Shock glued Ed in place for a second, limbs locked, fists curled loosely in the man's lapels.
He looked just like Colonel Mustang.
He had the Mustang's pale skin, one eye black as coal, the other wrapped in dirty-looking bandages encircling the left side of his face. His dark hair was long and disheveled, a generous layer of stubble peppering his jaw, and his frame was gaunt, completely unlike the proud and strong man Ed had known. All that combined with the stained clothes wreaking of trash and Ed wasn't exactly sure what he was looking at.
But he was certain that this husk was not Roy Mustang.
It would just figure that the scumbag's lookalike would be some petty mugger.
When Hohenheim had first introduced Ed to Alfons, Ed had cried and thrown his arm around the stunned German boy, only to realize too late that it wasn't his little brother. Of course, Ed had been under the heavy influence of pain medication, but Ed remembered his embarrassment enough to never make that same mistake again.
Even when he'd seen a green-eyed girl that looked so much like Winry, he didn't dare approach. He'd followed her from the market to a side street, then watched her open the door to a shop and catch a little boy that came charging out to greet her. A man was on the child's heels, and that's when Ed saw the gold ring encircling her fourth finger and his. Ed had gone back to the apartment that evening and locked himself in his room to nurse his lonely, broken heart.
Ed kept hope safely at bay these days. Even the shock wasn't enough to lower his guard for more than a moment.
He tightened his grip. "Who are you?"
The man with Mustang's face stared. "I'm . . . is it you?"
You?
"Is it . . . who are you?"
The man gaped at him, his single eye wide. "How—?"
Ed didn't like his tone of voice. Not at all. It sounded so predictable, so familiar, a mockery of everything he'd lost.
Ed tightened his hands even more, shoving the man hard into the bricks. "What do you want, some money or something?!"
"Fullmetal—"
Ed dropped him like he'd been burned.
The man sagged against the wall, his incredulous gaze never leaving Ed's. "It is you," he breathed. "I wasn't sure . . ."
The man was speaking, but Ed wasn't really listening.
Because this was impossible.
There was no way that Mustang could be on this side of the Gate. There was no way.
Impossible.
"It's . . . that's impossible," Ed said, like saying it outloud would restore his sanity.
He hadn't been drinking. He wasn't asleep.
But what else could explain this?
Ed felt faint, his heart beating far too hard in his chest, his pulse roaring in his ears. He backed away further, putting some distance between himself and the hallucination. That's all he was; a hallucination born of hunger and stress and grief. Ed really was losing his mind. Alfons had been right all along.
"Get away from me," he growled, but his voice was far too shaky to be threatening. He hesitated only a second longer before turning and heading back out of the alley.
"Wait!"
A hand fell on his shoulder and Ed twisted away from the contact, whirling to face the man once again. It had to be real, didn't it? He'd felt a hand . . . hallucinations were rarely tactile, right?
Unless he was that far gone.
Now that was possible.
"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice sounding more feral than not, straining in his dry throat like sand.
"It's me."
"Get away from me!"
"Roy. Roy Mustang."
Ed closed his eyes.
Then he staggered and collapsed to his knees.
"Hey!" the man—was it Mustang? Could it be Mustang? — said, crouching down next to him. "What's wrong with you? Are you hurt?"
It only just occurred to him that they'd been speaking in Amestrian this whole time.
Ed grasped at his aching chest. "You can't be him," he said simply, roughly, cradling his head with his free hand. "It's impossible."
"You're here, aren't you?" Mustang said. "Why couldn't I be here, too?"
"Did I . . . am I home?" Ed didn't like the way he asked the question.
It sounded way too hopeful for someone that had supposedly sworn off hope.
Mustang frowned. "No. I . . . Where is here?"
Ed laughed, grating and hollow even to his own ears. "Europe. Germany. Munich. This is the other side of the Gate."
"The other . . ." Mustang looked around, like the answers would be revealed to him in writing on the dingy alley walls. "How did we get here? Ed, how long have you been here? We thought you were . . ."
"Dead?" Ed asked blandly. "I am dead. I died to bring Al's body back and—"
Lightening zipped up his spine.
He seized Mustang again, leaning forward, almost pulling him into the dirt beside Ed in his desperation. "Colonel, tell me right now; did it work? Is . . . is my little brother . . . did it work Mustang, did it work?!"
Mustang regarded him like he would a skittish animal, gently taking Ed's mismatched hands and peeling them from his coat. "Alphonse is alive, Ed. You did it."
"Is he . . .?"
"He's in his body. He looks so much like you," Mustang said with a small smile.
If Ed wasn't already on the floor, he would have collapsed again. As it was, he almost fell over, but Mustang steadied him with a hand around his metal bicep. Relief made his eyes burn, or maybe he was just crying.
He'd done it.
Al was alive.
Ed was never sure, could never be sure, until now.
Al had a body. His body.
"Kid," Mustang said, "you're going to pass out if you don't slow down and breathe."
Ed hadn't even noticed, but he really was breathing hard and fast, like he'd just run to the river and back. He did as Mustang suggested, trying to take in slow measured breaths, forcing them out hard with his sobs.
"He's safe. He's okay," he repeated, like if he said it enough it would make it more real. It still didn't feel real, after years of not knowing. He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve, taking another breath. "He's okay."
"He's okay," Mustang agreed.
Ed swiped at his eyes to clear his vision then looked Mustang up and down. "What happened to you? You look terrible."
Mustang frowned, his free hand rubbing back and forth almost absently over his heart. "I was . . . shot."
Shot?
Did all the dead end up here? And in their own body?
Movement caught his eye and he looked up to see a pair of young men at the alley's entrance, trying to look casual even as they watched.
Ed's skin crawled.
"We need to get out of here." He couldn't afford to draw any more attention to himself than he already had in this world.
Mustang looked up, noting the same men. "Aren't they just civilians?"
Ed leaned heavy to the right, trying to get his more uncooperative leg out from under him. Mustang grabbed Ed's hand and hoisted him up without asking. Ed was too grateful to mind.
"Maybe, maybe not." It was safer not to trust anyone. "Let's go."
"Where are we going?"
"To see Hohenheim."
XxXxX
Two years earlier.
XxXxX
Ed did not want to be seen like this, and he really didn't want to ask for help.
Especially from Hohenheim.
Alphonse had always said Ed's pride would be the death of him, but Al probably had no idea just how literal that might be.
Ed curled his only hand in the old wool blanket, fighting against a wave of nausea. No matter how many differences this world had from his, the pain of losing two limbs was equally unpleasant.
Scratch that, it was agonizing.
The burns were just the icing on the cake.
He turned his head to the side—his body too weak to lean over the side of the bed—and vomited on the sheets for the third time in the past minute. It was like his body thought his empty stomach was the problem and not the grating, burning, singing pain on his right shoulder and left thigh.
What were the odds of the blimp taking the exact same limbs at the exact same places?
Equivalent Exchange had a cruel sense of humor.
No such thing.
No such thing.
He screwed his eyes shut. He couldn't think about that right now.
Yeah, if he could stop thinking about anything and everything, that would be great.
He'd only been out of the hospital for a grand total of two days, and only conscious for maybe half a day of that, but that was half a day too much in his opinion. This world's excuse for pain medication was a joke, or did Hohenheim say something about no opiates? No money? Or had he thrown up the good stuff?
He couldn't remember.
The sick was on his shoulder and soaking his sheets and his hair, hot and uncomfortable against his sweaty skin. He could use a hand—ha—to clean himself up, and maybe to help him aim for the wastebasket next time, but that would require Hohenheim. Not that Hohenheim hadn't seen him at worse recently; he was the one that had carried Ed's near-dead body to the hospital after all. He'd sat by Ed's bedside for ten days, spoon-feeding him broth and changing bandages when the hospital staff didn't change them soon enough for his liking, talking Ed down after every delirium-induced nightmare.
Nightmares about his mother.
Alphonse.
Nina.
Sloth.
Envy's hand running right through his stomach—
Ed clamped his only hand around his middle where he remembered being impaled.
Vividly.
Not now.
He threw up again anyway.
"Edward!"
Ed was too used to that panicked voice now. He didn't like the familiarity of it. Hohenheim had no right to be worried about Ed's health after what he'd done to his mother and Al.
"I think your pain medication wore off."
Ed choked on a scathing reply as Hohenheim peeled the sweat-soaked covers away from his shivering frame, putting one broad hand behind Ed's narrow back and raising him to sit.
The movement pulled at the raw muscles wrapped around amputated bone and Ed's vision twirled like one of those rides at the traveling fairs.
He threw up again.
"We'll increase the frequency," Hohenheim said, but Ed wasn't sure who he was talking to. He couldn't see the old man without turning his head, and that was a dangerous game right now. He felt the cold swipe of a wet cotton ball on his bare thigh and the sharp bite of an injection.
An old fear spiked his pulse, but he didn't have it in himself to fight the needle right now. "A smaller dose every four hours instead of six," Hohenheim continued. "Maybe that will help you stay ahead of the pain."
More needles. Wonderful.
Hohenheim gave him a few moments to breathe while the morphine slowly but surely began to eat away at the worst of his pain. He bent forward, his forehead almost touching his knee and making his stomach twist uncomfortably, but it was either sit or fall over, so he sat.
The cheap mattress groaned and dipped under Hohenheim's weight as the older man settled himself beside Ed, a bowl of steaming water and a washcloth in his hands. Ed wasn't really sure when he'd left to get it. "Do you feel up to moving?"
Ed shook his head, not trusting his voice to be hostile enough.
Hohenheim nodded, dipping the cloth in the water and squeezing excess to splash in the bowl. He then began what he'd done so often in the hospital; washing the vomit from Ed's face and body.
Ed's cheeks burned with fever and humiliation, but he didn't stop Hohenheim. Ed supposed he wanted to be clean more than he wanted to save the ragged remains of his tattered pride at the moment.
Of all the people to be trapped in this world with, of all the people Ed could have been forced to rely on, it had to be Hohenheim.
Equivalent Exchange at its finest.
No such thing.
Ed wished it was Winry, or Al. Even Mustang would have been an improvement over his lowlife absentee father.
He felt alone, lost in a lake of pain and uncertainty, his future dim and his heart anxious and homesick. This world stank of fear and hatred, of wanting and fighting and cruelty; a wretched place to be stranded.
A frail voice that felt older than Ed asked him how, exactly, it was different from his world.
He didn't know. Maybe there was a comfort in familiar horrors.
"I know that I've done nothing to deserve your trust, Edward," Hohenheim murmured as he gently wiped the side of Ed's neck, the cold cloth raising gooseflesh on Ed's burning skin. "But at the very least, if you'll let me, I can help get you back on your feet."
Ed didn't have the energy to tell his old man what an idiotic statement that was. Here in a world without automail, just how was Hohenheim planning to get Ed "back on his feet?" Ed would be lucky if he ever moved without assistance again.
Despair and bile kind of tasted the same, and he couldn't tell which one was clinging to the back of his tongue.
"While you were in the hospital, I took the liberty of drawing up some plans," Hohenheim continued. Unable to hold himself upright anymore, Ed sagged against Hohenheim's solid frame and wished he could just crawl under the bed and disappear. "I used to help Pinako, back when she was first getting her business up and running."
Her business . . .
Her automail business.
It could have been interest or the biting cold, Ed couldn't tell himself, but his spine straightened seemingly on its own, lifting his head to just hover over Hohenheim's shoulder.
"Don't get too excited," Hohenheim said with a wry smile. "I'm no automail engineer." Little did Hohenheim know that Ed wasn't prone to getting excited. He was just . . . interested. And cold. "I've got some basic blueprints, but I'll need to take some measurements, and getting parts is going to be a problem. This country has recently gotten out of a war, so metal is hard to come by, and copper for the wiring even more so. I'm not sure what else we could use, but maybe between the two of us, we can cobble something together."
Ed didn't want to admit just how promising that sounded.
Ed opened his mouth, forced back another wave of nausea, and croaked, "When . . . can we start?"
"We're not going to start anything until you've recovered," Hohenheim said firmly, and Ed might have bristled at the too-fatherly tone if he hadn't already been so busy trying not to throw up again.
Hohenheim finished cleaning him up, removing the sweat-bile-and-something-else stained button up borrowed from Hohenheim's closet and replacing it with another that was also too big, but smelled nicer. He reapplied a few bandages that Ed had sweated or kicked off of his only remaining leg, and by the time he was applying a salve to the last one, Ed was dancing on a knife's edge of consciousness.
And maybe it was a fevered dream, but Ed was sure he was still five and his father's back was retreating out the door. The morning sun burned the silhouette into his eyes, capturing the image with perfect, stark clarity: it was the last time Ed would ever see him.
And all he knew was how miserable it was to be alone.
"Dad," he croaked, reaching across an impossible distance.
A large, soothing hand stroked through his sweat-soaked hair. "Shh," a strong voice murmured in his ear. "I'm right here."
Well, we got three different timelines going now. Hopefully by the end something will make sense xD I just think it's important to establish Ed's relationship with bio-dad before we bring in adoptive-dad c: Special thanks to mildlynerdy for once more lending me her editing prowess and saving you from excessive incoherence xD
I spent the better part of the evening hiding from tornados, and when I finally come home and get ready to shower, I open the door, what do I find? A spider that has absolutely no right to be there. It's not one of the dainty ones with the skinny legs, it's one of those big ones that look like they lift, and if you know me you know I don't like to kill things, but I also very much do not want to try to escort this spider anywhere because what if it jumps on me and bites me and I gain spidery super powers? I am not ready for that responsibility.
So what do I do?
I just shower with this huge spider skittering in circles around me.
This was the most traumatic shower of my life, and I cannot rest for I know that tomorrow he will still be there, waiting. This spider is now the shower-buddy I did not ask for and am now cursed with.
I am now off to look up how long spiders live. I hope you enjoyed the chapter! If you have the time, please drop a comment/review and I'll see you next time :D
God Bless,
-RainFlame