Leave A Scar

With a hotel rooftop as our edge, he pulled away, breaking the kiss, and with the moon as our lamplight, rested his forehead against mine.

He moved away, after a few minutes, and a wind gently blew through me.

Ed looked out to the moon again. Still holding my hand, but over time it loosened, fingers relaxing, becoming the smallest of bits further away from the back of my palm. And then our palms separated from one another, like he was finally ungluing himself from me.

I

I didn't know what to think of it.

I lifted my head up from his shoulder, asking if there was something wrong. Or at least I wanted to; I almost did, before I saw his face. How low he hung his head, and it threw me back into a moment when we'd first started traveling. Stepping out into a hotel living room, seeing him at the kitchen sink with one hand on the edge and his eyes hidden from me.

His eyes were hidden now, like they had been then. Like they were when he spoke with Winry.

I didn't know what to think of it.

I finally asked him, or at least I tried to. I got some word out, some small moment of a line never finished. Because he just turned away from me, hiding his face further.

"I... Need you to go," he told me.

What?

This question must have slipped out; some part of me must have said something, echoed something from a brain rattling with recycled thoughts. I must have made another noise, because his hand slipped from mine. I wanted to reach out, follow his movements, but I just watched that stature rise. He stood, and he spoke again. Repeating it.

"I need you to go," and he didn't say my name this time, like the word itself was acidic, staining and eating away at each letter, every syllable.

I started speaking again, tried to make some selfish statement. But only the first syllable got out, and it was a word I knew all too well.

"I..."

I tried again, helplessly watching him turn his back to me, hunch a little. Displaying that flamel insignia against the moonlight, like a beacon for my inevitable suffering.

I had always been in pain, this was just a new level.

He straightened, head turning up to the sky. And he spoke again, voice stretched slightly, like he wanted to get the rough sadness out of his words.

"You can't keep coming with us," he said. As if it made all the sense in the world.

With his face towards the moon, with tears brimming his eyes, he spoke, telling me what I feared most. What I had been thinking all along; a reflection of my own civil war, my own inner crossfires.

"J...Just let me in," I pleaded, tears brimming my eyes. "I can take the weight—I can take on—"

Ed just shook his head, and with his eyes closed to the moonlight, he spoke once more.

"I was scared about that, in the beginning. Let you in enough, more than anyone. Deep enough for you to really leave a scar when you left."

I... I had to be dreaming. This has to be another nightmare. It had to.

I stayed still, stayed standing, waiting to wake up, and then, finally, with his heart as the lead, he spoke again. Powering my own self-destruction.

"I know now that's just a bunch of wishful thinking. That every person I come in contact will just end up getting hurt, in more pain then they had been when I arrived. So that's why it's best we leave things as they are now. Fold our cards before we end up busting and losing everything."

He was using card analogies?! He was comparing... Whatever we were to a CARD GAME? I wanted to get angry, yell at him or do something other than cry. But I couldn't. I couldn't even open my mouth wide enough to speak. All I could do was fuċkɨnġ stand there, knees shaking and legs bȧrėly holding me upright. I wanted to fall, hit the ground hard and be back on that hospital rooftop again. Alone this time, without him there. Because I kept throwing myself back to that moment, and it's the beginning of the hell I deserved. It's the only thing that would begin to suffice my punishment, my next sentence.

How much pain had I caused him? How much did I deserve this time? A life sentence? Two?

He bowed forward just a little bit, his hunched figure blurred and half-silhouetted in my vision. "I..." He was trying to speak, but I just heard how rough his voice was. How it seemed as broken as I felt.

"I..." A click sounded, then another one. His hand coming into a fist, secured away inside his coat pocket. Like always. Another thing he was hiding away from me. Another thing I didn't deserve to see.

"I can't tell you how much you mean to me," he said, and I nearly collapsed, hearing my name with those words. "I... I keep trying to. I keep looking for some way, some word or moment or drawing that captures you in a way that makes sense to me, but I can't. I can't explain that feeling. I just know it's going to hurt both of us"—He turned away even further. His hand clicked again, and distantly through my own fuċkėd up brain of pure useless noise I heard how his arm shook a little. Trembling before it stabilized quietly. He was so much better at putting himself back together. He could actually do it. I was just a sorry excuse; a forgery of a broken piece of art. He took in a breath, a small one that he quietly let out through his mouth before speaking, continuing on. Picking up where he left off. "And I know I can't let any of it happen. That I need to close our road before it gets any longer, and I need to make that inevitability an impossibility."

"But... You and Al... We were searching, traveling..."

"It's not..." He paused again, and I felt the silence dig into my ċhėst. Carving a deeper emptiness, one that broke down further like a sinkhole when he spoke again, nearly rendering me absolutely, purely useless. "It's not the journey that's the problem. Or, at least, it's not the main issue. Even if we had bumped into each other some other way, in some other reality, the result would be the same."

How did he know?! I wanted to SCREAM at him, shout it with whatever pathetic excuse for power I had. I wanted to tell him he DIDN'T have to do this, but I was caught up in my will to actually fight. The idea that I actually could do anything to slow down what I knew was right. He was right. I wasn't good enough.

"I'm sorry," I wanted to say.

These words were at the back of my lips, buzzing against my mouth and my tongue and everything that still tasted of him. I wanted to apologize, to use every breath I had left in this worthless life to say how sorry I was. And even then, it wouldn't cover it. I didn't deserve to speak, to fill that air with my disgusting god forsaken sound. Not even the vibrations would do anything but make things worse. Carnage, making bodies that didn't deserve anything but pain and darkness and the absence of everything they would never have. It was a cycle, that agony. That emptiness. And I was simply destined to live my life repeating all of it.

"I keep hurting people," he said. "Good people, like Al; innocent ones, like Winry..."

I did what I could; I moved, rendering my physical body useful in a way. I reached out, and without looking to me, he reached as well. The ungloved metal hand fitting into the spaces of mine.

The fingers in between the spaces of mine curled, like they were trying to somehow hold on. "There isn't a word to describe you," he told me, and I felt myself break when he spoke my name again, "I... I keep trying. I keep trying to find something that envelops every part of your existence, your meaning to me, whether it's in a word or a sketch. I can't." His fingers curled like they were slowly trying to grasp something, slipping away from the spaces of mine. "I can't do it; I can't hurt you like that."

"Just let me in," my voice was incredibly weak; less powerful than a squeak of a mouse.

He shook his head. "No. We can't keep taking you with us," My name fell from his lips again, and I felt that wall... The one that prevented me from really hearing it... I felt that protection crack a little more.

I listened instead to the only thing I could hear. His words. What he just told me. But it was a line I had been given before, when I woke up in the hospital after Dublith.

"We can't keep taking you with us. You have to stay here."

"Y-you were going to leave me there," I began, feeling my throat shake as I opened my eyes. Forcing myself to keep staring at him. Watch as he looked away, foot sliding back again. Turning him to a partial profile, half illuminated by the moonlight. Partially covered in darkness. I forced myself to keep speaking, producing a mess of sobs that thankfully translated into actual words. "You were going to leave, and you changed your mind..."

I wanted him to do the same, right now. Just look over at me and give that big grin, tell me to get that look off my face. Because this was some kind of test; because there was no way—no way—I actually believed he would ever do something like this. I had to know that there was no way that this could ever be real.

But he never looked over at me. He kept his stare down, on the street far below us. Wind gently breezing through; a sweeping air that picked up at the very end, giving a small gust against his hair, a light snap of his coat ends. That sound struck a pain right into my being. Just reminding me of how he had turned away from Winry...

"I wanted to keep traveling with you, and Al..." he said softly. "I..." He looked to me just a little bit, head turning a little closer, a little more in my direction. But eyes remaining low, searching the edge between us like he might find the words he wanted to say written in the concrete. With a swallow, he stepped back again, completing the step his foot was positioned to take, and his eyes closed again.

"I... Felt something with you. Something I hadn't felt in a really, really long time."

I waited, watching as he grinned just a tad, almost making the expression sarcastic. "I keep calling it my light side, but most of the time I think I just feel a warmth." His smile spread into a grin, and he laughed just a little bit. "You're that warmth," he told me, and I choked back another sob, muting it in my throat. "You're that light," and the sound my name nearly made me crack completely.

I slapped a hand to my mouth, curling my fingers until the nails dug into my skin. Leaving streaks of red on white.

"Please," I sputtered. "Please stop..." Stop saying my name. Stop...

Ed just closed his eyes, hand curling at his side, and the silence spoke so loud. Calling my name all over again. That name broke me all over again. I forced myself to hear it, to take in every sound and syllable. Repeat it back to myself in my mind, ingraining the sound and engraving the pain it had been the cause of for such a long time.

Mirah.

It was that mirror I could never look into. And now Ed was forcing me to stare back at myself with just a single word.

I stayed standing, giving my legs the remaining amount of energy I had. I was on the brink of collapsing completely. Holding my hand to my mouth, teeth between one finger because it was all I could do to not collapse on the ground in a mess of agony.

"It... It doesn't have to be this way"—My hand raised to my hair, getting tangled in stressed out strands—"I know—"

"No..." He shook his head, and took another step back. Putting more distance between us. "That's another reason. This is way too dangerous. I've been so fuċkɨnġ selfish with letting you travel with us."

"If something were to happen to you"—Glossiness suddenly came to his eyes, and he tried to smile through, his voice shaking—"I don't know what I'd do. I don't know what I would be," I felt my ċhėst cave in, hearing my name again. More tears welled up in his eyes, and his smile faltered, whispering, "Where I would be."

I wanted to take his pain away, do something to get that grin back on his face. That brilliant smile that would laugh for a moment and tell me to cheer up, to not worry because things would be okay. I wanted him to smile again, and I didn't care the reason why. I just wanted him to be happy.

And that's why I needed to leave. So he could. So we could both finally part— go our separate ways and just leave. Better off if we did. For both of us. For everyone.

Winry flashed into my consciousness, and it hurt. Seeing her again. Sobbing like that, desperately trying to hold herself together, one arm wrapped around her waist, one hand holding her side like there was a stab wound inside her; parting the flesh, leaving the blade to twist.

I blinked more tears into existence, feeling my hand shake, wanting to raise to my hair and cover my mouth at the same time, shaking somewhere in between; feeling my lungs want to implode and my heart want to break. I wanted it to happen. All I could think of is that I wanted the pain to go away. He just stood there. Head down, eyes hidden. And I bȧrėly caught sight of the light flashing down, hitting the ground between his boots.

My own eyes closed, trying to hide away in that darkness where I belonged. But I couldn't stop the sobs from bursting out of my throat. And I couldn't stop the rough wheezing sound made when I tried to pull those sobs back in. Like I could rewind time and make all this go away. Make it so I never found that stupid watch and we would both be nothing but distant memories to each other. I didn't even deserve that much. I didn't deserve to take up space in that brain of his.

I nearly crumbled, I nearly fell to my knees but something kept my upright. My foot stepped out, scarred calf keeping me standing. Some part of me was trying to hold on. Or maybe I just knew I needed to go. I was wasting their time. Still being here. I needed to leave. Needed to go.

And Ed didn't stop me. He didn't say a word, didn't make a move, and I have no memories of stumbling down the stairs, miraculously making my way down without getting hurt. But it would be a good start. A broken leg, a forearm snapped in two. A good landmark for my most recent and worst fuċk-up.

I didn't realize Al had stopped me until I noticed I was no longer moving. His arm was stretched out, partially curled around me. I didn't feel the metal, not at first. But then the sting of the coldness gradually buzzed against my skin, and I almost broke completely. I tried to take in enough air, feeling my lungs hyperventilate and my mind begin to slip even further away from me. I heard Al's voice, alarmed and panicked and worried for something he shouldn't be worried about. There was everything else in the world to spend his energy on.

His arm shook a little, trying to get my focus. And it worked for a moment; his voice rang out even louder, piercing through everything I now had exposed. Everything that was no longer covered by walls.

"Mirah!"

My knees shook. They buckled for a moment, legs stabilized once again by someone so much stronger than me. I could feel his other hand at my back, trying for a thicker support. I just heaved with loud breaths and monstrous sobs.

"What happened?" Al was pressing me, and the concern forced my eyes to shut. Trying to bring myself anywhere but here. "Why are you crying?"

It took everything in my power not to let out a mȯȧn; something that I was sure would turn into another broken, skittered sob. Another breath I was using. Air I was stealing. Space I was taking up.

I found some type of "strength", something that made me shake my head and respond to Al's question. Speak in a voice I didn't recognize. Something that was weak and small and everything I truly was. And I told him how Ed wanted me to leave, that it was best that I left.

I felt Al's arm lower just an inch; a side effect from the shock he was feeling, probably. But I still felt my hands trembling, fingertips flinching against the surface of his arm. Torturing myself with the coldness.

"Why... Would Brother say something like that?"

I didn't know. I didn't know but I knew I had to leave. It was best that I did. They didn't have to keep dragging me anywhere. Lose the weight. Lose the baggage. Make their lives better. Easier. More manageable. It was so long overdue, so I had to leave now.

And that's what I did.