and the world, in its cold way, started coming alive
title: remember to remember me, standing still inside your past
series: full metal alchemist
summary: post series fic I've been working on for...uh forever. god this reads like elricest around the globe to me, without any kissing. It's done but never really finished, I just don't feel like doing it anymore fjhd
When Munich is only a distant spec, Ed wonders aloud if they should have burnt that house down too. Alphonse respects the silence that follows while Noa stands in the space in front of them, heavy with everyone else's past and future.
Alphonse guessed the baby's name before Gracia told them, and with a tense attempt at humor Hughes asked if he was a mind-reader too. Later, Al started to cry while they pack for the journey. Not expecting tears from something that used to rust over, Ed pushed his weight on the questions.
"I forgot," Al choked, his vision cloudy as red sleeves ghost across his face like wounds. "Hughes. I forgot he was dead."
Al's memory comes and goes. He might recall being the Philosopher’s Stone, but he'll have trouble thinking of who made him that way. He'll remember Scar in a couple hours, an outburst of the Ishbalan's name over lunch. He'll throw Edward a giddy grin for the accomplishment of remembering- forgetting Scar was just another person they got killed. Edward grins back, because every moment where Al doesn't remember is like having a stranger sitting across from him. This is what we were searching for? he thinks in those moments where Alphonse's memory fails. Is this the same person as my brother? He doesn't ask these things out loud, but Noa knows, and because of that Al can't help from feeling the older kids are ganging up on him.
"We'll cut inland," Edward mumbles over the map. "Just take the train straight back up." He jabs at the paper for emphasis. "It'll be faster." Alphonse presses his forehead to the window, aching out the smell of the breeze. The cold gives him a headache, the older brother complains loudly, turns over onto his side and falls asleep.
They're sitting across from one another, and Noa wishes she could only see the boys like this- and not from their dreams. In front of her;, Al's eyes water from of the speed of the train. His gaze moves with the passing coast, and his mouth is open to taste the salt on the air. She doesn't look to his brother. Edward is dreaming in liquid and pinks that scream like thousands of tiny faces in an ebbing tide. Noa thinks she'll take Alphonse's side when their situation sours- it always does. All times of home and comfort are fleeting for someone like her. When they abandon each other, she'll go with Al. She picks him because he dreams in a hollow, gray warmth, like an echoing hold that covers her vision.
Alphonse has acorns in his pockets, huge and hollow, and he glares when Ed tosses some of his collection into the river.
"I was saving them!" he says angrily.
"So what? There will always be more trees," Edward assures him, prying more shells from his brother's fingers and flicking them through water's surface. Al watches a car shudder past them, kicking up dust and smog as it goes.
"Maybe," he mumbles and gathers pebbles instead. Watching him, Ed wants to share his brother's enthusiasm for this world. But Ed came through the gate with resolved isolation and misery, and he isn't sure he'll ever really grow accustomed to this place without it. He grabs Al's arm and turns him around, because Edward knows he'll always have enthusiasm for seeing that face again. Al laughs shyly and tries to understand Edward's relived smiles, tugging at him. They scrabble over skipping rocks until Alphonse pushes when Ed pulls and they're lucky they only fell on the ground instead of into the river. Even still, the stones of the road are as cold as the chunks of ice that float past them. His fingers warm up as Al forces their hands together, flesh to glove. Edward shudders.
"They used to be smaller than this," Alphonse mumbles, voice blank with so much honestly running through it.
"You just used to be bigger," Ed assures them both. Noa comes back with supplies and bemused smiles at their position. The conversation shifts.
The younger brother tries to explain their world with words, but Ed doesn't bother. She can see it if she wants to. Anyway, it's like trying to explain one Alphonse to another. He thinks about the other Alphonse sometimes, when the newspapers mention Bucharest or when someone slugs him. He mentioned Heiderich to Noa once, soon after he died. She didn't say anything. He tells himself it's because she feels guilter than he does, but it's probably because she knows his memories.
Throughout their time together, Edward compared the man and his brother so often that Heiderich eventually broke and cried, "I don't know what you expect me to be, but I won't do it. So stop, please." They only spoke when absolutely nessecary from then on. Ed didn't think he'd ever do right by the Rumanian's standard. That he wasn't just limping through his presence on their foreign world, but through their research and their time together. It doesn't matter, he told himself at the Heiderich's funeral. You have the real thing now. It probably wasn't worth it.
Before they left the house, Ed was sick from thinking of all Heiderich's things.
"His notebooks," he growled as he turned a key to seal the dead boy's room. "They're all in Romanian, totally useless. It isn't worth it to look at them at all." Alphonse was all agreements, save for one initial hesitation.
"But numbers don't have a language, right?" Ed told his little brother to shut up. He hates that door, that dusting room, the key in his hand and the house that was all around them. They would've burnt it to the ground if the property wasn't in Heiderich's name.
"When we get back to Munich," he says, "We should visit the grave." Al nods at his request, not looking up from his reading.
"Yeah, you've said that before," the younger brother mumbles. He still reads by breathing out each of the words, and his ghosting voice is scarcely audible over the hum of the train. Noa falls asleep on Edward's shoulder and he eyes her suspiciously, wondering how many more memories she can gather from that closeness. He strains his ears trying to decipher what part of the essay Al's on before it exhausts him. In a half sleep he sometimes wonders if he's not just keeping Alphonse alive beyond the gate, but himself now too, and Noa, and why hadn't he been able to focus a little bit of that power to save Heiderich?
Alphonse shakes him awake before they reach Graz, asking, "So we're going home?" Ed rolls over and says, "No, we destroyed the gate, remember?" and falls back asleep before he realizes his brother meant Germany.
"You're right. He's a little different," Alphonse admits at last, but the confession doesn't make either boy look away. Noa watches over the gawking boys with interest, digging a thin fork into their meal. She dropped her questions when they said he resembled a person from their army days. Alphonse used to comfort her when she expressed concern about the military rule the boys came from.
"It's different back home." He smiled. "The government there doesn't treat people like Germany does."
Ed saw thousands of Ishbalan graves in a perfect memory and corrected him, "Yeah they do."
Every so often Edward catches the other man watching them back, through the interior of the cafe windows, or against a tray's reflection. It isn't really Mustang, he reminds himself. Even still, they stare long enough that the man with the Colonel's face stops by the table on his way out. He says he's a painter and Al kicks his brother under the table when Edward laughs. His little brother looks like he's forgetting again, talking happily with the stranger who ignores Noa completely. Edward thinks he can hear her thoughts too. He isn't why we left, Ed tries to direct to the girl, but she's too angry to pay attention. He's a good guy- kind of.
In the middle of the night Noa shakes Ed awake and asks, "Why did he only have one eye? The Colonel." Edward tells her to stay out of his dreams. He pushes for anger when he realizes he can't answer her question.
In Prague, Alphonse starts having coughing fits.
"This isn't happening," Edward begs, pushing red handkerchiefs into his pockets before his brother can see. ("What isn-?" he brother rasps.) "Shut up, Al."
In the hotel bed, Al winds up facing into his chest, cooling one of his palms against the plate that affixes Ed's arm to his shoulder. His fingers shiver and white teeth grin under the darkness. Every time Alphonse shows something about a temperature, or a texture, a taste or a smell, Ed doesn't know what he's supposed to say back. They might as well have switched places, where Al experiences everything and Ed dulls the reactions and sensations behind maps and texts rather than armor. It's possible they're both deadened metal, cold under their faux skin. Ed wishes that was true now more than ever; Alphonse has to stop ever few meters to catch his breath and they don't have money for a doctor in the city.
"Go to sleep, 'niisan," Al mumbles and reaches out for his brother's hair. "You get headaches when you stay up too late."
"No," Edward corrects endlessly, turning toward the wall. "That's you." Either way, he's the one awake and alone at night while Alphonse sleeps.
Of course Al can't understand. He can't know either, because knowing what's happening to him would only be a thousand times worse. Noa admitted before the confrontation that it's Alphonse's body, he has to suspect he's sick. Please tell him. Edward won't hear it. "He grew up made of iron," he snaps and lets Noa assume it's some sort of metaphor. "How do you tell something like that he's not invincible?"
Noa comes back in the morning and Ed sits across from her at the table, peeling oranges quietly.
"I have friends in Belfast," she starts cautiously. "He'll be able to rest there. You can both rest."
"Thanks, but I'm not staying," he growls, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I have a job." When she tries to plead a case, Ed cuts the girl off. She reminds him of Winry. "I'm going to find a cure." Noa is the psychic, but Ed can hear her thoughts as loud as if she shouts it. If he ever he falls to an exhausted sleep next to Al, he dreams of the boy dying while he's away.
In Belfast; "You aren't leaving me again." Alphonse says immediately, forcefully. "I haven't forgotten how that felt. You aren't leaving me." Ed can tell his brother is too tired to cry and it makes the thought of leaving him behind easier and harder all at once.
"This isn't a discussion, Al. You're staying here."
During the fight that follows, Edward slips and tells him their father is dead. With Al's miserable rebuttal, Edward cracks Winry's automail punching the wall. Sensei is dead too. Even if he had stayed in their world, it wouldn't have mattered. It was dissolving enough with each death, so it would've only been a matter of time before it was as unrecognizable as this place. That place can't be fixed, just like now his automail can't be fixed. Al can't be fixed.
Noa goes over the broken metal joints with tiny, weather-beaten hands while Ed and Al sit with worlds of distance between them (again). Al's staring at his brother, no longer startled by the rash display of violence. The closer he gets to dying, the more his memories are adjusting. Right now Al is wearing the face he uses when he looks over their calculations, checking facts and numbers. He's adding it up too. Our coming to this world- it probably wasn't worth it. Ed thinks this so loudly Noa starts to cry.
She chokes, "I knew this was happening." She only cries harder when Edward snaps,
"Yeah, you probably did."
Alphonse isn't there for breakfast the next morning. It reminds Edward of the empty house in Munich. He remembers dragging his leg from room to room, calling for his father like he did as a toddler during the war. When his dad disappeared again, he didn't bother asking around town for Hoenheim. The legendary alchemist made it clear from the beginning Edward was easy to leave behind.
This memory is screaming in his mind by lunchtime. Noa keeps talking to him but he can't hear her. Read my thoughts, he snarls. What's stopping you now? She tears into an orange with blunt nails and mumbles, "It's hard to hear them when you're this worried." As an afterthought she says, "He wouldn't abandon you-"
"Noa."
By midnight Edward's accepted it. Al always believed in fair trade and following the order of things. He sacrificed himself, then Ed did it, and now Al would do it again to keep his brother from witnessing more loss. It still just feels like they're children fighting, struggling to get the last word.
series: full metal alchemist
summary: post series fic I've been working on for...uh forever. god this reads like elricest around the globe to me, without any kissing. It's done but never really finished, I just don't feel like doing it anymore fjhd
When Munich is only a distant spec, Ed wonders aloud if they should have burnt that house down too. Alphonse respects the silence that follows while Noa stands in the space in front of them, heavy with everyone else's past and future.
Alphonse guessed the baby's name before Gracia told them, and with a tense attempt at humor Hughes asked if he was a mind-reader too. Later, Al started to cry while they pack for the journey. Not expecting tears from something that used to rust over, Ed pushed his weight on the questions.
"I forgot," Al choked, his vision cloudy as red sleeves ghost across his face like wounds. "Hughes. I forgot he was dead."
Al's memory comes and goes. He might recall being the Philosopher’s Stone, but he'll have trouble thinking of who made him that way. He'll remember Scar in a couple hours, an outburst of the Ishbalan's name over lunch. He'll throw Edward a giddy grin for the accomplishment of remembering- forgetting Scar was just another person they got killed. Edward grins back, because every moment where Al doesn't remember is like having a stranger sitting across from him. This is what we were searching for? he thinks in those moments where Alphonse's memory fails. Is this the same person as my brother? He doesn't ask these things out loud, but Noa knows, and because of that Al can't help from feeling the older kids are ganging up on him.
"We'll cut inland," Edward mumbles over the map. "Just take the train straight back up." He jabs at the paper for emphasis. "It'll be faster." Alphonse presses his forehead to the window, aching out the smell of the breeze. The cold gives him a headache, the older brother complains loudly, turns over onto his side and falls asleep.
They're sitting across from one another, and Noa wishes she could only see the boys like this- and not from their dreams. In front of her;, Al's eyes water from of the speed of the train. His gaze moves with the passing coast, and his mouth is open to taste the salt on the air. She doesn't look to his brother. Edward is dreaming in liquid and pinks that scream like thousands of tiny faces in an ebbing tide. Noa thinks she'll take Alphonse's side when their situation sours- it always does. All times of home and comfort are fleeting for someone like her. When they abandon each other, she'll go with Al. She picks him because he dreams in a hollow, gray warmth, like an echoing hold that covers her vision.
Alphonse has acorns in his pockets, huge and hollow, and he glares when Ed tosses some of his collection into the river.
"I was saving them!" he says angrily.
"So what? There will always be more trees," Edward assures him, prying more shells from his brother's fingers and flicking them through water's surface. Al watches a car shudder past them, kicking up dust and smog as it goes.
"Maybe," he mumbles and gathers pebbles instead. Watching him, Ed wants to share his brother's enthusiasm for this world. But Ed came through the gate with resolved isolation and misery, and he isn't sure he'll ever really grow accustomed to this place without it. He grabs Al's arm and turns him around, because Edward knows he'll always have enthusiasm for seeing that face again. Al laughs shyly and tries to understand Edward's relived smiles, tugging at him. They scrabble over skipping rocks until Alphonse pushes when Ed pulls and they're lucky they only fell on the ground instead of into the river. Even still, the stones of the road are as cold as the chunks of ice that float past them. His fingers warm up as Al forces their hands together, flesh to glove. Edward shudders.
"They used to be smaller than this," Alphonse mumbles, voice blank with so much honestly running through it.
"You just used to be bigger," Ed assures them both. Noa comes back with supplies and bemused smiles at their position. The conversation shifts.
The younger brother tries to explain their world with words, but Ed doesn't bother. She can see it if she wants to. Anyway, it's like trying to explain one Alphonse to another. He thinks about the other Alphonse sometimes, when the newspapers mention Bucharest or when someone slugs him. He mentioned Heiderich to Noa once, soon after he died. She didn't say anything. He tells himself it's because she feels guilter than he does, but it's probably because she knows his memories.
Throughout their time together, Edward compared the man and his brother so often that Heiderich eventually broke and cried, "I don't know what you expect me to be, but I won't do it. So stop, please." They only spoke when absolutely nessecary from then on. Ed didn't think he'd ever do right by the Rumanian's standard. That he wasn't just limping through his presence on their foreign world, but through their research and their time together. It doesn't matter, he told himself at the Heiderich's funeral. You have the real thing now. It probably wasn't worth it.
Before they left the house, Ed was sick from thinking of all Heiderich's things.
"His notebooks," he growled as he turned a key to seal the dead boy's room. "They're all in Romanian, totally useless. It isn't worth it to look at them at all." Alphonse was all agreements, save for one initial hesitation.
"But numbers don't have a language, right?" Ed told his little brother to shut up. He hates that door, that dusting room, the key in his hand and the house that was all around them. They would've burnt it to the ground if the property wasn't in Heiderich's name.
"When we get back to Munich," he says, "We should visit the grave." Al nods at his request, not looking up from his reading.
"Yeah, you've said that before," the younger brother mumbles. He still reads by breathing out each of the words, and his ghosting voice is scarcely audible over the hum of the train. Noa falls asleep on Edward's shoulder and he eyes her suspiciously, wondering how many more memories she can gather from that closeness. He strains his ears trying to decipher what part of the essay Al's on before it exhausts him. In a half sleep he sometimes wonders if he's not just keeping Alphonse alive beyond the gate, but himself now too, and Noa, and why hadn't he been able to focus a little bit of that power to save Heiderich?
Alphonse shakes him awake before they reach Graz, asking, "So we're going home?" Ed rolls over and says, "No, we destroyed the gate, remember?" and falls back asleep before he realizes his brother meant Germany.
"You're right. He's a little different," Alphonse admits at last, but the confession doesn't make either boy look away. Noa watches over the gawking boys with interest, digging a thin fork into their meal. She dropped her questions when they said he resembled a person from their army days. Alphonse used to comfort her when she expressed concern about the military rule the boys came from.
"It's different back home." He smiled. "The government there doesn't treat people like Germany does."
Ed saw thousands of Ishbalan graves in a perfect memory and corrected him, "Yeah they do."
Every so often Edward catches the other man watching them back, through the interior of the cafe windows, or against a tray's reflection. It isn't really Mustang, he reminds himself. Even still, they stare long enough that the man with the Colonel's face stops by the table on his way out. He says he's a painter and Al kicks his brother under the table when Edward laughs. His little brother looks like he's forgetting again, talking happily with the stranger who ignores Noa completely. Edward thinks he can hear her thoughts too. He isn't why we left, Ed tries to direct to the girl, but she's too angry to pay attention. He's a good guy- kind of.
In the middle of the night Noa shakes Ed awake and asks, "Why did he only have one eye? The Colonel." Edward tells her to stay out of his dreams. He pushes for anger when he realizes he can't answer her question.
In Prague, Alphonse starts having coughing fits.
"This isn't happening," Edward begs, pushing red handkerchiefs into his pockets before his brother can see. ("What isn-?" he brother rasps.) "Shut up, Al."
In the hotel bed, Al winds up facing into his chest, cooling one of his palms against the plate that affixes Ed's arm to his shoulder. His fingers shiver and white teeth grin under the darkness. Every time Alphonse shows something about a temperature, or a texture, a taste or a smell, Ed doesn't know what he's supposed to say back. They might as well have switched places, where Al experiences everything and Ed dulls the reactions and sensations behind maps and texts rather than armor. It's possible they're both deadened metal, cold under their faux skin. Ed wishes that was true now more than ever; Alphonse has to stop ever few meters to catch his breath and they don't have money for a doctor in the city.
"Go to sleep, 'niisan," Al mumbles and reaches out for his brother's hair. "You get headaches when you stay up too late."
"No," Edward corrects endlessly, turning toward the wall. "That's you." Either way, he's the one awake and alone at night while Alphonse sleeps.
Of course Al can't understand. He can't know either, because knowing what's happening to him would only be a thousand times worse. Noa admitted before the confrontation that it's Alphonse's body, he has to suspect he's sick. Please tell him. Edward won't hear it. "He grew up made of iron," he snaps and lets Noa assume it's some sort of metaphor. "How do you tell something like that he's not invincible?"
Noa comes back in the morning and Ed sits across from her at the table, peeling oranges quietly.
"I have friends in Belfast," she starts cautiously. "He'll be able to rest there. You can both rest."
"Thanks, but I'm not staying," he growls, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I have a job." When she tries to plead a case, Ed cuts the girl off. She reminds him of Winry. "I'm going to find a cure." Noa is the psychic, but Ed can hear her thoughts as loud as if she shouts it. If he ever he falls to an exhausted sleep next to Al, he dreams of the boy dying while he's away.
In Belfast; "You aren't leaving me again." Alphonse says immediately, forcefully. "I haven't forgotten how that felt. You aren't leaving me." Ed can tell his brother is too tired to cry and it makes the thought of leaving him behind easier and harder all at once.
"This isn't a discussion, Al. You're staying here."
During the fight that follows, Edward slips and tells him their father is dead. With Al's miserable rebuttal, Edward cracks Winry's automail punching the wall. Sensei is dead too. Even if he had stayed in their world, it wouldn't have mattered. It was dissolving enough with each death, so it would've only been a matter of time before it was as unrecognizable as this place. That place can't be fixed, just like now his automail can't be fixed. Al can't be fixed.
Noa goes over the broken metal joints with tiny, weather-beaten hands while Ed and Al sit with worlds of distance between them (again). Al's staring at his brother, no longer startled by the rash display of violence. The closer he gets to dying, the more his memories are adjusting. Right now Al is wearing the face he uses when he looks over their calculations, checking facts and numbers. He's adding it up too. Our coming to this world- it probably wasn't worth it. Ed thinks this so loudly Noa starts to cry.
She chokes, "I knew this was happening." She only cries harder when Edward snaps,
"Yeah, you probably did."
Alphonse isn't there for breakfast the next morning. It reminds Edward of the empty house in Munich. He remembers dragging his leg from room to room, calling for his father like he did as a toddler during the war. When his dad disappeared again, he didn't bother asking around town for Hoenheim. The legendary alchemist made it clear from the beginning Edward was easy to leave behind.
This memory is screaming in his mind by lunchtime. Noa keeps talking to him but he can't hear her. Read my thoughts, he snarls. What's stopping you now? She tears into an orange with blunt nails and mumbles, "It's hard to hear them when you're this worried." As an afterthought she says, "He wouldn't abandon you-"
"Noa."
By midnight Edward's accepted it. Al always believed in fair trade and following the order of things. He sacrificed himself, then Ed did it, and now Al would do it again to keep his brother from witnessing more loss. It still just feels like they're children fighting, struggling to get the last word.