His senses are acute, and everything that he tastes, smells, feels, he remembers in detail. That night so long ago, he recalls the bitter bile in his throat, the suffocating sulfur in the air, the bleeding body before him. He remembers the fear that gripped him then, more powerful than anything he had ever felt, because he had done that to his mother. He can never forget, because he lives that night every night.
He remembers his father's back. He is tall and strong, but has no more presence than a washed-out picture. As long as he can remember, his mother has waited for that man. She wouldn't accept anyone else. Edward is not enough to keep her happy, and so she withers and dies, still thinking of him, longing for him. When that man finally returns, the hatred that has built up over the years surface all at once—that hate still burns because Edward is not one to forgive and forget. He remembers every petty grudge and every solemn sin. Resolved or not, they stay with him, eat away at him until he is nothing but hate and self-loathing because the one who wronged him the most is himself.
Each of the multiple scars on his body has its own story, but Edward is one for secrets, and so the stories are never told, no matter how many times he rolls them over in his head. He will learn from them, change from them, grow from them, but no one will ever witness it happening. He keeps himself covered, mentally and physically, because no one is able to handle the stories he has.
In his journey, he encounters many people, meets all sorts of faces, kind, mean, hard, deceiving. The little girl who starved to death in that alley, clinging to her ragged doll, the man who begged for his daughter's safety when the soldiers shot his wife, the young boy who couldn't even scream before the red light engulfed him—Edward remembers their faces very well. He learns to read behind the faces too, because that sweet young girl with long lashes turns around and stabs him with madness in her eyes. And sometimes, when he looks in the mirror, he wonders why he can't see behind his own mask. And sometimes, he wonders if it isn't madness that burns in his own eyes, obscuring his soul from himself.
Edward remembers the Gate. The strange sensation of being pulled apart—mind from body from soul—lingering on his very being. He remembers, too, how it feels to be put back together. The pain of the automail being attached to the nerve endings doesn't compare to the pain of said nerves reforming, boiling back into existence. Every wound, every bruise, every broken bone is mended so perfectly that, had Edward ceased to remember them, they may as well have never existed. There are many things that only exist in his memory now.
His mother. His father. Nina. Scar. Hughes. The Homunculi. The Philosopher's Stone. Gone. All gone. He alone retains all the information.
So it is good that he remembers everything.
Except...
There is one thing that Edward doesn't remember at all. The nights following the failed transmutation are somewhat blurred. There is blood, there is despair, there is shame and guilt and so much more. He remembers crying until the tears ran dry. He remembers screaming until his voice was lost. He remembers staring into the darkness until it merged with him.
But he doesn't remember why he woke up.
He doesn't know the reason why determination filled his broken body, forced him to walk, forced him to move forward. He knows that there was no reason to keep going, and yet, he did. He doesn't know the reason for changing his life like that, because there doesn't exist anything powerful enough to change him like that. It is the one thing he cannot account for.
He ponders it often, now that his life is calm, stable, normal. He never asks anyone though; there is no one he trusts enough to ask. He keeps to himself mostly, but once in a while, he lays in the grass with Winry and watches the clouds. They watched the clouds together when they were young too, but it feels different now. Being with her feels odd somehow. He can never put his finger on it though, and when he asks if she knows what's missing, she can only turn away and cry.
At times like those, he wonders if he has forgotten something important.
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A/N: Original idea gacked from Tsukishirou. Thanks, hun!
Any constructive criticism is appreciated. I know the dangling modifiers, run-on sentences, and sentence fragments abound. Some of it's nice the way it is, but if there's a better, grammatically correct way of writing it, I'm all up for it. I'm not sure how successful I was with writing in present tense. Any pointers there would be nice too.
Thanks for reading! Hope it was enjoyable.