What if Edward never manages to find his way home? Well, I've been wanting to write that scenario for a long, long time.
These are, for the most part, 100 word drabbles detailing the life of an Edward who NEVER returns to Amestrice. I've been wanting to write something like this since I first saw the end of the series. ;; I got a bit... lazy with these in the middle (since I wrote them completely out of order), so some of them are between 101 and 110 words. I'm not sure I'm completely satisfied with how these turned out (I suck jawsomely at drabbles), but overall I'm happy that I finally got this damn fic out of my system.
Warnings? MASSIVE spoilers for the end of the series. Spoilers for, uh, world history. oO Very subtle pairing stuff, if not being warned about that kind of thing bothers you (and I really do mean subtle- I'm sure there's at least one NO ONE will pick out in a million years).
Between Heaven and Home
Cephied Variable
Edward's first walk through the streets of Munich is on a sunny day. The streets make a patchwork of black and white, long shadows cast by the skeletons of buildings hollowed out by war.
"This place is hell." he says later, laying on the floor with an arm over his eyes, "This entire damn world is hell."
Hohenheim looks at him over the top of his book and says: "Perhaps that is so, Edward. But you'd be surprised at the places where a man can find heaven."
That night he presses his eyes shut to the glow of transmutation circles burnt into his memory.
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There is a girl with Nina's pigtails in the crowd, a woman with his teacher's slanted eyes. There is a man he keeps seeing with a shock of blonde hair and a nasty smoking habit. Everytime he sees an elegantly dressed man with dark hair he fears that they will turn around and smirk at him with unnerving familiarity.
The only one he ever meets is Alphonse Heiderich, and it hurts more than he ever could have imagined. All Edward wants to do is hold his brother tight and never let go.
Unfortunately, it is not easy to forget who Heiderich is, and who he isn't.
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He goes south, and then east, to where the land gets dry and bright, like an over exposed photograph (except that this world takes pictures in black and white). This land too is war torn, conflicted and broken in places.
The ruins here are echos to what Edward is told was the greatest civilization ever known to man. Although the people here are oppressed they still carry themselves with the pride and composure of kings.
In the face of every man and woman, Edward can see the red eyes of the Scarred Man staring back at him, glimmering with equal parts passion and madness.
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He meets a girl. She calls herself a "gypsy", which Ed figures is a kind of nomad. She introduces him to her family with a bright smile and they welcome him with open arms, jewelry ringing and jingling like instruments.
They dance, a swirl of color, emotion and music. Their thick accents blur together with blue taffeta and the red candle light and Ed, who has probably had a bit too much to drink, only sees a tornado of movement and noise dragging him down into darkness.
The girl leans over him in the firelight, a bemused smile on her face. In her eyes burns the fire and passion of all the things Edward has lost over the years.
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He is twenty-five years old when he finally takes a man to his bed for the first time. Or rather, is taken to a man's bed. However, Edward is still Edward, and would never concede that he wasn't in complete control of the situation.
Edward refuses to admit that the man's pale complexion, dark features and handsome face (which can almost be called dastardly) mean anything at all. He awakes with aches in his body, aches in his heart and a need to break free. He's sick of being a slave to the eyes and whispered voices of people he'll never see again.
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Everything passes like a whirldwind. Life and time and the space between. His mind is flooded with names and languages and people that never quite feel as real to him as they should.
After a time he begins to ask himself: What color were Alicia Hughes' eyes? or What was Winry's favorite food? or even: What kind of music did that bastard Colonel always listen to?
It's when he can't remember whether his Al had blue eyes or green that he realizes he's been on this side of the gate longer than he ever was in the world where he was born.
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In 1939 he tries to return to Germany, but finds himself re-routed to England. He waits out the war in the country side living on rations and the occasional newspaper, trying his best to ignore the calvalry trucks as they pass through town. They remind him far too much of Ishbal and Liore and the ledgend of a city that disappeared in one night.
And when he sees the newsreels later- black and white images flickering death and carnage- all he can hear is the sound and scream of someone performing human transmutation on the other side of the gate.
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After the war he scours Germany for Heiderich. Smoke and ash still drift down the empty streets and roll out to the fields where mass graves make the earth rich and green. People look at him curiously, eyes bright, but empty as if their souls have gone into hiding.
He gives up eventually and goes to Heiderich's old house, surprised when a pale, pretty woman with honey-blonde hair and too-familiar eyes (it'd been too long, he was imagining things) answered the door. He asks his question and a darkness passes over her face.
"Alphonse refused to build rockets for the Nazis." she says, voice small, "He went to the camps, and I haven't seen or heard from him since."
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He passes a mirror and stops, running his fingers over the ghost of a beard on his chin and cheeks. He realizes, with glasses tipped on his nose, that he's beginning to look like his father- look like an adult- finally. Sometimes he thought his hair would go gray before he grew out of that baby face.
He teaches science at Oxford and has come to suppose that chemistry is something like alchemy. There's less reverence- less respect for the natural order of things. But then again chemicals and compounds hardly have the same power on this side of the gate.
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One of his students stumbles in an hour early, bleary-eyed, hung over with a five o'clock shadow. Edward feels a throb of sympathy- history won't remember this boy's generation; too young to participate in the war but old enough to remember every detail.
"What with the war, and communism and... everything, I'm beginning to think that this world is far worse than any hell Dante could have dreamt up."
Edward gives him a measured gaze and says, "Perhaps that is so, but you would be surprised at the places where you can find heaven."
Or, he ammends silently, At least something approaching contentment.
fin.