Chapter One
The Story I Heard
The story I heard
Is that people are bored
And the measures you take
To wrestle with your lord
This is a story of equivalent exchanges.
This is the story of my discovery of the principle that everything has its price, and how it changed my life forever. It's the story of mad politicians, monsters with human faces, missing fathers, and the end of the world. It's also the story of SATs, college applications, misanthropic physics teachers… and the family I never quite appreciated and the friends I never knew I needed.
But most of all, it's the story of a girl named Winry Rockbell, and how, at the end of the day, an equivalent exchange of love can be both the most maddening and beautiful thing to exist in this entire goddamn world.
"Yo, Ed," says a quiet voice from the doorway, and although I know whom it belongs to, it sounds woefully unfamiliar in its seriousness.
Maes Hughes twists his long legs into a pretzel beside me on the chilly wooden floor and idly begins folding a pair of my socks. With quick, deft fingers, the pair has been perfectly wrapped into a fist-sized ball, and he gently places it atop my overflowing suitcase.
"Did you never learn to fold your clothes properly?" he asks lightly, pushing his square frames a little bit higher up his ski-slope nose.
"What's the point?" I retort roughly, slamming the case shut. Its zipper whines as I aggressively pull it through its neat rows of teeth. "I'm just going to throw it all in some closet in a few hours."
"Okay," he responds with a genial shrug. "Sounds good to me."
God, I hate when adults get like this, I ruminate as I flop down onto my back, staring up at the lazily spinning ceiling fan.
"What was that?"
Crap. I said that out loud, didn't I?
"N-nothing," I mumble in response.
"Look, Edward, it's okay to be upset–"
I'm on my feet in a flash, finally getting to fight the fight that I'd been waiting for.
"I don't need any of your bullshit, Hughes! You know I'm not upset! I'm angry!" I fist my hands into my jeans, and my prosthetic one, my stronger one, accidentally tears a hole in the fabric near the pocket.
"Whoever said that you can't be both?" asks Hughes in that fucking mild tone that I just can't stand. He unfolds his pretzel legs and stands up to meet me, and I'm caught a little off-guard by the fact that I'm really gaining on him in height.
I ignore the small swell of pride I feel, because none of that really matters anymore.
Or does it?
"Whoever said? I said! I say!" I snarl. He's really got me going now, and he knows it; his arms cross tightly over his sweater-covered chest, so different from the pressed dress shirts and suit jackets that I'm used to.
But he still doesn't say anything.
"I'm angry, goddammit!" I shout, voice rising higher than the spinning ceiling above us. "I'm angry because they're giving that fool a nice clean death instead of letting him rot in some dark prison like he deserves! I'm angry because I care more about what he did than he does! I'm angry because–"
" –there was nothing you could do about it," Hughes finishes simply, his voice still at room temperature. "And you're upset that you're feeling so helpless."
"What…" I trail off, and although I'm just as riled up before, a telltale drumming heartbeat pounding through my body, I'm genuinely curious about what the spectacled git has to say.
"Because for the first time in your life, you watched a life ruined by no fault of your own. For the first time in your life, you couldn't take the blame. And for the first time in your life, you couldn't keep someone safe." He doesn't move a fraction of an inch as he tells me all this, but his dark eyes are wide open and very, very kind.
I feel like my bones have turned to jelly. I sink back down to the floor, and just as he had before, he follows me there, once again pretzel-fying himself. I copy the gesture, my elbows on my knees and my head in my mismatched hands.
"But you're wrong," I say in a hoarse whisper. "You're wrong…"
"Okay. Why?"
Fucking tricky former schoolteacher, trying to get the fucking answers out of me without any effort of his own.
"I'm pretty bad at keeping people safe," I finally admit after some time, and I can look him in the eye without feeling any true madness. "Just ask my little brother."
"I think that if I did, he'd tell me the exact opposite," Hughes responds lightly.
Because I can't think of anything else to say, I roughly grab the edge of the suitcase and unzip it, digging through the pile of shirts, slacks, and everything else required to clothe an eighteen year-old boy about to set off for prep school. Finally, I unearth the perfect sock ball and turn it over in my hands; flesh and metal, metal and flesh.
Which one is real? I think.
Which one is the real me, now?
"Say, Hughes, what's the best way to fold a pair of boxers?"
"Do you have your passports? Your IDs?"
"Ye-es," I respond, a long yawn effectively cutting me in half. It's nearly midnight, but Grand Central Station is jam packed, full of people rushing off to places that I'll never know. Gracia Hughes is too busy acting the mother hen for me to look around at the constellation-covered ceiling or the statues of past Fuhrers crowned in gold leaf and waving at no one.
"What about the cash we gave you, is it still in that envelope–"
Alphonse comes up behind her with a giggling Elicia still attached to his leg like a sloth to a tree branch – not planning on letting go any time soon. He comfortingly pats Hughes's wife on the arm, towering over her with his stupid tall self.
"We're going to be okay, Mrs. Hughes. You don't need to worry yourself."
Just looking at Alphonse makes most people feel safe and sound. It's because of those big, tawny puppy-dog eyes, is what I say aloud. Thieves and murderers don't wear puppy dog eyes.
But my own silent truth is that he looks so much like our mom, and that's a good part of what's kept me sane over the years of lonely, lonely loneliness.
The driver leans warningly on the horn, then, and the ensuing puff of steam is enough to startle Elicia from her perch. She dashes off behind her father, practically climbing her way up his shirt in a remarkable display of dexterity for a three year-old, and especially one still awake at this time of night.
"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" she cries, tugging on his sleeve insistently. But for once in her short life, Hughes is paying more attention to someone else.
And that's us.
"Everything's going to be okay, Edward, Alphonse," he says, looking at me with an especially hard expression. "Don't worry yourselves too much, alright?"
"We'll see you at Christmas!" is his parting shot, fired at our backs as we carefully board the slowly rolling train. Its pace begins to speed up, gradual yet insistent, and the station is about to slip away and give way to the starry August sky.
"Take care!" Gracia echoes, one arm tight around her small daughter and the other steadfast around her husband's waist. "Be safe!"
"Christmas!" Elicia squeaks.
I need them to know that I'll at least try, so I lean out the window next to our seats like a hypocrite and shout back, "We will! We will!" Al seconds these sentiments, waving like a madman from his place next to me.
The Hughes family disappears from my vision, so I settle down and get ready for some nice shut-eye.
Al hums along to his iPod as the night train rockets through the city, buildings growing sparser and sparser and tree cover thickening. "Express to Resembool County," the conductor tells me reassuringly, and that's the last thing I hear before I finally drift away, Hughes's promise still at the forefront of my mind.
And the face of a girl that I absolutely need to see once again, because I'm beginning to forget it.
Author's note: This is the counterpart to "Skinny Love," coming from Edward Elric's POV. I'll try to update it concurrently with "Skinny Love," although I make no such promises.