Chapter Text
Edward Elric was pouting in his room. Trisha had invited a military man into their house, and he’d spoken of the State Alchemy program. There was a gleam in his eyes that Ed didn’t like, the kind of thing that made him wish the man would leave.
He was perfectly happy where he was, and besides, he’s only seven years old. He and Al just got back from Dublith- visiting home after learning as much as they could from Teacher.
“There’s no age restriction-” the man had said, eyes shining, and his mom had snapped that he certainly wouldn’t even consider it until he was at least sixteen, and Ed had nodded.
(Really, he didn’t want to be a dog at all . What he really wanted was for the man to leave , but his mom had been telling him about this thing called ‘diplomacy’ where you make nice to people you don’t like so that they’ll do what you want.)
He wondered if this was because of the new skill he’d stumbled upon- of thinking arrays instead of drawing them- of holding them in his mind and touching his hands together to close the circle- of being the circle.
It was an idea he’d conjured up after catching a mention of it in one of (bastard family abandoner) Hohenheim’s journals- of alchemists who could become alchemy.
A little voice in his head had whispered and giggled as he’d done it for the first time, had crooned that the little al-che-mist was doing well , and that had freaked him out, but the sheer power of feeling alchemic charge racing through his veins had quickly dashed his reservations to the ground.
And now the military wanted to talk to him. Ed was a bit confused- certainly it couldn’t just be because he didn’t use circles? It wasn’t like it was hard- he pitied the State Alchemist who hadn’t figured it out yet. His Teacher could do it (she’d caught him by the collar and screamed about a Gate when she’d seen him clap, but he’d explained and she’d just narrowed her eyes at him and hadn’t asked again-) and she didn’t have nearly the research resources that a State Alchemist would have. Surely it was simple.
Al hadn’t gotten it yet- but Ed thought he probably just wasn’t explaining it right. It was okay, though. Ed wasn’t a very good teacher. Al would figure it out.
Ed rolled over on his bed, and stared out the window at Al and Winry horsing around with Den in the grass outside.
He’s done moping. The man’s gone, and he won’t be back for a couple years now. Ed sits up and shakes himself off, then makes his way out back to where Den is fetching a wrench.
The conflict in Ishval is heating up, Ed knows, but Resembool is quiet, despite being only a couple hundred kilometers North and shipping important goods. It’s been two years since the military man came to offer Ed a place in the State exam, and they’re seeing the Rockbells off before their trip to Central. The Elrics, Winry, and Pinako wave to Winry’s parents’ train as it disappears into the distance.
They’re arguing over what to have for lunch when the first shell hits.
Ed’s vision is dark and edged with smoke, and all he can think as a faceless woman drags him out of the rubble is that his family is still in there. He roars in outrage as the woman struggles to hold his squirming body, and it’s hard to breathe with the dust choking the air, but “lemme go, lemme go, they’re still in there, they’re still in there, lemme go, I gotta get em-”
“You’re not helping anybody with those limbs of yours, kid,” the woman says, and Ed looks down at the places his arm and leg are supposed to be and screams.
Edward Elric has spent a year and a half recovering from double automail surgery. He kneels at Trisha Elric’s headstone with dry eyes, and thinks of his little brother laid up in a Central hospital, in a coma and on life support for a year and a half now.
He thinks about the medical bills that he owes Pinako for his automail, and he thinks about the enormous financial drain that keeping Al alive has become.
The drain that the Rockbells can’t support for him anymore.
Edward Elric spends an hour apologizing to his mother’s gravestone, and then he stands and brushes off his knees.
And he packs a single suitcase, and boards a train to the military headquarters at Central.
The Fullmetal Alchemist enlists on his twelfth birthday, and when the lady at the desk asks whether he’s registering in a combat or research position, he flatly asks which pays more.
He’s shipped out on a train bound Southern the next day.
The Fullmetal Alchemist spends a year as a sort of courier for the Southern front on the Aerugoian border, escorting supply trains and putting down small conflicts with nonlethal measures that help maintain the tenuous peace between Amestris and the trading country.
He kills his first man by accident, when a supply train is hijacked by radical Aerugoian nationalists.
There’s no muss, no fuss. Aerugo denies knowledge of their involvement, and the whole thing is swept under the rug.
(A soldier tells Fullmetal that you always remember your first kill, and Fullmetal doesn’t react, because he can’t even recall the shape of the dead man’s face. All he remembers is the way it felt when the transmuted blade of his right automail arm had slid between the man’s fourth and fifth ribs.
He wonders if that makes him a monster, and then he recalls the paychecks that buy his little brother time and knows that he’d do it again, monster or not.)