Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is still not mine. I just add to the coincidences.

A/N: Now with even more added soup!

Chapter 1: The Cripple, the Gardener and the Thief: Act 2

It was not a comfortable journey.

Of course, Ed was neither expecting it to be nor unused to travelling in discomfort. But it had been a long time since he had been without his auto-mail. And then he had had – as much as he hated to admit it – someone extremely qualified to look after him, namely his dad.

The seats in the carriage were hard, the suspension rickety and the heating non-existent. He couldn't get settled and fidgeted for hours, repeatedly catching the side of his head on the window ledge and generally getting antsy about having to stay in one place without any distractions. All he could do was sit and worry and pretend to be asleep when the preternaturally cheerful guard came around to 'keep him company'. On top of all that, he was getting stomach cramps from having wolfed down the pastry and bread. The way his head had begun to swim only added to his misery.

He was almost pathetically grateful when they reached the station he had to change at and he was able to hobble out into the fresh air for a while. The shock of it, less frigid than it had been, still unseasonably cold, was enough to bring him out of his stupor.

The next train was worse. He was wedged between a flustered travelling businessman with an enormous suitcase and a woman who was just plain enormous. Some kid was screaming the whole time and his stump hurt more with every jolt. Ed was increasingly certain that it had begun to bleed or seep pus or something. He would have tried to get the seat to himself by mentioning this but he suspected that this might lead to someone offering to 'help' and that would probably make things worse. Instead, he suffered in relative silence and miles and miles of countryside passed in a stifling blur, the inside of his head full of dull, sluggish thoughts and bursts of deep red pain.

He needed help from the guard and the conductor to get down to the platform in Cormath. It was nearly an hour before he had recovered enough strength to hobble to the dock and the boat that was taking passengers across the estuary while the Great Viaduct was repaired. He could barely keep down the soup someone had given him in a moment of pity.

Then, for the first time in his life, he was seasick.

By the time he got to the other side of the water, to find that the only way to get to the next station – the one still connected to Central – was by road, Ed was about ready to collapse. He got most of the way up the high street before fatigue and dizziness overcame him. Lurching into the relative shelter of a shop doorway, he crumpled into a heap, the crutch clattering on the flag stones.

It was getting dark, the only passers-by hurrying along home. All the shops were shut up for the night, their owners retreating to the back rooms or already gone. No one spared the great hero of the people a second glance. Perhaps they assumed the police would move him on. Perhaps they just didn't care. Perhaps he should have tried to find a place to stay down on the docks. But desperation, the knowledge that people were depending on him, had driven him on before he could think things through and realise that there would be no one to hitch a ride with this late in the day.

Angry, with himself and the universe in general, he dragged the hat from his head and leant back against the door, cursing his weakness. Damn Fletcher for being right. Damn Chambers for shattering his auto-mail. Damn the cosmos for shaking the railways to bits.

"Al..." he whispered, as if the name would conjure his brother out of thin air, "Noah..."

Them and the Bastard Colonel, and Hawkeye. What had happened to them? He hardly dared think about it. If they had come through the void and escaped the Hunger, why had they not been in the snow next to him? If they hadn't...

With a sharp chink, a a handful of coins landed at his foot. For a while, Ed simply stared at them, confused by their sudden appearance. Eventually, however, he registered the person who had tossed them down to him and looked up.

She had blonde hair tied up in a bun and a full, heart-shaped face. Her coat was long and dark, worn over a simple blouse and skirt. There was nothing remarkable about her, although she was quite pretty. She looked down at him with wide, amused eyes.

"I'm not begging," he rasped, irritated that anyone would think he was.

"You look like you need it, all the same." She smiled as she said it. "Or do you just really like shop doorways?"

Ed's face crumpled into a glare and he tried to drag himself back to his feet. He fell back almost immediately, breathing raggedly. The woman watched him, that spark of amusement still obvious.

Something else fell from her hand, something that fluttered down to rest a little closer to him than the coins. A single playing card. The Queen of Hearts. He reached out and picked it up, turning it over, staring at the pattern on the back.

"Is that enough to jog your memory?" she asked coyly, fingers going to her blouse's top button, "Or do I need to do something a bit more extreme?"

"Psiren?"

She smiled.

"You do remember me then?"

"What the hell are you doing here?"

There was little real force in the words – he was too astonished and too tired to be angry. The thief shrugged.

"At the moment, confirming my suspicions." She knelt down, the better to see his eyes. "I thought so. Even after all this time, I've never met anyone else with eyes quite like those."

Ed shifted, looking away, abruptly defensive.

"Am I supposed to believe that you were just in the neighbourhood?"

"Believe what you like." Her smile didn't fade. "I saw you in Cormath. I saw your eyes on the boat over. Didn't you see me looking at you?"

He shook his head once, sharply. Psiren shrugged again.

"I suppose I am quite good at not being seen," she observed, "You seem to have gone down in the world." The only reply she got was a glare, weakened by exhaustion and overuse. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry. Come on. I've got a flat nearby."

"What?"

"Warmth, shelter, sofas – or you can spend the night out here. But as a trained medic, I have to tell you, that's not a very good idea."

Ed managed to make a noise that combined derision, disbelief and defeat in a single syllable.

Psiren's flat was on the bottom floor of an old stone town house. It was surprisingly sparse for the home of a jewel thief, the walls bare except for a few mirrors, the furniture old and worn. She guided Ed to a battered sofa, made him lie down and vanished for a moment to retrieve a first aid box.

He hissed as she pulled the fabric of the rolled up trouser-leg away from his stump. When Psiren got a good look at it, so did she.

"If this feels as bad as it looks, I'm amazed you managed to get up from the docks at all."

Ed tried, with limited success, to look unfazed by the sticky mess that was the remains of his auto-mail port.

"It doesn't...and I've got a high pain threshold."

"Hmm." She tutted and rummaged through the box. "I can clean it up but you need a doctor or an engineer."

"I know," he retorted sullenly, "Where do you think I'm going...?"

"From the way you look? The nearest soup kitchen."

Deftly, Psiren soaked a pad of cotton wool in antiseptic and applied it to Ed's flesh. He stifled a yell, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood.

"You do have to admit, you don't look like a great and powerful State Alchemist any more."

"Nuh...and what are you supposed to be this time? Librarian? Teacher again? Or did the catsuit just shrink in the wash – ow!"

"I am a respected member of the community. For the moment, anyway. It's a handy trick called 'keeping a low profile.'" She glanced up at the ceiling. "Actually, now I think about it, I've been going straight for nearly a year and a half now."

"Right..." he groaned, "And I'm the King of Sweden."

"Of where?"

"It – ow – doesn't matter..."

For a few minutes, they sat in silence, save for Ed's occasional grunts of discomfort. But when Psiren turned to dig out a new pad, he cleared his throat.

"So why are you helping me, exactly...? I thought we were...even."

"I am a nurse," she reminded him, upending the bottle of antiseptic into the pad.

"Like hell you – nuh!"

"I'm a medically trained alchemist." This time the retort was deadly serious. "You don't need many qualifications to be a nun or a teacher but working in a hospital needs more than a sweet tongue. Or did you think I'd buttered my way in?"

"Saying you couldn't?" Ed mumbled, fighting to keep his eyes open.

Psiren grinned, flashing bright white teeth.

"Of course I could. But hurting people because you don't know what's going on isn't good cover. Anyway," she added, moving to get at his shoulder, "you've got a serious infection, the results of major bodily trauma and signs of dire exhaustion and recent hypothermia. I wouldn't leave a rat sitting on the street like that."

"You just said that – guh – to impress me."

"It's also true. Hmm. It's no good, I can't do this up your sleeve.

Her fingers caught at the buttons of his shirt, deftly unfastening it before he had time to realise what she was doing. He groaned, dimly annoyed that people kept undressing him, like he was a four year old or something. Psiren lifted an eyebrow and it dawned on him that he'd mumbled the thought out loud.

"Is that a complaint?"

"Nuh..."

A great weight was slowly coming down behind Ed's eyes. The shocks from the antiseptic had been pushing it back but now it came on remorselessly, blotting everything out. His head fell forward, lost to gravity. The absurd coincidence of running into and being helped by someone else he knew flashed across his mind, just before it went dark. Maybe I'm getting lucky...

He muttered it aloud but if Psiren replied, he didn't hear her.

Feverish dreams rushed in to fill the darkness. Hideous shapes with grasping claws loomed large, reaching out to rip and tear. His own face screamed at him from the bottom of a well, eyes burning with hate and purple fire. A man glanced down at him from atop a huge stone throne then turned away, dismissing him as an irrelevance. Al tumbled past, back to back with Noah, their fingertips wound together, their hair billowing in a wind he could not feel. Back on a bridge in Aquroya, Psiren collapsed under his weight, playing cards fluttering around them, the transmutation circle on her chest glowing softly. Winry watched him from balcony of her gramma's house, flicking a lantern on and off as he trudged towards her along a long and winding road, people he couldn't see following him out of the darkness. Envy laughed at him from behind an opera mask, mocking chuckling growing louder and louder until it was a long, tortured tumult of insane cackling. Blazing figures cut across the chaos, growing taller and taller until they filled the world, from horizon to horizon. Seven faces blacker than obsidian turned to him, speaking in unison a single word:

"TRUTH."

Sunlight half-blinded Ed. He promptly screwed his eyes shut again and moaned, trying to roll over and hide from the glare. Agony shot across his shoulders and up through his abdomen.

"Gaaaaa!"

"Good morning, sleepy-head." Psiren materialised at his side, a glass of water in one hand, a white pill in the other. "Here. Swallow this. It should help with the pain."

He nearly choked, but a couple of gulps of water dislodged the tablet and washed it down. He fell back against the cushions as Psiren took the glass away.

"Urgh."

His head was a lump of stone, impossibly heavy, flopping around uselessly on the end of his neck. Thoughts only half-formed before they fell apart under their own sluggish weight. The urge to get up was terrible, but the feeling of weakness that seeped through every part of his body was utterly overpowering.

"Daaamn..." he hissed, voice a wavering shadow of a noise.

The next thing he knew, Psiren was staring down at him again, looking unexpectedly concerned. Worry changed her face completely, erasing almost all the of the usual smug amusement. It made her look...kind.

"It really tears you up, doesn't it?" she said quietly, not making any attempt to hide her expression as most people might have, "Being helpless. It's not the pain that matters at all."

Ed growled something incoherent and obscene.

"You and your charming invitations." She was suddenly the efficient thief with her tongue in her cheek again. "You'll be pleased to know that I've arranged transport to take us to the next town. It'll probably be a tight squeeze in the back of Hiram's trap but I'm sure you'll be able to put up with it for an hour. Of course, if you want me to ask him to take the scenic route..."

The words trickled into his brain. After a moment, they triggered a slightly more awake form of reasoning.

"You've...what do you mean, 'us'?"

"That I can't look after you, that it'd be odds on whether you'd be killed by my lack of skill or your own impatience and that you are – or were – a State Alchemist, which means you probably belong with your own kind, which means you should carry on to Central. Oh, and there's no way you'll make it the rest of the way without someone like me looking after you."

Ed blinked rapidly.

"When did I tell you where I was going?"

"When I overheard you talking to the harbour master." She sat down next to him and placed a hand on his brow. "Hmm. You get careless when you're close to running a fever."

"Doesn't everyone?" he muttered, trying not to enjoy the coolness of her touch.

"Depends on how deeply rubbed in the paranoia is. Open wide."

He accepted the thermometer without question, forcing himself to be patient while she checked the reading. Finally freed with a tut from Psiren, he leaned a little way to the side so he could see as much of her as he was likely to from that angle.

"Why..." He stopped and started again. "What do you want? You're not just helping me for what happened in Aquroya. You can't be. So what do you want? Why do you give a shit about me?"

She raised an eyebrow but didn't turn.

"I don't suppose you'd buy the Hippocratic oath?"

"You're no doctor."

"No, I'm not. I'm a thief and a damn good one at that. I spend my life taking things away from other people and I honestly have no reason to give anything back. I could go on about my youth – which was lousy, by the way – or the fact that surviving in this world means doing whatever you can to beat the competition – which it is – or that there's honour among thieves. Honour among thieves! Please." Now she turned and there was nothing like kindness or smugness in her face. "What do I want from you? I don't know yet. But one day, I'm going to ask you to pay me back for this. And you'll agree. Because you're an honest kid. And you know what? You're famous. You're important. You're the Fullmetal Alchemist, hero of the people, symbol of the new order. You sacrificed your life for the good of the country – or as good as. Whatever story they spin is going to have your name on everyone's lips. They're going to put you up on a pedestal, the young genius who helped show that State Alchemists don't have to be monsters. And when they do, a favour from you will go a long way." She laughed softly and the smugness was back. "I don't know what it'll be yet. Might just be a hotel room and a bottle of the best wine. Might be the keys to the Central Bank. But I think, in a few years, I'll be able to ask you for whatever I want. And get it."

She stood up, leaving Ed feeling slightly stunned. Without waiting for him to say anything else, she packed up the thermometer and made her way towards the door.

"I'll get you some soup then we can clean you up a bit before Hiram gets here."

With a final swish of skirts, she vanished. Ed gaped after her, then closed his mouth and let his head sink towards his chest.

And tried not to think too hard about what he was pretty sure had been the first truly honest thing Psiren had told him.