DISCLAIMER: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist. SquareEnix and the author do. I just took Alphonse out for a bit to play. I'll put him back later, honest!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Just a bit of introspective musing on Edward's part. No spoilers for the series.
What If?
Sometimes, when he got really bored, he played the "what if" game.
What if Father hadn't left and Mother hadn't died?
What if they'd never gone for training with Sensei?
What if they'd never decided to transmute Mother?
When he got to the part about "what if Al had died instead of being bound to a suit of armour?" he usually stopped. He didn't even want to imagine what that would be like.
But sometimes, he liked to dream about what life would be like if Mother was still alive. They'd still be living in their little house in Rizenpol, with the library full of alchemy books and the rest of the rooms full of light and laughter and fun. He and Al would spend their days either playing with Winry or roaming the countryside, coming home only when Mother's light flashed in the upstairs window.
He and Al would tease Winry until she threw a wrench at them, and they'd run away, laughing, her chasing them across the fields. Mother would be there when they finally came home, her face full of love and warmth, and she'd hug them and kiss away any of the hurts that young boys tended to accumulate over the course of the day. And then she'd chase them upstairs to wash up for dinner, sending them off with a kiss and the smile that was reserved just for them.
When he thought about his mother's smile, that was usually the time Edward's eyes would tear up but he always fought them back. He couldn't cry. He had to be strong for Al's sake. His little brother was counting on him.
Some days, Edward couldn't see anything of the little brother he'd known in the huge armour body clanking alongside him. Edward often played with the idea of how life would be different if Al still had his own body, but that thought too made him want to cry. So he eventually stopped thinking about it.
On the days when Mustang drove him crazy (which was 9 days out of 10), Edward imagined what would happen if Mustang had never come into their lives. At first, the thought would make him smile but one look at Al would bring him crashing back down to earth. Mustang may have been the biggest bastard walking, but he had kept Al's secret, had even helped them hide it. And, much as Edward hated to admit it, he'd protected them when he could.
Because of Mustang, Edward and Al had met so many other people – Hughes and Glacia (and later Alicia), Lieutenant Hawkeye and the rest of Mustang's staff, Maria Ross, Colonel Armstrong... the list seemed endless.
The "what if" game didn't seem to much fun then, when he realized just what he would be missing if he'd never met these people. So Edward would think back over the events of his young life, and, in the end, would decide that "what if" didn't matter.
In the end, all that really mattered to him was what he had.