Chapter Text
Title: Rose Garden
Date Written: 8/17/25
Word Count: 1109
Prompt: Hanahaki.
Love, to Cloud Strife, was like a bed of roses. It started out soft, innocent, like dainty flower petals unfurling in his stomach. Over time, the tiny bulbs bloomed into sprawling blossoms, flooding his blood and marrow with their addictive perfume.
Usually, that was where it ended; for one reason or another, the feelings would wither and die, and so too would the garden in his midsection, soothing the way for the next target of Cloud's infatuation.
Until he met Zack Fair.
Because the flowers never so much as wilted, instead growing stronger, nourished by the SOLDIER's constant kindness, no matter how strangely Cloud acted. For the first time in his life, someone actually liked who Cloud was, in spite of his flaws.
With the budding roses, of course, came the thorny vines. Alongside the butterflies dancing along his stomach lining when he saw his friend, there was now the agony of thorns piercing his insides, tearing into his organs and bleeding him dry. It was terrible. It was wonderful.
It was perfect.
The pain drove him deeper in love, let the reach of the flowers spread deeper around his chest. Soon, the blooms settled deep in his lungs while their thorns wrapped tightly around his ribcage, the beginning of a debilitating disease he couldn't bear to part with.
The first time he coughed up a flower petal, he didn't know what to think. Cloud had never heard of such a thing happening before. It seemed more like fantasy than reality, like one of his romantic dreams forced into reality.
Every source he could find pointed to unrequited love as the source, and death the punishment for letting it go untreated.
Even knowing his life was in peril because of his devotion, he couldn't stand to part with the roses he was cultivating. In a way, they were a gift from Zack. It would be cruel to strip them - and the overwhelming amount of love - from his body.
So, Cloud said nothing. Pretended as though everything was fine. He completed his drills with the same efficiency as before, hung around Zack slightly more frequently, and spent what little free time he had feeling out the growth of his inner garden.
After a month or so, he had started to spit out full blooms, soft pink things weighed down by the heavy red of his blood. Selfishly, he gave each and every one to Zack, if only so that he would be remembered when he died.
The continuous spread of sharp-edged vines and soft-petaled blossoms was agonizing, stealing away more and more of his insides, siphoning his already limited energy to support the parasites making themselves home in his midsection, but he wouldn't have it any other way.
Zack had a girlfriend, Cloud knew this well. They had met once at Zack's behest, though the SOLDIER had to leave early for something or other. She was kind, and Cloud didn't have room in his heart to hate her; all the space was filled with love, crammed full with ticklish flowers and squeezed taught by thorn-covered stems.
With bright eyes, she had said, "He won't thank you for it. He would rather you alive than dead." As if she could see through his flesh and into the chaotic workings of his body, see the green dying his flesh or the roses invading his innards.
Smiling, he replied, "I know, but I would rather love him than live."
She said nothing in reply, and they had spent the day relaxing while she tended to her lilies, and he to his roses.
It took three months for him to drop out of the cadet program. He could no longer keep up, and he didn't want to risk being sent to the infirmary. If they found his flowers - slowly weaving their way up his throat, contracting so tightly that he could hardly speak - they would rip out all of his hard work.
He left Zack a letter and an email before disappearing into the slums. Without a job to sustain himself, he would've been forced beneath the plate eventually. When he stepped off at the Sector 5 train station, Aerith was waiting for him.
She grabbed his hand and dragged him back to her church, ignoring his coughs and sputters and the flowers dripping from his lips like droplets of spittle. No matter how he tried, his vocal chords refused to move the way he needed, twined as they were with vines, pierced on sharp barbs until they were rendered useless.
Behind the heavy double doors at the back of the large atrium was a nest of bedding, where she pushed him down to rest. "Zack will be here soon. So, you can see him one last time." The smile on her face was sad but understanding.
Zack was so lucky to have her. The words he wanted to say were lost to the roses clogging his esophagus, but he knew she could read them in his eyes.
It took two hours for Zack to arrive, and in that time Cloud was quickly degrading. One of his eyes had been clawed away from the insides, spilling wet down the side of his face, soon replaced with a bundle of blooms that stretched the skin around his eye socket, not even mentioning the tearing caused by the stems crawling out to curl around his face.
Similarly, one of his ears had become compromised, oozing blood and plant matter, wriggling vines curling around his drooping blond hair. The skin of his throat was green from the bulging mass beneath it, and his stomach was bloated with the amount of roses being grown so quickly.
By the time Zack finally pushed his way through to where Cloud was resting, his mouth was flooded with flowers, and his remaining eye was growing glazed. Even so, he lit up at the sight of his friend, weakly twitching as if to reach out.
Mako eyes widened, then watered. "Oh, Cloud. Why?"
There was no verbal answer, nor a non-verbal one. Cloud's other ear was spilling out petal after petal. All he knew was that Zack was there, that he could see the object of his love one last time before dying.
The SOLDIER grew closer, holding one of Cloud's hands, and his remaining blue eye grew wide with elation, misty over with delighted tears.
They sat like that for a time, until the garden growing in Cloud's body suffocated him, and his chest tore itself open under the weight of his love, spilling red roses over Zack, so much that his blood would never wash off.