Chapter Text
“Everything we know about them is wrong.”
They were the first words Ed had said to Al after he and Roy got back from that first, wonderful flight—that first thing he was good at, that he excelled at, that made him feel whole and right and good in a way he hadn’t in over a decade—and they’d been echoing in his head for hours since. Generations upon generations of Vikings had battled it out with dragons, had fought for their very lives against them, that desperation for survival evolving into a hate that blinded them to anything else. Ed knew the feeling, of course—hell, he half-blamed dragons for the village treating him like shit (after all, if his mother hadn’t been taken and he hadn’t lost his arm, would he still have been seen as useless?)—but it was more shocking than it should have been to see how that hatred skewed everything they knew about dragons.
There was no denying it now. Roy wasn’t an outlier, a good dragon among thousands of evil ones. Dragons were clever and strong and wild and as good or evil as any human. Something was making them attack the island, whether it was a grudge or that weird thing Roy had mentioned, that buzzing that clouded his mind the first time they’d flown. Dragons could be good. Dragons could be wonderful. Ed’s dragon was the best thing in his life right now. Seven generations, four hundred years, and all that the tribe knew was how to kill them.
Nothing on that little sweet spot that made a dragon collapse into a puddle of gooey purrs. Nothing on the way they’d tuck hatchlings under their wings to warm them after the cold. Nothing on how Night Furies could flip and spin and twist and turn on a dime, or how Terrible Terrors could warble like songbirds. Nothing at all, except the best ways to kill a Deadly Nadder or trip up a Hideous Zippleback. And when he finally got to share what he learned about dragons, that knowledge had to be used in the arena, convincing his peers and teacher that he really was a genius dragon-killer and not a traitorous dragon-lover.
Nothing but blood and death and war, for four hundred years.
Ed didn’t know if he could stand to stay much longer. Watching how they talked about dragons, the way he used to talk about dragons, made him feel worse and worse by the day. Hearing his peers wax poetic about the gruesome ways they’d kill their first dragons and imagining that happening to Roy—Al shut them down, usually, stole the conversation away and covered him when he had to bolt back to the cove, but it was sickening. Not to mention the complete 180-degree turn the village made in their treatment of him, calling him a dragon-hunting genius and begging to learn his tricks when a handful of months ago they were sneering at him and whispering that he should’ve been drowned like all runts used to be. They acted like those words, those sneers and hits and snide looks and cruel whispers didn’t matter. They acted like it was all okay because he was finally acting like a Viking.
It was everything he’d wanted for years, and now all it did was make him feel…helpless. And stupid. And so, so angry.
It just wasn’t fair. No one would really mourn him if he faked his death and disappeared with Roy, except for Al—but Al would know, he’d tell Al where to find him, leaving Amestris would never mean leaving his brother behind for good. Hohenheim might be sad for a little while, but he’d forge ahead as always and eventually forget him. Teacher…Teacher would probably grieve. The rest of the village, though? They didn’t know him. They didn’t know anything about Edward Elric. They cared about Edward the Future Dragon Slayer, and Edward The Dragon Genius. None of them gave two shits about Ed The Inventor or Ed The Kid Who Wanted Love or Ed The Grieving Amputee Being Blamed For His Mother’s Death.
Fuck them. Fuck them all.
He’d leave if he won the stupid dragon training challenge, he decided. He wasn’t going to kill a dragon. Not now, not ever. He was better than that. He wished he could show everyone that they could be better than that, humans and dragons alike.
“Hatchling will,” Roy rumbled in the back of his mind, and he blinked lazily down at the sketches of new tailfins and saddles. “Hatchling change the world.”
“Hatchling can’t do shit if he’s killed for treason, bastard,” he reminded the Night Fury fondly, grinning as the dragon whuffed, sounding miffed. “Go to sleep, you’ll find out how tomorrow goes one way or another.”
“Throw challenge?”
He sighed quietly, burying his head in his hands, the glowing lanterns casting odd shadows across the project board looming above him—thousands of dragon-killing tools and machines scrapped, conveniently scattered to hide the real project: Roy’s tail. “I’m gonna have to, aren’t I?” he murmured aloud, staring down at the wooden worktable from between his fingers. Tomorrow was the last challenge. The elders would decide whether he or Winry got to kill the Light Fury. Whoever took down their little runner-up dragon first.
He hoped she wouldn’t try to kill it then and there. They weren’t supposed to go for the kill until the big fight, so they wouldn’t have to capture more dragons to train new recruits with. But if she did—
“I might not be able to.”
“Edward.”
Ed yelped, rocketing to his feet and whirling around to meet golden eyes—his father’s eyes. Hohenheim stood in the doorway, looking mildly concerned as he glanced around the workroom—which, to be fair, was kind of a mess. He quickly shoved some papers over the tail design, before leaning as casually as he could against the table. Guess the last time he was in here was when I was starting my apprenticeship, before he got so busy… “Oh—uh—hey, Dad, what’s—you’re back? Did you find the nest? What’s going on?”
“No luck, though I expect you guessed as much,” he sighed, and Ed made what was probably an appropriate noise of sympathy and disappointment. “No ships or lives lost, but the sails are in bad shape.” He shook his head, and Ed grimaced. His father’s desperation to find the nest would’ve been obsessive if he didn’t take his duties as chief so seriously. “But I heard something…interesting about your dragon training, hm?”
A chill ran down Ed’s spine—his father probably hadn’t found anything out about Roy, but—but— “How so?”
“That you’ve been excelling without ever having to use a weapon.” Hohenheim tilted his head, his gaze thoughtful. “That you have…a way with the dragons. You know their secrets, somehow.”
“I—I wouldn’t call it knowing their secrets, I just—”
“You’ve always been different,” Hohenheim said, and Ed—Ed couldn’t stop himself from recoiling even as Roy snarled through their bond. He knew it was true, but it had only ever been sneered cruelly at him, hissed insultingly, said with such exasperation: you’re just too different.
Hohenheim blinked in evident shock at his reaction, before holding up his hands, surprisingly gently (Ed remembered being cradled in those hands, thrown into the air and caught and giggling and shrieking, carefree and safe—ached for it). “No—hear me out, son. You…you think differently, than most of us. And for the longest time, it’s made you a target. From the village, from your peers, from…from me, because I did nothing to stop it.” Shame glowed faintly in his father’s eyes, and Ed couldn’t help but stare in shock. “I hated myself for it, but sometimes I thought—sometimes I wished that you weren’t so different. That you thought like a Viking. Acted like one. I told myself it was for your survival, but really it was for my own sake. To make things easier.” He shook his head. “It’s telling that as soon as I left, you felt safe to come into your own—to use everything that made you different and truly excel.”
Oh.
Oh, no. No, no, he hadn’t expected this. He hadn’t expected an apology, or encouragement. He—what was he supposed to do with this now?
He was hearing everything he’d wanted to hear his father say for the last ten years, and it was all because of a lie.
“I’m so, so sorry for not encouraging you. For making you feel like you weren’t wanted because of your differences.” Stunned, Ed let his father gently take his hands, metal and flesh, and squeeze them tenderly. “I should have done better. I will do better. I know the village’s treatment of you has to be very little comfort, considering their past behavior, and I will be discussing that with them at the next town hall.”
“They said I should’ve died instead of Mom.” The words spilled out before Ed could stop them. “When I was little. They said it should have been me.”
Hohenheim’s eyes widened, and—tears, those were tears in them. “They said what?”
Ed winced. He definitely hadn’t meant to say that out loud—but the words were coming out, and he couldn’t stop them. “I—they said it was my fault. T-that I did something. Or—or that I shoulda been d-drowned, and then no one would have to deal with me and Mom wouldn’t be gone because she wouldn’t have tried to protect me and—”
He dared to glance up and quailed; the tears were still there, but now Hohenheim looked angry. “They told you what?” he repeated, and his voice was soft and deadly. Ed tried not to shrink in on himself, but he couldn’t stop himself from ducking his head as his father squeezed his hands gently. “Ed, why didn’t you tell me?”
He swallowed thickly, Roy rumbling soothingly in the back of his mind as he gazed down at their hands—his dwarfed by his father’s, mismatched and strange. “…You were busy. You—you had to be the Chief, and—and the chief couldn’t always be my dad. U-um. And I…I thought you k-knew.” He grimaced as his voice cracked over the last word. “And didn’t…care, I guess. A-and then I just—I thought you—you blamed me too.”
There it was.
The terrible secret eating away at his chest for over a decade.
You blame me for Mom being gone. Don’t you?
“No,” Hohenheim breathed, and Ed dared to peek upwards before jolting in shock as tears slowly rolled down his father’s cheeks. “Son, no. It was not your fault—you were so young; you were trying to protect your brother. We’ve been fighting this war for four hundred years. Dragons have broken into many a home and stolen the Vikings inside to kill or maim or burn.” He felt Roy let out a low, uneasy croon at that; as much as Ed knew they were wrong about dragons, the Night Fury probably hadn’t thought much about what dragons had done to humans. “There is no way it could have ever been your fault—I haven’t been the father you deserve, but I never, ever blamed you for Trisha’s death.” A shudder of grief went through Hohenheim’s body, still aching with sorrow ten years later. “She would have chosen death a thousand times over letting you or Al come to harm. And if I had been there—Edward, if I had been there, I would have done the same.
“I failed you. That much is clear, is obvious, for you to believe that I ever thought you were responsible for her death.” Hohenheim shook his head slowly, before leaning forward and gently pressing his forehead to Ed’s. He froze for a moment, before pressing back gently, transported back to when he was four and his father could really be there and his mother was alive and everything was okay. “My precious boy. My little survivor.” A thumb rubbed tenderly over his metal fingers, and he let out a shuddering breath, trying to hold back the tears. “The Valkyries may have taken your mother that night, but Odin and Eir blessed us when you survived your injuries. I wish Trisha was alive, yes, but never at the expense of your life, son. Never.”
It was selfish, considering that Ed was lying about everything right at this very moment. That he was planning on leaving, betraying his family, betraying his tribe, all for the sake of the dragon he couldn’t kill.
But this was—it was everything he wanted to hear, needed to hear, and if he let himself curl into his father’s embrace, let himself cry as Hohenheim pressed a true Viking helmet forged from his mother’s favorite weapon into his hands, let himself pretend that tomorrow wasn’t going to make or break his entire life, then no one else had to know. Not tonight. Not right now. He could have this, just one last time.
Maybe I won’t win tomorrow. Maybe Winry will get there first and take it down without killing it. Maybe—maybe—
He won.
He won. The Nightmare had rolled onto its back and started purring as soon as he’d scratched at it; he’d tried to stay out of its way but it came right to him and Winry had an axe and the thought of her slicing through its long, thin neck was terrifying enough and—
Ed won the challenge.
The Elder chose him to slay the Light Fury in front of the entire tribe. Al looked sick, Winry looked like she could snap his neck right then and there, and as he was hoisted onto his classmates’ shoulders all Ed could think was:
I have to go.
Now.