Hookay. It's moving, finally. The acceleration may be approximately the speed of molasses, but it's moving. Hopefully, since y'all have stuck around this far, you'll hang around long enough to see where we get... and I'll take this moment to thank you readers and reviewers. Feedback seriously keeps me going, some days ;) do not underestimate the importance of a nice review to brighten a dull college day!
So, this chapter, for those who wondered, things are happening in Amestris too. Big, important things. Big important meaningful - oh, I'll just stop.
Alphonse Elric did not believe Edward was alive. He knew it. For him, it was just one of those facts of life.
When he had woken up, ten years old, and realized that he was missing about six years out of his life, the first thing he had done was look for Edward. Ed would know what had happened. Even if Ed was also six years older than he should be, he knew that Ed wouldn't watch him with those strange, pitying looks everybody seemed to have when around him.
They told him Ed was dead. How can that be? Al had asked in bewilderment. What happened to him?
Nobody knew. That lack of knowledge infuriated Al like nothing else. If there was no body, how could they say that his brother was dead? They claimed to have known Ed for six years longer than he, but they seemed to miss such an important thing about his brother. Ed didn't just die. If he was gone, there was a reason for it. But if there was no body, then he would be back. Ed would always come back to Al; it was as simple as that.
Maybe that was when he started thinking of them subconsciously as 'They', classifying them as the people who didn't know. Granny, Winry, Teacher, the unfamiliar woman called Rose, the soldiers that kept dropping by to 'check up on him'; all of them were lumped together in his mind.
They refused to tell him about Ed. They watched him sadly when they thought he wasn't looking, lost in some tragedy they wouldn't tell him about. They wouldn't listen when he told them Ed was still alive.
Slowly, painstakingly, Al collected information about the missing years. He found pictures, of his brother with a suit of armor, but no pictures of himself. Where was he? Had the failed transmutation somehow made him vanish entirely? And why had his brother spent so much time with the person wearing that armor?
Al started asking questions. The next time the soldiers came to visit – Maria and Danny, their names were, and they always pretended they weren't soldiers, he cornered them.
You know something, don't you? He had demanded. Generalizations would get him nowhere; he knew this from previous interrogations, so he jumped in with his questions. Who is the person wearing the armor that I see with Brother in all the pictures? Then, because he knew that it always got people flustered, he allowed his voice to tremble and waver. Did Brother…replace me?
Maria and Danny had exchanged a glance, and the familiar look of guilty pity was in their eyes. Finally Danny had broken – Al knew he would cave, Danny was just too nice- and told him. Al had spent the last six years as a soul in a suit of armor, transmuted by Edward.
If anything, that had only increased his simmering rage at all of Them, and increased his confidence. His brother had succeeded in such an amazing alchemical feat, and they could walk around with closed, guilty faces, pretending he was dead? If his brother had actually successfully restored his body, how could they even consider him being weak enough to die before seeing Al?
Al spent the next few weeks contemplating what he had learned. He knew, without a doubt, that his brother had attempted -and succeeded- in human transmutation and that he was the living proof. Now that he knew this, he was comforted that the strange differences he had been noticing about his body lately were not the product of his mind; he was genuinely changed.
Al locked himself in the bathroom, stripped, and inspected his body carefully in front of a mirror. Wonderingly, Al ran his hands down his arms and chest, suddenly realizing, I am my brother's greatest creation. Al carefully inspected every inch of himself, looking for flaws. With a kind of excited wonder, he found details of his body that were actually very different from what he remembered.
Oh, everything worked properly, that wasn't the problem. But there were little changes, like the fact that some of his freckles seemed to have vanished (though he didn't really expect Ed to remember the exact placement of freckles on places like his upper thighs). Also, the shape of the white crescents under his fingernails were now much more pronounced than they had been.
Fascinated by these discoveries, he continued his inspection, and was amazed to discover several not-so-small 'mistakes' in his make-up. Al noticed that he had no fingerprints. He didn't know whether this was an oversight on Ed's part, or whether at the moment of truth fingerprints had just not been the highest on Ed's priority list, but the tips of his fingers were strangely smooth. A close inspection showed that the bottoms of his feet were similarly nondescript. Well, if it was between having fingerprints and having working kidneys, Al would take the kidneys any day.
Scrutinizing his mouth uncovered the fact that Ed had straightened his teeth for him, which was actually rather nice.
Al wasn't quite sure, but he had his suspicions that his eyelashes were a bit longer, and that his eyes were a lighter gray than they had been.
What happened to his hair, though, was quite curious. In his memories, his hair was a fairly uniform darkish-blond, several shades darker than Ed's. For some unknown reason, though, his hair was actually highlighted now, ranging from almost-brown on the bottom layers to bright gold strands on top. Wouldn't it have been easier to just stick with one color?
The shape of his cock was also rather different than he remembered, though that made sense; Edward would hardly be carrying a vivid image in his mind of what his brother's penis looked like. Al laughed to himself quietly. He didn't really mind much.
The new shape was just as good as the old one, he supposed.
Somehow, all these changes made Ed seem much more real to him, more human. Anybody could make mistakes, and the little imperfections in his body only drove home how hard his brother had worked to make him perfect. Looking at himself in the mirror, Al felt closest to his brother. This image of him was the one that Ed had carried around in his mind. True, it was a rather idealized, slightly inaccurate version of who Al had been, but it was how Ed had seen him. He felt that by looking at his body, he could gain access to his brother's mind.
Even his features were slightly changed, Al noted, when he stepped back and regarded himself as a whole. Now that he knew to look for the differences, he could see that the resemblance to their mother was just a little more pronounced, which also made Al inexplicably happy, as did the clear similarity to Ed.
Overall, he decided, he was very proud of his brother. The only glaring physical problem that he could see was the age, and that was something he couldn't understand. Why had Ed subtracted from his age?
Since he had been in the armor and hadn't aged visibly, did Ed subconsciously still see him as a ten-year-old, and so had created a ten-year-old body for him? Had this in fact been a conscious decision on Ed's part, not to deal with the complexities of artificially aging Al in his imagination, but instead playing it safe and creating a body that he had a clear image of in his mind?
But most of all, what bothered him were his missing memories. In his mind, there wasn't even a large blank gap where memories should be. All he had was the memory of the transmutation going horribly wrong, a moment of disorientation, and then waking up in a hospital. The knowledge of his missing memories bothered him the most.
Al couldn't conceive of a situation in which his brother would purposely tamper with his mind. The thought was simply ludicrous, which left only one option.
Ed had failed. Somehow, when transmuting his body, Ed simply hadn't known how to implant the memories in his new body, or he had tried and was unsuccessful at it. That, more than anything, saddened Al. When Ed found his way back, what was he going to say to him?
The other inaccuracies were amusing - Al could imagine ribbing his brother playfully about an obsession with eyelashes or some such nonsense. But the memory loss wasn't. Al knew, without a doubt, that Ed would see it as the worst kind of failure and inadequacy on his part, and that Ed would blame himself.
That, most of all, led to Al's decision. The memories might be irretrievable. But until Ed returned, Al would do his damnedest to learn all he could about what had happened. He would pump everybody he could for information, dig up every story and picture and document, so that when Ed finally returned, Al would be able to smile at him and pretend that he remembered almost everything. After all, a few inaccuracies here and there were to be expected.
Anything was better than having to tell his brother that he had messed up, and that what was probably the most amazing and important transmutation of his life was less than perfect.
The problem was that he got little to no cooperation from the people around him.
Nobody seemed to be willing to tell him much of anything about those missing years. Apparently, they were afraid of him doing something silly, like killing himself in an attempt to resurrect Ed. Al tried to be reasonable. After all, he explained, there was no reason to resurrect Ed, since Ed wasn't dead in the first place!
As a rule, that killed the conversation. Whoever he happened to be talking to - be it Rose, or Teacher, or Winry, or even Sig and Pinako, would fall silent, a sad look on their faces. After a moment, they would either try to explain to Al gently that Ed wasn't coming back, or mutter a halfhearted 'yeah...' or 'I hope you're right'.
It was unbearably frustrating, not to mention lonely.
Al wondered sometimes if they blamed him at all for Ed's disappearance. Nobody would be so crass as to say something like that, of course, but Al still wondered.
All in all, the combination of their disbelief, sorrow, and the sudden age gap served to separate Al from the people he should have loved best. He still loved them, of course, but he couldn't help but feel betrayed in his brother's name. How could they give up on him so quickly?
And, a small unpleasant thought wormed its way into Al's mind, if something were to happen to him, would they give up so easily as well?
Rose finally talked. She didn't know so much about Ed's life, but she had been the last one to see him. The problem was, she explained, those memories were very hazy, and she wasn't quite sure what had happened, or where. But Rose told him about the Lior rebellion, and what Ed had done, and about Scar and the military and a whole host of people whose names Al didn't know.
All the while she cradled her baby, and Al had a suspicion she wished it was Ed's. That night, Al heard a strident argument between Rose and Winry, and could distinctly catch some words - "you shouldn't encourage him!" "He has the right to know... "
That, more than anything, reassured him that the strange story Rose had told was based in truth. Otherwise, nobody would have cared about him learning of it. Armed with knowledge and a name, Al set off for Central.
He prepared for the meeting carefully. He spent hours studying the pictures of Ed, noting the details, until he finally fixed on the look he wanted. When he emerged from his room, dressed for the first time in his new look, he wasn't prepared for the stares.
People watched him. He could feel their eyes on him all the time as he walked through the streets, could hear the whispers behind him. At first he felt mildly self-conscious, but soon he straightened his back with pride. His long hair bounced against his back, and the red coat billowed dramatically, and he knew that Ed had walked like this also.
Nobody would forget his brother. Every step he took was like a re-affirmation of what he knew. Someday, Ed would be back, and until then, he would keep Ed's image, his legend, alive in the consciousness of the people.
Al stalked into Central Headquarters, ignoring the looks with a confidence he didn't know he had. It only took him a few minutes to reach the office he was looking for.
He knocked on the door and entered, a few minutes early for his appointment.
Roy Mustang had been his brother's commanding officer, and his reaction was everything Al could have hoped for.
For a moment, the soldier stood frozen, staring at Al, his face white as if he had seen a ghost. The next, Mustang dragged Al violently into the room, slamming the door behind him.
"Are you insane?" he hissed, shaking Al by the shoulders. "What are you thinking, walking around dressed like that? Don't you know that your brother is a wanted man?"
"No," Al said coldly, frowning at the man. "I don't know, because nobody will tell me anything." His heart beat more frantically in his chest. Wanted? What could his brother possibly have done?
Mustang pulled away, and ran a distracted hand through his hair, yet Al could see the look he shot out of the corner of his eye. Yes, Mustang had the same look all the others had – guilt, sadness, and Al was not above playing on it to get what he wanted.
Mustang composed himself, and went back to sit behind his desk. He gestured, and Al made himself comfortable on one of the sofas.
"Why is he wanted?" Al shot the opening question.
Mustang had difficulty meeting his eyes. "He is believed responsible for the destruction of Lior, and the murder of nine hundred soldiers."
The thought was so ludicrous, Al didn't even feel angry at the accusation. His brother, murdering? Ridiculous. "You were his commanding officer. You must know that he would never do that."
"I know," Mustang said firmly. "I have submitted the proof in my possession, with the interest of clearing his name. But it was only enough to make them consider that he might not be responsible."
"Well," Al was confused, "we'd better do something about it, right? It would be really silly for Brother to come back and find this mess, wouldn't it?"
Mustang was silent for a moment, and Al waited. Here it came, the 'he's not coming back' talk.
"Consider this," Mustang finally said. "If your brother's case were to be reevaluated, it would encourage investigations. Investigations which," he shot a sharp look at Al, "might eventually lead them to you. Trust me when I say that your brother would rather be remembered as a mass murderer, than have you spend the rest of your life in a laboratory."
Al froze, only now realizing the implications of his life. If the military knew he was the product of human transmutation…but still. "My brother is going to be back!" Al said hotly.
"If your brother returns, let us hope that he will have something to tell us about what happened that will help clear his name."
Al glared at the soldier. "You too! Why do you think he's dead? How can you pretend to know my brother, when you think he would leave me so easily?"
Mustang looked at him, and again, Al could see the deep guilt on his features. "Alphonse, the last day I saw him, I knew that Fullmetal was willing to sacrifice his life for your sake, and I knew that there was a good chance it would be necessary. I let him go, and only you returned." Pain was in his voice, and Al suddenly felt rather uncomfortable.
It wasn't Their fault they didn't know Ed well enough to realize he would be back, Al thought to himself. If anything, they were suffering more than he was, thinking that Ed was gone.
"So," Mustang cleared his throat, regulating his tone, "I believe that now you understand why you cannot wander around wearing those clothes."
Al smiled slightly, and nodded. "I see why I should stop wearing these clothes. But I'm not going to." He wouldn't let them forget Ed. "And I will find my brother."
Mustang looked at him, but at the same time through him, and Al knew that he was remembering Ed. Finally, Mustang looked down, and leaned back heavily in his chair.
"The two of you were always insane," he mumbled sadly. Abruptly he regained control of himself, and looked at Al, emotions once again hidden behind a businesslike mask. "I wish you luck, Alphonse," he said gravely.
Yes, Al thought triumphantly. This would work. "Help me," he pleaded gently. "Tell me about my brother."
Mustang looked like he was going to resist, so Al stalked up to the desk and leaned over, looking straight into Mustang's eye. "You know I lost my memories. Unless you help me find out what happened, how can I ever know where to bring Brother back from?"
The combination of the pleading, the resemblance, and the clothing did its work. Mustang looked away, pained, and Al knew the man wouldn't deny him anything in his power to give. Some part of him felt bad at exploiting Mustang's guilt, but Al quashed the feeling. It was for the best, he told himself. If nobody cooperated, he might never find Ed, and if he found Ed, they could all stop feeling so guilty about him.
So he sat quietly and listened as Mustang told him about his wild young subordinate who had been the Fullmetal Alchemist.
That night, Al started his first notebook about his brother. Painstakingly he wrote down the details, trying to capture who his brother had been to the Colonel.
He also made a list of people Mustang had mentioned, resolving to question them too.
The next day he began his search after a popular fiction series Mustang had pointed him towards, about the adventures of the Fullmetal Alchemist, and began one of many sojourns in libraries, digging up newspaper clippings.
And so began his journey across Amestris. Practically everywhere he went he encountered stories, and his notebooks filled up rapidly. Many stories contradicted each other, and he wasn't welcomed happily everywhere.
Some people believed that Ed was truly responsible for the massacre at Lior. Others thought it was a plot by the military to discredit the heroic People's Alchemist.
In some tiny out-of-the-way places they asked, "What massacre?"
Strangely enough, the longer he spent wandering around in Ed's clothes, the more people believed that he was right, and that Ed might actually be returning some day.
Often it was only small things, like Winry commenting that Ed's automail was definitely ruined, and musing how much he might have grown, but every comment like that gave Al a flush of success.
As time went on, though, the people around him grew to hope more, yet Al started to fight doubt. It was almost frightening, sometimes, how much people seemed to want to believe him, to want their hero back. So many people drew hope from Al, based on nothing but hearsay and his convictions, and Al found their trust almost worrisome. What if he was wrong? What if this was nothing more than an expression of his own wishful thinking?
And if everybody was talking about it, and thinking about it, then why wasn't so much as a hint of Ed's whereabouts showing up? Before long, Al would be running out of places to look.
Al would always quash these thoughts quickly, but they still wore away at him, growing increasingly more bothersome.
Until the night of the dream.
Al often dreamt about his brother. Sometimes they were dreams he knew were based on stories people had told him, usually featuring his brother loudly causing trouble in some town or another. These dreams invariably left Al with a bittersweet feeling upon waking, because no matter how many people told those stories, he knew that there were the small holes in the tales. The holes describing the times when Al and Ed had been alone together, and there was nobody to tell him what Ed had been like then.
But there were other dreams, hazy ones where he always looked on Ed from above, that left him unsure whether they were nothing but his own overactive imagination, or truly some remnant of his lost memory.
This dream was different, though. It was very foggy and hazy, but Ed appeared in it. Ed, as Al had never seen or imagined him before. This Ed was older, and he wore his hair tied back in a plain ponytail, while his clothes were drab whites and browns. In the dream, Al was talking to him, though later he couldn't remember what they had talked about. What he remembered the most when he woke up was the aura of depression hanging around his brother, the way his smile was halfhearted, and how his shoulders slumped, movements stiff. Jerking awake, Al grabbed the nearest notebook and quickly wrote down everything he could remember. Depressingly, it wasn't much, hardly more than a jumble of disconnected words, but Al found himself energized beyond belief.
He didn't know where the dream had come from, but he was certain it meant something. Somewhere, far away, Ed was alive, and trying to find his way home. Al redoubled his efforts, filled with a new conviction.