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A flash of gold in the sunset, bright enough and quick enough to be mistaken for the sun itself, ahead of the storm looming, and everyone’s attention is drawn to the man rushing through town, muttering uncharitable things under his breath. He’s handsome, one person decides. Pretty, another corrects. He looks like the Elric brothers; someone else says out loud what most of them are thinking. He spares them nothing, not even a glance, eyes fixated on his wristwatch despite the rough road, a worn rucksack thrown over his shoulder and bouncing with each step. With a loud curse that has Mrs. Henson covering her granddaughter’s ears, he picks up the pace and runs.
They don’t see him again for a few days.
—
Ed is not a stupid boy. Naïve, maybe. Immature, well his argument against that would prove the point. But he’s not stupid. They had everything right. Everything, he swears. Their father’s study reeks of death and decay, blood – his own and from the thing in the middle of the array – pools under him, breaking the lines of the initial array, ruining all their hard work, their years, and years of research. He doesn’t care.
His hand is shaking too much. Ed sobs helplessly. Please. Please. “Give him back,” he whispers. “He’s all I got.” He tries for defiant, and it comes out in a breathless gasp.
His remaining knee slips, his elbow gives out. He crashes to the ground and the pain of that is drowned out by the agony of his missing leg. He whimpers and sobs. He’s only eleven, a child. Full-on adults would be, have been, reduced to complete wrecks by now. The only thing keeping him going is his brother. Alphonse who was here and now isn’t, who paid too big of a toll for Ed’s screw up.
“Please,” he pleads and gets back up on trembling arms. “Please.”
He misses the front door opening and the thunder of uneven footsteps. It’s raining outside, big, crashing booms of thunder, a torrential downpour broken up by shatters of lightning. The door swings and bangs in the wind. Tears blur his vision enough he’s terrified he’s going to mess up the blood seal. Everything he knows and everything he was given goes into this one, last desperate act. The armor’s chest piece rocks in his grip. He slumps down onto it; a trembling flourish finishes off the final piece of the deceptively small seal.
“Give him back.” A demand, righteous and trembling and he knows he’s unworthy of doing such a thing, but he has to try. He refuses to walk away – crawl away – from this without Alphonse. “Give him back, damnit!”
Out of the corner of his eye there’s movement, a flash of gold too bright for this dark, gloomy room. A brown-gloved hand descends and covers his own without care towards the blood. Tears stream down Ed’s cheeks anew and his lips part to croak out a warning only to snap them shut when their hands spark and the alchemical reaction of his transmutation crackles from blue to –
– to gold.
(and, so faintly he thinks he’s imagining it, he hears, “Get fucked, Truth.” It sounds like him, but not and he doesn’t think any more about it because Al. Alphonse, there he is. Give him back!)
—
Resembool is quiet and quaint, just barely enough activity over the years to cover up the scars war left behind. The train station has been rebuilt nicely, what was once a small hive of activity slowly picking back up. City boys like Roy Mustang aren’t made for muddy, grassy places like this and it’s only because they’re not alone that keeps his curses locked down tight as he dodges yet another pile of manure. He preemptively shoots Riza a glare and she just stares at him with that blank, professional expression that does nothing to hide the laughter in her eyes. He wrinkles his nose at her before he turns back around, squinting in the overcast gloom, towards the lone house on the hill.
The Elric brothers. There’d been rumors about them for years now, two genius brothers who can look at an array and think of a dozen ways to improve it – almost unheard of nowadays, too many people think everything about alchemy has already been discovered. Those same people don’t bother thinking of any kind of alchemy outside the borders of Amestris. Roy hopes they choke on their arrogance. The brothers, geniuses, prodigies, and older, so says the rumors. Yet, their careful poking around town makes a lie out of one of those descriptions. (“Kids, sir?” “Yes, well. Let’s take a look, shall we?” because maybe the townsfolk are mistaken, maybe even full-on wrong, and they’re both pretending they’re not lying to themselves.) Roy rubs his thumb and middle finger together once then shakes out his hand to hide his nerves.
Roy knocks on the front door. Riza stands ever at the ready on his shoulder, scanning the muddy yard. It rained last night, heavy and flooding. There’s movement from inside. He knocks again, it’s only polite. Something crashes from deep inside the house, there’s a yelp, then uneven footsteps getting louder before the knob jiggles. He plasters on his most charming smile, dialing back from politician to simply State Alchemist. Politicians don’t get much traction in these types of towns – especially this close to Ishval. Hell, he’s already at a disadvantage just being military.
The door creaks open just a sliver, and a gold eye peers out from the dimness. Roy blinks at the color, the only outward reaction he gives. Without a word, it swings open all the way to reveal a man a few inches shorter than him. He has gold everything; sun-kissed skin, gold spun hair, and glimmering eyes. He’s dressed in dark browns and creams that does more to flatter his coloring than anything else despite the worn edges, vest unbuttoned and loose, sleeves rolled to his forearms. Roy checks to make sure his jaw hasn’t dropped; this man looks like he’s walked through the sun’s rays and took everything with him.
“What do you want?” he asks, voice hoarse and rasping, mouth pulled down in a scowl. Roy suppresses a wince; it sounds like he’s been screaming all day. He looks it too, now that Roy’s past the initial surprise. His long golden hair is pulled back in a messy high ponytail, fly aways and outright clumps escaping the tie; the shadows under his eyes speak of more than a single night of no sleep; and his sun-kissed skin is pale in exhaustion and sickness. The man coughs and clears his throat. “What’s a State Alchemist doing all the way out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere?”
Roy, ignoring the swearing, catches the way his eyes flicker to Riza behind him, notices how he clocks her as not an alchemist. His pocket watch chain isn’t visible for once, hidden under his black coat, they could both be alchemists, or both be simple soldiers. “My name is – .”
“I know who you are, Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang, the Flame Alchemist.” He nods to Riza. “First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye. I’ve been to East City before, you’re not a secret.
He quickly buries any reaction under layers of forced professionalism and charm, hyper aware of Riza’s hand going to her gun. There is, interestingly enough, no reaction on the other man’s part when he says Roy’s title. This close to Ishval and considering what happened to Resembool during the war, he expected a little more hate, more of a sneer at the reveal. Not to mention how he presents how he knows – “I’ve been to East City before.” – instead of how most people know him through newspapers and reels. There’s nothing but a quiet acknowledgement and a gleam of mischievousness at getting the upper hand.
“Well, it seems you have me at a disadvantage,” he says, smiling through prickling nerves.
The man (not one of the Elric brothers? He’s too old, yet…) sighs, closes his eyes briefly, and steps to the side, gesturing them into the house. “Theo,” he says simply. “If you’re looking for my brothers, you’re out of luck.”
“Brothers?” Riza asks.
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Half,” he admits. “They’re visiting a family friend up the road right now, the storm rocked a few nerves.” He walks down the hall without waiting for them to follow. He’s shoeless, Roy notes absently. What a bizarre thing for his brain to latch onto. Shoeless, but wearing socks. He has an accent too, soft, and not quite what the rest of town has.
“What makes you think we’re looking for them?”
Theo scoffs, pauses to cough harshly, then his head tosses in what can only be an unseen dramatic eye roll. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone came looking for them. Geniuses, right? Prodigies?” He glances over his shoulder, something pleased in his eyes at the sight of them following. Riza looks around curiously, calculatingly. “It’s always the same story. We’ll tell you what we tell everyone else: not interested.”
Roy frowns. “I have no interest in recruiting children,” he assures the man, and it’s all true. Too many children have been ruined by the military, by war. “The rumors had them older.”
“That’s a first.”
The kitchen speaks of that rough storm, there’s glass piled on the floor under a broken window. An array done in pen on a piece of paper tacked to the wall, fluttering in the wet breeze still coming by. It has all the components to reshape the glass back into a windowpane. Why hasn’t he used it already? It’s well into the day from end of the storm. Theo brushes his fingers atop the table, leaving behind streaks of dust. His forearms are toned, more so than is usual for a civilian alchemist. There’s chalk dust hidden in the creases of his sleeves, finely powdered on his vest. Roy can’t find a single chalk array anywhere in view.
“Town must’ve told you they were kids,” Theo’s saying. He leans against the table, hip cocked out, resting all his weight on one leg. “Why come out, if you already knew that?”
“Curiosity,” Roy says. The house looks like a home. A mostly unlived in home. Dusty, musty. Like someone had taken this place and snapshotted it for a long while before coming back and barely doing anything to make it a true home again. “We wanted to make sure they were telling the truth.”
Theo nods. “Smart. Small townsfolk can be bitches like that.” He gestures towards a picture on the wall. A woman with brown hair and kind eyes, crouching to wrap her arms around two laughing gold-haired boys. They all have the same smile. The date in the corner is five years ago. “Tough luck. Time to pack it up then, hm?”
Roy eyes the window array one last time. It’s a common one. A number of household alchemy books – not everyone wants to be a State Alchemist, and everyone knows the more information to keep from the public the more likely they’re going to turn against you – have that array as one of their standard repair transmutations. This one hasn’t been activated at all; the paper is missing the tell-tale crinkle on the edges from the alchemical discharge. Which means that he hasn’t used it trying to fix other windows and that leads him back to the question of: why hasn’t he fixed this one already? He looks around slowly, something discomfited settling along his spine. There’s a worn rucksack dropped in the corner of the room, metal glints at the opening.
“Interested in alchemy?” he asks over the dozen other questions burning on the tip of his tongue. “I would imagine you are, with brothers like that.”
He laughs, low and slightly off. Roy can’t tell if it’s bitterness or something else. Jealousy wouldn’t be unusual if your younger-by-at-least-a-decade-brothers were years beyond your own knowledge. “I dabble here and there. I can draw a mean circle, but some things are beyond me.” He meets Roy’s eyes like a challenge, and he knows, knows, the man is lying badly on purpose.
Staged, he realizes right then and there. This is all staged. The array, simple and unused, right at perfect eyeline with a broken window that should have been fixed hours ago. The way he led them directly into the kitchen to keep them from being curious about the rest of the house. Offering up where his brothers were before they asked to keep them from wandering, subtle enough to make it seem like casual conversation instead of deliberate. Whatever crashed earlier, before he answered the door, is nowhere in sight. The picture, right there and ready to offer proof so no one has to ask to see the brothers in person.
It's all both very obvious and just subtle enough that it would’ve worked on anyone but him and Riza.
“What did you say your name was again?” Roy asks, his charm just as much as a lie.
Theo smiles tightly and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Theo.”
“Got a last name to go with that?”
He shrugs with one shoulder. “Nah, not really.” They watch him silently as he pulls his hair free from the tie and shakes it out. His hair really is gold, Roy decides. Not a dark blonde or a honeyed brown, but gold. Theo tils his head to rake his hair into submission, inadvertently showing off a dark smudge of ink under his ear and down his neck in a vertical line. It’s too small to read from this distance. “I could tell you this whole sob story about our dad is an ass and I don’t have a last name because I refuse to take his, but don’t got all day, yeah? So, just Theo.”
Roy hums noncommittally. “Shame,” he says because that was another bit of casual, not-quite-important information given out to seem helpful and friendly but is really just hiding that he’s covering something up.
They technically have no reason to stay. They really don’t. They have confirmation the alchemists they’re looking for are actually children, even if it is based on a five-year-old picture and the word of a protective old brother. Roy refuses to recruit children, that much is true. And from what Theo is telling them, presenting them oh-so-carefully, the man didn’t inherit the genius levels of talent for alchemy the Elric brothers did. He has the basics, and it ends there.
Supposedly.
“Thank you for your time, Just Theo,” he says with a smirk. Theo blink owlishly before he smirks back. It transforms his face, opens it up and brightens it. He looks better with that than he does with a scowl and Roy vaguely wonders what he’d look like with a real smile that reached his eyes and everything. “We’ll be out of your hair now. Do tell the Elric brothers hello for us, will you?”
Theo barks out a laugh that transforms into another cough. “Probably not.” Roy smothers his concern with an amused smile.
He doesn’t follow them out, just stays against the kitchen table and watches them leave. Roy’s nerves prickle again, and he can’t help but look over his shoulder. Theo meets his gaze, and the gold-haired man gives him a lazy salute, eyes crinkled at the corners with his smirk. He turns around, ignore Riza’s knowing and slightly disapproving gaze, and shuts the door gently behind him.
“He’s hiding something,” Riza murmurs once they’re on the front porch. “We’re just going to leave it, sir?” she asks mildly rhetorically.
Roy adjusts his ignition gloves. Not once did Theo look at them. Everyone is curious about the array that makes the Flame Alchemist tick yet not for a single moment did his eyes stray. Too focused on his charade, maybe, but Roy doubts that. It has to be something else; he refuses to think otherwise. She nods sharply at the movement, in agreement without a word.
The next day, after they’re chased away from the Rockbells’ house by a laughing, vindicative Theo and an unimpressed grandmother and without seeing the brothers, they come to the Elrics’ house once more. They take a walk around the building, curious. The window is in one piece, not stray transmutation mark to be seen – Roy can’t help being impressed, glass is one of the hardest materials to keep free of marks since it’s clear.
An unusually shaped stone catches his attention, and he wanders over to a grave marker off the side of a large oak. Out of the way and unobtrusive, it’s blank except for the current year and the alchemical symbol for salt. No name, no birth year. The earth under it is mud, but everything is mud. No way of telling how fresh it is.
He resigns himself to not getting the answers himself and wonders how best to convince Madame Christmas to take a look in his stead.
—
In the dark of the room, enclosed and suffocating, Ed thinks. He doesn’t know what to think, but he does it anyway. It’s difficult to wade through the foggy pain that still grips him, his thigh throbbing in time with his heart, and everything the Gate shoved in his head whirls around in confusing patterns, clamoring to be examined first. He settles his thoughts on the mysterious Theo. Al shifts in his sleep next to him and Ed twists to face him a little bit more. It sends sharp bursts of pain up his nerves. He ignores it in favor of staring at his little brother’s face, trying to imagine it as the cold armor helmet he’d intended on binding his soul to and fails.
Equivalent exchange rules the laws of alchemy, everyone knows this, and yet – yet none of this was equivalent at all. Ed lost a leg and Al lost everything just to bring back something that wasn’t their mom. Ed had been ready to give up everything else to get his brother back, only Theo interrupted and…and did something. Himself lost nothing and gained only more from Truth and the Gate. Alphonse got his body back and his soul is intact. There was nothing given in return.
The only variable that wasn’t there in the original transmutation was Theo and the thing that was supposed to be their mom. Ed’s memories after Theo took over his transmutation – you can do that? – are hazy at best and completely gone at worst, he just remembers flashes of white and red and the murmur of voices that sounded like they were underwater and far away all at once. When he came back to himself, he and Al were already at the Rockbells, and Winry was doing her best not to cry over him while Granny worked on his leg.
Theo went to clean up the house, Granny had told him that morning. Which tells him that he’s physically okay, that Truth didn’t take a limb or muscle or anything important for movement from him. Ed’s smart, he can figure out what exactly he’s cleaning up. The mess of gore and the evidence that two little boys committed Taboo. He just can’t figure out why the man is doing this for them. Winry told him Theo looked like them only older and Ed can’t help but think back to their bastard of a father and wonder if this makes him even more of a bastard.
He hasn’t seen Theo all day, a combination of things makes him both suspicious and childishly curious. Al doesn’t have a lot to say about him, having been too focused on Ed to pay much attention to their mysterious savior – because he is that, their savior, because Ed knows he would’ve never gotten Al back like he wanted if it weren’t for whatever Theo did.
Al whimpers in his sleep, brows furrowing. Ed has just enough reach to press a finger between them, soothing out the wrinkle. His little brother shifts closer, curling in a ball, and Ed resists the urge to grab his hand, worried about waking him.
The door creaks open, shining a weak light over both of them, and a shadow blocks most of it. Ed squints and sees someone too tall to be Granny or Winry, so this could only be Theo. All he can see is a silhouette, no defining features except his hair is long.
There’s a soft snort of amusement. “Go back to sleep.” He keeps his voice low, which Ed appreciates, but he doesn’t like how hoarse it sounds. He frowns.
“What’s wrong with you?” he whispers.
Another sound of amusement. “Go back to sleep,” he insists.
Ed carefully sits himself up, blanket piling to his lap. There’s a wheelchair next to the bed. He doesn’t trust himself to use it, still weak from blood loss and pain and trauma. “What did it take from you?” he demands quietly. “Why did you do that? I had it under control.” He most definitely did not. He just can’t wrap his head around this stranger interfering in his mistake, sacrificing for their fuck up, family or not.
Theo enters the room quietly, footsteps almost silent except for a slight hitch every other step. He carefully scoots around the bed and settles on Ed’s side, hand bracing as he leans back, head tilting as he lets out a small sigh. Ed stares at him. Now that he isn’t blocking the light, he can see why Winry says he looks like them but older. Gold hair, like Ed’s, but long like Hohenheim. He’s pale yet there’s an unmistakable natural darkness to his skin that matches both brothers. When he opens his eyes, he feels like he’s staring into a mirror.
“Why?” Ed mumbles, glancing away. Theo’s not wearing gloves now and he can see scars on his hands, his left pinky is crooked.
There’s a long silence before Theo sighs again. “I’d been trying to find you both for years now,” he says. Ed looks up sharply. Theo’s not looking at him or the ceiling, but instead over his shoulder. He twists around. Al’s awake, watching them both quietly. “I didn’t know Hohenheim had more kids until recently and as much as I hated him, I want to meet you. Every time, though, something got in the way.”
“So, we are related,” Al says.
Theo nods. “I wasn’t expecting our meeting to be like this, though.” Ed grimaces then jumps when a hand settles warmly on the crown of his head. He glances up at their half-brother through his lashes. Theo smiles at him. It’s a nice smile, softens the edges of distant sadness around his eyes, makes the shadows under his eyes lighter. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
Ed sniffles, reaches up and curls his hands around Theo’s wrist. “Thank you,” he says, quiet and miserable. “For whatever you did.” The hand ruffles his hair then pulls away, not far enough to force Ed to let go so he hangs on. “What did you give up?”
“Nothing.”
Al draws in a sharp breath. “What?” Because he doesn’t know what happened, not like Ed does. His memories of the Gate and Truth muddled and partially out of reach, just barely there enough for him to know it happened and to have knowledge he shouldn’t. But he does know there’s always a toll and he’s had the same questions Ed had.
Theo laughs something soft and bitter. “I have nothing left to give,” he says. He sounds so sad, so lost when he says that. Ed squeezes his wrist in a mockery of comfort and Theo twists around until they’re holding hands and he squeezes back. “It’s okay. It’s an old hurt. There’s always a toll and I paid ours, but don’t worry about me, it’s an old toll as well.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Al says. He sits up and leans over Ed, wrapping his hand around both of theirs. Theo eyes the jumble of fingers and palms with a bemused expression. “It was ours.”
“I was happy to pay it,” he insists in a way that sounds almost like the truth. Ed and Al exchange looks and nods sharply at each other. “What is this? What are you planning?”
Al gives him that wholly innocent and sweet smile they use whenever they get caught doing something wrong – only about half the townsfolk still believe in it, but that’s another story. “Don’t worry about it.”
It seems Theo is also a non-believer in Al’s innocence because he says, humor and concern evident in his tone, “That just makes me more worried.”
—
Theo is sick, they figure out. They find out only a day later – after a State Alchemist and a soldier come by and both Theo and Granny run them out. Not sick like their mom had been, but a normal, this could be deadly but isn’t because of modern medicine, sick. That’s why he’s so pale and exhausted all the time. He insists he was sick before he arrived in Resembool and they can only believe him because he’s getting better, not worse.
Still, it was frightening to turn the corner and find him on the floor, curled into a ball and muffling his coughs in the corner of his elbow. Sweat shines on his forehead, his eyes squeezed shut, his breathing erratic and shallow. Winry shouts for Granny, panic in her voice, and thunders out of the house. Ed and Al stay behind, too short to try and help him up, Ed’s angle with the wheelchair means he can’t do anything to comfort him, so Al’s patting his back in a move that does little to help with the breathing or coughing but does loosen some tension in Theo’s shoulders.
“I’m fine,” he says as Granny forces him to lay back in bed. “I promise,” he adds at everyone’s disbelieving scoff. “I was in Aerugo recently, I got sick there.” It’s such a mundane reason to be sick but Ed and Al sigh in relief that it really is something natural and not because of the Gate. “There was something going around the village I was in, I caught it just before I left.”
Granny whacks his shoulder gently. “You’ve been on the road weeks with this?” she asks sharply. Theo looks resigned when he nods. She whacks him again. “And all that running around you’ve done. No wonder you’re not over it yet. It’s a miracle you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere!” And she disappears downstairs, swearing under her breath.
“What were you doing in Aerugo?” Winry asks, leaning over the foot of the bed frame, eyes alight with curiosity. “Aren’t we at war with them?”
“Who aren’t we at war with?” Ed says drily. Al punches his shoulder and Ed pouts.
Al rolls his eyes. “We’re not at war with Drachma. There’s a ceasefire.”
Theo laughs softly, half out of respect for his lungs and half out of weariness. “Technically, you’re right. It’s a Non-Aggression Pact, but it’s shaky at best. We’re still definitely at war with Aerugo. I was just in a border village, though, checking out a few rumors. Nothing came of it.” His face twists in frustration.
Granny’s still downstairs and Theo doesn’t look like he wants to elaborate on his time in Aerugo. So, Alphonse grabs his arm, shaking it slightly, eyes shining.
“Do you know Aguerian? Can you teach us?”
Not even fifteen minutes later, Granny comes back into the room (still looking murderous) to find all three kids on Theo’s bed and Theo – not resting like she expected and wordlessly demanded – laying out the basic foundations of learning Aguerian, promising to get them reading it sometime soon as well. She sighs, fondly and exasperated. Stubbornness and intelligence, runs in the family.
—
In the days after, Roy dreams of white rooms and laughing mouths full of teeth and the crimson gore of slowly cooling blood. He dreams of golden suns and the white-hot burn of fire. There’s screaming, there’s always screaming. He can’t block it out. Can’t stop it. Can’t wake up. His gloves are missing and he’s sick to his stomach for even thinking of it because this is all his fault in the first place. He’ll only make it worse. He always wakes to ash in his lungs and the ghost of blood on his tongue. There’s dried tears on his cheeks and he has to relearn how to breathe.
It never gets easier.
—
“You really know how to pick ‘em, Roy,” is the first important thing Maes Hughes says over the line. Roy pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing, and ignores Riza’s silent amusement. “Oh, I can go back to talking about my beautiful wife if you don’t want to hear this. Did I tell you about the glorious blackberry pie she made yesterday? It was – .”
“Yes, you did. Twice.”
“Spoilsport,” Maes says, laughing. “Rude. Unappreciative. I’ll have you know – .”
“Maes, please,” Roy practically begs. He thunks his forehead on the desk surface when all Riza does is smirk at his expense. “What did you find out?”
“I’ll admit it was difficult without a last name,” Maes says after a beat of silent while he rearranges his thoughts. “Not even using ‘Elric’ as a place holder helped. I had to go off base description alone then had to narrow it down even further when I got a hit off the Elric brothers in Dublith.”
Roy sits up in surprised. “What were they doing in Dublith.”
“Visiting Kauroy Lake apparently. They stayed with an Izumi and Sig Curtis for about half a year.”
“Doing what?”
“You told me to look for Theo, not investigate the Elric brothers! I can’t know everything!” Roy waits patiently until there’s a sigh. “Fine. I did poke around. Apparently, they were learning alchemy from Izumi Curtis. Why two prodigies were after a teacher, I don’t know, but that’s what they were doing. Their neighbors weren’t interested in giving anything up other than their dislike for the military and apparently the Curtis’s are notorious haters on an even grander level.”
Roy leans back, staring at the ceiling. Interesting. “Fair enough. Theo?”
“So obsessed,” Maes mutters. Roy doesn’t dignify that with a response. “The earliest hit I get on him is two years ago. He walked out of the Eastern Desert right into Liore. He stayed there for a month then went north through Central first –right around when Barry the Chopper was killed, by the way – .”
“Relevant?”
Maes pauses. “I think it might be,” he admits quietly. “Call it a gut feeling. Anyway, Central then North City until he hit Drachma. Then…he leaves the country.”
“I wasn’t aware Drachma was allowing foreign citizens,” Roy says. Riza raises an eyebrow.
“Neither was I,” Maes says, exasperated. “But that’s what my contacts say. He made it in with little-to-no questioning and came back to Amestris through the West Gate wearing Cretan clothing. Since then, he’s been traveling all around within Amestris before spending time on the Aguero border, moving further in only briefly. He made his way to East City a week ago and you were both there at the same time before he left for Resembool just a day or so before you.”
“What was he doing?”
“For the most part? Helping.”
“…helping?”
He can hear Maes nod over the line, a crinkly static from his collar brushing against the mouthpiece. “Yeah, helping. Besides whatever his own agenda was, is – which absolutely no one could tell me what that was – he helped on farmland doing the heavy lifting and repairs, worked as an assistant in shops ranging from grocer to mechanic. There’s a few accounts of him in factories. A couple libraries and schools said he helped with transcribing, a couple border towns said he translated text in Drachman, Cretan, and Aguerian.”
That’s quite a list. No great feats of alchemy to be seen. Not even normal, regular feats of alchemy. Roy’s almost…disappointed. He doesn’t know why.
“You said the Eastern Desert? Think he’s Xingese?” Roy pauses, think backs, and amends: “Culturally Xingese?”
“Nah,” Maes denies. “Accounts say he came out of the desert wearing Amestrian style clothes, believe it or not. His accent is vague, but definitely from this part of the world somewhere. While there is some Xingese influence, it’s not enough to say he’s been living there all his life.”
“Any time spent in Ishval?” He has family there; it would be strange if he hadn’t. If Roy had the choice, though, he would’ve stayed very far away.
“None whatsoever. Or at least none I could track down. He dodged the bulk of the fighting by going to Liore, that’s as northeast as you can get coming out of the desert. He spent most of the war out of the country, didn’t come back until a few days before it ended.”
Roy hums, closing his eyes, suddenly exhausted. Riza sets a cup coffee on his desk, he peeks open an eye to watch her. He hadn’t even heard her leave.
“I don’t get why you’re so interested, Roy.”
He slides a hand over his mouth, squeezes his eyes tightly, then pushes his fingers through his hair. “You didn’t see the house,” he says quietly. “You didn’t see him. He knew I could tell he was lying. He was hiding something so well I was second guessing myself. And… Maes, he knew me. Beyond whatever he read in the papers.” (“I knew you couldn’t leave it alone. Wanna see them with your own two eyes, right? You’re shit out of luck, Lieutenant Colonel.”) “His transmutation of the glass was near perfect. The wall he pulled up to keep the Lieutenant and I from getting to the Rockbells was constructed beyond household alchemy books. He’s hiding something and I want to know what.”
“I don’t know, Roy,” Maes says slowly. “I’m one of the last people to say you’re seeing things but…maybe you’re seeing things.” He slumps. Maybe. Probably. “But…” He perks up. “When your gut says something, it’s usually right. Any chance of pulling him for the program?”
He laughs. “I doubt I could convince him, let alone convince the brass. I have no proof he knows more than the basics other than hearsay and my own educated guess. Neither you nor the Madame could find evidence he was performing alchemy on the road that would call attention to him. I wanted two prodigies and I got a giant, supposedly alchemy-less mystery instead.”
“Like I said: you really know how to pick ‘em,” Maes teases. Roy rolls his eyes. “I’ll keep an ear out for anything else. If I find anything alchemy worthy, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Thanks, Maes. I owe you one.”
“Oh, you owe me more than just one. Gracia hasn’t seen you in a while, come up for a visit one of these days. I’ve got tons of new pictures of her that you haven’t seen yet! There’s this one from a picnic, I have to tell you, I have the most gorgeous wife. The way the light – .”
“Good-bye, Maes.” He hangs up to delighted laughter. Roy sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. He gives Riza a weak smile. “Remind me to never do something like this again.”
“Noted, sir,” she replies in that way he knows she’s judging him. She slides a stack of paperwork in front of him, hand subtly on her gun. “Now, I think that’s enough procrastinating, don’t you?”
—
They don’t pry. As much as the curiosity burns them, they make an effort not to pry. Every day Theo looks less and less sad, less pained, and they don’t want to bring up any bad memories. He only recently stopped looking at them with those distant, sad expressions during the lonely moments when he thinks they don’t notice. It takes months, but they get him to laugh with real joy and smile like it doesn’t hurt. Ed is still smugly proud of Al for getting the first laugh out of him.
Theo helped him through his automail surgery. He’d convinced Granny that Ed was serious and could take it, but made Ed promise to take his recovery slow and proper. Ed wanted to rush it. The look in Theo’s eyes made him second guess that. He still uses the wheelchair months later, though he’s on crutches more often than not lately.
It’s slow going down the porch steps. He limps along with scowl, muttering uncharitable things under his breath in Aguerian. Al and Winry are in town, fetching groceries, and Theo was helping him go through their father’s old journals, translating here and there but mostly transcribing while he let Ed just read through them, but when they took a break an hour ago, Theo disappeared.
He’s pretty sure he knows where his brother will be and, sure enough, Theo’s sitting under the large oak in front of their house, head tilted back against the trunk. He breathes slowly, face lax in sleep. Ed stares at him for a long second before his gaze is caught, as usual, by the headstone Theo made for the thing they made last year. He never explained why he set it up if it wasn’t Trisha Elric or why he decided to carve the symbol for salt. Ed does know that it also means body and that’s really all it was, a body with no soul and no spirit.
Ed shuffles carefully until he’s sitting next to him and leans into the crook under his arm. Theo shifts automatically, curling his arm over Ed’s shoulders. His cheeks warm. He’s always been the older brother, the caretaker when their mom started to get sick. It feels weird to be taken care of. Weird, but nice. He just wishes they could do more for Theo after all the family he’s given them.
“Overslept, didn’t I?” Theo mumbles, squeezing Ed tighter.
“Just a bit, old man.” He gets a brief too tight squeeze for that comment. “C’mon. I don’t get why you’re sleeping out here when there’s a perfectly good bed back at the house.” Not home, because they could never quite get themselves to claim it as such despite everything Granny and Winry do for them.
“It’s nice out,” he argues half-heartedly, still practically asleep.
Ed twists in his grip to watch him through his eyelashes. The tattoo on Theo’s neck is in plain view with his hair done up in a messy bun. Paracelsus’s tria prima, Theo had explained to them. Sulfur for soul, mercury for spirit, salt for body. Then, one extra, the alchemical symbol for gold. It’s uncomfortably close to the main components for the Human Transmutation array, minus the gold, and when Al said so, Theo just smiled wearily and nodded. No other explanation.
“So, Winry, Al, and me have been talking,” Ed starts out slowly.
“Winry, Al, and I.”
He elbows Theo in the ribs gently making him chuckle. “Don’t start with me,” he mutters. Ever since they started learning languages, Theo’s taken it as his duty to correct their grammar in every language, mostly to be an ass.
“Anyway. We think you should take the State Alchemist exam.” He feels Theo stiffen and start to pull away. Ed lunges for his arm, trapping him there. Theo stares at him with wide eyes, he can’t tell if there’s shock or confusion in his expression, but he does see fear. “No, listen. You like alchemy. You do it all the time. You do it without a circle like me and Al.” And boy, was that a shock to find out. “You’re smarter than anyone I know. Why not?”
“The military is full of monsters,” Theo rasps out. It’s not the first time he’s said that.
Ed frowns. “They can’t all be monsters,” he insists. “You liked that Mustang guy, right?”
He closes his eyes as the familiar sentence makes itself known. “I still don’t understand how you guys came to that conclusion. He’s the lesser of two evils, but that doesn’t mean I should just join the State Alchemist program!”
“Alchemy makes you happy,” Ed says seriously, more serious than he’s said anything in a long while. Theo’s next protest dies a quick death. He examines Ed’s face closely. “Alchemy makes you happy,” he repeats. “And we want you to be happy.”
“You guys make me happy,” Theo whispers. Ed can’t help but smile.
“So does alchemy. You can have both,” Ed reminds him. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Pain flickers across Theo’s expression. “I don’t want to be like dad.”
Ed scoffs. “You won’t be – because we’re going with you.” He slaps a hand over Theo’s mouth before he can say anything. “No! We’re going with you. If you don’t take us, we’ll just sneak our way there.”
“That’s if I’m even going.”
He smiles, bright and innocent. He’s never been able to pull it off like Al can but every so often he catches an unsuspecting person. Theo is not quite unsuspecting. “We’ve got time before the next exam. You’re going to regret being so stubborn.”
Theo sighs with a fond smile and Ed knows he’s already won.
—
Roy stares down from the galley in disbelief. Theo – Elric, he’d introduced himself to the proctors – stands before the panel, about to participate in the practical portion of the State Alchemist exam. As if sensing him watching, Theo’s gold eyes scan the miniscule crowd until they land on Roy and he smirks, winking. Roy grips the railing tightly, breath catching. He looks a million times better than when he last saw him last year, healthy, not as lean, his cheeks filled out enough Roy can tell the difference now between then and now. He’d been under-weight, just a bit back then.
“What are you presenting today, Mr. Elric?”
Theo turns his attention back to the panel, flexing his shoulders briefly. Then, to the astonishment of everyone watching, he takes off his gloves and rolls up his sleeves. He’s wearing a black button up and black slacks, the scuffed up black work boots not quite working with he outfit but adding a hint of charm to the whole ensemble. It makes him glow, contrasting his hair, skin, and eyes in a way Roy thinks should be blinding.
All of it brings attention to the fact he hasn’t got a single piece of chalk on his person. He doesn’t reach for any other writing tool, not even a knife if he wanted to try making an array out of blood.
“I’m here under duress,” Theo says blandly, obviously fond. There’s a murmur of confusion as he catches Roy’s gaze again. “But I’m here either way.”
He shows them the palm of his hands – blank – and the back – also blank – then claps his hands together in the mockery of prayer. The sound echoes in the sudden silence, all of the air sucked right out of the room. Roy holds his breath, and he can’t figure out what he’s waiting for.
Where his hands meet, energy crackles. The unmistakable hum of transmutation energy buzzes between his fingers. Except, where there should be blue and white as all transmutations are his….his burns gold. Theo’s eyes reflect the light, two miniature suns in their own right. He slams his hands on the ground, the gold resplendent, and as he draws them back, a piece of the floor follows.
There’s a dozen ways this could go but it goes this way: when he pulls back his hands, carefully and coaxingly, the wood follows and peels way like a blooming flower to expose the metal he’s separated from the rest of the floor. It forms under his direction into a many-petaled flower the size of his head. The petals themselves are each crafted painstakingly out of metal, joined seamlessly to the wooden base that’s mostly there to fill up space. It’s a marigold, complicated, detailed. Breathtaking even in its simplicity.
Some would have shown their skills in weapon making, others their ability to copy complicated arrays, and even more a hundred different ways that would never come close to the sheer detail and control this one man has presented them – all without a circle. Roy can’t even begin to comprehend how many arrays that flower takes, let alone how Theo managed to do it without a transmutation circle.
The panel is shocked silent. Roy can respect that. Theo watches them from beneath his lashes, mouth still twisted in that smug smirk. He bows to them, shallow and short, hand to his chest.
“Thank you for your time,” he says, voice echoing. He doesn’t wait to be dismissed before he turns heel and walks out of the room.
By the time Roy gathers his wits to follow him, rushing to the lobby, Theo is already gone.
—
“They’re putting me in East City, under the command of one Roy Mustang.”
“You like him so that’s good!”
“Seriously, where did you get this?”
“Oh! What’s your title?”
“Ha. ‘The Goldenrod Alchemist.’ They named you after a flower.”
“I did make a flower for the exam. Beats some of the other names they come up with. At least it’s more interesting than ‘Flame.’ Plus, goldenrods can be pretty.”
“Yeah, like you!”
“Winry, I really don’t need this from you.”
“What! I’m telling the truth!”
—
Hello again, Mr. Al-chem-ist, Truth says. Ed keeps his eyes closed, pretends for just a moment that none of this is real. When he opens them, Truth is smiling at him, just as manic as the last time he saw Them yet not quite.
He stares down at his hands, curls his fingers. It hurts though there’s nothing to hurt. “I’m dead, aren’t I?” he asks, resigned. It hurts to breathe, a sharp crackling in his lungs.
Somehow, Truth’s smile gets even smaller. Not how you wanted to go, I suppose? They say, almost…sympathetically.
Ed’s head falls back as he sighs, shoulders slumping. His Gate isn’t here, of course, and he feels it like a hole in his chest. It’s been more than a decade, and while he got use to not being able to do alchemy, he could never fill that gaping empty spot.
“What do you want, asshole?”
There’s a beat of silence. Ed refuses to look. Let’s make a deal.
Ah, there we go. He sighs again, folds carefully to the ground. His knee screams at him, his automail feels strangely heavy. It hasn’t felt this heavy since the first year he got it. “What if I don’t want to? I’m tired.”
Another beat of silence. This time Ed looks, curious. Even without eyes, he can tell Truth is staring at him. They sit cross-legged, elbow on Their knee, chin in hand, looking contemplative. What is normally white behind Them, something grey starts to form.
Then I won’t force you, They decide.
Ed stares back, eyes wide. His jaw drops. “…fine,” he says, because what else can he say when Truth comes out and says that? “I’m listening.”
He wants to ask if everyone else made it out. All he remembers is Roy’s eyes widening, a hand reaching out for him, then the sudden concussive blast of a bomb going off. Heat seared his back, pain exploded from his spine out. He remembers being thrown against the other man and arms wrapping around his shoulders. He remembers hearing Al shouting his name. He remembers – nothing else. Ed wants to ask, but he doesn’t. He seals his lips and tamps it down, curls until he’s folded over his legs as Truth talks.
Soon, he’ll be Theo and have two years to get used to the fact before he has to confront his past. But right now, he’s Edward Elric, The People’s Alchemist who can’t do alchemy. He’s dead and the pain of it followed, echoing. Tears streak down his cheeks as he cries silently.
Soon, he’ll get a second chance he didn’t want, but damnit, he’ll take it.