Title: Cats in the Cradle
Rating: PG-13 for gore.
Warnings: End of series.
Summary: Alphonse fears that his brother may be dead, and feels guilt that he is not working hard enough on his study. He has a dream where his dead brother comes back and chides him for not working hard enough on his studies. Analyze that, Freud.
Edward comes to visit him, one night in his sleep.
"So," Ed says casually, seated on the edge of the desk in the circle of candlelight. "Looks like you've been getting on well."
He grins. Little bits of brain slowly drip from the side of his head, where his skull is smashed in; plip, plip. Fragments of bone and golden hair are still stuck to the side, sliding off in slow motion.
Al's mouth is dry. "I've been okay," he whispers. "It's lonely without you."
Ed nods understandingly. There's a plop as something falls out. "Guess it must be," he says. "That's why you got a girlfriend, huh? To keep you company."
"She's not my girlfriend," Al says. He breathes through his mouth, looks away. "She's just -- a friend. We go out sometimes."
Ed's not wearing the red coat from the photographs; Al took that. He is, however, painted in blood all over, from his collar to his boots, and when he shifts around Al can see right through the hole in his chest to the other side. "You've been spending an awful lot of time with her." Ed's voice is oddly cheerful. "No wonder your studies have gone downhill."
Al shakes his head, and keeps on shaking it, more and more violently. "I -- I'm still -- searching," he wheezes through a tightly constricted chest. "I've -- I've just hit a blocking point. It -- it's hard."
"Yeah, you've never been as good with the theory as me." Ed grins again, showing skull-teeth. "Here, I'll help you, Alphonse. I'll show you where your notes are going wrong."
Ed leans over, and there's a heavy wet splatter over the surface of the desk, and he puts his hand down on Alphonse's notes, the array he was drawing when he feel asleep. "Here's your problem," Ed says. His hand leaves a red and gray stain on the paper. "Here in this array, y'see, Al. You've let things into it that aren't supposed to be there. You're letting other things get in the way."
Alphonse wakes, in his own bed, and barely manages to keep from screaming and sobbing aloud. He nearly falls from his bed, stumbles over to his desk -- the lamp is low, almost guttering out, and it takes his hands two shaking tries to turn it up, before he can frantically scan the pristine white paper of his notes.
Clean. Clean. Nothing there that shouldn't be there, no putrefying matter of flesh left two years neglected. Al drops the paper back onto the desk, buries his head in his hands, and cries.
It was just a dream, he knows it was just a dream. Knows that wherever his brother is, he wouldn't condemn him, wouldn't blame him. But with no mother to kiss him and comfort him, no brother to awkwardly reassure and promise to protect him, knowing doesn't make much difference.
~end.