WARNING: Unaliving yourself discussions.
KEYNote: There is another chapter. I'll post it after I finish going through this story to clean it up a little bit more. Dyslexic edits still leave much to be desired, but it helps me keep this story tight.
P.s. I do purposely skip some of the action scenes because it mimics the show too closely. Alchemists are fun but the Dwarf and Hohenheim are just magic. Also, the Dwarf is severely weaker than he had been as it tried to consolidate its power.
Chapter C26 - All I Ask of You
"Maes," Roy said, frustrated beyond belief.
Ling had yet to come home, and feeling responsible for the boy, he worried he might do something out of grief.
Maes was smirking at him, with more light in his eyes than he had seen since Ed's departure.
Their whole team was present, scrunched together around the table.
One of Maes's dogs sprinted down the steps, her fur patterned by the alchemic dragon.
She began eagerly sniffing everyone, especially Riza who had left their dog at home.
Heavier steps than any of the Hughes girls came down the steps, and Roy turned to see who it was, as did everyone else.
They all gaped as the golden haired alchemist appeared with a hefty stack of folders in his arms as if he had just strolled in from the other office.
Ed dropped the folders on the table. grinning widely at them, "Are you all in the mood for some deep government conspiracy?"
Sound exploded around the room.
Armstrong was crying.
Several people were crying actually, and it took some time to calm down the emotions and for Ed to explain how he had survived the North.
Roy was more than relieved to know that Ed was alive, and more and more disturbed by what Ed was explaining about their government.
"So what's all this?" Riza asked.
"And where was it all?" Maes asked. "We checked your room. I've already given Miles half your library."
"That's fine, I have all I need from them," Ed said, unfolding one of his maps of Ishval, followed by another map. "I alchemy them into the ceiling."
"Of course you did," Roy sighed, even as he tried to decipher the meaning of the map.
If he remembered correctly, it was the Temple and the central cultural seat of the Ishvalan people.
Or it had been.
Ed laid out a second map.
Maes let out a sound of outrage.
"What is this?" Armstrong demanded.
"Bradley's Black Ops strike," Ed said. "The terrorist attack that was used to spark the war, with the Amestris government, very clearly, being the aggressors, if placing trade embargoes on them and beginning to set up military surveillance throughout their cities wasn't enough."
They all stared at him or the two maps.
"This isn't enough," Havoc said.
Ed began to spread out the files he had. "I have first-hand testimonials from some of the operatives involved. As well as the dishonourable discharge papers, their execution papers, and the alchemic research done on them in Laboratory 5. I've been going through reports for years, that track the destruction of Ishval that supports this series as well as orders Bradley gave that led to violence on our own people since his rise to power."
A ringing played in Roy's hearing as he tried to process just how damning this information could be.
"You want to take down the Fuhrur with paperwork?" Riza asked.
Ed smiled, "No, we will take him down with paperwork, as well as the corruption that surrounds him and came before him." He pulled out more files and another map, "See this is a conspiracy that stretches back to the birth of the country."
It took Roy a moment but Maes and Riza saw it first.
"They are going to turn Amestris into a–"
"Massive human sacrifice," Ed explained. "But I have that taken care of. You're job now is to take care of the politics."
Riza scoffed, "You think we are going to let you go anywhere alone again?"
"I think my brother is out there and aside from Bradley, the Dwarf in the Flask doesn't have any pawns left. And I think you are all needed to handle Bradley. After I handle the dwarf, I'll go back north for my miraculous survival."
"Ed," Maes said flatly. "Roy can help you."
"Roy is one of the human sacrifices," Ed snapped. "Going directly to the Dwarf is not smart."
"But you're going," Roy noted.
"He'll be my sixth homunculus. I can handle it," Ed said again. "Meanwhile, if you screw your part up, all of us and our families will be black bagged."
Roy recoiled but held his tongue, because, to some extent, he was right.
Riza and Maes were thumbing through the files, and their shared look of grim satisfaction let Roy know just how damning the information was and how likely they were to succeed with it.
It would have been nice to know at the time that Bradley, or Wrath, was already dead.
oOo
Van Hohenheim knew that the Dwarf had made other homunculi, so it was worrying that he hadn't yet encountered more of them.
Al hardly talked at all since the funeral except to Winry over the phone.
Therefore, Hohenheim wasn't expecting Al to open up, though he wasn't overly surprised by the topic.
"Hey, Dad?"
"Hmm?"
"When Ed tried bringing Mom back to life, did he only trade his arm and leg for what he created?"
Hohenheim sighed, "That depends. When you reach beyond the veil, the Gate, the Gate reaches back into you. He learned things about alchemy that you would never want to know. Despite his age, he was successful."
"You call that successful?" Al bit out.
He sighed again, "He did not lose his soul, life, or his mind, not even the majority of his body. So yes, successful in entering the Gate and surviving it."
"Oh," Al said. "So most people…"
"Aren't intelligent or strong-willed enough to survive it."
"Thanks for the compliment, apologies for being able to return the remark to the moron who would leave books about human transmutation where anyone, specifically, his young sons could find them."
Hohenheim and Al spun, the dimly lit hallways beneath the capital revealing his oldest son, alive and real.
"ED!" Al screamed before proceeding to tackle his older, yet shorter, brother.
Hohenheim wanted to hold both of them in his arms but he knew that he wouldn't be welcomed.
But that was okay. He deserved neither Edward's forgiveness nor love.
He had been the one to leave his family behind, to abandon his sons, and leave them only his alchemy books that had planted the false hope of human transmutation.
It was enough for them to be alive.
It was more than enough for Trisha's sons to be alive.
oOo
Al was shaking, "How are you alive!?"
"Come on, Teacher survived Briggs, you think I would do less?"
"But– but…" Al tried to formulate his thoughts.
"I fell into the tunnels Sloth was making," Ed said. "I couldn't let anyone know what I had found."
"How many of the tunnels did you destroy?" Dad asked.
"I destroyed the Western arch and then went inward to the Capital," Ed said, rubbing Al's back as he spoke.
Al didn't know whether to punch him or never let him go.
Dad nodded, "That's good, it gives us time."
"We don't need time," Ed said. "We need to end this. How dangerous is Dwarf?"
"That's it?" Al interrupted. "You come back to life, and that's all you have to say? We went to your funeral."
"There's going to be a lot of funerals if we don't kill this monster."
Al glared at him, "We know. It's what Dad and I have been doing since you left while you were working for the government."
Ed raised a brow, completely unimpressed, "Technically, I joined a military coupe."
Al stared at him, "What?"
Ed waved to their surroundings, "My father, Maes, has been planning to put Mustang on the thrown since Ishval, possibly since they went to Academy together."
"Oh," Al said, so much that hadn't made sense beginning to.
"Boys!" Dad exclaimed.
They both spun to face a hundred eyes that glowed from the darkness.
"Okay, maybe I should have brought Mustang," Ed said.
Al gave him an askance glance as he pulled up his sleeves to give him access to the arrays on his leather bracers.
Ed, however, just clapped and the waterway beside them became a living wall that cleared the hall in a wave, destroying the chimaera watchdogs.
Al looked at his older brother, who was nonchalantly dusting off his hands.
Ed met his gaze with a smile, "Ready to save the world?"
Al grinned, and suddenly, it was as if no time had passed between them.
They were brothers and they always would be.
oOo
Ed was not impressed with the Dwarf.
He was glad that he had been tracking the water pipes as it gave him an advantage as they fought.
The Dwarf was an arrogant piece of shit who seemed to think that Ed had personally killed all of its creations.
Which was true, he had killed Sloth, sort of.
"You've certainly mellowed out... you used to be fun, full of life and emotion," Hohenheim mocked the Dwarf as they fought. "Lust, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, and Pride. Of course, excessive want will destroy anyone, but those same desires are necessary to understand what it means to be human. Why did you rid yourself of them?"
Then the Dwarf ate its Hohenheim skin shape after they had all poked enough holes in it.
"And I still have one weakness to rid myself of," the Dwarf snapped.
"You won't have the chance," Ed called as he alchemied a blast of boiling steam toward the Dwarf, freezing it as Al brought part of the ceiling down on him.
The Dwarf rippled with red alchemic light and staggered, looking up at them with a snarl.
His black blob form with giant eyes, rushed forward to attack Al who was the only one among them who was still relying on drawn arrays.
"No!" Ed and Hohenheim yelled together.
Neither of them got there in time.
The Dwarf held Al by his throat, the fear in his golden eyes killed Ed.
It gutted him.
The Dwarf laughed, flashing an absurdly wide slash of teeth, "Like I said, one final weakness to shed."
Ed stood tense, ideas of how to get out of this spinning through his head with the reality of how hopeless he was in preventing the Dwarf from snapping Al's neck.
The Dwarf stopped smiling as he pulled a liquid stone from himself, and began pressing it into Al's forehead.
Al squeezed his eyes tight, gritting his teeth as red light flashed around him.
At first, nothing happened.
And then Al began to writhe.
The Dwarf dropped him like a seizing fish.
Ed sprinted toward him as Hohenheim handled the dwarf.
Al screamed, writhing in his arms as his body tried to fight off the stone hijacking his body and soul.
The Dwarf laughed, "Despair, Edward Elric-Hughes. Despair."
Ed felt his mouth go dry.
Greed, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Pride, Wrath, and Despair.
To give up on the hope that things can be better.
Ed knew that feeling all too well.
Hohenheim snarled, "Despair teaches you that you are capable of failure, that you have limits. That we are not gods."
"I will be!" the Dwarf roared.
"You have failed," Hohenheim challenged. "Dwarf in the Flask."
Ed looked up to the two fighting as Al went limp in his arms.
"I have won!" the Dwarf crowed as it glupped onto Hohenheim.
But the man only smiled, "We came into this world together, and so our story shall end together."
Ed met his gaze as his birth father laid both his hands over his own heart as he was consumed by the monster.
In that moment, Ed knew, he knew that Hohenheim had learned what Ed had about the stones, that the souls from the stones could be freed.
Still, the only reason Hohenheim was alive was because of the energy of those other souls.
But to end this cycle…
"I'll take care of Al," Ed said.
Hohenheim smiled again, "I know."
The Dwarf screamed as they were both consumed by light.
Ed didn't have time to watch what became of them because Al chose that moment to open his eyes, no longer gold, but red-purple.
Ed was pretty sure Al had won the fight for his soul, but he was still inhuman, or more than human at this point.
Only what drove him was a lack of direction.
Al looked up at him with…
As if Ed had failed him.
"You left me," Al stated, his voice empty of the passion that Al put into everything, be it good or bad.
"I'm sorry," Ed answered, holding him closer. "But I'm here now."
Al turned away.
Ed followed his gaze to see Hohenheim slumped on the floor, faded and motionless, his last smile remaining even in death.
Finally at peace.
"My family is dead," Al said listlessly. "There is nothing left to fight for."
Ed shook his head, "Al, I know this pain. I know what it means to despair, to believe there is nothing that can be done and nothing worth fighting for. But it's not true, Al. We can always do better, we might not be able to undo what has been done, maybe we can make up for our sins, but we can always do better."
Al looked up at him, "You'll only leave me again."
Ed smiled sadly, "Perhaps, and perhaps I won't always be here when you return. But you know what?"
Al shook his head.
"I'll never stop trying. And when I'm gone, you'll remember me and you'll remember what our mother taught us. To be kind, to be good, to do our best until the next adventure comes. In the end, that's all we can ever do."
"It's not enough," Al stated.
Al laid his hand over his chest, the tattoo around his hand unwinding, "Maybe, but it's all I have to give. It's what our mom, and your dad, and my dad, my sisters, and Winry, and Granny gave us too."
Al laid his hand over Ed's, "And what's that, brother?"
"Love."
Light bloomed around them as Ed shut his eyes.
And love brought him before Truth who smiled at him with benediction.
"You are my favourite, Little Alchemist."
"I want Al safe and whole."
Truth nodded, "You gave me all I asked of you and never shied from the tole, no matter the pain it brought you. So I promise, your Alphonse shall be free of what the Dwarf in the Flask did to him, free from the Despair that was not his own to bear."
Ed sighed, dropping to the ground while crossing his legs. He felt so tired all of a sudden, as if by making peace with Al he had lost his direction.
As much as he had told Al he would try his best, without a mission, the world outside the pocket-verse felt infinite and overwhelming in its possibilities.
Not least of which because he was dreading the cost of saving his brother, which was surely going to be expensive given how much he selfishly cared for his brother.
Truth chortled as he–it–persieved his thoughts.
Time felt like it stretched on for longer than the expanding galaxy and yet passed in a single beat of his heart.
"And what's the price this time, Truth?" he finally asked.
"Do you know why you feel you've lost your compass, Alchemist?"
"Because you're going to take my alchemy from me?" Ed asked, looking up at his gate, knowing he could trade it for just about anything.
After all, what was more equal to the act of creation by giving up that very potential of creation?
Truth laughed, "A riddle solved and another ignored. No, that is not the answer I was looking for. You're not trading to receive yourself for yourself. You are trading a release from contract for clarity."
Ed sighed again, "You are nothing but a riddle. No, I don't know why I feel lost now that I've achieved everything I set out to achieve."
"But that's just it," Truth said, something changing in his tone as he knelt before Ed so they were eye to eye.
Though this form of Truth had no eyes.
"When you bargained with me the first time, you asked for something that was already lost. You offered me everything so that your brother might be happy and safe again. You offered me everything and anything. You offered your life, freely, without truly understanding what you wanted. You had wishes, but no clear desire beyond what you knew in your heart of hearts was impossible to achieve."
Ed took in a deep breath, "Because I had already failed Al, looking for a way to get Mom back was just a distraction. To ensure Al didn't give into despair. I couldn't–" He had to take another breath. "I couldn't handle him crying anymore without giving up myself."
"But you did give into despair yourself," Truth said. "From the beginning, you've been searching for a way to end it. The pain, the mistakes, the hopelessness. You've been searching for a way to make it all stop, permanently."
Ed's breath caught, his eyes widening as he finally realised what Truth was getting at. "I was looking for a way to die, and make it mean something."
So that his last act wouldn't be another disappointment, another failure, another shortcoming.
But it was more than that, he wanted freedom from the guilt, the regret that choked the joy and colour from the world, from his thoughts, from everything he had ever done or would do.
He had wanted it to stop.
"The cost you must pay, Little Alchemist," Truth said. "Is to stop searching for your death and live what life you have."
Ed closed his eyes, Nina and Gracia's faces flashing through his mind, asking him to come home.
Al asking him to stay.
Maes asking for him to never give up on hope.
Because Maes had known him from the beginning. His father had known exactly what he was looking for, had known how badly had wanted to die and was just too stubborn to let even his greatest desire take him without a fight.
Because eternal rest had been more than he thought he deserved.
When Ed opened his eyes, he was standing in his old home. Sunlight poured in from the window, the breeze soft and sweet as his mother lay dying on the bed, even as she fought for every moment, every breath.
Fought to stay with them a little longer.
"Mom?" he asked, taking her hand with both of his.
His hand was so much smaller than hers, soft compared to the callouses she incurred from working on the house and her garden.
She smiled at him with nothing but love in her eyes. The pain and sorrow she felt were trapped inside her bones where Ed could neither perceive nor understand it.
"Take care of your brother," she had told him. "I won't be here forever."
He could only nod and then shake his head, biting his lip so that he wouldn't cry and wake Al who had finally fallen asleep a little after dawn had broken over the hills.
His mother, Trisha Elric, in all her wisdom and strength, could barely squeeze Ed's hand as she asked, "Forgive me, my little one. Please forgive me, Edward, for leaving you too."
She began crying then, the tears falling soundlessly down her cheeks when she saw his–doubtlessly stubborn–expression.
For she had seen him just as surely as Maes had seen him.
His parents had seen his anger.
His fear.
His refusal to accept defeat.
He finally found his voice, tight with emotion as he answered his mother's plea with a promise he would not fulfil, "I will."
I will.
But he hadn't.
Not then.
Not when she died, nor in the months and years that followed afterwards.
He had never forgiven her. Not for leaving them, not for loving Hohenheim even after he had left her.
Ed had not forgiven her for leaving him even though it had never been her choice.
Because that was the way of life. Sometimes, no matter how hard you fight, no matter how much strength or power you have, each life has its own destiny to follow, regardless of promises or wishes made.
Ed had been a child then, only a child, who had believed that if he had just tried hard enough, if he was just smart enough, and believed well enough, the world could be other than it was.
But Ed wasn't a child anymore and he had his own promises to keep.
And maybe he wouldn't be enough, he knew there would be times when he would fail again and fall short, but perhaps trying was enough.
Perhaps he was enough because he was all he had to give.
Just as his mother had given him and Al all the love and life she had.
Edward Elric-Hughes took his mother's hand between his own, the flesh and the metal, her skin softer than his now, her bones delicate beneath the years between them, and he said what his heart knew to be true, "I forgive you, Mom."
And then.
He let her go.
And he forgave himself for leaving Al and endangering the people he loved most. He forgave himself for the things he had done wrong and for the things he could not change.
He was, after all, only human.