Chapter Text
The last thing Ed remembers is everything going white. A voice, maybe, lingers in his mind, but he wasn't sure if it was his own or not. His head is too hazy to recall anything properly.
He recognized this place, this familiar white void. He's been here before. He doesn't intend to stay, he has people to get back to, people who are counting on him. He needed to get back to his brother, who he was sure was not taking his disappearance well. Neither of them could be separated for too long, it just made them both nervous and worried.
It should have gone smoothly. Envy even gave him his Philosopher's Stone core to use as payment to bring all three of them over, he was sure nothing could have gone wrong. He wouldn't lose another limb this time, at the very least. So, he lets go. He lets himself be deconstructed, and welcomes the warm darkness he's faced before.
But this darkness is not warm anymore. It turns icy cold all around him, freezing him down right to the bones. It's such a sudden change, it almost scares him.
He feels like he's drowning. Cold water fills his lungs, he feels heavy, like he's sinking. He starts to panic, Ed knows what crossing the Gate is like and this was not it. There was never any water, where was it coming from? Had he crossed already, or was he still trapped?
Where am I? He barely had the time to ask himself the question while he fought to swim to the surface, if there was a surface. It seemed impossibly deep and impossibly dark; did he land in some sort of lake, or the middle of the ocean? Could the Gate even do that, just spit him out in some random spot of the world? That hadn't happened before, it shouldn't happen this time. Where he ended up would be consistent, wouldn't it?
Oddly enough, between the ice-cold water and the confusion bordering on panic, Ed can point out one specific thing.
He doesn't feel like himself anymore.
His limbs sat weirdly on his body, he tried to orient himself right-side up but found that his body wouldn't let him. Maybe 'not like himself' wasn't the right descriptor, but something had changed, and he needed to find out what. He could just barely open his eyes under the water, finding that it didn't sting like he thought it would. He catches a glimpse of something golden, maybe his braid? But it wasn't nearly that long, it didn't stretch out in front of him like that.
His automail is still there, at least. He stretches his right arm out, the gray metal shining in the growing light and accompanied by a slight pain in his shoulder. He guessed that was what was weighing him down, but he couldn't just get rid of it. He was getting closer to the top anyway, and good thing too, as he wasn't sure how much longer he could stay conscious in these circumstances. He sees the flash of gold again, through the dark spots forming in his eyes, but he only sees it when he uses his left arm in a swimming motion. It confused him, but he had better things to worry about at the moment. Not drowning, for example.
Ed breaches the surface with a gasp, reaching out to grab at anything he could use to pull himself out. He feels around, but it's all smooth stone. His lungs expel the water in a violent cough, which almost makes him slip back under the surface. He feels weak, he exhausted himself while struggling to swim, he didn't think he had the energy to stand at the moment.
He didn't think he could stand anyway, even if he hadn't been drowning for a few minutes. The strange feeling in his arms and legs remained, it was like his body was put back together wrong. His legs just wouldn't bend the way he wanted them to, he wasn't sure if he had thumbs or not anymore, because he couldn't feel them. He can't feel his metal arm in the first place, but his flesh arm should have felt like it had fingers. But it didn't. The stumps of his right shoulder and left leg ached in a dull way, like they would when he overexerted himself or in the late stages of his recovery from surgery.
There's something else, too. It was like a fifth limb. Ed could move it just fine, he felt it swish back and forth and disturb the water, and he wondered- very briefly- if someone's arm might've gotten fused to him on accident, like some kind of mix-up during the deconstruction and eventual reconstruction. Envy probably wouldn't even notice his arm had disappeared, that bastard could regenerate it and turn out just fine. Ling would be a bit worse off, but he'd live.
Ed was sure it wasn't an arm, though. An arm would have a hand at the end, and a hand would have fingers. Ed couldn't stretch any digits from that weird fifth limb, but he could on his arms. He flexes the muscles, trying to stretch out his fingers to make sure he could still move them. He catches what he thinks are his nails on something, a nick in the rock or some kind of foothold, and he's finally able to pull himself out of the water. He wonders why he could only do that when he flexed the muscles in his hand.
The air was even colder as it hit him, and Ed thought that maybe this was worse than being half-submerged. Wherever he was, it was night, and it was arguably colder on solid ground than it was in the pool. He could get used to the feeling of the water, but the chill breeze blowing over his soaked-through form did him no favors. Something stuck to him, like wet hair all over his body, and water dripped steadily from each strand to form a small puddle below him. His breaths come in ragged gasps, his chest tightens as his lungs try to cough out the rest of the water. He feels even weaker now, having spent the last little bits of his energy dragging himself onto solid ground. He can't even lift his head up; it lies uncomfortably against the smooth stone floor, just as soaking wet as the rest of him.
Through his drooping eyelids he can see a spiral of stone rising higher and higher, likely leading out of this weird hole in the ground. Patches of ferns sway in the breeze and he hears the rustling of leaves in trees far above him. Ed thinks he hears something else, some kind of movement, and something twitches on the top of his head once it registers. He's sure the words 'what is that' and many variations thereof have rang out in his mind more times in the past five minutes than they have during most of his life.
Ed thought to take a small nap to regain his strength. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea. Cold stone was no replacement of soft bedsheets in a Central City hotel room, but it just had to do for now.
---
Ed's mind only grappled with more questions when he woke up. He motioned to get up, but his legs felt awkward and he couldn't get upright. He was swept up in another round of light panic when he finally decided to look down.
Paws?
Now he definitely knew something was up. Maybe this was just a weird dream, and he'd wake up any moment to a fretting Alphonse, but there was this sense of certainty that lingered in the back of his head, certainty that this was not a dream. He never felt pain in dreams, not physical pain at least, but the cold water had stung him and burned his lungs in a way that had to be real. Ed still hadn't processed the fact that he now seemed to be in the body of an animal, but knowing that he had four legs now instead of two legs and two arms did help him in figuring out how to move again.
Learning what animal he became wasn’t exactly hard, considering that he could just look at the rest of his body. A quick examination of himself answered that question rather quickly. Paws, a thin tail, sleek striped fur, and a little muzzle? He was a cat, most definitely a cat. A golden cat, the very same shade as his hair.
Great. Wonderful. Absolutely no complaints here, he thought almost bitterly. It's not that he didn't like cats, he was rather fond of them, but he never really thought about being a cat. That seemed more like something Al would think about, given his affinity for the furballs.
He turns on his heels, meaning to head toward the pool of water, but he fumbled over his paws and tripped. He quickly righted himself again, and while it felt awkward to walk on his toes he got the hang of it rather quickly. He was always a fast learner.
It took Ed a few minutes to get used to walking in this body, he would plant his forepaws down and his hindpaws would fall into their previous position. Simple enough, once he stopped trying to stand upright like a human. At least his automail changed with him, it'd be awkward to lug around two human-sized limbs attached to the body of a cat.
That leaves the matter of his alchemy still up in the air. It was difficult to bend his legs in a clapping motion, probably because cats weren't exactly known for their ability to clap. Once he finally got his paws to move in the way he wanted them to, he took a deep breath, and pressed them down dramatically against the stone. He waited for the blue flash of light, the sparks, and the formation of some simple shape out of the rock, but there was nothing. He did it a few more times, frantically clapping his paws together and planting them to the ground, but there was nothing.
This worsened the situation considerably; he didn't have his alchemy, he had no idea where he was, and he was a cat of all things. Ed wondered for a brief second if this was some sick game on Truth's end, if this whole debacle was intentionally created just to drive him mad. Ed found himself hating that guy a little more with each passing minute, and he couldn't wait to rightfully kick his ass when he got the chance.
Maybe he'd even try right now .
Making his way back to the pool, Ed looks down at his own reflection out of pure curiosity. His face was striped, with some lighter fur along the underside of his muzzle that continued to stretch down under him, along his stomach. A standard tabby, he supposed. He'd seen plenty of those hanging around Central, and possibly even more Al had stashed in his armor.
He sat at the water's edge, his tail curling over his paws without him really meaning for it to. He didn't feel keen on getting soaking wet and cold again, but it was likely his only option. The Gate had spit him out inside it, maybe he could claw his way back over through the same pool, it was the logical conclusion. He felt his fur bristle along his spine at the thought, much like how he would get goosebumps sometimes.
"Well, it's worth a shot." He mumbles to himself, gazing down into the pool's depths. It seemed oddly deep for such a small pool, and eerily enough, it was perfectly round. Usually bodies of water had some imperfections along the banks from natural erosion, little chips or chunks that were missing and carried along by the current, which this pool seemed to lack. Maybe that meant it was special, or something. He was banking on this specific pool being connected to the Gate of Truth, at the very least.
So, with a deep breath, Ed dived down. After the sun had warmed and dried him up, the ice-cold water nearly burned him just as it did before. He swam further and further down, fighting through it just as he did before, but he couldn't see the bottom. It seemed almost endless, and he could barely see at all after he went deep enough. The light simply couldn't reach this far down.
He had to surface again when he ran out of oxygen. A frustrated hiss rose in his throat, another sensation he wasn't used to yet. His one plan had led him to a dead end, the one connection to his home that he thought he had turned out to be nothing. He had to find something else, some kind of link between these worlds, and he had to do it soon. Really soon, he thought as he climbed out of the water, he had important things to do. He had the common sense to shake himself dry this time instead of just sitting around and waiting for the sun to do it for him, but it wasn’t as effective as dogs made it seem and his fur remained mostly damp.
A loud rumbling in his stomach almost startles him. Oh right, he still had to eat.
"What am I gonna eat?" Ed asks himself. It wasn't like he was stupid, he knew what cats ate, it's just that he didn't really want to eat rodents or any other weird forest creature. Rabbits were fine, it wasn’t exactly a favorite of his but he’d grown accustomed to the taste of rabbit meat a long time ago.
But hunting as a human was different than hunting as a cat. He didn’t have thumbs, he couldn’t make snares and hide like he did back on the island during his training. He’d figure it out eventually, he was sure of that. Maybe he could find a river and catch a few fish..
He raised his head to look at the spiral stone walkway. The greenery got thicker and thicker the higher up it went, and he could see the tops of oak trees just over the edge. He opens his mouth to yawn, and immediately but unintentionally tastes something on the air. He didn't know what it was, but it smelled good and he was most definitely thinking with his stomach right now, which told him he should try following it. He made his way over to the walkway, and as he climbed it he realized that his paws fell in line with another set of pawprints, worn into the stone. They had to be ancient if they were this defined.
"Popular place, I guess." Ed reasoned. Watering holes were bound to be crawling with animals, and he guessed this one had been around for a long time. The scent got stronger as he reached the top of the walkway, and he looked around to find each edge surrounding the area to be lined with thorny bushes and rocks coated with moss. Trees surrounded him on all sides, and as he breathed the amount of scents flooding his senses almost overwhelmed him. He was able to pick out the strongest one, the one from the bottom of the hole, and followed after it. Opening his mouth to search for scents turned out to work far better than just using his nose, but it also made the inside of it taste weird.
He was very careful to avoid any twigs or piles of dead leaves, and he made sure to set his metal limbs down very lightly. If he knew anything about hunting for something it was that you had to be quiet, lest you scare off your quarry. His silence paid off, and soon a tiny brown mouse came into his view. Ed crouched down into the tall grass, focusing all his attention on the creature just a few feet in front of him. He still didn't really know how he felt about eating a mouse, much less eating it raw , but he didn't exactly have a choice. Besides, it's not like it would make him sick. He was a cat, cats did this sort of thing all the time.
They tended to be rather reckless about how much they killed, though. He recalls a barn cat he found when he and Al were really young, it had killed almost every small critter it could find, ranging from mice to birds to squirrels. Ed never remembers it actually eating the mice, it always just ate the kibble that was put out in a bowl for it. He'd find the dead creatures sometimes, usually left right where the cat had killed them. It unnerved him a little to know that it didn't kill to eat, it killed just for the fun of it.
Ed got too wrapped up in his thoughts. Right when he realized he was close enough, he got careless, and startled the mouse into running away. He hissed to himself and raced after the little thing, trying to track it with his eyes to find out where it went. Eventually, it darts into a hole, and Ed loses it. He tries to stick his paw into the hole to fish it out, but he can't hook his claws into it.
"Damn it!" He curses, his ears flattening against his head. It's weird they do that now, he thinks, and all my senses are so much stronger . His ears would swivel every time he heard something, his nose would twitch and his mouth would open to take in every new scent. He even felt his whiskers twitching every so often. His body and mind were racked with instincts and behaviors he never had before and he didn't know how to control it all. He wouldn't have to deal with it long, hopefully. He'd find a way back, he had things to do back home and he couldn't just give up. But that would take time, he couldn't use alchemy and the pool of water he landed in was useless. He'd have to do some investigating.
Ed kicks at the dirt one more time before padding off, trying to track down something else to fill his stomach for the time being, maybe a rabbit. At least he was used to hunting those as a human, and used to the taste. Surely, it would be better than mice. The trees were thinning out now, and rolling hills spilled out in front of him.
When he was far enough away, another cat poked his head out from underneath a bush. His pelt was speckled with black and ginger fur, paired with yellow eyes that were narrowed into slits. A low growl sounds from his throat as he sneaks off after Edward.