A/N: Just a little something that popped into my head when I was thinking about the November Prompts - I thought this prompt in particular was a really good one. Hope you like :)
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Poppy
Jimmy had always known that he had been named after two important people in his parent's lives: Jim Taggart, their old boss and his father's mentor and Alexander Reid, his mother's eldest brother.
It took him until he was five years old, however, before he realised that he didn't actually have an Uncle Alexander. At least, not one that he ever saw.
That had been when he had asked his mother why he never saw his Uncle Alexander and had been shocked to have done little else but make his mother cry.
He learnt not to ask about his uncle after that, at least not to ask his mother about it. He waited until his father came home that evening and asked him instead, after apologising for accidentally making his mother cry.
His father had taken him aside and explained about how close his mother had been to her eldest brother, how he had joined the army and gone away to a country that Jimmy had never heard of.
And that he had never come back.
His mother's tears made much more sense to Jimmy after that and he felt proud to bear the names of such important men.
It would be several years later, however, that he learnt about the tradition of the poppy and finally understand why his parents always wore one at a certain time of the year.
That same day he had bought some red construction paper and held a secret meeting with his younger siblings.
The result of this meeting was a large red poppy with five petals, each one decorated by one of the Jardine children especially for their Uncle Alexander. Nerys, who had the neatest writing out of all of them, had written a message for their uncle in the black circle at the centre.
All five of them had then presented it to their mother.
It would be the second time that Jimmy had made his mother cry, but this time he knew they were happy tears.
The poppy they made was used every year after that to commemorate Remembrance Day, to help them remember those who had fallen and those who had returned.
But mostly to help them remember their Uncle Alexander.