Chapter Text
“Al…y’know, I don’t know for sure what’s gonna happen when we destroy it.”
“I know.”
“You can go back. It’s still open”
“I know.”
“...Winry and Granny’ll be sad.”
“I know.”
Edward looks at his little brother, and wonders when he grew up so much. He’d only missed a year, but it felt like a lifetime.
“I’m getting some real sick Deja Vu, right now, Little Brother.”
“Yeah, me too.” Al smiles sadly. “But at least we’re actually helping, this time.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
There’s a bright flash of light, and then Ed thinks maybe he should have listened to that Deja Vu when an eye splits open the ground and pulls them in.
Ed had a feeling today was going to be weird.
First, he’d woken up to a thunderstorm at 4 in the morning, Alphonse already fretting like this wasn’t Ed’s second year with automail. Plus, the storms were far worse in Resembool than the temperate city of Central.
He’d burnt the last pieces of bread he’d had in the dorms, and the early-morning street vendors were nowhere to be seen with the heavy downpour. Restaurants were closed this early, too.
And, of course, because Ed would never risk Al’s seal for the simple pleasure of being fully dry, his little brother hogged most of the umbrella. At least his automail was water-resistant.
He’d have to get Winry another gift.
The alchemist had then been assaulted by the overly-cheery-on-a-regular-day but worse-on-a-rainy-day secretary as soon as he’d walked into Central Command, only for her to tell him that he’d been summoned to Mustang’s office. As if he went anywhere else at 7 o’clock in the morning. Well, 7:15. He didn’t want the bastard getting a bigger head.
Ed kicks open the door as usual, grumbling about rain and a stick getting kicked farther up someone’s ass.
“I swear, Bastard, if you’re sending me on another stupid mine inspection, I’ll transmute your gloves to your face.” He glares at the man, definitely not pouting - no matter what Havoc says. Mustang smirks, not even bothering to look up at Edward.
“Actually, Fullmetal, it’s a catacomb.”
“Are you kidding me?! The hell am I gonna find around a bunch of dusty bones and outdated gold coins?!” He makes a move to lunge at the Colonel, but Alphonse’s metal arms grab him around the waist like he’s one of the countless stray cats he hides away in his armor. The string of profanity and threats goes unacknowledged as Mustang continues speaking.
“We’ve all been ordered to investigate the catacombs under the city, so think of it as a team exercise. You at least need to look like you’re part of my team. I can’t always let you run off chasing fairy tales, kid,” Mustang says, passing Ed and Al to enter the bullpen. Lieutenant Hawkeye hands him a stack of files that he passes out to each of them. “Here’s your briefing, but the Lieutenant will tell you the gist since I know you won’t actually read it.”
Ed huffs, plopping down at his own desk to the right of Hawkeyes. Her desk is separated from the main clump, being the First Lieutenant, but close enough none of them need to go to any great lengths to pass paperwork back and forth.
“Three hours ago, at 0400 hours, civilians populating complexes near the city center had reported a sudden rumbling under the ground. Soldiers within Central Command also reported feeling it, though it seemed to be a one-off quake. What was more concerning was the flash of blue light seen through some of the storm drains.” Hawkeye, as a rule, was unflappable and objective. It took almost a year for Edward to be able to read the small twitch of her brow and the corner of her mouth that told him it worried her.
“Wait, really? Why wait until now to send us down? The alchemist could be long gone by now!” Ed says, snapping upright in his chair. It had been 3 and half hours by this point, whoever was fucking around int he old catacombs could have left the city at this point.
“Easy, Chief,” Havoc says, leaning an elbow on Edward’s head. He swats at the man, but there isn’t any real heat behind it. He’s kind of always wanted an older brother. So he didn’t have to be the strong one for once. He knows the man does it to Breda and Fuery - would probably do it to Falman, if he wasn’t so tall. “All the catacomb entrances are monitored by military personnel," -so how the hell did they get in - "and the tunnels themselves are too unstable to try transmuting an escape route through the ground. If they’d tried, we would definitely know - one way or another.”
Either they’d be caught by the MP’s or cause a cave-in.
Great.
A day spent walking around with aching stumps, in the cold and heavy pressure of underground tunnels.
Great.
There’s a great big deal of nothing, for a while.
Al both does and doesn’t exist, time freezing and passing, speeding up and slowing down.
He’s moving at the speed of light and stuck in place.
He’s being taken apart and put back together again.
He’s holding his brother to his chest.
His brother hasn’t been put back together right.
Something is missing.
He wishes he knew what.
He hopes he never finds out.
In the span of a second - years, decades, no time at all - Al is blinking awake in the center of another portal.
His brother is not.
Edward is very stubbornly unconscious, blood dripping from his mouth in a steady stream.
Al’s entire body hurts, far worse than when he travelled through the portals before, chasing his brother across universes.
He hears a low growl from every direction, shooting up to see glowing eyes peering out from darkened tunnels that lead into the room.
Al readies his hands, staring down the chimeras that eye him back.
It’s his turn to protect his brother.
Roy was worried about Edward.
Which, nothing new, Riza had herself told him his reasoning got spotty when the two boys were involved. (How was he supposed to react, the shrimp wasn’t even a teenager yet.) But something was off today.
The boy was always sulky around Command, but he’d also acquired enough knowledge about automail to know how they got during weather patterns. (It was word of mouth. Absolutely nothing to do with the book in his study, None.) The kid looked more run-down than that, though. A sleepless night, to be sure, if the yawning and eye-rubing was anything to go by.
Roy himself was no stranger to them, but he knew Fullmetal’s were a different breed at times.
Still, the kid seemed to space off more and more the longer they spent in the catacombs. He’d shiver, blink rapidly, and then shake his head as if clearing it. Hawkeye had noticed, sending him a sidelong glance every time. He nods, slowing his pace a bit to match Edward’s better. The kid was sluggish today, no doubt a result of the aching automail ports.
“Hey, Colonel!” Breda yells down the hall, crouching near the ground. Roy sent Hawkeye a glance, a silent ‘keep an eye on the kid’ before approaching Breda. “Looks like alchemy, yeah?”
“Hasty alchemy, didn’t even bother covering their tracks,” Roy muses, running a hand along the rough transmutation marks. It looked as if something had been made from the stone of the ground and taken with whoever was lurking in the catacombs. It looked reminiscent of when Ed would make his spears, dipping before a spike pulled up in the middle. He also noted the lack of any chalk marks. An alchemical amplifier, or maybe tattoos, like Kimblee. “Keep a look out for any other transmutation sites. We’ll follow this path for now.”
“Ed?”
Riza’s voice carries across the empty space, loud enough for both the boy and Colonel to hear.
“Brother?” Alphonse is carefully following his brother, currently listlessly trudging down another pathway.
“What the…” Roy makes his way back to the three of them quickly, placing a hand on Ed’s shoulder. “Didn’t I tell you to stick with the group, Fullmetal?”
“I…yeah, I just…” Ed mumbles, undeterred by Roy’s hand. He walks with the kid, unease curling around his stomach. He’s suddenly very reluctant to remove his hand.
“Talk to me, kid. I can’t read minds, y’know.”
Ed mumbles too quietly for Roy to hear for a moment, before glancing at him for a moment.
“I dunno, I just…feel like we need to go this way.”
Roy shoots a raised eyebrow back at Hawkeye. She shakes her head, shrugging. Alphonse is no help either, fretting about his brother’s almost hypnotized state. Roy knocks a knuckle against the boy’s chest plate, giving what he hopes is a reassuring nod.
“You wanna tell me why you think that?” Roy asks, shifting the hand to the middle of Edward’s back.
“I…I felt it this morning…I thought it was just the storm, but…” Ed’s brow furrows, and he blinks again, taking in a sharp breath. “I-I dunno what it is.”
Okay, weird.
“This morning…I’m guessing that’s why you look dead on your feet?” he hears an intake of breath behind him - how a hollow suit can make that sound, he’ll never understand.
“Colonel, brother woke up at the same time the earthquake was reported! But, I didn’t feel anything…”
Okay, very weird.
“Alright, then. I guess we’re following whatever cosmic connection Fullmetal’s got going on today,” Roy mutters.
They walk for a while, Ed stopping occasionally at intersections for a moment before striding down at seemingly random. Riza shows him the map at some point, where she’s been tracking their progress.
The kid’s leading them right to the center.
He’s never been in the catacombs before, probably didn’t even know they existed until today.
Roy isn’t any less unnerved.
“Alright, shrimp, you gotta tell me what’s going on in that head of yours. Normal-level intelligence creatures here.” Ed doesn’t even react to the goading, just keeps walking.
“It’s…it’s alchemy…you don’t feel that?” Ed looks up at Roy, finally, eyes distant.
“Can’t say i do, ki…”
Roy makes the mistake of looking up ahead of them.
To the center of the catacombs.
“Is that..”
“Think so.”
“H-How did that even get here?!”
‘Sir-”
“Yeah, I see it.” The scattered exclamations of his subordinated drowns behind the static filling his ears as he stares at the center.
A transmutation circle.
A giant transmutation circle.
Roy’s never seen anything like it, not in all the years of studying alchemy or fighting alongside others alchemists.
What he does recognize is the seven points inside of the circle. He’s seen that before.
What worries him more are the obvious signs of struggle within the circle, leading to the tunnel they’ve come out of. He’d been so preoccupied making sure the kid didn’t flip out, he hadn’t been looking at his surroundings.
“Brother-!”
It’s reflex that has Roy catching Edward, body reacting before his mind has a chance to catch up. The boy is limp, head lolling back as Roy stops him from hitting the ground.
“Kid?! Kid, c’mon, it isn’t time to clock out yet,” Roy says frantically, lightly shaking the boy in an attempt to rouse him. The kid looks awful. His face is waxy, pulled in either pain or distress - Roy doesn’t know what to hope for - and his skin is cold and clammy. “Havoc, get over here!”
So much for keeping the kid steady.
Havoc hastily looks Ed over, confirming that there’s no hidden injury or some kind of seizure afflicting his kid subordinate.
He throws one last look at the circle, wondering - not for the first time - what the hell was happening in Central.