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Falling in love with him occurred insignificantly, was she expecting to happen?
Kane can associate it with the sweep of a long skirt and dust and heat, the air scented with Linda's perfume and just general uncleanliness, with the dirt in between her toes.
Linda was in the middle of one of her restless episodes, this one taking her clear out to a dry dusty plain, gathering bones for God-knew-what, and hated being alone in doing so, so Kane tagged along with her. Kane complained almost the whole way, as if she didn't want something to distract her anyway. Thinking was not something she wanted to be doing around then.
Kicking up clouds of brown, Kane coughed once into her hand, squinted, and considered her best friend before her, tall and pale in the middle of the one-tone landscape, bent, seemingly concentrating, over a mound of dirt. Kane could feel the dust collecting into mud in her throat, and she groaned internally.
"Do you love him?"
Kane stopped at once, and stared at the brunette- she stared right back, gaze firm and searching, her lie detector face. Kane frowned in thought, squinted, and shrugged. What a question. Was it the reason Linda had driven three hours out here anyway? Kane wouldn’t doubt it.
And there it was- the love.
But where was all the hoopla? The main event she’d heard gushing reviews for, the big show? Where was the desperate splutter to her heart, the clenching of her stomach, the thrills like little shots of adrenalin running through her veins? For Kane, there was only warmth. As if she'd been walking home in the cold and hadn't known it, had opened the door and finally realized how nasty it was outside. Had wrapped herself in a blanket and there was something warm, warm and so impossibly sweet to drink.
She'd grinned, almost sheepishly.
“Yeah … I think I do."
~
What a shame, she that can't remember that now.
The accident- of course Kane can't remember it and all Linda knows is that she barely had time to yell out to Alfons to take care of Patin for her before she streaked from the door, to find her best friend broken, in the arms of someone who had taken pity, looking like he really wanted to get outta there. How dare he. Linda felt, in the moment, like spiting acid at the person who didn’t hold Kane right, who didn’t care about her. Who didn’t know the bleeding girl he held, how she loved jelly beans and hated orange shirts.
Linda thanked the man profusely, though, and collected the injured woman, who had begun to bleed on the stranger’s arm, from a wound on her head that was bruised and very angry-looking. Linda could only imagine what had happened. At least someone had taken pity.
"s**t ... s**t, Kane, what the hell've you done to yourself now?" She’d muttered, assisted by a redhead in getting Kane into the car, as the woman was still almost totally unresponsive- and squeezed her eyes shut, leaning her head against the headrest of the passenger seat, holding the raven head in her lap.
Who would tell Alphonse, she wondered, and despaired.
~
In a way, it was Kane herself who told him.
It was Kane who was completely unaware of the person who had previously been one of the most important to her, sitting by her bed and (futilely) hoping the doctor was wrong. It was she who blinked those still-swimming green eyes at him and had asked the heart-shattering question, totally oblivious to what she'd just done.
"Wh-who're you again...?" Her voice had been dry from lack of water, and instinctively he reached for a glass of it and handed it to the still-confused, but grateful, love of his. He considered her question- it seared inside, but he didn't want to confuse or freak her out. He cared fiercely for her, and so he answered as best as he could.
"A friend." A smile, opaque plastic, and she could see right through it.
Linda had intervened about then; being one of the people from the past Kane could still fish through and remember. Though the pictures were drowsy and unclear, Linda was Linda and Oz was still Oz and that was that. Alphonse wished he could be jealous of them.
Looking at him, Kane felt a shiver pass through her stomach and recede into the gap that was her lost memory- try as she could, it would be impossible for Kane to sift the memory out and recognize Alphonse again. Something inside her, buried in her gut, hiding beneath her confusion and dread and slight headache, wanted nothing more than to have her bury herself in his arms and never resurface. It was with grief and some twisted form of pity, that Kane recognized the look to his eyes whenever he considered her- love.
She nearly cried, that day.
~
Why he persisted in being there, Kane will never know.
A lesser guy might've moved on, would've found another girl with striking features and a quirky personality to confide in, to be held when the grief over the previous love was just a little too much, a girl who he could love again. One who didn’t wonder at things she’d seen a thousand times before, could sing along to last year’s chart-topping songs, who didn’t look confused and just a little annoyed when he let an old inside joke slip, one who didn’t make him ache to remember that all of that had been forgotten.
Apparently, to Alphonse Kane was not only the first girl- she was the second and the third and all of them after that, everything he has loved and will love, all that he is and all that he isn’t- he could damn well hold himself, if only he could hang on to the aquarium-glass green eyes, and her smile.
"I don't get you." Kane had asked as they walked together one day, squinting as the sun shone in her eyes and purposely making her boots scuff on the sidewalk. She didn’t look at him, but instead at the walk. He’d squinted as well, and looked to her in surprise. Very early on he’d learned that Kane wasn’t hard to re-teach, and mostly that she’d trusted him as much as Linda. That surprised him- why she would trust him like that, when she had people she remembered to lean on.
He shrugged. “I don’t think I get myself much either.”
She’d grinned and pushed open the heavy wooden doors of their destination- a tiny organic hippy sort of shop, that smelled like tomatoes with the heavy undertone of coffee and probably pot, the whole place dark despite the huge windows lining almost every wall.
Kane dawdled, considering everything, running her fingers over the smooth curving surfaces of wine bottles, olive oil and vinegar. Every time she saw something she recalled liking, she stopped and asked him about it, and might ask him about anything-
“What’s your favorite fruit?” She prods, in her usual curious way. It delivers the usual pang of sadness, that question that seems so fundamental. What kind of lover doesn’t know her own partner’s favorite fruit?
He answers softly. “Oranges.”
He wishes she can remember the first time she tried Amestrian oranges. They had just come to their ripest and were at their absolute sweetest and definite best, and the two of them had gorged themselves on the fruit until their fingers were tired from peeling. Laying on the grass under the blanket of the night sky, laughing uncontrollably at absolutely nothing, they might’ve turned orange themselves.
Kane recognizes the pang in his face and turns away, with a waft of the most amazing thing he’s ever smelled and a light flick of black hair across his face- it smells like green apple shampoo, and it makes him want to cry.
~
Falling back in love with Alphonse is out of the question.
She establishes that from the start- why would she, after all. He’d always have to live with the fact that she can’t remember and besides, that would just be too predictable. Too chick flick-y. Fall in love, forget him, fall back in love. Settle into the rhythm, it’d be easy as anything. He is the simple way out, after all. He is what she has forgotten, who she ashes for and who she resists. Resists with all that she’s got, her logic and tenacity and just plain refusal.
It was simply too bad that her heart didn’t tend to listen to her head-
she began to love him anyway.
It was slow, though, painfully slow. After all, healing is a slow and delicate process. Wounds ache and burns burn and bones mend and life goes on. His life, he is determined to nudge her towards realizing, is her life as well. They are two halves; she holds his soul in the palm of her hand. If only she knew.
Though of course, he will never say any of that out loud.
Alphonse will never tell her how hard her forgetting him had hit him- how he spent long nights curled up in his bed, so painfully empty (though he’d sort of grown used to having an empty space beside him), devoid of even the recent memory of her warmth. How he would set out for a walk in the morning and wouldn’t return until late that evening, not even hungry nor looking tired. How he might suddenly freeze up when she’d unconsciously repeated something she’d said before, and he’d realize what he’d lost and it took so much to bring him back.
But, at least she was still alive and comfortable and cared for. His love for her prevented him from caring the most for himself. First came Kane, and then, and then grief. In that order, and that order only.
~
Linda unconsciously drove toward the same plain she did last time. Casting a sidelong glance Kane’s way, she was glad to see that the amnesiac was distracted with her iPod and the tendrils of sleep curling around her- he head tipped to the side and her breathing became regular. Linda smiled slightly and drove on for another hour.
“So ... Why are we here, again?” Kane asked, feeling the same dust between the same toes. She clicked her iPod off and shoved it in her pocket, made a visor with her hands so she could see out farther into the distance. There was grass, and soil and dust. Linda smiled, and commenced the gathering of the bones- something that surely sounds, official but wasn’t really.
As usual, she ended up wandering around, absently kicking up piles of soil to see if there are remains underneath. Today, there are none, and so she wanders about and watches her brown-and-orange skirt billow about. She smiles, the question nagging at her.
Linda will repeat the words she questioned exactly one year earlier, when she is good and ready.
Kane was good and ready, well, whenever. She didn’t like idly wandering for hours, going long stretches by her lonesome. If Alphonse wasn’t with her then someone else usually was; ever since her accident (which had most likely taken place when Kane was alone) Kane hated to be by herself for very long- so she stuck with Linda and counted the deep cracks in the sun-parched soil, trying to guess at why she’d come out here in the first place.
It is a while before Linda is good and ready.
Finally, as the sun threatens to set and the clouds are beginning to absorb their stunning final-performance colors, Linda opens her mouth for the first time in hours, and speaks. Just as before, the words are simple and clear and direct.
“Do you love him?”
This time, Kane is completely floored. Why would Linda, the very advocate of the amnesiac taking it slow and not rushing back into anything, ask her if she’d returned to that old habit?
Was it really that obvious to everyone else how the blonde was so determined to be a fact in Kane’s life, love or not, that it had to be asked how he’d establish himself there? Was it really so apparent that no matter what, they were supposed to be together?
Kane allowed her jaw to drop a little, as she considered the question.
Was it love?
What was it that he felt when he was around? Was that the name for the feelings in her stomach she got lately, when he was around? If so, then love wasn’t the thing she’d expected it to be. It was scary, but it was thrilling and captivating- to watch it, to experience what the flutters became, was a totally enthralling thing.
Was it love- her heart screamed yes, oh for God’s sake yes already, her mind muttered something along the lines of a nod, and her hands fell lightly to her chest. Her heart drummed, careful but very observant of what Kane would say. And she surprised even herself when she said it.
“Yes.”
~
Light filers through the still-curtain less window, assaulting the olive-skinned back of a lovely young woman and illuminating every one of her movements, as she reaches down and pulls her discarded shirt back on. He makes a small noise of protest as she does so and she looks back at him, amusement glittering on her face, grinning.
“Shut it. We need food, right?” She asks, almost surprised at the sound of her voice. It’s nearly familiar in this house she can almost remember growing up in. It’s been hours, anyway, since she last spoke intelligible words.
“Food can wait.” His voice is almost a whine- she rolls her eyes with a small snort. If she remembers right, it was him who kept telling her that they needed more food, after their last meal of peanut-butter-and-tuna sandwiches. She’d liked those fine, but no. Whatever. She doesn’t want to brush her hair anyway.
He threads an arm around her waist and she allowed herself to be pulled back down onto the bed. His eyes stray down to one of her legs, the smooth dancer’s calf, and he traces a long thin scar with a pale finger. It was almost too thin and out-of-the way to see, so of course he noticed it right away.
“Can you remember that one?’ he doubts it, and wonders where she might’ve gotten it from.
“Oh.” Her eyes flick down to where he traces it, and she grins- finally, one he notices that she can identify with a name, a date. It makes her even happier, in that moment.
“It’s- oh yeah! I fell over a bunch of rocks. Around here, too. I can show you later.” She nods slightly and turns her leg so the mark is out of sight, and catches his hand, holding it as she gazes for a moment out the window. He watches her in turn.
Whenever she tries to find a mismark on him, the findings are few and far between- though by no means does that mean he is pristine, most of his perilous years were spent inside a suit of armor, or under the fierce protection of his brother, having just retrieved his body back from whatever hell it had had the misfortune to reside. He tries to tell her that no, they aren’t really visible.
They lie somewhere inside, in his heart or his mind, a thousand tiny little slashes, layering constantly, starting from the day he slipped into memory and consciousness. It makes her hurt too, she wants to tell him, though the closest she can truly come to the little scars are staring into his eyes and trying to excavate the memories buried deep within. It is a fruitless, but nonetheless a very pleasant task.
For both of them, healing was a long and delicate process- but neither of them had to go it alone, and that has made every difference.
So, the ending was defiantly was not as good as the old version’s, and this version has a lot more whining and unnecessary stuff. But this one is much longer, and all that stuff, and has more development on Kane’s part. And it has, of course, AlKane, so of course I’m pretty happy. I don’t think I write about Al very well, I’m sorry for ruining him Phi-Phi. ; ; ‘
But, to anyone who’s just finished this fanfic, I thank you. <3
And REVIEW. Tell me what you disliked, what you liked, etc. It’s the best thanks you can possible give. C:
 men getting pregnant · Sun Apr 26, 2009 @ 06:47am · 0 Comments |
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