Chapter Text
November 11th 1923, Munich
“This place is odd,” Al says, his voice sounding surprisingly flat. His head hurts from all the memories being crammed into his head, but by sheer force of will, he manages to stay conscious. In front of him is Ed, his brother, holding a corpse whose chest is covered in dark, sticky blood. A girl is kneeling next to Ed. She’s crying.
Ed looks up, and he’s crying too. His smile is broken; grieving. “They don’t speak Amestrian here, Al. I’ll have to teach you German. We’re gonna stay here a while. Until we can get back.”
The girl looks up and Al’s breath catches in his throat. He knows this girl, and while she doesn’t have the worry lines etched into her face or dark pink bangs, it’s—
“Rosé?”
No reaction. Al’s not sure if he should have expected one.
“Her name’s Noah,” Ed says. He looks down at the blond man in his arms. “I guess you can figure out who this is.” He turns the body so Al’s able to take a look at the person’s face.
Al’s head spins and he tries to fall to his knees in a way that won’t have his kneecaps smashed by the concrete floor underneath him because he’s looking at himself. Admittedly, the other him is paler, taller, probably weighs more and has blonder hair. He bets, that if the other him’s eyes were open, they would be identical to Winry’s brilliant blue.
Winry. His chest aches, because now he might never see her again.
“Me?” Al says faintly. He manages, somehow, to scoot closer to Ed, eyes filling with tears. “Me?”
Ed exhales and from the look on his face, he’s considering how to explain everything. “We passed through the Gate. Like, the Gate that lets us do alchemy in the first place by drawing the energy from this world. Everything here is mirrored to what you know in Amestris. There are people here you’ll recognise. Some of them have different names, some have different jobs. They’ve been affected by the environment they’re in, pretty much. This—”
Ed chokes on another sob and Al’s not sure how exactly to deal with Ed crying. He wants to reach out, to comfort his brother, to hug him because now they both have physical bodies and he can do that and be a physical reassurance. But his corpse is laying in between them, head in Ed’s lap. Well, it’s not his corpse, but it’s him, but it’s not but—
“This is Alfons Heiderich. He studied rocketry with me at the University of Munich.”
The … something Ed said after ‘studied’ is foreign. Al’s never heard the word before. It’s like a word taken directly from the language they speak here. Ed had mentioned something. German?
The girl, Noah, looks at Ed and says something. It’s strange, this foreign language, filled with harsher ‘r’ sounds than Al’s ever heard before. For some reason, the faint flame of curiosity is lit in his chest. Languages hadn’t really something he’d ever considered focusing on, with him being much too absorbed in the quest to regain his body.
Ed nods to Noah and stands, carefully laying Alfons down on the cold concrete floor. There’s something inherently wrong about dying in a cold room like this and to be laid on the floor like this. Being dead isn’t an excuse to be treated without respect.
“We need to call someone to come here — I know who.” Ed’s face darkens. “At least, he’s got a good heart, even though he made some decisions I do not approve of.”
Al takes another look at the body that is supposedly him, laying there with blood staining his white shirt. Gunshot wound, probably. What a terrible way to go. Then, his sight is attracted to the shipwreck, to the corpse in the armour. Al doesn’t remember her name. She actively tried to destroy his home. Her name isn’t really important.
Ed’s moved over to one of the walls and is calling someone from the phone that’s located there. Nobody here speaks a language that Al understands. It has never really stopped him before when coming into contact with Ishvalan refugees in Liore or in the Central Slums. He gently taps not-Rosé’s hand and she looks at him, expression a textbook definition of devastation. Did she know not-him-but-him just like Ed? What if not-him and not-Rosé—?
No.
“Noah?” He tries. The name feels thick and foreign in his mouth. Ed had pronounced it a certain way, but there’s no way that the way he had said it sounded good. He’d just have to improve then. Her expression turns vaguely thoughtful through the devastation and she points to her chest.
“Noah,” she clarifies.
Apparently, they’ve now regressed to the point of using toddler language. He points to his own chest, swallows — his spit’s thick and he could probably use a glass of water or two. Interdimensional travelling had a tendency to leave one parched. “Alphonse Elric.”
He can see the gears in her head turning as she likely attempts to wrap her head around what-the-everloving-fuck-is-going-on. “Alphonse?”
Her accent has sufficiently butchered his name. Al doesn’t really mind; it tells him that this language is different from Amestris. He’ll have to get used to this version, with a long ‘o’ sound and the ‘e’ being pronounced like eh.
He nods in reply to his name being said. The situation is awkward, so instead of staring at her, his now bloody hands or the literal dead body in between them, he looks around for writing of any kind that might give him more clues as to what this ‘German’ is like. A sign on one of the machines near them tells him that at least most of the letters he knows from Amestrian is used here.
Did that mean that alphabets were interdimensional?
To his left, Ed hangs up with yet another one of those deep sighs that Al remembers barely hearing during their travels — Ed had often had at least one bruised rib at any given moment, if not several broken ones. Now, it sounds like he’s at least kept himself out of trouble that way. No broken ribs, just a broken heart and mind from losing another friend.
Al watches his brother walking back over to them. He looks far more comfortable with the automail than the prosthetics had had when Al had previously chucked part of his soul into this world.
He says something to Noah that Al doesn’t understand before turning to him, pants pockets hiding his bloody, torn up gloves. Ed gives him a smile that tells Al that Ed’s too far gone; that he’s at this point been shattered beyond repair. “We’ll have to wait here for a bit until the people I called gets here. One of them is in Berlin, so he’ll take a couple days, but the other said twenty minutes.”
Al doesn’t have the faintest clue what or where Berlin is, but he nods anyway.
Noah looks at Ed and asks him something. Al catches the mangled version of his name again. Ed looks for a moment like he wants to die. Al’s seen that expression before — during their long hours of research in Central Library.
“What is it, Brother?” Al asks, voice gentle.
Ed sighs deeply— definitely a sign that there are no injured ribs —and adapts that familiar thinking expression. “I’m trying to figure out how the hell to explain this all to Noah. She knows there’s another world — where Amestris is. She knows you from the time you were in the armour. She can do some freaky-ass mind-reading thing.”
Al attempts to grin. One the inside he wants to lay down in his bed in the Rockbell house and just process everything. There’s a lot going on and oh god if he never sees Winry and Granny and Rosé and Sheska and—?!
“Oh!” He chirps because Ed looks upset enough for both of them, and that means it’s his responsibility to keep them upright and focused. “When I passed through the Gate, I got all my memories back. I remember all of our travels again, Brother!”
Ed sits down again, straightens out his automail leg and pulls out a note from his pocket. It looks like it’s been carried around for a while, considering the frayed edges and yellowing of the paper. A small smile crosses Ed’s face and he mutters something in German again. Rosé’s face lights up ever so slightly. Al opens his mouth but closes it again; now’s not the time to be asking questions.
He has so many questions; has so many things he wants to ask. So much that is still left unanswered. Questions are resting in the ruins of the building, in the shipwreck. An array of questions begs to be asked about not-him.
He’s cold. The floor is slick with water and blood. Both him and Ed are bleeding, Noah’s shirt is stained through and they look like they’ve been through a frontline battle.
He doesn’t have his coat. Al wishes he had the red jacket, even if it’s a replica of his brother’s; a silent promise to find him. He found him. And even though he’s tired and cold and thirsty, he’s found his brother and it’s okay.
“I don’t know how old I’m supposed to be,” he says in an attempt to restart the conversation. The reek of blood is set in his nose. It’s gross. “My body’s 13, but judging by my memories, I’m 17.”
Al’s supposed to be a year younger than Ed. He’ll go by that. “How old are you, Brother?”
“Hard to tell,” Ed says gruffly. “It’s 1917 in Amestris, but 1923 here. If we count by the year I was born, I’m 18 in Amestrian time, 24 in German time. Your body is 13, your soul is 17, but here’d you be 23.” Ed looks like the maths is hurting his head, but that can’t be right. It’s probably the jumping between two different times, two different seasons, two different worlds. “I go by Amestrian time to anchor myself to home. If anyone asks, you’re born in 1906. Go by your soul age.”
Al’s head is spinning worse. Maybe he has a concussion. He decides to not voice that thought. They’ve been through enough for tonight. Besides, he’s had his fair share of head injuries over the last two years he spent travelling. It's nothing new.
Ed, having seen Al’s expression, laughs quietly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too at first. This world isn’t half bad though. Lots of good people, lots of bad people, lots of cool science.”
He’s oversimplified it. Typical Ed to place people in either the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ category. Al wonders what, all in all, the defining factors are.
“If I’m going to be able to enjoy this place and the science,” Al points out. “It’d be nice to know the language.”
The door to the room bangs open and a dozen police officers enters the room. In the lead is a man that…
Al’s breath catches in his throat because Al — because Al knows this person. He knew Ed had said duplicates, that he’d recognise some of the people here. Like Noah, but he hadn’t expected other people so quickly.
“Brigadier General Hughes?” Al demands, looking at Ed. “It’s him? He’s alive here? Does that mean—”
He’s cut off by not-Hughes marching in their direction, wearing one of the least Hughes-like expressions Al’s ever seen on the man— or not man’s —face. He looks livid, and when not-Hughes opens it’s mind to speak, it’s little more than a barely-restrained growl. “Edward—”
The rest is mindless chatter that Al doesn’t understand. The not-him — Alfons, is still resting in front of him, cold, pale and dead. He’s already observed this extensively earlier, but Al needs something to focus his attention on whenever Ed’s engaged in conversation he doesn’t understand.
Was all of this the toll he had paid to pass through the Gate unscathed? First kill Wrath and then have his duplicate die too?
He’s exhausted. Too much has happened in the last 24 hours. There’s a burning wish at the front, sides and back of his mind, a hope that Ed had a place around here where they can catch a wink of sleep.
Once Ed has seemingly pledged his innocence to not-Hughes, he turns back to Al, who, in the meantime, has curled up inside his jacket with the fastenings unbuttoned to rest over his shoulders in a more blanket-like manner. Al’s watching his surroundings with unfocused eyes, fighting to keep them open.
He wants to block this all out, to close his eyes for a few hours and then — and then deal with all this later.
Ed shakes his shoulder and Al manages to gather enough energy to at least focus somewhat on Ed’s face.
“Hey, Al,” Ed says, and Al forces to listen to his older brother. God, he just wants to lay down, hug a pillow and maybe cry out the excess hormones because who knew that interdimensional travelling did something to you? “It’s time to leave. Hughes’ gonna drive us back to my apartment. You can sleep there, 'kay?”
“Mmm,” Al hums weakly. He lets Ed drag him onto his feet and lead him out of the room. Tomorrow, Al tells himself, tomorrow he’ll take his time thinking about this.
He ends up spending the night sharing a bed with Ed. It’s nothing different than how it was when they were children. Apart from the fact that they’ve both grown a lot and half of Ed’s limbs are now made of steel.
They had shared a bed every night after mum died and they had been all alone in their house. Is there a duplicate for mum here?
When Al wakes up it feels for a moment like he’s back in Resembool. Then, the smell of coal smoke and big city hits him. It reminds him of Central, even though he hasn’t spent an extensive amount of time there since before Ed had gone missing the first time. He turns around and blearily shakes Ed awake. “Please tell me this isn't just one long, bad dream.”
“Huh?”
Ed’s glancing at the clock resting on the table that occupies a large part of the room. It’s apparently too early because Ed groans and places a hand over his eyes. “Coffee?”
He watches Ed slowly crawl out of bed, watches him struggle to gain his balance for a second before fumbling around for clothes. Al studies the clothes — he’ll probably have to start wearing similar ones.
“You dress like General Mustang,” Al blurts out. Ed stops halfway in buttoning his shirt and a thoughtful expression covers his face. It’s like his brain is feeding him a bit of memory and sensory experience at a time to prevent system failure and overload.
“I guess I do, yeah,” Ed says. He looks down at the shirt, frowning when his automail fingers seem to get stuck in the fabric. “People are more conservative here. Besides, what happened to that bastard’s face? The eyepatch, I mean.”
Al grimaces and sits up, rubbing his eyes. “Remember Colonel Archer?”
Ed’s face darkens. “Of course, I remember that scumbag that literally released a fucking psychopath from prison. What ‘bout him?”
“He got turned into some sort of half-human, half-machine hybrid and — after General Mustang killed the Führer—”
“So he was successful?” Ed interrupts. “That’s good. Yeah. Good. Anyway, continue.”
Al’s tempted to raise an eyebrow at the strange behaviour, but restrains himself, because internally, he’s agreeing with Ed’s mantra of ‘too early’. “Yeah. After he killed the Führer, Colonel Archer found him and shot him right outside the Führer’s mansion. In the eye. He almost died.”
“And the others? Havoc, Breda — the rest of the team?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t talk much to them, to be entirely honest. I travelled a lot,” Al says honestly. He’s still wearing his clothes from last night, and it’s not like he’d packed in advance for the oh well, seems like I might be travelling to another world tonight; better pack enough underwear! “Uh, Brother, do you have any clothes that would fit me? And maybe a pair of scissors so that I can cut my hair?”
Ed hums. “Check the dresser. I’ll ask Gracia to cut your hair later if you’d like. Coffee?”
Al looks up from where he’s been selecting clothing that looks like it’ll go together. He’s smaller than Ed now, and with all his memories back, he feels a slight kind of thrill that he’s no longer looking down at Ed.
“Yeah, sounds good,” Al says, pulling off the clothes he had worn to bed. It’s the same he’s been wearing since all of this started. There’s blood caking the sleeves of his jacket and he realises with a start that it’s Wrath and his duplicate’s blood that’s making the air smell like iron.
Al feels vaguely nauseous. He probably has a mild concussion.
“I’ll be in the kitchen. You saw it yesterday.”
Ed disappears out of the room, leaving Al to change into clothing that’s just a bit too large for him. He manages to find a hairbrush resting between stacks of notes, newspapers and textbooks. As Al brushes his hair back into a ponytail resembling Ed’s, he notices a paper filled with diagrams, equations and notes in German that he knows Ed only understands because it’s written in his characteristic chicken-scratch style.
He tiptoes out of the room — there are people that live in the apartment under them and Al’s not sure of what the customs in Germany say about making noise.
When he opens the door from Ed’s bedroom to the living room-kitchen combination, he hears Ed talking to Noah about something. A kettle is whistling on the stove. Ed grins at him, though there’s still that small droop Ed gets before he’s had coffee. “Hey, Al. Language training starts now.”
Al sits down by the table and smiles at Noah. She doesn’t smile back, but Al’s almost sure it’s got nothing to do with him and all to do with not-him.
“Okay then,” Al tells his brother. “What’s first?”
Ed places a mug of steaming hot coffee in front of him along with a piece of bread with cheese on a plate. “Greetings, so that you or Noah won’t have to go through me to talk.”
Al takes a bite of the provided food and chews it thoroughly. If he’d ever thought Amestrian cuisine to have its bland meals, this takes the cake.
To be honest, Al would almost, almost be willing to hurt something (only in the name of good) for cake just about now. He’s more than made up for a small moment of comfort like that.
Ed turns to Noah and hands her a plate of breakfast as well. He asks her something and she nods. Ed crams half the food on his own plate into his mouth.
“Ed,” Al says, only the faintest hint of a threat lingering behind his words. “There is such a thing as taking your time with eating, you know. We’re not running after homunculi anymore.”
“Quit being a brat,” Ed says through the food before swallowing. His tone is fond. “Now, listen to Noah, Al. She’s gonna tall you good morning. Just listen to how she says it and try to repeat it.”
The two words sound strange. There are only one of those exaggeratedly harsh ‘r’ sounds, but Al tries to listen and repeats it back to her. She nods approvingly, which means that Al either didn’t mess up as badly as he thought or she’s just being polite.
It's a 50/50 chance on either.
“Noah’s a good teacher,” Ed says. He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, rather than sitting down with them, and he’s nursing his own up of coffee. “You and her will have a lot of time to kill together. I’m a full-time student and spend a lot of time on campus, but she’ll stay here with you at least most of the time.”
Ed grins and places the mug on the counter behind him without looking. “Hang on. Before I leave, I’ll write you a list of words you can learn while I’m gone. I’ll jot down my schedule for you too. It’s—” Ed glances briefly at the calendar across the room. “—Thursday today.”
Ed disappears into his bedroom, presumably to grab a pen and paper and Al stares down at his plate, looking at the half-eaten piece of bread. Maybe they can have another go at toddler communication.
Al taps his plate hard enough to make a sound. Noah looks up and she’s chewing, but that’s fine because humans are equipped with the amazing ability to swallow. “Plate,” he says, hoping that she’ll get that Al wants her to translate the word into German. He taps the plate again for emphasis. It takes her a second, but she does translate it. He grins, and she smiles tentatively.
Al continues to tap more objects, like his mug and the table, says the Amestrian word and waits for her to say the German word. By the time Ed’s back with a list and a hastily scribbled schedule, they’re up and moving around the kitchen living room, pointing at objects.
“You’re really something, Al,” Ed says from behind him. “You haven’t been here for even 24 hours, but yet you’re already up and about to learn."
Al turns to see his brother standing in the sort-of doorway between the living room and kitchen, moving a mug towards his mug to take a sip of … hang on, is that Al’s cup?
“Brother!” Al calls accusingly, stalking over to him and reclaiming his mug. “You can’t just steal my coffee!”
Ed laughs. “Sorry, Al. There’s a list of word and phrases next to your plate in both Amestrian and German. If you’d like, you and Ro- Noah can take a look at them together and go through the list. You can go out too if you’d like, but no further than Gracia’s shop, okay? I’ll pass by her when I leave to tell her what’s going on.”
Ed’s moving to grab his coat, pulls it on and grabs a pair of keys from next to the phone to slip them into his pocket. Al looks at him, suddenly desperate. “You’ll be back soon, Brother, won’t you?”
He doesn’t say what he’s thinking. I don’t want to lose you again.
Thankfully, Ed seems to understand, because he wraps Al into a tight hug that has Al almost losing the grip on his mug. “I’ll be back in a few hours, Al. Don’t worry. I’ll call if anything happens.”
And Al lets go, smiles sadly at him and jokes. “Maybe when we get back, your new wish will give General Mustang a heart attack or two.”
“Maybe. I’d like to see that,” Ed says, but there’s something odd in his eyes that twinkle sadly before Ed turns around and is out of the apartment before Al can process exactly what happened.
November 15th 1923, Munich
They bury Alfons Heiderich one week later. It’s sad, and Ed spends the rest of the day holed up in his room, looking through a pile of photographs. Al gives him space and instead sits in the living room practising German.
“Very good,” Noah says, and a second later, Al smiles.
“Thank you.”
His pronunciation is wobbly but improving. He doesn’t have much else to do, so the times where he doesn’t pour over translations of nouns and adjectives, he digs up a pen and empty scratch paper from Ed’s desk in an attempt to start figuring out how to get back to Amestris.
He’s sitting there a few weeks later, at the kitchen table, newly cut bangs falling into his eyes when Ed comes in through the front door. “Hey, Al.”
Al looks up and smiles. “Hallo, Brother. You’re chipper. Anything good happen?”
Ed shrugs. “Nah. Saw a few familiar faces, and all that.”
He peers over Al’s shoulder and hums. “Whatcha working on there?”
“Just thinking,” Al sighs. “I don’t wanna stay here forever. I wanna go home at some point — back to Amestris.”
“Not bad,” Ed mutters thoughtfully, looking down at Al’s scribbled notes about needing Amestrian blood to get through the portal (or was it homunculi and immortal-dads exclusive?) et cetera. It might be a complete miss in Al’s opinion, and he’s thinking of scrapping the theory for a while.
“I’m just missing so many variables,” Al says. “I don’t think alchemy exclusively can fix this. You said … rocketry? What’s that?”
“Well, you saw the airships those dickwads sent in. That’s a huge part of it — making things that can fly. Fuel. Fireworks.”
“Sounds like complex physics and chemistry,” Al says, adding a point about it to his list. “That might be helpful if we’re gonna figure this mess out.”
“Yeah,” Ed sighs. “I’ll dig up some of dad’s notes once. He had some theories about travelling through the Gate. They’re all in English, though.”
“Another language?” Al groans loudly, but he’s only a little exasperated. “This is … fascinating. Do you think it’d count for a linguistics degree?”
Ed laughs and pulls a sheet from Al’s stack closer towards him. “You might be onto something there, Al. Once you learn more German, I’ll sign you up for a French and an English course or something at the university. You’d do well with languages, I think. Besides, if I focus on the more science-y stuff, you can do languages, and bam, access to even more resources on at least the physical sciences.”
Al glances at the calendar. “Today’s Thursday.”
He stands up, pen in hand and carefully marks the Wednesday they’d arrived, scribbling ‘arrival day’ neatly above the date. “I’d like to keep track of how long we stay here.”
Ed looks past Al towards the closed door that leads to Alfons’ room. “We should probably start cleaning it out. It’ll be yours then. It’s gonna be odd sleeping in a dead man’s room, but you’ve done weirder things before, Al.”
“Yeah.”
Al doesn’t know fully how to reply to that statement. His brother is grieving the death of one of his best friends and his only close friend on this side of the Gate.
“Hey,” Al says to avoid Ed getting too deep into his own head. “I’d like to see the university. Every time you come back, you look happy. Is it nice?”
“Yeah,” Ed says and the smile is back again from where it’s been mostly in hiding the last couple of days. “How about we go, and I show you now? We need more food too and I think you could need a walk. You’ve been cooped up in here with nothing but vocabulary lists.”
“If you’ll ask, I’ll tell you in more detail what happened in Amestris while we walk,” Al offers. “You’ve missed out on a lot and I think I’ve barely mentioned any of it. Rosé’s child has gotten so big. He can talk and everything. Just broken sentences, he's only two after all. It’s a pity you haven’t met him yet. She named him Kyle.”
Ed hums and he hands Al his spare coats. “Kyle, huh? I remember a little kid in Youswell named Kyle. He yelled at me when I explained that I couldn’t simply transmute gold to save the town from Yoki. He should be all grown up now. I never got to know his age, but I’d wager anything from fifteen to twenty.”
Al holds the door open for Ed. “I saved him when Lyra blew up the inn. I was scared I would end up impaling him on my armour and kill him that way instead of the pressure and weight of the rubble.”
He starts walking down the stairs. “What’s Noah doing, by the way? She left the apartment earlier.”
“She helps Gracia out in the flower shop from time to time. The people who get flowers from her don’t mind her — thinks she just happens to be born with tanner skin like us. That’s something they’re researching — this thing called melanin that determines the colour of your skin. Hi, Gracia!”
Al smiles in Gracia’s direction as she quietly claps the dirt off her hands before walking over to them. She points to Al’s hair. It had been cut by her only a week earlier. Losing the length had been odd but freeing. “Good?”
She knows that Al hasn’t been in Germany for long and knows that his German is still mediocre at best
“Good,” Al agrees, voice soft and friendly. “Danke.”
Her smile widens, and she turns to Ed and starts talking to him about something. Al spots Noah at the back of the store and raises a hand in greeting. “Noah!”
She looks up and smiles before pushing one of her braids away from where it’s been resting over her shoulder. The thing that Ed had mentioned— about his time in the armour and Noah’s ability to somehow see that —pops back into his brain again but he quickly files it away with a promise to himself where he would ask more about the skill and her culture once his German is better.
“How are you?” she asks him.
Al waves his already raised hand non-committally. “Good. Tired.”
These two words are equivalent to his general mood of ‘I feel good because I’m reunited with my brother who was missing from my life for two years but I’m tired because I miss my actual home and I’m kinda coped up in an apartment all day with little to nothing to do apart from learning a foreign language and attempt to clean Ed’s room’.
He keeps up a short, if simple, conversation with Noah involving plenty of pseudo-sign language until Ed calls his name and they leave. The streets are bustling with people, but Ed has no issue pointing out waypoints Al should know if he decides to venture out on his own.
It’s a beautiful day, with some smattering of clouds lining the edge of the visible sky. There’s a distinct November chill in the air, however, and Al wishes back to Amestris where Rosé had knitted him a scarf and hat to wear when trudging up in the North.
“That’s St. Michael’s Church over there.” Ed points to a tall, flat, decorated building. “There’s this religion, Christianity, that’s a kinda big thing here. It seems decent, but I’m not about to subscribe to that sorta belief.”
Al laughs, though the concept of another religion intrigues him. The church is nicely decorated, with miniature statues standing in small niches up the wall. “It’s not like Letoism, is it?”
“Nah. They believe in this one so-called capital-g God who created the Earth and everything on it. 2000 years ago he finds this virgin— they call her Maria here, but I’ve heard that the name depends on the country —who gets pregnant by sheer force of will or something. She births a son, he’s more or less magical; goes about walking on lakes, conjuring food and all that. He’s martyred before coming back to life and flying up to heaven to stay with his ‘dad’, this capital-g God. They have a holy book, the Bible, and I believe this lot also has a holy dude in this country further south— Italy —that holds some power.”
“That sounds interesting.” Al stops and looks at the church. “It’s an old building. I can imagine it’s quite a big religion then.”
“Yuuup.” Ed draws the sound out. “And it’s not something that should be discussed in the open, even in another language. Quite a lot of people here have strong opinions about certain groups. Remind me when we’re back and I’ll fill you in.”
The total walk to the university is just under thirty minutes and Al has a brief thought that three days a week Ed has to be up and walking here at the crack of dawn. The mere thought of it makes him shudder and Al wonders how his grumpy brother seems to his professor that early.
Then they walk onto the university campus and oh—
“It’s beautiful,” Al breathes, eyes wide. He turns around and around in a circle to take in everything. In retrospect, he’s pretty sure he must have looked like an actual idiot standing on a path in the middle of a garden spinning like that. But it doesn’t matter. “This is where you study?”
“More or less. Some of the practical lessons are out of the city. That’s experiments mainly. The dangerous ones. Sometimes we work with circuses and carnivals. That’s more the fireworks part though.”
“Yo! Edward!”
Al looks up and there’s a girl coming towards them, bag slung over one shoulder and carrying a book under the other.
“Hey! You were gone for a while until the last couple of days,” the girl says.
“Hey Clause,” Ed says, putting his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Shit hit the fan. Alfons is dead.”
The bag drops from Clause’s shoulder and Al’s heart clenches. The way Ed had said it hadn’t been gentle. “Ed,” he hisses, glaring at his brother. “You are allowed to be the tiniest bit nicer about it.”
It comes out as a broken mix of German and Amestrian, and Ed looks at him with half a grin that had previously been reserved only for Winry and Elicia. “Nah, she prefers it like this.”
Clause’s eyes are shiny, but she’s not crying like Al had expected her to. She manages a smile, but it’s fake. “Was he sick or—?”
“Yeah.” Ed lets out a sigh. “I don’t know what, but he apparently collapsed while working on this one research project he had. He died before I managed to get there since it was the middle of the night.”
“I’m sorry,” Clause says, and she does look sorry for Ed. The grief is written into the lines on her face. Then, she turns to Al and seems to notice him for the first time. The lines disappear and her face cracks into a wide grin. “Now who’s this?”
Al points to Ed, indicating for him to explain is mysterious identity. Ed flashes him a smile that’s all teeth. Al kind of hates him the slightest bit for that. “Go on, Al,” he mutters under his breath in Amestrian.
“I’m Al,” Al explains then. He feels like an idiot. “Al Elric. I’m Ed’s brother.”
Ed sends him a thumbs up before going off explaining that neither of them are German natives, but that Ed was offered to come study in Munich and that Al had come here just a few weeks ago too to study languages and chemistry. (Not that Al had understood most of the actual conversation; Ed had told him later over dinner.)
Al’s pretty sure that Clause already knew that much, but a cover story has never hurt anyone.
She leaves them soon after to wander the campus and Al turns to face Ed. “You seem to at least get along with someone here apart from just Noah.”
Ed shrugs. “Eh. Partially. I talk to people, like, I’m not a recluse or anything. Talking to her is kinda essential anyways — she’s my lab partner most of the time. Ah, anyway, because we’re here again, I might as well pick up some extra coursework from my physics professor.”
March 13th 1924, Munich
One morning in March— März —Al wakes up to Ed’s voice calling out in an interesting mix of Amestrian, German, what sounds like it could be English and … is that Xingese? Where the—?”
Al gets up, wraps the thickest of his blankets around him and pads out of his bedroom, only to take a hurried step back. “Brother … what is—?”
“Not one word,” Ed warns. “Not one single fucking word, Al.”
The floor is covered in water and diluted coffee. On the stove, the kettle looks like it’s been through a beating.
Ed stops, closes his eyes for a moment before sighing heavily. Some part of Al's brain faintly registers that he's been doing that a lot lately. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. I’m just on edge.”
Al wants to ask what’s made Ed yell and probably drop the innocent kettle to the hardwood floor of their apartment kitchen at 8 am on a Thursday morning. Then, he yawns with the realisation that he would very much like to go back to bed as soon as possible. “Did you just speak Xingese?”
Ed freezes from where he’s grabbing a dish towel out of a drawer. “Maybe? How’d you know what that sounds like, anyway?”
Al lets out another yawn-with-the-potential-to-swallow-Liore. “I was travelling around the entire country for a while and met a lot of people from all over Amestris, Xing and Creta. I’m not sure that the Cretan refugees were allowed to stay in Amestris but I did leave them alone.”
He carefully steps around the deepest parts of the coffee lake and takes the dish towel Ed offers him. “Where’d you learn it? Xingese, I mean.”
Ed doesn’t answer and only stares at the coffee puddle like it’s a research project.
“Brother?” Al prompts gently. He’s not awake enough for this — talking is a chore and the only appealing things to him right now is either the comfort of his bed or abhorrent amounts of coffee that would put any military office to shame.
Coffee in bed…
Ed rubs at his eyes with his unoccupied hand. His eyes are rimmed red, tear tracks can be spotted on his face and Al’s mind reels as it tries to keep up with reality, no matter how slow-going it is. Has Ed been crying?
Ed doesn’t often cry, only cries when seeing either Al or Winry in disturbing amounts of pain that he thinks he’s caused. There are so few things that can cause it, but even the narrow pool of possibility is confusing Al. Had it been a nightmare? An injury severe enough for him to cry?
“Mustang,” Ed mutters unwillingly a few moments later. “He’s fluent. Used it to speak in code when we were in Central Command. Nobody really pays attention to that. Amestris’ just a country of immigrants and annexed cultures anyway. So yeah, he taught me it.”
There’s something off in Ed’s voice. It’s terrible; a shadow of guilt tinged with blood-red spots of distaste and something else Al can’t place his finger on. It’s the same expression that flickers across Ed’s face whenever Al mentions the military or…
“Brother,” Al says slowly. He gets up from the floor and wrings the dishcloth over the sink. Small droplets of coffee hit the metal with quiet plings. He knows what is going on. He coughs, clears his throat and wonders how to formulate his words. “What do you think of General Mustang?”
He can sense Ed’s ‘cornered animal expression’ before he turns around to see it. Al doesn’t’ really expect an answer and instead puts on his best sleepy smile (which isn’t too hard), pats his brother on the back before stepping around the coffee pile, back towards his warm, comfy bed. “Never mind. I think I will go back to bed. Good luck with your classes, Brother.”
When he lays down, Al’s mind is awake, spinning; going through all the information at speeds that to anyone else would likely be terrifying. All the clearer memories he has where he’s seen Edward and the general together. And then he realises, there hasn’t been much at all. A couple of smiles, a few looks — but it’s not much at all.
Has he been missing something?
1915, Central Command
“Do you speak any languages besides Amestrian, Edward?”
Ed looks up at Mustang. He's sitting behind his desk looking all high and mighty. Bastard. “No. What’s it to you, anyway?”
“Curiosity, partially,” Mustang puts down the file he’s been looking at and stares straight at him. “I have an assignment here that’s due to start in a few months or so. There are Xingese immigrants potentially looking to start trouble in the North-Eastern region of Amestris. It says in the file that having knowledge of the Xingese language is recommended. It also calls for a qualified and talented alchemist. I’d have you have the assignment since I don’t have the time for the assignment myself at the present time.”
Mustang gestures vaguely in the direction of the piles and piles of files growing steadily taller on the top right corner of his desk.
Ed stares at him, incredulous. “You speak Xingese?”
Mustang raises a too-perfect black eyebrow at Edward. “Yes. My ancestry is Xingese and my foster mother thought it valuable to know the language. She signed me up for classes when I was young.”
He has a brief vision of itty-bitty Mustang staring down at the foreign language, learning to read the small pictures that were so different from Amestrian. The bare idea of a kid-sized Mustang is … hard to imagine.
Ed scoffs. “I can learn it. It can’t be so hard.”
“You underestimate the language, Fullmetal.” Mustang’s voice is flat but his expression reveals the amusement. “I can teach you some, but most of it you will have to do on your own. I would recommend improving your handwriting — as you undoubtedly know, Xingese uses a different alphabet and one mistake could end up with a character having an entirely different meaning.”
"Fuck you, I'll do it," Ed says, aware he's too confident in his own abilities.
Mustang laughs. "If you insist."