Give and Take

by Mirune Keishiko

The afternoon has long since faded into night and the moon is as bright as ever through the open window, but still vivid in my mind is Edward, rigid and stoic on the bed, pale face twisting in a pain he'd never admit was real, forcing his eyes open to watch with single-minded courage as Aunt Pinako and I install his new set of automail. He watches, not because he doesn't trust us to know what we're doing, but because he's just like that, has always been like that—always eager to know, always learning, always curious, no matter what.

Ed never broke the heavy silence throughout the hours-long procedure, but his strangled grunts and ragged breathing still echo in my head as distinctly and as disturbingly as any scream of agony. The first time he went through it, Aunt Pinako found him braver than many men she'd ever dealt with.

It's midnight by the time I finally finish packing away the delicate instruments that have taken me all evening to clean and polish. The day's work should have worn me out, but oddly enough I'm wide awake and restless.

The house is still and silent when I go down for a drink of water. Den is sleeping curled up by the door; he awakens when I sneak past him to the kitchen, but by the time I'm done, he's already turned around twice, as usual, and settled down to resume his slumber. He doesn't so much as flick an ear as I tiptoe past.

Sharp-eyed old Aunt Pinako is always there to help and oversee whenever I do surgery, and she hasn't found cause for criticism in a long time. Still, I tell myself, there's always the risk of infection; it's best to make sure. And I get so few chances to see Edward at all these days, much less when he's sound asleep and looking subdued, vulnerable, strangely beautiful in the half-shadows as he does now.

His flesh arm is thrown carelessly over his head, lean muscles bunched slightly; his flesh leg is bent at the knee, the covers spilling off the edge of the bed and grazing the floor. He's never been one to lie absolutely still when he sleeps. For some reason, as I stand mutely watching him from the doorway, some part of me is glad that that, at least, hasn't changed.

Because so much else has, from those crystal-clear days a long time ago when he and Al and I were still a trio and inseparable, and we knew all of one another's secrets and all of one another's stories. From sunup to sundown we were together, exploring the woods, picking fights with the other village boys, catching insects we would invariably later set free.

It was alchemy that first divided us—the first secret they really and truly hid from me. When they transmuted that doll for me it hadn't been so much the mystical transformation that shocked me as it had been the utter foreignness of it, the sheer unexpectedness of something I didn't know, the unfamiliar, inexplicable feeling of betrayal that tore through me when I realized that they knew something I didn't, had been devoting themselves to it all that time behind my back, and had no intention of ever sharing it with me.

It was alchemy that drew them, for the first time, from the village in which they'd lived all their lives—from me. When they returned months later, sun-browned and lean and conspiratorial between themselves, they were ravenous from a journey they wouldn't tell me about, and their eyes were alit with some sort of inner, wordless determination I didn't understand. Somehow they were suddenly beyond me, the old games and old haunts just not seeming to fit anymore, and there were no new ones to fill the void between us. Instead they spent long hours in their upstairs room together, reading and whispering and scribbling things I could hardly read. I sought refuge among my tools and machines, but it was still strange to sit down to dinner together in the evenings and hesitate to ask them what they'd done all day.

It was alchemy, too, that drove them from Risenbul for good, from the childhood home they turned to ash. I watched them disappear down the road in the gloom feebly lit by a dying fire. I cried that time, sure, but even then I couldn't imagine, had no idea how much different things would be, how much they—we—would change in the years I would wait for them, and how oddly empty I would feel when they finally returned.

Ed grumbles and mutters, shifting in the bed, wincing when he unconsciously pulls at still-sore joints. The covers finally spill to the floor. Slowly, almost reluctantly, I approach, finding that I can't look away from the figure sprawled across the bed.

Like the alchemy he does so effortlessly, Edward seems foreign to me now, entirely unexpected in the way he's grown and changed and not-changed—unfamiliar, unpredictable. I look because I want—I need—to know him again, by heart and by soul, just like I used to. I'm his mechanic, as he often boasts; he trusts me as he does few others, lets me see him weak, tired, discouraged, in pain. He lets me touch him without complaint or hesitation; he's seen me cry for him and his brother, and hasn't turned away. He lets me throw wrenches at him when he's been stupid—and anyone else he would transmute into a frog or kick into the middle of next week, but not me, never me. And when he gripes about his spanner-shaped bruises it's with an undertone of resignation that isn't lost on either of us.

I'm his mechanic, and I cling to that label. I work hard to live up to it, to be there throwing wrenches at him when he comes home again with a rueful grin and a busted arm. I make sure that the fit is clean, the screws just tight enough, the alloy finely wrought and tiny workings perfectly tuned. I'm his mechanic, and his friend as he calls so few others his friends, despite all the years he and Al never wrote and never called to fill me in on what they were doing and what they'd achieved and what they'd already become.

Suddenly Ed moves again on the bed, a dissatisfied sigh breaking the stillness. Just as he opens bleary golden eyes, just as I start forward and open my mouth to ask if anything's wrong, there's a creak of armor from the far corner and a low, thick, boyish voice.

"Are you okay, 'Niisan? Should I get Winry or Auntie?"

But I'm already there, hand over my heart which is pounding with the surprise that is Alphonse having been seated in the corner all this time. He still doesn't seem to have noticed me, standing in the shadows on the other side of the room.

Rubbing his eyes and yawning so hard that his jaw audibly pops, Edward sits up on the bed—gingerly. Like his brother, he doesn't seem to realize that I'm in the room. His groggy response is for Al alone.

"Just need to go to the bathroom," he mumbles, hefting his body over to the edge of the bed. "Your metal's all cold," he whines a moment later, when Al has hurried over to prop him up.

"Can I help?" I smile at them in the semidarkness.

The brothers simultaneously glance at me then. I know Al is a suit of armor, but still it seems to me at that moment that they have the exact same dumbfounded expression on finding me there. I bite back a laugh and settle for mock indignation instead.

"It's not like I haven't done it before," I huff, placing my hands on my hips. And it's true—one afternoon three years ago, Aunt Pinako wangled an errand out of Alphonse, and as far as Ed knew, I'd kept my word and not peeked.

"Uh, thanks, Winry," says Edward with a weak grin that betrays just how horrified he is by my offer of assistance. "But this is—y'know—boy stuff."

There's that term again. They used it to hide their alchemy once, too. I snort as the two hobble past me toward the bathroom. "Oh c'mon Ed, like I'd really want to peek at a little—" Thankfully Al slams the bathroom door shut behind them right at that moment, or else Ed would have woken up the whole house with his shouting.

I've just picked up the covers and fluffed them back out over the bed when the two reemerge. Mutely I stand off to one side and watch as Al gently half-supports, half-carries his older brother across the room. Ed flinches when his elbow scrapes against Al's armor or his metal foot hits the floor unevenly, but Al anticipates most of his discomfort before it actually happens, and bears more than his fair share of weight. Ed finally reaches the bed and sits down, with the kind of sigh he rarely lets other people hear.

And dimly I realize that Ed's been sleeping just in his undershorts. When I was holding him in place to fit the automail, I hardly noticed just how smooth his skin was beneath my fingertips, or how the sleek muscles along his legs and back rippled with his movements; but now the moonlight bathes him almost lovingly, and with his long golden hair hanging mussed and unbound past his shoulders, I feel something inside me clench, both pleasantly and unpleasantly. Not for the first time, I envy Al his place at his beloved brother's side.

"You guys gonna be okay?" I ask quietly, as Ed rearranges the covers around himself and Al clanks—softly—back to his corner. "You want anything? I can make us some tea—"

"Stop fussing like a damned mother hen," growls Ed without any real venom, "and let the two of us get some sleep, that's what you can do."

Al looks up at me with what can only be described as a sheepish look in his eyes. I give him an impish grin, because I doubt that he can see, all the way across the dimly lit room, my eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"Yeah, you're welcome, Ed," I say teasingly, retreating to the hallway. I shut the bedroom door behind me before they can recognize the huskiness in my voice or the catch in my throat.

Touka koukan, as the brothers so frequently say; the law of equivalent exchange. Something of value must be sacrificed to gain something of equal value. I am Ed's trusted mechanic, his old friend, one of his few confidantes, the girl he comes back to for repairs and for the occasional much-needed wrench upside the head. And Al, good old Alphonse, so mild and patient and thoughtful where Edward is hot-tempered and reckless—Al is Ed's brother and only family remaining, his constant companion on adventures and through dangers I can only speculate about, the one who shares all his deepest secrets, knows all his weaknesses, fears, doubts, faults. Whenever Edward looks at Alphonse he remembers everything he's given up for his little brother, everything his little brother has sacrificed to stay with him. And I love them both, and I long for them both, though I think of only one of them in particular; and it's hard to let go of old joys I still remember with the clarity of loneliness.

Bundled up in my blankets, staring up unseeing at the ceiling, I fall asleep to visions of that irretrievable past: afternoons filled with laughter and discovery, hushed meandering conversations in the moonlight, a much scrawnier Ed in an unfamiliar red coat and a clanking metal Al trudging away down the muddy road; and flames steadily consuming a home that my two best friends would, from then on, find only in each other.

I would have given up everything I had to be by his side, caring for him, supporting him, believing in him, loving him.

I would have given up everything for him, if only he'd asked.

owari

Am torn between obsessing further about this ficlet and just going with the flow. I guess it's just time to let go, though, hehe. Thanks for reading! Hope you guys had fun, even though it's so angsty...