Disclaimer: I do not own the Fullmetal Alchemist movie! Nor do I support the concept of the doppelgangers, however, I did rather like Alfons, as a totally different person from Al, that is. (and really he was, he didn't act like Al at all, imposter! He was a pretty suck ass doppelganger huh?)
A/N: This is really short! I did, however, find it under my bed, so does that mean anything to anyone? Do you guys like found-under-the-bed stories more than others? If so, this is your lucky day!
Rocket
Everything concerning Edward had always seemed a bit ironic.
Funny how it took death for Alfons to believe him. Funny how no one was laughing.
Noah, she was crying, crying and screaming, it seemed. Only some of the tears were for him – some friend, in the end – she was mostly concerned that Edward hadn't taken her along.
Ed's father, Hohenheim, well, he was dead. Clenched within the grasp of a great dragon's jaws. Didn't that sound terribly fiction? No one was shedding any tears for Hohenheim in the end. Edward had never really liked the man anyway.
He wondered if Edward would cry if he saw Alfons dead. The bullet hole that was a bloody blossom of scarlet stark upon his back. It was an odd thought – strong, determined Edward. Crying.
Alfons thought that if he were from another world, and everyone thought that he was crazy (even his best friend) he would have already been crying. Quite a lot.
How frustrating.
Even as Alfons had launched the rocket that would send his misunderstood friend home he did not fully believe him. It took the gunshot. The horrible pain. The rush of thoughts and memories and sudden calm of his entire mind to truly convince him. He was ashamed now, in his last moments, but never before that, that he had not believed Edward (not even once, not ever).
"All the pain fades away," Edward had told him, "and suddenly you're filled with a clarity you've never even imagined. Everything makes sense, just in time for it to all be over with."
There was that irony again.
That when you finally get the opportunity to realize all of your mistakes, everything you should have done, could have changed, in one existential moment of discovery...
...that's when you die.
It occurs to Alfons that when Edward told me that he had died before it was the moment he truly classified him as a loon. He has a scar there, he says, he can prove it, but that big scar over his heart can be from anything, really, and who seriously believes that they've died and lived in a different world and has a bodiless brother and isn't severely psychotic.
Sometimes he was scared that one day Edward would just snap, and all of his nice, contained, interesting story craziness would turn into that "raging lunatic" kind of craziness and he'd do something horrible. Edward, though, would never hurt anyone, if he didn't have to, and he feels horrible that he ever doubted that.
In retrospect, his own death is his own fault.
He wonders if he would have believed Edward sooner – and not on his deathbed, where there are only regrets and no actions you can take to right these wrongs, these "in your face"'s and "I told you so"'s – if he wouldn't be here, bleeding out, on the floor of some piece of machinery. Perhaps he would be traveling to Edward's world with him. Perhaps they would have a cure for his disease there. Perhaps he would meet the other Al, Alphonse. Maybe they'd be friends.
None of this matters though, because he's dying.
He thinks though, at the very least, that it's okay. Really. Because in the end, he helped Ed get there anyway, to his imagination land – his real world, rather. He'd one something with his life, and while it hadn't been what he had expected. Well, actually, it kind of had been.
He at least got to launch that rocket.