Title: Green For a Season
Author: Dayadhvam
Rating/Pairings: PG. Trisha/Van Hohenheim.
Summary: These are the small things that let her remember, that preserve their fleeting moments within the depths of her mind.
Notes: Written as a b-day gift for lilacfield at LJ, Aug. 2008; edited Sept. 2014; prompt: Ed and Al's first time fixing broken material objects. Title is from Algernon Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine."
When they met for the tenth time, she braided a crown of wildflowers for him and placed it jauntily upon his head. "I don't suppose you'd let me work some into your beard, would you?" she asked, tilting her head and looking at how the pale green and yellow and white of the flowers rested on bright gold hair. "I think it would suit you very well."
"I would beg to disagree!" There was mock indignation in his voice as he pulled up some of the grass and tossed it at her; she turned, giggling, and ran some distance before looking back.
He hadn't followed. He sat in the grass, shoulders thrown back and head cocked to the side, and watched her, a wistful look on his face and lonely shutters over his eyes. Then he smiled—the closed, bare look vanishing—and rose to his feet, brushing away errant pieces of weeds. "Don't run so fast, will you?" he said. "Otherwise I won't be able to catch up to you."
"I'll run slower if you like," she called back, making a pert curtsy. "But I can't wait forever, you know, so start running yourself!"
.
The basket smelt faintly of petunias, and Trisha frowned. Then she remembered that she'd stopped by the Rockbell place the day before to drop off some flowers for little Winry, who had proceeded to tuck as many as she could into Den's collar.
She sighed and began to pick up the tomatoes, putting them in her apron and bunching them together. She'd been rather fond of it, especially since it had that lovely straw braiding around the edges, but the bottom of the weaved basket must have been fraying. Curious that the entire bottom should fall out, though; she glanced thoughtfully at the hole. It wasn't a huge loss. Only, the tomatoes… Trisha inspected one which looked like it'd gone rotten.
Most of them had managed to escape the wrath of an unfortunate fall since she'd acted quickly and caught them, but the rotten one was beyond saving. It was still useful, at least; she made sure that the garden never lacked for compost.
"Ed! Al!" she called.
There was the pitter-patter of footsteps before the boys poked their heads around the doorway. Ed had a smudge of ink on his nose and Al still gripped a book in his hands. Burrowing into the stacks again, are they? She smiled and motioned them over. "Take this out to the garden and bury it near the plants," she instructed.
"Er, why?" Al looked nonplussed, blinking at the tomato, but Ed gave him a smack on the shoulder. "Silly! It's gonna fall apart and de-com-pose," he said, drawing out the last word and relishing the syllables; more precisely, relishing the meaning of the word with all the fascination of a boy his age.
"So what happened?" Al persisted.
"I was going to make tomato soup, but the basket broke and some of them fell out. This one doesn't look right," Trisha said patiently. "Or the basket, in fact. Look." She tilted the basket so they could see the hole. "A very big hole indeed."
"Oh…" Ed said. He shuffled his feet and looked away from the basket toward the corner of the kitchen window—it was far too nonchalant a motion for it to be innocent.
"Ed?" She picked up one of the saved tomatoes and began to rinse it. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?" She could play the innocence game just as well as they could.
"No! I don't know anything!" he blurted, and started to sidle toward the exit, hand in hand with Al.
Ah, so he does know something. Sometimes her children's attempts to conceal their shenanigans were far too amusing. The corners of her mouth twitched up. "Really?" she asked teasingly. "Don't forget the tomatoes—"
Al was always more open than Ed was. He also had a better idea of when to give up the innocent act. "Wait, brother, but mother's basket—"
"He didn't say anything!" Ed shouted.
"Sorry, mother!" Al blurted in direct contradiction of his brother. "We didn't mean to! We—mmph, Ed, stoppi—"
"Let your brother speak, Ed." She crossed her arms and gave him a Very Disappointed Look (as they always called it); he dropped his hand from Al's mouth and mumbled something inaudibly.
"Say it louder, Ed."
"We were just playing soldiers." He fidgeted with the hem of his shirt. "It got a little crushed—but it's fine now, really!"
"I wouldn't call the basket very fine now," Trisha said, looking over at the basket with a critical eye. "You could have told me it was torn earlier."
"Yeah, but then you'd ground us and you wouldn't let us go play with Winry," Ed grumbled. "We fixed it anyway, it's not our fault it's broken now."
"I see," she said. "I was wondering why it was more bumpy around this line than usual." She had not seen it at first when she picked it up, but the unevenness couldn't hide itself anymore. "In that case, you'll have to fix the basket all over again."
"But mother, we—"
"You've already fixed it once, haven't you? You just have to do your best." She smiled distantly and ran her fingers over the braiding, the lines winding around each other to form the shapes of distorted wildflowers.
.
When they separated for the last time, she stood in the doorway of their home, her body outlined by the straggling rays of sunshine that snaked their way over the land. "Perhaps you should say goodbye to the boys?" she asked, staring at him and trying to memorize the rough-hewn planes of his face, the swinging way he walked, the sunlight crowning his head with circles of gold—the essence of him, down to the way strands of glinting hair lay across the rims of his glasses. His was a special kind of messiness.
She nearly missed his response. "I'd rather not," he said heavily, adjusting his bag. "You can tell them when they're older—maybe some day they'll come looking for me, who knows?" He chuckled, but there was no mirth in his voice. She heard only the yawning emptiness, the abyss of his immortality from which he had yet to escape.
"No," she said. "You'll come back." She wished she could will her statement to be truth, to be an indisputable reality. "I won't go and leave you hanging; you can try to do the same for me."
He said nothing; gave her a pained, strained look and took her hand in his, then bent down low and pressed his lips against the back of her hand with the faintest pressure. "I—do not try to promise anything," he said. His breath passed over her skin fleetingly before he straightened again to his full height. "Except that I'll do what I can."
"I already knew that." She waved her hand in the air and tried hard to smile. "I'll make your favorite tomato soup for you when you get back."
"Of course," he said.
-fin-