Title: Go, and I Will Follow
Summary: There was a way to stop the colonel being forced through the transmutation circle. But it was the worst way. [Alternate series ending, 2009 anime]
Warning: Major character death
Notes: This work was inspired by Contraltissimmo's Direct Order comic on DA, which came across my tumblr dash the other day. This is probably the most evil thing I've ever written, for which I deeply apologize.

Go, and I Will Follow

Armstrong stands at the entrance, tears rolling down that stone-solid face and soaking into his moustache.

"Edward Elric," he says gravely, as though Ed could have forgotten his own name. "A great and terrible day."

He claps one massive hand down on Ed's shoulder and then steps aside, head bowed, leaving the path clear. Ed stumbles through, waiting for the darkness to clear.

The first thing he sees is Lieutenant Hawkeye, sitting in the center of a broken transmutation circle, head bowed, cradling Colonel Mustang's body to her chest. Then he sees the scattered debris of the room: transmuted stone and broken steel, spent bullet casings and scraps of cloth woven through smears of blood. The confirmation—he hadn't wanted to listen when Zampano had told him—slices straight through his stomach, and Ed sways on the spot.

"Lieutenant?" he whispers.

"Hello, Ed," she replies, in a voice as empty as Ed feels.

He drags himself to her side—through a line of dried blood and the scorched remains of an alkahestry circle—and kneels, forcing himself to look, to accept.

"They said you won."

Mustang's eyes are open, pupils wide and hollow. The bullet-hole on his forehead looks like nothing more than a smudge of congealed black paste. His hands are spread, palms up, gloves torn and stained red. Just beyond, Ed can see the floor, the streak of blood and something else—

"Yeah," Ed says, swallowing bile. "Yeah, we won. We stopped them."

The lieutenant's eyes are open as well, glassy with tears that slide down her dirty face in steady streaks. A ragged scar runs from her left ear to her clavicle, dark with blood that soaks her clothes. She holds tight to Mustang's body, gently cradling his head with one hand as the other smoothes the seams and buttons of his jacket.

"It's over now, Lieutenant. We have to go."

He reaches across and sets his hand over hers, over Mustang's still heart. The movement breaks her stare—she looks down and flinches.

"You got your arm back," she says.

"Yeah. That's what Al did for me. And I got his body back."

"He'd be proud of you," she says, dull eyes fixed on Mustang's slack face. "After everything you've been through, all your struggles. You did it. He would have been so proud."

"Lieutenant, please come with me."

He can't believe his body still carries the strength for tears, but he feels one splash on his outstretched arm. He can't see the gun, but he can guess it's on her far side, tucked beneath the hem of her trench-coat.

"I'm sorry, Ed," she whispers. "I can't."

"Yes, you can."

She shakes off his hand gently, and then threads her fingers through the hair tangled at Mustang's temples.

"Please, Lieutenant. Please just get up, and walk out with me. Please."

"Do you know," she says, and he wonders how her voice is still so flat, "what the worst part of a fight is? The moment after it's ended, and the moment before the next fight starts. There's such a sense of...of lacking purpose. You give yourself over to something so completely, drain yourself out and stretch and make it your whole identity, and then it's over, and all you can do is sit there and wait for whatever's next."

"But you can't spend your life waiting. You have to get up."

He bends down, trying to catch her eyes.

"Move forward or stay still. He told me that once."

She says nothing, curving her hand now over the angle of his jaw, tracing the ridge of bone back and forth.

"I think he also told you that it was your choice."

"You can't choose this. You just can't. Not after everything."

He hears the crack in his own voice but doesn't care.

"We've been through so much, and there's so much left to do still, and we can't do it without you."

"Yes, you can."

"No, we can't!" Ed shouts, digging his right hand into his thigh. "We can't lose both of you!"

She meets his eyes at last.

"Ed, this is what I want."

The day comes crashing around him—the whole year, and all the chaos and blood and anger—as he pitches forward, face pressed against her shoulder, sobs ripping through his bruised lips and broken ribs. She brings her hand around his back and gently cradles his head as well, fingers resting lightly across his temple.

"I'm sorry," she says, and he listens for the waning hum in her chest. "I'm sorry, Ed, but this is it for me. I'm tired. I want to go. I want to be done."

"Please," he whispers, grabbing fistfuls of her jacket. "Don't go—we need you. I need you."

"Not as much as you think. You've got Al, and Winry, and Fuery and Havoc and—"

"That's not enough," Ed says fiercely, but his eyes are still shut tight. "I need you, too."

Even saying it, he knows it's for nothing—there was no one behind her broken gaze and nothing left inside her for more than a few tears. So he cries for both of them, for all three—the weight of Mustang's body against his knee is firm but cold, gone forever somewhere unreachable, and for the life of him he can't remember the last words they exchanged—he hopes it was something good, something neutral at the least and not just another sarcastic quip.

"You won't do it if I'm here," he whispers. "You're always trying to protect us. You won't do it if I'm here, because you won't make me watch you die."

She says nothing, rubbing small circles into his temple, as the sobs leave him with only hiccups, like a little kid demanding concessions from a patient mother. He tightens his arm around her waist and reaches up to grip Mustang's collar.

"Why'd you go and do it?" he asks. "Why didn't you just go through? Why didn't you use it to save her? We could've figured it out. We still would've beaten him somehow."

But those dark eyes have no more answers, and he knows Riza will wait as long as she must. He has only one weapon left.

"What am I supposed to tell Al?"

Ineffective—she flinches again, but still doesn't speak. What little daylight flickers through the destroyed ceiling angles away and then dissipates altogether. Somewhere far above them, the work of rebuilding has begun.

The tears stop completely. His face feels warm and tight, but his puffy eyes have dried, and Ed sits up. It takes longer for him to stand, to put his feet back beneath himself and rise up. Riza's hand slides from his head to his shoulder, down his arm, and then their fingers intertwine.

From her unchanged place at the circle's edge, she stares up past their joined hands into his eyes.

"Please," he asks, one last time. "Please come with me."

"Goodbye, Ed," she says, as moonlight paints the ghost of a smile across her bloodless lips. "We're so proud of you."

His footsteps echo. He drags his feet and that's somehow worse—every nerve on fire, listening, waiting. He reaches Armstrong, huddled weeping against the wall, and joins him, sliding down the crumbling stone, tasting blood and bile in his mouth.

The gun's report is short and sharp to their ears.

o.o.o.o.o

He lies to Al.

Those bright eyes are dulled enough at the news of Mustang's death.

"What about the lieutenant?" he asks, and his whole fragile body trembles.

"What d'you think?" Ed replies, forcing a half-smile. "She was never far behind. Bradley was just too much. The colonel went down, and she died with him."

"They went together," Al confirms, and Ed nods. He can find some truth in that, at least.

There's a pair of funerals a week later, but they don't go. Al can barely sit up, and Ed feels like each footstep has to be pulled up from fast-drying mud. Two months later, they go home to Winry, and Ed decides right away that he'll never leave again.

It's hard at first to keep the act going—to smile and laugh and needle Granny about height—and there are times that Ed disappears from the house, when he takes his coat and walks for hours, from road to road, stopping nowhere, seeing nothing but the puff of dust kicked up by his moving feet.

He knows they've noticed: more than once he comes home and hears quiet voices through thick doors.

"Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye took good care of us in East City," Al says one evening, as Ed leans his head against the wall. "They were always around, and always helping us. They knew we'd figure out a way to get our bodies back."

"I still can't believe they're gone," Winry sighs, and Ed slides down the wall.

Soon enough the act is not an act so much any more—he stays quiet, but he finds little things to occupy his empty time: fixing the roof, re-framing windows, sweeping the shop floor, and painting a new sign. Everything that happened in Central becomes distant, a haze seen through smoked glass—a mirage he leaves behind, eyes on the horizon.

Hohenheim spends a day with them, showing up after six months with nothing but his clothes and hat.

"I have no right to ask it," he says, but Ed steps from the door and nods him inside.

Al still gets tired easy, so Ed sits up with Hohenheim alone, drinking wine from chipped coffee mugs.

"It's a good thing I gave up my alchemy," Ed says suddenly, after a few hours of silence. "I didn't learn a damn thing. I'd do it all over again, exactly the same—same failures, same consequences—for even the smallest chance of getting them back."

Hohenheim dies within a week—they add another name to Mom's stone, and then carry on with their lives. Ed grows a little more and keeps his gaze low, while Al takes off for Xing and a life beyond.

In five years, he thinks maybe he's forgotten—but it's that thought which sets it all off again. His footsteps echo, but he marries Winry and by spring they're expecting their first. Al comes back for a visit with May Chang—Ed takes their bags upstairs, and then grabs his coat and hat and goes for a walk in silence, while they all wait for him on the front porch. May knows, of course, but she's kind enough to say nothing.

It's the letter that really sets him off—addressed to both, but Ed's lucky enough to grab it first from the box, laden with bags on his way back from the grocery. He reads it too fast and has to go back again, while the edges of the paper go damp and curl beneath his fingers.

Hey Fullmetal, it starts. No one calls him that anymore.

He skims the rest. Five years, and Havoc wants to have a memorial. A celebration among friends.

I know you were never much for following orders, but you two were a big part of Mustang's squad. And Ed, well, you were one of the last to see them. It would mean a lot to us to see you boys again.

Winry takes a while on the stairs—she's being over-careful lately—to find Ed in their bedroom, the letter crumpled beside him. He hasn't cried like this since that night, since—

"Ed?"

"I just left her there," he blurts, and Winry pushes herself into the circle of his arms. He turns his head to rest against the gentle swell of her belly. "I knew exactly what she was going to do, and I just left. I didn't even really try and—maybe it wouldn't be the life she wanted, but she'd still be alive."

It feels like breaking in half—like kneeling in that circle and feeling her warmth for the last time, and knowing it's the last time but still unable not to let go—not to get up and keep going.

"Ed, I don't understand," Winry says softly. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I can't tell them the truth. I just can't. But I can't...I can't live with it anymore."

Winry's hands thread through his hair.

He pulls her as close as he can without hurting her, sobbing with a sort of desperate finality. Because he's decided, at last, that he's finished with this, finished with guilt for everything he can't change, everything he left undone, all the lives he touched and destroyed. He will move forward, even if they couldn't.

"Just promise me," he says, when he can manage to speak again. "Promise you won't go without me. That you won't leave me behind."

"Of course I won't," Winry whispers, pressing a soft kiss into his hair. "We'll go together."