SPOILERS: If you don't know how the series ends, the secrets of the Stone, or you haven't seen the movie, then PLEASE don't read this. It's so much more fun to watch it unspoiled. (And by golly there are some spoilers in here.)
A/N: Um…sorry it took so long to edit. But hey – it's over twice as long as the last chapter!
Living Room Space
TerraCotta Bones
Chapter 2: Atlas Man
And you don't wanna be here in the future
So you say the present's just a pleasant interruption to the past
And you don't wanna look much closer
Al swirled his lemonade with his straw, and stared at his hands. When he was little, he'd cut his finger, and the scar was still there, a little white line on rosy skin. He'd been cutting the wood Ed had squirmed his way out of chopping.
The clink of the ice cubes against his glass was soothing, comparatively.
He wasn't quite listening to the argument anymore.
Ed roared, or Russell roared, or they roared at each other, and Ed's fist flew to almost an inch away from Russell's face before Russell bolted out of his seat.
"Call me short one more time!" Ed yelled against Russell's screeched, "What the hell, Ed?"
They glared at each other, Russell stiff as an iron bar and Ed curling into a snarl. He was rooted to a rickety bar stool and sinking onto the counter, drunk enough to topple. His fist swung heavily at his side.
Their pitch and moan, Russell and Ed's, squealed through the bar, broiling and stewing with the raucous gamblers at the pool tables and the lurching, rumbling regulars in the back. In their corner at the front of the bar, the light was dim, and patchy. Ed narrowed his eyes.
"I think you've had too much," Russell muttered, red in the face. He flexed his hands.
"You've got another thing coming, bro."
Russell grabbed Ed by the collar and heaved him out of his seat, up into the air. "Yeah, and here it is—"
"Brother!" Fletcher yelled, catching his brother's arm. "Don't!"
Al blinked, and tried to pull his brother off. "Ed, really, this is too much—"
"Get off me, Al!"
Al stopped, his arms half-bent to draw his brother away. He exchanged glances with Russell and Fletcher; Fletcher looked apprehensive. Russell shook his brother off. He spared Ed a scowl, and then shifted his gaze to Al, accusing, if only for a second. Al stared back, startled.
"I'm outta here," Russell snapped. He threw a few coins on the counter. When he stormed through the door, one of the beaded chandeliers nearby quivered.
Ed sneered and sat down, and threw back the rest of his drink. The bartender cut them all warnings with his eyes.
Fletcher sighed, and walked over to his chair for his belongings. They were the same age now, he and Al, with almost the same brother. Al massaged his knotted neck.
"Sorry," he said.
"It's not your fault," Fletcher murmured. He fingered his glass. "Why don't we let our brothers cool off for a while? We can meet up again in a day or two."
Al gestured to the bartender for a bill. "I don't think so. We've got to leave tomorrow."
Maybe his brother would shape up in Central.
"Oh—" Fletcher took a drink, "—I've been waiting to hear that," he said, softer, into his glass.
"What?"
Fletcher looked apologetic. Al waited without expression. "C'mere," Fletcher said, motioning him over. "I just mean that – I think you should take your brother home."
"That's what I'm doing," Al replied sharply. He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and rubbed his face. Red marks striped already flushed skin. "Sorry."
Fletcher shook his head. "No, I mean you should take him home. Like – Resembol, was it?" He flicked his blue eyes to the trench-coated drunk with his golden hair falling into his glass. "Something's wrong."
Alphonse paused, and looked at the floor – worn wooden planks with gum mashed into the grain, and leather scuffs layered over vomit stains and boot mud. He kicked at the floor; his whole body ached from only three hours in a bar. "What do you mean?"
"Well he's – not the way he used to be. Maybe this is like when my brother and I tried to make the Philosopher's Stone out of red water."
Black paint was chipping off of the bar counter. Al's glass – sweet sweet lemonade – looked far away on the other side of Ed. "I don't remember that," he said quietly. "Remember?"
"Right." Al watched his eyes scatter around the room. "Well, you know the story I guess." Al nodded, and Fletcher continued, "My brother kept going because he thought he was fulfilling our father's dreams, but I knew we were just poisoning the whole town. You were the one who told me to stand up to him."
Al didn't respond, but flicked at the peeling paint. This was another story Ed did not want to tell him; he'd only learned it when it spilled out from the Tringhams in the first days of their visit.
"We were under the delusion that everything was fine."
"I'm not delusional," Al said. He stared at his hands – fleshy and pink. "Are you saying that we're doing something wrong?"
"No." Fletcher finished his drink, then laid out a few coins. "But your exact words to me were, 'If your brother's doing something you know is wrong, then just be brave and stop him.' Don't you think this situation kind of resonates?"
I thought I was imagining things.
Al managed a half-smile.
How close did you have to look?
"You remember that, after – what – four years? I don't even remember that."
"Someone has to." Fletcher smiled and slid into his jacket, and Al listened to his footfalls as he pushed through the door. A wave of heat swept in as the door swung.
Al stared at his hands – fleshy and pink, scarred white in childhood. He wondered what had happened to them in the five years he couldn't remember.
When Ed returned all those months ago and the two of them climbed out of the rubble beneath Central, Al could have died from happiness. After three years, he was free to imagine life as it should've been – he could go be a real alchemist, not just a boy looking for his brother. They could both go back to Resembol and be happy again, proud to stand next to each other. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever done, his simple wishing. Ed had been ecstatic to see his younger brother in the flesh. He'd ruffled his hair, socked him in the arm, stared at him like he was a fish out of water. Maybe a boy out of armor wasn't so different.
Now Al could only see the fuzz on his brother's jaw, the automail, and the thick, callused skin on his hand. Ed was almost a full head taller than him, and his hair was so long, right down to the middle of his back – he didn't braid it anymore, like in all the pictures. He wore gloves and long-sleeves and pants all the time, even in summer. He looked like the fifteen-year-old pictures of their father, with his ponytail. He'd had gained four years on Al, and turned into a man.
Al's simplest of wishes now was to remember his years in the suit of armor, so that he would recognize his brother. They had eight years missing between them, and nothing to say. All the stories he should've been privy to, horror and fairytale, he'd lost, and Ed wouldn't tell him anything.
Curiosity killed the cat, Al, he'd say. Then his gold eyes would darken, and he'd add, You can't even imagine it. The truth behind all truths.
The truth behind all truths. Teacher mentioned something about that.
Al didn't remember anything else.
Curiosity killed the cat. So what? Heart disease killed Trisha Elric. They still tried to bring her back.
He didn't even remember. All he could think of was being pulled into the vortex of their rebound, then waking up in a giant ruined ballroom. What happened in between? Ed said their transmutation failed, and Mom never came back – but what about the rest of his life? What did he do for five years? He qualified, didn't he, for that responsibility? For his own life?
Ed thought he was protecting his little brother. Something about becoming a State Alchemist, the murder of a man named Maes Hughes, and the rebound; Al was the fly in the web, caught in the dark, and Ed trotted down any line he wanted. The alchemy that once brought them together fogged, and whatever his brother had done kept them on either side, shadowed.
What do you look at when you're not looking at me? When you look at me?
On Ed's curved back was a heavy, heady science; on his automail limbs was a sin; in his chest was a heart, Al was sure. Scar-sore and red. He'd read the book time enough to know that, but in his absence whole chapters had been written, and deleted.
Al walked over to Ed and sat next to him. "You got something you want to say to me?"
Ed didn't look at him, didn't even move. "Nope."
Nothing, Brother?
Al tapped his fingers on the counter, three times, four. A ceiling fan above him spun the air with its blades. Sleep and drink hung in the bar like fat honeybees on petals, buzzing. "We've gotta go, Brother."
"I'm not going anywhere."
Al paid the bill in front of him. "C'mon, Brother, we have to pack for the train tomorrow." He pulled the glass out of Ed's hand. "We're going to Central, remember?"
Ed crossed his arms on the counter and laid his forehead on their cushion. "I don't want to go Central anymore."
Al looked at the liquors lining the wall behind the bar, saw red, gold, brown, clear, green; glasses displayed like collector's trophies. He thought of a nine-year-old Ed squirming out of chopping firewood, sticking his tongue out. The warmth this place was supposed to provide didn't reach him. "You can't drown your woes in alcohol, Brother."
"Who says I have woes?"
Al rolled his eyes and shoved him in the arm. "Get up. You look pathetic."
Perhaps Russell was right to accuse him of wrongdoing. Ed was his brother. Take care of each other. Her simplest, her only wish.
Ed grumbled incoherently. Hair stuck up from his head.
"Yeah, you do look pathetic," Al said. He tried to help his brother into his jacket, but Ed shook him off.
"I can do it myself," he snarked.
Al glanced at the bartender as they left, and guessed that they wouldn't be coming back anytime soon. He pushed the door open before his brother walked into it, and when he stepped out, the door whooshed back and forth behind him. Opening, and closing.
Outside, oily street lamps broke the night, and late August heat threatened to suffocate its trespassers. Ed's broad shoulders stooped.
Who makes the world that you carry?
There was a place in Resembol, and in Rush Valley, that was hospital to its returning children.
You should take my brother home.
'Cause you're afraid to find out all this hope
You had sent into the sky by now had crashed
And it did
Because of me
In a town like this, he bet that the stars looked great in the middle of the night. But he couldn't tell.
Ed bent over a railing and threw up into someone's bushes.
"Ed!" Al squawked. Ed could just seehis brother's mouth drop.
"C'est la vie," he remarked, coughing. He continued with, "I can't believe I just said that."
"What?"
"Nothing." The words slithered out of his mouth like – like dribble through puffy, beat-up lips. Like vomit on a tongue.
He threw up again. This time he didn't make it to the bush, and multi-colored barf flew onto the sidewalk.
Soon his head would spin off and land somewhere across the street, where he would have to search for it, blind and headless.
Honestly, he'd hoped for more when he and his brother arrived in Xenotime a few days ago. Lemon pie would have been nice, a few visits to old acquaintances – he could ignore the topic of Mugyar and the red water – but then the trees hadn't grown back yet, and the gold hadn't returned, and Russell Tringham was still Russell Tringham, and he and that punk just weren't meant to be.
Maybe he should've been pleasanter – or not a complete asshole, as Al had reminded him every night. Maybe he should've stayed sober.
Naturally, thoughts like that ran up the puke.
"God, you're a mess," Al groaned, and took his brother's arm in order to drag him along.
He tried to wriggle free. Failing that, he quipped, "Don't use the Lord's name in vain, little brother!"
He gagged on his own words; pictured a cathedral with a rose window. Streets with cobblestones, England and Germany.
"Ed, shut up!" Al shook him. Ed could feel his brother's glare on the back of his head. "Since when do you care about God?"
"You live in a psycho-religious place like Europe for a while, and you pick up a few things. Lemme go."
There it was again – the tightness in his chest – the line he could never cross, the tale he would never tell. A cathedral with a rose window, and an old bespectacled man with a golden beard. This place called Europe where he'd been imprisoned for three years; this place that lived outside the blushing naiveté floating in his little brother's face.
Al nearly dropped him on the sidewalk. "If you weren't falling down drunk, I'd leave you behind."
"Good thing I'm not falling down, then," Ed retorted. Then he tripped, and retched over the side of the curb.
Al rolled his eyes. "How can you have that much in your stomach?"
Ed didn't answer. He stayed crouched on the ground, dead certain that his entire body was being sucked up through his esophagus and onto the asphalt road. Maybe the roar in his head and his chest would go with it.
Honestly, he'd hoped things would go a little better.
He closed his eyes, and wished he could sink into the ground.
The truth behind all truths.
Life isn't always better than death. Sidewalk is always better than drunk. He wiped his eyes.
Al sat down next to him, a good distance from any possible vomit spray. Ed heard his shoes crunch the gravel in the road, and hoped, ridiculously, that when he sat down it was with a straight back. When did he become his brother's father?
He threw up, and wished he hadn't gotten drunk.
His vision was swimming he was so nauseous, and Al was angry at him, again. The acid in his throat sizzled like comeuppance.
"You getting tired of me, Al?" he whispered.
Al didn't even hesitate. "You're my brother, Ed," he said, just as softly.
Like a brother means anything, Ed thought bitterly, and not bitterly – not unkindly. He wondered who he was upset with – not Al. Never. But it was our only reason.
The ground wanted to swallow him in, whole. Piece by piece. And he would go under and not come up.
The curb beckoned to him.
A ripple ran through his body, and another gulp of breakfast, lunch, and dinner washed onto the road. Under the pool of light from the street lamp, it looked violet. Strange. He wouldn't remember it in the morning.
The last time he'd done this, he was German.
Did you know I lived with Dad while I was in Europe?
"We just gonna wait here until I start dry heaving?"
"That or sober," Al said, looking at his hands.
Ed blinked, hard, and stared at his brother to stay awake. Alphonse. In three years, Al looked just like he'd imagined, considering that he hadn't known he would be thirteen when they finally met again. His hair was short, unruly, and burnished gold; he hadn't seen those ocean-gray eyes in eight years; he looked like their mother – slender, and leaner rather than thicker and broader, like their father. His face was round, thin, and soft where Ed's was hard. He held his body like a cat – gentle, and unobtrusive. He only came up to Ed's chin, but that, unfortunately, would change soon.
In Europe, Ed couldn't have dreamed of more. He'd spent half his life trying to get the boy in front of him back to the boy in front of him. It was all he ever wanted.
And Al didn't remember.
They'd used the Philosopher's Stone, the one fueled on human lives, to bring each other back. To return what they'd so foolishly lost. Ed had become a State Alchemist, had killed people, and the Gate had swallowed him like a dead soul, like alcohol or cement in the sidewalk. Worse than that. They'd sold the world just to save themselves, or almost – and voilà, the product of their sacrifices.
Voilà. Right.
He coughed bile out of his throat.
I'm glad you don't remember.
He saw no lines in his brother's face, no shadows, no demons. If they hadn't tried, so long ago – if they hadn't tried, maybe his brother would have grown up to be this boy in front of him, as innocent as he could ever wish.
Equivalent exchange finally gave him what he wanted, so to speak. Only, he was alone, again, in half a lifetime of catastrophe.
Homunculi. Mother. Automail chimera Roy Mustang Hughes Nina Shou Tucker military Lab Five Scar Greed Dante Lust; every eye-opening Gate crossing that ever destroyed his life. Nina. Hughes. His father.
Europe, and eight years, and nightmares.
There were places to lock up the things he didn't want to think about. He just had to find them. Then Al could wonder for the rest of his life about the reality of what happened after their transmutation rebounded. Ed had tried for so long to take the world on his shoulders. Now he could.
Al shoved a handkerchief in his face, and he took it and wiped his mouth. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Al said, and leaned back with his palms on the sidewalk. "You know, Fletcher said something to me."
Ed managed to sit up. He only heard half of what his brother said, then he tilted his head up to look at the stars, and tried vainly to count the pinpricks. His brain was clouded.
In America, we call that the Big Dipper.
He knew these constellations. Nothing new or unfamiliar about them. A little boy's shapes in the sky.
Mind the crab grass. It's a weed.
He knew the kinds of grass – he knew long, sweeping fields and wind and herds of sheep. Resembol. After three years in Europe, he was good at it. All he had to do was close his eyes and there she'd be – Resembol. Long fields, and his once-upon-a-time of a childhood.
"He said that we should go home."
Ed grunted, blinked. Somewhere along the line, the fabric split into threads. He put his head in his hands. The line he couldn't cross – which side was he on? Somehow he couldn't imagine standing with Al, oblivious, looking over the divide. In the valley, he stood blinded, looking up.
Welcome to my humble abode, Mister Elric! Oh, this is my baby daughter, Lucy.
His name was Oberth, a German scientist.
Nina. Hughes. Baby pictures on the bulletin board in Winry's kitchen.
Why did he decide to miss Europe now, of all times? Why did he miss Europe at all? He'd spent the whole time partway insane, dreaming. He didn't remember half of anything, or tried not to, but here were the words and faces, planted next to his alchemy and ghosts. The valley of the shadow of – he didn't remember it now.
I hope you find what you're looking for, Elric.
"I hated it," he muttered. He wiped his eyes.
"Hated what?" Al's hearing was too good.
He wanted to black-out and wake up without his heartbeat slamming in his chest, or in his throat. Everything he saw shimmered, like a mirage.
How do you erase? How do you put it away where you can't fall all over it anymore?
"Back there. I mean – you know – when I was gone."
Ed tried to lean back, and he kept leaning and leaning, and he kept staring up and up, and he would've fallen over if Al hadn't caught him. It was a quick and steady hand behind his back.
"Watch it, Brother." Al paused, for a moment. "Are you even listening to me?"
"You think we should go home."
All he'd heard was home. He would've liked to stand up at this point, but there was nothing left in his legs. He could sleep right here, he was so tired. Tired.
Edward, if you sleep with your prostheses attached you'll regret it later.
It took him sixteen years to meet his father, and longer to understand him. It shouldn't have taken so long. That bastard. Ed never did find out why he left them. He wondered if the man had any regrets about what he'd done.
Ed wondered about his own regrets.
Strange that he would be just as powerless for answers in Amestris as Germany. Ironic.
"So what do you think?" Al said.
"You mean Resembol?" Ed queried. "I don't really want to go back there." Just goes to show how much a burned-down house can burn down.
"Why not? It might be nice to take a break for a while."
"Al, how can we take a break when we're not doing anything?" Ed put a hand to his forehead, and felt his heartbeat through his temples. "Besides, the only thing in Resembol is an old hag and her dog. Why would we go there?"
"Don't talk about Aunty Pinako that way, Brother." More curtly, Al continued, "And we are doing something. We're alchemists. We're researching."
Ed hazarded, though he didn't mean to, a laugh. "Yeah. But for what?"
Al glared at him. "It was your idea in the first place, Ed! We're looking for ways that alchemy can help people. We're going to restore alchemy's good name, because obviously nobody knows how wonderful it can be. That's what we're doing. If you're gonna drag me all over the country and get into fights all the time, could you please at least pretend to stick to your goals!"
Ed groaned and looked away, glowering. Al let out an exasperated sigh and crossed his arms.
Ed knew Al wanted to go home, that he stayed with him because he couldn't bear to go away after so long a separation. But Ed couldn't stay in Resembol. He would never go back to the military. There was nothing there. It was just – he hadn't made any plans beforehand, about what to do after his return – it just never entered his head. He'd only got as far as going around to Resembol and Dublin to say, "We're back!" and then – what? Live? After he finished the first part, he was empty-handed.
So when he searched, he found alchemy.
He reasoned he could help the people this way, and reignite his glorious reputation, sort of, minus the fugitive part. He reasoned he could make up for the things he'd ignored as a State Alchemist because he'd had more important things to do, and be the Hero of the People once more.
Perhaps, though, he just wanted to remind himself of the good alchemy could do. It didn't just hurt people, or turn grief and love into a sin, a creature of evil with his mother's face. He remembered a time when Al himself had to be reminded of the same things.
Hey, Al, do you remember the Hughes? Maes, Gracia, Elysia? How about Psiren and that crazy detective? No? Well how about Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Greed? The Fuhrer? Nothing?
He could lock it up inside him. He would protect his little brother.
"I still think we should take a break, Brother."
A long time ago, he decided not to tell Winry anything either. She wouldn't know about all the crazy shit he and Al got into, and nobody they knew would know about her. It was witness protection, plain and simple.
Besides, he knew what Al would be like if he remembered, or if he told him what happened. He knew that his brother's charm and blush would crumble, and people would see in him the wreckage that they saw in Ed; he couldn't have that. Better yet to preserve, for as long as he could, an Alphonse Elric who did not know what it was like not to feel, or touch, or live.
It was like the Al that lived in the suit of armor never existed. It used to be his worst fear.
Now he had equivalent exchange – his peace for his little brother's. Al was Al again, human and wholesome. It took five years.
I'll do whatever it takes to fix things.
It took such a long time. He'd been such an idiot, back then. Maybe he still was. He wondered if he was pleased with the results.
"Brother?"
"Al, why are you asking me questions right now? I'm frickin' intoxicated, and we are sittung – sitting – on a goddamn curb in the middle of the night. The hotel's probably locked, and our train comes at eight. You gotta have better things to do right now."
Al huffed. "It's one-thirty," he said. "And the hotel is not locked, you're just trying to scare me. For crying out loud, I'm not letting you get drunk ever again."
Ed felt his headache splinter into the next level. "I'm gonna hold you to that."
Al threw a pebble across the street, and after a little while grumbled, "I think we should go see Winry."
Ed closed his eyes, and wished he had something cool to put across his face.
"Brother?"
Winry.
"Why would we do that?"
"Because if you don't want to go to Resembol, then she's next on the list," Al declared, "and if you stop me, I'll break your arm. Then we really will have to go see her. She'll hit you with her wrench, too."
Ed tried to glare back. "What are you talking about, Al? You know she'll just hit you if you do anything to her precious masterpiece. Why do you even want to go at all?"
She could've stayed with them. She traveled with them for two months right after she finished with his automail reinstallment, and then she left to go back to her internship in Rush Valley. But she could've stayed.
And she wasn't magical; she didn't have the fairy dust to lift the weight off his heart. She had Rush Valley. They didn't need her, or her toolbox or, even less, her apple pie.
He wondered when the trees would grow back in Xenotime.
He missed her, but that wasn't so out-of-the-ordinary. He'd missed her before, for years. It was just so strange to be the one she left behind, and not the other way around. He didn't much like it, but he supposed it was karma come back to haunt him.
Besides, he didn't need to see her now that he was so proficient with illusion. She was different than the girl he'd envisioned in Germany; she wasn't sixteen, and she didn't live in Resembol anymore – her hair was shorter, her skirts were longer, she was a real woman, and a real mechanic – but, not to kill the cliché, she was always with him. For as long as he could remember. At nineteen she was as feisty as ever, and as caring; she was the girl he'd imagined, only older. And she left him, not the other way around.
He recalled being surprised.
He wondered if he'd thought the three of them would be together again, after he'd returned from Europe.
Al stood up, silhouetted by the glow of the street lamp. He gave Ed a shadowy stare, then murmured, "If you won't tell me, then maybe you'll tell her." He started to walk away.
"Tell her what? Hey, wait!" Ed never told Winry anything. That was the point. And if he told her what he'd been doing during his search for the Stone – she'd probably smack him with a death-toothed, anvil-sized, saw-edged Wrench-from-Hell and demand to know why he didn't tell her before.
And nobody had to know about Europe. He would himself like to forget about it, along with everybody else.
He stood up unsteadily.
Ahead of him, Alphonse hesitated. A light breeze broke the heat.
"I don't remember anything, Brother," he said. In three years, his voice was older. Deeper. "Maybe she will. And you certainly need the help."
In three years, Ed put things in his heart that he wouldn't ever take out again. Eight years.
"I don't need any help!" he yelled. Al kept walking, and didn't stop.
In the slight retrospect of a few seconds, yelling something like that probably meant the opposite. But did his brother really think that he would tell Winry what he was hiding from him?
I've fixed you, Al, and I'm here. What more do you want?
Or was it what he wanted for himself instead? And what was that? Redemption? Some companionship in memory? Or maybe his brother's face, fully aware of five years of searching for the Philosopher's Stone and alive, screaming, with thankfulness for his body. Or maybe something he couldn't yet describe.
He clenched his fists, and looked up at the sky. Winry was marooned in Rush Valley, and she could stay that way. Their tickets were to Central.
I know what and who we lost. We don't need two to do that job. Or three.
Blue-black, with stars pricking the darkness. A half-moon haloed the clouds around it.
"Isn't it silly to look up at the sky and believe someone else is looking at it, too? The one you want to be looking at it?" Her eyes laughed.
Winry, back in Resembol, on the balcony at one-thirty at night after his lastest reinstallment surgery. Her hair was so long before she cut it.
It would have been silly, because he really wasn't looking at the same sky.
He wondered if anyone he'd left behind on the other side of the Gate missed him, and then wondered why he cared.
The one you want to be looking?
In front of him, the sidewalk stretched over a hill. He couldn't see his brother anymore. The buildings on both sides of the dusty road loomed dark and heavy, old. Xenotime hadn't changed much. He wanted to know when the trees would grow back.
Inside him, something dark and heavy loomed. He blinked, slowly.
Take care of each other.
He thought he felt a raindrop fall on his head; but that was silly, there weren't enough clouds. He looked up at the stars, and wondered who else looked along with him.
Give my love to your brother, when you see him.
He cried out, softly, choking on dry tears. Dad.
He remembered why he'd gotten drunk in the first place. Russell, spewing happy reminisces about his brilliant father, just like Roy Mustang spewing bullshit.
He rubbed his face, and felt like throwing up again. Winry couldn't fix someone like him. She had other things to worry about. She couldn't possibly fix him. You can't just fix a person, like an arm or a leg or a car, because you can't see the space – the roar, the thunder – inside him, and you can't hear it, and you can't make it go away.
My name is Alfons Heidrich. What's yours?
Edward Elric.
His brother didn't know anymore how to lead his life. So now he searched for nothing.
I hate this.
He chased, as best a drunk could manage, after his brother.
And then you bring me home
Afraid to find out you're alone
A/N: Yay for border lines!
Some Did-You-Knows:
When Fletcher says "your exact words to me were…" – yes, those are Al's exact words (in the official English version). "Take care of each other" and "I'll do whatever it takes to fix things" are also exact quotes (I think).
If you don't live in the Western Hemisphere (or is it the Northern Hemisphere?) – the Big Dipper is a real constellation. Just doesn't always go by that name.
Atlas is the name of the Greek god (godly person?) who holds up the earth. Points for really blatant metaphors.
Art history – a "rose window" is a giant circular stained glass window that you may see in some cathedrals.
If you didn't watch the movie and read this anyway, Alfons Heidrich is the European double of Alphonse Elric. (Hey! Go find all your FMA friends and have an FMA movie party! It's finally out in the US!)