Alright! Been a while since I posted a story outside of Shattered, eh? This is definitely a little different from what I normally write, but bear with me here and tell me what you think.
Notes
1) You will notice that there are parts of this story where I leave out quotation marks. That is intentional. Leaving them out was a stylistic choice, meant to have some kind of an impact on the reader -- you can decide for yourself. For me, it means that Al isn't all there for the parts where those quotation-less conversations take place, that that's something like a dream for him. I dunno exactly how to describe it, but it seemed meaningful, so I did it. :3 If I get any comments that say "UR STORI'S OK, BUTT U FOURGAWT QUOTES!" I won't hesitate to hurt you. D:
2) This is unbeta'd. D: I love my beta, but she, like everyone else, has a life (darnit!) so I'm posting this. I looked over it myself, but I suck at catching my own mistakes, so the grammar might not be amazing. I hope my beta doesn't hate me. TT sends her Austrian love
3) Throughout this fic, you need to keep in mind that Al is not used to being away from his brother, where Winry and Mustang and everyone else are. They're totally used to leaving Ed on his own to wander the countryside while staying at home and hoping he's alright, but Al isn't. D:
This is totally TWT, as Al randomly has his body back and is randomly marrying Winry. There's some swearing.
Enjoy!
Edward didn't attend their wedding. General Mustang said that he had sent Edward to Xing for a two week project nearly three weeks prior, and he still hadn't returned. Because of this, there was a desperate lack of family members, Winry having no one but her aging Grandmother and Alphonse having no one at all. The military was happy to fill the empty spaces, but Al insisted that they postpone the date, maybe a day or two, because perhaps Edward's train had been delayed, or perhaps he was hurt? He had sent a letter, Al assured them, short and succinct, insisting that he would be there, and Alphonse trusted his brother's word above all other things. When Edward said he was coming, he damn well meant it.
But the people braving the scorching Rizenbul heat in long gowns and stuffy tuxedos were unhappy to hear that they would have to repurchase train tickets and arrive home late, and Riza, seven months pregnant, was snappy, hormonal, uncomfortable and desperate to get back to her own bed. Alphonse couldn't put it off. The wedding went on according to plan.
Al's heart wasn't in it, though. Roy gave him a list of phone numbers an hour after a restless wedding and Alphonse left Winry dancing with Havoc at the party to call them. Only one of the numbers he dialed received an answer though, and when Alphonse tried to ask about his brother's whereabouts, he remembered that he didn't speak Xingese.
When he had finished, he slumped dejectedly onto the table, fingering the phone cord lightly and watching the wedding party continue without him through the wide back window of the Rockbell's house. It never crossed his mind to wonder how his brother could do this to him, distract him from his own bride on his wedding day. It never crossed his mind to wonder precisely how selfish Edward Elric was to miss the most important day in his little brother's life. All that Al could do was worry, because Edward was hurt, certainly. Edward was lying in a ditch somewhere, maybe bleeding, maybe broken in two.
Al whimpered softly into the table.
He got up and stormed around inside the house for another hour, adjusting his tie and debating the pros and cons of returning to the wedding party, but he found that he had to when Falman came to find him, carrying strict orders from a Mrs. Riza Mustang, who had a pistol strapped just to the left of the slit in her floor-length gown. Al blanched, fixed his hair in the hallway mirror one last time, and then returned to the party long enough to cut the cake and pop the cork on the champagne.
She asked him to come to bed, to turn out the kitchen light and devote some energy to his blushing bride for God's sake. His bastard brother, who wasn't wearing a garter or a wedding dress, who wasn't wearing a ring on his goddamn finger, could wait until morning. He had only forgotten the date, Al, come to bed, please.
Alphonse calmly explained, no, no he wasn't wearing any of those things, but he was wearing an automail arm and thousands of scars, Al flushed a deep crimson, all for him. Winry could take the wedding ring and garter and dress off – Edward could never remove his scars. It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it as soon as he saw Winry's deadly glare. Yes, she said, she could take them off – any time she damn well pleased – and he'd best remember that. And then she went to bed.
Alphonse stayed by the phone and worried, occasionally calling another number, sometimes turning over in his mind what he would do if his brother didn't return this time.
Alphonse slipped into the General's guestroom that morning and helped him to pack his things. He was tired, dead tired, having waited all night by the phone. The General said he was being silly in that airy, condescending tone that always infuriated Edward – said that the date had slipped Edward's mind and that he would come bumbling back with some inane story begging forgiveness within the week.
Alphonse didn't believe him though, because surely something was wrong with Edward for him to have let Alphonse down like this. Certainly he was in a Xingan hospital – maybe he had lost his memory in some alchemy accident or, God forbid, maybe he had lost another limb. Alphonse folded together socks that didn't match as he thought this, made balls of brown and goldenrod and didn't even notice as he put them into the suitcase.
The General took stock of the mismatched socks and the faraway look in Alphonse's eyes, then conceded with a sigh that he could send out word for Edward to return if Al was really that worried. But really. He shouldn't be concerned. Edward could take care of himself.
Alphonse wasn't so sure.
A week after the wedding and the Rockbell house was quiet, save the quiet gurgles of Alphonse doing the dishes in the kitchen sink and the eery scratch of Den's automail leg on the back door. Even Granny Pinako had gone on a trip to Rush Valley, disguising her attempts to give her grandchildren some alone time with her monthly excursion for automail parts in Rush Valley.
There was still no word from Edward.
General Mustang had sent a messenger to Xing the moment he returned to his office (and Al had called, just to be sure) but no word had come yet. Alphonse found himself unable to sleep and unable to concentrate most of the time now, and even as he did the dishes, his mind drifted far away, to a busy street in Xing where his brother lay cold and alone and sick, having caught some Xingan bug that of course Edward's delicate Amestrian body wasn't used to. Edward had a weak constitution, he couldn't handle that sort of thing right now, so close to the winter months. With his automail and his feeble immune system, a foreign disease could rip right through him – could kill him if he wasn't careful.
Under his hands, a plate cracked, and Alphonse looked down to find his blood running pearlescent and red in the dirty dishwater below him. He watched it with a sort of horrified fascination, focused on it until he could see Edward's tiny body plummeting overboard off the side of a ship and into murky waters, and his blood ran free and red as Al's did.
There were arms encircling Al's neck then, warm and soft and yielding in a way that he didn't want at all. He had been expecting the firm, hard muscles and cool, unbreakable planes of automail and flesh crossing over his chest and whispering into his ear that he was alright, Al, that he gotten caught up along the way, but he was here for some leftover wedding cake if Al had any in the icebox?
Come to bed, Al, he heard instead. It's late and I'm tired. But Al indicated the cut on his finger, said he needed to bandage it and then he would be right up. He swore it. Winry glared and removed her arms, backed off and let out a resigned sigh.
She took two sleeping pills before climbing the stairs to their room, and Alphonse spent the rest of the night combing through books about diseases native to the country of Xing.
Granny Pinako came back to find the house a wreck, books and papers strewn about, Alphonse buried in some text on the couch, and Winry with tired eyes, a bathrobe, and a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. She joked gently that just because the lovebirds were busy didn't mean they should abandon their household duties. Winry shot her a glare then, filled with righteous anger and barely-hidden desire. Alphonse hadn't even looked up to say hello and didn't respond to the remark, because he was busy investigating the crime rate of Xing and it's cities, as well as its gang population and drug use.
Perhaps for this project Edward had gone undercover and things had gone awry. Perhaps he had really been entirely unable to care for himself without his baby brother, even though he had assured everyone, time and time again, that he was twenty fucking years old and damn well old enough to go on a stupid information gathering mission all by his very lonesome.
Stupid. Stupid. Alphonse turned another page and thought he must have been the stupidest person in the world because of course his brother couldn't do anything without him. Of course his brother was bound to get hurt. Of course he – Alphonse stopped.
His wedding band had caught on a page of the book he was reading, and Alphonse promptly removed it with unfazed disinterest and set it atop the living room coffee table. He never looked away from the words dancing on the page in front of him.
In the kitchen, the phone rang and Alphonse was up in an instant, flying out of the room. Winry's hand had fallen over her eyes but Alphonse paid it no mind as he grabbed the phone off it's cradle and jammed it to his ear.
It wasn't Edward or even the General, though; it was some nameless well-wisher who Alphonse listened to with muted interest, gazing longingly at his books back on the sofa. After a few minutes, he hung up the phone without saying goodbye. The lights fizzled and blinked above him, and Alphonse's gaze traveled up and out the window to a storm he hadn't noticed before as he stalked back to his seat.
Upon reaching the living room, Al found that Winry had migrated from her place in the dining room, and she looked down at the coffee table in horror, clasping the collar of her robe and holding it closed. Al, she said, and Alphonse wasn't quite sure he liked her tone.
Why did you take your ring off?
That's a stupid question, Al thought, picking the ring up and examining it. It shimmered dully, not at all like the gold of his brother's hair and eyes, in the sputtering overhead lamp.
It was getting in my way, Al said finally.
Winry stormed out of the room.
That night brought rain that Rizenbul hadn't seen in years. Alphonse heard it pounding on the roof and the front door, saw it gathering in the little dips in the earth on their road. But when he gazed out into the storm, hugging his knees tight and breathing in air that hinted a fire in the hearth, Alphonse didn't look into the sinister downpour, he looked through it. Behind the dark unfathomable torrent, he saw a figure coming toward the house, moving slow and sure, walking not running, wet and haggard.
Surely. Surely it was his brother.
Alphonse was off the sofa and bounding out the door in an instant, boots and coat forgotten on the hook by the door.
He ran down the road, splashing, taking only vague notice of the fact that his lovely flowerbeds were washing away, of the fact that everything beautiful in his yard and his garden was gone with the storm.
Brother, he called out, breathless.
Edward!
The figure moving along the road stopped and looked up, eyes wide. And those eyes were gold for a fleeting instant, that hair was yellow, before there was a flickering like in his lights and they both turned dull, muddy brown.
Can I help you, son? The man said. Alphonse blinked against storm, drops clinging to his eyelashes and stinging his face.
No. He said. No.
There's only one person who can now.
Winry confronted him in the morning, by the embers of a dying fire. Alphonse was still wet from his excursion into the rain, but he had collapsed onto the couch when he came back in and he hadn't moved since. He might have had a fever, he wasn't sure, because something inside him felt funny and his face felt hot.
She told him that she couldn't live like this.
Alphonse said, haughty, face still buried in the couch cushions, that he couldn't either. Winry had, after all, done nothing to help him in his struggles over the past two weeks, had done nothing but mope and whine about the house. He had never been separated from his brother before, not really, not for this long, but there was no sympathy forthcoming, that much was apparent. Winry had been as cold and steely as the automail she prided herself for since their wedding day.
Why, she asked, were they even married? Why did he even bother troubling himself with proposing and organizing a fruitless wedding?
Alphonse shook the hair out of his eyes, narrowed them, and spat back that he had only wanted her to be happy. But she wasn't, was she? It wasn't him that she loved, not really. She had always loved his brother, anyway.
Winry gave him the most peculiar look then, lips curling up with an edge of insanity to them. No Al, she said, I love you. I've always loved you. I always will.
He loved you, Alphonse shot back. He loved –
Winry slapped him, shouted, asked him what in the world had come over him.
You drove him away! This marriage drove him away! He shouted.
Alphonse wasn't sure when he had made that conclusion, when worry for his brother had turned into hatred and cold. But it did seem logical, didn't it? What if his brother was jealous of their love, because he had loved Winry at some point, hadn't he?
Hadn't he?
Oh God. Alphonse had been the one to hurt his brother! Maybe it hadn't been Xing at all... This had to end, then. He wanted Edward back.
Winry seemed to have come to that conclusion as well, and she threw her ring on the floor, ground her foot into it, and stalked toward the door.
Now, she said, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, I'm wearing your scars too.
And she left.
Alphonse had thought that after Winry left her own house, Pinako at her heels, that Edward would miraculously manifest before him, admitting that he had been a little jealous, but it was alright now, wasn't it? They could be together. And nothing would ever try to pull them apart again.
When a week passed and Edward hadn't returned, the concern welled up inside him again and there was Edward in everything he did. Papers on the floor, rustling in the wind, and he heard the folds of Edward's coat. Closing the mailbox and there were the hinges of Edward's mechanical arm. Gold in the rising sun and there were his eyes. Bubbling in a nearby brook and there was his voice. Cooking all his favorite foods and there he was across the table, as if the scent alone had traveled across the Great Desert and carried him home.
Every night he went to bed without Edward there was a miserable, but every morning he woke alone was unbearable. He half wished he were a dog some nights, because he longed to dream in black and white. The colors he saw when he dreamed – gleaming pink of blood-bathed bones, gold of suffering eyes, too much red, red, red everywhere – were enough to leave him a trembling mess when he awoke.
There came a night, after a while, where the dream was too vivid, where he could feel every place Edward was hit or tossed or impaled – and not from Edward's point of view. No he was the mysterious silhouette of a man jabbing and punching and stabbing and hurting his own brother with all his might. Even as he screamed and panted and sobbed for it all to end, Edward crumpled into a dirty heap at the end of the his dream alley and oozed red.
Alphonse was out the door as soon as his initial waking tremors had subsided, sprinting down the path in the same wrinkled, unwashed clothes he'd worn since Winry had left a week earlier. He was at the train station before he knew it, shouting into the ticket booth for service, godammit, I need a ticket to Xing! The attendant was slow enough about it, checking the timetables and taking breaks to spit tobacco into a dirty old spittoon.
Eventually, he announced that there were no trains to Xing for another two days. Alphonse growled lowly under his breath and accepted the ticket with very little grace. When he had turned to leave, after having safely tucked the ticket away into his pocket, the salesmen called out to him again, asked him what was wrong. Alphonse tried to smile but grimaced, tried to laugh but groaned. Everyone in Rizenbul was too goddamn familiar.
I'm just missing someone terribly, he said in response. I hope that he's alright.
Me too, the salesman said, eyeing him critically – but I'm a bit more worried for you. You're not looking too well yourself, young man.
Alphonse thought, vaguely, as he turned around and left the station, that that was a stupid thing to worry about.
The phone was ringing when he got home, and Alphonse was there by it in an instant, shouting a hurried hello!? into the receiver, and holding it to his head with shaking hands.
"Hey, Al!"
Alphonse was silent.
"Al? You there?"
"I'm...yes, of course I'm here, Brother," Alphonse said breathlessly. "Are you alright?"
"Listen Al, I just got back into Central and looked at the calendar."
Alphonse's breathing grew heavy, his heart thudded dully in his ears.
"I can't believe that I missed your wedding – I'm such a goddamn idiot. But things in Xing got a little hectic, y'know?"
The words coming out of his mouth were not his own. They couldn't have been.
"I...Edward, you should have been home weeks ago."
Edward let out a low chuckle, and Alphonse found it a very odd noise to be making.
"I know...I know, Al. You hate me, don't you? I'm so sorry, I just lost track of time."
Hate?
Alphonse didn't hate his brother.
Alphonse could never hate his brother.
"Never. Just...just come home?"
"'Course I will. I'll see you in a bit, Al. Can't wait to see Winry, too!"
Click.
That didn't stop him from hating himself.
Thanks for reading, and please review! I really want some opinions on this one.