Pretty Flowers All in a Row Solo Finished

Time heals all wounds...

It had been sixteen years since the accident. Sixteen years, and not a day went by when Violet Henley did not think of her sister. In her mind, she could still see the narrow oval of light overhead, the cold stone and the brackish water that swallowed her pretty plaid skirt and black knee high socks. She could her screams, echoing off the walls, becoming thinner and ragged as the hours passed and night fell.

He had changed course... the cyclist. James Fanelin. She could still remember seeing his face appear over the wall of the well, peer down, blue eyes filling with shock and fear. He'd never ridden down that path before, but he had changed course... and he had saved Violet's life.

In the hospital bed at St. Mungo's, she had swallowed her words, bit hard on her tongue, and for six days, stubbornly, she'd refused to mutter anything at all. They had feared, then, that there was brain damage, but Vi knew well enough... The moment she opened her mouth it would all be over. It would all change. And it had. She'd told them, finally, with tears in her eyes - told them that Oleander had done it. That she had convinced Violet to go to the edge of the well, promising her that there were mermaids at the bottom. Vi hadn't believed her sister, but she'd been so desperate for Olea to like her that she'd gone anyway. And Olea had pushed. She'd pushed and pushed until finally, smaller than her sister, the fragile girl of only twelve, Violet had plunged. The water was higher than it should've been... melted snow from the brief warm sprint they'd had two days prior. Otherwise, she might have died.

This though, wasn't factored in when they decided Oleander had to go. They took her away, screaming and clawing and swearing. Taken her away and tucked her into the cozy corner of an asylum in the middle of nowhere, near the shoreline. And no one knew. No one dared to ask. Oleander vanished... and Violet shrunk. For a year, they tried to pull her from the shell. For a year, they plucked and tugged and pushed and poked.

School was hell, and Violet could feel herself fading away... becoming the nothing Oleander had wanted her to be. It was a Professor in the end, who saw the struggle for what it was. Guilt. And fear that someday, that guilt would become hatred. That guilt would design in others a notion of what Oleander saw in her... A rotten, broken, hateful thing. A curse. An intruder.

He saw. And he shown light and truth into her in such a way no one had been able to before. It wasn't her doing. Oleander was the broken one, broken in her mind and her heart, where no one could fix her. Where only time could do the work needed... He reached into the darkness and he took Violet's hand and he pulled her free and free, indeed, she thrived. And she bloomed. And grew.

She grew, and grew...

But never so much that her roots dried up and she could not remember.

She wanted to remember. Because forgetting was too painful, forgetting meant letting the darkness win. For all she had done, for all her cruelty and her violence, Olea deserved better than that. They both deserved better.

And so every year, Violet would find herself at that little middle-of-nowhere hospital on the shore, and she would enter through the old oak door and pass by the old oak desk, where Mr. Gravish, the caretaker, would give her a wave with a wrinkled hand and hold out the visitor's badge. She would pin it to her chest and she would wait. And after a little while (never too long, though never right away), Maeve Marvish would arrive with her stern expression, hair pulled back into a severe bun. She would shake Violet's hand with her own cold, calloused one and gesture Violet before her.

And every year they would walk the long, dark hallway, to the door at the end, where Maeve would pull out a key and unlock the door.

"Ten minutes..." She would remind, and in Violet would go.

Oleander never said a word. Not for sixteen years. Violet would sit and she would talk and talk... She would tell her sister about their family. About the bakery and all the on-goings in Hogsmeade and St. Davids. She would tell her about any new young men who came callings... about blossoming love and broken hearts... She would tell her about the weather and the world and everything in between. And when ten minutes were up, Violet would kiss Oleander on the top of her head and she would leave.

Six minutes had passed this year, and Violet was telling Olea about her appointment as Charms professor, when it happened...

"I wish I understood, Olea... what to do. Ackerley thinks I'm ready, and I know it's what I want. But you know how sometimes, when you want something so badly and then you get it, you end up disappointed that it doesn't measure up to expectation? Well... I'm just so afraid that if I do this, it... it won't be--"

"Everything you wanted it to be?"

Oleander's interruption came so unexpectedly, that Violet found herself speechless for several seconds after. Her heart pounding, she leaned forward, and with her breath caught in her throat, she stared at her sister, awestruck. Sixteen years and not a word...

"Olea, I..."

"Take the job, Vi. You've talked of nothing else since you were fifteen. And I'm tired of hearing about what you baked in the shop or that ridiculous boy from the paper, sending you flowers every Saturday. Or how Mum and Dad vacationed in Leeds this year instead of Cardiff. Maybe you'll finally have something interesting to talk about..."

Huffing out a soft laugh, Violet shook her head, and so pleased was she to hear her sister's voice that the harsh, unfeeling note of her words completely escaped her attention, "I will then..." She agreed, an she smiled, though Oleander didn't return the expression, "And next year, I will have so many stories for you, my dear Olea."

"Why do you come, Little Flower?" Oleander asked, and for the second time that night, she shocked her sister, canting her head towards Violet, to meet the young woman's gaze, "Year after year. Why do you continue to come here? No one else does... No one's ever bothered."

"Because you're my sister, Oleander. And I love you."

"Even after what I did?"

"Even after..."

"I'd do it again, you know..."

"I do. But I also know you can't help it. I see it in you, Olea. The darkness. I see what it all did to you, to be seen the way you were. To feel so... useless. Broken. And I have always, always understood why you were the way you were..."

Eyes narrowing for a moment, Oleander seemed to consider what her sister said, before looking away again and that brief, shining moment of clarity seemed like a ghost, to float in and out on a whim... and then it was gone.

And for the next two minutes, Oleander was as she had been for so long now, and Violet rose and kissed her head and left the old house and the shore and returned to her life. But for a moment... just a moment, Oleander had been so much more than anything she'd been in so long. And Violet knew that her sister, however her mind had warped her conscience... however the darkness had tainted her soul, was proud of her and who she would soon become.