Drabble - Something Wrong

[baroqueangel]

Title: Something wrong
Pairing/Characters: Al
Rating: PG
Warning: Sadness...
Words: 659
Summary: Al wonders what they did wrong
A.N:I wrote this for NaNo and never got it posted, actually, if I'm being honest I did write this during NaNo but I wrote it after reading a friend's journal and something in me just said I had to get this down. I wasn't happy with it then, the ending seemed a little off, but I like it better now. I'm still not completely happy but if I play with it I'll truly hate it so I figure it's good as it is. My brain works like this a lot.

Had they done something wrong?

Al sat on the grass, knees hugged tightly to his chest, his hands interlocked around them so that he didn’t fidget. Next to him Ed sat in pretty much the same pose, head bowed and resting on his knees. He took in his brother’s hunched shoulders and defeated look and it broke him even more.

What had they done wrong? Why had this happened to them? He wondered briefly if the same things had gone through Winry’s head when auntie Sarah and uncle Urey had died. He was sure she hadn’t done anything wrong and throwing wrenches at Ed’s head should not count, especially when he deserved it most of the time. Why did the three of them seem to always have to give things up?

If he looked at it with alchemy then surely they should have got something of equal value in return for their mother being taken but he could think of nothing that would ever equal their mother‘s life. Were nine years of good memories really worth taking her? Because that was all he could think of. That was all that could account for it. Was having the memory of her beautiful smiling face really an equivalent exchange? If that was it then he would give it up in a heartbeat just to have her back. He would sacrifice all his happy memories from the past to have just a little bit longer with her.

“Brother, what are we going to do?” Al was hungry, he was scared and more than that, he was confused.

“We’re going to get her back Al.” Ed seemed so sure, his voice sounded strong and Al wanted to believe him, believe that it was possible. They hadn’t done anything wrong, they had not received anything of equal value in equivalent exchange therefore didn’t alchemy owe them? Alchemy had taken something that it had no right to take, it needed to give it back!

~~~

As Al sat watching his brother sleep he thought back on the first few days after their mother’s death. Ed had been so sure of their actions and at the time Al had trusted in him, wanted him to make it better, wanted alchemy to give back what it had taken. How foolish they had been.

Ed looked so small right now, a leg and an arm missing, pain showing on his sleeping face, mumbling about being sorry probably thanks to some nightmare that was holding him hostage. There was nothing they had done wrong, Al knew that now, he just wished he had figured it out sooner. They hadn’t been bad.

Death was just part of life and a part that nobody could change, no matter how good their intentions were or how much they tried. Al would have wept for his lost innocence if he could, in this cold metal suit he had no tears, he couldn’t really express his emotions in that way anymore which was something else he could have wept for right then.

It had taken so much for him to realise that nothing could ever be given to equal the taking of a life, nothing would ever be enough to make up an equivalent exchange. Death did not mean you had done something wrong and it didn’t mean you were being punished. They were being punished now for not realising that sooner.

Al remembered something that granny Pinako had told them not long after their mother’s death, something that he wished had made more of an impact on them before. She’d told them about a saying that had been around when the old religion had been thriving, something that had at least offered a little comfort even if only a little. She had told them that only the good die young and nobody in her view, and now also in Al’s, had more good in them than Trisha Elric and Pinako’s son and daughter-in-law.