William decided that if they wouldn't believe him, he would have to prove them wrong.

So William gathered together the materials for a transmutation, the small wooden bird that was the first type of alchemy that he had ever attempted, surely they would recognise that. He drew the transmutation circle and pressed his hands to the edges... Nothing happened, he checked the circle and the ingredients; everything was there and how it should have been.

Growing desperate, he tried again.
"Stupid transmutation!"
And again.
"Just work!"
And again.
"Please..."

Of course William remembered what he had read about the theories about homunculi losing the ability to perform alchemy, this had all been there but he had to prove them wrong. He had to!

It was at that more than slightly inconvenient time his mother walked into his room and saw him.
"Are you trying to perform alchemy?" She said, "Don't you remember what I said? Homunculi don't have souls; that means that they can't perform alchemy."
William had hoped that, that part was as untrue as the rest of the lies they had found in those books.
Angrily he turned to her and said: "If you need a soul to perform alchemy, doesn't that mean that YOU shouldn't be able to?"
"Be careful homunculus" said Hoenheim, appearing at the doorway, "We know the weaknesses that can kill you and we will use them if you provoke us!"
With that both of them left the room while William cleared the transmutation circle and ingredients away, telling himself that he was just stressed from the events of the past few days and that he would try again later.

William had never thought that anyone would envy his human life, now he knew that the one person who ever would, was his current self.

William was furious! First his parents had almost completely abandoned him as a child, they had caused his death, and instead of just burying him and letting him be they brought him back and then complained that he wasn't right! He was beginning to despise them!

As he was focusing on his anger, trying to calm himself down enough to think of a way out of this situation, the same thought kept running through his head... "If only I could run away... If only I could run away... If only I could run away... But how? They would see him, and stop him if he tried."

Suddenly he felt strange, it hurt a little but it mostly just felt really weird, he unintentionally glanced at the mirror and was shocked. Had his hair just had gotten a little darker? Surely he was imagining things; that wasn't possible... Then again, the books his mother and father had about homunculi did say something about them having strange powers, similar to, but outside the realms of alchemy. So he closed his eyes and concentrated, this time willing his hair to turn black, when he opened his eyes a few seconds later, he saw that it had! Now he had a plan!

So he disguised himself as well as he could, trying to make his new body look as different as possible, without looking strange; he now had short, dark hair, light bown eyes and was quite a bit taller. He got outside and into the street and ran as far as he could. There was no stopping him this time, he was going to leave, find a place where he was wanted, or at the very least a place where he wasn't hated.

After so many years of secretly wanting to leave, to be free he finally was... But now where would he go? He hadn't had any friends for years; he tried to avoid children who talked about their oh so wonderful parents, and that meant most of them. He probably could manage just living somewhere away from all of the humans, but that wasn't what he wanted, for his entire life he had just wanted to be normal... Well that was no longer really possible, but he could pretend he was normal, right? It couldn't be that hard to pretend he was a normal human, could it?

It actually turned out to be quite easy, William wandered the town's streets for hours looking at things that he had never really had the chance to experience before. The sight of children playing by the road, of friends sitting together chatting about some trivial topic and of couples out on a walk together and there were many places he could see but he prefered to watch how people interacted.