For most of my life, the Law of Equivalent Exchange had been one of the only things both me and my brother had truly believed in at the same time. Even though we were about as alike as salt is to pepper at times, that law was something we always thought was the absolute truth. Solid as stone. Now it seems I can't help but think that when you take that small step out of the alchemy and science realm, when you step back into the reality that belongs to humanity and all of its strife, that law isn't so set in stone anymore.
When the elements turn into emotions and precise calculations become uneducated guesses, that's when that law seems to shift its self. It bends and molts and suddenly it seems the Law no longer applies as nicely, as equally good as it did before. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to the bad. A murderer lives while a baby dies. The poor are exploited, shrivel up into bones and the rich grow fat, their greed forever growing. It seems that when the human element is thrown into the mix, things don't seem to work out as they logically (by the Law's standards) should.
We never did find the philosopher's stone. We never did fix our bodies. Despite all we did, we never got to be whole again. Despite all the sweat and blood (metal shavings and chips from me if you get technical) we spent trying, simply trying, we didn't received what we sought. Slowly but surely, the leads we would have followed stopped coming until there were no leads at all. For years we waited, I much more patiently than my brother, so sure that something new would eventually come up, something we could follow. Something we could hope would finally bring success. We waited, Ed as a dog of the military and me almost forever known as "Al, Fullmetal's Little Brother". We waited and waited and dug and dug for something, anything new for us to grasp and say "Finally…finally!"
Ed turned fifty-nine the year we stopped looking for the stone. After almost half a life time of searching for a remedy to an awful mistake, we had turned up empty handed, stuck at square one, and forty-seven years older than when we had started.
I want to say it was one of the most devastating moments of our lives, but then again, we'd already had our fair share of devastation and let downs, at that point it was almost as if we should ask someone "What's another one going to do to us?"
We moved on as best as we could, slowly at first, our feet still knocked out from underneath us. Ed resigned from the military and soon after we moved in with Winry at the house she had once lived in with Granny Pinako (may her soul be at peace).
Again time moved on and I began to realize something. Ed wasn't as strong as he used to be, nor had his hair been so filled with silvers, whites and grays. He needed thick glasses to read any book and deep wrinkles became a normal part of his face. Short as he had always been, over time he seemed to shrink slightly, his bones and tendons and joints creaking as he would walk. His once loud and always strong voice grew softer and at one point his hair started to slowly disappear. Ed was getting older, much older. And there I was, still the very same as the day I had become a walking suit of armor.
What had I ever done to deserve the agony of watching my brother slowly die? Especially when I knew that unless I some how intervened with my impromptu granted 'gift' of immortality, I would never be able to follow him into death naturally. Where was the exchange, where was the Law? What awful thing had I done?
"Al? Al, where are you?"
My wandering mind snapped to attention at the sound of that quiet voice. Sighing at the oatmeal mush that was Ed's dinner I carefully carried the meal on its antique tray back to my brother's room where he now spent most of his time.
"I'm right here Brother." I answer, wondering yet again how this insanely old person had once been my insanely youthful brother.
"Oh, there you are. Al, is it my birthday today?" His voice was just as soft spoken as before, its tone only slightly more demanding.
"Yes Brother, a hundred years to the day."
He laughs softly, as if in on some big joke.
"I never thought I would have lived to be this damn old!" His voice sounds a little bit like its old self; vibrant, full of life.
I laugh with him a little as I answer "Well, I don't think either of us thought we'd ever be so old."
He laughs a little more, the smile crinkling his face more as the old muscles pushed and tugged according to response to the stimuli. He breathes deeply a few times afterwards, his body exhausted from the small exert.
"Al…I'm really tired." He says suddenly, his old eyes locking onto mine.
"Well, I'll let you take a nap and then you can eat some dinner later."
It was normal for him to get tired easily at this point, it was to be expected.
"No…Al. I'm really tired."
"Brother…" Even to me the word is dripping in fear.
"Al, if I go to sleep, I don't think I'm going to wake up."
His old, spotted, and wrinkled hand reaches and places itself on top of the glove that has been acting like my hand for almost a century.
"Al…don't let me stay in the dark for too long alone…ok…?"
"Ok Brother." I manage to say.
His still golden eyes lose there luster and he breathing starts to slow, slow, slow…
--And then it stops all together—
For a moment, the irony of his life hits me like a brick. The famed Fullmetal Alchemist, my brother; daring, brave, "Take-no-shit-from-anybody" attitude had not died in some great battle. Had not died young, had not died with so many possibilities before his untimely death. This man, who at one point had seemed almost destined to die at a young age, had in fact lived to be exactly one hundred years old; old and feeble and unable to take care of himself.
And yet I knew that to the world he would only be know as Fullmetal, and if I could I would have smiled knowing that that was how he was to be remembered. Strong, no matter how hopeless the situation seemed. Strong, like he'd been for me.
Standing up, the covers of his bed became tucked around his body and pulled gently over his face, the oatmeal mush forgotten, the evening was young, and there was a river near by that I knew would easily erase an over ninety year old blood seal.
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If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
+Then I'll follow you into the dark+
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My first attempt at an FMA fic…Don't ask how I didn't discover this series sooner, shit happens.