Leave A Scar (Fullmetal Alchemist)

With Rest

I blushed harder than before, red running across my cheeks. He just grinned wider, leaning forward, and I reached out, flicking his nose.

He flinched back, both hands covering the spot I had flicked, muffling his shout of surprise.

Al and I giggled.

Al was the first to bring us all back to reality. He looked up from his book, momentarily watching Ed eat and me fake my way through breakfast.

"We're hitting up Wellebley, right?"

"Yeah," Ed replied, standing and stretching out his lower back with his hands on his hips. "That should be our last stop."

Al unrolled a huge map, something I had only seen a handful of times in the month-and-a-half I had been traveling with the Elrics. The soul in the suit nodded, responding to Ed's statement and looking down at the map as I exchanged smiles with Edward. He looked down, to the map, and with a larger smile I decided I wasn't worth staring at anyway.

Al unclicked a pen, circling the town he had just questioned. "It's only a few stops away," he said, and part of me wondered why they even needed this worn down map at all. The destinations, the pathways, they all must be memorized by now. Paths and stories I couldn't retrace or recite, even if I wanted to.

The light chatter that had been floating around me suddenly died down, and I focused enough to see golden eyes looking at me expectantly. Like a reply should be falling from my lips at any moment.

Ed smiled, eyes closing. "Never mind," he said, and he straightened, hand slipping away from the map. "We'll leave in a little bit."

And that was the end of the conversation. When we were on the train, I thought of another conversation, a discussion we'd never had before. I just thought of the Homunculi, and the underlying fear I had been hiding from the beginning rose up. Creeping and crawling over my stomach, the back of my neck. As trees passed by, I could only wonder how long they would survive. How many rings were inside each trunk. How, if we cut ourselves open, how many rings would be inside of us, at the end.

It had been quiet for almost a week now, the loss of the amulet still pulling at us.

I could only hope something would break through soon.

_____

It's rare that people talk to themselves. Usually it's from stress, though that would be implying I knew anything about people at all. He remained staring downwards, murmuring something to himself. He perked up, noticing I was noticing him. And Ed's face grew a bit pale, voice asking me if everything was alright.

I nodded a little furiously, returning the question back to him. And he matched my nod, as strange as it was.

"Just thinking out loud!" he replied, grinning enough for his eyes to curve.
I matched his smile. Of course. That makes sense.

Al's helmet clicked, as he went back to reading. He was the only one who could decipher books endlessly on the train, not having to deal with motion sickness. How Ed could sketch on a train was above me.

I finished shaking my head, shaking my thoughts away and opening tired eyes to look at my skirt. I bunched up a hand, fisting fabric that mirrored the night sky.

Look at me, trying to be poetic.

I smiled bleakly, and after a few moments, sleep gathered me up in its arms.

_____________

I didn't dream, just experiencing that small black space, feeling like I was half-asleep and half-lucid until I heard a voice. Consciousness came to me like I was floating back up to the surface of water, air coming back as my eyes cracked open.