Disclaimer: Owning Fullmetal Alchemist would be the awesomest thing in the entire world, but sadly, I don't. So I'll just have to settle for slightly less awesome things.
A/N: I'm such a bad updater! Thanks for all the reviews! I'm so glad you guys like my stories. And, I meant to mention this before, yes, all the sciency things I say in my stories are true. I'm very anal about it and if I include something like that I make sure I research it first. :)
Those Three Years...
...were the greatest three years of my life.
Al was back, we were home, and everything was perfect.
Al was sad. I was sad. Winry was sad. But we were happy too.
Like every great story, and my life was a pretty great story, it makes you feel all fluffy inside and then rips your heart to shreds and tears the organ straight away from your chest.
During gym class in grade school, there was never any order.
Tears it straight away from your chest. For Alphonse, it was metaphoric, for me, it was more literal.
There were just children, running in all directions, chaos, sweat, noise. Then the teacher would come in, and she'd blow her whistle and we'd all giggle and run over to her, pushing and shoving and chattering like birds, all trying to get to the same place at the same time. We'd calm down, slowly, staring at the teacher's passive face, she was waiting for us, watching us, patient. She was a pretty lady, who always wore shorts and always wore smiles, and when we were finally quiet, she crouched down and touched her neck with two fingers.
And she just looked at us. As if she were waiting for something, for someone. For someone to do something. So I crouched down, not sure if that was part of what I was required to recreate – and was I? – my fingers just brushing the tips of the green grass below me, and I placed two fingers on that spot on my neck. She looked at me, looked straight at me, and gave me a smile, approval, and all the other kids did the same as I had.
I couldn't tell you what her name was. She died the same year that my mother did. She had gone to Central to visit her brother who had come back from a rough military assignment that had lasted a very long time. She was so excited.
I waited for a long time, every breath through my lungs loud and blaring in my ears. Then I felt it.
A pulse.
It was quick and light, fluttering under my fingers. And I knew then, this wasn't just my heartbeat, my pulse, this was my life. There beneath my fingers. It would dance there until I died, and then it would stop, rest. Slow. End. Never again.
She never saw her brother. A car came around the corner too fast, the man in the driver seat had been drinking too fast. Everything was fast for a moment. The car. Her pulse. Her death. Then it was all over. A pulse. It stopped, slowed, ended. Her breath left her lungs and her brother cried. They sent him to Liore the next day.
He probably died there.
One day I felt my brother's pulse, and I knew that everything would always be great. Because Al would make it great.
I went to her funeral two weeks before my mother's. My mother cried. I don't know anymore if it was because her friend had died, or because she knew she was going to.
Would you cry if you knew you were going to die?
It was almost nice to have a date, an exact time. I'd always knew I wouldn't live long (I'd even shortened that time once), and when we began our quest, I began it with the full expectation that I may not survive.
All I'd ever wanted was to get Al's body back. To fix things. Broken. Alone. I'd make things whole again.
I did. So it was okay. Everything I'd ever wanted out of life. What more was there?
This was fine, I'd said, this is fine.
Then I'd cried because I was going to die.
