Work Text:
Categorically, Alphonse supposed that he and Ed (mostly Ed) had sucker punched the ways of the known universe so many times that standing behind his brother in Truth’s domain for, and he quotes, “fun and bitch slapping” was really…. not… that impossible or implausible or any other word that started with ‘im’ and ended with ‘ible’ (because all of those words tended to apply to Ed at some point or another during the course of every day of their shared life ).
Al wasn’t with Ed the night that Colonel Hawkeye told him about her time in Ishval, how she came to join the military, and Roy’s aspirations to become fuhrer, but he’d heard about it enough to form a pretty solid picture in his mind.
Riza, in a soft sweater with her hair down, seated at one side of her kitchen table with a mug of tea and Ed on the other side, probably disheveled and at least a little manic as he tended to be at the best of times.
Ed had told him that her father had tattooed his array on her back and that she’d asked Roy to burn it off of her after the war. Al had been duly horrified, as he supposed anyone with an ounce of compassion would have been, Ed was frothing at the mouth with anger, ready to dig up the man’s body with the sole purpose of yelling at his remains which Al had also been horrified by.
(“Not literally, Al. It’s an exaggeration. Geez.)
Neither of them, it appeared, had realized the full scope of what it implied until they’d actually seen the scars. Sure, they’d known that some arrays were large, sprawling things that required the better part of a chalkboard to scrawl out fully. They just never imagined that someone’s parent would be cruel enough to ink something that complicated onto their child’s skin.
Ed, who hated needles, was especially incensed the moment he’d seen it. She’d never bared her back around them, before. She wasn’t self conscious of the scar, not in the way Ed tried to cover his automail ports and Roy kept his gloves on throughout the work day and around company. She was simply disinclined to answer the questions that always followed their reveal.
A diplomatic excursion turned mini-vacation off the coast of Aerugo, six years after the Almost Apocalypse, was the first time they’d ever seen Riza in a dress without a back .
It was a sundress in a stunning shade of cornflower blue that really brought out her eyes -- Al had stopped at a flower vendor on the side of the main street and acquired several simple, white flowers for her to tuck behind her ear -- and even then it wasn’t until they’d reached the beach itself and she deemed it too hot to keep her hair down any longer and (terrifyingly enough) pulled a soft looking scrunchie from the holster on her thigh to secure her hair into a bun much neater than the disgrace atop Ed’s head that they’d seen it.
Al had gasped, a nearly silent intake of breath that rattled around his lungs in a way that he hadn’t felt since those first few months directly after regaining his body. Ed’s reaction, fittingly, was more physical than his brother’s; his flesh fingers, loosely tangled with Roy’s in the relative anonymity that being out of Amestris and out of uniform granted them, tightened until the pressure exerted could very well have come from his automail.
Neither of them said anything, then. Riza already bared the burden of having the goddamn thing on her body she shouldn’t have to also shoulder other’s reactions. Al recovered first, plastering on a smile and shaking off the shudder that ran down his spine, ignoring the slight shake in his fingers as he grabbed hold of Riza’s wrist and dragged her off towards the water.
Ed followed them with his eyes until they reached the shoreline before turning to Roy, lips pressed together tightly and eyes shining with the kind of righteous fury he only ever seemed to feel on behalf of others.
Roy remained silent, not waiting to risk being heard by any of the Hawk’s senses, but Ed had long learned to read every micro expression and twitch of the man’s eyebrows.
He was seriously reconsidering that bit about digging up old man Hawkeye’s grave being an exaggeration. But it wouldn’t be satisfying enough to yell at his corpse; he deserved to hear every terrible thing Ed had to say to him.
Had Al been looking towards his brother at the time, he would have seen the glint in his eye and the slant of his smile and known immediately that some fuckery was a-goddamn-foot.
But he hadn’t been and now he was living with the consequences of leaving his brother unsupervised for more than several consecutive seconds.
Beside him, in the unrelenting white of the Place Beyond Gates, Roy seemed to be experiencing a similar sense of regret.
Ed, because he was Ed, was in front of them both, flanked by the two people he trusted most in the world, waving the hand that wasn’t on his hip at the literal embodiment of god , completely unimpressed.
“I stopped my evil uncle from eating you!” Ed said, “You owe me. I don’t want to bring the guy back to life, I just want to scream at him a little.”
Truth, for the first time in his eternal life, had no idea what the fuck was happening or how to handle it. “You want me to let you talk to the soul of Berthold Hawkeye?”
“Fuck, is that really his name? Unfortunate. But yes. Consider it payment for saving your ass six years ago.”
“Saving my ass,” Truth repeated, completely monotone. Honestly, Al could sympathize. That was a common, valid reaction to Ed’s… everything.
“And you don’t want to speak to your mother instead?” Truth asked, because Ed was correct and they were a bastard , “You almost lost everything to bring her back to life--”
“No.” Ed said firmly, with such finality that even Roy looked a little startled; but Al got it, “We’ve made our peace. Our bastard father is there with her and we’ll see her again soon enough; there will be more than enough time for us to talk then. I want to see old man Hawkeye and I want him to be just corporal enough for me to shove my metal foot so far up his ass that he’s gonna choke on my toes . Got it?”
“Yes,” Al said, finally, stepping forward and smiling in the way that promised something painful, slow, and oh-so-terribly unfortunate should the person in question not immediately do exactly what he wanted, “Got it?”
Behind both Elric’s, Roy grinned only a little meanly, clenching and unclenching his fists. He wondered idly if his alchemy would work in Truth’s realm? It would be awfully poetic if it did.