This story...gods, I think it comes from my heart. Here it is almost Christmas, and I am literally half a world away from my little sister. It hurts, almost. My host family here in Taiwan doesn't celebrate Christmas at all. Not even commercially. Rotary wants all of us inbounds to go to school on Monday, and there's no snow, and no sledding... I'd be the first to tell you how much I hate the cold, but this...? It's foreign, it's alien, and most importantly...
It's lonely.
I suppose this is my attempt at a Christmas fanfic, but...well, it's pretty depressing - at least for me. I miss my family, and of all my family, I miss my sister the most. I think I'll dedicate this to her, for all that she doesn't read my fanfiction ever.
So, yeah. Merry Christmas.
...for all that I'm pagan. sweatdrop
TITLE: AT HOME IN THE COLD
WRITTEN: 21.Dec.06
WORDS: 319
He was just sixteen. Not quite seventeen. Still a child. Mature beyond adulthood.
He wanted his brother back, damn it.
Ed watched Alphonse Heiderich make several adjustments to the drawing of a rocket, attempting to make it even more aerodynamic that before, and had to will his loneliness away. He was cold with loneliness.
"Hey, Alphonse…" He stopped, thinking back to his little brother again, wishing there was some way he could know if the transmutation had worked or not. "Alphonse, don't you miss your family?"
The blue-eyed young man looked up from his blueprints. "I guess," he said. "I get letters from them all the time, so it's not so bad. I'm going back to see them for Christmas…I mentioned that to you, right?"
"Erm, right." Ed still wasn't clear on what Christmas was, nor did he care. They didn't have Christmas back home…
Oh, home. The cold crept back in.
It was all so clear in his mind. He knew every inch of the tiny dorm room he and Al shared in Central, and he knew all of the train stations between Central and Risembool by heart. He could still smell the old, musty scent of the First Branch library, and could still feel the warmth of the desert sun in Lior.
And he could still hear his brother's voice.
His loneliness came back, and it was numbing in its intensity. The need to share his home with someone, anyone, was enough to drive him mad.
"Alphonse…?"
Somebody. Anybody. "Yeah, Ed?"
Home…well…he didn't have a physical home, like most people. But he had his brother, instead. What was the saying? Home is where the heart is? Well, he knew where his heart was, and it wasn't in some building anywhere… Four years, he'd kept his heart safe in a suit of armour.
And so he had to ask…
"Have I ever told you about my little brother?"
THE END
Love and peace, people. Read and review. Reviews always cheer me up. And depression is fun for no one. angsts I'm sure I'm annoying, the way I always talk about my sister with my friends here. I have three friends I see regularly. But...well, I can really feel for Ed, trapped away from all that's familiar. Oh, gods, think of the "reunion" fanfics I'll be writing come June... I'm sure the scene at the airport will end up in some fic or other, only changed to fit world settings, and the like...
