Day 24: Sun Room
Aidou was, above all, obstinate in his decision not to interact with any more idiotic people. Going outside to join the herd? Yeah, he'd just be asking for it in doing such a thing. So he chose the only other option given to him by his nurse - if not for being too smart to ignore the potential repercussions, he would've backhanded her long ago -
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...well. It was better this way, at any rate. He stayed laying out on a couch, quiet and resting, and let the sun warm him as he dozed. At night he was anticipating a great deal of exploration to be done. That meant that he needed to rest now. And for that... he needed to not be worried about random balls being kicked in his direction. It was hard to relax when there was so much activity, even if he wished to be out there and playing.
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The Sun Room was practically empty. A few groups of people, some familiar and some not, and most of them looking rather lethargic. She had to admit she felt the same.
And there, stretched out on a couch, was a boy who was both familiar and not. Frowning some, Lust made her way over and nudged him with one of her crutches, not caring that she was probably waking him up.
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Instantly, his upbringing brought itself to the surface. He scrambled to his feet, instantly offering his chair, and even giving his hand to help ease herself down if she needed it. "I'm terribly sorry," he insisted, "normally I'm more polite than that!"
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"I'm the one who woke you up." She settled herself into the seat, legs crossed to ease some of the strain on her hip. "You look ridiculously familiar, and yet I'm quite certain we've never met. An interesting little conundrum, wouldn't you say?" She cocked her head, eying him up and down. Oh yes, the resemblance was remarkably striking.
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Though that second part made him blink, a little frown appearing on his face. "I'm sorry, but I can't say that I've seen you before, either. Maybe I look like someone you know?" That was, of course, becoming a common thing now. It seemed like his alternate had known a lot of people in his world.
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"You do resemble someone I know. Someone very dear to me, in fact. The way you offer the suggestion so readily implies that I'm not the first person to approach you. My name is Lust. I'm a friend of the Elric brothers." More or less. She supposed she could refer to Edward as a 'friend'.
"What is your name, boy?"
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He smiled, though not quite as broadly as he normally did. "And no, I've been approached about it a lot of times... we do have a resemblance, after all. Al and I do, I mean."
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"You could be his twin." And he seemed to have the same cheerful politeness and desire to help that Alphonse did, as well. But there the similarities ended. The bond she shared with Alphonse was a special one - he understood the fear and confusion of losing memories to the Gate. He knew what it was like to wonder what of you was real and what wasn't. He understood things few others could ever hope to.
"Where do you come from?"
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"I'm... both more and less than his twin. From what I understand, I'm the him from my world. We're like... mirror images, I guess is the best way to put it. Just a little different, because of the different world." A pause, and he weakly added, "But I'm not really sure how it all works, myself."
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"I would imagine you're more than just 'a little' different," she said. "You've led different lives, and it's our experiences who make us who we are." She shrugged. "I don't understand it myself, but it hardly matters. Though I suppose I may look at it differently than you - I was created to be something else, but all I have of her is her face and a handful of memories. I'm rather used to sharing my face and form with another."
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Then Alfons stopped, and frowned, a thought occurring to him. "What does that mean, that you were 'created' to be something else? And... I guess I might be speaking out of ignorance, but... that doesn't matter, does it? You said yourself that experiences make you who you are, so... that's how I see it. Even if you share her face, that doesn't change who you are."
Simplistic, perhaps, but Alfons had always had a bit of a blind spot when it came to being different.
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She wasn't going to discuss the details with some other-world child she'd just met. He was a sweet boy and all, but there were some things that didn't need be discussed.
"You do know about alchemy, don't you?"
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The German frowned at that, looking at Lust with new-found respect. She was flawless, as women went, he wouldn't even have been able to tell the difference if she hadn't told him. "I imagine it has to be really complicated," Alfons admitted, "in my world, making someone is something only novelists can even dream of."
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"I was told alchemy didn't exist in your world. Technology advanced instead, machines took the place of alchemy. It must be a strange place indeed, at least to those of us who take the alchemical arts for granted. I wonder what I would be, in your world. Could a human created by alchemy exist, in a world with no alchemy?"
It was an interesting thought, one Lust had pondered before in truth. Would she be human, or simply cease to exist?
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"But it's not that there's 'no' alchemy, that's why I said we 'didn't' have it. Edward could at least open up a gateway with his alchemy, and that helped get him back to his world in the end. So I imagine that you'd remain the way that you were... but I couldn't really say for certain. I just don't know enough about it."
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"Did he? I was never certain exactly what happened. Edward and Alphonse both gave me their own versions, and both were convoluted in their own ways. Though I was rather certain both of them ended up in Germany... perhaps I heard wrong." She shrugged. It hardly mattered to her.
"So tell me, Alfons Hiedrich, what did you do before you were brought to this place?"
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