all messed up

Characters: Chris Mustang, her sister

Summary: Life after Abel.

The moment Chris Mustang realised that it was really, truly over was the moment the coffins were lowered into the dark earth to never see the sunlight again. It was ridiculously good weather for a burial, the sun was shining and not a single cloud was in sight. She grabbed her sister's hand a little tighter, hoping to get a reaction from Abigail but there was no avail because the very second the heart under her hand had stopped beating, Abigail Tempest née Mustang had stopped functioning as a normal human being. Within seconds, she had gone from denial to an acceptance she had not been ready to shoulder yet and had broken apart under the knowledge.

Chris looked from her little sister to her orphaned nephew and cursed Abel for leaving them behind. Roy was coping the way a four-year-old dealt – with confusion and she just knew that while Abigail had realised it too fast, Roy had not understood it yet. It was so typical for Abel to leave the way he had lived: always too fast or too slow but never at the right pace. She sighed as she shook her head, wondering how her sister-in-law – may God bless her soul – had ever been able to love Abel and to live with him who had never had a right pace. Then again, Rachel had probably seen something in him no one else had ever seen and so, it was okay.

She squeezed Roy's hand once more and hugged him as the man in black – Rachel's father – laid a single white rose onto the fresh grave. A moment later, Abigail rose, trembling and whimpering in spite of the sedative her doctor had given her to prevent a nervous breakdown, to rest the enormous bouquet of red lilies and white roses on her brother's grave.

There had never been a discussion about who of them would do this. Abigail had been Abel's twin sister, his all-time favourite and thus, it had been her right and her duty to lay down their flowers. It was a shame to see Abigail this broken over their brother's death and if he had been still alive, Chris would have throttled him for making her little sister suffer like that.

"Aunty … why is Aunty Abbs crying like that?" the little boy asked and Chris decided not to lie because one day, he might remember and she did not want him to get the wrong idea.

"Sometimes…" she started. "Sometimes, you are very sad … so sad that it feels like someone has your heart in his or her grasp and squeezes it tightly. And Aunty Abbs … she has loved your brother, a lot. She is very sad that he is no longer here and … she cries because the pain has to escape from her body somehow to make … to make her stop suffering."

"So, if she has no tears left, she will no longer hurt?"

"You know, this is a good question … and I really don't know. Maybe … hopefully."

She prayed for deliverance for her sister, for something to make Abigail's tears stop because Abigail had always been the strong one, the one who had defied everything and everyone because she had known that she was doing the right thing. But all along, the younger woman had relied on Abel and with Abel gone, there was no guarantee left for Abigail's sanity. Under different circumstances, she would have been the one to take in Roy but in her current state, she could barely take care of herself and her husband would be busy enough with their own twins. Plus, Abel had wanted that Roy would be her foster son and not Abigail's – maybe because he had known. Abel had been a smart man and he had loved Abigail just as much as she had loved him and thus, he had most likely known that his untimely death would break her apart.

"Uncle Alain?" Roy asked as he tugged on his uncle's sleeve. "Can you make Aunty Abbs smile again? Daddy never liked it when she frowned … he liked her smile 'cause it's like the sun."

This was when Chris shed her first tear. She had tried to be the strong one after Abigail's breakdown because Roy needed someone to lean on but now, she could not hold it back anymore. Roy was right. This was indeed what Abel would have wanted but this did not make it hurt any less.

For Abigail Tempest, it ended far, far later.

It did not end the day when her brother's heart stopped beating and her world stopped turning. It did not end the day she could remove the bandages from her arms to see the scars that flames had left behind. It did not end the first time she felt well enough to go to the graveyard without her husband to lay down Abel's favourites flowers on their birthday. It did not end the day she accidentally called her brother only to realise that he would not pick up.

For Abigail, it ended when she realised that she was still alive, even without him. It ended when she could read their old books on air alchemy without breaking down every time she saw a handwritten remark her brother had left behind. It ended when she could breathe and walk without feeling the weight of a life not lived on her shoulders, when she could smile when she remembered his antics.

She would never deny that Abel's death had left traces on her because she had loved her brother and for him to disappear like that had broken her but she had healed. Her husband had carefully pieced her back together, never pressuring, always giving her the space she needed. And as time passed, she could talk about her brother without crying, she became a new person, an Abigail-without-Abel. This was strange because she had always known him to be there when she fell and now, she had to pick herself up. In her childhood, she had never imagined that she might be the one to bring the flowers to the grave of her brother after all was over.

She still missed him but with every passing day, she received another blanket woven out of love. Her children grew and her husband had always been there to comfort and shelter her when she felt cold. She still regretted, though. She regretted that Roy had never met his father – she had barely known her sister-in-law but she would have wanted him to meet Rachel as well – but as years passed, she also regretted that she had been as missing in his childhood as his parents.

On bad days, she imagined that Abel was just on a vacation and that he would be back. On good days, she remembered the dreams she used to have and worked on changing the world, little by little, by working in council of her hometown and fighting for better education. Whenever she felt like betraying her brother or not honouring his memory enough because she worked again, only three years after he had left, she remembered Chris' words "He wouldn't have wanted you to crawl around, choking on a noose that bears his name" and breathing was easier again.

What she regretted as well was that she had never had the chance to say goodbye because maybe, letting go would have easier in that case.

But in the end – and this was maybe the only reason why she suffered, Abigail Tempest was human.

She was a human who missed the beloved ones but she slowly learned to move on from her brother's death because otherwise, she would break to the point that even Alain could not fix her again and she knew that this was the last thing Abel wouls have wanted.