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The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2012-12-20 22:57:00

[Ed/Russell; PG-13] Blessings Of Persephone
Character/Series: Edward Elric/Russell Tringham; Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Written as a sequel to "A Deal With Mister Hades".
Title: Blessings of Persephone
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 4884
Summary: It'd been five years since Edward had returned from Germany.


It'd been five years since Edward had returned from Germany. Nobody knew he was back, except Al and Winry and Grandma. Edward had requested they not tell anyone so he could have his privacy. He was mourning the loss of Alfons, he didn't want happy reunions.

It was after an almost-attempt at human transmutation that Edward finally started doing more than drinking and living a half-life without his partner. He blew the dust off the memories of rocket diagrams, fuel formulas, and approached Winry about making flying machines. She was the engineer, not him, but he knew the designs, the fuels, the theories. Winry happily dove into work with him, focusing on the new projects between automail patients.

After they got their first flying machine off the ground, they sent letters to the university in Central, to the military department, anyone who might be interested in their designs.

The military answered first, with the highest bid for their work. So they packed up their things, Al in tow, and headed for Central for a long-term stay, leaving Grandma to hold down the home front. Edward wasn't sure he wanted the military to have these designs, but as in Germany, when searching for sponsors, the projects follow the money..

"You two go back to the hotel," Edward told his brother and sister-in-law after they'd eaten at a small diner near their hotel. "I want to take a walk."

Al glanced out the window off to his left. It was raining, a cold drizzle that wasn't soaking, but by no means pleasant. He looked reluctant to let Edward out in gloomy weather. "Want me to come with you , Brother?"

Damnit, Al. He could handle gloomy weather, he wasn't going to waste away in it. "Naw, I'll be fine," he said as casually as possible, trying to ignore his brother's unspoken reason for that offer. "I just need to stretch my legs. Keep your wife warm, she'll appreciate it."

Winry laughed and shook her head. "If you're sure, Ed, I'll take advantage of the invitation." She gave Al a suggestive look, then took his hand in one hand, and her umbrella in the other. "Walk me back, dear?"

Al gave his brother one last worried look before getting up. Edward was doing his best to put off 'I'm fine leave me alone' vibes at his brother. They usually could read each other well enough for Al to know that Edward still needed some time now and again to mope. "Don't stay out too late, Brother," Al told him, less reluctant to let his wife lead him away than he had been before. It was an argument he wasn't winning, he may as well enjoy some private time with Winry without Edward fluttering over their shoulders with blueprints.

"I won't," Edward said. If Al could read Edward's mind as well as he seemed to these days, he knew Edward was being truthful, no matter how weak his smile of reassurance was. He just needed a little time away from that work, from Alfons's work. A walk in the rain might help.

Once Al and Winry had been gone a suitable amount of time for Edward to feel safe leaving, he left a tip on their table and grabbed his umbrella and headed out.

The cool rain was soft as it pattered against his umbrella, but the air was chilly, and Edward wasn't eager to find out how much more the persistent gentle damp atmosphere would amplify that. So he kept his umbrella decidedly in place over his head as he walked, letting his mind wander.

It'd be known soon that he was back, as soon as the public got whiff of his foreign designs that would send mankind flying. He wondered idly if any of his old friends would try to contact him. Mustang, Hawkeye, Armstrong, any of them. He knew they'd be angry that they'd never been told of his return, but it'd been by his own choice; he wanted the privacy to adapt to a home missing someone and had failed spectacularly at it for five long years.

It was time to move on.

"Ed?"

Edward stopped, hearing his name, and looked around for the source. He didn't immediately see anyone, most people half hidden under their umbrellas. Maybe it was some other Ed being called for that he heard. His name wasn't exactly uncommon.

But the voice he heard was familiar, maybe a bit deeper than he'd last heard it, but he remembered it. He finally spotted the eldest Tringham brother just up the block a ways, not quite as hidden by his umbrella as Edward or the people around them was. He wondered how Russell had even spotted him. Well, there's person one from the outside world that now knew he was back. He forced a smile he didn't feel, one that felt pathetically weak and barely there. "Hey, Tringham."

Russell hurried over to him, almost losing his umbrella in the process, and stared in dumb wonder at Edward, as if he were some strange creature caught under glass.

Edward wanted to back up a step.

"Where- I thought you- how long-" Russell drew in a deep breath, then another, then ran a hand over his hair. "Where the hell have you been?" he demanded. "You never came back from that city, everyone thought you were dead."

There may have been something thick in his voice at that, but Edward decided he was hearing things. So he simply shrugged. "I spent a couple years in hell, then managed to find my way home. That was five years ago. I just didn't want anyone to know. I wanted my privacy."

"Your privacy?" Russell snarled, then grabbed one of Edward's coat lapels, his other hand still holding his umbrella, slightly over Edward's and nearly bumping it out of his hand for how much Russell was in his personal space. "At least tell people you're alive, then ask them for privacy, you don't just let us think you're dead!"

That thickness again. Another thing to ignore.

Russell let go of him. "Damnit, Elric, your logic does not resemble any logic I've ever seen."

Edward didn't have it in him to argue, so he looked down at the wet cement sidewalk and mumbled an apology.

For a moment, Russell was silent, watching him. "So what're you doing in town?" he finally asked, obviously keeping something else to himself. He'd taken too long to deliberate on what to say next for Edward to think there wasn't something else he'd rather ask. "I'd think you'd be in Rizenbul, to have managed to stay hidden all these years."

"I'm here with Al and Winry," he said. "We're selling designs for flying machines to the highest bidder."

"Flying machines?"

Edward's lips quirked into a small smile. "I wasn't kidding about spending a couple years in hell. I found another world entirely that I spent two years in. They had flying machines, and I was helping with working on them. I helped Winry come up with the designs for them."

Russell's face looked vaguely like a kid who just got told Santa was coming to visit. It was marred by concern and worry and no small amount of confusion. "You gonna show me these designs?" he asked. "Make up for scaring the life out of me?"

"When did I do that?" Edward asked, once would've demanded but lacked the strength to argue that much.

"When you walked down the street like you'd been there all along when the world- including me- has been thinking you're dead," Russell replied sharply. It sounded like he'd been trying to dull whatever was behind that snap. "Now show me these designs."

There, that was better. The old Tringham that Edward had missed. Far more than he'd admit.

Not feeling like fighting, and a tiny bit lonely for the company of someone who wouldn't fuss over him and his depressive fits the way Al and Winry did, Edward shrugged, something he found himself doing a lot as the mourning gave way to numbness and apathy. Left alone, he was still tempted to drink, but he'd promised Al he'd stop. Maybe having the company of an old friend would drive away that temptation. "The hotel we're staying at's this way," he said, turning and walking back, not looking to see if Russell was following or not.

He hoped he was.

Russell didn't disappoint him, keeping pace. "Leave it to you to bring back new science. So where was this other world?"

"On the other side of alchemy," Edward said, trying and failing to describe it.

"What?"

Good, proper confusion and none of that other emotional shit that Edward was sure he was imagining. He knew better, Russell had sounded desperate to hear Edward promise to return from that city when he called after him, that last day in Amestris. But he couldn't bring himself to want to reconnect on that kind of level of emotion with anyone outside of his brother and in-laws.

Maybe some other time.

Edward heaved a deep sigh. "Alchemy's regulated by a Gate," he said, trying again. He knew it still wouldn't make sense; there was knowing about the Gate, but understanding it required seeing it, and he was most definitely not going to let Russell see that thing. It'd extracted too high of a cost to his loved ones. Even with his refusal to involve himself more than superficially- and he stubbornly pretended to ignore all the tiny signs that his resolve was beginning to crumble -the old emotion was still there, and demanded at the absolute minimum that amount of caring.

"There's a world on the other side of it," he continued, hoping he was making sense. "I spent two years there, then came home and retired to Rizenbul for awhile. Just spending time with Al, you know?" Smooth lie, Elric. Bet Russell doesn't fully believe that, but at least he's likely to humor Edward. "Then he and Winry got married, and he had less time for me, so I stole his wife with these designs. Just to get back at him."

Russell laughed. "That sounds like you. Just, next time, remember to tell the rest of the world you're back, Pipsqueak."

"I'm not that short anymore," he protested without much heat.

Russell stopped and started at him, even as the rain began to pound on their umbrellas rather than pitter patter. "You really have grown up. That barely got a reaction outta you."

The look Edward gave him was dead. "Shouldn't I have grown up some?"

"Well, it's a bit disappointing I can't tease you that way anymore," Russell admitted, starting to walk again.

"Too bad for you," Edward said, leading Russell the last block to the hotel his family was staying at. They closed their umbrellas once inside, shaking them to get the worst of the wetness off before locking them shut. Russell was silent as they took the elevator up to the sixth floor where the Elric family rooms were. The elevator operator offered no conversation, either.

Winry and Al's room was right across the hall from Edward's. He was staying alone, so there was nobody to disturb as he unlocked the door and led Russell in.

"I'll get out the blueprints in a second," he said as he shucked his coat and put it on the coat rack.

"I can be patient," Russell said, taking off and hanging up his own coat. He took a seat on the edge of the bed at Edward's invitation. "Our shoes are wet," he pointed out. "Should we be sitting on the bed to look at these designs?"

Edward paused at his suitcase that held the designs and looked back at him. "If you're comfortable going shoeless in someone else's hotel room, be my guest," he said. Deciding Russell's idea actually was a good one, he kicked off his shoes and the slightly damp socks that his shoes hadn't protected from the puddles on the sidewalks as much as he would've liked. Time to get new shoes, he supposed.

Edward dug into his suitcase and pulled out a couple rolled up blueprints, then joined Russell on the bed, sitting cross legged across from him. Taking great care, as if they held more secrets than just science that Amestris hadn't seen yet, spread out the pages for Russell to see.

Russell spent a few minutes staring at them, eagerly taking in this new science and likely committing it to memory. "This is amazing," he said, running a hand over the paper, smoothing it down and almost caressing the formulas and calculations. Science seemed to have distracted him from whatever he'd been choking on earlier. Good.

"It'd take a lot of room to get her up in the air, though," Russell noted.

"Yeah, the military will have to build an airfield with runways for take off," Edward admitted.

Russell looked up disapprovingly. "The military?"

"They were the highest bidders," Edward said with a shrug. "I don't really care what they do with it, either. I just want Alfons's hard work to be seen by someone."

"I thought you got this from the other side?" Russell said. "This is Al's design?"

Edward froze, going first cold pale, then hot red as he ducked his head, turning it to look at the far wall, the ground, his wet shoes and socks, Russell's wet shoes by the bed, pretty much anywhere but at Russell. "No. Not Al. Someone else I met in the other world."

For a second, Russell didn't say anything. "I'm guessing 'met' is not used casually? You were close to him?"

Fighting back tears and mentally snarling at himself for his slip in letting Alfons come up at all, Edward looked up at the ceiling as if lost in thought. Okay, ceiling, yes. Another thing to look at besides Russell, and a good way to stop tears. "Yeah, something like that."

"I didn't take you for being interested in guys," Russell said, tone gentle, as if he realized that this was a tender subject just from the thickness in Edward's voice alone. Was it anything like what Edward heard in Russell when they first ran into each other out on the street?

Get a grip on yourself, Elric. You're lonely and he's the first friend you've seen in five years. Don't even let your head go there. Too fast, too soon, too lonely, not a good combination.

Despite the frequency of the action, Edward shrugged again. "Nobody took me for being interested in either gender," he said matter-of-factly. "I was too obsessed with my work. And I almost was too obsessed with getting home to notice him, but he was helping me get there, and my roommate, so it was hard not to, I guess. But that was a long time ago, it doesn't matter now."

There, Al should be happy. He was talking about Alfons to someone other than his brother. He was trying to not be as involved with the words he was saying as he was when Al forced him to talk, forced him to accept hugs, forced him to get the words out in the hopes that there's never be a chance for a human transmutation attempt again. But he was talking. That was something.

"Why do I get the feeling it matters a lot more than you're saying?" Russell said, voice hushed. "Fuck, Elric, I saw that look on your face when you realized you'd brought him up. You still miss him, and if I had to guess, that's why you didn't want to face this world for the last five years. Am I right?"

Edward closed his eyes and hung his head, fighting back the urge to cry in grief and rage. "It's none of your business," he snapped, feeling trapped by that tone, that gentleness, that promise of more than just Al's comfort, of Winry's hugs when she caught him crying or just brooding. He wasn't ready for someone else in there yet.

Though Russell, of all people to find out first, made it damn easy. Mustang might've been better, but Russell was a peer. Someone his age who might understand. Who wasn't likely to initiate another damn hug, to let Edward decide if his shoulder was good enough to cry on.

"You never knew him, anymore than Al or Winry ever did, so don't any of you have any right to tell me how to handle his death, got it?" he said, still choking on his words, trying to put more defensive barbs into them.

"I'm not telling you anything," Russell said, holding his hands up in surrender. Then he leaned forward a bit, relaxing his back. "Or at least, I wasn't. But I do know, thanks to you, that you can't dwell on the past." He rolled up the blueprints while Edward forced his breathing into an even pattern. "Ed, I'm sure your brother's said more than I could, he obviously knows more and he knows you better than I do. If building these machines helps you move on, great, but you can't keep him to yourself forever. We may not have known him, but we see the effect he had on you, and that's something your friend and family want to know about. Nobody's digging at your privacy, we just want to know that part of you."

"There's no reason for it," Edward protested softly, trying so desperately hard to keep Russell's words out and the temptaion to lean on his shoulder and cry as he'd done so many times before squished and buried where it belonged. "It's just making me run over old painful ground."

Russell grabbed Edward's shoulders gently. "No, it's celebrating a life that meant something important to you. Talking about things helps, Ed, at least that's what I've been told."

His self-control was starting to scatter to the four winds as his grip on his emotions wavered. "I'm out in the world, I'm doing something to affect it, I'm not just hiding away anymore, isn't that enough?" he demanded through tears that refused to be reined in.

"It's a step," Russell said. "Maybe you should try getting in touch with the others? See how people are doing?"

No. Russell alone was hard enough, bringing in anyone else would be too hard. "Maybe some other time," Edward replied weakly. "I don't even really feel like dealing with you right now." More honesty, but this time an honesty he hoped would chase away the prodding for other honesties.

"Too bad." Russell put his hand under Edward's chin and lifted his head to look at him. "Hey, I'm not trying to poke a raw nerve, but this kind of grief, for this long, it's an infected wound, not a healthy mourning. You need to get it out before it kills you."

That shoulder was looking awfully tempting.

"It almost did," Edward confessed under his breath, wondering if Russell would even hear. Or if he wanted him to.

"What did you do?" Russell's voice had dropped several decibles into a near whisper.

Edward would be surprised if Russell hadn't already guessed the second the words were out of his mouth. He sighed, blowing his bangs out of his eyes as Russell dropped his hand. "I nearly tried to bring him back, okay?"

There. Be horrified. Realize there's nothing but a fuck up sitting in front of you and leave. The loneliness was overwhelming and Edward was finding everything Russell was offering very, very tempting. But it was just concern, just a friend, taking a piece of Edward's past and handling it gently, like he knew what he was hearing, how important the words were.

But don't do that. Go away before the lonely too long hit and Edward did something stupid.

Russell drew back, staring at Edward with horror, then anger, anger that Edward interrupted with his own. "Al already slugged me and yelled at me for it, I don't need you to, too."

"That's too damn bad," Russell snapped, grabbing Edward's shirt collar and pulling him closer with an angry (and frightened?) look, contorting his face into one with teeth bared and eyes shining brighter than they should. A beautiful shade of blue. Alfons's blue.

Oh god, go away.

"What would your family have done if you'd gone through with it, huh?" Russell demanded, giving him a shake. Edward let him do it, took his licks with all the grace of a defeated man could. "And fuck, did you even think about any of us who were missing you? We thought you were dead once, I thought you were dead and that it was my fault for showing you that stupid city in the first place!"

Edward's defensively dead wall shattered, confusion setting in. "Why would you think that? It wasn't your fault, what happened, and I had to get Al back somehow."

Russell took a deep breath, eyes closed tightly as one hand dropped to his lap, the other moving to Edward's shoulder, gripping the flesh tightly. "I thought I should've gone with you. I've been thinking what it might've gone differently if I'd just gone with you. Maybe I couldn't have been much help, but maybe I could've, you know?" He opened his eyes, and they were wet with their own sheen of tears. Those eyes too bright.

Edward felt completely off-guard by this emotional confession, felt battered and bruised; Russell had dragged up memories of Alfons, and now he was forcing him back into his own world, where Alfons was gone, and Russell was there, saying he blamed himself for something nobody had blame in.

He gingerly lifted a hand and rested it on the side of Russell's face, trying to be comforting and wishing he wasn't. Too lonely, Elric. If anything came from this contact, the consequences may be too much for both of them. "Russell, you wouldn't have been able to help, not against what was down there. You needed to be up here for your brother."

Russell turned his face slightly into Edward's hand, closing his eyes and taking a shuddering breath as a few stray tears escaped to wet his cheeks. "Yeah, but we all needed you. Amestris needed you." A pause and Russell opened his eyes, laying an intense and heavy look on Edward, locking him in direct eye contact. "Hell, even I needed you. Who else was I going to pick on for being shorter than me? My brother's no fun about it."

Even I needed you.

Too much loneliness and too much grief piled in on Edward, and fuck all his internal warnings. They were ignored as that desire to not be alone directed his movements before he could stop himself. He leaned forward and captured Russell's lips with his own. Too many years being too lonely.

Lunacy. Madness. But maybe enough to make Russell leave and let Edward return to that too dark world he'd become used to.

A point in Russell's favor, that he didn't immediately shove Edward away, and he made a barely there attempt at returning the kiss, but it had been rather lackluster. Edward pulled back, face on fire and tears of humiliation already following behind the tears of grief. "Sorry," he muttered, looking down at his hands in his lap. "You'd better go now, before I have to kill you for whatever reaction you're going to give me."

Silence stretched as Russell refused to move, one hand still on Edward's shoulder. "If we go this way, Ed, it's for keeps," he said quietly. "I don't do one night stands."

Edward stared at him for a moment, mind grabbing onto that offer, before everything inside crumbled. "I don't want to be alone anymore, I want someone who's going to be there, " he whispered. "That's all. I'm sorry, if it's not what you want, you can go."

Russell brushed away a few tears from Edward's face, then leaned in and kissed him, uncertainly at first, then with more passion than sense.

Edward wrapped his arms around Russell's neck, kissing him like a drowning man finding air, greedily wrapping himself in the sense of another and letting it act as a balm for the loneliness and isolation that had been infected for so long.

It was hours later that they fell asleep, and for once, Edward didn't dream about Alfons's death, for once he didn't have a nightmare of any sort, tucked up against Russell's side.

He awoke to an empty bed, Russell and his few things gone, rain pattering away on the window like nothing had happened.

That had been too much to hope for.

Edward felt too numb to grieve, too numb to be angry, too numb to do anything but move on automatic as he dressed, picked up the blueprints that had been set aside on the night stand and put them back with the rest, all but one that he kept out to study at the desk, throwing himself into his work.

The door opened, startling Edward, who looked up at Russell's entrance.

In Russell's hands were two cups of coffee, the handle of his umbrella looped over his arm. The room key dangled from one finger. "Oh, sorry, I didn't scare you, did I?" Russell said. "I figured you'd still be in bed, I decided to get us some coffee." He set one lidded cup down on the desk next to Edward, then set his own coffee down long enough to lock the door and trade the key for the coffee.

"I thought you left?" More a question than a statement. He'd been so certain it was over before it began. Starting to become certain that it'd been a dream to begin with, and a crazy one at that.

Russell set his coffee back down to hang up his coat and kick off his shoes; his umbrella was down next to Edward's. Then he shook his head. "I told you, I don't do one-night stands." Then he smirked. "Guess what, Elric, you're stuck with me now."

For a second, Edward couldn't react, still too numb from finding himself alone, before a small smile worked its way across his lips. Relief. Happiness. An empty space feeling not so empty anymore. He could already feel things returning to where they had been before he left, relationship changed and stronger, but it was still him and smarmy old Tringham. "Goddamnit, I shot myself in the foot, didn't I?"

"Yup!" Russell said brightly, reaching over and brushing some of Edward's hair back from his face. He kissed Edward gently, and Edward leaned into it, trying to steal that air that'd pulled him from the waters the night before.

When they parted, Russell straightened, took a swallow of coffee that made him grimace- for fuck's sake, Russell, if it's still hot, sip it, don't gulp it. "So here's the next question. Am I stuck moving to nowhere Rizenbul, or can I convince you to leave your family to move to Central with me?"

Edward looked down at the blueprints in front of him, thinking. He'd never really considered leaving Rizenbul, but Rizenbul had been a hiding place. Russell was dragging him back into the world and Edward felt himself willing to go along this time. "Winry will be in town often with these things keeping us busy," he reasoned. "Al's outgrown needing me around all the time, he's married, and god knows when they're going to start reproducing. The point of being the fun uncle is that I get to send them home to their parents, not be stuck with the results of whatever I did." He glanced up at Russell. "Where do you live here in town? With Fletcher, I'm guessing?"

Russell shook his head. "Fletcher moved in with his boyfriend. It's been just me for the last three months."

"Then I can move here," Edward said. "I think it's time both Al and I outgrew needing to be hip attachments to each other."

"Well, I got a two bedroom flat if he and Winry change their minds about being away from you," Russell said. "It'd be a bit cramped, but it'd be doable. Just so you have an out. And hell, I like farmland, if it doesn't work here in Central, we can move to Rizenbul."

An idea occurred to Edward, one he never would've allowed himself to consider before. "You know what? Why don't we go ahead and move to Rizenbul?" he suggested. "We can rebuild my old house, have a place of our own." It'd erase the last signs of that last one prayer to bring Alfons back. Alfons had passed, and Russell was there now to clean away the grief that had only loosened its hold when he started working with Winry. It was time to go home.

He smiled, amusement actually creeping in for the first time in ages. "You'll have access to plants you can fuss around with again."

Russell smiled, and it was a smile that Edward knew would be easy to fall in love with. "Sounds good to me." That smile turned down right evil. "Now, for the fun part. Who tells your siblings?"

"Like hell you get to tell Winry and Al," Edward said with a frown. "I lay claim to that. You have Fletcher. You can go tell him while I see how long it takes me to convince Al that I'm not joking."

"Deal."