A/N: This one was supposed to be sort of silly and fun. Sigh. Apparently I an incapable of writing for this fandom without adding at least a little bit of angst. Oh, well. It's Fullmetal Alchemist. So, I guess that's appropriate, right?
Many thanks, as ever, to my FANTABULOUS readers/reviewers. You guys rock my world!
I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist, or any of its characters.
Brands and Remembrances
In retrospect, Ed would realize that everything was Havoc's fault.
Okay. Maybe not everything. Ed was willing to admit that maybe the lieutenant wasn't the cause of the dinosaur extinction. And he was almost ready to stop blaming the Dark Ages on his stupid ass.
But, really. Everything other than that. Every horrible thing ever. Totally traceable back to him.
Like the current situation.
Havoc wanted a tattoo. Apparently, he believed that the acquisition of skin ink would kick up his rating on the sexiness scale by six or seven notches.
And while the men of Mustang's squad had still been hopelessly awash in the seemingly endless sea of his utter and unbelievable stupidity, Havoc had taken advantage of their silence and recruited them all into accompanying him.
So, clearly, it was all Havoc's fault that Ed was currently cooling his heels in a seedy looking tattoo parlor in downtown Central on his first day off in weeks. He avoided making eye contact with a heavily inked man wearing a white shirt that read 'Bubba', and thought longingly of the books waiting for him back in the dormitories, and the answers that could be pressed inside their pages. He'd refused to accompany Havoc back into the actual art area (his rather limited amiability ran out at hand-holding), and so was now braving the untold dangers of the waiting room, which reeked of old cigarettes and sweat, and the ink-addicted that inhabited it. 'Bubba' had been with him from the beginning; Ed had almost completely adjusted to the dizzying designs stretched up and down his arms and shoulders. And a little while ago, a girl with more metal in her ears than one might find in steel refinery had wandered in and chatted with the man behind the counter for a bit. Her hair had been a bright bubblegum pink, and her black skirt had been decked out with silver chains. She'd snapped her gum at him in a thoughtful manner upon entering the room, and dropped him a wink out of one heavily lined eye before she left.
Ed had buried his blushing face behind a magazine and struggled not to think of Winry.
Back in the present, the sound of Havoc's manly wails floated down the corridor, accompanied by Breda's barks of laughter and Fuery's soothing voice, creating a bizarre sort of harmony with the mechanical whirring of the tattooist's needle. Sitting nervously beside his older brother on the sagging couch, Al made a soft sound of sympathy.
"It sounds bad. Doesn't it, Brother?" he asked, twisting his fingers anxiously.
"What, Al?" Ed asked distractedly. He was busy playing a sort of 'I Spy' game using the pictures in Bubba's arm tattoos.
"Havoc's tattoo," Al repeated. "It sounds like it's hurting him."
Ed snorted softly, squinting his golden eyes as he tried to determine whether the figure circling Bubba's wrist really was a dragon, or actually an elongated pickle.
"It was his choice, Al," he reminded him. "I'm not going to waste my time feeling sorry for his self-inflicted stupidity."
"I…guess."
For a moment, there was silence, and Ed let out a soundless 'aha' of triumph as he spotted a grinning skull with flames bursting from its eye sockets high on Bubba's shoulder. Then Al gave a little squirm against the sofa, and canted his metal head in Ed's direction.
"Um…Brother?"
Recognizing the difference in tone, Ed momentarily abandoned his perusal of Bubba's bicep.
"Yeah, Al," he invited, because it was rare to hear his baby brother's voice so hesitant and unsure outside of the presence of strangers.
"What…," Al folded her metal fingers with soft, metallic clinks. "What do you think it feels like? What Havoc's doing?"
The guilt was immediate, and it was incendiary. It burned its way through Ed's stomach, until his gut became a charred, hollow hole of sorry, my fault, God, so sorry.
"Getting a tattoo?" he asked hoarsely. "I…" Ed fumbled, because he was clearly incapable of describing the experience. "I don't know, Al."
"Oh," Al said, voice small, and Ed wanted to scream. Or die. It wasn't a huge comfort, being able to describe sensations that Al was slowly forgetting with words, but the Elrics still clung to it, because it was all they were currently capable of.
Being unable to perform even that small service, which really was the very least he could do for Al, made the gaping maw of guilt in Ed's stomach expand even further, the blackened edges of it pressing against his heart.
Al must have caught the bleak expression on his face, because his next words were spoken with deliberate and determined cheer.
"I'll just ask Havoc when he gets out. Don't worry about it, Brother!"
Ed's smile was weak, and thin. A mere shadow of the sunbeam bright grin he was capable of producing.
"Sure, Al. Okay."
But by the time Havoc stumbled back to the waiting room, looking more like he'd survived a war than received some simple skin graffiti, he was too busy weeping over his freshly punctured skin to be of much use, answer-wise. Ed and Al helped Falman drag him back to the dormitories, while Breda followed behind and repeatedly advised Havoc to 'man up, because really, you only got your rank identification on your wrist, and it's like four numbers, you girl'. By the time they got back to their own room, it was too late to ask, and Al actually seemed to have forgotten, too busy guiltily giggling over Breda's insults.
But Ed remembered. All night, he tossed and turned on his regulation dormitory bed, pretending to sleep as he replayed the sound of Al's voice in his brain over and over, sounding so soft and disappointed.
….
One week later showed back to business as usual for the soldiers of Mustang's squad. The late winter rain made the office atmosphere rather gloomy, and Havoc's continuous whining about his aching wrist was making even the ever-patient Riza's temple twitch, but Fuery was cheerfully banging away at a new military-issue camera prototype, which they hoped to test out on infiltration assignments, and Falman's face was calm as he filled out endless stacks of paperwork. Breda was lounging in his chair, a sandwich in one hand and a pen in the other as he scribbled down the details of his latest assignment, and Hawkeye, when she wasn't glaring warning daggers at Havoc, checked over some of the Colonel's more last minute forms with something like contentment on her face.
Even Ed had seemed unusually mellow when he'd entered the office. Well, mellow for him. He'd opened Mustang's door by hand and with the words; "Wake up, Colonel Bastard, I've got more crap for you to sign" instead of simply kicking the wood in with one automail foot. And Mustang had limited himself to a single lazy short joke, and it wasn't even a very good one, because humor loses its bite when you yawn in the middle of it.
Their exchange was sluggish by their standards, with only one or two shrieks of rage that really sounded more like whines of mild protest, and a single saucy remark connecting the rain outside to the general uselessness of fire alchemy, and even that was almost an afterthought. Ed couldn't pick up on more than three hidden meanings behind Mustang's words, a new record, and even the bastard's smirks were half-assed, as if the sound of the water on the window panes sapped the smugness out of them.
The rest of the squad was just as sluggish, but still unable to prevent themselves from commenting when Ed wandered out of Mustang's office after only one semi-enthusiastic explosion.
"Whoa," Havoc said around the cigarette in his mouth. "Feeling friendly today, Boss?"
"That's wonderful, Ed!" Fuery added earnestly, looking up with a warm smile from the piece of equipment cradled in his hands. "Are you and the Colonel finally getting along?"
Ed snorted and flopped lazily against the arm of an available chair.
"Hardly," he replied, with a jaw-cracking yawn and comfortable stretch. "Just too tired to let his bastard-levels get to me today."
"Rain often inspires feelings of lethargy and laziness," Falman offered, before returning to his paperwork with a satisfied nod.
"Thanks, Falman," Breda mumbled, his voice garbled by the fact that he'd settled his face into his desk with a weary sigh. "You freak."
"We've got some free time, Brother," Al pointed out, watching as his older sibling wriggled sleepily against the chair. "Do you want to do something? Maybe spar? I think the training gym is free."
"Margh," Ed answered. "Spar? I think I'd rather sleep, Al."
Havoc heaved himself out of his chair with great effort so as to properly deposit the reports he'd been working on in the correct cabinet. Hawkeye pretended she wasn't watching closely to make sure he did it right.
"Lack of motivation," he diagnosed. "That's the spirit, Boss. I didn't think you had it in you."
As he made his way back to his seat, he gave Ed's back a friendly slap. Ed immediately stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth.
Everyone in the office froze.
"Brother?" Al asked hesitantly, as Ed carefully wiped his face free of expression. "Are…are you all right?"
Ed gave Al a blank look that absolutely no one in the office believed.
"What do you mean, Al? I'm fine."
"I believe that your brother is referring to the fact that you just flinched from Havoc's touch," Hawkeye summarized softly. She met Edward's eyes with a stern, serious look. "Edward. Are you injured?"
"No," Ed answered, but it was too fast to be believable.
Al made a soft sound of distress and moved forward.
"You are, aren't you? Brother! I thought we talked about this. You said you weren't going to hide things from me anymore. You promised!"
Ed clenched his teeth together hard, and struggled to ignore the hurt and sadness in his baby brother's voice.
"Come on, Al," he muttered. "Knock it off. I'm not-"
Behind him, Havoc cocked a brow, and raised his hand again. Ed ducked back instinctively and danced carefully out of range.
"-Hurt," he finished lamely, now avoiding the eyes of everyone in the office.
"All right," Breda said, shoving himself to his feet. "Let's see it."
"What?" Ed asked, eyeing the lieutenant nervously.
"Your wound," Hawkeye elaborated from his other side. "We need to see it to assess what sort of attention it requires."
"Hey, listen," Ed began, only to be cut off by an overly-concerned Fuery.
"You can't just ignore it, Ed," he said pleadingly. "Is it an open wound? What if it gets infected?"
Flanked by the unbeatable walls of anxiety and worry for his own well-being, Ed could only raise his hands.
"Why would you guys just automatically assume that I'm hiding-"
"Remember that time, Fullmetal?" Mustang asked, from where he was now leaning against his office door, watching the scene with an unreadable expression. "That one time when you came in to give your report, and no one knew you were injured until you puked up blood all over my office floor? Remember that? And what was that ridiculous excuse you gave, when asked why hadn't sought medical attention? Oh, right. 'I didn't think it was a big deal'."
Ed winced. Mustang's voice was perfectly pleasant, and an outside observer might have thought that he was being kind. But Ed could read the barely masked rage in his eyes like a well-loved storybook.
"If you choose to get yourself killed out in the field, Fullmetal, then that's really none of my concern," Mustang continued dismissively, even as his eyes burned with accusatory anger. "But when you bring it in to my office, you force it to become my business. I'm rather fond of my rugs, Fullmetal. I'd rather you not die all over them."
"You are such a bastard," Ed breathed, and tensed when his baby brother grabbed his wrists in a hard, unshakeable fist.
"Show us, Brother," he said. "Please don't force us to find it."
"This is stupid," Ed snapped, the beginnings of a fine temper building behind his eyes.
"Wrong answer!" Havoc cheerfully replied, and began to pluck at Ed's coat.
Ed snarled and struggled against Al's hands, but Havoc continued to touch, undaunted. He stopped when his fingers pressed against a muscled shoulder blade, and Ed let out another soft, unintentional hiss.
"I think we have a winner," Breda observed. "Okay, then. Off with the jacket!"
"I am not stripping in the middle of the office," Ed hissed, wriggling earnestly against the appendages restraining him.
Havoc grinned fiercely, his teeth digging groves into the cigarette they were clamped around.
"Embarrassed, Boss?" he asked. "We can ask Hawkeye to step out, if you want."
Ed blushed furiously as Riza's eyebrow rose majestically on her face.
"Oh, screw you," he snapped over his shoulder, right into Havoc's smirking face.
"Mm-hmm," Havoc agreed absently. "Grab his other arm, Breda."
Breda bounced cheerfully to Ed's side, and seized the boy's arm. Together, he and Havoc wrestled his wrists away from Al, and began forcibly tugging off his black jacket. His red one was already resting on the table across the room, where Ed had tossed it upon entering.
"Come on, Brother," Al pleaded, as Ed continued to struggle and snarl. "Just take it off!"
"E-excuse me."
The entire tableau froze. As one, they turned their heads towards the open office door, where a small, mousy-haired secretary stood, eyes wide and mouth agape, a stack of papers cradled in her hands.
Despite the situation, Ed almost laughed as he realized what she was looking at. Breda and Havoc were teamed up and obviously trying to remove his clothes. A giant suit of armor was hovering close by, urging him to just take it off. His superior officers, and Falman, were observing calmly from across the room.
Fuery was fluttering anxiously nearby, and that stupid camera was still in his hands.
The snicker lodged itself painfully in Ed's throat, and he could see by the answering humor in Havoc's face that he wasn't the only one who'd grasped the situation, and what it might have seemed like they were doing.
"Miss Marie," Riza said coolly, as if there was nothing strange about the current situation at all. "The forms sent by General Cain, I presume?"
Wordlessly, the girl nodded, her eyes still locked helplessly on the still stationary subordinates, frozen in the act of forcefully stripping the prodigy Major, in the middle of the office.
"You may place them on the center table," Hawkeye ordered in a voice that invited zero argument.
"R-right," Miss Marie stammered, her cheeks stained a bright, blossoming pink.
She dropped the forms on the table and fled so fast that the echo of her heels clicking down the hallways sounded like machine gun fire.
Mustang passed a weary hand over his eyes and shot Riza a reluctantly amused look.
"How long do you think I have before the child exploitation citation papers reach my desk?"
"The speed of Miss Marie's mouth is well known around base," Riza returned solemnly. "And her communications network is impressive. Two days, Sir, if that."
"Wonderful."
Havoc and Breda took advantage of the distraction, and wrestled Ed's coat down his arms, letting it bunch at his wrists.
"We've got a bandage," Breda reported, tapping a gentle finger against Ed's shoulder blade.
"Guys," Edward said, a bit desperately now. "Guys, wait. It's not what you think, really, it's okay-"
But Havoc was already peeling the adhesive off, and Al was peering worriedly over his brother's back.
There was a long, rather loud silence, during which Ed's face flamed a brilliant red.
"Well," Mustang prompted after a while. "What are we dealing with? Stab wound? Third degree burns? Is he going to bleed all over my carpet?"
But neither of his subordinates answered, because they were too busy gaping at Ed like they'd never seen anything quite like him.
"Brother," Al said, his voice hushed with confusion and wonder. "Is that-?"
"Yeah," Ed mumbled uncomfortably, his words aimed at the carpet he was studiously observing.
"W-what is it?" Fuery asked hesitantly, and his mouth was slack with the horrible possibilities he suddenly imagined marring Ed's back.
"Does it require attention?" Hawkeye asked, almost urgently, real alarm in her eyes at the sight of Havoc and Breda's faces so serious. "Should I call the infirmary?"
"No," Havoc replied, shaking his head emphatically. "No, it's…" But words seemed to fail him, and he fell silent.
"Edward?" Mustang asked, almost an order, and later Ed would realize that there was actual concern in the older man's voice.
Ed's blush brightened horribly. He rolled his eyes and, with a bad-tempered huff, shoved away the hands restraining him. They let him go without resistance this time, their limbs turned weak and limp as water. Ed crossed his arms and spun around, presenting his back to the room at large.
"There," he snapped. "See? I don't need a doctor. It's not a big deal."
No one spoke. Eyebrows were both raised, and scrunched in confusion. Mouths gaped, and Fuery let out a soft, involuntary sound of surprise.
On his back, right above his left shoulder blade, his skin was decorated with the words 'Memoria Noxia', carefully printed in beautiful, curling black ink.
"How did you even-?" Breda asked, and Ed shot him an angry, impatient look over his shoulder.
"They don't care. Once you flash enough gold, and your silver watch chain, they fall all over themselves trying to help you."
Wordlessly, Alphonse reached out one giant metal finger and pressed the tip of it carefully against his brother's back, right beneath the tattoo. The skin around the decorated section was still pink and slightly swollen, indicating its freshness.
"What does it mean?" Fuery asked, his voice forced to quite in the sudden stillness of the room.
"Memory," Mustang murmured, and his mouth curled with something that might have been sorrow, might have been sympathy. "Memory and fault."
"Brother?" Al whispered, and there was a dangerous hitch in his metal voice.
The look that Ed tossed Al was equal parts embarrassed and laid bare. He hurriedly snatched his coat from around his wrists and shrugged it back up his shoulders, forcing Al's fingers away, and closed it at his throat with an angry jerk.
"I got it so I could tell you what it feels like," he muttered, his voice surly and self-conscious. "But…But even though that was the reason, I still didn't want to get something that didn't mean anything."
"B-but Ed," Fuery asked, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. "'Fault'?"
Ed flinched a little, his back bowing underneath all the scrutiny, and his hands curled into tight, uncomfortable fists.
"We'll get our bodies back," he snapped defiantly at the floor, unable to meet anyone's eyes. "Eventually. Someday. Soon. And when we do, my reminders will be gone." He gave his prosthetic arm a tiny, indicative twitch. "But I can't afford to forget. Not ever again. I don't deserve to. So now, I'll carry the memory and the fault forever, even after the automail isn't there."
More silence, heavy with words unsaid. Ed finally lifted his flushing face.
"So, yeah." He lifted one rage-filled finger and drilled it towards Mustang's face. "Stop smirking, you stupid bastard!" It wasn't an accurate accusation, there wasn't even the hint of a smirk on Mustang's face, but Ed made it anyway, because a smirk would have flustered him less than the faint approval burning in Mustang's eyes. That look implied that Mustang knew exactly what Ed's tattoo was, that he recognized it; the boy had branded himself, taken his guilt and had it stamped on his back in blood and ink so that he would be forced to carry it forever. Ed didn't want relief, didn't want salvation, not from this failure, and Mustang was maybe the only one in the room who actually understood.
Ed skipped right over Hawkeye's tiny smile, because it didn't do anything to help his blood-filled face, and refused to acknowledge the fact that Fuery's lower lip was trembling suspiciously. He turned to Breda instead, because the shock and awe in his eyes was slightly easier to swallow.
"The next time you try to strip me in the middle of the office, I will transmute you into a tree. An ugly tree. Got it?"
Wordlessly, Breda nodded. Head high, eyes blazing and defiant, Ed finally turned and started to stomp from the room.
"And it didn't hurt that bad, you wimp!" He tossed over his shoulder, in Havoc's general direction. "Gah, I swear. All your fault!"
The silence amongst Edward's subordinates, and his superior, was a lasting one. Even after Al raced out after his brother, both laughter and tears trembling in his voice as he demanded to know how it had felt, and how long it had taken, and if there was anything he could do to make it feel better, it lingered.
Along with the tiny smiles that helplessly curved the remaining six sets of lips.
...
A/N: Written to celebrate my own recent skin ink acquisition. Hee. Also, don't attack me if the Latin terms are wrong. I got them from a website, so reliability is sketch at best.