Author's Note: Originally supposed to be submitted to an anon. exchange on LJ, but when I re-read it I realised it wasn't what the person I was writing for really wnated, and it wasn't very fluffy, so I've decided to make it into as fic on here. Huzzah! Um, some manga spoilers for Chap. 54. Based on the manga, obviously, because the manga's better:D
Disclaimer: Don't own it. It all belongs to Hiromu Arakawa. Kudos to her. Oh, except Bliss, whom I created, so I guess I own her... Yes...
Oh, and in case you've just read the graphic novels (the quality of the translations seem to be deteriorating; the name translations are all over the place:) Ling Lin and Ran Fan Lanfan. Whoo. Bliss is an OC created by me.
Golden eyes stared at the glass window of the train. Through the window, greenery flashed by, a blur of, well, green, but the scenery wasn't what the golden eyes' were looking at. Rather, they were staring at their reflection, which stared back blankly against a backdrop of green.
Edward Elric, the State-certified alchemist known as 'Fullmetal' was not having a good day. He had not been having a good day for around four days running, and it was already past noon on said fourth day.
His younger brother, Alphonse, was sitting across from him, conveying a sense of worry, if that was possible for a giant, empty suit of armour. Al wanted to say something, but it seemed like Ed was becoming more and more introverted, preferring to keep his thoughts to himself and getting annoyed when his brother commented, so Al kept quiet even though this was something way out of character for the usually boisterous Ed.
"Do you think she'll beat me up?"
Edward's question startled Al out of his thoughts. He was looking at his brother expectantly.
"Er, who?" the suit of armour asked, confused.
"Winry!" Ed said impatiently, turning to look back at the window. "You know, because I broke my automail..." The word 'again' remained unspoken, perhaps to leave the violent experiences of past automail-breaking incidents unremembered.
"I'm sure she'll understand, brother," Al assured him. "After all, she only does it because she cares," he added.
"Ha! Right," Ed snorted derisively, glancing down at his right shoulder. The sleeve of his red coat hung limply, empty, as his arm had been completely destroyed this time. Al couldn't remember a time when the arm had been mostly intact, yet still in need of maintenance, when they had gone to see Winry.
"Can't we go to Dominic instead?" Ed muttered, looking hopefully at Al.
"No, brother," Al sighed patiently, "Winry would just find out and be even madder."
"Or couldn't you just fix it with alchemy? That could work, right?" Edward seemed to be getting more and more desperate.
"I don't understand how automail works, and even if I did there's no material to transmute," Al replied.
"Hmph." Ed's head drooped so his bangs hung before his face, covering his eyes. He said nothing more on the subject.
Al sighed inwardly. Maybe he should have agreed, just to keep his brother talking. It was almost eerie how quiet Ed was being. It was so unlike him. Ever since Ling had become the new Greed. What was he thinking about? Did he feel guilty?
The suit of armour shook his head and turned to stare out the window. They'd been on the train for a couple of hours, so the stop for Rush Valley should be coming up soon.
"What are you going to say, brother?" Al asked.
"Say to who?" Ed grunted rudely, even though they both knew he knew who Al was talking about.
Al didn't reply, just kept staring out the window.
The older Elric sighed. "I'm sorry, Al," he said quietly. "It's just... I don't know, any more. Everything. It's so hard, not telling Winry, and she might be in danger – no, I know she's in danger, but I can't do anything about it!" His left fist thumped against the seat and he fell silent.
"You'll figure it out," Al reassured him confidently. He had the utmost faith in his brother, even if he could be unpredictable and temperamental. He hoped it would be better now that Ed had said what had been gnawing at him this whole time.
"Yes, I guess I'll have to," Ed agreed dully, returning to his listless, quiet state.
Al was about to ask him what was wrong now when the train started to slow and the intercom crackled out, "Rush Valley, next stop!"
Ed rose and grabbed his suitcase from the compartment overhead.
"Let me take that, brother, you only have one arm," Al offered, holding out his hand. His brother had been the only one to get injured in the fight.
"I'm fine, Al," Ed said sharply.
Al stiffened, hurt. "Fine."
When the train stopped, Ed and Al were the first to disembark.
They walked beside each other, Ed with the suit case flung over his shoulder. Al was glad his coat covered his automail port so the vultures that passed for automail mechanics wouldn't come running over, offering to fix his automail, because Al was really not in the mood. He didn't trust himself not to beat one of them up, which was totally against his nature.
"There it is," Ed remarked, coming to a stop. They stood before a shop with a sign that read, 'Garfiel's Atelier' above the store front. They could see Garfiel inside, bustling about, chatting with the male customers.
"I think I'm going to take a walk, brother," Al said, turning to walk away. He resisted the urge to look back as he strode up the street, but if he had he would have been disappointed: Ed had already walked inside.
The younger Elric wandered the winding streets of Rush Valley, wondering where Paninya was. He liked the girl, she was always nice to him.
As if that had been her cue, the former thief dropped down from a roof to his right, landing in a crouched position before straightening and looking up at the boy. "Hey, Al, what's up? Didja bring those Xing guys again, cuz I just finished fixing all that stuff," she said with a grin.
"Hi, Paninya," Al greeted in a subdued manner. "No, just it's just me and Ed. He wrecked his automail again."
"Really? Let's go see!" The girl grabbed his arm, always eager to poke the pulp that had formerly been known as Edward Elric after he had met Winry, and before Al could protest was dragging him back towards Garfiel's Atelier.
"No, Paninya, I don't want to see brother..." Al protested weakly, not making much of an effort to stop her. He felt sorry for how he had treated Ed and needed to apologize to him, but he didn't want to be the one to go back, he had wanted Ed to come find him.
"Oh, come on, you can rescue the poor boys from Garfiel then," Paninya replied. They got to the automail shop in a quarter of the time Al had been wandering around Rush Valley and by then he was so lost he probably couldn't have found the way back to the train station.
"It's a good thing you know the city's layout so well, Paninya," Al remarked as they walked in.
"Well, I did grow up here," she pointed out, waving to Garfiel, who seemed to have moved passed the make-up-wearing stage and into the dress-wearing one. Al shuddered a little.
"We're just going to go see Winry," Paninya explained cheerfully, taking Al into the back, to the workshop. "I wonder how bad the damage'll be this time?"
"On the automail or Edward?" Al asked.
"Ed," Paninya clarified.
"Oh, probably pretty bad, I mean he did completely destroy it this time, not like the last time we were here," Al replied.
Paninya made a sympathetic noise. "Well, that's always too bad. Good thing I don't do that sort of thing, Dominic would have a heart attack or something. Hey, let's sneak in!" she added in a whisper as they neared the door to the workshop.
"Um, all right," Al agreed, not quite sure why she would want to, but it couldn't hurt anyone, right? Wrong! ((Teehee!))
The dark-skinned former thief crept up silently to the door, which was mostly closed, but the door-tab-thing wasn't latched, so they wouldn't have to turn the doorknob or anything. It was strangely quiet, so Al took that to mean that the violent, beating-up part was over.
How wrong he was.
Al crept up (somewhat less quietly, due to the whole trapped-in-a-suit-of-armour scenario) and Paninya nudged the door open a little.
As Winry was something of a perfectionist, the hinges didn't squeak, or make any noise at all, since the blonde was obsessed with maintenance, and it swung silently open.
Neither Paninya or Alphonse were prepared for what they saw.
Winry and Ed were standing near the back of the room; apparently his brother hadn't been beaten to a bloody pulp by Winry's infamous wrench. It was quite possibly a first, something Al never would have considered, but he would also have never considered the sight before him now, either.
The two possibly closest people in the fourteen year old's life were... were...
Paninya made a strangled noise at the back of her throat, loud enough to alert the couple kissing – kissing – that someone else was there.
Ed and his mechanic sprang apart, both blushing – blushing – and looked at the door.
Al fled, not sure whether they had seen him or not; he just needed to get away. Emotions, jumbled together, blended into one, crowded his brain. No, not his brain, he didn't have one, he was just an empty suit of armour...
Alphonse eventually regained his senses, but by then he was totally lost. He was in an alley, the sun was almost down, casting the dead-end into darkness.
He slumped to the ground, staring at his hands. A part of him wanted to go back, yet another part felt horribly betrayed, and just a tiny bit jealous. His brother had said that regaining their original bodies was his number one priority, so why was he hanging around with Winry?
The first part felt that wasn't fair; he knew Ed was trying, but he didn't want to be reasonable. Even kind souls like Al snapped once and a while.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" sneered a nasally voice, disturbingly familiar, from the high roof overhead.
Al tried to get to his feet, but the owner of the voice landed before him and kicked him back down. Violet eyes with slit pupils glared into his own white-red ones, momentarily paralysing the younger Elric. Which was all the time the evil creature needed to immobilize him by jerking off his helmet and shoving it's hand inside, resting it on his blood seal.
"W-what do you want?" Alphonse stammered, still able to see the Homunculus known as Envy even without his helmet.
The green-haired being smirked, violet eyes cold and cruel. "What do I want?" it repeated mockingly. "I want you and the Fullmetal pipsqueak to start listening to what we Homunculi, and Father, have been saying!" Envy shifted it's hand slightly so a fingernail was mere millimetres away from the edge of the bloody array. The smirk was gone, replaced by an inexplicable expression of intense anger.
"Listening? What are you talking about?" Al asked, trying to back away, but as he was up against the wall there was no place to go.
"We – Wrath, that is -" Envy said it's brother name distastefully, "-told you to stay away from the little mechanic girl or something nasty and violent would happen, remember?"
"...No, sorry." Al sweated dropped where his helmet would normally be if it had been on his head. "I honestly don't remember."
"Really?" Envy rocked back on his heels, hand leaving Al's seal. "Are you sure?" He studied the suit of armour intently, as if he expected to see an expression on his face or something.
"Quite sure," Al replied.
"Envy! You idiot!" hissed another voice, familiar yet foreign, and Ling – no, it wasn't Ling, Al reminded himself with a pang of sadness, it was Greed, and not even the one who had kidnapped him to discover how to bind his soul into a suit of armour – jumped down, landing beside Envy.
"What do you want?" the green-haired Homunculus demanded angrily. His dislike for the youngest Homunculus was obvious.
"We're in the wrong city, dumb ass, it's the next one over!" Greed sneered, rolling his eyes.
Al took this opportunity to grab his helmet and put it back on.
"Oh. Right. Shut up you squinty-eyed freak!" snapped Envy. "Never speak of this again, understand?!" it added in a snarl to Al, who nodded, if that was possible for a body made of steel. Satisfied, Envy leapt back up onto the rooftop and disappeared into the darkness.
"Later, kiddo," Greed said with a sharp-toothed grin, giving the suit of armour a wave with his left hand - so Al could plainly see the Ouroboros there - and disappeared after his shape-shifting sibling.
Al sighed softly, sad and depressed all over again, despite Envy's screw-up.
"Al! Al!" His brother's voice came faintly to him from somewhere down the alley.
"Al!" Winry's cries joined Ed's, but Al stayed where he was, still uneasy. Eventually their voices faded away, leaving him in silence again.
Several minutes later Paninya appeared at the mouth of the alley. She walked up to him, hands stuffed into her pockets. "Hey, Al," she said.
"Paninya." A thin greeting at best and certainly not up to the regular Alphonse standards, but hey, who the hell cared? His brother and Winry obviously didn't, and all the other people whose opinions he considered important were somewhere else.
"Um-" she scuffed the toe of her boot against the concrete, staring down, "-I think Winry and Ed are looking for you."
"Yes," he replied shortly, not making any movements; he just sat there, leaning against the wall.
"And they, um, they want to explain what happened to you," she continued in a mumble, still not looking up. "So maybe you could go see them?"
"Maybe." Al didn't know what to think any more. Despite the calm, collected air that Al often seemed to project in contrast to his brother, the suit of armour was actually as troubled and often confused as Ed; he just didn't voice it as often, or at all, really, and it seemed like he was reaching the end of his long, long leash. It was a temptation to just explode right here, in front of an innocent girl like Paninya, but then she would have been dragged into it and he couldn't have lived with himself if yet another person suffered because of his sins.
"A-all right, I guess I'll see you later," Paninya said softly, turning to go.
"Later," Al agreed, echoing Greed's word.
The dark-skinned girl stood there for several moments, probably thinking about what she could say to Al, to console him, maybe, but in the end she just gave up and left Al to his thoughts.
The worst part was he couldn't feel. His brother might often seem like the tortured one, blaming himself for their bodies, but in the end Al was worse off. That was what was truly eating at Al now. He wanted to breakdown, to scream – all doable things, and yet above all he wanted to cry, truly cry, if only to feel the sensation of the salty water on his human, flesh and blood face, but he couldn't, and he hated it, and he just wanted to cry.
For about the fourth time that evening, someone dropped down from the roof overhead. He'd have to think about changing his position sometime soon, this alley just saw too much traffic.
Al hardly even looked up, expecting Ed or Paninya, but when they finally spoke, the foreign voice startled him,
"What's with the long face, bud?"
Which seemed like an absurd comment, considering his lack of an expressive human face, but it still caused him to look up, straight into eerily bright green eyes that twinkled with good humour. In the dim light cast by a flickering street light several metres away, Al could make out pale skin, freckles splashed across, over prominent cheekbones and above a slightly smiling mouth. Shaggy light brown hair framed the face, obscuring the eyes slightly, but not really.
"Wh-who are you?" Al stammered, standing abruptly after he recovered.
"Mm, call me Bliss. Everyone else does, and I can't be bothered to tell you my real name; it's too ridiculous," the girl replied. She looked to be about Ed's age, maybe older. She was certainly taller than him, 5' 9" at least. Khaki cargos ripped at one knee and on the other ankle, black, scuffed boots that looked remarkably like Ed's, (only bigger and more worn-looking) a tight black t-shirt and red headband completed the look, and Al found himself intrigued by this strange person.
"Well, what do you want, um, Bliss?" Al asked, feeling slightly more at ease.
"Nothin' really. I just sensed you needed some help," Bliss replied, grinning a little.
"'Sensed'?" Al asked sceptically, thinking back to Ran Fan's uncanny ability to sense Homunculi, with the exception of Fuhrer King Bradley, for some reason, and shivered a little.
"Well, y'know, when I'm around sad people I start feelin' a little sad myself, so I have to go over and help them," she explained.
"Oh, right," Al said in a somewhat relieved tone; sometimes he felt like that too, but lately he hadn't. He realised it had been because he had been feeling down and hadn't been paying much attention to anyone but himself and his brother. Looking back, he realised many people had needed his help, he just hadn't been around to give it.
"What's your name, huh? Or am I just gonna have to call ya 'bud'?" Bliss asked wryly.
"Al- er, phonse. Alphonse. Elric," Al said awkwardly.
"Nice to meet you," she said genuinely. "Want to come back to my place? You look like you could use more cheering up, and this place doesn't exactly exude an air of cheeriness," the girl added. "It's not that far, only about five blocks on the ground, fewer if you're on the roofs, but that's not always a good idea, 'specially if you're a bit large." She winked and started off, apparently expecting Al's response to be affirmative, and the suit of armour was so curious that he followed without a second thought...
All right, comments appreciated, flames, um, not so much, but I suppose they're necessary. Unfortunately. -makes a face- ;)
Oh well, anything that seems like a review is cool too. So just go click that review button, kay:P
Also, I'm looking for someone who could possibly proofread my work for me? That would be nice, because I seem adept at making stupid typos like 'O' instead of 'I' and whatnot.
-QS-