Chapter Text
Ed slouched in his chair with a huff. It was his baby brother’s Naming today, the so-far unnamed little thing a gurgling mess in his mother’s arms. Ed narrowed his eyes at the babbling infant, still not sold on this whole “older sibling” thing. So far, the unnamed baby is nothing but a gross attention-stealer.
Father’s home today, presiding over the Great Hall with a stony eye, colorful silks fluttering in the open windows, palm-bearers interspersed throughout the Hall, waving the large ornamental fans that kept the hot desert air moving. Guests bustled around, fancy beaded skirts and sashes swishing across the dance floor as the musicians played slow background music, traditional Xerxian harps and lutes.
Ed tugged on his crisp collar, making a face at the harsh scent of starch. They’re starting now, King Hohenheim standing to address the crowd, Queen Trisha beside him.
Ed’s technically supposed to be up there, but he’s currently pretty immersed in trying to keep his fancy ceremonial-collar from choking him and wondering when he can get out of these heavily embroidered robes and back into his loose linens.
He’s tuning out the long speech full of boring, formal language, but listens just in time to hear his brother’s name- Alfajhe.
Alfajhe.
Wow, he thinks to himself. That’s almost as stuffy as Edris.
...I’m gonna call him Al.
The party continues with various guests coming up to offer blessings on the new prince. Inability to be tongue-tied, gentle manners around horses, eternally good dental hygiene, the usual little things. Ed himself, as his mother tells him, was blessed with a sense of humor, clear skin, excellent eyesight, and dry palms.
Blessings are a strange magic. Alchemy works on the principle of exchange, and blessings are made possible because those who bless others are often riddled with curses in return. That’s why everybody doesn’t just walk around slathered in good luck- the bigger the blessing, the bigger the price. It’s a big deal to bless someone, and a big deal to be blessed. Trisha always reminds Ed to be grateful for the blessings he was given, because his unusually non-slippery hands mean that someone out there has abnormally sweaty hands for it.
Ed watches in interest, observing… Al. He’s not quite as gross, now that he’s got a name. A little less like a hairless desert rat. Ed creeps up beside the ostentatious cradle and offers his pinkie to Al’s flailing little hands.
His… his baby brother grasps Ed’s pinkie in his chubby fist, gurgling and looking up at Ed with squinty gold eyes. Same gold eyes that Ed sees in the mirror every day, a little wisp of gold hair that promises to be similar to his own.
Ed watches as his little brother slobbers over his own fist and squints at him.
Cheeky little rugrat.
But as the party goes on, Ed leaving his brother’s side for a short trip to the refreshments, taking handfuls of sticky dates and making a general mess of his tailored robes, someone strange shows up. Someone in a cloak and hood, unusual in their plainness among the finery of the nobility.
Someone who throws off their hood and shows a glowing white figure, not human at all.
They say something about payment. About a curse in return for Hohenheim’s greatest blessing.
“When your greatest blessing goes too far with his alchemies, he shall fall into eternal sleep,” the figure says, with a wicked too-wide grin, “and the whole of your kingdom with him, only to be broken by a kiss!”
Ed- Ed knows what that means. This figure has just pushed a curse onto- onto Hohenheim’s greatest blessing. His father’s greatest blessing. Male- not the kingdom- has to be a person- not me, certainly-
Then-
Then they mean-
“You leave my little brother alone!” Ed shrieks, with all the fury of a five-year-old, running at the cloaked figure full-speed only to plow into a stone wall that rose up out of the Hall’s sandstone.
The figure laughs. “Fierce little dragon. What a good protector you are,” they croon. “Not good enough, though.” And the intruder claps, once, and disappears in a flash of malevolent violet light.
(As the years pass, the horrific memory fades, and Ed only remembers one line of the whole business-
Not good enough.
So he trains as hard as he can. He jumps into his combat lessons with a fervor. He listens attentively to his tactics tutor. He pushes himself as hard as he can with his alchemy. He even starts paying attention in his etiquette classes, albeit begrudgingly.
He’s still short-tempered. He’s still foul-mouthed. He still has no patience.
Not good enough. )
The Crown Prince is training with Prince Alfajhe today, the servants know. The two had ridden out with a small escort to the Royal Quarry, because as the Crown Prince aged his lessons focused on more of the kingdom’s fragile infrastructure. Prince Edris is eleven years old today, and Prince Alfajhe’s nanny has come along to care for the six-year-old who wishes so much to follow his brother like a little duckling.
It was sweet, the servants thought, how protective Prince Edris was of the younger boy. How he insisted that the younger brother got his share at the table before the elder, even though it was a gross breach of etiquette.
And when the party rushes back through the gates, Prince Alfajhe’s wails bring help running. But it’s not Prince Alfajhe who’s hurt, they see, because the Crown Prince is lying deathly-pale on a makeshift stretcher, scuffed, bloody, and missing an arm and leg.
It was an accident, the servants whisper. A horrible accident. A chance cave-in that crushed the Prince’s arm and leg. They’d had to saw the limbs off on-site just to get him out.
A tragedy, outsiders call it, with saccharine-sweet sentiments, but the palace servants see Crown Prince Edris determinedly following his babbling little brother through the hanging gardens, limping on a mechanical leg and gripping Prince Alfajhe’s chubby hand with a metallic prosthetic.
They know that it’s not a tragedy. Unfortunate, yes, terribly. But not tragic, because the Crown Prince is back to his fencing within the year.
Ed knows that Al isn’t supposed to learn any alchemy. Ed knows that Al has been completely banned from even seeing alchemy. It breaks his heart, for his little brother to be completely barred from one of the greatest wonders in their world, but he can live with it.
What he can’t live with is Hohenheim sending Al off to Xing of all places to get away from it!
“Father, please! ” Ed begs. Ed never begs. “Please, Al’s just a kid! Don’t send him away!”
“I must do what is best for our kingdom,” Hohenheim says, looking down at Ed with a smarmy frown. “And should Alfajhe ever even touch the art of alchemy, we would all be ruined.”
“ Seriously?! ” Ed cries. “You’re going to make me abandon my ten year old brother in a foreign country because of a stupid curse?! I kept him away from alchemy! I followed your rule, even though I hate it! But this is too far!”
“ I will say what is too far,” Hohenheim thunders, looming over Ed. “And your backtalk is approaching the mark. Now sit down, Edris. ”
Ed bares his teeth, but drops back into his seat at the dinner table. His mother and Al look between the two of them with wide eyes.
“You are sixteen years old, Edris,” Hohenheim says, with a sigh. “You are young in the ways of the world. If I say Alfajhe goes to Xing, Alfajhe goes to Xing. You do not have a voice in the matter.”
Ed feels his eyes start to well with furious tears, and he pulls his features into a snarl to disguise the emotion his father will see as just one more sign of what a child Ed is.
“It’s okay, brother,” Al ventures softly from across the table. “M-maybe the change of climate will be good! A-and I can learn a new language…”
Ed looks at his mother. The only person who has any authority over his father. Surely she will see that this is horrible. Surely she will see reason.
“Your father’s right, Edris,” Trisha says, lips upturned in a kind smile. “I know you’re upset. But this is for the best.”
The blond grits his teeth and looks down.
(He can’t protect Al if Al goes to Xing. But…)
“Well- then I’m going with him!” Ed declares, tipping his chin up to stare his father in the eyes. “I won’t let him go by himself.”
“No. You have your own responsibilities.”
And by the next week, Al is gone.
But over the span of the next three years, Trisha gets sick.
Very sick.
Sick enough that-
That the healers think that-
That she might die.
Hohenheim leaves the next day, saying goodbye to his bedridden wife and throwing a stern glare at Ed. He says he’s going to find a cure. Like magic or something. And then he’s gone. He just leaves Ed, leaves him all alone in the (too open, too bright, his mother is withering away the world should be mourning ) palace with a dying mother and funeral silks already flowing softly from the windows.
So Ed sends Al a letter different from all the letters they’ve exchanged before and begs Al to come home. To come home.
Prince Alfajhe arrives just in time to say goodbye, and doesn’t leave the Crown Prince’s side even for a minute in the days after. Even though King Hohenheim is still gone, and the Crown Prince has taken over much of the day-to-day.
Including planning the funeral.
The servants are picking out their best mourning robes with heavy hearts while, unbeknownst to them, Prince Alfajhe leaves his brother’s side for a moment.
Prince Alfajhe wanders into the Royal Library.
Prince Alfajhe’s grief-addled mind is directed to a certain book on a certain shelf by a certain voice that seems to whisper in his ear.
Prince Alfajhe stumbles on the Crown Prince’s ritual room, circle already drawn. Materiels already set out.
And, against all rhyme and reason, Prince Alfajhe, despite having never seen alchemy before in his life, attempts human transmutation. Because he misses his mother.
The servants don’t even have time to make it to their beds before collapsing into a deep, deep sleep.
(Ed was on his way to the library to find Al when the wards he’d placed on the ritual room tingled in the back of his mind. He stops, because that’s curious. He knows none of the servants go in there, he’d specifically directed them not to. He had an important… experiment set up in there.
The realization hit him just a moment before the change did.
Ed cries out as he falls to the floor, thrashing as pain like lightning burns up his spine, mind blanking under the onslaught. He blacks out, and when he wakes up he’s-
He’s-)
.
.
.
Roy Mustang looks up at the towering thicket of thorny vines blocking his path with a scowl. His squad has been searching for the lost ruins of Xerxes for a month now, dispatched by some bored paper-pusher with nothing better to do.
Admittedly, hiking through the wilderness had been a nice break from Central’s ruthless politics, but that was the first week. Now, Roy is tired of camping. He is tired of cooking food over a fire. He is tired of his uncomfortable bedroll, and he is tired of waking up to his shoes full of insects the size of his fist.
Roy is tired. And frankly, he’s ready to be back in his home, kicking off his shoes to sit by a crackling fire with a book and a glass of wine.
They’re taking the scenic route back, according to Falman’s map, but the map had not mentioned an obstacle such as this.
He glares halfheartedly at Hawkeye, who looks back at him with a deadpan stare. He looks left, then right. Plant-wall as far as the eye can see.
Roy lets out a longsuffering sigh, slumping momentarily into his saddle before straightening, a defeated light in his eyes.
“We’re going to have to go through it,” he announces glumly, and his team, excepting Hawkeye, groans in exasperation.
“ Find Xerxes, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. A research expedition, they said,” Havoc mutters around his cigarette. Roy knows for a fact that it’s one of his last remaining smokes.
“Machetes, I should think,” Hawkeye muses, rolling her eyes at Roy’s expression. “Don’t look at me like that. Your alchemy isn’t refined enough to control a blaze.”
She’s right. One of the reasons Roy had been so excited for a push to the desert nation of Xerxes was because the lost kingdom was, in all the legends, known for its alchemy. For the Crown Prince who had revolutionized the field, although he and his research had disappeared with the kingdom some centuries ago. Most of the knowledge they have about Xerxes comes from Xing, ironically enough, because a member of the royal family spent a few years there, enough to spread tales of the Sun People, golden eyes and golden hair.
Roy sighs, but dismounts and slides his machete off his belt, holding the horse’s halter with one hand and the blade with the other. “Come along then,” he says, and the squad begins their journey through the thicket.
“We’re so lost,” Havoc groans, rubbing his forehead, as Fuery pores over a map and a compass. The forest is making them all a bit antsy. Thornbushes and briar patches almost too thick to turn around in, barely any light filtering down through the foliage, but the most unsettling part is the silence. No birds, no bugs, no running water, no wind rustling through the tightly-wound branches.
Just- still.
“Not lost,” the man mutters, the soft response almost as loud as a shout in the forest’s quiet. “Just… a bit turned around. This area isn’t even on the map, I don’t think.”
Roy sits up, eyes sharpening at Fuery’s wording. ‘Not on the map at all’ is not a very encouraging statement when you’re trying to get back to civilization, but if you’re looking for a lost kingdom…
“Fuery,” he says carefully, “Is it possible that…”
“That this thicket could have been what kept the ruins of a previously assumed desert nation Xerxes from being discovered all these years?” Fuery pushes his glasses up. “Maybe.”