before you click the spoiler below, you won't regret it. It goes with your present.
{A Late Birthday Present for Misso - Apple of My Eye}
"The heart is a bloom."
The heart is a flower, meant to be nurtured for it to become the most beautiful that it could be. She was his lone Alpine rose, meant to be protected from all dangers, meant to be kept from the world. It was a bit of a selfish desire, really, to shield her away from the world with his barbed wire and bullet-proof barricade. But wasn't everyone a bit selfish? In this, he had built a holy image of her, built her into his Eve. He would do everything to protect his paradise. He always thought of her as obedient and content, never wanting to leave Eden. Why would Eve wish to leave Eden?
Call it sin, but she was a sinner. Eve would be tempted by curiosity and knowledge, a temptation worth taking. She would want to eat the golden apple of chaos, the apple meant for the fairest of goddesses. She would take a bite out of that apple, an apple that he would offer unknowingly offer to her. She was the fairest to him, as he was yet to define who to give such a fruit. A single bite and everything changed. A single bite, and she enjoyed the taste of knowledge and the outside world, of saints and sinners, of fire and ice. She was addicted and there would be no fighting it.
"Shoots up through the stony ground. There's no room. No space to rent in this town."
She would fight her way through the stony ground. She couldn't stay in that flower shop forever, couldn't be waiting on her brother forever. She wasn't the delicate rose bud she was before. The delicate rose bud has bloomed into the rose with thorns. She could protect herself in this desert place, she was sure of this. She simply had to find her way through her brother's barbed wire without destroying herself or her brother. It wasn't always easy, though. She was going against his current, going against the natural order. But it was justified. Entropy would have to rule eventually, and he simply fed into entropy with the amount of order he wanted.
She needed someone. Anyone. She was alone and she was the kind of person that was meant to be surrounded by people. Her grace attracted people. She was a beacon of light meant to be followed. And she kept searching, kept walking forward, even as he unintentionally pushed her back. It was sad that he didn't realize just how much he would push her back. She takes one step forward, he takes two steps back. It was a bit of a lonely, repressive regime that ruled even himself.
"You're out of luck. And the reason that you had to care. The traffic is stuck. And you're not moving anywhere."
Some days, it was a bit of an unreasonable amount of worry. She journeyed to seek milk and honey, and all he did was call back. She seeked a way out of the desert place when she could have just turned around and tried to get back into Eden before the flames would bar her way, but she couldn't turn around. Not with all of the new sights she was seeing, the new experiences, the feel of new words heavy upon her tongue, of souls she could hold in her arms. She took the first steps towards everything with a bit of shakiness, but every step became more and more confident until she could stand on her own.
The only one not moving was her brother, and she couldn't help but wonder what stopped him.
"You thought you'd found a friend. To take you out of this place. Someone you could lend a hand. In return for grace."
She stumbled and he watched her fall. He came to her aid and banished the perpetrator who took her grace. She was grateful for a while, back in Eden and in safety, but she couldn't help but feel it was all wrong. His grip on her only tightened with fear that another would come and steal her away. He forgot how much it hurt her every time he had to do such things to protect her.
The soldier came home with battle scars from places she couldn't imagine him ever being in. Places she wouldn't want to believe, places she would never want to see. She wanted to seek comfort, to seek a companion to accompany her back out into the desert to do him justice. Perhaps he wouldn't worry so much if she had a companion to protect her and show her the world. A companion to give her what she wanted and needed, to climb up into the trees of knowledge and toss her down the fruits.
She found him. He found her. And they would embark for the Promised Land.
"It's a beautiful day. Sky falls, you feel like it's a beautiful day. Don't let it get away."
The pursued each other like children playing tag, laughing and rolling down the hills together. The clouds were going away one by one, her smile becoming much more radiant as she helped drag him out of his own personal darkness. Her halo of golden hair tangled in his fingers, her arms lacing around his neck. It was a beautiful friendship, and an even more beautiful romance.
Her brother would find out, but they took their revolution. She wasn't going to be pushed back any longer. She wanted to snap her brother out of his perfect image of her, to strip Eve of her graces and show that she was also capable of sin. She needed to show that no amount of protection would have changed anything. A little bit of corruption was simply part of life, and she wouldn't be the worst offender. But to her brother... this was original sin, damnation for all to come. If she couldn't be pure, no one could. She crumbled his world and that was that.
"You're on the road, but you've got no destination. You're in the mud in the maze of her imagination."
He simply was incapable of changing the track of his mind. He had once known how to love a love so great, only to have it taken away from him in the blink of an eye. Did he want her to feel that? To feel as if he had been given the kingdom, only to have it taken away. He had hardened himself, unable to see past his lone castle walls. He wouldn't open the curtains or unbar the doors. He couldn't bear to see that she shined much more brightly in the sun.
Every saint has a past and every sinner a future. He tried to find faults in her companion. The lad wasn't always a good man. His vices were tainting, his sins were many. But he was only human. He had his virtues, but Vash was too blinded by bitterness to see them. Do you know what bitterness is? It is like drinking a vial of poison and expecting someone else to die. He was slowly killing himself, and she couldn't help but feel guilty, but he wasn't to be helped. Those who wouldn't accept help can't be helped.
"Touch me, take me to that other place. Teach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case."
Her brother's defenses started to crumble, little by little. Her silent revolution was undeniable. She was a saving grace and she kept going. She found that it was her duty to reconcile her companion with his past, and to reconcile her brother with his past. His secrets fell, he lost face. The gods fell, and when they fell, they never fell gently. They went out with a bang.
The men in her life were simply unable to look towards the future, and she would have to lead them to their Promised Land.
"What you don't have you don't need it now. What you don't know you can feel it somehow."
"Did Aoife have to threaten you to make you agree?"
"It wasn't necessary."
"Then why did you—"
"Do you think that I need much of a reason now?"
"What a beautiful day."
She smiled as she walked towards the land of milk and honey, up the steps of the alter. The sun need not set on her empire. This was the way it was supposed to be. She looked at her protector, who smiled at her, his fingers intertwined with someone he was finally able to love. She looked at her companion, her lover, her partner, and her eternity.
"I am the luckiest man in the world to live to see this day."
