Work Text:
Theo parked her jeep near the flower shop, two wheels on the kerb, the other two on the side of the road. Parking was not her strong suit, but she wasn’t preventing pedestrians from using the pavement, so it was good enough. She wasn’t planning on staying inside the shop for more than five minutes anyway.
She gave up on the idea of putting her gloves back on, they were still damp from opening her car earlier on. It had been raining all night, only a persistent drizzle remained on this cold morning, but angry looking clouds were still in the sky, threatening showers to fall. Typical October. Even the weather appeared to be gloomy.
The psychologist had taken a week off. Anniversaries always have a strange and strong power over people, she knew so, and she was no exception. She needed this break, Nellie died two years ago, consequently this was the third leave she’s taken ever since. Celebrating the memory of her late sister... frustratingly enough, she couldn’t think of anything else to do now.
She found herself trying to recreate the things her sister used to enjoy, as a way to feel close to her. Tea parties, too odd and childish to have one, let alone invite people. Picnics, something hard to consider when it’s almost the middle of autumn, indoor picnics will have to do. Watching sappy movies, she found herself missing her quick comments in the middle of a scene. Ghosts stories... she’s probably had enough of those for the rest of her life now.
She crossed the street and walked up to the front door, holding it open for a person walking out with their arms full of colourful plants. The shop was empty as she came in, and the smell of greenery overwhelmed her senses, she thought of it as a similar experience as stepping into a forest at dawn. The white walls and numerous windows made the room look particularly bright despite the grey weather.
To deck a gravestone with flowers... this couldn’t be that hard, people do that all the time. What kind of flowers to pick… something merry, full of light, not to highlight the contrast between life in a place that screams death, but to bring a bit of life near the place where her sister rested. As if it would change anything. Nellie used to be jolly, once upon a time. Flowers would have made her happy, she hoped.
As her eyes were scanning the different shelves packed with house plants and floral arrangements, a grey haired woman walked out of the back room into the shop. She looked rather tired, but smiled politely nonetheless. There was something about her face that looked oddly familiar, but she couldn’t make out what exactly, or even why.
“Good morning. Can I be of any help, or are you just looking for now?” She had a slight accent, Northern English, quite softened.
“Browsing,” she offered a smile back.
She nodded and got behind the counter, adding some greenish flowers to a bouquet. Would this look great on a tombstone? It came to her attention that she had no idea what she was looking for. She knew how to deal with living people, not living plants for dead people. She liked poppies, because it reminded her of the sunny days. Probably not the season. What kind of flower blooms in October?
“I need flowers,” she turned around. “To put on someone’s grave. I’m not sure what’s best.” she admitted.
The shopkeeper lifted her head, her gaze was immediately gentle, her hands still expertly fixing her arrangement. “Usually, people go for chrysanthemums, it’s rather traditional but it doesn’t last long in the cold. Otherwise you’ll want to opt for cyclamens, marigolds, asters or veronicas, these won’t wither too quickly as the temperature drops.” She paused for a moment, and set her piece aside. “Tell me about them.” She asked softly.
It took her a bit of time before she realised she wanted to hear about Nellie. Well... here goes nothing. “Eleanor. Um, she’s my sister.” She took a breath. “I don’t know what to tell you…”
“Tell me… what kind of person she was, or what makes you think of her, what you want her to know.”
She frowned for a split second. “Right, the language of flowers, symbols and all that. Sorry,” she quickly added, and thought for a moment. “She was my little sister, died two years ago, unexpectedly, sort of. She’s the kind of person who collects buttons, and... do you have anything that’d say something between “I’m sorry you thought you couldn’t call me” and “I’m sorry you didn’t”?”
The florist smiled sadly. “Blaming yourself for her death can’t be good. Can I ask how she died?”
Bold, but somehow she didn’t mind. “The circumstances of her death were… rather unusual.” And that’s putting it mildly, she thought. Little did she know that the standing woman in front of her had had her fair share of unusual events, so to speak.
She nodded knowingly, which troubled Theo a little. She was ready to have questions falling down on her like confetti, but none came, perhaps she was afraid to overstep boundaries, she thought.
However, she stared into space and she added, more to herself “No one ever got anywhere dwelling on the past. Not when it’s over, when there’s nothing more to do.”
She looked back up at the beautiful woman on the other side of the counter, her eyes slightly misty “A dear friend of mine explained, not long ago, that loving someone implies a risk of losing them, yet we chose to genuinely love all the same. It was a much appreciated reminder really, that nothing ever lasts. Everything, the good like the bad, has a due date, that only endings lead to new beginnings. And even if we have no option but to face the fact that we can’t rewrite the endings we don’t like, we can still choose to remember the good stories, the nice memories-”
“We fought, the last time, the real last time.” she interrupted. “She was so disappointed she couldn’t look at me when I left, and I know she doesn’t blame me, as crazy as it may sound, I’m sure she doesn’t, but..”
“You still blame yourself, nonetheless.” she finished. At the sight of the younger woman lowering her gaze, she carried on. “Sisters fight. It’s bound to happen, truly universal actually. Try to think about it this way: if you had the chance to fight with her one more time, would you?”
She tilted her head, considering her answer, and admitted “I would. Definitely.”
“With time, even the darkest shadows brighten up, you’ll find that all the moments you shared were precisely just that. Moments which you got to share together.”
It was pouring by the time she got to the graveyard. She wasn’t sure how long she had been standing in front of her sister’s stone, thinking. She was soaked, and her fingers were cold. She put her hands in her pockets, mentally kicking herself for choosing to throw most of her gloves away, although her mind was still set on leaving this habit behind her.
In the multitude of drops hitting her face, a warmer one ran down her cheek. The warmth spread to her heart, and she remembered that they loved one another completely. She played with the couple of buttons that remained on her pocket at all times now, then felt a thick paper at the bottom of it, folded in two.
As soon as the little card was between her fingers, the same feeling she had back at the shop seized her. An odd mix of love and loss, of presence and absence, that also felt peaceful, somehow. A feeling that would come and go in the following weeks. A feeling that would push her to go back to that shop, if not to buy her girlfriend flowers, then to have a chat with the other woman, and later to listen to the stories she had to tell.