The Golden Sun: Chapter Twenty-Five: Leto's Chosen
AN: So, it's been a while since an update, but life got away from me, what with COVID making my work at the hospital stressful, and my massive rewrite of LB aka BFI taking up most of my time. I didn't have a lot of drive to work on this, but it was a good thing I waited, because the plot's getting even better and better :)
"Never thought I'd see you so depressed about someone who wasn't Riza."
Roy hid his face behind his glass, not that it did much for him, but he always felt younger and smaller whenever his mother got involved.
Madame Christmas sighed, looking him over. "I won't say you're not in a sticky situation, Roy-boy, but your boys were from Emunah. You were never stationed there."
It used to give him an odd sensation of pride when someone called Ed and Al his boys, but now he just felt bone-deep exhaustion and shame. He hadn't had a good night's rest since finding out the Elric brothers were Ishvalan. Now, all he dreamed about was a pair of scared Ishvalan children before his fingers with terrified red eyes.
No rest for the wicked, as the saying went.
"No, but that doesn't mean I didn't kill their family," Roy knocked back a shot, feeling the burn as it ran down his throat. "I'll never be rid of the blood on my hands." He knew as well as anyone else that Ishvalan families spread far. Maybe Trisha Elric's immediate family was from Emunah, but that didn't mean that Roy couldn't have killed other members without knowing it.
Madame Christmas sucked in a drag, blowing out smoke heavily. "We've all got blood on our hands, boy, stop wallowing."
Roy looked up a bit befuddled, feeling a bit bleak and very much doubting that she'd be able to cheer him up; she'd failed thus far.
"You fought in a war you thought was wrong, you killed people you didn't want to because it was demanded of you…you really think you're the only one that regrets the War?" Madame Christmas arched an eyebrow. "Pull yourself together. You can't change the past, you can atone for it as best as you can…but from the looks of things, Trisha Elric wasn't killed by you, neither was her mother."
"I don't think that'll matter to Ed," Roy pushed his glass forward for another shot, making his mother scowl fiercely and top it off with something clear. He threw it back with ease, blinking owlishly before looking at his mother with accusation. "That was water."
"I'm cutting you off, Roy-boy, too much whiskey isn't good for you."
Roy groaned into the bar. "I'm trying to drown my misery!" he muffled into the wood.
Madame Christmas remained unimpressed, taking her own drink. "You're trying to drown in your misery, there's a difference."
"Not really," Roy grumbled. "End result is the same."
That made her roll her eyes. "You're being such a big baby, Roy-boy. If you want to make amends, you actually have to put yourself out there in the first place."
Roy looked up slowly. "What if they don't accept my amends?"
"Then you leave them alone," Madame Christmas said with a careless shrug. "They have a right to refuse to accept your apologies. Their family has suffered enough at the hands of the military…I think it would take an incredibly open heart to take all that you are and accept it and forgive you. I know that's not the answer that you want, but it's the truth."
When Al came round, he wasn't in the pure white expanse that he'd been before. "Where am I?" he asked out loud and there was the sound of familiar laughter.
"Does it really matter?"
He turned around. At first, he recognized it, the faceless bleached-white figure with the terrifyingly wide smile. "You!" he gasped.
"Me," Truth agreed. "How about a change in scenery?" White fingers snapped and Al startled as he stared around them. He hadn't had any idea where they were before and he knew even less now; it looked nothing like any of the Amestrian buildings he'd seen before. Amestris was a big believer in durability over everything, and it was something that was fairly obvious in just about every government building that Al had ever seen.
He'd never liked any of them very much; who wanted to work in a building without any personality? Al certainly wouldn't. He doubted Ed cared that much, just as long as he got whatever he needed from the building, who cared what it looked like?
But Al couldn't see with his own eyes, and what would Ed know about that? He had to squash the bitterness more than a few times, because it wasn't Ed's fault…he just missed having his own body, far more than Ed missed having his own limbs. Ed didn't care if he never got his back, just as long as Al did, and Al didn't even know what to think about that.
But this place…it was so beautiful that it struck all other description from Al's mind. The pillars were ornate -not delicate, but sturdy and decorative- and the ceiling was rounded and everything was so bright…Al could see so many plants, growing without hindrance, vines crawling up the walls like they were hoping for escape.
"Where am I?" he asked out loud.
"Where do you think you are?"
Truth was still in front of him, looking as eerie as he always had been. Was it even a he? Al wasn't sure…but calling Truth 'it' seemed like a good way to get his soul banished to wherever his body was.
"I've got no idea," Al said honestly.
"That's understandable, it currently is buried under more sand than you can possibly imagine," Truth conceded.
"Is…is that important?" Al asked, totally confused.
Truth tilted their head. "It might be," they said, "one day…but we're here to talk about you." And then they snapped their fingers again and if Al actually had a jaw, he was certain it would've dropped, but the formless shape with the terrifyingly wide smile was gone and in their place was something else entirely.
It was a woman, one with rich brown skin far more accustomed to sun than shade, and an intricate series of golden braids woven together to match the color of her eyes. The toga wrapped around her body was a rich red and there was a heavy circlet at her brow with a single ruby as the centerpiece.
She didn't look remotely like Mom, but she made him feel like he was in her presence all the same.
"Are you—" Al faltered slightly. "Are you Truth?"
"No," the woman said, "but Truth is an aspect of who I am, so I suppose you could say that Truth is me."
That only served to confuse Al more, but he thought that it was best not to bring it up or he'd never figure anything out.
"Truth is the part of me that only those who trespass into that which they shouldn't are capable of seeing…Truth is absolute order, but rarely am I faced with those who dared to knock on my door." She considered him with interest. "Truth takes that which you value the most, that is the trade. Your teacher who sought to return her child to her was left without the ability to bear children. Your brother who runs headfirst towards danger lost a leg to stand on. And you, Alabi Rashid, you who made a place for yourself as kind in the face of cruelty, lost the body to convey that kindness."
The name sounded familiar, but Al couldn't quite place it, and he was distracted by everything else.
The only sound was the audible creaking from Al's armor as he shook with a rage he'd never been able to put into words before. "It was cruel," he said thickly, "what you did to us was cruel."
"It wasn't, actually." The woman tilted her head slightly as if intrigued by his response. "You were the ones that knew it was a taboo to attempt human transmutation, and you were the ones that defied it, regardless. Did you expect mercy because of your age? Truth is not capable of mercy, Truth is absolute order, I told you, if you seek to defy Truth, then you are punished accordingly, not too cruel and not too merciful, absolutely equivalent, that is why the Law of Equivalent Exchange exists, because Truth exists."
It was hard to argue with her and Al was just going to get more frustrated until he actually combusted.
"Who are you?" he asked finally, once his aggravation had eased somewhat.
She smiled with a warmth that Truth had never possessed. "My name is Leto and I am the goddess willing to grant you that which you seek."
"What?" Al garbled.
Leto smiled and it was painfully like Mom's that it almost hurt. "Sit with me, Child of Ishvala."
"Oh," Al said quickly. "I'm not—" He wasn't Ishvalan, right? Sure, Mom had had red eyes, but she'd looked nothing like Gerah or Aminta or Ze'ev or any of the other refugees that had come to call Resembool home. Maybe she'd had a few drops to have their red eyes, but Ed and Al -unfortunately- took after their father, that's what Mom had always said.
"You think your mother's name was always Trisha Elric? No, the Elric name came from her father, the professor from Drachma. Your mother's family was from Ishval—"
"My mother's family was from Emunah," Al fired back.
"Which is in Ishval," Leto returned calmly and Al faltered. He'd always known that Emunah was in Amestris, but he'd never considered that it was in Ishval too.
"Where was your mother's family from?"
Colonel Mustang had had such a strange response to finding out that out, and Al hadn't been able to place what it was about Emunah that made him look like his stomach was twisting in on itself and he was about to be violently ill…but he'd fought in the Ishvalan War, he'd killed in the Ishvalan War.
Al sat down heavily, the realization burning through him like the fire the Colonel could call up with just a snap of his fingers. Not knowing what to do or how to feel, Al pressed his heavy gauntlets to his vizor, wishing not for the first time that he was capable of tears.
"Your mother's name was Etana Lieb, and even before the war, Ishvalans weren't treated very well, so she took her middle name Trisha and reverted to her father's surname in order to become the Glacier Alchemist of North City, in order to keep a roof over her mother's head."
Al felt choked, too full of emotions that he couldn't put into words. "Sounds like her," he managed thickly. God, he missed Mom so much…Mom would've known what to do, and if she didn't, she would've started digging for what would give her the answers she wanted. And she would've never let her frustration show, she would've braided her hair back tightly and smiled in a way that made her red eyes glow, and then she would've started all over again.
Ed was so like her, never giving up, leaving no stone unturned. He tried not to let the desperation show, for Al's sake, but Al knew it was there regardless.
It was a little too late for Al to be having an identity crisis, wasn't it? Besides, it was hard to have one when you were a literal suit of armor and the only source of your identity to speak of was your voice.
(Some days it hurt more than others that Al couldn't express himself as easily as Ed could, with all his fire and rage)
"Alabi," he said finally, "why did you call me that?"
"It's your name," she said simply, "a gift from one Xerxian to another. Alabi Rashid, younger brother of Edan Rashid."
"Xerxian," Al said tonelessly, "as in…from Xerxes?" That had been the reason he'd come to see Teacher in the first place, after all, but somehow it was laughable that a Xerxian had come asking questions about Xerxes.
"Is there any other place?" Leto asked, faintly amused, eyes glittering as she surveyed him and Al wasn't sure how to feel with that kind of attention from a literal god. And he really didn't like how she seemed to know everything about him while he felt that he learned less and less about himself. "I am Xerxes' god, though others know me in the form of Truth, rarely do I interact with humans unless it is to simultaneously hobble them and open their eyes completely."
Al thought that was an apt description, looking down at himself, effectively hobbled in the lack of body he possessed, while Ed could transmute without need of a circle. But Ed also remembered Truth and woke up terrified and gasping for air…would Al even need a transmutation circle after this?
And she didn't even seem apologetic. Al tried not to be annoyed about it, because she was technically right, they had known it was taboo and they'd pushed through anyways. Al wasn't sure it was arrogance -just because no one else had done it, didn't mean they couldn't- or just bone-deep sorrow at the loss of Mom.
(Afterwards, the realization of how horrified she would've been if she'd found out what they had done had been one of the only things Al could think about long after Ed had passed out from the pain, and it still plagued his mind years afterwards)
"So, what's special about me?" he asked instead, trying not to dwell on the dark thoughts swirling in his mind.
"I like a good story," Leto said with that warm smile. She practically radiated with warmth, like the sun…wasn't Leto supposed to be a sun god? There was some religious sect in Liore that were die-hard believers in the god. He and Ed had just been passing through on the train and one of the members of the church had evidently tried to make a run for it. Al didn't know if the church members had actually found the runaway, but the sheer contempt he and Ed had radiated when they'd burst into their train compartment to demand if they'd seen them was enough to send them running off.
But this Leto looked nothing like those statues of marbled tall men with long beards and crowns of sharp prongs like the sun was anointing him. She couldn't have looked further from them if they were standing side-by-side.
"A good story?" Al repeated.
"Yes, I'm very fond of them, I particularly enjoy a worthy redemption." She twisted her fingers and then there was a cup of something that looked like molten gold. Somehow, Al doubted that it was tea, but given his situation, he thought it best not to comment on it. "I've never had anyone search so completely for a way to right their wrongs. You and your brother are to be commended, you've gone further than I would've thought possible, but you will not reach the end without guidance."
Al felt like she was flattering him, but also telling him in the same breath that he wasn't good enough. It was too befuddling for him to be offended about it. Ed would've been insulted, for sure, if there was one thing Ed could be counted on doing above everything else, it was overreacting.
Not that he was ever going to admit that to him.
"And you're here to offer…guidance?"
She smiled her warm smile, her eyes glittering. "Yes."
"Is that something gods can do?" Al couldn't help but be baffled.
"I can do whatever I please," Leto said, amused. "I will send you on an epic quest."
That was about the last thing Al wanted to do. "How is that any different from what we're doing right now?" he asked shrewdly.
"What you're doing right now is digging in the sand in the hopes of finding water," Leto said wryly, crossing one leg over the other, sloshing the liquid in her cup around with the movement, but never spilling it. "You are in an unfamiliar land, digging in places the locals know will gain you nothing, what you need is someone to lead you in the direction of a lake, but know that the ferryman has a toll and it is great."
Al didn't need to guess that she was the ferryman in this analogy.
"Is it worth it?" Al asked instead. "To pay the ferryman's toll?"
"Is it worth to stay as you are?" she countered easily. "To remain in your impermanent state with the knowledge that one day this metal cage you've locked your soul into will reject it and leave you as you would've been without your brother's interference? To be dead, to remain dead? You're young, surely you want to live long enough to see your soulmate?"
It was a sore subject, Al's soulmate. There used to be an ouroboros, a snake curving in a circle to swallow its tail, between his shoulder blades, nearly where his soul array currently was. It was an old-fashioned symbol of ancient myths that had been forgotten -it might've been Xerxian, but it could've easily been something else, too, there were a lot of forgotten myths and legends- that you sometimes saw in alchemy. It had different meanings, like 'all is one' and 'eternity'.
Al had always thought it was cool, but he'd never totally appreciated it until it was gone.
"There is a girl who loves you so much that when she lost her mark, she cut its shape into her palm," Leto said gently and Al ducked his head. He had never been able to think about her, just as he knew that Ed had never been able to think of his, but the difference was that Ed knew it was there, he could see it in every reflection, in every mirror he passed, in every puddle he stomped through. There was no denying its presence.
Al hadn't seen his in years, and it hurt almost as much as thinking about Mom did.
"So, your guidance," Al said, trying not to think about a girl who couldn't bear the loss of her soulmark so much that she'd scarred her hand to bring it back, because that made his heart hurt and he didn't even currently have a heart, "what does it look like?"
"I am going to send you on a quest." She repeated the words like Al didn't understand the enormity of what she was offering.
Al's heavily padded shoulders sagged.
"Disappointed?" She asked with a quirked eyebrow.
"No," Al said quickly, mostly because he didn't want to upset the god that had literally taken his entire body from him, that had looked down on Ed, still bleeding from the stump where his leg used to be, determinedly trading anything he could for Al's soul, and she'd taken from them without a thought.
And Al didn't like it, but she was also right, there were consequences to their actions. He should've felt grateful that she was offering them a chance to fix it, but all Al felt was unease.
"No," he repeated, "it's just…how long would a quest like this take?"
"I guess that would depend on how well you make use of your time and your resources," Leto admitted consideringly. "I would say, a good season…longer if you don't."
Al sagged in his seat again. He missed food, and sleep, and sunshine, and being able to feel it when Ed or Winry hugged him. "What kind of quest?"
"The dangerous kind." This time her smile was little more than a baring of teeth that made her look so much like Truth that it was nearly unnerving. "Really, that's the only kind of quest that matters."
"Yeah, but that sounds like something I could really mess up," Al pointed out. "What would we be doing on this quest?"
"You will be finding four gems that I misplaced eons ago," she said in a tone that said it should've been obvious what she was sending him to find.
"Can a god misplace things?" Al asked, befuddled.
"I once misplaced a city," Leto mused thoughtfully, "I do wonder what happened to Atlantis."
It was probably best not to bring up that the Cretan island city had long since disappeared into legend after it had sunk to the bottom of the sea for unknown reasons. Supposedly the Cretans believed it was because they'd fallen out of favor with one (or several) of their gods who had sunk the city in retribution for some perceived slight -Al had always liked that one-, or, the more likely scenario was that there'd been some misuse of alchemy that had resulted in its destruction.
Given Leto, Al figured there were some things he was better off not knowing.
"Ah, well," she said, drifting away from the thought, "one day I'll find it, I suppose."
Al gave an uncomfortable cough to bring her back to the topic at hand.
"So, yes, gods can misplace things, not usually things as small as these, but I would like them to be returned to me."
"Why? What's so special about them?" Al asked, tilting his helmet slightly.
"They've had many names over the years, but in today's society I believe that they are known as the Cintamani, jewels that grant wishes." Well, Al could see why she'd like to get them back and why they'd help him and Ed in the first place. "Empires rose and fell by those jewels once upon a time. They are imbued with the will of the gods, so you can imagine why that kind of power could get one into trouble."
Al should've been listening more closely, but he'd gotten sidetracked. Empires that rose and fell… "Like Xerxes?" he asked.
Leto's mouth curved into another smile, this one softer than the last. "Clever Alabi, much cleverer than others give you credit for."
People thought Ed was the clever one, they thought Al was too soft for it, which Ed always said was bullshit, because when had being soft ever stopped someone from figuring things out before anyone else?
"Thanks," he said, not knowing if she was trying to be flattering this time around. She was a hard person to gauge, god or not. "So…four gems, that can't be too difficult, right?"
And Leto outright laughed. "Oh, you poor foolish boy," she chortled, "if this quest was easy, I wouldn't have given it to you. If you wish to be returned as you should be, you have to work for it. This quest is not easy and it will test you in ways you don't yet understand.
To the North is the Gem of Ice
Which you will not find without paying a price
The cold will cut deep
Before you reach this impossible Keep
The further you go, the closer you get
But never without a threat
Built upon death and ruin
To gain the jewel, your worth must be proven
Move too fast will be your doom
Take too long and it will be your tomb."
Al stared at her entirely too long. "Did you just come up with that?"
"Alabi Rashid, I am very old, you would not believe how much time I spent on that rhyme and how long ago," Leto said with a small laugh. "You are not the first to have earned this chance, but all the others failed…I wonder how you will fare?"
Unease rippled through his metal body. "That was just one, though," he pointed out, "you said there were four."
"Let's see how you do with the first, Son of Ishvala, then we shall see about the other three. This quest is not for the faint of heart, if you wish to succeed, abandon the Philosopher's Stone, it will only bring you more pain."
"What d'you mean?" Al asked in confusion. "What's so bad about the Philosopher's Stone?" There wasn't enough information on it to tell if it was a good or bad thing, although, Teacher had once said it was a tool for an alchemist, and tools were neither good nor bad, that was a quality of the user, but even she had never cared much for the rumors of the Philosopher's Stone's power.
Her golden eyes looked at him so very sadly.
"Oh, my dear," she said softly, "you're going to find out one day."
And then the world faded around him with a sharp snap of her fingers.
AN: Part of Leto and Al's convo is absolutely based on a convo I had with Emily about if Truth was bad or not.
I slightly quoted the Magicians, but there is no magic in this fic, promise XD