Archive of Our Own

“So, there’s somewhere I was wanting to take you today. Do you think you can get away for a little while?”

Wyatt almost cringed at how overly gentle his own voice sounded. Naomi had made it plenty clear across the few months that he’d known her how she felt about being treated like some fragile widow, but today was different. It was Valentine's Day, for Christ sake. Holidays in general made Naomi miserable because they made her miss her husband, but a whole day centered on love? That had to sting extra deep.

Naomi’s gaze didn’t trail up from her coffee cup, but she still responded to his question. “Yeah, I don’t have any big plans. Let me go finish getting dressed and we’ll leave.”

“Great!” Wyatt grinned. “Wear good shoes. We’ve got some walking to do.”

⸻

“This better be good. I don’t exactly consider a three-hour hike a light walk.”

“Weren’t you literally a courier?” Wyatt chuckled. “Walking is usually a significant portion of that occupation.”

Naomi didn’t even crack a smile. “Are we almost there?”

“Just over this hill,” Wyatt promised. The steepness of the tall hill they were climbing sharply increased, causing Naomi to have to almost run to ascend higher. Wyatt’s shoes were better made to dig into the earth, making his pace more leisurely than hers. He wordlessly stuck out an arm for her to grab onto. Naomi panted as she clung onto his bicep with a grateful nod.

She huffed, sending a coil of sweaty hair flying from her face. “Like I said, this better be good.”

Wyatt chuckled again as he held out his hands to help her to the top of the hill, where the sight he’d taken her to see came into view. “You tell me.”

Her dark eyes went wide as they swept over the sight nestled in the foothill below them. Most of the landscape of Tía Juana was characterized by sand, short shrubbery, and cacti. This particular lowpoint, however, was filled to the absolute brink with hundreds — perhaps thousands — of sunflowers. Vermilion Tithonia rotundifolia, cheery yellow Tithonia diversifolia, and Wyatt’s personal favorite, Helianthus neglectus . The patchwork of the differing sunflower types created a striking blanket of reds, oranges, and yellows across the earth, setting it aflame in the bright Baja California sun.

“It’s… amazing,” Naomi said after a time. “How can they even all grow in this one spot?”

“An old friend of mine from the Republic was here a few weeks ago to study them. He believes it’s because of sunflowers’ propensity for absorbing radiation in the soil. This foothill created an environment where nuclear runoff naturally collected with the rain and wind. Presumably the sunflowers were growing here before the war, and then they adapted for the high radiation levels-”

Wyatt cut himself off when he caught Naomi staring at him. “Oh, I’m rambling, aren’t I? Sorry.”

Naomi let out a light laugh as she shook her head. “No, no, I liked it. I forget that you’re like… really smart sometimes.”

“I didn’t bring you up here so that you could insult me,” Wyatt said with mock offense, bumping his arm against hers to let her know that he was joking.

Naomi rewarded him with a wide smile, a rare expression from her. He felt his pulse quicken as he worked to quickly take in the crinkles near her eyes, the way her lips pulled up just a bit higher on one side. She was so horribly, heartbreakingly beautiful.

“So, why do the sunflowers soak up radiation?” she asked. “Doesn’t it hurt them?”

“Not much, actually. Think of it sort of like a symbiotic relationship. The nuclear isotopes are similar to some nutrients that the plants attempt to pull from the soil, making it impossible for the sunflower to distinguish the radioactive materials from the nonradioactive. Sunflowers are natural hyperaccumulators, meaning they’re capable of storing things like heavy metals in their tissues.”

Wyatt glanced over to check if Naomi was following along and found her with a blank look on her face.

“Um, all I’m getting at is that it doesn’t damage the flowers to absorb the radiation, and it’s healing for the soil itself.”

Naomi nodded her understanding and turned her attention back onto the sight before them. “Either way, it sure is damn pretty.”

Wyatt sighed, his eyes staying on the woman next to him rather than the heliotropes before him. “Damn pretty.”