Work Text:
He walks around with a cavity in his chest, aching and throbbing with the ghosts of what it once contained. He fills it with flowers and laughter and the smiles of those he loves. He pretends not to notice when the joy he fills it with begins to crumble and whither, ashy and crackling as it dies. He smiles, he lives, and he pretends that the emptiness is not spreading, fracturing under the weight of his pretense.
It takes something special to make an alchemist. Just as painters have sparks that bakers do not, and the difference between a school teacher and a doctor pulses somewhere bright in their hearts, alchemists have something special that makes them what they are.
Anyone could be an alchemist if they tried. They could study and learn and channel their life's energy into feeding light into sigils. But there is a difference between an alchemist and an alchemist.
Edward still doesn't know yet, what that difference is, but he somehow knows when he meets one. An alchemist. They could have gone their whole lives without so much as seeing an array, and something in him still whispers. Alchemist, you're an alchemist, we are one.
Now that his gate is gone it is so much worse. He never knew before, that emptiness could be a tangible thing. That it could ache and pull and twist. That it could stretch as it reached for things he cannot see or understand. He never knew that it could crackle, every time someone near opened up that strange place in their heart and fed themselves into the universe.
He never knew it could grow, that it could creep, silent, unknown as it threaded itself into the fibers of his heart, nestled beneath his veins and pulsing in his head. That it could solidify, rock hard and resolute, before shifting into something wispy and tenuous.
He never knew that the emptiness could control him. Not until there was blood on the walls and his ribs were thrumming with the warmth of someone else's alchemy.
Not until he finally realized that alchemists were only alchemists because something inside of them was missing. That when something twisted loose inside their head, their heart, their soul, something else clicked. Something else filled that tiny little space left behind.
And, well, he has a lot of empty space, doesn't he?