Fullmetal Alchemist belongs to its creator. I'm using it without permission and for no profit.
Hee. What a dumb little run-of-the-mill fic this is. Ah, well, nothing for it. I wrote during art lecture.
Alphonse dreams. I know he does. I watch him zone out and forget the thread of conversation. He's supposed to be the one who reminds me of myself. He's shirking. The lights in his eyes dim and he won't turn his head – his helm? – his head or anything but he'll be gone, somewhere else. He never says anything, never makes the sound of breathing. When he's paying attention, he'll make that sound for me and everyone else around him. The deeper he gets into it, though, the easier it is to mistake him for dead.
This is my brother. It shows in the moments he chides or corrects, the times he laughs at me for being stupid and the moments of pure joy when we actually take a step forward instead of being shoved back with our heels in the mud.
His voice won't ring metallic but warm and alive. At least to me.
He's my brother, no matter what anybody else tries to tell us. No matter what he thinks. Mine. It's impossible not to know it when I'm with him, even when I can see my reflection in his breastplate.
This is the kid that shoved a giant spider in my pants and treed himself trying to pick apples in the fall. I don't regret letting him stay up there. Especially after the spider thing. This is the kid who'd climb into bed with mom when we had lightning storms. I know because I was there too. This is Al, my brother, the only person whose head I could always reach to grind dirt into when we wrestled.
I can tell it's him because his voice is the same as it ever was, straight out of my memories through a tin tube. High and bright and friendly, even when mine grew rough and deep. It's hard enough to listen to myself when he chimes in. The echoes are worse.
When Al zones on me, he completely drops out of himself. I figure usually he's thinking about the same thing I am. The ever-present goal that we drag with us everywhere while we look for it. It'd be poetic if it weren't so hollow whenever I let myself think too much on it. Those times, Al catches me and brings me back. He knows what's always on my mind and teases me for it sometimes. I don't mind that much. He takes me out of myself and for a moment we can laugh at how stupid we are, just the two of us. It's not funny around anyone else, and too often it's not funny around Al either.
He doesn't turn from me because the clanking would wake him up, but he stares straight ahead – I can tell his eyes are on me, it's just something I know – and he is gone. I want to talk him back to me but I hesitate. Stop. Can't even lift my hand or breathe or, for the sake of something, throw the fork so he clangs and wakes up.
I wonder, though, what he thinks about. I think he needs it. He's just a normal kid inside that armor and if he doesn't sleep, if he can't shut off his brain, he's got to have these moments of reverie or maybe he'll break under the pressure. We're under a lot of pressure. Just because his spine is iron doesn't mean he doesn't feel it. Just because I try to take as much as I can doesn't mean our load isn't shared. I know it's there, even without the frown lines he can't have.
So I don't shake him out of it. Even when it looks like he might be dead. Gone. He comes back when he has to and he's fine for days. I won't press, half out of respect and half because, if I ask, he's given license to ask me back. I know he stays with me while I sleep, playing at laying in bed. I know he wonders about me, too, knows I can't be as one-track-minded as we pretend. He refuses to be the first to ask, though, and I will leave him to his own thoughts during the day. If I can shut him out when I shut my eyes, I've got to do all I can for the boy who can't blink.