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Reflection
by Edmondia DantesDisclaimer: FMA is not mine.
AN: For Misty.
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Central at half-past four in the morning is quieter than any city has the right to be, and Alphonse doesn't like the hollow way his footsteps echo, the slow clanking bouncing from brick and metal and reverberating against his own steel skin.
He thinks of Risembool, star-speckled sky and the memory of ash on the wind, conflagration to sear the skies and bury regret molded in hands that aren't, anymore.
Edward is a dream dozing on his back, a tangle of silver and crimson and gold.
His life is his brother, and he does not remember his father.
His mother is a single regret. Only she bleeds black.
The blood on his hands is his brother's own.
He's glad for it.
Edward couldn't survive this way.
He's snoring, and Alphonse doesn't know how to sleep. They both suspect that Edward is doing it for both of them. That's all right. One human body is fragile enough, the strain of two is too much, and whenever they're far from a bedside, Ed collapses against him and it's fine, it's right, it's normal, even if they do look vaguely ridiculous.
This blood is mine.
Blood seals are strange things. It's possible it wouldn't have worked any other way. They're lucky. They're not dead.
I am a walking ghost.
Nights in Central are strange and foreign, and his brother's breath is fogging up the steel against his cheek.
Alphonse wonders what it would be like to feel it.
It's probably not worth the cost. Few things are.
Alphonse is walking towards the east.
He once looked like his brother, he knows, but a softer shade of gold, a subtler shade of crimson.
Dawn licks flame over silvered steel.
Maybe he'd smile, if he could.
And this is how we survive.
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