I'll Follow the Echoes

by Batsutousai

There was just no getting past it: This was 100% Ed's fault. He was also the only one who could save Al and Izumi. Assuming he wasn't dead or trapped with no way out.

Title: I'll Follow the Echoes
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Imprisonment, language, not canon compliant, POC!Elrics
Summary: There was just no getting past it: This was 100% Ed's fault. He was also the only one who could save Al and Izumi. Assuming he wasn't dead or trapped with no way out.

Disclaim Her: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Arakawa Hiromu and various publishers. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

A/N: This was written for the FMA Fandom Challenge on tumblr, based on sketches by aroriza (I'll link the finished pieces as soon as they're posted).

I fought with a couple of different things for this. I was originally stuck on the sketch of Selim and 'Riza', but the ideas my muse were batting around didn't ever seem to form into anything concrete, so I finally sat back and looked at the other two sketches, and my muse handed over this piece for the pic of Al and Izumi. It's not at all what aroriza intended for this scene, but it's what we get. So.

You can also read this at Archive of Our Own, tumblr, or LiveJournal.

-0-
-0-

It started, like it always seemed to with his brother, with someone commenting on his height. One day, Al hoped, Ed would get over that issue of his, but it clearly wasn't going to be any time soon, because even a whispered, "Ya midget," had sent him into a rage of screaming threats and flailing fists.

Teacher had stood there and dropped her head into her hands, shaking her head, while Al had really wished he could actually close his eyes, because he'd seen more than enough of his brother's carnage to know exactly what would happen.

Except, well, leave it to Ed to shout at and punch some rich man's son, who had two alchemists serving as guards. Alchemists who hadn't been afraid to go after some no-name little kid, and Al had just raised a hand to try and defuse the situation, when everything exploded.

-0-

Waking was abrupt and surprisingly wet. His immediate jerk found him sinking into the water that had been supporting him, and Ed flailed a bit, reaching blindly for anything solid he could grab on to, but his automail wasn't responding, and his real hand wasn't connecting with anything.

He forced himself to still, staring up into the utter blackness all around him and breathe in slow, calming breaths.

He was floating in water. It was dark. There was nothing in range on his left for him to grab on to.

His automail wasn't responding.

He gasped in a breath, almost flailed again when the action upset his precarious balance on top of the water, and forced himself to close his eyes and be still.

Okay.

Okay, he was floating and the automail wasn't responding. The most likely cause was it being gone. Which was disturbing and maybe a little bit worthy of panic and Winry was going to murder him as soon as she found out he'd lost it again, but it also meant he hadn't sunk and drowned, so.

That was a good thing.

Where was Al?

"Al?" he called into the darkness, trying to forget that his brother couldn't go in water or the blood seal would wash away. "Teacher?" he added, because she'd been with them, he remembered. (Her yelling and threats were hard to forget, honestly.)

Silence.

Though... "Teacher?" Ed called again, this time turning his head a bit and listening to the echoes.

He was inside something. A relatively narrow but long space, with stone or metal sides, most likely; he'd been trapped in enough enclosed spaces to recognise those echoes.

A tunnel?

His hand brushed something and Ed immediately made a desperate grab for it. The gloves made it hard to get a firm grip, and his fingers were slow to respond – cold or wounded? Either way, not good – but he somehow managed to get a hold of whatever it was. Given the way the water was pulling at his body, it was something static, which was...good, he assumed. Hoped.

Having his automail would make things so much easier, but Ed grit his teeth and pulled himself against the current, toward whatever he'd managed to grab onto.

He pulled himself close enough to catch his arm around the edge, then stopped to catch his breath for a moment. The water was still tugging at him, but now that the upper part of his body was out of it, he was noticing the chill; he desperately needed to get out of the water and dry off.

Ed huffed out a slightly sardonic laugh, figuring he was entitled; without both his hands or his suitcase with his writing materials, there was no way he could alchemise his things dry, and building up a fire would be a chore. Assuming he could manage to find anything to burn.

"Al," Ed reminded himself and forced a smile that hurt. But he'd decided a long time ago that he had to keep smiling, keep going, for his brother's sake, no matter what. And it didn't matter if Al was there or not, if he was even still...alive – he had to be, Ed would know if he was dead – he was going to stay positive. He was going to get out of the water and find some way to make a fire and dry himself off.

Taking a deep breath, Ed shoved against the object he was holding on to, aiming to get up, on top of it. He slipped the first time, nearly missed grabbing for the thing because the current started to pull him away, but he managed it the second time, and was grateful to find a narrow ledge he could roll onto and stretch out along.

He gave him until his heart – sped up after his near miss – had slowed back down to a normal rhythm, then moved to get onto his hand and knees, only to almost topple over when his right knee wasn't there.

Ed clenched his hand against the stone beneath him and allowed himself a long, heartfelt moment of cursing, because of course both of his steel limbs were gone.

Floating, not sinking in the water.

He forced himself to take another deep breath, breathe it back out past chattering teeth, then carefully shift and twist so he could sit back against the wall. Without his leg, he wasn't going to get far, especially not on a narrow ledge in the dark.

Light. Heat. What did he have on him?

His clothing, a couple extra hair ties, his pocket watch, one boot, and either a folded piece of paper, or a banknote in his left pocket. Nothing to draw an array with.

If only Al was there! He was the one that always kept chalk on him. Given, it might not have survived the water particularly–

Ed stopped and stared into the darkness for a moment, resisting the urge to smack himself. "Blood," he whispered, before yanking off his glove with his teeth and spitting it into his lap.

There was a sharp edge on his watch from where it had got badly scuffed at some point. He kept saying he was going to fix it, but he never had. And that hadn't been with the intention of using it to cut himself, but needs must.

He quickly sketched an array to heat fabric enough to set it aflame, then awkwardly shrugged out of his coat, because it would be the best object of clothing for this. He set the fabric carefully over where he'd drawn the array, then set it off and scooted away as quickly as he could.

It took a moment, but his coat did eventually start to burn, flames licking along the tattered and dusty edges.

Ed scooted back as close as he dared, letting the heat warm his side even as he looked around at the small circle of light the fire cast.

He appeared to be in some sort of underground sewer system. The ceiling was arched – the tunnel was likely a tube – and probably wouldn't be high enough to let him stand on the ledge. If it was a sewer, though, the rushing water shouldn't be too deep, though the firelight wasn't bright enough for him to see for certain. (Anyway, only having one leg meant he was as likely to get swept away, as he was to manage to hop along against the current.)

A quick perusal of his clothing found his left trouser leg in tatters, and some wiring and broken pieces of metal plugged into his port like his automail had exploded or something, and the rest of his clothing had clearly seen better days. Which wasn't really new, per se, but they looked worse than usual; his right trouser leg had some nasty slices in it, which had gone through to skin, and both of his sleeves were wrecked to above his elbows. He didn't seem to be bleeding anywhere right that moment, but he couldn't really get a good look and, honestly, he had no idea how long he'd been in the sewer water with open wounds.

What had happened to him?

"Well," he said to himself, if only to distract himself from worst-case scenarios, "this is a shitty situation."

-0-

"Brother!" Al shouted into the billow of dark smoke, while Teacher coughed just behind him. He wanted to turn to her, check that the smoke wasn't doing worse things to her health, but he needed to worry about Ed, too. First, even, since it had looked like the explosion had come from right under his feet.

He took a step forward, into the smoke, then another. The third time he set down his foot, something gave an ominous 'crack', and Al hurriedly took a couple of steps back. The sound of falling rubble followed his action, and if he could swallow, he probably would have.

Other people were starting to call out names, coughing accompanying each shout. Al waved his hand in front of his helmet, as if that would actually help him see through the smoke. It was useless, of course, so he turned to the only person he could help for the moment, ushering Teacher back, out of the worst of it. Her hand wasn't speckled with blood, yet, and Al let out a mental sigh of relief.

At least one of them was okay.

-0-

The fire from his coat went out before Ed could figure out any useful course of action, and he groaned and knocked his head back against the wall behind him a couple times, though previous experience said that wouldn't really help. If he had even one of his automail limbs, he could have done something, but, like this, alone in a sewer, he was shit out of luck.

(He was trying very, very hard not to wonder where Al was.)

He was just shrugging out of his jacket – another fire wouldn't really help him think any more than the darkness, really, but it would make him feel better – when he became aware of the tunnel lightening. He twisted his head, trying to determine where the light was coming from, and eventually spotted the approaching dots of firelight on the other side of the water, coming around a bend. It looked like a number of people, and Ed couldn't really be fussed about whether or not they were enemies, because they were his only chance to get out. So he shouted, "Hey! Over here!"

There was a rush of voices, then a number of splashes as a few people jumped into the water and moved down the tunnel toward him.

They were people, unsurprisingly. Ishvalan, he thought at a distance, given their darker skin, but he saw, as they got closer, that their eyes weren't red. (They weren't gold, either, though Ed tended to notice that for a different reason than he kept an eye out for red eyes.) The first one to get close enough for his circle of torchlight to reach Ed, sort of froze upon getting a good look at him, then said, "You're alive."

Ed narrowed his eyes at that, suspicions clanging in the back of his mind. "Yeah, that's me: Alive," he returned.

"It's the red coat!" another person called back to the crowd waiting near the bend in the tunnel.

Ed couldn't stop himself from glancing to his left, where the remains of said coat were little better than ash; these people had clearly seen him floating down the sewer, and that made him turn a glare on the three that had come toward him.

"You can holster that look, boy," the only women said with a pretty impressive glare of her own. "Some of our young'uns saws a couple bodies floatin' along a few hours ago. Tunnel splits enough times between there and here, wasn't no one gonna be huntin' them down to check for life."

"Lucky you managed a fire," one of the men said. "Never woulda come down here huntin' if we hadn't spotted the light."

Bodies? Plural? "Those other bodies, any of them wearing armour?"

"It was just one other," the woman corrected. "No armour I heard, though. Older guy wearing a suit."

Ed frowned at that, because he couldn't remember any older guys in suits. He remembered getting dragged along on Teacher's errand to deliver some meat to one of their customers who lived outside of Dublith and was sick in bed – he'd complained about having to go with, Al had sighed, and Teacher had kicked his arse for being a lazy shit, or something – and getting to the tiny little village, dropping off the order, and...

What? He...couldn't remember. Shit.

"Let's get you back to our shelters," one of the men said, before passing his torch over to the other man and stepping forward. "Can you hold on piggyback, or should I carry you?"

Ed clamped down on his pride and cast his empty right sleeve a baleful look. "Carrying, probably," he admitted a bit grudgingly, because he wasn't completely certain he was strong enough to support his own weight with just the one hand.

None of the three made any mocking comments – Ed probably would have exploded if they had, honestly – and he was picked up and carried away from the ashes of his coat without any fanfare.

-0-

The man who Ed had been intent on punching had, of course, been the local landowner. He was also clearly unpopular with someone, because no matter what everyone else appeared determined to think, Al knew his brother would never use an explosion to get someone back for calling him small.

Maybe if Teacher had been able to handle the smoke better, or Al hadn't been so worried about Ed's continued absence, he would have fought harder when the man had a group of guards round the pair of them up and escort them to a couple of prison cells. But he hadn't fought, had barely managed to trade his compliance for a doctor for Teacher.

As he leant against the wall he shared with Teacher's cell, listening to her laboured breaths, he tried not to think about the possibility of his brother being dead.

-0-

Their 'shelters' were piles of stone and discarded metal work shaped into what could almost be called huts. Tiny things that were too short for even Ed to stand up inside, which didn't, irritatingly, make him feel tall, just annoyed; he wasn't used to having to crouch, and it was stupidly difficult to do so with only one leg.

Ed clearly wasn't the only thing of potential interest to have washed down the sewers, because there was a rather large pile of stonework and broken pipes that a few people where adding to as Ed was carried into the little circle of makeshift homes.

He was deposited inside one of the shelters, then left to find his own way around while – he suspected – the lot of them discussed what to do about him.

He didn't bother leaving, instead looking around for writing supplies, because there was more than enough metal around for him to transmute himself a temporary leg. He wouldn't really be able to fight on it or anything – besides lacking the materials to make proper automail, he also lacked all but the most basic knowledge of how the inner workings were connected – but at least he'd be able to walk without help, see if he couldn't track his way back up the sewers and figure out what had happened, and where Al and Teacher were. If the tunnels had split between where they'd fallen in and where Ed had been seen by those kids, it was possible they'd just drifted down another direction. Or they were back at wherever Ed had fallen in, sighing over Ed's carelessness.

If only he could remember what had happened!

"Boy," the guy who'd carried him said as he ducked into the shelter he'd left Ed in, "how'd you lose your limbs?"

Ed couldn't quite stop himself from grabbing the port – and it was just the port, rather than it being a part of his arm, which meant it had probably just pulled out and was laying around somewhere, maybe even with Al and Teacher – and he glared at the man as he bit out the familiar lie: "Eastern rebellion. Both of them."

The man nodded, and Ed knew it was his darker skin that always made it so easy for people to believe he'd been born near Ishval, even though everyone else in Resembool had been as utterly white as the majority of Amestris. "You ever get prosthetics?"

"Automail," Ed admitted a bit grudgingly, because there really wasn't any point in lying when a quick check-up to clean and bandage his wounds would reveal at least one of his ports.

The man was still for a moment, face shadowed by his hair, before he let out a sigh and stepped forward, revealing–

"My arm!" Ed recognised, because he'd had the damn thing for far too long not to know it, even with the uncertain lighting. He reached for it without really thinking, and was maybe a little bit surprised when it was handed over without a fight. (Not that he'd ever admit as such.)

He shrugged his jacket out of the way and dropped his arm into his lap for a moment to feel around inside the port, making sure there wasn't anything in the way – some lessons, despite Mustang and Winry's commentary to the contrary, he only needed to learn once – then picked his arm back up, grit his teeth, and shoved it into place.

His nerves burnt as they reconnected to the circuitry, remembering what it meant to be 'alive' again, and he rode out the familiar agony in silence, only letting out his held breath when it fell to a manageable level. He took a moment to move it the same way Granny and Winry always told him to just after they connected it, making sure everything was working right. "Thanks," he offered once he'd ascertained it was as good as could be after getting left in sewer water for fuck knew how long; he'd need those stupid cleaning tools Granny'd given him to get some gunk out, but it shouldn't be a problem for a bit. So long as he avoided any fights. Which, well, without his leg, he was already going to need to do that, so.

"You're welcome," the man allowed. "Didn't see no signs of a leg, though."

Ed looked to the empty space where his leg should have been. "It looks like it got, I dunno, blown up or some shit, anyway; my mechanic'd kill me if I tried fixing it on my own."

The man grunted. "Can't do nothing about that, but it looks a bit like there was an explosion, yeah. Lotta street-stone and such clogging everything up. You get caught up in someone else's fight? Look a little–"

"Who're you calling–" Ed started on reflex, before a memory flashed through his mind, of doing the same thing out in the sunlight, snarling at some uppity fucker who'd had his nose in the air like he thought the world should be bowing down at his feet.

Ed remembered taking a step forward, shouting – either threats or insults, it hardly mattered which – and the fucker motioning forward a couple big guys in fucking fancy suits. Ed'd started to put his hands together, taken another step forward, and then everything has sort of...exploded.

"Mighta done," he allowed, because he had no idea where the explosion had come from, only that it had seemed to originate under his left foot. (He'd been lucky; if it'd been under his right foot, he'd probably be dead.) Given, there were plenty of people out there with grudges against him, but the ones who were most likely to blow up a street to take him out were all locked up in a prison in the east; no way any of them would have tracked him down, not without him hearing about an escape, first. (He hoped.)

Which left someone trying to off that uppity fucker or one of those big guys, and Ed'd just got whatever the opposite of lucky is. Which was pretty typical for him.

If it was an attack on him, that made Al and Teacher targets; if it wasn't, they were probably freaking out. (Or, well, Al might be freaking out. Maybe, if he wasn't being stupidly rational instead. But Teacher had probably written him off and decided he'd make his own way back to the meat shop.)

"I need to get home, my brother's probably worried about me," Ed said as he carefully got to his one foot, bracing a hand against the 'ceiling' of the shelter to help him keep his balance. "Do you have any scrap metal I can use?"

The guy's eyes tracked down to his waist, and Ed knew he was looking at the chain of his pocket watch, far too on display without his coat in the way.

"I don't want trouble," he insisted in a rush. "I'm on holiday, okay? You helped me out, I never saw you; equivalent exchange."

The man caught his gaze for a long moment, then let out a grunt and turned away. "We got some scraps you can use."

Ed wasn't really surprised to find the clearing was quiet when they moved out of the shelter, and he thought he might've seen little faces peeking out from the other shelters, but he ignored them; hopping along on one foot was distracting enough as it was, fuck.

While he was poking through the pile he'd been directed to, trying to find sufficient material for a temporary leg, the man said, "Where you probably fell in from got closed back up, and they took out the nearest access point, so you won't be able to go back there. Dublith's closer to us, anyway."

Ed froze for a beat, then turned a disbelieving look on the man, because Dublith had still be about half a day's walk when things had gone to hell. "How close?" he asked.

The man seemed to consider that for a second, then said, "Maybe ten minutes' walk."

Ed rubbed a bit roughly at his face, because that meant he'd been out for a...while. Way too long. Fuck, that was way too long to leave Al alone.

He forced himself to take a deep breath, reminded himself that his brother wasn't alone, not like he'd been, Teacher was with him, and she'd keep him from freaking the fuck out. Hopefully.

Still, either way, he needed to get to Dublith, reassure them he was just fine, though in need of a trip to Winry. (She was going to kill him; business as usual.) So he returned his attention to his scraps and, upon deciding his pile was sufficient, pressed his hands together, then touched the metal to activate the array.

As he fit the temporary into his port, he asked, "Can you give me directions to the Dublith access?"

"I'll lead you there," the man said.

Ed sighed and wondered how many times they'd double back in an attempt to confuse him, but he didn't bother arguing; he'd take what help he could get.

-0-

"My brother wasn't out to get you, I promise! We were just coming through town on some busine–"

"No doubt making deals with my enemies," the man muttered, clearly determined to ignore sense.

"No!" Al tried again, looking a bit helplessly toward the wall separating him from Teacher; he desperately needed some help. "We were delivering br–"

"Bombs?!" he interrupted, before letting out a slightly mad laugh and pointing at Al. "I knew it! Everything about you screams weird!"

Al...couldn't really argue that, given, but he could try, "My brother is a St–"

"Alphonse!" Teacher snapped.

Al couldn't quite keep from flinching away from the wall separating them, hurt and confused by her interruption.

"Believe of us whatever you want," she told the man, ice crackling along ever word.

"I'll believe the truth," the man informed her haughtily, before spinning and stalking from the dungeon room.

"Teacher?" Al whispered, hated how small and helpless he sounded.

"Do you really want to involve those bastards and their guns?" she hissed. But she didn't sound dangerous, or even angry any more. Just...tired.

Al turned away from the wall separating them and stared down at his feet. He'd got used to trusting Ed's credentials when they were in a tight spot, or Ed's refusal to be laid down for long. But Ed wasn't around, and neither was his pocket watch, which meant calling on the military could just as well end in a failure for them. And Teacher still wasn't well, probably wouldn't survive an escape attempt; they were stuck.

"Sig will start to wonder where we are soon enough," Teacher added, her tone gone gentle. Soothing.

Neither of them said it, but Al was certain he wasn't the only one who thought: 'Just in case Ed can't come to our aid first.'

-0-

When the first thing Sig said to him was, "Where's Izumi?" the bottom of Ed's stomach fell out, and he had to rebalance himself on the edge of the counter.

"Shit," was the first thing he managed to get out in response, which was kind of shitty, so he quickly followed it up with, "We got separated. I'd hoped she and Al'd be back here already."

"They're not," Sig said, rather unnecessarily.

"Fuck," Ed breathed, looking down at his temporary. There was no way he could walk the whole way on it – well, he could, and he had, but Winry'd really give him hell, then, for the damage it'd do to the port – and the quicker he got back, the better. "Can we borrow a vehicle?" he asked, glancing up at Sig.

Sig stared back at him for a long moment, eyes narrowed it either thought or anger – it was hard to tell with him, some days – then gave a brief nod and ordered, "Go change," before brushing past him and out the door.

"You look like hell," Mason helpfully commented as Ed made his way around the counter and toward the back room and the entrance into the house.

"Fuck you," Ed returned, and sped up to escape Mason's laughter; he didn't really have the patience for the idiot's sense of humour right then.

-0-

"If that brother of yours doesn't show his arse up real soon, I'll kill him myself," Teacher snarled after yet another serving of gruel.

If she was threatening Ed bodily harm, she was clearly feeling much better, and Al allowed himself a silent sigh of relief. (Well, as much of a sigh as he could do, considering his lack of actual breath.) "Maybe he was sensible and went for help?" he suggested, because the lack of further visits from their captor had left him fairly certain that nothing less than a line of military blue was going to get him to let them out without another explosion.

Teacher scoffed, then said, "If he involves the military in this, I'll kill him."

Al sighed again, reminding himself that debating the merits of the military with her was a lesson in broken things. Still: "Knowing Brother, he's probably making friends with whoever set the explosion, and they're gonna be taking out a wall any minute, now."

"Now that sounds like your brother," Teacher agreed, and they both laughed a little.

Heavy in the air, was the question of what they'd do if he never came.

-0-

Okay, so, to be fair, Ed hadn't actually known the guy he'd been threatening was the bigwig of the town, but the fucker really shoulda known better than to go around insulting visitors without knowing who he was talking to. (Or something.)

He did manage to get some mostly straight answers out of the pub owner they'd bought dinner from on their way through town to their delivery, and lunch on the way back, right before the explosion: Apparently, there was a group of disenfranchised former members of the town who sometimes caused trouble, including at least one other explosion, and always aimed at the bigwig. Ed'd just got unlucky enough to be involved it that little back-and-forth. And, because the bigwig couldn't capture the real culprits, he'd just grabbed Al and Teacher and imprisoned them; whether or not they were still alive, the pub owner couldn't say for certain.

With that information, Ed glared down anyone who looked at him a little funny – Sig at his back may or may not have helped with that task – and made his way to the bigwig's ugly-arse manor without getting attacked.

They were barred at the manor, of course, and one of the two guards who had started toward Ed before the street blew up was the one to come down from the house. He tensed upon recognising Ed and reached into his jacket. Before he could fully draw his gun, though, Ed had yanked out his pocket watch, because he was in no shape for a fight, and he wasn't close enough to take the guy out before he got a shot off. "I'm Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist," he snarled, "and if I discover either my brother or Mrs Curtis is harmed, you'd better hope the military gets here in time to keep me from destroying this whole fucking town."

(Which he might actually do; his leg was gone, he'd lost fuck knew how many days floating along in the sewers, and he was about eighty percent certain at least one of the shrapnel wounds on his right leg was infected. He wanted his brother, and then he wanted to go back to the meat shop and sleep for, like, a month. Preferably before facing down Winry.)

The guard behind the gate, as well as the two who had stopped him and Sig, all noticeably paled. "Please give me a moment to speak to Lord Charles, sir," the man on the other side of the gate said, even as he traded his gun for a handkerchief, which he quickly dabbed along his forehead. "The young man in the armour and the women who were with you are both well, as far as I'm aware, but I will need Lord Charles' permission to let them free."

"Better run," Sig growled from behind him, and Ed didn't have to look to guess at how utterly terrifying his glare would be.

The guard behind the gate fled with an impressive amount of decorum, while the two guards standing on their side of the gate sort of shifted to either side, clearly hoping to be well out of their way, in case Ed or Sig decided they were done waiting.

(Ed felt that was probably a good life choice.)

Ed was just starting to get to the point where breaking down the gate was sounding like a reasonable response to being forced to wait, when the guard came back out of the house, Al and Teacher following. Teacher was squinting a bit, and leaning on Al – Sig tensed next to Ed, and he was honestly impressed he didn't rush the gate – but she didn't look hurt, just...sick. Like she was having one of her bad days.

And then she shouted, "What took you so long, you useless apprentice?!"

Ed made a show of rolling his eyes, though he suspected he was a bit too far for her to actually see, and didn't bother defending himself, not with so many people who didn't really need to know how bad off he was.

As soon as the gate was opened, Teacher ran to Sig, and Ed was saved from having to watch that disgusting display by Al running up to him and hugging him hard enough to ache. "I was so worried, Brother!" Al said in that tone that meant he'd be crying if he could.

Ed squeezed his eyes shut and hugged his brother back as well as he could. "Sorry," he whispered.

Al gave him one more hard squeeze – some days, Ed wasn't sure if it was meant as a punishment, or because Al just didn't realise he was squeezing too tight again – then let him go so he could straighten and actually look Ed over. Ed tried a crooked smile, but he didn't expect that would fool Al for a moment.

When they turned to leave, Al kept close to Ed's side, and he didn't doubt that, should he look back, he'd find a hand hovering just behind him. He also didn't need to look to know that Teacher would have noticed his limp and was probably staring at him, trying to spot other injuries without actually asking.

Ed let out a quiet breath and resigned himself to a future of being poked and prodded and probably tossed across the garden a couple of times; at least she and Al were both alive and well enough to drive him spare. In the end, that's all he really cared about.

.