This chapter was really hard to right, but I guess it's okay.
I'm hungry.
"Your proposition isn't new," Andre Berger the Second said, his eyes distant as he processed what Alphonse had asked. "Many before have also wondered this."
"So… what do you think?" Alphonse asked, trying and failing not to seem too eager.
Berger thought for a moment.
"My father followed in his father's shadow and has his own theory on the nature of viruses, one that I am inclined to agree with - though he and I are… conflicted towards publishing it. As promising as it may sound to an experienced virologist or even bio-alchemist, alchemists of other fields and physicians may find it… well, I suppose they would call it superstitious nonsense."
"Try me," Alphonse said.
They were standing outside the door to the infirmary while Edward received his morning treatment. The bismuth syrup had done its job well, keeping Edward asleep throughout the night. Preferring to be safe than sorry, Al had convinced his brother to take a second dose before leaving Riza's apartment, in case today's injection caused similar side effects.
Berger glanced back and forth, as if expecting to be overheard by some nefarious eavesdropper. The action was so blatant and serious that it took Alphonse considerable effort not to laugh.
All humor was forgotten with the doctor's next words.
"Soul alchemy."
Al jolted, jerking his armor so violently that he almost fell over and exposed the reason for his shock.
"What?! I mean - what about it?"
"My father and I believe that the transmission of viruses may be a kind of soul alchemy - maybe not as literal as the old wives' tale of possession, but still a form of… stolen control. As if, by itself, it lacks something, something essential for living that it can't create for itself but is able to commandeer from others - hence its nature to infect preexisting cells."
"Mind, body, and soul," Alphonse said, naming off the alchemical components of life. "The virus has a soul, but no body. So it puts its soul into a body - or a cell, at least - and that's how it infects. Maybe its trying to make a mind or maybe its the mind that puts the soul into the cell. Kind of like how babies are made by the combination of a sperm and an ovum."
Berger listened to this explanation in the boy's ringing, youthful voice and realized that this child, so he claimed to be, was more intelligent, more intuitive than most aged adults he'd met. He had to give himself time to think about what Alphonse had said, time that Al gladly gave him.
"That is… exactly what the theory suggests," he said after a while, not bothering to pretend to be unimpressed. "I am surprised you are so familiar with the concept of soul alchemy - not just because you are young, but because most people, alchemists and otherwise, believe soul alchemy to be fundamentally impossible."
It was Alphonse's turn to look to and fro in search of eavesdroppers.
"If I tell you why I know so much about soul alchemy, do you promise not to tell anyone? I mean no one. If anyone finds out about this…"
Berger's expression turned lethally serious.
"I may tell my father, but neither of us would tell anyone. We would rather cut out our tongues."
Alphonse knew he wasn't being metaphorical.
"I'm telling you this because I want you to help me - help us. Please."
"Equivalent exchange. I would expect nothing less."
This man really was an alchemist, Alphonse thought, as he braced himself, raised his arms to bring his gauntlets to his helmet, and literally took off his head.
XXX
Edward's stomach was a mess of swollen lumps, the newer ones considerably larger than the old ones.
Edward was a mess of shaking and sweat and silent tears.
He was quicker to cover than he had been when the treatment first started, but the procedure still hurt and the memories it conjured hurt just as much. Roy simply held him, making no comment on the stickiness of the boy's skin or the coughing, gasping breaths he took as he worked on calming himself.
There was one thing, however, that he could not not comment on.
"Fullmetal, when we get to the house, you are taking a bath. You reek."
Roy expected a protest, but Edward seemed to relax at the sound of a hot bath, sighing and nuzzling into Mustang's shoulder.
"A bubble bath. With flowers and cucumber slices."
Ed snorted but didn't protest the idea.
"And rubber ducks and a little toy boat."
That earned him a giggle.
"And a mud mask."
"Who puts mud in'a bath?" Edward mumbled, his curiosity getting the better of his amusement.
Roy wasn't expecting the question, nor was he expecting to consider his answer so carefully.
"I… I don't know. I've been told it's good for your complexion."
"Then you should get th' mud."
It took Roy a second to realize what Ed meant. When he did, he laughed and tousled Ed's hair.
"I walked right into that. How are you feeling on food?"
Ed made a sound of non-commitment.
"Not hungry."
"How about you at least eat a muffin and drink some tea and I'll make good on that bubble bath?"
Edward considered this.
"One duck. And it has to be smiling."
"Bubbles and a duck. You got yourself a deal. Come on, hop up."
With a bit of shrugging and help from a Hawkeye who was eager to get to the office and receive the damage report on the time she'd been gone ("Really, Lieutenant, you're being overbearing. I got a third of my paperwork done and Breda only took three lunch breaks. And Havoc only set one waste basket on fire!"), Edward's arms were wrapped around the colonel's neck while the colonel's arms were hooked under his legs, the post-op ice pack turning the middle or Roy's back into a patch of permafrost.
Berger accosted them so suddenly and so vigorously that Roy nearly dropped Edward. Riza reached out to grab him and Ed himself let out a squeal of indignation. Berger, realizing his misstep, had the decency to look ashamed and stepped away, dipping his head in respect and apology.
"My apologies. I have been eagerly waiting for you. I have a request for the Fullmetal Alchemist."
Roy glanced over his shoulder at the boy clinging to his back.
"Well, here he is, though I don't know that he's currently in a position to be accepting requests."
Andre Berger raised his eyes above Mustang's head to the smaller head poking up above it.
"I beg you to share your knowledge of soul alchemy with me."
Riza's hand when straight to her gun.
Roy's, while somewhat preoccupied, reached for the gloves in his pocket.
Edward's grip on him tightened enough to be painful.
"It's okay," Alphonse said, stepping in front of Berger before he ended up shot or burned. "He wants to help us. He thinks that viruses like rabies might work like soul alchemy."
"And?" Roy said, not moving his hand away from his pocket.
"If life forces can be transferred from one container to another, why not information?" Berger said, completely unconcerned by the threatened danger. "Links of gene chains pertaining to the formation of structures of organs, limbs… even whole bodies!"
Edward heard the promise and all but vaulted himself off and over the colonel. Roy grunted at the sudden shift in weight.
"Fullmetal -"
"Really?!"
Berger smiled - a real smile, not a forced gesture meant to appeal.
"We won't know unless we try."
Ed brightened like a child waking up on the first day of summer vacation, then wilted when he realized what fulfilling this request would entail. He looked to his brother, as if asking for permission.
"He knows, Brother. He won't tell."
Edward looked away and studied nothing, then looked back at Berger with new determination.
"Not now. Later. I have to eat food so Mustang will give me bubbles."
Berger's expression was one of both extreme gratitude and extreme confusion.
Alphonse's was similar, which was a testament to his confusion because he did not have an expression.
Roy was too busy trying to hide his blush to give an explanation.
XXX
Edward could have added the grin, but it was easier to stretch a preexisting mouth than make his own.
Bubbles were just soap and like soap, rubber was made an organic material, meaning it was made of mostly carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with the occasional nitrogen and phosphorus. It wasn't hard to make more latex when he used up the rubber in the duck.
This, he thought, his fingers pruny from the water, which had since gone cold, is much better than some lame old duck.
He pulled the plug out of the drain and climbed out of the tub with some difficulty - he wasn't as sore as he had been, but full-body movements still hurt and he had to keep the maneuver slow to avoid pulling at the welts anymore than was needed. Roy had offered to help him - an offer that Edward had vehemently refused.
"Just put me on the floor," he'd said. "I can get undressed and in by myself."
"Are you sure, Fullmetal? It's not like it's anything I've seen before -"
"No, bastard! Shut up already!"
Then Roy had "accidentally" dropped him onto the tile of the bathroom so he could turn on the tap and fill the tub.
Edward had been surprised to find that they did not need to stop at a store to get the bubble solution and the rubber duck. Roy said that he kept them in storage in case the Hugheses ever came by with their daughter. Edward thought about pointing out that baby Elicia, who was no more than two months old, would be tiny and pink and not at all interested in bubbles beyond her own spit or rubber ducks beyond putting them in her mouth, but decided not to.
As Riza had told him that morning, one could never have enough blackmail in the military.
"You look like you're feeling a lot better, Brother," Alphonse said when Edward came out of the steam-fill bathroom, his hair wet and his clothes fresh from the laundry. "Maybe the flood is going down. You don't need the sand bags anymore."
Edward shrugged, not willing to test fate by either confirming or negating Al's analogy.
"Look at this, Al!" he said instead, showing the creation he'd made from soap and rubber.
Alphonse didn't react immediately. When he did, it was to lean down to get a closer look at the model in his brother's hands.
"Is that -"
"It's a griffin! It's half duck, half lion! Isn't it badass?"
"What are you two talking about - Fullmetal, what on earth?!"
"It's a griffin," Ed repeated, shoving the rearing rubber creature that now had a pair of bracing hind legs and rearing talons, an elongated tail and a sharpened, tapered beak.
Against his better judgment, Roy accepted it, taking the rubber monster out of Ed's hands and even going so far as to give it an experimental squeeze. Edward had left the whistle open, so air burst from the griffin in a high-pitched shriek the same as it had when it had been a simple duck.
"I… huh. That's… this is interesting, Fullmetal, but why exactly would you do this?"
Alphonse's helmet swiveled fast enough to make a sound similar to the griffin.
"Colonel! You can't ask Brother why he does something! It'll break your brain!"
But it was too late.
Edward's eyes turned inward, contemplating the purpose of his actions and by proxy the purpose of the universe itself.
"I did it… to spite the gods."
Roy looked upon the griffin with a new light.
"This is indeed spiteful, Fullmetal. I would consider the gods spited."
XXX
"Put this on my desk when you get back to the office, Lieutenant," Roy said, handing Riza the griffin in exchange for that day's paperwork. Riza accepted it unhesitatingly, then realized what exactly she'd been given.
"Sir, excuse my brashness, but… what?"
"Fullmetal made it for me. It's a nifty new paperweight."
Hayate, whom Hawkeye had taken with her on her errand for his walk to kill two birds with one stone, had other ideas. He wagged his tail excitedly, jumping up onto his hind legs and snapping his jaws, his black eyes round with pleading. Riza frowned at this display of poor self-discipline.
"No, Hayate. Down."
Hayate whined but obeyed, dropping onto the porch and drooping his ears in disappointment.
Roy sighed. If the dog was trying to break Mustang's heart, it was working.
"On second thought, Lieutenant, I have enough paperweights."
Hawkeye left Roy's house with her hands empty and her dog growling appreciatively, the griffin in his jaws squeaking with fervor.
XXX
It was not the first time Edward had told this story.
Just like every time he did, Ed readied himself and told himself he could do this.
Just like every time, he proved himself wrong.
Berger was silent, staring at the cup of tea Mustang had given him and a deep frown curving his beard. They were in the living room, Edward on the couch with a blanket over his legs and Berger in the armchair across from him.
Edward waited, braced for the accusations or the admonishments, or even for the man to just get up and leave.
"My father was correct."
Edward looked up with a start.
"What?"
"It is possible to transfer information with alchemy," Berger elaborated, looking up from his tea. Looking at him directly, Ed could see that his frown was one of deep thought, not disapproval. "My father's theory is correct. However, the price, the energy needed for transferring such a small amount…" Berger shook his head. "What could these creatures possibly be sacrificing?"
"You're not mad?"
Now Berger's frown was for a different reason.
"Why on earth would I be mad?"
"Because I… what I did was wrong."
Edward's left hand had wandered to his right arm, as it always did when he thought about that night in his father's cellar. Without the bandages covering the stitches, the bits of black thread pushed out from his skin as his hand curled into a fist around his automail.
"And no one else has? My boy, most of the greatest discoveries of humanity were made through mistakes, whether they were missteps in the process or in the morality of the process itself."
"That doesn't make it okay," Ed mumbled, pulling his chin into his chest.
"No, it doesn't. But we rarely choose how these discoveries are made. All we can do is try our best to further understanding with as little sin as we can. Completely avoiding a breach of ethics will never be possible. My grandfather was often criticized for his studies into rabies since in order to conduct them, he had to purposefully infect animals to create specimens. Many called him a devil for it. Perhaps they were right. Only a devil could take a starving pup off the street only to doom it to a nightmarish death - and he did so several times," Berger confirmed when Ed looked up in horror. "Dogs were his preferred samples because dogs are the most common reason for human deaths from the virus. The man in him knew it was wrong, but the devil in him made him able to do it so the man in him could be the doctor he became. Your devil may have shown itself, but it is the person you are that justifies its existence."
Edward shook his head, not understanding.
"Wrong things are wrong, no matter what."
Berger hummed.
"Perhaps you will understand when you are older."
Edward bristled. He held a particular hatred for those words.
"I can understand it now. I just don't want to."
Berger's laugh was a rough sound, but it was homely. For some reason, that made Edward angrier.
"The stubbornness of youth is an invaluable resource. Hold on to that for as long as you can."
There were silent for a while. Berger took a sip of his cooling tea and Edward listened to the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock.
"We didn't discover anything," Edward said, returning to his self-deprecating argument. "Mom stayed dead. I lost my arm and leg. Alphonse lost everything."
"But you gained an immeasurable amount of knowledge. You're bargain wasn't fruitless, even if you were not given the fruit you came for."
"So I can do some complicated transmutations without a circle. So what? I mean, I don't really care about my limbs - I just got new ones. But Alphonse can't get a new body, as far as I know. I don't know what he learned from the Truth, but I'm sure it wasn't worth his whole being. What's the point of gaining knowledge if you're not there to know it?"
"But your brother does know it. He may not know it in the way you know yours, but he is here and so is the knowledge he gained. It does not change the greatness of his loss, but there is some goodness to it that should not be discounted. Besides, having the knowledge gives him the ability of passing it on to others. The chance to teach and to learn is a gift in and of itself."
Edward scoffed, determined not to give in to Berger's positivity.
"You make it sound like a disease."
Andre Berger stiffened, his eyes bulging out of his head. The change in posture happened so suddenly and sustained for so long that Edward began to wonder if the man had had a heart attack and died in the middle of the conversation.
Edward very nearly had one when Berger swept him up and spun him around.
XXX
Alphonse knew Edward did not like talking about the taboo, and when did, he did not like any more listeners than was necessary, even if those listeners were already familiar with what had happened. Al had occupied himself with using the leftover bubble and a pair of the colonel's old shoes to make a rubber dragon to go with his brother's rubber griffin - for Hayate, he told himself, and not because he had been genuinely inspired by his brother's antics.
All thoughts of dragons vanished from his mind when he heard his brother scream.
Al barreled out of the the colonel's study where he'd been working at the same time Mustang through open the door to his bedroom, his hair mussed from the "paperwork" he'd been doing. They nearly ran into each other and had to stop and perform an awkward bit of maneuvering to let themselves out.
Neither of them knew what to do with the sight that met them.
A bewildered Edward was being danced around the living room by a surprisingly agile Andre Berger the Second.
"My boy, my brilliant boy, you've done it!"
Edward looked like he had no idea what the man was talking about and was too scared to ask.
When Berger saw Mustang and Alphonse watching him with varying expressions of alarm, he quickly set a dizzy Edward onto the floor and snatched Al's gauntlet, shaking it so violently that Alphonse thought he might be trying to pull the leather off.
"Good sir, you've solved the puzzle that has plagued mankind since its birth! Today is the day that the study of life enters a new age!"
Roy was glancing between Berger and Alphonse, trying to decide if he should intervene. Alphonse was glancing between Roy and Berger, trying to decide if he should ask for intervention.
"Um… thank you, sir, but… I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
Berger slapped Al's metal shoulder with a painful sounding bang. If it hurt, he showed no sign of it.
"My boy, you are a virus!"
Roy sent a questioning glare Edward's way, wondering what Fullmetal had done to break Berger's mind so thoroughly. Edward shook his head, just as much concerned as he was confused.
Alphonse, who had a lot of practice with dealing with fits of insanity, chose to take the man's proclamation as a compliment.
"Thank you, sir, though I'm not sure why."
Berger, realizing that none of the other alchemists understood what he was on about, dropped Al's gauntlet and took several deep breaths to calm himself.
"You gave up your very being to acquire - to transfer - information," Berger said, still shaking despite his attempts to quiet his excitement. "In doing so, you have created the transfer of this information to others. However, due to the fact that gaining the knowledge in the first place cost you yourself, to one who doesn't know any better, it is as if you don't exist."
Alphonse found it very difficult to take that as a compliment.
"But… I do exist. I'm right here."
"Exactly! You gave up your physical, discoverable form for information! You are information! In passing on information, you are passing on yourself, making more of yourself!"
Berger's eyes were so wide that it looked like he was trying to force them out of his skull. Roy had subtly scooted towards the wall phone, prepared to call for help if it became clear that the man had come completely unhinged.
"All this time, we have been looking for some vector, some carrier, a soul with no body - but it's so much simpler than that! It is nothing but information - pure information - that is useless until it can be interpreted. It's like… like reading instructions from a book. The book by itself is meaningless, but the reader makes it so! We have been looking for books when we should have been simply reading the words!"
This seemed to mean something, at least to Alphonse, because he tilted his head to the side as he thought, then straightened with a rattle and an enlightened, "Oh!" and then promptly swiveled on his boots, running to the study with thudding stomps strong enough to shake the house's foundation. He came running back with a random book in his hand, which he threw with dangerous force at his brother.
Edward barely managed to catch it. In doing so, it fell open and without thinking Ed read the contents.
It was a book about one the many extinct tribes from which Amestris had been made from.
Ed looked up from it, angry at how confusing this all was.
"What the hell is this supposed to mean - oh… Oh! I see!"
He snapped the book shut and tossed it towards Mustang.
"Catch it, bastard!"
Roy caught it and stared at it.
Then he looked up and glared at the room of excited grins.
"What exactly is the meaning of this?"
Edward rolled his eyes.
"You've been infected, Mustang. Keep up. Now open the damn thing and read it."
"But I've already read this book," Roy said, hefting the volume in his hand. "It's horribly boring and drier than an old lady's skin."
Edward wrinkled his nose.
"Ew."
"Exactly. Why would I read this book if nothing good will come out of it?"
There was a tense silence that was broken by Alphonse bursting into laughter.
"The colonel's immune!"
Then everyone except for Roy, including Berger, was laughing.
Roy had had just about enough of this.
"This is ridiculous. What does a book - an inanimate object - have to do with rabies? It's not alive!"
"No, but the information the book has is alive in your head when you read it," Alphonse pointed out. "But you're not going to read it because you've read it before. You know it's boring. But we don't know that, so we'd go ahead and read it. By the time we'd figure out the book was no good, we'd already have wasted so much time reading. The book looks like it might be useful, but it's really not."
Roy rolled his eyes.
"Of course not. It's just a book. Unless someone reads it, it's completely useless. Actually, it's worse than useless because even if you do read it, all it does is make you want to die from how awful it is."
It hit him as hard as Edward throwing the book at him.
"Oh. Oh, I see!"
"Viruses are books!" Alphonse said triumphantly. "They're only dangerous if the cell reads them! And the cell doesn't know that its dangerous until it reads it because books are useless unless there's someone to read them."
"Hiding in plain sight," Roy said, cracking a crooked smile. "A true tactician. But wait - books aren't alive. They're just things. Things can't think or plot and they definitely can't attack."
"No, but it could be a book about attacking," Edward explained. "And if the only thing you can do is what you read in books, then if you read a book about attacking, you'll just start swinging punches."
"That's all cells can do - they follow the instructions of their genetic code, like reading books," Alphonse took over. "But they can't tell the difference between their own information and information from somewhere else. So they just read and follow whatever information they can find. And if the information they read tells them to start doing bad things, like attacking other cells, they just do it. They can't do anything else."
"This includes spreading the virus to other cells," Berger said, offering his hand for the book. Roy tossed it and Berger caught it, not bothering to read its contents. "Some of the information must be instructions on passing on the information to other cells. This is why viruses spread throughout the body and to other people. Since the information is only meaningful, only real, once it's inside the cell, it can't be found until the infection has begun. Stopping the infection isn't achieved by stopping burning the book - there are always more copies of a book. The infection is stopped by simply choosing not to read it."
"Which you won't do if someone who's already read the book tells you not to," Alphonse said. "That's what vaccines do - they tell cells that the information from the virus is no good so they don't read it."
"But what about the cells that do read it? What happens to them?" Roy pointed out, trying and failing to not glance towards Edward. "How is the body supposed to attack itself?"
"That's the genius of it!" Berger said, taking charge again. "Rabies travels along the nerve cells to the brain, where its true danger lies. But since it is only information, which is harmless on its own, the body doesn't realize the danger until it is too late. If it does, it must choose between attacking itself or dying. No wonder, then, that viral infections make one feel so miserable."
"Like a river and sand bags!" Alphonse said, snatching the book from Berger taking off after his brother. "Ooh, I'm the rabies virus and I'm gonna getcha!"
Edward ducked and threw himself onto the couch, throwing the blanket over his head. The roughhousing made his sores sting and his joints hurt, but he was having too much fun to care.
"Oh, no, you don't! I've been vaccinated! You can't make me read that crappy book!"
Alphonse chomped the book like an alligator's maw and tried to bite his brother's nose, fingers, and any other part of him he could reach. Edward kept ducking under the blanket to avoid the mouth of pages, shoving his Al's arms away when he couldn't.
"Read it! Read it, darn you!"
"Never!"
Berger and Mustang watched them, Andre shaking his head in wonderment at the immediate shift from calculating scientists to playful children and Roy simply enjoying the scene with his hands on his hips.
"I hope you are very proud of them," Berger said at length. "Your boys are truly incredible."
"They're not mine," he said, his smile falling a bit. "Their parents… they're no one's."
Berger hummed sadly, remembering what Edward had told him about their mother.
"They may not have been made with your gene chain, but they've certainly infected you."
That caught Roy completely off guard. He stared at Berger incredulously, mouth slightly open as he tried to find words that wouldn't come.
Before he could find them, he was accosted by steel lump twice his size and the pages of a dry history book smashing his nose.
"Got you, Colonel!"
"Ack! Alphonse! I got the vaccine years ago, I'm immune!"
"Actually, most vaccines are only good for a few years. That's why we have booster shots," Berge said, his eyes twinkling as Roy's rounded in horror. "Just like with bacteria, viruses can change over time."
"So… you aren't immune!" Alphonse crowed triumphantly, then shoved the book into Roy's hands. "So you're it, now!"
Roy stared at the book, then stared at Alphonse, then stared at Berger, who realized what he was thinking and hastily glanced at the wall clock.
"Oh, would you look at the time! I really should be going now! Have a good evening, everyone - oh, fiddlesticks," he swore as Roy plopped the open book on his head like a triangular hat.
While people knew that viruses existed for centuries, it wasn't known what exactly viruses are until the 1950's, when microscopes became powerful enough to see the protein structures that form the injection device viruses use to implant RNA (single-stranded DNA, it's only DNA if it's double-stranded, or in the famous twisty shape you see in movies) into cells. Since viruses are essentially just RNA floatin' around everywhere, they are generally not considered alive by the scientific community, as a living thing needs to be made up of multiple working parts with the goal of reproducing. Viruses are able to reproduce but they don't have any working parts, so many scientists compromise by agreeing that viruses are quasi-alive rather than their own organism.