Title: The One Place
Rating: Measely PG
Important SPOILERS: For the end of the series!
Pairings: Ed/Scar... mostly.
Summary/Notes: Er... for anax and his (his? right?) evil contest. ^^U Inspiration is owed 100% to herongale for her incredible fanfic: "The Flooding Dark, the... somethingorother" XD Go read THAT!






"He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -



Pain was the first thing he registered: blinding and terrifying, followed by the yawning creak of rusted hinges, moving, moving. He thrashed in an endless moment, thinking desperately on how he had foolishly believed he had accounted for everything this time. He thought he had known what would come, had even trusted himself to be prepared. And yet…somehow…

Not again…!

Time shifted. Or perhaps it stopped shifting altogether. Payment, he knew. Payment could not be avoided, even though he had nothing.

I will give all that I can give and all that I cannot, so let it be enough.

A void was filled by a void that was empty and filled and then, again, endless, this dance…

I will give even what I do not h...


* * *


Cold. Water.

Hands. He turned his head, felt something cold against his cheek. Wet.

The sound of dripping water cast ripples over the surface of this thoughts, he thought he could hear laughter, or was it crying? He vaguely felt the press of images flooding against his mind, memories not his own, of times yet to come and ages long past. Laughter, crinkling over the edges of his battered mind. It felt more like a memory than a real sound, and it faded away, dragging him over the cresting wave of shadows.

I give you all of me, all, if only...


* * *


Again cold. Again water. But no laughter.

He opened his eyes to a ripple of paleness. It took him a few moments to realise it was a half-parted curtain, fluttering in the breeze that drifted through the open window. Sunlight dappled over the sheets. It felt warm on his left hand, making him curl up his fingers as if to catch it in his hollowed palm.

“I did not think you’d wake.”

That voice pierced his thoughts, toppling him from the safety of confusion into uncertain memory. He tried to fist his right hand but nothing moved. A momentary nausea swept over him as he realised that there was nothing there to be moved.

“Muh…my...au…”

Red eyes shifted minutely, following the movement of one arm over to an empty socket. It was almost impossible to keep his fingers from shaking, tracing the contours of metal that lined the cavity where his shoulder was.

“It was gone when I found you.”

“L-liar…”

There was no forthcoming answer, save for a deeper, sadder stare from those unfathomable eyes.

“Sleep, Elric.”

He did.


* * *


A phone rang and Edward was reminded of the sound telephones made at the Rockbell’s shop. Winry would change the bells regularly, save for the smallest one. That minute bell had been a wind chime until she first learned how to use a mechanic’s tools; it was never removed even though it disturbed Den to no end. The sound here was different, it sounded too much like Mrs Klein’s telephone, in the floor below Heiderich’s apartment.

A door creaked behind him and Edward could not contain a shiver of unease. It turned into a chill at the awkward, grating sound of metal on metal, so different from how his own prostheses ever sounded.

“You are feeling better, I see?” The tone was cold and distant, the pronounciation slightly off, but Edward thought he detected relief. His stomach clenched, assailed by a wave of brutal resentment. He didn’t want relief from this man, he didn’t want anything at all from him. In fact, he wanted nothing from no one.

Rather than answer, Edward let his eyes drift morosely over to the newspaper that lay by his bed. Most of it was advertisement for clothes and radio sets, or hair dressers’ artful sketches of bobbed haircuts. He thought briefly – with a pang of sorrow and guilt – of Munich and of Alphonse. He wondered if it might be advisable to send him a letter to tell him that he was alive.

I didn’t think I’d be here to tell him I had survived…

He had thought, pain or no pain, that he’d wake up to find himself home, or not wake up at all. It had been an all-or-nothing gamble, because he truly had nothing to offer. He had thought that death was better than not trying, that death was better than this.

“I brought some meat from the town, if you feel up to it.”

“I thought your kind didn’t eat meat,” the snappish recrimination slipped past his lips unbidden. Edward wondered for a moment if he should take it back, but he did not have the energy to waste on apologies. Not to this person.

“I don’t.”

What could he say, to such ridiculous gestures? The man brought him meat and let himself be snarked at… and for what?

“Then don’t buy it. I don’t need your help.” Edward turned to glare, gold eyes slitted in anger. The other man’s gaze was calm and unaffected, it might have even carried a covert hint of amusement at this rash claim.

“You are a terrible lair, Edward Elric.”

“It’s customary to give your full name if you are going to call someone by their own.”

Those eyes… Edward could not help thinking that they looked as if someone had dipped the pale irises into a cup full of blood. Their gaze was level and untouchable, making him feel as small and helpless as he surely looked.

But I am not, damnit!

“Then shall I call you Fullmetal, so that you can comfortably call me Scar?” There was no humour in those eyes now, the voice seemed to hint at the deeper cruelty of his words.

So we can comfortably refer to each other through our disfigurements? Oh, fuck you...

But he said nothing, unwilling to risk a fight when he was missing two limbs. He should have been thankful it was the prostheses he lost, but still...

The sizzle of fat melting in the pan made his mouth water unfairly. Edward turned his face away, doing his best to ignore the infuriating presence. It was impossible, however. There was something infinitely pervading about Scar, the proud yet sad slope of his shoulders seemed to take up more room than was possible, his silences were louder and more commanding than anything Ed could think of. He wished – quite suddenly – that he had asked Al about the man, asked him about all the things he knew by spending time with Scar as an ally. All Edward knew was gleaned from their enmity and their forced truces: that Scar was as dependable as any zealot could hope to be, gifted with a moral code that could easily fit in murder as a side-effect of a religious man’s holy quest.

The silence made his chest feel concave, he could almost imagine it creeping into the empty ports of his automail, replacing his flesh with…”So, it’s against your religion to eat meat, but not to cook it?” Truly, talking was better than letting himself think.

Scar shrugged, a gesture that ill-suited his powerful frame and solid neck. “If you want to be quite literal in your reading of Ishbala’s scripture.”

“I thought you were the literal one,” Edward answered, pricked by Scar’s tone.

The other man turned to glare over his shoulder, deep frown-lines pulling at the scar-tissue over his face, making the grimace look murderous even when it wasn’t. “I killed for Ishbala’s cause, true.” He turned back to the cooking and Edward could hear the scrape of a fork on the bottom of the heated pan. “But Ishbala forbids killing.”

Edward shifted uneasily, sitting up straighter on the bed. “But then…?” Scar's unreadable stare cut him off.

“You should know, Edward Elric, the kinds of things people will do for love.”


* * *


They were not so different, he and Scar.

Edward thought of this as he sat on the porch and stared at the other man’s distant shape, walking upslope to the small cottage. The sun hit the broad back squarely, browning even the paler skin on his face, the hair all white now, the eyes disquietingly red.

And here I am, crippled, on a chair, waiting for him to bring me food…

The thought was almost laughable, it could have been funny, had it not been such a powerful indicator of his weakness. Edward felt pathetic. He exercised his two limbs all day long, even managed to limp around the house. But it was nowhere near enough.

The town was far away and no sounds reached him in the countryside, save for the birds and the occasional bark of a farmer’s dog. The depth of the green colours outside reminded him painfully of Riesenburg. When the sun moved over the pastures, he could stare out the window and almost think he was home. Unless he caught the phone with his eye, which would made him think of Heiderich who had probably mourned and buried him along with his father already. He wouldn’t make the call because it was shameful to admit he had failed after all the effort they put into the project, and because he didn’t think he could return to that life. If there was truly no way of getting back to Amestris, then the last thing he wanted was to have Heidreich by his side, reminding him of…

Whenever these thoughts seemed to overwhelm him, Scar would return and Edward would be struck by his immobility, by the distance between him and Al. Scar’s powerful motions made him grit his teeth until his whole mouth hurt, because he missed running and moving on his own.

Scar’s brow was beaded with sweat from the walk and from his work in the corn fields. He walked in, passing by Edward with a vague nod of acknowledgement before stepping into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. The pipes here brought a whitish, chalky water that had to be boiled before it was drunk or used in cooking. Ed spent a good portion of his days boiling water to clean his automail ports.

Scar’s throat moved rhythmically as he drank and Edward was reminded of the powerful beasts of myth in his father’s alchemical essays. Scar was so vibrantly healthy and alive it made Edward feel overpowered; but not in the way Armstrong would overpower people. Scar’s low tones and slow movements choked Edward up because there was so much rippling under the surface.

“You are staring, Edward Elric.”

Yes, he had been staring. His eyes had rested on the space above Scar’s collarbone, wondering if he would ever be as big and strong as that. His own body felt feeble and childish, terrifyingly so. Edward wanted to look like Scar did, he envied that frame and poise.

“Why did you save me?” He asked, not for the first time. This once, however, he spoke with no anger, only an exhausted resignation that hurt his throat. “We are enemies.”

“We were enemies,” Scar punctuated. “But here…” Scar shrugged again, the movement still seeming at odds with him. “Who cares for our quests and ideals now, in this place? No one remembers… no one knows.”

I know, Edward almost spoke, but it was the lengthiest comment he had managed to get from the other man thus far. The words felt strange, he would have never imagined Scar could speak in such a way. It was the kind of though Edward had been turning over in his mind, erratically chasing it away with exercise and sorrow. If he let himself think of that, if he let himself consider it… then he would have to admit how glad he was that Scar was there, that someone knew who he was and where he came from.

However strange and unlikely a companion, Scar was from back home, and it lent a solidity to Edward’s life that had been lacking until then. The man who had been an enemy to the very end, was now… now…

“But how can you be here too?" It slipped past his lips, a truth he had not wanted to dwell upon. "You died.”

“Didn’t you die as well?”

Did he? Had he? Gods… how could he measure the distance between one thing and another, when the Gate was involved, when those hands, and those violet, violent eyes that hurt were everywhere and--- don’t think, don’t think, gods, don’t think of that!

They were laughing and crying, but...why?

He shook his head and grasped at the first thought that crept into his mind, willing the echoes of that memory to fade back under the surface.

“Perhaps… when you called upon the stone, you stepped through the gate, and not into it,” Edward mused, hobbling into the cottage as best he could. “Through, not into…then maybe…”

Scar cocked his head to one side, giving Edward a surprisingly dark glare as he made sense of the words. “You are still thinking of ways to get back?”

Edward flinched, sitting down heavily on a wooden chair by the table. No, he hadn't been thinking of that, not consciously at least, but there was no sense in explaining this to Scar. The man was too set in his own prejudiced image of Edward.
“Don’t you want to go home?”

“There is nothing for me there.”

“Your people are there,” Edward muttered, discontented by Scar’s apparent acceptance of his new life.

“My people do not need to be prosecuted further because of the actions I took against the military.”

“So you repent?” Edward asked, giving the older man a disbelieving stare.

“Repent? What is the point of that? No one gains anything, save perhaps my getting some peace of mind. I don’t believe in repentance, I believe in penance.”

Edward closed his eyes with a sigh. “Penance?” The concept seemed too much like wallowing, as far as Edward was concerned.

“What is done cannot be undone. You can only live on with the consequences.”

Edward leaned his chin in his hand and stared at the empty space below the metal framework imbedded in his leg. “So you don’t believe in fixing your mistakes?”

“At what cost?”

A plateful of cut up fruit was set on the table and Scar eased himself into another chair, opposite Edward. Dark red eyes stared him down, daring him to argue further. It was a circular argument and Edward suspected that most of Scar's answers would end in sophistry at one point or another. Religious drivell, his mind supplied unhelpfully. Under those circumstances, all Edward could think of, really, was of how defined the man’s shoulders were, compared to his own. It was unfair. Even Heiderich had been of a sturdier build.

“Better to have tried, than to have never tried at all,” Edward groused, bothered by the intimidating awareness of Scar’s longer legs under the table, close to his bird-like knee.

“Poetic sentiment, Elric, but faulty. For every new solution, there is a new price to pay. You can never return to a state of perfection once it is lost. Ishbala’s scriptures say,” and here the man paused at Edwards predictable grimace over the mention of religious content. “… that life is about shedding layers of awareness, seeking the understanding of our place in the world.”

“And if you lose it, this ‘place’ of yours?”

“One cannot lose such a thing. Turning back and retracing your steps in search of the past is drawing further away from it.” Scar reached out to take a piece of fruit but stopped when Edward slammed his fist down on the table, shaking with anger.

“That’s idiotic. This is not my place to be!”

“How very typical of you, to believe you know better than the gods and the rules set by heaven.”

“Don’t fuck with me!” On instinct, Edward moved to leap onto the man, but his missing limbs unbalanced him and he ended up leaning heavily on the table, his leg shaking. Sweat dripped into his eyes, blurring Scar’s face so that for a moment, he looked formless and inhuman, not like Scar at all. “You are just full of crap,” he ground out, wanting very badly to punch the man in the face.

Scar’s face was pinched by sadness, a pain so deep and alien to made Edward feel young. He couldn’t hate the man, not when he managed to look so downtrodden and masculine all at once. It was hard to hate someone who was so willing to atone, so willing to carry the brunt of his actions on very human shoulders. Unlike the doggedly fanatic devotee Edward remembered, this was a diametrically different Scar. It seemed as if the man had been graced with an inner peace nonexistent back on their homeworld.

“My place is with Al,” Edward managed weakly, blinking back the sweat that insisted on blurring his image of the man and the room around him.

“After all this time, you really think that? How long will you keep trying to keep your loved ones beside you, past their time?” Edward looked away, shaking. “Isn’t all of this the result of your trying to keep your brother beside you?”

“I have to know if he is alive.” Damn the man for speaking, damn him for living. Edward didn’t need this now, not now of all times!

“And if you got there, more wounded and crippled than you are now, wouldn’t you be saddling him with a greater sorrow? Unless you went home and he was not alive… what would be left to you under those circumstances? What of your life, Edward?” It was the first time Scar used only his first name. It made him feel strange. No adult had ever… “Is there no space for you to live for yourself in your grand design?”

Edward eased himself back into the chair. He opened his mouth to snap back, but could not form a coherent answer. From the moment his mother had died, everything had been about her, and after.. it was all about Al. There had never been time for him to think about what he wanted, not with Al as he had been. Never like that.

* * *


“If we save up, we might be able to buy you a prosthetic leg.”

“If you save up, you mean. All I do is traipse around the house and look bored.”

Scar’s throaty chuckle made Edward’s insides curl up. It was an unexpected sound and he felt inordinately pleased to be responsible for it.

“Well, you have been cooking the meals of the late…” Scar’s laugh became louder as he dodged a book.

“Call me a housewife again and I’ll skin you alive.”

A prosthetic leg. The thought made his chest feel light and bubbly. To be able to walk again! Edward wanted to hug Scar abruptly, for thinking of that and saying it himself, when Edward would have never brought it up on his own. Of course he had thought about it, but he had long ago promised himself to ask for nothing that Scar did not offer first.

He opened his mouth to thank the man, belatedly, when he saw the tightness on Scar’s face. Strong fingers kneaded viciously at the muscles at the base of his neck, brows furrowed.

Edward could not help feeling helpless, then. He too suffered from cramps every day, working with his body to use only two limbs instead of four, after all these years, taxed his muscles and pulled at the skin where metal met flesh. He kept quiet about the pain because it was his own problem and suspected Scar did the same. But Scar worked in the farmlands to feed both of them, and all Edward did was snark and discuss theology with him, trying to disprove Ishbala’s words. That was unfair.

“Come here," Edward found himself saying abruptly, signalling with his own good hand for Scar to come over. Red eyes considered his gesture, probably guessing at the intent. If Ed had ever thought Scar to be a fool, he had been sorely mistaken. The man was a fanatic – or he had been up until recently -, but he was not in the least bit stupid.

“Don’t concern yourself, I am well enough.” Scar spoke, avoiding Edward’s worried stare. The smaller man frowned, indescribably angered by that reaction. It wasn’t fair for Scar to have to shoulder the worst of the situation. And if something were to happen to him, an accidental slip with the harvesting machines because he was in pain, then Edward would be alone. He would loose the only person who knew him.

“Come here, damnit!”

After an invisible struggle of wills, Scar relented and moved to sit on the floor before Edward’s knee. Ed moved his leg aside to make room and get some leverage. He could feel Scar’s ribs – disquietingly warm – against the edge of the empty port and his thigh. “Don’t fall over,” Scar warned, with no malice.

Edward scoffed at his concerns and placed his hand on Scar’s tanned neck. There was something to be said of the other man’s musculature, it was not only formidable, it had the rugged beauty of something natural. Flesh moved where Ed sunk his fingers and he heard Scar heave a quiet breath before relaxing, measure by measure. It took some effort to rub at knotted muscles with only one hand, but Ed thought he was doing a pretty good job of it as Scar leaned back further, and the heat of his body made Ed’s skin prickle oddly. He moved his fingers up, kneading behind the older man’s ears and at the top of his neck. Ed almost jumped out of his skin that his ministrations drew a quiet sound for the man, and Scar sprawled his legs before him to get more comfortable.

The knowledge that he had made the man go limp like this, against him, was…

What am I thinking?

Scar ‘hm-ed’ vaguely and sat up straighter, without warning. Ed started when he felt Scar shift and then get to his feet. He hadn't been finished at all! He had wanted to go on for a while, if only to feel that great body turn sluggish between his thighs. It made him feel powerful. But then Scar’s hand brushed the inside of Edward's thigh accidentally as he stood up, a bit above the automail port, and suddenly Edward wasn’t very sure if there was enough air in the room.

“Very well, now you lie down on the bed,” Scar murmured, stretching like a sleepy tiger.

Ed could only blink. “Lie down…?” He mouthed, like a fish.

“Fair’s fair, no? Equivalent exchange.” Scar’s poor attempt at humour dispelled the heat from Edward’s limbs. Any remainder of alchemy made him feel cold and disconnected from himself. Sometimes he wondered if there was ever a time when he could mould the world around him with a clap of his hands. Of course there was, Scar remembered and that was all the proof he needed but… in all that time, he had never known any peace. Not like now, in this quiet little house, where he could read all day.

If only he could walk as well then life would have been almost, almost… perfect.

Al…

He was afraid to go back now, though afraid wasn’t the right term for it. Scar’s words had startled him out of a line of reasoning that had been years old. He did not truly care about himself: everything he had done, had been for Al. Except, that none of that would have been necessary had Edward accepted that his mother had died, and then… had he let Al die a natural death for trespassing into the unknown... would his little brother had suffered less? Was the absence of pain better than a painful life?

All this time, I tried to keep you with me, I tried to keep us together… All this time, I was afraid of being alone...

He had nothing to give, no way to pay the price that would be asked of him. Limbs would not suffice, it was souls that the gate took in crossing from this direction. His soul. He had though he had found a way around it, but it had been all for naught. And if he truly had nothing to pay, but he managed to make it through...

(Unless you went home and he was not alive…)

... what if it was Al who paid the price for both of them? What if it was Al's limbs, or Al's soul that were lost in return for Edward's passage? This had to stop at some point. It had to. It made sense, quite suddenly, that the price for being apart would be life for both of them. Life for Alphonse. Thinking of that made Edward feel slightly less wounded, less alone. It somehow made it better to wake up and start exercising his one leg, and then his arm… it was not so terrible to read and learn about a different world, and then cook dinner for this familiar stranger who was so, impossibly gentle.

Had there been no war, and no State Alchemists… you might have been a kind servant of Ishbala, a good man who liked kittens, like Al.

But Scar wasn’t, and Edward wasn’t an innocent child either. Maybe it was pointless to go back over those thoughts. Each new morning he learned something new, each new morning Scar seemed less of a stranger.

“You don’t have to return the favour,” Ed murmured lowly. It was cheapening to think Scar felt he ought to give an eye for an eye, even where backrubs were concerned.

“True, I don’t have to, but you have given me an opening… so that I can,” Scar’s voice was wonderfully deep and soothing, one could hear the smile in it. Scar’s version of a smile, of course, that was always small and easily turned into a frown.

Edward puzzled over those words even as he sat on the bed. When Scar pushed Edward gently onto the mattress and placed his hot hands on the places where it hurt the most, it occurred to him that Scar must have been long aware of his pain. Perhaps Scar had not known how to approach him, or if he could. Certainly, had he offered a massage, Edward would have stared at him as if he were mad.

But gods, that felt good. Long, powerful fingers reached all over his back, squeezing so hard it hurt, making the pain ebb with more pain. A different sort of pain, one that dissolved into uncomfortable lines of warmth and set a flutter into his pulse. Edward bit his lower lip to stifle a pleased groan, basking in the heat and physicality of the moment. He didn’t like people touching him most of the time, but then, had he known it would feel like this he might have been more amenable to it. Maybe.

“Edward?” Edward cracked one eye open to stare from between the fall of his hair, at Scar’s half-smile, half-frown.

“Hmm…?” The pathetically small reply made the man above him chuckle and start rubbing again. Softer this time, not so much about loosening up knotted tendons. Fingers moved over his neck, stroking more than anything else. It reminded him of how his mother would caress his hair at nights, even though it was entirely different. Scar's touches had become gentler, skirting over Edward's pliable muscles with a less defined - though still perceptible - intensity. Edward fought back a dizzy rush of understanding: Scar was doing this for his pleasure.

He opened his mouth to protest, but found no words. It was more than pleasurable, it was indescribable as all good things should be, but he did not like the lassitude that spread across his limbs, too akin to helplessness.

He did not like the tightness of his thighs either, that embarassingly familiar weight.

“Why are you doing this?” In that same voice as he had asked, a few weeks back: why did you save me?.

“Because.” Cryptic, as only Scar could be.

“Why?” Edward pressed on, acutely regretting when those hands left his skin.

Uncannily, Scar knew what the real question was. “Why not? You weren’t half-dead, only dazed and hurt. Whatever you tried to do, it failed… and I… I wanted – I needed – someone to remind me of who I was. If I remember that, then I know I can change, I can not be that person anymore.”

“Someone who could see how different you could become? More Ishbalan crap about moving forwards into your place in life?” Edward had to force the sneer into his voice, feeling weak and pained by the turn he had brought about in the conversation.

Scar’s face was unfathomable. “I saved you because I wanted to prove Ishbala’s way. I wanted you to want to be here, to cease your struggles against life and nature. You hurt yourself and your loved ones with your constant searching, Edward Elric, that is wrong.”

“I’m not the only one who wanted—“ Al had wanted it too, at a time, hadn’t he? He had matched Edward step for step. But... had he ever said he wanted to bring their mother back?

Or was he always standing in my shadow?

It was hard to remember things like that, after years of trying to forget that night.

“Certainly not, but you are the only one who always believed he could get what he wanted. You have no grasp of humanities’ limitations. You do not know what it means to want something so badly it hurts, knowing you cannot have it. That kind of understanding is what gives strength, and maturity.”

“Who the hell are you calling immature? You don’t know fuck about me, Scar!”

“And you don’t even know my name, is it not the same?”

Edward let out a heavy breath and pushed himself off the bed. “No, it isn’t! You could just tell me what it is, but you don’t.”

“You can’t have everything Edward. Life is about wanting what you can’t have, it’s what humans do, naturally. You can’t keep twisting the rules of nature around your fingers, to get what you desire. There must come a point where there is something you want that you cannot have, even if nature would allow it--”

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You know nothing of e--" Scar cut himself off and shook his head. The corded muscles in his neck stood out.

"What? Say it, damnit!"

"No."

"Why? Is it a state secret, like your fucking name?"

"This is not the right time."

Edward moved away, almost tripping in his anger, limping out of the house and onto the porch. The night was cool and it felt abrasive on the sockets inserted into his flesh. Abrasive. Like Scar’s words, so completely different from his touch.

To want something so badly… and know you can’t have it…

“I want to be with Al…” Edward whispered, knowing it was pointless. His back still felt warm were Scar had touched him, and he felt a traitor for missing that touch.

For feeling - somehow - that Scar was right.



TBC

EDIT : So, I fixed this up to include a few details that I had slipped up on, and polished the writing a bit. Heh... I feel much better about this piece now. ^.^ Hope it reads better.