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outranks · 5 years

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let's take a chance on happiness

somewhat belated birthday bash fic for @deputy-dianablack!! I had a lot of fun writing with your Deputy!! I hope you enjoy this ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

(and thank you so much to @edensgay for organizing everything!!)

pairing: OC Deputy Diana Black & Faith Seed

Lately Diana has been having problems with flowers, and for the first time since she arrived in Hope County it’s not the Bliss. Every time she’s in or around the Henbane she finds flowers where there should be no flowers. A gardenia in her car when she went to meet her friends at the 8-bit, daisies left scattered around the house she’d decided to crash in for the night, and now dandelions braided into Boomer’s collar. It’s not harmful, exactly, it’s just confusing and Diana isn’t sure what to make of it. If it only happened once or twice she could pass it off as a coincidence, but she’s pretty sure that someone wants her attention.

She’s just not sure who.

“Hey boy,” she says, crouching down to check Boomer for any clues that may have been left behind. “Who gave you these flower, huh? Can you lead me to them?”

Boomer barks and wags his tail happily, but doesn’t solve the mystery of the flowers.

Diana scritches at his ears anyway. “Aww, you’re a good boy, aren’t you? Yes you are! And you’re going to help me figure this out, right? Right! You are!”

“Are you—” someone clears their throat behind her. “Are you talking to the dog?”

Diana startles and loses her balance, toppling backward onto the ground with a yelp. “Faith?” It definitely looks like Faith, though Diana doesn’t trust anything in the Henbane to be what it appears.

“Have you thought more on walking the path?” Faith asks, stepping forward to help Diana get back on her feet. She’s solid, for once, and her skin is warm to the touch. She’s real. “There is a place for you here in the Project.”

“Right.” Diana brushes the dirt from her clothes, more than a little confused. On the one hand, Faith is much less unnerving than her brothers, but on the other hand she’s been having a very weird few days and now Faith is visiting her in person. “Um, no thank you,” she says. She’d prefer not to kill anyone, all things considered. At least not on the orders of Joseph Seed. She’s only met the man once at the church and it definitely wasn’t a great first meeting.

Faith hums, rocking back on her heels. “You would be welcome here.”

“Sure, yeah,” Diana shrugs, swaying to the side when Boomer bumps her legs as he runs circles around her and Faith.

“Your dog has dandelions in its collar.”

“Yeah,” Diana says, “weird, right?”

Faith frowns. “You think so?”

“Yes?” Diana shrugs again, feeling a little awkward standing out in the open, having a conversation with Faith who she is only mostly sure isn’t a hallucination. “It’s sweet, I think, but I don’t know how they got there.”

Faith rolls her shoulder back, meeting her eyes. “Maybe it means something.”

“Like a threat?”

“No,” Faith sighs, “something else.”

“Oh.” Diana looks from Boomer’s collar, then to Faith, and back to the dandelions starting to come loose from the braid. “Maybe they just thought Boomer would look pretty.”

“Maybe,” Faith says, looking off to the side where a group of Resistance fighters are walking on the road, getting closer and closer to seeing them. “You will see, soon enough.” She steps back, disappearing into a cloud of Bliss, leaving Diana and Boomer staring at the empty spot where Faith used to be.

“Was that a threat?” Diana is now much less sure that she hasn’t been hallucinating the entire time.

After that she starts finding red rose petals around places of interest for her, specifically. They’re scattered at shrines, on walkways leading to outposts she’s yet to take, and on one memorable occasion they were filling a boat she sank accidentally. It’s possible that it’s meaningless or meant for some other purpose, but it all feels very pointed. Like someone is leaving behind rose petals just for her.

And it is a little romantic, even if she still doesn’t understand it.

“Have you noticed there are a lot of rose petals around lately?” Sharky asks, kicking a few up into the air. “That’s weird, right? I’m not just imagining things and there have been rose petals her the whole time that I just haven’t noticed?”

Diana plucks one off the ground and examines it. “No, they’re definitely new.”

“You think Faith is changing from Bliss to roses?”

Which is a fair question, given the excess of roses they’re currently wading through, but there are still Bliss fields as far as the eye can see. “Maybe they’re mutant roses,” she says, because that’s always a possibility that should be considered in the Henbane. “Some kind of hybrid flower.”

Sharky groans, stepping away from the trail of petals. “God I hope you’re wrong, I’ve had enough of drugged flowers to last me the rest of my natural life.”

“Yeah.” Diana tosses the petal into the air and watches as it flutters back to the ground.

“The roses have not been modified,” Faith says. “The Bliss is more than we need already.”

“Oh God,” Sharky says, jumping and clutching at his heart. “These hallucinations get more real every time.”

Diana frowns and narrows her eyes. “I don’t think she’s a hallucination.”

Faith smiles pleasantly, and picks up a few rose petals of her own.

Sharky takes a step back, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder. “Then I’ll uh— I’ll be over there,” he says. “Shout if you need me or an assload of fire.”

“Got it,” Diana says, waving him off before she gives her full attention to Faith. “Are you—” following me, she thinks to ask and then reconsiders when she remembers that of course the Seeds are all keeping tabs on her. “Do you want something?” And will Diana be able to avoid jumping off the damn statue again, because that was enough of heart stopping adventure the first time.

“You’ve noticed the roses?”

Diana nods. They’re everywhere how could she miss them? “Are they a problem?” If they are, will she be expected to solve it? Last she checked, she still worked for the Resistance.

Faith sighs deeply. “The petals mean something.”

“Oh.” Diana can’t even begin to guess at what kind of message someone is trying to send by leaving them all over the Henbane. She had thought it was directed at her, but now she’s starting to wonder if it’s not some message to Faith regarding her Bliss plants. “That’s… bad?” She’s just guessing here and she doesn’t have a lot to work with.

“You think it’s bad?”

“Is it good?”

“They’re red rose petals.”

Diana is more confused than she was before, but now she thinks she’s also arguing with Faith which is both amusing and deeply concerning. There are definitely rules about having casual conversations with the enemy. “Do red rose petals mean something important?”

Faith sighs again and drops the petals she’s holding. “Yes,” she says, “it means subtlety isn’t working.”

“What does…” Diana asks herself because Faith has disappeared again, leaving her alone with a cloud of Bliss and Sharky singing to himself off in the distance.

The next time Diana finds flowers where no flowers should be is when she’s alone in the Henbane and a rabbit runs across her path. Except the rabbit has antlers and a string of flowers woven through them. At least, she thinks that’s what she’s seeing, but she’s been spending a lot of time around the Bliss lately and there’s always the possibility that it’s all going to her head. Still, she decides to follow the strange rabbit, just in case.

“Do you know what white violets mean?” Faith asks, perched on an abandoned ATV hidden in the woods.

The rabbit stops at her feet, seemingly unafraid of this one particular human, before it hops away into the tall grass.

Diana stops walking, frowning at the spot where the rabbit hopped out of view. “That did have antlers right?”

Faith shrugs and climbs off of the ATV, walking closer to Diana. “The violets mean take a chance,” she says. “Be happy.”

“Oh.” Diana isn’t sure how to respond to that, but it occurs to her, for the first time, that Faith might be the one sending the flowers. To her. Which would explain a lot and it’s a little embarrassing that she somehow hadn’t noticed until a rabbit with antlers was brought into the mix. Who else could orchestrate that besides Faith? “Are you giving me flowers?”

“Yes,” Faith says.

“Why?”

Faith looks off to the side for a moment, like she’s considering what she wants to say, before she takes a slow, deep breath. “If I had told you that I was interested in you, how would you have reacted?”

“I don’t know,” Diana says. She still doesn’t know how to react to any of this. Sure, the flowers are nice, but they seem unnecessarily complicated. Which is pretty standard for the Seeds, actually. They are the most dramatic family in the county. “Positively?”

“I wanted you to understand that my intentions were pure.”

Diana still doesn’t know what any of the other flowers mean, and pure intentions definitely weren’t the signal she was picking up, but it is the most effort anyone has ever gone to for her attention. It’s kind of nice. “Oh, okay, well—”

“I don’t expect anything from you in return,” Faith says, stepping closer again.

“That’s— that’s good, I don’t really have anything for you.” Though Diana pats at her pockets to check, just in case.

“Your attention,” Faith says, “your friendship?”

There’s a strong possibility that Faith means something more than friendship, but Diana is exactly opposed to the idea. She doesn’t want to fight for Joseph Seed, however she does want to know what Faith has in mind. She wants to know what their future will be if she agrees. “Yes,” she says. “Okay.”

“Will you come with me?” Faith holds out her hand. “I want to show you what we can have, together.”

Diana hesitates for just a moment. There are a lot of reasons to be wary of the Seeds and a lot of reasons to back out now while she still can. There are also a handful of reasons and ton of flowers, given to her by Faith, that say should should keep going and see where this path will lead her.

She takes Faith’s hand in her own. “Let’s go.”

#deputy-dianablack #f!dep/faith seed #my writing #fc5birthdaybash

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