I know, I know, I should be writing the next chapter of The Wrong Foot, but in my defense, I suck. Oops. I'm working through some snags in that chapter, but in the meantime, here's the first installment of an idea that just wouldn't leave me alone.

On the likely chance that you have no idea what The Wrong Foot is and would like me to just shut up so you can read this story, okay. Sorry. Here it is.

Disclaimer: Don't own FMA.

The window is somehow open again when Ed stumbles in the door of the apartment he shares with his brother. He crosses the room, slams it shut, and gets himself a glass of water before removing the cat from his favorite chair and slumping into it. Al's brought in the paper from this morning, so Ed snatches it from the coffee table and half-heartedly flips through to the classifieds to see if there's anything new. Predictably, there's not much. A few odd jobs, several offers with phone numbers he's already worn the apartment building's telephone buttons down from dialing, and some guy looking for a new drug dealer. He tosses the paper onto the pile with the rest as his ears pick up the sound of a key being jostled in a lock, followed by the squeak of the door opening a second time.

Al looks considerably more worn and ruffled than he did leaving the house this morning, an understandable phenomenon considering he spends the day wrangling two-year-olds. Still, he looks cheerful and manages a smile for his older brother, which Ed answers with a smaller one of his own and a nod of his head.

"The little devils treat you well?"

"One of them actually managed to punch me in the face," Al says good-naturedly as he hangs up his scarf and coat. "I think it was affectionately, though."

"Undoubtedly. I can't imagine any of the little buggers actually disliking you." He jerks his head towards the window. "That thing won't stay shut again."

"Seriously?" Al shoots a disbelieving look at the offending window. "I guess one of us'll have to look at it again."

"Yeah." There's a hanging pause when Ed knows they're both thinking about who they would rather have fix the window, someone who would have been more than willing and more knowledgeable about that sort of thing than either of them. Ed casts around for something to say that is not related to that subject.

Al finds words first, turning towards his brother with a widening smile. "I've good news."

Ed raises his eyebrows. "You found me a job?"

"Your feigned hopeful questioning was bound to pay off sometime," Al says, kicking off his shoes and plucking the cat from the armrest of the chair Ed is sprawled in. He gives her a loving scratch between the ears. "For once, the answer is yes. Or at least, potentially."

"Really? Wait, it's not at your daycare, is it?"

"No, although it was mentioned to me by one of the kid's parents, so unsurprisingly it is somewhat kid related. They're hiring at the science museum."

Ed's eyes light up in interest. "Now that, I think I could do."

The science museum is the kind of place Edward would have eaten up as a kid. They didn't have anything like that in Resembool, and while Cameron isn't all that big of a town, it does have a few things going for it, and a giant building with exhibits on everything from biology to industry to the science of natural disasters happens to be one of them.

The application process goes more smoothly than Ed ever even hoped, and a few days later he finds himself a member of the museum protection staff, stationed between the flying machine prototypes and the automail exhibit with the instructions to make sure no one touches anything that's not specifically interactive. While it's not the most active job he could have landed, he has to admit it could be a lot worse. Everyone mostly leaves him alone, aside from the occasional parent who wants to know the location of the restroom or a specific exhibit they want to make sure their kid doesn't leave without seeing. At least they don't expect him to smile, like the tour guide lady.

Although maybe he should have asked to be stationed somewhere else. Every kid that approaches the automail exhibit with a sparkle in their eyes floods his mind with images of Winry as a child, absorbing lessons from her grandmother with rapt attention and an understanding that should have been beyond her years. It's a memory that makes his chest a little tighter and his shift seem longer.

It's not like he needs such a blatant reminder of her for Winry to be on his mind, though. She creeps into his thoughts more often than he'd like to admit, in the wisps of blonde hair of passersby on the street, in the fresh, bright blades of grass of springtime, in the expert craft of his own left leg. It's been nearly five years, and some days are better than others, most days if you asked how he's doing he wouldn't even be lying when he'd tell you he's fine. Having Al around again certainly helps with that.

Other days, and thankfully they're becoming fewer, it's harder to find a reason to smile. He knows Al has those, too, but he's better at faking it. He's better at pushing through them and not getting bogged down. Ed on the other hand sometimes feels like he should have logically been crushed by now from the weight of all the guilt he's accumulated in his lifetime.

Of course, losing his job a couple weeks ago didn't help anything. It gave him far too much time to think. Running trials in lab didn't leave much space to contemplate anything outside of keeping the test tubes at the right temperature or writing up analyses of the latest bacteria culture. This job doesn't seem to have that same mercy.

He keeps himself occupied with people watching, since there's not much else to do. No use standing around missing Winry. It's not like she's even dead or anything. In fact, officially, he's the one who's dead. Edward Elric ceased to exist almost four years ago.

"Where's the dinosaurs?"

Ed looks down to see a couple of boys, probably nine or ten years old. Ha. So puny. He jerks his head to the left.

"Down at the end of the hall, take a left."

The boys run off in the direction he said without so much as a thank you. Ed checks his pocket watch–with a distinct lack of military insignia–and goes back to leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Three more hours.

Al beat Ed home tonight; when Ed comes in he's curled up on the couch with a book and the cat. He looks up brightly when the door opens. "How was your first day?"

"Long. Uneventful. Could've been worse."

"Glad to see you're so enthusiastic about it."

Ed shrugs off his coat. "It's a whole lot better than nothing, that's for sure. I owe you one." He stretches and flops down onto the couch. "Maybe one day we'll both find jobs in fields we're actually interested in," he adds, and proceeds to commence a staring contest with the cat.

Al hums in agreement, turning back to his book. Several moments pass by quietly.

"She's sneering at me, Al. Look at her, all smug. You think you're better than me, do ya?"

"Sometimes I think she might be."

"Oh, take the cat's side, huh?"

"She lets me read in peace, for one thing. Why can't you two just get along?"

"Well, maybe if you hadn't named her after milk of all things–"

"Buttermilk is a perfectly cute name. And it's her favorite drink."

"Milk is an abomination, regardless of butter content."

"But she's so soft. And warm." Al runs a hand down the cat's back and then holds her up closer to Ed's face. "Feel how soft and warm she is, brother."

The younger boy's smile is so eager and happy that Ed's own lips turn upwards a bit. Ever since getting his body back, Al has been such a dork about sensations. It's moments like these when Ed finds it hard to regret anything.

He scratches Buttermilk between the ears with a sigh of defeat. "Excessively soft."

The next day at the museum is quite busy. He guesses that Saturdays usually are. His focus has been captured for the last several minutes by two little blonde girls, one a dirty blonde and the other something brighter, running back and forth down the hallway. They're making quite a bit of noise and Ed is wondering whether it's within his jurisdiction to tell them to kindly shut up, when he notices the brighter blonde girl's face. Everything about it, from the chubbiness of the cheeks to the upturned nose to the round little chin, strike him as devastatingly familiar, and why is everything reminding him of Winry as a child lately? Is this place cursed or something?

He should be over her. He should have moved on by now. She's moved on, for goodness' sake. He thinks he's over her one minute, but then things like this come along and dredge up the pain as if it weren't buried beneath four years of building a new life.

What he did was for the best, honestly he believes it was. She wasn't safe with him. That was made all too perfectly clear, and he'd die before he'd ever let her go through what happened to her again.

Back when he was a kid on the military payroll, he'd inadvertently shaken up the foundations of a town called Liore by deposing a leader who had been duping his citizens for years. Ed had gone on his merry way, believing he'd done them all a nice favor, but the people had become so reliant on that leader that they didn't know what to do after he was gone, and chaos broke loose. There were riots, people ended up dead, and evidently, some of their loved ones held grudges. Not too long after Al had gotten his body back, Ed and Winry started dating, and some small group harboring resentment and keeping tabs on the young alchemist decided to exploit his weakness.

Namely, by abducting his girlfriend.

He can still remember the days he'd move through in a barely coherent haze of anger and determination, the nights he'd spend on the brink of despair and drowning in the waves of his guilt and fear. Al had come home from traveling in Xing the minute he got word of what was going on and joined in the search with the help of General Mustang's team (even though Ed was no longer military, they were more than willing to help, and for that the Elrics were very grateful). Nearly a year passed with no real results–Ed's stomach still turns with the thought of how unbearably long that was, what could have happened in that time, what maybe did happen–and he decided he had no choice but to take more drastic measures.

The team supported him for the most part–after close to a year dealing with a cryptic group who only corresponded with them thrice in that time and was unnervingly good at covering their own tracks, and still being no closer to finding Winry, they too saw it could be their best shot. So Edward Elric, former Fullmetal Alchemist, along with his brother Alphonse, stole a car and headed out on the open road to investigate a potential lead on Winry's whereabouts. Tragically, they never reached their destination. The car was a flaming wreck, bodies were produced and identities confirmed by the boys' former legal guardian Roy Mustang, a small funeral was held and attended by those who knew the Elrics well.

Or at least that's the story that was published in the newspapers and put into the boys' records. With the help of a militarily-trusted document forger, the Elrics became the Masons and retreated quietly off to a small town in southern Amestris where they took a look around and started rebuilding some semblance of lives for themselves from the dust. The group from Liore found that having Winry around wasn't much fun when the target they were meant to be tormenting was dead, so they let some crucial information leak to the military and apparently the rescue mission went off smoothly and easily, although the Liorans were nowhere to be found when Winry was. Word was sent to Ed and Al that she had been alive, though not as well as they might have hoped, but that she was being nursed back to full health. The team kept up the ruse of the Elrics being dead until they managed to track down and incarcerate the Liorans; they suspected that the group might be keeping an eye on Winry so it would not be wise to allow the girl to run back to her supposedly-dead boyfriend, and they weren't sure they would be able to stop her from doing just that if she knew the brothers were alive.

As they'd hoped, the group from Liore couldn't stay invisible forever; the information Winry managed to piece together about the time she'd spent in captivity helped them track down the culprits once and for all. By that time Winry had moved back in with her grandmother in Resembool. Ed and Al received this information in a letter from Hawkeye via the regular post; the fact that she wasn't using the team's usual underground ring of communication anymore assured the brothers that the whole thing really had blown over.

And Ed started hoping. That maybe, just maybe, with a new identity and a past wiped clean, that he could be with Winry without putting her life in danger. That they could start over together.

So he sent off a letter, explaining what they'd done and why it had been necessary, apologising, admitting that he didn't deserve a chance but if she could manage to forgive him he'd be more than willing to try again. Saying if she wanted to see them again then please write back, but he'd understand if it was too much to ask, if she couldn't risk it, if she didn't even want to anymore, and if that was the case she'd never have to hear from him again.

She didn't write back. It was weeks, and then months, and Ed knew he'd said he would understand, but that didn't make it feel any less like the foundation he'd built his hopes on without even realizing it was crumbling beneath him. He didn't know how to cope with the fact that this time he'd finally gone too far, hurt someone too much, for them to trust him with that kind of power over them again. He'd been used to feeling like the few people closest to him really would have been so much better off if they hadn't gotten their lives tangled up with his, but now he realized that he'd also gotten used to those people disagreeing with that particular sentiment. Defending him. Staying with him anyway.

He hadn't realized how much of his strength had been Winry Rockbell until she wasn't his support beam anymore.

The little girl with the brighter blonde hair seems to have run out of steam quicker than her friend, or sister, or whoever, who's still doing laps up and down the hallway like she's training for a marathon. Brighter Blonde is panting a little, and seems to have noticed that there are actual exhibits on this hallway for the first time. She barely glances at the automail display though, uninterested (See? Winry would not have done that. You're imagining the similarities), and heads straight to the aviation section, pressing her face against the glass encasing the hot air balloon model and miniature aeroplane prototypes.

Dirty Blonde seems to be a regular at this place, and a couple days later he discovers why, when a lady with a long-suffering expression and the same nondescript black shirt and name badge as Ed comes up behind the little girl while she's prepping for another marathon training session and tells her to calm down. Ah. A staff member's kid. That explains it. Most little kids don't hang out at a museum on a daily basis of their own accord.

The day after that Brighter Blonde is with her again. She burns out on running even quicker today, and Dirty Blonde decides to keep her company this time instead of continuing the laps on her own. Now they've both got their faces pressed to the glass of the aviation display, and he's grateful for the glass or else his job of keep kids from touching exhibits would be much more tiresome.

"Are they really real?" he hears Brighter Blonde ask the other.

"Dunno," Dirty Blonde responds. "I never seen one. Ask him."

"Who?" Ed mentally prepares himself for having to interact with a child, because he can see out of the corner of his eye that Dirty Blonde is looking in his direction. Sure enough, she points at him in response to the other girl's question.

"The guy."

"Oh."

A few moments later Ed feels a small tug on his pant leg and looks down to see Brighter Blonde clutching the material in her fist while twisting around to point at the models.

"Do they have those in real life?"

"The flying machines?"

She nods and goes back to the display, releasing his pant leg. He follows and crouches down so he's on level with the girls.

"Well, there are a few in existence, but they're still being tested. They want to make sure the technology is safe before they let people like you and me try them out."

"Oh," Brighter Blonde says thoughtfully. "That's nice of them."

Ed nods. "It is."

"What about the balloons?"

"Oh, yeah, those are great. I've never been in one, but they've been around for a while."

"It looks fun."

"It does."

"I wanna ride in one!" Dirty Blonde says, bouncing slightly up and down.

The lady who must be Dirty Blonde's mom–and maybe Brighter Blonde's too, for all he knows–comes up, stuffing her name badge into her back pocket as she walks. "Come on, girls, let's go home."

The girls instantly forget the hot air balloons, flocking to the mom like ducklings. "Was the man telling you about the exhibit?" the mom asks. "Tell him thank you."

"Thank you!" they both say in unison, looking at the floor rather than him. The mom/his coworker gives him a somewhat tired smile. He returns it. Before she turns away, though, her smile shifts, her brow creasing just slightly, and he thinks he detects something else there underneath it. Intrigue? Confusion? He's not sure. He's never been the best at reading people's faces.

Whatever it was is gone before he can think too hard about it, and she gives him a final nod before turning and heading towards the exit, her ducklings trailing behind her.

He goes back to his station and pulls out his pocket watch. It's almost time for him to clock out too. When he looks back up there's a kid trying to climb the railing in front of the photography exhibit. He curses under his breath before going over to put a stop to that particular daring endeavor.

The next Wednesday business is pretty slow, so the two girls have pretty much free reign to run up and down the hall without worrying about making an unfortunate collision with a museum patron. It's the first day this week that Brighter Blonde is here with her friend/sister/however-they're-related. Business must be really slow on whatever hall Coworker Mom is stationed at, because she's taken up temporary residence in Ed's hall, hovering over the girls. Every so often she glances over at Ed and he wonders if she's worried he thinks she's trying to take over his job, or something. He hopes his expression somehow communicates the extent to which he does not care.

After about an hour of this apparently she can't take it anymore. She approaches him with a somewhat nervous, friendly smile.

"Hi, I'm Julie," she says, extending a hand which Ed shakes. "Have you been working here long?"

He shakes his head. "Just a little under two weeks."

"Oh," she nods, then considers him another moment, tucks a shoulder-length lock of blonde hair behind her ear, and takes a deep breath. "This might be a weird question, but are you at all related to the Elrics?"

Ed does his best not to freeze, not to look down at his name badge which he knows for a fact says 'E. Mason', not to panic. He has nothing to be afraid of anymore, right? The danger has passed, he stopped being so paranoid years ago, stopped coloring his hair, stopped looking at everyone like they might have a dagger up their sleeve. For the most part. But the Elrics are dead, and she's not even questioning that, she's just asking if he's related.

He forces his breathing to be steady and looks at her badge. 'J. Brosh.'

Wait… Now that he really looks at her… Maybe she can be trusted.

He nods. "Are you related to Denny Brosh?"

She nods back, smile becoming more assured and posture visibly relaxing. "He's my brother. Did the Elric boys talk about him?"

Ed hums a vaguely affirmative response, remembering fondly the Major's subordinate with the eager salute. He and Al fairly bullied him and his partner Ross into turning a blind eye on their antics on a few occasions. "A couple times."

Her smile widens before softening a bit, becoming a little sadder, a little more compassionate. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Oh. Right. He's a relative of the tragically deceased Elrics. He returns her smile, hoping it contains the proper amount of stiff-upper-lip-ness. "Thanks." He pauses before adding, "How could you tell we were related? I mean, we don't have the same name..." A quick gesture to his badge.

"It's the eyes," she says, pointing to her own. Ah, right. He'd forgotten his and Al's gold eyes weren't exactly common.

Julie seems to catch herself and starts to backpedal. "Not that Denny talked about Edward's eyes, or anything…" She laughs a bit self-consciously. "I mean, I'm also friends with Winry Rockbell. But I guess you figured that."

This time Ed doesn't manage to stop every muscle in his body from freezing up. She's friends with…? But then his fried brain belatedly registers the gesture that accompanied that final sentence, the way Julie glanced toward the little bright blonde girl who's given up running and is currently sitting against the wall playing some sort of hand-clapping game with her friend. I guess you figured that.

And of course he wasn't imagining anything, and the little girl really, really does look like Winry.

Ed's world tilts as he realises just how far Winry Rockbell has moved on.

He's not sure if his expression is conveying any sense of how much he had not figured that, but Julie doesn't seem to notice if it is. As he's struggling to grab at the pieces of his shattering heart that really should not be capable of shattering further than it already was, she bites her lip and seems to be thinking hard about something.

"You know, I hadn't really thought about it, but Winry doesn't talk about your side of the family much. At least, not in a way that gave me any indication that there were any family members on your side still alive." She looks a bit worriedly at him, but Ed just stares at her. Her words aren't making much sense, but he is beyond the capability of contributing anything to this conversation at the moment, so he'll let her talk.

"Anyway, what I mean to say is, if me bringing Sara here is painful for you at all–"

Sara. The name lands heavily, rattling his bones. He sees a glimpse of a kind smile and blue eyes, a face in a photograph.

"–then I can talk to Winry about it, and see if–"

The rest of that sentence is lost on Ed. Why does she think it would be painful for him? What does a previously unknown relative of the Elrics have to do with Winry Rockbell's daughter? Unless–

Sara looks up at the sound of her own name and her mother's, momentarily distracted from her game, and Ed doesn't even have time to attempt the math on how old this kid would have to be, because after looking at Julie she turns her curious gaze on Ed. It's at that moment that Ed realises she had never really looked him in the eyes before.

Because he definitely would have noticed the brightness of those gold, gold irises.

To be continued! Don't forget to review!

Cheers,

Alice