It will always be a life altering moment that takes the least time, that will slow and blur and drag into eternity and be over between one breath and the next. It could be a clap splintered through ten, twenty, one hundred years, echoed forever beneath the unforgiving burn of an array. It could be the sudden jerk of a car, the moment of frozen voice and thought and body that preceded the stutter of a hollow breath. Or it could be a vaguely familiar woman, out of place amongst the organised rows of sombre books, holding a fat roll of redblueyellow blankets to her chest. It could be two steady chocolate eyes watching him, two full lips that moved, four words drawn out into long, incomprehensible syllables. It could be a single sentence, lost into the air before he'd registered the beginning.
"This is your son."
One night. One woman. One awkward bundle of vibrant cloth and time leaned back back back against itself, tipped nearly to falling, held tense and trembled and ached and – slipped, tumbled beneath its own current, dissolved into its own pull.
"This is your son."
---
The needle blurred as it entered his skin, dragged its sharp sting over his nerves and left thin trails of pitch twining under the bright flecks of cinnabar in its wake.
---
He was born three weeks early at a hospital in Siena; a tiny, wrinkled body, a layer of coal dark hair on a ball-shaped head and a pair of startling gold eyes that were nothing like his mother's. Mathieu – you give him the last name, I give him the first – named after the man who was and wasn't her father, who had raised her, taught her, loved her in place of those who hadn't. Nearly seven months old, and Ed hadn't been at his birth, hadn't seen him grow, hadn't known he existed at all.
It had begun – Mathieu had begun – after a circus show in Germany, in a too-small bed at the back of a wooden caravan that was painted red on red on yellow and rocked in time to the rhythmic cshlp of skin-on-skin. By the time she realised it – Mathieu – had begun, her troupe had moved on to Italy and Ed had left no trail at all when he traded Berlin for Munich. She was still looking for him half a year later, in the autumn, and gained not even the hint of a whisper of his name, but had had to give birth to their son regardless.
Ed couldn't even recall where he'd been at the time.
It wasn't until she had passed into France, when Mathieu was four months old, that she'd finally caught the vague remains of a rumour. A blond prodigy, come from Germany but not German, who had reached notoriety with unnatural speed due to a rather passionate inclination to argue with (and disprove) professors of advanced physics.
Nearly seven months old, and he lay quiet and trusting and strange in Ed's arms. Nearly seven months old and those four words sank slowly into Ed's brain, separate and alien and scattered until they curled together, made a cohesive whole, gave each other meaning and purpose and...
"This is your son."
His son. He knew alchemy and chemistry and mathematics; he could translate a page of military code within an hour, could comprehend a chemical formula as long as his arm in a glance, but those two, single-syllable words jerked his brain into a sudden, stuttering blank.
His was easy; a male possessive pronoun that indicated ownership or something in relation to himself: his book, his shirt, his face, his friend. Son made perfect sense; a word used to describe the relationship of a male child to its parents. Ed was the child of his parents; son.
Only, he'd never really considered that before.
Yes, his parents had conceived him and his mother had birthed him, but he'd always just been himself, Ed, Edward. And Al was a son, too, he supposed, though he'd never thought to call him that; Al had always been Al, brother, sibling, Al.
"This is your son."
He knew mother – soft eyes and gentle hands, a smell like clean sheets and hot bread and the most beautiful thing in the world – and he knew father – vague recollections of tall and strong and a voice that rumbled laughter in a wide chest, and then bastard and traitor and some forgotten smell twisted beneath rot – but he'd never really learned anything about son. Except now there was a bundle of chubby limbs and downy hair, a soft new scent and bright, bright eyes that looked up at him and trusted him with no reservations at all.
Son. It had always meant conception, pregnancy, birth. It had always meant reproduction, a mix of two sets of DNA into a male child, similar and unique. But now it also meant mother and father, also meant son, also meant father.
"This is your son."
His son. And Ed was a father.
---
It didn't even hurt, really. There was a slight pain, moving over his skin in meticulous, evolving patterns, but it was hardly noticeable beneath the oddly soothing vibration that continued to whisper presence even once it had passed.
---
Ed stopped going to the libraries. He supposed it had been an option to stay, to say no, I have to get back to my brother, but he remembered looking after his mother when she got sick, the desperate agony when she died, the glowing, greedy eyes and sucking black hands clawing into him everywhere and how the one person who should have, could have stopped him hadn't been there.
But worse than that, maybe, he remembered the quivering, aching pit in his guts for every day his father didn't return, each year that passed, every letter that wasn't answered.
He remembered before that, the time he'd snuck into his father's study and been too young to understand but old enough to think he did. He'd clambered up on the big chair, looked out over the vast, grown up landscape that was his father's desk and flicked through the papers like he understood them, like he could read the arrays as effortlessly as his father did, like he knew things as amazing as his father did. Hohenheim had found him there and he hadn't said anything, but there had been something in the expression on his face that had made Ed cower in the chair, young and small and bad, before he was lifted silently out of it.
All the way to the door in his father's arms Ed had wanted to scrabble and beg I'm sorry I'm sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry but his throat had been choked closed by that look. He'd wanted to grab at his father's shirt as he was put down outside the room, but Hohenheim hadn't spared him even a glance and Ed's hands had been frozen into dumb fists. His mother had found him there, staring at the door handle and waiting for it to turn.
He'd been put down for his nap and fallen instantly into exhausted, stricken sleep. And when he'd woken up, his father had smiled at him again, laughed deep and bright and rumbling again, let Ed sit on his shoulders when they went down to the river again, just like always, and so Ed had forgotten.
A month later, Ed got a little brother who was tiny and weird and puked up on his shirt and was so cool. Then, several months after that, just past Ed's second birthday, Hohenheim left.
It had taken a week for Ed to realise what that look was on his mother's face whenever he asked what Daddy was doing that was more fun than being at home with them, if they could write a letter to tell him they missed him, if Daddy was coming back today, tomorrow, soon. A week, and then he'd remembered being young and small and bad, and that he'd never apologised in the end after all.
Yes, it was illogical and irrational and Ed sometimes wondered if he'd been born stupid, but he'd believed it, for longer than he ever cared to admit. It had been a sick, suffocating certainty that clung to him even when he'd grown old enough to know better. It had been a nauseating swing between spitting fury and aching rejection that rolled always beneath his consciousness, so that he didn't even need to remember some days. And it was a lingering doubt, a shadow against his breath, a mute whisper of all his flaws humming always beneath his skin.
Mathieu looked up at him with his sun-rich eyes, and Ed didn't ever want them to look like his own.
He'd been buried in books since he was four years old, he'd loved books since before he could talk, and he would give his life, his soul, everything of himself for his little brother. So he could have said no, I have to get back to Al, but it wasn't really a choice. He had a son, and that was all. He had a son.
---
Familiar unfamiliar lines crawled slowly along his skin, gradually bled into shallow rivers and split, multiplied, wove through each other to languidly trace muscle and tendon and bone.
---
Mathieu was Mathieu Alphonse Elric now, after spending the first seven months of his life without a last name because his mother didn't know it. Ed wasn't sure whether the mother claiming the first name in exchange for the last was traditional or something specific to this mother, but he had spent his life breathing equivalent trade. So he had offered; the last name in return for a second, to be able to give his son something of an uncle he would never meet, the brother Ed loved past his own life. He hadn't expected her to smile with some expression he recognised but didn't know, to smooth her hand over their son's head with a hushed gentleness that he knew but thought he'd forgotten, and ask why their son should only have two names to be proud of when he could have three.
Mathieu Alphonse Elric; born to Edward Elric, an eighteen year old alchemist from another world, and Cassandra Moreaux, a twenty three year old contortionist from a travelling circus.
And maybe it should have disturbed Ed, but he'd spent so much of his own life defining family by people who didn't share his blood that it barely occurred to him to find it strange. Mathieu's Grandmaman Helen had run away to marry Grandpapa Elmo at fourteen without ever having spoken a word to him, had been telling fortunes since she was barely seven years old, and had watched over Cassandra and the baby during the pregnancy in place of a mother Cassandra didn't have. Tante Filippa and Tante Caprice were identical twins that had been abandoned to the brothels at eleven until they joined the troupe at sixteen, were covered from head to foot in tattoos that connected over both their bodies like puzzle pieces, and had half seduced the doctor to be at Cassandra's side when Ed wasn't, to see his son born when Ed couldn't.
Mathieu's Oncle Bernado was the 'Strong Man', easily half again Ed's height and with enough muscles to rival Armstrong. He was gruff and suspicious and helplessly soft hearted, and had been there to protect Cassandra and the new baby when Ed hadn't. The boy's Frere Demetri, the son of Tante Emma and Oncle Demetri, wasn't quite old enough to start performing but trained with his unicycle and his fire rods. He had been the one who had stayed with Cassandra when she was too pregnant to even practice, when she was recovering from the birth, when she'd been close to being crushed by the forced inactivity and needed something, anything to take her mind from a newborn child with no father that she had no idea how to raise.
Oncle Volo was completely colourless, naturally white hair and impossibly translucent skin and red tinted eyes that reminded Ed so much of Al that his chest ached. Oncle Antonio, Oncle Gian, Tante Anna and Soeur Maria were acrobats, Oncle Oskar was a contortionist that barely came up to Ed's chin, Tante Ein and Tante Zwei had been born joined from hip to shoulder and their lover, Oncle Rene, could escape handcuffs, straightjackets and locked chests upside down and under water before he ran out of air.
And they all loved Mathieu as if he'd been born of their own flesh.
So Edward Elric, Alchemist of the People, child prodigy, youngest ever State Alchemist, ran away and joined the circus. His only hesitation was the knowledge that if Mustang ever found out, he'd never be able to wipe the smirk off the damn man's face.
---
Eventually, the concentrated burn was replaced by a light, humming scratch and Ed let his head fall back, wandered his eyes over the winding path of cracks in the stone grey ceiling. He didn't need to watch to follow the lines as they mimicked the shape, to know where the shadows fell as they began to define the form.
---
Ed knew very well that he owed his life to his brother, had known it even before he'd died the first time, but he'd never expected to owe the life of a child to him, too. Not just Mathieu's conception, not just his existence – though Ed did wonder about that sometimes, didn't know whether he would have ever felt secure enough to drop his guard and his clothes if he'd had to wear the stiff, primitive prosthetics of this world – but his life, the shape of every day and every month and every year.
Because Ed did know that there was no way he could have done any more than basic tricks with a missing arm and not even two legs to hold him upright, that the troupe would have had no use for a cripple with no experience and no skill and no way of improving either. And he knew that they would have let him stay despite it, for Mathieu, for Cassandra, but he also knew that he might have left anyway, abandoned his son and the mother of his son exactly as he was abandoned; with no explanation and no reason save for his own desperate insecurity and useless good intentions.
But Al had kept his promise, even when Ed had given up hoping.
The philosopher's stone had asked for so much and sometimes, in the dark, pretending to sleep and listening to the silence of his little brother's non-breaths, he'd ached for not touching that array. What was a handful of criminals against Al's life? If a murderer and Al were stuck in a burning building, would he hesitate trying to save the murderer while Al was eaten by the flames? They had been sentenced to death, anyway, didn't it make sense to use something that was going to be sacrificed whatever he did?
He'd been sick with relief and self-loathing, but he just couldn't, he couldn't, not even for Al, so how could he ever have justified it for himself? His limbs had never been anything against Al's suffering, had never been equivalent, had never been enough of a punishment for his sin. Ed had caused it, invited it, Al had not. Ed had a body, could breathe and eat and sleep, but Al didn't, couldn't. Ed had thought of it, suggested it, initiated it, and Al had not. Ed would carry the evidence of his sin, would swallow the determined rake of want that he didn't deserve, but Al would not.
Except his little brother had always been stronger than him. Ed had pretended to sleep and felt the despair gnaw at him as the selfish wail clawed at the back of his throat and Al had talked about when they got their bodies back, Al hadn't hated him, Al had kept his promise when Ed had long crumbled beneath the weight of it.
Al's life for his. And his life for Al's.
Ed could remember dying. In the moments before he properly woke, he could still feel the numb stab of an unnatural arm sliding through his chest, the clean separation of skin and the smooth destruction of his heart. He remembered being dead in vague, horrifying flashes that he was never quite sure whether to trust or not; a nowhere, never-ending white stretching in every direction but covering no distance at all. The Gate, and endlessly waiting for that familiar, greedy invasion. Talking to a whiteblack figure no bigger than a child, feeling panic and hope and disgust and relief choking a body he did and didn't have.
The impressions drifted further away the harder he reached, slid through his fist like smoke, but there had been... something that happened. He knew something had happened, even if he couldn't quite maybe-remember, because he'd woken up and he'd known without opening his eyes that Al was gone, that his little brother had sacrificed armour and soul and stone for two flesh arms and two flesh legs and a life worth less than his own. He'd woken up and his body had hummed with the array sitting languid behind his eyes, calm and confident. He'd woken up and he'd known that the Gate had what he wanted, that it would give it to him.
Al's life for his and his life for Al's. Ever since he'd read Marco's notes he'd been afraid, stricken, terrified, he would lie awake listening to his solitary breaths rasping over his ears and hating himself for not touching that array. He'd promised Al. There were no other lives to use but he didn't to use any, and he hadn't wanted to die but he'd promised.
Al hadn't hesitated, though, and somehow Ed knew that, too. Al had always been stronger and he hadn't hesitated, hadn't been afraid, hadn't thought of himself before he gave everything for Ed's life and Ed's limbs and Ed. The only thing was... there really wasn't a point to the world if his little brother wasn't in it.
The Gate had reached right into him and the array had shivered power through his bones and he'd genuinely expected to trade Al's death for his own, to be torn apart or sucked into oblivion or spend the rest of his existence in the Gate. His life for Al's. His soul for Al's. His body for Al's. It could take it all, anything, everything, do whatever It wanted. For Al.
He'd never expected to open his eyes to a foreign sky that looked just like the one he knew, to a world like and unlike his own, to the chance to maybe go back if he could just work out how. He'd never expected to have to face every day without his little brother, to wake up and eat and travel and study and go to sleep and wake up again and be alone. He'd never expected to jerk awake in the night, sweating and staring frantic into the darkness because he couldn't hear the grinding kschk of metal shifting against metal as it moved in tiny increments, trying to be silent.
Nearly three years he'd searched for some way to get home, waking every day to a dream and closing his eyes to waking. Sometimes he saw Al ten years old again, playing with Den and Rose's child in Risembool, real skin and real hair and real laugh and real smile stretching over his face. Sometimes he saw Al at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, taller and older and saying brother without an echo hovering around his voice. Sometimes he saw Al in a mix of metal and flesh, bent backward and forward and blinking glowing eyes that bled in a human face with FullmetalEdwardEdBrother in the hollow voice of a chimera the bitter reek of sick alchemy, and he'd always wake gasping and choking on his wet breath, drenched in acrid sweat and feeling like he'd just fallen unconscious away from the horror.
But, no, no, Al was fine, Ed was sure he knew Al was fine. There was a calm in his bones, a knowing that the Gate had given him what he wanted, he just... sometimes, he wondered what he'd given in return. He was alive, he had all his limbs and all his internal organs, his mind was intact. It had taken something, he was sure of that; he remembered the feeling of heart-clenching relief even with eager black hands silking cold and ice overunderthrough him. But – had it taken something from Al? There was no way to know if it had or not, except for the perpetual assurance that he didn't understand or trust but couldn't help but feel. Al was fine.
The thing was, Ed wasn't. There was no Ed. It was Ed-and-Al, it was Fullmetal-and-Alphonse, it was the Elric brothers. Ed had only ever been Ed because Al was there, because Al was smart and good and believed for him, because Al steadied him when he couldn't stand on his own, because Al made him remember him.
Nearly three years, and the only thing that had kept him from fading into the daze was the thought that he had to get home. He moved through the wash of unfamiliar faces and odd customs and alien languages, and every breath waited for its echo in another world. Nearly three years alone but hoping, desperate but hoping, terrified but hoping and –
"This is your son."
Mathieu was a year old by just a handful of days. Ed was Papa, now, and Cassandra was Maman, and Mathieu's family was in this world, in this circus, in these people that had accepted him regardless of how he'd been conceived. And Ed wouldn't risk trying to take him through the Gate, wouldn't ask Cassandra to leave everything about existence that she knew, wouldn't take Mathieu from his mother and he wouldn't leave him himself.
Equivalent trade. His brother for his son. His son for his brother. Al didn't need him, and Mathieu was only a year old. Al was hopefully maybe definitely fine, and Cassandra hadn't intended to be a mother any more than Ed had intended to make her one. A life for a life, and sometimes he wanted to go home so badly that his whole body ached, but he had a son. And that was all.
---
Every spare moment between training and practice and travelling and Mathieu and performing and celebrating and eating and sleeping went into the design. Ed had worked and reworked it until there wasn't so much as a hint of a flaw, wasn't a single line that fell even a breath outside where it should. No array had ever warranted such patience, the same as no part of his life had ever held the power to slow his research before. But he had the time, now, and sooner or later didn't make all that much difference.
"There'yar." The man said, wiping the last smudge of red off newly shadowed skin and sitting back to consider his work with a critical eye. It wasn't common practice to do so much in one sitting, apparently, but Ed had refused to walk around with this half finished and the man had been intrigued enough by the design that he'd agreed. Despite the close work and the constant focus and only stopping for a scant lunch when Ed's stomach had become too insistent, the man's hands had been as steady as a surgeon's from the moment he'd begun to the moment he'd finished. "Y' be careful with i', boy, s'my best work."
The only trace of Al in this world resided in his dreams and no one would believe him if he ever spoke of them, anyway. Ed would have given his arm and leg all over again just to see his brother, just to hold him when they could both feel it, just to say goodbye, would have given everything of his body for just a moment – but he couldn't. He couldn't.
At least there was this, now. An automail arm and an automail leg made of skin and ink and two limbs of bone and muscle and nerves that his little brother had once given up his life for.
Ed touched one of the lines over his knee, followed it over the curve and couldn't quite help staring at his own fingers as the sensation tingled almost sharply over sensitive skin. It wasn't enough, it would never be enough, but there had never really been a choice.
"This is your son."