Chapter 10: Reasons


When Alphonse was just a young boy, he'd found a book in the library that had been misplaced in the fiction shelves which he'd been looking through. It was called, simply, Alchemy but, when young Alphonse tried to borrow it, he wasn't allowed to. He was told by the librarian that it actually belonged in the restricted section and only licensed alchemists could borrow it. Young Alphonse asked how he could become a licensed alchemist. The librarian told him that he had to find himself a teacher who was already a licensed alchemist, study very hard and then, when he turned eighteen, he could take a test and, if he passed this test, then would get his alchemist's license. Then he could go into the restricted section whenever he wanted and borrow any books in there that he wanted.

Having forgotten all about the novel he'd been looking for, young Alphonse hurried home where he'd found his mother setting out the day's wash to dry before her customers came to pick it up. He ran up to her and told her all about what had happened at the library and what the librarian had told him. Little Alphonse asked his mother -- begged her -- to find him an alchemy teacher so that he could learn alchemy and get his alchemist's license.

"I'm sorry," his mother had said, "but I'm afraid we just don't have the money right now to pay for a teacher. Maybe when you're a little older."

Young Alphonse was understandably disappointed but he was used to such disappointments, even at such a young age. So his life continued as it had before, going to school in the mornings, stopping by the library in the afternoon for a new book, helping his mother fold the day's laundry after he returned, and then reading until he fell asleep. Once in a while the schedule would change and he would play with his friends but this was just young Alphonse's life. Until his next birthday.

Little Alphonse and his mother had been saving up all year for his birthday party. There were balloons and hats and streamers and his mother had even baked a beautiful and absolutely delicious smelling chocolate cake just covered in sparkling candles with one in the center in the shape of a seven. Everything was absolutely perfect, there was just one thing missing. The guests.

Little Alphonse had invited his closest friends to the party, but due to the unexpected rainstorm, no one had been able to show up. Alphonse had been so disappointed, even though his mother kept assuring him that all they had to do was tell the other children that they should come tomorrow instead. That made him feel a little better, but it just wouldn't be the same, celebrating his birthday on a day that wasn't his birthday.

He and his mother tried to make the best of the situation, though, and she cooked him his favorite meal for dinner and even let him eat some of the cake for dessert, promising that shed simply bake another for the party the next day. Just as she'd been about to let him open his present, however, they were both surprised by a loud knock on the front door. They hadn't been expecting anyone due to the rain but, sure enough, when little Alphonse's mother opened the door, they saw two drenched strangers standing there.

Young Alphonse's mother invited them both in, though the large behemoth of a man scared young Alphonse and he clung to his mother's skirt. Their names were Izumi and Sieg Curtis, the woman explained and accepted his mother's offer of tea and birthday cake. They'd been on their way back to Dublith when their train had been cancelled thanks to the weather effecting the nearby river. They'd walked from the train station and tried to find an inn to stay in for the night until the flooding went down, but there just hadn't been any and the conditions had gotten worse outside. But it was no trouble, young Alphonse's mother had assured them. She was very glad to help.

As it turned out, however, their visitors were even more help in the end.

The storm had been picking up outside, making everyone inside increasingly nervous. The rain was bashing against the house, the thunder shaking the ground and, soon, the tree just outside the kitchen was struck by lightning. It remained standing somehow, but at such a precarious angle that it looked as if it would fall over at any moment. And it did. The wind picked up to dangerous speeds and the tree tipped over, crashing into the kitchen and strewing glass, wood, and other debris everywhere.

Little Alphonse's mother just didn't know what to do. Even if the storm ended soon, the kitchen couldn't stay like that. Unfortunately she also just didn't have the money to pay for such extensive repairs. She was at a complete loss for what to do and the kitchen was quickly filling with water from all of the rain, and the wind was bringing in dirt and debris from outside. It was just a complete mess and there was nothing that she could do about it.

So, Izumi stepped forward. The stranger asked young Alphonse and his mother to step back a bit, away from the kitchen, to give her some room. Once the kitchen was cleared of people, Izumi clapped her hands together, pressed them to the floor, and the room covered in what appeared to be blue lightning. Young Alphonse stood transfixed as he watched the blue lightning encompass everything and make it all begin to move and repair itself seamlessly. The broken window looked brand new again and the wall seemed just as it always had been. The dents in the floor and wood-burning stove were gone, as if they'd never even been there in the first place. And, finally, the tree chopped itself up into firewood and rested itself by the stove.

Both little Alphonse and his mother were in awe. Little Alphonse's mother wanted to somehow repay Izumi for what she'd done but both she and her husband assured her that it was nothing and she should just consider it payment for allowing the couple to spend the night. Since Izumi seemed a bit ill and weak, though, the four of them retired to the living room once more and took up another conversation.

Little Alphonse couldn't have told you anything about it, however, since he was too busy forming a plan in his head. It had been the first time that he'd ever seen alchemy and he just knew that this would be his one and only chance to ever learn it. So, the next time the conversation seemed to have lagged, young Alphonse asked Izumi if she would please teach him alchemy.

Izumi looked him over thoughtfully for a moment but turned away saying that she didn't take on students. Well of course she didn't, his mother said and apologized for his abruptness and assumptions. Little Alphonse ignored his mother and tried again, assuring Izumi that he would work really hard and everyone told him that he was very smart so he would learn quickly. Hoping to deter him, Izumi asked how the little boy was planning on paying her since, after all, a little boy couldn't possibly have the money to hire an alchemy teacher. Young Alphonse's eyebrows furrowed and he looked to his mother who merely flushed and patted his head, reminding him that they couldn't afford something like that right then.

Little Alphonse frowned sadly but nodded, climbing into his mother's lap. He'd been so close too.

What he hadn't realized, however, was that Izumi had been watching him -- especially his reaction to his mother's words. He'd been truly disappointed and she knew exactly how he felt. She believed him that he was serious about learning alchemy and they certainly weren't going to find many people willing to not charge them to teach young Alphonse.

"Two days later, I was on a train with Izumi and Sieg on our way to Dublith."

"Your mom stayed behind?"

Alphonse nodded and Edward couldn't help but notice that he appeared just a bit guilty about that; and he thought he had an idea as to why. "So what happened?"

"She was my teacher for six years. She and Sieg owned a butcher shop and I helped out there to pay for the lessons. She let me visit home at holidays, but otherwise I was only able to write letters to my mom. The letters just stopped coming one day, though, and about two weeks later, I got one from one of our neighbors saying that she'd died."

The two boys fell silent for a few moments, Edward simply waiting for his roommate to be ready to finish his story, though he had the feeling that he already knew the ending.

"You tried to bring her back."

Alphonse blinked up at the older boy, surprised, apparently, that he'd been able to figure it out. "Not exactly," he said quietly, hoping that the dimness of the light would help mask the tears in his eyes. "I almost did. I researched for months behind my teacher's back. I just wanted to see my mom again so bad because I didn't even get to see her before she got sick. Izumi found my notes, though, and stopped me before I was able to do anything."

Edward studied the younger boy carefully while a long silence stretched out between them. He'd had a feeling that the reason that Alphonse was in the school had to have been something like that.

"So you didn't really go through with it?"

Alphonse shook his head and the older boy hesitated before asking, "Do you think you would've if she hadn't stopped you?"

Alphonse looked up at him again, but almost immediately dropped his eyes back to the floor. "I don't know," he said, furrowing his eyebrows. "By the time she got to me, I already had the array drawn out in my room in her house. I hesitated, though, for a while. I'm not sure how long, but enough for Izumi to find and stop me."

"Why did you stop?"

Silence. And then, "I guess I was scared."

Edward could understand this completely, considering all of the stories about attempted human transmutations. None of these stories inspired confidence.

"I don't blame you," the older boy murmured, leaning back against the wall and staring at the door across from him. "It's pretty scary."

Once again Alphonse looked at him in surprise, though he didn't seem as surprised as he probably should have been. It seemed the younger boy had picked up on a few things, himself. He didn't even have to ask any questions; Edward could see it all on his face.

"It was my mom too, only there was no one around to stop me."

"You mean you actually went through with it?"

He nodded.

"And you actually survived . . . "

Edward could hear what sounded like awe in his roommate's voice. That was a bad thing. If people were going to be awed by him, he didn't want it to be because he'd lived through something like that. Besides, it wasn't as if he'd come out unscathed.

Leaning forward, away from the wall, Edward silently stripped off his grey uniform jacket. Alphonse was surprised by the movement and watched in confusion as the jacket was dropped to the floor. Then, his roommate unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and began rolling up his right sleeve, revealing a completely mechanical arm.

Surprise turned into shock and Alphonse wondered how he'd never noticed that his roommate had an automail limb but, as he watched Edward remove his glove, he realized: He was always wearing those gloves. This wasn't entirely unusual since they were a part of the uniform and every student at the school wore them throughout the day. But not many of them wore them to bed as well. Alphonse had barely even noticed the quirk, having been intent on not paying attention to his roommate as much as possible. The glimpse of metal beneath Edward's rolled up left leg pant was more easily explained since the older boy was always in long pants and socks, which wasn't at all unusual.

Then, Alphonse remembered that Edward was only fifteen and had been a student at the school for several years, from what he'd heard. So that had to mean . . . "How old were you?"

Edward gave him that gauging look that Alphonse was becoming so accustomed to before he answered, "Eleven."

That was . . . How was that even possible? Not only had Edward survived an attempted human transmutation, the most dangerous alchemy known, but he'd done it at the extraordinarily young age of eleven!

"You really are incredible . . . "

And here Edward had thought showing the younger boy what had happened to him would prevent that sort of reaction. He stared down at his hand, watching his mechanical fingers clench and unclench. "You think that just 'cause I managed to survive?"

"That's reason enough, isn't it? and the fact that you were so young." Alphonse just couldn't believe it. "You're probably the youngest person to ever survive that."

"Yeah," Edward snorted bitterly, clenching his automail hand, "what an accomplishment."

Edward could feel his roommate's eyes on him with that same measuring look he'd given him so often. He was trying to figure out why he was so bitter about it, but the older thought that it must be obvious.

"You didn't succeed."

"That's a stupid question."

Although it had been more a of a statement than a question, Alphonse had to agree. Of course he hadn't succeeded. No one ever had. That was why Alphonse had hesitated in the end -- he'd just been too afraid.

"So . . . what happened then?" he asked. "I mean, you lost your arm and leg, and all of the elements, right? So you must have gotten something in return. Equivalent Exchange: You can't have given up all of that and gotten nothing in return."

Edward forced down a shudder. "Oh, I got something alright."

"What was it?"

"I'll tell you this much: It sure as hell wasn't human."

Alphonse looked as if he wanted to ask again, so the older boy cut him off. That, he was not ready to tell him. Or anyone. "So your teacher turned you in?"

The younger boy nodded. "She brought me over to the military but asked that I be sent here."

He wasn't entirely sure why, but the older boy seemed surprised by this and Alphonse asked him what was wrong.

"Why would she want you to be sent here?"

"She said she went here when she was younger, and it helped her," he answered with a shrug.

Izumi. Of course, how could he not have realized? She hadn't been Izumi Curtis back then, but he still recognized the name. And how ironic that Alphonse, who had nearly attempted a human transmutation, should turn out to have been Izumi's student. Or maybe she'd been teaching her student something that she shouldn't have.

"Edward," the younger boy asked, cutting off his roommate's thoughts, "when you got sent down here the last time -- when you tried to move the building -- you didn't use an array." Alphonse had the look of someone who was just figuring out an extremely difficult puzzle. "And those little balls you were flicking at Master Mustang. It was alchemy, wasn't it? I thought it was but I didn't see any array."

Well, there was no way of getting around it. Besides that it wasn't as if he'd done much to hide that particular ability from anyone.

"How is that possible? How are you and my teacher able to perform alchemy without an array?" No matter how hard he tried, Alphonse just couldn't think of a way that anyone should be able to do something like that. It was defied all the laws of alchemy that he'd been taught!

Edward looked up at his roommate. He didn't want to get into it. In fact, the less people that knew how he managed to use alchemy without an array, the better. There were too many people out there that would misuse an ability like that. But, then again, Alphonse definitely didn't seem like that type, or the type that would attempt to perform such dangerous alchemy just to be able to perform array-less alchemy. He was just . . . curious.

"Your teacher never told you?" he asked carefully.

Alphonse shook his head. "She never even did it after we got to Dublith. Not in front of me anyway."

"She was probably just trying to protect you."

The younger boy gazed questioningly at him.

Edward sighed. "The reason I'm able to perform alchemy without an array is the same reason I'm here."

"You mean . . . the human transmutation?" The older boy nodded. "I don't get it. Why would performing human transmutation make you able to not use an array?"

It was a perfectly understandable question. The only problem was that Edward wasn't sure he could answer it. "I'm not sure, exactly, but something happens when you do and . . . I dunno. You just learn how, okay?" Along with quite a few other things that he wished he hadn't learned.

Alphonse got the feeling that his roommate thought he didn't believe him, though he couldn't figure out why that would be. He'd seen Edward perform array-less transmutations and he had no reason to think that he was lying. The older boy was really so much more amazing than he'd thought and it made Alphonse feel just a bit vindicated for all the time he'd spent watching Edward and trying to figure him out. It would have been somewhat disappointing to find out that there had been absolutely nothing interesting about his roommate.

"Edward?"

Without even really thinking, the older boy sighed and said, "Y'know, you don't have to call me Edward. Ed's fine."

Alphonse, to his surprise, smiled at him. "I was just wondering. When you did the transmutation . . . were you scared?"

Edward seemed to sure of himself and undeterable that Alphonse couldn't imagine that he had been even a little scared. It made the younger boy feel almost silly for not even being able to go through with his own plans. Edward was just so strong and incredible and Alphonse . . . was weak and unremarkable.

To his surprise, though, Edward looked down at his automail hand and nodded.

So then it was true. Edward really was human. Even someone as powerful and confident as the older boy was had been frightened in the face of such dangerous and uncertain alchemy.

"Hey, Ed."

"Yeah, Alphonse?"

The younger boy smiled at him again and shrugged. "You can call me Al."

-To be continued