Annoying and Persistent
By: Zora
Written for the "Shadows contest" at LJ.
Author's Notes: My two muses are currently serving time in jail for excessive gambling and I don't have enough money to bail them out. They are only sometimes able to send their ideas to me via trained African swallow. I'm very sorry.
--
"Edward! You get back here right now! You better not be fighting! You're in trouble!"
Edward and his brother, Alphonse, sighed, and looked away from the shadow of their mother next to them. It was at times like these that they regretted having tried human transmutation, especially as they turned around, annoyed, only to see her in this state. Then it came rushing back, a tornado of guilt that blew them away. They couldn't look at her.
"Mom… we'll be fine. We'll be back soon, we just have to check up on this. It could help us with the Philosopher's Stone! Sorry, you can't come with us." Alphonse's pleading voice was laced with guilt.
"But—"
"Remember what happened last time?" Ed questioned, an eyebrow raising.
--
Edward, Alphonse, and Trisha were running through a tunnel, having mistakenly stumbled upon a group of rogue alchemists while attempting to find the train station. Now, the alchemists were firing at them; their projectiles always missed, showing their inexperience.
Trisha yelled, "Watch out! Watch out! Oh, Ed, stop! You're getting grounded after this! Al, watch out for that fireball!"
Edward resisted the urge to run away from the shadow of his mother behind him, partly angry, and partly worried for her safety, even though she couldn't really be hurt. He felt the need to protect her; it was the least he could do after having messed everything up in the first place.. "Mom, how can you even see what's going on? You're on the ground…"
Trisha's shadow slithered up the wall. "I'm watching you! Hey, you ruffians! Get away from my sons!"
--
Yes, a disaster.
--
The sky was a painter's easel, with soft colors—purple, red, and yellow—spattered over the blue of day, when Edward and Alphonse made their way out of their cheap hotel room Edward gingerly avoided stepping on the glass beer bottle that had shattered over the floor of the lobby, and he and Alphonse both pushed at the doors until they reluctantly opened with a piercing shriek. As they stepped outside, the heat of the desert hit them like a slap in the face. While they were walking, tired-looking people coming home from work gave them suspicious glances, and the drunks, swaying and holding onto buildings, openly stared at the armor that was Alphonse.
"Why'r ya wearing armor for, sonny? There's no war 'round these parts, y'know," one man said, chuckling at his own joke.
"Of all the places, why did our lead have to live here?" Edward moaned. "I just hope—"
"Honeys, you forgot your coats! It's chilly at night in the desert!"
"—that Mom doesn't follow us," Edward said with a groan at the sound of his mother's voice.
Their mother's shadow ran up beside them. Now the townspeople were really staring. It's not everyday you see a talking, walking, independent shadow, especially one that constantly nags two poor, innocent, defenseless boys.
Alphonse tried to calm down his outraged brother, his hysterical mother, and the frightened bystanders. He first tried to calm the random people, but in the midst of the chaos that had begun to ensure, his helmet was knocked off, bringing fresh screams from everyone nearby as they glimpsed nothing inside the armor.
Edward, Alphonse, and Trisha ran down the street and slipped into a nearby alley, which, with the coming of night, had already turned into a sinister, shadowy mass. Edward and Alphonse, always gifted with active imaginations, believed they could she the shadows writhing in front of them, reminding them of that day. The shadows, Edward thought idly, could be his mother, or even Alphonse, his body being sucked through the Gate and being grabbed by hundreds of hands, hundreds of eyes…
"Brother, where's this man's house we're looking for?" Alphonse asked, hoping to get his mind off of the ghastly images of that day.
"12 Elm Street," Edward said, looking up at the street sign a few feet away. "We're on New Bark Avenue. Let's go and get out this town as quickly as possible."
--
November 19th, 5 years earlier
"No, Al!" Edward cried, his body falling forward onto the floor. His hands pounded the floor. "No, not Al, not him too…" He almost tipped over; with a strange sense of foreboding, he twisted around to see his stump of a leg, and the warm blood now lapping at his hands. He screamed a desperate cry. "Make it stop, make it go away…"
"Edward?"
Edward's head shot up. He knew that voice! "Mom?" he asked tentatively, hopefully. He couldn't see anything moving beyond the light of the candle, as the rest of the room was shrouded in shadows.
A new shadow came into the light of the candle, a familiar shape. "Ed? Oh, Ed!"
"Mom, you're… alive." Edward paused in disbelief. "But where's your body? Something must have gone wrong…. We have to get Al back! Mom, stay back for a while, okay? I have to go get Al!" He stood up unsteadily, and leaned against a suit of armor. He didn't look at his mother even as she called his name.
"We've committed a sin, and we'll find a way to get you back to normal," he said. When his mother didn't respond, he turned around, and forced himself to look at her. "I'm sorry."
Then, as an afterthought, "Teacher's going to kill us."
That's how their mom—only a shadow of her former self, literally—had come "back to life." She had her soul, but she no longer had her body. However, while she might be "Trisha, Ed and Al's mother", she had changed—had lost the endearing qualities that Edward and Alphonse had remembered fondly from their childhood days. And she was driving everyone crazy.
--
They walked past Goldenrod Street and into a quieter part of town. The houses here were larger and cleaner, and there was a sense of peace and honestly enshrouding the area. They were looking for a man who was rumored to have done extensive research on the Philosopher's Stone; he had settled here after the Ishval Rebellion.
"Dearies, now that we have some free time, I demand an explanation. You couldn't explain to me while we were on the train here because Ed was asleep." Trisha's voice rose. "Why did you attempt to bring me back to life? You should know better than to try something like that!" She writhed on the hard packed dirt that made up the roadway for the town. Her voice, normally sounding like a human, had turned into a screeching, high-pitched tone. Edward and Alphonse wanted to put their hands over their ears, but they couldn't. They didn't deserve to.
"We had to try! We couldn't just leave you like that. We wanted you back." The brothers tried to explain.
"And now look! Fighting everything and everyone in sight, being part of the military—oh, my little boys are all grown up!" Trisha burst into tears, her mood changing instantly.
Edward and Alphonse looked at each other. An unspoken conversation took place.
"Why, oh why, did we ever want this again?"
"It's not all bad. She's just trying to keep us safe."
"I'd forgotten how much restraint we were under as kids, and how much freedom we had before this…"
"Brother!"
"I know. I know. We shouldn't be complaining."
Elsewhere, a seedy looking man was peering out his window as a bickering family neared his house: a young blonde man, a large suit of armor, and a shadow. He pressed a red stone into a jar, and then hurriedly made up a sign and tacked it up against the door. He laughed maniacally.
"Mom." The voice that Edward used was determined. "Don't worry. When we get the Philosopher's Stone, the first thing we're going to do is to restore you to your body. Or, Al. I mean – both of you!"
They looked up the address of the man one more time, and the looked up. To their surprise, they were already facing the house they were looking for, a two-story, red brick house with a large backyard. In front of the house, they saw flowers—of every color— in bloom. Bunches of daffodils lined the stone pathway that led past the square, black mailbox and up to the white double doors. They could hear a dog barking from somewhere within the house.
They walked up to the front door, and saw a sign posted there. They had to squint to read it, as the last rays of the sun threw shadows over the hastily written words. It read: "Moved to New Location. Look me up in Crete, with my new store 'Ye Olde Alchymye!'"
Edward and Alphonse groaned, and then looked at each other in dismay. "What will we do now, Brother?" Alphonse asked.
Edward shrugged. "I guess we'll go back to Central and find someone else who can help us," he said. The sun had set fully now, and the world was bathed in shadows. They could no longer see Trisha, but they could still hear her.