Hello rushed update not much time so much wanna tell you reference winner random quest special mentions to prettygal2426 who gave us the entire synopsis of the movie and the scene it was in it was 'The Avengers' gold star to both me so generous apologies for any typos please notify me!
*GASPS*
Here's…the next reference…before I pass out…:
"I'm telling you this because you think you get it, which isn't the same as actually getting it, get it?"
Please, get that. (Lol, pun!) If no-one does, I'll just be embarrassed. (Clue; poular anime.) Allons y! To the story!
Of Bad Dreams and Brofists
After Roy and Edward had reached their quarters, the older of the two had quickly changed into something more comfortable - a white shirt and casual trousers - and settled himself on the couch to sleep.
Edward didn't bother to ask why he didn't go to his actual bed instead of the couch, just changing out of his Kambeian clothing into his usual black trousers and singlet, which he had brought with him in the bottom of his suitcase.
He then yawned toothily, smacking his lips and realising how late it was out. Fixing up the stacks of books a bit more and giving the room a general tidy-up, Edward managed to tire himself out a little more before moving off to the bedroom to sleep. He tossed his trousers back into his case, undid his hair and flopped onto the giant squishy pillow.
Settling down, he tried to sleep for around twenty minutes before figuring that he couldn't. Knowing his habits around this matter, Edward drew the conclusion that if he was going to fall asleep it would have happened already.
Something was keeping him up.
Irritated, the boy rolled over a few times before standing up and lugging his bed down the short corridor and dumped it on the vacant couch.
He wrapped himself up in it and let out a contented murmur before drifting off.
Have you forsaken us?
Edward looked around, taking in his surroundings. He was standing in the living room of his old home in Resembool, a room that smelled slightly of stewed beef and smoke, where a carpet fuffed up between his feet and a cold breeze out of the fireplace sent goosebumps up his arms.
Feet. Arms. He was whole.
Edward inspected himself - here stood a small boy, all limbs intact and capable of sensation, with tufty blonde hair that ended in roughly trimmed points half-way down his neck.
He had been stripped of his height and lean muscle, his fighter's physique replaced by the softer flesh of a child and the previous power behind his blows gone.
Edward glanced about the room and noticed a boy standing opposite him.
It was Alphonse Elric, aged about nine or ten, still bearing slightly chubby cheeks and fluffy blonde-brown hair parted to one side. He looked the same as ever; polite, innocent and sweet, ready to go and play as boys his age often did.
Edward opened his mouth, but Alphonse got there ahead of him.
"Ready to go, big brother?" He narrowed his eyes. "That is who you are, isn't it? Or are we even related? You don't have any brothers, so who am I?"
"Al—" Edward began, but was cut off.
"Boys, it's time to go do the shopping!"
Edward's heart nearly stopped.
Trisha Elric popped her head around the doorframe and into the room, smiling. Her expression became one of sudden realisation.
"Oh, silly me. I keep forgetting. I'm not your mother, am I Edward?" She smiled again, but it was forced this time. "I only have one son."
She and Alphonse made their way down the corridor towards the kitchen, Edward running along behind. "No! Wait! Mom, Al! I am—"
Click. The front door creaked open slowly, and Edward squinted against the sudden rush of light that came flooding in. He could make out the silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered figure in the doorway, but the face was cast into shadow.
"And I'm not your father either, am I?" the figure rumbled. "No. You're not part of this family."
"Hold on!" Edward called out. "I am! You are my family!"
"I'm Edward Mustang, fifteen years old. My father is Roy Mustang, and my mother is Elizabeth Mustang, who passed away when I was young. I have no siblings."
"From your own mouth, Edward," Alphonse said pointedly, all traces of 'sweet little brother' gone. "You denied us all."
"That wasn't real!" Edward protested. "That was for a mission! I was undercover!"
"You're not my son," Trisha said, not even trying to smile. "You don't belong here. Scat, you scoundrel."
The figure in the doorway murmured in agreement, opening the door a little wider. "One son we could handle. Come on, Trisha, Alphonse. Let's go to the markets. I'm staying here with you."
"Alright, dear," Trisha replied. "Come along, Alphonse. Don't let that strange child fill your head with lies like human transmutation." Turning to the man in the doorway, she added, "I feel like I would waste away without you, dear. As if I would die waiting for you to return if you did leave us."
The three exited the house, leaving Edward alone in darkness.
The little boy sat down on the floor, closing his eyes and hugging his knees.
Maybe… If there was only one of us, dad would have stayed. And them mom wouldn't have gotten sick, and I wouldn't have gotten Al to do that transmutation. Perhaps…
He looked up at the doorway again, a soft tear rolling down his cheek. Perhaps our family would have been better off I wasn't a part of it.
An ominous feeling washed over Edward, making him shudder. The room turned abruptly cold, and he started to shiver uncontrollably. A hand of ice trailed over his shoulder, cold and sharp, spreading like a veins of a deadly snowflake.
His body became weaker all at once, pain stabbed at his right shoulder and left leg. Freezing numbness invaded his being, spreading from the sources of the pain and holding him tightly.
He looked at it.
Bad idea.
The hand was almost all bone, held together by strings of pale, shredded skin and thin ligaments, crusted with dried blood. Edward gulped, his throat tightening.
Hot, moist breath blew on his neck, making fine hair rise all over his body and his own breathing quicken.
"Edward," a sing-song voice rasped from behind him, making his blood run cold. "Look here, Edward."
Despite knowing he would most definitely regret obeying whatever creature this hand belonged to, Edward turned slowly, his pupils dilating as he caught sight of what stood there.
"You… You're the…" His voice died, and he tried again, "You're the failed human transmutation."
The creature, reaching for Edward's face from it's sprawled position, grinned. "That's right, Ed. I'm your real family. It's what you deserve; to live with the outcasts, mutilated and cursed, and all those who failed to be human."
Slowly, more creatures emerged from behind this one; a baby with bulging masses of flesh attached where there shouldn't be, a girl who was naught but a mere skeleton with flowing brown hair, and a half-human, half-canine chimera whom the boy recognised instantly. More flooded out, each one just as horrendous and deformed as the one before. They reached for the boy's face, brushing his cheeks with bony hands and leaving blood smeared all over his body.
"I am your mother," said the original monster. "Aren't I?"
"You're my big brother," rumbled the chimera. "Aren't you?"
"We're your real family, you inhuman failure," they said in unnerving unison. "Aren't we?"
To Edward's horror, the skin on the ends of his fingers started to tingle and become pale - blood wasn't reaching it anymore. His arm was dying.
Painfully, the same process started up in his foot and he caught sight of white, vein-laced skin below the fabric of his shorts.
He tried to close his eyes, but the thing placed it's hand on his face and forced him to watch.
"Look, Ed," it rasped. "First, we'll take back the limbs you owe us…"
Edward let out a choking sob of terror as the tingling started up in his right leg, in the fingers of his left arm.
"…and then we'll take the rest of you, to punish you for everything you've done that has gone without being justified."
Edward, wheezing at this stage as the cramping, suffocating sensation reached his chest, let out a scream and collapsed.
Roy opened his eyes on oppressive darkness, unable to tell where anything was. He could feel hands touching him, tapping his back, shaking his shoulders gently and gripping his chin. One amongst them was cold and hard, like metal, and two more had the texture of leather.
Familiar voices echoed about the bleak darkness, coming from all directions and confusing him severely.
"Colonel? Colonel Mustang, sir?"
"Boss? Hey, boss? Hello?"
"Colonel Bastard? Are you in there?"
"Mister Mustang? Can you see us?"
"Roy? Heylo, Earth calling Roy!"
Moving his hand to his forehead, Roy felt the rough, yet smooth texture of reactive cloth brush his skin. He was wearing his ignition gloves…so why couldn't he see them? Was he blind?
Roy flinched away at the touch of cold metal on his cheek, anticipating a weapon, knife, gun or otherwise. Instead, that hand touched him again on the forehead lightly.
Auto-mail? Is that…Edward?
"Hey, Colonel Bastard. Why don't you respond? Can you not see us or something? Are you blind?"
Roy tried to speak, tried to say something, but couldn't. His words were sealed and he couldn't talk.
He was powerless here.
He gave up, sitting back and letting the inquisitive hands roam his face, back and shoulders, sighing depressedly as it dawned on him that he was unable to do anything here.
He listened to the individual voices, distinguishing the differences between them and deducing who was surrounding him. Edward is here… Alphonse too. Lieutenant Hawkeye, Hughes and Havoc, Breda, Fuery and Falman… Is that even…? Gracia and Elysia? And that nice girl who works at the front desk? Everyone's here…
Suddenly there was an almighty explosion, throwing him to the side and sending him skidding across some kind of hard, jagged flooring until he came to a halt. His shoulder burned. He could hear the sounds of people struggling to their feet all about him, and then the sound of distant gunfire joined the ringing in his ears. War?
Struggling to his feet, he struggled to pinpoint exactly what was going on when a firm hand gripped his shoulder and pulled him away.
"Hey! Let go!" he protested, lips finally free, wrenching his body from side to side futilely.
"Enough, Roy!" snapped his captor, - Hughes, Roy realised - pushing him down into a sitting position, his back against what felt like packed earth.
"We need to get you out of here! You're obviously blind or something, you can't help at all here. Just get somewhere safe and let us handle this."
"How many of you are there?" Roy asked pleadingly, desperate to help somehow.
"Not many. A hundred at most."
"And how many enemies?"
"…A few more than ten thousand. But we have to hold our ground; that's our orders."
Roy was about to shout out that that was the most preposterous order he'd ever heard, a suicide mission to the end, when Hughes called out, "Elric! Behind you!"
A blare of gunfire.
"Edward!"
"Big brother! NO!"
And then he was allowed to see in his mind's eye, a shadowy figure with a pistol aimed at Edward's back.
The boy turned, so slowly, he saw, so slowly, he fell, so slowly, and he died.
So slowly.
And then, in vision rimmed with fuzzy black, he saw the killer.
Himself, a twisted smirk on his face and his black eyes cold and merciless. His clothes were clean and he didn't even seem to give a damn about who he'd just killed.
And then it faded.
Roy looked helplessly in the direction of Hughes's voice, begging him, "Please let me fight! I can flame them! Anyone! Just let me fight them!"
"Dammit, Roy! How the hell will you know where to fire if you can't see? You'll only end up hitting your own. Just let it go!"
Roy bared his teeth in a frustrated snarl, slamming a fist into his knee. How did this happen? Why am I so useless? Everyone I know is out there fighting and dying and I'm stuck here…
A close shot sounded and there was a thump as Hughes fell.
"No!" Roy shouted, looking around and wishing for his sight back. "Please, no!"
"Too late for that now."
Roy recognised his own voice before felt pain flare in his chest and then he was down as well. He didn't feel anything now; he knew what it felt like to be shot, but not killed.
Just as he was about to drift off into some form of what might be called sleep, the ground - whatever terrain it might have been - was jerked out from underneath him and he fell, clutching at anything and everything to try and halt his fall.
Then he was falling, just falling, down into an abyss that didn't appear to have a start or an end, blind.
He let out a shout, but nothing changed. He simply continued his descent to nowhere, on and on, trapped in a realm of constance and complacency.
Where everything stayed the same.
And he had no effect on anything.
Useless.
He closed his eyes.
Roy flicked awake, winded, and rubbed his head drowsily. Cringing at his sudden, dizzying shift from dreams into reality, he laid a hand on his chest and felt his heart pounding with the force of some great drum.
Feeling slightly feverish, he sleepily undid the buttons on his shirt to cool himself down a little, yawning quietly as he did so.
A sharp cry of pure terror set him on high alert.
Glancing across the darkened room, Roy caught sight of Edward's shadowy figure on the couch opposite. The boy was shaking, panting and touching his hands to his face and shoulders fretfully with his eyes wide and unfocused.
"No… No way… I shouldn't…shouldn't think that way…" the boy muttered, searching the room frantically. "I wouldn't… They wouldn't… Al? No. Mustn't think…like that…"
His gaze locked with Roy's.
"Monster!" he shouted suddenly, his alchemy briefly illuminating the room as he transmuted his auto-mail into a blade. "Get away!"
His eyes were wild and unfocused, his terrified expression creating the illusion that he was just your average child scared of the monster hiding under the bed.
Roy was momentarily stunned, blinking as he pushed himself up and tried to gather his wits. "Hm? Edward, it's only me."
"Only—" Edward dropped his arms heavily, letting out a trembling breath of relief. "Only you."
Roy sat up and looked curiously at the boy. "Are you quite alright, Ed?"
"Am I…?" Edward transmuted his arm back to it's original from, gripping his head and running his hands through limp black hair. "'M I al…right…?"
"That's what I asked," Roy muttered, cocking his head in cautious puzzlement. "Are you?"
"Y-yeah." Edward's chest heaved a few times as he caught his breath. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm okay. All good."
"A nightmare?" Roy asked. "Is that what?"
Edward allowed himself a few seconds to compose himself before responding, "Yeah. Just a nightmare. I'm okay."
Roy watched the boy calm himself down, brushing his hands through his hair and running checks on his auto-mail systematically, gradually soothing himself.
"Odd," Roy murmured.
"What's odd?" Edward asked shakily, examining his metal shin.
"I just had a bit of a…strange dream myself," Roy admitted. "A little freaky."
"So you had a nightmare as well then?" Edward asked quietly, falling still.
"Guess you could say that," Roy replied.
They sat in silence for a few moments, Roy silently catching his breath and Edward twitching each of his metal toes in turn.
"We're two of a kind, huh?" Roy's quiet statement fell away into the darkness.
"Guess we are."
More silence ensued, during which Roy's heart gave an especially loud thump before ceasing to be heard above a normal volume.
"Mn." He gave his chest a quick rub and said, "What did you dream?"
"I'll only tell if you will. Equivalent exchange."
"Alright. You first."
"But how do I know you'll tell me yours after?"
Roy smirked in the darkness. "You'll just have to trust me there."
Edward was quiet, and Roy could picture his sceptical expression. Eventually…
"The world is coming to an end. I'm trusting you."
Roy smirked again, only this time out of a sad kind reflection than the usual mockery. Do I really seem so unreliable to you, Edward…?
"I was back home, in Resembool, our house before we burned it down. I was in the living room with Alphonse, and he said we couldn't really be brothers. Then…" Roy caught a sharp intake of breath. "Then mom came in, asking for us. No, for Al. Then she said I wasn't really her son. They left, but I chased them. To the door. Where he was waiting. Our dad. He told me I wasn't part of their family, and that he was going to stay with mom and Al. He said one son he could handle, and they left. And I thought that maybe…maybe my family would be a lot happier if they weren't…" He stopped.
"Weren't what?" Roy prompted.
"If they weren't my family."
Roy looked across at the boy, slightly shaken.
"Think about it; if dad had stayed, then mom wouldnt've got sick 'n'…I wouldnt've dragged Al into this mess. It all might've turned out better for them."
"Ed…" Roy began, not quite sure of what to say next.
"But that's not the end of it," Edward continued. "I was there in the darkness when…it…grabbed hold of my shoulder."
"'It'?" Roy repeated.
"Our failed transmutation," Edward elaborated darkly. "That monsterous thing we created that was supposed to be…our mother."
Roy heard a clank - he supposed Edward must have clenched his fists. He couldn't imagine the terror Edward must have felt after seeing the monster of his life again.
"And a whole bunch of other beasts. The chimera that Shou Tucker made…from Nina and her dog. A baby and a boy… All of them mutilated in some way. Twisted, like we did to our mother. I…" Edward broke off, his voice getting shaky again. "I thought up those things, Roy… All of them in my head… Half of 'em I've never seen, so they must all have…" He swallowed nervously. "Those things came from my imagination."
"That's okay then, Ed," Roy said. "If you only imagined them, then what's the problem?"
"If I imagined them…" Edward whispered. "Does that mean I could be capable of creating those beasts? I mean…I did make one of them…so what's to say I couldn't make them all…?"
Roy frowned concernedly, moving his hand down to his side after undoing the last button.
"Can you describe it to me?" the man asked softly. "Your failed transmutation? All those other things?"
"No. I just…can't. It's too…" Edward shook his head. "Can't."
"You could try," Roy put in. "Even a few vague words would do. I saw the blood on the floor of your basement, I want to know what made that."
Edward took a steadying breath. "Sure you wanna know? About it? And all those things?"
"I've seen and heard enough messed up nonsense to fill a lifetime. What's a few more on the list?" Roy said. "And besides, you'll feel better if you tell someone what you saw. Just get it off your chest. You're one of the few people who saw that thing; I get the feeling you wouldn't talk to Alphonse about it and Ms Pinako Rockbell is far out of the question, for quite a few reasons judging on your way of thinking. So take it out on me; I can handle it."
"Well." Edward hesitated again. "I can try and tell you, but I get the feeling I'll either give you a really crap description or stop halfway."
"That's good enough for me," Roy assured him.
Edward's eyes reflected a small amount of moonlight from the window as his head turned to face in Roy's direction. Quietly but firmly, he said, "It was horrible. Arms and legs all distended and oversized, splayed on it's back with all it's guts hanging out. Blood everywhere. Wheezing, coughing it up. It's face was like a monster, messed up teeth and a twisted jaw. And it's eyes…"
Edward shuddered and halted before continuing. "They were round, deep, holes in her face and they shone eerily out of her like torches. They weren't the eyes of a human. They were terrifying. It was so quiet, but so loud. I could hear it breathing, see it convulsing and spraying blood everywhere.
"And the worst thing was, I couldn't find Alphonse. His clothes were there on the floor, crumpled and empty, and I couldn't see him anywhere. I was all alone with a monster. Then I had to pull him back. I only had one leg now, and I was crawling on the ground. On the ground where it was. And it hurt. I grabbed the armour and I drew up that rune, screaming and shouting the whole time and then my arm was gone too and I…"
Edward, panting now, stared emptily at his hands and said, "I told him not to look but he didn't listen. He turned that helmet, he saw her, and we both cursed ourselves for being so stupid and thinking we could have done something like bring someone back from the dead."
There was a dull fwump as Edward collapsed backward onto the sofa and gave a quivering sigh. "And he ran me to Granny's, where we gave her and Winry and heart attacks. I don't really remember much about that part. Then you rocked up with the Lieutenant and…I've said a lot more than I meant to."
Roy looked in the boy's direction again, his face strangely unemotional. "That's fine by me. All I wanted to know about that."
"The rest of them were almost as bad," Edward said softly. "A baby that had been marred beyond recognition. A boy with no eyes soaked in blood. A dead girl with living hair and something so distorted and disfigured that I couldn't even tell whether it was human or an animal."
Edward stopped clamped a hand on his mouth for a minute as if he were going to be sick and then whispered, "And they all reached for me. They said I was an inhuman failure. One of them. That they were my family." Weakly, he finished, "And then they started to take my limbs again, but not away. They killed them. They were turning me into one of them. My body was being transformed to match theirs."
Roy frowned. Such things in the head of a boy so young, he thought sadly. It's not right. He shouldn't be tortured by things like that.
Edward gave his head a quick shake, saying, "I thought once, ages ago, that I shouldn't have been born. I wanted to go back in time and kill myself because of how much better off Al and mom would be if it weren't for me. I hated myself."
He paused momentarily before he kept talking, "But then I realised that I didn't want that. Alphonse loves me, mom loved me. Even if I hadn't ever existed, dad probably would have left anyway, and mom still would have gotten sick. And then Alphonse would have no family left at all. And I know that's the worst feeling ever, being totally alone, even though my experience was so brief."
Clenching his fists again, Edward went on with his eyes burning like hot coals. "I decided I didn't want him to feel that, especially not for a lifetime. I'd rather he have me and be in that body than be all by himself in flesh and bone. I want to look after him, and I want to be his brother. I want to be Edward Elric, the brother of Alphonse Elric and the son of Trisha Elric. Hell, I even want to be the son of goddamn Hoenheim! I want to exist and I want to help people.
"I sometimes wonder if that's possible, and if we ever do any good, but I have to keep thinking 'there's always tomorrow'. I guess after all this time, that one thought just resurfaced."
Roy smiled. He's so strong. And wise, in his own way.
"And now I'm going back to sleep, because I know you're going to break your word and not tell me your dream."
Edward rolled over and closed his eyes, leaving his bare back to Roy.
"Hmf." The man closed his eyes as well, almost offended, but too tired and stirred to care.
A gentle silence gripped the room for a moment, filling the atmosphere with warm tension.
"I dreamt I was blind," Roy murmured.
Edward gave a start. He obviously hadn't been expecting Roy to go through with their deal.
"I could hear everyone around me, all my men, Hughes, you and your brother, Elysia and Gracia even. I could feel you touching me, fussing over me, but I couldn't talk."
Edward glanced over curiously. "Going blind? That's what you're scared of?"
"Amongst a couple of things, yeah," Roy admitted quietly. "That's a prospect I wouldn't really like to have become reality. After that, there was this huge explosion and we blasted into a war. I could hear people screaming and guns firing, and before I knew it, people were getting killed. But I couldn't do anything, Hughes wouldn't let me. I felt so useless. Then they shot us both, and then I was just falling down this dark hole. Cliché, huh? And I couldn't do anything about it. Falling blind and helpless."
Roy placed his head in his hands. "I hate that! Can't stand it! There's just…no worse feeling."
Roy noticed Edward looking at him ponderously.
"I always wondered… Why do you always react that way? When someone says you're useless, you take it personally and then overreact and look like you're having some kind of identity crisis," the boy said.
Roy flashed another mirthless smirk. "I suppose it must look like that. It's just that to me…you can't get much lower than having no effect on anything…being totally and utterly helpless…unable to help those closest to you."
"I can understand that," the younger of the two replied solemnly.
Silence.
"There's one more thing," Roy admitted quietly.
"What's that?"
"It was me," he whispered. "I killed everyone. I was the enemy."
Edward kept looking at the ceiling. "There were two of you?"
"I killed you too," Roy murmured. "Then Hughes, then myself. Fitting, huh? I'm the death of all of you. I'm my own downfall."
"Wrong," Edward said firmly. "You're bringing them up, aren't you? You're not bringing anyone down now. If you even think about it that way, I'm gonna beat your ass 'til you start thinking right again. All those people in your platoon, they follow you because they know what you can do for them. I know what you can do for them. For everyone."
He added, "And for me."
Roy closed his eyes and considered this.
Suddenly, Edward stood up, walked over and held out his tightly balled auto-mail fist over the table, looking Roy in the eye.
"What? You wanna punch me?"
Edward rolled his eyes. "No, stupid. You bump it with your own fist. It's what you do. It means, 'I trust you'."
Roy reached out and nudged Edward's waiting fist with his own, smirking. "I'll never understand those weird things teenagers do nowadays. When I was a kid, we just broke stuff and threw things at each other."
"Old man," Edward joked, moving back to his bed.
"Ignorant brat," Roy retorted, settling down.
'Goodnight' was the word that hovered in the air between the two, even though they hadn't spoken it.
AAAHH! IT'S HORROR! I scared myself with Ed's dream…
I have found the perfect song. For everything. Ed and Al, Hughes and Elysia, Roy and Riza, my own original story.
Demons by Imagine Dragons. Bloody brilliant. If you haven't heard it, go listen. I can nearly guarantee it'll make you think of the Royai pairing.
And I finally got the next volume of FMAB (I've read the manga and seen the original anime already, but not all of Brotherhood. Heh.) and I'm up to the bit where Roy loans that 520 cens to Ed. I laughed so hard because Ed basically ran up there and mugged the Colonel!
Gosh, that was so funny.
(To anyone who's read '444 I'm Not Allowed to do in Amestris' by Do A Barrel Roll) And then when Ling attacked Father, my sister and I both yelled, 'Go, Ling! Use slash! Ling Ling Li Ling!'
Goodbye! So long! See you next time! For chapter the next one - Of Tigers and Teddy Bears!
REEEEEEEEVEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!1! (Spellcheck doesn't know what to make of that…)
