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Ed still remembered when he had first set eyes on Major Alex Armstrong, that frisson of fear coupled with the snarling anger of all bratty kids everywhere: I could take him. Never mind that Alex was taller than Al's armour and built like an ox. He had been a boy and – as much as he hated to admit it – short. Maybe, with Izumi's teaching, he could have outmanoeuvred him, but all Alex would have to do was grab him and he'd be squashed flat: a greasy smear on the training ground.
Then the massive man opened his mouth, and Ed was left more off-balance than he had been since the day he'd first tried to stand while wearing Automail, staggering in a world that didn't meet his expectations. His voice may be as big as he was, but Alexander Armstrong was a gentle soul, well-spoken and honourable. More to the point, he did not look at Ed and see a child struggling to keep his head above water in the adult world of the military. He did not rile him, like Mustang, or coddle him, like Hughes. He met him as an equal.
Ed didn't know how much he needed that until he had it: quiet and unquestionable.
They trained together, and Ed learned all the advantages he had over a man Alex's size. Armstrong may be unstoppable when he was on a charge, but he had to commit to the movement. It meant Ed could dance and shift, flinch back and duck forward. It was... good. Whenever he was so angry at the world that he could barely breathe, or exhausted in his search for the Stone, he'd make an effort to meet Armstrong. It reminded him of all the ways he was strong, and all the ways he was weak, too.
And every time, when they reached the end, Ed's vest sticking to his spine and Armstrong's bare muscles gleaming, Alex would shake his hand and offer a soft smile along with his farewell.
'I shall see you anon, Edward.'
Only people from Amestris' oldest families spoke like that. Ed might have laughed at it once, but it became a little lynchpin in his life: something on which he could rely, even when all the world went straight to crap.
Today, though? Today it was a lie. Ed knew it. Maybe Armstrong did too. The Stone. The Gate. Al. They had walked so many roads in search of an answer, but they had always come back empty-handed. This time, they'd reached the end of that journey. Ed knew it deep down in his guts, just like he knew that he wouldn't be coming back. The Gate demanded its price, and he would pay with everything he had.
For Al.
Yet still Alex shook his hand, and those blue eyes were solemn and intense. The curled moustache quivered for a moment – the threat of tears, mercifully suppressed. 'I shall see you anon, Edward.'
He did not deny it, though the temptation was there. Saying goodbye had never been his thing. As far as anyone knew for sure, this was just another mission. Even Al was oblivious. Ed felt like the only one with any idea what was going on. Yet putting any of that into words?
'Sure, Alex.' He tapped that big palm with his own, skin-on-skin: a brief, familiar farewell. 'And hey? Thanks.'
Alex did not ask what for. He merely put one hand over his heart and offered a brief bow, as if he were a knight of old and Ed was a brother-in-arms.
It was the best kind of goodbye.
Blood and pain. Light. The Gate.
Absolution.
'Brother!'
Ed groaned, dragged from the merciful oblivion of unconsciousness. Dimly, he was surprised. Waking up alive had never been part of his plan. His mouth tasted of grit and tin. Stuff hurt, but not in a way that suggested he was dying or anything. Instead, he felt as if Armstrong had slammed him around the training ground all afternoon: sore and bruised. He managed a cautious wiggle of various limbs, flesh and metal. He'd come out of it with as many as he'd had going in the second time, which was something, and Al?
'Al!'
He rolled and scrabbled, trying to spit the dust from his mouth and think around the ringing in his head. There were staggering footsteps and a bird's nest of long hair, big grey eyes and bare skin. It was an explosion of warmth: Al's real arms around him. That face that he'd missed but never forgotten, older now, as if his body had aged in the Gate's keeping. Nor was it a frail, wasted scrap of flesh. It was just Al.
After fuckin' years, he had finally kept his promise.
All the time they were making their way back to Central, it was like floating on some kind of cloud. Neither he nor Al seemed able to believe it. In between the euphoria of getting Al back, it would hit Ed around the head like a blow. It was over. The one thing that had driven him for years was finally gone. Maybe he should have been elated, but dread had a way of worming into any situation. It curled up in the pit of his gut, gnawing at him.
Because the truth was, he didn't know who he was without the hunt for the Stone: his own crusade to undo the wrongs of his past. With that gone, he was not sure how much of himself was left.
Central was like a kicked bee-hive, all swarming embarrassment after Bradley's failed coup. Mustang had a bad gash on the side of his face, where Archer's bullet had almost taken out his eye. It had missed anything vital, and the fucker would make the scar look dashing, no doubt. Havoc was limping around, and Hughes kept touching his chest, bothered by the shot that had almost stolen his life: half-healed now, though it would always leave its mark.
Soldiers and their scars.
Yet they looked at Ed and Al, and it was like a physical weight vanished from every shoulder. Falman stood taller; Hawkeye swelled with subtle pride, and Mustang looked at Ed like he could barely believe he had found his way back. Like maybe some of Mustang's sins had been washed away, too, lost in the flood of their triumph. Like maybe Ed's survival meant that Mustang – Roy – could also remember what it was to live.
Yet still, the dread rustled its scales, a serpent waiting to bite.
A week passed, and Ed couldn't find the meaning of the word "rest". He slept, or he tried to, but it was like something had set his blood to fizzing. He could snatch an hour, maybe two, here and there. He was so, so tired that he'd come out of the other side, where everything carried a glassy sheen. He felt a little like he was being remade, or maybe just cast adrift.
He didn't know what to do.
Right up until the moment the Alex Armstrong bodily picked him up and carried him to the duelling ground where they trained, set him firmly on his two feet. Huge hands rested on Ed's shoulders, and those blue eyes looked down from their great height into Ed's face.
'It is good to see you again, Edward,' he said, his big voice making the murmur more of a rumble. 'I have missed having you here to challenge us all.'
Ed scoffed at that. Mustang would have found a way to twist that into an insult: a little barb, perhaps, about how difficult Ed could be. From Alex, though, it was praise, pure and simple. 'Someone's got to keep you from getting slow.' He hitched one shoulder, grinning as Alex gave a huge laugh. The shirt came off that vast chest, exposing muscles that seemed, impossibly, to have only got bigger in the time he had been gone.
'And someone must keep you on your toes. Are you ready?'
It was glorious. Ed had not known how much he needed it until they were locked into their sparring, their wits and strength pitted against each other. It was as if someone had hemmed him in, reminding his swirling thoughts of the confines of his own body. He felt the way the plates of his Automail shifted, where they flexed and where they did not. He sensed how his joints moved and his flesh reacted, how the fizz of his mind was no longer effervescence spread too thin, but right there, boiling in his blood.
After so long looking outwards, to Al and his promise, to the future – once fixed and certain and now suddenly nothing but an open horizon – the simple physicality of fighting Alex was the most basic sort of relief. He did not have to think. He needed only to feel.
His world was limited to the edge of the arena and the big man who shared it with him: challenging him, pushing him, reminding him of where his weaknesses lay side-by-side with his strengths. With each passing minute, Ed could swear he could feel himself settling deeper into his body. It was the same, skin and bone and steel, but it was also brand new. He had never been this version of Edward Elric before, and now he had to learn to live with that.
Thanks to Alex, he now felt that was something he could do.
They finally called a stop, sweating and breathless – as closely matched as they ever were: two opposites, locked forever in a battle of give and take. Winning wasn't the point, not with Alex. He had taught Ed a lot of things, including the fact that he had nothing to prove. Not to anyone else, and maybe for the first time ever, not to himself.
He thought of Mustang and the others in the office, so relieved to see him and Al alive and well: almost as drunk on their triumph as the two of them. He thought of Winry, tears and anger blending together as she hugged them both, swearing up, down and sideways that she'd kill them dead if they ever scared her so much ever again. He thought of Alex, who had said goodbye to Ed that last time as if he had never once doubted he would make it home again, and who, even now, reached out his meaty hand once more to shake Ed's, those same old words falling from his lips.
'I shall see you anon, Edward. And welcome back.'
'Thanks, Alex.' He hitched on shoulder in a shrug. 'For everything.'
Because maybe to anyone watching, it had just been a normal sparring session, but for Ed, the serpent in his gut lay vanquished. Where, before, he'd felt like his feet were slipping in the sand, he'd finally found a stable foundation. Something to build the rest of his life on, whatever that may be.
Whatever happened, whatever the future held, one fact held strong. He was the Fullmetal Alchemist, and he was not alone.