Hey, this is my first Fullmetal Alchemist fic so I hope it's okay also I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist which could be considered a good thing.
Ideas, they are what shaped the world; continued to change the world even once the source of them was gone. The idea of "Equivalent Exchange," one that was firmly integrated in the minds and lives of Alchemists and had even extended to the people who didn't use the science them selves, lives on even though the man Nicholas Flamel was long gone. See a person is fragile, a person will eventually die and then so will the people that knew them until they are lost in the faded, worn out pages of history books and that's if they're lucky.
But an idea cannot replace a person; it cannot replace the man I love. He is gone now, gone not dead, never dead because so long as I believed he was alive I could be free to live myself. In my times of darkness, waiting for him at a desolate outpost near the boarders of Drachma I had thought he was dead. It was there I realised my feelings and they only came to bring me regret. My men came and visited me even though they no longer were my men as I had given it up when I became just another enlisted man. Those men may or may not have known about my feelings but the one who never came I was certain they knew. I could never bring myself to blame Hawkeye for not wanting to see me in that state, even my younger self would scoff at me.
Even though the certainty of his death was high there still was a tiny flame, deep in the depths of my being, of hope. Alphonse helped fuel that pitiful spark, the spark that kept me breathing, eating, living if it could be called that. Alphonse seemed sure that he could get his brother back and sure that his brother wasn't dead. Even when I thought he was dead I never summoned for more than a moment the thought of attempting a Human Transmutation, life is a current, a flow that to go against the price is far too high. He was a living embodiment of that price as was Alphonse even once his body was returned.
For two, painfully slow years I stayed at my post, even refusing leave when it was gifted to me. I would like to say that I didn't give up hope on Alphonse but that would be a lie yet that was proven wrong when the storm came. A storm, it wasn't a strong enough word to describe it but it's the only thing I could compare it to. That tiny flame ignited into something more that day and something inside told me to go back, it didn't quite make sense but life in general never does but it told be to go back to Central, back to the place I had abandoned and I wasn't able to ignore it.
When I arrived my old life fell back into place, I was able to use alchemy again, something that I couldn't bring myself to do when he disappeared. Then he appeared, older, more mature, more beautiful if possible and yet very much the same. I wasn't sure exactly how I felt when I saw him, it was like a maelstrom of so many different emotions, powerful and grand I could barely keep in place the façade that kept my true inner self from the world.
I felt empowered and use the strength he brought me without even realising it to help him defend against the other world evasion. I thought that he was back for good, I thought that I'd have more time in order to finally tell him of my love, that maybe I could convince him to never leave me again. Those were only fool's thoughts, not one of a man hardened by life and I should have known that they would be in vain.
That moment when he jumped onto that airship it dawn on me that he was leaving, at that moment I should have pulled him straight into my arms where he belonged and kissed him senseless but then that would have only made it harder to left him go. I wasn't sure I if I completely regretted not acting and I know deep down I shouldn't. Instead I let Alphonse go, destroying the only possibility of him returning again and then destroyed the only thing linking our world to his new one. I did what he wanted me to do and what I needed to do.
When it was all finalised I couldn't bring myself to go back as just another enlisted man, I couldn't go back to the pitiful excuse I had for life. See he gave me something; he gave me an idea which may not have been originally his but it was one he lived by. It was an idea to protect those who couldn't do it themselves even if it put me into disrepute. I went back to my job, "Alchemists be thou for the people," and though I would never attempt to steal his unofficial title of "Hero of the People" I would try to live like that and be there for those who he could not.
He left me with that idea, or more rekindled and altered my own from after the Ishbal incident. But an idea cannot replace the man I love, the Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric because you cannot hold an idea, kiss it, love it. It may have been an idea that revived me from my state of melancholy but it was a man that gave it to me, a man that I would never forget, a man that would be forever in my heart.
Thanks for reading that, I hope you enjoyed it. It was partially inspired by V for Vendetta (a good movie) and yeah…
...Hope everyone has a good day.
Please review.