I'll Love You More, Ch. 9
Title: I’ll Love You More
Chapter: #9, I’ll Be Running The Other Way
Previous: 1, I, 2, 3, II, 4, 4.5, 5, 6, III, 7, 8, IV
Genre: Drama/Romance
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: for the entire series.
Summary: After six years, the brothers are finally reunited, but will Ed be able to adjust to a world that has long since moved on without him? This is an AU that ignores the movie. Pairings include an Ed/Win Al/Win triangle of sorts, but there is mention of some past Ed/Hei and past Roy/Riza.
Chapter Summary: Amestris is plunged into chaos when the terrorist attacks lead to the assassination of the elected leader. Both Elrics wind up in the midst of a war but unable to contact each other.
I'll Be Running The Other Way
It was the only place within walking distance of Altenburg.
He had walked from Dillon to Altenburg once, that day he re-appeared in Amestris without a single cenz in his pocket for a train ticket, and now, nearly two years later, he was right back where he started: walking between towns, leg aching, out of breath and out of shape from so much lack of activity, and it was summer, meaning it was unbearably hot out and he could feel his automail heating up. He was surprised it wasn’t scorching his clothes.
He’d only been in the town that one time before, but he remembered there was a fountain in the town square, just like Altenburg and just like all the towns in the north, and when he found it he sat down on the edge of it, hands on his knees, and thought now what? because that was the easiest thing to think for the moment. Then he grabbed the edge of the stone he sat on and leaned back, closing his eyes and feeling the cool water wash over his face and neck and finally over his shoulders, swearing that even underwater he could feel the metal of the port hissing as it hit the water.
After nearly a minute he rose back to a sitting position, dripping and gasping and rubbing his eyes and looking ahead through soaked strands of dark gold at the floral patterned skirt of an older woman with her hands on her hips. “You’re not allowed to bathe in the fountain,” she said firmly, steeling her expression. “People drink that water, it’s unsanitary to submerge your entire self in it, and don’t give me some line about how you’ve just had a bath because you clearly have not.”
He gaped at her. She was the same woman who had told him he was in Dillon the first time he was there; the same woman who told him her husband had an inn nearby and the same woman who had been amazed by the alchemy of a street performer.
Ed rubbed the back of his head, trying in vain to appear if not charming, at least trustworthy. “Ah, you’re right, I haven’t,” he conceded. “You wouldn’t know where I might find a place to stay?” he added hopefully.
She shook her head. “No where on this end of town,” she said, still gazing down at him, seemingly trying to make up her mind about this stranger. Her eye caught sight of his metal hand and he saw her notice it, covering it with the flesh one.
“But I thought-“ he began, narrowing his eyes.
“We don’t take well to travelers here in Dillon, not these days,” she said brusquely. “Never know who to trust, who’s military and who’s a terrorist.” She gave a nod towards the other direction; opposite the one he came. “You need some kind of help, try the military base.”
He stood up, hoping to look her in the eye but she was a tall woman, and he contemplated standing on his toes for a moment before he decided that was just too undignified. As if he could become more undignified than half-soaking wet with nowhere to stay and not a penny to his name.
She looked at him warily. “Just as I thought,” she said, folding her arms. “No friend of the military, you.” With that she walked away, leaving him gaping behind her.
“Wait!” he called without thinking. “What about your inn?”
She waved her hand in the air, not even turning around. “Closed,” she said as she walked away. “For repairs.” She got a few steps further before whirling around again. “Wait a minute,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You’re him, aren’t you? You’re the Fullmetal Alchemist.”
“No, my name is-“
“Heiderich, isn’t it?” she finished for him. “Edward Heiderich?”
He stood, several feet away, blinking water droplets from his eyelashes. “Did you say your inn was closed for repairs?” he tried.
It came naturally to him. He didn’t know why he thought it wouldn’t. All he had to do was visualize in his mind the straightening of beams, the rearrangement of molecules…
All he had to do…
The world in which alchemy was nothing more than a bedtime story was becoming more on more like a dream to him. Feeling the elements shift beneath his hands, looking up in triumph at the solid building straightening under his power, he wasn’t certain that other world had even existed. He had spent ten years believing it was nothing but a secondary existence, a transitory place, an imitation of his true reality, and, looking into the smiling face of the woman who’s inn he had just repaired, he felt at home, finally.
The alchemist for the people.
Using alchemy to help the common folk.
Using alchemy.
“There you are, ma’am,” he said, able to feel his grin splitting his face in half. He dusted his hands off by brushing them together. “All fixed up.”
She folded her arms in front of herself. “Well,” she said, pleased. “I’d say you’ve about earned yourself a hot meal and a place to stay whenever you need it.” She winked. “Mr. Heiderich.” He started at the name.
It was his own fault. He needed an alias and it was the first name that popped into his head. The first name he knew wouldn’t be tied to anyone on this side of the gate. But every time he heard it it was like being reminded of a dream that was slowly slipping out of his memory.
Dillon was a nice town. It was a lot like Altenburg: a small northern town along the northern railway through the mountains. There had been a war between Amestris and Drachma, he knew, and surely the train didn’t run back and forth through the mountain tunnels like it had before the war, but in actuality he didn’t know. He knew very little about the current state of his own country.
He hadn’t heard much about the terrorist attacks on the northern railways, effectively blocking off physical contact from the rest of the country. The military had tried its best to hush it up, preventing much more than the barest details from reaching the news. He hadn’t heard much about the terrorist attacks in Central either; that was Al’s area these days, not his.
He wasn’t in this world to benefit the military; he was nobody’s dog. He wasn’t in this world to be with the people he loved; it had been too long and he wasn’t the golden boy they remembered. But he could always be the Alchemist of the People.
His mind was blank.
There were no images, just a white nothingness. It was like when a film ends, and it goes black, and then slips off the reel and the screen is simply white, with nothing projected but the light from the bulb, except he had no memory of there ever being a film.
His eyes were open. He was looking at a ceiling, and then at a wall. Nothing looked familiar to him. It wasn’t simply that he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know anything at all. And it was terrifying.
Think, he told himself intensely. Think of something. There has to be something.
He was sitting on the side of a cot, staring at a small, bare room. He crossed his feet. The action felt familiar. He was beginning to be aware of his body. It felt familiar. And then,
Edward.
Edward?
Longing. Missing. Wanting. Crying. Screaming. Pushing. Hurting. Clinging. Sobbing. Loving. Wishing. Hoping. Trying.
Edward.
The knowledge came slowly, as if being forced out through an opening too small.
He had a brother named Edward. A brother he loved beyond loving. A brother he had spent most of his life missing. A brother whom he didn’t know where he was right now, a brother whom he had hurt-
And with that thought everything hit him at once, his mother’s death, the transmutation, waking up in the future to find everyone older and his brother gone, joining the military, finding his brother again, older, different, changed, but still Edward, his daughter (or was she Ed’s daughter?) and the screaming, sobbing fight they had just had. All this was layered with the knowledge that he had spent four years as a suit of armor, and the barely-there memories his soul still held onto of that time, and layered again with the information that his country was under an attack that seemed to be coming from within itself, and that, being military, he was right in the middle of it all.
The president had been assassinated. Officially it was the result of a short lived civil uprising; something that came from his country’s own citizens. Privately, it was being discovered that a foreign source had hired Amestrian rebels to do the job. Their enemy to the north, Drachma, was preparing to attack again.
But… where did this information come from? How did he know the president has been assassinated. Had it really happened, or had it been a dream his over-tired, over-stressed subconscious had cooked up?
He didn’t jump when he heard the gunshots outside his window. He was military, he was trained not to be shocked by something like that. He was in the military dorm; the shots were far away, somewhere else in Central. It probably wasn’t a dream. The city probably was rioting. The president probably had been killed. So… why was he here in his room?
He looked down at himself. He was in uniform. The last thing he remembered was that he was waiting to give General Mustang his report from his field work in Bethan. But obviously he didn’t give him the report… did he?
He couldn’t recall anything like this ever happening to him before: waking up feeling blank and panicked and unable to remember his most recent actions. Yes, he did lose four years of memory, and yes, it did feel very unsettling, but it didn’t feel like this. What was going on?
The second time he heard gunshots he sprang into action. He didn’t know how he knew that the people of Central were rioting, he didn’t know how he knew that the president had been assassinated, but he knew who he was. He was a Lieutenant in the Amestris military and he did not belong in his room, he belonged with the rest of the soldiers, doing what they had to do to get things under control.
Edward smoothed his gloves over his hands, flesh and metal, and gave his leg and his shoulder a good stretch like he did every morning. He gathered his hair back in a ponytail at the back of his head, combing his gloved fingers through its length. He listened to the sounds of his boots on the wooden stairs of the inn, and smirked. The sound wasn’t exactly the same, but it was close enough. If you weren’t listening for it, you’d never know.
No matter what the suspicion of the innkeeper, there was no visible proof at all that he was the Fullmetal Alchemist. None whatsoever. He was just an ordinary guy who liked alchemy, earning his keep in this small northern town.
He liked to go to the edge of the town, where the forest started, to exercise. He went through his old routine that Izumi had taught him an Al almost on auto-pilot, it had been so familiar to him. His body was slower to respond, but it felt good to push himself. The burning in his muscles just meant he was using them. It just meant he was whole. Physically.
It was one of those clear summer days, not a single cloud, and the blazing heat of the sun was thick in the air. He liked the feel of the sun-shade pattern the leaves above him made over his form, changing and glittering constantly as both he moved, fighting an invisible opponent, and the leaves moved, rustled by an invisible force. A thin sheen of sweat coated his face, and he was flushed pink from the exercise.
When he felt he had done enough for the day, he hung his head down, hands pressed to his thighs, facing the ground and breathing deeply. He felt his ponytail slowly slide over his neck and head to hang upside down, the ends of his hair dangling in front of his eyes behind his bangs. He stood up suddenly, still breathing furiously, and grinned at his accomplishment. He stretched his automail joints once more and felt a pang as he mentally thanked his best friend. I’m sorry, Winry. I’m sorry, Al, he thought, like a mantra, over and over. But whatever he had done to hurt them with his return was nothing compared to what he had done to Al when they were children. At least he had righted the worst of his wrongs. One of them, anyway.
Walking back through the town, several of the residents raised their hands and waved to him. “Hello!” they called to him from whatever their activities were. He waved back. There was a small book shop on one of the side streets, and he decided to have a look inside, even if he couldn’t buy anything. Surely, such a small town wouldn’t have anything very advanced in the way of science or alchemy, but he could probably find some interesting fiction or poetry. Breathing in deeply as he entered, feeling strangely comforted by the smell of old paper and bindings, his eye was caught by a slim volume with a castle on the cover.
Of course this little shop wouldn’t have that new series he liked that was all the rage in Central, but older stories were just as good. He began to leaf through the volume when he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Need that book for school, son?” rumbled the voice, and he looked up into the face of the middle-aged bookseller.
Ed frowned. “What?”
“I keep plenty of copies of that one, they all read it over at the school. Although it might be ahead of your year-“ The man stopped speaking when he saw Ed’s expression.
“I’m not in school,” he exploded. Who did this man think he was, some kid? Just because he was short -and he wasn’t that short- didn’t mean he was a kid, didn’t this man have eyes? Because there was no way he looked that young!
“Not in school?” the man asked, narrowing his eyes. “What is the world coming to these days, kids not going to school-“
“I’m - a bit - old,” Ed said, each word clipped and tight, his one hand making a fist and the other pressing its fingers tightly into the cover of the flimsy little book, “to go - to school,” he spat out, and the man looked at him curiously.
Then he laughed. “Ah, my mistake!” the man said good-naturedly. “You look about as old as my son, I guess I just assumed!”
Ed rubbed the back of his head, forcing a smile to his lips. “Ah, that’s okay,” he made himself say. He released the book from his tight grip and set it back on the shelf with its duplicates. “You’re lucky I’m not a kid, I might’ve destroyed your entire shop for calling me a microscopic shorty who doesn’t look old enough to be in kindergarten!”
“I didn’t say all that!” the man protested, but Ed was already halfway out the door, the little bells above his head jingling at his exit.
On the way back to the inn a pair of dark-skinned children collided with him in the street, and when they looked up at him it was with red eyes. “Hey, careful!” he told them. “Don’t play in the street!” was what he said, but he was surprised to see Ishbalan children so far north in his country. Were they orphans? Had some northern couple adopted them? No, there was there mother a few feet away, chatting with another woman, a native of the north. She spoke with an accent, but she and her children seemed very much at home in Dillon.
“Watch me,” said the little boy. “I can do a trick!” He produced a yo-yo from his pocket and proceeded to bounce it up and down on the string. The sister, the little girl, shrieked and laughed at him.
“You’re doing it wrong!” she told him.
“Am not!” the boy said crossly. “This is what the man in the shop was doing.”
Ed laughed, crouching down. “I think you’ve almost got it,” he said encouragingly. “Can I try?”
The boy handed him the toy with it’s unwound string, and Ed wound it carefully before he let it drop from his fingers and jerked it back up.
“I think this is how you do it,” he said, watching the two pairs of red eyes go up and down with the yo-yo.
The girl clapped her hands and laughed again, and the boy snatched his toy back. When Ed looked up their dark-skinned, red-eyed mother had come over to them. “I’m sorry if these two are bothering you,” she said, smiling. She tilted her face down to her children. “Don’t bother the nice young man, I’m sure he has things he needs to be doing.”
Ed shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said, rubbing the back of his head again.
“Stay and play with us!” the little girl demanded, and Ed smiled at her.
“Uh, maybe another day?” he suggested, and the mother laughed.
“Well, they certainly took a liking to you right away!” she said, her red eyes meeting his.
“Uh, yeah, well. Kids usually do. I have a daughter about her age,” he added awkwardly, uncertain as always about calling Kaiya his daughter.
“Do you? Maybe our kids could play together! There aren’t very many children here their age-“ she looked at him curiously. “You’re new to the town, aren’t you?”
“My daughter is… with her mother,” he said, even more awkward now. “And yeah, I am new around here.”
“You must miss her. Your daughter, I mean,” the woman said sympathetically.
“Yeah. I do.”
The woman held her hand out to shake. “I’m Anya,” she said brightly, and he gave her hand a quick shake with his gloved one.
“I’m Ed,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” The woman then gathered her children out of the street and went back to her conversation with her friend, and Ed continued his walk back to the inn. His country had changed in more ways than he realized, he thought to himself. When he had been a kid he had seen the military marching through his town on its way to conquer Ishbal. When he had been a teenager his government had rounded them all up and sent them to camps in deserted places, because it was “better” for them that way. Now not only were the signs at the Central train station in Ishbalan as well, but there were Ishbalans living right here in the north, right along side everyone else. Maybe his country was changing for the better?
Al felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up from where he was crouching on the roof of the Central headquarters building. “You’re shift’s finished, Elric, the next rotation’s on,” the soldier told him. He couldn’t recall the man’s name but it was someone he’d worked with before. Al nodded and stood up, his joints stiff from holding the awkward position for so long. “General Mustang wants to see you in his office now that things are starting to calm down,” he added, and Al nodded again.
Roy had forbid him from leaving the headquarters building, insisting that his help was completely unnecessary for the crowd control and he wasn’t needed in investigations either. He finally allowed Al to help out the security team, and Al would have protested, saying there weren’t many State Alchemists here in Central at the moment and of course his skills were needed, but he had the suspicion that Roy knew something about his memory loss that he did not.
The halls of the headquarters building were eerily quiet, considering the recent upheaval, and Al figured people who normally worked inside were called away for one reason or another relating to either the rioting or the assassination, or something else entirely. His country was spiraling out of control, he could feel it in the air, and he was certain everyone else could as well.
The sight of General Mustang was a comfort to him, and that realization left him slightly shocked. But the man always had an aura of calm and control, even in the midst of chaos, and Al felt the effects immediately.
The single eye regarded him steadily, and gloved fingers formed a steeple for the gaze to pass over. Al stood in front of the desk, his brief calm being replaced by unease.
“Close the door,” Mustang instructed him, and he did. “Tell me what happened.”
“On the roof?” Al said, even knowing that wasn’t what the man was talking about. He was talking about whatever preceded his waking up in his dorm in the midst of a military crisis with no memory of anything, let along how he got there.
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Sorry, sir,” he said dutifully, looking down at the floor. “It’s just that- well, I don’t know what happened.”
He could read no expression on the man’s face. “Why don’t you tell me what you do know?”
“I was going to give you my report on the Bethan mission,” Al began haltingly. “And then- nothing. I woke up in my room and I couldn’t remember anything at all. Like everything I knew had been completely wiped out.”
“Has that ever happened to your memory before?” Mustang asked calmly.
“No, sir. Never.”
“Anything else you might want to add?”
“No sir,” Al said at first, but then he added, “just that, when I woke up, I knew what was happening. I knew that Central was rioting and I knew that the president had been assassinated. First I thought it was a dream, because I couldn’t remember it happening and I couldn’t remember being told about it. But I knew it was true.”
“My first thought,” the General said slowly, “was that you were not yourself. That a shape-shifter had taken on your appearance. But you said some very strange things to be just before you lost consciousness.”
Al frowned.
“I should send you to the military psychiatric unit,” Mustang said, leaning back in his chair, placing his hands on the edge of his desk. “If anyone else had heard the things you said, I would have to. But I’d like to believe there’s another explanation for this.”
Believe me, so would I, Al thought grimly. “So, what… what did I say, then?” he asked anxiously.
“You were very concerned about finding your brother. I found it suspicious that you would speak about him so bluntly and in front of so many people, and when I questioned you about your identity in private, when I told you I thought you were a homunculus pretending to be Alphonse Elric you told me that you were not, you were human, but you were not Al. You were merely a spirit who had taken over Al’s body in order to find Ed.”
”What?” Al did not believe in the supernatural. He did not believe in ghosts and spirits and possessions. As far as he knew, the General didn’t either.
“The strangest thing you said,” the General continued, his voice sounding far away amidst the confusion swirling around Al’s mind, “was that you were Alphonse, you just weren’t this Alphonse.” The man stared at him for a few more seconds. “I’m hoping you can tell me something, Lieutenant, whatever it may be, that will put your mental health back in good standing with me. Because as I’m sure you can understand, I am incredibly concerned as of now.”
Alphonse, but not this Alphonse. Another Alphonse.
The other Alphonse.
He swallowed hard. His heart was pounding. Had the other boy’s soul really crossed the Gate and inhabited his own body? What could have happened? And what if it happened again?
“I don’t know if it will make you less concerned,” he said quietly, staring at the surface of the desk, forcing himself to repeat something that must sound impossible, “but I think I can tell you what happened. It has to do with Ed.”
Winry swiped blindly for the alarm clock on her nightstand for several moments before she woke enough to realize the sound was not her alarm but her telephone ringing in the middle of the night.
She stumbled out of bed, first being surprised that Kaiya had not woken and begun to cry before her brain shifted into panic. When was the last time her phone had rung in the middle of the night? She knew when. It had been during the war.
“Hello?” she said into the receiver, her voice shaking, her mind begging it to be a wrong number.
“Winry,” Al’s voice crackled over the wires to her. “Listen, this is very important. You’ve got to come to Central where it’s safe, you and Kaiya both. Is Brother with you?”
“Safe? Al, what are you talking about? Why isn’t it safe?”
“The borders-“ there was a crackle and she didn’t hear the rest of his sentence. “-have warned us but there’s still a chance. It’s safer even in Central, even with the assassination. You’re too close to the northern border. Is Ed there, or are you alone?”
She stared down at the little table the phone rested on, seeing this very scene years before.
“No,” she whispered. “Ed isn’t here.”
”You’re too close to the northern border, Drachma is going to attack.”
“Al, if Drachma is going to attack, why isn’t the military here to stop them?”
There had been a disturbing pause.
“Al?”
“The military,” he had told her, his words falling out of the phone like stones, dropping down onto the wooden floor at her feet, “doesn’t consider protecting the northern countryside a priority. They’re announcing the evacuation tomorrow over the radio. I’m sorry for calling you in the middle of the night but I wanted to give you time to pack.”
Her home had been the Rockbell home in Rizembool for generations before she was even born, how could she possibly begin to think about packing things up and leaving? What could she take? No matter how many of her things she could carry out of the place, she would still be leaving her home. Her only home. “There’s really going to be a war,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. Her voice was resigned. She was already looking around the room deciding what could come with her and what would have to stay.
“There’s a place for you here in Central-“
“I don’t want to live in Central.”
“It’s the safest place you can be right now. Please, Winry. I need to know that you’re safe.”
She clutched the phone to her ear. “Al,” she whispered. “How am I going to know whether you’re safe?”
“Are they evacuating?” she asked softly, the memory sending chills up her spine and over the back of her neck.
“Not yet. They don’t want people to know there’s no way to evacuate everyone by train. The rails have been blown up and there aren’t enough workers to repair them fast enough. The military is too tied up protecting Central.”
“The rails… what?” she repeated in a near whisper.
“They’ve been keeping it out of the news because they don’t want people to panic. But Winry, promise me you’ll find a way out of there. Get to Central if you can.”
“I’ll drive,” she said, her voice an echo of how she thought it would sound. “I’ll find a car, I’ll drive if I have to.”
The next sentence was cut off by static. “-inside the country, but it isn’t. They’ve been here all along.”
“What?”
“Winry?”
“Yeah?”
“If I don’t get to see you, I love you. And tell brother I love him.”
Her eyes flew open. “Don’t talk like that, Al! Nothing’s going to happen to us! Everything’s going to be okay. Kaiya and I will meet you in Central, I promise you!”
There was silence, and it was several seconds before Winry realized that the line was dead.
When he woke up he had thought he was in London. He had thought he was in London in his father’s apartment and that the city was being bombed. A quick look out the window at the sky had assured him that he was at home in his own world, where huge blimps did not drop bombs out of the sky and machines called airplanes had never been invented. That realization had sent him into a fresh panic: what were the sounds of war doing in his own world?
He had crept downstairs to see the woman who owned the inn standing in the open doorway, and together they could see the distant flashes of gunfire to the north of the town. “What’s happening?” he asked in a whisper, and she jumped, pulling her shawl around herself even tighter.
“We’re being invaded,” she whispered back. Ed stared past her into the town; there were people in their doorways and at their windows looking out with dread at the same sight he was. He could hear the reports coming from the radio of more than one house: it was an emergency announcement that all civilians were to stay indoors until further instruction and that all military personnel who were not at the base were to immediately report back.
“By who?”
“Drachma, of course,” she hissed, and motioned for him to keep his voice down.
“They can’t hear us, you know,” he said, stepping out onto the porch only to be snatched back inside.
“What are you doing?” the woman snapped, her eyes fearful in the moonlight.
He twisted out of her grip and stepped out into the street. “I’m an alchemist,” he said, letting his voice take on a cocky tone and meaning it for the first time in years. “If we’re being invaded, I’m going to stop them.”
He said it loud enough that all the households on the street with their doors and windows open could hear his announcement, and they watched him has he stormed off in the distance towards the sound of gunfire.
He crept quietly closer and closer to the fighting, trying to get a good gauge of what was going on, when he felt the unmistakable barrel of a gun on his neck. He froze.
“Don’t move,” said the voice.
“Not moving,” he gritted out. As soon as he spoke the other man dropped the gun.
“You’re Amestrian,” the soldier said.
“Damn right I am,” Ed responded, whirling around to face the man who had almost shot him.
The man looked him up and down. “You’re not military,” he said, but his gaze was questioning. “You’re not in uniform.” What kind of civilian would walk right into a battle?
They both heard the missile above them at the same time; they both ducked down, the soldier covering his head and Ed clapping his hands and pressing them to the ground, causing an earthen dome to rise up above them. Within seconds it was shattered by the missile, spraying clouds of dirt in all directions, but the explosive had been alchemically neutralized.
“I’m an alchemist,” the young man said. “I’ve worked for the military before.”
The man gave a short nod. “We could sure use you now,” he affirmed, but the mysterious alchemist had run off towards the next hurtling explosive, barely neutralizing it before it would have blown him to pieces.
As the battle raged on a rumor began to spread about an alchemist who had come from the neighboring town, a short man with blond hair who did alchemy without transmutation circles.
The northernmost regions of Amestris had been somewhat disputed territory ever since the first war had ended. Drachma had officially retreated back to their borders but the area between Rizembool and the mountains had remained unsafe enough to prohibit re-habitation. That had been a big enough blow on the northern part of the country. But even in the midst of the previous war Drachma had not gotten as far as Bethan, as far as Altenburg, and certainly not all the way to the base in Dillon.
If this battle was lost, the entire north could very well be lost. And the Drachman army was huge. They were huge, and they seemed to anticipate every defensive move the Amestris military attempted to make. The only success they had was with this wildcard alchemist who had shown up in the middle of the night, saying he was there to help.
Winry had tried to hire or borrow a car, any car, from anywhere, but by the next morning the whole town of Altenburg was in a panic. The station was selling out of tickets towards Central, even though Winry knew that even with a ticket the train wouldn’t get her to Central, not if what Al had told her hours ago about the damage to the rails. The lines at the small station were long and unruly, and by the time she got to the window all the tickets were gone.
The conductor saw that she had a child with her and at the last minute waved her on, but there was nowhere for her and Kaiya to sit. The train was full of women and children. They were evacuating, she thought with a shiver. She had told Kaiya that they were going to Central to see her Daddy, and that she had to be very good or she and Mommy would not be allowed on the train, and her daughter clutched her hand silently, looking around with wide eyes at the other, silent children on the train. The entire compartment was filled with a sense of dread, and Winry was certain that every compartment on the train was exactly the same.
She wondered if any of these people knew their ticket wouldn’t get them to Central, like she did, and were trying anyway, or if they really thought they had got their passage to safety.
After two hours of standing Kaiya finally began to fuss, along with the other young children in the compartment. She began to whine for her Daddy. “Shhh, baby,” Winry told her quietly. “When we get to Central we’ll see Daddy, all right?”
It came as no surprise to her when the train came to a stop and sat on the tracks just south of Dillon station with no explanation. She was right, no one else on the train knew that the rails had been damaged and the train couldn’t run. There was a rash of speculation as to why the train stopped, but when the announcement actually came, it came as a surprise. All the passengers would be walking along the tracks back to Dillon and would be spending the night in the town hall. By morning the rails should be repaired. Winry hoped that was the truth.
By the time she was back indoors, in the crowded building with a hard cot provided for her, she was frightened and exhausted, and Kaiya was tired but would not go to sleep in the strange place. She spent the day listening to the radio reports that yes, Al had been right, Drachma was invading from the north, and then suddenly the broadcast went silent.
Late at night, curled around her daughter and trying in vain to get at least a little sleep before morning, she woke to the unmistakable sounds of distant gunfire. Everyone who had been on the train with her was slowly waking up and shuffling towards the windows and could see the battle going on in the distance. “That’s the military base out there,” someone told her.
“The military can’t stop them,” said someone else. “That base is a military research facility, they don’t have enough men there to fight a decent battle.”
She hated the waiting; she hated the uncertainty. It wasn’t any different waiting for news of disaster at home or waiting for news of disaster here in the town hall in Dillon. It was familiar to her all the same. And she hated it.
“Did you see that?” the soldier said in a low voice, crouching down beside his comrades.
“Which?”
“Look,” he said, jerking his head to the left, and all three men saw another man, a young man, in civilian clothing, clapping his hands together and pressing them to the ground. The earth seemed to tremble for a minute and they could almost see the path the alchemy took out across the battlefield to the enemy side. Seconds later there was a purple and blue explosion in the distance.
“He’s crazy,” one of them whispered.
“He’s gonna get shot,” said another, just as the figure jerked backward, dropping to its knees on the ground and clutching its left shoulder.
“Who is ‘e?”
“Dunno.”
There was a moment’s pause. “Go get ‘im,” came the directive. “I’ll cover you.”
There was blood soaking through the man’s shirt but he stood up and ran with the soldier back to the rocky area that was providing them with cover.
The soldier yanked the man’s shirt open to see the wound, even as the man protested. “Hey, I’m a doctor,” the soldier told him. “Calm down.”
“I’m fine,” the man sputtered.
“You got shot,” the soldier said, and the man yelped as he probed the wound. All three soldiers could see when the doctor pulled the shirt aside that the man’s other shoulder was automail. “Get out of here, get back that way to the medic tents, they’ll tend to you there,” he instructed, but the man ignored him, trying to stand back up.
“I’m fine,” he insisted.
“You’re the Fullmetal Alchemist,” one of the other soldiers blurted out, staring at the uninjured metal soldier.
Something exploded about ten feet to the left of the men.
“I am not. If you remember me at the end of all this,” he said, gesturing with his metal arm to the debris still scattering over the rocks from the explosion, “be sure to remember that, too!”
The soldier who was also a doctor was reaching into his bag. “I can get the bullet out and bandage you up, but it’s going to hurt,” he warned. “They have better painkillers back at the medic tents.”
“Fine but make it quick,” the man who was not the Fullmetal Alchemist grumbled. A few minutes later he was gone.
It took three soldiers to drag him into the concrete bunker, and he protested the whole way. “Hey,” he shouted at them. “I’m on your side, is this how the military treats its own guys? Hey! Just tell me where we’re going already!”
He recognized Colonel Warnes as soon as he saw him, and some leftover part of him that was still fifteen and military brought his hand to his forehead in a sharp salute, causing him to wince at the stabbing pain that rang through his injured soldier.
The Colonel looked at him warily, raising his eyebrows. He stood in front of a board that was scribbled with detailed military strategies that made no sense to Edward. He had never fought in a war; when he was military he was fighting only for himself. “So you are military,” the man said, his eyes boring into Ed’s own.
“Military consultant, sir,” he lied.
“And what are you calling yourself?”
“Heiderich,” he said shortly, sticking to the original lie. “Edward Heiderich.”
“Your alchemy without a circle is remarkable,” Colonel Warnes said, pacing the short length of the concrete room. “You may have turned up in time to be our saving weapon.”
A human weapon.
Like the Colonel, his Colonel, had been in Ishbal. Destroying enemies left and right, and tortured for the rest of his life because of it.
Ed mentally shook his head. This was different. These were not civilians and they weren’t innocent. They were invading the home he had worked so hard to get back to. He listened carefully as the man began to decode the scribbled on the board.
He clapped his hands together and pressed them to the ground, feeling the power surge up inside him. It was if he could see the Gate itself each time he transmuted; as if his power was infinite. He always held back since returning to his own world, he always used as little energy as he could manage to spare sucking the souls away from the other side of the Gate to fuel his transmutations. Now he let go, no barriers, to spare the souls of strangers on his own side. It felt like the time in Lior when he had been there when Scar created the Philosopher’s Stone: a reaction was underway that was nearly, but not quite, out of control, but was growing bigger and more powerful and he struggled to hold onto it without holding anything back.
It would destroy the enemy as ruthlessly as they had meant to destroy his own people. He was doing what he had to do, he thought, and with that thought, he let just a little bit more power into the transmutation. There was always more energy to draw from, and he would always be able to control it. The wind from the reaction whipped around his face, his hair flying out behind him, and even the men he was protecting cowered in fear of him.
He felt two white-hot pains sear into his gut, and his body buckled, but he forced himself not to break the circle.
He was doing this for the people. He was the People’s Alchemist.
Chapter Ten
Note1: I bet you didn't really think I was going to update this soon!
Note2: Honestly I didn't either but all this writing for NaNoWriMo has kinda got me in the flow again! (Of course, its also distracting me from the actual NaNo project, but... ah well.)
Note3: While I'm starting notes with "honestly," I'll just add that honestly, this chap feels a little too short to me, and not that great for all thats been leading up to it. Usually I am really particular about this fic, but I've been fussing with this chapter for a good while now and this is about all I can do with it. Sorry if it's falling flat, but, I've got ch. 10 mostly finished as well (yeah how many times have you heard that from me?) and it should be back up to par.
Chapter: #9, I’ll Be Running The Other Way
Previous: 1, I, 2, 3, II, 4, 4.5, 5, 6, III, 7, 8, IV
Genre: Drama/Romance
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: for the entire series.
Summary: After six years, the brothers are finally reunited, but will Ed be able to adjust to a world that has long since moved on without him? This is an AU that ignores the movie. Pairings include an Ed/Win Al/Win triangle of sorts, but there is mention of some past Ed/Hei and past Roy/Riza.
Chapter Summary: Amestris is plunged into chaos when the terrorist attacks lead to the assassination of the elected leader. Both Elrics wind up in the midst of a war but unable to contact each other.
I'll Be Running The Other Way
It was the only place within walking distance of Altenburg.
He had walked from Dillon to Altenburg once, that day he re-appeared in Amestris without a single cenz in his pocket for a train ticket, and now, nearly two years later, he was right back where he started: walking between towns, leg aching, out of breath and out of shape from so much lack of activity, and it was summer, meaning it was unbearably hot out and he could feel his automail heating up. He was surprised it wasn’t scorching his clothes.
He’d only been in the town that one time before, but he remembered there was a fountain in the town square, just like Altenburg and just like all the towns in the north, and when he found it he sat down on the edge of it, hands on his knees, and thought now what? because that was the easiest thing to think for the moment. Then he grabbed the edge of the stone he sat on and leaned back, closing his eyes and feeling the cool water wash over his face and neck and finally over his shoulders, swearing that even underwater he could feel the metal of the port hissing as it hit the water.
After nearly a minute he rose back to a sitting position, dripping and gasping and rubbing his eyes and looking ahead through soaked strands of dark gold at the floral patterned skirt of an older woman with her hands on her hips. “You’re not allowed to bathe in the fountain,” she said firmly, steeling her expression. “People drink that water, it’s unsanitary to submerge your entire self in it, and don’t give me some line about how you’ve just had a bath because you clearly have not.”
He gaped at her. She was the same woman who had told him he was in Dillon the first time he was there; the same woman who told him her husband had an inn nearby and the same woman who had been amazed by the alchemy of a street performer.
Ed rubbed the back of his head, trying in vain to appear if not charming, at least trustworthy. “Ah, you’re right, I haven’t,” he conceded. “You wouldn’t know where I might find a place to stay?” he added hopefully.
She shook her head. “No where on this end of town,” she said, still gazing down at him, seemingly trying to make up her mind about this stranger. Her eye caught sight of his metal hand and he saw her notice it, covering it with the flesh one.
“But I thought-“ he began, narrowing his eyes.
“We don’t take well to travelers here in Dillon, not these days,” she said brusquely. “Never know who to trust, who’s military and who’s a terrorist.” She gave a nod towards the other direction; opposite the one he came. “You need some kind of help, try the military base.”
He stood up, hoping to look her in the eye but she was a tall woman, and he contemplated standing on his toes for a moment before he decided that was just too undignified. As if he could become more undignified than half-soaking wet with nowhere to stay and not a penny to his name.
She looked at him warily. “Just as I thought,” she said, folding her arms. “No friend of the military, you.” With that she walked away, leaving him gaping behind her.
“Wait!” he called without thinking. “What about your inn?”
She waved her hand in the air, not even turning around. “Closed,” she said as she walked away. “For repairs.” She got a few steps further before whirling around again. “Wait a minute,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You’re him, aren’t you? You’re the Fullmetal Alchemist.”
“No, my name is-“
“Heiderich, isn’t it?” she finished for him. “Edward Heiderich?”
He stood, several feet away, blinking water droplets from his eyelashes. “Did you say your inn was closed for repairs?” he tried.
It came naturally to him. He didn’t know why he thought it wouldn’t. All he had to do was visualize in his mind the straightening of beams, the rearrangement of molecules…
All he had to do…
The world in which alchemy was nothing more than a bedtime story was becoming more on more like a dream to him. Feeling the elements shift beneath his hands, looking up in triumph at the solid building straightening under his power, he wasn’t certain that other world had even existed. He had spent ten years believing it was nothing but a secondary existence, a transitory place, an imitation of his true reality, and, looking into the smiling face of the woman who’s inn he had just repaired, he felt at home, finally.
The alchemist for the people.
Using alchemy to help the common folk.
Using alchemy.
“There you are, ma’am,” he said, able to feel his grin splitting his face in half. He dusted his hands off by brushing them together. “All fixed up.”
She folded her arms in front of herself. “Well,” she said, pleased. “I’d say you’ve about earned yourself a hot meal and a place to stay whenever you need it.” She winked. “Mr. Heiderich.” He started at the name.
It was his own fault. He needed an alias and it was the first name that popped into his head. The first name he knew wouldn’t be tied to anyone on this side of the gate. But every time he heard it it was like being reminded of a dream that was slowly slipping out of his memory.
Dillon was a nice town. It was a lot like Altenburg: a small northern town along the northern railway through the mountains. There had been a war between Amestris and Drachma, he knew, and surely the train didn’t run back and forth through the mountain tunnels like it had before the war, but in actuality he didn’t know. He knew very little about the current state of his own country.
He hadn’t heard much about the terrorist attacks on the northern railways, effectively blocking off physical contact from the rest of the country. The military had tried its best to hush it up, preventing much more than the barest details from reaching the news. He hadn’t heard much about the terrorist attacks in Central either; that was Al’s area these days, not his.
He wasn’t in this world to benefit the military; he was nobody’s dog. He wasn’t in this world to be with the people he loved; it had been too long and he wasn’t the golden boy they remembered. But he could always be the Alchemist of the People.
His mind was blank.
There were no images, just a white nothingness. It was like when a film ends, and it goes black, and then slips off the reel and the screen is simply white, with nothing projected but the light from the bulb, except he had no memory of there ever being a film.
His eyes were open. He was looking at a ceiling, and then at a wall. Nothing looked familiar to him. It wasn’t simply that he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know anything at all. And it was terrifying.
Think, he told himself intensely. Think of something. There has to be something.
He was sitting on the side of a cot, staring at a small, bare room. He crossed his feet. The action felt familiar. He was beginning to be aware of his body. It felt familiar. And then,
Edward.
Edward?
Longing. Missing. Wanting. Crying. Screaming. Pushing. Hurting. Clinging. Sobbing. Loving. Wishing. Hoping. Trying.
Edward.
The knowledge came slowly, as if being forced out through an opening too small.
He had a brother named Edward. A brother he loved beyond loving. A brother he had spent most of his life missing. A brother whom he didn’t know where he was right now, a brother whom he had hurt-
And with that thought everything hit him at once, his mother’s death, the transmutation, waking up in the future to find everyone older and his brother gone, joining the military, finding his brother again, older, different, changed, but still Edward, his daughter (or was she Ed’s daughter?) and the screaming, sobbing fight they had just had. All this was layered with the knowledge that he had spent four years as a suit of armor, and the barely-there memories his soul still held onto of that time, and layered again with the information that his country was under an attack that seemed to be coming from within itself, and that, being military, he was right in the middle of it all.
The president had been assassinated. Officially it was the result of a short lived civil uprising; something that came from his country’s own citizens. Privately, it was being discovered that a foreign source had hired Amestrian rebels to do the job. Their enemy to the north, Drachma, was preparing to attack again.
But… where did this information come from? How did he know the president has been assassinated. Had it really happened, or had it been a dream his over-tired, over-stressed subconscious had cooked up?
He didn’t jump when he heard the gunshots outside his window. He was military, he was trained not to be shocked by something like that. He was in the military dorm; the shots were far away, somewhere else in Central. It probably wasn’t a dream. The city probably was rioting. The president probably had been killed. So… why was he here in his room?
He looked down at himself. He was in uniform. The last thing he remembered was that he was waiting to give General Mustang his report from his field work in Bethan. But obviously he didn’t give him the report… did he?
He couldn’t recall anything like this ever happening to him before: waking up feeling blank and panicked and unable to remember his most recent actions. Yes, he did lose four years of memory, and yes, it did feel very unsettling, but it didn’t feel like this. What was going on?
The second time he heard gunshots he sprang into action. He didn’t know how he knew that the people of Central were rioting, he didn’t know how he knew that the president had been assassinated, but he knew who he was. He was a Lieutenant in the Amestris military and he did not belong in his room, he belonged with the rest of the soldiers, doing what they had to do to get things under control.
Edward smoothed his gloves over his hands, flesh and metal, and gave his leg and his shoulder a good stretch like he did every morning. He gathered his hair back in a ponytail at the back of his head, combing his gloved fingers through its length. He listened to the sounds of his boots on the wooden stairs of the inn, and smirked. The sound wasn’t exactly the same, but it was close enough. If you weren’t listening for it, you’d never know.
No matter what the suspicion of the innkeeper, there was no visible proof at all that he was the Fullmetal Alchemist. None whatsoever. He was just an ordinary guy who liked alchemy, earning his keep in this small northern town.
He liked to go to the edge of the town, where the forest started, to exercise. He went through his old routine that Izumi had taught him an Al almost on auto-pilot, it had been so familiar to him. His body was slower to respond, but it felt good to push himself. The burning in his muscles just meant he was using them. It just meant he was whole. Physically.
It was one of those clear summer days, not a single cloud, and the blazing heat of the sun was thick in the air. He liked the feel of the sun-shade pattern the leaves above him made over his form, changing and glittering constantly as both he moved, fighting an invisible opponent, and the leaves moved, rustled by an invisible force. A thin sheen of sweat coated his face, and he was flushed pink from the exercise.
When he felt he had done enough for the day, he hung his head down, hands pressed to his thighs, facing the ground and breathing deeply. He felt his ponytail slowly slide over his neck and head to hang upside down, the ends of his hair dangling in front of his eyes behind his bangs. He stood up suddenly, still breathing furiously, and grinned at his accomplishment. He stretched his automail joints once more and felt a pang as he mentally thanked his best friend. I’m sorry, Winry. I’m sorry, Al, he thought, like a mantra, over and over. But whatever he had done to hurt them with his return was nothing compared to what he had done to Al when they were children. At least he had righted the worst of his wrongs. One of them, anyway.
Walking back through the town, several of the residents raised their hands and waved to him. “Hello!” they called to him from whatever their activities were. He waved back. There was a small book shop on one of the side streets, and he decided to have a look inside, even if he couldn’t buy anything. Surely, such a small town wouldn’t have anything very advanced in the way of science or alchemy, but he could probably find some interesting fiction or poetry. Breathing in deeply as he entered, feeling strangely comforted by the smell of old paper and bindings, his eye was caught by a slim volume with a castle on the cover.
Of course this little shop wouldn’t have that new series he liked that was all the rage in Central, but older stories were just as good. He began to leaf through the volume when he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Need that book for school, son?” rumbled the voice, and he looked up into the face of the middle-aged bookseller.
Ed frowned. “What?”
“I keep plenty of copies of that one, they all read it over at the school. Although it might be ahead of your year-“ The man stopped speaking when he saw Ed’s expression.
“I’m not in school,” he exploded. Who did this man think he was, some kid? Just because he was short -and he wasn’t that short- didn’t mean he was a kid, didn’t this man have eyes? Because there was no way he looked that young!
“Not in school?” the man asked, narrowing his eyes. “What is the world coming to these days, kids not going to school-“
“I’m - a bit - old,” Ed said, each word clipped and tight, his one hand making a fist and the other pressing its fingers tightly into the cover of the flimsy little book, “to go - to school,” he spat out, and the man looked at him curiously.
Then he laughed. “Ah, my mistake!” the man said good-naturedly. “You look about as old as my son, I guess I just assumed!”
Ed rubbed the back of his head, forcing a smile to his lips. “Ah, that’s okay,” he made himself say. He released the book from his tight grip and set it back on the shelf with its duplicates. “You’re lucky I’m not a kid, I might’ve destroyed your entire shop for calling me a microscopic shorty who doesn’t look old enough to be in kindergarten!”
“I didn’t say all that!” the man protested, but Ed was already halfway out the door, the little bells above his head jingling at his exit.
On the way back to the inn a pair of dark-skinned children collided with him in the street, and when they looked up at him it was with red eyes. “Hey, careful!” he told them. “Don’t play in the street!” was what he said, but he was surprised to see Ishbalan children so far north in his country. Were they orphans? Had some northern couple adopted them? No, there was there mother a few feet away, chatting with another woman, a native of the north. She spoke with an accent, but she and her children seemed very much at home in Dillon.
“Watch me,” said the little boy. “I can do a trick!” He produced a yo-yo from his pocket and proceeded to bounce it up and down on the string. The sister, the little girl, shrieked and laughed at him.
“You’re doing it wrong!” she told him.
“Am not!” the boy said crossly. “This is what the man in the shop was doing.”
Ed laughed, crouching down. “I think you’ve almost got it,” he said encouragingly. “Can I try?”
The boy handed him the toy with it’s unwound string, and Ed wound it carefully before he let it drop from his fingers and jerked it back up.
“I think this is how you do it,” he said, watching the two pairs of red eyes go up and down with the yo-yo.
The girl clapped her hands and laughed again, and the boy snatched his toy back. When Ed looked up their dark-skinned, red-eyed mother had come over to them. “I’m sorry if these two are bothering you,” she said, smiling. She tilted her face down to her children. “Don’t bother the nice young man, I’m sure he has things he needs to be doing.”
Ed shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said, rubbing the back of his head again.
“Stay and play with us!” the little girl demanded, and Ed smiled at her.
“Uh, maybe another day?” he suggested, and the mother laughed.
“Well, they certainly took a liking to you right away!” she said, her red eyes meeting his.
“Uh, yeah, well. Kids usually do. I have a daughter about her age,” he added awkwardly, uncertain as always about calling Kaiya his daughter.
“Do you? Maybe our kids could play together! There aren’t very many children here their age-“ she looked at him curiously. “You’re new to the town, aren’t you?”
“My daughter is… with her mother,” he said, even more awkward now. “And yeah, I am new around here.”
“You must miss her. Your daughter, I mean,” the woman said sympathetically.
“Yeah. I do.”
The woman held her hand out to shake. “I’m Anya,” she said brightly, and he gave her hand a quick shake with his gloved one.
“I’m Ed,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” The woman then gathered her children out of the street and went back to her conversation with her friend, and Ed continued his walk back to the inn. His country had changed in more ways than he realized, he thought to himself. When he had been a kid he had seen the military marching through his town on its way to conquer Ishbal. When he had been a teenager his government had rounded them all up and sent them to camps in deserted places, because it was “better” for them that way. Now not only were the signs at the Central train station in Ishbalan as well, but there were Ishbalans living right here in the north, right along side everyone else. Maybe his country was changing for the better?
Al felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up from where he was crouching on the roof of the Central headquarters building. “You’re shift’s finished, Elric, the next rotation’s on,” the soldier told him. He couldn’t recall the man’s name but it was someone he’d worked with before. Al nodded and stood up, his joints stiff from holding the awkward position for so long. “General Mustang wants to see you in his office now that things are starting to calm down,” he added, and Al nodded again.
Roy had forbid him from leaving the headquarters building, insisting that his help was completely unnecessary for the crowd control and he wasn’t needed in investigations either. He finally allowed Al to help out the security team, and Al would have protested, saying there weren’t many State Alchemists here in Central at the moment and of course his skills were needed, but he had the suspicion that Roy knew something about his memory loss that he did not.
The halls of the headquarters building were eerily quiet, considering the recent upheaval, and Al figured people who normally worked inside were called away for one reason or another relating to either the rioting or the assassination, or something else entirely. His country was spiraling out of control, he could feel it in the air, and he was certain everyone else could as well.
The sight of General Mustang was a comfort to him, and that realization left him slightly shocked. But the man always had an aura of calm and control, even in the midst of chaos, and Al felt the effects immediately.
The single eye regarded him steadily, and gloved fingers formed a steeple for the gaze to pass over. Al stood in front of the desk, his brief calm being replaced by unease.
“Close the door,” Mustang instructed him, and he did. “Tell me what happened.”
“On the roof?” Al said, even knowing that wasn’t what the man was talking about. He was talking about whatever preceded his waking up in his dorm in the midst of a military crisis with no memory of anything, let along how he got there.
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Sorry, sir,” he said dutifully, looking down at the floor. “It’s just that- well, I don’t know what happened.”
He could read no expression on the man’s face. “Why don’t you tell me what you do know?”
“I was going to give you my report on the Bethan mission,” Al began haltingly. “And then- nothing. I woke up in my room and I couldn’t remember anything at all. Like everything I knew had been completely wiped out.”
“Has that ever happened to your memory before?” Mustang asked calmly.
“No, sir. Never.”
“Anything else you might want to add?”
“No sir,” Al said at first, but then he added, “just that, when I woke up, I knew what was happening. I knew that Central was rioting and I knew that the president had been assassinated. First I thought it was a dream, because I couldn’t remember it happening and I couldn’t remember being told about it. But I knew it was true.”
“My first thought,” the General said slowly, “was that you were not yourself. That a shape-shifter had taken on your appearance. But you said some very strange things to be just before you lost consciousness.”
Al frowned.
“I should send you to the military psychiatric unit,” Mustang said, leaning back in his chair, placing his hands on the edge of his desk. “If anyone else had heard the things you said, I would have to. But I’d like to believe there’s another explanation for this.”
Believe me, so would I, Al thought grimly. “So, what… what did I say, then?” he asked anxiously.
“You were very concerned about finding your brother. I found it suspicious that you would speak about him so bluntly and in front of so many people, and when I questioned you about your identity in private, when I told you I thought you were a homunculus pretending to be Alphonse Elric you told me that you were not, you were human, but you were not Al. You were merely a spirit who had taken over Al’s body in order to find Ed.”
”What?” Al did not believe in the supernatural. He did not believe in ghosts and spirits and possessions. As far as he knew, the General didn’t either.
“The strangest thing you said,” the General continued, his voice sounding far away amidst the confusion swirling around Al’s mind, “was that you were Alphonse, you just weren’t this Alphonse.” The man stared at him for a few more seconds. “I’m hoping you can tell me something, Lieutenant, whatever it may be, that will put your mental health back in good standing with me. Because as I’m sure you can understand, I am incredibly concerned as of now.”
Alphonse, but not this Alphonse. Another Alphonse.
The other Alphonse.
He swallowed hard. His heart was pounding. Had the other boy’s soul really crossed the Gate and inhabited his own body? What could have happened? And what if it happened again?
“I don’t know if it will make you less concerned,” he said quietly, staring at the surface of the desk, forcing himself to repeat something that must sound impossible, “but I think I can tell you what happened. It has to do with Ed.”
Winry swiped blindly for the alarm clock on her nightstand for several moments before she woke enough to realize the sound was not her alarm but her telephone ringing in the middle of the night.
She stumbled out of bed, first being surprised that Kaiya had not woken and begun to cry before her brain shifted into panic. When was the last time her phone had rung in the middle of the night? She knew when. It had been during the war.
“Hello?” she said into the receiver, her voice shaking, her mind begging it to be a wrong number.
“Winry,” Al’s voice crackled over the wires to her. “Listen, this is very important. You’ve got to come to Central where it’s safe, you and Kaiya both. Is Brother with you?”
“Safe? Al, what are you talking about? Why isn’t it safe?”
“The borders-“ there was a crackle and she didn’t hear the rest of his sentence. “-have warned us but there’s still a chance. It’s safer even in Central, even with the assassination. You’re too close to the northern border. Is Ed there, or are you alone?”
She stared down at the little table the phone rested on, seeing this very scene years before.
“No,” she whispered. “Ed isn’t here.”
”You’re too close to the northern border, Drachma is going to attack.”
“Al, if Drachma is going to attack, why isn’t the military here to stop them?”
There had been a disturbing pause.
“Al?”
“The military,” he had told her, his words falling out of the phone like stones, dropping down onto the wooden floor at her feet, “doesn’t consider protecting the northern countryside a priority. They’re announcing the evacuation tomorrow over the radio. I’m sorry for calling you in the middle of the night but I wanted to give you time to pack.”
Her home had been the Rockbell home in Rizembool for generations before she was even born, how could she possibly begin to think about packing things up and leaving? What could she take? No matter how many of her things she could carry out of the place, she would still be leaving her home. Her only home. “There’s really going to be a war,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. Her voice was resigned. She was already looking around the room deciding what could come with her and what would have to stay.
“There’s a place for you here in Central-“
“I don’t want to live in Central.”
“It’s the safest place you can be right now. Please, Winry. I need to know that you’re safe.”
She clutched the phone to her ear. “Al,” she whispered. “How am I going to know whether you’re safe?”
“Are they evacuating?” she asked softly, the memory sending chills up her spine and over the back of her neck.
“Not yet. They don’t want people to know there’s no way to evacuate everyone by train. The rails have been blown up and there aren’t enough workers to repair them fast enough. The military is too tied up protecting Central.”
“The rails… what?” she repeated in a near whisper.
“They’ve been keeping it out of the news because they don’t want people to panic. But Winry, promise me you’ll find a way out of there. Get to Central if you can.”
“I’ll drive,” she said, her voice an echo of how she thought it would sound. “I’ll find a car, I’ll drive if I have to.”
The next sentence was cut off by static. “-inside the country, but it isn’t. They’ve been here all along.”
“What?”
“Winry?”
“Yeah?”
“If I don’t get to see you, I love you. And tell brother I love him.”
Her eyes flew open. “Don’t talk like that, Al! Nothing’s going to happen to us! Everything’s going to be okay. Kaiya and I will meet you in Central, I promise you!”
There was silence, and it was several seconds before Winry realized that the line was dead.
When he woke up he had thought he was in London. He had thought he was in London in his father’s apartment and that the city was being bombed. A quick look out the window at the sky had assured him that he was at home in his own world, where huge blimps did not drop bombs out of the sky and machines called airplanes had never been invented. That realization had sent him into a fresh panic: what were the sounds of war doing in his own world?
He had crept downstairs to see the woman who owned the inn standing in the open doorway, and together they could see the distant flashes of gunfire to the north of the town. “What’s happening?” he asked in a whisper, and she jumped, pulling her shawl around herself even tighter.
“We’re being invaded,” she whispered back. Ed stared past her into the town; there were people in their doorways and at their windows looking out with dread at the same sight he was. He could hear the reports coming from the radio of more than one house: it was an emergency announcement that all civilians were to stay indoors until further instruction and that all military personnel who were not at the base were to immediately report back.
“By who?”
“Drachma, of course,” she hissed, and motioned for him to keep his voice down.
“They can’t hear us, you know,” he said, stepping out onto the porch only to be snatched back inside.
“What are you doing?” the woman snapped, her eyes fearful in the moonlight.
He twisted out of her grip and stepped out into the street. “I’m an alchemist,” he said, letting his voice take on a cocky tone and meaning it for the first time in years. “If we’re being invaded, I’m going to stop them.”
He said it loud enough that all the households on the street with their doors and windows open could hear his announcement, and they watched him has he stormed off in the distance towards the sound of gunfire.
He crept quietly closer and closer to the fighting, trying to get a good gauge of what was going on, when he felt the unmistakable barrel of a gun on his neck. He froze.
“Don’t move,” said the voice.
“Not moving,” he gritted out. As soon as he spoke the other man dropped the gun.
“You’re Amestrian,” the soldier said.
“Damn right I am,” Ed responded, whirling around to face the man who had almost shot him.
The man looked him up and down. “You’re not military,” he said, but his gaze was questioning. “You’re not in uniform.” What kind of civilian would walk right into a battle?
They both heard the missile above them at the same time; they both ducked down, the soldier covering his head and Ed clapping his hands and pressing them to the ground, causing an earthen dome to rise up above them. Within seconds it was shattered by the missile, spraying clouds of dirt in all directions, but the explosive had been alchemically neutralized.
“I’m an alchemist,” the young man said. “I’ve worked for the military before.”
The man gave a short nod. “We could sure use you now,” he affirmed, but the mysterious alchemist had run off towards the next hurtling explosive, barely neutralizing it before it would have blown him to pieces.
As the battle raged on a rumor began to spread about an alchemist who had come from the neighboring town, a short man with blond hair who did alchemy without transmutation circles.
The northernmost regions of Amestris had been somewhat disputed territory ever since the first war had ended. Drachma had officially retreated back to their borders but the area between Rizembool and the mountains had remained unsafe enough to prohibit re-habitation. That had been a big enough blow on the northern part of the country. But even in the midst of the previous war Drachma had not gotten as far as Bethan, as far as Altenburg, and certainly not all the way to the base in Dillon.
If this battle was lost, the entire north could very well be lost. And the Drachman army was huge. They were huge, and they seemed to anticipate every defensive move the Amestris military attempted to make. The only success they had was with this wildcard alchemist who had shown up in the middle of the night, saying he was there to help.
Winry had tried to hire or borrow a car, any car, from anywhere, but by the next morning the whole town of Altenburg was in a panic. The station was selling out of tickets towards Central, even though Winry knew that even with a ticket the train wouldn’t get her to Central, not if what Al had told her hours ago about the damage to the rails. The lines at the small station were long and unruly, and by the time she got to the window all the tickets were gone.
The conductor saw that she had a child with her and at the last minute waved her on, but there was nowhere for her and Kaiya to sit. The train was full of women and children. They were evacuating, she thought with a shiver. She had told Kaiya that they were going to Central to see her Daddy, and that she had to be very good or she and Mommy would not be allowed on the train, and her daughter clutched her hand silently, looking around with wide eyes at the other, silent children on the train. The entire compartment was filled with a sense of dread, and Winry was certain that every compartment on the train was exactly the same.
She wondered if any of these people knew their ticket wouldn’t get them to Central, like she did, and were trying anyway, or if they really thought they had got their passage to safety.
After two hours of standing Kaiya finally began to fuss, along with the other young children in the compartment. She began to whine for her Daddy. “Shhh, baby,” Winry told her quietly. “When we get to Central we’ll see Daddy, all right?”
It came as no surprise to her when the train came to a stop and sat on the tracks just south of Dillon station with no explanation. She was right, no one else on the train knew that the rails had been damaged and the train couldn’t run. There was a rash of speculation as to why the train stopped, but when the announcement actually came, it came as a surprise. All the passengers would be walking along the tracks back to Dillon and would be spending the night in the town hall. By morning the rails should be repaired. Winry hoped that was the truth.
By the time she was back indoors, in the crowded building with a hard cot provided for her, she was frightened and exhausted, and Kaiya was tired but would not go to sleep in the strange place. She spent the day listening to the radio reports that yes, Al had been right, Drachma was invading from the north, and then suddenly the broadcast went silent.
Late at night, curled around her daughter and trying in vain to get at least a little sleep before morning, she woke to the unmistakable sounds of distant gunfire. Everyone who had been on the train with her was slowly waking up and shuffling towards the windows and could see the battle going on in the distance. “That’s the military base out there,” someone told her.
“The military can’t stop them,” said someone else. “That base is a military research facility, they don’t have enough men there to fight a decent battle.”
She hated the waiting; she hated the uncertainty. It wasn’t any different waiting for news of disaster at home or waiting for news of disaster here in the town hall in Dillon. It was familiar to her all the same. And she hated it.
“Did you see that?” the soldier said in a low voice, crouching down beside his comrades.
“Which?”
“Look,” he said, jerking his head to the left, and all three men saw another man, a young man, in civilian clothing, clapping his hands together and pressing them to the ground. The earth seemed to tremble for a minute and they could almost see the path the alchemy took out across the battlefield to the enemy side. Seconds later there was a purple and blue explosion in the distance.
“He’s crazy,” one of them whispered.
“He’s gonna get shot,” said another, just as the figure jerked backward, dropping to its knees on the ground and clutching its left shoulder.
“Who is ‘e?”
“Dunno.”
There was a moment’s pause. “Go get ‘im,” came the directive. “I’ll cover you.”
There was blood soaking through the man’s shirt but he stood up and ran with the soldier back to the rocky area that was providing them with cover.
The soldier yanked the man’s shirt open to see the wound, even as the man protested. “Hey, I’m a doctor,” the soldier told him. “Calm down.”
“I’m fine,” the man sputtered.
“You got shot,” the soldier said, and the man yelped as he probed the wound. All three soldiers could see when the doctor pulled the shirt aside that the man’s other shoulder was automail. “Get out of here, get back that way to the medic tents, they’ll tend to you there,” he instructed, but the man ignored him, trying to stand back up.
“I’m fine,” he insisted.
“You’re the Fullmetal Alchemist,” one of the other soldiers blurted out, staring at the uninjured metal soldier.
Something exploded about ten feet to the left of the men.
“I am not. If you remember me at the end of all this,” he said, gesturing with his metal arm to the debris still scattering over the rocks from the explosion, “be sure to remember that, too!”
The soldier who was also a doctor was reaching into his bag. “I can get the bullet out and bandage you up, but it’s going to hurt,” he warned. “They have better painkillers back at the medic tents.”
“Fine but make it quick,” the man who was not the Fullmetal Alchemist grumbled. A few minutes later he was gone.
It took three soldiers to drag him into the concrete bunker, and he protested the whole way. “Hey,” he shouted at them. “I’m on your side, is this how the military treats its own guys? Hey! Just tell me where we’re going already!”
He recognized Colonel Warnes as soon as he saw him, and some leftover part of him that was still fifteen and military brought his hand to his forehead in a sharp salute, causing him to wince at the stabbing pain that rang through his injured soldier.
The Colonel looked at him warily, raising his eyebrows. He stood in front of a board that was scribbled with detailed military strategies that made no sense to Edward. He had never fought in a war; when he was military he was fighting only for himself. “So you are military,” the man said, his eyes boring into Ed’s own.
“Military consultant, sir,” he lied.
“And what are you calling yourself?”
“Heiderich,” he said shortly, sticking to the original lie. “Edward Heiderich.”
“Your alchemy without a circle is remarkable,” Colonel Warnes said, pacing the short length of the concrete room. “You may have turned up in time to be our saving weapon.”
A human weapon.
Like the Colonel, his Colonel, had been in Ishbal. Destroying enemies left and right, and tortured for the rest of his life because of it.
Ed mentally shook his head. This was different. These were not civilians and they weren’t innocent. They were invading the home he had worked so hard to get back to. He listened carefully as the man began to decode the scribbled on the board.
He clapped his hands together and pressed them to the ground, feeling the power surge up inside him. It was if he could see the Gate itself each time he transmuted; as if his power was infinite. He always held back since returning to his own world, he always used as little energy as he could manage to spare sucking the souls away from the other side of the Gate to fuel his transmutations. Now he let go, no barriers, to spare the souls of strangers on his own side. It felt like the time in Lior when he had been there when Scar created the Philosopher’s Stone: a reaction was underway that was nearly, but not quite, out of control, but was growing bigger and more powerful and he struggled to hold onto it without holding anything back.
It would destroy the enemy as ruthlessly as they had meant to destroy his own people. He was doing what he had to do, he thought, and with that thought, he let just a little bit more power into the transmutation. There was always more energy to draw from, and he would always be able to control it. The wind from the reaction whipped around his face, his hair flying out behind him, and even the men he was protecting cowered in fear of him.
He felt two white-hot pains sear into his gut, and his body buckled, but he forced himself not to break the circle.
He was doing this for the people. He was the People’s Alchemist.
Chapter Ten
Note1: I bet you didn't really think I was going to update this soon!
Note2: Honestly I didn't either but all this writing for NaNoWriMo has kinda got me in the flow again! (Of course, its also distracting me from the actual NaNo project, but... ah well.)
Note3: While I'm starting notes with "honestly," I'll just add that honestly, this chap feels a little too short to me, and not that great for all thats been leading up to it. Usually I am really particular about this fic, but I've been fussing with this chapter for a good while now and this is about all I can do with it. Sorry if it's falling flat, but, I've got ch. 10 mostly finished as well (yeah how many times have you heard that from me?) and it should be back up to par.