No sign as yet,

april 30, 1924

"Lan Fan, come on!" calls May, waving to her from the end of the platform.

Securing her mask over her face, a noble servant to the Imperial family follows her mistress.

Her lady.

—

She was reassigned to May's security by Ling's order, effective immediately following his death; the country grieved their beloved leader, the man who loved all of Xing like the children he'd never get to have, who would not let himself be manipulated, who served in the interest of the country rather than his own(unlike his father before him).

Ling passed the title of Emperor to the eldest of the Emperor's sons, a man of the Hua clan called Zou. Lan Fan remembers him scheduling several dinners with Zou and his family in the months before he died; the Huas were poor, like the Changs and the Yaos. Zou had given his word to even the score between all fifty clans, and Ling had trusted him with the duty.

Lan Fan and May left for Ishval immediately following the funeral, and they cried together on the train. For a brother. A childhood friend, a longtime love. May became the first and only member of Ling's inner circle in Xing to learn about the true nature of the illness that killed him so quickly; Lan Fan told her about Ling's relationship with the homonculus, and everything he did during the Promised Day. She knew Ling would shudder at the thought of his beloved sister knowing about the monster that overtook his body for so many months, but she had always thought May deserved to know what had become of her brother during those months in Amestris.

May claimed she had no idea about Lan Fan's feelings for her lord, but the look on her face gave her away- just like Ling's always did.

They traveled together. Officially, Lan Fan was the princess's guard; to May, she was a friend and companion, a confidant as she'd been for years. She loved May as Ling did: honestly, and without hesitation. She did the best she could to fill the role of big sister, even though she knew better than anyone that no one could possibly beat Ling.

They joined the Elrics- usually Alphonse, which May claimed was merely coincidence- on several occasions, visiting ancient ruins and libraries across the East and West. Lan Fan was reminded of the hours she spent when she was a young teenager, studying the Philosopher's Stone in various libraries throughout Amestris.

They went to Ishval many times, watched its people rebuild from the ground up. Lan Fan worked with them, arms blistering beneath the hot sun as the women taught her to bandage a wound properly, the best way to distribute salve to relax her muscles; a woman called Shan developed a balm to help cool the plate where the metal of her arm fused with her shoulder.

Scar, the man who May often referred to as her surrogate father and Lan Fan remembers from their brief meeting in the sewers beneath Central City, met her with grunts and short phrases reminiscent of Fu's; she found herself enjoying the work by Scar's side, piling brick and chopping wood in relative silence, while May preferred to spend her time beneath the canvas canopies with the wisewomen, learning all she could about their traditional medicine and the healing properties of sparse desert plants.

In Amestris, they spent their days at Dr. Knox's- much to his apparent chagrin, even though every time they offered to stay elsewhere he told them they were being "prideful, ungrateful fools", and forced them into his spare rooms anyway. Lan Fan often visited Brigadier General Hawkeye, who looked at her with sad eyes and offered her more cookies than she could possibly eat.

Lan Fan's days were full with learning, and meeting, and working; May made sure there was never a dull moment, and when she thought Lan Fan might be getting bored, she started teaching her basic alkahestry, or insisting she fix a pipe or write a letter. No one gave her much time to grieve, and she was grateful. She never cared for the people that wasted their time moping over things that had passed- and so she chose not to. She pushed thoughts of Ling to the back of her mind and worked, harder than she ever had before.

—

She sits beside May on the hard wooden bench, crossing her legs beneath her and settling in for a long train ride of staring out the window(she's never been good at reading on trains the way May is; it makes her nauseous).

The train, bound for Ishval, sets into motion. May buries her head in a book, and Lan Fan stares at the expanse of desert before her- the very desert she once crossed on foot, before the rail system that Ling insisted upon was installed- and after a moment, something gold crops up on the horizon.

Lan Fan rubs her eye, and it still doesn't go away. She supposes that one of the countries on either side of the desert must have commissioned a statue.

As they draw closer, she starts to make out the details, and it's- Ling. Sculpted in gold, taller than life- she imagines it must be ten feet tall- and unmistakably Ling, accurate to the curve of his jaw and the slope of his neck. He holds his hand aloft, the vial he carried his Philosopher's Stone in sitting upright on his palm.

Turning around, she grabs May's wrist. "Did you-?" she asks hoarsely, her voice almost a whimper.

May shakes her head, a bittersweet smile on her lips. "I didn't."

Lan Fan lets go to press her hand against the window, tracing the fine line of his cheek, just as it used to be, illuminated by the sun.

For one moment, he is within and without.

She misses him. She misses him, the second person in her lifetime she was incapable of protecting, the only person she ever loved; he was honest, and proud, and stupid and ambitious and she wants him back more than anything. Her shoulders shake with the effort of holding back tears.

"I love you," she whispers, because she will never have the chance to say it to his face again.

I'm sorry, she thinks, because she is.

Was.

Will be.

She was never meant to live longer than he did. She never wanted to; he was meant to live centuries in the sun, and have a dozen wives and ten thousand children.

She could not save him. Twice, she could not save him, and her failure ate him alive, as it is eating her.

Her throat hurts, and she can't tear her eyes away from the statue; it's a perfect recreation. They didn't mess up, not even a little.

It hurts more, that way.

He smiles toward Xing, and Lan Fan does not cry.

She doesn't look away from him until she's forced to, when her neck is starting to ache and the shape of him has become a dot against the blue sky, and she promises him-

She promises a lot of things, in those moments, alone on a train seat with the desert heat seeping through the thin windows.

She promises to do her best to not hate Greed. She promises to oil her automail.

She promises she will not fail May as she failed him.

When Lan Fan closes her eyes, she sees him on the backs of her eyelids, and cannot remember what his voice once sounded like.