envoy of the pure
Al had expected anything.
After years of battling second-hand gods and various other types of megalomaniac outlaws, existing as a bloody doodle on a large, metal doll (only years later did he start having headaches about the philosophical implications of that and wondered why the hell his father had had that armour in the first place) and generally being used to not knowing what was happening around him at any point in time, he'd finally accepted that life was probably going to always be this way (and then wondered if Father had actually put some kind of curse on people with Xerxian genes, because that would explain a lot).
He thought nothing could surprise him because he was in a constant state of 'being surprised' and therefore – never really surprised (again, he hadn't quite figured out the philosophy of that).
He was wrong.
Xing, to make a sample list of ingredients, was a nice, homemade concoction of:
- extreme racism, so over the top people would spit in his wake to show their disdain for the westerners;
- conservatism to the point of being unable to accept anyone foreign to the canon as having anything worth contributing (that was mostly the Elders in the court, which took every carefully phrased so as not to be offensive opinion coming out of his mouth to be an attempt to impinge upon 'strictly country politics', even if he was simply complimenting the food);
- a...penchant... for gossiping about things that were so personal he was stunned at their audacity and presence of mind to do so while the person was in front of them (he was also now convinced that there was a maid somewhere in the court who kept tabs on everyone and their cousins' secret lovers, illegitimate children, and STDs, including, somehow, his own);
- extreme beauty, wonderful food, amazing culture, a wealth of knowledge so vast he was pretty sure they'd figured out how to make Philosophers' Stones five thousand years ago and simply abandoned the project in light of more interesting and less socially destructive pursuits
- some pretty decent people, actually.
That wasn't all there was to it, though; he was simply surprised that he would simultaneously hate it and love it so much, he'd thought it would be either one or the other. Once again, he became convinced of the fact that everything in life (even being an automated metal puppet for several years) has its upsides as well as its downsides.
That was, of course, before the hormones hit.
He blamed Ed (though of course he would never tell him this, Truth knew his guilt complex had yet to resolve and he would not want him to wallow in that for another decade or two).
Maybe it would have been better if he'd just waited for him to get him at the gate for six-seven years; maybe then he would have experienced at least some of these...things…(though what kind of stimuli the white space would have to conjure to do that he wouldn't even dare imagine) and wouldn't be in such a bind now.
For, you see, after he'd recovered enough to get his ass from Central to Resembool, he'd spent the next two years leaving the house only once every six or seven months, if at all, and seeing as Winry was like an older sister to him, he could never ogle her the way Ed (sometimes so obviously) did.
Then he'd gone to Xing, reunited with May, became besties within the month (despite her making very successful attempts at beating Izumi for the title of 'most despotic teacher ever') and everything was great.
On May's sixteenth birthday, though, he'd woken up, fetched her present from the alchemically sealed safe in his wall (the only place he was sure the court spies wouldn't rummage through, and which also contained other things of great importance to him...as well as a family of kittens he'd adopted and which breathed through a whole he'd dug from the safe to the outer wall), went to her room to surprise her with it–
–and, finding her still asleep, he'd stopped dead in his tracks because holy sh–
No part of her body could be seen under the covers, and Al knew she wasn't the type who would sleep with revealing pyjamas (or without any at all, though he did not want to think about that), so, really, there was nothing to make him feel so mortified.
However, he could see shapes where he could normally see nothing due to the nature of her clothes (which he'd learn to curse a few days from then) and that–that was a chest.
And when she turned on her side–were those hips?
But what got him most of all was her face. He tried to picture her face from when they'd first met and juxtapose it to her current one.
When had it–when had she–become so….
...womanly?
She started to stir and he nearly hit his head on the ceiling jumping (they had really low ceilings in the living quarters, for whatever reason, given that Al was around average height here). She furrowed her brows and scrunched her nose, as if she didn't want to wake up, making a smile appear on Al's face. Then, she started turning uneasily and the sheets twisted more firmly around her body–
And he bailed. He ran like hell because there was not supposed to be so much blood in the place where he could currently feel there was.
(Obviously, he was fucked.)
God hated him.
He knew God hated him when he'd been pushed so far that he had to say (and curse, quietly, to himself) that God hated him because that was such a typical depressEd thing to say he had to have really hit rock-bottom.
The cause of his troubles?
He was being accused of murder.
The murder...of a cat.
Not a high-ranking Xingese official. Not the Emperor (though he really wanted to, last week, when he'd poured his soul out and Ling had just laughed), not an Elder (though the temptation grew with each passing day), not any of the schemers in the court (or their spies).
No.
An apparently holy cat, that had a cult spanning millions of people among several countries (he was rather afraid that this wasn't the weirdest belief he'd encounter in the East) who prayed to its incarnation every day and had a special festival held in the capital every year where hundreds of thousands of its followers gathered and tried to touch its paw in order to be eternally blessed with good luck.
And he was being accused of having killed its current reincarnation.
Alphonse Elric. Killing a cat.
God really must hate him.
Fortunately, the Universe gathered that it was an accusation so absurd that he could only be cleared in a way that was even more absurd.
Thus, on the day of the trial, while the jury prepared the rope and instructed the executioner, May Chang walked in, Xiao Mei in her hands.
Everyone quieted down and became very, very still.
She handed Xiao Mei to Alphonse.
Everyone gasped.
He stroked her.
Everyone gasped even more.
She didn't bite him but snuggle against his hand.
The meeting was adjourned. All charges were cleared within the day.
He hated this country.
Al really loved Xing.
He loved it because, unlike Vodi, accidentally stepping on a stone that fell in another's property was not enough to earn you a death sentence if the judge was in the mood for it.
He loved it because, unlike Xongi, its people were not cannibals who imported all of their meat from elsewhere due to bone-deep nationalism and did not have a propensity to proclaim 'universal' human values as their own while drinking cocktails made of liquidised eye.
He loved it especially when he was under constant protection as a diplomatic figure and did not need to sleep with one eye literally open so that his brain could (even unconscious) detect danger, alert his subconscious and possibly have him perform alchemy while asleep so that he could have a fighting chance.
Al really loved the East as a whole as well, nevermind a couple of...mishaps...but there was one thing he could not stand in particular.
The fact that, sooner or later, he had to leave. Not because Amestris was duty-bound to have an ambassador switch every couple of years, or because he couldn't simply visit when he wanted to, or because he felt he had to reunite with Ed and figure out the cure to chimaerism (as Al had decided to call it).
It was because, sooner or later, the Elders were really going to off him. Not because he was young and pretty and they were jealous, or because he was meddling and had an 'evil' qi and was, therefore, a threat (as they were going to present it), but simply because they didn't like him. They didn't like how he mastered alkhaestry so quickly, how he was good friends with the Emperor (and his bodyguard) himself, and how, according to them (he'd paid that maid well for that information) May would throw herself at his feet and marry him without much ceremony if he asked.
He, according to them, was dangerous. Not to Xing, but to their own power.
And that was probably the only thing they were right about.
He honestly would have liked to pretend that he hadn't seen Ed and Winry's wedding coming ten years ago, but the opportunity to point out well-documented (in embarrassing pictures, stories, and tokens) evidence of their long-standing love was too fun to pass.
Ed claimed he'd never known his little brother could be so evil, and Al threw him a stare. Ed then corrected himself, saying he hadn't seen his brother so evil, and Al had to nod, and say gravely, "Xing does things to people". Normally, May would have swatted him on the shoulder to feign an attempt to preserve her country's honour, but she simply sighed.
The week after the wedding the Elric-Rockbell household (for Winry had optioned not to take Ed's name, claiming that 'Winry Elric' made her sound like a witch, after which Ed had proceeded to a) say, jokingly, it fit her, and get a year's worth of wrench-throwing done in the span of thirty seconds, and b) agree with her, as solemn as Death after another one of their encounters /at this point, they were about to become poker buddies/) was still quite lively. Al, May, Pinako, Marcoh, Mustang and his team, Armstrong (the younger one, thank Truth) and the newly-humanised ex-chimaeras (it had taken Ed and Al precisely one week to find the cure because they were good with deadlines like that) were all staying with the newlyweds. Since the house wasn't big enough to accommodate all of them, the military personnel (Riza, naturally, included) slept outside (which was enough to convince the people of Resembool to not mess with the Elrics for three generations to come, especially after they saw a man light a fire by snapping his fingers as if commanding the flames to hurry the fuck up and cook his dinner).
Al had requested this, so that they could help him (and, consequently, Ling, who had given his unofficial consent for the plan right before they'd left) with plotting to take down some of the more...hazardous elements of the Xingese court. Mustang, after securing political help from the Emperor for his future run as Führer, had thrown himself wholeheartedly into it along with his entire team; the ex-chimaeras didn't need any convincing to help the Elrics once again; Marcoh was promised more smuggled Xingese literature; and the rest were dead-set to have the path cleared out so that Ling would have a happy ruling (and be able to marry Lan Fan without any opposition).
So when Al came back to the East, he was ready, and there was nothing the court could throw at him that could possibly confound him.
(...except, possibly, pictures of May in a swimsuit, but why the hell would they have any of those–)
A/N: I may be having way too much fun with this. What do you think?