Chapter Text
Ed wakes up with a scream. When arms almost immediately wrap around her, stopping her from struggling, it takes a moment for her to register that it’s Roy’s voice repeating, “You’re all right, you’re safe, Al’s safe, just calm down.” That’s when she relaxes, and the panic abates. “Good, that’s good. Just breathe.”
It’s difficult for her to sift through the haze that seems to have settled over her mind and remember what could possibly have lead to Roy hugging her. Then she realizes she can feel both arms and both legs, and the panic builds up in her throat again. “Al,” she says, pulling herself away from him, and his eyes are clearer and more focused than she thinks they’re supposed to be. “I got him out of—is he, is he.”
“Your brother is recovering just fine, Major Elric.”
There’s a doctor she recognizes as the one who treated her after the incident with Laboratory Five standing in the doorway. Central’s military hospital then, but there’s no way few enough people were injured that she has her own room. She wants to ask how long she was out, but Roy tells the man, “She just woke up out of nowhere,” before she has the chance.
Roy doesn’t leave as the doctor enters with his clipboard, and she realizes, oh, she’s sixteen and probably not considered fully cognitive functional, which means no one here will be comfortable questioning her without an adult in the room. “When can I see Al?”
As the doctor takes a seat in the chair opposite her commanding officer, he answers, “Not until we know what’s wrong with you, Major. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Usually in a hospital, no one asks her anything after she first wakes up until physical testing is finished. Something’s not right. Roy slowly releases her, and remaining sitting without the support is harder than expected, but doable. “Um, I don’t—there was the fight,” she answers, and glances at him. “Al and Greed—you were blind. How are you seeing me?”
“Major Elric, I need you to focus.”
“Oh, uh, I remember making the transmutation circle and that’s—what the hell?”
(white, so much white, and brightness on brightness with a smile and a voice like glass saying, what you’re asking for has a price you can’t pay, child.
but there was a price and she paid, and it hurt her body and her head and here’s her brother, waiting, and she’s leaving a gate that isn’t hers but she’s seen through too. sunshine is darkness in comparison, but al is smiling at the warmth on his skin)
Coming back to herself is hard, and she realizes the problem is that she can’t take it. Not yet, anyway. “I got him out,” she says, and presses her palms to her eyes, trying to blur out the memory of all that brightness. “What happened after I got him out?”
“According to Hawkeye?” Roy answers. “You were awake for about a minute. Then you just collapsed and didn’t wake up.”
The doctor tells her, “It’s been five days. Alphonse is doing remarkably well, considering the condition he entered in. But there was nothing physically wrong with you other than some weakness in the muscles in your arm and leg. You just wouldn’t wake up.”
Nothing physically wrong.
Oh. Oh.
That means the Truth made it so she couldn’t be healed. “It was probably just the stress of the transmutation,” she says, looking back up. She doesn’t appreciate how white her room is. “I’m not going to be in so much trouble I’ll never be able to see Al again, am I?”
Even if she were to quit the military now, human transmutation is still illegal enough to warrant an arrest. Thankfully, Roy just shakes his head. “In light of the hypocrisy and the hand you played in stopping everything, Grumman, Armstrong, and I decided it was all right to look the other way.”
“Major Elric,” the doctor says, bringing her attention back to him, “we’re going to have to keep you here for a few days to run some tests. General Mustang here is going to make sure you won’t sign yourself out early this time, is that clear?”
For once, she actually wasn’t planning to. “Yeah. All clear. So why can you see?”
With a slightly uncomfortable look to the doctor, Roy explains about Dr. Maroch and the Philosopher’s Stone. Ed thinks she should probably be disappointed in him, but instead she’s just relieved to hear he’s all right.
At sixteen, Ed’s young enough that Roy can use his position as her commanding officer as an excuse for something loosely resembling guardianship, but old enough that she can do the same with Al. Before she woke up, the Curtises took care of everything. Apparently Dad went back to Resembol—he didn’t have enough energy left to survive more than a few days, and gave one last goodbye to Mom, Pinako said over the phone.
Signing things is hard because she’s still trying to regain coordination of her hand, but writing with automail was hard, too, so her signature is no messier than usual. “Your doctor estimates you’ll be in here for another month,” she tells Al as she works through her mass of hospital and military paperwork. “I’ll be right here in Central the whole time.”
Al’s strong enough to stand and walk, though not for long and only short distances, but he can sit up normally. With his hair cut and some weight put on, he has the same exact-split-of-their-parents look that she has. “Where are you going to stay?” he asks. “Major Armstrong told me most of the military apartments were destroyed.”
“With Riza.” Now that they’re going to be roommates, they decided to go by a first name basis. “I’m on partial leave right now, so it’s more of a suggestion than an order, but Grumman’s ‘requested’ that I help repair the city was pretty absolute. She’s closest to the destroyed part.”
Most of it went undamaged, but it’s enough that someone with her skill level would speed things up. “So you’re really going to do it, then? Stay in the military?”
Though she and Al never really talked it over, General Armstrong mentioned to Major Miles that she’d given the Fullmetal Alchemist an invitation to be stationed at Briggs, and then he went and mentioned it to her brother. “I’m not sure yet,” she lies. “When you’re let out, I’m going to be on real leave for a few months so I can go with you to Resembol. I can decide then.”
Al frowns, but doesn’t comment. Instead he says, “Ling had a message for you before he left.”
By the time she woke up, Ling, Lan Fan, and Mei were all gone before anyone could look too much into questioning them. A message isn’t better than a chance to talk, but there could be nothing, and that’s worse. “What was it?”
“‘I’m sorry I didn’t take control earlier.’ What does it mean?”
Confused, she answers, “I have no idea,” because if anything, she should be the one apologizing. That whole dynamic between her, Ling, and Greed wasn’t a good one, and she knows it. “What about you? Did you have a chance to say goodbye to Mei?”
“I was allowed visitors for a few minutes on the second day,” Al says. “She said the goodbye wouldn’t be permanent.”
That’s good. Al deserves something to look forward to. “Well, if I stay with the military make sure to give me enough advance notice that I can take vacation time for the wedding.”
His ears go red from embarrassment, and she laughs as he tries to stutter out protests. This is Al, human and alive and feeling with a heartbeat and skin, and she doesn’t care what it took to get him back.
“It’s a dress, Edina, not an explosive.”
She looks up to where Riza is staring at her from the hallway, groceries in hand, and actually smirking. Nearly every clothing store Ed’s repaired has given her something as gratitude and for the first time since she was eleven, she owns skirts and dresses as well as pants and shirts. “Mrs. Mackery, the woman who owns that place on Hathaway and Main,” she says, “handed this to me along with a rant about how red really is my color or something.”
It’s a beautiful dress, red with short sleeves and white on the edges, but she can’t think of any time she’d ever need to wear it. “The whole team is going out to dinner tomorrow night,” Riza says, answering her unasked question. “Knowing the C—General, it’ll be a place with a dress code.”
Tomorrow is the promotion ceremony. As of now, only General Armstrong and Roy have changed ranks, but anyone who played an active hand is about to shoot up, apparently. Including her.
Thankfully, Roy promised to pull some strings and keep her on his team instead of risking her getting stuck with her own.
“Yeah, and there are enough of us that he’ll make me help pay,” she says, because prices in Central have temporarily skyrocketed until everything goes back to normal. “I guess you’re right, though. This is better than that yellow skirt.”
“You own a skirt?”
Riza moves the bags all to one hand, and easily catches the ball of cotton Ed throws at her. “Who gave you this?”
With a shrug, she answers, “Honestly, I’ve lost track.”
When the apartments were destroyed, so were all her clothes. The bag she had with her from her time with Greed is probably still in the slums somewhere, but that didn’t have much in it to begin with. And she might have money, but people just handing her things that are her size is less frustrating than shopping.
“There’s another one in blue,” she adds. “That store on West Ave gave me another dress. It’s like nowhere believes in the concept of giving women pants. Where do you get yours?”
Right now Riza’s wearing a skirt, but that isn’t the only thing she owns. “I’m bigger than you, and can fit in men’s sizes,” she answers, which isn’t what Ed wanted to hear. “You have alchemy. I’m sure you can manage something if you really want to.”
While that’s true, she’s about to spend a few months in Resembol, and Winry will force into these anyway. The doctor said Al can be released in three days, and he’s well enough to go to the promotion ceremony if he wants, as long as he goes right back and has someone accompany him. Which means Teacher’s bringing him. She and Sig stuck around for six weeks, but they’re heading back to Dublith in four days, too.
Like Winry and Al, the two of them don’t get Ed’s decision to stay in the military. Riza gets it, though, same as General Armstrong. Now with the corrupt higher-ups weeded out, the military is just ironically less judgmental. Her time with Greed and the others amplified that—when she was disguised as a boy, more people looked her in the eye, and were less worried about making that first strike, even though she looked more like a kid than before.
Riza says, “Have you decided what you’re going to do yet?” as she folds the skirt up and lays it on the bed. “I know you have an offer at Briggs.”
“Central is closer to Resembol, so closer to Al. Unless I get called out on fieldwork, I’m going to stay here.”
Tomorrow, after the ceremony, she’s going to tell General Armstrong. Ed’s surprised to find she feels a little disappointed that she won’t have a chance to work with the older woman after all.
It’s warm the day Ed goes from Major to Colonel. “Welcome to the career path, Fullmetal,” Roy says as he hands her the certificate she has to use to get her new jacket later. Her eyes find Al’s out in the crowd of family and friends and curious Central citizens, and the smile he gives her is somewhere between sad and proud.
(people are proud of seeing loved one get rewards, but not this sort)
Everyone on Mustang’s team jumps two ranks, except Havoc, who’s just reinstated. Maria Ross is now a First Lieutenant, and Major Armstrong makes the same leap Ed does. “If you weren’t so young, you would have been promoted higher,” General Armstrong says when everything is done and before she has the chance to go get Al. “We’re trying to replace the ones we lost with people we trust, but even saving the country isn’t enough for the average military dog to be satisfied with a teenage Brigadier General.”
She wouldn’t have minded keeping her rank as Major. She’s staying on, but that doesn’t mean the career path interests her anymore than it did a year ago. People take enough issue with her already, and she doesn’t want to give them an excuse to have any more. “I remember how angry people were when Mustang became a Colonel at twenty-six,” she says. “The outrage was hilarious. Guess that means I should be ready.”
“No one would care how old you are in Briggs.” General Armstrong glances at her from the corner of her eye. “I realize with your brother back, you won’t want to be that far away. Are you going to be stationed in the east now?”
Getting herself stationed in the east would make the most sense for closeness, but she likes Central despite everything and doesn’t want to be alone. “Mustang still has me as a member as his team, so I’m staying here.”
General Armstrong looks at her, calculating, before saying, “The offer remains, Colonel. Central’s mentality doesn’t suit you.”
Neither does Briggs, with its cold animosity and endless, overhanging threat of violence. Now Ed’s killed someone—something—justified or not, and she knows realistically she could do it again. That, even more than Al, is reason enough to stay away. “Next time fieldwork sends me that way, I’ll come by,” she says. “With the Freezing Alchemist dead, I’m the only one with any proficiency in water alchemy, so I’ll inevitably be the one sent up if something happens.”
(there was a snowy hill covered in blood. later, she and the others plan to take over the world starting there. history repeats itself. maybe that’s the truth)
“I look forward to it.” General Armstrong sticks out her hand, stiff, and Ed shakes it. Then she’s sent on her way to get her jacket, that one last step before she can get to Al and Teacher.
Roy’s not the one giving them out, but he’s the one who gives it to her. Even though Dr. Maroch healed his eyes, it wasn’t perfect, and he’s stuck wearing glasses now. She never paid much attention to what he looked like before, but they’re slightly slanted the way Ling’s (another truth: denial is a gift, and she’s gotten good at it, so it’s easy to block out what she’d rather forget) and Mei’s were. “Take care of yourself in Resembol, Ed,” he says, and she thinks he probably gets it more than anyone else. “Not too well, though. I don’t need my new team quitting on me now.”
Despite telling Al her decision isn’t definite, both she and her commanding office know it is. “I’ll see you in a few months,” she says, and adds, “Roy,” as an afterthought.
When her brother and the Curtises finally reach her, she gives them only a weak smile. She doesn’t mention Riza’s apartment key in her back pocket or that maybe, just maybe, she felt a spike of pride at raising two ranks.
Or maybe it’s just that this is growing up, and that thought scares her more than anything else.
When she reaches Resembol, Winry tackles both of them before feeling around Al’s body and grabbed Ed’s very visible arm and leg. “You two did it. You two really did it,” her friend says, and beams.
Al gives her the real hug first before pulling Ed in along with them. “Yeah, we did,” he says. “Ed really did.”
She buries her face in her best friend’s shoulder, takes a deep breath that smells like sunshine and oil, and tells herself she’s home. For a moment, she even lets herself believe it.
Part of her hates the idea of it, but the other part knows she needs it, so Ed makes an effort to change—she lets Winry force her into her more feminine wardrobe courtesy of friendly shop owners, and lets her hair grow out again. It feels like it’s probably a good idea to divorce herself from those three months on the run with a homunculus she slept with and a couple violent chimeras playing watch dog because she’s having trouble dealing with groups of people at once.
Luckily for Al and Winry, they were with a bigger group that, despite including a little girl, disgraced military doctor, and Ishvalan serial killer, was oddly less complicated. Al’s main adjustment is to his new body, not social readjustment. While Ed always had a reputation as not being much of a people’s person, she’s starting to realize she was much better than her friends gave her credit for.
It also really doesn’t help that she finds out that the Truth didn’t just take something from her. “My alchemy isn’t work,” he says in a panic on their third day in Resembol. “I just tried without a circle, it’s only working with a circle, Ed, it’s—”
And, like an idiot, the only thing she can think to say is, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
For the next day and a half, he barely even looks at her.
(what you’re asking for has a price you can’t pay, child.
you take millions of souls as payment for a stone. i can offer you who knows how many possible futures in exchange.
the truth considers it for a long time before it laughs and laughs and she doesn’t have time to react before the hand comes through. there’s light burning through, brighter than a star, melting her from the inside out, and—
then it shifts into greed’s father, just a swirling black speck who comes even with her face, and he says, i warned you i would release the sun. you should have listened, little alchemist.
when he shatters, she screams, and the blood is cold against her skin)
A month in, she wakes up with Winry’s arms wrapped around her, and Ed’s shaking so hard her teeth chatter. “It was just a dream,” her friend says, hugging her tight. “Nothing can hurt you in a dream.”
This is the third time she’s done this. In Central she never did, and she wonders what that says about her. No, actually, she doesn’t. She knows exactly why—living with Riza, she felt protected. Here, in Resembol it’s too quiet, and disaster’s less likely to strike, but back home, she knows her roommate can do just as much damage as she can.
In no way is Winry weak. But Ed worries about her enough that this room isn’t going to keep the nightmares at bay. “Sorry,” she says, and presses her face into the pillow. It smells like oil, too, something combustible. She thinks of Roy and his blindness and how he didn’t fucking deserve any of this. “I didn’t mean to.”
Winry says, “It’s all right, really,” and then repeats, “Ed, nothing can hurt you in a dream.”
What Ed wants is for someone to tell her to suck it up. This isn’t all right. She just needs someone else to remind her first.
“What did you give up, Ed?”
It takes Al a while to ask, and Ed thinks he was probably working up the courage. He hasn’t used his cane in a week. A few days ago was her assessment date, which she gets to skip this year, or maybe forever. “The Truth didn’t tell me. I said whatever it wanted,” she lies. “I hadn’t expected it to take something for you.”
(for a soul, his push. for his body, lives not lived.
she hopes that second bit doesn’t apply to him too)
Right now Winry’s taking care of a surgery and Pinako’s cooking, so the two of them get some alone time. “I don’t believe you,” Al says, and she’s usually a better liar than this, which is terrible but true. Good sisters don’t lie to their little brothers (parents lie to their children, and she raised him for a large part of his life, so maybe it was an oversight that no one bothered to warn her about). “Ed, come on. You used to tell me everything. I know it had to be something big, so I’m not mad or anything, and if you don’t want me to say anything to anyone, I won’t.”
“I really don’t know. I mean it,” she says, before she decides it’s probably better if she don’t lie completely and adds, “I think it might’ve had to do with my, I don’t know, sanity or something. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me. I’ve felt off for weeks. You’ve noticed, I can tell.”
That’s true, at least. The same applies to Winry. In the time Ed’s been back, they’ve barely left her alone for more than a few hours, like they’re afraid she’ll snap or something, and they rarely let her leave the house by herself. It’s actually a little insulting. Al frowns and says, “Yeah, I have, but, Ed, you’ve been that way since you came back to Dublith from Central. That was a year ago. I know you’re holding something back—there was just so much going on that I didn’t know how to bring it up.”
It takes Ed a second to connect the dots. “Is this an intervention?”
“Maybe. A little. I don’t know. I’m worried.”
Consider he’s only had his body back for a couple of months, he still hasn’t mastered any emotional control yet, and the amount of wide-eyed concern he’s showing is disconcerting. “Al, I’m fine. Was fine. I’m here, right?” she says after a moment. “I’d just found out Hughes was shot. When I went to the sight of his murder, there was this couple laughing there like nothing happened and it freaked me out, all right? Then I get back, and my teacher’s injured, and my brother’s kidnapped, and I got beat to hell by a guy who wasn’t human only to be saved by the leader of the country. About a week and a half later I thought I saw a friend burn to death. So I was a little not okay for a while, I guess. But I got better.”
(the first greed wasn’t afraid to hit a girl, and that’s when she decided that the military is just easier, maybe. but her greed—
well, second greed, actually, or ling’s, would be a better way to put it, but it’s amazing how casually possessive the mind can be.
sometimes she really hates it)
Al sighs, and she knows he won’t drop it, even if he should. There are some things he doesn’t need to know, and one of them is that she gradually snapped after a while because she couldn’t take the pressure. “It’s more than that and we both know it,” he says. She should have known he’d piece it together. “I’m your brother, you can talk to me.”
“Look, I know, but there’s stuff that I just can’t—”
“Ed—”
“You won’t want to know.”
“I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t!”
Sometimes people think they want to know something, and then later they wish they didn’t. How many idiots died because they wanted to know about immortality? When people are offered answers, they snatch them up, and most of them time, it isn’t long before they learn to regret it. She doesn’t want that to happen to Al. She’s also scared about what will happen to her, too, if she actually puts anything to words.
But Al’s insisting, and she’s tired, and she wasn’t lying when she said she felt off. It hasn’t been that long, but he’s starting to wear her down. “What I gave up wasn’t anything terrible,” she tells him finally. “I’ll admit, I remember. I just can’t talk about it yet, all right?”
Though obviously reluctant to give up, her brother answers, “Fine. But I’m here when you think can. I don’t care if you’re in Central and you have to do it over the phone. Just promise.”
To her relief, he doesn’t push anymore for what happened before they split, and he didn’t even try for during. She promises, and thinks that maybe she will one day, but most likely she won’t because it’s not like it will ever really affect her anyway.
She’s out at the Resembol Grand Market when a voice suddenly shouts, “Edina?”
When she turns around, she finds a redhead standing there, eyes brown and face covered in freckles. Her front teeth are crooked, her nose looks like it broke and no one set it properly, and her body is a rounder version of Sheska’s. Despite her greatest efforts, Ed can’t place who this is. The girl, who has to be about her age, must catch on to her confused, because she adds, “Oh, sorry. I guess it’s been a few years. It’s me, Mellie Miller.”
Last time she saw Mellie Miller, they were eleven, the girl’s hair was darker, her nose straight, and she was one of the kids who thought it was fun to tease Ed about her eyes. “Yeah, I should have known, sorry. It’s been a long day,” she says, and gets a better grip on the bags in her arms. “So you’re still in Resembol, then?”
The other girl laughs. “I’m sixteen, I’m not going anywhere for at least another two years,” she says, which reminds Ed that most people her age have a couple more years of school left. “What about you? I heard you were back after that disaster in Central from Win, but I wasn’t sure if I was actually supposed to believe that.”
“I’m only here for another month. Then I’m going back home—to Central, I mean,” she says, and the way Mellie is look at her is the same was when they were kids, except to her body, not her face. She’s wearing a skirt and blouse from one of the boutiques with her hair down. After being mistaken for someone significantly younger most of her life, she didn’t understand what Riza meant when she said Ed didn’t look much like a teenager anymore. Standing in front of her old grade school bully, realizing half those freckles are actually pimples, she finally gets what her friend was talking about.
Mellie asks, “Oh, do you have someone there? A man, I mean. I’m together with Tommy Mackery now, if you remember him,” and Ed thinks about Teacher said, about how something only matters if you let it.
With a smile that’s shockingly real, Ed answers, “No, I have a job. I’m a Colonel in the military. Good luck with Tommy Mackery, Mel. Tell him if he still wants to join the military that the north always has openings.”
The other girl’s eyes stay on her as she walks away, and normally Ed has to stutter through talking to anyone now. She doesn’t know where that came from, but it felt better than it should’ve. Things don’t matter unless you let them, and she likes her eyes and what they mean too much to let bitchy eleven-year-old girls haunt her any more than they already have.
Unlike Al, Winry waits to ambush her until the very end of her leave, and doesn’t bother asking her about what she gave up. Instead, she goes for something worse and says, “Al told me about the message Ling gave you to see if I knew what it meant because supposedly you didn’t. I told him I didn’t either.”
This is somehow even more awkward. “Well, good for you. I know what it’s referring to, but I still don’t get it,” Ed says. “But thanks. For not telling Al.”
“I don’t know details or anything, but you were here a day and it was obvious something was going on,” Winry says, and undoes the bandana tying back her hair. “Don’t worry. That’s something that’s staying between us, girl to girl.”
Like with Al not pushing her for anymore answers, hearing this is a relief. She should have known Winry wouldn’t judge her, at least not on something like this. “It wouldn’t have happened in any other situation,” Ed says, and knows what she’s really doing is trying to justify that whole relationship, for lack of a better word. “I’m not normal, but I’m like…that, either.”
“I know,” her friend says, “and it’s not like it was your fault or anything. Let me guess, you had no idea what was going on at first?”
As much as Ed doesn’t like not knowing things, Winry’s right. It was less than she didn’t get it, though, and more that she didn’t know how to react. Some things, she learned, do take explanations, and anything she knows about sex and relationships comes from half heard conversations and textbooks. “Basically,” she says, and frowns. “I feel like an idiot. And it really wasn’t fair to Ling.”
With a shrug, Winry says, “I don’t know about that. Think about the message he gave Al—he didn’t use the word couldn’t. He said ‘didn’t.’”
Word choice isn’t something Ed thinks much about, but oh. “Well, I still feel like an idiot,” she says, “but that’s one less thing to feel bad about. Why would he be sorry?”
Her friend doesn’t answer, which never means anything good. “Do you need any help getting ready for Central?” she asks instead.
“What?” Ed answers, caught off guard by the sudden subject change. “Oh, if you want.”
They spend the rest of the afternoon packing, not saying much, and Ed tries not to think about what Winry could possibly mean by any of that.
Even though by this point there’s no way Al can’t have figured out she made her decision months ago, he still says, “You still have time to change your mind,” the day before she’s meant to leave.
She understands it, really. He hasn’t had this body for all that long. When they were younger, they had plans for her to quit and they’d come back here and have some happily ever after. “Central’s not that far. I’ll have time to visit, and I’ll call you as often as I can,” she tells him. “I’ve already told Roy I would. There’s no backing out now.”
That’s bullshit, and they both know it. If she really wanted to, Roy would be disappointed at losing yet another State Alchemist, but he wouldn’t be all that surprised. “I thought you hated it,” her brother says, frowning.
“Yeah, when it was under Bradley—Wrath, whatever. Grumman, Armstrong, and Roy are working to de-militarize the military,” she says. “I’d rather help in that than, I don’t know, teaching. Or going back to school.”
At sixteen, going back to school is her only option in Resembol. “This doesn’t have to do with me does it?”
He’s looking at her with large, worried eyes, and in retrospect, she should have seen that question coming. To him, this change in opinion must seem a lot more sudden than it actual was. “No, it has nothing to do with you, you haven’t done anything wrong,” she says. “Al, you’re my little brother, and now you’re safe, you’re in a human body, you can do anything you want to. Just because I’m not in the same town as you anymore doesn’t mean I’m going to love you any less.”
“You’re Edina Elric, you saved the country! You can do whatever you to, too—”
“And I want to do this!”
There are a lot of reasons, but this is the simplest she can boil it down to while keeping accurate. Al’s eyes stay wide, but the look changes from worried to wounded. Tomorrow she’s supposed to return to Central, but she never gave them the day, and she doesn’t know if she can go through this argument again in twenty-four hours.
Before her brother can answer, she says, “I’m supposed to be back by morning, so I need to catch a train today. I’m sorry.”
(greed says, i could always not give you up when this is done, and she answers, i’m really good at leaving. call it a family trait.
sometimes leaving means getting out of a bad situation. more often, leaving just means running away)
Though she still has the key, Ed feels awkward coming back announced before the expected time, and Riza doesn’t answer her knock. Not knowing what else to do, or where else to go, she ends up on Roy’s doorstep four streets down. He opens up almost immediately after the bell rings. It’s raining, making his hair frizzy and hers probably worse, and the shock on his face is gone as quick as it came.
“Riza will be back in a few hours,” he tells her without her having to say anything first, stepping aside to let her in. “I wasn’t expecting you to show up early.”
She’s been here before, but this is the first time she’s really seen Roy dressed casually. His hair’s a little messy, his shirt solid without a single button in sight. It feels like she walked in on something she wasn’t supposed to. “I’m sorry for just dropping by without a call. I wasn’t really expecting to come back early either,” she says, and lets him take her jacket as she places her stuff on the floor. “Where’s Riza?”
By now, all the apartments should be fixed. She should get around to signing herself back up for one, or looking for a place of her own. “Out of town. I sent her on an errand,” Roy answers, and this could mean anything from intercepting an illegal weapons shipment to buying him groceries at a farmer’s market. “What are you doing here, Ed? Did something happen with your brother?”
“Well, not really with him, but—I don’t know. It’s been tense.” She doesn’t want to admit that lately, she and Al have been like strangers to each other. That argument was inevitable. “We fought, and I left a couple hours later.”
Roy doesn’t tell her she acts like a child for walking out, even though she knows that wasn’t the best reaction she could have had. But she knew if she stayed, the subject would’ve come up again later, and she can only hold down what she doesn’t want to say for so long. “You’re welcome to stay until Riza returns. I was about to start dinner,” he says, and leaves it at that.
No one’s better at self-denial than a military officer, and she’s going to fit right in. The thought doesn’t depress her as much as it should.
A month later, Central is blanketed in a thin layer of snow and ice and Ed still lives with Riza because the older woman insisted. To make it even more surreal, Roy managed to convince the some new bar owner to let her in as long as she doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol, so when the team goes out to celebrate the end of particularly difficult work week, she’s dragged along. In Resembol, she had difficulty managing to just go to the store. When she was travelling around the country with her brother, she couldn’t talk with people she didn’t know well. And with Greed, she barely spoke to anyone outside of the four of them.
In a way, this is the biggest change.
Right now it’s a Friday in late December, and Jean and Kain are bringing drinks over with some impressive balancing acts. “So, Ed, you ready for your first bit of fieldwork since you got back?” Falman asks as her coffee is put down in front of her.
Since she returned, she’s been in Central, but out of the office. A lot of emergency calls ask for her by name, much to the annoyance to other State Alchemists in the city. Several had themselves transferred and so far not even the Fuhrer’s said a word against that. “Yeah,” she says, and she’s not sure if it’s a true or yet. “Rush Valley. Can’t wait to see what Paninya is going to do when she realizes I don’t have automail anymore.”
Even without alcohol, the coffee warms her better than the heat in Central HQ. “I’ve never been to Rush Valley. Is it nice?” Jean asks. He’s going with her—after Riza, he’s the best shot, and even she acknowledges it’s probably a bad idea to send a girl just shy of seventeen with a reputation like hers so far away from home on her own.
She shrugs. “If you’re into that sort of thing. Winry and Pinako make some of the best automail in Amestris, and once the locals noticed, they decided it was a good idea to strip me to get a good look at it.”
“And there wasn’t police intervention?” Breda says, unashamedly staring. Roy’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm, and Riza’s mouth goes tight, clearly scandalized.
“From what I gathered, it’s pretty common down there.”
“Oh, great, now I have to protect your virtue too.”
Ed decides not to mention she’s already ruined that on her own, or that something similar happened again only hours later. When she said it, she hadn’t realized it was the sort of thing she was better off keeping to herself. “If something like that ever happens again, tell someone, Ed,” Fuery says, which only freaks her out. “You’re military still. There are laws against that.”
Only military. That seems a little unfair, if he means what she thinks it means, but it also wasn’t nearly as bad as she made it sound, apparently. Deciding she’s better off ending this now, she says, “I know a man who’ll let us stay with him so we won’t have to pay for a hotel. Winry apprenticed under him. Still does, technically. She’s taking a break to spend a year with Al.”
A full year means she’s closer to a good sister at the moment than Ed is, but she’s good at blocking that thought out when she’s with people, too. “Who is he?” Jean asks, eyeing her warily.
“His name’s Mr. Garfield. He’s weird, but not like that.”
Thankfully, Breda chooses that moment to finish his drink in record time and call for another. “You’re driving me. Don’t get too drunk,” Roy says, and when Jean makes a comment on him using them for chauffeurs now, Riza cuffs him on the back of the head harder than is strictly necessary.
In three days, Ed leaves for her first fieldwork mission in ten months, and that’s a much shorter amount of time than it feels.
The case is to apprehend the first serial to surface since the defeat of her father’s lookalike, and Paninya somehow manages to find her before they can even make it Mr. Garfield. “Where’s your brother? Or that Xingese guy?” she asks immediately, watching Jean as he gets them something eat that Ed won’t do much more than pick at. Now that she’s stopped eating for two people, her appetite’s decreased to nearly nothing. “And why are you dressed in a uniform?”
In the shortest possible way she can manage, Ed explains that her brother and friend are back in Resembol, Ling in Xing, and she’s still working in the military. “That’s Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc,” she adds, nodding towards him. “He’s not an alchemist.”
“You’re with someone who’s not an alchemist?”
“We work for the same General.”
That’s the best way she can put it that she can think of, even though it must not make much sense to Paninya. It’s just that there aren’t many State Alchemists left, and Roy has too much to do to ever leave Central for a long time. “Do you two have anywhere to stay? After what you did last time you were here, you could always stay with us,” Paninya says, and for a second, Ed feels like she can’t breathe.
“It’s better if we’re in the city, not up a mountain,” she says quickly. “Besides, the Lieutenant’s overprotective, I don’t need Mr. Dominic marveling over my new arm.”
(outside it’s still raining and the woman’s about ready to faint, but winry has a baby in her arms, newly delivered. edina takes one look at the little boy, imagines a body twisted but breathing, and runs.
i can offer you who knows how many lives not lived, she told the truth, and sixteen or not, it suddenly strikes her exactly that the means)
Maybe Jean overheard the end of the conversation, or maybe Ed’s just gone pale, but when he comes back bearing gifts of southern food, he asks, “You all right, Colonel?”
Outside of work, no one really calls her Colonel. For the next week, they’ll be considered on duty no matter where they are or what they’re doing, so she better get used to it. “Yeah. This is one of Winry’s friends, Lieutenant,” she says, and smiles. “Paninya.”
With her partner back, the conversation switches to what Paninya might know in relation to the case. The girl has eyes and ears everywhere, observation skills left over from her days as a pickpocket, and she ends up being more help than she realizes.
Three days later and Lawrence Zimmerman, ex-State Alchemist finally coming out of the woodworks now that the old Fuhrer is dead, is apprehended. Jean gets him at gunpoint, Ed sticks him to a wall before he can get away. Then they let the officers from South HQ do the rest.
At the train station, Jean buys them ice cream like they’re children. “First rule of real fieldwork, Colonel,” he says. “Alcohol’s for when you have to kill someone. Sugar’s for when you don’t.”
“I like ice cream better than whiskey,” she tells him, and doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or bad thing when he laughs.
Her pivotal role in saving Amestris somehow earned Ed a constant standing position in foreign affairs. There aren’t many, but both diplomats from Creta and leaders from the developing Ishval the military regularly deal with all seem to want to meet her. This is how she ends up in the east with Roy on her seventeenth birthday rather than back in Resembol as promised.
(no, you’re running away, her father says, and hiding the memory.
she tells him he should know, that he’s the expert on leaving, but that seems to be a hereditary trait, because she’s not so bad at it herself)
“One more year and your birthday will actually be interesting,” Roy says when he returns to the hotel with more paperwork. “Happy seventeenth, Ed, your present is extra sleep.”
Birthdays aren’t that big of a deal for her, especially now with Hughes gone, but even work in hot, stuffy Ishval beats her last one. “How kind of you, General,” she answers, but accepts the work held out for her anyway. “So, what rights do I lose or gain this time?”
As he takes the seat across from her, his own stack in his lap, he answers, “You can get your driver’s license.”
“That would be wonderful,” she says, “if I knew how to drive.”
Roy just stares at her before saying, “Well, I know what you’re going to do when we get back.”
If this doesn’t end in complete disaster, Ed will honestly be surprised.
He teaches her personally, clearly as an excuse to get out paperwork, and it’s a horrifying experience.
“This would be so much easier if you just shut up and let me try, Roy!”
“It’s a new car, Ed, I’m not going to risk you wrecking it!”
“Then you should have let someone else show me!”
By the end of the day, she can even K-turn. Roy grumbles about know-it-all kids, which only makes it better.
During her next job in the east, Roy lets her take a few days to visit Al and the Rockbells. When she arrives, her brother and Winry aren’t there. “It’s a Thursday, Ed,” Pinako says, fixing them tea, as Ed takes a seat at the kitchen table. “Without an official apprenticeship, even my granddaughter has to go to school.”
While Ed knew that, it hasn’t been something she really spared a thought to. In Amestris, there are no laws about school or anything, but it’s what most people do anyway. “I can stay for couple nights, so I can wait,” she says. “How have things been? Are you still getting a rush from limbless military officers?”
“Not as many, but they’ll all be back for tune-ups soon.” Everyone asked her for suggestions before she left, so of course she gave the Rockbell name. “Al’s doing well, since I know you’re going to ask. He’s too smart for his classes, but he’s enjoying it.”
Pinako pulls up another chair and Ed says, “That’s good. I thought he might be bored.”
“I think he must miss having someone to talk alchemy with, but bored isn’t the word I would use,” Pinako says. “What about you? You look better than the last time you were here.”
Last time she was here, Ed was trying to figure out her own head. Though she wouldn’t say she’s put together perfectly now, she’s starting to feel like she can actually deal with it. There’s too much information crammed inside of her, and maybe she wasn’t entirely lying when she told her brother the Truth might have taken her sanity during their latest trip through the Gate, but she knows how to manage it.
“I’m fine. Busy, but fine,” she answers. “I live with Riza Hawkeye and her dog. You’ve met her, she was the blonde soldier that came here with Roy.”
The tea kettle whistles, and Pinako gets up to finish. Lately all Ed’s really had to drink is either water or coffee. “Are they treating you right in Central?” Pinako asks with her back turned. “I don’t know much about politics, but I do know people, and I can’t imagine many are happy about having to answer to a kid.”
Shrugging, Ed says, “If it bothers people, I wouldn’t know. No one’s said anything. And I’m pretty sure if I ever tried to give an order to someone on the team, they’d just laugh and ask Roy what to do—what?”
Now Pinako’s facing her again, a mug in each hand, and one eyebrow raised. “You sound happy,” she says, less like a bad thing and more like it’s surprising, and puts the mugs down on the table. “It’s good you came to visit. I know you have more work than before, but don’t be a stranger.”
With Al here, Ed never would be. “I won’t,” she promises, and her sip of tea burns its way down her throat.
Al is taller than the last time they saw each other, and stronger, and he hugs her so tightly it hurts. He doesn’t apologize for their argument, and neither does she.
This is enough for them to know it’s all right anyway.