FMA Fanfic: Snow Angel
Snow Angel.
by arcanewinter. G 852 Roy, Elysia. Fullmetal Alchemist.
Roy watches his best friend’s little girl playing in the snow.
There were some days, though few and far between, when Roy Mustang did not order one of his subordinates to drive him home, electing to walk the inconvenient distance instead. Though the route he took was longer than necessary, only the most uninformed would assume he did it for the scenery, or the fresh air, or a love of the outdoors.
On the contrary, he most often set his boots to pavement on the days few others would, be it through the rain, or, as on this afternoon, through the falling snow.
Anyone who followed would easily learn the reason as soon as he turned that first corner, where one road led to his home, and the other led to his friend’s.
And it would always be his friend’s, even if he was no longer seen or heard there.
It wasn’t cold enough for the snow to crunch under his boots as he approached the house, and so he went unnoticed as he drew close enough to watch the little girl in the front yard. She rolled about in the far corner in her cumbersome snowsuit, customary pigtails certainly hidden beneath her tightly closed hood.
As he settled against a corner post in the brick wall skirting the yard, he could see the girl’s mother inside, seated close to the window to watch her, though he was beyond her easy vision.
He wondered how much of this scene was comprised of memory for her; he wondered if she too could not help but see the doting father as he lifted his daughter and stretched to set her in a clear patch of snow, free from both their footprints, so that her snow angel could be as perfect as she was.
The girl hobbled unaccompanied now through the snow towards a white rabbit that seemed to be teasing her, unthreatened, and when she at last toppled harmlessly into a drift, Roy watched as her mother nearly got up. But she soon sat back again as the girl rolled until she could stand once more, clearly unfazed as she continued her quest.
Roy couldn’t help the barest smile, and he thought he could see the gentle tremor of laughter in his friend’s wife.
The rabbit continued hopping lazily, looking for the hardier survivors of the frost, until finally the girl pounced triumphantly, sending the creature straight towards Roy, then along the wall to a tiny escape. The girl giggled, admirably undaunted, but she spotted him before she could follow the elusive creature.
She recognized him, but before she could call out to him, he brought his finger to his lips, and she hunched down doing the same, her best impression of quietness. And where she once cowered from him, so much colder than her father, she now waded unbalanced through the snow towards him, following not the direct line the rabbit had taken, but the edge of a wide circle. It was only now that Roy noticed the familiar pattern in the snow at its center.
“Angel,” she whispered to him as she got close enough, pointing to it and taking the trouble to lift her face to him, though it nearly brought the hood over her eyes.
He smiled, pausing before he reached down over the wall and patted her head, nudging her hood a little further back. “And a very good one, too,” he answered, hushed.
“No,” she corrected, shaking her head while her hood remained still. “Daddy Angel.”
Roy lifted his brows slightly, his eyes shifting with incomprehension to the depression in the bright, clean snow. “I suppose he must be.”
Still, she did not look satisfied, but the front door had opened and from the warmth and light came her mother’s voice, calling her in for dinner.
Dutifully, her goodbye to him was a silent one, her small hand opening and closing in its thick mitten while his ironically ungloved hand waved back.
He watched her trundle off, again avoiding her snow angel, which his eyes passed over before he could step away from the wall, the warm light from the window illuminating it better than the pale sun.
And though he was usually too cynical for such thoughts, he still felt it a shame that the rabbit had run through its whimsical perfection.
But Roy hadn’t gone two steps when he stopped again, eyes drawn back to the angel, where the rabbit tracks were clearly the only unbroken snow around it.
He frowned as the girl’s words returned to him, remembering her displeasure when he had not understood what she meant.
For a moment he stood still, his breath leaving him, steady and slow, in visible puffs that quickly dissolved in the chill air. It had stopped snowing, but Roy hadn’t noticed, his attention on the snow-filled yard, now vacant and sadly peaceful.
He finally leaned into movement with some difficulty, his legs cold and stiff from his quiet vigil. As he passed the property, his hand brushed the snow from his bangs in a reserved gesture of acknowledgement to the one he couldn’t see or hear, but felt.
[I was listening to Edward Scissorhands OST - The Grand Finale as I wrote.]