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nebroadweTitle: Drabble: All Who Joy Would Win
Fandom: FMA (anime version)
Character(s): Ed, Al, OCs
Pairing(s): Al/OC (but nothing onstage)
Rating: G
Word Count: 300 (I needed a treble-length drabble; sue me)
Warnings: Implicit spoilage for the end of the series and the film.
A/N: I know exactly what happens to the Elric brothers for the next twenty-five years after the end of the film, but I never expected to write any of it besides "Tick-Tock". I just can't see myself doing the enormous amounts of research I'd need to make the "what did you do in the war, daddy?" part of the story credible. But this snapshot developed all on its own as I contemplated a friend's recent milestone -- and who am I to scorn inspiration? Crossposted from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_gen, fma_writers and fma_fiction).
Dedication: Forlyricnonsense in honor of her graduation. Excelsior!
Zürich, 1936
By the time they reach the hall it's standing room only, so Ed props up a wall while Herr Brunner negotiates seats for his wife and daughter in the last row. Bargain struck, he bustles back to Ed, who takes a step away under the guise of making room. He has no desire to share this day with anyone -- particularly not a Swiss petit-bourgeois whose wife can't conceal her relief that her bluestocking daughter is about to reel in a husband. He's not sure what Al sees in the girl, either, but he's learned to stifle his doubts. Rubbing at a fading reminder of one such lesson on his left biceps, he hopes she appreciates what a formidable champion she's gained.
Once the ceremony begins, Ed taps his foot through the invocation and the addresses, counting the minutes until the only speech that matters: the announcement of his brother's name among the graduates, now and for all time Alphonse Elric, Ph.D. He picks his brother's black-gowned form out immediately when he rises with his fellows to receive his diploma, but finds it hard to keep him in focus once he steps onto the brightly-lit stage. He squints fiercely, conscious of watching not just for himself but for Granny Pinako and Winry and his mother and even the old bastard whose canny investments paid Al's tuition. See? There he is.
The bluestocking applauds so enthusiastically that her bobbed hair bounces above her shoulders and her mother feels compelled to pass some inhibiting remark. The girl folds her hands and leans away, frowning, but smiles again when her gaze crosses that of her fiancé's brother. See?
Meeting her apple-green eyes, proud and damp as his own, Ed finds unexpectedly that he doesn't mind sharing the moment after all.
Author's Note: In case anyone was wondering, Al is receiving his degree (in physics) from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH), which began granting doctorates in 1909 and has numbered Wolfgang Pauli among its faculty and Albert Einstein among its graduates.
[Acknowledgments: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix); the anime of the same title was directed by Mizushima Seiji and story-edited by Aikawa Sho. Copyright for these properties is held by Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, Mainichi Broadcasting System, Aniplex, Bones, and dentsu.]
Fandom: FMA (anime version)
Character(s): Ed, Al, OCs
Pairing(s): Al/OC (but nothing onstage)
Rating: G
Word Count: 300 (I needed a treble-length drabble; sue me)
Warnings: Implicit spoilage for the end of the series and the film.
A/N: I know exactly what happens to the Elric brothers for the next twenty-five years after the end of the film, but I never expected to write any of it besides "Tick-Tock". I just can't see myself doing the enormous amounts of research I'd need to make the "what did you do in the war, daddy?" part of the story credible. But this snapshot developed all on its own as I contemplated a friend's recent milestone -- and who am I to scorn inspiration? Crossposted from
nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_gen, fma_writers and fma_fiction).Dedication: For
lyricnonsense in honor of her graduation. Excelsior!By the time they reach the hall it's standing room only, so Ed props up a wall while Herr Brunner negotiates seats for his wife and daughter in the last row. Bargain struck, he bustles back to Ed, who takes a step away under the guise of making room. He has no desire to share this day with anyone -- particularly not a Swiss petit-bourgeois whose wife can't conceal her relief that her bluestocking daughter is about to reel in a husband. He's not sure what Al sees in the girl, either, but he's learned to stifle his doubts. Rubbing at a fading reminder of one such lesson on his left biceps, he hopes she appreciates what a formidable champion she's gained.
Once the ceremony begins, Ed taps his foot through the invocation and the addresses, counting the minutes until the only speech that matters: the announcement of his brother's name among the graduates, now and for all time Alphonse Elric, Ph.D. He picks his brother's black-gowned form out immediately when he rises with his fellows to receive his diploma, but finds it hard to keep him in focus once he steps onto the brightly-lit stage. He squints fiercely, conscious of watching not just for himself but for Granny Pinako and Winry and his mother and even the old bastard whose canny investments paid Al's tuition. See? There he is.
The bluestocking applauds so enthusiastically that her bobbed hair bounces above her shoulders and her mother feels compelled to pass some inhibiting remark. The girl folds her hands and leans away, frowning, but smiles again when her gaze crosses that of her fiancé's brother. See?
Meeting her apple-green eyes, proud and damp as his own, Ed finds unexpectedly that he doesn't mind sharing the moment after all.
Author's Note: In case anyone was wondering, Al is receiving his degree (in physics) from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH), which began granting doctorates in 1909 and has numbered Wolfgang Pauli among its faculty and Albert Einstein among its graduates.
[Acknowledgments: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix); the anime of the same title was directed by Mizushima Seiji and story-edited by Aikawa Sho. Copyright for these properties is held by Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, Mainichi Broadcasting System, Aniplex, Bones, and dentsu.]
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 12:49 pm (UTC)Very nice ficlet. It was an insightful peek into the Elric brothers lives years down the road.
Ed should consider himself lucky. At least his brother didn't get up there and tell the audience that his goal, now that he'd graduated, was to become a massage thearpist and midwife. (This actually happened at one of the graduation ceremonies; the girl had graduated with a 4.0, and the people around her were going to Harvard Law, Northwestern, etc...and this girl was going to massage thearpy school.)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 01:49 pm (UTC)You wouldn't be faculty somewhere, would you? :-) But yes, commencement season did have me thinking about this event and
Ed should consider himself lucky. At least his brother didn't get up there and tell the audience that his goal, now that he'd graduated, was to become a massage therapist and midwife. (This actually happened at one of the graduation ceremonies; the girl had graduated with a 4.0, and the people around her were going to Harvard Law, Northwestern, etc...and this girl was going to massage therapy school.)
Heh. My first Ph.D. adviser left the profession to train as an acupuncturist, so I'm not unfamiliar with the abrupt career-change phenomenon. Ed and Al have already had the "what are you going to do with your life?" argument well before this point, though, when Al secretly sits the ETH entrance exam (my sources tell me that as long as he passed it, it wouldn't matter that he couldn't produce an educational resume). That would be a year or so after the events of "Tick-Tock." Al wants to pursue the study of physics systematically (and pick up a little bioengineering on the side, so he can help maintain Ed's automail) and try to influence the development of nuclear technology into peaceful channels over the long haul from within; Ed is refusing to think about the issues on more than a case-by-case basis because he knows it's probably hopeless to put the genie back in the bottle but doesn't want to admit it. They work through their disagreement, though. (Maybe someday I'll write that story, too ... but the research, the research ... )
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 02:14 pm (UTC)With any luck, I'll be done with my undegrad by next year. I hope, I hope, I hope!
My new boyfriend was graduating from the one ceremony where the girl had gone through college to become a masseuse. I was meeting his family for the first time that night and his father made the comment, "If I were her mother, I'dve killed her; or asked her to pay me back the money I spent to put her through college." I can understand leaving a discipline that you're not happy with...but this girl graduated with honors with the goal of becoming a massuese and midwife.
Somehow, I think it would have been easier to simply go to massage therapy school.
And I hear you about the research. However, it is summer coming up. Maybe you'll find you have more time to research?
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 02:50 pm (UTC)[crosses fingers for you!]
Somehow, I think it would have been easier to simply go to massage therapy school.
I guess it depends on where you are. In my part of the world, midwifery requires a master's degree in nursing (I have a friend who got hers from Georgetown), so it might not be as fluffy a career choice as it sounds.
And I hear you about the research. However, it is summer coming up. Maybe you'll find you have more time to research?
True, but there's research and then there's RESEARCH. I wouldn't be satisfied unless I could reproduce Nazi Germany and WWII Switzerland with a pretty high degree of surface plausibility. Then there's the trouble of getting the machination plotting to hang together (how do you break a half-sedated man out of a Soviet interrogation facility in Berlin in 1947 and smuggle him into one of the Allied zones without the cooperation of the Allies?). I have too many other irons in the fire to start down that road -- if I'm going to do research this summer, it'll be toward making my original story plausible (an easier task, since I'm making up the setting, so it only needs to be internally self-consistent. That said, I still intend to decant the library of every volume it has on Renaissance astronomy and telescopes. Sigh.).
Peace!