He stumbled across the desert plains, the grains of sand in the wind sharp against the uncovered skin of his face.
A cacophony of voices screamed and cried in his ears, their wails reaching a crescendo that that made him want to fall to his knees and cry at the unfairness of it all.
All of them, everything he had, all of it gone in just a single night. All because of... him.
He fled his home, or, what was once his home, picking a random direction and setting off into the harsh desert, unable to face the ruin of his Kingdom, the citizens who look up at him with wide, unseeing, glassy eyes. Accusing eyes that seemed to bore deep into his soul.
He didn't know where he was going, just that he needed to go.
"Listen to me," He begged. "Talk to me... everything's going to be okay..."
He wondered if everyone else would know of the tragedy that befell Xerxes, if they would scoff and condemn him for being such a fool. A foolish fool.
For being tricked.
Who would help Xerxes, no longer a Nation, not even a man, but a Philosopher's Stone?
A monster?
A golden city buried in the sands, soon to be forgotten within the endless whirlwind of time.
(Run far, far away. If you run far and fast enough, maybe you'll be able to escape your pains. But the past will come back to haunt you. It always does. Always.)
0o0
"There's absolutely nothing wrong with either of you, other than the surface injuries which you have been treated for already." The doctor declared, looking over all medical reports and X-rays he had of the Elrics. Although Edward did not remember the old doctor's name, he did recognise him. He was a rather old man, with wispy grey hair atop his balding head and wrinkles lining his face. He also wore large circular glasses. Edward recalled this doctor being around whenever he had to be hospitalised after several incidents of criminal chasing gone horribly wrong. At this point, the doctor was probably unsurprised to see Edward. If he, however, was surprised to not see a hulking suit of armour trailing after his most frequent patient like a puppy, he did not show it.
"Nothing missing?" Alphonse piped up hopefully from beside Edward, the hospital clothes hanging loosely off his bony frame.
"Unless you're referring to your weight, or lack of thereof in your case, no there is not. Your brother seems to be missing his appendix, but that was removed several years ago according to the file. I think I'd be more worried if you did regrow one." The doctor said flatly.
"Lay off." Edward snapped irritably, arms crossed over his chest as he sat next to his brother.
"Brother, be nice!" Alphonse chided, before turning back to the doctor. "So, you're saying that there's absolutely nothing wrong with my brother?"
"I don't know why you expect any differently," The doctor said rather tiredly, taking off his glasses to clean it with the end of his shirt. "There's maybe a few bruised ribs at inside, but even those are beginning to fade; remarkably fast at that. Now, your only problem is that you're so underweight a gust of wind could knock you over. Other than that, I'd say the two of you are healthy enough to not be rushed to the emergency room. Now get out. I have other patients to see."
After being kicked out of the doctor's office, Edward crossed out the possibility of Truth taking either of his and Alphonse's organs before tucking his notebook under his right arm. His left arm was occupied with the crutch that was holding him upright. "Well, I guess we can safely say that we won't be coughing up blood like Teacher soon."
Edward paused, not hearing Alphonse make any acknowledgement to his statement. He turned his head, eyes widening as he saw the expression on his little brother's face.
Alphonse's head dipped down slightly towards the ground, eyes shadowed by his too long hair, so Edward initially had trouble making out the face he was making, but when he did he was shocked by the grimness he saw.
"Al? What's wrong?"
"it's wrong, but..." Alphonse trailed off.
"But?" Edward prompted slowly, concerned and at the same time bewildered by what his little brother was saying.
Alphonse lifted his head, looking Edward square in the eyes. "I almost want something to have been missing. At least then, we'd know how to move forward from there. Not knowing what the Gate took... it's scary. What if it's something slow that's going to kill us? What if you..."
He didn't finish his sentence, letting his unspoken words hang in the air, lingering.
Edward stared, shocked by what his brother was saying, before a sort of calm fell over him as he reached out to ruffle Alphonse hair.
"Your hair's gotten long," He remarked idly, watching as Alphonse mouth fell open in shock at his blatant disregard of everything he just said.
"Ed! I'm being serious! How can you not care if you-!"
"C'mon, Al," Shifting his notebook into his right arm, he gently grabbed Alphonse's arm with his free hand and tugged him into their hospital room. "You need a haircut."
"Ed!"
"Please, Al?" Alphonse paused, seemingly hearing the underlying plea under Edward's words before he grudgingly obliged and sat himself down carefully on one of the room's chairs while Edward dragged over a small dustbin. A pair of scissors was transmuted from an unused chair, thinning the metal but not destroying the furniture.
With a snip, the long locks that tickled Alphonse's back fell away into the dustbin. For a moment, all was silent save for the metallic snip of the scissors and the rustle of falling hair. Then, Edward spoke.
"See? We're already moving forward." His words genuinely caught Alphonse off guard, the younger male turning his head to look up at Edward who smiled slightly as he continued on. "You're getting your old hairstyle back now, and soon you're going to recover completely. Then, we're going to go back to Resembool, where Winry is going to make you an apple pie. That'll be one item crossed off your list, right?"
"Ed..." Alphonse stared at him.
"We'll move forward as always, Al." Edward said, carrying on with giving Alphonse an impromptu haircut. "Remember what we learnt at Yock Island? The world will keep moving, and so will we. As for the Truth's toll... whatever it is, we'll keep looking and we'll find out eventually. There's only so much we can lose. But for now, you can enjoy having your body back. Let me do the work. It's my Alchemy that the Truth didn't accept as a toll."
"Brother..." Alphonse's silence continued for a few more moments before he relented, a hint of a smile creeping onto his face as he laughed. "You dummy. I'm not going to let you run off by yourself and do all the work. Who's going to make you drink your milk if I'm not there?"
"Al, you are aware that I'm the one who's cutting your hair, right?"
0o0
Blindness. A single word with more than one meaning. It meant ignorance, and, it also meant the loss of visual perception. If there was something to be said about blindness, the simplest opinion was that Mustang hated it. Amestris was blind to the Homunculi's plans, and it was only by sheer luck that their plans were uncovered in time to be thwarted. Amestris' blindness led to the death of Maes Hughes, Mustang could say, if he was feeling particularly bitter. Could his own ignorance have contributed to the tragic ending of Hughes? Although the days were few and far between when he thought this, it was a thought that lingered before he brutally quashed it. No, the only ones at fault were the Homunculi, and those who knew of the plans and did nothing.
Before the Promised Day, Mustang was only ever familiar with one aspect of blindness. True, he had seen his fair share of people who had either lost or damaged their eyesight in battle while he served in Ishval, but he had always thought that would be the furthest he'd know of blindness.
Here he sat now however, a full day after the Promised Day, staring at the nothingness where his hands should be, fingers curled around the soft sheets of the hospital bed. The palms of his hands twinged in pain, from where the late Fuhrer Bradley had stabbed through his hands with his swords. No lasting damage, according to the doctors. He'd be able to use his hands without issue in the future.
That was good and all, but what happened next...
He hated it.
A long time ago, when he had first stormed into the Rockbell house in Resembool in a fury, when he had first met the broken shell that was an eleven year old Edward Elric, fresh out of losing an arm and leg, as well as his younger brother's body, he remembered equating Edward's broken demeanour to the trauma of losing limbs. He had seen older, far more experienced men and women lose limbs and come away from it a changed person, the trauma too great to bear. Why would a child be any different from those adults?
While it was a wonder that Edward had come away from it mostly intact (mentally. He'd be blatantly lying if he said physically), Mustang had to wonder...
Edward never spoke of his Human Transmutation. He'd rarely bring it up, even in passing, much less talk about the incident in detail. However, Mustang would bet his career that his youngest subordinate had seen it. That... horrifying, grinning, featureless, thing that took his eyesight.
Edward must have seen it. Alphonse must have seen it. Their teacher, and even their father...
How could they all sleep at night? Every time Mustang tried to sleep, that horrifying, grinning face made itself known, right alongside the horrors of Ishval.
"Colonel?" Mustang snapped out of his darker thoughts, focusing on the familiar, calming voice of his most trusted. The rustle of fabric told him that she had saluted him, even though it was completely unnecessary since he couldn't see it.
"Lieutenant," He greeted her, his unseeing eyes focusing on where he assumed Hawkeye would be. "At ease. Have your injuries been treated?"
"Yes, sir." There was a pause. Mustang could almost feel her eyes looking over him. "... Are you alright, sir?"
"As alright as I can be, I suppose." He said with a sigh. "It'll be a bit harder to climb the ranks like this, but I'll still eventually become Fuhrer."
"Sir..." Mustang felt her hand against his. "It'll be alright. Even if you can't see, I'll be your eyes."
It seemed that Hawkeye could always read him so well.
"... Thank you, Lieutenant."
0o0
Edward lay on the bed, golden hair pooling around his head as he slept away the hours peacefully. A stark contrast to Alphonse, who was still very much awake despite it already being ten in the evening. For one horrifying moment, he wondered if the Truth had taken away his ability to sleep, before he relaxed. If that were the case, he would have most certainly noticed it the previous night. The most logical assumption for his sleeplessness would be his own, active thoughts that were still wrought with worry, despite his big brother's words to him earlier that day.
He sighed, leaning back into the pillow. Despite Edward's best attempts to comfort him, the worry ate away at him, a gnawing sense that never really went away even with Edward's words beating his worries over the head with a metaphorical broom.
Alphonse snorted at the absurd mental image. If worries were tangible things, he really could see Edward chasing his worries away with a broom or even one of his tacky, transmuted weapons.
It was a sad truth, but Edward honestly had no sense of style, despite his protests saying otherwise.
The creak of the door caught Alphonse's attention, breaking him out his thoughts.
"Oh! Dad!" He exclaimed, sitting up, before wincing at the volume of his voice, suddenly remembering his brother sleeping just a bed over, as well as Edward's disdain for their father. Not particularly willing to deal with trying to hold his brother back, he continued in a softer voice, "Where were you? Are you okay?"
Hohenheim smiled kindly. "Yes, Alphonse. I am alright. As for where I was, I was talking to the souls in the Philosopher's Stone. It would seem that I've got about four hundred and forty thousand or so people to talk to."
"Huh?" Alphonse scrunched his brows in confusion as Hohenheim entered the room and closed the door behind him quietly. "Oh! You mean, the souls from the Homunculus? But weren't they...?"
"Yes, that's what I thought too." Hohenheim said wearily, finding a chair to sit down on next to Alphonse's bed. "When those souls were released from him, I thought they'd be freed. Be able to pass on. But... even I don't understand it, but they were absorbed into my stone. Now, all I can do is listen to everyone so they can calm down."
"I see..." Alphonse said, trailing off before he perked up. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
For a moment, Hohenheim seemed taken aback by his youngest son's offer, eyes widening slightly in surprise before he gave his son a soft smile. Reaching out, he hesitated for a moment before he gave Alphonse a pat on the shoulder. "You're a good kid, son. But it's alright. I can handle this myself. You should worry about yourself more."
There was a pause, before he awkwardly asked, "Did you cut your hair?"
"Brother cut it for me. Believe it or not, he can do it decently enough." Alphonse laughed softly, reaching up to touch his now shorter bangs of hair. "Hard to see Ed doing something like cutting hair, right?"
Edward had actually done a surprisingly good job, despite his teasing to do a poor job for that milk comment he had made. Alphonse supposed it was from the years he had spent trimming his own hair because he just could not be bothered to go and properly get his hair cut. Something about 'not having enough time to waste, and research being far more important since that bastard colonel might call them at any minute for another mission'.
"I see..."
There was an even longer moment of silence between them that seemed to drag out a little bit too long, before Alphonse awkwardly ended the silence with a question. "Do you want to... talk to Ed?"
"I doubt he'd want to talk to me," The Xerxsian chuckled, although Alphonse could almost hear the underlying sadness in his laughter. Grief, about his relationships with his sons. "Not unless it's to yell and punch me. I only came here to check on the two of you since it's the least I can do for you two, although I suppose I was lucky enough to be able to talk to you."
"Brother doesn't hate you," Alphonse said in a small voice, twisting the fabric of the blanket between his fingers idly. "He just doesn't want to admit it. But I think he'll let it go in the future, since he knows you left for a good a reason."
"Well, I guess I have a long wait ahead of me," Hohenheim said as he began to stand up. "If your brother is anything like me when I was his age, he's not going to completely forgive me for a very long time."
Just then, right after Hohenheim stood up, the chair he had been sitting on fell over with a crash, the chair leg broken. Caught off guard, he stumbled for a moment, but managed to regain his balance without falling to the ground.
"That was dangerous!" The older man exclaimed, a hand over his heart as he recovered from his shock. "Someone could have gotten hurt from that."
"Oh!" Alphonse sheepishly covered his face in embarrassment, mortified that he and Edward had actually forgotten to transmute the scissors from earlier back into the chair. If it had been anyone else or just someone with poor luck (like Edward), they might have gotten seriously injured depending on how they hit the ground. "Sorry, dad. I forgot brother transmuted a pair of scissors from that chair. We must have forgotten to put it back."
Hohenheim chuckled and waved it off. "It's alright. It does remind me of that time when you boys were younger transmuted a duck figurine out of the floorboards and forgot to put it back. Some poor person tripped over that hole and lost a front tooth if I remember correctly. Get well soon Alphonse, you and Edward. I'll see you soon."
With a wave, the older man vacated the room, closing the door quietly behind him and leaving Alphonse by himself, still smiling to himself at the story.
"... That doesn't sound right."
Yelping in surprise, Alphonse's head snapped to the side to see his brother rolling over on his bed to face him, his gold eyes glinting in the dull light in a way that almost reminded him of the reflectiveness of cats' eyes.
"Brother!" Alphonse exclaimed. "How long were you awake for?"
"Since the old man nearly became a victim to unsteady chairs. I probably should fix that later." Edward said, ending his sentence with a yawn as he sat up, wincing as he accidentally put pressure on his bruised ribs. "What did the bastard want?"
"Ed, that's mean. You shouldn't call him that," Alphonse chided, but let it go since there was hardly any heat behind his brother's words. Although, whether or not it was from just waking up or not was still up for debate. "And dad just wanted to check on us."
Edward snorted, but chose not to argue otherwise, a rarity when it came to the topic of their father. Alphonse could still remember that whenever their father was brought up, it'd usually very quickly degrade into a shouting match between the two of them, resulting in a few days of not talking to each at its very worse. Eventually, both of them just learnt to never mention their father, lest they start fighting again. The fact that Edward did not fly off the handle this time said quite a lot.
Alphonse was proud of his big brother, he really was.
Then, he remembered what his brother had said just after their father had left the room.
"Wait, Ed," He began, "I almost forgot, but what did you mean by that?"
"By what?" Edward grunted, looking at his brother as he rubbed his tired eyes.
"You said, 'that doesn't sound right' when dad left just now. What did you mean by that?" Alphonse repeated Edward's words back to him verbatim, watching as his brother wrinkled his nose in thought.
"It doesn't sound right." Edward insisted, yawning once more before he continued. "He shouldn't have seen us do Alchemy when we were kids. Remember? We learnt from his books because he wasn't there. We began studying after he left, and he didn't bother showing his face until recently. There is no way he'd remember something like that."
"Maybe you're just remembering it wrong," Alphonse suggested, ignoring the slight bitterness in his brother's voice as he pondered his brother's words, trying to remember if their dad had thought them a bit of Alchemy and had stayed long enough to see their first transmutation. "We were pretty young at the time. Maybe dad did teach us a little before he left. Then we just picked up the rest from his books."
"Ah, whatever." Edward groaned before slumping back onto the bed with a soft thud. "I'm too tired to think about this. I'm going back to sleep. Good night Al."
With that, Edward passed out once again, leaving Alphonse by himself once again.
The youngest Elric shook his head in exasperation as he sank back onto the pillow, his eyes on the ceiling as he tried to fall asleep, his thought wandering to his most recent conversation with his brother as he tried to think back. His memories were quite foggy from when he was a child, so he didn't expect to remember his first transmutation.
Huh.
One of them must have mixed their memories up, Alphonse thought to himself as he finally drifted off to sleep.
0o0
In the aftermath of the Promised Day, there was much to be done. Buildings were damaged, civilians and soldiers injured, some more severely than others, and much of Central Command needed to be replaced, with almost all of the Generals either dead, MIA, or simply just arrested as the main conspirators of the Promised Day. After all, what else could they tell their citizens? An immortal creature made from Alchemy spent the last four hundred years planning to sacrifice the country's population of fifty million people in order to gain enough power to devour God.
Yes, that would go over very well indeed, assuming the citizens wouldn't think that they were complete and utter lunatics and decided that another Vive la révolution was in order..
Therefore, they stuck to the cover story with the Generals, because that was actually far more believable than the actual truth.
As the sun began to rise, a beautiful sunrise that Amestris would never have seen again if it were not for everyone who had a part to play in the promised day. Hammers rising and falling, the chatter of people rebuilding their homes, the occasional flash of alchemic sparks from a helpful Alchemist, it would seem that everything would be alright.
The world kept turning.
The ache in Edward and Alphonse's chests lightened as time marched onwards.
0o0
A/N Welp, there's the second chapter. Also, I think I figured out why I lost steam for the previous attempt at this crossover. One, the cringe but you already knew that. Two, the way the plot was headed. Apparently, I just can't write action. It would seem that I am doomed to only ever write emotional, slice of life, stories. Maybe I'll try to add a bit of action to not bore you people, but I can't promise that it'd be good.
You people also might have figured out what Edward and Alphonse's toll was already since I'm being pretty obvious about it.
If you think the build up is too slow, I'll try and pick up the pace. Also, if you think how Edward and Alphonse are acting in regards to the memory thing seems a little too nonchalant, think about it. Kids don't have the most reliable of memories and sometimes they remember things that never happened. Or at least, that's how it was for me. Anyway, they are just assuming something similar.
Next time on Redux; Edward and Mustang get around to talking about stuff, Edward and Alphonse begin to find unexplainable injuries on them, the injuries of which they do not recall getting, and Hohenheim really wants to be a better dad.
Thank you.
- Gwntan12