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Emma falls in love with Regina but Regina doesn't love her back, as any more than a close friend.
It's hard but at least Emma has her close.
So Emma never tells Her.
Emma wakes up one morning and while she drinks water her throat starts to burn, and then she's coughing up flowers.
First, it's a red rose, I love you.
Then a deep, dark crimson rose, mourning.
Then a yellow rose, jealousy.
An orange one, desire.
Until the flowers stray from roses and go on to white lilies, my love is pure.
A red carnation one too, my heartaches.
Every time something happens with Regina she coughs up different flowers portraying each emotion.
She hides them everywhere she can, flushing some down the toilet, putting them in the sink, the pretty ones go in boxes under her bed, some in paper bags only to go in the garbage. but one day Regina finds one in between her couch cushion.
She doesn't think much of it until she hears Emma coughing in the bathroom and when she walks in to see if she can help, she sees flowers everywhere with little specks of blood too, and she knows exactly what's happening.
Unrequited love.
She questions Emma for hours until Emma tells her it's Killian and since he left her and she's still in love with him she's coughing up flowers.
That was enough to convince her until Killian came back and confessed his love and yet the flowers still came.
Regina didn't take Emma lying to her lightly.
They fought and Emma's flowers came with more blood and deeper feelings.
A purple Hyacinth, I'm sorry, please forgive me.
Emma still refuses to tell her it is she whom she truly loves.
So every day she coughs up more and more flowers until she looks pale from blood loss and just exhausted. The burning in her chest aching and her throat closing up frequently.
Then Regina starts to take care of her since she figures there isn't much else she can't do.
Every day Regina shows up with food and helps to heal Emma's throat with her amazing soup-making skills and with whatever else she can, she helps her with cleaning and they watch tv and she gives her antibiotics and everything she can to heal everything except her heart, and yet it's not enough.
Of course, it's not enough.
Then little by little Emma stops coughing up flowers, or at least she coughs up less.
Ones with softer feelings.
A pink lily, beauty.
Blue salvia, I think of you.
Her favorites were sunflowers, pure adoration.
Though instead of believing the shortage of flowers means Regina might love her she simply chose to believe she's getting over her.
She believes her undying love might be dying out and she'll be ok again, she and Regina will be ok again.
3 months pass and Emma is almost completely fine, only occasionally and rarely throwing up flowers. And she thinks she's doing better. Way better.
Until one morning when her heart starts to ache in her chest. All of her chest's burning up actually, and all she can feel is burning and pain, and then she stops breathing.
And she's gone.
And the next day Regina is coughing up flowers.
A single red one, I love you.
And a black one, death.
Hanahaki, the disease of unrequited love 🌺