Reading Between the Lines
Hohenheim, Edward :: FMA Anime (end of series) :: PG
Long distance messages across a continent.
Please note - this is a mild AU, set after the end of the series. It's based on a strange dream that wouldn't leave me alone - what if alchemy could be developed on the other side of the gate?
All lost chances harm every moment in spirit and time.
It was an idea they had come up with several hours into 1925, drunk on expensive caviar, cheese, champagne and their own success. It was a new year's party for two with outrageous excess, the champagne alone an unheard of expense per bottle. Either of them could have afforded it and under normal circumstance neither would ever have bothered. But 1925 had been an exception and the food and wine alike had been bought with tiny rough cut diamonds that might have been pried from a woman's earrings; diamonds which had, after years of trial and error, research, sweat, disappointment and effort, been drawn from lumps of raw coal on the dusty chalk lines of an alchemical array. It had been, Edward swore, the best damn champagne he had ever had. Hohenheim had wholeheartedly agreed. Between them they polished off three bottles, leaving one untouched on the counter.
Edward had fallen asleep on the couch near five in the morning, his glass slipping from lax fingers to roll across the floor. It left the last of the champagne in a wet trail across the rich colors of the persian carpet. Hohenheim had tucked a blanket around his son and stumbled off to his own bed as the sun was rising.
Over coffee the next afternoon Edward had declared it was criminal that nothing, not even alchemy, had perfected a foolproof cure for the morning after. Hohenheim had suggested that if he wanted to cure the symptom he would have to start by curing the inherent stupidity that caused overindulgence in the first place. He had then compounded his own headache by spending the rest of the afternoon designing an array to take champagne stains out of the carpet. Edward had dubbed it the laundry array and had offered to make dinner in exchange.
Not a week later Edward had departed, after a screaming row that left a dent in the front door of the apartment from Ed's parting kick and several cups and a lamp shattered on the floor. Hohenheim had answered the door forty minutes later with dustpan in hand to speak to several officers of the gendarme who wanted to inquire about the disturbance. He told them the truth - an arguement with his visiting son that had gotten out of hand - and declined their assistance in the matter. When they were satisfied he shut the door on his neighbors' curious eyes and went back to sweeping. It was only after he had thrown the dust and pieces away - a habit gleaned from the intervening years - that he had remembered that he could have just fixed the broken items.
He had waited up half the night and finally gone to bed after chalking a small array on the inside of the door and promising himself that he would fix the dent first thing in the morning. He didn't, but he did spend most of the next day arranging for weekend subscriptions to the major newspapers in each of the cities they had agreed upon, secured by third parties who would forward the papers to whatever address he supplied. There was no word from Edward that day, or the next, or the one after that. Hohenheim stopped expecting any.
A week later he took out the first of his own ads in the classified section of the Sunday newspaper. All lost chances harm every moment in spirit and time. He signed it from Father Henri Everard. No address, no telephone. Just a little note of no consequence to the faithful, a streetcorner preacher shouting out in the newspaper. The real meaning was there for only one set of eyes - ALCHEMIST, H.E.
He ran the small note every other Sunday after that, as steady as clockwork. The newspaper took his money and printed it without question; the readers were left to wonder.
It was nearly three weeks after Edward left before he discovered that the laundry array had been drawn with careful precision in waterproof chinese ink on the inside collar of every one of his suit jackets. That night he drank the last bottle of champagne and hangover be damned. He used the array faithfully for as long as he owned the jackets; by the time the last of them had become too threadbare to be kept, years later, he was already realigned enough to the gate of that world that he no longer needed to depend on arrays.
The chalk array remained on the apartment door for three years, as did the dent left by Edward's heel. It was the last thing Hohenheim removed the day he moved out, dent and chalk both erased with a sweep of his hand when he closed the door for the final time. Father Henri Everard of Paris stopped his biweekly one line sermon, but his curious practice was picked up by Father Horatio Enrici of Milan.
In 1927 he found the first ad in the Lisbon newspaper, jumping out at his wandering eye as he skimmed the Portuguese text over his morning coffee. All lost chances harm every moment in spirit and time, signed by a Father Francis Mendes. It had taken him a few minutes, caught by surprise with the coffee mug halfway to his mouth, to decipher that "Francis Mendes" stood for "Full Metal".
He had telephoned Father Enrici's reply to the Lisbon newspaper from the train station that afternoon, to be run immediately - Stand tall and tell everyone; do only good. By the time he had disembarked in Lisbon and checked himself and a hastily packed suitcase into a hotel the newspaper was already on the streets. He had managed a meal, a shower, and some much needed sleep before the next morning had dawned with a newspaper delivered to the door of his room. He found the answer in the classifieds between bites of breakfast - FMUDL1300.
They met a block away from the Universidade de Lisboa at a quarter to one, both of them unsurprised that the other was early. Hohenheim, tired and at a loss, had said the first thing that came to mind. "Why did you chose 'state dog' as the reply?"
Edward had shrugged, slipping his watch from his pocket. It was a heavy thing, untarnished hand crafted silver, the hippocamp motif bright and sharp despite the years. "I want to remember where I came from." Hohenheim, who had used the name of his ancestral birthplace in liu of his given name for the majority of his life, couldn't argue the point.
During the four days that followed they had, by unspoken mutual agreement, never mentioned the fight years previous. Edward had seen him to the station at the end of it. "Where are you heading?" Hohenheim had asked.
"I'm not sure," Edward replied. "Watch the drop points." He had offered his hand in a quick, firm clasp. Hohenheim had been surprised but grateful.
True to his word, the drop points followed the pilgrimage of Father Mendes from Lisbon to Kiev, then to Calcutta and on to Beijing. In 1930 Father Enrici gave his duties back to Father Henri Everard, who now preached through the London Times, while word from Father Mendes had been last heard in Cairo. Hohenheim clipped out the one line sermons that he found scattered through the foreign papers, keeping them in a neat file labeled with date and location. They met once more, a week in Munich in the fall of 1931, during which it never once stopped raining. As the 1930's marched on the notices from Francis Mendes became fewer and further between.
They rang in 1935 in the Paris Hilton, over a single glass of champagne each. Midnight had come and gone, the new year officially underway, while they sat at a table in the restaurant, talking and drinking.
"Are you ever going to stop searching?" Hohenheim had asked. It was the only time he had mentioned the subject in the last decade.
Edward had finished the last of his champagne, tipping the crystal glass thoughtfully between his fingers so that the light caught and sparkled across the edge. "No," he had said quietly. Hohenheim took his lesson from the first time and didn't press any further.
In 1936 Father Mendes posted his sermon from Warsaw. The drop point newspapers remained mute and silent on the subject of one line sermons after that. Father Everard continued his preaching in London but he was, to all appearances, talking to himself.
Hohenheim had grown used to the newspapers, used to the indulgence of news from abroad as seen through the eyes and minds of the people who lived there. He continued to read them despite the silence, checking the ads habitually between the local and regional news. Reading, and posting, and waiting. There was a fine art to waiting and it was one he had, by force, become adept at.
He tried to guess, sometimes, where Father Mendes might appear next. It was a game to make the waiting more bearable. There were other times, remembering the firm finality in Edward's reply, when he wondered what he would do if some day that one line sermon appeared in an international newspaper attributed to an Alessandro Elton or an Adam Erasmus or any other combination of names spelling out the initials A.E. He wondered, if it did happen, if Edward would ever stop being smug.
He wondered how long was long enough to wait, stifled by the silence and the headlines that grew more grim by the year. He wondered when he ought to start searching himself.