9. [PM] + [Action] (forward-dated to the 24th)

[rewritethis]

[PM to everyone who so much as spoke to his AU, if he knows their name] [ooc: this can be handwaved or backtagged!]

If you remember the guy asking after me a couple of weeks back: I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

- Edward Elric

[Action]

[After those slightly cryptic PMs go out, Ed is absent from his usual hangouts for the rest of the morning. It's pretty difficult to miss him if you venture into the training centre, though - he's standing around a small clearing fairly close to the entrance, although after a little while a more accurate description would be miniature wasteland. Fallen grats lie here and there in the torn-up earth surrounding him; a couple are wounded in a way that suggests he impaled them somehow, but most just look like they've been rather viscerally beaten.

Presently, he settles down at the base of a nearby tree, on top of his untidily folded coat. He pulls at the hem so he can start polishing his right arm, but then stops and hangs his head. There's clearly something on his mind.

Not too far in the distance, a large animal roars.]

Comments

[earthlychild]

The dream that wasn't really a dream. And then I get the strangest feeling something else happened just recently. Someone was after you.

[She sighs and smooths her skirt.] I just wanted to be sure you were all right with all that.

[rewritethis]

[He glances up from the tea.] "Feeling"? So you're saying you don't remember for sure?

[earthlychild]

I...do? Maybe I just don't want to remember. It really worried me, what that other me was.

[rewritethis]

[Forehead creasing a little, he looks down again.] ...Could be.

But when you think about it... memories are information, nothing more. They're just as fallible as the rest of any human, and they don't come close to making up the whole of one. Maybe she's real in some other time or place, I don't know - there's plenty to choose from. So what? Whatever she left behind, it doesn't mean she was you. Or could ever have been you.

[He's definitely no longer smiling, which doesn't do much to hide what he's really talking about.]

[earthlychild]

[Aerith closes her eyes in thought.]

I don't hate what I remember of her. It might mean something. Maybe it doesn't.

[But where a certain Turk leader is concerned? She's worried it does. She bites her lip---there are things she remembers, but she's not sure if whoever she met was a parallel Edward Elric.]

But...was there another you?

[rewritethis]

[He narrows his eyes. Then again, if he hadn't already been dwelling on it for most of the morning, he'd have been even unhappier about the question.]

It's hard to say. [A pause.] Well, no, that's not true. More like I don't really want to say it. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

[There's another clinking noise as his grip on the the mug tightens.]

I know what he was, though. He wasn't human.

[earthlychild]

[Aerith looks at him with concern. She's not afraid, just worried about him.]

That...somehow, it makes sense. But he's not you, right?

[rewritethis]

You're asking me? [He doesn't look up.] If he wasn't, and it wasn't just parallel world counterparts getting swapped around, why him out of all the unrelated people on the street who would've made as much sense? That's what I don't get. But if I'm wrong, and he was... what the hell am I supposed to think?

[earthlychild]

"You think he might be part of you. But...you know you.. It's a little weird, but you're still Cadet Elric. You have the same friends, the same goal. Don't lose that."

She shouldn't either. Aerith promised herself that she wouldn't, but it was hard.

[rewritethis]

"Easy thing to say. But you can't gain anything without losing something."

He seems to have stopped drinking the tea.

"I could tell you that guy wasn't the first fake human I ever met, but maybe that isn't even important. Maybe I made the trade a long time ago."

[earthlychild]

Aerith knows he's saying something more than the literal meaning of the words. She bites her lip and exhales through her teeth.

"Made what trade?"

[rewritethis]

He looks up and, maybe surprisingly, smiles at her. "Well, you tell me. What would you call the cost of growing up?" He doesn't bother waiting for an answer right away. "When you start bringing up topics like that, equivalent exchange isn't such a straightforward concept any more. But I can't pretend I didn't pay anything for it. Truth is, I wouldn't trade it back. I'd do it again, even if I knew these memories actually meant something." Here his smile falters slightly again. "However many times it took."

It's a weird, elliptical little speech to hear coming from a relative stranger, and he intends it to be.

[earthlychild]

I'd call it...pain, I suppose.

[She might not fully understand, but the pieces were slotting in with bits borrowed from her own life.]

When you know that the world's not a great place and there are very few people who are truly looking out for you.

But I always hold out hope for those few.

[rewritethis]

Yeah... you're right. And I'm luckier than a lot of people there. Always have been. Nothing's changed. It's just one more fraction of the price I promised myself I'd pay right from the start, when you look at it like that.

[He takes another sip of the tea.]

Sorry. You don't care about any of this.

[earthlychild]

No, it's all right.

[She casts a Fire spell as a warning to keep away one of the lesser bugs, then smiles.]

You aren't the only one. There's no need to keep everything inside. Just talk to your friends.

[rewritethis]

I've heard that one before. [He seems to find it a little funny, even. He cracks a slight grin.] But who really counts as a friend when you already know they could get switched around or thrown away at any minute, like we're the playthings of some lunatic god?

[earthlychild]

I know it's scary.

[That statement bites at her more than she wants to admit. What's the point in her making friends when she'll...well, that isn't in his future.]

In some sense, we are the playthings of a lunatic god. But that doesn't make everything meaningless. I mean...what would your friends say to that?

[rewritethis]

They'd ask me when I was coming back.

[He shuts his eyes briefly.]

This place... it's not so bad, once you get used to it. In a lot of ways, it's not even different. But there's something I still need to do, and there's no way I can do it here. That's the only fact that should matter, friends or no friends. Getting too attached to anything else, trying to cling to meaning where in the end there won't be any, it'll just muddy the water. It shouldn't make any difference to me.

[And it does. That's as clear as if he'd said it aloud.]

So I'll be okay. It's just for a little while longer, after all.

[earthlychild]

I have a mission like that too. So I guess you're right.

[She grips the fabric of her dress and sighs, though. She's not giving up completely.]

But I don't want to turn them away. Just in case...impossibly...we end up staying here and can't go back.

[rewritethis]

That won't happen. [His voice is quiet by his standards, but he couldn't have sounded more emphatic if he'd screamed it.] We're taking our sweet time finding it, that's for sure, but there's always a way. If there's anything worth believing in, it's that.

[earthlychild]

I'll believe it with you.

[It's a quiet promise, a tiny promise, but a promise all the same.]
So...I guess we're not really feeling any better, but. Did anything help?

[rewritethis]

Well, it's a little early to tell. But maybe just remembering that is enough.

[He sets the mug down - it's still almost full - then slings his coat over one shoulder, gets to his feet and dips his head in a quick bow.] Thanks for the tea.

[He looks over at the grat Aerith took down, as well as what's left of the handful he went overboard on earlier.] Guess I should clean up in here before I go.

[earthlychild]

If you like. But it'd be rude of me not to help.

[Aerith smoothed her skirt, then smiled, slipped her equipment into her bag, and cleaned away her mess with a few spells.]

I guess I'll see you again!