Soul Memory [Fullmetal Alchemist][G][Gen, Al-centric]
Soul Memory
G
Fullmetal Alchemist
Alphonse, Edward, mentions of Winry, Isumi
It's true Alphonse didn't remember.
Notes: Everyone needs to get out a post-2003-pre-Shamballa fic, I guess. Here's mine. I don't think it's particularly original, but it's done, it's been sitting on my hard-drive for ages and I'm just done with it.
It's true Alphonse didn't remember.
Not as such. When he searched for those missing years his mind had no recollections to give him. But as he'd (apparently) already proven, the soul was not the same as the brain, and his soul remembered what his body did not.
He felt things more intensely now. All his senses seemed enhanced: tastes were sharper, scents more pervasive, and every touch was like a shock of electricity on his skin. Colors seemed more vibrant; sounds were louder than he remembered, and his reactions to them were strange (the clack of train wheels against tracks always calmed him). There was no physical reason for this; as far as his body was concerned he was ten, full stop. But his soul had missed these sensations for five years, and it reveled in them.
It was more than that, though. During the day he was fine, learning more from Sensei and refining what he already knew, talking with Winry and Auntie Pinako, playing with Den by the river. But at night...he hated night-time. For the first few weeks he refused to sleep alone because he felt an unbearable loneliness. Am I here? Am I real? Only the sound of another heartbeat could drown out those questions. Even then, he knew it wasn't Ed's heartbeat. Brother, brother, where are you?
He had nightmares from which he woke crying and screaming for his brother (always his brother and never his mother; Winry wondered about that, but Alphonse was not surprised). He never remembered much, but he always remembered red: the dark red of blood, the vibrant crimson of his brother's coat, the pinkish-red of the Philosopher's Stone. There was too much red in his dreams.
He had other nightmares too--strange dreams where his brother was dressed in neither his childhood clothes nor the black-and-red ensemble from pictures but in plain brown and cream. Edward's right hand was bare (his dreaming mind always thought, no glove, how strange) and pale but distinctly skin-colored. The world around him was curiously leeched of color, like a photograph that had spent too much time in the sun. He didn't think it was an effect of the dream: even his brother's sunshine hair was a duller almost-honey, rather than the molten gold he remembered. In his 'true' nightmares, Ed's hair and eyes were beautiful and vibrant and real in ways that the rest of the dreamscape never was.
He understood the screaming nightmares. If even half of what he'd been told was true, those night terrors were only his soul, trying to remind the rest of him. But the dreams of the other-world, with its stodgy, mechanical science, with its gray stone and smoke-smudged brick, with his brother talking to and learning with a him-that-was-not-him...
He knew Edward was alive.
He knew with a surety that surprised even Winry, even the soldiers he'd been re-introduced to, who had seen already so much evidence of the brothers' devotion. He would have known without the dreams, too, knowledge that wasn't wishful thinking or denial, knowledge soul-deep and inerasable. It was why he left when Sensei had nothing more to teach him. Why he tugged on his brother's coat and gloves, why he painstakingly embroidered alchemic arrays onto the palms, why he boarded the first train to Central. He would follow in his brother's footsteps, in his old forgotten footprints. If he followed that labyrinthine path, which crisscrossed and doubled back on itself so many times as to be nearly incomprehensible, it would lead him to his brother.
He knew it.
G
Fullmetal Alchemist
Alphonse, Edward, mentions of Winry, Isumi
It's true Alphonse didn't remember.
Notes: Everyone needs to get out a post-2003-pre-Shamballa fic, I guess. Here's mine. I don't think it's particularly original, but it's done, it's been sitting on my hard-drive for ages and I'm just done with it.
It's true Alphonse didn't remember.
Not as such. When he searched for those missing years his mind had no recollections to give him. But as he'd (apparently) already proven, the soul was not the same as the brain, and his soul remembered what his body did not.
He felt things more intensely now. All his senses seemed enhanced: tastes were sharper, scents more pervasive, and every touch was like a shock of electricity on his skin. Colors seemed more vibrant; sounds were louder than he remembered, and his reactions to them were strange (the clack of train wheels against tracks always calmed him). There was no physical reason for this; as far as his body was concerned he was ten, full stop. But his soul had missed these sensations for five years, and it reveled in them.
It was more than that, though. During the day he was fine, learning more from Sensei and refining what he already knew, talking with Winry and Auntie Pinako, playing with Den by the river. But at night...he hated night-time. For the first few weeks he refused to sleep alone because he felt an unbearable loneliness. Am I here? Am I real? Only the sound of another heartbeat could drown out those questions. Even then, he knew it wasn't Ed's heartbeat. Brother, brother, where are you?
He had nightmares from which he woke crying and screaming for his brother (always his brother and never his mother; Winry wondered about that, but Alphonse was not surprised). He never remembered much, but he always remembered red: the dark red of blood, the vibrant crimson of his brother's coat, the pinkish-red of the Philosopher's Stone. There was too much red in his dreams.
He had other nightmares too--strange dreams where his brother was dressed in neither his childhood clothes nor the black-and-red ensemble from pictures but in plain brown and cream. Edward's right hand was bare (his dreaming mind always thought, no glove, how strange) and pale but distinctly skin-colored. The world around him was curiously leeched of color, like a photograph that had spent too much time in the sun. He didn't think it was an effect of the dream: even his brother's sunshine hair was a duller almost-honey, rather than the molten gold he remembered. In his 'true' nightmares, Ed's hair and eyes were beautiful and vibrant and real in ways that the rest of the dreamscape never was.
He understood the screaming nightmares. If even half of what he'd been told was true, those night terrors were only his soul, trying to remind the rest of him. But the dreams of the other-world, with its stodgy, mechanical science, with its gray stone and smoke-smudged brick, with his brother talking to and learning with a him-that-was-not-him...
He knew Edward was alive.
He knew with a surety that surprised even Winry, even the soldiers he'd been re-introduced to, who had seen already so much evidence of the brothers' devotion. He would have known without the dreams, too, knowledge that wasn't wishful thinking or denial, knowledge soul-deep and inerasable. It was why he left when Sensei had nothing more to teach him. Why he tugged on his brother's coat and gloves, why he painstakingly embroidered alchemic arrays onto the palms, why he boarded the first train to Central. He would follow in his brother's footsteps, in his old forgotten footprints. If he followed that labyrinthine path, which crisscrossed and doubled back on itself so many times as to be nearly incomprehensible, it would lead him to his brother.
He knew it.