A/N: I’m not preaching, and this certainly didn’t come out as I originally intended it. It kinda wrote itself. Based on the manga sometime in the future after Ed was able to get Al’s body back.

Warning: Mild spoilers but nothing big.

“Happy Ending”

Edward leaned back on the grass with his arms propped up like supports to hold his entire weight. He smiled contently as the sun slowly browned his light skin and simply resigned to watch his little brother play with Den. Though Alphonse lost his body nearly five years ago, it had seemed more like a lifetime since Edward lost his family. In some aspects, the older brother poignantly knew it had been, and his amber eyes shook with that knowledge. He looked down at his automail arm, the one he had given up acquire his little brother’s soul—twice—and would give his other arm if it meant he would never lose his brother again.

As he closed his eyes against the resurgent memories that plagued his conscience, Winry’s tender voice pierced his thoughts. “Ed, what’s wrong?”

“Ah, I was just thinking…”

He refused to meet her gaze when she pressed, “About?”

Winry always wanted to know everything about him, and a part of him believed she actually did. Sure, he kept things from her, like many of his and Al’s adventures and just how he finally acquired his brother’s body, but since losing his mother, Edward knew Winry had seen him at his worst, something even his brother never has.

“I was just thinking about Al,” Edward revealed, crossing his legs and leaning forward. His shoulders slumped as he allowed her this one victory and waved his fingers across the tips of the blades of grass. “How he feels being back in his body. Is it just like he remembered?”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Edward observed Winry pulling her longs legs to her chest and laying her chin on her knees. “What you really mean is,” she pondered out loud, her tightened lips converting her words to whispers, “ ‘has he remembered anything from before you rescued his soul from the Gate?’ ”

Edward fell backwards in the grass, afraid that Alphonse would see the tears that slowly crept under his eyelids. He hid them from his brother usually at night when Alphonse couldn’t see them, cried into his pillow so his brother couldn’t hear. Now, if he left abruptly, Alphonse would know the world wasn’t quite as perfect as it should be, but if Edward simply laid in the grass, maybe his little brother would think he was sleeping, not that the world at any moment could crumble.

“Winry, he’d hate me, right?” he queried, covering his teary eyes with the crook of his automail. “He would, wouldn’t he?”

He heard her shift in the grass to lie next to him, then smelled the scent of motor oil and cinnamon that lingered in her hair. Her gentle pressure on his chest had long since failed to alarm him as it once did, and he took the comfort she lent.

“Ed, just don’t talk about it.”

“Why?” Edward challenged, his voice faltered even with that one word. “Because I’m right? Because he would hate me forever and leave and never come back?” He covered his entire face now, and tears seeped through his clamped fingers. He hoped Alphonse would never see them.

“Ed…” Winry’s voice trailed off as she turned her face into his shirt, and he felt the wetness against his chest. “…Just stop. Don’t talk like that.”

“I need to. Please, Winry. Tell me he would be grateful I took his soul from the Gate. Tell me I’m wrong,” he practically begged, his hands dropping from his face. He beseeched up to the seemingly calm sky, though he knew the answer deep within his heart.

“You’re wrong….” she sobbed, and for a moment, he laid in a shocked peace. “Al can’t hate. He’s too kind.”

Edward’s grimace softened his face a tad, for if he knew one truth—if not The Truth—it was that the soul he saved from death’s grasp was more kind and loving than any person he ever had known—except his mother. “But he would, wouldn’t he? He’d have finally gotten something from me,” Edward bemoaned and wiped the tears trickling down his face. “He’d hate us all. Teacher. Granny. Even you…but he’d get over you. He could never hate you forever, Winry. But…me…”

“Ed…” She wiped her tears in his shirt and raised her eyes to offer him the tiniest of smiles. “Just forget it. That’s the past. He’s here with us now, with you, and that’s all that matters.”

“I couldn’t leave him there.” Edward absently ran a hand through her hair, his eyes unfocused. He laid his head to the side, and the euphoric sound of Al’s laughter only lamented his soul. “When my mom’s soul wasn’t there and I saw him…I knew what would happen if I left him there…and I needed someone. I couldn’t go back to the world alone. I just…I couldn’t go on without him.”

“Shh…” Winry put a finger to his mouth, and he didn’t have it in him to snap at her. “Even though we don’t know what happened, Al was at the Gate for a reason. Someone must have tried to transmute him, and you saved his life by bringing his soul back. No matter what, you gave your right arm to save a life for him. If that isn’t brotherly love, I don’t know what is.”

“But then I lied to him. I planted those memories of our childhood. He knew it…He knew it, remember? At the hospital? I…I could have told him the truth, but I—I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was so afraid he’d just leave me, and…I could never handle that.”

Deep within his soul, after losing his bastard father and solacing mother, Edward knew he would never survive losing yet another family member. The pain had been so great all those years ago that he thought his heart had actually bled. When he failed to bring back his mother, he had been so distraught that he even created familial ties so he wouldn’t be alone in the world. But because of his sinful actions, he might lose the only family he still had.

Clenching his fist, he shook his head as his morose eyes slid closed. “If I would have tried harder to get him to talk after…But…I—I…”

He tensed, his teeth almost ripping his bottom lip. He tried to blank out the images, though they embodied the happiest and ironically saddest time in his life. When he failed to transmute his mother and the lifeless and grisly body laid upon the ground a few feet away, he thought he needed to give more to save his mother and maybe a vessel for her. He drew the arrays on his chest, his arms, forehead, anything it took, followed by the blood rune in the armor with the life force from his leg. Edward didn’t want to remember when he failed to see his mother’s soul but instead saw the white outline in the form of a little boy.

After the boy came to in the suit and carried Edward next door, he remained silent, closed off to the world. Those were the loneliest days of Ed’s life, after he awoke without an arm or a leg. He sat utterly destroyed, blinking back the tears and watching the boy he brought back. The young boy stayed tucked in the corner of the room and seemed to shiver, even in the suit of armor. After Mustang came and Winry and Granny suited him with automail, he broached their silence. Eventually, Ed coaxed the boy into talking, but Alphonse—he mentioned as his name—muttered some blather about sins and his father and the bonds. After that, he refused to talk any longer, and though in the armor the boy physically couldn’t cry, Ed still heard the tears.

They were both alone, lost without any family, and it was then that Edward decided to create his own. Stealing an image of the boy from Alphonse’s memories, he transmuted his own, tweaked them as he saw fit, and injected them into the armor’s being. He never thought the stammered words “B-Bro…th…B—Brother…” would ever have sound so good, especially after his only child upbringing. “The glint in his mother’s eyes” he had been called, but suddenly, he no longer was alone, and Alphonse became his glint.

“Maybe it’s better,” Winry’s usually bright eyes dulled, and she squeezed Edward’s hand a little tighter, dragging him back to the present. “M—Maybe it’s better that he doesn’t remember, Ed. Wherever he was, a person had tried to transmute his soul. Who would do that to a ten year old?” She snuggled up to his chest, laying her head in the crook of his neck. “You went on a journey to restore the body of a boy you never even met, only knowing what treasure that smile possessed, and now that you can see that smile for yourself, he doesn’t remember what caused him to lose that body in the first place. Maybe you paid for your sin. Maybe after all the hardship and the pain, maybe someone felt you deserved a happy ending.”

“But now that he has his mind again, what if he remembers?” Ed croaked and clutched her to him. “And what if his life from prior resurfaces finally…”

“It hasn’t yet, and if it’s as bad as we think…”

Edward’s whole body melted against the ground before a sudden shudder took him. “…you didn’t hear him cry that night, Winry. You don’t know how much he hurt, and…if it’s that bad, I don’t want him to remember just so he doesn’t have live with that burden. I think…” He swallowed hard, and he laid on the grass, his palms up as if for judgment. His chin fell just enough so he saw Alphonse running besides Den, his brother’s smile warm and kind. “….I think I did the right thing…all those years ago, even if I did for my own selfish reasons.” A fond smile parted his lips for the first time since their conversation began, and the loving glint once more glimmered in his eyes. “I just hope he never remembers."

Winry planted a brief kiss on his lips. “Then, pray.”

Ed snorted. “You know I don’t—”

“It’s out of our hands, Ed.” Her stern eyes kept his disgruntled attention. “The only thing left is to pray.”

“Brother!” Alphonse fell to the grass next to Edward and Winry, lying on his stomach. His head upon his pillowed hands, the boy smiled up at Edward, his golden eyes shining with nothing but hero worship. However, as he slowly discerned his brother’s teary, red eyes, Alphonse’s own darkened. “Brother, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, we were just talking about how happy we are to have you back,” Winry assured, her face still tinged pink, but her smile just a fond as always. She ruffled Al’s short hair. “Why don’t you lay next to us?”

Alphonse opened his mouth to protest, but when Den jumped on his back and pinned him to the ground, he surrendered and curled up next to his brother. Within a few minutes, his cheek rested gently on Edward’s stomach—to keep Ed from exposing the area—while his breathing eased to a slow rise and fall of his chest.

Edward lay awake, even after Winry’s soft weeps quieted. Feeling the warmth of his brother on his stomach and Winry on his arm, he didn’t think a moment could be more perfect or more heart wrenching. Yet, looking up to the sky, he knew he never wanted this to end. He needed Alphonse now just as much as he needed him five years ago, and if just to calm his own guilt for the moment, he decided to believe Winry. They had no idea where Alphonse came from and why he would have been bound and transmuted, but he knew he cherished his little brother more than they did.

Thus, as he ran his hand methodically through Alphonse’s hair, he prayed, so that the one he loved so much would never remember that past, and his little brother would get what he deserved more than anyone—a happy ending.

The End