Disclaimer: I don't own any of them. Not making any money of this. Love the idea of Ed and Roy.
Chapter 3: Acceptance
Winry poured a generous slug of whiskey into her coffee and knocked it back in one gulp. She needed it, even if it was only eleven in the morning. "Want some?" she offered brusquely to the man sitting across from her at the kitchen table. He looked up, surprised, then shook his head, smiling faintly. Winnie babbled softly in her high-chair, reaching out with one fat little hand and gurgling in satisfaction when the nice, new, interesting man agreeably offered up a finger.
"You're handling this awfully well," she grumbled.
Auric shrugged. "I like children. And this isn't the first time I've had my life evaporate on me," he pointed out. "Most Gatekeepers develop a pretty fatalistic attitude to whatever fate chooses to throw at them. You have to, given that your chances of dying on any particular day are generally higher than most people's."
"You have that in common with Ed," she mumbled. "Magnets for weird things happening. Although I suspect he wouldn't be reacting this well if your situations were reversed."
A hint of amusement rose in the golden eyes. "I have to say though, it's a little odd talking about myself in the third person. Although it's nice to know what my original name was. Edward Elric, eh?" A whimsical smile. "A strong name - I like it. Auric…Elric…at least there's a hint of commonality there."
Winry sighed. "You really don't remember anything?"
The smile faded. "Winry, I would give my right arm to remember…."
"Don't say that!" she barked, jumping up and almost upsetting the table. Surprised, Winnie began to cry and Winry swore under her breath. "Shit. Hold on," she picked up Winnie and hugged her to her chest. "Shh, shh, it's all right sweetheart, mommy didn't mean to scare you."
He said nothing, just watched as she soothed the crying child until Winnie fell asleep on her shoulder. Winry padded out and handed the baby to Granny Pinako. "How is Al?" she asked in hushed tones.
"As well as can be expected. He's outside, thinking. How is our guest?"
Winry rolled her eyes and headed back to the kitchen, where she found Auric leaning against the counter staring out the window. Following his gaze, she saw her husband sitting hunched over by the bank of the brook in their garden.
"I'm sorry." He didn't look at her.
"It's not your fault," she said mechanically. "It's just…you know…and then your arm and leg…."
He looked up at last. "Yeah." After calming Alphonse down, Winry had sat down with a confused Auric and filled him in. He had seen the photographs. Two little boys with shining faces, their identical smiles marking them as brothers despite the difference in coloring. A grim-faced child with golden eyes that dared the world to take him on, a glint of metal between glove and sleeve. Some kind of accident, she had said vaguely, Al can fill you in on the details later. A blonde youth in a blue military uniform, a look of exasperation on his face as he suffered a gloved hand pinning something on his chest.
Him. This had been his life. But he didn't remember any of it. And judging by the reactions of the people around him, he was getting off easily. Alp…no, Alphonse in this world…was taking it very badly. He supposed he could relate…Alp had been the closest thing he had had to family, and the feeling of rejection by his look-alike was surprisingly painful, even though he knew intellectually that Alp was dead. So for Alphonse, having his brother, to whom he had been extraordinarily close by all accounts, in essence reject him…well….
A hand on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie. Winry was looking at him with a very serious expression. "Auric. Would you please go talk to Al?"
"Are you sure he wants me to?"
"Men! He may not want you to, but you have to anyway," said Winry firmly. "Don't make me do what I used to do with Ed."
"Which was?"
She held up a wrench silently. He held up his hands in surrender and turned to the door. She watched him go, a wistful look lurking in her eyes.
Ed would have put up more of a fuss, even if it meant getting beaned with a wrench.
The sunlight on the water was mesmerizing, Al thought. If you stared at it long enough, your mind became one with the hypnotic sparkle, and then you didn't have to think, didn't have to feel, didn't have to be anything. Didn't have to think about your brother who didn't remember you, didn't remember mom, didn't remember the sacrifice he had made.
"Hey."
Bugger.
"Winry suggested that we should talk."
Al snorted. "Knowing my wife, I doubt it was a suggestion."
A snicker. "She was waving a rather large wrench around at the time." Al didn't look up as Auric sat down next to him gracefully. "So. Do you want to talk?"
"Not really."
"All right then." And the other man stretched out lazily on the grass, putting his hands behind his head. Al stole a glance. Auric's eyes were shut against the glare, but that was Ed's face and Ed's hair and Ed's voice and Ed's presence and…and….
He didn't realize he was crying until Auric silently handed over a handkerchief. "Thanks."
"No problem." Finally Auric spoke again. "Tell me about him. Tell me about me."
"I don't know where to start," Al admitted.
"How about at the beginning?" laughed Auric. "We were…are brothers. What were our parents like?"
And slowly, hesitantly, Al began to talk. Auric listened intently, chin on hand, elbow on knee.
"General."
"Hmm?" Roy looked up in surprise. Captain Hawkeye had inserted herself almost silently into his office, and that wasn't like her; she was very strict about military protocol, if for no other reason than to keep Havoc, Fury, and the rest of his motley crew on their toes. For her to be slipping around like a common footpad was unusual, to say the least.
"You should see this. It's from Colonel Hughes." She handed out an innocuous brown folder.
Roy reached for the folder slowly, giving it a suspicious glare. He had formulated a theory that the worst news always came in the simplest of packages. Carefully, cautiously, he opened the folder and scanned the top sheet.
He normally took great pride in his reputation for always being right. And then there were days like this one when he just hated it.
"They're really going to do this. Draft all the civilian alchemists and put them on the frontlines." The war was going badly, he knew, but this move by the Fueher just reeked of desperation. "This will end in tears."
"Look at the first name on the list, General."
"Alphonse Elric," he read numbly. Oh dear. The file nearly slipped from his fingers, and for some reason the only thing he could think was that if anything could bring Edward Elric back from whatever afterlife he now inhabited, this would be it. If only so that he could strangle Mustang for not protecting his little brother as promised. His eyes fell on the photograph that sat on the corner of his desk, the one sentimental item he allowed himself, and he took a deep breath, composing himself and allowing the ingrained habits of a long life in the military to take over. When he raised his head again, only the bland mask of a Major General stared calmly back at his PA.
"Captain."
"Sir." Hawkeye was already standing at attention.
"Tell the Colonel I need a secure line..."
"…to call the Elrics, yes sir, he says it will be ready in two hours…"
"…volunteers get to pick their own units, don't they? And we have a spot…"
"…headcount already confirmed, sir, and might I respectfully suggest that rather than a telegram…"
"...by the way, I heard the telegram wires to Risembool were blown up in the last attack and will be…"
"…it will take about a week to restore, so for the sake of expediency the draft notice should be sent…"
"…by courier? But it's such a long way to Risembool, and anyway, we have…"
"…no one to spare to courier the message, sir, we're shorthanded as it is…"
"…so send it by mail, Captain, we can't help that the postal service is dysfunctional at the moment…"
"…perhaps a ticket waiting at the station for the first train out tomorrow…"
"You have your orders, Captain."
"Yes, sir."
As Riza Hawkeye left the office, she could see her CO reach out with a gloved hand and deliberately turn the photo frame face down.
"You always were a dab hand when it came to drawing," Al said absently as he flipped through the journal Auric had handed him. "Watching you create an array was always impressive – not that you often needed to, of course – you never had to rub out anything or overdraw. It was like you had it complete in your mind before you even began." He looked up. "Brother…um…Auric?"
Auric was rolled over onto his stomach, staring into space. At Al's voice, he started and looked over. "Sorry. It's just a lot to digest. Not that I don't believe you or anything, but Alchemy doesn't exist in my world. Just the Gates, and the laws that apply to them, although there are similarities. Conservation of energy sounds a lot like equivalent exchange."
Al smiled. "Stands to reason you would be a Gatekeeper then." He had to admit that as much as he was still upset over not getting his brother back…yet, he insisted to himself, surely Ed would remember in time, after all, he'd remembered in his dreams, hadn't he?…Auric was interesting as a separate identity. He could see flashes of his brother's temper in him, but Auric was more contained, more controlled…and a whole lot less angry. He supposed it had something to do with the loss of painful memories and the whole fatalistic ethos of the Gatekeepers Guild that seemed to be the only real ties Auric had had in his four years of existence. "Tell me more about what Gatekeepers do?"
A negligent shrug. Al had also noticed that where Ed had always given off the impression of a hovering bird of prey, ready to attack in a blinding swoop of wings and claws, Auric was more relaxed, or at least gave off the impression of being so, more like a watchful cat. A lot like a certain General, actually. "We open Gates. We close Gates. Move things through Gates. Act as couriers for messages that have to get to somewhere fast – we can teleport ourselves without opening a Gate." A momentary look of sadness crossed his face. "That's how Alp went on ahead to the front."
"Do you have to have been where you're going to do that?" asked Al, fascinated.
"No. As long as we're told where we're going, we can feel the destination through the qi lines…um…they're lines of energy that run throughout the fabric of the world. When we open a Gate, we're really just bending them to our will. Other Guild responsibilities…we're great spies and we sometimes freelance as secret bodyguards. But if you repeat that, I'll have to kill you."
Al blinked.
"Kidding. There's no one you could tell who would matter, anyway." Auric stretched luxuriously, then winced as a strained muscle made its displeasure known. "Think about it. We can go where we would at will…most people look at us and see a Gatekeeper and not an individual face…and we're all very well trained in hand-to-hand. You have to be if you're ferrying secrets about. So the Guild, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the occasional trade of skills for money or influence made sense."
"Equivalent exchange," murmured Al.
Auric looked over, startled. "In a sense, yes. Politics and power consists of trading favors after all. Speaking of." He looked pointedly at his journal lying open in Al's lap, and made an interrogative noise in his throat.
"Oh! Well, the first drawing is the place I found you…it was where we lived as children. We burned it down when you became a State Alchemist…you told me it was so that we would move forwards and not backwards. The second one is an alchemic symbol. Our teacher wore it, and so we did too…and after your…disappearance, the Fueher himself bestowed it upon us as the official Elric family crest." Al rolled up a sleeve to reveal the snake and cross on his upper arm. "When you brought me back, this was on my arm, probably from the transmutation process."
"The next one is the suit of armor you bound my soul to. And that's you, with your automail arm." Al's eyes lingered happily over Auric's intact right hand. "And the last one, that's…that's General Mustang."
"The man I used to work for?" Auric asked. "Why would I remember him of all people?"
"I don't know," said Al, a frown creasing his brow. "Maybe because he was the one who looked out for us as kids?"
"That doesn't make sense, then I would surely have remembered Winry and Granny Pinako." A familiar intensity was now seeping into the golden eyes. Al remembered that look well. It was the look that Ed used to get whenever a new problem had presented itself that required solving. "He's always saying something to me too, in that dream. Fulminate?"
"Ful-min-ate…" Al sounded out slowly. "Fullmetal! That was your title. All State Alchemists get an official title to use. General Mustang is the Flame Alchemist. And you're the famous Fullmetal Alchemist."
"Was, Al. I'm no alchemist now. Just a humble Gatekeeper a long way from home." Auric bit his tongue the moment the words slipped out, as he saw Al's expression. "Al, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to rub it in."
Al shook his head. "I'm sorry too, Auric."
A golden brow arched. "For what?"
"For…well…I haven't exactly reacted in the best way. And if I've made you feel like I'm angry at you for not being who I want you to be…well…I am angry. But not at you. You can't help that you are who you are. I just wish things had turned out differently, that's all."
"Fate is. We can but change how we deal with it." One corner of Auric's mouth crooked up. "Unofficial motto of the Guild. Just the sort of crap you'd expect from a bunch of people with no memories." He stood and dusted himself off. "Shall we go in? It's getting late, and I'm sure Winry thinks we've killed each other."
"More likely that I've killed you, I am the alchemist of the family now," Al pointed out, straight-faced. "And I am bigger."
A familiar spark flared in Auric's eyes. "Are you calling me short?"
