I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or any other copyrighted material that I may have missed.

ORIGINALLY this was hot-off-the-press and I didn't pay nearly as much attention to detail as I would have liked to, so I amended the chapter.

SPOILERS: I've made this a post series fic that has nothing to do with the movie. Basically this is where the story's at. General Hakuro is fuehrer, 'General' Roy Mustang's got the eye patch, and Alphonse is back in the flesh as a ten-year-old boy who remembers the four years of living as a walking steel can and is staying in Resembool with Winry and Aunt Pinako. Edward had led Alphonse to believe that the Philosopher's Stone still had enough power in it to restore the both of them and convinced his little brother to go first knowing full well that it would use up what little was left, so he still has automail.

April 20, 2006

Running in the Shadows

By … Lady of the Northern Mountains

I.e. K. L. Nelson

Ch.1

This can't be

"Dr. Bergen." He smiled at hearing the voice of his young apprentice and turned to face her and engage in friendly banter, he needed Something to get the drawl of that mornings lecture out of his head. They were always poking fun and trying to one up each other and there was hardly a dull moment with them in the same room. Then he took in her appearance, she looked like she wanted to cry.

"Christy, what's wrong?" He'd never seen her like that before, so pale and scared; she was almost shaking and it was starting to scare him.

"Remember/" She paused as a janitor walked by. "Remember how you said that we'll probably never have concrete proof that they exist?"

Why is she whispering? He nodded and decided to follow her lead. "Yes, because they're so rare we'll probably never find one, but what's the matter, you look terrified!"

Swallowing she glanced about quickly. Feeling that it was safe, she pulled out a large, manila envelope that was hidden under her jacket and held out for him to take. She did it so protectively, like she was too afraid that someone might see it to have left it in the office behind a locked door. After all, janitors weren't the only ones with keys in a hospital.

"You really need to take a look at this."

He knew Christy well enough to know that she wouldn't act like that unless there was something seriously wrong. Taking the envelope in hand he held it tight to his side and led her to his office, locking the door behind them; he hadn't even bothered to look at it first.

Opening the envelope he held up and read the charts. They were blood charts of various organs from two patients. There was nothing to compare; the charts were incomplete. One was of only a couple of organs and the other was of just the organs not mentioned in the first chart... nothing to compare.

He looked back at his apprentice; she was scared. She wouldn't do this over nothing, what the hell am I missing. Though only in her early twenties and still listed as a nurse, Christy had been officially studying under Dr. Bergen since she was fifteen. Andos was a friend of the family and the nice man next-door; and he had been teaching her medicine for as long as she could remember.

Then she pulled another envelope out of her uniform jacket and handed it over. The charts in the first envelope alone were strange enough, but when compared to the second. "You need to see these too."

He took it and pulled out the first file, a hormone chart. He scrutinized every detail, but the man couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. Once again he found himself confused and clueless. Turning his eyes once more to the envelope he took out the other chart and looked it over, comparing it to the first again and again. It was another hormone chart, but this time for another patient. They were from the same two patients as the blood charts. Every seemed perfectly normal. Both were textbook examples of a healthy human, almost too perfect. He felt like he was trying to catch smoke with his bare hands.

"I don't understand. Where did you get these, they seem normal?" His eye widened. "Wait." Something clicked and he looked at the dates to be sure; the same dates. That was it! They were reasonably healthy people, but no two people should match up that closely at the exact same moment.

"They resemble each other too closely, right?"

She shook her head. "All of these came from the same patient."

His shock was blatant as he spoke in an airy gasp. "What?" Normally she would have been laughing at the look on his face.

"There's your proof. At first I though I had somehow just gotten the samples mixed up. I didn't see how that was possible, but I had the patient come in and took another sample. That's when I took the other samples."

After a moment of letting it all sink in he smiled. "You found one?" Stepping up to her he pulled her into a tight embrace. "Oh my god. You actually found one? This is great! This is fantastic! There's no way I'm taking the credit for this one, this is your finding and yours alone." He pulled back a bit, wanting to see her smile. "I mean... you actually found..." His rant slowed to a halt when he saw how scared she was.

"What is it you're not telling me?"

"There's something else."

His heart nearly stopped at those words. Whatever it was, it was going to be bad, and Andos Bergen was known as a man who cared about his patients with a passion little seen in professional medicine.

"The patient is a sixteen-year-old boy."

The blood visibly drained from his face as his eyes took on the same fear as her's.

No. He had been looking for proof that they exist for the better part of his forty-six years studying medicine and now he wished that he had never found it. This can't be happening! There was no way he way going to exploit a man, much less a child, in that condition just so they could get their names into the history books for finding him.

"Holy shit."

"Doctor, there's more."

"God, what now!"

"His name is Edward Elric."

His expression tightened again in thought; then he tensed. "The Fullmetal Alchemist?"

"The one and only. I did all the blood work myself, there's just no way those are wrong."

If his face was white before, than the shade he turned required a new definition for the term to fit.

He ran a shaky hand through his short, gray hair. "How do you keep a lid on something like this. It 'would' have to be someone famous now wouldn't it. If this gets out the press and religious fanatics are going to eat him alive, not to mention how many enemies are going to come crawling out of the woodwork once they hear of his condition, someone with a reputation like his is bound to have at least a couple of bad ones."

Then his eyes locked on her's.

"Where is he?"

"Room L-346."

"Good, don't let him leave the hospital. I'm booked for the next two hours, but it's too risky to let him go; who knows what might happen in his condition."

"Way ahead of you. I already told him to stay the two hours until you could see him. There's a general with him acting as his guardian and they were going to wander about for a while, but they're not leaving."

"I'm going to take another blood test just so I can say that I did."

"I was going to recommend that."

Dropping the files on his desk he fell into the extra chair next to his desk and slumped in defeat. He wanted to cry, to just open up and breakdown, as did she. Quite abruptly he slammed his fist down on the desk shouting "Damn It!" It made Christy jump a little. Andos sat there for a tense moment before taking a deep, calming, breath.

"If only we had caught this sooner."

Gritting his teeth he took another slow breath.

"Ok, there are three options, and none of them are good." Relaxing his still balled up right hand he rested his forearm on the desk and started counting out fingers with the left hand. "Choice number one, he undergoes surgery 'now', at this stage it's practically murder. Choice number two, he tries to pull through 'without' loosing it. We'll probably loose them both and the chances that it might work are slim to none." Releasing a heavy sigh his voice and features turned chiseled with an aged cold; she'd never seen him look so grave. "And then there's choice number three, the worst case scenario, he decides to go through with it and doesn't care if he dies..." He dropped his counting hand palm up on his thigh and hung his head in an almost broken manner. "In which case he is quite 'literally' committing suicide."

"But... he's too young to make a decision like that. He's just a sixteen-year-old boy..."

Leaning forward he rested his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands in frustration, muffling his voice. "I know... that makes him practically a baby when it comes to this kind of a choice."

There was a long moment of silence before Christy decided to speak up.

"There is a fourth choice... we could just not tell him about the other choices..."

Lifting his eyes he looked both appalled and disappointed in her for saying such a thing.

"I don't want to hear you say that again... There is no forth choice, you got that?"

She still looked determined.

"He may be just sixteen-years-old," he started in a mildly aggravated tone. "But he's a state alchemist. By government law he is an adult; 'we're' the ones without a choice. And we would have no right to make that decision for him even if he wasn't a state alchemist. I will lay the choices out for him and offer guidance, but we must respect his decision."

She sighed. "Yes, I understand."

"Good."

Glancing up at the clock his eyes widened.

"Shit! My appointment started five minutes ago!"

Another thing the man was known for was being a bit of an overgrown child with a sometimes brazenly profane tongue, quite the surprising trait for a sixty-two-year-old man. Most joked and got a real kick out of it.

Jumping to his feet he carefully put the charts back in the appropriate folders and took them to the large safe set into the back of his desk hidden behind a door disguised as a pair of draws. Turning the dial back and forth a couple of times he opened it, placing the files inside and closing the safe. After spinning the combination dial once more to lock it he closed the wooden door and turned back to Christy.

"Are there any more files like these?"

She responded with a simple shake of the head.

"Good."

Taking out a handkerchief he wiped the sweat off his face and hands before they left, locking the door behind them. Andos put the handkerchief back in his pocket and they went their separate ways.

This is meant to be a complete cliffy so if you haven't figured it out than I've done my job right.

If you review please don't openly speculate what you think it might be; you're not supposed to know till you read the next chapter so I don't want you guys spoiling anything for anyone. If you want to talk to me about what you think this is than send me a message through my profile.

I haven't seen a fic like this yet and I just wanted to say that if by some small chance there's another one like it out there that this isn't a rip-off.

Not A Yaoi! I Have Nothing Against Yaoi; Just Don't Like Writing It… yet!

I get into a lot of non-yaoi male Closeness in my fics and felt that I should tell you this right off the bat. Frankly I don't think that there's enough of it out there. Too many people got sex on the brain to write strong non-yaoi sappy moments without overdoing it.

RAPE is another story. Lets face it; if a man is willing to rape just to get laid is he going to care about the gender of his victim. And more often than not it's a power thing that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with being gay. Just think of all the don't-drop-soap prison jokes out there.

I'm not saying that I do a great job of it, but I wish certain others (whom for the sake of maintaining professionalism I will not mention) would put some kind of an effort into it. Take a look at Ch.2In Dreams of my other fic, "Broken Stride", to get an idea of things to come. Minus the kissing and nuzzling, "Bringing The Puppy Home" by AngylLayDying is an excellent example of the kind of yaoi interaction my stuff can easily be mistaken for; it's also one of the top yaoi fics out there.