Chapter Text
GYAAAAAAHHHH!!
A bloodcurdling screech abruptly cuts through the quietude of the train car, and it instantly sends Alphonse's soul into a frenzied state.
What's going on!? He asks himself as he rips his attention away from the window and frantically spins his helmet around the train car's interior, poised to leap from his seat and get into a fighting stance once he finds someone struggling for their life or being held at gunpoint for some unreasonable amount of ransom.
Alphonse spends five long seconds surveying everything and everyone around him, but nothing happens.
The couple sitting across the aisle from him and Edward have yet to spring from their seats to escape what could be their impending doom. A mother and her two kids situated a row behind Alphonse's metal frame still chat amongst themselves without any perceived fear in their voices. And the elderly man taking a nap two seats away from Edward can still be heard snoring in bliss. None of them, nor the few other passengers occupying the car, have given any solid indicators that they heard or saw anything out of the ordinary.
The tranquil atmosphere remains undisturbed, and that in of itself greatly disturbs Alphonse.
Did no one else actually hear that!?
"Al?"
The teen pauses his surveillance to look down at his brother and sees his golden irises abandoned the book in his grasp to study him.
"Something wrong?" Edward asks, slightly alerted by the gasp the younger one let out seconds ago. The grip he had on his book has gone slack, and he no longer lounges back with his automail arm against the window sill.
"Uh," Alphonse hesitates to answer, and his unease increases tenfold as he realizes that his own brother somehow hadn't heard the greatly agonizing scream either.
It couldn't have come from the outside of the train car, because it'd be awfully difficult to hear anything beyond the usual cacophony of noises produced by the train, but there's no way it could've come from any of the other train cars since it sounded so close.
Maybe I just misheard the kids while they were playing? He suggests to himself hopefully.
The suggestion is a flimsy one, much like the ribbon protruding from the top of his helmet, and his hope is killed as quickly as it came into existence.
The screech was far too visceral and left him too shaken up for it to be so carelessly explained away as one of the younger kids' yells of play, especially when none of the kids had ever come close to being so loud during the trip. The very idea of his own mind being so far gone that it'd play jokes on him isn't remotely funny, nor is it an idea he's willing to seriously entertain, as it's dangerously close to crossing over into an area of his mind he desperately tries to steer clear of.
He may be forced to consider the possibility though, seeing how he's evidently the only one in the car who heard that singular scream.
That's the strangest part, Alphonse has the unsettling thought as he performs one last sweep of his surroundings, and he confirms for a second time that nothing is wrong.
Oftentimes, he's subjected to a plethora of unpleasant thoughts in the dead of night, when the rest of the world has gone to bed without him and left him alone with nothing but the light of the moon and the stars as his sole companion. He wouldn't go so far to say that dealing with his inability to sleep has gotten easier over time, because it assuredly hasn't, but he's grown used to combating his restless mind by distracting himself with any activity he can find to do throughout the night. He is not typically combating his restless mind in the middle of the day when the sun still lights the sky with blue, and definitely not while on a train car half full of passengers who occasionally grab his attention with their numerous idiosyncrasies.
And, loathe as he is to think of it, he's used to spiraling because of an overactive imagination, not auditory hallucinations.
This is an entirely new occurrence that he hasn't the slightest idea how to navigate.
Alphonse watches his brother's confusion deepen with a quirk of an eyebrow, no doubt growing concerned by the lengthy amount of time he's taking to make sense of his dilemma.
Edward lowers his book with a start and he goes to ask again, "Al—"
"N-Nothing," Alphonse's arms raise with a clink to placate his brother as he hurriedly strings together an answer to cut him off. "It's nothing. I just thought I heard...something."
The weak reply doesn't convince the older alchemist the slightest bit, though he brings himself to relax a bit once he ascertains that there isn't an immediate threat to be dealt with. He still questions his little brother with a wary frown, "Okay, like what? Did it sound like it came from the train?"
"...I don't know. I don't think so. I don't hear it anymore though, so I guess it really was nothing," Alphonse tells him, and he fights the urge to fidget with the leather of his hands as he lowers his arms.
It is a lie, but not a complete one, because he can't determine where the scream came from, let alone what (or who) could've made it. And, the more he contemplates describing to Edward what essentially sounded like someone screaming their lungs out in terror, the harder it becomes for him to imagine a scenario where his brother would ever believe his explanation without thinking there's something seriously wrong with him.
He's already half a step away from doing that himself.
So he makes the fairly juvenile decision of changing the subject before any further prying can be done, "There's one last stop before Youswell, right?"
A stretch of silence passes between them as Edward visibly thinks of broaching the topic again, but he ultimately sighs in defeat seconds later, and he files the incident away for later prodding to appease Alphonse. He answers the question about their destination, "Yeah, Aszamem, and then another 30 minutes give or take. We shouldn't be in Youswell for too long. We're just going there for a mine inspection, and then we'll be on the first train out of there."
Alphonse thinks of the sun's current position in the sky and comments, "It'll be sundown by the time we make it to Youswell though, and we don't know how long the inspection will take. It wouldn't kill you to rest a ittle more before we head back out."
"Look, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can get back to our own business." Edward emphasizes his displeasure with a close of his book and tosses it aside to start ranting, "I don't see the point in us doing this anyway since there's already a lieutenant stationed there. If the colonel just wants an update on their mining operations, then he should ask them about it instead of sending us to the edge of the border. Better yet, he should just go there himself since he apparently didn't have any new leads to give us."
"Finding leads on the stone isn't easy for anyone to do, Brother," Alphonse reasons.
Edward crosses his arms and responds bitterly, "I'm well aware of that, Al. But just because he doesn't have a lead doesn't mean we wouldn't be able to find a lead on our own. This assignment's just out of the way."
"And what about the times when we can't find a lead? An assignment wouldn't exactly be out the way then."
"Yes it would!" The young state alchemist counters hotly, "Any amount of time that we could spend looking in a different direction is getting wasted on doing work for that walking matchstick. He gets to sit around with his pompous mug as he grows one step closer to that stupid promotion he's always daydreaming about. Meanwhile, we just get a clap on the shoulder for busting our asses, and we're no closer to finding a stone."
Alphonse decides against arguing how being a part of the military means being forced to do actual military work sometimes, knowing Edward doesn't need or want to be reminded of what and all he signed up for. He instead says, "Don't you think the colonel's been honestly helping us? I mean, sure, you still have to take on assignments from the military, but he's at least been picking out ones we'd be fine dealing with by ourselves."
Edward rolls his eyes, "You mean what Mustang thinks we can handle since we're just 'a couple of kids'."
The younger Elric pushes past the comment, "And he gave us the lead on Liore not too long ago."
"That one sure helped us out," comes the sarcastic reply.
"Brother—"
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Edward relents a little at his brother's tone of disapproval. "It's not like he had control over Cornello's stone being a fake. I still say he should've done this one himself though. We've got better things to do than sit around scrutinizing carts full of minerals."
That wouldn't be so bad, the armored teen thinks to himself, admittedly welcoming some of the small breaks they get from trying to return their bodies back to normal, especially after experiencing the stinging disappointment of yet another false lead just a week ago in Liore.
Edward needs these breaks too, try as he might to deny himself of them. These long rides on the trains can sometimes be brutal on him.
Alphonse eventually responds to his brother's prior admission, "He is a colonel, Brother. He probably doesn't have enough time on his hands to do it himself."
Edward deadpans, "Al, that lazy bum barely even does his own paperwork. He's got nothing but time on his hands."
The 14-year-old lightly chuckles and doesn't bother trying to defend Colonel Mustang this time, well aware of Lieutenant Hawkeye often needing to threaten the older man into picking up a pen so he doesn't wait until the last minute to sloppily rush through his work. There have even been numerous occasions when the boys arrived to see the other members of the unit stuck at their desks with some of his paperwork in their hands, Hawkeye included, though she'll almost always be the first to finish her stack.
Edward's current expression strongly reminds Alphonse of Mustang's during moments like those; eyebrows drawn together and mouth twisted downward with annoyance, all because his own workload is getting in the way of him doing anything else until it's finished.
Brother would rather swallow a needle than admit that him and the colonel are alike, Alphonse muses to himself in humor. He offers some words of encouragement for his brother, "Maybe we'll get lucky and find something in Youswell."
Edward fixes him with a look, part suspicion and part amusement, "A coal mining town on the outskirts of Amestris having leads on human alchemy? That's wishful thinking, even by your standards."
"You never know. The booking clerk did say the town doesn't get many visitors after all," Alphonse says with a metallic shrug, and while he isn't so certain that they'll find anything worthwhile in the town either, it doesn't change the fact that they truthfully don't know what they'll find there.
Alchemists are known for finding and developing a myriad of creative methods to hide their work from unwanted lookers, with some methods being more extreme than others. They'll sometimes encode their research to appear as innocent as a lone cookbook that holds nothing more than recipes on quiches and pies to those who are less observant. They'll lock their materials away in some hidden compartment of their own homes, with some of those hidden compartments only being accessible via alchemy. Some alchemists will even resort to running off to a less populated area to avoid detection as they immerse themselves into their passion, free to operate without any lambastings from the public or legal restrictions from the military.
Resembool wasn't so different.
Edward's expression turns pensive as he picks up on the implication of his brother's words, but he simply leans back in his seat and sets his gaze upon the passing landscapes. "We'll see."
Alphonse hums in agreement and follows suit.
The air between them goes still with silence again.
The "normalcy" of their conversation does its job of successfully diverting Alphonse's train of thought from the odd phenomenon he'd experienced, and the rest of the evening's wild sequence of events are almost enough make him forget the phenomenon ever happened.
Almost.