prompt number 2 of the day: “I see you always buying those [insert flowers] for others but never for yourself, so here you go!” (hands roses) AU with a side of pretend federova survived the game
aria argento [POV character]/yelena federova, read on ao3
The woman walks by every day at noon precisely, holding one large blue hydrangea loosely in her left hand, as if it isn’t important. It is, though. She moves swiftly through the crowd and gracefully dodges anyone who might come into contact with the flower.
It’s not even the most confusing thing about her. That she’s out and about at all, walking around Prague…
You’ve seen people with more augments. Adam drops by your desk at least once every couple of days. But hers are so…visible. TYM unguligrade leg prosthetics, long, deadly, black and silver and every bit the way things were before the Incident. And she’s so tall too, taller than most the cops who should be stopping her every two seconds. But…they don’t. You can’t figure it out. Is it the way she walks, with confidence, and assuredness, and...but you walk like that. You think you do, at any rate. And they won’t leave you alone.
You tell yourself you want to learn from her. That’s the reason you have taken to eating lunch outside. Every day, at noon.
That, and you want to know what the flower is for.
You don’t follow her, one day. You both simply end up walking in the same direction. You, to get some paperwork you left at home, she…
Well, you aren’t sure. She stops dead at a crosswalk, and looks back over her shoulder, just a little, just barely enough where she can see you out of the corner of her eye. One minute, she is there, the next, she ducks behind a corner and is gone.
Cloaking shield, you think. Then again, if she had military augs, she’d definitely be stopped by the police more often.
You don’t see her for another two weeks. At first, you think she might have been freaked out by the way you were following her. You weren’t, but you can’t exactly tell her that. After a week goes by, you start scouring the databases. Tracking augmentations. Looking up police reports, and finally, deportation orders to Golem.
There’s no news of any aug like her getting murdered in the streets, so that’s one small good thing to hang on to. It is, at least until Smiley cheerfully reminds you that most aug murders these days don’t get reported, much less investigated.
She shows back up the day before you are alarmed enough to ask Adam for help. He knows things; he could help, you’re sure. The augmented woman shows up first, though, picking her way carefully through the streets with a hydrangea.
It gives you an idea.
The next day, you are prepared. They’ve only one hydrangea left at the flower shop, and you know she’ll need it, so you ask the woman behind the counter for something nice and are mildly flustered when she offers you a rose.
“It’s a little much, don’t you think?” you ask, keeping hold of it.
The woman grins.
“Take a chance!” she says, in Czech.
The augmented woman is right on time, that day, right at noon. You’re leaned against the building opposite Praha Dovoz today, and you’re going to be smooth about this. There is no way to be smooth about this.
She see you – she has to see you – does she see you? She walks quickly, with purpose, doesn’t even turn her head at the sight of you fiddling with the rose. She’s several steps past you when you regain control of your voice.
“Hi!” you say, and wince inside. You sound like a kid. Hi, let’s be friends!
“Flower woman,” you add, and cringe again, because, she has a name. You just don’t know it, but she has one. It’s probably a very nice name, too.
This does halt her. She turns to face you, one gliding movement, like she has ice skates in her augs or something. God. You shouldn’t be talking right now. You’re going to say something stupid. She is looking at you, frowning, disapproving? The dark eye shadow she wears makes her look especially intimidating.
Take a deep breath. You’ve handled far trickier situation than this one. Ooh-rah. Get it done.
“I work around here,” you start, with a friendly smile. “And I always see you buying those hydrangeas for others, but…”
She’s still staring, face not changing from a frown. Is it even a frown? Is it neutral? Are you reading into it too much? God, what if the flowers were for her?
Rally. You’re nearly done.
“But never for yourself,” you say. “So, um…here you go!”
You hold the rose out to her. They had nothing to match her black and silver augments, or her jet black combat jacket, so you’d gone with a nice, pale yellow. Nothing too much. She glances down at it, then back up to you, brow furrowing and briefly making small lines in her forehead.
You keep the smile on your own face, straighten up. Calmly hold out the flower.
She makes a fist with her right hand and you think for a moment you’ve miscalculated horribly, but she hovers it over her forehead for a brief moment, touches it to her chin, and then accepts the rose.
It’s not a smile so much as the lack of a frown, but either way she looks happy. She runs a thumb along the outside of the petals, and nods sharply at you.
Then she turns, and continues walking. Almost as if it had never happened, except now she dodges all the pedestrians who might bump into both the hydrangea and the rose.
