Chapter Text

PART ONE

Trisha’s first born would come in March. On the cusp of Spring, Pinako and Sarah Rockbell were set to march the foot beaten path to the Elric house to assist with the birth.

She waited for March at the window as the grass grew fragile with snow, thinking of a babe that would take their first breath as the initial flower bulbs broke through the thawing soil. Excitement took root in her belly as it swelled, as the baby—Edward, he will be, Edward, Edward, Ed—became restless and active, straining to sit low in her womb. Her baby was someone with such tenacity to live it left her awestruck, breathless, cradling her belly long into the night, long after the kicks stopped coming, long after the stars had gone to sleep.

Pinako made comments. When the belly hangs low, the older woman said, her cold, small hand splayed against the taut skin, it means the babe will come soon.

You’ll have an impatient child, Trisha…I don’t know if you’ll make it until March.

Trisha smiled, while Pinako’s expression soured and pinched. And by Fate’s unshakable path forward, Edward Elric was born in February. During the dead season.

With a pulsating agony in her stomach and between her legs, in her heart and the strain in her arms as she gripped the calloused hand of Hohenheim in one hand and the sheets in the other—Sarah deposited her son in her arms, her smile exhausted, but jovial. He only weighed four pounds.

“A boy,” Sarah told her, sweat beading on her brow. Expression set in determination, she laughed when Trisha did. Her son came into the world shrieking at the top of his lungs, warbling and terrified, with rich dark skin and a crown of wet golden hair. Staring at the infant, scrunched into a ball, tiny fingers and toes curling, sodden with a turbid sheen, and every inch of skin doused in veiny blood—Trisha knew. She knew everything about him, at that moment. He would be difficult. He would be loving. He would be passionate and a pain, but so full of life his presence would fill a room and leave whispers when he left.

“I knew it,” Trisha choked, a burn behind her eyes. She giggled wetly, and the fit didnt’t die off, squeezing from her rattling lungs in time with Edward’s whimpering cry. She nuzzled into his wet cheek, eyes misty, and the feeling of damp warmth propelled the tears to fall. “I knew it. A boy. I told you, dear, didn’t I?”

“…A boy,” Hohenheim repeated, his voice far away. From behind fogged glasses, the man sniffed, staring at their wrinkled bundle of life. His voice shook. “Trisha, I—“

“Oh, let the poor woman rest, Hohenheim. Fetch more blankets, the warm ones, you blasted old fool—since you’ve done nothing but sit there this whole time.”

The bed dipped next to her. Trisha did not look up. She felt Hohenheim leave, heard the door shut quietly and Pinako shuffle about the bedroom—but she could not tear her eyes away from him. Her son, with skin like hers, and a beautiful, beautiful voice. Hearing him breathe, listening to him cry, is the best thing she had ever heard.

“He’s beautiful, Trisha,” Sarah says, squeezing her shoulder. “Do you have a name? Or—I suppose we should wait for Hohenheim to get back, shouldn’t we?”

“No need,” Trisha breathed. Her son. “Edward. His name is Edward.”

—

Edward’s eye color changed from a misty, clouded grey to red within two months.

Trisha thought they would be gold, like his father’s, or green like her own. She had doubts, as instead of growing straight and thin, his aureate hair gradually thickened with coarseness and curls. Trisha was not estranged from her own family history, but until she saw the pale infant blue recede into a crimson rivaling the new bloom of cranesbill in Resembool with her own eyes, it never occurred to her.

That her son would be blessed by Ishvala.

She found herself enamored with them. A maroon ring caged his bloodborne irises. Within their searching gaze a kaleidoscopic brew of marbled color swirled, and an almost prismatic bundle of ruby scratched at the pupil.

Edward liked to stare. He engaged with the world easily, gaze pinned on the spiraling hills beyond their house, the drifting clouds, the faces coming and going from the estate. He stared at her and Hohenheim the most, and though her dear one did not cower away from the curious gaze, she soon realized he looked at his son with a fervent intensity. Hohenheim was prone to his strangness, something she loved about him, and he bore into Edward like he was a mystery, sometimes, an anomaly the other. There was love there, sequestered behind the blank peer of his observation—a squirming, unfamiliar thing preferring to hide away in his solemn, silent thoughts.

“Sometimes I think you a fool, Hohenheim,” Trisha told him. She watched him, standing above the bassinet with Ed swaddled in his arms. His foot slid through the blanket, his arms writhing stubbornly, but for once, he was quiet. “You hold him like a queen scruffing her kitten. Here, hold him close, put him near your chest—babes like the contact, you know.”

Van Hohenheim hummed low in his throat. Ed fussed as he adjusted him, but grew quiet when he made contact with his sleep shirt.

Trisha hooked her chin over his shoulder. “Look at you. My boys. And look at him, my love. His eyes, their color have come in. Aren’t they something? A blessing from Ishvala.”

“An inheritance pattern.” He corrected.

“Whatever it may be,” she smiled, “it suits him, doesn’t it?”

Hohenheim remained quiet for a moment before glancing at her. She had gotten good at reading Van and the tragedy in his skin, bracing for the question before it came.

“…And you’re not ashamed of it, Trisha? The ailments the past in your blood has brought to the surface?”

“Of course not,” Trisha responded softly. She reached over and took her son from him. Running the pad of her thumb over the sleeping babe’s face, she laid it on the soft swell of an infant cheekbone. In the bowels of sleep, Ed cooed, resettling against her bare chest with a wet smack of his mouth. What a hungry little thing. “The story our blood tells is not ours, dear. The love of our ancestors does not make monsters.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Trisha cupped his cheek. The hair on his chin was rough beneath her hands. Smoothing a thumb beneath his lip, her heart leapt in her chest. Gold. What a strangely beautiful color.

“I know I am, dear,” she said, “I know.”

—

As he grew older, Edward noticed the not-so-little things about people.

He noticed that Mom’s face grew gaunt by the day, taking on a skeletal form as shadows leached the color from her cheeks and replaced it with a sallow paleness. Ed noticed she smiled anyway, but only at he and Al when they looked at her.

He noticed that not many people are like Alphonse. Not many of those in Resembool were enamored with the small brown birds that were everywhere, or played with the wild cats that liked to slink through the countryside at dusk, or could read as young as he could.

And with a curious mind, Edward noticed that most people did not look like him. They did not have brown skin or red eyes or golden hair. They were paler, tanned and reddened by the sun, white as the winter snow when the sun went away. He classified people into categories. People with brown, green, blue eyes. And then there was he and Al.

The spectrum of eyes lingered. On him. Always on him.

 When one of his classmates fell into the ring of mud surrounding the schoolhouse, people did nothing but start and laugh. It rained heavily the night before, the wind wrenching branches from trees, and layering a thick phlegm of sludge across Resembool. It wasn’t his fault that he tripped.

Ed helped the boy up without a second thought. Angled toward his brother, who held Winry’s hand near the yard fence, waiting for him, he didn’t notice the fists rearing out like a snake behind him, brutally shoving him into the mud.

“Don’t you touch me, you filthy Ishvalan!”

Head ringing, Ed hefted himself onto his elbows, struggling to take in air. Alphonse exclaimed and Winry cried out. Al tugged him up by the armpit. Edward stumbled to his feet, sputtering, mud dripping down his chin. He numbly placed a hand on his aching nose.

And then curled the hand into a fist and slammed it into the boy’s face. The force sent him hurtling toward the ground.

It took Alphonse, Winry, and the school teacher to pull him off. He was sent home with a note that he crumpled in his grip. When they finally made it to their house, Alphonse reluctantly tiptoed upstairs while Ed met Trisha in the kitchen.

She greeted him happily, her smile dropping as she noticed the mud caked on his face.

“Oh, dear. What am I gonna do with you, huh?”

Trisha cleaned away the muck from his face and hair with a cloth heavy with warm water. She didn’t pressure Ed to say anything, though he knew she knew he was in trouble. Instead, she worked around the kitchen with her back to him. Waiting, but not demanding.

But Ed couldn’t make himself unfurl the note from his pocket.

“...Mama. Why don’t the other children look like me? Or Al?”

Trisha shook water from her hands, patting them dry on a towel. She hefted a berry basket from the sink and set it on the counter. The sun beams made it hard for Ed to see her. He blinked hard, mouth falling open as she appeared in front of him, blocking out the light.

“Everyone looks different, Ed. That's what makes us special. You wouldn’t want everyone to look the same, would you?”

Ed trapped his lip between his teeth. “Well…no, but…”

She laughed. “Must there always be a but, Edward?”

“But I meant why don’t they look like me?” He kicked his feet back and forth from where they dangled from the chair. “Because—because my eyes aren’t a real color.”

“Red is a real color, dear,” Trisha responded. She paused, gingerly lowering herself into a seat across from him and reaching to cover his hand with her own. “It doesn’t matter what is the same and what is different about you. You’re you.”

“But why?”

Trisha blinked, covering her lips with her fingers before bursting into bellish laughter. “You remind me so much of him,” she sighed, eyes flickering to the table and back, “Ed—you, me, and Al—the blessing of Ishvala runs through us. They chose you to see through.”

Edward reached up to feel at his face. See through him? He shivered, imagining something else looking through his eyes. Trisha, shaking her head, grasped his wrists between her fingers and smiled. “It will make sense when you're older,” she explained, “when it needs to. For now, don’t worry about it, okay? There is nothing wrong with you.”

Frowning, Ed tugged his hands, looking up at his mother solemnly. “...Am I a filthy Ishvalan?”

His mother froze, her brow twitching down. Learning forward, her frantic voice sent Ed’s heart racing.

“Where did you hear that, Ed? Tell Mama, baby—I won’t—I’m not mad at you.”

With trembling hands, Edward handed Trisha the note. She unwrinkled it, skimmed it, and turned it face down on the table.

Ed swallowed, wrinkling his nose. “He called me filthy. A…a filthy Ishvalan. I’m not, though, Mama—he pushed me into the mud and that’s why I’m dirty. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know, I know,” Trisha soothed. She hesitated before sighing, the anger draining from her expression and leaving her limp. “It’s okay, Edward. I’m not mad. Okay? And you’re not…you’re not filthy.”

Trisha swiped her palms on her apron, bouncing to the counter and retrieving the basket. Heavy with ripe berries gleaming with dew, she placed it between them. Ed gasped, leaping to his feet, the word Ishvalan forgotten.

Strawberries.

Trisha smoothed her hand over his hair, tugging on the stubborn cowlick. “Don’t go bragging to Alphonse that I gave you the first pick, now.”

Ed shoved his hand into the basket. The berries he pulled out squish between his fingers, juice rolling down the slope of his hands and to his elbows.

A vibrant, living red.

—

“—You ought to take the boy out of school.”

Granny Pinako twisted the radio dial, quieting the stream of voices trilling from the speakers into a dull roar. Ed and Al looked at eachother from where they hid behind the doorway.”

Trisha hummed. She tore the lush heads of basil from its stem, littering them into a bowl. Her hands shook dangerously, and she put down the herb bundle to brace herself on the laminate.

“Why would I do that, Pinako? You know…you know he loves it there. Learning and playing and—just like…just like…”

“Hohenheim. I know.”

Trisha sniffled. Al made like he was doing to run to her, eyes wide and rhuemy, but Ed gripped his wrist before poking his head around the jamb. Their mother threw her head back, staring at the ceiling, breathing shakily and refocusing on the window.

Granny sighed. “I don’t want to do it either, Trisha. But the war might leave you no choice, if you want to protect him. Alphonse is passable, they could overlook him, but Ed…animosity is festering, as much as I hate to admit it. I see it. And I know you do, too.”

“There is no reason for it,” Trisha said wretchedly, “I am estranged. So was Hohenheim. All we have is us. You and your family as well, Pinako. I have no ties to the Ishvalans of my bloodline. I have been here since I was a girl, and they were born in this house. You think children are cruel enough to ostracize one of their own?”

“I am not talking about the children.”

“...You can’t be serious about this. Pinako. He’s just—they’re just children.”

Pianko hobbled toward Trisha’s bowed form. “You and I both know how the poison of words so easily worms into the hearts of the folk, down here. I’m sorry.”

For a long moment—one Ed thought took hours to pass—as the fireflies tittered and ciacadas buzzed, as the steps of Sarah and Yuriy Rockbell, joined by their daughter between them, laughed their way up the hill to the Elric estate, Trisha remained silent.

“A War of Extermination,” she whispered, worrying her apron between her hands, “they…they really mean to kill all of us?”

“Trisha,” assured Pinako, “while I live, with all the—power I have, I will not let death come to your sons.”

“...He’s going to be so upset. Both of them. So, so upset. I hate to see my boys upset.”

“It will only get worse. I fear the worst is not yet upon us.”

Wordlessly, Trisha’s chin lolled toward her chest. She rubbed her eyes. “Okay, Pinako. Okay. I’ll—I’ll take him out of school.”

Both heads snapped to the door as Winry’s voice blared through the walls. “Ed—! Al—! Open up! We’re hungry! Mama, that tickles, s—stop—bahahaha—!”

“Fetch the boys,” Pinako ordered, shooing Trisha from the kitchen, “I will get the door.”

Ed flinched out of his skin, he and Alphonse scrambling backwards into the hallway as their mother rounded the doorway. She jolted when she laid eyes on them, breath caught in her throat. Al’s voice broke when he cried out her name, throwing himself at her leg. Edward stared up at her, eyes hot, and Trisha opened an arm for him.

A war. Her voice moiled in Ed’s brain as he tried to make sense of it. Of Extermination.

“Oh, Alphonse,” Trisha hums, “dry those tears. I know. I know. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t, Mama! You didn’t!” Ed interjected, clambering over Alphonse’s back. “I—I did. I upset him. Because he—Al’s hungry, Momma. It’s okay.”

Trisha looked at him blankly before grabbing his face in her hands. She did the same to Alphonse. The satiny pad of her thumb brushed the underside of his eye, all the way to his cheek. Their mother gazed at each of them, but lingered on Edward.

“What you are,” she began, “is beautifully unique. You carry with you—a piece of me I could not bear to let die. My kind Alphonse, my loving Edward. There will never be anything wrong with you. Don’t let anyone tell you as much.”

Both Ed and Al nod. Trisha smiled, but her chest seized and she erupted into a violent fit of rattling coughing.

Cast in the dim light of the hallway candles, Granny Pinako stared at them from the shadow of the front door. Her weathered face grim.

—

The kitchen window exploded when something smashed the lozenge mutins in the dead center.

It bowed inwards and popped like a bubble, vomiting a slew of bellish shards onto Edward’s head, Trisha’s face, and Al’s body. The remaining pieces scattered around their shoes, slapping against the far wall and somersaulting into the hallway, cutting runes into the wood floor.

Edward held onto Alphonse as he shrieked, gripping his shirt as they both trembled—startled by the boom of noise. A block, the corner piece resembling a moth-bitten shoe, sat innoculously in front of the two. The broken, pebbly scrap bounced a few feet away.

Trisha's eyes catapulted to the cement brick at Ed's feet. They flickered to his face. In them swirled a concoction of fear, anger, and understanding. It terrified him.

For the past few days, when the sun had not yet risen over the horizon, Edward would hear the cries of his mother through the walls. Before Alphonse woke up, he liked to listen to Trisha as she got ready for the day or made breakfast, usually humming, her feet dancing across the house. But lately, she had been rising later and later, despite being awake. Trisha was careful not to wake them up or let them see her when she sobbed, but Ed heard her. Day after day.

He wondered if it had something to do with him, because Trisha didn’t let him go to school anymore. She sent Al with reluctance, even when he cried, and Ed cried, and their sobs laced together into a despondant mesh of sorrow. Most days, Winry had to peel Alphonse from the doorframe as Ed remained dejected inside, watching his brother’s back disappear in the direction of the schoolhouse.

And Edward—

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—” Trisha bundled him into her arms, one of the days a fit of sobbing left him unable to draw in air. “You’re just…oh, Ed. I’m so sorry.”

Hands sticky with a sweet, honey syrup, Edward waited for Alphonse to return while Trisha prepped potatoes. They went to the market earlier, and they were fresh. Though, Ed heard the merchant tell another woman that they were twenty cenz a pound, but for Trisha, he said two-hundred. His mother did not point out the mishap, and tickled beneath Ed’s chin when he opened his mouth to try and tell the farmer he made a mistake.

They were supposed to get two pounds of potatoes to entertain the Rockbells for dinner. But they trekked home with only one.

“I ought to send for Hohenheim,” Pinako uttered, “He...though an odd one, that, would not stand for the treatment of you nor the children.”

Trished sighed harshly through her nose, glancing at Ed. He adjusted his book so it covered his face, and, satisifed he didn’t appear to be listening in, she responded, “You can't, Pinako. You...I am more than capable of protecting my sons.”

“They're scared, Trisha. And so are you.”

“Being scared,” she cautioned, “means we are very well alive, and very much human.”

Granny Pianko shook her head. “Right, right. I know better than to fight a losing battle, Trisha. Next time, maybe Yuriy will accompany you and the little one to the market—they should not give you trouble with him around.”

“Speaking of,” Trisha giggled. “Where is he? Winry and Alphonse are due back, soon.”

“I told him about the mishap with your window. Blasted fool probably took it upon himself to find the perpetrator, going around door to door and asking about it—and Sarah, the dear, has no doubt taken after him. Don’t fret about it, Trisha. That girl will have him here on time, maimed or not.”

—

Edward realized his eyes were the color of hurt when he was five.

Not like Alphonse, whose gold was the color of the sun, how it striped along the grass and shrouded their skin when it fell asleep below the hills. Or Winry, whose eyes held the sky and the gentle roll of the river.

Ed’s eyes were the color of hurt. It was the color that gushed from his knees when he fell into a puddle of gravel and scraped his knees to ribbons. The color spewing from Al’s hand when the sharp jut of metal sheared a deep line through the meat of his thumb. The color of Winry’s face when she cried herself sick after Aunt Sarah and Uncle Yuriy left for Ishval.

The color of the rivulet of blood dribbling from Trisha’s mouth as she laid still on the floor, as her final breaths wheezed through her flattening lungs, steadily growing cold. The color of what should be their mother, gazing at them from the middle of the transmutation circle, and the color of the inundation of dark artery blood gushing from the stump on his left leg.

For once, their eyes are the same red—but the boney amalgam that is, was, should be Trisha carried an unnatural sheen, glow cutting through the darkness like a pike shorn through tender meat. And they look at Ed, through him, seeing deeper than soul.

That thing. A monster. What should have been their smiling mother, laid a corpse. Edward’s failure donned his eyes.

—

“...What do you want, Ed? Granny made soup, but we also h—have the…the leftover stew from y—esterday.”

The first time Edward spoke after the failed transmutation, he screamed. He ripped his throat into pieces and the vitriolic blood gurgled into his mouth and got smashed between his teeth as he gritted them, heaving, breathless, anger thrumming beneath his skin.

“I want you to find me something to cover my fucking eyes, Winry! I can’t—I can’t look at them—at myself without—without seeing—!”

Her.

Winry dropped the tray of soup. The ceramic shattered, shards bursting around her feet. She pressed a fist to her wobbling mouth and hiccupped, knees knocking together as she lowered her head toward the floor.

A heavy gauntlet clumsily landed on his shoulder. It touched down harshly, jostling Edward in his chair. Al had not gotten used to his strength, catapulted from a child into a metal behemoth over seven feet tall. Because of him. Ed’s remaining hand splintered the arm of his wheelchair.

Alphonse dragged in a hitching breath, the hand drawing away. “Brother…”

Winry stamped her foot, scrubbing at her wet face. “I—Aunt Trisha wouldn’t want you to—”

“Mom is gone, Winry! What part of that don’t you fuckin’ get!? I want—I can’t—I want them out, dammit, I—”

“Ed—”

“Brother, stop—!” Alphonse’s tinny voice echoed through the metal. Ed went still. “You—you’re going to hurt yourself. Please…please stop.”

Hand caught in Alphonse’s grip, Edward blinked. The scratches he dug around his eye burn. Voice caught in his throat, he thunked his head against the back of the wheelchair, turning to face Al’s chestplace.

“Out,” he whined, “out, out, out, out—”

—

Granny Pianko came home with a pair of glasses. Thin wire frames and armed with steel plating on the sides. The lenses were as dark as night.

Winry helped Edward slide them on. Alphonse wheeled him toward the plated mirror mounted over the mantle. They looked like blots of coal on his face, completely secluding his eyes. When he turned, the side carapices kept him from seeing them from the side. Edward was hidden.

No words were said. Ed settled in the wheelchair, eyes covered from the world, and felt something in him settle.

—

“You’re really going to go through with it, then?”

Behind him, Winry twisted water into his hair. It was stubborn, refocusing to absorb moisture unless worked into. From the corner, Al watched. Suitably damp, she took a comb and worked out the knots from tip to roots, careful not to snag the mattes. Then, she parted his hair, winding them into the beginning of a braid.

The bastard that came to the Rockbell house—Mustang, or something—said he had a fire in him. Ed felt it, writhing in the lining of his stomach and licking into his throat. It was warm and biting, something distantly familiar.

“Sure am.”

“What brother said,” Al chimed in, shifting in place. “We—we did this to ourselves. So it’s our job to, you know, fix it.”

Ed rolled his eyes. “I was the one who convinced you, Al. Stop saying we.”

“You know that isn’t true, Ed!”

“Oh, you two!” Winry smacked him with the comb's teeth. Ed yowled. “How many times do I have to hear you hash out the same argument!? Ugh—!”

“...Sorry, Winry,” Alphonse demurred. “You know brother.”

Ed stiffened. “Whazzat supposed to mean!?”

“I do, in fact,” Winry sniffed. She grabbed his head and spun it forward. “Sit still, Ed, or it’ll be crooked. I’m serious, you—you bonehead!”

“Who you calling a bonehead, motormouth!?”

The remaining duration of the time Winry spent braiding drowned beneath a slew of increasingly nonsensical insults. Alphonse sighed, but said nothing, slowly plodding closer to watch Winry finish Ed’s hair.

“You know, Ed,” Winry whispered, afraid to destroy the fragile quiet, “you have really pretty hair. I mean—mine is straight and thin, and so is Al’s. But yours—the shape is really pretty. No one else really has hair like yours. I…I really like it.”

Edward’s face burst with warmth. He kicked his leg out wildly, stammering nonsense, the feeling of her hands on the back of his neck suddenly too much.

“I agree,” Alphonse said cheekily. The metal does nothing to disguise the mischief in his tone. “Your hair is just so pretty, brother.”

“Shuddap—!” Ed explodes. “The both of you!”

When Granny Pinako entered the room and demanded what the ruckus was about, Winry hurried tied a ribbon on the end of the braid and scampered behind her grandmother, breathless.

“Nothing, Granny! Nothing at all!”

Alphonse fell into a fit of laughter, the armor clinking as it shook. Winry escaped through the open door, leaving Edward redfaced and huffing in his chair.

Fondly shaking his head, Al used the ewer to pour him a glass of water. The only sound being Ed’s breathing and the tremble of his brother’s armor as he focused on pouring. His nails bit into his palms.

Sometimes, Edward did not think he should have this. Leisure. Family. Love. It was his deluded desire for it that made Alphonse into this in the first place. He was blame reincarnate. A curse.

Taking the glass with a nod, Ed sipped it. It was cold enough to burn his esophogus. Another thing Al couldn’t feel.

“...Automail surgery.”

“What?”

“I was just…” Al took a shuddering breath. The armor faceplate remained blank, soulfire eyes bright in the pit of shadows it caged. It was a far cry from Alphonse—a boy who wore his heart on his sleeve. “Are you sure, brother? Winry and Granny were telling me about everything it entailed. And…everything that could go wrong.”

“Ugh, Al,” Ed rolled his eyes, “Winry’s a worrying, nagging gearhead and Granny’s a worrying, nagging old bat. I don’t need their worry! I’m going to be fine. I—I have to get your body back, Al.”

“Our bodies, brother.”

Ed waved him off. “Yeah-fucking-yeah.”

“...It’s going to hurt.”

“I know, Al.”

“I don’t—I don’t want you to hurt, anymore.”

“I know, Al.”

“It’s not fair.”

A swelling, nauseating anger lurched from stomach to throat. Ed’s mouth burned with bile, and he gripped the glass hard enough for the water to slosh over the side. “Don’t be a baby,” he spat, “of course it’s not fair! Nothing is! You know that and I know that—! The quicker this happens the quicker I can fix this. I don’t need you or Winry or Granny talking my ear off my own fucking head about this and that and be careful and—and—whatever! Okay?”

“...Okay. Okay, brother.”

—

Above them, the clouds rolled in lightly, stroked gold by a sun resting over the hazy husk of Eastern City. The command center was an ill swell in the earth beyond the beading hills of Resembool. Edward traced the decline with his eyes. It looked like the ground was breathing, sometimes, and the fluxtuating elevation was the inhale—exhale—of the world beneath their feet.

Ed placed his automail hand over his chest. It moved up—and down as he breathed, but he could not feel the warm skin there. The heaviness in his limbs threatened to pull him into the grass, but he stood regardless, a metallic remnant of a boy.

“So…just like that, then. You’ll be gone.”

Tracing over the smooth grooves of steel knuckles, Ed scowled. “Yup. Train leaves tomorrow. So early, that we might not even see you before we leave, Winry. Wouldn’t that be tragic.”

Winry puffed out her cheeks. “You—! Ugh, you’re such a pain!”

“And you’re an annoying, blabbermouth gearhead!”

“Well, you—!”

Alphonse sighed, wilting. “You guys! Stop it! You’re ruining the moment.”

“Ed’s temper is so short he’s tuning you out, Al.”

“Who the hell are you calling small enough he can’t hear anyone taller than him!?”

“Not what I said,” Winry huffed, turning away with her hands on her hips, “and you know that. Idiot.”

Biting the insides of his cheeks to prevent himself from snapping back at her and risking the wrath of Alphonse, Ed stiffly shoved his fists into his trouser pockets, rocking back on his heels. A cool breeze gently plucks his braid from his shoulder, whisking his bangs into the wind. Stirred-up leaves darted over the flattened hill face, snagging on the spikes of Al’s armor and tangling in Winry’s hair.

Alphonse made a noise of surprise, plucking the dead leaf from his shoulder and holding it to the sky. He let it go, and Ed watched it disappear into the glare of the sun.

“I can feel your eyes on me, Win’. What. Do you. Want.”

“Hmph,” she huffed, leaning down to glare at him in the eye. Up close, he saw the pale freckles bespattered across the plump bridge of her cheeks. “I want you to take your glasses off, Ed.”

Edward’s throat spasmed, heat crawling up his neck. “Why!?”

“Because I want to see your face before you leave!”

“B—but—but—!” Edward sputtered. “You can see my face now! They only cover my eyes!”

“It doesn’t matter!”

Muttering, Edward entrapped the shades’ rim between his thumb and pointer finger. Squinting through the dark lenses, his eyes fluttered shut as the light hit them. Heaving in a shuddering breath, he drew them down his nose, off his face, and lowered his arm.

Without them, everything looked brighter. The lights of the East City were beacons in the bruising sky.

Both Alphonse and Winry stare at him. He can’t read his brother’s face—it’s his fault, his fault, his—but Winry…he had always been able to read her. Eyes shiny, lips distorted in a frown, she looked distraught. Catching his glance, she granted him a wobbly smile.

“I get why you want to hide them from the military, Ed,” she confessed, “but you shouldn’t—you don’t have to hide them from me. Us.”

Edward swallowed around the lump in his throat. The Eastern Command Center stood before them, in reach, yet an eternity away. He reached his hand out—clamping metal around the mirage. As his fist closed, his steel joints creaked.

There is nothing wrong with you, Edward. The memory of a hand, still warm, still soft, cupping his cheek, involuntarily took over his thoughts. Neither of you.

Tomorrow, Edward and Alphonse will embark from the countryside into the city. The grass will die, sweltered beneath the weight of concrete roads, the sky broken into fragmented pieces by the large buildings permeating the populous. Tomorrow, Ed will begin his atonement, and he will not stop fighting until Al gets his body back.

But today, he wanted to tell his mother sorry. He wanted to crawl into her arms, wanted to just see her, one more time. But he couldn’t. He had a job to do.

“...Dumb, sappy gearhead.”

In retrospect, Edward should have saw the wrench coming.

—

Ed held the aquilline tip of a transmutated spear to the throat of the highest ranked man in the country, alchemy thrumming beneath his hands. Simutaneously new and as old as the gestation of humanity, the electricity flitted through his veins and burnt him from the inside out.

With a descisive whisk of his hand, Edward tore off his glasses and glared—with the eyes of a people he ordered the extermination of—at the Führer.

As though he ripped open his soul and laid bare before judgement, Edward felt naked without the glasses. King Bradley’s face was light, almost amused. No surprise curdled in his eye, one hand held up to keep the gallery of guns at bay.

“Oh-hoh,” said the Führer, “what a surprise. Tell me, alchemist, what is your plan, here?”

King Bradley’s men stare at him, a thick line of hate drawn between their sneering faces. Edward’s shoulders squared, arms trembling.

“My plan,” Ed gritted, “is to return my brother and I to how we were before. I will get our bodies back, King Bradley. Nothing else to it.”

“And you submit yourself as a dog of the military? Alchemist—where have you been the past few years?”

Ed tilted his nose up. “I know what happened. I don’t have an issue with you. My goals are my own. Mine and Al’s.”

Bradley stroked his chin, smiling so wide the skin around his eye clenched it shut. He hummed lowly, descending into a hearty guffaw. Without warning, he reached out and patted Ed’s shoulder. He barely restrained a flinch.

“You are quite the interesting boy!” The Führer bellows. “Interesting—and quite entertaining, I must say.” Though the smile remained, his eye slit open, revealing a cold, calculative leer. When he spoke again, the words were hissed in a whisper inaudible to anyone but them. “It will please me to welcome you to the Amestrian Military, Ishvalan.”

—

Edward’s eyes are not the color of fire.

They’re too dark for the rage of an inferno, harboring something deeper, angrier. But they watched, peerlessly, as the flames swallowed the zenith of their house, the writhing arms of fire worming into the blank sky. He took off his glasses to gaze upon the destruction of the home he was born in, a cry trapped in his throat, desperately holding onto the fact his eyes might be the color of hurt, but they weren’t the color of this—both the fire, and the black, skeletal remains of Trisha’s love that smoldered long after they descended the hill.

Silently working their way back to the Rockbell estate, Edward slipped the glasses over his nose. The weight of the wire eased his shaking into a resolve that fell heavier than Alphonse’s steps beside him.

Together, Trisha’s sons leaft Resembool and embarked into the maw of Amestris’ Military. They wear no collars, but they’re already dogs.

—

PART ONE

FIN

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