Another day has almost come and gone
Can't imagine what else could wrong
Sometimes I'd like to hide away somewhere and lock the door
A single battle lost but not the war
-"Bring On The Rain" Jo Dee Messina
Roy Mustang never understood why the Elric boys would refuse to let him protect them so much. Every step, every turn, Edward fought and railed against letting Roy do anything for them. The only way Roy could gain any ground was to go behind the boy's back and arrange something that Edward would not realize was help.
It was not for an excess of pride. Edward was a prideful boy, to be certain, but pride can only run so far when the gods have melted the wax feathers of that particular sin for someone as violently as they did for the Elrics.
It was not even for a lack of trust, though Edward would never admit it, even to himself. He knew that Roy would do whatever he could for the boys, even if it didn't always seem like he had anybody's interests but his own in mind. It was not concern that he would get too far caught into what the boys were doing and end up disappearing as they might.
It was none of these things, and Roy Mustang had never figured out what it was then.
Roy Mustang's biggest weakness was the rain, the storm that rolled in from the Western skies, dark clouds blocking the light of the sun and unleashing its violence on the land below.
So how did he expect to protect the boys when he was so useless in the very storm from which they needed shelter?
A bright flash that was followed immediately by a deafening crack of thunder woke Edward with a start. He sat up in bed quickly, eyes owlishly wide, his vision slowly adjusting to the dark of the room. Just outside his bedroom window, rain hammered against the glass, painfully loud, rhythmic and steady and jarringly out of synch with his own heartbeat.
He held still for several seconds, and then another flash of lightning and the resulting crash of thunder that made his ears ring, and the young boy knew that he would not be falling right back to sleep tonight. With a huff of frustration, he swung his legs over the edge of his bed, cringing as the chilly air hit his flesh.
In the bed next to his, he heard a whimper, barely audible above the dull roar of the storm outside. Any thoughts of sleep that had still been lingering evaporated as he hopped out of his own bed and tiptoed across the cold wooden floor to the bed of his younger brother.
"Hey, Al, you okay?" he asked, placing a hand gently on the bundle of blankets where he thought his brother's shoulder was.
After a few seconds, Alphonse's chubby, childish face peeked out from under the covers and stared at Edward, before his expression crumpled up. "I hate storms," he admitted sheepishly, trying to keep the quiver out of his voice.
Edward made a face, a lopsided sort of smile that was at once amused and exasperated and trying hard to not show how much he hated storms as well, and started to say something, but was abruptly cut off by another strike and crash of the storm and both boys jumped, Edward hopping up into the bed and clinging to his younger brother as Alphonse emerged from the covers like a striking serpent and clung right back to him.
After a few seconds, the echoing thunder died back down to a dull roar, and the brothers looked at each other.
"Brother..." the younger whimpered, not bothering to disguise the fearful whine in his voice, too tired and too frightened by the thunder that hurt his sensitive young ears to care. That's what big brothers were for, after all, to protect and make the fear go away, then pick on the younger later for acting afraid when the danger, imagined or otherwise, had passed.
Edward was nothing else if not an older brother. "Come on, Al." He slipped down off the bed, grabbing Alphonse's hand tightly and continuing to hold it as the younger crawled out from under the rest of his blankets and put his feet on the floor, screwing up his face at the chill. Silently, he squeezed his brother's hand and Alphonse wrapped his arms around Edward's, clinging to his side tightly as they slipped out of their bedroom.
The thunder cracked again and both boys started, then half-ran the rest of the way down the hall to their mother's room, pushing open the door as more thunder rumbled and echoed out the window across the Rizenbul countryside.
Neither boy spoke, standing there in the doorway, the younger tucking himself against the elder's side tightly and barely peeking one eye out from against Edward's arm to look at their mother's bed. After another moment, the woman roused herself from sleep and sat up, squinting against the darkness to the two small boys in her room.
"Edward? Alphonse? What are you tw-"
"Al was scared," Edward interrupted her, tone brave for as much as it was quivering, watching her with fearfully apprehensive eyes and an unwavering expression.
Trisha smiled, a warm and soft gesture, then stood up out of her bed, reaching for her robe and pulling it on. "Come on, over here."
Relief passed over Edward, and he and Alphonse hurried over to her bed and clambered up on it, burying themselves under the covers and clinging to each other tightly. Trisha secured her robe and sat down on the edge of the bed, petting back first Alphonse's, then Edward's hair lightly.
Edward gave her a sleepy smile, holding his brother close to him, then yawned and closed his eyes, pressing his face into her pillow and letting himself drift off to sleep.
The wind howled outside the window, screaming threats of the storm that was moving in the night Trisha Elric died. The rain had started by the time Pinako had pried either of her young sons from her side, still gripping her hand tightly. It thrummed steadily against the windows, a drumbeat, dancing to a different pulse from the ten year old heart that was breaking into so many dysfunctional pieces of Edward Elric.
When he finally left his dead mother's side so the doctor could take it out of the house, he'd disappeared, breaking away from Pinako and Winry's attempts to comfort him, from the deafening silence of his brother, the boy too frozen from shock to cry yet. He'd escaped, pushing away from the townsfolk in their living room, from the pitying eyes, from the sympathetic, empty words and slipped into his father's lab, into a back corner curled up tightly between the wall and the bookcase, hugging his legs tightly to his chest and staring at the window with all the angry defiance of a wounded small boy, hatefully defying the storm to try to take anything more from him.
Lightning crackled and nearly blinded him, and thunder rolled, deep and angry at the insolence of so small a child, shaking the panes of glass in the windows, the shadows in the room jumping and dancing wildly like beasts waiting to attack the boy at any given moment. He closed his eyes and pressed his face against his knees, biting back the sting of tears, hot and bitter in his eyes. The thunder continued to growl and echo low against the mountains to the East, and Edward felt himself sinking under the emptiness, under the fear, under ... everything.
"Brother?"
The voice was whispered, distant, coming from the doorway to the lab, so quiet it shouldn't have been heard at all above the sounds of the thunder outside the window, but Edward heard it, and looked up, eyes travelling over to the doorway to the small dark outline of his younger brother in the doorway.
Seconds ticked by, the only sounds the steady rain against the window and the sides of the house and the low growl of thunder, then Edward finally swallowed tightly and opened his mouth to speak. His words caught on the tears he'd held back and he faltered, choking them back again, bowing his head and holding one hand out to his brother instead. Alphonse's footsteps were rushed and light against the floor and suddenly his arms were around Edward's neck, clinging tightly and whimpering with strangled sobs against his older brother's shoulder.
He unwrapped his other arm from his knees and shifted a bit, pulling Alphonse closer to him and hugging him tightly, one hand absently petting his hair the way their mother had for them both, staring at the ground, wide-eyed and trembling, breath coming in painful and tightly-controlled little gasps, still fighting back the tears, desperately trying to be strong for the younger boy. Alphonse's tears and sobs were lost to the household in the storm, in the violence that screamed and howled and growled outside, but Edward heard them, heard them and choked on them and locked them away in his memory.
He hadn't even noticed the weather that day, but the air crackled with the energy of the incoming storm, making all the hairs on his arms stand up. The anticipation that hung heavy in the air matched the anticipation that had sung along all his nerves like electricity, crackling and dancing in the back of his mind.
He didn't notice the weather much either when the transmutation started going horribly, completely, and utterly wrong.
The wind howled, the rain pounded against the sides of the house like a choir, singing a steady and ominous rhythm that matched the demonic howls and screeches in the lab, the flutter of paper and the cracking of glass as the covers on the lights shattered under the force of the alchemical energy zipping uncontrollably around the room. It was a peculiar harmony, an orchestra of thunder and lightning and high-pitched shrieks of energy with a steady tempo of rain, and it all sang through his head, through his heart, passing over and through his body and joined by the pain that lanced up his leg and whited out his vision through the purple haze that was covering the room.
And above the noise, above the clamor, above the roar of the beast, the thunder outside and in that tiny little room, Edward heard a scream that stopped his heart, that silenced the noise and commanded his attention.
"Brother!"
The screams of his younger brother echoed through his mind and held his attention and stopped his heart and stole his breath and he held out his hand to him, trying to catch him, reach him, take the pain away, stop him from fading away...
But he slipped through his fingers, the same as his mother had, and all he could hear was the triumphant growl of the thunder outside, the violence of the storm that drowned his screams, taunting him for the defiance of two young children treading upon the territory of the gods. His ears rang and his heart tried to beat in his chest and it echoed painfully under his breath and his world cracked and turned upside and inside out and shattered, the pieces reflecting back on him everything going wrong, and he was drowning in his tears, drowning in the rain, in the roar of the thunder, in the screams his throat strangled and choked on.
It howled and raged in his mind and wasn't quieted until he heard his brother's voice again, frantic, desperate, confused and scared, and he hoarsely answered the questions with an automatic sort of response, relief starting to wash away and quiet the storm in his head, and his vision blacked out, the clouds covering the world from view.
The thunder became a dull roar of voices, a myriad of words that never quiet connected in his mind- Help my brother, please! Come to Central. He's far more interesting than his father. There are children injured here. Go away. And then it was quiet, and Edward was left alone with the fading echoes of thunder as the eye of the storm passed over him, circling above him.
When he finally opened his eyes to stare down the maw of the growling beast, he found himself in a dark room. There was something wet and heavy on his forehead and the faintest bit of light filtered in from the still overcast night sky. Groggily, he turned his head, and found not Death, but a war-built armor sitting in vigil at his bedside.
The words had fought their way past his lips before he realized it, before he could think about what he was saying. The knowledge was instinctual, recognizing the heart before the face. "Al?"
The armor turned its head to look at him. "You should go back to sleep, Brother."
Silence was his answer, and seconds ticked by, counted off by the steady thrum of the rain on the window next to him, and then he reached out his arm, his only arm left to him, still silently looking at the armor that was now his brother.
A clatter of mail-plates hitting together as Alphonse leaned over and Edward wrapped his arm around his neck as far as it would go, pressing the side of his face to the armor's faceplate. A faint, echoing sound came from somewhere deep inside Alphonse and Edward realized that Alphonse was trying to cry. The thought struck with a pang that shot out from his heart, through where his arms and legs were supposed to be, then came to settle as a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach .
In those hollow sounds, Edward could hear the rumble of thunder again, as the eye passed over and the storm threatened and loomed again, and he closed his eyes, shivering and clinging to his brother. So many words to say passed through his mind but nothing seemed right, nothing sounded like it would be heard above the thunder, so he said nothing, silently hoping that his brother would hear what his heart was trying so clumsily to say, and understand.
Nina had almost made Edward feel like a child again. She'd almost made him think that maybe, just maybe, he and his brother weren't completely lost, that their innocence was still there, even if it was tattered and torn.
It was warm and muggy for spring the day that he'd crept back into Shou Tucker's house, the air entirely too still, full of the promise of the incoming storm.
The wind had begun to pick up when he saw the little girl, or rather, the creature that had once been that little girl, confused and in pain in her father's lab.
The thunder began to rumble in the West when he tried in a desperate and last-ditch effort to keep Nina from the government and released her from the military car.
And the rain had started to fall when he found the bloodied stain on the wall that had once been his friend.
When his hands pressed against the wall, desperately trying to piece together the little girl, he slipped a little, the blood and rain slick underneath his hands, hot and miserable to the touch. The rain fell around him and his frustrated sobs choked and died in his throat, and all he could do was keep clapping, keep trying to fix Nina, fix that little girl that had once been alive, been human...
Roy's words were understood, registered, but not heard. Edward couldn't make out his voice through the noise of the storm, even though he understood the words- "Move forward." He turned and ran from them, from the then-lieutenant colonel, from the voices, speculating so coldly and easily as to what happened to Nina, from all of them. The clanging and hollow sounds of Alphonse's footsteps followed him above the sounds of thunder and his own ragged breathing.
Alphonse didn't speak up until they were around the corner and Edward had come to a faltering stop, folding his arms against the wall of a building and resting his forehead against them, shivering and trembling so much his shoulders ached and his stomach turned.
"Brother?" His voice was quiet, hesitant, but Edward heard it above the noise and looked up at him. The younger Elric stepped over to him and knelt down, bringing the demon-faced armor that housed his soul down to his brother's eye level. A whimper fought its way past his defenses and he turned to him, resting his hands on the armor's shoulders and pressed the side of his face to the side of the helmet. Alphonse brought his hands up to the back of Edward's shoulders, trying to hide his empty body behind his big brother's much smaller form, hide himself from the storm around them.
Silence passed between them, and the storm raged around them.
Roy Mustang never understood why Edward so adamantly refused his help. He refused the help of everyone, certainly, but he seemed to have a special loathing for his commanding officer, and he never understood it.
Someday, when the skies had cleared, he might explain it to the colonel.