Author's Notes: Yes, it's fairly short. I know, I'm awful. I refuse to work on the next part of TA until my contest entry is done, though. Challenge words: millipede, pie, swashbuckle, flop.
Written for FaultyWish, set while Ed is staying with Al and Winry.
The short version, for folks not familiar with the Wish universe: In a dream, the Gate tricks Al into agreeing that the world might have been better off if his brother never existed. And then it gives the boy what he asks for: Ed is taken, for many, many years within the Gate, where he suffers incredibly both physically and mentally. One night, an Al who is 28 and a doctor, married to Winry, who never had an older brother and never studied alchemy, dreams of a boy he doesn't know in terrible pain... and saves him. Now Ed is living in the world as it would have existed without him, struggling to adjust and heal.
Dreaming of Then
This is not his brother.
Edward has to keep reminding himself, because every now and then, if Alphonse enters the room while the boy drifts on the edge of consciousness, some long-forgotten part rises up in recognition of the voice. Insists, with a surge of relief thick enough to strangle him, that it's all been one long, terrible nightmare. That if he opens his eyes, the boy he's grown up with will be there, wearing a body created on the worst night of his life.
Or maybe, maybe even in the flesh- because he's tried so hard, and perhaps it worked, after all.
But it is always cloth that meets his gaze, the inside of a blindfold to prove the existence of endless darkness, and whatever might have surfaced alongside the beginnings of a faint spark of hope is crushed.
The only thing worse than those times are the days when his brother's voice speaks soothingly until Ed gives into exhaustion and slides down into sleep, expecting nightmares.
Because, once in a great while, they do not come.
He has pleasant dreams instead, images that are fragile wisps of memory in the waking world. Things that have been all but driven from him by the years of pain and deprivation, precious glimpses of a life gone by, jewel-bright and glittering.
He dreams, and there is the intense scrutiny of disbelieving eyes as two young children kneel in the vibrant green of the grass. Their stares follow the path of the millipede that navigates beneath the blades, and the question comes, uncertain and awed. "Brother, is it supposed to have that many legs?"
He dreams, and there is the weight of the quilt their mother made for the approaching winter above him, a warm head resting on his shoulder. The bedtime story is less than halfway finished, an enthralling tale of a swashbuckler in search of legendary treasure, but he can tell from the slow, even sound of his little brother's breathing that Alphonse is already asleep.
He dreams, and there are shrieks of laughter echoing down the hall, the delighted sound of two children who have just discovered that the couch is the perfect height for climbing. They have collected every pillow in the house on the floor below, are taking turns in clambering to the highest point to flop into the soft pile, breathless and flushed with excitement.
He dreams, and there is the taste of cherry pie, crust flaky and warm, filling hot enough to scald. He gulps it anyway, because it's just that good, but pauses after the first three bites. Because Alphonse is in their yard still, promised that he'd finish watering the flowers out back before coming in to see what their mother had baked.
And so the boy balances the plate carefully in both hands and brings the slice outside, intent that his brother have the rest before it gets cold.
He wakes to a strange sensation against his eyelids, and it takes a moment to realize what has happened: the tears have soaked the blindfold, are pressed damp and warm against his face, trapped by the fabric.
Beside him, a man who is not his brother speaks gently, kindly, believing that his words are doing some good.
Edward wishes that he would be quiet.
owari--