Old Cloth
The old cloth was scratchy, and that disconcerted him. He didn't like being unsettled, but he supposed he'd learn to deal with it. It wasn't like he was going anywhere.
It wasn't like he had anywhere to go.
Absently itching at the flesh of his arm – and wasn't that sensation just as strange- he walked down the streets, wondering at the context and the subcontext of it. Deserted, hardly a soul in residence, dilapidated and mournfully making their last stand, determined to rise until the end. And wasn't that just like him?
Enough of this melancholic crap, he thought firmly to himself. Niisan wouldn't think like this. Or maybe he would – he was prone to overanalyzing symbolism and then getting it all wrong anyway. Instead of amusement, crippling pain came with that imagery.
Of his brother, grumbling and scowling as per usual, kicking debris out of his way with the negligence of one too concerned with life to live.
Alphonse really wished he were there. Really, really craved that presence by his side, that one that never left, no matter how stupid and pig headed and irrational he'd been. How could he be stable without him? What was a world that didn't have Edward in it?
Crumbling. That's what it was, and that's what the city was doing, just as his very soul.
He had to get out of here, decided Al with a mixture of anxiety, desperation, and numbed leisure. He had to go find Niisan.
"Junshou," said Alphonse quietly, head bowed in thought. He did not shift, he did not fiddle, he did not fidget.
He was not his brother, and more's the pity.
"Alphonse-kun," replied Roy easily, face carefully bland. His mind whirred and calculated, pressing options and weighing outcomes. No, no – no, it couldn't have happened like that. Since when had a sixty percent chance ever stopped the Elric kyoudai of winning? Since now and then, apparently.
He wouldn't grieve. No, he was past grieving. Nevertheless, the question was obligatory.
"Where's your brother?" Roy couldn't quite bring himself to say 'Hagane,' like he had so many times before. It seemed... Somehow, it seemed disrespectful.
"I'm not certain." Alphonse frowned slightly, looking up at him in perplexity. "I looked all over the place, but I couldn't find him. Do you think Niisan got it wrong, and he was transplaced elsewhere?"
For a moment, Roy's mind froze in pure startlement. And then it moved again, agonizingly slow at first, gaining speed and horrified momentum. It rushed past the things he didn't want to think about, as it always did, and hurried on to the necessities. To life.
"No. I went over that part myself with him," the general said slowly.
"Oh." A pause. Alphonse's mind - and Roy could see this part quite clearly, almost as if through water – scrambled and finally grappled onto something else, relieved. "You don't suppose he thought it failed, and he'd gone off to – to... To look for me?" At the end, his voice was tinged in desperation.
Roy knew as well as he did that it was far more likely that, had that been the case, Edward would have gone to commit suicide. He didn't flinch away from the notion – he knew it too well himself, and it was too intimate a confidence to betray with pity and shame.
"No, I don't think so." The pause was more hesitation, and Roy said abruptly, "Alphonse-kun, have you taken touka koukan into consideration?"
"But – But Niisan theorized that it was just that – a, a theory. We amounted for it, of course – you know we did – but... But it wasn't a primary concern. The earlier experiments showed that it wasn't necessary."
Ultimately, the Elric kyoudai had turned their backs on the very principle that had ruled their lives for almost a decade. Equivalent trade had betrayed them, then and now, and in the end they had shunned it. Shunned it as a way of life, but not as an alchemical law.
At least, Roy had assumed that. It seemed like he'd been wrong, and this time his mistake was to the detriment of more than just Maes or his laughingly important career.
"Do you want help looking for him?" he asked, and his voice was soft with concealed emotion.
Alphonse immediately brightened. He smiled gratefully at him, and it struck Roy that he was a beautiful child. The thought crushed something in him just as the hope for Edward's life did, how the simplicity of them both could make him strive for things he'd forsaken.
"Thank you very much, Mustang-junshou! It's just what I was thinking. Do you mind if... if I go call Winry?" His spirits faltered, here, as if some part of his addled mind sensed that she had a good chance of reaching him.
"Of course not." His tone was brisk. "Please feel free to use my phone. I'm leaving to consult with Hawkeye-chuusa."
"Thank you."
Alphonse hadn't believed Winry when she'd reluctantly, tearfully told him that it was likely Edward was dead.
Had dismissed the idea that his brother could have sacrificed himself just for his life.
Roy hadn't. He'd been thinking that all along, knowing it was a very Edward thing to do for his brother. Shamelessly tapping the phone line for any information Alphonse might tell Winry that he hadn't offered to Roy, he'd pieced together something else.
Part of Al did suspect the truth, and that was, perhaps, the worst of it. Roy himself hadn't given up hope completely, but by now he knew better than to hang your heart on something improbable; Alphonse didn't.
And, when he returned eight months later to give another report, it showed.
Roy was always intensely grateful for the differences between Alphonse and Edward, and he was that without being ashamed. But some days it seemed like their similarities would be what destroyed them in the end.
When he'd finished saying his update on the situation, Al had, as always, stared expectantly at Roy. As if he'd had the answers hidden in his sleeve or a desk drawer all along, and he was promising that he wouldn't be angry if he had, if only he'd give them to him now.
Roy only wished that was the case.
"Alphonse." He was unsure, contemplative. Wondering what the outcome would be. He knew he had to this; it couldn't go on any longer. And he hated himself for knowing it, but he couldn't continue wasting resources like this.
He only wished that Maes was here to reassure him.
He only wished that Edward was here to distract him.
"Yes?" asked the boy when it seemed nothing else was forthcoming.
"Have you..." Roy hesitated, and he wasn't ashamed of that, either. Practical to a fault, so he plunged onwards, saying the words before he could really think about them. Before he could really accept them as a possibility. "Have you thought of the possibility that Edward might be dead?"
Disturbingly, Al gave him a bewildered look. "Of course I have." Roy didn't let himself breathe a sigh of relief, not when Alphonse frowned at him and continued dismissively, "But I know he isn't. He can't be."
"Why not?"
"What do you mean, why not? You don't want him dead, do you, junshou?" He was accusatory, and Roy hastened to respond.
"Of course not. But it's a possibility, and we have to consider it."
"No we don't. Not when I know it hasn't happened." There was something distinctly desperate in Alphonse's eyes, something crumbling, something fading and fraying.
Like the old cloth of Edward's coat that Alphonse refused to throw away or mend.
Obscurely, Roy wondered how long it had taken the younger Elric to teach himself to walk after he'd been restored.
Winry had told him that he still wasn't quite good enough at it for her comfort.
Well. This time, he'd help him learn how to run again.
