Today wasn't a good day for me. Oh well, at least my bad mood gives me inspiration.
Disclaimer: I don't even own the computer I'm writing on. Do you really think I own Fullmetal Alchemist?
Alone.
That's all you are, now. Alone, in a world so undeniably similar, but so gut-wrenchingly different from your own.
Every time you pass officer Hughes in the streets, you have to stop yourself from running to him and saying how much you missed him, or asking him why he had to stick his neck out and get himself killed.
But you can't, because he never died here.
Once, you could have sworn you passed Winry while walking home one day. But you couldn't run up and hug her or ask for her to take a look at your automail. Because automail doesn't exist here, and because she was holding hands with another man, matching engagement rings on their fingers.
You left her behind without saying goodbye.
You constantly feel the need to yell at the street car driver, because his name is Roy Mustang, and he has that same infuriating smirk that you remember seeing time and again on your superiors face. Hell, even the way they walk is the same, an odd mix of cocky and fierce, ready for battle.
But he doesn't know you. You were never his subordinate, and he was never the man you looked up to so much it hurt.
Alfons is the worst. With that brilliant smile, the way he throws back his head and laughs at the smallest things, even the way he talks, hands flying every which way as he explains some strange idea he had that morning.
You can't look at him without seeing your Alphonse, your little brother. You can't help but feel that pang of guilt, that fear that if you're alive, then maybe the transmutation didn't work, maybe Al really is gone, and your not there to mourn him.
Then Alfons brings you back to reality- this reality, where Edward Elric is nobody, with no history and no family- with some crazy plan to make some fireworks and set them off on New Years Eve, and you have to talk him out of it.
'And you say I'm the crazy one!' you laugh. And Alfons laughs with you, and that laugh makes you sad, but happy, still, because at least if you can't have your brother, you have this, this wrestling match on the floor of the apartment, these jokes and crazy plans.
At least you have a police officer who's not that bad under that tough mask he puts on for work, and the baker's daughter who lives down the road who just got engaged, and the street car driver who jokingly calls you short when you ride to work in the morning.
Maybe, just maybe, you aren't that alone after all.
I just realized how much I've published this past week or so. I am on a roll with the oneshots!
Review!