I Just Know I Love You

Chapter 3

We three sat in silence for what felt like ages, genuinely, surprisingly hoping the Colonel would come back and lecture us further with legality details of the job. I began to slouch in my seat, my butt mostly being held on the edge of the seat by my legs on the floor, my shoulders dipping below the chair back. Alphonse, who usually sat still as a wax figure, loosened his metal hinges in boredom, propping his head up with his hand. Edward squirmed the most out of all of us. Normally, I would squirm in my seat right along with him, however I was so preoccupied with the notion of a serial killer I didn't even notice my uncomfortableness. Edward, however, never stayed in the same position in his seat for more than 30 seconds, the hinges on the chair and his limbs squeaking with every dramatic sigh he took.
Finally, he gave in to trying to get us to start a conversation ourselves, "So we all heard what Mustang said: office work, state excursions, serial killers. What's the consensus here? What should we be most worried about right now?"
Right to the point, as always, I amused myself. "To be honest with you guys," I answered my friend, "speaking as myself, I'm worried about the alchemist killer." The two boys absorbed my opinion as I paused. "However, speaking as a state alchemist, if we stay together, we have less of a chance to run into them."
"In terms of continuing our search," Alphonse's voice rang through his suit, "I think the best way to start is to gather some information beforehand. We passed a library trying to get here earlier, a library only to be used by state alchemists. It'd be a waste of a library for there not to be at least one book on the stone." We all nodded in agreement.
There wasn't much to do while waiting for Mustang, and when there isn't much to do, what else do teenagers do? It started with me, finally responding to my body's cries to stretch, when my curiosity of the room got the better of me. I moseyed around the office, telling the boys I was "stretching my legs", and I did so, though I stretched my eyes and snooped around the room as well.
Soon after I began prying books from the enormous shelves, Edward arose, doing some genuine stretches out of discomfort, and then sneakily joining me in my search for something interesting as well. I scanned notes scribbled on scrap paper, found a few pictures of various family members, none of which were cute babies or pets, and deduced which of the chairs were comfiest.
"Brother, I can't help but ask," Alphonse said in a rather tattletale-ish tone, "what are you doing with all those books? You're not even taking them fully out of the shelves." Edward stopped tilting a book out of the shelf by the top of its spine and whipped his golden braid around to look at his brother.
"I'm obviously checking for secret passageways, Al. That's like- creepy government room 101," Ed said as if this was common knowledge and not some entirely fake schmuck he made up on the spot. Ed rolled his eyes and scoffed loudly at his little brother's question, turning back to his task of tilting books out of the shelf.
Alphonse  piped up, "Ed, what are you talking about? This isn't even a creepy government room, it's like...  a totally normal government room."
"That's just what they want you to think. The thing that makes this room so creepy is how normal it is. That's why it's the best place to hide a secret bookshelf passageway!"
"I'm pretty sure if you thought of it as brilliant, it's not."
The boys went back and forth arguing for a moment, and I could tell that Al was just aiming to give his brother a hard time, that he didn't fully doubt something secret being in the room. Taking Edward's side in the ruse, I pulled a book from a far shelf, moving my prosthetic arm in a way I knew created a clicking sound, and gasped, "Oh my god. You guys, I think I just found the secret passage!"
Both boys whipped their heads so fast they would've screwed off, "Really?!"
"No, dingbats, it's just a room," I laughed at their reactions, taking great pride in my deceiving skills.
Alphonse was pointing at raising his nonexistent eyebrows at Edward, shouting "See? See?"
Edward berated me just as enthusiastically, "Now why would you go and make it look like we were in cohorts, just to let me down, huh?" His words seemed harsh, but he smiled and laughed through every letter. He got behind me and shoved lightly on my back, inching me towards the chairs once more, "Can't believe you'd backstab me like that!"
I sat back down, feeling much more relaxed than earlier, "Ah, don't be so harsh, Ed. I'd never backstab you... unless it was to make you the butt of a joke." Edward stuck his tongue out at me while Alphonse relished in the satisfaction of being right.
As our laughter died down to giggles, the blue office door opened once more, but it was not Mustang who appeared. The woman who had escorted him away in the first place stood in the door frame.
"Excuse me," she saluted, "my name is Lieutenant Hawkeye. I apologize for tearing you away from the Colonels briefing, but I'm afraid his meeting is taking longer than expected. I don't believe you'll be able to finish this talk today, would you mind coming back tomorrow?"
We looked at each other hesitantly. We hadn't exactly thought far ahead enough to have a place to stay at night. Lieutenant Hawkey seemed to pick up on our confusion, "I'll be right back, promise." We heard her boots clack away down the hall, stop a moment, and then grow louder as they returned. "Am I correct in assuming you don't have a place to stay the night?"
Alphonse nodded in embarrassment, "We sort of assumed we'd figure it out on the way or some time throughout the day, but we, um... forgot."
Hawkeye's expression softened, as if remembering she was dealing with teenagers, though she said as stern as before, "I had a brief chat with our night staff, and you may stay in the records room for tonight. There's a little couch in there and, I hear from the receptionist, a certain lieutenant colonel enjoys naps in the file closet there." She huffs a small laugh to herself, a joke that must be unknown to us.
"Thank you Lieutenant Hawkeye," Edward looked her in the eyes, "We're really grateful for this."
"Don't worry about it," she returned, "We can't have you three sleeping on a park bench, now can we?"
•••
The records room was a short walk down another hall from the Colonel's office. Apparently, they had made arrangements so that the night shift had taken out their usual files and they would only come in if they had to, leaving us to get a semi-good night's sleep.
"Where are you going, Al?" I questioned sleepily. He had started out the door as soon as we had gotten there.
"I'm going to take a walk around the building, I'm not sleepy right now," he started once more, but popped his head back in. "Don't worry, I won't go outside. That state alchemist killer probably doesn't have the courage to come inside, anyways." He clanked off down the hallway, the hollow echoes of his suit becoming quieter and quieter.
Edward and I took one of the three blankets the records workers had found for us and sat on the long couch. We sat our boots by our respective sides of the couch, leaning on the arms of the couch like back rests, facing each other. Al had turned off the light when he left, so there was no need to get back up. It was pleasantly dark in there, the only light coming from the window at the back of the room, letting us see out on a small courtyard, illuminated by dim street lamps. Our feet were overlapping somewhat, making mine closer to the back of the couch than his.
I tried to move my legs to get more comfortable, when the heel of one of my automail feet knocked into Edward's metallic shin, sending a ringing clang through the room. The sudden noise made us both freeze instantly, shooting wide-eyed glances at each other until the ringing fully stopped.
We both snorted somewhat embarrassed at this, realizing how absurd our reactions were. Since we now had each other's full attention, Edward took his opportunity to ask, "So how do you really feel? About looking for the philosopher's stone?"
"I'm pretty sure us being here is pretty telling of my opinion, Ed," I smirked softly, trying in vain to dodge the question.
"Well yeah, I know the general idea of how you feel, but not the specifics," Ed sat up against the arm rest, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "I've talked with Al about our plans for- hell- years now, so I'm sure of our stance. But then again, he's my brother. We sort of know each other like we know our own minds," Edward trailed off. "Not to say I don't know you well! I mean I think I've got you figured out after all these years," the boy scrambled for safety.
I chuckled, "Well, I should hope so." I grabbed my elbows and sat back, thinking over my words properly before answering, "A part of me feels like this is really the only option we have of getting back our bodies and living a normal life but... another part of me is scared. Not just scared in the sense of physical danger, but scared as if we'll never be normal." I leaned forward and sat my hands palm-up on my knees, one feeling warm and allowing me to feel, the other feeling nothingness and cold, "Because if I'm being honest Ed, I don't think we can go back to being normal, not with all these memories and scars and this automail-" Edward grabbed my hands, his prosthetic hand grabbing my prosthetic, his real hand grabbing my real one. He looked up at me with an emotion I couldn't quite place, it was knowing, and comforting, yet behind it I knew he was conveying hurt as well, hurt we both experienced.
He smiled sincerely, a rare occurrence from him, "This is normal. For us, this is every day. Every day we live with these memories and scars and we use our automail: because it's all we have. Normal looks different for everybody, our normal is for us and us alone." He looked down at our hands. When we sat face-to-face, our automail arms were on the same side, and our real arms on the other. He looked back up at me and smiled, gripping me a little tighter, "Besides, I think our normal is much more interesting than somebody else's normal." I looked down, needing to look somewhere other than his face, for fear of crying. I wasn't sad, I was just happy somebody knew what I was going through, mixed with a little bit of embarrassment from revealing something so personal.
We let go of each other and went to sleep on our temporary bed, feeling a little bit closer to each other than before.
•••
Al came back into his friend and brother's temporary room around midnight. He needed a little alone time to think, having some of the same doubts as the rest of them, though he just preferred to settle some of them by himself. Not needing to sleep since his soul was fused with the suit of armor, Alphonse sat on the floor by the window, watching the night sky. As always during the night, he drifted off into a spaced-out state in place of sleep, his mind whirling with options and decisions, trying to create a solution for the next day before it even happened. What was there to do, anyways, he thought, It's not like I have the ability to dream like them anyways.