A/N: Here's the traditional icky Valentine's Day story. Okay, it took me a little while to come up with this pairing (it's difficult finding two people of opposite genders in this age range…)… so… I hope it's decent and okay. Post-series, of course, with our main characters aged up a bit. n.n Please review!

Disclaimer: Roses are black, Violets make me sick, Either I own FMA or I don't, Take your pick. (The correct answer is D, none of the above. I don't own FMA.)

Memories

by crazykitsune17

I think I was about ten or eleven when I first saw Fletcher Tringham. He was a nice kid. Had a very boyish face, clean, with bright blue eyes and blonde, choppy hair. Carried a couple books under his arm, looked very nervous.

I remember smiling at him that first day. I don't remember him ever smiling back.

My mother and I had just moved to a new town called Xenotime – a town of a few people spread out here and there – a few years after my father's death. Everybody knew everybody… until we moved there. Of course, we became town celebrities the moment someone figured out that there were newbies out there in the woods. We became fast friends with all of the old village ladies and the old village men, but I remember feeling awful lonely due to the lack of young people in the area. I was getting to that age where friendship and camaraderie were beginning to take over my life – the tortuous prepubescent years, where one struggles to fit in and achieve popularity.

Of course, those were the years when an interest in boys started popping up too.

But before I could start being interested in boys, I need a girlfriend to confide all of my secret hopes, dreams and crushes to. I found one eventually. Her name was Marcia Twight, a tiny, skinny girl with deep mahogany curls and a pale, fragile face that looked like it would break if she even did so much as smile. Despite her frail visage, however, she was able to laugh like a hyena whenever I told her about all of my goofy and foolish attempts to try to get boys to notice me.

My first crush wasn't Fletcher Tringham. It was a boy named Dmitri, a cute, rosy-cheeked Russian boy with a loveable accent. I remember it was the accent I fell in love with rather than his personality. Marcia and I would spend hours on end at each others' houses trying to imitate it, both of us failing miserably.

"Oh, Marcia-dearest, vood you like some caviar?" I'd ask mawkishly, trying hard not to laugh. Marcia would then give me a deep, back-breaking bow (she was very flexible and one time even folded herself completely in half while trying to bow to me) and reply, "Oh, yes, zank you veddy much." Then she would complete her gracias thanks for the caviar with a Russian-type dance. We always ended up on the floor doubled over in laughter.

I remember that for my twelfth birthday that year, I wished for a kiss from Dmitri. I obsessed about it, blowing so hard on the candles of my birthday cake that spit flew out of my mouth and nearly drenched my mother, who wiped her face and laughed.

I never got that kiss from Dmitri. It wasn't a big deal. I moved on to Fletcher soon enough.

Xenotime's primary school was a small three-room building with a few sweet, soft-spoken lady teachers who taught grades one through eight. I was placed in the seventh and eighth grade classroom along with Marcia and a few other people. I was twelve and in seventh grade. Fletcher Tringham had moved on to the secondary high school in the next town over, but he always stopped by to help the teacher. His older brother, Russell, sometimes visited too. I remember Marcia had the biggest crush on him…

"Eww, he's like, ten years older than you!" I had cried at her when she told me.

Marcia had only blushed and giggled. I began to laugh too.

"Wouldn't it be neat if you and Russell got married and then me and Fletcher got married?" I rolled over onto my stomach in the lush green grass outside her farmhouse and grinned.

"Aww, that would be so cute! We'd be sisters-in-law!" She had grabbed my hands, and I had grabbed hers, and we both went rolling down her backyard hill together.

Of course, I hadn't talked to Fletcher at all at that time in my life. Not one word.

The summer before eighth grade, I thought about Fletcher a lot. I doodled pictures of him in my notebooks, I had dreams about us getting married. I even wrote out a list of potential names for our children. I had come up with Angelina, if it was a girl, Maes if it was a boy – after my daddy. Then, if we had another boy, we would name him Russell, after Fletcher's older brother. We would have two cats, named Henry and Lucy, and when they had babies, their names would be Arnold, Maggie, Charlie, Becky, and Robbie.

I had our entire lives all planned out. And every day over those hot summer months, Marcia and I would keep adding on to our life stories, fine-tuning our marriage vows here, adding a couple details on our neighboring front lawns, changing our kids' eyes from brown to blue.

It was a typical teenage girl infatuation. We all had them. Mother would often regale me with sweet stories from her past about her and daddy.

"Oh, we met… gosh, it's been so long… at a library. I remember I was still in school, studying for some test or another… I think it was a math test… I never was very good at math… And I remember your father coming up to me, his handsome face sprinkled with his typical stubble… and he said to me, 'Gee, that looks tough. Want a hand with that?'

"He must have seen all of the bite marks I had left on my pencil. I had gnawed that thing almost down to the lead. An old, nervous habit of mine…

"Then he leaned down and took a chair next to me. Over the course of an hour, he helped me work out my math problems, all the while scooting his chair closer and closer to me until our legs were touching. I remember that warm feeling on the outside of my thigh, and butterflies began to float around in my stomach… I knew then that this man was somebody important; never before had I gotten such turbulent butterflies…"

I remember I had felt those butterflies in my stomach every time I thought about Fletcher. In the lines at the candy store, in the park, at home, half-asleep in my bed. I would always, as a reflex, giggle loudly and blush beet red, covering my mouth with my trembling hands. Whenever I did that, Marcia would always look at me and smirk; "You're thinking about Fletcher again, aren't you?" And I would nod.

When I finally got into high school, Fletcher, I found out, had a girlfriend already. He was three years older than me, tall, handsome. He had grown nearly an entire foot since the time I had first laid eyes on him. His hair had grown out a little, and he was wearing it in a neat little ponytail at the back of his neck. His face had lost a bit of its boyishness and become a little more etched-in and hardened, but his eyes had never lost their sparkle. He was more handsome now than ever before.

So of course, he had one of the most beautiful girls in town as his girlfriend. Evelyn Mansen, stunningly pretty at age sixteen, thin as a rod and soft, golden hair that shone in the sunlight. I was so jealous of her.

"I'll never be as pretty as Evelyn," I had whined dejectedly to Marcia one day. Marcia knew this, and all she could do was just hold my hand and pat me comfortingly on the back.

The school year came and went. Every afternoon I would always see Fletcher with Evelyn, holding her hand, kissing her lips, carrying her books and giving her the looks I wanted for myself.

I wanted the looks of ultimate passion. I wanted the looks you saw in the theaters, those sugary, movie-star smiles where the man's lips are parted every-so-slightly, his eyes staring right into yours, reading you, touching you.

I wanted that so badly that on Christmas Eve of that year I had begun to cry.

During my second year of high school, Marcia and I began to drift apart. It was a gradual – yet mutual – split-up. I was sick of her, and she was sick of me.

I remember one of our last conversations together…

"Elysia, you seriously need to get over Fletcher!" she had screamed, pink in the face. "It's really starting to get on my nerves! When we were twelve, it was cute, but you're letting this become an obsession! Every time we talk, it's always about Fletcher. Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher! Well, Elysia, Fletcher has a girlfriend, and he would never go out with you! Okay? Seriously, you need to shut. Up."

I don't remember her ever apologizing for that. I don't think I ever apologized either. I was too far gone by then.

My own mother was starting to get sick of Fletcher herself. "Why don't you start to like some other boy?" she would ask kindly, a hint of desperation in her voice. "There are plenty of other young men who I'm sure would love to date you."

I could not think of a single soul.

"No, Mom, Fletcher's the only one for me!"

My mother sighed. "If you say so…"

I had won at least that battle… for now…

I remember Valentine's Day of that year like it was yesterday. So does Fletcher.

He had come to my door that evening with a bouquet full of roses and a card. I was so absorbed in my depression that night that I had not even noticed that the man I had dreamed about had finally come for me, just like in my fantasies!

Except, of course, in my fantasies, I had always been there to answer the door.

I'm sure my mother was just as surprised as I was that evening. "Elysia!" she had cried with shock. "Somebody's here to see you!"

I remember the color rushing to my bloodless veins and my cheeks turning pink as I dashed up the stairs to greet my visitor. My heart was thudding, and in the back of my mind, all I could think was "Fletcher! Fletcher! Fletcher!" Of course, my doubt was overpowering my optimism at the time, so you can't possibly believe how surprised I was to actually find Fletcher Tringham on my front doorstep.

"I'll leave you two alone," said Mother softly with a tiny hint of a smile.

I smoothed back my long hair and smiled as naturally as I could (but inside, I was beaming so hard my face felt ready to crack). Surely, Fletcher must have been able to hear my heart pounding…

"Fletcher! Hi!" I had to struggle to keep my voice under control.

He handed me the flowers. "Happy Valentine's Day."

I took them with trembling hands. "B-but, Fletcher… Your girlfriend…?"

Fletcher looked at me with confused eyes. I remember he smelled very nice that night – like autumn sunshine fused with the wintry air of February, very outdoorsy and attractive. "I… haven't had a girlfriend in a long time," he said.

My heart stopped in its tracks. "You… haven't?"

I had become so blinded by my own misery, that I had failed to see the truth that Fletcher loved me.

"I… I love you, Elysia," Fletcher said, almost unblushingly (but I had caught the tint of red on his cheeks). "Would you… would you like to go out sometime?"

I could have melted. My face turns hot and pink even now as I think and remember that blissful day in February.

It's Valentine's Day again, nearly sixty years later. We are old now. Old and withering. Fletcher is on his deathbed, alive only by helping me retell my fondest memories. The smell of autumn sunshine and fresh wintry air lingers in our dreary hospital room, and for a moment, we both believe that we are back in our teens, young summer love running fast through our memories like a video reel.

It's beautiful.

Fletcher's wife had already passed away about a year ago, and since then, I had visited him nearly every day, watching his ill health rapidly deteriorate. My own health was slipping away by the second, but the thought of seeing Fletcher again after all these years was enough to keep the arthritis out of my knees and the air in my weakening lungs.

I hold his hand. "Fletcher," I whisper, tears in my eyes. "I've never stopped loving you." Of course, I had long since gotten over my girlhood obsession, but there was always a little treasure chest in the back of my mind with Fletcher's name on it. Every time I got lonely, I would always take my key and twist open the chest, letting the beautiful memories of our days together flow and intermingle with one another.

My heart would ache and yearn for those times, but I had a husband of my own, just as he had a wife.

But now, right here in this tiny hospital room, we have each other, and it's as if we are back in high school.

"I… I love you too… Elysia…"

Fletcher was buried the next week. But I'll always have the memories.

-Elysia

-crazykitsune17-