"Don't forget me."
Ed snapped upright, gasping for air. For a single panicked moment, everything was silent but for his panting and his fumbling around in the dark as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. There was nothing but pitch black all around him, and his hands scrabbled against the wall on his left until the edge of something soft and papery met his fingertips. His rocket poster?
Yes. Yes - he remembered, then – he was in the apartment he had once shared with Alfons Heiderich, the apartment that he had been sharing with his brother Al for the few days that had elapsed since they destroyed the Gate.
He touched his face with his left hand and felt a little bit of wetness there. It couldn't be sweat, although he was sure there was plenty of that in other places. Had he been crying in his sleep? He stared blindly at his apparently wet fingertips, puzzled. This hadn't happened to him in ages, not even during these past two years; not when he could no longer overcome the loneliness of being stranded here by telling stories of Amestris, and not on those days when the churning of his thoughts had brought him to the conclusion that his transmutation had failed and Al was dead.
That was when it hit him, what he'd seen in his dream just minutes ago. Deep blue light...a fountain spewing dark crimson blood, raining on him from up above. A smaller pool of it on the ground, soaking through a white shirt.
It was no use. Physical pain was something he could stand, something he was more than used to by now, but this...this was a different kind of struggle altogether, one that he had lost. The grief that he'd been stubbornly holding down for days had tightened his chest and surfaced in his throat, and he didn't have the strength to push it away any longer. He choked on a sob. The impulses came one after another, and soon he had raised two arms to his face, cool steel and warm flesh, and he was sobbing uncontrollably into his hands.
The walls were thin, and Al, who had been sleeping right next door, eventually awakened from the noise. He stumbled around until he located the source of the disturbance, and then turned a light on in the hallway. He gingerly nudged the door of his brother's room open to peek inside.
"Brother?" he mumbled sleepily. "What's wrong?"
When he didn't receive an answer, Al entered the room and knelt in front of his brother on the bed. He pulled Ed's hands away from his tear-stained face.
"Brother...did you have a nightmare?"
A slight jerk of the head, no. "It's not that," he said in a hoarse whisper. "It's just..." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Dad and Alfons...dammit...they're dead and it's my fault." His voice was even raspier than usual, and so hushed that Al could barely hear him.
"What?"
"They're gone forever..."
He clenched his hands and his nails dug into Al's wrists.
"Ed, what happened? Tell me."
Ed took a few steadying breaths. Once he'd regained some of his self-control, he said, "Dad...he died, trying to get me back. And then...Alfons – not you, Al, but someone else – he died trying to get me back home, too. He's been a good friend to me these past few years, but all I ever saw in him was you. It's just...it's my fault, isn't it?"
Al sighed. He knew that Ed would probably come to his senses in the morning, after the spectres of his nightmares left him. But for now...
Al pulled his brother's head down to his shoulder and held it there firmly with one hand, soothingly patting his back with the other. When Al was trapped in a suit of armor, his clunkiness and their size difference had made it far too awkward to comfort his brother like this, but now he that he had a human body again, he was going to take full advantage of it.
He thought over what Ed had told him. Al barely remembered their father, and had never met this other Alfons, but he knew that bottling things up inside only made things worse when the pressure valve finally broke, and he knew how Ed was about blaming himself. In his most gentle tone, he said, "Don't you remember what you told me about Wrath, brother? He sacrificed himself for my sake, so that I could open the Gate, but he did it of his own free will. No one was at fault for that." He pressed his cheek against his brother's head. "The same goes for Dad and your friend."
Ed did not reply. Instead, he returned Al's embrace by hugging him around the waist.
"Mom, Dad, Winry, Alfons, Hughes...they're all gone. Everyone's gone except you, Al. You're all I have left, so...so...promise me you won't ever die. Please."
"I won't die, brother," Al promised. "Not as long as you won't."
Ed breathed in through the soft material of Al's shirt in one long, ragged gasp. "Thank you."
.
~o0{}0o~
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A/N:
Maybe Roy Mustang is hardened enough that he could lose his best friend and only shed a single tear, but I'm not sure if the same could be said of Edward. Also, what I love about Ed's character is that his angst is never over-the-top, and always feels very honest and human. I tried to emulate that feeling here, to make it as believable as possible.
~Vina