route_1065 | Elric Family: making everything awkward since 1502

Entry tags:

Elric Family: making everything awkward since 1502

Who: Alphonse and Heather
Where: A shopping center in Goldenrod
When: Monday, 15th of December
Summary: In which certain familial relations come to light!
Rating: PG13 for language at most?
Log:

Christmas was a very new thing to Alphonse, and what little he did know was relatively 90 years out of date. He hadn't expected how the decorations had gone up seemingly overnight all over the city, nor the sales and products being advertized everywhere. It had taken a few weeks before he'd even found out about the gift-giving tradition, and while it wasn't something that they'd ever had back home he thought it might be nice to get some gifts for his friends.

He had a few ideas, but there were so many things being offered everywhere Al couldn't help doing some window shopping. He already has a bag with a few things (some nice chocolates for Lust, and three big fluffy sweaters for Wrath), but he's currently looking at a big RC truck in a toy store window. He's almost tempted to get that just to try it out...

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Living out of hotels hadn't honestly seemed like such a big imposition when she'd gotten used to it. They were, after all, relatively cheap in this world, and it hadn't been too hard to cough up the cost.

But it added up fast and even after spending only a few months living rent-free at Greed's place, Heather had found herself with an unexpected surplus of cash accumulating that would've otherwise gone to keeping a roof over her and Henry's heads.

What better to spend it on than Christmas gifts, though?

So today finds Heather out doing much the same thing as Alphonse, though she hasn't gotten a whole lot done yet. Mostly because she's been spending most of the outing regretting bringing Wren with her. REALLY, WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?

"If you don't stop trying to peck the jingle-bells off of every mall Santa, you're goin' back in the ball," she growls to the football-sized black bird under her arm. "I swear, I can't take you anywh--"

... And then she nearly walks straight into Al, sidestepping at the last minute to avoid him-- ... hey, wait a minute, she recognizes that yellow hair.

"... Pretty cool-lookin' truck. I'd drive it."

Al startles and steps out of the way as well to avoid that collision, having caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was in the--"

--oh hey, it's Heather! "Eheh, yeah, it look really cool! I wanna get it, but I'm not sure it's worth the cost for me. I've still got a lot of gifts to get." He frowns a little when he looks at the mischievous Murkrow locked under her arm, though. "...um, having trouble with that one?"

She won't make any snide remarks about him seeming a little too old to be playing with toys like that. As far as she's concerned, kids get to be kids for as long as they want. She's known too many who got robbed of their childhoods to ever begrudge any young teen wanting a cool toy truck.

"Eh, you never know, maybe Santa will bring it," she says with a wink, before nodding down at Wren, who is happily kicking at the air with her spindly yellow legs. "YE-UP. I dunno what I was thinking, bringing her along. She's been a klepto since birth."

Too old, nothing, Al's never seen a tiny car like that before! Winry showed him and Ed plenty of things while they were both still here, but she'd never mentioned things like this!

Of course there's problems with his lack of information as well... "Who is this 'Santa' person? I've seen his name all over the place recently, is he a symbol of the season or something?"

He chuckles at Wren's antics, stepping over and reaching to give her a little scratch on the head under the 'hat' feathers. "Yeah, I have that problem with Cecil, my Liepard. Lost and found at my hotel checks with me first when things are reported missing at this point. I'm lucky they haven't kicked me out over it!"

"Oh, you must not be from a world like mine. But basically, yeah. Santa's a fairy tale guy who brings presents to good kids at Christmastime. Or coal, if they're bad."

She waves her free hand airily. She'd figured out pretty early on that her father was definitely the one putting the presents under the tree, but hadn't been too broken-up over it.

"Anyway, sounds like Cecil and Wren should never meet."

It had been bad enough when Kaito's Aipom had still been around... she kinda wonders what happened to that little guy. Probably headed out to the wild after the second time his trainer had gone home.

But she came out here to SHOP, not have heartachey twinges, so she shoves that thought aside and offers Al another smile.

"SO. Doing some holiday shopping or just admiring the decorations?"

Alphonse laughs and grins at that. "Well, that's one way to get little kids to behave for the month! Why coal for the bad kids, though?" It seems a rather arbitrary choice, to him.

"Yeah, probably not the best idea." He nods, lifting his bag in indication. "Yep! When I found out about the gift-giving part of the holiday, I decided to join in on it. I'm still kinda stumped on what to get some of my friends, though..."

"Dunno. Never did look too hard at the symbolism there."

Her guess is just that it was ugly and boring.

Shifting Wren to her shoulder with a firm command of "Stay," Heather adjusted her grip on the shopping bags she was also carrying.

"Yeah, Christmas gifts are always a little tricky, even if you're used to doin' it every year. I like to think I'm pretty good at pickin' 'em out, though. I'm about... halfway done with mine, probably. Want some help?"

"If you wouldn't mind, I'd be really grateful!" Al beams at her, relief clear on his face. "I was looking for something for my friend Greed right now--he's a pretty adventurous guy, even if he has settled a lot since coming here, so I wanted to find something he could have a lot of fun with."

Hence, eyeing that RC car.

Heather's face lights up at that.

"Oh, hey! I didn't know you knew Greed!"

This is only the beginning, Heather.

Putting her hands on her hips, she shoots Al a crooked grin.

"He's a pal of mine, too. I'm sort of crashing in his house at the moment, actually-- me and my roomie Henry. I bet I could help you pick somethin' out for him."

"Oh, you're living with them?" Al grins widely; it's always nice to find out your friends know each other! "I know both Greed and Lust from home, but I've only been over to their place once before."

But then Al frowns as he remembers the reason for the lack of visits. "Envy hasn't given you any trouble, has he?" Sure, Al could buy Envy tolerating the presence of other homunculii around just out of need of someone that understands, but he can't see him letting humans hang around without giving them some amount of grief.

(Ha. Ha ha. HA HA HA HA HA.)

"Dude, really?"

She had-- ... no, really, she literally had no freaking idea that the blond kid who'd helped her out on the battlefield was from the same world as the Homunculi.

And if Al had looked older, or been more unpleasant, or in any way given her a reason to think about Envy's bitter sibling problems, she might have put two and two together right away.

But she doesn't.

Not yet.

Instead, she blinks and kind of tilts her head.

"Well, he stole one of my pancakes this morning, but in all fairness I kind of deserved it since I spent most of last night trying to put ornaments on his head instead of the tree. Why?"

In Heather's defense, it's hard to imagine Alphonse and Envy being related at all. But the fact that Al's eyebrows shoot up nearly to his hairline and he stares at her like she grew a second head might clue her in that something is up here.

"And you got away with your limbs intact?!" Normally he has much more tact, but with Heather just blandly stating that as if it were a daily occurance...it made no sense at all!

And in turn, the way she stares back at him like she has no idea what he's freaking out about is probably a good indication that she's not on the same page as him about Envy at all.

"... Uh... I don't think he really cared that much. I know he's got a temper, but he mostly just whined and tried to stick a 'Don't open till XMas' sticker over my mouth. Then Cujo got his head stuck in a stocking and we got distracted filming it. Are you okay, kid?"

He kind of looks like he's seen a ghost or a naked grandma or SOMETHING.

"I...yeah, it's just..." Al shakes his head, wondering for a moment if there isn't some other Envy that Heather is thinking of somehow. This is just too... "That isn't the Envy that I know at all, not even here. I'm pretty sure the only reason he's only tried to kill me once since I arrived is because all the other times I've seen him he was human!"

Ooookay.

On one hand, Heather knew Envy was considered a monster where he came from. She knew he'd done bad things, and killing people was kind of implied to have been one of them.

But this is a KID.

She holds her hands up.

"Whoa. Slow down. Okay, I know Envy's not exactly the poster child for innocence. But he's my friend. And far's I can see, he's been behaving himself on the 'don't go around trying to kill people' front. Hell, he agreed to it."

HEATHER YOU DIDN'T SEE THE DESTRUCTION HE WREAKED WHEN HE GOT HIS POWERS BACK. HE WAS CAREFUL NOT TO DESTROY ANYTHING AROUND YOU.

"Well, he fought me half-way across the city over that weekend at the end of last month, and that sure as hell wasn't just for kicks!" Hell, he's still got a gash on his arm that's healing from that whole mess! "He's had centuries of practice keeping people in the dark about a lot of things."

"Yeah, but he-- ... wait a second."

Fought him halfway across the city.

And the kid is from the Homunculi's world, yet Heather had never known it before, despite living with them.

... Could... could this be...

"Hang on. Time out. Are you-- ..."

She pauses, not even sure how to weigh the words on her tongue. Envy had been angrier that day than she'd ever seen him before, that day when he'd called her about his half-brother's arrival.

More than with anything they had ever talked about with each other before, his emotions had practically been ripping him apart.

But now she has to know.

"... You're not his brother, are you?"

Al sighs, running a hand over his face as he forces himself to calm down. "Half-brother, yeah. ...how much do you know about him?"

Because if she considers Envy a friend at all, he's willing to bet she doesn't know nearly as much as she thinks she does. Though...why would Envy have told her about their family connection at all?

For just a second, Heather stares.

And then, like a sudden gathering of stormclouds, her face crumples into a scowl.

His question, just for the time being, is ignored. Looking back over her shoulder towards the entrance she came in from, she speaks in a low, growling voice as her fist clenches.

"Oh, that little shit. I'm gonna kick his ass."

...oh. Oh no, he recognizes that sort of tone. A million flashbacks of Ed getting righteously angry over something, and none of it ever lead to anything resembling a good outcome.

"Heather, jeez, no, don't fight him over it!" He actually reaches to grab her sleeve. "I've dealt him before, I can handle it! It's not worth making an enemy of him!" God, the last thing he needs is an innocent bystander getting hurt because of his family issues.

His fingers close successfully around her sleeve, which results in a croak from Wren and a scrabbling of claws on leather as the Murkrow on her shoulder gleefully scuttles down her arm to nip at Al's fingers.

Heather scolds the bird with a PSHHHH!!! and gives her shoulder a bounce to get Wren to knock it off before looking back at Alphonse evenly.

"Enem-- what? No, no, no. Kid-- look."

She plants a hand to her forehead, heaving a sigh.

"The day you got here, Envy came to me. Because he needed someone to stop him from going straight to you and killing you, and I-- ... for various reasons, he trusted me to talk him out of it. We worked it out and I made him a deal. His end was staying well away from you. Anything worse than bitchin' you out over the network? Not allowed. If he went ahead and picked a fight with you anyway, that's breaking the rules and I'm gonna give him a big fat earful about it. Even if it was on one of the weird weekends."

She trails off with a puff looking Al over again.

"... Christ, I had no idea you were just a kid."

"Ow!" Al quickly pulls his hand back (that hurt, jeez!) and frowns as Heather explains. He knows she has no reason to lie, but the picture she's painting of Envy is so at odds with what he's known it's...hard to wrap his head around. He knows Envy's been here for years, but...

Was there still something worthwhile left of him, even after so long with Dante?

"...well, I'm actually seventeen." Much easier to just address that for now.

There's no question that Heather has only seen a very different Envy than the one that spread chaos across Amestris and made the Elric boys' lives a living hell. And only part of that is from the fact that he's genuinely changed-- the other part does indeed have very much to do with Envy keeping his old tricks out of her view.

But all the same... now that she knows who Al is, she knows how crazy she must sound to him. For all his sneakiness, Envy has never tried to claim to her that he was anything but a wicked monster back home.

She blinks at him for a second, momentarily derailed by this new bit of information.

"... Oh."

A beat.

"... Well, still. Doesn't change anything. He's a grownass adult--" Even if he VERY RARELY ACTS LIKE ONE... "--and he shouldn't be picking on teenagers."

"Well, I'm not gonna deny that, but I'd never really thought of him as particularly sane before now. Especially after I found out the sort of woman he'd spent most of his existence forced to listen to." It's at least something of an admission that he's willing to consider the idea that he's wrong about Envy. A little bit.

Maybe. God, it makes things so much more complicated; he liked it better when he could just try to avoid Envy and pretend he didn't exist.

At that, her expression darkens once more, but it still isn't directed at Al.

"... Yeah, he told me a little 'bout her, too," she says, and her voice is as murky as the look on her face. There's something a little different about it than when she was just pissed off about Envy attacking Alphonse. Something personal.

But whatever it is, she's apparently not planning on elaborating on it any more than necessary, because she shakes her head a bit.

"Al-- is it okay if I call you Al? Look... I'm not gonna defend whatever it was Envy did back where you all came from. He's been pretty straightforward about the fact that he was a major ass. ... But he's been here for years. And for most of that time, he's been a good friend to me and Henry-- a guy who came from my world. He's-- I'm not gonna extoll his virtues to you or anything, that'd just be dumb, but he's the reason I'm even staying with Greed and Lust."

As fond as she's gotten of the swaggering, shades-toting lunkhead and the slightly-more-mysterious woman, she still doesn't know them well. She and Henry are there because Envy invited them, plain and simple.

"... He's fucked up, no doubt about it, but... well, we sorta relate on that front."

Al shakes his head, but it's not in denial. "No, I get that, I do. I can't think of any reason that Winry would have put up with him at all if he hadn't changed a little. But I thought he'd just been playing another game or something, manipulating people like he did back home." He hadn't thought Envy was even capable of getting back to a stable place, let alone recover enough to make what seems like a real, honest friendship with Heather. After all, look how badly his own mother had been twisted under that bitch's watch, and that had only been five years' worth of exposure.

But if there is anything left worth reaching out to...part of Al recoils at the thought (he killed Edward, killed the only family he had left), but at the same time he couldn't live with himself if he didn't at least try. "...can I ask you to tell him something for me? There's...there's something he should know, but he wouldn't ever listen to me about it."

It was a slow development, and admittedly France, Miguel and Tulio'd had a lot to do with 'civilizing' Envy before Heather ever got close to him. But the friendship is real. ... And honest, mostly. The breaching of that deal is quite frankly the first time Envy's ever broken Heather's trust.

And it's less of a personal upset than a GOD DAMMIT, ENVY moment.

"Well, one thing Envy and I have in common is we've both lived under people who manipulated us. I can spot it when it happens-- and he's never tried any of that shit with me."

And that is actually the truth.

Still, her expression softens as she looks back over at Al, chest heaving in a sigh.

"Sure, you can tell me."

Al nods, and takes a few moments to gather his thoughts. "...I...when I got here, I lied to him about what happened to him back home. How he died. He...tell him that Dad died, too. Envy was the one to kill him in the end, before the transmutation went off."

He bites his lip, then sighs. "And tell him I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't have lied to him, he didn't deserve that."

Her expression as he tells her the truth is unreadable.

Because Envy HAD told her what Al had told him. And it had indeed been cruel. Especially if it was a lie.

And it had, in part, influenced her decision to make her end of the deal 'I will help you hunt your father down and destroy him if he ever shows his face here.'

"... You're right, he didn't."

If her tone sounded stiff, it's because it was. Even if she was pissed right the fuck off at Envy right now, he was still her friend and that was a nasty thing to do, Al. >8(

But then again, it seemed there wasn't any one bad guy in this situation.

So she sighed.

"I'll tell him."

The blank expression and stiff tone is reprimand enough, and Al doesn't try to defend himself or his actions. Maybe later he could explain to her in full just why Envy had earned so much of his hate and anger, but not right now.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

It's not a conversation she's looking forward to having, though. Because, well, shit.

"... Anyway. Still need some help picking something out for Greed?"

Yeeeeah, sorry about that, Heather. He'll find a way to make it up to you!

Al smiles a little and nods, more than a little relieved. He wasn't sure if Heather would still be in a mood to help him. "If you're still willing."

Miffed or not, she shoots Al a smile to let him know things are still cool. Even if he did something pretty crappy... he at least apologized for it. And it's not like he had to tell her to begin with. So she gives him a clap on the shoulder.

"Hey, unlike a certain tree-head, I try to keep my promises. So... since Greed's got that big house that needs furnishing, I'm thinking housewarming-type stuff is probably best..."

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Elric Family: making everything awkward since 1502

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Think that's a wrap?