Chapter Text
“He’s only going to be gone for a while y’know”
“What?”
“Al, he’ll only be gone for a while. He’s going to Xing with Mei and then he’ll be back. It’s not like he’ll be gone forever, that’s what you do when you leave home, you come back.”
-
It was since this particular conversation that had Roy additionally rather concerned for Edward’s mental state since the Promised Day.
Alphonse had left with his not-girlfriend to study Alkahestry whereas Edward started wandering aimlessly. The previous assumption was that he would settle down with Ms.Rockbell but they weren’t quite sure how to navigate together quietly after their very different lifestyles up to this point. Which was one of the few things that made sense in reality given how unreal the Elric’s lives had been. Edward himself tended to keep little contact with the people he’d met, either from his childhood to travels thereafter. Hardly conducive to fostering and keeping close relationships. So after running amok for years on a constant countdown towards impending loss, Ed wasn’t used to stopping, couldn’t stay with anyone long enough, and was unable to settle as of yet. The disquiet of a soldier, though he might deny having been one.
Alphonse on the other hand kept a steady streak of writing, telegramming, or calling when possible to just about everyone. According to him it was his way of maintaining humanity where he otherwise was literally an empty metal shell. So while Ed didn’t exactly foster deep human relationships to define comprehensive shared understanding, Al studied it and was able to discern his learned understanding from his brother from shared communication of the typical populace. Usually.
Speaking of, “Well yeah, of course I’m coming back. It’s just going to be a while. Alkahestry is a lot more intuitive than alchemy. There’s science to it, of course, at its core but much more of it according to Mei is focus and feeling which is supposed to make sense as she explains it but I myself can’t say it feels like anything is being explained,” Al has the audacity to say.
“No, yes, wait, no I understand that, what I am trying to understand is that Fullmetal-” “He’s not Fullmetal anymore” “-right, he seems to think that you’re just on vacation and that ‘coming home’ means you will once again be living together indefinitely when you do come back,” Roy very much has tried to re-explain this to Alphonse multiple times during this conversation and somewhere something keeps going wrong.
“Oh, you mean, ah,” Alphones eloquently relays, as the discernment between brother and other resumes.
“‘Oh,’ I do mean, yes, I’m afraid when he comes to the realization that you are not just visiting Xing but living there and will be visiting him he may not take it so well,” Roy says.
So far Edward himself had been travelling around to the places the brothers had previously righted every wrong Edward could get his tiny little hands on without even realizing he’d latched himself onto. He very well could have just done the job he was asked and walked away. There were many times where his job was just to check in and then suddenly Roy is getting both thank you letters and property damage claims that end up rescinded with more thank yous after the kid fixed whatever was wrecked during whatever horrible town problem he’s being thanked for fixing. According to Edward, he didn’t actually remember much of the places themselves. The actions that led them there, the alchemical discoveries, the people, and the Trauma™, sure, but not so much things like any normal person would when touring a place.
“You were his purpose for years. I know you know this. Between the two of you only one has the emotional intelligence, and given how much regular intelligence you both hold he’s filled his meager vessel beyond full even without Truth expounding alchemy’s secrets to him at all times, that’s almost not unreasonable. I know neither of you are under my command anymore-” “Technically I never was” “My point is! That having the world’s savior just going around doing whatever might be too anticlimactic for him, and that without a purpose this wandering is going to lead him into a ditch no one can find.” Roy finally seems to get his uncovered concerns out in a way that gives Alphonse the pause he was expecting at the beginning of the conversation.
No Roy doesn’t think that Alphonse would ever neglect his brother or not see the possibility of what would happen to an aimless Edward without him. Roy is just afraid that after the boys were cleared to go their separate ways he may have thought that Edward was good enough mentally to do so as well as physically. That Ed would find a new drive to hold onto with his non-achemical diamond hands.
After a moment where it seems Al has taken this into consideration he sighs, “Colonel”, and now it’s Roy’s turn to interrupt for once “General actually”, and Al disinterestedly responds(which is disheartening because if either Elric would ever give genuine response it would have been sweet Alphonse) “Congratulations,” and continues, “Anyway, I’m sure he’ll find something. In fact I’m sure he’s found multiple somethings by now. Probably already resolved those somethings but Brother has always had a knack for being in just the wrong place at the right time.”
“I know he has. Even though he’s retired he still occupies the topic of at least a fourth of the paperwork on my desk,” Roy had gotten sick of it the first week after picking up the Elrics at age eleven and ten but the incredible feat that it is still going on even beyond ending conscription is just some bullshit. The kid is incredible, he’ll give him that, but how things continue to happen, how he keeps creating minor miracles to the average even now that he too has lost his alchemical advantage is remarkable. “But currently he himself is occupying the couch in my office while completely and utterly shitfaced without so much as a by your leave.”
Alphonse was not supposed to have this much audacity but perhaps it was simply overshadowed, which is incredible given his stature, by his brother’s. “Col- General, I still don’t see the issue?”
“Edward has been showing up plastered and passing out on my couch more and more recently and I am thinking the reality of the situation, his loss, your gain, and both your separation, may finally be setting in for the worse,” Roy says and just hopes it leads somewhere so he can send Edward literally anywhere else (he doesn’t want him anywhere else).
“General, the frequency I understand is concerning, but I don’t think it’s because he thinks we’re supposed to be staying together like before now, or even before everything that led to it,” Al explains with the air of a teacher who realized that their repetition has made them numb to what learners are facing with an entirely new topic to them and backtracks to the beginning with a newfound patience with the epiphany that their students are not, simply stupid. “Brother is not realizing that ‘I’m not coming back the way he thinks I am’. I don’t know what the rest of the drinking is about, are you quite sure it’s drinking, it really could be a lot of things with him, you never know. Quite the enigma, my brother. What I’m saying is that he knows things are different. It’s not just hitting him.”
Roy still can’t entirely get over it considering there is a facedown Edward, concernedly possibly not breathing at times, on his fucking couch with alarming frequency. So Roy has got to ask, “Yes, Alphonse, I am sure he is plastered. So, if he isn’t just in denial of at least the change in the circumstances of your distance, why does he keep saying you’ll just be back?”
“Because that’s what you do when you leave home to him.” Al states. So plainly he states. Like that all just makes sense. Like your place of dwelling for years isn’t actually your permanent placement so long as you go to your original residence once every few years.
Clearly some clarification is in order, “But that isn’t ‘coming back’, that’s ‘visiting’.”
Alphonse’s first social language was the same as everyone else around him but after losing their mother and becoming all the more isolated his social language was based on Ed who always remained in his own category that those around him adapted to. Through observation Alphonse redeveloped common ground and spoke both Brother vs other. Though brothers they always very much remain, once they left Resembool where fewer people found Ed coherent, Al had established himself more in the other category to his brother.
“It’s not to him,” Alphonse explains, “To Brother, coming back means returning to the people who matter to you. It doesn’t mean forever, it doesn’t even mean for a long time. Coming back may just be stopping in to use your bathroom. As long as he knows that you are indeed coming back, you’ll get a typical ‘Hey!’ like you’ve barely been gone and a punch to the face can be avoided.”
Given that Edward effectively punched his gate, his immortal dad, and essentially God, avoiding a punch is preferable even without automail.
Edward, who was until this point comatose on Roy’s couch, is actually showing signs of life. Which holy fuck thank whatever, but also Roy needs to get to the bottom of whatever this new epiphany is before whatever the little shit pulls next given his every waking moment is a catastrophe. Of course, this culminates in the ever excellent and well thought out, “What?”
“General, I realize that his view of things is a bit skewed. We’d been running for so long and he’s been so focused the entire time that his view beyond our mission looks very different to him than to anyone else. He spent the time hyperfocused in a misplaced guilt he was never meant to carry so that I could spend my time experiencing whatever I could without any real physical senses. I learned how the general populace works by watching them, I watched to see what it would be like once I had my body back. Because Brother always said I would. So I know he thinks differently, and that he himself doesn’t realize that. What he sees as logical can be completely insane to someone else, and he won’t see why, and little is going to change that. We set our house on fire, General.”
Roy somehow keeps forgetting that fun little nugget of their past. Dad leaves, Mom dies, learns alchemy from Izumi Curtis, human transmutation and its consequences, sets their house on fire, and the military with all that has entailed. Somehow setting the house on fire actually became more of a footnote. “...Yes, because something about so you both wouldn’t be tempted to go back.”
“Exactly; When you have a house, you live there, and you stay there; We couldn’t do that. If the house was still there we would go back and stay. That’s just logical to him. Although his definition of stay had changed in our travels, now it really can be brief and still count. At the time it was a return and reroot which also meant give up. Only after a long time did we even begin to stay in the dorms and he accepted that mostly because he had conceptualized the dorm as a hotel or temporary hostel and not home. Your welcome by the way, I had to figure out how to present that to him. Just- ask him what is going on- no, actually, ask what he’s been up to these days, better yet ask what he’s discovered recently. That’s also the best time to get him to drink some water and give him something to eat. If his drunken stupors are anything like his multi day no sleep research binges, which they are, this is the time.”
Those signs of life are really kicking in now as Edward groans, rolls off the couch with a more passionate groan, an oof, and something like the sound a stepped on cat makes when he opens his eyes to the light of the burning suns straight to his retinas otherwise known as the ambient light gently coming through the office window not even directly on him.
“Now would be a good time to hand him some water and ask,” Al reminds him. Clearly knowing the difference between a distressed cat noise and a distressed Brother noise even from another country across the desert over the phone.
So Roy starts, “Fullme-” “No, sir.” Alphonse intervenes
And starts again, “Edward, what riveting scientific discoveries have led you to so frequently deign my couch with the graceless kicks of your inebriated heavy left-footed presence?” There, he followed Al’s advice. He doesn’t have any water on hand though, he’ll get some for Edward after he gets his answer.
Ed looks at Roy like one, he can barely conceptualize his presence, and two, like he has no idea who he is. “I met some people who study Xerxes and apparently they found that the oldest known recipe for anything is a beer and they’ve been trying to recreate it and when we found out it was shit, how to improve it. Turns out there are a ton of ways you can improve on anything that is bad given that: it’s bad. And can also be made from just about any organic substance, so we’ve been trying a lot. Then every time we tried it they would ‘toast’ and I was like why are we saying burnt bread when we drink. Some of this isn’t classified as beer, they aren’t even related anymore, there’s no wheat. So we found out that ‘toast’ comes from putting a piece of bread in your wine to reduce acidity so we started trying our alcohol mixes with different breads and testing their acidity based on the make up of both the brews and the breads. I will say we strayed pretty far from the Xerxian recipe that started this but they are opening up a new bar downtown with all this shit we made. You guys should try it when it opens. I have rights to a good portion of the stuff. Go fund me.”
And if that recollection was within Roy’s expectations he would be Truth themself.
For someone who must have or is actively in the process of creating a massive hangover that was incredibly informative, though a bit difficult to discern some of the things he was saying given the slurring.
They did end up going to what is adjacent to being Ed’s bar and Roy and his entire team, even Hawkeye, must admit, they did make some damn good alcohol. Given that science is the basis of alchemy it makes sense that without it Edward would just go back to doing science the long way. In a sense he didn’t lose anything but efficiency (and sobriety for the duration of this fixation). Currently the team's new project is finding Edward a new project because while this one had clearly been interesting enough to occupy him for some time the threat to his sobriety is equivalent in threat to his health. So while Roy is in far less fear for Edward’s mentality, outside of inebriation, he is in fear of what the kid may literally cook up in his future aimless endeavors.