April 10th, 1976

Two-in-the-morning would never be the same, and Trisha Heimler Mustang didn't think she would ever forget the amazing feeling of holding her little girl in her arms for the first time. Or the second time… or ever.

It had taken longer than anticipated, thanks to her daughter's large head which she had insisted came from Roy, who hadn't even argued the point. He'd looked too pale and shaken to argue, and Trisha had felt a mild twinge of guilt, even in the midst of pushing. While he'd tried to hide it, she'd seen the gouges in his hands, the worry on his face.

Now he was smiling at them both; her, and their daughter, his hands resting gently on Trisha's shoulders as he sat beside her on the bed. Trisha was quite content to lean back into him, her head pillowed against his strong shoulder.

Alone, at last, for the first time since Ren had arrived yesterday morning, Trisha's only desire was to fall asleep with Roy and little Rosa.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" she finally asked Roy, who had been abnormally silent ever since Rosa's first cry had pierced the air in their little bedroom.

Roy kissed the top of her head. "I love you."

A tired chuckle escaped her. "I love you, too. Though that wasn't what I meant. What are you doing in your head anyway, composing poetry?"

"If I was it would be pretty awful," Roy admitted. "My brains are nothing but mush right now."

"Your brain and my body." Trisha knew the aches would only last a couple of days, but she still felt the abuse and battering her body had taken in the process of labor. As soon as she felt better though, she couldn't wait to do things again, like sit up and get up off the couch without wobbling, and walking around the block without getting winded! Then she'd see about hitting the gym. "I mean, what do you think of Rosa?"

"What am I supposed to think?" Roy asked. "She's a baby. She's wrinkled, pink, and absolutely adorable."

"So no different from your baby sister?" Trisha teased, tiredly. Her anger at him yesterday morning had evaporated.

Roy gently began to massage her shoulders with his hands. "Well, she's also absolutely terrifying."

"How's that?"

"Well if she's anything like my sisters, most of my salary is going to be going into clothes, and then college."

"I have bad news," Trisha smiled, relishing the feel of his hands as they eased agonized shoulder muscles. "That was always going to be the case."

Family visits were kept brief, given the hour, but everyone crammed downstairs got a quick look and a chance to give out hugs and congratulations before they left. Winry, having been in and out of the room through-out, assisting Ren, waited until Maes and Elena and the girls had all had their few minutes, before going back in with Sara, Franz, and Ed.

Of all of them, Winry noticed with some amusement, the most relaxed were Franz and Ed. An interesting contrast considering she knew full well they had worried as much about Trisha as anyone else.

In this, the birth of a new great-grandchild, Winry was content to sit back and watch her own daughter, her oldest child, move into her own grandmother-hood.

"Enjoying yourself?" Ed asked, slipping an arm around her shoulder.

"I am," Winry smiled at him. "Look at how happy they all are."

Franz had finally wrangled a turn holding his granddaughter and he had a big grin on his face. Sara was talking with Trisha, who looked much better after a shower and clean bedding, sprawled out on the bed, resting comfortably. Even Roy was smiling, finally.

"Do you miss it?"

"What? Having babies?" Winry glanced at her husband. "No. We have plenty of grandchildren and great-grandchildren to make me quite happy enough, thank you. I've gotten used to getting sleep again. Why, do you miss having them?"

Ed shook his head emphatically. "Not a bit. Besides, we can always get a new puppy if we want something around that wets where you don't want it to until it's trained. Which reminds me, I should call and see how Mal is doing."

Winry couldn't help laughing. "I'm sure he's fine, Ed. But really, why the nostalgia?" He didn't seem upset, or even particularly pensive, but he had that air he got, when he was thinking about the past, or something equally deep.

"It's silly," Ed smiled. "I was just thinking about Mustang."

Winry didn't have to ask which one. "I'm sure he'd have an appropriately clever remark for the occasion." If the Flame Alchemist had lived to see his grandson marry their granddaughter, he'd have had loads to say at the wedding. Seeing this, the first child born of the blood of both, he'd probably have made some quip at Ed, but only to hide how emotional he'd be too.

For anyone who cared about lineage, little Rosa had quite a lot to live up to. Thankfully, Winry thought, all the baby had to worry about right now was if she was warm, dry, and fed. Which meant, of course, that Rosa had no worries at all.

Roy waited until Trisha and Rosa were fast asleep -Trisha on the bed, Rosa in her little basinet right next to the bed- before he finally slipped downstairs.

He hoped that there was something left over to eat from the night before. He had vaguely smelled Xingese sometime during the night, so he guessed that there was probably some in the refrigerator. Well, it would make a good enough breakfast at six in the morning, especially since it was his first real meal in twenty-four hours.

The place seemed to be empty. At least, that was what Roy thought until he noticed someone on the couch under a blanket. It took a moment in the dim light to realize it was his father.

Somehow, that fact was reassuring. Roy smiled as he went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out the sack with the remaining Xingese food. His stomach was finally starting to get revenge on him for the neglect, and it was time to fill it while he had a moment's peace.

He had just finished reheating some sweet and sour pork with broccoli and rice when a shadow fell across the floor from the doorway. "Private dining or is there room for company?" his father asked.

"Sure."

Maes put on the kettle and sat down across from him. "I take it the girls are asleep."

Roy nodded and dug into his meal. "Yeah. As soon as Rosa fell asleep Trisha passed out."

"That's good," his father smiled. "She's earned a good rest." Then he cocked his head slightly and gave Roy an interested look. "So how are you doing?"

"To be honest, I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed," Roy admitted. "Not in a bad way just… I feel so many things at once it's hard to sort them all out."

Maes chuckled. "Welcome to fatherhood."

"You mean it's always like this?" Roy wasn't sure he could survive eighteen plus years in this emotional state.

"No," Maes shook his head. "This is the mild stage."

I knew it. I'm doomed.

April 13th, 1976

Breda sat looking down at his Xingese Go board, contemplating his next move. Sitting across from him, on the couch, his opponent was looking intensely at the board. To Breda's pleasure, Krista had turned out to be an inexperienced but enthusiastic player, and she picked up strategy quickly. So Breda enjoyed the chance to spend an entire Saturday afternoon teaching her some of the finer points of the game. It helped that the puppy-following of teenage boys wasn't there today.

He set down his next piece – he was playing black – and waited to see what Krista would do. If she was smart, she could keep that section alive. If she didn't see what he had just set up, she was in danger of losing nearly half the board.

Krista fingered her piece as she stared intently at the board. Breda didn't try and rush her. In the hallway, he heard a knock at the door, and Charisa's voice from the kitchen calling out, "I'll get it."

"Don't worry about it," Tore called back, and Breda heard his son-in-law moving down the hallway. A moment later Breda heard the door open and footsteps coming in. "Wow, that didn't take you guys long."

"No one can accuse me of slowing down yet," Edward chuckled as he and Alphonse came into view.

Breda snickered as he looked up at the brothers. "No, but some of us wish you would just a little."

"Maybe when there are less interesting things to do," Al suggested.

"Is it more important than interrupting our game?" Breda asked, turning back to Krista, only to find the girl had gone stock still and was looking –not quite staring- at Ed and Al. Or, at least, Ed.

"Is it about my father?" she asked breathlessly.

"As a matter of fact." Ed held up a white envelope with what looked like a Cretan seal on it.

Krista bounced to her feet so fast she almost knocked over the board, which Breda barely saved. So much for a good game.

"Now calm down," Ed grinned as Breda moved the board out of the way for later and Ed took Krista's vacated spot on the couch, pulling out several reports from the envelope. "I can't promise any of this is going to be as useful as we all hope it will be, but I expect we'll find out something useful."

"Do I want to know how you got those reports?" Breda asked curiously as Tore and Al crowded in around the table as well.

"It wasn't hard," Ed admitted. "I just gave an old friend a call."

"President Argyros?" Tore asked.

"Doubtful," Al shook his head. "It's not good policy for the President of a country to go sending old military reports to foreigners, especially not if they used to be part of a foreign military, even if you are on friendly terms."

"Nope, not him," Ed nodded, spreading out the papers. "I called his brother instead."

Krista looked confused, and Tore amused. Breda couldn't help a snort. "Of course. If anyone would be able to weasel those out of obsolescence it would be Ziro."

The papers were, of course, in Cretan.

"What do they say?" Krista asked, leaning in a little.

"Don't you read Cretan?" Tore looked a little surprised.

"Not well," Krista shook her head. "My mother was Amestrian, and we lived in Amestris. My father well… I thought he was Cretan, but look how that turned out."

"Don't worry, we'll translate," Al promised her.

"Thanks," Krista squeaked.

Breda didn't try craning his neck to see what was in the documents. He'd hear soon enough, so he settled back in his comfy over-stuffed chair and sipped his iced tea.

Ed, with Al lurking over his shoulder, following along, read through everything quickly before he said anything. "Well, that's an interesting coincidence."

"What is?" Tore asked.

"There was a raid on an alchemical facility –not a legal one- about twenty miles inside the Cretan border just two days before Dumais' death. The report doesn't give much on what they found there, other than that several people were arrested, but as many as ten may have escaped. Further reports show no later arrests. There were at least twenty-five people in the lab. Several of them claimed to have been ratted out by an alchemist with a funny accent. They assumed he was Amestrian."

"Do you think that's what happened?" Krista blurted out, eyes wide. "Maybe my father knew something about what was going on in that lab, and he reported them."

"Or he was working with them in the first place," Ed replied, still looking thoughtfully at the report. "His notes make it very clear that he was interested in finding a way to re-open the gate and successfully travel through it again; at least, what we've managed to decode so far. There are also implications that he wasn't working alone in some of his research."

"Sounds like this lab might be worth checking out."

"So would the old house, and the storage in West City," Ed nodded.

"When can we go?"

"We?" Ed looked at Krista. All eyes moved towards the girl, and she blushed, but looked them head on.

"He's my father. If he's from some other world, I want to know about it. I mean, he was here long enough to meet Mom, and have me, and I want to know if these guys killed him or what." There was an intensity in the girl's eyes that Breda hadn't seen before, not quite feverish, not quite obsession, but definitely a girl desperate to find a truth to hold on to that didn't completely uproot her entire view of her childhood and her parents.

"Fair enough," Ed agreed.

"Hold on," Tore cut in, looking surprisingly stern. "While I don't think this is a bad idea, I can't let Krista just go running off to West City, possibly Creta. It's still school, and while she's living here, Charisa and I still have to act as her guardians. She can't leave the country without at least one of us."

"So come along," Ed grinned. "You know you want to."

Breda's son-in-law rolled his eyes. "Yes, I do. But I have no idea if I can get off work that long, and we just brought Camelia home, and.."

"Wow, you're starting to sound awfully responsible," Ed prodded him verbally. "You work at HQ. Talk to Whitewater and tell him this mission bears looking into, especially if it might involve murder on Amestrian soil. He was already involved in getting the Amestrian records."

And it all stays safely in the family, right, Ed? Breda tried not to shake his head.

Tore shook his head. "You think of everything, don't you? But what about the house…"

Charisa came into Breda's view again as she kissed Tore's cheek. "Oh, go along on this mad quest if you want to. It won't be until summer, right? We'll have plenty of time to get things settled and planned before then, and it's not like Dad isn't here to help with the kids, right Dad?" She looked at Breda.

"Oh, of course not," Breda nodded, though for a moment he felt a twinge of disappointment. He had to admit, he was getting excited about this mission of theirs. It had been so long since he'd left Central and done something like this… even if it was a bunch of alchemists going off to talk alchemy, he was a little tired of arm-chair adventures that didn't go further than a storybook on a rainy afternoon.

Charisa gave him a piercing look. "You want to go too, don't you?"

That got everyone's attention. Breda shrugged. "Well you've got my interest piqued. But I doubt these guys want me along, slowing them down," he gestured at the rest of the room. "It's not like I'd be much help."

"You sure you don't want to come?" Ed was looking at him intently now. "It's not like your brain wouldn't be useful in solving this little mystery."

"This is alchemist work," Breda shook his head. "If you need my brain, you can afford a long distance call. Me hoofing it all over the countryside wouldn't be helpful to you, or good for me." He knew Ed and Al; there would be a lot of walking, and he didn't have a hope of keeping up if they actually managed to hunt down any of these possible alchemists-in-hiding who had been doing reportedly illegal research that hadn't been covered in these low-security documents. Though Breda wondered what Ed hadn't read out loud. Surely Ziro wouldn't have sent anything that wasn't more useful than that.

"Your call," Ed shrugged.

"But you'd be welcome of you change your mind," Al cut in assuredly.

"Does this mean we're going?" Krista asked. She was now looking hopefully at Tore.

Tore sighed. "Yes, if I can get permission to go, we can all go."

"Thank you." Krista looked like she was resisting the urge to jump up and throw her arms around Tore. She had certainly twitched where she stood, and every muscle was tensed with excitement.

Al was looking amused. "Now all we have to do is break the news to the girls."