A/N: I have an excuse for my slowness and it's in my profile. lol

This was written in response to the July challenge for the Scar x Lust community at Live Journal, and the prompt we were given was "Forgiveness". I seriously didn't think that I could get anything done this month due to physical complications, but to my surprise, I was able to hang tough and wrote something on my OTP for FMA. I sure hope you guys enjoy this one, but fair warning - it's AU. Yummy cookies go to the people that can guess who the mother is in this ficlet.

Playing Games

"Mommy!" the little girl cried to her mother as she ran down the dirt road to their little house, her long, dark brown curls trailing behind her. "Alex keeps making fun of Hippo!" She gestured behind her as the large, almost bald dog came running after her, breathless and panting as he was followed by a dark-skinned boy who looked rather stoic instead of sinister and mischievous.

The pale woman with short brown hair looked at her daughter, at the dog, and then to the boy that had finally joined the rest of the group. "What sort of things has he been saying, Lydia?" she asked, trying to keep the discussion from turning into an all-out war between the children she knew had a tendency to bicker. If only there were more kids in the neighborhood for her youngest one to play with, and her older brothers were even worse, the little devious brats…

"He's saying that Hippo is fat and will eat me in my sleep tonight!" Lydia replied, folding her arms across her chest as she turned to glare at the boy, again not bothered at all by the accusations against him. "Make him say he's sorry, Mommy!"

"Now I can't make him do something he hasn't admitted yet, Lydia dear," her mother said coolly, looking to the boy with sincerity, yet remained firm. "Alexander, did you say those mean things about Hippo?"

To her surprise, he nodded, not with enthusiasm, but just out of pure honesty. He wasn't a bad child, not getting into trouble frequently like her sons, but he was a different type of boy, looking for the strangest sorts of trouble. Perhaps he was just doing it to get attention?

"Well then I suggest you best apologize to Hippo and then to Lydia for what you've said," the gentle woman told him, still smiling as always.

Alexander almost glared down at the large lump of pale fur and skin at his feet, the canine panting wildly in expectation of what was coming. He almost regretted this… "I'm sorry, Hippo. You're not fat, you just eat too much of the same thing," he said, trying to feign sincerity when he looked up at the young girl awaiting her apology as well. This was his favorite part. "I'm sorry for what I said, Lydia. Forgive me?"

When the boy smiled the smile he rarely gave, Lydia turned a bit shy and began to sway a bit, her old and faded red skirt swishing back and forth as her weight shifted. Her mother, watching the scene unfold now knew what the boy was up to – since this had happened many times before, and it had nearly the same result each time, she understood that it was all part of Alexander's plan.

Grinning, she looked to Lydia, "Now dear, show him that you do forgive him."

Lydia's cheeks turned a bit red as she nodded then turned to peck Alexander's cheek with a giggle. Though it was all part of his plan from the beginning, he still felt light-headed and had to give his head a quick shake to keep himself from falling over.

"All right, now that that's over, you can go play. Off with you, off with you!" Lydia's mother said, shuffling them off to run back into the fields before supper time. As the two children obeyed and darted off down the dirt road again to their favorite play place, Hippo struggling to keep up, the woman sighed and turned her attention back to hanging the laundry on the line. With a smile on her face, she snatched up another shirt to hang up, all the while reminiscing of the games she used to play as a little girl.

The same games her daughter and her first love were playing now.

A/N: So was that worth the long wait, SxL fans? I sure hope so, because I may continue to be slow for a while. If you guys liked this, leave a review. If you didn't and just wanna flame, please don't. I hurt enough, k? Thanks for your time, all! Always a pleasure to entertain you!

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