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CHAPTER 9:
ABYSS OF THE STARS
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Julia started from where she was looking at Al and Winry; trying to tell from their small shifts in facial expression, and postures, if Al's, and Winry's, sleep was peaceful, or tormented by nightmares; when the door opened quietly.
She looked back to see the retainer of Ling's and Greed's, who had been identified as Lan Fan, walk quietly into the room with her mask off.
But, as soon as she saw that Al was still asleep, protected warm and close inside Winry's arm, she stopped, an empathetic and sympathetic and understanding expression assuming itself on her visage.
Julia suppressed the urge to clench her teeth.
The concept of letting Al out of her sight in his current condition, for a single instant, caused her stomach to heave so sickeningly and violently and light headedly and eye wateringly that she was barely able to keep all and every single last solitary component of its innards, if not her stomach itself, from retching violently and without end, even after she was empty of everything inside her, even her body was wracked and tortured by agony from ceaseless dry heaves.
But if she didn't talk to Lan Fan, Lan Fan might wake Al up.
She stood up, ignoring the draining exhaustion, and the pulsing anguish in her head and the stump of her left leg, from moving after having had no sleep the whole night; and then she turned to Lan Fan, nodded, and moved her head in the direction of the hall to say that she'd talk to Lan Fan outside of Al's hospital room.
Once she was out in the hall, she saw a radio with a phone hanging loose from it on the floor to her right.
Lan Fan shut the door with similar silence to how she'd opened it.
"There's a young woman named Rose Thomas from the town of Liore on it," she said.
The barest threadbare frayed string of relief rose within Julia.
She still didn't know for certain what had happened at Liore, but that it had almost certainly directly contributed blood to a point of the nationwide Amestrian Crimson Star transmutation circle itself, and someone who was around Al's and Ed's ages was calling from there, might enable Al to feel better.
She picked up the phone as quickly as possible, ignoring further exhaustion and throbbing agony in her leg and head.
"This is Julia Crichton, a friend of Alphonse Elric and the Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric," she identified herself. "Are you calling because you're a friend of theirs, and you're worried about them?"
The other girl's voice sounded a mixture of relieved, terrified, worried, and pained.
"That's right," she said. "My name is Rose Thomas, and I worked with Al and Ed's father, Hohenheim, a little, to set up the revolution.
"Major General Armstrong radioed us that the alchemist who had fomented the Liore riots escaped the revolution, and that he might head in Liore's direction.
"So I wanted to let Ed and Al know that we're still okay, so they wouldn't believe that all of their work hadn't been meaningless hardship, and a fruitless Equivalent Exchange."
The same all and nothing and non all and not nothing and not everything and what wasn't anything erasing and washing pitch ivory white ebony unendingly infinite and endless desperate despair and agony and self hatred and fury that Julia could barely justify not speaking from any longer, now that she knew that Al saw himself as the murderer of the father who he loved as much as he loved Ed, shrieked and screamed blinding through everything that was Julia.
But Julia suppressed the urge to sound protective, defensive, angry, and upset.
"That's not something that Al and Ed need to hear at this time," Julia responded, her voice a mask.
She didn't know precisely what Rose had been through, but Julia knew that it must have been something very similar to what Ashleigh, her parents, Miranda, her other loved ones, her people, and she herself, had been through.
And most alchemists, and their friends, didn't yet have any reason to believe that the Truth and the Law of Equivalent Exchange were horrific lies.
Now Rose sounded a lot more terrified and worried.
"Did something bad happen to them?" she queried.
"What is your relationship to Al and Ed?" Julia asked back. "I don't know whether they'd want you to know, and how much."
"I met Ed"
New blinding fury shrieked and screamed through Julia at the discomfort in Rose's voice as she talked about Ed.
Ed, and thus Al, did not need someone who was in love with Ed, or who was falling in love with him, beginning to do so, or who had a crush on him, and who didn't have the decency to not feel embarrassed about how she felt about Ed after they'd just participated in a battle, feeling that they were correct to believe in one Truth and Equivalent Exchange
"and Al when a fake priest named Cornello was proselytizing in Liore for a fraudulent religion known as the teachings of Leto. He had a Philosopher's Stone"
Further blinding fury shrieked and screamed inside Julia that Rose didn't sound as though she knew what a Crimson Star was composed of
"and used it to pretend that he could perform miracles, such as resurrecting the dead."
That did it.
Julia suppressed the urge to harshly and sharply place the phone back on its receiver.
Rose was a victim, and her feelings for Ed might be genuine and not just a crush.
If Julia hung up on her, she could hurt Al even more.
"He wanted us to serve him as an army that wasn't afraid to die to rebel against the Amestrian government,"
Julia was no longer sure that she shouldn't tell Rose precisely what she thought of her.
That wasn't just a horrific insult to all of Al's and Ed's years of effort standing on their own strong legs and clawing their way out of their valley, it was an insult to Ashleigh, Miranda, and the other Milosians as well.
But Rose and her kinsfolk were still victims, even if they were victims of a far different sort than Ashleigh, Julia's parents, Miranda, and Julia's people.
If Julia gave Rose a piece of her mind, she'd be no different than Ed when he'd repeatedly hurt Ashleigh, Miranda, her people, and the other Milosians by refusing to accept that his definition of morality wasn't all that there was to morality.
And, as Ed had Rose before he'd met Julia, he'd almost certainly put Rose and the people of Liore through the same pain.
They hadn't deserved that
"in order to start a war and shed the blood of my people for reasons that we haven't been told, but Ed and Al exposed him, and saved me from attempting to participate in a human transmutation to try to restore life to my late love, Cain, in the process."
The shrieking and screaming fury vanished, and Julia felt sick that she'd experienced it.
"As I result, I lost hope in everything and almost everyone, but Ed convinced me to believe in my own strong legs."
There was a sincere love, and worshipful adoration and reverence, for Ed in Rose's voice that had nothing to do with seeing Ed as a God or a religious figure and everything to do with his qualities as a person.
Julia kept more blinding shrieking and screaming fury from rising at how Rose had distorted Ed, and how she loved him in these ways, by allowing herself to feel uncomfortable when she should have just been worried about what Ed had gone through.
Al hadn't just been uncomfortable, but embarrassed; when he'd told her that her soul was among the furthest things possible from the barren wasteland that Ashleigh had told her that it was during those endlessly infinite and everlasting erasing and obliterating seconds when she'd all but completely and wholly erased what hope in their people and the valley and the rest of the world that he'd had remaining so horrifically that she'd driven him to try to murder her; and it was the most beautiful soul that he'd met in his life, and so beautiful that he loved her for it, and that he was starting to fall in love with her.
But he'd been able to tell that she was feeling a lot better than she had for years when he'd felt uncomfortable and embarrassed when he'd told her how beautiful her soul was.
There'd been nothing wrong with Al having been discomfited at connecting that deeply with her then, particularly as they hadn't known each other for more than three days.
Rose didn't know what condition Al and Ed were in.
Her own selfish discomfort at how she felt about Ed should have been one of the last things on her mind.
"As a result, when Cornello, or someone impersonating him, continued to proselytize for the supposed Leto anyway, in order to set off riots between the people angry at him for lying to us and the people who still believed in him and this ruined Liore and murdered thousands of its inhabitants, we'd learned our lesson, so we were able to rebuild the town through our own effort and hard work, by walking on our own legs."
This time, Julia's stomach heaved so violently it almost did send its innards out of it.
She knew without any question how Al and Ed had reacted to learning that exposing Cornello had caused the riots.
"I even learned Ed's lesson so well that I'm moving forward from all of the death and pain a lot more easily than I moved forward from Cain's death, because I've accepted now that we brought it upon ourselves due to our sins."
Julia gripped the phone receiver so tightly that her knuckles went white, and she felt herself start shaking and shuddering and trembling.
There wasn't even no agony or despair or self hatred or fury, or none of what wasn't pain or despair or self hatred or fury, or nothing of anything, or a lack of nothing, now.
Julia still empathized and sympathized with Rose's loss of Cain, but this was far too far.
It was almost a relief to finally have a target that she didn't need to battle and who she could just give a piece of her mind to, and who justified her taking out all of the pain and despair and self hatred and anger of the last two days on.
"You learned nothing," Julia hissed viciously and savagely, with deadly, contained fury.
"To my knowledge, your people didn't once undergo any form of discrimination or oppression until last year. Liore was an ordinary large town that made a modest income through imports and exports, and that had no reason to need a priest to improve its lot.
"You yourself had reasons to believe in Cornello, but most of your people just saw him as a means of having greater prosperity spoon fed to them, and, in one way or another, they didn't care to deal with how they'd had a bright future dangled before them and it had been a lie.
"Creta and Amestris horrifically oppressed my people for between four centuries and three centuries, so much that by the time we pushed Creta and Amestris out of our borders and reestablished our independent nation tens of millions of Milosians had died over those centuries in genocidal war, full scale war, systematic extermination, slavery, poverty, famine, disease, and other hardship, such as digging for what scraps of food and drink we could find in an ocean of piles of garbage.
"Every day, my older brother Ashleigh, who I love as much as Al loves Ed, and who loves me as much as Ed loves Al, my parents, my friends, my people, and I woke up each morning not knowing if that day would be our last.
"The Ishvalans have suffered through a similar genocidal war, full scale war, systematic extermination, poverty, famine, disease, and other hardships for the better part of around twenty years by now.
"I'm not saying that what Ashleigh and my parents and my friends, and my people, and the Ishvalans, was in any manner worse than what the people of Liore, and you yourself, went through, because it isn't.
"That's part of my point.
"The people of Liore murdered each other and one another over the course of weeks because they were hateful and angry that they'd been lied to, or that their fellows were endangering the greater prosperity that they'd believed that they could attain.
"This is discrimination and oppression just as ruthless as what Ashleigh, my parents, my friends, my people, and the Ishvalans suffered through.
"What gives you the nerve to say that all of them, most of all your own people, deserved their torment and suffering, and that it had a point and meaning, after everything that Al and Ed have done for you and your people?"
"So you'd rather that I believe that what my people and I went through was wholly meaningless torture?" Rose responded, contained anger of her own in her voice, though there was a large amount of worried guilt that Julia might have a point.
Julia's stomach twisted in sickness at the knowledge that she wanted to smirk in partially mocking approval that, even though Rose had stopped standing on her legs and had refused to claw her own way out of her own valley, and that she'd now replaced Cornello with Al and Ed, she had at least regained, or hadn't lost, her willingness to contend with hardship.
That was going too far herself.
But Rose had just remorselessly and relentlessly distorted everything Ashleigh, Al, Julia's parents, Miranda, Julia's other loved ones, the Milosians, Ed, the Ishvalans, all of the Dwarf in the Flask's other Amestrian victims and victims of other nationalities, Rose's own people, and Rose herself, had been tormented through, after what Al and Ed had done for her.
Julia wasn't going to go too far herself, but she had completely and totally no tolerance for Rose's way of feeling and thinking at this time.
"I'd rather that you stop living in the fairy tale reality that Al and Ed tried to teach you to stand up and walk forwards out of," Julia responded.
"No one deserves death and pain, for any reason, and whether something good comes of it in the end or not, it should have been brought about through better methods.
"Hard work and unnecessary hardship are two totally different matters, and no form of work on this planet requires someone to die for that work to pay off.
"To say that people deserve death for any reason, or pain when something could have been achieved through other means, is to make a mockery of the concept of what hard work, work, effort, and moving forward on your own strong legs are.
"Most of your people weren't like you. They didn't need someone to extend them a farcical helping hand when they were in dire straits. Unlike you, who were already suffering, so you just shifted from one form of torment to another when you learned that Cain was gone for good and then the riots began, they were fine as they were. They fell into pain and suffering when they were happy with the lives that they had.
"Al and Ed tried to protect you and your people, yet you have repaid Al and Ed for the warmth and kindness they extended you and your people by refusing to recognize how happy your people were while you were hurt, and averting your eyes from the pain your people fell into when they were happy and brushing it off?
"By replacing Cornello with Al and Ed, when Al and Ed both specifically advised you to believe in yourself and your own truth and morality, not anyone else's?
"By thus distorting and brutalizing and twisting and warping how much they love you and your people, and how much they want you to live warm and home and safe and cherished?"
"I have not replaced Cornello with Al and Ed," Rose rejoined, sounding very angry herself now.
"I begged Ed to become my new Cornello when he was about to leave Liore, and that was when he told me to stand up and use my own feet, and believe in myself, not other people."
"Then why do you believe that the lie that is Equivalent Exchange supposedly causes your people's suffering, and your own, to be all right?" Julia replied right away.
"Because something of equal value must be lost to gain anything in return," Rose shot back.
"And who are you to try to stand up for Ed and Al, and then hypocritically call the Law of Equivalent Exchange a lie?"
Julia suppressed the urge to bring up the countless reasons why she'd been extremely skeptical of the Law of Equivalent Exchange from the first time she'd learned about it before her parents and Ashleigh and she had emigrated to Creta, due to all of what they and her other loved ones and friends and people had lived through for between four centuries and three centuries.
That wouldn't convince Rose of anything.
"For your information, that is what Al and Ed just learned yesterday, in among the most ruthless ways possible."
Julia heard Rose inhale in harsh horror and terror.
"Ed and Al went through what I did?" Rose asked, sounding as though she was so horrified, and terrified, now, that she could barely breathe.
"I won't ask you what happened.
"I should hear it from them myself.
"Where are the three of you now?"
The agony and despair and self hatred and fury that weren't there disappeared, and Julia just wanted to let the phone drop from her hand, close her eyes, and cascade into the blissful welcome of the void.
Rose clearly did love Ed and Al a very large amount, regardless of how insincere her feelings, romantic and otherwise, for Ed were, and how much she'd distorted and brutalized how much they loved her.
But the concept of letting Rose anywhere near Al, or Ed, and thus Al himself, still caused Julia to feel sick with terror and worry.
If they found out what they'd done to Rose, it would hurt them even more than they'd already been hurt.
Julia pushed her emotions away as far as she could justify doing so, though.
"I'm sorry," Julia said, and she meant it.
"I didn't understand how much you care about Ed and Al."
That didn't mean that she could drop her argument about why Rose needed to recognize that she wasn't truly in love with Ed, and she didn't understand him, before it hurt Al, though.
Particularly because Rose now intended to see Ed once more.
But Rose didn't know Julia, and she had no reason to trust her.
If she continued to argue this, and Rose tried to find Al and Ed herself; and she ran into the Dwarf in the Flask and lost her soul to the one called Father's enlarging replacement advanced Crimson Star; or she was killed or otherwise badly hurt, that would hurt Al, and Ed and thus Al, much more.
"Al and I, and his father, and their childhood friend Winry, who you may or may not have met, are at a hospital in Central, named the Concentricity, where a large number of the people injured during the battle yesterday are being treated," Julia informed Rose.
"Ed's en route to the town named Citrine, to try to keep another misapplication of alchemy from potentially getting out of hand there."
"Then I'll travel to Central, and the Concentricity," Rose answered.
Julia pushed aside her surge of sickened revulsion at how she was very slightly angry and upset that Rose wasn't placing herself in danger by directly traveling to see Ed at Citrine.
"But before you advise me not to tell them how I understand what they taught me; first, I'll spend the entire trip to Central thinking it over.
"Secondly, whether I end up agreeing with you or not about how I continued to replace Cornello with Ed and Al after what Ed said to me when I tried to do that, the law and truth that I'm unwilling to accept is that there was no point or meaning to what my people and I went through. To me, that makes what they went through a lot worse than it would be if what they went through had a purpose, or if we had it coming to us.
"If you believe, as they do and they taught me to understand, that truth shouldn't be held back from them, do not try to twist how I interpret the love and warmth and kindness and homes that they gave my people, and I myself, just because you didn't believe that I honestly love Ed and Al.
"Are you sure that you should be using Al's name first, whatever he did for your brother and the rest of your family and your other loved ones and friends and the Milosians, and you, and not Ed's?
"Because you appear to have been as inspired by Ed's example as I was."
Julia didn't feel like laughing the most infinitesimally minuscule or infinitesimally microscopic bit, but Rose needed to hear laughter after what she'd just heard that Al and Ed had gone through.
So Julia forced herself to laugh.
"It's the opposite," Julia said.
"I taught Ed a good deal about dispensing with his conviction that he knows all the answers about right and wrong.
"Ed aggravated and irritated Ashleigh, my best friend Miranda, my people, and I most of the time that we first spent time with him, months ago before I was abducted and brought into Amestris by the people working for the alchemist who has been causing all of these problems."
Julia pushed away her terror and worry for how Pride was doing, now that she'd returned him to Cordelia.
Cordelia hadn't hesitated for a single instant when Julia had told her who, and what, Pride and her late husband, truly were.
She'd thanked Julia for protecting Pride and supporting Pride when his blood father had abandoned him and betrayed him and what he'd believed in, and for enabling Pride to be in a better position to support Bradley as he died and for keeping Bradley company as he died herself. And Cordelia had told Julia that Pride was still as much her adopted son, and Bradley still as much her late husband, as they'd been when she hadn't known the truth about who they were, and Cordelia had said that she wouldn't have agreed with their devotion to their blood father and his research had she known about it, and that she would have endeavored her hardest to teach them what a true family and true love, was about.
She'd additionally told Julia that she, and Al and Ed, were welcome at their mostly undamaged estate within the courtyard of the Central Command Center, where she'd be assisting in coordinating the transfer of government, any time that they wanted to visit.
Pride would be as as much okay as he could be after what the Dwarf in the Flask had done to him yesterday, and for around three and a half centuries beforehand, with Cordelia, as he'd be with Julia.
Julia pushed her memory away, of what Pride himself had said when she'd returned him to Cordelia, however.
This wasn't the time to think about that.
At least Cordelia had refused to have Selim Bradley declared a civilian casualty of the battle, regardless of how determinedly Pride had begged her to do so; and then ordered her to do so when Cordelia had requested him to do what Julia had, to talk down to her as arrogantly as he needed to for his pain to lessen until he was comfortable talking to her in a different way, so long as he wasn't arrogant to anyone but her and Julia without their permission.
Cordelia was also determined to think of a way to reveal to the public, now grieving Bradley as a casualty of friendly fire, that Bradley had colluded with High Command in their treason against the people of Amestris; in such a way that didn't damage their faith in their late Führer King too much, and that diminished what he'd fought for for his Homunculus family, the people of Amestris, and Cordelia as little as it could.
Julia had already recommended to Vatanen that he and the Milosian Assembly to convince Amestris' new government to give Cordelia a position within it, if they didn't offer her one, or she didn't campaign for the people to vote for a position for her, themselves or herself.
Cordelia more than deserved a position in Grumman's administration.
"Through means that would betray Ashleigh's confidence to tell you," Julia went on, "The two of us disabused Ed of that notion of his."
To another bare threadbare frayed string of relief, Rose laughed at this.
"I've got to meet your brother in person, as well as you, then," she said. "I'd really like to get to know two people who were able to convince alchemists are Gods Edward Elric"
Ed had said what to Rose?
If Julia could do so without hurting Al, Ed was going to hear Julia's opinion about that brand of his own version of bad science from her in extremely clear cut, and extremely up front, terms.
"that his definition of morality isn't infallible divine scripture.
"Are you willing to tell me precisely what Ed and Al did for your brother, your people, and you?
"And how close you are to Al?"
Julia thought over whether she should answer this.
If Rose took this the wrong way, she might hang up the phone, and Julia needed to try to convince her to stop fooling herself about Ed.
But it was very unlikely that it would be easy for Julia to do so, so it was most likely a better idea to make it clear to Rose precisely how determined she was to not let Rose hurt Al, directly, or indirectly through Ed.
"I'd betray Brother's confidence to tell you what they did for him, other than to say that they showed me how to enable him to move forward from a lot of pain that he was in due to how Creta had discriminated against us.
"As for my people, they worked together with us, and with me, to prevent the Cretans from slaughtering us to the last person, soldier and civilian, in order to reestablish a presence in Death Canyon and try to retake Table City.
"And to enable my people and I to regain our independence and throw off Creta's and Amestris' oppression after all of the centuries we'd been asphyxiated by it."
Julia considered forcing herself to feel uncomfortable, or, at least, embarrassed, in order to try to meet Rose in the middle before she spoke the next matter, but even thinking of doing so caused her to want to retch violently forever even after dry heaving hurt.
Now indescribably more than at any time before, Al didn't deserve that.
She hadn't talked about what they'd said to each other before he'd left Milos, and her, when he'd woken up while she was sitting at Ed's and his bed next to Winry, because she'd been terrified that it would hurt him if Winry and Ed didn't already know how they felt about each other, but Julia couldn't degrade Al's and her bond, or their growing feelings for each other, in any way to anyone who specifically asked about it.
"As for Al and I, we're starting to fall in love with each other, and we told each other that we love each other before he left Milos, though we didn't actually establish a relationship because he had dreams of his own to fulfill."
"So you're the person who I could tell that Al would often think of when I'd bug him about the specific way that Winry loves Ed," Rose said back.
Julia wanted to retch endlessly once again at how she actually felt a tiny amount better to know that Al had thought about her, and that way, a lot, while they'd been apart.
"I wondered if it was Winry, but it didn't appear to be, as it sounded like it was just the beginnings of romantic love, and as though that person was somewhere far away, while he'd known Winry since his childhood and she was right there with him in Liore.
"Will it betray Al's confidence to tell me how he saved you and protected you?"
Julia suppressed the agony and despair and self hatred and fury that wasn't them this time, but she did allow protectiveness and defensiveness and irritation and anger into her voice, for Al's sake.
"Al doesn't need people talking about me as though he needed to strain himself, in any way, saving and protecting me, after yesterday.
"Al is the one who needs to be saved and protected.
"One of my largest mistakes during the Rebirth of Milos was that I couldn't feel of, or think of, a better way to save and protect him than what little I tried to do for him during our time together in Milos.
"But he does need as many people as possible to know how wonderful he is now, so I will say that he repeatedly protected my life and health.
"And when the Cretans tried to exterminate us, by using a geothermal power station that they'd built to endeavor to drown Death Canyon in lava, he tried to perform transmutations to contain the lava; and when I attempted to back him up with transmutations of my own,"
Julia pushed her recollection of how those transmutations had been accomplished as distant as she could justify pushing them
"he turned himself into a living shield for me with a transmutation and his armor for almost all of the time that I was trying to restrain the lava; and he extremely nearly risked death the whole time that he did, because the lava came within a needlepoint thin edge of destroying all of his armor each instant that he shielded me.
"By doing so, and with his presence, and his words, he continually convinced me not to give up hope that I could contain it no matter how futile my transmutations looked to be up to the task of restraining it."
Julia endeavored with everything that she knew to keep her memories of the complete and total and whole and absolute hopeless broken and erased and ruined and obliterated despair of that nightmarish time from entering her heart and mind that much.
If Al hadn't been there for then; protecting her as a living shield on the narrowest barest margin of death with his body and armor and transmuted rock wall and the boundless and ceaseless unrestrained and unfettered love and warmth and understanding and empathy and sympathy and security and reassurance and comfort and safety of his presence and feelings and thoughts and memories and belief and trust and hope and faith and wishes and dreams; a lifeline beacon of blinding incandescence to hold back the endless and eternal unending ebony night that Ashleigh and all existence and the world and her life and her, and Ashleigh and all reality and the world and her life and what was and wasn't her, had become; she knew beyond even the most endlessly distant flicker of an outline of a ghost of a phantom of a silhouette of a shade of a shadow of a doubt that; even if she herself had been capable of keeping Ashleigh's lava transmutation from evaporating her into nothing until Ed had pressed him so hard that he'd needed to stop it to defend himself against Ed; she'd have given up entirely soon after she herself had begun to struggle against the lava threatening to engulf all of her people and home and existence and reality and world and life and she herself.
That was one of the very tiny things left, along with the knowledge that she'd stopped hurting Ashleigh as much, that her people had regained their happiness, and that Ashleigh and she had mostly repaired their shattered bond, that was keeping her from losing all hope and just transmuting a small but deep pond of lava somewhere where it wouldn't hurt anyone or damage any property or terrain and throwing herself into it face first with her eyes open, to die as horrifically agonizingly and excruciatingly as possible.
"This enabled me to keep transmuting means of restricting the lava until Ed figured out a way to fully block it, and then the three of us did so together, with the assistance of another State Alchemist who he knows, Colonel Roy Mustang.
"Al gave my brother, my people, and I myself, every solitary dream that we'd wished for and longed to take hold of, and protected every single fiber of our happiness and who we are.
"But don't even start to say that that's why I love Al so much, and why I want to protect him so much, to the point that I'm starting to fall in love with him romantically.
"It has nothing to do with being thankful for what he did for Ashleigh, and my people, and I myself.
"It's because he's in a lot of pain himself, so he needs as much love and warmth and protection and sanctuary from people as possible, particularly people who understand his pain."
Did Julia understand Al's pain as well as she'd believed that she did, if she could murder tens of millions or more of her people through forcing them to starve and dehydrate to death in hopeless imprisonment after centuries or decades or years or months or weeks in a similar prison from which they'd believed that they'd had no escape?
And force Al to deal with the knowledge that his brother had done something similar, less in number but no less as incommunicably horrible, for death and pain weren't questions of numbers?
And force Al to deal with the knowledge that she'd done the same thing?
She wasn't fully sure that Winry's love for Ed wasn't sisterly, and was romantic; because, even though Winry's terror and concern for Ed had been more exclusively heartfelt than it had been for Al, Ed had actually murdered around sixty people or more through slow and painful despairing death, while Al hadn't done so.
Julia wasn't worried that Al was interested in Winry and not her after the way that Al had told her that he loved her before he'd left Milos, but should Julia try to convince Al to turn to Winry for that kind of love?
Or to turn to Rose, and for Rose to turn to him, if Winry did love Ed romantically; as Rose clearly loved Al in a different way, and one that was far more genuine than the misguided beginnings of romantic love for Ed that Julia couldn't believe had any chance of becoming genuine at this time?
May wasn't an option.
Julia had heard and seen clearly the emotions in May's voice, facial expressions, and body language in regards to Al, but she almost certainly wasn't any older than twelve, so, regardless of how well she did or didn't know Al, she was too young for him.
No.
Al didn't want that kind of love from anyone else.
He wanted it from Julia.
He'd made that indisputably clear with how he'd told her that he loved her.
Julia had no choice but to try to live up to Al's belief and trust in her that she could love him effectively in those ways.
Whether she herself believed that she could love and care for and cherish and keep safe Al in those ways was completely and wholly irrelevant.
As long as that was the kind of love that Al wanted from her, she had no choice but to try to give it to him; unless it turned out that their feelings didn't develop any further than the beginnings of romantic love, or they did but that kind of bond didn't work out.
"Give me more credit than that," Rose said back, sounding angry once more now, and offended. "If I didn't understand Ed, or I was just selfishly thankful for what he'd done for my people and I, I'd have tried to steal him from Winry when I met her, as I'm all but certain that that's how Winry cares for Ed."
Julia wished desperately with all of what she knew that she could trust that Rose at least understood Winry well enough to be in a position to say that, so that was at least one way that Julia could believe Al might be able to feel better.
But after all of what Rose had just said, Julia couldn't do so.
"I had a boyfriend.
"I know what it is to love someone romantically."
"If you did, you wouldn't have said that unnecessary suffering amounts to anything, or that anyone deserves to suffer for any reason," Julia responded.
"Ed and Al need me," Rose replied in irritation and anger. "They don't have time for us to argue."
The phone clicked off.
Julia saw no reason to fight back the tears at what she might have just let happen to Al and Ed.
It didn't make a difference whether Al saw them.
He knew how upset she was, and he might feel a tiny amount better if he at least knew that she was letting it out.
She wished that she could do for him what he and Ed wanted Winry to do for them, and cry tears of joy that he was back in his body, but she didn't know if she was capable of just crying from happiness now.
She replaced the phone on its receiver and let go of it to let it fall the small amount of the rest of the way onto its receiver, wishing with all of her being that she could just let go of herself and fall somewhere totally boneless and never move once again.
"Julia!" Winry's voice came from inside the room. "Al's awake, and I'm needing to hold him back from trying to get up and find out where Ed and you are!"
Julia felt every last drop of blood drain from her face, and she whipped around to sprint back to the door, yank it open, and run inside.
Winry was holding Al gently but firmly in a partial embrace, partial restraint in both of her arms now as he was trying to push and pull himself free.
He sagged when he saw her, but he continued to attempt to push himself up, and out of Winry's hold.
"Ed is keeping it together," Julia said as she walked quickly in his direction.
"He left to investigate whether or not another pureblood Homunculus in a town named Citrine has become dangerous."
She reached his beside, and she sat down in the chair that Winry had been sitting in last night.
Al stopped moving, and he collapsed back against Winry.
She suppressed the urge to clasp Al's hand herself.
Ed's warmth, and hers, were almost certainly among the things that he wanted to feel the least now, now that he was back in his body.
"And as you can see, I'm still right here with you."
But Al's expression didn't alter the slightest bit.
He just said, "Julia, you need to sleep."
Julia couldn't think of any way to reply to that without hurting Al even more in the process, so she said nothing.
"I heard your discussion with Rose," Winry said.
"Don't worry about guarding Ed, and thus Al, from Rose.
"I'm not sure which of you I agree with about whether unnecessary suffering can achieve anything, or whether saying that it does is causing people's pain to sound like a good thing by giving that suffering meaning," Winry's voice said from behind Julia, and Julia started, and she wanted to retch endlessly after repeatedly dry heaving another time.
"But I do agree with you that no one deserves to be in pain.
"I don't forgive people for causing pain all of the time; but I agree that, if it's not something that I'm willing to forgive; I still need to tolerate that someone inflicted it, or let it happen, and not hurt that person back, or let that person be hurt back.
"I'll keep Rose away from them unless she has one or more good reasons for spending time with them.
"I've had my own reservations with Rose since I met her and I saw how little she was upset by what had happened to Liore. She means well, and she's learned from her mistakes a lot more than you believe, but I have my own worries about how okay she is now with what her people, and she, went through.
"She was in the best position of anyone to try to take away as much of Al's guilt as possible for the riots happening, because she was friends with both of them, but she disregarded how bad he felt and yanked me, someone who she'd just met, off to her home to try to cheer me up with my own problems, and to try to enable me to take care of Ed better."
Julia went stiff.
Winry could keep Rose away from Ed.
Julia wasn't letting Rose within the farthest fringes of Al's line of sight.
Who the h-ll did Rose believe that she was!?
"And in order for her to spend time with the person who had enabled Ed to regain his legs, because that meant that I'd saved her as well.
Ed and Al don't need me to talk about what way or ways that I'm willing to love one of them right now, however, so I won't get into that for the time being unless one of them, or both of them, specifically bring it up himself, or themselves."
Julia was further revolted with herself for judging a girl who had been very close to Al and Ed since they'd been children, but she still experienced a small surge of relief that, whatever way Winry loved Ed, she knew not to be uncomfortable, or embarrassed, discussing it at this time, if at all.
How could she have let their progress in researching the Doorway of Truth and the Crimson Star trick her into lowering her guard so much that the Amestrians had actually been able to arrest her!?
If she hadn't; while she might have still murdered about one hundred million people or more healing mortal wounds that she'd probably have ended up injuring Ashleigh with whether she'd met Al and Ed or not, Atlas wouldn't have come looking for her; she wouldn't have met Al and Ed and caused them even more pain than they were already in, and Miranda and she and the others might have figured out how to transmute the Crimson Star and been in a position to defend the Valley of Milos from Ashleigh's lava themselves.
And then she wouldn't have wrecked Al and Ed even more, or murdered who knew how many other people or condemned them to indefinite imprisoned torment or other agony, because no one in Amestris would have known that she'd performed human transmutation.
Julia was still determined to keep moving forward from the death of her parents, and her parents' anguish, and everything else that she'd moved forward from since she'd lost her left leg healing Ashleigh's wounds and giving him his face back, and this had taught her that she'd been trapped in the past.
So she'd move forward from her mass genocidal torturous murder of her people and a lesser number of millions of others, what she'd let happen to Al and Ed since then, particularly yesterday, and the rest of the sins that she'd discovered that she'd recently committed.
Coming to terms with what she'd done, and not done, was another matter fully.
Especially if Ashleigh fell back into despair himself when he found out how many people had died, and how they had died, so that he could live on, and regain his face.
He'd been willing to murder and torture at least about one hundred million more people himself, as the toll for opening the planet's Gateway of Truth and to actually open it; torture at least around fifty million more people forever to master the Truth; and murder and torment who knew how many other people in the later wars that he'd need to wage to try to establish his new world; and, if he won all of those wars, afterwards as he enforced his new order.
And he'd requested Julia to be at his side as he did so.
But he hadn't known that the approximately one hundred million people or more who he'd murder would die through starvation and dehydration, or that at least the approximately fifty million people who he'd trap to entrap God could be given new bodies and minds.
Whenever she saw Ashleigh once again, even if Julia became convinced that she should try to keep what she and Ed had done from Ashleigh forever, he'd figure it out himself sooner or later, and be hurt even worse that she hadn't been honest with him.
He'd figure it out himself, and be hurt in boundlessly indescribably worse ways, if she tried to keep Ashleigh from finding out by avoiding reuniting with him when he was at last willing to see her once more, and never spending any time with him again for the rest of her life.
All of her effort to heal Ashleigh's wounds, emotional, mental, and physical, and give him back what happiness she could, might have been all for nothing; with the possible exception of repairing his face; and she might have just erased Ashleigh incomprehensibly immeasurably worse than before.
And for all she knew, once he found out what giving him it back and healing his injuries had cost, he might rip his new face off himself this time.
He no longer had a Star, so if he tried to do something immoral or amoral once again as a result of finding out what had happened, he could be taken into custody without too much trouble and she wouldn't need to hurt Ashleigh that way a second time by disabling him herself, but it shouldn't even be the most infinitesimally minute possibility that that would need to happen once again.
If Julia didn't know that Al and Ed wouldn't have accepted that it had happened, and that, if it had, they'd have gone to the same lengths trying to recover her from it as they had each other, and Al's soul and their bodies and Al's mind and their limbs, Julia would have wished that her Doorway of Truth had just taken all of her soul, mind, and body as it had Al's.
Al had tried to convince her not to do it, and she'd ignored him.
She'd been worthy of the Truth sentencing her the same way that it had Al.
That might have been why it hadn't sentenced her that way.
It had wanted to prevent Julia from understanding Al's torment by penalizing her the way that he'd been penalized, because that would have lessened the pain of the sentence a good deal, so it had just taken her leg as it had taken Ed's because she'd relied on the warmth of Ashleigh's love as Al and Ed had relied on the warmth of their mother's love.
As well as, perhaps, to make it harder for her to understand how much Al was suffering by forcing her to partially be tortured the way that Ed had been, and still was.
"But I can say that Al, and Ed, deserved far better than Rose brushing off how bad Al felt to try to improve my ability to do something that she, whether she has the capability to do so or not, feels too guilty for what she did to try to do it herself.
"I can tell that she did take Ed's and Al's examples, and words, to heart and that she's trying to move forward now, and I have no doubt that she'll succeed in time, but she can do so without hurting Ed and Al even more than she did when they met her the first time in the process."
"I don't have any arguments against that," Julia said.
"But I'll keep Rose away from Al, unless I can trust that she won't hurt him.
"You just worry about Ed."
"It's not a problem," Al said, and Julia cringed at the belief that he deserved whatever pain Rose caused him, as long as she didn't hurt Ed in the process, in his voice.
Once again she suppressed the urge to tell him what she'd said when she'd told him that she loved him as well, and that she was beginning to fall in love with him herself, and thank him once more.
Regardless of how much he needed to hear that he didn't just hurt Ed; as she'd understood from the desperate self hatred and guilt and despair and anguish in how he'd loved and protected and cared for and cherished Ed, and Winry, and her, and Colonel Mustang, and Lieutenant Hawkeye, and to a lesser extent everyone else around him; when they'd spent time together in Milos; Julia knew just saying that in and of itself would just cause Al to feel even worse now, because he felt so horrific now that he'd just believe that Julia was hurting herself by thanking Al, and believing that he was worthy of her thanks.
She suppressed the urge to grip his hand once again, too.
"If you've gone back to believing something idiotic like what the two of you did before I knocked sense into the both of you, that you're supposedly such a monster that you can't even be the real Al and that you're just a fake Al with fake memories who Ed transmuted to take the place of the real one,"
Julia felt all of the blood drain out of her face at hearing that
"and who he hates as much as he was scared that you hated him, you need to know what Ed told me to at last convince me not to fire on Scar."
Julia cringed once more, and shifted in such a way that Winry and Al could see, and Al and Winry could know, that she'd have taken Winry's hand if it hadn't meant touching Al in the process of doing so.
"Ed told me that I don't have hands for murdering or hurting people," Winry went on. "That my hands are for protecting and healing people, such as when I construct and install automail in order to enable people to recover from amputations, or when I delivered Dominic's grandson in Rush Valley.
"The same matters are true of you.
"Whether you yourself couldn't feel warmth when your body was armor, or not, your hands, and the rest of your soul and mind and body, exist to give warmth and love and protection and healing and home and sanctuary to people in need of them.
"You've done that for Ed all of your life, and Granny, and Julia, and me, for as long as you've known us.
"What else could you have done for Ed when Gluttony ate him?
"If you'd gone to the Dwarf in the Flask sooner he'd have just needed to perform the human transmutation himself, with his own Stone, to remove Ed from Gluttony's ravaged Portal, and we both know that he wouldn't have cared at all for how the souls who he was transmuting as the toll felt about being used as catalysts.
"You couldn't have shielded Ed from Gluttony's transparent column with your armor even if you'd reacted fast enough to do so. You told me that it even engulfed one of Mustang's fire transmutations. If you'd tried, it would have just gone right through you and swallowed Ed and Ling anyway, and you'd have ended up stuck in Gluttony's ruined Doorway along with them and those souls would have needed to die in pain to get you out of the Portal as well. And then Ed would feel far worse that he killed all of them that way to keep you safe.
"If you hadn't flown down to the valley floor to contain the lava, and had accompanied Julia to defeat Atlas while Ed attempted to restrain the lava, you might have actually been able to beat Atlas rather than just take the Stone away from him, so Ashleigh wouldn't have needed to finish him off, but Julia still would have swallowed the Star and ravaged that point of the circle and thus the whole thing, and then you'd just be more upset now because you'd have been even more personally acquainted with how much she was suffering."
Julia nodded to confirm this.
She still remembered how she'd felt then with full clarity.
It wouldn't have mattered if it had been Al there, rather than Ed, or not.
She knew that she'd most likely have felt a small, but meaningful, amount better, if it had been Al at her side then rather than Ed; but after what Atlas had revealed to her and the mass genocidal murdering lava that Creta had unleashed against the Valley of Milos; Julia was certain that she would have swallowed the Star, and then ruined the point of the three dimensional transmutation circle, and thus the full circle, from hatred and revenge.
"I could have used my soul as the toll for Brother opening the real Portal when he was in Gluttony's, whether oldest Brother had done it from outside, or Brother had from inside," Al objected. "Brother could have then returned it to my armor afterwards.
"And I could have kept the Star away from Julia when I engaged Atlas, or blocked her from wrecking the point of the circle with my body, as Ed did your stolen gun."
Julia spoke up before Winry needed to, this time.
"You're being silly, and you know it," she reproved Al.
"If you'd tried to from outside, the Dwarf in the Flask would have had your restrained, or done so himself, and then used souls in his Stone as the toll. He wouldn't have been willing to risk something going wrong and him failing to have your soul as a potential point for his circle when the eclipse reached its umbra.
"If you'd tried to from inside, even if your soul had been a sufficient toll for decomposing, and reconstructing, two humans, a Homunculus, and a suit of armor – and we all know that it's very unlikely that it would have been – you'd have put Ed through as much pain as he went through when you did that yesterday; assuming that he wouldn't have reacted to your offer by using himself as the toll rather than you.
"Ed hurt his automail badly when he recovered the Crimson Star from Atlas. You know how good Atlas was with transmuting water and electricity, and that he could transmute with the Star every bit as capably as I'd been able to even though he didn't think to swallow it, and thus keep someone from separating it from him. It's very unlikely that you'd have been able to take the Star from him and keep it from me at the same time.
"The same issue is true about you blocking me from destroying the ruins of the initial Milos. You saw how effectively I transmuted once I reached the valley floor with the Star. Without equal ingredients being part of the transmutations, I knew how to transmute well enough to defend myself against Ashleigh slightly decently. If you'd blocked me from annihilating the circle, I'd have just redirected the lightning around you."
Al clenched his teeth in acknowledgment that he almost certainly couldn't have prevented Julia from annihilating the circle.
"You don't know for sure that my soul wouldn't have been enough," Al objected. "Oldest Brother's blood was enough to recompose Dad as part of a Stone because resurrecting the dead wasn't involved. My soul might have been a sufficient exchange to decompose and reconstruct three bodies, and one suit of armor that didn't qualify as a human, when they weren't being altered into a different shape.
"It might have even temporarily given Brother back his right arm, though he'd obviously have lost it for a second time returning my soul to the armor.
"It would have hurt Brother very badly, yes, but as horrific as me doing so would have been, it would have been relatively less painful than what I let him do.
"And I had a small chance of keeping the Star away from Julia."
"Even if your soul had been a sufficient toll, the one who calls himself Father might have been okay with Ed putting your soul back in the armor as soon as he was out of Gluttony's Doorway," Winry disagreed. "Whether that involved Ed giving up his right arm a second time or not, he might not have been in any condition to discover that Ling was still aware of what was going on inside of Greed, even with the knowledge of medical alchemy that the one who the Homunculi call their Father possesses. You know how painful reinstalling automail can be when it hasn't been fully separated; if it had been completely disconnected from Ed's nerves and he or someone else had needed to reattach it themselves, rather than Granny or me, he'd have been in so much pain that it's very unlikely any medical transmutation enhanced by a Philosopher's Stone would have given Ed the capacity to fight capably.
"And if Ed hadn't known that Ling hadn't given up to the torment of being imprisoned in the Stone, he very well might not have been willing to travel to Briggs, and he'd have very likely kept trying to rescue Ling until he found out that Ling was partially all right.
"Then Fu and Lan Fan wouldn't have left Central to outfit Lan Fan for automail and they might have gotten themselves killed trying to rescue Ling; the two of you might not have visited Milos, which would most likely have killed Julia and most or all of the Milosians in the valley and caused the second Stone to end up in Ashleigh's or Atlas' hands; and you two might have reached Briggs later, maybe even much later, and we thus wouldn't have been in a position to convince Scar to reveal Ishvalan secrets to May and Doctor Marcoh and decode his brother's research, and discover the reverse transmutation circle."
"Ling asked or requested Greed to write a message to deliver Lan Fan himself," Al answered. "Whether Ed had been able to combat Greed effectively or not, we'd have known that Ling was still aware of the reality around himself inside Greed's Stone."
"Assuming Ling even lasted long enough, with Ed in no condition to fight, that the one called Father knew how physically fit Ling was, leading him to have a change of heart about Gluttony not eating Ling and causing him to see Ling as expendable as a new body for Greed," Winry countered.
"Ling might have performed well enough to keep Gluttony from restraining him if he'd been driven to pick up the slack for Brother," Al argued in response. "So oldest Brother might not have even been able to transmute him into Greed."
"You're kidding yourself once more," Winry replied. "If the Homunculi hadn't been able to restrain Ling they'd have just resorted to their usual methods of blackmail, and they'd have threatened one or more of Mustang's brethren in arms more than they were already being threatened if he hadn't surrendered and let the one called Father put Greed's Stone inside him.
"Ling would have acquiesced to their terms right away.
"He wanted Greed's Stone, remember?"
Winry pressed a kiss into the top of Al's head.
"You need to stop thinking, or talking, in hypotheticals.
"No alchemical studies, through seeing the Truth, or otherwise, can reveal what lies in the future.
"All that we can do is focus on what's right in front of us in the here and now."
"I can't accept that Truth," Al responded, struggling to move and pull out of Winry's arms once again, but though she was no longer restraining him, he was too weak to do so.
"I heard Brother's discussion with the Truth, so I understand where he's coming from about how alchemists aren't any different than other humans, and I've felt the same way myself from the beginning.
"But that doesn't change how I have seen the Truth.
"Enough that I was even acquainted with it in ways that oldest Brother wasn't until he transmuted it to make it part of him.
"There should be no limits to how I can apply that knowledge to love and care for and protect and cherish other people.
"I should be able to tell what will happen in the future.
"People who are learned enough and smart enough can anticipate shifts in a political spectrum or the economy.
"This happens all the time.
"I should be able to accomplish the same matters, with anything.
"You know that I believed that Brother's idea to transmute Mom back to life was a bad idea, but I didn't stand up on my own legs and convince him not to, and I went along with it because he was Brother and I was the younger sibling.
"Now that I know how horrifically I hurt Brother, and that I murdered Dad, and how terribly I hurt Julia, because of it, it now looks like; as Ed found a way to free all of my soul, body, and mind from the Portal of Truth without sacrificing anyone else in the process; maybe I should have found a way to reconstruct the Truth itself into my soul, body, and mind without sacrificing anyone else, and become the most learned alchemist on the planet with stronger legs than anyone."
Every last single drop of blood drained totally out of Julia's face.
"All this time, I thought I was searching for power just so I could do something to help the valley; to help these people. But in the end, I think what I was doing was constantly clinging to the memory of my parents and their love, hoping that restoring the holy land would bring them back to me somehow."
If the not all and empty of the void and forever unbeginning and never unending complete and total and whole and full and absolute and utter horror of what she'd done to Al by performing human transmutation hadn't prevented Julia from even breathing, she couldn't believe that she wouldn't have retched violently endlessly even after she could no longer dry heave, and then passed out from the strain of throwing up, and then resumed retching violently even though there was nothing inside her when she woke up until she fainted once more and then woke up and continued to retch everlastingly for all eternity as she fell unconscious and woke up to do so and passed out and reawakened to resume doing so for a few weeks until she died because she wasn't able to keep any food inside of her.
By performing human transmutation and murdering around one hundred million prisoners of centuries of torment through hopeless imprisoned starvation and water loss, she'd played a major role in driving Al; the most loving, the kindest, the warmest, the most selfless, the most protective, the most self sacrificial person who she'd met in her entire life; to honestly long for the same kind of erasing, obliterating, ruining, destroying, corrupting power that had distorted Ashleigh into a mass genocidal murderer and that had led Julia to murder those around one hundred million hopeless prisoners of torture and despair through further imprisoned torture and despair.
Winry was white herself.
"Al," she spoke, in terror and worry, and she at last sounded as though she was truly struggling to keep tears from coming to her eyes, "Don't forget what I just said about what Ed said when I felt like shooting Scar.
"Don't forget what you yourself said to me when I picked up the gun.
"You know, in your heart, that you don't really want that kind of knowledge of power.
"Love and home and warmth and hearth are found by focusing on life, and people who are still alive; not by trapping yourself in the pain and death of the past."
"I didn't say that I want it," Al responded, and Winry sagged, but Julia had too much experience with the hopelessly desperate self hatred and guilt and despair and anguish that had been in Al's voice when he'd said that he felt and thought that perhaps he should have transmuted the Truth into himself to know that Al meant what he was saying.
He believed that he didn't care about that kind of knowledge or power, but Julia knew endlessly and eternally too well where the kind of desperation and self hatred and despair and agony that Al was feeling now could take you.
Julia gave Winry a look that told her that, as Ed had needed to convince her not to shoot Scar at the time she'd felt like doing so, and to move forward from whatever her reasons had been for wanting to shoot him, Ed and her and her grandmother and Al's other loved ones and friends and Julia herself needed to convince Al of the same matters, to convince him not to do something similarly agonizing, to himself, and to one or more, or a lot of, other people at the same time.
Winry returned Julia's look with an angry, challenging, defiant glare that told Julia that she knew just as well as Julia what Al was going through.
But this didn't relieve Julia at all.
Julia had no choice now.
She might hurt Al worse now if she didn't touch him, because Julia now knew that Al might hate himself so much that he saw her refusal to do so not as her being considerate about how he felt about experiencing Ed's warmth, or hers, but as meaning that she was so revolted by him that she couldn't take the concept of having even the tiniest amount of physical contact with him.
She reached out and clasped Al's closest hand with reassuring love and protective warmth.
Al flinched violently, but, though he didn't return her grip, he didn't pull it away a single millimeter, doubtlessly for the same reasons that Julia was now touching him, and Julia kept herself from moving her hand a single millimeter herself.
"What I mean is that Brother and you and Granny and Julia might have needed me to obtain it," Al went on.
"I don't have a clue about anything.
"Brother's the genius, not me.
"I'm nothing more than an oblivious infant.
"So what if my soul and memories aren't fabrications?
"They're inexpressibly worse than fabrications."
Desperate, hopeless, broken, shattered tears brimmed in Al's eyes and began falling down his face.
Winry turned Al's face and head and kissed eight tears, four from each eye, and then started brushing them away with her fingers, but Al didn't react to her doing so, and he continued to talk as though she wasn't even doing it.
"I'm the most mammoth farcical human of them all," he went on, "A Homunculus who isn't even a manufactured hated and loathed and unwanted and rejected and cast aside and thrown off fractured fragment of a soul; but who is just a hollow shell of a soul and a mind and a body, and who doesn't just not give anyone love or warmth or home or sanctuary after his creation and rather just lets people down and drags them down all the time, but who hurts people horrifically from the very instant someone begins to feel and think of creating him, throughout every instant one or more people do so, and for every instant that he's alive afterwards.
"I don't need any unique abilities as a malleable human to hurt people; I do so just by existing and being real and being alive and being here in existence and reality and life and the world.
"That's all that I've done from the first instant of my inception, all that I can do now, and all that I'll be able to do until I die, and for unending everlasting eternity afterwards if there is such a thing as an afterlife.
"I'm thankful to Mom and Dad for giving birth to me, and Brother for protecting me as armor and now back in my original body.
"But I hate myself, and always should, and I always will, as much as possible, for having been created, and for having been protected."
For the first time since Julia had learned what Ed and she had genuinely done yesterday, true relief, and genuine hope, filled Julia.
Then she knew what Al needed to hear, though this would most likely just convince him not to give up any further for the time being; and, if it enabled him to feel better even slightly, just by the barest amount.
Julia hoped that this wouldn't hurt Al in its own way, though; because she had no idea how he felt about connecting this way with someone who was just beginning to fall in love with him, and who he was just beginning to love romantically as well; and whether this would rob him of a precious time that she had no justification at all whatsoever in any fashion to take away from him, particularly after how much he'd already lost and been tormented by.
But she had no choice.
Al needed her to be as loving and caring and protective and cherishing of him as possible now.
Julia gave Winry a look that asked her if she would please enable this to be as much between Al and Julia as possible while still remaining close enough to reenter the discussion if this caused Al to feel even worse.
Winry's eyes widened slightly as she realized what Julia had in mind, and she gave a small, encouraging nod, telling Julia that this most likely wouldn't rob of Al of anything, as he'd most likely see this as not counting as they weren't truly in love romantically.
Julia felt a small amount of further relief fill her.
Then Winry let go of Al, and she carefully maneuvered herself out from under the covers beneath him and climbed out of Al's bed to sit down in the seat that Julia had been in last night, watching Al carefully to see how he reacted to what Julia was about to do.
As soon as she was sitting down, Julia got up, while not letting go of Al's hand, and sat down beside him on the bed.
She reached behind him with her free hand and placed it on the rough center of his back to lift him up slightly, and then she let go of his hand and brought her other hand behind the back of his head to hold his head and face facing hers.
Al's eyes widened, realizing himself what Julia was about to do, but he didn't recoil the smallest millimeter, or let any fear or discomfort show in his face.
That almost certainly meant a lot more bad matters than good, but at least it did mean one or more good matters.
Julia looked Al directly in the eyes.
Then, without breaking eye contact, Julia bent her head down and pressed her lips against Al's as lovingly, welcomingly, protectively, and reassuringly as she could think of being.
Further small relief filled her that; whether or not Al felt that it would be uncaring and inconsiderate not to kiss her back, he must have recognized that she didn't want to take a true first kiss away from him if they were able to genuinely fall in love with each other; for he didn't kiss her back at all, thus keeping it from being a full first kiss.
Nor did he break eye contact himself, or recoil the tiniest millimeter, even now.
Still without breaking eye contact, began rubbing as large and soothing and secure and strong and comforting circles on his back as she could without risking hurting him in his weak state.
She didn't pull back from the kiss the slightest amount as she began to speak, keeping her gaze wholly locked on his.
"You don't bring people pain without doing anything," she said.
"You bring people love and warmth and home and refuge and safety and sanctuary just by being you, and by being here in existence and reality and life and the world.
"Why do you believe that Ed understood what to say to Winry about why she had hands?
"Why do you believe that Ed understands the value of, and the nature of, what it is to be a human, Homunculus or natural born, so well?
"It's because you taught him that, merely by being you."
Al's eyes widened once more, and Julia kept herself from sagging as incomprehensibly measurelessly completely and fully and wholly and totally and utterly and absolutely disbelieving desperate hope and relief appeared in his eyes, though he still didn't move at all, or even shift his eyes the slightest bit.
Julia continued the kiss, and to rub his back in all of the same ways as she had before, while keeping her gaze on his.
"Even before you lost your original body," she said, "You supported him in studying human transmutation to try to bring your mom back because you didn't want him to continue to suffer terribly researching alchemy connected to his, and your, mom passing away.
"Regardless of any mistakes you made by doing so, it was still as selfless and sacrificial as anything else you've done for him, because you knew that the transmutation might cause something very bad to happen, yet you cared more about the torment Ed would go through if he studied it himself, and if he performed the transmutation himself and something went wrong without you at his side to endeavor to protect him from anything that went wrong.
"I know how difficult researching human transmutation is, so I know for certain that you risked the happiness and the soul, mind, and body you had after your mom passed away for a very long time before he lost any of his limbs.
"He didn't need to protect you, or give up any part of his body to protect you, to teach you to love Ed and give Ed warmth and bring Ed home and protect Ed.
"You didn't need to learn anything, from what he did for you or any of the times that you've seen your Truth, and you don't need to see it any longer or learn anything more to be able to love Ed and take care of Ed.
"All that you've needed to say and do from the beginning, from the instant that you first began to feel and think, was to be you.
"Nothing more, and nothing less.
"That's, additionally, why Ed, and Winry, and your Granny, and I, and the rest of us, have moved forward on our own strong legs this far, and why we have the happiness that we have now, even with all the hardships that we still need to overcome.
"Because you're who you are, flaws and qualities, and all of what causes you to be you; no matter your heart, no matter your soul, no matter your memories, no matter your dreams, no matter your mind, no matter your brain.
"And they have nothing to do with what body you're in.
"You're not a fraudulent human, or a farcical person.
"You are a dream.
"And you give other people dreams, and enable them to take hold of them, no matter how much hardship they need to strive through to do so.
"So you're as much of a human, and a person, as anyone else.
"I believe in who you are, and your strong legs and wisdom as they are now, and your ability to love and care for and protect and cherish Ed, and Winry, and your Granny, and me, and everyone else you love and care about, and anyone else who you choose to love and care for and protect and cherish.
"I could never thank you enough for all of this, and all of the rest of who you are, flaws and qualities, no matter what body you're in, any more than I can for what you did for Ashleigh and Miranda and the other Milosians and I myself.
"So I'll just say it.
"Thank you.
"I love you, and for who you are and for all of this and all the rest of who you are and all of your flaws and qualities, with everything that is who I am; heart, soul, memories, dreams, mind, and brain, no matter what body I'm in; and with everything that I know."
Julia ended the kiss and pulled back into a sitting position, but she continued to rub Al's back in the fashions that she had before, and to keep her gaze focused on his.
His broken and shattered tears were spilling down his face inexpressibly fathomlessly more desperately and disbelievingly now, but there was a small amount of true hope in his expression at last.
Now that Winry could get more involved once more, Julia saw her clasped Al's closest hand and squeezed it with as much heartfelt sincerity and loving and cherishing care and security as she herself could think of.
"I believe in you in the same ways, and I'm just as thankful to you.
"And I love you just as much, though in a different way than Julia does."
Al didn't say anything for a few seconds, but then his lips curled up in a smile that was partially forced, but that Julia could tell was partially genuine and real.
Julia was barely able to keep faint, exhausting, sheer, total relief from yanking her and dragging her, and a leg and head now pulsing and throbbing with anguish that she'd barely been aware that they were in, plummeting and cascading into the blackness of night.
"All right," Al said, and he sounded as though he meant it.
"You're welcome, Julia.
"You're welcome, Winry.
"I'll keep moving forward.
"So could you please stop worrying about me now, Julia, and sleep and rest loved and warm and cared for and home and safe and secure and sound and cherished, as well?
"It doesn't matter what you've done, too.
"Your soul is still as breathtaking as I said it was when I told you that it was the last time that I saw you, and I'll never stop, or lessen at all, believing in you for it, or thanking you for it, or loving you for it."
Al's words, however, barely meant anything to Julia.
She might have erased Ashleigh once again, and undo all of the happiness that she'd given back to him, and if she'd hurt him terribly enough, one or more people might need to physically disable him and combat.
She'd hurt Al so terribly that he was actually himself considering wielding knowledge and power that he knew better than to seek.
She'd barely been able to love and protect Pride.
And she had murdered approximately one hundred million people, or more, after they'd been tortured within trapped hopeless despair and agony through further imprisoned despair and torture, and tens of millions of those people had been her fellow Milosians.
"Those are among the largest reasons that you two have convinced me to keep believing in myself, and move forward," Al was going on.
"Because I know that, no matter what, I can believe in the two of you.
"So will the two of you please believe in me as well?"
"In less than a heartbeat," Winry responded right away.
"We've never stopped doing so.
"It's all of the same right here," Julia told Al herself.
"And you yourself are welcome.
"Home and warm and secure and sound, in my arms as much as in Ed's and Winry's and your Granny's, anywhere, any time."
"I don't doubt that," Al spoke back.
"So can you please sleep now, and stop hurting yourself for my sake?"
Julia looked at Winry questioningly.
"I'll stay here with Al, so you can go back to your room and sleep now.
"Do you want to walk back, or should I ask Lan Fan to find someone willing to carry you?"
Julia removed her eyes from Al's and stopped rubbing his back.
Then she lowered his back and head back onto the bed and turned to Winry.
"I'd prefer to walk, but I know that you and Al will both feel better if I try to start catching up on my sleep now."
So Julia turned herself in the direction of Winry, knowing that the older girl would catch her if she was successfully able to fall asleep.
Darkness swallowed her almost before Julia was even aware that it was doing so, and she was barely able to react in time to shift forwards to fall into Winry's arms before it engulfed her.
.
"Beneath a veil
As cold as this
You sleep so deeply
All alone
.
"The melody of a prayer
Across the lonely fields
A little light
Began to shine
.
"I watched as you dreamed
You laughed like a child
So familiar, and yet so far
That is the promise of our future
.
"That one day
On a green morning
One day, we will make it there
.
"Because in this sky of darkest winter
We still believe
Fields of hope"
'Fields Of Hope'
GUNDAM SEED DESTINY