Frustrated Author Preface (feel free to ignore): Alright. I give up. I cave. I wrote this in February for a LiveJournal competition called Transmute Fluff which has, quite frankly, been a disorganized mess from the very start. I wrote this for a user on LiveJournal, and because she never wrote anything to put into the competition despite the three to four months she had to do it in (much like half the other anonymous entrants) it didn't even go to her in the end. Which really sucked. I mean, I wrote it special to her request, and I really am actually proud of it, but it never got to her. It was posted, but it really wasn't the same. Now, technically, I shouldn't be posting this here, because the competition isn't over. But seriously moderators, it's July, and the contest was meant to end in May, and I really don't see an end forthcoming. So I say screw it. XD; I want to get this story on my account here, so HERE YOU GO READERS! If you saw this on LJ and I ruined the anonymous thing for you, I really am sorry, but hell -- I never even wanted to enter this contest in the first place. I mean it's fluff. FLUFF. And anyone who has read my writing knows that me and fluff do not mesh well. Actually, a bitch friend of mine (who used to be my LJ friend but then decided quite suddenly that she hated me and removed me from all her friends lists rather abrubtly) coerced me into joining it, and then dropped out herself. Which was a bitchy thing to do. But you really can't expect much more from a bitch. (I AM NOT BITTER.) Anyway. THE RESULT IS THIS FIC. It was never meant to be written. Clearly, the Gods did not want this story to be written. THEY TRIED TO SEND ME SO MANY SIGNS! But here it is, nonetheless. I'm going to post this sucker and get it out of my BRAIN, godammit!

Wow. XD Sorry for that rant folks!

Notes: Frankly, the comments above are full of more language than this story. This is a messy pile of fluffy goop. There is, of course, angst of the Ed variety and a hint of Papa!Roy, because I just don't write anything without these things. It's really not possible for me. But it is also full of Ed/Sheska fluffy goop. Yes. You read that right. As I said previously, this is an extremely unusual thing for me, because I hate pairing Ed and I hate writing fluff. But this was a request. So. Ed/Sheska. And you know what? Despite it all, I really like how this came out! It's a different style for me. It's third person limited from Sheska's POV and written in the present tense. I hope you like the change as well as I do.

Warnings: Light romance (some kissing), drunk!Ed, sappy goop, mild language at some point. Spoilers for the series, disregards the movie. This takes place about eight years after Ed is sent across the gate.

Enjoy!

It's a well-known fact to anyone familiar with the library that taking food into those sacred knowledge houses is strictly forbidden and is dutifully frowned upon by tight librarian lips. No one wants to read a book with crumbs nestled between the pages after all, and should a globule of something sticky land on an important word, it would be most inconvenient for the reader. Drinks are a deadly sin to librarians as well – to a greater extent than food, even. Spilling an open glass of anything, be it water or grape juice, spells doom for the sacred tome in question, and in a world where running ink is taboo, librarians learn to recognize the sloshing of liquid from yards away, through shelves and walls, learn to smell the distinct scents of cranberry juice or liquor on a single whiff.

Sheska is not a librarian anymore, and she hasn't been for quite some time. Such is the consequence of loving the written word too much. It's better, she reminds herself daily, that she is away from all that, anyway, because when she worked in the Central Library, the quality of her eyesight had a tendency to steadily decrease with her pay. Now she works in a military branch in South City. She has her own office, and it overlooks the fountain in the courtyard. On nice days, she can open the window and hear it gurgling.

So no, it's true that Sheska isn't among the ranks of librarian faithful anymore, but the instincts of the librarian have been instilled in her. She worked in a library long enough that she will instinctively shush anyone talking in a reading room and that she will automatically re-shelf any book that is not properly alphabetically placed.

She can also hear the sloshing of a bottle miles and miles away (it's a glass bottle, and the liquid inside is thick) and smell alcohol in the air without any breeze at all to carry it to her (fruity, tangy, bitter – like wine, but not). Tonight, on the second floor of a public library in South City, stretched out behind a sofa in the southernmost reading room and losing track of time completely, Sheska smells brandy.

She peeks her head out and rubs her eyes behind thick glasses, imagining that she looks something like a mole peeking out of its hole after a long winter's hibernation. It's dark; the overhead lights have gone out systematically. One on, one off, one on, one off – because apparently this saves energy. Sheska thinks it's a useless system, if only because now there's nothing to stop her reading into the night, because they didn't turn all of the lights off (which would save more energy), and she won't stop reading until she can't see the words three inches in front of her face.

The moon paints the ground a yellow color on the stretches of the room where the lights are out. Sheska vaguely wonders how long it was she was out – or in, rather. She was reading a particularly steamy romance novel. It had fallen behind the couch around four in the afternoon, she had followed it – utterly enraptured – and because of that, they failed to notice her when closing time hit and the librarians were ushering everyone out for the night.

She slowly makes her way down the winding, light-striped hallways, disconcerted by the eerie silence of the library at night (different from the forced silence of the day) and by the fruity smell and sloshing that had assaulted her recently deprived senses. Since she had started to make her ways towards the noises, a soft, melancholy humming had joined the mix. She can't help but think that the voice, even slurred as it is with drink, is hauntingly familiar.

There's a room at the end of the hallway that must not have been important enough to be zebra-striped, and it has gone completely dark with the closing of the library's doors. The humming is louder there, and when she comes through the doors, looking warily into the room's shadowed depths, she stops for a moment and hesitates, considering the dangers involved with assaulting a drunk man about getting brandy on the library books – alone, in the dark, and in the middle of the night. All of her fiction-honed instincts scream "no!" but her heart, which she rarely trusts and which really should have more say in her life than it does, sings at the sound of that wispy hum, floating through the air and permeating her senses and defenses like the brandy had in the first place.

She takes a step forward.

Almost immediately, she sees the gold. It's even more familiar than the voice, that particular shade – deep and rich even when there's little or no light to make it shine. It's almost as if it has a light of its own. That gold had been a constant in her life once, just as much of an important presence as a family-doting man with glasses and a lopsided smile. She thinks of that gold sometimes still, sitting in her office and listening to the gurgling of the fountain, because Sheska has a photographic memory, and as such, she has never forgotten why she is sitting in that office in the first place or why her mother is still alive today.

The name comes as easily as the cookbook that brought them together.

Edward. It feels good to think it.

But it is wrong that the gold is here now, she knows this. Edward is dead; he has been dead since the coup eight years ago. She attended his funeral. She attended the memorial service they held on his birthday a few months ago. She can smell the fresh flowers on his grave still, if she thinks hard enough. She can see the embossing on the stone and the fierce, proud, crooked smile that Alphonse always wears when his brother is mentioned. She can hear singing and praise, soggy tears and bated breaths. She can feel the tension in the air around her and the tears that trickle down her own face. But these feelings can't be right, because they contradict that piercing gold, that lulling hum, the acrid brandy, the warm, living presence. For a moment, suspended between the memories of feelings and the palpable ones of the now, Sheska thinks that she is dreaming.

Another step brings her closer to the golden sheen of his hair. The piercing eyes are shut loosely, eyelids twitching against each other and eyelashes making trembling, dancing shadows along his sallow cheeks.

He is different than she remembers, and Sheska wonders how exactly, her mirage and her fantasy can be inconsistent with the memories she has of him.

Edward Elric, she thinks disbelievingly, floating high and intoxicated by air, is very much alive.

She isn't sure what has drained him of his vitality, it's been too long since she's seen him to know, but she recognizes that it is gone as soon as she sits across from him at the little study table, chair tipping forward to get a better look at his gently down-turned face. His golden vibrancy that had filled the room when he was fifteen is gone, and Sheska misses it like something tangible, like the air that she breathes. Her photographic memory recalls an Edward that was small, but had enthusiastic presence enough to paint the walls with it. This Edward is larger – taller and broader at the shoulders – but his vitality is waning, seems to have been stretched thin and lanky like his body as it grew.

He hiccups once, and abruptly, his eyes shoot open. The sight of it steals her breath away. His eyes always were the most beautiful gold, and that's one thing that time hasn't changed. They are as lustrous as ever, sparkling dully in the weak light from the sporadically lit hall. They are blazing now with alcohol, and he has a certain febrile heat that makes the air around him heavy. Between the thick air and sudden tightening in her chest, Sheska finds it very hard to breathe indeed.

His eyes settle on her with a grave finality, and he focuses so intently on her face, studying her features. Sheska is amazed that he is able to concentrate like that through his drunken haze, but she knows immediately that she shouldn't be surprised anymore.

This is Edward Elric, after all.

When she speaks, it's quiet and whispered, and it feels vaguely as if she's speaking to herself with how silent Ed has become. "What are you doing here, Edward?"

What an inappropriate question. What are you doing here? How about, "How are you alive?" "Where have you been?" "Why me, why here, why now?"

Why?!

His eyes cloud immediately, and he glares at her with a sort of cross-eyed concentration. Sheska is vaguely reminded of an infant – confused, utterly dependent.

"I...where'm I?" He slurs, and Sheska can only think, oh. Oh dear.

She avoids answering and instead fusses over his hair, pushes it out of his face (of his eyes) and swallows back revulsion at the grainy slickness of it. There's a smudge of something brown on his left cheek, and Sheska licks her thumb, mumbles 'now that won't do will it?' under her breath, and reaches up to rub the stain away. It's something her mother has always done, and she recalls vaguely that it had always annoyed her.

Edward's nose crinkles as she does it, and his eyes still have that glazed quality to them that doesn't suit him at all.

"You're in South City," she finally replies. "Did you come by train?"

"'Dun 'member," he mumbles, drops his gaze like a guilty child. She gazes steadily at the brandy bottle clutched tightly in his automail hand.

"Well it's little wonder with how empty this bottle is, Edward. What are you thinking?" When he doesn't reply, she reaches down to pry the incriminating bottle from trembling fingers and is met with fierce resistance. She doesn't speak, but resumes her petting with one hand, gently stroking the automail (for all the good that will do her). He only looks at her hand in that same cross-eyed way, clings tightly to his lifeline.

"S'mine. I bough' it," he says in a puzzled slur.

"Hand it over, please, Edward."

"S'mine! Bough' it fair n' square."

"Yes, and it's lovely, and I'll give it back to you when you're sober enough to enjoy it, but please hand it over for now." He looks at her as if he didn't understand a word and clenches tighter on the bottle in his hand. There is an ominous crack. Her sixth librarian sense tingles, and Sheska has enough time to shift the struggle to an area over the carpeted floor rather than over the table lined with ancient books before the bottle shatters completely under that inhumanly strong grip.

Edward looks at his hand, looks at Sheska's face, and starts bawling.

Well, she thinks, shaking brandy from her fingers, she certainly didn't expect that.

She shushes him as well as she can, but there's something deeper than a little spilled brandy going on here. He refuses to be calmed, so she lets him sob himself out on the table, pounding it with his automail fist, and his cries echo hollowly in the great, empty library.

"Edward, you need to help me on the stairs," she says. Her breath is coming short and ragged, and she hasn't even made it to the front door yet.

"You're too heavy for this, Ed."

He just grunts in a soggy way, rubs his nose on her shoulder. He's using Sheska as a sort of a cane, but more often than not, his legs just give out completely, leaving her to drag his dead weight across the floor.

Sheska's legs finally betray her at the top of the stairs to the second story landing. There is a flight below this one, and Sheska knows she can't make it with a drunk, despairing, half-metal boy clinging to her arm. She contemplates Edward's bright flush, the newly awakening storm outside, the grand atrium above their heads pit-pattering with rain, the golden glow of the moon disappearing fast, the two flights of stairs, and thinks that even if she were able to get the poor boy out the front door, it would be cruel to drag him to her flat in the rain.

She sighs and he looks at her with bright, adoring eyes, still glimmering at the corners with traces of tears. His nose is running, and she pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket and holds it up, tells him softly to blow. His lips work in a familiar, miserable way again as she pulls the hanky away, and all she has time to think is now what!? before he breaks into another bout of sloppy tears on her shoulder.

Lightning cracks above them and the atrium illuminates briefly in the eerie flash. His moans mingle morosely with the thunder outside.

"There, there." She mumbles awkwardly. She rubs at his shoulder like she knows what she's doing. "It's alright." (And it probably isn't, but it's a good thing to say, anyway.) He proceeds to sob himself out again, and she finds her shoulder thoroughly saturated by the end of it.

"Shesssska," he says a moment after the tears stop. He lingers on the 's' in her name drunkenly, his head lolling to the side and his glazed eyes starting intently into hers.

"Am I...Am I drunk?" In any other time, she would have giggled at the absurdity of the question.

"I – yes. Yes you are."

He nods and his tone is utterly matter of fact. "Though' so. But. If I'm drunk. W-will..."

"What?"

"Will I 'member what I say?"

"What you – " Sheska pauses, thinks, realizes that she has absolutely no experience to draw from because she had a glass of wine once at her mother's birthday party and it did nothing aside from making her hopelessly ill. She's avoided it since then. However, the characters in her books have experiences to draw from, and she can recall volume five in one of her favorite series. Michael Mandfred, space alien fighting alchemist extraordinaire had gotten particularly smashed with his lady friend Marissa one evening, and couldn't recall anything about the evening for the rest of the book. Of course, it turned out in the end that Michael had killed her when he found out she was an alien queen in disguise but –

Ah. Well. Edward was pretty well inebriated, to the point of incoherence and random emotional outbursts. If Mr. Manfred could be sober enough to kill an alien queen and still not remember a thing the next day, Edward would wake up with little or no memory of the entire evening.

"Probably not," she decides on. He nods again.

"How 'bout what I do?"

"Nope."

"Oh. Good."

Abruptly, he sends her tumbling backwards. She lets out a muffled 'eep!' when her head bumps the stairway banister, but that is forgotten relatively quickly when his mouth is suddenly there over hers, hot and wet and furiously determined. He is making little desperate noises into her lips and his eyes have closed in the heat of the moment, but hers remain wide, wide open. Her lips are closed and puckered in momentary surprise while his are open and sucking frantically all over her face, anywhere he can find to gnash at her with clumsy gums and teeth and tongue. It's sloppy and miserable and Sheska stays frozen in terror the whole dragged out, longer-than-life minute of it.

He comes up for air and pants, looks at her in that cross-eyed way, and Sheska can taste brandy.

"I. I'm not gonna 'member that."

Sheska gulps, puts awed, reverent fingers to the stiff, drying spittle on her cheek, thinks – I'm not sure I want to either.

But there's something tender and hurt and caring in his eyes, and when she looks him straight in the face, she can't bring herself to say something so cruel, even if he did scare (scare?) the life out of her and then some. There's more to this than spilled brandy and a sloppy kiss and far, far too much alcohol. She should have asked earlier, but somehow she was so afraid of getting pulled into that complicated life (death?) of his. Regardless of how hard Ed tries to stop it, it's an undeniable truth that the people close to him tend to (die) get hurt.

"Edward, is something the matter?"

He looks at the carpet, picks at it, then looks up at her guiltily.

"Al."

And isn't that always the problem?

"Gone too long. Missed ev'rything."

Yes. Gone. Not dead, not buried, not six-feet-under and marked with a granite stone, Sheska thinks, woozy and numb. Not dead.

Only gone.

As if that makes any more sense.

"Gone? Edward – that's one thing I don't understand –"

"He's married, now, y'know." She did know. She had been Winry's bridesmaid.

"...Yes."

"He doesn' need me."

"Oh, no. No no no, of course he needs you – " He breathes deep. Sheska does the same, smells the comforting woody smell of her books tinged with unfamiliar brandy.

"I'm not gonna 'member this t'morrow," he finally says, drowsily.

I hope not.

He falls asleep in her lap there at the top of the stairway. It's an unfamiliar feeling to her, the hard, sturdy, angles of him lain out beneath her. He's masculine and beautiful and there asleep in her arms, and Sheska has never wanted anything so much in her life.

She tries to tell herself at first that it's merely relief. The constant mantra (he'salivehe'salivehe'salivehe'salive) chanting at the back of her mind is doing crazy things to her brain, and she is merely fuzzy with relief, warm with euphoria. She only wants something from him because he is quite suddenly, conveniently, utterly, accessibly there for her to want something from.

She isn't sure what she wants exactly, she's never been in this situation before. All that she knows from this gorgeous, intoxicating contact is that she has never felt a book so warm as how Edward Elric feels right now. She touches his head, runs fingers along his throbbing pulse, remembers his gnashing, forceful crush of a kiss, and thinks that a drunk, dirty, skin and bones man-child should not make her feel like this.

Because certainly, this is what she's read about. A thousand fiction books, a thousand situations – eyes meet across the room, hands touch, and it's warm and there's a spark and lightning arches between their palms. She's read it a thousand times before and she's sighed and swooned, but she has never before felt it, felt the heat gathering in her face and behind her eyes and tinting the whole world gold.

A half an hour goes by and Sheska is left wanting. Her initial theory goes out the window when electricity shoots from his slowly rising chest to her outstretched palm and she can recall a vague semblance of this yearning attraction from years ago.

Edward is lucky. He has drink to ease this feeling, to numb the spark that he certainly must have felt between them too to have jumped her like that at the top the stairs. Sheska has nothing, and so she is left feeling bereft and confused, like Edward Elric had suddenly risen from the dead, strolled drunkenly into her life, and stolen her sanity with one clumsy half-kiss.

"I. I'm not gonna 'member that."

Sheska will. She doesn't want to, she doesn't need to, it would be better to move on and forget.

He lets out a soft snore, nuzzles closer into her leg, and Sheska thinks, What are you doing to me?

She lays a timid feather of a kiss on his forehead.

What have you done already?

The morning brings blinding light through the window above them, scratchy carpet beneath them, a twisty tangle of limbs on the floor and thank God today was Sunday, because librarians finding two people sprawled suggestively across the library floor with the heavy stink of alcohol hovering over them is not at all conducive to keeping the library card Sheska treasures.

Ed wakes slowly, head still resting on her thigh. She feels him do so when his long hair slithers out of her lap. It's his groan that wakes her completely, agonized and pitiful, and it comes just seconds before a terrible, wet slap on the carpet and miserable gagging. Sheska is careful to keep her eyes closed in mimicked sleep as he rids himself of the brandy and whatever he had eaten in the last few days. When all she hears is heavy breathing, she opens her eyes and sits up.

The way he looks at her is puzzling. His lips twist into a sort of a grimace as she rubs her eyes under her thick lenses. His eyes narrow in a pained way and a corner of his mouth won't stop twitching. And Sheska –

Has no idea what to say.

She wants him to know what to do. She wants him to pick up the distant sparkling shards of the brandy bottle and laugh – a temporary lapse in judgement, he'll say – and then he'll sweep her off her feet and kiss her again. Fairytale ending and all that. This kiss she imagines won't be like the slap in the face with a wet fish she got before, though. It'll be sweet and chaste and warm like in her novels.

And maybe he won't smell like alcohol and body odor when he does it, and maybe he won't have vomit dribbling down his chin, and maybe his clothes won't be quite so baggy and dirty and unsuited to the fairytale land she can picture them in. Maybe he'll look less like the world has just slapped him in the face.

He's running down the stairs before she even has a chance to realize he's gone from her side. She surprises herself when she's up and running after him.

"Wait! Please, Edward, come back!"

He stumbles a flight of stairs below her, and had she been more athletic, had she been more bold, she might have jumped the railing to get to him. As things are though, she isn't bold and she isn't athletic, and Edward is on his feet and sprinting when Sheska reaches the spot where he had fallen.

She stops pursuit when he reaches the door. It's locked (how the devil had he gotten in the night before?) and he runs into it full force before he realizes. The glass in the door doesn't shatter, and it's almost comical when the force of the impact sends him sprawling backwards. He scrambles to his feet, and Sheska is almost on top of him begging him to STOP already when she realizes that she can hear half-gulped, barely contained sobs on the end of his every breath.

He's absolutely humiliated, Sheska realizes, and I'm...

And I'm not helping. She stops in her tracks.

She didn't expect him to look back when he finally figured out that he needed to transmute the door open, but he does, and his eyes are lonely and desperate, and his face is contorted in passion, in something like love for all that Sheska has seen of it.

She hopes he means that expression for her.

She waits on the staircase like a princess in a tower as her knight rode out the door and down the promenade. And he was her knight – he was wearing her colors, after all. She could see her handkerchief clutched tightly in his right hand as he sprinted out the door.

He's not going to remember.

She comes home feeling pitiful and sorry for herself – she pulls a pint of ice cream out of the freezer and a book off the shelf in her living room before she even shakes the rainwater from her hair.

Just forget. Concentrate on something else.

Looking at meaningless words and letting melted ice cream pool beside her, she finds that she can't.

A day later and Sheska comes home from work to find her phone ringing. Mondays are nothing but trouble, she thinks, and she picks up the phone and puts it to her ear. She doesn't even have a chance to say hello before an urgent whisper that she's heard before rings out across the line.

"Sheska."

She's heard it on countless radio broadcasts over the past eight years – ever since the coup and his inauguration ceremony. She heard it there too, but it was louder and booming and strong. She's heard it address countless masses of people and she's heard it address a gravestone, but very few times has she heard it address her.

"...F-Fuhrer Mustang?"

"Sheska, he's – you've seen him?"

"I – "

"Your handkerchief, it was yours. It was embroidered. You've seen him?"

She hesitates until she finds her whisper is just as high and breathy and desperate as his. "Yes." Definitely not a dream then, she thinks.

"Sheska, he died."

"Yes."

"I cried at his fucking funeral!"

"I put flowers on his grave."

There's another long, awkward pause, filled with the heavy breathing of two people who've encountered a dead man.

"Then how...how is he asleep on my couch?" The Fuhrer says shakily, voice a high, wavering tenor.

The same way he kissed me Saturday night. The same way he slept with his head in my lap.

"I wanted to ask you...ask you...is it really him? Do you think it's really him?"

Her mind is a haze of golden eyes and brandy in the fading light of her kitchen. "Yes," she says boldly, without hesitation.

"Don't tell anyone what you've seen." A slow, bated breath. "I'll take care of it."

The line goes dead.

He does take care of it, only a few days later. There's a picture of Ed on the front cover of the newspaper only a week after she sees him first, but he looks considerably more like a human being, now. He's fleshed out a bit – looks like he has eaten a few good meals since his return, at least – and it's hard to tell from the grainy black and white of the photograph, but Sheska looks at it long and hard and sees his clean-shaven face, a new sheen to his hair, a new gleam to his eyes, crisp, freshly-pressed clothes, and smooth milky skin under his eyes where there had once been ugly, black, sleepless bags.

None of that, however, is the best part.

The best part is his expression – sheer, unadulterated bliss in every line on his face, in every tooth in his smile, in every once-familiar twinkle in his eyes (Sheska takes the time to appreciate each nuance thoroughly). And the reason for it all is obvious, right there in his arms on the front page of the daily newspaper and something that Ed hadn't seen for nearly eight years.

She studies Alphonse (wrapped so tightly in Edward's arms, how can he breathe?) too, finds it strange that he is crying unabashed streams of tears like he never had at his wedding. He looks happier than he ever had at his wedding, too.

Sheska only half-reads the article (how can she when the picture is so distracting?) but she doesn't really need to because the picture caption says it all anyway. Apparently, the story they're telling is that Edward is a returned prisoner of war from the old conflict in Liore. Sheska knows this is untrue, but she also knows that it is possibly the best thing the Fuhrer could have said – for Edward and himself. Trust subtly manipulative Mustang to turn something so precious into something beneficial for himself.

Sheska knows that the Liore conflict is still a bumpy thing. Mustang has been trying to convince the nation that there are bad people in Liore who instigated the riot and took those thousands of lives, but the rest of the Liore people are good. It always makes more sense to people to separate things into black and white, after all. Shades of gray make for a complicated, bumpy rule; this is something that Roy knows. And so, the explanation is simple.

Sheska translates Roy's political babble and reduces Roy's quotes to the basest of solutions. Edward was taken by bad Liorans eight years ago. Edward was returned by good Liorans a week ago. The bad ones had finally fallen to the good ones. The people of Liore are nothing to be feared. Not now. Not ever.

Roy Mustang is smart. Sheska has always known, but she realizes again when she thinks of how much hate Amestrians have harbored toward the citizens of Liore since the incident all those years ago. Roy Mustang is smart, war-scarred, and has always been desperately afraid of a second Ishbal within his own borders.

Now, there will never be one.

And what of Edward? He is a hero again. He, along with the new leader to represent Liore, confirm the fact that Edward, a helpless captive for eight years, recently helped the good in Liore to oust the bad, and that – that is finally, finally that.

But for all that Roy's defense is a political venture, she can't help but think that the smile on Edward's face and the softening of those sharp, harsh cheekbones is his doing. Roy Mustang had said he would take care of "it." Sheska sees that "it" wasn't the only thing he has taken care of.

She studies the photograph for another few minutes and even when she glances at the clock and sees that she is late, she finds she doesn't much want to move.

The week is a drab and boring thing, dragging on as it is always wont to do. Sheska's time is measured in words, thousands and thousands of words that she remembers so, so easily – because Sheska has a photographic memory after all, so even if she were to wish the words away, they would stay just as they were in the back of her mind, a useless lump of useless knowledge that does absolutely nothing to make her happy.

Sometimes, scribbling on a notepad or typing away on her military-issue typewriter, she just wants to sob at the injustice of it all. She wants to scream and cry and fuss – it's not fair, she thinks. It's not fair that I remember all these words. It's not fair that I remember all this touch and taste and sight and smell that I can never have again. She has all of her memories stored away neatly in a mental file cabinet, and any time she likes, she can take them out and read them, but what good is that, really? Reading memories is no different than reading a romance novel, after all, and when she's reading, she almost has the illusion that she can feel the love through the pages. But when the book is over, when the memory is over, that is simply – the end. And no matter how many times Sheska rereads the novel, it always ends exactly the same way.

She wakes up to his smile in that photograph because she always tends to start the day with the most pleasant memories, but by the time she goes to bed, she's desperate and groping, she's determined enough to concentrate on Edward Elric that even the sound of his vomit hitting the library floor is more pleasant that the sounds of her mundane day to day life.

Sheska wonders how she is possibly so obsessed with something, with someone, she had barely thought about two weeks ago. She wonders if it is healthy to be this obsessed. She considers seeing a military psychologist, but he will know what this is – Sheska has already diagnosed it, herself.

She is in love, and she is in lust, and it is a deadly combination because Sheska has a photographic memory.

And, heaven help her, she cannot forget his face.

Two weeks after and Sheska returns to the library reading room. She is amused to see a faint stain on the carpeting near the top of the stairs. The library will close soon, and Sheska feels strange making her straight path through the crowds thronging in the opposite direction, towards the doors on the ground floor, but she wants to be here. This is the way she is doomed to spend her Saturday evening – saturating herself in Edward's essences by being in the places he has been. By walking the floors he had walked. By seeing the things he has seen.

It is the best that she can do.

It's sappy and hopeless and romantic, but it is all that she has.

She doesn't smell brandy when the lights dim in their systematic way. She doesn't see gold when she sits on the reading room couch. But when she closes her eyes, it's easy to believe that she does. So she does, and dreams awake, and there's a rustling of cloth at the entrance, and, for god's sake, she's even remembered to add a slightly heavier thump to each alternating footstep.

He doesn't speak because she doesn't want him to. She doesn't open her eyes because she knows he won't be there. She can almost feel his warm breath on his face and she knows that she is crazy but God in heaven, she just doesn't care anymore –

Lips over hers are surprising, but she opens her mouth to them and gasps softly. She knows this is all in her head too as hands find her shoulders (and one is metal, because Sheska is utterly mad, Sheska is utterly obsessed, and Sheska has a photographic memory) as his tongue smoothes its way over her mouth. He tastes sweet. He tastes beautiful, and it's just as she imagined it from the first moment she saw gold gleaming at her from across an empty room.

She opens her eyes and finds that he's not drunk, just like –

Blinks.

Rephrases.

She opens her eyes and finds that he is real.

There's a mad few moments where she scampers backwards and he scampers backwards. She was already sitting but he falls hard on his ass, ponytail swinging and world-famous mouth going a thousand miles a minute in harsh swears.

He stops suddenly, and their eyes meet, and this is the part in books when sweet nothings are exchanged, where there's much caressing and hand-holding and tender I-love-yous, but Sheska has a photographic memory, and she has been stewing over the images of one of the most beautiful men in the history of Amestris for two weeks, and for God's sake, she's not a saint.

She lunges at him, he meets her halfway, and they're going at it with determined lips at tongues in seconds.

"I died – " He says between her lips at one point, and Sheska is in such a haze of euphoria that she only thinks uh-huh, that's lovely before she's cleaning his teeth with her tongue again.

"I died, and you – "

"Edward – "

"God everything's so clear when you die, Sheska –"

"You're…beautiful – "

"I saw your face – "

"Beautiful, beautiful –"

"Sheska, are you listening –"

The sentences are starting to get long enough that Sheska has to stop her kissing to listen, so yes, yes she is. However, he seems to want her to look at him when he's talking. It's a simple enough thing to do anyway, because his eyes are beautiful, and she could stare at his eyes all day. He talks again, and she tries hard not to look at his lips too closely.

"When you die. Everything…it all makes sense," he breathes. Sheska wonders if maybe he is crazy, but a glance at his soft, smooth lips says it's okay if he is. Sheska is crazy too, after all. "When you die, everything you ever wondered about in life kinda…I dunno…pops.

"I…" he gulps, "died. Y'know? I got – stabbed a little." Sheska wonders what it's like to be stabbed a lot if being stabbed a little is enough to kill you. "And when. It was all going dark, I remember – seeing everyone. Y'know, Mom, Al, Winry, Mustang, Hawkeye. And – iunno. You were there.

"I didn't see it coming, like. Just one second I was thinking of Al and the next we were pulling you out of a pile of books. And you – looked at me. And you smiled. And I was thinkin', y'know, just as my brain was short-circuiting and sending me all kinds of weird stuff you're. You're really pretty." He ends on a breathless note, and his eyes waver back and forth at something on the ground, and his blush spreads adorably from his nose to his ears. Sheska vaguely wonders why something so grotesquely insane and haltingly ineloquent makes her feel like she's melted into a puddle.

Her mouth won't form words.

She's lucky Ed's can't seem to stop.

"I had a long time to think about it, and the other day when I came back and Al was…married and I didn't want to face him just yet…South City is so close to Rizenbul, and it's not like I knew you were here. It's not like I looked for you. It's not like I wanted to vomit on your shoes. I just wanted to forget, and a library's as good a place as any, right?

"Anyway. I missed you. A lot. I know I said I wouldn't remember – and I kinda wish I hadn't, mind – but that kiss was horrible, but you look great now y'know, I love your hair. And those new frames are really…iunno distinguished. Pretty. They…favor your eyes.

"And I was drunk and I didn't know what I was doing, I haven't kissed that much, and everything looks way better when you're drunk anyway, don't get me wrong you – "

Sheska cuts him off with a kiss when the compliments turn insulting. It's sweet and chaste and warm and despite it all, it feels like their first time.

"…Wow," he says when she pulls back, and Sheska is inclined to agree.

She wakes to Edward's ponytail slithering its way out of her lap and to his lackadaisical stretching across her legs. There are no librarians around because it is, of course, Sunday, but Sheska would have liked to see a team of tight-lipped librarians move them now. She's warm and content on the scritchy carpet, and he's alive and beautiful above her.

His gentle kisses on her forehead make her happy and his distinct, musky scent is positively incredible.

She doesn't need to make a note to commit it memory – that is entirely unnecessary.

Sheska has a photographic memory, after all, and come what may, she's going to remember this forever.

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