One Acquainted With Abandonment
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: K
Warnings: None.
Universe: 2003 Universe [Post-Conqueror of Shamballa]
The last time she saw those two was happy—then they decided to leave without telling her.
A few hours passed.
"They'll be back," she assured herself, looking out at the fields from her porch. "They're probably just having a great time, and forgot that I'm waiting for them…" she sighed. "Like always."
Four days passed.
"They haven't called…" she murmured, sitting at the table with a cup of water in her hand. "It must have been something I said… I need to apologize to them." She got up and picked up the phone, calling Central Headquarters.
Five days passed.
"Why? Why did they leave me?! It's their fault! They never called, they never told me they were going! I… I…" she'd rant on and on like this for hours, sobbing and yelling in hopes they'd hear her pain and come back. Of course they didn't.
A month passed.
She wiped the tears from her face. This was the fourth time this day that she burst out crying. She was sitting on her bed, facing the window with her knees pulled up to her chest. She just wanted them to come home—she missed them, she needed them. Couldn't they see that? Of course they wouldn't.
Three months passed.
She was working on automail for the first time since they left. She didn't want to, but her grandmother thought it would help her. She started to fine-tune the fingers. She remembered the time she forgot a screw in his automail… and how it almost killed him. She let out a shuddering sigh, wiped her face, and continued working.
Five months passed.
She had begun to help patients again. She wanted to now. It gave her something to think about other than fairy tales to keep the aching pain of their absence from hurting too much. She finished a patient's repairs and smiled for the first time in a long while.
A year passed.
She was smiling as often as ever. Although some days she still woke up expecting them to be running into the house, broken, she was okay with it. It reminded her not to forget about them. She went downstairs and ate breakfast. She remembered how he'd never drink his milk, and she laughed. Whenever wrote a letter to a certain girl in Central, she remembered how he'd complain about having to do all these dumb things now that he was a dog of the military.
She laughed and propped her head up with her hand. A sigh escaped her lips. She was ready to say what she had been afraid to say for so, so long, the words she tried to convince herself she never needed to say because it wasn't true. It was true. They weren't coming back. She closed her eyes.
"Goodbye."