7. Oxygen.
T: This chapter is also, in part, exposition but it has a vague cliff-hanger that I hope makes up for this fact!! I own nothing you see here apart from the plot bunny and yep, the warnings remain the same.
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"I thought that the next that I saw this place I'd have some form of an answer…I guess it's true that things never quite work out the way we planned."
"Do you want to face Al with that attitude?" Winry enquires, her face tightened into the 'mothering' edge that he recalls well from his childhood.
"Let's go home!" He remarks as he pulls a smile onto his lips.
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"Oniichan!" Alphonse is as warm to the touch and he clutches as tightly to the other as his missing arm will allow, irrationally afraid that that warmth might disappear if he lets his guard down.
"I was so frightened when Winry-chan told me about your arm…I wanted so badly just to see your face…to know that you were alive…"
"As if I'd die yet, I'm fourteen next week, after all!"
"Not that you'd know it from the size of him." He resists the urge to snap at this remark, for he has no want for Alphonse to know anything other than a peaceful life and instead says,
"Al this is Colonel Mustang, Colonel this is my little brother Alphonse." Al breaks free his embrace then and, bowing deeply, he says,
"Thank you for saving my brother's life."
"Don't mention it."
"I'm Major Louis Armstrong, Alphonse-san and I must say that I am touched by the strength of the bond you share with your brother."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Major. 'Niichan, it's probably best that we hurry, you know how little aunty likes to be kept waiting!"
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"We can have something for you in three days, but it's not going to be a pleasant or a cheep procedure."
"I need my arm in order to perform my alchemy and so I'll endure the pain, pay what I have to pay, in order to continue walking forwards."
"What about you, Colonel?"
"I'm not about to be outdone by someone ten years my junior and as to the cost…"
"Though I am sure that you can afford it I would ask that you allow me to pay." This last is uttered by his father, the man leaning heavily against the doorway, his completion pail.
"You should not be out of bed." Al remarks as he settles himself into the crook of their father's left arm. Even with this added support he is limping heavily and discomfort he must feel with every step begins to show as a twitching of his smile, both these things as small signs of how rapidly the other's health is deteriorating.
"I had a want to see Edward again and I wished a moment of Colonel Mustang's time." The Colonel tenses, all but imperceptibly and then he says,
"You mentioned that you had wish to visit your mother's grave, Edward, why not do as such now and leave us old soldiers to reminisce?" He is tempted to reject the suggestion, yet there is something in the Colonel's voice that sates the desire almost the moment it forms.
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Al accompanies him to the grave, his presence as the gentlest of salves for the grief he feels always in this place.
"When I told Tousan about the attack on your life he was, as he has said, scared and yet the moment I mentioned the Colonel's name his attitude changed. Do you think that they know one another?"
"It is possible; Tousan was a state alchemist for a great while after all."
"Do you really think that they are reminiscing?"
"No and yet, judging by the Colonel's manner, its better that we do not question the matter further." There is a moment of silence and then Al is enquiring,
"Have you made any progress?"
"I met someone recently who specialised in bio alchemy and, for a while, I thought he might hold the answer…that was not quite the case and so I am afraid that I have nothing."
"I am certain that you shall succeed 'niichan."
"I am running out of time though, aren't I?"
"Tousan is strong, 'niichan, enough that, some days, I forget that he is suffering…it is true that the illness has not slowed But I do not believe that it is life threatening."
"Not yet at least." He regrets the words almost the instant they have left his lips, their negativity staining the previous levity and silencing his brother for the longest of times.
Eventually, his manner weighted still by depression, Al enquires,
"Will you let me come with you this time?"
"I have already made a powerful enemy in this quest, ototo and I am assured that, before I reach its conclusion I shall have made many more. To know that you're life, as well as my own, was under threat from those people…"
"What if that was no longer a problem?"
"What do you mean by that?"
Al refuses to meet his eyes when he replies, "It is nothing," and it is this, more than the numbed edge to his voice, that assures him that the other is lying. He wishes to press, to understand why Al would go so far as to threaten the trust between them and yet he is afraid of what he might learn…afraid of the lengths that his brother would go simply to be at his side always.
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T: Guesses anyone as to what's going to happen next? Ed's remark that he couldn't die until he'd reached his next birthday is the sort of statement younger children occasionally make…it also gave me the excuse to stress that he's soon going to be 14 rather than 13. As far as Roy's age goes I've used the stated age in the manga and used the anime timing to get his age at this point in time…something that sounds so much more complex than it actually was! Finally you will find out what Roy was talking about with Hoenheim but its going to be way down the line! Next chapter Thursday morning (ish) until then how about reviewing??