here, here, my family (you are my familiar, you are my familiar)

They’re not totally oblivious to how little they have in common, physically speaking. Ed got absolutely nothing from Trisha, dripping with his father’s golden coloration. Al lacks even a vague resemblance to Hohenheim, practically a male incarnation of his mother. Pigment aside—Al got Mom’s light brown hair, but his eyes are scarlet instead of green, and even before they learn what genetics are and how it works, they find it a little odd.

But they don’t really question it. They’ve been at each other’s side since as long as either of them can remember, bound by a single home that exists between them in a permanently shared state. Together, they stumble into alchemy, brilliantly eager, and together they wrap a complicated science around their little fingers.

And that’s all that really matters, for the longest time. They are family, in every sense of the word. Even when Hohenheim disappears one bright, clear morning and Trisha fades into sickness, that doesn’t change. They rely on each other instead.

It would be a lie to say they never saw it coming—they just took their time fitting all the pieces together.

For the longest time, Al has only a passing understanding of what “Ishvalan” means. He knows he is one, knows that they live in a place called Ishval, that people look at kind of him funny because his eyes are scarlet. It just doesn’t mean anything to him in the way that it probably should.

To her credit, Mom does try to teach him some traditions of the religion and culture and language. It’s not her fault Al has no interest, and Brother no investment, and so the attempts die. If Al were older and more reverent, he might have been greedier for what she had to say—Mom is of Risembool, but she lived in Ishval for a time, so she knows the customs as best as an Amestrian can.

But he isn’t old enough to appreciate it. He’s still a child who doesn’t really understand that there are different races of people and that different colorations can mean different things. The word “Ishvalan” is nothing more than a collection of syllables to him, something distant and other from himself. Why learn about prayer when he can learn alchemy instead?

Somewhere along the way, he figures that if he is Ishvalan, so then are his mother and brother. They don’t have red eyes like him, but they’re family. If they’re all the same thing, it just makes sense.

That is only a child’s logic. Reality is not so simple.

For the longest time, Ed doesn’t think too much of their eyes being different colors. Al is kind of light (for an Ishvalan) while Ed is kind of dark (for an Amestrian), so he overlooks it. He also overlooks the fact that Mom had a boyfriend back in Ishval before she met Hohenheim—it’ll be a while before he figures out that two people can be siblings while having different fathers, and by then he’ll completely disregard the anachronism.

In the meantime, he’s a good big brother. He’s gruff but loving, huffy but patient, punches bullies in the nose, and overall sticks persistently by Al’s side. They do everything together because they do not yet know a world where separation is more than a brief, impermanent thing immediately mended the next day. For all intents and purposes, they exist to be siblings.

Mom particularly approves when Ed shares his toys or grudgingly comforts Al when he’s crying. The approval warms him—he’s a child, and his mother is his entire world. Even more so, after Hohenheim left.

It still hurts to think about, the way his father’s eyes pierced before he walked out the door and never came back. By the time Ed realizes the finality that marked that bright, chilly spring morning, he’s all but renounced any familial connections to Hohenheim. He refuses to consider someone who abandoned their child a father in any sense of the word.

Somewhere along the way, he decides that all he needs in life is his mother and his brother. They don’t look anything alike, but they’re family. They have the same last name, so it just makes sense like that.

That is only a child’s logic. Reality is not so simple.

By the time Al figures out that Hohenheim isn’t his biological father, he also realizes there are no photos of the man who is. Mom never really talked about her old boyfriend, only mentioned his name once as far as Al can recall, so he’s left with a giant question mark hovering over his heritage.

To an extent, he still considers Hohenheim his father. He knows Ed doesn’t, cannot comprehend why Al would prefer someone who left them over someone who, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t exist.

But see, Hohenheim is someone that Al can put a face to the word “Dad”. He knows what Hohenheim looks like, remembers snippets and flashes from his toddlerhood, and a figment is still better than nothing at all.

Losing Mom is like having the entire universe collapse into a fiery burst of heat-death and entropy. Ed is five when she fades, and he’s too young to know yet that crying is an option rather than a requirement. In the future, he’ll hoard his tears like a miser hoarding currency, but he weeps openly at the funeral.

A world without her is just too much for him to bare, let alone comprehend. Perhaps, given time and the support of others, he might have been able to swallow down the hot shards of grief. He could have moved on.

But see, he’s just too young to understand death and the necessity of it. He dares to consider getting it all back, a moment of hubris that will leave a brand upon his soul and blind him for many, many years until he realizes why men fear God.

Whenever soldiers pass through Risembool on their way to the warfront, Al hides in the house to avoid a gun aimed at his temple. Leaving to train with Teacher in Dublith is an unexpected blessing.

Things are different, in Dublith. The summer heat is muggy in a way that beats down on your brow as relentlessly as a blacksmith hammers steel. There’s still propaganda on the radio that denounces the Ishvalans, but it’s not as frequent or as derogatory as he’s used to, and it’s mostly just trying to stir patriotism to support the war. People who don’t know him, who see him as an Other instead of an Elric, narrow their eyes distrustfully when he passes. No troops clad in the military’s colors arrive in the town carrying guns and bullets aimed for the people living in the desert, and he doesn’t have to fear going outside.

Once, when summer reaches a fevered pitch and Teacher declares it’s too hot for them to train without risking heat stroke, they cloister themselves in the guestroom to escape the sun’s tyranny. Brother is trying to keep up pretenses of diligence, pouring over the books that Teacher assigned them to read while sweat drips from his brow. Al, on the other hand, just stares blankly at the ceiling and tries not to think about the fact that he can feel his brain melting.

“How do you think the Ishvalans stand it?” he asks, suddenly.

Brother looks up, blinking with bright saffron eyes. “What?”

“The heat,” Al says. “This is insane. Who can live in this?”

A frown folds on Brother’s face, and he seems to think about that, then says, “Isn’t the desert dry, though?”

That’s true. It’s pretty humid here in Dublith, with today being no exception. Moisture is so thick in the air that you can scarcely breathe around it. Al supposes the desert wouldn’t be like that.

Not that he would know. He’s never set foot anywhere outside Risembool until now.

“Yeah.” Al looks up at the ceiling again. “I guess so.”

At some point or another, Ed concludes that half the reason why Teacher accepted them as her apprentices is so she could exploit them for free labor. She makes them sweep the floors and wipe the windows and even has them help out in the butcher’s shop. When the delivery truck needs to be packed up, she gives him and Al a clipboard and a sheet of paper and orders them to keep track of the boxes that Mason loads up to double-check that they haven’t missed anything on the order

“Why do you have a delivery truck in the first place?” Al asks, sitting off the back porch, legs swinging off the step while Ed marks another tally under “pork”. “Don’t people usually just come into the shop?”

Ed glances at the half-loaded truck-back. “And who buys that much meat?”

“Restaurants in the area, mostly,” says Mason, heaving another crate onto the lip. The word “beef” is stamped across it in bold black letters, so Ed makes another tally on the sheet. “But there are also folks who live too far from the shop to come in on a daily basis—or people who live on the outskirts of the city. Some even live outside it.”

“Outside?” Al repeats, bewildered.

“Yeah. Like, there’s this one old alchemist friend of Izumi’s who lives in this old mansion in the woods? I think she doesn’t really like people, so she doesn’t come into town anymore. Everything is delivered.”

Ed pulls a frown. “Why does she not like people?”

To which Mason shrugs. “Well, some folks just like their privacy, y’know?”

That’s true. Risembool had a couple hermits or two that found human company absolutely intolerable. Maybe because they never had anyone to be with. Ed supposes that there’s some people who are just used to being alone.

Not that he would know. He’s always had Al at his side, as constant as the sun rising every morning.

“Yeah.” Ed looks down at the sheet again. “I guess so.”

When the newspaper declares an end to the Ishval war, Brother turns boneless with relief and his eyes shine golden-bright as he grins up at Al. “I bet this means that they’ll stop with the witch hunt.”

That would be nice, because Al doesn’t particularly like being hunted. It might mean an end to hiding when soldiers roam through Risembool, searching for red-eyed people hiding from the military’s wrath. It might mean that he can finally walk around like a normal person, without people looking at him a little funny because of his eye color.

But it makes him wonder why the war ended so suddenly, so abruptly. The Fuhrer said they weren’t going to stop until every last Ishvalan was dead—so maybe they finally ran out of Ishvalans to kill. Something about that makes him kind of sad, for some reason.

He takes the paper and stares at the headline, unsure how to feel.

When they get home, Ed checks the mail, and is surprised to find a single letter inside their mailbox. The date stamped on it is from five months ago, when they were still on Yock Island. There’s dust on the paper.

A cheap postage stamp kisses the upper right corner, the kind that you could probably get a whole sheet of for just five cenz. The paper feels kind of cheap too, like something someone picked out at the last minute. Scrawled across the envelope in nervous letters reads their address, their mother’s name, the sender’s name.

Without thinking, Ed rips the envelope open. Inside is maybe a half-sheet of paper, which he’s ripping into a million pieces before Al can see it—before long, he has a handful of white confetti instead of a letter. Something about that makes him kind of angry, for some reason.

He takes the envelope and stares at the name, unsure how to feel.

They are their mother’s sons and they each have half her blood. Two halves, one whole. Two drops to make a soul. It should work.

It doesn’t.

Colonel Mustang bids them to join the military. They do. At least this way, they can try to get back what they lost.

Hopefully, this attempt will be more successful than their last.

Meeting Scar for the first time is—jarring.

Not just because Al is reduced to a heap of scrap metal and because he nearly watches his brother die right in front of him while he is powerless to do anything. That’s part of it, but.

It’s the first time he’s met anyone like himself. Well, not totally like himself, because Scar strikes Al as a being composed of sharp, broken angles that are a remnant of someone who was shattered by an impact. But even without a ragged scar searing across his forehead and a shock of white hair, likeness could be found in scarlet eyes.

All of a sudden, a hard, sharp line crops up between “Amestrian” and “Ishvalan”.

Between “Amestrian” and “him”.

It’s just... too much. He’s never even heard of Ishvala—okay, not never never, Mom had tried to impart that different culture and language to him, it wasn’t her fault he hadn’t listened—but apparently, he’s meant to believe in this god so wholeheartedly that he should kill in His name? Or at least, that’s what Scar made it sound like, and so far he’s the only reference Al has to this mysterious religion he should be part of but isn’t, and he’s not sure if that’s how it works overall or if Scar is just one man who’s twisting a very spiritual faith into something that justifies murder.

“You’re nothing like him,” Brother tells Al, voice firm, golden eyes resolute.

He knows that’s probably meant to be a reassurance. It should be a reassurance. That man is very likely responsible for Nina’s death. But at the same time, that thought strikes him with a strange sense of loss. Like the separation between them should be a bad thing. Like there’s something wrong with Al that he’s not angry and vengeful the way Scar is.

Based upon what Scar said, the Ishvalans condemn alchemy as a sin rather than a virtue. So by Scar’s definition, that would make Al just as much a sinner as the State Alchemists that razed the desert.

That still rattles him. All these years, he’s grown friendly and cordial with Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye and their team and other people in the military like Major Armstrong and Lt. Col. Hughes. He’s even started to consider them something like friends, albeit friends who are older and more mature and, well, grownups. And all this time, they’ve been responsible for the extermination of his people.

His people. Not Brother’s, or Mom’s, or even Hohenheim’s/Dad’s. Just Al’s. He’s part of something that they aren’t, exists in a different category. He’s on one side of the line between “Amestrian” and “Ishvalan” while they are all on the other.

In that one family portrait with all four of them, his red eyes are an outlier. He’s the thing that does not belong.

He doesn’t like thinking of himself as “other”.

All the while Dr. Marcoh talks about the war that raged through Ishval and how the Philosopher’s Stone was used as a genocidal bioweapon, Ed feels his heart beating too-loud in his ears. He casts discreet glances in his brother’s direction, searching for any remote signs or symptoms of distress, but finds none.

Even after Dr. Marcoh relents and confides in them where he hid his research, offers them a ray of hope to light their way, Al remains silent and sullen. Ed would do anything to know what his brother is thinking, but he knows it’s not his place.

Al is Ishvalan, and Ed is not, and this is a subject he has no baring over. It’s a divide between them, and he doesn’t like it.

Night has fallen deep and slow over the countryside when Major Armstrong approaches Al. There’s a skittishness in his eyes, a photograph held tentatively in his massive fingers. Al doesn’t need to look to know that it’s a snapshot of himself when he was still flesh and blood and a brown face bearing blood-red eyes.

“I don’t need an apology, if that’s what this is about,” Al says, trying to keep his voice as lighthearted as he can manage.

Major Armstrong flinches. “But—”

“I’m not angry.” And Al means that. He doesn’t quite forgive them, these people who destroyed Ishval and its people, but he can’t find himself to hate as violently as Scar does. “I wasn’t there, so. I don’t think I’m really someone you need to apologize to.”

“...still.”

A sigh rattles in Al’s broken emptiness. He can’t wait until Brother’s arm is fixed and he can stand back up on his own two feet. “Major, I’m a suit of armor. I don’t have a race or a religion or any of that. So please, don’t worry about it, okay?”

The Major lingers, face dark with guilt, but he ultimately bows his head in acquiescence. When he goes back inside, Al looks out at the dark sky, wondering if that’s really true.

They go to Teacher’s in hopes of asking her about the Philosopher’s Stone. They learn instead that Hohenheim is a self-proclaimed expert on it, and Ed clenches his fists to keep from breaking everything.

At the very least, Teacher understands why they don’t want to seek their sorry excuse for a father out, even if she seems a little disappointed by it. She’s probably hoping they can make amends and live happily ever after, but like hell that’s going to happen. Still—she doesn’t know very much about the Stone, so she can’t be of much help.

“But I do have an old colleague who studied it in the past,” she offers.

They perk up immediately. “You do?” Al asks excitedly.

“Her name is Dante. She’s a bit of a recluse, and lives outside the city.” Teacher folds her arms and stares hard at the wall, her frown thunderous. “We don’t talk as much as we used to, but... she might hear you out, if you tell her you’re my students.”

That, admittedly, doesn’t bode as well as it could, but it’s better than nothing. They accompany Mason as he makes a delivery to a big mansion in the woods where she apparently lives. As the road becomes bumpier and the woods deepen, Ed has to wonder what kind of lunatic would actually prefer to live out here. Like, he enjoys camping as much as the next person, but the trees rustle in a way that makes the back of his neck prickle, and he nearly bangs his head on the ceiling no less than three times whenever the truck’s tires hit a root or something.

Al responds to his complaints with snickering, the brat.

Standing under the shadow of the mansion—and yes, it is a mansion, a sumptuous thing of enormity and grandeur, aged in the way old and beautiful houses are without being dilapidated—stirs something in Ed. Some... not quite nostalgia, per se, but something like it. He shakes it away when Mason uses the brass doorknocker to alert this mysterious Dante of their arrival.

The person who opens it is deceptively young and very lovely, but in a stern, severe way. Her dark hair is sheered into a cutting bob, a sharp contrast to her milky face and liquid violet eyes. She parts rosy lips to address Mason, but then stops, her face shifting as her gaze flits over his shoulder.

“Afternoon, Miss Alighieri,” Mason greets brightly.

She doesn’t seem to hear him, her piercing gaze pinning Ed in place. He swallows and resists the urge to fidget. Something about the way she looks at him inspires this sudden urge to run in the opposite direction.

Mason seems to recognize where her attention lays and offers a sheepish chuckle while tucking a hand behind his head. “Oh, uh, these two are Izumi’s students. They wanted to talk alchemy with you, so I brought ‘em along. This is—”

“Edward,” she says.

Al straightens and Ed blinks. They both turn to each other in absolute bewilderment, but if Al knows anything more than Ed does, he certainly isn’t offering it, so they’re both in the same boat of knowing absolutely nothing about what’s going on here.

“Uh... you know each other?” Mason asks, a touch awkward.

Her face softens, suddenly, and her lips part into a radiant white smile. “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby.”

This is weird, right? Like, legit freaky. It’s not just Ed that’s struck with a sudden and inexplicable surge of discomfort?

She continues, “You ended up looking so much like your father.”

...of fucking course.

After Mason leaves, Al and Brother end up in Miss Dante’s parlor. She serves tea which Al unfortunately has to decline, then settles herself across from them in a whisper of dark silk.

“So how did you know Dad?” Al asks while Brother sips his tea carefully, amber eyes narrowed with that same smoldering distrust whenever the subject of Hohenheim comes up.

That makes Miss Dante grow still.

Slowly, she lowers her cup. There’s a clink of porcelain as it greets the dish. “I wasn’t aware he had other children.”

Something in the way she says that sounds almost like an accusation, and a flush of irrational embarrassment goes through him. “Oh, no, I’m not— Like, biologically speaking, he’s not— I just, uh, call him ‘Dad’,” he finishes, rather lamely.

She seems satisfied with that, albeit only barely. That shadow of skepticism lingers before Brother coughs into his fist, drawing her attention back to him. The change in her demeanor is immediate—the harshness immediately falls off her, replaced by something warm and amiable and a pleasant smile that curls prettily across her face. “So. Why did Izumi send you boys all the way out here?”

The change of topic is a welcome one. They tell her about the Philosopher’s Stone, their interest in it, their hope that she can help them pursue it. As they’re discussing it amongst themselves, Al is vaguely aware of how the keen way Miss Dante focuses on and addresses Brother. Brother seems to notice to, starts to grow visibly uncomfortable as the conversation drags on, but does his best to hide it. This is their chance to refute what Dr. Marcoh’s notes revealed, to contradict what they found in Laboratory 5. If they can find an alternative method to creating the Stone, they can restore what they’ve lost.

“Hohenheim and I studied the Stone together for a while,” admits Miss Dante finally, setting her empty cup aside. “We were making great headway, but... I guess he decided to go in a different direction. So we split up.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Al says. Brother says absolutely nothing, but her eyes stay on him.

“I still have all our old notes though, if you’re interested,” she goes on, rather conversationally.

“Sounds great.” Brother’s tone is a touch too brusque. His tea is half-untouched, and has long since gone cold.

She leads them to her library, throwing open a pair of great oak doors to reveal endless bookshelves brimming with dark leather spines. Al feels the breath still in his nonexistent lungs as he drinks in the sheer vastness of the room before him. It’s a glorious rival to the alchemy floors in the Central Branch libraries, just as magnificent if not more so, and with no requirement of a State Alchemist’s certification to unlock the illustrious knowledge within it.

“You’re free to whatever you like.” Though Miss Dante seems to say this to both of them, she looks at Brother in particular.

“Thanks so much,” Brother replies, sounding like he’s trying his best to actually mean it, and immediately makes for the nearest bookshelf. Al trails at his heels.

Her smile is thin and pleasant. “You’re very welcome.”

As they’re about to depart and make their way back to Teacher’s place, Miss Dante stops Ed at the front door by touching a hand to his shoulder. There’s something in her eyes, somewhere between sorrowful and tender, that gives him pause, has his throat tightening in discomfort. “Before you go, there’s something I’d like to show you.”

“Okay?” He glances down the hall, where he can hear Al shuffling around. “Hey, Al—”

“No, dear,” she interrupts, voice soft. “Just you.”

Right... Not creepy at all.

After telling Al to wait outside for him, Ed is led up the stairs to a private room that reminds him vaguely of his father’s study back in the old house, but sumptuous in a way that gives the impression of a wealthy owner. Miss Dante glides over to a rather impressive bureau twice as large as the one that burned up in the fire, its dark hardwood surface polished to a lovely shine. A gilded frame shows a snapshot of Hohenheim, grim and stern as Ed always recalled him being, standing next to what must be a younger version of Miss Dante, her hair long enough to brush her shoulders and her eyes brighter than they are now. Curiously, Hohenheim’s countenance is unchanged, exactly the same as the single photograph that features their entire family.

Unfortunately, Ed isn’t allowed the freedom to examine the photo more closely. Miss Dante tugs the topmost drawer out by its intricate brass handle, and with a slow sort of reverence, she unearths a piece of thick vellum paper. When she holds it out to him, she does so like she’s offering him something precious, like she’s handing him her most valuable treasure. That tender sorrow has returned to her eyes, accompanied by something he would rather not think about too deeply.

Blinking, Ed takes it. It doesn’t look overly important at first glance, but he pauses suddenly as he skims it over. Narrowing his eyes, he rereads it, slower this time. Then again, faster, heart beating in his throat. A third time. A fourth. He’s imagining it, right?

Shakily, he raises his eyes, swallowing. Miss Dante smiles at him in this tender, wistful manner that makes all the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

The paper crinkles as his grip tightens. “...what the hell am I looking at?”

“Your birth certificate,” she replies gently.

There is no fucking way that’s what this is. The date matches, sure, but that’s all. Everything else is wrong. His name is Edward Elric. Edward Elric. Not—

Miss Dante—this stranger—lays a hand on his shoulder, gentle as a feather. “I don’t know what that woman told you,” she says, and Ed wants to scream because that “woman” is his mother, and not—not— “but when your father left, he took you with him.”

“You’re lying.” His voice quivers. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t—

“Edward—”

Ed spins on his heel and runs.

Brother is deathly silent while they trek through the woods on their way back to Dublith, sticks and stones crunching under their feet. If he even registers any of the concerned questions that Al levels his way—about what the piece of paper clutched to the point of wrinkling in his hand is, why he exploded out the door like that, why Miss Dante was calling after him as he ran like his life depended on it—then he refuses to acknowledge any of them. All Al can do is stare helplessly at his back and wonder.

The only time he speaks is to tell Al he’s not going back to that house, and that’s the end of it.

When they get back to Dublith, Brother makes a b-line for the nearest phonebooth and dials Granny’s number. That alone is unusual enough to make Al worry, even more so when Brother demands privacy. Al ducks behind a corner, trying not to eavesdrop, while Brother’s voice grows loud and sharp and raw as the conversation drags on.

“You were there when I was born, weren’t you?” Brother demands, and it sounds like the words are scraping themselves free from his throat.

Al doesn’t hear what Granny says in reply, but he does hear the sharp, telling clang of the phone being hung up. He asks what the call was about, only to receive no answer. A thick, heavy silence settles over them, like the calm before the storm, as they march themselves back to Teacher’s.

For all her formidability and powers of intimidation, Teacher can’t get Brother to talk, either. Threats make no more difference than heartfelt pleas. He remains so firmly clamped shut on the matter that she eventually has to drop it.

A few days pass before Al finally works up the courage to sit down and ask, point blank, what happened. “You can tell me,” he insists. “We’re brothers, y’know?”

Ed looks at him, eyes glittering like pyrite, and says nothing.

Ed watches as Al studies the birth certificate in silence.

“...Brother—”

“You don’t need to call me that, Al.”

Their calculations hinged on them sharing half of Trisha Elric’s blood. Two halves, one whole. Two drops to make a soul. It should have worked.

It didn’t. And now they know why.

They mean to talk about it—but then Al gets kidnapped by Greed, his memories of the Gate return, they meet Ling in Rush Valley, they learn about Brigadier General Hughes in Central. Battered by a whirlwind on all sides, they revert to their old routine and resume business as usual.

Under the surface, though, something between them has cracked.

Logically, Al knows that Colonel Mustang was there in Ishval, what he was ordered to do and how the desert was razed at the State Alchemist’s hands.

Knowing something logically is very, very different from seeing the still-smoldering corpse of Second Lieutenant Ross.

When Lust screams as she is incinerated over and over and over, Al trembles around the tight hold he has over Lieutenant Hawkeye. Even inhuman and monstrous as she is, even if she would have killed them all effortlessly if she were given the opportunity—Al still finds himself wanting to weep for her, knowing that she has to go through that agony over and over and over and over and over before she can finally die.

Her words hang in the air as she fades to ashes. Al is immeasurably grateful for the inability to smell or feel the heat likely still simmering in the air.

The Colonel is collapsed on the ground, face white and twisted with pain, gritting his teeth while he tells them that Lieutenant Havoc needs a doctor. As he’s loaded into the ambulance, Al remembers that it was Colonel Mustang who roused Ed from his melancholy stupor and set them down this path of impossible ambition.

He wonders if the Colonel knows what he is. He wonders what it means if he doesn’t, and what it means if he does.

Something about the ruins of Xerxes instills in Ed a still, sorrowful reverence. He brushes his flesh hand across the crumbling walls, the overgrown desert ivy, the mosaics dusted in sand. It feels almost like wandering through someone’s tomb. The air is heavy with tragedy.

Which is why it is so bewildering and yet relieving to find that there are people living here, after all—not the people of Xerxes, who have all since vanished. But the people of Ishval, stubborn and resilient, have made a new home from the skeleton of this ancient place.

He’ll tell Al about them, once he returns to Central. Ed is sure he’ll be happy to know that some fragment of Ishval still lives.

After Granny calls to reveal that Dad has made an unceremonious return to Risembool, and Al has told them all about the man who left him and Ed when they were children, Ling leans forward and asks, “So why do you call him your father if you’re not related?”

In the past, Al would have answered immediately that it’s just more convenient that way, and that he likes having someone to call his father rather than some nameless, faceless entity that probably died in the desert. Someone is better than no one.

But now he pauses, flashing back to the way Ed’s eyes glittered cold and forlorn topaz as he tremulously surrendered the birth certificate. He thinks back to when he first awoke in this body to find Ed with a bloody mess where his arm was, a whimpered confession of soul-binding and sacrifice. He thinks back to the times Ed punched bullies and defended Al from people who eyed him like he was something Other, something Wrong. He thinks back to the funeral, when Al wept, when Ed threw an arm around his shoulder and wept with him, when they were all each other had. He thinks back to when they were children, when Ed would tussle with him and lock him in a chokehold and they would spend hours in the study puzzling out Hohenheim’s alchemy books.

He thinks about this for a minute, then says, “Blood isn’t everything, y’know?”

Ling eyes him curiously, then nods and cracks a smile. “Got me there.”

Meeting Hohenheim after all these years is—jarring.

Not just because it’s been so long since Ed has seen him in person, stood underneath his shadow, felt those piercing eyes run through his being before his bastard father closed the door and never came back. That’s part of it, but.

They’re in front of Trisha’s grave, which alone feels like sacrilege. Hohenheim abandoned her ten years ago, left her to sicken and whither away, but he has more of a right to be here than Ed does.

Scolding words are leveled his way, sharp and distant and impassive but still so, so cutting. Ed feels himself shrinking beneath those eyes that he’s dreamed about, tossing and turning as he tried to comprehend why his own father didn’t want him. Seeing that it was more than just his childhood imagination run wild is like watching the world crack.

“You ran away,” says Hohenheim, slowly.

“The hell would you know?” Ed fires back, pressed into a corner, back against the wall, scared in a way he hasn’t felt since he was a child staring at the monster he and Al made in the basement that night.

To which Hohenheim exhales softly through his nose. Something sad flashes across his face, then. “I do know.”

Ed isn’t even given a chance to say anything to that, to fire off a retort or a question or ask what the hell, before Hohenheim turns away, evidently having decided that they’re done here. The sight of his father’s back turned to him—board and distant and cold as a mountain range—sends a lancing of something jagged and bitter through Ed’s being, seeping through all the broken parts of him until they’re sharp enough to cut. While Hohenheim starts to pick his way down the path, Ed feels his hands curl into fists so tight he thinks his automail groans.

“I know about Dante.”

The footsteps stop.

Trisha’s headstone is a grim spectator, impassive to the way Ed’s eyes burn. In his mind’s eye, the birth certificate sears like a firebrand, a scar upon everything he has ever known. His shoulders tremble as he turns slowly. “I know what you did.”

The look on Hohenheim’s face is one of blank, blanched horror. The sight of it inspires a visceral thrill of triumph. Finally, after all these years, he can fight back.

“Edward,” Hohenheim starts tremulously.

“This is just what you do, isn’t it?” The words well up from this black, churning crack somewhere in Ed’s belly, scar his throat with their acid as they rise up and pool venomously on his tongue. If this is how it feels to say them, he can only imagine how much it hurts to have them lobbed at your weakest point. “First her, then Trisha. And I bet there were more, too. You son of a bitch.”

Swallowing visibly, Hohenheim takes a step back. Ed is winning. He’s winning. “I don’t know what she told you—”

“You left her.” Ed feels dizzy, drunk, victorious. “You took me away from her. You stole me from my mother.”

“I assure you,” Hohenheim says, sounding very much like it’s taking everything he has just to keep his voice study, “that Dante is not the victim here.”

A wild laugh breaks free of Ed’s throat. “Is that how you justify it to yourself? That you were doing me a fucking favor? First you kidnap me, then dump me on some random woman, and then you just leave, satisfied that you did a job well done? No. No fucking way.”

To that, Hohenheim says nothing. But there’s pain in his eyes, beautiful and glorious and oh, he’s not so untouchable after all!

He’s shaking so hard he’s going to fall apart, explode in a burst of fury and pain and venom and he’ll take Hohenheim down with him. “You can blow it out your ass, you sick fucking bastard!”

“...nothing I say is going to change your mind, is it?” Hohenheim asks, after a minute, slow and sad.

This—no. He’s supposed to be running for the hills, running far, far away from the truth of what a monster he is. He’s supposed to be on his knees, cowering, begging for Ed’s forgiveness in this pathetic, slovenly matter so that Ed can laugh in his fucking face. Not just stand there, silent and morose and stalwart, taking it all without a single word in his defense. Not just standing there and accepting it.

What father accepts their son hating them?

Does he just not fucking care?

“Please don’t call her ‘some random woman’,” Hohenheim says softly, and Ed jolts. “You know that isn’t true.”

“Fuck you,” Ed spits, whirling around and storming off and refuses to let the bastard see that he’s won.

When Brother returns, he bides his silence on the subject of Hohenheim, steadfast and stubborn. Al knows him well enough to know that forcing the issue won’t do any good, so he doesn’t.

Instead, Brother tells him about Second Lieutenant Ross still being alive and well and on her way to Xing. He tells him about the desert, the way the heat seared into his automail and threatened to burn him alive. He tells him about the ancient majesty that hung suspended in the air at Xerxes, how the light streamed through the ruins and how the ivy hung off the walls like it came right out of a fairytale book.

Most of all, he talks about the Ishvalan refugees that are turning the ruins into their home, and that warms Al right down to his soul.

But then, lowering his voice, Brother also tells him about Scar, about what he did in Ishval, how Uncle Urey and Auntie Sarah’s blood is on his hands. How Scar, who had been their patient and whose life had been saved by them, took their lives in a flash. That an Ishvalan is responsible for making Winry into an orphan.

“We can’t tell Winry,” Al whispers, somewhere between righteously furious and absolutely terrified. He doesn’t want her to cry over this, because she’s his friend and the last thing he wants is to hurt her. But there’s also this small part of him, dark and shuddering, that’s deathly afraid.

If she never finds out, then maybe she won’t hate him for the red eyes he and Scar share.

Envy takes responsibility for the war, and Ed sees red.

Specifically, Ed sees red eyes. Scar’s red eyes, widening in shock as Ed spits about how he murdered the Rockbells in cold blood right after they saved his life. The refugees’ red eyes, forced to take shelter in the ruins now that they’ve been driven from their homeland. Al’s red eyes, quivering as he peered cautiously out the window while soldiers marched through town ready to kill on sight.

Al is Ishvalan, and Ed is not, and they are all but strangers who grew up in the same house—but in that instant, Ed wants more than anything to cut Envy’s head off and avenge all the people that suffered in that pointless war.

In the white space between realms, where only gods and sinners tread, a pair of strangers come face to face after four long years. A heartbeat passes between them. Red eyes lock with gold. The Gate parts. Their time is up.

Just a glimpse—that’s all they need to spark hope.

There’s so much going on that Al doesn’t even know where to begin. Somewhere between Envy being a giant monster and Ling turning into Greed and Dad’s creepy doppelgänger, he ends up back-to-back with Scar, of all people, while they’re surrounded on all sides by chimeras.

Al doesn’t think he hates Scar in the way that Scar hates the State Alchemists, but it’s very close, a dark and throbbing fury that rears its ugly head when he remembers how Winry wept when she learned the truth. Whether they are of the same people is hardly important—what is important, though, is the girl inside his armor who is crusted with blood and needs to be saved. So he’s willing to put that fury aside, for now, reluctant as he is to do so.

Scar flexes his hand in the way a soldier might cock a gun. “When this is over,” he grunts, “there’s something I wish to discuss with you.”

One of the chimeras lets out a gurgling cry. Al snorts. “And what’s that?”

Then Scar says, voice low, “Your mother’s name—it wasn’t ‘Trisha’, was it?”

“What?”

Before he can get anything else out, Scar yanks Al’s helmet off and then that’s the end of that.

Major General Armstrong taps her fingers impatiently while they tell her about their past. Al talks about the transmutation itself, about how they tried and failed to resurrect their mother—Ed, meanwhile, remains decidedly quiet, because he’s not sure what word he would use in relation to Trisha Elric.

Major Miles removes his snowblind glasses to reveal stunning red eyes. Al doesn’t know what to say, what to think, if he should tell him that they are alike, that Al’s flesh body has the same scarlet eyes, the same dusty brown skin—he bides his silence instead, because he’s not sure what it even means to be Ishvalan.

The Stone that Kimblee sets upon the table gives off a lurid crimson glow as bloody as its nature. Ed stares at it, mouth going dry.

His first impulse is to knock it away, get it as far away from himself as possible, shatter it into a million different pieces. Outrage and disgust bleed together when he remembers what he found in Dr. Marcoh’s notes—this thing was transmuted from the lives of Al’s people, thousands of souls sacrificed on a whim so some alchemist somewhere could brag about defiling Equivalent Exchange.

Every fiber of his being hates it outright, everything it is and everything that it stands for. But at the same time—

“Hohenheim and I studied the Stone together for a while,” is what Dante said as she unveiled an entire library dedicated to the subject of this terrible shard of bloody horror that sits in front of him now.

It makes him sick to realize that this monstrous thing is what drew his parents together. It is the catalyst to his existence, the keystone to his birth. He might never have been born, if greedy alchemists did not desire the Philosopher’s Stone for its godlike power and the immortality it can offer.

Because of the Stone, he is alive. He thinks that makes him hate it even more.

Night settles heavy and velvet over Asbec. Al watches the shadows shift across the snow, lights from windows winking out one by one by one. The buildings here are small, ramshackle things built upon sagging wood, all tightly clustered in on themselves so that the only real breathing room is in the town square. It’s not terribly clean, either, as Yoki keeps complaining about to anyone who will listen. Yet the people here are happy—children build snowmen in the day, their scarlet eyes glittering delightedly, while the adults hum old folk songs over bonfires and make do in this hardy, unflappable way they have about them.

Floorboards creak. Al turns. The pale, sloppy “x” on Scar’s forehead seems to glow in the moonlight.

“They’re a hardy people,” Scar says, approaching the window and looking out into the frozen world.

“I know.” Al brushes his bulky fingers over the glass. There was probably no frost to draw pictures in, back in the desert his father’s people considered their holy land. “My father was Ishvalan.”

Scar’s eyes flash in Al’s direction, but remain shuttered, guarded. “Was he.”

Okay. No more bullshitting. “So... remember in the tunnels, when you said you wanted to ask me something? And you somehow, y’know, knew my mom’s name?”

A grunt of affirmation, but nothing more.

This is going to be like pulling teeth, isn’t it? “Are we gonna talk about that, or...?”

After a moment, and just when Al is convinced that Scar is just going to stand there in a pillar of stoicness, he begins, “The name ‘Elric’ was familiar to me when I first heard it, but it wasn’t until recently that I remembered where it was from.”

“Mom said she lived in Ishval for a time,” Al concedes, warily. The idea that Mom might have known Scar before he became an Amestrian-hating murderous zealot is twenty different levels of weird and wrong, but he tries his best to hold his judgement.

Again, Scar pauses, flashing a guarded gaze in Al’s direction. He folds his arms, and the sleeve of his coat hides the tattoo running blackly across his arm from view. “My brother was a bit unconventional, as far as our people went. I’m sure you already guessed that, seeing as these are his alchemy notes that we’re researching.”

“Okay...?” Al isn’t sure where this is going, but, again, he tries his best to hold his judgement.

In this body, Al is actually taller than Scar, which feels strange in a way he hadn’t thought about before. Scar looking up at him doesn’t strike him as very natural. “Before the war broke out in Ishval, there was a woman whom my brother was attached to, er... intimately. Beyond the bonds of marriage.”

Briefly, Al searches for any judgement in Scar’s tone before deciding it isn’t important. “So... what happened?”

“Amestris’s annexation had been a source of contention for a long time.” Outside, a stray breeze sends puffs of powder snow skittering about. Scar peers out the window unblinkingly. “Tensions started to rise. People were angry. The Amestrians living there at the time grew nervous. They—quite ironically—feared their military wouldn’t be strong enough to protect them.”

In that moment, Al finds himself struck with the sudden urge to laugh, high and sharp and dry, but he stifles the urge. This is genocide they’re talking about, after all. Whether it was born of silly, irrational fear or not does not make it any less grotesque than it is.

“Among those who were worried was my brother,” Scar continues, “and so he arranged for his love to return to her hometown with the intent of reuniting once things cooled down.”

Wait. “And... When was this?”

Yet again, Scar’s ruby eyes flash in Al’s direction. This time, a nervous prickle starts to build where Al’s blood-seal keeps his soul anchored in place. It’s a relief when his gaze returns to the window. “Early October of 1899, if I remember right.”

Early October. If he was born in late May of the following year, then give or take a few weeks, it’s conceivably possible (no pun intended) that—

...oh dear god. Ishvala. Whatever.

Oblivious to the ringing in Al’s nonexistent ears, Scar goes on, “Things only got worse, afterwards. The Amestrians decided to stop sending trade and post service in Ishval without military supervision because they were afraid of their delivery people getting attacked. By the time the child was shot and war was declared, they had lost contact entirely.”

Mom wasn’t overly forthcoming with details on her ex, spoke of him maybe once or twice as far as Al can remember. For all that he is content with himself and his identity, the mystery of this person had always fascinated him, so he scrapped up what little details she was forthcoming with. She maybe dropped his name once, and Al repeated it silently to himself until it was branded upon his memory, the strange inflection of the accent in it and all.

Slowly, He turns to study the profile of the man standing next to him. Al doesn’t know what this mysterious now-dead brother looked like, how similar their features might have been, but is it possible...

“Scar.” Al’s voice is very small. “What—What was your brother’s name?”

For the record, Ed had not intended to become Greed’s henchman. It just sort of... happened. The way most shit in his life sort of just happens. Because his life sucks.

Their campsite is somewhere south of Dublith. Greed wanted to visit the dive bar that his former incarnation called his own, see if he could stir up any memories. The only reason the homunculus is flying solo without their “protection” is because, if the military really is going around collecting alchemists who have witnessed the Gate, then Teacher might have fallen on their radar and the chances of soldiers in the city is probably high. In a rare act of generosity, Greed offered to check up on Teacher while he was in town, which was probably just something he said to pacify Ed’s anxious irritation at staying in the woods like this.

In the meantime, he and Darius and Heinkel are forced to wait for their quote-unquote “leader” to return. They use this time to enjoy a dinner of canned beans and freshly-caught rabbits without Greed hovering over their shoulders, laughing at them for being burdened with mortal bodies needing regular sustenance. Kind of ironic, considering Greed’s in Ling’s body, but whatever.

Heinkel tosses a wary glance into the murk. The sun hangs low enough on the horizon for darkness to close in from above and a sharp wintry chill to creep in through the air. “Is it just me, or is Greed taking a long time?”

“Fucker’s immortal,” Darius growls as he rips a particularly large chunk of meat off the leg. Ew. “I ain’t worried.”

Just then, Ed notices something from the corner of his eye. The flicker, the shift in the shadows. Darius and Heinkel notice at the same time as he does, tensing while Ed leaps to his feet. He presses his hands together on instinct, a transmutation sparking between his fingertips and waiting to be let loose upon the world.

Dark silk ripples through the undergrowth as the cloaked figure approaches, an old lantern clutched in one hand. They stop at the edge of the clearing, lingering beneath the treeline. A slender, ivory hand rises to push the hood aside. Dante’s amethyst eyes wink in the firelight.

Ed drops his hands, blinking. “What. The fuck.”

“Friend of yours?” Darius asks gruffly, while Heinkel eyes her warily.

“Uh...” He’s too busy trying to figure out how in the name of Truth she found him like this to really register the question. And even if he did, there isn’t exactly a simple way to explain this.

“Now, Edward,” Dante tuts, sounding vaguely maternal in a way that makes him bristle with inexplicable indignation, “you needn’t to be so impersonal.”

There is a part of him that wants to laugh at that. He only met her once, six months ago, and has only known her true relation to him in that brief span of time. They have not interacted since the day he bolted out of her house clutching the true print of his birth certificate. Impersonal is all he knows.

Before Ed can say anything, though, there’s a crash from the branches, and Greed lands on his feet with his long flapping around him overdramatically. Dante takes a step back, clearly alarmed, but the homunculus has his back to her, and doesn’t really seem to notice her as he addresses his “henchmen” with a toothy grin.

“So, there’s good news, and then there’s bad news—” Credit where credit is due, Greed is quick to break off and glance over his shoulder at the new arrival. “And who’s the pretty broad?”

...that is so many flavors of wrong and gross and ew that Ed doesn’t even know where to begin.

Unperturbed, Dante only smiles thinly. When she raises the lantern, shadows dance across her face. “Just a kindly stranger offering some travelers a place to stay.”

“Sweet,” Greed says before anyone can object. “Lead the way, toots.”

So... long story short, Scar is Al’s uncle. Which, really, is somewhere between absolutely insane and somewhat unsurprising at this point, because life just refuses to be easy for him. Turns out, being a living suit of armor is not where the insanity ends, but whatever.

With that in mind, he asks if Scar can please, please, please pretty please not murder his brother, he would ever so much appreciate it, please and thank you.

Rather than getting offended, like Al half-expected him to, Scar expresses his surprise. “You still consider him your brother?”

...because that’s what’s important here. Not the whole can-you-please-not-kill-people thing. Geez. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You just finished telling me that you don’t share any blood.”

Al stares at him unblinkingly. “I’m a suit of armor. I don’t have blood.”

A long moment passes in which they stare at each other blankly. Finally, Scar turns away with a grunted, “Fair enough.”

So... long story short, Dante is absolutely batshit. Which, really, Ed should have seen coming, because his life always seems to revolve around all things complicated and borderline disturbing. Turns out, being punished by a grinning alchemy deity is not where the insanity ends, but whatever.

Dante, though—Dante was a beast unlike anything he’s seen before, on par with Tucker and the homunculi in terms of inhuman depravity. And even then, he’s not sure where she falls on the spectrum of madness and morally fucked up.

The dark obsession that roiled in her eyes still chills Ed down to his very core. The concrete floor of her personal laboratory in the basement is bloodstains upon bloodstains upon bloodstains where she tried in vain to transmute her own Philosopher’s Stone. See, she’s always known about the gruesome method that goes into its nightmarish creation, and entire villages have been wiped off the map as she attempts to sate her hunger for immortality. For eternal life and eternal youth and eternal beauty, as she put it.

She might have even succeeded, if she knew more about the technique, if she had figured out how to polish her method and sharpen it to a fine point. What she got instead were pale imitations that could not be bonded to flesh, and that was not enough.

Her end is almost poetic, in a gruesome and macabre way. How she managed to extract a piece of Greed’s Stone, Ed doesn’t know. But the fallout was enough to make him retch, bloody vomit and cracking bones and agonized screaming.

Ling was strong enough to survive the Stone. Dante was not.

Somehow, Ed wills himself not to look at the remains.

As they sit on the vast front porch of this big, glorious mansion that has become her tomb and stew in the aftermath, Darius discretely unveils a small leather-bound notebook from his coat pocket. “I found this in her lab,” he whispers, low enough that the others won’t hear, as he holds it out for Ed to take. “I thought—I dunno. Maybe you’d want to read it.”

He takes it with a pounding heart. If Ed is smart, he’ll shred it into pieces. Rip all the pages out, defile every inch of it. Transmute his arm into a blade and stab it to the point of illegibility. He doesn’t want a window into that monster’s depravity.

Instead, he tucks into his own pocket. It sits there for a whole week before he scraps up the courage to crack open the pages.

It starts with meeting Hohenheim, escalates quickly into things that make Ed gag, because gross, ew, yuck. But then it spirals into disarray when she becomes convinced that Hohenheim is immortal, somehow. What starts as a romantic ideal for a love spanning centuries evolves into an unhealthy obsession with youth and beauty, an irrational abhorrence to aging. Aging is a part of nature but she doesn’t care, because she’s smart and determined and wants it bad enough. And people would surely be happier if they were not beholden to time’s whims.

What chills him most is how familiar that train of thought is—arrogance and hubris and a little boy who thought that death was his plaything.

Her depravity escalates with each failed attempt. It gets to the point where Hohenheim gives up trying to save her and would have left, outright, if not for the fact that she allowed herself to get pregnant. Not that she wants to be a mother. No, the child is a last-ditch effort to persuade him to share the secret he oh-so-selfishly hoards from her. And if he still won’t yield to her, then her son can at least be molded into a successor who can make the Stone where she has failed.

When she writes about Hohenheim taking the baby with him and disappearing, her main concern is that she’s lost the means to achieving immortality.

Ed’s hands shake as he folds the diary closed.

“I assure you,” Hohenheim said, back then, “that Dante is not the victim here.”

God fucking dammit.

His eyes sting. A laugh bubbles in his throat, sharp and bitter and broken. This monster of a woman gave birth to him only so he could be a bargaining chip or a pawn and nothing more. And it disgusts him, absolutely revolts him, that her blood is in his veins.

And oh, what would have happened, if he had grown up in that house, calling that monster his mother. If his dark obsession with human transmutation ran deeper, blacker, descended into that same depravity. If there was no Al or Trisha or Winry or Granny to teach him love and selflessness and what it means to be human.

...Hohenheim actually fucking saved his life. Go figure.

The night is quiet and cold and solitary. Ed is alone in his wakefulness, keeping vigil over the camp until it comes time for Darius or Heinkel to replace him. Their fire is a meager thing that crackles in the clearing’s center, struggling to stay alive through its pathetic fuel of hastily-gathered twigs and bark and kindling.

Sparks fly where the diary lands with a thump against the embers. He watches, throat thick and sulfur-colored eyes smoldering, as the pages slowly blacken beneath the influence of flames.

It reminds him, in some strange and nostalgic way, of when he and Al watched their house collapse into fire and smoke. A resolute ending to the home they used to have. In order to create, one first has to destroy. In order to obtain, something must be given away. They sacrificed their old home to get back what they lost.

This is no different, really, and as the flames continue to crackle, it feels like a shackle has come loose from his ribs. The leather cover is the last to go, but after barely an hour, it’s just ashes and smoke. A resolute ending to the person he could have become, but didn’t.

Meeting Hohenheim for the first time is—jarring.

Al is sheepish, timid, meek. All these years he has considered Hohenheim his father, but it’s something he has no right to do, and he’s not sure how reciprocated that feeling would be. And it seems Hohenheim is just as awkward, because he doesn’t seem to know how to broach the subject either.

Brother has always been bewildered why Al would consider this man, this vaguely-remembered stranger, a father to him. It seems to puzzle Scar, too, if the curious scarlet glances cast in Al’s direction are anything to go by. Which makes sense, really. They share no blood, it’s been a decade since they last saw each other, Mom never actually married him so even calling Hohenheim Al’s stepfather is something of a stretch. By all accounts, they owe each other nothing.

And yet...

“You still call me ‘Dad’.” The way Hohenheim says this, once they are alone in a back alley and able to reconnect in relative privacy, it sounds like a miracle.

If Al could blush, he would. In the past, he would have said that it’s just more convenient that way, and that he likes having someone to call his father rather than some nameless, faceless entity that probably died in the desert. Someone is better than no one.

That’s not the case anymore. The stories Scar shared about his brother flitter around Al’s mind like a swarm of butterflies, beautiful and swift and new. Sloppy brushstrokes paint a blurry picture that will likely become crisper and sharper the more detail is added to the portrait. He still doesn’t have a face, this older brother who gave his life and his arm to save his younger brother, but he has a name now and he is a person rather than an enigma. By contrast, Hohenheim is proving as time goes on to be a bigger mystery than Al ever thought he was.

But—for all the good things that Scar says about his brother, Al will still never know him. No matter how good or kind or selfless of a person he was, he’s gone now. Al never met him, can never get a father out of him. With Hohenheim, he has a chance, fleeting and irrational though it might be.

And... Hohenheim didn’t have to be there, in those early, hazy, half-remembered days. He had no obligation through blood, and he was there, even if only for a little bit, and that’s not nothing.

With a nervous laugh, Al tucks a hand behind his head, an old habit from when he was flesh. “Er, yeah. Is... Is that okay?”

A warm, glowing smile spreads across Dad’s face. “Of course,” he says, and then, “Thank you.”

This is a terrible idea. Ed knows this, logically. He’s on the run, a fugitive stalked by the military, a recognized enemy of the state. Coming back to Risembool at all was risky of him, and he would have avoided it entirely if his automail wasn’t long overdue on maintenance.

The darkness is stagnant as he whispers down the road. Hopefully it’s deep enough to hide him, and to justify this absolutely asinine idea of his.

Shadows pool in the cemetery. His false leg gives an annoying squeak in the knee as he picks his way through the rows and rows and rows of headstones until he finds the one he’s looking for, layered in the shadow of a drooping tree. A dryness scratches at his throat as he stops in front of it, lowers himself slowly to the ground. The earth is hard, cold, still hasn’t fully thawed out even with the early arrival of spring.

“Hi,” he says.

Trisha’s tombstone is as impassive as it has always been. Her name is etched cleanly into the stone surface, the shortness of her life settled right underneath. Part of Ed wants to reach out, trace his flesh fingers across the letters and numbers, but he isn’t sure if he’s allowed.

“So, um.” He’s not really sure how this works. Yes, he’s visited, but he’s never actually tried talking to her, before. “I, uh... met my biological mother.”

Silence replies, thick and murky and unimpressed. Crickets chirp in the distance.

A sigh leaves him, heavy with weariness. “She was insane, though. I dunno what it says about me, that I’m related to her. It almost makes me glad I can say I’m related to the bastard, shitty as that is? —Uh, sorry about the swearing.”

Still no response. The longer Ed sits here, the more ridiculous he feels. Who even said there was an afterlife, anyway? Or that you could communicate with the departed by talking to their headstone? What kind of bullshit is this?

“Okay, shit, um. What I’m really trying to say is—” The words suddenly get lodged in his throat. He swallows them down. “W-What I’m trying to say is—”

Fuck, why is this so hard? Ed breathes in deep, throws his hands over his face and his eyes. His fingers tangle in his hair. Something about the headstone being blocked by his palms makes it easier to choke it out.

“Is it okay... if I still call you ‘Mom’?”

After a beat, he reluctantly parts his hands. There is no change from the grave, still and silent as it always is. But there is nothing accusing to be found in the letters that stare at him, nothing condemning or refuting or scornful of this childish weakness that lingers in his heart.

Shakily, Ed lowers his hands. “I know I didn’t really know you all that well. I didn’t get a chance. I wish I did, but... life sucks, I guess.”

As if in agreement, a breeze stirs through the graveyard, bringing with it a remnant chill of winter. Ed shivers and pulls his coat tighter around himself. At least the northern automail doesn’t conduct the cold.

“I know it was only for a little while but—you actually cared about me.” He swallows at the tightness in his throat, the stinging in his yellow eyes. “I loved you, dammit, and I... I want to believe that you loved me too, e-even if I wasn’t yours. Even if...”

Even if he’s the son of that crazy bitch. Even if he’s the son of that careless bastard. Even if Trisha Elric owes him absolutely nothing.

He bows his head, somewhere between reverence and begging. “So is it okay, if I tell people that you’re my mother? If I still think of you like that? Is that okay?”

Ed doesn’t know for certain how much time he spends, sitting there with his head bowed and his legs crossed as this stoic tombstone sits across from him, ever-silent. He’s sore by the time he raises his head and finds the first faint, wispy curls of pale grey fringing the horizon in preparation for an early dawn. Night makes its reluctant retreat before the light can grow too strong and evict it more forcefully from its position in the sky.

Swallowing nervously, he looks back at Mom’s grave. It still doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t refuse him outright, so he figures that’s as much permission as he’s going to get.

Selim Bradley—a homunculus, as it turns out, because why not—growls in frustration as his shadow-tentacles swamp Al, prickle at his blood-seal. If Al were stronger, he’d writhe and kick and buck in an attempt to get free, but his consciousness has been a tenuous thing since he left the North, so all he can do is shiver, pinned to the ground, while those glowing eyes burn into him.

“Why isn’t it working?!” the homunculus hisses. “You’re Hohenheim’s blood, aren’t you?!”

Al stares, unblinking. “Who told you that?”

Hohenheim sprawls the truth out at their feet in all its grotesque, terrible glory.

It’s just... too much. The woman who gave birth to him was a sociopath, and now his father isn’t even human. The Philosopher’s Stone is not only the cornerstone of his existence, but the very thing that made it possible in the first place. Ed holds his hands over his face and tries to remember how to breathe. The air is heavy around them, the meager fire at the center throwing off crackling sparks to fend off the deep, stunned silence.

He can’t tell if it’s disgust over the Stone or lingering bitterness over the abandonment (justified or not) that makes Ed use Mom’s last words as a weapon. Either way, it’s a shock when he draws tears instead of blood.

“Maybe you should give your dad a chance?” Darius proposes over a bowl of steamed noodles, because no one in this damn group can mind their own fucking business, apparently. “I mean, he seemed genuine enough.”

“And he did seem to have a good enough reason for being away for so long,” Heinkel adds, because why have one unwanted opinion when you can have two? “You have the opportunity to talk to him now. I wouldn’t waste it, if I were you.”

For the record, the only reason Ed leaves is because he doesn’t want to deal with this bullshit. That’s it.

Somehow, though, his feet take him back to the fire circle. Where the wavering firelight mixes with murky nocturnal gloom, Hohenheim’s back is bowed as though broken. It’s hard to imagine that Ed could have ever once found it as imposing as he did.

God fucking dammit.

Hohenheim glances up in bewilderment as Ed approaches. His eyes are still red and raw from the earlier waterworks. Shit. “You came back.”

“Only because I have shit I want to ask you,” Ed snaps, dropping onto the log across from this—person. Thing. Human Philosopher’s Stone. Fuck.

“Of course.” There’s resignation in the way Hohenheim says that, a breathy sigh running through the words. “Alright. Go ahead. What would you like to know?

Ed folds his arms and looks away, pointedly. “Why do I have Mom’s name and not yours?”

Surprise flashes briefly across Hohenheim’s face—maybe he was expecting a question about Xerxes and Father and this whole fucking mess they’re in—but he regains his composure in the form a tenuous smile. “I’m glad that you’re calling her ‘Mom’ again.”

“Answer the fucking question before I punch you in the face again.”

A great sigh falls free from Hohenheim as he slowly, slowly leans back. He moves like something ancient, Ed realizes. Glacial and enormous, out of step with the rest of the world. “Part of it was Dante. I wasn’t sure if she was looking for you or not, and I figured it was safer. The rest is... well, I didn’t want you to have my name. It’s mine, but it’s a reminder, too. And... it felt like we were all part of the same family, with the same name.”

Skeptically, Ed studies the grim shadows that flicker across the face of this man who could have been his father, if only he had stuck around. Maybe Hohenheim had not asked for an ageless and undying body, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t cowardly of him to leave when he did. They needed someone, anyone, even a worthless excuse of a father who would end up outliving them in the end. That bitterness still simmers low in his belly, lingers in the back of his throat.

Perhaps it’s Dante’s blood in him that won’t allow him to let go, to move on, to forget that hurt and pain and loneliness that drove him to a loathing so powerful it borders on hatred. Maybe it’s just the way he is. But he can’t let go, just like that. It’s not that easy. Not that simple.

“Dante’s dead,” Ed says.

Instead of surprised, Hohenheim just looks resigned. “She finally got her hands on a Stone, didn’t she?”

The fire dancing between them reminds Ed of the one that ate up her journal, burned away the evidence of her depravity. “Greed’s. A piece of it, anyway. It... didn’t end well.”

With a sigh, Hohenheim bows his head, interlocked hands pressed to his forehead. “If I’d been more careful, maybe she wouldn’t have ended up like that.”

“What’s done is done.” Because even if that’s true, there’s no going back now.

They sit there for a moment, the stillness broken by the crackling fire, before Hohenheim reluctantly raises his eyes. “She didn’t hurt you, did she?”

“How fragile do I look?” Ed snaps, which is not really an answer, but he doesn’t want to go through the motions of worried father and scared son looking for protection. That ship sailed a long time ago. “We were talking about Mom, not Dante.”

That earns a twitched, tender smile that Ed refuses to acknowledge. “Is there anything else you want to know?”

“Yeah. How did that, uh, happen, anyway? You and her?”

“Oh. Well,” Hohenheim begins, and it’s strange to see him like this, so burdened and unguarded at the same time, so contrary to the distant figure that Ed has always known him as, so... human, “when I returned to Risembool with you, I had... doubts, about whether or not I could manage alone. I knew nothing about children or babies.” He winces as he says this, like it’s painful to admit, and Ed is actually surprised that he’s so willing to admit it at all. “So I hired some help.”

“...you hired Mom as my nanny?”

Hohenheim offers a sheepish smile, but no denial.

Okay then.

“It worked for both of us. Al had been born rather recently, and, unfortunately, people were still very biased against Ishvalans. They wouldn’t have anything to do with either of them. That basically left her with no place to stay, no money, no way of really supporting them both.” Hohenheim looks down at the fire, fingers laced together, his eyes misty with remembrance. Shadows rise and fall across the planes of his face, touched by grief. “So I offered her the job. She moved in, and things just... came together from there.”

Something about that strikes Ed as so simple and yet so profoundly sweet that he nearly gags on it. He huffs and looks away and refuses to let himself think about a time where they would have been a real family, or the possibility if they had been able to live as happily as they should have been allowed.

Then, Hohenheim adds, with a meaningful look in Ed’s direction, “She loved you, you know.”

That strikes a chord, something raw and tender and painful in a good way. “I know,” Ed snaps, leaping back to his feet. “I don’t need you to tell me that!”

And then he storms off again, because he doesn’t want Hohenheim, of all people, to see the way his eyes burn with tears he refuses to shed.

It’s Brother’s blood that was used to create the seal, and Dad thinks maybe that’s why Pride was able to gain control of him, however fitfully and difficultly. Shakily, Al raises his blunt leather fingers up to brush them over the pattern that keeps his soul bound to this unfeeling body.

He told Scar that he didn’t have any blood. But maybe that’s not true. This whole time, he’s been carrying Ed’s blood with him.

“Sorry, Brother.” Al’s voice is solemn through the thick earthen walls that separate them from one another. Ed rests his palm against the calcified dirt, feeling the vibrations with his fingertips. “This isn’t much of a reunion, is it?”

“Not really,” Ed manages, and nearly chokes up because Al still calls him “Brother”.

In the pale swirl of dust in the air that conceals them from Kimblee and Pride’s view, the Stone that Mr. Heinkel holds up between his fingers gleams with the color of freshly-spilled blood. “You can give these souls the ability to fight.”

Al takes it, stares down at this bloody shard in his massive leather palm. Ishvalan souls swim inside it, and he is of their people but not really one of them, exists beyond their culture and their language and their traditions. For all intents and purposes, he is an outsider.

But his eyes are still red, and he curls his hand into a fist. He’s not sure if he can give them their freedom, but he can at least try.

In the pale swirl of souls churning around Ed in a wild maelstrom of misery and suffering and eternal torment, Pride’s soul is a point of pitch-black writhing in shock as Ed descends deeper and deeper into the Stone’s belly.

Ed grabs hold, tries not to stare at the whirlwind of agony that screams on all sides. Xerxean souls swim around him, and he is of their people but not really one of them, exists beyond their culture and their language and their traditions. For all intents and purposes, he is an outsider.

But his eyes are still gold, and he yanks the monster out. He’s not sure if he can give them their freedom, but he can at least try.

All it takes is a single moment for Al to decide.

Father advances upon Brother in a slow, lumbering motion, tottering in an attempt to maintain a tenuous balance. Ed writhes, pinned and helpless and unable to get away. If Al doesn’t do something soon he’ll become another screaming soul inside the Stone. Just another life snuffed out to feed this monster’s ambition.

They share no blood, no heritage, are not even of the same people, but in that instant, it doesn’t matter. Blood has always been inconsequential.

Mei cries, but she understands. Brother screams as the daggers sink into place. Al claps, and the world becomes white.

It’s almost hard to hate what the homunculus has been reduced to, this pale and pathetic imitation of a human being, with bulging eyes and bulging veins and a body rapidly falling apart. But Ed punches right through its belly, carved open an enormous hole from the false flesh and borrowed matter with the arm his brother traded his soul for.

He can feel them, the souls vibrating inside this vessel that the homunculus crafted from stolen life. The people of Xerxes, robbed of their humanity, of their entire nation. An entire people, Ed’s people, even if only by fifty percent. They thrum within this abhorrent flesh, surging forward, desperately seeking release. All they need is a means of escape.

“Release the people of Xerxes!” he spits, and yanks his arm out.

When the torrent spills free, red-black and screaming with elation, it feels something like a triumph. Ed watches as they spiral into the air, dissipating into a candyfloss blue sky. His breath grows ragged. It’s a shame Al missed it.

Nothingness beats down in every direction. The twin Gates facing each other are massive, imposing things. A blurry figure sits across from Al, grin wide and toothy. “How do you know he’ll come for you?”

His body is in terrible condition, the hair long and greasy and matted, nails sharp and cracking, scarlet eyes dull, brown skin reduced to a pale, ashy hue from too little sun. Flesh clings to bones, ribs show with each breath. Hunger gnaws through his abdomen and thirst claws at his throat and his vision burns with too little sleep. It hurts to be in a body like this.

But it feels good to smile. “He’ll come,” Al rasps.

Hohenheim is bowed before him like a sinner seeking repentance as he offers his life before the shattered metal altar that once served as Al’s body. Ed’s hands shake as confessions of love and apology drop from his lips like refrains. He keeps thinking of the eyes that pierced through him on that clear, bright morning and how those eyes are so soft now, malleable in his palms, warm and tender and dark with regret.

“You’re my sons,” Hohenheim finishes reverently, “and all I want, more than anything, is for you to be happy—even if I’m not around to see it.”

For five long years, Ed has been hoarding his tears like a miser. He’s been blinking pain from his eyes and swallowing it all down and not letting a single drop get out. But now, the dam breaks, and it spills over in burning trails down his face.

“Shut up, you dumbass dad!” The words come out thick. “You say shit like that again and I’ll punch you in the face, you hear me?!”

While Ed wipes furiously at his eyes, cursing his own weakness, Hohenheim looks at him in wonder. “...you finally called me ‘Dad’.”

“There you are, you idiot,” Ed says, crossing the white distance between them, golden eyes gleaming.

Al grins up at him with laughing red eyes. “Took you long enough.”

The hospital bedsheets are scratchy, the pillow soft, the air smells sterile with disinfectant. A low drone of activity rolls in from the hallways, but the room is quiet, private. Brother is having surgery to remove the shrapnel from his shoulder. The nurses want Al to rest.

His scarlet eyes are half-lidded as he turns to the visitor at his bedside. “You knew the whole time, didn’t you?”

Colonel Mustang’s dark eyes are sightless but no less intense. If not for the fact that he’s staring at the wall, gaze ever-so-slightly unfocused, you would never guess he couldn’t see. “That day we met, I went into your house. And I happened upon a picture of you two.”

“Why didn’t you say anything, then?”

The composure drops, and the shadows of the war revisit on the Colonel’s face. “I... wasn’t sure exactly what I was meant to say.”

Stillness beats out between them. Al stares up at the ceiling, the off-grey tiles that make it up. It’s hardly his place to condemn this man, this murderer. After all, he was far removed from the conflict, safe in the cradle of Risembool while his people were burned and slaughtered and destroyed for the agenda of a monster that turned the entire nation into a bloodbath. He didn’t know Ishval before its ruin, and for the longest time “Ishvalan” was nothing more than a collection of syllables to him, something distant and other from himself. It was a word rather than an identity, just coloration and place that people came from.

So far be it for him to boo and hiss with the rest of those wronged. Kimblee was the murderer of the man who could have been his father, but wasn’t, and Kimblee is dead now. Maybe he did have some relatives that fell to Roy Mustang, but he’ll never know.

Quietly, the Colonel starts, “Dr. Marcoh gave me this to cure my eyes.”

And then he raises his bandaged hand to reveal a jagged, bloody shard. Al’s brows rise to his forehead. It looks like the same Stone he wielded in his fight against Pride and Kimblee on the outskirts of Central. Come to think of it, hadn’t he handed it over to Dr. Marcoh for safe-keeping?

The Colonel swallows, then goes on, tremulously, “I know it’s made from your people, so I—”

“Colonel,” Al interrupts, as gently as he can manage, “I know you’re trying to be respectful, but I have no authority over those souls. You don’t need to ask my permission.”

“Actually,” says the Colonel, “I was going to ask your advice.”

Al blinks. Well how about that? “Oh yeah?”

“Personally, I don’t think it’s fair.” Al watches in silence as the Colonel turns the Stone between his fingers. It casts flashes of scarlet and garnet shimmers where the light strikes its sharp facets. “I can’t use the same method that Fullmetal did to get your body back, but... is it honestly fair of me to sacrifice more souls like this? I’m one of their executioners. Even if I’m trying to atone, it feels like... adding to the body count.”

If Mr. Heinkel were here, listening to this, he’d probably throw his arms up and rattle off a litany of curses about self-righteous idiots. Imagining that makes Al want to laugh, but this is no laughing matter, so he bites the inside of his cheek. “Do you want to atone?”

“Of course,” the Colonel—Roy Mustang—replies as though he’s never meant anything more in his life.

“Then use the Stone,” Al tells him. “If I were one of those souls in there, I’d rather help a good person find forgiveness than sit around for eternity.”

The words “good person” make Mustang flinch. “But—”

“Colonel, you can punish yourself plenty once you can see again. So go get your eyes back.”

For a long, long moment, Mustang just stares blankly at the wall, blinking, dumbfounded. The Stone pulses softly in his hand, leaves a bloody hue across his fingers. Maybe it’s a good thing he can’t see that, because Al is sure that alone might be enough to sway his mind in the other direction.

Then Mustang’s head drops with an exhausted sigh. “...you Elrics are something else, you know that?”

“I’m sorry, Ed,” Granny says after she has finished relaying news of Hohenheim’s fate.

There’s a part of Ed that desperately wants to be angry, to be indignant. After that affirmation of paternal love, he’s abandoned again. Outrage should be bubbling inside his throat, black and burning.

But—he gets it. They’ve finally achieved that beautiful dream that seemed impossible before. Triumph shines a little less brightly when there’s a corpse in the corner. Crawling away into a quiet, secluded spot far away from their dizzying victory must have been Hohenheim’s weird, slightly-insensitive way of sparing them.

“Thank you for telling me,” he murmurs.

“I found some letters addressed to you both in his pocket,” she offers, but even she seems to realize how cold a comfort that is.

Ed closes his eyes. He thinks back to the single letter that came in the mail all those years ago and that he tore up without thinking, without even reading it. He’ll never know what it said, what was in it. Hohenheim never asked about it, either. It’s just... lost.

For the life of him, he can’t remember what he did with the envelope it came in, if he kept it or threw it out or if it burned with their old home.

“Alright. Anything else?”

Granny pauses, then, quietly, “Well, I thought you should know—I found him in front of your mother’s grave, smiling.”

There’s nothing Ed can really think to say to that, so he just thanks her again and hangs up. A long moment of silence stretches as he stares at the receiver, wondering what he’s going to tell Al.

When they finally have a moment to themselves, they fold into the closeness and unwind the last few months that have separated them. Their shared hospital room grows animated with stories and laughter, with shouts of bewilderment, dripping sarcasm, then rapid-fire jokes and mirthful teasing exchanged fast as heartbeats. Under the surface, that thing that cracked mends itself, slow and steady.

After Al has finished telling Ed about Scar and their newfound blood connection, he leans back, tucking spindly arms behind his head. Brown hair pools around his face like a tarnished halo, desperately in need of a trim. “He tried to teach me a little of the customs while we were traveling to Liore. And he wanted me to actually come with him while he was rounding up the other Ishvalans, but I had to turn him down. We needed to get the message out to everyone else.”

In the bed next to him, Ed looks up at the ceiling too, eyes soft and saffron. His golden braid is still messy, still flecked in dry blood, desperately in need of a wash. “Do you think you’d want to visit Ishval? After it’s rebuilt and all?”

At that, Al’s expression clouds with uncertainty. “Maybe? I’d definitely like to learn the language, but a lot of the traditions are tied to religion, and... I’m an alchemist, so.”

There’s a hum of agreement, but Ed doesn’t say anything. It isn’t the same for him. Xerxes crumbled into dust aeons ago, along with all its customs and its language and whatever religion was hosted in its fallen temples. He’s a fish out of temporal water, a living relic. There’s no opportunity for him to reach out and connect with his heritage—especially now that Hohenheim has finally found his place of rest. But knowing that Al has that opportunity warms him in a way it never did before.

“I,” Al begins, tentatively, “don’t know if I can fully forgive Scar.”

Ed glances his way and blinks once, free of judgement. “No?”

Al shakes his head. “It’s just... I know he’s trying to atone, just like how the Colonel and Lieutenant are, but—I knew Auntie and Uncle. I know Winry, and how he hurt her. And it... it feels harder to forgive him than even the people that destroyed Ishval.” He pulls a conflicted frown. “I know that sounds crazy, and maybe even cruel, but...”

“It’s more personal,” Ed finishes.

“Yeah.” Al heaves a sigh. The whole thing is a complicated mess, because the Ishvalans were the victims, but the whole war was a bloody quagmire that dragged everyone, even otherwise good people, through it so that everyone came out stained and dirty. “I didn’t know those people who died. I knew the Rockbells.” He worries his lip nervously with his teeth, turning to Ed. “Does that make me a bad person?”

To which Ed simply shakes his head. “Anybody who tells you who you have to forgive and why is full of bullshit. Besides,” he adds, a little softer, “you can let go without completely forgiving.”

“Like you’re doing with Dad?”

“Ugh. No way. I’m gonna hate the bastard ‘til the day I die.” But there’s a casual brush of humor in Ed’s voice rather than the hard, sharp anger that lingered whenever the subject of Hohenheim came up in the past.

A weak smile flutters across Al’s lips, amusement mixing with familiar, lighthearted exasperation. “So... Have you thought at all about going back and visiting Miss Dante?”

Shadows fall over Ed’s face. “Did I... not tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Quietly, hesitantly, voice low as though confiding a grave secret, he unravels the tragedy and madness that stalked Dante’s being. The walls drink in the intimate details of who she was beneath the surface and what she did to feed her dark ambition and how that obsession ultimately proved to be her undoing. Some things are held back, because it hurts too much to taste them on his tongue. As the story undulates deeper and deeper into murderous depravity and moral decay, the horror on Al’s face grows sharper and starker and more pronounced.

Once Ed has finished, and silence has interjected itself between them, Al draws in a shaky breath. “Oh my god.”

“Yeah. Kind of sucks.” The delivery is offhanded, but there’s a flinty touch of pain underneath.

Pressure builds in Al’s throat at the unfairness of it. While his world expands, Ed’s narrows and shrinks. There’s nothing equivalent about that.

Noticing the shadow that crosses Al’s face, Ed sits up, reaches out his arm—the newly restored one, bony and scrawny and wan, pitiful in comparison to its original self, but flesh and blood regardless. The hand is held out like an offering, bony fingers and too-long nails and a palm that is open, welcoming.

Slowly, Al rises to, unfolding his arms from behind his head. He reaches out to accept the offering. The crack that divided them suddenly falls closed. Their hands meet, link, ashy brown and pale bronze.

“You don’t need to worry about me, Al.” Ed squeezes, grinning wide and radiant. “I know who my family is.”

A matching grin spreads across Al’s face. “Me too.”

There’s a story about New Xerxes. How it was reborn from the dust and detritus that lay stagnant for centuries before it bloomed to the prosperity it enjoys now. How it became the multicultural haven, this melting point beneath the desert sun where Ishvalan and Amestrian and Xingese and whoever else could mill around the marketplace as a single people, undivided by culture and religion and race.

Legend has it that a pair of brothers descended upon the ruins. That they ran their fingers over the bones of the ancient civilization that lay shattered all around them. That they, slowly but surely, put the pieces back together.

The younger they say was of the same people who found refuge in the ruins when their homeland was destroyed, his eyes steady and deep ruby. The elder they say was of the same people who fell into ruin when their country faded and was the rightful inheritor of this land, his eyes fierce and bright amber.

Though they called each other kin, they shared no blood between them. They were brothers in name alone.

But names are sacred in Ishval and in Xerxes alike. And family is so much more than just blood.

Notes:

...yeah. So. That happened.

Title of this giant self-indulgent mess is from the lyrics of "4AM" by Bastille (Album: Doom Days).

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