He Who Searches for Himself - Chapter 42
Chapter: XLII (42) - Second Chances
Rating: PG
Word Count: 9,447 / 421,403
Beta: AmunRa
Previous: Chapter list for Part 1 thru Current
Alternative: located on fanfiction.net
Chapter Summary: With everyone up and more or less mobile, three tired journeymen take a few days to recouperate and become reaquainted in Mustang's care.
Part XLII - #93 - Second Chances
Alphonse Elric sometimes felt like two different people: the boy who had lost his memories and the boy who had been armour. Today he was the boy who had been armour was newly flesh again, so from that perspective it had been years since Al had felt his body move like this. The younger of two Elric brothers ran through the floors of the hotel like he was made of elastic and weighed nothing at all; the tips of his bare toes threw him forwards and his arms pumped momentum along while the boy's hands grabbed at the air, hoping he could pull himself forwards a little bit more with each motion. He'd been doing it all day: running - there was so much excitement! Al bounced off the staircase railing before bolting upstairs, his legs launching him to every third step, and Al burst onto the top floor almost unburdened by gravity.
Like the guard monitoring the upper floor had been expecting his arrival, the officer's finger was pointed down the hall, "Miss Rockbell's room."
Al found his stride again as he powered down the hall, rebounding off of the doorframe and nearly falling into Winry's room, staggering to a stop at the foot of her bed and gasping for air.
Already awake, Winry looked back at Al through tired eyes, her hair sitting wildly atop her head. Slowly pushing herself up onto one elbow for support, Winry sat up a little further.
"Al…"
Alphonse lost interest in catching his breath; again he moved quickly, leaping onto the bed on all fours, scrambling across the sheets, and his arms flew around Winry. The pair fell back into the pillows and the bedding seemed to explode on contact. They sunk into the bed, Al holding on with all his might and Winry too heavily medicated to do much more than just hang on.
"You're okay?" Alphonse asked when the sheets had finished settling down around them.
"Mmhm," Winry nodded.
"I'm so glad," Al squeezed a little harder and it took all of his willpower not to cheer into Winry's ear, "and I'm so glad to see you! You're finally awake!"
"I'm glad to see you too," Winry giggled at the excitement in Al's voice, "I missed you."
"I missed you too," with another tight squeeze and a deep breath, Alphonse finally let go. He sat back on his knees at Winry's side, helping her sit up in the bed, "Are you okay? Is your leg bothering you at all?"
Winry was stuck between bewildered and overwhelmed as she processed the questions, "I'm fine Al. My leg, it…" Winry glanced down, concern slowly entering her face. Both Winry and Alphonse sat on the bed quietly before the blanket moved when Winry wiggled her toes.
"Your leg should be numb!" Al chirped, "The nurses numbed it because of the surgery and soreness. You can't feel it at all, can you?"
Winry wiggled her toes again. For a moment - only a fraction of a second - there was a very distant and unsettling look that passed through Winry's eyes. Before Al could think of anything to say or do about it, Winry smiled at him, "Its numb Al. It doesn't hurt."
"Great!"
"Al…" a frightened sound emerged quickly in Winry's voice, "is Ed okay?"
"Yeah," Al would have yelled his joy over that fact out the window if he could, "Brother's in the next room!"
Winry's relief could almost be felt - the loss of tension in her body, the loosening of her muscles, and the sigh in her next breath. Al's excitement teetered around for a moment before he slid himself off the foot of the bed and dropped to his knees.
"Did Brother get into some fights before you two came home? The Brigadier General says he's pretty banged up," the top of Al's head vanished from Winry's sights.
"Al…?" Winry's curiosity rose, "what are you-"
Al's head peeked over the mattress, "I have something for you!"
"You do?" Winry tilted her head.
"Yup," Al bounced to his feet, pulled something heavy out from under the bed, scraped it along the floor, and then heaved it onto the top of the mattress.
Winry's eyes lit like a child on Christmas morning, "My tool kit!"
"I think we found everything that was in it," Al beamed, crawling back onto the bed.
"Oh my beautiful tool kit," the medication wasn't strong enough to keep Winry bedridden from that. She pulled herself out from beneath the sheets and crawled to the foot of her bed, throwing open the lid, "what a sexy bunch of instruments you all are."
"I thought you might like to see that again," Al beamed and sat straight like a proud and praised puppy, "figured you hadn't wanted to get forcefully divorced from your favourite things."
Winry laughed at the notion, "Al, you have no idea."
Unable to do much more than grin and soak up the unfolding day, the younger Elric brother slid up side-by-side to Winry on the bed, "This is great - this is all great!" it was so strange for Al to try and verbalize how good it was to feel so successful when there had been no point prior when anything had gone this right, "I have my brother back, I have you back," Al's grin exploded, "I even got my memories back!"
"You got what!" Winry's blue eyes flew open wide, her dropped jaw morphing into a widening smile as she stumbled through her words, "I thought Izumi said… but, you got them back… really?"
"Uh huh!" Al glowed.
"Al, that's fantastic! I'm so happy for you," Winry smiled, a still-tired pair blue eyes looking into a sparkling set of golden ones, moving like she was prepared to hug him…
… and suddenly the whole exchange derailed. Winry froze, "What the-?"
"What?" Al looked around abruptly.
Winry leaned in nose to nose, pushing Al back in surprise, "What happened to your eyes?"
"Oh," Al blinked; even after staring at himself for hours on end in the mirror, his mind still didn't register that his eyes were a new colour, "I dunno."
"Mr. Elric, Miss. Rockbell?" a voice interrupted.
Both Al and Winry turned to the doctor who stepped into their reunion.
"I'm going to need Miss Rockbell for the next short while," the older, burly man folded his arms, "to ensure everything is as it should be. I'm going to ask you to excuse yourself, Alphonse."
"Okay," Al slid himself off the side of the bed.
"No no, wait Al, come back for one sec," Winry's hands patted down on the sheets, "get up here."
Al glanced to the doctor who shrugged his approval and crawled back up onto Winry's bed again while she motioned for him to re-seat himself in front of her. Even while Al was still settling Winry collected one of his hands and held it in her grasp until he was seated. Al watched with interest as Winry turned his hand over and opened it palm-up. Al had noticed something about everyone else's hands - they all seemed more worn than his. Izumi had told Al at one point in time that Ed had transmuted him to a state that was something like being brand-new; his hands and feet, elbows and knees, none of them felt like they had any wear or tear. Though, out of all the hands he'd come in contact with since his older brother had brought him back, even after all the journeying, Winry still had the softest touch out of anyone. Winry placed her other hand down on top of Al's open palm and looked at him for a few moments. Winry's eyes moved around, looking him over carefully like she was inspecting him for something, and settled for a straight-on stare back into Al's eyes. It was a soft gaze that lasted long enough to cause Al to shift around and hope Winry couldn't see him blush.
Al was given his hand back suddenly and Winry's hands landed on his ears - she dipped his head forward and left a strong kiss on Al's forehead before freeing him.
"Go hang out with your brother for a while," Winry told him, sending the boy slinking off the bed again, red in the cheeks and grinning fiercely, "he missed you like crazy."
Al backed himself up to the door, thumbs finding the belt loops on his pants, "Sure, I'll make sure he's not giving the other doctors headaches."
"You do that," Winry smiled, "and come back and see me later!"
"Yup," Al bowed his head and scampered from the room, "will do!"
Edward Elric concluded that the Amestris sky was brilliant - brilliant with its scenery, brilliant with its colours, brilliant in its vibrancy, and just brilliant. Throughout the evening the sun moved down through Ed's vision, skipping across slanted rooftops, and eventually dipping below the skyline - but not below the horizon - and the sunset managed to create a host of colours Ed had forgotten had existed. Sunsets in Germany and Britain were nothing compared to this. The polluted, lifeless grey that had been infused into everything was washed away and Ed was at a loss for how to explain how it felt to see that.
Ed glanced over when the latch to the roof was rattled and the hinges groaned. Ed grinned when his younger brother's bright gaze fixate on him - the colour change in Al's eyes hadn't been hard to get use to and Ed actually thought it made the expressions on his face shine a little more.
Every time he saw Al it was like drifting through a good dream - Ed hadn't seen this much of his brother's flesh face outside of his nightmares in ten years.
"Watching the sunset?" Al asked as he walked up.
"Yeah," Ed grinned as Al sat down next to him.
"What were the sunsets like beyond the Gate?" Al crossed his legs and looked up to Ed.
It wasn't like Ed to stall when Al asked questions, but he took a moment anyways and just looked at Al in the evening light. The Alphonse Elric sitting next to him was exactly what Ed had wanted to reclaim and at first and second glance it still didn't quite seem real. None of the important things Ed had ever wanted, or thought he'd wanted, had ever been reclaimed, so there was a throbbing lump in the centre of Ed's chest that made him think he was waiting for the punch line to a cruel joke to appear or that he'd finally see the catch in his life for this reward. Even though he'd known months in advance that Al had his body back, that he was alive and healthy, to look at his younger brother like this, to know this would be what he would see day in and out, Ed felt an endless bombardment of relief, joy, and excitement.
Al would get to grow up.
"Brother?"
Ed's nose wrinkled and he threw himself back into the conversation, "Sunsets sucked beyond the Gate. The sky was filthy."
"Pollution?" Al's asked.
"No," Ed shook his head, "just how things were: everything looked dirty."
"Oh," Al sat forwards, casting his gaze out towards the remnants of sundown, "I kinda got a glimpse when I was at the Gate, but what kind of things were there for you to do beyond the Gate?" the younger brother rubbed his hands over his knees, "like, you couldn't have possibly just studied alchemy for so long?"
Ed chewed on the question for a moment, which was sort of like trying to grind down a huge wad of leather. What did he do beyond the Gate, "Well… I'd been working the last year. I had to get money somehow."
Al sat himself up a little higher, eyes widening with interest, "What did you do?"
"I…" Ed suddenly realized that his line of work had been very, very unlike him; he hated that world for domesticating him, "I was on office assistant."
"You were a what?" a laugh was buried in Al's surprised voice.
"I was the office bitch in the science wing of the university dad worked at," Ed suddenly hopped he wouldn't have to tell that to anyone more than Al… the looks on peoples' faces would get old really fast.
Al didn't speak up again for some time; Ed turned to him and sat silently while he watched his brother wrap himself up deeply in thought. Al sat quietly for a few moments, twitching his nose while he thought. Ed recalled the wretched feeling of watching his younger brother think as a suit of armour: Al would be frozen - almost vanishing into his thoughts like he ceased to exist - and nothing would move. If Ed was lucky, Al would hum his thoughts. It was a painful silence that lasted as long as it took to draw his conclusions. Now Ed looked on while Al thought, watching his brother's eyes move, brow lower, nose flinch, lips purse, shoulders roll, and feet shuffle.
It was five seconds where everything was just so right.
"I have a question," Al finally blurted out, "Dad was with you beyond the Gate, wasn't he?"
Ed didn't think he would have encountered that question and have everything around him feel good enough that it would just roll off his shoulders. Ed dressed himself up in a frown anyways, "Yeah, Dad was beyond the Gate with me."
Al shifted himself around so that he faced Ed, "Did you know him very well? Did you two talk?"
Ed sat up a little straighter and looked back at a number of years' worth of memories, "I… um," and after some thought and consideration Ed dug out the desire he needed to tell Al so many of his stories, "I lived with Dad."
"Huh?" Al blinked.
There was a trove of stories and Ed wanted to tell his brother so much of it.
"I lived with Dad for most of the time I was there."
Al was very lucky he was already sitting down.
"What?" Al gawked with disbelief, his eyes darting around in confusion. Ed's reply defied everything the boy had ever believed possible between his brother and their father, "Y-you did? Wh… w-why? How?"
Ed almost felt like laughing at the reaction - if someone had told him his story in advance, Ed wouldn't have believed it either, "I'd lost my arm and leg again and I was sick. Dad found me in a hospital and when I was well enough to leave he brought me home with him. Dad kind of um… forced his fathering on me."
"And you took it?" it really just wasn't sinking in for poor Al. This was his older brother who loathed and despised their father to a wretched degree.
Ed smirked at Al's reaction, "I took it. I didn't take it willingly most of the time…" Ed hesitated, allowing his eyes to lower and his thoughts to drift back to the beginnings of a lonely journey that felt like it had started a lifetime ago… and strangely it came after another lifetime he'd had that was even farther away. Ed looked back up to his younger brother and felt a little old, "but I didn't know where I was, I didn't have anywhere else to go, and I wasn't in a position where I could take care of myself. So, yeah, dad tried to play parent for me."
Al's wide eyes bounced off the rooftops surrounding them before they leapt back to his brother again, "Did you two get along?"
Ed narrowed an eye, "That depends on your definition of 'getting along'."
Before Al dug up another question the younger boy let his focus fall into his hands, "When I reached into the Gate, I could see everything. And I don't just mean 'everything'; I mean I could see everything - even things that weren't things. It was too much, I couldn't understand it all, but I understood enough to know that if I thought about you, I'd find you… and I did," Al looked up to his older brother, "but I tried to look for dad and he wasn't there."
Ed swallowed his next breath, "Dad died, Al."
Preceding silence wasn't needed, the younger brother just slowly nodded, "I figured that's what happened. Do you know how he died?"
Al might never get out of his older brother a proper explanation for the gut-wrenching, sickened look that sat behind Ed's eyes, but Ed still gave him an answer, "Envy killed him."
Again something was said that derailed Alphonse's thoughts, "Envy? What was Envy doing there?"
"He got through the Gate at some point," Ed shook his head, distancing himself from a few memories, "He didn't come through like the rest of us, he came through as… well, a thought in people's heads. He was a homunculus with no soul and his body didn't make the trip, but his mind came through and floated around looking for someone he could either use or wanted to use him," Ed slowly pulled in a deep breath before continuing, "Envy's stuck there now, there's no way to bring him back. He can be their nightmare from now on."
Al had no reply for his brother's statement, the boy's eyes only wandered away and drifted off into the sky.
"I'm sorry you never got to spend much time with him, Al," Ed's hand finally patted down atop his brother's soft hair, "you would have been able to appreciate him a lot more than I did."
"I can't change it," Al shook his head, a definite sound of disappointment being suppressed, "so I'll just have to get stories about dad from you."
Ed rummaged his hand through his brother's hair, rocking the boy's head with the motions before letting it go, "Well…"
Al looked to Ed as the older brother twisted his face with some thoughts.
"If you want…" Ed narrowed an eye and the bridge of his nose creased. Ed thought for a moment about what he wanted to say and finally drew back to Alphonse, his lips curling with amusement, "I can tell you the story behind how Dad got himself royally fired from his advisory job with Britain's armed forces before we moved to Germany. It's kinda entertaining."
Al's eyes again widened with intrigue, curiosity, a bit of concern, and fascination above all else; a number of looks that Ed might never get tired of seeing on the face of his baby brother. Even if Ed never regained feeling in his arm and leg, or if the damage done from the journey stung forever, none of the wounds would ever be enough to overpower the feeling of sitting right here right now. Ed would willingly keep all the imperfections if it meant he could have moments like this for the rest of his life.
Alphonse grinned at his brother, "Sure!"
Winry Rockbell had pushed the sorry excuse for a table in her hotel room up next to the window after a painstaking amount of effort. It wasn't a great view but Winry still liked seeing what she could of the trees, the rooftops, the sky, and the stars - even in the night full of faint street light it absolutely beat out the mundane scenery she'd just spent months looking at. At some point during her observatory evening she'd managed to hobble over and turn off the lights so the stars would show up better. Winry hadn't noticed until she was looking at an Amestris sky again: there were so few stars in the other world's sky.
A knock interrupted everything and Winry glanced over her shoulder when the door opened. The intruder made her smirk.
"Well, hey there stranger," Winry narrowed a teasing eye at Ed through the dark room, "I heard a rumour you existed. What brings you to this neck of the woods?"
"Ha ha," Ed snorted at the greeting and hid his hands in his trouser pockets after shutting the door, "Shouldn't you be in bed?"
"Do you think I'm any good at being bed ridden?" Winry rolled her eyes at the question, "and what do you think you're doing coming into a girl's bedroom if she should be sleeping? You knocked then let yourself in -didn't even wait to see if I'd answer."
Ed puffed out his cheeks and huffed as he walked up to the window, "Chances of you being asleep were poor to none, and if you were asleep I'd have left."
Winry narrowed an eye and patted her hands atop her knees, "Lucky for you I wasn't trying to get changed."
Ed drew to a stop at Winry's side and his cheek twitched while he looked out the window, his hands sinking deeper into his pockets, "I worked this hard to get home alive, I'd like to stay that way."
Winry withheld the urge to burst out laughing at him, "So, what's up?"
"Nothing much," Ed shook his head and stuck his nose to the window, "what were you looking at?"
"Nothing much," Winry smiled sweetly and gave Ed back his useless answer, tipping her head innocently when she caught his gold eyes look at her unimpressed, "just seeing how everything looks from here."
Ed gave a dismissive nod to everything, "Did you want to go up onto the roof and have a look?"
Winry choked on her laugh, "Do you know how hard it was to get all this set up with me hobbling around on these wooden… things," she gave a wave of her hand to her crutches, "I can barely get to the bathroom, I'm not hauling myself onto the roof. That'd take hours."
Ed chuckled at the sour look Winry put on to go with her protest, "I can take you up onto the roof, Win."
"I don't want to be toted around, Ed," Winry sighed, "if I'm going up to the roof, I'll take myself."
"Are you doing okay?" Ed's question fell out like he'd managed to pop the balloon that held the words.
Winry figured he'd shown up for some purpose that was more than just nothing. The problem with the question was that the gauge she'd once used to determine 'okay' was in need of repairs and Winry wasn't entirely sure what a proper answer to the question would be.
"Well… I'm home, I'm safe, I'm with family…"
Ed's left hand surfaced and landed carefully on Winry's shoulder, "But… you're okay?"
Yes, Winry was okay because she wasn't dead or in a life threatening situation anymore… but Winry had been pulled right out from middle of the most terrifying ordeal she'd ever been through and plopped right back into real life. Winry felt like she was still supposed to be afraid of something. She didn't want to even glimpse at the events in the Thule Hall; it was done, she wanted to move on. No, Winry corrected her thoughts, she didn't want to 'move on' - she wanted to run from it.
Winry straightened around on the table and collected Ed's hand from her shoulder. She pried his left hand open wide, watching Ed's fingers straighten like his knuckles were stiff hinges. Ed had used this one hand every day, let it take abuse every day, and continued to rely on it every day to take care of them both and make sure Winry was in some state of 'okay'. Ed was always trying to take care of Winry, he'd told her that and was stubborn about it to the n'th degree; even when Winry would stomp her feet because she didn't want it and even when she was hurt enough that Winry really needed to hear Ed say he'd look after her. Winry looked up to Ed, eyeing the confused and awkward look on his face. There were black stitches on Ed's purple and yellowed right cheek bone; even in the dark, their Amestris world was clear enough that the colours could be made out, and when Winry's memories reminded her of the moment leading up to when Envy had struck Ed to cause it, Winry wished she could turn her mind off. Or crawl away from her thoughts. Or make it all un-happen. Or just-
Ed's voice intruded, "Winry?"
Winry blinked and looked at Ed for a few moments, the concern on his face and in his eyes defeated any other shade, colour, or expression he might have donned.
"You okay?"
After a moment was taken to thoroughly read the look on Ed's face, Winry smiled and let his hand go. She rose on her good leg, holding onto Ed's shoulder to steady herself and Ed grabbed her arm as she wobbled. Even before she was steady Winry threw her arms around his neck and shoulders, squeezing with all her might. Ed staggered a few steps back, grabbing Winry as he stumbled trying to steady them both. When Ed's two feet became firmly planted and Winry teetered around on only one tiptoe, everything in the room spun to a stop.
"Thank you," Winry spoke quietly, "for how hard you're always trying to take care of me."
Without another word the two of them stood in the middle of Winry's dark room, a slit of streetlight the only thing peeking in from between two buildings shielding Winry's window. No one moved within the room, no movement came from beyond the four walls either, like everything had frozen just as Edward had. There were always these awkward moments where Winry would engage Edward beyond his comfort zone and he honestly wouldn't know what to do - it was sort of like interacting with a statue. But Winry had whittled down the time it took Ed to figure himself out, so it wasn't long before the statue softened into someone who put a hand down on the middle of her back and wrapped the other arm around her shoulders.
"And I'm so glad you came home," Winry's fingers dug into his shirt, "I'm glad that we're safe and that it's over and that we won't go back," she tucked her forehead away into a place on Ed's shoulder that he'd set aside for her tears and left it dry. "I don't know how I'm supposed to feel right now and I don't know how to describe how I do feel. I don't know if I'm okay or if I'm something else. I think I'm supposed to be talking or crying or venting or dealing over a lot of things and I can't… it's just not there," Winry's shoulders rose when Ed's grip tightened, "but I'll be okay, I promise."
After the moments she'd used to take her next few breaths, Winry found herself on the receiving end of a hug that out muscled her own. The world beyond Winry's window on this night remained strangely calm - no distant gunfire, sounds of people, or wind in the trees, and the world in front of Winry's window offered very little to overturn the silence. Wrapped in a quiet midnight cloak, Winry closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry," one of the two hands on Winry's back found its way into her hair to hold her head, while the other arm wrapped tight around her back, "for everything you've gone through and everything you've had to deal with."
"It's not your fault. It's never been your fault."
"I'm still sorry."
Beyond the Gate Ed had held himself accountable for Winry; what she'd dealt with and the things that had happened to her. Ed had held himself accountable for Winry every day; for what she'd lost and what she had the potential to lose. Ed held himself accountable for Winry and he would do everything in his power to stave off the world from breaking her down like it had spent every day for five years trying to do to him, even if the harder Ed tried, the larger the blows they were dealt became.
Ed had made himself so accountable for Winry's state of affairs that, by the time there were wounds on her body and waking nightmares preparing to become demons in her head, the places Ed kept her safe, the warm and quiet places where she could hear him breathe, became the safest places in the world.
Some point well after Winry had told herself to ignore the soreness of the tired leg she'd been balancing on, Ed's grip loosened when she moved; Winry reached back for the table she'd been sitting on and Ed helped her slide back on. Winry tucked her hair behind her ears and looked up to Ed as he stepped away, capturing his hands before he could hide them again and Winry held them in her lap. Ed never tried to worm away or hide the embarrassment painted on his face, in fact Ed seemed quite entranced by the entire engagement; a very enthralled pair of golden eyes watched her with an expression that was some kind of cross between a person engrossed in a story and a deer caught in headlights. Winry wanted to giggle at how lost Ed seemed to be.
"Mr. Mustang's going to want to talk with us properly tomorrow, isn't he?" Winry breathed life into her voice.
"Yeah," Ed nodded.
Winry's brow tightened, "You guys are going to have to figure out what to do about Dante, aren't you?"
Ed's eyes were the first thing to depart the conversation, "Yeah."
"Okay," like she'd expected the answer, Winry accepted the response with a nod, letting go of Ed's hands, "then I'm going to go to bed and make sure I'm wide awake for question period."
"Yeah," Ed backed himself out of the engagement with a few reverse steps, then he straightened his shoulders and let his hands vanish into his pockets, "yeah, good idea."
Winry watched while Ed's next few steps turned him around and took him through the dark room to her door, his feet heavy on the floor like they weren't on his list of things to think about and his ponytail bouncing wildly with each step. Ed grabbed the knob, turned it, but didn't open the door - he looked back first.
"When we're done with Dante and it's safe to travel, I'll take you home like I promised."
Winry's brow rose - that didn't make sense, "Ed, we are home."
Ed stood at the door for a moment, barely able to be seen in the pale evening light. With his face locked up in a stern, unwavering expression, his powerful eyes the only thing catching what little of the street light made it through the room, Ed stared back at Winry and pulled open the door.
"Not all the way."
Roy Mustang had been more than prepared to capture and corral Edward coming downstairs that morning, figuring the once-metal FullMetal Alchemist would rise with the sun. While he lounged around alone amidst a collection of leather chairs pushed together to encircle a table littered with empty glasses and beer bottles waiting for the sun to rise, what Roy hadn't been prepared for was Ed making his way back into the building at four in the morning.
Edward Elric was a startling thing for the officer to see no matter how many times he'd encountered Ed since his return. Beyond the fact that Ed was monumentally taller, he also carried himself differently. For this ungodly hour jaunt, Ed was dressed in a pair of beige trousers and wore a white dress shirt in place of the medical casuals he'd been dressed in since his rescue. The shirt was long sleeved, but Ed had rolled it up snug around his upper arms, left the top button of the shirt undone, yet he'd still chosen to tuck it into his pants. Ed wore a simple pair of sandals, his hair was tied up in a ponytail, and to Roy's amazement the entire outfit looked nice, casual, and properly pressed.
Mustang couldn't get over how strange that look was for Ed.
"What?"
Mustang retrieved himself from his thoughts and stared blankly at Ed's frown.
"What are you staring at?" Ed's brow fell further, one foot on the lower rung of stairs leading up into the suites of the building.
Shaking himself free from his analysis, Roy straightened himself out in his seat, gulped down what was left of his drink, and pointed to one of the opposing chairs, "Have a seat."
Ed took a moment to think about it before turning and taking up the man's offer. Roy watched the bandaged right hand hang from the flesh arm attached to Ed's proper shoulder as the whole limb swung in time with each step; he'd never observed Ed function with two matching arms before.
"What are you doing up this time of night?" Roy sat forwards as Ed dropped himself into a seat cushion, taking a bottle up from the mess and refilling his glass.
"Couldn't sleep," Ed pushed both his hands through his face, clearing away his hair, before it all fell back into place again, "thinking."
Mustang swirled his drink, melting away what was left of his ice cubes, "Ah, they must be deep thoughts to keep a man up so late." Without adding anything further to the current conversation, Mustang took a sip from his glass and then watched while Ed gave him a long, hard look before snapping his eyes around the arrangement on the table.
Ed finally narrowed an eye, "Are you absolutely wasted?"
Roy snorted, taking another drink, "I haven't been here that long. I can't speak for those who sat in these chairs before me though."
For whatever reason Mustang couldn't pinpoint, the response seemed to bring Edward to life. He watched while the golden blonde fished through the collection of glasses on the table, unearthed one that was potentially clean, and pushed it across the table. Roy blinked at it.
"You sharin'?" Ed questioned.
Mustang cocked the brow over his seeing eye, "Magic word?"
"Fuck you," Ed chirped.
For someone who'd apparently been up all night, Roy was more than entertained by Ed's socially good spirit - it was unusual. Roy reached forwards, picked up the glass, and stood up, "I didn't know you drank."
"Now you do," Ed's elbow hit the arm of the chair and his chin landed in his hand.
"Why are we drinking together?" Roy asked as he walked through the room. He did actually want to know why; this scenario wasn't in his top 100 in the list of things he was expecting to do this year.
Ed's reply was blunt, "Something new to do."
"Yeah?" Mustang reached onto the counter and flipped open the lid to an ice box, filling the stout glass half full with ice cubes, "well, word to the wise, I don't recommend drinking too often," he fingered his way through a choice of bottles that had been set aside from the collection of beer and generic lacquers that littered the centre table, "you end up with hangovers, memory loss, an empty wallet, and naked women in your bed," Roy undid a tall bottle and filled Ed's glass enough to submerge the ice. He glanced back, picking up his tone, "the latter of which isn't a bad thing mind you."
Roy was rewarded with a red-faced scoff followed by an eye roll.
"And I've always found I sleep rather well afterwards," the amusement on Roy's face continued to grow as the conversation topic frayed a couple of hair's on Ed's head, "it can also help release some tension. If you haven't tried it recently I do recommend acquiring company if you're having trouble sleeping."
Ed responded to Mustang with a magnificent deadpan expression and his flattest tone, "Not bloody likely."
Roy hesitated before grinning at Ed's reply. He sat himself down again and pushed the drink across the table to Edward, then wove his fingers together and put his forearms down on his thighs, "Where did you get that?"
"Get what?" Ed sniffed his drink and crossed his eyes.
"The accent," Mustang mused.
Ed's interest in the drink waned, "I don't have an accent."
"No, I suppose not… not really," Roy reconsidered his statement. Beyond the fact that Ed's voice sounded deeper with the absence of his scratchy pubescent teenager problem, there was something very odd that kept popping up now and then, "you have an interesting inflection in your voice that comes and goes - it sounds faintly like an accent," he watched while Ed curiously swirled his drink around, searching for legitimacy to Roy's statement, before the officer added a touch of clarification, "It sounds snooty."
There was a moment where Ed's brow rose, his eyes widened, and his lips began to curl - like the blonde knew something Roy didn't - before Edward finally burst out laughing. It wasn't exactly what Roy had been expecting for a reaction, so the man watched while Ed had himself a good laugh over the insight and wondered if he'd ever be let in on the joke. When Ed finished calming himself down he surprised Roy by abruptly downing the entire glass of alcohol he'd been given, nearly dropping it on the table by the time he'd taken the last swallow. What remained of Ed's amusement turned into coughs - the alcohol watering his eyes and flushing his face red.
Mustang's night suddenly felt quite unbelievable. He collected the glass Ed had discarded and made his way back to the side counter again, replenishing the oversized shot Ed had taken, and promptly returned to the two man engagement.
Ed's left fist thumped his chest as he continued to fight the after effects of the drink, "Snooty?"
"Yes snooty, and don't drink this one so fast," Roy put the glass down in front of Ed - now seemed as good a time as any for more relevant questions, "how's the feeling in your arm and leg?"
Ed shook his head, giving a sniff to the drink in front of him before picking it up, "Same as the last time you asked."
Roy felt a twinge of disappointment - he was kind of hoping Edward had a revised answer for him beyond 'numb', "And I heard you mention earlier you are twenty-two now?"
Clearing his throat, Ed shifted his posture and sunk into the arm of his chair, "Yeah, I turned twenty-two a couple of weeks back."
Roy was going to have to do a lot more work to convince himself that Ed wasn't sixteen going on seventeen even if it was visually apparent he was not a child. The officer voiced another question, "That means you've been gone for six years?"
Ed shook his head a little, "Mmm about five and a half. Not six."
The way Ed spoke so casually about the length of time he'd been gone for was just a little unsettling from Roy's perspective. There were over five years in Edward's life where he'd lived in some place, existed in some way, and survived somehow in a world the rest of them would never know. Roy mulled over the answers he was getting, finding them willingly given without Edward's snarl or snark, and figured he'd continue with question period until Ed's willingness to engage in civil conversation waned. With that thought in mind, Roy daringly drove his questions up a few notches.
"Who assaulted you?"
"Excuse me?" Ed narrowed an eye.
Mustang slowly walked his carefully placed line of questions, "Obviously there was an incident around the time you came home, but when the doctors checked you over we found a host of old injuries that predated what we could see. What's been happening to you?"
In the middle of the night that was far closer to dawn than dusk, within the poor overnight lighting that the hotel kept on, Roy sat and waited while the question was weighed over in Ed's mind. The older man watched Ed's hand push aside the hair that covered his face, his fingers scratch into his scalp as it all fell into place again, and then Ed moved on to scratch the back of his neck.
"We were jumped," Ed scowled, his voice toning down into a low growl, "we were in an alley and got jumped."
For a moment Mustang considered requesting an elaboration, but unlike everything else Edward had offered up during the conversation, this one had a good deal of bite to it and it felt like it contained a substantial amount of the wall Ed had kept around himself for so long. Something in the back of Roy's mind told him the door to this question was a little bit more closed than he'd have liked it to be. As the officer debated where he`d take his questions next, Ed beat him to the next word.
"You know, when we were in Dante's ballroom," Ed took a moderate drink from his glass, a golden eye twitching at it when he swallowed, "and everything was a mess, I can remember asking you to take care of Al and Winry for me…"
Roy's brow rose, "I'm impressed you can remember that. You were out of it."
"Yeah," Ed shook his head like he was trying to escape the memory. He took a sip from his drink, "but you still took care of them anyways."
Mustang frowned, "You say that like you didn't expect me to."
"Not that," Ed looked into his glass of dwindling alcohol, the tension in his brow vanishing, "just, thanks for looking after them for me."
Mustang sat silently for a moment. Before all other thoughts occurred to him, the one thing Roy couldn't shake was how worn Ed was sounding. The subsequent thought interrupted the first - Roy hadn't even considered being thanked for that, let alone thanked from Ed. While Roy watched the blonde show deliberate interest in the drink in his hand, the officer's thoughts fell back to a moment where he'd been running through the Rizembool countryside, chasing down a runaway boy wearing a braid down the back of his neck. What Roy wouldn`t have given to get it through that stubborn child's thick skull that his commanding officer was trying to look out for him. He was trying to help. Roy had wanted to help. He'd always had the boy's best interest in mind - everyone around them did - if Ed had only opened his eyes wide enough to see it.
"You're welcome," suddenly Roy wanted to know the entirety of what had happened to Ed beyond the Gate, but since the sun was already crawling out from behind the horizon, the details would have to wait, "and you should get some sleep."
"You know," Ed paused to finish off his drink, clanking the glass down on the table as he swallowed before standing up, "this shit is disgusting."
Roy grinned, "It's strong. You'll sleep like a log."
Ed gave a thoughtful nod and headed towards the stairs up into the building, "Thanks for the nightcap."
With his grin still present, Roy called out a teasing bid goodnight, "Did you want me to ask one of the hostesses if any of them would like to be referred to your room before the sun has completely risen?"
Ed stopped on the fourth step, his head shaking while his fingers danced around on the handrail, "I hope you die in a fire."
Roy let out a sharp, barking laugh, "Hardly."
Al had caught Winry sitting at the edge of the pool from an upper floor window. He watched her sit quietly on her own for a few minutes, the sun dangling directly overhead, her wounded left leg tucked away while the other dangled in the cool water of the pool. Al couldn't quite make out what Winry had in her hands, it was a metallic object of some kind and she turned it over on occasion, but whatever it was had her undivided attention. The younger Elric brother gave up his vantage point and made his way down, smiling across the deck to Winry when the screen door made a ton of racket as he came outside to join her.
"Hey Al!" Winry called.
Al walked up alongside her, kicked his sandals off and sat down. All dipped his legs into the pool, eyeing the wrench he spotted cradled in Winry's grasp, "What's that for?"
"It's for Ed," Winry sighed, like the object was a lot heavier for her than the weight in her hands would suggest, "well, sort of - it's the wrench that I bought ages ago to work on his AutoMail. He doesn't need it anymore… I'm not sure what I should do with it."
"You can use it for other things, can't you?" even Al had hung around Winry long enough to know when a tool was a little more than your garden variety kind.
The wrench was turned over in Winry's hands again and she wiggled her foot in the water, "I've used it for other things before it's just… this and Ed's AutoMail were synonymous things. My poor wrench has lost its purpose," she looked over to Al abruptly and spoke with a pouty lip, "it's purposeless and I feel sorry for it."
"That poor wrench," Al bit his lower lip and tried not to laugh, which was hard to do because it became obvious Winry was trying not to laugh at herself, "maybe you should hold a decommissioning ceremony for it?"
The discussion didn't go much further, both Al and Winry turned over their shoulders when the noisy screen door complained again. Ed ducked out of the shaded cover of the hotel and winced in the sun.
"Brother! We're debating the fate of your AutoMail wrench," Al announced as Winry flipped it around once more in her hands.
Ed's brow rose as he sat down on the other side of Al, "Yeah? Maybe you should melt it down and make something new?"
"I don't want to melt it," Winry scowled, "it's a fantastic wrench!"
Al had to admit he also felt a little put off by Ed's desire to melt it, "Don't you want to keep it Brother, like as a memento or something?"
Ed snorted, "No."
"Well, why don't we go get lunch and think about it more over food?" he looked between Ed and Winry flanking him, "I'm hungry."
A wild smirk swept into Ed's face, "For a little guy, you sure do eat a lot."
"Actually," Al pulled himself to his feet, straightened his posture, and looked smugly at Ed while his older brother stood up alongside him, "like a normal person, I'm a growing boy at this age," Al ducked out of the swat Ed made at him, "so let's go inside!"
No sooner had Al expressed his desire to head indoors than a flurry of gunfire and the sound of glass exploding from a window overhead kept the trio from going anywhere. Winry flattened herself against the pool deck and both Elric brothers dropped to their hands and knees. All three sets of eyes watched glass rain down from a shattered window in the hotel room a few meters away. Again a round of gunfire was set off and suddenly the sound of men's voices rose up.
"Get in the pool!" Ed ordered, "the door's too far, get in the pool Al!"
Alphonse scrambled towards his brother, getting grabbed by his wrist and then the scruff of his neck as Ed hauled him into the water. Without being told, the trio took a collective deep breath and all three vanished beneath the surface of the water in the deep end of the pool. The water had more than enough clearance above all their heads to hide in and Al opened his eyes as he sank to the bottom, looking to Ed and Winry as everyone put their backs to the pool edge and tried to crouch on the pool floor for as long as they could.
Really, this idea of hiding their movements at the bottom of the pool to discourage gunfire had a sixty-second life at best; all depending on when the first person needed to come up for air. Before anyone needed to breathe, the calmness in the water was abruptly disturbed by what felt like a boulder being dropped into the pool. The water surged, pressing the trio into the pool wall and pinning them for a moment before the backlash ripped them away. Three scrambling bodies rose to the surface.
Ed was the first to gasp for air, followed quickly by Al then Winry. Everyone frantically looked to a black mass in the water as they scrambled to get to the pool edge. All three pairs of eyes watched as the mass burst out from the water and landed on the patio deck like a dark soggy mop had been flung there.
Ed, Al, and Winry watched as Wrath snapped his head and threw his hair back, sending a shower of water everywhere.
Ed's jaw dropped, "You're still around?"
With purple eyes looking more like an animal than anything human, the homunculus grinned at the trio hungrily, "I found my arm and leg."
"That's so fucking old!" Ed barked, and though he had more to say it was all cut off when Winry put her hand in Ed's face and abruptly shoved him away.
Like she could have boiled all the water around them, Winry's voice raged with hellfire, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THAT AUTOMAIL, WRATH?"
Both brothers looked at the wayward homunculus that Winry had done the humanitarian thing for and dressed up in her finest AutoMail.
It was rusted. Al's eye twitched.
It was mangled. Ed paled.
It had springs and wires popping out. Winry's fingers twitched around her wrench.
"It's very durable," Wrath stomped his AutoMail foot against the pool edge and the wild child swayed on his feet like an ape. Before anyone could react further, Wrath exploded from his stance and leaped over the pool.
Al clapped his hands together and used the water from the pool to snare the homunculus - surging it up like a geyser while Wrath sailed over it and then sucking him back down into the water once again. Wrath hit the surface with a belly-flop crash.
"Al!"
Al glanced over as Winry called for his attention.
"Can you pin him down on the deck?" Winry pushed herself towards the adjacent edge of the pool, cringing when the homunculus burst out of the water again and re-emerged above their heads with a scream, "I don't want to get electrocuted."
There was no time to debate it and Al kicked his feet through the water, clapped his hands together, and slammed them down on the edge of the pool. Two extensions of cement jettisoned out and caught onto Wrath in mid-air and a second transmutation rolled the homunculus up into the tendrils of solid material, quickly pinned him screaming face-down to the ground.
"Great," Winry climbed out of the pool.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing WINRY?"
"SHUT UP ED," she silenced him with her most vicious glare.
Al watched, nearly wanting to cover his ears at the screams Wrath was making, holding his breath as Winry sat on the creature's ankles and latched her wrench onto the knee joint of her AutoMail work. Wrath continued to thrash within his bindings.
"Winry! He's going to break it," Al shrieked as both brothers scrambled through the water.
"Two seconds," Winry ripped her wrench around at the inside of Wrath's knee before she hooked it onto a secondary latch and ground down her teeth in frustration, "stupid thing is caked in rust… two more seconds."
The brothers reached the pool's edge Winry was at and snapped their attention to the back doors of the hotel, watching wide-eyed as a host of armed officers with weapons pointed burst onto the patio.
The cement bindings cracked as Winry pried her wrench around once more. Wrath exploded from his trap, knocking the mechanic onto her backside at the lip of the pool and sending her wrench sailing across the yard - embedding in the doorframe next to Mustang's ear as he emerged.
The officer stared blankly at the blunt object.
"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE, FULLMETAL?"
Ed gawked - Mustang was expecting him to answer for this?
Wrath flew to his feet and stared down the collection of officers that stood poised to fire, knowing no one would shoot because there was someone sitting behind him. With a glint in his eye, Wrath took a step back on his AutoMail leg and looked over his shoulder at Winry on the pool deck.
The entire audience watched as two bolts suddenly went flying under the pressure of Wrath's weight and a number of springs sprung with the shift in balance. Winry folded her arms and glared at the creature while the entire knee joint buckled under his weight, completely falling apart. With a squawk, Wrath toppled over, falling into the pool amidst the clatter of parts hitting the patio.
"And that's why you take care of your AutoMail," Winry snarled.
No sooner had Winry announced her victory than another 'boulder' hit the water, showering Winry and following Wrath in, sinking the creature in the process. The boys startled exchanged glances before looking to Mustang, now standing at the pool edge. Ed and Al made their way to the shallowest end of the pool, watching a chaotic mass of darkness churn in the deepest parts of the water before it all went motionless. In the brief moments where everything was calmagain, Mustang's men moved forwards with weapons trained on the water.
The chaos in the pool's deep end moved again, slower and calmer, and a dark displacement drifted towards the soggy pair of brothers. The displacement came to life within the water, making its way towards the Elric brothers, and the boys' stomachs suddenly churned in absolute terror when they saw Izumi Curtis arise from the pool, the woman's own wrathful gaze assaulting everyone she glanced at with bricks. Dressed only in her leggings and black shirt, but wearing the most pissed off look anyone had ever seen her put on, Izumi dragged an unresponsive Wrath by his hair in one hand and carried a cleanly-sliced AutoMail arm in the other.
"S-Sensei!" Al moved towards her.
"SIT YOUR ASSES DOWN!"
Al abruptly backed up and sat down in the shallow end of the pool next to his already seated brother.
Izumi stopped, water at her knees, and she glowered at the two boys looking like they were wishing they could crawl away. The woman's eye twitched, "Hello Edward."
Ed cleared his throat and paled to a fantastic shade of Elric-white, "Hi Sensei…"
With the heaving motion of one arm, Izumi tossed an incapacitated Wrath onto one edge of the pool deck and then tossed Winry's rusted piece of work onto the other. The woman's arms flew back into her body, firmly folding across her chest, never once bothering to move the mess of soggy hair out of her face. Izumi took a sharp breath and everyone with an eye on the scene flinched.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THE KIND OF HEADACHE YOU'VE CAUSED ME?"
To Be Continued…
Author's Note:
Ed has a very profound, private, and absolute appreciation for all the people he got back… you know that saying "you don't know what you have until it's gone" - Ed, why do you have to learn things the hard way?
I have never, ever written Roy and Ed interaction before (well, I haven't written a whole lot else other than this, but that's not the point) I was sort of like "uhhh…" the whole time LOL.
Just to revisit Al's situation and the age discrepancy between the boys now. Ed is 22; he was 16 and a half-ish when he got booted beyond the Gate at the end of the series and has been there for a subsequent five and a half years. Al, at the end of the series, was 15 but was reverted to a 10-year-old (the exact state where he'd vanished turning the transmutation of Trisha). I had 9 months go by in Amestris before picking up the story (so Al had his '11th' birthday… actually 16). Al was 11 for the entirety of the story until he got his memories back, which bumps his mental state up to 16 but leaves his physical state at 11. I really messed that up, didn't I? Am I going to adjust Al's physical appearance? No, he's going to get to have his adolescence :3 and grow up like all the other kids he got to see grow up. Al is going to be the only child on the planet to appreciate puberty… o.x;
Rating: PG
Word Count: 9,447 / 421,403
Beta: AmunRa
Previous: Chapter list for Part 1 thru Current
Alternative: located on fanfiction.net
Chapter Summary: With everyone up and more or less mobile, three tired journeymen take a few days to recouperate and become reaquainted in Mustang's care.
Part XLII - #93 - Second Chances
Alphonse Elric sometimes felt like two different people: the boy who had lost his memories and the boy who had been armour. Today he was the boy who had been armour was newly flesh again, so from that perspective it had been years since Al had felt his body move like this. The younger of two Elric brothers ran through the floors of the hotel like he was made of elastic and weighed nothing at all; the tips of his bare toes threw him forwards and his arms pumped momentum along while the boy's hands grabbed at the air, hoping he could pull himself forwards a little bit more with each motion. He'd been doing it all day: running - there was so much excitement! Al bounced off the staircase railing before bolting upstairs, his legs launching him to every third step, and Al burst onto the top floor almost unburdened by gravity.
Like the guard monitoring the upper floor had been expecting his arrival, the officer's finger was pointed down the hall, "Miss Rockbell's room."
Al found his stride again as he powered down the hall, rebounding off of the doorframe and nearly falling into Winry's room, staggering to a stop at the foot of her bed and gasping for air.
Already awake, Winry looked back at Al through tired eyes, her hair sitting wildly atop her head. Slowly pushing herself up onto one elbow for support, Winry sat up a little further.
"Al…"
Alphonse lost interest in catching his breath; again he moved quickly, leaping onto the bed on all fours, scrambling across the sheets, and his arms flew around Winry. The pair fell back into the pillows and the bedding seemed to explode on contact. They sunk into the bed, Al holding on with all his might and Winry too heavily medicated to do much more than just hang on.
"You're okay?" Alphonse asked when the sheets had finished settling down around them.
"Mmhm," Winry nodded.
"I'm so glad," Al squeezed a little harder and it took all of his willpower not to cheer into Winry's ear, "and I'm so glad to see you! You're finally awake!"
"I'm glad to see you too," Winry giggled at the excitement in Al's voice, "I missed you."
"I missed you too," with another tight squeeze and a deep breath, Alphonse finally let go. He sat back on his knees at Winry's side, helping her sit up in the bed, "Are you okay? Is your leg bothering you at all?"
Winry was stuck between bewildered and overwhelmed as she processed the questions, "I'm fine Al. My leg, it…" Winry glanced down, concern slowly entering her face. Both Winry and Alphonse sat on the bed quietly before the blanket moved when Winry wiggled her toes.
"Your leg should be numb!" Al chirped, "The nurses numbed it because of the surgery and soreness. You can't feel it at all, can you?"
Winry wiggled her toes again. For a moment - only a fraction of a second - there was a very distant and unsettling look that passed through Winry's eyes. Before Al could think of anything to say or do about it, Winry smiled at him, "Its numb Al. It doesn't hurt."
"Great!"
"Al…" a frightened sound emerged quickly in Winry's voice, "is Ed okay?"
"Yeah," Al would have yelled his joy over that fact out the window if he could, "Brother's in the next room!"
Winry's relief could almost be felt - the loss of tension in her body, the loosening of her muscles, and the sigh in her next breath. Al's excitement teetered around for a moment before he slid himself off the foot of the bed and dropped to his knees.
"Did Brother get into some fights before you two came home? The Brigadier General says he's pretty banged up," the top of Al's head vanished from Winry's sights.
"Al…?" Winry's curiosity rose, "what are you-"
Al's head peeked over the mattress, "I have something for you!"
"You do?" Winry tilted her head.
"Yup," Al bounced to his feet, pulled something heavy out from under the bed, scraped it along the floor, and then heaved it onto the top of the mattress.
Winry's eyes lit like a child on Christmas morning, "My tool kit!"
"I think we found everything that was in it," Al beamed, crawling back onto the bed.
"Oh my beautiful tool kit," the medication wasn't strong enough to keep Winry bedridden from that. She pulled herself out from beneath the sheets and crawled to the foot of her bed, throwing open the lid, "what a sexy bunch of instruments you all are."
"I thought you might like to see that again," Al beamed and sat straight like a proud and praised puppy, "figured you hadn't wanted to get forcefully divorced from your favourite things."
Winry laughed at the notion, "Al, you have no idea."
Unable to do much more than grin and soak up the unfolding day, the younger Elric brother slid up side-by-side to Winry on the bed, "This is great - this is all great!" it was so strange for Al to try and verbalize how good it was to feel so successful when there had been no point prior when anything had gone this right, "I have my brother back, I have you back," Al's grin exploded, "I even got my memories back!"
"You got what!" Winry's blue eyes flew open wide, her dropped jaw morphing into a widening smile as she stumbled through her words, "I thought Izumi said… but, you got them back… really?"
"Uh huh!" Al glowed.
"Al, that's fantastic! I'm so happy for you," Winry smiled, a still-tired pair blue eyes looking into a sparkling set of golden ones, moving like she was prepared to hug him…
… and suddenly the whole exchange derailed. Winry froze, "What the-?"
"What?" Al looked around abruptly.
Winry leaned in nose to nose, pushing Al back in surprise, "What happened to your eyes?"
"Oh," Al blinked; even after staring at himself for hours on end in the mirror, his mind still didn't register that his eyes were a new colour, "I dunno."
"Mr. Elric, Miss. Rockbell?" a voice interrupted.
Both Al and Winry turned to the doctor who stepped into their reunion.
"I'm going to need Miss Rockbell for the next short while," the older, burly man folded his arms, "to ensure everything is as it should be. I'm going to ask you to excuse yourself, Alphonse."
"Okay," Al slid himself off the side of the bed.
"No no, wait Al, come back for one sec," Winry's hands patted down on the sheets, "get up here."
Al glanced to the doctor who shrugged his approval and crawled back up onto Winry's bed again while she motioned for him to re-seat himself in front of her. Even while Al was still settling Winry collected one of his hands and held it in her grasp until he was seated. Al watched with interest as Winry turned his hand over and opened it palm-up. Al had noticed something about everyone else's hands - they all seemed more worn than his. Izumi had told Al at one point in time that Ed had transmuted him to a state that was something like being brand-new; his hands and feet, elbows and knees, none of them felt like they had any wear or tear. Though, out of all the hands he'd come in contact with since his older brother had brought him back, even after all the journeying, Winry still had the softest touch out of anyone. Winry placed her other hand down on top of Al's open palm and looked at him for a few moments. Winry's eyes moved around, looking him over carefully like she was inspecting him for something, and settled for a straight-on stare back into Al's eyes. It was a soft gaze that lasted long enough to cause Al to shift around and hope Winry couldn't see him blush.
Al was given his hand back suddenly and Winry's hands landed on his ears - she dipped his head forward and left a strong kiss on Al's forehead before freeing him.
"Go hang out with your brother for a while," Winry told him, sending the boy slinking off the bed again, red in the cheeks and grinning fiercely, "he missed you like crazy."
Al backed himself up to the door, thumbs finding the belt loops on his pants, "Sure, I'll make sure he's not giving the other doctors headaches."
"You do that," Winry smiled, "and come back and see me later!"
"Yup," Al bowed his head and scampered from the room, "will do!"
Edward Elric concluded that the Amestris sky was brilliant - brilliant with its scenery, brilliant with its colours, brilliant in its vibrancy, and just brilliant. Throughout the evening the sun moved down through Ed's vision, skipping across slanted rooftops, and eventually dipping below the skyline - but not below the horizon - and the sunset managed to create a host of colours Ed had forgotten had existed. Sunsets in Germany and Britain were nothing compared to this. The polluted, lifeless grey that had been infused into everything was washed away and Ed was at a loss for how to explain how it felt to see that.
Ed glanced over when the latch to the roof was rattled and the hinges groaned. Ed grinned when his younger brother's bright gaze fixate on him - the colour change in Al's eyes hadn't been hard to get use to and Ed actually thought it made the expressions on his face shine a little more.
Every time he saw Al it was like drifting through a good dream - Ed hadn't seen this much of his brother's flesh face outside of his nightmares in ten years.
"Watching the sunset?" Al asked as he walked up.
"Yeah," Ed grinned as Al sat down next to him.
"What were the sunsets like beyond the Gate?" Al crossed his legs and looked up to Ed.
It wasn't like Ed to stall when Al asked questions, but he took a moment anyways and just looked at Al in the evening light. The Alphonse Elric sitting next to him was exactly what Ed had wanted to reclaim and at first and second glance it still didn't quite seem real. None of the important things Ed had ever wanted, or thought he'd wanted, had ever been reclaimed, so there was a throbbing lump in the centre of Ed's chest that made him think he was waiting for the punch line to a cruel joke to appear or that he'd finally see the catch in his life for this reward. Even though he'd known months in advance that Al had his body back, that he was alive and healthy, to look at his younger brother like this, to know this would be what he would see day in and out, Ed felt an endless bombardment of relief, joy, and excitement.
Al would get to grow up.
"Brother?"
Ed's nose wrinkled and he threw himself back into the conversation, "Sunsets sucked beyond the Gate. The sky was filthy."
"Pollution?" Al's asked.
"No," Ed shook his head, "just how things were: everything looked dirty."
"Oh," Al sat forwards, casting his gaze out towards the remnants of sundown, "I kinda got a glimpse when I was at the Gate, but what kind of things were there for you to do beyond the Gate?" the younger brother rubbed his hands over his knees, "like, you couldn't have possibly just studied alchemy for so long?"
Ed chewed on the question for a moment, which was sort of like trying to grind down a huge wad of leather. What did he do beyond the Gate, "Well… I'd been working the last year. I had to get money somehow."
Al sat himself up a little higher, eyes widening with interest, "What did you do?"
"I…" Ed suddenly realized that his line of work had been very, very unlike him; he hated that world for domesticating him, "I was on office assistant."
"You were a what?" a laugh was buried in Al's surprised voice.
"I was the office bitch in the science wing of the university dad worked at," Ed suddenly hopped he wouldn't have to tell that to anyone more than Al… the looks on peoples' faces would get old really fast.
Al didn't speak up again for some time; Ed turned to him and sat silently while he watched his brother wrap himself up deeply in thought. Al sat quietly for a few moments, twitching his nose while he thought. Ed recalled the wretched feeling of watching his younger brother think as a suit of armour: Al would be frozen - almost vanishing into his thoughts like he ceased to exist - and nothing would move. If Ed was lucky, Al would hum his thoughts. It was a painful silence that lasted as long as it took to draw his conclusions. Now Ed looked on while Al thought, watching his brother's eyes move, brow lower, nose flinch, lips purse, shoulders roll, and feet shuffle.
It was five seconds where everything was just so right.
"I have a question," Al finally blurted out, "Dad was with you beyond the Gate, wasn't he?"
Ed didn't think he would have encountered that question and have everything around him feel good enough that it would just roll off his shoulders. Ed dressed himself up in a frown anyways, "Yeah, Dad was beyond the Gate with me."
Al shifted himself around so that he faced Ed, "Did you know him very well? Did you two talk?"
Ed sat up a little straighter and looked back at a number of years' worth of memories, "I… um," and after some thought and consideration Ed dug out the desire he needed to tell Al so many of his stories, "I lived with Dad."
"Huh?" Al blinked.
There was a trove of stories and Ed wanted to tell his brother so much of it.
"I lived with Dad for most of the time I was there."
Al was very lucky he was already sitting down.
"What?" Al gawked with disbelief, his eyes darting around in confusion. Ed's reply defied everything the boy had ever believed possible between his brother and their father, "Y-you did? Wh… w-why? How?"
Ed almost felt like laughing at the reaction - if someone had told him his story in advance, Ed wouldn't have believed it either, "I'd lost my arm and leg again and I was sick. Dad found me in a hospital and when I was well enough to leave he brought me home with him. Dad kind of um… forced his fathering on me."
"And you took it?" it really just wasn't sinking in for poor Al. This was his older brother who loathed and despised their father to a wretched degree.
Ed smirked at Al's reaction, "I took it. I didn't take it willingly most of the time…" Ed hesitated, allowing his eyes to lower and his thoughts to drift back to the beginnings of a lonely journey that felt like it had started a lifetime ago… and strangely it came after another lifetime he'd had that was even farther away. Ed looked back up to his younger brother and felt a little old, "but I didn't know where I was, I didn't have anywhere else to go, and I wasn't in a position where I could take care of myself. So, yeah, dad tried to play parent for me."
Al's wide eyes bounced off the rooftops surrounding them before they leapt back to his brother again, "Did you two get along?"
Ed narrowed an eye, "That depends on your definition of 'getting along'."
Before Al dug up another question the younger boy let his focus fall into his hands, "When I reached into the Gate, I could see everything. And I don't just mean 'everything'; I mean I could see everything - even things that weren't things. It was too much, I couldn't understand it all, but I understood enough to know that if I thought about you, I'd find you… and I did," Al looked up to his older brother, "but I tried to look for dad and he wasn't there."
Ed swallowed his next breath, "Dad died, Al."
Preceding silence wasn't needed, the younger brother just slowly nodded, "I figured that's what happened. Do you know how he died?"
Al might never get out of his older brother a proper explanation for the gut-wrenching, sickened look that sat behind Ed's eyes, but Ed still gave him an answer, "Envy killed him."
Again something was said that derailed Alphonse's thoughts, "Envy? What was Envy doing there?"
"He got through the Gate at some point," Ed shook his head, distancing himself from a few memories, "He didn't come through like the rest of us, he came through as… well, a thought in people's heads. He was a homunculus with no soul and his body didn't make the trip, but his mind came through and floated around looking for someone he could either use or wanted to use him," Ed slowly pulled in a deep breath before continuing, "Envy's stuck there now, there's no way to bring him back. He can be their nightmare from now on."
Al had no reply for his brother's statement, the boy's eyes only wandered away and drifted off into the sky.
"I'm sorry you never got to spend much time with him, Al," Ed's hand finally patted down atop his brother's soft hair, "you would have been able to appreciate him a lot more than I did."
"I can't change it," Al shook his head, a definite sound of disappointment being suppressed, "so I'll just have to get stories about dad from you."
Ed rummaged his hand through his brother's hair, rocking the boy's head with the motions before letting it go, "Well…"
Al looked to Ed as the older brother twisted his face with some thoughts.
"If you want…" Ed narrowed an eye and the bridge of his nose creased. Ed thought for a moment about what he wanted to say and finally drew back to Alphonse, his lips curling with amusement, "I can tell you the story behind how Dad got himself royally fired from his advisory job with Britain's armed forces before we moved to Germany. It's kinda entertaining."
Al's eyes again widened with intrigue, curiosity, a bit of concern, and fascination above all else; a number of looks that Ed might never get tired of seeing on the face of his baby brother. Even if Ed never regained feeling in his arm and leg, or if the damage done from the journey stung forever, none of the wounds would ever be enough to overpower the feeling of sitting right here right now. Ed would willingly keep all the imperfections if it meant he could have moments like this for the rest of his life.
Alphonse grinned at his brother, "Sure!"
Winry Rockbell had pushed the sorry excuse for a table in her hotel room up next to the window after a painstaking amount of effort. It wasn't a great view but Winry still liked seeing what she could of the trees, the rooftops, the sky, and the stars - even in the night full of faint street light it absolutely beat out the mundane scenery she'd just spent months looking at. At some point during her observatory evening she'd managed to hobble over and turn off the lights so the stars would show up better. Winry hadn't noticed until she was looking at an Amestris sky again: there were so few stars in the other world's sky.
A knock interrupted everything and Winry glanced over her shoulder when the door opened. The intruder made her smirk.
"Well, hey there stranger," Winry narrowed a teasing eye at Ed through the dark room, "I heard a rumour you existed. What brings you to this neck of the woods?"
"Ha ha," Ed snorted at the greeting and hid his hands in his trouser pockets after shutting the door, "Shouldn't you be in bed?"
"Do you think I'm any good at being bed ridden?" Winry rolled her eyes at the question, "and what do you think you're doing coming into a girl's bedroom if she should be sleeping? You knocked then let yourself in -didn't even wait to see if I'd answer."
Ed puffed out his cheeks and huffed as he walked up to the window, "Chances of you being asleep were poor to none, and if you were asleep I'd have left."
Winry narrowed an eye and patted her hands atop her knees, "Lucky for you I wasn't trying to get changed."
Ed drew to a stop at Winry's side and his cheek twitched while he looked out the window, his hands sinking deeper into his pockets, "I worked this hard to get home alive, I'd like to stay that way."
Winry withheld the urge to burst out laughing at him, "So, what's up?"
"Nothing much," Ed shook his head and stuck his nose to the window, "what were you looking at?"
"Nothing much," Winry smiled sweetly and gave Ed back his useless answer, tipping her head innocently when she caught his gold eyes look at her unimpressed, "just seeing how everything looks from here."
Ed gave a dismissive nod to everything, "Did you want to go up onto the roof and have a look?"
Winry choked on her laugh, "Do you know how hard it was to get all this set up with me hobbling around on these wooden… things," she gave a wave of her hand to her crutches, "I can barely get to the bathroom, I'm not hauling myself onto the roof. That'd take hours."
Ed chuckled at the sour look Winry put on to go with her protest, "I can take you up onto the roof, Win."
"I don't want to be toted around, Ed," Winry sighed, "if I'm going up to the roof, I'll take myself."
"Are you doing okay?" Ed's question fell out like he'd managed to pop the balloon that held the words.
Winry figured he'd shown up for some purpose that was more than just nothing. The problem with the question was that the gauge she'd once used to determine 'okay' was in need of repairs and Winry wasn't entirely sure what a proper answer to the question would be.
"Well… I'm home, I'm safe, I'm with family…"
Ed's left hand surfaced and landed carefully on Winry's shoulder, "But… you're okay?"
Yes, Winry was okay because she wasn't dead or in a life threatening situation anymore… but Winry had been pulled right out from middle of the most terrifying ordeal she'd ever been through and plopped right back into real life. Winry felt like she was still supposed to be afraid of something. She didn't want to even glimpse at the events in the Thule Hall; it was done, she wanted to move on. No, Winry corrected her thoughts, she didn't want to 'move on' - she wanted to run from it.
Winry straightened around on the table and collected Ed's hand from her shoulder. She pried his left hand open wide, watching Ed's fingers straighten like his knuckles were stiff hinges. Ed had used this one hand every day, let it take abuse every day, and continued to rely on it every day to take care of them both and make sure Winry was in some state of 'okay'. Ed was always trying to take care of Winry, he'd told her that and was stubborn about it to the n'th degree; even when Winry would stomp her feet because she didn't want it and even when she was hurt enough that Winry really needed to hear Ed say he'd look after her. Winry looked up to Ed, eyeing the confused and awkward look on his face. There were black stitches on Ed's purple and yellowed right cheek bone; even in the dark, their Amestris world was clear enough that the colours could be made out, and when Winry's memories reminded her of the moment leading up to when Envy had struck Ed to cause it, Winry wished she could turn her mind off. Or crawl away from her thoughts. Or make it all un-happen. Or just-
Ed's voice intruded, "Winry?"
Winry blinked and looked at Ed for a few moments, the concern on his face and in his eyes defeated any other shade, colour, or expression he might have donned.
"You okay?"
After a moment was taken to thoroughly read the look on Ed's face, Winry smiled and let his hand go. She rose on her good leg, holding onto Ed's shoulder to steady herself and Ed grabbed her arm as she wobbled. Even before she was steady Winry threw her arms around his neck and shoulders, squeezing with all her might. Ed staggered a few steps back, grabbing Winry as he stumbled trying to steady them both. When Ed's two feet became firmly planted and Winry teetered around on only one tiptoe, everything in the room spun to a stop.
"Thank you," Winry spoke quietly, "for how hard you're always trying to take care of me."
Without another word the two of them stood in the middle of Winry's dark room, a slit of streetlight the only thing peeking in from between two buildings shielding Winry's window. No one moved within the room, no movement came from beyond the four walls either, like everything had frozen just as Edward had. There were always these awkward moments where Winry would engage Edward beyond his comfort zone and he honestly wouldn't know what to do - it was sort of like interacting with a statue. But Winry had whittled down the time it took Ed to figure himself out, so it wasn't long before the statue softened into someone who put a hand down on the middle of her back and wrapped the other arm around her shoulders.
"And I'm so glad you came home," Winry's fingers dug into his shirt, "I'm glad that we're safe and that it's over and that we won't go back," she tucked her forehead away into a place on Ed's shoulder that he'd set aside for her tears and left it dry. "I don't know how I'm supposed to feel right now and I don't know how to describe how I do feel. I don't know if I'm okay or if I'm something else. I think I'm supposed to be talking or crying or venting or dealing over a lot of things and I can't… it's just not there," Winry's shoulders rose when Ed's grip tightened, "but I'll be okay, I promise."
After the moments she'd used to take her next few breaths, Winry found herself on the receiving end of a hug that out muscled her own. The world beyond Winry's window on this night remained strangely calm - no distant gunfire, sounds of people, or wind in the trees, and the world in front of Winry's window offered very little to overturn the silence. Wrapped in a quiet midnight cloak, Winry closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry," one of the two hands on Winry's back found its way into her hair to hold her head, while the other arm wrapped tight around her back, "for everything you've gone through and everything you've had to deal with."
"It's not your fault. It's never been your fault."
"I'm still sorry."
Beyond the Gate Ed had held himself accountable for Winry; what she'd dealt with and the things that had happened to her. Ed had held himself accountable for Winry every day; for what she'd lost and what she had the potential to lose. Ed held himself accountable for Winry and he would do everything in his power to stave off the world from breaking her down like it had spent every day for five years trying to do to him, even if the harder Ed tried, the larger the blows they were dealt became.
Ed had made himself so accountable for Winry's state of affairs that, by the time there were wounds on her body and waking nightmares preparing to become demons in her head, the places Ed kept her safe, the warm and quiet places where she could hear him breathe, became the safest places in the world.
Some point well after Winry had told herself to ignore the soreness of the tired leg she'd been balancing on, Ed's grip loosened when she moved; Winry reached back for the table she'd been sitting on and Ed helped her slide back on. Winry tucked her hair behind her ears and looked up to Ed as he stepped away, capturing his hands before he could hide them again and Winry held them in her lap. Ed never tried to worm away or hide the embarrassment painted on his face, in fact Ed seemed quite entranced by the entire engagement; a very enthralled pair of golden eyes watched her with an expression that was some kind of cross between a person engrossed in a story and a deer caught in headlights. Winry wanted to giggle at how lost Ed seemed to be.
"Mr. Mustang's going to want to talk with us properly tomorrow, isn't he?" Winry breathed life into her voice.
"Yeah," Ed nodded.
Winry's brow tightened, "You guys are going to have to figure out what to do about Dante, aren't you?"
Ed's eyes were the first thing to depart the conversation, "Yeah."
"Okay," like she'd expected the answer, Winry accepted the response with a nod, letting go of Ed's hands, "then I'm going to go to bed and make sure I'm wide awake for question period."
"Yeah," Ed backed himself out of the engagement with a few reverse steps, then he straightened his shoulders and let his hands vanish into his pockets, "yeah, good idea."
Winry watched while Ed's next few steps turned him around and took him through the dark room to her door, his feet heavy on the floor like they weren't on his list of things to think about and his ponytail bouncing wildly with each step. Ed grabbed the knob, turned it, but didn't open the door - he looked back first.
"When we're done with Dante and it's safe to travel, I'll take you home like I promised."
Winry's brow rose - that didn't make sense, "Ed, we are home."
Ed stood at the door for a moment, barely able to be seen in the pale evening light. With his face locked up in a stern, unwavering expression, his powerful eyes the only thing catching what little of the street light made it through the room, Ed stared back at Winry and pulled open the door.
"Not all the way."
Roy Mustang had been more than prepared to capture and corral Edward coming downstairs that morning, figuring the once-metal FullMetal Alchemist would rise with the sun. While he lounged around alone amidst a collection of leather chairs pushed together to encircle a table littered with empty glasses and beer bottles waiting for the sun to rise, what Roy hadn't been prepared for was Ed making his way back into the building at four in the morning.
Edward Elric was a startling thing for the officer to see no matter how many times he'd encountered Ed since his return. Beyond the fact that Ed was monumentally taller, he also carried himself differently. For this ungodly hour jaunt, Ed was dressed in a pair of beige trousers and wore a white dress shirt in place of the medical casuals he'd been dressed in since his rescue. The shirt was long sleeved, but Ed had rolled it up snug around his upper arms, left the top button of the shirt undone, yet he'd still chosen to tuck it into his pants. Ed wore a simple pair of sandals, his hair was tied up in a ponytail, and to Roy's amazement the entire outfit looked nice, casual, and properly pressed.
Mustang couldn't get over how strange that look was for Ed.
"What?"
Mustang retrieved himself from his thoughts and stared blankly at Ed's frown.
"What are you staring at?" Ed's brow fell further, one foot on the lower rung of stairs leading up into the suites of the building.
Shaking himself free from his analysis, Roy straightened himself out in his seat, gulped down what was left of his drink, and pointed to one of the opposing chairs, "Have a seat."
Ed took a moment to think about it before turning and taking up the man's offer. Roy watched the bandaged right hand hang from the flesh arm attached to Ed's proper shoulder as the whole limb swung in time with each step; he'd never observed Ed function with two matching arms before.
"What are you doing up this time of night?" Roy sat forwards as Ed dropped himself into a seat cushion, taking a bottle up from the mess and refilling his glass.
"Couldn't sleep," Ed pushed both his hands through his face, clearing away his hair, before it all fell back into place again, "thinking."
Mustang swirled his drink, melting away what was left of his ice cubes, "Ah, they must be deep thoughts to keep a man up so late." Without adding anything further to the current conversation, Mustang took a sip from his glass and then watched while Ed gave him a long, hard look before snapping his eyes around the arrangement on the table.
Ed finally narrowed an eye, "Are you absolutely wasted?"
Roy snorted, taking another drink, "I haven't been here that long. I can't speak for those who sat in these chairs before me though."
For whatever reason Mustang couldn't pinpoint, the response seemed to bring Edward to life. He watched while the golden blonde fished through the collection of glasses on the table, unearthed one that was potentially clean, and pushed it across the table. Roy blinked at it.
"You sharin'?" Ed questioned.
Mustang cocked the brow over his seeing eye, "Magic word?"
"Fuck you," Ed chirped.
For someone who'd apparently been up all night, Roy was more than entertained by Ed's socially good spirit - it was unusual. Roy reached forwards, picked up the glass, and stood up, "I didn't know you drank."
"Now you do," Ed's elbow hit the arm of the chair and his chin landed in his hand.
"Why are we drinking together?" Roy asked as he walked through the room. He did actually want to know why; this scenario wasn't in his top 100 in the list of things he was expecting to do this year.
Ed's reply was blunt, "Something new to do."
"Yeah?" Mustang reached onto the counter and flipped open the lid to an ice box, filling the stout glass half full with ice cubes, "well, word to the wise, I don't recommend drinking too often," he fingered his way through a choice of bottles that had been set aside from the collection of beer and generic lacquers that littered the centre table, "you end up with hangovers, memory loss, an empty wallet, and naked women in your bed," Roy undid a tall bottle and filled Ed's glass enough to submerge the ice. He glanced back, picking up his tone, "the latter of which isn't a bad thing mind you."
Roy was rewarded with a red-faced scoff followed by an eye roll.
"And I've always found I sleep rather well afterwards," the amusement on Roy's face continued to grow as the conversation topic frayed a couple of hair's on Ed's head, "it can also help release some tension. If you haven't tried it recently I do recommend acquiring company if you're having trouble sleeping."
Ed responded to Mustang with a magnificent deadpan expression and his flattest tone, "Not bloody likely."
Roy hesitated before grinning at Ed's reply. He sat himself down again and pushed the drink across the table to Edward, then wove his fingers together and put his forearms down on his thighs, "Where did you get that?"
"Get what?" Ed sniffed his drink and crossed his eyes.
"The accent," Mustang mused.
Ed's interest in the drink waned, "I don't have an accent."
"No, I suppose not… not really," Roy reconsidered his statement. Beyond the fact that Ed's voice sounded deeper with the absence of his scratchy pubescent teenager problem, there was something very odd that kept popping up now and then, "you have an interesting inflection in your voice that comes and goes - it sounds faintly like an accent," he watched while Ed curiously swirled his drink around, searching for legitimacy to Roy's statement, before the officer added a touch of clarification, "It sounds snooty."
There was a moment where Ed's brow rose, his eyes widened, and his lips began to curl - like the blonde knew something Roy didn't - before Edward finally burst out laughing. It wasn't exactly what Roy had been expecting for a reaction, so the man watched while Ed had himself a good laugh over the insight and wondered if he'd ever be let in on the joke. When Ed finished calming himself down he surprised Roy by abruptly downing the entire glass of alcohol he'd been given, nearly dropping it on the table by the time he'd taken the last swallow. What remained of Ed's amusement turned into coughs - the alcohol watering his eyes and flushing his face red.
Mustang's night suddenly felt quite unbelievable. He collected the glass Ed had discarded and made his way back to the side counter again, replenishing the oversized shot Ed had taken, and promptly returned to the two man engagement.
Ed's left fist thumped his chest as he continued to fight the after effects of the drink, "Snooty?"
"Yes snooty, and don't drink this one so fast," Roy put the glass down in front of Ed - now seemed as good a time as any for more relevant questions, "how's the feeling in your arm and leg?"
Ed shook his head, giving a sniff to the drink in front of him before picking it up, "Same as the last time you asked."
Roy felt a twinge of disappointment - he was kind of hoping Edward had a revised answer for him beyond 'numb', "And I heard you mention earlier you are twenty-two now?"
Clearing his throat, Ed shifted his posture and sunk into the arm of his chair, "Yeah, I turned twenty-two a couple of weeks back."
Roy was going to have to do a lot more work to convince himself that Ed wasn't sixteen going on seventeen even if it was visually apparent he was not a child. The officer voiced another question, "That means you've been gone for six years?"
Ed shook his head a little, "Mmm about five and a half. Not six."
The way Ed spoke so casually about the length of time he'd been gone for was just a little unsettling from Roy's perspective. There were over five years in Edward's life where he'd lived in some place, existed in some way, and survived somehow in a world the rest of them would never know. Roy mulled over the answers he was getting, finding them willingly given without Edward's snarl or snark, and figured he'd continue with question period until Ed's willingness to engage in civil conversation waned. With that thought in mind, Roy daringly drove his questions up a few notches.
"Who assaulted you?"
"Excuse me?" Ed narrowed an eye.
Mustang slowly walked his carefully placed line of questions, "Obviously there was an incident around the time you came home, but when the doctors checked you over we found a host of old injuries that predated what we could see. What's been happening to you?"
In the middle of the night that was far closer to dawn than dusk, within the poor overnight lighting that the hotel kept on, Roy sat and waited while the question was weighed over in Ed's mind. The older man watched Ed's hand push aside the hair that covered his face, his fingers scratch into his scalp as it all fell into place again, and then Ed moved on to scratch the back of his neck.
"We were jumped," Ed scowled, his voice toning down into a low growl, "we were in an alley and got jumped."
For a moment Mustang considered requesting an elaboration, but unlike everything else Edward had offered up during the conversation, this one had a good deal of bite to it and it felt like it contained a substantial amount of the wall Ed had kept around himself for so long. Something in the back of Roy's mind told him the door to this question was a little bit more closed than he'd have liked it to be. As the officer debated where he`d take his questions next, Ed beat him to the next word.
"You know, when we were in Dante's ballroom," Ed took a moderate drink from his glass, a golden eye twitching at it when he swallowed, "and everything was a mess, I can remember asking you to take care of Al and Winry for me…"
Roy's brow rose, "I'm impressed you can remember that. You were out of it."
"Yeah," Ed shook his head like he was trying to escape the memory. He took a sip from his drink, "but you still took care of them anyways."
Mustang frowned, "You say that like you didn't expect me to."
"Not that," Ed looked into his glass of dwindling alcohol, the tension in his brow vanishing, "just, thanks for looking after them for me."
Mustang sat silently for a moment. Before all other thoughts occurred to him, the one thing Roy couldn't shake was how worn Ed was sounding. The subsequent thought interrupted the first - Roy hadn't even considered being thanked for that, let alone thanked from Ed. While Roy watched the blonde show deliberate interest in the drink in his hand, the officer's thoughts fell back to a moment where he'd been running through the Rizembool countryside, chasing down a runaway boy wearing a braid down the back of his neck. What Roy wouldn`t have given to get it through that stubborn child's thick skull that his commanding officer was trying to look out for him. He was trying to help. Roy had wanted to help. He'd always had the boy's best interest in mind - everyone around them did - if Ed had only opened his eyes wide enough to see it.
"You're welcome," suddenly Roy wanted to know the entirety of what had happened to Ed beyond the Gate, but since the sun was already crawling out from behind the horizon, the details would have to wait, "and you should get some sleep."
"You know," Ed paused to finish off his drink, clanking the glass down on the table as he swallowed before standing up, "this shit is disgusting."
Roy grinned, "It's strong. You'll sleep like a log."
Ed gave a thoughtful nod and headed towards the stairs up into the building, "Thanks for the nightcap."
With his grin still present, Roy called out a teasing bid goodnight, "Did you want me to ask one of the hostesses if any of them would like to be referred to your room before the sun has completely risen?"
Ed stopped on the fourth step, his head shaking while his fingers danced around on the handrail, "I hope you die in a fire."
Roy let out a sharp, barking laugh, "Hardly."
Al had caught Winry sitting at the edge of the pool from an upper floor window. He watched her sit quietly on her own for a few minutes, the sun dangling directly overhead, her wounded left leg tucked away while the other dangled in the cool water of the pool. Al couldn't quite make out what Winry had in her hands, it was a metallic object of some kind and she turned it over on occasion, but whatever it was had her undivided attention. The younger Elric brother gave up his vantage point and made his way down, smiling across the deck to Winry when the screen door made a ton of racket as he came outside to join her.
"Hey Al!" Winry called.
Al walked up alongside her, kicked his sandals off and sat down. All dipped his legs into the pool, eyeing the wrench he spotted cradled in Winry's grasp, "What's that for?"
"It's for Ed," Winry sighed, like the object was a lot heavier for her than the weight in her hands would suggest, "well, sort of - it's the wrench that I bought ages ago to work on his AutoMail. He doesn't need it anymore… I'm not sure what I should do with it."
"You can use it for other things, can't you?" even Al had hung around Winry long enough to know when a tool was a little more than your garden variety kind.
The wrench was turned over in Winry's hands again and she wiggled her foot in the water, "I've used it for other things before it's just… this and Ed's AutoMail were synonymous things. My poor wrench has lost its purpose," she looked over to Al abruptly and spoke with a pouty lip, "it's purposeless and I feel sorry for it."
"That poor wrench," Al bit his lower lip and tried not to laugh, which was hard to do because it became obvious Winry was trying not to laugh at herself, "maybe you should hold a decommissioning ceremony for it?"
The discussion didn't go much further, both Al and Winry turned over their shoulders when the noisy screen door complained again. Ed ducked out of the shaded cover of the hotel and winced in the sun.
"Brother! We're debating the fate of your AutoMail wrench," Al announced as Winry flipped it around once more in her hands.
Ed's brow rose as he sat down on the other side of Al, "Yeah? Maybe you should melt it down and make something new?"
"I don't want to melt it," Winry scowled, "it's a fantastic wrench!"
Al had to admit he also felt a little put off by Ed's desire to melt it, "Don't you want to keep it Brother, like as a memento or something?"
Ed snorted, "No."
"Well, why don't we go get lunch and think about it more over food?" he looked between Ed and Winry flanking him, "I'm hungry."
A wild smirk swept into Ed's face, "For a little guy, you sure do eat a lot."
"Actually," Al pulled himself to his feet, straightened his posture, and looked smugly at Ed while his older brother stood up alongside him, "like a normal person, I'm a growing boy at this age," Al ducked out of the swat Ed made at him, "so let's go inside!"
No sooner had Al expressed his desire to head indoors than a flurry of gunfire and the sound of glass exploding from a window overhead kept the trio from going anywhere. Winry flattened herself against the pool deck and both Elric brothers dropped to their hands and knees. All three sets of eyes watched glass rain down from a shattered window in the hotel room a few meters away. Again a round of gunfire was set off and suddenly the sound of men's voices rose up.
"Get in the pool!" Ed ordered, "the door's too far, get in the pool Al!"
Alphonse scrambled towards his brother, getting grabbed by his wrist and then the scruff of his neck as Ed hauled him into the water. Without being told, the trio took a collective deep breath and all three vanished beneath the surface of the water in the deep end of the pool. The water had more than enough clearance above all their heads to hide in and Al opened his eyes as he sank to the bottom, looking to Ed and Winry as everyone put their backs to the pool edge and tried to crouch on the pool floor for as long as they could.
Really, this idea of hiding their movements at the bottom of the pool to discourage gunfire had a sixty-second life at best; all depending on when the first person needed to come up for air. Before anyone needed to breathe, the calmness in the water was abruptly disturbed by what felt like a boulder being dropped into the pool. The water surged, pressing the trio into the pool wall and pinning them for a moment before the backlash ripped them away. Three scrambling bodies rose to the surface.
Ed was the first to gasp for air, followed quickly by Al then Winry. Everyone frantically looked to a black mass in the water as they scrambled to get to the pool edge. All three pairs of eyes watched as the mass burst out from the water and landed on the patio deck like a dark soggy mop had been flung there.
Ed, Al, and Winry watched as Wrath snapped his head and threw his hair back, sending a shower of water everywhere.
Ed's jaw dropped, "You're still around?"
With purple eyes looking more like an animal than anything human, the homunculus grinned at the trio hungrily, "I found my arm and leg."
"That's so fucking old!" Ed barked, and though he had more to say it was all cut off when Winry put her hand in Ed's face and abruptly shoved him away.
Like she could have boiled all the water around them, Winry's voice raged with hellfire, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THAT AUTOMAIL, WRATH?"
Both brothers looked at the wayward homunculus that Winry had done the humanitarian thing for and dressed up in her finest AutoMail.
It was rusted. Al's eye twitched.
It was mangled. Ed paled.
It had springs and wires popping out. Winry's fingers twitched around her wrench.
"It's very durable," Wrath stomped his AutoMail foot against the pool edge and the wild child swayed on his feet like an ape. Before anyone could react further, Wrath exploded from his stance and leaped over the pool.
Al clapped his hands together and used the water from the pool to snare the homunculus - surging it up like a geyser while Wrath sailed over it and then sucking him back down into the water once again. Wrath hit the surface with a belly-flop crash.
"Al!"
Al glanced over as Winry called for his attention.
"Can you pin him down on the deck?" Winry pushed herself towards the adjacent edge of the pool, cringing when the homunculus burst out of the water again and re-emerged above their heads with a scream, "I don't want to get electrocuted."
There was no time to debate it and Al kicked his feet through the water, clapped his hands together, and slammed them down on the edge of the pool. Two extensions of cement jettisoned out and caught onto Wrath in mid-air and a second transmutation rolled the homunculus up into the tendrils of solid material, quickly pinned him screaming face-down to the ground.
"Great," Winry climbed out of the pool.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing WINRY?"
"SHUT UP ED," she silenced him with her most vicious glare.
Al watched, nearly wanting to cover his ears at the screams Wrath was making, holding his breath as Winry sat on the creature's ankles and latched her wrench onto the knee joint of her AutoMail work. Wrath continued to thrash within his bindings.
"Winry! He's going to break it," Al shrieked as both brothers scrambled through the water.
"Two seconds," Winry ripped her wrench around at the inside of Wrath's knee before she hooked it onto a secondary latch and ground down her teeth in frustration, "stupid thing is caked in rust… two more seconds."
The brothers reached the pool's edge Winry was at and snapped their attention to the back doors of the hotel, watching wide-eyed as a host of armed officers with weapons pointed burst onto the patio.
The cement bindings cracked as Winry pried her wrench around once more. Wrath exploded from his trap, knocking the mechanic onto her backside at the lip of the pool and sending her wrench sailing across the yard - embedding in the doorframe next to Mustang's ear as he emerged.
The officer stared blankly at the blunt object.
"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE, FULLMETAL?"
Ed gawked - Mustang was expecting him to answer for this?
Wrath flew to his feet and stared down the collection of officers that stood poised to fire, knowing no one would shoot because there was someone sitting behind him. With a glint in his eye, Wrath took a step back on his AutoMail leg and looked over his shoulder at Winry on the pool deck.
The entire audience watched as two bolts suddenly went flying under the pressure of Wrath's weight and a number of springs sprung with the shift in balance. Winry folded her arms and glared at the creature while the entire knee joint buckled under his weight, completely falling apart. With a squawk, Wrath toppled over, falling into the pool amidst the clatter of parts hitting the patio.
"And that's why you take care of your AutoMail," Winry snarled.
No sooner had Winry announced her victory than another 'boulder' hit the water, showering Winry and following Wrath in, sinking the creature in the process. The boys startled exchanged glances before looking to Mustang, now standing at the pool edge. Ed and Al made their way to the shallowest end of the pool, watching a chaotic mass of darkness churn in the deepest parts of the water before it all went motionless. In the brief moments where everything was calmagain, Mustang's men moved forwards with weapons trained on the water.
The chaos in the pool's deep end moved again, slower and calmer, and a dark displacement drifted towards the soggy pair of brothers. The displacement came to life within the water, making its way towards the Elric brothers, and the boys' stomachs suddenly churned in absolute terror when they saw Izumi Curtis arise from the pool, the woman's own wrathful gaze assaulting everyone she glanced at with bricks. Dressed only in her leggings and black shirt, but wearing the most pissed off look anyone had ever seen her put on, Izumi dragged an unresponsive Wrath by his hair in one hand and carried a cleanly-sliced AutoMail arm in the other.
"S-Sensei!" Al moved towards her.
"SIT YOUR ASSES DOWN!"
Al abruptly backed up and sat down in the shallow end of the pool next to his already seated brother.
Izumi stopped, water at her knees, and she glowered at the two boys looking like they were wishing they could crawl away. The woman's eye twitched, "Hello Edward."
Ed cleared his throat and paled to a fantastic shade of Elric-white, "Hi Sensei…"
With the heaving motion of one arm, Izumi tossed an incapacitated Wrath onto one edge of the pool deck and then tossed Winry's rusted piece of work onto the other. The woman's arms flew back into her body, firmly folding across her chest, never once bothering to move the mess of soggy hair out of her face. Izumi took a sharp breath and everyone with an eye on the scene flinched.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THE KIND OF HEADACHE YOU'VE CAUSED ME?"
To Be Continued…
Author's Note:
Ed has a very profound, private, and absolute appreciation for all the people he got back… you know that saying "you don't know what you have until it's gone" - Ed, why do you have to learn things the hard way?
I have never, ever written Roy and Ed interaction before (well, I haven't written a whole lot else other than this, but that's not the point) I was sort of like "uhhh…" the whole time LOL.
Just to revisit Al's situation and the age discrepancy between the boys now. Ed is 22; he was 16 and a half-ish when he got booted beyond the Gate at the end of the series and has been there for a subsequent five and a half years. Al, at the end of the series, was 15 but was reverted to a 10-year-old (the exact state where he'd vanished turning the transmutation of Trisha). I had 9 months go by in Amestris before picking up the story (so Al had his '11th' birthday… actually 16). Al was 11 for the entirety of the story until he got his memories back, which bumps his mental state up to 16 but leaves his physical state at 11. I really messed that up, didn't I? Am I going to adjust Al's physical appearance? No, he's going to get to have his adolescence :3 and grow up like all the other kids he got to see grow up. Al is going to be the only child on the planet to appreciate puberty… o.x;