A note from the Hime no Argh herself—

Sorry this chapter was so long in coming; I was on spring break without access to a computer, so I couldn't update. Lots of thanks to those who have been reading and reviewing.

Title: Withering Flower

Summary: Rose despairs over the man she thought she'd never see again.

Disclaimer: No ownage.


Withering Flower

She didn't know him. Eight years had changed him—perhaps not dramatically, but significantly. Apart from being an inch or two taller than her, a bit of a shock—it seemed nature had caught up with him at last—he was so…quiet. Where was the loud, cocky brashness? Where was the self-assured certainty that everything he did was equal to God's grace upon the earth? Where was the righteous anger, the insistence of his incredible wisdom over everyone older than him? He was quiet, very quiet. An apparition in a house full of people who had never truly believed they might see him again.

But he was happy, she knew that. No, he was more than happy—he was in heaven. Granted, Rose hadn't known him for very long, but in the time she had she had never once seen that look on his face, the incredible peace and contentment he wore whenever he was with his brother—which was always. Edward and Alphonse did not leave one another's side, not for a moment, not for any reason. They slept in the same room, as they had when they were children. If one was bathing, the other was no more than a closed door away. One always knew where the other was.

She couldn't be jealous. In fact she understood their situation completely. After eight long years, the very thought of being separated again was so painful that neither trusted the other out of his sight for five, maybe ten minutes at the most. They did not trust that the laws of this world would not whisk them apart without warning.

Rose had a child. She understood a bond deeper than blood, a bond that could overcome any pain, even that which she had suffered at the hands of her son's father. She understood the protectiveness, the fear of losing the one so close to her heart. She understood.

But it was painful, also, to understand that whatever she might feel for this strange, quiet man with Edward's name and face and even occasionally his sharp tongue, that whatever she dared to hope he might feel in return—and she did dare—was all secondary to him.

Something in him had definitely changed. She thought she knew what it was. Eight years in that other world he never spoke of, eight years of wondering when and how and if he would ever see his brother again—it had closed his heart. How could it not have? She knew what pain was, and loneliness, and scars that never really healed. She knew what it was like to have a heart that was locked tighter than her throat. And she knew what it was to have it open again, like a withered flower that had discovered anew the sun.

He had done that for her, but she had not been able to repay him. Someone else had done it for him. The person who meant more to him than anyone in the entire world. The person he was so blindly, blissfully in love with.

Worlds could not separate those brothers for long. She didn't stand a chance.


Next link: Mother

Lieutenant Ross reflects on that which she can never have.