Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

... Kuester’s got it out for me, I think. You know that eastern wunderkind that qualified for State Alchemist at twelve? The old bastard’s assigning him to my command. Are we really so strapped for soldiers that we can’t even wait until they’re through puberty? I swear to God, if anyone asks me to give him The Talk, I’m going AWOL.

Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist. I haven’t even met the kid and I already hate him. What the hell kind of alchemy does he do to get a codename like “Fullmetal”, anyway?

Pray for me, dear. God might just be the only one who hasn’t forsaken me over here.

(Excerpt from a letter sent from Col. William Hoover to Isaac Mathias, dated Feb. 5. 1905.)

--

[don’t you worry, little al-che-mist, says the voice. it is the muted echoes in the night, the sound of a drop hitting a pool, the shouts lost on the wind. it is only a matter of time.]

--

Ed is thirteen the first time he uses alchemy to take a life.

It’s a reflex gone wrong, the fight-or-flight instinct that Sensei drilled into him playing up at the worst time, and Ed doesn’t even realise the Cretan soldier is dead until it’s too late. For a few seconds, he stares at the dead body in the typical green of Cretan military fatigues, before he shakes himself out of it.

He has a mission to complete.

Afterwards, when Ed has transmuted the train tracks into an unrecognisable mess and returned to give his report to the colonel, he sits on his bed and he thinks. This is what he signed up for when he took the State Alchemist Examinations. He walked into that hall with no illusions as to what it would mean to be a combat-focused alchemist under military command and he did it anyway, because—

Because of Al.

Al, who is in a coma in a hospital in Central, whose medical care is being paid for by Edward’s missions for the military. Blood money. Al would be disgusted if he knew.

Edward sighs and flops backwards on his bed. What bothers him the most, he thinks, isn’t the fact that he killed, isn’t that he used alchemy to do it – it’s that he can’t remember the soldier’s face.

It’s just a—blank.

“Major Elric, sir!”

Edward blinks himself back to reality and takes in the appearance of the soldier stood at attention in the doorway to his room. “Can I help you, Lieutenant?”

“The colonel wants you back in his office, sir,” the soldier says. “Something about an inconsistency in your report.”

Edward sighs. “I’ll be there in five.”

He checks his appearance once, running his eyes over his loose clothes – not a military uniform, because they deal primarily in guerrilla warfare here, and the objective is to not draw attention to themselves – and checking for any noticeable bloodstains. He came straight from the target to the train station to the dorms, but it seems he’s come off lightly this time.

Presentable enough, he decides and trudges out of his room to find the colonel.

This is how the military works. Death is an everyday occurrence. Life goes on.

--

There are worse places to serve than Western HQ, Ed reflects. The war with Creta is rather subdued, so far as combat goes. It’s not so much about open hostility as it is about sabotage and subtlety – dishonest, maybe, but it’s the kind of fight that Edward managed to survive in for over a year without taking a life.

Doubtlessly that’s the reason he was assigned here in the first place. No-one wants the negative publicity that would come from sending a twelve year-old to the frontlines, but Ed’s combat potential was too great to ignore.

“Yes, I am taking care of my automail,” Ed says for what feels like the fiftieth time. “No, there isn’t going to be a repeat of the incident in Pendleton. Yes, I am eating enough. No, you can’t come visit.”

Ed ignores the sniggers from the other soldiers in the area (“I can’t believe Fullmetal has a girlfriend and I don’t. He’s, what, twelve?”) and tightens his grip on the phone. Winry’s words are rapid-fire to the point where it takes a phenomenal amount of effort for Ed’s sleep-deprived mind to decipher their meaning.

He sighs, feeling the weight of each one of his fourteen months’ service as he tries to form an explanation for Winry.

“I’m stationed at Western HQ, Win,” he eventually settles on saying. “Things aren’t so great with Creta at the moment. It’s pretty dangerous.”

Latest intelligence reports suggest that the next targets are going to be West City’s transportation links with the rest of Amestris. Any train into the city could be the one that’s destroyed and Ed is not letting Winry get caught up in that.

That information is classified, though. Ed can’t tell her it and he definitely can’t tell her it over the phone, so his warning just comes across as condescension.

She doesn’t take that so well. “Well then what the hell are you doing there, Ed?” Winry shoots back. “Can’t you request a transfer?”

Ah, this old argument.

Ed sighs. “We’ve been over this,” he says. “Southern HQ and Central don’t have any openings, Northern HQ deals primarily with Drachma, and heading back east isn’t an option unless I want to end up on the frontlines in Ishval.”

It’s then that Winry goes very, very quiet.

“Winry?”

There’s the sound of her taking in a deep breath. “Mum and Dad are thinking of going to Ishval,” she says. “They say that with the war heating up, the military’s going to start needing more competent doctors.”

Ed thuds his head back against the wall behind him. “Winry,” he says uselessly.

“I’m scared, Ed,” she admits. “I’m scared that they’re not going to come back and I’m scared that you aren’t either.” She inhales again. “So you better stay alive, you hear me? No matter what you have to do, you stay alive, got it?”

A gun in his face, don’t think, just act, hands together, transmute, move, move, move—

Blood.

“Got it,” Ed says weakly.

“And call me when you can.”

“Got it.”

“And drink your milk.”

“Got i—you little scumbag!”

The sound of Winry laughing down the phone follows Edward for the rest of the night and carries him over into a fitful sleep.

No matter what you have to do. If only she knew.

--

Life in West City drags by.

As he grows, Ed spends less and less time back at the command centre and more and more time out in the field. He blows up warehouses and he wrecks supply lines and he hits and he runs. His days are charged by adrenaline and his nights by cold, irregular slumber.

Once a year, he gets on a train and heads for Central to personally deliver his annual assessment report and, once a year, he stops by the hospital where Al is. For as long as he can bring himself to, he sits by his brother’s unconscious body and he waits.

Nothing ever comes out of it.

It’s during these visits to Central that Winry stops by to check on his automail. She fusses over the circuits and reams into him for not keeping up with his maintenance, then charges him an exorbitant sum for the pleasure. She’s growing up too, but not in the same way as him. Better.

Good, he thinks, as he flexes his newly upgraded automail for the first time. She deserves that.

Sometimes Ed thinks he will spend the rest of his life in the same way, slowly adding to his body count and bank account in equal measure, until he finally screws up enough that a clap of his hands will not buy him an escape. This is the rhythm that Edward has chosen for his existence, though, and he will not complain about self-made suffering.

Before he knows it, he is fifteen years old – one year off the minimum age of enlistment in the military – and he has wasted a fifth of his life fighting a meaningless war. Is everything so ultimately pointless, he wonders, fists clenching as his mind turns to Al, unmoving and slowly crumbling away in a bed miles away.

His fingers unclench, skate downwards over his left leg, his automail leg. The prosthetic that gave him his moniker. Maybe it should define him, he thinks. Maybe he should anger over the loss of his limb. Maybe, he should be bitter and aggressive and volatile, but—

All he is, is empty.

That night, he dreams that the metal from his left leg is creeping up his body, slowly and unfeelingly taking over, until it reaches his chest. His breath leaves him in a gust as he wakes, hands patting himself down, checking he still has his flesh body.

Then he laughs. More machine than human, he thinks, and it stings of the truth.

--

[step into my parlour, little al-che-mist, a whisper in his ear. we’ll make a cynic out of you yet.]

--

After Ed passed the State Alchemist Examinations at the young age of twelve, he was given the option of taking on a research placement or entering the field. He had looked the office clerk in front of him down with a strong gaze and flatly asked which paid better.

Danger pay, it turned out, was a real thing.

So he had accepted the blue uniform that was placed in his arms, packed up what limited belongings he couldn’t survive without, and shipped himself off to West City to serve under General Kuester.

Kuester took one look at Edward Elric, standing to attention in his ill-fitting uniform, snorted derisively, and fobbed him off onto Colonel Hoover.

Ed and the colonel have a working relationship, nothing more. Hoover appreciates that Edward can get the job done with minimal fuss and minimal casualties on their side, and Edward appreciates that Hoover is the one who decides whether or not he’s worth the money he’s paid.

Ed doesn’t trust the colonel, per se, but he can predict his moves and that’s almost as good.

“Fullmetal,” Hoover greets without any warmth. “Good job on the mission in Fafaus. You saved a lot of lives.”

I ended a lot of them, too, Ed thinks, but does not say. He’s too young to be jaded – that’s how the saying goes, right?

“Thank you, sir,” he says instead.

Hoover puts a sheet of paper in Ed’s hands – paper orders, which is odd, because they rely typically on word of mouth here in the west. Ed scans his eyes down the words on the page and freezes.

“You’re being recalled to Central,” Hoover explains. He sighs. “Much as executive poaching pisses me off, there’s not much I can do about it. Order came from up top.”

“I thought Central was pretty much the only place in Amestris that wasn’t short-staffed,” Ed replies, voice slightly strangled.

Hoover shrugs. “The conflict in Ishval has led to a lot of reassignments,” he says. “Word of advice, Fullmetal: Central’s different to West City. More traditional. I know that you’re typically a plain-clothes officer, but I’d suggest you to dig out your uniform. Maybe alchemy it so that it fits you this time.”

Ed feels his eyebrow twitch. “Are you saying I’m short, sir?” he grits out.

“Not at all, Major,” Hoover says smoothly.

“And the verb is transmute,” Ed adds with a sneer.

Hoover’s returning look tells Ed just how little he cares. “Dismissed, Fullmetal.”

Ed gives him a sloppy salute on his way out and revels in the way that it makes Hoover sigh as if Ed’s very existence is shaving precious years off his life. It’s a point of pride for Ed that Hoover has nearly forty percent more grey hair than he did three years ago, despite being only thirty-nine.

Out in the hallway, Ed exhales. He looks down at the paper orders in his hand and he just thinks. Central’s not too bad, really, even if Ed is only going to be there a few days at most, but he has a bad feeling about all of this.

Under the authority of Executive Order 3066, Ed reads again, Major Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist, is hereby ordered to return to Central City for reassignment.

He scrubs a hand down his face. What is this all about?

--

“You ever been to Ishval, Fullmetal?”

Ed looks up from his hands and tries to ignore the way that they’re shaking. It has nothing to do with the poor suspension on this vehicle, but no-one needs to know that. “No,” he says, “but I grew up in the east, so.”

“No kidding, me too,” Second Lieutenant Verra says. She turns the car slightly so that they’re not driving straight into the sun. “Where you from?”

Ed doesn’t want to think about this, doesn’t want to think about anything from before he became a soldier, but he answers her all the same. “Resembool.”

“Huh,” Verra says. “Normally we’d be routed through there, but Command’s trying to keep the State Alchemists split up – make it harder to wipe you all out, you know?”

“Yeah,” Ed says, throat dry.

“You going to be okay with your automail, by the way?”

Are all officers outside of West City this chatty? Have Ed and his antisocial tendencies been spoiled by the don’t-both-me-don’t-bother-you attitude of Western HQ?

“I’ll be fine,” he answers. “They make this special cold-resistant automail up in Briggs, but it’s more extreme-temperatures-resistant. The military sent some stuff down for my mechanic and she put a new leg together for me. Should be able to deal with the heat.”

It makes him sick, really, that the military involved Winry in this. She’s listed on all of his forms, because being a State Alchemist means that the military pay for his automail upkeep as part of his medical care, but—

Damnit, getting off a train at Central Station to be greeted by Winry and an armed escort was not how he wanted his week to start out.

Nothing about this week has gone as planned, though.

A long time ago, in Resembool, back before—a long time ago, the first rumours of Edward’s ability to transmute without a physical circle had just begun to spread. A military recruiter showed up on their doorstep, ready with a pitch about the perks of selling one’s soul to the military.

“Why did you even let him in?” Ed asked that night, after he had helped Mum put Al to bed. “I don’t want to join the military.”

Mum sighed. “And I don’t want you to be a soldier,” she agreed, “but it’s a good opportunity for you to further your alchemy studies.”

Ed snorted. “As if they could teach me anything.”

“Edward,” she sighed again. “We’ve had this conversation before. Just because someone’s not as smart as you doesn’t mean that you can’t learn anything from them.”

He crossed his arms and scowled. “They couldn’t teach me anything I would want to learn,” he corrected.

They didn’t hear pleasant things about the military in Resembool. They were too close to the border with the desert, too close to Ishval, not to hear the whispered horrors about the growing war. It will be bloody, mark my words, Ed had overheard a woman at the market tell his mother, and we all know that that blood will not be the military’s.

“Not all soldiers see the front lines,” Mum said, a touch uselessly. “Not all State Alchemists even serve in the field.”

Ed shook his head. “It’s war in Ishval, Mum,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

Mum did not live long enough to see the truth in Edward’s words. She didn’t live long enough to see him throw away his principles, either, though, so there’s that.

“Fullmetal?”

Ed opens his eyes. He rubs at his face roughly, shifting into a more upright position in his seat. “Lieutenant Verra?”

Verra stares out through the windshield. “We’re here.”

Executive Order 3066: any combat-oriented State Alchemist is to be deployed to the frontlines in Ishval in the hopes of bringing this war to a swift close.

It is 1908. It has been seven years since that conversation with Mum, seven years and Ed can’t even recognise his life now as a product of his life then.

“Thanks for the ride,” Ed mutters. Then, he kicks open the door of the car, pulls on his white coat, and goes to war.

--

[soon. it’s the first thing he ever hears the voice say. soon, little al-che-mist.]

--

Ed hates Ishval from the very moment he steps out of the Lieutenant Verra’s car into the blinding sun. It’s a barren, thankless land crafted from ruins and sand. Privately, Ed wonders why the hell anyone would want to fight over it.

It’s hard not to notice the stares that follow him as he walks through the camp to command’s tent. He supposes he does look rather out of place – a short fifteen year-old in full uniform – but the guards outside the tent let him through after he flashes them his pocket watch.

“Fullmetal Alchemist reporting for duty, sir,” Edward says, saluting crisply once he’s inside. It’s cooler inside the tent, but only marginally so, and Ed feels a bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck.

“Ah,” the general says. “Fullmetal. You’re assigned to the Sero District.”

Ed waits for further orders and when none come, asks, “Sir?”

“The Sero District, Fullmetal,” the general repeats. “It’s south of Daliha. I’m sure one of the lieutenants would be happy to point you in the correct direction.”

That is not the clarification he wanted. “And I’m meant to… meet up with a command centre there?”

“What?” The general blinks. “No, we don’t have any centres that far into enemy territory.”

“So what are my orders?” Ed asks, more than a bit lost.

The general stares at him like he’s the one not making any sense. “You’re assigned to Sero District,” he repeats.

Ed wants to slam his head against something. “And what, pray tell, am I doing there?”

A dead stare.

Ed gulps. “Sir?” he tacks on, more than a moment too late.

“I thought I was being perfectly clear, Fullmetal,” the general says, words tight, “but allow me to spell it out for you if it is still too complex. You have been assigned to the Sero District. Cleanse it.”

Cleanse… they can’t mean—

“Leave no-one alive, Fullmetal.”

--

[soon, the voice cackles, soon, soon, soon, it’s coming, little al-che-mist, coming, coming, coming! soon you will see! open your eyes, little al-che-mist. soon!]

Chapter Text

Edward Elric was just 15 years of age when he was deployed to Ishval in 1908. He was the youngest soldier on the frontlines and, like many State Alchemists, had never undergone formal military training. In spite of this, Elric finished the Ishval Civil War with one of the highest kill-counts of any State Alchemist, second only to the likes of Roy Mustang and Solf Kimblee.

Elric’s service in Ishval marked his military career for years to come, but to truly understand the mind behind the Fullmetal Alchemist, we must first return to his roots, in the small farming community of Resembool.

(Excerpt from “Great Minds of the Early 1900’s Volume 3: Edward Elric”, by Reuben G. Wulf, first published 1968.)

--

[he does not hear the voice at first. he cannot. It is beyond his comprehension, but the words still reverberate, meaningless but still there, just out of his reach. he is four and the world is coming for him, yet, for now, he sleeps unaware. peaceful in his ignorance.]

--

Ed doesn’t make friends easily. He’s too different (golden eyes and hair, you some kind of freak, Elric?), too smart, too quick, too young, always too much of something that makes him stand out.

It’s not the same for Al.

Al’s brilliance at alchemy is tempered by his equal brilliance at people. Where Ed alternately stutters and rages his way through social interactions, Al navigates conversations with unmatchable ease. People like Al and Al likes people, so it really shouldn’t be a surprise that he slowly builds up a network of friends that never fails to make Ed burn in jealousy.

But he can be glad, too.

Glad that his brother has never had to come home with scabbing wounds on his knuckles, never had to face the disappointed face of their mother as she tells him to control his temper, never had to stew in bitter loneliness without knowing how to change it for the better.

So Ed reads and he learns and he absorbs. He brings books to school to study during break and lunch, substitutes glyphs and quadrants and circles for friendships, and slowly, slowly, the world around him starts to break itself down into things that make sense.

There are equations in movement, he discovers. Buildings can be seen as their chemical components; the most basic of social interactions as Equivalent Exchange.

It is not a healthy metaphor, he later learns. It is too simplistic for the intricacies of life, encourages the false idea that there is always an ulterior motive behind a kind act, but for Ed at just five years of age, an amalgamation of too-old, too-young, it helps.

--

“I’m sorry,” Ed apologises, left arm gripping his right to his side, a nervous gesture that he’s not sure when he developed.

“No,” Mum sighs. “No, you’re not.”

Ed looks at his feet. “I’m sorry that I caused you trouble,” he amends. “Mum, I—”

“Ed, no matter what you think, I do understand,” she interrupts. “I know that you find these sorts of things hard, but I always thought…”

That you’d figure it out eventually – the words hang in the air unsaid. Ed flinches at the implication, because he always gets it eventually. It’s his thing. He may take a while, but with time, everything makes sense.

Just not this. Not people.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Mum says and for a second, Ed’s heart stops in his chest.

No, no, no, no, no, he wants to scream, please, no, don’t leave, I’ll do better, I swear, I’ll try harder, please, don’t—

But he doesn’t. Hohenheim taught him that the weakness doesn’t go away if you don’t show it, but sometimes, it is easier to pretend it doesn’t exist.

“I’m pulling you out of school,” Mum says and Ed sort of… falters.

He feels slightly stupid. Mum isn’t like that. Mum didn’t leave. How could he think Mum could ever be like Hohenheim?

“You’re not learning anything, anyway,” Mum goes on. “In fact,” her tone turns teasing, “I’d wager all you’re doing is shortening your teacher’s life expectancies.”

That’s a cue, Ed has learned. He summons his best unrepentant grin and brings his eyes up to Mum’s face.

She smiles back and something lightens within him. “The Rockbells home-school their daughter too,” she says. “Maybe you and Winry can be friends.”

I’d doubt it, Ed does not say. Instead, he nods up at Mum and lets her crowd him into her side.

“What about Al?” he asks suddenly. “I mean, he’s not really learning anything either. He’s just as good at alchemy as I am, you know?”

“I don’t know, Ed,” Mum says, and he can tell she is weighing her words carefully. “I don’t want to take him away from his friends.”

Ed snorts. “What friends?”

And maybe the words are driven by jealousy, but they are just as true as they would be without it. What kind of friends, Ed wants to know, cheer and clap as your older brother curls into a ball to protect his kidneys?

“Ed,” Mum says warningly.

He just doesn’t get it.

“It’s his choice, I suppose,” she sighs. “I’ll talk to him tonight.”

Ed feels his mouth go dry. Given the choice between Ed and everyone else, what will Al choose? It makes him a terrible brother, doesn’t it, that he honestly does not know.

--

Al chooses Ed.

Again, Ed rages at himself for seeing Hohenheim in the people he loves.

--

[the sins of the father, the voice guffaws. if only you knew, little al-che-mist. oh what bliss there is to be found in pitiful ignorance. he wakes in a cold sweat.]

--

Ed is seven years old and he has found his soulmate.

Not his romantic soulmate – because, ew, gross – but his platonic soulmate, who will sit and talk mathematics with him for two hours and who punched the lights out of a village boy because he said Ed’s hair and eyes made him look like an alien. Sure, she’s a machine geek and she smells of motor oil six days out of seven, but she is brilliant in the core sense of the word. That’s Winry Rockbell, though, fierce and quick and self-motivated.

She doesn’t care one shred for alchemy, but Ed finds that he doesn’t care so much about that either. She does geek out when she realises that she could get Ed to synthesise parts for her once he gets good enough, turning on him with wide, sparkling blue eyes. Ed gives her a flat look and tells her that he won’t use his alchemy for something so pedestrian.

Al laughs at him for days as the bruise heals.

Ed thinks he might love her, just a bit, and inside, the wound that has been left open and festering ever since Hohenheim left starts to scab over.

Whatever it takes, he thinks, and vows to keep her safe.

--

“Al, Al, Al!” Ed cries, stumbling over his legs as he skids across the hallway of their house. “Al, wake up!” He throws open the door to his brother’s room. “Al, I’m serious – I’ve got to show you something!”

Al groans and sits up in bed, stretching his arms above his head. “Ed?” he asks blearily. “What time is it?”

“A little after five in the morning,” Ed rushes out as he latches onto his brother’s hand and starts dragging him away, “but this is important.”

“Oh,” Al says flatly, “well, if it’s important.”

Ed ignores the sarcasm in favour of tugging harder on Al’s wrist. “So, I was up late – or early? I think it might have been early – thinking about alchemy, and I realised that the circle is a guide, you know, for the energy, but then I was thinking – why can people use simplified circles, you know?”

“Ed,” Al says tiredly. “You’re speaking too fast again.”

Ed sighs, “Fine. I’ll just show you,” and he claps his hands together.

There’s a crackle of energy, a tang on the air, and then Ed places his hands to the floor. A pause – and Al’s doubt is almost palpable – but then, a few inches away from where Ed’s hands are touching the floor, something twists and rises up. When it finishes forming, Al stares at the wooden flower.

He doesn’t comment on the fact that it is five in the morning, or that Ed has just violated one of Mum’s most strictly upheld alchemy-in-the-house rules; instead, he gapes openly. As if anticipating what the next question out of his mouth would be, Ed shows Al his hands and they are—

Bare.

“Did you just—”

Ed nods.

“Oh my God,” Al whispers. “Oh my God.”

Ed nods again.

“You just—without a transmutation circle—oh my God.”

Ed grins.

--

Alchemy without a physical transmutation circle is mentioned several times in Hohenheim’s books. There isn’t much detail recorded on the ability, but that doesn’t mean much of anything. Hohenheim’s library is, after all, rather limited – a good starter pack, but pretty useless for higher level alchemy.

In that, Ed and Al are almost entirely self-taught.

So, Ed looks at his ability and he sees nothing special. The next level of alchemy, nothing to brag about.

This is probably the only reason that it takes so long for the military to find him.

--

The whispers spread through Amestris bare months after the outbreak of the Ishval Civil War. The people, desperate for a bit of whimsy in the face of years of violence, latch onto them with fervour that is only equalled by the rumours’ improbability.

A boy, they say, with eyes of solid gold and hair as yellow as the sun. A boy who can make waves through the ground with his hands, who claps and commands nature. A boy in the east, lost in fields of corn. A boy.

Roy hears the rumours and almost laughs. It’s ridiculous: a kid achieving alchemical nirvana? Okay, sure.

No matter how ridiculous the rumours are, though, they still reach the State Military Academy, even if Roy wishes they hadn’t. Ten of his eleven bunkmates just won’t shut up about it and the eleventh – Maes, who Roy thought better than this – contents himself with sitting to the side and fanning the flames.

“No way, man, when have you ever heard of someone using alchemy without a circle? There’s a reason alchemists all have crazy tattoos and shit.”

“Doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. It could just be really difficult.”

They’re all so loud. Roy is honestly considering braining someone with his book if only to buy himself five minutes of (horrified, most likely) silence to make it through the rest of the chapter before lights out.

“Well, we could always ask our resident alchemist-in-training, you know?” Maes says, effectively cutting of the speculation of the other cadets in the bunkroom.

I take back every nice thing I ever said about you, you dirty traitor, Roy thinks as he shoots a glare at his soon-to-be-former friend. Maes smirks right on back, relaxing onto his bed to watch the aftermath of his comment.

Every single eye in the bunkroom is on Roy now and if that isn’t an uncomfortable position to be in, he doesn’t know what is. Elemental Composition Vol. 5 is going to have to wait for another night, it seems, not that he was making any amount of significant progress through it.

“It’s not impossible,” Roy hedges, snapping his book shut and hoping that they’ll let him leave it at that.

Yeah. No such luck. Maes, I’m going to kill you slowly.

“Okay,” Roy says, thinking back to the lesson where his teacher had explained this to him. “Think of alchemy like maths. When you first start off, you need to write out all of your working to make sure you don’t make a mistake – that’s the equivalent of working with a full transmutation circle. The better you get, though, and the more you practise, that’s when you can start cutting out stages of your working because you just automatically do it in your head.”

They’re all watching him, utterly enraptured, and Roy wonders why the hell they can’t look at him like this when he’s trying to explain a strategy for one of their exercises. (Maes, the eternal bastard, is still smirking. Roy’s going to transmute his hair into dust if he doesn’t stop soon.)

“So, it sounds pretty simple, right?” Roy goes on. “But it’s not. Whatever maths equation you’re thinking of, I can guarantee it’s too basic by about a factor of a hundred, at least. Even then, it’s unlikely anyone with the ability to perform a transmutation without a circle would be able to replicate it beyond in one very specific set of circumstances.”

“But it’s possible, right?” one of the cadets – Milner – prompts.

Roy scowls. “It’s not impossible,” he corrects. “That’s not the same thing. This rumour – it’s nothing more than that. If someone were to achieve circle-less transmutation, it wouldn’t be some no-name kid from an eastern backwater.”

“You’re sounding pretty jealous, there, Roy,” Maes says, still smirking.

Roy quirks an eyebrow. “You particularly attached to your hair, Maes?”

“No more than anyone else, I suppose,” Maes responds.

It’s Roy’s turn to smirk, fingers inching towards where he keeps his chalk. “Good.”

--

Ed levels the full weight of his you-stupid-talking-monkey stare at the military recruiter in front of him. “I don’t do alchemy without a transmutation circle,” he says scathingly. “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

“Edward,” his mother chides quietly. Given that she’s the whole reason that Ed’s sat here, though, taking to this gun-toting moron, he isn’t all that inclined to listen to her. There are some people it is dangerous to say no to, she had said.

Yeah, well, there are some people it is dangerous to say yes to, and this imbecile is probably one of them. Ed can’t believe they sent someone so stupid to recruit him. He’s actually a little insulted.

“But you do it without a physical transmutation circle,” the recruiter presses.

“Well, yeah,” Ed says with a shrug, “but that’s hardly worth a visit from the military. There must be tons of people who can do it over in Central.”

“Uh, no, not really,” the recruiter says. “I’d actually wager that you would be the first.”

Edward stares at him. Is the guy messing around? What kind of second-rate alchemists is the military employing? It’s not like it’s hard. It’s only a matter of time before Al can do it too.

He’s about to open his mouth to say something to that effect, but stops himself at the sight of the expression on his mother’s face. He bites down on the words, instead managing a neutral-ish, “Is that so?”

“Yes,” the recruiter jumps in with immediately, looking like he’s ready to cry at the lack of a combative answer. “The military would like to ask you to consider taking the State Alchemist’s Examinations. There are many benefits to being a State Alchemist, most notably a large volume of resources for research, including certain restricted branches of the National Central Library and a substantial annual grant.”

Ed isn’t impressed. “Did you practise that speech?” he asks.

“Edward,” his mother says again.

“He’s speaking as if I’m going to up and join tomorrow!” he protests. “I’m eight years old! If you hadn’t pulled me and Al out, we’d still be in school!”

At the mention of his age, Trisha Elric’s face darkens. “We are, of course, talking about the distant future, aren’t we, Lieutenant?”

The recruiter blinks. “Well, technically, there is no age restriction on the exams…” he says, before catching sight of her face. Ha, Ed’s mum is awesome.

“But of course we wouldn’t want Edward to attempt them until he thinks he’s ready,” the recruiter rushes to add and, upon receiving another glare from Trisha, amends, “and that would be when he is at least sixteen—” another glare, “—if not later.”

Trisha smiles widely. “I’m glad we’re all on the same page,” she says.

Ed watches the entire interaction with a growing smirk on his face. People always underestimate Trisha Elric, he thinks, and that’s not fair. Ed may look like his bastard, spineless father, but his intelligence, his tangible brilliance, that’s all Mum.

“Why don’t you go and check on your brother whilst I finish talking to the lieutenant here?” Trisha asks, still smiling.

“Sure,” Ed agrees, pushing down off the kitchen chair. He gives the military recruiter a jaunty mock-salute on his way out, because he knows how much that sort of thing pisses soldier-types off.

He hears his mum sighing exasperatedly at his back and he grins.

--

[all that arrogance, the voice sneers in his ear. you truly believe yourself untouchable, don’t you? such a fool, little al-che-mist. such a fool.]

--

Resembool is a slow town at its heart. The outbreak of the war has brought growth to the area, but to the residents and those who know where to look, it is idyllic and quiet.

It is home.

Ed thinks that maybe Resembool won’t always be home, but for now it is, and he has learned to love it for what it is. Everyone knows everyone; with a few exceptions, people are kind of to each other. They have to be, because Resembool is not large enough to avoid anyone for a decent length of time.

Izumi Curtis doesn’t fit in even in the slightest.

She is abrasive, passingly polite at best, and alternates between kicking arse and coughing up blood. Here’s the thing, though, the thing that makes Ed disregard the snide mutterings of the villagers: Izumi Curtis might just have forgotten more about alchemy than Ed has ever known.

He says as much, straight to her face, because he had never quite mastered those tricky social interactions.

Al teases him about it relentlessly afterward. “You told her you wanted her brain,” he gasps, halfway through relating the tale to Winry. “She looked so disturbed, as if Ed were this weird farmer kid with a dissection obsession and she had to watch her back because the moment she turned around he’d crack her head open with a shovel.”

Ed worries about Al’s mind, sometimes.

Winry snickers. “You a zombie, Elric? After some braaains?”

Ed scowls. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he says as Al bursts into laughter. “I didn’t see you coming out with anything better. You were too busy looking all starry-eyed.”

Al’s laughter trails off, his gaze turning wistful. “The alchemy…”

“Yeah,” Ed sighs. “It was awesome.”

“She can use alchemy without a physical transmutation circle,” Al adds, mostly for Winry’s benefit.

Winry snorts. “So what? So can Ed.”

“So,” Al explains, “up until now, Ed was the only person we had even heard of that could do it.”

Ed shifts, distinctly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation is heading. “I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before you can do it too, Al,” he insists.

Al shakes his head. “I don’t think so, Brother,” he replies. “I don’t get your explanation at all. Your arms form the transmutation circle and you project the symbols with your mind? It sounds a bit beyond my level.”

Ed scowls. He hates this, hates the way that his ability – which really can’t be as impressive as everyone says it is – has done this to his brother. Al looks at Ed and sees something which cannot be reached, a level of brilliance he will never achieve, and that’s wrong. Al is just as good at alchemy as Ed – he’s read the same books, done the same transmutations, and the only thing that stands between them is the chalk Al needs to use to mark the ground.

(And if only the Edward Elric of four years ago could see them now, see how the dynamic of envy has switched. Ed no longer craves the friendships Al crafted with such ease, no longer clings to alchemy as if it is a lifeline, no longer waits for the day that Al turns his back and leaves. He loved Winry from almost the moment he met her, but it is only now that he appreciates just how much she saved him.

Saved him, the dark part of his mind whispers, at the expensive of his brother.)

“Wow, Ed,” Winry says, eyes wide, “I had no idea you were so cool.”

“You’re mocking me, aren’t you?” Ed asks flatly.

Winry grins. “What gave me away?”

Your everything, Ed does not say, because he values his life and doesn’t fancy having to go downstairs to ask the Drs Rockbell for medical attention.

--

In the end, getting Izumi Curtis’s attention is far easier than Ed expected it to be. All it takes is one transmutation in her presence, the sight of him clapping his hands together and creating, and she’s there, in his face.

“What did it take?” she demands, holding him up off the ground by his neck. “What did you give it, you foolish child?”

He kicks and struggles and tries to get away, but she’s too strong for his scrawny body to overcome. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he cries. “Let me go!”

“The Gate! What did it take from you?”

“What gate?” Ed yells back. “I don’t know what you are talking about, you crazy woman!”

He yelps as she drops him, barely managing to land on his feet. She’s backed away from him now, stance uneven as if she’s physically staggered by his words.

“You don’t…” she whispers, “you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

Ed glowers. “That’s what I told you.”

And then she’s back in his face, scouring his appearance for some unknown trait. “What do you know,” she asks, “about human transmutation?”

That’s… That’s not a question that Ed wants to be asked by—well, anyone, really, but especially not by a woman that he’s looking to apprentice under. The implications of that single question are staggering and for once in his life, Ed finds himself determined not to think something over.

Ed swallows and meets her eyes. “It’s taboo,” he says quietly. “And it’s taboo for a reason.”

Izumi Curtis stares at him for a long time. Then, she huffs and breaks eye contact. “Kid—”

“My name’s Edward, you know. And I’m ten; I’m not a kid.”

“Kid,” she repeats, “what do you have in Resembool that you can’t leave behind?”

Later, Ed will think back to this moment. Think that he shouldn’t have forced back the words – my brother, because Al is everything – that he wanted to say. Think that he made the biggest mistake of his life when he tried to carve a path out on his own.

But that is later. Ed says, “Nothing,” because maybe, just maybe, this is what he and Al need. What Al needs, to finally be out of Edward’s shadow.

Izumi Curtis stands up, shaking out her limbs. “Well, kid,” she says, “it’s your lucky day. You just landed yourself an alchemy apprenticeship.” She pats him on the head, once, then catches her hand as if it betrayed her in the action. “I’m going to go and explain this to your mother. You go pack.”

--

Ed has barely a second to process his surroundings before he’s ducking and rolling, dodging a thrown book.

“Pay attention when I’m speaking, brat!” Sensei yells. “Do you have any idea how many people would kill to be my apprentice?”

“Your apprenticeship would kill them,” Ed mutters under his breath, slipping out of his defensive stance to pick up the book from across the room.

“What was that?” Sensei growls. “Are you not grateful for my teachings?”

“You ditched me in the wilderness for a month!” Ed shouts indignantly. “I almost died!”

“And how much did you learn?” Sensei asks pointedly.

Ed scowls. He hates it when she wins their arguments and she always wins. “A lot,” he allows.

Sensei smiles widely. “Come on,” she says, a touch gentler, “if we get through this, I’ll let you have the afternoon off when I go for a lie-down. You can write your mother and brother another letter.”

--

Learning under Sensei is an experience in survival. But – and here’s the thing – he learns. He walks out of Sensei’s house a year later aware and awake in a way he could never have been without her guidance.

Sensei ruffles his hair in that gruffly affectionate way of hers, and sends him off back home.

Ed sits on the train to Resembool and watches the countryside whip past and finally, finally, he thinks he knows what it is to feel at peace.

--

But that peace cannot last. This is war, and it is only a matter of time before—

It is only a matter of time.

Ed steps off his train onto the station platform, and he catches sight of Mum and Al, both looking so happy to see him again. He puts one foot in front of the other, knowing he’s grinning like an idiot, and then—

The world explodes into fire.

The rapid growth of their town, the way that everyone has enough to eat, the contentment of the people – Ishval looked at it all and saw a target. It makes Ed so furious, because they are civilians. The most these people have to do with the war – and it’s always the fucking war, isn’t it – is that they sell fabric to the military for their uniforms.

Fabric . For uniforms. So that the Ishvalans know who to shoot.

Fuck them and their inevitable end at the hands of the military. They fucking deserve it.

Someone pulls Ed out of path of the worst of the blast, throws him back into the train carriage. He struggles against the hands that hold him back, delirious with desperation, because his brother his mother his family God please no.

“Kid,” someone is saying. “Kid, calm down.”

“My brother—” Ed tries to say. “He’s—”

“You’re not going to much help to him with only one leg,” that same voice says back. “Calm down, kid.”

Only… one leg?

Ed looks down and then he screams.

--

[always at the expense of your brother, little alchemist, the voice laughs. how much is one boy worth?]

--

The explosion at the train station makes national news. Sensei calls from Dublith, offers to hike down through the countryside to see him, but Ed turns her down. He doesn’t want her to see him like this, crippled and stewing in his own uselessness.

Mum is dead. Trisha Elric has her own gravestone, made with alchemy because she’d always said it was a beautiful art when used correctly, and Ed can’t figure out how he’s supposed to feel about all of this.

Al—he’s not dead. That’s all that keeps Ed going through all this. Al isn’t dead. He’s covered in burns and he won’t wake up, but he’s alive.

That’s enough. It has to be enough.

Ed dreams of fire and heat and pain, listens to Winry when she tells him that she’s so glad he’s still alive, still mostly-whole, and he passes his days in a haze of discomfort.

And then Sarah Rockbell walks into his front room and tells him that if Al’s going to live, he needs to be sent into a city hospital and that costs more than they – than he – can afford. It would be kinder, she starts to say, if they—

Ed cuts her off.

How much is one boy worth?

More than I can pay.

Ed looks down at his hands, his instruments of alchemy. After a year with Sensei, he understands why it’s so strange that he can just do transmutations, understands that the knowledge of circle-less alchemy is a mark of sin, but he doesn’t know why. What he does know, though, is what he has to do with it.

For Al.

Pinako is stood behind Dr Rockbell. She’s probably there for moral support, to hold him close after he’s decided to kill his brother, and she meets his gaze evenly. He’s always liked that about her, how she refuses to look down on him for his age or his inexperience.

“Give me automail,” he says.

Pinako sets her lips around her pipe. “Why?”

Ed’s features set into a determined smirk. “I’m going to become a State Alchemist.”

Chapter Text

VERRA: The problem with Order 3066 was that the vast majority of State Alchemists were what we would now call civilian military contractors. They worked for the military, but they weren’t truly part of it, which made for decidedly mixed results.

INTERVIEWER: Mixed results?

V: Well, on the upper end of the scale, you had people like the Flame Alchemist – Roy Mustang, that is – who was, on top of being a State Alchemist, a highly-trained soldier. He knew how the military worked and he knew how to handle himself in a war. Then, on the other end, you had people like the former Spiral Alchemist – Lesley Hirsch – who had led a primarily civilian lifestyle and had never seen combat before. Mustang was predictable and stable. Hirsch wasn’t.

I: And where would Edward Elric fall on this scale? [a lasting silence] The Fullmetal Alchemist?

V: No, no, I know who Edward Elric is. I was just thinking. Fullmetal – that’s what we called him – would be difficult to quantify like that. He was fairly well integrated into the military from his time in West City and he handled the combat better than most, but…

I: But what?

V: He was very young. Sometimes, that worked in his favour. Others, not so much.

(From a radio interview with Capt. Anne Verra, in commemoration of the end of the Ishval Civil War, first aired Jun. 9. 1918.)

--

“So that’s him, huh,” Roy mutters to himself as he eyes the golden-haired boy sleeping on one of the benches in the mess.

“Who’re we looking at?” Maes pipes up from his side, following Roy’s line of sight in an obnoxiously exaggerated way. “Oh, the Fullmetal Alchemist.” Maes’ mouth twists into a frown. “Isn’t he the one who broke your record for youngest ever State Alchemist just a year after your certification?”

“Yeah,” Roy sighs.

At the time, he’d felt resentful. Roy had bled, had sweated, for his certification and God damn it, he was proud of what he had achieved. And then, this Fullmetal kid swanned in just a year later and blew all of Roy’s hard work out of the water.

Now, Roy’s just—he doesn’t know what he feels. Jaded, maybe, because he should be surprised that the military would turn a child into a human weapon, but amongst all of the horrors he has seen today alone, he just can’t muster the emotion.

“He’s smaller than I imagined,” Maes notes finally.

Roy shakes his head. “They always are.”

Maes sighs. “Ain’t that the truth.” He claps a hand down on Roy’s shoulder. “C’mon, I heard a bunch of guys have a poker game going in the medical tent and Hawkeye’s competing. You wanna watch her wipe the floor with them?”

Roy tears his eyes away from the sleeping boy – because that is what he is, more boy than man, and he is losing himself to this godforsaken war more than he will ever realise – and lets Maes steer him away.

He knows what they say about the Fullmetal Alchemist – and it is always that, always Fullmetal, as if by not calling him by his name they can somehow forget that he is just a child. Roy’s killed more men than nearly any other alchemist in this war, except for maybe Kimblee, but but Fullmetal’s reputation leans less towards unmitigated slaughter and more towards surgical precision and efficiency.

He claps and he brings down buildings, they say.

Unfeeling and remorseless, more machine than man.

Roy thinks that’s all bullshit. He’s never seen a machine snore in its sleep.

--

Ed snaps to attention at the feeling of movement to his side, doesn’t think so much as react, hands snapping together and slamming into the ground. Alchemy crackles beneath his fingertips and in one smooth motion, he pulls a dirt-crafted sword from the ground.

Twist, counter, attack—

He drives the sword straight into the Ishvalan’s gut.

Blood spills from the wound, soaking his white gloves and coat through with red. The Ishvalan stutters to a stop, breath pushing out of his lungs onto Ed’s face, and then he falls.

573, Ed thinks.

He doesn’t know why he even bothers keeping count anymore.

The street around him is empty – not surprising, really. This was just a routine patrol of an area that had already been secured. Anyone smart would have stayed the fuck away from it.

“Guess you weren’t smart, huh,” Ed murmurs down at the dead body at his feet. Predictably, really, the dead body does not have a response to that.

Sighing at the blood splatters on his white coat – because now he’ll have to requisition another and he’s pretty sure that the supply guys are getting sick of his face – Ed peels off his gloves and starts back onto his patrol.

A hand catches around his ankle.

Ed stumbles before catching himself and turns back around to see—

Al. Alphonse Elric. His brother. Face just as gaunt as Ed remembers it, lying on the ground and bleeding out, eyes wide and crazed.

“Oh,” Ed says.

And then Al smiles.

It’s that same warm expression that Ed remembers from an age ago. Harmless and cheery – friendly.

“Brother,” says Al. “I’ve missed you.” He sounds so damn happy that it’s—it’s not fair, really, because this isn’t Al.

Not Al stands on weak legs, swaying, and he’s dressed in the a hospital gown stained with his own blood. “What’s wrong, Brother?” he asks. “It’s been so long. Aren’t you happy to see—”

“You’re not real,” Ed tells him flatly.

“Maybe,” Not Al says, “but… Whose fault is that?”

And then—fire.

“Kid! Kid, fucking hell—Roy, get over here you ass—”

Someone’s screaming. It takes Ed an embarrassingly long time to figure out that it’s him.

As soon as the realisation hits him, he snaps his mouth shut and forces his eyes open. There are two faces hanging over him and a third, hanging a little further back. Two men and a woman. Ed blinks himself into awareness and, you know what, he isn’t awake enough to deal with this shit.

“Who’re you?” Ed mumbles, pushing himself up into an upright position. He realises belatedly that the two people above him – they were holding him down.

Ah, shit, Ed thinks as he looks down at his left trouser leg. He’s torn the fabric open, which means transmuting the damn thing back together or braving the supply guys. Through the holes in the fabric, his skin is red, like he’s been clawing at it with his bitten-down nails.

He was trying to rip his automail leg off. Ed wishes he could say it’s the first time it’s happened, but for all of his other crimes in this godforsaken war, he’s not usually a liar.

Waste not want not, Ed remembers, an echo of his mother, and it knocks him sideways slightly. She’s gone, has been gone for a long time, but sometimes it just feels like he’s on an extended trip away from home. That he’ll get off a train in Resembool and she’ll be there, smiling and waiting— before she disappears in a haze of flames.

Ed slams his hands together with more force than strictly necessary. He feels it rattle down to his bones, a secondary rhythm to the thrum of alchemy, and then slaps his palms against his trouser leg. Slowly, with a crackling protest, the material stitches itself back together.

Ed looks back up at the faces to find that they are just… staring at him.

Fuck. He probably missed their introductions, didn’t he?

“Sorry,” Ed says, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Let’s try that again. I’m Edward Elric. Major. You are?”

The man on the left – black hair, slight Xingese tinge to his features, early twenties, alchemical array stitched to his gloves – shifts, looking supremely uncomfortable with the sudden attention. He looks to be about two seconds away from defaulting on military protocol when his friend takes over introductions, jumping into them with a grin that feels a little fake.

“Captain Maes Hughes, Major Elric,” he greets, sticking out a hand for Ed to shake. “The grump to my side is Major Roy Mustang, and behind us is the ever-lovely Sergeant Major Riza Hawkeye.”

Ed gingerly takes Hughes’s hand. He wonders briefly why it feels like by that very action, he’s joining some sort of cult.

“Flame Alchemist, right?” Ed says to Mustang, because, well, it’s something to say. Ed’s never been good with this conversation thing and the military definitely did not help in that respect.

Mustang twitches. “Fullmetal, correct?” he replies crisply.

Oh man. This guy is even worse at social interactions than Ed is. That’s—impressive, really.

Probably sensing that Ed and Mustang are heading nowhere friendly any time soon, Hughes starts speaking again. “You’ve been asleep here for a while,” he says. “Hawkeye had enough time to win—how much was it?”

“60,000 cenz,” reports Hawkeye. She doesn’t sound smug, though. She doesn’t really sound much of anything.

Isn’t that how it goes, though? Sometimes, to survive, you’ve got to shut yourself down until you can cope. Ed knows how that feels better than he would like.

“Yeah, 60,000 cenz from the poker game in the medical tent,” Hughes continues. He seems perfectly at ease, which can’t be true, because he is literally supplying the social skills for three people. “Which took longer than you might think,” he adds. “I think you slept through lunch.”

Really? Ed pulls out his pocket watch and checks the time. Sure enough, it’s just rounding on half past three.

Huh. Ed snaps the watch shut. How did I manage that? I was napping on a bench in the mess tent.

No time for food, though. In… two minutes and forty-six seconds, he needs to be across base camp and saluting the general. Something about a special assignment.

Ed is thrilled, really.

“Sorry,” he apologises without feeling, “but I’m actually due in the command tent, so…”

Maes Hughes gallantly steps out of Ed’s way. The captain might just be the strangest character that Ed has met so far in this war, which is saying something. Alchemists generally have at least a few screws loose – it comes with the territory, really. Cagey as shit and either brilliantly insane or insanely brilliant: that’s what it takes to make State Alchemist.

Hughes is just—genuine, even when he’s not.

Ed gives the three soldiers a nod each, getting a nod back from Mustang and Hawkeye and a face-splitting grin from Hughes.

Again: weird.

--

As soon as Fullmetal has left the tent, Maes turns the full weight of his disapproving stare on Roy. “You didn’t have to be so unfriendly, Roy.”

Roy sighs. He’s just—tired, really. Maybe Fullmetal is on to something with his napping, not that Roy can figure out how the kid managed to sleep through lunchtime in the mess tent.

He musters up a teasing smile from somewhere deep within him. “Someone has to balance you out, Maes.”

Maes probably isn’t convinced by it, but the act clearly makes him feel a little more at ease. “Ouch, Roy,” he says, feigning hurt. “That cuts deep. Really, it does. How will I ever reconcile myself with the fact that I am… friendly?”

“With difficulty, I imagine, sir,” comes Hawkeye’s dry-as-a-bone contribution. Her eyes flicker to the tent flaps, tight and discerning as ever. “He wasn’t how I imagined him.”

“Too messed up for your liking?” Roy asks. He digs his hands into his pockets. “What else did you expect from a child soldier?”

Her gaze returns to Roy. “Blonder than I imagined,” she clarifies.

“Well,” Roy says, weighing the word. There’s something about blond hair and golden eyes, something that he should remember, but is just sitting slightly out of his reach in his mind. “That too, I suppose.”

--

Clap. Slam. Clap. Slam. Clap. Sla—shit.

Ed grabs hold of his mission objective’s white coat and yanks the older man down behind the cover of a wall. A hail of gunfire cuts through the air above them before Ed forces his hands together once more and smashes them into the ground.

The gunfire stops. 798.

Ed counts his heartbeat back down, waiting until he’s slightly more calm, before he turns to the other man. “You alright, doc?”

Dr Tim Marcoh jolts, as if Ed’s question was the equivalent of a red-hot poker. “You’re a child,” he says, like that means anything at all in a warzone. “Why did they—they sent a child.”

It’s fabulous, truly, that there is someone else out here that seems to understand just how fucked up this all is, Ed thinks, but the crisis of morals is really going to have to wait until—

“Move!” Ed throws himself and Marcoh forward into a desperate dive. The wall behind them explodes into a mess of debris, but Ed is already scrambling to his feet and hauling Marcoh up with him. There’s no time for alchemy, even without needing to draw the circles, so Ed just concentrates on running.

For all their resentment of the Amestrian occupation, Ishval really could have benefited from some of their city-planning laws. The districts are a maze of stairs and back-alleys and dead-ends; Ed spent days combing every street in Sero and he still doesn’t know the layout perfectly.

But this isn’t Sero. This is Mektev, smack-bang in the middle of the Ishvalan-held territory, and all Ed has to go on is an old dusty map he glimpsed during his briefing earlier that day.

Should have just gone back to sleep, Ed thinks sourly and he pulls Marcoh out of the way of another attack. They round a corner at break-neck pace, only—

It’s a dead-end.

“Put your hands up, sinner.” The words come from behind Ed and Marcoh, spoken in accented Amestrian.

Sinner, Ed thinks shakily. Sinner, as if any of these people are allowed to preach to him about sin, as if they didn’t burn his family alive.

Sinner, because alchemy is a greater crime than murder. Sinner, because even as they fight and kill and destroy, Ed is still one level below them for his ability to create.

Don’t they get that? Alchemy is based on science, not on miracles. It’s about taking the earth’s cast-off energy and using it for something constructive, feeling the throb of—

Wait.

Slowly, Ed raises his hands above his head. Marcoh, following his lead, does the same.

“Turn around. No alchemy or I shoot.”

At fifteen years of age, Ed is officially the youngest person on the frontlines by three years. He looks it, too, and though he hates this for being the one shred of his childhood he cannot dispose of, it can be useful.

No-one expects their people’s butcherer to be a child.

So, Ed turns around, and he sees the Ishvalans tense when they realise how young he is. He needs only one moment and hesitation and he gets it.

Ed claps his hands together above his head, a mockery of a prayer, and then brings them down to the ground.

And with nothing more than a picture in his head, he turns the ground against them all.

--

When they were in the academy together, one of the finer pleasures of Maes’s life was making Roy Mustang lose his cool. It was mostly because sixteen year-old Roy Mustang was a class-A prick, but also kind of because it was really damned difficult and Maes had never been able to walk away from a challenge.

By the end of the year, they were best friends.

Gracia laughed herself to tears when he told her this. She said it was so brilliantly representative of his character that she didn’t know where to start.

Roy’s changed a lot since their academy days. He’s less put-together, less obsessed with perfection – a bit of a hot mess, in all honesty. It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking tragic.

Still, though, Maes gets a flare of achievement out of the way that Roy chokes on his coffee when he tells him the news.

“What did you just say?” Roy wheezes.

Maes grins. “See your face right now, Roy?” he asks. “That’s pretty much exactly what Gardner looked like when he was told too.”

“Are you kidding me, Maes?” Roy coughs. “That earthquake yesterday and the massive mobilisation following – that was Fullmetal’s doing?”

Maes hums in agreement. “Brought down the entirety of Mektev on the inhabitants’ heads,” he says. “Military’s still gathering data, but preliminary reports suggest that Ishvalan casualties from the event are around 4,000. Command wanted to press the advantage.”

“Four thousand,” Roy murmurs. Maes wonders if he realises he’s speaking aloud. “Military casualties?”

“Non-existent,” Maes answers. He takes a grim sip of his own drink – tea, because Gracia had sent him a case in her last care package. He’s not as good at making the stuff as she is, but if—when he gets home, he supposes he can ask her to teach him. “Artificial earthquakes, huh?” He shakes his head. “What will you alchemists think of next?”

Roy raises his mug to his lips once more. He doesn’t say anything, which is more common these days than Maes would like.

Maes sighs, takes another sip of his tea, and tries not to think of what it means that a fifteen year-old boy has killed more people in a single day than Maes has in his entire military career to date.

--

Ed is ready to fall into a hundred-year sleep when Marcoh approaches his bed in the medical tent. Alchemy of that scale is always exhausting – mentally and emotionally, if not physically – and in spite of the ten hours he spent asleep directly after the incident, Ed still isn’t back to full strength.

“Are you going to ask me to make another earthquake too?” Ed asks Marcoh irritably. “I suspect you’d be able to follow a bit more of the theory than the general, but that’s not really saying much.”

Marcoh’s face is inscrutable. “You told them you wouldn’t,” he says. Ed’s not sure if it’s meant to be a question or a statement.

“Couldn’t,” Ed corrects. “I told them I couldn’t.”

4,229. That’s the final death count from Mektev. In one day, he skyrocketed his kill-count into the same league as the Flame and Crimson Lotus Alchemists.

And it was so easy. Clap, sketch array, destruction.

Killing should never be that easy.

Marcoh stares at him and he looks… relieved?

“Fucking hell,” Ed mutters. “I’m too tired to deal with this shit. What do you want, doc? Sorry about the arm, by the way. Victim of circumstance, you know?”

Marcoh touches the plaster cast around his right arm, as if just now remembering the fact that he broke it. “Why did you join the military, Major?”

“To fight the good fight,” Ed answers. “That all you wanted to know?”

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Marcoh says. “You’re a child, Major.”

Ed wants to roll his eyes. He suspects that he’ll fall asleep if he does, though, so he resists the urge. “Major this, Major that – for fuck’s sake, doc, I’m either a child or a soldier, not both. Make your fucking choice.”

Marcoh is silent. Ed has to turn his head to make sure that the doctor hasn’t left.

“You’re from Resembool,” is what Marcoh eventually chooses to say.

“You get that from my file?” Ed asks. He just wants to sleep.

“A year before you took the State Alchemist Examinations, Resembool was bombed by Ishvalan forces,” Marcoh says, “but I don’t think you joined the military for revenge. Your mission record is too good for you to be emotionally-driven. You make clear and clinical decisions in the field.”

“I passed my last psych eval with flying colours, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Ed says. He exhales heavily, fixing Marcoh with a golden-eyed stare. “I’m not trying to be rude, doc, but this is frankly none of your business.” He breaks eye-contact and closes his eyes.

Silence. Blessed, unmarred silence. Then—

“You have more options than the military, Edward.”

Ed almost laughs. Almost, because he thinks he would sound far too close to hysterical for his liking.

He hears Marcoh leave and rolls over, wrapping his blanket tighter around himself.

It has been nearly three months since he last heard someone call him by his name.

That night, he dreams that it’s Winry and the Rockbells living in a cramped house in Mektev, and they scream as the walls collapse on top of them.

--

Things change after Mektev.

It’s subtle at first, an edge of wariness that follows him as he moves through the camp. An air of fear whenever he sits down to eat in the mess tent. The way that soldiers shuffle out of his way as he walks.

On the battlefield, it’s not as subtle.

Ed is a high profile target now. There is no longer a single moment’s hesitation at the sight of his young face. The Ishvalan people want vengeance and Ed—Ed can’t fault them that.

It’s getting harder and harder to remember what he is doing out here, if there ever was a reason.

More machine than human, he thinks as he wakes up from a dream of choking on metal lungs.

He rolls over on his bed, reaching under his pillow with a trembling hand until he finds it. Two weeks into his time in Ishval, Winry had sent him a letter. He didn’t open it then, too busy sweeping through the streets of Sero to kill the scattered residents and he still hasn’t.

He misses her.

Yeah, Ed thinks quietly. That’s why.

Just a few more months, he tells himself. Just get through these next few months.

Chapter Text

… Edward looked up at Roy through golden eyelashes, the sun glowing around the edges of his light hair in a mockery of a halo. “Promise me, Roy,” he said, voice low.

Roy felt something jolt within him at the sound of his lover’s voice. Edward was always serious, but this was something else, something less detached, more human. Roy swallowed heavily.

“Promise you what, Edward?” he asked.

“That you will always come for me.”

As if that was ever a question. “I promise,” Roy said and then he leaned down to capture the next breath from Edward’s lips.

(Excerpt from “Tempered in Flame” written by Blaise De Zyre, first published Dec. 4. 1989.)

--

Late at night, days after Maes had first called out to Roy across Daliha, Roy leant his head back against the main support of their tent. “I wonder,” he murmured, “if any of us even know what we’re fighting this war over.”

Maes looked up and through the flickering darkness to him. “An Amestrian soldier accidentally shot an Ishvalan child.”

But Roy just laughed. “And what,” he asked, “was that child’s name?”

Names are considered sacred to Ishvalans, spread widely only after death. And Roy wondered this, still wonders this: as each side scrambled for guns and swords, who listened?

Who remembered the girl with a bullet in her skull before they trampled over her corpse to protest her death?

“I don’t know,” Maes admitted quietly.

Roy shook his head. “Neither do I.”

Because the answer to those questions is unsurprisingly simple: no-one.

--

Roy hates desperate people.

It’s one of the incontrovertible facts of human nature: when they are desperate, people are dangerous. Ethical lines are so much easier to ignore when you’re convinced that you have no other choice; moral codes so much easier to abandon in the face of certain death.

The human survival instinct is a truly awful thing.

And Ishval is desperate. The war is drawing ever nearer to a close and it’s looking more and more like a decisive victory for the military. (Because we were willing to go further, Roy thinks. Because we were willing to resort to indiscriminate slaughter.)

So this… This really shouldn’t be a surprise.

“Sir?” Roy croaks.

“Fullmetal has been captured,” Brigadier General Gardner repeats. “By Ishvalans,” he clarifies, as if that wasn’t already blaringly obvious.

But it doesn’t make any sense.

Ever since Mektev, Fullmetal has been near the top of Ishval’s kill-on-sight list. They’re not going to be sparing him on account of his age, not anymore, and the military is more likely to run in guns blazing than negotiate for his release, so why capture him?

To send a message? To extract information? Or is there something else at play here?

Roy swallows his thoughts back. “When do I leave?” he asks.

“As soon as you can put together a team with at least one sharpshooter,” Gardner states, glasses flashing in the light. “Mustang—” and that catches Roy’s attention; he doesn’t think he’s ever hear the general refer to him by his name, “—bring him home.”

Roy nods. “Yes, sir.”

State Alchemists are not meant to be people; they are simply weapons with a heartbeat. They are something to be feared and revered in equal measures, beyond human, infallible.

What a stupid creed. Cut Roy and he bleeds red, just the same as Maes and Hawkeye.

Just the same as Fullmetal.

Maes falls into step with Roy once he’s exited the command tent.

“So?” Maes asks.

Roy inhales. “Find Hawkeye and three others – we’ve got a mission.”

--

Before they headed further into the districts, Maes pulled out a rough map of Ishval and pointed out three locations he thought most likely to be holding Fullmetal.

They find him at the second.

The smell of burning flesh from the first raid is still clinging stubbornly to Roy’s senses when he enters the room where Fullmetal is and the kid is not doing great. He looks near dead, actually.

Someone has removed Fullmetal’s automail leg, presumably to stop him from running away, but the way that they’ve impaired his alchemy is—just—

“Fuck,” Maes breathes.

Yeah, Roy thinks quietly. Fuck.

At the sound of Maes’s voice, Fullmetal’s head jerks up. He’s tense for only the barest of seconds before he relaxes again, head dropping back against the stone wall he’s propped himself up against. “Took you fuckers long enough,” he slurs.

“Your arm,” Maes says dumbly.

Fullmetal blinks languidly down at the place where his right arm used to be, where there is now only a bloody stump. “Oh,” he says. Roy thinks he may be in shock. “That. Figured I needed it to do alchemy. They were wrong.”

Fullmetal seems to have a gift for understatement, Roy thinks dryly. They were wrong. That’s one way to explain the carnage surrounding the young alchemist. “They were fatally wrong”may be more accurate.

“Hughes, you’re going to have to carry him,” Roy says, speaking up for the first time since they’ve entered the room. “I can’t risk the blood interfering with my arrays.”

“Got it,” Maes says, walking towards Fullmetal and scooping his arms beneath him.

Fullmetal’s head lolls to the side. “Bridal style, awesome,” he says. “Always wanted to be a princess.”

Maes snorts. “Sorry, kiddo. I’m taken.”

There’s a mumbled “all the good ones” before Fullmetal seems to drop off into unconsciousness.

“The closest medical centre would be in Valenha, right?”

“Right,” Maes nods.

Roy gives the room one last look – the transmutation circles written in blood, the stone spikes up from the floor, the dead bodies strewn about carelessly – and frowns. “Get him out of here, Maes.”

“Roy—” Maes breaks off when he sees Roy pulling his gloves taut on his hands. “Right, snap-snap-boom, got it.”

Once Maes is clear, Roy snaps his fingers, and the room is swallowed by flame.

--

“The mission went well,” Hawkeye says, sounding accusatory.

Roy brings his head up from where he had been holding it in his hands. “Yeah,” he agrees.

“No casualties on our side,” she continues, “and our speed in locating Fullmetal likely saved his life. It was a success.”

“I know,” Roy says.

“Major Mustang,” Hawkeye says, and that’s enough to make him snap his eyes up to her. She only ever uses his full title when she’s making some sort of point. “This was a good day. Treat it like one.”

A good day…?

Roy’s eyes stray to the flaps of the Valenha medical tent. Beyond that thing border of fabric, a pair of blond doctors are treating a fifteen year-old boy. Roy refuses to think of it as anything less or more than that, because—

The first word out of Dr Rockbell’s mouth when he saw the kid was a pale-faced “Ed”.

Ed. I’m Edward Elric. Major. Said like that, with “major” as an afterthought, and no mention of a codename.

“Do you ever feel like you’re forgetting how to be a person, Hawkeye?” Roy asks.

Her returning smile is bitter. “I’ve already forgotten, sir.”

He laughs at that, because the other alternatives are far too betraying of his mental state for comfort.

--

The world is pain. It’s suffocation and excruciation, automail surgery without the blur of time layered over it. Ed can barely think through it all.

(It’s just as well that the war has taught Ed how to use alchemy to kill so well that it’s practically muscle memory, isn’t it?)

There is a voice beside his ear and he feels the distant sensation of something being pressed over his mouth.

“It’s okay, Ed.” Feminine and soft. Kind. “I’ve got you.”

A pair of hands circle around him and he crumples. “It’s okay, Ed,” she whispers, almost too quiet. “I’ve got you.”

—Mum!

Ed’s eyes snap open, the word dying on his tongue. All he can see around him for miles and miles is white. There is no horizon, just oblivion.

Drip.

Ed looks down.

Drip.

A small pool of blood is forming beneath the space where he used to have an arm. The wound is open and angry, but he can’t feel it anymore.

Drip.

Slowly, Ed turns around. He sees a gate, nearly four times as tall as him, and in front of that gate, there is a… shadow.

“Hello, little al-che-mist,” the shadow says.

Soon. The sins of the father. It’s coming. All that arrogance. Step into my parlour.

Ed freezes. His mouth opens, speaks without permission: “Truth.”

“Oh, very good! Very, very good!” The Truth leans forward, grin wide and deranged. “How quick, how clever, how smart.”

It’s—his mind stutters to a halt. He feels his features fold in on themselves and he just—he doesn’t know what to think. “Why can I—you showed me the inside of the gate.”

“Yes,” the Truth says, the word almost a hiss through all the teeth of its smile.

It’s been four years, but Ed remembers Sensei’s lessons just as strongly as if they had been taught to him yesterday. He won’t ever forget her explanation of equivalence, won’t let himself forget her warning about hubris, can’t let go of all the uncertainty she created in her mind that day.

What did it take? Ed had asked himself, because there is no such thing as something for nothing. There is always a price.

What was his?

The Truth laughs. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see, little al-che-mist? You’ve already paid it!”

Ice sinks in Ed’s gut. I’ve already—

“My arm?” he chokes. “My leg?” Oh God no, please not this. “My mother?” Please let her not have been reduced to this, please—

“Something much, much better, little al-che-mist,” the Truth cackles. It crowds in closer, until its face is pressed up against Ed’s cheek.

A whisper at his ear: “Your innocence.”

Bodies, so many bodies, the horrors of war, children that he killed because he was ordered to, the pregnant woman who begged him for mercy, but he had none, because he was finally, finally dead inside, blood pooling in the streets, crystallising around sand, and he is tearing himself to pieces because—

This is the price he must pay.

“Why?” Ed croaks. “Why me? I never attempted human transmutation. I never—never.”

There is a pause, too empty of sound to be comforting. Then, the Truth crouches in front of Ed, feral smile crafted from half anticipation and half delight.

“I wonder, ‘Fullmetal’, how much do you know about the people you have killed?” The Truth smirks. “The people you call Ishvalans have a saying for this…” A razor-sharp laugh. “Well, they did.”

In West City, Ed was told that he would always remember his first kill. That officer in his pristine uniform was wrong, though, because Ed can barely recall the Cretan soldier whose life he took in a haze of adrenaline and survival instincts. He doesn’t really remember the innocents either, beyond their red-eyes and dark skin, had trained himself to see nothing more than a target.

It made it easier.

God, what a monster he has become.

“Nothing, little al-che-mist?” the Truth taunts. “And you were doing so well!” There is a bone-chilling smile stretched out across that imitation of a face. “How about a hint? The saying starts like this: the sins of the father…”

Hohenheim—

And the world dissolves.

--

Ed opens his eyes to a familiar, albeit slightly blurred, face. He blinks once, twice, trying to catch his mind up with the recent events and reconcile them with the sight in front of him.

“Dr Rockbell,” he says through the dryness in his mouth.

“Honestly, Ed, how many times have I told you to call me Sarah?”

Sarah Rockbell. Winry’s mum. Mum and Dad are thinking of going to Ishval, Winry had said, a near eternity ago and Ed had listened and registered the words without filing away their meaning.

“A lot,” Ed says in answer to Sarah’s question.

She sighs. “You gave us quite a scare, young man,” she says, tone gently chiding. “When Captain Hughes burst in here, covered in blood and carrying you, I nearly had a heart attack. Honestly, you’re growing up to be far too reckless for your own good.”

“Pretty certain this one wasn’t my fault,” Ed mutters, before breaking off into a coughing fit.

Sarah places a flask in his hand. “Drink,” she commands.

Ed drinks.

“When you came in, you’d lost a lot of blood, so we got you set up with several transfusions right away,” she explains. “That’s why you were probably feeling so lightheaded towards the end.”

“Figured as much,” he mumbles.

Sarah quirks an unimpressed eyebrow at his sass. Ed ducks his head, suitably cowed.

“Yuriy and I bandaged up the wound on your shoulder, but seeing as we guessed you were going to want to automail it up at the nearest opportunity, we were hesitant to do anything much more elaborate than that,” she says. “The retrieval team managed to pick up your automail leg unharmed, so we re-attached that. You were so out of it you didn’t so much as twitch when the nerves reconnected.”

Ed pushes as much air out of his lungs as he can manage in his heavily drugged state. “What happens now?” he asks.

“You’ve got a debrief with Major Mustang when you can manage it – he’s the one who lead the team that retrieved you – and then we ship you off back home.”

“Back… home?”

Just a few more months, he had thought to himself. Just a few more months, just a few more lives, just a few.

Sarah places a hand on top of his head. “You’re done, Ed.”

You’re done, Ed. Three words and everything changes.

So it’s finally over, Ed thinks. He tries to put a name to the feeling spreading through his gut, but can’t quite quantify it. He has enough money saved to fund Al’s medical care in Central for at least another five years and after that—well, maybe it is time to finally let Al go.

(He has been haunted by Al’s face ever since he arrived in the desert. Al as children he killed, Al sitting on his bunk and sneering at him, Al shaking with anger at the idea that Ed bought his survival with 5,000 dead bodies.

Everything has a price. That doesn’t mean you should pay it.)

“Ed? Are you in pain?”

Ed lets out a shuddering breath. “I’m fine, Dr Rockbell.”

“It’s Sarah, Ed.”

You’re done, Ed.

Yeah. He guesses he is.

Chapter Text

Winry sobs when she sees him, thumping his chest with her knuckles and calling him every synonym for idiot there is. Ed takes it all in silence, listening to the chastisements for getting hurt so badly with stone-faced acceptance, and he brings his left arm up to capture her in a half-embrace.

Over Winry’s shoulder, he can see Pinako.

There are no tears in her eyes, but Ed wouldn’t want there to be. Pinako is supposed to be rough and tough and unflappable – and she is.

“More automail, Ed?” she asks.

Ed curls the fingers on his remaining hand. “Yeah,” he says.

Winry draws back from him, cheeks damp but eyes dry. Her gaze drops down to his shoulder as if just now realising what it means to have lost an arm to war.

The smile that works its way onto her face is a little forced. “Geez, Ed,” she says, “when we’re done, you’re going to be more machine than man.”

He flinches.

Winry blinks. “Ed, you okay?” She places a gentle hand on his left shoulder, but he brushes it off.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Just a little tired.”

She tilts her head – she has always been far better at reading people than him – but she lets it go. “I’ll say,” she agrees, voice slightly too cheerful. “Did you sleep at all on the journey back? C’mon, you can sleep in the guest room – just for tonight!”

Ed lets her lead him away.

--

Resembool is a slow town at its heart. Four years ago, fire rained down from the sky and Resembool burned – it is stunted and haunted by the war in Ishval. And yet…

It is quiet.

Edward Elric cannot help but feel that he does not fit in in the slightest.

He walks from the Rockbells’ into town, well aware of the stares that follow him as he moves. They are close to the desert here, close enough to Ishval to be used as a major transport route for the war, and Ed is close to infamous. The all know him here. Maybe what’s worse is that they also knew him before.

He buys a newspaper and a loaf of bread and then starts to walk back to his childhood home.

The house is exactly as he remembered it.

It’s almost as if the building has been held in suspended animation for the past four years, silent and imposing. Waiting for him to come back, as if that was the inevitable outcome of all this.

Ed’s flesh hand tightens around the loaf of bread.

He should have burned the goddamned thing to the ground.

--

Automail surgery is easier the second time around.

Maybe it’s because he’s older now, no longer afraid to scream in the face of blinding agony. And he does. Scream, that is. His throat is raw and burning, but he doesn’t care. That pain is kinder, milder almost, and it is the most twisted relief to focus on it instead.

But, no—that’s not quite right. The surgery is easier because that’s the way experience works, because he can remember in excruciating detail what it felt to have his arm wrenched away from him, what if felt like to be burning in the desert, and there is simply far less on the line now.

It makes him laugh, really, when he thinks about it. “Nerves of steel,” the Führer had said all those years ago, and it’s true.

I am Fullmetal, Ed whispers internally.

He thinks he hates that, just a little bit.

--

The telegram arrives when Ed is three weeks into rehab.

In Resembool, it’s easy to lose track of time – to forget that there is still a war raging scant miles away, to forget what that means. Out of sight, out of mind – that’s another thing that Mum used to say to Ed, but she never told him how cruel it could be.

Sarah and Yuriy Rockbell are dead. Casualties of circumstance, most likely, because one of the unspoken rules of combat has always been that doctors are not to be harmed.

Ed does not think about the Ishvalan midwife he slaughtered in Sero when he comforts Winry, though. He doesn’t think about the medical centre that was flattened along with Mektev. After all, he adds tiredly, what is one more abandoned principle?

Ishval is alternately vivid and hazy in his mind. At times, it feels like a distant dream, an out of body experience. It doesn’t feel like it was really him that did all of that; the violence and the killing and the heat of the desert are just too different to lazy rehabilitation and an empty house in Resembool.

Ed tangles a flesh hand in Winry’s hair and steadies her as she cries.

It is hard to think of himself as a soldier, even as an alchemist, like this.

Slowly, Winry chokes down on her grief. She calms in his embrace and then – and this is the thing that will destroy him later, will shatter him so absolutely – she wraps her arms around his neck and she says, “Thank you. For keeping your promise.”

Years ago, in a cramped rec room with about ten other soldiers shamelessly listening in on his call, Winry had told Ed to come back. No matter what you have to do, she had said.

Ed tightens his hold around her.

This is what he vows: he will never, ever tell her exactly what that was.

--

The war ends on a Thursday.

Ed counts back the days in his head, the numbers working themselves through effortlessly, until he has calculated that it started on a Wednesday.

There’s something funny about that, that they fought so much, killed so many, and all that happened in the frame of a week was a one day shift.

Was it a peace treaty, he wonders, or were there finally no more people left to kill?

Ed stops suddenly. He hadn’t even realised that he was walking, but when he sees where his feet have taken him, something roils in his stomach. Standing proud and perfect in front of him is his mother’s gravestone.

Trisha Elric, Ed traces the words with his flesh hand. 1872-1904.

He remembers making this stone with alchemy, drawing out the circle by hand because it somehow felt more right to expend effort to make it. He remembers her smiling and ruffling his hair and telling him how proud she was of him. He remembers the first time they’d ever spoken about alchemy, and about why he liked it so much—

Be thou for the people.

Ed feels sick.

Be thou for the people.

It’s the creed that lies at the very heart of alchemy as a science, as much a part of the art as the Law of Equivalent Exchange. The words were printed in vibrant green ink on the first page of the first alchemy book that Ed ever opened, stark and unwavering in the candlelight.

He still has that book somewhere, buried deep among the rest of his deadbeat dad’s crap, but he can remember reading it that first time just as clear as if it had only happened yesterday.

Be thou for the people, he had read and he had thought of his family, of Mum and Al, both stumbling for stable footing without Hohenheim, and he had thought of Resembool and their serene pace of life.

“Be thou for the people?” Mum asked when he told her about it. “Sounds pretty noble, Ed.”

When did he forget? It was long before he left Resembool for Dublith, long before he took the State Alchemist Examinations, long before Ishval.

He thinks of Trisha Elric and her unwavering love and he wonders if he would be able to look her in the eye if she were here. He thinks of Alphonse Elric, sleeping unaware in a hospital in Central, and knows that the answer is no.

For the first time in a long time, Ed breaks down and he cries.

--

When he drags himself back to his house, Winry is sat on the steps outside his front door, fingers nervously twiddling her ponytail. It’s a small surprise to see her there, actually; she hasn’t purposefully sought out Ed’s company since—

Since the telegram.

“Ed,” she says, standing when she sees him.

“Winry,” he returns. He walks past her up the steps and fiddles with his lock for a few seconds. When he turns back to her, she’s still standing there, a touch more awkwardly than before, lips pursed as if she is mustering up the courage to say something.

There’s a social code for this occasion isn’t there? Oh, right – “Do you want to come in?”

Winry doesn’t tease him about his hesitance like she used to. She just nods.

Once they are both inside, Winry sits down opposite him in his lounge and inhales. Her hands clench on her knees.

“Winry?” Ed asks. “What’s wrong?”

She looks up. “Tell me about Ishval.”

He stops, fingers curling. “No.”

“Ed—”

“No,” he repeats. “No, Winry, that’s—that’s not fair of you to ask.”

“I can handle it, Ed,” she insists. “I want to know.”

Ed closes his eyes against the images that his mind throws at him and his hand twitches down to the skin around his leg’s automail port. He no longer dreams of ripping his leg away; instead he sees someone else tearing it from him as he screams for them to stop.

“No,” he says eventually. “No, you don’t.” He doesn’t have any good memories of the desert, none, except—

“Let me tell you about your parents instead, Winry.”

It’s a compromise that will probably not last. She takes it.

--

The days drift by. Ed isn’t entirely aware of the passing of time. His motor skills with his new arm gradually improve and the dull ache in the new port dulls.

In his dreams, the metal doesn’t creep up him anymore. It is already there, surrounding him, flowing through his veins like quicksilver, and as he breathes through it, all he feels is a blissful nothing.

Winry looks at him like she is in mourning. She is, but not over him, and yet Ed does not know how he can fix this.

He isn’t sure he wants to.

--

There is a man in Amestrian Military blue stood at the edge of the drive up to Ed’s house. As he draws nearer, Ed is able to better make out the soldier’s familiar features. He blinks.

“Major Mustang?” Ed asks. “What are you…”

Roy Mustang looks about ten times better than the last time Edward saw him, but that honestly might have been the blood loss talking. He smiles genially, all perfect charm, and Ed is struck by the sudden desire to punch his face in.

“I thought I’d come and see how your automail rehabilitation was going,” Mustang says.

Ed is not a suspicious person by nature—okay, that is a flagrant lie, but you try fighting a non-war against Creta for three years without coming out of it at least slightly more wary than when you went in. All the same, he can’t help but feel that Mustang is not being entirely truthful about his reasons for a visit.

That and the fact that he remembers Major Mustang as being a lot less smooth. Socially awkward was one of his first impressions, actually.

Ed sighs. “Why don’t you come in?”

--

Mustang’s gaze skitters over the sitting room as Ed shuffles around the kitchen, searching out the dusty tea-set he knows he has somewhere. Ed can just tell that the bastard is silently judging him for the mess, but it’s weird, okay, to be back in a house he hasn’t lived in since his mother died. He’s not used to keeping everything in order yet.

When Ed finally emerges carrying something that vaguely resembles tea (the date on the packet says that it expired over a year ago, but no-one needs to know that) Mustang has yet to sit down and is staring at something on the mantelpiece.

Ed puts the tray down and wanders over to see what has caught Mustang’s attention.

Oh. His pocket watch.

“Ah, yeah,” Ed says. “Haven’t quite gotten around to sending that back in yet.”

Mustang spins around so fast that Ed is surprised he didn’t get whiplash. “You’re quitting the State Alchemists’ program?”

“Yeah,” Ed says, looking anywhere but at the watch. “Be thou for the people, you know? Can’t really do that when I’m answering to the military.” He clutches his automail arm close into his side. “I didn’t join for the right reasons, anyway.”

“There is no right reason for joining the military,” Mustang replies with surprising ferocity.

“No,” Ed agrees, “but there are wrong ones. And I…” It’s always a dangerous line to tread, how much to reveal about his experiences to people. “I’m not sure I like the person it made me into.”

Mustang frowns.

“No,” Ed corrects, “that’s a lie: I know I don’t like the person it made me.”

Mustang is silent for a long time and Ed is content to leave him to his contemplation. He shuffles back to the tea-set and sets about pouring cups of the hot liquid.

“You know you were the youngest State Alchemist to ever qualify?” Mustang makes his way over to the coffee table and takes a seat on the alchemy-crafted sofa that was the first thing Ed transmuted with his new arm.

“Someone might have mentioned it once,” Ed says, tone slightly sardonic, because honestly, no-one had ever shut up about it.

“You broke my record.”

Ed squints at Mustang as the older man takes a sip of the tea and tries not to grimace at the off-taste. He puts his cup down, probably to never pick it up again. Ed can’t blame him; Mustang is certainly more polite than Ed would be in his circumstance.

Ed blinks, Mustang’s words finally registering. “Do you want an apology?”

Mustang laughs. “Maybe I would have three years ago, but now…” He trails off, shaking his head. “The thing is, Fullmetal—”

“Don’t call me that,” Ed cuts in, all manner of politeness gone from his person. “I have a name.”

You ever been to Ishval, Fullmetal?

Fullmetal, pay attention!

Leave no-one alive, Fullmetal.

Ed exhales, forcing all the air out of his lungs. “What are you here for, Major?”

“Lieutenant Colonel.”

Ed blinks. “What?”

Mustang sighs. “My new rank,” he explains. “They promoted me. And as for your question, I’m not sure if you recall, but we met in Ishval before—” He breaks off awkwardly.

“Before I was captured and de-limbed?” Ed supplies dryly.

Mustang’s face does this delightful thing that Ed knows means he isn’t sure at all how to react to that. “Yes,” he says. “Before that. And I stumbled across you sleeping a few times.”

“I’m not surprised,” Ed replies flatly. “I slept a lot in Ishval. Didn’t deal too well with the heat.” He sighs, fingers twitching for no reason. “Cut the bullshit, Lieutenant Colonel. What is this about?”

There’s a long pause, as if Mustang is trying to formulate the most tactful way to phrase something really tactless.

“The military will not let you go, Edward,” he says at length and then, spotting the look on Ed’s face, adds, “No, hear me out. You have unrivalled alchemic talent for someone your age – for someone three times your age, even. The arrays you wrote on the floor in that house we found you in? They were the sorts of things I’d expect to see as the product of years of study and yet you came up with them on the spot, bare hours after losing a limb.”

Ed clenches his fists to stop himself from doing something he’ll regret. Like punching Mustang’s stupid face in. Not that he’s sure he’ll regret that.

“You ever wonder why you were assigned to Western HQ?” Mustang asks. “It’s because the war with Creta is stale and slow and it was the perfect way to slowly acclimatise you to combat. The military has invested a lot of time and effort into training you to be the perfect weapon and they are not going to let you go without a fight.”

“So I’m trapped, is that it?” Ed spits. “I should just lie down and accept that all I will ever amount to is a dog of war?”

Mustang, the utter bastard, just calmly raises his cup to his lips. “By now, I doubt you know how to be anything else.”

Not even the look of disgust on Mustang’s face from the taste of the not-tea can bring Ed back from the place those words have sent him.

It was supposed to be better, after the war. Go home. Live a little. Make peace. But all Ed has found in Resembool are bad memories and worse habits, automail surgery because it’s something to do with his time, quietly wasting away…

Like Al.

Except Al has a coma as an excuse and Ed only has his guilt.

“You did terrible things in Ishval, Fullmetal,” Mustang says without hesitation. “We all did. And we will spend the rest of our lives atoning for them.”

And that’s enough to cut through all the grief, to bring burning anger straight to the forefront of Ed’s mind, because how dare he, how dare Mustang presume to know the intricacies of what Ed did on orders, how dare he.

Ed launches himself over the tea-set at Mustang, hands fisting in the man’s stupid blue uniform – and Ed hopes he likes his shiny new rank, his reward for all the people he killed in cold blood – and his right grip may be a little loose, but the force from Ed’s lunge carries him forward, straight into the lieutenant colonel’s face.

“You shut the fuck up about things you know nothing about,” Ed growls. “Ishval was—Ishval was hell and you can just shut the fuck up.”

Mustang seems completely unaffected. “I wonder,” he says, “what your brother would say if he could see you now.”

Ed is this close to snapping the bastard’s neck. He could get away with it, probably. Transmute a grave behind the house and bury the body—and then he cuts the thought off, because that is something he learnt in West City and he—oh God.

Ed drops Mustang. He staggers back and lets his body fall onto a chair.

“What if I said we could change it?”

Ed’s head snaps up. “What?”

“The military,” Mustang changes. “What if I said we could change it?”

Ed exhales. Rational thoughts, Elric. “I’d say you were edging on treason…”

You’re insane, he thinks. That isn’t even… But Mustang isn’t laughing, isn’t pretending; he’s serious.

Ed feels something harden within him. “And that you’d need subordinates you could trust,” he finishes.

There’s a tense silence. Then, Mustang stands, straightening out his uniform. “When you’re done recovering, Edward,” he says, all of the weight of his previous words gone from his voice, “you should stop by East City. I’ve been assigned there for the foreseeable future.”

He smirks. “As the former holder of the record for youngest State Alchemist, I wouldn’t mind mentoring someone like you.”

--

On his way back to the train station, Roy pauses. “You know, I am not the person most people would typically turn to for something like this.”

“You asked if there was anything you could do for my family; I answered.” Pinako Rockbell taps out her pipe, looking up at Roy with squinted eyes. “Besides, typical is the last word I’d choose to describe Ed.”

Roy isn’t going to argue with that. “I am sorry about your son. He was a good doctor.”

It sounds a little cliché, a touch impersonal, but Pinako doesn’t pick at it. “It was war,” she says. “We all lose things to the battlefield. Some more than others.”

He wonders if she’s talking about Fullmetal.

And then he remembers the aimless looking boy in the empty house and he realises that that was a stupid question.

“Resembool is several hours’ travel from East City,” she muses suddenly. “Whatever my son did for you in Ishval must have been very important for you to travel all this way.”

Roy laughs. “You are a very shrewd woman,” he notes, “but yes, it was.”

Pinako raises on eyebrow at him.

“He answered a question that I had had since the beginning of the war,” he says when it becomes clear that she’s not going to let him leave without giving more than that.

“A question?”

“About a name,” Roy clarifies.

When he looks back down at her, there is a misty quality to her gaze. “Yuriy was always good with names,” she says. Then she blinks and the haze is gone. “Take care of yourself, Lieutenant Colonel.”

Roy nods at her, accepts the dismissal, and walks away.

--

It is hardly difficult to see why Mustang and Elric were drawn together as allies in spite of their sparing interactions. Both of them were young for the responsibility of their ranks and they had both served in Ishval to devastating effect. Witness accounts place a figure matching Mustang’s description in Resembool, Elric’s hometown, shortly after the end of the Ishval Civil War, during a time when Elric was reportedly recovering from the loss of his arm.

How deep this relationship stretched in those early days, however, is somewhat harder to tell. Once he returned to active duty, Elric remained in Central for just three weeks before requesting a transfer to Mustang’s command. Many historians have theorised that the roots of Mustang’s revolution stretch back even this far. Another popular claim is that his and Elric’s respective public personas were calculated moves to curry support for this eventual goal. There is, nonetheless, very little evidence to support either theory.

What is clear is that the following years of Mustang acting as Elric’s commanding officer and mentor established an ingrained sense of trust and respect between the Fullmetal and Flame Alchemists that played a vital part in the change to come.

(Excerpt from “Sparks of Change: From Ishval and Beyond” written by Hiei Chang, first published May 6. 1970.)

--

Be thou for the people.

The words are scratched into the metal in angular script, put there as the final test of his control over his new automail. Ed traces over them with one gloved hand, before he switches his grip and clicks the watch shut.

“Where to, young man?”

Ed puts the pocket watch away. “When’s the next train to East City?”

--

[distantly, an echo of an echo of a memory, there is the sound of laughter.]