Write Back, Or Else

If I had a dollar for every epistolary fic I'd ever started, I could have doubled PetitMinou's Fandom Trumps Hate donation for this one!* XD It was EXTREMELY FUN, and I'm so glad to have had the opportunity to write one I couldn't fail at like I usually do. :'D I hope you love every minute of it! Thank you so, SO much for bidding on me, you lovely human being. ♥
*This is a Tierfal Typical Exaggeration™, but I really love writing letters and unleashing that good old stream-of-consciousness. Doing it with these two was a particular delight. c:
Also a big shout-out to rachhell, who I was chatting with a while back about Al's body Betraying™ him when he gets it back, which is quite simply the best. ;__;

Work Text:

Dear Brother,

On the one hand, I hope that you’re having such a wonderful time in the west that you don’t have time to read this, let alone to answer.

On the other hand, I hope that you are STAYING OUT OF TROUBLE, to such an extremely thorough extent that you are bored out of your skull (a figure of speech, please stay in your skull), and the prospect of getting into a predicament is so far from your mind that you will write back just to have something to do.

I know you are and always have been as honest with me as you can be, and I’ve always tried to do the same, so: I’m not sure which one I hope for more.

While I’m being honest, I also hope that missing you will get easier over time. Surely it will! Missing Winry got a little easier, or maybe we were just so busy that we forgot to remember from time to time. That sounds bad. Maybe that was always a part of the predicament-chasing, and I just never quite clocked how crafty you could be when it came to protecting the both of us from what we felt.

You’ve always said that anything can be done with a sufficient combination of stubbornness and practice, though, so I can only assume that the principle applies to this, too. You and your principles, Brother. I hope they’re still serving you well.

Gosh. This got so philosophical! I swear that wasn’t what I set out to write. Maybe I’ll outline in advance next time to keep myself on track. I don’t want to waste your time.

What I was going to tell you was what you asked me to write about, which is how things are going over on the side of the map. They’re going really great! We finally(!) made it to Xing about a week ago, and it’s been a race to try to get settled and sort things out since then—I meant to write earlier, but it seems like the days just slip through my fingers so fast I hardly notice it until it’s too late, and the midnight oil is burning by then. Everything is so different here! But the people are so nice, and they’re all trying to help us even when they don’t know that we’re friends with Ling. Sort of. Am I friends with Ling? I know you’re friends with Ling. It’s so hard sometimes not to think of us as a unit.

Anyway, you’ll have to forgive me twice: once if this letter is a little loopy, and second for the loopiness being a result of the fact that it’s something like two in the morning by now. I know, I know!! I need to sleep, and it’s the most important part of recuperating, and blah de blah, okay, okay, I know. But even setting aside the fact that the days feel harrowingly short now and I hate it, there is a much more pressing issue at hand, which is that Jerso and Zampano both SNORE.

Brother. They are so loud. You would not believe your ears, you would cover your ears, you would move to a different province even if it meant starting over with a new dialect. They are like an entire timber yard teeming with lumberjacks who make Sig look small and every single one is SAWING AWAY ALL NIGHT LONG like he’s got a QUOTA.

So I have discovered the unfortunate truth that there is something worse than not being physiologically capable of sleep, and it’s being capable of sleep but not being able to because it’s like somebody put a very sensitive microphone right next to Winry’s scary drill and is blasting it into your brain all night long.

The upshot is that I have several devious plans in the works to convince them to get their own darned apartments and stop noise-polluting mine. The downshot is that I’m so tired that I’m not sure if the plans are any good.

You never snored! Okay, you snored a little. Like a kitty. Baby snores. These guys would leave you in the dust. You aren’t ready for the snoring big leagues even when you’ve got a horrible cold like that one time after we chased that alchemist into the river in December and you had chills for a week.

I miss that. I miss you. I miss your snoring most of all. Don’t believe anything I say that you didn’t know already, two has always been an awful time to be awake.

Write back, or I’ll steal Ling as my friend and take up snoring competitively. I’d have the best coaches.

Love,

ALPHONSE ELRIC YOU ARE GOING TO GET EIGHT SOLID HOURS OF REM SLEEP A NIGHT OR SO HELP ME I WILL TURN UP ON YOUR DOORSTEP AND MAKE YOU, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME??

Pretty sure you do so it’s good we got that out of the way.

Things are really boring. Nothing blows up around here without a LOT of help. I’m doing the best I can but I’m just one guy here.

You were talking about being honest and all so honestly it’s just not as fun without you, I think that’s a lot of it. Because you always picked up what I was laying down so fast that we could move together at light speed and that was the most exhilarating thing in the whole damn world, you remember? I hope you do. This group I’m traveling with is cool and all but by the time I’m done explaining what I’m thinking the moment’s always gone and I no longer have the incandescent compulsion to do the stupid thing and instead I think twice and consciously decide to be boring. Or safe. Or whatever. It all amounts to the same shit.

What did you mean about the days being harrowing?? Harrowing how?? Is it just because they go by so fast or is somebody bothering you? If there is somebody bothering you then once I’m done making you sleep I’ll rip them to pieces and spread the pieces out into different flowerbeds across the city. The plants will eat the evidence. I know you’re going to tell me that’s a stupid plan and exactly why it’s stupid and I’m really looking forward to it.

My best suggestion for the snoring problem is to smother them with pillows every time they start and then play innocent when they wake up and I don’t know if that one is too viable either. I’m crap without a sounding board. You know that better than anyone.

If you tell me what you’re talking about with this “harrowing” shit I’ll tell you my one good new it-blew-up-in-my-general-vicinity-but-I-had-nothing-provable-to-do-with-it story. Eq. ex. I only have the one so you’d better wow me with your overflowing sincerity or I’m going to hold it hostage, okay?

Write back or else I won’t write back, you see how that works? Checkmate.

—EE

Dear Brother,

You are a pitiful negotiator at best. I am very annoyed that that makes me miss you even more. I don’t know how Winry ever stood this, she must be made of steel on the inside.

I didn’t want to talk about that because I don’t want you to worry about me! I know you will anyway but I can at least try not to make it worse. Or I could have before I wrote that. It’s just like you to ignore eighty percent of what I say and pick up on the part that I shouldn’t have written. Is that in the big brother secret code manual or something? I bet it’s in chapter one.

You don’t need to worry, though! Like I said, overall things are really great! We’re having a great time. I’m having a great time not smothering any of my friends. Do you regularly smother your friends? I’m going to tell Ling and steal him. He’s mine now. Tough cookies, Brother. This is what happens to serial friend-smotherers.

Your plan to rip people up and distribute them in flowerbeds is not the worst one you’ve ever had, actually, but I think the transportation would pose a pretty significant problem? Were you thinking of carrying the pieces around, or cutting a little bit off of the person at every stop? Either way there’s going to be blood everywhere and getting rid of THAT evidence would be much more difficult. And you’re not big enough to carry a person around. Which is fine, as it happens, since no one is bothering me anyway, but I think it’s my sworn duty to put my fingers into the obvious logical flaws here. You’d be disappointed if I didn’t.

Maybe “harrowing” was a slightly hyperbolic word. I’m going to blame that on the fact that it was two in the morning and also the fact that Ling reminds me of Roy sometimes, which puts me in a very presentational frame of mind. There’s a lot of that here! At least with the emperor-related business. I imagine that once you get out of the city, it’s quite a lot like Resembool. People are people everywhere, aren’t they?

I’m wondering if I can train a pair of cats to sit on people’s chests while they’re sleeping. One could sit on Jerso and one could sit on Zampano and I bet it would either even out their breathing or wake them up for long enough that I could get to sleep before they did. I’m working on the pair of perfect alchemically-enhanced earplugs in the meantime. They need to be so, SO soft because my ears are way too sensitive and it’s annoying. Eardrums are so fragile, and skin!! Don’t get me started on skin. Why haven’t we evolved something better? It’s terrible, you barely even have to touch it and it breaks and then all kinds of nasty bacteria can get in and then you’re totally hosed.

I did not make an outline.

Harrowing, though, only because I don’t want you holding perfectly innocent stories hostage in your letters, that hardly seems fair! Harrowing is probably too much. It’s just that there used to be so much… time. There were so, so many hours in every single day, and I was always the same for all of them—always awake and completely undistracted. Now it’s… I love it! Don’t get me wrong, I know you won’t get me wrong, I know you understand. But now if I sleep badly, my brain is fuzzy for the whole day. I have to maximize the time I get where I’m sharp and smart and it seems like that’s so delicate that I have to dedicate half as much time again to optimizing the conditions of my existence to create that time. I have to remember to eat, or I am in DEEP TROUBLE. There is so much more work to do to maintain all these PESKY vital functions (I know you’ll hear that in the way I mean to say it) that it cuts down on the already dwindling quantity of hours that I get to accomplish all the things I want to do, and there’s more to do than ever, and I think I understand better now why you’d choose not to sleep some nights. It feels like the clock is always ticking and a lifetime just isn’t ever going to be enough, how could a single day with sleep at the end of it even come close?

But I know that’s just me, and I’m still adjusting, and I’ll get it sorted out. Everybody else has it sorted out. I just have some catching up to do. I’ve got a LOT of catching up to do, I guess, in all kinds of different ways, but that’s fine, because I’m very fast and even stubborner than you are. You’re the only person who will believe me when I say that.

It’s really not a big deal and you really don’t need to worry about it, I swear. I’ll swear on anything you want me to. It just feels a little harrowing at two in the morning when the remainder of my life the way I understood it has been hacked down by almost a third because I need to sleep so MUCH in order to be able to function well enough to do all the things I want to do in the other hours, and my two in the morning brain has very little perspective and quite a lot of panic. But it’s okay! I’m getting better at taking naps when there isn’t anyone around to snore with the force of a localized earthquake and I’m now much more stable at two in the morning most nights. See? I CAN think outside the box. Sometimes I kick the box on my way out for good measure.

But tell me about you, Brother! Tell me how things are going and what you’re up to and who you’re with and what the weather’s like and how the automail is doing. I want to know everything. Have you seen the ocean yet? Please take a picture of it, I want to see it, I should have gone with you. Oh. I wasn’t going to write that. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t going to write that, it’s one of those things that I know I shouldn’t even be thinking, but I am, and they always get out somehow. You can never build a fence high enough or a cage they can’t climb or a collar they can’t slip. I guess that’s how we started out, isn’t it? We said the thing we weren’t supposed to be thinking, and the rest of it snowballed from there.

It’s all right, though—really it is. I know that’s a temporary feeling because things are so different here, because the learning curve is so high and the language is so hard and I feel like the only people who don’t stare at me are Zampano and Jerso. When they used to stare at me it was for obvious reasons and it wasn’t at ME, not really, it was at the shell I’d taken over like a little hermit crab and screw them for judging me for decorating a house I needed at the time, right? But it feels more personal now. I don’t know. Everything feels more personal now, everything feels MORE now. I think that’ll pass too but I’m a little scared it won’t. I’m a little scared that life’s just like this, and the armor dulled everything so much that I forgot.

It’s good that I didn’t go with you, though! It is. I know it is. Because you’re going to get to find all sorts of new places and have new experiences and meet new people! We both are! I’m excited for both of us. It was so easy—and so necessary—to insulate ourselves the way we did, to talk to each other first and foremost and always face it all together as much as we could. I don’t know if we would have survived otherwise. But it’s different now! We can both figure out who we are and how we handle things when we’re on our own, and we’re not just leaning on each other out of habit. That’s great! You’re going to be great. You’re going to be amazing. I can’t wait to hear about it all.

I just miss it a little extra because it seems so lonely here right now, I haven’t properly stolen Ling from you yet and Mei is really busy working on an Ishvalan refugee program here (I’m helping!!) and obviously Lan Fan has her hands full because everyone is trying to kill Ling (good luck to them) so it’s a little tricky. It’ll get better. I just miss the way I always knew what you were going to say except when I didn’t and how you would make me laugh anyway even when I did know. I used to wonder if you tried extra hard to make me laugh to remind me that I could, and of how human that was—how much of a soul there is in joy and humor and the involuntary impulse of it. Now I know you did. I should have thanked you the first time I thought it but I was afraid that if I pointed it out, you’d get self-conscious and you’d stop.

I hope you’re making your new friends laugh. I mean that! I hope you’re showing them their souls and that they’re good ones, and I hope they’re looking out for you even if you don’t need it.

See, look at that, I don’t even need an outline to make a perfect segue after all. Tell me your story now. Equivalent exchange.

Love,

Al,

You’re so unfair, you gave me so much I have to talk about and now I have to write forever and my HAND hurts. This hand hurts all the fucking time. I can’t tell Winry that because she’ll try to chop it off and graft the old one back on and then use me as a freaky poster child for her shop and that would just be the worst. You gave me this arm anyway and like fucking hell am I ever gonna give it back even if that rat bastard treated it like shit and didn’t take care of it and apparently messed up a bunch of my nerve endings as a parting gift just for fun. Still mine. Keeping it.

Anyway.

I know a little what you mean. I do. I try to think back sometimes and there are these swathes of time I can’t even remember, or can’t remember clearly, because they just get eaten up in this white haze seeping out from the sides of my skull. I was so scared. I was so scared that there wasn’t going to be enough time. Every single day, every single night. I never told you because I didn’t want YOU to be scared too obviously but I used to try to calculate what the time limit might be, for the blood seal on the steel and the link to the Gate and all of it. Just vast giant equations in my head because I couldn’t risk writing them out and having you see them. I was so scared I was going to lose you some random day without any fucking warning even, that I’d just turn around and your eyes would go dark and you’d crumple to the floor into a pile of steel plating and you’d be gone. I’d lose whole nights thinking about that. Trying to convince myself that what I’d given had to lease you for a little longer. Trying to believe I was doing everything I could and everything there WAS and that I had to sleep to be able to do any more tomorrow.

So. I get it a little. I guess. You just gotta take it one minute at a time. You just gotta break life down into breaths and heartbeats. I’m not even going to say that you can do it—you’re already doing it. You’ve been doing it. All you have to do is not stop.

Enclosed as you probably already noticed since it was pretty damn obvious is a photo of the sea. It’s so fucking huge you can’t even get your head around it. (The sea, not the photo, the photo’s normal sized.). You think “Oh wow I can’t see the other side, this shit must be big” and then you realize the other side is thousands of miles away and your brain just sort of goes “No thanks” and you look at seagulls for a while. Seagulls are big too. They’re bigger than crows. I always thought they were small for some reason but they’re BIG and they’re noisy as fuck and they want your food regardless of what it is or how mean you look. I saw a seal too. Looked like a giant slug up on the rock making the weirdest bark kinda noise you’d EVER heard only then it flopped over into the water and it moved like a fish, just pure grace. Weirdest shit. There must be a million of them out there in the ocean given how big it is. And ten million fish and all those sharks and fuck knows what else. Crabs. WHALES. They were telling me about whales. Some fishermen pulled up a little shark and by “little” I mean it was huge and don’t even say anything about my perspective on that topic, AL, it was honestly huge. Everybody else said so too.

I’ll see if I can get a picture of one of those but I’m still really lousy with the camera so in addition to them being pretty rare I think it’s slow going on that in general. Also enclosed is a picture of a cat for you to prove it. Yes it really is a cat. I know it looks like a blur but if you can’t trust your brother who can you trust??

I mean, Lan Fan. And probably Mei. And probably your two snoring beauties who just followed you across a desert. But you SHOULD trust me is what I’m getting at, it was a cat. One of those ones with the ears that are kinda folded over? It was sitting on some lady’s porch sunbathing but I guess it didn’t like having its picture taken.

Al I would trade the entire fucking world for you in a heartbeat, no hesitation, you know that but sometimes you make me look unoblivious in comparison and that’s not even a word. I don’t think. It should be though, it’d be damn useful.

They’re not staring at you because you’re not Xingese. They’re staring at you because you’re not Xingese and you are fucking gorgeous you DUMMY.

You got stared at in the hospital. You got stared at in Central. You got stared at in Resembool. You got stared at everywhere you went and no matter what you were doing because people can’t believe that you’re real at the first look so they get mesmerized. That’s a curse that you’re going to have to live with wherever you end up because it’s not just Xing and it’s never going to be ‘just’ anywhere. You ought to trust me on that one too.

I don’t want to tell you the story anymore, the story is boring compared to an Ishvalan refugee program. Tell me about that. Are they setting up some kind of transportation or just focusing on making it easier for Ishvalans who end up in Xing to get settled or actively rescuing them from the shithole of Amestris or what?? This is more interesting than any of my stories, I promise. I should come over there and help you guys out with it.

In the preservation of the exchange though the group I’m with is… they’re about what you’d expect given that Mustang set me up but Hawkeye didn’t let him fuck me over too bad. At the start they all thought I was some sort of archaeologist because I was reading all the time and just sort of watching them a lot because I guess they didn’t know how fucking bad my fucking Cretan is so they didn’t realize I was just trying to figure out what they were SAYING, not trying to be some sort of esoteric silent academe or some shit. Hilarious in retrospect actually but at the time I wasn’t sure why they were kind of standoffish and I guess they thought the same thing.

Anyway about three days in to the whole expedition in the wilderness thing we tracked some wacko alchemist into a bog and I juryrigged a snare trap and then picked a fistfight when he showed his face to force him to back up into it (and also to whup his ass because he was ANNOYING and a shitty person too) and then I wrapped his hands up real tight in two separate scarves I borrowed from people so that he couldn’t draw any arrays or anything and then I think they realized I was not an archaeologist. Probably. Or at least only on the side.

Can you believe this, though?? Mustang getting me to do the same shit that he used to pay me for before, only I don’t have the advantage of alchemy and he isn’t the one paying, he foisted my paychecks off on some foreign power but he’s still the one actually benefiting because me helping them makes him look good. Evil fucking genius, that one. I’m going to save up my money and mail him a poisonous frog in a little tank. Hawkeye will take care of it once it’s done scaring the pants off the bastard. Probably make it the office mascot. The idea of him running the place is another reason we should move to Xing and stay there. Ling’s an idiot but he wouldn’t sell me to Creta and pretend it was for my own good and not even tell them that I’m not an archaeologist. Who the fuck does that?? People you don’t want to have to vote for someday, that’s who.

Anyway I’ll tell you more about the Cretan crew another time when my hand isn’t fixing to fall off. You’d like them all because you’re you. I like most of them pretty well I guess. I want to hear about all the new friends you must be making since you can hardly walk down the damn street without people wanting to get to know you. (Reminder that this is why they’re staring. Because they really want to be friends. Same way you would stare at a cute cat that I can’t photograph to save my goddamn life.)

So no more of that shit, okay? No more getting stressed about it. You hold your head up high and walk down the street like you own it because you might as well.

You know Mom would be so proud of you, right? She’d think this is amazing and you’re amazing, going someplace you don’t even speak the language and knocking all their socks off. I mean I think Ling didn’t wear socks sometimes but Greedling definitely did and that’s a story you DON’T want to hear, so maybe socks aren’t a big deal in Xing but that’s not the point.

Write back or I’ll tell you the story about Greedling’s socks which you DO NOT want.

—EE

Dear Brother,

Ling would absolutely sell you to Creta for half a dozen baozi and you know it. I told him about the archaeologist thing and he commissioned an incredibly beautiful traditional watercolor of you with giant round-lens glasses and a pith helmet wearing all khaki with a million pockets, menacing some innocent Cretan with a little brush and a pair of tweezers. I had it framed and put it up on the wall.

I wish you could try baozi instead of just being hypothetically sold for them, though. I wish you could try all the food here, because it’s AMAZING, there are just so many flavors I never even knew about and so many textures I never tried at home, and you could just eat until you explode and never get tired of any of it. I’m really glad our apartment is a long way from the palace and a long way from the university and a long way from the market because otherwise I would just spend all my time there eating everything. If they don’t open up a good and really authentic Xingese restaurant in Central you’re just going to have to come here so that you can try it all for real.

Or we could always start a small Xerxesian refugee program. VERY small.

Oh, Brother, you are so sorely mistaken. I want to hear the Greedling’s socks story just as much as I want to hear the other story. Do you really have no idea that you make every story so engrossing that it’s impossible to think about anything else for the better part of a day? I used to love listening to you tell stories about things that I was there for. And not just because of the parts that you made up. Stories that I don’t know at all are practically catnip.

Those photos are both so beautiful. Thank you most of all for thinking of me and then thank you for taking them and then thank you for sending them. You didn’t have to do any of those things, let alone all three, let alone on two separate occasions. I know you’re busy.

I’m glad you got to see such a good kitty though!! Next time you should focus on petting the kitty instead of taking a picture for me!!

I want to know more about sharks and crabs and whales and seals and whatever else you can spot out there. I want to know everything about everything.

I think that a lot of the stuff that you said is stuff that you have to say because you’re my brother and you want to protect me from the terrible world, and I love you for saying it. I got stared at in the hospital because I was EMACIATED, BROTHER. I got stared at in Resembool because nobody had seen me looking like me for five years and they were confused. If I got stared at in Central, which I quite doubt actually, then it was only because I was standing next to YOU, and you are not only famous but very likely the bearer of the prettiest hair that anyone has had in four centuries and that has nothing to do with me. I was collateral staring damage at best. At worst? At something.

I thought you might understand the days feeling insufficient. (I almost write “too short” there and then I didn’t. I hope you love me for that. I love me for that. I’m so nice.) I could see in myself some of the same symptoms you had back then, the drive for movement and activity and the pacing and the intense awareness of the passage of time and all of it. That energy. Manic, I guess. Desperate, maybe.

I’m doing better though! I talked to Ling about it a little, because I was thinking that he must have been going through a lot, too, back then. You mentioned once that that was one of the first things you realized about him, other than the fact that he was “a grade-A asshole fully prepared to ghost some poor schmuck and leave him with the whole fucking bill”, I think is what you said. You knew he was like us, though. That he was running towards something, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to have to give up to get there. That he was all in.

He had some good suggestions about paying close attention to the way you’re breathing and the way you’re sitting—he gave me some books on some of that, actually, which I think you’ll really like, and I think Teacher would like them too!—and he said sometimes you just have to forgive yourself at the end of a day. Sometimes you have to look at yourself and say “I tried, and I’m going to let it be enough,” because tomorrow is another chance but you can’t make it come any faster by worrying about it. He also suggested tea. I am drinking a LOT of tea. That’s very nice too.

The refugee program is going to be amazing! Mei has so many good ideas, and I’m just so glad she’s letting me help. I’m not sure she even needs me except as manpower since Ling has pretty much given her the green light to do whatever she wants with it and handed her some advisors who can make it happen, but it’s so great to get to be a part of it. Right now we’re doing a little bit of everything you mentioned! Sort of. We’re not quite rescuing anyone, I don’t think, but we’re trying to open the door to anyone who is willing to pick up and leave for what might be the third or fourth or fifth time for so many of them. The hope is to make it easy and safe and appealing for them to come, to have things set up here in a way that’s welcoming while still being, you know, Xing. Mei had this idea for having a school where they teach both Ishvalan and Xingese and having it be open to anybody to enroll so that Xingese kids can be part of the cultural exchange too and it’s more integrated.

Maybe it won’t be as simple as that in real life, but it sounds so nice that I really hope it works! And of course we’re trying to get an office set up that could help them get housing and find jobs and everything, and trying to make a registry of employers who speak Amestrian so that it’s easier to communicate while the language barriers work themselves out and we’re trying to get translators who can work in shifts and be on-call in case anything comes up at a weird time or they need to help with something halfway across the city or whatever it is. It’s a lot more ideas than action at this point but it’s so exciting! I think we have a real chance of creating a place where they can live and be successful and happy and rebuild without having to be in the shadow of… all of it, I guess. I think the next step is definitely bringing in some Ishvalan consultants to see what they think is best or what might not work because of cultural nuances we wouldn’t have thought about, so Mei sent Scar a message about that, and he might come. I sent Major Miles a letter too, but I know he’s pretty busy and he may not feel comfortable doing it anyway. But I figured it was worth a shot.

If nothing else—or, honestly, maybe instead—I’m hoping they’ll tell everybody in the Ishvalan community about it, and we can get some really great input from people who have been keeping their culture alive in Amestris on how we can help it to really grow here instead of just surviving. I hope it works. I really hope it works.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got to say that’s interesting. None of it’s as interesting as Greedling’s socks, and you and I both know it. Ling must know that story too. I’ll ask him if you don’t tell me, so there.

Why does your hand hurt so much anyway?? Don’t give me that Truth being a bad tenant stuff, I ended up fine, mostly. Other than the emaciation thing. Are you going around punching things unnecessarily again? We had this talk, Brother, you CAN and SHOULD use your words, not least because your wrists and your knuckles aren’t going to hold up to this kind of abuse forever, and Winry can’t just replace them anymore.

You should go and rest both your hands by the ocean. It looks so peaceful. You have to take care of yourself, Ed. Nobody else will except me and I can’t right now. I wish I could. I guess begging is the best I can do. You wouldn’t want to make your adoring baby brother sad by messing up your hands with more reckless behavior, now, would you? Hmm?

Write back when it doesn’t hurt and not a minute before, okay?

Love,

Al, see, this is why you’re not the big brother. The big brother has the undisputed right to make stupid decisions even when he KNOWS they’re stupid without there being any consequences. That’s just how it works. My hands are going to be fine though. The right one just gets sore sometimes, I think it’s probably some kind of a disconnect between the old nerves that are all beat to shit from the automail port and everything trying to match up with the new nerves that are comparatively all shiny and clean and it’s like trying to get an old-ass wire to spark with a new one and sometimes it just won’t work. It’s fine. Are you okay?? Are the allergies less shitty in Xing? I hope maybe the tea helps with that too.

That program sounds so fucking amazing. Mei is pretty cool I guess. And it’s pretty cool of Ling to help y’all get it going, Amestris would’ve mummified that in red tape so thick you wouldn’t even have been able to see the shape of it anymore. This is all supporting my theory that I should move there because imperial government is actually fucking rad when you personally know the emperor.

Shit, though, that sounds pretty sketchy written out like that. It doesn’t count as corruption if nobody’s doing anything wrong though, right? This is just sort of low-grade nepotism, maybe? Still not as bad as fucking Amestris as far as I’m concerned. I guess it’s a pretty big challenge to do worse than founding your nation on deliberate calculated bloodbaths and putting a literal goddamn monster in charge. Don’t tell Ling I said that, he loves a challenge.

(Small Xerxesian refugee program joke NOT FUNNY for the record.)

Let me know when you’re getting close to the stage of hopefully getting Ishvalans on the move or whatever. I bet Mustang would help you out with pushing their repatriation paperwork through if that’s something you need. Whatever else you can say about that fuck he really does want to do what he can for them and he’d back you a hundred percent. Just don’t ask HIM to do the paperwork or you’ll have to wait a year and a half and it’ll be illegible. If you need somebody to escort folks from Amestris to Xerxes or Xerxes to Xing, too, I’d love to do that. Be a bodyguard or a tour guide or whatever. That’s basically what I’m doing right now only for rich people so I’d WAY rather do it for Ishvalans. You wouldn’t even have to pay me except for food and stuff. Let Mei know that for me, okay?

It sounds like you and she are getting pretty close huh?? Haha. Do you write to Winry too? I bet she’s already giving you a hard time about Mei, so I won’t make it worse. That girl is real damn smart and she’s tough as fucking nails. I always liked her so I could definitely understand why you would. Just take it easy, you know? If you commit you’re going to have to be part of her gigantic family and then you’ll have like four hundred birthdays you have to remember and that sounds like a pain in the ass. If she makes you happy, though, it’s worth it.

Okay so I guess I kept you in suspense long enough and I owe you that it-blew-up-but-I-barely-had-anything-to-do-with-it story. I’ll try to make it quick.

So a couple of days after that other thing I told you about, where there was the guy in the bog and I hare-snared him.

Wait I have to back up a little. On paper in the contract what I’m doing is accompanying this chick Féina who is a lieutenant in the Cretan army who is trying to track down this insurgent faction that’s been straight up murdering people with alchemy. She’s got a couple of other people on her team, two are regular military and one other one is more of a military-funded scientist kinda like a State Alchemist without the alchemy, because the thing is that this group who’s out there doing the killing keeps trying to tie it to old Cretan rituals and committing the murders at ancient ritual sites and all kinds of shit like that. Reminds me of Milos. Which I try not to think about any more than I have to. Whatever, anyway, point is that Féina got me on a loan from the ENDLESSLY generous General Mustang who roped me in with bribes and books and trickery as you know and now I’m out here hacking through the jungle looking for ancient temples to see if there are any new bloodstains and I would really like to do paperwork for Mei’s Ishvalan refugee program is what I’m saying here. Not that it’s not cool sometimes but it sure would be fucking nice to get a break from fucked-up alchemy shit for more than a year at a stretch.

So the story!

Apparently the shitfucks doing the murdering thought I was an archaeologist too, possibly on account of the fact that I figured out the maps and read some of the creepy history books faster in a second language than their military guy read them in his first language so I was leading the way for a couple of our stops, and they must have been watching us because they ambushed me while I was taking a piss in the jungle by myself which is just so undignified I don’t know where to start. Not that they clubbed me while I was actively peeing or anything—if THAT had happened I would MAKE UP A NEW STORY, can you fucking imagine having to tell people about that, fuck—because obviously I heard them as they were closing in and put up a damn good fight but they outnumbered me about twelve to one and they had the sneak advantage and those were real shitty odds. So then I got clubbed and Ednapped. Fucking bullshit, society is a sham if you can ambush a guy while he is trying to pee. I guess if you murder people on a regular basis you probably don’t care.

Anyway their first and primary mistake was that they left me alive, and their second was that they took me back to their temporary hideout. And the third was that they had some explosives stored there. You can guess where this is going.

They’d probably heard me speaking only Amestrian to Féina which I do mostly to annoy her, but either because of that or just because they could tell I wasn’t local they thought I didn’t understand what they were saying in Cretan. They did speak sort of old-timey so it was a little weird at first but I got the hang of it and then it was so easy that it’s not even worth the hand cramp, you know EXACTLY how it went. Slipped the ropes, took a couple of them out at the ankles and flung a metal table or two at the ones who pulled guns and I didn’t even MEAN to blow the whole place sky-high, it was honestly just that I ducked behind and explosives crate at one point not realizing what it was. And then I skedaddled in the nick of time.

Knocked every single one of them out. Came back. Trussed everybody up. Tracked back through the jungle and found Féina and brought her and her lot back over and nobly brushed off the excessive praise, etc. Kinda like old times. I wish you’d been there, though, it would’ve been way more fun.

So we took care of that cell but there are a ton more of them out there, and the only thing they’re better at than murdering is hiding, so I guess I’m going to have to see out this whole shitty six-month contract after all. We still don’t even know what they’re doing it for. Not specifically, anyway, obviously it’s got some sort of warped religious significance or something. I told Féina that at least the statistical odds of it being my second apocalypse in twenty years of life were staggeringly low and she said “What” and I said “What” and then she just looked at me for a minute and I upgraded to “Never mind.”

It’s weird. Sometimes I feel like I live on a different version of the planet than other people. Like there’s another layer on top of their world that I exist on that looks like it’s overlaid, but it’s not. The rules are different, everything’s different, this shit feels so normal to me but it’s not. It isn’t normal for everybody else. Most people are going to go their whole lives without ever seeing somebody die, let alone seeing somebody who CAN’T die. What do you even do with that? How do you talk to people?

You’re right about Ling. About why we got along in a backwards kind of way even if I wanted to kick his ass a lot. He’s on this layer with us. He was before he got here. He’d given up his childhood for power just like we did, because he cared so much about his family that he couldn’t give up, and he couldn’t think of anything else.

Don’t ask him the socks story, though. He’ll tell it all wrong. I swear I’ll write it out for you next time if you promise me you’re drinking your tea and doing your breathing stuff and sleeping better and taking it easy on yourself. Pretend like I’m there nagging you about eating right and getting good sleep and all of it. I’d kick those chimeras out to the curb for snoring like that in your place, you know I would. Still will if you give me time to get over there.

Write back or else I’ll just nag you with letters anyway. Maybe I’ll do that for fun.

—EE

Dear Brother,

You are required by brotherly law to tell me the Greedling socks story now, because sleeping is going much better. Jerso and Zampano have started doing a lot of construction work in the city, which is great because they’re enjoying it, but was less great at the start because it means that they’re extra tired and started coming home in the afternoon and napping while I was trying to nap. And snoring.

But then I soundproofed their rooms with alchemy while they were out, so now everything is BLISSFULLY quiet, and it’s so much easier to sleep!!

I am very mad at you about your hands. I think it’s my turn to use a few “or else” clauses, as the duty-bound keeper of your better judgment, APPARENTLY. Take better care of your hand or else I will write to Lieutenant Féina myself and tell her that you are willfully endangering yourself in a way that could jeopardize her important operation, and also that you’re an IDIOT. Although I guess she probably knows the second part already.

You are always, always, always welcome to come and help with the refugee program. In any way you want. It would be amazing to have you.

Okay, now to that other thing.

I think Mei is brilliant and inspirational. I think she is a truly extraordinary person, to be kept close to the heart like so many of the extraordinary people we’ve met and know.

But I don’t feel like that about her. At all. I just don’t. This isn’t embarrassed denial talking, this is a fact. I’m honored and delighted to be able to call her my friend, but that’s all that I ever want to call her.

I’m getting clearer and clearer signs that she doesn’t feel the same way, though, and I’m not sure what to do about that. I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I always sort of assumed that the crush she used to have on me when she didn’t even know what I looked like would just… go away, I guess. I thought that once her world expanded again, and there were so many more possibilities for her to explore and so many more people for her to meet, and we weren’t in life-or-death situations together and protecting each other, she’d just move on.

It sounds weird to say this, maybe, but I’m actually really sad about it. I’m a dead end for her, but she can’t see it that way, and if I try to force her to change her mind, she’ll just resist more (who does that remind me of?), and everyone keeps acting like it’s a sure thing or something. I don’t know how to break it to anyone, because they all seem to like the idea so much. Like it’s some sort of legendary romance or something, rather than just two people who were allies once and are again. They’re all so excited I feel like I’d be a killjoy if I said anything. I wish people wouldn’t just see a guy and a girl who get along and pressure them to act like lifelong soulmates. It’s starting to seem like I’d have to create distance between us to deter them and avoid getting her hopes up, and I don’t WANT to do that. I don’t want to have to lose my friend just because everybody thinks she should be my girlfriend. It’s stupid. And wrong. And she’s so much more than that! She should be able to be her own person without people assuming anything, she’s great! She’s already done so much amazing stuff, and she’s working so hard to do more! Why can’t anybody let that be enough?

Anyway, you don’t need to hear all that. But I just thought it was important to say in so many words, I guess. She’s not quite my “type”, you know? I guess you don’t know, how would you know that? Haha. Never mind.

That story is so very, very you and makes me miss you even more. I am fully aware that I sound sappy telling you that I miss you all the time, but we’re trying to be honest, right? And that’s the truth. I’m still waiting for the silver lining.

I’m still waiting for all of it to feel like it was worth it.

I guess it felt a little bit like that when we were all in Resembool together—when you and I could finally sit still and just… breathe. I think we both put a time limit on it in our heads, though. Like it was a vacation. No, more like with your automail recovery, really. We were counting down to a completion date so that we could move on. Weren’t we? It wasn’t really about feeling better, or feeling happy, or feeling accomplished. It was about feeling good enough to keep going. To do more. To keep walking.

I’m not saying that’s not good! I know it’s good. I know we DO good. But all the same… when does it stop, then? When IS it enough?

Don’t get me wrong, either—I WAS happy there. Just getting to be us, letting things be simple, struggling with things like making dinner and mending fences instead of… well, everything else. But I was sad, too. Because I was so happy. And because I knew it was temporary. Because I knew it was a dream, and it was only going to last until sunrise. I’d forgotten how it is, with dreaming. I forgot how hard it is, sometimes, when you don’t want to wake up.

Don’t get me wrong about that, either, Brother. And don’t you dare start blaming yourself, which I KNOW you’ll try faster than I can put down the pen and snap my fingers. You didn’t rush me out. I’m fine. We both sensed that it was time to fly the nest and try something completely new.

I just can’t help thinking it would have been

Never mind. Ed, I’m sorry. I am. I hope you hear me, I hope you believe me. I’m just tired, and I just miss you, and I just get to thinking how much easier everything was when you were here. But that’s laziness and habit talking, isn’t it? You were always in the lead. I need to find my own way. I understand that. We did all right when we were separated, didn’t we? We both struck out and found people and made things work, and in the end we came back together, and we were all the better and all the stronger for having been apart. This is going to be like that. Look at you! You’re going to be an honorary Cretan dignitary before you know it, and they’re going to make you wear stupid, fancy clothes and a ridiculous hat and eat hors d’oeuvres that aren’t even a whole bite big at weird parties where people try to talk to you in code and you just stare at them and they fall in love with you. Anybody with any sense falls in love with you. Surely you’ve noticed that by now.

I promise I really am sleeping better. Just not so much lately, I guess—it’s the anniversary of Ling’s coronation, so there are all these nonstop celebrations, and they keep dragging me around to one feast after the other and one ceremony after the other and there are fireworks EVERY night. I’m going to soundproof the outside of the entire apartment complex if this keeps up.

Do you think I should get a cat?

I really want to. But it’s the same problem it’s always been. I don’t know if this is home, and I don’t want to let a kitty settle in only to pick up and move later on, and have the poor thing get all disoriented and confused. It’s hard enough for people. Can you imagine how upsetting that would be for a poor kitty?

Anyway, write back or else I’ll get one anyway. I’ll get FIVE.

Love,

Al,

Al, Al, Al, you are something else and I’ve always known that but sometimes it still catches me by surprise, you know?

Honestly I can’t stop thinking about that time either. In Resembool I mean. You’re right (shut up) and I felt it too, I could tell we were both just waiting and we knew we were relaxing on borrowed time. It was only ever just a breather, never really a change. We never changed.

But it was so good, too, to be there, and not to have to be anybody special or strong or important for once. To just get to be us. I don’t want to wrangle sheep for the rest of my life. I know that, I know I couldn’t take it, I know I’d split down the middle. You and me, Al, I just don’t think we’re made for normal shit. I think we went through too much, and THAT changed us. That made us into the kind of people who can’t sit still.

Not for long, anyway. But it was nice to do it for a while. It was nice to do it knowing that it wasn’t forever. And it was nice to do it with you. To get to just be us. It felt so simple for a couple months there, just you and me bumming around town bothering people and learning stuff. I maintain though that languages are a fuckton harder than alchemy. At least alchemy follows its own damn rules. Languages just make up rules all over the place and then ignore them and then judge you when you try to follow them because that’s what rules are supposed to be for.

I know you’re laughing at me for even implying I ever intentionally followed a rule in my life but you know what I MEAN and you know I’m right.

Point is I miss you too. More than I ever missed this arm, while we’re being honest. More than anything. I don’t know. Maybe that’s weird. We’ve always been weird. I figure that’s our lot in life and we might as well embrace it these days. Maybe it’s hardwired into our genes, right? Maybe that’s part of what Hohenheim left. The only home we’ve ever had is each other. A house up on a hill is nice too sometimes but that’s what it comes down to. It’s always been you and me. And you’re right. It’s good to get apart, it’s good to see new things and find out what we’re capable of separately and find new people who might have our backs, because if we were always together, we’d never even bother with anybody else. The world would get smaller instead of bigger.

But I know what you mean. Any time I’m with anybody else, I’m thinking about what they think of me—maybe not always, but some of the time. Always sometimes.

With you I’m just who I am. I’m just me.

Including with things like what you said about Mei, I guess. Sometimes I think you know me better than I know me. So I bet you know how it is with Winry already, and I don’t even have to say anything. Which is good. Not that my hand hurts. It’s fine. I swear it’s fine. Féina also thinks it’s fine! Féina is her first name by the way, it’s Lt. Barisco but she asked me to call her by her name so I did. It’s a nice name and I figure she doesn’t get to hear it that often since all her reports have to do the whole hierarchy bullshit thing.

I wish I knew what to tell you that you should do about the whole Mei situation. Fuck me. Big brothers are supposed to have advice, right? And it’s supposed to be good? You really have been shit out of luck since day one, haven’t you?

Maybe you can just level with her. She’s awfully smart. And it’s not going to be the first time she’s gotten news she didn’t want. It’s like… she won’t want to lose you as her friend either. She really won’t. Nobody would. Anybody with half a brain—with a QUARTER—would take anything that you were offering. I can’t exactly blame her for wanting everything she can get but she’s smart enough to recognize that you’re the best human being on the planet, and not getting to date you or whatever isn’t so bad. And that your respect is worth more than most people’s love anyway.

I guess just out and saying shit is usually my strategy and that hasn’t always worked out great, but it’s an idea at least. I think when it comes down to it, you’ll know what to do. You always know what to do. You really understand people in a way that makes them feel safe and important and that’s probably half of why she’s swooning over you in the first place. Who wouldn’t haha.

I will never ever ever ever go to a single shitty Cretan diplomat party and if they HOLD ME AT GUNPOINT I will not wear a ridiculous hat. On my fucking HONOR, Al. You could not MAKE ME.

I’m going to send Ling a nasty letter and tell him that he’s ruining his own damn country he worked so hard to get by keeping his own loyal citizens up all night. And that he’s a dumbass. For that but also in general. I hope the food is really, really good. Please soundproof your room. Please do not get a cat. Cats hate fireworks, don’t they?? You’d just have to spend a ton of time calming the poor thing down. Shit, that probably sounds like an incentive to you. Please don’t get a cat just to protect the cat from the evil sparky noises in the sky. If you’re at ceremonies and refugee program meetings and classes all day and night, you’d barely have a chance to spend time with the cat anyway! See? Bad idea. It’s like you said. You should wait until you’re really settled somewhere and then you can… fuck. Then you can get as many cats as you want. Okay? I said it. Fuck. I’m going to regret this. Please don’t tear this part off the page and frame it. I guess I deserve that but PLEASE.

Ah, man, that’s the best segue I’m ever going to get into the stupid socks story. Which I guess I owe you. All right.

So. We were heading through the damn woods trying to get back to Central at the same time as everybody else, right? Me and Darius and Heinkel and GREEDLING for all the damn good he was (none). We hopped a lot of trains but we couldn’t really risk hitching rides so there was a lot of walking through the forest involved. A LOT of walking. More involuntary exercise than anybody wanted.

And as we are all just valiantly keeping our heads down and trying to make the best of this extremely and indisputably un-awesome situation, there’s this day barely even halfway into the morning where Greedling just stops. We all keep walking for a minute because we figure he’s arguing with himself/with Ling/just being dramatic/whatever because he did all of those things a lot. But then he’s like “HEY. My sock. There is a HOLE in my SOCK.”

And obviously we’re like “Wow, that’s such a show-stopping emergency compared to the literal end of the fucking world, Greed, have you tried having a real problem?”, and he’s like “I am not going a mile further with this RUINED SOCK,” and I’ll save you the back and forth. We went to go get him a new fucking sock.

About two miles later we come up on this little town and by now he’s talking about how his feet won’t be soft ever again because of this sock and we’re all just trying to tune him out as we scope the place a little, but we don’t spot any military so we start carefully down the main street and we see this little shop and me and Darius and Heinkel are looking at each other like “Okay, if anybody is the praying type, pray they’ve got fucking socks,” and we walk in.

And after a couple seconds we’re looking at each other again like “STOP PRAYING” because we have somehow stumbled into the SOCK CAPITAL of the entire WORLD.

And before we can grab something and run for our lives Greedling walks in and looks around and puts his hands on his hips and smiles and we know we are fucked even before he says “Great! I want all of them.”

So now we’re looking at each other painfully aware of the fact that our collective pockets contain about 5,000 cens and a bit of string and I’m like. “Greed. You moron. You only need one sock. Getting a pair is already more than that. Just pick the best one and let’s GO.”

And he gives me this look like I murder babies for fun and profit and he’s like “I need to have all of them. I NEED them.”

I guess to be as fair as possible considering the absurdity of the circumstances, like, the guy has not gotten to be greedy about anything in weeks because we have been tromping through the woods eating scraps and squirrels and sleeping in tents that smell like ozone no matter how long you air them out and I think he just saw an attainable object in quantity for the first time in ages and fucking cracked.

But. Bottom line. There we are in this tiny town in the ass-end of nowhere, taking a break from trying to walk fast enough to stop the goodman apocalypse to stare at this huge wall of different kinds of socks while Greedling stares back at us like we’re idiots for not just grabbing as many as we can hold in our arms and running away or something. So Darius is like “Look, you can’t even wear that many pairs of socks, there aren’t that many days left to go,” and Heinkel is like “And nobody is even going to see you wearing them, let alone care about how many you have, so what’s the point?”, and I’m like “NONE of us are going to help you CARRY all those,” and then the shopkeeper hears us trying to speak reason to a homunculus and comes out of the back and is like “Can I help you?” and we’re all like “PROBABLY NOT!!” because it’s increasingly clear that we’re past help at this point.

Meanwhile Greedling just sweeps his hand out at the whole wall of socks and is like “How much for everything?”, and all I can think about is how Ling doesn’t even WEAR socks, and also about how the world is fixing to end in a giant alchemical fireball in a matter of weeks, and socks are definitely not going to fucking stop it. You know. That old thing.

So the shopkeep looks at Greedling and then at us and then at the socks and then back at all of us at once—and keep in mind we’ve still got twigs and shit on us and our shoes are filthy and nobody’s had a shower in like three days, THAT kinda walking-through-the-woods, here—and he’s like “How much you got?”

Obviously the answer to that was basically nothing. Which is how we ended up cutting a deal with this sock-selling shopkeeper in the middle of NOWHERE to go out into his front yard and start planting all these flowers that his wife likes, because his back is starting to give him a lot of trouble and he’s been meaning to do it for her birthday but she’s so rarely out of town. Not making this up. I WOULDN’T make this up.

And the second the guy turns his back, Greedling points at me and says “Just use alchemy!”, and I’m like “Yeah, sure, and draw the attention of every single person in this town, at least one of which has got to have heard about the warrant out for my goddamn arrest by now, great idea,” and he’s like “What the hell is the point of having minions when you all refuse to do what I say?”, and Heinkel just hands him a shovel.

The wife liked gardenias. And pansies. And roses, of course. The thornier the better.

It took like six solid hours, but we did make the yard look REALLY nice, and a couple random townspeople walking around came by and gave us water and food and stuff and told us about how the shopkeeper was such a nice guy and how great this was and were we his nephews (they’d all hesitate and then go “…adopted?” so I have no idea how many people this guy has adopted over the years or what) and blah blah blah.

When we’re finally finished we go back into the store and the shopkeep is like “Great, okay, take your pick,” and Greedling goes and takes down five pairs of socks.

Five.

He hands one to each of us and keeps two for himself.

And then says “Thanks, gramps!” and walks right out the door.

So that’s the sock story, and if you don’t regret asking now I might have to disown you. Or trade you for socks.

(Since I know the next thing you’re going to ask is whether those socks were worth it: I’m still not really sure? I think Greed learned an important lesson about friendship and/or minions and/or gardenias, possibly. The socks were fine but they were WAY overpriced compared to all that manual labor we put in doing up the guy’s whole yard. So mixed bag I guess.)

Well I hope that lived up to the hype, though I guess I’m not that optimistic about it, since all my stories from that whole trip are kinda like that. Although usually when I try to tell one of them I have to spend the first fifteen minutes explaining what a homunculus is and why Greed wasn’t like the other ones and THEN explain what a chimera is and explain why Heinkel and Darius weren’t like THOSE other ones and by then people don’t even want to hear the story anymore because they think they’re just getting a creepy alchemy lesson. Which they are, but that part’s free as context so I don’t know why they always check out. Some people have no taste I guess.

I hope the fireworks stuff is over at least, and you’re sleeping like a baby now. Or a log? Or a rock. Babies are all fussy and noisy and they wake up every two hours, right? I hope you’re sleeping like a happy cat. Even though you don’t have one. And probably shouldn’t get one. C’mon think about it.

Later, though. Later you should get a whole passel of them. If you want to.

Love,

Dear Brother,

The sock story was not even remotely what I was expecting. Imagining you and Mr. Darius and Mr. Heinkel towing huge bags of potting soil around and occasionally throwing clods of grass at Greed when he inevitably tried to “delegate” made me laugh until I almost cried. Were they interesting socks, at least? Were they colorful? Did he pick a different type for each of you? He really ought to have after all that but I get the feeling that voluntary sharing was such a big step for him that I shouldn’t criticize.

The fireworks and festivities have finally died down! I did very nicely suggest to Ling that maybe there should be a fireworks-related noise curfew of some type for people who can’t enact noise-canceling alchemical improvements on their place of residence, and he didn’t react like he’d received a scathing letter from you on the topic, so I’m hoping maybe it either got lost in the mail or you thought better of it. I don’t actually hope it got lost, though, because then one of your letters to me might get lost, and I don’t know what I’d do. I’m trying not to think about it.

I framed the thing you said about cats. Gold frame. I wipe the glass a little every night to keep it extra shiny.

I thought about the Winry thing a lot. Maybe more than I should have—probably more. Well, what the heck does “should” really mean, anyway? I’m not sure “should” ever meant much to us. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I’m not sure of much of anything anymore. Maybe I “should” be.

That sounds so dramatic. I’m sorry. I save your letters like a hoarding dragon and think about them and reread them and sometimes try to close my eyes and imagine what expressions you were making when you wrote them, or what expressions you would have been making if you’d been telling me in person instead. The last one was so much fun. Your Greedling impression was as side-splitting as ever. You did the Heinkel glare and the Darius shoulders, in my head. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. I probably “shouldn’t” say that.

I think it’s kind of like you said, with Winry. She didn’t live through—barely live through—the same things we did. She didn’t get changed like that. Slowest transmutation we ever did, and the hardest, and the biggest, in the end. I know you won’t get me wrong. I know we both love her to bits and pieces. But it’s not the same.

So much of that was built on expectations—wasn’t it? On what seemed ordinary and understandable, when nothing else around us was. When we hardly even remembered what that meant, what that “should” mean. When she was our only lifeline, the only thing really proving that we’d ever had a history. That we’d ever been kids, that we’d ever been happy, that it had ever been all right. If she remembered it, then it had to be true. We didn’t make it up. We were something else, once, outside of the desperation. Before the blood.

I’m sorry. I am. I hoarded your last letter too long. I used it as an incentive for myself—I told myself that I could write back to you after I talked to Mei, just like you said, and you said what I thought you’d say, and what I already knew, really, but wasn’t sure I wanted to believe. Sometimes you do just have to rip the bandage off and see what’s under it. Ready or not, here I come. The world doesn’t wait.

So I talked to her. I asked her if we could have a minute alone after we finished up a draft of a budget proposal for the program, which is still looking great!, but she looked so excited I knew she was misunderstanding what I meant, and I knew it wasn’t going to go well, and I knew I had to do it anyway. Heart made fullmetal, guts made of lead, sometimes. Gets heavy. I know I don’t have to tell you that.

Anyway. Sat down somewhere nice. Made eye contact. Smiled as gently as I could. Did everything I could think of.

The Xingese astronomers are really incredible. I’ve been reading up on a lot of that stuff—their telescopes are really advanced and their theory is even better. There’s this one very prominent astrophysicist named Wahuang who has all of these amazing ideas about how stars die. She thinks they collapse into their own gravity, more or less, and then just keep on collapsing forever as they consume themselves and everything around them.

That was about how I felt. Like a sun dying. Sounds grandiose when I put it like that. Did not feel grandiose. Felt like shit, Ed. She cried, and then she was humiliated about crying, so she ran, and I tried to stop her but that made it worse so I just let her leave and it was just so BAD, Brother. I keep trying to tell myself that it’s less-bad for it to happen now than later, but it’s hard to see any good in it at all. Not when she looked like I’d gutted her without any warning like that.

Ling sent somebody to pick me up right after I got out of my class (which I don’t think I even remember, which is one more tiny little pebble of a shame to place on top of the boulder). As soon as they took me off to one of his private rooms I knew what I was in for, and then I saw he’d made tea and I knew I was in for it good. Like being a kid again. You remember that time we dumped the wet laundry all over the garden to pretend the basket was a monster-catching cage, and then we tracked the mud into the house for good measure?

Except this time I knew I was right. I guess sometimes you can be muddy and right at the same time. Weird little world.

He poured tea for me first, which I am aware is an honor past description here, which is a bit difficult a lot of the time, but especially after you’ve told me sock stories. And shoe stories. And shoe-eating stories.

And he was getting ready to say something, which is also an indescribable honor etc., so before he could go off I said, “Remind me: why did you do it? Why did you work so hard to become the emperor?”

And he looked at me about like you’d expect and said “All of us wanted to break the cycle, but most of them weren’t willing to break quite so many rules.”

And I said, “Condense it more than that. Why did you do it?”

And he gave me that look that always betrays how smart he really is, and he said “You tell me, Alphonse. Why did I do it?”

So I said “For the same reason Roy did. So that no one could ever make you hurt people again.”

And he looked at me for a little while, and then he looked down at the table and pushed the teacup closer to me and said “Don’t tell me you’re not thirsty after the day you’ve had.”

So I think maybe he and I are okay but Mei…

You should have seen her. I’m glad you didn’t.

I’ll be okay. I know it will be better tomorrow, easier tomorrow, maybe it’ll feel so much better that I won’t even put this in the mail. Maybe I’ll rip it up and rewrite it.

But maybe I won’t, even if it is better, because it’s you, Ed. It’s always you. And I can always be me.

It’s always been you. In all the ways that matter. In all the ways there are. If the universe is collapsing anyway, I might as well just say it. Nothing has to change. You, as you are—you’re it. You’re perfect. Just stay like that. Be like that. Please.

I love you.

Al,

You goddamn idiot, you gave me your address.

My contract’s up and I’m leaving in the morning as soon as I put this shit in the mail and if you write back I won’t get it because I’ll be halfway to you by then. More than half if I get my way about it.

Tough shit.

See you soon.

I love you too you little

Well.

You know.

—E

The train stations in Xing are prettier than the ones in Amestris. Al can’t tell how much of that is decorative finesse and how much is simple personal bias: admittedly, there are a lot of flowers, and the roofs are curved and colorful, but he suspects that it has quite a lot to do with the fact that spending time at Amestrian train stations almost never meant anything good. They were always on their way to somewhere. They were always diving into something, and they were never sure if or when they were coming back up.

So far, Xingese train stations have been the site of more heart-pounding adventures than anything else. Ling treated the rail line from the capital to the border as an extremely serious test run for the rest of the country, and the infrastructure has only been getting better since Al first stumbled onto a platform with Maria Ross clapping his back until displaced sand clouded around his shoulders.

Today is a heart-pounder. Maybe it’s an adventure, too. He’s not even traveling.

He almost missed the call—between the lumberjack roommates and the coronation anniversary brouhaha, he alchemically soundproofed so many different parts of the apartment that he can barely hear the phone ringing from his room. Racing down and skidding to a stop and snatching the receiver from the cradle right before it gave up ringing had already slung his heart up into his throat. Hearing Ed shout “Hey, I’m getting in at nine tomorrow morning! Shit! Are you in class then?” had almost dissolved him into tears on the spot.

Instead, though, he’d stood there swaying slightly as the mixed-up emotions fizzed in him as ferociously as if his body was a shaken soda bottle, which seems to be his default reaction to experiencing an overwhelming number of strong feelings all at once. Ed had hesitated, and Al had heard a train whistle in the background, and Ed had said, “Hello? Uh, is this the right number? Ling sent—” and Al had rummaged up his voice and said “Fuck my class, Brother,” and Ed had laughed like a jackal and then said, “Watch your fucking language,” exactly like Al had been hoping for.

And now Al is here. And it’s three minutes, two minutes to nine—and Ling has watched this project like a hawk, or even like a Hawkeye; it’s his pet and his baby and the harbinger of so many other things that he won’t let the trains run late.

A plume of dark smoke swells larger and draws nearer. The black iron shape beneath it sharpens into the all-too-recognizable silhouette of an engine, and the rough industrial sounds that always used to mean leaving, always used to mean flinging themselves off into the dim unknown.

The brakes scream, and the engine sighs, and the smoke has barely even begun to dissipate before Al is setting off towards the cars at a helpless half-run, trying to watch every door at once.

He stops at a safe distance. Ed wouldn’t have traveled first-class, but he would want to be close to the front so that he could jump up out of his seat and snatch up his luggage and leap out sooner than everybody else—wouldn’t he? Surely he’s burning with the same anticipation, at the same intensity, with the same immensity and an identical, matched, mirrored need—

Surely—

Al looks back and forth and back and forth and tries not to let himself believe for a single instant that Ed could have changed his—

An unmistakable blond ponytail flicks behind one of the windowpanes, and then Ed’s beautiful strong shoulders fill the doorway of the third car down the platform, and he swings his suitcase and looks up and around instead of down at his feet, and he stumbles on the little steel stairs—

And then his eyes find Al’s.

And maybe that’s all either of them ever really needed.

They meet in the middle at a careening speed, and Ed only just gets the suitcase down on the pavement before they whack the wind out of each other in the collision, and Al considers it lucky, because he can’t cry if he can’t breathe at all yet.

He curls his fingers in the back of Ed’s coat until his knuckles ache fervently, and Ed’s hair shouldn’t smell nice—it doesn’t, really, after endless days of desert and one last stretch of train, but it smells like him, which smells like home, which…

Ed’s arms clamp around him, angled across his back—one high and one low, with Ed’s right hand fixed so tightly in the hair at the back of his head that his scalp tingles, and it almost hurts—

Ed’s face buries itself in the side of his neck for a second, and he hides his in Ed’s hair no matter where it’s been and what it’s been through, and he closes his eyes and breathes. In. Out. This is real. It has to be. The dreams all waver when he gets this far.

Ed pounds his back with the free left fist.

“Playing hooky already, huh?” he says. “Can’t leave you alone for five minutes.”

“Hang on,” Al says.

He doesn’t want to step back, now or ever. He doesn’t want to release his grip. He doesn’t want to have his fingertips rest anywhere other than Ed’s skin for the rest of his natural life, really, but mostly people don’t get what they want, and they make it anyway.

He fishes the envelope out of his shirt pocket where he’s kept it over his heart. It’s a little wrinkled. He addressed it but didn’t waste a stamp.

He mock-bows and extends it in both hands. “For you.”

Ed is already grinning wide and bright as he shreds the flap and hauls out the letter. He unfolds it.

All it says is BROTHER, NO!!!!, which they both knew it would, but Ed laughs again and wraps his arm around Al’s shoulders and hauls him in and kisses his temple. Just like that.

“Too late,” he says.

Al can sense the little smiles from the people around them, observing them but too polite to stare. They must look like two lost souls reunited. Maybe it’s that simple, too.

“Way too late,” Al says.

“Good,” Ed says. He knocks his hip against Al’s and picks up his suitcase again without letting go. “So what is there to eat around here? I was promised something called a baozi, wasn’t I?”

“You were promised a lot of things,” Al says. He tries to grab for the handle of Ed’s suitcase, but of course Ed anticipates it even as he starts to move and whips it away, just out of reach. “They’re not going to be selling much of anything until lunchtime, though. You want some tea?”

“Do I,” Ed says. He’s grinning. He looks so happy that Al’s heart breaks and then puts itself right back together and tries to lock that feeling inside itself by sealing up the cracks. “Can’t believe Ling put me on a fucking overnight train after everything I did for that asshole.” His arm squeezes tighter around Al’s shoulders for a second. “I thought for a minute that he’d given me the wrong phone number just to prank me, and my first act in the capital was going to be assaulting a head of state.”

Carefully, Al snakes his arm around Ed’s waist and settles his hand on Ed’s hip. It feels incredible. Ed’s grin widens.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Al says.

“Well,” Ed says, airily, “you gotta make an impression.”

Whatever else can be said of Edward Elric, he always does that.

They stop by the apartment first. All that’s in Ed’s suitcase is books, clothes, and a bag of coffee beans that takes up almost a full third of the space.

“I left some other stuff in Creta,” he says, as if it’s normal for a foreign government to volunteer to store your personal belongings while you dash across most of a continent to come to your brother’s aid. “But I remembered that Ling said one time they don’t really drink coffee here, so I thought you’d probably be missing it.”

“You,” Al says, daring to close his eyes as he raises it to inhale the aroma, “have no idea.”

He opens his eyes long before he’d like to. He can’t risk Ed disappearing while he’s got them shut.

Ed’s still sitting on the edge of the bed, though, with his knee angled up and out and the heel of his boot braced on the frame, grinning like he just can’t help it. Like he just can’t stop.

Al hugs the coffee to his chest, crosses the little room, and sits down right next to him—so that their sides align, and their shoulders touch, and their knees do, his left against Ed’s right.

He mostly slept through the first few days in the hospital, immediately after they brought his body back. He’d had a heck of a lot of catching up to do, after all, and the lights were so bright, and his head was so heavy, and his heartbeats were so loud that it seemed like the best solution. Ed had been there every single time he’d woken up—somewhat illicitly, on several occasions, and bleeding through the gauze wrapped around his shoulder on a couple of them. Al later learned that Roy had loudly proclaimed himself simply incapable of signing Ed’s release papers while blind and bandaged, specifically so that Ed could pull rank on the hospital staff one last time and sneak into Al’s room whenever he wanted.

The first time he’d felt up to it, Ed had wrapped the strong, scarred left arm around him and helped walk him over to a pair of padded chairs by the window. They’d sat there with their faces turned to the windowpane, and Al had let the tears roll for what might have been twenty minutes, or an hour, or longer than that. Sunlight on his skin. It felt like it had a taste. It felt beautiful.

This feels like that.

He’d regretted the crying later, though, since it had brought on the headache from hell. So this time he just smiles until his cheeks hurt, with his arm hooked through Ed’s and their hips pressed together.

He doesn’t know how long it is later that Ed’s stomach growls like a lion.

“Don’t laugh,” Ed says, which is a bit redundant given that Al’s already started. “Hey! You said you were gonna feed me, remember? And you said there’d be tea. What gives?”

Ed gives, of course—gives himself endlessly away.

But there’s an exchange for that, like there’s an exchange for everything, so Al takes his right hand and hauls him up off the bed and out the door and down the stairs. He’s going to love this city almost as much as Al loves the soft pads of these right-hand fingertips that Ed hasn’t quite managed to scuff up just yet.

Generously, Ed stuffs his face—and jokes around, and complains about the weather, and charms the vendors even though he doesn’t speak a word of Xingese—for fifteen solid minutes before he glances at Al sideways, swallows the bite of pork bun crammed in his mouth, and clears his throat.

“If it’s not a sore subject,” he says, lowering his voice a little, “I’ve been meaning to—”

“It’s better,” Al says, shoving at his arm so that he’ll know that it’s okay that he asked, even if it is annoying. At least he waited until they were sitting on a low wall by themselves, off to the side of the main road through the market. “You know Mei. She’s even smarter than she is strong. Things are still pretty awkward, and I know she’s hurting about it, but… she’s trying to get past it.” A prickly feeling still spreads in Al’s chest like a bramble growing at high speed when he thinks about it too much, but the truth is the truth: “I’ve just been trying not to make it worse.”

“You never make anything worse,” Ed says, calmly. He licks his fingers, the little heathen. They’re not even clean, he’s been touching all kinds of things—the wooden frames of the stalls, the shiny round leaves of the jade plants, the trellises heavy with curling vines, the bolts of beautiful fabric, Al’s arm, Al’s back, Al’s hair—

A shadow flickers, and they’re both on their feet.

“Some things don’t change,” Ling says, delightedly. “When I finally get the Dragon’s Pulse through your incorrigibly thick Amestrian skulls, you two are going to be unstoppable.”

“Let me guess,” Ed says, but he barely even tries to contain the grin. “Nothing ever happens in your country that you don’t know about.”

“I’m greedy that way,” Ling says, coolly, and Al waves towards the Lan Fan-shaped patch of deeper darkness in the alley beyond him. It waves back. “Also, I bought your train ticket.”

“Oh, yeah,” Ed says. “Thanks for that.”

They stare at each other for a second. Ling’s robes are so understated, and his smile is so wide, that most of his subjects probably wouldn’t recognize him right now.

“So,” Ed says. “Had any good boots lately?”

“My magnificent nation’s solitary failure,” Ling says, “is our lack of footwear-based cuisine. Have you bartered your labor for any socks?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Ed says, and that’s when the hugs and the back-pounding finally start.

“There are about forty more guest bedrooms that way,” Ling says, gesturing in a way that makes his sleeve swish so impressively that he must practice. “But they’re really all the same, and I imagine that we’d have to pry you off of Al with a crowbar, anyway, if we wanted you to stay in one…” He pauses, looking like one of the innumerable portraits where he stands in the opulent hallway, arms folded and eyes narrowed and chin raised. “Wait a second. It’s Wednesday. Al, aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

“Yes,” Al says. This seems like an appropriate moment to extract a few of the little sweet oranges that he bought at the market and slipped into his pocket. He hands one to Ed and one to Lan Fan. Dragon’s Pulse or no, he can feel that she’s trying not to laugh. “But I haven’t worked out yet how to be here and in class at the same time, so I picked one.”

“It’s funny how people assume you’re the good one,” Ed says, tussling with the peel, “just because you’re polite.”

“I am the good one,” Al says. Ling is gazing mournfully at the oranges, so Al takes pity on him and hands a fourth one over. “It’s all relative.”

Ling sighs delightedly. “I’ve missed your silly little language so much. That works on so many levels.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Ed says, but the smirk belies him more than a bit. “What’s next? Thirty dining rooms?”

Ling tosses the orange peel at his face—which Ed catches easily, of course, but not without a squawk of protest. “Are you sure you haven’t been here before?”

Unsurprisingly, Ling convinces them to stay for dinner, and it’s conducted in a specimen of the innumerable dining rooms which Al hasn’t ever even seen before. Ling has a very well-guarded one in one of the side wings—Al presumes that it’s closer to his favorite bedroom—which is much cozier. Al always brings some nice tea, and Ling just looks at him, and Al tries yet again to explain that where he’s from, you don’t show up to an invitation empty-handed.

This dining room is nice, too. Mei sits three seats away instead of next to him like she used to, which makes Al feel like his guts are a mud pit full of writhing worms, but then she starts telling him about how Scar is going to come and visit and check things out and bring some of the Ishvalans who had originally settled in Xerxes to get their advice, and she talks about it like it’s normal, and that at least makes the worms calm down, even if they don’t quite go away.

Ed helps, of course. Ed always helps. Ed makes everything better by being there—just by existing.

Ed is saying “What’s in that?” about every single dish that ends up on the table, as if he’s ever met a food he wasn’t willing to eat, regardless of its composition. It takes Al an embarrassingly significant number of minutes to realize that he’s doing it in part—if not entirely—to keep Al too occupied for overthinking.

Ling asks what Ed was doing all that time in Creta, and Ed tells several stories that Al hasn’t even heard yet as well as the ones he has, and there’s rice wine and tea and so much food, and Ed keeps asking Mei about ways that he can help her to help the Ishvalans, and Xiao Mei keeps stealing things off of his plate, and Al thinks…

Al thinks that sometimes, when you really need it, everything works out right.

Jerso and Zampano keep them awake for a while longer, catching up and laughing loud enough that Al is glad of the soundproofing yet again, since it’s probably saved them from making enemies of the neighbors. At some dizzy, giddy hour, he takes Ed’s hand and leads the way up the stairs to the bedroom again, and they both kick their shoes off and collapse onto Al’s little bed, and…

And lying here, with his forehead leaned against Ed’s, with his eyelids heavy and his heart full and their hands linked on the crumpled sheets between them, seems far, far too good to be true.

“Hey,” Ed says quietly. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I could conquer the entire world,” Al says, because it’s the truth.

Ed smiles, arching an eyebrow, and doesn’t even have to say it.

Al sighs his concession. “But like I should probably get some sleep before I try it.”

“There you go,” Ed says, and he shifts back far enough to kiss Al’s forehead before he presses his against it again. “Is that going better, or am I gonna wake up at three in the morning to you writing letters to some other brother I don’t know about?”

“Just for that,” Al says, “I’m going to encode the shopping list into fake stories and turn those into letters. It’ll keep you sharp.” He clears his throat. “It’s better. The Mei thing was bothering me a lot the first couple of nights, but…”

But knowing that you’d be on my side made all the difference in the world, Brother.

Knowing that you’re always on my side is everything.

Ed tilts his head slightly, chewing on his lip. “Huh. I feel like I can almost hear the echo of somebody sawing lumber.”

“Welcome to my world,” Al says.

“Thanks,” Ed says. The grin is back, and he settles in against the pillow and squeezes Al’s hand to punctuate it. “Digging it so far. Think maybe I’ll stick around.”

Al kisses the tip of his stupid nose. “Oh, all right.”

Ed snickers, and then he settles a little more. He closes his eyes. He smiles. He breathes out, slowly, deeply, utterly contentedly. The unconquerable upflick in his hair tickles Al’s scalp a bit.

And Al thinks—

Ed cracks one eye open. He’s no longer smiling: it’s more of a little grimace.

“What?” Al says.

“Uh,” Ed says. He pauses. “I gotta pee.”

Al stares at him. It’s very easy this close. “Now?”

“Or soon,” Ed says, like he’s not flagrantly violating the sanctity of this moment, and also of the extremely comfy bed. “It doesn’t have to be now-now. Shit, Al, did you see how much tea I had? I’ve never had that much tea in my life. You kept pushing it at me, so I just kept drinking it. That stuff’s good for you, right? I’m probably going to live forever. Thanks, by the way.”

“Yes, it’s good for you,” Al says, shoving at him, “but don’t you dare blame this on me. Why didn’t you pee before you got into bed, you lunk? Go already, would you? Move.”

Ed climbs up over him to reach the edge of the mattress—pausing, of course, to plant one hand over his shoulder, lean down, and brush a kiss over his mouth, so softly that it tingles.

Ed’s automail foot clinks on the floorboards, and his fingertips graze over Al’s arm as he starts for the door. “Are you just gonna sleep in your clothes like that? No wonder you have so much trouble these days. How’d you ever get by without me?”

Al tries very hard to scowl at him as he grins over his shoulder at the door. “Haven’t the slightest idea, Brother. Will you hurry up?”

Ed just smiles wider. “Or what?”

“Or else,” Al says.

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