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He keeps the hatred close to his chest, wrapping it around his heart and nurturing it in the cavity of his rib cage. From there it spreads like rot in his very flesh, festering and putrid and choking, climbing hungrily with intrusive hands up the rungs of his ribs, poisoning his lungs until they heave achingly. And when it clots in his throat, filling his mouth with its bitter heaviness, staining the underside of his tongue—that’s when he stops trying to breathe past it. He embraces it like an old friend coming home.
It’s easier like that. Hatred is so much easier than thinking.
“We’re almost there, brother.”
“I know.”
Alphonse nods and as he does so the sun glints on the surface on his armour, brutally blinding. Edward looks away.
The view outside the window is barren. Only sand and dead things for miles, rushing past in a flurry of dull gold. It’s hot on the train too—no cooling system, apparently—and sweat beads along Ed’s collar where it constricts around his neck. His left wrist is circled in a ring of sweat from his too-tight glove. The other hand, steel, is uncomfortably hot to the touch.
If he tries hard enough, he can almost believe he’s back home.
But no. This is a different desert with different people and a different culture; the city of Liore rises like a jutting spire from the horizon, dispelling any illusions of home. He tries to muster excitement—maybe this time—but he just feels foolish.
“Does it remind you of home?” Al’s looking at him, Ed knows, but he’s not in the mood to meet those red lights masquerading as eyes today.
“No. This place isn’t as alive.”
Al’s always asking. Always about home, like Ed will open up and spill every story he holds inside him. Only sometimes he obliges. He always regrets it afterwards.
They don’t talk for the rest of the journey. Ed flips through his journal while Al observes the scenery with subdued anticipation that belongs more to a boy of ten than fourteen. Ed isn’t sure how he does it.
“I think this might be the one, brother,” Al whispers, and it fills the carriage even though Ed’s the only who hears.
The sand kicks up a storm outside. Ed swallows, and allows himself to say, “Yeah, Al. I think it might be.”
Edward knows the man is Ishvalan as soon as he sees him. His eyes are hidden behind dark-tinted glasses, but his hair is a stark white too bright to be of old age, and his skin is as brown as Ed’s own. There’s a lilt to his voice too, an accent that extends his vowels just slightly and under-pronounces every l. The Amestrian he speaks is forced and clunky on his tongue, an ugly language in contrast with his native one.
Ed would know.
In different circumstances, Ed might have bowed with his hand over his heart as per Ishvalan custom, greeting a brother like he hasn’t been able to do for years. As it is, he’s being chased through sodden Central streets, his brother at his side and a killer at his heels.
When they find themselves cornered, when Al has half his armour blown to shreds, when Ed lies armless with the scar-faced Ishvalan ready to deliver judgement, he almost confesses. Almost lets his guarded secret spill if it will save him because Ishvala help him, he doesn’t want to die, not yet, he can’t, there’s so much left undone—
He doesn’t have a chance to. A gunshot shatters the world, and down the street stands Mustang with a cadre of soldiers. Ed isn’t sure he’s ever been glad to see that man.
There’s a fight. More gunshots. Someone puts a jacket around his shoulders, and only then does he realise how violently he shivers. Tremors that wrack his body like sobs. He can’t be certain it’s from the cold.
Vaguely, he registers that Major Armstrong is in combat with the attacker. It’s a close fight; anyone can see how the Major is struggling. Ed holds his breath until it hurts, but the fight carries on, and he itches to help but he’s so utterly useless without his arm. That hurts most.
Then the Ishvalan lunges but Armstrong is too slow, and in less than a second Ed understands exactly how this is going to go. He can’t watch someone else die, he’s sick of it, so he pushes to his feet amid the cries of the soldiers surrounding him and there’s only one thing he can do—
“Stop!”
Except that’s not what he says. It takes him a moment to realise that, and only does it really hit him when the Ishvalan man halts and turns, face slack with shock.
Everyone else turns too.
He hadn’t meant to say that in Ishvalan.
“You, boy,” growls the scarred man. He’s frozen in place yet Ed can’t help but feel like he’s advancing. “What did you say?”
Speech is an impossibility. He can’t speak, can’t move, can’t breathe. He can only stare; he’s nothing under these burrowing eyes. The blood in his ears is loud, gushing, like his head is submerged in hungry water and it’s filling up his lungs.
The man takes off his glasses and beneath is a shade of red Ed hasn’t seen for so long—it’s been so long he almost forgot how—
When the man speaks next, it’s not in Amestrian.
“What did you say?” Forceful. A command and a plea.
Bang goes a gunshot, but Ed barely hears it, only sees the dented stone as the bullet collides with the wall by the scarred man’s head, drawing blood as red as his eyes from his cheek. Lieutenant Hawkeye curses.
The ground rumbles as it caves in, and when the dust clears, the Ishvalan is gone.
The way they look at him makes him sick. Those eyes from all directions, none red, sink their claws into his skin until he wishes he could peel it off himself. He wonders if the layers underneath would even be human.
“What was that?” Mustang growls—no, spits, like he has some kind of bitter taste in his mouth—as the office door clicks shut. Al, still in pieces, is propped on the table. Hughes, Hawkeye, all of them, watch intently. Like this is some kind of show. The nausea builds.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ed says with a forced calm that burns the feeling from his tongue. His automail port gapes, an open maw of steel and wires. He has never felt more exposed.
“Brother...” Al’s voice is background noise. Ed looks at him once, and it’s enough to silence him. Guilt will come back to bite him with wicked jaws, he knows.
“You spoke—” Mustang looks like he might throw up, and what right does he have to look like that when Ed’s the one who—“You spoke in Ishvalan.”
“I did.” There’s no point denying it, but it still burns to admit. Ed is on display, peeled open for these eyes to pry at, and there isn’t a single thing he can do to escape it.
“Explain.”
“I’ve read a lot of books, Colonel.” There is no disguise that can conceal the disgust festering in that last word. “Picked a few things up.”
“I don’t believe that for a damn second.”
Ed sneers. “Too bad, ‘cause it’s the truth.”
Ed is not naïve enough to deny how his appearance paints him; with copper skin and bleach-white hair, he would be sickeningly obvious, if it weren’t for his bright yellow eyes. As much as he hates the man who passed them to him—
—There isn’t a day he doesn’t thank them for the fact that his bones aren’t ash.
“Fullmetal. I need to know the truth.”
It’s then that Ed sees his mother’s face, vivid as if it weren’t long-dead. He sees the gentle curve of her lips as she smiles; the white of her hair as it sweeps over one shoulder; the rust-red of her eyes, glowing in warm sunlight.
He sees red.
“You don’t deserve to know a damn fucking thing about me.”
He doesn’t let himself catch a glimpse of any expression in the room before he’s gone, throwing himself down white corridors and out the double doors until rain greets his face and cold clasps his heart.
Edward drags himself through the sewers for what must be hours. Wetness clings his skin. The stench of rot and faeces is cloying. He doesn’t turn back.
He finds the man propped against a wall, blood still dripping from his cheek and white hair dirtied into grey. His broad shoulders heave and his eyes are closed into some semblance of peace.
They open.
“Edward Elric. Is that really your name, boy?”
“Is ‘Scar’ yours?”
The man’s lips twitch. “No.”
“Then no.”
“What are you doing here?”
Edward takes another step. Closer. Maybe, if he reaches out, he could touch him.
“There are questions I need answered,” Ed says.
With a heavy breath, the man stands straighter. His posture is guarded, his fists clenched tight, but his eyes hold no such mistrust.
“Anything, for a brother.”