Author's Notes: This was written for Mikkeneko and set in the FaultyWish universe as established in the lj community of the same name. If you haven't read the other fics in this continuity, I recommend them highly, but here's the short, short version to let you know what's going on. -grin-

The premise behind Wish: In a dream, the Gate tricks Al into agreeing that the world might have been better off if his brother never existed. It gives the boy what he asks for: Ed is taken, for many, many years within the Gate, where he suffers incredibly both physically and mentally. Then one night, an Al who is 28 and a doctor, married to Winry, who never had an older brother and never studied alchemy, dreams of a boy he doesn't know in terrible pain... and saves him. Now Ed is living in the world as it would have existed without him, struggling to adjust and heal.

Set: After Ed has recovered somewhat and had his automail leg reinstalled; before Hohenheim comes to visit.

First Steps
The sky was thick with clouds on the day that he left; they hung low in the sky, black tinged purple, stretching away to the horizon like a roiling mass of fresh-bruised skin.

Al and Winry had argued again the night before, sharp words drifting through walls too thin to hide them, and he'd closed his eyes against the sound, trying hard not to think that it would never get any better- not as long as he gave them something to argue about.

When sleep had come, it had been uneasy, a fitful affair beset by guilt and heralded by the half-muffled screams of the two people he loved most. And when Ed woke to the still of an empty house, every old wound aching with the onset of rain, his first thought had been of leaving.

The boy had known, of course, that it would have to happen sometime, had been waiting quietly, building up his strength so that he could make his way to Central. The only thing surprising was how easy it'd been to set the plan in motion.

Ed had folded down the blankets on the bed before turning his attention to the stairs- an awkward attempt, still a bit strange, because the time without a leg had left walking nothing more than the relic of a dimly-remembered life.

He'd found paper in the kitchen, ignored the pain in his fingers from a break long healed as he'd lifted the pen to scratch a note.

In the cupboard, there was bread- thick and brown and flaky, a whole loaf, and he nearly hesitated to take so much. But Riesenburg was far from anywhere, and starving on the road would help nothing at all, and in the end the boy's logic had triumphed over the raw ache of guilt.

The only thing Ed hadn't meant to bring was the jacket, not even considered until he'd caught sight of it with his hand already on the doorknob.

And the chill was bitter; through the open doorframe, lingering on the edge of a house he knew so intimately, the boy had seen that the tree branches tossed fitfully with the force of the wind.

He'd paused a moment, eyes lingering along the length of it.

"Brother," a voice had chided from the depths of memory, and he'd recalled with a painful intensity the feel of small, warm hands as they'd reached around his shoulders to pull closed a coat much too large on Edward's eight-year-old frame. "It's not just stubborn to go out before a storm. It's stupid." Those bronze eyes had been exasperated and stern in nearly equal parts, but the smile on Alphonse's lips had been fond. "So if you're going to be an idiot, at least dress for it."

Never, Ed's mind had whispered quietly. Never happened.

But he took the jacket anyway, snatched it with shaking fingers from the small table near the open door- and when his throat grew tight as he fought to work his single arm into the sleeve, he reminded himself roughly that this is the way Alphonse had wanted it.

The air was still heavy with unshed rain when the first night came, creeping into the world with a chill deeper than the day had wrought. There was no sun to set- not through the mass of clouds that shifted uneasily overhead- but the sky inched darker all the same, a fading out that came only by degrees.

Winry should be getting home now, the boy realized dimly as he stumbled his way from the path to search out a place to settle down for the night. She'd be oil-stained and unkempt, tired from the day's work; when he'd cared enough to pay attention to the world around him, he'd been able to hear her, footsteps echoing up through the floorboards as she paused in the doorway, lingering before making her way to the kitchen.

Even now, she might be catching her first glimpse of the counter, might be bending down to peer at the scrap of paper he'd left folded there.

And she would be angry- concerned as well, of course, but furious first and foremost. Because this Winry was close enough to his Winry that he knew precisely the way her eyes would widen in surprise and then narrow with displeasure.

But the feeling would pass, Ed told himself, fighting down the sting of regret that accompanied the thought. The boy was, after all, just a passing stranger in their lives, one of the many people that his brother had been able to save in this world he'd never ruined.

And when Al got home much later tonight, likely exhausted from a long day tending to those that needed him- when his wife showed him the note and told him the patient they'd both spent so much time and energy on had gone- Ed wasn't sure that he wanted to know what would happen.

Because a part of him was still insisting that he knew every shade of emotion that would creep into his brother's eyes- that worry and hurt would make the expression quietly wounded. And he was so very afraid to think that it might be a look he recognized, something he knew from the years they'd never spent together, growing up.

It had happened before: snatches of memories caught in the comforting tones of Al's voice, in the warmth behind his smile. And every time, Ed had forced himself to reign in the response, to bite down the words and the feelings and the reaction that came from being with a person that a part of him wanted nothing more than to trust.

Because the other part was quite insistent indeed- and it, at least, couldn't seem to stop reminding him exactly how uncertain a thing trust really was.

The rain came later that night, pulling him from the black-clawed hands of nightmares and back into reality.

It was the sound that woke him, the steady pounding of droplets on the leaves of the tree spread out above him, and for a moment, Ed groped toward waking, uncertain where he was or what the noise might be. As always, there was that first moment of sickening terror as his mind struggled its way from sleep, that not-quite-aware moment when expectation and actuality refused to connect.

Because there should be more pain than this, a small voice contended very quietly; there should be hungry, reaching fingers and cruel, watchful eyes, and all around the endless, incomprehensible vastness of the Gate. That was the way things should be, and there was no place for the feel of moss damp beneath his palm or the heavy scent of rain in the air.

And then the first of the tiny drops of water was finding its way through the leafy barrier, was landing on Ed's forehead and tracing a wet, icy trail down the side of his face as it slid.

The cold came like a shock of realization, a tiny point amidst the deeper chill that pressed in on all sides, and he shivered in response despite himself. Recollection sparked a moment later, with the heavy drops that began to strike the ground around him: words that had cut him deeper than any he'd imagined, a world in which he'd never been, an endless bank of thick, threatening storm clouds.

The rain began in force, then, the individual sound of each falling droplet lost amidst the roaring hiss that descended over the night. It wasn't long before he was soaked through, Al's thick jacket drenched enough to leave him shivering with the chill of wet fabric pressed against his skin, but even as the boy pulled his arm more tightly about him in an effort to stave off the cold, a part of him was grateful.

Because the darkness of the world out beyond the shelter of his tree, wild though the storm raged, was nothing compared to the darkness of the Gate.

By noon the following day, Ed had finished the bread, stopping to huddle beside the path while he downed the last few bites.

Like his clothes, the loaf had quickly become sodden, but not even the unpleasantly moist quality was enough to keep him from bolting the meal. He'd been unreasonably hungry for most of the morning, after all- suspected, as he licked the last of the crumbs from his fingers, that it was his body's way of telling him that it didn't appreciate the long hours of travel when it had yet to fully recover from a period of prolonged malnutrition.

But there was nothing to be done about it- not even when he began to regret, faintly, not having taken more.

Because the next town out of Riesenburg would take days to reach on foot, and there was little option but to keep going.

If it would just stop raining, Ed attempted to convince himself, things wouldn't be so bad. He was used to traveling, after all- or had been, once upon a time.

If he thought about it deeply enough, he remembered the way a train seat felt under his back as he drifted off to sleep, the way the countryside would look streaking past the window. Somewhere deep down, he knew the feel of a warm breeze on his face and the packed dirt of a road not waterlogged beneath his feet. And tangled up with it all was his brother's voice, gently reproving, as the younger boy pointed out that arriving a day early wouldn't do any good if Ed exhausted himself getting there.

It was different now, of course- because everything in this world was different, and it was to be suspected that even something so familiar had changed.

The little pleasures of travel seemed to have disappeared; each step that he took was painful, automail ungainly and real ankle throbbing with the hurt of broken bone long healed. The boy hadn't been warm since the moment he'd stepped from the door of the Rockbell house, hadn't been dry since wakening beneath the branches of his improvised shelter, and his stomach had settled upon a twisting, uneasy sort of ache, intent upon reminding him that he ought to feed it.

But perhaps, if he concentrated on his destination- looked forward as he had so often in the past- he could ignore the rain and the ache and the hunger, focus on the future as he had so often in years now gone.

And so he thought not of Central- because he'd twisted his mind into knots already, wondering what precisely he intended to do when he arrived there- but rather of the part of his journey that would follow more immediately. Of the first town out of Riesenburg, perhaps a few days by foot, where he could venture to the train station without knowing that it was the first place Al and Winry would check for him, were they to look.

From there, perhaps, he could tuck himself away into a boxcar, lose himself amidst a small maze of crates and stay out of the rain for the rest of the trip to the city. And then, Ed promised himself, with the not-quite-familiar-any-longer rattle of a moving train beneath him, he would turn his mind to what lay in store.

The train station was damp with the weather, air clammy and roof sheeting a steady runoff of rain. What few would-be passengers clustered about seemed huddled in on themselves, intent less upon the surrounding world than making sure to keep their collars drawn up high enough to keep the chill at bay.

And for the first time, Ed was grateful of the weather- because opportunity presented itself as the station workers lingered beneath the overhang, putting off the loading that would doubtless leave them drenched. And when the boy moved too quickly for his unaccustomed new limb, nearly tripping himself as the automail leg caught on the step up to the boxcar, it was the rain that saved him again, protection from the watchful gaze of one of the passengers coming in the form of a woman who stood in the way, absently shaking out her umbrella.

He listened in silence to the sound of voices lowered in complaint as hands hoisted crates aboard, remained crouched motionless in the corner until the door slid shut, eclipsing him with darkness.

The train jerked into motion some five minutes, the steady rattle of wheels on tracks dimmed somewhat by the pounding of rain on the roof.

And when Ed settled down to plan the near-impossible, lulled by the rhythmic clatter of a sound he'd heard so many times before, he was overwhelmed by a nostalgia so intense that he very nearly expected to hear a voice drift to him out of the darkness.

"Brother," it would chide, amused and exasperated in equal parts, "You never think things through. How can we play cards when there isn't any light?"

But that world wasn't real any longer, and he understood that- knew it with a profound, aching sadness that would never really leave. The impression remained, though, deep enough to cut, the sense that Al should have been there to say it, that he should've laughed in response and offered to transmute a hole in the side of the car, big enough to let the light in.

"Don't worry, Al," he answered, voice lost under the combined roar of wheels and rain. "I'll think of something."

And the train rushed on toward Central.

owari--