Chapter Text
“Don’t you think you need to get your scores up for your college apps?”
The question lands about as lightly as the Standard Book of SAT prep, which is to say, like a ton of bricks on the kitchen table. Ed looks between Roy and the book. It’s a Thursday afternoon in October and everything’s quiet at the Mustang residence. Ed and Al are doing homework at the table, and Roy’s taking his turn to make dinner while Riza reads on the couch.
“College?”
“Yeah, Ed. Apps are due in a few months, remember? Your math score is fine, obviously, but you probably want to boost reading and writing.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Applications,” Roy frowns. “For college. The schools you’re probably looking at are going to want good scores across the board, even if you’re planning to focus on sciences. I mean… have you thought about where you’re going to apply?”
The look on Ed’s face tells Roy that the first time he’s thought about it might be right here, in their kitchen. Riza looks up from her book, face curious, but of course she says nothing.
“Who says I want to go to college?”
Roy’s dumbfounded. “Well, I guess I assumed…” He assumed a smart kid like Ed would be thinking about college. When apparently he should have assumed that Ed would see college as just another thing for the normal, well-adjusted kids, not for him.
But they’ve been a “normal” family for the past few years haven’t they? As normal as possible, for two traumatized kids out the fostercare system being raised by a pair of equally-traumatized veterans with no parenting experience to speak of. Hey, they’ve done alright, given the circumstances– it can’t be crazy for Roy to assume that Ed, now a senior in high school, would want to assimilate into the normal rites of growing up for American teens. He’s pretty sure Ed and Al’s mother had her bachelor’s degree, and their father was a PhD student, even if he never completed the degree.
So why’s Ed looking at him like he’s crazy?
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do after you graduate?” Roy asks.
Ed shrugs, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “Dunno. I thought I’d just like, get a job or something. I’m not trying to mooch of you guys forever, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
From the couch, Riza looks concerned, and Roy backpedals quickly.
“That’s not at all what I’m concerned about, Ed. This is your home. I just… You’re a smart kid.”
In fact, since moving in with Roy and Riza, Ed’s grades have done a complete one-eighty. He’s getting As in all his science classes, a feat that seems to cost almost no effort now that Roy’s making sure he actually does the homework. And even in the other subjects like English and History he’s scoring well, his lowest grade a B- in Creative Writing, which he professes to be “complete garbage at.”
But more than just grades, Ed is smart . Roy could tell from the first lab he ever watched Ed complete, in half the time of the other students and with perfect results. The formulas and compositions come as easy to him as breathing, which is why Ed was his top student even when his tumultuous home life meant he could never really apply himself. Ed doesn’t need to study chemistry, he just gets it, something Roy’s more than a little jealous of. If he were born into different circumstances, he’d likely be one of those gifted kids who spent summers in math camps and courted schools like Harvard and MIT. Instead, he’s got Roy, and Roy will be damned if he lets that brilliance end up working at a gas station somewhere.
“You could probably get into a great college if you wanted, Ed. It’s an option, you know?”
Ed looks at him warily. “I guess.”
“If you had to choose something to study,” Roy pokes, “what would it be?”
Ed squints at the SAT book. “I dunno… Chemistry, I guess?”
Roy siezes on that. “Hey, I loved majoring in chemistry in college! The labs we do in school now are nothing compared to what you could get up to at a good research institution. Anything you can imagine doing in the lab, it’s possible. And you get to design your own experiments in the more advanced classes.”
“Yeah, I guess that would be cool.”
“ I’d study chemistry,” Al pipes up from his homework. “But I’d do a double major in bioethics. It’s not all about learning theory– you also have to think about how it gets applied.”
Al is his own shade of brilliant, but unlike his brother, who prefers the hard-science side of things, Al’s always reading up on politics and social issues. History is his favorite subject and he excels at it.
Ed looks a little more interested by his brother’s enthusiasm.
“Okay, it’d be cool and all, but how would we pay for it? Doesn’t college cost like a million bucks these days?”
“There are scholarships,” Riza says, closing her book. “And financial aid. And Roy and I aren’t completely broke, you know. We’d be happy to contribute what we can.”
Ed looks uncomfortable again.
“And Mom left us a college fund too, Ed!” Al crows.
“It’s just money we get when we’re 18, Al, we don’t have to use it for college.”
“But that’s what she was saving it for,” Al says stubbornly. “Remember, she put in money for us every Christmas? She said it was for our education.”
“If you want to study chemistry,” Roy offers, “I could put together a list of schools that might be good options. I do it for students all the time. It doesn’t cost anything to apply–-”
“Except the application fee,” Ed mutters.
“--and you don’t have to decide anything now.”
“Well I want to go to college,” Al says, as if that decides it. “So unless you want to be stupider than me, brother…”
“ Fine. ” Ed pulls the SAT book in front of him. “I’ll apply. But that doesn’t mean it’s happening.”
Roy makes a list of schools. He chooses a few locals and a few sure bets, taking into account what Ed’s said he’s wanted: good chemistry professors, “no bullshit writing classes”, affordable, close to home. But he can’t help but slip in a couple that feel worthy of Ed’s brilliance, even if the kid would never go for them.
Ed starts studying more seriously for the SAT, mostly because Al bets him he can get a better score on the PSAT. Roy’s not sure if the rivalry is a ploy from Al to get Ed to study, but whatever the reason, it ends with Ed achieving a near-perfect score.
“That’s definitely not stayin’ on the fridge,” Ed growls, when he sees his results pinned between Al’s soccer schedule and an old Christmas card from the Hughes.
“What, I don’t get to be proud?” Roy teases.
“You didn’t even do anything!”
“I bought the book,” Roy points out.
“Ha, ha."
"Here--let me know if you have questions about the chemistry departments at any of these schools.”
He hands Ed his list. Ed scans it and his eyes narrow.
“Stanford? I may not know much about college but even I know that’s not on the same level as Michigan State.”
Roy shrugs. “What, don’t think you can get in?”
“All this reverse psychology bullshit is not gonna work on me. I don’t do everything out of spite, you know.”
"Oh really?"
“Seriously, I don’t! You think I’m gonna go to some dumb preppy college just to prove to you I can?”
Roy just shrugs again. But the list disappears and a few days later Roy catches Ed Googling some of the schools on it. At the gym, the guys are constantly asking about the apps: which schools he’s applying to, if he’s heard back from anywhere yet, what he’s writing his essay on…
“I wrote mine about working at McDonald’s,” Havoc says with a chuckle. “Got me into state school, at least.”
“Did you all do ROTC?” Ed asks, looking between them.
“Not me,” Falman says from the bench press. “I had a government job before I enlisted.”
“And I didn’t go to college,” Breda grins.
“See?” Ed says pointedly, glancing at Roy. “College ain’t everything.”
Roy pretends not to hear. At least he doesn’t have to worry about Ed trying to go into the military. He brought up ROTC once as a way to handle tuition and Roy shot it down so quickly and decisively that Ed never mentioned it again. Good.
“I didn’t go to college because I was stupid and goofed off all the way through high school,” Breda says. “You may not like to brag but we all know you’re in a different league, kid.”
Ed goes a little pink.
“Plus college is fun!” Havoc slaps him on the back. “And the girls… oh man.” A dreamy look comes over his face.
Roy tries poking Ed about what he’s writing his essay on, but the kid is stubbornly closed-lipped about it. He’d initially asked Roy what the point of the essay was.
"Garbage writer, remember?"
Roy tries to reassure him it's not really about the writing. “It’s a way for the school to learn about who you are. Beyond your transcript or extracurriculars.”
“I don’t have any extracurriculars, and my transcript’s shit.”
Roy does his best to explain that for someone with a background like Ed’s, these things can sometimes be overlooked. It ends up coming out patronizing, no matter how he picks at the words, giving off the kind of pity that he knows Ed can’t stand. He doesn’t want to tell Ed that his essay could be about any one of the number of horrible things he’s been through in his life, because the only thing that might be worse than pitying Ed for his situation would be encouraging him to use it for clout.
But it’s not Ed’s fault that he doesn’t have a great transcript or a bunch of clubs to his name. If anybody has an excuse, he does. But Ed won’t see it that way. The look on his face is making Roy think he’s going to abandon the whole process altogether.
“Just write about what interests you,” he says finally.
It comes down to the wire. Just before midnight on December 31st, Ed is hunched over the computer, hair flying free of its braid, hammering at the keyboard. Roy feels unbelievably stressed, like it’s his own application he’s late to finish. He finds himself pacing in the kitchen, torn between yelling at Ed to hurry the hell up and to just call the whole thing a failed experiment. This is why he went into teaching, not guidance counseling. Al hovers over Ed’s shoulder, muttering changes and corrections, anxiously grabbing the mouse from Ed to take over every so often.
Riza pats his hand when he glances at the clock for the hundredth time. It’s eleven fifty-eight. Seriously? He knows there’s procrastinating, but this –
“It’s done! It’s done!” Al comes running into the kitchen. The clock strikes midnight. “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”
The Mustang-Elrics celebrate, Ed with the dazed look of someone who’s just ran a marathon. Riza has somehow had the team on standby, because within thirty minutes the lot of them are there--Havoc, Fuery, Breda, Falman--toting champagne and beer to ring in the new year. Havoc’s drunk before he even arrives, wearing a pair of those stupid 2012 sunglasses and a feather boa he's procured from God-knows-where.
“Congrats, Boss!” he shouts, raising his glass in a sloppy toast, “you’re goin' to college!”
“ Might be going to college,” Ed counters.
The celebrations run into the early hours of the morning, and Havoc ends up passing out on the couch. Roy’s about to slouch off to bed himself when Ed catches him in the hallway. He thrusts a folded piece of printer paper into Roy’s hand.
“Al said I should share it with you. You know, if you want to read it or whatever. He helped me with the writing too. So… yeah.”
And then before Roy can say anything Ed turns sheepishly and darts off. “‘Night!”
Roy opens the paper and reads.
The laws of thermodynamics say that energy can never be created or destroyed, only transformed. There’s only so much energy in the universe, and it moves around, like water in a flask. Sometimes up, sometimes down, but the volume never changes. When someone dies, their body doesn’t just disappear, it decays. The atomic bonds break apart, and the carbon and nitrogen and other trace elements get recycled into other things: soil, air, water.
Before chemistry as we know it now was even invented, the earliest chemists described this as alchemy. To obtain something, something of equal value must be lost. They called this the law of equivalent exchange. Through it, alchemists believed that even something as worthless as lead could be turned into gold, if the right ingredients were sacrificed. When we were little, my brother and I were fascinated by this. We learned alchemical formulas by heart. We drew transmutation circles all over our house. As we got older, we started looking at science to explain things, but science itself is a kind of alchemy.
We know now that lead has three more protons in its nucleus than gold, and breaking apart that nucleus would require far more energy than such a reaction would ever be worth. But the principle still stands– matter and energy can’t be lost, they can only be changed. Atomic nuclei are held together by powerful bonds, but they can always be broken, if the right amount of energy is exchanged. For years, I lived my life by this principle: humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something up. But if you give something up, there’s something to be gained.
When my mom died, equivalent exchange stopped making sense. Her body was gone, and I could understand what happened to it, but something else had been lost, too – her smile, her ideas, the sound of her voice. People tried to tell me that her soul had gone to heaven, but what does that mean, chemically? Where does a soul go when a person dies? What does it get transformed into? It seemed to me, nothing. It was just gone, and there was no equivalent exchange. I got nothing in return for her death.
When I got to high school, I had stopped believing in the law of equivalent exchange. At the time, I was living with a foster family and my brother was living in a different part of the state. We started learning about these concepts in class – entropy, thermodynamics – but I didn’t care about them like I used to. Chemistry had lost its magic for me.
One day my chemistry teacher demonstrated the law of conservation of mass with an experiment where we burned steel wool and saw that it actually gained mass, by bonding with the oxygen to make iron oxide. It was supposed to show that just because what’s lost or gained is invisible, doesn’t mean it’s not there. It made me wonder about Mom – maybe what was lost was somewhere out there in the universe, waiting to come back to me. Or maybe the things we lose and gain can’t always be quantified with scales and measures, as much as we want them to be. But it got me interested in chemistry again, and trying to find out.
My teacher could tell I was interested, and he encouraged me, even when I was being a terrible student. He could tell that my homelife wasn’t good and he tried to help me there, too. I don’t know what he saw in me, but he didn’t let me off the hook. And when things got crazy at home, he let me stay with him.
After that, things changed for the better. I’m still living with my teacher, who I can now call my adopted parent. I got my brother back, and he lives with us too. And I’m applying to college, something I never thought I’d do. Somehow, my life has gone from lead to gold. So maybe my mom’s energy has come back to me in unexpected ways. If I’m accepted, I plan to study chemistry, and to discover everything I can about equivalent exchange.