Chapter Text
Greed triple-checks that no-one's following him before he vaults over the stone fence. And then he's gone. He comes back two weeks later without explanation. Ling screams. Lan Fan grabs Greed by the hair - it's short enough that it slips out of her fingers, so she digs metal fingers in his throat instead - and growls.
Mu pretends like he believes whatever excuse they tell him.
The clans develop a nearly steady routine in their attempts to gain Ling's favour. Yao sends a new person every other week, Chang has the same couple of informants lingering in the Palace while they wait for the Chang Leader's kid to get to adulthood. A lot of the others have decided courting for Mu's hand in marriage is the way to go.
Mu is having none of it. His parents split the workload so their kid can rest; Lan Fan handles the unofficial offers, Ling is for the official talks and negotiations, Greed deals with the... less than polite approaches.
It works.
They're all tired, though.
Greed vaults over the stone fence. He runs into a guard who's given the choice to either shut up or be silenced. She chooses to keep her life, but word reaches Lan Fan either way.
Edward and Winry get the cutest granddaughter anyone could ever ask for. Greed is given the task of passing on the news, which puts him in the corner of figuring an excuse to have dropped by in Amestris without telling anyone.
It goes about as well as you'd expect.
Lan Fan puts her metal elbow to Greed's neck and chokes him.
"Do you have any idea what we could've lost?" she screams. "We were attacked, and you weren't here, this is your job and you left."
"Y'never seemed to have a problem dealing with attacks", Greed rasps. His throat sparks, but with Lan Fan's forearm pressing his trachea closed, he can't heal.
"We did now", she growls. "And you weren't here."
"I'm sorry."
She drops him. He coughs up a lung as he forces his healing into overdrive.
"Not yet you're not", she says. "You haven't seen him yet."
Greed, for a moment, is terrified to figure whether 'him' is his husband or his son, and then forces himself to be glad it wasn't 'them'.
It's Ling.
The left side of his torso is horribly injured, covered with bandages and compresses. He's sitting up, a pillow on the right of his back keeping him elevated until his shoulder heals. His thigh has a clear gush through it, and Greed doesn't really want to know what he'll see after his leg is unwrapped.
But he's alive. And he's glaring daggers at Greed.
"I'm sorry", Greed says before Ling can open his mouth. "How could I have known? I never wanted this, especially not to you." He kneels at the side of the bed, and it's low enough that he's at eye level with Ling. "I'm sorry. I should've been here to protect you."
"I don't need you to protect me", Ling rasps. "I need you to keep the danger out of our home. I'm glad it was me, Greed, but I can't count on luck to do the same next time."
Lan Fan, seated on the other side of the bed, bites her tongue, doesn't offer herself in place of her Emperor, doesn't scream to offer Greed and his infinite healing. Because all of those things combined are better than their luck turning on Mu.
"I'm so sorry", Greed sobs, face to the sheets. "I'm so sorry, love, I'm sorry."
Ling sighs with a hitch. "Were you at least doing something of importance, wherever you were?"
Greed sniffs, picks up his head to look at Ling. His left eye is also covered in bandages, and his right is bloodshot. "I was in Amestris", he says finally. His voice still trembles. "And I was... fuck, I was doing fuckall, I didn't even have any real reason to go, I should've been here."
Lan Fan scowls at him.
"No, you're right", Greed says. "You're absolutely right. The very fucking least I could have done is tell you. I just. I hate this whole thing." He runs a hand through his hair, catches his lip with his teeth. "Yuriy got a baby girl."
"That's lovely", Lan Fan spits. "Absolutely wonderful."
"Hey. It's me."
"Oh, Greed? Since when do you use the telephone?"
"Ha ha May, is Alphonse there?"
"What, no love for me? I'm hurt, Greed, obliterated."
"Ling is missing half his sides and one entire leg. Is Alphonse there?"
"What?!"
"Please just give the phone to Alphonse."
"One moment - DEAR COME QUICK IT'S URGENT - here you go, it's Greed."
"Greed?"
"Hey, Al."
"Is there something actually urgent?"
"Can I ask you for a big favour? I mean a huge one."
"Oh come on, Greed. How much bigger than 'getting a body' can it be?"
Greed begs and pleads to hell and back. Alphonse eventually concedes, arrives at the Castle, and then Greed begs and pleads some more. He also pleads with Mu, to get him to occupy Lan Fan - but that one goes terribly, because Mu spills right away and Lan Fan demands that she be there for the insanity they're about to attempt.
So she is.
Ling is against it, at first, but with Lan Fan there and Mu in mind, he agrees.
So Alphonse fuses Greed into Ling.
It somehow manages to hurt worse than the first time. Even without the structural rearrangement that Greed usually brings, red sparks for so long it becomes tiring to even look at. Ling's leg grows healthy and his skin heals and his eye sees again.
And then, when the sparking stops, Alphonse pulls Greed back out and into his own body. That, at least, hurts just as much as last time.
All three of them pass out.
Six hours pass, and Ling is the only unresponsive one, thus the only one in a coma. Alphonse can stay awake and even hold a conversation, but he's exhausted, so he sleeps some more. Greed can open his eyes for a few seconds, minutes at most, before he blacks out again.
Twelve hours pass and Alphonse is awake. He goes to bed early and wakes up very late for a few days, but he's fine, other than that. Greed can sit up. He even manages a few sips of water. Ling is still comatose.
Thirty hours pass and Greed is fine. Or, actually, exhausted to hell and back, and with vaguely limited control over his limbs, but he insists he's fine. Ling is still comatose.
At the fourty-hour mark Ling lets out a whine, but remains unresponsive.
Around fifty-two hours after the fusing, May transmutes Ling into consciousness to give him water and a bite to eat. He eats exactly one bite, then slips back into oblivion.
On the third day, Alphonse is on his way to the Palace's grand library when he sees Ling slithering his way to the kitchen.
Three days Ling is unconscious, and Mu has already picked a bride, proposed, got her clan's blessing, and Greed and Lan Fan's hesitant agreement.
Mu introduces her to Ling. She's the Chang clan's leader's kid, the one they'd bred and raised to get Ling's favour. Mu says he loves her and wants to marry her and asks for Ling's blessing.
Ling gives it, and quietly begs Mu to reconsider, that he doesn't have to do this.
Mu brushes it off, because he does.
Ling curses himself. He never meant to plague his son with thoughts of mortality like this.
When Greed next goes to Amestris, he lets everyone know. Ling and Lan Fan go with him. He walks them around places he's claimed as his, and if they notice the rows of white pebbles at the windows in every other place he takes them to, they don't comment.
They meet up with old friends. Lan Fan hadn't seen Yuriy since he'd been little - now he has kids of his own, and barely remembers her at all.
Heinkel doesn't actually believe them when they meet him. He even gets confused between Greed and Ling. It's hilarious.
On the way back to Xing, Lan Fan admits that the year when all those friendships were formed seems to stretch on and on in her head. They all agree - some events are too important to be blurred in with the ones surrounding them.
Something is very, very wrong with Ling.
Lan Fan's started to grey around the temples, and her skin folds more than it used to. And still, Ling is fresh and green, yet they're the same age.
He looks like he's aged, sure. But not as much as Lan Fan.
They think it might be stress - Lan Fan is constantly alert - but no. The rest of their friends are also showing signs of age. All but Ling.
Ling, who'd been fused with a monster that not only healed, but also didn't age.
Ling does not want to see his friends die.
Greed can't apologize enough.
There are so many grandkids. Greed is only really there for the birth of two: his own first grandson, and Alphonse and May's third. After that he doesn't try as hard to keep track.
It's been thirty-five years since Greed died the first time. A half-round number. It's apparently appropriate enough that his friends start dropping on that year.
Edward is the first to go, surprising no one, saddening everyone. But they've all spent their fair time screaming his ear out about using his own life as a source of energy, and that never led anywhere, so now everyone is quiet. The funeral is crowded - Edward did have a knack for befriending anyone he came across - and he's buried a few feet to the left of his mother's grave.
There's enough space around him to bury his entire family.
Lan Fan goes next.
In her last moments, while her husbands cling to her metal hands, she admits that it's only fair that she goes so soon. She's lived a very dangerous life, and she never wanted to see the day when she'd be old enough that her senses would fail her. She gives them both a kiss on the forehead, and then one to Mu, who otherwise is too choked up to get too close.
She says she's glad she doesn't get to see Ling die, and on the official record it'll be interpreted as a guard's joy for a lifetime's work done right.
On the private record, Ling will curse in large letters and stain the paper with tears as he offers himself in her place, against her wishes.
Lan Fan, too, is buried near family, Fu's grave standing humble next to the honours Lan Fan's is showered in.
At age fifty-nine May falls very ill. She spends a few months settling her scores, letting her family know how much she loves them. But she recovers, thank god.
Actually, no. Two years later she's ill with the same symptoms. Her scores are settled, so all she has to do is spread her love, and she dies peacefully in her sleep.
Alphonse is calm. He blesses her with a eulogy in both languages, and wishes her a safe travel to her resting place. He promises he'll follow, but that she'll have to wait.
No one thinks May would be upset about that. In fact, as Ling reads Alphonse's qi to make sure he's alright, he thinks he feels something urging Alphonse to lay back and take his time. Alphonse seems all too happy to do so.
Winry dies during summer. She dies surrounded by her kids and grandkids. She dies with Alphonse taking note of her last words. She dies with a smile on her face.
In his two and a half centuries, Greed has never encountered a death so peaceful it warranted the phrase 'she closed her eyes like she fell asleep'. He does now.
Winry is buried next to Edward. There's still plenty of space around them, for when it's time to meet their family again.
As soon as Alphonse loses his last sibling (even if she was officially only an in-law), he spends a few weeks apologizing to May's grave. When she was alive they'd discussed their graves and she said she was fine with it, in fact she encouraged it, but Alphonse apologizes again and again, face to the ground and words slipping between languages in a messy mutter.
He's gone a decade later. He's buried between his family, Winry and Edward to his right, Trisha and Hohenheighm to his left.
If May had held a grudge, it's gone after a decade of asking for her forgiveness.
Ling holds out.
Somewhere between the high life of an Emperor and Greed's numerous fusings, Ling lives to be one hundred and two years old.
The list of heirs he leaves behind has been public knowledge since he was eighty. Now it feels like a miracle that no one had murdered him to get the throne earlier.
Tradition dictates that he get his own place of rest, an entire building with carvings and wall paintings to tell his life story - Ling had asked that he be buried next to Lan Fan and near Fu.
Greed sees to it that that's what happens.
The building is still made - and Greed is there too, to make sure that the story's accurate.
And after that, he doesn't have any more reason to stay any longer. Greed's been married before - though never to two people at once - but he thinks he never cared this much. After all, most of his past marriages ended in divorce, and the one that'd ended with death, well. It was very quick. And it was the last one before Ling and Lan Fan.
He'd never had a kid before. Mu lives and prospers as a prince with his family, and doesn't ask for Greed to stay.
So he doesn't.
Greed travels the world - goes high and low, all around the globe. Stays in places, makes friends, gains power. Explores nooks and crannies of endless libraries, looks around the unstable houses of tiny villages, talks with the street rats of cities too large to care for the poor. Spends a few decades running countries here and there - twenty-one years as President of Creta, about nine as a minister in Drachma. A lucky two years as Furher of Amestris before someone who actually knows history points him out to the press and he goes from urban legend to infamous reality overnight.
Man, he loves it when that happens. Decades can blend together and slip away so easily, and then one event happens and it's so important that a single night stands out like the sun.
He remembers the few months leading up to his first death very clearly, with tiny details. He has trouble recalling the last years of his spouse's lives - what did they do in the afternoons? How often were there assassination attempts in Ling's forties? Did anyone attack Greed personally between Lan Fan's death and Ling's?
He can't be sure. But ask him what stupid thing Edward did the night before the Promised Day, and Geed can tell you.
(Edward bought two yards of bright red cloth and transmuted it into a long coat, with his teacher's symbol on the back. When the others had teased him about it, he invoked the power of morale, and Greed couldn't have blamed him. Greed can recall the exact crease in Edward's brow as he folded the garment up.
It's the only time Greed had seen Edward admit that he's scared. It didn't matter that it was indirectly.)
(He remembers shards and coils of Alphonse's armor scattered around May. He remembers Gluttony's regeneration glinting off of Lan Fan's metal arm the first time he'd seen it. He remembers Ling latching himself on Greed's soul, screaming and desperate and choosing death over letting go. He remembers Ling remembering fighting Wrath with Lan Fan's weight on his shoulder. He remembers Gluttony pleading in his last moments, word for word. He remembers that Mrs Bradley had managed to stand in a room with three homunculi and tip the odds in her husband's favour with something as careless as a misstep. He remembers that Ling wasn't above using their hunger to strangle control out of Greed's grasp. He remembers Winry setting the table for two members of her family and a handful of strangers with the same care she's give if they were all family. He remembers, on his first minutes of conscience inside Ling's body, May had managed to pick a fight with everyone in the room, which was three homunculi, a godling, a state alchemist, a suit of armor.)
(He remembers that she's buried without any of them around her, but when she visits her grave it's dozens of years later and her kids are with her.)
Greed travels the world.
He takes up a habit he hadn't developed in his two centuries before the kids - writing. He writes everything down. Thoughts, events, quotes. He imprints his experience on paper. He sometimes writes the same things more than once, but it doesn't bother him - the way he leaves notes scattered around the world, it's going to be a nightmare for anyone to track them all down, if anyone ever attempts to. Repeating himself is to the world's benefit.
He's sure he's written at least eleven books about the Promised Day that are the exact same. The story of how Lan Fan lost her other hand is in Central, a copy in the Imperial Palace. What Greed remembers of his conversations with Alphonse about inhabiting bodies that weren't theirs is a series of scattered notes, sparse enough that collecting them all will be actually impossible - hell, a few of those end up crumpled up and tossed into the sea.
Greed makes a large mark. Dozens of people seek him out for years just for the chance to talk to him. He speaks with historians, alchemists, politicians, artists. He fixes inaccuracies. He tells tales. He gains a lot of names, but his favorite one is The Story That Walks.
Because isn't that just what stories do?
He dies without anyone noticing. His Stone runs out 451 years after he was created. He slips back into legend status, and centuries afterwards, he's going to be scientifically explained as a really good historian who did exhausting amounts of research, and even inserted himself into history to make it more real.
It doesn't matter. History repeats itself. Eclipses come and go, and many humans attempt to use them, but none were arrogant or sacrificial enough to match the first attempt.
There isn't another Promised Day.
Greed isn't buried. His body becomes ash. Oblivion comes like an old friend.