The next sensation was the glow of sunshine through his eyelids, and after that the rustling of grass in a breeze. Ed's eyes drifted open slowly. The grass drew into focus and he knew, before even lifting his head from the ground, that he was home.
He had been crumpled on the ground like a rag doll, but as he rose he could hardly remember why. Ed stood. He was…where was…?
Blood, and steel.
Ed's eyes widened and his hands flew to his side, to find…nothing. There was nothing. No blood, no wound, no jagged metal spearing his stomach, no dirt or dust or bruises. Not even his old black shirt he wore to hide the oil stains. Instead, he wore white linen like he might have done at home, as a child.
As soon as he pressed his hands to the place where the blood should have been, he drew them back to stare. Wonderingly, he turned the flesh-and-blood right hand before his eyes, looking at it from every side and flexing the fingers as though they were foreign. In that moment of suspended reality, what surprised him most was how alien the perfectly restored arm felt in the absense of automail.
He pressed fingers to his thigh, where the cold bite of an automail port was no longer gnawing at his femur. So, too, was the leg whole. For the first time in years, Ed stood in waist-tall grass with no metal bones.
Around him rustled the grass in the field that had divided his home and the Rockbells'. When he'd last been in Resembool he had allowed himself no more than a glance from the corner of his eye at the empty spot on the horizon where his house had been. Now it stood there again, perched like a baleful black bird, looking as it had the morning he'd burned it down.
"I'm dead," he said aloud, testing his voice.
The words seemed oddly muffled.
"No, love," came the words behind him, and Ed froze.
He froze because even in this place where all that had been destroyed was returned, that voice was the last he would have expected to hear. After so many years, it still felt like she'd spoken to him only yesterday.
Slowly, slowly, Edward turned.
His mother stood there, and she was restored as well—not only living, but she stood there every bit his beautiful, warm mother and not the brittle, thin woman illness had made of her.
He hardly noticed he'd stopped breathing.
Trisha smiled, and something in Ed cracked. He wanted desperately to wrench his feet loose and cross the few feet between them, but for once in his life he could not move or speak.
So his mother came to him, and took her son in her arms. He was taller than her now, some numb part of his mind whispered. As though being extricated from rock, his hands finally rose to wrap around her back. He felt her hand gently pat his back like a heartbeat the way she'd done when he was young, and that was nearly when Ed broke down.
Absurdly, what came rushing to his mind first were all the words he'd planned to say to her back when they'd drawn the circle in the basement that day. He wanted to tell her how badly he'd missed her.
What he said was: "Aren't I dead?"
"No," murmured his mother.
"Then I'm dreaming."
"No, love."
"Then how?" he whispered.
Trisha said into his shoulder, "There is more than one Gate, Edward."
That made sense to Ed. In this dreamlike suspension, it made more sense than anything, and rendered the vision around him rational and finite. He relaxed into the embrace.
And Trisha sighed, "And it is not time for you to pass through this one. Not yet."
Ed understood what she meant, and thought he maybe disagreed. "I'm tired," he said.
It was the first time he'd admitted it aloud, but cobwebs were obscuring his thoughts. Though she said it wasn't a reverie, he moved through the same sort of miasma that arrested him in dreams.
"I know, my love," said his mother, and she drew back just far enough to put her hand on his cheek and smile the smile that he and Al had brought themselves to ruin to see again.
And all he'd had to do was die, thought Ed vaguely.
"Ed, you must get up," said Trisha, her palm still warm against his cheek. "You have to save yourself."
That seemed a tall order to Ed. He saw himself as he must have looked in the omniscient eye of another, bleeding to death in a mineshaft in an even greater tangle of flesh and metal than he normally was.
"You have to do it, Ed," she told him, "because no one is coming for you."
It was late spring, here in this landscape the Gate had conjured. A far cry from the bitter cold in Baschool. Much like the taunting figure that guarded the Gate he knew, this passage must assume the shape most familiar to the traveler.
"You know this, sweet heart."
Yes, he did. He knew. No one would come for him.
"Can't I stay a while?" he asked.
"Not yet," said Trisha softly, and he was devastated to see tears threatening to pool in her eyes. "There are still so many people who need you."
How was it that so many needed him, when he and Al had done their best to need so few others? He needed Al, remembered Ed—suddenly frowning. Al was not here. His brother was on the other side of this alluring Gate and the idea of the brothers existing on opposite sides of it was like an equation he could make no sense of.
That equation had not made any more sense when it had been their mother. Ed gazed at her green eyes and chestnut hair, and was relieved his memory of her face had not wavered with the years. Sometimes he suspected that Al had difficulty remembering, but Al was too ashamed to say.
"It's not fair," said his mother, sadly, "and it shouldn't be you. But it is."
Ed passed a hand over his face and it came away wet. He hadn't cried in years, and all it took was the sight and smell and sound of of his mom. Trisha reached up and brushed at his eyes. "You've gotten so tall," she said, and Ed almost laughed. Instead he swallowed hard, losing the fight.
She came forward and embraced him again, and he was filled with dread. He knew it for a farewell. "I love you," he said thickly, trying to stop his voice from breaking. "I miss you. We miss you. I'm so sorry."
"For what, Edward? Being a child, who missed his mother? How long will you punish yourself?"
As long as it takes, said an ugly voice that cowered in his head. It settled on him like a lead weight.
"I miss you both so very much," whispered Trisha. "One day, my love."
He nodded into her shoulder.
"Get up, Ed."
The air chilled.
"Get up."
He closed his eyes, and the sunlight disappeared. He couldn't hear the grass rustling anymore.
When his eyes opened, they were dry.
Get up, his mind said even as his body rebelled. It felt like a voiceless echo. He tasted metal, and reflexively bared his teeth. Get up.
He'd been dreaming as he lay bleeding. The remains of it drifted away, scattering out of reach. Ed remembered sunlight, and the field behind his home. Soon that vision, too, faded, replaced by a dripping sound and the anguished groans of two men trapped under a mountain of rock and steel.
What had he been dreaming of? So often it was a relief when nightmares dissolved back into murky guilt, yet now Ed felt a terrible grief. It briefly overwhelmed the pain flooding through the gap his oblivion had created. Soon the pain was paramount, and only the mantra remained.
Get up.
Gradually he clenched a fist and began, slowly, to get up.
.
.
.
sadder than my usual fare, oop.
any thoughts are appreciated!