Disclaimer: I do not own the manga Fullmetal Alchemist or the poem Nothing Gold Can Stay.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
At first glance, Edward Elric looked weak. He was short and skinny for his age. His face was a bit girly and with those big eyes and blond braided hair he could sometimes pass for a twelve year old milkmaid. Ed appeared as easy to break as the gold his eyes resembled. But if you looked in those eyes, you wouldn't see gold, but steel, as hard and cold as his automail limbs.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Though technically Ed was still a child, he had lost his innocence a long time ago. He had watched it crumble away as tragedy after tragedy was inflicted on his life. Hohenheim abandoning them. Mother falling ill and dying. Izumi's harsh teaching. The failed transmutation. The Gate's toll. And Ed signed away the last of his childhood in becoming a State Alchemist, stripping it away to reveal the Fullmetal Alchemist, a jaded, cynical adult, older than the oldest man.
Then leaf goes down to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
Ed never stopped looking for a way to give Al back his body, even when they were knee deep in things nobody should have to face. Whether it was homunculi, State Alchemist killers, or government conspiracies that had been in play since before Amestris even existed, Ed muddled through, never looking back, for fear of what he'd see. Which was why he didn't hesitate as he slammed his now matching hands onto the transmutation circle. Father was dead and Amestris was saved, so now there was only one thing left to do. Al needed his body back, and Ed would get it to him, no matter what the price.
So dawn goes down to day.
The night faded into day as Al sat vigil by the place where Ed's transmutation had taken place. It had been three days since Ed had disappeared into the blazing alchemical light, and never returned. Al shivered in his new-old body, trying not to cry. It made sense that Ed had been taken. A body for a body, equivalent exchange. But this knowledge didn't keep him from bursting into tears when Hawkeye came to bring him back inside. Because in the end Edward Elric wasn't the steel he had been so famous for. He had been gold. Weak, fragile, breakable gold.
Nothing gold can stay.
