His wife yawned wide and ran her finger over their baby's tiny nose. "You were so easy," Winry whispered. She had tucked their daughter into a bassinet by the side of their bed, close enough that she could reach her from where she lay. She had complained that walking was too painful, and if anyone deserved to be lazy, she did.
Edward watched his sleeping daughter, her mouth open in a perfect "o," her little fingers and toes covered in knit socks so she would not scratch the delicate skin of her face. His chest shook when he breathed in, and he leaned over and pressed his lips to Winry's shoulder to keep himself from crying. His chest was so full he felt as if it could not contain his breath, and he had not stopped smiling, not for two days. "That was easy?"
She laughed and splayed her hand on the baby's stomach. "Compared to her brother?"
Edward grinned. Yuriy's birth had lasted almost nineteen hours, but this one had only lasted four. Doctor Maller had surprised him with that fact. To Edward, it had lasted an eternity. Yet it had still been midday, and Yuriy had awoken and insistent on seeing—and sharing his strawberries with—his new baby sister. Al had explained that the baby could not eat strawberries yet, and then he had taken Yuriy outside to play and give the parents some much-needed alone time.
Winry turned onto her back and pressed her hand against Edward's cheek. "You have to go."
Edward nodded. "Yeah." He pulled Winry closer and swallowed down the lump in his throat when his daughter cooed and gurgled. "You'll be alright alone?" Mei had taken Yuriy down to the river to catch frogs, though he had seen her shove an elementary alkahestry book into her bag with a conspiratorial wink. There was no way of knowing when they would be back.
She nodded and stretched her arms above her head. "I'm fine here. You and Al go."
There was a town meeting that afternoon, which Edward had promised to attend. Of course, he had promised that when he'd thought his child wouldn't be born for another two weeks, but Winry wouldn't hear of his backing out even for that. The baby was already born, she had insisted. He wouldn't miss anything at home. Then she had suggested Alphonse go as well, saying that as long as he intended to stay in Resembool, he should reintegrate himself into the town.
She yawned again. "I just want to sleep."
He buried his smile in her hair. "You deserve it." He brushed her hair back from her forehead, and her eyes closed. "You are amazing."
She smiled, and her nose crinkled. "I am pretty awesome, aren't I?"
They stayed there on the bed, his hand stroking her hair, until he looked at the clock on the wall and realised he needed to leave if he wanted to be on time.
"Do you want me to get anything while I'm out?" he asked.
When only her soft breathing answered, he knew she was asleep. He leaned across her and touched his daughter's round, wrinkled cheek, and thought of how amazing life was. The formation of that body was a simple process. Proteins and molecules passed between cells and coalesced into new cells, made possible by the one law that governed everything.
Almost everything.
He knew better than most that that law did not bind souls. They were not created from something else or formed by any process science could harness. Souls simply became in a vessel small and wrinkled, grew into it, and then lived long enough to grow out of it again. And then they were not.
Life itself contradicted equivalent exchange.
He kissed Winry's forehead and whispered, "I love you," then he rolled out of bed and crept downstairs.
For two days, he had lived in peace and bliss, uninterrupted by radios or newspapers or anything outside his world and his family. Alphonse and Mei had received visitors and well-wishers who had stopped by, in spite of the storm, with baskets of fruit and roast ham hocks and bread and cakes. But that time had passed, and he needed to return to the outside world.
The first and most significant problem waited for him in the front room. Alphonse straightened up from where he had been standing over the ledger on the desk. The previous evening, after Winry had gone to bed, he had given his brother the accounts; it was easier to show him than it was to explain. He did not expect Alphonse to have a solution to his financial troubles, but it would be a relief to at least talk to him about everything.
"Hey," Alphonse said while Edward passed him an umbrella and a coat. "How is she?"
"Sleeping," Edward said, and they stepped outside the house to brave the downpour. If he knew the Eastern weather patterns—and he did—the rain would stop sometime the next night, leaving a thick fog behind. When the fog dissipated it would take the spring with it, and Resembool's cool autumn would begin.
Alphonse stepped around a deep puddle and said, "I finished going over it."
Edward nodded and clenched his teeth. It would not have taken long to see the pattern. Reading more than a few pages would have shown how bad the issue was, how long it had been happening.
"It's not good."
"No kidding."
"You need to talk to Winry."
Edward looked at his brother as they passed through the kissing gate and stepped onto the weathered dirt road. "You think I haven't?" He sighed and looked ahead. "Al, she won't even entertain the conversation. And I can't bring it up now, what with Trisha's being born two days ago, and—" He stopped when he noticed Alphonse was no longer in step with him, and he turned around.
Alphonse stared at him with wide eyes, and Edward realised he had not told him. He rubbed the back of his head, just above his ponytail, and said, "That's what we were thinking about naming…" He took a deep breath, afraid Alphonse would think he'd stolen the right to use that name somehow. She had been his mother too. "If we had a girl," he said. Of course, he didn't have ownership of the name. Yet he felt the need to ask, "Is that alright?" Alphonse might still use it. First cousins shared names all the time.
Alphonse nodded. "Yeah!" Then he smiled and started walking again, and Edward let himself relax. "Yeah," Alphonse repeated. "I just didn't know. I'm not blaming you for that," he said, and he pressed a hand to his chest. "It's my fault. I went silent pretty much immediately after you two found out she was pregnant." He nodded again. "It's perfect."
Edward swallowed the lump that formed whenever he thought about his daughter and said, "Anyway, I didn't want to ruin the past two days, but with Trisha's just being born, we need an income now more than ever." He stepped over a patch of mud and sighed. "She wants to help everyone who comes in. That's just who she is." It was one of the things he loved about her, one of the many reasons why he had married her. "But—" He stopped speaking while he tried to think of the words to adequately express his fears.
"Ed," Alphonse said, "at this rate, you'll be taking out loans just to eat by the end of next month."
"I know."
"And with interest rates now, you'll—"
"I know, Al!" His neck felt tight. He wasn't angry with Alphonse. It was his fault things had gone so far. If Winry kept making new pieces and ordering parts and performing maintenance without charging customers, they'd have to take out a mortgage on the house her family had owned for generations. Then, when the pattern continued, they would lose that house to the bank. Then where would they be?
People needed automail, he knew that, but at some point, they would have to agree that their children needed food and a roof overhead more.
Then, Alphonse said the most unbelievable thing.
"Have you talked to Mustang about it?"
Edward choked on the absurdity of the question. "What?"
"He has the means to help, and he would." When Edward started shaking his head, Alphonse insisted, "You know he would."
"You can't think of a better solution?" Talking to General Roy Mustang about his financial woes was the worst thing he could imagine. Sure, Mustang would help in the end, but what would it cost?
"He still has his State Alchemist salary," said Alphonse, ever reasonable. "And borrowing from him is better than being indebted to a bank."
"Do you know what he would say if I asked him for help?" Worse, what if he expected something in return?
"He wouldn't say anything!" Alphonse said, wrong for the first time. "It's not like you've been drinking and gambling everything away. You've been helping people." He shrugged. "That's kind of his thing, too."
Edward shook his head. "No."
Alphonse scoffed. "Are you seriously going to risk losing your home and food for your children over your pride?"
Pride had nothing to do with it. He could take the comments and taunting that would last for years, most likely until either he or Mustang died. That was not the problem. The problem was that Mustang's idea of repayment never involved money. His ultimate goals may have been selfless; however, his methods were anything but. How could he explain that to Alphonse, who had always assumed Mustang acted in better faith than he actually did? "It's out of the question, Al." Then, when Alphonse opened his mouth, he cut him off with, "Drop it."
Alphonse did.
Still, the comment about the State Alchemist funding stayed with him. State Alchemists had always been overcompensated for their work. Perhaps there was a solution in that. "Maybe Riza's the one to talk to."
"Ed," Alphonse said, "I don't think she's in the same position to help."
"No," Edward said. "I mean he's probably given her special access to his bank account." He relied on her to run pretty much everything else in his life, so why not that? He doubted Mustang spent much time balancing his chequebook—
"Ed, that's illegal!"
"Oh, because Riza's never done anything illegal in her life," he said, remembering prison breaks and kidnapping homunculi and information smuggling and treason. Riza had been an active participant in all of those. And now that Mustang was running for Führer, Edward imagined that she had probably broken ten laws earlier that week..
"Alright, fine," Alphonse said. "But only when he tells her to." He kicked a pebble to the side of the road, and it splashed through a puddle. "Or when there's a good reason."
Edward frowned. That was an excellent point.
"Besides," his brother continued, "you're assuming she would keep a secret like that from him, which, ha."
That was the best point of all. Edward knew things about Hawkeye's life and her relationship with Mustang that he would never repeat. He knew her loyalty to him was absolute.
Yet he needed a short-term solution while he got Winry to accept that her current business model was not sustainable. "Fine," he agreed as they approached a stone bridge that crossed one of the many rivers that sewed the Eastern countryside together. "I'll think about talking to him."
"Good," Alphonse said.
As they stepped onto the bridge, Edward sensed his brother's hand rise. And though he knew Alphonse would not push him—not with the river so high and the current so strong—he said, "I will kick your ass." Then he marched down the road toward town, but not fast enough to miss Alphonse's snort.
"I think we both know who'd be doing the ass-kicking!"
Breda had been alone with boxes of files since he arrived that morning. He'd been grateful when Feury had brought him a sandwich around noon because time seemed to not exist within the walls of the Eastern Headquarters archives. He had anticipated General Mustang's checking on his progress, or sending someone to do it, so when he heard a knock, he was not surprised to see Major Hawkeye standing in the doorway.
"Captain," she said.
"Major," he replied. She had her coat over one arm and an umbrella in her hand. He had assumed she had come on an errand from the general, but she appeared to have no intention of returning to the office. "You headed home?"
"I thought I'd check on you first," she said. "Do you need anything?"
He groaned and slammed a metal drawer full of enlistment records closed. Beyond a few papers, he wasn't having much luck, and his deadline was fast approaching. He might be in that room all night. "A few litres of coffee would be nice."
Her expression warmed. "I'll see what I can do."
He watched her thumb through a stack of paper and added, "Or you can get the whole Ishval War declassified for me."
She looked over more files he had spread across the surface of a dusty metal table and said, "You overestimate me."
Breda wondered how much Hawkeye knew. Did she remember Elise Holfer? Had she come to check on his progress out of professional or personal interest? He reached for the file of leads he had found, Elise Holfer's puzzle of a life, and tried to find the words to ask her.
Then she said, "Why did you pull this?"
He did not need to look up to know which file she meant. It was a personnel file. It was Hawkeye's personnel file. He flipped through the documents he held, trying to find that photograph that had made him go hunting for more information on the major. "I was looking for something." There it was, that grainy photograph of twenty people in military uniform.
"Like what?" she asked. "At this point, you should know everything in here."
He had assumed that as well. Yet, even after fifteen years, he had been surprised. He'd been under the impression that General Mustang and Major Hawkeye had met before Ishval—they worked together with the ease of those who had a lifetime of acquaintance—but he knew the general was from Central. And her file listed her place of birth and residence prior to enlistment as Amlingstadt Municipality, Burne Land District, East Region. He had never heard of Amlingstadt before, but a quick search had revealed it to be a town with more sheep than people. There were other things he had learned, things he felt guilty for not knowing already.
He looked at her and said, "I didn't know you were wounded in Ishval."
Hawkeye snapped the file shut as if she could keep him from knowing what was inside. She lowered the file to the table, holding her hand on it. She looked toward the door, then at the papers, at her name in smudged type near the top of the cover page. "I thought," she said, choosing each word, "that medical records were sealed."
Breda had not expected her to tell him a story, but he had not expected that answer either. "They are, but your commendations aren't." He stepped forward to show her, but she shifted, pushing the file a little farther from him, and he thought better of it. "You received the Führer's Cross for being wounded in the line of duty in 1908," he said. She would have been nineteen. It was something he had known but had not considered before. "I've never seen you wear it."
She did not move but she watched him. His stomach hardened. He had thought that fifteen years of working in the same unit had built certain bonds of trust, but he might have assumed too much.
Then she smiled and said, "I should never have received it in the first place. It was friendly fire."
He nodded. Hawkeye's not wearing the Cross on her dress uniform made more sense if she did not think she deserved it. Still, she had been nineteen. "I'm sorry."
"Thank you."
Nineteen years old. She had not even graduated. He knew because during the first year they had worked together, she had run back and forth between the academy and headquarters, somehow managing to balance classes and work and Roy Mustang. Breda had graduated in 1907 and still had not seen live combat for seven more years. "Do you know who—"
"Yes," she said in that tone that let him know she would say no more.
He wondered who she was protecting from him. It could have been Elise Holfer who had done it, the very woman whose history had sent him digging through Hawkeye's.
No. It couldn't because there was only one person she guarded with such determination. But the realisation left him with more questions.
"You weren't looking for my commendations," Hawkeye said.
"No, Ma'am," he said, allowing the subject to drop. "I was looking for information on your time at the Academy. I found this." He held out the photograph to her, and she took it from him. "I thought there might be more, but there's nothing." He had been researching in circles.
Hawkeye stared at the photograph where she stood in the front row and flipped it over to read the description someone had stamped onto the back: "24th Sniper Training Division, 16 February 1908."
When she turned it back over, he tapped a face in the back row. "That's her. That's our girl."
Her eyebrows shot up. "Oh. That…" She pressed a hand to her lips. "Oh."
"Do you remember anything from your time in Ishval? Anything at all."
It was a foolish question. Hawkeye and Elise Holfer may have gone in together, but a training division, especially one of snipers, would have been divided upon arrival. The soldiers would have been sent where they were needed, into other divisions, and not kept together. Still, he knew from experience how gossip circulated through camps, so he needed to ask.
Hawkeye took a deep breath, and her face fell into her typical, impassive expression. "No. Nothing."
"What about from training?"
She shook her head. "No." Then she handed him the photograph. "I'm sorry."
Breda sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
"Why haven't you pulled her file?"
He clicked his tongue. "There is one page on her in this whole building. Can you believe that?"
That one page had told him that she was discharged soon after returning from Ishval. A General Discharge Under Conditions Other than Honourable, or, as Havoc called it "Discharged Because Your Superior Knows You're a Bastard but Doesn't Have Enough Evidence to Request a Court-Martial." Then her records had been sealed and moved without any indication as to where they had gone. "She doesn't even appear in census records," he said.
"Where does a person hide from census records in this country?" Hawkeye asked.
Breda could not answer. Amestrian censuses occurred every five years, and they were organised and meticulous. Unless Elise Holfer had been hiding in someone's cellar since 1908, she would have been counted. Where in Amestris could she have been?
He gasped. It was so easy. "Major, you're brilliant."
"Am I?"
He grinned. "She wasn't hiding from the census in Amestris. She wasn't in Amestris at all."
He grabbed a notepad and a pen. The last census had concluded in May of 1920, which meant he needed to look at all immigration records from June of that year to the present. There were thousands of border crossings, and she had to have passed through one of them. If she hadn't—he would think later about what he would do if she hadn't. He would start in the North. Falman could help him when he went back to Briggs and—
"Captain," Hawkeye said, and he stopped scribbling notes. "I actually came to ask if you could do something."
He did not know how much time he had to take on another task. General Mustang expected something substantial Friday evening and there were too many immigration records to check over the next two days, but he nodded.
She pulled a business card from her coat pocket and passed it to him.
He read the name at the top and nodded. The general wanted him to run another investigation. "When does he need this by?"
"He doesn't."
His head snapped up, and he watched her for some explanation. He considered it unusual, to say the least, that she would ask Breda to run an investigation outside of Mustang's orders. Her face was a mask of practised stoicism, though, so he sighed. Perhaps it was personal.
"Am I checking up on your boyfriends now, Major?" He reread the card, then looked around at the mess he had created in the archives. "This is kind of my priority right now."
"I understand."
He didn't want to disappoint her, but he wouldn't have any time before she and the general left. "So I probably won't have anything until you get back from Central."
"That's fine." She nodded and added, "Thank you." She promised to ask someone from the cafeteria to keep bringing him coffee and food until he went home, which he doubted would be before the next morning, and then she left.
He read over the business card again. He had no idea who "David Bauer, PhD" was. And, to be honest, Breda had always assumed there was something between Hawkeye and Mustang. Then again, he had proven himself wrong about that relationship once that day, so perhaps he did not know Hawkeye as well as he had thought.
Good for her, anyway. She deserved to be happy. Havoc was Breda's best friend, and he had been since their time in the academy, but it was a little ridiculous that the office clown was the only one in their unit who was married.
He dropped the card into his pocket and returned to his notepad. First, Tolna. It was the largest border town in the North, and one of the officers stationed there had lost several favours to him in a game of poker some years earlier. Then he'd check Verpelet, Then Bickse. If he could find where and when Elise Holfer had reentered Amestris, he could discover where she had been and with whom she had been. He could turn Madam Christmas's hazy whispers into hard facts.
As a boy, he had thought his older brother the smartest, strongest person in the world. Their father had left before Alphonse could idolise him, and Edward had filled that role. There had been no problem Edward could not solve, no fight he could not win, except for those fights against Alphonse. Those Edward had almost always lost.
Then, when they had grown older, Alphonse had watched his brother fail, over and over, and still stand up and come back, smarter and stronger than he had been before. He had defied supernatural odds. He had fought monsters. He had gambled everything against the highest power in existence, and he had won. So Alphonse found it strange to see his brother so routed by something as mundane as money.
"Mei and I could help," he suggested when he and Edward sat in the meeting hall.
They didn't have much. They had left most of their things behind when they'd fled Xing on Saturday, and their bank accounts were inaccessible due to politics and a railroad blockade. Still, if all four of them pooled their resources, they could figure out something.
Edward shook his head. "No, I don't want you to do that."
"Ed—"
"No," Edward said, his eyes following the men and women who stood milling about the room. "You know you're welcome to stay as long as you want." He looked at Alphonse. "I mean it. Years, if you like." He turned away. "But one day, you two might want to leave and find your own place for your own family. You're going to need to afford that."
One of the councilmen called the meeting to order, and people began to file into the rows of wooden chairs. Gunther, a lean young man with whom Edward and Alphonse had attended primary school, sat on Edward's other side and murmured a congratulation before asking Alphonse how he had been. Alphonse did not have time to answer before the councilman banged a gavel on a table at the front of the room and called for quiet.
Under the reading of the minutes from the last meeting and a recitation of the evening's agenda, Alphonse leaned into Edward and whispered, "You'll pay us back."
"What if we don't?" Edward whispered back. "I've already said I'll think about talking to Mustang, and I will." Then he sank into his chair, his eyelids already dropping with boredom. "But thanks."
Alphonse stared at his hands. If transmuting currency weren't illegal, he would do it. He would do it the second they got back to the house. But it was illegal, and he knew it would contribute to rising inflation, making the problem worse for everyone. Still, he wished. And he wished he could do more than sit and offer—
"And Alphonse Elric is back from Xing," the councilman said. Alphonse looked up to see the entire room staring at him. "Alphonse stand up."
Alphonse did not move, and then Edward, grinning like mad, elbowed him in the ribs, and he jumped to his feet.
"What was it like there?" the councilman asked.
Alphonse looked around. Most of the people in town had never travelled as far as East City, and they watched him with expectations of exotic stories from the East, tales of the Emperor and palaces and fabulous riches. All he could think of, though, were his last two months there. Of people he had thought friends ignoring him in the halls and once-supported initiatives meeting with stony silence. Of rumours even Ling, in the infinite power his rank afforded him, had been unable to stop. He remembered Mei sobbing after a meeting with one of her uncles and refusing to tell him what had been said until two days later. Then Lan Fan waking them in the night and stealing them from the palace to the airfield where the few people who had not turned against them waited to say goodbye. He thought of trying for half a year to hold together an alliance until the Amestrian government could find someone more experienced to fill his position. Of failing.
So he said, "Great." When no one looked away, he knew his answer was unsatisfactory, and he added, "Very interesting."
He glanced at Edward, who watched him with a furrowed brow. While the story had been a source of hilarity to his brother, Edward also understood that parts of it were painful, and he did not want it to be common knowledge any more than Alphonse did.
The councilman nodded at Alphonse, encouraging him to continue, and he scrambled for something positive to say. The first thing he thought of was, "Good food." He dropped into his seat and bowed his head.
When the meeting resumed, Edward leaned in and said, "'Good food?'"
"What was I supposed to say?" Alphonse hissed back. He couldn't exactly tell the councilman it had been just lovely, thank you, that is until he had lost the goodwill of the Xingese clan leaders and found himself exiled. Almost every clan, each in their own vibrant and unique way, hated him and his wife. Yes, it had been just wonderful until he had ruined his career and Mei's life.
Edward shrugged. "Something other than 'good food.'"
The councilman cleared his throat. "Moving onto the assignation of crop rotations—"
"If someone tells me I have to plant rye again," a burly man cried while jumping to his feet, "I'm gonna—"
"If you try to make me grow spring wheat," someone else started before half the room was standing and yelling over each other.
Alphonse watched the chaos bubble, and he looked at Edward, who had somehow sunk lower into his chair and crossed his arms. "What is happening?"
"Crop inflation," Edward said. "It was fine before the border closed and the distribution centre…" He paused and looked around before saying, "Burned down."
Alphonse nodded. Edward had filled him in on that.
"But Xing is where most of the trade went," Edward continued. "Now crops are going to start rotting in the ground because no one can sell to cities because there's way too much already on the market. And if they can't sell, they can't pay off the debts they took out to buy heavy machinery to grow more crops—"
"I know that," Alphonse said. He had grown up in Resembool too, and spending the past few years in a palace hadn't put him out of touch. City people and the wealthy were still feeling the joys of the decade of prosperity. But the working classes, and farming communities in particular, were beginning to feel the strain of the upper classes' expanding affluence. It seemed to be a problem everywhere, not just Amestris. "Why are they yelling at each other?"
Edward sighed and shifted in his seat. "The council came up with a plan about a week ago. Have public food storage, can and preserve everything, and then control next harvest by assigning what certain farms should grow."
It was a decent enough idea for a small town to implement. It would mean everyone could eat, even if a depression or famine hit. Greater variety in export from Resembool would lead to more people's ability to sell what they grew.
"And everyone agreed," Edward said. "But then…" He shrugged.
"But then they realised that they had agreed to being told what to grow," Alphonse finished. It was a terrible upheaval of lives and an extreme risk. A wheat farmer would not know where to begin with barley, and asking him to make the switch could ruin him. No one would agree to that.
Edward nodded, then opened his mouth to say more, but he was cut off.
"None of this would even be a problem if Mustang cared about what is happening here!" a man roared above the din, and a few called out agreements. "But he doesn't."
Edward straightened in his seat, perhaps ready to jump up and say something to shoot that idea down, but another person shouted, "You heard them on the radio! He's a liar!"
Edward sat frozen, and Alphonse leaned in to ask, "What are they talking about?"
"No idea."
Gunther looked down at them and said, "You don't know? It was two days ago! It's been all over the news!"
That would have been when Winry was in labour.
Edward scowled. "We've been a little busy."
Gunther sat, looking abashed, and said, "Right." He twisted his cap in his hands. "Some nutcase took over all the stations and accused Mustang and others, like that Armstrong lady up North and the Führer himself, of killing Führer Bradley and overthrowing the government."
"What?" Edward asked, and when Gunther started to repeat himself, he said, "No, I heard you. Tell me everything."
Alphonse half-listened to the story, trying to breathe and calm his racing heart. Whoever those people were, they were almost right. It was true that Mustang had plotted to kill the Führer and overthrow the government. Alphonse and Edward knew because they'd been there. They had helped.
When Gunther recited the signing off message, "an Amestrian future for an Amestrian people," Edward grabbed Alphonse's hand and said, "Al, we gotta go."
As they pushed through the throngs of people crowding the row of chairs, Edward said, "We have to do something."
"Like what?" Alphonse asked.
His brother shook his head. "I haven't figured it out yet."
Alphonse rolled his eyes. Edward lived his life in a perpetual state of "figuring it out."
When they reached the aisle, the councilman started banging his gavel and someone cried, "The Elrics know him. Let's ask them!"
Edward stopped walking and turned, grinding his teeth and hissing an expletive.
Alphonse's stomach churned, and his neck felt hot. The entire room watched the brothers as if they could explain what happened in Eastern Headquarters, but if their missing the radio broadcast was any indication, Edward and Alphonse knew even less than the general population did.
"Is he going to end the blockade?" a woman's voice called.
Edward shook his head and shrugged. "I don't know. I'm sure he will, but—" He rubbed the back of his neck. "He doesn't really talk to me about that."
Alphonse could believe that they did not discuss politics or economics often. Edward had once claimed his relationship with Mustang was based on two things: alchemy and a healthy, mutual hatred.
"Are the rumours true?" someone else called. "Did he plot to kill Führer Bradley?"
"Why doesn't he do something to help us?"
Edward held up his hands and took a step back from the barrage of questions. He had learned about the radio broadcast seconds earlier, and he was more interested in what the closing line had meant than what the overall message had meant for Resembool's economy or Mustang's campaign.
Alphonse, though, felt the queasiness in his stomach tighten, felt his shoulders and hands tense. He knew they needed someone to blame, but they had found the wrong person. General Mustang had only ever tried. So when someone else asked how they could even trust Mustang, Alphonse shouted, "I can't believe this!"
The room quieted, and he continued, "He's the reason the railroad exists at all!" He held out his arms and looked around the meeting hall, renovated since his childhood, gleaming with new paint and sporting a roof that no longer leaked. "The East was the poorest, most underdeveloped region of the country when he arrived fifteen years ago. Remember where we were after the civil war?"
Some people near him shifted. It was not just the Rockbells who had been lost in the conflict. Farms too close to the Ishvalan border had burned, and parts of Resembool had endured bombings. An influx of refugees had strained the regional infrastructure. Alphonse had been a child, and he still remembered listening to radio announcements and hiding under his desk during drills at school.
"What did he say?" someone asked, and another called, "We can't hear you!
Alphonse grabbed a chair, pulled it into the aisle, and jumped on it so his voice would carry over the people around him and not through them. "As long as Mustang's been here, there's been minimal conflict," he said, his shoulders relaxing and his chest lightening. Alphonse had spent months making instant decisions, defending policies, and turning negative sentiments into decisive action. Edward did not think that way, but he did. "There's been no fighting on our borders for the last eight years, which is unprecedented in this country."
He pointed to the newly-installed light fixtures hanging from the vaulted rafters. "Every building has electricity, every home has wireless radios…And all of that is possible because of the desert trade route he opened." He threw one arm to the side. "He didn't do that for himself. He did it for the East. He did it for you!"
Alphonse held up his forefingers and said, "He didn't start the blockade. The government of Menimras did. And he can't send official delegates to negotiate its end, because only the führer can do that. But he might have that power next January, and if he wins this election, I know he'll do everything he can to reopen the railway." If Alphonse could not trust Mustang to do it for selfless reasons, he could trust him to do it for selfish ones. The trade route with Xing was one of his most significant accomplishments. He would do anything not to see it fail.
"I know you're scared right now," he said, and he pressed a hand to his chest. "I would be too. But are you going to let fear and some lunatic's rantings turn you against the one person who has been fighting for the East for fifteen years?" He took a deep breath. "And I know it's a lot to ask for you to hold on for one more year. To pull together and go with the council's plan for one year. But you can trust him. Mustang is a lot of things, but he is good for his word.
"General Mustang has not forgotten about this town or ones like it, and he won't forget. And when he's the Führer—" Alphonse stopped and looked around.
The room was silent, and it had been for some time as everyone had watched him speak. And he stood on a chair. He stood on a chair and lectured them and somehow he had thought that was a good idea. He had not lived there for years, and he stood on a chair and lectured the entire building, and they probably thought he was overzealous and pretentious, and he needed to get down. He needed to get down right that second and leave and never show his face again because what had he been thinking? "Yeah, he'll get it done," he rushed. Then he jumped off the chair and ran for the door.
He grabbed his umbrella from the box on the porch of the meeting hall and popped it open while he heard Edward, still inside, say, "We've got a newborn to get back to."
Alphonse rushed down the path, as fast as he could without slipping in mud. He heard splashing behind him and Edward calling, "Al!" He stopped and waited for his brother to catch up.
When Edward did, he said, "You know, he should hire you to write his stump speeches."
Alphonse pressed the heel of his hand into his eye. "I looked like an idiot." A self-important idiot who thought he had the right to tell a whole town he had not lived in for years how to think and how to vote and—
"I'm sure I'm the only one who thought that," Edward said, and he grinned. "And I only thought it at the end when you completely forgot what you were saying."
Alphonse groaned, and the queasiness came back.
"I'm serious!" Edward said, and he slapped Alphonse's back. "That was awesome. You could do that for a living."
"Yell at people?" he asked.
"No," Edward said, and pointed toward the meeting hall. "Politics. That was politics."
That made it worse. Could Edward not see that made it worse? Alphonse turned and walked down the road. He wanted to go home, to forget it had happened. To forget that he had enjoyed speaking like that, that he had enjoyed being in Xing too. The first few months had been incredible, navigating problems and etiquette and protocol and finding creative solutions. He had kept the alliance intact, and the Imperial Ministers happy, until the day he hadn't.
He could hear Edward following, so he said, "I think I destroyed any career in politics this weekend."
"It was your first time doing something like that officially," Edward said. "And Mustang won't even care in a few months—"
"I'll care," Alphonse snapped. "I'll care because I couldn't do it. I couldn't hold the alliance, I couldn't save face for Mei, I couldn't keep her own family from turning against her. I can't do anything except stand on a chair and shout half-baked ideas."
He heard Edward sigh, and he looked over at him. "What?"
Edward shrugged. "When you get like this, I can't even talk to you. I either have to physically fight you or wait for Winry to scream some sense into you." Then he punched Alphonse in the arm.
"Ow!" Alphonse rubbed at the spot his brother had hit. "That actually hurt."
"I know what it's like to mess up," Edward said, and he kept walking through the rain. Somewhere behind the storm clouds, the sun was setting, and the sky darkened to deep charcoal.
Alphonse tried to swallow the pain in the back of his throat. His brother had always blamed himself for that day when Alphonse had lost his body in a violent transmutation and when Edward had lost his arm and leg. "You didn't mess up alone."
"Yeah, I did," Edward said. "And guess what? I fixed it!" He shook his left leg, the one that was still automail. "Well, mostly." He put a hand on Alphonse's shoulder. "The people here like you, and they want to hear what you have to say. And you're good at saying things. And the things you say are usually smart." He took his hand back and shrugged. "I'm just saying you might be cut out for this."
Warmth flooded Alphonse's chest as he remembered what it had felt like to wake up every day and do the most good for the most people. "You know, I get what Mustang is trying to do." He took a deep breath and let it out. "I was helping people. I couldn't always see them, but I was still helping." He had kept Imperial Ministers in favour of the railroad until the blockade had started, even as their opinion had turned against Amestrian involvement in Xingese affairs and against him. He had helped keep the trade route running. He was proud of that. "It was getting ten and giving back eleven, just like we talked about. And I thought that maybe that was the way to do it. That was the way to help the most people and overturn equivalent exchange."
Edward frowned. "You know, Winry always says Mustang and I can't stand each other because we're too similar. But I think you might be more like him than I am." He grinned. "The good parts."
Alphonse laughed. It felt good to laugh. "I'm surprised to hear you say he has good parts."
Edward rolled his eyes. "He might have one or two good qualities. Maybe three." He jammed his finger into Alphonse's chest. "Don't you dare tell him I said that."
Alphonse smiled. He never would.
Edward turned and started toward home again. "He'll get over it," he said. "Then you should seriously ask him if you can do something for his campaign."
Alphonse watched him go, then let his umbrella fall to the side and turned his face towards the sky. The first summer after he had his body back, he had snuck outside to stand just so. He had closed his eyes and just felt the rain, felt the fat, warm drops hitting his skin with gentle pressure, felt his clothes and hair sticking to his skin. The rain made Edward grouchy, it made Winry tired, and it made Mustang useless. But Alphonse loved the rain. It made him feel alive.
"Al! You're gonna get sick, you moron!"
Alphonse opened his eyes, smiled, and ran after his brother. He was twenty-three. There was plenty of time to correct his mistakes.