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batsutousaiTitle: Reverti Ad Praeteritum
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood/manga
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: Mature
Pairings: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, May Chang/Alphonse Elric, Gracia Hughes/Maes Hughes, post-Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell
Warnings: Spoilers like whoa, Ed's potty mouth, canon-typical violence, pile 'o OCs, mute!Ed, original character death, angst, fluff, past dub-con, past adultery, Ed has all the guilt
Summary: Unwillingly forced to serve as a human trial for a crazy alchemist experimenting with time travel, Edward Elric finds himself standing across from Truth in the moment it takes his leg from him. Armed with the knowledge of what's to come and burdened with guilt for the choices he'd made as an adult, Ed sets out to fix every mistake he ever made and save every life they ever lost, no matter what it takes.
Key: "Speech" | 'Mouthing words'
'Writing'
:Sign Language:
"In another language" | 'In another language'
A/N: So, I know the English translation uses 'chi', but that makes me think of blood, more than spiritual energy, so I actually chose to go with 'qi', which is another (more modern) transliteration of the Chinese character in question. So, you know, when it shows up, it's not a typo, and yes, I actually know what I'm doing. :P
That said, I ended up going in a slightly weird way with the concept of qi, more emotional aura than energy flow, but the whole concept seems a bit arbitrary to my western upbringing (sorry), and since Ed is of a western mind, and this is from his PoV, I figure I can fudge everything a bit.
For those of you who have been wondering, you get your explanation for what happened between Ed and Roy near the end of this chapter. Cue the warnings for (technically off-screen) dub-con and adultery.
I've updated the first chapter with the final chapter count, and here it is for those who don't want to go back: There'll be 30 chapters, with the fic being completed by 10 May.
Chapter Four
-0-
It had never really occurred to Ed before, but he was beginning to suspect that Al had taught May alchemy before she came to Amestris as, first, the Xingan ambassador, and then Al's wife. Because watching the Chang clan struggle with concepts that didn't mesh with their idea of nature's flow was...hilarious and kind of pathetic, all at once.
That said, it was probably equally hilarious to watch Ed and his brother struggle with the concept of the Dragon's Pulse.
Honghui and Ru were the two clan teachers, with Ru focussing more on martial arts and the fighting aspects of alkahestry, while Honghui focussed on basic academics – especially the art of the written and spoken word – and the healing aspects of alkahestry. Honghui had welcomed them both into her classes, and was, by all appearances, completely unbothered by Ed's muteness, easily adapting to asking Al for a translation, or waiting while Ed wrote his response. She was also quite patient with them, trying to walk them through understanding the Dragon's Pulse in multiple ways, and cautioning them against giving up in a gentle voice. (Which Ed might have well chaffed at, had always kind of hated people telling him to be patient and keep at it, because he'd spent more than half his life struggling with a disability, and knew more about stubborn determination than most of those who tried to teach him about it. But Honghui was missing her right hand, even seemed comfortable with its lack, which suggested she knew a fair bit about struggling to keep on, even when it would be easier to just give up; it made it a lot easier to bear her quiet promises that they'd figure the Dragon's Pulse out eventually.)
Ru, on the other hand, hadn't seemed to have much interest in Ed and Al at all – neither in teaching them, nor in learning from them – until he'd come across them sparring in a small clearing next to their house during their second week.
"Who taught you?" he demanded when they stopped to catch their breaths.
Al flinched – Ed had noticed the lurker, but his brother clearly hadn't, and he should probably work on Al's situational awareness – then looked over and said, "An Amestrisan named Izumi Curtis. She was our alchemy teacher."
"Your 'alchemy' is taught in hand with fighting?"
"It was for us, but I do not believe that is common," Al said, looking at Ed.
Ed shrugged and shook his head; so far as he was aware, Teacher's style of instruction was far from average. (But, then, so far as he was aware, Teacher was also insane and terrifying, so maybe that was a part of it.)
Ru stared at them both for a long, silent moment, then grunted and turned away. "Be in the clearing behind my home at sunrise tomorrow," he ordered, then started away.
Ed and Al blinked at each other. :What was that?: Al signed.
:I think...he might be offering to teach us Xingan fighting?: Ed returned a bit helplessly.
Al looked back after the man and hummed. :Could be useful.:
:If he can teach us to sneak around like Ling and his idiots, it'll be super useful,: Ed pointed out.
:One of these days, Brother, I'm actually going to meet Ling and find out you've been lying about him this whole time,: Al complained.
Ed laughed as he made his way into their house.
As it turned out, Ru was, indeed, willing to teach them Xingan martial arts. Better, when Al asked him about learning to use the sword they'd taken from those bandits, Ru got him to describe it, then got a wooden practice sword of the same style, explaining, "We call this a 'jian'." Then he pointed at where the eldest of the three boys of the village – Tengfei, who was Ed's physical age – was practising with a sword that looked like the one Ling used. "That is a 'dao'."
"Ah. Apologies," Al offered, because 'dao' was the only name Ed had learnt for Xingan swords, so that's what Al had been calling it. He shot Ed a glare. "Someone taught me wrong."
:It's not my fault I only ever saw Ling's sword!: Ed signed back. :How was I supposed to know they have two different types of mid-length stabby things?:
Al snorted. "Did you just–?" he started, before covering his face and groaning. "Brother, please stop making up sign language slang."
Ed rolled his eyes and went back to the slow movements Ru had set him; apparently, he was too action-oriented and needed to learn to slow down and appreciate the fluidity of his movements, or some bullshit.
(He almost missed Teacher's way of teaching them.)
Over the course of the next four months, Al tried out both sword types, the spear (called a 'qiang', apparently), the quarterstaff (called a 'gun'), and kunai. He ended up settling on the jian sword, but he and Ed both suffered proper lessons in using spears, since they were, as Ed had once pointed out, easy to create pretty much anywhere, and Ed let himself be taught the basics of sword craft, since that was Al's chosen weapon, and it was only sensible to learn how to use the weapon his brother would be using.
And, still, Ed and Al struggled with the Dragon's Pulse, while the resident alkahestrists gave up on alchemy.
"Master Edward?"
Ed sighed and looked up from his lunch, silently bemoaning the interruption of the short break from bringing in the harvest that he'd allowed himself. 'May Gongzhu,' he mouthed in return.
She made a face. "No one here calls me that," she complained.
Ed pulled out a kunai and scratched in the ground, '+ no one calls me "Master Edward". What do you want?'
She plopped down on the ground and tilted her head at his writing. "Your handwriting is terrible."
Ed just sighed and took a large bite of his rice ball.
"Sorry," she offered quietly.
Ed sighed again and quickly brushed his foot over his message, clearing it, then wrote, 'I know my handwriting sucks but your language is complex + I'm writing sideways. Idiot.'
"Hey!"
Ed flashed her a smirk.
She huffed and slumped, tugging out her own lunch and holding out a bamboo shoot to one side, which brought Xiao Mei running from behind Ed. (He had a sneaking suspicion that panda was planning something nefarious in regards to his person, because she always seemed to be behind him, when she wasn't clinging to May. Al thought he was nuts, of course, because he had some completely incomprehensible love for the thing, which resulted in a massive blind spot.)
After a brief silence, during which Ed finished one of his rice balls and pulled out another, while May unwrapped her own and Xiao Mei attempted to murder her bamboo, May said, in Amestrisan, "I know your language, a bit."
Ed shrugged and nodded – she'd known it when she first came to Amestris, so he'd been assuming at least half the village understood it.
She eyed him for a minute, probably waiting for surprise, before huffing and taking a huge bite out of her rice ball. After swallowing, she said, "I want to learn your hand language."
Ed blinked; okay, he hadn't expected that. He should have – May'd very clearly had a crush on both of them pretty much since day one (though her approaching him suggested she'd finally started to cotton on to the fact that he was no prince charming), and learning to communicate fully with them would be of interest to her – but he hadn't.
Well, Ed didn't have anything against teaching her – or anyone else, really; it got lonely only being able to speak to Al, sometimes – sign language, and since most of the signs were based on concepts, instead of the actual words, it should be easy to teach, no matter how much Amestrisan 'a bit' was.
Still... 'Ask Alphonse,' he wrote. 'It's easier to teach if you can speak while signing.' Because they hadn't brought those books with them, and Ed really had no interest in writing out each word when he signed.
Too, making Al and May spend time together? Brilliant. (And he should probably stop trying to play matchmaker, but Al and May had been so happy together; he wanted them to have that again.)
She flushed faintly. "Talk to Master Alphonse?" she got out in a rush, sounding so very terrified.
Ed started to smile when his well-honed (and oft-ignored) sense of impending danger flared, and he let his instincts take over, pushing himself forward and catching May around the shoulders, yanking her away just before a dao sword came down where her head had been.
Letting go of May, Ed shoved himself to his feet, knocked the next swing of the dao sword aside with the kunai still in his hand from using it to write, taking a shallow cut to the arm for his trouble, and kicked out hard with his left leg. The attacker bent over with a gasp, clutching at their stomach, and Ed swung his left foot around and brought it down on the fucker's head.
They crumpled to the ground.
May caught his sleeve. "Back to the village!" she insisted, and Ed nodded and followed her while he pulled out a second kunai; this close to the fields, he couldn't chance his alchemy, or he'd ruin the crops, and they needed everything the clan had planted at the start of the spring, since they hadn't really planned for taking on two more people.
They found four more of the attackers in the village. Two of them were holding off Ru and a couple of the other village men, while the other two were getting away, one carrying Hohenheim's stupid journal, the other with the repaired vase.
Away from the fields, Ed didn't waste any time in clapping his hands together and dropping to the ground, creating a giant fist out of the earth at the feet of the person carrying the vase, grabbing him tight, while being careful not to damage the vase; just because he could repair it again didn't mean he wanted to.
The person with Hohenheim's journal sort of stumbled in shock at the giant fist that caught their ally, and May used the distraction as cover for tossing a few kunai at their feet, then sketching a quick array in front of her with her foot and tossing down more kunai at the points before activating it. A hole opened beneath the person's feet, and they shouted in shock as they fell. Another clap from Ed had earthen bars sliding into place over the top of the hole, keeping that prisoner from trying any impressive acrobatic feats to get out.
Since Ru and his lot – who had been joined by Al and the other boys he'd been in the fields with – seemed to have their two well in hand, Ed stepped forward and lightly plucked the precious vase from the one guy's hands, mouthing, 'I'll take that, thanks.'
"The elders!" May realised, before breaking out into a run towards the house.
Ed huffed – didn't the idiot princess remember she'd been a target too?! – then hurried after her, not bothering to take the time to put the vase back down.
They found Elder Nuo laying in the floor in a pool of blood, a butterfly sword in each hand, while Elder Qiang was slumped, motionless, against the far wall.
"No!" May cried as she dropped to her knees next to Elder Nuo and tried to draw an array close enough to her to activate it, but the blood was too spread out.
Ed ducked back outside and let out a sharp whistle to catch the attention of the others, making a rough 'come' motion when Al looked over.
Trusting Al to get the rest of the village organised, Ed stepped back inside and set down the vase before walking over and kneeling next to Elder Nuo. Cretan healing might not be as good as Xingan healing, but it was all he had, so he clapped his hands together and activated the blood clotting array he'd used on his own leg, closing his eyes against the flare of green light and trying, desperately, to find her wounds and close them without actually seeing them.
(Please, please, don't let her die. He was supposed to be keeping people alive this time, not watching them die!)
Hands caught on his shoulders, warm and familiar, and Al whispered, "Brother, you're going to exhaust yourself."
Ed let the alchemy go, slumping back against his brother as the energy expenditure hit him all at once.
"That was the Cretan array?" Al asked, and Ed gave a tired nod. "Gently," Al ordered someone else. "Her wounds might reopen if you're not careful."
There was the sound and rush of multiple people moving around them, and Ed assumed they were carrying Elder Nuo to her bed, where one of the Xingan alkahestrists would be able to heal her properly without fighting with the blood.
Ed forced his eyes open and found only the blood remaining in front of him; even May had vanished.
May.
He tried to lift his hands to sign, but couldn't manage more than catching at Al's sleeve and tugging.
"Brother?"
Ed turned and – so unspeakably grateful that Al had mastered reading his lips – mouthed, 'May.'
"She's with Elder Qiang; it looks like he's just got a bump to the head and a few bruises."
Ed gave a small shake of his head. 'Assassin,' he mouthed.
Al tensed – Ed had told him about the unending battle for the Imperial throne, which involved assassination attempts made on the princes and princesses – then promised, "I'll make sure someone stays with her."
Ed let his eyes close and relaxed back against his brother as exhaustion dragged him under.
As if they'd needed any more awe from the Chang clan, Ed's quick actions out in the fields and in the elders' house found them awash in gratitude.
Ed was kind of glad that his exhaustion from the healing array gave him an excuse to hide in bed for two days, but Al literally dragged him out of bed on the third day, snapping, "I'm done with putting them off. Stop acting like a kid and go face them, Brother."
Ed tossed him a cross look. :I'm twelve, idiot.:
Al rolled his eyes, clearly not about to fall for that. "You're thirty-one, stop lying. Now, go take a bath and change while I make breakfast." As he walked out of their bedroom, he added, "If I find you've climbed back into bed, I'm going to fill a bucket and dump it over you."
Ed groaned, because Al would, then got up and set about getting clean and making himself presentable. When he dropped down across their low table from Al, he signed, :I hate you.:
:I love you too, Brother,: Al signed back once he'd set his chopsticks down, his mouth full. :You'll survive a bit of gratitude.:
Ed slumped. :That's not it,: he returned.
Al swallowed, then asked, "Then what?"
Ed shook his head. :I'm tired of being celebrated for being decent.:
Al sighed. "Not everyone's going to punish you like you're always punishing yourself, Brother."
Ed shot him a sharp look. :The fuck is that supposed to mean?:
Al grimaced at the sexual sign, but gamely soldiered on: "You think I don't notice? Brother, you gave up your voice for me. And then you cleaned up the remains, like you didn't want me to see. And trying to cross the Great Desert with automail? You kept saying you'd be fine, like it's normal to make yourself suffer daily burns for weeks on end."
:Who fucking cares about a few burns?!: Ed fired back, the motions of his hands rough and jerky between them. :We need to stop the Dwarf in the Flask–:
"That's my point!" Al snapped, pointing his chopsticks at Ed. "What, it doesn't matter what happens to you, so long as everyone else is happy?"
Ed pressed his mouth into a thin line and, deciding he'd lost his appetite, got up. :I'm off.:
"Sit back down, right now, Edward Elric!" Al ordered, everything about his tone and voice and pitch one hundred percent their mother. (Fuck, and he'd thought Al did that too well after his voice dropped.)
Ed...sat. He ducked his head forward, hiding his eyes behind his bangs, and signed, :What do you want from me, Al?:
Al shifted, moving forward on his knees across the floor until he was in front of Ed, then took his hands. "I want you to stop punishing yourself for something that hasn't happened. That won't happen," Al whispered, determination and sorrow mixing in his voice. "I want you to let yourself be happy."
Ed looked up into his brother's gold-gold eyes, nothing at all like hollow red points of light. He took him in, living and breathing and so very alive. Not hollow armour, not trapped on the other side of the Gate, waiting for Ed to get his act together.
And then he leant in and pressed a kiss to his brother's forehead. 'I am happy,' he mouthed, before slipping his hands from Al's grip and standing. :Right. I'm off to be showered with ridiculous amounts of idiotic praise. If I spontaneously combust, say something pithy at my funeral, will you?:
And then he spun and rushed out of the house before the tears welling in Al's eyes could spill over.
How was it, that he always managed to make Winry or Al cry?
Things calmed down after a couple days, once the Xingans reminded themselves that Ed didn't really talk to anyone but his brother – for obvious reasons – and while he was generally pretty friendly, he'd never gone out of his way to spend time with people, unlike his brother. (Which, not that anyone but Al understood, was mostly because he was a man trapped in a child's body, and people expected him to relate to other children and be bored by the 'adult concerns' of trying to keep the struggling clan alive, and it was actually more the opposite way around.)
At some point, May must have finally built up her courage, because Ed came home from a hunt with a couple of the village men – a couple rabbits held in one hand and the spear Ru had forced him to make without alchemy months ago in the other – to find May sitting across the table from Al, who was walking her through some basic phrases. (Ed was a little sad; he'd kind of wanted to see how the alphabet would go.)
:Is she staying for dinner?: he signed after juggling everything so he could, aimed at Al, but not hiding it from May.
The princess frowned uncertainly at Al, and he translated, "Brother wants to know if you wanted to stay for dinner." He glanced towards where Ed was putting his spear away. "It looks like we'll have enough."
"If it's okay," May agreed quietly, "I wouldn't– I mean–"
Ed snorted as he came over to grab the knife he usually used for skinning off the table, turning his head and mouthing, 'Young love,' to his brother, then laughing as he dodged the swipe Al took at him. :Fire?: he signed, nodding towards the cold hearth.
"Yes, fine," Al muttered, getting up to see to their cooking set-up.
Ed left him to it, settling outside to take care of the rabbits within hearing range of one of the windows.
"That was...fire?" May asked.
Al made an affirming noise.
"Did he upset you?"
Al huffed out a breath. "He was being his usual stupid self about something he thinks is funny."
"Should I go?"
"No!" Al cleared his throat while Ed failed to quash his grin. "Ah, no, please. Brother is way better behaved around other people."
May scoffed. "He's always rude to me."
Al laughed at that. May must have made a face or something, though, because he quickly stifled it and said, "I'm sorry, May. It's just...being rude is kind of Brother's way of saying he thinks you're pretty okay. And, I mean, he did save your life and all, right?"
"I guess," May agreed quietly.
The house was silent for a moment, and Ed was just about to take his skinned rabbits back inside, when May asked, "Does he like us? The Chang clan."
"Yeah," Al returned, so fucking honest, "he does. I think, if we didn't have people waiting on us back home, he'd be happy to stay here."
Ed smiled to himself and shook his head, reminded that this Al hadn't yet been forced to suffer Ed's wanderlust. Though...
He glanced towards the twinkle of lights from the village as he stood.
Maybe he was growing up a bit, after all this time, because Al was right: this wouldn't be a terrible place to settle down for a while. He couldn't – and he wouldn't – but it might be nice.
Ah, well. They had at least another year and a half before they needed to seriously start considering heading back. Maybe, by then, he'll have had his fill of this stationary life.
As if in reward for turning eleven, Al figured out how to manipulate the Dragon's Pulse the day after his birthday. Ed was the first to know, solely because the first thing Al did was, from across the room, form a sort of fence around Ed.
Ed shot him an unimpressed look over his journal.
Al grinned. "Guess what, Brother?"
Ed sat his journal down with a sigh and signed, :You figured out distance alkahestry?:
"Yup! And I can apparently use you as my focal point!"
That...was going to get extremely irritating, extremely quickly, Ed just knew it.
And, well, he wasn't wrong; Al spent the first couple weeks randomly transmuting things next to Ed, rarely with any warning. He didn't make a fence again – Ed might have actually retaliated, at that point – but little earthen figures and flowers would grow next to him any time he sat down somewhere, and he once glanced over at the crackle of a transmutation to find a pile of kunai growing into being.
He'd sighed and picked one up once they were done, because Al was giving him that hopeful puppy look that Ed was pretty sure he'd developed just to keep Ed from killing him. After holding the kunai for a moment, he dropped it back on the pile, signed, :Unbalanced,: then went back to trying to modify the array for his leg, because a fix that had been brilliant in the desert, was causing him some trouble now that winter was setting in. (Not that he thought it would get so bad that he'd end up with frostbite, but the automail was notably cooler than he expected it to be at this temperature. And it really wasn't a big deal, especially since he had the northern automail, but since he knew Winry was developing this for other people, and he needed a break from trying to figure out alkahestry, he figured he might as well try to work out all the kinks.)
Al's next pile of kunai had much better balance, which Ed proved by throwing them, one-by-one, at his brother until Al left to pout.
Ed was proud of him, absolutely, but the cold had always made his stump achy, which in turn made him irritable, and Al's surprise gifts were more of a distraction than anything else.
(And, okay, he was a little jealous; even without his alchemy, he'd always managed to figure out new arrays faster than his brother, but alkahestry was a constant source of bafflement, and Al had picked up the extremely unhelpful 'just sharpen your senses' suggestions when he made the effort to 'help' Ed.)
Some days, Ed wished that dodging the Dwarf in the Flask's ability to shut off alchemy in Amestris had an easier fix than 'befriend Scar' or 'learn to use alkahestry'.
December brought another attempt to steal Hohenheim's journal, which Ed and Al weren't aware of until everything was already over. The village alkahestrists gathered to discuss security measures, which Al dragged Ed to after May came to get them.
Ed's first suggestion of, :We could just burn the damn thing?: earned him an unimpressed stare from his brother. Ed sighed and rolled his eyes, then leant around Honghui to grab some paper off the table the Xingans had gathered around.
"Edward?" Honghui asked, while most of the rest of the table turned to look at where he was turning to use the wall as a writing surface, pulling out the pen he always kept in his pocket.
"I think he has some ideas," Al offered, "but you should probably keep researching alkahestric solutions, since we won't always be here to help keep the arrays active."
That seemed to be enough, because the Xingans returned to debating options, leaving Ed to trace out arrays in piece.
Ed's three ideas were thus: a sort of pressure trap array that would activate when the book was removed, but which required drawing part of the array on the back of the book, and would make any casual use of it extremely complicated; locking the book up using a paired array, which would require that an alkahestrist be the one to retrieve it if they wanted to use it for anything, assuming they could translate it to actually work with alkahestry; and just generally surrounding it with alchemic traps and hoping no one in the village accidentally set them off.
They eventually settled on the lock-and-key set, and Ed might not be able to use alkahestry, but never let it be said that such limits stopped him from trying to build an array that would work, with some help.
Two hours later, the book was secure and Ed and Al headed back for their house, Ed signing, :They DO realise we have more of the damn things, right?:
Al snorted and shook his head. :I don't know. At this point, I think it's more an attempt to keep the other clans from getting their hands on the only one not under the emperor's control,: he replied, sticking with sign language, because May had finally seen fit to inform him that everyone in the village actually had at least a basic understanding of Amestrisan, which was apparently fairly common in the clans that had land on the western side of Xing (which Ed hadn't known, even if it did explain why Ling, May, Fu, and Lan Fan had all been fluent when they first got to Amestris).
:The only one, save the other eight you brought and the twenty or so still at home,: Ed corrected.
Al rolled his eyes. :Save those ones,: he agreed.
:And the ones in Amestrisan.:
"Brother," Al sighed.
Ed just laughed; he loved reminding his brother that their neighbours' most precious artefact was way more common than any of them could begin to believe.
Once it started snowing, Ed made a very obvious bid to remain indoors, where he could sit next to the fire and be less miserable. Which, really, just seemed to make Ru more determined to teach him Xingan martial arts, which meant the arse would come over and harass Ed each morning, until he gave in and followed him back to the training yard behind his house.
May would usually follow Ed and Al back to their place once Ru finally released them, so Al could help her with her sign language, and then Ed would tease his brother mercilessly after she left, because he could.
On one such day, after an unfortunate failure of a practice bout saw Ed soaked and miserable, he stormed ahead of his brother and May and retreated straight to the bedroom to change into a warm jumper that May's mum, Ai, had made him, and his spare trousers, then stalked back out into the main room and, yanking his trouser leg out of the way, prodded the fire back to life with his automail, in a bid to warm it up faster. (Well, as much as it could be warmed, anyway; at least he'd found a way to alter the array so it didn't get quite so ridiculously cold?)
That was how May and Al found him when they finally came in, and May's horrified cry of, "Edward, your leg!" reminded him that they'd actually managed to keep anyone in the village from realising he had a metal limb. (Because it wasn't that hard to keep from kicking someone with it during practice, as many years as he'd been sparring with it, and it wasn't like he made a habit of running around in anything that showed it off.)
Ed blinked and shrugged. :It's just automail.: As if she actually knew what that was; Xing didn't have automail technology, he knew, hence the reason one of the villagers – Gan – made do with a peg leg, while Honghui had learnt to manage with just one hand (and her own loss was, Ed half suspected, a large part of the reason she'd focussed on – and was so willing to teach anyone who was interested in – healing alkahestry).
"Automail," Al translated, when May looked to him, clearly unfamiliar with the sign. He gently pushed her towards the fire, which Ed had managed to abuse back into life, explaining, "It's a type of metal prosthesis that's fairly common in Amestris. It involves connecting wiring to the remaining nerves, so the wearer has about the same amount of mobility as if they hadn't lost that limb."
Ed sat down and wiggled his metal toes at her, showing off, and her eyes went wide.
And then Xiao Mei pounced on his foot and chomped on his big toe.
Ed sighed. 'Really?' he mouthed at the panda, while May tried to muffle her giggles and Al just straight-up cackled. 'Fine. Go for it. Gnaw on my toes to your crazy heart's content.' He turned to May and signed, :Carnivore.:
"She is not!" May complained with a huff, and Al rolled his eyes, resigned to this debate. "She's just very friendly."
:With her TEETH,: Ed returned, before pointing to where Xiao Mei was testing the rest of his metal toes for durability. Or edibility. It was kind of hard to tell when all her tests involved sharp teeth.
And then Xiao Mei stopped biting and sort of started...cuddling. With his foot.
Ed hid his face in his hands while the other two laughed at his expense. Seriously, how was this his life?
Well, if nothing else, at least he'd finally made friends with Xiao Mei? One up on his life before?
Planting season was busy, but also warmer, and so Ed could finally leave the house for an extended period without ending up feeling miserable.
Planting season also, apparently, heralded the return of their thieves, because another two attempts were made to get the book, with Ed's modified lock-and-key array proving its worth by flummoxing them both times. Ed bore the round of gratitude with a few tired eye rolls.
In the middle of April, Ed, Al, May, and the other children of the village who weren't deemed too young (so, Zi, Tengfei, Dewei, and May's half-brother, Bao) followed Honghui up into the rockier area of their land, while she droned on about nature poetry. Ed really sort of wished he could skip this lesson, and he could tell by the occasional yawns that Al felt the same, but Honghui's downtrodden expression when Ed had tried to politely bow out of her last poetry lesson had shut him up, and he didn't have the heart to try it again. So he kept to the back of the line, trying to look like he was paying attention, and really just musing over some of the alkahestric arrays in a book he and Al had bartered off a travelling merchant that came through the village the week before.
And then, between one step and the next, his sense of being watched sparked, a curl of unease brushing out over his shoulders, and he looked immediately to where May was walking next to Zi at the head of the line, just behind Honghui. She was clearly fine, and no one else seemed bothered, but Ed had spent years relying on that sense to keep him alive, and he quickened his steps to grab Al's shoulder.
"Brother?" Al murmured, blinking out of his own distracted daze.
:Trouble,: Ed signed.
Al frowned and cast a quick look around, then shook his head. "I don't–"
They saw the figure at the same time, jumping down from the cliff-face just above May. Tengfei shouted, "Down!" but Ed had already thrown a kunai, and Al had clapped his hands and was pressing them against the cliff, growing an arch over the rest of their party.
Ed's aim was pretty much perfect – months of target practice and Ru's stupid, repetitive slow motion drills had given him back the knife skills he'd had as an adult – and his kunai pierced the attacker's arm with enough force to upset their balance. They hit Al's arch hard and tumbled into a graceless heap to the far side of the path.
"Brother?" Al asked, while the others peeked around the edge of the arch to blink at the would-be assassin.
Ed frowned and shook his head; he still felt like they were being watched. He closed his eyes to focus on the sensation, finally pinpointed it, then grabbed one of the kunai Al kept at his waist for distance alkahestry and tossed it toward where it was coming from.
Obediently, Al clapped his hands together, and Ed finally opened his eyes in time to see a section of the cliff face a little further along and a fair distance above them crackling with the light of a transmutation as it shifted into a cage, within which was a man shouting curses at all of them.
"I thought you couldn't sense qi!" Tengfei snapped, glaring at Ed.
Ed blinked and looked to Al. :I...can't?:
Al cleared his throat and spoke aloud for the benefit for everyone else, "Brother, how did you know they were there? I didn't notice anything."
Ed grimaced. :I felt like we were being watched.:
"Being watched?" May repeated.
Ed nodded a bit uncertainly. :And not by anyone friendly. I don't know. I just...: He sighed, tried to think of a way to explain three years of having to watch his own back in hostile nations, and almost two decades of regular battles, about half of which had been life-or-death. :Battle awareness, I guess. I know when someone's coming at me with a weapon, or watching for a weakness.:
May blinked. "You're reading the qi of your opponents," she said.
:I'm not–:
Wait.
Was that what they meant by 'qi'? The way Ling had talked about it, he thought it was comparable to a human soul. But, then, Ling had once said that Al hadn't had any noticeable qi while in the armour, and that Bradley's qi had felt more like any other human's, rather than like the other homunculi's, even though he'd had a Stone, too.
Ed had been trying to fit the alkahestric concept into the alchemic body/mind/soul concept that his study of human transmutation had taught him, but his battle-sense had never really fit into that framework, it just was. It defied all possible explanation, but it had kept him alive, so Ed had just given up trying to sort it into a scientific framework, tossed it in next to that stupid, fickle 'love' and other such emotions.
'Oh,' he mouthed.
There were still parts he was missing, because Ling and Lan Fan and Fu had been able to sense the Philosopher's Stones and each other, to an extent, but at least he had a framework, and he knew the Dragon's Pulse concept was related to the concept of qi, so it was only a matter of time before he finally figured out alkahestry. That was...a relief. He was tired of banging his head against the proverbial wall.
Al just sort of hugged him around the shoulders, while May beamed.
Tengfei rolled his eyes at all of them, then pointed to the crumple of would-be assassin on the side of the path – Ed suspected they'd been knocked unconscious at some point during the unplanned fall – and said, "We need to take him back to the village." And then he looked past the arch, towards the earthen cage. "And that one."
"Brother and I will get that guy," Al promised, before dragging Ed along after him.
On the upside, their lesson in nature poetry was cancelled.
Ed spent the rest of April and well into May fighting with his battle/qi-sense, until he finally managed to pin down the elusive Dragon's Pulse. (And at least now he understood why one of the less helpful suggestions for finding it had been to be more dragon-like; Amestrisan dragons didn't flow.)
The thing about having mostly mastered qi-sensing first, was that he could now tell why Al could use him as a focus, same as the kunai that he kept close so they could pick up his personal resonance, same as Ed could use Al as his focus. More to the point, Ed and Al could probably use each other's kunai as easily as they could use their own, because Al felt like an extension of him. Not really like an extra limb or anything – he couldn't manipulate his brother in any way – but their energies were almost an exact match.
"It is a little weird," May offered when Ed asked her about it, because her half-brother and half-sister didn't have anything like the same energies as each other or her, and Zi and Tengfei were also siblings, but felt completely different to Ed, too. "It is said that twins have the same qi, and that's what I thought you were, when you first came."
:But we're not,: Ed signed, even while he recalled back to another life, when he and Al hypothesised that their souls had crossed on the other side of the Gate, which was the only reason Al hadn't actually died when Truth took his body as his toll. He knew, now, that qi wasn't really the soul, but there were similarities, and crossing paths on that side could have just as easily mixed their qi together. The minor discrepancy in their qi – not enough to affect their ability to use each other, but obvious if you looked hard enough – could be attributed to any number of things, including temperament, Ed's future memories, and Ed's automail. There was no way to really know, and the inexactness of it all was a constant source of headache whenever Ed thought about it too much.
"Well, you are much closer to each other than I am to Bao or Lanying; maybe that's it."
:Maybe.:
"Or maybe it's because you're related to the Philosopher of the West."
Ed sighed; he should have known that was coming. :I still say you lot put too much stock into him.:
May huffed. "You're just jealous he came to Xing instead of to Amestris!"
Ed snorted. :I'm really not.: Although, when he thought of it, that would have been a weird sort of reversal, Amestris getting Hohenheim, while Xing got the Dwarf in the Flask.
...right. No, better Amestris got the Dwarf in the Flask; he didn't really want to know how much sooner that fucker would have tried his array if he had a ready-made country that was in a pretty constant state of warring with itself.
"I know that look," Al said, and Ed and May both turned to find him walking up behind them. "The Philosopher of the West again?"
Ed scoffed, while May ducked her head and nodded.
Al sat on May's other side and patted her back, which earned him an adoring look that made him clear his throat in that way, Ed knew, that meant he was trying to pretend he wasn't embarrassed. "You should really just stop bringing him up, May," he said in a rush, an obvious bid to cover his embarrassment. "You know Brother's just going to be rude."
May sighed and slumped. "I know..." She tossed a twig she'd been fussing with for a while, and they all shared a quiet laugh when Xiao Mei caught it and then proceeded to gnaw on it.
"May!" they heard from the village. "Where are you, May?"
May climbed to her feet with a heavy sigh, then called back, "Coming, Mother!"
When she looked at Al, he smiled. "We'll see you tomorrow," he promised.
May flushed slightly and gave a vigorous nod before spinning and dashing away, Xiao Mei bounding after after one last squeak of goodbye to Ed and Al.
:Al and May, sitting in a tree,: Ed signed cheerfully. :K-I-S-S–:
Al smacked his hands. "Seriously, Brother, stop. Why are you always so immature?"
:It amuses me.:
Al groaned and covered his face. "I hate you."
Ed snorted and rolled his eyes, waiting until Al peeked out at him before quickly signing, :Are you blushing?:
"I am leaving," Al stressed, jumping to his feet and turning towards the house.
Ed laughed at his retreating back.
He only lasted another ten minutes or so before following Al in, led by the hopeful grumblings of his stomach. And, indeed, Al had started their dinner, which made Ed grin, even as he knelt next to the hearth to help.
Once it was done and they were sat across from each other at the table to eat, Al signed, :You know, Brother, you can tell me who YOU ended up with and not mess with my expectations.:
Ed almost choked and quickly set his chopsticks down to grab his water and take a swig. :The FUCK, Al?: he signed once he could breathe again.
Al frowned. :Your excuse for not telling me or Winry who we ended up with.:
Ed rubbed at the bridge of his nose. How had he not anticipated this getting brought up? :What does it even matter?: he signed with a scowl.
"Maybe I want to be able to tease you the same way you keep doing to me with May!" Al snapped, clearly too upset to bother with signing.
(Under a listing for the antonyms of 'subtle', you will find a picture of Ed.)
Ed grit his teeth. :It doesn't matter who I was with, Al, because it's not going to happen again.:
Al just sort of stared at him for a long moment, anger draining away to be replaced by surprise, then worry. :Brother,: he signed slowly, :did you get your heart broken?:
:No. Drop it.: He very pointedly turned his attention back to his food.
"No," Al said, because not looking at his brother didn't keep him from communicating, dammit. "Brother, what happened? Why won't you ever tell me anything?"
:I told you plenty of shit,: Ed signed without looking up.
"You told me about the Dwarf in the Flask and his people, and you told me about the lieutenant colonel and them, and you'd always go on about how I turned into some great alkahestrist and Winry became the best automail engineer in all of Amestris, but you always dodge questions about yourself." He took a deep breath, then said, "Dammit, Ed, you're my brother. I care about you, okay?"
Ed stared down at his food for a long moment before sighing and looking up to sign, :Winry. I married Winry.:
Al blinked. "But...why would you not–"
Ed clenched his jaw and roughly admitted, :Because I slept with someone else. She doesn't need that shit.:
Al grimaced at the mention of sex – and that should have amused Ed, really, because his brother was such a blushing virgin it was hilarious, but the current subject matter sort of squashed his sense of humour – then caught his lower lip between his teeth and considered Ed.
Ed looked down to stab what was left of his extremely unappetising meal with his chopsticks.
"That's it," Al said quietly, and Ed peeked up through his bangs. "That's what you're punishing yourself for, isn't it?"
Ed grimaced. :Stop psychoanalysing me.:
"No," Al returned, before continuing, "It was someone you care about, wasn't it?"
Ed blinked, lost. :What? Who was?:
"Who you–" Al winced "–slept with. You're afraid you'll do it again."
Ed scoffed. :I don't care about them.:
Al sighed. "Yes, you do. And she clearly cares about you, too."
:No, they DON'T.:
"She must," Al insisted naïvely. "Why else would she have–"
:He was DRUNK!: Ed signed angrily.
Al just sort of froze, his eyes going wide.
Shit. 'He'.
Ed shoved his way to his feet and ran from the house, because he couldn't– He didn't–
Fuck.
It wasn't his sexuality that would be a problem – none of them had ever minded that Garfiel was gay, and Ed was technically bisexual, anyway – but he'd cheated on Winry with a man. Winry, who had been legitimately upset as a child when people called her 'one of the boys' because she'd always hung out with Ed and Al and liked machinery. Winry, who had grown her hair out long so people would stop assuming she was a boy, who wore dresses and skirts like they were a statement, only wore trousers when she was working because it was a safety issue.
Winry, who had spent three hours trying on wedding dresses until she found one that turned her into a fucking goddess. Winry, who had fucking glowed while she was pregnant, had been scarily suited to motherhood, even when she'd been trying to juggle two kids and a business and Ed couldn't sit still and help for more than a few months at a time.
Ed jumped and caught at a branch growing next to the cliff face, used it to help himself swing up and reach a stone handhold, caught the next one over with his other hand, shoved himself up with his feet and just barely managed to catch the lip of the little cave Tengfei had jokingly said there was no way he could reach without resorting to alchemy, so Ed had proven him wrong.
He groaned and flopped back onto the floor of the cave, rubbing roughly at his face.
Winry aside, Mustang had been drunk. He'd been so beyond wasted, and Ed had agreed to lug his arse home because he'd only had one drink and the rest of the team were at varying degrees of intoxication, including Hawkeye. So he had, laughing the whole way at the nonsensical bullshit their new Führer was saying to lamp posts, bemoaning his lack of a camera and just generally enjoying the chance to celebrate the bastard finally meeting his goal, just like Ed had done his own.
He'd helped Mustang all the way up to his room, because he didn't trust the idiot not to trip on the stairs and crack his head open, and when he'd turned to leave after dumping him into his bed, Mustang had grabbed his wrist and said some line about Ed helping him meet a second goal that night, then yanked him down and kissed him. And Ed...
Shoving Mustang away had never occurred to him. He hadn't thought about Winry or his kids, hadn't thought about the fact that Mustang was way too drunk to be able to consent to anything... Fuck, he just hadn't thought at all. He'd let his dick take the helm and made one of the worst mistakes of his life. And when he'd woken up just before dawn, warm and content and curled up in the bastard's arms, he'd realised what he'd done and had barely taken the time to get dressed and leave the money he owed the bastard before running out.
Fuck. He'd sworn he'd never tell anyone about that, assumed Mustang didn't even remember (or, if he did, he hated Ed enough to stay away), and look at him now! A little bit of pressure from Al and he gave in. Maybe he didn't say who, but Al knew, now, exactly how much of a fuck-up his elder brother was.
The worst part of the whole thing, though, was that Al was right: Ed knew, given half the chance, that he'd do it again. Because sleeping with Mustang, even when the bastard was completely sloshed and Ed had only the vaguest of ideas how gay sex was supposed to work?
It had been the best night of his life.
Ed woke to warm fingers running through his hair and someone humming one of the melodies Mum always used to sing.
And then, apparently sensing he was awake, the humming stopped and Al said, "You're an idiot, Brother."
Ed tensed, remembering: Fuck. Al knew.
Al sighed. "I'm not angry with you, Brother," he said, sounding a little tired.
Ed felt a worm of guilt uncurling in his stomach; how long had it taken Al to find him? He hadn't been there when Tengfei had challenged him to reach the cave, and Ed had never told him about it. Mostly because it had never really occurred to him as a possible hiding place until he'd needed one.
"How could I possibly be angry with you for something that hasn't happened."
Ed...froze. Yes, it had. He remembered it happening.
But that...wasn't what Al meant, was it? He'd made this point months ago, when he'd cornered Ed about 'punishing himself', or whatever bullshit. To Al, Ed's memories were just a possible future. There was nothing saying they had to occur exactly as Ed remembered. Mistakes could be avoided, all future sins wiped clean.
Ed sat up, pulling away from the fingers that hadn't once stopped combing through his hair, which Al must have undone, because it was loose down his back. The cave was...so much smaller, now, with two of them, just barely enough room for them to move around without chancing an elbow in the face. And dark as all fuck, the half-moon letting in just enough of a glow for Ed to see his hands.
:I can't think that way,: he signed, using his hair as a convenient shield from his brother's gaze, and not caring how much his brother could make out. :It doesn't matter if it was in the future, I still remember it happening.:
Al moved, loose gravel scratching across the cave floor, and his hands curled around Ed's, forcing them still. Warm and gentle and so far removed from the harsh judgement Ed had always known he'd deserved. "Idiot," he whispered, sounding heartbroken. "I love you, you idiot brother."
Ed's breath caught, because this wasn't– Al wasn't supposed to just–
Al had always been the better of the two of them, and Ed really should have known better than to assume his brother would ever hate him for something that he had spent so much time hating himself for.
Ed curled forward, let his head press against Al's collarbone, and Al let go of his hands to wrap him in a hug, tight and warm and laced with all the forgiveness that Ed still wasn't certain he deserved.
They stayed like that for a long, impossible moment, before Al let out a jaw-cracking yawn and quickly followed it with, "Sorry."
Ed snorted and tugged away, grabbing one of Al's hands so he could pull him towards the cave entrance. Where he found...a staircase.
:Really?: he signed, turning to stare back at Al.
Al grimaced. "How was I supposed to get up here?"
Ed sighed and rolled his eyes, then turned and started down the staircase.
Al grumbled something too low for him to make out, then followed him down the stairs. Once they were both back on the ground, Ed clapped and returned the stairs to their original form. :Come on.:
"How did you get up there?" Al asked as they started back toward home.
Ed waited until they'd cleared a cliff blocking the light from the moon, then signed, :I climbed the cliff.:
"You climbed the–" Al cut himself off with a groan. "Of course you did. Potentially suicidal acts of physical exertion are your specialty. I really don't know how I keep forgetting that."
Ed shoved him. Even though it was...kind of true.
Al waited until they were back in the house before asking, "So, mystery man–"
:Go to bed,: Ed signed, before shoving him hard towards the bedroom.
"I'm going to find out eventually," Al promised.
Not if Ed had anything to say about it, he wouldn't.
:B-E-D,: Ed signed over Al's shoulder, between pointed shoves though the house and in the general direction of his brother's bed.
Once Al was tucked in, Ed rubbed tiredly at his face, silently ordered himself to just stop thinking about Mustang, and turned in himself.
Firm hands at his hips, a heavy warmth against his back, pressing in tight. And those hands curled forward around his sides, across his chest, hugged him tight. "Fullmetal," that voice breathed into his ear, "come for me."
Ed woke in a rush, his body tingling with the aftershocks of a way too real dream. 'Fuck,' he mouthed into the silence of their room, pressing his palms tight against his eyelids and trying to pretend he didn't notice the wet stickiness in his boxers; his unconscious's very own little 'fuck you'.
He couldn't quite stop a quiet snort, more a sound of helplessness than any real amusement. He should have known this would happen. Al offered his uncompromising forgiveness, so Ed's body turned traitor.
He dragged himself out of bed to go clean up and, after seeing the promise of sunrise outside the eastern-facing window, got dressed and started breakfast.
Al stumbled out to the main room just as the food was ready, and sort of plopped down into his spot and listed to one side, trying valiantly to keep his eyes open.
Ed shook his head and served his brother some tea and food; there was no point in trying to talk if Al couldn't reliably focus on his hands, so he just let his brother struggle towards the waking world in his own time.
Which, well, maybe Ed would have been better served shooing his brother back to bed, because the first thing Al said, around his second cup of tea, was, "Mystery man."
Ed barely managed to swallow his mouthful of tea without giving Al and the table an impromptu shower. :STOP,: he signed a bit desperately. :Let it go, Al. Please.:
Al considered him through sleep-crusted eyes for a long beat before huffing. "Stop about May," he returned.
Ed grimaced – he liked teasing his brother about May's crush – but nodded. :Deal.:
(He didn't, for one minute, believe that would be the end of the matter.)
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