She’s always loved them, daffodils.
It’s been a slight fixation since her childhood. They looked like trumpets with stars on the end, at least to her childlike mind. She picked every one she saw once she was finally big enough to walk, making crowns and bracelets of them once her fingers gained the dexterity to do so.
She preferred them to just about every flower, even though many people who tried courting tactics saw fit to try other flowers, like exotic orchids, or lilies. They served as one of the main decorative themes in her room, juxtaposed with her DC heroes, vintage finds, oddities from Greece, and Bruins paraphernalia.
She received bouquets of them on her St.Valentine's Day, after performances, as gifts on her birthday (which wasn’t far from St. Valentine’s Day, really, so she got twice the amount of flowers), and on various other occasions.
With college and hunting, it became rare that she got daffodils as often as she once had. Especially with hunting. She and John had their trust fund money, and Aron and Dita backed most of their ammunition needs, but they were still wise with what they did have.
They’re staying in Hartford at the apartment, Tina scrawling out a letter to Lena in Greek, when there’s a knock on the door. It’s purely instinct that she grabs a knife after she sets down her pen, going to answer the door.
She’s not shocked that there isn’t anyone there, at least not anyone that she can see. But on the floor, in a crystal vase, sat a large bouquet of daffodils. Smiling slightly, she picked them up, instinctively inhaling the scent of the yellow flowers.
Quietly, she nudges the door closed behind her, carrying the vase back to her desk where she decides to display them.
A week later, she’s in a used bookstore, looking for books on lore. As if she looks for anything else these days, honestly. Somehow she manages to find multiple books that she’s looking for, and at the cash register, the girl working is stunned, telling Tina “We don’t carry those books.”
Regardless, Tina pays for the books anyways (the kid is a fool to only ask for five dollars, but who is she to argue), and goes to leave the bookstore, wrapped purchase in hand. She’s stopped by the teen, who holds a flower out to her.
A bright yellow daffodil.
“I was told to give this to you.” She says.
Tina is confused, but she takes the flower anyway.
A metaphysical shop for spell supplies, the gun store for some more ammunition, the grocery store for fruit, the bakery.
Each stop on her way, she’s given a flower, and they never tell her from whom.
It doesn’t hit her until she finally completes her last errand before heading back to the apartment.
Daffodil is just the colloquial, umbrella term. Narcissus, their genus, sometimes the flower Hades planted to lure Persephone... The flower that, in some myth, she picked and inadvertently opened a hole to the Underworld, through which Hades carried her through.
Tina smiles softly to herself, takes one of the flowers she’s been given and tucks it behind her ear, starting the car to head back home for the night.
Close-by, watching invisibly, a certain god smiles upon seeing the bright yellow against the near-white of her hair.
