damned_institute | Day 69: Sun Room

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Day 69: Sun Room

[From here]

Scar lumbered into the sun room, hair still damp from the shower. He had been sure to be as quick as possible. The damn communal shower was miserable.

He settled down in one of the couches, his shoulders drooped and eyes tired. What the hell had happened out in the courtyard? One moment, he had been fine, and the next he had been completely deaf. Had something been done to him when he died? His ears were fine, as far as he could tell.

At least he could sit in a comfortable chair in the sun. The small luxury was something he would never take for granted after camping in the wilderness and the sewers of Central for years. There was too much on his mind, too much to keep track of. The simple knowledge that Frank was dead was enough to sap the energy out of him. He was too tired to even be angry.

[Alphonse!]

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He shrugged. "I don't think so? My throat feels itchy before it happens, so I have enough warning to not vomit all over someone."

Al sighed and shook his head. "I've kept my salad from lunch down, at least. I gave my sandwich to Brother after he found a bunch of fingernails in his. Whole ones," he added with a grimace.

"What?" Fingernails, now?! Scar had never heard of such things happening during the day. There had never been a problem with the food.

Al nodded, feeling disgusted himself. "The rest of his food was fine, and all of mine and Lloyd's. But that was...really, really gross."

Scar was silent a moment, looking away from Alphonse for the first time in a while.

"The food is typically fine, during the day. Nothing like this ever happens. Hallucinations, other strange effects... It all happens at night."

Usually.

"Obviously not all of the time." Al grumbled a bit. "Damnit, Brother's the one that's supposed to find trouble in places there isn't any, not me!"

Scar sighed.

"You've both managed to land yourselves in a troublesome place simply by winding up here." A pause. "Edward tells me you came from not long after Lust?"

"You mean after she died?" Al nodded with a frown. "We'd just killed...Sloth, and Envy showed up and was going to take me to wherever the homunculii were holing up. I blacked out and wound up here halfway there, though."

Al really didn't want to think about Sloth. It was obvious the homunculus had the memories of their mother, she'd admitted as much in her dying moments. But something had to have twisted her to make her into the monster she'd become. Was it just her new nature that changed her, or something--or someone--else?

Scar looked back to Alphonse at the mention of Sloth. He shouldn't have brought it up. Yet something about this boy made Scar want to talk to him.

"I apologize." He was quiet another moment, looking back at his hands. "Edward explained to me this morning," he added by way of explanation, occasionally stealing a glance back to Alphonse to make sure he was all right.

Al frowned, more from the memories than what Scar had said, nodding in response to him. "...it was hard, having to confront the fact that we'd made her, then abandoned her to become that. We had no way to know, but..." It was easy to wonder if there might have been some sign they'd missed, that the twisted flesh they'd found in the circle could form itself back into the form of their mother.

Scar watched Alphonse closely as he spoke.

"You couldn't have known. Not from... that." The image was still burned into Scar's mind, so many years later. The result of the inevitable failure. He could not tell the boy that it was through no fault of their own. What they had done was unforgivable...

But understandable, in Scar's eyes. God, they had been so young... And yet they had escaped the experience with their sanity intact. Or perhaps it was because they had been so young.

"I know...but I still wonder. Especially now. We'd thought the homunculii were just copies, imitations...but they're not, really, are they? If they hadn't been abandoned, they would have been the same as the person we'd tried to revive."

Al felt like this was important, that he needed to make this clear, if only to give voice to his troubled thoughts and emotions. He curled up, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around his legs. "...I wanted to save her. I wanted to save her, but she was too far gone to want to come back."

Scar didn't know what he was supposed to say. Not when he spent hours lying awake asking the same questions.

He shifted closer to Alphonse. He wanted to say something. Do something. Let him know something, but he didn't really know how. Or what to say. Or what, even, he wanted to communicate.

"I..." He cut himself off. Did he really want to say this? Yes, if only for Alphonse's sake. And maybe a bit for himself, as well. "I wonder, too." It was a difficult thing to admit. There was an ache behind his eyes and a tightness in his chest.

Al sniffled and leaned against Scar when he moved closer, grateful for the older man's sympathy. "It's hard not to," he agreed in a quiet voice, doing his best to hold back the tears--this wasn't the time for that, not here. "But...even if Lust isn't the same anymore, you still have a chance to make some sort of friendship with her. She's been hurt, but I can tell she still cares about you."

Scar closed his eyes for a moment, frowning and collecting himself, focusing on Alphonse leaning against him rather than the alternative. The truths implied by any of the possibilities presented made his mind run in endless circles he didn't want to face.

"That's different." He desperately tried to cook up some way to steer the conversation away. Damn his poor speaking skills. "Don't mind yourself over it. You have your own matters to deal with." But he was telling the truth. It was different. If nothing else, it was a far more complex and tangled story than Scar wished to explain, even though nothing but the whole story could make Alphonse understand why things weren't as they appeared. There was nothing black and white between Scar and Lust.

At least not as far as Scar was concerned, or was willing to admit to.

"It's not though, not in the important ways." Al frowned up at Scar--which was still a little odd, looking up instead of down at people. Another one of those little things he was getting used to. "You have a chance to regain a little of what you lost. You shouldn't push that away."

Even if Scar explained it all, Al would still say the same things--more understanding that Scar felt off-balance with the whole thing, but to him the right path would still be the same.

"None of it was ever mine to lose," he said flatly, as if it were the definite answer and solution. Which was again, in his mind, the truth. He had no right to be so torn up about any of this.

And Scar was still wondering when and why they had stopped talking about Sloth. Although... He doubted Alphonse wished to linger on the pain of his mother's now dead homunculus. So he wasn't about to force the conversation in that direction, either.

Maybe it was high time he faced the issue, difficult as it was. He needed to stop running. To stop curling up and hiding like a stubborn child whenever it came up.

Al sighed, crossing his legs and turning so he sat facing Scar. "What makes you say that? You knew her and cared about her, and I'm willing to bet she at least considered you a friend in life as well."

Scar just had to keep telling himself that it was to distract Alphonse. He watched the floor rather than his current companion, avoiding eye contact as he always did when talk turned to unsteady ground.

"There isn't..." He cursed his speaking skills once again. "She was never mine to lose, Alphonse. It never had anything to do with me." At least not directly. He had just stood and watched from a distance- as it turned out, not as secretively as he had initially thought.

"Things change." A long pause. He was going to need to be more specific than that, difficult as it was. "Emotions change. It is not a matter of whether or not we can manage to be allies." Or even friends. There was more than that. More that he hadn't really admitted to, until now.

Al thought that over for a minute--it was a bit more complicated than he'd initially thought, it seemed. "...have you asked her about her feelings about all this?"

Now Scar's eyes wondered pointedly in the opposite direction as Alphonse.

"No." And why hadn't he? It was the obvious solution to this mess. Speak to Lust about it. But then why did he refuse to? Every time the opportunity presented itself, he froze. Perhaps he did not want to know what she thought, did not want to face whatever it was she felt. Perhaps he was afraid of what might come of this... This strange little dance of theirs. Constantly circling one another, every nature of emotion tangled in the mess.

Al recognized that sort of reaction--how many times had Ed done the same when his pride kept him from doing something?--and bit back on a chuckle. "That's going to be the easiest way to figure this all out, you know."

"It's never easy," he said flatly. Only because he made it difficult.

But again, it all came back to the nervous edge he felt whenever he considered where Lust did stand in regards to all of this.

"Of course it isn't," he said patiently. "But that doesn't mean you should run away from the problem. And really, knowing the answer will be better than constantly wondering, even if the answer isn't something you want."

Al had a niggling feeling from the way Lust had acted every time she looked over at Scar this morning that it was a favorable answer--the only hurdle then would be Scar's personal hangups. Which, to be fair, were probably a very big hurdle.

Scar slumped back into his seat. His shields were splintered and he was out of arguments.

Damn that boy's undeniable charisma.

"That is true. In a sense." But there were just so many things in the way. So many things that Scar put in the way. He hardly had to ask Lust what she thought about... whatever they were discussing. He just didn't want to face confirmation.

Al watched Scar, keeping his expression as mild and encouraging as possible. It was pretty clear this was the first time Scar had been willing to admit to even this much. "...you don't have to feel guilty you know. It's not like you planned for things to fall out this way."

He wanted to say he was sure his brother wouldn't be angry with him, either...but that might step into too delicate of territory, and this conversation already was treading thin ice. And given the man's clear devotion to Lust's 'former self' mentioning that might just make the walls Scar was building around himself that much thicker.

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