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Jul. 18th, 2006 02:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mikkenekoNote: Reposted for a friend because I can't find the original on the web any more. I did NOT WRITE THIS FIC.
edit: FOUND IT!
twig
watch me -
Disclaimer: The fic takes place early in the series, around episode 15 or so, or something. Also, I use bad fangirl Japanese because I can. ^^
=================
“’Niisan!!!”
He has no fear of his own death. Edward knows the shapes of the things that are worse than death, knows how to etch them in the ground and curl his fingers down and call them forth to destroy his enemies.
Or to watch them try to breathe.
Or to see his brother dissolving before his eyes.
Or to hear the hollow voices of children twisted into nightmarish absurdity, things that had great value transformed into nothing. Nothing at all.
Gold into lead. Things are not proceeding as he had planned.
Alphonse is screaming, but it is a distant sound, and he has put up enough of a wall that this will be over by the time his brother breaks through. The other alchemist is still here, though Edward cannot hear him breathing, or the soft scraping as his fingers rub together – the same principle as Roy’s gloves, modified somehow. The room is poorly lit, he hasn’t been able to figure out how they work – or how to win this.
“You can’t escape.” He calls out. “Everyone knows you’re here, and you can’t stop all of them.”
Hawkeye knows for sure, and Edward really wishes she’d have found this lunatic first. He is getting tired of being at the end of so many final battles, the ending of so much history he’s not a part of. She didn’t say much about what happened, about who he hurt of hers or why. He’s an Alchemist, so of course it’s all a matter of power and pain and innocent blood. For all the things he thought Alchemy could do, it all seems to come down to nothing but horror in the end. Another mad bastard with nothing to say about the Philosopher’s Stone – again - and his brother terrified – again – and Edward backing himself into a corner on purpose, to try and bait the man into a trap he hasn’t quite put together yet.
Only this time, the alchemist has melted through the wall somehow and is waiting quite patiently for him.
“So, /this/ is the Fullmetal Alchemist.”
Ducane has one eye, and it glints like broken glass. Dark strands of hair hang limp over his face. Madness, all the familiar signs of madness, until he really ought to just hang a sign around his neck – ‘National Alchemists want YOU to ruin the rest of your life! Join now!’
The sad thing is, the army’s never really had to work at recruiting them. Alchemists flock to the chance for glory, even when they know the price. Edward checks his eyes in the mirror now and then, just to make sure confidence is only confidence, that he isn’t slipping. He knows it’s not anything like solid ground, but a tightrope beneath them all.
Ducane reaches out, and Edward tries to block but the man’s strength is incredible, batting his arm away. The twisted hand presses against Edward’s chest, and digs in instead of striking, a sharp claw trying to tear out his heart. He feels the sharp knife twisting beneath the surface of his skin, though there is no way the man is strong enough to stab him that deep and there was no weapon in his hand.
“Life makes fools of us all, little boy. It’s something I think you should learn.”
Ducane has him off the ground, by the front of his shirt and the skin underneath The strong fingers digging into in his chest are bad enough without whatever’s happening inside his body, someone driving nail after nail straight through his heart. A high-pitched wail, that’s probably nothing good, and by the time Ed realizes it’s his own scream he’s managed to reach up with his automail arm and dig out one of Ducane’s eyes.
Technique is a good thing. Fighting /really/ dirty can be better. The man staggers backward and Ed would do something about it, sketch a circle or at least try to change his position, but instead he just pitches over, every muscle refusing to move and the pain in his chest growing worse and worse.
An alchemy circle on Ducane’s skin? Or is it on his glove, like Mustang’s? The thought of Roy seeing him like this makes his teeth clench, he needs to get off the floor before the cavalry arrives.
Maybe with something transmutable in his other hand... he’s trying to figure it out as Ducane screams and arches backward, the building starting to fall down around them –
A flicker of light from the corner of his eye. An idiotic stroke of luck, Edward knew the man was trying to trap him in a specific place, though he never did figure out the reason. Instead, whatever trap Ducane placed there is now ripping the alchemist apart. Waves of power that flay the skin from his bones and then crumble the bones and by the time Ed has shut his eyes and turned away it’s too late, and the worst of it is seared behind his eyes.
Just like his mother, the thing that should have been her. Sometimes he hates her, for being his sin, the thing he will have to carry around for the rest of his life. At least a war was a war, horror and carnage and misery all a part of the deal, and even Edward knows better than to think he has any chance of stopping that sort of machine.
He’d made his own bloody little hell instead, out of peace and pathetic, childish need and Alphonse’s trust in him. It might not be war but it is bad enough.
Dirt sprinkles his cheeks, and somehow Ed manages to roll onto his stomach, though his vision goes gray and black when he even attempts to drag himself forward.
He has absolutely no right to be annoyed with his oncoming death. Edward has put himself in harm’s way so often he’s surprised they don’t call him the Lemming Alchemist. Roy will probably carve it on his grave.
The thud of stone striking stone. Won’t be long now. An explosion roars out above the sound of collapse, and Edward fights to lift his head and open his eyes, failing at both. Distantly he can hear the sound of clanking steel. Damn it.
//Get out of here, you idiot.//
Alphonse never will, not ever. Edward keeps underestimating just how fast and agile his brother is and flinches from the sound of the building finally toppling around them – and then realizes there is cool air in his lungs, and he’s outside because Al’s gotten them to safety.
A low rumble, and a few crickets start up chirping again as the sounds from the building lapse into silence. Alphonse is saying something but the words keep slipping into an icy slush, sliding out of his mind, building up in his chest. Where in hell is Hawkeye, anyway?
Edward shivers, and cold arms hold him close. How far are they away from help? Awareness fades, as Alphonse breaks into a run.
“Hold on, ‘niisan. Hold on.”
-------------------
Roy Mustang stares down at the sweating, whimpering boy in the bed and tries to remind himself this is the Fullmetal Alchemist, not someone who needs or wants to be thought of in terms of physical age. A genius in his field, a soldier who has already walked through the fire more than once, pushed by a drive to know and do that even Roy finds somewhat humbling, nearly intimidating. Edward Elric will leave his mark on the world, and Roy wonders just what that will be – and how much will be changed forever.
He very much doubts the State will find the results in their favor.
“No. Please... please...”
A few tears join the beads of sweat, and Edward twists, thrashing as well as he can considering he’s missing an arm and a leg. The Automail limbs have been removed – slightly damaged in the fight, they do hurt him to wear, and Edward needs all the strength he has to fight the sickness that has hold of him now. Alphonse is still resting, did not see enough of the fight to know exactly what has happened, only that the Alchemist they had been sent after is dead, and their prodigy had to be carried off the battlefield.
“Al... Al?” A shuddering breath, and another whimper. He looks so young, and deathly pale. He is a boy, just a frightened, sick child. All the alchemists are really nothing more - children with gifts they can barely control and hardly fathom.
No different than arming Hughes’ tiny child with a rifle and no target - no truth and no purpose but the one she would have to make for herself. Who would she choose to kill, what god would she align her weapon to - or could such a powerful weapon in those hands only turn on its owner in the end?
“It’s all right. Your brother is fine.”
As if Edward understands, he sinks back against the pillows, pale and still. Roy wrings out the cloth in the basin quietly. He had interrupted the nurse in order to question Edward, but that is obviously impossible now.
The world offers few chances for kindness, especially for soldiers and certainly for National Alchemists. He is very careful, wiping the sweat off the boy’s forehead and flushed cheeks, pulling the blanket back to dab at his chest, and stare at the place metal meets skin, the pale expanse of bed sheets where another arm should be.
Roy cannot imagine what the boy will be like when he truly grows up. In the privacy of his own mind, it is a worry. All they need is another war where they can’t keep track of him. The chance for Ed to do more than his fair share of things he’d regret for the rest of his life. Edward is thoroughly decent, and thoroughly decent people often twist into the worst sort of monsters. Roy is rather certain Ed cannot simply be broken. Even if Alphonse were to die, it wouldn’t be enough for Edward to simply turn a gun on himself.
Maybe some of that worry is just jealousy in weak disguise. Roy has made his own rules, is making his own game, but so few things really tie Edward to his position. He’s a chaotic element, and it won’t get easier with time. Whatever the boy’s destiny, the rest of the world will be along for the ride. Edward may chafe under the restrictions of being a National Alchemist now, but eventually he’ll age, and know what Roy has learned of war and the world, and that will be a fearsome thing to see.
Roy watches the Fullmetal Alchemist sleep, and thinks of penance and flame.
-------------------
He’s so hot. Why the hell is it so hot?
Ed tries to lift his arms, no response from his metal limb and his human one has a ridiculous amount of trouble navigating the edge of the blanket. He finally just flings his arm out – not at all graceful but he is much cooler afterward, arm hanging limply over the bed, someone methodically stabbing him in the chest, in perfect time with his heartbeat.
He is extremely put out then, when the blanket is tucked back around him. It’s almost worth opening his eyes for.
A voice murmurs, his head is tipped back. Cool water, but it hits his throat and chest like a knife and he coughs hard and sharp, hands lifting him up as he chokes.
“... al?” The word is barely sound, and he swallows and gasps and the effort causes pain but doesn’t seem to help him breathe. The hands around his are smaller than his brother’s, and warm. Human hands. Edward cracks an eye open, the face familiar though it takes his mind a long, long time to place it. Roy is smiling a little. Oh, dammit.
“... how long did it take you to beat me this time, old man?”
He expects Roy to smile, say something sarcastic. Hopefully it won’t end with a punch, or another spell. He tries to lift his hands to counter, but can’t lift his left and his right is too light. Missing.
“Do you remember what happened, Hagane?”
What happened? Something happened? He hurt his mother, but didn’t Roy already know that? Edward twists away, from a sudden burst of flame, deep inside his chest. How the hell did Roy do that? Is he being tortured? What did he do wrong, and more importantly, what does he have to say to make it stop?
“... please stop.” Two words are difficult, he has to swallow and lick his lips to continue. “Please stop burning me.”
The Colonel’s eyes open a little wider in surprise, and he raises a hand – bare, no glove. It’s a bit of a disappointment, Ed decides, because it means there’s no one left to ask for help.
“Where’s my brother?”
“Resting.”
Hawkeye is standing by the door, and steps forward when Edward looks at her. She doesn’t like seeing him like this, and it’s almost amusing to see her falter. “Can you tell us what happened in there?”
Edward frowns, slowly shaking his head, all he knows are the waves of pain rippling across his chest, down his back in white-hot arcs. “Ask Ducane what he did...to me?”
“We couldn’t find what was left of him, until your brother told us where to look. Smears don’t talk much, even when they’re made of alchemist.”
“He took a shot at Al.”
It isn’t a good enough explanation, and it wasn’t the reason Ducane died but he wants them to understand he doesn’t regret what happened to him. What he saw.
What he saw?
Waves of blood and skin, human bones crushed together by the force into a strange sort of instant tombstone. The thought makes him gag, he turns and retches and is very grateful for the basin there.
Oh. Yes. That.
He’s coughing again, voices shouting and hands on him. Blood in his mouth and he’s not sure what from and he really hopes Roy wasn’t stupid enough to let him bite his tongue off.
His heart feels like a hard knot inside his chest, made out of automail, and then someone jerks down on the wrench and tightens as hard as they can.
--------------------
Startling cold against his lips, nearly painful, and enough to wake him. It must take a great deal of effort to work the metal digits around such a small thing as a chip of ice, but Alphonse manages. It’s not worth speaking, or trying to open his eyes, so Edward lays as still as he can, and tries to feel the difference between the pain in his chest and the constant twinge of his arm. Missing arm. Everything hurts.
“... that was stupid, oniisan.”
Cool metal embrace, he can feel it through the thin blanket. The arms hold him tighter when he moves, and it doesn’t matter that it’s just an empty suit of armor and doesn’t warm him up. It doesn’t matter at all.
“... al?”
Edward cracks his eyes open, sees his own reflection blurred and warped in the steel. Blinking is hard, breathing is more trouble than it’s worth and it is Al who has to unfold his limbs and move him into a better position. Ed looks at the sunlight and wonders what day it is.
“... can’t move?”
“The doctors gave you something a little while ago. Whatever Ducane did, it seems to act on your muscles, trying to constrict them until you crush your own body to pieces. Your heart too, and your lungs. They said you would probably be all right soon.”
Drugged to the gills, that explains it. Edward knows he’s usually stubborn enough to do what he wants – at the very least try – irregardless of the situation. It’s easier this time not to bother, to make his biggest worry trying to swallow, as Al holds a cup to his lips.
“Are you all right?”
Alphonse doesn’t answer, just tucks the corner of the blanket a little more tightly around the gap where his other arm should be. It’s an answer in itself – yes, he’s fine, only because Edward refused to let him get involved. Upset that Edward can’t treat him like an equal. It’s easy enough to let his brother stand on his own in training, hours of fighting and practice that could end in sheared metal and wounded pride but nothing he can’t fix.
He won’t get Al into anything he can’t fix.
Perhaps the fate he chose for his brother is more selfish than death – but Edward doesn’t care. He is so, so afraid, because he would go to hell and drag Alphonse out, but he has the chilling suspicion that it would end just like the Philosopher’s Stone, where no one knows the way. What is he supposed to do if no one has the answers? He’d thought Roy was guarding them, or at least knew who might be, but now he’s no longer so sure.
The drugs have knocked out his ability to shiver, and for a moment he feels nauseous, cold and hot all at once.
“’niisan?”
Always there for him. Always. Edward picks the first sensation to rise up from the turmoil.
“... cold.”
“Sorry.”
He winces at Alphonse’s tone, no matter how sick he is he should know better, that his brother isn’t in a human body, can’t control his temperature. “No. I am. Sorry.”
So sorry. All the time.
Alphonse sighs. “I don’t want you to say it like that. It was my choice, too.”
“Mom told me to take care of you.”
A soft laugh, the sort of thing that makes him feel like the younger brother. “She told us to take care of each other.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Baka.”
He rests in Al’s arms, until the light reflecting from the wall isn’t half as bright, and someone comes with another blanket and a warm drink, Al helping him sit up, though it’s hard to swallow with all his muscles working so strangely, and he’s glad when he manages not to drip too much water on his clothes.
Al never leaves, even when it must get boring, looking after a crazy older brother - and Edward knows he’s selfish for only feeling relieved.
--------------------
It’s hot again, lungs stinging with each breath he takes in, but Edward realizes he’s walking, his automail limb back on and his legs aching and the sun pointing down its spotlight for him - yes, Edward Elric the shining star of an otherwise unpopulated wasteland.
Unpopulated, because the dead are piled all around him. Recently killed, there are no flies, no smell, and scattered between on the streets are bleached bones, remnants of an even more ancient battle.
Ishbal? Who could still be alive to kill?
At the end of the street is a wall that seems to go on forever, blown apart to rubble in certain places but surprisingly whole at others. Edward runs a finger along it, unnerved by the grit beneath his fingertips. Not a dream, then, though that isn’t a very scientific evaluation. He can feel things in the dreams where Al is screaming and his mother... the thing he’d–
“You know, it never goes away. She never does. I can still close my eyes and remember the pattern of the blood on the floor.”
Edward jerks his head up, and wonders how he’d managed to nearly walk past the man, hunched against the top of the wall like a gargoyle. He blinks again – and even if he’d managed to mistake the man for a chunk of stone, there was no way he should have overlooked the gun propped against his shoulder – more like a turret, the rest of the weapon a small wall all its own, reaching the way back the ground.
He stares, eyes snagging on the details of the weapon even before he bothers with the full picture. As always, he cares more about how the thing works than why it’s been put together. He can almost make sense of the various attachments, a cannon on the high perch, powered by everything below. All of it the result of a great deal of alchemy, but to what purpose?
A roar over his head, Edward turns in time to see the tallest structure still standing brought down to match the rest of the skyline, and remembers he’s standing in a war zone.
He thinks the man sitting astride the wall lets out a soft cackle, and beneath him the mechanics of the gun begin to hum and click, the entire support structure rattling as it powers up, glowing brightly until Edward has to shield his eyes.
The sound of the shot is deafening, nearly knocks him on his ass, and Edward is scrambling toward the wall before he can think to be afraid, pressing his face to a crack – there is a dark line on the horizon, what he can only assume to be enemy troops – and a rising cloud where more of them used to be.
“I’d like to say they never learn. Tragically, I think they do.”
A soft grunt and a sharp thud, and Edward scrambles backward as the sniper stretches up to his full height. He’d seemed tall enough, hunched over the weapon, but even the hunks of buildings and rough-hewn wall are insubstantial compared to the man looking down on him. Edward knows he should be afraid. Is afraid, but it is a cold and slowly growing thing that has nothing to do with anything this man could do to him.
He doesn’t like the look of the gunman, tattered remnant of a coat stretched over broad shoulders, dirty enough to be any color underneath. Unkempt blond hair just as filthy, a braid trailing down to his waist, sticking out at strange angles, as if he’d done it all himself, and in a hurry.
He makes the mistake of looking in the man’s eyes, reminded instantly of the darkness in the shadows past where the thing that should be his mother lies – and of Scar, that first time, and his empty eyes. Edward is staring at a dead man, with a very familiar face.
“Are you... my father?”
The man laughs, mutters something Edward can’t hear but that sounds very derisive, and strides right past him. “Try again, kid.”
Keeping up is difficult, he has to break into a half-run just to match the other man’s long stride. Edward scowls – if this idiot mentions the difference in height, he’ll be eating a boot sandwich. He realizes, a few moments later, that those dead eyes watch him. The thought that this man is even capable of teasing seems ludicrous.
“Oh yeah, the height thing. I remember that. You get over it.”
The words don’t make sense, and then they make too much sense, and Edward stops short.
“What did you say?”
Scars on this man’s face, deep wrinkles and scars but he’s turning and even though Edward is supposed to look he’s trying to turn away because now it’s obvious, impossible but obvious. A thin bead of cold sweat is running down the back of his neck. He stares at the man’s arm, but nothing is visible beneath the long sleeve.
Before he can say anything, the tall stranger reaches in his pocket. He doesn’t think that it might be an attack, that he should consider raising a defense until the man has already tossed something in the air between them. Golden and gleaming.
A pocket watch. /The/ watch. His mouth is too dry for swallowing, let alone speaking. Just to make sure, he opens it up, checks the inside, and quickly closes it again, shuddering despite his best intentions.
“Where’s Al?” His voice trembles, showing every one of his sixteen years. The man answers him with the barest whisper of a sigh. A slight shift in his shoulders, maybe only half an inch, and he knows.
“No. No no no.”
“If it’s any comfort, you didn’t have any control over it. He was a hero, and they gave him a medal and an award and a pretty little statue in the town he saved. How could anyone ask for more?”
The other, taller him turns toward the outer wall, and of course the expression on his face says it’s anything but all right. Edward thinks stupidly that if the situation were just a little different, he’d be happy to know that he finally gains a few inches. Winry must have went nuts, adjusting the automail so drastically – he can see that he still has it, this old and still using limbs that aren’t his. Standing in some blazing desert surrounded by corpses - without Al.
“You were stronger after he was gone, you know. It made you free. You were the best National Alchemist there had ever been. I guess it was what you gained, for giving him up.”
“I don’t care about that!” He couldn’t cry, because this wasn’t real. It was all a stupid dream, because he couldn’t be talking to himself and be himself and this wasn’t him – because if Al was dead he sure as hell wouldn’t be alive. He would have died for his brother first.
“Why did you stay with the National Alchemists, I wonder? Out of spite? Nothing else to call a life?”
The other him starts walking again, well before Edward thinks he can recover. It’s not as if he has to believe any of this – there cannot be two versions of him, this is an illusion, or a dream. He has a vague memory of tension, worry – something in the past that sparked this. This is the effect of some miscast alchemy perhaps, a hallucination, not an entity all its own.
A lie, this cannot be his future, with Al gone and a dead city spread out all around him. He will not allow it.
Edward throws his hands up, as a second blast shakes the street very close to where he stands, dust and fragments of rock blowing around him, cutting into his skin and burning his throat when he tries to breathe.
“Who are you fighting?” The words are half-choked, and he looks up to see the man who shares his name – and only that – climbing onto a different section of the wall, too far away to hear or just not listening. Edward runs after him, listening to the whistle-roar of incoming fire, watching as the projectiles smash what is left of the buildings, leaving plumes of smoke in their wake. It’s almost more disturbing to hear no sound, nothing but crumbling rock. No one is left in this city but the two of them – and Ed already knows that one of them can’t be real.
He struggles up onto the wall after his older self, who doesn’t seem to be doing anything except watching the oncoming forces approach across the wide plain, something that is the twisted cousin to a smile crossing his lips, chin in his hand. Maybe he should have checked the piles of bodies a little further for Alchemist uniforms. Maybe this is some last stand, although the part of him that knows when it would break instead of fighting back doesn’t want to believe its possible.
It isn’t possible, he realizes, looking over the wall. It’s worse. A row of familiar uniforms, familiar faces. Every Alchemist he knows and many unknown, all of them changed with the passing of years, but all present, along with most of the soldiers in the damn country.
Roy is – not surprisingly - leading the march. The attack continues to pulverize the city around him, but his double does not move.
“What did you do? Why are – they’re trying to kill you?”
“Long story.” So much death in two simple words. So many horrible choices and terrible nights and endless, meaningless, violent years. It might take the man as long as he had lived it just to tell it.
“You have the Philosopher’s Stone.” The only thing that makes sense, though yet again that inner voice he wishes he didn’t have negates the idea... because he would have tried to bring Al back. Stupid, impossible, and certain to hurt so many more than it could, but he would have done it without thinking.
The other him laughs, eyes winking with something much sharper and harder than happiness. Age there too, so many years poorly lived.
“Years ago, but that’s long dead and buried. I remember now, how important it seemed at the time.”
One last look over the wall, and he plants a hand, jumping back down to the ground as Edward scrambles to follow. The hulking, future him lands in a crouch but does not rise, palms pressed flat against a pale line in the ground, wider than the span of his fingertips. Edward frowns, looking up to see another curving line coming off the first, disappearing around the corner half a block away. The moment it starts to change, to glow, he knows what it is. The lines make no sense, not unless the finished circle is larger than...
“What are you doing?”
“Did you ever look up at the sky, or at one of those maps in the libraries, and think you could probably get a circle around it, around all of it, if you only knew where to start drawing?”
“... yes.”
“Well, so did I.”
He has never seen alchemy like this. The wall in front of him is just gone, lifted up and out and crumbling to nothing before Edward can inhale, and all he’s breathing in light and heat. The air is gone, the whole world turned monochrome – and beyond the lines he stands on with this impossible golem who claims his future – there is only Armageddon.
The Alchemists are close enough that Edward can see them react to the sudden, unexpected attack. See Roy lift up his hands to block and when Edward first sees the flames he wants to laugh at this stupid delusion, this man who claims to be him, because if there’s anything the Colonel can manage –
Edward realizes the paleness he’s looking at is not the edges of the Alchemist’s gloves, but the skin beneath, and then the bone.
It is not a pretty death. When alchemy goes wrong it always goes ugly, and violent, and the great Flame Alchemist – ironically - is burning to death right in front of his eyes.
He dies silently, but there agony in it, mouth twisted in something like a scream, flesh the same color as his dark hair and blue-green flames that rise to consume him – torn apart before the blaze subsides, sinew and flesh spattering out, drenching Hawkeye a moment before she catches fire too. The blue green flames rise up to consume all the Alchemists, and then the soldiers behind them, and everything is just gone.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
Edward runs forward but knows he’s already going to be too late, slamming his hands together and dropping them to the ground in an attempt to save anyone or anything at all. It’s like trying to draw water in a drought, there isn’t anything left to be transmutated, nothing to destroy in order to create that hasn’t already been annihilated – and the army is smoldering in front of him and the sky writhes, blue-green to the horizon.
Edward breathes, open mouthed, entire body dry as sand and shaking all over as he turns on his double.
“What did you do? How far... how far did it go? WHAT DID YOU DO?”
He grabs his own collar, somehow, drags the taller man down to meet him, staring into the eyes that smile back, dazed and distant and already gone. Edward knows the answer, the impossible answer, because sometimes in the night he’ll sit back and look at the stars and wonder. Wonder if he could draw the lines far enough, broad enough, wonder if he could make a circle of the sky, or the land, or the /world/.
He wonders, with half a body of metal and a brother barely saved he /still wonders/.
“... a circle that big, that’s giving up nearly everything, isn’t it? What do you think we’ll get back? I wonder.”
Edward stares into his truth, the dead eyes that stare back at him, that have made this destruction for nothing, and he screams.
//“Oniisan!”//
The green-blue fire wraps around him, his body alight just like the rest of them, but Edward is going to lash out against this to the end of himself. Go down fighting, go down raging against such impossible cruelty - and what if that stubborn demand is /exactly/ what brings him to this end?
“It’s the last thing you learn, kid. Being an adult means you don’t have a goddamned clue what’s going on – you just get to act like you do.”
“Oniisan!”
The voice is so distant, too distant to help. Maybe no one could ever help him. Edward tries to scream but there’s nothing left in his lungs, and he follows the world into oblivion.
----------------------------
“Should I–”
The whole world had crumbled on top of him, and he fought and strained to breathe anyway. Burning, everyone was burning, he’d done it, no no...
“Oniisan!”
“Hold him down!”
His throat hurts, little choking sounds he doesn’t mean to make but can’t stop. Edward blinks, feeling tears and hands against his body and cloth wrapped around him, tight and constricting – didn’t make sense, wasn’t he supposed to be dead?
//Everyone’s dead. Everyone.//
He fights against the hands that hold him, strong hands, and he’s only got the one arm to do it with. Where’s his automail? He might despise it at times but it serves a useful purpose, makes him stronger and he needs to be so strong.
//You know where it ends. You know.//
How can he dare want to be stronger? Oh please, please let this be the kind of nightmare that fades quickly. He doesn’t want to remember, doesn’t want to carry this around with his mother and Nina – damn, damn he’s crying and if he cries he can’t breathe and if he can’t breathe he can’t get them to let him go.
A hand wraps around his throat or maybe just brushes against it but some part of him snaps and he gets in a good, panicked punch and the next thing he knows he’s on his feet – foot, balancing precariously, ache stretching from the arch and the sole all the way to the back of his neck and everything hotter than hell. His hand is tracing the tiniest circle in the dust on the windowpane behind him, and perhaps that’s why everyone’s gone so silent.
“Edward? Are you with us?” Hawkeye’s voice, and he can hear the very slight tremor of uncertainty – she’s good at hiding. They’re all so good at hiding. He opens his eyes, can see the gray blur of Alphonse, and Hawkeye... and Roy.
//Going to kill you Roy, going to kill you and enjoy it and I don’t know why and you can’t stop me, you really can’t stop me and I always thought you could.//
He licks his lips and thinks he might say it all, it’s hard to think around the heat in his skin and the way he can’t seem to balance and his lungs have turned into a squeezebox full of holes.
“You’d kill me, right Roy?”
He laughs before Roy can speak, laughs over Al’s gasp. It seems too obvious to have to ask. Roy has a plan. Of course Roy has a plan, and the National Alchemists have all their rules, and history, and he’s good but no one is /that/ good. No one.
Just a dream. Just a dream. Had to be.
No one would just let him walk around, child prodigy and all, and not give any thought to his future, what he might be capable of someday. /Someone/ was keeping track of this, that was what adults did, what maturity meant. Seeing the attacks before they had even been thought of, with more than enough time to dodge. Like chess. He is terrible at chess, Alphonse is better at strategy, while his is the game of risky sacrifice.
The words and the world tip and spin in front of him, and he closes his eyes until the ground beneath his feet levels out.
//Ishbal was a plan, wasn’t it? How many people have died, when you /knew/ the plan that was supposed to save them?//
A fluke. All a fluke, a mistake. Not important, not like this.
“You’d do it.” His voice shakes, desperately, and he can’t rein it in. “You could do it now, if you had to. Right?”
Roy stares at him, and there is no answer in his eyes.
//It’s the last thing you learn...//
Ed chuckles weakly, it feels as if he is being strangled, though it’s still a surprise when his whole body just gives up, slumping forward. The floor disappears in a sudden sweep of gray.
“Edward!”
Someone shouts, but it’s Alphonse who moves the fastest, and it’s his brother who catches him. His sweet, careful brother who Really Did Not Deserve Any Of This, no matter what he could be talked into, or was willing to take.
His leg drags along the floor for a moment, and then he’s lifted, and for a moment it’s all Ed can do to just soak up the cool feel of the metal and try to remember how to remember, try to catch any thought and hold it, hope it will be enough to drag him back to the surface.
“Is he going to be all right?”
Alphonse, hesitant as ever. He is as much his younger brother’s anchor as Al is his. A flesh and blood hand at his wrist, the slight teeth of fingernails against his skin – Hawkeye.
“I’ll tell them to bring more medicine, but his pulse is strong enough.”
//Strong. You want to be strong, don’t you? You were stronger after he was gone. It made you free.//
No. No. Please let him die first. Hands too gentle to be the steel he knows they are wipe away wetness from his eyes, and he can feel movement, back toward the bed. They think he’s passed out again, and he can feel that wonderful blankness tempting at the edges of his mind, still just out of reach -
“What did he mean... what he said?”
Al cannot say more, and it’s a long time before Roy answers, devastatingly unsure, the reply the absolute last thing he needs to hear.
“I don’t know.”
Edward opens his eyes to the window, looks up at the sky, and wonders.
============================
Author’s Notes –
1. EdNow vs. potential EdFuture made me think of that Dexter’s Laboratory where he goes into the future and is like, nine times his height and totally ripped. I think it’s doubtful too, but when I opened the head to start writing, that’s who came to the party.
2. Apologies for any mislabeled details. This was a fast and ugly slushpile fic with a few good lines I didn’t want to just delete.
edit: FOUND IT!
twig
watch me -
Disclaimer: The fic takes place early in the series, around episode 15 or so, or something. Also, I use bad fangirl Japanese because I can. ^^
=================
“’Niisan!!!”
He has no fear of his own death. Edward knows the shapes of the things that are worse than death, knows how to etch them in the ground and curl his fingers down and call them forth to destroy his enemies.
Or to watch them try to breathe.
Or to see his brother dissolving before his eyes.
Or to hear the hollow voices of children twisted into nightmarish absurdity, things that had great value transformed into nothing. Nothing at all.
Gold into lead. Things are not proceeding as he had planned.
Alphonse is screaming, but it is a distant sound, and he has put up enough of a wall that this will be over by the time his brother breaks through. The other alchemist is still here, though Edward cannot hear him breathing, or the soft scraping as his fingers rub together – the same principle as Roy’s gloves, modified somehow. The room is poorly lit, he hasn’t been able to figure out how they work – or how to win this.
“You can’t escape.” He calls out. “Everyone knows you’re here, and you can’t stop all of them.”
Hawkeye knows for sure, and Edward really wishes she’d have found this lunatic first. He is getting tired of being at the end of so many final battles, the ending of so much history he’s not a part of. She didn’t say much about what happened, about who he hurt of hers or why. He’s an Alchemist, so of course it’s all a matter of power and pain and innocent blood. For all the things he thought Alchemy could do, it all seems to come down to nothing but horror in the end. Another mad bastard with nothing to say about the Philosopher’s Stone – again - and his brother terrified – again – and Edward backing himself into a corner on purpose, to try and bait the man into a trap he hasn’t quite put together yet.
Only this time, the alchemist has melted through the wall somehow and is waiting quite patiently for him.
“So, /this/ is the Fullmetal Alchemist.”
Ducane has one eye, and it glints like broken glass. Dark strands of hair hang limp over his face. Madness, all the familiar signs of madness, until he really ought to just hang a sign around his neck – ‘National Alchemists want YOU to ruin the rest of your life! Join now!’
The sad thing is, the army’s never really had to work at recruiting them. Alchemists flock to the chance for glory, even when they know the price. Edward checks his eyes in the mirror now and then, just to make sure confidence is only confidence, that he isn’t slipping. He knows it’s not anything like solid ground, but a tightrope beneath them all.
Ducane reaches out, and Edward tries to block but the man’s strength is incredible, batting his arm away. The twisted hand presses against Edward’s chest, and digs in instead of striking, a sharp claw trying to tear out his heart. He feels the sharp knife twisting beneath the surface of his skin, though there is no way the man is strong enough to stab him that deep and there was no weapon in his hand.
“Life makes fools of us all, little boy. It’s something I think you should learn.”
Ducane has him off the ground, by the front of his shirt and the skin underneath The strong fingers digging into in his chest are bad enough without whatever’s happening inside his body, someone driving nail after nail straight through his heart. A high-pitched wail, that’s probably nothing good, and by the time Ed realizes it’s his own scream he’s managed to reach up with his automail arm and dig out one of Ducane’s eyes.
Technique is a good thing. Fighting /really/ dirty can be better. The man staggers backward and Ed would do something about it, sketch a circle or at least try to change his position, but instead he just pitches over, every muscle refusing to move and the pain in his chest growing worse and worse.
An alchemy circle on Ducane’s skin? Or is it on his glove, like Mustang’s? The thought of Roy seeing him like this makes his teeth clench, he needs to get off the floor before the cavalry arrives.
Maybe with something transmutable in his other hand... he’s trying to figure it out as Ducane screams and arches backward, the building starting to fall down around them –
A flicker of light from the corner of his eye. An idiotic stroke of luck, Edward knew the man was trying to trap him in a specific place, though he never did figure out the reason. Instead, whatever trap Ducane placed there is now ripping the alchemist apart. Waves of power that flay the skin from his bones and then crumble the bones and by the time Ed has shut his eyes and turned away it’s too late, and the worst of it is seared behind his eyes.
Just like his mother, the thing that should have been her. Sometimes he hates her, for being his sin, the thing he will have to carry around for the rest of his life. At least a war was a war, horror and carnage and misery all a part of the deal, and even Edward knows better than to think he has any chance of stopping that sort of machine.
He’d made his own bloody little hell instead, out of peace and pathetic, childish need and Alphonse’s trust in him. It might not be war but it is bad enough.
Dirt sprinkles his cheeks, and somehow Ed manages to roll onto his stomach, though his vision goes gray and black when he even attempts to drag himself forward.
He has absolutely no right to be annoyed with his oncoming death. Edward has put himself in harm’s way so often he’s surprised they don’t call him the Lemming Alchemist. Roy will probably carve it on his grave.
The thud of stone striking stone. Won’t be long now. An explosion roars out above the sound of collapse, and Edward fights to lift his head and open his eyes, failing at both. Distantly he can hear the sound of clanking steel. Damn it.
//Get out of here, you idiot.//
Alphonse never will, not ever. Edward keeps underestimating just how fast and agile his brother is and flinches from the sound of the building finally toppling around them – and then realizes there is cool air in his lungs, and he’s outside because Al’s gotten them to safety.
A low rumble, and a few crickets start up chirping again as the sounds from the building lapse into silence. Alphonse is saying something but the words keep slipping into an icy slush, sliding out of his mind, building up in his chest. Where in hell is Hawkeye, anyway?
Edward shivers, and cold arms hold him close. How far are they away from help? Awareness fades, as Alphonse breaks into a run.
“Hold on, ‘niisan. Hold on.”
-------------------
Roy Mustang stares down at the sweating, whimpering boy in the bed and tries to remind himself this is the Fullmetal Alchemist, not someone who needs or wants to be thought of in terms of physical age. A genius in his field, a soldier who has already walked through the fire more than once, pushed by a drive to know and do that even Roy finds somewhat humbling, nearly intimidating. Edward Elric will leave his mark on the world, and Roy wonders just what that will be – and how much will be changed forever.
He very much doubts the State will find the results in their favor.
“No. Please... please...”
A few tears join the beads of sweat, and Edward twists, thrashing as well as he can considering he’s missing an arm and a leg. The Automail limbs have been removed – slightly damaged in the fight, they do hurt him to wear, and Edward needs all the strength he has to fight the sickness that has hold of him now. Alphonse is still resting, did not see enough of the fight to know exactly what has happened, only that the Alchemist they had been sent after is dead, and their prodigy had to be carried off the battlefield.
“Al... Al?” A shuddering breath, and another whimper. He looks so young, and deathly pale. He is a boy, just a frightened, sick child. All the alchemists are really nothing more - children with gifts they can barely control and hardly fathom.
No different than arming Hughes’ tiny child with a rifle and no target - no truth and no purpose but the one she would have to make for herself. Who would she choose to kill, what god would she align her weapon to - or could such a powerful weapon in those hands only turn on its owner in the end?
“It’s all right. Your brother is fine.”
As if Edward understands, he sinks back against the pillows, pale and still. Roy wrings out the cloth in the basin quietly. He had interrupted the nurse in order to question Edward, but that is obviously impossible now.
The world offers few chances for kindness, especially for soldiers and certainly for National Alchemists. He is very careful, wiping the sweat off the boy’s forehead and flushed cheeks, pulling the blanket back to dab at his chest, and stare at the place metal meets skin, the pale expanse of bed sheets where another arm should be.
Roy cannot imagine what the boy will be like when he truly grows up. In the privacy of his own mind, it is a worry. All they need is another war where they can’t keep track of him. The chance for Ed to do more than his fair share of things he’d regret for the rest of his life. Edward is thoroughly decent, and thoroughly decent people often twist into the worst sort of monsters. Roy is rather certain Ed cannot simply be broken. Even if Alphonse were to die, it wouldn’t be enough for Edward to simply turn a gun on himself.
Maybe some of that worry is just jealousy in weak disguise. Roy has made his own rules, is making his own game, but so few things really tie Edward to his position. He’s a chaotic element, and it won’t get easier with time. Whatever the boy’s destiny, the rest of the world will be along for the ride. Edward may chafe under the restrictions of being a National Alchemist now, but eventually he’ll age, and know what Roy has learned of war and the world, and that will be a fearsome thing to see.
Roy watches the Fullmetal Alchemist sleep, and thinks of penance and flame.
-------------------
He’s so hot. Why the hell is it so hot?
Ed tries to lift his arms, no response from his metal limb and his human one has a ridiculous amount of trouble navigating the edge of the blanket. He finally just flings his arm out – not at all graceful but he is much cooler afterward, arm hanging limply over the bed, someone methodically stabbing him in the chest, in perfect time with his heartbeat.
He is extremely put out then, when the blanket is tucked back around him. It’s almost worth opening his eyes for.
A voice murmurs, his head is tipped back. Cool water, but it hits his throat and chest like a knife and he coughs hard and sharp, hands lifting him up as he chokes.
“... al?” The word is barely sound, and he swallows and gasps and the effort causes pain but doesn’t seem to help him breathe. The hands around his are smaller than his brother’s, and warm. Human hands. Edward cracks an eye open, the face familiar though it takes his mind a long, long time to place it. Roy is smiling a little. Oh, dammit.
“... how long did it take you to beat me this time, old man?”
He expects Roy to smile, say something sarcastic. Hopefully it won’t end with a punch, or another spell. He tries to lift his hands to counter, but can’t lift his left and his right is too light. Missing.
“Do you remember what happened, Hagane?”
What happened? Something happened? He hurt his mother, but didn’t Roy already know that? Edward twists away, from a sudden burst of flame, deep inside his chest. How the hell did Roy do that? Is he being tortured? What did he do wrong, and more importantly, what does he have to say to make it stop?
“... please stop.” Two words are difficult, he has to swallow and lick his lips to continue. “Please stop burning me.”
The Colonel’s eyes open a little wider in surprise, and he raises a hand – bare, no glove. It’s a bit of a disappointment, Ed decides, because it means there’s no one left to ask for help.
“Where’s my brother?”
“Resting.”
Hawkeye is standing by the door, and steps forward when Edward looks at her. She doesn’t like seeing him like this, and it’s almost amusing to see her falter. “Can you tell us what happened in there?”
Edward frowns, slowly shaking his head, all he knows are the waves of pain rippling across his chest, down his back in white-hot arcs. “Ask Ducane what he did...to me?”
“We couldn’t find what was left of him, until your brother told us where to look. Smears don’t talk much, even when they’re made of alchemist.”
“He took a shot at Al.”
It isn’t a good enough explanation, and it wasn’t the reason Ducane died but he wants them to understand he doesn’t regret what happened to him. What he saw.
What he saw?
Waves of blood and skin, human bones crushed together by the force into a strange sort of instant tombstone. The thought makes him gag, he turns and retches and is very grateful for the basin there.
Oh. Yes. That.
He’s coughing again, voices shouting and hands on him. Blood in his mouth and he’s not sure what from and he really hopes Roy wasn’t stupid enough to let him bite his tongue off.
His heart feels like a hard knot inside his chest, made out of automail, and then someone jerks down on the wrench and tightens as hard as they can.
--------------------
Startling cold against his lips, nearly painful, and enough to wake him. It must take a great deal of effort to work the metal digits around such a small thing as a chip of ice, but Alphonse manages. It’s not worth speaking, or trying to open his eyes, so Edward lays as still as he can, and tries to feel the difference between the pain in his chest and the constant twinge of his arm. Missing arm. Everything hurts.
“... that was stupid, oniisan.”
Cool metal embrace, he can feel it through the thin blanket. The arms hold him tighter when he moves, and it doesn’t matter that it’s just an empty suit of armor and doesn’t warm him up. It doesn’t matter at all.
“... al?”
Edward cracks his eyes open, sees his own reflection blurred and warped in the steel. Blinking is hard, breathing is more trouble than it’s worth and it is Al who has to unfold his limbs and move him into a better position. Ed looks at the sunlight and wonders what day it is.
“... can’t move?”
“The doctors gave you something a little while ago. Whatever Ducane did, it seems to act on your muscles, trying to constrict them until you crush your own body to pieces. Your heart too, and your lungs. They said you would probably be all right soon.”
Drugged to the gills, that explains it. Edward knows he’s usually stubborn enough to do what he wants – at the very least try – irregardless of the situation. It’s easier this time not to bother, to make his biggest worry trying to swallow, as Al holds a cup to his lips.
“Are you all right?”
Alphonse doesn’t answer, just tucks the corner of the blanket a little more tightly around the gap where his other arm should be. It’s an answer in itself – yes, he’s fine, only because Edward refused to let him get involved. Upset that Edward can’t treat him like an equal. It’s easy enough to let his brother stand on his own in training, hours of fighting and practice that could end in sheared metal and wounded pride but nothing he can’t fix.
He won’t get Al into anything he can’t fix.
Perhaps the fate he chose for his brother is more selfish than death – but Edward doesn’t care. He is so, so afraid, because he would go to hell and drag Alphonse out, but he has the chilling suspicion that it would end just like the Philosopher’s Stone, where no one knows the way. What is he supposed to do if no one has the answers? He’d thought Roy was guarding them, or at least knew who might be, but now he’s no longer so sure.
The drugs have knocked out his ability to shiver, and for a moment he feels nauseous, cold and hot all at once.
“’niisan?”
Always there for him. Always. Edward picks the first sensation to rise up from the turmoil.
“... cold.”
“Sorry.”
He winces at Alphonse’s tone, no matter how sick he is he should know better, that his brother isn’t in a human body, can’t control his temperature. “No. I am. Sorry.”
So sorry. All the time.
Alphonse sighs. “I don’t want you to say it like that. It was my choice, too.”
“Mom told me to take care of you.”
A soft laugh, the sort of thing that makes him feel like the younger brother. “She told us to take care of each other.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Baka.”
He rests in Al’s arms, until the light reflecting from the wall isn’t half as bright, and someone comes with another blanket and a warm drink, Al helping him sit up, though it’s hard to swallow with all his muscles working so strangely, and he’s glad when he manages not to drip too much water on his clothes.
Al never leaves, even when it must get boring, looking after a crazy older brother - and Edward knows he’s selfish for only feeling relieved.
--------------------
It’s hot again, lungs stinging with each breath he takes in, but Edward realizes he’s walking, his automail limb back on and his legs aching and the sun pointing down its spotlight for him - yes, Edward Elric the shining star of an otherwise unpopulated wasteland.
Unpopulated, because the dead are piled all around him. Recently killed, there are no flies, no smell, and scattered between on the streets are bleached bones, remnants of an even more ancient battle.
Ishbal? Who could still be alive to kill?
At the end of the street is a wall that seems to go on forever, blown apart to rubble in certain places but surprisingly whole at others. Edward runs a finger along it, unnerved by the grit beneath his fingertips. Not a dream, then, though that isn’t a very scientific evaluation. He can feel things in the dreams where Al is screaming and his mother... the thing he’d–
“You know, it never goes away. She never does. I can still close my eyes and remember the pattern of the blood on the floor.”
Edward jerks his head up, and wonders how he’d managed to nearly walk past the man, hunched against the top of the wall like a gargoyle. He blinks again – and even if he’d managed to mistake the man for a chunk of stone, there was no way he should have overlooked the gun propped against his shoulder – more like a turret, the rest of the weapon a small wall all its own, reaching the way back the ground.
He stares, eyes snagging on the details of the weapon even before he bothers with the full picture. As always, he cares more about how the thing works than why it’s been put together. He can almost make sense of the various attachments, a cannon on the high perch, powered by everything below. All of it the result of a great deal of alchemy, but to what purpose?
A roar over his head, Edward turns in time to see the tallest structure still standing brought down to match the rest of the skyline, and remembers he’s standing in a war zone.
He thinks the man sitting astride the wall lets out a soft cackle, and beneath him the mechanics of the gun begin to hum and click, the entire support structure rattling as it powers up, glowing brightly until Edward has to shield his eyes.
The sound of the shot is deafening, nearly knocks him on his ass, and Edward is scrambling toward the wall before he can think to be afraid, pressing his face to a crack – there is a dark line on the horizon, what he can only assume to be enemy troops – and a rising cloud where more of them used to be.
“I’d like to say they never learn. Tragically, I think they do.”
A soft grunt and a sharp thud, and Edward scrambles backward as the sniper stretches up to his full height. He’d seemed tall enough, hunched over the weapon, but even the hunks of buildings and rough-hewn wall are insubstantial compared to the man looking down on him. Edward knows he should be afraid. Is afraid, but it is a cold and slowly growing thing that has nothing to do with anything this man could do to him.
He doesn’t like the look of the gunman, tattered remnant of a coat stretched over broad shoulders, dirty enough to be any color underneath. Unkempt blond hair just as filthy, a braid trailing down to his waist, sticking out at strange angles, as if he’d done it all himself, and in a hurry.
He makes the mistake of looking in the man’s eyes, reminded instantly of the darkness in the shadows past where the thing that should be his mother lies – and of Scar, that first time, and his empty eyes. Edward is staring at a dead man, with a very familiar face.
“Are you... my father?”
The man laughs, mutters something Edward can’t hear but that sounds very derisive, and strides right past him. “Try again, kid.”
Keeping up is difficult, he has to break into a half-run just to match the other man’s long stride. Edward scowls – if this idiot mentions the difference in height, he’ll be eating a boot sandwich. He realizes, a few moments later, that those dead eyes watch him. The thought that this man is even capable of teasing seems ludicrous.
“Oh yeah, the height thing. I remember that. You get over it.”
The words don’t make sense, and then they make too much sense, and Edward stops short.
“What did you say?”
Scars on this man’s face, deep wrinkles and scars but he’s turning and even though Edward is supposed to look he’s trying to turn away because now it’s obvious, impossible but obvious. A thin bead of cold sweat is running down the back of his neck. He stares at the man’s arm, but nothing is visible beneath the long sleeve.
Before he can say anything, the tall stranger reaches in his pocket. He doesn’t think that it might be an attack, that he should consider raising a defense until the man has already tossed something in the air between them. Golden and gleaming.
A pocket watch. /The/ watch. His mouth is too dry for swallowing, let alone speaking. Just to make sure, he opens it up, checks the inside, and quickly closes it again, shuddering despite his best intentions.
“Where’s Al?” His voice trembles, showing every one of his sixteen years. The man answers him with the barest whisper of a sigh. A slight shift in his shoulders, maybe only half an inch, and he knows.
“No. No no no.”
“If it’s any comfort, you didn’t have any control over it. He was a hero, and they gave him a medal and an award and a pretty little statue in the town he saved. How could anyone ask for more?”
The other, taller him turns toward the outer wall, and of course the expression on his face says it’s anything but all right. Edward thinks stupidly that if the situation were just a little different, he’d be happy to know that he finally gains a few inches. Winry must have went nuts, adjusting the automail so drastically – he can see that he still has it, this old and still using limbs that aren’t his. Standing in some blazing desert surrounded by corpses - without Al.
“You were stronger after he was gone, you know. It made you free. You were the best National Alchemist there had ever been. I guess it was what you gained, for giving him up.”
“I don’t care about that!” He couldn’t cry, because this wasn’t real. It was all a stupid dream, because he couldn’t be talking to himself and be himself and this wasn’t him – because if Al was dead he sure as hell wouldn’t be alive. He would have died for his brother first.
“Why did you stay with the National Alchemists, I wonder? Out of spite? Nothing else to call a life?”
The other him starts walking again, well before Edward thinks he can recover. It’s not as if he has to believe any of this – there cannot be two versions of him, this is an illusion, or a dream. He has a vague memory of tension, worry – something in the past that sparked this. This is the effect of some miscast alchemy perhaps, a hallucination, not an entity all its own.
A lie, this cannot be his future, with Al gone and a dead city spread out all around him. He will not allow it.
Edward throws his hands up, as a second blast shakes the street very close to where he stands, dust and fragments of rock blowing around him, cutting into his skin and burning his throat when he tries to breathe.
“Who are you fighting?” The words are half-choked, and he looks up to see the man who shares his name – and only that – climbing onto a different section of the wall, too far away to hear or just not listening. Edward runs after him, listening to the whistle-roar of incoming fire, watching as the projectiles smash what is left of the buildings, leaving plumes of smoke in their wake. It’s almost more disturbing to hear no sound, nothing but crumbling rock. No one is left in this city but the two of them – and Ed already knows that one of them can’t be real.
He struggles up onto the wall after his older self, who doesn’t seem to be doing anything except watching the oncoming forces approach across the wide plain, something that is the twisted cousin to a smile crossing his lips, chin in his hand. Maybe he should have checked the piles of bodies a little further for Alchemist uniforms. Maybe this is some last stand, although the part of him that knows when it would break instead of fighting back doesn’t want to believe its possible.
It isn’t possible, he realizes, looking over the wall. It’s worse. A row of familiar uniforms, familiar faces. Every Alchemist he knows and many unknown, all of them changed with the passing of years, but all present, along with most of the soldiers in the damn country.
Roy is – not surprisingly - leading the march. The attack continues to pulverize the city around him, but his double does not move.
“What did you do? Why are – they’re trying to kill you?”
“Long story.” So much death in two simple words. So many horrible choices and terrible nights and endless, meaningless, violent years. It might take the man as long as he had lived it just to tell it.
“You have the Philosopher’s Stone.” The only thing that makes sense, though yet again that inner voice he wishes he didn’t have negates the idea... because he would have tried to bring Al back. Stupid, impossible, and certain to hurt so many more than it could, but he would have done it without thinking.
The other him laughs, eyes winking with something much sharper and harder than happiness. Age there too, so many years poorly lived.
“Years ago, but that’s long dead and buried. I remember now, how important it seemed at the time.”
One last look over the wall, and he plants a hand, jumping back down to the ground as Edward scrambles to follow. The hulking, future him lands in a crouch but does not rise, palms pressed flat against a pale line in the ground, wider than the span of his fingertips. Edward frowns, looking up to see another curving line coming off the first, disappearing around the corner half a block away. The moment it starts to change, to glow, he knows what it is. The lines make no sense, not unless the finished circle is larger than...
“What are you doing?”
“Did you ever look up at the sky, or at one of those maps in the libraries, and think you could probably get a circle around it, around all of it, if you only knew where to start drawing?”
“... yes.”
“Well, so did I.”
He has never seen alchemy like this. The wall in front of him is just gone, lifted up and out and crumbling to nothing before Edward can inhale, and all he’s breathing in light and heat. The air is gone, the whole world turned monochrome – and beyond the lines he stands on with this impossible golem who claims his future – there is only Armageddon.
The Alchemists are close enough that Edward can see them react to the sudden, unexpected attack. See Roy lift up his hands to block and when Edward first sees the flames he wants to laugh at this stupid delusion, this man who claims to be him, because if there’s anything the Colonel can manage –
Edward realizes the paleness he’s looking at is not the edges of the Alchemist’s gloves, but the skin beneath, and then the bone.
It is not a pretty death. When alchemy goes wrong it always goes ugly, and violent, and the great Flame Alchemist – ironically - is burning to death right in front of his eyes.
He dies silently, but there agony in it, mouth twisted in something like a scream, flesh the same color as his dark hair and blue-green flames that rise to consume him – torn apart before the blaze subsides, sinew and flesh spattering out, drenching Hawkeye a moment before she catches fire too. The blue green flames rise up to consume all the Alchemists, and then the soldiers behind them, and everything is just gone.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
Edward runs forward but knows he’s already going to be too late, slamming his hands together and dropping them to the ground in an attempt to save anyone or anything at all. It’s like trying to draw water in a drought, there isn’t anything left to be transmutated, nothing to destroy in order to create that hasn’t already been annihilated – and the army is smoldering in front of him and the sky writhes, blue-green to the horizon.
Edward breathes, open mouthed, entire body dry as sand and shaking all over as he turns on his double.
“What did you do? How far... how far did it go? WHAT DID YOU DO?”
He grabs his own collar, somehow, drags the taller man down to meet him, staring into the eyes that smile back, dazed and distant and already gone. Edward knows the answer, the impossible answer, because sometimes in the night he’ll sit back and look at the stars and wonder. Wonder if he could draw the lines far enough, broad enough, wonder if he could make a circle of the sky, or the land, or the /world/.
He wonders, with half a body of metal and a brother barely saved he /still wonders/.
“... a circle that big, that’s giving up nearly everything, isn’t it? What do you think we’ll get back? I wonder.”
Edward stares into his truth, the dead eyes that stare back at him, that have made this destruction for nothing, and he screams.
//“Oniisan!”//
The green-blue fire wraps around him, his body alight just like the rest of them, but Edward is going to lash out against this to the end of himself. Go down fighting, go down raging against such impossible cruelty - and what if that stubborn demand is /exactly/ what brings him to this end?
“It’s the last thing you learn, kid. Being an adult means you don’t have a goddamned clue what’s going on – you just get to act like you do.”
“Oniisan!”
The voice is so distant, too distant to help. Maybe no one could ever help him. Edward tries to scream but there’s nothing left in his lungs, and he follows the world into oblivion.
----------------------------
“Should I–”
The whole world had crumbled on top of him, and he fought and strained to breathe anyway. Burning, everyone was burning, he’d done it, no no...
“Oniisan!”
“Hold him down!”
His throat hurts, little choking sounds he doesn’t mean to make but can’t stop. Edward blinks, feeling tears and hands against his body and cloth wrapped around him, tight and constricting – didn’t make sense, wasn’t he supposed to be dead?
//Everyone’s dead. Everyone.//
He fights against the hands that hold him, strong hands, and he’s only got the one arm to do it with. Where’s his automail? He might despise it at times but it serves a useful purpose, makes him stronger and he needs to be so strong.
//You know where it ends. You know.//
How can he dare want to be stronger? Oh please, please let this be the kind of nightmare that fades quickly. He doesn’t want to remember, doesn’t want to carry this around with his mother and Nina – damn, damn he’s crying and if he cries he can’t breathe and if he can’t breathe he can’t get them to let him go.
A hand wraps around his throat or maybe just brushes against it but some part of him snaps and he gets in a good, panicked punch and the next thing he knows he’s on his feet – foot, balancing precariously, ache stretching from the arch and the sole all the way to the back of his neck and everything hotter than hell. His hand is tracing the tiniest circle in the dust on the windowpane behind him, and perhaps that’s why everyone’s gone so silent.
“Edward? Are you with us?” Hawkeye’s voice, and he can hear the very slight tremor of uncertainty – she’s good at hiding. They’re all so good at hiding. He opens his eyes, can see the gray blur of Alphonse, and Hawkeye... and Roy.
//Going to kill you Roy, going to kill you and enjoy it and I don’t know why and you can’t stop me, you really can’t stop me and I always thought you could.//
He licks his lips and thinks he might say it all, it’s hard to think around the heat in his skin and the way he can’t seem to balance and his lungs have turned into a squeezebox full of holes.
“You’d kill me, right Roy?”
He laughs before Roy can speak, laughs over Al’s gasp. It seems too obvious to have to ask. Roy has a plan. Of course Roy has a plan, and the National Alchemists have all their rules, and history, and he’s good but no one is /that/ good. No one.
Just a dream. Just a dream. Had to be.
No one would just let him walk around, child prodigy and all, and not give any thought to his future, what he might be capable of someday. /Someone/ was keeping track of this, that was what adults did, what maturity meant. Seeing the attacks before they had even been thought of, with more than enough time to dodge. Like chess. He is terrible at chess, Alphonse is better at strategy, while his is the game of risky sacrifice.
The words and the world tip and spin in front of him, and he closes his eyes until the ground beneath his feet levels out.
//Ishbal was a plan, wasn’t it? How many people have died, when you /knew/ the plan that was supposed to save them?//
A fluke. All a fluke, a mistake. Not important, not like this.
“You’d do it.” His voice shakes, desperately, and he can’t rein it in. “You could do it now, if you had to. Right?”
Roy stares at him, and there is no answer in his eyes.
//It’s the last thing you learn...//
Ed chuckles weakly, it feels as if he is being strangled, though it’s still a surprise when his whole body just gives up, slumping forward. The floor disappears in a sudden sweep of gray.
“Edward!”
Someone shouts, but it’s Alphonse who moves the fastest, and it’s his brother who catches him. His sweet, careful brother who Really Did Not Deserve Any Of This, no matter what he could be talked into, or was willing to take.
His leg drags along the floor for a moment, and then he’s lifted, and for a moment it’s all Ed can do to just soak up the cool feel of the metal and try to remember how to remember, try to catch any thought and hold it, hope it will be enough to drag him back to the surface.
“Is he going to be all right?”
Alphonse, hesitant as ever. He is as much his younger brother’s anchor as Al is his. A flesh and blood hand at his wrist, the slight teeth of fingernails against his skin – Hawkeye.
“I’ll tell them to bring more medicine, but his pulse is strong enough.”
//Strong. You want to be strong, don’t you? You were stronger after he was gone. It made you free.//
No. No. Please let him die first. Hands too gentle to be the steel he knows they are wipe away wetness from his eyes, and he can feel movement, back toward the bed. They think he’s passed out again, and he can feel that wonderful blankness tempting at the edges of his mind, still just out of reach -
“What did he mean... what he said?”
Al cannot say more, and it’s a long time before Roy answers, devastatingly unsure, the reply the absolute last thing he needs to hear.
“I don’t know.”
Edward opens his eyes to the window, looks up at the sky, and wonders.
============================
Author’s Notes –
1. EdNow vs. potential EdFuture made me think of that Dexter’s Laboratory where he goes into the future and is like, nine times his height and totally ripped. I think it’s doubtful too, but when I opened the head to start writing, that’s who came to the party.
2. Apologies for any mislabeled details. This was a fast and ugly slushpile fic with a few good lines I didn’t want to just delete.