Disclaimer: I don't own FMA nor its characters.

Gracia woke with the feeling of warm sunlight caressing her face. She got up and got ready for the day-another day without Maes.

It had been a year since Maes' death, and Gracia was still trying to get back into normal life. "It's okay to cry." They said, "Take your time adjusting." They told her. But they couldn't really understand that she could not allow herself to wallow in her grief.

She didn't have time to take baby steps when her own little girl needed her.

Elysia needed her mother.

Gracia would sometimes stop and think about how downhill her life had rolled, but never had it occurred to her how deep her husband's death impacted their daughter. Looking back on it, she saw how selfish she really was then, until the day she thought to clean up her late husband's home office."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"Mommy, who's this?" Gracia startled, turning to see Elysia bending over one of the case files on the floor.

Maes' workroom had started gathering dust since he died, and she never really had the courage to touch it until she was ready.

Reaching for the folder, she took a closer look at the picture Elysia was pointing at.

Oh.

"This is Nina Tucker, she was a little girl like you."

Elysia's small voice broke the silence.

"What happened to her?"

Smiling gently, Gracia placed the file back in the drawer, not able to take one more look at the round face and twinkling eyes of a child whose future was so horribly taken.

"She went to heaven, honey-" She was interrupted by Elysia's sudden, agonizing wail.

Gracia quickly made her way to her daughter, doing a swift check-up to see if Elysia had hurt herself before hugging her tightly.

"Elysia, dear, what's wrong?"

Elysia's sobs were loud, a waterfall of tears cascading down her face.

"I hate her!" she screamed, stomping her feet, "She made daddy lie to me!"

Her mother stared at her in shock and confusion.

"You know your daddy would never-"He did!"

Elysia's blazing emerald eyes, ones so much like her father's, were filled with so much hurt.

"Daddy promised that I would always be his only special little girl!"