yurishippingolympics | YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024

Hanahaki disease!

Link to kittyuri hanahaki fic on ao3 here!

FILL: TEAM TOUHOU

lottery57 - 2024-06-26 17:14 (UTC) - Expand

The eponymous flower - For characters with plants or flowers in their name, create a piece featuring that character/pairing with that plant/flower

Jasprose/Nepetasprite :3

Re: FILL: TEAM TOUHOU

avagames - 2024-06-19 08:37 (UTC) - Expand

FILL: Team Griddlehark

cavaliercot - 2024-07-02 04:03 (UTC) - Expand

Catchfly: Pretended love, A snare, "I am thy prisoner"

word count: 500

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall

extra tags: implied violence, blood, spies au??? unclear

//

“Sorry,” Cinder says flatly, sounding not particularly sorry at all. “You should have known when I gave you the catchfly.” A smile twists up the blood-smeared corners of her mouth, and Winter isn’t at all ashamed to say that it makes her look devastatingly attractive. “I was proud of that. Not very subtle of me, right? You could have taken the warning and run.”

Winter spits blood onto the floor. “But where would the fun be in that?”

She tilts her head to the side, considering. “True enough.”

I was giving you an out lingers between them, unspoken. As much as this sucks, Winter can’t say she hasn’t enjoyed the chase, the thrill. She tugs ineffectually at her cuffs, looking for weak points she knows she won’t find. Cinder is thorough and very, very smart. “Do you regret any of it?”

It’s meant as an off-handed comment, but it bites her tongue regardless, fills her mouth with the taste of her own blood all over again. She doesn’t know if she wants the answer.

Cinder’s head tilts to the other side, fixing on the wall just above her head. It’s an old habit of hers; a way of brushing aside her own guilt. “You don’t know anything about flowers, do you?”

Winter shakes her head. The room spins.

She raises a hand, ticking words off on her fingers. “I gave you a catchfly. Pretended love —” and here her mouth flicks up again, sarcastic, self-deprecating, “a snare, ‘I am thy prisoner’. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Two out of three isn’t bad.”

“I never intended to make you feel — caught,” Winter begins haltingly, staring determinedly down at the floor again, but Cinder’s laugh cuts her off.

“Being in love with your target tends to have that effect.”

She swallows thickly. The taste of blood on her tongue becomes a caress; familiarity. They’ve sparred before, and it’s always ended like this — Winter kneeling, licking blood off her teeth; Cinder above her, licking blood off her fingers. “I do love you too, if you were wondering. Nothing about that was ever fake. I contemplated quitting my job more than once.”

“So why didn’t you?”

Interestingly enough, the air chills. For someone who has always burned so hot, Cinder has always been good at being cold. Winter tilts her head down, back to the floor, acquiescing. “How do you tell the person you love you’ve been sent to kill them?”

There’s no warmth to her voice when she replies, no heat. “You don’t. You give up and move on.”

“You knew, though,” she challenges, “you singled me out because you had my file from the start. We both did.”

Cinder’s hand tightens around the sword at her side, fingers trembling. “I would have quit. I would have done it if you asked me to.”

Winter stares at her shoes, at her blood on the floor. So why didn’t you? goes unsaid: so why wasn’t it worth giving it all up for me?

Edited 2024-06-29 22:55 (UTC)

FILL: Tokusatsu Yuri Ships United Front

baradhiblue - 2024-07-02 02:46 (UTC) - Expand

(Purple) Hyacinth: Grief and sorrow; Please forgive me

Ship: Minato Asahi/Mitsurugi Saki
Canon: Ultraman R/B
Words: 534

----------

Next week is the end of the world.

Saki, in the end, has almost zero regrets. Every step she has taken, for thousands of years, has led up to Leugocyte’s downfall, once and for all. Soon, she too will be amidst the stars, reunited with her brothers in their eternal slumber.

“You’ve done well.”

Their voices grow fainter by the day, but to not etch them into her memory is sacrilege. Grigio, Mitsurugi Saki — what say you — is the only person still walking these grounds that can. Isn’t that what she’s committed every single one of her mistakes for?

Red. Blue. Red. Blue. Saki’s grey is neither.

“Tsuru-chan!”

Saki blinks.

In front of her eyes lies another that could not possibly be categorized as red or blue. Minato Asahi’s brothers may put on her brothers’ powers like a costume — nay, adapt them for themselves, and fight to protect their homeland. But their younger sister is all smiles and candy, colouring everyone’s hues in neither red, nor blue, but a brilliant orange.

“Yes,” Saki responds, monotone.

Asahi’s smile is unwavering. Silly girl, there is still hope in her eyes. But would Saki have preferred another version of her, one dulled by the inevitability of planet Earth’s fate?

Such a version is impossible to imagine. Who is Minato Asahi, without her upbeat swinging of Saki’s hands, or without her eager hands stuffing dessert-sweet into Saki’s mouth, or with the glimmer in her eyes that rival the stars itself?

“It’s boring sitting here for a while,” Asahi says, “Let’s walk around!”

The thing about Asahi is this: not even Saki’s words are aware of how to shape themselves into the saying, “no,” anymore. At least, not on a humble walk. So Saki complies, letting the heavy thumping of her space-black boots harmonize with the lighter clicks of Asahi’s ballet-pink flats.

Flowers bloom, unaware of the unavoidable. They, too, are not red or blue. Instead, they dare to combine the two together, standing in a royal fashion.

Purple hyacinths, Saki realizes. To them, too, she must make an apology.

Mitsurugi Saki, in the end, has almost zero regrets. The lone regret she has falls entirely within the girl next to her, for when Saki rests among the stars, she will never meet Asahi again.

To Minato Asahi. The world as you know it will end next week. And with that too, I shall be gone.

“Wah! Tsuru-chan, look! They’re so pretty!” Asahi exclaims in the back.

Yes, indeed. They are. Saki’s heart hangs, lower and lower. Maybe, the very rope supporting it may be weaved of these purple hyacinths. And within a week’s time, this rope will snap.

“I suppose they are,” she replies.

She turns to Asahi. Asahi had mentioned weaving flowers into her hair — how would these appear, should they be nestled within the crooks of a braid?

Saki will never know. The world will soon become extinct of these flowers, and she will never see Asahi again. Will someone grieve the sight, when Saki is gone — will someone’s wracked sobs cross the galaxy, telling the universe over and over?

Minato Asahi. Even if I may no longer be conscious of receiving it, please forgive me.

Edited 2024-06-24 01:30 (UTC)

FILL: Team Anime/Manga

hopelessgemini - 2024-06-29 22:29 (UTC) - Expand

Obligate carnivore surrounded by plants.

"Girl who thinks she's having a normal and innocuous conversation with another woman entirely unaware that to all outside observes she occupies a panel framed with extremely conspicuous amounts of lily flowers" — hellomelancholic on Tumblr (link)

"my mom has a potted sunflower in the kitchen. because it is a sunflower, it keeps turning towards the light from the window. my mother keeps rotating it so it faces inward because she wants "to see its beautiful petals and have it really brighten up the space!" . the sunflower is visibly wilting ."

— skoople on tumblr

deadly flowers with a beautiful meaning and/or appearance

Ship: Dahlia Hawthorne/April May (Ace Attorney)

character A uses flower symbolism as a means of flirting; character B knows nothing about flowers

Ship: Kitty/Yuri
Word Count: 1224

------------------------------

Someone’s playing a cruel prank on her and frankly, Kitty’s sick of it. Sure, the first few weeks she’d understood–torn notes, stolen gym clothes, weird plants in her locker, it’s run-of-the-mill new kids treatment.

But they’re three weeks in and the flowers are still streaming in like it’s Day 1. She’s pretty sure Q is collecting the petals behind her back, even though she tells him not to.

“Some of these are rare!” he protests as he shoves them into his backpack. They’re getting crushed under the weight of all his books. “Like really, really rare!”

The first week had been camellias, according to Q. White and pink buds, delicate petals layered in a seemingly endless ring around the center. Q had swooned amidst her coughing fit.

Week 2 had brought sakurasou and a raging case of hives.

“These aren’t even native to the area,” Q had shrieked. “This is a Japanese flower–the primrose! The petals are so small… and such a pretty shade of purple!” Kitty had offered a sympathetic sniffle, her nose buried too deep in a tissue to note the delicacy.

The worst part is the allergies. Portland is a nightmare in Spring but she scrapes by with a box of Claritin and cutting her schedule in half. She only steps outside out of necessity. Having petals showered on her head every time she reaches for her textbooks is a completely different story.

And now Week 3 has brought cornflowers, if Q’s expertise is to be believed.

“They’re blue,” Kitty says, picking one up by the stem. Q yelps at her lack of delicacy. “Corn isn’t blue.”

“They have a history,” he sighs at her ignorance. “And a lengthy set of meanings too.”

“Pretty sure I don’t need a dictionary for that one,” she laughs. “This must be the Korean way of saying fuck you and get out of our school.”

Q’s responding smile is strained.

“You gonna take them again?” she asks. He shrugs guiltily in response but he’s already reaching for the stems.

“It’s a pretty shade of blue,” he says by way of explanation and Kitty shakes her head.

“If you wanna keep the creepy, stalker flowers, that’s all you. It’s like they know my schedule too because they always sneak them in when I’m at classes! Anyways, same time, next week?”

Q grins and bumps his fist against hers in response.

“Sweet Williams?” she echoes on Week 4. Q nods back violently. “Doesn’t look much like a William to me, haha!”

Her joke is received with silence because Q is on 4 hours of sleep and traded in his humor for brawns at birth.

“Okay… or not,” she finishes and tosses the bundle in his direction because she knows he’ll scoop them up off the floor anyways. He’ll probably give them to Florian too and the poor guy won’t even know they’re second-rate.

“Sweet Williams,” he echoes dully and Kitty doesn’t even know if it’s the flowers or last class’ lecture that sucked the life out of him. Professor Lee can be draining on a good day and Hades-soul-sucking-levels-of-evil on a bad one. “I think I’m starting to get it.”

“Get what?” Kitty prods but Q just stares at her blankly in response. “What’s there to get?”

He studies her in the crappy hallway lights, gaze swinging like a pendulum between her and the lockers and back to her again.

“I don’t know. I’m not really sure what there’s here to get.”

Week 5 brings honeysuckles that litter the ground when she reaches for her history textbook.

“Seriously?” she yelps, grinding one underfoot as she fishes for a pencil. “Again?!”

The sneezing starts up again just as Eunice and her posse walk by. They smother their disdain the same way that the Korean haminis do when she walks in the streets with a crop top–that is, not at all. Kitty looks up at the sky and wonders again, why her?

“It’s like they’re trying to make me look stupid,” she says and doesn’t even feel bad when her locker slams shut on a petal, tearing it in two.

“No,” Q mumbles when he thinks he’s out of earshot. “You’re definitely not the one that looks stupid here.”

There are no flowers when she opens her locker on Week 6 and she nearly cries from the relief. Finally, her anonymous-stalker-slash-creep-slash-weirdo-who-only-communicates-passive-aggressively-via-flowers has chosen to let her live in peace.

She closes her locker and nearly screams. Yuri is standing in the open gap, leaning against the wall with a flower in her hand. She’s cupping it like a candle flame, like she’s shielding Kitty from it. Or maybe shielding it from Kitty?

“Please,” she says and there’s desperation edging into her voice. She nudges the stem in her direction with a flick of her wrist.

Record scratch. Rewind. That’s a flower in her hand. That means Yuri’s been the one leaving her flowers? Yuri’s been the one leaving her hate messages, telling her to get out of her school?

“You have to know what this one means,” Yuri says and she sounds tired, like she’s been stretched out on a hanger for weeks and left out to dry.

She sighs and unfurls her hand to reveal a bright red rose behind it. Oh. Oh.

Red roses–Kitty’s seen those ones before. In shojo mangas and chickflicks and every convenience store within a two-mile radius before Valentine’s Day.

“That’s… not an ‘I-hate-you’ flower,” she says slowly. Yuri shakes her head in response and the smile tugging on her face looks worn.

“It’s an ‘I-like-you-please-go-out-with-me’ flower, Kitty,” she replies.

“Oh.” Behind her, Q gives an awkwards two thumbs-up. He knew, she realizes belatedly. She shoots him an angry why-didn’t-you-say-something look and he gives her a half-shrug with his jaw set out in response. “Oh.”

“You don’t have to force yourself to say yes out of pity. I–”

“No!” Kitty’s always had a tendency to leap before she looks and her mouth tumbles on forwards before her mind has time to catch up. “I mean–no, I, ugh! What I’m trying to say is you’re smart and beautiful and you never have a hair out of place and you saved my tourist ass when I was stranded in the airport on that first day. And you’ve helped me carve out a space for myself at KISS and made me feel like I really might belong, even when the whole universe seemed to be telling me otherwise. I think I would’ve packed my bags and given up by now, if it wasn’t for you.” Yuri’s smile has tumbled out into a full-blown thing and Kitty sucks in a deep breath before continuing.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I didn’t know someone like you could like someone like me.”

“Surprise?” Yuri says. Her lips are half-hidden behind the rose but Kitty can still make out her smile.

“Are you free Saturday?” Kitty asks suddenly because she’s overcome with the urge to nail this down now, to put a ring on her finger before she can change her mind. She has six weeks to make up for and Kitty Song Covey doesn’t do things halfway. Yuri blinks at her.

“I think so?”

“Then it’s a date! I’ll bring you flowers–what’s your favorite kind?”

Yuri looks up at her shyly before she smiles.

“Catnip!”

Foxgloves have a history of folklore related to fairies. It is said that planting foxgloves will attract fairies, and that depending on the size of the fairy and the specific myth, they may wear the foxglove bloom as a dress, wear it as a hat, or if particularly small, use it for shelter and sleep inside.

Ship: Kitty/Yuri
Word Count: 722
i love fairy yuri

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Minho makes fun of all the foxgloves she plants until a fairy shows up on her doorstep one day.

“Hi,” she says for lack of better options, hoping against hope that pleasantries are universal. The fairy blinks slowly at her in response.

The fairy in front of her doesn’t fit the typical stereotype from stories. She’s a little bit taller than Kitty with her feet an inch above the ground, the silver wings on her back beating back and forth in some cross between a hummingbird and a bee. They glint brilliantly where they catch the light.

No one told her fairies that wore denim jackets instead of ballerina tutus. No one told her that fairies were this pretty either. (She would’ve planted more foxgloves then.)

“I’m Kitty,” she says, wiping her palm against her apron to get the sweat off. She sticks it awkwardly out to her when it's not quite dry but at least less damp.

“Yuri,” the fairy responds. Her voice is a melody that would put a choir to shame.

Yuri noticeably does not take her hand and Kitty eventually lets it fall limp against her side.

“I heard that you guys sometimes use these things as hats!” she says, gesturing towards the pink flowers blooming between them.

They both stare at the petals that can’t be more than a few inches wide unfurled.

“A hat,” Yuri echoes dully. “For my finger maybe.”

“Ah,” Kitty replies eloquently and makes a mental note to find whoever the fuck published the latest almanac on fairies and beat the absolute life out of them for the inaccuracy.

“Why didn’t you come earlier–when I first planted the foxgloves?”

Yuri shrugs as she leans against the fencepost.

“Would you trust a pot of gold that appeared one day on the side of the road?”

“Touché,” Kitty says but Yuri still reaches for the flowers regardless. She plucks them up by the stem and folds them into a pocket in her jacket that seems to spill out into infinity. A pocket dimension in her pocket. Kitty giggles.

“What do you want, Kitty from KISS?” Yuri asks her.
She jolts at the words before remembering the shaky lettering going across the wood. Kitty’s KISS Cabin, she had spelled out in paint one time when she was twelve with too much free time on her hands and though the letters have faded, she keeps the colors around for nostalgic reasons. Or something like that.

“You don’t have to,” she explains, trying to cram a childhood into her words. “That’s–you can call me just Kitty.”

“Just Kitty,” Yuri echoes and Kitty doesn’t have the heart or the energy to correct her.

“I heard you’d grant a wish if I could find one of you,” Kitty says, voice hopeful. Yuri stares at her like she’s trying to study her in the sunlight.

“We don’t grant wishes,” she replies, bemused. “You’re thinking of genies. What would you have wished for?”

“For my neighbor to have bad skin for the rest of his life.”

Yuri blinks at her and Kitty’s not sure if it’s amusement or disappointment in her eyes this time.

“You summoned a fairy from the woods to play a prank on your neighbor.”

“It wouldn’t be a prank–he treats his skin like it’s made of gold or something! It would have devastated him.”

Yuri laughs for the first time in their conversation–laughs a real laugh that has her clutching at her stomach and wiping tears from her eyes. She looks almost human like this, save for the giant silver wings still beating behind her back.

“Just Kitty, you are the most interesting person I’ve met in a while,” she sighs, rubbing at her cheeks. “Why don’t you come with me–just for a little bit?”

Kitty stalls like an overturned engine. She’d been a good kid. She had all the rules drilled into her growing up–don’t riddle with trolls, don’t invite vampires in, don’t go home with fairies.

But clearly the people who wrote the rules have never met a fairy like Yuri and Kitty’s never been one to play it safe–she planted flowers on the off-chance they’d attract fairies after all. Kitty takes her hand amidst all the ringing alarm bells going off in her head.

“Lead the way.”

passionflowers get their name from their appearance: the flowers' corona is said to resemble the crown of thorns jesus wore upon his crucifixion, and thus the flower is named after the passion of christ, a period of time encompassing judas's betrayal and ending with jesus's death.

OC/OC

art link- mild content warning for stylized blood/stigmata

“[fireweed is] one of the first flowers that grows, and grows the best, after a fire/out of the ashes of something old. so in my mind it’s suiting the theme of letting yourself grow from your grief and losses, and choose to move forward with new life”

- Sarah Webb, on the symbolism of fireweed in her webcomic Kochab

word count: 288

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

//

“I don’t like this,” Winter says, screwing up her mouth.

Cinder shrugs languidly, stretching her arms over her head. “I brought fireweed. Feels symbolic, doesn’t it?”

“You always were annoying.”

Winter steps back so Cinder can kneel down by the grave, sinking the heels of her boots into fine soil. The whole world feels off-balance, cast in the soft gold light of the setting sun, melting into itself. She wouldn’t be here if she had a choice.

But then again, she thinks, watching Cinder’s shoulders rise in a sigh, she wouldn’t be anywhere else, either.

“I was a lot of things,” Cinder says, “but it doesn’t matter now. They’re all gone. Right?”

“Right,” Winter echoes, adjusting her grip on her mourner’s cloak. The Atlesian nobility used to wear them in the weeks leading up to funerals, before the city fell to the ground. Klein found her one from an old Valean charity shop and gave it to her, just so she could wear the mask of respectful enemy a little better. “Fireweed, huh?”

“For growing out of the embers of an old life,” Cinder says. Winter catches the fading edges of a smile as she turns to her, away from the grave. There’s a kind of eerie stillness to her now, a loss of vitality, and she isn’t sure if she’s quite comfortable with it. “I’m burying myself today. Gotta have something symbolic, right?”

“Mm. Bit morbid, though, don’t you think?”

“I’m nothing if not morbid,” Cinder shrugs. She rises to her feet, brushing her hand over the top of the headstone, and steps away, head haloed by the setting sun. “Home?”

Winter extends an arm to her. She threads her own through it, pulling her close. “Home.”

FILL: Team Ace Attorney

kannaa10y - 2024-07-01 09:28 (UTC) - Expand

Red spider lily (hanakotoba) - never to meet again, lost memory, abandonment

Pairing: Sayeon Lee/Ryujin Kang (Hand Jumper)

CW: gun
artwork

Re: FILL: TEAM KITTYURI

static_prevails - 2024-06-28 18:22 (UTC) - Expand

Flower Shop Owner x Tattoo Artist AU

Ship: Athena Cykes/Juniper Woods (Ace Attorney)

FILL: Team Kittyuri

missiletoe - 2024-06-24 04:05 (UTC) - Expand

Miscommunication: Person A tries to express their feelings via a certain culture's flower language, but Person B only knows a different set of meanings and misunderstands.

Pairing: OC/OC (Phoenix/Emma)
The main characters of these comic strips are my OCs Phoenix (blonde-haired one with the baseball cap, any/all), Alice (the one with the white/red dyed hair, she/her), and Emma (black-haired one in the spaghetti strap dress, she/her)

Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_plants_with_symbolism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanakotoba
https://hananokotoba.com/suisen/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_(plant)#Toxicity

Edited 2024-07-01 00:10 (UTC)

"I'm sick of roses and horny for revenge." -Dulcinea Septimus, The Locked Tomb

Aradia/Terezi (Homestuck)

Diphylleia grayi is a small white flowering plant that is known as the skeleton flower because its delicate petals turn transparent when wet.

What happens when one can see right through you at your most vulnerable?

Edited 2024-06-17 20:55 (UTC)

ghoulstrade & their parallels
(ship: maria/gina, ace attorney)

"The Venus flytrap, a devouring organism, aptly named for the goddess of love." --Tennessee Williams, Suddenly Last Summer

"It has long been known that Roridula plays host to a curious insect called the assassin bug. These bugs live on the plant, and for reasons still unknown can traverse the sticky glands with no problem at all. When other insects become caught, the assassin bugs close in, stab their needlelike mouths into the struggling prey, and suck out the juices. [...] Assassin bugs, after sucking dry Roridula's prey, secrete a nutritious substance onto the plant that the leaves then absorb-- a true carnivore by proxy!" --Peter D'Amato, The Savage Garden 1st rev.

Edited 2024-06-17 21:05 (UTC)

"Associated with spring, sakura trees represent renewal, joy and hope. Moreover, their flowers reflect the cycle of life. They radiate a magnificent but fleeting brilliance as they fade after only fifteen days, reminding all mortals of their fatal outcome. Thus, the cherry blossom is an invitation to enjoy life." - [hanakotoba]

"Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away." — Frida Kahlo

Edited 2024-06-17 23:10 (UTC)

Pairing: Mandy/Kiara (ocs!)

artwork

Re: FILL: TEAM KITTYURI

miyukitty - 2024-06-28 18:50 (UTC) - Expand

FILL: Tokusatsu Yuri Ships United Front

realxeyez - 2024-07-01 11:45 (UTC) - Expand

"Symbol of the emperor and the imperial family in Japan, the chrysanthemum flower evokes nobility. [...] In Asia, this flower is also associated to happiness and longevity. In Japan, a golden flower petal at the bottom of a glass of wine will bring you a long and happy life." - [hanakotoba] (royalty/nobility 👸)

Edited 2024-06-17 23:21 (UTC)

"Associated with Buddhism, the white lotus is the flower of spirituality by excellence. This pond plant, which blooms in summer, symbolizes purity, mysticism and reincarnation. With its roots submerged in the mud, the lotus will always produce beautiful flowers above the water. For this reason, the lotus represents the elevation of the consciousness and the spirit." - [hanakotoba] (reincarnation, you say...? 😮)

Edited 2024-06-17 23:11 (UTC)

Ship: Kitty/Yuri
Word Count: 711

did i hear someone say reincarnation yuri??? i also combined it with doomed yuri which kind of goes hand-in-hand

CONTENT WARNING: blood and graphic depictions of violence because it is women with swords & also major character death but there's reincarnation

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There are white lotuses blooming when they die. The battlefield is spilled with blood, the mud caking flesh and metal alike but in sporadic patches across the valley, there are beautiful white lotuses blooming in the sun. Yuri sighs and thinks that there could be worse last sights.

She shifts in her armor, feels the wood dig into her ribcage as the spear that’s got her through the heart tears against her chest. She lets out a hiss of pain as she tries to claw at it.

There are no medics to find her on this field–they won’t come for a fortnight at least–and even if there were, she doesn’t need a doctor to tell her that she’s broken beyond repair. The last of the Emperor’s Guard, slain in an ambush like this. Outnumbered ten to one, but at least they fought valiantly before they died. At least they fought tooth and nail, scraped the bottom of their souls for resolve until they had nothing left to give and hopefully that’ll earn them a line in a two-thousand line sonnet and a seat at the golden table of heaven.

The last of the Emperor’s Guard–unless. Yuri turns on her side, gnaws through her tongue to dull the pain to find her.

Ah. Yuri doesn’t know if it’s relief or guilt that crushes her chest when she turns to see Kitty speared right through the neck. Still hacking wheezy breaths out of her chest–but the breaths of a dying man, not a living one.

They’ve always been together, attached at the hip by more than just sworn loyalty to the Emperor and it seems only fitting that they go out together. At least Kitty won’t have to continue on without her. At least Yuri won’t have to live without her. (She wouldn’t see the point in that.)

“Kitty,” she says, gripping her hand in hers. Kitty’s gaze is loose and languid as it tracks her face. Her blade is shattered on her knee, the tip impaled in a skull next to them. “Kitty, look at me.”

“I,” Kitty swallows, a line of blood trailing down her face. Yuri wipes it away with her thumb and licks it clean. “I guess I shouldn’t have skipped so much training, huh?”

Yuri laughs, her nose in the petals. Kitty makes her shredded heart feel light in her chest.

“You were a shitty lieutenant,” she spits out. It’s all spilling out of her–sincerity mixing with the blood that dribbles down her mouth. “But you’re not bad company to go out with.”

Kitty licks her lips and scowls, defiant even in death.

“Partner,” she insists stubbornly. They’re toying with the semantics even on the brink of death.

Yuri laughs and concedes because it’s Kitty–it’s always Kitty and she’s never been able to say no to a face like hers.

“Partner,” she echoes quietly and her arms buckle under her as she lands with her chin on the dirt.

She wonders if in a hundred years, they will remember the sorry excuse of a battle fought here. She wonders if in a thousand years, the Empire will still stand. She wonders if in ten thousand, there will still be people to walk the path of her graveyard.

She wonders if she will become fertilizer for the next batch of white lotuses, witness to another pair of star-crossed lovers meeting their untimely end.

She closes her eyes. Beside her, Kitty’s chest has gone still in her armor and her fingers have gone cold. Yuri stops wondering after that.

------------------------------------------------------------

There is a girl standing alone at the entrance ceremony, looking like a child abandoned on their first day of daycare. Yuri raises one arm in a greeting.

“Hi!” she yells across the field. “You lost?”

The girl turns and there’s something heavy in the weight of her expression. She’s drawn in bold, brash lines against the outline of the crowd, like she’s done in charcoal on a watercolor painting.

They’ve never met before but something like recognition crosses her face when she spots Yuri. She raises one hand and waves back, a smile pressed onto her face.

There’s something glinting in the sun and Yuri squints to make it out.

Pinned to her breast pocket is a small white lotus.

FILL: Team Touhou

514ko - 2024-07-01 03:09 (UTC) - Expand

"In Hanakotoba, the peony is related to bravery. It symbolizes honor, courage and strength. [...] On the other hand, the peony embodies the feminine ideal, because underneath its delicacy, its stem is resistant and its posture dignified. When faced with bad weather, the peony does not bend, unlike other flowers." - [hanakotoba]

"Watch as she buckles and bends but never breaks, no mistakes
[...]
Who am I if I don't have what it takes?
No cracks, no breaks
No mistakes, no pressure" -lyrics from "surface pressure", encanto

Edited 2024-06-17 23:14 (UTC)

"In spite of its strong toxicity, Adonis is highly appreciated by Japanese people. Its radiant color evokes happiness. Moreover, it is a flower that was given to relatives in the Edo era to welcome joy into the home." - [hanakotoba] (toxic codependent yuri, anyone? 💘)

Edited 2024-06-17 23:07 (UTC)

"In Japan, the iris is associated with the Children's Day Celebration, Kodomo no Hi, and with virility. Its long petals symbolize samurai swords as well as health and protection." - [hanakotoba]

Edited 2024-06-17 23:17 (UTC)

PROMPT: TOKUSATSU YURI SHIPS UNITED FRONT

FILL: Team Kittyuri

PROMPT: TEAM ANIME & MANGA

FILL: Team Rosemary

PROMPT: TEAM OC MOON