Work Text:
It's a few days into things that Cleo finally shows up at Joe's base, something in her expression strange. Or, well, she assumes her expression is strange? It's not as though she can see her face, or really wants to look at her face, more than she saw it in the mirror the other day. She needs touch-ups, she thinks. Repairs, touch-ups, so many things. Weeks trapped on your own in a hostile dimension will do that to you, she thinks. Ruin your perfect undead complexion. Give you a bad hairday.
Make it harder to talk to and relate to your fellow hermits, in a way that Cleo's beginning to wonder how she'll recover from. Eh. She's recovered from worse. She'll just spend a few weeks... twitchy, is all.
(A few weeks. A few months. The rest of her life - Cleo, with a body that no longer repairs itself and permanently in some of the shape of the day of her death, knows better than most how long things can stick to someone, given that she gets handy physical demonstrations! Yaaay. It's... fine. She's fine. She's hardly the only person having a bad few weeks, honestly. Everyone understands if she's a little uncertain about interacting with people lately, a little more unlikely to go places without water on hand, a little more... a lot of things. She's fine! She's been through worse, really!)
The point is: it takes her longer than it normally would for her to show up at Joe's base with flower seeds, bulbs, and a few flowers that have already started growing in carefully-balanced flower pots.
"Joe, I finally got fed up enough to let you put shears near my neck against my better judgement!" she yells.
Joe pokes his head out from the... haunted house he's built? He'd said something about Elvira, but he's also known to change his mind.
"Oh, good, I'll go get them!" he says, cheerily, and Cleo sighs and prepares to resign herself to the day.
Compared to most of the hermits right now, Joe is easy to talk to. He doesn't change. He doesn't talk much about what happened after they separated - to be fair, no one is - and he knows her well enough to know the extent to which she's going to be willing to talk. They'd had their heartfelt reunion for a good five minutes, and then Cleo had threatened Joe, and Joe had said something stupid, and it had felt far more okay and normal than, say, trying to look at Welsknight's expression after he'd figured out Cleo had gotten trapped in the End after he'd left.
(That's been the hard part. She knows she looks bad. She's seen herself in a mirror, like, once? Twice? She knows from the looks the other hermits have given her that it shows and lord, she hates that. Thank fucking god for Joe, who has never reacted normally to anything in his life. If he'd looked at her like that too, she would have screamed. It's not like everyone else isn't also a mess, thank you!)
Case in point: Joe's garden shears, this season, look somewhat more like the most terrifying knives Cleo has ever seen an unqualified idiot wield, and she's had him do this multiple times. She's pretty sure he just hooked some really short swords together with a hinge? Which, okay, sure. This is fine. She definitely wants that near her neck, and isn't worried about that at all, nope! No concern with her! Sharp things near her neck is totally fine, and why did she ask for this?
"I didn't ask to get beheaded?" she says.
"Some of the vines that died this time look really terrible?" Joe says.
"Thanks," Cleo says.
"No, I mean - the vines are really thick, I can't use normal clippers to get them off. I mean, I could? But I'd have to like, really go at it, and then I'd probably tug all of the flowers a lot, and I know you hate it when I do that because it hurts your head. So I figure, if I can cut them all out in one fell swoop -"
"Fine, okay," says Cleo. "Do you at least have a normal knife, too?"
"Yep! This isn't my first rodeo. Or my first time planting flowers on your head!" He gives Cleo slightly awkward jazz hands. Cleo sighs.
"Lets go inside, then," she says.
"Uh," Joe says, and before he can protest, Cleo goes inside. It is... sure an unfinished interior. And exterior. And most of the base - hasn't he had several days to build a starter house? Where is he sleeping? The resupply station? Not important, she thinks. She can't judge anyway. Her starter house isn't really what anyone would call "done" either. There are, at least, chairs, and... a mirror, which Cleo faces herself away from.
Joe blinks. "Uh," he says again. "You sure you don't want to see what I'm doing? Not that I'm not an expert in this, but also, you are giving me more trust than I feel like, generally, is safe to give me as a person?"
"Are you going to abuse it?"
Joe is suspiciously silent. Cleo considers. She either has to look at the dead flowers and scratches and unrepaired slashes in the skin of her face, or she has to let Joe plant new flowers. Knowing him, he's found something himself that he'd originally planned on joking about convincing her to have permanently planted in her body for a good half of the upcoming season, and is now seriously considering making her have permanently a part of her the rest of the season. It's absolutely not something that she should be trusting Joe with. On the other hand, she's not here for reminders. She's here to remove reminders. She sort of just wants to tune out and trust Joe with knives at her vitals? It'll be soothing, kind of, in a terrifying way.
Yeah, sure, she decides. She can make a bad decision with consequences. It won't be the end of the world.
"Honestly, I was thinking of just taking a nap," she says. "Go for it."
"Oh! Oh boy! Okay!" says Joe, with the kind of delight in his voice that can only lead to bad things. Cleo breathes, and then closes her eyes. Maybe she will take a nap.
It doesn't last for long, Every time she does this, she forgets that it hurts, in a way that's hard to explain to a non-zombie. Non-zombies have never had flowers grow their roots in their head, because Cleo's like, pretty sure that would kill them? She's also fairly certain that the flowers wouldn't grow properly in a living person. Not enough nutrients.
She hums, annoyed, as Joe carefully starts to pull out the old dead plants. Despite her joking, and the way her hands are shaking, she does trust him. She trusts him with the shears.
For a while, they're quiet.
"You know, last time we did this, it was after Last Life," Cleo says. "We really need to start doing this before the flowers die."
"I mean, yes! That would probably be best! Although, if you use enough perennials -"
"Because that will work on my head."
"I mean, are you sure about that?" Joe tugs something. Cleo winces. "I mean, sure, the soil composition of your decomposing body may not lend itself to -"
"Soil composition? Joe, are you implying I'm made of dirt?"
"I mean, kind of?"
Cleo snorts. "Thanks, Joe, very flattering."
She falls quiet again. Joe's real careful, so he takes longer than Cleo had used to take, back when she first did this the first few times herself. Taking longer isn't something she necessarily minds, though. It means the flowers are normally a lot better planted, and stay something colorful and alive on her for longer than they did when she used to plant them. It's just also annoying, since it means she has to wait while Joe messes with her head, sometimes for as much as an hour. Even when they talk about things like whether or not Cleo counts as dirt, and even given that Joe can't shut up on a good day, eventually, he has to focus and she has nothing but time to think.
That's why she'd wanted to take the nap, honestly. She hadn't wanted to think.
(She just... needs something alive. Something that is a part of her, and is alive, is all. She has no issues with being a zombie! She's entirely used to being dead! In fact, she rather hates being alive? Being alive again sucks. But when she'd planted those flowers the first time - when she'd first gotten help with it - even now - some days, she really remembers she's dead. Some days, it's just... yeah. It's fine. It's fine. To think that this season she's hardly the first person to rise from the dead, either.)
(She's just the only one made of reminders.)
(Ugh.)
She settles back as Joe begins rambling about his plans for the season, and lets herself relax as much as she can. She can relax despite the knives near her neck, and the flowers being woven into her hair, and everything that's happened. It's honestly easy enough. Nothing to worry about. And she'll close her eyes, and she won't see the speckles from the void, and she won't think about everything else, and she'll just... breathe! Or, not breathe, she doesn't have to do that, she's not sure why that was her example, she's not good at breathing. Think? She'll just think.
When Joe's done, he spins her around to look at the mirror. Cleo examines her face again. She still, frankly, looks like a bit of a mess, but she's a zombie, so she always does. The flowers being alive now, though... they help.
She reaches up for the black and deep purple roses that are among her more usual red and orange flowers, and her more usual ivy vines.
"Interesting choice," she says.
"It felt fitting for this season," Joe says. "I mean, I can remove them? But that'd take even longer, and then you might ask me to remove the green zinnias."
Cleo considers for a moment. "No, Joe, they look fine."
They're another reminder, but she finds she doesn't mind them. They're alive. They're a reminder, and they're permanent, but they're alive, in a way very few things about her gets to be. It's less... something inflicted on her, and something she's choosing to wear and remind herself of. Yeah, she likes them, she thinks.
She pauses.
"What shade of green?" she asks.
"Oh, you know," Joe says.
Cleo turns around and picks up Joe's shears herself. "Yes, I think I do. Joe?"
"Already on it," he says, and he quickly backs away and starts running. She laughs, a little incredulously.
Make that two reminders. One of what she'd done on her own - and one of who'd she'd reunited with afterwards. Of course he did. She sighs. She could fix it herself, but honestly, she hasn't dealt with the flowers herself in such a long time that she may as well just live with it until the flowers grow too wilted not to uproot and replace. If anyone asks, she thinks, she'll mention that zinnias are perennials, and hard to kill.
Fitting, she thinks. Fitting.
(One of these days, they'll actually talk about it, in more than the easy falling back into happy patterns with each other. One of these days, they'll acknowledge it, in ways that are more than flowers and concessions made to new neuroses as easily as breathing. One of these days, they'll sit down, and Joe will tell her what happened after she left, and she'll tell him what happened after he did, instead of easily moving through each other's spaces and adjusting for it. But for now, Cleo had come to replace the flowers in her hair. It's a nice first step, she thinks.)
Two nights later, she picks up a knife, some harming potions - she's a zombie, they're necessary - and a mirror. She may as well own the scars, too. She always has, and no amount of reminders will stop her from doing it.
When she finishes fixing herself up again, she feels much better, honestly. No idea why she hadn't done it before.