Author's note: Hi everyone! This is just a short one-shot for mother's day, so if you are a mother, thank you for your wonderful work, because without you no one would exist. If you are not a mother, but you have a mother thank them for everything. Sorry for getting all sappy, but this might be mainly sappy. This is different than my other fics because this actually has no shounen-ai! :0 I'm writing this while listening to random Celtic Thunder and Brave songs, so this might get... interesting... Enjoy!
Warnings: Spoilers for the ending of brotherhood/the manga, language, etc, and general whatevers.
A sudden chill ran through his body from the damp wind. Ed shrugged tighter into his long coat in an attempt to hide from the piercing cold. There was no shelter nearby to take cover in, but he didn't try to find any ether. If he left to find warmth, that would mean venturing away from the spot where he stood, the sacred spot. A spot that he had stood in many times over the years.
He looked over the large expanse of the clean-cut area that was once a field. Rows among rows of even, white stones flagged mourners to the correct location of their loved ones. The stone that Ed was standing in front of was the cause of much of his sadness along with many bad choices that lead to a few long, guilt-filled years. Those years are over, Ed thought as he looked down at the carving in the stone by his feet. He had read the words carved into the stone so many times that it felt like the words were also carved in his brain. The gravestone was simply marked with 'Trisha Elric' and her birth and death dates.
Ed tried to sniff back more tears that threatened to flow onto his already wet cheeks. Today was Mother's Day, but that was not the only reason that he was sad. When they were kids Al and Ed almost never celebrated Mother's Day, because a lot of the years Mother's Day also fell on their mother's birthday. This year is one of those years.
He gave up on trying to hide his tears and he let one fall onto the muddy ground. Al was not there to give Ed an anchor to the world outside his tortured mind, so he drifted from memory to memory. One was when he and Al were very little, probably right after their father had left them.
He looked up into his mother's forest green eyes as she looked up from the stew she was eating.
"Boys, do you know what today is?" She said. I looked at Al to see my confusion written all over Al's face. We looked back to her and shrugged in unison. She gave a small laugh before she replied, "It is a very special day. Try looking on the calendar." She pointed to the paper on the wall. Al and I jumped up and went over to the paper. Al was too young to read, so he couldn't understand what we were looking at. I tried to sound out the things I knew.
"M-M... Mu...Muth... Moth... Mothe...e-...Mother...D-a-a...Day...Mother Day?" I finally finished with a look back at Mom. She nodded and smiled to show I did well. I grinned too, until I realized that I had no clue what that meant.
"W-uts -at?" Al asked in his cute kid-talk. He had asked 'What's that,' and I looked at Mom for an answer. She smiled again as she explained it patiently.
"I am you mother. That means that you were born because of me. This day is called 'Mother's Day' because children do things to show how much they love and appreciate what us mothers have done for you kids."
"-At -o we -o?" Al asked. I repeated Al's question, "Yeah, what do we do?"
She replied, "Well, you could do anything you want to do, but to give you some suggestions, when I was a kid I would make my Mom a card and do some of the chores for her..." She trailed off when she looked at our stew that had been abandoned in the commotion. "But first, let's finish dinner." As we climbed back onto our chairs she ruffled each of our heads in turn.
After each bowl had been emptied, we resumed our conversation from earlier. Mom acted as if she had suddenly realized something and said, "Do you know what makes this Mother's Day so special? Today is my birthday as well!" She finished the sentence with a smile that practically split her face in half. We both looked at her with a 'oh, crap' face that showed that we had forgotten her birthday completely.
Al and I suddenly sprinted out (well, I sprinted but Al shuffled out because he was continuously tripping over himself) of the back door to try to put something together.
We had eventually came back inside with scraped knees, muddy clothes, and a battered bundle of wild flowers that mostly consisted of weeds. Mom just gave us that little smirk that said she was trying to be strict and unaffected, but was failing due to the whole humor of the situation. She had hugged us both and thanked us for our effort.
The memory faded, and Ed was left standing in front of the drab stone again. The tears started to suddenly come harder as he choked on his desperate sobs. A scream, that practically dripped of the emotions of the past years, radiated from his chest and vibrated through the countryside. His legs lost their strengths and he collapsed onto the wet ground. Damp mud was staining his clothes and seeping into his core, but he was too lost in thought to notice. A glint off of his auto-mail caught his attention.
The sun was finally starting to rise and lighten the sky. Ed had left the house in the middle of night because he couldn't sleep, and now he realized how long he had actually been at the somber grave. "Shit," he gave a feeble curse when he remembered how early Winry wakes up.
He sat there for a few minutes more, trying to stop the sobs and catch his breath. He was almost ready to go when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped up instinctively and went into a natural defensive position before he saw who hat touched him. The slightly frightened person eased her grip on the wrench when she saw that Ed was alright. Ed looked at the figure with brilliant blond hair that glowed in the weak light. She was disheveled, as if she had just gotten out of bed and ran here, which is probably the truth,thought Ed.
Ed's knees started to slip as the sudden burst of adrenaline started to wear off. The girl caught him and helped him down the rest of the way to the ground. At this new angle he could see the new person clearer than he had before. Sea-blue eyes looked back at him with a worried look as Winry fiddled with the wrench in her hands. She usually didn't see her husband looking this weak and... defeated.
"I-I'm sorry for scarring you, but I woke up and you weren't there. I figured you had come here, especially today..." She trailed off when she noticed Ed's demented looking smile. "Well... um, if you need a tune-up on your leg I could probably fix it by the end of the day if you come home now... B-B-But don't come if you're not ready to leave yet," She blabbed on, ignoring the true nature of why Ed's legs gave out.
"Thanks Winry. You can always cheer me up." Ed looked up into Winry's slightly stunned face. "I'm sorry for worrying you. Today is supposed to be your day when you lay in bed all day and just rest." He looked down again, but it was with the playful, slightly guilty look that is similar to a kid who just got caught not doing his chores.
Winry gave a similarly playful sigh before saying, "Knowing you, if I let you look after the kids both of them will somehow blowup something. They might even destroy the whole eastern area! And besides, you know I don't like just sitting around waiting even if it is Mother's Day." Winry smiled at Ed before asking him, "Can you stand? I really don't want to carry you home, even if you are light-"
She was cut off by another one of Ed's infamous short rants. Winry (after dodging a few flying fists and landing a hit of her own) helped Ed onto his still slightly unsteady feet. Ed leaned forward and captured Winry's lips with his own. It was just a short kiss, but is was filled with their love and 'thank you's.
"We better go so we can get there before the kids wake up," Winry said. Ed sighed and they started walking home into the sunrise of the new day.
As long as they had each other they would stand strong and forever go forward without looking back to the past.
Afternote: Sorry for the bad ending, I had no clue how to end it :/. Anyways, I thought this up because it is Mother's Day and I thought 'How would Ed act on Mother's day' and I also thought 'What if it was a double hitter?'. I basically wanted to torture Ed a bit (sorry ed). Thanks for reading! Bye for now!