Title: A One
Sided Correspondence
Author: Tiamat's
Child
Rating: G
Fandom:
Fullmetal Alchemist
Character/s:
Knox
Disclaimer: Not
mine.
Summary: Even
after they leave, Knox's family tries to keep in touch. Some
spoilers. Written before chapter 63's release.
Notes: Written
for Mhari as a slightly belated birthday present.
A One Sided Correspondence
The first letter arrives five days after his wife and daughter leave. The address is written in his daughter's careful, childish, too rounded capitals. The ink is green. The envelope is just a business envelope. The postmark is the day after he sent them away. The return address is in his wife's writing – tidy, sharp, like the notes on the cupboards he can't touch.
The postal service is slow, these days. He supposes it's the sudden shock of peace.
He puts the letter back in the box.
The next day, there are two postcards. One, his daughter's writing, one, his wife's. He doesn't know what they say, because he reads them, but the letters on the pasteboard don't make sense, don't resolve into words, sentences, a paragraph, a letter. His wife's has water lilies on it. His daughter's features a surprisingly fierce tiger. The postmarks date them two days after they left.
He puts them back in the box.
The day after, there is another letter, in a correspondence envelope, heavy, good paper – his wife must have gotten her stationary unpacked. It feels nice in his hand, like her hair, though the texture's not the same at all. The ink is black now, and thicker. More expensive. Her good pen.
He puts the letter back in the box.
The next morning he stands over the stove while his oatmeal bubbles, and thinks of the mail box, and the for letters in it. (The regular mail, the bills and the advertisements, is on the table.) He wants to answer them. But to do so he will have to take them out of the box. He can't.
He pours the last of his cold coffee down the sink and leaves for work.
When he returns there is another letter. This one is green. Thick paper. Black ink. He feels guilty for touching it. He puts it back.
The day after he doesn't check the mail.
Nor the day after.
Nor the day after that.
Then he does, and pulls the letters from the mailbox into a shoebox that was in the coat closet. He takes them in. Sets them on the kitchen table. Tries to figure what comes next.
Eventually, he goes to sleep.
The days go by. New letters join the population in shoebox, and still he does not open them, still he does not reply. The shoebox overflows. He finds a milk crate, uses that as well. The milk crate overflows too.
The letters come more slowly now.
His table is full. He does not know what to do. He moves the letters to another room, to what used to be his daughter's room. He thinks of using the room that was once his study, but he hasn't been in that since before he left for Ishval. He can't. The books accuse him. The old patient files know and are ashamed.
He dreams of letters now, sometimes, rather than Ishval. He wakes shaking, ready to struggle, drenched in adrenaline triggered brain chemistry, certain at the end of sleep that there are letters clutched in his hands, bending and crumbling, letters and letters and letters.
He is tired.
The letters come.