Cough it out, eat it up

It isn’t a secret, not really; this isn’t the sort of thing one can conceal forever. But it is an unspoken agreement in the party: we do not speak of Tonelico’s illness.

“There, there.” Mash rubs soothing circles over her back. “Breathe. It’ll be okay.”

Tonelico wheezes, spasms, and another violent cough overtakes her entire body. She hunches over, petals spilling over her lips.

“I’m with you.” There is not much that Mash can do- but at least, she can talk. Let her voice be an anchor through the pain. “I’m with you. It’s okay.”

With a latch spasm, Tonelico retches, and a cascade of flowers tumbles out of her mouth, hanging by vines. She stays like this for a few seconds, catching her breath- then she reaches up and pulls on the bundle of leaves, until the vines snap, retracting back to the back of her throat.

“... Thank you.” She’s smiling, but she’s still very obviously breathless. Her shoulders keep twitching without any of her input. “That would have been unpleasant to deal with alone.”

Mash rubs her back one last time, then lets go. “Don’t mention it.” And, like the rest of the team, she will go back to pretending it’s not here.

They call it hanahaki, the flower-vomitting disease.

“It’s caused by repressed feelings,” Ector explains to her, one day when they are alone, “anger. Sadness. Hope. All these things you keep deep inside. They fester, and plants grow from this fertile soil.”

He does not elaborate. He does not need to.

Tonelico is a good person. She always looks at the bright side of things. She helps people without ever asking for a reward, and smiles regardless of any hardship in her way.

She reminds Mash of Senpai. This is not a good thing.

She holds onto that assumption for the whole nine months she spends in the Fairy Calendar. Tonelico tells her my spear went out of control, and Mash thinks of the petals she finds on Tonelico’s pillow every morning; she tells her I will not save the fairies, and Mash thinks of the leaves she huffs out at times; she tells her there is not a single fairy I wish to save, and Mash thinks of bouquets of carnations pried out of her jaws with bare fingers.

It’s only at the very end of her journey that Mash understands that, like with many things, Tonelico had been playing a role.

It’s a horrible sight; Tonelico breaking down, madness in her eyes. She must be cursing the very skies, but her words are incomprehensible, her voice drowned in the torrent of flowers fleeing her lungs. Some of them are roses. There is blood on the petals.

And yet. Even now.

Mash guesses her true name before she speaks it out loud. By this point, the ice has almost engulfed her whole; she can no longer speak. In her last moments of consciousness, Mash connects everything she knows about Tonelico, and everything she knows about Morgan, painting the only picture that makes sense.

Even now. Even now. Even now. She’s trying to save Britain. Even now. Even now. Even now. She’s trying to save Britain.

It wasn’t anger she was repressing. It wasn’t any kind of rage at all. What she kept so dearly close to her heart, what Tonelico refused to ever speak out loud, was but the simplest and most unrequited-

-love.

Morgan’s body is not in the throne room. Morgan’s body is not anywhere to be found. Mash is familiar with the fairies’ cruelty by now. They must have thrown it into the Great Pit.

The flowers remain, though. Whatever they did to Morgan, it tore these plants right out of her lungs, and scattered them all over the room. 

Mash picks one up- a simple yellow one. That simple act echoes with simple times, afternoons helping Tonelico up after a particularly harsh cough. A flower. A simple flower. Morgan’s flower. Morgan’s love.

Because despite everything. Despite everything. Tonelico, Morgan, she loved Britain. She loved Britain to the point of making herself sick.

And it did not love back.

The flowers. The flowers. The flowers. They’re scattered across the room. No one has given them a second glance. Maybe one day someone will come and use them to make a crown, or decorate their house- unaware that they are the last remnants of a girl who damned herself to the bone for her country. Unaware that they are holding Morgan’s spilled love, misdirected as it may have been.

Mash violently shoves the flower in her own mouth.

It tastes bitter. Of course it does. Tonelico’s love could not be any other way. At best it tastes bad, at worst it might be poisonous. Mash doesn’t care. She swallow it whole, barely chewing, and when it has safely slid its way down her throat she bends down and grabs another.

This is Tonelico’s. This is her love. It grew from her entrails. The thought of anyone getting their hands on these, treating them like they would a piece of furniture- it’s unbearable. They have no idea what any of these mean. They have no idea who Tonelico was, truly was . They have no right over her love. They have no right over her body. If anyone is to desecrate her any further, then- let it be Mash. Let it be someone who cares.

Yes, this is a completely insane thing to say, she is aware. But what can she do? She is alone in her grief. Senpai would understand if she explained, but they weren’t there. There is no one left alive who was. The only thing left in this world who must have loved Tonelico as much as she did is the parasite that grew in her lungs, and so Mash gathers its remnants in her palms and eats and eats and eats.

Her throat hurts. She chokes at times. Tonelico choked too, when she coughed those out. This is the closest the two of them have ever been.  It’s cannibalism. It’s communion. It’s don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me.

This petal still has blood on it, the taste of copper filling Mash's mouth. This is from her veins. This is from her guts. Every stem she ingests is a part of Tonelico that can never be taken away from her- not by the Fairies, not by the Queen’s Calendar, not by any cosmos denial. This, she will carry with her until the end of times. Tonelico’s love will not die. Mash will survive and therefore it will not die.