Chapter Text
Resembool is quiet. There’s hardly any sounds on this dirt road besides the wind rustling the trees, the cows lowing in the adjacent field, the distant rush of a river.
It makes Roy want to scratch his skin off.
“Ten and eleven,” Hawkeye says suddenly next to him, and Roy startles and looks over at his adjutant. Her hair’s starting to get long. She usually has him cut it when it gets to her ears, but she hasn’t asked yet.
“That’s how old I was when I started training.” He says.
“Not how old you were when you took the exam.” She counters, and then adds, “Sir,” as though it’s an afterthought.
Roy shrugs one shoulder, rolls his eyes up at the clear blue sky, and wonders if it shrugs with him. “If their prowess is anything like what was reported, then they need some direction regardless.”
“Right,” Hawkeye’s voice is flat. “and we’re here for no other reason.”
“None,” Roy says. “glad we’re on the same page.”
Rockbell Automail Clinic has a wind-chime outside the door. When Roy gets close enough to examine it, he sees three little hands imprinted in white on the metal, names scrawled along the side.
Winry, reads the careful inscription below the middle hand.
Roy turns away.
He knocks for almost a full minute before the door’s answered by an older woman.
She stares at them with cold, emotionless eyes, eyebrows raised in silent accusation, and doesn’t offer any greeting. Roy’s gotten too used to far worse reactions to his uniform to be bothered by it.
“Good morning,” Roy says. “my name’s Lieutenant Colonel Mustang. I work for the-”
“I know who you are.” The woman cuts him off. “Why are you here?”
“We heard of two alchemists who lived here. The Elric brothers?”
“You’re wasting your time.” The woman says shortly and begins to shut the door.
Roy shoves his foot into the crack and pushes it back open. “Why would that be?”
“They’re of no use to the Amestrian government.” The woman crosses her arms tightly. “Not anymore.”
“Ma’am, with all due respect, we heard differently, and-”
“Granny? Who is it?”
A young girl with blonde hair and bright blue eyes appears over the woman’s shoulder, and Roy’s throat closes for a moment when she meets his gaze. Her expression immediately darkens and takes on a heavy anger Roy would have thought impossible for someone so young if he didn’t know better. “What do you want?” She snarls.
“Let them in.” A voice echoes from inside the house. Devoid of any emotions, hoarse and flat, but child-like.
The girl- Winry, Roy is sure, she looks too much like her parents to be anyone else- turns back into the house. “Ed, are you sure? You don’t have to-”
But Roy has already shoved open the door completely and crossed the threshold. He stops in his tracks.
The child sitting in a wheelchair in the corner looks like something straight out of his nightmares, and nothing like what the report described.
Three of his limbs are missing, and the only hand that remains dangles limp and useless over the side of the chair as though it’s missing, too. The child’s pallid dark skin is covered in a thin sheen of dried sweat and there are deep circles under his downcast eyes. His light hair is pulled back into a ponytail and clearly hasn’t been washed in weeks. In the late afternoon sun, it shines almost white.
Almost.
Roy looks sharply back at Hawkeye, an unanswerable question on his lips begging to be asked, but he keeps his mouth shut tight, and Hawkeye can only shake her head mutely.
“Edward Elric?” Roy asks slowly.
The child’s dull eyes move with great effort to meet his. Roy desperately wants to see something behind the disconcerting burnished gold, but they’re empty. Lifeless.
“What happened?” He demands, turning back towards the woman. “We were told Edward was an amputee, but not this.”
“What’s going on?”
Roy looks up and finds a suit of armor standing in the doorway. Namely, a hulking, walking, talking-with-the-voice-of-a-child suit of armor, standing in a direct beam of sunlight that allows Roy to see past the dark slits of the faceplate and all the way to the other side of the metal, where there’s a splash of dark red in the shape of an alchemical circle, and nothing else.
Roy’s stomach lurches.
He crosses the room in three quick strides and lifts the child out of the wheelchair by his shirt, the growing rush of blood in his ears almost enough to block out the sounds of everyone else clambering to stop him. “What did you do? Who did you try to transmute?”
The child barely reacts to him. His head lolls to the side. He blinks sluggishly at Roy, and then, for just a second, there’s a spark of fire in the cold ash bed of his eyes. “You were in Ishval.”
Roy recoils back, dropping him back into the wheelchair as though his clothes burn. His hands feel utterly bare, all of a sudden. Unprotected. “Why?” He asks roughly. “Why do you know that?”
“The market.” The child says, and he laughs mirthlessly. “You killed them, didn’t you?”
Roy stares at the boy’s thin face and suddenly remembers with startling clarity and a wave of nausea, a small child sprawled out in front of him on the ground of a busy marketplace, unusually golden eyes wide with fear. He’d left Ahlirat only a few days after that, was transferred to the next region over to begin carrying out Order 3066. Something like relief floods his tight chest, but it’s short-lived. The child begins to laugh again, and this time, it sounds closer to a scream.
Roy shakes himself violently and kneels down to the child’s level. “Listen to me closely, Edward Elric. Human Transmutation is a capital offense. If they find out, they won’t care that you’re a child. They will kill you.”
“They already did.” The child’s voice cracks.
Roy roughly grabs his shoulders, leans closer. “You only have two options here. You will either die, and your brother will remain whatever- thing- you’ve made him into, or you can get up, and you can fix this.”
He lets the child go. He falls back lifelessly into his wheelchair and Roy stands up.
Winry has her hands balled into fists and angry tears are spilling over her cheeks. Hawkeye’s expression hasn’t changed, but Roy can tell she’s close to doing the same.
He walks to the door. “When you’re ready to fix your mistakes, I’ll be at Eastern Command.”
When the child looks up to meet his eyes, there’s a flicker of something in his own. That’s enough for Roy. He bangs open the front door and takes the stairs down two at a time, Hawkeye behind him.
As soon as he gets far enough from the house that he can’t read the sign anymore, Roy doubles over by a tree and promptly throws up everything he’s eaten in the past twelve hours.
Hawkeye stares at him with stony eyes, arms crossed, as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “A child. They’re children.”
“No.” He says shortly and shoves his gloves onto his hands. The rough material is almost comforting, in a twisted way. “They all ceased to be children the minute we took everything from them. Maybe, this way- maybe we can help them get something back.”
It’s not absolution. Nothing ever will be. But it’s something.
“I’m still not sure this is the best course of action, Ed,” Pinako says, peering at him over the edge of her glasses. “I’ve never heard of anyone with more than two automail limbs. The strain on your body-”
“I have to.” Ed cuts her off, staring at the white ceiling of the recovery room. It’s been a long time since he’s wished it was tan. “How long for recovery?”
“For three limbs? Three years, at the shortest.”
Distantly, Ed can hear Al clunking around in the kitchen, trying to help Winry prepare a dinner that he can’t eat.
He can’t sleep, either. Ed found that one out when he woke up screaming from a nightmare of a roof collapsing, Cyra trapped on top of him, blood dripping from her mouth, and Al was immediately at his side.
Ed swallows a roil of hot, guilty nausea. All that he has left is Al, and he’s condemned his brother to a half-life.
But maybe-
Maybe he can fix it.
“I’ll do it in eighteen months.”
“Geez, Winry, you don’t have to cry,” Ed mutters, ducking away from her as he shoves the last of his clothes into the small suitcase Pinako procured for him.
Winry sniffles again and pulls her knees to her chest. “You don’t have to go.”
“I do. I can’t- I can’t leave Al like that.”
“Aren’t you worried?” She fiddles with his bedspread. “What if they- Ed, what if they find out?”
Ed slams down the top of the suitcases and immediately cringes when he hears Winry gasp behind him. He still hasn’t quite figured out the strength of this new arm. “They won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?” She demands. “What if they do? I know it’s not law anymore, but what if, what if-”
“I don’t have a choice, Winry!” Ed whirls around to face her. “I’m down to one fucking limb, and Al- he’s- he’s-” He cuts off and takes a deep breath, trying to calm the desperate thrumming of his heart in his throat. “I don’t have a choice. Mustang said he’d help me find a Philosopher’s Stone, and that’s the only lead I have right now. I’m not leaving him like that. I won’t. I won’t do it.”
“Alright, I know.” Winry whispers. “But you have to promise, okay? You have to promise to keep yourself safe and keep Al safe, and you have to promise to come back.”
Her face is red and swollen, and there’s a terrifying trust in her blue eyes. Like she thinks he’ll pull it off. Like she thinks he’ll return.
Ed turns away again. “I can’t promise anything.”
“Some stunt you pulled with Fuhrer Bradley,” Mustang drops a file down onto the desk and leans against it, crossing his arms. “Could have gone real badly for you.”
Ed picks up the file he’s dropped and flicks it open. “He hasn’t had me killed yet, has he?”
“‘Yet’, being the keyword there. If you’re going to be under my command, I’m going to need you to reign in the stupid, dangerous stunts by at least fifty percent, alright? I’m not trying to go gray before I’m thirty, kid.”
Ed holds in a derisive snort and doesn’t bother lying to Mustang as he skims the embossed paper within the file. The Amestrian inside, which pronounces him a State Alchemist and grants him the rank of Major, is flowery and in looping cursive, but Ed’s gotten far better at deciphering non-standard Amestrian, and it only takes him a minute to reach the bottom of the page. Something cold settles in his stomach as he stares at the last sentence on the page. He looks up at Mustang. “Fullmetal Alchemist?”
“That’s right,” Mustang nods. “every State Alchemist is granted a title.”
“And you’re the Flame Alchemist.”
“Yes.” Mustang splays his fingers out against the wood of the desk and grips the edge tightly.
“But my alchemy has nothing to do with metal-”
“No, it doesn’t,” Mustang says heavily, and Ed falls silent.
He flexes his own fingers, made of metal and screws and Winry’s sheer determination to give him back his body, and has to bite back a laugh. How fitting that the last step in joining the military that decimated his home, murdered his family, is to give up his name, yet again.
The identity he’s erasing this time is fake, that’s true, but it was freely taken, and given to protect him. To accept a title clearly meant to deride him when his mother gave him a name meant to grant dignity and belonging- it feels like he’s spitting on her grave.
Or he would be, if his mother was allowed the dignity of a burial. The hole that Pinako dug out back for the black, malformed thing that she dumped into it cannot count as a resting place, nor the prayers Al whispered as he knelt next to it for hours as funeral rites.
Not for the first time, Ed thinks about Khal Ahiqar’s dogged insistence that alchemy brings nothing but ruin, and wonders idly if maybe his uncle was right. But then he thinks about his brother, soul tethered to this world by nothing but metal and blood, and knows that it doesn’t matter whether he was. None of it does. Not if Ishvala is real, not if alchemy is cursed, not if what he’s doing is wrong.
This path he is walking may end in nothing but more destruction and pain for him, but Ed is going to ensure that Al gets his body back before that happens. He won’t let his brother get dragged down into the pits of hell with him.
He takes a pen off of Mustang’s desk and concentrates on signing his name along the bottom. He’d had to learn how to write again, and despite his focusing, his signature still looks blocky and childish. Still, he shoves the paper at Mustang and pretends not to notice how final the action feels.
Mustang takes the paper from him and slips it back into the folder. His expression is stonily neutral, his office deadly quiet, and Ed wonders if this is how every certification goes.
“Well, that’s that,” Mustang says, and there’s an odd tone of regret in his voice if Ed listens closely. “welcome to the military, Fullmetal.”
“Hey, Chief!” Havoc greets as Ed shoves open the door to the office.
It’s raining out. Al’s metal got soaked from the walk from the train station and he’s sure to rust if he doesn’t dry off as soon as possible, so Ed had pushed him towards the barracks the minute they got back to Eastern Command.
“Oh, is it raining?” Breda asks, staring at the water dripping from Ed’s braid with his eyebrows raised.
Ed shoots him a withering look before he claps his hands together, and the water flies off of his clothing and outwards into the office-
-hitting Mustang, who’s exiting his inner office, straight into the face. Mustang wipes a hand over his face and flicks the water off. “Hello to you, too, Fullmetal,” he says dryly.
Ed takes out his report, which he’d done on the train, and is only slightly damp, and shoves it at him. “Here ya go. What’s our next assignment?”
“Slow your roll,” Mustang grumbles as he unfolds the paper and peers at his writing. “Fullmetal, this is nearly illegible.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, you try writing with a metal hand on a train!” Ed flops down onto the couch, crossing his arms.
Havoc snickers. Mustang shoots him a look, which makes him clamp his mouth shut and turn back towards his paperwork.
“You could have just waited till you got here to write it. Any major incidents?”
“No, it was a bust.” Ed sighs. The so-called Philosopher’s stone had been nothing but a sleight of hand, if that. “And I wanted to get going on the next one right away, so chop-chop, Colonel, what’s the next assignment?”
“There is none.” Mustang drops his report on Hawkeye’s desk; she dutifully begins to file it away.
“Sorry, what?” Ed bangs theatrically on his ear, tilting his head towards the ground. “My ears must have gotten water-logged. It sounded like you said ‘there is none’?”
“No, you heard right, Edward.” Hawkeye chimes in. Mustang shoots her a look, too, but Lieutenant Hawkeye’s made of stronger stuff than Havoc, and she continues on. “We’re going to need you to remain at Eastern Command for the time being.”
“What?” Ed yelps, sitting straight up. “Why?”
“You’ve heard about the killings in Central?” Mustang asks.
“Sure, but that’s in Central-”
“They were all State Alchemists,” Mustang says. “Besides, Shou Tucker was in Eastern, and we have reason to believe it was the same man who killed him. Until he’s apprehended, you need to remain where I can keep an eye on you.”
Ed turns away, his throat closing. Nina’s death had been another stab through his ribs and a vicious one, at that. He’s beginning to think it’s not worth getting close to anyone; maybe his destruction is catching.
“I can take care of myself.” He forces out and prays that his voice doesn’t crack. The last thing he wants is to show weakness in this office.
“No one thinks any different.” Hawkeye turns in her seat to face him. “But this man has killed alchemists triple your age, Ed.”
“So then, I’ll help catch him,” Ed says. Anything to get back on the road. “Who is he?”
“We don’t know much. He's got, uh, a scar in the shape of an “x” on his face,” Mustang says.
“Anything else?” Ed says impatiently. “You’re telling me no one got a look at anything but a scar?”
“Red eyes.” Hawkeye supplies quietly. “White hair. Darker skin. Tattoos.”
The breath in Ed’s throat catches. His heart begins to pound in his chest. He grips the port of his left leg tightly, feels the flesh give way to metal under his fingers. “He’s Ishvalan.”
“We’re fairly certain. We think these are acts of revenge.” Hawkeye says.
Ed shakes his head. “No, no- revenge isn’t- Ishvalan religion isn’t vengeful-”
“Well, this Ishvalan is,” Mustang says. “Regardless, until he’s apprehended, you’re to remain in the dorms. Do you understand, Fullmetal?”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Ed stands and forces himself to walk out of the office before the shakiness that’s already started in his flesh hand travels all the way down his body. He slams the door shut and leans his head against the cool glass of the window next to it, staring blankly at the sheet of rain coming down outside.
“Is he alright?” Havoc’s voice sounds from inside the office, muffled and hushed. “Kid looked pretty shaken.”
“He’s fine.” Mustang says shortly. “As long as he doesn’t pull any stupid shit to try and find Scar himself, he’ll be fine.”
“Why does he know about Ishvalan religion? We never got taught any of that in school.” Falman asks.
There’s a short silence. Ed’s heart ratchets up again.
“He grew up near the Eastern border,” Hawkeye says finally. “I’m sure he was exposed to Ishvalans before the war.”
“Ah, gotcha.” Falman seems satisfied, and the sounds of the office shift back into typewriters banging and papers shuffling.
Ed takes a deep breath and pulls his head up off the window. If Mustang isn’t going to let him leave until Scar’s found, then Ed’s just going to have to do what he’s done dozens of times already in the three years he’s been a State Alchemist: everyone else’s job.
“Brother! Brother, he went that way!” Al grabs Ed by his automail and turns him towards a small alleyway, where Ed can just make out a flash of white hair disappearing behind a corner.
Part of him wonders- wonders if maybe, in another life-
No, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that this man is killing every State Alchemist he can get his hands on. Killed Nina. And that he doesn’t seem to care that Ed couldn’t have possibly been involved in Ishval, as the rest of the State Alchemists that he’s killed were.
So Ed charges down the alleyway, Al hot on his heels.
Scar’s turned down a dead-end, backed up by a massive brick building, and Ed immediately claps to transmute a blade over his arm, wincing internally about the shit Winry’s sure to give him for it. She hates when he fucks up his outer casing.
Scar seems about to perform his own alchemy, his hulking back towards them. His hands are pressed to the wall and beginning to crackle blue, but imminent danger has never stopped Ed before, and it’s not about to, now.
“It’s over, Scar!” Ed yells, moving forward. “We’ve got you cornered!”
Scar glances behind at them. And then he does something weird. His shoulders tighten. His head picks up. And then he drops his hands.
Ed turns to Al, because what the fuck are they supposed to do now? All those reports of Scar murdering grown adults, and now he just surrenders? But Al is staring straight ahead and there’s a look of shock, if such a thing could exist, on his faceplate.
“Khal,” Al breathes out.
“Al, what-”
Ed turns back. And finds his uncle on his knees in front of him.
As Mustang said, a massive scar mars his face, crossing both his eyes, and his arm is covered in oddly familiar tattoos where there should only be clear skin. But there is no mistaking his red eyes.
The same shade and shape as Mama’s.
“Kh-khal?” Ed manages to stutter. “You- you’re?”
“Hey, has anyone seen Fullmetal?” Havoc hollers from the street, only a couple dozen feet away. “Could have sworn he went down this way-”
Ed immediately turns, slams his hands on the ground, and raises a massive wall to block them off from the street. When he turns back, Ahiqar hasn’t moved from his place on the ground. He’s slumped forward as if all the fight’s been drained out of him.
“You’re Fullmetal.” Ahiqar says quietly. When he raises his eyes to meet Ed’s, they’re rimmed with red. “I thought- I thought you were gone, Eshkhan.”
“We thought you were, too,” Al says.
Ahiqar looks sharply at Al, and comprehension dawns first on his face, and is quickly replaced with something far more distressed. “Atal?”
“Yeah, it’s me!” Al says. “I-if you survived, did anyone else-”
“You committed the taboo,” Ahiqar says harshly, and Ed remembers with sudden, startling clarity, long sermons on saying their prayers before meals, folding their sashes correctly, paying attention during Temple.
And then he remembers Nina’s blood staining the carpet, and knows that his uncle’s shaking hands- hands that had brushed his hair, made him food, tucked him into bed- were the cause.
A sudden rush of red-hot anger blinds Ed for a moment. He jabs a metal finger right into his uncle’s chest as it rises and falls with his breaths, because he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s somehow alive- “Don’t lecture me about shit,” Ed says, low and raging. Ahiqar stares up at him with wide eyes, not moving a muscle. “We thought you were dead. We thought everyone was dead, and me and Atal- we had no one. And now, what, we find out you’ve been alive this entire goddamn time, and what have you been doing? Killing left and fucking right. You were going to kill me.”
“I-I thought you were a State Alchemist-”
“I am a State Alchemist.” Ed snarls, and there’s a sick, twisted sort of satisfaction to be had in the way that horror unfolds across his uncle’s face. “As if you have room to talk. As if your sacred oath as a priest included murdering children.”
“Eshkhan,” Ahiqar says. “State Alchemists, they’re the ones that-”
“We know!” Al yells in Amestrian, and Ed abruptly realizes that he’d slipped into Ishvalan unconsciously. There’s a metal hand on Ed’s chest, shoving him back from Ahiqar, and Al steps between them. “Khal, you think we don’t know that? But we made a mistake, and it seems like we aren’t the only ones who did. We needed the resources of the military. Trust me, Brother doesn’t like it any more than you do. Now listen to me, both of you. We don’t have much time before someone realizes that the wall isn’t supposed to be there, so I’m going to ask you this one more time, and you’re going to answer. Khal. Did anyone else survive?”
Ahiqar stares at Al, eyes searching the metal faceplate for something. Ed isn’t sure what. And then his head bows, his eyes drop to the ground, and Ed breaks eye contact with his uncle. He knows what he’s about to say, and he doesn’t want to watch his face as he does.
“No.” Ahiqar rasps out. “No, Atal, no one else survived. Cyra and Tsira are gone. I- I buried them myself. Eashoa- he gave himself to protect me and carry on his work.” Ahiqar flexes his scarred, tattooed arm, and a wave of hot nausea overtakes Ed. That’s where he recognizes the tattoos from. They’re Eashoa’s.
Ed walks away. Pulls at his hair by the root, tugging it out of his braid, and shuts his eyes tight.
It doesn’t hurt, he tells himself. It doesn’t. They’ve been gone for years. He’s known they’ve been gone for years. This changes nothing.
But his uncle is alive. Someone is alive. Until the military catches him, that is. Ed looks up sharply at the large wall he’s transmuted.
“Go.” Ed says.
“Wh-what?” Ahiqar stutters.
“Go.” Ed repeats and turns on his heel to shove his uncle forward. “If they find you, they’ll kill you.”
“But-”
“Do you think we have time to argue? Go!”
“We’ll find you, I promise!” Al says and helps Ahiqar to his feet.
Ahiqar still looks shaken, confused, but he presses his hands to the back wall. It crumbles under his touch, and he shoots them both a final look, lips pressed tightly together, before he disappears behind it and the wall builds itself back up.
It isn’t until Al lays a careful hand on Ed’s shoulder and he startles violently that realizes he’d been staring at the wall.
“Are you alright?” Al’s Ishvalan is rusty. He slips on a syllable, and Ed has to stop himself from wincing.
“I’m alright, brother.” Ed forces a weak smile to his face. “We’ll find him. Let’s go, before they get suspicious.”
Ed doesn’t know what he expected Lieutenant Hawkeye’s apartment to look like, but he knows it wasn’t this. It’s small, but clean and warm. There are flowers on her kitchen table and an old picture of two kids- one with short blonde hair, one with cropped black hair- grinning toothily with their arms around each other’s shoulders, taped to her ice-box. Black Hayate is stretched out underneath her feet, and Ed has to stare at these details for a minute before he really comprehends them, proof that Hawkeye exists outside of the office, outside of her uniform.
He wraps his hands around the tea she poured him and tugs it closer, watching her methodically clean the gun with a serene look on her face.
“It hasn’t been fired,” Hawkeye says. There’s no accusation in her tone, but Ed flushes anyways.
“No.” Ed manages to get out. He stares down into the dark tea and wishes it tasted a little sweeter, a little sharper. “I couldn’t- I couldn’t fire it, not even when I found the- thing- responsible for killing my family. Guess that makes a coward, huh?”
A soft hand slips under his chin and tilts his head back up. Hawkeye’s brown eyes have a deep, nearly sherry-red tint to them, Ed notices distantly. “On the contrary.” She says gently. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
He doesn’t.
He really, really doesn’t.
Ed would sooner forget waking up in an ocean of blood, the smell of it so pervasive, so pungent, that even when he retched, he couldn’t taste the acidic bile over the iron in his mouth. He had no need to add the recollection of wandering until Ling collapsed, and Ed had to drag him for hours to the stack of terrible memories he keeps locked in the back of his head.
Finding Envy. Envy telling them that there was no way out, that they were stuck in Gluttony until they died.
Envy taunting him. Because humans might be wired to overlook what would be too inconvenient to acknowledge, but Envy could pick out the too-light shade of Ed’s hair, the too-dark shade of his skin, from the moment they met.
“Oh, and it was so easy, to start the war,” Envy cackled, turning their head towards Ed. “To shoot that little girl. You see, there’d been clashes before then, sure, but nothing quite like what I did. She trusted me, you know. Trusted me up until I put the gun against her head. Her eyes, well-” Their dark eyes bore into Ed, and he dug his nails into his palm. “I’d imagine her eyes looked something like your brother’s before I shot her.”
Ed was moving forward before Ling could stop him, hands moving of their own accord, vision narrowed down to Envy’s dark, soulless eyes, and nothing else. “You,” he snarled, hands closing around the gun in his jacket. “You did this. You started the civil war. You destroyed my home. Murdered my family. You killed- You killed my mother.”
He didn’t know that he had ever internalized how to handle a gun from Hawkeye’s lectures. All he knew is that within a second, the safety was clicked off, and the muzzle was shoved under Envy’s jaw. “Give me one fucking reason I shouldn’t kill you right now.”
“Simple.” Envy tilted their chin up. “It would make you as bad as me.”
Ed stared. The gun was growing heavy in his hand. He’d never seen Mama’s body. He’d been out of his mind with pain, and all he remembers is someone putting a hand over his eyes as he was carried out of the house, and Atal’s screams, loud enough to shake the walls. But he had enough nightmares to imagine what it looked like.
To make another corpse-
Ed doesn’t know that he could do it.
The gun sagged, just for a moment, and Envy laughed in his face.
“You humans and your mercy.”
And a backhand sent him flying into the ocean of blood.
The tea’s gone cold. He keeps his hands wrapped around it anyways. “Envy told me- Envy told me outright, that the homunculi had started the war. That they were what killed my mom.” He whispers. “And I still couldn’t do it.”
“Ed…” Hawkeye says quietly. She drops the gun onto the table, and when Ed looks up, she’s clutching her hands together, digging her nails into her skin. “The homunculi may have started the war, but we carried it out.”
Ed knows that. He does. But there is no way to think about Mustang as the Flame Alchemist, and exist in the same world as him. It's easier to think of them as separate people.
Lieutenant Hawkeye, who brings him tea and sandwiches from the cafeteria without him asking during late nights, and the Hawk’s Eye, the sharpshooter who left entire mountains of carcasses that used to be his people, behind her.
Colonel Mustang, who constantly searches for leads for the Philosopher’s Stone for him, and the Hero of Ishval, who razed entire towns in minutes. He can’t reconcile the two together. He never has been able to.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he says.
“Nothing at all,” Hawkeye says, and she sounds like she’s being honest. “there is nothing I can say that will erase what I’ve done. I can’t beg your forgiveness. I can’t be forgiven for it. Neither can the Colonel. But I want you to know- we want to make this right. You’ve seen bits and pieces of our plan over the years, but we’re going to make it right. There can be no peace for your people without justice, so we’re going to make it just. When the Colonel becomes Fuhrer, everyone who was hailed as a hero after Ishval will be tried as war criminals and sentenced however the tribunal sees fit.”
Ed stares at her. He’s sure that if he applies any more pressure to this cup, it’ll break under his hand.
Justice?
Does such a thing exist? Can it exist? There is no way to move forward from what happened. He’s not entirely convinced that time didn’t stop moving the minute that roof fell on his head. Putting the murderers on trial does not bring back the murdered. No amount of retribution will make ash back into stone, blood back into living flesh.
Ed doesn’t say anything back to her, because there isn’t anything to say. So he just sits at the table with cold tea under his hand, and Hawkeye quietly picks up the gun and continues cleaning blood out of every crevice.
This isn’t nearly the first time Ed’s almost given up. Not even close to it. He doesn’t remember much from those weeks following the explosion, but there were moments of sudden lucidity within the ocean of hazy, feverish pain, with a Rockbell hovering over him, attempting to coerce him into drinking or taking medicine, that he recalls the pain nearly overtaking him. It pervaded every nerve in his body, and all that he can remember is thinking, make it stop. Please. Anything to make it stop.
He can’t feel much now.
He knows, logically, that the large piece of rebar sticking out from his stomach is causing him pain. The blood pooling underneath him is more than enough evidence that he is completely and unequivocally fucked.
He coughs, once, and cringes at the blood that spatters out in front of him. He knows enough of human anatomy to understand that means he has minutes left, if that.
Kimblee’s face flashes before his eyes, and Ed lets out a hacking laugh, adding to the crimson in the concrete. Nine years later, and the man finally had a chance to get one step closer to completely exterminating Ahlirat. He must be overjoyed.
So much for mercy.
It’s alright, though, isn’t it? He hasn’t believed in Ishvala in years, has only called out to Him in anger and derision. But maybe- maybe he’ll see Mama again. And Cyra. Everyone that he’s lost…
And then there’s Winry, closing his fingers around her earrings, expression determined and terrified, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “Keep them safe, alright?” Keep yourself safe.
Al, ten years old, looking at him with such utter trust that Ed has to look away. Al, fourteen, red eyes reduced to a light glare out of a metal helmet.
Ahiqar. Standing behind Winry. Telling Ed in no uncertain terms that he would protect the people he loved.
“Fuck-” Ed gasps out, and shifts on his side as the shock begins to ebb, and a burning pain spreads up his side. “Fuck Kimblee. I won’t- I won’t make them cry. Not over this.”
Ed claps his hands together and blue light courses between his fingers.
Ed had nearly forgotten what his brother looked like.
The one glance he’d gotten of him since he was ten years old had been rushed and tinted red with terror and rage, and he hadn’t been able to get a good look at him. Wasn’t able to do what he’s doing now- staring at his brother’s face, trying to memorize every detail, just in case he blinks, and Atal disappears.
He’d forgotten that Atal’s hair was lighter than his- lighter still now, almost as white as the pillowcase behind his head. He’d forgotten the scar on his forehead from when he tripped playing ball in the street and smacked it against a rock. He’d forgotten about the faint burn marks that lingered on his left cheek. He’d forgotten how much he looked like Mama.
Ed shuts his eyes and tries to bring Mama’s face to the front of his mind, and then Cyra’s, and then Eashoa’s. They’re blurry now; faded with time, hard-to-reach- like Atal’s own face had been.
But Atal’s here. His body is here, and Ed can feel his pulse under his fingers, hand wrapped tight around his bony wrist.
“Don’t cry, brother,” Al says hoarsely, and Ed forces his eyes open to find that he is, in fact, crying.
He swipes roughly at his tears with the sleeve of his hospital gown and tries for a smile. “I’m alright.”
“Yeah.” When Atal smiles, it stretches the skin over his gaunt face and pulls at his eyes, but Ed thinks it’s more blinding than the mid-summer sun. “We’re gonna be alright.”
There’s a hesitant knock on the door, and Ed turns, confused. Teacher and Sig had already been by, as had every member of Mustang’s squad that wasn’t currently incapacitated. Winry wouldn’t be in Central for a few days at the earliest, so really, no one should be bothering them, unless it’s another nurse coming to bug Ed into getting back into bed.
But it’s not a nurse.
Van Hohenheim stands in the doorway, massive frame filling out most of it. He worries the hem of his filthy shirt, staring at Al unabashedly.
(Has the gold of his hair always been streaked with gray?)
“Dad!” Al says. “I-I didn’t think you’d come-”
“I just wanted to make sure you’re safe. That you’re both safe.” He directs the last part to Ed, tilting his head up as if asking for approval.
Ed looks at his father for a moment, and then back at his brother, who seems so happy, so content, and Ed can’t break it. He’s never been able to say no to his baby brother.
“Alright then, don’t block the door,” Ed says gruffly, and Hohenheim’s shoulders drop in relief.
He sits down on the other side of the bed, and for a minute, seems to just be drinking in Al’s visage. “You look-” his voice cracks in two. “You look so much like your mother, Atal.”
“Brother says that, too. I-I don’t remember her well,” Atal says, like it’s a confession, like it’s something to be ashamed of, and Ed grips his brother’s hand tighter.
Hohenheim’s eyes become unexpectedly glassy. He shoves the heels of his hands into his eyes, pushing his glasses up into his hair. Ed distantly wonders if he’ll need glasses, too, someday.
“There is nothing I can say that will excuse what I’ve done.” Hohenheim’s voice is cracked and raspy. “But please, please, know, if I had known what they were going to do to you- to your mother, to everyone- I would have never left.”
“Why?” Ed’s voice leaves his mouth without permission, but he meets his father’s surprised look with defiance. “Why did you leave?”
“To stop this. I knew what Father was capable of, and I needed to stop what happened to my people from happening to-”
“Mama was so convinced you were going to come back, did you know that?” Ed laughs, though it doesn’t feel funny. “She always told us you’d return someday.”
“I wanted to, Eshkhan,” Hohenheim says desperately. “You don’t know how much I missed you all, and once I learned what happened- I thought I had lost all of you at once, and-”
“Your people.” Al interrupts.
“-I am so, so, sorry, and- what?”
“Your people.” Al squeezes Ed’s hand again, and Ed recognizes it as both a calming gesture and a warning. “Did they- did they all look like you?”
Hohenheim seems dumbfounded for a moment. “I- y-yes, for the most part.” He touches his hair. “Most everyone, at least.”
Ed’s never seen another pair of gold eyes. Only when he’s looking in the mirror. Or now, in his father’s face, which may as well be a mirror. To imagine an entire people that look like him- like his father- it’s nearly as overwhelming as it was when Miles took his glasses off so that Ed could see the deep red of his irises.
“I was just wondering,” Al says. “Mama never told us much about it.”
Hohenheim lets out a hoarse chuckle, dropping his head. “Well, that would be my fault. I never told her much. It was… too painful. Much easier, to pretend it had never existed.”
“But it did exist,” Ed says fiercely, fingers tightening around Al’s wrist. “It did. Just because it’s gone now doesn’t mean all those people never mattered, or-or, what they believed in, or what they did.”
“No, you’re right.” Hohenheim shakes his head. “But you two- you’re it. There are no other Xerxians.”
“We’re used to it,” Al shrugs one boney shoulder and gives their father a half-smile. “There aren’t many Ishvalans around, either, Baba. I can’t speak for Ed, but I’d like to know more. Please?”
“Alright, Atal.” Hohenheim wipes at his eyes again. It seems Ed isn’t the only one unable to say no to his brother. “Alright. Of course.”
And Hohenheim speaks.
He speaks of a distant land, of people who worshipped the sun, and in turn, the sun touched their skin, their hair, their eyes. He speaks of bustling markets and the birth of alchemy, of great injustices and even greater works of art. He speaks until darkness has fallen over the hospital room. He speaks until Ed’s head is slumped against Al’s thigh, and he’s snoring softly, and Al’s eyes have fluttered closed. And then he gets up, arranges a spare blanket around his eldest’s shoulders, tucks his youngest in, and quietly puts his coat on.
He looks back at his sons from the doorway, and he whispers what he wouldn’t dare say in the light of day.
“Ta’burni, my sons.”
“Atal, Atal- will you be careful!” Ed hisses, holding out his hands in case his idiot brother, who is currently balancing on a chair in the kitchen to reach the lightbulb he’s changing, decides to fall.
Atal rolls his eyes. “Now who worries too much? I’m fine, brother!”
“Are you? Are you fine?” Ed demands, grabbing his arm as Atal gets down from the chair and tries not to panic at still being able to feel the bone through his thin layer of muscle. “Look at you! One strong wind and you’re gonna fall and crack right open!”
“Oh my god, Ed, you’ve got to calm down, it’s been almost six months of this!” Winry says as she comes through the front door. It must still be raining out; she’s soaked through.
“Thank you!” Atal throws a hand towards Winry. “Even Winry agrees, and she’s the queen of over-worrying!”
“The what?” Winry says, eyes flashing as she wrings her hair out over the sink
“Wh-what I meant to say was the queen of apple pies?” Atal tries, holding his hands out placatingly.
“That’s what I thought you said.” She says imperiously. She nods at the covered basket she brought in from town. “I stopped by the post office- there's a package for you both in there.”
“There is?” Ed tosses the soaked towel atop the basket towards the sink. Underneath Winry’s assorted automail parts and a pack of cookies from the bakery lies a brown package with no return address.
“Maybe Mrs. Hughes sent something?” Atal peers over his shoulder.
Ed shakes his head. The looping, familiar handwriting looks nothing like Mrs. Hughes’. He shakes it; nothing rattles around inside, so it’s probably not a bomb. Good enough. Ed tears off the packaging, opens the lid of the box underneath, and feels his breath catch in his throat.
Nestled inside the box, folded neatly, is a scarf, yellow like the flowers that bloom on the cacti in the summer. Its soft material is well-worn and faded, but it’s clearly been taken care of.
There’s a small card lying on top.
Atal and Eshkhan,
I am not sure how much you remember, but this was your mother’s favorite head-wrap. She wore it nearly every day. I took it with me when I left our home. You have lost so much; I wanted you to have something of hers, no matter how small it is. I am working with Miles in Central. We’ve been asked to help with reconstruction. I know that you have both been through a great deal, but when you have rested and recovered, please know you are welcome to join us. Be safe and be well, and I will see you soon if Ishvala wills it.
Underneath, there is a Central address and a phone number.
It’s unsigned, but Ed doesn’t need a signature to know who sent this. As if he hadn’t seen his uncle’s handwriting a thousand times over, on manuscripts and written prayers and holy texts.
“Is that-” Atal asks, one hand resting on the scarf.
“Yeah.” Ed’s voice cracks. “It’s Mama’s.”
Ed runs his fingers over the soft material of the scarf and shuts his eyes. When he tries to recall his mother’s face- maybe he’s making it up- but her features seem sharper, somehow.
Ahlirat doesn’t look anything like he remembers. The crops were further out from town, weren’t they? And the market- it was bigger. There were dozens and dozens of vendors. The square they’ve designated for it seems smaller, somehow.
And the color of the building material they’re using to reconstruct the temple is paler than it ought to be. The old temple was dark with age. Ed squints through the doorway into the unfinished chambers inside and wonders if they’re repainted the ceiling already.
“Man, was this always so itchy?” Atal comes up on his right, tugging at the collar of his tunic. “I swear I don’t remember scratching this much.”
Ed chuckles and turns to his brother, adjusting the fold of his sash across his shoulder for him. “They weren’t this itchy, these are just new. It’ll get softer as you wash it.”
When Atal smiles at him, it doesn’t pull at his skin anymore, but it’s just as blinding.
Across the small square, Ahiqar and Miles are having a quiet, indistinct conversation. Ahiqar says something, and Miles nods, claps Ahiqar on the shoulder, and heads off towards the edge of the square, where Mustang is waiting with his team, shovels and hoes on their shoulders so that they can go back out to the fields.
“What do you think?” Ahiqar asks as he walks up. He sweeps a hand around the square. “I know it doesn’t look like much now, but give it a few years.”
“It’s great!” Atal says enthusiastically. “I got to tour the new school, and it looks fantastic!”
“The school was my project.” Ahiqar runs a hand through his hair. He’s growing it out, and it nearly reaches his shoulders. “Education was so important to Eashoa. And to Cyra. I wanted to make sure it was done right.”
“It was. Cyra would have loved it.” Atal says.
“And you, Eshkhan?” Ahiqar asks. “What do you think?”
Eshkhan tears his eyes away from the temple and faces his uncle, one hand brushing over his sash- a soft, well-worn yellow, crossed with bright red. “You know, years ago, the man who saved us told me he hoped I’d get to go home again. I never thought I would actually be able to. I thought- I thought we’d lost all of this. So what do we do now, you know? Where do we move from here?”
Ahiqar’s never been one for affection, but he clasps Eshkhan’s forearm and brings his forehead to his, and Eshkhan has to shut his eyes against the emotions that immediately well up in his chest.
“Forward,” Ahiqar says when he lets go, and Eshkhan tilts his head up towards the setting sun, reflecting golden off the top of the half-built temple. “We’ll move forward.”