A/N: I hope my readers appreciate how much I suffer for them. I was reading The Mummy Congress, a truly odd book, and it talked about European bog bodies and how the Nazis tried to use them to justify violence towards homosexuals, and I immediately had an idea for a story about Alphons being interrogated by the Nazis about his relationship with Ed. Which isn't the suffering part. The suffering part is that this story idea seemed so pressing that I had to start writing it despite being on an airplane flying to Portland at the time. And me and travel don't mix well, overall. Especially not if I try to do anything other than just sit there and listen to music - like, oh, say, writing. So I made myself utterly miserable and nauseous to get this done. And it didn't quite turn out as I thought it would, but I like it. My official stance on EdAlphons (aka EdHei-kun, because otherwise we get him mixed up with Al when we discuss it, and we find incest creepy): I do not think they would ever have a relationship. I think for Ed Alphons looks too much like his brother, and he doesn't have any feelings for him. However, I also think it highly probable that Alphons has feelings for Ed. Why else would you let a total stranger move in with you, follow him around the country, and give up your life's dreams, not to mention your life, for him? So I'm thinking of doing more one-sided EdAlphons at some point.
Disclaimer: I don't own Alphons Heidrich, unfortunately, or I could have saved him at the end of the movie. And thank the gods, I don't own the Nazis. As far as I'm concerned, Hitler can keep them.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Alphons is washing dishes in the kitchen when he hears the banging at the door of the small, grubby flat he shares with Edward, and for a moment after he opens the door all he can think is that his hands are dripping soap on the floor.
There are three of them, tall, dark, somber-looking men in uniforms he recognizes; there are more of them in Munich every day, it seems.
"Is Edward Elric here?" he expects them to ask, because Ed is the type to get into trouble like this, to get involved with men like these, to have men like these come looking for him. Ed, not him. Alphons only wanted to make rockets.
"Are you Alphons Heidrich?" they ask instead, and he can only nod dumbly.
"We would like to talk to you," the tallest man says gravely. "Would you mind coming with us for a little while?"
"Will I ever come back?" he doesn't ask, even as he wonders if these men have been sent to make him disappear, if someone will find his worm-bitten corpse a month from now in a ditch, or if he will just vanish without a trace. But if there is one thing Ed has taught him, it is that resisting only convinces them you have done something wrong.
"As long as you don't keep me too long," he says instead. "I have work to do."
"Don't worry," the tallest man replies. "This shouldn't take long." His thin, cold laugh leaves Alphons feeling sick, and he wonders if he could run back into the kitchen and at least leave Ed a note, so he would know why he didn't come back.
But one of the men already has a hand on his arm, and he lets himself be led down the steps to the street, where a dark car is waiting for them.
"Where are you taking me?" he is too scared to ask, and he knows they wouldn't answer. The silence in the car as they drive is absolute, almost painful; he wants to beat his fists against it and shatter it to a thousand pieces. But the three men would probably kill him if he did that, so he doesn't say a word, doesn't even whisper prayers under his breath as he tries to sit as straight and still as the men do and watches them out of the corners of his eyes.
The car stops at a grim, imposing building in a part of Munich Alphons has never seen before, and he thinks it looks like a prison although he has never seen a prison before. There is no sign on the front of the building, just a skinny, sullen-faced guard standing beside the door who asks the men several questions that Alphons can't hear and then waves them through.
The hallways are a tangled maze, worse than the warrens that are the slums of Munich, and Alphons realizes that he is trapped; even if he tried to run off, they would find him long before he found the way out. His hands start to shake, and he shoves them into his pants pockets to hide it from the men.
At the end of the last hall is a small room, and when the four of them are inside the last man turns and locks the door, and Alphons can feel his heart pounding in his chest. There is a small table with a glass of water on it, and a chair, and one of the men directs Alphons to sit.
"Am I being charged with something?" is not a wise question to ask, Alphons knows, because the only answer will be "do you think you should be?" So he swallows the words and waits for one of them to break the silence.
"You're not in trouble, Herr Heidrich," the tallest man says, and Alphons wonders how he can be expected to believe him. "We just want to ask you a few questions about Herr Elric."
Alphons doesn't know whether to be relieved or disgusted. Of course it's about Edward. It always is.
"I don't have anything to tell you. Just leave him alone!" he wants to shout, because there can be no good reason for these men to want to know about Ed. But that would be a dangerous thing to say to them now. It wouldn't help Ed.
"I'll tell you what I can," he says instead, "but I'm afraid I don't know that much."
"Just do your best to answer our questions," the man says kindly. "How did you two first meet?"
"At a conference," he answers. "I was there with a professor of mine. He happened to be acquainted with Edward's father. The two of them were talking, and they found out Edward and I had similar interests, and they decided to introduce us."
"Interests in what?" the man asks, and Alphons knows he must know the answer to this, if he knows enough about Edward to think he needs to ask questions about him, and he wonders what else his answer is supposed to reveal.
"Rocketry, of course. And when we met, we found we had some similar ideas about the theories and applications of rocketry, and that we'd get a lot further in our research if we pooled our resources and worked as partners, so that's what we decided to do."
"And he wanted to keep me around anyway, because I remind him of someone he cared about," Alphons doesn't add, because it's not something he wants to think about anyway.
"Rocketry…that's an unusual field for a young man like you. Why do you pursue it?"
"I don't know," Alphons answers. "I find it intriguing, and I'm good at it, and it seems like a good way to make a name for myself."
"Of course," the tall man says, and Alphons can see the condescension on his face. "And Herr Elric?"
"I don't know Edward's motivation," Alphons says levelly. "You would have to ask him yourself." And that is the truth, because Alphons has never really believed Ed's stories about alchemy soulless monsters and evil governments and boys trapped in suits of armor, although he has sometimes wondered what tragedies Ed has endured, that he has to make up something like that instead.
"He's never talked about using his research for anything, or of selling it to anyone, or of working for anyone?"
"Never," says Alphons. He wonders if they suspect him of treason, of selling his work to be used against Germany. "I've never seen anyone with Edward's single-minded devotion to science for its own sake. He doesn't care about anything but his research.
"He doesn't care about anything but getting back to that imaginary country and all those people who probably don't even exist," would be a better answer, but Alphons doesn't think the men would want to hear it. But then, they don't look like they wanted to hear the answer he gave, either.
"Has he ever mentioned a group called the Thule Society?" the man asks.
"Never," Alphons says, and it isn't really a lie, because they made the offer to Alphons, not to Ed, and he had planned to tell him about it when he got home, but now he's not sure he'll live long enough for it to matter, because he knows he's not tell these men what they want to hear, and he knows that he can't.
"Do you know that his arm and leg are false?" the man asks, and Alphons can see he is losing his temper.
"Yes," replies Alphons, deliberately provoking him and not really caring. "It's hard not to notice."
"Do you know how that came to be?"
"My impression is that he lost his limbs in an accident when he was a small child," Alphons answers. "And that his father designed the prosthetics for him. But I'm not certain. We don't talk much, except about work."
"He never tells me anything," Al wants to add. "He doesn't trust me." But these men wouldn't care.
The tall man is furious now, and his face is harsh and ugly in the sharp, unforgiving light of the bare bulb that hangs above the table.
"Are you involved with Herr Elric?" he demands, his voice a poisonous whisper.
"Yes," is the answer Alphons wants to give but doesn't. Doesn't because these men would certainly kill him if he did. Doesn't because they would kill Ed too. Doesn't because it would be a lie, because he has looked at Ed that way, and Ed has never looked back.
"Don't be absurd," he answers instead, without a crack in his mask of disgust.
"Stand up," the man, says harshly, and Alphons obeys numbly, knowing he is about to die.
"Thank you for your time. You can go now," are the words the man shouldn't be saying, but he does, and Alphons watches blankly as the door is unlocked, lets himself be led back through the maze of corridors to the waiting black car. The ride back to his apartment is as cold and silent as the ride that took him away from it.
When he steps out of the car and the men drive away, he collapses on the steps, shaking uncontrollably, crying but only barely.
"Where have you been?" Ed calls from the kitchen when he opens the door.
"Men came and took me away to be interrogated because of you," Alphons desperately wants to say. "I had to lie to protect you. I may have failed. I may have condemned you. I may have saved you life. I almost died for you."
"Nowhere. Just around," he says instead.
A/N: I love Hei-kun! Why did he have to die?! And we all agree that the whole thing was weird in the movie - it's like "Oh no, Alphons is dead, but it's okay because I have real Al!" Sad.