A/N: Please feel free to review! Not proof read. This is a pretty strange and dark AU, so please be aware of that!
Things weren't supposed to just end like this. We knew everything came at a price, and still we ignored it. And it cost us our bodies. And somewhat our lives.
It was never going to be a day like any other. My big sister and I had planned this for months. See, when you live in a small town like Resembool, word spreads like wildfire. The news of our late mother's fate became rumors and then facts to everyone the morning after her death, and soon enough, we became the source of pity for everyone. Edna hated it. If there was anything that she hated most in the world besides liars and criminals, it was to be looked down on. I still remember her amber eyes filled with the flames of fury when she was offered gifts because of the death.
"You were always the more gentle and grateful one, Allison," Grandma Pinako had told me one night.
But I didn't believe it was true. Because if she could see me now, she'd probably be disappointed. We attempted use human transmutation to revive our mother, but that thing...whatever it was...Ed told me she was certain it wasn't her. But I was scared. Scared that I had caused Mom significant pain, bringing her back to life, only for her to die in agony once more. Edna told me that even if that were true, it wasn't completely my fault.
She had a tendency to blame things on herself, I'd wish she'd cut me some slack and not take all the credit. It's like the reason she's short (I know because she's complained a bit) is because of the weight and guilt that's found a home resting on her shoulders.
I should be grateful that I'm alive. But really, I hate it. It's selfish. Sometimes I think that everything would be better if I never lived. If Sister let me die, maybe I wouldn't be such a burden.
"Al? Al? Allison?!" The little voice in the speaker inside me rang.
"Y-yes? I'm sorry, Edna, I dozed off."
"It's okay. Remember. Next hour." Her voice was deep and quite androgynous, and it was the closest thing to the idea of my mother's.
"Copy," My own voice wasn't anything like hers. Her voice was so unique, calming, in the times I had heard it.
Ed and I didn't get to talk often. It's been three years since the incident. I counted on the wall. The scrapes were deep. I had tallied numbers on the wall with my new body. It was armor. I looked tall and gruff, almost like a man. I could see myself on the mirror, hung up on the stone wall. My room was small, and aside from the dirt floor and stone walls, there was a wall in front of my bed. It was made of cell bars. Whoever wanted to look could see.
I was stuck in this...prison. See, we made a deal with someone we shouldn't have. A well known mobster and an alchemist, or so we thought. Nobody's ever seen him aside form those who make deals with him, but he goes by Truth. In exchange for our 'mother,' he'd take something. Only, we didn't know what it was.
That something ended up being my body, and Ed's leg, and in return for my soul, she got rid of her arm. But in the end, we were separated, and I've never seen her since the day. They had given us radios, and occasionally, Ed could talk to me through it. Recently, she's come up with a plan to get us out of here. By recently, I mean in the past year. She's only been able to talk to me twice then, so I'm still pretty in the dark about it.
Hours pass by fast when all you've been doing is just that for three years. I heard the door to this part of the building - the cellar, I assumed - open and slam shut, and the frantic panting of a voice I had studied so closely. Hurried footsteps rushed closer, and eventually, a woman met face to face with me, inches apart, the cell stopping us from enjoying this moment. I could feel something inside me well up. I felt myself sobbing, but there were no tears.
It wasn't. It couldn't be, right?
A tear slipped down her cheek, and it happened to be the answer to all of my questions.
"Edna!" I shouted, reaching to touch her.
"Alise!" Her expression showed pain and longing, holding my arms and resting her forehead on the bars.
She looked to the side, and soon enough, I heard banging on the steel door.
Quickly, she transmutated the cell, something I hadn't seen in so long.
"I know," She huffed, pulling me out and pushing me to run, "I had to make them believe I couldn't do it."
She was wearing Izumi's red coat, cross on the back and everything. She looked so young, yet old. She looked tired. Worn down. I only wondered what she had went through, trapped here like me. Her hair was longer, tied into a silky braid, but I couldn't see what she was wearing underneath her red coat because it was a few sizes too big, and it was closed up.
She's wrong. She is short. So short. She's always described herself as average and that people - whoever they are - tell her that she's extremely short.
So we ran. Fast as I've ever seen Ed run, and certainly the fastest I've ever run. Her golden hair, I couldn't help but admire. It left a trail, like a ray of sunlight behind her.
I couldn't tell you how far or fast we ran. But it was far enough that Ed and I had transmutated through the wall and barbed fence, jumping over the picket fence after that.
And on my way out, I turned my head, I was met by onyx ones, far away, watching. As I watched, I couldn't help but notice the flashing red reflecting on them, and I snapped my head in the direction of the light. The building was on complete chaos, sirens going off that I hadn't noticed in the heat of the moment, red signal lights blaring, and a small flame going off in the west wing.
We had a reason to run as far as we did. Both different, still oddly similar. Only, I wouldn't know how deep and dark Ed's was. And by the time the moon was up and the stars had filled the sky, Edna and I were in the forest, and she was shoving me into a car, an unknown woman in the front seat.