108 - Fractures
It left something to wonder what kind of fortitude, no, what kind of numbness Dante had to have grown accustomed to that allowed her to find comfort in a disgusting place like this.
Ed questioned the empty city again.
The hollowed earth continually swallowed up all signs of life in this glorified catacomb.
There'd been a draft screaming at him, warning of the haunts in the city as he came down. He already knew. Standing above the ruins of a five-hundred-year-old crime, the wind threw his hair around like a child's tantrum in protest of his return.
In the skeleton of the city, that wind was both absent and silent.
Ed stood in the grandeur of Dante's ballroom and eventually lifted his arms to tie his hair.
He stood in the centre of that room for what felt like ages, going over moments in his mind that he'd replayed a thousand times beyond the Gate. He could place it all in the room like he was nothing more than a spectator of his own life. The strange dance with Rose when he didn't realize what was going on. The lecture Dante had given him about his willful ignorance. Rose's baby. The other fight with Envy he'd also badly lost.
The emptiness in the hall once the madness settled.
Rose was there in that emptiness, but his world was a void.
Al was gone.
Ed couldn't accept that.
He'd lost everything.
And then he spent the next five and a half years learning what it felt like to actually lose everything.
Eventually, Ed walked around the generous spill of dried blood left behind when the Gate had sent Al back. The chaotic slick spread along the floor, vanishing into a hall beyond, was entirely his and Winry's doing.
Ed couldn't remember those moments anymore; the disjointed memories he had of what went on while he suffered from alchemical shock were gone. He'd remembered them vaguely for a few days after, like a few incoherent recollections of a dream that tugged at him, but he'd lost them now.
Even his memories at the back side of the Gate with Winry were getting foggy. Couldn't his brain pick other memories to fade away? He had a few suggestions.
Loitering in his own nightmares wasn't why he'd come down here.
Edward left Dante's castle and wandered the streets of her dollhouse.
Silence welcomed him everywhere, but harshly scolded him every time he disturbed anything. Door hinges, frozen by centuries of preservation, complained when he opened them. Dry, brittle floorboards protested with the strain his weight placed on them.
Edward walked the empty, underground city, struggling to be one of the ghosts.
There was no life anywhere.
It wasn't just human life that was gone from the city, it was all things that qualified as 'life'.
No weeds, no cobwebs, no insects, no mold, and no water or food; every inch of Dante's most glorified atrocity was old, dry, brittle, fragile, and immaculately preserved.
But every house showed signs of life once lived.
Edward walked into stunning historical views - with context removed, this place was an archeologist's dream. Homes built with the glorious flaws of mankind attempting to perfect the wooden craft in its infancy. Windows sealed with imperfect, foggy glass made before manufacture was refined. Exquisite handmade furniture now lost to the onset of modern production. Fabrics painstakingly woven by hand garnishing the décor. Beautiful paintings decorating mantles where photographs would now be.
It was a perfect snapshot of civilization hundreds of years ago.
Despite the awe the graveyard offered, the most terrifying reminder of what had happened - of what Dante had done - were all of the clothes left in heaps where a life had been taken inside the homes. On more than one occasion Ed had to leave the building he'd entered, either feeling sick from his inability to detach himself from what he was seeing or simply remembering the sight of Al's clothing left at the edge of their transmutation circle so long ago.
After a night spent carving a mental map of the city, Edward wandered into the scant home two blocks inside the underground parameter. Not wanting to risk Dante turning up out of the blue, because that would be just his kind of luck lately, on the floor of a home with a few less unsettling mementos, at a spot where no windows offered light, he tried to get some rest.
He tried.
Private encounters with his own ghosts continued to cripple his sleep, leaving his head pounding, his body weary, but his mind running at a frenzied pace.
The bag on the floor next to him begged for Ed's attention like a pulsing beacon. It was full of things for him to do. He refused to frame it as excitement, but maybe anticipation. Three bags and two paper-wrapped samples of elemental powders, a portable scale, a stone mortar and pestle, a generous length of rope, and a number of empty containers all called to him.
Ed found the energy to fold himself upright and drag his body over to the bag. Maybe there was a cellar he could test things in and give his mind something to wind down with.
The back door of the house cried when Ed cracked it open for the first time in hundreds of years. A tiny yard contained by a crude, brittle fence, was nothing but dust and dirt beyond the door. Soil stripped of its nutrients, the landscaping showed the hollow molds and contours where grass, food, and possibly a large tree had once grown.
Tucked away near the corner of the building was what he was looking for.
A wooden hatch lay level with the barren earth, sealed for who knows how many centuries. Edward wrapped his hands around the fat length of rope tied to an iron ring and pulled.
The sealed hatch won immediately. It hardly budged.
It made sense that, for the time period, the door would be weighted underneath, but just how much weight used was the question.
The longer Ed fought his losing battle with the hatch, the more his resolve grew to exponentially increase his training with Sensei and Al when all this shit was done. Because Izumi was right, he'd been nothing but a damned office assistant with one arm and one leg - he was a tall waif compared to his condition before he'd left. No matter which way he yanked, no matter what was used for leverage, no matter how hard he tried, Ed didn't have the strength to–
The hatch finally began to open and the Elric forcing it to comply began turning red, every muscle in his body straining through the battle.
Once past vertical, the hatch finished opening on its own and Ed was left on all fours to catch his breath.
Eventually collecting himself, Ed went back inside. The two paper-wrapped powders were tucked away in opposite pockets, as well as a matching white glove to accompany each. The pocket knife plus the book of matches he'd taken from Sheska's went into his vest pocket, and one free hand picked up a lifeless candle from a mantle on the way out.
The knife was used to cut the tethers of two bagged weights from the inside of the thick hatch and Ed listened to their deep, hollowed thuds in the dry room below. Lighting the candle, the ladder was tested, felt sturdy, and begrudgingly permitted Ed to climb down safely.
Descending into the earth, Edward swung the candle out to examine the tiny cavern with empty shelves carved into the dirt. A rickety wooden table sat in the centre of the room, dressed with nothing but a single candle holder and a candlestick half expired. Ed shared the light he brought with the partially melted candle in the earthly room. He licked his fingers and pinched the one in his bare hand out.
As the light shifted in the room, Ed caught sight of the ground beyond the table. His breathing hitched, his body locked, and Ed's heart flew into a thunderous frenzy.
There was a lost pile of clothes in the dirt beyond the far side of the table.
Dammit, this was someone's tomb.
This whole underground nightmare was a tomb, but someone was in this cellar when everything came to pass.
Unsettled golden eyes carried the glow of candlelight as he recollected his wits. Lurching through his next breaths, Ed marched around the table and scooped up the clothes. Throwing a pair of ancient, draw-string pants over his arm, Ed picked up the buttoned shirt with generous sleeves and snapped it in the cellar's stale air. The shirt was folded atop the table, followed by the pants, and the hand-stitched, animal hide shoes left behind were dusted off on Ed's slacks. He placed them atop the bundle.
"Sorry, but I need to borrow your cellar for a bit."
In the dead, dusty earth, Ed apologized to the ghosts Dante left behind.
Winry stood with her face in the storming showerhead, letting the water flow as hot as she could take it. She was probably going to steam up the whole building, but the shower felt so relieving it was a little hard to care.
She hadn't tried standing under a shower since she'd gotten back. She missed it. Things could be forgotten for a little while under the shower, in the comforting tone of rushing water, even if she wasn't exactly balanced on both feet.
It was fantastically blissful, until she realized she'd used up all the hot water.
Turning the taps off, Winry wrung out her hair and bumbled her way out of the tub.
Wrapped in a towel, she sat down on top of a blanketed stool Sheska had put in the room for her, took a heavy breath in the warm air, and rolled her left knee inwards. She peeked down at the damage on the outside of her leg.
She'd hardly looked at it. It was on the outside and a little behind, so it was a bit awkward to get a good look at. It might actually be forgettable if it would start letting her hold her bodyweight. The gunshot wounds were almost always wrapped, but she hadn't wanted to have another shower with her leg sticking out of the tub. The wrap came off before she'd gotten in.
What it looked like now was two reddened, ugly craters in her leg that had filled back in with deep, dark scabs. She'd seen a patient once who'd recently had one of his AutoMail anchor points removed and it kind of looked like that, but more crude, like a back alley doctor had done it.
Winry's fingers traced the circular edges of the bullet holes, her heart anxiously rocketting along as she felt the uneven contours of the damaged tissue.
She remembered a lot of moments, but couldn't quite remember the moment this happened anymore. What was left was kind of a blank, replaced with loud static and a lot of indistinguishable noise. She knew Ed was there, but she couldn't quite place anything going on around her, it was drowned out by the unstoppable surge that twisted her whole body down to the ground. At the mercy of a feeling that 'pain' didn't adequately describe, she'd made a desperate attempt to force her voice to communicate how her entire body screamed. The chaos in her head didn't clear until something about the world around her made her very, very aware someone was standing over her…
"Sheska!?" Winry gasped in the thick air, "do you have any big socks?"
"Like stockings?" Sheska called through the wall.
"No, like knee-highs," she didn't want to look at it.
"I got winter ones?"
"That'll do," she didn't want to think about it either.
Winry gave herself something else to focus on: had Sergeant Fuery been by yet? Was there any update from Xenotime? Any news on the boys? How was there still nothing to tell her? Why was she constantly fated to sit around and worry?
Toweling herself off, Winry shook out the plaid nightshirt Sheska had dug out and threw it around her shoulders.
"I have breakfast almost ready!" Sheska sang when she tossed her long winter socks into the room.
Wrapping her hair in a flowery towel, Winry dressed her legs, did up the shirt, collected herself, and waddled into the kitchen.
"Where'd you get this monstrous thing?"
Setting two steaming cups of coffee down on her kitchen table, Sheska laughed at the enormous, button-down shirt hanging off Winry past her knees, "I found it at a thrift store. It looked big and comfy for a lazy Sunday or a long book."
Winry held out her arms and showed off how the thing hung off her body, "I think we could both fit in this."
Giggling, Sheska sauntered back to the frying pan on her stovetop, "Shower help at all?"
Winry shrugged, dropping her arms to her sides and losing her hands to the length of the sleeves. She limped across the kitchen and plunked herself into the kitchen chair, "Sort of. I still have a bit of a headache. I probably shouldn't have overslept like that."
"Some days we all need a good ten hour nap!"
Bowing her head over her coffee to breathe it in, Winry tangled her fingers through the handle and lifted the mug up to her lips. Sitting back before the towel on her head succumbed to gravity, Winry quietly sipped her coffee and eyed the books, mail, fliers, and newspapers occupying Sheska's kitchen table.
She dug out a half-folded newspaper from the mess of things, "Has Sergeant Fuery been by yet?"
"Nope," Sheska glanced over her shoulder, "oh, that's a few days old."
"That's okay," Winry didn't really care, her days were all blurred together by this point, "I haven't been able to read a newspaper in months."
The frying pan in Sheska's hand landed heavily on the stovetop and she flew into the chair across the table from Winry, "So, your kidnappers kept you locked away then?" her fingers tinkered around her waiting coffee, "they didn't let you know anything about what was going on in the outside world?"
Winry laughed awkwardly. It was such fun in her head last night, practically juvenile and childish, but now every way she thought of trying to start a conversation to explain what had happened sounded clunky. Shifting in the chair, Winry tried to find a simple way to frame a response.
"It's… complicated. But, I actually couldn't read the newspaper, it was in a foreign language."
Sheska's voice pitched, "You left the country!?"
"Yeah, I sure did."
"AH. That must have been terrifying," Sheska squealed, rocking in her chair, completely forgetting about the breakfast she'd left cooling on the stove, "did you know where you were? Were you able to communicate with anyone? Did they keep you locked up all the time? Were you a slave? Did you have to do labour?"
"No no no, nothing like that," Winry waved the worries away, "it wasn't like that. I got to see things. I spent most of my time in a city called Munich and they spoke German there."
" Geeerrrrrmin?" Sheska's glasses slid down her nose, her mouth twisting to the side, "What is that? Is it a dialect?"
"It's a language. It's written like English, but with some extra characters that make it completely…"
Winry's words stalled and the air slowly left her lungs, sucked away by the dumbfounded, gaping expression devouring Sheska's face.
"... different," she narrowed her eyes abruptly, "what?"
Placing her hands firmly on the table, rising out of her seat, Sheska leaned towards Winry, "Written like English, you say?"
"... Uh-huh."
Sheska matched Winry's gaze with inquisitive slits, "What extra characters does it use?"
"Some vowels with extra dots up top and a curly looking B that isn't a B at all," Winry answered.
Slowly tilting her head up to the ceiling, her shrinking pupils dancing around excitedly in her eyes, Sheska's jaw creaked open a little wider, "It's a proper language called 'Germin'?"
For the life of her, Winry couldn't make heads nor tails of this absolutely bizarre reaction she was getting, "German, because the country it's spoken in is called Germany."
"GerMAN...ee?" pushing off her arms and standing where she should have been sitting, Sheska dug through every map, atlas, and history book stored in her head, "there's no country called German-ee anywhere."
"That's because it's not on any map here."
Winry watched her words put all the gears in Sheska's head into motion. One after another, each turned, gained momentum, spinning harder, faster, and more wild, and—
A knock on the door startled both girls, freeing Sheska to come completely unscrewed. With a frivolous amount of glee, she bounced on her feet and began backing out of her kitchen.
"Hold that thought!"
"Sheska!" Winry squawked, rising from her chair, "I wasn't abducted by aliens!"
"Keep thinking about Germin!" Sheska raced out of her kitchen, "don't forget about it!"
Half standing in her seat, the hand Winry had reached out for the woman who'd soared away fell limp at her side as the front door was excitedly thrown open.
"I couldn't if I tried."
Winry looked at the cooling breakfast on the stove and debated helping herself to it. Ultimately, she sat down again. Sheska's questions were going to come a mile a minute and she was going to have millions of them with how quickly she would be able to put details together, either correctly or incorrectly. And then she was going to have to mix it in with whatever the news update was from the military, if there even was—
"Winry?"
Her head swung on a pedestal, moved by a voice she hadn't expected to hear. Wide-eyed, Winry turned to see a single young Elric cross the kitchen entry.
Breda had needed a notepad on occasion before, but now he needed to carry around the damn thing all the time. The last thing he needed to do was mis-step on something Hakuro had said. The guy was a nightmare.
The hotel's main floor had stopped pretending it wasn't filled with government resistance that morning and everyone was required to be back in uniform. Hakuro had set up shop in one of the conference rooms downstairs and was organizing people in the lobby. It wasn't like the man needed to be secretive like the brigadier general did, but Breda had a lot of sympathy he felt like he needed to extend to the owners. Those poor folks hadn't signed up for this.
At least Hakuro didn't seem like he intended to stay long. He seemed hell bent on moving in on and staking claim to half a dozen government institutions and he'd spent every daylight hour bringing in people to help orchestrate that. He was infuriating as hell, but he was astoundingly swift, concise, and organized about it.
The man was, unfortunately, good at what he did.
Leaning into a door, Breda let himself into the second floor room that Lt. Colonel Armstrong still occupied, with far fewer visitors, and looked at the man occupying the woeful desk. Stalling in his stride, he watched his superior officer lift his heavy head up and out of his hands, allowing his arms to fall away and fold atop the desk. Breda lightly rattled his fingers off the door, sheepishly making amends for his unannounced intrusion.
"Sorry, Sir."
"What can I do for you, Lieutenant?" Armstrong asked, sounding groggy.
Breda reached back and quietly re-seal the beleaguered aura in the room, "Permission to speak, Sir?"
Taking a slow, composed breath, Armstrong nodded and sat back in the chair, "Of course."
Not entirely sure what he wanted to get across, but realizing he had the urge to say something, Breda started with the one question that needed asking that he didn't want to know, so he could at least get the elephant out of the room.
"We're not getting rid of Hakuro, are we?"
The aura radiating off the wilting tower of Armstrong answered the question before the man shook his head, "No, Lieutenant, I believe we are stuck with him."
"For what it's worth," Breda didn't want to leave that sentiment hanging, "I don't think you made the wrong call."
A weak chuckle reverberated out of the man who'd made an excruciating choice, delivering his words like he couldn't accept them, "I appreciate the sentiment, Lieutenant."
"I mean, really, what were you supposed to do? When did Aisa ever act on her own before? There was no precedent for that," Breda bounced his shoulders effortlessly, trying to buoy some sense of life back into his superior, "we gambled and the dice didn't roll our way."
Pulling the wooden chair away from the front of the desk, the officer spun it around on a single leg, and sat it down on all fours again backwards. Straddling the seat and sitting down, Breda folded his arms over the back of the chair.
"And it was the people Hakuro gave us who got uppity. Things went to hell and they wanted the brigadier general to show his face and reign in the situation. There's only so far you could take the cover story and that's not your fault."
Armstrong's gaze filtered through what remained of paperwork on his desk, the meaningless remnants Hakuro had left for him to sort through, "I can't help but think there was another way, Lieutenant."
"Nah," he wrinkled his nose, "those guys weren't going to answer to you in all that - they wanted 'our leader'. If you hadn't called Hakuro in to be a totalitarian asshole, thump his chest, and woo the masses, we'd have lost the bigger picture," shaking his head lightly, Breda tipped his head up to the ceiling, "Dante and the government would have remained in power. Hakuro gave us the leverage we needed to give folks a fighting chance in Xenotime."
Nodding slowly, though not making it clear if it were for acknowledgement or acceptance, Armstrong hunched forwards. Clasping his hands, he placed them on the centre of the table, "Have you heard anything more out of Xenotime?"
Breda tisked, "Not really. The prime minister's delirious, his 'family' is missing, we have government officials missing, we got people confirmed dead, a mountain is burnt to a crisp, there's top quality alchemist activity reported, Xenotime is in an uproar, and apparently the townsfolk chased everyone from East City out with flaming torches. Not a peep from anyone in our party, though."
Breda finished his summary of things and had to admit that it sounded incredibly bleak.
"Very well," popping his hand apart, Armstrong strummed his fingers atop his papers, trying to put his thoughts together, "the news should be changing shortly, would you do your best to keep a lower profile when rumour begins to spread about the brigadier general's assassination attempt."
"Excuse me?" Breda's brow lurched skywards, "Hakuro's got the key to the city, we gave it to him. Is he actually that petty?"
"It is not coming from him," shaking his head, Armstrong began to resign himself to the inevitable, "scuttlebutt from the government convoy has begun filtering into our channels, identifying 'Roy Mustang' by name, and calling for his arrest. We should be vigilant. General Hakuro has always been vocal about his displeasure that the brigadier general was exonerated for his actions at Fuhrer Bradley's residence. I'm certain he will gladly use this to his strategic advantage."
That news made a bad situation even worse. Breda couldn't imagine a scenario where they could convince Hakuro to not get behind a story like that. The man would not only use it as a strategic advantage, he'd be the one pouring the gasoline.
"Take one thing to heart, Lieutenant."
Breda eyed the lumbering man as his chest began to swell.
"We can find confidence in the reaction that the brigadier general had some significant measure of success on his mission and is alive enough to elicit this level of outrage," Armstrong's mustache curled, masking his grin, "the 'family' is missing, after all."
"Yeah, 'missing'," Breda's grin emerged as he rolled his eyes.
"While they remain missing, we will remain vigilant," Armstrong firmed up his words, "just because they cannot identify her, does not mean Dante is not on that train, inciting outrage."
Nodding and rocking in his chair, there was one more question Breda had been avoiding. Hooking his thumbs around the top knobs on the chair's backing, the officer chewed on his words for a moment before he got them out, "How long's Hakuro known about Dante?"
Armstrong's response was far more clear and direct than he'd been expecting, "I was advised that Hakuro was informed shortly before he chose to step aside. I understand he was given enough details to draw his own conclusions on several matters."
Breda gave a light laugh at the state that put things in, "He might be a disgusting piece of opportunistic shit, but he's human. At least he looks at some of the people in this country like their lives have value. And we know he's got no affiliation with Dante."
"And we must keep ourselves intertwined with him to make sure he remains that way," the senior officer in the room firmly laid the groundwork for their immediate future, though he followed it up with a disappointed shake of his head, "we strive to have a decent man guide the country and are forced to settle for someone far less. It's a sad moment for mankind that we should be thankful he will one day die of old age."
"Baby steps, Boss," swaying out of his chair, Breda rose to his feet. Rotating his chair around on the single leg, he tucked it away at the front of Armstrong's obsolete desk, "Progress is slow."
Armstrong practically shook the walls with a huff of disappointed laughter.
Breda flared out his hands as he backed up to the door, "I got a cousin who's a history teacher, every family dinner gets to hear it from him when politics comes—"
The door popped open, bumping the lieutenant in the back.
Spinning around, Breda gawked at the wide eyed gaze Havoc gave him when his head popped in.
"Hey guys."
"Lieutenant!" his beady eyes widening as far as his solid face would allow, Armstrong rose from his seat.
"Dammit man, don't you knock!?" Breda sputtered.
"Nice to see you too," slipping into the room, Havoc's brow wove and he chomped down on his cigarette, "Hakuro's down there like a goddamn dictator and I nearly got shot for breathing at the door. What the heck happened?"
Alphonse leaned away uneasily.
Sheska leaned in a little more curiously.
And Winry poked her in the arm once more, "They're not going to change colour the closer you get."
Sheska shot upright, "Yeah, but how'd they turn gold!?"
Al's shoulders sagged, "I have no idea."
"But there has to be a scentif–"
Winry and Alphonse quieted Sheska with identical pleading gazes.
Her retreat sent Winry back into a frenzy, "If Ed wasn't with you, then you were by yourself with Dante!?" this was in no way how any scenario played out in her head, "and she didn't hurt you, she didn't melt your brain into alchemy goo, she just talked about Ed and the Gate?"
"Yeah," Al confirmed, "Aisa threw him out of the van before we left Central, Dante didn't get him out of the city. It was just me."
"And you're okay?"
"I'm alright, but—"
"Hold on, what about Ed and a gate?" shuffling on her toes up to the kitchen table, Sheska grew a little frazzled, "Who are Dante and Aisa?"
Winry waved her hands, "It's complicated, just hang on."
"But, Ed is back," Sheska ignored the request, "and you both know Ed is back?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
"Oh. Okay. So, then can one of you tell me—"
"Sheska, please…" Winry reached out and tugged on her sleeve, "we can explain Ed and everything else in a few minutes."
Flaring her nostrils in frustration and pinching lips, Sheska begrudgingly held onto her words.
Winry quickly felt every fiber in her body swell with enough power to go storming into the darkest corners of Central City to find their wayward Elric and drag him back kicking and screaming by his ponytail.
"Why the hell didn't he come back and see us at the hotel!?" her words snapped, "what does Ed think he's doing?"
"I don't know," Al was starting to sound like a broken record, "I have no idea. Nobody's seen him. I don't know what he's thinking, what he's doing, or where he is."
"If he doesn't turn up in a hospital, I'm going to kill him," Winry's gaze zipped down to slits, "that death he keeps avoiding, I'll give it to him."
"Guys, I uh… actually— "
Sheska again collected two pleading gazes and swallowed her words once more.
"Before you kill my brother," Al swung the conversation back to his objectives, "I need to know if you can remember what happened when you were with him at the Gate. Were you awake for that?"
"I sure was!"
"Good!" practically bouncing on his backside, Al eagerly dug into Winry's memory, "The Gate was blocking him from getting home, so he would have needed to do some kind of transmutation while you were there. Do you remember what he did?"
"Yeah, he—"
There were a lot of memories she would like to forget and just as many she wished she would stop having nightmares about, but her time with Ed at the Gate that had grown the most hazy. Not like it was being forgotten or that it was fading like a dream, but that it was starting to get lost in a fog. It was still there and it was clear if she thought hard enough and swept the clouds away. Somehow, the entire event felt distinct from all the other memories, like it had been stored somewhere else and didn't quite connect to the events around it.
Winry cleared the fog and paled at her memories, remembering how she'd grabbed Ed to try and stop him from doing something.
She just didn't know what that something was.
"He said he needed to make the doors appear. They weren't there. It was just us and thousands of purple eyes," Winry put a hand on her chest and her fingers gathered the fabric until she filled her hand with the oversized shirt. She winced, "I asked Ed what we were going to do. He thought about it for a bit, then he got that look in his eye he gets when he has an idea, and he unbuttoned his shirt…"
Winry's eyes swept away, pulled from the walk-through when Al's small hands reached across the table and clasped around her wrists. Eyeing the yellowed discoloration of bruises littering both his wrists, her lips tightened. Picking her head up, Winry stared at the strong, brilliant golden eyes of the younger brother trying to shoulder a siege of concerns all on his own.
"He put a transmutation circle on himself?" Al asked like he already knew the answer.
"He did," she answered softly.
Sitting back, Al withheld whatever sentiments he had wanted to use to describe how he felt about that and soldiered on with his questions, "Do you remember what the transmutation circle looked like?"
Winry nodded, "It was easy, actually. It was a star - the five point star that kids draw in the sand. He put a circle around it and positioned it so it was a single point going down. He said that it would go against the natural flow and connect the 'there to here' and 'here to there'."
Alphonse took a moment to assess his brother's tactics, "Yup, more or less that's exactly what it'll do, but it's not enough," he returned his focus to Winry, "there was a condition he had to meet with the Gate in order to get home, did he say anything that might have dealt with that?"
"No," Winry continued to confirm things Al hadn't wanted to hear, "he did do something, I know that, but he wouldn't tell me what."
"Winry," the tone of Al's voice was a muddied mixture of frustration and concern, "whatever he's done has given him some kind of link back to the Gate. I don't know what it is, he hasn't told any of us, and it looks like he's been deliberately trying to keep us from finding out. I don't know what his relationship with the Gate implies. What does it mean for his life and his future? Why did he keep it from us? What else is he hiding from us? I put you guys there and I…"
Al's head shook lightly, like he was trying to sift out something from the mess in his head to reveal any kind of answer.
"I don't know if he came home okay."
At any other moment, with any other context, given that it was Ed and he continued to do absolutely stupid things with alchemy, Winry would have shared the despair in Al's voice. But, she actually thought some of the worries flooding him weren't entirely warranted. She had to question why, because Ed didn't exactly leave himself any room to trust in what he was doing, and she found herself combing through his words to her at the Gate.
"'I know what I can do to get us home'," Winry breathed life into a statement, reviving Edward's words for his younger brother to hear, "'Whatever you're afraid of isn't going to happen'. That's what he said before I let him do whatever he did to take us home."
In the middle of all the other unanswerable questions the older brother had left out for them to chase around, while there was every reason to doubt his current actions, Winry had faith in Ed's actions at the Gate. And she realized she'd been told why.
"Ed wanted to come home. He wanted to be with you and he wanted to take me home. And he wanted to…" Winry paused, standing in her memory at the Gate and listened to his words again, "Ed wanted to get on with his life. He wanted to try and live - he wasn't doing that there. When we were at the Gate, when I stopped him, he talked like he'd actually thought about his own future. Not mine, not yours, his. There was something more he wanted out of his life."
Ed rarely talked about his own future. He talked about objectives and goals. Research and get Al's body back. Research and build a rocket. Research and get home. He never talked about what he wanted to do after. Winry didn't know if it was because he was afraid to want something more and risk losing it or if he honestly didn't know what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. What she heard at the Gate though, was Ed putting his voice into at least wanting something more - something beyond everything that was trapping him.
"I don't understand what's going on with him now or why he's ducking us, but what he did at the Gate was something to get him home, so he could be here for you and start living."
Easing out of the anxious tension that was trying to lock him up, Al wrung his hands together, tying his fingers into knots while he organized and digested Winry's words, "I wish I knew where he was."
"I know where he is!"
The conversation between Al and Winry tripped and together they came to a crashing halt. Their heads snapped to the woman standing at the front of the room.
Sheska's hands danced around her stomach nervously, like she wasn't sure where to begin answering the interrogative gazes of the two people who were finally listening to her.
"Well, not anymore, he left a couple days ago."
The expressions on the Resembool pair seated in the room flashed away, leaving blank slates. In a suite stuffed so full it carried no echo, Alphonse and Winry's voices echoed each other.
"What!?"
Sheska put her hands firmly on her hips, "Can one of you tell me how he's twenty-two?"
The rhythmic tap, tap, tap, of the pen dangling in Hakuro's clasped hands overpowered the march of time ticking from the wall clock. He commanded time with the same authority he used to command his troops: firmly, obediently, and without hesitation. Under perfect control.
Hakuro treated his seat at the fold-out table near the curtain-sealed window like he was already in control of the desk in Fuhrer's office. The elder man drilled his steeled gaze into Havoc sitting alone on a chair in the middle of the floor, locked in the small meeting room. He commanded a response.
"At the time I left," Havoc continued to hold his ground against the man's accosting presence, "Brigadier General Mustang was incapacitated due to red water poisoning. Major Hawkeye has been overseeing affairs in East City."
Tap, tap, tap. His head held high, posture firm, Hakuro's sentiments buzzed like warning shots, "Red water poisoning is known to be quite lethal."
"Fortunately," Havoc steered Hakuro's thoughts down another track, refusing to let him relish in the thought of Mustang's incapacitation, "the toxins were airborne, rather than in liquid form, so there has been time to address treatment in East City."
A hum vibrating in Hakuro's chest rumbled in the air. Tap, tap, tap, "Even so, without the speed of rail transport, that's a lengthy drive to leave a man to suffer through."
Havoc debated if the man was in any way considering Mustang's plight or actually enjoying the idea of him suffering, "Remaining in Xenotime for any reason wasn't an option."
Unexpectedly nodding like he agreed, Hakuro let up on his merciless pen tapping and looked around the room almost playfully. His nod continued, like it advanced his thoughts, until he finally resumed his visual stranglehold of one of Mustang's most trusted subordinates.
"Then, you didn't get her?"
Havoc's jaw creaked, "No."
Parting his hands, the pen Hakuro held clattered onto the tabletop. Firmly gripping the arms of his seat, the chair legs scratched along the floor like nails clawing through wood, and he rose to his feet. The heels of his boots landing with dull thuds on the floor, Hakuro circled his desk and approached his guest.
"So, I am here managing not only this aggressive take-over of the controlling facilities in Central City AND made to deal with the return and suppression of the incumbent government, while Mustang couldn't even do everyone the courtesy of ridding us all of the fairytale goblin lurking in our midst?"
"Sir," Havoc responded firmly, "the intention in Xenotime was never to engage Dante, it was to retrieve an innocent third party."
Hakuro stopped his approach when the tips of his boots tapped Havoc's feet. He towered over the seated officer, "Someone who found themselves in a similar position to Miss Rockbell, then?"
Havoc refused to flinch, "The threat Dante posed to the victim's wellbeing had the potential to exceed Miss Rockbell's circumstances."
"I see," the light nod of his head resumed, slowly fading. Folding his arms, Hakuro lifted his chin high, and looked down the length of his nose at the officer beneath him, "The prime minister has been reported to be in some kind of deteriorating psychological state and his daughters and family aide are presumed dead - though I'm confident there is an off-the-record account of their wellbeing. When what's left of a functional government and their convoy's locomotive rolls in later this evening, their arrival will throw everything here into further unrest, because then, I assume, they will have access to their own podium to proclaim that Brigadier General Mustang is the terrorist leader behind the assassination attempt and subsequent events in Xenotime."
Stiffening beneath his interrogator, Havoc glared up at the man lording his presence over him, "I assure you, Sir, it is a false accusation."
"False or not, I can't defend him," Hakuro tipped his head, thrust his arms behind his back, and barked, "there's an entourage of people now under my command who had no idea he'd left them. Loyal people who had no clue what their situation was until he was needed as a voice they could rally behind, only to discover he was nowhere to be found when your security failed."
Havoc's voice began to rise, "There was no precedent for us to suspect Dante had assets in Central available to come at us from within. Entertaining these accusations will be enabling her—"
"She's already enabled! The damage is done!" the senior officer's words thundered in the room, "and Mustang is still not here. Quite frankly, it's too late for him to show up. So, enabled is our enemy to divide what we are, and those who remain standing will answer to me." The corner of his mouth flinched, tweaking to nearly reveal a smirk, before Hakuro turned on his toes and began to pace his chamber once more, "If your objective is to topple the goblin's government, then Mustang has relinquished his command in favour of whatever bullshit transpired out east. No one will rally behind a perceived terrorist who is believed to have attempted to violently depose the incumbant, Lieutenant Havoc."
"And you, Sir, are aware that's not what happened," desperately fighting to maintain his composure against a man he'd have to answer to one day, Havoc looked around at his options and acknowledged he was out of usable leverage, "you have the power to set the records straight."
Hakuro turned his nose up at the plea, "I am aware of yours and Lt. Colonel Armstrong's accounts, but the account we should be endearing ourselves to is the story we've all begun hearing through the grapevine, and that grapevine is poised to feed the public en masse. The papers. The radios. On what grounds do I have to counter these mouthpieces? The words of two men?"
The footfalls of the general's boots found the rhythm of the seconds marching from the clock.
Hakuro threw his arms out to his sides, "What cover story do I offer our brave Brigadier General? That he got sick and went to East City for treatment he couldn't receive in Central? Or do you have an appropriate way of disseminating Dante for the public to digest to win favour? I struggle to quantify this story of Dante. I can't imagine how you would begin to convince a layman about the tale," a dismissive laugh bounced through his chest as his arms locked behind his back again, "standing by Mustang runs the risk that I will be construed as a supporter of anarchy. Considering the exhaustion, pressure, and strain the people of the country have been under the last year, no one will get behind that," raising his hands, Hakuro firmly slapped the back of a stiff hand into his opened palm, "people want order, stability, and safety right now, condemnation of rueful actions are what they want to hear, and I will happily sing that lullaby to them like I would my own children."
Havoc's hands gripped his knees like claws as he endured what could only be a rehearsal of speeches to come.
Hakuro firmly slapped his hand into his palm once more, then threw his hands away, swinging his arms behind his back. His nostril's flaring with a deep breath, the elder man's chest swelled, "If the ultimate goal of this disaster is to strip this 'corrupt government' of its power, I can do that, but not by defending a violent terrorist. I need the people of this country to believe, undoubtedly, that I am here for them."
There was nothing Havoc could offer the situation that didn't require mountains of exposition and explanation - things the officer himself wasn't certain he fully understood, but he trusted his companions and stood by them. It wasn't like Hakuro was wrong in a few instances either, it was simply unfortunate circumstances they could do nothing about.
"On behalf of this insurgent military faction, I will issue a condemnation to the press later tonight for release with the paper tomorrow morning, denouncing the actions in Xenotime and shed affiliations with those involved," Hakuro's tone dipped, falling low, but remaining above a whisper, "if you have any way of reaching your compatriots in East City, Mr. Havoc, tell them to prepare to stay out of sight for the next while, there will be a bounty involved."
Havoc shot up from his chair and stepped forwards, "You don't have the authority to issue a bounty!"
"I certainly can't issue an arrest warrant, yet. Actions will speak louder than hollow words, so I'll put my money where my mouth is," deciding to take no issue with Havoc's outburst, Hakuro let a grin full of wicked satisfaction curl into the corners of his mouth in response, "Mustang sat on his hands while loitering on the doorstep of Central, now he can sit in a kennel of his choosing until I decide to let him out."
Literally having to bite his lower lip to keep from spouting off a series of choice words for the smug reaction, Havoc decided he would rather let himself out of the room than engage with Hakuro any further.
"I offer you this piece of advice, Mr. Havoc," Hakuro bellowed as his guest turned to leave, "have yourself a seat on the next available train that manages to go east, your affiliations will no longer gain you favour with anyone here."
Taking the cigarette out of his mouth, Havoc flicked it high in the air above his head, and slammed the door before it landed on the floor.
"This list doesn't make sense."
The single loose sheet Alphonse held out in front of his nose teased him - it challenged him - to this 'alchemy puzzle' his brother had diligently worked on solving. Names of alchemists, some long deceased, might contain the key that revealed Ed's decisions to wait out the events in Xenotime and avoid making contact with anyone in Central. It was the only clue left behind that he couldn't burn - because Sheska had it in her head.
"They're all academic alchemists, except my brother didn't seem to know the details on who any of them actually were," tucked away in the living room, Al slumped into the seat cushions next to Winry. Flicking the page in his hand, his eyes traced through the lines down to the last name, "And a business owner, who has nothing to do with alchemy, but Sheska says she'd seen this man's name in military payment records."
The volume of information Sheska had provided through the day came just shy of overwhelming. His nerves threatened to fray if he spent too long looking at the enormity of it, so he had to break it down into smaller bits to navigate. But, the mountain of questions Al was accumulating continued to grow far faster than any answers came.
Released from his grip, the sheet of paper swept down to his lap and he dropped his head back into the seat cushions, "How do these people relate to that pile of 'alchemy stuff'?"
"At least we know he only wanted folks in Central City," it was the only consolation Winry could find, "that should mean he's not screwing around out of town."
Al stared at the ceiling, slouching in his seat, and voiced a sentiment he already knew the response to, "I need to go out and find these people."
"Not tonight you're not," Winry spoke like she had the power to stop him, "the streets are already a mess and that government train isn't even here yet. It's better to wait for the morning."
Testing how deeply he could sink into Sheska's sofa, Al clenched his eyes and stretched his legs out. Tracing the tips of his toes through the grooves of the hardwood floor he breathed in the aroma of dinner Sheska had started preparing, "Dante set up Central City to boil over when she gave up control – this whole mess, every bit of it, she's responsible for. We try to get ahead and still end up playing catch-up with her."
"Worrying about that isn't going to help us right now," Winry voiced a sentiment easier said than done, before perking up with an idea, "maybe we need to take a page out of Ed's book. Write everything down. Get a notepad from Sheska and start compiling everything, maybe you'll see something in the words."
"Maybe…" Al mumbled.
The suggestion just wasn't enough to quell the hungry beast of frustration eating away at him from within. Stretching his arms out in front of his body, Al tensed and turned his stiff hands inwards, settling his gaze in his palms. His lowered voice went hoarse as he tried to keep his words from leaving the room.
"Winry, he clapped his hands and touched Sheska, that's dangerous. How much control does he have if he's confident he's not going to hurt her," the younger Elric couldn't get past how absolutely baffling his older brother's actions were every time Sheska revealed something more, "why did he let Wrath see the Gate and then used Sheska like he was trying to make sure she wouldn't? What trade did he make with the Gate that allows this?"
Winry's brow stitched together, "Al."
"What's he capable of? Why's he doing this on his own? Is he going to hurt himself? What happens if Dante gets a hold of him?"
"Al stop."
"What if he can damage the flow of both worlds? Why's he-"
Shoving an arm into the cushions to reach across Al's back and take a firm grip on his shoulder, Winry gave him a shake to snap him out of the onslaught of concerns.
"Stop."
Alphonse's vocabulary crumbled away, uncertain how to put together the smorgasbord of worries and laments that had been brewing inside of him into a coherent sentiment. Worrying about what Dante was up to was one thing, but worrying about his brother was a whole other beast.
"Do you believe your brother has lied to you about the Gate?"
Yes. Yes, he did believe his brother had lied about the Gate and he didn't know why. It was an awful, lonely feeling that left Al with unfocussed anger and frustration the more time he was given to think about it and the more information he learned. He wanted to believe there was a good reason, he wanted to trust there was something more going on, but he still couldn't see what his brother's actions were leading towards.
Fighting to ease the tension tying him up in knots, Al put his head down on Winry's shoulder and felt her hand tighten around on his arm.
"I wish we could go home," he pouted.
Winry nearly laughed at a sentiment that rang all too true for her. Bringing her socked feet up, Winry caught her heels on the edge of the coffee table and nestled into the sofa with Al, "And I wish my leg was better so I could help more. I hate feeling this useless."
Al had two perfectly good legs and still felt useless.
He used to be so familiar with what was going on inside his brother's head and, even when he was unsure, there was some kind of gut feeling to go on. He felt a tingle of pride every time he'd call his brother out on his behaviour even before he did anything. He knew; Ed was his big brother and Al knew him. Every way he was turning lately he struggled to find that person he knew and Al couldn't digest how alienated he felt.
"What do you honestly know about his journey over these past few years?"
Dante's words were meant to torment his youthful self. They were meant to pick away at the invisible scabs growing on him in her misunderstanding of reality. But it wasn't Al's memory that had become her weapon.
"What has he told you, what has anyone told you, that gives you confidence to judge his character so innocently, when you're completely unable to relate to what he's experienced?"
Well? What did he know about his grown-up brother roaming Central?
He'd lived beyond the Gate. He lived in a world without family, friends, or the comfort of alchemy. They'd talked about some things and it sounded like his brother had really struggled with adapting to a normal kind of life. He was forced to learn how to wake up every morning without his younger brother. He'd had no choice but to come to terms with the state of his body. He lived most of his everydays surrounded by strangers who only knew the stories he'd made up, but nothing about who he really was.
Ed had lived in large cities, he travelled to other countries, he'd made enough peace with their dad that he lived with him, he ate up the other world's defunct alchemy, he also studied the other sciences to try and find a way home.
He was blending in. He worked an ordinary job and dressed the part, living a basic life he didn't want. Even if Ed was unhappy beyond the Gate, objectively his circumstances seemed straightforward, even after Winry showed up. The only significant events Al could think of that stood out was their dad's death and… an asterisk.
"Winry, can I ask a question?"
"Mmhm?"
Al lifted his eyes to stare at Winry's feet perched on the edge of the coffee table, listening to the memory of laughter after his brother's stitches had been removed, knowing that under the cover of borrowed socks was the reason she still struggled to get from one place to another.
"What happened before you came home?"
The tension Winry emitted at the question tried to tangle the air around them into knots right along with her.
It was odd that neither one of them had ever brought it up, it was hardly even acknowledged. His brother just picked Winry up, carried her around, and seemed genuinely concerned about her, but never brought up why the situation existed in the first place. Maybe Alphonse could write off an event on Ed's tendency to bottle up things that bothered him, but Winry doing that too didn't seem right.
"We've never talked about it. I don't know why my brother was banged up and I don't know who shot you."
"Oh…"
There was a very uncomfortable emptiness in that monotone sound that made Al anxious about having asked.
"It was this guy named Rudolf."
The detached, matter-of-fact way the information was delivered was overshadowed by the déjà vu that visited Al. His brows landed firmly atop his eyes; he'd heard that odd name before. He'd heard her statement before. There was a memory of the name and it came in Winry's voice. Al wracked his brain, where had he heard—
"Hess," his eyes cleared.
"Yeah, him."
It was a tiny story amongst all the others that sounded like such fun when Winry had begun the tale. Now, Al sat on the memory of her hotel bed and replayed the story of a nice evening for his brother's birthday that fell to pieces in her eyes for no reason he'd understood at the time.
He peeked in at her to see if he could find Winry's expression behind the hair that fell past her face.
"Why?"
Feeling her arm slip out from behind his back, Al followed her hands up to her ears. Her shoulders shook with a deep breath and Winry's fingers swept the long stretches of hair at her cheeks behind her ears. She turned to Al, releasing his heart to the pit of his stomach at the forced smile she offered, burdened by more damage than her leg. Alphonse collected her hand and held it tight with both of his, hoping for her to squeeze back. Eventually, she did. Patiently waiting, he watched Winry collect enough of herself to string words together, and Al held on as she began to spin the room with a terrible tale he'd asked her to share with him that night.
To Be Continued...
Author's Note:
Poor Al getting a massive info dump. I tried to structure it in a way that it wasn't a recap chapter... Al just had to learn things.
I didn't write the orchestra birthday with any intention of using it for trauma later, it was just supposed to be a cute adventure (then again, I didn't plan on waiting so long to finish the story LOL). The outing was deliberately set up by Envy!Hess to get them out of the house, but the fact it was enjoyable was entirely their own doing. Ed was a miserable bugger beyond the Gate and this was one of the few times he put effort into maintaining a good mood and being good company. If they reminisce, the memory is a positive one. It's one of the few misadventures Ed won't write off as otherworld things he'd rather forget. But, it's entirely ruined the moment they put it into context :( (which hurts me, I enjoyed that bit).
Speaking of Ed and Winry's European misadventures, I found some ancient art on an old external which had the concept art for their costume outfits for Patricia's grandfather's party. I gave the London adventure some art life during my Christmas break and they're on my tumblr (weatheringtea)
Next chapter is Feb 6. Stuff starts to happen!