Authors Note: Okay, I just wanted to let you know that this writing style likely will not be used for most of the chapters of this fic. This is my odd not really any point of view (although we do jump into Envy point of view a bit but… not much) voiceover-ish type style that I use for prologues and such. Comments and the like are always welcome, and I would like to apologize ahead of time for any spelling or grammatical errors. I'd also like to say that chapters as a whole will generally be quite a bit longer than this. Again, prologue. For those that are curious while the AU does largely follow brotherhood I will be taking certain aspects from the '03 anime, aspects that will become glaringly obvious as they show up. Essentially this is a bit of a ripple-effect type fic where I change one thing and the pretty much everything changes around it. Well, one thing and aspects. As far as pairings go romance will not be a big focus, although some pairings might show up in time, albeit they will most likely be ones that show up (or are extremely heavily hinted at) in canon if they do.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for now. I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist on any way, shape, or form.

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It really was amazing how tiny, seemingly insignificant things could turn around and change everything. Say a girl has a mole on her cheek. Although people will notice it, maybe comment on it once or twice, it likely won't be anything truly important in the long run. It will be one of the features of her face that people are used to. The presence of a mole surely would not be able to have any lasting effect on the world around it.

Except for when it does.

Little details like this are things that people tend to take for granted. They will look at that face and some part of them, so far in the back of their mind that they likely wouldn't notice it, will expect to see that mole. But the thing about details, things that we don't pay too much attention to, is that they can become so glaringly obvious when you look and see that they are gone. Even though someone may not have paid any attention to that mole before the fact remains that it is part of the face, and so when they look at it and see that it is not there that tiny part of their mind, the part that always noticed the mole, will shout out that something is wrong.

When a man by the name of Maes Hughes found himself confronted by a stranger he would have thought her to be Maria Ross were it not for the absence of that mole on her cheek, just below her eye. Things got stranger than that simple lack of a mole, much to his bewilderment and horror when he pointed it out and the imposter, whatever it may truly be, touched it's fingers to the spot and made the mole appear. One would think that the sudden appearance of the missing mark would capture and hold all of his attention. Yet at the moment the gun the imposter currently held and was pointing at him was posing quite the challenge to the seemingly impossible action.

Of course there were other little details that we might not think matter until they did. Only sometimes no one would ever know that these details mattered or why they did, no one would ever quite realize what an impact they had on their life. A picture would be the perfect example of this. A picture showing a family, the family of a man cornered by a shapeshifter with a gun, a picture that would have given a perfect way to mess with the man. A picture that, when the man had been rooting through his pocket a moment earlier, never fell out. Neither shapeshifter nor the man in the phone booth were aware of this one detail and the potential it had to change so much.

Maybe it was cockiness that made Envy remain still for that moment while in the form of Second Lieutenant Maria Ross without taking a shot. After all, even if he was idiotic enough to try and fight, a miserable human such as the one before him would not be able to best him. Maybe he just wanted to have a bit more of a fight than taking a single shot. For all that one bullet had been able to cause the spiral that was Ishval he doubted that the death of this man would cause anything quite as dramatic. Besides, things had been so boring lately, it seemed all the real excitement had been left in Liore and the now-destroyed Laboratory Five. Even if it wasn't much a brief struggle would be better than nothing.

In the future he wouldn't be able to remember the exact reason for his standing still in the form of the Lieutenant. Not that it stood much of a chance of stopping him from fabricating a likely unpleasant answer.

What happened next? It was bullshit. He could have used more eloquent language, maybe call it a lapse of judgment or underestimating his opponent, but in that moment Envy was fairly certain that the best term for it was bullshit. Hughes lunged forward with his knife despite the fact that he was moving toward someone that now looked exactly, and would have looked exactly the whole time if not for that damned mole, one of his co-workers. So this human seemed to have some guts despite the overly sappy talk about his 'family' from seconds earlier. Not that he cared. No, he cared that despite all the crap he had seen over the years of his existence, despite knowing that even if the knife hit he would heal almost instantly, those pesky things called instincts made him dodge. He fired of course, he fired his gun and aimed to kill, but that slight movement was enough to change the trajectory of the bullet slightly. While it was not so much that the intended target wasn't hit it was enough that rather than hitting his organs or, you know, somewhere deadly the man was shot near his shoulder.

Envy froze as the man staggered back and to the ground, gripping his shoulder. It was not guilt or anything of the like that he felt. Instead fear managed to get a grip on the sin for a moment. He had missed, he had taken the shot and he missed. Sure the human was on the ground near the phone booth but the fact remained that the shot may not be deadly. If it wasn't… then they might have a slight situation on their hands. Or at least you might, some voice in the back of his mind gleefully taunted him. His response was to violently shove the thought away and aim the gun and Hughes once again. This time he would not miss. They couldn't afford to have him miss.

It may have gone swimmingly if no one had seen the man who currently had the gun pointed at his head. Alas, Maes Hughes had indeed been spotted as he staggered out to the phone booth with a bleeding arm. When someone sees someone that appears to be rather frightened desperately seeking a phone they tend to ask questions. Not to mention that gunshots were loud and tended to attract quite a bit of attention, attention that made anyone who may have been nearby approach like moths to a flame. His hesitation, short as it was, was comprised of precious seconds wasted. As he pointed the gun at the man's head he heard rapid footsteps coming from not so far away combined with shouts, not to mention the figures he could see approaching. There was a slight noise emanating from the phone currently dangling from its cord, signifying that someone was on the other end even though no one was currently responding.

For all that homunculi claimed to be superior to humans and their emotions even they were not completely immune to the things. As it happened fear was a very human emotion, or perhaps it was merely a universal emotion. Either way he could feel it coming over him in a massive wave, threatening to pull him under. In that moment he made what might have been one of the worst decisions of his life. In a moment of fear, not from the possibility of getting caught itself but having missed that first shot, what some of the others might do if he not only failed to kill Maes Hughes but was also seen or even captured (not that he would ever admit to considering that a possibility, not that he would admit to having felt anything even vaguely resembling fear) seeming to override his senses, including that glorious thing called common sense, Envy turned around and ran.

On that day Envy failed.

On that day Maes Hughes survived.

All because of a couple of tiny details.