Discord was having a tea party at Fluttershy’s when it happened. His first thought was that he was choking on his tea of unknown origins, though he called it “pu’er.” However, when Discord finished coughing, hacking really, he found in his hand flower petals of a multitude of colors.
“Discord? Are you okay?” Fluttershy asked, concerned for her friend. “Would you like some more tea, or some water?”
“No, Fluttershy, I’m good for now,” he answered, popping the petals out of existence before she could see them. “Where were we? Ah yes! As I was saying…”
After their gathering, and once he was back in the chaos dimension, Discord let himself cough up more petals, as he had kept himself from doing so at Fluttershy’s. They were made up of six different colors, and they were familiar to him, but he couldn’t quite place how or why.
“Maybe I saw it in a book on draconian medicine… It’s too late to look in one at the moment, I need to get ready for my appointment with Celestia.”
He sighed contentedly at the thought, then promptly coughed up more petals. “Maybe I should have that appointment moved,” he choked out between the petals. The thought saddened him, and he ended up spitting out a whole flower. A very familiar flower.
He had made the flower himself, using the colors of his friends as a palette, and had made a bouquet for the princess of the sun.
His princess.
He knew he loved her, which is why he had found out a way to spend time with her once a week. They got together to play some Ogres and Oubliettes, a game that balanced them out. It had set rules, and largely relied on chance.
He knew exactly what was wrong. His mother had suffered from it when he was young and his father had left them.
He muttered the word that his mother had called it between her coughing fits and the tigerlilies that came from them.
“Hanahaki.”
Discord arrived at Celestia’s tower in the way he usually does - grand and over the top. Throughout their session, he tried to subtly steer the subject to love and crushes. Near the end he succeeded, although that was because he gave up on subtlety and straight up asked her.
“Celestia… Have you ever loved someone?” he asked, veiling his burning curiosity with a mildly interested look.
Celestia snorted and began to tease him. “Aw, does wittle Dissy have a cwush on somepony?” she said in a cutesy voice most would use around foals. When Discord turned beet red (literally) and didn’t say anything, Celestia asked him, more seriously, “Discord? Do you have a crush on somepony?”
Discord still red, and still refusing to talk, nods.
Celestia beamed. “Who is it? I mean, you don’t have to tell me… Uh.. Oh! You can tell me how she makes you feel when you talk to her, and what she is too you. Or he! I don’t want to assu-”
“She makes me feel like I’m weightless. She’s the light of my life.”
Celestia laughed. “And I’m not? I’m offended!” she proclaimed, using her magic to grasp a pillow and playfully swat him with it. Little did she know.
“Celestia can you please answer my question? Have you ever loved someone? Ever at all?” Discord asked, keeping his voice even.
“No, Discord. I’m afraid I haven’t been truly in love. Fleeting crushes, yes, but never love,” she answered after carefully considering her choice of words for a few moments. In the time it took her to answer, Discord began to feel the flowers in his throat and in his chest break through his attempts to keep them from coming up while he was with Celestia, for what would she think if he started regurgitating her favorite flowers?
He cleared his throat to try to push them down, to no avail. Celestia looked up at him, having hung her head answering his question. She was expecting him to say something. So he did.
“Celestia… Is it possible that you could… Love me? Just out of curiosity, of course!” he added quickly, but not quickly enough for Celestia.
“I do love you… But not in that way. I’m sorry. In time, perhaps, but not now,” she said, staring at him with eyes that showed sincerity and sympathy. In that moment, Discord knew - he wouldn’t make it.
Suddenly, the pain in his chest tightened, and he couldn’t just swallow down the now multitude of flowers threatening to fall from his lips. He held his clawed hand over his mouth in a last ditch attempt to keep the flowers at bay, but they just kept coming, and into his hand and onto the floor fell a few flowers that had slipped through.
Celestia watched, a concerned expression apparent on her face, and as she watched, her expression turned to horror. She knew those flowers - they were her favorite. A small stream of tears rolled down the left side of her face, and she let them flow, for she knew what this was, and what it meant for Discord.
“I’m sorry.”
She repeated that over and over, until Discord, during a reprieve from the flowers, interrupted her. “It’s not your fault. It’s my own.
“Celestia, as you can see, I’m slowly dying. I’ll be damned if I go after the only option I seem to have. I don’t want to forget you. You’re everything to me. I’d die before I lose you, and it se-” he coughed up more flowers, interrupting himself for a few minutes. When a break in the stream of flowers came, he continued, saying “and it seems I will. I don’t know when, but I know that it’ll be soon. Likely before our next get together. Before that happens, I want to tell you that I-”
He started coughing up more flowers, some of which had crimson stains on the petals. He couldn’t hold back the tears from the pain of the cuts and scrapes the flowers left on his throat, nor the pain at the thought of losing Celestia. The tears flow freely down his muzzle, and onto the pile of flowers.
When the flowers give him a break, he says only a few words.
“I love you Celestia. With all my being.”
With what he wanted to say said, some tension in his shoulders loosen, and he relaxes, comforted by the thought that at least he got to tell her.
He doesn’t try to stop the flowers now, and they fall to the floor, meeting no resistance. The petals, for the most part, are covered in his blood, but he doesn’t care. However, he knows Celestia does, and, finding a flower in the pile without any blood on it, puts it in her mane, his eyes saying what his mouth no longer can.
Don’t cry for me. Smile.
But she didn’t smile.
She didn’t smile when he collapsed shortly after.
She didn’t smile when Luna found them, her weeping over Discord’s unmoving body.
She didn’t smile when Luna rushed to find the castle nurse.
She didn’t smile when the nurse moved Discord onto a stretcher.
She didn’t smile when they took Discord out of the room.
She didn’t smile as she stared at the flowers left behind.
She knew he wouldn’t make it. Discord had kept regurgitating flowers for a while after he collapsed. He had stopped shortly before Luna had found them. She mourned.
She didn’t smile at his funeral, but then, nopony did.
She didn’t smile after his funeral, when everypony had moved on.
She didn’t smile when she coughed up a petal from the largest flower she knew existed, because of course the titan arum would be Discord’s favorite flower.
Author's Note
HEY SO HERE'S A PLAYLIST THAT I LISTENED TO WHILE WRITING THIS
Damn I love me some angst.
Anyway, I recently got into the hanahaki byou thing that's actually really old if the amount of fics for it on ao3 is anything to go by (78 pages that I only went ~20 through oof).
My boyfriend and I were discussing any and all people we could inflict this upon and I suggested Discord (screenshot here)
I also drew a thing for this! Blog with the image here.
Anyway this was one hell of a ride :'D
