Author's Note: Wrote this story because I love Alphonse so much. I saw a piece of fanart on tumblr posted by Desferal. It inspired me to make this. It was quickly done, something I just whipped up and I would love to got through it later when I am more focused to touch it up a bit but here it is.
Let Him Sleep
The house was silent as the night stretched on into the hours that no one knows exist. After everyone goes asleep, time goes on. The clock ticks through time we are blissfully unaware of as our eyes are closed and our minds dreaming. Only one person knows these hours of the night personally. They experienced their length and know their loneliness. He understands the time between time and the night within the darkness.
Only one small light was on in the small-town house. It effectively chased the shadows out of a single hallway and no more. Fearing to wake up the dead sleepers with the light, all lamps were left out, all candles doused except one. Within the sphere of yellow light there was a string of books scattered across the floor. Spines stood up towards the ceiling. Books were half read and pages poorly turned. They were dropped and overlooked where they were left off in their reader's wandering thoughts. Statues of the intentions left for dead, stories of the dreams never to be reached.
The only person watching the evening make its pass was a lone suit of armor standing in the open window, peering into the summer's warm night. This person's name was Alphonse and he was neither a boy nor a man, because either of those terms would imply being remembered. But in the hours of the night, Alphonse became miserably forgotten while everyone else laid snuggled in their beds. Even sleep had forgotten to wrap him in its arms and carry him into the blissful world of unconsciousness. Alphonse learned the meaning of the word alone a while ago, but it felt like every night he was relearning what it really stood for.
However, Alphonse never forgot. He remembered the faces of the people who now abandoned the streets. He remembered the words he had read in his half-finished books, the ones he read to distract his thoughts from remembering too much. When he remembered too much his mind wandered too far into ghosts that normal boys and men left ecstatically behind in their slumber. He thought of nightmares that existed beyond the dreams and recalled them far too clearly. Not having the ability to sleep made him pick up book after book to derail his train of thought from turning onto the dead-end track, changing books when his focus became too lost.
Tonight, the books he read over a hundred times every night were not enough. Tonight, Alphonse almost wanted to turn off the lamp in the small hallway and let himself be completely forgotten in the night. But, there was something out there just like him. There was something just like him who was forgotten every night, and who stayed up in the odd hours of the day that no one recalled. They watched him every hour of the evening when he wandered through the darkness of his mind and desperately fought to keep his nightmares at bay.
Alphonse stared up at the night sky and slowly counted the stars, taking in the way that each one of them sparkled and shined back at him. He learned all the constellations and made many more. He dragged his finger through the sky pointing out different planets, naming them out loud and reminding the celestial heavens that he didn't forget them. Each one he knew, each one he remembered. Every night he traced the stars and knew how many were going to be in the sky on what day of the year. He made his own maps if the ones he found were too vague. He wrote down the stars and told them that he would not forget them. Even in the hours of the night that no one knew existed, Alphonse told the stars that he would remember them. Because, every night they remembered him. He understood the loneliness that the odd hours of the evening wrought him but he knew the stars understood it too much as well.
No more.
…
A small boy opened his eyes to the bright white ceiling of the Central Hospital. It was dark in the hospital room and all of the lights were doused except for those in the hallway, concealed behind closed doors. The nurses didn't want to turn on anymore lights in fear of waking him from his sleep. No books laid scattered across the floor. In fact, the boy's thoughts were well contained from the hours of rest that he had received that day. He slept well, like he hadn't done it in years and his mind stopped its wanderings and felt finally at ease.
This boy was Alphonse. Though his body looked starved, bones poking through paper thin skin and muscle, Alphonse was remembered in the late nights where everyone was asleep. Slumber had taken him into its arms and pulled him into the dreamscape of black unconsciousness every night. He eagerly laid down to rest his mind from the world around him. But tonight, he was awake.
In the hours of the night that did not exist, golden eyes wandered to the window where the moonlight flooded into his bedroom in a desperate attempt to reach him. He followed the silver fluorescence to the inky blackness of the night and caught sight of a sparkle peeking out of the darkness. Alphonse wanted desperately to walk over to the window and gaze out into the summer night and to feel its warmth, to breathe the air that it supplied him, but he was too weak. His body refused to move from its comfortable bed to go to the window and greet the evening. Though he couldn't do these things, he allowed himself a tired smile as the sparkling star shined furiously at him, making him recall memories of the late nights in the odd hours that everyone else forgot. He remembered the names and the constellations he had spent so long trying to memorize. He no longer felt the loneliness of the night but he still understood its meaning quite well and remembered the acquaintance that still suffered its horrible cold grasp every night until the infinity's edge.
"Don't worry, I won't forget you," Alphonse sighed, a whisper to the stars that were long forgotten by the busy world, but never by him.