FMA -- Spectra (Part III)
Title: Spectra
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 16,200 (4,800 this chapter)
Warnings: language; ALL OF THE SPOILERS for '03/CoS
Summary: A prism with three faces. (Colorblindness/soulmates AU.)
Author's Note: Three guesses who meant to rewatch all of the relevant parts of the end of '03 and CoS but ended up too fucking depressed to care if the fic details were accurate and made stuff up instead~! :'D
SPECTRA
PART 3
Al thinks about blood a lot.
And white.
Sometimes both at once.
He thinks about hinges, and the scrape of steel, and about liminal spaces, and about a little flower shop on the corner of a street.
“You could try Rosé,” Colonel Mustang-he doesn’t like it when Al calls him that, but nothing else sounds right out loud-says. “The last time I spoke with her, she couldn’t remember much-she said they were in the sewers, and then she faded out again; she thinks it might have been some kind of alchemical version of hypnosis. Ed sent her up the stairs to the church and told her he was going back to ‘finish it up’. More of it might have come back to her by now.”
Al taps his pencil eraser against the page of his notebook. Brother frequently wrote in pen. Al aspires to that kind of confidence. “I tried to go down there-to the city underneath the temple. It was cordoned off. Military police. I tried name-dropping, but they didn’t believe me.”
Colonel Mustang smiles thinly, stands, and crosses to the desk against the wall. Al already knows that the first drawer is full of bottles of brandy in various stages of consumption; apparently the second is full of sheaves of papers and envelopes and other stationery-related miscellanea.
The colonel rummages-well, rummages isn’t the right word; Roy Mustang has probably never rummaged in his life; every motion he makes is considered, controlled, and deliberate-through the collection and draws out a stack of photographs rubber-banded together. He looks over at Al, and it’s a wonder anyone survived an encounter with him back when he had both eyes to incinerate people with.
“Why do you trust me?” Mustang asks.
“Because Brother did,” Al says. “And that didn’t come easy to him. Based on the ranting in the margins of a lot of his notes, it seems like you lied to him more than once, but he knew that when the chips were down, you’d back his play. I don’t suppose he ever told you, but that mattered to him a lot.”
Colonel Mustang holds the stack of photos in the palm of his hand-he hasn’t gone so far as to stretch it out and snatch it away, but the import of a prize that Al has to earn is unmistakable.
“And?” Mustang says.
Al eyes the photographs. They’re wrapped in a sheet of tissue paper to protect the prints from the rubber band. He can’t make out any of the images.
“And you were a commander,” he says, slowly. “A man of action-or at least of instigating the actions of others. You’ve been here a long time now, out of all of the games. I think you miss it. And I think you’re tired of waiting.”
Mustang’s smile is only fractionally warmer than the blizzard Al trekked through to get here. “And?”
“And,” Al says, meeting his intractable eye, “you’re just about all I’ve got. Winry’s the only other person on the planet who believes he might have made it-and she’ll deny it, if you ask her. She says she let it go, and that things happen, and all of that, but there’s stuff in her workshop that can’t be meant for anyone else. Besides which-she wouldn’t have reached out to you if she didn’t have a reason that outweighed her own feelings.” He raises his hands. “May I?”
Mustang steps forward and deposits the photographs into Al’s waiting palms.
“I wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into,” Mustang says.
Al unwraps the pictures carefully. The first few are of the outside of the old temple; that’s familiar enough that he can flip through them swiftly to get to the ones edged with shadow-like they were taken from a doorway, or some kind of arch. The foot of the stairs that Colonel Mustang just mentioned, perhaps?
The reports weren’t exaggerated. There’s an entire city down there.
“I have no idea what I’m getting into,” Al says. “But I know where I’m coming from.”
“That’s something,” Mustang says. He pulls up a chair next to where Al’s been sitting on the floor, leans down, and points at the photograph in Al’s hands. “I went directly to the theater first-that’s where Rosé said they last were before he ushered her out, and it seemed like he was headed back in that direction. After that I made a fairly full circuit documenting everything I could. There was blood in the elevator, and half of the floor was destroyed-like someone had taken an enormous bite out of it. Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkeye says that one of the homunculi is still down there. I suppose he’s feeding off the Stones.”
“Delightful,” Al says. He eyes the colonel. “I thought there was only one Philosopher’s Stone.”
“Only one of any substance,” Mustang says, “as far as I can tell. They imbrued you with it in Ishval while you were in the armor-attached it to you somehow. I suspect you did something drastic, in recompense whereof Edward did something even worse.”
“He wouldn’t have let me one-up his sacrifice,” Al says. He’s made it to one of the ballroom shots-he squints at the rich, draping velvet and the rows of lights, willing himself to remember something, anything, some fragment, some dream…
Nothing comes.
“I’ll go to Liore next,” he says. “It’ll be nice to see Rosé, whether or not anything has come back to her. It’s been a while.”
Mustang looks at him for a long moment, then stands up and crosses back to the desk. “I don’t have much else to offer you,” Mustang says. He sorts through a few more papers and retrieves a small set that’s stapled together. “These are the only transcripts I have-there wasn’t time to do many interviews between when they let me out of the hospital and when they served me the demotion.”
Al takes the papers, looking up into the dark eye framed by the curve of the patch.
“I’m going to get Brother back,” he says.
He doesn’t say Or die trying, though he thinks they both can hear it.
The earthquake in Liore is what gets reported, but the earthquake is only the beginning.
In the aftermath, Al feels like a live wire in a downpour-shorting, sparking, feeble, frantic. Rosé puts her hand on his shoulder and guides him just inside the orphanage. When they’re out of the sunlight, the mountain of a man beside her lays one huge finger gently underneath Al’s chin and lifts his face up, the better to start peering at his eyes.
“Mr. Armstrong,” Al says, because of course that’s who it is, and that almost sounds right on his tongue, “is there a telegraph office here?”
Armstrong must have known his brother very well. Otherwise, he wouldn’t hesitate.
“Is it terrifically urgent?” he asks. “I think it would be ideal to have you examined by a medical professional as soon as possible, to be sure there aren’t any-”
Al swallows It’s not the first time I’ve passed out after dividing up my soul, as that might make it worse instead of better. “It is a bit urgent, honestly.”
Armstrong and Rosé exchange glances. The little boy hiked up in Rosé’s arms tugs at her hair.
“Very well,” Armstrong rumbles.
Al tries to keep it short, because characters are expensive, but there’s so much to say.
WENT THRU SAW HIM TALKED TO HIM STOP. WE WERE RIGHT AND IT WILL WORK STOP. COME TO CENTRAL STOP. PLEASE STOP. NOT STOP STOP BUT TELEGRAM STOP.
Darn. Oh, well. In a few days, he might not need money anymore anyway.
From the moment he hits the foot of the stairs in the underground city, with Wrath’s hair whipping around the corner just before him, everything becomes a blur.
He’s been thinking a lot about blood, and liminal spaces, and unnumbered sharp black fingertips extending from the screaming silence of the white-
His guts freeze solid as the almost-familiar monster’s teeth sink into Wrath’s sides. The gore gushes out of the strange little creature who’d turned into something like his friend-spills, pours, floods-and Al’s whole body turns to dry ice; the vapor chokes him; their eyes meet across the huge expanse of cracked and fissured stone-
Wrath is going to die whether Al uses this array or not.
It ought to mean something-a life. Even one that’s stolen; even one that shouldn’t have begun. Even one born out of arrogance and fed on agony straight through.
Al owes him that much-meaning.
So he runs towards the hell he almost knows and claps his hands together and slaps them on the floor.
The illumination blinds him for more than a moment; for what feels like years-
Everything shudders around him; everything happens so fast-like time itself can’t contain this possibility; like this universe rejects the notion that Ed should come careening back into it in a flying machine and crash-land in a plume of smoke-
And it’s only several minute-hours later, when they’re forging through the shattered streets, that Al realizes why his heart still feels so hollow when it’s gotten everything it wants:
Ed hasn’t touched him.
Ed hasn’t touched anyone-hasn’t initiated it, anyway; Winry hurled herself at him.
Either Al did something wrong-something terribly wrong-
But Sheska didn’t even get a handshake.
It’s deliberate.
It’s calculated.
Ed’s not going to stay.
Ed’s going back there, so he’s trying not to get attached. He’s trying not to let himself get too close to any of them, so that everyone will hurt less when he leaves.
Suddenly so much of Colonel Mustang’s long-term frustration with Ed’s stubborn magnanimity makes perfect sense.
Al has to approach this from an angle that’s indirect-right? He has to work sideways; he has to get to the point by first moving all the way around it, so that Brother won’t expect him to zero in.
“Is it true?” Al asks. “The thing about the colors. Can you see them?”
“Yeah,” Ed says. His stride doesn’t falter. “But everyone can, over there. So maybe I just brought it with me.”
“He can still see them,” Al says. “Colonel Mustang, I mean.”
Ed doesn’t slow his pace a whit, but the fingers of his left hand slowly curl into a fist.
“Good,” Ed says. “It’s good that he made it.”
Al opens his mouth for He’s supposed to be here, but-
Gunfire strafes the pavement; Ed’s left arm hooks around Al’s shoulder, and he throws them both to the ground.
Al can’t breathe for a long second-the smoke doesn’t help; his heart leapt halfway up his throat and stuck there, slamming, battering at walls-
Ed shakes him, gently. “Al-hey-”
He drags in a shuddering breath that scrapes at his mouth, his tongue, his esophagus-burns in his lungs and lingers there like a poison cloud. “Y-yeah-”
Ed’s hand stays on his shoulder for a long second, and Ed’s eyes fix on his. Al can’t tell what’s deeper-the shadows in them, or the shadows underneath.
“You okay?” Ed asks.
Al holds his forearm over his mouth and coughs into it, trying to clear his throat. Ed’s gaze lingers on the coat sleeve, and the smile that toys with the corners of his mouth is an awful, cruel, bitter sort of thing.
If Al hadn’t seen pictures of the time in between, he wouldn’t recognize this boy.
Not even a boy-not anymore. Maybe not for a long, long time.
“Yeah,” Al says, clearer this time. “I’m fine.”
Ed helps Al up, brushes at the back of the coat-and then withdraws his hand abruptly and lets it fall at his side.
“Right,” Ed says. “Let’s sort this motherfucker out.”
He musters a real smile this time, so Al offers him one back.
Al had heard that it’s typical for Roy Mustang to make an excessively dramatic entrance, but he didn’t realize that an alchemically jury-rigged hot air balloon wouldn’t even make Ed blink.
“’Bout fuckin’ time,” Ed says, clambering up onto the platform, and there’s a flash of a grin so wild that Al’s heart flits past a scheduled beat.
“I happen to think my timing is impeccable,” Colonel Mustang says. A dark eye has no business being that bright, but he’s managed it somehow. His hair flutters just in front of it, and he slants a little smile. “I always knew you were alive.”
“Can’t help it,” Ed says. “Too damn stubborn to die.” He squares his shoulders and curls his automail hand. “So what do you say we blow this shit sky-high, and then you tell me what’s up with the new accessory?”
Colonel Mustang’s smile broadens slightly, tilting further until it’s not really a smile at all-it is unmistakably a smirk.
“Done,” he says.
A rain of bullets pours out of the body of the ship, and they all hit the deck. Colonel Mustang wrenches himself upright first, taking cover behind a jagged pillar, and Ed’s only moments behind him-
Al scrambles to follow, only to stop in his tracks as Mustang-
Slings fire from his fingertips.
Like it’s natural.
Like it’s nothing.
Like it’s an art.
Like the whole world was built to bend around his hands, made subject to his will.
Ed’s metal hand-Ed’s metal hand; it’s cold and hard and far too strong-latches onto Al’s arm, and Ed hauls him sideways just before bullets split the air again-
Al doesn’t know what to look at: Ed’s grim intensity or Colonel Mustang’s astonishing concentration or the source of the ongoing gunfire or-
“Shit,” Ed breathes, more like a prayer than a curse. He starts to reach towards Colonel Mustang and then doesn’t finish extending his arm-just leaves it hanging halfway between them. “Cover me,” he says to the colonel. “She didn’t expect us to put up a fight.”
Mustang’s smile doesn’t light his eyes. “She must not know you very well.”
Ed’s gaze settles on the cavernous hole of a doorway leading into the ship.
“She killed my dad,” he says, and Al’s heart drops-straight out his diaphragm, through his stomach, through his guts, and it doesn’t stop; the ground’s a hundred feet away, and it just plummets heedlessly- “I don’t even know how many more.”
Colonel Mustang lifts his hand, fingers poised, mouth set in a line.
“Go,” he says. “I’ve got you.”
Ed almost smiles.
He claps his hands together, then smacks one palm against the grille of his automail, and Al’s tortured heart skips one more time-the boy who can transmute without a circle draws a broad blade out of the surface of Winry’s masterpiece, and it wouldn’t take Teacher’s training to see that he knows how to use it.
Before Al can gasp in enough breath to speak-to offer surprise or admiration or solace or backup-Ed’s off and running towards the dreck-edged maw of the open ship.
“Wait!” chokes out of Al’s throat in a cracking scream, and he plants his feet to fling himself after-to follow Ed into that ship, into any cruel unknown; into the depths of any hell that’s ever been-
Colonel Mustang’s arm in front of his chest bars him, and he scrabbles against the wool of the uniform sleeve, but the bastard’s grip is sound.
“Let him,” Mustang says. “He’s not-”
“I just got him back,” Al says, twisting hard, taking more satisfaction than he should from the flash of pain that crosses the Colonel’s face. “You can let him go again if you want to, but don’t you dare try and stop me.”
Mustang stares at him for a long moment, fingers still clenched in the fabric of Al’s coat.
“I know what to do,” Al says. “Trust me. I just need you to get him out of there.”
Mustang’s eye on his is almost too intense to bear, but Alphonse Elric has done worse for less, and he will not lose this time.
Mustang nods once.
Al jerks free of his grasp and pelts towards the ship; over the echoes of the shells and the rush of the air, he can hear Mustang’s boots pounding after him.
The breached ship welcomes them with flares of light from the gunfire-it’s deafeningly loud this close, but Ed darts around the stream of bullets, undaunted and so graceful that Al’s breath sticks watching him twirl out of the jaws of death, flipping clear of peril’s claws without his sharp-eyed focus wavering for a fraction of a move.
That is-right up until he sees Al framed in the open side of the ship and stumbles hard.
The woman with the pale hair, half-fused to some kind of armor, with the monstrous black fluid climbing up her face and the huge gun dreck-welded to her arm, presses her advantage with a knife of a grin.
The snap of Mustang’s fingers barely registers-but the torrent of flame surging towards her startles Al and Ed both back to life.
“Get out!” Brother shouts, dropping back into a defensive crouch.
“No,” Al says, and the adrenaline suffuses him straight through, head to toe to tingling fingertips, and he presses his palms together, digs in his heels, and crafts an array inside his head, funneling it through the lines inked out on his gloves.
He slaps one hand against the wall of the ship just beside him: cold metal’s malleable, and a pillar of it juts up next to the armored woman-she’s fast enough to avoid it hitting her directly, but it throws her balance, and she has to stagger three full steps to find her feet.
“She killed my dad.”
Al claps again; this time he aims a spike right for her. This time he wants blood.
She swivels aside, and it arcs past her harmlessly, but Mustang corrals her with a thin wall of flames on the other side, forcing her back before she can take a firing position again. Ed, knees bent and eyes alight, races towards her, slashing with his bladed arm, and she turns her dripping black machine-gun on him-Al fractures the floor behind her, and she wavers again, firing wide.
Turning away from your target invites defeat, but he has to catch Colonel Mustang’s eye.
Mustang-advancing like a vengeful angel, wreathed in flame, cavalry skirt flooding out behind him like a banner-glances towards him once.
Al jerks his head in Brother’s direction. In the circles not fooled by the histrionics, Mustang’s famed for intellect. It’s time for him to live up to that reputation-there’s no opportunity to mouth the word Now.
Al thinks he sees a glint of comprehension in that single too-dark eye.
He claps his hands, drops to his knees, and slams both palms down flat on the charred metal of the floor.
The steel turns molten underneath the woman’s feet-liquid tendrils snake up her legs, embedding themselves in the armor, pinioning her in place.
“Nice, Al!” Brother calls, sweeping towards her with the gleaming blade-
But Colonel Mustang snaps again, and a spiral of flame melts the gun on her arm, and as she howls like a wounded animal, writhing in place, Brother lurches backwards, slipping as the whole ship tilts-
-and lands right in Mustang’s open arms.
Which cross each other over Ed’s chest and tighten so that Mustang can start dragging him backwards towards the exit.
In his element-in a fair fight, if such a thing exists-Ed would be out of that position inside of a second.
But right now he only has eyes for Al dodging around the fallen pieces of the ceiling and the jagged dents carved into the floor-running right for the armored woman, pushing his palms together and then holding them both out open, with the light already crackling down the lines-
“Al!” Brother screams, and the sound chokes off as Mustang presumably hikes him up higher, or hauls him closer to the door; Al can’t risk looking now-
The woman spits words that must be another language’s curses at him, swiping with her arm; molten metal splatters, and a drop of it glances off of Al’s cheek-the sheer vibrancy of the burn almost startles him enough to distract him, but she cannot, will not win this-
He ducks beneath her arm, darts around her, and smacks both hands against her back.
As threads of searing light wind outwards from the impact of his palms, Al circles past her and makes a break for where Mustang is manhandling a kicking, flailing, incoherent Ed out onto the platform.
The brightness pulls on him already as he moves-blurring the boundary between physical and metaphysical; more than anything, it feels like a steel cord wrapping around the base of his lungs, cinching tighter, squeezing the air out of his chest-
“Wait,” he manages to wheeze, and hopefully Colonel Mustang can read lips around Ed’s frantic angry-cat display, because the ambient noise keeps redoubling in Al’s ears, and he’s not sure how much of it is real, and how much is only in his head.
This is bigger than anything he’s ever done before-bigger, and a thousand, ten-thousand times more difficult; he’s never had to overcome another sentient will-
He manages two more steps before the roaring in his head-the hurricane tearing at the edges of the array-swells so large he has to dedicate his whole being to sustaining its lines. Distantly he senses what must be his knees hitting the metal as he sinks down onto them; something tugs at his hair and his clothes, but whether it’s the wind or someone’s hands is miles beyond him-
“Cut it loose!” a low voice says-an order; a command, and light sears just past his squeezed-shut eyelids.
He has to hold this; he has to hold her there-has to move her arms, one at a time; has to set them on the flight controls-he can figure this out; he can make it work; he just has to hold the array-
A heaving motion sends him sprawling forward; his arms fold underneath him; his short, ragged breaths bounce back cold off of metal-the connection dwindles as she drifts further away; Brother must have severed the platform edge, and the physical distance between him and the ship-
He buries both hands in his hair and curls his fingers, clamping his eyes shut tighter. Hold it, hold it-
He can do this; the only other fucking option is losing Ed again-
“Don’t touch him!” the voice says again, sharply, but he’s buried too deep in light and sigils and the haze of his brain for it to shake him. “He cleaves off part of his soul-he’s done it before; it must be how he crossed over to you-”
She fights-she rages. She tussles with him for scraps of control, and he imagines himself scratching his fingernails down every single line of the array; he pushes her-one muscle at a time. He slams her remaining hand down on a promising-looking lever; he shoves at her until she jerks forward, haltingly, and her weight shifts it.
The ship sputters, shudders, roars-exhaust flares; the whole contraption quakes, and then it moves-
Towards the glowing circle in the sky; she screams so loud he can’t hear his own thoughts, so loud he might as well not even exist-
But he doesn’t need to exist. He just needs to get her through.
The circle has a gravity of its own, and it hauls on her; her scream of protesting fury crescendos between both of their brains; it gouges at him, but he won’t-he won’t-
Forward-forward-through-through the circle; through the-
White.
White space and silence-silence so loud his ears ring with it; silence so loud her last shout dies instantly, swallowed by the deafening wideness of the void.
He tries to breathe, but all there is-
Is emptiness.
And fear.
The woman presses her advantage-chafes against the confines of the glowing lines; scrabbles at the borders; he can feel his face contorting with hers, a perfect mirror image, as she snarls, hisses, tears sharply at the weakest points of his control-
No.
Not now.
Her side wants her back.
The ordinary order of the universe is on his side.
The universe wants to settle back into its natural configurations when perturbed. She can fight that forever, but she won’t win.
He forces her hand to fall on a promising-looking tube.
He makes her rip it out of the wall.
Fluid pours out-he makes her grab another, tears it loose; sparks fountain everywhere, and several wink out in the spreading pool of spilled fuel on the floor-
And it ignites.
He doesn’t remember too many details from being in Heiderich’s head-least of all because the German would muddle the thoughts filtering back to him even on the rare occasions that his sleep patterns let him stay for more than minutes at a time. But he remembers that one of their ongoing challenges was trying to make their rocket fuel less explosively combustible.
They never quite figured that out.
The ship keeps catapulting through the empty-silent not-space, and Al lets go.
The woman’s willpower hacks through one of the foundational lines of the array, then another-and he lets her; he snaps another one to help; he blots out a sigil in his mind-
And he comes loose.
He’s just-a wisp; barely even an entity; just a tiny cloud of smoky consciousness in the vastness of this nowhere-place, drifting pale and aimless. Instinctively he tries to catch his breath, even though a part of him knows that he doesn’t have the lungs or the throat he’d need to transport air even if there was any.
He wheels weightlessly in the openness; he turns his awareness, somehow, and focuses on-
A door.
A towering monument of stone, ornately carved; and as the center seam parts, the rumbling of it sounds hollow.
A Gate.
Something rustles in the incomprehensibly deep darkness; something whispers.
And then-
The hands from his nightmares-the claw-fingered arms he senses in the shadows when he’s alone at night-
Dozens, hundreds, flung right at him-grabbing, seizing, scratching, clinging, and they snap back and drag him with them, catapulting into the dark-
Thought-concept-image-ideas pummel him from every side-every angle, all at once, crammed into his misty approximation of a brain-
The pressure from everywhere becomes unbearable, but he can’t-
Move, can’t stop it, can’t run-
Someone screams, loud and hoarse, a rasp-edged wail that shatters into desperate, helpless, abject tears, because he can’t make it stop-
“Al!” Ed’s voice says, and he feels-something, something damp and a little bit rough. Something on his face-he has a face again; he has- “Al, hey-c’mon, look at me-God, please-Al, c’mon-”
The tears feel hot on his cheeks and sting in his eyes and weigh down his eyelashes, but it’s always been so darned hard to deny his brother anything, even when he’s being rash or ridiculous or a jerk. Especially then, because it’s all just a front, isn’t it? It’s all just projected to cover the fact that Ed’s spent so much of his life terrified-spent so much time feeling absolutely broken underneath.
Because Ed-
Al blinks up at his brother’s eyes. They look so much more familiar now.
“It came back,” he croaks out.
Ed’s right hand on Al’s shoulder is gripping much too tight. Consternation flits back and forth across his face, deepening the lines on his forehead and the half-circles underneath his eyes.
“What did?” he asks.
Al fumbles until he can grasp Ed’s forearm; the world keeps tipping sideways. “The memories. I went through the Gate, and it-all of it-”
Ed stares at him.
“She’s gone,” Al says.
As if on cue, the sizzling array cut into the sky wavers, wobbles, and-
Explodes.
Ed throws both arms around Al (the right one might have just bruised his spine), and Roy throws both arms around both of them, and Al can hear the shrapnel that rains on someone’s back, but he can’t feel any of it.
“I propose a motion,” Roy says. “Specifically, a motion that we get the hell out of here.”
“Seconded,” Ed says.
Al manages to huff a little bit of a laugh. “Thirded.”
If he’s not mistaken, Roy hugs them both a little tighter before he lets go.
[Part IV]
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 16,200 (4,800 this chapter)
Warnings: language; ALL OF THE SPOILERS for '03/CoS
Summary: A prism with three faces. (Colorblindness/soulmates AU.)
Author's Note: Three guesses who meant to rewatch all of the relevant parts of the end of '03 and CoS but ended up too fucking depressed to care if the fic details were accurate and made stuff up instead~! :'D
SPECTRA
PART 3
Al thinks about blood a lot.
And white.
Sometimes both at once.
He thinks about hinges, and the scrape of steel, and about liminal spaces, and about a little flower shop on the corner of a street.
“You could try Rosé,” Colonel Mustang-he doesn’t like it when Al calls him that, but nothing else sounds right out loud-says. “The last time I spoke with her, she couldn’t remember much-she said they were in the sewers, and then she faded out again; she thinks it might have been some kind of alchemical version of hypnosis. Ed sent her up the stairs to the church and told her he was going back to ‘finish it up’. More of it might have come back to her by now.”
Al taps his pencil eraser against the page of his notebook. Brother frequently wrote in pen. Al aspires to that kind of confidence. “I tried to go down there-to the city underneath the temple. It was cordoned off. Military police. I tried name-dropping, but they didn’t believe me.”
Colonel Mustang smiles thinly, stands, and crosses to the desk against the wall. Al already knows that the first drawer is full of bottles of brandy in various stages of consumption; apparently the second is full of sheaves of papers and envelopes and other stationery-related miscellanea.
The colonel rummages-well, rummages isn’t the right word; Roy Mustang has probably never rummaged in his life; every motion he makes is considered, controlled, and deliberate-through the collection and draws out a stack of photographs rubber-banded together. He looks over at Al, and it’s a wonder anyone survived an encounter with him back when he had both eyes to incinerate people with.
“Why do you trust me?” Mustang asks.
“Because Brother did,” Al says. “And that didn’t come easy to him. Based on the ranting in the margins of a lot of his notes, it seems like you lied to him more than once, but he knew that when the chips were down, you’d back his play. I don’t suppose he ever told you, but that mattered to him a lot.”
Colonel Mustang holds the stack of photos in the palm of his hand-he hasn’t gone so far as to stretch it out and snatch it away, but the import of a prize that Al has to earn is unmistakable.
“And?” Mustang says.
Al eyes the photographs. They’re wrapped in a sheet of tissue paper to protect the prints from the rubber band. He can’t make out any of the images.
“And you were a commander,” he says, slowly. “A man of action-or at least of instigating the actions of others. You’ve been here a long time now, out of all of the games. I think you miss it. And I think you’re tired of waiting.”
Mustang’s smile is only fractionally warmer than the blizzard Al trekked through to get here. “And?”
“And,” Al says, meeting his intractable eye, “you’re just about all I’ve got. Winry’s the only other person on the planet who believes he might have made it-and she’ll deny it, if you ask her. She says she let it go, and that things happen, and all of that, but there’s stuff in her workshop that can’t be meant for anyone else. Besides which-she wouldn’t have reached out to you if she didn’t have a reason that outweighed her own feelings.” He raises his hands. “May I?”
Mustang steps forward and deposits the photographs into Al’s waiting palms.
“I wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into,” Mustang says.
Al unwraps the pictures carefully. The first few are of the outside of the old temple; that’s familiar enough that he can flip through them swiftly to get to the ones edged with shadow-like they were taken from a doorway, or some kind of arch. The foot of the stairs that Colonel Mustang just mentioned, perhaps?
The reports weren’t exaggerated. There’s an entire city down there.
“I have no idea what I’m getting into,” Al says. “But I know where I’m coming from.”
“That’s something,” Mustang says. He pulls up a chair next to where Al’s been sitting on the floor, leans down, and points at the photograph in Al’s hands. “I went directly to the theater first-that’s where Rosé said they last were before he ushered her out, and it seemed like he was headed back in that direction. After that I made a fairly full circuit documenting everything I could. There was blood in the elevator, and half of the floor was destroyed-like someone had taken an enormous bite out of it. Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkeye says that one of the homunculi is still down there. I suppose he’s feeding off the Stones.”
“Delightful,” Al says. He eyes the colonel. “I thought there was only one Philosopher’s Stone.”
“Only one of any substance,” Mustang says, “as far as I can tell. They imbrued you with it in Ishval while you were in the armor-attached it to you somehow. I suspect you did something drastic, in recompense whereof Edward did something even worse.”
“He wouldn’t have let me one-up his sacrifice,” Al says. He’s made it to one of the ballroom shots-he squints at the rich, draping velvet and the rows of lights, willing himself to remember something, anything, some fragment, some dream…
Nothing comes.
“I’ll go to Liore next,” he says. “It’ll be nice to see Rosé, whether or not anything has come back to her. It’s been a while.”
Mustang looks at him for a long moment, then stands up and crosses back to the desk. “I don’t have much else to offer you,” Mustang says. He sorts through a few more papers and retrieves a small set that’s stapled together. “These are the only transcripts I have-there wasn’t time to do many interviews between when they let me out of the hospital and when they served me the demotion.”
Al takes the papers, looking up into the dark eye framed by the curve of the patch.
“I’m going to get Brother back,” he says.
He doesn’t say Or die trying, though he thinks they both can hear it.
The earthquake in Liore is what gets reported, but the earthquake is only the beginning.
In the aftermath, Al feels like a live wire in a downpour-shorting, sparking, feeble, frantic. Rosé puts her hand on his shoulder and guides him just inside the orphanage. When they’re out of the sunlight, the mountain of a man beside her lays one huge finger gently underneath Al’s chin and lifts his face up, the better to start peering at his eyes.
“Mr. Armstrong,” Al says, because of course that’s who it is, and that almost sounds right on his tongue, “is there a telegraph office here?”
Armstrong must have known his brother very well. Otherwise, he wouldn’t hesitate.
“Is it terrifically urgent?” he asks. “I think it would be ideal to have you examined by a medical professional as soon as possible, to be sure there aren’t any-”
Al swallows It’s not the first time I’ve passed out after dividing up my soul, as that might make it worse instead of better. “It is a bit urgent, honestly.”
Armstrong and Rosé exchange glances. The little boy hiked up in Rosé’s arms tugs at her hair.
“Very well,” Armstrong rumbles.
Al tries to keep it short, because characters are expensive, but there’s so much to say.
WENT THRU SAW HIM TALKED TO HIM STOP. WE WERE RIGHT AND IT WILL WORK STOP. COME TO CENTRAL STOP. PLEASE STOP. NOT STOP STOP BUT TELEGRAM STOP.
Darn. Oh, well. In a few days, he might not need money anymore anyway.
From the moment he hits the foot of the stairs in the underground city, with Wrath’s hair whipping around the corner just before him, everything becomes a blur.
He’s been thinking a lot about blood, and liminal spaces, and unnumbered sharp black fingertips extending from the screaming silence of the white-
His guts freeze solid as the almost-familiar monster’s teeth sink into Wrath’s sides. The gore gushes out of the strange little creature who’d turned into something like his friend-spills, pours, floods-and Al’s whole body turns to dry ice; the vapor chokes him; their eyes meet across the huge expanse of cracked and fissured stone-
Wrath is going to die whether Al uses this array or not.
It ought to mean something-a life. Even one that’s stolen; even one that shouldn’t have begun. Even one born out of arrogance and fed on agony straight through.
Al owes him that much-meaning.
So he runs towards the hell he almost knows and claps his hands together and slaps them on the floor.
The illumination blinds him for more than a moment; for what feels like years-
Everything shudders around him; everything happens so fast-like time itself can’t contain this possibility; like this universe rejects the notion that Ed should come careening back into it in a flying machine and crash-land in a plume of smoke-
And it’s only several minute-hours later, when they’re forging through the shattered streets, that Al realizes why his heart still feels so hollow when it’s gotten everything it wants:
Ed hasn’t touched him.
Ed hasn’t touched anyone-hasn’t initiated it, anyway; Winry hurled herself at him.
Either Al did something wrong-something terribly wrong-
But Sheska didn’t even get a handshake.
It’s deliberate.
It’s calculated.
Ed’s not going to stay.
Ed’s going back there, so he’s trying not to get attached. He’s trying not to let himself get too close to any of them, so that everyone will hurt less when he leaves.
Suddenly so much of Colonel Mustang’s long-term frustration with Ed’s stubborn magnanimity makes perfect sense.
Al has to approach this from an angle that’s indirect-right? He has to work sideways; he has to get to the point by first moving all the way around it, so that Brother won’t expect him to zero in.
“Is it true?” Al asks. “The thing about the colors. Can you see them?”
“Yeah,” Ed says. His stride doesn’t falter. “But everyone can, over there. So maybe I just brought it with me.”
“He can still see them,” Al says. “Colonel Mustang, I mean.”
Ed doesn’t slow his pace a whit, but the fingers of his left hand slowly curl into a fist.
“Good,” Ed says. “It’s good that he made it.”
Al opens his mouth for He’s supposed to be here, but-
Gunfire strafes the pavement; Ed’s left arm hooks around Al’s shoulder, and he throws them both to the ground.
Al can’t breathe for a long second-the smoke doesn’t help; his heart leapt halfway up his throat and stuck there, slamming, battering at walls-
Ed shakes him, gently. “Al-hey-”
He drags in a shuddering breath that scrapes at his mouth, his tongue, his esophagus-burns in his lungs and lingers there like a poison cloud. “Y-yeah-”
Ed’s hand stays on his shoulder for a long second, and Ed’s eyes fix on his. Al can’t tell what’s deeper-the shadows in them, or the shadows underneath.
“You okay?” Ed asks.
Al holds his forearm over his mouth and coughs into it, trying to clear his throat. Ed’s gaze lingers on the coat sleeve, and the smile that toys with the corners of his mouth is an awful, cruel, bitter sort of thing.
If Al hadn’t seen pictures of the time in between, he wouldn’t recognize this boy.
Not even a boy-not anymore. Maybe not for a long, long time.
“Yeah,” Al says, clearer this time. “I’m fine.”
Ed helps Al up, brushes at the back of the coat-and then withdraws his hand abruptly and lets it fall at his side.
“Right,” Ed says. “Let’s sort this motherfucker out.”
He musters a real smile this time, so Al offers him one back.
Al had heard that it’s typical for Roy Mustang to make an excessively dramatic entrance, but he didn’t realize that an alchemically jury-rigged hot air balloon wouldn’t even make Ed blink.
“’Bout fuckin’ time,” Ed says, clambering up onto the platform, and there’s a flash of a grin so wild that Al’s heart flits past a scheduled beat.
“I happen to think my timing is impeccable,” Colonel Mustang says. A dark eye has no business being that bright, but he’s managed it somehow. His hair flutters just in front of it, and he slants a little smile. “I always knew you were alive.”
“Can’t help it,” Ed says. “Too damn stubborn to die.” He squares his shoulders and curls his automail hand. “So what do you say we blow this shit sky-high, and then you tell me what’s up with the new accessory?”
Colonel Mustang’s smile broadens slightly, tilting further until it’s not really a smile at all-it is unmistakably a smirk.
“Done,” he says.
A rain of bullets pours out of the body of the ship, and they all hit the deck. Colonel Mustang wrenches himself upright first, taking cover behind a jagged pillar, and Ed’s only moments behind him-
Al scrambles to follow, only to stop in his tracks as Mustang-
Slings fire from his fingertips.
Like it’s natural.
Like it’s nothing.
Like it’s an art.
Like the whole world was built to bend around his hands, made subject to his will.
Ed’s metal hand-Ed’s metal hand; it’s cold and hard and far too strong-latches onto Al’s arm, and Ed hauls him sideways just before bullets split the air again-
Al doesn’t know what to look at: Ed’s grim intensity or Colonel Mustang’s astonishing concentration or the source of the ongoing gunfire or-
“Shit,” Ed breathes, more like a prayer than a curse. He starts to reach towards Colonel Mustang and then doesn’t finish extending his arm-just leaves it hanging halfway between them. “Cover me,” he says to the colonel. “She didn’t expect us to put up a fight.”
Mustang’s smile doesn’t light his eyes. “She must not know you very well.”
Ed’s gaze settles on the cavernous hole of a doorway leading into the ship.
“She killed my dad,” he says, and Al’s heart drops-straight out his diaphragm, through his stomach, through his guts, and it doesn’t stop; the ground’s a hundred feet away, and it just plummets heedlessly- “I don’t even know how many more.”
Colonel Mustang lifts his hand, fingers poised, mouth set in a line.
“Go,” he says. “I’ve got you.”
Ed almost smiles.
He claps his hands together, then smacks one palm against the grille of his automail, and Al’s tortured heart skips one more time-the boy who can transmute without a circle draws a broad blade out of the surface of Winry’s masterpiece, and it wouldn’t take Teacher’s training to see that he knows how to use it.
Before Al can gasp in enough breath to speak-to offer surprise or admiration or solace or backup-Ed’s off and running towards the dreck-edged maw of the open ship.
“Wait!” chokes out of Al’s throat in a cracking scream, and he plants his feet to fling himself after-to follow Ed into that ship, into any cruel unknown; into the depths of any hell that’s ever been-
Colonel Mustang’s arm in front of his chest bars him, and he scrabbles against the wool of the uniform sleeve, but the bastard’s grip is sound.
“Let him,” Mustang says. “He’s not-”
“I just got him back,” Al says, twisting hard, taking more satisfaction than he should from the flash of pain that crosses the Colonel’s face. “You can let him go again if you want to, but don’t you dare try and stop me.”
Mustang stares at him for a long moment, fingers still clenched in the fabric of Al’s coat.
“I know what to do,” Al says. “Trust me. I just need you to get him out of there.”
Mustang’s eye on his is almost too intense to bear, but Alphonse Elric has done worse for less, and he will not lose this time.
Mustang nods once.
Al jerks free of his grasp and pelts towards the ship; over the echoes of the shells and the rush of the air, he can hear Mustang’s boots pounding after him.
The breached ship welcomes them with flares of light from the gunfire-it’s deafeningly loud this close, but Ed darts around the stream of bullets, undaunted and so graceful that Al’s breath sticks watching him twirl out of the jaws of death, flipping clear of peril’s claws without his sharp-eyed focus wavering for a fraction of a move.
That is-right up until he sees Al framed in the open side of the ship and stumbles hard.
The woman with the pale hair, half-fused to some kind of armor, with the monstrous black fluid climbing up her face and the huge gun dreck-welded to her arm, presses her advantage with a knife of a grin.
The snap of Mustang’s fingers barely registers-but the torrent of flame surging towards her startles Al and Ed both back to life.
“Get out!” Brother shouts, dropping back into a defensive crouch.
“No,” Al says, and the adrenaline suffuses him straight through, head to toe to tingling fingertips, and he presses his palms together, digs in his heels, and crafts an array inside his head, funneling it through the lines inked out on his gloves.
He slaps one hand against the wall of the ship just beside him: cold metal’s malleable, and a pillar of it juts up next to the armored woman-she’s fast enough to avoid it hitting her directly, but it throws her balance, and she has to stagger three full steps to find her feet.
“She killed my dad.”
Al claps again; this time he aims a spike right for her. This time he wants blood.
She swivels aside, and it arcs past her harmlessly, but Mustang corrals her with a thin wall of flames on the other side, forcing her back before she can take a firing position again. Ed, knees bent and eyes alight, races towards her, slashing with his bladed arm, and she turns her dripping black machine-gun on him-Al fractures the floor behind her, and she wavers again, firing wide.
Turning away from your target invites defeat, but he has to catch Colonel Mustang’s eye.
Mustang-advancing like a vengeful angel, wreathed in flame, cavalry skirt flooding out behind him like a banner-glances towards him once.
Al jerks his head in Brother’s direction. In the circles not fooled by the histrionics, Mustang’s famed for intellect. It’s time for him to live up to that reputation-there’s no opportunity to mouth the word Now.
Al thinks he sees a glint of comprehension in that single too-dark eye.
He claps his hands, drops to his knees, and slams both palms down flat on the charred metal of the floor.
The steel turns molten underneath the woman’s feet-liquid tendrils snake up her legs, embedding themselves in the armor, pinioning her in place.
“Nice, Al!” Brother calls, sweeping towards her with the gleaming blade-
But Colonel Mustang snaps again, and a spiral of flame melts the gun on her arm, and as she howls like a wounded animal, writhing in place, Brother lurches backwards, slipping as the whole ship tilts-
-and lands right in Mustang’s open arms.
Which cross each other over Ed’s chest and tighten so that Mustang can start dragging him backwards towards the exit.
In his element-in a fair fight, if such a thing exists-Ed would be out of that position inside of a second.
But right now he only has eyes for Al dodging around the fallen pieces of the ceiling and the jagged dents carved into the floor-running right for the armored woman, pushing his palms together and then holding them both out open, with the light already crackling down the lines-
“Al!” Brother screams, and the sound chokes off as Mustang presumably hikes him up higher, or hauls him closer to the door; Al can’t risk looking now-
The woman spits words that must be another language’s curses at him, swiping with her arm; molten metal splatters, and a drop of it glances off of Al’s cheek-the sheer vibrancy of the burn almost startles him enough to distract him, but she cannot, will not win this-
He ducks beneath her arm, darts around her, and smacks both hands against her back.
As threads of searing light wind outwards from the impact of his palms, Al circles past her and makes a break for where Mustang is manhandling a kicking, flailing, incoherent Ed out onto the platform.
The brightness pulls on him already as he moves-blurring the boundary between physical and metaphysical; more than anything, it feels like a steel cord wrapping around the base of his lungs, cinching tighter, squeezing the air out of his chest-
“Wait,” he manages to wheeze, and hopefully Colonel Mustang can read lips around Ed’s frantic angry-cat display, because the ambient noise keeps redoubling in Al’s ears, and he’s not sure how much of it is real, and how much is only in his head.
This is bigger than anything he’s ever done before-bigger, and a thousand, ten-thousand times more difficult; he’s never had to overcome another sentient will-
He manages two more steps before the roaring in his head-the hurricane tearing at the edges of the array-swells so large he has to dedicate his whole being to sustaining its lines. Distantly he senses what must be his knees hitting the metal as he sinks down onto them; something tugs at his hair and his clothes, but whether it’s the wind or someone’s hands is miles beyond him-
“Cut it loose!” a low voice says-an order; a command, and light sears just past his squeezed-shut eyelids.
He has to hold this; he has to hold her there-has to move her arms, one at a time; has to set them on the flight controls-he can figure this out; he can make it work; he just has to hold the array-
A heaving motion sends him sprawling forward; his arms fold underneath him; his short, ragged breaths bounce back cold off of metal-the connection dwindles as she drifts further away; Brother must have severed the platform edge, and the physical distance between him and the ship-
He buries both hands in his hair and curls his fingers, clamping his eyes shut tighter. Hold it, hold it-
He can do this; the only other fucking option is losing Ed again-
“Don’t touch him!” the voice says again, sharply, but he’s buried too deep in light and sigils and the haze of his brain for it to shake him. “He cleaves off part of his soul-he’s done it before; it must be how he crossed over to you-”
She fights-she rages. She tussles with him for scraps of control, and he imagines himself scratching his fingernails down every single line of the array; he pushes her-one muscle at a time. He slams her remaining hand down on a promising-looking lever; he shoves at her until she jerks forward, haltingly, and her weight shifts it.
The ship sputters, shudders, roars-exhaust flares; the whole contraption quakes, and then it moves-
Towards the glowing circle in the sky; she screams so loud he can’t hear his own thoughts, so loud he might as well not even exist-
But he doesn’t need to exist. He just needs to get her through.
The circle has a gravity of its own, and it hauls on her; her scream of protesting fury crescendos between both of their brains; it gouges at him, but he won’t-he won’t-
Forward-forward-through-through the circle; through the-
White.
White space and silence-silence so loud his ears ring with it; silence so loud her last shout dies instantly, swallowed by the deafening wideness of the void.
He tries to breathe, but all there is-
Is emptiness.
And fear.
The woman presses her advantage-chafes against the confines of the glowing lines; scrabbles at the borders; he can feel his face contorting with hers, a perfect mirror image, as she snarls, hisses, tears sharply at the weakest points of his control-
No.
Not now.
Her side wants her back.
The ordinary order of the universe is on his side.
The universe wants to settle back into its natural configurations when perturbed. She can fight that forever, but she won’t win.
He forces her hand to fall on a promising-looking tube.
He makes her rip it out of the wall.
Fluid pours out-he makes her grab another, tears it loose; sparks fountain everywhere, and several wink out in the spreading pool of spilled fuel on the floor-
And it ignites.
He doesn’t remember too many details from being in Heiderich’s head-least of all because the German would muddle the thoughts filtering back to him even on the rare occasions that his sleep patterns let him stay for more than minutes at a time. But he remembers that one of their ongoing challenges was trying to make their rocket fuel less explosively combustible.
They never quite figured that out.
The ship keeps catapulting through the empty-silent not-space, and Al lets go.
The woman’s willpower hacks through one of the foundational lines of the array, then another-and he lets her; he snaps another one to help; he blots out a sigil in his mind-
And he comes loose.
He’s just-a wisp; barely even an entity; just a tiny cloud of smoky consciousness in the vastness of this nowhere-place, drifting pale and aimless. Instinctively he tries to catch his breath, even though a part of him knows that he doesn’t have the lungs or the throat he’d need to transport air even if there was any.
He wheels weightlessly in the openness; he turns his awareness, somehow, and focuses on-
A door.
A towering monument of stone, ornately carved; and as the center seam parts, the rumbling of it sounds hollow.
A Gate.
Something rustles in the incomprehensibly deep darkness; something whispers.
And then-
The hands from his nightmares-the claw-fingered arms he senses in the shadows when he’s alone at night-
Dozens, hundreds, flung right at him-grabbing, seizing, scratching, clinging, and they snap back and drag him with them, catapulting into the dark-
Thought-concept-image-ideas pummel him from every side-every angle, all at once, crammed into his misty approximation of a brain-
The pressure from everywhere becomes unbearable, but he can’t-
Move, can’t stop it, can’t run-
Someone screams, loud and hoarse, a rasp-edged wail that shatters into desperate, helpless, abject tears, because he can’t make it stop-
“Al!” Ed’s voice says, and he feels-something, something damp and a little bit rough. Something on his face-he has a face again; he has- “Al, hey-c’mon, look at me-God, please-Al, c’mon-”
The tears feel hot on his cheeks and sting in his eyes and weigh down his eyelashes, but it’s always been so darned hard to deny his brother anything, even when he’s being rash or ridiculous or a jerk. Especially then, because it’s all just a front, isn’t it? It’s all just projected to cover the fact that Ed’s spent so much of his life terrified-spent so much time feeling absolutely broken underneath.
Because Ed-
Al blinks up at his brother’s eyes. They look so much more familiar now.
“It came back,” he croaks out.
Ed’s right hand on Al’s shoulder is gripping much too tight. Consternation flits back and forth across his face, deepening the lines on his forehead and the half-circles underneath his eyes.
“What did?” he asks.
Al fumbles until he can grasp Ed’s forearm; the world keeps tipping sideways. “The memories. I went through the Gate, and it-all of it-”
Ed stares at him.
“She’s gone,” Al says.
As if on cue, the sizzling array cut into the sky wavers, wobbles, and-
Explodes.
Ed throws both arms around Al (the right one might have just bruised his spine), and Roy throws both arms around both of them, and Al can hear the shrapnel that rains on someone’s back, but he can’t feel any of it.
“I propose a motion,” Roy says. “Specifically, a motion that we get the hell out of here.”
“Seconded,” Ed says.
Al manages to huff a little bit of a laugh. “Thirded.”
If he’s not mistaken, Roy hugs them both a little tighter before he lets go.
[Part IV]