A/N: This a three-way crossover between FMAB/Avengers (MCU more accurately)/HP, starting from Amestris, meeting the Avengers right after where Part 1 left off, then working up to HP which will be the primary focus, so that's why I put that on here. I'll explain later how exactly HP and the MCU are in the same world and why Ed hadn't realized, don't worry. Bear with me until everything is set up :)
Chapter 1: Feeling left behind
Standing in front of the apartment door of his sister's place on an early summer Sunday afternoon, Alphonse Elric hesitated to knock. It really shouldn't have given him such trepidation since there wasn't another person on this planet whom he had a deeper, more fundamental connection with than Edeline Elric. In every sense of the word, ever since their failed human transmutation at the ages of ten and eleven irrevocably so. Their shared Gate was a great attestation to that. Their devotion to restoring each other's bodies without caring for their own was another. Always placing the other before themselves.
And yet here he was rooted in his place, agonizing over what he was going to say to the former Fullmetal Alchemist about his reason for being there. You see, she had no idea that her brother was going to visit her, for Ed thought that Al was in Xing, holding the position of ambassador between their countries, now for the tenth year, and blissfully married to Princess Mei of the Chang Clan.
At least that's what his letters to her would have suggested, but it hadn't been true for the last five years if you considered the 'blissfully' part.
When they had gotten married at the age of 21, this really wasn't the way they had imagined their lives. After the many hurdles fate had already thrown at Al, he thought he could overcome anything. Especially if he had his loving wife at his side. But things started going downhill when they decided to have children and couldn't conceive for three years. They visited all the doctors they could find in Xing and even in Amestris – although the real reason for his visits he had never revealed to Ed at the time – but after two years they still had no answers. Al himself theorized that he had become sterile because of the five years he had spent in front of the Gate, in the most crucial time of his teens when his reproductive system should have fully matured with the cocktail of hormones young boys' bodies ought to release in that time frame.
Edeline Elric was the epitome of misplaced guilt. She had only recently overcome the immense weight of what she had perceived as solely her own sin and which had forced her brother to live as a suit of armor, condemning him to an existence where he couldn't feel, eat, sleep. Al knew she would blame herself all over again if she were to learn of the other consequences that time period might have had, not that her brother would ever hold those events against her. And yet the younger Elric wasn't really sure if he could lie convincingly enough to fool her.
Mei and Al had considered the option of adoption, even did all the paperwork and waited patiently for the call that would inform them that there was a baby just for them. And the longer they waited, the more he felt his princess drift away from him. However hard she tried to compromise, adoption wasn't truly what she had wanted. Mei always fantasized about carrying his child in her womb. In the end, she wasn't able to let go of that expectation of what their life should have been, and it wedged itself in their relationship.
Alphonse saw it happening, tried everything in his power to stop it, but there was a point beyond which he alone was just not enough to keep a relationship going. So in their third year since the adoption papers were put in, after a heartfelt talk and a lot of crying, the Elric-Changs came to a mutually agreed split.
So here he was, a divorced man at the age of 31, in front of his sister's door and he had absolutely no idea what he ought to say to Ed to prevent it from escalating into what she always did: hating herself all over again.
Taking a deep breath, he knocked despite those worries.
After a few seconds, the tell-tale dissimilar footsteps on the tile floor could be heard from the other side of the oak wood door, and a blond woman with golden eyes, barely over five feet tall, dressed in only a white tank top and black shorts opened the door.
For a moment Al thought his sister wasn't happy to see him, her face held a mixture of confusion and alarm. And then he heard Winry's voice from inside. "Who is it, Ed?"
A few moments later the taller blond woman came into view too, and it took every ounce of his self-control to look utterly elated when he hugged the very pregnant looking form of his sister-in-law.
"You guys are expecting? Congratulations!" Al gushed.
An even greater shock awaited him when two toddlers came rushing in, both with brilliant golden eyes.
"Momma, look what we drew!" the little girl called in enthusiasm, waving a piece of paper while the boy who looked to be the same age nodded eagerly as he jumped up and down in excitement to make his point.
"Al, meet your niece and nephew, Maisie and Tristan," Winry beamed with the sense of pride that only a mother was capable of.
"Uncle Al!" they exclaimed in unison, both running up to him. Apparently, he was talked about in the household even if they didn't bother to inform him that the family had expanded.
During all this Ed stood there still, like a deer caught in headlights.
"Hey, kiddos!" Al enveloped them in a huge hug, looking up questioningly at his sister behind their backs.
Winry caught onto the tension growing between the siblings, so she ushered the kids out so that they could talk peacefully.
"Maisie, Tristan, why don't you guys grab a snack from the kitchen and play in your room for a while?" the mechanic instructed her younglings, who were oblivious to the adult matters unfolding in the room. They ran squealing with utter delight at the prospect of cookies that had just about cooled off to an edible temperature on a plate on the counter.
"Ed, I thought you told him," dark blue eyes glinted with scolding as Winry straightened up, placing her hands on her hips.
"I was planning to…" the ex-alchemist scratched the back of her head, full of embarrassment. She really was planning to, but she didn't know how to break the news to her brother when she knew they had been trying for so long without success.
"It's fine Winry, I understand," Al cut in with a sad smile.
"I just didn't want to rub it in, when you and Mei couldn't…" Ed sighed, fiddling with the side of her face and a strand of hair on it while peeking up at his brother.
"We split," the younger Elric blurted out. There wasn't an easy way to go about this.
"Oh, Al…" Winry was the first to react, hugging her brother-in-law comfortingly. "Why don't we sit down?" she said after a few minutes, guiding both of her childhood friends to the couches.
"What happened?" Ed asked with a little snarl. She wanted to protect her brother so badly. From all of this. He deserved so much more from life.
"It just wasn't working out. She wanted to have children of our own, and I couldn't give her that. Adoption just wasn't the right option for us," Al sighed. He was emotionally numb to it all already.
"Did you visit Dr. Marcoh?" the ex-alchemist inquired. She was grabbing at straws, she knew that. But she would have given anything if it meant that her little brother was happy again.
"The Stone had been used up since, but even if it wasn't, I'm not sure I could have lived with that," the younger Elric shook his head at that suggestion. "But yes, we visited a number of doctors over the years."
"Do you guys know what the problem is?" the mechanic asked. Fixing things was her domain, and she knew quite a lot about anatomy because of her line of work.
"Nothing definitive, but I have my theories," Al shrugged in resignation, he caught Ed's eyes and the look she was giving him. This was exactly what he wanted to avoid. "Don't even go there, it's not your fault."
"So what now?" Winry looked at the siblings.
"We got a divorce, I resigned from my position. I could join the military, work with you, maybe?" he proposed. With that hopeful expression, he looked every bit like the little boy that he used to be.
"About that…" Ed trailed off nervously. That wasn't really an option anymore.
"Ed quit four years ago when Mustang became Führer. That's when we started thinking about children," Winry finished for her. That was one of the happiest days of her life when she finally didn't have to worry about her wife getting herself killed in some military operation.
Made sense, Al thought. That was Ed's promise, and she had fulfilled it, so there wasn't really anything holding her there anymore. She had given more than her fair share to their country.
"I wanted to ask about that. How…?" he switched topics to the technical parts of childbearing in a lesbian couple.
"We had an anonymous sperm donor. Same one now for Winry. We agreed that each of us should have the experience of childbirth once," Ed explained. That would have been Al's guess too.
"So am I going to have another niece or nephew? When are you due?" Al beamed. He was truly happy for them. He could live with this. Being a devoted uncle, living vicariously through Ed and Winry.
"End of August. They are twins again based on my size. Supposedly it's very common with artificial insemination. We wanted to keep the genders a surprise. They would only be able to tell us a guess anyway, from the way I carry. Too bad we don't have those ultra-whatever machines like on Earth, the ones Ed talked about. They seem handy for all sorts of medicinal purposes. You can see inside the human body with it! Can you believe it?! I wonder how they work, wish I had one to take apart…" the blue-eyed girl rubbed her belly lovingly as she ranted on about her love for machines.
Two more months and the house would become even livelier. Al looked around thoughtfully. Too lively for a two-bedroom apartment.
"Are you guys moving then?" the alchemist inquired, ignoring her gear-headed ramblings.
"Back to Resembool actually. Next weekend. Granny isn't doing so well. Old age is finally catching up with her," Winry muttered wistfully.
Pinako was pushing ninety. It seemed like a logical step to move back and help out.
"What about the shop and this apartment?" Based on the letters he got, their auto-mail business was booming, now they had a branch both in Rush Valley and Central, besides the odd job that came in through Resembool that so far Granny was able to handle.
"I have enough employees to keep the shop running in town, I will come up once in a while to check on them to make everything is going fine. We were thinking of renting out the apartment," the mechanic waved off the concerns. They could more than afford for her to take off time to raise kids. By all means, she would still take the more urgent cases back home, or the ones that specifically requested her. No one had delusions that Winry would stop working just because she popped out a few kids.
"Do you guys think, I could maybe lease it?" Al probed hopefully. It would have been perfect. He would come and visit often, but he didn't want to impose on their lives.
"You can have it, of course! But don't even think about giving us any money for it!" Ed burst out so loudly that the kids came rushing in to see what was going on.
"Momma!" Maisie ran to Winry for comfort, frightened but the raised voices. "Mommy is being mean again."
Tristan just eyed the adults with a suspicious glare, making his way in a more sedated pace to Winry, clinging to her arm.
"There, there, Mommy didn't mean to shout. She was just excited that Uncle Al is moving home," she lovingly soothed the little ones with a warm hug, pulling them up into her lap.
Maisie glanced at Ed through her tears then leaned towards her to be taken over. Ed reached for her with a shit-eating grin, always surprised when she was favored over Winry.
"I'm sorry, Maisie," the ex-alchemist murmured into her daughter's ear as the toddler hugged her around her neck.
"It's okay, just don't let it happen again," Maisie pulled away with a serious face – the expression much too comical on a three-year-old, but very similar to the scowl that Ed used to always adorn – wriggling her finger admonishingly at her mom. A second later she hopped off, her tears long forgotten, grabbing her brother's hand to pull him with her and they were off again.
"Wow, I'm not sure which of her mom's she takes after more!" Al laughed out at the exchange.
"Her!" both Ed and Winry exclaimed at the exact same moment, pointing at each other. Then they both chuckled.
"I know she is not mine by blood, but she is every bit my daughter. At the beginning of spring, she started taking an interest in auto-mail. Tristan is a lot like you actually, Al. And Trisha, his namesake." the pregnant blonde mused with a small tear escaping her eyes. "Calm and gentle, always the peacemaker, following Maisie wherever she takes him."
"What names are you thinking of for the little ones?" the younger Elric questioned further.
"Well if both are girls, then Sarah and Nina. For boy names, we were thinking Juri, which is a variant of my father's name, and maybe Noel if both are boys," Winry listed the options while Ed leaned back, her hand over at the small of her pregnant wife's back, rubbing it. She knew from experience that was the most tender spot in these months, especially towards the end.
"Beautiful names," he had to agree.
A/N: Chapters might come sparsely for a while because I'm still working on another story, but I just wanted to put at least the first chapter out so that if you want you could follow it. All thoughts and comments are welcome on the basic premise of the story so far.