Don the Armour
Chapter 14 - Diverging Paths
It was cold. He was shivering as if his duvet was sprinkled with frost. It wasn't even winter yet, but he felt its bitterness howling at his window of the November wind. The darkness loomed on forever, and Al huddled deeper under his covers.
He had been in his own room for a week now. He had begged his mother to let him have his own room. And yet…the wind moaned at the doors and the trees rattled through the air like invisible scythes. He was alone as the casters of dark and storm battled outside of his bedroom window.
Al jolted as rain started to fall too. His shivering intensified. He was terrified.
He grabbed for his pillow and slipped out of bed. The hallway light was on as he opened his door. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet, and every ushering sound caused him to whelp in surprise. Al constantly checked behind him, his senses all alert, as he passed his parent's bedroom, hoping he didn't wake them up. At the end of the hallway, he stopped.
If he opened the next door, his older brother would know he was a coward. Al prided himself with beating Ed in every fight. He would be admitting defeat if he opened the door.
But he was closer to Ed than anything else. He swallowed his childhood pride and reached on his tiptoes to pull the door open…
And as Al pushed the door opened, he tumbled backwards with a thump onto the landing as Ed barged straight into him. Ed's hair was ruffled, and deep circles had settled beneath his eyes. His shoulders were tense – as if all of his senses were on fire and as alert as Al's were.
"Al!" Ed cried, but as Al's pleading gaze his voice softened to a whisper. "I was so worried about you. You've never liked the dark…"
There was silence for a moment before both brothers answered simultaneously, "I came to find you."
Al's mouth gaped open in surprise and Ed looked abashed at the floor. The older Elric grabbed Al's arm and dragged him into the recesses of his own bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind them. AL hugged his pillow close to his chest as he crawled into bed after Ed. The outside seemed to be a world away.
"If we're sharing a room, we have to get a bunkbed. And I want the top bunk." Ed mumbled, his voice already coated with the entrancing promise of sleep.
"Okay, Brother," Al replied, but in truth, he wanted the top bunk. He would have to convince Ed to settle it with a fight.
But dreams were dancing before Al's eyes. With the warmth of Ed beside him, he closed his eyes and his breathing deepened as the fears of the dark faded like the stars at sunrise.
It could wait until tomorrow.
Al should have realized. There were many things that he had been, and still was, ignorant to. The first case: why could Chiron wield a gun?
He knew the Brigadier General, and had greeted him like an old friend, no…an ally. And Chiron worked in a military hospital. That meant he had a military background. He could wield a weapon as well as any soldier.
But Chiron was a world away. The world around him, the world that he was seeing, was a kaleidoscope of emotion. On one side, there was light and the other there was dark, like both aspects of his reeling mind.
He wanted to run. He wanted to protect Ed.
He wanted to fight. He wanted to protect Ed.
He had to protect Ed.
Al was trapped in the middle of the fight or flight scenario against the snipers, against Truth, against this situation.
Ed's words of caution rang faintly in the back of his mind, but with each time he tried to remember them, they became fainter and hazier as if blocked out by a layer of foam. It was becoming harder to call to that light side. He was leaning towards that dark corner and the need to fight.
But he should be running. That was how everyone could live. And that way, nobody would get hurt. Fighting wasn't the only solution to the problem.
What if fighting was the only solution though? He could stop the snipers…he could interrogate him…the armour body was a bonus…he wouldn't get hurt.
A bitterness surged through Al with the burning desire of revenge. He had been complacent for all of his life. He had allowed Truth to rip his soul away from his own body. He had done nothing when Ed's ability to walk had been robbed from him. He had allowed his body to be beaten bloody with a blood seal carved with his own anguish.
He had done nothing. And that had been his useless.
Al clutched his gloves to his helmet as a piercing scream sounded from his armour. How could it be such a beautiful night when his mind was a tempest of emotions?
Ed was lying on his lap still unconscious. Al heard footsteps coming towards him. Driven by instinct, he lashed out with a low sweeping hand which the person jumped over with ease with the grace of an acrobat. If blood could have been pounding against his head, the feeling would have been agony; the blood would have pounded against his skull as thunderous as a waterfall.
He couldn't see who the object of his attacks was – his mind was too clouded with fury.
Every person had a limit. And Al had been on its border for a long time.
He had snapped. He had crossed that border and without Ed awake, there was nothing to pull him back.
His soul eyes glowed like a molten furnace. They would all be hurt for trying to harm them. Al would protect Ed with the strength of his soul even without his alchemy.
"Alphonse! Al! Shit." The object of Al's attacks was in fact Chiron. He dug a hand into his pocket and slammed a button on a key chain he never lost sight of, which was his emergency call. Both the military and the nearest MP force would receive this signal of distress. Chiron had a duty of care to Edward – he didn't have enough time to stop Alphonse too. He didn't know what Ed had in his system and how toxic these substances were.
Al was oblivious since the shadows block people's features from view. He felt their touch around him.
Al had once been afraid of the dark. He had once had to survive through the nightmares with his brother by his side. He had been afraid that if he fell asleep, the dark and cold would snatch him away to some godforsaken place.
What place could be worse than the portal?
Why had he been fearful of something he was now awake to every night?
But Al possessed little to no self-control in his state. This was Truth's most sinister toll ever.
"I swear, you're going to keep on paying for what you did!" Al screeched, "I've never stopped paying since the day Mum died!" His armour soles clanked against the ground as he rushed up to meet the snipers. Oh they tried to fire bullets but they were worthless and clattered to the floor like pins. Al raised his right fist and swiped it overhead, which knocked one assailant in the chest, sending them tumbling backwards. The other with the weapon still brandished in their hand lifted it across to defend their chest. However, Al's left hand swept out from seemingly out of nowhere, which this sniper could not avoid. They were sent reeling back to the gates of the hospital's compound, disorientated from Al's sudden switch from the defensive to the offensive.
He couldn't hear Chiron swearing repeatedly under his breath. "Shit, shit, shit, hold on Ed!" He was slamming a foot onto the button repeatedly while rummaging around in his bag for a needle and syringe. Ed had been given more than a lethal dose of poison. It would take him, and quickly, too. The older Elric had started shaking profusely.
However, back-up had arrived. Rock walls conjured out of alchemy and screams echoing through the night in a region of Central wouldn't fail to attract attention. But regular MPs and soldiers couldn't confront alchemists. Alchemists could counter alchemists. The few alchemists who had been wounded at the Amestrian Games were separated into the different hospitals around Central, but four had been admitted here. The Elric brothers, Roy Mustang and Alex Louis Armstrong with a broken rib.
And they had come. Roy had abandoned his sling and had his alchemic gloves on. Armstrong was impeccable, the sparkles glittering around him accounted for, and only the bandages on his bare chest indicated any sign of injury. Their morale had not dampened in the slightest.
"We have arrived!" the hulking Major announced, "Witness the technique of alchemic combat passed down the Armstrong line for 14 generations!"
As if summoned by his calls, five more snipers jumped delicately on the roadside from the rooftop, their faces hooded and hidden. Each was holding a different weapon, but each had the characteristic rifle slung across their backs.
The General and Major saw Chiron working on Ed and their gaze continued to Al, who was trembling and preparing to advance for the next round of attack with the original two snipers. However, there were five snipers about to attack the doctor and patient. Even though their wounds throbbed inside out, they both advanced. One snapped his fingers and the other slammed his steel gauntlets into the earth. Fire and rock arose from their simultaneous transmutations.
Chiron, at the same time, had found what he was looking for, and inserted the correct volume of liquid into the syringe before plunging its contents into Ed's arm. "Work!" he hissed at the contents travelling through Ed's vein directly back to the heart, willing it to pump faster and harder. "Work!"
The faint ring of battle whispered around Al. He was striding forward, at the point where he was about to break out into a run when he heard a voice like grit whisper into the air. "Work!"
He turned around, his mind disorientated by shock to witness the Brigadier General and Major fighting against a larger band of snipers, defending a crouching Chiron over Ed's unconscious body. Suddenly, he heard the icy breathing of a sniper standing next to him. Al went limp and he was dragged to the ground. He didn't move.
"We need your skills, and we need you alive," one of the snipers whispered in a thick accent. They definitely were not from Amestris. And this wasn't a request, this was an order. If he didn't turn himself in now, everyone was going to get hurt.
And how could he face Ed in this state, with his soul so badly wounded that he could snap at anything? Al let his armoured limbs slump to the floor, and they were detained by the two snipers he had injured. More snipers seemed to melt from the shadows of the dark streets, as if they had observed the entire fight and had been forced not to intervene until now. There were at least two dozen of them.
"There're too many!"
"Even the alchemy which is the legacy of the Armstrong family cannot overturn this many at once, especially not with the young Elrics being injured!"
The Brigadier General and the Major. They had been fighting the battle which was pointless. They would be injured even more if he didn't surrender now. Chiron was wiping his forehead and his expression told Al that Ed was in a stable condition. Ed would be fine. It was Al's entire fault. "Promise me you won't hurt them. Promise me they won't be killed."
The snipers exchanged a glance with each other, and nodded in mutual agreement to Al's request.
He would be taken by these people alone. Al surrendered for the first time in his life.
His mind flashed back to that moment over fifteen years ago to that stormy night which had frightened him so much. Al was about to knock on Ed's bedroom door. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and braced himself for what was to come. But instead he turned away and returned to the depths of his own bedroom. Alone.