Ed was seated at his brother's bedside, silently counting his fingers. Al was asleep, as he often was most of the day. His body's time at the Gate had left it severely malnourished, barely alive and extremely weak. Being bound to a suit of armor hadn't helped much either. While doing so had kept his soul alive, it had left him starved of the basic physical sensations. There was going to be more rehabilitation beyond just putting meat back into his bones.
Once Al up was up to scratch again, healthy and full of life as it should be instead of a living corpse, Ed would resign from the military. The withdrawal forms were ready to be submitted and have been since he joined. Getting Al's body back was the only reason he joined and now with that accomplished, along with stopping the nation from being turned into a giant Philosopher's Stone and getting his arm back as a bonus, Ed saw no reason for staying, especially since he couldn't perform alchemy anymore. A state alchemist who couldn't do alchemy was a bigger joke than a child in the military. If he didn't resign, Ed was probably going to get booted out.
The only reason he hadn't turned them in already was because Mustang was still who-knows-where and he needed his commanding officer to sign off the paperwork. No one had seen a hint of the bastard since the Promised Day and he would have been declared dead, or at least missing, if Grumman hadn't assured them that he was off on 'personal business'. No one was given anymore information beyond that and given that Lieutenant Hawkeye was also missing, the two of the would be coming back soon and most likely in one piece.
When all the paperwork was filed and he was officially back to being plain old Ed again, he was Al were probably going to head back to Resembool and then they were going to-
Going to do what?
Ed turned back to Al's hand, gently rubbing his bones through a thin layer of skin and flesh. So frail and brittle but he could feel the warmth in his brother's veins. Warmth and blood and life and all the things his little brother deserved after all the shit he had put them through the past several years.
Al stirred, his body stiffening from its relaxed state as his eyes flickered open.
"Hey brother." he said, his voice dry and soft but finally free of that metallic clang. It was deeper too, his body somehow over going puberty while at the Gate.
"Morning Al." Ed replied, slowly helping his brother into a seated position. The hospital gown, hung loosely on his body, showing off knobby joints and pale skin. "How are you feeling?"
"Alive and very tired, not that I need anymore sleep." Al stretched, pulling his arms above his head and cracking a couple bones to wave off the stiffness. "Who knew bodies needed so much maintainance?"
"Bet I do, considering I've been keeping two alive for a while now. Maybe I'll gain a few more inches, considering your body's not leeching off of mine anymore."
"I don't know brother. I might need some extra nutrients from you for some body mass. Your inches will have to wait."
"Oi, get them from elsewhere!"
They paused for a moment and then laughed. Life was good now. The future could worry about itself. Right now it was just two brothers enjoying a long awaited relief.
Ed started flipping through the clipboard at the end of Al's bed. "From the looks of it, the docs say that you should be good to eat solids now."
His brother immediately perked up. "Really? Finally an end to soup and grey gelatine!" Al gazed off into nothing, completely overtaken with the thought of real food. "I really missed Granny's stew and I have to try Miss Gracia's pie and Winry's too. Maybe at the same time! And also…" He turned to Ed with a pleading look. "Do you think we could get Ling to bring over some Xingese specialties?"
"No way! That bastard would probably gulp it all down before he's even left Xing. Besides...wouldn't you want to ask May instead?"
"Brother!" Al cried, cheeks heating to a deep red blush which made a stark contrast to his pasty pale skin. Topped with the gold from his eyes and shaggy hair, it made him look almost like a circus clown. Ed couldn't help but chuckle at his brother's expense.
Al huffed. "Well then, what about you and Winry? Should I expect to be an uncle any time soon?"
Ed's cheeks reddened in response and their roles were switched. His brother was laughing now, unbridled to the point that it almost devolved into a coughing fit.
"Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. This was supposed to be about food, not girls." Ed mumbled.
Al slowly quieted down, a few hiccups remaining. "You still have my list brother?"
Ed nodded, bringing his suitcase from under his chair to his lap. "You wrote down a hell lot while we were travelling. We might need to go around the country again to tick everything off."
"The Elric Brothers, from searching for the Philosopher's Stone to hunting the best dishes in Amestris!" Al declared, striking a pose like Major Armstrong.
And they were both laughing again, just two boys horsing around like anyone else their age.
Ed clicked his suitcase open except, it wasn't his suitcase. It looked identical on the outside, yes, but on the inside…
"Brother, please don't tell me you lost my list."
"I think I lost out entire suitcase, Al." Ed said, pulling out the first of the many wierd things inside the case. It was a fancy looking stick. He twisted around in his hands, examining the intricate carvings along its surface.
"Let me see." Al grabbed the edge of the suitcase, turning it towards him to have a look.
He pulled out a long cloth and kept pulling and pulling until he had a ratty three metre scarf draped over him and his brother.
"Who the fuck owns this thing?! A stage magician?"
"Language, Ed." Al said automatically, but his attention was wandering elsewhere. "There's something written on it."
Ed pocketed the stick and looked where Al was pointing. A strangling golden thread among the grey fabric squiggled to look like words.
"Is it Aerugean?"
Ed read over the scrawl again. "No. I think it's Cretan." For once, he was glad for the military requiring him to learn all the languages of the surrounding nations. It was a pain considering Drachman used a different alphabet and Cretan was no rules all exceptions but at least it was paying off.
He grabbed his end of the scarf and began slowly reading the text. "Ok, I think this guy was completely fucked in the head."
"Brother!"
"It's true! Listen:
'Yarn so far make me near,
Yarn of home make me clear
The sea, the gate and hidden wall,
And send me there with little fall!'
What sort of-"
There was a hollow pop, a barely noticeable shift, and a blink later, Ed was no longer in the hospital but in an alleyway. He pulled the stupid scarf off and frantically scanned the area.
"Where…? Al? Al!"
"Over here!" Came a muffled cry.
Ed turned and there was his brother, still in his hospital gown and wrapped in the other end of the scarf.
"Al!" He rushed over, pulling Al to his feet. Were his legs really that skinny? Shit, how could he stand? How was he going to walk?
"Brother, where are we?"
"No clue." He draped his brown jacket over him. Of all the days to leave his red coat behind; it would have been much warmer. Ed also wrapped the scarf, the damn thing that got them into this mess, around Al's neck. He couldn't risk Al getting sick at a time like this.
"Up you go." Ed said, heaving his brother onto his back. Al was feather-light, most the weight coming the clothes he was wearing rather than his actual body mass.
"Hey! I can-"
"Just humor me for now, Al, until we find out where we are."
Al sighed. "Fine, just for now."
Out the corner of his eye, he spied the suitcase lying innocently a metre away. Ed wanted to punt it off into oblivion but there had been some useful stuff in it. Some spare clothes, toiletries and even a bit of cash and valuables that could be pawned. Grudgingly, he picked up the suitcase. It was too valuable to leave behind, for now.
Heading out of the alley, Ed found himself on the main street. It was obvious now they weren't in Central, or anywhere else in Amestris. The sidewalk was flooded with people, all going one way or another without any regard for the world around them. Tall rectangular buildings, taller than anything in Central, rose to the sky and lined the streets leaving only a blue path of sky visible over the road. Speaking of the road, the cars that zoomed across it were like nothing he had ever seen. Bigger and sleeker and running at speeds that would crush anyone who happened to wander across the road...if this was what civilians had access to, who knew what they're military had.
Ed shuddered at the thought. "C'mon Al, let's get some less crowded."
But already, his brother had drifted off to sleep.
Carefully, Ed made his way through the crowd in search of some sort of information centre. Experience taught him that people didn't take kindly to being stopped by a random teenager on a street. It was better to ask someone who was paid to do that sort of shit.
He did his best to keep Al concealed under his jacket by hunching over, trying to make it look like he was carrying a backpack or something rather than a malnourished person. The less questions asked the better.
The streets were starting to thin and the sun was lowering in the sky. It was getting late and they still hadn't found anything. Ed's stomach growled. Maybe they should stop at the next diner they passed. Hopefully the money in the wacko's suitcase would be accepted in wherever-the-hell-they-were.
"Hey kid!"
Ed froze. Were they calling out to him?
"Yeah! You there!"
He turned and there was a lady wearing too little clothing for this chilling weather. She stopped in front of him, panting slightly and brown ponytail still swinging from the momentum.
"Yo kid, I saw you walking all hunched and glum and- Oh shit! Is that a person?"
Ed strained his ears, trying to keep up with the woman's babble. She definitely wasn't speaking Amestrian (thank Truth he hadn't tried stopping anyone on the street), and her words were laced with a strange accent he'd never heard before.
"Are you speaking this...language?" he said slowly in Cretan.
"Yes and wow! What's with that accent? You're not from around here are you? Are you lost? Did you get separated from your parents?"
Ed heard the word lost and began nodded slightly, trying his best not to disrupt Al.
"Poor things! Leave it up to good old Jo to find your folks!"
The lady grabbed his spare hand and began dragging them off the direction she came from. Ed showed no resistance, only making sure that the jolting wouldn't make him drop Al.
Best case scenario, this lady would get them back to Amestris.
Worst (most likely) case scenario...he still had a good automail leg to kick with.
There was definitely a rule or something about not going with strangers but getting dropped in the middle of Truth-knows-where with absolutely no fucking clue on how you even got there in the first place and everyone is speaking Cretan of all things –
Yeah, Ed was taking his chances with the first friendly face he met.
The woman – Jo from what he could gather from his shoddy Cretan, didn't seem immediately threatening. She wasn't much taller than he was – maybe even the same height or, should he dare hope, shorter – and the thick glasses and dirty flannel combo reminded him of a cross between Sheska and Winry. However if there was one thing he learned from the military it was never to trust appearances.
Jo had a firm yet gentle grip on his right hand – his right flesh hand and Al on his back warm and in his own body - as she lead them down the road. In trying to avoid the crowds, Ed hadn't noticed how sparsely populated it was for a city street. A good thing for trying to avoid attention and a good place for a fight if one broke out. Property damage was always better than civilian casualties – except there wouldn't be much of that unless he kicked something really hard with the right leg. No more alchemy, right. There were a lot of things to adjust to.
She brought them to old red car – old as in Ed noticed the paint chipping in places and one too many dents around the doors but otherwise it was more advanced than any automobile that Ed had seen before. It was smaller and more compact compared to any car he had seen in Amestris with a sleeker design that was decades ahead of anything the military had. Maybe it was all purely aesthetic but if this was what civilians had, he didn't even want to think about their military.
"Come on, hop in." Jo said, unlocking the car with only a press of a button from a tiny control.
"Hop?" Did she expect then to jump on the car?
"Y'know – you can go inside. It's not going to bite you or anything." She opened the backseat door, making a wide gesture to usher them inside.
"Oh, hop." Idioms, the bane of all communication. It was bad enough when they varied between different areas but in a language he was barely competent in – good luck.
Ed slid Al in first, carefully buckling his sleeping form to the seat. Al had always been a deep sleeper when they were kids and now wouldn't be any different, especially since he had a whole lot of sleep to catch up on.
"A hospital gown?"
Ed quickly turned around. "Excuse me?"
"Ah, nothing nothing." Jo said, holding her hands up. "Just some mindless muttering, that's all."
"It better be…" Ed grumbled as he strapped himself in.
The comfort of these cars was definitely leagues ahead of anything back home. Ed could already feel himself falling into the plushness of the seats. If only train seats were this comfy, that way he wouldn't be left with a sore back every trip. That was another thing they had to add to Al's list, the joys of cross-country travel. The soft rumblings of the engine and steady lull of travel nearly sent Ed tumbling into sleep.
"…I really should bring them to the police – but the other kid definitely needs a hospital –"
"Police? Hospital?" Ed said, startling himself back awake.
Then Jo started speaking – too fast with too much volume fluctuation for Ed's limited Cretan to keep up with.
"What? Slowly, please." Ed interjected into the mumbling rant.
"Oh, sorry uh…I was thinking of going to the police but I wasn't expecting the other kid to look so bad and he looks like he's going to fall apart any minute so I thought about if –" She still wasn't making any sense.
"Where are we going now?" Ed asked.
Jo gave a nervous laugh. "The hospital."
"No."
Police officers he could deal with, they were like the military but less competent. It was hospitals he was more worried about. They were going to ask questions: about his arm, about the shrapnel still in his shoulder, about Al's entire physical state. They were going to put two and two together and realise that they had the Fullmetal Alchemist in their grasp with conveniently packaged with the perfect leverage. Ed had been sent to enough border skirmishes to know that Creta definitely knew who he was.
"But kid, the other kid-"
"I take care of brother." Ed said firmly. "We go to police first."
Paper trails are of the utmost importance to an alias, the bastard's words practically rang in his ears. Ed normally wouldn't give anything that spewed out of Mustang's mouth a second thought but if there was one thing that bastard was good at, it was manipulation. Adults of any kind treated paperwork like it was some sort of unrefusable truth, even if something directly contradicting it was right before their eyes. If he could lay some ground work with the police here, establish him and Al as nothing more as a pair of lost harmless kids, then that was best protection they could afford.
Ed struggled to stay awake for the rest of the trip. The enthralling comforts of the car were luring him into a travel nap – even if it was the hardwood of a train bench Ed would still be facing his habit of dozing off. However the moment he close his eyes, he knew their destination would change. He kept his eyes trained on the rear-view mirror, locking his gaze with the driver's.
They stopped in front of a redbrick building with 'POLICE' written in Cretan above the door.
Ed gently nudged Al awake.
"Brother where-?"
"Pretend you don't know Cretan." They didn't have time to fabricate a story together so it was best the Cretans thought only one of them knew the language.
Al's drowsiness immediately faded away. His cheeks were too hollow and skin too pale but Ed knew that steeled look Al flashed him, that unwavering support and trust in what his older brother had planned (hopefully he didn't lead them into ruin again).
{~~~}
Their names were Edward and Alphonse Curtis but they preferred to called Ed and Al. (Teacher wouldn't mind if they used her name. She and Sig might as well have adopted them at this point.)
Ed could understand a little bit of English but could speak even less while Al's was barely existent. (Mustang had sometimes insulted Ed in Cretan for some damn reason. Ed didn't stop until he was competently fluent in the language so he could throw insults back - Al had been dragged along for the ride of course.)
The brothers had much difficulty answering most of the police's questions due to the language barrier. They were obviously very close and very young as Al latched firmly onto his brother's arm. (Al was holding Ed back. The officers had guessed that they were about twelve and thirteen respectively and Ed knew how to read.)
They likely originated from Eastern Europe. How they got all the way to England with no documentation was a complete and utter mystery. Even the boys were unsure, simply shrugging, as if they had appeared out of thin air. (Partially true. They still had no idea how they got to this country. Which was apparently an island. The officers had provided a map but none of the country names or borders was familiar. There was something that could have been the Xingese Desert so they had vaguely gestured to the mass of countries west of it.)
(The officers had tried asking about their physical states but they couldn't answer. There was no simple explanation to Al's malnourished state and Ed's withered arm.)
Apparently there was someone that they could contact about their whereabouts, a legal guardian of a sort.
"No blood but he always tell us what to do." Ed had grumbled. "But good man."
"He keep Brother safe. No danger. No trouble." Al had stumbled out after several false starts trying to find the right words. "Good man."
So they handed Ed a satellite phone in hopes that they could get in contact with their 'guardian'.
(Mustang had to know someone they could contact. Hell, everyone here sounded like Mustang when he spoke Cretan and nothing like the few Cretan soldiers that Ed had the misfortune of meeting. That bastard had to know something.)