Living Room Space: Atlas Man -- Edward Elric (Part 3)
Title: Living Room Space
Author: Terracotta Bones
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: EdWinry
Spoilers: end of the series, end of the movie
Disclaimer: FANfiction.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1: Machine Language
Summary: Sometimes we dream of the people we love. Al still dreams, though he can look Ed in the eye. Edward has nightmares.
Author's Note: Go here to hear the song that inspired the story (and watch the hereby disclaimed anime video).
Chapter 2: Atlas Man
Part 3
I hope you find what you’re looking for, Elric.
“I hated it,” he muttered. He wiped his eyes.
“Hated what?” Al’s hearing was too good.
He wanted to black-out and wake up without his heartbeat slamming in his chest, or in his throat. Everything he saw shimmered, like a mirage.
How do you erase? How do you put it away where you can’t fall all over it anymore?
“Back there. I mean - you know - when I was gone.”
Ed tried to lean back, and he kept leaning and leaning, and he kept staring up and up, and he would’ve fallen over if Al hadn’t caught him. It was a quick and steady hand behind his back.
“Watch it, Brother.” Al paused, for a moment. “Are you even listening to me?”
“You think we should go home.”
All he’d heard was home. He would’ve liked to stand up at this point, but there was nothing left in his legs. He could sleep right here, he was so tired. Tired.
Edward, if you sleep with your prostheses attached you’ll regret it later.
It took him sixteen years to meet his father, and longer to understand him. It shouldn’t have taken so long. That bastard. Ed never did find out why he left them. He wondered if the man had any regrets about what he’d done.
Ed wondered about his own regrets.
Strange that he would be just as powerless for answers in Amestris as Germany. Ironic.
“So what do you think?” Al said.
“You mean Resembol?” Ed queried. “I don’t really want to go back there.” Just goes to show how much a burned-down house can burn down.
“Why not? It might be nice to take a break for a while.”
“Al, how can we take a break when we’re not doing anything?” Ed put a hand to his forehead, and felt his heartbeat through his temples. “Besides, the only thing in Resembol is an old hag and her dog. Why would we go there?”
“Don’t talk about Aunty Pinako that way, Brother.” More curtly, Al continued, “And we are doing something. We’re alchemists. We’re researching.”
Ed hazarded, though he didn’t mean to, a laugh. “Yeah. But for what?”
Al glared at him. “It was your idea in the first place, Ed! We’re looking for ways that alchemy can help people. We’re going to restore alchemy’s good name, because obviously nobody knows how wonderful it can be. That’s what we’re doing. If you’re gonna drag me all over the country and get into fights all the time, could you please at least pretend to stick to your goals?!”
Ed groaned and looked away, glowering. Al let out an exasperated sigh and crossed his arms.
Ed knew Al wanted to go home, that he stayed with him because he couldn’t bear to go away after so long a separation. But Ed couldn’t stay in Resembol. He would never go back to the military. There was nothing there. It was just - he hadn’t made any plans beforehand, about what to do after his return - it just never entered his head. He’d only got as far as going around to Resembol and Dublin to say, “We’re back!” and then - what? Live? After he finished the first part, he was empty-handed.
So when he searched, he found alchemy.
He reasoned he could help the people this way, and reignite his glorious reputation, sort of, minus the fugitive part. He reasoned he could make up for the things he’d ignored as a State Alchemist because he’d had more important things to do, and be the Hero of the People once more.
Perhaps, though, he just wanted to remind himself of the good alchemy could do. It didn’t just hurt people, or turn grief and love into a sin, a creature of evil with his mother’s face. He remembered a time when Al himself had to be reminded of the same things.
Hey, Al, do you remember the Hughes? Maes, Gracia, Elysia? How about Psiren and that crazy detective? No? Well how about Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Greed? The Fuhrer? Nothing?
He could lock it up inside him. He would protect his little brother.
“I still think we should take a break, Brother.”
A long time ago, he decided not to tell Winry anything either. She wouldn’t know about all the crazy shit he and Al got into, and nobody they knew would know about her. It was witness protection, plain and simple.
Besides, he knew what Al would be like if he remembered, or if he told him what happened. He knew that his brother’s charm and blush would crumble, and people would see in him the wreckage that they saw in Ed; he couldn’t have that. Better yet to preserve, for as long as he could, an Alphonse Elric who did not know what it was like not to feel, or touch, or live.
It was like the Al that lived in the suit of armor never existed. It used to be his worst fear.
Now he had equivalent exchange - his peace for his little brother’s. Al was Al again, human and wholesome. It took five years.
I’ll do whatever it takes to fix things.
It took such a long time. He’d been such an idiot, back then. Maybe he still was. He wondered if he was pleased with the results.
“Brother?”
“Al, why are you asking me questions right now? I’m frickin’ intoxicated, and we are sittung - sitting - on a goddamn curb in the middle of the night. The hotel’s probably locked, and our train comes at eight. You gotta have better things to do right now.”
Al huffed. “It’s one-thirty,” he said. “And the hotel is not locked, you’re just trying to scare me. For crying out loud, I’m not letting you get drunk ever again.”
Ed felt his headache splinter into the next level. “I’m gonna hold you to that.”
Al threw a pebble across the street, and after a little while grumbled, “I think we should go see Winry.”
Ed closed his eyes, and wished he had something cool to put across his face.
“Brother?”
Winry.
“Why would we do that?”
“Because if you don’t want to go to Resembol, then she’s next on the list,” Al declared, “and if you stop me, I’ll break your arm. Then we really will have to go see her. She’ll hit you with her wrench, too.”
Ed tried to glare back. “What are you talking about, Al? You know she’ll just hit you if you do anything to her precious masterpiece. Why do you even want to go at all?”
She could’ve stayed with them. She traveled with them for two months right after she finished with his automail reinstallment, and then she left to go back to her internship in Rush Valley. But she could’ve stayed.
And she wasn’t magical; she didn’t have the fairy dust to lift the weight off his heart. She had Rush Valley. They didn’t need her, or her toolbox or, even less, her apple pie.
He wondered when the trees would grow back in Xenotime.
He missed her, but that wasn’t so out-of-the-ordinary. He’d missed her before, for years. It was just so strange to be the one she left behind, and not the other way around. He didn’t much like it, but he supposed it was karma come back to haunt him.
Besides, he didn’t need to see her now that he was so proficient with illusion. She was different than the girl he’d envisioned in Germany; she wasn’t sixteen, and she didn’t live in Resembol anymore - her hair was shorter, her skirts were longer, she was a real woman, and a real mechanic. But not to kill the cliché, she was always with him. For as long as he could remember. At nineteen she was as feisty as ever, and as caring; she was the girl he’d imagined, only older. And she left him, not the other way around.
He recalled being surprised.
He wondered if he’d thought the three of them would be together again, after he’d returned from Europe.
Al stood up, silhouetted by the glow of the street lamp. He gave Ed a shadowy stare, then murmured, “If you won’t tell me, then maybe you’ll tell her.” He started to walk away.
“Tell her what? Hey, wait!” Ed never told Winry anything. That was the point. And if he told her what he’d been doing during his search for the Stone - she’d probably smack him with a death-toothed, anvil-sized, saw-edged Wrench-from-Hell and demand to know why he didn’t tell her before.
And nobody had to know about Europe. He would himself like to forget about it, along with everybody else.
He stood up unsteadily.
Ahead of him, Alphonse hesitated. A light breeze broke the heat.
“I don’t remember anything, Brother,” he said. In three years, his voice was older. Deeper. “Maybe she will. And you certainly need the help.”
In three years, Ed put things in his heart that he wouldn’t ever take out again. Eight years.
“I don’t need any help!” he yelled. Al kept walking, and didn’t stop.
In the slight retrospect of a few seconds, yelling something like that probably meant the opposite. But did his brother really think that he would tell Winry what he was hiding from him?
I’ve fixed you, Al, and I’m here. What more do you want?
Or was it what he wanted for himself instead? And what was that? Redemption? Some companionship in memory? Or maybe he wanted to see his brother’s face, fully aware of five years of searching for the Philosopher’s Stone and alive, screaming, with thankfulness for his body. Or maybe something he couldn’t yet describe.
He clenched his fists, and looked up at the sky. Winry was marooned in Rush Valley, and she could stay that way. Their tickets were to Central.
I know what and who we lost. We don’t need two to do that job. Or three.
Blue-black, with stars pricking the darkness. A half-moon haloed the clouds around it.
“Isn’t it silly to look up at the sky and believe someone else is looking at it, too? The one you want to be looking at it?” Her eyes had laughed.
Winry, back in Resembol, on the balcony at one-thirty at night after his latest reinstallment surgery. Her hair was so long before she cut it.
It would have been silly, because he really wasn’t looking at the same sky.
He wondered if anyone he’d left behind on the other side of the Gate missed him, and then wondered why he cared.
The one you want to be looking?
In front of him, the sidewalk stretched over a hill. He couldn’t see his brother anymore. The buildings on both sides of the dusty road loomed dark and heavy, old. Xenotime hadn’t changed much. He wanted to know when the trees would grow back.
Inside him, something dark and heavy loomed. He blinked, slowly.
Take care of each other.
He thought he felt a raindrop fall on his head; but that was silly, there weren’t enough clouds. He looked up at the stars, and wondered who else looked along with him.
Give my love to your brother, when you see him.
He cried out, softly, choking on dry tears. Dad.
He remembered why he’d gotten drunk in the first place. Russell, spewing happy reminisces about his brilliant father, just like Roy Mustang spewing bullshit.
He rubbed his face, and felt like throwing up again. Winry couldn’t fix someone like him. She had other things to worry about. She couldn’t possibly fix him. You can’t just fix a person, like an arm or a leg or a car, because you can’t see the space - the roar, the thunder - inside him, and you can’t hear it, and you can’t make it go away.
My name is Alfons Heidrich. What’s yours?
Edward Elric.
His brother didn’t know anymore how to lead Ed’s life. So now Ed searched for nothing.
I hate this.
He chased, as best a drunk could manage, after his brother.
______________________________________________________________________________
And then you bring me home
Afraid to find out you’re alone
______________________________________________________________________________
References: The Big Dipper is a nickname for a constellation of stars known as Ursa Major, which appears over the United States.
Atlas was the Greek god who was charged with holding the sphere of the earth on his shoulders.
A rose window is a circular stained glass window that appears in many European cathedrals.
If you didn't watch the movie and read this anyway (silly!), Alfons Heidrich is the European double of Alphonse Elric.
CHAPTER 2: PART 1
CHAPTER 2: PART 2
Author: Terracotta Bones
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: EdWinry
Spoilers: end of the series, end of the movie
Disclaimer: FANfiction.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1: Machine Language
Summary: Sometimes we dream of the people we love. Al still dreams, though he can look Ed in the eye. Edward has nightmares.
Author's Note: Go here to hear the song that inspired the story (and watch the hereby disclaimed anime video).
Chapter 2: Atlas Man
Part 3
I hope you find what you’re looking for, Elric.
“I hated it,” he muttered. He wiped his eyes.
“Hated what?” Al’s hearing was too good.
He wanted to black-out and wake up without his heartbeat slamming in his chest, or in his throat. Everything he saw shimmered, like a mirage.
How do you erase? How do you put it away where you can’t fall all over it anymore?
“Back there. I mean - you know - when I was gone.”
Ed tried to lean back, and he kept leaning and leaning, and he kept staring up and up, and he would’ve fallen over if Al hadn’t caught him. It was a quick and steady hand behind his back.
“Watch it, Brother.” Al paused, for a moment. “Are you even listening to me?”
“You think we should go home.”
All he’d heard was home. He would’ve liked to stand up at this point, but there was nothing left in his legs. He could sleep right here, he was so tired. Tired.
Edward, if you sleep with your prostheses attached you’ll regret it later.
It took him sixteen years to meet his father, and longer to understand him. It shouldn’t have taken so long. That bastard. Ed never did find out why he left them. He wondered if the man had any regrets about what he’d done.
Ed wondered about his own regrets.
Strange that he would be just as powerless for answers in Amestris as Germany. Ironic.
“So what do you think?” Al said.
“You mean Resembol?” Ed queried. “I don’t really want to go back there.” Just goes to show how much a burned-down house can burn down.
“Why not? It might be nice to take a break for a while.”
“Al, how can we take a break when we’re not doing anything?” Ed put a hand to his forehead, and felt his heartbeat through his temples. “Besides, the only thing in Resembol is an old hag and her dog. Why would we go there?”
“Don’t talk about Aunty Pinako that way, Brother.” More curtly, Al continued, “And we are doing something. We’re alchemists. We’re researching.”
Ed hazarded, though he didn’t mean to, a laugh. “Yeah. But for what?”
Al glared at him. “It was your idea in the first place, Ed! We’re looking for ways that alchemy can help people. We’re going to restore alchemy’s good name, because obviously nobody knows how wonderful it can be. That’s what we’re doing. If you’re gonna drag me all over the country and get into fights all the time, could you please at least pretend to stick to your goals?!”
Ed groaned and looked away, glowering. Al let out an exasperated sigh and crossed his arms.
Ed knew Al wanted to go home, that he stayed with him because he couldn’t bear to go away after so long a separation. But Ed couldn’t stay in Resembol. He would never go back to the military. There was nothing there. It was just - he hadn’t made any plans beforehand, about what to do after his return - it just never entered his head. He’d only got as far as going around to Resembol and Dublin to say, “We’re back!” and then - what? Live? After he finished the first part, he was empty-handed.
So when he searched, he found alchemy.
He reasoned he could help the people this way, and reignite his glorious reputation, sort of, minus the fugitive part. He reasoned he could make up for the things he’d ignored as a State Alchemist because he’d had more important things to do, and be the Hero of the People once more.
Perhaps, though, he just wanted to remind himself of the good alchemy could do. It didn’t just hurt people, or turn grief and love into a sin, a creature of evil with his mother’s face. He remembered a time when Al himself had to be reminded of the same things.
Hey, Al, do you remember the Hughes? Maes, Gracia, Elysia? How about Psiren and that crazy detective? No? Well how about Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Greed? The Fuhrer? Nothing?
He could lock it up inside him. He would protect his little brother.
“I still think we should take a break, Brother.”
A long time ago, he decided not to tell Winry anything either. She wouldn’t know about all the crazy shit he and Al got into, and nobody they knew would know about her. It was witness protection, plain and simple.
Besides, he knew what Al would be like if he remembered, or if he told him what happened. He knew that his brother’s charm and blush would crumble, and people would see in him the wreckage that they saw in Ed; he couldn’t have that. Better yet to preserve, for as long as he could, an Alphonse Elric who did not know what it was like not to feel, or touch, or live.
It was like the Al that lived in the suit of armor never existed. It used to be his worst fear.
Now he had equivalent exchange - his peace for his little brother’s. Al was Al again, human and wholesome. It took five years.
I’ll do whatever it takes to fix things.
It took such a long time. He’d been such an idiot, back then. Maybe he still was. He wondered if he was pleased with the results.
“Brother?”
“Al, why are you asking me questions right now? I’m frickin’ intoxicated, and we are sittung - sitting - on a goddamn curb in the middle of the night. The hotel’s probably locked, and our train comes at eight. You gotta have better things to do right now.”
Al huffed. “It’s one-thirty,” he said. “And the hotel is not locked, you’re just trying to scare me. For crying out loud, I’m not letting you get drunk ever again.”
Ed felt his headache splinter into the next level. “I’m gonna hold you to that.”
Al threw a pebble across the street, and after a little while grumbled, “I think we should go see Winry.”
Ed closed his eyes, and wished he had something cool to put across his face.
“Brother?”
Winry.
“Why would we do that?”
“Because if you don’t want to go to Resembol, then she’s next on the list,” Al declared, “and if you stop me, I’ll break your arm. Then we really will have to go see her. She’ll hit you with her wrench, too.”
Ed tried to glare back. “What are you talking about, Al? You know she’ll just hit you if you do anything to her precious masterpiece. Why do you even want to go at all?”
She could’ve stayed with them. She traveled with them for two months right after she finished with his automail reinstallment, and then she left to go back to her internship in Rush Valley. But she could’ve stayed.
And she wasn’t magical; she didn’t have the fairy dust to lift the weight off his heart. She had Rush Valley. They didn’t need her, or her toolbox or, even less, her apple pie.
He wondered when the trees would grow back in Xenotime.
He missed her, but that wasn’t so out-of-the-ordinary. He’d missed her before, for years. It was just so strange to be the one she left behind, and not the other way around. He didn’t much like it, but he supposed it was karma come back to haunt him.
Besides, he didn’t need to see her now that he was so proficient with illusion. She was different than the girl he’d envisioned in Germany; she wasn’t sixteen, and she didn’t live in Resembol anymore - her hair was shorter, her skirts were longer, she was a real woman, and a real mechanic. But not to kill the cliché, she was always with him. For as long as he could remember. At nineteen she was as feisty as ever, and as caring; she was the girl he’d imagined, only older. And she left him, not the other way around.
He recalled being surprised.
He wondered if he’d thought the three of them would be together again, after he’d returned from Europe.
Al stood up, silhouetted by the glow of the street lamp. He gave Ed a shadowy stare, then murmured, “If you won’t tell me, then maybe you’ll tell her.” He started to walk away.
“Tell her what? Hey, wait!” Ed never told Winry anything. That was the point. And if he told her what he’d been doing during his search for the Stone - she’d probably smack him with a death-toothed, anvil-sized, saw-edged Wrench-from-Hell and demand to know why he didn’t tell her before.
And nobody had to know about Europe. He would himself like to forget about it, along with everybody else.
He stood up unsteadily.
Ahead of him, Alphonse hesitated. A light breeze broke the heat.
“I don’t remember anything, Brother,” he said. In three years, his voice was older. Deeper. “Maybe she will. And you certainly need the help.”
In three years, Ed put things in his heart that he wouldn’t ever take out again. Eight years.
“I don’t need any help!” he yelled. Al kept walking, and didn’t stop.
In the slight retrospect of a few seconds, yelling something like that probably meant the opposite. But did his brother really think that he would tell Winry what he was hiding from him?
I’ve fixed you, Al, and I’m here. What more do you want?
Or was it what he wanted for himself instead? And what was that? Redemption? Some companionship in memory? Or maybe he wanted to see his brother’s face, fully aware of five years of searching for the Philosopher’s Stone and alive, screaming, with thankfulness for his body. Or maybe something he couldn’t yet describe.
He clenched his fists, and looked up at the sky. Winry was marooned in Rush Valley, and she could stay that way. Their tickets were to Central.
I know what and who we lost. We don’t need two to do that job. Or three.
Blue-black, with stars pricking the darkness. A half-moon haloed the clouds around it.
“Isn’t it silly to look up at the sky and believe someone else is looking at it, too? The one you want to be looking at it?” Her eyes had laughed.
Winry, back in Resembol, on the balcony at one-thirty at night after his latest reinstallment surgery. Her hair was so long before she cut it.
It would have been silly, because he really wasn’t looking at the same sky.
He wondered if anyone he’d left behind on the other side of the Gate missed him, and then wondered why he cared.
The one you want to be looking?
In front of him, the sidewalk stretched over a hill. He couldn’t see his brother anymore. The buildings on both sides of the dusty road loomed dark and heavy, old. Xenotime hadn’t changed much. He wanted to know when the trees would grow back.
Inside him, something dark and heavy loomed. He blinked, slowly.
Take care of each other.
He thought he felt a raindrop fall on his head; but that was silly, there weren’t enough clouds. He looked up at the stars, and wondered who else looked along with him.
Give my love to your brother, when you see him.
He cried out, softly, choking on dry tears. Dad.
He remembered why he’d gotten drunk in the first place. Russell, spewing happy reminisces about his brilliant father, just like Roy Mustang spewing bullshit.
He rubbed his face, and felt like throwing up again. Winry couldn’t fix someone like him. She had other things to worry about. She couldn’t possibly fix him. You can’t just fix a person, like an arm or a leg or a car, because you can’t see the space - the roar, the thunder - inside him, and you can’t hear it, and you can’t make it go away.
My name is Alfons Heidrich. What’s yours?
Edward Elric.
His brother didn’t know anymore how to lead Ed’s life. So now Ed searched for nothing.
I hate this.
He chased, as best a drunk could manage, after his brother.
______________________________________________________________________________
And then you bring me home
Afraid to find out you’re alone
______________________________________________________________________________
References: The Big Dipper is a nickname for a constellation of stars known as Ursa Major, which appears over the United States.
Atlas was the Greek god who was charged with holding the sphere of the earth on his shoulders.
A rose window is a circular stained glass window that appears in many European cathedrals.
If you didn't watch the movie and read this anyway (silly!), Alfons Heidrich is the European double of Alphonse Elric.
CHAPTER 2: PART 1
CHAPTER 2: PART 2