Chapter Text
"Al!" Izumi's frown threatened to bow the wooden bench beneath her, "get back from there!"
"Don't worry! I just want to take a closer look." Brazenly defying his teacher, Al placed a hand on the cold metal side of the train and lowered his voice, "I've seen them go by so many times, but the ones here seem different."
Maybe this was what he gets for spending so much time with Winry, a heightened interest in trains. Mechanics was not his forte, but he could still admire the magnificence of a train engine. Al pushed the palms of his hands harder against the cold steel, his lips curling in amusement. Yup, Winry was going to be so jealous when he told her how close and personal he got with the latest engines going through the big cities.
Izumi ran out of patience with Al's willful deafness, slapped her hands over her knees, and stood up to holler, "We're heading home if you don't park yourself behind the white line now!"
The inarguable command sent Al scampering backwards. The train was interesting, but this journey was far, far more important.
He straightened his green button-down shirt with a sharp tug and headed back to Izumi. The dull thumps of his feet ascending a mountain of wooden stairs were swallowed by the buzz of the station. Finding his teacher on the overflow platform, Al shuffled his feet and sheepishly grinned in an attempt to diffuse whatever he could of her tension. "The trains go by all the time at home, but we always stay away from the tracks."
This 'we' wasn't Al and Winry, or Al and Rose, or Al and anyone of his redefined life. This 'we' was still Edward and Alphonse Elric.
"It's different here - they're all together and all parked. I just wanted to have a closer look."
Izumi released the air in her lungs through her nostrils and sat back down. "It's the same kind of train that stops in Resembool every twelve hours."
"I suppose, but not exactly. Plus, there's only one track going through Resembool Station. There's…" Al spun on his toes and scampered to the railing of the wooden deck, "... two in here and more outside! There's a roof overhead and the floor down there is concrete. It's nothing like Resembool at all. This is huge!"
The teacher swallowed a tired sigh and tucked her sentiments away under her breath, "This isn't the first time I've taken you to Dublith. I know you have your memories from tha—"
Izumi stopped.
The sense of concern radiating off her brought Al back, "Something wrong?"
Visually engaged in the bustle at her left, Izumi searched the crowd for the anomaly that caught her attention. Al joined her and was surprised at how easily he found the fair face and blue eyes that quickly vanished behind a veil of dark hair on a bench.
Izumi's mouth cranked open, "We're being watched."
Just like that Al heard his teacher thrust her concerns to the forefront of their trip.
There was no amount of reassurance he could offer that would loosen how tightly wound Izumi was, and every blip on the radar made it worse. He didn't share the worry – this person was just a girl uncomfortably weaving her fingers through the ends of her skirt. Not an adult. Certainly not military. No one was going to abduct him and turn him into a science project. How in the world would anyone know he was Alphonse Elric in the first place? She was overreacting again.
"Don't worry about her," Al tried to abolish the worries dredged up by the one person who had taken interest in them.
Slow to dismiss the peering young lady, Izumi didn't respond.
Objectivity crept back in and Al reminded himself to respect how badly his teacher wanted them to sail under the radar. They were meant to be nothing more than two faces in a crowd en route to Dublith. A mother and son like so many others. Of no interest to anyone.
Until they arrived in Dublith, Alphonse Elric was just plain ol' Al Curtis.
The crass ring of the station's broadcast system clawed at every ear to announce the Central City boarding call. Well before the cringe of the shrill noise had relented, the veil of black hair and the young lady leading it swiftly passed Izumi and Al, every footfall masked by the uncomfortable station buzz as she hastily rushed ahead.
Al again assured Izumi there was nothing to worry about, only to have her grip on his arm tighten as they got to their feet.
Izumi's hold on an eleven-year-old fuelled with far too much vim and vigour only lasted until they descended the stairs. Al bounded down to the main platform. Racing ahead, his travel bag bouncing over his shoulder, he wove into the crowd of people filling the departure platform. Impressively, Izumi's warning call carried above the roar of people. Al paused in the flow, dancing in place as he dodged the waves of people that shoved past him. Was she seriously going to put a leash on him if he didn't stay glued to her side!?
"She's being so overprotective," Al sighed to himself, "I get it, but even my mom was never so—"
"She's not your mother?"
Alphonse wheeled around.
The fair face and blue eyes met him nose to nose.
Clearly a few years his senior, the girl's gaze was wide, her expression awestruck, and her entire look was framed by dark, waist-length hair. What did she want? She was kind of pretty. Why was she talking to him? Dangit, he was starting to sound like everyone in his family. But, why was she interested in who his mother was? For a split second, Al did entertain Izumi's concerns.
The longer they stood in silence staring at each other, and the longer they were bumped around by human traffic on the platform, the more Al started to think she wasn't going to say anything again unless he replied.
"She is my mom," Al lied, upholding the integrity of a scripted answer, "you just misheard."
Alright, he'd spoken up, now it was her turn to say something! Al returned the girl's opening gesture by staring at her and patiently waiting. Her hair flew around her arms while people brushed past, lit by the sunlight filtering in from a crack in the canopy over head.
"Sorry, nevermind," the girl's words rushed out in a single breath.
What!? That wasn't fair, Al wanted to know more. "No, it's fine, what did you wa—"
Exasperated with the two idle children acting as pylons, the humanity moving around them shoved Al aside. The young Elric staggered around in a mess of bodies, bouncing off annoyed people as he attempted to reorient himself. By the time he was steady again, the mystery girl with long black hair had been swallowed by the sea.
Alphonse was lurched around one more time when Izumi snagged him by his shirt collar. Secured at her side, unable to escape her hold, Al obediently glued himself to her hip and was left to wonder what on earth had just happened.
Ed cursed up a storm helplessly watching a spread of papers fall to the floor. The jostling on this train had moved beyond annoying to infuriating. He didn't have the dexterity in both hands to overcome it; everything fell through his right finger tips, literally.
"The war's been over for years, they could at least put a little effort into repairing the tracks properly," he chastised no one who could hear him. Needing more stability than the bouncy ride had to offer, Ed eased himself down to his knees to collect his research from the private cabin floor.
A knock on the door narrowed his eyes. Now what?
"Excuse me, Mr. Elric?"
Aw, come on, he'd just gotten down here. It'd be a cold day in this hell before he bitched or complained about his physical challenges though. Ed adjusted his right shoulder, gave his left hip a good smack, and hauled his body back up onto both feet to open the door. "Yes?"
A well painted, middle-aged, female attendant smiled. "Good afternoon, Mister Elric. Since we were not stopping in Reichenhall, you requested to know when we'd entered Austria."
"Already!?" Damn that was fast. Had he been dozing off? He was never going to get used to how quickly train travel got someone across continental Europe.
Thanking the woman and shutting the door, Ed was back down on the floor of his cabin to examine the state of his research. Pages nearest the door were scuffed with his shoe prints. Force of will wasn't getting his right arm to move like it should, the damn thing was malfunctioning. Not like it worked optimally in the first place but, when it was working right, it was a hell of a lot better than the partially paralyzed sensation it was giving him now. He entertained the idea of taking it off, but the thought of putting it back on again made Ed's skin crawl. AutoMail activation hurt like a son of a bitch – but this thing was a torture devise all of his own doing.
And his father's.
Edward gave two seconds of thought to asking his old man help him re-mount the arm and he was okay with the unsightly decoration hanging off his body.
The train rumbled around a wide bend, offering a scenic view of the hills they navigated. Ed sat on the floor and saw none of it. The white curtains pulled wide welcomed a growing swath of low-hanging sun. The beam widened as the train turned until it poured off the seat and flooded the floor with sunlight.
The sun was something Ed had learned he could disregard – it wasn't warm, it was just there. It illuminated the world in the daytime, fed the plants, heated the air, cooked the people, made him sweat, did its job, but it was lacking something. Initially, at the beginning of all this, Ed concluded that nothing felt warmed by the sun. Cooked, baked, or burned sure, but not warmed. Somewhere along the way Edward had lost his grasp of that intangible absence, and now the sun was just there. He ignored it.
Ed climbed back into his seat, dusty papers at his side. Beyond the window a smoky-blue sky held no clouds. What he hoped he hadn't lost grip of was his recognition of what the sky and the earth should look like. If he thought about it hard enough, yeah, he could see how the view was still muted. Drained of vibrancy. Not to the point of being monotone, but a grey wash dulled everything the eye saw. Ed dreaded the day when he'd have been gone long enough that the grey lifelessness of this world would pollute his memory too. He didn't want this to ever feel normal.
Relaxing as best he could in a hard, wooden seat, Ed let his shoulder's fall and he did something dangerous – he let his mind drift.
Before the empty void of sleep took away his dreams every night, there was a point where his consciousness was free to do whatever the hell it wanted. Sometimes it re-lived things he'd rather forget. Sometimes he would be cursed with a waking nightmare. But, sometimes he'd get Al. And sometimes he'd go home.
Another mangled section of track spoiled everything and Ed bounced. Not realizing how far he'd slouched, he slid off the seat, landed on the floor, and smacked the back of his head against the bench lip. Clawing at his new bruise, half his papers had joined him down there.
Screw it, the research was going back into envelopes and into his briefcase for this leg of the trip. Nothing was ever going to get done at this rate.
In the paper shuffle conducted on a dusty floor, a much smaller sheet than all the rest slipped out of the pile and sailed towards the door. Ed's eyes rounded and he floundered forwards on what he had for hands and knees to capture his Vienna transfer ticket before it escaped under the door.
"Christ, I can't lose that," dusting himself off, Ed tucked it into his breast pocket, "the last thing I need now is to get stuck in Austria."
Al twitched and sat up in his seat. He crossed his legs to settle himself. He re-crossed them the other way. He put a hand on his kneecap and scratched it. He plopped his chin into his open hand on the arm rest.
"What?" Izumi asked flatly.
"Nothing," he lied.
"What?" Izumi repeated herself.
There was no position where Al didn't radiate discomfort. He slouched in his seat, fully aware of the problem he was walking into on such a crowded train. He knew the reason the couple who'd been seated with them had been gone for so long.
"I need to use the toilet," he confessed.
"I told you, you should have gone–"
"I know you said that!"
Al cut her off and immediately wished he hadn't. A sleepless Izumi rose from her seat like a cataclysm in the noisy train car and caused Al to wither away in his spot, chirping out apologies while she loomed.
"Excuse me?"
A curious voice directed focus to Izumi's shoulder and dug Al's eyes out from his cowering ball.
The fair face with long black hair from the train platform stood firmly at the opening of the booth. Adjusting her knee-length dress, the girl shoved her hair behind her shoulders and presented herself proudly, though the nerves rattling her fists were determined to betray her. "I'm sorry, but your voice bothers me."
The blue in her eyes dulled when everyone with ears, including her own, recognized how rude her opening statement sounded. The visitor recoiled as the awkward silence around her became louder than the rattling train car. Half of the sweltering passengers pulled their heads out of the window breezes to give the brazen young traveller a cautious eye for her declaration.
Izumi slowly turned to her, the exhausted dark circles under her eyes weighing down her expression, "I'm sorry young lady, but pardon me?"
The girl stepped back abruptly, "That came out wrong."
"Where are your parents?" Izumi demanded.
"I'm so sorry, Ma'am, I wasn't talking about you," the girl shifted her eyes off of the woman bearing down on her and looked at her companion, "I was talking about him."
Al popped out of his compact shape. "You're the girl from the train station."
"He hasn't said anything to bother you." Izumi brought her temperature down to a simmer and let the passengers of their train car find something else to gawk at. Her voice lowered, "I saw you keeping an eye on us this morning, didn't I? How long has this 'bother' been going on?"
She humbly looked down at her feet, "I didn't mean to stare, but something's been nagging at me since I passed you at the station. And I don't think my memory is wrong. Well, not that wrong. And, you see, it's just not adding up!"
"What's not adding up?" Al wanted to wrap his head around her directionless babbling.
Izumi offered the vacant spots of their booth to their mystery guest, "Have a seat."
Making a point to seat herself directly across from Al, the girl smoothed her hands over her knees and immediately brightened. Her eyes picked up the light and, like Izumi's foreboding presence had inexplicably vanished, Al was the only one she saw.
"It can't be you. I thought maybe it was, but this isn't…" she peered in a little closer, "you're not the right size at all, but you do sound the same."
Every inconclusive word teased Al's curiosity a little more, and she left him sitting on pins and needles with a poignant pause.
"Do you have a brother named Ed?"
Al's heart screamed.
"Edward Elric? He's an alchemist."
Yes.
No.
Al anchored his gaze in her direction and stared right through her. The vibration of the train tamed, the noise of the world's chatter silenced, the breeze of the open window was lost. The world moving outside the four walls around them ended.
This girl knew him.
Not the fictitious Al Curtis bouncing through Central City and down to Dublith alongside the woman who would guide him towards his aspirations. This girl knew that Alphonse Elric. The one Al didn't know. The one he'd forgotten.
Izumi crossed her legs and put a hand on Al's shoulder, "Never heard of him."
Wounded ears shuttered themselves to cruel, necessary words. The muffled sounds that reached Al echoed like he was trapped inside the hollow chamber of armour he couldn't remember. He had no brother for this trip. He was an only child. It was so much more fun when words didn't actualize it.
"Why do you ask?" Izumi continued.
"Something like five or six years ago, two alchemists were in a town I used to live in," she explained, returning a fragment of Al's lost life to his hands, "it was two boys, I guess not much older than me, and their names were Edward and Alphonse Elric."
There it was – a glimpse into the life taken from him found in the wild. His family discouraged him from seeking the missing pieces, but instead encouraged him to find his own path, and implored him not to mould himself around a lost reality. These loose ends weren't supposed to just find him. No one should recognize him. The Elric brothers had 'vanished' and Alphonse Elric was his own best disguise.
"It was something that was kind of hard to forget. They were pretty unique. After they left, my dad heard that one of them ended up becoming a State Alchemist, but… your voice, when I first heard it I was expecting to see a giant! It was so unforgettable: this big guy in a suit of armour with a little boy's voice echoing inside it." She raised her arms above her head, as though to remind herself how it felt to be in that towering presence, "I never thought I'd hear it again, but you sound exactly like him."
A ghost from Al's past had heard him.
"That's quite an interesting person you're describing, but it's a coincidence." Izumi's voice softened and her exhausted tension eased. She moved her hand off Al's shoulder and down to his knee to squeeze it, "This is my son, Al Curtis. He's never travelled without me and he's never worn a suit of armour. I'm sorry, dear. He's not who you thought he was."
The girl shifted uneasily in her seat and frowned to consider the answer given. "Okay. I'm sorry I bothered you like I did."
"Don't apologize," Izumi smiled her reassurance, "if you weren't observant, I doubt your parents would let you travel alone. But since I've told you who we are, why not tell us who you are – what's your name, dear?"
"Clausé," the answer was eagerly given. "My dad's never had a problem letting me travel alone. I'm meeting him in Central, actually. He'd come home if he could, but the terms are he can only get leave in Central, so I'm going to him."
Izumi kept the conversation going, cautiously probing for answers, "Your father's in the military?"
Clausé nodded, "He signed on six months ago to help the people rebuild what had been lost in the wars. He supported the de-escalation the new government talked about, but we didn't have money to donate, and the only way to help was to offer labour, so he enlisted. He's been serving in the Ishibal region long enough that his turn for leave came up, so he's back for a bit."
Regardless of her cynical opinion of the new government, Izumi conceded the young lady's father had his heart in the right place. "He sounds like a good man."
"Thank you." Clausé put her hands on her knees and pushed up to her feet, "I should go and keep an eye on my bags. Sorry I bothered you with all this."
Wishing Clausé well and seeing her off with a wave, Izumi waited for her to be out of sight before refocussing her attention on the child who'd retreated next to her.
"Al," Izumi gently nudged him.
"I've never heard that name before," he croaked, locked up with his faint reflection in the half open window, "I had no idea who she was. I don't remember any of that."
Izumi reached an arm around his neck, and the fingers of her free hand slid into his hair. Al's head went down on a soft space at her shoulder and Izumi put her chin down on his short bed of hair. She tucked him away at her side and held him there, selfishly taking a moment to play the role of the soothing mother figure she was scarcely allowed to be.
"That's okay."
It was understood, but not apparent until Ed was physically gone, just how much strength Al drew from his brother. There was a kind of confidence and emotional fortitude Ed possessed that Al relied on, and it was lost now. It was no secret Al's refusal to come to terms with Ed's fate laid the groundwork for his motivation to venture out with Izumi on this quest.
But such a magnificent job had been done focussing on the importance Ed had played in Al's life that none of his mental preparation considered how he might feel if he came face to face with the other parts of himself he'd lost along the way.
Al slumped into Izumi's side, closed his eyes, and waited for the uncomfortable feeling to pass.
"Holy hell, it's hot in here," Edward hung out the train cabin window like laundry draped over a line, "when was it ever this hot in August?"
Sitting idle for half an hour made the entire string of train cars insufferable. Ed pressed his cheek against the wooden frame and even that didn't offer relief. Was the passenger turnover done yet? Better yet, was the track adjustment done?
At the risk of sweating buckets, there wasn't a whole lot more naked he could go. Already without his jacket and vest discarded on the seat across, plus his shoes on the floor, Ed undid the top few buttons at his collar. Was there any sort of protocol for how far he could unbutton his shirt in a premium coach?
Ed yanked his ponytail up a little higher to get it off the back of his neck and hoped that would help vent some heat.
So, the big question finally became: was it finally hot enough to make the paint run on the Danube station sign? Ed was about ready to melt out the window, the paint couldn't be that far behind. Did he want to open his eyes and find out?
"Paper, sir?!" A little voice peeped from the platform below.
Ed didn't open his eyes. "Shoo."
It didn't discourage the peddler, "I have Weiner Tagblatt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Angewandte Chemie, Weiner Zeitung! Come on, they're only a spot!"
Edward swung his left arm out the window and aimlessly flicked the child's oversized hat askew with his fingers, "I said 'shoo'."
The nuisance persisted and managed to get Ed to crack an eye open to catch a glimpse of the feeble skeleton of a child. A trail of sweat ran through the boy's face without care. The skin stretched over his body seemed to be a more pale grey than any shade of pink. The frail thing's wide eyes were swollen with desperation, and the healthiest thing about him seemed to be the determination to sell a single newspaper.
"Your papers are all German," and that probably meant they were old, "do you have anything more local?"
"Zeitung is!" The child eagerly shoved a thinner publication into Ed's face, "It's from Vienna! I promise."
Edward liquified, drained into his cabin, and reappeared moments later to toss a few coins down to the desperate paperboy, "Give me that, now go away."
The child tossed the paper up to his customer and marched proudly further down the track. "Thank you for your patronage!" he called.
Ed uncoiled the paper. Shaking out the pages, the headlines gave him more than enough reason to grumble. "Of course it's old." He tossed the paper aside. "I'm sick of reading about what new province or border they're making up for whomever and wherever. I'll read an Austrian paper next year, maybe by then they'll decide what country to leave Vienna in."
The window perch was relinquished and Edward had a go at laying on the wooden seat of his cabin. Bundling his coat, Ed tucked it behind his head, shut his eyes, and let his thoughts be entertained by the only thing on his mind lately: Goddard's works.
Edward's mind could run marathons through that man's theories and propositions by this point, manipulating and toying with chemistry and physics and propulsion was practically the only thing that could keep Ed occupied in his down-time.
An English copy of Goddard's 'Methods of Reaching Extreme Altitudes' was finally in his hands and he had eaten up every word of it. For a few weeks it was his breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The mathematical theories behind rocket flight looked like something only a madman could think up. His experiments with fuel to penetrate the earth's atmosphere were spellbinding. The Goddard Report had been scrutinized and memorized. Tsiolkovsky had been a fun rabbit hole to go down, but Goddard was the kind of crazy son of a bitch Ed wanted to meet. If the Atlantic ocean hadn't been between them, Ed would have picked that man's brain ages ago.
Ed could only pass himself off as an Englishman or a German, so he wasn't going to touch the shitshow the Russian Empire had turned into just to translate Tsiolkovsky's mind with a dictionary.
Next on Edward Elric's hit list was Hermann Oberth.
The youngest of rocket science's brightest stars, Oberth was making a name for himself in European circles. Considering how easily Ed had gotten himself lost in Goddard's work, he was excited to see what sort of insights would someone like Oberth get from it – the man actually knew what he was doing! If Ed wanted to launch himself into the stratosphere and reach the Gate he fell out of, he needed another brilliant mind to help him.
It wasn't like he had Al to bounce things off of and critique his work.
The things Ed had piled up to tell Al all about when he got home was nothing short of a treasure trove. An absolute mountain of treasure. Every day, the mountain grew a little more, until one day Ed looked up and found himself standing in the shadow of it.
Ed lay his flesh arm over his eyes. Well, he didn't need to bring all of that treasure home.
Provided Al was home.
Hope that Al was there to go back to was the only thing Ed could hang on to that gave this purgatory any meaning.
"Sir?"
This second chance he didn't ask for.
"Sir…?"
Edward cracked his eyes open and looked over to a shy attendant peeking in through the cabin door. "Sorry," he sat up and shook the fog from his head.
"Would you like more water?" she opened the door a little farther, "the heat isn't good for anyone."
Ed brushed his damp hair off his sweaty forehead, "Yes, thank you."
She nodded, "We've been cleared to depart in about ten minutes. Ticket takers will be passing through shortly, have your pass ready."
"I will, thank you— oh hey, excuse me!" Ed stopped her before she could move on. Straightening himself out on the bench more presentably, Edward offered a sheepish grin to the young lady, "Once they've checked tickets, is there any problem if I… uh…" he shook out the collar of his shirt and wondered how to word this, "take some liberties with what I'm wearing to get more comfortable in the heat?"
The mousy smile he got from the young attendant made Ed squirm. It wasn't like he was asking if it was okay if he stripped.
"We can bring a hanger for your door, so you can enjoy your space freely, without disturbance."
"Perfect, thank you." On second thought, maybe he had just asked if he could strip, if only so he could hang his clothes to dry in the window before he got to Vienna. He didn't need to turn up on Oberth's doorstep smelling like something the cat dragged in.
Wonder stretched Al's face tall and dialed the life in his eyes up on high. "There are so many people here. Central City is huge!"
"Yup. Central City Terminal is a blasted maze." If Izumi had her way they would only be transferring here, but the national rail mess that no politician was addressing was forcing the pair to spend the night in the city. Izumi rolled her head around on her neck, body begging for a proper bed, and she lit a fire under Al's idle backside. "Stop gawking and pick up your bags!"
Alphonse snapped them up. Bouncing alongside his teacher as they navigated the departing crowd, he chirped, "We have somewhere to stay, right? Is there time to look around the city? There's so much to see already! Can we go to a bookstore? The alchemy texts have to be amazing here. We should check out the new releases first, maybe there's been new research in the last five years that's come out that can help us!"
Where did children find this energy? Izumi wished she could borrow from his exuberance and see the city through Al's lens. It was his 'first time' seeing Central City, of course the rush would hit him, but Izumi was too tired to share in it. Too cautious. Too worried. They couldn't leave this city fast enough. This was the last place in the country Izumi wanted to be.
"I called for a room at an inn when we skipped that transfer to look around, so we have some time to find some books you want."
"Yes!" Al's fist pump nearly launched him into the air.
At least Izumi could be thankful he hadn't stayed upset for too long. "Use that energy to find us a lift. If all these people are taking cabs, there'll be none left for us."
Alphonse was ten strides ahead of her before the sentence had finished.
Izumi's posture sagged and the tired darkness around her eyes grew thicker. She wanted to cap Al's energy, put a leash on him, and take him as far away from Central as she could get. For twenty-four hours she had to focus on keeping their presence low. If she couldn't lock Al away at the inn, she'd bury him in a bookstore – out of sight and out of trouble.
Al came back into Izumi's sightline again near the vehicle corral; stopped fifteen or twenty metres ahead, instead of holding a taxi he was already neck deep in trouble. Izumi's heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach. Why on earth was it so hard to keep these Elrics from running amok? She clenched her hands to keep herself from strangling him – what was Alphonse thinking talking to a man in a military uniform in Central City!? Of all places!
Surging forwards, Izumi's ears captured the conversation before she could capture Al.
"It's good that you have time off to spend with your daughter!" Al beamed.
"Where did you say you were going? Dublith?" the officer tapped his chin, his military jacket unbuttoned to accommodate the heat, "I think I have a cousin who lives there…"
"We are, but we have to wait until tomorrow, so we're staying in an inn for now," Al said.
Clausé combed her fingers through the ends of her hair, "Dad, I don't think they'll have much luck getting a ride this time of day. Could we drop them off?"
Al protested with an emphatic wave of his hands, "No, don't do that. We'll be fine!"
"Yes, we will be fine." Izumi's shadow overtook Al. She placed a very firm hand on his shoulder, and decorated her words with the kind of overly pleasant tone that she knew would make this young man's heart shiver. "Good afternoon, folks."
"Dad, this is Al's mother, Mrs. Curtis," Clausé smiled.
Izumi lightly bowed her head to greet them, "I hope my boy isn't holding you up, Clausé… and… Sergeant Clausé?"
"I'm property of my own daughter now? How the tables have turned," the military man burst with a hearty laugh at the address and enlightened his company, "It's Serif. Harrod Serif. Clausé was thinking you may have some trouble catching a lift this time of day and I don't think she's wrong. Can I offer you a ride to your inn? Your son mentioned it was his first time in Central, we can pass by the Open Market Fair for a bite to eat before you settle in for the night. We'll give the young man a solid first impression of the city, what do you think?"
No.
Izumi wanted to pick Al up and march off without another word. If only she was a 15-year-old brat and could hiss. Being chartered around Central City by an off duty military officer was not something she wanted to do for more reasons than she could count. "We really shouldn't impose on you like that. I know my way around Central City, we'll be fine on our own."
"No, really, we insist!" Clausé chirped.
Izumi fought the urge to outwardly cringe. On the surface, there was little viable reason to decline. The internal motivation to refuse didn't even boil down to her deep-rooted disgust of the military. The two of them were meant to travel unnoticed, even to the kindness of strangers. But a girl who'd recognized Alphonse Elric by voice alone was sharing her interest with a man involved in an institution Izumi wanted to hide Al from. How treacherous was this slope they were on?
"Leave time in the military is hard to come by – focus on spending time with your daughter. We'll be fine," Izumi tried to politely excuse herself again, "we do appreciate the offer, though."
"Nonsense!" Clausé's father threw his rich, jovial voice out for too many voices to hear, "there are more than enough hours available to me this week that I can see you safely to your inn, and you can join us for an early evening dinner at the market along the way."
Clausé smiled sweetly at Izumi. Dammit, she knew this girl was going to be trouble. Her father's countryside courtesy shone proudly with his thick fists planted on his waist. And Alphonse, for as much hot water as he knew he was in, gambled away his trip to the bookstore and looked up at Izumi from the corner of his eye with that look.
"Well," she was still weak to it, "it's an offer too good to refuse, I suppose." They would get this over with as quickly as possible and then she would lock Al up for every single one of their remaining hours in Central City.
Edward flipped his pocket watch open. And closed it. Open again. Closed. Click, click, click. A boredom ritual since he was twelve, Ed mindlessly flipped the lid of his pocket watch. It helped him concentrate, be damned if he could explain why or how. There were too many thoughts for his mind to juggle and he was growing tired of all of them. Whatever he had left for boredom relief had been sucked dry in Vienna. He slumped further on this creaky wooden bench.
"That's a very lovely watch," someone stepped into his light, "who's your craftsman?"
Ed looked up to the eclipsed sun and met a bright face dressed like every young woman who cared about her appearance in 1921 did. She tilted her head, hoping to encourage a response.
Ed answered by snapping his watch shut, "Someone my father knew had it made."
The presumptuous woman sat down next to him on the station bench, curls bouncing lively around her face, "I've never seen that sort of insignia before. Is it Persian? A war token, maybe? It seems militaristic, are you a soldier?"
Confusion was the primary element in the leery stare Edward was giving her. Who was this woman and why was she in his business all of a sudden? Ed took a second to examine this busybody. She was dressed like she'd walked out of a magazine. Her knee length tan jacket was tied perfectly at the middle and her hat sat slightly askew to let her curls bounce with more enthusiasm on one side than the other. The tops of her high-heeled boots hid beneath the reach of her dress hanging below her jacket's hem. She was wrapped in fragrant mystique and presented her smile like a bow atop a gift.
Flirting impatience, she crossed one leg over the other. Daintily, almost mockingly, she clasped her hands together over her knees and Ed could clearly see the wedding ring on her finger. What the hell this random, married woman could want with him?
"Well," Ed gave a half assed answer to explain why he carried a replica of his State Alchemist watch around in a world where no one would recognize it, "it's a personal keepsake… for an old friend."
The woman's eyes widened with delight, "Oh, that's sweet, what a nice thing to do for a friend. Did they pass in the war?"
"No…" Ed garbled his words, "it's complicated."
"I understand how that is," she continued, "it's fine craftsmanship though with the edging and the lines. I could tell from a distance it was something exquisitely made. You must have used the finest silver for it. How does it work? Do you wind it? Is it automatic?"
The woman's questions sent a chill down Ed's spine and he stuffed the watch back into his pocket. "What's your name?"
"Me?" she smiled as if she'd been hoping all along he would ask, "Mathilde. And what might yours be?"
"Edward," he gave Mathilde a wary eye; the name didn't ring a bell, so what business did she have with him? "Do I know you from somewhere?"
Mathilde re-crossed her legs and lounged on the bench they shared. "I'm not certain. Are you from Schässburg? Have you ever been there?"
Of all the cities she could have brought up, she managed to pick the one that worsened Ed's frown, "That's where I'm headed, actually."
"Are you?" she lit up.
Just once someone had managed to drag Edward into a cabaret club and this lady had all the earmarkings of the flamboyant dancer he'd been forced to converse with at the table. She was too old for this to be some sort of gimmick or prank. Was this the front of a scam? Where was the husband to go with this ring?
"Guess we can't say we've met there, can we?" Mathilde tapped her chin lightly, as if she were playing a game, "how about Munich? Have you ever been there?"
Ed's suspicion swelled, "I live in Munich."
Unfazed by Edward's lack of enthusiasm in their conversation, Mathilde babbled on, "Brilliant! Have you ever been to the university there? I've had a number of friends that attended and my husband is on great terms with several professors. It's the best education Germany has to offer."
Now she was beyond suspicious. Edward locked her in his crosshairs, "My father teaches there."
"Does he really?" legitimate surprise resonated in Mathilde's response, "well, he must be a great man to be a professor at Munich's university. What's his name?"
"Why?" that was as far as Ed was letting her go with this game or scam or whatever. "What're you trying to get at? Why are you talking to me?"
Taken aback by the harsh accusation, Mathilde's feathers ruffled, "You asked if we knew each other from somewhere, I was getting to the bottom of it."
Ed dismissed her, "Sorry, I don't know you from anywhere."
A wave of dissatisfaction took over Mathilde's presentation, "You're a miserable bugger, aren't you? For a young man dressed as nicely as you are, your social skills leave everything to be desired. It's no wonder you're travelling alone," she chirped. Mathilde stood up sharply and straightened her jacket with a dignified tug, "I can't imagine anyone taking a fancy with you and I guarantee the brothel owners all through Austria will kick you out if you're so disrespectful to the service. You aren't big enough to—"
A vein pulsed on Edward's forehead and he shot up like a firecracker. "LISTEN, LADY!"
In the middle of a crowd of watchers whose ears had picked up the commotion, Ed laid the law down for the most crucial accusation she'd gotten wrong.
"I've grown."
"Tilly!" a male voice beckoned from a distance, ending the altercation before it could degrade any farther. "We're boarding!"
"I'll be right there!" Mathilde hollered, stepping away from Edward still fuming with righteous indignation. The playful tease she'd wrapped herself in fell away like a shawl that had slid off her shoulders. A woman with eyes mature beyond her years smiled at him. "I hope you find what you're looking for in Schässburg. There have been some problems with rebel groups since we became Rumanians, so keep alert, won't you?" Mathilde spun on her toes, tossed her hair from her face, and walked away.
"What on earth…" Ed gawked at the back of this chaotic woman until she vanished into the crowd of people.
As if a passing train had barrelled into him, Ed was struck by the acute awareness of all eyes around him trying to pretend like they hadn't been watching the scene. Ed sharply adjusted his vest and shirt cuffs like he was civilized, cleared his throat, and sat back down. His pocket watch chain rattled on the bench and the device found its way back into his hand. Ed glanced at the time, crossed one leg over the other, clasped his hands around the watch in his lap, and gave no one else in this crowd of gossipy snoops any further reason to stare at him.
"Wow." Al gawked at the crowded street.
Clausé screwed her hands to her hips, voice bursting with delight, "The Open Market Fair began a few days ago. Streets and streets of little shops selling everyone's best products! Food, clothes, sweets and candy, toys and games… and gadgets for that girlfriend you were talking about – you can find them all here!"
Momentarily overlooking all the perks and benefits of the adventure, Al recoiled in a childish horror. "Winry is not my girlfriend."
"Awww," Clausé teased, walking a stride ahead of him into the bustling market, "she sounds so sweet though."
"Winry is six mo--years older than me! There's no way!"
"Well fine, she can be a big sister then," Clausé let Al have his way, then let the entire conversation fall to the wayside when she turned on a dime, answering the call of a booth that caught her eye.
This was perfect, Al thought. Exactly how perfect, he wasn't entirely sure.
After devouring their meals at one of the many sprawling cafés, the duo had managed to beg and plead themselves away from their guardians. In this bubbling market lined with streamers and decorative knick knacks, Al had approximately fifteen minutes to get to personally know the stranger he'd forgotten.
He hadn't expected his first encounter with someone he'd lost to hit him so hard. Unbelievable stories had weighed heavily on his heart when he listened to them at home. Sometimes, he didn't want to hear them at all. Every tale felt like a storybook adventure that had been ripped out of him, stolen or confiscated for reasons his teacher could theorize, but no one could say for sure. Clausé was part of that. Maybe he could learn something from her that would shed better light on who she was to him. It wasn't like he could lose much more, and at worst he'd make a new friend.
Five fingers of a firm hand dug into Al's shoulder in the middle of the crowd, ripping him out of his thoughts. His feet skated around in the muddy road beneath his feet, and Al landed on his hands and knees when someone pushed him aside. Throwing his head up and tossing his scowl into the sea of patrons, a towering figure stared at the fallen child. The looming man's square jaw held firm, his empty brown gaze not giving away if he was the culprit or simply the only one to acknowledge the result of a careless act. His solid suntanned arm reached down, hoisted Al out of the muck, put him on his feet, and moved on without a word.
Slapping the dirt off his hands over his knees, Al visually tailed him, eyes latching on to the sun bouncing off his long, dancing earrings like a crow, before the man vanished in the shade between buildings.
"The feathers won me over!"
"What?" Clausé's prized new possession landed between Al's eyes.
"It's an ink pen!" grabbing his wrist, Clausé pulled Al to the side of a booth to escape foot traffic. "It looks like a dip pen, but it can store the ink in its body too, so you don't have to keep dipping it. Here, look!"
Al sort of looked. He looked at Clausé folding the white paper bag her pen set came in. He looked at her slip a new nib into the polished black pen stem. And he looked at her unscrewing the lid to a black ink well.
"You dip it in the ink jar like so and just wait a few seconds."
"Uh huh."
All the times in between, Al was inching backwards trying to see into the alley between two buildings.
"It'll suck it right up!"
"Uh huh."
"I'm going to draw something for you."
"Uh huh." Al's focus toiled in the shadows. What reason did someone have to go down there?
As far as he could see, the alleyways were only wide enough to let a couple of steel doors open, and were clogged with street slop and garbage cans. There wasn't an obvious exit into the adjacent street – the alleyway split against the wall of a multi-storey complex. The sun wasn't high enough this time of day to shine any light anywhere in there.
"Al?"
Al returned to Clausé and cringed at the sight of her soured face. Oops, he was supposed to be paying attention, wasn't he? "Sorry." He didn't protest when she snatched up his right hand and started doodling in his palm with fresh black ink.
"What are you looking for?" she tightened her pinched lips, "did you see a chimera?"
That got Al's undivided attention, "A chimera!?"
"There are chimeras living in the alleys of Central City," Clausé pried open Al's curling fingers to get a flatter surface for her work, "I heard they eat kids."
People-eating chimeras? It sounded like something stupid his brother would say to scare him, but Al wasn't completely ignorant of the darkness lurking in the country. Enough stories had been told by Rose, Izumi, and Winry that there was probably some basis to Clausé's claim. However, a chimera hunkered down this close to so much noise and people traffic in the middle of the day? Nah.
The crass echo of tin clattered off the tight walls, startling the duo. A fallen garbage can scraped off the brick and rolled to a stop, its lid wobbling away to settle to its own abrasive soundtrack. Peering into the mouth of the alley, the children watched a pair of yellow eyes, and a second coloured deeper orange, glow in the depths of the disturbed darkness, as frozen as those watching them. A few moments were needed for the human eyes to adjust to the dim lighting and see what had happened.
"Cats," Al exhaled. A mangy orange one and a black one with dirtied white paws.
Clausé sighed the tension away, "No hungry chimeras in the alley if the cats are around."
Which made the alley perfectly safe to enter.
Already several strides deep into the shade of tall brick walls, Al started lowering his centre of gravity and slowing his approach to the skittish animals. His voice softened, "Don't be scared, I'm not going to hurt you."
Two creatures that had been put on edge by aggressive noises weren't so sure.
Carefully, cautiously, Alphonse reached out his arm and extended an index finger for the animals to sniff as he grew closer. The darker cat, the braver of the two, held its ground as Al approached, stretching its neck to move its nose closer to the encroaching human smell. Something left behind from dinner must have been lingering on his hands, because the index finger that arrived first was of great interest, but the scratches behind the ear that Al gave were even better.
"You're a cat guy." Clausé floated up behind him, clasping her hands behind her back.
Curling four fingers into dusty fur, Al's smile shone in the dark, "I am."
The cat vanished.
Al's hand hung empty in the air as a deafening noise exploded off the brick walls louder than a dozen toppled garbage cans. The angry sound clenched Alphonse's eyes for long enough that the cat and its companion had not only vanished from reach, but disappeared from sight altogether.
Life inexplicably slowed down when Al began searching for an answer to what just happened. Beyond his shoulder, he looked at the back of Clausé's head and followed her gaze out into the bright glow of the sun lit market. Merchants stood in shock. Patrons stumbled through their strides. At the centre of the light at the end of the alleyway, an elderly peddler's body jerked unnaturally in slow motion. Like a fishhook had caught her by the ear, she toppled to the ground untouched by human hands.
The children's world paused for a single heartbeat to audibly thump, before a woman screamed and the sound of gunfire began crashing off the building walls.
Time exploded into motion. Alphonse and Clausé threw their bodies in the direction the cats must have ran, ducking beneath the echo of bullets and covering their ears to the human panic bouncing mercilessly between the tight walls. Soiled feet pounded through the murky layer of filth on the alley floor, their hearts thundering in their heads. Nearly slipping to their knees when the route ended with a split, Al led their escape left and he grabbed onto the unmovable handle of a locked steel door.
Clausé's bone chilling shriek spun Al around. Catching himself before he fell in the alley sludge, the two cats ran through their feet. The creatures fled into the darkness opposite them. In the shadows the cats abandoned, thirty or more strides beyond the children, a human figure stood hunched over deep in the dirty crevice between brick walls. Suffocating in the cataclysmic sound of the world falling apart, Clausé and Al watched the dark, foreboding figure rise and turn to face them, chilling the shiver that rippled through their spines. A toxic glimmer of pale light flashed like lightning near the figure's face as he moved. The pair abandoned the door, turned, and raced after the cats that must have known better.
Al sailed a stride ahead, searching for the dreary corridor the cats disappeared down. Clausé clawed her hands over her ears, unable to drown out the endless echoes bombarding them. Reaching back to snag her for a sharp turn, Al's feet slipped out from under him like the muck had turned to ice. Clausé tumbled on top of him in the dim escape route and they scrambled into the narrow space between two more building walls.
A noise far more violent and jarring than all the other deafening chaos shook their bodies, rattled their bones, and blew their limbs out from under them. A gust of pressure sent Alphonse and Clausé flying as an explosion ravaged the route they had just abandoned, launching them like projectiles into the garbage bags piled at the end of the corridor.
To Be Continued…