Title: Erase and Rewind
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairings: None. Okay, if you look for them I'm sure you can find hints, but.
Genre: Serious
Word Count: 1,510
Notes: Christmas fic for ryokophoenix, 2006. Title stolen from a Cardigans song, not because the song is at all relevant but because I liked it.
Summary: The ending of The Conquest of Shambala sucked. Well, okay, the whole thing sucked, but the ending sucked MOST. Therefore!

---

It had all seemed so simple and sensible in theory. Ed had to go through the gate, he had to stop the invasion of Amestris, and then he had to go back to Munich and destroy the gate from his end (having made sure someone would destroy it on the Amestris side), without stopping long enough to be reminded what he was leaving behind.

Ed was used to making sacrifices, and it made sense for him to be the one to do it, because he was the one who’d lived there before. He’d been gone for two years; Amestris wasn’t really his world, anymore. He didn’t even miss alchemy anymore.

Okay, maybe that was a lie. But he could live without it, and the point still remained that two years was a long time. Everyone back in Amestris had probably gotten used to his absence by now, so finally knowing what had happened to him could only help them move on.

Everything had gone as planned: he’d gotten through the gate, he’d stopped that insane woman from her conquest of Amestris, and now all that was left was to tell Al to destroy the gate on this end and go back to destroy the gate on the other side. Just keep on moving, that was the key. Don’t stop, don’t think, just be glad Al is human and that everyone else is alive.

Just a little more alchemy, and then it would all be over for good.

Clap--

“Fullmetal. Stop.”

Roy’s voice was every inch the colonel he hadn’t been for two years, ever since the coup against the homunculus Pride when he had lost his eye and Al had lost his memories and Ed had completely disappeared. It was a command from a direct superior, absolute, so assured of being obeyed that Ed found himself wavering automatically for a moment even though he’d never exactly snapped to obey when he was technically military, and though it only threw him for five seconds at most, he’d already lost his chance.

“Nii-san, what are you doing? You can’t!”

“I have to go back through the gate!” Ed argued, but he could feel his resolve weakening against Al’s hysteria and Roy’s frown, and he couldn’t free his arms from Al’s tight hug. “Al, let me go! We dealt with them this time but nothing is stopping them from sending more! I have to destroy the gate so they can’t come back!”

“We can destroy it from this side,” Al said, not backing down. “Don’t be stupid, Nii-san!”

“I’m not, I’m being realistic!” Ed yelled, and glared at Roy. “Destroying one side isn’t enough of a guarantee to risk another invasion on! It’d be hypocritical for you to tell me not to make sacrifices!”

“If the gate on this side is destroyed, there is nowhere for their gate to lead to. The sacrifice you’re planning is meaningless,” Roy said, hard and uncompromising. “Edward. Do you really believe this is necessary? Or are you simply running away?”

Ed’s hesitation, the moment of self-doubt where he had to stop and question his own motives because he realised he didn’t know, was perhaps answer enough.

“We’ll crash, it’s too heavy,” he said finally, which was less of a last ditch protest than a simple statement of fact, and Al beamed, recognising from long experience with his older brother that he’d won. Al always won. “That ledge has to be severed from the ship.”

“Then you can do it from the other side,” Al said firmly, and Ed looked from the grin on his younger brother’s face to the faint smirk on Roy’s and realised the moment he’d been aiming for had already passed.

“Fine,” he sighed, and clapped his hands again.

~

The aftermath, which included Winry clinging to him and crying all over him and Hawkeye’s heartfelt welcome back and Armstrong thumping him so hard on the back he choked, was enough to make Ed feel like complete shit and admit to himself that his plan maybe hadn’t been quite as well thought out as he’d previously believed.

It also made him wonder again if the Colonel was right, if he was just running away.

“Winry.”

Several hours later, after everything was over, after the ship had been destroyed and the gate with it and everybody had finally left and Al had fallen asleep and Winry had stopped crying, Ed faced her with a serious expression.

“I need to ask you something.”

Unsurprisingly, Winry seemed somewhat nervous at such an ominous beginning, but she tried to smile, though she still looked slightly tired and washed out. “Sure, what’s wrong?”

Ed frowned, automail hand twisting with his human hand in his lap as he stared out the window. “The Colonel said… that if I left Amestris again, I’d just be running away. I don’t know, maybe he’s right. But I don’t really get what he meant by that. Why would I want to run away? What do I have to run away from?”

Winry looked down at the mug of coffee she held wrapped in her hands and sighed. “I think he means… Ed, you don’t know how to be happy,” she said, finally settling on bluntness because there was no easy way to put it. “You don’t know how to just be there for the ones who love you, rather than making big gestures and grand sacrifices and in the end leaving them behind, because it’s all you’ve done since you were twelve. And I think… I think you’re afraid to try. That’s what he meant.”

Ed flinched guiltily, recognising the truth in her words, but stayed silent.

“Though,” Winry added, a little reluctantly, “it’s a bit hypocritical for Colonel Mustang to talk to anyone else about running away.”

Ed turned away from the window to glance back at her, frowning faintly again. “What does that mean?”

Her finger traces the edge of the mug lightly, circling its rim. “He hasn’t been on active duty since everything that happened two years ago,” she said. “He’s been on a sort of self-imposed sentry duty in one of the colder parts of the country. We don’t see him much. I think Lieutenant Hawkeye visits, sometimes. I’m not sure what he was doing there. Waiting, maybe.”

“I thought he looked pale,” Ed said finally, not sure himself whether he was being serious or not. “He lost an eye, too. And… Al’s lost his memories.”

“Yes,” Winry agreed quietly. “And Izumi-sensei passed away last year. I’m sorry, Ed.”

Ed smiled wryly. “It’s okay,” he said, only half-joking. “If everything were too perfect, it’d just be weird.”

It was a sad reflection on his life that that was kind of true, said in irony though it was.

~

In the end, perhaps surprisingly and maybe not surprisingly at all, it all came back to the military.

Ed had told Winry that he was going to be a state alchemist again. She hadn’t been happy-- even less so when Al had said he was going with Ed, not that that was at all unexpected-- but she had understood when he’d explained. He didn’t know how to just sit still; he’d been on a journey almost for as long as he cared to remember. He had to be active to be truly happy.

“This time I’m not looking for anything,” he’d told her, certain that he was making the right decision this time. “This time there’ll be no ulterior motives. Al and I are going to help fix things.”

And this time, Al was a national alchemist too, because they didn’t have to worry about the physical examination this time.

Roy was waiting for them at the station outside of Risembool, snapping his fingers to create sparks with a bored expression, and Ed rolled his eyes.

“What do you want, shit Colonel?” he snapped, and Roy smirked, his entire manner exuding the Mustang that Ed had known.

“Is that any way to talk to your superior officer, Fullmetal?” he drawled, pushing off the wall. “I came to pick you up. Which shouldn’t be too hard, since you haven’t really grown much in the last two years…”

Ed stared at him for a moment, disoriented by the unfamiliar familiarity of it. Nobody over the other side of the gate had ever made jokes about his height.

Of course, then the shock wore off and the outrage was back.

“WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SHORT HE’D FIT WITH THE LUGGAGE, HUH?”

“Nii-san! Calm down!”

And just like that, something had clicked back into place, something old made new again. Before it had always been about going backwards, trying to fix the mistakes he’d been making ever since his mother died. Now he’s back, and it’s not quite like the reset button has been hit, but he’s back to zero instead of minus infinity. It was time to walk forward instead of walking back.

Ed was going to make Amestris his world again, and he was going to rebuild his future from the ground up.