Chapter Text
La distance est un vain mot
The Croatian coast had opened wide walls of amber rock, gray water and a leaden sky bathed in a blue and gold sunset before his eyes. A cold breeze was blowing that day, heavy with salt.
Through Ljubljana, the city of dragons, and new Budapest, the borders of Romania had risen unexpectedly in dark forests, arches and stony spiers raised to make the sky appear jagged. The land of Transylvania doesn't know mildness, doesn't know what the sun is: it's a place of rugged peaks and crystal lakes, with swollen streams of green water.
Edward had liked it from the first moment.
1.
On the first day of travel, his face pressed against the window to watch the rain, Edward wonders how the stars can be studied in a place where the sky is not even visible: but that night the storm takes away the clouds.
The galaxy is a very white swarm, fragments of glass and pieces of glistening silver scattered on the black velvet sky. There are no cities to stain the dark with their lights. Ed leans his forehead against the cold glass and closes his eyes. For a moment the sky above his head has different constellations, another name.
There is Alphonse, somewhere there, watching it with him.
9.
Impossible impossible impossible impossible impossible, is it...
"My name is Alfons Heiderich."
... possible?
Ed would blatantly stare at him if he wasn't afraid of looking weird, and he just doesn't want to look weird. Not to him. Not to - he looks just like Al.
While having dinner with all the other researchers, Edward observes the image of Alfons reflected in the shiny metal jug in front of him: the square chin makes his - otherwise delicate - features more sharp; blond hair, fair skin. His eyes are not like Al's, they have the color of the lakes of Romania, the blue-green sea of the Slovenian islands instead of brown. But they have the same mild, proud and stubborn kindness.
He's tall. Seeing his little brother has grown tall is a spiteful and surprising punishment to his ego, but Ed thinks he can tolerate it: anything, as long as he's allowed to see him.
It's not Al. It's not Al, but he looks like him.
"So you study the stars."
Alfons smiles at him.
"I'm an aerospace engineer."
"Aerospace?" he plays with the cutlery while looking at him.
He sees Alfons laughing at his question.
Would Al laugh like that? The last time he saw him laughing - before the armor - he was nine years old and had a thin and childlike neck; on Alfons' neck he can see his Adam's apple jerking slightly. He has a veil of golden beard on his smooth skin.
Alfons stops laughing to observe him with a somewhat perplexed curiosity:
"Is that a real question?"
"Yes, I'm very serious."
Alfons looks like he's thinking about it. Maybe he wonders if Ed's making fun of him.
"An aerospace engineer designs, tests, and supervises the manufacture of aircraft, spacecraft, rockets... tests prototypes to make sure they function according to design and develops new technologies."
He knows what an engineer is: someone like Winry. There are big machines here, machines that fly and machines that do jobs that, in Amestris, not even men want to do. Engineers build machines.
For a moment he thinks that Alfons would probably like to see the mechanisms of his arm and leg.
"You're here to build the rocket, then."
Alfons' eyes light up, sparkling with enthusiasm:
"Yeah! And you...?"
Ed tilts his head to one side with an interrogative expression, and Alfons asks him: "Are you here for the rocket too?"
I'm here for my brother. My brother who has your face. My brother, because I promised him we would meet again.
Ed smiles. With the tip of the fork he draws a perfect circle on the white tablecloth.
"I'm here for the stars." He says.
14.
"This is a convergent-divergent nozzle, see?" Crouching at the bottom of the rocket, Alfons points out to him the space where the exhaust gases escape, tapping gently with a wrench against the heavy metal edge. Edward leans over to see it better.
"Professor Goddard was the first to think it could be used like this. We're still trying to stabilize it to get the right gas velocity when passing through the bottleneck, but I think we're almost there."
And then, looking up with bright eyes and a cheerful smile:
"It will fly. We can use it to touch the moon, Ed."
Not even the moon of that world is his moon, Edward thinks. It has craters that he doesn't recognize, a face that is not familiar to him. Not even the moon is far enough away, they have to go further, beyond: but Alfons is smiling at him, and he cannot do anything but return.
"Do you want to go see it up close?" Ed asks after a while.
Alfons is lying on his back, wedged between the rocket and the floor, and is now tightening one of the bottom bolts.
"What, Ed ...?"
"The moon. Do you want to see it up close?"
"Not... not exactly. Can you pass me a wrench?"
Ed sits on the ground, not caring for the soot that immediately dirties up his light trousers, and hands him the requested wrench.
"Not exactly it's a vague answer, Al... " He hesitates. "Do you mind if I call you that?"
Alfons' face, dirty with dusty black, leans out of the engine to look at him. He always smiles brightly and looks happy.
"Of course not. I'm glad."
That's not Al. He isn't Al. He's got his name, he's got his face, but he's not Al. He's the Al of this place, the place he wants to leave. Calling him as his brother - thinking of him as his brother - is not wise.
"Al." He repeats anyway.
It's not wise but he can't help it. "So? Why are you so interested in launching this rocket?"
Alfons disappears under the engine again, and his voice sounds muffled and metallic: "Because someday we'll all walk on the moon, Ed. Have you ever read From Earth to the Moon?"
Edward has no idea what it is.
"Well, it's a novel my father gave me when I was ten years old, and... if you haven't read it you can't understand what it was for me. There will be houses on the moon someday. People will live there. We will have cities on the moon, we will sail from there and travel to the stars, and I want to be part of all this."
A moment of silence, before he ends saying:
"If I cannot be like the protagonist of that book, I will at least be the person who has paved the way for him."
Ed would like to ask why Alfons thinks he can't be him - and why, above all, his voice sounds so indescribably sad while he talks about it - but then Alfons asks him to pass him another wrench and the conversation is over.
He gets the answer to his question the same evening, anyway, in the form of an unexpected blood stain on the handkerchief pressed against Alfons' mouth.
If you have a fatal lung disease, you don't have enough life to touch the moon.