Alphonse is murdered! Edward goes insane and Winry dies in an attempt to save him from himself. With her blood on his hands, Ed's sanity returns and he realises that he loved her. With the two people he loved most in the world dead, he may decide to take his own life... Angst, angst and more angst.
Um... that was the long summary too. So. This =started out= as an experiment of mine to see just how much angst I can stuff into one chapter. It grew and grew and now I'm starting to think of it as "fallen apart" rather than "the angst story" like I first thought of it xD now it's no longer one chapter. Includes character death, suicide and necrophilia (JOKE!!! IT WAS A JOKE.) Also, Al is (was?) in a human body again, with one half-automail arm, like in my big FMA story (posted on dA.)
This is rated M for the following reasons: Blood, character death, self harm, attempted suicide, gore (and lots of it, though not in great detail), generally violent themes, suicide, disturbing images, good descriptive words (may not sound bad until you hear the words themselves. Eww). I may add more reasons later.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or any of the characters. They are belong to Hiromu Arakawa. ^^ clear? I don't even know why I put these disclaimers up, this is called fan fiction dot net for a reason. If I was posting OW I would post on Fiction Press.
I hope you enjoyed my way too lengthy introduction! ^^ I also hope you enjoy the fic itself, by the way... -_-
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"Al!" Edward shouted cheerfully, bursting through the door, blonde ponytail whipping behind him.
"You'll never guess what--" Then he saw.
Not his short-haired, overgrown little brother, probably sorting through Ed's papers or attempting to get the kitchen at least marginally clean, but a kitchen full of M.P.s. And probably not because they had been invited in for lunch. There were nine of them, in all, and every one of them looked over at Edward as he stopped in his tracks.
"W- where's Al?"
"...I think you had better go upstairs, Mr. Elric. From what I've been told, you just may be able to handle it."
"What the.." Ed ran up the gray, creaking staircase, nearly tripping over his own feet several times in his haste.
Now, he had seen blood- oh, yes. Lots of blood. Much of it his own. He had even seen Al's blood, on a few occasions-- but not so much of it. Never so much. It took him a minute to realise that the bloody mass sprawled across the floor was- no, had been his brother. After he realised that it had, in fact, been human. Several more M.P.s were standing around the room, some trying to prod and reposition the corpse onto a sheet.
Edward slumped to the floor, landing heavily on his knees.
His rich, gold eyes bore the only outlet of so much fear, loss, horror, and anguish that it was amazing he wasn't crying out.
The body's head rolled around, twisting its neck gruesomely. Its face turned towards Ed, the face of his brother, his bastion of sanity, the one who had held him back, kept him from flying-- but also held him from falling off the cliff.
Now he was falling.
And falling and falling and falling. He felt like he would never hit the ground, but if he did it would end it. This whole thing, end the fall, the sickening, horrifying, bloody, nightmarish fall.
He wouldn't die from the fall alone; it would take the ground to do that.
Alphonse's eyes were the same colour as his. Gold. He had smiled to look at those eyes, it felt like he was looking into a mirror.
His face had been relatively unharmed, just one long slash across the side of his head and a lot of blood. He had no expression. But as his blank, golden eyes turned, fixed in his lolling head, to face Edward, something akin to a spark left those eyes... or maybe it was just Ed's imagination.
He passed out.
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Winry looked on in concern as the now awake Edward was, unsuccessfully, consoled. She had cried.
But it all seemed so unreal. Al? Murdered? WHY?! Why had the gentle, handsome, politically neutral Elric been killed? Surely he had no enemies. And if it had been one of the homonculi, they would have kidnapped him for sure, rather than hacking him to pieces.
Then it came to her.
Why Alphonse had been killed.
To get to Edward.
Al was just a convenient way of attacking Ed emotionally without harming him physically. But why would anyone do that? Maybe they wanted him alive, but emotionally wrecked, practically insane, and almost brain dead. Killing his beloved brother was not a good way of keeping him alive, Winry thought angrily.
Her cerulean eyes widened as she realised that Ed might actually commit suicide. But... but he was in an altered state, if he killed himself while still scarred from Al's death, he would never live to regret it. But if, theoretically, he could kill himself, but still be alive, he would regret killing himself. Only that he wouldn't have, because he was still alive.
She shook her head vigorously, sending several tear droplets onto the carpet of the military hospital. This was just confusing her. It wasn't doing any good. What she needed to do was keep him from killing himself, because if he lived he would be glad later on that she had stopped him, when he wasn't so upset about Al.
The reality of the younger Elric's demise returned to Winry, and she choked, then started crying again.
She didn't try to console Edward. What would be the point? What could she say that would make it better for him?
"It's okay?" NO, IT WASN'T.
"You'll get over it?" No, he wouldn't. And it was cruel.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Alphonse was gone for good.
She left the room, ran to the womens' room, and burst out in screams of anguish. As floods of tears poured down her face, her slender body wracked with sobs, in paroxysms of grief. Still curled up in a corner of the grubby restroom, salt-bleaching her red shirt with tears, she thought blearily that it was good she had left. She didn't want Ed to see her like this. If it even got through to him, it would only make things worse for him.
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Edward was sure his eyes were wide open, but he could see nothing-- nothing, that is, except for the peaceful face of his precious brother's mangled body.
He had not shed a single tear, and he wondered why in a sort of horrified, time frozen, blood-ocean haze. He could not fathom why he wasn't on his knees in tears, why he wasn't outpouring his emotions to the world. Instead they sat inside of him, banging on the walls, begging to be let out.
How he would have loved to cry. He wanted to cry. His damn body just... wouldn't. His soul was shredded and weeping, while his body remained frozen, merely looking straight ahead.
If he would ever have stooped to using such a tired metaphor, he would have said his heart was broken.
If he had been able to speak.
Someone handed him a glass of water. He stared unseeingly at it for a while before the burning in his throat became nearly unbearable. He decided that maybe he should do something with it; drinking it seemed like a good idea.
When the burning dryness that kept him silenced dissolved, his body began to obey the commands of his soul. He screamed.
That was the only way to describe it.
The sound of grief more profound than any that would cause tears. He had lost the one person who he truly loved, the most important in the world to him. The one person he could not live without.
He would die.
If his body wouldn't do it on its own, he would help.
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= Eight Days Later=
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"E- Ed?" Winry gingerly pushed open the door of his room. He had said very little lately, and what he had said sounded either suicidal, insane or aggressive. Or all three.
He was lying curled on one side on the bed, but rolled over so that his legs were hanging over the edge.
"Go home," he croaked. His voice was hoarse from disuse.
"What?"
"GO HOME!!" he shouted, lifting a crumbling alchemy text from the floor and throwing it at her face.
She ducked. The book hit the door behind her and the ancient binding broke, making a cloud of yellowing pages flutter down through the air, hitting the wood floor with pathetic "thwap" sounds.
"Ed!" She carefully gathered up the indecipherably scripted pages. "Why?! Why do you want me to go home?!" her eyes pricked again. I can't leave him. He'll k- kill himself.
There was no answer.
"Edward..." She pleaded, hoping against hope for an answer. An answer meant he wasn't thinking too hard about Al's or... his own death.
He repeated himself.
"Ed, you're not thinking of- of trying to..." she nearly choked. "...bring him back...?"
His expression changed to anger, and not directed at her. "No." And that was all.
"Ed..." she said, trying to sound warm and caring without implying that she wasn't sorry about Al. "Y- you need to eat. You haven't eaten for a long time."
"not hungry..."
"That's a lie, Ed, and you know it as well as I do." she was desperate. She had to get him to live again.
Right now, he was only existing, and that was only because she was depriving him of any sharp things. She kept them in a locked box, and there was no danger of him breaking into it via alchemy-- he hadn't been able to do it since Al had died.
Not that he hadn't tried.
He'd also tried to suffocate himself, bludgeon himself to death, and countless other methods-- including attempting to transmute his heart outside his chest. She had thanked any and all gods that existed that he was unable to do alchemy.
When she embraced him, crying in relief, he had
shoved
her
away.
That hurt much more deeply than the bruise it had left on the back of her head when she hit the wall.
And now he was telling her to leave him. Leave him to commit suicide.
"just... just go away." practically a whisper.
"No." she refused.
"WHY NOT?!" that was typical now; just a thread of sound one minute, and then a shout.
She looked down, crying without tears, without sobs. Internal crying. "If I leave, you'll die."
"So?" She looked up. "I want to die."
Her eyes widened and tears started to form. She couldn't answer.
"If I didn't, why do you think I keep trying to KILL MYSELF?!!"
She stepped back. He was getting dangerous again. She left the tray of food she carried on the floor and backed out, now with sobs to match her tears.
Two hours later, when she looked in, he was lying once more on the bed. The food had hardly been touched. But at least it had been touched. He had consumed some water, at least, and there was a tiny piece broken off the roll. She sighed, a little more happily, and left.
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What would Winry understand?! She hadn't seen Al... no, Al's body. It had left scars in Ed's eyes that would never heal, no, never, not as long as he lived. He dared not shut his eyes anymore, lest that bloody image carved into his eyes project itself upon his eyelids and come back vividly, in colour, unlike the ghostly lines that still haunted every sight. That last sight of Alphonse's winsome face, entirely relaxed into the complete and utter emptiness of death. Somehow worse than the carnage that haunted the few dreams he'd had-- before he recognised that it was unwise to sleep.
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Katez-chan says: Wow... I wasn't intending that to be so gory O_O;;;; Sorry... I still do like this story though, the gore hasn't ruined it for me! I hope it didn't for you... I hate being a review whore, but I do like feedback so please REVIEW! Or my scene divider will attack. It's sharp.