Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ By Sightless Lightning ❯ Part VIII - Edward ( Chapter 8 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

The city never really slowed down, but the bustle had a different quality after sundown. Once the snow started to fall it became particularly noticeable, as adult men and women paused to look up into the sky and smile at the huge, lacy flakes like children, or else hurry through the gathering darkness in an attempt to get home quickly before it started to blizzard.

Edward shoved his hands into his pockets to keep his left hand warm, and his right from picking up the cold as fast as it otherwise might. He did not look up, and only noticed the snow when it began to stick to objects around him. His red coat wasn't really thick enough or warm enough to properly keep the cold out, but the weather was insignificant at the moment ... a petty distraction.

He's a lot more capable of taking care of himself than you seem to think.

Despite Edward being on the military payrolls for the entirety of his teenaged years and adult life, Central City didn't really have that familiar feel to it that a well-known city should. His military career had not been standard, not even for a State Alchemist; he hadn't realized it at the time, but he'd been allowed to skip a lot of the indoctrination that State Alchemists were generally required to undergo. Perhaps it had been his age ... Edward was inclined to think so. Perhaps someone at Headquarters had assumed that a twelve-year-old Edward lacked the patience for even the watered-down version of basic training that State Alchemists got, and had given him a pass in order to not piss him off and make him quit. So instead, he'd gone straight to East City with Mustang's unit, and whenever he returned from one of his assignments, it was to East City instead of Central. He'd never learned to shoot a gun, handle military correspondence, or how to requisition a vehicle out of the motor pool, and he'd learned how to read rank insignia only when Mustang got tired of getting chewed out whenever he called a general by the wrong rank.

Whoever had made this decision at Headquarters had been wrong, of course. Edward would have done it, and stayed with the military at any cost. He would have done anything for his brother.

You do everything for him. He has no reason to try to get better than he is, because he doesn't have to. You assume that he's helpless and treat him like he is, and it makes him helpless.

THAT'S NOT TRUE!

Then explain to me why he needs you to bathe him now, when he was able to do it himself the day before yesterday.

Someone bumped into him, and made a rude comment about it, but Edward didn't even look. He almost ran into someone else before he finally glanced up and realized he'd wandered onto Fenwick Boulevard, where the fashionable shops and restaurants were. It was still busy here, people shopping in the snow before the stores closed, and Edward turned away down a side street to escape it. The snow was getting thicker on the ground, with only the occasional spot of pavement visible between the interlinked flakes unless footsteps broke through.

Was it true? Edward had, of course, never seen Alphonse outside of his own presence. His brother hadn't been behaving in any way that Edward found odd or unusual since he had recovered enough to get out of bed, but according to Mustang the difference was remarkable.

Could it be true?

So ... what? You think I should just let him fall when he trips? You think I should let him stab himself with a knife trying to cut his own food?

You would never have learned to walk, Fullmetal, if your mother hadn't let you fall a couple of times.

Edward had to stop for a minute and lean up against the side of a building for support, because the tears in his eyes were blinding him, and emotion was crushing his lungs. He was doing it again, apparently. No matter what he tried, no matter how good his intentions, he always screwed it up. And when he screwed up, he did it spectacularly, and it was always Alphonse who suffered for it.

Could Alphonse be better by now? Speaking, functioning, getting on with his life, if it hadn't been for Edward coddling him? He couldn't believe that. He couldn't. Even if it were true, Edward just couldn't believe it. Believing that would mean believing that he had been damaging his brother for almost a year now, destroying him with kindness. He pulled his coat in closer around him, clenching his fists and crossing his arms over his belly to hold in the pain that was twisting inside him like a live thing. It was going to make him sick again at this rate.

How could he do that? How could he do that to his own brother, and not even see it?

Would he have noticed it, if he hadn't fallen in love with Alphonse?

His ears were chilled through, a dull throbbing numbness and relentless ache. He ignored it. After a few minutes, the nauseating guilt in his belly loosened a bit, and he pushed himself upright and started walking again. No one spoke to him.

... what exactly are you trying to tell me here?

I'm trying to tell you that he's never going to get better with you around.

Winry had tried to help him, he realized that now. It had made him angry when she'd asked, and probably she hadn't seen it as clearly as Mustang did. But some part of her must have known. By asking Edward to leave Alphonse behind in Risenbourg, she hadn't been acting on a selfish desire to be the caretaker of a person she loved as much as Edward did. She hadn't been trying to free Edward from some kind of perceived burden, or trying to keep Alphonse away from a potentially dangerous environment. Or, perhaps it had been all of those things, but she must have also known, on some level, that Edward was having more of a detrimental effect on Alphonse than a helpful one.

Girls were perceptive like that, in Edward's experience. Knowing things that sometimes they didn't even know they knew.

As usual, Edward had listened to no one but himself. Nobody else understood what Alphonse needed, he'd imagined. Nobody could. As usual, Edward was infallible in his own mind, and no one could tell him different. It had always been that way, and only Alphonse could beat some sense into him, and even then only sometimes ... did he always have to be such an arrogant bastard? Perhaps it was because he never seemed to suffer much for his own mistakes; it was always Alphonse who bore the brunt of it.

He had to stop again to press his fists into his middle against the pain there, and blink to clear his vision. His left leg had begun to pick up the frigid cold, sending a warning ache into his thigh. He should probably find a restaurant or something to warm up some ... it was a good hour or more walk back to Mustang's place, and he should get his ears thawed and his automail to a more acceptable temperature before turning back. His footsteps, however, continued to carry him away from that quiet little house, and he did nothing to seek warmth.

What was it all for, in the end?

You can't make me leave him.

You're right. I can't. But I can ask you to, because if you love your brother, you'll want to do what's right by him. Don't you? Or do you just like to see him this way?

When their mother had lain dying, the vicar had come by to - in Edward's opinion at the time - spout empty platitudes at them. Everything happens for a reason, he'd said, you have to just trust in God's wisdom. No matter how bad things seem now, you just have to trust that they would have been even worse, if things hadn't turned out this way.

Edward had never been much inclined to believe that, but when the light had faded from his mother's eyes, the doubt became impossible to ignore. It was hard to imagine a worse outcome that involved his mother living. When the wild transmutation reaction had eaten his leg and his brother, and he'd looked for the first time upon the obscenity that was the Gate, and then seen the abomination that was the homunculus he'd created, a kind of certainty that he'd never known before had settled into his heart. If his mother had lived, none of this would have happened. True, there was no way to know what would have happened, but it couldn't possibly have been worse than what actually did.

He wished he could have the kind of gentle faith that people like the village vicar had, or that innkeeper in New Dalwar, or any number of other people he'd known. Most were religious, but some believed in no god, and all of them had a kind of quiet acceptance that, come what may, everything always eventually worked out for the best. It just wasn't always possible to see it when it was in progress.

The snow was starting to come down more heavily, and the sound of Edward's footsteps changed under his boots, ringing hollowly. The wind picked up somewhat, biting into his ears and knifing through the insufficient protection of his coat, and he glanced up to find that he'd come to the Sixth Street Bridge, crossing the river. He stopped halfway across, at the apex of the low arch, and leaned against the railing as the occasional car whirred by behind him.

"I want to believe," he said, looking down into the black water. It would be nice to think that it had all been for some purpose, and everything would turn out for the best. It would be so nice to just throw it all into the lap of some kind of overarching spirit, one that could take the responsibility away from him.

He wanted to believe that there was something ... more to the world, than what he could affect. It was a frightening thought, that this was all there was, and he could do permanent damage to the world around him, and the people in it. By accident or design, if this was all there was ... if there was only one chance at life ... if there was nothing protecting him from the world, and nothing protecting the world from him ... it was just too dreadful to imagine that he could have had only this one chance and, blindly, screwed it up.

He wanted to believe, but just couldn't. There was no reason to think that there was some benevolence guiding him, all unknowing, and that this was the best of all possible outcomes. There was no reason to believe in anything more divine than his own intellect.

What did people do when their gods failed them?

His leg ached. His ears ached. His shoulder was starting to ache, and so were the fingers of his left hand. And the place inside him where his faith should have been ached, burning with the misery of knowing too much and being too practical.

"He'd be better off without me," Edward murmured to the river. The wind was icy, and the water must be, too. "He'd be better off right now if I had never existed."

His gloved hand closed over the metal bar of the railing.



It was Alphonse glaring at him that finally made Roy go out to find Fullmetal. If asked, he wouldn't have admitted it, because it would have been embarrassing to tell someone else that he'd been guilt-tripped into coming out in the freezing cold and snow by someone who didn't even talk.

"I didn't tell him anything that wasn't true," Roy had told Alphonse when the death glare started, about thirty seconds after Fullmetal had thrown on his coat and boots and stormed out the front door. "He just needs to calm down."

Then, when the snow started to fall, he'd said, "Your brother can take care of himself. You know that."

None of that had made a dent on Alphonse's silent rage, and Roy couldn't even be certain that the boy understood him. There was one thing that Fullmetal was right about - there was no way to know for sure what went on behind those tempestuous gray eyes.

"Fine," said Roy in the end, throwing down his newspaper and reaching for his overcoat. "I'll find him and bring him back. Stop looking at me like that."

Roy was kind of glad that he'd done it, now. It had gotten quite cold out, and Fullmetal hadn't taken the time to fully dress, just tossing on his red coat over his tank top before slamming the door behind him. Before he was even halfway to Jaefer Avenue, Roy was wishing he'd brought his scarf, or that he'd brought a car home that afternoon instead of having Havoc drive him.

Well, how could he have anticipated the day ending with him searching for one small young man in all of Central City?

He headed in the general direction of the city center, simply because there were likely to be more people about in that direction, and if he couldn't find someone who had seen Fullmetal, there was just no possible way Roy would be able to find him.

We haven't been doing anything! We aren't doing anything wrong!

Now that he was out of the house and away from Alphonse's withering anger, Roy started to wonder just what Fullmetal had meant by that. He certainly hadn't accused Fullmetal of doing anything ... wrong. Not in the way the boy had meant that panicked defense. He was going about this business with his brother all wrong, but that wasn't immoral, it was just mistaken.

As the snow began to fall more thickly, Roy decided that he was going to be very annoyed if he searched for Fullmetal out here all evening, only to find him snugly wrapped up on Roy's couch when he finally got home. He turned up the collar of his overcoat to protect his ears somewhat and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

On Ninth Street he finally ran into a few people, but none of them had seen Fullmetal. On West Xavier, there was a young woman that he vaguely recognized closing up a clothing boutique; he supposed he must have taken her out once or twice. She recognized him readily enough and flirted with him a little, but she hadn't seen Fullmetal either. The young man with her, however, whom Roy took to be her boyfriend, had.

"Little short guy, yeah, yellow hair? His coat was cool. I think he went up toward Fenwick."

Sometimes Roy wondered if Fullmetal did things like this to him on purpose. There was just no way for Fullmetal to do something logical, like head back to Roy's house after realizing that he was inadequately dressed, or make for Headquarters and get a dorm room for the night.

He had more luck on Fenwick - it was a good thing Fullmetal looked so distinctive, and that he was apparently moving pretty slowly. A man selling hot pastries out of a vending cart said that someone matching Fullmetal's description had passed that way not ten minutes earlier, and to Roy's great amusement he called the young alchemist a "kid" twice. Not even Roy was brave enough to do that, at least not to Fullmetal's face.

When Roy stepped onto the Sixth Street Bridge and caught a glimpse of red through the falling snow, he'd been looking for almost an hour. He was cold and tired, and just wanted to bring Fullmetal home to his brother, but something about the figure's posture made him stop before his presence was noticed. He wasn't sure what there was about it - the defeated slump to the young alchemist's shoulders, the way he stared at the black river, or the limp way he leaned against the railing with one knee braced against the concrete parapet that kept unwary feet and crashing cars on the bridge. Perhaps all of those things, but whatever it was, it made Roy pause some ten yards away and give Fullmetal a little privacy with his thoughts.

He had sort of expected the argument to send Fullmetal raging out of the house, but he'd also expected him to wander back on his own. That was the kind of person Fullmetal was - he had difficulty sometimes with realizing that he'd made a mistake, but once he knew that he'd made one, he'd try to set it right. Sometimes quite aggressively. Roy had expected the young man to come storming back in the door, in much the same way he'd stormed out, and angrily throw his error back at Roy like a challenge.

This loitering around on bridges was quite unexpected, and the way he was doing it bothered Roy a great deal. Fullmetal looked so ... small, out there, all alone. Small and cold; he must be freezing in that thin coat, and as Roy watched he thought he could see the young man shivering.

He was wondering how well Fullmetal might take it if Roy were to go over and offer his overcoat when the slumping figure straightened, and laid a hand decisively on the metal bar of the bridge railing. Even before Fullmetal raised a leg and planted one boot atop the parapet, Roy suddenly, horribly knew what he was planning to do, and the world skewed momentarily sideways because that just was not possible.

The words were out of his mouth before he knew it. "Wait! Fullmetal!"

Fullmetal flinched, lost his balance before he got up onto the parapet, and almost fell onto the sidewalk. "Colonel," he said, surprised, as he quickly straightened up, drawing back a little but keeping one hand on the railing. "What are you doing here?"

There was no point in answering that, so Roy affected a casualness he did not feel, putting his hands into his overcoat pockets and letting himself slouch a little; his heart was still racing from what he'd almost watched Fullmetal do, and the nausea of fear was bitter in the back of his throat. "I know these things are generally beneath your notice, Fullmetal," he said, and surprised himself with how even his voice managed to be. "However, those of us who are normal mortals and worry about things like hypothermia have determined that it's cold and snowing."

Roy wasn't able to really see Fullmetal's expression - the younger alchemist was just too far away, and the light was too chancy - but he could tell it wasn't pleasant. "Leave me alone, Colonel," said Fullmetal, looking away and turning to stare out at the river again.

An impossible request. Roy took a few slow steps in that direction instead, sauntering with what he knew was almost exaggerated nonchalance. "I'm afraid that if I go home without you, your brother will murder me in my sleep," he said. "That glare he was giving me was scary."

Fullmetal flinched, shoulders hunching a little. "He won't hurt you. He wouldn't hurt anyone, that's not the kind of person he is."

Roy stopped about ten feet away and leaned against the railing himself. The water was black and slow, and reflected back the street- and house-lights with an oily gleam; the wind was bitter, having picked up the icy chill of the water as river and air flowed together. He wanted to get closer, twist his hand into the hood of Fullmetal's coat and just hold, in case the young man got it into his head to try jumping off the bridge before Roy left, but he didn't dare get that close just yet. "What are you doing out here?" he asked, echoing Fullmetal's own question back at him.

The answer didn't come right away, and when it did, it was in a grudging, clipped tone. "Thinking."

"Hmm." The steel rail that topped the concrete parapet was leeching heat out of Roy's arms through shirt, jacket and overcoat, and he shifted his weight uncomfortably. The cold must have been excruciating for Fullmetal, who wasn't nearly as warmly dressed, and who hadn't even bothered to fasten up his coat or raise the hood. Indeed, out of the corner of his eye, Roy could see that the younger alchemist's cheeks were white, almost dead white against the bright gold of his hair and the red of his coat, and he was shivering violently.

"You know," said Roy, when the silence had lengthened too far, "you can stop punishing yourself anytime you like."

Perhaps that had been the wrong thing to say; Fullmetal's shivering grew immediately stiffer. "What would you know about it?"

"I dare say nobody blames you except you. Not the way you blame yourself, anyway. You've made mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, what's important is what you do about it. I always thought you understood this."

"I do understand that," said Fullmetal, and the animosity that heated his voice was less veiled now. "What the hell would you know about it? Why are we even having this conversation?"

Because if I don't have some kind of conversation with you, you'll jump off this bridge as soon as my back is turned and I'll be responsible for that. Roy suddenly felt extremely tired, a feeling that did not blend well with his fearful certainty that Fullmetal was still about an inch away from climbing over the bridge railing. Why did everything that involved the Elrics always have to be so difficult? What in the world could he say? Making Fullmetal angry would be hideously easy, and it seemed he'd started to do it already without even trying, but that would only be a temporary fix. Letting out a soft sigh, Roy said, "I don't know, Fullmetal. You tell me."

There was nothing then but the whistle of the wind through the mysterious support framework on the underside of the bridge. Once again, Roy considered whether or not Fullmetal would brush him off if he offered his own overcoat. He had his uniform jacket on under it, and would probably be warmer without his coat than Fullmetal was right now, but Fullmetal probably wouldn't accept it and might even get angry at the offer. Roy didn't want to fight with Fullmetal tonight; evoking the younger alchemist's rage would not solve anything, and there was no telling what kinds of things the anger would conceal.

Beside him, into the silence, Fullmetal fidgeted, no doubt wondering when Roy was going to leave and allow him to kill himself in peace.

Deliberately, Roy turned around and put his back to the river, leaning against the railing with one foot kicked back up onto the parapet behind him. He looked up, watching the snow fall; it seemed to come out of nowhere, materializing the moment it hit the aura of light that surrounded the streetlamp above them. "You know," he said casually, "that water is cold."

"I'm sure it is." Hostility made the words sharp.

"Water that cold burns worse than fire. It's just this side of freezing, and probably the fact that it's moving is the only reason it hasn't frozen over already. It would hurt like hell to fall in."

"That's nice," said Fullmetal darkly. "Is there some specific reason you're telling me this?"

Words were so inadequate. There had been a time when it had been Roy who was the one flirting with his own mortality, sleeping with a loaded gun on the nightstand just in case he lost his courage in the middle of the night, and feeling like a walking corpse during the day. He remembered quite well how painful and bleak it could be to face up to one's own sins, but there seemed to be just no way for him to communicate to Fullmetal how well he understood.

In fact, the hardest thing to understand about Fullmetal was how the younger alchemist had found the resilience to face his sins more than once.

"I meant what I said before," said Roy quietly. "You need to let Alphonse-kun go for a little while. But there will come a time when he asks for you, and what am I supposed to tell him when he does?"

There came a pained little squeal, an inhuman sound that Roy could not immediately identify. "That's not fair," said Fullmetal.

"Perhaps. I think he deserves a lot more credit for knowing what's going on than you seem to give him, so maybe he won't have to ask. Is that what you want?"

Fullmetal did not answer, and Roy did not press him. They stood there for what felt like a long time, as the wind chilled Roy's ears, and surely did worse to Fullmetal.

He should do something. Roy knew that, but he wasn't sure what form the action should take. He still wanted to wrap up Fullmetal in his coat, tuck the heavy oilcloth around that fragile shivering that racked the young man's body and trembled in his voice. He wanted to do this, but didn't try because Fullmetal seemed so determined to make himself suffer, with his thin red coat that wasn't even buttoned up and his thinner shirt. Had Roy been this frustrating to Maes, back all those years ago? It made him smile a little, to remember, even though it hurt ... Maes would have known what to say to Fullmetal. Maes always knew what to say, what to do, and Roy had never picked up the trick of it.

"What exactly do you want from me?"

Glancing to his side, Roy said, "What do you think I want from you?"

That high-pitched squeal came again, and this time Roy was able to see that Fullmetal was clenching his fist on the railing, and the automail hand was deforming the metal rail. "Just answer the damned question, Colonel. I'm not in the mood to play around with you."

Yes, Roy could see that. The way Fullmetal talked to him often bordered on insubordination, but ever since the Elrics had returned from Risenbourg, Fullmetal seemed to be in even less control of himself than usual, and tonight he no longer seemed to be making even the slightest effort. That didn't bode well. "I want you to come home to your brother," said Roy.

"What makes you think I wasn't going to do that anyway?" asked Fullmetal, with a note of furious desperation.

Roy just looked at him, and a moment later Fullmetal was glaring at the river once more. "I wasn't going to jump," he said.

"All right," said Roy agreeably, although he didn't believe it.

"I just came out here because I needed to think about a few things. All right?" Fullmetal's voice started to rise in pitch. "You made me mad, you knew that was going to happen so don't tell me you didn't, and I needed to get away from you and think about some stuff."

"Fullmetal, sometimes I wonder if it's possible for me to talk to you and not make you mad." Sighing, Roy raised his elbows and rested them on the railing behind him. A passing car caught them both in its headlights, but it passed by in a whirr of engine and left the snow and silence to descend again in its wake; the wind it blew off competed for a moment with the wind off the river, and the confusion of air tugged at the hem of Roy's coat. "Sometimes it's tempting to take the easy way out, you know? Just a few seconds of pain and then all the pain is gone. No more nightmares, no more having to try to live with yourself. You never have to worry about facing anyone ever again."

"Shut up," said Fullmetal, and this time there was no mollifying "sir" appended to the end. Roy let it pass.

"Why? I'm just talking to myself." Roy hadn't thought that bleak emptiness was still present inside him ... he hadn't felt it in years. Not like this, with the life of the city seemingly so far away, and this child-alchemist, who had somehow turned into a young adult while Roy wasn't watching, contemplating a black river beside him. The mellow darkness and lethal cold of the bridge suddenly struck him as very beautiful.

"You don't know anything of what you're talking about."

Roy glanced sidelong at Fullmetal. "Don't I?"

"You have no idea ..." The emotion that twisted Fullmetal's lips and stole his voice was not one Roy could identify, and he held his peace until the moment passed, and Fullmetal fought it down. "You have no idea what I've done."

Roy was an instant away from assuring Fullmetal that yes, he knew perfectly well what the younger alchemist had done, when he hesitated. We haven't been doing anything! We aren't doing anything wrong! He still didn't know what Fullmetal had meant by that frantic, panicked denial, and it gave him pause. What could Fullmetal have done that wasn't obvious?

Watching the young alchemist stare in the direction of the river, obviously no longer really seeing it in favor of whatever invisible sins he thought he'd committed, Roy wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"So what has Alphonse-kun done?" he asked eventually. It was an effort to keep his voice mild.

That ugly, twisted grimace was still on Fullmetal's lips when he turned slightly to glare at Roy. "He hasn't done anything. He hasn't done anything."

"Then don't punish him," said Roy.

The rail turned out to be a hollow steel tube, which protested its flattening under Fullmetal's fingers with a plaintive squeal. "I hate you."

"You've said that before."

"I mean it this time. I hate you."

Roy suspected that the person Fullmetal hated the most was himself, but if it helped to transfer some of that onto Roy, well, he didn't mind. Didn't mind that at all.

"Fuck." With a vicious motion, Fullmetal yanked hard at the rail; it did not break, but it shrieked as it bent further, harsh in the soft cold air. Roy straightened, caught off-guard by the outburst of violence but not terribly surprised by it. "I hate you," said Fullmetal again, and Roy heard the unspoken corollary clearly.

Roy shucked off his overcoat; the wind bit through his uniform jacket almost immediately. Fullmetal flinched when the heavy coat fell onto his shoulders and almost pulled away, but Roy tugged the younger alchemist around to face him and didn't let go of the coat lapels. Baleful gold sneered up at him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" White-gloved fingers appeared, folding around the edges of the coat to hold it, and Fullmetal shivered within the draping tent of black oilcloth.

"Let's go get you warmed up," said Roy, "and I'll call for a car." It was hard not to brush Fullmetal's hair out of his eyes; he looked so young, so terribly young and so bitterly cold, and it was so difficult to remember that he was not a child. His lips were almost blue with the cold, and the cheerful gold of his hair looked like it should belong to someone else, someone without those tired dark marks under his eyes. "Come on," he said, hesitating just a moment before sliding an arm around the back of Fullmetal's shoulders to turn him around and start him walking.

Fullmetal did not reply, and something unknotted in Roy's chest when they stepped off the bridge. Presently, as they got closer to Fenwick and the crowds that still lingered there, there was an uncomfortable little motion beside him, and he let his hand drop back to his side.

"Colonel," said Fullmetal quietly. He walked with his head slightly down, braid caught under the collar of Roy's overcoat.

"Hmm?"

"You won't ... tell anyone about this, will you?"

"No," said Roy. "Nobody has to know."

A slow pause, and then, "Colonel ... aren't you cold?"

"Kind of. Don't worry about it, though."

"It's snowing, you know. It's kind of stupid for you to give me your damned coat."

"Mmmm." Perhaps it was.

"I'm not giving it back."