Hey, hey, hey. : D S'goin' on?
Okay, here's the thing: This chapter is going to be mostly from Mustang's point of view. The italics are his first person, and the quotes in italics are his memories. Everything is... not him. Duh. Hopefully, you guys will be happy that I stuck Hughes in there. I tried. D:
Disclaimer= Nope. I don't own FMA. :
Read on, my sheep.
Dark. Even, blank darkness. It's got to be nighttime. I don't know if there's any other way to describe it. When I look up, all I see is endless black, but that's always there. It's like a starless sky. However, below me, I see countless amounts of pin-pointed light, constellations, the Milky Way. I'm watching a sky under my own feet. It's beautiful.
"Why did we have to wait until now to read it, Brother?"
I know that voice. It's unmistakable. Alphonse Elric, Edward Elric's younger brother. Brown hair, soft eyes, fair skin. But he didn't have those before. I blink hard, and for a moment, I hear one of those damned memories echo in the dark above me.
"Nobody asked you to sacrifice yourself for us!"
Oh yeah. I did that.
A sudden, chilling breeze rips past me, tossing me like a feather in its current. I sail wordlessly through the empty air, waiting for the breeze to drop me off at another place I recognize. It always seems to bring me to a familiar place. I've learned to simply go along with it.
"Gracia would've been asking about it. You know that, Al," Edward said as he peeled open the manila envelope in his hands. Alphonse was sitting on the bed, legs crossed next to where his brother lounged on the floor. With a soft rustle of papers, Edward drew out the heavy file with their names printed on the top page. After a quick flip-through, Edward discovered a packet of photos taken at the scene of Alphonse's return transmutation.
"This is..." One of Ed's hands went up to cover his mouth in horror as his eyes widened, reminding Alphonse of an identical pair of golden suns. "Alphonse, look at this picture."
I move closer to the brothers, wanting to see what the picture was. I stood on the bed, my bare feet making no indentation in the blankets. After all, I was weightless. I didn't make indentations anymore, much less shadows. I wasn't even a ghost.
By turning myself slightly, I could see the photo over Alphonse's shoulder. At the same time as the brown-haired boy, I gasped and was nearly swept into the air again by a brief breeze of surprise.
"Brother..?" Alphonse choked out, "This is the room. This is the room where it happened! I remember! We were there..." He began indicating different areas in the photo, "...Fuery was there. Havoc had been outside. Mustang was... here." He pointed to the corner of the photo where the very edge of a dark room was situated. It was in the corner of the picture that I could see a very visible smudge on the concrete wall of the room. At a first glance, it really did look like a smudge, but further examination led me to believe that it was a shadow. My shadow.
"That picture was taken almost thirty minutes after they had taken you and I to the hospital, Al," Edward said, swallowing hard. I swallowed too, but I felt nothing. I blinked again and heard one of those damned memories.
"Mustang? Mustang?! Answer me! Dammit, Colonel, you'd better not have done what I think you did! Colonel Mustang!"
I touched my non-existent face, hoping to find the tears that I was sure I was crying. There were none, not even the faintest trace of dampness. I found that I didn't regret that time, but it hurt to remember.
"Al? Answer me, Al? Alphonse? Please be back. Please be back..."
"That's his shadow. Brother, that's his shadow. I know it!" Alphonse said, his voice escalating, "He was standing right there when you began the transmutation. He promised to watch us, and he stood right there!"
"Shh! Al!" Ed shook his hands to quiet his brother down. "Maybe when I transmuted you and he did that stupid thing..."
Hey. It wasn't stupid. I would've smacked the little mouthy idiot in the back of the head if I still had flesh-hands.
"...the Gate left a piece of him behind. Or maybe the Gate took his body so quickly that part of his existence didn't have time to follow. Alphonse, do you understand?" Edward looked positively terrified. His face had gone pale, and his hands were shaking. He licked his lips over and over.
"He's stuck?" Alphonse whispered his guess, his complexion being slightly paler than his brother's. "He's stuck between the Gate and our world?"
"No! No, he's able to traverse between the Gate and our world! He has two bodies. Oh, damn. What have we done? We've left him with no place to stay. There's no way to reverse this!"
I didn't mind. Two bodies was alright with me. At the time when Edward was transmuting Alphonse, I had fully intended to do what I had done. I knew Ed wouldn't be able to bring his brother back with the meager leg and arm he still had to offer. They deserved their whole bodies again. Being stuck in a limbo of life between two worlds for the rest of eternity, it didn't seem so bad. After all, the breeze took me wherever I wanted to go, and my body never grew hungry or tired.
That was how Alphonse had felt for all of those years.
I replaced him.
"Brother..?" Alphonse looked close to tears. Dammit, I hated it when the kid cried when I was stuck in the same state as smoke. It made me feel worse than I already did. Please, don't cry again.
"I've sent him to a place worse than hell," Edward chuckled hysterically, "Well, I told him to go away. I told him not to move. But he..." Suddenly, his eyes looked straight at me. I swear, I'd never seen him look so haunted as he had looked at that moment. It seemed as if he were going to evaporate. Then, he looked at Alphonse. "We shouldn't be reading this so late at night. The court case is in four days. We've got time."
"But, Brother-"
"Don't start, Al," Edward warned. "It's late. Your body needs the sleep. We'll finish reading tomorrow." On a softer note, he added, "Okay?"
Alphonse seemed to deflate slightly, but he nodded. "Fine."
Then, the breeze was back, carrying me away none-so-gently to another place. As I careened through the air, I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the beautiful stars below. After seeing Edward's guilt, seeing the night sky just didn't feel worth it.
I landed soundlessly on a patch of damp graveyard grass, next to a stone I knew so well as my own. Beside it lay Hughes's marker.
"You went to see them again, I assume?" The familiar outline of a hazel-eyed man sat on top of his own grave, hunched over in a casual form of sitting. He eyed me without the glasses he had used while he was still alive. Ghosts don't need glasses. They see everything clearly.
"Yeah," I sighed, resting my back against the cool granite of my own grave. Finally, I looked up at the night sky, smiling faintly with relief that they were above me for the first time in a very long while. "Ed found out what he'd done to me."
"He didn't take it so well." Hughes didn't state it as a question.
"He never was the sort of kid to take information like that with a calm demeanor. I guess I had it coming, huh?"
"That's what you get for doing stupid things. You heard what he said when they buried you. He was prepared to fail again." Hughes made his habitual movement of pushing his 'glasses' farther up his nose.
"If someone says my idea was stupid one more time, I'm going to haunt them," I growled.
"You can't haunt if you're not a ghost," Hughes said simply with a haughty grin.
"Don't remind me." I closed my eyes, wanting to sleep. Of course, I couldn't sleep. Sleeping was for someone who was truly dead. While away from the Gate, the body I was in was unable to retain sleep. My other body in the Gate was unconscious.
"You don't regret what you did, do you?" my black-haired comrade mused.
"Nah. Those boys deserved what they got. If I was going to die, I wanted to go out with a bang." I frowned with my eyes still shut, "I really wanted to become Fuhrer, though. Looks like Hawkeye's going to have to take care of my unfinished business."
"She can do it. After all, she was under your command."
I chuckled, "She'll probably just end up assassinating the Fuhrer just to get into office. Why didn't I think of that before?"
"Idiot." He grinned, "I'm going to sleep. Goodnight, Roy." Hughes slipped off of his grave and wiggled around until his body slid effortlessly into the ground. When only his neck and face showed, he added, "You should wake up now. Sleeping in is bad for you." Then, he disappeared into his coffin. I probably wouldn't see him again until the breeze decided to bring me to the graveyard once more.
"Yeah. I'll see you later, Maes," I sighed, then stood on top of my grave. "Alright. Let's go," I said to no one, and felt my body being lifted into the air again.