FMA -- Spectra
Title: Spectra
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 16,200 (4,900 this chapter)
Warnings: language; ALL OF THE SPOILERS for '03/CoS
Summary: A prism with three faces. (Colorblindness/soulmates AU.)
Author's Note: So people were like, "DAMN, where's all the CoS!Roy/Ed?"; and then Mthaytr was like, "DAMN, where's all the Roy/Ed with the sexy pining?", and then they were like, "Also, remember that incredible soulmate-colorblindness AU that Panda made?", and somehow I forgot how much CoS eats my brain.
[I write notes for AO3 now so they are always freaking long. Sort-of-sorry.]Anyway, this thing basically wrote itself over the course of a week and a half - which was something of a miracle, really, because I've been so burned out on pretty much everything that it was an incredible relief to feel like writing was fun and easy and natural again.
tl;dr I wrote this over a month ago; y'all know the drill with my life these days. But now that I finally found the energy to reread it, I'm actually kinda pleased with how it turned out, so that's… something. :'D
SPECTRA
PART 1
At least Roy’s alive.
It was touch and go in the Gate there-colors in and out; everything fucking swirling, and all that noise in his head; the cacophonous cavalcade of more information than any human being could hope to grapple with searing through the fragile fabric of his puny little mind-but Ed couldn’t tell if the fade to black-and-white and back was because the Gate was just like that; or because he himself was dying; or because Bradley was giving Roy a hell of a run for his fucking money.
And when he landed, he had other problems-namely, the fact that he’d fucking woken up at all, let alone buck naked on the floor of the same damn bedroom in the same damn flat that Hohenheim had had before in that place called London, down two limbs and up a scream hanging halfway between the base of his throat and the tip of his tongue.
He wasn’t supposed to wake up.
That wasn’t the fucking trade.
And he panicked-fucking flung himself upright, hop-ran downstairs without even thinking about crutches or how to move or any of that shit; he never quite figured out what he did, or how he did it, but somehow he followed sounds and careened through the whole place and ended up crashing into the doorway to the sitting room. That was a safe enough spar to cling to in a fucking storm, so he held onto it and scanned the room and fixed his fucking gaze on Hohenheim, who had a dinky little ornate teacup raised halfway to his open mouth.
Ed didn’t have time for that shit.
“Where’s Al?” he asked.
To what Ed would later recognize as Hohenheim’s enormous fucking credit, the man just blinked, smiled wanly, and said, “I’m not sure, Edward.”
Then he turned to his whole tea party full of openly-staring fucking middle-aged friends, added “Excuse me for a moment,” set his teacup down, stood up, and ushered Ed off into the kitchen-which required putting an arm around Ed’s shoulders for him to lean on, which made Ed rankle, but there wasn’t time for his pride or his feelings or any of that shit, because-
“Where’s Al?” he managed again, and his voice started shaking this time, but he pushed the fuck through it. “I was-okay, wait, help me out here. Last time, I didn’t give anything to go through the Gate to get here, right? It’s just-dying. That’s what does it. You die in a fucked-up-enough way, you just go. Right?”
“Based on both of our experiences,” Hohenheim said slowly, “that sounds like an accurate representation of eve-”
“But he gave me back this shit,” Ed said, gesturing to the empty shoulder and the stump of his thigh. “With the Stone. Only now it’s gone again, so that was a toll for something, right?”
Hohenheim, watching him very closely, nodded once.
“Because I was trying to give up fucking all of it,” Ed said, sounding ever-so-slightly fucking desperate even to his own ears now, but who the fuck could blame him, when-? “Only I’m here, I’m alive, more or less-so what the fuck is that about? What the fuck did I pay for, exactly?” His heart pounded far too loud-once, twice, three times, straining against his ribcage, echoing in his ears. “How much of him did I buy back?”
He saw her again, so fucking vividly-visceral down to the smell of the gore and the dreck and the dank walls of the dark basement-that his knee gave way, and only Hohenheim’s fast fucking reflexes to catch him kept him from slamming his dumb ass down on the floor.
“Careful,” Hohenheim said, which was a stupid thing people always said after the fact, which Ed had always sort of hated, but at least it was a decent gesture or something. And Hohenheim was easing him into one of the kitchen chairs, which was nicer still.
Ed sat. Ed stared at the floor. Ed put his hand out and felt the back of the chair, and then the table, and then the tin of loose leaf tea that was still sitting out on the table. He considered eating one of the leftover biscuits, but the thought of it made his stomach fucking roil, which made him suddenly aware of the fact that his whole fucking body felt like it was churning or collapsing or on fire-or, in some notable places, all three.
“Edward,” Hohenheim said, quietly, “breathe.”
“I’m fuckin’ trying,” Ed said, and he was, but there were little shadowy spots wavering in front of his eyes, and he gripped the table edge to make sure he stayed fucking upright. “Backlash, I guess. Just-shit, do you think-I mean, it must’ve put him back, right? It’s got a shitty-ass sense of humor, but it must’ve put him back; that’s how it works-that’s how equivalent exchange works. Sure, it’s bullshit when you apply it on a universal scale, but with alchemy, that’s the fucking point, and this was alchemy; this was straight-up fucking circles and light-”
“Edward,” Hohenheim said, sharper this time. “Breathe.”
“I fucking know,” Ed said. To fucking prove it, he sucked in a huge fucking lungful of oxygen and held it in his mouth with chipmunk cheeks, glaring up at the douchebag playing at Dad of the Year.
Hohenheim had to fight a smile. What a fucking asshole.
“That’s a start,” he said. “Sit still; let me get you some water.”
Always with the talking down and the giving orders-never mind that this particular set of instructions made a hell of a lot of sense given how hard Ed’s whole body was shaking.
“He must’ve made it,” Ed said as Hohenheim went for the tap. “He must have. That’s how alchemy works. The rest of it’s shit, but that’s how alchemy works. And I traded-I mean, even if it didn’t take what I planned for, I’m stuck here. Right? Which leaves me with more than I intended when I paid, but not a lot, ’cause… fuck, all I really got back was three-quarters of a body, right? So the rest of it-all of the rest of it-must’ve gone to Al.”
Hohenheim turned to glance at him. “That’s what I would assume.” The asshole brought over a water glass. There wasn’t any particularly shitty way to hand your twice- or thrice-abandoned progeny a glass of water, but if there had been, he probably would have done it like that. “It doesn’t always… calculate, I suppose you would say, especially literally, either. There are a lot of things it might include in the exchange that you wouldn’t have accounted for-unquantifiable things, concepts.” He paused. “Your access to people. Emotions.” He glanced down at Ed’s solitary remaining hand. “Abilities.”
Ed could practically fucking hear the gears in his own brain grinding together as they tried to mill that one.
Hohenheim pushed the water glass closer to his hand. “Drink this,” he said. He paused again, and his gaze slid towards the doorway towards the living room, where his probably-scandalized-as-shit guests were still sitting on their stuffy asses. “After that, we should probably find you some pants.”
It occurred to Ed that Hohenheim had just done something he’d never fucking done before: he’d stuck his neck out for Ed and taken care of him first and foremost-instantly, reactively. On instinct.
He’d acted like a fucking dad.
That changed things, a little bit.
Ed drew a deep breath, let it out, and lifted up the glass, which felt heavier than it should have.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
It was only when he was lying down that night that the rest of it finally struck him.
He’d been thinking-in an aimless, wandering, overwhelmed sort of way; with the tattered remnants of his battered brain. He’d been thinking about how fucking surreal it was; and at the same damn time, how fast he’d already started adjusting. The human brain was an extraordinary, inimitable fucking machine sometimes-it chewed up stimuli and spat them right the fuck back out. It was the most adaptable thing in the world. Hell, in a matter of about five seconds, he’d adjusted to a colossal alteration in his own visual perception of the world after a lifetime of a single expectation-
And the realization hit him like a leaden fucking anvil dropping into his guts:
The fucking color.
He still had it-still saw it. Right?
He did, didn’t he? He fucking-he hadn’t even thought about it; the concept hadn’t even crossed his mind through all of the fucking chaos and the emotional-pinball fucking ricochets back and forth and sideways and upside-down-
But he remembered-
There’d been colors in the kitchen, hadn’t there? He still had-
And that meant-
He scrambled up and started to hop across the fucking room; of fucking course he slipped two feet from the desk and ate hardwood, then had to drag himself up, then had to fumble frantically with the lamp until he caught the switch, and-
Yellow.
Definitely fucking yellow; definitely not fucking black or white or gray or-
Roy was alive.
Roy was fucking alive, and that was something, wasn’t it?
That was one fucking victory chalked up in his column, no matter how much else he might’ve lost.
Life goes on.
The trick is not letting it go on without you, even when a part of you would rather just get left behind.
Is every sunset in Amestris as gut-wrenchingly gorgeous as the one he saw that night? Was it just because it was the first one in color, or was it because of what was in front of him?
Sunsets are nothing fucking special here.
Just-gray.
Everything is gray.
Some mornings he’s so fucking terrified of the cloud-dimmed monochrome that his first impulse is to cut himself open and watch himself bleed.
He tacks shit up on the walls-red, green, blue, orange. Scraps of paper; advertisement fliers and doodles in different-colored pens. Samples to look at when he’s not quite fucking sure anymore.
It doesn’t go away-the color. Some days it’s so muted he fingers his pocketknife, and the agitation runs through him like an electric fucking current; but it doesn’t go away.
That’s something.
Right?
He always just figured it was bullshit. He always just figured it was a pile of fantastical romantic nonsense; he always just figured the reason there weren’t any hard and fast facts about it was because it was a load of crap.
Izumi never taught them about this. His mother never said a word. And he didn’t think to ask anybody else-it was stupid anyway, right? It was a stupid, schmoopy thing for silly, lonely people, and he had better things to do. He had a job-a mission. He had Al. He had a score to settle, and other people kept tallying more fucking marks.
He never even dreamed of asking any of the questions he needs answers for now.
Does it still count if you become somebody different? Does it still count if the world you live in twists you up on the inside so violently that you don’t even know yourself anymore?
Is it only literal death that wipes the colors from your sight again? Or does it count if one day you’re no longer the person that you used to be?
Can it happen to one person? Can you meet someone who fills in all your jagged goddamn edges, but the completeness only goes one way? Why doesn’t it apply to platonic kinds of love and shit, too? Did his fucking parents have it? He’s got these fuzzy recollections of surprise that his mother never seemed to need to touch the tomatoes to know when they were ripe, but that could just be his own brain rewriting shit retroactively; brains do that; they believe what they want to believe-
Can it happen to a single person twice? If your soulmate dies, is there such a thing as second chances?
Can you have two at once?
What does it mean in the grander social scheme of shit, right? Do you have to get along with them? Does it always work out? Obviously you can-have-that-with someone and still kind of want to throttle them and/or punch their fucking lights out at intervals; he’s more-or-less-living proof of that. Evidently you don’t turn into fucking Armstrong at the drop of a hat-at the tap of a fingertip-and start spewing roses everywhere or whatever shit.
So what is it? What is it really?
If it can’t be platonic-he and Al prove that part, because if there were ever two people more attached, he’s never fucking heard of ’em-then it must have something to do with… love. Right? But that’s a nebulous fucking concept to say the least, and it’s not like there haven’t been flickers of fury and light in his stomach and his throat and his chest over other human beings than Roy. Sure, if you crunch the numbers, the bastard’s probably leagues ahead of anybody else who’s ever roused the whole range of Ed’s emotions, but-
Then again…
It has been a while, hasn’t it? It’s been a while since Ed couldn’t ignore the throbbing in his guts when Roy’s mouth curved into a smirk, and the dark eyes flicked towards him. It’s been a while since he did his damnedest to burn it out, and all he got was a mouthful of curses and a deep, unshakable conviction that Roy would die for him, if it came to that. He doesn’t know why he knows that, but it’s true-same way the stars are; same way as the sky: fixed and bright and inescapable no matter where you run.
Maybe they’d be something.
Maybe if their hands met again-maybe if it was more than that; more skin; maybe if it was fingertips and palms and mouths and eyelashes-maybe if they had more time-
He knows he didn’t have a choice-or that he did, but he’d already made it, and the wheels were already in motion, and lingering would only have thrown him onto the fucking tracks and hacked him the fuck up. He had to go. It was Al; it was for Al; all of it’s always been for Al, and that’s how it should be; everything he’d ever cared about was on the fucking line-
No fucking possibility in the world-no matter how scarlet-orange it spills-would be worth that. No abstraction, no mist-edged potential, could pay for what was at stake. Nothing in the world could pay for that.
So he turned his back and walked away.
And there wasn’t time to mourn it.
There’s time, now. There’s time to think in guilty little cold-twist threads-with soft, warm tendrils winding outward, towards a thousand things he’s never known-
There’s time to wish for shit he can’t have and hasn’t earned.
Shit he doesn’t deserve.
Shit that he has to let go of, for his own damn sake, so he can keep it together and get the hell out of here one of these days.
So he asks the questions-solid, scientific inquiries. He digs his heels into the logic instead of walking the tightrope wires of the endless fucking what-ifs.
What’s it tied to, physiologically? If you lose something-a hand, an arm, a heart-does the connection dissolve? Do the colors go away? Or do you lose some finite part of the spectrum, and you get to keep barf-orange (which Ed wishes he didn’t know) and olive green? What’s the anatomical mechanism-?
Hell. This stupid-ass fucking world is full of science-that’s its solitary redemptive fucking feature, as far as he can tell. Maybe there’ll actually be some literature worth investigating, and he can find out.
Sometimes-
Sometimes, when it’s late; when he’s tired, and his brain is wrung-out-empty, and there’s nothing more that he could do towards heading home and finding Al even if he tried-
Sometimes, he lets himself wonder.
Lets himself imagine.
Lets himself pretend.
Maybe there would be a night-maybe a few nights; maybe lots of nights; maybe every motherfucking night; maybe-
Maybe there would be nights where he’d go over to Roy’s place. He doesn’t know what the hell Roy’s place looks like, so he makes it up-narrow foyer, cramped kitchen, set of stairs. That shit doesn’t make much of a difference except to set the scene anyway; he focuses most of his imaginative power on the study, which has all the books and curios and shit; and the living room, which has a fireplace and a couch; and the bedroom, which…
Well, the bedroom has Roy-dark eyes, smooth hands, and the little real-smile Ed only ever got to see on special fucking occasions. It was barely more than a myth for ages, but then there was a time when Ed saw him on one of the lawns trying to feed Hayate, and Roy didn’t know he was there, and when Hayate licked the bastard’s fingers, he just-
Smiled-
Without any of the smirking or the goading or the smugness or the bullshit; just for its own sake.
So that’s what Ed dresses him in. Maybe it’s unfair or something-maybe it’s fucking arrogant, actually; maybe it’s presumptuous of him to assume he’d be able to draw that out. What the fuck is he even capable of that could make Roy happy, anyway?
Maybe he wouldn’t have to do anything.
Maybe that’s part of what it means.
Maybe they could just-be. Just be together; just exist. Maybe that’s the point-maybe it’s about identifying someone whose charred, twisted, fucked-up little fragment of a soul can settle in with yours. Maybe it’s about broken edges that finally fit. Maybe it’s about somebody already having a little pocket in their battered fucking heart that’s shaped like you, and all you have to do is drop right in it.
Maybe it’s not even about-love.
Maybe it’s about acceptance.
Maybe it’s about understanding.
Maybe it’s about wholeness, in a way you’ll never find all on your own.
And maybe that’d be enough to start Roy smiling-if Ed just naturally filled up some of the emptinesses that he’s been carrying for his entire life.
That’s a nice thought. Does Ed deserve a nice thought or two? People say thoughts are free, but people say all kinds of shit that they don’t mean, and nothing’s free. Not really.
Ed lays his left arm over his eyes and tries to forget-tries not to hear the city; tries not to hear the pipes in the walls or the neighbors past them. He’s not here-not right this second, anyway. He’s home. He’s in Amestris. Al’s fine; Al’s great; Al’s all flesh and blood and beaming grins; he doesn’t have to worry about that. He can worry about Roy’s hands, and the way the drowning sun set fire to the whole world around them in that single moment before the dark drew in.
He can ghost through the imaginary foyer, past the kitchen, past the books-up the staircase, trailing his fingers on the banister; he’s at home here; he’s afraid of nothing.
He can push the bedroom door open. Roy’s sitting on the edge of a bed with a thick white down comforter over the top. He stands up and meets Ed halfway-meets him, and takes his hands, both of them; Ed registers the automail, but Roy doesn’t really seem to see it, and-
They-
Kiss.
Ed’s not quite sure what it’s supposed to feel like, but that’s not really the point. For now it feels warm and sweet and safe and soothing-feels the way that chocolate tastes. Not especially concrete; indistinct but good; it’s like a hug but closer, sharper, quickening his blood.
Roy leans down to rest his forehead against Ed’s, but for once in his obnoxious life, the bastard’s not dumb enough to comment on how far he has to tilt his head to get there. He lifts his hands up and lays them along either side of Ed’s jaw.
“It was always you,” Roy says. “All this time; it was always you.”
“Yeah,” Ed says. “Guess you’re stuck with me.”
“Likewise,” Roy says.
The contours of Roy’s face get kind of blurry. The eyes are clear as fucking day, but the little things-the exact way his hair lies, what size his ears are-are starting to get lost.
“Fucking wait for me,” Ed says. “God, Roy, fucking-please.”
“I have let you down,” Roy says, “but I have never betrayed you.” The same two fingertips-to Ed’s lips this time. “Remember that.”
Things have gotten worse. Well-“worse” is subjective, but probably nobody would argue.
Ed’s been around the block enough damn times to know that things usually get worse before they get better. He’s also been around long enough to know that sometimes they don’t get better at all.
Sometimes your asshole dad’s exhaustive letters just stop coming, and nobody at the university-nobody you used to know, no matter how many telegrams you send across the Channel-can tell you why.
Sometimes you meet somebody who looks so much like the person that you live for and left behind that it bowls you right the fuck over-and it’s so much like being stabbed straight through the fucking ribcage that you’d swear you can feel the hot blood streaming down your sides.
Sometimes you have no choice except to go through whatever’s passing for your existence feeling like there’s a film over everything-like you can push and prod and claw and scrape, but you never get through it, never touch anything-
Sometimes you sort of figure that the punishment was the fact that you survived.
Sometimes you wish you hadn’t.
And sometimes you can’t drown it, can’t dull it, can’t fight it.
Sometimes you don’t think you can hold on anymore.
Sometimes-
Alfons runs the palm of his hand just centimeters above the delicate faces of the forget-me-nots. They’re the same damn color as his eyes.
The really funny shit-Ed wishes there was someone he could share it with-is that Ed never knew how much he himself looked like a fucking dandelion until this color thing. It’s ridiculous. It’s a riot. Al would laugh; fucking Roy would probably laugh, if he’s even capable. He must be; that’s a human thing. What does his laugh sound like when it’s not so fucking sarcastic it’s unrecognizable as an expression of joy?
“You always gets the brightest ones,” Alfons calls to Gracia where she’s bent over some roses. “I don’t know how you do it. These are like the sky in summer.”
That’s a pretty high (ha) compliment from Alfons; the sky is about his favorite thing on-well, off-the fucking planet, so-
Ed stops.
He stares at Alfons-clever fucking fingertips still dancing in between the tiny little petals.
Ed’s voice comes out in a strangled fucking wreck. “You can-you can see-that?”
He knows Alfons fucking loves him in a way he’ll never be able to reciprocate. But it doesn’t-work that way. Does it? Sure, they’ve brushed past each other before; they live in a fucking closet together, after all, but it’s not… It can’t be one-sided. Can it?
Alfons stays very still. With his hand raised and his whole body frozen, he looks like he’s baiting a wounded animal with some questionable food.
“See what?” he asks slowly.
The words cling to the tip of Ed’s tongue-The colors, do you see the colors? Who is it? God, please, please, fucking tell me it’s somebody else, anybody else; tell me it’s not me; I couldn’t do that to you; that’s way past “unfair” and well into the territory of “ungodly”, although I guess it’s all the same-
But while the syllables sit and tremble there, his heart beats twice, and something sparks inside his brain.
Flags.
The flag for this miserable country-it’s black and yellow and red.
Why the fuck would it be three specific colors, two of them close on the spectrum, if nobody could see them?
Why would Gracia group some of the flowers by their shade, not their type?
Why would there be such a fucking thing as weisswurst if they didn’t have a distinction of pale shades other than white?
“Nothing,” Ed says, and his tongue tangles clumsily, like swallowing around a mouthful of stones. Fuck words, and fuck speech, and fuck German, and fuck this whole fucking universe- “I-never mind. I thought I-saw something. Sorry.”
All this time, he wasn’t listening. He wasn’t thinking about it-he just assumed the rules would stay the same.
What a fucking idiot.
He deserves this-all of it. This is the fucking price.
“Sorry,” he says again-like it matters; like it means anything; like it makes a difference against the long, long, long-ass ledger of failures and wrongs.
He can feel that Gracia’s stare is all confusion, but Alfons’s is-gentler. Vulnerable. Kind.
Ed hates him for being so similar at the core sometimes-so close, so desperately close, and still so fucking far.
“It’s all right,” Alfons says.
It’s always all right, with Alfons. He doesn’t have the slightest fucking idea what’s going on in Ed’s stupid head at any given moment, and he puts up with all of it anyway-and that’s so like Al.
Only there are moments where Ed surfaces from a stream of thoughts and catches him watching Ed’s face with this half-startled, wholly-puzzled sort of expression-and in those seconds, he looks like Roy.
“Sorry,” Ed says, and moves past before they ask any more fucking questions, and the heavy fake leg creaks beneath him all the way up the stairs.
He lies on his side that night, staring at the gold foil filigree on the label of the bottle on the desk. The cheap cognac doesn’t pull enough anymore to drag him across the barrier between the haze of pain and the haze of sleep.
All this time-all this time, everyone in this whole damn world had the sky and the grass and the river and the marble walls; everyone had wildflowers and ladybugs and Gracia’s soft gray-green eyes. None of that was his alone. That’s par for the course here; maybe it’s one of their returns on the dues that they pay for living. Maybe it’s their equivalent of alchemy-an ordinary magic anyone can own.
All this time, he’s been bullshitting himself.
Roy’s probably dead.
Even if he bested Bradley, somehow, against a thousand fucking steeply-slanted odds, Archer was on his fucking scent; and even if that didn’t finish him, the fucking military would never stand for seeing their idols felled by an upstart like Roy-
Roy’s probably dead.
Al might be, too-not dead so much as not-alive; never-alive; unwritten and undone. Not-brought-back. Hovering in the emptiness of the Gate somewhere, contemplating Ed’s squandered fucking sacrifice.
Or maybe they never fucking lived, right?
Maybe this is the real thing, and all of that was his vivid fucking imagination, cooked up overnight so many times he started to believe it as a fact.
The brain is incredibly fucking powerful, sometimes, after all. It has the power to deceive, and the power to dissuade, and the power to destroy itself.
But most days it makes more sense the other way around-this is the dream. This is the unknown, unknowable shadow-life, cut out of nightmares held up to the light, woven out of threats and death and miseries. This is a world where nothing works; where money’s getting meaningless; where children starve routinely, and no one even cares; where hope withers, and faith fails, and the sunlight’s weak enough to bleach the color out of almost everything.
When he dreams about home, it’s still in color.
Does that count for anything?
On the scales, in the books-
He knows the answer to that.
He knows that no one’s listening.
That’s what it really means-the word alone.
He should get his ass killed and get it over with-it’d be so damn easy, in a place like this, where there’s violence in every smile, where the potential for cruelty lingers on every indrawn breath. He could kill himself with the cognac if he tried at it, and maybe he should-it’d be better, wouldn’t it? He’s been the anomaly everywhere he’s ever gone. He’s the sore spot; he’s the snag; he’s the problem, and if he’d just remove himself-
But there’s a chance, still. He hasn’t gathered up enough proof either way. There’s a chance that Al or Roy or both of them are still on the other side of that towering doorway, alive and fucking kicking.
He has to know for sure before he does anything he can’t take back.
He has to get back somehow.
He has to know.
[Part II]
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 16,200 (4,900 this chapter)
Warnings: language; ALL OF THE SPOILERS for '03/CoS
Summary: A prism with three faces. (Colorblindness/soulmates AU.)
Author's Note: So people were like, "DAMN, where's all the CoS!Roy/Ed?"; and then Mthaytr was like, "DAMN, where's all the Roy/Ed with the sexy pining?", and then they were like, "Also, remember that incredible soulmate-colorblindness AU that Panda made?", and somehow I forgot how much CoS eats my brain.
[I write notes for AO3 now so they are always freaking long. Sort-of-sorry.]Anyway, this thing basically wrote itself over the course of a week and a half - which was something of a miracle, really, because I've been so burned out on pretty much everything that it was an incredible relief to feel like writing was fun and easy and natural again.
tl;dr I wrote this over a month ago; y'all know the drill with my life these days. But now that I finally found the energy to reread it, I'm actually kinda pleased with how it turned out, so that's… something. :'D
SPECTRA
PART 1
At least Roy’s alive.
It was touch and go in the Gate there-colors in and out; everything fucking swirling, and all that noise in his head; the cacophonous cavalcade of more information than any human being could hope to grapple with searing through the fragile fabric of his puny little mind-but Ed couldn’t tell if the fade to black-and-white and back was because the Gate was just like that; or because he himself was dying; or because Bradley was giving Roy a hell of a run for his fucking money.
And when he landed, he had other problems-namely, the fact that he’d fucking woken up at all, let alone buck naked on the floor of the same damn bedroom in the same damn flat that Hohenheim had had before in that place called London, down two limbs and up a scream hanging halfway between the base of his throat and the tip of his tongue.
He wasn’t supposed to wake up.
That wasn’t the fucking trade.
And he panicked-fucking flung himself upright, hop-ran downstairs without even thinking about crutches or how to move or any of that shit; he never quite figured out what he did, or how he did it, but somehow he followed sounds and careened through the whole place and ended up crashing into the doorway to the sitting room. That was a safe enough spar to cling to in a fucking storm, so he held onto it and scanned the room and fixed his fucking gaze on Hohenheim, who had a dinky little ornate teacup raised halfway to his open mouth.
Ed didn’t have time for that shit.
“Where’s Al?” he asked.
To what Ed would later recognize as Hohenheim’s enormous fucking credit, the man just blinked, smiled wanly, and said, “I’m not sure, Edward.”
Then he turned to his whole tea party full of openly-staring fucking middle-aged friends, added “Excuse me for a moment,” set his teacup down, stood up, and ushered Ed off into the kitchen-which required putting an arm around Ed’s shoulders for him to lean on, which made Ed rankle, but there wasn’t time for his pride or his feelings or any of that shit, because-
“Where’s Al?” he managed again, and his voice started shaking this time, but he pushed the fuck through it. “I was-okay, wait, help me out here. Last time, I didn’t give anything to go through the Gate to get here, right? It’s just-dying. That’s what does it. You die in a fucked-up-enough way, you just go. Right?”
“Based on both of our experiences,” Hohenheim said slowly, “that sounds like an accurate representation of eve-”
“But he gave me back this shit,” Ed said, gesturing to the empty shoulder and the stump of his thigh. “With the Stone. Only now it’s gone again, so that was a toll for something, right?”
Hohenheim, watching him very closely, nodded once.
“Because I was trying to give up fucking all of it,” Ed said, sounding ever-so-slightly fucking desperate even to his own ears now, but who the fuck could blame him, when-? “Only I’m here, I’m alive, more or less-so what the fuck is that about? What the fuck did I pay for, exactly?” His heart pounded far too loud-once, twice, three times, straining against his ribcage, echoing in his ears. “How much of him did I buy back?”
He saw her again, so fucking vividly-visceral down to the smell of the gore and the dreck and the dank walls of the dark basement-that his knee gave way, and only Hohenheim’s fast fucking reflexes to catch him kept him from slamming his dumb ass down on the floor.
“Careful,” Hohenheim said, which was a stupid thing people always said after the fact, which Ed had always sort of hated, but at least it was a decent gesture or something. And Hohenheim was easing him into one of the kitchen chairs, which was nicer still.
Ed sat. Ed stared at the floor. Ed put his hand out and felt the back of the chair, and then the table, and then the tin of loose leaf tea that was still sitting out on the table. He considered eating one of the leftover biscuits, but the thought of it made his stomach fucking roil, which made him suddenly aware of the fact that his whole fucking body felt like it was churning or collapsing or on fire-or, in some notable places, all three.
“Edward,” Hohenheim said, quietly, “breathe.”
“I’m fuckin’ trying,” Ed said, and he was, but there were little shadowy spots wavering in front of his eyes, and he gripped the table edge to make sure he stayed fucking upright. “Backlash, I guess. Just-shit, do you think-I mean, it must’ve put him back, right? It’s got a shitty-ass sense of humor, but it must’ve put him back; that’s how it works-that’s how equivalent exchange works. Sure, it’s bullshit when you apply it on a universal scale, but with alchemy, that’s the fucking point, and this was alchemy; this was straight-up fucking circles and light-”
“Edward,” Hohenheim said, sharper this time. “Breathe.”
“I fucking know,” Ed said. To fucking prove it, he sucked in a huge fucking lungful of oxygen and held it in his mouth with chipmunk cheeks, glaring up at the douchebag playing at Dad of the Year.
Hohenheim had to fight a smile. What a fucking asshole.
“That’s a start,” he said. “Sit still; let me get you some water.”
Always with the talking down and the giving orders-never mind that this particular set of instructions made a hell of a lot of sense given how hard Ed’s whole body was shaking.
“He must’ve made it,” Ed said as Hohenheim went for the tap. “He must have. That’s how alchemy works. The rest of it’s shit, but that’s how alchemy works. And I traded-I mean, even if it didn’t take what I planned for, I’m stuck here. Right? Which leaves me with more than I intended when I paid, but not a lot, ’cause… fuck, all I really got back was three-quarters of a body, right? So the rest of it-all of the rest of it-must’ve gone to Al.”
Hohenheim turned to glance at him. “That’s what I would assume.” The asshole brought over a water glass. There wasn’t any particularly shitty way to hand your twice- or thrice-abandoned progeny a glass of water, but if there had been, he probably would have done it like that. “It doesn’t always… calculate, I suppose you would say, especially literally, either. There are a lot of things it might include in the exchange that you wouldn’t have accounted for-unquantifiable things, concepts.” He paused. “Your access to people. Emotions.” He glanced down at Ed’s solitary remaining hand. “Abilities.”
Ed could practically fucking hear the gears in his own brain grinding together as they tried to mill that one.
Hohenheim pushed the water glass closer to his hand. “Drink this,” he said. He paused again, and his gaze slid towards the doorway towards the living room, where his probably-scandalized-as-shit guests were still sitting on their stuffy asses. “After that, we should probably find you some pants.”
It occurred to Ed that Hohenheim had just done something he’d never fucking done before: he’d stuck his neck out for Ed and taken care of him first and foremost-instantly, reactively. On instinct.
He’d acted like a fucking dad.
That changed things, a little bit.
Ed drew a deep breath, let it out, and lifted up the glass, which felt heavier than it should have.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
It was only when he was lying down that night that the rest of it finally struck him.
He’d been thinking-in an aimless, wandering, overwhelmed sort of way; with the tattered remnants of his battered brain. He’d been thinking about how fucking surreal it was; and at the same damn time, how fast he’d already started adjusting. The human brain was an extraordinary, inimitable fucking machine sometimes-it chewed up stimuli and spat them right the fuck back out. It was the most adaptable thing in the world. Hell, in a matter of about five seconds, he’d adjusted to a colossal alteration in his own visual perception of the world after a lifetime of a single expectation-
And the realization hit him like a leaden fucking anvil dropping into his guts:
The fucking color.
He still had it-still saw it. Right?
He did, didn’t he? He fucking-he hadn’t even thought about it; the concept hadn’t even crossed his mind through all of the fucking chaos and the emotional-pinball fucking ricochets back and forth and sideways and upside-down-
But he remembered-
There’d been colors in the kitchen, hadn’t there? He still had-
And that meant-
He scrambled up and started to hop across the fucking room; of fucking course he slipped two feet from the desk and ate hardwood, then had to drag himself up, then had to fumble frantically with the lamp until he caught the switch, and-
Yellow.
Definitely fucking yellow; definitely not fucking black or white or gray or-
Roy was alive.
Roy was fucking alive, and that was something, wasn’t it?
That was one fucking victory chalked up in his column, no matter how much else he might’ve lost.
Life goes on.
The trick is not letting it go on without you, even when a part of you would rather just get left behind.
Is every sunset in Amestris as gut-wrenchingly gorgeous as the one he saw that night? Was it just because it was the first one in color, or was it because of what was in front of him?
Sunsets are nothing fucking special here.
Just-gray.
Everything is gray.
Some mornings he’s so fucking terrified of the cloud-dimmed monochrome that his first impulse is to cut himself open and watch himself bleed.
He tacks shit up on the walls-red, green, blue, orange. Scraps of paper; advertisement fliers and doodles in different-colored pens. Samples to look at when he’s not quite fucking sure anymore.
It doesn’t go away-the color. Some days it’s so muted he fingers his pocketknife, and the agitation runs through him like an electric fucking current; but it doesn’t go away.
That’s something.
Right?
He always just figured it was bullshit. He always just figured it was a pile of fantastical romantic nonsense; he always just figured the reason there weren’t any hard and fast facts about it was because it was a load of crap.
Izumi never taught them about this. His mother never said a word. And he didn’t think to ask anybody else-it was stupid anyway, right? It was a stupid, schmoopy thing for silly, lonely people, and he had better things to do. He had a job-a mission. He had Al. He had a score to settle, and other people kept tallying more fucking marks.
He never even dreamed of asking any of the questions he needs answers for now.
Does it still count if you become somebody different? Does it still count if the world you live in twists you up on the inside so violently that you don’t even know yourself anymore?
Is it only literal death that wipes the colors from your sight again? Or does it count if one day you’re no longer the person that you used to be?
Can it happen to one person? Can you meet someone who fills in all your jagged goddamn edges, but the completeness only goes one way? Why doesn’t it apply to platonic kinds of love and shit, too? Did his fucking parents have it? He’s got these fuzzy recollections of surprise that his mother never seemed to need to touch the tomatoes to know when they were ripe, but that could just be his own brain rewriting shit retroactively; brains do that; they believe what they want to believe-
Can it happen to a single person twice? If your soulmate dies, is there such a thing as second chances?
Can you have two at once?
What does it mean in the grander social scheme of shit, right? Do you have to get along with them? Does it always work out? Obviously you can-have-that-with someone and still kind of want to throttle them and/or punch their fucking lights out at intervals; he’s more-or-less-living proof of that. Evidently you don’t turn into fucking Armstrong at the drop of a hat-at the tap of a fingertip-and start spewing roses everywhere or whatever shit.
So what is it? What is it really?
If it can’t be platonic-he and Al prove that part, because if there were ever two people more attached, he’s never fucking heard of ’em-then it must have something to do with… love. Right? But that’s a nebulous fucking concept to say the least, and it’s not like there haven’t been flickers of fury and light in his stomach and his throat and his chest over other human beings than Roy. Sure, if you crunch the numbers, the bastard’s probably leagues ahead of anybody else who’s ever roused the whole range of Ed’s emotions, but-
Then again…
It has been a while, hasn’t it? It’s been a while since Ed couldn’t ignore the throbbing in his guts when Roy’s mouth curved into a smirk, and the dark eyes flicked towards him. It’s been a while since he did his damnedest to burn it out, and all he got was a mouthful of curses and a deep, unshakable conviction that Roy would die for him, if it came to that. He doesn’t know why he knows that, but it’s true-same way the stars are; same way as the sky: fixed and bright and inescapable no matter where you run.
Maybe they’d be something.
Maybe if their hands met again-maybe if it was more than that; more skin; maybe if it was fingertips and palms and mouths and eyelashes-maybe if they had more time-
He knows he didn’t have a choice-or that he did, but he’d already made it, and the wheels were already in motion, and lingering would only have thrown him onto the fucking tracks and hacked him the fuck up. He had to go. It was Al; it was for Al; all of it’s always been for Al, and that’s how it should be; everything he’d ever cared about was on the fucking line-
No fucking possibility in the world-no matter how scarlet-orange it spills-would be worth that. No abstraction, no mist-edged potential, could pay for what was at stake. Nothing in the world could pay for that.
So he turned his back and walked away.
And there wasn’t time to mourn it.
There’s time, now. There’s time to think in guilty little cold-twist threads-with soft, warm tendrils winding outward, towards a thousand things he’s never known-
There’s time to wish for shit he can’t have and hasn’t earned.
Shit he doesn’t deserve.
Shit that he has to let go of, for his own damn sake, so he can keep it together and get the hell out of here one of these days.
So he asks the questions-solid, scientific inquiries. He digs his heels into the logic instead of walking the tightrope wires of the endless fucking what-ifs.
What’s it tied to, physiologically? If you lose something-a hand, an arm, a heart-does the connection dissolve? Do the colors go away? Or do you lose some finite part of the spectrum, and you get to keep barf-orange (which Ed wishes he didn’t know) and olive green? What’s the anatomical mechanism-?
Hell. This stupid-ass fucking world is full of science-that’s its solitary redemptive fucking feature, as far as he can tell. Maybe there’ll actually be some literature worth investigating, and he can find out.
Sometimes-
Sometimes, when it’s late; when he’s tired, and his brain is wrung-out-empty, and there’s nothing more that he could do towards heading home and finding Al even if he tried-
Sometimes, he lets himself wonder.
Lets himself imagine.
Lets himself pretend.
Maybe there would be a night-maybe a few nights; maybe lots of nights; maybe every motherfucking night; maybe-
Maybe there would be nights where he’d go over to Roy’s place. He doesn’t know what the hell Roy’s place looks like, so he makes it up-narrow foyer, cramped kitchen, set of stairs. That shit doesn’t make much of a difference except to set the scene anyway; he focuses most of his imaginative power on the study, which has all the books and curios and shit; and the living room, which has a fireplace and a couch; and the bedroom, which…
Well, the bedroom has Roy-dark eyes, smooth hands, and the little real-smile Ed only ever got to see on special fucking occasions. It was barely more than a myth for ages, but then there was a time when Ed saw him on one of the lawns trying to feed Hayate, and Roy didn’t know he was there, and when Hayate licked the bastard’s fingers, he just-
Smiled-
Without any of the smirking or the goading or the smugness or the bullshit; just for its own sake.
So that’s what Ed dresses him in. Maybe it’s unfair or something-maybe it’s fucking arrogant, actually; maybe it’s presumptuous of him to assume he’d be able to draw that out. What the fuck is he even capable of that could make Roy happy, anyway?
Maybe he wouldn’t have to do anything.
Maybe that’s part of what it means.
Maybe they could just-be. Just be together; just exist. Maybe that’s the point-maybe it’s about identifying someone whose charred, twisted, fucked-up little fragment of a soul can settle in with yours. Maybe it’s about broken edges that finally fit. Maybe it’s about somebody already having a little pocket in their battered fucking heart that’s shaped like you, and all you have to do is drop right in it.
Maybe it’s not even about-love.
Maybe it’s about acceptance.
Maybe it’s about understanding.
Maybe it’s about wholeness, in a way you’ll never find all on your own.
And maybe that’d be enough to start Roy smiling-if Ed just naturally filled up some of the emptinesses that he’s been carrying for his entire life.
That’s a nice thought. Does Ed deserve a nice thought or two? People say thoughts are free, but people say all kinds of shit that they don’t mean, and nothing’s free. Not really.
Ed lays his left arm over his eyes and tries to forget-tries not to hear the city; tries not to hear the pipes in the walls or the neighbors past them. He’s not here-not right this second, anyway. He’s home. He’s in Amestris. Al’s fine; Al’s great; Al’s all flesh and blood and beaming grins; he doesn’t have to worry about that. He can worry about Roy’s hands, and the way the drowning sun set fire to the whole world around them in that single moment before the dark drew in.
He can ghost through the imaginary foyer, past the kitchen, past the books-up the staircase, trailing his fingers on the banister; he’s at home here; he’s afraid of nothing.
He can push the bedroom door open. Roy’s sitting on the edge of a bed with a thick white down comforter over the top. He stands up and meets Ed halfway-meets him, and takes his hands, both of them; Ed registers the automail, but Roy doesn’t really seem to see it, and-
They-
Kiss.
Ed’s not quite sure what it’s supposed to feel like, but that’s not really the point. For now it feels warm and sweet and safe and soothing-feels the way that chocolate tastes. Not especially concrete; indistinct but good; it’s like a hug but closer, sharper, quickening his blood.
Roy leans down to rest his forehead against Ed’s, but for once in his obnoxious life, the bastard’s not dumb enough to comment on how far he has to tilt his head to get there. He lifts his hands up and lays them along either side of Ed’s jaw.
“It was always you,” Roy says. “All this time; it was always you.”
“Yeah,” Ed says. “Guess you’re stuck with me.”
“Likewise,” Roy says.
The contours of Roy’s face get kind of blurry. The eyes are clear as fucking day, but the little things-the exact way his hair lies, what size his ears are-are starting to get lost.
“Fucking wait for me,” Ed says. “God, Roy, fucking-please.”
“I have let you down,” Roy says, “but I have never betrayed you.” The same two fingertips-to Ed’s lips this time. “Remember that.”
Things have gotten worse. Well-“worse” is subjective, but probably nobody would argue.
Ed’s been around the block enough damn times to know that things usually get worse before they get better. He’s also been around long enough to know that sometimes they don’t get better at all.
Sometimes your asshole dad’s exhaustive letters just stop coming, and nobody at the university-nobody you used to know, no matter how many telegrams you send across the Channel-can tell you why.
Sometimes you meet somebody who looks so much like the person that you live for and left behind that it bowls you right the fuck over-and it’s so much like being stabbed straight through the fucking ribcage that you’d swear you can feel the hot blood streaming down your sides.
Sometimes you have no choice except to go through whatever’s passing for your existence feeling like there’s a film over everything-like you can push and prod and claw and scrape, but you never get through it, never touch anything-
Sometimes you sort of figure that the punishment was the fact that you survived.
Sometimes you wish you hadn’t.
And sometimes you can’t drown it, can’t dull it, can’t fight it.
Sometimes you don’t think you can hold on anymore.
Sometimes-
Alfons runs the palm of his hand just centimeters above the delicate faces of the forget-me-nots. They’re the same damn color as his eyes.
The really funny shit-Ed wishes there was someone he could share it with-is that Ed never knew how much he himself looked like a fucking dandelion until this color thing. It’s ridiculous. It’s a riot. Al would laugh; fucking Roy would probably laugh, if he’s even capable. He must be; that’s a human thing. What does his laugh sound like when it’s not so fucking sarcastic it’s unrecognizable as an expression of joy?
“You always gets the brightest ones,” Alfons calls to Gracia where she’s bent over some roses. “I don’t know how you do it. These are like the sky in summer.”
That’s a pretty high (ha) compliment from Alfons; the sky is about his favorite thing on-well, off-the fucking planet, so-
Ed stops.
He stares at Alfons-clever fucking fingertips still dancing in between the tiny little petals.
Ed’s voice comes out in a strangled fucking wreck. “You can-you can see-that?”
He knows Alfons fucking loves him in a way he’ll never be able to reciprocate. But it doesn’t-work that way. Does it? Sure, they’ve brushed past each other before; they live in a fucking closet together, after all, but it’s not… It can’t be one-sided. Can it?
Alfons stays very still. With his hand raised and his whole body frozen, he looks like he’s baiting a wounded animal with some questionable food.
“See what?” he asks slowly.
The words cling to the tip of Ed’s tongue-The colors, do you see the colors? Who is it? God, please, please, fucking tell me it’s somebody else, anybody else; tell me it’s not me; I couldn’t do that to you; that’s way past “unfair” and well into the territory of “ungodly”, although I guess it’s all the same-
But while the syllables sit and tremble there, his heart beats twice, and something sparks inside his brain.
Flags.
The flag for this miserable country-it’s black and yellow and red.
Why the fuck would it be three specific colors, two of them close on the spectrum, if nobody could see them?
Why would Gracia group some of the flowers by their shade, not their type?
Why would there be such a fucking thing as weisswurst if they didn’t have a distinction of pale shades other than white?
“Nothing,” Ed says, and his tongue tangles clumsily, like swallowing around a mouthful of stones. Fuck words, and fuck speech, and fuck German, and fuck this whole fucking universe- “I-never mind. I thought I-saw something. Sorry.”
All this time, he wasn’t listening. He wasn’t thinking about it-he just assumed the rules would stay the same.
What a fucking idiot.
He deserves this-all of it. This is the fucking price.
“Sorry,” he says again-like it matters; like it means anything; like it makes a difference against the long, long, long-ass ledger of failures and wrongs.
He can feel that Gracia’s stare is all confusion, but Alfons’s is-gentler. Vulnerable. Kind.
Ed hates him for being so similar at the core sometimes-so close, so desperately close, and still so fucking far.
“It’s all right,” Alfons says.
It’s always all right, with Alfons. He doesn’t have the slightest fucking idea what’s going on in Ed’s stupid head at any given moment, and he puts up with all of it anyway-and that’s so like Al.
Only there are moments where Ed surfaces from a stream of thoughts and catches him watching Ed’s face with this half-startled, wholly-puzzled sort of expression-and in those seconds, he looks like Roy.
“Sorry,” Ed says, and moves past before they ask any more fucking questions, and the heavy fake leg creaks beneath him all the way up the stairs.
He lies on his side that night, staring at the gold foil filigree on the label of the bottle on the desk. The cheap cognac doesn’t pull enough anymore to drag him across the barrier between the haze of pain and the haze of sleep.
All this time-all this time, everyone in this whole damn world had the sky and the grass and the river and the marble walls; everyone had wildflowers and ladybugs and Gracia’s soft gray-green eyes. None of that was his alone. That’s par for the course here; maybe it’s one of their returns on the dues that they pay for living. Maybe it’s their equivalent of alchemy-an ordinary magic anyone can own.
All this time, he’s been bullshitting himself.
Roy’s probably dead.
Even if he bested Bradley, somehow, against a thousand fucking steeply-slanted odds, Archer was on his fucking scent; and even if that didn’t finish him, the fucking military would never stand for seeing their idols felled by an upstart like Roy-
Roy’s probably dead.
Al might be, too-not dead so much as not-alive; never-alive; unwritten and undone. Not-brought-back. Hovering in the emptiness of the Gate somewhere, contemplating Ed’s squandered fucking sacrifice.
Or maybe they never fucking lived, right?
Maybe this is the real thing, and all of that was his vivid fucking imagination, cooked up overnight so many times he started to believe it as a fact.
The brain is incredibly fucking powerful, sometimes, after all. It has the power to deceive, and the power to dissuade, and the power to destroy itself.
But most days it makes more sense the other way around-this is the dream. This is the unknown, unknowable shadow-life, cut out of nightmares held up to the light, woven out of threats and death and miseries. This is a world where nothing works; where money’s getting meaningless; where children starve routinely, and no one even cares; where hope withers, and faith fails, and the sunlight’s weak enough to bleach the color out of almost everything.
When he dreams about home, it’s still in color.
Does that count for anything?
On the scales, in the books-
He knows the answer to that.
He knows that no one’s listening.
That’s what it really means-the word alone.
He should get his ass killed and get it over with-it’d be so damn easy, in a place like this, where there’s violence in every smile, where the potential for cruelty lingers on every indrawn breath. He could kill himself with the cognac if he tried at it, and maybe he should-it’d be better, wouldn’t it? He’s been the anomaly everywhere he’s ever gone. He’s the sore spot; he’s the snag; he’s the problem, and if he’d just remove himself-
But there’s a chance, still. He hasn’t gathered up enough proof either way. There’s a chance that Al or Roy or both of them are still on the other side of that towering doorway, alive and fucking kicking.
He has to know for sure before he does anything he can’t take back.
He has to get back somehow.
He has to know.
[Part II]