A/N: Written as a Multifandom Drabble exchange gift for Koraki.

"Aren't the flowers here pretty?" Selim asked. He raced around in circles. He threw up his arms like an airplane and ran around the house's large garden.

Mrs. Bradley dusted off her shirt, removing grains of soil off her shirt. She gazed down at the rows of her rose garden and admired their deep red color.

One of the roses in the bunch leaned over pitifully. Its petals dropped. Mrs. Bradley wasn't sure if the poor thing hadn't gotten enough water, but the rose would die sooner rather than later in its condition.

"Would you like one, Selim?"

Selim stopped running. Seeing her nod at her rose garden, he grinned widely. "As long as it's okay!"

Mrs. Bradley lowered her clippers to the rose's stem. She trimmed the thorns away. A loose thorn swiped at her skin and nicked it. Blood slowly oozed out.

"Oh, no!" Selim crouched next to Mrs. Bradley and inspected her finger. "Mother, you're bleeding."

Mrs. Bradley adjusted her sun hat. The afternoon rays beat down on her neck. She hummed to herself calmly, smiling as Selim's eyes filled with worry.

"Sometimes," she told him as she plucked the rose from its perch, "you have to endure a little pain to get the things you really want out of this life, Selim."

Selim traced a finger over the petals as soon as the rose was handed to him. He seemed appeased by this, but confusion crossed his eager features.

"What does that mean, Mother?"

Images of a baby being handed to her floated to her mind's eye. Grief had almost overtaken her at the knowledge of her loss. In defiance, she had planted the seeds of determination in the pit of her very being. The thorns of sorrow had encased her heart, but she had ripped them out one at a time.

"Think of how your father sacrificed himself for this country. You have to put all your blood, sweat and tears for a peaceful country." Mrs. Bradley's chest puffed up. She wiped at the blood with a small blue handkerchief. No matter the problems her husband had caused back in those days, she would be proud of the accomplishments he had given Amestris.

In a distant past, she remembered Selim's squeals of delight as he had asked her husband about the military. His victories. His failures. His plans.

Mrs. Bradley could not ignore the truth. But she would teach her son about the man that she had known her husband to be—the man that gave her strength to raise Selim all over again years later.

Selim turned the rose in his hands. "I wish I could hear more of Father's stories…" Sadness flittered across his eyes until he returned to the present. "What does that have to do with this rose?"

"To get to the pretty things in life, you have to go through the hard obstacles. It's natural to get hurt fighting for what you believe in. But I think you'll understand when you're older," Mrs. Bradley told him, wagging her pointer finger. The blood flow from the wound had ceased for the time being.

Selim's face fell at her playfulness, and he stared inquisitively at her, pouting. She couldn't help when he made it so easy. Mrs. Bradley wrapped both arms around Selim in a crushing yet gentle hug.

Selim squirmed. "Mother, that's embarrassing!" He tried to pry himself away. Clinging onto the rose, he only managed to trap himself in her embrace.

But she didn't mind Selim rejecting her in his childish ways. She welcomed every bit of his humanity, all the simple reminders that she was doing everything in her power to make his human life truly happy.

Mrs. Bradley missed the bruises she could no longer heal from the past. But now, Selim was the one thing she would never let go of. For the rest of her life she would channel those memories and make him the most handsome, strapping man in all of Amestris.

If she must, she would trim all the thorns and weeds choking Selim in their cold, dark pride. She would do this herself just so he could rise towards the sunlight.