FMA fic: Transient (part 10)
Title: Transient (part 10)
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: PG
Category: Gen
Approximate length: 60,000
Summary: With Ed suffering from what he thinks is the seasonal flu the Elric brothers track a rogue alchemist in a small town outside of East City.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9
Spoilers: This story takes place about a year before the boys go to Lior. Anything that happened before that is fair game.
Disclaimers: I don’t own Fullmetal Alchemist. This story was written for entertainment only. I’m not making any money.
Notes/warnings on this part: plot, angst, and Ed being very, very sick. Once again, if you see any mistakes please point them out.
Enjoy.
PART 10
“Run, Leon!” Mason shouted.
Ed rolled his eyes and countered, “Don’t run, Leon.”
For a panicked instant Leon looked from Ed to Mason and back again, then bolted in the direction of the town, past the deputy and away from Ed.
Ed clapped his hands together and smacked them against the garden wall. Stone rods sprang from the wall and cut off Leon’s escape.
Ed marched toward him, mud sucking at his boots as he walked.
Mason sprang in front of him with his arms stretched out to his sides, as if Ed were some wild beast and his friend was in danger of being mauled.
“Get out of the way, Mason,” Ed warned him.
“No,” was Mason’s only reply. He stood frozen on the spot, breathing hard. “If you want Leon you’ll have to go through me.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Ed admonished him. He clapped his hands and ropes made out of thick black mud grew up out of the ground. They ensnared Mason’s legs and snaked up around the deputy’s body, pinning his arms to his sides.
Mason’s horrified struggles were almost comical, but Ed was in no mood for a laugh. He stabbed an automail finger in the deputy’s direction. “If you talk, I’ll gag you.” Ed said, and gave Mason the most intense stare that he was capable of.
Mason’s jaw twitched and his nostrils flared but he kept his mouth shut.
Ed took a deep breath, then put his hands together one more time, though it was more of a pat than a clap.
“Sit down,” he told Leon.
Leon looked panicked for a moment, as if wondering if Ed was asking him to sit in the mud, then he glanced down and saw the low, hard stool that Ed had fashioned for him through alchemy. It was growing up from the ground like a stump.
Leon sat, but he looked like he was resisting the urge to draw his knees up to his chest.
Ed dropped down onto an identical stool that he had furnished for himself.
“The watch,” Ed demanded.
With a pleading look in his eyes Leon reluctantly reached a hand into his vest. He pulled out a silver timepiece, it was round and heavy and embossed on the front with the state seal, a shiny chain dripping through his fingers like rainwater. Ed retrieved his own pocket watch from inside his coat and held it side-by-side with Leon’s. The two were identical.
Ed looked up. Leon’s hand was still outstretched toward him, as if he was afraid of what Ed would do to his watch. Ed glared at him. “Stop looking so pathetic.”
Leon sat up straighter, looking mildly offended.
Two letters had been inscribed on the back of Leon’s watch. “E. G. F.,” Ed read out loud.
“It belonged to an state alchemist named Elroy Foegle,” Leon explained. A hint of pride crept into his voice, “the Shifting Earth Alchemist.”
“Yeah? Did you steal this from him?”
“He was my uncle,” Leon said defensively.
“Is that a ‘no’?”
“I’m not a thief.”
“Right, you’re just a liar.”
Leon hesitated, “I didn’t…I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean for things to turn out this way.”
“Nobody ever does,” Ed sighed. “So where is he, your uncle? Does he know what you’ve been up to?”
Leon dropped his gaze. “He’s… not around anymore.”
Oh.
“Let me guess, he died in the eastern rebellion,” Ed said, not without sympathy.
Leon shook his head. “He never made it that far. He was stationed in the west, in the mountains.”
Leon paused and Ed glared at him. “Does that story have a middle and an end too, or just a beginning?”
“The-the year he arrived there was a lot of flooding, and because of that, landslides,” he began hesitantly. Ed gestured impatiently for him to continue. “A few villages got cut off from the main cities. The military didn’t want to get involved, but my uncle and a few other men went without orders to try to help clear the roads. While they were working there was another avalanche, a big one, and they were all buried. The villagers tried to dig them out, but it took days. By then there was nothing they could do. One of the villagers knew my family. He brought my uncle’s pocket watch back to my mother instead of returning it to the military.”
Ed considered the pocket watch and the kid in front of him who was, in more than one way, closer to being a man than Ed was.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Ed said respectfully, “but it doesn’t make the things that you did here right.”
Things were quiet for a little while. Ed looked down at his muddy boots, which were slowly but surely being washed clean by the falling rain. He was surprised when Leon started talking again.
“I’m on your side, you know,” he said.
“How’s that?” Ed asked doubtfully.
“The first time I came here I was twelve years old. There was a military patrol passing through town. I guess they were returning to East City from somewhere. They looked tired, like they’d been traveling for a long time. They wanted to buy food and rent rooms for the night but the people here closed their shops and refused to serve them. Those men hadn’t done anything wrong, but the people in this town still treated them like criminals.”
Ed could sympathize. Ed remembered all too well how unpleasant it had felt to be kicked out of the inn in Youswell for his association with the military. He’d thought the villagers petty and cruel, until he discovered that the reason for their ire was well founded. It seemed that there were more places like Youswell than Ed had imagined, and a lot more people who would be more likely to hurt him than help him just because of the watch in his pocket.
“I know what the military did here,” Leon said. His voice was quiet but passionate, “and I understand that it must have been awful, but the military itself isn’t the problem. It’s just an institution. It’s like a weapon or a tool. The people who run it determine whether or not it’s good or bad. There are good men in the military, people like my uncle who try to make a difference, who try to change the way things are, but if people don’t give them a chance, what good can they do?”
Ed had almost forgotten that Mason was even there until he said quietly, “You never told me that your uncle was a state alchemist. You never said anything about the military at all.”
“Would you have helped me if you knew what I was trying to do?” Leon asked.
Mason fell silent. He looked torn. Luckily for him Ed was willing to forget his earlier threat to gag the deputy if he spoke.
“So all of this was because you wanted to change the way this town acted toward the military?” Ed asked.
Leon shook his head, “I wanted to do something for this town, but I wanted to make a statement too. I wanted to open people’s eyes and make them see how wrong they are, even if I had to break a few rules to do it.”
“Well, you certainly sound like a college freshman,” Ed muttered.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Listen, you can’t open anyone’s mind with a crowbar,” Ed told him wearily. “Believe me, I’ve tried. And you aren’t going to get anyone to trust you by lying to them. If you want change, you have to make it happen from the inside.”
“Is that why you became a state alchemist?”
“Not even close,” Ed said bitterly. His hand traveled unconsciously to his right shoulder.
The subject matter was heavy and Ed felt like he was sinking under the weight of it.
“So did this uncle of yours teach you to do alchemy?” Ed asked.
“No, I learned it on my own.”
“That’s a relief. You’re lousy at it, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Leon said in a flat voice.
“You’re welcome.”
“You know there’s only so much you can learn out of a textbook,” Leon sulked.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Ed said. Then he added thoughtfully, “Actually, the bridge was a decent piece of work,” He admitted. “It was stupid and misguided, but decent. The other transmutations weren’t horrible. They worked, after all. They just didn’t work very well.”
Ed sighed and stood up. Leon’s eyes tracked his every move warily.
“Well, do you have money for a train ticket?” Ed asked.
Leon’s defeated expression was replaced by one of confusion, “Um, yes…” he answered cautiously.
“Good.” Ed tossed Leon’s pocket watch at him. Leon barely got his hands up in time to snatch it out of the air before it smacked him in the face. “Take that to East City. You’ll need it to get into military headquarters. Do you have a suit in that suitcase?”
Leon nodded, still frozen in shock. “It’s a school uniform- ”
“Good. Wear it. There’s a man there named Mustang. He’s a colonel. Tell him that Edward Elric sent you. Then give him the watch. Don’t say anything else.”
“Give him the watch?” Leon repeated. “You want me to turn myself in,” he realized.
“To Mustang. No one else.”
“He’ll send me to the stockade!” Leon protested.
Ed shrugged. “He might. Depends on what kind of day he’s having when you get there, and whether or not you decide to do anything stupid on the way or, you know” Ed waved his hand in the air “anything else stupid beyond what you’ve done already.”
“He’ll take my watch away,” Leon said, clutching the trinket like a lifeline.
Ed gave a frustrated sigh. “Small price to pay considering that it never belonged to you in the first place.”
“But I won’t be able to help anyone without this watch. I probably won’t even be able to perform transmutations!”
Ed shook his head. “Alchemy isn’t a gift. It’s a skill. Didn’t they teach you anything at the university? The alchemy isn’t in the watch. You have what it takes. It will take time, and a lot of studying, but if you want to help people without having to lie to them, then that’s the way you need to do it.”
“How do I know I can trust you? Or this Mustang guy?”
“You don’t. You’re just going to have to decide for yourself if the chance to do things officially is worth the risk of being locked up. You broke laws, Leon. You impersonated a state alchemist. Even if you did the wrong things for the right reason it’s still wrong and you have a debt to work off. The cost to the state just to send me out here-” but Leon was starting to turn pale so Ed decided to spare him. “Let’s just say I incur a lot of expenses when I travel. It will be up to Mustang to decide how you pay for your crimes. My advice to you is to be polite when you meet with him. Call him ‘sir’ a lot, or ‘colonel’. He likes that.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” Leon asked.
“Nah.”
“But I’ll be recognized at the train station.”
“Then walk to East City!” Ed told him, exasperated. “Or…wear a hat or something. You’ve managed to stay practically invisible in a town of less than a thousand people for two weeks. How hard can it be for you to get on a train without being recognized?”
“Um…okay.”
“Listen, go or don’t go. You run and you’ll be a fugitive. You go to East city and see the colonel and you get a chance to make things right and maybe, just maybe, you get to make a difference. Personally, I don’t give a damn what you do.”
With that, Ed turned his back on Leon Mueller. He put his hands together. The bars blocking the rogue alchemists’ escape receded back into the stones from which he had created them. Ed waited until he heard the squelching sound of retreating footsteps, then he undid Mason’s bindings as well. He even removed every speck of dirt from the deputy’s uniform.
Mason stared at him, incredulous.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Go after him.”
“I’m not going to stop him if that’s what you think,” Mason said. He was frowning, half defiant, half confused.
“Did I ask you to?”
Ed coughed into his hand. When he drew his palm away from his mouth he saw that it was bright red. He covered his surprise at the shear amount and wiped the evidence off on his red coat.
“I thought that you might want to follow your friend. You know, to make sure he doesn’t run into any trouble.”
Mason hesitated, probably wondering if this was a trick.
“You should go.”
The deputy’s body began to move, but his eyes stayed locked on Ed.
Ed broke eye contact, turned his head away to cough again, a deep, gagging spasm.
“Are you going to be alright?” Mason asked him.
“What the hell do you care?” Ed snapped. “If you’re going then go already!”
Mason lingered a moment longer. “Thank you,” he said. Then he broke into a run, and vanished around the corner of the nearest building.
Ed stood looking down the alley after him. All of the energy and tension from a few moments ago was gone, and with it, all the heat in the world seemed to have vanished as well. Ed yanked his hood over his head, then pulled his coat tight around his body, folded his arms protectively over his chest, and shivered.
The walk back to the sheriff’s station seemed to take Ed a thousand years. He fully expected Mason Biggs, sporting a long white beard, to be waiting for him when he arrived.
The reality was so eerily similar to what Ed’s had sarcastically imagined that it froze him in his tracks.
“Who are you?” Ed demanded of the elderly man who was sitting behind the sheriff’s desk, wearing a deputy’s uniform and badge.
The older man regarded him calmly, as if this was a question that people asked him every day. “Oh,” he said, “so this is what you look like when you’re awake.”
Ed’s memory dutifully, if belatedly, spat out a name. “Oh, right, Walter. Hello.”
“Hello,” Walter responded. “Say, did you know that you’re dripping water all over the floor?”
“Oh, uh no.” Ed realized that he must have forgotten to take off his coat. He wandered back into the coatroom, which he must have entered through but couldn’t remember; he’d been so lost in thought.
Ed fumbled to get his arms out of the sleeves while Walter looked on, his thick fingers knitted together in his lap. “Well, did you get what you came here for?”
Ed thought about that as he stood there, holding his coat by the collar, arm poised in midair. “Yeah…well…yeah, I think so.” After a few attempts he managed to hang his coat on one of the pegs.
“Good for you.”
Ed decided that he liked Walter. There was something very soothing about the way he spoke and the way that he held himself, something wise and ancient.
The creases in Walter’s forehead deepened as he watched Ed walk in front of the desk. “I think you should sit down,” he suggested.
“I’ve been getting that a lot lately,” Ed mentioned.
Walter gave him a thoughtful “hmmm,” but didn’t push the issue.
Ed glanced toward the stove, which was lit and radiating cheerful warmth. He noticed that there was a chair already positioned in front of the stove, like it had been waiting for him.
Oh. Well, that was nice.
Walter bent his head toward his work, licked the tip of his pencil and began to write. The soft scratching sound of pencil against paper was familiar and soothing.
Ed sat. He folded his arms around himself, either trying to keep his body heat in or trying to keep the rest of the world out. He wasn’t sure which.
Even through the thick material of his clothes the stove quickly warmed his flesh and turned his automail limbs into glowing sources of heat themselves. Still, there seemed to be a block of ice at Ed’s core that the fire couldn’t touch. He shivered and coughed and hugged himself tighter until Walter got up from the sheriff’s desk and brought him a blanket from one of the cells.
“Good time for a nap,” Walter suggested, inclining his head towards the cells with a conspiratorial wink.
Ed stared dumbly at the blanket for a moment before he could remember how to use it. He unfolded it and wrapped it clumsily around his shoulders.
“No thanks. I want to wait for Al.”
“He’s your kid brother, right?” Walter asked, scooting the sheriff’s chair around the front of the desk. He sat down with a heavy sigh, the kind that Ed associated with older, heavyset men. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, fingers interlaced in front of him.
“Yeah.”
“Seems like a good kid.”
“He is.”
“Awfully nice of the military to post you two to the same assignment. Don’t they usually try to keep family members apart?”
“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t- um, Al’s not military.”
Walter’s bushy eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “Oh. Really? Well, the way he talks about you I can tell that he’s very proud of his older brother. Seems like he wants to follow in your footsteps.”
It occurred to Ed that he should be bothered by Walter’s questions, or at least try to avoid answering anything too directly, but Ed was so tired and there was something so disarming and kind about the old man that Ed relaxed his defenses.
“I don’t want him to,” Ed said firmly. Then he realized how cruel he must sound, like he didn’t want his brother around. He corrected himself, “I mean that I don’t want him to join the military. One dog in the family is enough.”
“You don’t like working for the military?”
Ed didn’t have to think hard about that answer at all. “I hate it.”
Walter leaned forward, brows drawn together. There was a question in his kind blue eyes, and Ed answered it before he could ask. He told Walter how Colonel Mustang had recruited him into the military. It was something that he rarely talked about, because it led to questions about his family and his automail and a hundred other questions to which no one needed to know the answers.
When Ed was finished answering Walter’s questions about the military he found himself still speaking, as if he’d lost the ability to stop. The floodgates had been opened and the pressure under which Ed’s words had been kept was too great now for them to be shut. Ed watched himself from the sidelines, aware of what was happening but powerless to do anything.
Ed answered questions that he’d never been asked. He answered questions that he wished he’d been asked, and questions that people had asked years ago. He talked at length about things he’d kept bottled up inside. He talked as if by speaking he could purge himself of every rotten, sinful thing he’d ever done. He talked until his voice gave out, until he began coughing. With every cough a sharp pain lanced through his chest, but still he kept coughing. He coughed and he watched the crease between Walter’s eyebrows grow deeper and deeper.
There came a breaking point, and Walter pulled him to his feet. With one hand on Ed’s left bicep and the other on the back of Ed's neck the deputy guided him to one of the cells and sat him down on a bunk. As soon as he was down Ed collapsed onto his side, too spent to care what he looked like, too miserable to put on a strong front.
Walter manipulated his limbs into a more comfortable position and stacked thin pillows under his head. When he’d done all he could he left for a moment, and Ed could hear him talking to someone on the other end of a phone line, but he couldn’t make out the words over the thick noise of his breath wheezing in and out of him.
When Walter was finished with his phone call he ambled back into the cell. He seemed relaxed and his movements were unhurried, matter-of-fact even as he knelt by Ed’s side. He said, “Doc’s going to come and have a look at you,” and he might as well have been talking about a broken faucet or a loose floor board, like Ed was a tool or a piece of furniture, easily damaged and easily fixed. Well, he reflected, it was partially true.
“You want to tell me a little more about this place you grew up? Resembool?”
Ed drew breath to speak, but the words got lost on the way to his mouth. Before too long he forgot what the question had been.
Walter patted him on the leg. “S’okay,” and then began to talk to him in a low, steady voice. The words rose and fell in the familiar cadence of a bedtime story, and even though they washed over Ed instead of sticking in his memory he felt comforted by the sound of the old man’s voice.
Ed didn’t remember falling asleep but he woke to a stranger in a white coat bending over him.
“Easy,” Walter said, because Ed had immediately sucked in a surprised breath, which started him coughing again. “Ed, this is doctor Nikola.”
The doctor helped him sit up. Then he pressed a cold circled against the skin of Ed’s back and asked him to breath deep. The doctor might as well have asked him to spin his head completely around. It was all Ed could do to get enough air between coughs.
Next Ed found his forehead cradled in a big, warm palm. Ed loathed the idea of strangers putting their hands on him, but the doctor’s touch was clinical and detached, unemotional, so Ed relaxed into it.
“Okay,” the doctor said, like he’d come to some kind of big, important conclusion. Ed felt the deep rumble of that one word in his chest, like an earthquake.
Then the doctor scooped him up off the bunk like he weighed nothing at all, like his automail was aluminum and his bones were feathers. The room spun. Ed closed his eyes. He thought that the doctor might be taking him upstairs but he soon felt cold raindrops, sharp as needles, falling on his face. Ed opened his eyes and followed the blinding white sky as it swayed out of sight, lost above the eaves of the bathhouse.
The doctor’s boots thudded heavily on the wooden floor. Ed felt the vibration through his entire body.
“We need a tub,” Ed heard Walter say, followed by a shout and chorus of hurried footsteps. Ed thought he picked out Samantha’s voice somewhere in the din, but he couldn’t see her so he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined it.
Ed tried to keep track of what was happening around him but his mind and body didn’t seem to belong to him anymore. He felt the doctor set down on a bench. Although he had stopped moving Ed still felt the room swinging sickeningly around him. He dropped his head between his legs, barely aware that there were two people on either side of him, holding him upright, and a basin between his feet on the floor. Ed would have happily stayed that way for hours, but someone gave a signal that Ed couldn’t read and suddenly the hands that had been holding him were tugging at his limbs, undressing him. They removed his boots and socks. They took his shirt next, then his leather trousers, leaving him only his shorts and tank top. Ed was overcome by a strange, paralyzing anxiety about his metal limbs. He thought if they saw them they would know and his heart began to race. He tried to pull away but his limbs were heavy, like he was moving underwater, or moving through a dream.
Ed heard voices, male and female, and someone who sounded like Al. He wanted to call out to his brother. He wanted to ask what was happening but he couldn’t speak, just like in so many of his dreams.
The doctor picked Ed up and carried him to a waiting bathtub. He lowered Ed gently in.
Ed found his voice.
He started to scream.
Hot! Too hot! They were burning him!
Ed kicked and thrashed, the desperate flailing of a dying animal, fueled by primeval energy. He felt automail connect with flesh.
“Don’t let him put his hands together!”
That was Al’s voice. Ed hadn’t realized that was what he was trying to do until his brother said so.
“Al!” he shouted, his voice a ragged mess “Help! Don’t let them do this! Al!”
But Al’s big leather gauntlets were the ones holding him in the bath and keeping his right palm from making contact with his left. Hot tears of betrayal leaked down Ed’s cheeks and the fight drained out of him. What Ed thought at first was boiling water was actually freezing cold. The boiling heat was inside of him.
Ed looked up helplessly at Al’s expressionless helmet and realized that he had no idea what his brother was thinking. For perhaps the first time he was struck by Al’s menacing appearance, this nightmarish form that Ed had trapped him in. Ed was frightened by it, and frightened also by the ring of strange faces surrounding him. Ed made feeble attempts to escape the tub and their scrutinizing glares. A dozen hands moved to stop him. He sank back, confused and helpless. Someone placed a washcloth on his head and he didn’t have the energy to shake it off.
“Help me, Al,” he begged through chattering teeth.
“I am helping you, brother,” Al told him.
There were swirls of red-orange in the water. Ed’s lips and tongue tasted like copper.
No, Ed thought, you’re drowning me.
He couldn’t breathe. Even though his head was out of the water, they were drowning him.
To be continued... part 11
Thank you for reading. Feedback is welcome.
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: PG
Category: Gen
Approximate length: 60,000
Summary: With Ed suffering from what he thinks is the seasonal flu the Elric brothers track a rogue alchemist in a small town outside of East City.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9
Spoilers: This story takes place about a year before the boys go to Lior. Anything that happened before that is fair game.
Disclaimers: I don’t own Fullmetal Alchemist. This story was written for entertainment only. I’m not making any money.
Notes/warnings on this part: plot, angst, and Ed being very, very sick. Once again, if you see any mistakes please point them out.
Enjoy.
PART 10
“Run, Leon!” Mason shouted.
Ed rolled his eyes and countered, “Don’t run, Leon.”
For a panicked instant Leon looked from Ed to Mason and back again, then bolted in the direction of the town, past the deputy and away from Ed.
Ed clapped his hands together and smacked them against the garden wall. Stone rods sprang from the wall and cut off Leon’s escape.
Ed marched toward him, mud sucking at his boots as he walked.
Mason sprang in front of him with his arms stretched out to his sides, as if Ed were some wild beast and his friend was in danger of being mauled.
“Get out of the way, Mason,” Ed warned him.
“No,” was Mason’s only reply. He stood frozen on the spot, breathing hard. “If you want Leon you’ll have to go through me.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Ed admonished him. He clapped his hands and ropes made out of thick black mud grew up out of the ground. They ensnared Mason’s legs and snaked up around the deputy’s body, pinning his arms to his sides.
Mason’s horrified struggles were almost comical, but Ed was in no mood for a laugh. He stabbed an automail finger in the deputy’s direction. “If you talk, I’ll gag you.” Ed said, and gave Mason the most intense stare that he was capable of.
Mason’s jaw twitched and his nostrils flared but he kept his mouth shut.
Ed took a deep breath, then put his hands together one more time, though it was more of a pat than a clap.
“Sit down,” he told Leon.
Leon looked panicked for a moment, as if wondering if Ed was asking him to sit in the mud, then he glanced down and saw the low, hard stool that Ed had fashioned for him through alchemy. It was growing up from the ground like a stump.
Leon sat, but he looked like he was resisting the urge to draw his knees up to his chest.
Ed dropped down onto an identical stool that he had furnished for himself.
“The watch,” Ed demanded.
With a pleading look in his eyes Leon reluctantly reached a hand into his vest. He pulled out a silver timepiece, it was round and heavy and embossed on the front with the state seal, a shiny chain dripping through his fingers like rainwater. Ed retrieved his own pocket watch from inside his coat and held it side-by-side with Leon’s. The two were identical.
Ed looked up. Leon’s hand was still outstretched toward him, as if he was afraid of what Ed would do to his watch. Ed glared at him. “Stop looking so pathetic.”
Leon sat up straighter, looking mildly offended.
Two letters had been inscribed on the back of Leon’s watch. “E. G. F.,” Ed read out loud.
“It belonged to an state alchemist named Elroy Foegle,” Leon explained. A hint of pride crept into his voice, “the Shifting Earth Alchemist.”
“Yeah? Did you steal this from him?”
“He was my uncle,” Leon said defensively.
“Is that a ‘no’?”
“I’m not a thief.”
“Right, you’re just a liar.”
Leon hesitated, “I didn’t…I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean for things to turn out this way.”
“Nobody ever does,” Ed sighed. “So where is he, your uncle? Does he know what you’ve been up to?”
Leon dropped his gaze. “He’s… not around anymore.”
Oh.
“Let me guess, he died in the eastern rebellion,” Ed said, not without sympathy.
Leon shook his head. “He never made it that far. He was stationed in the west, in the mountains.”
Leon paused and Ed glared at him. “Does that story have a middle and an end too, or just a beginning?”
“The-the year he arrived there was a lot of flooding, and because of that, landslides,” he began hesitantly. Ed gestured impatiently for him to continue. “A few villages got cut off from the main cities. The military didn’t want to get involved, but my uncle and a few other men went without orders to try to help clear the roads. While they were working there was another avalanche, a big one, and they were all buried. The villagers tried to dig them out, but it took days. By then there was nothing they could do. One of the villagers knew my family. He brought my uncle’s pocket watch back to my mother instead of returning it to the military.”
Ed considered the pocket watch and the kid in front of him who was, in more than one way, closer to being a man than Ed was.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Ed said respectfully, “but it doesn’t make the things that you did here right.”
Things were quiet for a little while. Ed looked down at his muddy boots, which were slowly but surely being washed clean by the falling rain. He was surprised when Leon started talking again.
“I’m on your side, you know,” he said.
“How’s that?” Ed asked doubtfully.
“The first time I came here I was twelve years old. There was a military patrol passing through town. I guess they were returning to East City from somewhere. They looked tired, like they’d been traveling for a long time. They wanted to buy food and rent rooms for the night but the people here closed their shops and refused to serve them. Those men hadn’t done anything wrong, but the people in this town still treated them like criminals.”
Ed could sympathize. Ed remembered all too well how unpleasant it had felt to be kicked out of the inn in Youswell for his association with the military. He’d thought the villagers petty and cruel, until he discovered that the reason for their ire was well founded. It seemed that there were more places like Youswell than Ed had imagined, and a lot more people who would be more likely to hurt him than help him just because of the watch in his pocket.
“I know what the military did here,” Leon said. His voice was quiet but passionate, “and I understand that it must have been awful, but the military itself isn’t the problem. It’s just an institution. It’s like a weapon or a tool. The people who run it determine whether or not it’s good or bad. There are good men in the military, people like my uncle who try to make a difference, who try to change the way things are, but if people don’t give them a chance, what good can they do?”
Ed had almost forgotten that Mason was even there until he said quietly, “You never told me that your uncle was a state alchemist. You never said anything about the military at all.”
“Would you have helped me if you knew what I was trying to do?” Leon asked.
Mason fell silent. He looked torn. Luckily for him Ed was willing to forget his earlier threat to gag the deputy if he spoke.
“So all of this was because you wanted to change the way this town acted toward the military?” Ed asked.
Leon shook his head, “I wanted to do something for this town, but I wanted to make a statement too. I wanted to open people’s eyes and make them see how wrong they are, even if I had to break a few rules to do it.”
“Well, you certainly sound like a college freshman,” Ed muttered.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Listen, you can’t open anyone’s mind with a crowbar,” Ed told him wearily. “Believe me, I’ve tried. And you aren’t going to get anyone to trust you by lying to them. If you want change, you have to make it happen from the inside.”
“Is that why you became a state alchemist?”
“Not even close,” Ed said bitterly. His hand traveled unconsciously to his right shoulder.
The subject matter was heavy and Ed felt like he was sinking under the weight of it.
“So did this uncle of yours teach you to do alchemy?” Ed asked.
“No, I learned it on my own.”
“That’s a relief. You’re lousy at it, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Leon said in a flat voice.
“You’re welcome.”
“You know there’s only so much you can learn out of a textbook,” Leon sulked.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Ed said. Then he added thoughtfully, “Actually, the bridge was a decent piece of work,” He admitted. “It was stupid and misguided, but decent. The other transmutations weren’t horrible. They worked, after all. They just didn’t work very well.”
Ed sighed and stood up. Leon’s eyes tracked his every move warily.
“Well, do you have money for a train ticket?” Ed asked.
Leon’s defeated expression was replaced by one of confusion, “Um, yes…” he answered cautiously.
“Good.” Ed tossed Leon’s pocket watch at him. Leon barely got his hands up in time to snatch it out of the air before it smacked him in the face. “Take that to East City. You’ll need it to get into military headquarters. Do you have a suit in that suitcase?”
Leon nodded, still frozen in shock. “It’s a school uniform- ”
“Good. Wear it. There’s a man there named Mustang. He’s a colonel. Tell him that Edward Elric sent you. Then give him the watch. Don’t say anything else.”
“Give him the watch?” Leon repeated. “You want me to turn myself in,” he realized.
“To Mustang. No one else.”
“He’ll send me to the stockade!” Leon protested.
Ed shrugged. “He might. Depends on what kind of day he’s having when you get there, and whether or not you decide to do anything stupid on the way or, you know” Ed waved his hand in the air “anything else stupid beyond what you’ve done already.”
“He’ll take my watch away,” Leon said, clutching the trinket like a lifeline.
Ed gave a frustrated sigh. “Small price to pay considering that it never belonged to you in the first place.”
“But I won’t be able to help anyone without this watch. I probably won’t even be able to perform transmutations!”
Ed shook his head. “Alchemy isn’t a gift. It’s a skill. Didn’t they teach you anything at the university? The alchemy isn’t in the watch. You have what it takes. It will take time, and a lot of studying, but if you want to help people without having to lie to them, then that’s the way you need to do it.”
“How do I know I can trust you? Or this Mustang guy?”
“You don’t. You’re just going to have to decide for yourself if the chance to do things officially is worth the risk of being locked up. You broke laws, Leon. You impersonated a state alchemist. Even if you did the wrong things for the right reason it’s still wrong and you have a debt to work off. The cost to the state just to send me out here-” but Leon was starting to turn pale so Ed decided to spare him. “Let’s just say I incur a lot of expenses when I travel. It will be up to Mustang to decide how you pay for your crimes. My advice to you is to be polite when you meet with him. Call him ‘sir’ a lot, or ‘colonel’. He likes that.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” Leon asked.
“Nah.”
“But I’ll be recognized at the train station.”
“Then walk to East City!” Ed told him, exasperated. “Or…wear a hat or something. You’ve managed to stay practically invisible in a town of less than a thousand people for two weeks. How hard can it be for you to get on a train without being recognized?”
“Um…okay.”
“Listen, go or don’t go. You run and you’ll be a fugitive. You go to East city and see the colonel and you get a chance to make things right and maybe, just maybe, you get to make a difference. Personally, I don’t give a damn what you do.”
With that, Ed turned his back on Leon Mueller. He put his hands together. The bars blocking the rogue alchemists’ escape receded back into the stones from which he had created them. Ed waited until he heard the squelching sound of retreating footsteps, then he undid Mason’s bindings as well. He even removed every speck of dirt from the deputy’s uniform.
Mason stared at him, incredulous.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Go after him.”
“I’m not going to stop him if that’s what you think,” Mason said. He was frowning, half defiant, half confused.
“Did I ask you to?”
Ed coughed into his hand. When he drew his palm away from his mouth he saw that it was bright red. He covered his surprise at the shear amount and wiped the evidence off on his red coat.
“I thought that you might want to follow your friend. You know, to make sure he doesn’t run into any trouble.”
Mason hesitated, probably wondering if this was a trick.
“You should go.”
The deputy’s body began to move, but his eyes stayed locked on Ed.
Ed broke eye contact, turned his head away to cough again, a deep, gagging spasm.
“Are you going to be alright?” Mason asked him.
“What the hell do you care?” Ed snapped. “If you’re going then go already!”
Mason lingered a moment longer. “Thank you,” he said. Then he broke into a run, and vanished around the corner of the nearest building.
Ed stood looking down the alley after him. All of the energy and tension from a few moments ago was gone, and with it, all the heat in the world seemed to have vanished as well. Ed yanked his hood over his head, then pulled his coat tight around his body, folded his arms protectively over his chest, and shivered.
The walk back to the sheriff’s station seemed to take Ed a thousand years. He fully expected Mason Biggs, sporting a long white beard, to be waiting for him when he arrived.
The reality was so eerily similar to what Ed’s had sarcastically imagined that it froze him in his tracks.
“Who are you?” Ed demanded of the elderly man who was sitting behind the sheriff’s desk, wearing a deputy’s uniform and badge.
The older man regarded him calmly, as if this was a question that people asked him every day. “Oh,” he said, “so this is what you look like when you’re awake.”
Ed’s memory dutifully, if belatedly, spat out a name. “Oh, right, Walter. Hello.”
“Hello,” Walter responded. “Say, did you know that you’re dripping water all over the floor?”
“Oh, uh no.” Ed realized that he must have forgotten to take off his coat. He wandered back into the coatroom, which he must have entered through but couldn’t remember; he’d been so lost in thought.
Ed fumbled to get his arms out of the sleeves while Walter looked on, his thick fingers knitted together in his lap. “Well, did you get what you came here for?”
Ed thought about that as he stood there, holding his coat by the collar, arm poised in midair. “Yeah…well…yeah, I think so.” After a few attempts he managed to hang his coat on one of the pegs.
“Good for you.”
Ed decided that he liked Walter. There was something very soothing about the way he spoke and the way that he held himself, something wise and ancient.
The creases in Walter’s forehead deepened as he watched Ed walk in front of the desk. “I think you should sit down,” he suggested.
“I’ve been getting that a lot lately,” Ed mentioned.
Walter gave him a thoughtful “hmmm,” but didn’t push the issue.
Ed glanced toward the stove, which was lit and radiating cheerful warmth. He noticed that there was a chair already positioned in front of the stove, like it had been waiting for him.
Oh. Well, that was nice.
Walter bent his head toward his work, licked the tip of his pencil and began to write. The soft scratching sound of pencil against paper was familiar and soothing.
Ed sat. He folded his arms around himself, either trying to keep his body heat in or trying to keep the rest of the world out. He wasn’t sure which.
Even through the thick material of his clothes the stove quickly warmed his flesh and turned his automail limbs into glowing sources of heat themselves. Still, there seemed to be a block of ice at Ed’s core that the fire couldn’t touch. He shivered and coughed and hugged himself tighter until Walter got up from the sheriff’s desk and brought him a blanket from one of the cells.
“Good time for a nap,” Walter suggested, inclining his head towards the cells with a conspiratorial wink.
Ed stared dumbly at the blanket for a moment before he could remember how to use it. He unfolded it and wrapped it clumsily around his shoulders.
“No thanks. I want to wait for Al.”
“He’s your kid brother, right?” Walter asked, scooting the sheriff’s chair around the front of the desk. He sat down with a heavy sigh, the kind that Ed associated with older, heavyset men. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, fingers interlaced in front of him.
“Yeah.”
“Seems like a good kid.”
“He is.”
“Awfully nice of the military to post you two to the same assignment. Don’t they usually try to keep family members apart?”
“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t- um, Al’s not military.”
Walter’s bushy eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “Oh. Really? Well, the way he talks about you I can tell that he’s very proud of his older brother. Seems like he wants to follow in your footsteps.”
It occurred to Ed that he should be bothered by Walter’s questions, or at least try to avoid answering anything too directly, but Ed was so tired and there was something so disarming and kind about the old man that Ed relaxed his defenses.
“I don’t want him to,” Ed said firmly. Then he realized how cruel he must sound, like he didn’t want his brother around. He corrected himself, “I mean that I don’t want him to join the military. One dog in the family is enough.”
“You don’t like working for the military?”
Ed didn’t have to think hard about that answer at all. “I hate it.”
Walter leaned forward, brows drawn together. There was a question in his kind blue eyes, and Ed answered it before he could ask. He told Walter how Colonel Mustang had recruited him into the military. It was something that he rarely talked about, because it led to questions about his family and his automail and a hundred other questions to which no one needed to know the answers.
When Ed was finished answering Walter’s questions about the military he found himself still speaking, as if he’d lost the ability to stop. The floodgates had been opened and the pressure under which Ed’s words had been kept was too great now for them to be shut. Ed watched himself from the sidelines, aware of what was happening but powerless to do anything.
Ed answered questions that he’d never been asked. He answered questions that he wished he’d been asked, and questions that people had asked years ago. He talked at length about things he’d kept bottled up inside. He talked as if by speaking he could purge himself of every rotten, sinful thing he’d ever done. He talked until his voice gave out, until he began coughing. With every cough a sharp pain lanced through his chest, but still he kept coughing. He coughed and he watched the crease between Walter’s eyebrows grow deeper and deeper.
There came a breaking point, and Walter pulled him to his feet. With one hand on Ed’s left bicep and the other on the back of Ed's neck the deputy guided him to one of the cells and sat him down on a bunk. As soon as he was down Ed collapsed onto his side, too spent to care what he looked like, too miserable to put on a strong front.
Walter manipulated his limbs into a more comfortable position and stacked thin pillows under his head. When he’d done all he could he left for a moment, and Ed could hear him talking to someone on the other end of a phone line, but he couldn’t make out the words over the thick noise of his breath wheezing in and out of him.
When Walter was finished with his phone call he ambled back into the cell. He seemed relaxed and his movements were unhurried, matter-of-fact even as he knelt by Ed’s side. He said, “Doc’s going to come and have a look at you,” and he might as well have been talking about a broken faucet or a loose floor board, like Ed was a tool or a piece of furniture, easily damaged and easily fixed. Well, he reflected, it was partially true.
“You want to tell me a little more about this place you grew up? Resembool?”
Ed drew breath to speak, but the words got lost on the way to his mouth. Before too long he forgot what the question had been.
Walter patted him on the leg. “S’okay,” and then began to talk to him in a low, steady voice. The words rose and fell in the familiar cadence of a bedtime story, and even though they washed over Ed instead of sticking in his memory he felt comforted by the sound of the old man’s voice.
Ed didn’t remember falling asleep but he woke to a stranger in a white coat bending over him.
“Easy,” Walter said, because Ed had immediately sucked in a surprised breath, which started him coughing again. “Ed, this is doctor Nikola.”
The doctor helped him sit up. Then he pressed a cold circled against the skin of Ed’s back and asked him to breath deep. The doctor might as well have asked him to spin his head completely around. It was all Ed could do to get enough air between coughs.
Next Ed found his forehead cradled in a big, warm palm. Ed loathed the idea of strangers putting their hands on him, but the doctor’s touch was clinical and detached, unemotional, so Ed relaxed into it.
“Okay,” the doctor said, like he’d come to some kind of big, important conclusion. Ed felt the deep rumble of that one word in his chest, like an earthquake.
Then the doctor scooped him up off the bunk like he weighed nothing at all, like his automail was aluminum and his bones were feathers. The room spun. Ed closed his eyes. He thought that the doctor might be taking him upstairs but he soon felt cold raindrops, sharp as needles, falling on his face. Ed opened his eyes and followed the blinding white sky as it swayed out of sight, lost above the eaves of the bathhouse.
The doctor’s boots thudded heavily on the wooden floor. Ed felt the vibration through his entire body.
“We need a tub,” Ed heard Walter say, followed by a shout and chorus of hurried footsteps. Ed thought he picked out Samantha’s voice somewhere in the din, but he couldn’t see her so he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined it.
Ed tried to keep track of what was happening around him but his mind and body didn’t seem to belong to him anymore. He felt the doctor set down on a bench. Although he had stopped moving Ed still felt the room swinging sickeningly around him. He dropped his head between his legs, barely aware that there were two people on either side of him, holding him upright, and a basin between his feet on the floor. Ed would have happily stayed that way for hours, but someone gave a signal that Ed couldn’t read and suddenly the hands that had been holding him were tugging at his limbs, undressing him. They removed his boots and socks. They took his shirt next, then his leather trousers, leaving him only his shorts and tank top. Ed was overcome by a strange, paralyzing anxiety about his metal limbs. He thought if they saw them they would know and his heart began to race. He tried to pull away but his limbs were heavy, like he was moving underwater, or moving through a dream.
Ed heard voices, male and female, and someone who sounded like Al. He wanted to call out to his brother. He wanted to ask what was happening but he couldn’t speak, just like in so many of his dreams.
The doctor picked Ed up and carried him to a waiting bathtub. He lowered Ed gently in.
Ed found his voice.
He started to scream.
Hot! Too hot! They were burning him!
Ed kicked and thrashed, the desperate flailing of a dying animal, fueled by primeval energy. He felt automail connect with flesh.
“Don’t let him put his hands together!”
That was Al’s voice. Ed hadn’t realized that was what he was trying to do until his brother said so.
“Al!” he shouted, his voice a ragged mess “Help! Don’t let them do this! Al!”
But Al’s big leather gauntlets were the ones holding him in the bath and keeping his right palm from making contact with his left. Hot tears of betrayal leaked down Ed’s cheeks and the fight drained out of him. What Ed thought at first was boiling water was actually freezing cold. The boiling heat was inside of him.
Ed looked up helplessly at Al’s expressionless helmet and realized that he had no idea what his brother was thinking. For perhaps the first time he was struck by Al’s menacing appearance, this nightmarish form that Ed had trapped him in. Ed was frightened by it, and frightened also by the ring of strange faces surrounding him. Ed made feeble attempts to escape the tub and their scrutinizing glares. A dozen hands moved to stop him. He sank back, confused and helpless. Someone placed a washcloth on his head and he didn’t have the energy to shake it off.
“Help me, Al,” he begged through chattering teeth.
“I am helping you, brother,” Al told him.
There were swirls of red-orange in the water. Ed’s lips and tongue tasted like copper.
No, Ed thought, you’re drowning me.
He couldn’t breathe. Even though his head was out of the water, they were drowning him.
To be continued... part 11
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