Archive of Our Own

“I must say, I’m rather impressed. Most never think of using abstract concepts as payment.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spare me. You gonna take it or not?”

“I will take as much as you wish to give, al-che-mist.”

“I’ll give as much as it takes.”

Ed wakes with a pounding headache.

A groan leaves him as he raises his head. It’s like someone poured molten iron in his cranium and fuck, what did he do, smash his head against a wall or something?

For some reason, he’s laying on his back, staring blearily up at a very blurry ceiling. Trying to roll over, however, proves to be a mistake, because it causes his esophagus to contract, suddenly and without warning. He tries to cover his mouth with his hand, but the migraine reaches a white-hot crescendo and his stomach lurches and he ends up spitting bile all over the floor.

Ugh. Gross.

Wiping at his mouth with a grimace, he pulls himself upright and settles himself on his knees. The headache starts to fade, ebbing away like the retreating tide and sinking back into the shallows of oblivion. Startlingly quickly, actually, but he’s certainly not going to complain. It’s much easier to think when his skull isn’t throbbing.

As he swallows down the lingering gritty bitterness of vomit, he takes note of his surroundings. Strangely murky, dimly lit, swathed in shadows as though light dares not tread upon it. The walls are shaped from steel lines marred by old water stains, the floor cracked concrete beneath him. Above him hovers a skylight of sorts, with rusted windowpanes and glass that is tarnished from apparent years of neglect. A single window sports a massive hole that allows milky grey light to pour in more freely, but that does little to alleviate the overwhelming gloom. Bile mixes with something dank, with a thick mustiness of dust and mildew and a sharp tang of rust. Wherever he is, it’s fallen into a state of disrepair.

Dark shapes create alien outlines in the distance. Ed rises groggily to his feet, his head wobbling somewhere between too-light and too-solid. As he squints at them, they become clearer—he spies a forklift with rust caking the mast and conveyer belts that have collected cobwebs in their inertia.

A warehouse? Ed sucks in a breath thick with dust and nearly sneezes. An abandoned warehouse.

Only then does he notice the smell of alchemy in the air, a lingering ozone-sharpness you would almost mistake for the premonition of a lightning strike. Unless you were an alchemist, had immersed yourself in the craft long enough to tell the difference between transmutation detritus and a natural phenomenon.

Something about it unsettles him, somehow. He takes a single step forward, with the intent to investigate, and only then catches a glimpse of something in his periphery that draws his gaze downwards.

Chalk lines sprawl out beneath his foot.

He chokes on an ozone-heavy gasp as he scrambles back. A massive array unfurls across the floor in front of him, the white of the chalk almost eerily bright against the murk, as though it were painted from the dust of bones. His gaze wanders over the shapes, over the geometric patterns mixing with long, sweeping arcs that immediately prickle with familiarity. The hairs on the back of his neck rise as the glyphs jump out of him.

A shiver of foreboding goes down Ed’s spine.

Why is there a human transmutation circle here?

Hastily, he claps, and then he brings his fingertips against the array’s boundary. Almost immediately, blue light spills across the chalk lines, erases them from existence, sinking into the concrete as though they were never separate substances at all. As the last whirls of white dissipate, a breath of relief leaves his lungs.

Only then does he notice the large, hulking shape laid spread out across the floor. In what was presumably the circle’s center.

Visions of the twisted thing that Ed conjured that night immediately spring to mind, unbidden and gruesomely opportunistic. But this silhouette lacks any twisting limbs, no ribs curving out from a broken body, no blood and other bodily fluids pooling out from its gnarled abdomen to stain the concrete in a dark, reeking pool. No, actually, as Ed chances a few steps forward, he sees that the shape of it actually looks more or less in-tact. The size makes it either a massive specimen of a human being, or not human at all. And the way the light filters across the hard angles over it, tracing a surface that gives a metallic glint in return for the attention, gives the impression that the latter is the case.

Ed’s brows furrow as he rakes his gaze across the steel legs, the steel arms. A blunt wedge rising from the chestplate. A streaming feather spilling out from a still head. Spikes on the shoulders. A suit of armor, laid flat on its metal back. And a vaguely familiar one, at that...

Then he blinks.

Isn’t this from... his basement?

Blinking again, he takes another look at it. The familiarity bites a little more strongly as he recalls the silent sentinel that always sat in the corner, collecting dust while Ed poured over alchemy books and gleaming metallically as if in answer to the kerosene lanterns he burned late into the night. The fuck is it doing here, of all places? He burned down his house, reduced his childhood memories to smoke and crumbling ash—this thing should be a melted pool of metal slush across the basement floor, unable to escape the punishing heat from the flames. It should not have survived, much less have made its way to East City, of all places.

At least—Ed thinks he’s in East City.

He’s... pretty sure.

There’s a soft and muffled sound, almost like a moan, that nearly has Ed leaping out of his skin. He knows that wasn’t him. And there doesn’t seem to be anyone else.

Unless...

Swallowing, he turns back to the armor.

It lies inert, deceptively still. That should be reassuring, but he notes a pointed lack of any dust or rust that indicates it has not been here very long, and his heart quickens in his throat because this thing was in the center of a human transmutation circle.

Oh shit.

His steps forward are tentative as he approaches. His hands shiver as he lowers himself to his kneels.

So far, his throat remains unclogged from the heavy stench of blood and sweet rot mixing damningly together, just as they had that fateful night when the thing that was supposed to be Mom took a broken breath. So far, there is no labored breathing that indicates a twisted body struggling to maintain life it was never supposed to have. There is nothing that indicates anyone made something warped and wrong, violated the ultimate taboo for their own selfish pleasures.

Regardless, Ed tenses himself in anticipation for gnarled limbs, for necrotic flesh, for spilt innards and a half-coherent face, as he undoes the leather straps keeping the chest plate in place. Then, slowly, he removes it.

To his surprise, the thing that sits cradled in the cuirass, among the folds of draping chainmail hanging down from the shoulder plates in heavy curtains, is not necrotic and twisted at all. Instead, there’s skin so frighteningly pale that Ed is almost blinded by it. A head of long, greasy hair that must have been blond once, but it’s so mistreated and ragged that it almost looks brown.

Movement from the figure catches Ed by surprise. It rolls over, turning to reveal a face that looks terrifyingly young. A kid Ed’s age, more or less. He looks as though he hasn’t eaten a day in his life, all waxy skin clinging feverishly to jagged bones. His ribcage is so painfully visible that you could count every last one, his belly swollen in a manner that Ed recalls is usually associated with malnutrition and is in no way healthy in the slightest. His eyes are sunken, riddled with bruises that are terrifyingly dark against the etiolated paleness of his face. His skull seems to strain against the confines of his skin, cheekbones jutting out sharp enough to tear straight through.

Horror surges icily through Ed’s veins. Shit. Shit. This kid needs help.

A shiver moves down the boy’s bony frame, and he curls in on himself with a whimper. He isn’t wearing a stitch of clothing, and the metal must be cold. Ed hastily tears off his coat and throws it over the boy’s side, draping him in scarlet.

“Stay here,” he says to the boy. He’s not entirely certain the kid can hear him, if he’s even conscious, but, y’know. Reassurance and shit. “I’m gonna get help, okay?”

The kid’s face screws up at the sound of Ed’s voice, as though he’s trying to rouse himself, but Ed is off like a shot. Delaying would not be in either of their best interests.

First thing’s first, he needs to find out where he is. As soon as Ed exits the warehouse, emerging into a day that is laden with heavy cloud cover and casts a dreary shadow across the world, he finds his bearings rather quickly. Recalls that this is some dilapidated section of East City’s (he was right) warehouse district, with the exact street and address popping into his mind almost immediately. Which is strange, because he remembers the where, but not how or the why.

That’s something he can worry over later. The kid needs help, first.

He counts the change in his pocket as he makes for the nearest phone booth. Luckily, he has enough for a call and then some. Hastily, he dials the first hospital that comes to mind—at least one advantage to being as accident-prone and hot-blooded as him is that he’s familiar with many of the hospitals in the area, even if he loathes them—and informs them that there’s a painfully skinny boy in an abandoned warehouse on the southside, on such and such street, he’s in bad shape, hurry. The woman on the phone assures him they’ll be there soon.

After he hangs up, Ed debates going back to the boy. He probably should, just to make sure the kid is alright, and isn’t entirely alone until the medics get here. On the other hand, he’s not really sure if he wants to linger somewhere he found a human transmutation circle traced out in careful chalk lines across the floor.

Shit. A human transmutation circle. Fuck. Ed—it gives him a shiver just to think about it, about why that kid might have been in the center of one. He refuses to believe that someone actually succeeded in human transmutation, because it’s literally impossible to form a coherent human being from alchemy, much less revive the dead. Somehow, he gets the feeling that whatever happened in that warehouse is something he doesn’t want an answer to.

And he vowed a long time ago that he wouldn’t allow himself to get mixed up in human transmutation again. Because he can’t allow himself to do that, linger in a past that will never return to him. It’s not right and not healthy. He has to look forward, look for the Philosopher’s Stone, has to—

Wait.

...why is he looking for the Stone again?

Uh.

Y’know what? That can wait. That can wait for a time when there isn’t a skinny kid cradled in the armor from Ed’s basement, sitting in an abandoned warehouse.

So Ed ultimately decides to go back, if only to make sure the kid isn’t totally alone. But it turns out that the paramedics are faster to respond than he thought, an he arrives to find a white ambulance parked outside the warehouse, the scarlet emergency lights mounted on its back screaming with brilliant flashes. He ducks into the nearest corner just as white-clad paramedics emerge from the warehouse doors pushing a gurney where the boy has been laid flat. He’s so ghastly pale that he would blend in entirely to the white gurney cushions if not for Ed’s coat still draped over him in crimson ripples and the head of greasy hair that forms a tarnished halo around his head.

From Ed’s vantage point, he can see the boy’s head faintly lolling, his eyes half-opened. He looks delirious. Ed can’t imagine he’d be exactly coherent, in his condition. The medics hastily wheel the gurney to the ambulance, where another first responder straps an oxygen mask over the boy’s etiolated face.

The kid is loaded into the ambulance back. The doors close up. The ambulance drives away.

Police sirens whistle in the distance, and a jolt rips down Ed’s spine. A glance over his shoulder greets him with the distant flash of blue-red lights mounted on police vehicles. He really shouldn’t be surprised, considering. They’re all connected, hospitals and fire trucks and ambulances. The police are probably here to investigate just how the hell this kid ended up in that condition in the first place.

The idea of being questioned by the police makes Ed grimace. It would be needless aggravation that he really doesn’t want to deal with. He’s already done his part by calling the hospital. They’ll take care of the kid. And the chances of anyone connecting the suit of armor as having once been a resident in the basement of the house he burned down three years back is slim to none.

Most importantly, it’s none of his business. He’s uninvolved, distantly removed, a bystander in whatever the hell happened here. And he’s done more than he needed to just calling the hospital. There’s no need for him to be here.

By the time the police show up, Ed is long gone.

Something’s... off, Ed finds as he picks his way back to the inn he usually stays at when he’s in East City (he’s a little annoyed at, and a little concerned over, why he was so uncertain in the first place). It’s hard to put it into the words, but he feels like something in the world has shifted in some infinitesimal way. Like everything has been moved two inches to the left, or the right, or backwards, and now his orientation of everything is just slightly skewed.

Stranger still, he finds himself compelled as though by habit to occasionally over glance his shoulder. He’s not expecting to be followed, but the empty air unsettles him, somehow.

Maybe it’s guilt of some kind, telling him to turn back around to check on the boy and at least make sure he’s alright. It’s not really any of Ed’s business, but it would be the right thing to do and damn if Ed’s sense of justice hasn’t bitten him in the ass before.

But—no, that doesn’t feel right. Ed knows guilt. Its symptoms, its warnings, all the effects and causes and places it can spring up from to seize him. He knows it so intimately he can pick it out immediately from a line-up of similar-shaped emotions. He isn’t entirely sure why he and guilt are on such good terms, come to think of it, only that he knows guilt from anything else and knows that this particular pricking at the back of his mind isn’t guilt. More like some stubborn phantom that haunts the edge of his mind but maintains stubbornly formless and nebulous and refuses to succumb to clarity.

Well, Ed muses as he reaches the inn, if it’s really important, it’ll probably just come to him later.

As he pushes the door open, the receptionist at the front desk glances up from her paperwork with mild surprise. But she plasters on a smile nonetheless. “Oh, hello Mr. Elric. I didn’t think you were coming back today.”

“Uh,” Ed starts, and isn’t quite sure how to finish that. What exactly does she mean, not coming back today? When did he say that?

She taps her pen against the desk, more idle than impatient. Her smile remains perfectly polite. “Would you still like to check out?”

“...no.” Why would he do that? “I’ll stay a little longer, thanks.”

“Alright.” If she notices his hesitation or his uncertainty, or even his bewilderment as he’s faced with a direct contradiction of what he very clearly doesn’t remember, she chooses to tactfully ignore it. Instead, she turns around to the wall of hooks where each of the room keys hang beneath number labels to correspond to each door. “The usual, right?”

“Right...”

The grid is divided up by floors, each row representing a different level. He usually stays on the second floor, in the same room every time, and he’s actually come to wonder if they reserve the room for him because it benefits the inn’s reputation that the famous Fullmetal Alchemist stays in it so often. Usually because of decent service and that this inn is conveniently close to East City’s larger libraries, but that’s besides the point. The point is, the key she pulls off the rack is the key to his room, and he has very little recollection of having given it to her.

As she hands him the room key, though, she tilts her head and inquires brightly, “So are you alone today, or should I be expecting your companion sometime later?”

...what?

“No.” Ed’s mouth still tastes vaguely of bile from when he threw up. He swallows. “No. Just me.”

“Alright,” is her reply, and then she goes back to whatever she was working on. He lingers for a moment, frowning and vaguely unsettled, before turning away and drifting up the stairs.

After a few minutes of pacing the length of his room, he finds that too few things are adding up and he still can’t shake the feeling that he should be somewhere else. Doing something. Research or a mission or something other than sitting here, looking out the window at the nice view of East City granted by his vantage point—a lovely, hazy grey horizon that silhouettes modest skyscrapers. People call East City backwater, and while it is nowhere as impressive as the glittering metropolis of Central, it has its own quaint charm that you can only appreciate if you were born and raised in the stagnant countryside like Ed was. Unfortunately, it fails to distract him from this nagging feeling.

Eventually, he just decides, fuck it, and uses the complimentary phone in his room to dial Mustang’s office. His steel fingers tap against the table as the line rings. Whenever he glances out the window, beyond the bundle of sheer curtains framing it, he feels like he’s unconsciously looking for someone. Waiting for someone. It’s bizarre.

A click. And then, “Colonel Mustang’s office. First Lieutenant Hawkeye speaking. To whom am I addressing?”

That surprises Ed a little, because Hawkeye doesn’t usually do secretarial work, doesn’t usually answer the phone in the colonel’s stead. Not unless the colonel’s in a meeting or asleep over some paperwork or something, or too busy with said paperwork to be interrupted by something as trivial as a phonecall. And you can hear from the tone in her voice, the feather-light anticipation, that she’s expecting to have to deflect Hughes and another long spiel about how lovely his wife and daughter are.

Still, Hawkeye is infinitely better than the bastard. “Hey, Hawkeye, it’s me.”

“Ah, Edward.” Her tone immediately loses its practiced patience in favor of a warm note. “To what do we owe the call?”

He bites his lip for a moment, hesitating. It’s probably going to sound a little nuts, him having to ask this, but it’s the only explanation he can think of for whatever the hell happened down there at the reception desk and he needs answers. “Say, did the colonel assign me a mission? With a—a shadow, or a partner, or some shit like that?”

Hawkeye pauses. He can practically hear her furrowing brows. “...not to my knowledge. Why?”

Well. Shit. There goes that theory.

“No reason.” Ed pinches the bridge of his nose. Great. Just, absolutely fantastic. “Sorry for bothering you.”

He hangs up before she can ask questions he doesn’t have proper answers to.

That feeling of something being off doesn’t leave Ed alone the next day. He thinks that it might be because he’s still missing his coat, so he buys a spool of fabric and transmutes a replacement. But that actually doesn’t solve anything and he’s left to pace irritably for a full hour, wondering why it doesn’t feel right.

When that doesn’t work, he goes to the library. Maybe some research on the Stone will help settle his mind. New leads always cheer him up.

But then he finds himself revisiting that question he was avoiding yesterday, about why he’s even searching for the Philosopher’s Stone in the first place. He knows that the allure of it is what drew him into taking up the State Alchemist’s militarist mantle, but he isn’t entirely sure why obtaining it is as vitally important as he knows it to be. Something in him insists his reasons are to restore his limbs, which doesn’t feel right, because the automail sucks but he’s never really cared about himself before. Not like that. If anything, he’s content with lugging around the weight of his sin on his body. It’s atonement, in some way.

So why, then? It plagues him for the next few days as he consults book after book after book he’s sure he’s read before, but things are becoming strangely less certain the more he pokes at it. Memory should be a long, flat plateau he’s able to casually stroll down, but now there are potholes cropping up at almost every turn. Not massive sinkholes, with edges that are sharp and defined and jagged, but more like sloping depressions that he stumbles in before even realizing he was on an incline. Then he’s left to pause at the bottom, wondering what used to be here.

Six days pass. Ed sleeps in, despite usually waking up bright and early. He wakes with cricks in his neck or back pain from sleeping hunched over the table or flat on the floor, which is strange because he’s always in a bed by morning, no matter where he falls asleep. He regularly forgets to eat while doing research, even though that’s never been a problem in the past. He finds himself turning around to bounce theories off someone who isn’t there.

It’s... a generally weird six days.

The personal crisis is so consuming that he nearly forgets about the whole armor-kid incident until he returns to the inn, miffed at the continued fruitlessness of his research, and the receptionist informs him that he received a call from a one Colonel Mustang just two hours ago.

Ed’s mood sours even further, even as curiosity nips at him. “What’d he want?”

“He wanted to know where you were, how long you’d been staying at the inn, that sort of thing,” the receptionist explains, a bit nervously. Which makes Ed’s brows pinch, because the bastard isn’t usually so... stalkerish. “He sounded worried. Then annoyed. And then he wanted you to call him back immediately.”

Yeah, that sounds more like Mustang.

A glance at the clock says that it’s now passed office hours, so even if Ed does call Eastern Command, there’s a very good chance Mustang won’t be there. And Ed doesn’t exactly have the colonel’s personal information (which he doesn’t even want, because Mustang is insufferable and Ed refuses to spend more time with him than absolutely necessary). So he shrugs and says, “I’ll call him tomorrow.”

Of course, when tomorrow rolls around, Ed is utterly bewildered to find Havoc parked outside the inn, smoke curling from the end of the lit cigarette hanging between his teeth.

“Havoc, what the fuck?” Ed demands, leering into the rolled-down driver’s window.

Rather than answer, Havoc takes his cigarette and taps it against the window. The accumulated ash falls to the pavement in grey, half-smoldering clumps. “Get in, chief.”

Technically, Ed could argue, but it probably wouldn't help any. So he just sighs loudly at the inconvenience as he walks around the car and then slides into the driver’s seat. As soon as he closes the door behind him, Havoc shifts the gear and pulls out from where he was parked at the curb.

“Mustang sent you, didn’t he?” Ed already knows the answer, of course. Mustang always sends Havoc whenever he wants Ed to do something but can’t be bothered to contact Ed himself. Lazy bastard. “What does he want now?”

Havoc doesn’t say anything. Which is weird, because Havoc is usually pretty chatty.

Ed frowns. Slumps into his seat and glances out the window. There’s very little traffic, probably because they managed to miss the early-morning rush of everyone crowding the streets to get to work on time. At the very least, it means that wherever they’re going, they’ll get there quickly.

“This better be worth it,” Ed mutters.

Still, Havoc says nothing.

Of all the places Havoc would stop, a hospital seemed as far from likely as rain in the desert. A statistical possibility, of course, but very far from your expectations.

Even weirder—it’s the hospital that sees Ed as its most frequent visitor and was, more recently, the one that he called when he found the armor kid in the warehouse last week.

He blinks as he steps out from the car, bewildered. He could understand being driven directly to Eastern Command so he could get dragged into a meeting in Mustang’s office, but a hospital is pretty far removed from any military business. It makes no sense why Mustang would have Havoc drive him here.

“Why are we here?” Ed asks Havoc, who hasn’t moved to get out himself. He takes that to mean this is a drop-off rather than an escort.

Havoc bites his cigarette and gestures with his thumb towards the doors. “Boss is in there. Wants to talk to you.”

“Wait, Mustang’s in the hospital?” Shit. Ed may hate the bastard, but goddamn. “Fuck, what happened? Was there, like, an assassination attempt I missed or something? Shit, is he okay?”

To which Havoc arches a casual brow. “He isn’t here as a patient, chief.”

Oh. Well. The burgeoning concern immediately deflates and flatlines into exasperation. “Okay, then I’ll repeat—why are we here?”

“Your mechanic’s here too,” Havoc goes on, seeming not to have heard Ed, and Ed’s brain stutters because wait, what? Winry’s here? Since when? “Actually”—and Havoc leans out the window, his jaw giving a thoughtful twitch—“you might wanna get a move on, before she drags you in herself or something. Wouldn’t put it passed her. She looked pissed.”

The news of a pissed Winry inspires dread in a way only few things can, but it only provides a shallow dent in Ed’s continuously rising levels of confusion and annoyance. Confusion, because what is going on right now. Annoyance, because why is no one telling him. “Why is Winry here?”

Apparently today is fuck around with Ed day, because rather than a direct answer, Havoc only exhales heavily and levels Ed with a long, hard stare. Something vaguely condemning, but doing its best not do so openly. It makes absolutely zero sense, because anyone who knows Havoc knows that it takes something really shitty before he starts to level you with those looks. And Ed has no memory of doing anything to offend him so grievously (not that his memory has been particularly at its peak recently, but still).

“Look, chief,” Havoc begins in the way someone usually does when they’re about to give a Very Important Lecture, “everyone’s allowed to pull a few shitty things. Just ‘cause nobody’s perfect. And it’s fine, long as it’s, like, not super shitty. But—this is really shitty. ‘Specially for you.”

What? No, seriously, what? “What are you talking about?”

“EDWARD! THEODORE! ELRIC!”

Ohhhh shit. Please don’t let that be Winry, please don’t let that be Winry, please don’t—

But the universe is a dick (what else is new?) and Ed swallows as turns to glimpse an absolutely furious Winry Rockbell. She charges down the front steps of the hospital with a speed that no human should possess, one that will definitely overwhelm him the minute he tries to run—not that he could, frozen like a deer in headlights beneath the burning cerulean intensity of her gaze. The twist of her scowl says that she intends to tie him into a pretzel-knot and then throw him to a pack of wolves and then beat him bloody with a spanner just for good measure.

And just as he registers, rather belatedly, that she used his middle name—fuck, a whole new wave of terror washes over him—she’s towering over him like grim death itself, all but shaking with the force of bottling her tantrum. The rage boiling over in her sapphire gaze packs enough heat and intensity to melt him into a boiling puddle at her feet.

Swallowing, he raises his hands up in placation. Maybe if she sees that his automail’s fine, she’ll calm down. “Okay, before you—”

“Where in the name of heaven and hell have you been?!” The thunder in her voice brings up unpleasant memories of hardware tools colliding with his skull.

At the risk of being mutilated, Ed snaps back, “Me? What are you doing here?”

Belatedly, it occurs to him there are quite a few automail-related reasons that would explain her being here. She and Granny could be here to pick up a patient for automail fitting, a recent amputee who can’t make the journey all the way down to Risembool by train or carriage. It would make sense.

It would not, however, explain the smudged bruises beneath her eyes. Which Ed only just notices now. Or, he realizes as he takes a better look at her, the way her hair looks as though it’s been teased with nervous fingers and her lip bitten with worry and how there’s a sallowness about her complexion that he’s only ever seen when she’s so intensely worried that sleep eludes her. Or that her eyes are red like she’s been crying recently.

She thunders on, a blotchy redness burning in her cheeks. “What am I doing here? What are you doing not being here?”

“...why would I be here?” Like, Ed knows he gets injured a little more frequently than normal, but he’s fine now. Not even sick.

Unfortunately, this only has her face turning into a shade of scarlet so vivid he actually fears she might burst a blood vessel. Before he can say anything else, Ed finds himself snagged by the steel wrist and being dragged roughly up the stairs, while he sputters and tries to drag his heels and demand what exactly is going on right now. But Winry is deceptively strong despite her narrow frame, has spent her whole life working around heavy machinery and the sleeves of her jacket conceal powerful muscles, so his struggling ultimately amounts to very little.

Just as the hospital doors close behind him, he could swear he hears Havoc hollering in the distance, “Make sure you apologize good, chief!”

What the hell?

One of the nurses at the reception desk shouts at them to sign in, but Winry pays it no mind. Ed is basically a ragdoll in her grip as they turn into the general infirmary ward. She stops abruptly before one of the doors at the end of a long hallway, almost tears it right off its hinges as she pulls it open, then all but throws him inside.

It takes some stumbling and windmilling of his arms, but miraculously, Ed does not faceplant into the tile.

“You’re a tad late, Fullmetal,” comes an obnoxiously familiar voice to the left.

To Ed’s surprise, Mustang a little less kept than he usually does. His uniform is rumpled, his hair a little messier than usual, the grim line in his face foreboding in a way that usually implies something terrible is about to happen, if it hasn’t already. The glower on his face is one that Ed would expect to see after maybe a quick bout of verbal repartee, but Ed hasn’t said anything yet and there’s a coal of disapproval smoldering in the colonel’s dark gaze. His arms are folded like a parent getting ready to scold a misbehaving child (not that Mustang is his—shudder), only the look on his face is so severe that Ed nearly pales while he searches his recent memory for his latest massive fuck-up. Because clearly, Ed has screwed up very phenomenally, otherwise Mustang wouldn’t be glaring daggers like this.

Even more bewildering is that Hawkeye, standing at his side like the ever-present shadow she is, mirrors this gimlet eye to a piercing degree. Normally, Hawkeye hovers above their petty issues and only jumps in when it’s really serious, acting as a mediator while calmly explaining why Ed needs to fix whatever mistake he made or sometimes, rarely, advocating on Ed’s belaf. But when Hawkeye glares, you fear for your life—it may lack heat, but damn if she couldn’t cut glass with those eyes of hers. Like now. Ed swallows, half-certain she’s going to take out her gun and shoot at his feet just to make a point.

Through the mild terror, Ed can’t help but wonder why they’re here. Normally Mustang doesn’t leave the office unless it’s urgent. Normally Hawkeye doesn’t accompany Mustang unless there’s official military business going on and it will make the colonel look good to have his adjutant shadowing him at all times. But right now, both of them stand at the bedside like visitors of gravely ill relatives.

Ed glances at the bed’s occupant. And blinks.

...isn’t that the armor kid?

Yeah—it’s definitely the same kid, though he looks infinitely better than he did when Ed first found him. There’s color in his face now, though he’s still ghastly pale in a way that deems a need for sunlight and him to get back in acquaintance. Someone has washed his hair at some point, so the brassy golden color shines a little more brightly when the sunlight hits it. His lips aren’t quite as chapped, the circles beneath his eyes significantly less pronounced, his nails clipped and his skin scrubbed clean. An IV has been jabbed into one of his forearms, connecting via a long, winding plastic tube to a pressure bag of saline or something like it that’s set upon a metal rack. The painfully gaunt angles of his body still look like they’re going to tear his skin from the inside out if he moves too much, but at least he’s clothed now, if you can consider a papery hospital gown clothes, so it’s not quite so obvious. Perhaps the biggest improvement of all is the fact he’s actually awake, sitting up and his eyes alert, though it still looks like a gentle breeze could send him careening into the floor.

The clincher is when Ed spies a scarlet square against the white linens, tucked next to the pillow. The coat Ed laid over the boy’s shoulders before the paramedics arrived, still as brilliantly scarlet as ever. It’s been folded so that the Flamel crown is face-up, proudly displaying the snake curling around the cross and the diadem mounted at the top and the unfurling wings. Bewilderedly, Ed can’t help but wonder a little why the boy would bother keeping it.

Reality interrupts with a sharp slam of the door from behind. When he turns, Winry has planted herself in front of the exit, an immovable object and impediment to his escape. Though he doesn’t think she’s carrying a wrench, you can never be too sure. And she certainly looks ready to whip one out for the sole intent of bludgeoning him to death.

“Well?” she prompts.

Mustang and Hawkeye mirror her expression in varying degrees. Armor Kid winces sympathetically. Ed blinks.

Actually, the more Ed looks at Armor Kid... It’s a little crazy, but Ed could almost swear Armor Kid resembles Mom, just a little. Vaguely in the shape of his eyes or the slope of his nose. Mom even used to part her hair the same way. Probably just a coincidence, of course. A very weird one, though.

“What do you have to say for yourself?!” Winry demands shrilly when Ed doesn’t say anything.

“Winry,” rasps Armor Kid, voice painfully rough and hoarse as though it hasn’t been used in years, and Ed does a double-take, “c’mon, just calm down—”

“You calm down!” she retorts, throwing her arms up. “I’m gonna rip his arm off and beat him with it in a minute!”

“I’m sure he has a good reason.” To which Armor Kid glances at Ed with topaz-colored eyes, which makes Ed blink because he could have sworn he was the only one with eyes like that. “Right?”

On some level, Ed is aware that Mustang and Hawkeye join Winry staring at him impatiently, waiting for him to say something in his defense (even though he didn’t do anything, he swears). On every other level, however, he’s too busy ascending various planes of what the fuck to bother acknowledging that, much less figuring out how the hell they all seem to think he did.

He looks between them once. Again. Winry scowls impatiently. Armor Kid’s brows furrow. Ed repeats this exactly three times before he accepts that he is only one who doesn’t know what’s going on right now.

He jabs a metal thumb at Armor Kid while turning to Winry. “Do you two know each other?”

Almost immediately, the impatient scowl slips loose from her face. She blinks. “What?”

“Did you hit your head, Fullmetal?” comes Mustang’s snarky question from across the room and fuck off, bastard, it’s a perfectly legitimate question! And excuse Ed for being concerned that Winry apparently knows a kid that Ed found in the center of a human transmutation circle.

Upon further reflection, that actually explains why Mustang and Hawkeye are here, and in full uniform nonetheless. Why Havoc was sent to escort Ed all the way down here, to this particular hospital. In the past, Mustang has been bastardly enough to assign Ed to missions with potential ties to human transmutation under the logic that Ed, more than anyone else, would be experienced in that particular field. In the past, Ed reluctantly tolerated the dickery of such things, if only because every case with ties to human transmutation lead him one step closer to—

To—

...to what, exactly?

Uh.

The point is, Mustang’s presence suddenly makes sense and he’s as much of a bastard as ever and Ed is going to deck him in the teeth with the steel fist. “Is this a mission or something? ‘Cause if it is, then we could have just done this in the office.” 

“A mission,” repeats Mustang exasperatedly, while Hawkeye blinks and furrows her brows. 

Ed swears to god—or whatever power passes as god—that he’s going to murder the bastard one day and dispose of his corpse in a ditch. And the colonel wouldn’t even be able to stop him, because he’s too much of a dumbass. “Yeah, a mission. Y’know, with manila files and your ugly-ass couch and me casually callin’ you a bastard? Ring a bell?”

Mustang opens his mouth to fire off what’s probably a very snarky retort, but Hawkeye interjects with a firm, and slightly bewildered, “This isn’t a mission, Edward.”

Exasperation rises in him like a tide at that, and Ed throws his arms up, because fuck it. He’s done trying. “Well, then I give up! Just tell me, then!”

“Tell you what, exactly?” Mustang retorts, sounding very close to raising his voice in anger. Like Ed’s the one being aggravating here.

“Well, gee, let me think... oh, I know! How about why you’re here, why Winry’s here, why I’m here, and why you felt the need drag us into a fucking random person’s hospital room. ‘Cause I’d really appreciate an answer to that one!”

Dead. Fucking. Silence.

Four sets of eyes sear into him with matching looks of blank horror. No one speaks, moves, breathes, twitches. Motion is a thing belonging to a distant past that they have long since put behind them. Time crumbles, the universe closing in to trap them in a fractured eternity. Ed slowly lowers his arms, which he had been using to gesticulate exaggeratedly in his irritation. Once again, he gets the distinct feeling that he’s the odd man out.

Reality resumes when Armor Kid raises a tremulous hand to his mouth and inhales sharply through his nose.

At his side, Ed’s steel hand curls into a nervous fist. “...why is everyone just staring at me like I’m crazy?”

A creak from the bed. He glances over to find that Armor Kid has dropped against the mattress, his too-long hair pooling out in a brass halo around his head. The heels of his palms are pressed into his eyes, his breaths slow and heavy and shuddering at the ends. Ed doesn’t understand.

Suddenly, Mustang is at Ed’s side. A gloved hand lands on Ed’s shoulder, which Ed would normally protest to, but the deep seriousness in the colonel’s gaze gives him pause. Gone is the irritation that simmered low and hot in that dark gaze, replaced instead by a solemness that works to snuffs any objections that might otherwise spring to Ed’s tongue. In fact, he could swear that the colonel’s face has even lost a bit of color.

“Can I speak to you outside?” His tone is soft, the register lowered, but there’s something infinitely solemn about it.

Something prickles at the back of Ed’s throat, but he forces it away with a scowl. “Does it have to be you?”

Instead of succumbing to their usual repartee, Mustang only gently nudges Ed towards the door. Winry takes a large step to the side in order to let them pass, watching Ed with wide eyes and no color in her face as they slip into the hall. Hawkeye’s gaze seems to burn into Ed’s shoulder blades, brimming with a subdued horror that Ed refuses to acknowledge, because there is something infinitely terrifying about the prospect of someone like Hawkeye succumbing to fear.

“You idiot...!” whispers a voice—stricken and furious and utterly, painfully heartbroken.

Bewildered, Ed glances over at Armor Kid over his shoulder, but just then, the door closes behind him. And he can’t be sure if he imagined it or not.

“Do you know who that was?” Mustang asks once they are alone in the hallway, with no passing nurses or doctors or dutiful visitors there to eavesdrop on their hushed conversation, a strange lull in activity that allows them vital privacy.

Ed goes out on a limb to assume that he’s talking about Armor Kid. “It’s the kid I found last week in an abandoned warehouse.” And then he pauses, trying to make sense of the strange intensity in his commanding officer’s gaze. Mustang’s expression is of the painfully grim kind you’d commonly see at funerals, worn by attendees who have no personal relation to the deceased but sink into a sort of second-hand bereavement. “...do you know he is?”

Rather than an answer, Mustang just rubs at his eyes, a weariness creeping into the tension of shoulders and the lines of his frown. In the past, Ed was always joking when he made a crack about the bastard’s age. This is the first time he struck Ed as old in any capacity, as though an entire eon has passed and only Mustang has aged beneath its influence.

Clearly the colonel knows something Ed doesn’t. But then again, what else is new?

Cautiously, Ed glances around the hallway. There’s still no one listening. You’d think hospitals would be busy at all times, but not every moment is packed with the tension of a life-threatening emergency. They’ve caught themselves a moment of privacy.

With no one to listen, he leans forward and lowers his voice and whispers, urgently, “Mustang. I found this kid in a suit of armor. In this abandoned warehouse on the southside. In the middle of a human transmutation circle. That’s—That’s why you called me here, right?”

Exhaling heavily, Mustang looks down at him with weary eyes. “Does the name ‘Alphonse’ mean anything to you?”

“What? No. Why?” Is that Armor Kid’s name or something?

At this, the colonel winces as though he’s been physically struck and quickly averts his gaze. As much as Ed would like to believe that it’s some roundabout guilt for how the bastard nearly went off at Ed a few seconds ago, something needles at him that there’s more to it. There’s more to everything that’s going on here right now. Havoc and Winry and Hawkeye and now Mustang were all pissed at him a second ago for some reason. Only to stare at him like he murdered someone, and it’s irritating beyond words how very little Ed understands of what’s going on right now. This just doesn’t make sense.

Like why this is what catches the colonel’s attention. Not the part about the suit of armor or the abandoned warehouse or the human transmutation circle—instead, Mustang’s hung up on the fact that Ed doesn’t recognize a stranger. Because apparently that’s what’s important here.

“Refresh my memory, Fullmetal.” There’s a faint tremor in the word “memory”, but Mustang doesn’t seem to notice. Ed, however, does. “Did you have any siblings growing up?”

Ed’s brows furrow. The fuck does this have to do with anything? “I’m an only child, bastard.”

The colonel sucks in a soft inhale, which has Ed’s irritation transitioning into the beginnings of worry. Mustang still won’t look at him, and that’s not a good sign. “...I see.”

Alright. Ed is officially concerned. “You gonna tell me what the fuck is going on now?”

“Stay here,” says Mustang in lieu of an answer. When he finally does glance Ed’s way, his gaze is shuttered to avoid giving away anything. “I’ll be right back.”

Before Ed can say anything else—protest, ask questions, demand a fucking explanation—the bastard has thrown his back into Ed’s vision. Suddenly, the door is closed behind him, and Ed is standing alone in the hall, struck with a sudden sensation of watching night fall over the world, stealing away the daylight and leaving him to fumble around blindly in the darkness.

A very narrow window slices vertically up the door. The glass crisscrossed by a thin hatching probably meant to provide privacy to whatever residents take refuge within that room. When Ed tries to peer through it, arch up on the balls of his feet in order to squint through it, but it offers too little to be definite. Nothing concrete or placating, no answers to the questions starting to buzz through his mind. Only white walls, white ceiling, white floor. The bed is all the way at the other end of the room, out of reach to periphery glances.

Once or twice, he thinks he can catch a glimpse of Mustang’s blue uniform, a flash of Winry’s blonde ponytail, a hint of what might be Hawkeye’s stern voice. But he can’t be sure. If they are talking, they’re doing their damnedest to keep their voices low enough so he can’t eavesdrop. And thought sends an anxious pit into Ed’s stomach. Whatever they’re discussing, it clearly involves him.

He tries to pace it away. Something’s wrong. Or not-right, anyway. Not-right like it’s been not-right for the last week. He shouldn’t be alone right now—which is ridiculous, because he’s been alone all his life, since Mom died and Hohenheim left and it’s always only been him.

No matter how hard he tries, though, he can’t shake the feeling of an unexplainable loss, somewhere deep down.

Say what you will about Mustang, but he’s a bastard through and through. A half an hour passes before the bastard returns, about ten times more composed than he was before, by which Ed has been mistaken for a friend of Armor Kid’s no less than twice by some of the nurses and the hall has a few more straggling listeners than it did before. In order to preserve the privacy of the subject, they end up having to relocate to a secluded corner of the lobby behind a potted ficus and speak in hushed whispers to avoid eavesdropping.

Turns out, this is official military business. Can’t have civilians knowing.

Even if it is stupid beyond comprehension. “So there is a mission.”

“Yes.” The colonel pauses to glance through the green foliage of the ficus, likely checking to be sure that no one is paying them any mind or listening in or anything else that might result in such a heavy subject being leaked to the press. Then he lowers his voice a little further. “You were assigned to investigate a local alchemist we suspected might attempt human transmutation.”

“And there was a partner?”

“A local investigator. However, he had to drop out due to a family situation, from what I understand.” Mustang clucks his tongue as if in distaste, because again, he’s a bastard through and through. Guy’s grandmother could be on her deathbed or something and Mustang would just complain about the inconvenience of it all. “Terribly unprofessional, if you ask me. But you wanted to keep going, so.”

Ed’s brows pinch. That certainly does sound like him, but... “Then how come Hawkeye said—”

“Due to the nature of the mission, the executive decision was made to not inform the lieutenant. Clearance levels and all.”

That sounds like total bullshit, because Hawkeye could and would absolutely just torture the information out of the colonel (and it wouldn’t even be that hard, just pile on the paperwork and he’ll squeal). Not to mention that she's known about similar missions in the past. But Ed can buy Mustang being enough of a bastard to keep her in the dark, especially if this is something that came down the pike from a higher-up. Above all, the colonel follows orders.

“Alright,” Ed says, still skeptical. Something about this doesn't sound right. “But why was Havoc so pissy when he came to pick me up?”

Mustang seems to falter for a moment, which is weird, because Mustang doesn’t falter. It only lasts a fraction of a second, though, before the colonel scowls and crosses his arms as though he’s been grievously wronged. “Perhaps because it’s been an entire week and I still don’t have a report in my hand.”

Don’t tell me that’s what crawled up your ass and died. It’s strange, though, because the whole battle over reports and paperwork politics in general have usually left Havoc and the rest of Mustang’s team as amused bystanders. “That’s—”

“And you have remained out of contact for the past week,” adds Mustang flatly.

...okay. That makes a little more sense. “And Winry? Any idea what’s up with her?”

Winry, who came out into the hall with tears carving their way down red cheeks and held her silence to every last one of his worried questions. Who just wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulled him into a hug so tight she was practically latching onto him like a limpet. Who held on for a long, long time before she mumbled an apology into his shoulder for blowing up at him before she left. Hawkeye went with her to the women’s bathroom so she could get herself cleaned up, which left Ed to stare at her retreated back with a sensation that could only be described as bewildered dread churning in his stomach.

“I believe she was in town visiting a client of hers.” There’s something flat about the colonel’s tone. Rehearsed, almost. “I would have informed you, but again—”

“Yeah, yeah, haven’t been in contact. I’m sorry, okay? Fucking...”

It’s not unusual for Ed to avoid Eastern Command. He makes it no secret how he resents his connections to the military, even as he acknowledges just how necessary it is to his hunt for the Philosopher’s Stone (the reasons for which he’s still trying to work out). Just because Mustang’s unit are more likable than normal soldiers doesn’t mean he enjoys spending too much time around people wearing military blues. Which is usually why he’s quick and diligent with his reports, sends them in the mail rather than present them in-person if he can help it, because it’s easier to get it over and done with so it isn’t hanging over his head. That way, he can go back to searching for the Stone for as long as he can before Mustang lures him back with another mission or a helpful hint in the right direction.

Frowning, Ed rubs at his temples. Something just isn’t adding up. “Y’know, I’m having a little trouble remembering this mission. When, exactly, did you give it to me?”

A flat look of mock-worry appears on Mustang’s face. “Perhaps you actually did hit your head.”

Ed opens his mouth to fire off retort—but then he remembers the nausea and the pounding headache from when he first woke up in the warehouse.

When a powerful transmutation backlashes, an inordinate amount of energy is released from it. This is especially true of human transmutation, which is famed for its deadly rebounds and its ability to completely mutilate those who attempt it. Yet another reason it’s considered a taboo among alchemists. And if Ed had gotten there in time to witness the transmutation, but not stop it—

“I—” Ed blinks. “...you might be right.”

Holy shit. He might have had a concussion.

“So good of you to finally admit it.” Aaaand there he is. There’s the smug asshole Ed knows and hates. “Once you’re done collecting the witness statement, perhaps you should have someone check it. Make sure you haven’t, ah, stunted your growth.”

“WHO ARE YOU CALLING—” But Ed stops as the rest of that statement catches up to him. “What witness statement?”

“You said that boy was in the center of the circle, right?” Strangely, the colonel waits for Ed to nod once in confirmation before continuing. Which is weird, because usually Mustang likes to talk over Ed whenever he gets the chance. “That means he’s a witness. He won’t talk to me—being a fully decorated officer in full-uniform, my guess.” And then he casually jerks his head in the infirmary ward’s direction. “So, your turn.”

A cold hand closes around Ed’s throat. Metaphorically, of course, but still. “Fucking hell, bastard. Have you seen the condition he’s in?”

Just the sight of Armor Kid’s physical condition is painful enough. But if he really did get involved in human transmutation, then there’s a good chance his dreams are filled with blood and screaming, with an empty white hall and a massive pair of doors behind which the entire universe burns. Maybe he dreams, like Ed, of mangled monstrosities in the place of loved ones. Or something like that.

The contemptuous look on Mustang’s face quickly softens as he glances over at the infirmary ward. “Actually, he’s better than he looks, all things considered. He’s one tough kid.”

Bewildered, Ed’s brows furrow. Is it his imagination, or does Mustang sound... fond?

Before he can question it, though, the colonel reverts to his smarmy self and claps his hands once, loudly and obnoxiously. “Now chop, chop. I have date tonight.”

Fucking Mustang and his fucking dates. Ed jabs his hands into his coat pockets with a scowl. “What even makes you think he’ll talk to me? I’m military, too.”

“Yes, but after that little fit, I think he’s willing to trust you far more.” And then, proving once and for all how much of a bastard he is, Mustang taps his temple with one finger and pulls one of those smirks that make the urge to throttle him so strong you can taste it. “Excellent reaction, by the way.”

“You—” Deep breaths, Ed. Remember, there’s a waiting room full of witnesses right over there. You can stab him later. “Bastard. Why didn’t you just say—”

“You’re gifted in many areas, Fullmetal, but acting is not one of them,” Mustang retorts flatly. Prick. “And if all else fails, build a rapport. ...you might find you have a lot in common.”

Okay, how insulted should Ed be by that? No, seriously, how much?

“Yeah, yeah, okay, hold on a sec.” Ed is sent an exasperated look, which he pointedly ignores, because if Mustang wanted him to start following orders without question, maybe he would be less of an asshole on a daily basis. “This isn’t going on the public record, is it?”

In return for that, the bastard sends him a flat stare of barely-concealed irritation. As though he’s deeply offended that Ed would ask that. Which is fair, seeing as how, asshole or no, Mustang actually does have a sense of morality—one that won’t allow him to feed kids to the firing squad. It’s what’s kept Ed hidden, all these years, despite the blackmail attempts.

“Thought so.” Ed crosses his arms. “So why are we even bothering? Why don’t we just, I dunno, leave him alone or something?”

Genuine surprise flashes across the colonel’s features, momentarily displacing his calm mask. “...that’s unlike you.”

“Turning a blind eye?”

“Not wanting to get to the bottom of something.” Mustang watches him carefully.

Normally, that would be true, and there are a lot of things that don’t quite add up, but something about this just doesn’t stir his usual curiosity. Besides, he figures with a shrug, the kid’s been through enough as it is. “I don’t see why I should worry over a stranger, Mustang. It’s not my business.”

Again, the colonel’s expression flashes with that secondhand mourning, but it departs a moment later, so quickly that Ed wonders if he imagined it.

“Perhaps,” comes a voice from behind, and Ed nearly jumps out of his skin, because fuck, someone needs to tie a goddamn bell around Hawkeye’s neck, “it might prove a cathartic experience for the both of you.”

Frowning, Ed glances over his shoulder at where Hawkeye has manifested spontaneously. She seems to have regained the composure she lacked when Ed last saw her, though her expression is a touch more grim than it usually is. There’s no point in asking when she got there, or how much of the conversation she heard. Hawkeye is scary like that, see.

“How’s Winry?” Ed asks instead.

“Better,” Hawkeye replies, without missing a beat. “I believe she’ll be out soon. In the meantime, please speak to Alphonse.”

“Yes, that is his name,” says Mustang before Ed can even open his mouth to ask.

Huffing his irritation, Ed sends Mustang a glare, who returns it apathetically. Then he looks over at Hawkeye, a little more curiously, to which she remains painfully stoic. He turns back to Mustang, then to Hawkeye again, and repeats this a couple more times before his shoulders get tired of being squared and ultimately droop.

There’s something about them, he doesn’t know what, that gives the impression they won’t be the ones relenting here. And let’s face it—Mustang, Ed can argue with all the live long day and filibusterer and bullshit, but he knows he’ll never win a fight with Hawkeye. She is capable of trumping anyone in any argument, no matter how trivial or how crucially important. When Hawkeye wants you to do something, you just kind of go along with it or risk your own life in the process. And Ed is not that stupid.

Besides. Mustang will probably pull that “official orders” bullshit if he refuses.

It’s better to just get it over with.

Once Ed has managed to convince the nurses that he’s a concerned visitor (they buy the act because despite what Mustang says, Ed is a good actor, so suck on that, colonel!), they’re very eager to discuss Alphonse. No surname is given, at least none that they’re willing to share, but they gush over the kid enough that it almost doesn’t matter. They probably don’t even realize how much information on the boy’s condition they’re giving away.

The first five days after his hospitalization saw Alphonse as largely unresponsive, to the point where the doctors speculated over whether or not he was brain dead and nearly put him on life-support. Until, miraculously, when a nurse working a very early morning shift noticed his eyelids fluttering reluctantly open about two days ago.

Of course, they couldn’t get much out of him immediately. He was so weak he couldn’t lift his head, was hardly able to remain conscious, could barely muster a few words at a time. But within a matter of mere hours, lucidity returned strongly enough that he was able to manage clear, coherent sentences, and was strong enough to sit up as late morning began transitioning into noon.

As of now, he’s on a liquid diet now to prevent something called “refeeding syndrome”—which sounds fake, but Ed isn’t a medical professional, so what does he know? Every on-duty nurse has instructions to check on him as often as they can in case any unforeseen complications crop up that demand immediate and urgent attention. Or in case his catheter or bedpan needs to be changed, since the weakness in his body is so pronounced that even standing could be detrimental, and he’s confined almost to his bed until his atrophied muscles are ready to be challenged once more with movement.

Yet, in spite of his condition of severe malnourishment and what appears to be drastic sleep deprivation, he’s been nothing but pleasant and amicable with all the staff, as though he hasn’t been comatose for the better part of a week.

“He’s just the sweetest thing,” said one of the nurses with a bright smile while Ed just blinked at her. “An absolute darling. You’d think he would be scared and asking a million questions about his condition, but he just asked me all about my son and how my morning was and—oh, goodness, he’s just so brave.”

One tough kid, Mustang said. He wasn’t kidding.

And, here’s the kicker—he’s a whole year younger than Ed. Crazy, right?

Once Ed has managed to wring enough information out of the nurses, he reluctantly forces himself to approach Alphonse’s room. Hesitation visits him with one hand on the door handle, ready to push it in and disturb this poor kid who has been through enough already. Already, Ed was reticent. Hearing about it all just solidifies his desire to leave the kid in peace.

But it’s likely that Mustang and Hawkeye won’t get off his back until he goes through with this. So he sighs and turns the handle and enters the room again.

Armor Kid—uh, sorry, Alphonse—is still sitting in his hospital bed like he was before, which Ed know knows is because his body is physically too weak to stand, much less walk. The sheer scrawniness of him is almost painful to look at, even as Ed forces himself not to avert his gaze. At first, the patient doesn’t seem to notice that the door is even open, because he has his bony knees curled up to his chest and his head bowed as though in reverence, skeletal arms wrapped around something that he clutches desperately to his chest. Too-long hair drips over his face, conceals his gaunt features.

It’s far cry from the picture the nurses painted of the fearlessly affable young man who smiled through his illness. So much so that Ed is struck with the urge to flee. This is a person who has been utterly crushed, and Ed is intruding on a moment of cutting vulnerability.

He never gets the chance to make a silent, hasty retreat, though. Perhaps Alphonse finally notices the weight of a gaze upon him, because he glances up, only to freeze like a deer caught in someone’s headlights. Something like surprise, or perhaps mortification, flashes sharply across the hard angles of his face, but despite that, he doesn’t avert his gaze sheepishly or bashfully as though he’d been caught doing something shameful. Instead, his gaze remains steadfast, staring at Ed with sunken, slightly-wide eyes of uncanny topaz.

After an awkward moment or so has passed, Ed finally regains the sense to clear his throat. “Uh. Hi,” he begins, uncertain. “Alphonse, right?”

“Right,” Alphonse mumbles in that raspy, disused voice as he slowly uncurls his knees. His arms remain where they are, giving the impression that he’s hugging himself.

“So... I dunno if you know who I am, but I’m—”

“I know who you are,” the boy interrupts, a little forcefully. He flinches, then lowers his head and repeats, a little more softly this time, “I... I know who you are.”

Okay. Well. Ed is something of a celebrity. Makes sense.

Just then, though, Ed realizes what Alphonse is doing isn’t hugging himself to ward off some imagined vulnerability. No—Ed’s coat is clutched to his chest, a splatter of brilliant crimson against the otherwise sterile white of the hospital gown. It almost gives the impression that someone gouged the kid’s heart out with a rusted knife, left him to bleed out profusely from the chest, scarlet spilling all over the place. And he hugs it as tight and tenderly as a frightened child might their favorite stuffed animal, if only because the softness makes them feel safer than they actually are.

Briefly, Ed can’t decide if he should be weirded out or flattered that the kid is using his coat as a lifeline of some kind. It’s kind of a toss-up.

Flattered seems safer. Especially since Ed did leave it on him when he first woke up, so. “You can keep that, if you want. I’ve got plenty.”

Confusion makes itself known on Alphonse’s face, until he looks down and seems to realize what he’s doing. An embarrassed flush graces the hard angles of his face. He swallows and sets the folded-up coat off to the side. It’s slightly rumpled now, the pattern no longer crisply visible. 

“...think I could sit down?” Ed asks after a moment passes in which neither of them speak. Alphonse nods wordlessly.

Despite how frequently Ed finds himself in hospitals, he’s never actually sat in one of these plastic chairs. There was just never a time when he was in to visit someone he knew to be a patient, rather than being the patient himself. He knows that the cots are stiff, the mattresses flimsy, knows that sleeping in a hospital bed is an endeavor in discomfort. In the same vein, the chair is an experience seemingly designed to leave your ass numb if you sit on it for too long. But then again, hospitals aren’t really designed to be comfortable so much as functional, so.

“Listen,” Ed begins carefully, because he’s not quite sure how to approach this, and all he can do is hope that his bluntness won’t break anything, “do you think you can tell me about... what happened, back in the warehouse?”

Softly, Alphonse exhales through his nostrils. He looks over at the wall off to the side. His bony hands fall against his lap, limp like a ragdoll’s.

“I mean, you don’t have to!” amends Ed hastily. “I just—”

“Can I ask you something, first?”

Ed finds himself with his jaw half-opened to say something that won’t come out. He closes it, blinking, surprised. “Uh. Sure?”

“Your arm...” One of Alphonse’s hands twitches, shifts closer to the folded-up coat next to his pillow. “It’s a prosthetic, right?”

Surprise blooms in Ed’s stomach—until he remembers Winry, remembers that she likes to boast to her other clients that she’s the mastermind behind the Fullmetal Alchemist’s automail. He still isn’t entirely sure where the connection between Winry and Alphonse is, but it doesn’t take much to get her bragging. “Winry tell you that?”

Alphonse’s shoulders curve, hunch. Neither confirmation or denial. “...how did you lose it?”

Silence pans out for a short moment. This is another reason Ed was so hesitant to go and talk to the kid, if only because this is a topic he’s never keen to revisit. But even he can’t deny the benefit of an honest conversation, or how reassuring it might be to find you’re not the only one who screwed up so majorly. So he releases a sigh as his flesh hand wanders over to clutch at the unnatural solidness of his steel wrist.

“When I was little, my mom died.” If Ed closes his eyes, he thinks he still might be able to see her face. The image is blurry, the way memories are when they date back to a time in your life when age came in single digits, but he still remembers how she smiled, radiant as the dawn. “And I tried to bring her back. My arm was taken by the rebound. My leg too.”

Fingers twitch. Alphonse absently strokes at the corner of the folded-up coat with his thumb. “You lost... both of them to that.”

“Yeah.” Ed clears his throat, leans back into the seat. He almost crosses his arms, then figures that might come off as too confrontational, so he lets them drop to his sides. One is heavier than the other as testament to his sins. “Which is why you can trust that I won’t turn you in.”

As Ed says this, Alphonse’s hand clenches around the blood-colored fabric. Ed wonders if he’s even aware he’s doing it.

“You talked to the nurses, right?” Alphonse asks, so matter of fact that, for a moment, Ed finds himself strangely embarrassed. Like he violated the kid’s privacy or something. “They mentioned my relatives?”

“Yeah...?” More like lack of relatives. According to the nurses, Alphonse spent the early hours of clarity asking about an older brother the hospital is still having difficulty tracking down, since apparently he doesn’t have a permanent address (which made Ed stop and wonder what that meant, because people without a home tend to be of the lonely, broken type and those shards can cut if you get too close to them). No parents, though. Or guardians, foster or otherwise. Family friends, distant relatives, nothing.

Just a brother he was desperate to see. And wasn’t here.

Hearing that left Ed trembling in sheer outrage. He doesn’t have any older siblings, but he does have a father who walked out on him when he was little and made him realize that family—real family, the ones that count—doesn’t pull shit like that.

Why bring it up now, though?

Very slowly, Alphonse leans back against the headboard of the bed. He stares up at the ceiling with wide, glassy eyes. In the wrong light, he looks terrifically fragile. “When I was ten, my brother and I tried to bring back— uh, s-someone we loved. But it backfired and I...” His throat twitches as he swallows thickly. “I lost my whole body.”

“Your whole—” Ed nearly chokes on his tongue. He knew Truth was a bastard, but—holy shit.

With the hand not currently gripping Ed’s old coat, Alphonse reaches up to touch his chest. Gingerly, as though he isn’t still fully convinced that he’s real and solid. Which now makes sense, because again, holy shit. “My brother... he— He sacrificed his arm to keep my soul here. And he bound it to a nearby suit of armor. He saved my life, but nearly lost his own in the process.”

Bile rises in Ed’s throat, thick and stinging sharp, as he recalls the empty armor he found spread out on the warehouse floor. Alphonse had been tucked inside the cuirass, but if what he’s saying is true, then—

Then...

Fucking— Binding a human soul to an inanimate object?! Who—who fucking does that to a person, much less their own family? It doesn’t matter if it saved Alphonse’s life or not, that's sick. Fucking grotesque. Words can’t even begin to describe the revulsion and horror that surges to life within him as he imagines Alphonse existing in a body like that instead of flesh and bone, breath and blood. A flash of righteous fury springs up from the churning disgust, one that has Ed praying he and this bastard of an older brother never meet, otherwise he might not be able to keep from introducing him to Ed’s steel fist.

Goddamn.

“He had to get automail to replace his arm,” Alphonse continues, then pauses, biting his lip nervously. “So, um...”

Alright. Ed sees where this is going. “That’s how you know Winry?”

Something flashes across Alphonse’s face, and he suddenly rolls over onto his side. The IV jabbed into his arm grows taught in protest. “...yeah.”

“Does she know?”

“Yeah.”

“Granny too?”

“Uh huh.”

“And they’ve been helping you keep it a secret.” Just like they have been for Ed, all these years. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him that the reason they were so sympathetic to these brothers in the first place is because of Ed.

To that, Alphonse says nothing. If not for the hospital gown and the mane of brass-colored hair spilling down his back, Ed gets the feeling that he would be able to count every last vertebra making up the other boy’s spine.

“...there’s more, isn’t there?” Ed asks after a moment, because that explains why Alphonse was in a suit of armor, but not in the middle of a human transmutation circle and not why he’s like this, emaciated and malnourished but very much flesh and blood.

There’s a rustle of cloth and linens as Alphonse rolls onto his back again. He still won’t spare a glance in Ed’s direction, only continues to study the mottled grey-white tiles that comprise the ceiling, interspersed with squares of halogen lights that leave searing prints on your vision if you look at them directly.

“My brother always blamed himself for what happened,” says Alphonse, and he sounds just rueful enough that Ed works hard to clamp down on the bitter laugh and its accompanying crow of Good, he damn well should!. “He’s spent the last few years searching for a way to get me back into my body. Just last week, he said he’d found a way— Something about—about abstract tolls. He... He wouldn’t tell me, exactly. I didn’t really push. I should have— I know I should have, but I...”

At some point, Alphonse’s breathing has grown heavier, harsher, in the way that breathing usually does before it transforms into hiccuping sobs. Panic rises in Ed at the thought of having to comfort this kid, bring him back from a panic attack or something—which Ed is so not equipped to do, ask anyone, he’s fucking terrible at comforting, even under normal circumstances, ask anyone—but Alphonse seems to recognize the response his body is having and starts sucking in deeper breaths in order to steady himself. Watching the pitched rise-and-fall of his bone-ridden chest is almost difficult to bear, but slowly and surely, the rhythm of inhalation and exhalation grows less choppy.

Despite everything, Ed can’t help but be a little amazed at the kid’s self-control, given all he’s been through. It can’t be easy, going from a human body to an inanimate object to a human body again. Especially a human body in this abysmal state.

On impulse, Ed begins reaching out, only to catch himself, because if it were him, he wouldn’t want to touched by a total stranger. Alphonse, though, looks almost pained as he struggles to calm himself, practically wincing in what Ed can only assume is embarrassment. So Ed decides, screw it, and brushes flesh fingers over the bony shoulder closest to him.

The kid jerks in surprise at the sudden touch, eyes flying open. But he relaxes a moment later, goes practically limp. Ed finds himself pinned beneath a glistening stare.

“Better?” Ed asks after a few moments have passed and the worst of it seems behind them.

Swallowing, Alphonse nods. He sniffs. Ed retracts his hand.

Pieces are beginning to connect, but there’s still something missing. And Ed’s brows furrow as he considers those gaps. “...wait. You said your brother performed human transmutation to get you back to normal?”

Alphonse looks away, almost guiltily. He nods again.

“But there wasn't any—” Ed stops.

There was no one else in the warehouse. Just Ed, and Alphonse, and an empty suit of armor.

...oh shit.

The back of the plastic chair greets Ed’s spine as he leans back, slumps against it. Shit. Fuck. Fucking hell.

“I think he did something stupid.” Alphonse’s voice is even raspier than before, thick with so many emotions Ed can’t even begin to untangle them all. He has his hand spread over his chest again, pressing his fingertips against his clavicle so hard they’re losing color and Ed heavily suspects they’ll leave spotted bruises in their wake. He grips at Ed’s coat again, with knuckles that have gone absolutely white. “...I think it worked.”

Mustang had said something about an alchemist with intentions to commit human transmutation. Now it makes sense. Fuck, now it makes sense.

And here Ed is, dredging up what must be a still bleeding wound. He throws his steel hand over his face. “I’m sorry.”

Through his gloved fingers, Ed can feel the heat of Alphonse’s gaze on him. It lingers for a long moment that feels like a short eternity before it disappears. “It’s... it’s not your fault.”

Guilt twitches in Ed’s sternum as he lowers his hand and finds himself staring at it, wondering how it would feel, to willingly give it up for love of a brother. “I know. But still.”

He definitely should not have come in here, asked about this. Fuck Mustang and his witness statements. Screw Hawkeye and her idea of catharsis. There’s nothing cathartic about dwelling over a tragedy. And Ed would know, more than either of them, how cutting the loss of a family member can be. Especially one where you know you could have stopped it, could have prevented it, if only you had known. If only you had known.

Of course Mom would have tried to protect him, but that didn’t stop the desperation and helplessness from seizing him when he stumbled upon her collapsed on the floor that day, flushed with fever. Or when he was pacing outside the door while the doctor looked in on her and wondering how he didn’t notice that she’d gotten sick. Or when he cursed his ignorance when her coffin was buried. Time offers a better perspective, but it doesn’t change the insistent feeling that he could have—gotten help or done something different or something. Could have saved her.

Looking at Alphonse now, lost and forlorn, Ed is reminded painfully of himself when he spent those first few days sitting in the graveyard, silently running through possibilities of bringing her back.

A sudden jolt makes him straighten. “Hey. Alphonse.”

His tone must betray his urgency, because Alphonse looks up at him, confused.

“Are you—you’re not planning on doing something stupid too, right?”

Alarm flashes across Alphonse’s face, like kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “W-What?”

“Tell me you aren’t planning to, like, try and get your brother back.” The way Alphonse sits up sharply like he’s been stung, only to immediately avert his eyes, has dread pooling icily in Ed’s stomach. And he has to grip the armrests of the chair to keep himself from leaping to his feet and shaking the poor kid by his pitifully bony shoulders, because fucking hell, how thick can you be? “Because, like, shit— Not only would that be stupid, but I mean... He sacrificed himself for you. And I know that sucks ass, but it would suck ass more if you ended up wasting that. You could get yourself killed or—”

“I wouldn’t—” Alphonse starts to protest.

“But you don’t know that,” Ed interrupts forcefully, and he remembers when he was that same idiot, blind with grief and a childish notion of invulnerability. And maybe, maybe this is why Hawkeye wanted him to talk to the kid. “Your brother was a fucking idiot, fine, but he got you back. What you have now— Are you really gonna waste that on the off-chance you get him back? Are you gonna sentence him to live without you?”

To that, Alphonse says nothing. The expression of utter horror speaks for him.

Blowing out a breath, Ed leans back in his seat. He finally crosses his arms, and the weight of his prosthetic over his flesh arm presses firmly against the blood and bone. “Don’t you think he’d want you to be happy?”

Alphonse’s mouth falls open, but no sound leaves him. The glossiness in his eyes never really left, and it looks like it won’t take much before bitter streams start running freely down pale, bony cheeks. His bottom lip quivers precariously, and his breathing has gotten heavier as he tries to keep from sobbing. But miraculously, he only sniffles wet and doesn’t let a single tear fall. Resilient is right. If Ed were him, fresh from losing his brother, he might be half-mad from sheer desperation and wild with grief and some stranger saying this to him would have him crumbling into pieces.

But Alphonse doesn’t shout, or scream, or spit violent denials. He blinks and does not cry and he listens.

“He wanted you to live your life, right? Isn’t that why he worked so hard to get your body back?” When Alphonse neither interrupts or answers, continues to stare at Ed with wide, wet eyes, Ed knows that he, miraculously, has gotten through. Found a way to make him listen, to make him understand. “If he really loved you, then he would want you to live that life. So you need to move on. For his sake.”

Perhaps that’s too much, a nail through the heart. Because abruptly, Alphonse’s head drops and the too-long curtain of his hair prevents any attempts at reading his expression. His shoulders shudder, start to bob as his breathing gets harsher, choppier. At first, Ed panics, sirens blaring in his head for him to do something—offer a— a comforting pat on the shoulder or the head or— or something.

It isn’t until Alphonse throws a hand over his mouth that Ed realizes he isn’t crying.

“W— What’s funny?” Minus the cursing and shit, Ed thought the whole thing was pretty profound. Definitely not something to be fucking chuckling at.

Still snorting, Alphonse peers up at him through his too-long fringe. Silent laughter and some faint trace of exasperation bleed into the sorrow that already lays there. “Nothing, I just... I hate it when you’re right.”

Huh?

“But thank you,” Alphonse continues softly, before Ed can open his mouth and ask what the hell that meant, “...I needed to hear that.”

Just then, Ed realizes that the tears have succeeded in spilling free and go on to trace sharp crystal trails down the other boy’s face. As Alphonse reaches up to wipe them away with his bony fingers, Ed can’t help the clench in his chest. “You gonna be okay?”

It’s probably a stupid question, because no matter how much time passes, it’s always going to hurt. Loss is a literal subtraction from your existence. It’s not something that can be replaced, or permanently healed, even if the pain eventually dulls to a point where you don’t notice it anymore.

In return, Alphonse musters a watery smile. It looks like he’s trying desperately not break down crying. “...I think so, yeah.”

But not now, goes unsaid, and it doesn’t need to be.

The fact remains, however, that there’s nothing Ed can do about it. No matter how sympathetic, he exists beyond this whole mess. This kid’s life has been scraped open raw, and the last thing he needs is some nosy stranger shoehorning his way into Alphonse’s business.

Sighing, Ed rises to his feet. His automail knee clicks as he stands. Gloved fingers linger uncertainly on the armrest. “I should probably get going.”

Surprise flashes sharply across Alphonse’s features as he glances up, which quickly dims into disappointment. “Oh.” He thumbs away a tear at the corner of his left eye with one hand. The other has gone back to clinging to Ed’s old coat. “Right. Of course.”

“I meant it, y’know,” Ed says, jabbing his hands into the pockets of his current coat, which makes Alphonse blink at him in surprise. “You can keep that, if you want.”

Which has Alphonse blinking at him, clearly not understanding—until he looks down, only just then seeming to realize how he’s been clinging to the cloth as though for dear life. He all but flinches back in apparent alarm, but doesn’t release his grip on it. The Flamel crown wrinkles as his fingers tighten further around the fabric, the snake twining itself around the winged cross finding itself broken up by the folds.

When the tears well up this time, Alphonse makes no effort to wipe them away.

Ed turns away, suddenly and inexplicably embarrassed. “Take care of yourself, okay, Alphonse?”

He isn’t expecting to be heard, much less to earn a response. So he isn’t put off when he doesn’t receive one. Biting the inside of his cheek, he makes for the door. Best to leave Alphonse to himself. Let him regain his composure without some stranger awkwardly standing over him and watching him with critical eyes.

About halfway to the door, though, there’s a sudden groan from that Ed assumes to be the bedframe. “Hey. B— uh, Edward?”

“Yeah?” Ed asks, turning back around.

And then he’s nearly bowled over by the weight of the kid throwing himself onto him. Through the surprise that seizes him, Ed manages to maintain their collective balance by stepping back with his steel leg, so the momentum doesn’t send them both crashing into the floor. That concludes the only scrap of coherency he has, which evaporates almost immediately when bony arms snare themselves around his shoulders. They’re far enough from the bed that the IV drip is pulled taut, the metal rack upon which the pressure bag sits nearly clattering to the linoleum tiles, but Alphonse doesn’t seem to notice, much less care.

Without even hesitating, Alphonse buries his face into Ed’s flesh shoulder, nose blunt against Ed’s collar bone and forehead pressing into the flat of his shoulder and there are fingers curling around the weave of his braid. There’s an exclamation of bewilderment rising in Ed’s throat—it dies when he hears the quiet sobbing.

“Thank you.” Alphonse’s voice is wet and fragile and tremulous. “For everything.”

At first, Ed can’t bring himself to move. Alphonse transfers his face from Ed’s shoulder to his throat, where Ed can feel just how warm his tears are. 

It’s awkward as fuck, but Ed allows Alphonse to cling, if only because he sincerely doubts Alphonse has the strength to stand upright on his own. Ed can hear the labored undertone to his breathing, notes the way Alphonse’s bony knees tremble as the moments tick passed. He can feel every sharp contour in Alphonse’s body, where his bones rebel against their container, and it makes Ed ache with something between pity and relief.

Pity, because fucking hell, that’s not the sort of body you want to come back to after god-knows-how-long spent in a container that a person was never meant to inhabit. Relief, because at least this body is human and it actually belongs to Alphonse, and now he’s back in it. Every breath that lands against Ed’s jacket-collar is warm and damp and living and human and if that older brother would here now, he would probably weep in joy at having succeeded.

But he isn’t here. Ed’s here. So he lets Alphonse have someone to hug, if only because his brother isn’t here to hug instead.

Eventually, Alphonse’s knees do end up giving out. Luckily for them both, Ed was anticipating this. So while Alphonse yelps and the metal rack clatters to the floor, Ed manages to catch him before they can both end up cracking their skulls open on the linoleum tiles.

Since the foot of the bed is fairly close, Ed drops Alphonse off on the mattress. Still, Alphonse maintains his grip on Ed’s coat, his braid, keeps his face buried against Ed’s neck as though he’s trying to feel Ed’s pulse through the collar of his jacket. With each breath labored by the effort to smooth the sobs out, Ed wonders about the last time Alphonse got the opportunity to touch anyone. Hug them, feel their warmth, smell their skin. It must have been a long time.

Before Ed pulls away, he raises his flesh hand and awkwardly pats the top of Alphonse’s scalp. It feels like a hollow gesture. “I... really didn’t do that much,” he mutters, in response to gratitude he doesn’t deserve.

To which Alphonse’s grip on Ed tightens, like Ed will cease to exist if he lets go. There’s a loud sniff, right in Ed’s ear. “You did more than you know.”

Not really. All Ed did was call the hospital and then force Alphonse to recount painful memories and maybe talk him out of throwing his life away. Anyone could have done that, really. Ed has done next to nothing for him.

If Alphonse wants to believe otherwise, though—well, the kid’s been through enough.

With great reluctance, Alphonse eventually does unlatch from Ed. He peers up with glossy topaz eyes set in an emaciated face and tears rolling unabashedly down bone-white cheeks. It’s a shame they had to meet like this, when Alphonse is so frail and brittle. That this will be how Ed remembers him.

Sighing, Ed looks away. He can’t help but feel strangely embarrassed, now. “Get better, okay?”

“I will,” Alphonse promises solemnly. He makes no move to wipe the tears away.

Without further ado, Ed turns away and makes for the door. Nothing stops him this time as he retreats. Nothing impedes him as he turns the door handle. Nothing stops the hinges from squeaking as he opens the door and peers out into the hall and nothing stops him from crossing the threshold until— 

“Goodbye, Edward.”

The graveness framing those words, more than anything, is what gives Ed pause, just as the door slowly groans its way closed. Something about the delivery feels more meaningful than an exchange between two transients, who happen to share the lucky span of a few breaths in the same space, bidding each other farewell as they sink back into the currents of a wide, wide world in which they will never meet again. It’s too solemn, too heavy, too loaded with things left unsaid and unremembered. More like grief, really.

But Ed doesn’t linger on it. He doesn’t turn around to poke his head back into the room and ask Alphonse what he meant by that. He just sighs once the door closes behind them, then sticks his hands in his pockets and makes his way down the hall to give Mustang the rough recount he wants.

It never occurs to him, once, to look back. And why would it?

Alphonse is a perfect stranger. Nothing more.