Chapter Four: Differences

Ed was looking out the window, watching it rain.

"Brother, I was thinking... I remember the gate now, and I'm a philosopher's stone, so I can probably do alchemy without a circle." Al was sitting on the bed and was about to put his hands together to test the hypothesis, but Ed yelled not to.

"Al, you can't use alchemy anymore. If you use the stone's power, we don't know what will happen to you. Wait until we learn more about it, first."

Ed didn't turn his glaze back to the window, but instead stared at Al. He sighed, caving in to Ed's request. Al then glanced toward the door, hearing the knob turn.

"Don't worry, Al, it's just me," Edward said as he shut the door. Al kept staring at him as he took a drink from the bottle he was holding. "What? I got thirsty. No one recognized me and no one followed me here, so you're still safe."

"How could you possibly be thirsty when it's rainy outside?" Ed asked without turning to look at him.

"I donno," Edward said with a shrug. He went over to sit on the bed, and Ed widened his eyes when he came within view.

"Milk?!" Ed exclaimed as he fell backward onto the floor from surprise.

Edward blinked, looked at the bottle he was holding, and looked at Ed. "You don't like milk?"

"I don't know how you could," Ed told him in disgust.

A smirk came to Edward's face and a dark gleam to his eyes, and he started trying to force the bottle into Ed's mouth. "Milk's good for you! Why don't you drink some?!"

"No! Get off of me!" Ed demanded as he tried to squirm away from Edward.

"And you wonder why you're so short?!" Edward asked.

"What?! I'm not short!"

"Shorter than I am!"

"Are not!"

"Drink it!"

Ed knocked the bottle out of Edward's hands and it spilled out onto the floor. "Aww..." Edward said sadly as he watched the milk sink into the floor. At the same time, Ed was grinning that the horrid substance was gone.

"I thought the two of you would be more alike, technically being the same person and all," Al pondered. "But, brother hates anything containing milk - except stew."

Edward widened his eyes and frowned.

"What's wrong with you?" Ed asked Edward as he got up from the floor.

"I need to tell you about Mom," Edward said seriously.

"Is anything wrong with her?" Al asked him.

Edward shook his head. "There were these two people - no, things would be a better word for them."

"You mean, the Homunculi?" Al asked.

Edward widened his eyes for a second in surprise. "You know about them? ...Well, anyhow, one of them - Lust, I think it was - told me that my mother isn't really my mother - but yours. That Jonston switched our mothers years ago."

"She's lying," Ed stated. "You can't believe a thing they say."

"I want to believe she's lying - but I can't. There's too much evidence that says otherwise. Years ago, my mother was deadly sick. We tried everything we could think of to try to keep her from dying, but we couldn't do anything about it. We even tried contacting Dad, so she could see him one last time, but never got a reply from him. Then, suddenly, she was better. After she got well, she never talked about being sick. Every time my brother or I brought it up, she would deny ever being ill. There was also this one time, a little after she got better..."

Edward left the kitchen with a glass of milk.

"Milk? I thought stew was the only way to get any milk into your stomach," his mother said with a laugh.

"Huh? Mom, I've always liked milk. You know that," Edward told her with a smile.

"But..." She began to say. "Well, I guess I was mistaken, then..."

"That doesn't prove anything," Ed told Edward.

"But... Our mom did seem to get ill somewhat suddenly, brother," Al said.

"Al, we both know she was hiding her illness from us."

"We don't know that for sure! She never told us whether that was the truth or not!" Al said.

"Trust me. No one switched our mothers. Don't you think one of us would have noticed by now, if it did happen?" Ed asked the two of them.

--End Chapter--

Finally, huh? I managed to watch that part of that episode today... Some things are quotes/partial quotes, by the way. (and will be in other chapters)

I know what Ed meant about not liking milk, but liking stew (from the anime). I don't like milk very much, but I like a lot of things made with milk, like cheese, milkshakes, icecream, etc... I also don't like tomatoes (raw ones are okay, though), but I like a tiny bit of ketchup on french-fries and a little tomato sauce on pizza or condensed tomato soup on spaghetti - unlike milk, though, I don't like much tomato sauce on anything. It's kind'a ironic that I really like Italian food, but don't like tomatoes, since Italians love adding tomatoes to almost everything - there's hardly anything I'll eat at Fazoli's, even though it's my favorite restaurant. They finally got something besides Fettuccini Alfredo that has no tomato sauce, though.

Oh, also, can anyone tell me if you've ever seen anyone eating ice-cream in the show/manga? You'd think Ed'd like ice-cream, if it exists. Anyone have quick access to Ed's birthday episodes? I think there's two places that ice-cream could be... When Hughes threw Ed that party when he turned 12, and when Ed turned 16 a little after lab 5 happened (Hughes party for his daughter). If Hughes has no ice-cream, I'd be very tempted to say that it doesn't exist there. (Heh... I'll let you know what I'm up to if I decide to do it - but, it's not related to this fanfic) (sighs) I tried looking up the year ice-cream was invented and it looks as though it was around for hundreds of years. I had the same results when trying to find the year color photographs were invented... Guess the common folks just didn't begin using color film or eating icecream until much later...