Kingdom Hearts (Marluxia/Namine) [week 6, prompt 7]
Title: Softness of Petals Author: Sister Coyote Rating: Worksafe, but see warning. Length: 500 words. Warning: Entirely worksafe, but implies future dubcon/badtouch. Summary: In one of the thousand changing rooms of Castle Oblivion, Marluxia has a garden.
In one of the thousand changing rooms of Castle Oblivion, Marluxia has a garden.
(Of course.)
Have the right (or wrong) card in your pocket, go down the right (or wrong) hallway, open the right (or wrong) door, and there it is -- a lush secret garden, open, impossibly, to a soft blue sky, though all the skies over the Castle are black, always black.
There are paths and walls, a little splashing fountain, statues of forgotten gods, low benches, but all of these things are secondary to the flowers. Every surface is garlanded with morning-glory and moonflower. Light petals blow from the cherry trees and heavier wax-white petals from the magnolias. A low wall borders a field of poppies with their lush heads; round planters cradle the heavy pods of nepenthe-blossoms; quiet pools host the spreading blooms of the lotus; deep beds of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme cast their spicy scents on the air.
The centerpiece of Marluxia's garden is a circle of roses, and at the heart a red rose. ("Stolen," Larxene said, "like all of them; he's more monster than the one he got that from.") And though something in the luxury of Marluxia's garden terrifies Namine, she is drawn, as if against her will, inexorably to the heart of that circle, and to the red rose there.
She pushes past the others: the violent fuscia wildrose, the heady-scented white cabbage rose, the elegant tea-rose, the delicate sweetbriar. She bends as if in a dream, and buries her face in the wide-blown bloom, inhales its scent, which seems to drift upward from her nose straight into her mind. She puts out a fingertip to touch the silk petal, and catches instead on a thorn.
Then he is behind her, fast as magic, and his voice is low as he says, "Did the princess prick her finger?"
She startles, but he catches her hand with great delicacy and brings her bloodied fingertip to his mouth. She does not pull away. The heavy perfume of the roses fills her body; she has no more strength than their slim canes.
"You have plucked my roses," Marluxia says. Though she has done no such thing -- she would not do such a foolish thing -- she somehow cannot protest. Her mind is full of sweetness, her limbs heavy and soft. "And now you're mine." His voice is soft and lush as the moss beneath her feet.
Her mouth is full of the softness of petals. No words can penetrate.
"Sleep, princess," he says, folding her bloodied finger in toward her palm. Some part of her dislikes the look in his eye, the slow satisfaction. Nonetheless her eyelids droop. Marluxia does pluck a rose, then, with a swift crack of its stem that almost (but not quite) rouses her from the spell. He brushes it along her cheek. Her eyes slip shut. "Sleep now," he says.
The last thing she feels as the strength ebbs from his body are his arms gathering her up against his chest.