Work Text:
Ed loved his brother, he really did. Al was smart, funny, nice, just an all-around better person than Ed…and he didn’t realize it, which was pretty charming, too.
But even Al had a few downsides. And one of them was the fucking nagging.
“Brother, you swore we’d never, ever come here. In a million years. If people held guns to our heads.”
“Shut up, Al.”
“You promised. We could have sent him a letter, you know. We could have met him somewhere else.”
“Shut up, Al.”
“He’s going to be really ann—”
“Al!”
He couldn’t have brought this up when they were back at ground level, oh no. He had to wait until they’d climbed the death-defying goddamn cliff. Only then was he like, ‘Hey, maybe we should never have come.’ The hell. “I didn’t see you coming up with any better ideas!”
“I just did! You didn’t give me a chance before!”
“Wha—what the fuck is that supposed to mean? What, I’m supposed to stop and solicit your opinion now cuz you’re shy like that? Was little Al afraid to speak up to his big, scary brother?”
“Brother—”
The giant gate with a face took that moment to scream and shout and demand to know their business. Good timing, because that conversation was only headed toward a fistfight.
But seriously, whose idea was it to put a face on the gate? No wonder Cross had sent Allen here. Going by the decor, these wackos had to be his soul siblings. “Hey,” Ed shouted. “We’re here to see Allen Walker. He around?”
The gate rolled its eyes around in a demented, not-comforting sort of way, and a bunch of golems swarmed out of nowhere and surrounded them.
Ed assumed these golems weren’t much like Timcampy, which was to say, he assumed they didn’t bite, but he was gonna keep an eye on them all the same. Al’s back hit his, and Ed grinned. They were always on the same page when they were surrounded, say that for them.
“Good morning, Al, Edward,” came a staticky voice from the nearest golem.
“Allen! Good morning.” Did Al really need to sound so damn cheerful about it?
“Edward.”
“Uh, yeah, Allen?”
“You promised never to come here.”
Such a fucking asshole.
“I lied,” Ed snapped. “A concept you’re totally unfamiliar with, I know.”
The golem hissed static, which meant that Allen had the line open, but was stuck trying to conjure up some polite way to say, Fuck you, fuck you, die die die. Of course, if he’d ever just come out and say, Fuck you, die, he and Ed wouldn’t have this whole oil and water thing going on in the first place.
“It’s not like I wanted to come,” Ed pointed out.
“And yet here you are.” The fine subtleties of tone were lost through golem medium, but Ed didn’t have to hear that bitchy, uptight edge to Allen’s voice to know it was there. He took a breath, ready to start in with the shouting.
“How’ve you been, Allen?” Al cut in brightly. “It’s been ages, hasn’t it?”
Long pause during which Allen fought not to say, Not long enough. There was really no point to him not saying things, because you could totally hear everything he wasn’t saying. “It has. It’s good to see you, Al.” It wasn’t quite an emphasis that he put on that you. Just a slight hesitation in front of it. He was such a bastard, holy shit. “How have you been?” he went on, genuine warmth making its way through the static.
“Oh, pretty good. Wandering around, keeping track of brother. Dodging things Master throws at me.”
Allen laughed.
Yeah, Ed hated Allen, sure. But Allen really liked Al, so…well. Asshole had some good points. Which was why they were here.
“Why are you here?” Allen asked, voice sharp again, right on cue.
Bad idea to admit anything over golem with fuck knew what audience, though. “Why anything? Master sent us.”
“…He sent you to the Order?”
“No, don’t be stupid. We’re not the chosen apprentices here. As far as I can remember—correct me if I’m wrong, Al—his exact words were, ‘You’d better run like hell, stupid brats.’ So we did. Shit blew up behind us. We decided to look for you.” It was true as far as it went.
Staticky silence on an open line as Allen considered that story. Then, “Komui, please open the gate, we need to get them inside right now—”
Disconnect. The gate opened.
That was Allen for you. Ninety percent of the time, total jerk, but when you really needed him, he was solid. Quick on the uptake, too.
“You shouldn’t take advantage, brother,” Al murmured, disapproving.
“He lives to be taken advantage of,” Ed announced airily, and marched on in.
* * *
Timcampy beat Allen to them, swooped happily over their heads, and bit Ed on the shoulder for the hell of it. Ed had missed the little maniac.
“Hey, Tim.” He held out a hand which Tim ignored in favor of zooming insanely around. “Still fightin’ the good fight? Stealing Allen’s food for me now I can’t do it?”
Tim did a gleeful barrel roll that meant hell yeah. Ed laughed.
Of course Allen had to come along and ruin the mood.
“You haven’t grown at all, have you?” he said instantly. “Are you sure you’re eating enough?”
Allen, Ed noted bitterly, had grown a lot. Freakishly tall bastard. “Nice to see you too, Allen, I’ve missed you and everything, and by the way I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Brother!”
“Al!” Allen cried happily, beaming and grabbing Al’s hand and totally cutting Ed out. “How are you? Last time you sent me a letter you were still in China. Was that where…is Master okay?”
“He’s…Master. We’re guessing he’s okay.”
Allen nodded, serious now, no more playing. “What happened?”
Ed and Al exchanged a glance. “We’ll catch up,” Al said. “Later.”
In the code of those trained by Cross Marian, this meant top fucking secret. Allen frowned. “I’ll show you around after dinner.” Setting a time for their secret meeting.
Look at them go; they were like exorcist spies. Not that Ed was ever going to forgive Cross for, like, anything, but sometimes the batshit insane training did come in handy.
“Should we be checking in with someone?” Al asked, because Al worried about crap like checking in with other people’s authority figures.
“Someone should…well, normally Komui would be here to meet you. But there was, um. An explosion. That doesn’t matter—”
“Explosions?” Ed perked up. Maybe this place wouldn’t be so bad—they hadn’t even been here ten minutes, and already people were blowing shit up.
“No,” said Allen.
“What no?”
“No, you can’t visit the labs. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”
“There are labs? Where—”
“Lenalee!” Allen interrupted, which would’ve pissed Ed off under normal circumstances, but this time…
Allen’s voice was like. Sweet all of a sudden. Not fake sweet, not conning somebody sweet—really sweet. Happy, even. Ed had heard Allen sound honestly nice before—Allen was capable of sounding nice when he was talking to Al, for instance—but it still had that edge of—what? The real Allen. He always sounded dangerously crazy with sugar on top.
Not this time. This time, seemed like he wasn’t just trying to kid the audience into thinking he was nice, he was trying to kid himself. Holy shit, who was this Lenalee? Ed turned, and—
Face like an angel, walk like an assassin. Right. It made a weird kind of sense.
“Hello,” she said politely, holding a clipboard, poised to jump in any direction at a moment’s notice. “It’s nice to meet you! I’m Lenalee Li, Chief Officer Li’s assistant. I’m sorry he can’t be here right now, but he should be available soon. And you are…?”
“Edward Elric,” Ed told her, talking right over Allen’s would-be introduction. “And this’s my brother, Alphonse. You’re an exorcist, too, right?”
“Right! How could you tell?”
Ed shrugged. If he said, Because you have crazy fucking eyes, Al would knock him down and then Allen would kick him and pretend it was an accident. “Just shows, I guess.”
“Oh? …Interesting. Well, I can give you the tour if you’d like, or—”
“Nah, Allen said he’d show us around. You don’t have to waste your time.”
Lenalee paused and gave them all a weighing look. “Why don’t we have lunch?” she asked. “You can ask me questions, if you have any, then Allen can give you the tour. And after that, my brother will be free, and you can tell him what brings you here. He’ll want to know about your Innocence, too.”
Ed distinctly did not want anyone knowing anything about his Innocence. “Sounds good.”
Lenalee nodded, spun on her heel, and took them straight to the food—no wonder Allen liked her.
“So how do you know Allen?” was her first question. It was a reasonable one, and she didn’t spring it until they were halfway through lunch, which was friendly. Hell, even Ed was starting to like her.
“Cross trained all of us,” he explained. And may God have mercy on our souls.
“Really?” She abruptly went from interested to avidly interested. Weird. “Allen never mentioned that General Cross had other apprentices.”
Ah. That explained the interest, then. “I am totally shocked to hear that,” Ed announced. “Shocked. Al, are you shocked?”
“Actually,” Al said, worryingly quiet, “I am. A little.”
“It didn’t come up,” Allen insisted in the tense, edgy tone Ed was used to. Kind of a relief. That sweet, for-Lenalee voice was freaky. “Why would it have?”
Al narrowed his eyes. Allen responded with the innocently oblivious face.
“We haven’t always gotten along so well,” Ed told Lenalee before this could turn into an Al vs. Allen fight, which were the scariest things on earth. “Personally, I think it’s a question of style. Our styles clash.”
“Maybe they would if you had a style,” Allen murmured.
“If I want money, I blow up the bank vault,” Ed went on, ignoring the background noise. “I figure it’s honest and clean that way. Allen? Seduces the teller.”
“The manager,” Al corrected.
“Give me some credit,” Allen added.
Ed was a pro at derailing their fights. All it took was getting everybody annoyed at him instead. Easy.
Lenalee gave a delighted laugh. “Oh,” she said, “I’m sure Allen’s never actually seduced money out of anyone!”
Ed and Al stared at her. Then they turned to stare at Allen, who was begging them with his eyes not to say anything.
“Yeah,” Ed said slowly. “Haha. Right. And he’s never cheated at cards, either. What the fuck lies have you been telling these people, Walker?”
“Are you parasite types like Allen?” Lenalee cut in with a bright obliviousness that was so very bright and oblivious that it had to be put on. Allen cast her a grateful glance.
Seriously. Seriously these were Allen’s people. Freaks. “…Right.” Ed waved his arm around demonstratively. “Parasites.”
“So your arm is your Innocence. Like Allen’s.”
“Yeah,” Ed agreed. And that was all he planned to say about that. People got weird when they knew about the leg. Apparently having two kinds of Innocence was non-standard. Though, really, if Cross could handle it, anybody ought to be able to. “We figure Cross has some kind of kink for weird arms. Right?”
Allen ducked his head and rubbed his mouth. Trying not to laugh.
“I mean, originally we had some other theories on what it was he saw in the three of us,” Ed went on, since Lenalee was still looking more entertained than horrified. “Little boy kink. Orphan kink. Athletic kink.”
“Criminal incompetence kink,” Allen threw in sportingly.
“But we decided finally, had to be the arms.”
“And why,” Lenalee asked, smiling and bemused, “did you decide that?”
“…Can’t remember, actually.” Ed turned to Allen and raised an eyebrow.
“Bangalore,” Allen said.
“In that, um. Brothel, brother.”
“Oh, yeah. There was this hooker! It’s totally an arm thing. Uh, you want details?”
“No,” Lenalee said definitively. “But how does Al fit into this?”
Ed and Allen turned to give Al worried looks. Al sighed at them. “I’m sort of weird all over,” he explained. “If he has a weird arm kink, then…I fit the bill, too.” He rolled up his sleeves, and his arms shimmered silver when they hit the light. “It stops at my neck. I guess I should be grateful for that.”
Lenalee leaned in, fascinated. “How does that…?”
“How’s it work? We’re not sure. It seems to be right under the epidermis, so I don’t have a sense of pain. Or, um. Some other things.” Other things. Like heat, cold, the touch of another person. Such a fucking nightmare. “I can feel pressure, though. It’s like my whole body is scar tissue. And I can pull the Innocence up to the surface and make it into armor—with spikes, if I want. Any shape, really. It’s useful.”
Lenalee’s eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. “No sense of pain,” she repeated. Al shrugged. “How have you survived?”
“Well. Brother’s a nag.”
“Excuse me!? Who’s a nag!?”
“What’s this? New exorcists?” asked some redheaded guy with an eye patch, looking at them with the same clinical interest as a scientist looking at lab rats. Only then he smiled like a pal, which upped the creepy to Cross-holding-a-baby levels.
Lenalee was totally unfazed, which, yeah, Ed wasn’t even a little surprised. “This is Ed and this is Al. General Cross trained them; they grew up with Allen,” she said happily. Then, as an afterthought, “Oh, and this is Lavi.”
“We did not grow up together,” Allen and Ed snapped almost in synch, which Ed could admit was almost as creepy as this Lavi guy’s buddy smile or Cross holding a baby.
“Hello, Lavi,” said Al, representing for normal people. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Hey,” Lavi said, sliding onto the bench across from Al and looking like he planned to grow roots there. “I didn’t know Cross had other apprentices.”
When Lenalee said it, it was a statement of random curiosity. Lavi said it like he should’ve known—like it was his job to know and he was annoyed and a little worried that he hadn’t. Huh.
“What can I say? Allen’s a dick.” Ed ignored Allen’s indignant muttering and Al booting him under the table. “What about you? Exorcist?”
“Right,” Lavi agreed pleasantly.
“He’s also the Bookman’s apprentice,” Allen explained, eyeing Ed like he was expecting a fuss.
Ed wasn’t planning to kick up a fuss. He knew a thing or two about Bookmen, and he’d never been able to decide whether they were the coolest thing ever or just scary as fuck. The Bookman’s apprentice? That was celebrity territory, so Ed promptly did what he always did when encountering celebrities (which, trailing around after Cross, happened surprisingly often): he sized the guy up and then tried to ignore him.
Unfortunately, the guy did not ignore him back. “So Cross sent Allen to the Order on his own? Why not you two?”
“Well…” Al was grasping for some kind of diplomatic horseshit answer, and as much as Ed really meant to ignore the Bookman, he couldn’t let that slide.
“Yeah, obviously Allen got sent to the Order, and with Tim, too. Because Allen is Cross’s favorite.”
“Oh no, Ed,” Allen said with the fake sweetness of doom. “You’re his favorite. He couldn’t bear to part with you until you were in danger.”
“Nah, remember that time the plant ate your pants and he wouldn’t let you get new ones? That’s love.”
“Hm. I remember the time he chained you to his bedpost. That’s love.”
“Yeah, but I remember the time he stayed awake all night to make sure you kept doing pushups all night. Dedication, man.”
“Oh, but he chased you five hundred miles across Europe and into the Alps that time you and Al tried to escape. Even more dedication.”
“Wow,” Lavi murmured, wide-eyed and maybe horrified, maybe fascinated. “What did he do to Al?”
“Leave Al out of it!” Ed snarled, turning on Lavi, and Allen backed him up with a disapproving scowl.
Lenalee made a not especially successful attempt not to giggle, and Al sighed. “He didn’t feel the need to get quite as creative with me as he did with these two.”
“Yeah?” Lavi was going all keen-eyed and Bookman over this. Weirdo. “Why’d he have to get creative with them?”
Al stared. “Look at them,” he said.
Lavi opened his mouth to say something, probably something hilarious, but he got interrupted by a guy making an Entrance.
Totally deserved a capital letter. Maybe an exclamation point, too. This guy, he made an Entrance!
He was cheating, though. Anybody with hair that dramatic had a natural advantage when it came to Entrances! But the giant sword helped. So did the scowl, the aura of doom, and the general feeling that if you got within five feet of him, he might have to kill you. Ed kind of wanted to walk up and shove him just to see what would happen. If the dining hall would end up destroyed or what.
Al would have a fit, though. Too bad.
“Oh, Kanda!” said Lenalee. “Come meet the new exorcists!”
The guy with the hair stopped, turned with flair, and studied them. Then he spun away and went to get food, not a word. “Friendly,” Ed observed.
“Oh…he means well,” Lenalee said.
“Yes,” Allen muttered. “Someday he’ll master the art of basic politeness, and maybe even take an occasional, passing stab at not being a complete jackass every hour of the day.”
Whoa. Allen wasn’t usually inspired to rant about people. Shit, Allen was never inspired to rant about people. Even Cross, he just bitched about in a low monotone. He’d used a bad word and everything. The shock! The scandal! “What’s this guy’s name again?” Ed asked. “Kanda? I like him already.”
“You would,” Allen hissed. Ed foresaw hours of easy entertainment, here.
Al kicked him under the table (again) because Al was a spoilsport. “So that’s Kanda Yuu,” he said, destroying the mood completely.
“You’d never know to look at him, would you?” Ed murmured back.
“What does that mean?” Allen demanded. He’d heard them, obviously, because he had ears like a bat and a lifelong career as an eavesdropping con.
“Oh, Allen,” Al said like it’d just occurred to him. “Weren’t you going to show us around?”
Allen sighed. “When we’re finished eating.”
“Yeah. Jeez, Al, you trying to starve us or something?” Ed couldn’t believe his brother sometimes. Food was important. But for some reason, the question made Al and Lenalee smirk at each other, which Ed didn’t like one bit.
When they finished their food and stood to leave, Lavi got up too, obviously planning to follow them. Or at least that was his plan until Lenalee grabbed his arm and forbade it. Bookmen weren’t supposed to have emotional attachments, but Lenalee clearly owned Bookman, Jr.—Ed recognized the signs. Interesting. Bookmen sometimes sucked at being Bookmen, who knew?
* * *
Allen didn’t bother to play around with a pretend tour—they just beelined their way to his room. In Allen-speak, this meant he trusted people in the Order more than he’d ever trusted anybody. Which was way the fuck more than he should.
Ed was reflecting on how much he did not want to have this conversation when he got a good look at Allen’s room. At that point, his brain screeched to a halt. “Oh my God,” he said, prowling around the place, trying to find somewhere to sit that wouldn’t tip over or give him nightmares. “It’s like the circus meets the morgue. It’s like an insane asylum decorated by the inmates. It’s so…you.”
“Thank you for your insight, Edward,” Allen said sharply. “Why are you here? Why are you really here? I thought you were helping Cross with his research.”
“Uh…” Oh, right. Time for the Talk. “Turns out I’m not really one of nature’s research assistants.”
Allen just smiled, grimly patient. Ed turned to Al for help. Al raised an eyebrow and opened a hand in Ed’s direction. This was your idea. Ed sighed. Might as well dive right in, then, if his traitor brother was cutting him loose. “You know this place is like made of evil, right?”
Allen blinked slowly several times. “What?”
“You know,” Ed went on uneasily, less sure by the second that Allen actually did know. “Crazy experiments. Second exorcists. Leverriers through the ages. Giving the Earl a run for his money in the just plain wrong department. Come on, tell me you noticed!”
By the time Ed stopped talking, Allen was curled into an unhappy little ball on his bed, chin tucked behind his knees, arms wrapped around his legs. He looked sad and small and pitiful. It was making Ed feel like he’d stepped on a kitten, which was so much bullshit—Allen wasn’t a kitten, he was a goddamn saber-toothed tiger. But he did a seriously good kitten impression sometimes. Jerk.
“Second exorcists?” Allen asked quietly.
With a glare at Ed, Al took over. What the hell was that about? Ed had tried to get Al to talk from the start! Ed had tried! “It’s not the entire Order,” Al said soothingly. “Just a section. They’ve done a lot of human experimentation. It’s pretty bad, Allen.”
“Lenalee said…but I thought that stopped when Komui took over.”
“Maybe it stopped here,” Al said gently. “But it definitely didn’t stop everywhere.”
Allen hid most of his face behind his knees so they couldn’t see his expression. Old trick of his. The jackass was gonna plaster the fake smile on in a minute and act like nothing was wrong, Ed knew it. And then Ed would have to deck him.
“Your Kanda guy’s a second exorcist,” Ed announced, trying to deflect the fake smile. “I’m guessing he didn’t mention it.”
Enough of Allen’s face reappeared to show a scowl. “He doesn’t mention much.”
“Oh, fuck you, like you ever mention anything, Saint Butter-Wouldn’t-Melt-in-My-Mouth.”
“Brother!”
“I mention things if they’re important!” Allen insisted, his whole face showing now.
“Yeah, well. I’m sure he didn’t figure it was that important, seeing as there’s not sweet screw-all anybody can do about it. I’m only telling you cuz I know you, and I know you’ll stick it out here until doomsday unless you’ve got proof of evil.”
“And maybe even then,” Al said with a smile at Allen. The hell was there to be smiling about? That freaky clinging thing Allen did was not smile-worthy.
Allen propped his chin on his knees and stared at them, intent. “Tell me about the second exorcists.”
Ed looked at Al. Al folded his arms and glared. What was with this sadism kick?
“Fine,” Ed huffed. “So once upon a time in a far off land called Asia Branch, some bright spark gets this great idea. They’re gonna take some exorcist corpses, put their brains into the bodies of random kids, and make…second exorcists. Now this may seem immoral, sick, and wrong, but, hey, it’s all okay! Because it’s a holy war. Fill in the blanks.”
Allen’s eyes were huge, but they didn’t seem to be taking in any data. “They wouldn’t have…”
“Guess again.”
“Kanda?”
“Yep.”
Silence while Allen processed that. He looked pretty bleak, but at least he wasn’t crying. Ed always felt like a shit when he made Allen cry, even though this time, it totally wouldn’t have been his fault.
“So,” Allen said softly, “you can bring the dead back to life.”
“Yeah, sort of,” Ed muttered. “In that life-for-a-life kind of way. Wanna ask your Kanda guy how it’s worked out for him?”
Allen kept staring blindly straight ahead. It was freaky. “No,” he breathed.
“That’s what I thought.”
“There’s more to it,” Al put in.
“More to it that’s none of his business,” Ed snapped.
“More to it,” Al continued, ignoring Ed. “Kanda Yuu wasn’t the only second exorcist. There was another one called Alma Karma. They were friends.”
Allen turned his freaky blind stare on Al, but didn’t say anything.
“Alma…snapped. I guess he remembered his life before, or. It’s not really clear how it happened, but. He killed a lot of people. Kanda had to cut him down in the end.”
“Kanda heals really fast when he’s injured,” Allen pointed out.
“So did Alma,” Al said. “But everything has a limit.”
Blind staring. Silence. More blind staring. This was creeping Ed right the fuck out.
“How did you find out about this?” Allen asked finally, after Ed had decided he’d taken a vow of silence or something.
Ed shrugged. “You know how Cross knows all kinds of shit he shouldn’t? So we broke into his trunk.”
Allen uncurled himself and leaned forward, any and all angst overridden by rabid, professional curiosity. Sometimes you had to love the guy. “How?”
Ed grinned. “My brother is a genius, is how.”
Al shifted uncomfortably. “It wasn’t genius, it was…I feel kind of bad about—”
“Drugged him!” Ed caroled gleefully. “Waited until beer number ten—”
“Slipped something in the beer,” Allen concluded, equally gleefully.
Al looked away and muttered something about illegal, wrong, misuse of opiates. Ed and Allen ignored him. “So you took his keys,” Allen continued.
“Right,” Ed agreed. “And we were in and out. He never knew. Had a lot of crazy stuff in there about the Church, too, but…I’m guessing you don’t care. Just, you know, blackmail stuff on priests.”
“I don’t care,” Allen confirmed. “But I’m amazed you got away with that. He didn’t notice in the morning?”
Ed’s eyes narrowed. “…No.”
Silence as they all considered the likelihood of that. And then Allen said slowly, “I’m really sorry, but that’s—”
“—impossible,” Al sighed. Ed gave a depressed groan and thudded his head back into Allen’s dresser, because they were right. They were totally right.
“So he wanted us to find those notes,” Ed said, putting it into words for posterity. He and Al would’ve worked that out sooner if they’d had a minute to think, but they’d been pretty busy fleeing for their lives. Even so, shit, it was embarrassing it’d taken them this long. Because this was classic Cross behavior right here. “The fucker.”
Resigned muttering around the room. Ed shifted into a belligerent sprawl and accidentally kicked a shriveled head across the room. This place freaking screamed ‘decorated by Allen Walker.’
“The notes on the second exorcists and the blackmail stuff…they weren’t the only things in the chest,” Al said out of nowhere.
“Oh? What else was there?” Allen asked, as he was pretty much bound to do, seeing as Al had brought this shit up even though Ed seemed to remember firmly agreeing not to.
“We should tell him about the Fourteenth,” Al announced, and Ed whirled on him, incredulous.
“Al! You said, It’ll only make him sad. You said, It won’t do any good. You said, He’ll find out soon enough anyway. You said—”
“I know! But now we know that Master wanted him to know—”
“Cross is an asshole—”
“That doesn’t mean he’s wrong!”
“Fourteenth?” Allen asked with polite interest.
“Now you’ve done it,” Ed muttered to Al, then opened a hand to him, because turnabout’s fair. Your turn, idiot.
Al explained about the Fourteenth, and when he was done, he hugged Allen and let him shake while Tim hovered around, panicky. Ed left so Allen could cry if he wanted and not be embarrassed about it.
Al had been right. It was good they’d told Allen. Someone had been bound to tell him sooner or later, and it would’ve sucked even more in front of strangers.
* * *
Once he left Allen’s room, Ed realized that, like a genius, he hadn’t asked anyone where he and Al were supposed to sleep. So he had to track down Lenalee, which wasn’t easy, and then she made him swear to talk to her brother in the morning before she’d show him the room. Still, she did him the favor of not asking any awkward questions. Classy of her; Ed appreciated that. Then again, from what he’d heard, her brother might have everyone’s rooms bugged, in which case why bother asking questions?
It took Al two more hours to make it to the room, which didn’t bode well for Allen’s mental state. But he’d totally be doing his scary, brittle imitation of just fine by morning, Ed was sure. That was his style.
Which made it a real surprise to walk into the dining hall the next morning and find Allen single-mindedly nagging Kanda instead.
“Knock off the interrogation, beansprout,” Kanda snarled, trying to elbow Allen out of the way so he could get to the food.
“It’s not an interrogation.” Allen actually sounded pissy like a normal person. Amazing. “I just asked if you were healing okay!”
“It’s got nothing to do with you.”
Oh, yeah, that. Wrong. Wrong answer, Kanda Yuu.
“Actually, it does,” Allen said, going from irritable to ice cold in under two seconds. “We have to work together, remember.”
“I don’t report to you.” Kanda was refusing to register the change of mood. Ed almost had to admire that level of bullheadedness. “So fuck off.”
“Of course, Kanda. I’m sorry for taking up your time, Kanda,” Allen said, light and polite and pure evil. “By all means, continue pushing everyone away so you can die alone in peace.”
Kanda slammed the tray of food he’d finally managed to acquire down onto the nearest table and stormed out of the dining hall. Apparently nothing was worth doing unless it was worth doing with loud, dramatic flair. Not that Allen was any better. Ed turned just in time to see him spin on his heel and march to his room, slamming the door behind him. It was shockingly un-Allen. Cross would laugh and laugh.
The dining hall maintained ominous silence for a very long thirty seconds or so, then someone coughed, someone laughed nervously, and conversation resumed.
Really, Ed should’ve figured something like this would happen—or Al should have, anyway. Because the thing was, Allen was lousy at guilt—witness the whole Mana debacle. And now he knew this big secret about Kanda that he didn’t have permission to know, and he felt bad for Kanda, and he felt bad about knowing. Plus he was having a meltdown about his own shit while pretending he wasn’t. Of course he was being a dick. Soon enough, he’d admit to knowing about Kanda’s mess, Kanda would punch him in the face, and Allen could feel outraged instead of guilty. Then he’d mellow the hell out. In the meantime, though, pointless misery everywhere.
“Okay,” Ed said. “This is actually kinda sad.”
“Go after Kanda, brother.”
“What?” Ed stared incredulously. “No way! Why? I don’t even know him!”
Al gave him a tragically disillusioned look, and Ed was up and walking toward the door before he’d consciously registered a response.
Someone really needed to get Al under control. Some days—and it was totally traitorous to think this—but some days, he was worse than Allen.
Okay. Fine. So Ed had to talk to a random, pissed off guy he didn’t know, but nobody’d specified what he had to talk about. Right? Right! And Ed knew from maddening personal experience that, when you were dying to throttle Allen Walker, the last thing you wanted was some asshole coming along and telling you that actually Allen was a great guy. There was something very wrong with a world in which Ed was thinking of being that asshole, anyway.
And there was Kanda, lurking at the end of the hall. Hadn’t made it far, had he? Right. Showtime. No pressure.
“Hey! Kanda, right?”
Kanda whirled on Ed and stalked toward him because he wanted to rip Allen’s throat out and Allen wasn’t there, so the nearest bystander was just gonna have to do. Ed knew how this felt from the other side, but he’d never realized how freaking disturbing it was from this side. Note to self: less taking it out on bystanders in the future. It wasn’t their fault Allen was a dick.
“What?” Kanda snapped once he was firmly within Ed’s personal space and acting like he might draw a sword on him.
Think fast, Edward Elric. The subject of Allen Walker is five kinds of taboo right now, so what to say, what what? Shit, Al’s gonna kill me…
Oh, hang on.
“Sorry to bug you, but, uh. You know where the labs are?” Sure, Allen had said that Ed couldn’t see them, but was Allen here? No.
“I don’t have time to show brats around.”
“That’s funny, because you were standing over there in the corner muttering to yourself, so I figured—hey, get a fucking grip!” Crazy asshole really was drawing his sword. “I know he’s a jackass! I know you want to choke him to death! It’s not my fault, okay? I had to live with the shit-for-brains for three years, so don’t feel like you can freak out on me of all people!”
Kanda narrowed his eyes menacingly, but his hand moved away from the sword. Ed chalked it up as a win. “What is it you want?”
Ed heaved a sigh of relief. “The labs.”
Kanda turned and walked off without a word. Behavior like this, Ed imagined, must drive Allen right up a wall. Ed just trotted after Kanda and wondered if he’d’ve turned out similar if he’d died and been brought back and then had to kill his best friend.
Shit, no way. If it’d been Ed? He’d have ended up a monster, and somebody would’ve had to kill him, too, to put him out of his misery. Probably that would’ve been Allen’s job, cuz Allen’s life was crappy like that.
Although there was a horrible possibility that Allen actually was Ed’s best friend, in which case Allen would be dead already, which meant the only one left to kill Ed would be—who? Al? God, that would suck.
Okay, this was some gratuitous brooding bullshit right here, and it needed to stop. Like as if Ed didn’t have enough real problems.
“So, hey,” he said, mostly to distract himself. “Will you stab me if I tell you some keeping-yourself-from-killing-Allen tricks?”
Kanda gave him the side-eye, but he didn’t go for the sword again, so Ed figured, what the hell. “Al and me, we just go ahead and give him the answer he wants as often as possible. You can always tell what he wants you to say, so just, you know, say it. He’ll work out how full of shit you were later, but he respects a good lie, so. You get less of that how-could-you face. And who needs that face, right?”
“I won’t lie to him.”
“Uh.” Oh, whoa, what? He wouldn’t lie to Allen Walker, Mr. Bullshit himself? Why not? Man, this guy and Allen shouldn’t even be allowed to share the planet, let alone the same HQ. Jesus Christ, I won’t lie to him, what the…
Oh, right. Riiiight, this was the guy who drove Allen to using bad words. Meaning he got to Allen. And hey, Allen’d always had a thing for dead people, and Kanda was about as close to dead as you could get without actually fucking a corpse.
Ngh.
“What?” Kanda demanded, hand straying to his sword. That thing was totally his comfort blanket, wasn’t it?
“Nothing, nothing. Train of thought derailed is all. Right, fine, don’t lie to him. Don’t say anything, just glare death instead. I bet you’re a natural at that. But don’t say the exact thing he doesn’t want to hear, because whether it’s true or not, he’ll think you’re saying it to make him mad.”
Kanda snorted in total disgust. Ed kind of agreed. “Because he’s crazy,” Ed elaborated. “You have to remember that. He is seriously insane; he figures lying is a favor you do for other people. He doesn’t get the point of the whole ‘truth’ thing.”
And the response to that was stone-cold silence. Ed was going above and beyond on this thankless fixing-Allen’s-relationships crap; Al had better be happy.
Kanda stopped abruptly and gestured left, apparently giving up on Ed as a bad job. “End of the hall,” he announced, about-facing and marching away without further ado. Ed could hear him muttering, “They’ll love you,” as he turned the corner and disappeared.
* * *
They did love Ed. And it was mutual, which even Ed could tell was kind of scary.
Well, Johnny and Ed and Tapp were best buddies in under five minutes, anyway, but the Reever guy kept lurking around suspiciously like he was just waiting for Ed to start blowing stuff up. What was that about? Did Ed have I blow stuff up written across his forehead? He wouldn’t put that past Allen. Or Al, come to that.
Whatever—couldn’t make everybody happy.
“It keeps you awake how long?”
“Seventy-three hours!” Johnny said proudly. And Ed was, he had to admit, pretty impressed.
For a second, until he remembered what he’d learned about these people so far. “And…are you like. Remotely functional toward the end of that?”
“Oh no,” Johnny said, horrified. “No, no—you’re mentally incapacitated from the moment you take it. And aggressive, too.”
“It makes you violent and crazy,” Tapp clarified. “And then it gives you the strength of ten men to do your crazy with.”
Ed nodded, because yeah. That seemed about right.
“The theory was genius,” insisted a sulky voice from the doorway. Reever rolled his eyes, and Ed turned to check out the latest mad scientist. Who said, “I’m Komui Li. You must be Edward. Lenalee has been telling me all about you and your brother.” He grinned. It was weirdly menacing.
So this was Lenalee’s brother, huh? He reminded Ed of Cross’s friend Hughes, in that he was clearly a nice guy and kind of a goof, and if you let yourself be distracted by that for one second, he would own you. (Hughes got himself killed by an akuma in the end, though, because you can’t manipulate akuma. Unless you’re Cross, who cheats, or Allen, who’s earned the right.)
Ed had really liked Hughes. Rolling with that thought, he gave Komui a lazy salute and said, “So you made the stupid zombie drink? The hell were you thinking?”
“Mm…lost to time, I’m afraid. I’d been awake for a few days when I came up with it, you see.” Komui’s mouth was smiling, but his eyes were dissecting Ed. Definitely Hughes-like. Needed practice, though; if he’d been doing it right, Ed wouldn’t have seen it for what it was on their first meeting.
“Hey, so you’re the boss, right? I mean, technically.”
Reever snorted with laughter, then tried to play it off as a coughing fit. Maybe he and Ed could be friends after all.
“I am,” Komui agreed, casting a wounded look Reever’s way.
“So you can take me to, what, whatever, the thing that keeps the Innocence, right?”
“Hevlaska,” Komui said. “And yes, I can. I’d planned to, in fact. Why do you ask?”
“Would you believe scientific curiosity?”
Komui eyed him. “No.” Suspicious pause, then a shrug. “This way,” he said, leading Ed through a door in the back of the room.
This was why scientists were awesome. Komui knew full fucking well that Ed was up to something, but he was playing along because he wanted to know what it was. Run the experiment, and if it all blows up, hey, think of the data.
Ed adored the science department.
* * *
Hevlaska was a tentacle monster living in a giant tank (pen? cage? pit?) in the bowels of headquarters, sitting on a bunch of Innocence like a brooding hen. The Innocence was humming off-key, like an instrument just out of tune enough to put your teeth on edge. Ed took in the scene and found himself sympathizing with every bad thing Cross had ever said about the Order. It didn’t help that Komui was beaming proudly, like this wasn’t bizarre at all.
Some tentacles took this moment to dive for Ed in an alarmingly purposeful way, and that shit officially crossed the line. “Hey—hey! Whoa, whoa, where d’you think you’re going with those? Get the fuck away from me!”
Komui waved his hands in what was probably meant to be a soothing way. “It’s all right. Hevlaska can—”
“I don’t care, shut up. I mean it, whatever-you-are, get the fuck away or I will cut you.”
“Ed,” Komui sighed, sounding just like Al. But the tentacles did back the fuck off, which was all Ed cared about. “Hevlaska can analyze your Innocence and improve your synchronization. It can only help you.”
“Thanks but no thanks.” Fucking tentacles, what the fuck was wrong with these people?
Komui pouted. “Allen was much more reasonable about this.”
“Yeah, I bet he was.” So Allen got willingly molested by the tentacle monster. Ed would make very sure he never lived that down.
“Ed, I don’t think you understand—”
“No, I don’t think you understand. My Innocence and I get along because we don’t talk. If we did talk, we’d hate each other, because face facts: I’m an arrogant dick and Innocence is a cranky jerk; that’s why Allen and Cross get along with it so well. If my Innocence and I end up hating each other, and we will, I’ll Fall. You got me? So let’s not push it. Look, just, don’t do me any favors. I’ve seen your lab.”
There was a long, awkward silence. Ed occupied himself by reflecting on the fact that he was never such a goddamned liar until he met Allen Walker. He didn’t want anyone screwing with his synchronization, true, but it wasn’t because he was afraid of his Innocence. They understood each other pretty well, actually. The Innocence knew that for all his plans to detach Al from this mess, Ed was in it for the long haul, because the one thing he hated more than God was the Millennium Earl. The enemy of my enemy, whatever whatever.
He was against explaining any of that to third parties, though. For one thing, what if it got back to Al? Al thought Ed was planning to go back to normal, too, and the argument over that wasn’t one Ed was ready for at the moment, or possibly would be ready for, ever.
“I respect your wishes, Edward Elric,” said Hevlaska, sinking back into the depths. That was good. If Hevlaska was okay to back off the Innocence, then Ed was okay to refrain from asking why anyone, of any species, would choose to cage itself in a basement for hundreds of years.
Komui was still pouting, though. The tentacle monster was a better person than Komui. “What did you hope to get out of this visit, Ed?”
Ed propped his elbows on the railing and stared down into the tank, which, still weird. Gotta love the Black Order. Kids in cages, Innocence under glass. “When we were little, Al and I had this theory about Innocence and raising the dead,” he explained reluctantly. “Figured if the Millennium Earl could call back souls, God should be able to. Figured if God could do it, then we could too, if we got our hands on some Innocence.”
Komui cleared his throat. “Yes. I heard about that experiment.”
Ed caught himself rubbing his arm, and forcibly stopped. “Yeah? Cross?”
Komui nodded. “He wanted my advice. It was strange.”
“Cross, right, guy’s kind of known for strange. So’d you give him advice?”
“I didn’t have any to give.”
“The hell’d he want advice on, anyway? It was too late by the time he came along. Shit, but that’s how he is, right? Always shows up a week after you need him. Did it with me and Al. Did it with Allen. Starts to look like a pattern after a while, so I guess he’s either a creep or a fuckup. Or, hey, maybe both.”
“…He came to see if I’d had any success with reassigning Innocence to new accommodators. He knew I was interested in that.”
For Lenalee, Ed realized. God, they were all screwed, weren’t they? “Okay,” he said, “I feel kind of bad for calling him a creepy fuckup now.”
Komui did him the huge favor of just laughing and letting it go. Or pretending to let it go, because guys like Komui never actually let go of anything, but it was decent of him to pretend.
“Anyway,” Ed went on, “After all that, it doesn’t make sense that Al and I are still alive, right? We should’ve Fallen. So we’re curious.” And what Komui didn’t know about the details of their curiosity couldn’t get them jailed by the Order’s high command. “I just wondered if seeing a bunch of Innocence together would make anything click. If I’d see some common thread that would make it all make sense.”
“And do you?”
The Innocence down there was all different shapes and sizes, but it all had the same feel, and it was all humming that fucking annoying hum that only Ed and Al seemed able to hear. It couldn’t be a coincidence, not if Ed was looking at a whole tank’s worth acting the same way. Too bad he didn’t know what the hell it meant. “Nothing I can use.”
Komui nodded thoughtfully, hesitating over asking Ed more, eventually letting it go. Ed had to hand it to the Order: they sure did train their people in the fine art of knowing what not to pursue. “Good luck,” Komui said.
“Yeah, thanks,” Ed answered, mildly depressed by this whole trip. “I’ll need it.”
* * *
The tentacle monster adventure had carried Ed all the way to lunch, so he headed to the dining hall. Allen would definitely be there, and Al would probably turn up, too, because he knew that where there was food, there were also, inevitably, Allen and Ed.
Sure enough, Al and Allen had staked out a whole table and Allen had piled it high with food. Convenient. Now Ed didn’t have to get his own—he could just steal Allen’s. The sniping and bitching was always so fun. Dinner and a show.
Food theft, bitching, and Al peacemaking all proceeded according to plan. It was a nice break, but once the food was gone, Ed figured he’d dodged serious business as long as he could. He took a breath and told himself to man up. “So. Allen. Glad you’re looking less like hell.”
Allen polished off the last of his food, casting Ed a considering look. Ed hated that look. Never had been able to figure out what the fuck it meant. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
Ed shrugged. “Not like it’s your fault. I blame Cross. Plus, you know, God. That asshole.”
Allen laughed. Ed glanced at Al—Ed had made Allen laugh, Ed had social skills after all, take that—but Al was doing his best Sphinx impression. Killjoy.
“People get upset when you say things like that,” Allen informed Ed like he knew from experience.
“People are pansies.”
“Edward.”
“Allen.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
And what was that? What was that? Here they were, having a normal conversation, and Allen had to go and throw something like that right down in the middle of it. “Uh huh. You definitely looked grateful at the time.”
Allen splayed his fingers across the table, studying the mismatched hands. He’d obviously gotten some kind of Innocence upgrade since Ed last saw him, because his arm was way cooler now. Ed was maybe sort of jealous, but he hadn’t asked about it because he wasn’t sure whether Allen would gloat or cry. Either way, Ed couldn’t deal.
“Everyone ends up knowing things,” Allen said softly, “that they wish they didn’t need to know.”
“But they do need to know them,” Al concluded.
Ed hated it when they were depressing and right. “You’re welcome, then. But if you decide to hate us for it later, remember it was actually Al’s idea to tell you.”
Al and Allen grinned at each other for some unsettling reason. Ed didn’t get a chance to worry too much, though, because the door to the dining hall slammed open just then. Ed hoped it was Kanda making another Entrance!
But no. It was some weasel-featured guy, looked like he bit into a lemon in infancy and never recovered. Angry, suspicious, uptight—exactly what you don’t want to see in a guy with power, but he definitely had power. People were scurrying around him in that minion satellite pattern.
If this guy was who Ed thought he was, then Cross’s box of blackmail had a novel’s worth on him. Just what they needed. “Is that a Leverrier?”
Al did a horrified double-take. Allen blinked at them. “Yes? Malcolm Leverrier. He’s some important Central Office…person.”
“Great, fantastic. So that complete douche is your boss?”
“I prefer to think of Komui as our boss.”
Ed rolled his eyes. “Think whatever you want. But Komui has to take orders from the douche, am I right?”
“Yes, but—”
“We’re history, we are gone. Catch you whenever.” Ed shoveled down the last of his food, nodding to Al, who went to ask Jerry for travel supplies. Ed hardly knew Jerry, but already he knew he’d miss the guy.
“Are you running away?” Allen demanded wrathfully.
One of Allen’s problems—one of the many—was a tendency to get attached to places for no better reason than because he’d been there for a while. “Running away from what? Jesus, always with the half empty attitude. Think of all the awesome stuff we’re running toward. And get real, this place is obviously not worth it.”
“You’re abandoning everyone here who’s helped you.”
“Abandoning? Shit, Allen, I didn’t tell them to come here, and I don’t know why they’re staying. But you know what? It’s not my problem. And it’s not yours, either, Mr. Savior of the Universe. We’re off to wipe out akuma, seeing as that’s our job. And you, you feel free to stay here and do…whatever.”
“They can’t just cut ties and walk out! How would they support themselves, how—”
“How did we support ourselves? Tell ‘em to get a fucking job. Or rob an easy mark, if they want to do it Allen style. They can hack it. We did, and obviously the Bookmen did, too. You ask me, those Bookman guys’re just here for the cheap entertainment, and, by the way, there is something really messed up about that.”
“Don’t say that where Lavi might hear. He doesn’t like people to know.”
“We’re pretending we’re not onto his scam so we don’t hurt his feelings?”
“Right.”
“You are such a fucking freak, I don’t even know where to start with you. Point is, people can do fine on their own. Which makes staying here their problem, not mine.”
“You can’t leave.”
“The hell I can’t. Don’t boss me.”
“This is our home.”
Ed’s eyes widened, his jaw tightening. “Don’t you pull that shit with me,” he hissed. “Not you. You wouldn’t know a home if you head-butted the doorframe.”
Allen’s face did a weird angry/sympathetic spasm, but he got it under control quick. “Ed, I’m just learning what a home is now. Don’t ask me to give it up. Please.”
Ed turned away. Fucking Allen. Every once in a while, he came out with something goddamn heartbreaking. “I’m not asking you to do anything, okay? I’m telling you what I know, and you can do whatever you want with it, I don’t care. So don’t. Look at me like that.”
“Are we packing?” Al asked uncertainly, hovering beside them, holding bags full of food.
“Yeah.” Ed pushed back from the table decisively, ignoring whatever tragic waif thing Allen’s face was doing. Allen’s crazy was not his problem.
* * *
“I thought you were here because you wanted the Order’s protection,” Allen said later, when Ed was waiting in the front hall with the luggage while Al tied up loose ends, explained to everyone that they were taking off, all that Al-type stuff.
“Yeah, I figured that, what with the way you threw open the doors for us and locked out the big bad world and everything. That was actually kind of. You know. Thanks. Didn’t need it, but. Yeah.”
“You came to help me.”
“Whatever.”
Allen stared. Apparently the idea of Ed going out of his way to keep Allen alive was messing with his whole worldview. Seriously? Ed wasn’t that much of a dick.
“Hey,” he said, not meeting Allen’s eyes because this whole conversation was awkward. “Don’t go evil. That’d be a pain in the ass.”
“Why?” Allen asked, smiling. “Because you’d have to kill me?”
“No, jackass, because I wouldn’t kill you. Me and Al, we wouldn’t let anybody kill you, you’re ours. But it’d be a bitch, cuz you’d rampage around and cause a global catastrophe. So don’t.”
Allen frowned. “If I’m taken over by a Noah, I’ll want you to kill me. And what do you mean, I’m yours? No, never mind, it doesn’t matter, I am asking you to kill me.”
“Right, like I’ve ever done a thing you said. I won’t kill you. Global catastrophe. All your fault.”
“Ed, what if I can’t—”
“I’m saying you’d fucking better.”
“Fine. It doesn’t matter. Kanda will kill me, if it comes to that.”
Man, he really was stuck on Kanda, wasn’t he? Necrophilia, gross. “Kanda and I made a deal. He won’t kill you, either, and he won’t let Lenalee or Lavi or anybody.” That wasn’t strictly true, but Allen didn’t know that, and Kanda wouldn’t tell him.
“What!?”
“Yeah, uh-oh. What’re you gonna do now? Oh no, you’re gonna have to live! Asshole.”
“It’s not entirely up to me, you—kill me.”
“No.”
“Kill me.”
“Fuck you, live forever.”
“I came into this conversation at a very odd moment,” Lavi said, walking over trailed by Al, who was frowning in disapproval. “What are you two talking about?”
“Ignore them,” Al advised. “Brother, Lavi’s taking me to the library to get a map and some books, and then I’ll be ready to go. If you and Allen could wait here for five more minutes without fighting or blowing anything up, that would be great. Any requests from the library?”
“You know which books I’m looking for,” Ed said impatiently. “Seriously doubt if the Order’ll have them.” Al rolled his eyes and turned to Lavi, who reluctantly led the way out of the hall, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds.
“You’ll kill me,” Allen said confidently once Al and Lavi were out of earshot. “You will. You’ll have to.”
“No,” Ed assured him, “I won’t.”
“Yes, you will.”
“Uh, I really won’t.”
“And what about all the people I’ll kill if you don’t?”
“What about them?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Back at ya.”
“You have no sense of social responsibility.”
“You just figuring that out? And Cross always said you were smart. Guess it must’ve been the man-crush talking.”
“Ed, I’m serious. Do you want people to die?”
“No, dickhead, I don’t. But I want you to die least of all. Well, least after Al.”
“That’s…nice of you. Though not very likely. But fine, say I accept that. If I get taken over by a Noah, I’ll be as good as dead anyway.”
“Says who?”
“I think I’m the expert here!”
“Why? You ever get taken over by a Noah before?”
Allen’s face did that thing where it shut down, totally just—bam—no one home. And then the lights came on and the con was home. Nice Allen rules no longer applied.
Ed grinned. Now they were playing for real.
“I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” Allen said sadly, face mild and concerned. He was such a dick.
“I think I have, actually.” This was gonna turn real ugly real fast if Ed didn’t watch it, but he was pretty sure he was holding more cards than Allen this time. God, he hoped so.
“Oh?” Allen tipped his head and smiled. Creeeeepy. “What if I turn into a Noah and kill Al? Have you planned for that?”
Ed grinned harder. So Allen was planning to throw him off with the brother card and then really hit him, huh? But for once in Ed’s life, the brother card wasn’t gonna work, and that would undermine Allen’s whole attack strategy. Apparently he didn’t know everything. Nice to have proof. “Yes,” Ed said, voice dripping satisfaction. “Yeah, we accounted for that.” Hah! I win, asshole.
The mask cracked; Allen scowled. Ed did love getting Allen’s mask to crack. “What does that mean?”
“It means, smartass, that we’ve been practicing catching Noah. How cool are we? So we’re not really gonna let you stampede around killing people; you don’t have to worry. I was just messing with you. Sort of. It would still be a pain in the ass, so don’t do it.”
“Catching Noah.”
“Right.”
Allen slapped a hand over his face and sat down abruptly on the floor right there in the hall. Kinda worrying. Ed crouched down to keep an eye on him, wondering if he was gonna faint, laugh, or jump up and try to kill somebody. Ed gave the options even odds.
“Brother,” Al sighed, reappearing with maps and books. No Lavi, though, which must’ve taken some doing. “You promised.”
“Not my fault he’s delicate!”
“Catching Noah,” Allen repeated, aggrieved, not moving the hand.
“Yeah, well, obviously. I mean, they can burn the Innocence clean out of you, right? So we thought we’d catch one. Help us figure out how to fix Al.”
Allen removed his hand, took a deep breath, and held it, counting to ten instead of giving Ed the umpteenth lecture on how burning the Lord’s grace out of a person in no way equated to ‘fixing’ anything.
Ed begged to differ, which was why they’d had that fight maybe a hundred times. It went like this: Ed argued that he hadn’t Fallen yet, so he couldn’t be too wrong, Allen hissed that it would be way too late once Ed had Fallen, Ed insisted that you couldn’t live if you were always sweating the small stuff, Allen made cutting allusions to things Ed’s lack of forethought had cost him in the past…aaaaand fistfight. Wasn’t that Ed didn’t have a reply—technically he could deal that lack of forethought card right back at Allen and make it hurt worse on the return—but that was where it crossed the line and made violence the safer option for both of them.
Allen was turning kinda purple. Apparently ten wasn’t a high enough number.
“Allen.” Al was alarmed by the purple face; Al was easily alarmed. “God, you two. Is this what were you talking about before? When you were arguing about killing Allen right in front of a Bookman?”
“He said we have to kill him if he turns Noah, I said no way we’re killing him, he freaked out. I’m right.” Ed folded his arms belligerently. Allen gave up on the whole controlling his temper idea and gasped for air before starting in on a rant.
“He said he was going to let me go on a killing spree, then he said you two have been practicing catching Noah. And that I shouldn’t worry.” Allen stared at Al, accusing.
Al shrugged. “Well, it’s a moot point. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to lose.”
Allen started laughing, jagged and out of control, and Tim swooped in to bite him on the ear. Tim disapproved of hysterics, which had gotten Ed in trouble a time or five. He actually had a few tiny curved scars in the shape of Timcampy’s teeth. Vicious little bastard.
“Allen, you are not going to lose to a Noah.” Al also disapproved of hysterics. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Ed smirked and scooted back so as not to get in Al’s way. Best to leave this one to the pro.
“I’m not going to lose,” Allen agreed, still wild-eyed, still crashed out on the floor. “But if I did—”
“You’re not going to,” Al repeated patiently.
“But you should plan for—”
“No.”
“Al—”
“Can you talk to him?”
“…What?”
“Can you talk to the Noah in your head?”
“I…haven’t tried. I mean, I didn’t even know what it was until yesterday. But how…?”
“Well, you should try. Maybe you two can work out a deal. You know, share your body.”
“Has that ever worked for anyone?”
“You’re not really like anyone else,” Al answered, neatly sidestepping the question. Allen cast him an approving look for that one, and Ed laughed out loud.
“Hey,” Ed put in, “even I think you can do it, and you know I wouldn’t lie about that to cheer you up or whatever. I’d be more, I dunno, following you around with a pre-carved tombstone, holding a chisel, ready to add in the end date.”
“All right,” Allen said, standing up and brushing off. “Fine. I’ll try to talk with the Noah in my head, even though that’s exactly opposite what anyone with common sense would tell me to do. But first, I’m going to talk Kanda out of this…deal you’ve talked him into.”
“Good luck with that.” Ed stood too, grinning at the thought of all the silent staring in Allen’s future. Maybe Kanda would even tell him there was no deal, which Allen obviously wouldn’t believe. He’d think Kanda was lying to him to protect him. Ed was a genius for setting this up.
Allen’s eyes narrowed. “You realize this means you have to stay alive. Because if I do go on a rampage and Kanda refuses to kill me and you’re not around to catch me, I’m going to be very annoyed.”
“Yeah, I’ll worry myself sick about that when I’m dead.”
“Brother,” Al murmured with self-righteous disapproval that he promptly undermined by kicking the shit out of Ed’s shin. “We’ll be careful, Allen. You be careful, too.”
Allen nodded, then strode off out the side door without any hesitation or a single glance back, because that was what being trained by Cross did to you. Tim buzzed Ed and Al one last time before following Allen.
“He’ll be okay, won’t he?” Al asked, suddenly sounding his age. He did that sometimes, possibly just to freak Ed out.
“What? Yeah! Jeez, he’ll be fine, don’t be stupid. He can totally handle this.”
Al nodded, calming down, as well he should. Obviously Allen could handle this. If a jerk like Hohenheim could work something out with the Noah in his head, Allen could do all that and take over the world on the side.
Ed was almost looking forward to it.