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Greed was dead.
He couldn't remember, sitting there, how long it had been since the Promised Day. He couldn't remember when he sat down. Couldn't remember the last time he had gotten up. His clothes were too large, his crown too heavy. There was a seemingly endless stack of scrolls in front of them. It never grew smaller. As soon as he made progress, aides he couldn't recognize or name always brought him more.
“My lord?” a familiar voice said, cutting through the too loud silence. His thoughts didn't use to race like they did now. The other voices used to be enough to drown them out. They were still there, the voices, but they were never loud as his had been.
“You've been staring at that scroll for the past five minutes,” Lan Fan said, ever his shadow.
“It's a serious issue,” he said. Greed was dead. Greed was-
He looked down at the scroll. He squinted at the letters that were finally coming back into focus.
“...Floral arrangements in the gardens,” he said after a far too long pause, “are something to take very seriously.”
With her mask on, it was impossible to read Lan Fan's face. He didn't even try. He knew the words weren't good enough. He ignored her stare from behind the mask. Greed was dead. There would be no taunts. Banter, maybe, but he didn't have the stomach for it now.
He returned to his scrolls.
“The emperor has been acting…off,” Lan Fan said.
It had been several months since their return to Xing. She had never expected that she would find herself confiding in a girl from another clan. But with her grandfather gone, and the emperor hiding himself away in the depths of a chamber not even Lan Fan fully dared to go into herself.
It had been different, before Amestris. Before she lost her arm, before she left him behind while his body was puppeted by a homunculus that was no better than a demon. Her shoulder acted at the thought of it all. There had been no alternative—not other choice in that one damning moment—but if Lan Fan could have gone back in time, she would have found a way to escape the homunculi’s grasp without incapacitating herself. Then she would have been there. He wouldn't have gotten possessed, gotten attached.
“Al's brother says they were close,” Mei Chang said. Lan Fan had lost track of how many times they had had some version of this conversation.
Lan Fan stared into her cup of tea. She wished her grandfather was here. She had always been confident in her own abilities, but she felt like she needed him more than she ever had before.
“We've faced loss before,” Lan Fan said. “We lost-”
Her voice caught in her throat.
“He's mourned that monster,” Lan Fan said, “more than he's mourned the retainer that served him for years.”
He never outright said that was the reason for the difference. He never outright said who he was mourning. But Lan Fan knew his face. She knew his expressions. He barely faltered when he had seen Fu's corpse, but when he saw his reflection? That damn tattoo on the back of his hand?
That was true grief. What he felt towards her grandfather didn't even begin to compare.
She slammed her cup down on the table. Mei flinched. Her panda did, too.
“It wasn't supposed to be like this,” Lan Fan said. “This wasn't the future he was building towards.”
There was a shifting in the halls. It took a moment for her to realize that she could sense his qi from just around the corner.
“...Lan Fan…” Mei said, quietly, voice nervous and tense. She sensed it, too.
Lan Fan waited for the inevitable reprimand. He had never been the one to mince words. With his bodyguards of the afternoon nowhere to be sensed or found, she was sure he had given them the slip again. There was no reason for him to not address the homunculus who had died in that final fight.
But the words never came.
His qi faded. He returned to the depths of his sprawling palace, and inevitably returned to the depths of his bedroom. He rarely left there outside of official functions and duties, these days.
Greed was dead.
He tried to act normal, most of the time. Tried to act like it was before. Tried to stuff his face with food, tried to slip out through windows to avoid work or explore the streets beyond the main palace. But his bodyguard always caught him comically easily, and his stomach couldn't handle the food like it once had.
He gripped the sides of the bucket he had hidden away in the corner of his room tight. That state dinner had lasted longer than it was supposed to. He had a philosopher's stone in hand, but it still couldn't stop the nausea.
This wasn't what this was supposed to be like. This wasn't the future he had planned. That they had planned. He had always prepared to rule alone, but he was supposed to share it. They were supposed to eat this food together, make snide comments about his vassals together, and-
His stomach heaved. He couldn't stop himself from retching into the bucket.
“Ling?” a voice said from outside the door. He hadn't ever heard its owner approach.
He unsteadily got to his feet and made his way over to the door. He tried to wipe some of the bile and food off of his lips, but he just ended up smearing it on his sleeve instead.
He opened the door. The Chang girl was standing there. Her panda, on instinct, hissed. It didn't matter how many times it saw him. He wondered, in the back of his head, if it somehow knew.
“Xiao Mei,” the girl—Mei—reprimanded, but the panda didn't look guilty. He might have been more amused if he wasn't trying to hide the bucket from her view. He was supposed to be the heir to the Yao clan. The emperor of Xing. And the emperor of Xing did not throw up in buckets just because his stomach apparently couldn't handle all that food anymore.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Mei said. “You helped my clan like you said you would, but…”
She trailed off.
Her eyes flickered over him. He hid his sleeve behind his arm, but it was already too late. With far more speed than she should have had, she had tugged his arm back out from behind him.
“You're sick,” Mei said, alarmed. “Did someone poison you? You didn't look sick earlier-”
“‘m fine,” he interrupted. “I just…ate too much.”
Mei hadn't known him before, not nearly as well as Lan Fan. Those words didn't set off alarm bells for her in the same way they would have for his most loyal bodyguard. He could be a little selfish—a little greedy—with the truths that he let himself give.
Mei frowned.
Before he could shut her out like he had planned to, she marched into his room.
“This room is a mess,” Mei said. “Does anyone even come in here to clean it?”
“They're scared of me,” he said. “I'm the emperor who can't die. Don't you remember how they reacted when we first came back?”
He would have savored it. There was something delightfully dramatic about cutting your own head off in front of your father. But while it had guaranteed that the Yao clan had won, it hadn't exactly won him any frien…
He frowned. He looked away.
“How long have you been sick?” Mei asked, suddenly. He glanced down at her to see her looking surprisingly alert. Attentive, too.
“Since-” He looked away again. Rubbed the back of his neck. “Doesn't matter. I'm already feeling better now.”
He took a step forward, genuinely considering shoving her out the door and locking it behind her. But that would bring even more questions, so he stepped back. He didn't move from that spot. Didn't look at her, either.
“Ling,” Mei insisted.
There was no formality there. No distance. She was an annoyed younger sister of an annoying older brother. He had seen that sibling dynamic play out before, back in Amestris. It made him think of the Elrics.
“...Since Amestris,” he relented. The combination of that tone and a gold-eyed, gold-haired former alchemist made him give in when he would have otherwise held his ground.
“...Since you lost Greed,” Mei guessed.
His voice caught.
“...Yeah,” he said. “Since I lost Greed.”
She didn't know his tells like Lan Fan did. She couldn't look at him and see the lie. It was easy, tricking her. He didn't let himself feel any guilt about it, even he had grown fond of her during their journey across the desert to Xing. It took guts, coming back when you had everything you had ever wanted in your grasp. If it had been before the Promised Day, he would have said she was an idiot. Now, he understood what had brought her back to Amestris all too much.
“It's quiet, without him,” he let himself admit. A carefully worded truth. “Even with all of these souls still here to keep me company.”
Mei was quiet. She looked him up and down, seeming so small and young. He hadn't ever cared about ages before all of this, but that was before he kept seeing him in his reflection. Immortality had never seemed so unappealing.
“What was he like?” Mei asked.
He took a breath in. Let it back out.
“Annoying,” he said. “A pain in the ass. He would never shut up.”
He looked up towards the ceiling.
“But he was loyal, too,” he said. “You knew you could trust him, even when you didn't want to.”
He paused.
“He…would have liked you,” he settled on. There was a reason he had offered to help her clan in the first place. He couldn't pretend it was out of kindness from a heart he didn't even think he had. “If he had gotten to know you more.”
Mei mulled this over.
“I would have liked to meet him again,” she finally said.
He took another breath in. Let it back out.
“...I would have liked to see that,” he said, giving her one last truth.
Mei stayed for the next hour. She did her best to help him tidy up his room. She had thought it had been difficult enough keeping her own one clean. With all of the gifts Ling had received since he had become emperor, his room was somehow worse.
She tried to soothe the tension in his stomach with alkahestry, too, but it could only do so much. It wasn’t just a physical sickness that he was facing now. She had gotten stomachaches like that before, back when she first set out from Xing. She had felt them when she had decided to turn around.
As Mei walked back to her room with Xiao Mei, she thought.
There wasn’t any way to bring that homunculus back. She knew that. You couldn’t bring back the dead. But if Mei didn’t think of something, Lan Fan was going to continue to stew. Ling was going to continue to wither away.
He had given her clan protection. Food, safety, and shelter. She had to repay his kindness, not just because she had a duty to do it, but because she had actually started to like him on their way back from Amestris. He really was like a brother to her now-
“Brothers,” Mei managed to get out, eyes wide. “Xiao Mei, I got it!”
Without letting her panda determine just what that meant, Mei booked it down the hallway. It would take time to get a message there, take time to get a response and a visit, but-
This could work. This could work.
Ling hadn’t just traveled with Greed. He had traveled with other people, too. And if she reached out to Al’s brother—who she still didn’t really like, but that was besides the point—through Al, she just knew that he would come. Al trusted his brother’s dedication, so Mei would, too.
There was someone in his room.
He didn’t realize they were there, at first. He had grown numb to the assassination attempts in the first week alone. Now, the sight of someone standing around, leafing through the pile of gifts stacked up in the corner, barely even registered. He made it all the way over to his bed before he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
He spun around, Ultimate Shield shooting up his arms. He was more passive with it, these days, but he had wanted nothing more than to lie down in his bed after a long day of meetings he didn’t care about or even fully understand. He took a step forward, clawed fingers raised in anticipation of a fight.
He started to move his hand back-
And then he caught a glimpse of gold. He faltered. Took a step back. For a moment, his hand was stained red. He quickly blinked the vision away. His hand was still the same shade of grey that it always was when he used this power.
“So you can still use the Ultimate Shield,” Edward Elric said, pushing back the hood of his traveling cloak.
The Ultimate Shield remained out.
“You…You’re not supposed to be here,” the emperor said. He let himself wonder, for a moment, if this was some trick of a shapeshifting homunculus, but then he remembered that Envy was very much dead. A pit settled in his stomach at the thought. He didn’t address it. “Why are you here?”
Edward Elric stared at him. “Hello to you, too,” he said, a note of irritation in his voice. “Mei asked me to come. She said you were falling apart.”
“I’m not-” He frowned. “I’m not falling apart.”
Edward crossed his arms. “When was the last time you cleaned in here?”
The emperor surveyed the room around them.
“...The last time Mei came to visit me,” he said, which he had thought was recent enough. He hadn’t kept track of the days in-between then and now. “But you came. You saw me, you visited, now you can go.”
Edward was pissed off, hearing that. It was all too easy to see. But if he was pissed, he wouldn’t think, and that was exactly what he needed right now. The emperor of Xing acted with all of the dignity of his position, slipped behind Edward, and gave him a good old shove towards the door.
“Are you kidding me?” Edward said, digging his feet into the ground. The emperor resisted the urge to swear. If only Edward had gotten his leg back instead of his arm. Then he wouldn’t be able to stand his ground as easily. “I came all this way and that’s what you say to me? They’re worried about you, Ling. Lan Fan and Mei. They’re saying you’re not acting like yourself anymore-”
The air was heavy. His stone burned. “Get out.”
“What?” Edward said.
“I said,” he said, “get out. I’m the emperor of Xing. You’re my visitor, and I’m telling you to get out of my room. So get out.”
Edward stepped away from him. He looked back at him. Edward gave him an expression that he hadn’t made when he had heard Greed had died. His eyes looked hurt, the same way they had looked when he had thought he had lost his brother.
“You’re serious,” Edward said.
The emperor held his ground. He didn’t say a word.
The hurt gave way to anger. He felt a sick sense of satisfaction, seeing that expression then. “I came all the way here because I was worried about you,” Edward said. “Al’s still recovering and I-”
He made a frustrated little noise.
“Fuck you, Ling,” Edward said. He turned on his heels and stormed over to the door. It wasn’t until it slammed behind him that the emperor finally felt his legs give out from underneath him. He stared at the door, listening to Edward stomp down the hallway. He was probably going to find Mei to tattle to her. The emperor told himself he didn’t really care. The sooner that Edward Elric left, the better. He couldn’t risk all of this falling apart because of one stupidly observant girl’s idea.
…Even if he would have never wanted to lose Ed.
“Fuck,” the emperor swore. He needed a drink.
Ling wasn’t a drinker, and having a philosopher’s stone made it even more difficult to get drunk. But there were…workarounds. Tricks. A philosopher’s stone acted on instinct. The most pressing thing always healed itself first. That was usually the alcohol, when you drank it. But if you managed to find a well-placed roof spot, managed to steal a kunai from a certain Mei Chang’s collection as a petty, petty attempt at revenge, and stabbed your leg right when you were dangling your feet over the edge of the roof, then it was all too easy to make your stone forget about the alcohol. There was always the chance that your stone would be reminded that you were drunk and try to clear your head, but once you got even just a bit tipsy? Then your inebriated instincts would do all of the work. Having a working pair of legs was more important if you fell.
He wasn’t even sure what he was drinking. It was strong, whatever it was. He had poured two cups of it, originally, but had abandoned his cup after realizing he could just get it straight from the bottle.
“What are you doing up here?” Ed demanded.
“Drinking,” he said. Ed was an idiot. Wasn't what he was doing obvious? Then he paused, finally registering that Ed was even up there to begin with. He narrowed his eyes. “I thought I told you to go.”
“From your room,” Ed said. “And I'm terrible at listening to instructions. Just ask Colonel Bastard.”
He considered this point, then slowly nodded. “You're insub…sub…” He frowned. Furrowed his brow.
“...Insubordinate?” Ed finished.
“That,” he said. He patted the spot next to him. He was still mad at Ed for showing up in the first place, but he didn't feel as mad as he had earlier. “He would want you here.”
He couldn't read Ed's expression, but he didn't have to. A moment later, Ed sat down next to him. “Is that why you're up here stargazing?”
“Moongazing,” he corrected. “Even if the clouds keep getting in the way. ‘Was supposed to be ours. Not just his.”
“He was a greedy asshole,” Ed agreed. Ed had no idea, really. The thoughts he would have, sometimes, were some of the greediest of all. “You're drinking for him, too?”
He shook his head. “For me.”
Ed eyed the cups between them. “Which is why there’s two cups?”
He followed his gaze down, then frowned. “You’re too smart,” he said. “You’re not supposed to notice that. You keep noticing things.”
“...Things like what?”
He gave Ed a nudge. “You’re not going to trick me,” he said. “I’m not saying.”
Ed stared at him for a very long time, so he wisely looked away and went back to staring up at the moon instead. When he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned to see Ed grabbing the cup from in between them.
“Well,” Ed said, “if you’re not telling me what it’s for, then I’m going to take it. Because that’s what he would have wanted.”
He squinted at Ed. “‘re too young,” he pointed out.
“You’re barely older than me,” Ed shot back.
He snorted. That really was a funny comment. “You’re a kid compared to me.”
Ed scowled. “Could a kid do this?” Ed raised the cup to his lips and took a large gulp of it, only to immediately recoil. He stared at the cup like it had just given him the worst betrayal of all.
He grinned, triumphant, when he saw that look on Ed’s face. “Told you you were a kid,” he said. His words slurred together. He didn’t care. He eyed his own bottle. There was barely anything left of it when he swished it around, but he still downed it one big gulp regardless.
“You really are drunk,” Ed suddenly said, “aren’t you?”
As if proving his point, he tried—and failed—to put the empty bottle down next to him and Ed. A moment later, there was a shatter as it went falling off of the roof and slamming into the ground below.
They both stared down at it.
“...I didn’t even realize you could get drunk,” Ed said, still staring at broken glass.
“Not supposed to be able to.” He gestured at the kunai in his leg. Ed, who hadn’t apparently seen it when he got onto the roof in the first place, stared at the sparks of red repeatedly shooting off of it. “I had to get creative. Got the idea ages ago. Back when Mar-”
He stopped. The name died on his lips. The world was still blurry and his head still spun, but some part of him recognized the danger in admitting just where he had gotten that idea. It had become instinct, at this point. It overrode any instinct to not fall off of the roof. For a moment, the sparks stilled.
He tore the kunai from his leg. There was a flash of red. The wound healed. With that injury gone, his vision cleared in a matter of moments. He ran through everything he had said, trying to remember if he had said anything he wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t have a filter when drunk. He never had. The things he had shared before. The stories he had told. There was a reason Bido had so easily found his way into-
He rushed to his feet. The kunai skidded across the rooftop.
“I need to go,” he said, but Ed was blocking off his exit. That was the side of the roof he had climbed up on. His eyes flickered to the ground below. If he jumped, the Ultimate Shield could help with the fall. He could heal faster than Ed could climb down.
His feet were just at the edge of the rooftop. It would be so easy to jump. He should have just jumped then. He should have taken advantage of the fact that he could heal and Ed couldn’t. But then he thought of a broken automail arm, and he just…stopped. He couldn’t get himself to make the move.
“The Ling I know doesn’t run,” Ed said. It was a challenge.
Fuck you, he wanted to say, but that wasn’t very Ling Yao of him. Not in this kind of moment. He kept his gaze down on the ground below. “...Maybe the Ling you know died with Greed,” he said, voice bitter and quiet. “There’s just me now. That’s all you’re going to get no matter how much you want him back.”
Above them, a cloud finally moved away from the moon. The light of the full moon shone down on them. When he realized just how suspiciously silent Ed had been, he raised his head. Ed’s skin was pale. His golden eyes were wide. They were back on the battlefield, then. Father had just been defeated. Ed had realized that they had lost Greed and Alphonse, and he was looking at him the same way then that he did now. He could have sworn, just before this conversation, that Ed had only looked at the spot his brother had been in like that. That Ed hadn’t looked at him like that, too.
“You’re not Ling,” Ed said.
The air stilled.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. He tried to play it nonchalant. He tried to give a grin. But Ed kept giving him that look, and he couldn’t hold it. He couldn’t make it look natural. “Of course I’m Ling-”
“That’s not his smile,” Ed insisted. “You’re not him. The only one who could act like him that well would be-”
Ed froze.
Ed scanned him up and down like he couldn’t really believe it. He knew, even before Ed uttered the name he had secretly so desperately wished someone would say was his, that Ed had figured it out. He had been the military’s youngest state alchemist for a reason.
“Greed,” Ed whispered. The cup that had been in his hand fell and rolled to the very edge of the rooftop.
The grin disappeared. There was no point in trying to force it anymore.
“I told you,” Greed said, “that you were too good at noticing things. His bodyguard hasn’t even noticed. And that Chang girl’s convinced I’m actually her brother. But then you come here and you just know.”
The cup teetered. It felt and shattered right next to the empty bottle.
“...How long?” Ed asked. His voice was quiet, but Greed could see that fire in his eyes. He could hear the anger bubbling in his voice. When he stepped forward a moment later and grabbed Greed by the collar of his shirt, Greed wasn’t even surprised. “How long has Ling been gone, Greed?”
“Really want me to say it, kid?” Greed asked. “You already know the answer.”
“Tell me the answer,” Ed demanded. “Tell me that it’s not-”
“The Promised Day?”
Ed's grip loosened.
“What happened to Ling?” Ed asked. “Is he still-”
Greed sighed. He looked up at the moon. “I already told you. It's just me. The only other souls in here are the ones in my stone.”
Ed let go of him. His arms—human and warm, no longer one metal—fell limp to his side. Greed didn't move from his spot. It was all over. He knew it was. Ed was going to tell Lan Fan and Mei now, and then that was that. There would be no returning from all of this. He had one last job, and he had still managed to fuck it up. So much for keeping what was meant to be his.
“Ling is dead,” Ed said, voice barely above a whisper. “And you just—what the hell, Greed?”
“You didn't think it was me.”
Ed faltered. “What?”
“You didn't think it was me,” Greed said. “No one did. It wasn't even supposed to be me. But then he swapped last minute. I don't know how. He just-”
His voice caught. He paused. Took a breath in. Tried to recover. He couldn't, really. He never really would.
“He took what was mine,” Greed said. “My sacrifice. And then you all saw my expression and thought I was him, so I went along with it. If he took what was mine, I could take what was his. He had told me I'd be able to rule his country someday-”
Ed shook his head. “You're lying.”
“I don't lie-”
Out of the corner of his eye, Greed saw Ed cross his arms. “You've been lying for months, Greed,” Ed said. “Pretending to be someone you're not. I know that's a lie. You were getting drunk over him. You've been sick. Mei called me here because she saw how you were falling apart. She might have thought you were Ling, but-”
He made a frustrated noise.
“He was your friend, Greed. Not some possession you can pretend you didn't care about.”
Greed tore his gaze away from the moon.
“And now he's gone,” Greed said, voice so bitter and tired. It never really ended. “He was supposed to be different. But then I fucked things up with him, too, and lost him just like I lost everyone else. I still see Bido's blood on my hands. Still remember what happened to my gang. And then I let Ling die. So I had to make things right. Had to pretend to be him. He had wanted to be emperor, so I became emperor. He would have wanted to protect Mei's clan, so I did that, too.”
Ed just stared at him. He didn't say a word. Greed couldn't read the expression on his face, right away. He didn't want to try. When it finally did start to register, he didn't know how he felt. Ed's eyes were soft. His lips were drawn into a thin, thin line. It was pity on his face.
So Greed kept talking. He didn't want to sit on what that look meant.
“‘sides,” Greed said. “He was the one who everyone wanted the most. It was basic math. That thing you alchemists call equivalent exchange—one of us needed to live, and it wasn't supposed to be me-Why are you giving me that look?”
Ed kept giving him that look of pity, then, but there was another emotion mixed in. His eyes had widened when Greed was talking, too.
“Because you're my friend, Greed,” Ed said. The words didn't make sense. Shouldn't Ed have been pissed at him now? He had been before. Greed should have been getting punched, or slapped, or something. And for Ed to call him a friend…
In another situation—another life—that would have satisfied the aching in his chest. It would have made the burning in his hand stop.
Ed raised a fist up. He pressed it up against Greed's chest, but there was no fight to it. It didn't even hurt. “What if we wanted both of you?” he said. “What if we wanted to grieve the right person? Ling deserves to be grieved. Lan Fan deserves to know.”
Ed raised his head up. He looked up from Greed's chest.
“And I want you back, Greed,” Ed said. “I want my friend back.”
Greed stared.
“I kidnapped your brother,” he pointed out.
Ed snorted. “You're really starting there?” Greed didn't say anything to that. “We kicked your ass, Greed.”
“....Because you had your teacher there,” Greed said after a pause. “Wrath, too.”
The thought of Wrath made his stomach clench, but there was no way to get revenge on him now. They had tried, both Ling and him, but he had fucked that one up, too.
“I took Ling's body,” Greed tried to argue.
“After Father gave him your stone,” Ed replied. “And then you ended up sharing control with him anyways.”
“Not willingly,” Greed said. “He was an annoying kid. Stubborn and persistent. He…”
Greed trailed off. Ed fell silent, too. They stood there underneath the moonlight together, Greed's cup and Mei's kunai at their feet.
“...You were talking about Ling, earlier, weren't you?” Ed guessed, finally. His voice was quiet. “Not yourself.”
Greed took a breath in. He let it back out.
“...I was,” he admitted. Ling would have wanted Ed there. He had been a greedy bastard, too, even though everyone always thought Greed was the worst with it. It was Ling that Greed had thought would get a kick out of Mei, Ling who would have enjoyed moongazing, and Ling who, at the end of the day, would have never wanted Greed to rule alone. Ling had always known what Greed really wanted, even before Greed actually knew it himself.
Greed stared down at the broken glass and cup underneath the roof.
“...I should go find something to clean that up with,” Greed said. “Lan Fan is going to give me an earful if I don't.”
Lan Fan, of course, was going to give him one, anyways, once she found out he wasn't really Ling. He knew Ed was going to say something about it if he didn't do it first.
Ed eyed the damages, too.
“It's too bad I can't use alchemy anymore,” Ed said, a little bit bitterly. Ed hadn't seemed to hate the sacrifice before, but Greed had to admit he missed the convenience of Ed being able to do it. It would have made his life a lot easier right now. “Got any plans for afterwards?”
Greed raised his head. “For after I get kicked out as emperor?” Greed said.
“They're not going to kick you out,” Ed said. He raised his head, too, and looked at Greed with a pair of golden eyes that were just as annoyingly insightful as they always were. “You're the one who has been the emperor. From what I heard on my way here, the people outside the palace like you.”
Greed's breath caught in his throat. “They…do?” Greed asked, bewildered. He had been so busy trying—and failing—to live up to Ling's legacy that he hadn't even stepped foot outside of the palace walls since he took the throne.
Ed nodded.
“But do you have any plans after you tell Lan Fan and Mei?” Ed asked.
Greed narrowed his eyes. “What are you thinking?” he said, knowing Ed's expressions all too well after their times traveling together.
“Well,” Ed said, a glint to his eyes, “I came straight here after getting into Xing. I didn't have much time to explore the streets yet. And I was supposed to go on a tour of Xing someday from its emperors.”
Greed sighed. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Even now, I'm still trying to live up to the kid's promises. So you want me to fill in for Ling, then? You're shit out of luck. I've barely gone out there myself.”
Ed grinned at that.
“Good,” Ed said. “Because I'm going to lead the tour.”
Greed blinked. “What?”
He gave Greed's chest another nudge.
“You can't do all of Ling's work,” Ed said. “That's too greedy, even for you. Someone else can step in for him, too. He would have wanted you to have some fun. And I know more about traveling than you ever will.”
Greed straightened. “Bold words to say to the physical embodiment of greed.” He mulled over Ed's offer. They hadn't ever had a chance to do something fun like that before. When they had been traveling before, they had always been trying to stay under the radar of Father and the military. Greed couldn't ever remember being able to not worry about things like that, not since long before he left Father.
He grinned. His clothes still were too large, and his crown, when he put it back on later, would still be too heavy, but, for the first time in months, Greed finally felt like himself.
“Fine,” Greed said. “You have a deal.”
Ed was right, Greed knew. Ling would have wanted this for him, even if Greed had told himself otherwise. He still didn't know how to deal with this grief—this aching in his chest that never refused to go away—but it hurt a little less when he had Ed to share it with him.
Ed withdrew his hand from Greed's chest. He went back to staring at the ground below. “...How were you planning on getting down?” Ed asked, apparently not having thought that far when he climbed up.
Greed could have just climbed down the way he got up in the first place, but he had spent far too long playing the part of the grieving emperor. There was a much more entertaining alternative.
Ed looked over at him. “...Greed?” he slowly asked, already starting to read the expression on his face.
When Greed grabbed him and launched them both off of the roof a moment later, Ed really should have expected it. Even when Ed wildly swung his arms around after giving a startled yelp, Greed refused to let go.
Ed, after all, had made the mistake of saying that he was his friend. And Greed really didn't like giving up what was his.
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