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Ed is twenty when he finds his first gray hair.
Actually, it’s Winry who finds it. She’s mussing up his hair because it annoys him and that’s how they show affection even after the past four years of officially dating when she notices a glint of silver. Pulling her hand away, the silver comes too, a long strand caught between her fingers.
“You’re turning into an old man already, Ed,” she teases, holding out the strand for him to see. “I guess those years in the military did a number on you after all.”
“Shut up! You’d have a few gray hairs too if you were me,” Ed says petulantly. Winry lets out a peal of laughter at the sullen look on his face and largely forgets about the incident until two days later when she catches him looking through his hair piece by piece.
“What’re you doing?”
Ed whirls around. “I was just uh, you know, checking my hair. For… split ends!”
Winry raises an eyebrow. “Split… ends? Since when do you—oh my god, Edward! You were looking for more gray hairs, weren’t you?” She’s howling, a guttural sound of pure mirth at the ridiculousness, the Ed-ness, of the situation.
“So what if I was?”
“Oh, Edward,” Winry says, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye, “you’re twenty. You’ve got a ways to go before you start going gray. And who knows? Maybe you’ll go bald first!”
“Right,” Ed says, suddenly quiet. “I’ve got a ways to go.” And then he’s brushing past her, leaving her alone in the middle of the room wondering what she exactly said wrong.
--
When Ed is twenty-two, Al comments on the wrinkles in his face that weren’t there the last time they saw each other only six months ago. Winry hadn’t noticed before, but now that Al’s mentioned it she sees the crows’ feet at his eyes and the laugh-lines in his cheeks.
Ed pretends not to hear them.
--
When Ed is twenty-three, he plans a romantic picnic for the two of them. He has a ring in his pocket from Granny Pinako and a speech all planned out in his head. He’s spent much of his life running headlong into things without thinking, but this is one life-altering decision he’s really put time and effort into and he’s never been surer of anything.
But he’s out of breath before they even reach the top of the hill, gasping loudly enough that Winry doesn’t even tease him for being out of shape. Instead, she helps pull him up the rest of the way with a worried look in her eyes that he absolutely hates.
He plops down on the grass, struggling to fill his lungs even though he’s stopped moving.
“Ed?” Winry asks, tentative, making Ed cringe. Winry isn’t supposed to be unsure, he thinks. It never means anything good. “Are you alright?”
Ed, still breathless, fingers the ring in his pocket (made of the best steel around, the sort of stuff Winry put in only her finest automail). “I’m fine,” he insists. “Come on, let’s eat.”
The lingering fear in Winry’s eyes almost makes him reconsider his proposal. But as they start eating and her gaze clears, he decides that maybe he’s earned the right to be selfish about it.
When he finally gets down on one knee, she shrieks out a “Yes! ” before he can even start his speech and he thinks the only thing better than this was seeing Al get his body back.
--
It’s Al who finally confronts Ed about his deterioration, during the winter Ed is twenty-six, just after Granny Pinako died. There are streaks of gray in his hair and the lines of his face have only become more pronounced. He gets winded walking short distances and sometimes he simply gets so quiet that he can go days without speaking at all.
And Al’s been away from Resembool more often than not lately, so maybe that’s why the changes seem so abrupt to him, but when Ed trips over a stool and can’t seem to pull himself up Al decides that enough is enough. He puts Ed on the couch and pulls Winry in from the kitchen.
“Ed,” he says, “what’s going on.”
Ed looks between the two of them, worry etched into their faces. They’ve both noticed, but they haven’t said anything until now. And he owes them an explanation.
“Remember when we were in the North and we were getting Winry away from Kimblee?” he asks and Winry and Al nod. “Well, after Al went off to warn you I—kinda fought Kimblee a bit. But I fucked up and I got pretty badly hurt. I wound up using my own life as a philosopher’s stone and—well I think I’m feeling the aftereffects.”
And then the bastard has the nerve to smile at them. It’s gentle and small and so goddamn genuine Al kind of wants to puke. “But hey, I’m still living a lot longer than I would’ve otherwise, so overall I’d call that a win.”
Winry lets out a choked-off sob, her trembling hands covering her mouth. Al’s are clenched into fists at his side and he is one part angry and another hundred parts devastated (because haven’t they suffered enough? Haven’t they given enough yet? Where was the Equivalency?). He chooses to focus on the anger because it’s the only thing keeping him upright.
“And you didn’t think to tell us this sooner?” His voice is low and dangerous. “You didn’t think we deserved to know you were dying?”
“Al—”
“I’m your brother, Ed!” Al is shouting now, barely conscious of the words spewing from his mouth. “Winry’s your wife! You don’t get to just go off and die and not tell us anything. We’re all we’ve got, remember? We’re all we’ve got!”
Ed has a deer-in-the-headlights look about him as the room descends into silence. Tears are streaming down Winry’s face and before long he feels them on his own cheeks (and there’s still a part of him that marvels at the sensation of crying even now).
And Ed gets up unsteadily, limping with his automail leg (how heavy it must feel to him now) and walks outside.
“We’ve been married two years,” Winry whispers once he’s gone, “and I’m already losing him.”
Al says nothing, but now that he’s let out his anger nothing is holding him up and collapses to the floor. Winry stumbles back against the end table and he can hear a vase shake back and forth before settling.
He’s not sure how long they sit there, him on the floor and her standing against the wall, but some interminable amount of time later Winry speaks.
“We should go get him.”
They find him at their mother’s grave, back against the tombstone and rubbing at the stump of his left leg. “Sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says without preamble. “I just—didn’t want to upset you.” He sighs, the breath visibly billowing out in front of him. “Guess I fucked that up too.”
Snow has started to fall, melting as soon as it touches the ground. “It’s cold out,” Winry says, holding out her hand to help him up. “Come inside.”
--
Ed is still twenty-six when Izumi comes to live with them, leaving behind Sig and the butcher’s shop as soon as she heard the news from Winry. Ed expects her to be angry, maybe throw him around a bit, but she comes with a gentleness she usually reserves for young children and stray animals (and him, every once in a while, when he really needed it). The first thing she does when she sees him is hug him, tight, like he’s going to slip through her grasp at any moment.
He keeps expecting it to change, expecting her to go back to normal once she gets used to the reality of the situation, but it doesn’t. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t insist he help wash up after dinner. Instead, she helps him out of bed every day and watches him eat and runs her fingers through his hair as she hums some little tune.
Ed fucking hates it.
So he pouts. If she’s going to treat him like a child, he’s going to damn well act like one. Weeks later, when his automail gets too heavy (it felt better to say it like that, like it was the automail’s fault and not his damn stupid dying body), he refuses to use the much lighter spare or even a crutch and no amount of cajoling will convince him otherwise. The look on Izumi’s face at his stubbornness is familiar and he readies himself for her temper but she takes in a deep breath through her nose and lets it out through her mouth.
“Ed,” she says (quiet, too damn quiet). “Please.”
Ed just doesn’t fucking understand and it’s pissing him off.
“I get enough of that from Al and Winry,” he snaps. “It’s my life and I’ll do what I damn well please.”
He can see a vein in her head pop. “Just put on the spare you stupid brat!”
Immediately she looks guilty, like she plans to retract that statement, but before she can say anything Ed starts laughing. Full-on belly laughs, like the whole thing is a damn joke.
“That’s the first time you’ve called me a brat since you got here,” he says, breathless (everything left him breathless now), wiping a tear from his eye for dramatic effect. “Never thought I’d miss it so much.”
“Oh really?” she says, beautifully, wonderfully angry. “I’ve been wanting to say it for weeks now! What kind of idiot gets himself into this situation by showing mercy? I trained you better than that, you stupid pupil. And now you won’t even take basic care of yourself? How pathetic. I see it was foolish of me to try to spare your feelings—you deserve a beat down!”
And Izumi goes back to normal—mostly. But her hands are still gentle as she helps him take off his automail and replace it with the spare. And when she goes to help him stand, Ed might lean into her just a bit more than he would’ve with anyone else.
--
Ed is twenty-six and he feels about sixty when Mustang comes barreling into town.
“Edward,” he says mildly when he gets to the Rockbell house, “I heard from Lieutenant Hawkeye that you were seriously ill.” His boots are dusty and his uniform rumpled. Ed has never seen him look anything other than put together unless there was a battle being fought.
Ed’s brow furrows in confusion. “How’d she hear about it?”
“Not from you, apparently,” the newly-promoted general says, still in that same flat tone. “In fact, not one of us heard anything about it until Hawkeye got a call a couple days ago. Which is funny, because last time I checked you still had people you called ‘friends’ in the military. Has that changed?”
“It was Al, wasn’t he? He called Riza. I told him not to.”
“It doesn’t matter who told us!” Roy is yelling now. Den looks up from where he was sleeping at Ed’s feet in concern. “What matters is that it wasn’t you. Didn’t you think that maybe we had a right to know, Fullmetal?”
Ed flinches. “You’re not my superior officer anymore, General.”
“Dammit Ed!” Roy rakes his hand through his hair. “Dammit Ed,” he repeats, quietly.
“It’s not like there’s anything you could do, anyway. Winry and Al and Teacher are all here to take care of me. All telling you would’ve done is distract you from becoming Fuhrer. Which clearly it did,” he says, giving Roy’s disheveled appearance a pointed look, “since you came all the way out here just to yell at me.”
“And how distracted,” Mustang spits the word, “do you think I’d be if I didn’t find out until you died?”
“I was kinda hoping…”
“What?”
“I was hoping that you’d be Fuhrer by then.”
“Oh.” The room is silent for a moment. “Ed, remind me how old you are?”
“I’ll be twenty-seven in a month, why?”
Ed knows that he looks much older, and he hasn’t gotten up once this entire conversation but still his lungs are straining for air. Still, the look on Roy’s face isn’t one that means he’s trying to reconcile the concept of the young soul within the old body—Ed knows pretty well what that looks like by now. But Ed isn’t at all sure what Mustang is thinking.
“Okay,” Mustang says at last, “I’ll make you a deal: if you can hang on ‘til thirty, I promise I’ll be Fuhrer.” Grumman is on his last legs and Ed knows that the general’s a top contender for the position, but so are a lot of other people. There’s no guarantee that he’ll be the one chosen, but for the look of absolute surety on his face.
“Okay,” he says. “I can do that. But you better hold up your end of the bargain, or I’m going to haunt your ass until you do.”
Mustang smirks. “Noted.”
He leaves soon after and the energy leaves the room with him. Ed lies down on the couch and drifts to sleep (something he does a whole lot lately).
And if there are tears running down Roy’s face as he walks away, well, no one’s around to notice.
--
Ed has just turned twenty-seven and Winry is not speaking to him.
She helps him into bed but she sleeps elsewhere. She brings him his food but she does not make eye contact. This goes on for a week before Ed can’t take it anymore.
“What did I do?” he asks when she comes in to bring him his breakfast. “Please, Winry, just talk to me.”
Winry is silent for so long after he speaks that he thinks she isn’t going to respond until she lets out a whoosh of air and finally looks him in the eyes.
“I was looking at this”—she holds up her hand and points to her wedding ring—“last week and I realized something. You knew. When you proposed to me, you knew what was happening and you didn’t tell me.”
“Winry, I wasn’t—”
“I deserved to know, Ed! I deserved to know exactly what I was getting into.”
Ed looks down at his hands, clenched into loose fists. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. And I’m sorry—I just couldn’t deal with you knowing. So I was selfish. And I’m sorry.”
“So, to make up for it, you have to ask me again.”
Ed’s head snaps back up. “What?”
“You have to ask me again,” she repeats. “I didn’t know all the facts the first time and so it doesn’t count.”
Ed’s palms are sweaty and his heart is racing, which probably isn’t good for his overall condition, he thinks distantly. He’s even more nervous now than he was the first time and one look at Winry’s face lets him know that she’s completely serious. He has to ask her again just to hear her say no. Who would want to marry someone who would just die soon and leave them behind?
“W-winry,” he begins, “I know I don’t really deserve it, I know that at this point I don’t have much to give, but I love you so much and nothing would make me happier than if you would be my wife. Please.”
She’s silent for a dreadful moment. “Yes,” she whispers. Ed can hardly believe his ears. “Yes, yes, always and forever yes.”
It feels even better than the first time.
--
Ed is twenty seven and he has a revolving door of visitors from all over. Ling even has a short visit, all the way from Xing, though he does not stay long.
Riza and the rest of Mustang’s men come by at some point. They yell at him some too for not telling them but then they start hugging him and it weirds him out. (“We’re all losing you, Ed,” Winry says when he complains to her. “Just give us this.”)
Major Armstrong comes too, much more quietly than he’d anticipated. He doesn’t take off his shirt even once the entire time. He spends most of his visit sobbing in the corner before he heads back to Central. Ed isn’t at all sure what to make of it.
General Armstrong, however, does not visit. Ed didn’t expect her to.
--
Ed is twenty-eight and he aches. Every muscle and joint in his body burns and throbs regardless of whether he moves. Some nights it gets so intense that he cannot sleep and Winry stays up with him, rubbing at all the sorest spots as he whimpers pathetically.
Pain medicine helps, but only so much. If he takes much more than he already is then he runs the risk of becoming addicted and that is something he refuses to contemplate. So he suffers.
One day, Al comes back to Ed’s room with a jar of ointment that had been left on the doorstep with a note attached that read: “For Soreness”. It’s Ishvalan made.
The ointment, when rubbed into his skin, works better than anything else.
--
Ed’s almost twenty-nine and he punches Al. It’s the most pathetic punch he’s ever thrown but it gets Al’s attention.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” Al asks, affronted, but moving to support Ed as his shaking legs give way and he falls onto the floor. “What are you doing up? And punching me in the face?”
“Winry’s out and I was coming to see if you could help me to go visit Mom, but what do I find? You, researching human transmutation!”
Al guiltily covers up the books he had been looking through. “It’s not like that. I wasn’t gonna try to bring you back to life. Just… stop you from dying in the first place.”
“Then why aren’t you looking at medical alchemy? Or alkahestry?” Ed asks pointedly.
“I’ve already tried. There’s nothing.”
“Then there’s nothing! Dammit Al, I thought we’d learned our lesson about this a long time ago.”
“So what? I’m just supposed to watch you die?”
“Yes!”
“I can’t do that, brother!” Then, whispering: “You can’t ask me to do that.”
“I’m sorry Al,” Ed says. The younger brother joins him on the floor with a thud.
“I just… feel so useless. We once fought God itself, Ed.”
Ed scrubs at his face. “You can’t fight this.”
--
Ed is twenty-nine and Fuhrer Grumman is dead. He can barely get out of bed most mornings but he insists on going up to Central to watch as Mustang becomes the youngest Fuhrer in history.
He passes out halfway through the ceremony and wakes up in the hospital.
--
Ed dies two days before he turns thirty.
They want to give him a military funeral, but Mustang shoots down the idea, along with the one to promote him two ranks postmortem like they did for Hughes. Ed always hated the military.
The ceremony is still a large affair—Ed had made quite a few friends during his travels and they come now to pay their respects. Many of them stay for quite a while until rumblings of thunder send them scurrying for shelter. Roy, however, remains at the gravesite until the only ones left are him, Hawkeye, Izumi Curtis, and of course, Al and Winry.
“I thought he was safe once he left the military,” Roy says. “I thought for sure he’d outlive me.” For a moment, a human transmutation array pops into his mind. He doesn’t give it a second thought.
Ed is buried next to his mother and his father lies on her other side. Al stares at the graves of his family as slowly the others pull away, first Hawkeye, then Izumi, then Winry pulls away to go visit her parents and Pinako. Al and Roy stay, though, until the sun falls below the horizon and the stars occasionally peek out from behind a thick blanket of clouds. A cool wind blows through the field.
Finally, Roy speaks. “It’s cold out, Al. Why don’t you come in with me?”
Al hesitates before following the Fuhrer away, pausing only to get Winry. Together, they leave the gravesite behind as the first drops of rain begin to fall.