Chapter One
This is after Brotherhood, Al has his body back, and Ed has retained his alchemy and automail. The toll is revealed later. ;)
Standing on the ashes of the burnt down Elric house Ed and I stood with a tool box each and a trolley of planks behind us. Ed smiled.
"We'll rebuild the house." I smiled. "After my and Al's mistake."
"Yes, and raise a family of our own." I placed a hand on Ed's stomach, making the twenty-one year old man blush and laugh. We'd been married for a few years, and we'd discovered, after a miscarriage, that Ed could get pregnant. And so, birth control came into play, and we had been careful.
"Look." Ed smiled, he pulled away from me, dropping the box. He walked to the burnt out house, smiling. I followed him. He stepped through burnt out rooms.
"This was the hallway..." Ed murmured. The hardwood floor was scorched and burnt to ash in some places, and worn completely away by the wind and rain over the years. "There was and there is where the living room will be." He pointed with his automail to a room that had a burnt dresser in it. "That way is Dad's old study." He walked down. Where we were in the burnt out place wasn't as burnt. Faded paint still remained, clinging onto the walls. Ed was twelve when this was all burnt. Almost a decade ago. Ed's steps fell softer, and he slowed down.
"This was our room... Al and I... We shared this one..." He waved his hand towards a room. The bed was reduced to a pile of ash, so had most of his belongings in there. I walked in. The roof was actually intact here. Ed knelt, pulling a small scrap of something out. It shone, and he looked at it.
"Mom..." He held it to his chest.
"Ed... I once wanted to perform the taboo myself." I walked over and knelt by him. Ed was no longer short, but hunched over as he was, he looked every bit the broken child I'd first met him as. Ed leaned into me.
"Really? I never thought my lover'd ever think of doing the unthinkable." He sighed. I rubbed up and down his arms, calming my husband down. Ed turned into me and buried his face in my chest. The floor was burnt slightly, but we'd work from it, and this would be our room.
I'd lost my right arm when a beam fell when I was trying to repair a couple beams in the basement. So, now Ed and I both depended on automail to replace our right arm. And I was still going through rehab, the house slowly being completed. We'd been staying with Mrs Rockbell and the other Elrics. Al married Winry not too long after we married, and like me, she took the Elric family name.
"Ah, Roy." Pinako smiled, running a hand over the various parts of my arm. "Doing well I see." She tapped the end of her pipe on the bicep of the arm. "I think you'll be like Ed, done in a year."
Winry tottered in.
"It's Ed..." Her shirt was stained with blood. I stood up, the chair I'd been sitting on knocked over.
"WHAT?"
Winry's blue eyes were filled with worry. "He just buckled over, clutching at his chest..."
"Wh-What do you mean?" I asked.
Winry turned towards the door, beckoning with her right hand. "You should come too. There's too much blood."
My heart sank like a stone. I followed her to where Ed was.
Unluckily, it started to rain. The water plastered Winry's shirt to her frame, and her hair stuck to her back.
My fingers twitched, a storm on the beginning.
Once enough rain had pooled, blood started to stain the water a ruddy red. I knew it was Ed's.
A glimpse of golden saffron strands caught my eye. The hair was stained with blood, and it was splashed across his face, a trail of crimson liquid trailing down his chin, his eyes shut tightly in pain.
ED! I thought, running to him. He was bleeding heavily. And the tree that was supporting my husband's back was just as soaked in blood as the ground around him and his clothes. Fuck...
A golden flash caught my eye as I slowly walked towards him. Feathers scattered around him, quickly soaking up his blood.
"It hurts... Al... I think... My toll... I think it's clear... I paid with something greater than living. He didn't take my life, but he took something important..." Al's eyes were wide, Ed's voice hoarse. The amount of blood Ed had lost, would have killed any man. Ed pushed away from the tree, shakily getting to his feet.
"Ed, what are you doing?" Winry asked him, her eyes wide.
He ignored the blonde he had once loved and walked to me, practically falling into my arms. I wrapped my arms around him and touched his back. Blood and a clear liquid oozed from slits in his back, his breathing was broken and ragged.
Two things shot out from his back, white and gold in color, feathers becoming missiles shooting from them. Al pinned himself to the ground, as he was on the receiving end of most of these missile-like feathers. Winry seemed to be out of range.
"It hurts..." Ed murmured, his face was stained with tears, his eyes red and puffy.
I touched the things on his back, and Ed flinched into me. "Ed, you have wings!" I murmured in wonder. He looked over his shoulder and fainted with the shock.
Winry and I had ported him back to the Rockbell residence, the bleeding slowly beginning to stop the closer we got. Al flanked behind, looking up, his copper eyes filled with worry.
"I hope the rain washes Brother's blood away and doesn't soak into the ground..." Al murmured, keeping up the pace behind us.
Ed's gold and white wings flicked slightly as we ran back, and by the time we got into the sanctuary of the Rockbell residence, the four of us were soaked to the skin, white shirts rendered translucent, and throwing the muscles of my arms into definition.
Granny Pinako -only recently had I found myself calling her that- watched as we huddled around passed out Ed and brought him to our room. Al and I started undressing him, Winry explaining to Granny Pinako what the situation was.
One thing that was starting to make me worry, even though he stopped bleeding, was the wings. Seeing wings on Ed made me think he was far from human and ground-bound. In fact, the way he looked, if you stripped him of all clothing and wrapped a drifting swath of cloth around his hips, he would be an angel sent from the heavens.
But I really didn't believe much in God or anything. Religion felt like a bit of a burden, yet another thing to judge other humans against. Making racist comments about others.
Somewhere along in the course of my thoughts, Al had left the room, and from the thump from the direction of the hallway, he'd sat down outside to watch guard over the room. Even though the Elric family had grown from two to four, it was still a routine that Al followed, one to protect their tiny family of two. Now, as a group of four, we wouldn't leave home without our other half. Winry for my brother-in-law and Ed for me.
Ed sighed in his sleep, the wings folding and slipping back under his skin, flattening out, appearing as if they had never been there at all, but the new dips in his back told a different story.
I smiled, placing a hand on his face. His golden eyes flicked open, leaning into the touch of my hands.
"All I remember is feathers attached to my back..." Ed murmured softly, his eyes dulled slightly with pain, as if every tiny touch and movement hurt him.
"They were, and still are. They're just hidden at the moment, powerful wings that you can probably fly with." I smiled gently.
Ed sat up, flinching slightly, reaching for my shoulders, tapping where three stars once rested.
"And you have wings of your own, they just aren't substance. But you're my guardian angel." Ed smiled. "As I am yours. And now, it appears that's more literal. I think the price I had to pay was my humanity, I dont feel like I once felt. I feel more... Archaic." He looked at his hands. "And I guess, the one thing that was greater than the gate, was my humanity, my mortality."
I wrapped my arms around him. "You still appear to be mortal."
"I don't feel mortal anymore, Roy... It's as if I've changed entirely." I heard his hurt tone.
"Well, if you don't feel mortal anymore, then I guess... I'll make you feel... wonderful." I smirked, bowling him over, flinging him down onto the bed. He blushed brightly.
My hands slid over his chest, still well muscled even though he barely worked out anymore, but he still sparred, and I'd been pressured by Ed and Al to start sparring with them, and it helped a lot, but in the beginning, I was clumsier than a baby deer learning to use its legs. Ed quickly whipped me into shape. And I thank him a lot for it.
"God, Roy..." He breathed, his eyes dark pools of bronze. I shoved my face into the crook of his neck and inhaled like a man doing drugs. In a way, I was addicted to a drug, but it was Ed's intoxicating scent that drove me on. My automail creaked as I drew circles on Ed's stomach. The muscles under the skin rolled, and a groan came up through his throat.
"Roy, Ed... I know you'd like to be all intimate... but... I'm out here, and I can hear all of the sounds you two are making... and I'd rather not listen to it..." Al called from the hall. I froze mid-circle.
"Sorry, Alphonse." We replied, blushing brightly.
His laugh came back in return. I changed into some dry clothes, my fingers twitching as I handed him a change of clothes. Ed smiled and took them.
"Automail not happy with the storm I take it. And the fact its still so new to you." He laughed a little, placing his right hand in mine, the automail instinctively closing around his. I smiled as Ed pulled me to him, wrapping his flesh arm around my neck. The top of his head came up to my eyebrows now.
"When did you stop growing?"
"I was your height at twenty." I muttered. Ed's eyes flashed. "And I reached this height at twenty-five." Ed smirked.
"And I've been growing like a weed in the last year." He murmured. "Soon I'll be taller than you."
I gave him one of my trademark smirks. "Well, you're still shorter than me." I placed a hand on his head, drumming my fingers gently on the top of his head.
"Yeah... But you're pretty damn silly, Roy." He paused before saying my same, as if he were hesitating to call me Mustang, which he hadn't since the night before our wedding.
"Ed." I smiled, kissing his lips.
Ed pouted, the wings folding out again, and folding around me. The feathers were soaked from the rain, and he shook them, scattering rain drops around the room, a couple landing on the back of my neck. I shuddered as it dripped down.
"Sorry..." He murmured, brushing his hands across my cheeks tenderly. "They're soaked..." He stared at the feathered limbs in a mix of awe and agony.
His toll was his mortality? How did he become closer to a god, if it was meant as a punishment? I thought.