FMA -- Bloodlines
Title: Bloodlines
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters: Team Mustang, Al
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,009
Warnings: language, major spoilers for '03/CoS
Summary: It's more than the coat that they've got in common.
Author's Note: Speedfic which doesn't come close to measuring up to phindus's heartbreaking sketch, and which sort of accidentally turned into a Frozen Flame prequel. O__o
BLOODLINES
Al-tiny, warm, breathing, blinking, definitively-not-steely Al-smiles and flips another page of the Worst Handwriting in the Office winner for three years running.
Havoc picks at the braiding on his uniform and thinks that it’s just so damn sad. Is this some kind of fucked-up corollary to the Elric brothers’ special brand of equivalent exchange? Can only one of them ever be whole?
He clears his throat, and Al glances up, and Breda and Fuery and the Lieutenant glance over. Falman’s fetching more of Ed’s old reports for them to gather around the office table and reminisce about.
“I just, uh,” Havoc says, rubbing at the back of his neck a little. “I just wanted to say I think the boss’d be thrilled. I think he’d be real proud of you. He loved you like the sun and the stars, so I think it would’ve meant a lot to him to know you came all this way trying to figure out who he was.”
Al blinks his huge brown eyes. His expression’s gone completely blank-Ed could never do that; Ed was like an open book with illuminated letters and a voice reading the text aloud in a shrill voice. When Ed felt something, you damn well knew it.
“Lieutenant Havoc,” Al says, “is there a reason you’re referring to my brother in the past tense?”
The silence doesn’t fall so much as slam down and mercilessly smother everything in its path.
A furtive survey of his colleagues’ faces confirms Havoc’s suspicion that none of them has the heart to say what needs to be said.
Fortunately, Lieutenant Hawkeye has the balls.
“Alphonse,” she says slowly, “I know that it’s difficult, but you should at least consider the possibility that Edward is d-”
“But he’s not,” Al says. “You don’t know him like I do. Well, you-know him differently than I-well-it doesn’t matter. I can assure you that my brother is very much alive.”
Hawkeye’s voice softens; her eyes already have. “It has been a struggle for all of us to accept that that isn’t the case.” Al starts to shake his head, progressively faster until the end of his ponytail snaps back and forth. Hawkeye raises her voice just a fraction and forges ahead: “It helped me a great deal to get some closure. We could all go together to the cemetery; there’s a grave for h-”
“There isn’t a grave,” Al says. “There’s a headstone. Stones are inherently meaningless, and there’s nothing sacred about a stone without a-without a body. There’s no body because Brother didn’t leave one, and he didn’t leave one because he’s not dead.” He starts worrying at the wrist of one little white glove, rubbing the hem between his thumb and his first finger, tugging and twisting harder and harder as words keep pouring out of his mouth. “Brother isn’t like other people; he doesn’t give up, and he doesn’t give in, and the only reason he’d stop fighting would be if he was dead-but if he was dead, there’d be a body, and there isn’t. He has to be alive; it’s the only logical explanation for the phenomena that were observed.”
Fuery looks like he’s going to cry. Breda looks like he’s going to quit. Hawkeye’s jaw is tight, and Havoc feels like shit.
“Okay,” he says. “So where is he?”
Al goes very still.
He looks like a goddamn puppy-he’s all huge, pleading eyes and squishy cheeks and brown hair, and his head’s tilted slightly to one side, and his feet are too big for him-
But then his eyes start to narrow. Puppy, yeah, but there’s some wilderness left in him. There’s a little bit of wolf, and it’s not going down without a fight.
“I don’t know,” Al says, and every consonant is razor-sharp somehow. “But I’m going to find him. I can swear that to you right now-I’m going to find my brother. I know what I’m saying, and I understand the gravity of it. I’m not a child.” He plants his tiny, white-gloved hands on the table and stands so quickly that his chair skids back. “I will do whatever it takes; I will go to hell or further, and I will bring him back. He would have given anything for me, and this is equivalent, and he is alive, and when I prove it to you, you’re all going to wish you’d had a little bit of faith instead of being such f-” His voice breaks.
He swallows hard, and then he shouts, and he barely even sounds like Al-
“You’ll wish you hadn’t been such fucking idiots!”
There’s one last flare of blood-red, and then the door slams so violently that a framed certificate falls off of the wall.
“That could’ve gone better,” Havoc says into the silence.
“Could’ve been worse,” Breda says.
“We’re horrible people,” Fuery says faintly. “We just tried to explain to an orphaned kid that his big brother-that his idol-that… oh, God.”
Hawkeye presses her lips together, crosses the room, and picks up the certificate. The glass is cracked. It occurs to Havoc, with an eerie sort of intuition, that this particular plaque was one of Mustang’s-that it’s something left over and abandoned and kind of purposeless now, like…
Well, like them. And like poor Al most of all.
The door opens again, and Falman walks in with his arms full of manila folders. It’s tough to tell whether the general ambiance of dejection registers.
“Alphonse asked me to draw him a map of the northern outposts,” Falman says.
Breda sits up a hell of a lot straighter at that. “No shit?”
Havoc must have cigarettes stashed in this uniform somewhere. Anywhere-? “I don’t think he’s capable of bullshitting-are you, Warrant Officer?”
“Certainly not,” Falman says.
“Oh,” Fuery says. “Oh, dear.”
In weird unison, they all turn to look at Hawkeye.
Wordlessly, she lifts the broken frame and affixes it to the wall again.
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters: Team Mustang, Al
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,009
Warnings: language, major spoilers for '03/CoS
Summary: It's more than the coat that they've got in common.
Author's Note: Speedfic which doesn't come close to measuring up to phindus's heartbreaking sketch, and which sort of accidentally turned into a Frozen Flame prequel. O__o
BLOODLINES
Al-tiny, warm, breathing, blinking, definitively-not-steely Al-smiles and flips another page of the Worst Handwriting in the Office winner for three years running.
Havoc picks at the braiding on his uniform and thinks that it’s just so damn sad. Is this some kind of fucked-up corollary to the Elric brothers’ special brand of equivalent exchange? Can only one of them ever be whole?
He clears his throat, and Al glances up, and Breda and Fuery and the Lieutenant glance over. Falman’s fetching more of Ed’s old reports for them to gather around the office table and reminisce about.
“I just, uh,” Havoc says, rubbing at the back of his neck a little. “I just wanted to say I think the boss’d be thrilled. I think he’d be real proud of you. He loved you like the sun and the stars, so I think it would’ve meant a lot to him to know you came all this way trying to figure out who he was.”
Al blinks his huge brown eyes. His expression’s gone completely blank-Ed could never do that; Ed was like an open book with illuminated letters and a voice reading the text aloud in a shrill voice. When Ed felt something, you damn well knew it.
“Lieutenant Havoc,” Al says, “is there a reason you’re referring to my brother in the past tense?”
The silence doesn’t fall so much as slam down and mercilessly smother everything in its path.
A furtive survey of his colleagues’ faces confirms Havoc’s suspicion that none of them has the heart to say what needs to be said.
Fortunately, Lieutenant Hawkeye has the balls.
“Alphonse,” she says slowly, “I know that it’s difficult, but you should at least consider the possibility that Edward is d-”
“But he’s not,” Al says. “You don’t know him like I do. Well, you-know him differently than I-well-it doesn’t matter. I can assure you that my brother is very much alive.”
Hawkeye’s voice softens; her eyes already have. “It has been a struggle for all of us to accept that that isn’t the case.” Al starts to shake his head, progressively faster until the end of his ponytail snaps back and forth. Hawkeye raises her voice just a fraction and forges ahead: “It helped me a great deal to get some closure. We could all go together to the cemetery; there’s a grave for h-”
“There isn’t a grave,” Al says. “There’s a headstone. Stones are inherently meaningless, and there’s nothing sacred about a stone without a-without a body. There’s no body because Brother didn’t leave one, and he didn’t leave one because he’s not dead.” He starts worrying at the wrist of one little white glove, rubbing the hem between his thumb and his first finger, tugging and twisting harder and harder as words keep pouring out of his mouth. “Brother isn’t like other people; he doesn’t give up, and he doesn’t give in, and the only reason he’d stop fighting would be if he was dead-but if he was dead, there’d be a body, and there isn’t. He has to be alive; it’s the only logical explanation for the phenomena that were observed.”
Fuery looks like he’s going to cry. Breda looks like he’s going to quit. Hawkeye’s jaw is tight, and Havoc feels like shit.
“Okay,” he says. “So where is he?”
Al goes very still.
He looks like a goddamn puppy-he’s all huge, pleading eyes and squishy cheeks and brown hair, and his head’s tilted slightly to one side, and his feet are too big for him-
But then his eyes start to narrow. Puppy, yeah, but there’s some wilderness left in him. There’s a little bit of wolf, and it’s not going down without a fight.
“I don’t know,” Al says, and every consonant is razor-sharp somehow. “But I’m going to find him. I can swear that to you right now-I’m going to find my brother. I know what I’m saying, and I understand the gravity of it. I’m not a child.” He plants his tiny, white-gloved hands on the table and stands so quickly that his chair skids back. “I will do whatever it takes; I will go to hell or further, and I will bring him back. He would have given anything for me, and this is equivalent, and he is alive, and when I prove it to you, you’re all going to wish you’d had a little bit of faith instead of being such f-” His voice breaks.
He swallows hard, and then he shouts, and he barely even sounds like Al-
“You’ll wish you hadn’t been such fucking idiots!”
There’s one last flare of blood-red, and then the door slams so violently that a framed certificate falls off of the wall.
“That could’ve gone better,” Havoc says into the silence.
“Could’ve been worse,” Breda says.
“We’re horrible people,” Fuery says faintly. “We just tried to explain to an orphaned kid that his big brother-that his idol-that… oh, God.”
Hawkeye presses her lips together, crosses the room, and picks up the certificate. The glass is cracked. It occurs to Havoc, with an eerie sort of intuition, that this particular plaque was one of Mustang’s-that it’s something left over and abandoned and kind of purposeless now, like…
Well, like them. And like poor Al most of all.
The door opens again, and Falman walks in with his arms full of manila folders. It’s tough to tell whether the general ambiance of dejection registers.
“Alphonse asked me to draw him a map of the northern outposts,” Falman says.
Breda sits up a hell of a lot straighter at that. “No shit?”
Havoc must have cigarettes stashed in this uniform somewhere. Anywhere-? “I don’t think he’s capable of bullshitting-are you, Warrant Officer?”
“Certainly not,” Falman says.
“Oh,” Fuery says. “Oh, dear.”
In weird unison, they all turn to look at Hawkeye.
Wordlessly, she lifts the broken frame and affixes it to the wall again.