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Al can’t breathe.
Behind him, Rose and Lyra are supposed to be running away, only they aren’t, they’re just standing there, and Rose’s baby is wailing.
In front of him, water is still solidifying into a human-looking figure, and Al gets it, he gets why no one is moving, because the sheer amount of wrongness radiating off the water is choking him.
Out of the flood, a blond haired boy steps out, face smooth and empty like a still pond.
He’s wearing white gloves that go up to his elbows, and a tight black shirt and pants.
Al’s still stuck in place, gaping at the homunculus, when the emotionless face suddenly breaks into a playful grin, childish and a little daring.
“What’s wrong, Al?” Ed asks. “Why didn’t you make me right?”
He’s gasping for breath, and this doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t, the thing that was supposed to be Ed wasn’t anything close to human.
It was an oozing mess of half-finished organs, a leaking ribcage, and a horrifying head of too-thin skin stretched over a misshapen skull.
This Ed has purple eyes and hair that’s just a shade too bright and unnatural.
The face is just a little different, less baby fat and taller, but not by much. His smile is just like the one Ed used to wear whenever they’d mess around with Hohenheim’s alchemy books, or searching for frogs by the creek with Winry.
Only it stays there, perfectly preserved, and that isn’t Ed.
Ed was always moving, complaining, doing something, like he had business to do at age fucking nine.
Now, Ed’s movements are all precise and deliberate; stepping over rocks like he’s calculated the distance needed to clear them.
“What’s wrong?” he repeats. “Didn’t you miss me? Isn’t that why you brought me back?”
Al is trying to stay calm, but something about the way Ed is walking is pissing him off.
He bares his teeth, even as Ed picks his way through the debris to him. “You aren’t my brother.” he hisses.
Ed’s eyebrows raise. “Now, that’s different,” he says. “The Al I remember was always too cowardly to fight.”
And this, this is what’s wrong with him. Even when they were fighting over petty things, Ed never went too far. Any time their squabbles became a little more serious, Al would run down to the creek and sulk, and always before dinner, Ed would come with his hands in his pockets to tell him that dinner was ready.
Al’s hands stop shaking. “I’m not that Al anymore,” he says.
Then he claps his hands and the entire ceiling comes down between them.
x
The next time they meet, nobody else is there.
Ed’s supposed mother is gone, and the Fuhrer has left for a trip to the East. This time, Ed is sitting on a fancy seat with a blank expression.
His face only shifts when Al creaks the door open, into something a little more curious.
“Hey,” he says. “Are you here to kill Selim?”
Al tightens his fist. “No. I’m not a murderer.”
The moonlight glints off a shiny plaque on the desk, coming in from an open window.
“I guess you haven’t changed too much, then,” Ed is smiling a little. “I’m technically obligated to protect the Fuhrer’s family, but I’m too tired to put up much a fight.”
There’s something so chilling about the way he says it, like he would let his own adopted brother die for the sake of his own laziness.
“Oh, there was something I wanted to ask you, before,” he looks distant, now, gazing at nothing. “How’s Mom? I didn’t think she was the type to let you become a state alchemist.”
The question knocks every other thought of Al’s head, and he suppresses the urge to run away.
Some twisted part of him wants to tell Ed that Mom’s alive, that she’s doing fine and that she’d let him become part of the military because she wanted him to be happy. He wants Trisha Elric alive in at least somebody’s mind, even if it’s a twisted, evil version of his dead brother.
But he knows, if he told Ed that Mom was alive in Resembool, the dam that he’s been building since he was nine would break.
The dam would break, and he’d lose his mind, trying to convince himself that he could still bring Mom and the real Ed back, that the first time was just an anomaly, that he could accomplish something that is impossible.
Al stares at Ed’s almost perfect, blank face.
“Mom’s dead,” he forces out. “She died an year and a half after you did, from a genetic condition that nobody bothered to diagnose.”
Ed blinks once, mouth opening just enough for Al to see his perfect, white teeth.
“Well,” he sighs. “That’s not very lucky of you, is it? First I die, and you get back whatever amalgamation I was first, and then Mom leaves you too.”
Al wants to cry, scream his throat out at Ed, to say something else, to look anything other than mildly surprised at the news that his fucking mother died right after he did.
Ed leans back into the cushion, and Al realizes something.
He wants this abomination, this distorted version of Ed dead.
Anyone who ever knew Ed would know that this homunculus is the farthest thing from him.
His last name isn’t Elric anymore, it’s Bradley, and he’s the precocious son of the Fuhrer.
Ed’s cold voice interrupts him out of his musings, eyes fixed on Al’s right arm.
“Is that what you gave up for me?” he asks.
Al’s jaw locks up. “No. Human transmutation is impossible,” he says. “It’s the price I paid for the knowledge I gained.”
Ed laughs for the first time, ringing through the high ceilings. “No?” he chuckles. “You have me, don’t you?”
Fury rips through him, forcing its way down his throat and settling in his chest.
He hates Ed so much he can hardly breathe, he wants to lunge at this imposter and squeeze his throat until he dies a second time.
Al wants so much that he almost forgets that Ed is a homunculus, and that he can transform into water.
Instead of running at Ed like he wants to, though, he just grips the doorway until it creaks under his metal fingers.
“You are not my brother.”
Ed stays where he is, detached and removed, and somehow, carefree.
“I look like your brother, though,” Ed says indifferently. “I have all of his memories, and his emotions.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Al is breathing fast through his nose. “You don’t have a soul.”
Ed snorts. “If I had acted like Ed did, would you say the same? If I talked like he did, are you sure you would know the difference?”
He hears the wood crack under his hand.
“I’m not sure,” Al grits out. “But I do know that no matter how much you try, you and the rest of the homunculi will never become human.”
“Oh? And how do you know?” Ed looks a little more present, something strange in his expression.
Al stares back defiantly, meeting his eyes without flinching. “You were created by me, homunculus,” he declares. “Homunculi are alchemists’ mistakes, and you are mine.”
Ed’s eyes narrow, and for the first time, he looks present, angry, almost.
“How arrogant of you,” Ed drawls. “I hope you know how to back up such words, next time we meet.”
Al leaves through the front door, with Ed’s stare on his back the whole walk.
x
Later, after Dante is defeated and the Homunculi dead, Al thinks about Ed again.
The way his face had looked when he’d started dissolving in the warehouse.
How calm he’d looked, even while vomiting up red stones.
He thinks about Lust and her desire to be human.
He’s never figured out why, exactly Ed wanted to be human.
He knows Lust wanted to be human so that she could die, but Ed had never expressed any desire for that.
All he knows is that Ed died with a smile on his face, smug with the revelation that he wasn’t really Al’s brother.