Disclaimer: Arakawa owns the world - who am I to lay claim to even a portion of her greatness?

Notes: The challenge: Flowers. The secret: this is not fluff. But it's supposed to be, so interpret how you will. Unbetaed because my wifey has been very busy lately. She did prompt me to stick a newspaper in here somewhere, though.

Stained

Ed's sixth spring was a season of hard rain, and he could still remember the mud years later, though his mind had swathed most other recollections in layers of hard knocks. The soles of his feet would grow black when he played outdoors, leaving a trail of tiny prints that gave him away no matter where he tried to hide. Not even Al was safe from the dirt; he would wrestle with the pump and come out the worse for it, palms streaked, feet no cleaner than before. Trisha Elric couldn't be found without a rag in one hand and dark smears on her dress.

Ed tried to rouse himself as soon as the light outside his windows grew from black to dim blue. He crept out of bed and shed his nightclothes in the hallway, slipping naked through the door. Shivering on his knees, he dragged his fingers through the grass, searching for the wet touch of earthworm flesh. The dead ones weren't much fun, but if he felt something curl beneath his skin, Ed would plop it into an empty pickle jar that he stowed under his bed.

When Trisha came to wake her sons for school, the older boy closed his eyes tightly in a child's parody of sleep. He heard her sigh over the stained sheets and pajamas that, despite his best efforts, he hadn't preserved against traces of muddy arms and legs.

-

Every student lined his shoes along the wall to keep from tracking the weather across scrubbed floorboards, but the schoolhouse still smelled like sodden turf. Ed's nostrils prickled as he slumped, chin on the table he shared with his brother. He wished there were a clock in the room.

Beside him, Al struggled with his letters. Both boys could read better than many of the older children, but writing was something they hadn't picked up from their father's books. Ed smiled as Al spelled out a shaky B-R-O-T-H-E-R.

Too young, the teacher had said, and Trisha would have gladly kept her second son at home for another year were he not so persistent. He would cling to her skirts, pleading with watery eyes, and Ed would join in too because he thought it looked like fun. Besides, school couldn't possibly be interesting without Al to talk to.

When Alphonse followed his brother out of the house on the first day, Trisha hadn't stopped him.

Ed pushed a hand deep into his pants pocket; he had hidden the worms there when he realized that his pickle jar was too conspicuous. Catching a slim, squirming body between his fingers, Ed scuffed the floor beneath his chair with impatient kicks and waited. The instant his teacher turned to the blackboard, he dropped his victim down the back of Al's shirt.

Al jerked a little and his spine straightened abruptly. Ed had anticipated a more satisfying reaction – shrieks or wild flailing – but all Al did was frown and carefully search the length of his back for the intruder. It wasn't long before his hand withdrew, cupping the earthworm inside the warm shell of his palm.

Al hopped off his chair without a word. The wood floor was sturdy enough that his trek to the nearest window went unnoticed, but the latch snapped as it released, and a disruptive creak of rusty hinges gave him away.

"Alphonse Elric!"

Ed watched his brother turn to the reproachful eyes of the schoolmistress. Unfazed, Al lifted his hand and the prize it held.

Her lips puckered sharply and her eyes creased at the corners. Ed had never seen a prune before, but he'd heard that they looked just as crinkly.

"Who brought that in here?" the teacher snapped.

Trying to look innocent while hiding a grin at his private joke – Prune-face, Prune-face – was a difficult task, but if anyone could manage it, the boy for the job was Edward Elric. He crossed his fingers under the desk and held his breath as he waited for Al to answer.

Al's eyes darted to his brother's for only a second. "I just found it," he said. "Can I set it free?"

Edward knew that life wasn't fair. But there were times when life really wasn't fair. Like when my baby brother is a better liar than I am, Ed thought, watching Al splay his fingers over the window ledge. The worm dropped from his open palm into the wet grass below.

-

The first morning that the sun rose into a clear sky, Winry danced down the path to the schoolhouse. Al's eyes were on her sandaled feet, circling in the dirt while her dress twirled around her knees. He began to move in a jerky imitation, but Ed hit him lightly on the back of the head and he tripped over his own feet.

A second later, Ed's face was full of grass. He yelled as Al propelled them both downhill. Al threw a punch and missed, and Ed tried to kick him in the shin only to dislodge a clod of dirt instead. Their limbs tangled up into a ball of Elric.

By the time they separated, both boys were scraped and panting. Al seemed to have forgotten that he was angry, so Ed lay on his back unguarded, watching Winry roll down after them. She held her arms above her head, hands clasped, and laughed while the world spun around her.

"We should go to school," Winry said after several minutes had passed.

Ed twisted his neck to meet her worried gaze. He threaded his fingers through blades of grass, wriggled his back in the ground, and smiled. "I bet the sky can teach us more anyway."

"Hey, I see Brother!" Al interrupted in a shout, with one finger raised toward the clouds. They could have been whipped cream on hot chocolate, white and puffed. There would be no spring storms today.

Ed reached out to flick him on the nose. "No you don't, stupid," he said.

They reached the schoolhouse half an hour late. Open windows ushered in a cool, dry breeze and Winry's dress was stained as green as the Elrics' knees.

-

There was dirt under Ed's toenails. His feet barely reached the earth from his perch on the side yard swing, but that they did reach was what mattered. Or had mattered until last month. Now that Al could perform the same feat, it didn't seem so important anymore.

Rocking back and forth, Ed tried to worm his toes deeper into the lawn. He slipped closer to the board's edge in the process. This precarious balance was short lived; Ed slid off and landed hard just as his mother called his name from the back of the house.

"See the little white flowers?" Trisha asked her older son after he joined her in the garden. Ed squatted on the balls of his feet, tipping from hand to hand as he tried to balance himself. "Do you see them, Ed?" his mother prompted patiently.

His gaze shifted to her pointing finger and he frowned at the plant she indicated. "Uh huh," he said. He rocked back onto his left hand.

"You have to pull these out right from the bottom, so you get all the roots," Trisha instructed. She tugged slowly at the base of the weed, birthing its tangled roots in a shower of soil. "Do you think you can help me do that? Let me see you try."

Ed's first three attempts were too vigorous and left him with only a torn stem, but soon he was carrying fistfuls of uprooted weeds to a growing pile at the center of the yard.

"Why isn't Al helping?" Ed asked his mother.

Trisha glanced back at the pile. Al sat beside it, playing with the discarded plants. "He thinks that all flowers should stay in the ground," she said. "Even the bad ones."

"Oh." Ed looked at his brother too. All of their practice drawing arrays had helped his dexterity; though his fingers still slipped once in a while, Al had tied a chain of stems several feet long. "He should help us anyway."

Trisha sighed and shook her head, rubbing her stained palms together. "Just leave him alone, sweetie."

The next time Ed stopped by the weed pile he pulled on Al's hair, his fingers leaving dark streaks in strands of gold. Al wrinkled his nose and gazed up with a smile. When he stood, he was too tall, and growing all the time. Ed refused to admit that his little brother would surpass him soon, but he knew. He had reminders every day.

"This is for you," Al said as he lifted his arms in the air.

Ed plucked at the flower chain that hung limply from his neck. He met Al's eyes with his brow furrowed. "It's just a buncha dead weeds."

"Not dead," Al protested, frowning. "Or it's your fault for digging them up."

"Well, what am I supposed to do with them?" Ed asked.

"Dunno," Al said with a shrug. His hair teased the tops of his squinting eyes when he smiled again. "They're pretty, right?"

Ed returned his attention to the string of twisted stems and crushed white flowers. He shredded off a leaf with his fingernail. "If you say so, I guess."

Al left him with a kiss on the cheek and a voice that laughed like imminent summer, a memory that lingered when only the mud remained.

----------------------------------

Edward Elric was tired. He was tired of showers that were just not hot enough right up until they scalded him, and of shoes staying wet past noon. He had spent too many mornings waking up with his nose cold, too many nights shivering himself to sleep. It seemed he'd snapped his mouth shut on his brother's name a hundred times as he realized that Al had no body heat to share.

Truth: the count was far greater.

But only rarely was Ed brave enough to admit to it and never stupid enough to speak his mind. He didn't like the fact that black ice waited outside his door beneath a layer of innocent powder, he didn't like walking into Mustang's office with a limp and a yellow-grey bruise that mocked him from the bathroom mirror, he didn't like having to refuse his superior's smirking offer of Won't you sit down, Fullmetal?; but armor didn't bruise, didn't need to sit down, and Al hadn't woken with his nose cold in five years.

No matter how many times Ed thought, Serves him right for sneaking milk into my hot cocoa, the gravity of their situation lurked beneath a thin layer of half-hearted jokes and forced smiles.

Some days, the Elrics both slipped on their way out the door.

-

Al had startlingly good vision for a boy without eyes. He could tell that his brother's automail was aching before Ed noticed the pain himself, he knew when a meal was ready simply by looking at it, and he could spot an abandoned kitten from seventy yards away. But he somehow missed the slush melting from the streets mid-January, and he failed to comment when Ed stopped wearing gloves in bed.

"You can't go outside like that!"

Ed's hand stopped just short of the doorknob. He glanced at his button-down shirt, then frowned at Al. "Why not?"

"You'll freeze," Al answered from their hotel room's tiny kitchen. Breakfast was in its middle stages on the countertop.

Ed sighed, rolling his eyes, and leaned back against the door. "It's really not that-"

"It's still winter, Brother," Al interrupted. The stove hissed on at the touch of his hand. "Put on a coat."

"I'm just picking up a newspaper." Ed's teeth filled his face with a grin. "Won't even have to leave the building." He closed the door on curtain-dimmed dawn, his brother's irritated voice, and a pot full of stew that Al couldn't smell.

False spring passed from mouth to mouth, but everyone knew it wasn't supposed to come this soon or last this long. February was sweeping down in warm breezes while flower buds emerged from thawing soil. Flowers! Had Al missed even the flowers?

The idea surfaced silently, but by the time Ed had a newspaper in hand, it had grown too large to ignore. He walked outside without a coat that Al didn't know he didn't need.

-

There was dirt under Ed's fingernails. The lines of his palms were traced in black, ready to leave smudged handprints on anything he touched. Newsprint and soil spilled onto the table as he laid down his load.

"What were you-" Al started as he turned to greet his brother. He froze when his eyes fell on Ed's ungloved hands and the dark spread he had created. "What are you doing? You're making a mess!"

Ed only laughed and ignored the question. "Al," he said. "Al, you know it's getting warm outside? Look what I brought you, they came right from the ground!"

"Wash your hands," Al ordered, but he moved closer to the table, a cooling bowl of stew forgotten on the counter. "Are these… flowers?"

Ed blew bangs from his eyes as he lathered up his hands, taking a moment to smile over his shoulder. "Yeah, can you believe it? Grab a pot or something so we can plant them."

No answering creak of armor met Ed's words. "Why did you bring them here?" Al asked softly.

"To show you," Ed replied, wiping his hands on his shirt as he turned back to his brother. "Plus they'll die if they stay out there. This warm spell can't last forever." Al remained quiet and Ed began to fidget. He wondered if he'd done something wrong. "I-I got the roots and everything, so they'll be all right. Had to waste a few sheets of newspaper, though."

"Brother…" Al shifted his attention away from the flowers to look Ed in the face. "They'll die anyway. If we find another lead… We can't carry a plant around with us everywhere we go."

Ed lifted his eyebrows and snorted. "I spent all that effort digging these up and this is the thanks I get?"

"Bro-"

"Don't be so gloomy. At least they're less work than a cat. We'll find someone else to take them when we leave."

Both boys looked back at the flowers. Most were still green and closed, but snowy petal tips poked out from several of the buds, and one was already blooming.

"Where are we going to find a pot?" Al asked after a long silence.

"Dunno." Ed's lips twitched at the corners. "They're pretty, right?"

"They're beautiful," Al replied, and Ed could hear his voice smiling.