He gripped the gravestone with his only hand, steadying himself as he sank to his knees on the frozen ground. Its me, Momma, its Edward, he began, haltingly, staring at the dirt and grass at the base of the slab. I’m sorry, I didn’t bring you anything, except- Al’s here, and he’s whole, and he’s perfect, and I’m here too, so I can take care of him now, just like you said. Except, Momma, it’s really Al that takes care of me, but, at least we’re together now.

I wish- I wish I could tell you something that would make you proud of me, and… I’ve done my best, but all I’ve managed to do is screw things up, again and again. I wish I could tell you I’m not the obnoxious know-it-all kid I was when I was ten, but- that’s not really something I can say either. But I promise you, I know I’m not God, and I’ve learned my lesson: I promise you I’ll never endanger myself or my brother’s life ever again, not for something impossible.

I wish I could say all the pain I’ve caused everyone around me hadn’t been in your name, in your memory, but I cant say that either. I’m sorry, Momma. I’m sorry, it’s been- so many years, I’m starting to forget your face. We burned the house down, to keep us from running home instead of chasing our goals, and all the pictures burned too. Auntie Pinako had a few, I think, but it’s been ten years even since I’ve seen those. What I remember mostly are your eyes. Al has your eyes, and sometimes when I look at him I see you.

Rizembool was quiet, utterly quiet, Al had been right when he said there was no one there. The only sound was the wind blowing tiny specks of snow around, not enough to stick but enough to cloud the air and to chill the tips of his nose and ears. Dad loved you, he admitted, with some difficulty. I never believed it, but I know you did. You never doubted him. He- he’s gone now too.

You- you have a granddaughter now. Her name is Kaiya. She’s perfect, she’s the most perfect baby you’ve ever laid eyes on. She’s Winry’s, and she’s beautiful. Me and Al used to fight over who would marry Winry, but in the end, I guess neither of us won. She’s Winry’s daughter, he repeated. Maybe you can be proud of us for that.

He shifted uncomfortably on the cold ground, and when he blinked he saw the salty drops fall onto the frozen dirt. He raised his hand to his face, not even having realized he was crying. I do remember you, Momma, there are things I’ll never forget; I’ll never forget how your arms felt around me, I’ll never forget how my head fit perfectly into the curve of your waist. I’ll never forget your voice and I’ll never forget the words to that song you would sing while doing the dishes. I’ll never forget the way mine and Al’s beds smelled the days you would wash the sheets, I’ll never forget the taste of the porridge you would make us for breakfast. I’ll never forget playing out in the fields and seeing your light flashing for us to come home, I’ll never forget seeing the house lit at night with a candle in each window to guide us home. I’ll never forget that yellow apron with the little flowers I used to bury my face in and cry when I would scrape my knee-
He didn’t know how long he sat, his head leaning against the stone, or where Al had been, whether he had stood and watched his brother cry or whether he had gone to sit by the river, in the spot he always used to when they had been kids. If there had been anyone at all in Rizembool besides the brothers, there would have been stories about the ghost of the Fullmetal Alchemist hovering over the graveyard, but there was only Al.

The brothers walked silently over the debris that still remained of their burned down house, keeping step with each other and not speaking until Al said, “Do you want to see yours?”

“Mine?” Edward had echoed hollowly, not quite trusting his voice yet.

Someone, they saw, had been to that grave already, and had left a wreath of flowers, and Ed shuddered, kicking at the wreath with his foot. Did people really come all the way out to Rizembool to leave flowers on his grave? Who were these people, and just what did they think he had done to deserve their attentions? He, the sinner?

“Lets get out of here, Al,” he said, shoving his hand further into his coat pocket, suddenly colder than he had been.

“I want to stop at the house.”

Ed turned to look behind them at the ruins that had been the Elric house, but Al shook his head and pointed to the building in the distance. “No, at Winry’s house. I want to see if there’s something there she might want.”

“The house is still there?” Ed asked, confused. “Then why-“

“It’s there,” Al said tersely. “The Drachman army used it as their headquarters when they occupied the town.”

Ed had elected to wait outside while Al entered the abandoned building they had once called their home, understanding, suddenly, why Winry had refused to come with them. His memories of the Rockbell house were bright and full of warmth, and he found he didn’t want them replaced with empty rooms and dusty shelves.

After some time had passed, Al emerged, carrying two boxes, trailing cobwebs that he swiped at before handing one to his older brother. “What-“ Ed began.

“They’re photos, from the basement,” Al said. “I thought they might still be there.”

The brothers were silent for the first two hours of the drive back to Altenburg, Al keeping his eyes fixed on the road and his attention carefully on what was in front of him. Ed’s eyes were closed and he leaned his head against the window, but Al knew he wasn’t sleeping.

Finally, breaking the silence, Al let out a heavy sigh as a preamble. His brother’s eyes fluttered open. “I didn’t tell you this before,” he began, his words uncertain. “But I just want you to know, because I know she didn’t tell you.”

Golden eyebrows rose, once, curiously.

“Winry isn’t my girlfriend anymore.”

“Al, I’m sorry-“

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. And it’s better this way. It’s fine,” Al said firmly.

“Al-“

“I said don’t be sorry!”

Ed clamped his mouth shut.

Nearly another hour had passed before they spoke again. It was dusk, and the sky was a glowing deep blue above their heads, a road sign here and there illuminated by a streetlamp. “It’s just five days until she starts the surgeries,” Ed said quietly, staring at the trees flying past them.

“Are you scared?” Al asked softly.

“A little,” Ed admitted.

“You’ll be all right, Brother,” he encouraged. “You’ve done it before, you know what to expect.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Let me be there with you,” Al said suddenly. “Don’t send me out of the room, let me be there through it all.”

Ed sighed. “I don’t want you to have to see me like that, Al, I’ll be screaming my head off in pain.”

“Winry told me you never screamed.”

“I can’t promise you that this time,” Ed said quietly. He looked out at the road, and then over at his brother, and then back out at the line of trees that blurred into a stripe of brown and black if he let his eyes relax.

When Al began to speak again, his voice had an odd quality to it, one Ed couldn’t quite place.

“You always told me that you were fine, that you weren’t hurting, but I knew you were lying to me because when Winry would come in to check on you you would whisper to her that you needed more pills.”

Ed’s eyes widened, and he jerked his gaze over to his brother, who sat gripping the steering wheel, gaze fixed on the road.

“You had these terrible nightmares, I knew you did because I watched you sleep, all those long nights, it must have been the medicine that was giving you those dreams and you would never tell me about them. You wanted to spare me from them but you didn’t know that I had them too, and I had them while I was awake, because I couldn’t sleep.”

Ed was staring at him, watching his eyes dart from side to side, the course of their vehicle no longer part of his attention.

“You would call for me, and you would call for mom, and sometimes you would even call for dad, and when you were like that there was nothing I could do. I would touch you, but I couldn’t feel it, and you didn’t even know it was me. You would look at me and you didn’t know it was me.”

“Al, the road,” Ed said harshly, and reached out and grabbed the steering wheel, sending their car swinging back to the center of the road. They had been driving half on the shoulder and half on the grass for quite some time before even Ed had noticed it. “Al!” Ed pressed, refusing to let go of the steering wheel, staring into his brother’s vacant eyes. “Al, snap out of it!”

Alphonse blinked, slamming his foot on the breaks and causing their vehicle to screech to a halt. “What happened?” he demanded, blinking rapidly. “Did I fall asleep? I didn’t think I was that tired-“

Ed was opening the car door, walking around the vehicle, opening Al’s door. “Okay, Al, get out, I’m driving the rest of the way!” he said forcefully, waiting for his brother to obey him.

“You can’t drive, you have only one hand!” Al protested, but Ed’s insistence was unwavering.

“I can do lots of things with only one hand! You almost ran us off the road, get out!”

“I’m awake now, Brother, I can drive fine-“

“Al, you weren’t sleeping- do you even remember what you were saying?” Ed demanded, the realization dawning on him.

“What are you talking about?” Al said, confused.

“You were telling me things only you would know. Things no one could have told you. Things I didn’t even know,” he said quietly, his voice grave.

“What do you mean?”

“Things from when you were in the armor.”

“That’s impossible,” Al said flatly, folding his arms across his chest and looking up at his brother.

“It should be,” Ed agreed. “But you did it. Now out, and let me drive, I want to get back to Altenburg before midnight.”

His eyes narrowed. “Brother, I’m not letting you drive,” he said stubbornly

“I’m not letting you drive,” Ed countered, equally stubborn.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“So we’re spending the night somewhere nearby.”

“Fine, that’s what we’re doing.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” Al drove cautiously into the small town they were passing by, feeling his brother’s eyes on his face the entire way. Once they had found themselves a room, Ed had pressed him with questions about his memory, but Al was unable to tell him anything new. This was a bad idea, coming here, he thought to himself. Brother’s miserable, I’m miserable, and now Brother thinks I’m crazy, to top it all off. Could I really have done that, spoken to him about things I don’t even remember, and not have realized it?

He thinks my memories are his fault, that he’s hurt me in some way! He saved my life, if he hadn’t kept my soul in that armor I would be dead right now, instead of here, alive, warm and beside him, with a life and a family and nothing more I could ask for. Brother doesn’t deserve any more guilt or any more pain. I wish I could tell him nothing will ever hurt him again, but I can’t say that. He’s going to be going through the worst pain he’s ever felt, pain he thought he’d never have to go through again, just to get his automail installed. “Brother,” he said quietly, interrupting Ed’s worried rantings. “It’s all right.” It wasn’t all right. It wasn’t all right that he had lost four years of memories, but he was used to it. “Don’t do this to yourself. I’m fine.”

By the next morning every citizen in the town of Bethan was full to the brim with the gossip that the Fullmetal Alchemist and the Soul Alchemist had spent the night in their most prominent (and only) inn. If anyone else, any out-of-towners, were to inquire, however, they would say he must have been a ghost. The people of Bethan were proud to say that the People’s Alchemist had come from the North, and they would not give away his secret that easily.

“Of course I’m nervous,” Ed said, not looking at her as she stitched up the wound she had made in the end of his leg. He shuddered.

“What’s wrong?” she said sharply, looking up. “Did I hurt you?”

He shook his head, pressing his lips together. “No, it just feels fucking strange, like you’re tickling my toes or something.” In fact, she had attached tiny metal transmitters to a few select nerves in his stump. That little preparatory step, she had insisted, would help a great deal during the surgery. She had done the same the day before with his shoulder.

She blinked. “Oh,” she said. “Good. That means I’m doing this right.”

His eyes widened in a sudden panic. “You don’t know if you’re doing it right? Winry! I thought you said you knew what you were doing!”

She laughed at his horrified expression. “I’m just kidding Ed, god. Of course I know what I’m doing. This is my entire life, you know.” She tied off the last stitch, swabbing the stump one more time with disinfectant. “Done,” she added unnecessarily.

Ed leaned back against the wall, looking half-relaxed sitting there in his boxers, but his tapping fingers betrayed his discomfort. “Al is really upset that he can’t get back until tomorrow. I know he wanted to be here with me tonight.”

“I know you wanted him to be here too,” Winry said gently, cleaning off her instruments. “General Mustang is such an ass, he told Al it would be no problem for him to go on leave, and then springs this last minute stuff on him.”

“I keep telling myself that the first surgery was so long ago I couldn’t possibly remember it that well,” Ed began, not looking at her, “But I do, I swear I do. And it hurt more than losing my limbs in the first place did.”

Winry glanced up at him, surprised. She had never, that she recalled, heard Ed say anything about how much it had hurt. She knew, of course, that it did, but Ed had also been the only patient of Pinako’s that had not cried out during the painful nerve attachments. She waited, but it didn’t seem like he was going to continue, so she said, “Don’t worry, Al will be here tomorrow morning, and he’ll be here to stay with you until you’re all recovered.”

“You think I can really do it in a year, Win?” he asked, his fingers still tapping on the bench. “I mean, I’m not a kid any more, I’m not growing, so you think my body will still heal as fast?”

“I don’t know, Ed,” she said honestly. “Wait,” she said, stopping him when he reached for his prosthetic leg. “You can’t put that on, you’ll irritate the stitches, what are you thinking?” She got up, jerking open her supply closet, pulling out a crutch.

“I guess I’m not thinking,” he admitted, taking it from her, pulling himself up with it in a practiced motion and tucking it under his arm.

“You should go to bed, Ed,” she instructed him. “Get as much rest as you can tonight.”

“I don’t think I can sleep,” he said admitted, shifting his weight on the crutch. “I thought Al was going to be here tonight. I’m too on edge,” he said, his eyes darting side to side. He lowered his voice, his cheeks turning faintly pink at his next admission. “Sometimes Al can get me to sleep, he kind of pets my hair, like mom used to do, but Al’s in Central, or on his way from Central, anyway.”

It seemed like it had been ages since he had been open with her, in any way. In fact, the times when she worked with his nerves, getting ready for the surgery, were the only times they had been close to each other, the only times they had spoken about anything other than where is the baby? Can you watch the baby? Would you feed the baby? If I change the baby will you put her to bed? Here they were, in the same house, yet when Al wasn’t home they moved in circles one around the other, like magnets that pushed each other away. Winry let out a slow breath. “Well, I’m not Al, but maybe I can help you sleep,” she offered, but he shook his head.

“It’s not the same,” he told her.

He hobbled across the workroom on the crutch and stared up at the flight of stairs that led up into the house.

“Do you want some help?” She asked hesitantly.

Ed considered her offer, looking steadily from her form to the stairs and back, and shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, I’ll take some help,” he said.

It was different, trying to help him, because he was taller than her now, if only by an inch or so. He was taller, he weighed more, and there was no way to help him other than to wrap and arm around his waist and offer him balance as he hopped awkwardly up the stairs. She had helped him when they were kids, when she had been the bigger one, when she had been in charge, when she had envisioned herself his doctor, when she had taken it upon herself to put her friend back together as best as biomechanics would allow, but now she really was in charge. There was no one for her to turn to if she did not know what to do. When she was eleven she had believed she could do no wrong, that there was no automail problem she could not solve, that Edward was in the best hands available. Now she felt almost afraid to touch him.

“Aw, man, I am a mess,” Ed said, but he was laughing as she deposited him on her bed, seeming not to notice her discomfort. “Why’d you bring me in here anyway,” he demanded, noticing that he was in her room and not Al’s.

“Well,” she began, still hesitant. “I’m not your brother, but I am your friend. I thought you wouldn’t want to be alone quite yet.”

His pride made him want to protest, that he didn’t need her to watch over him, to soothe him into sleep, that she would be doing plenty of that soon enough and even that was too much to ask from her, but he swallowed it, seeing how she hesitated. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her feelings by turning her away, like he knew he had done so many times before. If she wanted to be there for him, he would let her. She was his best friend, after all. “Okay,” he agreed, quietly, not meeting her eyes.

She wanted to sit behind him, to wrap her arms around him, to press her chin into his shoulder and her cheek against his own, but was that the act of a friend, or a lover? What did she know?

What did any of them know?

She shifted on the bed, drawing her feet up under her knees and turning to sit behind him, skimming her fingers lightly down his shoulder blades and digging them into his lower back, which she knew must be perpetually sore from walking with one strong leg and one false one. “Ah,” he said, giving in, voicing his approval. “You’re good at that,” he told her.

“I try,” she said softly, moving her hands slowly up his back as she felt him beginning to relax.

“Mmm,” he said. “You smell good.”

“Eh?” she said, confused. “I do?” Winry was certain she smelled of nothing but sweat and machine oil, the way she always smelled after working in the shop. Not a particularly attractive or feminine smell, she was sure, but she had never known Ed to give a false compliment.

“Yeah. I missed your smell,” he said, and her eyes flew open, her hands stopping their massaging circles. “Hey, don’t stop!” he protested, and she made herself continue.

“Ed, you should lay down,” she instructed. “You’re supposed to by trying to sleep, and you don’t sleep sitting up.”

“Lay down with me,” he said, tugging at her hand as he shifted into a lying position.

She cooperated, her heart pounding, and pulled the blankets up around them, lying back on the pillow next to his. He was still holding her hand, she realized, and he was staring at it, rubbing his thumb over her veins.

“I love your hands, Win,” he said quietly, seemingly transfixed.

“Thanks,” she said, unsure of how to respond. After a moment she pulled her hand away, turning on her stomach and propping her chin on her hands, looking down at him. His eyes were closed and there were faint creases between his eyebrows. “Are you nervous?” she asked.

He shrugged with one shoulder, not opening his eyes. “I guess,” he admitted. “Shouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you know what to expect, so yes, you should be,” she said bluntly.

He cracked one eye open, the corner of his mouth jerking up in a wry grin. “Aw, thanks, that really makes me feel better,” he said sarcastically, but he reached over for her hand again, wrapping his fingers tightly around her own.

“What?” she asked, raising one eyebrow, pulling her hand away slightly.

“Eh?”

“What do you want with my hand all of a sudden?” she asked him, and watched his cheeks turn faintly pink. I’ve slept with this man, her mind told her suddenly. And now he’s embarrassed by holding my hand?

He dropped it instantly. “Sorry,” he said quickly, but she could already feel her own face flushing crimson. It had been a year ago, about, at least a year ago that she had collided with a dead man on her way to the market to pick up a half dozen eggs. A year ago that they had yelled and she had cried and they hugged and comforted and argued and ended up here in her bed. Her heart sank into the pit of her stomach. He wished it had never happened. That’s what he told her. “Win, what’s wrong?” he asked, concerned.

Round eyes blinked at him. “Nothing,” she said miserably.

He turned his head, looking out her window at the deep blue of twilight. “It’s been a little while since I’ve been in here,” he said with a faint smile don’t even say it Ed, she thought darkly, glaring at him as he gazed at the sky, unaware. Whatever it is you might be about to say, I don’t even want to know what it is. Just don’t say anything.

But he didn’t, she realized, and he wasn’t going to. She let her head drop onto the pillow, closing her own eyes and trying hard not to think anything at all.

After a while she became aware of his fingers pulling through her hair, just like what he said Al would do for him, stroking the long strands slowly and gently. She opened her eyes to find that he was watching her, his expression carefully blank, his golden eyes blinking every few seconds, their dark gold lashes brushing together ever so briefly.

She was determined to do nothing.

She did nothing when he pressed his warm lips to her forehead, and she did nothing when he pulled back, watching her carefully. “Ed.” She let his name hang between them for a moment. “What are you doing?”

Another beat passed before he answered. “I’m not sure,” he whispered. The silence between them was becoming oppressive, and suddenly she wanted to sit up, to jump out of bed, to say something bright and cheerful and switch on the light on the night table to illuminate the darkening room. He couldn’t possibly be looking at her the way he seemed to be, his eyes burning into her just like they had that night that other time, he couldn’t possibly be wanting what he swore he didn’t and she couldn’t possibly be even considering- “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I just wanted to touch you.”

“Why?”

He looked down at his lap. “I’m sorry.”

She put one hand on either side of his face, feeling the rough texture of his cheeks on her palms, and he lifted his eyes and let her meet his lips with her own. “Edward,” she whispered, her face only inches from his, “tell me you want to do this.” Don’t answer me Ed, I don’t even want to know your answer.

“We can’t-“ he began, shaking his head.

She pressed a finger to his lips. “We’ll never tell him,” she said of Al in a rush of words, things she never meant to say tumbling from her lips. “He’ll never know. He’ll never ask, and we’ll never tell.”

“Is this what you want?” he asked hesitantly.

Her deep eyes widened. She nodded I’m not going to get an answer I’m never going to get an answer why are we even doing this I swore he swore we swore this would never happen and-

Ed shook his head. “I can’t- We can’t, Winry. We shouldn’t.”

I know we shouldn’t and you know we shouldn’t and I’m never going to know if it’s something you want or not because I don’t want you to answer me not really “He said it was all right,” she insisted quietly. “He said he doesn’t want to tie me down.”

“And I said we would never do this,” he reminded her, pushing her hands away.

“Did you promise?” she whispered.

Wordlessly, he shook his head again. “But,” he began, looking down at himself, gesturing to the stub of his leg, his missing arm. “Like this?”

“Edward, I don’t care,” she assured him, grasping for something familiar. She was used to reassuring him that things were going to be okay. She was used to offering him her comfort. “I don’t care how many parts you have or don’t have. You’re you, regardless.”

That wasn’t really what he meant, he had been referring purely to the physical maneuverability of it, but her words sent a rush of memory over him.

“Alphonse, how can you possibly-“ his words caught in his throat, and he looked down at himself in disgust. “I’m half a person!” he protested.

Alphonse had taken him by the shoulders, holding good and scarred skin alike, and ducked his head down, looking into his friend’s eyes. “No, Ed,” he said gently, nervously, not wanting to say the wrong thing. “No.” He let himself stare, unrestrained, at the un-naturalness of it all, the sheer imbalance of his form, and at the same time, the beauty in it. “Maybe half a body,” he admitted, honest as always, “but you’re a whole person.”

Edward had looked at him witheringly, searching for pity in his open face but finding none.

Alphonse reached for his single hand, pressing it between his own, twining their fingers together. “You’re a whole person,” he repeated, “and I think you’re fine the way you are.”

Edward leaned forward, pressing his face to the younger boy’s chest, not knowing whether to laugh at the absurd assurance or to cry at the truth of it but suddenly unable to look him in the eye.

“Edward?” Winry said gently, calling him back, moving back into his field of vision. He had turned away, and she had followed his eyes, not letting him escape her. “You don’t believe me?”

He shook his head, pressing his lips together. “No, I believe you,” he said quietly, with a heavy sigh, falling back onto the bed and bringing his only arm up to cover his eyes. “I can’t do this, Win. It isn’t right.” He slid his arm up a bit so he could read her expression.

She didn’t understand. He hadn’t said enough.

“It wouldn’t be you,” he told the ceiling. “It would be him.”

Slowly, she reached over him, wrapping her hand around his, pulling his arm off his face so she could see his eyes. But he’s gone, she wanted to say. You’ll never see him again. We’re both free, she wanted to tell him, but he was no freer than she was, and she had known that all along. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I won’t ask you again.” She pulled him back up to a sitting position and wrapped both her arms around him, letting him bury his face in her long hair.

“I love you,” he whispered, and for a brief moment, her heart soared.

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, entwined like lovers. He wasn’t thinking, not really, just watching the shadows move across the room with the shifting moonlight and listening to her quiet breathing as she lay next to him. He shivered slightly, suddenly missing the warmth of her body, and wondered when they had separated. Was she sleeping?

He reached over, sliding his arm under her, trying to pull her closer to him, and she smiled, eyes still closed, and rolled over, resting her head on his shoulder and throwing one leg across his hips. Hesitantly, he rested his hand on the small of her back, and felt the rise and fall of her breathing against his torso. He was not thinking any thoughts about love, about different kinds of love, about how many people a person can love in a lifetime. He wasn’t thinking about death, and separation, and which is harder for the heart to understand. He wasn’t thinking about existence, and what parts of himself he may have inadvertently left behind on the other side of the Gate.

When he felt rough, gentle fingers sliding over his cheek, his jaw, trailing down the side of his neck and stroking the place below his ear, he did not think anything at first. She must be asleep, came the slow realization. We’ve both been asleep. A light kiss fell on the side of his face, and he turned away, not even knowing why. God, does she think I’m A? he wondered, knowing he should push her away but instead pretending to sleep himself, enjoying her touch as much as dreading it. Her hand slid over his throat, moving across his chest, brushing a nipple and he stiffened, unmoving. He let out a heavy breath, realizing this was a bad idea as his sleep-muddled body began to catch up to the sensations it was registering. Her lips fell on the hollow at his neck, following his collarbone, and a calloused palm pressed up his side, fingers pushing into his ribs. He jerked when she touched the shiny, strange skin that had been underneath steel for so many years at a time, grasping at where a right arm should have been, clutching at the scarred stump.

Her eyes opened, and he could feel her sharp intake of breath as she stiffened against him, lifting her head. Now she wakes, he thought, still in a half-daze himself, looking blearily into her round open eyes, dark in the shadowed room. Her lips were parted, and she pressed her teeth into the lower one, pulling away from him slightly, seeming to expect him to do something. “That feels kind of weird,” he whispered in the dark, moving his had to cover hers, drawing it away from his empty shoulder.

“Sorry,” she whispered, not breaking eye contact. “I think… I must have been asleep.”

He took a deep breath, slowly bringing her hand to his lips, pressing it into them. “You could touch me somewhere else,” he suggested finally, almost disbelieving his own words. He wanted this, or at least part of him wanted this. Al had forgiven them, and Al was not there, and would never know. And Germany was worlds away.

She pulled her hand away, moving back to the empty side of the bed and pressing her face into the pillow. He sat up then, watching her, not sure what to do next. Her shoulders were shaking, he saw. Was she crying, or was she angry? “Win…” he said softly.

“What are you trying to do to me, Edward?” she demanded into the pillow, not looking at him.

His eyes widened. “Do to you? You started this! What are you trying to do to me?”

“I was asleep!” she wailed, sitting up, facing him, and throwing the blankets into his lap in a half-formed bundle. “Make up your mind!” she said desperately. “Who do you love?”

“You,” he said simply, and that was his answer, at least right then, even if it was not a complete one. He pushed the heap of bedding off of him, letting it rest in a pile between them.

“Then you need to decide how, and just how much,” she insisted, her tone not accusing at all, more sad than anything else. “As much as I want to, I’m not going to do this with you if you’re going to wake up tomorrow telling me you regret it. I can’t do that again!”

He turned away from her, swinging his leg over the side of the bed. “I’m going back to Al’s room,” he said stiffly, eyes casting about for a moment for his prosthesis before remembering that the limb was downstairs in the workshop and there were stitches in his leg. He stood up slowly, not looking back at her and using the nightstand for balance as he hopped awkwardly across the room to retrieve the crutch he had dropped earlier in the day.

Out in the hallway, he leaned against the railing, looking down into the house that was not his house, feeling that this life was not his life; that nothing could be real anymore. Edward Elric was in pieces, and his soul was stretched thin as his heart trying to collect them all again. Yes, he was standing in the hall on one leg while the other was two floors down in the workshop, and yes, his right arm was disassembled somewhere in Winry’s closet, but these things could be remedied. His body could be whole again, if not completely flesh, and soon enough he would have four working limbs after more than a decade without them, something that was possible only in this world he had been born in.

But love and guilt, he was afraid, would never be one without the other. He imagined Alphonse, his lover, alone and abandoned in Germany, and knew a piece of himself would always be there with him, as much as he professed to hate that devastated world. He had known they could not always be together, and had always turned the conversation away when Alphonse tried to speak of the vast forever that was the rest of their lives. He had known that eventually he would leave, and he had done exactly what he had sworn not to do, and gotten involved. Even now, after all this time, he couldn’t sort out for himself exactly why he had stayed with the younger man, if it was because he loved him in his own right or because he felt useless on his own, away from his brother, and Alphonse had been a ready substitute.

It was as impossible to return to the Alphonse in Germany as it was to return to the Al in his memory, Al the child, the innocent. They had both been innocent.

Now he was afraid he would never be a whole person again.

Chapter Six: Without a Hand to Guide Us

Al felt as if his bones were going to crack, but he grit his teeth and said nothing, letting his brother grip his hand tightly, watching as he squeezed his eyes shut, gasping raggedly. In the corner of his vision he saw Winry jumping up to adjust the IV she had running antibiotics and painkillers directly into his bloodstream. His eyes did not move from his brother’s face as he watched her lay a hand across his forehead, swiping his damp bangs off of his face. “That should help a bit,” she said, her voice comforting, reassuring, and Ed nodded, his eyes still tightly shut, but loosened his grip on Al’s hand just slightly. “I’m not doing any more today, I can’t stress his nervous system any more than I already have,” she told Al quietly. “In a few more days he’ll be ready for another round.” She leaned her face down, close to Ed’s ear. Although his eyes were shut she knew he was still conscious. “I just upped your morphine,” she said to him. “You should stop feeling so much pain within a few minutes. If it’s not enough, promise you’ll say something.”

He nodded, once. She could tell he was feeling the effects already; his hand went limp in Al’s and his eyelids fluttered, opening in dull gold slits as his facial features relaxed a bit.

Winry looked down at her hands. Her fingers were stained rust colored with blood; she could see it in the creases of her fingernails. She didn’t need to look further to know that there was blood splattered across the front of her surgical smock as well. “I’m going to clean up,” she said to Al, leaving the surgery room that was adjacent to her workshop.

She scrubbed at her hands at the sink, and looked at her reflection in the cloudy mirror. Her hair was covered in a bandana and her surgical mask was still around her neck from where she had pulled it down after she finished for the day. Her skin was pale and her eyes looked sunken, with dark circles under them. Why do I look so terrible? she thought briefly. I’m not the one who just endured massive trauma to my nervous system. I’m just the one who inflicted it. She felt herself shudder, and her stomach lurched uncontrollably now that the surgery was over. Machines were so clean, so precise, so predictable, and the human body was so volatile, with different surprises and different problems. It was a different kind of machine, she supposed, and she told herself time and again that she could handle it, she could handle the blood and the frayed muscles and the cut off bones, the unnatural way the body healed off the stumps of missing limbs. It was part of what she did, it was part of her life, and she was strong and she could handle a little bit of gore as long as it meant she was helping someone. Not everyone is cut out for this, her grandmother had warned her. But her parents were. Her parents were doctors, her parents had seen these things every day, these things and worse, things even worse than seeing a metal suit of armor speaking with her best friend’s voice, carrying her other best friend in its arms, bloodied and mutilated and dying-

Strong arms wrapped around her waist, familiar hands clasped around her middle. “Go upstairs and rest,” he told her softly. “I’ll stay in here with him.”

“I don’t need to rest,” she said, with no force in her voice. “I need to stay in here with him, make sure he doesn’t develop a fever.”

“I’ll come get you if anything changes.”

She shook her head, pulling away from him and returning to the surgery room. She could hear his footsteps behind her. She re-checked the IV, re-straightened the sheets on the bed, and pulled the second chair over and sat down. “I’m just going to stay here,” she said, the sound of her words becoming lost in the roaring in her ears. “I’m fine,” she thought she said, but the next moment her stomach was dropping out from under her and Alphonse caught her before she slid to the floor.

“You’re exhausted,” he said firmly. “We’ve been in here for twelve hours.” He had pressed a cold glass of water into her hands, and she sipped it gratefully. “Give yourself a break.”

“Al-“ came Ed’s hoarse voice, and Al was at his side in an instant.

“Brother?” he inquired softly.

“’M thirsty,” his brother whispered, his words slurred and slow from the medication. Al put a hand on his forehead, more for comfort than to check for a fever, and slipped a chip of ice between his brother’s lips.

“Better?” he asked.

Ed nodded.

“Do you want another?”

He nodded again. “Win?” he asked, his voice cracking.

She jumped out of the chair and was at his side in an instant.

“Go rest,” he instructed, before Al slipped him another bit of ice.

In the end it was Al who stayed up through the night, watching over both of them. Winry dozed kneeling on the floor by the bed, her head resting on the edge and her hand on Ed’s good shoulder. His brother slept fitfully, waking every half hour or so and speaking very little, but Al knew his dreams must have been tormenting him, because he would cry his brother’s name or call for his mother, and in the dark Al could see a different scene in front of him, superimposed over this reality; one where his own soul hovered over the bed, watching his brother, tied to this world only by an intricate array drawn in blood on a suit of armor, wanting to offer comfort but unable to feel any contact and fearing that his insensitive leather gauntlets would hurt rather than help the small form in the bed. He reached out his human hand, wrapping his fingers around his brother’s palm, and felt a delayed squeeze. Ed was not asleep. Al hadn’t thought he was. He stroked his thumb soothingly across the back of his brother’s hand, his only hand, and hoped that his presence was enough.

Al’s bed had become Ed’s bed, after Winry was through with the surgeries and had finished installing the automail ports. He wasn’t allowed to get up until his body had fully healed around them, which he had known from the beginning, but that didn’t make him any less restless. He could only read every book in the house so many times, he could only demand descriptions of his brother’s military missions until he knew Al’s life almost as well as if he had actually been there with him, and it didn’t help that his energy level was so low that even if he had been allowed to get up, he would have been tired out as soon as he was out of bed. The days began to run together in a haze of painkillers and feverish dreams interspersed with hours of waking boredom and quiet conversations.

He was sitting, propped up on several pillows, staring at the book in his lap but not reading it when his brother interrupted his listless state.

“Brother?” he questioned hesitantly. “Don’t be mad, but-“

“Why would I be mad?” he interrupted, frowning. Not that he hadn’t been irritable with both Al and Winry, constantly, snapping at them for stupid things and causing them to tiptoe around him even more than usual. Not that he wasn’t a real treat to take care of, he was certain of that. Best patient in the world, he was.

“You’ve got a visitor.”

Ed snapped the book shut with his one hand. “Al,” he groaned, “I feel like shit, I don’t want to see anyone right now.”

“But today is-“

“I don’t care,” he said, knowing his voice sounded harsh and immediately regretting it when he saw his brother’s hurt expression. “Sorry, Al,” he said, forcing his voice back to something more neutral. “I’m not exactly in the best mood right now-“

“I noticed,” Al said dryly, leaning against the doorframe. Then he shrugged. “But we love you anyway, and that’s why we put up with you.”

“Thanks,” Ed muttered sarcastically. “So why the hell would you want me to inflict my foul mood on anyone else?”

Al raised his eyebrows. “Actually, I told him not to come, but he insisted. I’m sure he knows you’re not exactly a ray of sunshine right now.”

His brother just glared at him.

“Please don’t tell me he came all the way from Central and you don’t even want to talk to him,” Al insisted, letting his eyes widen in a way he knew his brother couldn’t say no to.

Ed leaned his head back on the pillows, turning his glare to the ceiling. “Ugh, not that bastard!” he protested. “I don’t want to see him, and I don’t want him to see me like this!”

“Why not?” Al asked innocently. “I thought you were friends.” His brother’s expression did not lighten, and Al changed his tone. “Brother,” he said quietly. “If you really don’t want to see him-“

Ed gave a heavy sigh. “Fine, Al,” he grated out. He looked as if he was going to add something else, but he remained silent.

Within a few minutes General Mustang strode into the room, pulling a chair up next to the bed and sitting down. “Hello, Edward,” he said, fairly pleasant, but not without his characteristic smugness. “How are you feeling?”

“About as good as I look,” he said sullenly, looking down at his single leg stretched out under the blankets.

Roy handed him a package, wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with a string. “Happy birthday,” he said simply, and Ed took it from him, forcing half a smile onto his tired face.

“Thanks.” He pulled at the string, thankful that it was just a simple bow that he could untie easily with his one hand, and slid his finger under the paper to rip it off. However, the paper was thick and wrapped in several layers, and Ed ended up sighing and handing it back to him. “Do you mind?” he asked crossly.

Roy did not apologize; just finished unwrapping the package and set its contents, a pile of books, on the bed next to him. He watched as Ed picked up the first one.

“Huh,” he said, still listless. “An alchemy book,” he observed, setting it aside.

“It’s new, its from-“ Roy began, but Ed had already picked up the second one, and his expression brightened.

“Hey, thanks!” he said, his voice genuine this time.

Roy blinked in surprise. “You know, I didn’t really believe Alphonse when he said you liked those,” he began, and Ed looked at him quizzically. “They’re kids books,” he said. “And besides, I never figured you for fantasy.”

Ed just shrugged one shoulder, already turning the book over to read the back. “People change, you know,” he said distantly. “Besides, when I was a kid, I was reading stuff grown people have trouble understanding. I didn’t have time for anything like this.” He picked up the last book and his eyes widened. “What’s this?” he demanded, holding it up between two fingers, as if he didn’t want to touch it.

Roy gave a light laugh at his reaction. “I’ve read it, it’s wildly entertaining and horribly inaccurate. I thought it would amuse you.”

“The Life and Times of the Fullmetal Alchemist: Edward Elric, Alchemist for the People?” he read, his expression incredulous. He flipped it open. “By anonymous? What the hell? What did the guy write that makes him not want to give his name? Is he afraid I’ll come after him once I read this?” He opened the book to a spot near the middle, and read a few lines to himself, and actually laughed.

Roy smiled. “It’s very entertaining, believe me.”

“Thanks, Roy,” he said again, and they lapsed into an easy silence.

“So,” Roy began, after several minutes had passed. Ed arched an eyebrow. “Remind me how old you are?”

“I’m twenty-seven,” he answered evenly.

“You don’t look twenty-seven,” Roy observed, immediately wanting to take the statement back. He didn’t come here to torment Ed while he was sick, but it seemed automatic, of course he should tease him about his appearance. To his surprise, Ed just shrugged again.

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” he asked. “I’m not supposed to be this old anyway.”

“Twenty-seven is hardly old,” Roy assured him, feeling relieved.

Ed narrowed his eyes, looking cockily back at him. “Aren’t you going to be forty soon?” he asked devilishly, with a trace of spark in his eye.

“No,” Roy snapped, but he let Ed laugh at him anyway.

They both turned to the door when they heard Al and Winry’s hushed voices in the hall, and Ed groaned and rolled his eyes when they began to sing. “Guys,” he tried to protest, but Roy joined in as well, and despite his objections a large cake was soon placed in front of him with twenty-seven lit candles. He did not blow them out right away, trying to continue to look annoyed, and Al, who had been carrying Kaiya, sat her down on the bed next to Ed. “Help him with the candles, Kaiya,” he instructed her, but she just waved her hands in delight at the little flames. Finally Ed allowed himself to grin, and took a deep breath, blowing out all the candles.

Winry leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, whispering, “happy birthday,” to him, and Al picked up Kaiya and sat down on the bed next to his brother, sitting her in his lap. Ed leaned over and awkwardly hugged him with one arm. Winry clasped her hands together. “Don’t you look cute, the three of you like that,” she exclaimed. “Stay like that, I want a picture.”

Ed rolled his eyes. “Don’t take a picture,” he protested. “Just cut the cake, it looks really good. You didn’t make it, did you?”

“Al made it,” Winry confirmed.

“Ah, good,” Ed said, earning himself a smack on the back of his head. “Hey, be nice to me, it’s my birthday!”

After the cake had been eaten and Roy had left on the last train to Central and Winry was putting Kaiya to bed, Al remained next to his brother in his bed. Ed leaned his head on his younger brother’s shoulder and sighed.

“Do you feel old?” he inquired.

“Nah,” Ed said contentedly. “I feel happy.”

“You do?” Al asked, surprised.

“Yeah. I mean, other than the fact that I can’t really get up, that is,” he amended. “Sorry, Al, I know I’m a bad patient.”

Al spread his hands. “Hey, don’t apologize to me, Brother, say you’re sorry to Winry. You’re her patient.”

Ed just leaned further into his brother, feeling the warmth of his body on the side of his face. His body ached dully where the ports had been screwed into his bones, but it was a familiar ache, and he sighed again. “You know what?”

“Hm?”

“Ever since… the whole time we were searching for the stone, Al? Part of me didn’t really believe I’d ever be this old.”

Al frowned. “Don’t say that, Brother,” he admonished. “I always believed in you.”

Ed looked up at him. “Did you?”

Al nodded. “Of course.”

“How do you know?”

Al tipped his head. “What do you mean, how do I know?”

Ed was silent for a few minutes. “You do remember some things, don’t you,” he said quietly, not really asking as much as stating it as a fact. “Not when you’re trying to, but you do remember a little bit.”

“Sort of,” Al admitted. “Mostly emotions, though. Images, here and there.”

“I didn’t mean to take your memories, Al. I don’t know if they were part of what I traded, or if they’re just gone because your body can’t remember things it never experienced. I’m sorry-“

“My soul remembers,” Al said softly. “Stop apologizing. I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for you.”

Ed reached for his brother’s hand, squeezing it tightly. “I love you Al.”

He leaned his cheek into Ed’s hair. “I love you too.”

“Be careful,” Al warned, holding his older brother steady as he grasped the crutch firmly in his hand, pulling it under his shoulder and resting most of his weight on it.

“I am being careful,” Ed said through gritted teeth. He wanted to tell his brother to let go of him, that he wasn’t going to fall, that he was plenty used to walking on one leg and one crutch, but the truth was it had been nearly four months since he had stood upright and his balance was admittedly shaky.

“You all right?” his brother asked, grey eyes full of concern.

In truth, the heavy ports were pulling at his newly healed skin causing it to sting uncomfortably, and his bones ached and his muscles throbbed, and at this moment he couldn’t imagine having actual mechanical limbs attached to these ports that felt more massive than they really were. He knew it was impossible for the metal to rip from his body, clattering to the floor with bits of bloody skin and muscle still clinging to them, but it sure as hell felt like it.

“It’s okay to say no,” Al said quietly. “Do you want to lay back down?”

Ed shook his head stubbornly. “No, I want to get out of this room.”

“O-kay,” his brother agreed, continuing to support him as they made their way slowly down the hallway and down the stairs, stopping twice for Ed to rest. Once at the bottom of the stairs, Ed surveyed the living room, which he also hadn’t seen in four months. Winry was sitting on the floor with Kaiya between her legs, doing one of those puzzles with the little knobs on each of the large, brightly colored pieces. Other toys of Kaiya’s, including a set of plastic tools in a brightly colored plastic toolbox, were strewn about the floor. Kaiya babbled a few syllables and dropped the puzzle piece, stretching out her little hand in Ed’s direction and shrieking a few more incomprehensible sounds.

Winry looked up and saw Al helping Ed down the last step, and she stood up immediately. “I didn’t say you should come downstairs, Ed!” she said worriedly. “I said you could get up, you know, to go to the bathroom or something!”

Ed smirked, his expression still cocky although he felt physically drained. “Yeah well, I got so excited by taking a piss all by myself that I just got carried away,” he said sarcastically.

Winry threw up her hands, shaking her head, and looked him up and down, taking a quick stock of his well being. “Sit down,” she ordered, pointing to the couch. “You’re exhausted.”

“I want to sit on the floor,” he said stubbornly, and she rolled her eyes.

“Fine, sit wherever you want,” she said, clearly wanting to avoid an argument.

Al helped him sit carefully down in front of the couch, and watched with concern as his brother winced when the stump of his leg hit the floor. “Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable on the couch?” he asked.

Ed shook his head. “Nah, I wanna play with Kaiya without worrying about her crawling off the edge of the cushions,” he said. She had started crawling early and ever since it had begun Ed had been terrified, somewhat unfoundedly, that she would crawl off the edge of his bed without him being able to stop her. He folded his leg in a half-cross legged position and patted the floor next to him. “Hey,” he said to her, “want to come play over here?”

She turned the last piece of her puzzle and watched it snap into place, and said excitedly, “Ma-ma-ma-ma!” and overturned the whole thing, scattering the pieces over the floor again.

Winry crouched down beside her daughter. “Very good!” she said encouragingly. “You’re very smart, you know that?”

“Ma-ma-ba-ba!” she responded, picking up a puzzle piece and banging it on the floor.

“Ba-ba?” Winry repeated.

“Ba-baba-ba,” Kaiya confirmed, dropping her puzzle piece and staring at her mother. “Ma!”

Winry looked over at the brothers. “Do you think she’s saying bottle?”

Al shrugged. “Ba-ba?” he tried.

“Ma-ma-ba-ma!” she said again, and became suddenly very absorbed with her puzzle again, piling the pieces on top of each other.

Al smiled. “Ah, you want your ma-ma to get your ba-ba,” he translated, looking over at Winry with a grin.

“Ba-ba?” Winry said to her, but Kaiya had become disinterested with the conversation. She looked at Al. “I think she’s just making sounds, I don’t think she’s really saying bottle,” she said. Then Kaiya pushed her puzzle aside and began her lurching crawl across the floor in Ed’s direction. When she had begun crawling it had been as if she was in some kind of race, and would propel herself across the floor faster than her baby’s coordination would allow, causing her to fall face-first into the floor fairly often, but she seemed to have mastered her speed-crawl and scrambled over to Ed, crawling into what had become “her spot” between his legs. Winry stood up. “I’m going to get her some juice anyway,” she said. “Maybe that really is what she wants.” Ed wrapped his arm around Kaiya, and for a few minutes she was content to be held, but soon she was squirming out of his grasp.

“Brrroooo,” she announced.

Ed touched her nose. “Broo,” he said back, smiling.

Winry came back with Kaiya’s sippy cup and handed it to Ed. “Here,” she directed, “you can give her this. Don’t let her throw it across the room.”

Ed laughed. “Don’t throw your cup, Kaiya,” he said, letting her take it out of his hands and bounce it on the floor.

Winry immediately crouched down and picked it up. “I said don’t let her do that,” she said crossly, putting the cup back in her daughter’s hands. “Hold on to your juice,” she instructed.

“Ma-ma-ma-ma,” Kaiya responded.

“She didn’t throw it across the room,” Ed protested, defending her.

Al switched the radio on, and together they listened to the news broadcast from Central. There had been another bombing earlier in the week, and there was still no information, at least that was made public, about who or what was behind the attacks. Eventually, Ed admitted that the floor was not terribly comfortable after all, and Al helped him onto the couch, ignoring his protests that he was fine and could get up on his own. They sat around the coffee table listening to music and played a few rounds of go fish, which had been a favorite game of the three friends ever since they knew what card games were, and then Al suggested that they open up one of the wine bottles they had been given for the holidays. “To celebrate just being together,” he said, and poured the three of them a glass.

Ed took a sip and set his glass aside, out of Kaiya’s reach, afraid that the wine would make him even more tired than he already was. It was stupid, he thought, frustrated, that he should be so tired, it wasn’t like he did anything other than sit around for a few hours rather than lay around upstairs. He leaned his head back on the couch and stretched his leg out, propping his foot on the coffee table and letting Kaiya hang on his knee.

“She’s gonna start walking soon,” Al said about the baby, watching her sway back and forth against Ed’s knee.

“No she’s not,” Winry told him. “She’s way too young to start walking, no babies start that young. She’s only eight months old.”

“She’ll probably start walking before I do,” Ed said.

Winry shrugged. “She might,” she agreed. “I think Granny said I started walking by myself at fourteen months. How old were you?” she asked both brothers at once, looking from the younger to the older.

Ed thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said finally.

“You don’t know?” Winry repeated, startled at his answer.

Ed shook his head. “No, I don’t. And I don’t have anyone to ask, either.”

“Do you know how old I was, brother?” Al asked curiously, realizing that Ed was right, there wasn’t anyone around they could ask about their early childhood firsts. If they didn’t remember it, they’d likely never know.

Ed was still shaking his head. “I don’t know how old you were, Al,” he said, his mouth twisting up in a fond smile, “but you started crawling exactly like Kaiya, trying to get everywhere first, and smashing your face into the ground on the way. Only you cried about it more,” he added. “And I would come running and try to pick you up.”

Al laughed. “Maybe that’s why I cried so much, because I wanted your attention,” he told him.

“Ed, you cried a lot too,” Winry told him teasingly.

“What?” he demanded. “I did not!”

“Yes you did,” Al and Winry said in unison.

“No I didn’t,” Ed insisted.

“Whenever you didn’t get your way, you cried,” Winry said.

Ed narrowed his eyes. “That was a long time ago then,” he said stiffly. “I was too little to remember that.”

“I remember it, Brother, so you couldn’t have been that little,” Al said, smiling as he took a sip from his wine glass.

His older brother frowned, but was ultimately too tired to continue denying what was apparently true anyway. His eyes snapped up when he heard Al gasp.

“You’re bleeding,” was what he said, and Ed looked down, startled, seeing the wet redness seeping through his shirt. Winry was at his side in an instant, insisting on knowing why he didn’t say anything if his shoulder was hurting him and pulling the collar of his shirt open to dab at the cracking skin with a piece of tissue.

“My shoulder always hurts, I didn’t know I was bleeding!” he told her defensively, leaning back on the couch and letting her inspect the area around the port.

“You stay there,” she instructed, “I’ll be right back.” She left the room to retrieve a few medical supplies from her workroom downstairs.

“It’s not like I can go anywhere,” he hollered after her.

Al looked carefully at his brother, noticing how pale and tired he looked. “If you weren’t feeling well,” he admonished quietly, “you should have said something.”

“But I liked being out here with you and Winry and Kaiya like a normal person instead of laying around upstairs in that room!” he said miserably.

Winry returned with some gauze and some antibiotic cream for the irritated skin around the port. “Its too soon for you to be moving around this much,” she declared. “I shouldn’t have let you come down here, you need to be upstairs in bed. Your body is still too stressed from the trauma of nerve surgery.”

“I wasn’t moving around,” he protested, “I was just sitting here!”

Winry was looking down. “I’m sorry, Ed,” she said. “I should have told you right away to go back to bed.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Hey, you did, remember? I just didn’t listen.”

She put a hand on either side of his face, looking at him critically. “You’re exhausted. You were tired just from coming down here. You need to go to bed, it’s late anyway,” she directed.

The fact that he didn’t object made it all the more clear just how tired he was. Sighing, he reached for the arm of the couch and flinched as he tried to stand up.

“Be careful,” she warned.

“But my good shoulder is fine,” he mumbled.

“Your whole body is connected, you know that,” she told him. “You’re going to start bleeding again.” She glanced at Al, who wrapped an arm around his brother’s waist.

“I can carry you upstairs,” Al offered.

“I can get upstairs on my own!” Ed said, but his voice was lacking its characteristic stubbornness.

“I know you can,” Al said quietly. “But you don’t have to, that’s why I’m here.”

“You can’t carry me.”

“Brother, you probably weigh about half of what I do right now. Just let me carry you.”

Ed didn’t say anything, and let his younger brother heft him carefully up in his arms. Al was briefly alarmed at just how light Ed really was with only two limbs, but carried him slowly up to the bedroom and laid him gently on the bed.

“Do you want me to stay here with you?” he asked hesitantly.

Ed pulled the covers up to his chin. “Nah, I’m about to fall asleep as it is,” he said, yawning as if to prove his statement.

“Okay,” he said, lingering for a moment at the side of the bed. “Good night,” he added.

“’Night, Al,” he answered, his eyes already closed.

Winry stood at the top of the stairs in her nightgown, leaning over the railing. “Al,” she called down to him. “Come to bed, it’s almost one in the morning.”

Al was picking up Kaiya’s toys that were still strewn about the living room. “I will, lemme just finish up in here,” he said, gathering the playing cards and stacking them neatly, putting them back in their box and away in the drawer in the end table. Then he picked up the wine glass Ed had discarded earlier and downed the contents in one long, slow gulp, and put the cork back in the bottle. When he went upstairs to the bedroom Winry was already in bed, curled up on her side with her head on one pillow and the other clutched in her arms.

Al undressed quickly, putting his clothes in the hamper and diving under the covers, wrapping his arms around her and whispering in her ear, “hey you. Gimme back my pillow.”

She rolled over, swinging the pillow in an arc over her head, landing it squarely on Al’s face. “Thanks,” came his muffled response. He was asleep within minutes.

Winry lay awake, watching the shadows on her ceiling, listening to Al’s rhythmic breathing. If she listened hard enough she thought she could hear Kaiya sleeping in her crib, and Ed sleeping in the next room. “We’re really alone, Al,” she said in the darkness, even though she knew he was already asleep.

Al had forgiven her, just like Ed said he would, because Al loved her; loved them both. But even with Al at her side, she was suddenly and painfully aware of how alone she was. I don’t have anyone to ask, Ed had said earlier, and the conversation had stuck with her, eating away at the back of her mind all evening. None of them had anyone to ask. Granny was not there to tell her she shouldn’t have let Ed get out of bed so early, to tell her it was normal for him to bleed around his ports, to tell her exactly how long she needed to wait before attaching the actual automail. Neither her grandmother nor her mother was around to tell her at what age Kaiya should be learning to walk, and her heart twisted, not for the first time, knowing that her daughter would never know her grandparents.

Is this what adults did, she mused, make everything up as they went along? Is that what her parents had done? No, they had Granny to guide them along, to tell them what to expect with their daughter. She didn’t want to guess with Ed, to play things by ear. She didn’t want to do a single thing that might cause him any more pain than she already had to; she wanted to know for certain that she had done the surgery perfectly, that he would have perfectly functioning limbs in the end, but there was no certainty in anything anymore. She didn’t want to guess with her daughter, to cross her fingers and hope she was doing right. Kaiya couldn’t even speak yet, and Winry was already dreading the day she would have to answer her questions about why she has three parents when the other little kids have only two. “We’re totally alone,” she repeated. “None of us has anyone to ask.”

“What are you talking about?” Al mumbled blearily, sitting up in bed, looking at her worriedly. She hadn’t meant to wake him, and she sighed.

“Nothing,” she said finally, and he lay back down. “Go back to sleep.”

“We don’t need anyone else,” Al said, sounding defensive. “We’ve always been fine on our own.”

Winry rolled over on her side. “You’re such an Elric,” she muttered, pulling the covers tight around herself.

“Were you expecting something different?” Al asked, clearly puzzled, but after a few minutes she heard his breathing return to the slow rhythm of sleep, and continued to stare at the shadows on her ceiling.

Chapter Seven: The Calm Before

The sound of her footsteps on the tiled floor marked the deliberate pacing that was a well-known habit of the General. She paused, turning smartly on her heel, looked her communications officer in the eye, and said, “No, I don’t like it. Something doesn’t sound right about it.”

He frowned. She was only echoing his own sentiments, and he hoped for some inkling of direction from her.

She turned back to the window, staring out at the walls surrounding the base. “It’s almost like someone is deliberately feeding us false information,” she mused, and he nodded. “Whoever they are, they’ve got operatives who are in this pretty deep, maybe in this base itself.”

He cleared his throat. “General Hawkeye, we’ve been through the personnel files of every soldier stationed here, nothing seems out of the ordinary.”

“Of course not,” she said briskly, turning her back to the window and leaning against the glass, her hands spread at her sides along the sill. “Of course it doesn’t seem that way, not at first glance.”

“Investigations is already-“

“Not investigations,” she interrupted him, looking at him intently. “You. Until we get to the bottom of this, involve as little people as you can. I trust you, but I can’t trust everyone, and the evidence is clear. They have someone, or some ones, inside the base.”

He pulled his hand up in a salute, spouting out “Yes ma’am!” and turning to leave.

“And Lieutenant!” she called after him, stopping him in his tracks, and he watched her point to the offending object on her desk. “What is this?”

He kept his features carefully blank as he answered, “That’s a bouquet of flowers, General, ma’am.”

“Who brought it in here?” she demanded, hands still clasped behind her back, eyes still a-flash with suspicion.

“Ah, the secretary, ma’am. They’re from your husband,” he added helpfully, because that’s what the secretary had told him, and that was the rumor that had been circulating the base: General Hawkeye was married to someone else in the military, someone who also held a high position, and the relationship was kept under wraps for professional reasons.

She arced an eyebrow. “They’re a security risk,” she said crisply, turning back to the window and waving her hand at them. “Remove them at once.”
“Al,” the blonde mechanic directed sharply, pressing down firmly on the older brother’s flesh shoulder. “Let go of his hand, he’ll smash your fingers.” Al released the hand reluctantly, and she snapped, “Hold his hip with your free hand, don’t let him jerk off the table.” She held the connection lever firmly in her own hand, making eye contact with Al across the table, and watched Ed squeeze his eyes shut in anticipation of the shock to his system. With a nod, they pulled their respective levers in unison, and Ed arched his back off the table and gritted his teeth. He gave a strangled cry that was cut short when the color drained from his face and his body relaxed suddenly on the table.

“Brother!” Al cried out, leaning closer to his face and turning his head to look questioningly at Winry.

“He’s fine, Al, he just passed out,” she assured him briskly. She had connected automail for dozens of patients, not only him, and she knew exactly what she was doing, although Ed was the only patient she ever replaced more than one limb for. Shoving her hands under his shoulders, she gave a grunt. “Come on, Al,” she instructed, “help me move him to the bed.”

Even between the two of them he was nearly too heavy, and they strained under the weight of heavy steel.

Winry hated this part. She hated causing him pain. She knew it was normal for a patient to lose consciousness after the trauma of nerve connection; she knew everything had gone smoothly but she still hated seeing him like this, pale and unconscious and hurting. She glanced over at Al, and knew he was thinking the same thing.

She watched his eyelids flicker, unsure if he was waking up already or not, but in another moment she was looking into gold eyes that were bright with pain. “It’s over,” she said reassuringly. “That was the worst of it.”

He nodded slightly, and squeezed his eyes shut, turning his head to face the wall as his brother put a cool cloth over his burning forehead.
Riza frowned, muttering to herself as she rolled up the map and exited the conference room. Something wasn’t adding up.

Amestris had been at an uneasy cease-fire with Drachma for over two years now with no hint of progress on a treaty, and now the Drachmen leaders suddenly were willing to make concessions. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the meeting had been a cover for some already pre-determined, unofficial agreement, and it worried at her unrelentingly. Everywhere she turned there was deception in this new government, and at times she didn’t know who to follow.

She was a good General, she knew that, that was why she had been promoted so many times, but, as she had been doing more and more frequently, she found herself wishing for the days of following the man she believed in and pushing him to the top.

Returning to her office, she sat down at her desk, twirling a pencil on its eraser and trying to make some sense out of the current situation. She could see the ring of water the vase from the flowers had left on the wood, and absently swiped her finger through it, thinking vaguely to herself that it looked like it could be a transmutation circle.

Just then her phone rang, and she shook herself, answering it promptly, “Hawkeye.”

“Did you get what I had delivered?” He didn’t identify himself but she recognized his voice immediately; only those she worked the closest with had her direct line at the base.

“General,” she said coldly, “Firstly, I don’t have time for anything so frivolous, and secondly, I’ve ruled that everything not entirely necessary to the function of this base to be a security risk. I had them thrown away.”

There was silence on the other end, and she frowned, drawing another line through the ring of water in the corner of her large desk. Finally she heard him clear his throat. “You threw away the papers?” he asked hesitantly, sounding uncertain.

At his words she sat up straight, her eyes snapping open. Had there been information concealed somehow in the bouquet? Was she wrong to assume they were merely another desperate attempt to win her back as more than just a co-worker? “Why did you send them that way?” she demanded, firing the questions at him one by one. “Why were you so secretive, why not just have them delivered military post?”

“What are you talking about?” he snapped back through the line. “I had Havoc personally deliver them to you, so there wouldn’t be any chance of the information leaking out, I know you’ve been having security problems in Dillon; it’s been all over Central command.” He was silent for a moment, thinking. “I take it they haven’t been received,” he said tightly. “Damnit!” he swore. “I haven’t heard from the Second Lieutenant in three days, and I assumed he must be living it up there in Dillon or something.”

“You didn’t send me flowers,” she said quietly, her cheeks burning. Someone had gotten those flowers past security, and they weren’t sent out of any misplaced affections of her ex-husband.

“Why in god’s name would I do that? You’ve always sent them back before,” he raged. She could hear something through the phone, probably him pounding his fist down on his desk. Control your temper, Colonel, she would have snapped in the old days, and he would have sat up at attention, as if it were her in charge of him and not the other way around. “I can’t get out of Central right now,” he said, his voice weary. “Things are too tied up with the terrorist attacks and the civilian unrest, or I would have come and spoken to you personally.” He groaned. “I knew I should have been worried when Havoc never checked in with me. I needed someone I trust to touch base with our contacts in Altenburg.” By “contacts” she knew he meant the Elrics, and wondered what was going on.

“Sir,” she inquired, “what was it Havoc was supposed to bring me?”

“I’m not telling you over the phone,” he said quietly. “You’re right to worry about the security in your base. Something isn’t right here either. Records I know I’ve read over are turning up missing, or worse, they’re filed but I can tell they’ve been altered. Classified government files from before the coup are unable to be located, and the president thinks the military has them-“

“What does this have to do with Altenburg?” she asked, her brows drawing together in worry. Roy hadn’t sounded this scattered, this panicked, since the days after the coup when they were both unsure of their fates.

“In my search through the military files,” he said carefully, “I found records of an Edward Heiderich, suspected to be the Fullmetal Alchemist, having been arrested and released in Central last fall.” She nodded; she had heard all about that incident. “But there are more current records of him having been in Central, even up to several weeks ago, and of course that’s impossible. Someone, for some reason, must be using his name, to what gain I don’t know.”

“Wasn’t there another alchemist, years ago, in Xenotime, who posed as Fullmetal?” she mused.

She could hear him sigh on the other end. “It’s not him, I’ve already located him. He’s in Xenotime with his younger brother, working on some kind of agricultural alchemy project for the government’s reconstructive efforts. He hasn’t been in Central in years.”

“But what reason would anyone have to use Edward’s title?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I was hoping our friends could shed some light on this. I haven’t been able to keep in good contact with them recently. Do you have anyone you can send to Altenburg?”

She nodded. “I’ll go myself,” she said at once. “And I’ll have my people call you if Havoc turns up here, or if anything is heard about him at all.”

“Thank you,” he said, sounding relieved. “With the way things are going in this country, I don’t want to do anything that would put them in danger, but one of them might be able to tell us something. I just haven’t been able to get out of Central.”

“Sir, it’s all right. I’ll go. I’ll let you know if I learn anything.”

“Thank you,” he said again. “And Riza?” he added after another moment of silence. “Be careful.”

She pursed her lips. “I’m always careful, Sir.”
When he woke up his vision slowly came into focus on his best friend, sitting on the side of his bed, dropping her set of miniature screwdrivers from one hand into the other in a series of metallic clinks. Her hair was still tied under the scarf she wore when she worked, but several strands had worked themselves loose and hung in chunks around her face.

Careful not to move at all, he took a moment to assess his body. His nerves felt like something was sparking through them, which was, if not pleasant, at least familiar to him. He remembered vividly the efforts he spent fighting with his makeshift prosthetics wishing for even the pain of automail attachment, something he had always dreaded, if it meant he would be able to move freely.

He could feel the weight of the limbs pulling unnaturally on his body, and he remembered that as well. It was painful but familiar, and he felt his shoulder jerk involuntarily. That, too, was to be expected.

The movement startled her, and Winry looked down at him, putting the screwdrivers down on the sheets beside her.

“How long have I been out?” he asked, his voice cracking and his throat feeling scratchy.

“About two hours,” she said softly. “Do you want something to drink?”

He nodded, slightly, and remained still as he watched her stand up, leaving her pile of screwdrivers on the bed, and stride over to the sink in the workshop, reaching up to the shelf above for a glass for him. She returned, setting the glass on the bedside table and frowning. “You’re going to have to sit up a little, Ed,” she said apologetically, and he nodded.

“All right,” he agreed.

She pulled an extra pillow from the closet, and set a steadying arm around his shoulders as he lifted his head, shifting with the smallest of movements he could manage and grimacing at the sensations that went ringing through the wires, up into the ports and into his nervous system. Mid-way to sitting up he froze, eyes squeezed shut, breathing heavily. Through the rush of electricity he could feel her rough hand on his flesh arm. “That’s normal, Ed,” she said soothingly. “Just stay still a moment, let your body adjust.

He gave another slight nod. “I know,” he said hoarsely. After a few more deep breaths, he opened his eyes and sat up a little further, allowing her to slip the pillow behind him so he could lean back, letting the wall behind him support some of the weight of the metal arm that was bolted to his chest. She handed him the glass, and he drank it slowly, careful not to spill any on the sheets. “Where’s Al?” he asked, looking around.

“He went upstairs about a half hour ago, do you want me to get him?” she offered.

He nodded, staring down at the yet-immobile right hand at his side. The fingers twitched slightly, and he felt the twinge inside the port in his shoulder. A faint smile flickered on his lips. “How soon till I can get up, Win?” he asked her, looking up at her.

She shrugged. “You can get whenever you’re ready,” she said grudgingly. “If you feel up to it. You’re not going to be able to move, of course-“ She looked skeptically at the stairs leading up into the house. “I’ll have to get Al to help me get you up the stairs, you’re about five times as heavy as you were, Ed,” she added.

He shifted slightly on the cot, wincing at the way his every movement seemed to jar the ports of his arm and leg into a flurry of electrical activity. He heard the door at the top of the stairs open, and his brother’s voice called down, “Winry? Kaiya wants you, she keeps yelling ma-ma-ma-ma, can you come upstairs? I can’t figure out what she wants.”

Ed gestured to the stairway with his left hand. “Go ahead,” he told her.

She stood up, facing the stairway. “Al, your brother’s awake,” she called back, and Ed could hear the thunder of his brother’s footsteps on the wooden stairs. They passed in the doorway; Winry heading up and Al entering the workshop.

When Al looked he thought Ed seemed to be unconscious; he was completely still and his eyes were closed. His eyebrows were drawn together across his forehead, and when Al approached the cot he reached out, drawing his thumb lightly over the wrinkle between his eyes, wanting to make it disappear. One gold eye slit open. “Hey,” he said weakly.

“How do you feel?” Al asked, pulling a chair up to the cot and sitting down.

“Like I’m being over run by electricity,” came the response, and the other eye opened as well.

His brother looked small, Al thought. And young. And tired, but not necessarily in pain.

“See that?” Ed asked quietly, and Al blinked.

“See what?” he asked, following his brother’s eyes to the automail hand and saw the thumb and first finger twitch, coming closer together and almost touching.

A weak grin cracked across his pale face. “They’re moving, Al,” he said, his voice softly excited. “My fingers are moving.”

He would never get tired of it.

Ed watched his daughter pick up the red crayon and throw it on the ground with an expression of pure delight. He picked it up. The blue crayon was next. He picked it up and handed her the orange one, smiling. “Look,” he said, “on the paper, see?” He laughed as she banged the crayon down on the paper repeatedly, making a collection of orange marks on the white expanse.

When Kaiya discovered that the crayon would break if she banged it hard enough, she threw both halves of the orange on the floor and picked up the blue, intent on it meeting the same fate.

He heard her coming down the stairs before he saw her. Winry leaned her chin on the banister, and Ed tipped his head backwards, looking at her upside down. “What?” he asked her lazily.

“Al’s upstairs working on something,” she complained.

“I know,” he told her, “that’s why I’m down here playing with the baby.”

Winry rolled her eyes. “You’d take any excuse to play with her,” she teased.

“So would you,” he countered. “I thought Al was on leave,” he added. “What’s he got to work on?”

Winry narrowed her eyes. “Well, that’s your oh-so-good friend General Mustang for you. ‘Sure, Al, I’ll put you on leave for as long as you want, I’ll do anything for you Elrics. But while you’re on leave let me just call you back to Central every few weeks and send you home with extra work so you just think you’re on leave.’ What are you doing?” she asked then, reaching over the railing and messing her fingers through his bangs.

He immediately brought his hand up to flatten them back down. “Huh?”

She came down the last few steps and flopped down on the couch next to him. “What have you been doing all day?” she repeated. “Al’s holed up in his study and I’ve been filling orders for customers, what have you been doing?”

“I did all my exercises!” he said defensively, inching away from her. “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing!”

She fixed her blue eyes on his. “Ed. I know that. That’s not what I was asking. What are you doing right now?”

“Huh?” he said again, rubbing his hand over the back of his head. “Just… I dunno, what do I always do? Kaiya and I are bumming around. We were coloring and stuff,” he said, gesturing to the crayons and paper spread out over the coffee table.

She leaned over, reaching for one of the thick sheets of paper with blue and orange marks in the corner of it. “Did you do this one?” she teased, her eyes glinting with a smile.

Ed raised his eyebrows. “No, mine’s the one with the airplane on it.”

“Airplane?” she asked curiously. Then she sat up on the couch, clasping her hands together. “You mean the machines that can fly up in the air?” she all but shrieked.

Ed chuckled. “Yeah, that,” he affirmed, looking at her with amusement.

She clutched the piece of construction paper to her chest, and he imagined he could almost see the little stars floating around in her eyes. Winry flung her arms out to her sides, still clutching the drawing and flopping back into the couch, and sighed. “Can you imagine!” she said wistfully, staring up at the ceiling. “Operating a machine that flies, what amazing technology! To feel the wind on your face, to be high above the word, up with the clouds, nothing but you and that beautiful machine… oh, Ed, how does it stay up there?”

He rubbed the back of his head, knowing he couldn’t get away with a simple explanation; this was Winry, after all. “Well, I told you I’d teach you how they work, remember?” When she nodded, he continued. “It’ll take a while to explain-“

“D’you think we can make one?” she said excitedly.

“You want to build an airplane?” he repeated, startled but not entirely surprised.

“Isn’t that what you were doing?” she demanded, and he stared at her. “In that other place, in Germany, weren’t you building a machine that was going to fly up into space?”

His mouth hung open. “How did you know that?” he asked her.

She folded her arms in front of herself. “Al told me. He said you and your… your friend were building a rocket because you thought you could get back here that way. Right?”

Ed continued to stare.

“And then Al and your friend finished building it while you were here, and that’s how Al got back.” She looked at him. “Right?”

“I didn’t know Al told you that,” he said finally, and looked away.

She chased his eyes, moving over the couch back into his line of sight. “I don’t know why you didn’t tell me,” she added before she could stop herself, letting an indignant tone creep into her voice.

“You didn’t ask!” he protested.

“Ed!” she argued, sitting up on her knees now, so even sitting on the couch together she was taller. “Yes I did ask you, and you said I wouldn’t understand.”

He shook his head. “If I said you wouldn’t understand something, I was talking about alchemy. I’m sure you would understand about planes, in fact, if you had been born in that world instead of this one, I’m sure it would have been you, not me and Al, being the one to send a rocket all the way into space,” he told her, trying to placate her.

She sat back down. “You and Al and your friend,” she corrected quietly. “It was you and your friend who built your rocket, and when you were gone Al just helped him finish up.” She had said something wrong, she could tell by the way his expression became that of someone who wasn’t there. She figured, right then, that even if she waved her hand in front of him he wouldn’t see her. He was somewhere else entirely. “Ed,” she called softly. “Come back to earth.”

“I am,” he said, his voice vague but his eyes no more focused than they were. “I am back on earth.”

“What was your friend’s name?” she asked, surprising herself. She didn’t even know where that question had come from, there were plenty of things about Ed’s stay in Germany she was more curious about than the name of his lover.

He blinked, his gaze coming into focus once more, and he turned to face her, seeming to be debating whether or not to answer her. Finally what ever he was struggling with was resolved, and he said, “Alphonse.”

Winry raised her eyebrows. “Really? His name was Alphonse? Wow. That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?” She didn’t understand why he flushed the way he did, looking away and stammering some kind of explanation, reaching for the drawing again and looking at it as if it had some kind of answer he could not provide. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined Ed with another man, but so it was, and who was she to think anything of it, she who had seduced (but there was no seduction involved!) his younger brother at the tender age of fourteen.

“It’s aerodynamics,” he said, nervous, his eyes darting from side to side. “It’s like a push-pull, to keep it up. There’s gravity,” he said, his voice becoming more even, more steady. “Gravity wants to pull the plane down, so it’s built with wings, see? And the wings give it lift. And the air, the air pushes against the plane, but it can fly through the air anyway because it has this huge engine that’s working against the air, and it pushes back harder than the air pushes…” he snatched a pencil off the table and began scribbling things next to his crude drawing. “It’s really all about physics,” he said, and she leaned in closer, suddenly fascinated with his descriptions of the foreign science, and, glad he was at ease again, she vowed never to bring up that ‘other Alphonse’ ever again.

Ed had found himself inordinately exhausted that night, and fell asleep early, sprawled atop the blankets with his clothes still on. He woke with a start several hours later; when he looked at the clock it was nearly one am. He could hear music coming from the other side of the wall, in Winry’s room, and rubbed his eyes, looking down at himself and realizing he had been sleeping in his clothes.

With a yawn, he stood up at rummaged through the drawers and pulled out some pajamas to put on, and then gave his automail a good stretch before venturing down the stairs to see what Al was up to this late.

His brother was not in the living room or in the kitchen, and Ed assumed he would not be another story down in Winry’s workshop if Winry was in her room. Puzzled, he made the difficult climb back up the stairs to check the study, but Al was not in there either. Pausing in the doorway of their bedroom, he thought he heard voices in Winry’s room, and felt his cheeks turning red when he realized exactly where his younger brother was and what he was doing.

Unsure of how to feel, he let himself flop down on the bed again, holding his automail hand above his face, studying it against the white of the ceiling. Slowly, he clicked each finger together with his thumb, something he hadn’t been able to do in ten years and something he had never been certain he would ever be able to do again, and let a smile flit across his face. Maybe, he thought, everything would turn out okay. Maybe he hadn’t destroyed his brother’s relationship the night he returned to his own world. Maybe he could live the rest of his life here, in the little three-story house in Altenburg, with his brother, his best friend, and his daughter. Maybe, slowly, just like Munich, this town would become home. He had a family all his own again, now, and maybe he would never leave them.

Edward Elric was tired of leaving things behind.

His father had left him when he was barely old enough to understand what was happening, and then his mother had left him too, when he was plenty old enough to know what had happened, and ever since then he felt his life had become a series of leaving things behind.

The brothers had left their home in Rizembool, burning it to the ground so they could not return even if they had wanted to, and with it they burned their childhoods, he realized now. So that had been left behind as well. When they had found –not really found, but obtained- *the Philosopher’s Stone, they had left the military behind as well, including the people who genuinely cared about them.

In crossing the gate he had, albeit unintentionally, left behind once more everyone he cared about, and in crossing back to his own world he had done the same.

He did not want to do it again.

Eventually he drifted back into sleep, and dreamed strangely of his father, whom he hadn’t thought of in a long time, except to answer Al’s questions. When he woke the next morning the image of his father’s face, his eyes hidden behind the glare on his glasses, was burned into his mind.

“I can’t, Winry, I’m sorry, I know it’s beautiful outside but I have too much to do right now,” he heard his brother protesting on the top floor of the house. Kaiya, as far as he knew, was playing in Al’s study upstairs, and he looked listlessly at the book that rested in his lap. It was the one Roy had given him for his birthday, The Life and Times of the Fullmetal Alchemist, and he had to admit, it was entertaining in its inaccuracies, but after about the fifth reading it, like every other book he’d acquired since returning, seemed to loose its charm.

“This isn’t fair, Al,” Winry said darkly. “You’re supposed to be on leave, and yet somehow I still never get to spend time with you-“

“Well what do you want me to do about it?” Al exploded, and Ed flinched, looking up towards the stairway. “Shall I just not do my job, because my girlfriend wants to spend time with me?”

“You said you’d always make time for me!” she snapped. “But I see what’s really important to you!”

“Winry, that’s not-“

“Forget it.”

“No, wait, I-“

“I said, forget it. You have work to do.”

“Are you mad at me?” Al demanded

“No,” she said harshly. “I’m not mad at you.”

“Well then quit acting like it,” he hollered after her, his voice echoing off the upstairs hall.

Ed hurriedly looked away when he heard her storming down the stairs. He expected her heavy sigh and heavier flop on the couch, he didn’t expect her abrupt announcement, “Why does he always think I’m mad at him?” She looked at him and added, “Don’t give me that smirk, I’m not in the mood for you right now either. God, I don’t know how Al puts up with me.”

He leaned his cheek on his hand. “Cause he loves you,” he told her simply. Then he looked towards the window. “I’ll go for a walk with you, if you don’t mind walking slow,” he offered. “It looks like it’s the first nice day of the year.”

She stood up, looking at him critically. “Are you sure you’re up to it?” she asked skeptically.

He narrowed his eyes, sitting up straighter. “Yes,” he insisted, challenging her. “I said we’d go slow. I’ll be fine.”

She shrugged. “All right then,” she said, reaching into the closet for a light jacket. Then she pulled one out and handed it to him. “Here, wear Al’s, since he clearly isn’t going anywhere today.”

He took it from her, not saying anything, and she followed him out of the house and down the stairs, which he took carefully, grabbing at the banister for the last few but making it down without incident. She walked behind him for a few steps. “Put your heel down first, Ed,” she instructed from behind him, and he stopped short, turning around.

“I know how to walk,” he snapped, putting his hand on his hip.

“No, you don’t,” she argued, “or you’d be putting your heel down first. Your left leg needs to do exactly what your right leg does.”

Ed smacked his forehead. “Gah!” he said in frustration. “Can you be my friend for just one minute, instead of being my mechanic? I thought we were going for a walk, not having an afternoon of criticizing Ed.”

She folded her arms, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. “Why do you have to argue with everything I say?” she demanded.

He raised an eyebrow at her, then tried to hide a smirk.

“What?”

He tried to wipe his expression unsuccessfully.

“What, Ed?” she repeated.

“No wonder Al always thinks you’re mad, if this is what you act like,” he said mischievously.

She just glared at him, and stayed a step behind him as they continued down the sidewalk. “That’s better,” she called after him after a few more steps.

He began to slow his pace more and more until they were finally walking side by side.

“You should have brought the cane,” she added after a few minutes of silence. “You’re still dragging your automail.”

She could see him stiffen, his lips forming a thin line, but he nodded. “Maybe,” he conceded.

“Lets stop in the soda shop there,” she suggested, gesturing to the little store counter on the other side of the street from them.

Ed looked relieved, and immediately agreed. They crossed the street, and he stepped quickly in front of her and held the door open with a flourish, smiling when he saw her shake her head at his attempts.

The shop was full of kids; giggling groups of girls and teenagers on first dates. Ed could imagine Winry and Al coming here, sharing a soda and looking into each other’s eyes.

“We should have brought Kaiya with us,” Winry mused, hopping up on one of the counter stools and resting her elbows on the counter and her chin on her hands. “You could have pushed her in the stroller.”

He shrugged, taking the stool next to hers. “Oh well. We can come again, you know.” He frowned, turning sharply when he heard a series of giggles from behind them. The group of girls were ducking behind their menus, and he was sure he saw one of them point. “What’s their deal?” he said crossly, looking down at his metal hand. “Don’t they know it’s rude to stare? Haven’t they ever seen someone with automail before?”

Winry smiled, shaking her head. “Ed, I don’t think it’s the automail they’re staring at,” she said with amusement.

His frown increased. “Well what the hell?”

She looked from the girls back to him, trying to figure out if he could really be so clueless, and finally told him, “Well, either they think you’re cute, or they know who you are. Or both.” When his cheeks flushed pink, she almost giggled herself.

“I don’t think they know who I am,” he mumbled, looking down at the counter. “I look completely different now.”

She shrugged. “You don’t look that different, Ed. Besides, I’m pretty sure everyone in this town knows who you are by now.”

Ed looked up when he realized someone was standing in front of them, and saw a man in a white coat standing behind the counter, smiling. “What can I get for you, sir?” he asked, his voice friendly. He was polishing a sundae glass as he spoke.

He turned to Winry. “What are you getting?” he asked her awkwardly.

“I’ll have a cherry soda, thank you,” she said with a smile, and the man nodded.

“Uh, I’ll have the same I guess,” Ed said quickly, feeling uncomfortable with the way he was being looked at. Wasn’t his return supposed to be this huge secret?

Soon there were two glasses of fizzing red drink in front of them. “So,” Ed said after a few minutes of silence and sipping. “Did you and Al come here a lot?”

She shrugged. “When he was around, we did.” She looked to the side, out the window at the people passing on the sidewalk, when she said, “This is where we came on our first date.”

Ed nodded. His guess had been correct, then. “There was a soda shop like this in Rizembool, in town,” he remembered, and Winry nodded.

If he had never talked Al into trying to transmute their mother, if they had both grown up in Rizembool living next door to the Rockbells, he and Al might have fought over who got to take Winry to the soda shop. He wondered who would have won.

“Ed, you cant be serious! You expect me to believe you?” Al asked him teasingly. “You’ve never been on a date?”

He just shrugged. “Well, really, what kind of girl would want to go on a date with me?”

Al’s expression was mocking. “I dunno, a bookworm maybe, someone who drowns herself in other people’s words, just like you do. Imagine how much you’d have to talk about!”

Ed rolled his eyes. “I have you for that, Al.”

Al laughed. “Well, that’s very sweet, but I worry about you, you know? You never try to meet anyone. Aren’t you even interested in girls?”

Ed fixed him with a serious gaze. “I have more important things to think about, you know that. I don’t have time for dates and girls.” He snorted. “Besides, what kind of girl,” he asked his friend slowly, “could possibly find me attractive?” His eyes took on that faraway look they got sometimes, the one that made Al’s mind burn with questions he never dared to ask. “Unless there’s someone out there who has a thing for mechanical parts.”

“Well, I think you’re pretty attractive,” Al said sweetly. “Mechanical parts and all.”

His friend just rolled his eyes again, returning to stirring his coffee. “There was a girl, once,” he said softly, in a brief moment of honesty. “She was my best friend, and my brother’s best friend.” He gave a light laugh. “Hell, she was practically the only girl I knew, or noticed, at least. And she was very beautiful.”

“What happened to her?” Al asked hesitantly. Ed’s voice was so soft, and his eyes were so sad, that he half expected Ed to tell him that this girl had died, or that something else tragic had come between them.

“I don’t know,” he said, very quietly. “She probably wonders the same thing about me.” He pushed his chair away from the table, standing abruptly and tossing a few bills on the table to pay for their coffee. “Let’s get out of here,” he said shortly, making it very clear that the reminiscence was over.

Winry was waving a hand in front of his face, and he blinked. “What?” he demanded.

She laughed. “What were you thinking about?” she asked curiously. “You looked completely gone.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I was,” he told her, unwilling at first to elaborate on his thoughts.

Were you thinking about your friend? she nearly found herself asking, but stopped herself right before she spoke. His reply startled her.

“Actually I was thinking that I’ve never been on a date,” he said hesitantly, and he seemed very young suddenly.

“Well this isn’t a date,” she said quickly, and he shrugged.

“I know.” He stirred his soda with the straw, and let his gaze wander around the shop once more. Most people had stopped staring by then; he guessed the commotion over his presence had died down. “Did you and Al really start dating when he was fourteen?” he asked her abruptly.

She blinked, even more startled this time. He didn’t sound like he was accusing her of anything, merely like he was curious, but her answer was still cautious. “Sort of,” she admitted. “Al… wanted me to move to Central with him, so that we wouldn’t be so far apart all the time,” she told him, “but I didn’t want to leave Rizembool. Of course, eventually I had to, because of the war, but-“ she paused, taking another sip of her soda. “We moved here because it’s a good place for my business; a lot of retired soldiers live here and in the nearby towns, so I get a lot of customers. And it’s close enough to Central that Al could come home more often.” She shrugged. “Once we got to see one another more than a few times a year, things just… happened.”

Ed looked like he was debating whether or not to say something, and she frowned. “What?” she demanded, on the verge of defensive.

“I didn’t say anything,” he protested, but her glare persisted.

“You were going to,” she pressed. “What was it?”

He looked directly at her. “I think,” he said slowly, “that fourteen is very young.”

She could have rolled her eyes, told him to mind his own business, snapped at him that he didn’t understand; there were a number of responses she had stored up for comments like his. Altenburg was a gossipy place, like any small town, and Alphonse had been famous already. She was used to criticism from strangers.

But Ed wasn’t a stranger. “Yeah,” she said softly. “It is.” She looked down at the tiled floor under her feet. “But Al always says he has two ages. When his body was fourteen, his mind was eighteen.”

“Do you believe that?” he asked intently.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. Age was a tricky thing. She herself was an adult now, but couldn’t say she always felt like one. Ed was four years older than her, but sometimes the difference seemed massive and sometimes it seemed like nothing. Sometimes she even felt like the older one. When she watched the brothers together she could sometimes believe that they were really only a year apart, but she couldn’t tell if that was because in her mind that was how she always thought of their ages or if that was how a stranger would see them too. “Do you?” she asked curiously.

Ed shrugged. “I don’t know either,” he told her.

She was expecting some kind of argument from him, and when none was forthcoming she demanded, “Why are you asking me this? Is this some kind of equivalent trade for the other day?”

He had finished his soda and was twisting his straw into an “o” shape. “Huh?”

“Are you asking me about Al because I was asking you about your friend?”

He dropped the mangled straw onto the counter and raised his eyes to her. “No,” he said simply. “I’m asking because I’m thinking about Kaiya.”

“Kaiya?” she repeated. He was never thinking about what she thought he was thinking about. “Edward Elric, you are the most difficult person to read I’ve ever known.”

He arched an eyebrow. “I’ve been told that before, I think,” he said nonchalantly. “And Al’s probably the easiest.”

She wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that either, so she slurped up the last of her soda with a loud sucking sound, turning a few heads. “You’re worried about me and Al, and Kaiya?” she echoed, bringing him back to his first puzzling statement.

“I don’t want to ruin her family,” he said with difficulty. “That’s what my dad did. I’m not him. If you and Al are- that serious-“ he looked away. “I just want to be sure that she isn’t going to lose anyone. That she’ll always have her parents. That she’ll never have to be alone, without anyone to keep her from making the same mistakes Al and I did.”

“Ed!” she said, surprised. “She won’t be alone! She has all three of us-“

“She needs two parents,” he interrupted. “Not three. I don’t want her to grow up confused. I don’t want the other kids around her saying things, whispering things…”

His voice trailed off but Winry could fill in the missing words. She remembered how the other kids talked about the brothers after their dad left. She remembered the teasing and the whispers and the speculations. Both Ed and Al had brushed it off as if it was no matter, pushing away the comfort she had offered them when they were children, but clearly it had mattered, if it was something Ed was still worried about.

“She’s your daughter, Ed,” she told him, her voice low, serious. She felt her heart pounding in her chest. Part of her believed that, and she could tell part of him believed it as well. “She won’t grow up confused. Everything is going to be fine. We’ll all three love her as much as we can, and she’ll be fine.”

He wasn’t looking at her. “If I had never come back, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” he said quietly.

“If you hadn’t come back,” she said, equally quiet, “she wouldn’t even be here.”

“We don’t know that,” he insisted. “It could be you and Al and her, happily ever after, with nothing to come between you.”

Winry stood up, pushing her empty glass to the back of the counter. “Ed!” she exclaimed. “Enough of this! It wouldn’t have been happily ever after and you know it! Neither of us was happy without you here!”

He stared at her standing there in front of him with her hands on her hips, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her face, her eyes bright with frustration.

“Come on,” she said, taking him by the arm. “I’ve been cooped up inside all week trying to finish those orders. You said yourself this is the first nice day of the year, lets get out and enjoy it!”

He blinked once, then cracked a hesitant grin. “Okay,” he agreed, pushing his own glass to the back of the counter. “Let’s enjoy it.”
Second Lieutenant Havoc pretended to show a genuine interest in the plain, mousy woman who had elbowed her way into the spot next to him on the crowded train to Dillon. She had begun with mournful complaining about the heat in the compartment and the lack of seats. “They should really built bigger trains,” she groused, “after all, I paid for a ticket same as everyone else, why should I have to stand? You know what I mean?” she demanded, looking up at him, and he had nodded neutrally. “It’s really hot in here, too. Doesn’t that uniform make you over heat?” She was pulling her blouse away from her thin chest, attempting to fan herself. “Because let me tell you, I am beyond overheating. This train is just too stuffy for me. You know, I heard those trains they built out to the desert, the ones that are going to connect to Xing? I heard they’re air-conditioned.” She nodded. “That’s right. Let the foreigners have all the luxury-“

He could have interrupted to tell her that there were no foreigners on those trains; they ran only through Ishbal and the Ishbalites had no desire to ride a train out of their homeland for any reason.

“I’m going to stay with my sister in Bethan for a few days, haven’t seen her in ages –god it’s hot in here- Bethan’s near Altenburg, you know, the town they say the Fullmetal Alchemist has turned up in-“

This perked his ears up a bit. Ed’s return was supposed to be a secret, but the rumors had been flying for over a year now with no sight of settling down.

“But it’s not him, I’ll tell you that much. Met him, I did, the real one, years ago on a train. He saved us all from terrorists. Of course, that train had enough seats for all its passengers, and wasn’t so ungodly hot, like this one. Short little thing, scrawny with blonde hair in a braid, not much when you look at him but powerful to those rebels, I’ll tell you that much, and they were big men. Remember it clear as day.”

He couldn’t bite his tongue any longer. “Excuse me, but what makes you so sure the rumors aren’t true?”

Her face lit up at the opportunity for a real audience, not just the general public in the standing room of the train. “Well,” she began enthusiastically, “I met the fake one too, I did, out west. Said he was the Fullmetal Alchemist, I said no way. Had a watch and everything, was using it for free room and board at an inn in my town, my very own town.” She shook her head. “Never did a speck of alchemy, not him or that creepy companion of his either. Knew it wasn’t him, he didn’t have that giant suit of armor with him the way he did on the train. Powerful alchemy, that, to animate a suit of armor to follow you around and protect you, don’t you think?”

Just then there was a horrible screeching sound, and the train lurched. The passengers in the standing room were thrown to one end of the car, the chattering woman landing on top of him. Havoc gripped the center pole tightly as he felt the car swing around, and covered his head to protect his face from the inevitable shattering of glass when the car slammed into something to its side, hard, and continued to drag another hundred feet or so on its side until it finally halted.

“Al, find out why the baby is crying,” Winry directed as she jumped up from what she was doing to turn down the stove when the pot of spaghetti began to boil over.

Both brothers clamored over to the baby, Al picking her up and both of them cooing over her. “Give her to me, Al, she needs her diaper changed.”

“No she doesn’t, I just did that,” Al insisted. “Kaiya, don’t cry, okay? You just didn’t like being over here alone, right? We’re both here now, so everything is okay.”

Kaiya instantly switched from fussing to babbling, grabbing at Al’s face with her hand.

“Ed, you wanna get the plates down?” Winry called from the counter as she was pouring the spaghetti from the pot into the strainer, sending up a cloud of steam. With one hand she shook the water out of the strainer and with the other she grabbed Ed’s flesh wrist as he reached up to the cabinet, snapping, “Use your other hand!”

He jerked angrily out of her grip and reached up again with the same hand.

“Ed!” she insisted.

“I’m not too good at picking stuff up yet,” he said darkly.

“Well that’s because you do everything one handed! Start using it more, and you’ll get better at it!”

He drew his eyebrows down. “You said yourself that this one might not work as well as the other one-“

“I’ve run every possible test on you, it’s fine!” she pressed. “I know you’re used to doing everything with one hand but if you keep doing that-“

She was interrupted by the smashing of three plates on the kitchen floor, and the baby started crying again at the noise.

“Brother, what happened?” Al called from the other room.

“You did that on purpose,” Winry accused.

“I did not! Don’t yell at me, it was an accident, I said I wasn’t any good at picking things up yet!”

“It was not an accident, I saw it on your face, you just reached up and knocked them over, you weren’t even trying! You are so immature-“

“Hey, I’ll have you know, I’m older than you by-“

“I don’t care,” she retorted. “I don’t care how old you are, even Al’s more mature than you and he’s only eighteen-“

“I’m twenty one,” Al said, hefting the baby on his hip. “Would you two cut it out,” he added. “You both need to grow up, you’ve been fighting like this every day.” He sat Kaiya in her highchair at the table and watched scornfully as Ed flopped down in the chair next to her as he bent down to begin picking up the pieces of the shattered plates.

After a moment Ed heaved a pointed sigh and said, “I’ll get the broom.”

Al held the dustpan as Ed swept up the last of the pieces, looking over at Winry, who was standing at the sink with her arms folded.

“How come it’s spaghetti again tonight?” Ed demanded, emptying the dustpan into the trashcan. “How come you always make the same thing?”

Al laughed, trying to lighten the mood a little bit. “Winry only knows how to make three things, Ed, you know that.”

Winry smacked the back of his head as he sat down again. “Quit complaining, Ed, you wanna cook?”

Ed just shrugged, reaching over and switching the radio on before picking up his fork to dish some spaghetti into his bowl. He passed the serving dish to Al, who set it down and switched the radio back to off. “Hey!” Ed protested.

“Between the two of you,” Al told him, “Three of you,” he amended when Kaiya screeched and banged on the table, “I’d really like to eat dinner in peace and quiet. Besides, all that’s ever on the news any more is stuff about the terrorist bombings in Central.”

Ed reached for the dial and turned it back on. “It’s not just in Central anymore,” he said seriously. The previous bickering was forgotten. “Someone’s sabotaging the train tracks all over the country, I heard it this morning. A train derailed right outside of Bethan.”

Al looked thoughtful. “That must be why General Mustang wants me back so urgently,” he mused.

“Al!” Ed and Winry protested at the same time, and Al looked guilty.

“I have to go,” he said sheepishly. “It’s my job. Something’s going on; they need me.”

“When were you going to say something about it?” Winry demanded. “I thought you were on leave till the end of the month.”

“When I was certain I couldn’t get out of it,” Al said grimly. “And I’m pretty sure I can’t. Things are really serious in Central.”

“I wish I could go with you,” Ed said suddenly. “I miss being able to help out like that.”

Winry glared at him. “Don’t you dare,” she warned him.

“I won’t,” he assured her. “I’m not healed yet anyway, not completely.”

“But even when you are-“

“I know, I know,” he said, waving away her concern. “Al’s told me all about it. I’m a secret. No one can know I’m back.” He raised an eyebrow. “A really badly kept secret,” he added, “seeing how everyone in this town knows I’m here, and eventually someone’s gonna come looking for me-“

“We’ll deal with that when it happens,” Al said firmly. “You’re not coming to Central with me, Brother.”

Ed sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m staying here. I’m retired from alchemy anyway.”

Chapter Eight: The Sins of Indulgence

“Brother, I have to go,” Al said, laughing, trying to shake Ed off as he clung to his brother’s side. “Let go, Ed, seriously,” he said, trying in vain to make his voice more stern.

“But you’re on leave,” Ed whined. “You’re supposed to be taking care of me!”

Al rolled his eyes. “You can take care of yourself just fine, you know that. Besides, Winry’s here.”

Ed relaxed his grip a little. “I know. I know I can, I just don’t want you to go. Why can’t you work at the base in Dillon, why do you have to work in Central?” he complained. “How did you and Winry ever do it, with you being gone all week? I don’t even like you being gone for a day! How long until you come back, by the way?”

Al pushed his brother’s hands off of himself. “I don’t know,” he said seriously. “I didn’t get a very clear description of what’s going on. I know it’s classified, and I know they need me. They need me, specifically, as an alchemist, not just anyone. So, I have to go.” He shrugged. “Its part of the deal, you know that, Brother.”

Ed frowned. “Do I ever. Once the military’s dog, always the military’s dog. Don’t do anything dangerous, promise me?”

Al sat down next to him. “I can’t promise you that. You of all people should know I can’t promise that. But I will promise you I’ll come home as soon as I can.”

The older brother nodded. “I wish I could go with you,” he said. “What if something happens? What if you get in over your head, who’s gonna back you up?”

“I’ll have back up, don’t worry so much! Whatever it is they need me to do, it wont be alone!” Al assured him. “Don’t worry so much! I’ve been doing this for years, you know.”

This only made Ed’s expression sourer. “Yeah I know. You started when you were just a kid. You should have been going to school with all the rest of the kids and playing outside and chasing girls and stuff. You never got to just be a kid.”

Al’s expression sobered. “Neither did you, Brother,” he reminded him. “I did it for you, you did it for me. And we turned out all right, don’t you think?”

Ed looked into his younger brother’s face and saw, not for the first time, the subtle changes that were taking place every day: the way his features were sharpening, his jaw line becoming more defined, his voice deepening slightly. “You turned out fine, Al.”

Chapter Eight: The Sins of Indulgence

“Brother, I have to go,” Al said, laughing, trying to shake Ed off as he clung to his brother’s side. “Let go, Ed, seriously,” he said, trying in vain to make his voice more stern.

“But you’re on leave,” Ed whined. “You’re supposed to be taking care of me!”

Al rolled his eyes. “You can take care of yourself just fine, you know that. Besides, Winry’s here.”

Ed relaxed his grip a little. “I know. I know I can, I just don’t want you to go. Why can’t you work at the base in Dillon, why do you have to work in Central?” he complained. “How did you and Winry ever do it, with you being gone all week? I don’t even like you being gone for a day! How long until you come back, by the way?”

Al pushed his brother’s hands off of himself. “I don’t know,” he said seriously. “I didn’t get a very clear description of what’s going on. I know it’s classified, and I know they need me. They need me, specifically, as an alchemist, not just anyone. So, I have to go.” He shrugged. “Its part of the deal, you know that, Brother.”

Ed frowned. “Do I ever. Once the military’s dog, always the military’s dog. Don’t do anything dangerous, promise me?”

Al sat down next to him. “I can’t promise you that. You of all people should know I can’t promise that. But I will promise you I’ll come home as soon as I can.”

The older brother nodded. “I wish I could go with you,” he said. “What if something happens? What if you get in over your head, who’s gonna back you up?”

“I’ll have back up, don’t worry so much! Whatever it is they need me to do, it wont be alone!” Al assured him. “Don’t worry so much! I’ve been doing this for years, you know.”

This only made Ed’s expression sourer. “Yeah I know. You started when you were just a kid. You should have been going to school with all the rest of the kids and playing outside and chasing girls and stuff. You never got to just be a kid.”

Al’s expression sobered. “Neither did you, Brother,” he reminded him. “I did it for you, you did it for me. And we turned out all right, don’t you think?”

Ed looked into his younger brother’s face and saw, not for the first time, the subtle changes that were taking place every day: the way his features were sharpening, his jaw line becoming more defined, his voice deepening slightly. “You turned out fine, Al.”
She didn’t wake up right away when she heard the sound, and when she did she was slow to recognize what it was and where it was coming from. When rather than stopping, it became louder and more alarming, she forced her mind into wakefulness, pushing herself up in bed and blinking in the darkness.

These were sounds she recognized from ever since That Day, ever since the Elric’s lives had changed irreversibly and, by association, hers did too. It wasn’t a sound she heard often, but once she was fully awake she knew exactly what was happening.

Snatching her robe from her door handle, she crept down the hall to the doorway of the other bedroom, and watched him tossing in the bed, his unintelligible cries tinged with fear. Cautiously, she entered the room, coming to stand over the bed.

“Ed,” she said quietly, forcing some volume into her just-awoken voice. Her hand found the switch on the wall, and she let light flood the room. “Ed, wake up, it’s a dream.” Wary of being smacked by flailing metal limbs, as she remembered happening before, when they had both been children, she steeled herself and knelt on the edge of the bed, grasping him firmly by the shoulders and bringing her face close to him. “Edward,” she said, with more force this time. “Wake up! Wake up, now!”

He jerked out of her hold, but sat up, his eyes wide open suddenly, gasping and choking, his body seeming to shudder. He looked at her for a second, and then curled in on himself, clutching his automail to his chest and letting out a muffled cry, his face pressed into the blankets bunched in his lap.

She scooted closer, alarmed at his display of pain, and wrapped a cautious arm around him. “Ed, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

He remained curled in a ball in the center of the bed, not lifting his face, but he nodded, and Winry leaned down, lowering her voice now that she knew he was awake.

“What hurts? Your shoulder? Is the port irritated? What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” he said into the blankets, his words blurring together. “It just hurts.”

“What hurts?” she pressed.

He turned his face to the side but his eyes were squeezed shut. “My arm,” he gasped out, and she frowned. This was new but not new. Ed had felt these phantom pains, in the limbs he no longer had, after she had installed his automail the first time as well. It was purely psychological, Granny had explained to her, but although that didn’t make it any less painful it meant no amount of medicine would help. She and Al had tried to follow Granny’s suggestion that they try to fool his mind into perceiving something comforting being done to the missing limb, and she tried that strategy now, rubbing her hands back and forth over the junction of flesh and steel, hoping the illusion would carry over as soothing to whatever part of his brain that registered pain in a limb long gone.

“I thought you were having a nightmare,” she said quietly, not stopping, making sure her hands had equal contact with skin and metal.

“I was,” he gritted out. “I thought the pain was part of the dream.”

She wished Granny were there, only Granny knew when to tell Ed to suck it up and deal and when to just comfort him in his un-combatable pain. “Is this the first time this has happened?” she asked, her concern growing. What if it had something to do with the way she installed the wiring? What if she shifted one of his nerves, only slightly, not enough to even see it but enough to mix up the signals to his brain, enough to cause him pain where no pain should be possible? “Since the surgery, I mean,” she amended.

He nodded, turning his face back into the blankets in his lap, and guilt began to press in on her.

She continued rubbing his shoulder. “Is this helping at all?”

He shook his head.

“Do you want me to stop?”

He shook his head again.

“Do you want me to get you a painkiller?” she asked hesitantly, but he shook his head at that too.

“What the hell for? I thought this was all in my head,” he snapped, and she fell quiet, feeling as ineffective as she had when she was eleven years old, watching over the little boy in the patient bed in her home in Rizembool.

Sighing, she grabbed him around the chest and hauled him into a sitting position, climbing further onto the bed and positioning her legs on either side of him and rubbed her strong hands over both his shoulders, feeling the need to do something even if she knew it wasn’t much. Outside the window was still pitch black, but in the silence of the still house she could hear the birds, and knew that it must be right before dawn, early morning, really, no longer late at night.

“Happens sometimes when I have these dreams,” he mumbled, and when she didn’t say anything, after a moment he continued. “Al always used to do this for me and it never helped, and then he tried to do this for me too. Nothing ever helps.”

“Then maybe I should stop,” she said again, but he shook his head.

Eventually he lay back down, and she kept a hand on his shoulder and lay down with him. She didn’t offer to stay, but he didn’t ask her to leave either, and eventually, after the sky had gone from dark grey to dingy white, they were both asleep again

She woke up feeling the warm sun on her face, and pulled the covers tighter around herself and stretched her legs under the sheets, pressing her face into the pillows and snapping her eyes open when she felt her foot brush against steel. Feeling momentarily disoriented, she sat up half-way and looked over at Ed, surprised to see his eyes open and staring blankly up at the ceiling. Slowly, he blinked, and turned to face her. “You’re awake,” he said.

She sat up the rest of the way, looking around. It had been a while since she had slept in Al’s room; she wasn’t like the brothers, falling asleep somewhere different every night. “What time is it?” she asked, covering a yawn with the back of her hand.

Ed glanced over at the clock on the nightstand. “About seven,” he said lazily, turning over and pulling the blankets with him. “Go back to sleep.”

“Hey,” she protested. “You took all the covers!”

“You’re in my bed,” he retorted. “That makes them my covers, get your own.”

“Ed,” she whined, and smiled to herself as he shuffled the blankets and sheets around and tossed her fair share over to her, not moving from his curled up position on his side, facing away from her.

She drew the blankets up to her chin, closing her eyes again at watching the pattern the bright sun made against her eyelids. “You feeling better now?” she asked sleepily, and heard him rustle the covers a bit more.

“Yeah, thanks,” he answered.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I know.”

She drifted back to sleep, and when she woke again she was alone in the bed. Ed was sitting on the window ledge in his pajamas, his hair tied back loosely and backlit by the sun, with Kaiya in his lap and a book balanced on one knee and a mug of coffee in his human hand. Kaiya had her face pressed against the window, her hands making little clouds of fingerprints all over the lower half of the glass. “Bur!” she squealed, and Ed nodded, not looking up from his book.

“Right,” he said, “Birds.” Winry sat up in the bed, and he looked over at her. “’Morning, Sleepyhead,” he said with a smile, and she yawned again and stretched her arms over her head.

“You’re the one who sleeps until one in the afternoon,” she protested half-heartedly.

He just shrugged. “Not today I didn’t,” he informed her. Then he gulped down the rest of his coffee, reaching over to set the mug on the nightstand, flipped his book closed and stood up, picking Kaiya up with him and plopping her on the bed next to Winry. “Here,” he told her, “Play with Mommy, I need to get dressed,” and with that he pulled off his pajama top and began sorting through his drawers for a clean shirt.

“Ed, did you give her breakfast?” she asked.

“Yep,” he said, not turning around as he pulled a plain black t-shirt over his head.

“Y’do your exercises?”

“Yep.”

“Did you eat breakfast?” she asked then, standing up and picking Kaiya up with her.

“Bur!” Kaiya announced, pointing to the window.

“Birds?” Winry asked her, walking over to the window. “I don’t see any birds.”

“Bur, bur!” her daughter insisted.

Winry put her down on the ground, holding her hands up above her head and walking with her, and said, “Come on, baby, we’re going downstairs to make Mommy and Ed some breakfast.”

“I made you breakfast,” Ed called from inside the bedroom. “It’s downstairs on a plate, under the frying pan lid.”

Winry sat at her kitchen table, contemplating a forkful of lukewarm, syrup-drenched pancakes, wondering why every morning the three of them spent together couldn’t be like this. Maybe, slowly, they were resolving the tensions that had been present between the two of them ever since Ed had re-appeared in this world nearly two years ago now. Slowly, she was able to convince herself that while she did love him, she had never been in love with him; when she was young and heartbroken she had merely thought she was in love with him, and she was learning to ignore that voice that told her she never had any trouble knowing exactly what she wanted and demanding to know why things should be any different now.

Ed’s pancakes were better than hers. Al had been exaggerating, there were slightly more thanthree things she could cook: spaghetti, pancakes, and tuna-noodle casserole was only about half of her list After her grandmother died she had told herself she would be fine living on her own; she would feed herself with the recipes from Granny’s cookbooks, but things never tasted quite right. Always like something was missing.

Except the pancakes. Winry’s pancakes were exactly like Granny’s. But, she conceded, taking another bite, Ed’s were better. Whether the recipe was Trisha’s or Izumi’s or someone from that other world’s, she assumed she would never know. She was through with trying to pry into the secrets of his past; it was too painful to watch him take on that faraway, forlorn, regretful look.

After the last bite she stood, pushing her chair away from the table, and put her plate in the sink. She grabbed the shopping list off the refrigerator and headed out to the porch to find Ed and ask him if he would mind going grocery shopping later in the day. Walking to and from the market would be good for him; he was nearly adjusted to the new automail but his stamina was still lacking.

Winry stood in the doorway looking out onto the porch and smiling. He was sitting, bent over the small table, scribbling furiously on the large roll of paper. It was going to be a complete set of plans for this “airplane” he had told her of. Of course, they would never actually build one, how could they, but he was making good on his promise to explain to her how they worked.

She didn’t know why she did it. Maybe things can only go smoothly for so long, or maybe it was because he looked so intent on what he was doing, so Ed, that she just couldn’t help herself.

As soon as her lips brushed his cheek his metal hand seized her wrist, the joints between the fingers slicing into her skin. “Cut that the fuck out,” he snarled.

“What is wrong with you?” she snapped back, instantly regretting her action.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he retorted, eyes flashing. “Do I look like Al? Or did you forget which brother is your boyfriend?”

“No, I- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-“ she faltered, trying in vain to diffuse the situation.

He slammed the pen down on the table. “Well what did you mean, then?” he demanded.

“You just- you looked so content like that, concentrating-“

“I was,” he said darkly, “Until you started this fucking game up again!”

“It’s not a game!” she protested, trying to be honest. “You just looked- I don’t know. You looked like you.”

He scowled. “I always look like me, I hope,” he said dryly.

“Handsome?” she amended.

“Bullshit,” was his clipped response. “You’re beautiful, but that doesn’t mean I go around kissing you whenever the mood strikes me.”

She threw her hands up, not facing him, looking out over the railing at the street. “It was a friendly kiss, Ed, we are friends, remember?”

“Bullshit,” he repeated from behind her. “What the fuck is a friendly kiss? Would you have done that if Al was sitting right here?”

She whirled around, staring at him for a long minute, hands on her hips. “Yes,” she said finally. “Yes I would, because we both know it didn’t mean anything, just like the night you came home didn’t mean anything, just like the night before your surgery didn’t mean anything.”

He gaped at her. “Didn’t mean anything?” he echoed hollowly, the anger dropping from his voice.

“You don’t like women,” she continued, speaking to his stunned expression. “You know it, I know it, Al knows it. There’s nothing wrong with that. So I can give you a friendly kiss if I want,” she said, all the while echoing his own words in her mind, what the fuck is a friendly kiss anyway? A “friendly kiss” is feeling so comfortable around someone that you start to forget they don’t want the same things as you do, she told herself, feeling the situation slip out of her control as she spoke.

His mouth hung open; he stared at her. She stood with her back to the sun, her hair catching its glow but her face in the shadows. “I never said that,” he protested. “I never said I don’t like women.”

Her hands were on her hips again, and she glared at him. “So it’s just me you don’t like,” she said, making her voice angry and insulted and threatening because she couldn’t bring herself to sound sorry. “Thanks, Ed, that makes me feel real great.” She swept past him, jerking the front door open, intending to disappear inside again before he demanded a further explanation, but he grabbed her around the waist, pulling her close to him, pressing his body against hers.

His face was so close to hers, she could see the veins in his forehead twitching, she could feel what she thought must be anger emanating from his being. “What,” he said harshly, “did I ever do to give you that idea?” Her eyes were wide open, and stayed open in shock when he smashed his lips into hers, metal hand tight around her waist and the flesh one coming up to push its fingers through the back her hair. This was no friendly kiss, this was no misunderstanding of emotions!

She shut her eyes, feeling his tongue force her lips apart, pushing into her mouth, and let him kiss her, pressing her own tongue into his, taking in his taste. Her eyes flew open. Was it possible to kiss someone this way if you had no feelings for them? Was it possible to lie to yourself for nearly two years just to make things easier, just to keep from facing the inevitable, just to keep from making a choice?

The kiss surged on; he turned this way and that, prying into every part of her, moving to kiss her throat, her eyes, the place behind her ear, everywhere, breathless, wanting. When he broke away he stumbled backward, mirroring her shocked expression. “You are the only woman I’ve ever looked at,” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “And you let my brother think you’re in love with him. How great do you think that makes me feel?”

“I am in love with him,” she said breathlessly.

“Then quit fucking with my head like that!” he raged, swiping at the drawings he had been working on, letting them flutter to the floor and stomping down the rickety outside stairs.

She stared numbly at his retreating back.

Al went first to the site of the train wreck in Bethan, displaying his State Alchemist watch unnecessarily to the local police. He was traveling out of uniform, as he normally did, and he was without his trademark red coat, but nearly everyone in the north knew who he was.

“Ah, Lieutenant Colonel Elric,” the man said, holding a hand out to shake, and Al took it. “We were hoping the military would send you, even though we’re such a small town and I’m sure you have much more important things to be doing-“

Al smiled at him engagingly. “I’m from a small town myself, sir,” he said, always polite. “But aren’t there military investigators here already?”

“Yes, sir, they arrived this morning, aren’t you…” the man faltered, his voice trailing off.

“I would appreciate it,” he said, keeping his voice low, “if you did not tell them I’m here. I’d like copies of the accident report, if you please, and then I’ll be on my way.”

“The chief investigator has the report at this moment, sir, but I’m sure you can find him-“

“He has the only document? Were there no copies made?” Al pressed.

The man motioned for Al to follow him inside, and after a few minutes of inquiries handed him a hand-copied duplicate of the report. Al slipped it into his briefcase, thanking the man, and turned to head back to the train station.

“Lieutenant Colonel!” the man called after him, and Al turned. The man walked swiftly after him, standing with him in the vestibule of the building. “It may be forward of me, sir, but I am assuming that you suspect the investigators will leave here with what they believe is the only copy of the report.” Al opened his mouth to protest, but the man held up his hand. “Don’t look at me like that, we’ve all heard about the rumors of corruption in the military and alterations of records. Something wasn’t right about that wreck, it was more than a terrorist attack and we know it. Now you yourself are leaving with what really is the only copy of the report, assuming the original wont be returned.” The man looked at him questioningly, brazenly. “We like to keep our files in order, here, sir.”

“Oh, your files will be in order,” Al told him, his voice low. “You won’t have anything missing. But you’re right, you shouldn’t expect to get the original report back.” With that he gave the doors a push and had disappeared down the sidewalk. The chief of police shook his head. The right hand of the government didn’t seem to know what the left was doing, apparently. He wished he had thought to order a third copy of the report, but how was he to have known the military would send both hands in to disturb his files?

Al turned swiftly when he heard the voice behind him. “Little Boss!”
“Excuse me, sir,” said a tiny voice behind him, and Ed turned on the platform, feeling his ponytail swish across his back at the sharp movement. There were two children standing behind him, one of them tugging on his coattails.

He raised an eyebrow to them, and they giggled.

“Can I have your autograph?” the taller (older?) one said boldly, and Ed’s eyes widened. My presence here is a secret, my ass! he thought to himself briefly, before he took the paper and pen from the child and paused just after the first down stroke of the E. “What are you going to do with it?” he asked curiously, trying to be certain the kids hadn’t mistaken him for Al or something.

“It’s for my Fullmetal Alchemist poster, for school!” the smaller one piped up, and Ed’s eyes widened further.

Edward Heiderich, he scrawled before he could change his mind. “I’m not the Fullmetal Alchemist, you know,” he told them firmly, and they nodded as if they had just been given a huge secret.

“Can we see your automail?” they begged, and he looked around at the small crown on the station platform. Part of him itched to show off. Forcing some restraint, he lifted his sleeve and showed them his metal forearm. “Oooo,” they admired.

“All right now, enough of this,” he said, pulling his sleeve back down again. “I’m waiting for someone very important, where are you supposed to be?”

The two children exchanged guilty glances and ran off, just as the whistle sounded in the distance signaling the incoming train.

When Al stepped onto the platform he obliged his older brother with a hug but scolded, “You shouldn’t be out here in public, people are going to see us together and-“

Ed held his brother at arms length, surveying his appearance to make sure he had returned in one piece. He had. “Al, I’ve already been asked for my autograph. Everyone here knows who I am.”

Al smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand as Ed snatched his suitcase from him, swinging it around in a wide arc before linking arms with him and pulling him down the stairs of the platform. “Have you been showing off?” he accused, not even knowing where the accusation came from. When was the last time he had seen his brother in show-off mode? Not since they were kids, not that he could remember.

“Ahh, you know me too well,” Ed said with a grin, allowing his brother to fear the worst.

Al fortuitously changed the subject. “How’s Winry, how’s the baby?” he asked smoothly, watching as his and his brother’s feet met the pavement exactly in time, perfectly in step.

“Baby’s a genius, Winry’s a bitch, nothing new!” Ed quipped.

“Brother!” Al exploded. “What is it with you and Winry, every time I’m not here you two fight!” The air between them caught a sudden chill and Al found himself wondering, not for the first time, if it really was an argument that had happened or if it was something else entirely.

“It’s what we do, Al,” Ed said, but his voice was strained. “We’ve done it since we were kids. You’re much better suited for her.”

“You think?” Al said coldly, and they walked the rest of the way home in silence.

Winry was sitting on the front porch, various metal foot and toe pieces spread out over a cloth on the small table, and Kaiya’s face lit up when she saw them walking up the street. “Da da da da!” she called. Al scooped her up and tossed her in the air, his eyes dancing as he listened to her shriek with delight. It didn’t escape him how his brother and Winry locked eyes for a moment before Ed stomped into the house, slamming the door behind him.

When he climbed the stairs to his bedroom he found that Ed had already begun unpacking his suitcase for him. As he unbuttoned his uniform jacket he said, keeping his tone conversational, “You know, some people would say I’m crazy to trust you two together.” He shrugged out of the jacket and hung it on its sturdy hanger on the back of the door and began undoing his regulation military belt. “I’d tell them I’d be crazy not to trust you, after all, you are my brother,” he slid the belt out of its loops and raised his eyes to Ed, “and I know you’d never do anything to hurt me, right?”

“Al, I never-“ Ed started.

“Right?” Al repeated, his voice steady, his eyes calm.

“Of course, Al.”

There was something soothing about the way he could delight Kaiya with the same thing over and over again. She’ll grown out of it, enjoy it while it lasts, he told himself, and basked in her excitement every time she threw her pile of flowers on the ground and then lined them up, then picked them up one by one and made an orderly bundle of them.

“One!” she would say, picking up the first one, and “two!” when she picked up the second one. “No, no!” she would say for the third and fourth, but the fifth she would hold up triumphantly and declare, “five!”

Ed crouched beside Kaiya, taking the bundle of wildflowers she was playing with in his hand and setting them in the grass in front of them. “Want to see something magic?” he asked her, and she grinned, nodding, her grey eyes lighting up with delight.

He paused for a minute, hardly thinking about it at all, and brought his hands together in a clap and touched them to the flowers, and there was a flash of blue alchemic energy and when it faded, he was holding a woven crown with flowers for jewels. As he held on to it, the small flowers grew, their petals becoming thinner and broader and more brightly colored, and Kaiya clapped her own hands and shrieked with delight. “Da da da da!” she babbled, and he laid the crown on her pale hair and grinned at her.

“Don’t you look like a princess,” he said fondly.

“Da da,” she repeated, and he frowned.

“Say ‘Ed,’” he instructed. “Call me ‘Ed,’ call Al ‘Dada,” he told her seriously, feeling his stomach sink.

“Da da,” she said again, looking at him with round, serious eyes that reminded him for all the world of Winry’s. Then she took the flowers from her own head and placed them crookedly on his. “Fowrs!” she announced.

He sighed and leaned back on his heels. “That’s right,” he told her, forcing a bright tone into his voice. “Flowers.”

“Brother?” came Al’s voice from inside. “Are you and Kaiya-“ his head appeared in the doorway and he snickered. “Nice flowers,” he commented.

“Fowrs!” Kaiya repeated, then “Da da da da!”

Al reached down and picked her up, and she protested, reaching out towards the flower crown on Ed’s head. “Fowrs!” she insisted, and Ed laughed and took it off, handing it to her. “Mommy fowrs,” she said happily, waving the crown around.

“Okay,” Al said, nodding. “We’ll give Mommy the flowers, come on, lets go inside- Brother?” he added, watching his face carefully. “Are you all right?”

Ed had suddenly become focused on something only he could see. “Yeah,” he said distantly.

“Coming inside?” Al asked, his eyebrows raised.

“In a minute.”

After shooing Kaiya inside, Al crouched down next to his brother. “What’s wrong?” he asked softly. “Where did your mind go this time?”

Ed rested his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, staring at the place where the flowers had been and thinking of somewhere else entirely: the yard of a mansion in Central, in the dead of winter, when he had shown another little girl how alchemy took wishes and made them come true. He had been only twelve years old then, and she couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Kaiya was now. He had cried when she died, and once a few days after, in the middle of the night, when no one but his brother was around to hear. “It doesn’t matter,” he said hollowly, pressing his hands on his knees and standing up. “No one remembers her anymore.”

“Remembers who?” Al questioned, puzzled.

“Nina Tucker.”

Shou Tucker’s daughter, the lifeless doll, Al wanted to say, but he had never known her as a real person, not that he could remember, so he said nothing. “Did you make those flowers?” he asked instead.

Ed nodded. He made them with a clap of his hands, the way he made and changed so many things in the old days, before he knew the true price. Before he knew that the energy didn’t come from his own soul but from the souls of those on the other side.

“Alchemy isn’t a sin, Brother,” Al said quietly, standing next to him but not looking at him.

“It should be,” Ed said with resignation, turning to go in side. “It should be.”
Al was tired. He was tired, and for the first time since the war ended he was truly worried. Something was going on and no matter what the military did, it couldn’t be stopped. General Mustang had always seemed to him as a man who knew everything. You never knew just how but you always knew he did. General Hawkeye seemed like a woman who could handle everything without batting an eye. Now, Mustang was worried; Al could see it in his face when he thought no one was watching. And Hawkeye was flustered.

Something was very wrong and there was nothing he or any of them could do but watch things slowly crumble. They had to be ready, they told each other in hushed tones. Something was about to happen, and when it did, they had to spring into action.

When Al stepped off the train in Altenburg the sky was a pure, high blue and the air seemed to fairly shimmer with sunlight, but the platform was empty. Ed had not come to meet him the way he had been doing ever since Al had gone back to work. He felt his stomach flip: had something happened?

Breathing deeply, he told himself he was just worried about work. And when your work is ensuring the safety of the country you and everyone you care about lives in, your stomach’s gonna flip a lot. Nothing was wrong. Yet.

He just needed to see his brother, to look into those golden eyes and hear that familiar voice telling him that everything was going to be okay. Neither of them would believe it, but it would help none the less. His steps quickened as he walked down the sidewalk to his and Winry’s house.

Al frowned when he pushed the door open. It had been ajar; how many times had he told the two of them to lock the door? Altenburg was a small town, but leaving the door unlocked was just asking for trouble. “Hello?” he called out, and was met with silence. He sighed. They must have taken Kaiya and went out or something. Now that the weather was warm and Kaiya was walking, they liked to make a habit of taking her to the town square to play in the fountain, in hopes that she would start to play with the other children in the town.

He dropped his suitcase in the living room and opened the fridge, letting the cool air blow on his closed eyelids for a moment. Then he took out Winry’s green pitcher and looked around guiltily before he took several gulps of the sweet lemonade directly out of the top. Smiling as if he had fooled the universe, he replaced the pitcher and closed the door, picking up his suitcase and heading towards his room. He tossed it on the bed, unlatching it and taking out the book he had picked up for his brother in Central and setting it on the nightstand where Ed could find it. Then he picked up the box he had gotten for Winry and made his way to her room, thinking he would leave it on her nightstand as well, letting her find it at her leisure.

He stopped in the doorway.

He blinked.

He wasn’t even surprised.

He blinked again.

He was so not surprised he wasn’t even angry.

The window was open and the curtains were pushed back, spilling that beautiful sunlight in a window-pane pattern right over the couple in the bed, laying on top of the covers, fully clothed, limbs intertwined like they were one person.

Al blinked once more.

Ed stirred, burrowing his face for a moment further into Winry’s shoulder and then turned, stretching his arms over his head and opening his eyes. He gave his brother a sleepy smile. “Hi Al,” he said.

He might as well have slapped him in the face, and Al took a step back as if he had. “You’re not even sorry?” Al said, meaning to snap, to say it bitingly, but it came out weak and shocked.

“Sorry, we fell asleep,” Ed said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and glancing over at Winry.

Al smacked his hand to his forehead. “I’m such an idiot,” he muttered, leaning the back of his head into the door, looking up. Then he turned his smoldering eyes on his brother. “You fell asleep,” he repeated, the words dropping to the floor with the weight of bricks.

Ed was beginning to look worried. “Al, we weren’t- we were just sleeping, nothing-“

Al shook his head, his expression darkening further. “I know, I believe you.” He did, and it made him feel all the worse. It was right in front of him, all this time. Every time he looked at them he saw it: something between them that he and Winry just didn’t share. It was impossible to hide, and they must think he was an idiot to have even tried.

“You lied to me!” he cried, and the long day, the long week, the frustrations at work and the frustrations at home and the tensions that had been resonating between the three of them for the past year and a half burned behind his eyes, pushing tears to well up and threaten to splash down his cheeks. He heard his voice crack, wavering between octaves in a way it hadn’t done in years, and was furious with his body for not being how old he wanted it to be. “’I don’t want to come between you,’ you said!” he accused. “’I don’t want to hurt you.’ ‘I want you to be happy,’”

Winry had jumped out of the bed as soon as Al’s voice had woken her up. “Al,” she began desperately, “It’s not-“

“Don’t you tell me what it is and isn’t,” he said harshly, turning his stormy eyes on her.

“But I-“

“You’re in love,” Al spat. “You’ve always been in love with him,” he said, watching her face, her eyes wide, her mouth gaping. “You tell me that isn’t true,” he challenged her.

“I-“ she had to force herself to maintain eye contact with him, not allowing herself the luxury of looking away. “I can’t,” she said, finally, quietly, firmly.

“You,” he said to Ed, jabbing his finger into his chest, “are disgusting!” he shouted, and Ed blinked his gold eyes in shock.

“Al, I-“

“Don’t look at me like that, you know what you are! You’ve been lying to me all this time like I was some kind of idiot, like I didn’t matter, like I was just some kid who didn’t know any better-“

Ed stood, locking eyes with his brother. He shook his head fiercely. “Don’t start that again,” he insisted. “I don’t think you’re a kid, and I haven’t-“

“I wish you had never come back!” Al screamed.

“I wish I had never come back,” Ed countered.

“Stop it!” Winry yelled, louder than them both, her eyes blazing and her hair flying around her face, flinging her arms out and giving them both a solid whack across the chest. “You stop this, both of you, you don’t mean that, you don’t!”

“I mean it,” Al said at once, no longer screaming, his voice deadly serious.

“I mean it too,” Ed said sharply.

“Al, stop it,” Winry pleaded.

He turned on her, throwing his hands up. “Why? Why should I stop? Why should I keep up this ridiculous game a second longer? I’m sick of loving you both so much I’m willing to play dumb!” His voice took on that eerie, quiet, frightening tone once more. “You don’t belong here, Ed. One of us should have died. I turned up alive again, alone, and I learned to live with that-“

But you didn’t, Al, Ed protested silently. Neither of us could live without the other.

“And now you’re here, and you don’t belong.” He flung his arm out, gesturing wildly towards Winry’s bed, the covers still rumpled. “You don’t belong in her bed! You don’t belong in my bed! You don’t belong anywhere in this house!” With each sentence his voice rose, cracking again, and his face grew redder and his eyes grew wilder.

“If you didn’t want me here,” Ed said angrily, “you should have thought twice before you risked your life and mine to pull me out of Germany and back into this world that is my world, so you shut the hell up about me not belonging here. I was born here and I’m here now and there’s no going back to the way things were!”

Al spun to face the wall, avoiding looking at them both as he continued, throwing his hands above his head. “Oh but I bet you wish you could go back, back to that other Alphonse,” he said meanly, words and feelings he had forced himself to push away now tumbling forth before he could stop them, “so you two could play house, play lovers, you sick fuck, what kind of sick person would sleep with his own brother-“

“He wasn’t you, Al!” Ed pleaded, his eyes red, desperate. “He wasn’t you, I swear!”

“Oh, he was me,” Al said frighteningly, turning around again, looking his brother straight in the eye. “I met him, remember? I know who he was. He was lonely, he was miserable, he was- and you- you- how could you do that?”

Winry followed back and forth between the brothers with her large eyes, saying nothing. She could hear Kaiya starting to cry in the other room, and knew the cry would escalate into a scream if no one came, but she couldn’t look away. She couldn’t stop them but she couldn’t leave them either.

“What ever happened to you, Edward Elric, to make you think you can just help yourself to everything? All you do is take, take, take! You meet this poor soul who’s just another version of me, and you, you, I don’t know what you did and I don’t want to know and it’s sick, Ed, it’s sick, but I said nothing because I love you and you’re my brother and he thought you loved him and he never knew what he really was to you until I came along-“

“But he wasn’t you,” Ed repeated urgently. “He was his own person, and I did love him, and-“ Ed felt his body slamming back into the wall, and brought his hand up to his mouth in surprise. Al had punched him in the face, a full out punch, not something he could just bounce back from the way he had when they were kids. This wasn’t play fighting, this was real.

“If you loved him, then what are you doing with her?” he screamed, flinging his arms in a gesture towards the door where Winry was standing, staring, haven given up on stopping them. “How many people do you need to love you before it’s enough?” he demanded, his voice dropping to that frightening quiet. “How selfish can you get before you’re sick of yourself?”

“Al,” Ed said, his voice breaking, “Everything I did, those whole ten years, every thing I did was just to get back to you-“

“And what did you do the minute you got back?” Al asked roughly, and Ed forced himself not to look away.

“She didn’t tell me!” he said, what he had said many times, and echoed Al’s gesture towards Winry as if she were a statue, a mere representation of herself incapable of defending or apologizing for her own choices.

“She’s been in love with you all this time, she never lied to me about that, and you’ve been in love with him all this time so what the hell do you want with her but more, more, more?” The sight of his brother holding his hand to his bleeding lip only enraged him further. “The universe doesn’t belong to you, Ed. You can’t just have everything you want, you can’t just decide to make up your own right and wrong and you know it, deep down I know you know it and you hate being wrong. You hate being wrong so much you burned down our house so it wouldn’t remind you of it, you hate being wrong so much you gave up your own life to bring me back so you wouldn’t have to live with the consequences, you hate being wrong so much you convinced yourself that other Alphonse wasn’t me and you, you-“

“All right!” Ed screamed. “All right, I was wrong, all right, I never get anything right, all right, I hate myself for it, is that what you want to hear? I hate myself? I’ve fucked it all up? Everything I touch turns to shit? You’re right, I don’t belong here, you’re right, it’d be better if I’d never come back at all. Is that what you want?”

“I wanted my brother back but instead I got this sick bastard who’s just like dad and collects people’s hearts and breaks them-“ and it’s my heart you’re breaking Ed, mine, can’t you see that, with every word you scream, every time you say you hate yourself but he couldn’t stop the words from coming. “You should hate yourself, you’re everything you never wanted to be!”

He waited for the next volley of protests, of curses, of excuses, but they never came. I take it back, he cried inside, but not every part of him cried it and no part of him reached out to stop his brother from flinging the door open but when Winry moved to go after him he pulled her back sharply by the shoulders. Her huge, wet blue eyes stared into his for nearly a minute before she jerked out of his grip and grabbed him around the waist, shoving him forcefully out of the room and into the hall, pointing down the stairs to the front door, which was already wide open.

“Go after him, you asshole!” she said menacingly before she slammed her door in his face.

It was her room, not hers and Al’s room. Her room had always been her own and she could throw him out if she wanted. She flung open the window and stuck her head out forcefully, her balance almost wavering. She watched Ed storming down the street, and even now her mechanic’s eye watched his gait and how he still favored his flesh leg, just slightly, but that it certainly wasn’t hindering his progress.

It wasn’t like he packed a suitcase or anything. He would get halfway across town and then come back, at least for the night, and they would work things out, how could they not? He wasn’t really leaving. How could he leave? His brother was his entire life, his brother was his entire reason for being here-

She waited for Al to go running after him, she waited to watch from her window the tearful resolutions, but all she saw was Ed, Ed storming away, Ed getting smaller and smaller and Ed getting lost among the buildings in downtown Altenburg.

She listened, but all she could hear was Kaiya’s screaming. Maybe Al would get her, she thought numbly, and when he didn’t, she kept her eyes trained on the sidewalk at the front of the house, waiting for him to go after his brother. The sun was starting to set, and the shadows of the buildings were growing long and when Ed came back his shadow would be nearly three times his size, and she leaned a little further out the window.

When it was dark, when the sky was deep blue-black and the town was quiet for the evening and Kaiya had cried herself out (because Winry had been listening and Al had not come back upstairs, so he could not have gone to her) she finally felt the weight of the silence pressing in on her mind, and her heart ached. It ached for Al, who had tried vainly to accept this disaster that had been dumped on him the day he woke up with no memories. It ached for Ed, who- oh, her heart had always ached for Ed in some way, but this was something new and old. It ached for the man who had lost everything and somehow managed to lose even more. It ached for her daughter who had been born into a country on the verge of a civil war and into a family that was falling apart at the seams it never had.

Ed had always believed in the impossible. Al believed in the impossible, and that was one of the things she loved so much about him. Winry held onto reality like it was the only certainty left in the world, and the harsh reality was that you couldn’t be both friends and lovers. The universe wasn’t made that way.

She shook her head, jerked herself back inside the window. That was a kind of heartbreak she wasn’t prepared to deal with. She hadn’t allowed herself to choose yet, and she wasn’t going to choose now.

She let her heart fall back into the old, aching loneliness of missing someone, and pulled the familiar record out of its sleeve, flopping backwards on the bed and wishing it was her old bed in her home in Rizembool, and instead of listening for her daughter through the walls she was listening for her grandmother.

That’s the Ed song, she could hear twelve-year-old Al say in her mind, banging on her bedroom door. You’re playing the Ed song!

b If you leave, don't look back... /b

i Dear Alphonse,

When I heard you were hurt you have no idea how worried I was; fortunately by the time your mother was able to give me the news you were already well again but it frightened me all the same. It’s been entirely too long since we’ve seen each other and I’m so sorry to hear about the death of your friend; I know how difficult it is to lose someone you love. It can take a life time to get used to the feeling of being alone. Unfortunately I wont be able to make it to Hirligen for the holidays this year because I have been planning a trip to Greece with some friends from my University days, but I’d hate to miss seeing you.

Is there any way you’d be able to visit me here in Frankfort? Or should I find a time to visit you? I just hate that the older we get the less we see each other; after all, you were always my favorite cousin and it was too long without seeing one another even before you were hurt.

Hopefully seeing you soon,

Your cousin Stephanie /i

It was no trouble getting the time off of work. As excited as the team of scientists had been to get Alphonse back in the lab, he hadn’t been much more than a disappointment. His mind was just as brilliant as ever, but the drive was gone. His ambition was a mere shadow of what the lab was like when he and Ed headed up their own project. Now that spark that meant the shining search for knowledge only showed up when Al was talking about ancient theories, occult sciences, old and disproved research and what the other scientists could only dismiss as “crazy talk.”

Other dimensions?

Alchemy?

Using souls as energy?

It wasn’t a matter of intelligence, they all agreed. Yes, it was a frightening head injury their colleague had sustained, but it didn’t affect his intelligence. It was worse than that.

It was his perception of reality.

hr

The train compartment was hot and stuffy and it was cramped; he had been unable to find a car with even one extra seat and he balanced his research on his knees, scribbling furiously, not caring that he looked the part of a mad man to the other travelers. When he finally arrived in Frankfort he was pale, his light hair untidy and his shirt collar undone. He exited the train with his papers still clutched in his fist and scanned the platform for the familiar figure of his tall, loud cousin.

He laughed out loud when he saw her. She wore a ridiculously tiny green hat and carried an equally ridiculous green purse, and she stood by the wall in front of the train schedules jumping and waving her hand in the air. “Alphonse,” she greeted him, smiling, placing a hand on either side of his face. “I’d hug you but you need a shower,” she said bluntly.

He smiled back at her and shrugged. “I can’t argue with you, that train was like an oven.” Before they could exchange their usual banter she had hailed a cab and was pushing him gently towards it, and he gallantly opened the door for her.

“Ah, such a gentleman!” she said playfully, and leaned forward to give directions to the driver.

“You cut your hair off,” he said, noticing it for the first time.

She ran a hand over the back of her neck, grinning. “American fashion,” she told him. “Soon everyone will be doing it.”

Al merely raised his eyebrows.

Stephanie rolled her eyes dramatically. “Really, you should stop holding it against the Americans just because they launched the first rocket.” She wasn’t prepared for the harsh glare she received; she had been trying to joke with him. “Al, relax, I’m just teasing you,” she said, trying to make her voice soothing and less alarmed than she felt. “You aren’t really angry, come on!”

“Forget it,” he mumbled.

They didn’t speak much for the duration of the cab ride, and he followed her silently up the stairs to her home. “Dad’s sleeping,” she told him quietly as she unlocked the door. “All he does these days,” she added. “I doubt he even remembers you, but you can say hi if you want.”

Alphonse just shrugged in response.

She flung a door open to the right of the stairs. “Here, you’ve got Berdy’s room, lord knows he wont be sleeping here again.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled in response, setting his suitcase inside the door.

“Hey,” she said softly, grabbing his arm above the elbow. “I didn’t make you mad, did I? Al?”

He gave a heavy sigh, and turned to face her. “No,” he said finally. “I’m just being an ass. Sorry about that.”

She raised her eyebrows, then gave him a friendly punch to the shoulder. “Fine then,” she said quietly. “Go get presentable, I’m prepared to entertain you all day.”

hr

He could feel it coming. He could feel it in the air between them even as they went sight seeing, even while they stopped for shaved ice, even while they leaned over the railing of the pedestrian bridge and stared down at the water.

“Al, are you all right?”

He knew that question. That question was the only reason she had asked him here. Because no matter how many times he answered it, no matter how many people he told ‘I’m fine,’ it would only come again and again. And he was sick of it.

Her voice was soft when she asked it, not her usual loud, abrasive tone but something quieter, more still. She was leaning over the railing swinging her horrible green purse over the water, and when she turned her head to look up at him her green hat slid down over one ear.

It slid a little further and dropped off her head, into his outstretched palm waiting to catch it before it tumbled down into the Main. “I’m fine,” he said neutrally, keeping ahold of her awful little hat and watching her ruffle her now-short dark hair.

“You’re not fine,” she said insistently, making no move to retrieve her hat.

He stood up from leaning over the rail, flinging his hands out to his sides. “What do you want me to say? You of all people? How ‘fine’ am I supposed to be?”

“You’re not,” she said quickly, her voice dripping with understanding that made him seethe. “You can’t be, you won’t ever be, you-“

“You don’t understand any of this!” he cried. He wasn’t yelling, he hardly ever yelled and he wasn’t angry with her. He was just frustrated with the constant attempts to comfort him coming from everywhere he turned.

“But Al, I i do /i understand, of course I understand-“ she said, clutching his arm.

“ i No you don’t /i ,” he insisted darkly, flopping back down over the railing. “Just let me get over this on my own, okay? Can’t we just enjoy these couple days together with out you picking me to pieces?”

“You’re not going to get over this,” she said softly, not looking at him, looking down at the brown water.

He turned his head sideways, his pale hair flopping down over his eyes, her stupid hat twisting in his hands.

“Steph,” he said slowly. “Just stop. You don’t even know what it is I’m trying to get over.”

She continued to look at him steadily, sympathy and empathy rising up in her eyes.

“I miss my brother,” he said then, and tried not to cringe when she wrapped her arms around him.

i Don’t you see it? /i he thought at she pressed his head into her shoulder. i Don’t you see the true problem here? /i

If his brother had been around, if his brother hadn’t run off to London years ago, he wouldn’t have been drawn to Edward Elric in the first place, he wouldn’t have needed him because he would have had his own Ed.

She let go of him, holding him at arms length and studying him hard for a moment as if she was about to say something else but thinking better of it. “We’re going to the pub tonight,” she said instead, grabbing her hat back and turning around, leaning back on the railing and watching the pedestrians pass. “You’re going to meet my friends.”

hr

The evening had been somewhat of a blur to him. He hadn’t been drinking in a long while, not since before the crash, and he could swear the first sip of his beer went directly to his head. He sat back in the corner, watching his drink carefully as if it was the most important thing in the room. There was a man there, several years older than himself, who paid a particular amount of attention to his cousin, and he suddenly understood her attitude. Of course she was convinced that everyone can get over the loss of a loved one and move on.

He had never seen her cry over her fiancé. He had seen her cry over a scraped knee, but they had been kids then. All he knew was what her mother had told his mother, that she had locked herself in her room for nearly a week, and when she emerged she refused to talk about his death. It wasn’t until years later that she would even mention him, but she never took off the ring he gave her.

Now Alphonse couldn’t recall whether she was still wearing it, he hadn’t noticed because he hadn’t thought to look. The bar had a small dance floor and he could see them together, moving to the slow song and looking into each other’s eyes. No wonder she was convinced he should be able to move on. But it had taken her more than a decade. His cousin was almost thirty, he realized with a start.

“What are you thinking about?” inquired another one of her friends, another man, and he shrugged.

“Time,” he answered quietly, lifting the glass and finishing it off.

“Buy you another?” the man offered, his eyes twinkling, and before Al could react another beer was in front of him.

His balance may have been shaky and his vision blurry, due to alcohol or depression or just plain thinking too much, but he felt like his perception was amazingly clear. He watched the man who had bought him the drink, he watched his cousin with her friend or her boyfriend or whoever he was, he forgot everyone’s name but he understood one thing. His cousin had invited this friend for him.

She knew Edward had been his lover. And she was trying to replace him.

He slammed his drink down on the table and his cousin and her friends looked at him, startled. “Just because you’ve convinced yourself it’s okay for you,” he said angrily, “doesn’t mean everyone is the same. I’m not like you. I still love him!”

She gaped at him, her eyes wide with shock and concern, and he pushed his chair aside and sent it tumbling as he stood up. He didn’t know if she understood what he meant; he wasn’t even sure himself of what he meant half the time.

“Alphonse,” she called after him, but he was storming unsteadily through the crowded bar and out the door.

He paced the sidewalk back and forth, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears. He could have been out drinking with Ed. They could have been celebrating something, or they could be avoiding working on something, or they could be just stopping by to see old friends. It would be Ed who was the melancholy one, Ed who thought too much and stared into his drink with such a miserable expression that Al had to do something silly to cheer him up, like pretending to fall out of his chair.

He swiped angrily at he wetness on his face. He was crying again? Again? When was it going to stop? When was everything he saw and did going to stop reminding him of Ed?

When he blinked to clear his eyes he saw his cousin in front of him reaching into her purse and withdrawing a slim cigarette, lifting it lightly to her lips and closing her eyes as she lit it and inhaled.

“You smoke now?” he asked, his voice catching.

She nodded, exhaling a perfect ring.

He held his hand out. “Give me one too.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You don’t smoke,” she said, frowning.

“I did in college,” he said vaguely, and she shrugged, handing him her fancy lighter along with the cigarette.

He fumbled with lighting it for a moment, wondering how he managed to get so drunk, and then squeezed his eyes shut as his lungs screamed at being burned. He doubled over coughing, turning away from her, embarrassed suddenly at his stupidity.

“Alphonse!” she cried, rubbing circles on his back as if it would help him to get a good breath in. After a minute of struggling and wheezing he managed a clear breath before taking another drag.

Stephanie snatched her cigarette back from his lips, grinding it out against the brick wall of the pub. “What is the i matter /i with you?” she demanded angrily, stomping her foot and glaring at him. “Are you trying to i kill /i yourself?”

“What is the matter with you?” he countered angrily. “Why’d you even ask me here, just to set me up with your friend, that guy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Just because i you’ve /i met some one… look, I’m really happy for you and all, but I-“ Alphonse coughed violently again, falling silent for another moment before continuing. “Look, it’s really great that you got over your loss and all that, but I-“

“Al, it’s not like that, I didn’t, that’s not how it works, god, why i do /i you think I asked you here? You seriously think I’m trying to manipulate you in some way? Introduce you to someone who’s… like you, so you can forget about Ed?” She inhaled from her cigarette sharply, letting the smoke drift out with her next sentence. “How can you think I’d be that sick?”

“Go back inside,” he said quietly. “Have fun with your friends. Go dance with that guy of yours. I’m sorry I ruined your evening. I’m going back.”

“Back to Munich?” she asked incredulously.

“No, back to your house,” he said, holding out his hand. “I want the key.”

She dug in her purse for a minute, looking up before she located it. “Al, just come back inside, or we’ll both go back, or we’ll go somewhere else-“

“No, forget it. Your friends are waiting. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

She placed the key in his palm, sighing. “Don’t lock me out,” she warned him.

“I won’t. I won’t sleep tonight.”

“You should,” she said reproachfully.

“Yeah but it wont happen.”

“Don’t make too much noise when you go inside-“

“I won’t.”

He was fairly certain he knew the way back to her house, but he had forgotten how intoxicated he was feeling and soon had no idea where he was. He wandered the lamp-lit sidewalks trying to search for landmarks but getting lost in thought each time he tried. It wasn’t late, he reasoned. He could wonder for hours before the bars started closing and the streets became crowded again.

Ahead he could see a man in a suit on the street corner stopping each passerby with a question. Al watched each person shake their head and continue on, and guessed that the man might be selling something.

“Excuse me,” the man said to him. “I’m looking for volunteers for an experiment we’re conducting,” he began.”

“No thanks,” Al mumbled, but the man continued.

“There is a woman in my library who claims she can speak to the dead. She is holding a séance tonight and we’ll be recording it. We’re looking for volunteers off the street to ensure that this isn’t just a scam of hers, although all evidence points otherwise…” The man’s explanation trailed off. “Sir? Are you interested?”

Alphonse was looking at the name of the street corner he was on, recalling something he had been told years ago. “The woman,” he said slowly. “Is her name Gemma Heinricks?”

The man seemed disappointed. “You know her then?” He shook his head. “I can’t use you, you have to be a complete stranger. Thanks for your time. Sir!” he called to the next passerby.

“Wait!” Al said before he knew what he was doing. “I don’t know her, I read about her in the newspaper, in Munich, that’s all. I remember the article saying she claimed she could cross between worlds, or something like that?” He suddenly felt dizzy and faltered a bit on his feet.

“Sir, have you been drinking?”

“I’ve got to see her, please, it’s important!” Al pleaded, and the man sighed.

“Follow me then.”

Al had lied when he said there was an article about Gemma Heinricks in the Munich paper, and he marveled at how easily the lie had come. As far as he knew, there had been no article. There had been a report published in an obscure occult journal and Ed had read it to him. Al dismissed it as nonsense but Ed had gone traipsing off to Frankfort with his father’s encouragement. Both Ed and his father had collected all kinds of information of the supernatural.

Ed had returned from Frankfort entirely dejected. Whatever he thought he might find from the woman hadn’t worked out for him. Al hadn’t been surprised; he had thought it all nonsense from the beginning, the traveling between worlds. That was before he knew.

He told himself it was impossible to speak to those who had passed away and that’s not why he was following this man. There was nothing that this woman could know about passing between worlds, or Ed would have never have returned from Frankfort. But he followed him anyway, if only for a chance to speak to the woman who had met Ed so many years ago, if she even remembered him.

Gemma Heinricks was a plain looking young woman with pale, straight hair hanging around her face. She sat at a round mahogany table with her hands folded and her eyes closed. The room held such a hushed air that Al dared not speak to her. There were several others sitting at the table, and Al joined them, taking one of the empty chairs.

“Does she need to know who I want to talk to?” one of the other people asked, and the man in the suit shook his head. There were other people in the corners of the room, in front of the bookshelves setting up cameras.

Gemma opened her eyes and looked directly at Al. “Why are you here?” she asked him, and he felt a chill up and down his spine.

“You met my brother once,” he said before thinking. He didn’t even realize what he said.

She nodded. “Edward.”

The man in the suit was shaking his head. “This won’t do, get him out of here. She knows him. We need these people to be complete strangers.”

Gemma was continuing to stare at him. “Let him stay, Franz,” she said softly. “He wants to be here.”

Soon the cameras were rolling and they were holding hands around the table. Al’s heart was pounding as he felt the temperature in the room drop, and a part of him took the moment to laugh at himself, a scientist, desperate enough to sit in on a séance. i It’s not because I believe she can talk to the dead, /i he told himself. i It’s just that Ed met her once, that’s all. /i

She began to speak in a deep, booming voice, and he would have thought it comical if the woman to her left hadn’t started crying. i This is terrible, /i he thought to himself then. i This country has been through a war, everyone has lost someone, this woman is just trying to turn a profit,

But no one here was asked for any money. /i

Al tried hard not to pay attention to the people around the table who cried out when they heard the voices of their “loved ones,” feeling like he was going along with a spectacular trick being played at their expense. It was impossible. It was completely impossible. He just wanted a moment to speak to the woman, after all this was over. After these people have left.

Even though he had been instructed to close his eyes, he let them slit open, staring down at the mahogany table listening to the voices around him.

hr

“Alphonse!”

His head snapped up out of habit and he blinked in confusion.

Had he fallen asleep?

He had been drunk, surely, but not terribly tired. It wasn’t even late.

But he had to be dreaming.

“Alphonse, the General is waiting for your report.”

A man in a blue uniform was gesturing towards a door, looking at him expectantly, and Al stood up as if out of instinct alone. “I’m dreaming,” he said out loud, but his voice didn’t have that weird echo of a dream. i But this had to be a dream /i .

He opened the door to see another man in a blue uniform sitting behind a desk. He looked up when he heard the door open and sat back in his chair. The man raised one eyebrow. The other was hidden behind a large patch. “Well?” he asked after a minute of silence. “Your report?”

“Report?” Alphonse echoed.

“You did go to Bethan?”

“Bethan?”

The man frowned, standing up. “Alphonse, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, I’m just dreaming,” he said, squinting, trying to figure this out. There was something about this man… why would he be dreaming about him? Why did he look so familiar?

The man had a hand on either side of his face, turning his head from side to side and looking hard into his eyes. “Alphonse,” he said sharply. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“It’s you!” Al breathed, recognizing him at last. “Ed’s… you were Ed’s…”

The man’s frown deepened. “You’re not making sense. What about your brother? Did something happen?”

“No,” Al said, desperately trying to get control over this dream. “Ed i is /i my brother.”

He expected to wake up then, he had his grand revelation, he had had it many times over in fact, it was the stuff of his nightmares. Now it was time for him to wake up.

Alphonse pinched himself, hard, just under his ribs, and nearly yelped out loud. He blinked, several times, stretching his eyes open wider each time and had to resist the urge to jump up and down and yell, “I wanna wake up, I wanna wake up!”

Because it wouldn’t have worked even if he had done it. Because he wasn’t sleeping. Which would mean he wasn’t dreaming. He put a hand to his head, half expecting to find what he did there: a ponytail of long hair trailing over his back. Looking down, he saw that he wore a blue uniform; the very same uniform the others around him were wearing.

As the pieces began to slide into place he let the full realization wash over him as to who the man with the eye patch was: he didn’t know his name or his rank or what his relationship with him was supposed to be, but he knew this was someone Ed had, at least at one time, harbored strong feelings for.

Strong enough feelings to get involved with this man’s double while he was stranded in Munich. Mr. Hassan, that had been the man’s name. Ed would disappear late at night, only to return intoxicated and miserable and talking nonsense, and it was all because of Mr. Hassan. Mr. Hassan was the reason Alphonse had ever let himself feel anything for Ed. Mr. Hassan was the reason Alphonse even considered that Edward was like him; that Edward also liked men. Because Ed was having an affair with Mr. Hassan.

And here he was. Not the copy in Munich (since when had the populace of Munich become mere copies of the people that inhabited Ed’s own world?) but the real man. The one who may possibly have deserved Ed’s misplaced affections.

“Alphonse,” the man said sharply. “Lieutenant Elric. Is everything all right?” His voice became a shade more gentle. “Are you okay?”

Alphonse opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking. Edward’s brother was a Lieutenant in the military. A military alchemist, that was what he had said, wasn’t it? He jumped when the phone on the man’s desk rang.

“Mustang,” said the man as he picked up the receiver. He listened for a moment and then began barking orders into the phone, commands that made no sense to Alphonse even as he listened carefully. When he slammed the phone down he looked Al in the eye and said, “There’s a situation. If you are unwell, you need to tell me now. Otherwise I need you to gather the rest of the unit. The president’s been shot and may have been killed. We need to lock down all of Central. Alphonse? Do you understand me?” The man, Mustang, stood up, coming around from behind the desk and took him by the shoulders. “Whatever’s going on between you and your brother you need to put it aside, you have a job to do!”

Information was swirling around his head faster than he could keep track of. He was unable to make heads or tails of his surroundings let alone fall into the role of Ed’s younger brother. He felt himself struggling even to keep consciousness, and let himself decide it may be better not to, hoping he didn’t hit his head too hard as his vision began to blur and he felt his knees give way beneath him.

hr

hr

He was silent as the military doctor had examined him, watching his body nearly as closely as the doctor himself did. He had seen himself in the mirror. He was Ed’s brother: dark gold hair and bronze eyes, but his own face, or a younger version of it. A face without lines, but a face with plenty of sorrow.

Now he sat in the military hospital, apparently forgotten by the doctor, watching patient after patient being brought past him. Had there been some kind of disaster? He sat by the nurses station, having been asked to vacate the exam room hours ago, and listened to the radio broadcast that he barely understood. It was like trying to read a book in a language that shared all the same letters but none of the same words.

The country’s leader had been assassinated and the city was rioting. That was why there were so many injured coming in to the hospital. The debate was over whether or not the crime had been internal. Because according to the broadcast, as far as Al could understand, another country’s government may have paid some unhappy citizen to commit the assassination. Which would mean he had appeared in a country about to go to war.

He fell asleep twice, for less than an hour, sitting outside the nurse’s station watching the injured come in and out. Nearly twenty hours went by before someone came after him, and it was the same man he had seen when he first appeared in this world. The man who looked like Edward’s Mr. Hassan. Mustang.

He burst into the military hospital, loud and demanding, surprisingly gentle as he pulled him to his feet but ordering the nurses to find him the doctor who had treated him. “Alphonse,” he said, his voice sharp, serious, and low. “Are you all right? What happened back there?”

“I-I’m fine,” he forced himself to say, but he could tell the man didn’t believe him, even after the doctor confirmed it.

“I trust you heard what happened?” man asked him, looking at him skeptically, watching how he would react.

“The president…” he began haltingly.

“The police have the suspect in custody. It looks like he may have been hired by the Drachmen- Alphonse!” he snapped suddenly. “What ever it is, put it aside! We’re in a state of national emergency, why have you been sitting in here all this time anyway? Why did you not report back to me?”

It was just like the dream. He had the chance to ask for Ed but his dream self could never get the words out in time. Strange as the situation was, this was not a dream and he was not his dream self. He could say whatever he wanted, he had no dream-restrictions on him. And Edward was really here, somewhere, in this world. He took a deep breath. “Where’s Edward?”

Mustang stared at him, hard, that single black eye piercing him, sharp as his voice, sharp as his grip when he grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out of the military hospital. “I need you in my office. We need to speak in private.”

They looked, Alphonse was sure, like two military officials walking briskly side by side, but there was no doubt in his mind. This man had a grip on him that belied his suspicions, and Alphonse wondered what the man would say if he told him the truth, that he wasn’t Alphonse Elric, he was Alphonse Heiderich, Ed’s lover from another universe. Because, he realized as he was marched through the military building up to the offices, this man, whoever he was, knew Ed’s brother well enough to know that even though he looked exactly like him, even though this was his very body, he wasn’t who he was supposed to be.

Mustang shut the door with a soft click and showed him one gloved hand. The gloves were strange, with red line designs on their backs, designs like the ones the Elrics had scribbled furiously over their research. “Envy,” he said slowly, quietly, as if to himself. Then he addressed Alphonse. “Did you know I killed one of your kind already?” He touched the patch over his eye. “It cost me,” he said, “but it was possible. Homunculi can be killed.”

Alphonse swallowed. “Envy?” he repeated.

“You’re a shape shifter. Just like him. You’ve got Al’s form perfectly, I can’t fault you there, but you didn’t do your research before hand,” he said, and his tone was menacing.

Alphonse swallowed again. Reality was even more frightening than his dreams. “I’m not Alphonse!” he blurted out. This place that was Edward’s home was dangerous with its strange alchemy and now its war, and its military and this man who looked like Mr. Hassan. “I mean,” he stumbled quickly, afraid to lie, “I am Alphonse, but I’m not i your /i Alphonse.”

The man pressed his thumb and middle finger together, as if he were about to snap, and the motion filled Alphonse with dread, although he could find nothing frightening about the snapping of fingers. “Who sent you here? What did you do to Al?”

“I don’t know how I got here. And Al, I i am /i Al, I’m in his body. I’m not some creature taking his form!” he said desperately. “Please, I just need to find Ed!”

Things Ed had told him about the other side of the gate were filtering through Roy’s mind. Everyone had a double on the other side. Ed even mentioned running into Roy’s own double. And Ed said he found himself in the body of his own double the first time he crossed the gate. Still, Roy remained suspicious. “Everyone wants to find Ed,” he said shortly, dismissing Al’s request. “It’s never been the easiest thing to accomplish. This city is rioting, I’ve got all my men on crowd control as we speak. I couldn’t contact Ed if I wanted to, even if I knew where he was.”

“You don’t know where he is?” Alphonse said, the sentence rushing out of him without enough air to carry it, his hopes sinking into the floor through the soles of his boots.

He felt like he was falling, falling through layers and layers of air, with the words “What have you done to Alphonse?” echoing after him.

It was over. His chance to seize his dreams and turn them to reality was over. He failed.

hr

When Alphonse woke he was lying on an uncomfortable couch covered in a scratchy blanket. Even as he opened his eyes his heart was racing, and his mind struggled to recall where he was and what had happened. He sat bolt upright, faster than he had meant to, and felt the room begin to spin.

i What room was he in anyway? /i

It was a library; the walls were lined with books, and he recognized it slowly. i Gemma. Gemma something. Gemma Heinrick, the psychic. /i “I was right, it i was /i a dream,” he said out loud, not really meaning to. Because of course it had to be a dream.

The woman, the psychic, Gemma, was in the room with him and hurried to his side when she realized he was awake. “Are you all right?” she asked him, her voice tinged with concern.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ve been drinking and… I fell asleep. I’m sorry, I ruined your-“ he looked around for the rest of the people, for the men with the cameras, for the man in the suit, but they were all gone.

She was holding a steaming cup of tea, and pressed it into his hand, saying, “Drink this.”

To late he thought of strange gypsy women giving mysterious brews to men, but it tasted like ordinary scalding hot tea, even like the cheap kind he and Ed always kept around.

“ i I’m /i sorry,” she said softly. “You’re looking for something, but it’s not something I can help you find. Your brother has not passed on, I could not hear his spirit.”

“I-my brother- I meant, you never met my brother. You met my friend, Ed-“

She smiled at him, and he felt like he wanted to scream. Why should she possibly be smiling at him? Was she reading his mind? Was he thinking anything he didn’t want her to know? “You know Edward is alive,” she said sweetly. “Your brother isn’t dead. Isn’t that enough?”

Alphonse stood angrily, flinging the blanket off of himself and not feeling dizzy or intoxicated in the least. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said harshly, eager suddenly to get away from her. “I’ll show myself out,” he added, making his way to the door.

Once outside he saw that it was the grey light of pre-dawn, and that he had been inside for hours. He recognized where he was immediately, and knew at once how to get back to his cousin’s house. He felt for her key in his pocket and smacked his forehead with his palm: he had locked her out! He walked hurriedly through the empty streets, not thinking once about the dream he had been having less than a half hour before.

It had been stupid to get so drunk in a city he wasn’t familiar with; it had been stupid to chase after ghosts in the first place. Here he was in Frankfort, invited, he was sure, to settle his cousin’s worries about him, and he had gotten drunk and angry and disappeared on her!

When he arrived at her house the door was cracked open, and he could hear her voice inside. “Stephanie?” he called, and she came rushing towards him, flinging her arms around him.

“What happened? Are you all right? Are you hurt? Were you kidnapped? Alphonse, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have left you go off like that alone, I-“

“It’s all right, I’m sorry, I was being an asshole. I’m sorry I took your key and then didn’t come back,” he told her. He saw that her eyes were wet with tears, and felt his heart sink even further into his stomach.

“Whatever I did that made you angry, Al, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I keep trying to make you talk about Ed-“

“Shh,” he said quietly. “I don’t really want to talk about Ed anymore.”

hr

I'll Be Running The Other Way

It was the only place within walking distance of Altenburg.

He had walked from Dillon to Altenburg once, that day he re-appeared in Amestris without a single cenz in his pocket for a train ticket, and now, nearly two years later, he was right back where he started: walking between towns, leg aching, out of breath and out of shape from so much lack of activity, and it was summer, meaning it was unbearably hot out and he could feel his automail heating up. He was surprised it wasn’t scorching his clothes.

He’d only been in the town that one time before, but he remembered there was a fountain in the town square, just like Altenburg and just like all the towns in the north, and when he found it he sat down on the edge of it, hands on his knees, and thought now what? because that was the easiest thing to think for the moment. Then he grabbed the edge of the stone he sat on and leaned back, closing his eyes and feeling the cool water wash over his face and neck and finally over his shoulders, swearing that even underwater he could feel the metal of the port hissing as it hit the water.

After nearly a minute he rose back to a sitting position, dripping and gasping and rubbing his eyes and looking ahead through soaked strands of dark gold at the floral patterned skirt of an older woman with her hands on her hips. “You’re not allowed to bathe in the fountain,” she said firmly, steeling her expression. “People drink that water, it’s unsanitary to submerge your entire self in it, and don’t give me some line about how you’ve just had a bath because you clearly have not.”

He gaped at her. She was the same woman who had told him he was in Dillon the first time he was there; the same woman who told him her husband had an inn nearby and the same woman who had been amazed by the alchemy of a street performer.

Ed rubbed the back of his head, trying in vain to appear if not charming, at least trustworthy. “Ah, you’re right, I haven’t,” he conceded. “You wouldn’t know where I might find a place to stay?” he added hopefully.

She shook her head. “No where on this end of town,” she said, still gazing down at him, seemingly trying to make up her mind about this stranger. Her eye caught sight of his metal hand and he saw her notice it, covering it with the flesh one.

“But I thought-“ he began, narrowing his eyes.

“We don’t take well to travelers here in Dillon, not these days,” she said brusquely. “Never know who to trust, who’s military and who’s a terrorist.” She gave a nod towards the other direction; opposite the one he came. “You need some kind of help, try the military base.”

He stood up, hoping to look her in the eye but she was a tall woman, and he contemplated standing on his toes for a moment before he decided that was just too undignified. As if he could become more undignified than half-soaking wet with nowhere to stay and not a penny to his name.

She looked at him warily. “Just as I thought,” she said, folding her arms. “No friend of the military, you.” With that she walked away, leaving him gaping behind her.

“Wait!” he called without thinking. “What about your inn?”

She waved her hand in the air, not even turning around. “Closed,” she said as she walked away. “For repairs.” She got a few steps further before whirling around again. “Wait a minute,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You’re him, aren’t you? You’re the Fullmetal Alchemist.”

“No, my name is-“

“Heiderich, isn’t it?” she finished for him. “Edward Heiderich?”

He stood, several feet away, blinking water droplets from his eyelashes. “Did you say your inn was closed for repairs?” he tried.

h

It came naturally to him. He didn’t know why he thought it wouldn’t. All he had to do was visualize in his mind the straightening of beams, the rearrangement of molecules…

All he had to do…

The world in which alchemy was nothing more than a bedtime story was becoming more on more like a dream to him. Feeling the elements shift beneath his hands, looking up in triumph at the solid building straightening under his power, he wasn’t certain that other world had even existed. He had spent ten years believing it was nothing but a secondary existence, a transitory place, an imitation of his true reality, and, looking into the smiling face of the woman who’s inn he had just repaired, he felt at home, finally.

The alchemist for the people.

Using alchemy to help the common folk.

Using alchemy.

“There you are, ma’am,” he said, able to feel his grin splitting his face in half. He dusted his hands off by brushing them together. “All fixed up.”

She folded her arms in front of herself. “Well,” she said, pleased. “I’d say you’ve about earned yourself a hot meal and a place to stay whenever you need it.” She winked. “Mr. Heiderich.” He started at the name.

It was his own fault. He needed an alias and it was the first name that popped into his head. The first name he knew wouldn’t be tied to anyone on this side of the gate. But every time he heard it it was like being reminded of a dream that was slowly slipping out of his memory.

Dillon was a nice town. It was a lot like Altenburg: a small northern town along the northern railway through the mountains. There had been a war between Amestris and Drachma, he knew, and surely the train didn’t run back and forth through the mountain tunnels like it had before the war, but in actuality he didn’t know. He knew very little about the current state of his own country.

He hadn’t heard much about the terrorist attacks on the northern railways, effectively blocking off physical contact from the rest of the country. The military had tried its best to hush it up, preventing much more than the barest details from reaching the news. He hadn’t heard much about the terrorist attacks in Central either; that was Al’s area these days, not his.

He wasn’t in this world to benefit the military; he was nobody’s dog. He wasn’t in this world to be with the people he loved; it had been too long and he wasn’t the golden boy they remembered. But he could always be the Alchemist of the People.

hr

His mind was blank.

There were no images, just a white nothingness. It was like when a film ends, and it goes black, and then slips off the reel and the screen is simply white, with nothing projected but the light from the bulb, except he had no memory of there ever being a film.

His eyes were open. He was looking at a ceiling, and then at a wall. Nothing looked familiar to him. It wasn’t simply that he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know anything at all. And it was terrifying.

Think, he told himself intensely. Think of something. There has to be something.

He was sitting on the side of a cot, staring at a small, bare room. He crossed his feet. The action felt familiar. He was beginning to be aware of his body. It felt familiar. And then,

Edward.

Edward?

Longing. Missing. Wanting. Crying. Screaming. Pushing. Hurting. Clinging. Sobbing. Loving. Wishing. Hoping. Trying.

Edward.

The knowledge came slowly, as if being forced out through an opening too small.

He had a brother named Edward. A brother he loved beyond loving. A brother he had spent most of his life missing. A brother whom he didn’t know where he was right now, a brother whom he had hurt-

And with that thought everything hit him at once, his mother’s death, the transmutation, waking up in the future to find everyone older and his brother gone, joining the military, finding his brother again, older, different, changed, but still Edward, his daughter (or was she Ed’s daughter?) and the screaming, sobbing fight they had just had. All this was layered with the knowledge that he had spent four years as a suit of armor, and the barely-there memories his soul still held onto of that time, and layered again with the information that his country was under an attack that seemed to be coming from within itself, and that, being military, he was right in the middle of it all.

The president had been assassinated. Officially it was the result of a short lived civil uprising; something that came from his country’s own citizens. Privately, it was being discovered that a foreign source had hired Amestrian rebels to do the job. Their enemy to the north, Drachma, was preparing to attack again.

But… where did this information come from? How did he know the president has been assassinated. Had it really happened, or had it been a dream his over-tired, over-stressed subconscious had cooked up?

He didn’t jump when he heard the gunshots outside his window. He was military, he was trained not to be shocked by something like that. He was in the military dorm; the shots were far away, somewhere else in Central. It probably wasn’t a dream. The city probably was rioting. The president probably had been killed. So… why was he here in his room?

He looked down at himself. He was in uniform. The last thing he remembered was that he was waiting to give General Mustang his report from his field work in Bethan. But obviously he didn’t give him the report… did he?

He couldn’t recall anything like this ever happening to him before: waking up feeling blank and panicked and unable to remember his most recent actions. Yes, he did lose four years of memory, and yes, it did feel very unsettling, but it didn’t feel like this. What was going on?

The second time he heard gunshots he sprang into action. He didn’t know how he knew that the people of Central were rioting, he didn’t know how he knew that the president had been assassinated, but he knew who he was. He was a Lieutenant in the Amestris military and he did not belong in his room, he belonged with the rest of the soldiers, doing what they had to do to get things under control.

hr

Edward smoothed his gloves over his hands, flesh and metal, and gave his leg and his shoulder a good stretch like he did every morning. He gathered his hair back in a ponytail at the back of his head, combing his gloved fingers through its length. He listened to the sounds of his boots on the wooden stairs of the inn, and smirked. The sound wasn’t exactly the same, but it was close enough. If you weren’t listening for it, you’d never know.

No matter what the suspicion of the innkeeper, there was no visible proof at all that he was the Fullmetal Alchemist. None whatsoever. He was just an ordinary guy who liked alchemy, earning his keep in this small northern town.

He liked to go to the edge of the town, where the forest started, to exercise. He went through his old routine that Izumi had taught him an Al almost on auto-pilot, it had been so familiar to him. His body was slower to respond, but it felt good to push himself. The burning in his muscles just meant he was using them. It just meant he was whole. Physically.

It was one of those clear summer days, not a single cloud, and the blazing heat of the sun was thick in the air. He liked the feel of the sun-shade pattern the leaves above him made over his form, changing and glittering constantly as both he moved, fighting an invisible opponent, and the leaves moved, rustled by an invisible force. A thin sheen of sweat coated his face, and he was flushed pink from the exercise.

When he felt he had done enough for the day, he hung his head down, hands pressed to his thighs, facing the ground and breathing deeply. He felt his ponytail slowly slide over his neck and head to hang upside down, the ends of his hair dangling in front of his eyes behind his bangs. He stood up suddenly, still breathing furiously, and grinned at his accomplishment. He stretched his automail joints once more and felt a pang as he mentally thanked his best friend. I’m sorry, Winry. I’m sorry, Al, he thought, like a mantra, over and over. But whatever he had done to hurt them with his return was nothing compared to what he had done to Al when they were children. At least he had righted the worst of his wrongs. One of them, anyway.

Walking back through the town, several of the residents raised their hands and waved to him. “Hello!” they called to him from whatever their activities were. He waved back. There was a small book shop on one of the side streets, and he decided to have a look inside, even if he couldn’t buy anything. Surely, such a small town wouldn’t have anything very advanced in the way of science or alchemy, but he could probably find some interesting fiction or poetry. Breathing in deeply as he entered, feeling strangely comforted by the smell of old paper and bindings, his eye was caught by a slim volume with a castle on the cover.

Of course this little shop wouldn’t have that new series he liked that was all the rage in Central, but older stories were just as good. He began to leaf through the volume when he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Need that book for school, son?” rumbled the voice, and he looked up into the face of the middle-aged bookseller.

Ed frowned. “What?”

“I keep plenty of copies of that one, they all read it over at the school. Although it might be ahead of your year-“ The man stopped speaking when he saw Ed’s expression.

“I’m not in school,” he exploded. Who did this man think he was, some kid? Just because he was short –and he wasn’t that short- didn’t mean he was a kid, didn’t this man have eyes? Because there was no way he looked that young!

“Not in school?” the man asked, narrowing his eyes. “What is the world coming to these days, kids not going to school-“

“I’m – a bit – old,” Ed said, each word clipped and tight, his one hand making a fist and the other pressing its fingers tightly into the cover of the flimsy little book, “to go – to school,” he spat out, and the man looked at him curiously.

Then he laughed. “Ah, my mistake!” the man said good-naturedly. “You look about as old as my son, I guess I just assumed!”

Ed rubbed the back of his head, forcing a smile to his lips. “Ah, that’s okay,” he made himself say. He released the book from his tight grip and set it back on the shelf with its duplicates. “You’re lucky I’m not a kid, I might’ve destroyed your entire shop for calling me a microscopic shorty who doesn’t look old enough to be in kindergarten!”

“I didn’t say all that!” the man protested, but Ed was already halfway out the door, the little bells above his head jingling at his exit.

On the way back to the inn a pair of dark-skinned children collided with him in the street, and when they looked up at him it was with red eyes. “Hey, careful!” he told them. “Don’t play in the street!” was what he said, but he was surprised to see Ishbalan children so far north in his country. Were they orphans? Had some northern couple adopted them? No, there was there mother a few feet away, chatting with another woman, a native of the north. She spoke with an accent, but she and her children seemed very much at home in Dillon.

“Watch me,” said the little boy. “I can do a trick!” He produced a yo-yo from his pocket and proceeded to bounce it up and down on the string. The sister, the little girl, shrieked and laughed at him.

“You’re doing it wrong!” she told him.

“Am not!” the boy said crossly. “This is what the man in the shop was doing.”

Ed laughed, crouching down. “I think you’ve almost got it,” he said encouragingly. “Can I try?”

The boy handed him the toy with it’s unwound string, and Ed wound it carefully before he let it drop from his fingers and jerked it back up.

“I think this is how you do it,” he said, watching the two pairs of red eyes go up and down with the yo-yo.

The girl clapped her hands and laughed again, and the boy snatched his toy back. When Ed looked up their dark-skinned, red-eyed mother had come over to them. “I’m sorry if these two are bothering you,” she said, smiling. She tilted her face down to her children. “Don’t bother the nice young man, I’m sure he has things he needs to be doing.”

Ed shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said, rubbing the back of his head again.

“Stay and play with us!” the little girl demanded, and Ed smiled at her.

“Uh, maybe another day?” he suggested, and the mother laughed.

“Well, they certainly took a liking to you right away!” she said, her red eyes meeting his.

“Uh, yeah, well. Kids usually do. I have a daughter about her age,” he added awkwardly, uncertain as always about calling Kaiya his daughter.

“Do you? Maybe our kids could play together! There aren’t very many children here their age-“ she looked at him curiously. “You’re new to the town, aren’t you?”

“My daughter is… with her mother,” he said, even more awkward now. “And yeah, I am new around here.”

“You must miss her. Your daughter, I mean,” the woman said sympathetically.

“Yeah. I do.”

The woman held her hand out to shake. “I’m Anya,” she said brightly, and he gave her hand a quick shake with his gloved one.

“I’m Ed,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” The woman then gathered her children out of the street and went back to her conversation with her friend, and Ed continued his walk back to the inn. His country had changed in more ways than he realized, he thought to himself. When he had been a kid he had seen the military marching through his town on its way to conquer Ishbal. When he had been a teenager his government had rounded them all up and sent them to camps in deserted places, because it was “better” for them that way. Now not only were the signs at the Central train station in Ishbalan as well, but there were Ishbalans living right here in the north, right along side everyone else. Maybe his country was changing for the better?

hr

Al felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up from where he was crouching on the roof of the Central headquarters building. “You’re shift’s finished, Elric, the next rotation’s on,” the soldier told him. He couldn’t recall the man’s name but it was someone he’d worked with before. Al nodded and stood up, his joints stiff from holding the awkward position for so long. “General Mustang wants to see you in his office now that things are starting to calm down,” he added, and Al nodded again.

Roy had forbid him from leaving the headquarters building, insisting that his help was completely unnecessary for the crowd control and he wasn’t needed in investigations either. He finally allowed Al to help out the security team, and Al would have protested, saying there weren’t many State Alchemists here in Central at the moment and of course his skills were needed, but he had the suspicion that Roy knew something about his memory loss that he did not.

The halls of the headquarters building were eerily quiet, considering the recent upheaval, and Al figured people who normally worked inside were called away for one reason or another relating to either the rioting or the assassination, or something else entirely. His country was spiraling out of control, he could feel it in the air, and he was certain everyone else could as well.

The sight of General Mustang was a comfort to him, and that realization left him slightly shocked. But the man always had an aura of calm and control, even in the midst of chaos, and Al felt the effects immediately.

The single eye regarded him steadily, and gloved fingers formed a steeple for the gaze to pass over. Al stood in front of the desk, his brief calm being replaced by unease.

“Close the door,” Mustang instructed him, and he did. “Tell me what happened.”

“On the roof?” Al said, even knowing that wasn’t what the man was talking about. He was talking about whatever preceded his waking up in his dorm in the midst of a military crisis with no memory of anything, let along how he got there.

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Sorry, sir,” he said dutifully, looking down at the floor. “It’s just that- well, I don’t know what happened.”

He could read no expression on the man’s face. “Why don’t you tell me what you do know?”

“I was going to give you my report on the Bethan mission,” Al began haltingly. “And then- nothing. I woke up in my room and I couldn’t remember anything at all. Like everything I knew had been completely wiped out.”

“Has that ever happened to your memory before?” Mustang asked calmly.

“No, sir. Never.”

“Anything else you might want to add?”

“No sir,” Al said at first, but then he added, “just that, when I woke up, I knew what was happening. I knew that Central was rioting and I knew that the president had been assassinated. First I thought it was a dream, because I couldn’t remember it happening and I couldn’t remember being told about it. But I knew it was true.”

“My first thought,” the General said slowly, “was that you were not yourself. That a shape-shifter had taken on your appearance. But you said some very strange things to be just before you lost consciousness.”

Al frowned.

“I should send you to the military psychiatric unit,” Mustang said, leaning back in his chair, placing his hands on the edge of his desk. “If anyone else had heard the things you said, I would have to. But I’d like to believe there’s another explanation for this.”

Believe me, so would I, Al thought grimly. “So, what… what did I say, then?” he asked anxiously.

“You were very concerned about finding your brother. I found it suspicious that you would speak about him so bluntly and in front of so many people, and when I questioned you about your identity in private, when I told you I thought you were a homunculus pretending to be Alphonse Elric you told me that you were not, you were human, but you were not Al. You were merely a spirit who had taken over Al’s body in order to find Ed.”

”What?” Al did not believe in the supernatural. He did not believe in ghosts and spirits and possessions. As far as he knew, the General didn’t either.

“The strangest thing you said,” the General continued, his voice sounding far away amidst the confusion swirling around Al’s mind, “was that you were Alphonse, you just weren’t this Alphonse.” The man stared at him for a few more seconds. “I’m hoping you can tell me something, Lieutenant, whatever it may be, that will put your mental health back in good standing with me. Because as I’m sure you can understand, I am incredibly concerned as of now.”

Alphonse, but not this Alphonse. Another Alphonse.

The other Alphonse.

He swallowed hard. His heart was pounding. Had the other boy’s soul really crossed the Gate and inhabited his own body? What could have happened? And what if it happened again?

“I don’t know if it will make you less concerned,” he said quietly, staring at the surface of the desk, forcing himself to repeat something that must sound impossible, “but I think I can tell you what happened. It has to do with Ed.”

hr

Winry swiped blindly for the alarm clock on her nightstand for several moments before she woke enough to realize the sound was not her alarm but her telephone ringing in the middle of the night.

She stumbled out of bed, first being surprised that Kaiya had not woken and begun to cry before her brain shifted into panic. When was the last time her phone had rung in the middle of the night? She knew when. It had been during the war.

“Hello?” she said into the receiver, her voice shaking, her mind begging it to be a wrong number.

“Winry,” Al’s voice crackled over the wires to her. “Listen, this is very important. You’ve got to come to Central where it’s safe, you and Kaiya both. Is Brother with you?”

“Safe? Al, what are you talking about? Why isn’t it safe?”

“The borders-“ there was a crackle and she didn’t hear the rest of his sentence. “-have warned us but there’s still a chance. It’s safer even in Central, even with the assassination. You’re too close to the northern border. Is Ed there, or are you alone?”

She stared down at the little table the phone rested on, seeing this very scene years before.

“No,” she whispered. “Ed isn’t here.”

”You’re too close to the northern border, Drachma is going to attack.”

“Al, if Drachma is going to attack, why isn’t the military here to stop them?”

There had been a disturbing pause.

“Al?”

“The military,” he had told her, his words falling out of the phone like stones, dropping down onto the wooden floor at her feet, “doesn’t consider protecting the northern countryside a priority. They’re announcing the evacuation tomorrow over the radio. I’m sorry for calling you in the middle of the night but I wanted to give you time to pack.”

Her home had been the Rockbell home in Rizembool for generations before she was even born, how could she possibly begin to think about packing things up and leaving? What could she take? No matter how many of her things she could carry out of the place, she would still be leaving her home. Her only home. “There’s really going to be a war,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. Her voice was resigned. She was already looking around the room deciding what could come with her and what would have to stay.

“There’s a place for you here in Central-“

“I don’t want to live in Central.”

“It’s the safest place you can be right now. Please, Winry. I need to know that you’re safe.”

She clutched the phone to her ear. “Al,” she whispered. “How am I going to know whether you’re safe?”

“Are they evacuating?” she asked softly, the memory sending chills up her spine and over the back of her neck.

“Not yet. They don’t want people to know there’s no way to evacuate everyone by train. The rails have been blown up and there aren’t enough workers to repair them fast enough. The military is too tied up protecting Central.”

“The rails… what?” she repeated in a near whisper.

“They’ve been keeping it out of the news because they don’t want people to panic. But Winry, promise me you’ll find a way out of there. Get to Central if you can.”

“I’ll drive,” she said, her voice an echo of how she thought it would sound. “I’ll find a car, I’ll drive if I have to.”

The next sentence was cut off by static. “-inside the country, but it isn’t. They’ve been here all along.”

“What?”

“Winry?”

“Yeah?”

“If I don’t get to see you, I love you. And tell brother I love him.”

Her eyes flew open. “Don’t talk like that, Al! Nothing’s going to happen to us! Everything’s going to be okay. Kaiya and I will meet you in Central, I promise you!”

There was silence, and it was several seconds before Winry realized that the line was dead.

hr

When he woke up he had thought he was in London. He had thought he was in London in his father’s apartment and that the city was being bombed. A quick look out the window at the sky had assured him that he was at home in his own world, where huge blimps did not drop bombs out of the sky and machines called airplanes had never been invented. That realization had sent him into a fresh panic: what were the sounds of war doing in his own world?

He had crept downstairs to see the woman who owned the inn standing in the open doorway, and together they could see the distant flashes of gunfire to the north of the town. “What’s happening?” he asked in a whisper, and she jumped, pulling her shawl around herself even tighter.

“We’re being invaded,” she whispered back. Ed stared past her into the town; there were people in their doorways and at their windows looking out with dread at the same sight he was. He could hear the reports coming from the radio of more than one house: it was an emergency announcement that all civilians were to stay indoors until further instruction and that all military personnel who were not at the base were to immediately report back.

“By who?”

“Drachma, of course,” she hissed, and motioned for him to keep his voice down.

“They can’t hear us, you know,” he said, stepping out onto the porch only to be snatched back inside.

“What are you doing?” the woman snapped, her eyes fearful in the moonlight.

He twisted out of her grip and stepped out into the street. “I’m an alchemist,” he said, letting his voice take on a cocky tone and meaning it for the first time in years. “If we’re being invaded, I’m going to stop them.”

He said it loud enough that all the households on the street with their doors and windows open could hear his announcement, and they watched him has he stormed off in the distance towards the sound of gunfire.

He crept quietly closer and closer to the fighting, trying to get a good gauge of what was going on, when he felt the unmistakable barrel of a gun on his neck. He froze.

“Don’t move,” said the voice.

“Not moving,” he gritted out. As soon as he spoke the other man dropped the gun.

“You’re Amestrian,” the soldier said.

“Damn right I am,” Ed responded, whirling around to face the man who had almost shot him.

The man looked him up and down. “You’re not military,” he said, but his gaze was questioning. “You’re not in uniform.” What kind of civilian would walk right into a battle?

They both heard the missile above them at the same time; they both ducked down, the soldier covering his head and Ed clapping his hands and pressing them to the ground, causing an earthen dome to rise up above them. Within seconds it was shattered by the missile, spraying clouds of dirt in all directions, but the explosive had been alchemically neutralized.

“I’m an alchemist,” the young man said. “I’ve worked for the military before.”

The man gave a short nod. “We could sure use you now,” he affirmed, but the mysterious alchemist had run off towards the next hurtling explosive, barely neutralizing it before it would have blown him to pieces.

As the battle raged on a rumor began to spread about an alchemist who had come from the neighboring town, a short man with blond hair who did alchemy without transmutation circles.

The northernmost regions of Amestris had been somewhat disputed territory ever since the first war had ended. Drachma had officially retreated back to their borders but the area between Rizembool and the mountains had remained unsafe enough to prohibit re-habitation. That had been a big enough blow on the northern part of the country. But even in the midst of the previous war Drachma had not gotten as far as Bethan, as far as Altenburg, and certainly not all the way to the base in Dillon.

If this battle was lost, the entire north could very well be lost. And the Drachman army was huge. They were huge, and they seemed to anticipate every defensive move the Amestris military attempted to make. The only success they had was with this wildcard alchemist who had shown up in the middle of the night, saying he was there to help.

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Winry had tried to hire or borrow a car, any car, from anywhere, but by the next morning the whole town of Altenburg was in a panic. The station was selling out of tickets towards Central, even though Winry knew that even with a ticket the train wouldn’t get her to Central, not if what Al had told her hours ago about the damage to the rails. The lines at the small station were long and unruly, and by the time she got to the window all the tickets were gone.

The conductor saw that she had a child with her and at the last minute waved her on, but there was nowhere for her and Kaiya to sit. The train was full of women and children. They were evacuating, she thought with a shiver. She had told Kaiya that they were going to Central to see her Daddy, and that she had to be very good or she and Mommy would not be allowed on the train, and her daughter clutched her hand silently, looking around with wide eyes at the other, silent children on the train. The entire compartment was filled with a sense of dread, and Winry was certain that every compartment on the train was exactly the same.

She wondered if any of these people knew their ticket wouldn’t get them to Central, like she did, and were trying anyway, or if they really thought they had got their passage to safety.

After two hours of standing Kaiya finally began to fuss, along with the other young children in the compartment. She began to whine for her Daddy. “Shhh, baby,” Winry told her quietly. “When we get to Central we’ll see Daddy, all right?”

It came as no surprise to her when the train came to a stop and sat on the tracks just south of Dillon station with no explanation. She was right, no one else on the train knew that the rails had been damaged and the train couldn’t run. There was a rash of speculation as to why the train stopped, but when the announcement actually came, it came as a surprise. All the passengers would be walking along the tracks back to Dillon and would be spending the night in the town hall. By morning the rails should be repaired. Winry hoped that was the truth.

By the time she was back indoors, in the crowded building with a hard cot provided for her, she was frightened and exhausted, and Kaiya was tired but would not go to sleep in the strange place. She spent the day listening to the radio reports that yes, Al had been right, Drachma was invading from the north, and then suddenly the broadcast went silent.

Late at night, curled around her daughter and trying in vain to get at least a little sleep before morning, she woke to the unmistakable sounds of distant gunfire. Everyone who had been on the train with her was slowly waking up and shuffling towards the windows and could see the battle going on in the distance. “That’s the military base out there,” someone told her.

“The military can’t stop them,” said someone else. “That base is a military research facility, they don’t have enough men there to fight a decent battle.”

She hated the waiting; she hated the uncertainty. It wasn’t any different waiting for news of disaster at home or waiting for news of disaster here in the town hall in Dillon. It was familiar to her all the same. And she hated it.

“Did you see that?” the soldier said in a low voice, crouching down beside his comrades.

“Which?”

“Look,” he said, jerking his head to the left, and all three men saw another man, a young man, in civilian clothing, clapping his hands together and pressing them to the ground. The earth seemed to tremble for a minute and they could almost see the path the alchemy took out across the battlefield to the enemy side. Seconds later there was a purple and blue explosion in the distance.

“He’s crazy,” one of them whispered.

“He’s gonna get shot,” said another, just as the figure jerked backward, dropping to its knees on the ground and clutching its left shoulder.

“Who is ‘e?”

“Dunno.”

There was a moment’s pause. “Go get ‘im,” came the directive. “I’ll cover you.”

There was blood soaking through the man’s shirt but he stood up and ran with the soldier back to the rocky area that was providing them with cover.

The soldier yanked the man’s shirt open to see the wound, even as the man protested. “Hey, I’m a doctor,” the soldier told him. “Calm down.”

“I’m fine,” the man sputtered.

“You got shot,” the soldier said, and the man yelped as he probed the wound. All three soldiers could see when the doctor pulled the shirt aside that the man’s other shoulder was automail. “Get out of here, get back that way to the medic tents, they’ll tend to you there,” he instructed, but the man ignored him, trying to stand back up.

“I’m fine,” he insisted.

“You’re the Fullmetal Alchemist,” one of the other soldiers blurted out, staring at the uninjured metal soldier.

Something exploded about ten feet to the left of the men.

“I am not. If you remember me at the end of all this,” he said, gesturing with his metal arm to the debris still scattering over the rocks from the explosion, “be sure to remember that, too!”

The soldier who was also a doctor was reaching into his bag. “I can get the bullet out and bandage you up, but it’s going to hurt,” he warned. “They have better painkillers back at the medic tents.”

“Fine but make it quick,” the man who was not the Fullmetal Alchemist grumbled. A few minutes later he was gone.

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It took three soldiers to drag him into the concrete bunker, and he protested the whole way. “Hey,” he shouted at them. “I’m on your side, is this how the military treats its own guys? Hey! Just tell me where we’re going already!”

He recognized Colonel Warnes as soon as he saw him, and some leftover part of him that was still fifteen and military brought his hand to his forehead in a sharp salute, causing him to wince at the stabbing pain that rang through his injured soldier.

The Colonel looked at him warily, raising his eyebrows. He stood in front of a board that was scribbled with detailed military strategies that made no sense to Edward. He had never fought in a war; when he was military he was fighting only for himself. “So you are military,” the man said, his eyes boring into Ed’s own.

“Military consultant, sir,” he lied.

“And what are you calling yourself?”

“Heiderich,” he said shortly, sticking to the original lie. “Edward Heiderich.”

“Your alchemy without a circle is remarkable,” Colonel Warnes said, pacing the short length of the concrete room. “You may have turned up in time to be our saving weapon.”

A human weapon.

Like the Colonel, his Colonel, had been in Ishbal. Destroying enemies left and right, and tortured for the rest of his life because of it.

Ed mentally shook his head. This was different. These were not civilians and they weren’t innocent. They were invading the home he had worked so hard to get back to. He listened carefully as the man began to decode the scribbled on the board.

He clapped his hands together and pressed them to the ground, feeling the power surge up inside him. It was if he could see the Gate itself each time he transmuted; as if his power was infinite. He always held back since returning to his own world, he always used as little energy as he could manage to spare sucking the souls away from the other side of the Gate to fuel his transmutations. Now he let go, no barriers, to spare the souls of strangers on his own side. It felt like the time in Lior when he had been there when Scar created the Philosopher’s Stone: a reaction was underway that was nearly, but not quite, out of control, but was growing bigger and more powerful and he struggled to hold onto it without holding anything back.

It would destroy the enemy as ruthlessly as they had meant to destroy his own people. He was doing what he had to do, he thought, and with that thought, he let just a little bit more power into the transmutation. There was always more energy to draw from, and he would always be able to control it. The wind from the reaction whipped around his face, his hair flying out behind him, and even the men he was protecting cowered in fear of him.

He felt two white-hot pains sear into his gut, and his body buckled, but he forced himself not to break the circle.

He was doing this for the people. He was the People’s Alchemist.

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Chapter Ten: Come Josephine In My Flying Machine

“Come Josephine in my flying machine going up, she goes, up, she goes-“ he sang as he rubbed himself vigorously with the washcloth. The light of early morning was filtering in through the tiny square window by the ceiling and throwing a yellowish glow onto the bathwater, and his long hair writhed beneath the surface like curls of dark gold seaweed. He wrung the washcloth out by twisting it around the faucet before he dunked his head briefly under water to rinse his face, pausing briefly mid-song. “Balance yourself like a bird on a beam, In the air she goes; there she goes!” he continued, water streaming off his head, and grinned, knowing whatever he sang sounded terrible to anyone who was listening, namely Alphonse, who actually had an ear for music

“Ed, shut up!” Alphonse bellowed predictably from outside the bathroom door, and Ed pulled the stopper in the tub and let the water drain out around him .

When he flung the door open, a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair hanging plastered to his back, he kept on singing, “Oh, gee, you’re a fly kid, but not me, I’m a sky kid!” watching with amusement as Al cringed.

“Okay, look, that is a dumb song” Al persisted, his hands on his hips, and Ed laughed at his attempt to sound stern while still in his pajamas. “I can’t believe you listen to that old stuff. And besides,” he said, laughing as Ed pushed past him, shaking his hair out as we went and spraying Al with water, “you can’t carry a tune to save your life!” he called after him.

Ed just shrugged, plopping down on the bed and taking care to thoroughly dry his metal arm. “I love you too, Alphonse,” he said with a sweet smile.

“Think you took long enough in the shower?” Al demanded, but it was all in fun. “I’m the one who has to get to class this morning!”

“Sorry!” Ed hollered after him once he had grabbed his towel and shut the bathroom door. He heard Al start the shower and lay backward on their unmade bed, staring up at the cracks on the ceiling.

“This one’s still breathing!” called a voice, slicing through his relaxation. The cracks on the ceiling looked sort of like clouds, he thought, like the outline of clouds, in fact, he thought he could nearly see the white-blue summer sky around them, and not his bedroom ceiling at all.

“Looks like a medic got to him, here, his shoulder’s bandaged already.”

“Did you check for other injuries?”

“Gunshots to the abdomen: two. Also bandaged.”

“They couldn’t fix up his head while they were at it?”

It was weird; it was like he was having a dream while he was awake. He could hear Al in the shower on the other side of the door but he almost thought he could feel hands on him, turning him over, pulling up his shirt- he wasn’t wearing a shirt, was he? Didn’t he just get out of the bathtub? His hair was still soaked, plastered to his forehead with warm, gooey water. The whole room was warm, sweltering hot even, how was that possible in the chill Munich winter? “Going up, all on,” he tried to say, continuing his song, but it came out cracked and raw.

“What did he say?” asked one of those underwater voices that were swarming around him.

“Is he waking up?”

“Are you military? Or civilian?” He thought there was a face in his vision, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe there were two, or three, or maybe they were just clouds, or cracks in the ceiling.

“Oh gee, you’re a fly kid-“ he began again when he heard the bathroom door crack open, and saw Alphonse roll his eyes as he stepped into the room. Ed was pulling a brush through his wet hair but dropped it at his side when Al crawled onto the bed behind him and wrapped his arms around his chest. Ed immediately tensed and stopped singing. “Al?” he said questioningly, twisting around trying to face his friend.

“That’s a terrible song, Ed,” he mumbled into his back, pressing his face into the other boy’s flesh shoulder.

“And that gets me a hug?” Ed asked, plainly confused.

“Yeah.”

After a minute Ed relaxed a little into his friends embrace. Alphonse even smelled like his brother, and it made his heart twist in his stomach. “Don’t you have to go to class?” he asked, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah,” Al said again, but didn’t move.

“You don’t want to be late.”

Alphonse pulled away then, sitting back on the bed and facing his friend, staring at him in the early morning light as if he wanted to commit him to memory just like that, with his wet hair in strings around his mismatched shoulders and that innocent, confused look on his face. “I wont be late,” Al said softly.

Ed saw Al looking at him and reached self-consciously for his shirt, pulling it awkwardly over his head and pulling the sleeve over his false arm. “C’mon, Al,” he said uncomfortably. “What’re you looking at? Don’t I look the same as yesterday?”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t get tired of looking at you.”