"So…you say it's really dull here?" Alfons questioned the older, yet shorter blonde, raising an almost white eyebrow. "Like, boring?" He added with a huff, puffing out his pink lower lip. Alfons had pestered Edward into telling another story before the rain started pelting the dirty cobblestone streets, sending everyone scattering. The two had taken refuge under a ledge to wait for the drizzle to abate; they were late to work anyway, so the rain was a good excuse.
"Not boring, per say…" Ed grumbled-sighed, unfolding the German newspaper to see just how wet it really was. The thick paper had prevented him from getting too wet, but what could he read during the hot afternoons when they weren't busy?
"Then what?" Alfons pressed, his lower lip jutting out further, getting impatient with Ed's cruddy, short and often half assed answers. He lightly poked the Amestrian boy in the side to get his attention since the soggy paper seemed more interesting then Alfons's question.
"The colors here are really dull." Ed finally gave him a straight answer and a bit of a glare to go with it for the poking him in the ribs. "There's not a lot of brightness in the colors…it's, like I said, a little dull." Ed explained, tucking the paper under his arm.
"What's that suppose to mean?" Alfons asked unhappily. "The colors here are just the same as anywhere else. It's not that dull…" He huffed indignantly. Edward tended to poke fun at the differences between his "home" and "here" and it often offended the younger German boy. What made Edward's world so much better than his?
"Yes, it is that dull. And the colors in my world are not the same as here. The reds are redder and the sky is a lot bluer and the trees are lot greener. Everything is pale and shades of brown and grey." Ed huffed and looked down at the brown sidewalk and the grey street. Alfons sighed a little and looked down as well. Edward had said it, but didn't…but he'd inferred that this world was ugly. That his world was ugly. It wasn't ugly…it was quite beautiful when you looked, thank-you-very-much.
"…it's not ugly, Edward." Alfons mumbled. "You just gotta look past the grays and the browns and see the color." The German boy kicked a small rock that had probably chipped off of a cobblestone. "There's color in the flowers in Gracia's shop…there's color everywhere; it's practically bursting at the seams. This world is beautiful Edward…" Alfons looked up at Edward with a soft smile. "You just gotta look past the grime and the muck and see what's really there. Yeah, it's kinda icky, but it's there." He closed his eyes and smiled at the smaller blonde. Edward blinked and kept on starring at the German boy. For the first time, he'd really seen just how blue Alfons's eyes were…just how brilliantly blue they were. It reminded him of the sky back home and the river that ran through his hometown…
"…yeah…" Ed mumbled, forcing a smile at the younger boy. "I just gotta look harder." Alfons nodded in agreement.
"It looks like it's clearing up…"
For the first time, Ed didn't see his younger brother as Alfons looked out from under the ledge. The boy's platinum blonde hair, not dirty blonde hair, shined even brighter in the sudden sunlight and he finally saw the depth in those blue, not almost brown, eyes…
There was no lack of color here…Ed just hadn't looked hard enough to see the color.