A/N: Where in hell did this come from?! I was just sitting eating breakfast, perfectly innocent, and I remembered, for no particular reason, that there's no alter Roy in the movie. And bam! This story idea hit me out of nowhere. I spent 3/4 of calculus and half of English lit writing this in my notebook while pretending to work, and then when I got home, I just had to finish it, even though it meant that I couldn't start my homework until 10:00. It was weird. And it's so angsty! It's not even flangst! Just angst! Poor Edo. I might do a follow-up to give it a fluffy ending, or I might make it in the same universe as my drabble for Biscuits of Humor this week (Sophia). Or I might let hanjuuluver use it as the prologue for a story she wants to do, if she ever actually starts it. Anyway, even though it's angsty, I really like this, so I hope you do too.
Rated T for extremely angsty Ed, alcohol abuse and random, meaningless sex with a stranger
Disclaimer: You know I don't own FMA. Why must you torment me by making me say it out loud? It hurts enough to think about it.
Someone Who Isn't You
Ed lies awake in his room in the shabby apartment he shares with the young man who is not quite his brother, and the thought that refuses to let him sleep is this: he has never seen Roy on this side of the Gate. In two years of looking without daring to look, he has yet to find this world's alternative to the Colonel he knew; he has never turned a corner and seen the face of the man who could be Mustang, but isn't.
Ed thought he saw him, on more than one occasion; in fact, the first year he saw Roy everywhere he went. In the streets, in shops, in classes he attended at the university, Ed caught glimpses of his hair, his eyes, his smirk, and felt his breath catch and his heart beat faster.
Most often, he would look a second time, and the resemblance would be gone. The hair, on closer inspection, was the wrong shade, or the eyes were the wrong shape, though they had looked like Roy's from a distance.
Sometimes when he got closer Ed would see that, though the man did indeed have Roy's smile, or nose, or ears, or hands, the rest of him was someone else entirely. The false hope from those encounters left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he had nightmares for days in which he transmuted Roy out of bits and pieces of him that were shared by strangers.
One night Ed sat in a bar with a glass of whiskey that was filled, emptied, and refilled more times than he could count, and told the bartender, in a confused jumble of English, German, and Amestrian, that he wanted to go home – though even he didn't know if he meant his apartment two blocks away, or London, or Risembool, or Central – and as he said this, a man walked in. It wasn't him, not quite, though he almost could have been; he was Roy with a thousand tiny imperfections, like whoever had made him had tried to make Roy with only an old photograph to work off. He could have been a cousin, or a son, or a brother. Someone who didn't know Roy that well could have mistaken him for the real thing.
Ed did know Roy that well. Ed knew it wasn't him, not really, but he needed it to be Roy, needed it so badly; it wasn't that hard to lie to himself, and pretend that it was, and the two of them were back at his apartment, shirts and pants rapidly being shed, before he wondered if this was a mistake.
Ed woke up in the morning with a headache and an unfamiliar body in his bed. In the thin light of early morning, free of the haze of alcohol, reality returned painfully, dispelling the tenuous illusion that the man he had slept with was Roy.
When the man rose and stretched, Ed offered him a cup of coffee and the quiet, awkward small talk of one speaking to a stranger. When he gathered his clothes and made to leave, Ed made no move to stop him; he just watched him go. It was only after the door had closed behind his back that Ed realized he had never asked the man his name. He was glad. If he had known it, he might have been tempted to find him again.
Ed was more cautious after that about seeing Roy in the faces of strangers. He still turned his head at the sight of coal-dark hair and charcoal eyes, but he refused to believe what he thought he saw until he was close enough to know it wasn't true anyway. It hurt too much to have his heart broken every time it wasn't him.
And now it has been two years since he came to this world and more than a year since he slept with a man who was almost Roy but wasn't, and as he lies in his bed, unable to sleep, Ed thinks that he has never found the Roy who exists in this world. There was no moment when he saw those features out of the corner of his eye, and told himself it couldn't be, but it was, and he knew it, and then they lived happily ever after. Every time he thought he saw Roy, he was wrong; the man in the bar was the closest he ever got, and even he was a mistake.
Ed doesn't understand why he's never seen him. There are logical explanations of course, but none of them makes any sense.
There is always the possibility that Roy lives far away in this world, China or Japan or Australia or somewhere else that Ed has never been because it would take almost as long as he's been in this world to get there. Ed doesn't believe that, though. It doesn't make sense that Roy would be put out of his reach in this world.
Roy is the only one he hasn't found. Ed cannot explain it, and he refuses to ask Hohenheim, but even though their names and lives are completely different, some fragile thread links him to the people of this world who are the people of his world. He seeks them out, these people who resemble people he knew once, out of what he supposes is a misguided attempt to recreate Amestris in this place; the part of him that is comforted by the familiar, that longs to go home, fights an endless battle with the part of him that argues, rationally, that they are not the same people, that he is twisted, that he is obsessed with the past.
In truth, Ed thinks that it wouldn't matter if he looked for them or not; they were drawn to him, or he was drawn to them, out of some strange link they share, and he would have found them no matter what. All except Roy.
Roy is only one he hasn't found.
He can't help thinking about the others.
Winry's name was Melissa, and she lived next door to him in London. She told him she wanted to go to America and become an actress, or stay at home and become a teacher. She never threw wrenches at him, although once she had hit him with a book. He wrote to her once a week.
He saw Armstrong at many of the fairs where he displayed his rocketry; the man was the Strongman in a traveling sideshow.
Ed saw Izumi, though her husband called her Elaine. They ran a boarding house in Paris that he stayed in on his way from London to Munich, and there were four children who ran constantly in and out, laughing, shrieking, and playing. Before he left, Ed told her she was a wonderful mother.
Riza owned a tavern near his apartment, one of the few in town where the serving girls went unmolested, because the men knew they would have to face down her.
Ed almost tripped over Havoc, who was sprawled across the steps in front of the dining hall at Munich University, where Hohenheim taught and Ed took classes sporadically, and once he stopped laughing, he introduced himself as Armand. He was Ed's first friend in Germany, because he was kind-hearted and easy-going. Second-hand smoke bothered him to no end, though.
Fuery was a silent, squeaking engineering student when Ed met him. He was too shy to speak to him, or anyone else; Ed finally had to ask one of the professors to learn his name was Lukas. His fellow students consider his most impressive accomplishment to be the introduction of Lukas to Armand, and are continually disbelieving that, not only did Lukas not die of embarrassment the first time they talked to each other, but he was the one to suggest a first date.
Ed walked into the flower store two doors down from his apartment and Hughes was standing there talking up the shop owner. Ed walked out the door again, and straight into the nearest bar; he doesn't remember the next three days very well, although he does remember waking up in the street, and the strange looks his neighbors gave him for weeks afterward. The first time Hughes talked to him, he burst into tears. It wasn't fair that this world had a Hughes while his didn't.
A year and a day after he came through the Gate, a friend of his father's introduced him to Alphons at a lecture on rocketry, and Ed couldn't say a word. He just stood and stared, and Alphons glared at him and walked away. Ed found him outside afterward and apologized, saying he looked like Ed's brother. Two weeks later, when he needed a place to stay, Al offered to let him move into his apartment. Ed never asked him why he would open himself so much to a young man he barely knew. He doesn't want to know the answer.
Ed sometimes feels guilty for the way he treats Alphons. Sometimes he forgets that he is not his brother, that he has an identity of his own, and he knows that it isn't fair to treat him like he is the person Ed left behind. When he remembers that, however, he always ends up punishing him for not living up to his expectations, for not being the person Ed wants him to be, and that isn't fair either. On nights like tonight, Ed is willing to admit that the best thing for Al would probably be for him to leave.
That is never going to happen, though.
To Ed, it only makes sense that if there is another Roy, he should be drawn to Ed as the others have. He and Ed should have run into each other by now. But they haven't.
On a night like tonight, Ed cannot banish doubt and fear. There is always the possibility that one of those times he thought he saw Roy, he really did. There is always a chance he didn't know Roy as well as he thought he did, that his memory was faulty, that he spent so much time looking that he just didn't see.
There is a chance that he let Roy walk out his door the morning after without asking his name, and lost him forever.
Ed doesn't believe this, however. He would know Roy if he saw him, he is sure.
Ed refuses to entertain the possibility that Roy has been killed in this world. If he admits that, he would have to admit the possibility that Roy is dead in his.
It has been two years since he came to this world, and Ed has not found the Roy that belongs here. Ed blames the Gate for this. He has to; he doesn't believe in God. He wonders sometimes if this is part of his sacrifice, that it wasn't enough for the Gate to take him away from his world, that it keeps him from ever finding the man who should be Roy just to see him suffer.
Tonight, he lies awake and wonders if it is better this way. He doesn't even know what he would do if he ever found this man; could he just walk up and say hello? Ed isn't sure he is capable of doing that.
And even if he did, what then?
No matter what he looked like, the man wouldn't be Roy, any more than Alphons was Al. He would have a life and a past of his own, most of which Ed would never know and none of which included him. He wouldn't know Ed, wouldn't recognize him. He wouldn't remember him and all the things they had shared, because for him there wouldn't be any. He wouldn't be in love. He wouldn't be Roy, just some man who looked like him.
It would probably hurt as much to see this man, who was Roy in every sense except for the only ones that mattered, as it did to see those men who almost were, but failed at second glance. It would probably be worse, because every sight of him would be a reminder of what he should have been, and wasn't.
Part of Ed tries to tell him that something, anything, is better than nothing, which is what he has now. At least he wouldn't be alone. At least he could pretend it was Roy.
Part of him thinks that anything – even nothing – would be better than that. Part of him says he can't love a lie. Part of him says he can't break his heart, not again, not like this.
It would hurt too much.
And Ed knows that the worst thing of all, perhaps, would be if this Roy did love him. Because he would never be able to resist temptation. Because he would want it too much and need it too much, and so he would always give in, even though he knew it was a mistake.
Because he would look into his eyes and never see the man in front of him, but another man in another world who loved him as well, and every time this man touched him, Ed would feel that man instead, and every time he said, "I love you," he would be saying it to that man instead, and Ed never wanted to be that cruel.
Because if Ed fell in love, he would have second thoughts about leaving. And Ed couldn't afford anything that threatened to keep him here. Not when he had so much to lose by staying. Ed didn't want to make that mistake.
Ed wanted to go home.
As he lies there, Ed's eyes slip closed, and his breathing becomes slow and even, and he is finally able to sleep. He has the same dream he does every night. It is of a face he hasn't seen, even once, in two years, except in his sleep, and he wakes up, as he does every morning, with tears in his eyes.
A/N: Seriously, was that angsty, or what! I don't know what chasm of my soul this came from. Now review, and tell me if you enjoyed the angst!
