Barren Explorers
By Kay
Disclaimer: If I owned FMA... well, I don't. But if I did, there would be so much naked Roy it wouldn't be funny.
Author's Notes: I wrote this a long, long time ago. But never uploaded it. So depsite the fact that the series has ended and there's no room left for this, I feel required to upload it anyway just for the sake of having it there. XD Ah, well.
EdxRoy SLASH implications and Fleshy!Alphonse gone fortune cookie. Enjoy. Utterly AU, of course.
It was an empty place now.
"Will you be okay?" Alphonse asked him, standing in the doorway with the light of the evening surrounding him.
Roy looked up at him blurrily, blinking slowly to try and focus on the face peering down at him compassionately. It was strange. There was pity there—a darkened, gut-wrenchingly honest sort of pity that failed to dredge up any sense of indignation, because such an emotion could only be the most heartfelt thing Alphonse Elric had to offer. The softening of his eyes, the worried curve of his mouth; they were sincere as they were gentle, and rather than recoiling from it, he leaned forward earnestly to the figure haloed by the sun.
"I didn't mean for it to turn out like this," he said. "I don't know what I did wrong."
"I know," Alphonse murmured, a faint smile coming over his features. "These things just happen sometimes, I know."
"It shouldn't have," Roy whispered, eyes fluttering shut against his cheeks. He rubbed at his face with an ungloved hand, the fingertips feeling cool against the flush of his face. It felt good to look away from the unsteady tilt of the room. He could taste the alcohol still lingering on his breath. "I wanted it to… I was going to—"
"I know."
"But I was." His chest hurt when he swallowed. Slumped against the wall of the hallway, Roy leaned back until his head thudded dully against the wood paneling, trying to ease the tightened sensation in his stomach. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I knew it would—I could feel it every day, but—"
"Sometimes you can't stop the inevitable," Alphonse said softly. He laid a hand on the doorframe, the other still holding the suitcase in one hand. The bronze of his eyes was sympathetic, as always. "Everything comes to an end someday. Sometimes that's just equivalent trade."
That made Roy pause for thought. He opened his eyes, brushing slips of black hair away from his face with a clumsy hand. "A good moment for a bad ending?"
"Perhaps."
"It wasn't enough." The spark of fury made his voice tremble, quaver in the stillness of twilight that was settling between them. Roy clutched his bare fingers into fists, digging the blunt curve of his fingernails straight into the flesh of his palm. It stung—but so did his eyes, the act of breathing, and it was only right that the feeling spread to chase away the numbness throughout the rest of his body. "It wasn't enough, not near enough. Wasn't I enough? How is that equivalent trade?"
"Maybe it isn't," the boy told him, flashing another smile. "Maybe it isn't, but what will you do about it?"
"I don't want to be alone," Roy said.
"We are all alone," Alphonse murmured.
There was a great truth in his words, but as he turned and left with his brother's suitcase in his hand, taking the last of Edward Elric from the house, Roy couldn't see it.
The End
