Part five of HaruMichi BatB!! Masterpost link This chapter is a little weak, I think, but it’s here and I hope you enjoy it!

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The gardens needed no tending. Whether by design or cruel coincidence, they bloomed in beauty with no mind to time or curses.

If not your hand in marriage, mayhaps I may have but a flower in your garden.

Michiru no longer belonged here, atrocity that she was. But Haruka could not have looked more perfect had she been painted into the scene. She had finally changed, donning a simple white tunic and navy trousers. The sunlight caught her hair in a golden halo. She leaned into a rose bush, strong hands delicate around the thrones as she smelled the petals.

Doubt bloomed in Michiru’s heart. A beautiful woman in a beautiful garden should not be intruded upon. She should enjoy it, without—

And then she looked up, the shyest of tiny smiles creeping up one side of her mouth. “I like flowers,” she said, tone inexplicably apologetic.

“Well then I hope you will like it here.”

Haruka made a show of looking around. “It’s very nice.” She looked back to Michiru. “I like your hat.”

Michiru reached up to the rim. “Oh, thank you.” It was a lady’s hat, wide brimmed to keep the sun off delicate skin, trimmed with ribbon and lace. A farce on one such as herself, but she could not but try to dress for the occasion.

“Do you spend a lot of time here?” Haruka asked as they began to walk the winding path.

“I have not walked the gardens for a very long time.”

“Do you not want to? We could—“

“No, no, it’s quite alright. I merely haven’t had a reason.”

Lies upon lies. She would rather be hidden away, where the sunlight did not glint on her scales, where she did not feel brush and moss along the length of her tail, where she did not ache to have the warm arms of a human woman to link into the crook of Haruk’s elbow as they strolled. It was one thing to be a monster in a dark haunted house, and quite another to be one in the light of day.

And yet again… she was not sure she would trade seeing Haruka’s sheepish excitement at the flowers, the way joy burst out of her in the sun before she could think to reign it back in.

“I just haven’t seen so many flowers in one place before,” Haruka said after a while. “There are some gardens back home, kids take pictures there for prom, but I never feel… and they’re not so grand as this anyway.”

MIchiru could not be sure if asking more would be prying. She chose a sideway question to be safe. “What is prom?”

Haruka laughed, warm and bright and Michiru’s heart ached for more. “Prom is… well, like one of your balls, I suppose, did you have balls? But it’s with schools, when you’re a teen. And all the girls are supposed to go with boys, and all the boys are supposed to try and get lucky. And you’ve got to wear a horrible dress, usually with sparkles on it, so I never went.” She smiled, scratching at the back of her neck. “Mina went to like, five though. Dated boys just to go to their proms. She loves that sort of thing.”

“Mina is…”

“My roommate. And best friend. She’s much more glamorous than me.”

“There are things much more valuable than glamour.”

Haruka chuckled again. “Tell her that next time she buys me a tie with sequins on it.”

“I don’t expect to have the chance,” Michiru said, too candidly. Haruka looked to her with knotted brows.

“What…” she started, but then shook her head and looked forward. “There are probably things you can’t tell me, right? But if there are things that could help, I can do them. I’m here anyway, and I mean…” She shrugged. “I’d like to do what I can.”

“Thank you, but there’s nothing to be done.” Michiru adjusted her hat to shield her face from Haruka’s questioning frown. “I am what I am, and I must stay here.”

———-

The problem, she mused later, back in the safety of solitude, where shards of her vanity mirror still littered the floor, is that there had always been stories, and the stories were always spectacular and dramatic.

She had been cruel, certainly. She had wanted to be left alone, and that was what she got. And maybe it wouldn’t have come to this, had she done even one thing different.

“I do not want the towns people to attend,” she’d said when planning her coming-of-age. She saw them every day, and their absence meant more invitations could go out. She craved more than what their small population had to offer.

“I do not wish to see anyone,” she had said when her parents passed. She was expected to grieve publicly, to consol everyone else who know the lord and lady of the house, and she wanted no part in it.

“I would not marry you or anyone else here were you the last men on earth.”

And that was all there was. She inflicted cruelty and cruelty was inflicted upon her. She could not tell Haruka there was nothing more to it than that. She had never even found the courage to tell the shades the nature of the curse. They deserved to believe there was a way out.

She slid from her bedroom to the room off its side, where one wall opened to a balcony. At its center she kept a small round table, and the table she kept a hand mirror.

When she’d first changed, she thought it showed her the future. In the glass she saw herself, beautiful and smiling, and she saw Makoto and Usagi regain life and leave. She’d seen travelers come and romance her back to humanity. She’d seen herself change back a hundred times over, and slowly realized it was but a reflection of her desires, not a premonition of anything that would come to pass.

Michiru knew better than to look now, but still her claws wrapped around its handle and brought it to her face. There she was in the gardens, long dress fluttering against her legs. Her hand rested at Haruka’s elbow. Haruka bore no trace of fear. They walked and talked and smiled. Michiru leaned against the wall. She sighed, heart heavy, and watched the scene change.

Haruka was dressed as she was when she came, and Michiru sat next to her in a strange sort of carriage. Her hair and the ribbons of her hat streamed back in the air from the open windows. Haruka laughed and took her hand, placing it on a lever that stuck out between them. The carriage gave a small jerk as they moved it together, and then the Michiru in the glass was laughing too.

“Show me something real,” she whispered.

The image in the glass blurred. She saw the world through her own eyes, through a window at the front of the house. One claw rested against the pane. On the other side, a woman with long blonde hair ushered Haruka into a different carriage,  where another woman waited to take them away. Haruka looked back once, and then was gone.

Michiru set the mirror down. There was some small part of her heart that wanted the right thing. She would not fight it when it came to pass.