Hello, everyone! It has been a while since I have brought fic, but I come bearing some now.
It was written for kalliel on LiveJournal in the FMA Exchange fic competition. I won first place! 49.7/50 FTW:D The judges were incredibly sweet in their responses. (I thought that the fic written for me was better, though. X3;)
This is an Al/Riza fic, as was requested (though there's hurt!Ed and papa!Roy too because I throw some of that into every fic I've ever written).
Spoilers: Spoilers for the whole series, divergent future from some point in the end. My ending: Roy stages a coup and becomes Fuhrer, Ed gets Al's body back, but not his own. (i.e. how the series should have ended ;D).
Warnings: I could have sworn that when I started this fic, it had a purpose... Be that as it may, I'm not happy with this fic at all. So just a warning, this fic is 10,500 words (How the hell did it get that long? I only wish I knew.) of kinda rushed – nothing. XD Goodness knows I tried, though. I do hope that it makes sense. If not, well, at least the words sound kinda pretty all strung together like this, right?
Enjoy!
The clouds above him are low, heavy, fat things, which reflect themselves morosely onto the ground below him in the form of an impermeably thick white mist. Between the two layers of liquid, humid misery though, there's a tiny sliver of horizon that he can catch from just the right position above the city and below the sky. From where he stands, the rain is drizzling off into the mist, and the earth is the sky and the sky is the ground, and he could turn is all topsy-turvy if he really wanted to, but it would still be icy sheets falling from a swirling mess of gray into a swirling mess of gray, a cyclical pattern of confusion. Like one of the little toys Fuhrer Mustang keeps on his desk now. Really, it is beautiful, something to behold, and how can Al be sorry for escaping from his brother if it means that he is able to look at a world with two skies? He takes a mental picture. It will sit dormant, like a portrait decorating the corridors in his mind, and when he finally does settle down for good, it will help him construct a photographic chronicle of a life he will not believe he'd lived otherwise.
Click. Whrr.
Maybe if he waits long enough, for some semblance of the rising sun to peek above either sky – because he'd long ago lost track of which one was the ground; his feet were on it, but having no feeling or awareness of his body for the longest time sometimes afforded a splendid sense of vertigo – there would be twin rainbows that met somewhere in the middle of the two horizons and melded spectacularly into a pot of gold twice as big as the one on either end. In only made sense, after all. "A" pot of gold plus "B" pot of gold equals one combined pot of gold somewhere in the middle. The leprechauns from his mother's stories would, of course, be devastated by their loss, having hidden the biggest slew of riches between the two skies for safekeeping, but Alphonse had found it, oh yes he had, and he'd share it with his brother who'd beam and buy himself an ice cream cone.
Stupid Brother.
Alphonse stomps his foot to remind himself of where he is. The vibrations tingle up to the blood seal his human transmutation left behind, red against his skin at the crest of his back, and suddenly he knows what is up and what is down. It leaves him feeling slightly bereft, but of course, the wake-up call is necessary. He knows it will be dawn soon, and then Edward will be awake, and then Alphonse will need to be there because even if Edward is a stupid, pig-headed brat, he'll be woozy on pain medication and sleep-heavy from the aftermath of his fifteen-hour nap, and the hospital will need his bed nonetheless, and Edward will have to go back to their apartment and sleep off the operation there. After all, since the war, bullet wounds are routine and "removing them is a minor procedure," and stop worrying, stop worrying, even though he was bleeding his life onto your hands ten minutes ago, stop worrying because he'll be just peachy keen by the morning. Three bullets are nothing.
Edward smirks up at him, and his smile is daubed with vivid red, "See Al? S'fine."
But Al does not agree, is still violently incensed with his brother for reasons he's not sure he's aware of, and usually his brother pale and white on a hospital bed drains the anger from him like a sieve, but this time it's still a tight, bundled coil in his chest.
Stupid Brother.
He's lost track of the earth and sky again before he can make it to the door leading off the roof of the hospital, somewhere halfway between the lip of the edge and the door that juts out of the roof like a sore. The wind raises suddenly, whipping the clouds a little wild in the air, and for a moment there's a sliver of sunlight just there, shining in thin, watery beams onto the roof.
"Alphonse."
It is a testament to how very beautiful the sight before him is that he doesn't hear the door open and that he doesn't hear her softly padded footfalls slapping on the wet concrete behind him.
"You'll catch cold in the rain." Alphonse had hardly even noticed he was wet. Strange. He looks down at his clothes for the first time – away from the sky – to confirm that he is in fact saturated, before he looks to the right and sees her standing straight beside him. He can't breathe for a moment.
She glows in the ethereal light of the early morning, in the first shaky spurts of sunlight issuing from behind the clouds, and he's only seen her this casually garbed once in his life. The civilian clothing takes away some of her edge, seems to have sanded down her corners to a grainy sort of smoothness. He hair falls down her back in straw-gold lengths made wavy by the moisture in the air. She is why he's angry still, not Edward's pigheadedness, Alphonse realizes then, and that confuses him more than anything.
Al could never quite remember when he'd first realized that Lieutenant Hawkeye – now a General – was beautiful. He imagines it was when he was still a walking suit of armor, when the world was still like a framed picture that he could interpret like art, giving it his criticism and moving on. Then, Riza had been no different from a flower or a butterfly or a pasture he passed on the train with his brother sleeping the next seat over, because he knew logically that her face, framed as it was by metal, was lovely in the way he'd known a painting was as a child. But it didn't go farther than that mild sense of admiration every day he was in the office for most of his formative teenage years, because he wasn't able to imagine how those lips or that hair would feel, and he wasn't able to remember what it felt like to have someone's breath gusting across your lips and mingling with your own.
When he was restored at age sixteen though, everything had been so incredibly, infinitely different. Her smile was tangible and three-dimensional then, something he could interact with rather than watch like a film at the picture show, and to feel the electricity when she touched his bare forearm, to know that the muscles in his shoulder were twitching in response to her palm there, had been almost as exciting as feeling Edward's long hair, which he'd touched so often as armor but had never actually felt, for the first time. And her smell – the fact that he could put a scent with her face, something a little bit like gunpowder and caramelized sugar, had been amazing at the time. After all, he had never known this woman in the Time Before, couldn't have known that she smelled so wonderful. Getting used to the fact that his brother smelled like machine oil all the time then had taken some getting used to as well, and who would have blamed him for leaning toward the sugar over the pungent scent of a machine –?
She speaks again. "Your brother is awake. He's talking to the Fuhrer right now, but I imagine he'll want to go home soon." Al breathes out a steady breath through his nose, tries to think about what he wants to say. As hard as he tries, though, there's still a gaping hole in his mind where reasonable thought should be now, so he blurts out –
"Are you alright?" When he knows very well that she was not shot, his brother made sure of that.
To his surprise though, she stops to consider, purses her lips like it's a difficult question, and gazes off into the distance where the sun has risen enough that its disappeared again above the clouds, now. The white of the ground has taken less of an impermeable quality though, so there are no longer two skies. There is one, and the misty remnants of a second, and a heavy drizzle of rain, and no sun to speak of. There went his pot of gold.
"I'm – frustrated. He shouldn't have had to take those bullets. If we had all been more on our guard, he could be at home now." Al doesn't overlook her careful use of the word 'we' rather than 'I' and feels immediately infuriated. A small piece of him – very small, mind – wants his brother shot again.
Then, he feels immediately guilty, because that gentle arc of red, and the fall of his brother's blue-clad body against a background of slow-moving chaos, and then her rushing to his side through the confusion –
He's angry again.
"There was nothing you could have done." But I. I could have. "Sometimes these things just happen." But to my brother. Always to my brother.
For a moment, she looks as if she's going to argue, but then she sighs and looks at him with deep burnt sienna eyes, which reflect the wind-whipped clouds behind him rather than his own lined face. "Yes. I suppose. He'll receive a promotion out of it, regardless."
Mildly, Al says, "Oh?" And his teeth clench with the strain of restraining a grimace.
"Lieutenant-Colonel Elric. I never thought I'd see the day that burning little ball of insubordination was promoted," she smiles something bittersweet and nostalgic in his direction, and despite the circumstances, it's blinding. "You must be proud."
Alphonse is extremely sorry to say that he is not, but he doesn't speak the thought aloud, just turns toward the jutting mar of the door on the hospital roof, almost moves to take her hand before he remembers himself.
"You're all over the papers this morning, Brother," Alphonse says cheerfully as he walks in the door to his brother's ward. "Nothing but good news, now."
Ed smiles wanly from the bed, and next to him the Fuhrer stands dignified and proud in a crumpled and blood-dotted military dress uniform. They both look tightly tense and strained, tired and very unlike themselves, for a moment when he first steps in. Mustang's discomfort is quick to fade into a neutral mask, but it's a little bit longer before Ed looks comfortable in his own skin again.
The room smells relatively fresh for a hospital, and Alphonse realizes it is the vase of roses on the side table that does it. They're strong enough to neutralize the overpowering stench of medication, but not strong enough to overwhelm it, so the room is slightly empty of smells, something Alphonse isn't quite used to since the barrage on his new body about two years back.
"'Course s'nothing but good. M'the Fullmetal Alchemist," he preens.
Alphonse had been correct about his brother being drug-happy and ready to sleep another three days, after all, because normally, Edward doesn't boast outside a mostly mocking context and normally, Edward vehemently denies the very existence of newspapers. Alphonse is glad. Exhaustion and pain will make his brother easier to deal with. Anger still lurks in the forefront of Alphonse's mind, curled up and poised to strike, and a coherent Edward is, more often than not, infuriating. A sleepy Edward is just vaguely cuddly and irritating in a different sense entirely – irritating in a "get off me Brother, I'm trying to read" sort of way, which Alphonse can definitely deal with.
Hawkeye steps into the room behind him and moves to stand beside the Fuhrer. They look strange next to one another that way, because it's clear that Hawkeye had gone home to change at some point, but Mustang had been entirely heedless of the uncomfortably starched uniform jacket and pants, and they hang loose on his bedraggled frame. She's a civilian and he's a soldier, and he can see the difference between his brother and himself now thrown into sharp relief.
Mustang is sharp and always has been, and he immediately catches the glance that Al casts in Riza's direction that Edward has not noticed for going on two years.
"Alphonse," Fuhrer Mustang says, and steps across the room, holding out his hand. Briefly, Al considers slapping it away, but that, he decides, would be entirely immature, and Fuhrer Mustang never did anything except stay at the hospital all night with his brother and a grossly excessive entourage of security. Plus, he must have something up his smarmy sleeve –
"I am eternally grateful for your help." Al basks in the praise, glows from it, even though the hospital room is dim and the clouds outside are still ubiquitously powerful.
He looks around to make sure that Riza is watching and he's sure his face has taken on a self-important see, I'm useful too expression when Edward pipes up from the bed in his blissfully ignorant and drug-sated state with a, "Pity you couldn'ta taken oneuva bullets, eh?" And he thinks he's being funny, he thinks he's being cute, but he's just voiced every single one of Alphonse's insecurities in one half-coherent sentence, and Alphonse wants very badly to strangle him. He's sure the Fuhrer knows when the handshake goes on a bit too long and squeezes a bit too hard, but he graciously shields Alphonse's twisting mouth and twitching eyebrows from the other two inhabitants of the room until Alphonse can gain control of himself enough to look Edward in the face and say, "Pity," in an only slightly strangled tone.
Hawkeye and some other unnamed soldier help him to take Edward home. He's woozy and dizzy and Alphonse knows that he shouldn't be going home just yet, but he's healthy enough to be forced out the door, so forced out the door he was. Edward doesn't seem to mind either way. Since he had turned eighteen, he has the habit of checking himself out of the hospital the moment they take the drip out of his arm anyway. He hums happily next to Alphonse in the backseat, hand touching Al's ever-so-nonchalantly across the vast expanse of upholstery, head jiggling with the transferred vibration from the window his head rests on. He'll never admit it, but Al can see in his countenance that he is pleased with himself. He looks like the cat who has gotten the canary. And Alphonse wants to be happy for him too, because he saved two very important people and he lived to tell about it, but whenever he tries, he can picture himself at the door to the great auditorium in Central Headquarters, leaning serenely against the doorframe and gazing airily across the masses at the beauty that is General Hawkeye standing ramrod straight next to the Fuhrer – even as a man in a long coat and dark glasses rushes past Alphonse's doorway security checkpoint and into the thrumming crowd.
"We're here, Alphonse," she says gently from the passenger seat, and she moves to open Edward's door because he had drifted off at some point and doesn't even notice when she stops the car. In his sleep, his face is laced with pain, and Alphonse feels guilty again.
Then the side door opens, and Alphonse wonders vaguely if he is bipolar, because the gentleness with which Hawkeye wrangles Ed in a sitting position and unbuckles him from his seat makes Al's blood boil.
"I'll do it." Edward wakes when Alphonse hoists him bridal-style over the threshold, and a fat drop of rain catches in his eyelashes even with the unnamed soldier hovering behind them all with a wide umbrella.
"C'n walk m'self," he mumbles through a yawn, butts his head gently against Al's shoulder like a cat who wants attention.
Al carries his brother anyway.
Back in the apartment, Ed lets himself show weariness again, and the very moment that Al closes the door behind Hawkeye (it wouldn't, he decides, be at all appropriate to ask her in for tea), Ed moans a weary sigh aloud to the stark white-painted walls of their tiny living room. Al lets him down on the couch knowing full well that it won't be at all good for his injuries in the long run, but Ed loves the couch so much, and seems to yearn for Al's contact like a physical necessity, and there's no way Alphonse is going to share Ed's tiny single bed with him in the state he's in.
He gets a thick blanket from Edward's bed and a book he probably won't pay a lick of attention to from the bookshelf they're also using as a towel rack in the bathroom (they ran out of room for books in the living room, bedroom, and kitchen), and he takes his seat under his brother's feet at the end of the couch, spreading the blanket over both of them. Ed smacks his lips and curls his toes and falls asleep almost immediately, his automail leg cutting uncomfortably into Al's thigh as Ed subconsciously burrows deeper. Alone again, Al opens the book.
He doesn't want to fall asleep. Doesn't try to fall asleep. He needs to be awake to give Ed his medicine two hours from now. But sleep comes to him almost as easily as it does to his medicated brother, because Al was up all night worrying and being bitter, and he slumps back against the deep red of their sofa, never even makes it past page one.
Alphonse dreams in newsprint, in solid little dots of black and white. His name never once appeared in the article that glorified Ed, but he was mentioned. Right under a mug of the detained assassin.
It is unknown at this point who allowed the shooter past a security point, but military police will be pursuing answers further so that the negligent officer may be properly reprimanded.
The words hover and echo, specter-like in his mind, and in his sleep they take the form of demons that pull back the trigger one, two, three times. Send Edward skidding backwards with impact one, two, three times. Contort Hawkeye's beautiful face into something terrifying one, two, three times, and then a fourth as she draws her own gun and fires straight at him.
His monochrome dream restarts, and he can see everything with a frightening clarity – banners on the vaulted ceiling above, ants crawling on the floor below – and he knows what he should have done, when he should have done it. There is the assassin, quick-footed and sure, gun not-so-carefully concealed in an inner pocket, and its outline stands sharp through his coat in slow motion. There is Edward, frightening presence behind the new Fuhrer – Edward was a very wise addition to the Fuhrer's security entourage, fiercely protective of his own no matter how intensely they may bicker. There is Hawkeye, but he had seen her before – that is the source of all the trouble in the first place.
There is the first shot. It goes wide around the podium, hits the grand crest of Amestris behind the Fuhrer and sends it waving. For a moment, in the black and white of his vision, Ed's eyes flash gold and he's out front, arms flung wide and snarling like a mother wolf, urging the Fuhrer down, and even though his dreams have no voice, that is not hard to make out. Alphonse had taken his eyes off of Hawkeye at this point, but he concentrates on her now as she fumbles for the gun in her holster and the second shot, meant for the Fuhrer's heart, strikes Ed in the left shoulder. The third shot comes quickly after that, and the gunman was so amateur, Alphonse could have taken him down earlier so easily if he had just been more attentive. It skims the side of the podium and finds its place somewhere just above Ed's hip.
Hawkeye has drawn her gun at this point, and the gunman must realize, because he shifts his attention to the left, panicked, and so does Ed; he casually steps in front of Riza just in time to take a third and final bullet just above his automail port in his left thigh. If Riza had intended to shoot before, she forgets when Edward drops, alarmingly fast, to the ground. Alphonse doesn't lament the absence of the wet thud of a warm body landing in its own blood in the deafness of his dream.
The next few moments are a blur of his own rage. The dream goes red as he takes the gunman down in a full-body tackle. He hadn't strayed far from the door that Alphonse allowed him through, so Alphonse is the first to reach him through the chaos and confusion. His head cracks hard against a chair going down, and there is no struggle after that.
Looking back now, Alphonse is ashamed of what he does next. He looks to Hawkeye and Mustang on stage, expects gleaming grins of pride (loving adoration in her beautiful eyes) and an absence of his brother's still form completely, but there are only the three of them plus a multitude of unnamed guards, moving in slow-motion sluggishness over his brother, whose blood stains the hardwood deeper black and white. Alphonse hears one thing, and it echoes and rings in the absence of sound.
"Someone help, he's been shot!" And that is Hawkeye, and Alphonse wishes himself in his brother's place with all the passion in his heart for reasons that are in no way concern for his brother, before he snaps awake.
Edward is awake and three hours overdue for his pain medication by the time Al is alert enough to fumble with the childproof lid in the dimness of their kitchen.
"Why didn't you wake me up, Ed?!"
"...Y'were sleeping."
When he gives it to his brother, Edward looks pale and drawn and exhausted despite his hours of sleep. He puts on coffee next, even though five o'clock in the evening is hardly the time for such a thing with anyone as high-strung as Edward in house. Next he puts soup on the stove, chicken broth that Gracia had given them a little while back. When he takes it to Edward in the living room, the medication has put him out again, and he lies still as the dead on the couch.
Al sets the broth on their low coffee table and trudges into the bedroom. The whole apartment is sparsely furnished but for the books. With a semi-permanent residence and a secure job, Ed had taken to bringing one home almost every day. Some are from the library, some were salvaged from their old home, some are bent at the spine and worn at the corners, some are brand new, the pages still making crisp rasping noises against one another when he turns them. It's not an unpleasant thing, and he knows how Sheska felt all those years ago, buried by books, pressed on all sides by words and illustrations. The earthy smell of the texts is something familiar he can look forward to after a long day in the foul-smelling city. He likes them. Occasionally they make living impossible – "Brother, I need a path from room to room. I've let you put them anywhere you like, but I need to be able to move for God's sake!" – but he likes them.
In the far corner of the room, there's a pile of books that stands even with the bed and on top of it, a sleek black phone. No one really calls except for Winry or Russell or Mustang occasionally, and it's always amusing to see Edward jump out of his seat when it rings, usually having forgotten entirely it was there.
He stops in the doorway, glances guiltily back to Edward breathing steadily on the couch, worries his lower lip with his teeth, then takes the last step into the room in one great stride. The door closes fluidly behind him.
The distance between him and the phone suddenly seems oppressively great, and his legs are heavy with his own blood. They pulse in time with his heart. One more step forward and his socked feet cling to the carpet with static. Another and he swears that Edward is calling for help from the other room, loses all the progress he's made by going back.
Enough is enough, finally, when Alphonse hits his bed with his knees in his preoccupied state. He flumps unceremoniously onto the red and blue-trimmed bed with and airy whuf and stretches his arm to cover the rest of the distance to the phone.
He hardly remembers dialing her number, hardly remembers picking up the phone at all, so when her voice rings out over the receiver, Alphonse nearly jumps out of his skin.
"Hello?"
Pause.
"...Hello?"
Pause.
"If this is the terrorist group from yesterday looking for another –"
"I let him in."
"Vi – Alphonse?"
"I let him in. He came right through my door, and I didn't even notice."
"I –" There is a tense moment of shocked silence and then, "It's fine. Of course it's fine. You didn't mean for it to happen. It could have happened to –"
"But it didn't happen to anyone!" he snarls. "It happened to me, and it happened to my brother!"
And it almost happened to you, too.
"Al –" The use of a nickname sends a little thrill up Al's spine.
"Told him I din' want this assignment. I'm not even in the military –"
"We asked you for the sake of the Fuhrer. We were shorthanded," she pauses, and even over the phone, he can hear her concentration. Her lips will be pursing now, her eyebrows tilting downward in an ever-so-subtle gesture of concern.
He wonders vaguely what she'd think if he told her that he had been looking at her rather than the door.
"No one will hold it against you. It was just a mistake. Everyone is going to be alright. Edward made sure of that."
A sudden sense of cold, hard, irrational anger cuts in above his rational thought at that, and Al doesn't think she's telling the truth. He doesn't think he'll be alright.
His stomach churns uncomfortably, because this unfortunate occurrence has drawn out the things Al hates most about himself, the seven deadly sins and then some, and now it's all he can seem to concentrate on. Predominating, though, was Pride, snarling fiercely in the back of his mind – I saved you. I saved you, too. Compliment me, praise me, damnit – and then Envy – my brother's not the only hero in the world – and then Wrath so intense he couldn't see straight.
Praise doesn't come though. Al's fair share of the praise for taking down the bastard doesn't come.
Sloth purrs, liltingly, soothingly above the others that If I hadn't been so lazy as to let him in in the first place, I wouldn't be any kind of hero. And Hawkeye must know this too, because she remains meaningfully silent.
"I –" He hears Edward shift in the other room, yawning hugely, and he must not know about this. "I have to go."
"Alphonse." Back to Alphonse. "We should talk."
"Edward needs me."
"He wouldn't blame you."
"I don't care."
Do you blame me?
The tight knot in his stomach won't let him stick around to find out.
Al slams the phone back into the cradle and tries to compose himself before he goes to reheat Edward's broth.
Seven in the evening and Edward is happily fed, gazing at the pages of Alphonse's book with the lazy intensity that he reserves for fiction. Alphonse has been scrubbing at the same bowl now for a little over an hour, since he had gotten off the phone with Hawkeye and ensured that Edward was set for the night. He is being unfair to his brother, he knows – in the moments where he gets angry again, he knows that his eyes glint and his face goes sour and his brother is afraid to touch him for fear that he'll just split open.
And Edward, of course, seems to think he's interpreted Alphonse's anger, seems to think he knows the reason. So once, when Alphonse had broken down and dejectedly lowered his head to the sink faucet over the dishes Ed had called a soft, "Hey, it's okay. You got there just in time, and I'm still alive, see? It's fine," in that patronizing, big brother way of his, which only served to aggravate Al more.
So volatile, Wrath clucks. So angry.
Suddenly, there is a violent knock at the door, and when Al turns, startled, toward it, the slippery ceramic dish he's been cleaning for so long slips out of his hands and onto the linoleum floor. It cracks, and Alphonse doesn't think he wants to poise his shaking hands to fix it just now.
Ed's eyes rise from the book, take in the broken dish with fierce concern sparking in their depths. "Are you okay, Al?"
Fine.
"Fine."
"You don't sound fine."
"I'm fine. I'll get the door."
"Check the peephole to make sure it's not a terrorist or something."
Al slogs through the piles of books to the bolted door and does check the peephole because it could very well be a terrorist looking back at him.
Oh, but the irony of letting one in twice would be simply delicious.
He half expects to see Hawkeye there – to talk – but instead it's only Mustang, of all people, looking impatient and haughty in a clean dress uniform. He is framed against a massive backdrop of blue in the peephole, and since when was their hallway painted royal blue and white?
And why in the hell was the Fuhrer walking around the town by himself when there had been a very real threat on his life only one day previously?
He opens the door quickly at the second realization and is about to usher Mustang inside and out of the hallway, for God's sake, when he is hit by the massive blue thing that might have been a wall thirty seconds ago.
"Alphonse Elric! The blind devotion with which you took down the gunman! I have heard the stories and have found your bravery worthy of the Armstrong line itself!" Alphonse looks down from his vantage over the massive shoulder and Mustang mouths security with a secretive little smirk as Alphonse hears one of his ribs make an alarming pop noise. Alphonse adores the praise though, absolutely eats it up and almost casts around the room for Hawkeye to check if she is listening before Armstrong lets him down and he gets enough oxygen to his brain to remember she is not in their apartment.
Edward looks at the three of them in the doorway a little warily, his place held in the book with one automail finger wedged into the crack.
"Alphonse, would you mind terribly if I borrowed your brother for a moment?" And at that, Ed looks slightly alarmed.
"And Edward Elric!" Armstrong booms, and Al notices that Mustang instinctively puts a restraining hand on his shirtfront before he can reopen every wound Edward sustained. Disappointed, Armstrong is left to wallow in babbling admiration from across the space, and there might have been a little rainstorm for all the humidity Armstrong poured into the room with his tears.
Alphonse's anger ignites hotly within him, and he wonders vaguely why he hadn't reached to stop Armstrong as well. He…doesn't truly want to hurt his brother.
Does he?
"'Dun wanna talk to you, bastard." Edward has never liked talking to Mustang when he's not in full possession of his wit, and the drugs have definitely dulled his edge a little bit, but that still doesn't explain all the hesitation.
"It won't take but a moment." Mustang turns on Al and Armstrong then, eyes gone a little narrow in a subtle plea. Alphonse is more than happy to drag Armstrong into the hallway then. Mustang will not hurt his brother. Mustang, at least, is in control of his temper.
He ignores Edward's last words ("Al! Don't leave meee!") as he ducks into the hallway with the brick wall close behind.
Ten minutes later, Alphonse can resist no longer.
"Why are you here? Why is he here?"
"The Fuhrer was plagued by a constant stream of remorseful guilt. The tragedy that has befallen dear Edward makes him –"
"But he already spoke to Edward about it today. At the hospital."
"Woe, but he –"
The door opens and the quiet from the room seeps into the hallway, stopping Armstrong's explanation. Armstrong stands tall and throws his whole body into a painfully sharp salute. Alphonse is glad that he doesn't start crying whenever Roy walks into the room now as he had when Mustang had first become Fuhrer. At the inauguration he had been a sobbing, wailing mess.
"Did you have something to ask me, Alphonse?" Mustang asks mildly, and there's an aura of relief about him that hadn't been there when he'd first knocked on the door.
"I –" Alphonse bites his lip. "My brother. You talked to him earlier."
"Ah, yes, I hope you'll forgive me, but I was rather incensed at the time. I might not have shown him the gratitude he deserved."
Armstrong sniffles loudly behind him, keeps one hand plastered to his forehead in a salute even as the other removes an enormous hanky from one of his breast pockets.
"I'm not sure I understand."
To Al's surprise, Mustang just – winks. "Your brother can be a brat occasionally, and yesterday was no exception. The fact that he saved my life doesn't change the fact that he had no regard for his own."
Alphonse doesn't really know what to say to that.
Seeming to sense this, Mustang continues, "To say thank you slipped my mind at the time, as I was rather more concerned with those bandages he seems so inclined to make his second skin." A little frown mars his face for the first time, and worry lines that Al has never seen before crease his brow. "I felt the need to remedy the situation."
"Of course," he manages. Suddenly, Ed's discomfort in the hospital room makes sense.
"If you'll excuse me," he bows a little nod to Alphonse, and Al feels strangely compelled to salute so he does, raises two shaking fingers without realizing it. Mustang smiles and beckons Armstrong toward the end of the hall with a little call of Colonel, to which Armstrong responds with a loud nose-blowing as he trots ahead.
Before Mustang turns the corner to follow Armstrong down the stairs though, he turns back to Alphonse and smiles again, offers a final few words.
"I don't blame you," he says calmly. For a moment, Alphonse feels hurt – betrayed. She was so quick to inform the Fuhrer of his mistake – they'd only spoken a few hours earlier! – was there no sense of loyalty between them? What he says next though, makes Al stop. "And she won't either. But, if you feel so inclined, perhaps you should ask her for yourself." He lowers his voice for the final words conspiratorially and Al leans closer to hear across the hallway. "I happen to know, from a very reliable source, that she likes caramel."
And then he is gone, down the stairs and into the dangerous city street.
Ed doesn't talk much that night, but he positively glows from his position on the couch. He keeps up the facade of reading Al's book as Al draws a transmutation circle to fix the cracked dish, but every so often he'll smile a mysterious little smile into the pages.
At ten o'clock, when both of them are thoroughly exhausted – Ed so much that he's drowsing over the book – Al helps his brother to his feet (pointedly ignoring the wince Ed clearly doesn't want him to see) and they make their slow way to the bedroom.
Pride snarls in his gut as Al is taking off his brother's socks, and something shameful in the back of his mind says, The great Fullmetal Alchemist, laid so low. Because what would the terrorists think now – what would Hawkeye think now – watching Ed blush when he couldn't bend well enough to reach his feet? Watching Ed stumble on that little rug that separated their beds? Hearing the gasp he let out when sitting upright pulled on his stitches?
Not so impressive now, Brother.
It's a malicious, malevolent, malignant thought, and Al is so startled with himself when he's thought it that he nearly drops Edward's socks.
Al turns so that Ed doesn't see his lip curl in shame, for he knows that this thought is the ultimate betrayal. Only Alphonse is allowed to see his brother so weak, because Edward trusts him with everything, even if Alphonse doesn't deserve it.
"Today was a good day," Edward breathes unexpectedly from the bed after he's settled. His tone is light and airy – he's drugged to the gills, happy in his loopiness. Al can only wish for such freedom from his emotions.
"Was it, Brother?" Al doesn't think so.
"I've been waitin' f'r him to say that to me f'r six years," he closes his eyes, grins into the pillow.
Pause. "Goodnight, Brother." He turns off the light and thinks that maybe he needs to find another dish to clean.
Alphonse buys a newspaper the next day. Hawkeye won't have revealed his name, he's fairly sure, and neither will have Mustang for that matter, but it's always safe to check. It's a strange mixture of relief and disappointment to see that it isn't there.
He also buys caramel – a big, fat chunk of it from one of the street vendors outside their apartment. As soon as he gets in though, Edward eyes it hungrily from across the room and Alphonse is powerless to resist him. He'd been weakened by a sleepless night; guilt for his brother and thoughts of Mustang and Hawkeye had left him sober and staring at a crack in the ceiling all night long, even as Ed slept a dead, quiet sleep halfway across the room.
Edward eats it happily, bites off chunks and chews with great gusto. Alphonse's non-existent fillings ache in sympathy. He imagines that Riza will be a little more dignified eating it – tiny little nibbles, and she'll cover her mouth with her hand when she thinks she's bitten off too much. Across the room, Edward smiles a sticky grin at him – there's a giant glob of caramel stuck to one of his incisors – and then offers up the chunk of sweet, messy goop with his automail hand.
"Y'want some Al?" He's careful not to lift his left shoulder, Al knows that it still aches fiercely, and that's the only things that keeps the Wrath at bay this time.
Darn, darn, double darn.
You can buy more caramel, Alphonse – he feels the need to placate himself.
"So…Al," Edward says abruptly, and the statement is tense in its effort to be casual.
"Brother?"
"Thanks for saving my ass. Before." Edward takes a bite of caramel like it will save him from speaking again.
"I…" Didn't.
Pride.
"I'm going to go buy more caramel."
And he does. He puts this chunk underneath his bed, though.
A week after the incident, Mustang announces that Edward will have a grand promotion ceremony – boring speeches, stuffy dress uniforms, champagne-filled after-party and all.
Edward is less than thrilled.
The real reason for the ceremony, though, is a gradual reintroduction of the Fuhrer and his new entourage to the public world. Being a hermit in his office is no way to run the country, and Mustang knows this well. Somehow, he needs to reacquaint himself with the public, and a small ceremony, invitation only and in a secure place, is the perfect way to begin.
Alphonse is less than thrilled as well.
Edward is a little better but still as stubborn as ever. He uses the wall as a guide to shuffle around the apartment, bitching all the while about the soreness of his leg and hip in the damp chill of impending winter.
The fact that Alphonse's attitude toward his brother rapidly fluctuates between madly infuriated and sick with guilt doesn't change – indeed, the passing of a week has only made it worse.
One thing that makes it infinitely more difficult for Al is the fact that his brother is trying not to make Al angry which only serves to make things worse in the long run. He sits quiet and reserved, asks what's wrong ("Because you always were into that sensitive – feelings shit, Al."), generally just acts so unlike himself that Alphonse hates him for it.
He can't stop thinking of Riza.
If he was infatuated before then now he has a full-blown, head over heels obsession. He closes his eyes and it's her face on the rooftop, gentle and pensive and so breathtakingly beautiful that Al doesn't know up from down again. She doesn't call or visit him, though Mustang reports that she had asked about him, and that she still likes caramel. Alphonse doesn't know how he could forget that. He'd had to unstick a chunk from his bedframe two nights ago after all, Edward casting discreet, suspicious glances in his direction.
The promotion ceremony is in a week. Alphonse stews over his irrational anger, lets it fester in his stomach and simmer in his blood.
"Al. You know I love you, right?"
The hundredth time.
"Yes, Brother, of course."
"…Thanks again."
"Of course."
He hopes that things will make sense by then.
Roy Mustang doesn't come calling again, but Hawkeye somehow finds her way to their apartment. It's raining again when she does, and Ed's sulking gloomily on the couch. Alphonse had smothered him with blankets earlier, worried for his aches, and it's always fine as long as Edward doesn't talk. A few days previously, Alphonse had found that hearing his brother speak grated on him, that listening to Edward talk ignited something irrational in him. Like every other word was some sort of gloat.
The sharp rap on the door, quick and firm, gives her away, and Al cuts a glance across the room at it like it wants to bite him. Ed looks puzzled.
"You want me to get it...?" He suggests uncertainly. "You 'n the door have some kinda fight? 'Cause bullet wounds or not Al, I'll take it down for you." His eyes spark.
"No." He attempts a ghost of a smile for his brother. "No just stay on the couch, Brother."
Over the days since the incident, Alphonse had taken to carrying little chunks of caramel in his pants pocket. He had found that he likes the texture better when it has been warmed sufficiently by the heat of his thigh, when it oozes off the wax paper just a bit as he unwraps it. He really can't stand how sticky it is otherwise. He didn't finally, finally get teeth again just to ruin them.
He fingers the smoothness of the wax like it's some sort of talisman as he gets up and moves slowly toward the door.
Edward looks at him with narrowed eyes when he takes a shaky breath and puts his hands gently on either side of the peephole, leaning in until his nose touches the door and he can see the unnatural curvature that the glass gives her face.
She's still beautiful, oh yes she is.
He's utterly doomed by her beauty though – nothing good will come of it, he knows – and she confirms the fact by lifting her hand with quick, determined efficiency and rapping again. Taken by surprise, Alphonse jumps back from the door. He doesn't get far though, because Edward's books are everywhere, and he hits a pile lying not one foot away from the entrance. The whole already-precarious tower teeters and goes toppling into the room's only lamp, a tall thing with a clumsy brown shade that quickly crunches under the pressure of Theories on Alchemic Adaptation of Single-Celled Organisms (a particularly thick, boring tome that Al never quite made it through) and the lightbulb never stood a chance after that.
Edward lets out a placid hmm, and the room is shrouded in darkness after a slightly anti-climactic little pop.
In the cover of shadow, Al doesn't attempt to hide the desperation with which he steadies himself, finds the peephole with his fingers, and looks through it again (making sure to leave some space between his eye and the door this time), only to see a glimpse of Hawkeye's – God help him – firm, shapely, perfect backside sashaying back down the hall.
"...Who's at the door, Al?"
That same irrational burning warmth that coils tight in his chest – a spring repressed, potential energy building. He can put a name to it now, and he doesn't hesitate to call it what it is.
Wrathprideenvysloth.
"A salesman," Alphonse spits without hesitation, and puts warm, gooey caramel into his mouth before he goes to pick up their poor lamp.
The day of his brother's promotion comes as something of a relief. Alphonse is so ready, by the time he slips into the auditorium that day, to leave it all behind him, to fade into the peaceful anonymity that being the great Fullmetal Alchemist's little brother affords with the grace that he had so long been capable of, but can't seem to muster now. He thinks back to all the days of, "No sir, that's the Fullmetal Alchemist. I'm just his younger brother," and the thoughts are tinted strangely by bitterness when he does. He hadn't quite realized how much he enjoyed that, being mistaken for a hero, but he's reminded of it now, and it's such a powerful realization that it sends him reeling.
There's no mistaking the two of them now, Al muses, as his brother moves sluggishly down the aisle toward his seat up front, cane in hand and tenderly favoring his left side, eyes on the ground to measure his steps. Edward looks like a chiseled war hero, carved from marble. He has the right eyes for it, the right jaw for it, the right teeth and skin and hair for it. He and Alphonse are cut from two different cloths, and it's so easy for the world to see now that he's standing next to a mousy, lanky boy, still caught in the tail-end of the unsteady throes of puberty, rather than a seven-foot suit of armor with a plume longer than his older brother's legs.
Alphonse has no doubt that someday, when all of his baby fat is gone and his limbs look less like they don't belong on his body, Alphonse will be handsome, but even in this, Edward will outdo him. Because Edward has never realized it, but he is startlingly handsome in an exotic, mysterious way that Alphonse will never be.
Edward stumbles then, as Al isn't paying attention, and three people make it to him before Alphonse does, hands all over his pristine dress uniform that had lived in the back of their closet until today. It still smells musty and Alphonse doesn't think, if his brother wore it for a million years, that he'll ever get used to how strange it looks on him.
Ed nods several thank yous but looks strangely uncomfortable as they continue on toward their seats. This venue is so much different than the last – more of an auditorium than a gymnasium structure, with only two entrances, guarded heavily now, and a dark-planked stage at the front. It's accented by thick, velvety curtains, and it's so much more intimate than the last place Mustang had given a speech in – Alphonse finds that he quite likes it.
When they take their seats, Ed sits with the same stiffness that he has for the past two weeks, even though he's recently made more of an effort to hide it. People around them glance at him and Ed withers under their watchful gazes. And isn't it just rich that Edward doesn't want all the attention people give to him so freely?
"This is dumb," he mumbles, jaw set and trembling tight. "I don' need to be scrutinized by an arsenal of lazy-ass generals who just want to gauge how many more bullets I'd be able to take on a battlefield." He pouts. "I wanna go home."
Oh poor youAl thinks, bitter. Being adored from afar is a terrible chore, isn't it?
He puts a reassuring hand on his brother's shoulder nonetheless.
Mustang's appearance is preceded by the appearance of a regular army of security. Every corner, every nook, the end of nearly every row of seats they take their place, silent sentries, before Mustang walks confidently onto the stage, like he's never been threatened a day in his life, like he's walking on sunshine and damn well wants the rest of the world to walk with him. But the world slows down when Hawkeye walks in behind him – dress uniform and hair hanging down in gentle arcs around her face. Alphonse's eyes catch on her and stick there even as Mustang starts talking – and he is a wonderful speaker, engaging to a fault, but Alphonse can't be bothered with another tedious speech exalting his older brother when she's standing there, just begging for his attention in the way she sets her hips and tilts her head and raises her eyebrows whenever Mustang says something that might be particularly interesting.
He must say something funny at some point because the high-ranking officers that surround them guffaw hugely, and Alphonse adds his own little giggle just because he can. Hawkeye makes eye contact with something to the right of him – Edward – and winks at him like he hasn't grown a day over twelve. Al's insides boil, the potential energy of the spring in his chest has grown so tight now that he thinks if it were to be released, it would burst straight through his abdomen. He takes the opportunity to look to his right, eyes blazing, and he finds Edward – shaking. In earnest. Alphonse lays a hand on his shoulder again and hopes, contradictorily, that he doesn't squeeze too hard.
Then Mustang says Ed's name – Alphonse hears that at least – and Edward is rising unsteadily to his feet. He is, of course, too stubborn to take the cane with him, too unwilling to let anyone see any kind of pain or struggle from him, so he leaves it leaning morosely against the armrest between their seats. Alphonse eyes it critically, and the rest of the auditorium falls silent as Ed scales the stairs with wobbling determination.
In the silence then, he hears something else, looks up sharply. It's a dull shing sort of noise, metallic and muffled by fabric. Alphonse knows by heart just about every noise that metal can make because he used to be the one making it and he still hears his brother making it every night when he shifts under the covers. It's like something being unsheathed. Like the sound of Fuhrer King Bradley's sword when he'd slid it down into Al and out, even though the blood had skewed the ring to it the second time around.
Impulse, remembered bloodshed, has him on his feet by the time Ed has maneuvered the stairs and starts across the stage on a long pilgrimage to the podium. Mustang stands patient and relaxed – totally unaware, and the bitterness of seeing his brother on stage fades away in favor of sharpening his hearing, tuning in to the frequency of metal.
It doesn't come again, and Alphonse relaxes slightly when Mustang has finally noticed he's stood. "Alphonse, I wasn't aware –" He's cut off abruptly as chaos erupts somewhere in back of him, and the unsheathing of several more weapons rings loud and heavy through the auditorium.
Alphonse has a moment to marvel at the sheer idiocy of the security staff to have checked for guns and not knives, to have let these people inside at all before he remembers –
Well.
In the midst of the chaos, he doesn't move. Rooted to the floor, he watches as security ushers the Fuhrer into the wings and Edward lags behind with Riza, limp exaggerated by the wider gait of his near-run. He calls to Alphonse and struggles against Riza's grasp, but she seems determined to see that Edward won't require another hospital stay any time soon.
There is no one in the first two rows with Alphonse. It's a wonder this group of whoever-they-weres didn't set anyone up near the front, where Edward was almost sure to have been. Nothing will happen to him. Nothing ever does. Naturally, the trouble will find Edward in the wings. Maybe it is a good thing to guard the stage entrance. He moves to the outer aisle and then to the short stairwell that leads to the tall stage. He traces the wood of the stair's handle with his fingernail. In back of him, the pounding of security's feet betrays their grievous error, and he doesn't think much of it when one comes up fast behind him.
Suddenly, there's a slim edge of something digging into his lower back, sharp and hard and obtrusive enough that Alphonse can feel nothing else but its pressure over his spine. There's hot breath on his neck when he impulsively takes a step forward, and in his ear someone whispers something, fast, harsh, and pained.
"Move," it hisses. "I do not want to hurt you. I am after the Fullmetal one." There's something foreign about it, it lilts and smooths over the tongue in a way that mainland Amestrian should not.
The saddest thing – Al's next natural thought is to be jealous, that this man wanted to kill his brother over him. Ha.
Al stays planted in the center of the stairway, and turns slowly to face the knife, which is, God knows, a bad idea, certainly. But getting a full view of the mercenary is worth it, because his eyes flash purple in the wan half-light, and at least Al knows why he wants to kill Edward, now.
Lioran. Strange to look at in his blue military disguise. Deadly sharp, deadly long knife angled in toward Al's stomach. But he won't do anything, of course he won't. No one can stab Alphonse. No one stabs Alphonse; they only stab his brother.
"Are you associated with the terrorist group from before?" Al says mildly. The man looks vaguely amused at that, smirks, shakes his head 'no,' and makes to pass Al to the stage in the narrowness of the stairway. Al sidesteps stubbornly, turns his head to the stage the see if Hawkeye has noticed his face-off with the only mercenary that seems to have been left free.
"I will not have this mission be in vain, now step aside! I'm after the Fullmetal and the Fullmetal alone!"
Alphonse – doesn't. Of course he doesn't. He won't allow another terrorist past him for the rest of his days. Edward is safe and will remain safe in the –
"Al!" Al turns abruptly to see Ed reappearing from behind layers of curtains on the stage, Hawkeye close behind and urging him to just stay put. He smiles for his brother, and something makes him forget the terrorist at his back until –
It's a strange moment when the pressure of the knife on his back changes to something more threatening, and then slowly, cleanly, mercilessly eases into him. He's certain that his face goes blank, that the smile he'd been wearing fades, that he looks silently stricken in a way that someone who has been stabbed should not. But the first thing that crosses Al's mind, as he feels that slim strip of metal enter him is, you bastard. And not for the assassin – for his brother.
He can never recall how many times his brother had reassured him that he was fine from a hospital bed, that it had never really hurt at all, that a few shards glass in his back, or a few bullets, or a couple of knives was practically nothing. Alphonse could also never quite recall how many of those countless times he'd believed him.
Now, proof a solid point of throbbing agony in his back, Alphonse knew that his brother had been lying, knew that the very real pain of a blade or bullet was nothing to scoff at – knew that every time Edward had dived in front of an assailant, he hadn't been aiming for glory and he hadn't been aiming to make his brother jealous because this pain, this absolutely breath-stealing, brain-bursting torture isn't worth all that.
The fact that he had done those things at all spoke volumes for the fact that Edward, rather, did these things for the people that he loved, took hits out of blind devotion and not out of a desire to see himself placed on a pedestal.
When the knife pulls out of him again, Alphonse feels all the anger he'd been harboring burst out of him with the first oozing gush of blood. He says, "Brother – " like a plea and stretches a hand out for Edward as he struggles to clear his head enough to stand. It doesn't work, and he drops to dark wood planking at the top of stairway. "Edward, I'm –"
Ed moves too fast. He's hurt and he shouldn't be running and there's a madman at the bottom of the stairs that wants to kill him and – and that is the most sane thought he's had all week. There's no bitterness there, just the untainted caring for his brother that he'd maintained perfectly easily when he'd been in armor and had daily known the pain of no pain at all.
Hawkeye reaches the assassin first though, because bullets move faster than one hundred and fifty pounds of enraged automail and muscle and there hadn't been any hesitation on her face when she'd pulled the trigger. The assassin drops with a sick thud on the stairs behind him and slumps down in a heap at the bottom. God, Alphonse thinks, as his vision goes blurry around the edges and Ed drops down on his knees beside him, she's beautiful.
"Al, what – what the hell were you thinking!" Ed pants. He rips off his uniform jacket without hesitation, shifts carefully behind Al, and applies pressure to the gushing wound with firm, gentle determination. Hawkeye kneels above him then, runs a soft, sweet caress down his cheek and then plants a quick kiss on his forehead.
"It's going to be alright, we'll call for help."
Alphonse wishes he were in any situation to enjoy the kiss. Instead he closes his eyes against the press of a blurry world against them. He can feel Edward stanching the flow of blood behind him and Hawkeye whispering soothing things to his face, and here he is, right back where he started, caught between two skies.
Bridging the rainbow that their hands make around him, above him, below him – he wonders what exactly that makes him.
Alphonse doesn't know why his brother hates hospitals so much. The nurses are very nice, and the food is better than anything he or Edward could make by themselves. Not to mention the fact that whatever is in the IV bottle to his right makes him forget the uncomfortable pull of the stitches in his back, makes him forget a lot of things that he'd been longing to forget for a while, now.
Plus, he always gets such wonderful visitors.
When he'd opened his eyes first, it had been Ed hovering anxiously over him, human fingers tracing the sinews on his wrist as if to ensure that his heart was still beating through touch. The first thing out of Alphonse's mouth, before he'd even moved a muscle in any direction, had been, "I let them in."
Edward had laughed. He had smothered him in what was an uncomfortable hug for both of them, given their respective stitches, but refreshing and right nonetheless.
"Stupid. You're so stupid –" Of course his brother wasn't angry. He has the best brother in the world.
Today, now, his visitor is General Hawkeye. She stands tight and tense across the room, and she's wearing civvies again. Really, she must have figured out how much he likes them.
Hawkeye being there reminds him of the anger he'd let fester in him for two weeks time. More or less, it hadn't been for his brother at all, but for himself. Hawkeye had given him a goal, had made him see everything he had to be, and his brother was the only example of a perfect human being (though he would deny it vehemently when asked) that Alphonse had ever known. Letting in that unnamed gunman and letting two of the most important people in his world get hurt had been a shock and a final straw, and Alphonse had needed to see their roles reversed before he could see that his flaws, that everything he had done that night had been silly human error, that nobody really hated him for it. That his brother wouldn't hate him if he explained. That Hawkeye could still acknowledge him as a person. That both of them would still want to see him saved if he were the one in the knife in his back, as it were.
He'd also wanted his fifteen minutes of fame (and all the pleasurable companionship that came with) but in the end, the fifteen minutes hadn't been worth the fifteen stitches that were marching up a patch of skin just to the left of his spine now.
There's an awkward silence which he had been filling with his thoughts until he decides abruptly to stop thinking them, and Alphonse chooses something silly (that had seemed like a good idea before he said it due to all the drugs in his system) to end it.
"Did they save my pants?" He asks suddenly.
"What?" She looks at him sharply, expressive eyes shining with some sort of suppressed mirth.
"Did they save my pants?" He says again.
"Your – no, Alphonse. I'm sorry. They were covered in blood." She looks bemused.
"Oh," he says. "That's a shame."
"Why?"
"I had this perfect piece of caramel in my pocket. Perfect texture and size and shape. I was saving it for you." Her face twists in a strange sort of fondness and she hugs him then, and Alphonse thinks that maybe he would have liked the kiss from before better, but he's through with wanting frivolous attentions – he and his brother have everything they need in each other.
Her lips brush past his ear when she pulls back, though, and he thinks maybe one more thing isn't too much to ask for.
Greed just shrugs in the back of mind when he pulls her back and kisses her, and Gluttony sadly acknowledges that she doesn't taste like caramel at all.
Thanks for reading! Reviews would be really lovely. ♥