Moving On
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Dedicated to my father, who died on the fourth of June, 2006.
Thanks to Lana for editing.
The sky was grey with cloud, even though the day was hot and humid. Oppressive.
The countryside for miles around was quiet and empty.
Edward opened his mouth and screamed away his anger and frustration and desperation. His voice echoed back off the hillside, sounding alien and strange and not at all his own.
He screamed and screamed until his lungs ached, and then suddenly, without any warning at all, his voice shattered into a sob and he crumbled to the ground crying.
Four years. It shouldn't still hurt. But it does.
There was no-one there to comfort him, no-one who could wrap their arms around him and promise him that it would be okay. Maybe that was for the best, though. It wasn't okay, and no amount of promises would make it so.
'It's not fair,' Edward said softly. His throat was hoarse.
'It's not fair,' he repeated with more certainty, more anger. 'It's not FAIR!'
It wasn't fair that they should work so hard and yet, ultimately, fail. It wasn't fair at all that, bare months after Alphonse regained his body, he fell ill. And unfairest of all was that, after everything, after every-fucking-thing they went through together, they ended up thwarted by something so stupid, so mundane, so fucking petty as disease.
Where was the equivalent exchange in that?
Equivalent exchange...
Edward had wanted to bring his brother back, no matter what the cost. But the fact was that Edward had nothing left to give. His alchemy was gone; he had given it up to save Alphonse, and now its absence had doomed him.
Mustang had dragged him aside, back in the darkest days just after the death, and said in a low, understanding voice that no matter what, Edward was not allowed to kill himself. What would Alphonse think? He'd asked, and Edward had never hated him more than he had in that moment, for being so unforgivably, painfully right. And so Edward had been forced to try and let go.
Bullshit.
Edward organised the funeral and tried to grieve, even though he lay awake at night with transmutation circles spinning through his mind. He scattered his brother's ashes to the wind, trying not to think about the price of a human soul.
Alphonse died. And somehow, the rest of the world moved on, leaving Edward bereaved and bewildered.
There's no suit of armour, no soul bond, no alchemy to repair this.
Alphonse is out of reach, and Edward is alone.