Title: Hope Under a Blue Sky
Rating: K
Characters: Ed, Al
Summary: This is an old game.
A/N: Written as part of my
Alphabet Drabbles challenge, as requested by
flameraven with the prompt “planned”. Written with the manga verse in mind, though I think it could take place pretty much anytime.
plan
-noun
1. a scheme or method of acting, doing, proceeding, making, etc., developed in advance
"Brother," Al whispers urgently one morning, well before it's considered polite to wake people up but still late enough that Ed will get up anyway. "What are we going to do when we get our bodies back?"
This is an old game. They've discussed a million and one things that they're going to do once they're restored. Some nights it’s more comforting to Ed than an old blanket, other nights it causes the burden on their shoulders to weigh even heavier. Ed always indulges Al though, and this morning he's in the right frame of mind, still hazy from sleep but awake enough, that their goal seems like a very real and near possibility. Someday, not one day.
He smiles dreamily into the dark. "We're gonna go home, and we're gonna show Winry and Granny."
"And then?"
"And then Winry's going to make you apple pie." Two, Ed thinks in his mind, practically smelling the dessert, so that they can each have one.
"And then?"
"Hm?" He's still thinking about Winry and the pie. His mind is blank. "And then what?"
"Then what do you want to do?" Al asked anxiously.
Ed is breaking the rules of the game and he knows it. Usually his answer here goes somewhere along the lines of "Torch every single piece of paperwork Mustang's pushed at me" or "Eat our way through Sensei's butcher shop" or "Visit some other country." Fun stuff, never entirely realistic (the paperwork would get him in trouble with Hawkeye), but always delightful to imagine. Instead, he cranes his head, catching a glimpse of Al gleaming dully in the pre-dawn rays, and asks curiously, "Well what do you want to do?"
"I think," Al says carefully, as if he's measuring out each word for proper weight. Ed forces himself awake a little more, sensing the importance behind his words. "I think I want to go back to school. There are a couple universities in Central. I can't live off your pay from the state for the rest of our lives."
Ed doesn't know which words are appropriate. He's never heard Al talk about school before; as children it was something that was simply part of the routine, until alchemy - and their mission to restore their mother - had blocked it out. "And then what?" he finally asks.
"And then," Al informs him, his tone still carrying that sense of importance, "I think I can get Winry to bake me a cake."