Chapter Text
Ambrosius is not a stranger to Hanahaki. He's had it before, after all.
He could, admittingly, still remember distant and foggy memories from almost two decades ago — of holding his mother's hand all the way up to the doctor's office, the artificial cherry taste of the lollipop he had been rewarded with after hours in that uncomfortable chair, and then leaving with the weight in his lungs gone, with the strange feeling of wanting them there again, so he could have a reason for his unexplainable feelings — the memories chipped and blurred at the margins, not unlike the thousand-year old scrolls in the Institute's vaults.
He still remembers exactly how the first petal had fell from his mouth — his chest felt unexplainably tight, as if there was something squeezing him, and he remembers feeling like he was going to die for the first time in his life. When his mother had found him, she had fainted right in front of the bathroom door, and Ambrosius couldn't possibly fathom why in the moment. Looking back, though, her six-year-old son with an expression on his face like he'd just saw a man die in front of him leaning over the toilet, clutching his sides like he had been stabbed with bloody petals scattered around him and even more in the toilet bowl —
— well. It wasn't exactly the most calming thing to experience, he guessed.
Ambrosius, even at a young age, had understood why he had to have the surgery and agreed to it after some hesitation. Hanahaki was still the same, even after a thousand years – most people saw their person, love (or tragedy?) at first sight and immediately felt those flowers bloom. They would slowly but surely creep through their respiratory system, wrapping around the lungs first then settling there in the stomach and, last, the heart. Eventually, the lover would have to make a decision between two choices. Confess to their love, which would either end in the two's happily after; or rejection, which would, admittingly, also remove the flowers. The other choice was to hole these feelings up in their chest, not speaking a single word until they finally collapsed with the final cough of a dozen blooms; the illness was, unfortunately, more fatal than not.
He didn't think of himself as most people, though.
Only after almost a year and a half of being in the company of Ballister, the infamous "street rat," who, in Ambrosius' opinion, was more determined and skilled then everyone else in their year, did he realize.
The second petal had struck at the worst time.
Their duel had been going surprisingly well for him, considering how utterly crap he had been at that time with his sword fighting skills. He had even blocked Ballister's hits a few times, and reveled every single time in the look of shock on the other boy's face, even as he had parried back even more determined. Until it wasn't, of course, because Lady Luck went from smiling down at him to flat-out laughing at his misfortune.
There was a presence in his throat, and the next thing he knew he had coughed up a single petal, right in front of Ballister as they were fighting together.
Terror shot through his body, the only reason why he didn't immediately cry out being that he had been trained to never cause a scene in public, and he had quickly made up a half-hearted excuse about his stomach hurting, rushing to the restroom to lock the door just as his cough had evolved into a fit of hacking, his small body completely folded over the toilet seat and golden hair falling into his eyes as he had felt something make its way up his throat with the accompanying side of utter dread.
Later, he had told his parents about his accident in the middle of their knight training and demanded for both of them to do something about it, to fix this flowerful disease that had consumed him fully from his head to his heart. Ballister had fortunately not noticed in the moment, luckily, but what if he did next time? What if he demanded for Ambrosius to explain the blood-soaked petals that had appeared from his throat, and Ambrosius would be at a loss for words?
He couldn't go through that. He couldn't be confronted by Ballister, the only person who truly knew Ambrosius, and have to admit that the petals and the suffering he had been going through for the past month be the cause of Ballister's presence?
Ballister would be devastated. Ambrosius even more.
He remembers the flowers, but not the color. They were carnations, his mother had told him, as he had presented her with the bloodied petals that had been coughed up in the restroom seconds earlier. The petals' texture had reminded Ambrosius of wrapping paper, the tiny colorful sheets that were produced in bulk for their arts and crafts time, and when he had excitedly told his mother his genius revelation she had smiled at him but it didn't quite reach her loving eyes.
After the surgery, he had felt exceedingly better, but it still felt weird to look at Ballister's beautiful big eyes and not feel that spark in his chest. It was like there was a gaping hole in his chest where the flowers had previously taken residence in, and now that they were gone all that space had been freed up.
Probably a side effect of the surgery, his six-year-old self had reasoned, and had ignored the overwhelming feeling of something wrong for years to come.
( They had disappeared, eventually, for a moment. For a single moment, the remnants of childhood love had disappeared, and the stray roots with their seeds uprooted had loosened their hold around his lungs, and he was able to breathe easier. Although he wouldn't centrally remember that moment as the time the feelings had disappeared;
he would remember it as the moment he had cut off Ballister's arm. )