Pride & Humility

XXI

Beta: TaintedLetter

(óヮò)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

(EDWARD)

Ed returned to Izumi's home with a heavy heart. He kept his hands tucked in his pockets, and he moved slowly through the darkening streets. His mind was elsewhere as he walked—he moved with an absent mind—his gaze pointed up at the sky.

His thoughts chewed back over his latest conversation with one of his oldest friends. A part of him was still having trouble reconciling the image of Lizzie as a soldier. He had only ever seen her in her greenhouse, working diligently on some new medicine with a bright, beaming smile on her face.

She was a doctor. She donated her inventions to refugees.

Yet she was someone who could casually take a life.

She worked hard to protect and serve those she loved.

But she didn't consider that those she killed also had people who loved them.

He wanted to ask what brought about this change, what made her become this way, but then—

"She is Elizabeth Luxanna," Roy Mustang said, his tone subdued and his dark eyes tinged with something closer to pity. "It doesn't surprise me at all, and those who know about her past, and her, shouldn't be surprised either."

Ed had recklessly asked Lizzie about that, and by the way she reacted he regretted it immediately.

He understood all too clearly how important it was to leave the past behind, and how it could still leave scars that couldn't be seen.

Something had happened to his friend. Something that made her—made her—

'Disconnect?' Ed really didn't know another word for it.

When he returned to his teacher's home, Izumi Curtis, he quietly slipped in. He knew Al had already taken their teacher back since she was unwell, so he guessed that she would probably be tucked into bed for the night.

Ed knocked once outside of her bedroom door and she said, "Come in."

He opened the door to their quaint bedroom. Izumi and her husband did well as butchers, but they certainly weren't on par with the money a State Alchemist made so they lived modestly.

"Teacher?" Ed quietly asked her. He slowly, hesitantly, approached her bed before taking a seat at the nearby empty chair. His hands were folded in front of him, and he leaned on his knees, his gaze downcast. This immediately drew Izumi's full attention, and she narrowed her eyes in concern.

She asked him, her tone not unkind, "What's wrong?"

"What would you do if Al and I killed someone as a soldier?" he asked her. "What would you do if we killed a lot of people?"

"Before or after I beat you back to your senses?" she asked him flatly. "Children shouldn't be soldiers. Have you and Al—"

"Not us," he reaffirmed. "Our friend, though, Lizzie. She's the fuhrer's daughter, and has been trained as a soldier for a long time. She was the one—"

"She's the one who cleared out the devil's nest?" Izumi sought to confirm. At Ed's nod, she let out a tight sigh. "A pity."

"She used to be a lot brighter," Ed said. "She still—she still is, but it feels like—it feels like—"

"Like she's lost something?"

"Yeah." Ed sat back in the chair, raising his gaze to Izumi's. "What would you do?"