Mirage
Chapter One – Prologue
Rizembool 1917
Her vision was beginning to blur from lack of sleep, but Winry pushed on to finish the ultra-superior mechanical arm, checking and re-checking that each screw was properly connected and that the complicated wiring was completely sound. She did not yet notice that she could hear the birds outside in their pre-dawn chirping, in fact, she did not notice anything at all until she was satisfied that the arm was complete. When she did look up, she sighed, realizing that she had again pulled an all nighter, but she smiled faintly when she admired her handiwork. Within a few hours, she knew, the rest of the house would come to life, Roze making breakfast for her little son, Den yapping around her feet, and Pinako contentedly having a morning puff on her pipe out on the porch. Winry absently made her way to the porch now, shivering in the dampness of the dawn.
He was never far from her thoughts. He, Edward, was all she thought about when she worked on her automail, no matter who it was for. When she closed her eyes, leaning against the porch railing, she imagined him leaning there next to her, normal as can be, and when she stared at him in surprise, her mind heard him say, "what, Winry, you thought I would stay gone forever? C'mon!" How many times had she stood on this porch, at how many times of the day, morning, midnight, afternoon, dusk, wondering when the Elrics would come home?
It had been over a year even since she'd seen Al, given him an affectionate, sisterly kiss on his eleven year old forehead before waving goodbye to him from the train platform. His body may have been eleven, but his smoky eyes were worlds older. They looked like Ed's had looked, she thought, like he'd seen too much, done too much, and it broke her heart to see eyes like that in Alphonse's young face. The time she spent with Al after he regained his body made her feel like she, too, was eleven years old again, carefree, without responsibilities, and without tragedy.
Not without tragedy, she amended. But without this loneliness she felt, that they all felt, now that Ed was gone. She heard the whistle from the station, and knew that the five o clock train had arrived, and that soon the sky would go from this sickly grey to a warm pink. She stood there as the minutes progressed, staring blankly at the horizon, not really thinking, letting her consciousness drift in a way she could only do after a night without sleep.
Winry imagined a lone figure walking up the road towards the house, and imagined it was Ed, finally returning home after two years, with a wild story to tell, wanting to know where Al was and if he really was restored, and apologizing profusely to her for the damage accumulated on his automails. She would run to meet him in the road, he would think she was going to hit him with her wrench, but really she would catch him in a hug he couldn't squirm out of, not letting go despite the protests she knew he would make, not until she was convinced he was real, solid, not a mirage at all.
Squinting her eyes, Winry told herself that there couldn't actually be that lone figure on the road, since when did her imagination become real? But wasn't that a boy in a red coat, with long hair in a ponytail and carrying a suitcase? She rubbed her eyes several times, almost wanting the vision to disappear, but the figure only became clearer. Her heart began to pound, and she took one deep breath and dashed down the steps, her feet pounding on the road as she raced towards the boy, colliding with him chest to chest and wrapping her arms around him. Vaguely she heard the suitcase drop to the ground and two strong arms held her tight for a few moments before he pulled back, grinning at her. "What are you doing awake so early, Winry?" said the unexpected voice.
Slate-colored eyes winked at her. "Al- Alphonse!" she said in surprise.
"Were you expecting someone else?"
dream
He was having the nightmare again. As soon as he realized where he was, in his father's study in a house that no longer stood, he knew it was the nightmare again. He was carefully measuring chemicals with his brother, seeing the confidence in Edward's eyes as he bit his lip in concentration while they drew the circle. Alphonse knew, knew the transmutation would end in tragedy, and because this was a dream, he took an extra look at his brother, knowing that this was the last time he would ever see him. "I cant wait to see mom's face again," he heard his own voice say, and then his body was dissolving, being torn to ribbons by the transmutation. Edward's hand reached out desperately to catch him, to stop the decomposition, but suddenly his hand was gone, and Edward was left grasping at the air, unaware that his own leg was beginning to dissolve as well.
"Brother!" he screamed, but he only screamed in the dream, he knew, because he didn't wake the sleeping form next to him.
The sleeping form next to him?
Alphonse sat up, the horror from his nightmare still lingering, and a new panic began to overtake him. This was not his room. This, though it was an ordinary bedroom, was no room he had ever seen. He glanced at the head next to him on the other pillow, at the golden hair spilling everywhere, and understood. He was still dreaming. Gently, hesitantly, as if he was afraid this dream would disappear, he pushed the hair away from the face, over the shoulder, and stared.
Of course, of course Edward had lived several more years after the transmutation, Alphonse knew that , but when he thought of his brother he only saw his eleven year old face. Now he thought back to photographs he had been shown, himself as a suit of armor, and his brother did have long hair, tied in a braid. Edward stirred when Alphonse brushed the back of his hand across his brother's cheek, thinking it was strange that there were real tears in his eyes in this dream.
"Whadya want, Al?" Ed mumbled into the pillow. "Tryin to sleep."
"Sorry," Alphonse whispered. "I just wanted to look."
Edward turned slightly, two golden slits appearing. "Alphonse, it's the middle of the night. Go to sleep," he said tiredly, closing his eyes again.
Al's fingers snagged in his brother's hair. "Brother, your hair is a mess," he admonished softly, not wanting to look away. Edward grunted in response. He picked up a hairbrush on the bedside table, and began to work the tangles out of the fine golden strands. Edward mumbled something unintelligible.
I'm dreaming of what it would be like if we had both survived, Al told himself. That's what this has to be. "If you tied your hair back when you sleep, this wouldn't happen," he admonished, then thought of the photographs. "Why don't you braid it?"
He wasn't expecting a response, he thought that Edward was asleep, but he mumbled, "because I can't, I've tried," and Alphonse's eyes darted to what was left of his brother's right shoulder.
"What happened to your automail?" he asked, with a knot in his throat.
"I told you, automail doesn't exit here," Edward said with a sigh, as if he had said it many times before, and his eyes flickered open for a moment, then he grabbed at the blankets and turned over, closing them tightly.
He half expected another comment about how he was trying to sleep, but Edward said nothing. Alphonse ran his fingers smoothly through his brother's hair. "I can do it for you then," he offered, with dream like simplicity, and Edward did not object as he twisted the sections together.
"My little brother used to braid my hair," he mumbled when Al tied off the end, dropping the thick rope onto his back. Alphonse started to say, "I am your little brother," but he found himself unable to speak through the tears that ran down his face. He laid down in the bed, wrapping his arms around his brother, and cried himself asleep in his dream.
Rizembool 1917
He awoke early, like he always did, and closing the front door softly he made his way to the riverside, trying to clear his head from the dream in the early morning fog. Curling his toes into the damp grass and watching the water swirl over the rocks, he went over the dream in his mind again and again. Of course, it was possible that the dream didn't mean anything, but Alphonse refused to believe that. If Edward had brought him back from death, because Alphonse had died, and Alphonse remembered dying, and now he was alive, well then, obviously it was possible. And during all those years he spent trapped in that armor, his body still existed somewhere, even if it didn't exist in this world, because now his soul was once again in the same body he was born with. And if his body had existed somewhere, his hopeful mind reasoned, Edward must exist somewhere as well.
Munich 1921
Edward felt someone shaking the bed, and even without opening his eyes he knew the sunlight must be pouring in the windows. "Al," he groaned. "Cut it out, I'll be up in a minute, just leave me alone!"
Alphonse pounced on the bed, snatching away the blankets. "No, you have to get up now, or you are going to be late!"
"Oh come on," he protested. "No one uses the library at eight am!"
"Yes they do," Alphonse argued in a singsong voice, "and you know it! You have five minutes," he said, whisking out of the room.
Edward slowly sat up, rubbing his left hand across his eyes, and yawned. He had been dreaming about Rizembool, he thought. He must have been, to wake up feeling this homesick. Carefully, he attached his prosthetic limbs, dressed quickly, and grabbed his hairbrush off the nightstand on his way out the door, dropping it when he realized his hair was already back.
Edward stopped in front of the mirror, frowning at his reflection. A vein switched in his forehead. It was his face that he saw, and he noticed fleetingly yet again that he was looking more and more like his father, but that wasn't what disturbed him. "Alphonse?" he called dangerously, and heard the movement of feet in the hall
"Hm?" Alphonse said from the doorway. "What are you doing, Ed? It's time to leave already!"
Slowly, Ed turned his piercing gaze on him. "Were you playing with my hair last night?" Ed asked, with such a threatening tone that Alphonse had to laugh at his friend.
"No!" he snorted, still laughing. "Since when do you let anyone play with your hair? Let's go."
Edward scowled, but picked up his coat and followed Alphonse out of the house. "You didn't braid my hair in the middle of the night, when I was sleeping?" he asked again after a few minutes. "Because I think I dreamed that someone did."
Alphonse shook his head. "Well, I didn't. Sorry."
"Well someone did!" Ed nearly shouted, exasperated, picking up the braid as emphasis.
His friend shrugged. "Then it was you," he said simply.
"One handed?" Ed demanded.
Alphonse stopped, opened his mouth, then closed it.
"It must have been you," Ed insisted.
"It wasn't me."
Rizembool 1917
Alphonse felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up into Winry's face. She sat down in the grass next to him. "You haven't been up all night again, have you?" he asked, concerned.
"No, I couldn't sleep. I was having strange dreams."
"So was I," Al said, and they were silent for a few minutes.
Winry picked up a stone, trying to skip it across the river, but it fell into the water with a heavy plop. "I thought you were Edward when I saw you yesterday," she said after a while. Noticing Al's morose expression, she tried to lighten her voice. "But I shouldn't have, you're taller than he ever was."
Alphonse turned his heavy eyes on her. "Brother wouldn't like you saying that, Winry."
She looked down. "I know," she whispered.
"Why did he have to die, if he had the Philosopher's Stone?" he cried suddenly. "I thought the stone let you ignore the laws of Equivalent Trade!"
Winry shook her head, and laid a hand on Alphonse's arm. "I don't have any answers for you. I'm sorry." She sighed, watching his expression, fighting with herself over whether or not to speak the next sentence. "It's been two years," she said slowly. "You're really here, we know you aren't going to disappear on us. And- and Edward is really gone, we know he isn't going to come strolling in the door someday." Alphonse looked like he had been slapped, but Winry took a deep breath and continued. "You've been doing really well, adjusting and everything, to not being able to remember-"
"And to everyone being older," he cut in.
"And that," she agreed. "And you've learned so much about alchemy… its like watching you grow up the way you should have, the first time around…"
"Except I should have a brother," Alphonse reminded her.
"You might find," she said carefully, "now that we know you are okay, that certain people might be more willing to share some information with you about certain things."
Al stood up. "You mean there's more?" he cried incredulously. "There's more that you've been keeping from me?" He seemed ready to cry.
Winry threw up her hands. "Not me, Al." She swallowed. "It wasn't just me, I mean."
His wide grey eyes seemed even wider when filled with tears. "Why?" he asked simply.
"Because some of those things," she said, thinking of the homunculus with his mother's face, "Are things we would all rather forget."
She watched sadly as Alphonse ran tearfully back to the house, Ed's red coat flying out behind him.
