Lost RoyEd Fic (update), Please Help
Well, I've been summarily informed that my memory is dogwater and the fic that I thought was a sequel to one fic actually had nothing to do with it so the search continues.
If you haven't read my first post, I lost all of my AO3 downloaded fic when my laptop at the time exploded (lithium batteries are a bitch). I've managed to find most -- though not all -- of my favorite FMA fic except, of course, the one I absolutely want more than any other because it was my favorite for years. I don't know the name, the author, or the summary, just parts of the plot, because I last read it a decade ago.
The fic in question was a post-2003 FMA set in a non-Shamballa world where Ed managed to return from Earth something like six years after the series end.
It starts just as Ed makes it back. Roy finds him and takes him home. He'd spent the last several years collecting everything he could find of Ed's -- photographs, personal belongings, news articles -- and giving them to Al. So he calls Al and tells him "I found your brother" and Al thinks he's talking about another photo or something. Only to come face to face with a rough looking adult he doesn't recognize (keeping in mind Al lost his memories at the end of the series and has only had pictures and descriptions to go on) and freaks out.
Ed, missing both automail, ends up chasing him across the floor, I want to say scooting on his butt? All the while yelling at Roy about why the hell his little brother is wearing his clothes and keeping his hair long like he did. Cue heartfelt reunion.
Since Ed and Roy had been lovers before he ended up on Earth and they still loved each other, Ed moves in with Roy and tries to rebuild his life after the trauma of living alone on Earth. This fic is at least occasionally somber in tone with a more mature relationship between Royed as Ed has grown up and they've both had to suffer the aftereffects of the end of FMA alone.
I remember one scene where Ed finally tells Roy about what happened to him on Earth. That he met a woman, became friends with her, worked with her father, and everyone assumed he would marry her when he met a man and got involved with him instead. That he'd been with him for a good while, had built something like a life with him, before his lover attacked him and revealed himself to be Envy all along. That fighting Envy was how he made it back to Amestris.
Ed never told Roy who the man Envy pretended to be was during his tale but Roy realized almost immediately that it was his counterpart. That Envy had seduced Ed with his own lover's face, had him trust him and love him before betraying him. He's surprised that Ed had come back to him, had trusted him as soon as he got back to Amestris, given that trauma, but it turns out that neither Ed nor Envy knew that Roy had lost an eye fighting Bradley so when Ed saw the scars on his face and the eye patch, he realized that he was looking at the real Roy Mustang. That he was finally home.
I never got to finish the story -- I think it was still being updated in 2017 or so? Or at least that's when I stopped reading it -- but the last thing I remember happening is Ed finding the ouroboros on Roy's eye under his eyepatch and declaring he wouldn't allow Pride to take Roy from him.
Please, please. If anyone knows the fic I'm describing, please let me know. If you have copies, I'd love that. But I can't even remember the name of the thing to try to find it on the wayback machine. I loved that story so much and now that I'm back in the FMA fandom it's loss is driving me insane. Not even joking. I think about it at least five times a day.
