Summary: Actions spoke louder than words, and Edward's actions had always screamed loudest. The boy had never done a slow thing in his life—why should his death be any different?
Okay, this story…yeah. It was originally a result of pondering the unfairness between characters' death scenes. For instance, (spoilers) the difference in death scenes between a certain pilot in the Firefly series, whose death was instantaneous and completely unexpected, and then scenes of certain characters like Captain Buccaneer from this series, who got like six death scenes and a plethora of last words and just wouldn't die.
And then…today I made the mistake of reading select parts of the book Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven But Nobody Wants to Die or (the eschatology of bluegrass) by David Crowder and Mike Hogan, and that book always makes me cry painfully every time I read it. Despite its uncommonly long and seemingly nonsensical title, it's a book all about our loved ones who have gone on before and dealing with our grief. It was written in response to a friend of the authors' sudden and very unexpected death. Some of you older readers may remember several years ago hearing in the news about a pastor being electrocuted during a baptism. I'm not usually affected by death very much at all, but reading again about Kyle Lake's sudden and unexpected death always makes my heart hurt and overflow through my eyes. I knew him personally, as well as David Crowder and the rest of the band, and it's the raw grief written into the pages of this book that gets me every time. I highly recommend it to anybody and everybody.
Anyway, the point of that is that the last part of this story about not remembering someone's voice is taken almost directly from that book.
Oh, also, the title for this fic is taken from the book Drops Like Stars by Rob Bell, a book not about "why did this happen?" but "what now?"
I apologize for the excessively longwinded author's note. I usually try to cut back on those, but I thought this one might be important. Please, enjoy. Even though I'm not too happy with the quality of this story.
Drops Like Stars
It didn't seem fair. One minute he was with them, and the next he was gone. Mustang saw it happen, from a distance. He hadn't been with him when it happened, but his eyes had just chanced to be drawn to his fighting form at that instant. He saw the impact, saw the boy collapse like dead weight. By the time he arrived at his side only seconds later, he was gone. Dead. Mustang could do nothing other than sit in shock and stare at the bloody chest. It wasn't moving.
It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Fullmetal was not supposed to die. Not at all, not for many long years. But especially not like this. Not so suddenly. He was supposed to have people around him, his brother and friends and all his loved ones, and he was supposed to speak to each of them in turn and tell them it would be all right, not to cry. Then a peaceful look would come over his features and he would die with a sigh and a smile on his face, leaving the others to disobey his last wish and dissolve in grief.
But he had died alone. There was no one beside him. He hadn't even gotten an extended moment to dispense his newly discovered wisdom that graces the dying, the sort they wish they had found while still alive. It had been sudden. Instantaneous. One moment he was with them, and the next he was gone. He even had an expression of vague surprise on his face, though slackened by the relaxation of muscles that would never be so lax in life. Like he couldn't quite believe it himself. Like he had maybe known something important had just happened, but wasn't completely sure of it.
He hadn't gotten any last words, Mustang realized. No, that wasn't quite right. Everyone who has ever spoken since birth has had last words. But he hadn't known they were his last when he spoke them. What were they? Who had they been spoken to? Mustang couldn't say. He had seen Edwards speaking with some of the other soldiers an hour past, had seen him yelling commands only a few minutes prior to this moment, had known he was shouting defiant insults at his enemy not long ago. But what were they? What were the words he had spoken inadvertently as his last? Mustang didn't know. Nobody else would know. It didn't seem fair.
It almost seemed fitting, though, that Edward had died in action, not with words. The boy had always been incredibly verbose, letting his opinion be known to anyone in front of him, but it was always his actions that spoke most truthfully about what he thought. In that sense, maybe this was fitting. Actions spoke louder than words, and Edward's actions always screamed loudest. The boy had never done a slow thing in his life—it was against his nature. Why should his death be any different?
Still—Mustang silently wished he had been with him when he had spoken his unknowingly last words. Maybe then he could remember what his voice sounded like. He had already forgotten, and it almost frightened him. But if he had heard those final words, Edward's last, he was certain that he could have stored them permanently in his mind to call up his voice whenever he forgot. He tried now, but he could only remember some words he had spoken—could even picture his face and his lips moving with the words—but there was no sound. No voice. Like the volume on the picture had been turned off.
Looking down at the too-still body of a lively boy with an expression of dulled surprise on such an expressive face, it didn't seem fair.