FMA Fic: "In Broken Dreams" 1/2
Title: In Broken Dreams
Author: evil_little_dog
Fandoms: Fullmetal Alchemist - 2003 Anime/Conqueror of Shamballa
H/C: Atonement
Rating: Teen
Warnings: 2nd Person POV. Nightmares. Gore. Mentions of character(s) death(s) (canon and O.C.). Heartbreak.
Summary: Al is the one who dreamed of returning to Risembool, but Ed goes home alone.
Word Count: Appx. 13,000
Disclaimer: Arakawa owns absolutely everything.
Notes: Much thanks to cornerofmadness for reading this over and telling me it didn’t suck. If I got anything wrong with CoS history/alchemy, that’s my fault, and not hers.
This story should be considered the conclusion to the two ficlets below. When I started writing In Broken Dreams as that conclusion, I didn't expect it to take on such a life of its own, and certainly not become an almost-thirty-page story.
First Frost
Ghost of You
Come Home
X X X
The sunlight feels like it’s baking your brain, but still, you stand on the side of the road. You’ve been here for over an hour now, staring at the yellow house on the hill. Someone had come outside while you’d watched, and you feel those eyes focused on you. It makes you want to move, but you’re not sure whether you want to continue up the path, or turn around and go back to the station, climb on board the next train, and head somewhere else, anywhere else, away from here. But you’re not a coward, or you like to tell yourself that, even though climbing the incline to the house is maybe the most frightening thing you’ve ever considered doing; even worse, in its own way, than the measures you’d used to return to your own world from that warped mirror called ‘Germany’.
How can you even begin to explain to her what had been sacrificed to send you back? If you’d come home with Al, things would be so much easier. You know Al wouldn’t think twice about walking up that path. He’d knock on the door, and when Winry opened it, he’d hug her and say, “I’m sorry.” Al isn’t with you, though, and that thought makes your hands clench into fists. You can still hear the cough rattling in his lungs; see the bright red blood he tries to hide from you. You hate him - hate Al - for drawing the transmutation circle and collapsing onto it, whispering breathlessly, “Go, Brother, p-please go home!” You want to scream at him to take it back, it’s not his time, you won’t be going back to Amestris alone -
- but here you are.
You’d regained consciousness in that decaying city beneath Central, staring at the sky-ceiling, tears rolling down your cheeks. It took time, and you had no idea how long, but your tears finally dried. When that happened, you realized you weren’t dead. Your brother had given what was left of his life to send you back to Amestris, and you know you can’t let him down. And even if you wanted to lie there and die yourself, Al would have beaten you up for even thinking it. He’d have told you to go home, find Winry, and…your mind goes blank around then. Al would insist you apologize, but you’re not sure why. You’d had this conversation back in Germany, more times than you wanted to remember. It’d always ended in arguments and cold silences between the two of you, sometimes lasting for days.
Now, that silence would last the rest of your life.
You rest your hand on the warm stone wall. She’s still on the porch, watching you watch her. A breeze catches the hem of her skirt, making it flow around her calves. It’s been too many years since you’ve seen Winry Rockbell. When you’d tried to bring her to mind in the other world, you’d remember blue eyes, overflowing with tears. An angry voice. The sensation of a wrench, connecting with your skull. And - your breath catches - her arms around you, holding on tight, her whispered words in your ear, ‘Welcome home’, her scent, warm and clean and like no one else’s, something you hadn’t even been aware you’d missed until she was literally under your nose.
“It is you.”
Starting, you realize she’s moved closer, standing more than two-thirds the way down the hill. Her arms aren’t open to you, instead, they’re folded. You can see crow’s feet around her eyes, and lines bracket her mouth, deepened by the way her lips are set in a downward-turned curve. She searches the shadows under the trees. “Where’s Al?”
Your mouth opens to say something, you’re not sure what, but only a squeak comes out. Something in her expression changes. “Ed?”
Knees giving way, you collapse on the road. A few seconds later, you’re aware of Winry’s hands on your shoulders, giving you a shake. She shouts your name, but you’re spiraling down, past the tentacles that dragged you from one world to the next, past Truth’s toothy smile, past the stink of blood and the sight of Al’s dying form, his lips forming your name as the light fades from his eyes, the same way yours fade now.
X X X
You wake with a start, realizing something has licked your hand. A pair of eyes are watching you; one pale blue, the other bi-colored, not quite equally brown and blue. The dog’s ears flip up and down and it nuzzles your hand, demanding your attention now that you’re awake.
Ignoring the headache lurking behind your left eye, you cautiously sit up. The pain doesn’t subside at your movement; for a second, it flares hot and hard, then dies back down to something almost livable. Something you can disregard. You rumple the dog’s ears and take a slow look around.
The room is familiar, far more familiar than you think it should be considering it’s been almost twelve years since you last saw it. The paint has been freshened and the curtains are new, but the beds - two of them, one for you, one for - and the dresser with its mirror and pitcher and bowl, and a couple of pictures scattered about on the walls, and a small shelf of books; you can almost point them out with your eyes closed.
Someone undressed you down to your threadbare underwear, and a part of you thinks you should blush that Winry’s seen you this unclothed, but you’re not that kid any more. Instead, you cast around for your clothes and pull them on. Your feet remain bare. Your shoes, you know, are downstairs near the front door, under the hall table. Your socks might’ve been washed by now, or, better yet, thrown out. You sigh, and head downstairs, the dog flowing down the steps ahead of you.
You follow Den’s replacement into the kitchen where Winry sits at the table, a cup of tea steaming in her hands. There’s a pot, so you open a couple of cabinets until you find the right one, and pour yourself a cup before sitting across from her. “So, who carried me into the house?”
“The Todd boys happened by.” Winry sips her tea. “I don’t think you’d know them. The eldest one’s sixteen.”
You can just remember the Todds jumping the fire before you and Al tried to bring your Mom back, so kids are news to you. “Thanks for taking me in.” The words sound awkward, coming out of your mouth. Like Winry is a stranger. But she is, a little voice inside you argues. Shut up, another, sounding remarkably like your brother, responds. You shift uncomfortably and take a drink of the tea, coughing when it burns your throat going down.
“You did come all this way,” Winry says, without any rancor in her voice. Well, maybe some.
There is a silence between you, like a wall, and you think Al would be disappointed. Al…You set down your cup to rub your temples. “Al’s dead,” you say, barely hearing Winry’s gasp. She had to have realized; maybe she was just going through the motions. “He-he got sick, in the other world. A disease that has no cure there.” The cup is warm and you wrap your cold fingers around it. “I didn’t know, at first. One-one of my friends there,” you picture Alfons’s blue eyes and blond hair, so like Winry’s, with his features so like Al’s, and choke for a second. “He died from the same disease, when I was h-here, last time.”
“Ed.”
The words keep coming, though, as if they’d waited for a long time for the dam to break. “And Al caught it, too. He - it started as a cough, but it kept building. Night fevers, weight loss. He coughed up blood and hid it from me.” You remember finding a handkerchief in the trash, and starting to scold Al for throwing it out until you found the blood wadded in its center. Instead, you scolded Al for another reason. “We…we were poor. Doctors said it was best to move, but.” Leaving Germany was difficult at best. It had taken all the money you’d been able to scrape together to get the gypsies to accept you both, and take you along. Al’s cough made them dump you - you weren’t Rom, and they felt no kinship with you. You told Noah to stay with her people, remembering her tears as she climbed into the back of the truck that hauled her away.
“We wound up in a little town, with no doctor.” Hiding in a basement, cold and wet. Al kept getting worse. “Al…started hallucinating. Said he could see,” see Winry. See this yellow house. That was all right. It was when he saw Mom, said he saw Dad, that you knew. From the way his skin turned waxy and his breath rattled. And his determination to draw a circle once you’d finally fallen asleep from exhaustion. You’d opened your eyes to see your little brother, blood dripping out of his mouth as he finished the transmutation circle. The smell, oh the smell, how had you slept through it? Your gorge heaves in remembrance, but you gasp, and smell tea and grease and metal and lavender - Winry - instead of death. “He drew the circle in his blood,” you choke out, “and then.” Al dropped his hands to the circle, activating it. The cold blue light erupted out of the circle of blood and you saw the black tendrils, reaching out for him and you as you scream at your little brother.
And then, you woke up in Amestris.
Your eyes feel damp and hot and you blink them hard, swiping a quick, careless hand over your face.
Winry’s head is lowered, but somehow, you think her eyes are dry.
X X X
You walk slowly around the house, trying to reacquaint yourself with it. The dog watches you from a rug in the corner of the living room as you stop, peering at a series of photographs on the wall. Some are of people you recognize from so long ago - one of your family, before the old man left; another of Winry with her mom and dad. A picture of Al, Winry and you as kids; another of you with Den, your chest in bandages and a spoon in your mouth. Pinako and Winry, together. Then there are pictures of people you remember. That dark-skinned girl thief from Rush Valley, looking older, holding a baby in her arms. Hawkeye and Winry, dressed casually, in front of some building. Mrs. Hughes and a girl who has to be Elicia. And then people you don’t know at all: a photograph of a pair of burly men, one posturing, the other looking grumpy. A little dark-haired boy who looks vaguely familiar, but you know he has to have been born since you were last in Amestris. There are a few of a man with sandy brown hair and dark eyes.
There is a photograph of Winry standing in a white dress, holding flowers, looking happier than you ever remember. The sandy-haired man is holding a newborn baby in a picture, and in another, he and Winry are cuddling a little blond girl.
You know that smile the little girl wears, and also that flash of temper she shows in more than one photo. This is Winry’s daughter with the sandy-haired man. You watch her grow, from her birth up until she seems to be around four years old.
There is no man in this house, nor a child; just Winry, the dog, and you.
X X X
“I’ll need to look at your automail,” Winry says as she sets out sandwiches and a tureen of soup, “before you leave.”
Those words stop you in mid-reach for one of the sandwich halves. Leave? You’d just gotten here, you almost protest, but then see it from Winry’s point of view. How many times had you just appeared for a tune-up and left? Obviously, enough that it made an impression. “I’d like that,” you manage to say, and pick up the sandwich, biting into it. You let out a moan through the bread. How long had it been since you’d had fresh food? And things in Amestris had so much flavor compared to what you’d eaten in that other world. The tastes explode across your tongue, and it’s all you can do not to cram the sandwich into your mouth. You know if you do, you’ll throw it all up again - these last few weeks, food had been even more scarce in that basement you’d been hiding in, and you’d been feeding Al most of what you’d managed to scrounge.
Winry eats neatly and quietly, glancing up at you as you set down the sandwich and take a sip of your water, then have a spoonful of soup. She doesn’t say anything as you pause between each bite, but you can tell thoughts are whirling in her head. “Once you finish, I’ll take a look at your automail.” She leaves you at the table, the dog following her out of the room.
Funny, everything tastes like ash now, but you force it down anyway.
X X X
You strip off your clothes, thinking they’re frayed, and shabby, and you should be embarrassed to let a woman see in you in such straits. But this is Winry, who’s seen you at your very worst, so you climb into the chair in your tattered underwear. You could transmute something better, but the idea of using souls makes your own feel like its dying. What if you used Al’s soul to fuel your transmutation?
You fight with your gut to keep the food down.
“What?” Winry asks.
Unable to answer her, you wave her off, pinching the bridge of your nose and breathing through your mouth until your stomach settles again. “Okay,” you sigh. “I’m okay.”
Winry picks up a screwdriver and sets it into a screw in your shoulder plate. You close your eyes at the sensation of her hand on your bare skin, separated by the leather glove she wears. Your nerves tingle. When was the last time someone touched you? “You’re skinny, Ed,” Winry scolded, breaking you out of your reverie. “If you lose much more weight, your skin and muscles will pull away from your plates.”
“There wasn’t a lot of food where I was.”
“You need to start eating then. Decent food, not just rice.”
You can’t remember the last time you had rice. “Okay, Winry.”
She falls silent as she works, and you’re just as relieved she doesn’t ask any questions. You don’t want to talk about the other world. Still, the silence seems weird; Winry always chattered while she worked, explaining what she was doing and complaining about the lack of care you gave your automail. You wonder if it’s just you inspiring this quiet, if she still talks to her customers. You wonder if she’s still as handy with hitting with that wrench. She hadn’t hit you, yet. You kind of wish she would.
Once upon a time, Pinako referred to you as their ‘best customer’. It was because of your automail, and the amount and time they put into it, not because you were friends with Winry. Not that you treated her like a much of a friend, not after your Mom died. Despite everything she did, every time Winry reached out, you rebuffed her. You just knew you were going to get your Mom back, and then, everything would be okay. And when it wasn’t, you were so intent on getting Al’s body back, you barely saw anything else. After Al followed you to the other world, he’d sometimes tell you stories about Winry, and how she’d been so sure you were alive. You’d known how hard she’d had to have worked on your automail - it fit perfectly, and she hadn’t even seen you for four years to know if you’d grown or not. You’d tried to blow off Al, saying it was an obsession with automail, but that wasn’t it. That hug Winry gave you the last time you’d made it back to Amestris - even you weren’t stupid enough to think that was a hug from a friend, not with the way she whispered ‘Welcome home’ in your ear.
And then, then you’d run away from her, again. Oh, sure, save the world, save Amestris, leave it behind and everything you might’ve been able to love, if you weren’t obsessed with your Mom, then your brother, then returning home to your brother, and now you’re home without him and.
And you don’t know what to do.
X X X
You’re still in Risembool, and it’s almost been a week. Winry’s busy, and you stay out of her way for the most part, but you take over some of the chores to give her some relief. There are still chickens in the yard, which means eggs need to be gathered. You’d learned to cook some dishes in Germany, and try to put together at least one meal a day, even if it is just sandwiches. The garden out back needs planting, and you can do that, and wash clothes, and hang them out. There are other things that need doing, little repairs you can do without alchemy, and you’re relieved at that.
The dog, you find out, is named Lu. She’s smart, and helps you find the eggs hidden in the grass and under bushes. When she’s not with Winry, she follows you around. There are no pictures of Lu, not as a puppy, not with the baby girl or the sandy-haired man, not with Winry. You wonder how long she’s been here.
You wonder if she’s a stray dog, like you are.
X X X
It starts raining one afternoon while you’re making a pot of stew for supper. At first, it’s a few drops, but they start coming down harder, and thunder booms, and Lu charges through the kitchen and tries to make herself fit behind the couch. When the lights flicker once, you glance up, but the second flicker makes you set down the paring knife and carrot you’d been peeling. Out of the window, you see darker clouds rolling in, lightning illuminating all their layers. The lights flicker again. “Winry?” you call, heading toward the basement door.
The lights go out as you reach the top step and you freeze, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. There’s a crackle and a boom and suddenly, everything’s bright and blue, and you can see Winry from the light outside the windows, then everything goes black. “Winry!”
“I’m okay. Stay where you are.” You hear something rustling over the sounds of the rain and the thunder, and then a light comes on in the basement from a torch. You can’t see Winry, but the light from the torch bounces as it comes up the stairs. “Move, Ed.”
You step back at the tone of her voice, shifting out of her way. Now you can see her face, and how tight her jaw is. She doesn’t look at you as she walks through the house and sits down on the couch. Lu creeps out from behind it and crawls into Winry’s lap. The lightning still strikes and the thunder growls in the sky, close enough to make the house shudder. The torch clicks off, and, as lightning flashes outside, you can see Winry, petting Lu, her eyes distant.
X X X
It’s not the first day of rain.
The electricity comes back on, almost as abruptly as it went off. You tune the radio, listening to the report of rain, and the river rising.
“Turn it off,” Winry said.
“I want to know what’s going on.”
“It’s spring, Ed. It’s raining, and the river’s rising. What more do you need to know?” She snaps the radio off as she walks by it, heading back down into the basement.
Lu whines, almost under her breath, and slinks down the stairs after Winry.
X X X
Someone bangs on the door of the house, waking you out of your rain-induced doze. You stagger out of the living room in time to see Winry opening the door, one arm folded across her stomach. Her spine is so stiff, you think it might break. The man standing at the door wears a rain coat, and water drips off the brim of his hat. “River’s rising,” he said, “know you’ve got someone visiting.” He leans around Winry to look at you. “We need all the help we can get to shore up the bank.”
You feel Winry’s eyes on you, too. “Do you have a raincoat I can borrow?” you ask.
She yanks open the hall closet door, pulling out a coat. For a few seconds, she doesn’t do anything, just looks at it, then she thrusts it against your chest. “Here.”
You pull it on, not about to mention it’s too big for you. You feel Winry’s eyes on your shoulder blades as you follow the man out the door.
X X X
The river is swollen and a line has been set up, men tossing bags of dirt to each other to keep the water from washing away the sheep farm beyond their backs. You smell mud and sheep shit and sweat as you approach. Women fill the bags and haul them to the beginning of the line. The last few men in the line put the bags into place, making a dam to contain the muddy water. The rain’s made everything slippery and you fight to keep your footing in your worn shoes.
You remember Izumi, and the way she clapped her hands and made an earthen wall, too high for the water to cross. You could do the same, but Al -
“Are you all right?” the man who’d led you here asks.
“Fine,” you mumble, and take your place in the line, heaving a bag to the next man down. Another bag slaps into your arms and another, and you lose yourself in the mindless work. The rain keeps falling, and someone down the line warns that there’s been more rain in the north, that the river hasn’t crested yet. Compared to the rising water, you can see just how low the wall actually is, and swallow hard. There’s still time, though, there has to be; you can shore up this oxbow, and the water will flow on downstream.
“Ed!”
Your name sounds high-pitched and strangled.
“Ed!”
You keep flinging bags.
“Ed!” Blue eyes burn into yours, and you pause for a second, staring blankly at Winry. She’s furious, and you think, yes, this is what you remember, Winry being alive and crackling with energy. She shakes you, her hands tightening on your wet sleeves. “Ed, use your alchemy.”
You shake your head, though your gaze goes to the wall, to the water you now see is rising faster. You see a branch out there in the middle of it, tumbling slowly toward the bank.
“Ed, use your alchemy. Make a dam.” Winry’s talking through gritted teeth. “Now, Ed!” She gives you another shake.
The branch isn’t a branch, but a tree, and the realization shocks you. You watch it as the water carries it closer. Something stings your cheek, and you wrench your eyes to Winry, seeing her hand pulled back to slap you again. “Stop the water, Ed!” She has your attention, and points to the men closest to the river. “They’re going to die!”
Al, you cry in your head, but the fury and fear in Winry’s face decides for you, and you press your hands together and drop them to the soggy ground. Lightning flashes and for a second, all you can smell is ozone, then the earth beneath you rumbles and a huge wall, firming up like concrete, guards the curve of the river. You feel the crash as the tree strikes the dam. Water laps up over it and showers down on those closest to the bagged dirt wall. Someone cheers, and the sound rises somehow over the rushing water.
You vomit everything out of your stomach until there’s nothing left.
X X X
Something licks your hand, making your eyes snap open. “Lu,” you say, your voice sounding awful. You try to move and fall back with a groan, pressing your flesh hand to your forehead. You’re hot, and sweaty, and your head is pounding. It hurts to breathe.
“You’re sick.” Winry’s voice. Sounds funny, like she’s underwater. “You pushed yourself too far. The doctor said you have pneumonia, have had it for a while.”
You blink at her, trying to figure out which version of her is the actual one.
“But you kept the river from overflowing and wiping out the Nedobeck’s farm. Thank you, Ed.” She bows her head to you.
It’s too hard to keep your eyes open, so you shut them again.
X X X
It’s a few days before you can even leave the bed, and then, you’re so shaky, you need help. Winry is there, propping you up with your arm over her shoulders like always, but this time, you have two good legs, not one. She helps you to the lavatory, and then, because you insist, the living room so you can sit up for a while and not see the same walls. By the time you’re there, you’re exhausted and trembling, and you sink onto the couch in relief. You think you must’ve dozed off, or fell unconscious, you’re not sure which, because when you open your eyes again, there’s a cup of tea steaming in front of you. You take it in both hands, drinking. It tastes good, warms you up, and you sigh softly, closing your eyes again for a few seconds.
“Careful.” Winry takes the cup from you and sets it on the end table. She’s watching you and you blink at her a couple of times to make sure she’s in focus.
“What?” you ask, your voice still sounding weird.
“If you hadn’t been here, Mr. Nedobeck and Randy would’ve died.”
“They’re welcome.” You close your eyes to avoid hers.
X X X
You twitch, realizing you’d fallen asleep again. It’s dark out. You don’t smell rain, so it’s just night, not another storm. Something savory tickles your nose, and its enough to make your mouth water. Winry must be cooking. You try to get up, and on your third attempt, make it, though everything spins around you for a few seconds. You wait until it settles, then make your way to the dining room, holding onto the walls to keep your balance. You feel like crap, but you can’t remember when you last felt really good, either.
Winry glances up at you, gives you a studying look, then nods to the table. You’re okay to reach it, but you nearly fall into the chair you pull out. Your flesh hand is shaking when you lay it on the table.
“Here.” Winry sets a bowl in front of you.
You smell chicken broth, and see dark green chopped leaves and white beans. Thick, crusty bread is on the table, along with a slab of pale butter bearing the imprint from the Todds’ dairy. A glass of lemonade, beaded with sweat, is next to your bowl. You pick up your spoon carefully and dip it into the broth. “Smells good, Winry.”
“I hope you like it.” She sits across from you with her own bowl, tearing bread and dropping it into the soup. Stirring it all together, she scoops up some of the now-slimy broth, she sups at it, her eyes nearly closed.
It’s a good soup, you think, tasty, and not heavy, which you’re pretty sure you couldn’t keep down right now. You break off a piece of bread and dunk it in the broth, sucking on the crust. It’s salty and a little spicy and tastes better than anything you’ve eaten since you can remember. You hope you can finish it.
“Ed, why didn’t you use alchemy to shore up the riverbank to start off with?”
The question nearly curdles your stomach, but you manage to keep the few bites you’ve eaten down as you set your piece of bread on the table. How do you tell Winry this? She’s not an alchemist. At this point, you don’t even remember what she might know about alchemy. You remember she didn’t trust it, or like it, or it scared her, but that was when you were all little kids, wasn’t it? Scrubbing your flesh hand over your face, you sigh. “It’s the other world. I found out something about alchemy there.”
Winry raises her eyebrows at you, spooning up more broth.
“There are people there, Winry, just like the people here.” You don’t want to explain about the doubles you saw. That’s a story for another day, if ever. “Except there isn’t any alchemy. Women…don’t get a lot of say about what happens in their lives in general. That’s not what I wanted to tell you about, though.” You have to push the bowl of soup away, but you do take a drink of lemonade to cool your throat. “The people there, I guess they had some way of crossing between there and here for a while. They did study alchemy, but they went to straight science. Alchemy isn’t even thought of any more there.”
Her expression is neutral, and you’re not sure if she’s actually listening or not, even though she seems to be focused on you. Well, you and her soup. Her bowl is definitely a lot emptier than yours. And it’s still not what you need to tell her. What you want to tell her. “Alchemy here, well, something has to provide fuel for it. It’s not just…a person’s will, but that’s a big part of it. But will doesn’t provide all the power, it has to come from somewhere. There are all sorts of theories out there,” you wave your hand, “about where that power comes from. I never thought of it, really, I knew it was there and I could use it, and I did.” You hold her gaze with yours, like it’s a lifeline. If you let go, if she drops her eyes - “I’m not an alchemist any more, Winry. I can’t be. I won’t use that power!”
She stirs her soup with her spoon. “You used it to make the dam.”
“Because you made me!”
Winry slaps the table, making the liquids slosh in their containers. “So, you would’ve let those people die, Ed?”
Swallowing, you tighten your jaw, a mirror of her reaction a few seconds ago. You can’t look at her now. Would you have let them die? Could you? “I can’t talk about this any more.” You push back from the table and leave the room.
X X X
You’re less shaky the next morning, but your stomach is going to gnaw its way out of your body cavity if you don’t put something in it. After dressing - you don’t recognize these clothes and think Winry must’ve left them for you - you head downstairs. In the kitchen, you cut off a slice of bread and layering a piece of mutton on it. Sinking your teeth into it, you moan softly, leaning your backside against the countertop in the kitchen. You eat your breakfast standing up, watching Lu as she trots into the room, sitting in front of you and cocking her head to one side. You’re not sure if you’d call it begging, but it’s pretty damned close. You give her a piece of the crust, and she gobbles it down, wagging her fluffy tail.
“Where’s Winry?” you ask her, because if Lu’s up, Winry probably is, too. “Take me to Winry.”
Lu cocks her head the other way and you roll your eyes at yourself for talking to a dog. Instead of asking her again, you set the kettle on a burner for some tea. After you have the tea steeping, you follow Lu outside to collect the eggs. No wonder you were hungry, you realize, seeing how high the morning sun is in the sky. Lu leads you to the eggs you don’t spot immediately, and you carry them into the house. There are enough that Winry can trade to some of the other neighbors for cheese or meat or whatever it is she might need. You think you ought to figure out a way to contribute to the household, if you’re going to stay her. If she’s okay with you staying here. You’ve been kind of an asshole to her. Again.
Winry’s in the kitchen when you come inside, pouring herself a cup of tea. You set the eggs down carefully on the counter. “There are another fifteen here,” you say to her, then add, “good morning.”
“Morning,” Winry said, yawning behind her hand.
“Do you, ah, have time to talk?” Rubbing the back of your neck, you peep at her through your bangs.
She sits at the table as her answer, and you pour yourself a cup of tea and sit down, too. “I’m sorry I couldn’t finish telling you about the other world last night, and alchemy. It’s…hard. It’s why I…don’t want to be a State Alchemist any more, why I don’t want to use alchemy. I don’t even…” You shake your head. “Winry, all the times I used alchemy here, in Amestris, I didn’t know. You have to understand that.”
“I don’t understand anything right now, Ed,” she says dryly.
“I suck at explaining things,” you tell her, totally serious. “But this, this changes everything, everything I ever thought about alchemy, even after I learned what the Philosopher’s Stone was made of.” You’d told her, you remember telling her. Didn’t you? “People die in that other world, and their souls,” your voice catches. Al. “Their souls are used to fuel alchemy here. When they die, that life force - it’s fuel, Winry, just intrinsic power to make a transmutation circle work. That’s why I didn’t want to use alchemy to make the dam! I couldn’t.” You shake your head, closing your eyes tight. “I might’ve used Al’s soul as fuel for, for.” Your voice gives out and you cup your head in your hands.
The sweet-smelling steam from your tea bathes your face. You wait for Winry to say something, anything. Finally getting control of yourself, you pick up your cup, taking a sip of the tea. It’s cooled enough it doesn’t burn your mouth. You risk a look at Winry, and wonder at her expression.
“Ed,” she said, in a tone that sounds familiar, “do you really believe that Al would care if you used his soul to help other people? To save lives? To do some good in this world? Do you think he wouldn’t have given that up willingly?” She shook her head. “Did you know Al at all?”
You stutter, your face flushing. “B-but.”
“But nothing, Ed!” Her eyes glitter, and you’re as fixed on them as if they speared through your body. “Al would be okay with that. Most people would! It’s - it’s a good thing, Ed! Don’t you see? You saved lives by making that dam.”
“But people had to die for me to do it!”
“Did they die just because you used the alchemy, or did they die, and you used their souls afterward?” Mouth gaping, you don’t have an answer for her. Winry stares at you, her brows furrowing. “Do people die in that other world when you use alchemy, Ed?”
“I - ” can’t answer that, you can’t. Because you’re not sure. Al sacrificed his body to send you back through to this world. Did he lose his soul then, too? Or is his soul still free, maybe here, in his universe? Waiting to be used like fuel? “Damn it!”
“Ed, everyone dies.” Winry’s squeezing your hands, and you’re not sure when she took hold of them. “Everyone. Your Mom, my parents, Granny, Al.” Her fierce voice hitches as she adds, “Robert and Molly.” “Everyone dies. If - if there’s some way for them to be - I don’t know, useful - isn’t that best?” She shakes your hands. “Isn’t it? Still helping people!” Tears spill down her cheeks. “A-Al, he’d - Granny’d…Mr. Hughes - they’d do that. They wouldn’t care ‘cause they’re still - still helping.” You want to pull away, disagree, but what she says makes sense. Still, you can’t think of Al’s soul, being consumed by a transmutation circle. Mom’s soul. Even the old man’s. Winry’s squeezing your hands, and your flesh one aches from the pressure on it. “You have to understand that, Ed.”
You wish you could.
X X X
It’s dusk, and you’re sitting on the steps of the porch, watching Lu run around in the yard. She’s chasing her tail, then throws herself on the grass on her back and wriggles, then jumps back on her feet again, running like a mad thing. The porch door squeals and pops as it opens and closes, and Winry settles down on the steps next to you. She wraps her arms around her knees. As if she senses Winry’s presence, Lu dashes up, dropping down onto her elbows, her butt in the air and tail wagging. She barks once, looking at Winry out of the corners of her eyes.
“You’re a crazy dog,” Winry tells her, and Lu runs off, speeding in a huge circle.
“Where did she come from?”
“Mr. Coyle brought her to me. She was the runt of her litter, and he said he didn’t think she’d amount to much. Didn’t think she’d live, her mom wouldn’t nurse her. I had to feed her by bottle, and make her poop and pee. I didn’t really want a dog, but.” Winry shrugs. “I guess I needed something.”
You stare out at the lawn, and the dog running around on it. “I’m sorry about your husband and daughter.” It’s weird to say, stranger to think about. Al had speculated about Winry and what happened to her after you both left Amestris. You’d snorted and said she was a gearhead, would always be a gearhead, and left it at that. But Al, he’d been more wistful, wondering if there might be a husband and kids, wondering if she might name them ‘Al’ or ‘Ed’. Molly answered that question.
“I’m sorry about Al,” she says.
Taking a deep breath, you fumble your hand over, taking hers and giving it a squeeze. Winry twines her fingers with yours, and the two of you watch Lu together.
X X X
“I need something to do,” you tell Winry. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
She cocks an eyebrow at you over the magnifying glasses she wears to work on automail limbs. “What?”
“I need a job.” I’m bored, you want to say.
“You have a job. You’re a State Alchemist.” She makes a face when you wave your hand in disgust. “Well, you are…but they,” her eyes drift sideways. Is that a blush?
“Winry?”
“I…um. I have your military allotment.”
For a few seconds, you don’t know what she’s talking about, then it comes back to you - the paperwork Hawkeye had you complete, in case something happened to you while you were in the military. You’d made Al your beneficiary; and if something happened to him, Winry was to get the allotment. You hadn’t known what to do with it, anyway. Since both of you were gone, Winry received the money. “What’d you do with it?” you ask.
Winry shrugs, still not looking at you. “I never touched it.” You think she mumbles, “I didn’t want blood money from the military.”
X X X
You see Al, blood dripping from his mouth, but can’t tell - is it Alfons or Alphonse? You scream, trying to reach out to him, to stop him from this, but they’re both smiling at you, sweet, heart-breaking smiles, as they activate the transmutation circle together. The lightning blue circle ignites, searing their hands and up their arms, swallowing them up as the ink-black hands grab you, wrapping you in ribbons and dragging you down into the circle. You shout, “Al! Alphonse! Al, no!” but your words come out like a whisper. “No! Al! You can’t! You can’t!” You reach for them but the ribbon-hands hold you too tight, pulling you away from Alphonse-Alfons and -
Something booms like an explosion and you’re jolted up out of your bed, gasping and looking around wildly. It takes a few seconds for you to realize where you are, and you want to curl up and howl at the world for taking your brother from you. If you’d stayed in the other world - but think, you remind yourself, your automail would’ve eventually failed, and you’re smart, but no automail mechanic. Who would you have been able to trust with your arm and your leg - with your life?
Shaking your head, you run your flesh fingers through your sweat-damp hair. “Damn it,” you mumble, trying to massage out the headache blooming in your temples. Your ports ache, a prelude to the upcoming storm.
Aspirin, you think, and climb out of the bed to get some. And maybe a book, because you don’t think you’ll be sleeping any more tonight.
X X X
It came as no shock to see him on Winry's porch.
Author: evil_little_dog
Fandoms: Fullmetal Alchemist - 2003 Anime/Conqueror of Shamballa
H/C: Atonement
Rating: Teen
Warnings: 2nd Person POV. Nightmares. Gore. Mentions of character(s) death(s) (canon and O.C.). Heartbreak.
Summary: Al is the one who dreamed of returning to Risembool, but Ed goes home alone.
Word Count: Appx. 13,000
Disclaimer: Arakawa owns absolutely everything.
Notes: Much thanks to cornerofmadness for reading this over and telling me it didn’t suck. If I got anything wrong with CoS history/alchemy, that’s my fault, and not hers.
This story should be considered the conclusion to the two ficlets below. When I started writing In Broken Dreams as that conclusion, I didn't expect it to take on such a life of its own, and certainly not become an almost-thirty-page story.
First Frost
Ghost of You
Come Home
X X X
The sunlight feels like it’s baking your brain, but still, you stand on the side of the road. You’ve been here for over an hour now, staring at the yellow house on the hill. Someone had come outside while you’d watched, and you feel those eyes focused on you. It makes you want to move, but you’re not sure whether you want to continue up the path, or turn around and go back to the station, climb on board the next train, and head somewhere else, anywhere else, away from here. But you’re not a coward, or you like to tell yourself that, even though climbing the incline to the house is maybe the most frightening thing you’ve ever considered doing; even worse, in its own way, than the measures you’d used to return to your own world from that warped mirror called ‘Germany’.
How can you even begin to explain to her what had been sacrificed to send you back? If you’d come home with Al, things would be so much easier. You know Al wouldn’t think twice about walking up that path. He’d knock on the door, and when Winry opened it, he’d hug her and say, “I’m sorry.” Al isn’t with you, though, and that thought makes your hands clench into fists. You can still hear the cough rattling in his lungs; see the bright red blood he tries to hide from you. You hate him - hate Al - for drawing the transmutation circle and collapsing onto it, whispering breathlessly, “Go, Brother, p-please go home!” You want to scream at him to take it back, it’s not his time, you won’t be going back to Amestris alone -
- but here you are.
You’d regained consciousness in that decaying city beneath Central, staring at the sky-ceiling, tears rolling down your cheeks. It took time, and you had no idea how long, but your tears finally dried. When that happened, you realized you weren’t dead. Your brother had given what was left of his life to send you back to Amestris, and you know you can’t let him down. And even if you wanted to lie there and die yourself, Al would have beaten you up for even thinking it. He’d have told you to go home, find Winry, and…your mind goes blank around then. Al would insist you apologize, but you’re not sure why. You’d had this conversation back in Germany, more times than you wanted to remember. It’d always ended in arguments and cold silences between the two of you, sometimes lasting for days.
Now, that silence would last the rest of your life.
You rest your hand on the warm stone wall. She’s still on the porch, watching you watch her. A breeze catches the hem of her skirt, making it flow around her calves. It’s been too many years since you’ve seen Winry Rockbell. When you’d tried to bring her to mind in the other world, you’d remember blue eyes, overflowing with tears. An angry voice. The sensation of a wrench, connecting with your skull. And - your breath catches - her arms around you, holding on tight, her whispered words in your ear, ‘Welcome home’, her scent, warm and clean and like no one else’s, something you hadn’t even been aware you’d missed until she was literally under your nose.
“It is you.”
Starting, you realize she’s moved closer, standing more than two-thirds the way down the hill. Her arms aren’t open to you, instead, they’re folded. You can see crow’s feet around her eyes, and lines bracket her mouth, deepened by the way her lips are set in a downward-turned curve. She searches the shadows under the trees. “Where’s Al?”
Your mouth opens to say something, you’re not sure what, but only a squeak comes out. Something in her expression changes. “Ed?”
Knees giving way, you collapse on the road. A few seconds later, you’re aware of Winry’s hands on your shoulders, giving you a shake. She shouts your name, but you’re spiraling down, past the tentacles that dragged you from one world to the next, past Truth’s toothy smile, past the stink of blood and the sight of Al’s dying form, his lips forming your name as the light fades from his eyes, the same way yours fade now.
X X X
You wake with a start, realizing something has licked your hand. A pair of eyes are watching you; one pale blue, the other bi-colored, not quite equally brown and blue. The dog’s ears flip up and down and it nuzzles your hand, demanding your attention now that you’re awake.
Ignoring the headache lurking behind your left eye, you cautiously sit up. The pain doesn’t subside at your movement; for a second, it flares hot and hard, then dies back down to something almost livable. Something you can disregard. You rumple the dog’s ears and take a slow look around.
The room is familiar, far more familiar than you think it should be considering it’s been almost twelve years since you last saw it. The paint has been freshened and the curtains are new, but the beds - two of them, one for you, one for - and the dresser with its mirror and pitcher and bowl, and a couple of pictures scattered about on the walls, and a small shelf of books; you can almost point them out with your eyes closed.
Someone undressed you down to your threadbare underwear, and a part of you thinks you should blush that Winry’s seen you this unclothed, but you’re not that kid any more. Instead, you cast around for your clothes and pull them on. Your feet remain bare. Your shoes, you know, are downstairs near the front door, under the hall table. Your socks might’ve been washed by now, or, better yet, thrown out. You sigh, and head downstairs, the dog flowing down the steps ahead of you.
You follow Den’s replacement into the kitchen where Winry sits at the table, a cup of tea steaming in her hands. There’s a pot, so you open a couple of cabinets until you find the right one, and pour yourself a cup before sitting across from her. “So, who carried me into the house?”
“The Todd boys happened by.” Winry sips her tea. “I don’t think you’d know them. The eldest one’s sixteen.”
You can just remember the Todds jumping the fire before you and Al tried to bring your Mom back, so kids are news to you. “Thanks for taking me in.” The words sound awkward, coming out of your mouth. Like Winry is a stranger. But she is, a little voice inside you argues. Shut up, another, sounding remarkably like your brother, responds. You shift uncomfortably and take a drink of the tea, coughing when it burns your throat going down.
“You did come all this way,” Winry says, without any rancor in her voice. Well, maybe some.
There is a silence between you, like a wall, and you think Al would be disappointed. Al…You set down your cup to rub your temples. “Al’s dead,” you say, barely hearing Winry’s gasp. She had to have realized; maybe she was just going through the motions. “He-he got sick, in the other world. A disease that has no cure there.” The cup is warm and you wrap your cold fingers around it. “I didn’t know, at first. One-one of my friends there,” you picture Alfons’s blue eyes and blond hair, so like Winry’s, with his features so like Al’s, and choke for a second. “He died from the same disease, when I was h-here, last time.”
“Ed.”
The words keep coming, though, as if they’d waited for a long time for the dam to break. “And Al caught it, too. He - it started as a cough, but it kept building. Night fevers, weight loss. He coughed up blood and hid it from me.” You remember finding a handkerchief in the trash, and starting to scold Al for throwing it out until you found the blood wadded in its center. Instead, you scolded Al for another reason. “We…we were poor. Doctors said it was best to move, but.” Leaving Germany was difficult at best. It had taken all the money you’d been able to scrape together to get the gypsies to accept you both, and take you along. Al’s cough made them dump you - you weren’t Rom, and they felt no kinship with you. You told Noah to stay with her people, remembering her tears as she climbed into the back of the truck that hauled her away.
“We wound up in a little town, with no doctor.” Hiding in a basement, cold and wet. Al kept getting worse. “Al…started hallucinating. Said he could see,” see Winry. See this yellow house. That was all right. It was when he saw Mom, said he saw Dad, that you knew. From the way his skin turned waxy and his breath rattled. And his determination to draw a circle once you’d finally fallen asleep from exhaustion. You’d opened your eyes to see your little brother, blood dripping out of his mouth as he finished the transmutation circle. The smell, oh the smell, how had you slept through it? Your gorge heaves in remembrance, but you gasp, and smell tea and grease and metal and lavender - Winry - instead of death. “He drew the circle in his blood,” you choke out, “and then.” Al dropped his hands to the circle, activating it. The cold blue light erupted out of the circle of blood and you saw the black tendrils, reaching out for him and you as you scream at your little brother.
And then, you woke up in Amestris.
Your eyes feel damp and hot and you blink them hard, swiping a quick, careless hand over your face.
Winry’s head is lowered, but somehow, you think her eyes are dry.
X X X
You walk slowly around the house, trying to reacquaint yourself with it. The dog watches you from a rug in the corner of the living room as you stop, peering at a series of photographs on the wall. Some are of people you recognize from so long ago - one of your family, before the old man left; another of Winry with her mom and dad. A picture of Al, Winry and you as kids; another of you with Den, your chest in bandages and a spoon in your mouth. Pinako and Winry, together. Then there are pictures of people you remember. That dark-skinned girl thief from Rush Valley, looking older, holding a baby in her arms. Hawkeye and Winry, dressed casually, in front of some building. Mrs. Hughes and a girl who has to be Elicia. And then people you don’t know at all: a photograph of a pair of burly men, one posturing, the other looking grumpy. A little dark-haired boy who looks vaguely familiar, but you know he has to have been born since you were last in Amestris. There are a few of a man with sandy brown hair and dark eyes.
There is a photograph of Winry standing in a white dress, holding flowers, looking happier than you ever remember. The sandy-haired man is holding a newborn baby in a picture, and in another, he and Winry are cuddling a little blond girl.
You know that smile the little girl wears, and also that flash of temper she shows in more than one photo. This is Winry’s daughter with the sandy-haired man. You watch her grow, from her birth up until she seems to be around four years old.
There is no man in this house, nor a child; just Winry, the dog, and you.
X X X
“I’ll need to look at your automail,” Winry says as she sets out sandwiches and a tureen of soup, “before you leave.”
Those words stop you in mid-reach for one of the sandwich halves. Leave? You’d just gotten here, you almost protest, but then see it from Winry’s point of view. How many times had you just appeared for a tune-up and left? Obviously, enough that it made an impression. “I’d like that,” you manage to say, and pick up the sandwich, biting into it. You let out a moan through the bread. How long had it been since you’d had fresh food? And things in Amestris had so much flavor compared to what you’d eaten in that other world. The tastes explode across your tongue, and it’s all you can do not to cram the sandwich into your mouth. You know if you do, you’ll throw it all up again - these last few weeks, food had been even more scarce in that basement you’d been hiding in, and you’d been feeding Al most of what you’d managed to scrounge.
Winry eats neatly and quietly, glancing up at you as you set down the sandwich and take a sip of your water, then have a spoonful of soup. She doesn’t say anything as you pause between each bite, but you can tell thoughts are whirling in her head. “Once you finish, I’ll take a look at your automail.” She leaves you at the table, the dog following her out of the room.
Funny, everything tastes like ash now, but you force it down anyway.
X X X
You strip off your clothes, thinking they’re frayed, and shabby, and you should be embarrassed to let a woman see in you in such straits. But this is Winry, who’s seen you at your very worst, so you climb into the chair in your tattered underwear. You could transmute something better, but the idea of using souls makes your own feel like its dying. What if you used Al’s soul to fuel your transmutation?
You fight with your gut to keep the food down.
“What?” Winry asks.
Unable to answer her, you wave her off, pinching the bridge of your nose and breathing through your mouth until your stomach settles again. “Okay,” you sigh. “I’m okay.”
Winry picks up a screwdriver and sets it into a screw in your shoulder plate. You close your eyes at the sensation of her hand on your bare skin, separated by the leather glove she wears. Your nerves tingle. When was the last time someone touched you? “You’re skinny, Ed,” Winry scolded, breaking you out of your reverie. “If you lose much more weight, your skin and muscles will pull away from your plates.”
“There wasn’t a lot of food where I was.”
“You need to start eating then. Decent food, not just rice.”
You can’t remember the last time you had rice. “Okay, Winry.”
She falls silent as she works, and you’re just as relieved she doesn’t ask any questions. You don’t want to talk about the other world. Still, the silence seems weird; Winry always chattered while she worked, explaining what she was doing and complaining about the lack of care you gave your automail. You wonder if it’s just you inspiring this quiet, if she still talks to her customers. You wonder if she’s still as handy with hitting with that wrench. She hadn’t hit you, yet. You kind of wish she would.
Once upon a time, Pinako referred to you as their ‘best customer’. It was because of your automail, and the amount and time they put into it, not because you were friends with Winry. Not that you treated her like a much of a friend, not after your Mom died. Despite everything she did, every time Winry reached out, you rebuffed her. You just knew you were going to get your Mom back, and then, everything would be okay. And when it wasn’t, you were so intent on getting Al’s body back, you barely saw anything else. After Al followed you to the other world, he’d sometimes tell you stories about Winry, and how she’d been so sure you were alive. You’d known how hard she’d had to have worked on your automail - it fit perfectly, and she hadn’t even seen you for four years to know if you’d grown or not. You’d tried to blow off Al, saying it was an obsession with automail, but that wasn’t it. That hug Winry gave you the last time you’d made it back to Amestris - even you weren’t stupid enough to think that was a hug from a friend, not with the way she whispered ‘Welcome home’ in your ear.
And then, then you’d run away from her, again. Oh, sure, save the world, save Amestris, leave it behind and everything you might’ve been able to love, if you weren’t obsessed with your Mom, then your brother, then returning home to your brother, and now you’re home without him and.
And you don’t know what to do.
X X X
You’re still in Risembool, and it’s almost been a week. Winry’s busy, and you stay out of her way for the most part, but you take over some of the chores to give her some relief. There are still chickens in the yard, which means eggs need to be gathered. You’d learned to cook some dishes in Germany, and try to put together at least one meal a day, even if it is just sandwiches. The garden out back needs planting, and you can do that, and wash clothes, and hang them out. There are other things that need doing, little repairs you can do without alchemy, and you’re relieved at that.
The dog, you find out, is named Lu. She’s smart, and helps you find the eggs hidden in the grass and under bushes. When she’s not with Winry, she follows you around. There are no pictures of Lu, not as a puppy, not with the baby girl or the sandy-haired man, not with Winry. You wonder how long she’s been here.
You wonder if she’s a stray dog, like you are.
X X X
It starts raining one afternoon while you’re making a pot of stew for supper. At first, it’s a few drops, but they start coming down harder, and thunder booms, and Lu charges through the kitchen and tries to make herself fit behind the couch. When the lights flicker once, you glance up, but the second flicker makes you set down the paring knife and carrot you’d been peeling. Out of the window, you see darker clouds rolling in, lightning illuminating all their layers. The lights flicker again. “Winry?” you call, heading toward the basement door.
The lights go out as you reach the top step and you freeze, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. There’s a crackle and a boom and suddenly, everything’s bright and blue, and you can see Winry from the light outside the windows, then everything goes black. “Winry!”
“I’m okay. Stay where you are.” You hear something rustling over the sounds of the rain and the thunder, and then a light comes on in the basement from a torch. You can’t see Winry, but the light from the torch bounces as it comes up the stairs. “Move, Ed.”
You step back at the tone of her voice, shifting out of her way. Now you can see her face, and how tight her jaw is. She doesn’t look at you as she walks through the house and sits down on the couch. Lu creeps out from behind it and crawls into Winry’s lap. The lightning still strikes and the thunder growls in the sky, close enough to make the house shudder. The torch clicks off, and, as lightning flashes outside, you can see Winry, petting Lu, her eyes distant.
X X X
It’s not the first day of rain.
The electricity comes back on, almost as abruptly as it went off. You tune the radio, listening to the report of rain, and the river rising.
“Turn it off,” Winry said.
“I want to know what’s going on.”
“It’s spring, Ed. It’s raining, and the river’s rising. What more do you need to know?” She snaps the radio off as she walks by it, heading back down into the basement.
Lu whines, almost under her breath, and slinks down the stairs after Winry.
X X X
Someone bangs on the door of the house, waking you out of your rain-induced doze. You stagger out of the living room in time to see Winry opening the door, one arm folded across her stomach. Her spine is so stiff, you think it might break. The man standing at the door wears a rain coat, and water drips off the brim of his hat. “River’s rising,” he said, “know you’ve got someone visiting.” He leans around Winry to look at you. “We need all the help we can get to shore up the bank.”
You feel Winry’s eyes on you, too. “Do you have a raincoat I can borrow?” you ask.
She yanks open the hall closet door, pulling out a coat. For a few seconds, she doesn’t do anything, just looks at it, then she thrusts it against your chest. “Here.”
You pull it on, not about to mention it’s too big for you. You feel Winry’s eyes on your shoulder blades as you follow the man out the door.
X X X
The river is swollen and a line has been set up, men tossing bags of dirt to each other to keep the water from washing away the sheep farm beyond their backs. You smell mud and sheep shit and sweat as you approach. Women fill the bags and haul them to the beginning of the line. The last few men in the line put the bags into place, making a dam to contain the muddy water. The rain’s made everything slippery and you fight to keep your footing in your worn shoes.
You remember Izumi, and the way she clapped her hands and made an earthen wall, too high for the water to cross. You could do the same, but Al -
“Are you all right?” the man who’d led you here asks.
“Fine,” you mumble, and take your place in the line, heaving a bag to the next man down. Another bag slaps into your arms and another, and you lose yourself in the mindless work. The rain keeps falling, and someone down the line warns that there’s been more rain in the north, that the river hasn’t crested yet. Compared to the rising water, you can see just how low the wall actually is, and swallow hard. There’s still time, though, there has to be; you can shore up this oxbow, and the water will flow on downstream.
“Ed!”
Your name sounds high-pitched and strangled.
“Ed!”
You keep flinging bags.
“Ed!” Blue eyes burn into yours, and you pause for a second, staring blankly at Winry. She’s furious, and you think, yes, this is what you remember, Winry being alive and crackling with energy. She shakes you, her hands tightening on your wet sleeves. “Ed, use your alchemy.”
You shake your head, though your gaze goes to the wall, to the water you now see is rising faster. You see a branch out there in the middle of it, tumbling slowly toward the bank.
“Ed, use your alchemy. Make a dam.” Winry’s talking through gritted teeth. “Now, Ed!” She gives you another shake.
The branch isn’t a branch, but a tree, and the realization shocks you. You watch it as the water carries it closer. Something stings your cheek, and you wrench your eyes to Winry, seeing her hand pulled back to slap you again. “Stop the water, Ed!” She has your attention, and points to the men closest to the river. “They’re going to die!”
Al, you cry in your head, but the fury and fear in Winry’s face decides for you, and you press your hands together and drop them to the soggy ground. Lightning flashes and for a second, all you can smell is ozone, then the earth beneath you rumbles and a huge wall, firming up like concrete, guards the curve of the river. You feel the crash as the tree strikes the dam. Water laps up over it and showers down on those closest to the bagged dirt wall. Someone cheers, and the sound rises somehow over the rushing water.
You vomit everything out of your stomach until there’s nothing left.
X X X
Something licks your hand, making your eyes snap open. “Lu,” you say, your voice sounding awful. You try to move and fall back with a groan, pressing your flesh hand to your forehead. You’re hot, and sweaty, and your head is pounding. It hurts to breathe.
“You’re sick.” Winry’s voice. Sounds funny, like she’s underwater. “You pushed yourself too far. The doctor said you have pneumonia, have had it for a while.”
You blink at her, trying to figure out which version of her is the actual one.
“But you kept the river from overflowing and wiping out the Nedobeck’s farm. Thank you, Ed.” She bows her head to you.
It’s too hard to keep your eyes open, so you shut them again.
X X X
It’s a few days before you can even leave the bed, and then, you’re so shaky, you need help. Winry is there, propping you up with your arm over her shoulders like always, but this time, you have two good legs, not one. She helps you to the lavatory, and then, because you insist, the living room so you can sit up for a while and not see the same walls. By the time you’re there, you’re exhausted and trembling, and you sink onto the couch in relief. You think you must’ve dozed off, or fell unconscious, you’re not sure which, because when you open your eyes again, there’s a cup of tea steaming in front of you. You take it in both hands, drinking. It tastes good, warms you up, and you sigh softly, closing your eyes again for a few seconds.
“Careful.” Winry takes the cup from you and sets it on the end table. She’s watching you and you blink at her a couple of times to make sure she’s in focus.
“What?” you ask, your voice still sounding weird.
“If you hadn’t been here, Mr. Nedobeck and Randy would’ve died.”
“They’re welcome.” You close your eyes to avoid hers.
X X X
You twitch, realizing you’d fallen asleep again. It’s dark out. You don’t smell rain, so it’s just night, not another storm. Something savory tickles your nose, and its enough to make your mouth water. Winry must be cooking. You try to get up, and on your third attempt, make it, though everything spins around you for a few seconds. You wait until it settles, then make your way to the dining room, holding onto the walls to keep your balance. You feel like crap, but you can’t remember when you last felt really good, either.
Winry glances up at you, gives you a studying look, then nods to the table. You’re okay to reach it, but you nearly fall into the chair you pull out. Your flesh hand is shaking when you lay it on the table.
“Here.” Winry sets a bowl in front of you.
You smell chicken broth, and see dark green chopped leaves and white beans. Thick, crusty bread is on the table, along with a slab of pale butter bearing the imprint from the Todds’ dairy. A glass of lemonade, beaded with sweat, is next to your bowl. You pick up your spoon carefully and dip it into the broth. “Smells good, Winry.”
“I hope you like it.” She sits across from you with her own bowl, tearing bread and dropping it into the soup. Stirring it all together, she scoops up some of the now-slimy broth, she sups at it, her eyes nearly closed.
It’s a good soup, you think, tasty, and not heavy, which you’re pretty sure you couldn’t keep down right now. You break off a piece of bread and dunk it in the broth, sucking on the crust. It’s salty and a little spicy and tastes better than anything you’ve eaten since you can remember. You hope you can finish it.
“Ed, why didn’t you use alchemy to shore up the riverbank to start off with?”
The question nearly curdles your stomach, but you manage to keep the few bites you’ve eaten down as you set your piece of bread on the table. How do you tell Winry this? She’s not an alchemist. At this point, you don’t even remember what she might know about alchemy. You remember she didn’t trust it, or like it, or it scared her, but that was when you were all little kids, wasn’t it? Scrubbing your flesh hand over your face, you sigh. “It’s the other world. I found out something about alchemy there.”
Winry raises her eyebrows at you, spooning up more broth.
“There are people there, Winry, just like the people here.” You don’t want to explain about the doubles you saw. That’s a story for another day, if ever. “Except there isn’t any alchemy. Women…don’t get a lot of say about what happens in their lives in general. That’s not what I wanted to tell you about, though.” You have to push the bowl of soup away, but you do take a drink of lemonade to cool your throat. “The people there, I guess they had some way of crossing between there and here for a while. They did study alchemy, but they went to straight science. Alchemy isn’t even thought of any more there.”
Her expression is neutral, and you’re not sure if she’s actually listening or not, even though she seems to be focused on you. Well, you and her soup. Her bowl is definitely a lot emptier than yours. And it’s still not what you need to tell her. What you want to tell her. “Alchemy here, well, something has to provide fuel for it. It’s not just…a person’s will, but that’s a big part of it. But will doesn’t provide all the power, it has to come from somewhere. There are all sorts of theories out there,” you wave your hand, “about where that power comes from. I never thought of it, really, I knew it was there and I could use it, and I did.” You hold her gaze with yours, like it’s a lifeline. If you let go, if she drops her eyes - “I’m not an alchemist any more, Winry. I can’t be. I won’t use that power!”
She stirs her soup with her spoon. “You used it to make the dam.”
“Because you made me!”
Winry slaps the table, making the liquids slosh in their containers. “So, you would’ve let those people die, Ed?”
Swallowing, you tighten your jaw, a mirror of her reaction a few seconds ago. You can’t look at her now. Would you have let them die? Could you? “I can’t talk about this any more.” You push back from the table and leave the room.
X X X
You’re less shaky the next morning, but your stomach is going to gnaw its way out of your body cavity if you don’t put something in it. After dressing - you don’t recognize these clothes and think Winry must’ve left them for you - you head downstairs. In the kitchen, you cut off a slice of bread and layering a piece of mutton on it. Sinking your teeth into it, you moan softly, leaning your backside against the countertop in the kitchen. You eat your breakfast standing up, watching Lu as she trots into the room, sitting in front of you and cocking her head to one side. You’re not sure if you’d call it begging, but it’s pretty damned close. You give her a piece of the crust, and she gobbles it down, wagging her fluffy tail.
“Where’s Winry?” you ask her, because if Lu’s up, Winry probably is, too. “Take me to Winry.”
Lu cocks her head the other way and you roll your eyes at yourself for talking to a dog. Instead of asking her again, you set the kettle on a burner for some tea. After you have the tea steeping, you follow Lu outside to collect the eggs. No wonder you were hungry, you realize, seeing how high the morning sun is in the sky. Lu leads you to the eggs you don’t spot immediately, and you carry them into the house. There are enough that Winry can trade to some of the other neighbors for cheese or meat or whatever it is she might need. You think you ought to figure out a way to contribute to the household, if you’re going to stay her. If she’s okay with you staying here. You’ve been kind of an asshole to her. Again.
Winry’s in the kitchen when you come inside, pouring herself a cup of tea. You set the eggs down carefully on the counter. “There are another fifteen here,” you say to her, then add, “good morning.”
“Morning,” Winry said, yawning behind her hand.
“Do you, ah, have time to talk?” Rubbing the back of your neck, you peep at her through your bangs.
She sits at the table as her answer, and you pour yourself a cup of tea and sit down, too. “I’m sorry I couldn’t finish telling you about the other world last night, and alchemy. It’s…hard. It’s why I…don’t want to be a State Alchemist any more, why I don’t want to use alchemy. I don’t even…” You shake your head. “Winry, all the times I used alchemy here, in Amestris, I didn’t know. You have to understand that.”
“I don’t understand anything right now, Ed,” she says dryly.
“I suck at explaining things,” you tell her, totally serious. “But this, this changes everything, everything I ever thought about alchemy, even after I learned what the Philosopher’s Stone was made of.” You’d told her, you remember telling her. Didn’t you? “People die in that other world, and their souls,” your voice catches. Al. “Their souls are used to fuel alchemy here. When they die, that life force - it’s fuel, Winry, just intrinsic power to make a transmutation circle work. That’s why I didn’t want to use alchemy to make the dam! I couldn’t.” You shake your head, closing your eyes tight. “I might’ve used Al’s soul as fuel for, for.” Your voice gives out and you cup your head in your hands.
The sweet-smelling steam from your tea bathes your face. You wait for Winry to say something, anything. Finally getting control of yourself, you pick up your cup, taking a sip of the tea. It’s cooled enough it doesn’t burn your mouth. You risk a look at Winry, and wonder at her expression.
“Ed,” she said, in a tone that sounds familiar, “do you really believe that Al would care if you used his soul to help other people? To save lives? To do some good in this world? Do you think he wouldn’t have given that up willingly?” She shook her head. “Did you know Al at all?”
You stutter, your face flushing. “B-but.”
“But nothing, Ed!” Her eyes glitter, and you’re as fixed on them as if they speared through your body. “Al would be okay with that. Most people would! It’s - it’s a good thing, Ed! Don’t you see? You saved lives by making that dam.”
“But people had to die for me to do it!”
“Did they die just because you used the alchemy, or did they die, and you used their souls afterward?” Mouth gaping, you don’t have an answer for her. Winry stares at you, her brows furrowing. “Do people die in that other world when you use alchemy, Ed?”
“I - ” can’t answer that, you can’t. Because you’re not sure. Al sacrificed his body to send you back through to this world. Did he lose his soul then, too? Or is his soul still free, maybe here, in his universe? Waiting to be used like fuel? “Damn it!”
“Ed, everyone dies.” Winry’s squeezing your hands, and you’re not sure when she took hold of them. “Everyone. Your Mom, my parents, Granny, Al.” Her fierce voice hitches as she adds, “Robert and Molly.” “Everyone dies. If - if there’s some way for them to be - I don’t know, useful - isn’t that best?” She shakes your hands. “Isn’t it? Still helping people!” Tears spill down her cheeks. “A-Al, he’d - Granny’d…Mr. Hughes - they’d do that. They wouldn’t care ‘cause they’re still - still helping.” You want to pull away, disagree, but what she says makes sense. Still, you can’t think of Al’s soul, being consumed by a transmutation circle. Mom’s soul. Even the old man’s. Winry’s squeezing your hands, and your flesh one aches from the pressure on it. “You have to understand that, Ed.”
You wish you could.
X X X
It’s dusk, and you’re sitting on the steps of the porch, watching Lu run around in the yard. She’s chasing her tail, then throws herself on the grass on her back and wriggles, then jumps back on her feet again, running like a mad thing. The porch door squeals and pops as it opens and closes, and Winry settles down on the steps next to you. She wraps her arms around her knees. As if she senses Winry’s presence, Lu dashes up, dropping down onto her elbows, her butt in the air and tail wagging. She barks once, looking at Winry out of the corners of her eyes.
“You’re a crazy dog,” Winry tells her, and Lu runs off, speeding in a huge circle.
“Where did she come from?”
“Mr. Coyle brought her to me. She was the runt of her litter, and he said he didn’t think she’d amount to much. Didn’t think she’d live, her mom wouldn’t nurse her. I had to feed her by bottle, and make her poop and pee. I didn’t really want a dog, but.” Winry shrugs. “I guess I needed something.”
You stare out at the lawn, and the dog running around on it. “I’m sorry about your husband and daughter.” It’s weird to say, stranger to think about. Al had speculated about Winry and what happened to her after you both left Amestris. You’d snorted and said she was a gearhead, would always be a gearhead, and left it at that. But Al, he’d been more wistful, wondering if there might be a husband and kids, wondering if she might name them ‘Al’ or ‘Ed’. Molly answered that question.
“I’m sorry about Al,” she says.
Taking a deep breath, you fumble your hand over, taking hers and giving it a squeeze. Winry twines her fingers with yours, and the two of you watch Lu together.
X X X
“I need something to do,” you tell Winry. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
She cocks an eyebrow at you over the magnifying glasses she wears to work on automail limbs. “What?”
“I need a job.” I’m bored, you want to say.
“You have a job. You’re a State Alchemist.” She makes a face when you wave your hand in disgust. “Well, you are…but they,” her eyes drift sideways. Is that a blush?
“Winry?”
“I…um. I have your military allotment.”
For a few seconds, you don’t know what she’s talking about, then it comes back to you - the paperwork Hawkeye had you complete, in case something happened to you while you were in the military. You’d made Al your beneficiary; and if something happened to him, Winry was to get the allotment. You hadn’t known what to do with it, anyway. Since both of you were gone, Winry received the money. “What’d you do with it?” you ask.
Winry shrugs, still not looking at you. “I never touched it.” You think she mumbles, “I didn’t want blood money from the military.”
X X X
You see Al, blood dripping from his mouth, but can’t tell - is it Alfons or Alphonse? You scream, trying to reach out to him, to stop him from this, but they’re both smiling at you, sweet, heart-breaking smiles, as they activate the transmutation circle together. The lightning blue circle ignites, searing their hands and up their arms, swallowing them up as the ink-black hands grab you, wrapping you in ribbons and dragging you down into the circle. You shout, “Al! Alphonse! Al, no!” but your words come out like a whisper. “No! Al! You can’t! You can’t!” You reach for them but the ribbon-hands hold you too tight, pulling you away from Alphonse-Alfons and -
Something booms like an explosion and you’re jolted up out of your bed, gasping and looking around wildly. It takes a few seconds for you to realize where you are, and you want to curl up and howl at the world for taking your brother from you. If you’d stayed in the other world - but think, you remind yourself, your automail would’ve eventually failed, and you’re smart, but no automail mechanic. Who would you have been able to trust with your arm and your leg - with your life?
Shaking your head, you run your flesh fingers through your sweat-damp hair. “Damn it,” you mumble, trying to massage out the headache blooming in your temples. Your ports ache, a prelude to the upcoming storm.
Aspirin, you think, and climb out of the bed to get some. And maybe a book, because you don’t think you’ll be sleeping any more tonight.
X X X
It came as no shock to see him on Winry's porch.