Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In Amestris, there aren't many people with golden eyes. "Your father told me a story once," Mom say on the third day in a year where Ed comes home crying because someone made fun of her in class again, "about the country of Xerxes. He told me -"

"I know all about Xerxes," Ed says, frowning and slumping back against her chair. "It was really important for alchemy before it was destroyed, so it's in all the books. But I don't want to talk about him."

With a sigh, Mom puts a hand on the side of her face and says, "Ed, sweetie, he's not going to be gone forever, and you can't stay angry forever. He had his reasons."

Even though Mom says this all the time, she hasn't explained anything, and Ed knows without really knowing that her father is never coming back. While her classmates tease her about her eyes just because they're so different, she hates them for an entirely separate reason. "Fine," she answers anyway, not wanting to argue. "What did he say?"

Mom smiles. "He said everyone from Xerxes had golden hair and golden eyes. Like you and Al," she says. "Don't let those other kids get you down. How many of them do you think can transmute the way you can?"

"None?"

"That's right."

Resembol isn't known for its alchemy, and Ed bets it will stay that way. She wants that to be enough, like it is for Al, but a week ago her teacher said she had to start paying attention in class because a couple fancy tricks wouldn't be enough to attract a husband one day. And when Ed tried to protest, she was rewarded with chalk to the face. Maybe she doesn't want to grow up and get married right away. That's what Mom did, and then Dad left. 

No. Not Dad. He's never going to be Dad again, she'd told herself when she realized he was gone for good, no matter what anyone says. 

Then Mom sighs again. "Promise me you won't let it bother you anymore," she says, which makes Ed feel terrible because it's not like she meant to cry. "Being different isn't bad. Who knows? Maybe someone on your father's side had Xerxesian ancestry."

Right now everyone says she looks a lot like both her parents, but Ed hopes that when she gets older, she'll just look like Mom, even if she is stuck with her father's coloring. Besides, Xerxes was destroyed in one night, so she doubts she'd got any of that in her. "Can I go over Winry's?"

There's a pause before Mom answers, "Only if you bring your brother."

That's all right by her, and Ed's out of her chair in a moment, calling for Al and running around looking for a new pair of socks. People at school can be mean, and her father is a terrible person, but she's got Mom, and Al, and the Rockbells, and that's enough for her.

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During the summer that Ed's nine, Mom falls ill. Even the doctor doesn't try to tell them she probably will make it, and one look at her brother's face shows that Ed's not the only one who feels like her world is crashing down around her. 

This isn't fair.

"Take care of them, Pinako, please," she hears her mom say one day through a crack in the door. "Please, Ed can't take care of Al on her own, she's smart, but she's just a kid."

"She's only a year older than him, Trisha, no one is expecting her to," Pinako answers. "I'll do the best they let me."

Ed walks away before she can hear anymore, guilty to have listened in, and afraid to hear Mom cry.

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A few months later Mom dies, and Ed spends hours sitting in front of her grave, dirtying her only black dress and already deciding she's never going to wear another one these again. "I want to go back to Winry's," Al says eventually when the sun starts to drop low in the sky. "It's getting cold."

This isn't fair, she thinks, and she's thought it so often she's lost count. Mom was right, she can't raise Al herself, but their father isn't here, isn't going to be here, and Pinako doesn't need to be responsible for them. But it's like Mom said - Ed's smart. Both she and Al are. There has to be something, something like -

Again, her brother says, "It's getting cold," and Ed looks up. "We should go back."

As she stands, she remembers something she read in one of their father's books, something about making life. About how it's borderline impossible, and it's illegal, but there's still a chance. For a long moment she's silent, then she asks, "What would you do if there was a way to bring her back?"

And she's not the only Elric who's smart, so Al figures out what she means quickly enough. "That's not allowed, Ed. It could kill us."

Yeah, it can, but standing in front of the grave like this, all she can think about is how much she wants to see Mom smile again. 

"Then I guess we have to make sure we get it right."

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Ed pays attention even less in class than she used to. After the third time she falls asleep from another all-nighter, her teacher bangs on the desk with her pointer. "Mathematics may not be your favorite thing in the world, Edina," her teacher says, "but my class is not time for a nap."

Since Mom died, she's been spending late night hours with Al in their kitchen alone, reading up on human transmutation, and she doesn't have time to care about something she already understands. "But I studied this," she says, or argues, and hears Winry groan dramatically to her right. "I don't need to listen to it again."

The teacher stares at her evenly for a moment before asking, "What multiplied by one hundred sixty-three is one hundred sixty-three thousand?"

"One thousand."

"Five multiplied by seventy-one."

"Three fifty-five."

"Nine multiplied by one hundred four?"

It takes Ed a second to actually figure this one out, as the nine times tables aren't as straight forward, but she's still able to answer, "Nine hundred thirty-six," before her teacher can do anything.

Alchemy requires knowledge of mathematics, though, so she and her brother studied this ages ago. She just thought she was being more discreet when she fell asleep. "Very good, Edina," her teacher says, finally relenting, "but drift off in my class again, and I'll be forced to take action."

If Mom were still here, Ed would probably have to take a note home saying she was rude in class, but the worst that can happen now is Winry and Al will nag her. She's almost curious to see what the teacher can do.

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Along with a flood that spring from all the melting snow comes a woman, an alchemist, and even Ed's willing to admit she and her brother need help. 

Later, when the woman now known as Izumi is holed up in a nursing bed, they unabashedly beg. "What about your parents?" she asks, resistant, and Ed doesn't care because she knows they have to do this. "Do they even approve?"

Before either she or Al can answer, Pinako says, "Excuse me, Miss Izumi, I'm their guardian. They're orphans."

No one chimes in to say they aren't orphans, not really, because their father's out there somewhere. Considering that not everyone likes that a couple of kids are living largely alone, Ed appreciates the momentary dismissal of his existence. "One month," Miss Izumi says, kneeling down in front of them, and putting a hand on Ed's shoulder and another on Al's. "You get that as a trial period first. Then I decide whether or not I'll take you on as students. You two show me the intelligence and the skill, and I'll teach you alchemy."

"And if we can't?" Al says, and Miss Izumi answers, "Then you return here," before he's even finished. "And if you do, then I'm officially training you both."

Grinning now for the first time in what feels like forever, Ed looks over to Pinako and says, "We're not going to be back in a month."

Winry's mouth twists into a frown. "I knew you were going to say that," her grandma says, putting her hand on her hips.

In a few month, it'll be summer again, but they're still going to be missing a few weeks of school. Maybe convincing Al to skip with her makes her a bad sister, but he's her brother, and they're in this together.

They have to be, if they're ever going to see Mom smile again.

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Her brother's starving, and there's a monster guy trying to kill them but not trying that hard so he's probably sent by Miss Izumi, and Ed can't take care of Al on her own, she's smart, but she's just a kid, Mom said. And yeah, maybe she's just a kid, but yeah, she's also smart, and most days she doesn't feel much like a kid anymore. If she gets her brother killed because she thought getting a teacher to hone their skills for highly illegal human transmutation was a good idea, maybe solving for x at the age of ten is the best she can do. But at the same time their father's gone, and Mom's dead, and she's just a kid, so they've got to try all they can to get her back, even if, even if -

Then, there's fish. There's rabbit. They've got a knife. Ed doesn't let Al touch it much, too afraid he'll cut himself by accident and it's not like she knows how to heal it if it gets infected. Eventually, they get smarter, and the guy doesn't get any slower or worse, but they get better. That's what matters. Eventually, Ed knows they can do it. 

That is, until - well, they've been marking how much time they have left on a tree, so she knows there're three days to go, and when she sees the puddle of blood right when she wakes up, she screams louder than she means to. Al wakes with a jolt, starts to ask what's wrong, but before he can do anything, the man with the dragon mask is there. 

"Get away from her!" her brother shouts, trying to jump over her, but even if her panic, she gets that's dangerous and grabs onto his shirt to stop him. "Ed, what're you doing?"

She flings her arm out to get the knife when the man puts the man on her arm, forcing her down, and a jolt of pain goes through her hips, and oh no, they're going to die, something happened, she's bleeding, Al's going to be all alone and he can't, he can't, he just can't.

"Hey, hey, you're okay," the man in the mask says, and pulls it off. "Look, I work with Izumi. She sent me here to make sure you guys didn't die. Shit, you really don't know what's going on, do you?"

And there's where her mind connects, and she stutters out, "Y-you hit me the stomach, internal -"

Unfortunately, he's just shaking his head, and despite her best efforts not too, she lets go of Al, who manages to force the guy's arm off of her and step between them. "I don't care about the stupid test," he says, and somehow got his hand on the knife, holding it out in front of him. "If you're really here to make sure we don't die, then you have to know how to fix us."

But the man shakes his head again and says, "Fuck," before continuing, "Kid, you aren't going to bleed out. I might not be a woman or anything, but I know this is pretty much normal. Didn't your mom tell you?"

"Our mom's dead," she says bluntly, forcing herself to sit up, ignoring the pain, because this really, really hurts, "or did Miss Izumi leave that out? What's wrong with me?"

He explains, awkward and probably leaving a lot out. And Ed's never been quite so horrified in her whole life.

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Somehow, the man gets in contact with Miss Izumi, because she shows up the next day, once again without her husband. First thing she does is throw Ed a coat to wrap herself in, which is good, because she's still pretty mortified with the whole thing. "What does 'one is all and all is one mean?'" she asks right after.

"One is the universe," Al says, and Ed adds, "One is me," sounding utterly miserable. "Does this mean we're going back to Resembol?"

Sighing, Izumi answers, "You two only lasted twenty-eight days. Normally I'd say yes, but this is what I'd call special circumstances. You're...younger than usual."

The masked man didn't say that, but he also said he wasn't a woman like that meant men didn't know all that much. If Mom was alive, maybe she would compare it to some Xerxes thing again, like with Ed and Al's golden eyes. "Is that bad?"

Same as back in Resembol, Izumi crouches down to her level again. "How about we get you to my home first?" she says. "I'll explain everything then."

That doesn't sound good, but Ed agrees anyway.

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Teacher beats them up a lot with the excuse that the you have the train the body to train the soul, but she shows them alchemy, too. Even so, they never ask her too directly about human transmutation, afraid she'll stop them. Five months later, in September, they go back to Resembol, smarter than before, and Ed feels confident they'll be able to figure out how to bring back Mom. 

In October, she's confident that they really have found the way.

It takes a while for Pinako and Winry to let them out of their clutches, but by midnight they have everything set up and ready to go. "Are you sure this will work?" Al says, suddenly nervous, and even though she is too, she tells him she isn't. As the big sister, she has to sound absolutely positive, which she is. 

For the soul, they use their blood, because they're family, and that means they're compatible. They only have one chance. "This is it, Al," she says with a smile, and a moment later the whole room is illuminated with blue. 

At first, it seems like it works.

Afterwards, that's the worst part of all.

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Picture this:

You’re eleven-years-old, a girl more intelligent than men twice your age, and you thought this meant something. Now your mother is dead, your brother gone. Now your intelligence means nothing.

The room you’re in is bright, bright like a star, and through all the brightness is an even brighter spot making up the shape of a human being. I am called by many names, it says. I am the World, I am the Universe, I’m God, I am Truth, I am All, I am One, and I am also you.

He points, and behind you is a door of stone that opens with a draft. You’re eleven-years-old, just a girl from a small town, and the eye that stares at you, accusatory, reminds you that you brought this on yourself. There are hands, then, black and squirming and many, that reach from the entrance and grab you, and you’re powerless as they pull you through. Your screams are absorbed into the brightness and the nameless thing says, Quiet, child, this is what you wanted, as the darkness shuts in around you.

You’re eleven-years-old, a girl more intelligent than men twice your age, and you thought you could play God. In exchange you get the universe crammed inside your head, and the knowledge burns inside you hotter than the sun.

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When Ed wakes, her leg and arm are gone. Al is gone. No, he's here. He's a suit of armor. 

(not my brother, give my brother his body back, he's all the family i have left, he's all i - take whatever you want in return)

To her surprise, not only is she alive, but she's completely bandaged and in the Rockbells' house. "You're an idiot, girl," Pinako tells her when she sees she's conscious. "What were you thinking?"

Her theory was flawless, the Truth showed her. Flawless at eleven, but in the end it didn't matter because she still got it wrong. 

All she's good for is solving for x, it turns out, and she's foolish enough that she brought Al along for the ride.

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It's not that she's defeated, or that she lost the will to live or anything, even though she knows that's what the State Alchemist and the female soldier must think when they come. It's just that she has no arm, no leg, and is still having trouble sorting out her mind (once there was a man who flew too close to the sun, and no one ever said a girl can't do it too), which is the biggest problem of all. 

Once he's gone, she realizes that he's right, that he's given her a way to fix the mistakes she's made and what she's done to her brother, and she turns to Pinako. Until she's whole again, she's going to need help. "I want automail," she says. "I can't do anything if I'm stuck without half my appendages."

Pinako is quiet for a long time, too long, actually, in Ed's opinion. "It'll be painful, not to mention hard."

"I can do it."

Two weeks later she has automail. A year later she can use it. The day she can, she finds out it's true, she really can do transmation without a circle (the gate showed her how as it pulled her body to shreds and that hurt too, but she can handle pain) and knows that license is as good as hers.

Then she and Al, who insists on coming along, burn their house to ash. If they're going to leave, then they need to make sure they aren't coming back, either.

Chapter Text

It’s not that Ed doesn’t think there’s some all powerful being up there doing what humans can’t. Rather, it’s that she’s met it, and the Truth wasn’t into miracles. All it believed in was equivalent exchange.

That’s why she doesn’t feel much remorse in the knowledge that she’ll have to take away this Father Cornello’s Philosopher’s Stone. Saying she’s doing it to help the people of Lior would be an excuse, so she’ll just up and admit it—she’s taking it for purely selfish reasons. But for all she and her brother know, this is their one shot. And it’s not like there’s such thing as divine retribution. She can deliver something close to that herself.

At the demonstration on the church steps, where they were lead by the easily impressed people at the food stall, she and her brother stand in the way back, her sitting on Al’s shoulders to see. “We need to get inside that church,” she says, shielding her eyes against the sun with her hand. “I can’t really tell, but I think it’s on his ring.”

As she hops off of him, Al says, “There shouldn’t be an admission fee, should there?” and Ed shakes her head. No, not at a church, even a fake one.

“I’m surprised no one got here earlier,” she says, glancing at the crowd in front of them. “The military wouldn’t like a guy calling himself ‘leader,’ even in an outlying town like this.”

She wonders what would’ve happen, if she’d been in her uniform like Mustang always insists she wear. And of course she refuses to wear it, because even at fifteen, her hips are so narrow and chest flat enough that all the thick fabric makes her look like a little boy. When she was younger, she’d always hoped she’d grow up to look more like her mom, but here she is, skinny and short with the right face that the wrong coloring disguises. The Truth doesn’t pick and choose fate like the people in Lior claim their god Leto does, but Ed can’t help but feel the universe is still intentionally trying to screw her over.

Very abruptly, the audience starts to disperse, and she moves closer to her brother to avoid getting knocked into. “I think this is our opening, Ed,” he says, and together they fight their way through the crowd.

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There’s Rose again in the church, standing in front of a statue of Leto like some sort of guard. “So what’s the deal?” Ed asks now that she has the woman’s attention, slipping her hands into her pockets. Even though the cotton of her gloves and wool of trousers, the heat of her automail still burns wherever it touches her skin. “You pray hard enough and Father Cornello gives you whatever you want?”

“Father Cornello doesn’t make that decision,” Rose answers as Ed takes a seat at one of the church pews. “He was chosen by the sun god Leto to perform his miracles.”

Unfortunately for the people of his town, the sun’s nothing more than fire—hydrogen, helium, and lesser amounts of oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, and other trace elements. The life cycle of a star runs itself fine on its own, and doesn’t need some divine power to help pull it across the sky. “These miracles,” she says. “They wouldn’t happen to include bringing someone back to life, would they?”

The people back at the stall already told her, but she thinks it’s probably better if she asks it straight. “Leto has granted Father Cornello that power, yes,” Rose says, and doesn’t mention her fiancé.

But this is Ed, who has metal attached to her body to keep her standing, and Rose doesn’t deserve false hope. Truth is, no one does. “Alchemists have calculated every element in the human body down to the exact measurement of what makes up a person’s eyelashes,” she says. “A kid could walk down to a local mark and buy all the ingredients with some pocket money. Turns that’s we humans are pretty cheap.”

“What do you—”

“But, you know, as much as they try, alchemists haven’t succeeded in making life,” she continues, as if Rose hadn’t interrupted. “Are you really telling me a god can do it when alchemists can’t?”

(the two aren’t the same thing, but they follow the same principle.

            in the end, everything comes down to what’s the best price)

Rose scrunches up her forehead. “Are you saying alchemists are on par with God?”

Before Ed can answer, Al cuts in, “No, of course she isn’t! She just means it’s dangerous to play around with bringing someone back to life.”

“Ever hear the story of Icarus?” Ed asks. Rose shakes her head. “It’s a bedtime story left over from a lost civilization. See, there was kid, and he and his dad were trapped, so his dad made them wax wings to fly to freedom. His dad said not to fly too close to the sun, to God, if you believe in Leto I guess, and, well—Icarus must’ve been an idiot because he did anyway. The wax melted, and he fell into the sea and died. Tragic, right?” Not giving Rose a chance to say anything, Ed adds, “Do you think we could see Father Cornello? I think I’m interested in Letoism after all.”

And Rose is either thick or desperate, because she believes it, and shows them the way.

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One of the few advantages to being a female State Alchemist is that any sexist opponent of hers has a tendency to hesitate before the first hit and try to talk their way out of it instead. Ed’s not particularly beautiful or anything, but her height makes her look younger than she is, she’s got weird colored eyes too big for her face, and keeps her hair in a braid the way mothers make their daughter wear it. “Just give us the Stone, you fraud,” Ed says after Father Cornello gives his big reveal about cancelling equivalency to make an army and really, the military should’ve gotten wind of this by now, “and I’ll walk away without telling anyone your dirty little secret.”

She watches Father Cornello’s hands grip the railing just a bit tighter, but he still doesn’t call for an attack. “Do you really think my followers will believe an outsider like you?”

“No, but they might listen to their town sweetheart.”

Every community has one, which she should know, considering she’s the military’s. And for Lior, it’s Rose—Rose, who emerges from Al’s empty insides. “Is is true?” she asks, horrified. “Was this really all just a lie?”

Ed doesn’t give him time to come up with some stupid charismatic response. “Of course it’s true,” she says, keeping her eyes on Father Cornello, who isn’t as good at hiding his shock as he thinks it is. “No one uses the Philosopher’s Stone selflessly.”

(once she had measurements and blood and arrays instead of wings made of wax, and a gate made of light and truth was her sun. in the end, the few people who know the xerxesian story only remember that icarus was a man.

            everyone always seems to forget he was just a kid, too)

“But he said, he said—” Rose’s knees are shaking as she takes a step forward into Ed’s line of vision. “You said you’d bring him back!”

Father Cornello says, “And with the Stone I still can,” and holds out his hand, “but only if you come here, Rose. You can see him again, but I need to deal with this military brat first.”

Not at all to Ed’s surprise, unfortunately, Rose steps forward. Al tries to protest, but if presented with the same opportunity back before she made her own mistakes, Ed might have done the same. “I haven’t been sent here by anyone,” she says, fists balling up inside the pockets of her short red jacket, because she might belong to the military (at eleven she shows she’s remarkably good at selling her soul, and at fifteen, she hasn’t done much to prove otherwise), but she needs everyone to understand what this really is. “It’s like I said. The Philosopher’s Stone can never be used selflessly. Now give this up—all of it—now, or I’ll show you exactly how third-rate you really are.”

She isn’t expecting the chimera coming in from her left. If it wasn’t for her automail, she’d be dead, and now she really is pissed. Luckily for her, anything goes as long as she reports back to Mustang afterwards.

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“You’ve got two good legs, Rose. Stand up and walk.”

From the outside, the church looks normal. The inside is an obstacle course of spikes and blood and sand. Ed’s lost her favorite jacket, the hem of her white shirt is in tatters, and the only way to fix her trousers was to thin the fabric so much it feels like she’s wearing nothing. Right now Rose is more like the church than like her—disheveled and ruined in the place people can’t see. That’s the better kind of damage. Even if Rose doesn’t understand that now, she will eventually.

This is why Ed just leaves her kneeling on the dusty steps, alone and in tears.

“You could have been nicer about it,” her brother says, and they’re barely even out of earshot yet. “She’s going to be left to tell the whole town everything on her own.”

If Rose can make it past hearing the truth first hand, then she’ll be able to spread the information just fine. “She needed a wakeup call,” Ed answers, and tries to remember if her uniform is still in her bag, because she can transmute that jacket to look like her normal one easily enough. “Besides, I think she’ll be all right. You know, once she gets her head on straight.”

Al agrees, and lets her change the subject to calling up Mustang once they hit the station without complaint.

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Lior was a mess. Youswell is something else altogether.

All Ed wanted was to sleep somewhere other than a train and room so she could change, since train restrooms didn’t exactly offer that sort of mobility. She’s got her jacket done—transmuted her military one by elongating it so it fell at her hips instead of her waist, thinning the fabric, used the gold threading to make the black Flamel on her back—but there was nothing she could so for her shirt or pants, and she looks a bit like a street urchin right now. The fact that she just got kicked out of an inn because her last name is Elric and is currently sitting on a porch in threadbare trousers waiting for Al isn’t helping matters. Even the east is cold at night, and automail is conducive to maintaining a comfortable body temperature.

Around about nine, Al finally returns, bearing gifts of food as brotherly love. “It’s not just State Alchemists they have a problem with,” he says, taking a seat next to her as she situates the tray on her lap. “It’s everyone in the military. I guess the Lieutenant Colonel who owns the town is really corrupt.”

As she pushes her braid off her shoulder she asks, “How? Collecting unfair taxes or something?”

“Yeah. And then using the money to bribe his way into promotions,” he answers. “Lieutenant Colonel Yoki is bleeding the town dry. That’s why they charge so much.”

While throwing her out was absolutely uncalled for, as well as unexpected, Ed can at least understand the reason behind it. A mining town in the east shouldn’t be this dead. She also has a natural distaste for officials who bribe their way through the ranks to begin with; working for Mustang for three years showed her it’s possible to work for the military and not use corruption to make it. “I can look into it,” she says. “Maybe if I help them out, they’ll give us a room. Next train isn’t until tomorrow morning.”

That said, she was at least hoping to finish eating first. Unfortunately the Lieutenant Colonel has other plans. Ed just wishes she could stop stumbling across trouble that has nothing to do with her.

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For pretty good reason, Ed’s always had the reputation of not following the rules all that well. Apparently Lieutenant Colonel Yoki never heard that, even though he’s certainly heard of her. “I’ll be sure to pass on word of you to my commanding officer,” she says when she accepts the deed, and hopes he’s just an idiot and she’s not actually that good at pretending to be corrupt herself. “Colonel Mustang has many contacts, after all.”

Yoki’s eyes move past her, scan across the mound of gold. This is going to break him, and she justifies it by reasoning the town’s better off without him, and he clearly doesn’t deserve this position anyway. Doing this doesn’t make her a good person, but it doesn’t make her a bad person, either.

Or maybe it’s just that she really is a bad person, and she’s gotten too good at ignoring it to notice.

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At the beginning of the celebration, Ed made it up to their room to change and scrub herself down, and when she comes back, everyone is already half drunk. “You look better in red,” the inn keeper says when he sees her, clapping her on her shoulder. “Even the best person looks shit in a uniform.”

With a laugh, his wife says, “Don’t mind him, dear. You look lovely in blue.”

To deal with Yoki, Ed had to transmute her jacket back to what it was supposed to be and made her pants at least resemble what they should be. “It’s all right,” she says, because it is. “I’m not particularly fond of it, either.”

Over in the corner, Al’s entertaining the son, the only person beside the two of them without a drink in his hand. Though as a State Alchemist Ed could probably get away with it, she’s pretty positive Hawkeye, Mustang, Hughes, and most importantly her brother would all kill her if she did anything. “Then why do you wear it?” someone else asks, wiping against his lips. “How old are you anyway, kid?”

Now that she’s dressed like a normal person, they aren’t treating her as formally. “Fifteen,” she says, “which means I get away with walking around without it.”

The man, who’d been steadily inching closer to her, abruptly moves away. She hears the son say to Al, “Do you really have to leave in the morning?” and her brother answer, “Well, my sister does, uh, need to report the Lieutenant Colonel as soon as possible. So yeah.”

And after East City, no matter what they find, they’re going back to Central for at least a couple of days. She misses her bed. Right now, that’s the closest thing to home they have. “They let you join so young?” the wife says, scandalized. “Is that even legal?”

Ed shrugs. “State Alchemists have independent rules,” she tells them, and sips her water. By this time tomorrow, they’ll be in East City. Part of her is dreading it, but for the most part, she’s just relieved. At least there no one treats her like she’s some child in need of their pity.

            (youth still clings just as tight as selfishness now, but she stopped being a child a long time ago)

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There are three things in the world that Ed’s conditioned herself to wake up for, in this order: the blue light of alchemy, Mustang’s voice, and Al’s. Oddly, gunfire never quite made the list.

All I wanted to do was sleep, she thinks, and punches the train hijacker hard enough in the temple with her automail fist that he faints. With her brother’s help, she takes out the next two. “They’re probably after that higher up,” she says, thinking of the guy who recognized her from her description in the station and was nice enough to offer them to join his family in the first class car. Apparently they should’ve accepted the invitation. “I’ll go check it out. You can take the actual carriages.”

One of the passengers, a man, says, “Thank you for your help, but I’m sure if we all band together, we can handle help, little lady,” now that the shock’s worn off. The other men around him even nod in agreement.

Sighing in exasperation because they don’t have time for this, Ed pulls out her pocket watch says, “Protecting you people is my job. So sit tight and be on guard in case someone else comes back here.” Then she glances at her brother. “Help me on the roof.”

“But Ed, you could be blown away!”

“I’m thin, but I’m not exactly light, Al.” Bodily she looks like she shouldn’t weight much more than forty-six kg sopping wet, but the automail should make her heavy enough that she should be steady. “Just help me already.”

Though the civilians all seem weary, and she doubts Al is happy, he does use his hands to keep her balanced until she gets a grip on the latter three windows down from the seats. The wind steals her thanks, but her brother understands her anyway.

Lior was a mess, Youswell was something else altogether, and Ed refuses to let this become anything worse.

-------------------------------------------------

Even though Ed would never admit it, she does get a certain amount of satisfaction from making Mustang proud. “Did you really take the afternoon off because you knew I could handle it?” she says hours later, sitting across from her commanding officer in East City HQ. “I didn’t know you had that much faith in me.”

As infuriating as Mustang is, she really can’t help but like him, because he and his team are some of the few people who are rarely ever surprised to find she’s competent at something. And after two weeks of dealing with Father Cornello, Yoki, and sexist train passengers, she can really appreciate that. “I have a date I can’t miss,” he says with a shrug, though she doubts that’s true, since it’s not like he hasn’t stood women up before, “so make it quick, Fullmetal.”

She leans forward, elbows digging into her knees, and glances at all the binders and folders behind him. “You owe for this one, Colonel, since you didn’t help,” she says, focusing again of him. “I just did your dirty work for you.”

“Since the idea of being in your debt disturbs me, I’ll bite,” he says, and she smiles. “What do you want?”

Before the whole disaster with the hijackers, she and Al extensively discussed another possible way to look at the situation on hand, since she’d now well known enough for at least other State Alchemists to take her seriously. It’s easier for her within the cities and the military than outlying towns. “Is there any way you could introduce us to an alchemist with specialization in biology? Or to any kind of research?” she asks. “Lior was a bust, but we did find out there was a way to fake a Philosopher’s Stone. Taking that into consideration, maybe we’re just looking in the wrong place.”

As Mustang stands to search through his records, he tells her, “About that—I need a full report on Lior and Youswell by tomorrow morning, Fullmetal. No arguments. And at least try to make your handwriting legible this time.”

Reporting on Youswell she doesn’t have an issue with, since the less corrupt higher ups need to know about Lieutenant Colonel Yoki, but she’s not ready to write on Lior. “My writing isn’t that terrible,” she says instead of protesting. “You trying writing with automail, it’s harder than you think.”

“It’s not as though your fingers are oversized.” He returns to his chair, dropping an open folder in front of her. “This isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, but he’s the best I can give you in East City. Shou Tucker, the Sewing Life Alchemist. Got his license two years back when he created the first talking chimera.”

Even before Lior, Ed wasn’t particularly fond of chimeras, but now after getting nearly ripped apart by one, she likes them even less. Still, it’s not like she expected to find what she needed on her first try. Elric luck is never that good. “I’ll see him tomorrow after dropping off the report,” she says, scanning his file.

To her surprise, Mustang says, “I’ll take you and Al personally. You’re going to need someone to explain what’s going on, and you aren’t too good at thinking up excuses.”

“This is just a way to get out of paperwork, isn’t it?”

Mustang doesn’t answer. For once, Ed decides to be nice and doesn’t tell Hawkeye.

-------------------------------------------------

This is a familiar story:

There’s a little girl whose father is an alchemist. That father is always absorbed in his worked, but she still loves him. At least for a while. But then he’s never there, and she’s bored and she’s lonely and doesn’t understand why Daddy doesn’t want to be around her anymore. Except plot twist, this time the father’s still here, and the girl hasn’t learned how to hate him just yet, and all she has is a dog, not a brother.

(why didn’t daddy say goodbye, edina asks mommy the day he leaves, frown already in place. he always says goodbye.

            mom kneels down to her level and wraps her arms around her. daddy isn’t going to be back for a little while, she answers. he said to tell you and your brother that he loves you both very much, and he’ll return as soon as he can.

            then years pass, and mom dies, and dad still isn’t here)

Looking at Nina now, curled up around Alexander and explaining Tucker’s long work days, Ed is reminded so strongly of herself that she puts down her book. Everything around her is so useful she could easily just sit her for a week and read, but this girl deserves a break. “Show us what you want to play,” she says, and nearly topples over by the force of which Nina throws herself into a hug.

The three of them end up in the back garden, playing hide-and-go sneak in the shrubbery, for the last half hour before Havoc shows up to bring them home. As a goodbye present, she transmutes a flower crown from what she finds in the garden, and places it on Nina’s head. “Thank you,” the girl says, and hugs first Ed around the middle, and then Al. “Are you coming back?”

With a nod, Al says, “We can play again tomorrow, Nina,” and Tucker doesn’t realize how lucky he is that his daughter hasn’t learned to hate him yet (truth is, hate isn’t born it’s taught, but the real truth is, that only applies to people and populations you haven’t met.

            everyone hates at least someone, and it didn’t take a bright light to show her that) because abandonment is a pretty strong motivation. “I promise.”

“I knew Al would be good with kids,” Havoc says, lighting a cigarette and watching Nina run back to her dad, “but you’re a surprise.”

“I close to raised to him, of course I am,” she says, and she knows her smile must look pretty bitter. “Guess there’s a lot about me you don’t know.”

 -------------------------------------------------

Ed manages to keep herself calm right up until Tucker says, “We’re the same, you and I.” That’s when she throws the punch.

“I was an eleven-year-old who didn’t get it,” she says, keeping him against the wall, and (everyone always forgets that icarus was just a kid, too) it’s the first time she’s ever used her age as an excuse for anything. “I didn’t have the life experience to tell me it was wrong. You’re an adult, a father—you killed your wife and daughter for what? Money? Power? I am nothing like you.”

When he goes to protest, she hits him again, does it hard enough to knock him out, and Al runs to go find the phone without her having to tell him. “Dad-dy,” the chimera, the chimera made of a little girl and her dog, gets out, nudging against her father’s palm. “Co—come pl-lay.”

(will you play with me, daddy, edina asks, tugging on his sleeve. mommy put al to bed.

            and daddy sets down his papers and puts her on her shoulders and then pushes her on the swing and chases her around the yard and accepts without question that she doesn’t want to play with dolls. i want to be an alchemist like you when i grow up, she says on the swing. she already looks like him, and mommy says she already acts like him, and neither of her parents ever tell her she can’t be whatever she wants just because she’s a girl)

“I got a hold of the Colonel using your code,” Al says when he comes back in, and not commenting that somehow Ed ended up on her knees. “He said he’ll be here soon with the police.”

Your daughter loved you, she thinks, looking at Tucker’s unconscious form, blurred by her tears. She loved you and you didn’t even appreciate it, you ungrateful bastard.

------------------------------------------------- 

(it’s the summer of cloudless skies and sunlight dancing through the leaves of oak trees. chalk sticks to her finger, more persistent than powder sugar. this is a childhood of hazy brightness and a sea of green grass and edina runs barefoot down the garden lanes.

            mommy, look, she shouts when she runs into the house, her brother’s favorite toy in hand. i fixed it.

            childhood is just a string of summer days, where mommy wears her favorite purple dress and always smiles. it’s perfect, edina, she says as she takes the little toy cat away. such a shame you couldn’t fix me too.

            then everything changes, and the sky darkens with clouds, and edina screams as black hands rip away at her arm and leg. the little cat turns into a tomato, which falls and rolls across the wooden floor, and mom collapses into a mass of charred skin and heart out in the open for everyone to see it beating. and her eyes, once so bright and green like a sea of grass, are as gold as the sun.

            such a shame, she says again, you couldn’t fix me too.

            again, little edina screams, and the universe pours itself into her head)

------------------------------------------------- 

“You really don’t need to see this, Ed,” Hawkeye says when Ed and Al come to find out what’s going on with Tucker and Nina. They hadn’t expected to learn the two are dead. “You look terrible anyway. Go get some sleep.”

Sleep deprivation has rubbed smudges of exhaustion under her eyes, and after this, she doubts her dreams will be any more pleasant than last night. Even so, she knows arguing against Hawkeye is more useless than arguing against Mustang. “Well, you know where to find us if you need me for anything,” she says, slipping her hands into her pockets, and Hawkeye agrees.

This probably means they should head back to the apartment. If they go back to their apartment, though, she might sleep, so she leads Al out on a walk around the city instead.

------------------------------------------------- 

After everything’s that happened, the last thing Ed needs to deal with is someone trying to kill her. Having Al to worry about makes it harder, so the moment she has an opening, she shouts, “Just, go! Get Mustang!” and creates a wall that delays her possible murderer enough for her brother to get away.

Since Ed’s so small, and light, and opponents have a tendency not to want to try and hit her head-on because they think that counts as good manners, she’s just as good using her alchemy at long distance as she is in hand-to-hand. Not having to use a transmutation circle makes her pretty good at improvising, too. “Whatever your issue with the State Alchemists is,” she says, trying to figure out how to imitate with the Freezing Alchemist did and using the rain on the streets to turn them into a makeshift ice-rink to slow the killer down, “leave that kid out of it. He’s just a civilian.”

Without Al to have to watch out for in her peripheral, Ed doesn’t need to worry so much about safety, which is good, because even with the ice slowing the man down, he’s still fast. She doesn’t waste any time by spare a thought as to what she’s doing to the city as she tries to counter his attacks, erecting walls from the ground or shields from brick alleys. At one point she turns the ice she created into spikes, but that isn’t her specialty, and they’re too brittle to do much more than damage his boots. Everything he just takes into stride, and she hasn’t gone up against someone she needs to struggle against in a while.

Then he corners her once, twice, boxing her in so all she can do it switch to close quarters. Normally she’s the quick one, but he dodges most of her attacks, and she isn’t expecting it when, instead of taking an opening, he just grabs her arm instead. The alchemy crackles, her jacket sleeve bursts, and—

And nothing. His alchemy was meant with the components in flesh, not steel, and his shock gives her enough time to knee him in the sternum. She falls heavy to the ground, rolling so her automail leg absorbs most of the hit,  and creates another stone barrier between herself and the man just in time for him to recover. Now that her backup plan is uncovered, she’s quick to turn it into a blade, knowing that the alley he’s trapped her in means her long distance attacks are at an end.

She lunges when he explodes the barrier, aiming for the arm that’s got to have the alchemic symbols on it for him to be doing this, and isn’t expecting it when he grabs her arm again. She’s expecting to even left when the transmutation glow envelopes it , breaking it apart, severing where it’s attached to her nerves.

When she falls to the ground again, she has nothing to catch herself with, and lands hard on her back just outside the alley. He crouches down to herself, but grabs onto her leg when she tries to kick out. “Do you have any last words for your god before you die?”

Oh, great, if he’s asking about god, this must be another religious thing. She refuses to be killed over some guy’s fucked up idea of divine right. “Sorry,” she says, and coughs. “God’s not exactly what I want to waste my last words on.”

Before the man can do anything, the whole area is illuminated with the glow of headlights. Car doors open, Mustang’s calls, “Step away from the Fullmetal Alchemist, Scar,” and Ed knows she’s making it through today alive.

Chapter Text

On the train to Resembol, Ed mostly sleeps. The hospital gave her something that made her tired and whatever it is, it refuses to leave her system. If it weren’t for Al, she would have missed what Major Armstrong said about Dr. Maroch.

Running to get off hurts her entire body. On top of losing her automail arm, the fight with Scar left her with a ripped up back, mild concussion, three cracked ribs, and two pretty bad contusions on her collarbone and hip. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come,” Al says when she almost tips backwards getting off the train steps. “You aren’t supposed to be moving around this much.”

Right now she isn’t even meant to be out of the hospital, but she signed herself out before Mustang managed to abuse his authority as her commanding officer and override her rights to do so. “I’ll be fine,” she says, more snappish than she means to, but doesn’t protest that Major Armstrong is carrying the bags. Apparently if they were heading back to East City after this, Hawkeye would have come along instead of him, and this is the first time in her waking hours that Ed isn’t wishing she’d changed her mind.

Besides, the fresh air feels good. The further east you go, the warmer it gets, and in this dozy little town, it doesn’t feel like summer is going to end any time soon. “Don’t worry, young Alphonse,” Major Armstrong says, patting her brother on the shoulder. “Maroch was a doctor during his time in the military. I’m sure if anything should happen to your sister, he will help her.”

“He defected,” she points out, and coughs. “He might not be particularly happy about helping out a current State Alchemist. Anyway, I really am fine. The stitches are holding, right?”

She would be better, of course, if whatever the hospital gave her wasn’t still clogging her cognitive functions, but Al must know that without her having to say that. Ever since she was a kid, she never liked anything that stopped her from thinking clearly. “We’ll be quick about this, then,” Major Armstrong, eyes already searching through the few people on the street, too. “The next train for Resembol leaves in two hours.”

By flashing around Major Armstrong’s excellent drawing skills, they eventually get directions to the man’s house, though he’s now living under an alias. When they finally reach him, their reward is a gun level to Armstrong’s face.

This is going to be a long two hours.

After Tucker, Ed was hoping she wouldn’t have to explain her life story again for at least a little while. Instead she does, because Dr. Maroch needs to understand why this is so important to her.

“Amazing,” he says as he pokes and prods at Al, who just stands there and accepts his fate. “Binding a soul to suit of armor like this, and at such a young age. Maybe someone with your intelligence could create a complete product. But I can’t show you my research.”

If he really isn’t planning on showing anything to her, then he shouldn’t have said she could do it. That’s already more hope than she had before. “Why not?”

Turning away from them, he answers, “This is the Devil’s research, kid. Researching it will put you through Hell.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing I’ve already seen it.”

(there’s a bright light, brightness then darkness, and everything that is, was, and could be, and a body twisted and charred and inside out and—

            well, no one ever said that hell was information, but that’s exactly what it is)

There’s a tense moment of silence, and then Dr. Maroch orders them to leave.

Right up until they reach home again, all Ed can think about is Dr. Maroch’s note, and his hint—look for the truth within the truth. But then she sees Winry, and nothing else matters. “I’m still mad at you for ruining my beautiful creation,” her friend says, gathering her in a tight hug, “but never go that long without calling again, okay, you idiot?”

In the beginning, when Ed had just left Resembol for the first time and was a twelve-year-old girl virtually alone in Central, she used to contact Winry a lot. Over time, as clues and missions sent them further out of the city, the calls grew less frequent. “Sorry, we haven’t been near a phones all that often,” she says. “I’ll try to do better for now on.”

“Good. Consider it my tip.” Winry taps her shoulder and continues, “What happened?”

Though she keeps out some of the worse details, Ed explains about the Scar. Outside, Major Armstrong breaks firewood and Al and Pinako’s voices float through the window. That’s all for sounds, though. Even Lior is crowded in comparison to Resembol, where classes are no more than ten people at a time and houses don’t come on top of each other. It’s just quiet, and humid, and green.

Until now, she hadn’t realized exactly how much she missed that. 

When she finishes, Winry just shakes her head. “You two need to stop putting yourself in danger like that,” she says, measuring Ed’s flesh arm. “What would have happened if Colonel Mustang hadn’t gotten there when he did? Al would’ve come here to tell you were dead, not that your automail is busted to pieces and you’re so injured I can’t even hit you.”

Her voice cracks, but she doesn’t cry, so Ed doesn’t comment on it. “Mustang would never let me die. I’m like his pet or something,” she answers as Winry moves onto her legs. “I can’t promise you we’ll never be in danger,” she adds, “but if I say I’ll be more careful, will you believe me?”

“No.”

“Yeah, hadn’t thought so.”

Winry scribbles down measurements in her notebook, her handwriting only slightly neater than last time. Despite her best friend turning out tall and gorgeous in a way that is entirely unfair, the Rockbell house feels trapped in a bubble of misplaced nostalgia. “Go away, Ed,” she says, waving her hand. “I need to get started if this is going to be done in three days. You can take my bed, by the way. Like when we were younger.”

As kids, they would sleep over each other’s houses all the time, trying to see who could stay up all night. It never worked. Now Winry can pull all-nighters to make automail and Ed forgoes sleep for research. “I’ll see you later for dinner,” she says, and slips off the work table.

Within five days, she’ll back in Central. Dr. Maroch’s note burns in her pocket, but she thinks she can last in a sliver of her childhood for less than a week.

Together, Ed and Al head to their mother’s grave for the first time in three years.

They don’t say anything. They don’t have to. Mom’s grave is well kept, with dying flowers in front of it and leaves cleared away. There’s a light breeze sweeping through, too, blowing around the branches of the tree that hang above it. This is where it all started. This is where she convinced Al that human transmutation was a good idea.

Not far out of sight is their house, now burned to nothing. For Al’s sake, Ed doesn’t suggest they go to see it.

“You’re too skinny,” Winry says as she attaches the new arm. “Do you know how difficult it is making durable automail for your size?”

When Ed was eleven, they made the same complaint, which she thinks is ridiculous. “It’s not like you don’t eat enough,” Pinako adds, and Ed squeaks in pain as the nerves connect, holding back at scream.

Connection and attachment doesn’t take long, and standing on actual automail instead of a spare feels great after three days. “I increased the percentage of chrome,” Winry tells her, “so it should be less prone to rusting. This also means it’s not as strong, so don’t try anything crazy. It was the best way I could think of to make it even with your actual limbs.”

Under normal circumstances, she’d test these out sparring with Al immediately, but she’s supposed to get her stitches out first thing in Central, so she’s not risking it. Besides, she doubts her brother would even agree. “Yeah, thanks,” she says, pulling back on a shirt and a pair of trousers. “I’m going to go grab Al and pick up three tickets for Central down at the station. Want to come, Winry?”

“No way, right now I’m going to sleep,” her friend answers, stretching. “I bet my bed misses me.”

“If there isn’t a train for today, can I crash with you for tonight?” she asks. “Armstrong’s got the couch, and I never want to sleep on a cot again.”

Winry hugs her, says that of course she can, and Ed’s reminded so strongly of childhood it hurts.

Though she won’t say it out loud, she really can’t wait to get out of here.

After she gets her stitches removed, Armstrong trades them off to two new people. By now, Ed’s starting to feel like an unwanted toy. “I can use my alchemy now, though, and I have my brother,” she says before Armstrong leaves, being careful to stay out of earshot of the new officials. “Even with Scar at large, we’ll be safe.”

Unfortunately, like her, Armstrong is still just a Major, and ranks aren’t exactly meaningless. “My orders come from both Lieutenant Colonel Hughes and Colonel Mustang,” he says. “And need I remind you of your last excursion with the man? He knows about your automail.”

While that’s true, she doesn’t need to be treated like a child. Armstrong doesn’t have a personal detail following him everywhere. Neither does Mustang. If she were twelve, she’d understand, but fifteen puts her three years away from legal adulthood, and old enough to make her own decisions. She goes to say this, but Armstrong continues, “I will return when the opportunity presents itself, Fullmetal—”

“Can you please just call me Edina?”

“—and perhaps assist you in your endeavors, if you require it.”

She sighs. At least it isn’t raining. “I’ll see you later then, Major,” she says, struggling not to scowl. “Al and I have dawdled enough already.”

To her relief, he doesn’t claim a hospital visit isn’t “dawdling.” Instead he just reminds the new guards that both of them need to be protected, and ushers them on their way.

(there are books, and they’re burning, the destruction of knowledge is just as important as the gaining of knowledge, but there was no smoke, only images and darkness and pain so what’s with the ash—

            but there’s also a house with matches and flint and a secret and)

Al’s hand on her back grounds her. No one is really old enough to take what the Truth shows them, but Ed was definitely too young, and it never settled completely. And sometimes she slips. It’s not like she means to.

Because he’s her brother, and he gets it, he doesn’t tell her to calm down. Ross and Brosh don’t even notice. Like Ed and Al, they’re too focused on the remains of the library.

“This isn’t fair,” she hears herself say. “This isn’t far.”

Then Maria Ross turns to her, and her eyes are open wounds of pity.

Finding Sheska is their first bout of luck in so long Ed can’t even remember. Within a week, they have everything they need. The work is tedious, and it must be boring for Ross and Brosh to wait for them outside the door all day, but this is so important that she can’t find it in her to feel too bad about it.

Having Hughes drop by is pretty great, too. As much as the guy annoys her, she actually enjoys his company a lot. “You’re just as bad as Mustang,” she says when he stops in a second time, pulling up a seat across from him. “You do realize procrastinating on your work is delaying us too, right?”

Of course, he doesn’t particularly care about that, and his hair is sticking up at such odd angles she understands why. “Who else am I going to tell about Elicia and Gracia?” he answers, and she rolls her eyes. Around him, she can act her age, and he still won’t treat her like a kid. “Roy threatened to find a way to incinerate me over the phone last time I called him. How’s the research going?”

“Slowly, but it’s coming,” Al says, and Ed takes another sip of the coffee she shouldn’t have in here. “Ed might have a heart attack by the end of it from a caffeine overdose, but we should at least have something. How’s Sheska?”

As he reaches inside his jacket for his wallet, Hughes says, “Oh, she’s great. With her working here now, I get shorter work hours, which means more time with the family. Look at how big little Elicia’s gotten!”

The endless pictures are expected, and some part of Ed doesn’t mind them. Last time she saw the girl, though, she could barely walk three feet before falling. “She looks like Gracia,” she says, leaning in to take a closer look. “How is she already three?”

“I know. She’s growing so fast, isn’t she?”

(maybe it’s that some part of her wonders if her own father was ever that proud of her, if he ever showed off pictures, but that’s a thought that will never leave the dusty corners of her mind)

Hughes adds, “When you’ve cracked the code, you should swing by. At least for her birthday, if you can.”

“We can call that a deadline,” Al says, and Ed imagines he’d be smiling if he had the human body he deserves.

Without any real reason, she thinks they’re pretty close already so when she says, “Yeah, we promise,” she means it.

            (and it’s remarkable, really, how often she turns herself into a liar)

It isn’t until Ross and Brosh come running in that Ed realizes she fell, banging her automail on the table. “What’s wrong?” Brosh asks immediately as Al pulls her off the floor. “You didn’t faint from overworking yourself, did you?”

Quickly, Ed shakes her head, though she has trouble putting the words together. “We cracked the code,” Al answers for her. “The price is living humans. In large quantities.”

The moment they figured it out, whatever her mind must’ve subconsciously blocked out for her flooded back in (black hands, purple lights, and screaming, so, so much screaming, quiet, child, this is what you wanted, said the truth), and it took her a second to reorient herself. Not everything’s there, like the transmutation circle, or what she saw die, but it was still there, and that’s what matters. “Dr. Maroch was right,” she says, burying her head in her hands. “It really is seeing Hell.”

There’s a long moment of silence where their guards must be doing something, and she looks up again at the sound of rustling paper. They’re gathering everything. “We should head back to your apartment,” Ross says softly, research in hands. “I think it would be good for the two of you if you got out of this room.”

That’s bullshit, because nowhere’s good for them right now, but they agree anyway. “I need you to promise not to say anything,” she tells them, willing to pull her rank for once if it comes to it. It’s bad enough that someone other than her and her brother are involved already.

By some miracle, both Ross and Brosh say they will. “Let’s get the two of you home,” Ross says again, and puts her arm around Ed’s shoulder. “It will be safer to talk it out there, anyway.”

For the first time, Ed realizes how suffocating and stuffy the library research room feels. Her mind is still a little off kilter, and she wonders if this is what insanity feels like.

Though the depression stays, after a while the panic lessens. If anything, she’s frustrated, because while she’s already decided they can’t do this moral principle alone, it’s unfair that she doesn’t remember the full process.

“We’ll find a different way,” she tells Al, because her brother agrees this is out of the question. “This can’t be the only option there is.”

To her surprise, he answers, “I don’t want to do anything that uses you, either, Ed. Just…don’t.”

Then Armstrong bursts opens the door unannounced, and Ed has never been so thankful to see someone that invasive in her life.

Laboratory Five is dark, and creepy, and Ed can’t see a thing in the ventilation shaft. Her littleness saves her, though more than once her braid catches on metal. In all of this, nothing is worse than having to leave Al alone out there. He can take care of himself, more so than her, even, but she’s the older sister, and older sisters don’t leave little brothers on their own. That’s the law all siblings know.

Eventually, she finds a point of entrance, and kicks it in, making more noise than she wants. By some measure of luck, no one comes running. It’s so well lit, though, that her theory is definitely right; this is still in use, no matter what anyone says.

The wide open room comes up suddenly, and the transmutation circle in the center doesn’t jog anymore memories. Maybe it’s incomplete, but it’s right. That much she knows, at the very least. It’s painted on the floor, not chalked, so clearly whoever drew it wasn’t expecting anyone to come looking. This had to been used more than—

She recognizes the type of footsteps instantly, hollow and metal and big, but they don’t have Al’s style of walking. “Let me guess,” she says, focusing on the darkened corner where all she can make out is the glint of light on steel. “This is where you transmute humans.”

A suit of armor steps into her line of vision. “I don’t know who you are, girl,” he answers, “but you figured out an awful lot just by looking.”

“What can I say? Everyone’s got their gifts.” There’s a sword at his side, and a run down the front of his helmet. Shorter than Al, it looks like, but Ed’s not tall enough for that to make a difference. “Who’re you?”

As he continues forward, unhurried, he answers, “The one in charge of guarding this place. You can call me Number Forty-Eight.” Looks like she was right about the prisoners being used as test subjects, too. Once criminals are put on death row, they’re stripped on their name, and just given a number, or at least that’s what she’s heard. “Try not to take this personally, girl, but my orders are to kill anyone who enters without permission.”

Though Winry said she needs to careful, Ed considers this a moment where she really doesn’t have another option. She claps, elongating her automail into a blade, and doubts this guy will care about hitting her or not. “Then try not to take it personally that this girl is fighting back.”

His hollowness makes him faster than a human would be, and it’s only her arm that saves her. “So where’s your blood seal?” she asks to delay as she forces him away from her. Considering she’s never beaten Al before, she doesn’t have much of an advantage here without transmuting. “I want to make this quick.”

“Figured it out already?” he answers, moving in for another attack, and she evades, coming up behind him to try and fuse him to the ground if she can, but he doesn’t give her enough time before he nearly hits her again. “There are people like more on the outside?”

He’s purposely not giving her time to transmute, she realizes, as he again aims for her hands. While she’s good enough at close quarters, without alchemy she’s almost useless in a fight. “Yeah, whoever did this to you isn’t the only freak who got the bright idea to bind a soul to a suit of armor,” she says, and rolls out of the way when he knocks her to the ground. “There, I’ve unveiled your secret. Your helmet or your body?”

Then he pauses, finally, giving her time to breathe, and it’s a good thing her cracked ribs are healed by now or this wouldn’t work. “It’s here,” he says, flipping his helmet up to reveal the blood seal before quickly lowering it again. “Now that you know the equivalent to my heart, we’re—”

She doesn’t give him time to finish, throwing herself forward to try and sweep it off. Without his head attached, he’ll lose control of his body, too, and she won’t have to kill him. Whoever designed him clearly didn’t think this through.

Unfortunately, the attack never makes contact. He sweeps her with his sword, and she doesn’t move fast enough, the blade slicing into her side. At his second attack, she blocks it with her wrist, and a shoot of pain goes through her shoulder that shouldn’t happen with automail. Something’s wrong with her arm, and it happened much too quickly for it just be this fight. And if that stops working, she’s screwed, and Al will probably die here, too.

Dodging is difficult, and she didn’t even end up on the ground or against walls this much in her fight against Scar. “So who were you back in your bodily days?” she says, trying to distract him as she aims for his wrist, failing again to disarm him.  “You must’ve done something serious to get your soul bound like this.”

Having endless stamina means he’s better at multitasking than she is, and she only half pays attention to his story. Something about a serial killer named Slicer who had a brother and together they hunted young women at night. Oh, she must be a field day for him. If anything, that just pisses her off more, and at his next attack, she throws herself forward to meet it.

His sword slices the top of her normal shoulder, but the angle and his surprise at her letting herself be hit is enough that she knocks his head clean off his body. That stays stationary, sword still held high in the air, and she ducks under it to walk around. “What are you doing?” Slicer says as she picks him up by the plume. “You haven’t destroyed the blood seal yet.”

“Do I really look like a murderer?” she says. “I’m not going to kill another person. But I won the fight, so tell me everything you know about the Philosopher’s Stone and who works on it. Is it the military? An outside party? Guards hear things, don’t pretend like you don’t.”

Before she can properly react, she hears the footsteps again. Again, she dodges, dropping Slicer’s head, but not in enough time to avoid another cut to the side. “Oh,” the head says, “did I forget to mention my brother was bound with me?”

The first fight was hard. Now she’s injured, and her adrenaline is running low with the blood loss kicking in, and she doesn’t see a happy ending to this at all. When she goes to transmute her arm again, the brother moves for her hands just like last time, not giving her enough time. If this is how they’re going to play it, then it’s time she gets creative.

All it takes is one kick to the abdomen, probably cracking her ribs for the second time in less than a month, and she’s back against one of the columns. He’s closing in, sword bearing down close to her heart, and she doesn’t have time to transmute. If only she had fire alchemy, then all she would have to do is snap. Except, wait. There’s something just as fast, and she can’t believe she’s doing this, but she’s running out of options.

At the destruction stage in the alchemic process, she stops, blowing up Slicer’s armor down to his leg. The body collapses into pieces with no one to put him back together. “Unless there’s a third one of you,” she says, out of breathe and struggling to stay conscious, “then you’re official beat. Just talk, because I’m not killing you.”

Slicer never gets a chance to answer. A woman appears from out of the darkness, her heels clicking against the stone floor, and Ed watches in horror as her fingers stretch, cutting straight through the blood seal. “My, my, would you look at that,” says someone else, and then a man emerges from behind her. “What’s the Fullmetal kid doing here?”

“Oh, what a troublesome little girl,” the woman answers, and her nails rip Slicer apart.

The man moves forward, bringing the sword down on the blood seal of the upper body. “You idiot,” he says, stabbing down again and again, past the point of simple necessity. “You were trying to kill one of our most important sacrifices. Look at the state of her. You could have messed up the entire plan!”

As the two draw closer, Ed forces herself to stand. “What plan? What are—ow!”

Her automail dislocates of its own accord when she tries to move it, popping where it connects to the nerves. The woman says something about technical difficulties, and then her partner has his hand in Ed’s hair, forcing her head up. “That’s probably better for you, kid,” he says, “or this would have been a lot bloodier than it has to be.”

His knee collides with her damaged ribs, and the wound on her side. As much as she tries to fight against it, her mind blanks from the pain, and her head fills with nothing but white noise. The last thing she feels before she passes out is the man throw her over his shoulder, and she really hopes Al somehow made it out alive.

Chapter Text

There’s a lot of white, and pain reverberating through her entire body. A hospital, Ed realizes, and panics for a moment when she can’t immediately remember what happened. Then it all comes back to her—Laboratory Five, Slicer, the man and woman with the strange tattoos. Before she fainted, she’d seen a larger, more complete transmutation circle on the wall, but it had been too dark to see clearly.

When she gets her bearings enough to sit up, she finds she’s alone with Maria Ross. “My partner is speaking with your brother, Major Elric,” she says, helping Ed steady herself. “He’s all right.”

That’s good to hear. Hospitals don’t make her brother all that happy, either, and he doesn’t even need to put up with fussy doctors. “Let me guess,” she says as she tries to move her automail and only succeeds in twitching her fingers. “I’m not.”

Ross reaches over to the bedside table, where a doctor must have left the medical chart. “This is the full report, Major.”

Four fractured ribs on her left side, two on her right, deep lacerations in her flash shoulder and her right side. Non-fatal damage to her kidney. A scrape along her left temple she doesn’t remember getting, and a twisted ankle. Even she’s forced to acknowledge she’s a wreck. “I was so close,” she says, frowning, as she puts her chart away. “The transmutation circle was right in front of me, I was about to get answers.”

Sighing, Ross asks, “May I speak out of term, Major?”

“Uh, sure? And can stop calling me Major? It’s creepy.”

“Then what else should I call you?”

With a shrug, Ed answers, “Edina? Mustang’s team calls me that sometimes. What is it?”

After a long pause, the other woman says, “You acted like a child yesterday. You put your brother in danger, and Sergeant Brosh and I at risk with our superiors. That was selfish, and you need start thinking about the consequences of your actions on other people.”

This isn’t the first time Ed’s been called selfish. She’s knows she is, too. That doesn’t make hearing it hurt any less, though. She goes to apologize for putting the two in that position, but Ross continues, “I understand better than most people why you might not want to ask for help,” before she can. “I know how many people in the military can be judgmental if a woman ever needs any. I’m sure First Lieutenant Hawkeye could say the same. But not everyone’s like that, Edina. You’re allowed to lean on other people sometimes.”

“My dad left when I was eight, and Al was seven,” Ed says, playing with a loose string on the course hospital blanket. Her gender doesn’t influence too many of her decisions, but outside of Winry and Hawkeye, there aren’t many women she talks to. “Then my mom died when I was ten. I raised my brother pretty much on own. You’re right. I’m not all that good at asking for help.”

Ross smiles, the birthmark under her eye crinkling. “Well, even after we’ve called off,” she says, touching the uninjured part of Ed’s arm, “if you ever need any help, you can come and find me.”

Though she’s not the best authority on the matter, Ed thinks this might count as making friends.

Not having Al at her side is disconcerting, but she’s not allowed to walk around too much on her injured ankle to go look for him. To make it worse, Hughes intervenes and calls Mustang, who gives the order over the phone that she isn’t allowed to sign herself out until the doctors say she can. Knowing her luck, that won’t be until long after her automail is fixed.

“I’m already stuck here for at least a week, Mustang,” she says when she finally has time to talk to him. “You don’t need to confine me here for any longer.”

Hospitals are horrible places. Everything feels sterile, but no amount of cleanliness can erase the number of deaths this building has seen. “I’m not letting one of my men die from something as stupid as ignoring medical advice,” he answers. “Your doctor gave me a list of your injuries. This is more serious than usual.”

This is only an issue because she’s not yet an adult. Her State Alchemist license allows her to bypass most of the laws confined to her age range, but not enough. And in the eyes of the state, a commanding officer is as good as a legal guardian. “Well, the doctors said nothing was fatal,” she says, running her fingers through her hair. “Don’t you have work to do, Mustang? What are you doing talking to me?”

“I’m keeping you from doing anything reckless,” he says. “You’re telling me how you got caught in that explosion when I get to Central.”

Saying she and Al were caught in the explosion that took Laboratory Five is easier than telling everyone they were investigating it. It’s a good enough excuse, since there were people on the street injured in that blast, but Mustang clearly doesn’t believe her already. “Then focus on actually getting here first. I’ll call you again when I’m out of the hospital, Colonel,” she says, and hangs up, not waiting for his goodbye.

Hughes comes right after Winry finishes with her arm, bursting in unannounced, and the only thing keeping her upper body hidden is an endless amount of bandages. With an undignified squeak, Ed pulls the blankets up to cover her hard enough they untangle from the end of the bed. “Knock next time,” she says, embarrassed. “I don’t exactly have a shirt on at the moment!”

Expectedly, all he does is turn around, not bothering to leave the room. “I heard you had your mechanic in,” he says as Winry helps Ed get a shirt over her head. “Unfortunately, even with your arm fixed, the doctors say you still aren’t in any condition to leave. It looks like you’re going to miss Elicia’s birthday party.”

Oh, no. With everything that’s been going on, she forgot about that. “You can look now,” she says, and he turns. “Al’s around here somewhere. You can ask him if you’d still like to go. This is Winry Rockbell, my mechanic. Winry, Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes. Hughes, meet Winry.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Rockbell,” he says, shaking Winry’s hand enthusiastically. “Ed, you’ll be happy to know won’t be kept under guard for two much longer.”

As much as she likes Ross, and to an extent Brosh, that’s a relief. The fewer people she involves in her work the better. “Does that mean Scar’s taken care of?” Winry asks from behind her. “Ed told me what happened to her last when she was in Resembol. Or did you do something else this time?”

“Roy’s team out in Eastern HQ haven’t found the body yet,” Hughes answers, “but there was enough evidence in an explosion for the higher ups to pronounce the problem solved. Once you’re out of the hospital, we can lift the guard.”

“Did the doctors give you or Mustang an estimate for how much longer I’ll be in here?” she says, because with the guard lifted, she can get more work done. “No one’s telling me anything.”

Then Winry hits her in the back, right where none of the bandages are. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” she says and when Ed turns to look at her, she finds her friend scowling. “Well, I’m going to go. I need to find a place to stay tonight before it passes check-in time.”

Before Ed can just offer her the apartment for the duration of her stay, Hughes jumps in and says, “Why don’t you just stay with my family? Any friend of the Elrics is a friend of mine.”

Winry tries to protest, and Ed manages to keep her laughter in right up until her friend is out of the room.

Ever since Mom died, Ed’s always seen crying as a point of weakness, and it takes a lot of bring her to tears. Hearing Al accuse her of fabricating his soul is enough to push her over the edge, and she leaves the room at a faster pace than any doctor would advise.

When Hughes finds her, she’s huddled up on the roof where she thought no one would look. “You said you didn’t know what happened to Al when you were inside,” he says as he sits down next to her. “I know you two well enough to say your brother wouldn’t come up with this on his own, Ed.”

That’s true, maybe. She doesn’t feel so sure anymore. “The guard I was fighting didn’t say anything about him,” she says, and wipes her eyes. “But just—I watched a blood seal get ripped apart in there. I was so scared and now—oh, I don’t even know.”

(not my brother, give my brother his body back, he's all the family i have left, he's all i—take whatever you want in return)

To her surprise, Hughes puts his arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer. The movement is so parental she barely knows what to do with it. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Ed,” he says, rubbing circles on her upper arm with his thumb. A breeze sweeps by, chilly and ripping through the thin cotton of her shorts and shirt. “Winry’s probably talking some sense into him right now, but maybe you should try telling him that.”

“I just didn’t want to worry him. I didn’t realize that was only making it worse.”

(she draws the seal in blood, and the hands burst from the ground again, ripping away at her arm.

            how the fuck could anyone accuse her of faking this)

“I’m not the best person to give advice on this, since I don’t have any siblings,” Hughes says, “but I do have a wife. Believe me, when you try to hide something from someone who loves you just because you don’t want them to worry, they can see something’s wrong and jump to the worst possible conclusion.”

But then that begs the question of how Al came to that conclusion in the first place. “I guess you’re right,” she says, and he probably is. “Can you give me a minute alone?”

Hopefully, if she’s alone, her brother will come up and she can figure out what’s wrong. The other option is Winry, and Ed doesn’t want her friend to know she cried. It’s bad enough Hughes does. “Yeah, I better get back to the office anyway,” he says, and stands. “I’ll come around again tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”

Maybe Ross has a point, Ed thinks as he leaves. Sometimes having people to talk to makes things more bearable.

After getting visited by the leader of the country, and calling up Mustang, Ed’s finally given permission to early. “We can wait another few days if you need it,” Al says once they hit the train station, clearly terrified. “Teacher’s not going anywhere after all.”

“You’re a suit of armor and I’m injured,” Ed says, braiding her hair for the first time in ten days. “She won’t beat us up too badly.”

Though she’s just as terrified as her brother, her relationship with their teacher was always a little different. Once she realized her apprentice didn’t have a mother to explain anything to her, she made it something of her job to do so. It was awkward, but Ed doesn’t even want to imagine how clueless she would be without her teacher’s help.

That, and they should have made this trip ages ago, because she isn’t the only one she knows who tried human transmutation, so she needs to ask about that too. She needs to know how much of it Teacher remembers, and if parts of it are a jumbled mess for her, too.

(cities burned and civilizations fell and families broke to pieces. but the truth, the truth is the human body can be an array, or a city, or a country, or even the shadows of the moon.

            the gate gives her everything for the price of a leg, but there’s a difference between knowing and understanding, and sometimes she thinks she understood more than she was supposed to)

She hates Rush Valley. Officially. And that was before the pickpocket stole her identification. Just on principle, Ed’s not a particularly touchy person, but now even out in the mountains she’s suddenly sitting with her pants rolled up to her thigh and shirtless. Arguably the only good thing is that she took the watch back the moment Winry started gushing, but they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with if she hadn’t let her friend talk her into this.

It’s hot for September, and inside the little house even hotter. “The design is good, but heavy,” Mr. Dominic says, tapping at her arm. “Were your parents short, girl?” Ed shakes her head. Her father was tall, and Mom was around Winry’s height, if she remembers correctly. “Then this might be the reason you are. There’s a possibility the heaviness could have stunted your growth.”

According to Teacher, she’s short just because she hit puberty so early. As much as she’d like to be taller this, she doubts it has anything to do with her automail. “I know I don’t look it, but I’m fifteen,” she says. “I’m done growing. Lightening it wouldn’t do anything now anyway.”

Finally, Mr. Dominic drops her arm, and says, “Well, you can remember it for future reference, Miss Rockbell. And you, alchemist, take better care of your automail. It’s scratched to hell.”

“Yeah, being a State Alchemist isn’t exactly the safest job in the world.”

As Ed pulls her shirt over her head, Winry throws herself between them, begging Mr. Dominic for an apprenticeship. By the time she’s fully dressed, the man’s locked away in his room, and Al is consoling their incredibly disappointed friend.

Rush Valley is officially one of the worst places they’ve ever stopped, Ed thinks, and slips her jacket back on despite the heat.

Naturally, it rains, and despite having her identification back, they’re stuck staying over for dinner.

That really wasn’t supposed to include helping birth a baby.

“Between what I remember of my parents’ medical textbooks and you being to create whatever we need with your alchemy, we can do this, Ed,” Winry says, dragging her back into the room. “Come on, you’re another girl, it’s not as though I can ask Al.”

“So if I was a guy you wouldn’t ask?”

“Of course not!”

Ed knows close to nothing about childbirth, but she does a pretty extensive mental library on the human body from all her time in Tucker’s library. Paninya plays errand girl, since she knows where everything is, and the future mother keeps screaming. None of them have a medical degree, and that better not tip the balance and cause a life-for-a-life situation.

Time lapses, though none of them keep track. When the baby finally comes, it’s Winry that delivers him, and Ed cuts the cord as Paninya strokes the woman’s hair. Then Ed glances down at the red, crying face of the little boy, and everything that just happened finally settles.

“I’m going to go tell Al everything’s all right,” she says, and rushes out so fast she almost trips over her own feet.

“What was that back there?”

“Winry, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

(alchemists have calculated every element in the human body down to the exact measurement of what makes up a person’s eyelashes, an alchemist learns. no one’s succeeded yet in making life, but that’s not to say it’s impossible. that’s not to say.

            but then there’s a body, twisted and inside out, and breathing and it’s not that making life is impossible. it’s that making the right one is)

Though she looks like she wants to press the issue, Winry holds her tongue for once. On the other side of the room, Paninya and Al gush over the miracle of childbirth. That’s what it was, undoubtedly. A human life was made today, and no one needed to suffer much more than labor pains to create it. Creation of a human being isn’t something alchemy can do.

In alchemy, everything needs equivalency, and you can’t create a body without taking one away. Sometimes Ed wonders how an arm ended up equaling a soul.

Sometimes she wonders if maybe the Gate takes things without telling you first, too.

First Teacher smacks them both. Then she hugs them, and her hugs hurt even worse than her punch. “Well, you’re still a stick,” she says when she lets go, and Ed’s ribs ache, “but you aren’t as short as I thought you’d turn out to be.”

Clearly, Teacher’s still ill, and Ed’s starting to think this might be her price. There’s no other reason why she can do a transmutation without a circle. “That’s the opposite of what I normally hear,” she says, and smiles, because she was right, and they haven’t been murdered yet.  “You look good. And I’m sorry to just come over unannounced like this. It was a last minute decision in the hospital.”

Glancing her up and down, Teacher asks, “What trouble did the military get you two into?”

“Can we talk inside?”

Ten minutes later and they’re all set up in living room, the table complete with tea and finger sandwiches courtesy of Sig. The whole house still smells like fresh flowers, which they buy from the florist down the street to disguise the small from the front store. Explaining everything, again, takes another ten minutes, and when they’re done, Teacher says, “I can’t offer you much help on the Philosopher’s Stone. It doesn’t interest me.”

Ed slumps back in her chair, ready for defeat, but then Sig says, “Well, honey, there was that one man in Central who mentioned the Stone. Remember?”

“In Central?” Al repeats. “Who was it?”

There’s a long moment of silence before their teacher says, “Hohenheim? I think that was—Ed, what’s wrong?”

(mommy, when is daddy coming back, she asks, and she asks this every day, and mommy must be frustrated even if she never seems it. sometimes daddy leaves for a week, but he always says goodbye and this time he didn’t say that.

            unfortunately, grownups never give all the answers, and mommy just says, how about you take you brother and go over winry’s, edina.

            after six months, edina decides maybe her father wasn’t as great as she thought after all)

“He’s our father,” Al says, which is good, because Ed doesn’t think she’s capable of answering that.

Teacher’s face softens in recognition. “The one that ran out on you.”

Nodding, Ed says, “That’s him. If he hadn’t left, none of this would have happened. Here I just thought he’d died.”

(but we still have a dad, alphonse keeps insisting every time someone calls them the elric orphans. he’s not here but we have him.

            it doesn’t take long before the term the elric orphans sticks)

“I wish I could be more help, but that’s the only lead I can give you,” Teacher says with a sigh. “The two of you can stay here tonight. It’s crime enough that the hospital made you sleep on one of their cots with so many of your ribs cracked without making you search out a decent hotel.”

For her own safety, Ed doesn’t mention that Teacher’s guest bedroom mattresses aren’t much more comfortable. Still, she knew what she was getting herself into when she got Mustang’s permission to sign out early. And she can handle some chest pain.

“Thank you,” she says, echoing her brother, and together they help clear off the table.

It takes about a day of exchanging stories, getting kicked out, and then accepted back in for Ed to finally talk to Teacher alone. “I knew you’d come eventually,” she says as Ed takes a seat across from her, toweling down her hair after her shower. “During the whole conversation with your brother, you looked like you wanted to ask me something.”

Though it was hard not to blurt everything out right then, there are still certain things she doesn’t want to say in front of Al. Regardless of what Hughes said, that hasn’t changed. “I don’t think we need him to remember,” she says. “How to make a Philosopher’s Stone is in here somewhere. I saw it. Everything’s just so confused sometimes it takes seeing something for me to straighten it out. Does that every happen to you?”

Shaking her head, Teacher answers, “It took a few weeks, but eventually everything settled. That hasn’t happened?”

“I think my brain must’ve blocked some of it out as a defense mechanism,” Ed says, disappointed to find out this might just be her. “When we cracked the code, though—I remembered watching it happen. And I know I saw the transmutation circle for it, too, it’s just not there yet.”

(the inside of the gate is timeless, and she was in there forever and yet no time at all)

Considering she assumed Teacher had seen what she did, Ed doesn’t like how worried she looks. “Al paid with his entire being, but you reached back in there and took his soul out,” she says, crossing her arms. “That might explain why you’ve seen so much.”

Maybe that’s it, then, why her price was just an arm. It also means Ed can spare her brother the pain of overloading his brain (because it burned, it burned white-hot with the heat of the sun and there are times she gets so confused that maybe clarity was her exchange, too). “Did it show you all those other people trying out human transmutation, too?” she asks, and Teacher nods. “I figured out you’d done it too the moment I realized I could transmute without a circle. I was just too scared you’d kill me if I came back and asked about it.”

“If you weren’t so beat up already, you bet your ass I would.” Ed laughs, and they’re quiet for a moment before Teacher continues, “Have you told Al yet? What you plan on doing? Because I know you aren’t planning on using the Stone.”

(this is the thing: she never actually promised.

            her brother’s always been the one who deserved it more, anyway)

“I don’t even know how to do it yet,” she says. “Does it really matter?”

Teacher doesn’t answer, but Ed still gets message that she’s an idiot clearly enough.

Because the weather down here is so warm, Ed blanked for a moment that it was already the end of September. With October right around the corner, this is what she and Al would call A Problem.

“Southern HQ is closer,” her brother says as she throws her clothes back in her bag, scrambling to get ready. “It would be easier than Central.”

Ever since she realized her assessment is coming up, Teacher hasn’t looked her in the eye, but she doesn’t have time to feel guilty. “Yeah, but I have nothing prepared, and Mustang’s there now,” she answers, double checking to make sure her uniform pants are there. “He’ll help me come up with something.”

Normally, she would do her assessment in Eastern HQ just because he’s her commanding officer, but technically she can do it anywhere. If she had something prepared, she wouldn’t bother with Central, but for once she actually needs him. “But the Fuhrer will be there,” Al says, which does admittedly makes things harder.

As she zips up her bag, she says, “I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can. I shouldn’t need to be there for more than a couple of days.”

Al sighs. “Don’t forget to go see Hughes and thank him for the hospital visits.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Sig walks her to the station, and waits with her until the train comes. Before she leaves, he gives her a hug goodbye, and tells her to come back soon.

There’s bad news. Then there’s terrible news. This classifies as the latter.

It was an accident, that she found out. Maria Ross let it slip, assuming she knew, and it takes her another hour before she finally finds Mustang. “I just heard about Hughes,” she says, taking the seat across from him in his new office. “I’m sorry.”

Even though she doesn’t have complete verification, she knows this is her fault. He’d been in the archive room and died in an outside telephone booth trying to make an emergency call, according to Ross. And Hughes was a detective, he was smart. It’s not too far out of the realm of possibility that he figured something out, and she should learn not to involve people in her own business.

“If you know anything,” Mustang says, “it would be easier on the both of us for you to tell me now.”

She wants to, really. As antagonistic as they are to each other most days, she still trusts him more than she does most people. “I can’t,” she says after a moment. “I got orders from someone with a higher position than you not to say anything.”

“Did Hughes, too?” She nods. “Well, that’s more of a lead than before.”

Already, that’s technically saying too much, but she’s never been one for following the rules too strictly. “Look, I know this is a bad time to ask, but the hospital really screwed me over for time,” she says, trying to bring her focus back to Al. He’s going to be devastated when she tells him. She should probably call Winry about this, too. “I haven’t had time to prepare an assessment. Any suggestions?”

Getting back to her brother is the most important thing for her right now, and from there maybe they can look for Hughes’ killer on their own. And when they aren’t confined to an official building, she’ll be able to tell Mustang about it, too. Involving people is never good, but if it weren’t for him, she’d be out on her own to begin with. “Well, the Fuhrer’s gone to Southern HQ,” he answers, which means Al was wrong, and it’s good she came here instead. “Armstrong’s gone with him, and most State Alchemists in the city are dead because of Scar. Your assessment comes down to me as your commanding officer.”

“So you mean I’m wearing my uniform for nothing?”

That gets him to crack a smile, though barely. “Transmute it to fit you,” he says. “I’ll consider that your assessment.”

Her jacket fits, only because she’s transmuted it already so many times, but her pants are cuffed up three times at the ankle, her shirt sleeves sticking out from under her jacket’s, and it bunches over her waist because it’s too big to be tucked in properly. With equivalent exchange, the only way to shrink something is to either thicken the fabric, or lose some of it, which is why she hasn’t done it earlier. One’s messy. The either doesn’t help in trying to not make her look like a boy.

Still, this is easy, and means she could be back on a train by tonight. She claps once to do the shirt, and then again to fix her pants. Then Mustang grabs her paperwork and fills it out right there. “The Fuhrer will have to sign it off, of course, but you still have your certification,” he says, and pushes the form off to the side. “You should start wearing that more often, Fullmetal. You’re not a kid anymore.”

“If this is your way of telling me to protect myself around corrupt military personnel,” she answers, “I’ve already figured that out.” There are exhaustion bruises under his eyes, and he can’t have been here more than a week. “Unless something comes up, Al and I’ll come back when we’re done with Dublith. I might not be able to say anything, but I can help.”

“Then you better catch a train to Dublith as soon as you can. Report straight back to Central after, Fullmetal,” he says, going back to his paperwork. “That’s an order.”

Before she leaves, she visits Hughes’ grave. Like Mom’s, it’s well kept, but with so many flowers it’s starting to overflow.

If only she’d stuck in Central for a few more days like Mustang said rather than run off. She might’ve been here to help. At the very least, she would’ve made the funeral. “Next time I’m in Central I’ll go see Gracia and tell her the truth,” she says to the grave, because his wife deserves to know whose fault it is, even if she can’t be told the details. “Al, Mustang, and I will find who did this to you, I promise. Thanks for everything, Hughes.”

On the day she turned thirteen, he dragged her over his place for a cake Gracia made her. Then again at fourteen, fifteen. There aren’t many people Ed honestly likes, given how many she interacts with, and there are even less who are willing to take time out of their personal lives to help her out. And in gratitude, she’d gotten him killed, widowed Gracia, left Elicia without a father.

Mustang telling her to wear her uniform was as good as a warning. If Hughes really did die because he found something out, then this directly ties into everything Ed and her brother are trying to achieve. In return, she’ll help dismantle the whole system just to figure it out.

By now, she owes him that much, at least.

Ed returns to learn Al was kidnapped yesterday, from the Fuhrer, who showed up with Armstrong, as if this week hasn’t been bad enough. “Excuse me, but I’d like my brother back,” she says, pushing open the door to Devil’s Nest, and already coming face to face with this Greed person. She promised Teacher they’d be back by dinner, so she needs to make this quick. “And this is not a good day, so I suggest you give me what I want before I have to ask twice.”

Then the man with the tattoo, the homunculus, steps forward. “We’ll give you the armor boy back,” he says as his men gather behind him, “but only if you give me what I want first. Equivalent exchange, right? That’s what you alchemists call it, last I checked.”

Before she left, Teacher already gave her a rundown on what the people here said, and Greed was pretty clear about what he wanted. Even if Al hadn’t been involved, she wouldn’t tell him. “Why don’t you just ask you partners in Laboratory Five?” she says. “They did good job binding two souls to the same suit. Impressive, really, once you get past how unethical it is.”

Clearly, Greed has no idea what she’s talking about. “I’m not really on speaking terms with the rest of them, if that’s who you mean,” he answers, before looking to one of his men. “Don’t kill her, Dorchette.”

Though the man’s fast, Ed’s smaller, and faster, and she jumps above his attack, changing her automail into a blade before bringing her arm down. Her momentum is enough to disarm him, and one hit to his neck with her elbow on her fall is enough to knock him to the ground. He falls with a thud, sword skidding across the floor, and she kicks hard to his temple leg before he can get up.

“I’d like my brother back,” she repeats, shoving Dorchette away with her foot. “Now.”

With a slow smile, Greed says, “Roa, take the armored kid and Dorchette and get out of here. We’ll have to look him over ourselves. Should’ve guessed a State Alchemist wouldn’t give up her secrets that easy.”

When the larger man—Roa—picks up Al, Ed goes to intercept, but Greed’s hand flies out, blocking her, and the force of the hit is enough to knock her backwards. His hand is grey suddenly, covered in some sort of material, and she barely has enough time to create a barrier from the floor to protect herself. All right, she’s gotten creative in a fight before. Considering the woman from last time could elongate her fingers into sharp points, she shouldn’t be so surprised Greed can do something, too.

Unlike her fight with Slicer, she’s able to avoid close quarters, and causes two quick distractions with spikes from the wall and floor before creating a square block that comes straight up from under him, knocking him under the chin and throwing him to the ground hard enough she can hear a crack. And just because her luck is so bad lately, she’s not shocked at all when he gets right back up, red light surrounding the injury and healing it instantaneously.

So he has a natural bodily shield and wounds won’t stick. This isn’t the first time she’s gone against a seemingly immortal opponent before, and all she has to do is incapacitate him, not kill him. Not to mention, he’s looking for the answer of immortality, which means he definitely isn’t. That body can’t regenerate forever. Unfortunately for her, her body can’t regenerate at all, and she’s been running around so much her body hasn’t had the time to fully heal.

“Oh, I know that look. You’ve figured it out,” Greed says, and the rock pillar that hits him in the abdomen breaks on impact. “Sorry for going easy on you, kid, but you should’ve taken the deal. I’m not giving you the chance to kill me.”

Whatever material was covering his arm crawls across his body, creeping from under his neck and around his face. It must have already been under his clothes for the stone to do that. “I only wear my uniform for official business, you know,” she says, already trying to think of a way to learn what the material he has on his body is. “Do you really think I don’t have backup?”

Then he’s in front of her, faster than before, and though she dodges, his claws still rip into the surface of her automail. It’s not broken completely, but the damage is enough to tell her this is going to be a long fight.

“I want to see my brother, let me go!”

“Major Elric, you need calm down!”

“But Al—”

Someone puts their hands on her shoulders, forcing her down, and a military doctor looks her over, stitching her up there at her demand. There’s no numbing agent, but she doesn’t care. She had Greed, she had him, but then her backup had to go and drag her out of there instead of help her. “The situation has been dealt with,” the man holding her down says. “You can see your brother once your insides aren’t spilling out of you.”

Before she can say that she’s fine, thank you very much, the door to the room she was brought into slides open. In walks the Fuhrer, and people really have to stop making the habit of coming in when all she’s wearing is a chest wrap. For fuck’s sake, she’s fifteen. The least someone could do is knock, even if that someone is the leader of the country.

He smiles at the sight of her, and at least his eyes stay on her face. “It’s good to see you awake, Fullmetal,” he says, and finally, she lets herself be pushed down so the doctor can finish with her. “Your brother is safe. I saw to the matter personally.”

“Where is he, sir?”

As the doctor throws the man holding her down a bandage for her cheek, the Fuhrer answers, “In the front room. A woman was hiding inside him, and she needs to be removed before you can see him.”

The way he words it pretty heavily implies whoever this woman is, she’s now dead, which must’ve been horrible for Al. Considering all she wants to do is protect him, Ed has a tendency to get her brother in more traumatic situations than helpful ones. “Am I allowed to see him when I’m done, sir, or I’m going to be check into a hospital?”

Fuhrer Bradley looks to the doctor for the answer to that, and the man says, “Well, you should go to the hospital if you have the chance, but if you take it easy for a few days, a stay at home recovery should be fine.”

She hopes that’ll be the end of it, but of course it’s not, because everyone’s now seen her brother’s body, and her automail is displayed openly with her clothes ripped to pieces like this. “Before you can do that, Fullmetal, I have a few questions for you,” the Fuhrer says, and actually crouches to her level on the broken couch the man dragged her out threw her on. “The mastermind behind this, the one with the tattoo. Did you make any sort of deal with him?” When she shakes her head, he continues, “Did you obtain any information?” Again, she shakes her head, not caring that it’s a lie. “One last question. Your arm and your brother’s body. Do they have any relation to this at all?”

Lying here won’t do her any good, but she can’t say yes, so she opts for not answering at all. After a moment, he pats her uninjured shoulder and says, “You’re an honest girl, Elric. Take care of that brother of yours,” as if this were a perfectly normal occurrence. “You two, make sure she’s patched up thoroughly before she’s allowed up.”

Then he leaves, and the whole thing is so sudden even the other two look shocked. Then the one holding her down says, “You heard him, Sergeant,” and the doctor gets back to work with greater vigor than before.

Oh, they are so screwed.

Later, Ed cleans her brother up herself, ignoring the pain of her own injuries. “So you don’t remember anything about human transmutation?”

As she fits Al’s breastplate back, he answers, “No. Everything came back to me all at once, but I don’t remember ever seeing anything like that.”

Maybe Teacher was right, then, and Ed saw everything because she essentially went back in for more. “That’s all right,” she says, standing. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Al catches her wrist before she can walk away. “You’re not okay, though, Ed.”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry,” she says, and smiles. She means it, too. All she needs is a chance to recover, like the Sergeant said. “And I’m sure Mustang will understand if we take a stop in Rush Valley to get my arm fixed. After, we have to go straight to Central—what is it?”

Just because her brother can’t make facial expressions doesn’t mean she can’t get a good guess on what he’s feeling. “You were wearing your uniform. You never wear your uniform,” he says. “Did something happen when you went in for your assessment?”

With a sigh, she says, “I’ll tell you in the morning,” because she’s not springing the news on him after how hectic today was that Hughes is dead. That Mustang asked her to be more cautious.

By some miracle, Al doesn’t try to pressure her. Tomorrow, then. She’ll tell him tomorrow, and then they’ll be on their way.

(neither have them have good legs, but they have durable ones, and they can walk as far as they need to)

Chapter Text

Winry slaps her instead of saying hello. “I can’t tell what’s worse,” she says, already peeling off Ed’s jacket, “my automail or your body. How did you end up with stitches on your cheek?”

The way her friend jerks her around hurts, but she manages not to wince. “I was up against a guy who wasn’t afraid to hit a girl,” she answers, letting Winry sit her down so she can take a look at her arm.

With a scowl, she says, “So I guess your teacher didn’t help you get any stronger after all.”

(to train the soul you have to train the body, but a homunculus doesn’t have a soul, so where does that leave the rest of them)

“No, she helped as much as she could,” Al says as Winry wraps a bandage around the automail. “We didn’t learn a lot, but it’s still more than we had before. Now Ed has to go back to Central.”

At that, her friend’s face splits into a wider smile than she’s given either of them in a while. “You’re going to Central?” she says, scribbling something down on her clipboard. “I want to go, too. I want to see the Hughes’.”

For a moment, Ed just doesn’t know what to say because she’d completely forgotten in the aftermath of Al’s horrified reaction that Winry didn’t know yet, either. “Um,” she says finally, “Winry, I’m sorry, but Maes Hughes was killed off duty a few weeks ago. That’s actually why I have to go to Central.”

The pen clatters against the table, and Ed looks away, not wanting to watch her friend cry. “What? Why?” she says, voice unsteady. “How?”

(the telephone booth, now cleared of blood, a young man calling someone up when she stops by to look, his pretty girlfriend laughing at something he says as he dials.

            a bullet wound to the head, military grade, and a stab through the shoulder and the chest. they have a what, they have a where, they have a how. what they don’t have is a why.

            that’s the missing piece of the puzzle)

“We don’t know. That’s what we need to figure out.”

Then Winry says, “I should go see Gracia and Elicia,” and Mr. Garfield answers, “You’ve certainly earned yourself vacation time to pay your respects to a departed friend,” before Ed can tell her that’s a bad idea.

When she finally does look back up, Winry’s got the pen in her hand again, hiding her face with her bangs. “I’m going to go get the parts you need, Ed, and pack for Central,” she says. “You have some time to kill if you two want to walk around.”

“Winry—”

But her friend’s already left the room. Ed wants to wait for her, worried about how she’s taking the news, but at the same time the shop is hot and stuffy, and she’s more than willing to get out while she can.

Dealing with a ravenous foreigner isn’t how Ed planned on killing time but here she is, anyway, sitting across a table from a boy who’s eating faster than anyone she’s ever seen. “You have a way to pay for this, right?” she says, glancing over at the owner who looks back at her with such pity it’s pathetic.

The boy answers, “Of course! Once I find a place to convert currency,” and his voice has a light accent she vaguely recognizes as coming from Xing. She doesn’t deal with foreigners often, but she spends enough time in East City to meet the occasional person here or there.

Apparently this is a problem, though, because the restaurant owner says, “There isn’t a shop to covert currency here. This isn’t a city.”

Surprisingly, the boy immediately puts down his bowl. “I am terribly sorry,” he tells her, but not the owner. “If I had known, I would not have inconvenienced you. Normally I know better than to impose on a pretty girl.”

“It’s fine,” she says, too disgruntled to even put up a fuss, and pulls out her wallet. “Can I have the check, sir?  I can cover this.”

Though the owner looks dubious, he nods and goes off to tally the price. “So I’m guess you’re from Xing?” she adds, taking out what she thinks is roughly the amount judging by the prices she got a quick look at earlier. “And it’s a recent thing?”

Nodding a little too enthusiastically, the boy says, “Yes, I crossed the desert to get here. It was rough, but I made it.”

“Why did you take that route?” Al asks as the owner comes back. She estimated a little too high, but tells him to keep the change as a tip for having to put up with this. “Aren’t there others?”

Again, the boy nods. “But I wanted to see the ruins of Xerxes.”

There’s a sudden childhood panic that seizes her (because no one in amestris has golden eyes, edina, everyone knows that, you must be some sort of freak, and it’s always horrible looking different when you’re just a kid), but it’s so ridiculous that it’s easy enough to push back down. “I heard there’s practically nothing there.”

He shrugs. “I wanted to see it for myself,” he says, which is reasonable enough, and much more reasonable than worrying over years of teasing at the expense of having Xerxesian eyes, or so Mom said. “I was headed here to do some alkahestry research.”

“We use alchemy here,” Ed tells him. “I don’t know much about the difference, but ours is more military based rather than medical. We’ve got border excursions everywhere except with Xing, really, so we need it.”

This isn’t a conversation she ever thought she’d end up having in Rush Valley. If this guy’s an alkahest, though, maybe he can help her out. “Are you two alchemists?” he asks, large smile on his face, and actually, it’s nice to see someone happy for once.

Pulling her pocket watch out, she answers, “Yeah, I’m Edina Elric, a State Alchemist,” and Al says, “And I’m her little brother.”

Somehow, the boy’s smile stretches even more. “Wow, state approved, aren’t I lucky. I’m Ling Yao,” he says, and enthusiastically shakes both her and Al’s hands. “You look much different from the other military people I’ve seen.”

“Well, I’m a girl, and I’m not in a uniform, so that might have something to do with it,” she says. “Are you an alkahest?”

“Oh, no. I’m just looking for something.”

Any good fortune Ed felt a moment ago leaves abruptly. All she wants is answers, not more people asking questions. “What is it?”

Then, as if her luck couldn’t get any worse, Ling Yao says, “Perhaps you’ve heard of it. The Philosopher’s Stone.”

(this is the devil’s research, and, searching for it will put you through hell. but there’s this saying about devils and temptation and sin.

            it’s no wonder other people are going to look for it, and it’s no wonder people are going to die for it, either)

It’s probably safer for everyone here if they get out, so she stands, and as she does, so does Al. “Sorry, but we can’t help you,” she says. “Any information on the Philosopher’s Stone is classified.”

Before she can even make a step backwards, there’s suddenly a knife to her neck. Considering that she’s in no condition to fight after Greed, this isn’t a good situation. “So you do know about it,” Ling says, standing too, and he doesn’t seem to amicable now. “If I promise not to tell anyone else, then will you tell me?”

Clearly this guy doesn’t understand the meaning behind the word classified, and it’s bad enough she’s already planning on telling Mustang. “What do you want it for?” she asks.

“It’s a long story, so I’ll give you the shortened version,” he answers, stepping closer to her. He’s tall enough to easier stare her down. “I’m looking for the answer to immortality.”

Oh, great. Another one. “That’s real good of you and all, but this knife is making me itch,” she says, scrambling to think of a lie. “It’s classified. That’s all you’re getting. And I’m one of the most important people in the military right now, so it’s in your best interest that I come out of this without a scratch, or you’ll be back in desert so fast you won’t have time to gather survival supplies. Besides, didn’t you mother ever tell you it’s rude to hit a girl?”

(as children, mom tells alphonse, never hit anyone, but tells edina, always watch your surroundings)

She expects this to backfire and to be forced into something anything, but then Ling says, “Lan Fan, Fu, let them go.”

“But, My Lord—” says a voice from behind her, obviously a girl’s, but one look from Ling quiets her. The knife leaves Ed’s neck without adding anymore nicks.

Both she and Al step away to leave, but before she does, she tells Ling, “Alchemy is based on the principle of equivalent exchange. Stop looking, because you won’t like the price.”

Ling and his mysterious body guards let them walk away, but she can’t shake the feeling of eyes on her for the rest of the day.

So Ling ends up coming with them and all right, so at least he has a pretty good motivation, but that doesn’t make his search any better. Ed doesn’t know if it’s Winry or Al who tells him they’re going to pay their respects to a dead friend, but he’s even what someone might consider respectful.

That said, she would appreciate it if he stopped staring at her every five minutes. When she finally confronts him about it, knowing she can’t take it for a whole train ride, he answers, “You have such interesting eyes. In my country, there’s a legend called the Western Sage that says a gold-eyed man from Xerxes brought alkahestry to Xing hundreds of years ago, but I’ve never met anyone with that color. Is it common in Amestris?”

(your father told me a story once, mom says)

Oddly, that actually gets Winry to laugh. “Not that we’ve ever seen,” she says. “When we were kids, the other girls in our class used to make fun of her for it.”

“Winry!”

Not giving their friend to either brush it off or apologize for giving out that bit of information, Al tells Ling, “We have a similar legend in our country, that a man brought alchemy here hundreds of years ago. We called it the Eastern Sage.”

(he said everyone in xerxes had golden hair and golden eyes.

            maybe someone on your father’s side had xerxesian ancestry.

            your father told me a story once—)

Oh, Ed thinks. Oh.

Unnerved, she goes back to looking out the window. This better just be the world’s weirdest coincidence, and not something she elected to ignore for years on purpose.

Almost immediately upon entering HQ they run into Hawkeye, and seconds later Mustang. “Well, that took you long enough, Fullmetal,” he says when he sees her, and looks her up and down. “I see you didn’t take my advice.”

The problem with never really wearing her uniform before is that she doesn’t have all that many, and now she’s lost both her jackets. This wasn’t a problem she ever expected to run into. “We had some trouble in Dublith and I had to get my automail fixed,” she tells him, which is awkward, because she promised she’d come back straight away. “And I need a refit. Right now I only have pants.”

Hawkeye looks first to Roy, then to Ed, and asks, “You couldn’t use alchemy to fix to jacket?”

“No, I lost too much of the fabric. And then the doctor managed to tear off even more,” she answers. “I’ll explain everything later. This is Winry, by the way, Colonel. You met her about four years ago.”

They shake, vaguely recognizing each other, and Mustang says, “I have to get back to work, but it’s been a while since we’ve caught up, Fullmetal. We should meet up for coffee later at that place around the corner.”

Though she’s bursting to know what he’s found out, she knows better than to ask about it here. “Yeah, of course,” she says. “What time?”

After they go decide on eight and go their separate ways, Winry hands her a slip of paper with an address in the warehouse district on it. If he’s willing to go that far out of the way, then he must have found out something important. Maybe even something about the killer.

Or maybe he found out about Laboratory Five.

There’s not going to be a meeting today. Ed knows that without needing to be told.

“Look at the front page,” she says when she returns to the apartment after replacing the uniform jackets she lost. “It says Second Lieutenant Maria Ross is being held for the murder of Brigadier General Maes Hughes.”

Both Al and Winry reach for it, but her brother gets his hands on it first. “We have to go down there. We have to tell them she discharged that bullet for us,” he says, scanning the article, and Ed’s already too busy ripping size tags off her uniform. “What are you doing? There’s something else, isn’t there, Ed?”

Right now, it’s six thirty, and already dark, and the reason she knows she’s not going anywhere tonight is because the order’s already been issued. And she knows this isn’t Ross’ fault. If she can do something to help, then she at least has to try. “Al, stay turned around,” she answers, and when she’s sure he’s not looking, she speeds through changing her clothes. Maybe Mustang had a point when he told her there was an advantage to wearing this. “Somehow Ross got out of prison, and the word’s out to shoot to kill if she resists. If I’m in this, I should be able to get past quartered off areas.”

She ducks under his arm, sitting down on the couch to pull on her boots, and this jacket is new, so it doesn’t quite fit her, but it’ll work well enough. “Let me come with you,” her brother says. “It’s dangerous out there on your own.”

Shaking her head, she answers, “I’ll be able to get around more on my own. Stay here with Winry. I need to find either Mustang or one of his team.”

Truthfully, she doesn’t know any of them as well as she should, but she knows her commanding officer enough that she can already see how this probably won’t have a happy ending. He didn’t talk about Hughes a lot, but Hughes sure talked about him.

“Just give me an hour,” she adds. “I’ll be back by then.”

They try to protest, but she’s gone before she gives herself a chance to change her mind. After Greed and Dublith, she’ll be happy she never has to put Al in a potentially bad situation ever again.

By the time she finds them, it’s too late.

As her commanding officer, Mustang isn’t technically supposed to touch her, but he’s one hand on her shoulder and another on her face, forcing her to look at him instead of Ross’ burned body. “What are you doing here?” he says. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

“I—I was looking for you,” she answers, trying to get her head around the fact that he just burned someone alive. “S-she was innocent. I came to tell you she was innocent.”

(i might be a dog of the military, but i’m not going to kill anyone, she decides at the age of twelve. they can order me around, but they can’t take that away from me)

But he’s already pushing her away, back out of the alley. “Go find Lieutenant Hawkeye before anyone else gets here, Fullmetal,” he says. “You shouldn’t get involved.”

“But—”

“That’s an order.”

(they can order me around, but)

Against her better judgment, she turns around and runs.

Even though she told herself she’d go see Gracia and Elicia, she just can’t bring herself to. Not after seeing that. And definitely not after running away.

She doesn’t tell Winry, who does go, but Al figures out something’s wrong even before he gets his hands on the morning paper. “I just really trusted him, I didn’t think he was like the others,” she says, curling up on the couch. “Guess I’m not such a good judge of character.”

In the aftermath, even Hawkeye seemed put out. As desperately as Ed wants to believe this was some sort of elaborate plot, she’s pretty sure the Lieutenant would’ve been in on it, even if she wasn’t. Maybe she should have stayed, heard whatever the other personnel said and whatever Mustang’s excuse was. All she knows now is that the dental records came in positive for Maria Ross.

There’s a knock on the door before Al can answer, and when he pulls it open, Armstrong barges in. “Oh, hello, Edina, Alphonse,” he says as he enters, and goes straight over to her. “What is this? Your automail is in a terrible state!”

“Wait, what—”

“It looks like you must go to Resembol to get it fixed at once!”

She goes to ask what’s going on, since her automail is fine and Winry is right here, but Armstrong just picks her up like she’s some sort of teddy bear. “Hey, put me down!”

“But we must go right this minute,” he insists. “Allow me to escort you for your own safety, Edina.”

“All right?”

Then, without putting her down, he rounds on her brother. “And you, Alphonse, you would stick out too much, so you must stay in Central with your friend.”

This is about to be the second time in a row she leaves Al alone, and she’s not prepared to do that, but Armstrong doesn’t even give her time to gather her stuff. The best she manages to pull off is to grab her jacket, transmuted once again, on her way out, and to shout goodbye to her brother. “Can you please put me down now?” she says. “I won’t run away.”

He does, placing her back on her feet, and she knows she’s small but this is just making her more aware of it than usual. “We must make haste,” he says, “if we want to reach Resembol on time.”

Normally Ed isn’t a particularly touchy feely person outside of people she knows very, very well, but when she sees Ross again, she hugs her so hard she’s sure it must hurt. “It’s good to see you too, kid,” the other woman says, hugging her back, and Ed hopes she isn’t feeling the burn of the automail. “I was worried when I heard you in that alley.”

When they pull apart, Breda says, “There was really any safe place in Amestris where we could hide a dead girl, so we brought her here to bring to Xing. The Colonel thought you should see her with your own eyes if you were going to believe him.”

Honestly, all Mustang would’ve had to have done was give her the heads up, and she would have believed him. Still, it feels good not to have that uncertainty anymore. “How’d he know she was innocent?”

“It was too set up. They wouldn’t have announced a murder like that in the paper if there wasn’t an ulterior motive,” Breda answers, glancing down at her. “We figured out what happened in Laboratory Five, too, Elric, or at least some of it, anyway. That’s what he wanted to tell you when you got here, but this got in the way.”

That’s good, if it means she doesn’t have to be the one to tell him. “He was pretty adamant about me not seeing a fake corpse,” she says, and rubs her shoulder where skin meets metal. This is why she hates the desert. “Before we leave, there’s something I need to take a look at.”

He raises an eyebrow. “We’re not in Xerxes for sightseeing.”

No, they aren’t, but that doesn’t mean she’s passing up the chance to see the sights anyway. There was a transmutation circle here, half of it, and she got a long enough look at it to feel Not Quite Right, but still too short to actually jog whatever memory that was. It has to be something from her time inside the Gate, and there’s a chance Mustang just gave her a lead without meaning too.

There was once a civilization called Xerxes that was destroyed in a single night, and it happened slow enough for the people of the country to scream at their gods about injustice. Thousands of people, most with golden hair and golden eyes, but some with something different, all cried out at once when the hands came from the ground. They all died too fast to see the Truth, even the alchemists. All those poor lost souls, and their legacy is a legend and some desert ruins.

Above her is half an array, but that’s enough for her mind to fill in the rest. Whoever performed the transmutation stood where she stands now, and the eye in the center must have absorbed that person whole. People say Xerxes was destroyed in a single night, but that had to have been months in the making. If she saw it all, she doesn’t remember, but remembers hands, and eyes, and a blonde man in the robes of royalty choking over a bowl. This is the cost for a Philosopher’s Stone. No, this is the cost for some more than a Philosopher’s Stone. And she watched it all.

(the inside of the gate is timeless, and she was in there forever and yet no time at all)

All of that, of everything she saw—this is her answer. She can’t transmute a country, and she wouldn’t even if she could, but whoever alchemist was had to have performed it on himself. That’s the important thing.

That’s the promise she’s willing to break.

When she told Armstrong and Breda she needed to stop in Resembol for real, and she’d like to do it alone, neither of them asked too many questions. She’s relieved, because she doesn’t want to explain how she ran into a bunch of Ishvalans and found out the serial killer who actively tried to murder her also murdered two people she considered family.

But if she’d known he would be here, she wouldn’t have come. He’s standing in front of Mom’s grave when she comes across him, and there are about a thousand things she wants to say, but all that comes out is, “It’s been seven years, and now you’re back?”

(the door of their house squeaks extra loud, and daddy could probably fix it, but he never does. edina doesn’t mind, either, because it’s how she knows when he comes home if it’s past her bedtime.

            then he’s gone, and it’s dark. the squeak is the sound of leaving. she fixes the hinge herself, and the door is soundless from now on)

Her father turns at the sound of her voice, and his eyes widen. It actually scares her, the sudden realization that she looks even more like him than she thought. “Oh, Edina, you’re here. Pinako said you would be in Central,” he answers, and makes it sound as if he’d just returned from another week long trip. “What are you doing back?”

“What am I—?” she says, confused. “I think you have this backwards. I’m the one who should be asking that question.”

All she’d wanted to do was go visit Mom and the Rockbells’ graves, not run into her father. He looks back at Mom’s name, and his shoulders drop. “I came home. Or I tried to,” he says, focusing on her again. “I hear you burned down our house.”

(the door is soundless even as it burns)

With her fists balling up at her sides, she says, “We did it so we wouldn’t have anything to come back to. We didn’t think we’d have to take you into consideration anymore.”

He leans down a bit, almost like he’s inspecting her or something, which reminds her unpleasantly of every male higher up in military she’s ever encountered. “No, you were running away,” he says, “and hiding the memory,” and she realizes Pinako must’ve told him everything.

So much for trust.

“Maybe we were, maybe we weren’t. I’ll leave that to your judgment,” she says, already moving to walk away. “After all, you’re the one who’s the expert on leaving.”

Before she turns, she sees that he doesn’t seem angry, or shocked at how harsh his once so sweet daughter suddenly is. If anything, he’s just disappointed, and she shouldn’t let it get to her, but it does anyway.

            (all little kids want acknowledgement from their parents, and edina isn’t as grown up as she thought)

Hohenheim leaves before her, while she’s pretending to be asleep. Originally she meant to leave today, too, but instead she’s back at her old house in the rain with a shovel and Pinako giving her instructions as to where she buried the body.

It takes hours, what with the rain and Ed nearly collapsing a few times. By the time it’s done, she’s standing in an empty grave, pushing body parts over the edge. She created this thing, and it died because of her, but she never buried it. This was her responsibility to deal with, and all she did was burn down a house.

(in rush valley she helps birth a baby, and that life comes into the world whole and healthy. she leaves him with his mother, and walks away, not thinking about how she’s made life before, too, and just left it to die)

All the bones are male, according to Pinako, and Ed scrambles to get some hair that’s still intact. It’s muddy, though, and hard to see the color, and she’s quick to push it under the water in the bucket.

When she pulls it back up, it’s black.

The tears start coming before she can stop them. “He was right, this isn’t her,” she says, hand covering her mouth, and she doesn’t move to get up from her knees even as the rain pours down hard. “I didn’t make her die twice. I didn’t kill her again.”

(it’s not that alchemy can’t create life. it’s that it can’t create the right one)

Pinako just puts a hand between her shoulders, and lets her cry.

She tells a very beat up Al everything, but leaves out meeting their father. There’s a chance that’ll turn into a rant, and Winry doesn’t need to hear that.

“I was thinking that if your body is still in there, mine might be supporting it,” she says, because she spent the whole train ride back to Central forcing herself to remember as much as she could. “When I grabbed your soul, I got you straight from inside the Gate, so I must’ve touched your body while it was unraveling. And according to Teacher I was inevitably going to be short, but it still doesn’t make any sense that I’m this thin, or how constantly tired I am.”

That’s why Al doesn’t remember everything he paid for, probably. She ripped him out too early, before he could see the end, and somehow she saw it instead. Maybe. That’s the only reason she can think of that she saw so much and only paid the price of a leg.

Frowning, Winry says, “You might not’ve supposed to have been this short, though. Trisha was average, and your dad was tall. Al was pretty tall for his age as a kid, too.”

There’s an awkward silence. Then, “No, I actually think I was supposed to be even smaller and this was just luck.” She never told Winry the uncomfortable reality of what happened on the island in Dublith, and how without a mom to explain things, her teacher had to do it instead. Before they returned to Resembol, she swore Al to secrecy, too. “It still makes sense for how thin I am, though. Even you commented on it.”

“You do eat more than your size, too. And sleep a lot,” Al says, returning to his seat on the chair across from her. “Do you really think it’s possible I’m still in there? That I’m not dying?”

Ed shakes her head. “I doubt your body will be healthy, but it shouldn’t be decaying, or a child’s, either. All we have to do is open the Gate and get you out.”

“Uh, I want to point out that last time you tried that, this happened,” Winry says, looking back and forth between the two of them. “What’s your plan?”

“I haven’t exactly thought of that yet,” she says, though she has an idea. First she just needs to find out if it’ll definitely work, and what the price will be. That the important thing, knowing the price before she goes in. “We should be able to figure out something between the two of us, though. And speaking of sleeping too much, I’m really exhausted.”

As she goes to get up, Al reaches out and grabs her wrist. “You have to find Colonel Mustang tomorrow,” he tells her. “He told me he knows everything, and to send you his way first thing.”

In her excitement at figuring out she can definitely get Al’s body back, she’d forgotten about Laboratory Five. Of course Mustang found out, Breda told her himself. And from the state of Al’s armor, it looks like he knows even more than she does now. “It’s already almost midnight. I’ll see him in the morning,” she answers. “Keep that Ling guy out, okay? I might kill him if he tries to ask me about immortality again.”

Winry and Al agree, and let her leave. Her dreams are filled with white light and cities burning.

Chapter Text

After Al tells her Mustang and Havoc ended up in the hospital, she visits Havoc first. When she visits Mustang, it takes a lot of willpower not to laugh. “You look just as miserable as I always am, Colonel,” she says, taking a seat at his bedside. “Understand why I always sign myself out early yet?”

He adjusts the way he’s sitting and though he doesn’t quite wince, he definitely isn’t comfortable either. “Yes,” he says bluntly, “but I know better than to do it. Not that you’re looking so topnotch yourself, Fullmetal.”

Digging up the grave hadn’t exactly done wonders for her, but she’s finally healing. It’s just taking longer than it normally would’ve. “A stroll through the desert was more of a hindrance than a help,” she says, crossing her arms. “You could’ve just told me, you know. I would’ve believed you.”

“The plan involved someone you probably aren’t too fond of, from what he tells me,” Mustang says. “I thought it was a better idea not to get you involved.”

Though this sounds like complete bullshit, she doesn’t call him out on it. Not while he’s in a hospital. But she would still appreciate it if he stopped treating her like she was a kid who couldn’t handle it. “Al explained everything. And I know from Breda that you found out.”

Even his nod looks painful. Then again, she saw what this woman could do before anyone else did, and she’s surprised he lived to talk about it. “What I don’t have is the full story from Dublith, or your half of what happened, since I’m assuming you didn’t tell your brother everything,” he says, “but here’s not the place to talk about it. Why did you stop in Resembol? Your orders were to come straight back to Central.”

Just like he doesn’t know the full story about Laboratory Five, or about Greed, she doesn’t know the full story of the Ishvalan Civil War. So instead of explaining what happened in Xerxes, she lies, “I heard this woman I recognized from home say ‘I can’t believe Hohenheim is back in Resembol.’ Considering I haven’t seen him in seven years, I felt like I should go yell at him.”

“Was it cathartic enough for you?”

“No, it was terrible.”

If she lives to see sixteen, her time without her father will eclipse her time with him, and in her four years in the military, Mustang and his team have done more for her than that bastard ever did. That’s not something anyone should be proud of. “Go home, Fullmetal,” he says, and this whole visit has been the most benign exchange they’ve ever had. “Stay out of trouble until I’m released. Then we can discuss a real plan at somewhere safe, where no one will be listening in.”

She stands, reluctant to leave without more information, but knowing he’s right. “Then hurry up recovering, Colonel,” she says. “You know I’m not all that patient.”

When she smiles at him, he actually smiles back, and it doesn’t feel as much of a waste when she walks away.

Ling Yao is one of the most annoying people she’s ever met, royal status be damned, and she’s pretty sure the only reason he hasn’t used up all her money on food is because he doesn’t think it’s chivalrous or something. She doesn’t like him enough to care about that, but if it keeps her research fund intact, she’s willing to let him go on believing she appreciates it.

To make it worse, Winry and Al don’t hate him, which means he’s also not afraid to hang around and ask frustrating questions. “Humans can’t be immortal,” she tells him for the hundredth time. “Everything dies in the end. Just look up at the sky. The sun will too, eventually.”

(the sun isn’t god, but maybe when it finally explodes, goes supernova and destroys the world and everything that surrounds it, the gate will die. what is truth if there’s no one around to learn it)

Unfortunately, Ling just doesn’t give up. “I need the secret if I’m ever to rule,” he says, and she rolls her eyes. “That’s what my father demands.”

(the story of icarus isn’t so much about respecting god but more about listening to your parents and if that father really wanted to protect his kid they should’ve just flown at night.

            sometimes parents don’t deserve what they ask for)

“Isn’t there some other way?” Al says, which means he agree with her that it’s a dumb fucking idea. “The Emperor must want something other than immortality, too.”

“He has everything else that he wants,” Ling tells them. “This is the one thing he can’t get for himself.”

Xerxes was destroyed all in one night because a king wanted immortality. But Xing has alkahestry, not alchemy, and just because the guy’s royalty doesn’t mean he deserves everything he wants.

While Mustang’s still in the hospital, unable to help watch her back, Scar returns. Three alchemists die within the course of a week. The idea it gives her is suicidally stupid, but it’s still an idea.

Even Ling, who overhears, thinks it’s a terrible plan, and that’s saying something. “It’s not like they’re going to kill me,” she says when he and Al both question her admittedly questionable sanity. This is genuinely one of the worse things she ever thought up, and she knows it, too. “I’m a sacrifice. They don’t want me dead.”

“Lust said the Colonel was a sacrifice, too, Ed, and she still almost killed him,” Al says, which is exactly the reason this is probably going to end up with her in a morgue. “They could just let Scar do the job for them because you know too much.”

Would it be better for her to wear her red jacket and civilian clothes like the last time she fought him, or her military uniform? Which one will be more likely to attack her on sight in? Probably the civilian clothes. “If you’re suggesting you do it alone or something, I’m not letting you,” she says as she pulls on her jacket, “though I’ll let you help this time. Maybe that will give us a chance, okay? I know his fighting style now, too.”

He also knows about her automail. She has to be careful not to let him get too close this time. “Lan Fan and I can help,” Ling says, and his body guard nods. “Whichever homunculus comes after you may be the secret to immortality.”

“I know your friend has combat skills,” Ed says, motioning to Lan Fan, “but do you?”

Clearly offended, he answers, “I am a potential heir to the Xingese throne. Of course I know how to fight.”

Including him seems like a bad idea, but they’re going to need all the assistance she can get. By now, she’s sick of all these questions. It’s about time she starts getting answers instead. “Al, I need you to find someone on Mustang’s team and let them know we’re going to need help. We can’t exactly lug a captured homunculus around the city alone,” she says, and this isn’t the first time she’s resented her age. Not being able to drive is an incredible inconvenience. “I’m going to go try to get his attention. Ling, Lan Fan, come with me in case that happens faster I think it will, but don’t get close enough for it seem like you’re supposed to near me.”

Lan Fan and Ling exchange a glance before the other girl asks, “How dangerous is this man, Miss Edina?”

“Um, let me put it this way: the only reason I didn’t die last time is because Colonel Mustang has great timing,” she answers. “You two aren’t alchemists, so there isn’t much I can’t explain past that. Al, I’ll meet you the block right of the graveyard at two, all right?”

With a nod, her brother says, “Be careful, Ed. You aren’t supposed to be out in the open like this.”

Yeah, this is violating her promise to keep a low profile, but she’s finally feeling better, and if Scar doesn’t attack today, she should be in good enough shape to put up a real fight. “Then you better hurry up.”

They split ways in front of the apartment complex. Only a week ago she told Mustang she would keep out of trouble. Good thing she has a long record of breaking her word, or she might be worried about disappointing him.

Somehow, they manage to cobble together a real plan, but that wasn’t supposed to include Mustang signing himself out of the hospital early. Suddenly she understands why he doesn’t like it when she does the same thing. She wants to ask him what’s this all about, but of course that’s when Scar finally comes out of hiding, and seeing him pisses her off all over again.

This time, she doesn’t give him time to say something anything about how terrible she is just for carrying a military identification, and goes straight for the attack instead while Al does the same from behind. He’s just as fast as last time, but Winry lightened her automail, which means she isn’t as slow.

As long as she doesn’t rupture anything, she can fix whatever she messes up later, and it isn’t difficult using the side streets of Central to her advantage. She knows East City, but not like she knows here, and she and Al haven’t fought together in a while, but they can still do it without yelling their plans at each other. Scar can’t attack both of them at once as long as they stay separate, and he doesn’t know the territory like they do. Unlike last time, he’s the one on the defense.

There’s only one problem in this whole fight, and she waits until she has him stuck barely evading to confront him about it. “You know, working in the military, I’ve met a lot of hypocrites, but very few of them are as bad as you,” she says, and draws in the alley wall while Al creates spikes from the ground, forcing Scar to dance around to avoid being too seriously hurt. “What happened in Ishval was horrible, and there’s no justification behind it, but how would all those people you claim you’re avenging feel knowing you killed a couple of Amestris doctors who were kind enough to heal you despite orders to leave? Did you ever even take a moment to stop and think about the daughter you might be leaving behind? The couple of orphans they helped raise? All their friends and family—”

“Ed!”

She looks up to Al, past Scar’s shoulder who’s shocked she finally landed a hit, slamming him into a wall. Then she follows her brother’s line of vision, and finds Winry standing there, eyes wide, and realizes how badly she just fucked up.

Silence falls, and she looks so much like her mother that Ed thinks Scar probably knows who she is without needed to be told. “You—you’re him? You’re the one who killed my parents?”

Even without saying the name Rockbell, of course her friend knows that’s who she was talking about. There’s no one else Ed would get angry enough to interrupt a fight for. “Winry, get out of here,” she says before he can answer, keeping her eyes on him. “We’ll talk about it later. This isn’t safe.”

Winry doesn’t listen, though, her knees going out on her as she falls to the ground. Scar won’t hurt her, of course, she’s not an alchemist, but if Ed’s right, something a lot worse than a serial killer will be showing up soon. “Al, get her out of here,” she says. “Now.”

“What? I’m not just—”

“Al, now.” Later, Winry can yell at her. She can do whatever she wants with her. But right now, she needs to get scare if she wants to survive.

Unfortunately, she has other plans. “They were good people. They never hurt anyone,” she says, ignoring everything but Scar. “Why would you do that?”

He bows his head, almost like he’s actually ashamed of his actions. “It was an inexcusable action that doesn’t deserve justification,” he says, and from the sound of that, maybe he looks ashamed because he is. Somehow, the idea of that makes it even worse. “You have every right to hate me, girl.”

No, she doesn’t. Hate suits someone like Ed, or Scar, or Mustang. Not someone like Winry Rockbell. “Al,” Ed says again. “Get her out of here.”

But Ed, well, she forgot about the discarded gun on the ground, and about how the death of a parent makes people do stupid things. Winry’s got her hands on it, finger on the trigger, and every military personnel has to learn how to shoot. Aiming at a target was hard enough. She’s not about to let her best friend do the same to a living person.

Scar’s reaching out his hand because Winry might not be an alchemist, but right now she’s a threat, and Ed just reacts, throwing herself in front of her friend. The barrel of is right against her back, two inches above her heart, but at least now it’s guaranteed not to go off.

Before he can do anything either, Al blocks the alley, and then explodes something, drawing Scar away. Ed wants to go after him, but she needs to deal with Winry first. “Get out of here,” she says, taking the gun as gently as she can from her friend’s hands. “I know what he did isn’t right, and you should be angry, but you’re meant to give people their lives back, Winry, not to take them away.”

Then Winry’s hands fly out, balling into the front of Ed’s jacket, and she sobs. “Take her,” Ed tells the Corporal that shows up right on time. “I’m the Fullmetal Alchemist, and I can deal with Scar on my own.”

“But, Major Elric—”

These guys are supposed to help, but they’ll only make it worse, so Ed swallows hard and says for the first time in her life, “That’s an order, Corporal.”

The man takes Winry by the shoulder, and Ed turns her back to run away.

Though Ed’s body aches, this is the first fight she’s come out of in a while that she definitely doesn’t need to be hospitalized for. “Look, we’ll find Scar,” she tells Winry at the train station where she’s waiting to leave back to Rush Valley. “Your parents will finally get the justice they deserve.”

As she lied to her, Ed’s not surprised that Winry won’t meet her eye. “Just say you’ll call me if you do,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “And be safe tonight. I saw what the last two did to you.”

Technically, the first time was a prisoner’s soul tied to a suit of armor, but that’s just technicalities. This time she has to be on a better guard than she was with Greed, though, and needs to be sure not to underestimate him too early in a fight. “We’ll be fine,” Al tells her, and she gives both of them a hug goodbye. “Don’t worry, Winry, we have a whole team with us this time.”

“Yeah, and Mustang’s got fire alchemy, which he can use when injured anyway,” Ed says, trying to sound more confident than she is. “We’ll have Ling and Lan Fan, too, and no one’s a better shot than Hawkeye. I promise, I won’t even have my automail destroyed this time.”

When Winry smiles, it’s so strained she might as well not bother putting in the effort. “I’ll hold you to that,” she says. “And I expect a call telling me you survived, got it?”

Both promise that, too, and Ed gives her friend one last hug before helping her onto the train. In Rush Valley, she’ll be out of harm’s way, and Ed will miss her, but her safety matters more.

So they have the homunculus. That’s just about the only good thing here.

“I suspected the Fuhrer was involved,” Mustang says, running his hand down his face in a deep set sort of weariness she’s never seen before, “but I hadn’t expected him to actually be one of them. This certainly changes thing.”

“Not really,” Ed says. “Either way, he’d need to be taken out of his place of power.”

(a king draped in robes wants immortality and kills his country to get it. right then he’s human, but he doesn’t want to be anymore, and there’s more here in common with xerxes than golden eyes.

            history is built on the shoulders of idiots, the truth shows her, and she’s one of them, but at least she’s not like that)

Thankfully, Ling doesn’t make some comment about how messed up Amestris is, or she’d have to point out why he’s here, and they already argue more than she and her commanding officer. Or at least more than they used to. Lately they don’t seem to be arguing about much. “He should be able to give us more information, if we can get him to talk,” Hawkeye says, crossing her arms. “As dumb as he seems, he must know something.”

“We can start by asking his name,” Ed says, because she already has a theory on that, at least. “I’ll bet you guys anything it’s Gluttony.” When everyone turns to look at her, she continues, “Well, think about it. The one I nearly killed was called Greed. He mentioned a Lust and Envy right before the Fuhrer’s men intervened, said Laboratory Five sounded like their sort of thing because I told him to ask the others about splicing a soul to a suit of armor.  I saw the woman you killed, Colonel. I’m guessing that was Lust.”

This is a relatively new idea, and she’s been too embarrassed to tell Al because she thinks it sounds like the sort of thing a nine-year-old would come up with. Now, saying it out loud, it seems much less ridiculous. “If that’s true,” Al says, “then there are five others. What could the Fuhrer be?”

“If your leader and this Greed person you keep mentioning are both homunculi,” Ling asks, “then why kill his own ally?”

She answers, “Because they weren’t. Not anymore, anyway. He said he hadn’t talked to any of them in a while.”

With a sigh, Hawkeye says, “This just keeps getting more and more complicated. I think you’re right, Edina. A name’s a good place to start.”

Mustang stands, and though he doesn’t cringe, his hand does twitch. Really, he’s more hurt than she’s ever been, he shouldn’t be out this early. “If he won’t talk,” he says, “we’ll just have to let him know he isn’t as invulnerable as he thought.”

This seems, to Ed, like another very bad idea.

She goes along with it anyway.

Bad idea was an understatement. “I feel disgusting,” she says, shaking blood off of her as Ling helps her up. “Thanks.”

Her holder fell out, and now her hair is loose, stuck to her face and body by the blood, stronger than most adhesives. When she gets out of here, she’s going to kill Mustang and Hawkeye. First off, she hates guns. Second of all, did they really think they were going to help any more than her alchemy would? Than Mustang’s alchemy would?

Oh, yeah. And this is all his fault, that bastard.

She watches as Ling spits out so much blood that she realizes he must’ve swallowed some by accident. “Do you think you can get us out of here?” he asks, and she wonders why he already assumes it’s up to her.

“Well, I have to get back to Al,” she answers, and squints, trying to see through the dimness. “If we can’t find a door, we’ll just have to make one. Take my hand, it’ll be easier not to get separated.”

(like her brother, once they were separated, almost separated for good, and she feels like she should be able to see)

Though she told herself it wouldn’t be awkward, when he does go to hold her hand, it really is. She’s never been the physically affectionate type with anyone but Winry. “Maybe your brother will find the answer from the outside.”

As great as that sounds, she doubts it’ll be any easier than finding a way from in here. “This place feels familiar,” she says, twisting around to look at all sides (where it goes on and on forever but nowhere at all in this place that shouldn’t exist), but finding nothing but darkness. “We need to find actual land. All this blood is clogging my gears.”

“If you get on my back, I can carry you,” Ling says, which is as humiliating as it is practical. “If you slip, you’ll take us both you.”

As much as she hates to admit she has a handicap, he’s right. When he drops a little, she climbs up his back until he gets his arms underneath her knees. “I’m not as light as I look.”

He adjusts her weight so she’s lopsided, taking her weight off her automail leg. “Just try to think of a way out of here, Ed,” he says, beginning to take the first few steps forward. “I’ll do the rest.”

(it’s been no time at all, but feels like forever already. the darkness presses in all around them instead of bright white light. it barely makes a difference.

            she knows exactly where they are. now all she has to do is figure out what’s wrong)

It isn’t difficult to finish the other half of the transmutation circle she finds, now that they’ve got Envy on their side. Not only did she see the other half in Xerxes, but she’s had the image living in her head for weeks.

No one needs to know that.

“Jump in when you see the eye,” she says, preparing, and situating herself in the center of the circle. This is it. This is where she finds out if she can get back Al’s body. “If this is a bastardization of what it really is, then the original should be able to get us out.”

Neither Envy nor Ling genuinely believe her, thinking this is more a shot in the dark, but she’s more sure about this than she has been about anything in her life—she doesn’t know if it’ll get them out, but she knows she can transmute herself. This is the theory she worked on years ago, completed. As it turns out, the ingredient she was missing was her.

Envy tells her to get on with it. She claps her hands, trying to ignore the pain of her broken arm, and unlike last time, gives in.

The Truth says, Hello, young alchemist. Back for more? and Ed’s body is ripped apart.

With the Philosopher’s Stone, she’s cobbled back together, spit out at the feet of the Truth. She doesn’t know where Ling is, or Envy. And when she lifts her head, she finds the Truth isn’t there at all. Rather, it’s a boy, his blonde hair almost as long as hers, and his bare back turned.

Her breath catches in her throat. Al! she shouts, forcing herself up. Al, I’m right here!

When he turns his head, she sees how gaunt his face is, how sunken his eyes, and she must be right, because he’s still definitely not a child. He says her in name in a voice low and raspy, followed by, I can only leave with my own soul.

She goes to move forward anyway, to try to grab him, but too late she notices the doors open. A black hand latches out, breaking the stark white brightness, and wraps tight around her ankle. I’ll be back, she tells him, struggling as more and more come out to drag her back in. I promise, I’ll—

Then they yank her all at once, and the doors shut in her face with a decisive shove. The Truth’s voice doesn’t reach here, but she thinks she can hear it say anyway, Everything has its price.

On her way out, she watches the Ishvalan Civil War, and riots in Lior, and blood spilling across a snowy mountainside. This isn’t useful, it isn’t paid for.

This is just the Truth’s way of making it worse.

With Envy standing on her, Ed’s  powerless to watch as this Father person drips the Philosopher’s Stone into his hand. The pressure of the foot taking up the length of her body makes it hard to even scream, but she wishes she could. Greed’s not someone she wants to face down again. And as annoying as he is, she considers Ling a friend, and she’s not in the mood to fight someone wearing his face.

Without her alchemy, she’s useless, too. But she’s still got the gun, she remembers, and scrambles for it at her waist. It’s a tight fit, but she gets it in hand, turns around, and aims. “Could you shoot such a tragic face?” Envy says, and she doesn’t want to, but she’s not a good person like Winry is, so she definitely can.

Before she has the chance to pull the trigger the way Hawkeye taught her, Ling says, “Ed, don’t! I want this!”

She twists her body even more before, looking to her friend, who’s held down on the floor, too, with her father’s lookalike bearing over him. “What?” she says. “Ling, I didn’t get you out of there just so you could be killed.”

“I came to this country looking for the Philosopher’s Stone, and here’s a man who’s just going to give it to me,” he answers, and she feels like this is all her fault, because he only got knocked over to the side in the first place because he jumped in front of her. “I can handle it.”

The lookalike drips the Stone straight into a cut on his cheek, and right when he scream, she gives up, twisting back around. “I’m sorry,” she says to the faces in Envy’s body, and pulls the trigger. 

Every soul in his body howls at the pain, but he loosens his grip enough for Ed to wiggle free. Her escape doesn’t last long, though, before the lookalike uses the pulse of the air, throwing her backwards. By the time she stands, ears no longer ringing, her friend is silent and still.

“Ling?” she says, cautious, inching forward. “Are you still there?”

When he lifts his head, the bandage slides off his hand, revealing to tattoo in the same place Greed had before. “Sorry, you mean the kid whose body I took?” he answers, and even his voice is the same as the last time. “He’s gone, girl.”

He stands, too, and everyone else in the room is uncomfortably silent, though she has a feeling they won’t stay that way if she fires the gun for a second time. Again, without her alchemy, she’s not much use against Greed. “Great, and here I thought kicking your ass was one time deal,” she says, and sounds more nervous than she intended to.

Somehow, despite occupying Ling’s body, he doesn’t move like Ling, or have the same facial expressions, and certainly doesn’t have Ling’s voice. “What’re you talking about?” he asks, forehead creasing in confusion. “Oh, you must’ve met a different Greed. This little girl seriously fought against one of us and lived?”

“He was the Avaricious before you,” says the lookalike. “No, the girl was not his killer, but apparently she came close.”

“Oh, you all gossip about me, how exciting,”  she says, and glances back at Al. “Where’s Ling? Or is he still a nonissue?”

Greed puts his hands on his hips, another very non-Ling thing to do. “The kid? He’s long gone. Gave his body up willingly and everything.”

Though he said he wanted this, she can’t imagine him giving in without a fight. He just spent who knows how long carrying her around through a landscape of blood just so they could think of a way out of there. And she refuses to believe he would just leave Lan Fan like that. Unless, of course, Greed lied and said they’d both have control. It’s not like homunculi seem the type above lying.

Suddenly the doors burst open, and in walks a chimera, snarling with its red eyes glowing. And even in a day that makes no sense to begin with, Ed will never fully understand getting saved by a little girl, and serial killer out for her life.

Almost like some sort of bad joke, the outfit Envy left her is her military uniform. With nothing else on her, and since she’s still not sure if her alchemy’s working, she’s stuck walking around town in it.

Which of course means she runs into Greed. “I’m not looking to get into anything, kid,” he says, sticking his hands in his pockets and slouching against the telephone booth. “Besides, as a rule of thumb, I don’t fight women.”

“Well, that’s certainly a change from last time. What do you want?”

He pulls out his hand, and in it holds a long slip of fabric with something written in Xingese, which unfortunately she doesn’t know a word of. “Your friend wants you to deliver this to some girl.”

Delivering this seems like a bad idea, but if it’s from Ling, then she’s obligated to. “This isn’t some trick, right?” she says, looking back up at him. “How do I know you aren’t going to follow us back just to kill her?”

Sighing, Greed answers, “I just told you, I don’t fight women. I’ve got more class than that.”

There’s no one around but them and Al, and it’s not like it’ll reveal an indecent amount of her body, so she takes her shirt and jacket and pulls them right to the edge of her wrap, showing him the scar on her side. “Really? Because this says otherwise.”

“How many times do I have to explain it for you to get it? That wasn’t me,” he says, impatient, and she drops her shirt. “Just give the girl the message. Til next time, kid.”

She waits until he’s long gone before turning her back in the direction she needs to go, though this now means a separate way from Al, again. “We’re really just going to trust him, Ed?” her brother says, as she starts towards the street. “Just because they don’t have the same memories doesn’t mean they’re that different.”

As she hands off the cloth to Al, she answers, “Ling’s leaking over or something. The first time we met he stopped eating because he didn’t condone the idea of a girl paying for his meals, remember? He’s not completely gone. Can you go give this to Lan Fan, please?”

“Where are you going?”

“To do my job,” she says. “I was on repair duty for the morning. And I’ve got to go return something.”

Somehow, through all of that, she ended up hanging on to Hawkeye’s gun. First she’ll go through her list of down on their civilians, then head over. She’s just not looking forward to explaining why there’s a bullet missing.

Considering that it’s almost inevitable that both of them are being tailed, this is just another example of Ed’s really bad ideas. “Even if they are watching us, it’s not like they can listen in on anything we say inside your house,” she points out when Mustang hesitates, and that’s enough for him to open his door for her.

In all the three years she’s been working for him, she’s never once step foot in his house. It’s about as neat, but bland as she expected. He leads her away to living room, also known as not close to the front door, and there aren’t even any pictures on the mantle. “You don’t need to analyze my home decor, Fullmetal,” he says, and her gaze snaps back to him. “Are you here to tell me what happened after we left?”

(in ishval he exploded whole neighborhoods by snapping his fingers, and never stopped frowning, even when strangers clapped him on the back. armstrong sobbed over the body of a child and hawkeye buried another one and the rockbells died screaming.

            there were a lot of people who died in that war, and it’s not her fault she remembers more clearly the ones she already knows)

In as few words as she can, she explains everything except what she saw. He doesn’t need to know she watched a whole war, his defining war, the way people watch movie reels. “Do you have leads?” he asks when she’s finished.

“Well, I don’t know why it worked for Scar, but that girl’s probably using alkahestry. She was definitely Xingese, like Ling,” Ed answers, running her fingers through her hair. “There has to be more of a difference than its application. When she wakes up, I’ll talk to her.”

(in lior there was rose, walking through rubble and past corpses in a tattered dress, and it was almost like the truth is telling her, see, see this is what you do. you ruin people and places and things)

Mustang nods. “That’s good,” he says. “After you get your hands on her, I need you to get out of Central. Do it as soon as you can.”

Presumably she’s not going to be here for much longer after she talks to the girl anyway, but it’s still sudden enough to leave her surprised. “I thought we already established I’m not in danger of getting killed.”

Just like that night when she thought Ross died, he places his hand on her shoulder. “You aren’t confined to an office, but you’re still part of my team,” he says, which never meant too much to her before, but now she she’s starting to understand it counts for something. “He may have promised you and Al can continue to search for a way to get your bodies back, but you can still be reassigned to somewhere specific.”

“That doesn’t seem likely, though,” she says, mildly confused, because no one’s ever stuck her in an officer before. “I’m not going to just run away. The girl’s injured, I can’t bring her out of Central.”

With a sigh, he drops his arm, and turns away from her for a moment before looking back and saying, “Don’t make me order you out of here, Fullmetal.”

(in ishval all they did was follow orders, and in lior there are no orders at all, and neither of them area leading to the better option)

“And I’ll just ignore it. You aren’t exactly in a position where you can have me court marshaled for not listening,” she answers. “Colonel, I’m not a kid anymore, but just because I’ve started following orders more often doesn’t mean I have to leave because you say so.”

When she says she’s not a kid, she hopes he realizes that isn’t just her exaggerating for the sake of argument. A year ago everyone called her Fullmetal, but suddenly now people are comfortable enough to call her Major Elric. She’s nearly sixteen, and that isn’t an adult yet in the eyes of the legal system, but it’s close enough to it. “Then I won’t order you,” he says to her surprise. “I’m asking you—take your brother and get out of here, Edina. If you do get reassigned, it might be the south, and you’ll be stuck dealing with the border skirmishes as a State Alchemist.”

Though she still doubts she’ll be assigned anywhere, fine, she’ll give him that. There’s no place she wants to be thrown less than an area of physical conflict (they can order me around, but they can’t take that away from me, she says, except that they can, and that’s the problem). “Then I better leave,” she says. “I have an injured fourteen-year-old to relocate.”

He walks her to the door. “Watch yourself, Fullmetal,” he says, hand on the knob. “I want you at full performance capacity next time I see you.”

“You can drop the ‘Fullmetal,’ Colonel,’” she tells him, because it’s easier than actually acknowledging what he said. “You’ve already called me Edina. Ed works better.”

At that, he pushes open the door, releasing her out into the dangers of the outside world again. She misses the heat of his apartment already. “Roy,” he says right before she walks away. “If I’m going to call you Ed, you might as well use my name, too.”

Then he shuts it in her face, and for a moment she stands there in shock, not entirely sure what just happened.

Chapter Text

Mei is missing, of course, because with Ed’s luck it’s not as though she expected otherwise. Top that off with Ling-turned-Greed now gone, too, Lan Fan heading to Rush Valley, and Mus—Roy’s order to leave, she decides they should go north. It seems appropriate, and leads say the girl might be there. Ed would feel safer if this didn’t require a letter explaining she’s to be trusted, and a suggestion to wear her uniform so the soldiers at Briggs know she isn’t some sort of spy.

Though he doesn’t say it, she knows Al is thinking that this is ridiculous, too. “Do you know how easy it would be for me to just run away?” she says on the train, uniform newly transmuted to fit again, as she lies down on the seat. “All I have to do is wear a big enough shirt and I can pretend I’m a boy.”

Looking down at himself, Al says, “It wouldn’t be so easy for me, though. I don’t think we can change the shape of this.”

No, she doesn’t think that either. They haven’t found information saying one way or the other, but there’s no way she’d ever risk it. “Well, right now it seems like we’re as safe as we’re going to be,” she says. “I wonder what’s so bad about the General. Do you think she’ll let us into Briggs like Armstrong says?”

“I hope so,” her brother answers, and his armor creaks when he turns his head to look out the window. “Your automail probably won’t do so good in the snow.”

It didn’t do so well in blood, and ice can affect gears too, so she doubts that this will be all that easy, too. “I’ll be all right,” she says anyway, staring up at the ceiling. They’ve never been this far north before. “Armstrong saying she might mistake me for a spy didn’t exactly give me hope, though. Why couldn’t that little girl stay put like she was supposed to? We could’ve gone somewhere not cold.”

“Just because she’s even shorter than you doesn’t mean she’s a little girl,” Al says, and Ed rolls her eyes. “We’re the same age!”

Even if she’ll never admit it, the problem with that is that does think of Al as just as kid. Despite what he’s seen, too, she played a big part in raising him since Mom died. She didn’t do particularly good job, but it’s enough that she’s the adult, and he’s the kid brother. “Look, it doesn’t matter,” she says, changing the subject before he can protest too much. “I promised Must—Roy that I’d get—we’d get out of here, so we’re leaving regardless.”

Without having to ask, she knows Al’s upset. That was a bad slip. “When did you start calling the Colonel by his name?”

Shrugging, she answers, “Since he told me too. Does it bother you?”

“No,” he says quickly. “I’m just surprised you’re suddenly getting along.”

“Being victims of government conspiracies inspire friendship, I guess,” she says, feeling awkward, and then turns on her side, facing away. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. It’s been a long few days.”

It’s probably obvious she doesn’t actually want to at all, but her brother just agrees to leave her be for a while. When she joined the military to get their bodies back, she knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but she hadn’t expected it to be this hard, either.

At Briggs, her first experience is almost getting stabbed with another weaponized automail arm. What a terrific start.

“I’m Major Edina Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist, from Central HQ!” she shouts when she realizes it’s not a bear attacking her, but a man larger than Sig. “My uniform is under this coat, I have the identification to prove it, I’m not a spy.”

The man doesn’t lower his automail arm, but at least he stops. “Open the coat, pull out the pocket watch,” he says, and she scrambles to do both, even though the cold air that rips through her immediately almost isn’t worth it. To make it worse, he has to bend down uncomfortably close to analyze the watch. As he straightens up, he continues, “Aren’t you one of Colonel Mustang’s?”

As she redoes the buttons, shaking, she answers, “Yes, but I’m here on my own agenda. I have a letter of introduction for General Armstrong from her brother. Can we enter the fort now?”

To her relief, the man backs away, and relaxes. “I’ll have to take it up with the General before any decision on that is made,” he says, and her huff of annoyance is ruined by how badly her teeth are chattering.

“Captain Buccaneer,” a woman’s voice calls from above them, and Ed needs to squint to see through the storm, but even from here she can see the similarities to Armstrong. “Who is this brat?”

“I’m Edina Elric from Central HQ, the Fullmetal Alchemist,” she says again, hoping the woman can actually hear her with all this wind. “This is Alphonse Elric, my younger brother. I have a letter of introduction from Major Alex Louis Armstrong.”

Before either she or the General can say anything, the man adds, “She has the uniform and watch. Do you want the letter sent up, General?”

Someone else, dressed head to toe in white, grabs her from behind, and her shout of protest is ignored while roaming hands look for the letter. “It’s in my coat pocket, not my pants!” she says, and he pulls it out without answering. They should’ve skipped this step and gone to look for Mei on their own.

When another someone else bring it all the way up to the top of the wall, General Armstrong just stares at the envelop for a moment before tearing it to shreds, letting it fall over the edge into the snow. The gears in Ed’s automail are beginning to stiffen. “I prefer to make my own opinions on people, Major Elric,” the woman says, which isn’t making this look any better. Ed isn’t particularly good at the whole first impressions thing. “Bring them up, men. We can’t have the famous Fullmetal Alchemist freeze on our doorstep.”

Captain Buccaneer takes her by the arm, and another soldier knocks Al on the back with the butt of his gun. “You heard the General, alchemist. Get moving.”

The walk seems to take forever, and by the time they reach the entrance, General Armstrong is already gone.

Before she meets with the General, Ed gets shipped off to the doctor they have on base. “You should have adjusted your arm and leg before you came north,” the woman says once she’s done oiling everything. “Your lips are blue from the metal sapping your body heat. Do you have a regular mechanic?”

As she hands her coffee, Ed answers, “Yeah, but she’s in Rush Valley. I didn’t exactly have the time to give her the heads up I was coming here.”

“That will be one hundred cents, please,” the woman says when she takes a sip, and Ed is just so annoyed by this situation that she doesn’t know what else to do but hand it over. “What? It’s the north, get used to it. You should send for your mechanic if you want to stay alive. It looks like it needs some upkeep anyway.”

(the lookalike fixes her broken arm, her broken ribs, her brother, but forgets about her automail. you don’t survive nearly getting eaten by a giant homunculus without full bodily repercussions.

            winry is going to kill her if she finds out)

She goes to answer, but Buccaneer says first, “You came here with mediocre automail, completely ignorant of the north, and you try to bypass Northern HQ?”

“Major Armstrong told me too. It said that in the letter of introduction.”

Though she’s been nearly everywhere else in Amestris, she always dodged the north on purpose. Even before she found out a special material was needed for it, her automail’s reaction to the cold was enough of a deterrence. “Why would anyone from the military possibly tell you to—”

Then the door slides open, cutting him off, and at least she has a shirt on this time. “Hello, brat,” General Armstrong says, and Ed is used to insults, but usually not from other military personnel. “If you’re done here, then follow me. Your brother can come.”

The room is three down, simple with a desk covered with a stack of papers, a lamp, and a photo of people who don’t look like family (her father always keeps a family photo on the corner of his desk, one without him in it, and after he leaves she hides it away. she has no pictures of her own) right under the light. “I hear you’re close to my brother,” General Armstrong says, taking a seat, and she’d know more if she read the letter. “Is Alex doing well?”

Considering that she doesn’t smile as she asks, Ed’s not entirely sure if the woman wants to hear a yes or no. “He was when I left, yeah,” she says, deciding to stick with the truth, and Al adds, “Major Armstrong’s doing just great.”

Somehow, the temperature in the room seems to drop even more, which means wrong answer. “Nevermind about him,” the General says, leaning her elbow on the desk. “Tell me why you would bypass Northern HQ to meet me. I want to know it all, including why your armor’s empty.”

Glancing at the other two in the room, Ed says, “That’s something we’re all better off not talking about.”

The automail engineer shrugs. “Up here, we keep our secrets. There’s no reason to hide.”

“If this reaches certain ears, we—I—could get in a lot of trouble. Court marshaled level trouble,” she says, and doesn’t mention that Roy could get in a lot of trouble too.

(aren’t you taking a big risk just for this? she asks colonel mustang at twelve when he explains everything to her. you could get in a lot of trouble if someone found out you knew.

            colonel mustang just smiles and puts his hands in his pockets. then i guess we have to make sure no one finds out, fullmetal, he answers, and this the last time they talk about it for three years)

“Even I have secrets like that,” the General says, and Ed’s starting to wonder if she always sounds this angry.

Al leans down close to her ear and says quietly, “I really think we have to tell her, Ed.”

With Winry a hostage, this is even more complicated than usual. For all Ed knows, she was just expected to stick around in Central. “Let’s see if we can pull this off without mentioning anything too important,” she says, and then turns her focus back on the others as Al straightens up. “All right, General,” she continues, “I’ll tell you everything.”

“Whoa, Ed, calm down.”

“What’s going on?”

“Sorry, my sister does this sometimes.”

(the gate shows her everything that was, everything that is, and everything that will be, and lior fades into a snowy mountainside with an explosion at the church. the ash turns to snow, drifting down across a field of bodies and tanks, and there’s red spilling across the ground. the men are unfamiliar, the uniforms not hers, and there are more bullet shells than corpses. the only survivor wears a white suit, blending in with the storm, and she never learned about this before.

            she falls back into the world when the ravens come, and lior and ishval are more important than some battle than she doesn’t recognize)

Taking in a full breathe of cold hair, she gets out, “Sorry,” and she’s addressing her brother rather than Major Miles, even if he has been nicer to her since their talk, “Just a bad memory. Hey, Al, can you put me on your shoulders so I can get rid of all this ice?”

Al starts to ask, “Was it something you saw in—” and she nods before he can finish. “Major Miles, we’ll be all right alone if there’s something you need to get to,” he adds as he picks her up.

Once situated, she says, “We’ll be back inside in a few minutes anyway.”

Miles looks back and forth, down the length of the outside corridor, and Ed flips up her hood. “This is going to take you longer than a few minutes, Major Elric.”

Earlier this year, she imitated the Freezing Alchemist against Scar, and it shouldn’t be difficult to do it again. After all, water alchemy only consists of changing the state, not one object into something else with the same mass, and that’s easy enough to figure out on her own. The second trip through the Gate certainly helped, too.

(there’re signs alchemy at the battlefield, explosive and large, and that can’t possibly be her)

As she claps, she says, “You should get out of the way if you don’t want to get hit by a face full of evaporated icicles,” and he shoots back into the doorway so fast it’s almost funny.

The blue light crackles down the length of the ceiling, traveling the length of the walls and floor and rail, and a moment later she can hardly breathe from all the steam. It’s hot suddenly, too, and Al can’t feel but he must know it, because he puts her down and gets her out of there quickly.

For a moment, Miles just sort of looks at her. Then he says, “I think I should show you around,” which means she finally did something right.

They get pawned off to Falman for the grand tour soon enough, since someone here apparently remembered he also once one of Roy’s. And because she gets reunited with someone she’s worked with before, it’s almost inevitable that they’re going to be attacked by a homunculus. She’s beginning to think Mustang’s team is cursed.

This is Sloth, she’s guessing, from the way he slumps. The only other one they’re missing is Pride, and this definitely isn’t someone named after that sin. “Let me fight him,” she tells General Armstrong, already turning her automail into a blade. “Artillery won’t work, he won’t die, but with alchemy maybe I can figure out something.”

“He won’t die?” Buccaneer says, and Sloth is getting closer. They don’t have time for this. “How does a kid like you know something like that?”

As much as she wants to tell them everything for their own safety, with Winry in danger she can’t. “I’m under orders not to say anything from a higher authority from you,” she says, even though even that’s telling them too much. “I’m not a spy, that’s not a spy. I’m on your side, so you can ask questions, but what I can answer is limited.”

There’s a very tense moment before the General looks the Sloth and says, “What is that thing made of? Can you tell me that much, at least?”

“His body composition and additional elements are the same as any human’s,” Ed answers, hoping the General doesn’t say anything because she’s not sure if even this much is allowed. “He’s just enhanced. I can figure it out with alchemy.”

“Have you fought another one of these before?” This is taking up too much time, so she nods. “Were you seriously injured afterwards?”

Though she doesn’t understand the point behind this, she still says, “It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.”

General Armstrong looks over her head, back to Buccaneer, and Ed realizes she should’ve just said no. “Get the fuel,” she says. “We might not be able to kill it, but we can still stop or delay it. Now you get to see the Brigg’s way, kid.”

Lighting it on fire won’t work,  not without the constant pressure of flame alchemy like Roy, but Ed will let them try. Maybe after that, they’ll let her and Al work this out on their own. 

In the end, it does work, which means Ed needs to reevaluate her idea of what people who aren’t alchemists can do against these things. Though, really, putting her in wood cuffs behind bars is an incredible overreaction. And then taking her into a creepy dark tunnel really doesn’t improve her mood.

She pulls out a map when she’s done inspecting the area, and she doesn’t want to make it seem like she knows so much of this already (because xerxes, in xerxes this happened too, and amestris has more in common with it than the elric orphans’ golden eyes). “I’m guessing the tunnel originates here, not in Drachma,” she says, uncapping a pen Falman gives her. “And I’m guessing it’s dug in the shape of a circle that goes around the entire country.”

(all the people of xerxes thought the emperor was so nice, building them irrigation systems like that, and she doesn’t know what’s worse—amestris keeping it hidden, or xerxes’ blatant lie)

Buccaneer asks why, so she explains, “It’s an alchemist thing,” before looking to her old team member. “Can you tell  me every instance of major bloodshed in this country since its founding?”

Some she knows already, some she doesn’t. With each new location she adds a circle until it forms a ring around the map. “Who told you about Lior?” Falman asks when she circles that one on her own.

“Lieutenant Brosh let it slip,” she lies. “Didn’t Eastern HQ take care of it?”

Finding out about Central soldiers only making it worse doesn’t surprise her, but it does Al. Hughes told her to be honest, but she still hasn’t told him everything, and what she saw in the Gate that second time is staying securely her information and hers alone. “I hope Rose is safe,” her brother says, and Ed tries not to think about the other girl walking through that street lined with bodies.

General Armstrong wasn’t kidding when she said Ed makes mess of everything she touches.

Falman says, “It wasn’t your fault, kid,” as she connects the dots.

“What?” General Armstrong says when the transmutation circle is finished. “How is that possible? How has no one seen this before?”

Without looking at anyone, she answers, “Someone did. And he was murdered in a telephone booth because of it.”

News of Hughes’ death reached even here, but Falman was the one who knew the man. He’s also the one who already knows the circle from Barry the Chopper’s information from Laboratory Five. “If this happens,” he asks. “If they make a Philosopher’s Stone from this, then how many people are going to die, Edina?”

(xerxes fell in a single night, legends say, but legends never give details)

“Everyone in Amestris,” she says. “All they need is bloodshed here at Briggs.”

She lets the news sink in as the candlelight flickers off the tunnel walls, and no one says a word.

Considering the situation, this is probably an inappropriate conversation, but it’s something of a taboo subject with Teacher and it’s not like she can talk about it with Winry, who isn’t here to begin with. “I know you were just conning him like we asked,” Ed says after General Raven finds his way into a grave of cement, “but did you mean anything you said, General?”

She thinks this might be too vague, but General Armstrong understands anyway. “If you’re a woman in the military, kid,” she says, brushing her hair behind her ear, “then you need to work three times as hard as any man to be respected. A woman in my position ever taking maternity leave would ruin any reputation of aptitude she ever gained. You’re, what? Fifteen? Sixteen? You can’t possibly be thinking of that already.”

Shaking her head, Ed answers, “Of course I’m not. I never want—well, that’s not the point. I’m from a small town, though, and grew up listening to older women telling me that practicing alchemy was no way to meet a husband. I know it’s been years, but—”

She stops talking when General Armstrong sighs. “Women in my family are expected to be perfect examples of femininity,” she says. “Catherine is my mother’s second chance at a proper daughter. Do you still hear it?” Ed nods, not bothering to pretend otherwise. “My brother is useless waste of space who can’t be trusted to get anything done, and your commanding officer is a slacker. If we survive this and you get your brother’s body back, come find me. Don’t return to being a civilian if you want that to stop.”

That’s an answer to a question she hadn’t asked. When she first opened this conversation, she hadn’t known what she was getting at, but she thinks General Armstrong figured it out for her. “Al and Winry will want me to return to Resembol,” she says. “I just can’t stand being defined by my gender anymore. When people hear the Fullmetal Alchemist and they meet us, they automatically assume it’s my brother. Unless I’m in uniform.”

“I’m the older sister, too, and I’m not the family heir.”

Considering some of the bullshit women have to put with from their own bodies, Ed thinks they just inherently deserve way more respect than they get. Oddly, it was fighting the homunculus that got her thinking, because the original Greed wasn’t afraid to hit first. If Roy really does it, if he really becomes Fuhrer, then she knows she can trust who’s in charge, and then maybe she won’t feel so guilty about carrying around the title of State Alchemist.

“I know you don’t like me all that much,” she says, pulling her sleeves over her hands in a useless effort to stave off the cold, “but thanks for the advice, and the help.”

Though she’s probably wrong, she thinks General Armstrong isn’t as constantly angry with her and Al as she pretends to be. After all, women can’t show weakness to just anyone, and Ed understands she hasn’t proved herself enough times to be an exception yet.

Winry’s here, arriving the day Ed turns sixteen like passive aggressive birthday present. If she didn’t know any better, she would say the Fuhrer knew she told General Armstrong, and this is supposed to be some sort of warning.  

She tries to hold her panic to a minimum, and lies there as still as she can while her friend fixes up her automail. At least in Briggs, for all their talk of sticking together and having no secrets within the group, they know to keep the men out when she’s only half dressed. Before General Armstrong threatened him, Kimblee wanted to sit in as “protection,” and Ed still doesn’t understand what that’s supposed to mean. “Can you please tell me before you do something stupid next time?” Winry asks, irritated, and adjusts something near the nerve connectors that makes Ed cringe. “You’re lucky I got here before you could get frostbite.”

“If I’d known it was going to be a problem, I would’ve called,” she says, and means it. She wouldn’t have called Winry up here for her friend’s protection, but she would’ve gone to Rush Valley first. “Coming to Briggs was a too spur of the moment for me to do any research on it, though.”

To Winry, this isn’t a good enough excuse. “It’s so banged up you should’ve come anyway,” she tells her. “There are two wires in the forearm pinched. What did you do for that to happen without ripping apart the whole area?”

With a single shoulder shrug, Ed says, “I’ve lost track,” and her friend taps her on the head with a wrench. “Was that really necessary, Winry?”

“You’re such an idiot,” she says, but she’s smiling at least. “So how’d you get yourself thrown in jail?”

Again, Ed shrugs. She can’t exactly say she thought she’d be out by now because this was supposed to just be a cover at this point. “If I say it’s a long story, will you drop it?”

Winry presses her lips into a straight line, but doesn’t answer. As much as Ed needed her automail fixed up, she needs her friend to be safe more. Besides, when she gets Al’s body back, she needs someone to look out for him during his recovery. There’s a realistic chance she won’t be here to do it herself, and even if she is, she doesn’t know how long she can stand living in Resembol again. General Armstrong was right.

“When we were younger, I always thought of you and Al the sister and brother I never had,” Winry says suddenly, and Ed looks from the ceiling to her friend. “That hasn’t really changed, even if I don’t see you for months at a time, now. I don’t have that much family left, Ed, so I want a real answer—next time the phone rings in Rush Valley, am I going to have to worry it’s a call from Colonel Mustang telling me you’re dead?”

As a kid, Ed was always such a terrible liar, but when she answers, “No, definitely not,” she thinks it comes across believably enough. “We’re close to finding a way to getting our bodies back. It’s a strong lead. There’s more of a chance that the next call you’ll get is Al asking you to make him apple pie than someone asking about funeral arrangements.”

That gets Winry to smile, finally, and Ed yelps when she twists something in the shoulder. “Don’t be such a baby,” her friend says, and some of the tension has left her shoulders. “And happy birthday, idiot.”

No one deserves false hope, but if Ed really does ruin everything she touches, she’d like to hold off hurting Winry for a little while longer.

Ed’s pretty sure that even without seeing the Ishvalan Civil War, Kimblee would still make her uncomfortable. His white suit isn’t helping matters.

(the gate showed her blood on a snowy mountainside, with a man in a white standing alone. all that’s left is briggs.

            that evidence of alchemy better not be from her)

There’s only one exit to the room he leads her into with a guard posted outside the door, and she doesn’t think she can get to it before he can if he tries anything. “I’m sorry if I scared you earlier, Major,” he says, and Ed bets that smile of his is pretty convincing to people who don’t know better. “The people here at Briggs are a little rough around the edges. With the arrest, I thought maybe you’d want someone watching your back.”

When getting her automail fixed, her nerves are disconnected, making her borderline useless, but it isn’t the Briggs men she’s worried about. “I understand,” she says, crossing her arms, “and thank you for your concern for my wellbeing, but what do you really want from me?”

His smile grows. “I’ve got a job for you.”

“A job?”

 “Well, you are a State Alchemist, aren’t you?” She doesn’t answer. “It’s a few jobs, actually,” he continues. “Three, all from the Fuhrer. First, he wants you to hunt down Scar—you find him, I’ll do the rest. Second, he wants you to locate Dr. Maroch, who’s suspected to have fled with Scar.”

Finding Scar, regardless of where the orders come from, isn’t something Ed has much of a problem with this, but this is news to her. “Why would Dr. Maroch be with Scar?”

“The only thing you need to worry about is locating them,” says Kimblee, and she hadn’t expected an actual answer. “Anyway, third, last—he wants you to create a bloodspot.”

(they can order her to kill, whether she likes it or not, but that doesn’t mean the evidence of alchemy comes from her)

Shaking her head, she says, “I’m not. I’m not recreating Ishval.”

The smile doesn’t leave his face. “I checked your file, Fullmetal,” Kimblee tells her. “You turned sixteen today, didn’t you? You should know what that means.” In Amestris, someone becomes an adult at eighteen, but a lot of laws protecting minors stop applying at sixteen. For her, who bypassed most already, it means she can no longer use her age as a defense. “When you joined the military, you should’ve expected you’d have to kill eventually.”

“Actually, I was pretty determined not to. Or at least not participate in a massacre.”

All it took to start the Ishvalan Civil War was for Envy to impersonate an officer and shoot a child. What Kimblee’s asking for now doesn’t even require an excuse. “How original,” he says, and reaches into his pocket. “The world’s going to change soon, girl. I’m interested in seeing who comes out on top, and I think I can tempt you into looking at things my way.”

Before she can remind him that he’s human, and investing himself in the wrong side, he places an object on the table. It’s red, thin and long and pointed on either end, glinting in the light. The Philosopher’s Stone, right there, in arms reach. “I need consult my brother and Winry first,” she says, but her hand twitches for it anyway. After searching for it for so long, she’s finally having it just offered to her, and Al’s been in that body for longer than he should have. She doesn’t want to use it, and she planned on never searching for it again, but it’s right here, and she never claimed to be a good person.

“Why Winry?”

“She’s practically my sister, and she has no idea she’s involved,” Ed answers. “If I’m going to carve out a bloodspot, she at least deserves to know why.”

Sighing, Kimblee says, “All right, but you’re not telling her without me there. Can’t have you telling her too much.”

Ed agrees, and Kimblee must not have siblings, or he’d understand it doesn’t always take words to get all the information across. By the end of this conversation, Winry’s going to know all she has to, and Ed’s hands are staying clean. Sixteen or not, she’s not a murderer.

            (or at least not yet, and there are more places in the world than bloody snowcapped mountains)

Chapter Text

Once they reach the witnesses who’d last seen Scar, Major Miles takes care of the questioning. Ed was planning on dodging everyone else to come up with a plan with Al and Winry, but Kimblee corners her for some State Alchemist alone time too quickly. Until now, she never fully appreciated how willing Hughes, Armstrong, and Roy were to respect her personal space.

“I know it seems so disgusting now,” Kimblee says casually, voice low enough for the conversation to be considered private, “but that’s normal. Everyone hates it in the beginning. By the end of this, you’ll come to see things my way.”

(she watches men kill under orders and women for their children and sometimes people just because they want to. a human can be a transmutation array the same way he can be a murderer.

            all it takes is the right push)

She adjusts the way she’s standing, uncomfortable around him. “I’m not like that.”

Patting her on the back, he says, “Of course you are, kid. You’ve already proven it.”

When she signed up for the military, she knew she was signing herself over for the possibility of going to war. She hadn’t realized she was signing herself off for a personality analysis, too. “I’m not,” she insists (except she’s already gotten the push to become an array, and who’s to say she can’t get the push to become anything else) because while she’s allowing him to think she’s going to go through with this, she’s going to make sure he knows it’s not willingly. This is fully under duress. “Just because I’m a State Alchemist doesn’t mean I am.”

“Being a State Alchemist has nothing to do with it. Someone like Strong Arm doesn’t have the stomach for it, but you do,” Kimblee says, and when she furrows her brow, he sighs, and continues, “Don’t pretend to be an idiot. You know what it means to pick and choose who lives and who dies. It’s not like you haven’t played around with human life before. You know how…exciting it is.”

(everyone who knows the story of icarus tells the story all wrong, because humility is a better life lesson than listen to your parents. so once there was a man who flew too close to the sun, because no one wants to admit a kid is capable of hubris, and he came crashing down in reward. one story’s right, and one story’s wrong, and she thinks it’s screwed up how well her life applies to both versions)

Before she can say anything, too shocked to have an immediate answer, he just walks away like he hadn’t just called her out on playing god. A moment later Miles waves them all over, and Ed hadn’t known it was possible to hate Kimblee more than she already did.

When they reach the mining town, Miles pulls her aside. “Don’t let yourself be alone with him again, or his men,” he says, shooting a backwards glance at Kimblee. “I know what that guy can do, and you don’t want to fight him alone.”

It’s been weeks, and she still hasn’t mentioned that actually, she knows exactly what Kimblee can do, too. “I can change the minerals in something fast enough he won’t know what to deconstruct and reconstruct to create his explosions,” she answers. “If it comes to a fight, let Al and I take care of him. You take care of his men. Besides, I need to focus on that girl before I can think about anything else.”

Every time she’s around one of them, she gets this weird feeling like there’s something not quite right about any of them. “We’re the same rank,” Miles says. “You can’t exactly order me around, Major.”

“Well, that applies to you too, Major.”

She hadn’t been trying to order him around, just tell him the best way to do this. In her whole time in the military, she’s given one real order and it was to keep Winry safe, which she thinks is as good a reason as any to break her code not to abuse authority. “Fine. Focus on finding the girl,” he says, clearly reluctant. “We’ll meet up with you when we can.”

Darius, one of Kimblee’s men, suddenly appears from behind Miles, and she scowls. Even though she’s playing along, she’s got enough of reputation of being insolent that she doesn’t need to pretend to be nice. “Don’t worry, we’re not hatching some secret plan. He’s just telling me to stay safe,” she says, pushing past both of them. “Come on, we’re got a serial killer to catch, or do you want to keep procrastinating because you’re worried a girl can’t take care of herself?”

Taking a quick look around, she finds Winry’s nowhere to be seen, which means at least part of their plan has worked already.

Giving Kimblee’s men the slip is almost embarrassingly easy, but it’s not like Ed and Al know their way around, either. Mining towns are mazes, something she forgot. It’s just been so long since she thought about Youswell that the idea that this wouldn’t have a simple layout hadn’t occurred to her. “This would be so much easier if Mei would just come to us,” she says as Al lets out Winry. “Even if that means we have to deal with Scar, too, I’m pretty sure I can—”

“ALPHONSE!”

Ed’s cut off by Mei literally coming to them, the girl throwing herself a little too energetically into Al’s arms. She glances at Winry, who would’ve banged her head pretty seriously at the impact had she been in there, and her friend is biting her lip with the corners of her mouth twitching. This isn’t cute, and she wasn’t supposed to find it anything close to that.

“Mei,” Al says, setting the girl down, and sounding way happier than Ed expected. With everything that’s been going on, she hadn’t really been paying attention to the possibility of her brother liking someone. “What are you doing here?”

Before she can answer, another voice says, “Mei, don’t run off like that!” and a man with a deformed face emerges from the shadows. “Dear God! Is that who I think it is?”

It takes Ed a moment to place the voice, but she does it. “Dr. Maroch?” she says. “What happened to you?”

Then, before he can answer, someone else comes in, and this person literally shrieks. “It’s the Fullmetal Alchemist!”

That—No. This just. No. “Lieutenant Yoki?” She glances at Mei and asks, “How did you pick this creep up?”

With a smile, Mei answers, “Mr. Yoki has been very kind to all of us,” which must mean her, Dr. Maroch, and Scar. “Alphonse, I didn’t know you knew all of them!”

“Villain!” Yoki says, pointing at her. “I swore to get my vengeance for what you did to me! You ruined me!”

Too confused by this whole situation to care about anything he’s going on about, she turns her attention back to Mei. Unfortunately, the girl’s now focused on Winry. “Alphonse, how could you?” she asks, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Who is she? I thought we had something special.”

While Al goes on sputtering about Winry just being a childhood friend, and Yoki continues ranting about how the Fullmetal Alchemist destroyed everything he stood for, Ed turns to Dr. Maroch. “How long have you been with her?” she says, thinking that maybe knowing her will be enough to get him to help them again. “Al and I figured everything out—the truth within the truth, what the military is planning for Amestris. We don’t really want to use something created by mass murder to get our bodies back, so we were going to look into alkahestry. What’re the odds she’ll help us?”

“High, judging by her reaction to your brother,” Dr. Maroch answers, watching the scene in front of them unfold with the same confusion. “The homunculi captured me not long after you left, and Scar rescued me. My face is his idea of disguise. It’s been working. I’m sorry about the Philosopher’s Stone, Major Elric. I tried to warn you.”

Shrugging, she says, “I might’ve found something else based on the same theory, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. It just doesn’t involve killing anyone. Getting you caught was our fault, I’m guessing, so I’m sorry about that. I mean it.”

He smiles, his ruined face wrinkling with the pull of his lips. “Perhaps it was retribution for all I did in Ishval. Equivalent exchange,” he says, which is a kinder way of looking at it than she had. “You aren’t the first person to think of combining alkahestry with alchemy, though, but the research is written in code. It’s going to need more than just Mei to translate that. And you won’t like it.”

There’s only one person they all have in common for that to apply to and no, Ed doesn’t like it at all. “Scar?” Dr. Maroch nods, and she feels dirty by the idea of working with him for anything already, but she’s willing to do it if that’s what it takes. She might be selfish, but there’s no point in getting their bodies back if it means the whole country will die anyway. “Well, I suppose that’s the lesser of two evils right now. Hey, Al!”

Her brother looks up. “What is it, Ed?”

“We’re going to go find Scar and ask him some questions so I don’t need to murder everyone in Briggs,” she answers, and Dr. Maroch’s eyes widen at the realization of what she means. After all, Hughes wasn’t the first to figure it out. “Come on, we’ve got to head out before Kimblee’s—”

Then, across the street, comes a sudden explosion. “That’s the building Scar was in,” Dr. Maroch says, and even Yoki’s gone quiet now. “You said Kimblee’s here?”

Al grabs her by the hand, and they both get out, “Stay here,” before running off in the direction of the blast. Knowing their luck, they’re already too late, but they need to at least try.

Scar’s stuck to a wall, palm facing outwards so his deconstruction is impossible to use, and for once, the worst injury Ed has is a light burn on her forearm from the chimera’s saliva. Half the room is covered in ice, created from that and snow using alchemy, and the rest is all raised stone.

Nothing, though, is more satisfying, than the look on Scar’s face. “I got better,” she says with a shrug in answer to his shock, and still can’t believe she beat him in close quarter combat all because he was expecting her arm to be steel. “Now, look, everyone here wants to kill you. My orders were to capture you and deliver you to Kimblee, but I’m not going to do that if you promise to—”

She stops talking at the sound of footsteps. “That’s close enough,” she hears Miles say, and when she turns, she finds him, a few of his men, and Winry standing there.

“You brought her here, Major?” Ed says, straightening up, and trusts Scar’s secure enough to look away from him. “What were you thinking?”

One of the others, pointing his gun down at the unconscious chimeras, asks, “What are these things?”

Miles follows his gaze. “No doubt the result of some experiment. Tie them up, men, and make sure it’s too strong for them to escape.”

If Ed had to guess, successfully splicing human DNA with an animal’s is a relatively new thing, no more than three years old. That’s when Tucker first used his wife. “They’re Kimblee’s,”  she says. “Someone probably did it so they had no choice but to stick with the military. Can’t exactly go back to a wife and kids when you’re combined with a hedgehog, can you?”

Without answering, Miles draws closer, and his men drag the bodies over to a column. “As much as I hate to kill one of my own,” he says, drawing his gun to point level with Scar’s forehead, “what you’ve done is unforgiveable. You’ve given me no choice.”

“Um, Major, I sort of—”

“Let me talk to him.” Now Winry’s moved closer to, ducking under Miles’ arm when he tries to block her. “Please,” she continues, “this man killed my parents. I need to know why.”

Whatever Scar did was after the war was done, and the Gate hadn’t shown Ed that far in advance. That said, she doesn’t know if she can take learning anything else, not when her head’s so stuffed with information it creates an almost constant background noise. “There’s nothing I can say that can excuse my actions,” Scar answers, surprisingly, “and nothing can change that I’m responsible for what happened.”

From below comes the screeching of tires against ice and pebbles. “Major, I know he’s a murderer, and supposed to be apprehended,” Ed says, grabbing Miles’ arm when he goes for the gun again, having heard it too, “but if you want to survive, you need to let Scar help us. He’s the key to figuring out the answer.”

“But—”

“I don’t like it anymore than you do, but he’s ironically the answer to saying Amestris. Right now, it’s up to you if you let that happen.”

There’s not even the slightest hesitation when Miles drops his arm. “They’re using the Rockbell girl as a hostage, right?” he says, glancing to Winry. “If we can use her to disgrace Kimblee, then she’ll no longer be used against you.”

One of the Biggs men says something about a storm rolling in, and they quickly cobble together a plan. That wasn’t supposed to include bringing a couple human chimeras along for the trip, and it definitely wasn’t supposed to include letting Scar kidnap Winry. But they’re running out of options, and Ed’s already realized that she has to take what she can get.

She slapped Kimblee.

She’d slapped him.

In retrospect, she only got away with it because they’re both Majors, and as Miles said, Winry getting captured on his watch was disgraceful. But, still. She’d slapped him. If this gets back to someone before she can solve everything going on here, she could get in some serious trouble.

It’s only because of this that she lets Al go out on his own in a storm to warn the others Briggs is no longer in command of General Armstrong. There’s not much Kimblee can do to her, especially without his men jumping down his throat for it because as usual that would be “hurting a young girl,” but he can still take his frustration out on her brother. “Be safe,” she says before he slips off. “I’ll see you soon, got it?”

“Yeah, of course, and Winry, too,” he says. “And I’m sure Mei will help us like she said.”

Just because Al has no body doesn’t mean he still can’t be trapped out there. Mei helping doesn’t matter if there’s only one of them. “If there’s some way to warn the Briggs soldiers, too, do it,” she says, and glances behind her. “For all we know, Central decided not to wait for the alchemists.”

He nods. “I was thinking the same thing,” he says. “Now I better go before you’re called out again.”

Watching him walk away is difficult, but she waits until his back is out of sight before going to back to rejoin Miles and the others.

The thing about Amestrisian military uniforms is that they aren’t made to be warm, and even with Ed’s coat, she’s still freezing. With Al gone, Winry in custody of Scar, having to team up with Scar, and already being told she needs to commit mass murder once, she’s really not up to hearing about another mission that involves killing people.

As Miles says, “No one’s to know about this mission outside this room,” she already knows what it’s supposed to entail. But she made a promise to herself, and she still intends to keep it for as long as she can.

(or maybe it’s that kimblee is right, and she’s just too afraid to find out what her push is)

“Isn’t having me help you kill someone a little counterproductive for why I’m here?” she says, because she finally had an opening to explain things to Miles. “We should take him captive for questioning.”

Shaking his head slightly, Miles says, “Kimblee’s not the sort of man you try and negotiate with. He won’t give us answers.”

A blast of cold air comes in through the curtained door, and she wraps her coat tighter around herself. “Maybe not to you,” she says. “He might talk to me. And we still don’t know about his men.”

When he looks down at her, she can see the glint of his red eyes even through his sunglasses. As a kid, people had made fun of her because hers are gold, but the comments he must’ve gotten had to have been worse. “What makes you think he’ll talk to you?”

(by the end of this, you’ll come to see things my way)

“I’m another alchemist, and he seems to want me on his side,” she answers. “I think he’s entertained by the idea of me or something, but he will talk to me.”

Despite how sure she is that she’s right about this, Miles and the other two don’t buy into it. “I’ve told you before. In Briggs, it’s carelessness that gets you killed,” he says, “and I’m not going to make the mistake of showing mercy.”

Maybe Miles was right, and showing mercy was a mistake, because otherwise Ed wouldn’t be sprawled out on the floor of an exploded mineshaft with a pipe through her abdomen. Broken ribs, again, she’s guessing, and something’s definitely up with her normal elbow. Her femur isn’t broken, but it’s definitely cracked, and three of her fingers are bent in ways they aren’t supposed to bend. To make it worse, her body doesn’t even have the decency to let her black out.

Breathing’s hard,, which means there’s something wrong with her lungs, too, but she can’t let Kimblee get away. Not with Winry and Al still out there. So she claps once, retracts her automail blade, and then claps again before bringing her right hand down on the ground. Every movement jars her body and the pain’s intense, but she’s felt her body unravel recently, and that was worse.

Even weak, she has enough control over her alchemy to move the rubble off Kimblee’s men. As they crawl out, she claps a third time, and breaks the longer side of the pipe. The one spliced with a gorilla, Heinkel, says, “What’re you thinking, kid? You’re more hurt than we are,” as Darius mumbles something about how Kimblee’s got to pay. Good. That means they’re more likely to help.

“D-don’t get the wr-wrong idea,” she manages to get out, though it’s hard, and she tries not to be scared when she suddenly sputters up blood. “Shit. I n-need help. Can’t p-pull th-this out of m-my stomach on m-my own.”

“We were enemies five minutes ago and now you’re asking us to save your life?” Darius says, and when she nods, she realizes her neck feels pretty weak, too. This is going to take some serious luck.

Though it hurts so bad she wants to scream, she stays mostly silent as Heinkel picks her up, leaning her back against him. “You know you’re going to bleed to death once I pull this out, right?” Darius says, leaning over her.

Again, she nods. “A-alchemy can s-stop it. B-be easier if we-we’re q-quick.”

Without a Philosopher’s Stone, she only has one option: to use her own life force. Considering she’ll probably die of something stupid long before her expiration date anyway, she won’t be shedding any tears over her lost years. She’s transmuted herself before, though she’s never tried to heal, and she has what she learned inside the Gate from two trips. As hard as it is to handle everything she’s seen, it does have its advantages.

When Darius puts his hand on the pipe, she brings her hands together in preparation. Then he yanks it out with on strong tug, she brings her hands down on her stomach, on the worst of it, and—

(all the souls in the envy’s body, the one she shot, the ones the cried out or laughed or wept, burning up together so her body can reconnect itself. a philosopher’s stone doesn’t bypass equivalent exchange because of alchemists cracked some magic code, she learns. it works because it sacrifices souls in payment, and in the end, even stones will run out of their uses.

            she is a philosopher’s stone made of a single soul, bodily formed, and she gives herself over. let the truth have more of her if it wants. everything has a price, and she’ll pay it willingly)

“Did you kill her?” Heinkel asks as her body goes loose against him, and it takes her a moment to come back to herself, but when she does, she clenches her hand.

No broken fingers. Her neck and leg feel better, too, as well as her ribs and shoulder. Unfortunately, the wound in her stomach still hurts, but externally, not internally, and that’s what matters. “No, it takes more than that to kill me,” she says, shaking her head, and with Heinkel’s help, she stands.

Darius says, “So it worked?” and now that she’s standing, she can feel the leftover damage better.

“Mostly,” she answers, looking down at the giant red spot and ripped open hole through her coat, jacket, and shirt. “I reconnected my bones, but the ones that were actually broken and not just cracked are still fractured, I think, and I reconnected my damaged organs and stopped the bleeding, but it won’t last forever.”

“Then you need a real doc—” If she keeps shaking her head like this, she’s going to screw up her neck again. “Kid, you’re not going to fight Kimblee in this condition.”

That might be true, but if she breaks her word, if she aims to—well, she bets she can fight dishonorably or whatever and still hit him pretty hard from behind. Long distance is something of her specialty, after all. She puts her hand over the wound on her abdomen, hoping the added pressure helps, and goes to find him.

She makes the grand total of three steps before she collapses. The last thing she feels before she finally faints is one of them slip one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulders. And she wonders, vaguely, what the homunculi would do without her, and if it would have been better if she just let herself die.

(edina is nine, and mom’s sick. outside birds sing, and den barks, and mr. maley’s freshly cut grass smells sweet in the still summer air.

            the door to mom’s room is slightly ajar, and edina doesn’t mean to listen in, but she does anyway, because she’s a bad person even at nine. take care of them, pinako, please, she hears mom say through the crack. please, ed can’t take care of al on her own, she’s smart, but she’s just a kid.

            she’s only a year older than him, trisha, no one is expecting her to, pinako answers.

            then there’s silence, and edina leans in closer to see what they’re doing because she knows what’s supposed to happen next. except the door suddenly flies open, and pinako isn’t there but envy, and he has a knife to mom’s throat.

            take a good look at your mother, here, kid, he says, and a tomato rolls from down the hallway, knocking against her heel. if i slit her throat, what will you do, bring her back to life, or kill me? there are a few people who really want to know.

            from behind her, her brother’s voice comes, you said you’d come back for me.

            she covers her ears to drown out the noise of people souls screaming, blinks, and when her eyes open, amestris is burning bright like a star)

In the days following the incident in the mine, Ed spends most of her time somewhere between conscious and unconscious. Her dreams are hazy, and more than once someone covers her mouth to stop her from screaming in her sleep.

Time feels suspended. She wakes up at one point when a doctor is stitching her, and the man stares at her for a moment before asking her if she needs a numbing agent. “Where’s Al?” she answers. “I want my brother. Is he safe?” and Heinkel says, “He’s fine, but you can’t see him until you get better.”

So she falls back to sleep. The doctor works. Repeat.

Somehow, she starts to get better.

Though she wants to leave the moment the doctor and his wife say she’s well enough to move around, everyone eventually convinces her to play it safe and wait it out. Repairing herself worked better than she expected, certainly well enough for her to get to someone who could really patch her up, but she hadn’t predicted the fever. Even with that broken, she’s still weak, and there’s no point in looking for Al if she’s just going to die along the way, her new bodyguards argue. For some reason, she actually listens.

Unfortunately, the military seems to be searching her out. She’s famous for her hair and for her eyes, so she forgoes the braid she wears over her shoulder and keeps it loose instead when she goes out, and takes the wife’s spare pair of glasses, turning the glass to nothing more than placeholders. “Here’s what we need,” the doctor says, handing her a list of groceries. They probably need more, but don’t want her to carry too much. “Are you warm enough, miss?”

With a slight nod, she answers, “I’m all right. One of the other two is going to pick up money from my research fund while I’m gone to pay you for your services. You really didn’t have to do this, so thank you.”

The doctor waves his hand dismissively. “I wasn’t going to leave a young girl out there to fend for herself,” he says, and she doesn’t point out that she wasn’t by herself at all. For some reason, the doctor’s wife quickly took it as her mission to suspiciously watch Darius and Heinkel as often as she could to make sure they weren’t making attempts at her virtue or something.

Ed really can’t wait to leave. Getting groceries is the least she can do.

“I’ll be back soon. Promise,” she says, and smiles so he knows she’s serious. “And I won’t forget the peanut butter.”

“If the load is too heavy, you don’t need to pick up the oranges,” he tells her. “They aren’t very good up here anyway.”

Lifting her automail arm, she says, “I think I’m good with carrying a few bags,” and finally, she gets him to smile too.

On the way out, a week earlier than anyone wanted, Darius drags out the two military personnel while Ed repairs the floor she raised to knock out the one who checked out the patient room. Then she peels the uniform jacket off one, and a hat off the other, as well as the description list.

“‘One hundred fifty three centimeters, dark blonde hair typically warn in a braid over the left shoulder, golden eyes, narrow body, last seen in uniform,’” Darius reads off as they slip inside a car she can’t even pretend they’re borrowing. This won’t be returned. “It’s bad enough you’ve kept the pants and boots, Ed. Putting the jacket on is asking for trouble.”

Heinkel, who’s in the driver’s seat, hits the gas, his sense of urgency beating out his need to argue with her. “I used to transmute my old one to fit my size all the time, so I’m used to working with the material,” she says, pulling off the shirt the doctor’s wife owned her. By now, she’s lost her decency in front of them. “My face is pretty blatantly a girl’s, but I’ve been mistaken for a boy enough time that it shouldn’t be too hard to disguise myself as one if I do this right. They aren’t looking for three guys.”

Thankfully, neither of them have a rebuttal to that, and they’re used to averting their eyes. The shirt was already much too long on her, so she thickens the fabric enough that it falls at a comfortable length, and is too stiff to show off what little figure she has. Then she transmutes the jacket, changing it to waist length instead of to her hips by thinning the material as usual, but turning it from brown to red. The golden thread she uses to makes to black patches at the elbows, and the flaps into pockets with the metal as buttons. Her pants become a darker brown, with the excess fabric becoming more pockets than are strictly necessary, and she brims the front of the hat, pushing it low over her eyes.

Once fully redressed, she can pass for a boy younger than sixteen easily enough, and her blonde hair can tie her to Darius, even if the shade isn’t exactly the same. Putting on the clothes would’ve been easier without the car speeding from a police chase. “Turn down that road and park,” she says, pointing to a side street, because changing the colors of everything gave her an idea. “And if you don’t, I swear that I’ll reach forward and physically grab the wheel.”

That gets Heinkel to do without saying a word, and years of getting teased as a kid taught her subtly to be ignored instead opening herself up to torment, so she might not be used to disguises, but she’s certainly used to dodging people. Quickly, before their tail can catch them, she changes the car from blue to dark red, rounding out the front and top, then grabs Darius’ shoulder to make him duck down as she does the same. Their tail drives right past, not even noticing them. Apparently mean eight-year-old girls taught her life lessons she hadn’t realized would come in handy.

Once they’re sure they’re in the clear, she and Darius straighten. “Do you know where we’re going?” Heinkel asks, glancing at her from the rear view mirror.

Unless Al found something really important she wouldn’t know about from her time bedridden and delusional, she knows exactly where he’d wait for her. “Roy—Colonel Mustang—had this safe house, but it was destroyed a while ago, so there’s no way anyone from the military will bother to look there,” she says, leaning between the two seats. “It’s a far drive, I know, but it’s definitely where he’ll be.”

“That’s far enough away that we could easily be pulled over along the way,” he says as he pulls back out onto the street. “What’s our cover?”

It takes her a longer moment to think of that, and she doesn’t understand why they’re turning to her. So far they’ve just been treating her like a kid. “I can be your nephew, or son,” she says, nodding to Darius, “and you’re an uncle or something. I don’t know. What’s a good male variant for Edina? Edward?”

The two share a Look before Darius shrugs. “It would make sense if someone heard us call you Ed.”

Like that, it’s decided, and after three and a half years of fighting against people assuming she’s a boy, Ed’s finally going along with it willingly. Life’s a joke, and that’s all there is to it.   

Al isn’t there, and Ed almost gives up at the realization there’s no sign anyone stepped foot in that safe house since the incident with Gluttony. Ling, or Greed, or whoever the fuck he is, showing up doesn’t help.

Then Ling disappears after nearly breaking through, and Greed runs away. That’s when Ed really does give up. “Look, I’ve been part of the military for over three years,” she says when she catches up to him, Heinkel and Darius not far behind her, “and I just found a homunculus in charge. Really, by this point, who does it matter which one of you does it matter who I’m taking orders from?”

Greed looks at her for a long moment before saying, “You’re offering to work for me?”

She nods. “In exchange for everything you know, yeah. The way I figure, there’s a huge possibility we’re going to die anyway. And these three won’t leave me alone, so you get three for the price of one.”

As expected, both Heinkel and Darius protest, but they both seem to have made it their mission to protect her or something, like they think she’s helpless, so she knows they won’t really leave. Besides, it’s not like they have anywhere else to go. This is probably the lowest she’s ever gotten, and she literally couldn’t care less. In the end, it’ll take a while, but this will inevitably get her to Al and Winry, and that’s all she cares about.

“Working for me means a life in the shadows, kid.”

“Stop calling me kid, and I don’t mind.”

“I also require you do everything I order.”

She shrugs. “I’m good with that as long as it doesn’t involve me killing people.”

With a lopsided smile, Greed sticks out his hand. “I think this is the start of a beautiful relationship, Edina,” he says, and they shake on it.

This will probably be hell, and she knows it all right, but she could be alone. As long as she reminds herself of that, she’ll be all right.

Or, at least that’s what she hopes.

Chapter Text

Like all good stories never told in full, this one starts in the rain.

Some old woman, taking pity on the lost-looking little boy in his straggly clothes with his water splattered glasses, gave Ed her umbrella before boarding a train car headed east. It doesn’t offer all that much protection, but it’s enough. Small town stations aren’t held inside buildings with clock towers and rushing civilians, after all. Usually they’re quaint, and open to the outdoors, and Lienchen’s is no exception.

Though neither Darius nor Heinkel seem to like it when she’s alone, Ed just needed a moment to clear her head. Today marks nearly two weeks since she last saw her brother and Winry, and the third day since she paired them up with Greed. She thought maybe the rain would clear away her anxiety, but if anything, it’s just making it worse.

(they’re children, and dad’s gone, and she realizes for the first time that he’s gone for good, and mom would be mad at her, but she runs out into the rain to clear her head anyway. it works.

            skip, and she’s fifteen, scared but not alone, and there’s a little girl spliced with a dog, dead but she doesn’t know it, and she thought the rain would clear her head. it doesn’t work.

            then, her father’s back, and gone again, and she’s digging up a body. it’s raining, and she’s not out here to clear her head. somehow, it works anyway)

Yesterday night they spent in an inn room meant for one off a dirt road in town, paid for with some of the leftover money they pulled for her research fund. Once Heinkel and Darius shaved, they went out to get supplies and tickets, and she and Greed compared notes and came up with a plan. It’s a little ridiculous, actually—he’s the first person she’s told about what she saw in the Gate. Or the first person she’s told everything to, anyway. She rationalized it by telling herself it was necessity, that they needed all the details, but that didn’t make her feel any better about it.

In a way, a homunculus knows more about her than Al.

She supposes that, because of this, she shouldn’t be all that surprised that after an hour out in the rain on her own, he finally searches her out. “So here’s the thing, Ed,” he says when he finds her, leaning against a pole under the awning protecting the benches. The other two are a little ways down, eyeing them warily, and their worry over her safety is really unnecessary. “When I agreed to have you work for me, I wasn’t planning on letting my best asset risk her life just to get some fresh air.”

(come inside, edina, mrs rockbell says, or you’ll catch your death of cold out here)

If the doctor and his wife saw her like this, they’d probably kill her. He has a point. Technically, she’s not even supposed to be running around like this for another few days at least. “It’s not like it’s a downpour,” she says, frowning, but steps under the awning anyway, shutting the umbrella. “Besides, I can dry myself off pretty easily with alchemy.”

Until they actually sat down and sketched out a plan based on his collective memory, and what she just knows, she thought she’d spend every moment around him either flinching, or wanting to hit him. Then she realized how much Ling was integrated with him, and wonders if that lookalike has realized yet exactly how much he fucked up on this one. You can’t combine the spirit of Greed with someone who’s already pretty greedy themselves, apparently.

“Then hurry it up, before anyone else decides they need a train for South City,” he says, already turning to walk away again. “I’m not bailing you out if you get caught.”

That was just as unnecessary as Heinkel and Darius not wanting her and Greed to be alone together, but she believes him. So she claps, and the water turns to steam, evaporating off her clothes and body.

This is going to be a long few months.

Just because they have a lot of answers doesn’t mean they have all of them, and the south makes for a good lead as long as she avoids running into Fuery. Then she finds out he’s on the front lines, and that won’t be too hard.

“When you said it was going to be an underground life, I hadn’t realized you were being literal,” she says, annoyed, as Darius gives her a leg up to reach the rim of the entrance she made. Except she’s can’t quite make it, because she’s not as tall as Al, and Greed reaches down to grab her elbow, pulling her up. “Do you know hard making a tunnel like that is when you don’t know the area?”

It’s late, so most of the personnel are cleared out of Southern HQ, but not enough to break in from the front. Which means the other three were assholes that made her create a tunnel that lead to a basement. “Well, you did it, so does it really matter?” Greed says as Darius helps Heinkel up, then grabs his friend’s hand to be pulled up himself.

Ed doesn’t bother to answer, instead trying to be as quiet as her automail allows as she searches around for the map of the interior and grounds. Though it’s easy enough to find, it’s clear the layout of this building is different from Central or East, and it takes her a moment to locate the archive room. “Third floor, second hallway, fourth hallway on our right, I think. Should be labeled,” she says, tapping it. “You two will know if someone’s coming, right?”

Being human chimeras have the same number of advantages as being part human part metal, so at least they can pull off that. Half an hour later and they’re in the archive room, Heinkel and Darius acting as guards by the door as Greed and Ed rifle around for anything they can find. And if it weren’t for her familiarity with code, they wouldn’t have what they were looking for. If this is what they’re looking for. Everything either corresponds with what they already know, or has nothing to do with anything. And considering this is a room in HQ, it’s doubtful it’s a State Alchemist’s research, or at least a normal one’s.

As she goes to put it back, prepared to come back tomorrow because there isn’t enough time to crack it now, Greed grabs her wrist. “If we bring it with us, we won’t have to come back,” he says. “Just take it and let’s get out of here.”

“We can’t just steal it.”

Rolling his eyes in a way that’s so very Ling, he says, “Your moral code isn’t my top priority right now, kid. We’re leaving.”

Though she wants to argue, the sky outside the window is already getting lighter, and they can’t risk someone finding that door they mind. “Fine,” she answers, and shoves the book into his hands, “but if we get caught, remember that this is your fault.”

The bastard just smirks, like she’s more amusing than serious, and she pushes past the others on her way back out. Back when she was in the military, she used to bend the rules, but she never did anything outright illegal that didn’t have an easy fix. And she really doesn’t like the feeling.

With the absolute last of her money, they rented a couple of rooms in another inn for a few days, and Ed spends her time locked inside, decoding. “So you know how the military always claims we’re only fighting defensively?” she says when she done, shaking from too much coffee and too little sleep and she hasn’t had anything to properly eat in a while. As she’s also supporting Al’s body, she knows can’t be good for either of them. “Well, this is a list of battles, just like it looks like, except not exactly what it says. It’s a list of how many they provoked into happening, and how many peace treaties they shot down.”

(kimblee provoked drachma into attacking, into fighting a battle they couldn’t win. this is the record of a spy in the enemy government, creating propaganda and lighting fuel to an unnecessary fire.

            the gate never showed her this, and she’s not sure whether or not she should be relieved)

“I thought they only needed one incident per place,” Greed says, grabbed her notes away from her and flipping through them. “And they’re not even fighting for territory. Fighting for the sake of fighting is just boring.”

With a shrug, Ed says, “Maybe they’re trying to throw suspicion off. A bunch of isolated incidents? Way more alchemists would’ve figured it out. Not many people have gone through with human transmutation, but a lot of studied it.”

Considering how deep the military is in all of this, more State Alchemists than Kimblee must be, too. That said, the way the homunculus talked about sacrifices implied they didn’t have many choices. If any of them ever really went through with it, they wouldn’t be helping. It’s not some neat party trick. The Truth isn’t as great as it seems. She’s a good case study for it. After all, she’s left her brother and best friend alone in the world somewhere, and ran away with a homunculus and couple violent chimeras just to get away from it.

(the gate might be her sun, but wanting is theirs. is it really so important she cares when they’re planning on destroying her world for an apotheosis they’ll never achieve.

           they’re all made of wax, and she wants to see how long it’ll take them to melt)

“The ruler of this country is the incarnation of Wrath,” Greed says, and throws her notes on the table. “Ever think he’s doing this just because it’s fun? Not everything needs a reason, Ed.”

Not everything needs a reason, but everything has one.

She just can’t handle the idea that Fuery might die for the idea of someone else’s entertainment.

Greed is in even deeper hiding than the last time, so it’s not like he can go out and get everything he wants when he wants it. Because of this, Ed’s not entirely surprised that when her money finally begins to run out, he suggests teaching her how to pickpocket—to “start small.” She’s so vehemently against it that she isn’t sure how, three hours later, she’s in some back alley of South City, shaking, with more strangers’ money in her hand than she cares to count.

When he sees her, he smiles, like he’s proud of her or something. “Knew you’d be a natural, kid,” he says, hitting her on the arm, and she thought they agreed he wasn’t allowed to call her kid. She also should have specified she wanted more restrictions than not killing. “Feels  good, right, getting what you want?”

Shoving the money at him to take, she says, “I don’t want it.”

He shrugs, like it’s her loss, and counts it up. “Well, if you appreciate having a bed to sleep in and food to eat, you better get used to it,” he tells her. “Together, we’ve got enough for another few nights’ stay, or a train—seriously, Ed, it’s not like you murdered them. It’s not that big of a deal.”

(it might not be murder, but these people have families and lives and needs that go beyond wants. they shouldn’t have to sacrifice anything just because she needs a real wall to put all her research on.

            and it’s annoying, really, how she knows all this, and is still secretly pleased she managed to make someone proud of her)

During her fight with the first Greed, he said his bodily make up was the same composition of human, but she’s starting to realize that goes for more than just physical components. This isn’t an aspect of Ling talking; this is Greed getting what he wants, how he wants it, in the limited way he’s can. Basically, he’s settling for less. It’s human enough to make her uncomfortable.

“Yeah, whatever,” she says, and draws her coat tighter around herself. “Can we just get out of here before anyone catches us?”

She goes to leave, but he grabs onto her shoulder so suddenly it’s almost enough to her to throw a punch in automatic defense. “Stop looking like you’re hiding, and we won’t get caught,” he tells her, not letting go. “Get that poker face up. Then we leave.”

(it’s been years since she pretended to be a good person. no point in starting now)

For a moment, she doesn’t do anything. Then she takes a deep breath, evens out her expression, and says, “Let’s go.” The self-satisfied smirk on Greed’s face makes her feel worse, but it’s three months, without her brother, until the end Amestris, and she can stand a little thievery if that’s what it takes.

“I hate you,” she tells Greed, glaring, as the bastard laughs at her expense. She’d hit him, but she’s pretty sure Darius would then hit her for moving before he could finish patching up her back. “This is all your fault, you know that?”

Some time between falling down that mine shaft and now, Ed lost all shame, which is probably a good thing, because she can’t fix up a cut on her back by herself. “Hey, I didn’t know the infrastructure wasn’t sound,” Greed says, and jabs his finger in a very guilty looking Heinkel’s direction. “Blame this guy for being heavy enough to break through the floor.”

All they’d been doing was cutting through an old building to avoid using the sewers, and that wasn’t supposed to include the floor giving out on them. Still. It really isn’t fair that she, the lightest out of all of them, is the only one who went through. “Well, then I hate all of you,” she says, not caring how childish she sounds. “But at least they aren’t laughing.”

That just gets Greed to laugh harder. Ed reaches over to grab one of the pillows of the bed she’s lying on, ignoring Darius’ cry of protest at the movement, and throws it at her friend’s face. “Is this why you’re so marked up?” Darius asks, or more like complains. “Because you can’t keep fucking still?”

“Hey, I was out cold for half of these getting fixed,” she says. “For the one on my side, blame this guy.”

“That was the old Greed.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Both your claws hurt like a bitch.”

Darius says, “Can someone keep her from fucking moving?” and Heinkel puts his hand on her shoulder blade, forcing her down, mumbling something about children. Greed starts to protest that the body he’s in might be young, but he’s not a child, and it isn’t long before Ed joins in.

It takes until the patchwork is done for her to finally acknowledge maybe she doesn’t hate Greed as much as she thought.

There’s a moment, one horrible moment, where Ed honestly thinks she’s going to get shot.

But then the Lieutenant hesitates, starts to say, “Major Elric, you’re—” instead of firing on sight, and she just turns and runs. A shot rings out from behind her, the bullet bouncing uselessly off a telephone poll, and the next moment she hears him shouting to someone else that the Fullmetal Alchemist is going that way. If it weren’t for the downpour, his aim might even have been good enough not to miss.

What happened was someone recognized Heinkel, which by default means someone recognized her, and now they’re all off running in opposite directions. She’d stop and create a wall, but that takes time, and even she isn’t good enough to dodge a bullet in the middle of a transmutation, and she really doesn’t think the Lieutenant will hesitate again. So she runs, and her lungs burn, and she can’t even find an alley to turn into.

That is, until she’s literally pulled into one by her left arm. Before she can even register what’s happening, Greed’s pulling off her hat, loosening her hair, and ripping off her jacket. “What’re you—” she starts to ask, but he cuts her off with, “Make it believable, kid,” and kisses her.

He’s got her pressed back against the rough alley wall, and the Lieutenant runs by right as she wraps his arms around his neck. Greed’s body mostly hides hers, and he keeps his face at an angle that hers isn’t visible. With her hair down and jacket off, she has to look like a girl again. To that Lieutenant, they must just have been some young couple kissing in the rain.

Of all the ways to get out of a situation, she never would have thought of this.

They stop in the hotel just long enough to gather all their stuff and for Ed to cut her hair, now that she’s been recognized. She chops it to right above her shoulders, to the length of her bangs, and when she’s done, she looks more like her childhood self and less like her mother than she has in years.

(growing up all she wanted was to look like her mom, coloring be damned. now she looks in the mirror, and it’s her father’s eyes staring back at her on some stranger’s face.

            your father told me a story one, mom says.

            she’s just a kid, mom says.

            two trips through the gate means she’s not much of a kid anymore. it also means mom’s story isn’t much of a story)

“You look good with short hair,” Greed says when she’s done, leaning against the bathroom doorframe as she snaps the glasses in half. When she doesn’t answer right away, he sighs and adds, “You aren’t still hung up on that kiss, are you? It was that or let you get shot.”

He also could have just shoved her behind those boxes or something, but she doesn’t say that. It’s not that big a deal. Just because Winry’s hung up on the idea of—

Suddenly Greed says, “Oh,” which means he figured it out when there was nothing to figure out. It’s not a big deal. “You’ve never kissed someone before, have you?”

Despite her greatest efforts not, she feels her cheeks get hot. “Running around trying to get my brother’s body back hasn’t left me all that much time to think about stuff like that,” she answers, and pushes past him. “I’m just annoyed we almost got caught, that’s all.”

(izumi says, something will only matter if you make it matter, and edina thinks she’s finally understanding what that means)

“I feel honored,” he says, and she stuffs her research in her bag. Darius is checking out train schedules for what’ll be easiest to jump. This time they aren’t risking tickets. “If we’re all going to die in a few months, it’s good you at least got that. We can have a reprise, if you want.”

There’s something about the way he words it—the “want” instead of “like”—that makes her uneasy. It’s bad enough he’s already gotten her to steal. She doesn’t need to be mixed up in anything else with him, too.

In the beginning, Heinkel and Darius hadn’t liked it when she and Greed were alone together. Now they don’t have a problem with it, and she sort of wishes they still did. Because in the end, Greed always gets what he wants, and she should have figured that out by now.

They’re in an abandoned house on the outskirts of a rural town in the west, and the other two are off collecting firewood. Ed can’t trace the series of events exactly, but one minute she was complaining about how she was cold, and the next moment Greed was kissing her. Even worse, she doesn’t completely hate it. Maybe he had a point.

            (or maybe it’s that she doesn’t have anyone else, and she could do with the attention)

Shockingly, Greed doesn’t flaunt the fact that he’s regularly kissing the former Fullmetal Alchemist in front of the other two, though that might be because they’d find a way murder him for it. If she were a guy, they wouldn’t be this protective. Then again, if she were a guy, this probably wouldn’t have happened. If they knew, they’d say he was just using her, and they’d be right. In a small town like this, they’re even more confined than usual, and she knows how messed up it is that she’s aware of this and letting it happen anyway.

It’s just that by now, she doesn’t care anymore. She doesn’t have it in her to.

(she dreams of amestris burning, and it’s only because of her brother that she makes herself sleep every night.

            after all, she’s not having him die of something as stupid as exhaustion)

Now it’s night, and she and Greed are on watch, because after a lot of bickering she convinced him he had to chip in too, and they always do this in twos. They’ve been here four days, and the west isn’t as hot as the south, and she justifies it by reminding herself they’ve done worse when she looks at him and says, “Get over here. I’m cold.”

He raises his eyebrow but doesn’t question her, just holds his arm out and pulls her closer to him. Even if he’s not much warmer than she is, it’s better. “I’m a homunculus, and even I know this is the world’s worst cliché,” he says bluntly, and she bites her lip to stop herself from laughing and waking the others.

“Shut up,” she says, keeping her voice down. “I’m not used to this kind of weather.”

Even though she can’t see his face now, she’s sure he rolled his eyes. For someone with a collective memory dating back hundreds of years, he sure is childish. “I’ve noticed,” he tells her. “All you do in your sleep is shiver.”

(as a kid, she thrashed around in her sleep so much she used to fall off the bed. after it happened enough times, she learned to be still)

Shrugging, she answers, “At least it isn’t as bad as Briggs. That sorry excuse for a blanket they gave me did absolutely nothing. And they made me pay for their terrible coffee.”

“Those bastards.”

She has to stop herself from laughing again. “If we make it out of this, I have a standing invitation to be stationed there,” she says, and for the first time realizes she’s actually considering it. “I probably won’t make it out of this, but still. I guess that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

There’s a sight pause before Greed says, “You have one hell of a death wish, kid.”—(and she thinks, you don’t know the half of it)

After an awkward moment of trying to think of what to say to that, she just answers, “Remind me to make thicker blankets or something tomorrow. I can’t take sleeping that cold anymore.”

He makes some noise of agreement in the back of his throat, and doesn’t complain when she settles in harder against him. They don’t talk for the rest of the night, and she isn’t sure when she eventually falls asleep.

When she wakes up, she’s warm, and he’s still wrapped around her.

Staying in a small town for too long would be suspicious, and it isn’t long before they’re in a slightly bigger one. Now it’s been a month since they paired up, a month and a half since she lost Al and Winry, and she really shouldn’t be surprised when whatever this thing she has going on with Greed is goes past kissing.

“I’m a,” she says, and frowns. “I don’t really—”

As he pulls her shirt over her head, he says, “Yeah, kid, I figured that,” and throws it to join his in a forming pile on the floor.

If Al saw her now, he’d be so ashamed of her. This is Greed—a homunculus, a sin trapped inside a corporeal form, and Ed’s actively participating in stripping both of them of their clothes. It’s just that she tired of thinking too much, and of worrying, and they’ve been on this collision course for a while. So it might be terrible, but for now she’s just going to run with it.

He knows it’s her first time, but he isn’t gentle. Even though she shouldn’t, she appreciates that.

After that, after Ed just gives in and decides that for a couple months, she can afford not to care, she actually enjoys herself. “No, no, I can beat that,” she says once Heinkel finishes his story about how he apprehended a serial killer in West City four years back. They’re trading military tales with Greed watching them, amused, from her side. “I’m the one who caught the Freezing Alchemist.”

Though Darius looks resigned to his fate, clearly expecting a State Alchemist to have better stories than the two of them, Heinkel is still in a state of denial. “Doesn’t count,” he says, shaking his head. “You had a whole team with you.”

“Roy and Hughes didn’t come in until the end,” she says, putting down her water. “I also took care of that terrorist on the train bound for East City a while back—the one targeting the General. But he was so easy I don’t even remember who he was.”

Taking a gulp of his beer, Darius says, “If you’d just let that damn alchemist take care of Central when he had the chance, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

While that’s true, she wouldn’t have risked the civilian causalities. Almost the whole city would’ve gone down along with HQ. “If she hadn’t taken care of him when she did, I wouldn’t be here,” Greed says, and oh, that’s true too. “Ed wins.”

“Your existence isn’t a good basis on who has the best case story,” Heinkel says, and glares daggers when Greed puts his arm around her. “I got Hans Muller alone, without alchemy.”

Darius claps him on the back. “I think it’s two against one here, my friend,” he says, and she smiles. “But really, Ed, how have you never gotten a promotion? Hans Muller got him one. Same with Eugene Jones for me.”

“Because no one wants to put a kid on the career path and I don’t care enough to ask,” she answers. “People are already pissed enough when they have to call me Major. It’s pretty insulting, really.”

“Your complete lack of ambition is astounding,” Greed says, and when she shrugs, he doesn’t move his arm away. “You at least should have gone for it out of spite.”

When she was fourteen, there were rumors that she could possibly be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and Havoc essentially told her the same thing. She wonders what that says about her former colleague’s personality. “Doesn’t matter now,” she says. “I’m just some deserter for the next month and a half, right?”

She thinks, suddenly, of Roy, and of how her jacket is still just a transmuted version of her military one, and how maybe it’s not all that surprising she plans on going back after all.

“Can you take care of Creta first?” Darius asks one night when they’re all really cold and trying to distract themselves by coming up with the best way to take over the world. They’ve gotten Greed to agree to leave Amestris as an ally, free to rule itself, as long as it helps him out in trade and war. “Everyone there’s a fucking asshole.”

On her makeshift map she’s just drawn on a couple slips of paper transmuted together, Ed sketches in some of the towns she knows. “It would make more sense to start with Aerugo or Drachma first,” she says, glancing around their little circle. Even with a blanket wrapped around her and pressed close to Greed, she’s still freezing.

(age nine and her teacher tells her, a few tricks won’t get you a husband.

            well, she hasn’t gotten herself a husband, but she doesn’t want one anyway)

As he takes the pen out of her hand, Greed says, “Desert’s thinnest over here, and not as hot,” as he draws a dashed line between Xing and Drachma. “It’s better to bring an army through there.”

Ed snatches the pen back. “You’d have Briggs, too,” she says, and circles a pass. Despite her aversion to war, this is incredibly entertaining. “Then you’d be attacking from the east, and have Briggs as a line of defense in the south. Considering how easily they took down Drachma a few weeks ago, I don’t think it would be all that hard.”

“That’s when you move on to Creta,” Heinkel says, leaning back against the wall of what was once a living room (proper girls and boy are supposed to get married and buy a house in resembol, not run away and burn down their lives). “Amestris has enough skirmishes down there to act as a distraction. They’d know about the Xingese army in Drachma, but they can’t abandon their southern front to a military powerhouse like Amestris.”

Again, Greed takes the pen, and draws a circle around where she drew the capital. “If I take this, will the whole country fall to pieces?”

With a nod, Heinkel says, “They’re a monarchy, and not a constitutional one. Take down their king, put one of yours in his place, and the country’s yours. Aerugo is a democracy, though. Less of a military power, harder to establish your own government.”

“Aerugo has those emergency laws where the Prime Minister gains complete control, though,” Ed points out. “That would give him the same power as an absolute monarch. And once Creta’s taken, you can combine armies and attack from the west, Amestris can cause another distraction skirmish from the north, and if you bring your army around through the southern area of Amestris and back into the Eastern Desert, you can attack from the east, too. I think Creta has a strong navy, too, which means an attack from a southern border. They’d probably surrender early.”

“You are vastly underestimating people’s determination to cling on to what they consider theirs, Ed,” Greed says, and raises an eyebrow at her.

Rolling her eyes, she answers, “Just because you’re like that doesn’t mean everyone is.”

Darius mumbles something under his breath, and she catches the word “idealist” like that’s a bad thing. “Greed exists in everyone. That’s sort of the point.”

She goes to tell him that’s not true, but doesn’t get that chance. “If this is about to turn into flirting, tell me now,” Heinkel says, “because I’m sticking around for that.”

Though the two of them have definitely gotten more watchful (because she’s a girl, and girls can’t take of themselves, of course, everyone always seems to say) since they caught Greed with his hand up her shirt as she worked on the buttons on his, Darius and Heinkel at least haven’t tried to kill either of them. Not yet, anyway. They’re treating it so lightly she thinks they might be bidding their time.

“So once you establish a ruler in Aerugo, you have the continent,” she says, ignoring him. “Do you seriously want to branch out and take the rest of the world?”

“It’s not world domination if I only have one landmass,” Greed says, and hands her more paper. “Besides, with the combined military of four states and the fifth allied state to provide supplies? How hard could it be?”

Another a few hours and half a dozen disagreements later, they have a plan on how to take over the rest. Ed tries not to let it scare her how much fun she finds this.

It’s late enough in the night to be morning, a Wednesday. There isn’t much time left, and she’s not looking forward to it ending almost as much as she is. Maybe Greed is rubbing off on her.

“You know, you signed yourselves over to me when you agreed to work for me,” he says almost casually, and she doesn’t look up at him from her place on the floor. Since it’s so close to the Promise Day, she’s started going over the plan again every night. At some point during this time she has the opportunity to get Al’s body back.  “I could always not give you up when all this is done.”

(he just thought of them as his possessions, her brother tells her once their back at their teacher’s house. that’s what he told the fuhrer. and they were willing to die for him anyway. how could anyone do that?

            they weren’t captives, but it was probably a form of captive bonding, she answers, and shrugs it off. the stitches on her side burn, and she doesn’t care. she adds, if you hadn’t noticed, that whole situation wasn’t exactly normal.

            her brother agrees, and it’s a while before she thinks about it again)

Still not looking up, she says, “I thought we already established I’m probably not making it out of this. You’ve got Ling’s memories, Greed. I might not have told him, but that means you know what I’m going to do anyway.”

(when he remembered, he killed on their behalf, too, and captive bonding can work both ways)

It takes him a moment to catch on. Then, to her surprise, he hits her—hard, right on her side, which is probably the only place he can reach. “You fucking idiot,” he says as she yelps in pain, and finally lifts her head. “That goes beyond having martyr complex. When I said you had a death wish, I had realized I meant you were actually suicidal.”

(in some sick way, she wonders if he’d kill for her, too)

“I got him into this,” she says, sitting up and pretending her side doesn’t hurt. “I’m the older sister, I should have known better. He deserves more. This is the least I can do.”

“And I’m a homunculus, I can get my hands on a Philosopher’s Stone for you.”

“I’m not using something that takes mass murder to create.”

“My core’s a Philosopher’s Stone. You’re already fucking someone’s who’s only here before of it.”

That catches her off guard. Objectively, she knew that, but she purposely hadn’t put much thought into it. Unlike with the others, it’s easy to forget with him.

She gathers her stuff and stands, needing some time to clear her head, but as she goes to walk away, he grabs her wrist. “Let go of me.”

Expectedly, he doesn’t. “It’s not like this is my fault,” he says, and it’s true, but he brought it to her attention, and now it’s going to bother her anyway. More indignant that he stopped her than anything else, though, she tries to wrench her wrist away, to walk off, but then he grabs her other automail arm, and he’s stronger than her, so it isn’t long before she suddenly all tangled up against him. “You’ve been doing a pretty good job of not thinking about it so far, kid,” he continues. “There’s no point in stopping now.”’

(even worse, she thinks he probably would)

“You’re hurting me, Greed.”

He keeps her where she is for a moment, and when he lets go, she doesn’t move. “I’ve got collective memory with the rest of them right up until I took bodily form,” he says. “Do you know the story of Xerxes? The full story?”

Shaking her head, she answers, “Only what the Gate showed me. Which was a lot, but I don’t know who transmuted it. I’m assuming the Hohenheim lookalike.”

So far she hasn’t really talked about her father, but Greed gets it anyway. “Yeah, that’s true,” he says, and tucks his hands in his pockets. This is unusual, considering they’re usually touching in one way or another. Since he can’t get anyone outside the three of them, she seems to be the replacement for everyone he could have. “Back then he didn’t have a body, though. Some rich guy created him using a slave’s blood. The memories are fuzzy, it’s been a while, but seems like he named the slave. Van Hohenheim.”

There’s a pause. Then, “No. I’ve accepted by now that I have Xerxesian ancestry, but that would—my father’s an asshole, but he can’t be that much of an asshole.”

Greed just shrugs. “Seems to me he got tricked, but again, fuzzy memories. Father taught him alchemy, put him in the center of the transmutation circle instead of that emperor guy who wanted immortality, which means your father got immortality instead and mine got a body. All the Philosopher Stones that make up our cores come from Xerxes. If your father’s Van Hohenheim, you might be human, but you’re only here because of the fall of Xerxes, too.”

She wants to tell him no, that’s impossible, but over the past year, she’s learned to redefine her definition of that, and unfortunately, it matches up; her father never talked about where he came from or his family, he didn’t look as though he’d aged at all when she last saw him, how unique his alchemy books were, and then there’re their damn eyes. This doesn’t seem fair, though, telling her right now. It’s almost like Greed is saying she doesn’t have a right to be uncomfortable when he’s the one who brought it up. Hell, if this is true, then she’s even more of a freak than she thought.

“I’m really good at leaving,” she says, finally answering his first question with something more concrete than how she’s probably going to die. “Call it a family trait.”

When he grins, it looks too much like Ling’s. “I bet I could think of a few ways to make you stay on.”

(she thinks she’d never kill for him, too, but there’s a chance she’d die for him if push came to shove, and that’s just horrifying)

With a smile of her own, she says, “I think you might be overestimating your own power.”

So far she’s done a pretty good job of ignoring what bothers her. She thinks she can probably ignore this too.

If it weren’t for Heinkel, she’d be dead, but as it stands, her automail is still damaged. “It’s usable, but I’ll need to go back to Resembol to have Pinako patch up what she can,” Ed says, holding up her arm. A piece of metal down the forearm is missing. “Great, just in time for the Promise Day, too.”

It had been a small town, and had no reason to be occupied, but it was, and someone from East City recognized her. And after her first fight with Scar, word of her automail arm got out apparently, because he knew the first place to aim wasn’t her heart or her head. “How long will fixing it take?” Greed asks, glancing at the damage. “Ten days isn’t all that big for a window.”

With Winry, she’d say a day. As long as her friend got the measurements right and made sure the insides were correct, Ed could fuse it back on with alchemy without them having to take it apart. But Pinako doesn’t know the model at all. “Three days,” she answers. “Add that to travel time, and we’ll reach outside Central the day before. That’s cutting it closer than we wanted, I know.”

“Better than you fighting only half firing,” Heinkel says, peering out the window. Darius is out finding train times and it hasn’t been too long, but that fight is making all of them jumpy.

Sighing, she says, “Yeah, I know. Maybe when I’m there I can get a warning to Roy.”

Thankfully, no one tells her this is a bad idea, because she’s already fully aware it is. Most like he’s pieced this together with Riza by now, but she doubts he has the date. And he needs that date.

Now if only she could get a hold of Al.

Before either Heinkel or Greed can answer, Darius finally comes back. “Train heading east, twenty minutes,” he says, out of breath. “We’ve got to run to catch it.”

All their stuff is already gathered, so it only takes a minute to clean out. Then they’re running, and after everything, it feels surreal that she’s actually heading back to Resembol.

It’ll be even more surreal when, in ten days, she’ll end up back home.

Chapter Text

The first thing Winry does is hug her. The second is tug at her hair. “What did you do, Ed?”

“People recognized me,” Ed answers with a shrug. “I needed to do something to hide. What about you? Are you all right? Is Al?”

Nodding, her friend answers, “We did fine, I think, if you could living in hiding as fine. Al’s down at the station right now. If you run, you can catch him.” Three months ago, she’d be out the door already without even reaching for her coat. Now she hesitates. “Hurry up! The train leaves in ten minutes!”

Even if she goes right now, she won’t make it in ten minutes. Besides, after this long, she can survive another couple days, she tells herself. “It’s safer if I don’t,” she says, and avoids looking Winry in the eye.

“But he’s been worried sick about you.”

“And I’ve been worried about him,” she says, “but it’s probably better that I don’t leave until I get my automail fixed.”

Winry grabs her arm, pushing up her sleeve, and inspects the damage. “It shouldn’t take more than a few hours since the inner gears are intact,” she says, holding the torn area up at eye level, “but you’re right. Al would just send you straight back here anyway. What happened? Actually, where have you even been?”

As quickly as she can, Ed gives her friend a rundown of the past few months, and glosses over the details. Suddenly, here in the bedroom where she spent most of her childhood, everything seems so much worse. If she doesn’t mention it, she knows the others won’t either. Or, at least she hopes not. She’s just not ready for Winry to look at her any differently.

(good girls, after all, don’t give up their bodies unmarried at sixteen)

When she’s done, her friend shakes her head. “I feel like by now I should just be happy you’re alive,” she says, and she has a point. “Mei, Al, and Dr. Maroch decoded Scar’s brother’s research and figured out a way to counteract the transmutation. We, uh, ran into your father, Ed. In Lior. He’s heading towards Central, too.”

Dealing with her father, especially after her enlightening conversation with Greed, is one of the last things Ed wants to do, but she had a feeling she would have to. “Do you know if he said anything to Al?” she asks. “Anything important?”

“Well, he said that the homunculus Pride is in the tunnels, but he can’t get out,” Winry answers, but Ed already knows that from Greed. “Is that what you mean?”

“Yeah,” she says anyway, just so her friend won’t ask. “That’s what I mean. When do you think you can do my automail? We need to leave tomorrow if we want to make it on time to save Amestris and get Al’s body back.”

Winry scrunches up her nose. “And yours.”

“What?”

“You need to get your body back, too.”

Ed looks away (when i said you had a death wish, i hadn’t realized i meant you were actually suicidal, greed said, and she doesn’t get why everyone is so invested in her survival), and tries to think her way out of this. Like Al, it’s probably better Winry doesn’t know. “His takes priority,” she says, which is vague, but works well enough considering the number of times she’s used it. “If the Gate won’t accept both, I’m willing to keep forking over all my research money to you.”

Shaking her head, Winry says, “No, Ed, you promised you’d get both your bodies. You promised.”

Right now, she really doesn’t need this. Not when she’s already accepted what she has to do. The whole reason she’s able to let Al go without seeing him is because she knows that somehow, some way, she’ll get this to work. “That was before I knew everything,” she says. “It’s either I help save Amestris and get just Al’s back, or get both back, and sacrifice Amestris in the process to get myself a Philosopher’s Stone, which I wouldn’t use to begin with.”

“Those are your only two options? Give up or let everyone die?” When she doesn’t say anything right away, Winry points at the door. “I have to get dressed. Meet me downstairs so I can fix you up.”

Even if it hadn’t been years since either of them were too uncomfortable to change in front of each other, Ed could tell she was being dismissed. She grabs her jacket off the back of her friend’s chair, slipping it back on as she goes to walk out. As she puts her hand to the doorknob, though, Winry suddenly adds, “You’re allowed to want to get your body back, too. You know that, right, Ed?”

(greed exists in everyone. that’s sort of the point)

Without answering, she leaves, shutting the door behind her, and nearly has a heart attack when Greed’s voice comes from her right, “That friend of yours is right, kid.”

Great, now the two of them are gaining up on her. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s rude to sneak up on people?”

He catches up to her as she hits the second step, slinging an arm around her shoulders. Since they got to Pinako’s, he’s been less touchy, and though she doesn’t want to admit it, she misses the constant contact. “Greed doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” he says, ignoring her. “You can at least admit you don’t want to die.”

“If you don’t want me to die, then come out and say it,” she tells him, and frowns. “I—”

“I don’t want you to die.” She looks up at him, surprised, and he shrugs. “I don’t like giving up what’s mine, remember?”

(he said, i could always not give you up when this done.

            now she wonders, when did i let myself become a possession, too)

Before they leave, Winry takes her by the upper arms, and says, “Be careful,” like Ed doesn’t already know that.

Then her friend glances over shoulder to the other three, to Greed, and Ed realizes Winry must have figured out at least a little of what’s going on. “I’ll be fine,” she says. “I can take care of myself in a fight.”

That wasn’t what Winry meant, but she gets the message as clearly as Ed did.

On the Wanted report, it said she’d last been seen in uniform, and when Ed enters Central to stop the Promise Day, she wants to make sure the homunculus and everyone working for them recognize her on sight.

The pants she lost a while back, though—tore them on splintered wood when Heinkel broke the floor. She doesn’t ask Greed where he gets the money for her to buy more fabric, just accepts it and smiles at the shop owner like this is a perfectly legal transaction. At least the boots and jacket are still all right, and any old shirt will do. When she asks for a place to change, the man points her in the direction of the bathroom, and that’s how five minutes later Ed’s dressed fully in Amestris blue and gold for the first time in months.

(at fourteen, colonel mustang throws a bag at her face. you’re finally tall enough for it, he says. you have to wear it.

            as a kid, no one made her. she didn’t fit. but i don’t want to, she says.

            tough luck, fullmetal, mustang answers. just because you’re a state alchemist doesn’t mean you can wear whatever you want.

            six months later she’s given an official mission, and it’s the first time the uniform comes out of the bag)

She’d managed to keep herself pretty neat on the road, all things considered, but after her short stay at Winry’s, she’s finally all put together. With the official clothing she was always so reluctant to wear back on, she feels like she’s falling back into herself again—she’s Major Edina Elric from Central HQ, the Fullmetal Alchemist, a member of Colonel Mustang’s team and the youngest person to ever join the military. This wasn’t ever something she was supposed to start identifying herself by. Somehow, it happened anyway.

When she exits, forcing the thought out of her mind, she finds Greed waiting for her outside, arms crossed. He raises an eyebrow at the sight of her. “You look different in that than you did a year ago,” he says, glancing her up and down, and she realizes he’s right. She hasn’t grown much, but it’s enough that it doesn’t make her look like a boy anymore. Before she can say anything, though, he continues, “Something’s about to happen that you aren’t going to like, Ed. Thought I should tell you in advance.”

Like any sane person, she doesn’t like anything about this situation already, so that really doesn’t sound good. Even so, she grabs Greed’s hand and lets him pull her away. She might be able to take care of herself, but she trusts him more than she should, and maybe her friend has a point.

She always imagined the next time she saw her father, they’d end up fighting again, not sitting next to each other on a log by a fire not knowing what to say. So she’s really not expecting it when her father suddenly begins with, “You look like your mother.”

By now, Ed’s already resigned to herself to the fact that she doesn’t resemble Mom at all, so this catches her off guard. “What?”

“We met when she was eighteen,” her father answers. “Her hair was short like this, and her face thinner than you probably remember. Trisha was always so sure you’d grow up to look more like me.”

(if she wants to be honest with herself, and she doesn’t, she doesn’t remember much about what her mother looked like at all)

“Pinako says I look like you,” Ed tells him, and snaps a twig in half, throwing a piece of it in the fire, “but I guess there are only two people in Amestris with Xerxesian eyes until Al gets his body back, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Her father’s silent for a long moment before he says, “So you know, then.” When she nods, he adds, “How much?”

“The Truth showed me the whole process,” she answers, snapping the second half into smaller pieces. “Greed has collective memory, too, and filled in blanks that involved you. He was very generous with information on just about everything. I’m guessing you told Al in Lior. How’d he take it?”

(there’s only one question she really cares about, and she hates how afraid she is to ask it.

            edina elric, the fullmetal alchemist, might be considered brave, but the little girl who cried to her parents about mean grade school girls still isn’t)

“Better than could be expected.” That, at least, isn’t a surprise. Al never felt the same animosity that she did. “He didn’t know already, though. I thought you might have—your brother told me about the Gate.”

“Well, that’s what happens when you through it twice,” she says, and shrugs. “When I pulled out Al, I saw what he was supposed to see, too. Felt the need to leave out family history, though, I guess.”

Tentatively, her father puts a hand on her shoulder, and for a moment she stiffens, but then forces herself to relax. He takes this as encouragement, and slides his arm around her, which makes her feel like a kid again. “Why did you leave?” she asks, not giving him a chance to say anything, because she should just get it over with. “Did it ever even occur to you that this would’ve been valuable information? I was eleven. I could’ve done with someone telling me to use common sense.”

With a sigh, he answers, “I know, I should have been there. And I never meant to be gone for that long. I left because I wanted to find a way to grow old with your mother. A person can only take living for so long.”

Oh, great, it’s hereditary. “So, basically, you left to find a way to die?”

“That one way to put it, if you want,” he answers, and she hates that she can actually understand that.

(there’s a difference between knowing and understanding, and sometimes she thinks she understood more than she was supposed to)

What she hates even more is that she thinks she might be forgiving him.

 She sees Al again, finally, after three months, and it’s not even him. Like she really should have expected anything different.

There’s something taking over his body, black spikes leaking through the cracks in his armor, and Greed’s got his arm around Ed’s waist, stopping her from following him into the woods alone. “I see you’re working with them now,” the homunculus using her brother’s body says, and if it were Envy, he wouldn’t be keeping this up, so process of elimination means this has to be Pride. “If you’re that willing to betray us, then you’re nothing more than an annoyance.”

Then she catches a glimpse of it—a thousand eyes and mouths tangled up in darkness inside the armor, and no, this isn’t some replica, then, this is actually Al. “Just, don’t move, kid. Pride can cut you to ribbons faster than you’d think,” Greed says, voice low and close when she tries to get out and attack. Louder, he asks, “So how’d you find me?”

“Little alchemist, you need to come with me,” says Pride, and the voice doesn’t sound so much like Al’s anymore, but Selma’s. “First, I need to deal with Greed.”

“They need me, they won’t kill me,” she says quickly, because if he’s not going to let her die, then she sure as hell isn’t letting him, either. “I can—”

“Not killing you doesn’t mean I need to leave you intact.”

Before she can do anything, Greed shoves her hard out of the way, right at the moment black…things shoot out of Al’s armor. She dodges, though barely, and creates a barrier those shadows break.  Clearly, this isn’t going to work, but she’s damaged homunculi before, and Roy’s killed Lust, so just because Pride doesn’t have a real body doesn’t mean he’s invulnerable.

All she has to do is figure out his weakness.

Then, she notices it—they’re avoiding her shadow, Greed’s, any coming off the woods. She won’t be able to see, but neither will he, and Heinkel and Darius will. Ling, too, if Greed gives his body over, which she hasn’t seen him do but she knows is possible. Being useless isn’t really her number one choice in a fight, but it’s better than nothing.

So she evades the spikes, claps one, and presses her hands to the ground. Blue light crackles across the dirt and up the power lines, and everything goes dark.

“Al!”

“Ed, stop trying to get yourself killed!”

Greed grabs hold of her, again, as Pride’s shadows wrap around Al’s body. There has to be another plan, objectively she knows that, but this is her brother, and he’s in danger, and she’s his sister, she’s supposed to protect him, she—

Red light inside of blue shoots out around the ground, and it’s like with Greed’s father. No transmutation circle, no hands. Next second the earth is growing upwards, and she didn’t think she could be anymore horrified until the dome closes itself around her brother and Pride. Together. And her father’s just standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking at it.

Before she can struggle away on her own, Greed says, “I’ll see you in Central, kid,” and let’s her go. She doesn’t even have a chance to yell at him for holding her back before he’s out of sight.

“It was Al’s idea, not mine,” her father tells her, before she can yell at him, either. “We needed to stop him before the fire spreads to the slums, and he’s too difficult to kill. This was the best plan we could think of.”

While this has the signs of one of her brother’s ideas all over it, that doesn’t mean she has to be happy about it. “You at least could have told me! So I didn’t try to—interrupt, or something,” she says, and isn’t appreciating how useless she’s been this entire fight. Half of it, against Gluttony when Ling took over, was in darkness so she couldn’t do anything then, and with Pride once the lights came back, she was purely defensive.

And now she let Al get himself trapped.

Her father mouth turns down into a slight frown. “Your brother told me not. Said you’d be against it,” he answers. “As for interrupting? I had a good feeling he wouldn’t just let you run into it.” He doesn’t need to specify for her to understand he means Greed, which is more uncomfortable than it should be, given the situation. Looking back to the dome, her father adds, “Al knew this was the only way to buy us the time we need. He should be able to hear you if you want to say anything before we leave.”

As he turns to start on the fire, she runs forward, putting her hand flat against the wall of dirt and trying not to think about how easy it would be to break it with alchemy. “Hey, Al!” she shouts, figuring her normal voice is too quiet for him to hear. “It’s just one day, all right? I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise.”

Al calls back at her to be careful and she thinks how ridiculous it is that this means she’s finally going to have to be.

There’s no sign of Greed, but she hadn’t expected there to be. Even if he does start in Xing like they said, it’s in his best interest to take out the rest of the homunculi first. Hopefully Fuu won’t try to exorcise him out of Ling when he finds him in Central because the old man doesn’t seem the type to wait around for an explanation.

Al’s the type to wait around for an explanation. She wonders if he’s talking with Pride.

“Your brother’s a tin can and your boyfriend’s got an impenetrable shield covering his body,” Darius says suddenly from her right. “They’re both safer than the rest of us.”

Off at the edge of the clearing, an injured Heinkel is holding a conversation with Kimblee’s other deserters, and her father’s talking with Scar and Dr. Maroch. Darius has a point. “Don’t call my brother a tin can,” she says anyway. “And Greed’s not my…boyfriend.”

Putting a hand on her shoulder, Darius says, “I’m going to give you some advice, Ed. If we survive this and either your dad or brother find out, then he was boyfriend.”

“My brother’s not finding out, got it? It’s staying between the four of us.” Now that she’s back with normal people, or more people, anyway, she’s beginning to realize that these past could of months were a bad idea. Sixteen-year-old girls don’t do that.

Darius just claps her on the shoulder and gives her a look that she thinks means, I know.

By the time they all make it down into the tunnels of Laboratory Three, Ed feels awful. Central looks like the start of every nightmare she’s had for three months straight, and she just had to pull her rank to get them in here. Overall, not the greatest start to what might be the last day of her life. It would’ve been better if she’d had the opportunity to meet up with Roy and his team for even a few minutes to trade information, go in with the best preparation possible.

And it really would’ve been better if she had Al with her.

Before they all split up, her father gives her a hug. She’s so shocked she doesn’t know whether to hit him, or hug him back. “Stay safe, Ed,” he tells her as he lets go, and cautiously, she answers, “You too.”

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

After spending so long with a homunculus and a couple violent human chimeras, Ed’s a bit more forgiving of an immortal army being incinerated than she would have been three months ago. That, and she’s just relieved to see Roy and Hawkeye alive.

Hawkeye smiles when she sees her, but Roy doesn’t. “It’s been a while, Fullmetal,” he says, and she stands straighter. “You cut your hair.”

So did he, from the looks for it. He’s usually more put together than the average person, but he’s been fighting a battle for hours, and has no right to still hold up the appearance of perfect officer. “Yeah, well, everyone needs a change once in a while,” she says, brushing dirt and ash off her clothes. “Good to see you too, Colonel, Lieutenant. Either of you know how many more of these there are?”

It took her all of five minutes to realize this immortal army is made of human souls attached to dummy bodies, but the military couldn’t have had an endless supply. “According to General Armstrong, too many. Enough to severely damage Central if they make it past the gates of HQ,” Hawkeye answers, and Ed hadn’t realized both Armstrongs were here, not just the Major.

“Then we need to finish this quickly,” she says, and brushes her hair out of her face. She hopes Al’s all right—and also her father and Greed. “Do you think the soldiers up there will be able to hold these things off? This can’t be the last of them.”

“We have the rest of the team, and the Briggs soldiers. It won’t be long before they figure out some sort of weakness,” Roy says, and then finally looks around to everyone else, his eyes settling on Scar. “Fullmetal, what are you—”

As if their luck couldn’t get any worse than an immortal legion of dummies with human souls, Envy suddenly stumbles out the doors. Earlier, in the woods, Dr. Maroch and Scar claimed they’d killed him and given what was left to Mei for safe keeping. “Is there something you want to tell me?” she says, looking to Scar too, but he looks as shocked as she feels.

For a moment, Envy’s clearly just as surprised as they are. Then he notices Roy, who he must know from Gluttony is Lust’s killer, and Ed knows this really isn’t going to be good.

Not good is an understatement, because Envy killed Hughes, which she should have seen coming, and it’s harder to catch up with Roy than it should be. Hawkeye’s talked him down, mostly, but that doesn’t help the fact that Ed has a homunculus literally in her hand.

“You know, I spent a long time with Greed. I get you guys,” she says to Envy, knowing that what she’s about to do is bad, but (she never pretended to be a good person, and there’s point in starting now) it’s better than letting Roy sacrifice his soul to simple revenge. “You’re not jealous of some idea of perfection or whatever idea it is that you pretend to be—you’re jealous of us. Of the human ability to make connections strong enough to stop each other for giving up. That’s not something you can do yourself.”

            (admit it, she says, crossing her arms. you’re going to miss me when you’re ruling the world all on your own.

            i’ll have others.

            yeah, but how many will actually like you.

            it’s a week until the promise day, greed’s already threatened not to give her up, and she’s starting to understand that maybe his wants extend past the materialistic)

Envy is silent for a long moment before he suddenly springs out of her grasp, mumbling to himself too quiet to hear. Hawkeye lifts her gun to shoot, but Scar must’ve put together what she’s trying to do, because he says, “Wait, he won’t last must longer.”

Then Envy sticks his arms inside his mouth, pulling at his Philosopher’s Stone. “Let’s see how long this alliance of yours lasts, Fullmetal,” he says, squeaky voice muffled, and the Stone bursts.

When he crumbles to nothing, Roy looks so horrified that Ed knows his head’s on straight again.

(not everything in the gate has an explanation.

              she sees five circles she doesn’t recognize, a flash of purple and blue connecting them, and moments later the images change to twelfth century drachma rulers burning books)

It’s the same circle as she saw in the Gate, she realizes, and the moment the light shoots out, Ed knows she’s out of time.

“Oh, not again, dammit!” she says, right as the eye splits the ground, and she has just enough time to hear Roy say, “Ed, what’s happening?” before her body dissolves.

The pain is intense. But then again, it always is.

She comes to her senses again under the city. Al’s here, and so’re her father and Teacher. Unfortunately, that lookalike, now nothing more than a black blob with eyes, being here, too, puts a bit of a damper on this reunion. It doesn’t help that Al’s unconscious, and their father’s…absorbed.

Then, somehow, it manages to get worse. “Roy?” she says, when he appears like they did in a light of purple and blue. “What happened?”

As Izumi drops to her knees next to her, Pride says, “I brought him to you for our fifth,” and Roy’s clutching at his face like it hurts.

If that was the same light as for them, that means—“What did it take, Roy?” she asks, ignoring the black blob over in the corner rambling about sacrifices. “It had to have taken something, even if you didn’t mean to go through.” And Pride’s wording pretty heavily implies this wasn’t of his own free will.

“Ed?” Well, at least it wasn’t his hearing. There’s blood on his gloves, too, on either side, and he has his hand on her shoulder, so she knows without having to check that they’re both still bleeding. A couple of cuts can’t be it, though, which means somehow had to have shoved knives through his palms. “Where are we?”

She looks past him to Pride and his father. “The homunculi command center, I guess,” she says, not sure what else to call it. “Roy, who did they make you transmute? What did the Truth take?”

The hand on her shoulder clenches loosely into a fist, bunching up the fabric of her jacket, and she recognizes this as the moment where he’s piecing it all together. “Why are the lights off, Ed?” he asks, and she never thought she’d hear Colonel Roy Mustang sound this afraid.

When he goes to stand, she grabs the hand he has bunching up her shirt, but before she can answer, Pride says, “So you’re blind, then? Good. Your alchemy was becoming a problem.”

That’s the snapping point for her, but as she moves for an attack, Al suddenly gasps.

Now the homunculi have everything they need.

Mei might only be a year younger, but her skewed priorities puts Ed’s to shame. Now Al’s stuck guarding the girl, and Ed’s fighting Pride, alone. Even if he’s weaker than last time, it’s not like this is easy.

Like last time, her speed and the new carbon of her automail are the only things that keep her getting cut to shreds. This doesn’t give her much time to transmute, but when she sees an opening for a head-on attack, she goes for it.

The dodge isn’t much of a surprise, but she was anticipating it enough to roll out of the way to avoid the counterattack. “You’re different, without my brother to hold you back from doing anything reckless,” he says as she pulls herself up. “We both know your talent doesn’t lie in fighting in close quarters, and now you’ve trapped yourself between my range of attack and the wall.”

When the shadows come up, Ed throws herself forward instead of away, blocking her face the best she can with her arm but cutting up her side, stomach, and leg. Pride’s shock at her not evading lasts long enough for her to get in an attack, bringing her automail blade down into the junction where his neck meets his shoulder, the best opening she has. “I spent three months with Greed,” she says as she jumps out of the way of a shadow and moves in for another attack. “Did you really think I don’t know about a Philosopher’s Stone’s expendability?”

Before her blade can connect, or he can answer, something wraps around her arm and her torso, yanking her backwards and throwing her against the floor. She skids, leaving a bloody trail from the injuries on her left side, and barely manages to turn so her automail takes most of impact. The thing is back on her a second later, just one instead of two, with a grip that actually immobilizes her. Any attempts to struggle out are ended immediately with a pressure as bad as Envy’s foot.

“I’m done letting you play, my little sacrifices,” says Greed’s father. “It’s time to put you to work.”

Releasing the energy from her Gate was somehow more painful than actually entering it. When she wakes up, the ache’s still there, and she has a feeling Greed’s attempt to hack whatever was holding her down away didn’t do her any favors.

His grip on her hasn’t loosened by the time she finally opens her eyes. “Is everyone all right?” Roy asks, looking around and focusing on nothing, and Greed helps her stand up.

“You have done well, my sacrifices,” a new voice says, and she knows without having to look that it’s her father’s old lookalike in a new body. “Your combined power allowed me to gain what I wanted: to acquire God.”

(there was once a boy and his father who were trapped, and the father made them wings to fly away to freedom. the boy flew too close to the sun and fell, but the father flew close to it, too, and nothing ever happened to him)

To do that, he’d need the Philosopher’s Stone, and Amestris has roughly fifty million people. That’s almost twice as many as Xerxes. “Your alchemy will be useless in here, young lady,” he says as her hands twitch to clap. Then he raises his, and a small ball of fire appears in his palm. “I have acquired God’s powers. I can even make a small sun here, in this room. Would you like me to release it?”

(it never really seemed fair that it was the kid who just excited to be free who died. his father was the one who made the wings to begin with.

            if someone were to sit down and talk philosophy and hubris, only one is to blame)

The irony of the image isn’t lost on her, and she heard the story of Icarus from her parents. Now she has to wonder who taught the story to her father, because maybe the use of a sun is on purpose. Poetic justice, or something like that.

Suddenly there’s a pulse, once, twice. Her father’s plan is in effect.

Greed covers her ears right before the souls release, but she can hear the screaming anyway. It’s deafening, and horrible, and she thinks it’s probably a good thing the Gate is soundless, because she doesn’t think she would have been able to stand this at eleven.

(icarus was just a kid, after all, and sometimes kids don’t look before they leap)

“Get ready, kid,” Greed says when it’s done, moving his hands. “He’s going to want my Stone, now.”

(she’s already taken her fall. but this bastard took the face of her father for years, and that has to be considered close enough to count.

            taking him down might be the retribution some boy in a fairy tale never got the chance to have)

When she reduces Pride back to Selma, a normal little boy, and returns from a Philosopher’s Stone to herself, she stupidly spares a moment to just look at the thing curled up the jacket she placed on the floor.

Over the past year, she’s promised a lot of people she’s going to make it out of this alive. Even before that, she made a promise to get both her body back, and Al’s. Without a Philosopher’s Stone, though, she couldn’t see a way to get back two bodies with nothing to trade. It’s screwed up, really, that a little boy who five minutes earlier was taunting her for giving up more than just her soul to his brother is the one to give her an idea as to how to solve everything.

(the truth doesn’t work with concrete matter, and could haves and what ifs and all the possibilities of lives not lived should easily make up for something from the physical world.

            even if you go in with nothing, you trade a price for knowledge. she’s now used herself as a philosopher’s stone when everyone says that shouldn’t be possible. if she plays this right, maybe she won’t have to break any promises after all)

“Someone will come back for you,” she says as she stands, ready to go join the others. “You can return to your mom in a few days.”

As she leaves, she hears a soft sigh from behind her, and she’ll just have to make sure to give someone the head’s up before does something stupid.

She’s screaming, “Al, stop, you don’t have to!” but her brother isn’t listening.

Then there’s light, blue and blinding, and her arm coming back feels the same as her body returning from an unraveled state. Without thinking, she twists and claps, dissolves the nail imbedded in her arm, and just barely dodges out of the way of the flash of red.

Skip, and Greed doesn’t listen to her either, when he jumps in there and sacrifices himself. And after that, and after Al, after blinding Roy and destroying her country and manipulating her for the past six months, she finally decides she’s done with everything and goes to end it.

With his body turn into the weakest carbon courtesy of Greed, it works. There’s a moment of silence, then people are cheering, and she’s never felt so low in her life.

It’s difficult getting everyone to clear out of the way so she can make her circle, but eventually they do. “I’ve got this…Dad,” she says when he tries to help, and manages something close to a smile. “Just concentrate on getting better or something. Al’s going to want to see you when he wakes up.”

“Will you—”

“I’ll live.”

Finally, he gets out of the way, too. She stands, and situates herself in the center of the circle. For the first time in ages, she’s actually hoping what she told her dad isn’t a lie.

The circle glows, and like a good sacrifice, she gives in.

Chapter Text

Ed wakes up with a scream. When arms almost immediately wrap around her, stopping her from struggling, it takes a moment for her to register that it’s Roy’s voice repeating, “You’re all right, you’re safe, Al’s safe, just calm down.” That’s when she relaxes, and the panic abates. “Good, that’s good. Just breathe.”

It’s difficult for her to sift through the haze that seems to have settled over her mind and remember what could possibly have lead to Roy hugging her. Then she realizes she can feel both arms and both legs, and the panic builds up in her throat again. “Al,” she says, pulling herself away from him, and his eyes are clearer and more focused than she thinks they’re supposed to be. “I got him out of—is he, is he.”

“Your brother is recovering just fine, Major Elric.”

There’s a doctor she recognizes as the one who treated her after the incident with Laboratory Five standing in the doorway. Central’s military hospital then, but there’s no way few enough people were injured that she has her own room. She wants to ask how long she was out, but Roy tells the man, “She just woke up out of nowhere,” before she has the chance.

Roy doesn’t leave as the doctor enters with his clipboard, and she realizes, oh, she’s sixteen and probably not considered fully cognitive functional, which means no one here will be comfortable questioning her without an adult in the room. “When can I see Al?”

As the doctor takes a seat in the chair opposite her commanding officer, he answers, “Not until we know what’s wrong with you, Major. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Usually in a hospital, no one asks her anything after she first wakes up until physical testing is finished. Something’s not right. Roy slowly releases her, and remaining sitting without the support is harder than expected, but doable. “Um, I don’t—there was the fight,” she answers, and glances at him. “Al and Greed—you were blind. How are you seeing me?”

“Major Elric, I need you to focus.”

“Oh, uh, I remember making the transmutation circle and that’s—what the hell?”

(white, so much white, and brightness on brightness with a smile and a voice like glass saying, what you’re asking for has a price you can’t pay, child.

but there was a price and she paid, and it hurt her body and her head and here’s her brother, waiting, and she’s leaving a gate that isn’t hers but she’s seen through too. sunshine is darkness in comparison, but al is smiling at the warmth on his skin)

Coming back to herself is hard, and she realizes the problem is that she can’t take it. Not yet, anyway. “I got him out,” she says, and presses her palms to her eyes, trying to blur out the memory of all that brightness. “What happened after I got him out?”

“According to Hawkeye?” Roy answers. “You were awake for about a minute. Then you just collapsed and didn’t wake up.”

The doctor tells her, “It’s been five days. Alphonse is doing remarkably well, considering the condition he entered in. But there was nothing physically wrong with you other than some weakness in the muscles in your arm and leg. You just wouldn’t wake up.”

Nothing physically wrong.

Oh. Oh.

That means the Truth made it so she couldn’t be healed. “It was probably just the stress of the transmutation,” she says, looking back up. She doesn’t appreciate how white her room is. “I’m not going to be in so much trouble I’ll never be able to see Al again, am I?”

Even if she were to quit the military now, human transmutation is still illegal enough to warrant an arrest. Thankfully, Roy just shakes his head. “In light of the hypocrisy and the hand you played in stopping everything, Grumman, Armstrong, and I decided it was all right to look the other way.”

“Major Elric,” the doctor says, bringing her attention back to him, “we’re going to have to keep you here for a few days to run some tests. General Mustang here is going to make sure you won’t sign yourself out early this time, is that clear?”

For once, she actually wasn’t planning to. “Yeah. All clear. So why can you see?”

With a slightly uncomfortable look to the doctor, Roy explains about Dr. Maroch and the Philosopher’s Stone. Ed thinks she should probably be disappointed in him, but instead she’s just relieved to hear he’s all right.

At sixteen, Ed’s young enough that Roy can use his position as her commanding officer as an excuse for something loosely resembling guardianship, but old enough that she can do the same with Al. Before she woke up, the Curtises took care of everything. Apparently Dad went back to Resembol—he didn’t have enough energy left to survive more than a few days, and gave one last goodbye to Mom, Pinako said over the phone.

Signing things is hard because she’s still trying to regain coordination of her hand, but writing with automail was hard, too, so her signature is no messier than usual. “Your doctor estimates you’ll be in here for another month,” she tells Al as she works through her mass of hospital and military paperwork. “I’ll be right here in Central the whole time.”

Al’s strong enough to stand and walk, though not for long and only short distances, but he can sit up normally. With his hair cut and some weight put on, he has the same exact-split-of-their-parents look that she has. “Where are you going to stay?” he asks. “Major Armstrong told me most of the military apartments were destroyed.”

“With Riza.” Now that they’re going to be roommates, they decided to go by a first name basis. “I’m on partial leave right now, so it’s more of a suggestion than an order, but Grumman’s ‘requested’ that I help repair the city was pretty absolute. She’s closest to the destroyed part.”

Most of it went undamaged, but it’s enough that someone with her skill level would speed things up. “So you’re really going to do it, then? Stay in the military?”

Though she and Al never really talked it over, General Armstrong mentioned to Major Miles that she’d given the Fullmetal Alchemist an invitation to be stationed at Briggs, and then he went and mentioned it to her brother. “I’m not sure yet,” she lies. “When you’re let out, I’m going to be on real leave for a few months so I can go with you to Resembol. I can decide then.”

Al frowns, but doesn’t comment. Instead he says, “Ling had a message for you before he left.”

By the time she woke up, Ling, Lan Fan, and Mei were all gone before anyone could look too much into questioning them. A message isn’t better than a chance to talk, but there could be nothing, and that’s worse. “What was it?”

“‘I’m sorry I didn’t take control earlier.’ What does it mean?”

Confused, she answers, “I have no idea,” because if anything, she should be the one apologizing. That whole dynamic between her, Ling, and Greed wasn’t a good one, and she knows it. “What about you? Did you have a chance to say goodbye to Mei?”

“I was allowed visitors for a few minutes on the second day,” Al says. “She said the goodbye wouldn’t be permanent.”

That’s good. Al deserves something to look forward to. “Well, if I stay with the military make sure to give me enough advance notice that I can take vacation time for the wedding.”

His ears go red from embarrassment, and she laughs as he tries to stutter out protests. This is Al, human and alive and feeling with a heartbeat and skin, and she doesn’t care what it took to get him back.

“It’s a dress, Edina, not an explosive.”

She looks up  to where Riza is staring at her from the hallway, groceries in hand, and actually smirking. Nearly every clothing store Ed’s repaired has given her something as gratitude and for the first time since she was eleven, she owns skirts and dresses as well as pants and shirts. “Mrs. Mackery, the woman who owns that place on Hathaway and Main,” she says, “handed this to me along with a rant about how red really is my color or something.”

It’s a beautiful dress, red with short sleeves and white on the edges, but she can’t think of any time she’d ever need to wear it. “The whole team is going out to dinner tomorrow night,” Riza says, answering her unasked question. “Knowing the C—General, it’ll be a place with a dress code.”

Tomorrow is the promotion ceremony. As of now, only General Armstrong and Roy have changed ranks, but anyone who played an active hand is about to shoot up, apparently. Including her.

Thankfully, Roy promised to pull some strings and keep her on his team instead of risking her getting stuck with her own.

“Yeah, and there are enough of us that he’ll make me help pay,” she says, because prices in Central have temporarily skyrocketed until everything goes back to normal. “I guess you’re right, though. This is better than that yellow skirt.”

“You own a skirt?”

Riza moves the bags all to one hand, and easily catches the ball of cotton Ed throws at her. “Who gave you this?”

With a shrug, she answers, “Honestly, I’ve lost track.”

When the apartments were destroyed, so were all her clothes. The bag she had with her from her time with Greed is probably still in the slums somewhere, but that didn’t have much in it to begin with. And she might have money, but people just handing her things that are her size is less frustrating than shopping.

“There’s another one in blue,” she adds. “That store on West Ave gave me another dress. It’s like nowhere believes in the concept of giving women pants. Where do you get yours?”

Right now Riza’s wearing a skirt, but that isn’t the only thing she owns. “I’m bigger than you, and can fit in men’s sizes,” she answers, which isn’t what Ed wanted to hear. “You have alchemy. I’m sure you can manage something if you really want to.”

While that’s true, she’s about to spend a few months in Resembol, and Winry will force into these anyway. The doctor said Al can be released in three days, and he’s well enough to go to the promotion ceremony if he wants, as long as he goes right back and has someone accompany him. Which means Teacher’s bringing him. She and Sig stuck around for six weeks, but they’re heading back to Dublith in four days, too.

Like Winry and Al, the two of them don’t get Ed’s decision to stay in the military. Riza gets it, though, same as General Armstrong. Now with the corrupt higher-ups weeded out, the military is just ironically less judgmental. Her time with Greed and the others amplified that—when she was disguised as a boy, more people looked her in the eye, and were less worried about making that first strike, even though she looked more like a kid than before.

Riza says, “Have you decided what you’re going to do yet?” as she folds the skirt up and lays it on the bed. “I know you have an offer at Briggs.”

“Central is closer to Resembol, so closer to Al. Unless I get called out on fieldwork, I’m going to stay here.”

Tomorrow, after the ceremony, she’s going to tell General Armstrong. Ed’s surprised to find she feels a little disappointed that she won’t have a chance to work with the older woman after all.

It’s warm the day Ed goes from Major to Colonel. “Welcome to the career path, Fullmetal,” Roy says as he hands her the certificate she has to use to get her new jacket later. Her eyes find Al’s out in the crowd of family and friends and curious Central citizens, and the smile he gives her is somewhere between sad and proud.

(people are proud of seeing loved one get rewards, but not this sort)

Everyone on Mustang’s team jumps two ranks, except Havoc, who’s just reinstated. Maria Ross is now a First Lieutenant, and Major Armstrong makes the same leap Ed does. “If you weren’t so young, you would have been promoted higher,” General Armstrong says when everything is done and before she has the chance to go get Al. “We’re trying to replace the ones we lost with people we trust, but even saving the country isn’t enough for the average military dog to be satisfied with a teenage Brigadier General.”

She wouldn’t have minded keeping her rank as Major. She’s staying on, but that doesn’t mean the career path interests her anymore than it did a year ago. People take enough issue with her already, and she doesn’t want to give them an excuse to have any more. “I remember how angry people were when Mustang became a Colonel at twenty-six,” she says. “The outrage was hilarious. Guess that means I should be ready.”

“No one would care how old you are in Briggs.” General Armstrong glances at her from the corner of her eye. “I realize with your brother back, you won’t want to be that far away. Are you going to be stationed in the east now?”

Getting herself stationed in the east would make the most sense for closeness, but she likes Central despite everything and doesn’t want to be alone. “Mustang still has me as a member as his team, so I’m staying here.”

General Armstrong looks at her, calculating, before saying, “The offer remains, Colonel. Central’s mentality doesn’t suit you.”

Neither does Briggs, with its cold animosity and endless, overhanging threat of violence. Now Ed’s killed someone—something—justified or not, and she knows realistically she could do it again. That, even more than Al, is reason enough to stay away. “Next time fieldwork sends me that way, I’ll come by,” she says. “With the Freezing Alchemist dead, I’m the only one with any proficiency in water alchemy, so I’ll inevitably be the one sent up if something happens.”

(there was a snowy hill covered in blood. later, she and the others plan to take over the world starting there. history repeats itself. maybe that’s the truth)

“I look forward to it.” General Armstrong sticks out her hand, stiff, and Ed shakes it. Then she’s sent on her way to get her jacket, that one last step before she can get to Al and Teacher.

Roy’s not the one giving them out, but he’s the one who gives it to her. Even though Dr. Maroch healed his eyes, it wasn’t perfect, and he’s stuck wearing glasses now. She never paid much attention to what he looked like before, but they’re slightly slanted the way Ling’s (another truth: denial is a gift, and she’s gotten good at it, so it’s easy to block out what she’d rather forget) and Mei’s were. “Take care of yourself in Resembol, Ed,” he says, and she thinks he probably gets it more than anyone else. “Not too well, though. I don’t need my new team quitting on me now.”

Despite telling Al her decision isn’t definite, both she and her commanding office know it is. “I’ll see you in a few months,” she says, and adds, “Roy,” as an afterthought.

When her brother and the Curtises finally reach her, she gives them only a weak smile. She doesn’t mention Riza’s apartment key in her back pocket or that maybe, just maybe, she felt a spike of pride at raising two ranks.

Or maybe it’s just that this is growing up, and that thought scares her more than anything else.

When she reaches Resembol, Winry tackles both of them before feeling around Al’s body and grabbed Ed’s very visible arm and leg. “You two did it. You two really did it,” her friend says, and beams.

Al gives her the real hug first before pulling Ed in along with them. “Yeah, we did,” he says. “Ed really did.”

She buries her face in her best friend’s shoulder, takes a deep breath that smells like sunshine and oil, and tells herself she’s home. For a moment, she even lets herself believe it.

Part of her hates the idea of it, but the other part knows she needs it, so Ed makes an effort to change—she lets Winry force her into her more feminine wardrobe courtesy of friendly shop owners, and lets her hair grow out again. It feels like it’s probably a good idea to divorce herself from those three months on the run with a homunculus she slept with and a couple violent chimeras playing watch dog because she’s having trouble dealing with groups of people at once.

Luckily for Al and Winry, they were with a bigger group that, despite including a little girl, disgraced military doctor, and Ishvalan serial killer, was oddly less complicated. Al’s main adjustment is to his new body, not social readjustment. While Ed always had a reputation as not being much of a people’s person, she’s starting to realize she was much better than her friends gave her credit for.

It also really doesn’t help that she finds out that the Truth didn’t just take something from her. “My alchemy isn’t work,” he says in a panic on their third day in Resembol. “I just tried without a circle, it’s only working with a circle, Ed, it’s—”

And, like an idiot, the only thing she can think to say is, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

For the next day and a half, he barely even looks at her.

(what you’re asking for has a price you can’t pay, child.

            you take millions of souls as payment for a stone. i can offer you who knows how many possible futures in exchange.

            the truth considers it for a long time before it laughs and laughs and she doesn’t have time to react before the hand comes through. there’s light burning through, brighter than a star, melting her from the inside out, and—

            then it shifts into greed’s father, just a swirling black speck who comes even with her face, and he says, i warned you i would release the sun. you should have listened, little alchemist.

            when he shatters, she screams, and the blood is cold against her skin)

A month in, she wakes up with Winry’s arms wrapped around her, and Ed’s shaking so hard her teeth chatter. “It was just a dream,” her friend says, hugging her tight. “Nothing can hurt you in a dream.”

This is the third time she’s done this. In Central she never did, and she wonders what that says about her. No, actually, she doesn’t. She knows exactly why—living with Riza, she felt protected. Here, in Resembol it’s too quiet, and disaster’s less likely to strike, but back home, she knows her roommate can do just as much damage as she can.

In no way is Winry weak. But Ed worries about her enough that this room isn’t going to keep the nightmares at bay. “Sorry,” she says, and presses her face into the pillow. It smells like oil, too, something combustible. She thinks of Roy and his blindness and how he didn’t fucking deserve any of this. “I didn’t mean to.”

Winry says, “It’s all right, really,” and then repeats, “Ed, nothing can hurt you in a dream.”

What Ed wants is for someone to tell her to suck it up. This isn’t all right. She just needs someone else to remind her first.

“What did you give up, Ed?”

It takes Al a while to ask, and Ed thinks he was probably working up the courage. He hasn’t used his cane in a week. A few days ago was her assessment date, which she gets to skip this year, or maybe forever. “The Truth didn’t tell me. I said whatever it wanted,” she lies. “I hadn’t expected it to take something for you.”

(for a soul, his push. for his body, lives not lived.

            she hopes that second bit doesn’t apply to him too)

Right now Winry’s taking care of a surgery and Pinako’s cooking, so the two of them get some alone time. “I don’t believe you,” Al says, and she’s usually a better liar than this, which is terrible but true. Good sisters don’t lie to their little brothers (parents lie to their children, and she raised him for a large part of his life, so maybe it was an oversight that no one bothered to warn her about). “Ed, come on. You used to tell me everything. I know it had to be something big, so I’m not mad or anything, and if you don’t want me to say anything to anyone, I won’t.”

“I really don’t know. I mean it,” she says, before she decides it’s probably better if she don’t lie completely and adds, “I think it might’ve had to do with my, I don’t know, sanity or something. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me. I’ve felt off for weeks. You’ve noticed, I can tell.”

That’s true, at least. The same applies to Winry. In the time Ed’s been back, they’ve barely left her alone for more than a few hours, like they’re afraid she’ll snap or something, and they rarely let her leave the house by herself. It’s actually a little insulting. Al frowns and says, “Yeah, I have, but, Ed, you’ve been that way since you came back to Dublith from Central. That was a year ago. I know you’re holding something back—there was just so much going on that I didn’t know how to bring it up.”

It takes Ed a second to connect the dots. “Is this an intervention?”

“Maybe. A little. I don’t know. I’m worried.”

Consider he’s only had his body back for a couple of months, he still hasn’t mastered any emotional control yet, and the amount of wide-eyed concern he’s showing is disconcerting. “Al, I’m fine. Was fine. I’m here, right?” she says after a moment. “I’d just found out Hughes was shot. When I went to the sight of his murder, there was this couple laughing there like nothing happened and it freaked me out, all right? Then I get back, and my teacher’s injured, and my brother’s kidnapped, and I got beat to hell by a guy who wasn’t human only to be saved by the leader of the country. About a week and a half later I thought I saw a friend burn to death. So I was a little not okay for a while, I guess. But I got better.”

(the first greed wasn’t afraid to hit a girl, and that’s when she decided that the military is just easier, maybe. but her greed—

             well, second greed, actually, or ling’s, would be a better way to put it, but it’s amazing how casually possessive the mind can be.

             sometimes she really hates it)

Al sighs, and she knows he won’t drop it, even if he should. There are some things he doesn’t need to know, and one of them is that she gradually snapped after a while because she couldn’t take the pressure. “It’s more than that and we both know it,” he says. She should have known he’d piece it together. “I’m your brother, you can talk to me.”

“Look, I know, but there’s stuff that I just can’t—”

“Ed—”

“You won’t want to know.”

“I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t!”

Sometimes people think they want to know something, and then later they wish they didn’t. How many idiots died because they wanted to know about immortality? When people are offered answers, they snatch them up, and most of them time, it isn’t long before they learn to regret it. She doesn’t want that to happen to Al. She’s also scared about what will happen to her, too, if she actually puts anything to words.

But Al’s insisting, and she’s tired, and she wasn’t lying when she said she felt off. It hasn’t been that long, but he’s starting to wear her down. “What I gave up wasn’t anything terrible,” she tells him finally. “I’ll admit, I remember. I just can’t talk about it yet, all right?”

Though obviously reluctant to give up, her brother answers, “Fine. But I’m here when you think can. I don’t care if you’re in Central and you have to do it over the phone. Just promise.”

To her relief, he doesn’t push anymore for what happened before they split, and he didn’t even try for during. She promises, and thinks that maybe she will one day, but most likely she won’t because it’s not like it will ever really affect her anyway.

She’s out at the Resembol Grand Market when a voice suddenly shouts, “Edina?”

When she turns around, she finds a redhead standing there, eyes brown and face covered in freckles. Her front teeth are crooked, her nose looks like it broke and no one set it properly, and her body is a rounder version of Sheska’s. Despite her greatest efforts, Ed can’t place who this is.  The girl, who has to be about her age, must catch on to her confused, because she adds, “Oh, sorry. I guess it’s been a few years. It’s me, Mellie Miller.”

Last time she saw Mellie Miller, they were eleven, the girl’s hair was darker, her nose straight, and she was one of the kids who thought it was fun to tease Ed about her eyes. “Yeah, I should have known, sorry. It’s been a long day,” she says, and gets a better grip on the bags in her arms. “So you’re still in Resembol, then?”

The other girl laughs. “I’m sixteen, I’m not going anywhere for at least another two years,” she says, which reminds Ed that most people her age have a couple more years of school left. “What about you? I heard you were back after that disaster in Central from Win, but I wasn’t sure if I was actually supposed to believe that.”

“I’m only here for another month. Then I’m going back home—to Central, I mean,” she says, and the way Mellie is look at her is the same was when they were kids, except to her body, not her face. She’s wearing a skirt and blouse from one of the boutiques with her hair down. After being mistaken for someone significantly younger most of her life, she didn’t understand what Riza meant when she said Ed didn’t look much like a teenager anymore. Standing in front of her old grade school bully, realizing half those freckles are actually pimples, she finally gets what her friend was talking about.

Mellie asks, “Oh, do you have someone there? A man, I mean. I’m together with Tommy Mackery now, if you remember him,” and Ed thinks about Teacher said, about how something only matters if you let it.

With a smile that’s shockingly real, Ed answers, “No, I have a job. I’m a Colonel in the military. Good luck with Tommy Mackery, Mel. Tell him if he still wants to join the military that the north always has openings.”

The other girl’s eyes stay on her as she walks away, and normally Ed has to stutter through talking to anyone now. She doesn’t know where that came from, but it felt better than it should’ve. Things don’t matter unless you let them, and she likes her eyes and what they mean too much to let bitchy eleven-year-old girls haunt her any more than they already have.

Unlike Al, Winry waits to ambush her until the very end of her leave, and doesn’t bother asking her about what she gave up. Instead, she goes for something worse and says, “Al told me about the message Ling gave you to see if I knew what it meant because supposedly you didn’t. I told him I didn’t either.”

This is somehow even more awkward. “Well, good for you. I know what it’s referring to, but I still don’t get it,” Ed says. “But thanks. For not telling Al.”

“I don’t know details or anything, but you were here a day and it was obvious something was going on,” Winry says, and undoes the bandana tying back her hair. “Don’t worry. That’s something that’s staying between us, girl to girl.”

Like with Al not pushing her for anymore answers, hearing this is a relief. She should have known Winry wouldn’t judge her, at least not on something like this. “It wouldn’t have happened in any other situation,” Ed says, and knows what she’s really doing is trying to justify that whole relationship, for lack of a better word. “I’m not normal, but I’m like…that, either.”

“I know,” her friend says, “and it’s not like it was your fault or anything. Let me guess, you had no idea what was going on at first?”

As much as Ed doesn’t like not knowing things, Winry’s right. It was less than she didn’t get it, though, and more that she didn’t know how to react. Some things, she learned, do take explanations, and anything she knows about sex and relationships comes from half heard conversations and textbooks. “Basically,” she says, and frowns. “I feel like an idiot. And it really wasn’t fair to Ling.”

With a shrug, Winry says, “I don’t know about that. Think about the message he gave Al—he didn’t use the word couldn’t. He said ‘didn’t.’”

Word choice isn’t something Ed thinks much about, but oh. “Well, I still feel like an idiot,” she says, “but that’s one less thing to feel bad about. Why would he be sorry?”

Her friend doesn’t answer, which never means anything good. “Do you need any help getting ready for Central?” she asks instead.

“What?” Ed answers, caught off guard by the sudden subject change. “Oh, if you want.”

They spend the rest of the afternoon packing, not saying much, and Ed tries not to think about what Winry could possibly mean by any of that.

Even though by this point there’s no way Al can’t have figured out she made her decision months ago, he still says, “You still have time to change your mind,” the day before she’s meant to leave.

She understands it, really. He hasn’t had this body for all that long. When they were younger, they had plans for her to quit and they’d come back here and have some happily ever after. “Central’s not that far. I’ll have time to visit, and I’ll call you as often as I can,” she tells him. “I’ve already told Roy I would. There’s no backing out now.”

That’s bullshit, and they both know it. If she really wanted to, Roy would be disappointed at losing yet another State Alchemist, but he wouldn’t be all that surprised. “I thought you hated it,” her brother says, frowning.

“Yeah, when it was under Bradley—Wrath, whatever. Grumman, Armstrong, and Roy are working to de-militarize the military,” she says. “I’d rather help in that than, I don’t know, teaching. Or going back to school.”

At sixteen, going back to school is her only option in Resembol. “This doesn’t have to do with me does it?”

He’s looking at her with large, worried eyes, and in retrospect, she should have seen that question coming. To him, this change in opinion must seem a lot more sudden than it actual was. “No, it has nothing to do with you, you haven’t done anything wrong,” she says. “Al, you’re my little brother, and now you’re safe, you’re in a human body, you can do anything you want to. Just because I’m not in the same town as you anymore doesn’t mean I’m going to love you any less.”

“You’re Edina Elric, you saved the country! You can do whatever you to, too—”

“And I want to do this!”

There are a lot of reasons, but this is the simplest she can boil it down to while keeping accurate. Al’s eyes stay wide, but the look changes from worried to wounded. Tomorrow she’s supposed to return to Central, but she never gave them the day, and she doesn’t know if she can go through this argument again in twenty-four hours.

Before her brother can answer, she says, “I’m supposed to be back by morning, so I need to catch a train today. I’m sorry.”

(greed says, i could always not give you up when this is done, and she answers, i’m really good at leaving. call it a family trait.

            sometimes leaving means getting out of a bad situation. more often, leaving just means running away)

Though she still has the key, Ed feels awkward coming back announced before the expected time, and Riza doesn’t answer her knock. Not knowing what else to do, or where else to go, she ends up on Roy’s doorstep four streets down. He opens up almost immediately after the bell rings. It’s raining, making his hair frizzy and hers probably worse, and the shock on his face is gone as quick as it came.  

“Riza will be back in a few hours,” he tells her without her having to say anything first, stepping aside to let her in. “I wasn’t expecting you to show up early.”

She’s been here before, but this is the first time she’s really seen Roy dressed casually. His hair’s a little messy, his shirt solid without a single button in sight. It feels like she walked in on something she wasn’t supposed to. “I’m sorry for just dropping by without a call. I wasn’t really expecting to come back early either,” she says, and lets him take her jacket as she places her stuff on the floor. “Where’s Riza?”

By now, all the apartments should be fixed. She should get around to signing herself back up for one, or looking for a place of her own. “Out of town. I sent her on an errand,” Roy answers, and this could mean anything from intercepting an illegal weapons shipment to buying him groceries at a farmer’s market. “What are you doing here, Ed? Did something happen with your brother?”

“Well, not really with him, but—I don’t know. It’s been tense.” She doesn’t want to admit that lately, she and Al have been like strangers to each other. That argument was inevitable. “We fought, and I left a couple hours later.”

Roy doesn’t tell her she acts like a child for walking out, even though she knows that wasn’t the best reaction she could have had. But she knew if she stayed, the subject would’ve come up again later, and she can only hold down what she doesn’t want to say for so long. “You’re welcome to stay until Riza returns. I was about to start dinner,” he says, and leaves it at that.

No one’s better at self-denial than a military officer, and she’s going to fit right in. The thought doesn’t depress her as much as it should.

A month later, Central is blanketed in a thin layer of snow and ice and Ed still lives with Riza because the older woman insisted. To make it even more surreal, Roy managed to convince the some new bar owner to let her in as long as she doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol, so when the team goes out to celebrate the end of particularly difficult work week, she’s dragged along. In Resembol, she had difficulty managing to just go to the store. When she was travelling around the country with her brother, she couldn’t talk with people she didn’t know well. And with Greed, she barely spoke to anyone outside of the four of them.

In a way, this is the biggest change.

Right now it’s a Friday in late December, and Jean and Kain are bringing drinks over with some impressive balancing acts. “So, Ed, you ready for your first bit of fieldwork since you got back?” Falman asks as her coffee is put down in front of her.

Since she returned, she’s been in Central, but out of the office. A lot of emergency calls ask for her by name, much to the annoyance to other State Alchemists in the city. Several had themselves transferred and so far not even the Fuhrer’s said a word against that. “Yeah,” she says, and she’s not sure if it’s a true or yet. “Rush Valley. Can’t wait to see what Paninya is going to do when she realizes I don’t have automail anymore.”

Even without alcohol, the coffee warms her better than the heat in Central HQ. “I’ve never been to Rush Valley. Is it nice?” Jean asks. He’s going with her—after Riza, he’s the best shot, and even she acknowledges it’s probably a bad idea to send a girl just shy of seventeen with a reputation like hers so far away from home on her own.

She shrugs. “If you’re into that sort of thing. Winry and Pinako make some of the best automail in Amestris, and once the locals noticed, they decided it was a good idea to strip me to get a good look at it.”

“And there wasn’t police intervention?” Breda says, unashamedly staring. Roy’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm, and Riza’s mouth goes tight, clearly scandalized.

“From what I gathered, it’s pretty common down there.”

“Oh, great, now I have to protect your virtue too.”

Ed decides not to mention she’s already ruined that on her own, or that something similar happened again only hours later. When she said it, she hadn’t realized it was the sort of thing she was better off keeping to herself. “If something like that ever happens again, tell someone, Ed,” Fuery says, which only freaks her out. “You’re military still. There are laws against that.”

Only military. That seems a little unfair, if he means what she thinks it means, but it also wasn’t nearly as bad as she made it sound, apparently. Deciding she’s better off ending this now, she says, “I know a man who’ll let us stay with him so we won’t have to pay for a hotel. Winry apprenticed under him. Still does, technically. She’s taking a break to spend a year with Al.”

A full year means she’s closer to a good sister at the moment than Ed is, but she’s good at blocking that thought out when she’s with people, too. “Who is he?” Jean asks, eyeing her warily.

“His name’s Mr. Garfield. He’s weird, but not like that.”

Thankfully, Breda chooses that moment to finish his drink in record time and call for another. “You’re driving me. Don’t get too drunk,” Roy says, and when Jean makes a comment on him using them for chauffeurs now, Riza cuffs him on the back of the head harder than is strictly necessary.

In three days, Ed leaves for her first fieldwork mission in ten months, and that’s a much shorter amount of time than it feels.

The case is to apprehend the first serial to surface since the defeat of her father’s lookalike, and Paninya somehow manages to find her before they can even make it Mr. Garfield. “Where’s your brother? Or that Xingese guy?” she asks immediately, watching Jean as he gets them something eat that Ed won’t do much more than pick at. Now that she’s stopped eating for two people, her appetite’s decreased to nearly nothing. “And why are you dressed in a uniform?”

In the shortest possible way she can manage, Ed explains that her brother and friend are back in Resembol, Ling in Xing, and she’s still working in the military. “That’s Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc,” she adds, nodding towards him. “He’s not an alchemist.”          

“You’re with someone who’s not an alchemist?”

“We work for the same General.”

That’s the best way she can put it that she can think of, even though it must not make much sense to Paninya. It’s just that there aren’t many State Alchemists left, and Roy has too much to do to ever leave Central for a long time. “Do you two have anywhere to stay? After what you did last time you were here, you could always stay with us,” Paninya says, and for a second, Ed feels like she can’t breathe.

“It’s better if we’re in the city, not up a mountain,” she says quickly. “Besides, the Lieutenant’s overprotective, I don’t need Mr. Dominic marveling over my new arm.”

(outside it’s still raining and the woman’s about ready to faint, but winry has a baby in her arms, newly delivered. edina takes one look at the little boy, imagines a body twisted but breathing, and runs.

            i can offer you who knows how many lives not lived, she told the truth, and sixteen or not, it suddenly strikes her exactly that the means)

Maybe Jean overheard the end of the conversation, or maybe Ed’s just gone pale, but when he comes back bearing gifts of southern food, he asks, “You all right, Colonel?”

Outside of work, no one really calls her Colonel. For the next week, they’ll be considered on duty no matter where they are or what they’re doing, so she better get used to it. “Yeah. This is one of Winry’s friends, Lieutenant,” she says, and smiles. “Paninya.”

With her partner back, the conversation switches to what Paninya might know in relation to the case. The girl has eyes and ears everywhere, observation skills left over from her days as a pickpocket, and she ends up being more help than she realizes.

Three days later and Lawrence Zimmerman, ex-State Alchemist finally coming out of the woodworks now that the old Fuhrer is dead, is apprehended. Jean gets him at gunpoint, Ed sticks him to a wall before he can get away. Then they let the officers from South HQ do the rest.

At the train station, Jean buys them ice cream like they’re children. “First rule of real fieldwork, Colonel,” he says. “Alcohol’s for when you have to kill someone. Sugar’s for when you don’t.”

“I like ice cream better than whiskey,” she tells him, and doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or bad thing when he laughs.

Her pivotal role in saving Amestris somehow earned Ed a constant standing position in foreign affairs. There aren’t many, but both diplomats from Creta and leaders from the developing Ishval the military regularly deal with all seem to want to meet her. This is how she ends up in the east with Roy on her seventeenth birthday rather than back in Resembol as promised.

(no, you’re running away, her father says, and hiding the memory.

            she tells him he should know, that he’s the expert on leaving, but that seems to be a hereditary trait, because she’s not so bad at it herself)

“One more year and your birthday will actually be interesting,” Roy says when he returns to the hotel with more paperwork. “Happy seventeenth, Ed, your present is extra sleep.”

Birthdays aren’t that big of a deal for her, especially now with Hughes gone, but even work in hot, stuffy Ishval beats her last one. “How kind of you, General,” she answers, but accepts the work held out for her anyway. “So, what rights do I lose or gain this time?”

As he takes the seat across from her, his own stack in his lap, he answers, “You can get your driver’s license.”

“That would be wonderful,” she says, “if I knew how to drive.”

Roy just stares at her before saying, “Well, I know what you’re going to do when we get back.”

If this doesn’t end in complete disaster, Ed will honestly be surprised.

He teaches her personally, clearly as an excuse to get out paperwork, and it’s a horrifying experience.

“This would be so much easier if you just shut up and let me try, Roy!”

“It’s a new car, Ed, I’m not going to risk you wrecking it!”

“Then you should have let someone else show me!”

By the end of the day, she can even K-turn. Roy grumbles about know-it-all kids, which only makes it better.

During her next job in the east, Roy lets her take a few days to visit Al and the Rockbells. When she arrives, her brother and Winry aren’t there. “It’s a Thursday, Ed,” Pinako says, fixing them tea, as Ed takes a seat at the kitchen table. “Without an official apprenticeship, even my granddaughter has to go to school.”

While Ed knew that, it hasn’t been something she really spared a thought to. In Amestris, there are no laws about school or anything, but it’s what most people do anyway. “I can stay for  couple nights, so I can wait,” she says. “How have things been? Are you still getting a rush from limbless military officers?”

“Not as many, but they’ll all be back for tune-ups soon.” Everyone asked her for suggestions before she left, so of course she gave the Rockbell name. “Al’s doing well, since I know you’re going to ask. He’s too smart for his classes, but he’s enjoying it.”

Pinako pulls up another chair and Ed says, “That’s good. I thought he might be bored.”

“I think he must miss having someone to talk alchemy with, but bored isn’t the word I would use,” Pinako says. “What about you? You look better than the last time you were here.”

Last time she was here, Ed was trying to figure out her own head. Though she wouldn’t say she’s put together perfectly now, she’s starting to feel like she can actually deal with it. There’s too much information crammed inside of her, and maybe she wasn’t entirely lying when she told her brother the Truth might have taken her sanity during their latest trip through the Gate, but she knows how to manage it.

 “I’m fine. Busy, but fine,” she answers. “I live with Riza Hawkeye and her dog. You’ve met her, she was the blonde soldier that came here with Roy.”

The tea kettle whistles, and Pinako gets up to finish. Lately all Ed’s really had to drink is either water or coffee. “Are they treating you right in Central?” Pinako asks with her back turned. “I don’t know much about politics, but I do know people, and I can’t imagine many are happy about having to answer to a kid.”

Shrugging, Ed says, “If it bothers people, I wouldn’t know. No one’s said anything. And I’m pretty sure if I ever tried to give an order to someone on the team, they’d just laugh and ask Roy what to do—what?”

Now Pinako’s facing her again, a mug in each hand, and one eyebrow raised. “You sound happy,” she says, less like a bad thing and more like it’s surprising, and puts the mugs down on the table. “It’s good you came to visit. I know you have more work than before, but don’t be a stranger.”

With Al here, Ed never would be. “I won’t,” she promises, and her sip of tea burns its way down her throat.

Al is taller than the last time they saw each other, and stronger, and he hugs her so tightly it hurts. He doesn’t apologize for their argument, and neither does she.

This is enough for them to know it’s all right anyway.