#laurissa

But no matter how much she tries, she cannot get her students to confess who had it been, and she’s too ashamed of being the victim of a prank and unable to discover the culprit to go complain to Principal Weems (she wouldn’t mind the excuse to spend more time in her study, but she feels pathetic to go and complain like a little girl). She tries to forget the shame and when Larissa’s warm eyes meet hers that evening over both of their glasses of wine, she can passably lie and state that her day had been ‘alright’.

Except it happens a second time, and this time it is only her and Larissa when it happens, interrupting what had been an intense moment, when, made bolder by the alcohol in her veins, their faces had been getting closer to each other, as if pulled by an invincible magnetic force. Laurel had seen her own desire mirrored in her principal’s eyes, and she had seen how the taller woman’s tongue had come out to wet her lips in anticipation…but when their mouths were but a breath apart, she felt the tell-tale pressure behind her breastbone and she has to turn away, her hands clutching spasmodically at her mouth, trying to hide the colorful petals from sight.

She is unsuccessful, and Larissa’s horrified face is all she needs to see before running away from it all: the almost-kiss (her father and her brother and her mother are all screaming at her from their tombs, asking her why hasn’t she started on her plan yet, why wasn’t she extracting revenge on those monsters who had ruined her family), her boss who she most definitely shouldn’t be falling for, and the embarrassment of those petals still coming out of her airways. Or trying to run away from it.

She does a decent job of hiding in her conservatory over the next few days, thankfully helped by the weekend, but the cough attacks come about in increasingly frequent bouts, and on Monday she has no choice but to visit the nurse office.

She sees the pity on the nurse’s face before hearing it in their voice. I’m sorry, they say, you seem to be suffering from Hanahaki disease. The name doesn’t tell her much, but the tone is not that of good news. Laurel wonders if she’ll die of it before avenging her family, and the thought gives her more comfort than it should have (it’s not just Larissa - a part of her is starting to come to love her girls in Ophelia Hall, and the way her students’ eyes sparkle when she shows them particularly deadly plants - and she now realizes that no matter her prognosis, the plan for revenge has already died before she does).

She pretends to know what the nurse is talking about and looks up the disease on internet as soon as she gets to her classroom. She had to sit down to process the news. The words stare at her unrelentingly from the screen.

When afflicted by Hanahaki disease, the patient is subjected to cough attacks with production of copious amounts of flower petals, if and only if the patient is concomitantly affected by one-sided affection towards another person. The natural cure for the disease is for the recipient of such affection to return the feeling, or through surgical intervention. The inevitable side effect of the surgical procedure is the assured loss of the feelings the patient had. If left untreated, Hanahaki disease leads to certain death within the timespan of a few weeks.

A few weeks. That was all she had. The next few days go by in a haze, as her brain processes the information. Even if her insurance paid for the surgery, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go back to how her life was before falling for Larissa (she had been plotting to slaughter a school full of children for something that happened way before most of them were born, that was not a good place to be in mentally).

She wonders if she should tell Larissa. But that would serve no purpose, other than let the other woman feel guilty of her inevitable demise. And Laurel thinks she knows Larissa enough to know that she would feel guilty. She would add Laurel’s condition to the ever-growing burden on her shoulders, and possibly try to take on the costs for her surgery as well. No, she wouldn’t tell Larissa.

“Marilyn, we need to talk.”

When she hears that name falling from the other’s lips she knows that there is another secret that she doesn’t want to take to the grave with her. She doesn’t want to die as a lie. So when she meets up with her principal that night, she asks her to listen first, and Larissa looks at her with a stony expression as she retells the story of the Gates family and of how little Laurel had come back to her hometown to extract revenge but ended up finding a new, happier family in Nevermore, among the outcasts.

When she finishes her story, Larissa takes a sip of wine, and Laurel wishes she was able to go back to when those blue eyes looked at her with warmth and desire, instead of being unreadable as they are now. Guarded.

“Why are you telling me this, after all this time?”

And Laurel apparently is uncapable to lie to her anymore, because the truth falls from her lips in all of its ugliness, as she looks away from the unspoken accusations she thinks she can see in the icy depths that she so loves (She loves her so much, her chest constricts even when she’s not coughing up petals).

“Because I’m dying.”

In the stunned silence that follows, her lungs seize up once more and she (once again, it was starting to become a habit) runs away from the principal’s office. She doesn’t want to see the pity mix with distrust. She wants to remember the way Larissa looked at her when she was just Marilyn, and she wasn’t dying (at least, not quicker than any other person).

But she lives in a school, and the location of her quarters is not only well known to students and staff, but also clearly marked in case anyone forgot (Larissa never forgets anything about Nevermore, she’s sure of that) so her escape was always doomed to be a short-lived one. That night, Larissa enters through the door without knocking, her normally pristine appearance disheveled, with creases in her clothing, and flyaway hair sticking up in all directions (her makeup looks smudged as well, almost as if she had cried, but that’s impossible, so Laurel explains it as a trick of the light). Laurel drinks in her appearance from where she’s sitting at her own tiny desk overflowing with botany books (God, she’s beautiful even when she’s agitated).

“Who is it?” Larissa asks, her voice commanding as if she was herding her students during a school trip.

“Who?” Laurel asks, even if her gut already knows, and it feels like it’s been filled with ice and dread.

“You have Hanahaki, right? Who is it that you have feelings for?” She looks even more agitated, making her way towards Laurel, then apparently thinking better of it and settling for pacing the length of her tiny office (with her long legs, it takes her barely a couple of strides in either direction, but that doesn’t seem to stop her).

The ice had turned to lead in Laurel’s insides, and she can only whisper: “Please don’t ask me that.” The answer seems to physically hit Larissa, because she recoils and stops dead in her motion, before once again crossing the room, and falling to her knees besides Laurel’s chair. Laurel can only watch her, feeling as if her eyes are bulging out of her skull in surprise (What is the meaning of this?).

But then Larissa’s eyes are looking up at her, pleading, (she’s definitely been crying, there’s no denying it from this up close) and she begs her: “Please, at least let me take you to the nearest specialist. I can pay for the surgery. Please don’t just give up.” And there are tears in Laurel’s eyes too because she cannot explain to her, because Larissa is a good person who feels bad for her friend and she wouldn’t be able to understand. So she just shakes her head, no, she wouldn’t go to the surgeon. (She’d never give up her love).

She’s surprised when Larissa grabs her shoulders and shouts (Larissa Weems is not a woman who shouts when she’s angry – she only shouts when she is scared and overwhelmed). “BUT YOU CANNOT JUST DIE!” and Laurel brings her hands tenderly to Larissa’s face and tries to wipe away her tears, and tries to put on a brave face, and tell her boss that everybody has to die sooner or later and that is a fact of life (she doesn’t tell her how scary the thought of dying is).

And then Larissa is not only crying, but she’s shaking with sobs, and her voice is small and soft and broken when she tries to argue against that. “But you cannot just die, because, because…” And then, smaller, softer, and even more broken “…because I love you.”

And just like that, the oppression that was getting heavier and heavier against Laurel’s breastbone suddenly lifts, and she is cured of her ailment. And she feels lighter and more alive and happier than she’s ever felt is her life up until now because she’s not dying, after all (at least, not quicker than any other person), she’s not going to cough up petals anymore, and, most importantly, her feelings are returned.

Her lips find those of Larissa, and taste the saltiness of her tears on them, lightly, tenderly, before pulling back slightly and murmuring, still unable to fully believe it:

“It’s you. It’s always been you.”

And then their lips meet again and this time it is passionate, overpowering, and filled with requited love.