Entry tags:

!complete, edward elric, lina inverse

Who: Lina Inverse & Edward Elric
What: Seeing each other after Lina's absence and helping Ed deal with his problems
When: Earlier this month
Where: The Ranch and then some diner thing not far from it, 'cause noms
Rating/Warnings: If you're triggered by a teenager doing violent things, then this mentions it
Status: Complete!

Lina didn’t have the infamous Shagmobile anymore. Like instructed it’d been given to Neal after her ‘death,’ a memento of their time on the road together, which now, in retrospect, felt like ages ago. Pete’s car it was, the fancy as fuck BMW - now accompanied with air freshener on the rearview mirror and air conditioning vents, an attempt to get the reek of tobacco out of the interior because geez, it was terrible.

Keyring spinning around her fingers after she parked, got out and searched the halls, she had already been given an idea of where the oldest Elric was hiding out. And she had every intention to drag him out (screaming and kicking, if need be) for some sustenance. This ranch was nestled practically in the middle of nowhere, but there was a quaint home owned diner off the highway she spotted. That was her destination.

Now, it really was the first time she had seen him since her ascension into the primordial waters of her universe, so she didn’t know what to really expect. Knuckles scraped against the doorframe hesitantly. Today she’d been dressed denim shorts and an over-the-shoulder shirt, hair pulled up in a ponytail. “Heeey, punkass. Remember me?”

Ed felt like crap and looked like crap. He'd lost weight since his stint as a mad scientist, and he barely slept these days. He was worn out. Physically and mentally he was drained and it showed. He couldn’t even find the energy to open the door. Some people deserved consequences for what had happened, he supposed he fell into that category.

"S'open." He managed before turning his back to the door and letting his eyes shut to rest. They flew open though moments later at the familiar voice he never expected to hear again. Was he hallucinating? Had he lost his damn mind? Gloved hands twitched some as He sat up on the edge of the need he was borrowing.

"Is this some kind of trick? Who the hell are you really?" A surprising amount of conflicting anger written in his features, automail hand becoming a rather sharp looking blade. Ed really didn’t seem to know what was real and what wasn’t right then, but he was ready if it was an orange County trick.

Someone looked like shit (re: not her) and briefly, auburn brows flared in some concern. Lina had been mostly brought up to speed on certain happenings, like the ‘I HATE EVERYONE’ koolaid people drowned in recently. And apparently, this little twerp had been out of the loop when it came to outside news - like chaos spitting her back out for whatever reason - and she held both hands up in surrender.

“It’s me,” she affirmed. “Cross my heart, hope to die.” Pause. “Or not, considering I just got back from that. Sorry, kid. I made a network post to try and communicate with everyone, and I actually just got my phone back.” It’d taken a minute to get settled back, but Pete had never actually gotten rid of any of her stuff. Guess he didn’t have the heart to bring himself to do it so soon, and she thanked her lucky stars for that. “If you want proof, ask me something only the two of us would know.”

Oh, no way in hell she was going to step in and provoke the kid - he looked ready to pop.

Calculating golden eyes narrowed in attempt to get a good read on what she was saying but he couldn't accept her words as truth. He had been the one who tried so desperately to cling to the idea that her death in the first place had been some kind of orange County nightmare, but he'd gone to her ceremony. He'd mourned her death and accepted it.

Blade hand didn't shrink away yet but remained at the ready in case she dared to move forward and try anything funny.

"What'd I do on mother's day?" Nobody else had been told what really happened that day accept Lina. He'd tried to tell Winry and his brother a few times now what he'd done but hadn't been able. "Don't move. " He warned, good accuracy had improved to scary levels of sharp since their last training sessions.

That was easy. “You burned down your old house,” she began and, keys still in hand, crossed her arms and leaned her hip against the doorway. “Hid and freaked out your aunt. I found your puny butt in the Guild and brought the offering of nuggets.” The greasy, chemically injected McDonald’s kind that had a smell so damn good she couldn’t pass it up, ever. “You weren’t eating. Like I’m going to guess you’re not doing now. Which, heeey, I was actually going to suggest we go eat because I’m hungry.”

There. He couldn’t really have a doubt that it really was her after that, could he? Or maybe he could, with how frazzled he looked. But food did the soul some good, especially for these two. “So you can either come with me willingly, or I’ll carry you myself. Though I might carry you anyway, because I can at least hug you like that.”

Lina stuck her tongue out playfully.

Easy for her yeah, but anyone else would have had an interesting time guessing. Ed had been careful when that happened. Methodically careful. Slowly finally the automail morphed back into a hand, he seemed convinced by her answer but he wasn’t sure how to react.

“How do I know you aren’t just my mind making crap up?” He could touch her he supposed, but did he dare? At her accusation of his lack of eating he let his eyes travel away. He didn’t feel hungry, in fact a few times he had to be reminded to eat lately. Even then he really just ate what was necessary to keep himself from getting ill.

He wanted a hug more than he ever realized from her if it really was Lina. Cautiously he approached her to give her a closer look. “...I don’t understand?” He managed, and yet his eyes were beginning to water whether his logical side accepted this or not.

His appearance must’ve reflected his mindset - a complete and utter mess. Lina sighed, a mix of melancholy and fondness, because him approaching her was a good sign. So was making his weaponized automail resemble an arm again. “The Lord of Nightmares and I...” she clicked her tongue, trying to find the right words to really explain what happened. “We came an agreement, should we say.”

It was the simplest way to explain it. No one would really understand the on-going mental dialogue between her and some primordial entity in chaotic waters in a separate plane in of existence. Possibly a completely different universe. From a completely analytical, studious standpoint the concept was fascinating and she already had a notebook to scribble down her memories, the details of it all, as it slowly came back to her to put together a bigger picture. From a more realistic standpoint, it was the strangest form of death one could ever experience and brought her loved ones grief, almost even ruined Pete, and that was some legitimate horseshit.

“Got spit back out at a park, accidentally blew it up…” A wince. “I’m YouTube famous, it’s a mess.” Anyway, she closed the gap between them to reach over, giving him a trademark ruffle of hair. “You’ve been kind of cut off from everything else, it looks. So are you convinced I’m actually me and are gonna give me a hug, or are you gonna make me instigate it so you can tell me I’m gross and squirm away?”

Ed still wasn’t one hundred percent sure what all that meant, or if this was a trick or not-but he took a chance for once and hugged her, forgetting about controlling his strength though-it was likely a little crushing. “Stupid idiot.” He muttered, not entirely sure which one of them he was referring to. Probably both at this point really.

Hot tears blurred his eyes none the less as he clung to her, feeling quite a bit like a child again. It was ridiculous, he couldn’t even remember the last time he actually cried like this and now he couldn’t stop.

Oof, alrighty, that sure as hell was a hug - tight and potentially rib-crushing but Lina took it, squeezing. It was good to see him again, the little shit, aware now of how long she’d been gone and time hadn’t been so nice to the people she cared for. For varying reasons, not just because of what happened during the week of darkness. “Missed you too, buddy,” she fondly snorted, kissing his temple.

Her cranky little brother, who seemed like he went through hell. And who seemed like he could inhale a burger or two to added a little meat on his bones, so she gripped his shoulders to take a good look at him. “And this totally means you’re coming with me, you know. If you don’t eat then, fine, you can watch me devour a double-stack like a lady.”

He needed to get out of here for a bit. Edward needed a day of normalcy, not horseshit.

Gross crying wasn’t a thing Ed was proud of, but he couldn't stop it for a minute there. Everything had gone to hell lately and he was on the last remaining strings of what was left of his sanity, or so it felt anyway. Fortunately it was short lived, Ed was too proud to crumble further than he had.

When she pulled back he looked up with irritated eyes from crying and frowned awkwardly at the idea of going out. "I haven't been outside since I got here. " He was a little worried about it.

Gross crying wasn’t a thing anyone was proud of. No judgments, though. He looked like he could benefit from a good ugly sob anyway, and Lina helped wipe his tear-stained cheeks (even if he protested, stand still and take it). “You could use some fresh air, and it’s just a diner off the highway. Not expecting you to entertain anybody else but lil’ ol’ me, Ed.”

If it was anything like last time, he might not be hungry now but the smell and sight of food would eventually entice him into actually taking a couple bites of something fattening and greasy. “Now if you gotta change, go change, but I’ve got Pete’s fancy Britishmobile and we’ll be taking that. Parked it juuuust…” A hand pointed over to the direction of the exit. “Outside. And hurry your blonde ass up, punk, this girl’s gotta eat!”

He squirmed a little at the touch but didn't move too far. It was mainly just habit anyway. His spirits seemed to improve whether or not he wanted to admit it or not. He was kind of afraid too really. Every time he thought things were getting better lately some terrible thing happened.

He nodded to that and looked back at her once more before he turned back to his closet for something he hadn’t worn the last couple days. "Just...don't disappear okay?" He was still partially worried this was some trick.

“Not going anywhere,” she promised. It was the truth - it had all worked out, the Lord of Nightmares had returned her in both realities, and neither worlds had sunk into the Sea of Chaos like a doomed ship. Lina hadn’t known what would happen; she knew the spell was important, knew that Hellmaster wanted it cast, but she didn’t know what would actually happen - didn’t know that, in the end, sheer stupid luck was on her side.

But once Ed was ready to go, she draped an arm around his shoulder and led him out to the car. Buttons unlocked each door and she playfully shoved him to the passenger’s side. “Don’t mind the smell - pretty sure Pete gave himself lung cancer while I was gone, jesus. But he gave you the talisman, right? I was going to…” A pause while she buckled in, revved the car up, and lowered the radio’s volume. “I was going to give it to you myself, at the end of one of our sessions, but…”

Time had gotten away from them.

He didn't take very long to change, but he rarely did to begin with so it wasn’t really a surprise. Ed let himself be lead toward the car. "Eep!" A very manly sound escaped him as he reached for anything to keep himself from looking too ridiculous (it failed of course ) in front of her.

Making a face at the smell as he settled in and got all his limbs in proper order he strapped on his seat belt. "...yeah. I haven't really had a chance to use it yet." He admitted awkwardly. "I've actually not done any alchemy at all since I got here." It'd been a week at least, but alchemy to Edward was as important as breathing was to anyone else.

“We’ll get back into the routine,” she promised, ruby eyes off the road for only a second to give the boy a glance. Lord knows they could both get back into the regular grind of things; Lina felt desperate to immerse herself back into the way things were, so she didn’t feel like she’d missed much. Plenty happened in her absence, and all she could do was figure out how she fit into things again.

Anyway, the homey little diner wasn’t all that far when you were driving on the highway full-speed, and she parked in their dusty lot. It was a casual eatery where the main course was typically cow meat (burgers, ribs) and house-brewed root beer poured in frosted mugs. Classy!

“Your aunt does know where you are, by the way. Right?”

Ed winced at the idea of alchemy and tensed. "I can't. You should probably just forget about it. " lord knew he was attempting to. It wasn’t happening very easy either, but he had to. Guilt still heavily weighed on him fire everything he'd done recently, spell or not.

The blonde watched things being delivered idly and couldn't help but to pick at some fries placed in front of him, the smell was too good to ignore.

"Heh yeah actually it was her idea I stay with Neal here a while...I-" He paused and lowered a fry back to the basket. "I did some horrible things to her and Al."

Oh, boy. There was a story - his body language screamed it. Fries were the first thing to go on her plate (also dipped in ranch, her cholesterol was probably insane), and she waited on inhaling the double-stacked burger (dressed in all sorts of things, like bacon and a fried egg, see: cholesterol). Kind of hard to continue a conversation with a full mouth.

“You did something with your alchemy,” Lina deduced, leaning back against the faux-leather booth with crossed arms, legs pulled up and crossed Indian-style. “Is this about the spell? With Neal’s batshit crazy pops?”

Ed hadn’t ordered nearly as much food as she had, food still made him a little queasy at the moment. He nodded. "Regina was training me to do things, but I agreed to them. I broke nearly every rule of alchemy there was. I-" his throat felt suddenly insanely dry as he reached for his drink, unable to continue for a moment.

Chimera alchemy was still a thing that made his stomach churn. It didn’t help he still remembered Nina every time it happened. "I was trying to make chimeras."

Wait, wait. Waaaaaait. Lina held both hands up as a stoooooop. “Regina trained you,” she repeated, a single brow raised in alarm. “You sure it was the right Regina? Because last Neal filled me in, she was going crazy Evil Queen and his daddycakes decided it was a great idea to walk around wearing her face.”

Something didn’t seem to add up there, not a bit. She was pretty sure it would have come up in conversation at some point. ‘By the way, my son’s other mother was encouraging Ed to make bad decisions.’ Uhhhh, what?

"I'm...pretty sure it was? " He frowned at that next part though. "She was pretty interested in me hurting people.." He didn't know her very well but he was pretty sure real Regina wouldn’t have done that sort of thing. "I learned a new trick while you were..." He trailed off at the last part of that sentence awkwardly.

"I don't have a name for it but I can use alchemy to tear someone up from the inside out. She kept trying to get me to use that one too. But if it was Neal’s dad I guess that makes more sense?" At the same time it was giving him a horrible feeling. He felt almost physically ill.

“Mmmm,” Lina drummed her fingers against her lips, eyes squinted in thought. “Neal told me the curse made those effected turn against people they cared about. Regina was under the influence in bitchmode, I heard, and apparently out causing mayhem - doesn’t sound like she would have tried to puppet someone to do the job for her.” No, that actually sounded exactly what Rumpletwatwaffle would do instead. Anyone with a title like ‘The Dark One’ would have a kick pulling strings and taking advantage of someone’s skill while they were under the spell’s murderous thrall.

Snapping out of that train of thought, it was easy for her to sense Ed’s distress. An arm stretched over the table to grab his hand to squeeze. “Look at me, Ed. What happened wasn’t your fault, but sometimes it’s gonna be hard to kick the guilt. You wouldn’t have done anything like that in your right mind. But that’s the curse of living here - sometimes things happen, and we can’t control them, and it’ll make us do things we wouldn’t normally do. But you gotta make peace with it, too. You can’t let it take over and eat you from the inside. You can’t survive this place like that.”

Ed squirmed at that. “I had no idea..” That was concerning. Rumble could just appear in anyone and he wouldn’t really know it was him until it was too late. It probably should have been obvious that Ed would have been a target because he was so involved in the trap making last time, but the thought hadn’t even crossed Ed’s mind, and it made him severely uncomfortable.

Golden eyes rose from the table and the barely touched food back to Lina. “Well no..they said that too but..” He trailed off, looking awkward again-it was difficult to get out of his head at times. “How?” He was uncharacteristically quiet, as he had been since it all happened. He really just didn’t know what to say.

“You take it day by day,” she suggested, a slight quirk of a smile. “And you throw yourself back into life, even if it’s a struggle to get out of bed sometimes. Accepting what happened is the only way to move on from it, Ed. You’re too young to be bogged down by things you can’t help. Sometimes you just gotta give life the finger and carry on.” Lina’s motto on life, basically, with the middle finger as her own personal logo - she’d been battered and bruised plenty with all she’d gone through, from her days running as a felon to her old partner becoming a literal monster, those months on the road, Shabranigdo’s murder, then being sucked into the blackhole that was oblivion for several weeks to return and put back together the fragments of her life.

It wasn’t easy. Life never was. But it wasn’t going to stop her from enjoying what she had and living. Whether it be chomping on generously dressed burgers with a frosty mug of root beer or something else. “Best part is that you don’t have to do it alone, either. We hold each other up because no one else understands the kind of baggage we’re stuck hauling around - and it eventually gets better. You just gotta work for it.”

But if Ed wasn’t going to put away those fries, then don’t mind Lina as she went in to swipe a couple of fried potato straws like a thieving glutton.

He gave her words some careful thought, it really was exhausting trying to think on it all the time. He wondered if he would be able to do things Linas way. Ed was tired of feeling like crap all the time lately. "I am kind of sick of feeling this way. " He wanted to be with Al, he practically never wanted to leave his side again. "What if people hate me? " He'd done some terrible things, certain people wouldn't probably be able to forgive for a while.

That move earned her hand a smack with automail. "Jeeze get your own first." Finally he shoved a handful of a few too many in his mouth to prove a point.

“I did get my own, I just happened to finish eating them, is all,” Lina snickered, but the drive to actually eat was a good sign. If either of them turned down food for one reason or another, there was definitely a balance off in the world somehow. “But no one’s going to hate you for something you couldn’t control. Stop thinking that. The only one that’s being hard on you is you, no one else.”

Sometimes a verbal bitchslap of realization was necessary, and she was the happy deliverer. Tough love with a dash of sweetness.

He peered at her plate and made a face. "I love you but do that again and I'll bite it. " He threatened, reaching for another handful and pausing after swallowing them. His feelings weren't going to go away overnight as much as he wanted them to, but it was a start on his end to getting back to normalcy.

He seemed to accept her logic though, it wasn’t as if he wanted to do the things he'd done then again now. He didn't have any crazy blood drain cravings. "My training grounds still look like a mad science lab.." He said, wrinkling his nose and finally starting in on his burger.

“Awwwwwwwww,” she drawled and batted those lashes, doe eyes in full effect. “You know, just because you told me you loved me, I’ll spare your fries and just settle with this burger. You’re welcome.” There was the Ed she knew - feisty and ravenous. Being mopey didn’t suit him. Though she knew it was a process. It always was, when shit hit the fan and you were stuck with bearing the guilt if something forced upon you.

But, yeah, about this massive as fuck burger with all the fixin’s imaginable - it was almost too big for her hands, but those teeth were about to rip into it fearlessly. “We’ll work on that too. It’ll keep us busy. Projects to work on, all that jazz.” A shrug. “I could use the routine, to be honest. In a way you’re doing me a favor, too.”

Maybe things weren’t exactly the way they were before her, uh, unconventional departure from this Earth, but they’d help each other get back to the stride of normalcy. They’d find their place again in the grand scheme of things.

Sometimes it just took a minute.