Crimson and Clover, Ch. 2
Title: Crimson and Clover
Author: infinitesimi
Previous: 1
Genre: Plot/gen
Summary: Ed would do anything to save his brother. Anything, even the impossible.
Note: Manga based with nearly no spoilers, unless you don't know about GreedLing. No pairings. Featuring crazy!Ed, or maybe he isn't crazy?
Chapter Two
The military in West City didn’t know the Flame Alchemist. Roy scowled. Ed was known all over the country, but these people didn’t know the mighty Flame Alchemist? He had to show his State Alchemist watch and military ID card to be allowed any information about Fullmetal?
Before seeing Ed, who was still unconscious, Roy demanded to see the armor, not knowing or fully realizing what he expected to find until he saw the eyes in the helmet unlit, dark, and lifeless, and swallowed hard. It was eerie; to him, this armor had been the only form of Alphonse he’s known and he shuddered, unable to shake the feeling that he was touching a dead body. Slowly, he pulled the helmet off and saw just what he unconsciously expected: the blood seal was destroyed.
Had the brothers done the impossible? Had they found a way to restore Alphonse’s body? Did the alchemical reaction destroy an entire building? If that was true, what had they sacrificed? And where was Alphonse?
Roy sat by the hospital bed, watching Ed’s shallow breathing and waiting for the doctor to talk to him. There was a bandage around the boy’s head; either he was unconscious from a head injury or from some type of alchemy. With Alphonse missing, the only one who knew what happened was Ed. Roy tried not to dwell on the possibility of Ed not waking up at all.
His attention snapped to the figure in the bed when Ed began to turn his head, mumbling and shaking, and Roy thought he might be waking up. “Ed, Ed, wake up,” he said quietly, trying to sound comforting. “You’re all right,” he said, having no idea whether he spoke the truth or not. In a few minutes Ed quieted again, having never opened his eyes.
When the doctor finally came to talk to Roy he told him the most serious of Ed’s injuries was to his head. They were monitoring his brain activity and he had periods of none at all, indicating that he had fallen onto a coma, interspersed with times of active brain waves but still no consciousness. “He was awake when they brought him in,” the doctor added. “It wasn’t until some time in the night when he fell into the coma.”
“Did he say what happened?” Roy pressed, his hands gripping the arms of the chair he sat in, staring hard at the pale face of his subordinate.
“He said a lot of things that didn’t make any sense,” the man said. “He said, ‘I tried but I don’t know if it worked’ and he kept talking about envy and being attacked by envy, or something like that.”
“The homunculus,” Roy said under his breath. “It could have been anything. That’s not enough information, I need him to wake up and talk to him myself,” he muttered, still staring at the figure in the bed.
“He will likely wake up eventually,” the doctor said, turning even more serious. “But understand, Colonel Mustang, he may not remember what happened at all. Amnesia is common in patients with head trauma. Its possible he may not be able to tell you anything more than I have.” Roy started to say something, but the doctor continued. “There haven’t been any indications of brain damage as of yet,” he admitted, “but the human brain is a strange organ. We wont know anything until he’s awake.”
“Brain damage?” Roy echoed.
“It’s simply a possibility, Colonel-“
Roy stood. “I want him moved to the hospital in Central as soon as possible. They have the best neurologists in the country and I want to make sure he has the best treatment available,” he ordered, looking down at the boy in the bed, trying to exert come kind of control over the situation. He had to get the boy out of the West, he thought irrationally, he had no control of anything here in the West. If he could only get Ed to Central-
“It isn’t safe to move him until he is at least awake, and able to maintain consciousness,” the doctor said firmly. “At that point I would recommend transferring him, he would certainly recover better in more familiar surroundings.”
“The boy is a quick healer,” Roy said with confidence. “I want him back in Central as soon as possible.”
“Brain trauma is a tricky thing,” the doctor repeated, and Roy simply stared at the bandage around Ed’s head. He would be fine.
Roy spent the night in the chair next to Ed’s bed, and had dozed of eventually in the early hours of the morning. When he woke up he opened his eyes to Ed’s pale gold ones staring directly at him. “Fullmetal?” he asked softly. “Are you awake?”
Ed brought a hand up to touch the bandage around his head. “My head hurts,” he said faintly.
“Yes, you got hurt,” Roy said, still speaking quietly. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Where’s Alphonse?” Ed whispered, and Roy swallowed.
“I don’t know, I was hoping you could tell me that,” he said, forcing his voice to be neutral.
Ed squeezed his eyes shut suddenly, pressing his head back into the pillow. “Envy,” he hissed out. “Envy got him. I tried to- stop him, and I tried to- save him-“ he choked back a sob. “But he’s not here.”
Roy felt the blood drain from his face. Ed hadn’t tried to restore his brother at all. The alchemical light people had seen was Ed trying to defend his brother. He could see tears in the corners of Ed’s eyes, and awkwardly placed what he hoped was a comforting hand over Ed’s own. How would Ed live without his brother? He’d barely been able to function for a few weeks away from him! His only family, the only Elric left was gone- Roy felt himself choking back a sob of his own.
“Hey, Colonel, don’t cry, I’m not dead,” Ed said to him, and Roy looked at him in surprise. Puzzled, he watched Ed bring a finger up to his eyes and frown when he felt the moisture. “I guess you’re making me cry too.” He wiped his fingers on the white hospital sheets. “So where’s Al?”
“Where’s Al?” Roy repeated stupidly, because there was nothing else he could say. He was still reeling from Ed’s confirmation that Alphonse was gone, and now-?
Ed pushed himself up on his elbows and looked around the room. “Yeah, where is he?” he repeated.
“Do you remember what you just told me?” Roy said slowly, feelings of panic rising up in him.
Ed thought for a minute. “I told you to quit crying- where’d Al go?”
“Fullmetal, you were hurt, you hurt your head, you must have some short term memory loss-“
Ed raised his eyebrows, and reached up once more to touch the bandage on his head. Then he scowled. “I do not,” he said stubbornly. “Why wont you tell me where my brother is? Is he okay?” He watched as Roy opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something, and then closed it, with no information forthcoming. “He’s not?” Ed demanded, his voice rising.
“Your brother died,” Roy said, still awkward, feeling inadequate, somehow, and strange, delivering news to the one who had just told him, and felt his stomach twist when Ed’s eyes widened.
“What? That’s impossible! My brother can’t die, he can’t be killed, he’s a suit of armor, what-“
“I saw the armor,” Roy said sadly. “The blood seal was destroyed.”
The devastation was plain in Ed’s eyes. “How- who-“
“You just told me it was Envy.” Roy said, as gently as he could.
“Envy…” Ed repeated, his voice trailing off. Then he frowned. “No. It’s not true, my brother isn’t dead, I don’t believe it,” he said, looking at Roy accusingly. “You must have made a mistake,” he insisted.
Roy swallowed. “Ed, you told me yourself-“
Ed’s eyed widened as the memory resurfaced again, fresh and new a second time, and choked out, “Envy did it, I saw him do it, I tried to stop him-“ and this time Ed was crying for real, full sobs, curling up in the bed and pressing his face into the pillow.
There was nothing Roy felt he could offer. What could he say to a boy who had lost his only family? Not knowing what else to do, Roy sat beside him a rubbed his back, up and down, but instead of calming, Ed went from sobbing to screaming for his brother. Roy tried to hold him but the boy was flailing uncontrollably, knocking him easily aside with his powerful metal limbs, and the nurses came running into the room with needles, injecting him with something that made him sleep again.
Ed did not ask about Al again for the duration of his stay in West City hospital. When the doctor was certain he was able to remain conscious he released him to Roy to transfer him to the hospital in Central. Ed seemed to have decided that Al was waiting for him in Central, and Roy couldn’t help but wonder if one of the nurses had put the idea in his head. The doctor had forbid him from mentioning his brother’s death, because he said the sedatives required to calm him down were hurting his mental recovery, and that it was wise to wait until at least his short term memory had returned to tell him so that he did not have to keep re-living the trauma.
The doctor also told Roy that loss of short-term memory was normal in patients that had suffered head injuries, and that as he began to heal it would return, but Roy wanted to hear everything from a doctor in Central before he would believe it.
He had out a note card on Ed’s nightstand saying, “Ed, you’re in the hospital in West City. You’re going home on Tuesday,” so that he did not have to keep telling him where he was and when he could go home every five minutes. In fact just then he watched Ed look as if he was confused, look around the room, read the card that was propped against the lamp, and then reach up and rub his head.
“What’s today?” he asked instead.
“Monday,” Roy answered patiently.
“So I’m going home tomorrow,” Ed stated, and Roy nodded.
“Right.”
“Home to Central or home to Rizembool?”
“Central. The best doctors are there.”
Ed rubbed his head again. “Where are my notes?” he asked then.
Roy raised his eyebrows. If Ed was getting bored, then this was a good sign, because his memory was getting long enough to need something to occupy his mind other than asking Roy the same questions over and over again. “Ah, did you bring them here with you? Or did you leave them in Central?” he asked carefully.
Ed thought for a minute. “I brought them here,” he said finally. “They were in my suitcase, where’s my suitcase?”
“I would guess it was in the inn when it was destroyed,” Roy assumed.
Ed frowned. “You told me not to wreck anything while I was here,” he remembered. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay, Ed.”
He looked over at the card on the nightstand again, reading it yet again. “I guess I hurt my head, huh?” he said then. “And I can’t remember anything?”
“Apparently not,” Roy told him.
“Huh,” was the response. “That must be annoying for you.”
In actuality Roy was very worried. He was in West City, where no one knew who he was and he had no unit to command an independent investigation from, and no one to talk to and trade theories with. He was solely responsible for Fullmetal until he got him to Central, and then he would be responsible for contacting the Rockbells and telling them what had happened. Would they be able to hold a funeral for Alphonse with no body present? Would Ed even be able to attend it, if he couldn’t seem to remember his brother’s death?
“What day is today?” Ed asked him again, and he sighed.
“Monday.”
“Oh good, we’re going home tomorrow. Then I can see Al.”
Roy felt as if he had been punched in the gut. “That’s right,” he said, unable to bear watching Edward fall apart again at the news, but feeling like a sickening liar even as he spoke.
It was the day of Alphonse’s funeral. It had been a quiet event, with only a few people present. There was, of course, no body, but there were plenty of tears. There was a hushed air among those who had gathered to remember him: the brothers Elric had stood for the impossible dream, the unconquerable will, the possibility of impossible success and impossible forgiveness. Everyone who had come to know them in Central had come to truly believe that one day they would succeed at reaching their goal, that one day the dead would come back to life, and that one day there would be two Elric brothers, both in the flesh, blazing new paths in the world of alchemical science. It was a shock to everyone to learn that this would never happen.
After the funeral Winry and Pinako, who where the only ones present who had ever known Alphonse in the flesh, went with Roy to Gracia Hughes’s home to pick up Ed. The doctor had advised against Ed attending the funeral, and although the Rockbells protested at first, after spending a few days with Ed they agreed it would be better for everyone not to mention Al’s death until Ed was able to remember it.
Pinako had argued that Ed should be at home in Rizembool, with his family, recovering, but the doctor had told her that he needed to be close to the neurologists in Central. They were puzzled as to why his short term memory was not returning but assumed it was a form of brain damage, and told them he needed to be around skilled professionals in order to recover as much as he possibly could. Roy did not mention to them the violent mood swings Ed was prone to, only because he did not want to cause the women any more heartbreak than they had already endured. It was hard enough for them when Ed himself insisted that he should remain in Central. “I have work to do,” he told them, “and besides, Al is here.”
When they entered Gracia’s home Mr. Hughes greeted Winry with a hug, saying how much she had grown since she last saw her. Winry’s eyes went directly to Ed, who was sitting at the coffee table coloring with Elysia. He had grown since she last saw him as well, in fact, it had been almost a year. He looked perfectly healthy and normal, his attention absorbed completely by the coloring book he shared with the little girl.
“Hi Winry,” he said when he looked up, standing up to greet the two women. “Hi Aunty.” He tipped his head, studying her for a moment. “Winry, what’s wrong? Were you crying? Your eyes are all red.”
She sniffed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Um, maybe its just allergies or something,” she said, her voice wavering.
He picked up the newspaper that had been under the coloring book. “Since you’re here in Central, Winry, I thought maybe you’d want to see a movie with me or something? Al’s busy, but I’ve been pretty bored lately. There aren’t any movie houses in Rush Valley yet, are there?”
She was a little surprised at his suggestion, and it still shocked her to hear him talk about Al as if he was just in the other room because it was exactly the way she felt about his death as well. She looked from the Colonel to her grandmother for permission, wondering if it was a good idea to go wandering around Central with Ed when he was obviously so sick.
Ed poked her in the side. “What, are you afraid I’m gonna get lost or something? Hey, my memory is a lot better now. See, I only said hi to you once since you’ve got here, and you’ve been here at least five minutes now.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Right?” he asked, and he was smiling when he said it so she couldn’t tell if he was being funny or serious, or some combination of both. “I even went to work yesterday,” he added, trying to persuade not Winry but Roy and Pinako.
Finally Winry shrugged. “I’ve been in Central enough to know my way around now, you know,” she told the adults. “Even if Ed does get lost, we’ll be fine.”
“I won’t get lost,” Ed said stubbornly.
Roy wanted to take the young woman aside and reiterate how important it was not to mention Alphonse’s death, how upset and violent Edward could get, but she was dragging him out the door before either he or Pinako could stop them. Winry was an intelligent girl, he told himself. She would be able to take care of Ed just fine.
“How was the movie?” Gracia asked them conversationally over dinner.
“Fine,” Ed said, his mouth full.
“Scary,” Winry added. “We should have asked Sheiska along, it was about aliens.”
“Do you remember it at all?” Roy asked curiously.
“Of course I remember it!” Ed said, immediately on the defensive.
“What was it about?”
“Aliens,” he responded promptly.
“Who was in it?”
“Actors,” he said, but his confidence was wavering.
“Ed, the part where the spaceship opened up and the lights beamed all the people up inside?” Winry prompted him, but he looked at her blankly. “You whispered to me how they used the film to make it look like they were disappearing, but they weren’t really?”
“Yeah,” he said uncertainly. “They can do that now, it’s like a trick with the cameras…”
“You don’t remember it at all,” Roy said, disappointment plain across his face.
Ed pushed his food around on his plate. “Winry got scared and grabbed my hand,” he said after a minute. He looked at her questioningly. “Right?”
She nodded, her eyes lighting up. “That’s what you remember?”
He blushed. “Yeah.”
Pinako and Roy exchanged worried glances.
“Hey, don’t look like that!” Ed protested. “I’m fine, I’m gonna be fine. Don’t worry about me!”
Later, after dinner, when Winry and Ed were helping Gracia clean up in the kitchen, Roy and Pinako spoke quietly in the living room. “You know, he may not ever get any better than this,” she told him, sucking in on her pipe although it was not lit.
“He seems like he is,” Roy argued, but Pinako shook her head.
“He seems like that to you because you want it to be so. He’s just adjusting; he isn’t improving. I’ve spoken to the doctors myself, you know,” she reminded him
“He went back to work in the lab this week,” Roy told her, ignoring her statement. “Everything went fine, as far as I know.”
“Edward always did keep meticulous notes,” Pinako said cynically.
“When the doctors say he wont get any better, I’ll send him home to you,” Roy promised. “Until then he needs to stay here, near the hospital. This is the best hospital in the country, and he deserves the best.”
Pinako sucked in on her unlit pipe once more. “You really think you can give him what’s best?” She nodded towards the doorway, where she had seen Ed standing with his arms folded several minutes ago. “Edward? Is Central where you want to stay?”
Roy spun around, not having realized he was being eavesdropped on, and met gold eyes under frowning eyebrows.
“Well, yeah, Al and I have work to do here,” he told her. “Sorry we don’t get to see you much, Aunty,” he added. “Maybe we’ll visit in a few months?”
“That would be very nice,” she told him, but she stared hard at Roy, and he couldn’t help but feel she was criticizing him yet.
Ed pulled his silver watch out of his pocket, flipping it open to check the time, and then recorded it in his lab notes. He had several experiments going at once, and two of them at least were seeming very promising.
It had been weird coming back to work. The other alchemists spoke to him either in hushed tones, as if they were afraid of upsetting him, or loudly, as if they were speaking to someone who was mentally deficient. He tried to shake it off, diving back into his work after reading thoroughly over his previous notes. He found Al’s notes in with his own in the back of the binder, dating back to several months ago, and remembered Al working on the projects with him at the beginning. The experiment had taken a turn neither of them expected, and Al would be surprised to find out what the end result was.
Pinako was right, Ed had always been a meticulous note-taker, and he spent several minutes every hour reviewing his records of what he had done that day. He mostly worked alone in the labs, engrossed in his own work, which is what he had always done, and gradually the other alchemists came to assume he was back to normal.
He wasn’t back to normal. He could feel it. He wondered if he should be taking notes on his entire life, not just his experiments, because he found himself unable to remember simple things like what he had eaten for breakfast. Every time he had a conversation with Roy he tried only to respond to things Roy said to him, not to start any topics of his own, because he was afraid every time he did he was repeating himself. Everything he said, it seemed, was met with a sad sigh, and left Ed feeling like he had said something wrong.
While he was waiting for some of his chemicals to turn, he flipped back in his notebook to work on his letter to Al. He never wrote his brother. Neither of them were much for writing letters, although he did remember getting a few brief notes from Al a while back. Odd how he remembered some things but not others. He didn’t have much to say really, other than when do you think you’ll be back in Central and he frowned at the page. Maybe he had already written Al and asked him that? He tried to remember, but it made him feel funny inside, as if maybe he and Al had quarreled or something, and that’s why Al never came to see him in the hospital.
He looked up, taking care not to get lost in thought, and checked his test tubes, recording the new color of the chemicals carefully. When he looked around he saw that he was the only one left at the lab and looked at his watch again, rolling his eyes. He had thought it was around two o’clock, now it seemed to be past six. He shook his head. The doctor had given him certain exercises to do with his brain involving flash cards, and he was pretty sure Roy made him do them every day, but he still ended up with chunks missing out of every day. Not only that, but he couldn’t shake this feeling that there was something major he was always forgetting.
He began to put away his notes and chemicals and grabbed his coat off the hook by the door, putting it on on his way out. Once outside the lab he waved a cab and spouted off Roy’s address, no problem. When Roy had allowed him to go back to work he wanted to hire a driver for him, but Ed insisted on getting home on his own. Roy made him carry a card in his pocket with his address on it, and Ed stubbornly declared he did not need it, and it turned out he didn’t. Ed had no trouble remembering Roy’s address.
When Ed got in he saw that he was the only one home. Usually Roy called for takeout when he got home late, and Ed decided to cook something for them both, just to pass the time. He filled a pot with water and set it to boil, vowing not to leave the kitchen so he couldn’t possibly forget that the stove was on, knowing that Roy would kill him if he knew Ed had been using the stove when he was home alone. I’ll show him, he thought to himself. It’s not like it’s hard.
Before he knew it the water was boiling, and, not for the first time, Ed wondered just what he had been doing in the time between turning the stove on and the water boiling. Just standing there? Thinking about something? Looking out the window? It could have been anything. He measured the rice carefully and dumped it in the water, covering the pot and sitting down at the table to watch it, setting his watch out open on the counter. He heard keys in the front door and thought, busted, now Roy would never know whether or not Ed could cook something without burning the kitchen down because he would surely take over from this point on.
Without saying hi, Roy went directly for the liquor cabinet and poured himself a whiskey.
“Damn,” Ed said. “Bad day?”
Roy rested his forehead on his hand. “Terrible. Where do you want to order from tonight? You must be starving.”
“I am, that’s why I’m cooking,” Ed said with a smirk.
Roy snapped his head up and Ed instantly felt guilty. Roy was obviously stressed about something, now he had given him something else to worry about. “What? What were you thinking?”
Ed gestured towards the stove. “It’s fine,” he said, sounding more sure of himself than he was. “Don’t touch it,” he added sharply when Roy stood and made to lift the lid off the pot. “Don’t take the lid off until it’s done!”
Roy raised his eyebrows. “What kind of masterpiece do you have in there, Fullmetal?” he asked curiously.
“It’s just rice. Whenever my mom made rice she said you should never take the lid off, it messes it up somehow.” He saw Roy looking at him analytically, the same way he always did when Ed talked about anything at all, really. “Yes, I remember my mom,” he said tiredly. “I remember lots of stuff you know. And I wasn’t going to burn your house down.”
Roy sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, which was not the response Ed expected. “Ed, you’re very smart, and I know that about you, it’s just hard to keep that in mind when-“
Ed interrupted him. “I know, when my brain’s all screwed up. I know,” he repeated. He looked down at his watch. “You can take the lid off now, the rice is done.”
They ate mostly in silence. Ed had been uncomfortable at first staying with Roy, in fact, originally he had said he would rather just stay at the hospital if he wasn’t allowed to be alone, but Roy had overruled his decision and brought him home with him anyway, saying something about having promised to take care of him. They had become a little friendlier with each other, but Ed was still very quiet around him. If they were friends, Ed felt that he should ask Roy what had made his day so terrible and why he came home needing a drink, but what if he had asked that already? He didn’t think he did. But he wasn’t sure.
“What…” he asked hesitantly, “what happened today?” When Roy’s reaction seemed normal, he continued. “What got you so upset?”
Roy shook his head, continuing to eat. “Nothing, it’s just politics, that’s all. Did you go to your appointment today?”
Ed knew Roy was watching him closely to try to guess whether or not he remembered it, and he said “yes” before he could think back to whether he recalled what happened or not. He knew he went, he never missed his doctor’s appointments, there were notes all over the place reminding him to go.
“How did it go?” Roy asked carefully, still watching him.
“I’m getting better,” Ed said, dredging up a vague recollection of an office with a grey carpet. Then he was hit with a brief but clear memory. “I looked at flash cards, no, we played a game with flash cards. Like the kid’s game, memory. I played for twenty minutes, that’s a record. I am getting better.”
Roy smiled, and Ed wondered, not for the first time, if Roy had already talked to the doctor and knew exactly how the appointment went.
Ed was twirling his fork around in the empty rice bowl. “You know,” he said, even more hesitantly, “there’s been something else that’s been bothering me. I’m sorry, I probably ask you this all the time.”
“That’s okay, Ed,” Roy said patiently. “It’s not your fault. What is it?”
He frowned. “How come Al isn’t here?” he asked, and Roy felt his stomach plummet. The first time he had tried to explain his brother’s death had been in the hospital, and it had ended in screaming and crying and eventual sedation. And it had happened plenty more after that first time, each time leaving them both drained, although only one of them could remember why.
“He’s away,” Roy said, but his tone was off, and Ed picked up on it immediately.
“Yeah, that’s what the doctor said too. And Hawkeye told me the same thing when I was in your office the other day. But… I kinda feel like everyone’s lying to me.” Ed looked at him intently, and Roy felt his face burn. Everyone was lying to him.
“I didn’t do something to make him mad at me, did I? Cause I guess I can be a jerk sometimes, but-“
“Your brother’s not mad at you, Fullmetal,” Roy interrupted.
Ed looked at him intently. “Then where is he?” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a worn notebook. “Look, I’ll write it down. This is the last time I’ll ask you, I promise. I write all kinds of important stuff in here.” When Roy didn’t respond, Ed’s frown deepened into a scowl. “What the hell, Roy? Why doesn’t anyone want to tell me? Look, I remember the important stuff, okay? It’s just the little things I don’t. I remember who you are, I remember who I am, I know my birthday and Al’s birthday and I remember where we were born and I remember growing up. I remember burning down our house and I remember coming here and I remember every single crazy mission you sent us on! Just tell me where he is, it isn’t fair to lie to me, cause that’s what you’re doing, I can tell. I’m not stupid!”
Several minutes passed before Roy answered. He stood up, taking his and Ed’s empty bowls and putting them in the small sink, along with the pot, and sat back down.
“Ed,” he said slowly. “I have told you where your brother is. You never remember, and you always get upset. You try to hurt yourself. That’s why they wouldn’t let you out of the hospital for so long. That’s why people are lying to you, they don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Ed banged his automail hand on the notebook. “I’ll write it down,” he repeated. “I won’t forget. It’s not fair not to tell me. I won’t do anything stupid. I won’t hurt myself. I’m better than I was before. I don’t even remember being in the hospital, you know that. You said I wasn’t myself then, and I wasn’t. I am now. Tell me what happened.” His eyes burned with such intensity that Roy squirmed in his seat.
He took a deep breath. “He died,” he said, before he could decide against it.
“Al’s dead?” Ed repeated, his voice even. “How- how did he die?”
“Envy killed him. In Youswell.”
“I got hurt in Youswell,” Ed said slowly.
Roy nodded. “That’s right.”
Tears began to slide freely down his cheeks, and Roy fought the urge to take a step back. It was never right to see another man cry, he had always believed. But Ed was still somewhere between a man and a boy. And he had no one right now, no one but him.
“Was there a funeral?” Ed asked abruptly, and Roy nodded again. “Was I there?”
“No,” Roy said softly.
Ed was staring down at his automail hand. “It’s all been for nothing then. Our search is over and I didn’t even know it.” He looked up. “Was it a nice funeral?”
“Yes.”
“Winry and Aunty came?”
“Yes.”
“I took Winry to the movies and all around Central and stuff, and she had just been to Al’s funeral?”
“You remember that?” Roy said, surprised, feeling guilty. If Ed could remember that, maybe he should have been there for the service.
But Ed shook his head, tapping the notebook in front of him. “I wrote it down,” he admitted. Then he stood up. “I’m going upstairs,” he said shortly.
Roy put a hand on his elbow. “Stay down here.”
Ed threw him a glare. “I’m not going to hurt myself, Roy. I just want to be alone,” he spat. “I just found out my brother died, leave me the fuck alone,” he cried, screaming the last word and storming up the stairs. Roy rushed up after him only to have the door of his guest room slammed in his face. This wasn’t what Ed had done in the hospital, he reasoned. What was a normal response to a loved one’s death anyway? Maybe he should respect his wishes. He slid down, back against the door, until he was sitting on the floor, ear pressed to the guest bedroom door, listening to the only remaining Elric sobbing.
Hours later, when Ed had quieted down, Roy went down to the kitchen to heat some water, and tried knocking on Ed’s door with a mug of tea in his hand. Ed appeared, swollen and red eyed, thanking him for the tea and closing the door again. It was one in the morning by then and Roy deemed it safe to go to bed.
He woke to a sound he was at first unable to place. When he realized what it was he bolted out of bed and flung open the guest room door. Ed had the chord of the lamp wrapped around his neck and his face had a purplish tint to it. Without stopping to think Roy wrestled it away from him and Ed lay back in bed, gasping for breath. His eyes were open but blank, and he didn’t say anything.
“Ed?” Roy tried, but he didn’t respond. Soon Ed closed his eyes and his breathing became more even, and Roy was astounded. Had he been asleep all along? Was he hurting himself in his sleep? He took a seat in the armchair by the bed, determined to keep watch for the rest of the night. He picked up the notebook on the nightstand, flipping to the most recent page, and tearing it out. Stop asking people about Al, Ed had written. He’s dead now/ He knew he should tell the doctor about what happened, after all, what if he hadn’t woken up to stop him? But it seemed obvious what Ed’s subconscious was reacting to. He crumbled the page into a ball and tucked it in to the pocket of his pyjamas.
In the early hours of the morning he crept out of the room just minutes before Ed’s alarm was set to wake him up. He had coffee and breakfast ready for him in the kitchen and eyed him carefully when he padded into the room in his pjs and slippers.
“You look like shit,” Ed said bluntly, taking Roy by surprise. “Didn’t you get any sleep?”
“How did you sleep?” Roy returned without answering.
“Fine. Do you have any stamps? I realized I wrote Al a letter the other day and forgot about it. I should probably send it now before he thinks I forgot about him or something.” Roy stared at him, and Ed frowned self consciously. “What?” he asked, “Is my hair sticking up or something?” He looked down, checking to see that his pyjamas were correctly buttoned. “What’s the matter with you, Roy? You look weird all of a sudden.”
“Nothing.”
Roy rapped a quick knock on the door before pushing it open, late again. These days it seemed he was late for everything he tried to do: perpetually trying to catch up with his own life. He hung his heavy military coat on the rack buy the door and nodded tiredly to his friends, trying not to notice the looks of concern he got from each one of them.
Havoc unstopped the bottle to fill the glass that had been sitting in front of Roy’s empty seat, but as he sat down Roy waved him away. “None tonight thanks,” he said, and was met with even more concerned stares. “Long day today, but a longer one tomorrow. I don’t want to go home drunk and try to look after Ed when I’m half out of my mind.”
Havoc shrugged, pouring himself another glass, and said, “Boss seems to be getting a lot better,” he said conversationally. “I just saw him in the office the other day, we talked for a little while. He seemed fine. How much looking after could he need any more?”
The poker chips were stacked in the middle of the table and the cards were sitting beside them in two decks, and Roy wondered if he had missed the game entirely. Falman’s usual seat was empty and Roy assumed he had already left. He hadn’t meant to arrive so late; poker night was usually his only night to really unwind every week. He dropped Ed off at Gracia’s each week, which felt disturbingly like dropping him off at a babysitter’s, which Ed had even remarked on the week before, but today after parting with Ed he went directly home and crashed in his favorite armchair, sleeping soundly and immediately for hours, not waking up until well after ten.
Roy ignored the question, instead picking up one of the decks and shuffling it absently. Breda stood up, saying he had to be going, and Fuery followed his lead, leaving Roy and Havoc alone at the card table with one empty glass and one full one.
“So,” Jean said after a silent minute. “What’s been going on that you haven’t been telling anyone?”
Roy stared at the bottle, with a look on his face that would normally only come from having consumed nearly half of it, and rubbed his forehead. “Nothing,” he said tiredly. “Everything’s fine.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Jean said quietly. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
Roy’s hand rubbed over his face and forehead a second time, and up through his hair, and he continued to stare down the bottle. “Maybe I haven’t.”
“Well I know it isn’t work, because things have been quiet over at headquarters, as far as I can tell,” his friend prompted. “And I know it isn’t women, because you’ve never had any trouble in that area either… right?”
Roy turned to face him and said slowly, “It’s Ed.”
“I thought he was doing better?”
The dark-haired man sighed. “You’re right, he is. He goes to work now, he does nearly everything he normally would.” Roy didn’t say anything else for nearly a minute.
“So…” Jean pressed. “What’s the problem then?”
Ink-black eyes looked up from the bottle, shadowed by dark circles in a too-pale face. “He hurts himself,” Roy said, his voice low. “He tries to- he tried to strangle himself with the chord of the lamp, Jean. In his sleep.”
Havoc set his drink down on the card table, abandoning it entirely. “What do the doctors say?” he asked, not knowing how else to respond. The Boss trying to kill himself? He couldn’t imagine it.
Roy looked down again. “I haven’t told them. They’d take him away. They’d want him to go back to the hospital, and he doesn’t want that! He can have a normal life, his research, its amazing, he’s been published in two separate journals last month and-“
“He can’t have a normal life if he’s dead,” Jean said sharply, leaning forward. “And you can’t have a normal life if you’re staying up all night trying to make sure he’s all right.”
“He’s going to be fine,” Roy insisted. “He just needs-“
“He needs a doctor, Roy, he’s sick. Has he accepted his brother’s death yet?”
Roy looked away, which was an answer in itself. He looked down at his watch. “I’ve got to go pick him up from Gracia’s,” he said, flattening any chance of the conversation continuing. “I didn’t want to leave him with her for this long as it is.” He stood up, and Havoc wheeled away from the table.
“Roy,” he said, unwilling to let the conversation drop. “You can’t fix everyone.”
“I’m not abandoning him to some hospital!” Roy insisted, his hand on the doorknob. “He’s been abandoned by everyone else in his life, I’m not going to give up on him too!”
Havoc stared at the door as it slammed shut, feeling powerless in his attempt to help his friend. It wouldn’t be giving up, he had wanted to tell him, but somehow, he knew Roy wouldn’t have listened.
Winter had come faster than Ed had realized and he left the lab later than he meant to, again. The research he had been working on was getting a lot of attention, and that only drove him to work even harder. The government was happy to provide any funding he asked for, and he had been throwing himself into his work the past few months. By the time he got out of the lab it was late, and there were no cabs to wave down. He thought about calling Roy for a ride, and thought again how much easier it would be for him if he had a room in the military dorm like he used to. Not wanting to bother Roy this late, he decided to just walk home, but he realized within a few minutes that it was a lot colder outside than he had originally thought. Not only were his nose and ears pink and tingling, but his automail ports were beginning to ache, and he groaned, knowing that once winter really settled in so would that constant ache that came with the cold. His arm felt like a lead weight tugging at his shoulder and he could tell he was beginning to limp a bit, and stopped to stomp his feet and rub his hands together to try to warm himself up, but he could feel the gears of his automail beginning to lock up already. Damnit. Now he was really stuck, how could he be so stupid not to bring a warmer coat with him to work? Some job Roy was doing of taking care of him if he had let him leave without a winter coat.
Then he shrugged. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had recently yelled at Roy to leave him alone, he can take care of himself just fine. Now, how to get home before he froze? He thought about knocking on one of these doors to ask to use the phone, but then he took a better look at the neighborhood he was passing through and knocked on a very specific door.
“Edward, how are you doing?” said Hawkeye, in control as always of the situation. Ed figured there was nothing on earth that could surprise the woman.
“I’m cold, can I come in?” he said, getting straight to the point.
She stepped back, motioning for him to come inside. “Of course, of course, what were you doing outside in the cold with just that light jacket?” she admonished.
He smiled ruefully. “That’s a very good question.” He could feel his automail moving smoother already, but the ports still ached and he rubbed at his shoulder. “I think I need to call Roy to come pick me up,” he added, and she nodded, handing him the phone.
“I just made a pot of coffee,” she told him, “Have a cup, it will help warm you up.”
He didn’t think a warm drink would help his joints much, but he accepted the mug from her after he got off the phone with Roy, who didn’t sound surprised at all when he told him what happened. He hoped he hadn’t done this several times already. “Thanks,” he said. “Roy said he’s in the middle of something at the office, he had to stay late, and he’ll be a little while. I wish I had known that, I would have just waited for him there.”
“How are you doing these days, Edward?” she asked him kindly, and he shrugged.
“Okay I guess.” He wanted to say he was getting better but he knew it wasn’t true, and he was pretty sure every one around him could tell that much. “I haven’t heard from Al lately, I hope he’s doing okay.”
Riza seemed startled at his words, but he kept talking.
“It’s kind of unusual for him not to write me, I mean, usually he’s the one who writes letters and I just read them and then throw them out, but I’ve actually written him a couple times and he hasn’t written me back. I hope I have his address right. No one will tell me where he is, so all I have to go on is the last address I remember. And we all know what my memory is like- what’s wrong, Lieutenant?” he asked then, because it seemed like he had upset her in some way.
She blinked, and he swore he saw the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “Edward,” she began.
“Do you know where he is?” he asked her urgently. “Because no one ever wants to talk to me about him. It’s really weird.” He could see her mentally struggling with herself and sighed. “You too then,” he said. “You know where he is, I can tell.” He took a sip from the mug in front of him. “You know, everyone thinks I forget everything, but I remember enough to know that everyone’s hiding stuff from me.”
“Think,” she said softly. “Do you really not know what happened to him?”
Ed shook his head sadly. “Everyone I ask doesn’t want to talk about it.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line. “Edward, your brother passed away this past summer,” she told him gently. “People don’t tell you because they don’t want to see you upset.”
Ed was shaking his head. “Al’s not dead,” he said. “I know he’s not dead, if he were dead, I would know it. I’d remember something like that. I always remember the important stuff.”
She watched him, astonished, as he took another sip of coffee. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything? Maybe he does this every time someone tells him? She got up when she heard a knock on the door, and Ed started to follow her. “Finish your coffee, Ed, I need to talk to the Colonel about something,” she said, feeling like the liar she knew he thought she was.
Roy looked exhausted when she opened the door and she told him as much.
“I’m fine,” he assured her.
“You’re not fine,” she said quietly. “You miss work, you come in late, you can never concentrate… it’s Ed, isn’t it? Taking care of him is exhausting you!”
“Ed doesn’t need to be taken care of, he’s fine,” the Colonel said harshly, shaking the flakes of snow that had begun to fall out of his hair. “He’s made more headway in the lab in just one month than those other idiots the government pays have in the past<,i>year, he’s obviously fine. He’s doing great. He doesn’t need to be taken care of,” he repeated.
“He went outside in the middle of winter with no coat again, and you know what that does to his limbs. How can you say he doesn’t need to be taken care of?” Her voice was stern.
“Riza, he’s fine-“
“He doesn’t know his brother’s dead,” she said quietly, and watched Roy’s eyes widen.
“You told him about Al?”
“He asked me,” she stammered, “and I thought- he seemed like he was normal-“
“He is normal,” Roy insisted, “as long as you don’t bring that up!”
“What kind of normal is that, Sir?” she hissed, her voice hushed.
Roy ran a hand over his tired face and up through his hair. “He hurts himself at night,” he said quietly, looking over her shoulder to make sure Ed wasn’t listening. “In his sleep.”
“What? What do the doctors say?”
“They don’t say anything. I haven’t told them. They’d want to lock him up!” he protested, seeing her expression. “He doesn’t need that, he’s fine!”
“He is not fine, Roy Mustang, and you know it! And you’re not fine either, look at you! I bet you haven’t slept more than four hours all week, you’ve got circles under your eyes!”
“Ed!” he called. “Let’s go, let’s get in the car,” he said, handing Ed his coat that he brought with him.
“Thanks Roy,” Ed said cheerfully. “Sorry about all this, I won’t do it again!”
Now two of Roy's closest friends didn't believe him.
There was a crashing sound, like glass shattering, and Roy came running. His front windows were shattered, his door was off its hinges and Ed was covered in blood. “Wait!” the boy was screaming, tears streaking down his face. “Al, wait, I can do it, I just need more time, there’s got to be something, don’t leave me! Al!”
“Ed!” he said sharply, looking at the mess, trying to assess the damage.
“Don’t you touch him, I can do it, I can save him!” Ed screamed, looking at Roy as if he didn’t know who he was and clapping his hands together, pressing them to the unhinged door and causing it to burst into thousands of splinters. Roy found himself wishing for whatever it was the nurses in the hospital had in those syringes.
“Ed, stop!” he said, trying to take control of the situation, but he quickly realized it was of no use. He picked up the phone and dialed the emergency number.
Author: infinitesimi
Previous: 1
Genre: Plot/gen
Summary: Ed would do anything to save his brother. Anything, even the impossible.
Note: Manga based with nearly no spoilers, unless you don't know about GreedLing. No pairings. Featuring crazy!Ed, or maybe he isn't crazy?
Chapter Two
The military in West City didn’t know the Flame Alchemist. Roy scowled. Ed was known all over the country, but these people didn’t know the mighty Flame Alchemist? He had to show his State Alchemist watch and military ID card to be allowed any information about Fullmetal?
Before seeing Ed, who was still unconscious, Roy demanded to see the armor, not knowing or fully realizing what he expected to find until he saw the eyes in the helmet unlit, dark, and lifeless, and swallowed hard. It was eerie; to him, this armor had been the only form of Alphonse he’s known and he shuddered, unable to shake the feeling that he was touching a dead body. Slowly, he pulled the helmet off and saw just what he unconsciously expected: the blood seal was destroyed.
Had the brothers done the impossible? Had they found a way to restore Alphonse’s body? Did the alchemical reaction destroy an entire building? If that was true, what had they sacrificed? And where was Alphonse?
Roy sat by the hospital bed, watching Ed’s shallow breathing and waiting for the doctor to talk to him. There was a bandage around the boy’s head; either he was unconscious from a head injury or from some type of alchemy. With Alphonse missing, the only one who knew what happened was Ed. Roy tried not to dwell on the possibility of Ed not waking up at all.
His attention snapped to the figure in the bed when Ed began to turn his head, mumbling and shaking, and Roy thought he might be waking up. “Ed, Ed, wake up,” he said quietly, trying to sound comforting. “You’re all right,” he said, having no idea whether he spoke the truth or not. In a few minutes Ed quieted again, having never opened his eyes.
When the doctor finally came to talk to Roy he told him the most serious of Ed’s injuries was to his head. They were monitoring his brain activity and he had periods of none at all, indicating that he had fallen onto a coma, interspersed with times of active brain waves but still no consciousness. “He was awake when they brought him in,” the doctor added. “It wasn’t until some time in the night when he fell into the coma.”
“Did he say what happened?” Roy pressed, his hands gripping the arms of the chair he sat in, staring hard at the pale face of his subordinate.
“He said a lot of things that didn’t make any sense,” the man said. “He said, ‘I tried but I don’t know if it worked’ and he kept talking about envy and being attacked by envy, or something like that.”
“The homunculus,” Roy said under his breath. “It could have been anything. That’s not enough information, I need him to wake up and talk to him myself,” he muttered, still staring at the figure in the bed.
“He will likely wake up eventually,” the doctor said, turning even more serious. “But understand, Colonel Mustang, he may not remember what happened at all. Amnesia is common in patients with head trauma. Its possible he may not be able to tell you anything more than I have.” Roy started to say something, but the doctor continued. “There haven’t been any indications of brain damage as of yet,” he admitted, “but the human brain is a strange organ. We wont know anything until he’s awake.”
“Brain damage?” Roy echoed.
“It’s simply a possibility, Colonel-“
Roy stood. “I want him moved to the hospital in Central as soon as possible. They have the best neurologists in the country and I want to make sure he has the best treatment available,” he ordered, looking down at the boy in the bed, trying to exert come kind of control over the situation. He had to get the boy out of the West, he thought irrationally, he had no control of anything here in the West. If he could only get Ed to Central-
“It isn’t safe to move him until he is at least awake, and able to maintain consciousness,” the doctor said firmly. “At that point I would recommend transferring him, he would certainly recover better in more familiar surroundings.”
“The boy is a quick healer,” Roy said with confidence. “I want him back in Central as soon as possible.”
“Brain trauma is a tricky thing,” the doctor repeated, and Roy simply stared at the bandage around Ed’s head. He would be fine.
Roy spent the night in the chair next to Ed’s bed, and had dozed of eventually in the early hours of the morning. When he woke up he opened his eyes to Ed’s pale gold ones staring directly at him. “Fullmetal?” he asked softly. “Are you awake?”
Ed brought a hand up to touch the bandage around his head. “My head hurts,” he said faintly.
“Yes, you got hurt,” Roy said, still speaking quietly. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Where’s Alphonse?” Ed whispered, and Roy swallowed.
“I don’t know, I was hoping you could tell me that,” he said, forcing his voice to be neutral.
Ed squeezed his eyes shut suddenly, pressing his head back into the pillow. “Envy,” he hissed out. “Envy got him. I tried to- stop him, and I tried to- save him-“ he choked back a sob. “But he’s not here.”
Roy felt the blood drain from his face. Ed hadn’t tried to restore his brother at all. The alchemical light people had seen was Ed trying to defend his brother. He could see tears in the corners of Ed’s eyes, and awkwardly placed what he hoped was a comforting hand over Ed’s own. How would Ed live without his brother? He’d barely been able to function for a few weeks away from him! His only family, the only Elric left was gone- Roy felt himself choking back a sob of his own.
“Hey, Colonel, don’t cry, I’m not dead,” Ed said to him, and Roy looked at him in surprise. Puzzled, he watched Ed bring a finger up to his eyes and frown when he felt the moisture. “I guess you’re making me cry too.” He wiped his fingers on the white hospital sheets. “So where’s Al?”
“Where’s Al?” Roy repeated stupidly, because there was nothing else he could say. He was still reeling from Ed’s confirmation that Alphonse was gone, and now-?
Ed pushed himself up on his elbows and looked around the room. “Yeah, where is he?” he repeated.
“Do you remember what you just told me?” Roy said slowly, feelings of panic rising up in him.
Ed thought for a minute. “I told you to quit crying- where’d Al go?”
“Fullmetal, you were hurt, you hurt your head, you must have some short term memory loss-“
Ed raised his eyebrows, and reached up once more to touch the bandage on his head. Then he scowled. “I do not,” he said stubbornly. “Why wont you tell me where my brother is? Is he okay?” He watched as Roy opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something, and then closed it, with no information forthcoming. “He’s not?” Ed demanded, his voice rising.
“Your brother died,” Roy said, still awkward, feeling inadequate, somehow, and strange, delivering news to the one who had just told him, and felt his stomach twist when Ed’s eyes widened.
“What? That’s impossible! My brother can’t die, he can’t be killed, he’s a suit of armor, what-“
“I saw the armor,” Roy said sadly. “The blood seal was destroyed.”
The devastation was plain in Ed’s eyes. “How- who-“
“You just told me it was Envy.” Roy said, as gently as he could.
“Envy…” Ed repeated, his voice trailing off. Then he frowned. “No. It’s not true, my brother isn’t dead, I don’t believe it,” he said, looking at Roy accusingly. “You must have made a mistake,” he insisted.
Roy swallowed. “Ed, you told me yourself-“
Ed’s eyed widened as the memory resurfaced again, fresh and new a second time, and choked out, “Envy did it, I saw him do it, I tried to stop him-“ and this time Ed was crying for real, full sobs, curling up in the bed and pressing his face into the pillow.
There was nothing Roy felt he could offer. What could he say to a boy who had lost his only family? Not knowing what else to do, Roy sat beside him a rubbed his back, up and down, but instead of calming, Ed went from sobbing to screaming for his brother. Roy tried to hold him but the boy was flailing uncontrollably, knocking him easily aside with his powerful metal limbs, and the nurses came running into the room with needles, injecting him with something that made him sleep again.
Ed did not ask about Al again for the duration of his stay in West City hospital. When the doctor was certain he was able to remain conscious he released him to Roy to transfer him to the hospital in Central. Ed seemed to have decided that Al was waiting for him in Central, and Roy couldn’t help but wonder if one of the nurses had put the idea in his head. The doctor had forbid him from mentioning his brother’s death, because he said the sedatives required to calm him down were hurting his mental recovery, and that it was wise to wait until at least his short term memory had returned to tell him so that he did not have to keep re-living the trauma.
The doctor also told Roy that loss of short-term memory was normal in patients that had suffered head injuries, and that as he began to heal it would return, but Roy wanted to hear everything from a doctor in Central before he would believe it.
He had out a note card on Ed’s nightstand saying, “Ed, you’re in the hospital in West City. You’re going home on Tuesday,” so that he did not have to keep telling him where he was and when he could go home every five minutes. In fact just then he watched Ed look as if he was confused, look around the room, read the card that was propped against the lamp, and then reach up and rub his head.
“What’s today?” he asked instead.
“Monday,” Roy answered patiently.
“So I’m going home tomorrow,” Ed stated, and Roy nodded.
“Right.”
“Home to Central or home to Rizembool?”
“Central. The best doctors are there.”
Ed rubbed his head again. “Where are my notes?” he asked then.
Roy raised his eyebrows. If Ed was getting bored, then this was a good sign, because his memory was getting long enough to need something to occupy his mind other than asking Roy the same questions over and over again. “Ah, did you bring them here with you? Or did you leave them in Central?” he asked carefully.
Ed thought for a minute. “I brought them here,” he said finally. “They were in my suitcase, where’s my suitcase?”
“I would guess it was in the inn when it was destroyed,” Roy assumed.
Ed frowned. “You told me not to wreck anything while I was here,” he remembered. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay, Ed.”
He looked over at the card on the nightstand again, reading it yet again. “I guess I hurt my head, huh?” he said then. “And I can’t remember anything?”
“Apparently not,” Roy told him.
“Huh,” was the response. “That must be annoying for you.”
In actuality Roy was very worried. He was in West City, where no one knew who he was and he had no unit to command an independent investigation from, and no one to talk to and trade theories with. He was solely responsible for Fullmetal until he got him to Central, and then he would be responsible for contacting the Rockbells and telling them what had happened. Would they be able to hold a funeral for Alphonse with no body present? Would Ed even be able to attend it, if he couldn’t seem to remember his brother’s death?
“What day is today?” Ed asked him again, and he sighed.
“Monday.”
“Oh good, we’re going home tomorrow. Then I can see Al.”
Roy felt as if he had been punched in the gut. “That’s right,” he said, unable to bear watching Edward fall apart again at the news, but feeling like a sickening liar even as he spoke.
It was the day of Alphonse’s funeral. It had been a quiet event, with only a few people present. There was, of course, no body, but there were plenty of tears. There was a hushed air among those who had gathered to remember him: the brothers Elric had stood for the impossible dream, the unconquerable will, the possibility of impossible success and impossible forgiveness. Everyone who had come to know them in Central had come to truly believe that one day they would succeed at reaching their goal, that one day the dead would come back to life, and that one day there would be two Elric brothers, both in the flesh, blazing new paths in the world of alchemical science. It was a shock to everyone to learn that this would never happen.
After the funeral Winry and Pinako, who where the only ones present who had ever known Alphonse in the flesh, went with Roy to Gracia Hughes’s home to pick up Ed. The doctor had advised against Ed attending the funeral, and although the Rockbells protested at first, after spending a few days with Ed they agreed it would be better for everyone not to mention Al’s death until Ed was able to remember it.
Pinako had argued that Ed should be at home in Rizembool, with his family, recovering, but the doctor had told her that he needed to be close to the neurologists in Central. They were puzzled as to why his short term memory was not returning but assumed it was a form of brain damage, and told them he needed to be around skilled professionals in order to recover as much as he possibly could. Roy did not mention to them the violent mood swings Ed was prone to, only because he did not want to cause the women any more heartbreak than they had already endured. It was hard enough for them when Ed himself insisted that he should remain in Central. “I have work to do,” he told them, “and besides, Al is here.”
When they entered Gracia’s home Mr. Hughes greeted Winry with a hug, saying how much she had grown since she last saw her. Winry’s eyes went directly to Ed, who was sitting at the coffee table coloring with Elysia. He had grown since she last saw him as well, in fact, it had been almost a year. He looked perfectly healthy and normal, his attention absorbed completely by the coloring book he shared with the little girl.
“Hi Winry,” he said when he looked up, standing up to greet the two women. “Hi Aunty.” He tipped his head, studying her for a moment. “Winry, what’s wrong? Were you crying? Your eyes are all red.”
She sniffed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Um, maybe its just allergies or something,” she said, her voice wavering.
He picked up the newspaper that had been under the coloring book. “Since you’re here in Central, Winry, I thought maybe you’d want to see a movie with me or something? Al’s busy, but I’ve been pretty bored lately. There aren’t any movie houses in Rush Valley yet, are there?”
She was a little surprised at his suggestion, and it still shocked her to hear him talk about Al as if he was just in the other room because it was exactly the way she felt about his death as well. She looked from the Colonel to her grandmother for permission, wondering if it was a good idea to go wandering around Central with Ed when he was obviously so sick.
Ed poked her in the side. “What, are you afraid I’m gonna get lost or something? Hey, my memory is a lot better now. See, I only said hi to you once since you’ve got here, and you’ve been here at least five minutes now.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Right?” he asked, and he was smiling when he said it so she couldn’t tell if he was being funny or serious, or some combination of both. “I even went to work yesterday,” he added, trying to persuade not Winry but Roy and Pinako.
Finally Winry shrugged. “I’ve been in Central enough to know my way around now, you know,” she told the adults. “Even if Ed does get lost, we’ll be fine.”
“I won’t get lost,” Ed said stubbornly.
Roy wanted to take the young woman aside and reiterate how important it was not to mention Alphonse’s death, how upset and violent Edward could get, but she was dragging him out the door before either he or Pinako could stop them. Winry was an intelligent girl, he told himself. She would be able to take care of Ed just fine.
“How was the movie?” Gracia asked them conversationally over dinner.
“Fine,” Ed said, his mouth full.
“Scary,” Winry added. “We should have asked Sheiska along, it was about aliens.”
“Do you remember it at all?” Roy asked curiously.
“Of course I remember it!” Ed said, immediately on the defensive.
“What was it about?”
“Aliens,” he responded promptly.
“Who was in it?”
“Actors,” he said, but his confidence was wavering.
“Ed, the part where the spaceship opened up and the lights beamed all the people up inside?” Winry prompted him, but he looked at her blankly. “You whispered to me how they used the film to make it look like they were disappearing, but they weren’t really?”
“Yeah,” he said uncertainly. “They can do that now, it’s like a trick with the cameras…”
“You don’t remember it at all,” Roy said, disappointment plain across his face.
Ed pushed his food around on his plate. “Winry got scared and grabbed my hand,” he said after a minute. He looked at her questioningly. “Right?”
She nodded, her eyes lighting up. “That’s what you remember?”
He blushed. “Yeah.”
Pinako and Roy exchanged worried glances.
“Hey, don’t look like that!” Ed protested. “I’m fine, I’m gonna be fine. Don’t worry about me!”
Later, after dinner, when Winry and Ed were helping Gracia clean up in the kitchen, Roy and Pinako spoke quietly in the living room. “You know, he may not ever get any better than this,” she told him, sucking in on her pipe although it was not lit.
“He seems like he is,” Roy argued, but Pinako shook her head.
“He seems like that to you because you want it to be so. He’s just adjusting; he isn’t improving. I’ve spoken to the doctors myself, you know,” she reminded him
“He went back to work in the lab this week,” Roy told her, ignoring her statement. “Everything went fine, as far as I know.”
“Edward always did keep meticulous notes,” Pinako said cynically.
“When the doctors say he wont get any better, I’ll send him home to you,” Roy promised. “Until then he needs to stay here, near the hospital. This is the best hospital in the country, and he deserves the best.”
Pinako sucked in on her unlit pipe once more. “You really think you can give him what’s best?” She nodded towards the doorway, where she had seen Ed standing with his arms folded several minutes ago. “Edward? Is Central where you want to stay?”
Roy spun around, not having realized he was being eavesdropped on, and met gold eyes under frowning eyebrows.
“Well, yeah, Al and I have work to do here,” he told her. “Sorry we don’t get to see you much, Aunty,” he added. “Maybe we’ll visit in a few months?”
“That would be very nice,” she told him, but she stared hard at Roy, and he couldn’t help but feel she was criticizing him yet.
Ed pulled his silver watch out of his pocket, flipping it open to check the time, and then recorded it in his lab notes. He had several experiments going at once, and two of them at least were seeming very promising.
It had been weird coming back to work. The other alchemists spoke to him either in hushed tones, as if they were afraid of upsetting him, or loudly, as if they were speaking to someone who was mentally deficient. He tried to shake it off, diving back into his work after reading thoroughly over his previous notes. He found Al’s notes in with his own in the back of the binder, dating back to several months ago, and remembered Al working on the projects with him at the beginning. The experiment had taken a turn neither of them expected, and Al would be surprised to find out what the end result was.
Pinako was right, Ed had always been a meticulous note-taker, and he spent several minutes every hour reviewing his records of what he had done that day. He mostly worked alone in the labs, engrossed in his own work, which is what he had always done, and gradually the other alchemists came to assume he was back to normal.
He wasn’t back to normal. He could feel it. He wondered if he should be taking notes on his entire life, not just his experiments, because he found himself unable to remember simple things like what he had eaten for breakfast. Every time he had a conversation with Roy he tried only to respond to things Roy said to him, not to start any topics of his own, because he was afraid every time he did he was repeating himself. Everything he said, it seemed, was met with a sad sigh, and left Ed feeling like he had said something wrong.
While he was waiting for some of his chemicals to turn, he flipped back in his notebook to work on his letter to Al. He never wrote his brother. Neither of them were much for writing letters, although he did remember getting a few brief notes from Al a while back. Odd how he remembered some things but not others. He didn’t have much to say really, other than when do you think you’ll be back in Central and he frowned at the page. Maybe he had already written Al and asked him that? He tried to remember, but it made him feel funny inside, as if maybe he and Al had quarreled or something, and that’s why Al never came to see him in the hospital.
He looked up, taking care not to get lost in thought, and checked his test tubes, recording the new color of the chemicals carefully. When he looked around he saw that he was the only one left at the lab and looked at his watch again, rolling his eyes. He had thought it was around two o’clock, now it seemed to be past six. He shook his head. The doctor had given him certain exercises to do with his brain involving flash cards, and he was pretty sure Roy made him do them every day, but he still ended up with chunks missing out of every day. Not only that, but he couldn’t shake this feeling that there was something major he was always forgetting.
He began to put away his notes and chemicals and grabbed his coat off the hook by the door, putting it on on his way out. Once outside the lab he waved a cab and spouted off Roy’s address, no problem. When Roy had allowed him to go back to work he wanted to hire a driver for him, but Ed insisted on getting home on his own. Roy made him carry a card in his pocket with his address on it, and Ed stubbornly declared he did not need it, and it turned out he didn’t. Ed had no trouble remembering Roy’s address.
When Ed got in he saw that he was the only one home. Usually Roy called for takeout when he got home late, and Ed decided to cook something for them both, just to pass the time. He filled a pot with water and set it to boil, vowing not to leave the kitchen so he couldn’t possibly forget that the stove was on, knowing that Roy would kill him if he knew Ed had been using the stove when he was home alone. I’ll show him, he thought to himself. It’s not like it’s hard.
Before he knew it the water was boiling, and, not for the first time, Ed wondered just what he had been doing in the time between turning the stove on and the water boiling. Just standing there? Thinking about something? Looking out the window? It could have been anything. He measured the rice carefully and dumped it in the water, covering the pot and sitting down at the table to watch it, setting his watch out open on the counter. He heard keys in the front door and thought, busted, now Roy would never know whether or not Ed could cook something without burning the kitchen down because he would surely take over from this point on.
Without saying hi, Roy went directly for the liquor cabinet and poured himself a whiskey.
“Damn,” Ed said. “Bad day?”
Roy rested his forehead on his hand. “Terrible. Where do you want to order from tonight? You must be starving.”
“I am, that’s why I’m cooking,” Ed said with a smirk.
Roy snapped his head up and Ed instantly felt guilty. Roy was obviously stressed about something, now he had given him something else to worry about. “What? What were you thinking?”
Ed gestured towards the stove. “It’s fine,” he said, sounding more sure of himself than he was. “Don’t touch it,” he added sharply when Roy stood and made to lift the lid off the pot. “Don’t take the lid off until it’s done!”
Roy raised his eyebrows. “What kind of masterpiece do you have in there, Fullmetal?” he asked curiously.
“It’s just rice. Whenever my mom made rice she said you should never take the lid off, it messes it up somehow.” He saw Roy looking at him analytically, the same way he always did when Ed talked about anything at all, really. “Yes, I remember my mom,” he said tiredly. “I remember lots of stuff you know. And I wasn’t going to burn your house down.”
Roy sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, which was not the response Ed expected. “Ed, you’re very smart, and I know that about you, it’s just hard to keep that in mind when-“
Ed interrupted him. “I know, when my brain’s all screwed up. I know,” he repeated. He looked down at his watch. “You can take the lid off now, the rice is done.”
They ate mostly in silence. Ed had been uncomfortable at first staying with Roy, in fact, originally he had said he would rather just stay at the hospital if he wasn’t allowed to be alone, but Roy had overruled his decision and brought him home with him anyway, saying something about having promised to take care of him. They had become a little friendlier with each other, but Ed was still very quiet around him. If they were friends, Ed felt that he should ask Roy what had made his day so terrible and why he came home needing a drink, but what if he had asked that already? He didn’t think he did. But he wasn’t sure.
“What…” he asked hesitantly, “what happened today?” When Roy’s reaction seemed normal, he continued. “What got you so upset?”
Roy shook his head, continuing to eat. “Nothing, it’s just politics, that’s all. Did you go to your appointment today?”
Ed knew Roy was watching him closely to try to guess whether or not he remembered it, and he said “yes” before he could think back to whether he recalled what happened or not. He knew he went, he never missed his doctor’s appointments, there were notes all over the place reminding him to go.
“How did it go?” Roy asked carefully, still watching him.
“I’m getting better,” Ed said, dredging up a vague recollection of an office with a grey carpet. Then he was hit with a brief but clear memory. “I looked at flash cards, no, we played a game with flash cards. Like the kid’s game, memory. I played for twenty minutes, that’s a record. I am getting better.”
Roy smiled, and Ed wondered, not for the first time, if Roy had already talked to the doctor and knew exactly how the appointment went.
Ed was twirling his fork around in the empty rice bowl. “You know,” he said, even more hesitantly, “there’s been something else that’s been bothering me. I’m sorry, I probably ask you this all the time.”
“That’s okay, Ed,” Roy said patiently. “It’s not your fault. What is it?”
He frowned. “How come Al isn’t here?” he asked, and Roy felt his stomach plummet. The first time he had tried to explain his brother’s death had been in the hospital, and it had ended in screaming and crying and eventual sedation. And it had happened plenty more after that first time, each time leaving them both drained, although only one of them could remember why.
“He’s away,” Roy said, but his tone was off, and Ed picked up on it immediately.
“Yeah, that’s what the doctor said too. And Hawkeye told me the same thing when I was in your office the other day. But… I kinda feel like everyone’s lying to me.” Ed looked at him intently, and Roy felt his face burn. Everyone was lying to him.
“I didn’t do something to make him mad at me, did I? Cause I guess I can be a jerk sometimes, but-“
“Your brother’s not mad at you, Fullmetal,” Roy interrupted.
Ed looked at him intently. “Then where is he?” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a worn notebook. “Look, I’ll write it down. This is the last time I’ll ask you, I promise. I write all kinds of important stuff in here.” When Roy didn’t respond, Ed’s frown deepened into a scowl. “What the hell, Roy? Why doesn’t anyone want to tell me? Look, I remember the important stuff, okay? It’s just the little things I don’t. I remember who you are, I remember who I am, I know my birthday and Al’s birthday and I remember where we were born and I remember growing up. I remember burning down our house and I remember coming here and I remember every single crazy mission you sent us on! Just tell me where he is, it isn’t fair to lie to me, cause that’s what you’re doing, I can tell. I’m not stupid!”
Several minutes passed before Roy answered. He stood up, taking his and Ed’s empty bowls and putting them in the small sink, along with the pot, and sat back down.
“Ed,” he said slowly. “I have told you where your brother is. You never remember, and you always get upset. You try to hurt yourself. That’s why they wouldn’t let you out of the hospital for so long. That’s why people are lying to you, they don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Ed banged his automail hand on the notebook. “I’ll write it down,” he repeated. “I won’t forget. It’s not fair not to tell me. I won’t do anything stupid. I won’t hurt myself. I’m better than I was before. I don’t even remember being in the hospital, you know that. You said I wasn’t myself then, and I wasn’t. I am now. Tell me what happened.” His eyes burned with such intensity that Roy squirmed in his seat.
He took a deep breath. “He died,” he said, before he could decide against it.
“Al’s dead?” Ed repeated, his voice even. “How- how did he die?”
“Envy killed him. In Youswell.”
“I got hurt in Youswell,” Ed said slowly.
Roy nodded. “That’s right.”
Tears began to slide freely down his cheeks, and Roy fought the urge to take a step back. It was never right to see another man cry, he had always believed. But Ed was still somewhere between a man and a boy. And he had no one right now, no one but him.
“Was there a funeral?” Ed asked abruptly, and Roy nodded again. “Was I there?”
“No,” Roy said softly.
Ed was staring down at his automail hand. “It’s all been for nothing then. Our search is over and I didn’t even know it.” He looked up. “Was it a nice funeral?”
“Yes.”
“Winry and Aunty came?”
“Yes.”
“I took Winry to the movies and all around Central and stuff, and she had just been to Al’s funeral?”
“You remember that?” Roy said, surprised, feeling guilty. If Ed could remember that, maybe he should have been there for the service.
But Ed shook his head, tapping the notebook in front of him. “I wrote it down,” he admitted. Then he stood up. “I’m going upstairs,” he said shortly.
Roy put a hand on his elbow. “Stay down here.”
Ed threw him a glare. “I’m not going to hurt myself, Roy. I just want to be alone,” he spat. “I just found out my brother died, leave me the fuck alone,” he cried, screaming the last word and storming up the stairs. Roy rushed up after him only to have the door of his guest room slammed in his face. This wasn’t what Ed had done in the hospital, he reasoned. What was a normal response to a loved one’s death anyway? Maybe he should respect his wishes. He slid down, back against the door, until he was sitting on the floor, ear pressed to the guest bedroom door, listening to the only remaining Elric sobbing.
Hours later, when Ed had quieted down, Roy went down to the kitchen to heat some water, and tried knocking on Ed’s door with a mug of tea in his hand. Ed appeared, swollen and red eyed, thanking him for the tea and closing the door again. It was one in the morning by then and Roy deemed it safe to go to bed.
He woke to a sound he was at first unable to place. When he realized what it was he bolted out of bed and flung open the guest room door. Ed had the chord of the lamp wrapped around his neck and his face had a purplish tint to it. Without stopping to think Roy wrestled it away from him and Ed lay back in bed, gasping for breath. His eyes were open but blank, and he didn’t say anything.
“Ed?” Roy tried, but he didn’t respond. Soon Ed closed his eyes and his breathing became more even, and Roy was astounded. Had he been asleep all along? Was he hurting himself in his sleep? He took a seat in the armchair by the bed, determined to keep watch for the rest of the night. He picked up the notebook on the nightstand, flipping to the most recent page, and tearing it out. Stop asking people about Al, Ed had written. He’s dead now/ He knew he should tell the doctor about what happened, after all, what if he hadn’t woken up to stop him? But it seemed obvious what Ed’s subconscious was reacting to. He crumbled the page into a ball and tucked it in to the pocket of his pyjamas.
In the early hours of the morning he crept out of the room just minutes before Ed’s alarm was set to wake him up. He had coffee and breakfast ready for him in the kitchen and eyed him carefully when he padded into the room in his pjs and slippers.
“You look like shit,” Ed said bluntly, taking Roy by surprise. “Didn’t you get any sleep?”
“How did you sleep?” Roy returned without answering.
“Fine. Do you have any stamps? I realized I wrote Al a letter the other day and forgot about it. I should probably send it now before he thinks I forgot about him or something.” Roy stared at him, and Ed frowned self consciously. “What?” he asked, “Is my hair sticking up or something?” He looked down, checking to see that his pyjamas were correctly buttoned. “What’s the matter with you, Roy? You look weird all of a sudden.”
“Nothing.”
Roy rapped a quick knock on the door before pushing it open, late again. These days it seemed he was late for everything he tried to do: perpetually trying to catch up with his own life. He hung his heavy military coat on the rack buy the door and nodded tiredly to his friends, trying not to notice the looks of concern he got from each one of them.
Havoc unstopped the bottle to fill the glass that had been sitting in front of Roy’s empty seat, but as he sat down Roy waved him away. “None tonight thanks,” he said, and was met with even more concerned stares. “Long day today, but a longer one tomorrow. I don’t want to go home drunk and try to look after Ed when I’m half out of my mind.”
Havoc shrugged, pouring himself another glass, and said, “Boss seems to be getting a lot better,” he said conversationally. “I just saw him in the office the other day, we talked for a little while. He seemed fine. How much looking after could he need any more?”
The poker chips were stacked in the middle of the table and the cards were sitting beside them in two decks, and Roy wondered if he had missed the game entirely. Falman’s usual seat was empty and Roy assumed he had already left. He hadn’t meant to arrive so late; poker night was usually his only night to really unwind every week. He dropped Ed off at Gracia’s each week, which felt disturbingly like dropping him off at a babysitter’s, which Ed had even remarked on the week before, but today after parting with Ed he went directly home and crashed in his favorite armchair, sleeping soundly and immediately for hours, not waking up until well after ten.
Roy ignored the question, instead picking up one of the decks and shuffling it absently. Breda stood up, saying he had to be going, and Fuery followed his lead, leaving Roy and Havoc alone at the card table with one empty glass and one full one.
“So,” Jean said after a silent minute. “What’s been going on that you haven’t been telling anyone?”
Roy stared at the bottle, with a look on his face that would normally only come from having consumed nearly half of it, and rubbed his forehead. “Nothing,” he said tiredly. “Everything’s fine.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Jean said quietly. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
Roy’s hand rubbed over his face and forehead a second time, and up through his hair, and he continued to stare down the bottle. “Maybe I haven’t.”
“Well I know it isn’t work, because things have been quiet over at headquarters, as far as I can tell,” his friend prompted. “And I know it isn’t women, because you’ve never had any trouble in that area either… right?”
Roy turned to face him and said slowly, “It’s Ed.”
“I thought he was doing better?”
The dark-haired man sighed. “You’re right, he is. He goes to work now, he does nearly everything he normally would.” Roy didn’t say anything else for nearly a minute.
“So…” Jean pressed. “What’s the problem then?”
Ink-black eyes looked up from the bottle, shadowed by dark circles in a too-pale face. “He hurts himself,” Roy said, his voice low. “He tries to- he tried to strangle himself with the chord of the lamp, Jean. In his sleep.”
Havoc set his drink down on the card table, abandoning it entirely. “What do the doctors say?” he asked, not knowing how else to respond. The Boss trying to kill himself? He couldn’t imagine it.
Roy looked down again. “I haven’t told them. They’d take him away. They’d want him to go back to the hospital, and he doesn’t want that! He can have a normal life, his research, its amazing, he’s been published in two separate journals last month and-“
“He can’t have a normal life if he’s dead,” Jean said sharply, leaning forward. “And you can’t have a normal life if you’re staying up all night trying to make sure he’s all right.”
“He’s going to be fine,” Roy insisted. “He just needs-“
“He needs a doctor, Roy, he’s sick. Has he accepted his brother’s death yet?”
Roy looked away, which was an answer in itself. He looked down at his watch. “I’ve got to go pick him up from Gracia’s,” he said, flattening any chance of the conversation continuing. “I didn’t want to leave him with her for this long as it is.” He stood up, and Havoc wheeled away from the table.
“Roy,” he said, unwilling to let the conversation drop. “You can’t fix everyone.”
“I’m not abandoning him to some hospital!” Roy insisted, his hand on the doorknob. “He’s been abandoned by everyone else in his life, I’m not going to give up on him too!”
Havoc stared at the door as it slammed shut, feeling powerless in his attempt to help his friend. It wouldn’t be giving up, he had wanted to tell him, but somehow, he knew Roy wouldn’t have listened.
Winter had come faster than Ed had realized and he left the lab later than he meant to, again. The research he had been working on was getting a lot of attention, and that only drove him to work even harder. The government was happy to provide any funding he asked for, and he had been throwing himself into his work the past few months. By the time he got out of the lab it was late, and there were no cabs to wave down. He thought about calling Roy for a ride, and thought again how much easier it would be for him if he had a room in the military dorm like he used to. Not wanting to bother Roy this late, he decided to just walk home, but he realized within a few minutes that it was a lot colder outside than he had originally thought. Not only were his nose and ears pink and tingling, but his automail ports were beginning to ache, and he groaned, knowing that once winter really settled in so would that constant ache that came with the cold. His arm felt like a lead weight tugging at his shoulder and he could tell he was beginning to limp a bit, and stopped to stomp his feet and rub his hands together to try to warm himself up, but he could feel the gears of his automail beginning to lock up already. Damnit. Now he was really stuck, how could he be so stupid not to bring a warmer coat with him to work? Some job Roy was doing of taking care of him if he had let him leave without a winter coat.
Then he shrugged. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had recently yelled at Roy to leave him alone, he can take care of himself just fine. Now, how to get home before he froze? He thought about knocking on one of these doors to ask to use the phone, but then he took a better look at the neighborhood he was passing through and knocked on a very specific door.
“Edward, how are you doing?” said Hawkeye, in control as always of the situation. Ed figured there was nothing on earth that could surprise the woman.
“I’m cold, can I come in?” he said, getting straight to the point.
She stepped back, motioning for him to come inside. “Of course, of course, what were you doing outside in the cold with just that light jacket?” she admonished.
He smiled ruefully. “That’s a very good question.” He could feel his automail moving smoother already, but the ports still ached and he rubbed at his shoulder. “I think I need to call Roy to come pick me up,” he added, and she nodded, handing him the phone.
“I just made a pot of coffee,” she told him, “Have a cup, it will help warm you up.”
He didn’t think a warm drink would help his joints much, but he accepted the mug from her after he got off the phone with Roy, who didn’t sound surprised at all when he told him what happened. He hoped he hadn’t done this several times already. “Thanks,” he said. “Roy said he’s in the middle of something at the office, he had to stay late, and he’ll be a little while. I wish I had known that, I would have just waited for him there.”
“How are you doing these days, Edward?” she asked him kindly, and he shrugged.
“Okay I guess.” He wanted to say he was getting better but he knew it wasn’t true, and he was pretty sure every one around him could tell that much. “I haven’t heard from Al lately, I hope he’s doing okay.”
Riza seemed startled at his words, but he kept talking.
“It’s kind of unusual for him not to write me, I mean, usually he’s the one who writes letters and I just read them and then throw them out, but I’ve actually written him a couple times and he hasn’t written me back. I hope I have his address right. No one will tell me where he is, so all I have to go on is the last address I remember. And we all know what my memory is like- what’s wrong, Lieutenant?” he asked then, because it seemed like he had upset her in some way.
She blinked, and he swore he saw the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “Edward,” she began.
“Do you know where he is?” he asked her urgently. “Because no one ever wants to talk to me about him. It’s really weird.” He could see her mentally struggling with herself and sighed. “You too then,” he said. “You know where he is, I can tell.” He took a sip from the mug in front of him. “You know, everyone thinks I forget everything, but I remember enough to know that everyone’s hiding stuff from me.”
“Think,” she said softly. “Do you really not know what happened to him?”
Ed shook his head sadly. “Everyone I ask doesn’t want to talk about it.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line. “Edward, your brother passed away this past summer,” she told him gently. “People don’t tell you because they don’t want to see you upset.”
Ed was shaking his head. “Al’s not dead,” he said. “I know he’s not dead, if he were dead, I would know it. I’d remember something like that. I always remember the important stuff.”
She watched him, astonished, as he took another sip of coffee. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything? Maybe he does this every time someone tells him? She got up when she heard a knock on the door, and Ed started to follow her. “Finish your coffee, Ed, I need to talk to the Colonel about something,” she said, feeling like the liar she knew he thought she was.
Roy looked exhausted when she opened the door and she told him as much.
“I’m fine,” he assured her.
“You’re not fine,” she said quietly. “You miss work, you come in late, you can never concentrate… it’s Ed, isn’t it? Taking care of him is exhausting you!”
“Ed doesn’t need to be taken care of, he’s fine,” the Colonel said harshly, shaking the flakes of snow that had begun to fall out of his hair. “He’s made more headway in the lab in just one month than those other idiots the government pays have in the past<,i>year, he’s obviously fine. He’s doing great. He doesn’t need to be taken care of,” he repeated.
“He went outside in the middle of winter with no coat again, and you know what that does to his limbs. How can you say he doesn’t need to be taken care of?” Her voice was stern.
“Riza, he’s fine-“
“He doesn’t know his brother’s dead,” she said quietly, and watched Roy’s eyes widen.
“You told him about Al?”
“He asked me,” she stammered, “and I thought- he seemed like he was normal-“
“He is normal,” Roy insisted, “as long as you don’t bring that up!”
“What kind of normal is that, Sir?” she hissed, her voice hushed.
Roy ran a hand over his tired face and up through his hair. “He hurts himself at night,” he said quietly, looking over her shoulder to make sure Ed wasn’t listening. “In his sleep.”
“What? What do the doctors say?”
“They don’t say anything. I haven’t told them. They’d want to lock him up!” he protested, seeing her expression. “He doesn’t need that, he’s fine!”
“He is not fine, Roy Mustang, and you know it! And you’re not fine either, look at you! I bet you haven’t slept more than four hours all week, you’ve got circles under your eyes!”
“Ed!” he called. “Let’s go, let’s get in the car,” he said, handing Ed his coat that he brought with him.
“Thanks Roy,” Ed said cheerfully. “Sorry about all this, I won’t do it again!”
Now two of Roy's closest friends didn't believe him.
There was a crashing sound, like glass shattering, and Roy came running. His front windows were shattered, his door was off its hinges and Ed was covered in blood. “Wait!” the boy was screaming, tears streaking down his face. “Al, wait, I can do it, I just need more time, there’s got to be something, don’t leave me! Al!”
“Ed!” he said sharply, looking at the mess, trying to assess the damage.
“Don’t you touch him, I can do it, I can save him!” Ed screamed, looking at Roy as if he didn’t know who he was and clapping his hands together, pressing them to the unhinged door and causing it to burst into thousands of splinters. Roy found himself wishing for whatever it was the nurses in the hospital had in those syringes.
“Ed, stop!” he said, trying to take control of the situation, but he quickly realized it was of no use. He picked up the phone and dialed the emergency number.