.
CHAPTER 12:
ELASTIC EQUIPOISE
.
Al suppressed the impulse to tune out the phone that had begun ringing; as he sat at the Rockbells' kitchen table poring over all the transmutation diagrams and formula for altering Philosopher's Stones and lava he'd assembled from his memory, and Julia's instructions; and keep his mind on his studies, and the hypotheses and theories he was attempting to develop to seek to understand just how much danger he'd left Brother in a ditch by the wayside in, on an entirely separate side of the Gate itself.
What he could let remain of who he'd used to be was worried for Teacher and Mustang, and thin horrified terror did cause the breathing he shouldn't even be able to do to come slightly harder.
But it was the old Al who wouldn't spare any attention to the ringing phone until he found out who was on it.
Brother would.
Al whipped his head in the direction of the phone within seconds.
Part of one of Brother's spare red capes from when Brother had been trying out different disguises before they'd left Resembool for Central what was now literally a lifetime ago for Brother, just as many sizes too large for Al as the also spare black shirt and spare black pants he was wearing, caught in the corner of the chair furthest from the table and the phone, and now Al couldn't breathe.
But he hadn't even had time to alter the size of the shirt and pants, and cape.
Brother had needed him to put them on with as little delay as possible.
Julia was striding briskly in the direction of the phone, and she reached it now and picked it up, moving it to her head.
"Hello?" she questioned, and a surprising amount of genuine willingness to talk to whoever was on the other end of the phone, and vibrantly sincere camaraderie, was in her words.
Al pushed down a surge of worry for Mustang, and the condition of the Brigadier General Al had known better than to ask Winry about until he had a better potential grasp of what he may have forced Brother to clean up after Al, that was much more anguished than Al had believed it would be.
"No, thank you," Julia answered whoever was on the other end politely.
She hung up the phone as though it had been an ordinary phone call, but as soon as the phone was securely in its receiver she gripped it so tightly all the knuckles of her hand became white.
Al suppressed the urge to clench his teeth as more terrified worry for someone he had barely met surged through him.
"What's wrong?" Al queried, and relief caused him to feel lighter at how he at least didn't need to actively keep his voice from sounding neutrally friendly.
Julia's voice was now a wary mask with an edged, vacantly fissured betrayal in it that, even after everything he'd witnessed, and been through, since he hadn't ended this before it had even begun by going along with Brother's intention to transmute Mom, Al had never heard in anyone's voice before.
"Stop lying to me!"
No, he u
Al pushed away the memory of yelling those words at Brother when he'd believed Brother had just put together his soul as though it was supposedly nothing more than the assembled components of any other uniform metal construct off a factory assembly line, and everything telling him why he needed to perceive why he was remembering it at this time, as far away as he could justify doing.
Al didn't understand why it felt like he was walking away from the cat once again, when all they'd been able to do for it had been to give it a more comfortable place to die.
And why, this time, it felt as though he was doing something far worse than merely walking away, and he was doing the precise same thing he'd done with Rose, and Lior, all over once anew.
"It was a telemarketer offering to clean the Rockbells' carpets, and rugs," Julia responded.
"I'm not in any mood to deal with anyone offering to sell me any goods, or services, at this time, particularly in regards to accusations there's supposedly anything wrong with blemish to finery, or a home."
"Stop l"
Something broke in Julia's voice as she said the word 'home' that caused Al's insides to distort, something, at this time, he was practically more familiar with than entirely and any clearing almost anything else he possibly c
"He's dead?"
"That's right, he said he would pace for every human that follows! Now to kill off each one until only Homunculi remain!"
"But they can't die. That's ridiculous, he wouldn't let that happen! He couldn't!"
"That's reality for you. All the effort he gave got him one thing in return."
no
he didn't know
this needed to stop
he couldn't let that happen fornever hadn'tbefore
"Do you want to talk about it?" Al queried.
Julia's eyes searched his face for a number of seconds.
Al knew he should be meeting her gaze with a hard, challenging one, but at the thought of assuming those kinds of Brother's mannerisms, he wanted to violently retch, and the red cape that had previously felt like a blanket wrapping him in the warmth he shouldn't be able to feel was now constricting, and asphyxiating.
So Al just turned his eyes, and face, slightly to the side.
A number of other sentiments passed over Julia's face, too many in number to decipher.
"Who is asking?" Rose interjected from where Al could now hear her enter the kitchen from behind both of them, her voice understanding, but determinedly reproving.
"Alphonse Elric; or the Frock of Leto, one so big for him he doesn't even need to attempt to stand up to stumble?"
Something attempted to rise inside h
"Stop lying to me!"
"He's dead?"
"That's right, he said he would pace for every human that follows! Now to kill off each one until only Homunculi remain!"
"But they can't die. That's ridiculous, he wouldn't let that happen! He couldn't!"
"That's reality for you. All the effort he gave got him one thing in return."
iridescentonyx
moltenfrigid
washingavalanchingcascadingclearing
concaveinvertedswitchbackserratedlabyrinthinelacuna
There was no other way Alphonse could respond.
He turned to face Rose.
A small amount of lightness caused hotness to push against the backs of Al's eyes at seeing Rose's baby wasn't in her arms, or anywhere nearby.
He knew Rose's son was too young to understand this, but at least, after Dante had literally attempted to turn him into nothing but the absent materials for one of the most lethal bombs of all, Rose's baby wasn't present to hear this.
"Nothing!? You mean to say you slaughtered all these people for nothing!?"
"At the end of the day, the human being is not much more than the components used to create a common bomb. If you think about it, we're not that special. Not you. Not me. We're all empty. We're all worthless."
"It's going to be so magnificent, Al. You'll make such a great impact. Such a great bomb."
"You said humans have no impact. No meaning. So tell me, how much of an impact do I make on you!?"
"This is the sole way left I can move forward," Al responded.
It took no effort at all to keep his voice steady now.
"I need to do what Brother and I couldn't before."
"I must do what the two of you cannot."
Scar's voice spoke as Al's did as he turned his back and walked away from Al to follow in the footsteps of a Brother he could never catch up to
Al turned his back and walked away from the cat, not wanting to leave it alone, in the cold, without anything more than an improved chance to fend for itself, but knowing if he did, Brother would leave him behind
"Al?"
Dad was flying out of sight amidst the spiraling currents of gold, an amount of eager curiosity and an impatient irritation on his face as he flew away until he was too small for his mostly disinterested features, and his white robes, to be seen
he landed on his back without his face even shifting in pain in front of a woman with short blonde hair and a brown haired man with a mustache in brown academic clothing who now stood behind him with shocked expressions on their faces, but ones that also recognized what had just happened, an indiscernible amount of what might have been fright passing so fast over the woman's face Al doubted the other person, whose expression was now settling into a visage of amazed and curious wonder of his own, had seen
a solar eclipse superimposed over the familiar purple large eye at the center of the Gate
vibrating from side to side as though in discordant pitch and tune with
the pitch black back of that eye's vitreous membrae
a Gate with transparent double doors and an eye with an iris of concentric, differing shades of red
a Gate with transparent double doors and an eye with an iris of concentric, differing shades of grayish silver
E times begin outer parenthesis begin inner parenthesis begin innermost parenthesis a times qx times px end innermost parenthesis squared plus b times qx times py end innermost parenthesis plus begin innermost parenthesis qc times pz end innermost parenthesis equals begin infinite zero end inner parenthesis equals begin inner parenthesis minus b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four a c end innermost parenthesis over negative two a end inner parenthesis if n equals vertice of non estimated Pi for all eight variables end outer parenthesis equals m c squared exponent begin as an exponent parenthesis negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four a c over two a end parenthesis end exponent
an expanding mushroom cloud of differing shades of gray of an unidentifiable size
"To my father!"
Al couldn't breathe at the recognition he must have not just glimpsed a formula in the Gate that might enable him to locate Brother during the time he, Envy, and Brother had passed back and forth through it more than once, but at the confirmation Dad really may be alive.
Now that he remembered seeing Dad, and that equation, as well as pieces that might be tied to identifying its variables, and locating its ingredients, and Al at last had somewhere to truly begin researching how to bring Brother home, any remaining flickers of doubt, and sickness in his stomach, settled into total quietude.
"I might be empty. But not w"
Al pushed it away as the frayed to threadbarest featherestlight pinion of hope he knew whatever his mind was attempting to reminisce to be.
He turned away from Rose, and he jotted down the equation he'd just remembered, properly applying the order of parenthesis outdoes exponent overwrites multiplication overwrites division surpasses addition outdoes subtraction.
Julia had reached the table, at his side, by the time he was done writing it down.
She pored over it, where she was standing, with her brow furrowed in thought.
Al didn't know why he was disappointed neither Rose, nor she, said anything.
"All that I recognize in this are my ability to confirm the presence of two quadratic equations, with the one in the first part of the formula finished, and the one in the exponent merely halfway done, and how px, py, pz, and qx are coordinates I've seen in among my father's oldest Milosian writings, from around the time our society was first established, in a diagram of something known as a phase space that refers, in respective order, to position width, position length, position depth, and momentum length."
Al pushed all of his eager joy at knowing there was such a thing as phase space, and six dimensions where position and momentum could both be tracked, and the Principle of Uncertainty could be worked around, down.
"It doesn't matter whether it's one belief, or six, though," Julia then spoke, and the same edge was partially back in her voice now as she turned to face him, along with a small amount of minor identifiable tinges of the same determination that was in Rose's.
"The Ed of my side of the Gate, or whatever you'd prefer to call it, didn't get along with me as much as the Al from that side did because he believes equal gain supposedly unfailingly results from equal effort, so he kept passing judgments on my willingness to use the Philosopher's Stone because he when Milos is an impoverished nation of a shantytown, warrens, and literal rolling hills of refuse at the bottom of a valley between that side of the Gateway's wealthy Amestris, and its prosperous Creta."
"That's reality for you. All the effort he gave got him one thing in return."
"And you've got to stop this! It won't solve anything!"
"Stay out of this, Al! You don't understand!"
"What will you accomplish but shedding more blood? Please, just walk away."
"I m"
This time, Alphonse did nothing more than ignore the memory, and it dispersed before it continued any further.
"To make matters worse, if the Führer on my side of the Gateway is determined to sacrifice even a sizeable fragment of Amestris' population to create a Philosopher's Stone he has no intention of using to benefit the state he heads, he's even as bad as Soyuz, and Herschel," Julia's voice cracked once more as she uttered that name.
"Stop l"
Al ignored it.
"The warmongering autocratic militarist I assumed him to already be was already bad enough.
"But if he isn't even attempting to compel his people to live by no one's beliefs about what constitutes a family, government, nation, or future than his own, and he's willing to let even the people he doesn't identify or assume as disloyal, or opponents, die, and be tormented; even if he lies to himself he's upholding the tenets of a militaristic meritocracy, he himself is worse than even an absolutist, and as bad as Soyuz, and Dante, in his own ways.
"While, from what I saw during my brief encounter with the Homunculi on my side of the Doorway; the other ones believe in caste systems where people's lives are supposedly determined by dint of birth, and not the individual ability to choose how to live their unique lives as they choose to, in all ways, where all people have the same capability for love and enmity, or understanding and closing your eyes to the outside reality; as much as Bradley, or whatever his real name is.
"The Ed of my side of the Doorway believes as much that some people are supposedly more worthy than others as Soyuz himself, yet he hypocritically turns around and claims to believe equal effort is supposed to always bring about equal gain.
"I don't want you to be the Al from my side of the Portal.
"But, do you really want to be, not even an Al, but an Ed, like that?"
Guilty protectiveness manifested on Rose's face, and this time, the determination was gone, and there was nothing but a certain challenge in her voice Al had never heard from her before.
At least he could still let this lighten him.
"The Ed here used to be similar, but trust me, he's learned better by now."
She looked at Alphonse, and asked, her voice now neutral itself, "Do you want to know the de
"Nothing!? You mean to say you slaughtered all these people for nothing!?"
"At the end of the day, the human being is not much more than the components used to create a common bomb. If you think about it, we're not that special. Not you. Not me. We're all empty. We're all worthless."
"It's going to be so magnificent, Al. You'll make such a great impact. Such a great bomb."
Al didn't know if the recollection had spent longer playing out in his mind's eye than usual, or if awareness had refused to connect with him, but he was now seeing Rose close her mouth, whatever she'd been saying completed.
How could Rose even begin to ask that, when, if any piece of his armor hadn't become materials for the finished Philosopher's Stone and survived within the Gate, and the Homunculi in the Gate could claim it the same way they could limbs, he might now have genuinely become nothing but an empty soldier capable of nothing other than inflicting death and torment until there was no longer a space, or time, on any side of any Gate, or anywhere inside it, for him to inflict murder and torture in for unceasing endlessness.
But he didn't want to think about what Equivalent Exchange had turned out to be, at this time.
"You have a good, strong pair of legs. You should get up and use them."
He wasn't doing that, if he delayed to have this conversation any longer.
"I'm choosing this path because I am willing to keep my eyes open to as much as the two of you, and to recognize war isn't brought about by one side being right in a dispute, and neither Brother, nor I, were any more in the right than the Bradley of this side of the Gate.
"I'm choosing it because I do recognize no one belief is right, and the other wrong, and that death, and pain, happen when one, or more, people treat their beliefs as assumedly more correct than any other person."
"Do you have any clue how many people Scar has killed to create the Philosopher's Stone? Seven thousand of them didn't make it home. But don't fret. They're all right in here. Oh, I bet you didn't realize all the souls of the Ishbalans that were sealed inside Scar's arm are inside you now. Isn't that great?"
Giving up and waiting to die hadn't atoned for how, from the very beginning, Al had been nothing more than the emptiest, most coldly unfeeling living artillery of all.
Attempting to harness the true Philosopher's Stone to heal, and give life, rather than to live as the almighty weapon of foreverlasting slaughter and torture, had condemned Brother to that very iron maiden.
Ed, Winry, Granny, Mustang, Hawkeye, Hughes, and the others were correct.
It didn't matter whether his soul, mind, and body were manufactured from assembly line components or real, or what their form was, or were.
He made his own choices, and that was what he was.
And he could no longer take the time to second guess.
Even i
when
was there a difference?
he was able to, at long last, give Brother the warm hearth he'd sundered from him all those years ago by refusing to walk on his own legs, he couldn't stop moving forward any longer.
He knew Winry, at the least, would attempt to stop him.
So all he did was pick up the paper with the equation, fold it up, and put it in his pocket.
He'd find out if anyone had brought Wrath back here with them, tonight.
If Wrath had at last realized what Dante, and Envy, and the other Homunculi, genuinely lived for, and was willing to accompany Al, so much the better.
But if he was here, and he didn't want to come along, or he was still their opponent, all on his own now, or a wild card who knew where, Al would leave him to his own path.
When night fell, however, and everyone was asleep, as Julia and Rose had discussed, Al knew where to begin.
He was going to find out what had happened to Gluttony, if not Dante, reverse the transmutation that had ruined Gluttony's mind, ability to communicate with the outside reality, or both, see if it could be reversed.
And then; not to attempt to advertise food and drink for Gluttony, or treat him as though he, or any relationships, familial, romantic, or friendship, presumably had a price, as Dante had done to the second perpetually youngest Homunculus; but to attempt to teach Gluttony he didn't deserve to starve to death any less than Julia did; he would begin fixing his refusal to see anyone other than Brother as worthy by teaching Gluttony that he hadn't been born different any more than Dante, and the Führers, and whoever this Soyuz was, or anyone else, at all, with any exceptions, at all, had supposedly had his, or her, choices, or freedom of how to live his life, limited, or restricted, at all, determined by his, or her, dint of birth.
It was not now can'thadn't neverfor too late for Al to have learned no one was any more, or less, worthy than anyone else of living on estates without even possessing a willingness to provide for the people they knew, or believed to be, obedient, and not opponents, or to have learned people who disagreed with him weren't foes on the other side of a chasm of right and wrong.
But it wasn't too late for Brother.
To give Brother his own history back, Al didn't need to burn down what ruins had never remained of his house to begin with in order to ensure that, this time, he wouldn't turn back.
.
"I'm sorry."-Dathan Palpatine
"You need to stop saying sorry. You know that. It's not your legacy that defines you, Dathan. Or your genetic makeup. We've been through this before, and I know we'll go through it again, and we'll go through it as many times as we need to until the day we die. You are you. You are Dathan. You are defined by your choices. You are defined by your actions. And right now, Rey and I need you, and you're doing a very good job at protecting us. We're in this together, Dathan. I know what you're thinking. We lose the Sith, means we lose the Jedi. But at least we know that someone's looking out for us. And that gives us something, right? Now we might have somewhere to run to. If they can find us."-Miramir Palpatine
"Maybe we can help them find us."-Dathan Palpatine
STAR WARS:
SHADOW OF THE SITH
