FIC: Gone
Banner courtesy of m14mouse
Title: Gone
Author: drummerdancer
Verse: None
Characters: Al, Winry
Word Count: 322
Prompt 272: In The Middle of Nowhere
Rating: K
Summary: Al wonders where his brother has gone.
In the middle of nowhere they lay, arms out, chests up, legs splayed like forks in the road, one overlapping the other-silent, quiet, no thoughts, no words, no chances to break their fragile retrieve from a world otherwise cold and hard, unforgiving even at its kindest. They lay-not talking, not looking at each other, just laying still, staring up at the sky.
Asking questions, looking for answers-all in a blueback sky by the tree behind Winry’s house, though in the Resembool night, they could’ve been anywhere-just staring at nothing, nobody.
Winry eventually stirs next to him, seconds, minutes, hours after they came out there. Her voice is hoarse, cracked-sad, but in a resigned sort of way.
“Do you think-did they check-?”
But Al has no idea; he didn’t know anymore than she did about where Ed had gone. He was his brother, yet for all the time that had passed, Ed could’ve been a stranger to him; not a word, not a breath in three years, and the military had finally closed his case today-leaving only the two of them left in the search, a search that had no leads, no points, no trails.
Just a missing person, memories without the body-hollow, empty, gone.
Like a suit of armor…
Al didn’t move as Winry continued to blab, hysterics creeping into her voice as it rose. His flesh, alive and smooth and warm, felt prickly as he tried to make the connection, make his mind work to figure out the laws of the universe-anything to bring his brother home, safe and alive.
Because Ed was Al’s home-his garage, his green-grass lawn, his chimney roaring in the dead of winter, his house with a dozen cats and a dozen water dishes and a dozen suede cat beds-and until they found him…
Al would remain-existing, stalling, spinning-in the middle of nowhere.
Double posted @ fma_fic_contest