Ah, another alternate Gracia. This was the only one I would be able to finish today, so here you go.

Remind Me

October 3, 2013

(fma day)

"There's that far off look again," Gracia chuckled mirthlessly as Ed came in and graced her with one of his distant smiles. The kind that showed her he knew deep down how to do it genuinely, but couldn't quite remember how.

She hated that he couldn't smile. That he could never be happy. She could count on one hand the times she had seen him laugh, despite his having lived in her house for nearly a year now.

He was old. Too old.

With every passing day, his shoulders hunched over more and his joints seemed stiffer. The glint in his eyes, so golden when she first saw him, began to dim with pain. And the acceptance of the pain.

He should be able to live, she told herself. He was too young to have fought in the war. She knew that his father was alive, a professor at university; he wasn't a casualty. His life hadn't been torn apart and he wasn't a slave to his ties for or against any political party.

But he still looked haunted, like he had seen too much, done too much for a boy his age. For anyone to live with themselves peaceably.

And she hated that she couldn't change that. That she couldn't bring him out of his shell. That she couldn't save him from his descent into himself.

She tried. At least once a week she would ask the question.

"So who is it that I remind you of? Back home…"

By now, she had learned not to expect an answer. Just a smile. To one degree or another. But never an answer, never an explanation, never some form of assurance that he wasn't going to fall apart with a cracked façade the next time he caught her gaze.

Asking helped, though. So she continued to ask the question with no answer.

And she received the surprise of her life when one day he granted her with a response.

"Well…" he drawled with a cheeky smile. "You remind me of Mrs. Hughes."

She wasn't expecting it. Her cheeks tinged rose red and within seconds she could feel her face burning with embarrassment. She didn't think she had been so obvious in her affections for the officer. He certainly never seemed to show any sort of reciprocal feelings.

Yet here was this boy, this stranger, who never lived in the present, able to read her like an open book. And teased her to his own detriment.

He began to laugh at her expression, a hearty, heartfelt laugh that brought the first full smile to his face that she had ever seen. The brilliance of it dazzled her, opened up a flood of light in the dingy shop and for a moment she forgot herself.

"You see," he said, wiping tears from his eyes. "Some things are just proven universal truths, constants in every world. You two were made for each other. That sissy should just stop putsing around and tell you how much he loves you instead of bothering all of us about your hundred virtues when we're trying to drink in peace."

He ran up to his room, leaving a trail of an almost magical cheeriness in his wake. Gracia couldn't help but smile, more hopeful about her secret admirer than she had dared to be in months.

Perhaps she and Ed were good for each other after all.