Author's Notes
I'm going to take a lot of artistic license with this story. I won't change too many of the 'series' events, but post-series there are no guaruntees. This is based on a sort of amalgamation of the first anime and FMA: Brotherhood, so if you've watched one but not the other, there might be bits that make less sense.
Reviews and constructive criticism are always appreciated.
Disclaimer: I neither own, nor claim to own.
Enjoy!
Breathing.
Weather like this makes him miss Resembool.
The air inside the apartment is damp and sticky. It sits in his lungs, as heavy as treacle. Central is a heat trap, with its narrow avenues and tall buildings absorbing all the heat of the mid-August sun, the bricks blood-black and sweltering. In this kind of heat, everything becomes hazy, like looking at the world through old warped glass; faces and shapes twist and morph, colours blur. Even now, several hours after the sun has made its slow descent and disappeared beneath the earth, it is still disgustingly hot. The walls leak their humidity, the whole city seeming to steam under the smoky yellow glow of the street lamps.
It reminds him of nights in his childhood when he would hide his head under the duvet in the cloying humidity of his own breathing, how he would surface from the dark cavern of bedsheets, relishing the coolness of the room around him.
He wants to surface. He wants to breathe.
Edward lies on his back, trying not to move. His skin prickles uncomfortably. A sultry breeze blows in through the window, making the thin curtains quiver. Shadows move slowly around the room, creeping around the bed and eying him maliciously. He wishes now that he had installed one of those ceiling fans with the wooden blades that swoosh round like a windmill. But when they moved in it was the dead of winter and bitterly cold; his main concern was keeping the place warm enough to stop the water pipes freezing and exploding in the night. It didn't occur to him that their chilly, uncomfortable home could ever be a hothouse.
He longs for green grass and rolling hills, the stiff breeze of the valley as the cool mountain air rolled down onto their village.
From the other side of the room, he hears Alphonse's slow, peaceful breathing.
He cannot understand it, Alphonse's ability to sleep anywhere, in any climate or condition. The heat seems to have no effect on him. While Edward chafes and sweats, his armpit swampy and his foot swollen, flushed in the face and fed-up, Alphonse seems to produce his own mini-climate of cool and calm.
Sometimes, Edward hates his little brother.
It occurs to him that he could transmute something to help him cool down, perhaps turn the warm and stagnant water that runs from ther taps into ice, but the effort that it would take to get up and do so is simply not worth what meagre relief it could bring him. Even thinking feels like an unnecessary exertion.
Far better to simply keep still and do nothing.
This is the third apartment they've lived in, and by far the worst.
The cost of creating a democracy is far greater than its immediate rewards. Inflation has been climbing steadily and stealthily for the past few years.
"We must make it through the darkest part of the night before we see the morning sun."
Edward hates to admit it, but Mustang gives a rousing performance every time he gets up in front of an audience. The man's natural sang-froid and faultless charm are propelling him fast towards near-godly status amongst the populace. Also, his sly pragmatism.
"If the cost of living has to go up, then the price we pay in return has to be tenfold," Mustang once told him. "And let it never be said that I am not a man of my word."
Edward sighs and rolls onto his front, his right arm flopping over the edge of the bed, metal fingers hitting the floor boards with a soft clunk. Mustang is still an arrogant bastard, but he is an arrogant bastard with a master plan and a lot of popular backing. People like the idea of being able to choose their leaders.
He lets his mind wander.
He goes back to that day, nearly ten years ago now. The day the hole opened up in the world and he was catapulted back through to his home. The furore, the confusion, his vomit splattering a pair of shiny boots as his stomach finally caught up with him on its journey through the gate.
"Fullmetal."
He remembers looking up into the Colonel's single eye, the strange void of the black patch that covered half of his face. He remembers brilliant sunlight and the smell of smoke in his nostrils.
"You're just in time. We're in the middle of a coup."
He remembers the distant ack-ack-ack of gunfire in the Central headquarters as he followed Mustang down familiar corridors. Soldiers he recognised, uniformed and tenacious, grinning at the Colonel, saluting, whooping and cheering.
It seemed more like a party than a coup.
He remembers being led into an office; the same office that he had spent so much time in years before, hauled in for damage to public property, for going AWOL for weeks on end, for leads, for news. For an argument. It looked just like it always had.
"Sit down, Fullmetal," Mustang had said. "You've missed a lot."
In his two absent years, the military had descended into chaos. Bradley was dead, destroyed in the same cataclysm that had sent Edward himself spinning through dimensions into Europe. For two years, the army had been split down the middle; on one side, Mustang, his supporters in Central and the East and General Armstrong, still full of piss and vinegar, and her Briggs' soldiers; on the other, what remained of the old guard, Bradley's loyalists, who continued to hold onto the seat of power by the skin of their teeth.
For two years, these two warring factions had quietly and venomously hounded one another; Mustang had been almost-assassinated no less than nine times. And Amestris had suffered for it.
"We were so busy tearing each other apart that we didn't even realise we were losing control," Mustang told him in the quiet of the office. Enveloped within the thick walls and closed doors of their old battleground, Mustang became confidential. For the first time, he spoke to Edward as an equal.
"There was looting, widespread violence. The army was so wrapped up in itself that we stopped trying to protect our people. There were so many deaths. Vigilantes started going out, hunting down criminals, holding impromptu executions."
Edward remembers the soft evening sunlight spilling in through the wide windows. He remembers the smell of boot polish and starch, the creak of the leather couch beneath him as he shifted his weight. The Colonel faced him from across the room, leaning against his desk, his single eye fixing Edward with an unreadable stare.
"People lost hope," he said. "They lost faith in us. And so we decided it was time to act. Enough is enough."
And so here he was, smack-bang in the middle of an uprising, sitting in an office in the middle of a city being torn apart by the military in the name of peace and stability.
"We're going to start over. We're going to rebuild. It's going to be different this time. Drastically so," Mustang pushed himself off from the table and stood up straight. He took two steps across the room to stand directly in front of Edward. And he held out his hand.
"Are you coming with me?"
The flash of white outside his window could be lightning. For a split second, everything goes deathly quiet, the world holding its breath.
The explosion is deafening.
Edward leaps out of bed and crashes to the floor as the whole building vibrates around him. Books fly off the shelf and fall thunderously to earth, pages rippling like the wings of startled birds. The sky is yellow, then red, then yellow again and then everything goes grey as a mushroom cloud of black smoke fills the air. The windows rattle on their hinges. The door bangs open and splinters against the wall.
Alphonse is on his feet in an instant, hauling Edward upright. Together they fly out of their front door and down the four flights of stairs that take them to the street. Edward forgets that he is clad only in his underwear. Already their narrow street is filled with people, everyone running outside, terrified, excited, armed; in ten years of danger and unrest, the natural reaction has become violence. No one wants to be a victim.
Ash begins to fall on them, covering everything in a fine film of black that turns everyone into a spectre. The breath of the city turns rancid, reeking of smoke and flame.
In the distance, they hear the wail of sirens.
Nearby, someone is screaming.