Do You Know What I Mean When I Say?
~ Lady Eldaelen ~
Just in case, I will leave my things packed so I can run away.
A week passes before he wakes for good, but Alphonse does not spend the time completely unaware. He experiences the days as if he is observing from above, hovering over his own shoulder, inert body on display while everyone marvels at his appearance. They rub his arms and smooth his hair and caress the curve of his cheek. They are at once strangers and friends and he does not worry as they debate over what to do with him. There's the young woman and her baby who, both with weeps and wails, are always crying. The two blond boys who never stop talking. The unnaturally pale kid whose dark bangs fall into his eyes. Just like Brother's.
A week passes and he watches with idle curiosity as he is carted around like some sort of human baton. First, to the home of a woman with kind eyes and a warm smile. Al knows without knowing that her strawberry cake is delicious, though he has yet to try it for himself. He knows without knowing that when the pigtailed girl who lingers along his periphery was born, she fit exactly in the palm of his hand and never cried when he held her, though he's fuzzy on the details of her birth. His teacher arrives and he knows without knowing that he has somehow disappointed and delighted her in equal parts. He and Ed both. Teacher brings him back to Resembool, and he knows without knowing that he should never have left. But if he had stayed, if they had stayed, they would never have found what they were searching for. What were they searching for?
More importantly: did they find it?
Each day brings the detached observation closer to his own physical perception. He does not want to pull himself away from this outer sight, it is familiar and comforting and right. Normal? It certainly feels normal, though intellectually he knows that people hear with their ears and see with their eyes and speak with breath from their lungs.
Don't they?
A week passes before he wakes for good, but when Alphonse Elric finally jumps back into himself, he wonders if he has fallen into a dream.
The disparities between this new reality and what Al remembers are most starkly revealed every time Winry walks into the room. She is so... old... and weary... and sad. She half-answers his questions and gives him this look that is one part reservation and two parts uncertainty.
It makes Al uncomfortable. It makes him want to punch things.
He sneaks alchemy books to read instead.
The frequency of Al's dreams doesn't change, but the content does. He dreams of a world awash in earth tones and shadow, with different technology and unfamiliar landmarks. Ed is in them, different, older, but there's never been any mistaking his brother. He exists in this strange world deep in Al's subconscious and there they study and travel and eat and argue together as if it is nothing out of the ordinary. The dreams are so vivid, so real. They wear him out. Some days Al feels like he hasn't slept at all. Sometimes he simply finds himself awake, so deep in conversation with no one that he doesn't realize he's stopped sleeping (or started) until he takes a breath.
He tells Winry about them at first, but she teeters between tears and anger, and not-so-subtle hints are dropped that maybe he should start accepting the fact that Ed isn't here. Tears and anger are nothing new for Winry, but the pragmatic tone that she uses when his brother is brought up is startling. What, Al wonders, did they do to give her such a thick skin?
Al starts spending his mornings on the front porch, legs dangling between the railing posts as he sits and tells Den his dreams. Den, at least, will listen. She has greyed a little in the face, just enough to look like she got a sniff of Granny's flour jar. She follows Al around, more so than she ever did before, but she gives him space and knows just when he wants to talk or take a run outside.
She alone makes her way into his room on the nights when he wishes for one more dream, but can't sleep.
Automail is a messy, painful, dangerous business. It is no coincidence that the Rockbells live on the back edge of Resembool's township with half their property flanked by deep woods and unfarmable land. Even Al's house (or what is left of it now -another glossed-over truth he doesn't fully understand) is just out of yelling range, and they've been the closest neighbors since forever. Al remembers that until she started helping out herself, Winry always spent the day at their house when a surgery was planned. On those days a deep green cloth was tied to the gate by the road so neighbors knew not to visit, and as kids they were not allowed to step foot onto the Rockbells' property until nightfall.
When Pinako tells him to spend the day by the river, green cloth in hand, Al does not hesitate. He accepts the amply packed picnic basket from Granny without complaint and heads for the back door. The sun shines through the picture window in the fitting room, glinting brightly off the two pieces of automail laid out on the work table as he passes by. Winry and Granny have been working on the arm and leg all week, in preparation for the first of several surgeries that will start today. The pale kid with the bangs will be wheeled into the operating room as soon as Al leaves.
Wrath, his brain supplies momentarily until he mentally -stubbornly- returns to "pale kid with the bangs" instead. What kind of a name is Wrath anyway? Who does that? His thoughts drift briefly from his parents to parents in general to his mother in particular until those as well are stubbornly ignored and he breaks into a run across the Rockbells' backyard.
He sets a path for the deep woods. The river snakes along the tree line for miles, disappearing over the horizon at a spot further away than Al can remember ever reaching before. Winry says he and Ed traveled from Lior to get home and passed through these woods less than a year ago. Like most things that Winry has told him since what he has dubbed The Awakening, Al simply nods and tries hard not to doubt her. He's checked the maps, calculated the distances. It doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense anymore.
The river is unusually low, he notices, and he navigates the rocky terrain easily. Al wanders far into the woods and settles down under a tree, away from any sight or sound of the river. He opens his latest reading book and fishes a small notepad and pencil from his pocket, but exhaustion quickly rolls over him in a familiar wave that he doesn't fight and he wads his jacket under his head as his eyes close.
He wakes to a twilit sky and a growling stomach. Too late, he frets, to forage through the basket for a snack, let alone the four-course meal his stomach is audibly demanding. He hastily gathers up his things - they have somehow managed to spread far from his side to all corners of his sanctuary. Details of his dream are already receding (another anachronous adventure with Ed), leaving yet another hole he won't be able to fill. Al crashes through the underbrush with much less delicacy than he'd prefer, but the sun is setting fast and he needs to make it across the river before he completely loses his sense of direction.
Back at the Rockbells', he finds Granny immersed in the workings of an ankle joint, billows of smoke pulsing from her pipe with every measured breath. Next to her table the recovery room door stands open, the doorway framing the immobile form of the kid in bed. And though they have barely spoken a dozen words to each other, Al can't stop himself from sitting in the chair at his bedside. Whether feigning sleep or actually unconscious, the kid doesn't react to his presence until the next morning when he finally opens his eyes and yells at Al to leave. It is the last (the only) significant amount of time Al spends with the kid before he takes off after his final surgery and installation, Winry and Pinako both up in arms over his disregard for a proper recovery. Al secretly leans towards disappointment, because for those few hours maintaining vigil, he almost felt complete.
Al is wandering along the river bank the day the box arrives. When he returns around dinner time he makes it up two porch steps before he realizes the heated voices of Winry and Granny filtering outside are not arguing over automail but rather Al himself. There is mention of a box and that man and then his weight falls on the squeaky board by the door and all conversation ceases.
When he enters, Granny announces his teacher's intent to visit at the end of the week and the diversion works. At his unexpected elation, as another elusive piece of himself falls into place, Winry whisks the unopened box up to her room. Al doesn't notice who it's addressed to. Al doesn't notice Winry hide her tears.
His teacher is not how he remembers. There is a sudden closeness, a new warmth that, while different, is almost as disconcerting as the Rockbells' added layer of detachment. Yet his request to study under her again tumbles out all the same, uncensored, unprepared. He ignores the brief flutter of relief that darkens Winry's face before she masks it with shock.
When they say their goodbyes at the train station, he takes Winry's request as an apology and in return offers his own promise as reconciliation. As the train pulls away from the platform, he hopes that will be enough.
To his dying day Al does not figure out what triggers the reaction, but over breakfast one day his teacher leaves the table and returns with his suitcase and a box.
That box.
She hands him both before sitting down to finish her glass of juice.
He runs fingers over the mailing label, the Central Headquarters seal, his name as the addressee.
His box.
She meets his frustration and tears and cries of betrayal with an even tone. She explains but does not apologize. She says she has nothing left to teach him. She thanks him for teaching her. And he is gone before he says something he will regret later.
He sits at the train station for hours. Al wonders vaguely if Teacher will send Mr. Sig for him by nightfall, but something inside tells him that their final words earlier that morning were truly the last he will have to remember her by. She has never been well, and she's been getting worse these last few weeks.
Her mortality has always lingered at the edges of his thoughts, blending with the events of his life before they met so that the concepts of loss, of sorrow and sadness are now represented in her face and his mother's in equal parts. He wonders what he might do if he goes through it a second time, if he stays and watches it again. Every scenario leads to destruction. Part of him suspects she forced his hand, provoking his leaving before her death to prevent exactly that from happening. He wishes he could feel grateful, but for now all that he has is sadness. Sadness... and a box.
He breaks the military seal with a pang of guilt that is quickly replaced by anger. Why should he be feeling guilty anyway? What is so wrong about wanting to figure out what happened to his brother? He rips into the box with more fervor than he expects, and in moments the packaging is little more than ripped and wrinkled shreds. There is a bundle of papers on top, held together with a neat knot of twine and another official-looking seal. Under that, a small leather case is nestled atop a pair of white gloves and some folded black fabric.
The gloves are just the slightest bit loose, but they fit. The black fabric is actually a pair of pants and a jacket trimmed in white. Al doesn't take the time to try them on, he's not quite sure they are large enough anyway. The leather case holds an intricately decorated pocket watch, polished so Al can see himself in the embossed curves of the state symbol. The watch is heavy in his hand as he fumbles with the latch, but it doesn't open readily.
Unconcerned, he picks up the papers, carefully breaking the wax seal off the cover page. The second sheet is handwritten in a fine, looping script that reminds Al of his mother. The letter is all business, but Al finds a certain warmth in the writer's words all the same. Ed had signed Al's name on the account that held the money he was making as a State Alchemist, all the information he would need to access the funds was enclosed. Ed's original watch was destroyed, here was the replacement they'd ordered earlier. The clothes had been left after his brother's last mission, and here's a couple of certificates and awards from the last few years.
He rifles through the papers and certificates, smiling as he reads Ed's name on such impressive awards. He skims over the bank legal work, eyes widening ever so slightly at the figure printed under the account balance. Al turns back to the letter, traces a finger lightly over the signature.
Riza Hawkeye.
He wishes he knows who she is. The name sounds familiar, somewhere it has been dropped in conversation, whispered between moments when they think he is not paying attention, spoken in confidence when he is not in the room. But walls are thin and he's always listening these days, his only recourse when others decide it's easier to leave him out of conversation altogether. The fact that he is so unsure about the person behind the name provides Al with all the proof he needs that it is one more piece to the past that has been carefully denied to him.
Al buys a ticket to Central before he loses his nerve and is just in time to take the last one out for the night. He dozes fitfully a few hours at a time, but it's not enough to feel truly rested when he arrives at his destination. Still, by the time the train pulls into Central Station, he has a plan. One that will hopefully lead to Edward.
He takes a deep breath and steps off the train without hesitation. He doesn't look back. He can only move forward.
I have no fear of drowning, it's the breathing that's taking all this work.
Notes: Just a little love for one of the more overlooked Als in the fandom. When I watch Conqueror of Shamballa, I spend most of it thinking, that is such a depressing little Alphonse, he needs a hug. This fic has been kicking around my computer in one unfinished iteration or another for at least five years. I first added header info to the file in preparation for submittal to lj's fma_fic_contest Prompt 98 (Alphonse) and they're on Prompt 223 now so... yeah. Verily I am a slow writer. Mostly, though, I'm just sick of nitpicking this to death. So now I wash my hands of it. Rest in peace, little Al 1.0, it gets better (in the sequel).
Title, pre- and postscript, and Al's voice in my head come from the Jars of Clay song, Work.
060713 ff.n