~06~

Sam hurried busily about the house, doing things to clean up here and there but mainly becoming concerned with the empty duffle bag on her bed. She still had chores and there were some things about her house that she wanted to get done before she left, but as she ran through the things she had to do, she became positive that it would take her at least three hours past her train ticket's time to do all of them- and that was without packing.

Her father wasn't home and she didn't expect him to be home for a while. He didn't expect it either, since his watch was supposed to last through the night. Likely, he was sleeping at the office right now to try and make up for the sleep he knew he would lose. Sam didn't know why he insisted on working such long hours. Well, at least he had become more comfortable with leaving Sam alone at the house.

After finishing the dishes, which was the last of her basic chores, Sam grabbed a towel to dry her hands. Then she focused on her left hand, making sure to get the water out of every nook and cranny so the shiny metal didn't rust and break on her.

A month after she got out of the hospital, Sam decided to get automail. The engineer suggested that the rehabilitation would take at least three years, and he wasn't even sure Sam would be able to get the arm, since the flesh had begun to heal itself and he was unsure if he could get to the nerves he needed in order to connect the metal arm and make it functional. Sam would have none of it. She wanted to be able to function in one year, and she told the engineer to try his hardest to hook up the hardware. Needless to say, the stress, the procedure, and the rapid recovery had her coughing up blood. Sam thought it was worth it. Her father seemed to have become more confident in her now that she had two arms to work with, and it was not so awkward to do things around the house. Yes, Sam definitely thought she understood why people chose this path.

Unable to persuade herself that organizing the office and then washing the floor would not take too long, Sam returned to her room and gazed upon the empty duffle bag. With a shake of her head and a sigh, she began moving. She grabbed her favorite and most sturdy clothing and folded it into the duffle bag. Then she grabbed small necessities like the bolts and oils needed to take care of her arm, courtesy of her mechanic, Albert. The thin, shy, and hermit-like boy had hurriedly handed her these things when she had told him about her plans to leave. She was glad she could call him any time her arm broke down.

The duffle bag was full to almost bursting and Sam took a step back to look over her room. Was there anything else she needed to bring? Her eyes immediately fell upon the small package wrapped in brown paper that rested on her bedside table. She considered it, looking at the note tied at its top that read 'I don't know if I'll get home in time to give this to you myself. If not, open it.' Sam took a step towards the box, and then she strode over to the bedside table and picked it up. Hesitantly, she put her fingers on the string that would unwrap the entire thing if pulled.

There was a knock on the door. Sam sighed, wondering why everybody seemed to have such odd timing when it came to her. She put the box back down when another knock rang through the small house.

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" Sam said as a third series of knocks sounded.

Finally, after becoming quite impatient at the person who incessantly knocked on her door, Sam reached the entrance to her house and quickly opened it. She blinked for a second, wondering if someone had knocked and then ran. Then, at a sound, Sam looked down.

A little girl of about 12 stood in front of Sam. She had braided ponytails, a red short skirt and T-shirt, and she held a backpack with both of her hands politely in front. Sam blinked at her, perplexed as to why she'd come here. She wasn't a newspaper reporter- that was for certain. And Sam had had quite enough of them. Maybe she was lost.

"Um… excuse me… are you… um… Sam? Sam Penber?"

Sam blinked, surprised. "Uh, yeah, I'm Sam. Who're you?"

"I'm Klara. And, um, I have a… a request."

Sam's eyebrows had no doubt climbed her forehead. "Uh-huh… And what is it?"

"I… I want you to bring my mother and father back!" the girl said in a rush, bowing suddenly.

Sam was very quiet. Bring back her parents? From where? Unfortunately, the bare skin she had exposed allowed her to pick up a bit of a hint towards what the girl was requesting, but… Well, it simply couldn't be. If she was asking that, it was impossible!

"Bring back your parents?" Sam saw the girl nod her head furiously from her bow, her pig tails jumping around a bit. "From… where?"

The girl's hands curled into fists and Sam saw her entire body tense up. She was likely trying not to cry. Then Sam heard a sharp intake of breath and Klara stood up, looking tearfully at Sam.

"They're dead! My parents are dead!"

Sam sighed and was quiet for a moment. This was going to be difficult. Poor kid. Geez, what was she saying? Sam had it just as bad as this kid, if not worse! But, still… Sam stepped aside and motioned towards the inside of her house.

"Come in." Sam said quietly.

Klara trudged inside, still trying to hold back tears. Sam closed the door and escorted her guest to the kitchen table, where she offered her a chair. The girl sat and let her backpack sit on the floor. Sam then made her way to the other side of her table, sitting in what was customarily her father's chair.

"Klara… I'm really sorry that your parents passed away. Truly, I feel your loss. I know what it's like." Technically, anyways. "But people can't be brought back from the dead."

"You're lying!" Klara burst out immediately, her voice rising to a shriek. "Everybody says that nobody can be brought back, but then why do they try it? You tried it! He tried it!"

"I did not."

"Yes you-"

"I did not!" Sam's suddenly raised voice and thinned lips silenced Klara immediately. Sam took a breath to calm herself, and then continued more quietly. "I didn't try to bring someone back from the dead. I don't even know if my mother is dead or just missing, and she's the only person I would consider it for. I asked for something else."

"But you still…"

Sam saw where Klara's gaze went and realized that she was still wearing short sleeves. Her metal arm was glinting in the sunlight. Sam looked at it, and then put her flesh hand on it. It held all the memories of the pain she had acquired obtaining this arm. But thanks to the fact that she had already re-experienced these memories once, they were now dull and no longer dug into her brain like a knife when she touched it.

"Yes, I lost an arm. I asked for something that did not abide by the law of equivalent exchange. Therefore, there was a rebound and… well, the result is obvious."

"Well… If you can't, then… Then let me follow you and help me find out how to do it myself!"

Sam was quiet for yet another moment. What an idiot child! Why would she still pursue this, knowing the repercussions! She would likely kill herself!

"I won't." was Sam's flat out refusal.

"I'll follow you even if you don't want me to!"

"You can't."

"Yes I can!" Klara muttered defiantly.

"No, actually, you can't. I don't know how much money you have with you, but I doubt it's enough to buy a train ticket. I'm leaving on a train today, it's already been arranged."

Klara was starting to look angry as well as stubborn.

"Where are you going?"

"Like I'd tell you."

Now she was starting to pout. What a little baby! Sam couldn't have been that pathetic, she was sure.

"Look," Sam said, "give it up. I know you want to see your parents. Trust me, I do. But if you pursue this, you could get yourself and a whole lot of other people killed. And then there's the likelihood that your parents won't even come back. Trust me, it's not worth it."

"I don't care." Klara whispered, her arms crossed and her gaze focused on her little shoes.

"I see I can't convince you." Sam admitted. "Well. Then the door is over there. You can let yourself out."

Sam got up from the table after motioning towards the door and headed to her room. She picked up a couple of things she had remembered she wanted to take with her, packed them, and then zipped shut the bag. Her gaze again turned towards the package her father had left for her. She picked it up and stubbornly placed it on top of her pack. She would wait until she was on the train to open it up. The least she could do is give her father the benefit of the doubt and wait for him to come home.

Sam spent maybe half an hour checking, double-checking, and triple-checking that she had everything she needed, had left everything she didn't, and considered what other chores she could do before she left home. It was a good thing, too. She had almost forgotten her money bag.

Finally, Sam decided she would tidy up the office as much as she could. It would be the last thing she could conceivably do here before she had to leave. She walked out of her room, down the hall, and into the kitchen, where she stopped. Klara was still sitting at the table, stubbornly staring at her shoes.

"What are you still doing here?" Sam asked. Klara offered no answer. She didn't even move. "Do I need to escort you to the door, kid?"

Sam waited, but Klara still gave no response. Annoyed that this girl could possibly be more stubborn than Sam's own father, Sam walked up to Klara, grabbed her backpack and her arm, and began pulling the girl to the door. Klara's reaction was immediate.

"No! I won't! I won't! I can't leave until they're back!" she began screaming.

Sam gritted her teeth against a rising headache. The girl was kicking and thrashing, making it difficult for Sam to keep hold of her. The little girl's backpack was light, but had something hard and box-shaped in it. Maybe she could knock the girl out with it.

Suddenly, over the noise of the two fighting girls, Klara's stomach grumbled. The two stopped immediately. Klara looked embarrassed and Sam stared, amazed, at the stomach, which growled again. Klara began fiddling with the bottom of her shirt.

"Can I, um… have something to eat?"

Sam glared.

"Fine." she said. "But as soon as you're done, you're leaving."

Klara ate a lot more than Sam thought she would. By the end of the meal, Sam could tell Klara was forcing herself to eat. Finally, Sam had to take the plate away from the girl, which made Klara begin to complain through a mouth full of food.

"Swallow your food before you talk. And anyways, you can stay a bit longer. At least until your food has settled a bit."

'How has she convinced me to let her stay two hours longer than I originally intended?' Sam wondered silently.

"I'll be in the office!" Sam called after she had finished cleaning up the last of their dirty plates.

The office was, as usual, in shambles. Mustang had stayed true to his word and had not come back to investigate it. Sam was glad. A thorough look-through at half the papers would tip someone off that Sam had been doing research on a specific circle, although anyone who knew anything about alchemy would not find that particularly suspicious. Anyone who knew enough about human transmutation might find a few pieces of the circle that were familiar.

Ah, what was Sam thinking? She had never done human transmutation, although the circle had certainly reacted as if she had. Sometimes she wished she had never gotten into alchemy, especially when everyone kept pointing the finger at her. Even a little girl, for crying out loud!

It took a while for Sam to put the different papers and books into their own piles, according to their subjects. She threw away most of her research notes. She could call it all up from her memory now, anyways. The piles were put in their appropriate books and folders. The books were all dusted off as much as she could and then placed on the shelves or set together on the now-clean table. It took an hour and a quarter, but Sam finally cleaned the majority of the office.

The girl looked at the trash bin. It was chalk full of her research papers and some papers she had just doodled on as a child. Paranoia grabbed hold of her, not for the first time, and she grabbed the trash bin. She walked outside and put it in the larger trash can that lined the outside of Central's houses. Still not satisfied, Sam used alchemy to set those few pieces of paper aflame. Finished covering up the evidence, so to speak, Sam walked back inside, feeling foolish. Honestly, who would want to know what she had done and how she had done it badly enough to search through her trash?

"Ok, kid. Your time's up." Sam said, walking towards Klara. Then she stopped. Klara's eyes were closed, her breathing was slow, and her head was down. Sam blinked. She hadn't thought the girl would fall asleep.

A glance at the clock and Sam knew she had to get going. She still had forty-five minutes until she needed to start running, but she didn't fancy the idea of getting a workout quite as intense as that. Sam headed to her room. She put on her coat, which was a dark piece that came down to her ankles and could tie around the waist. Carelessly, Sam removed the strap that would be used in order to tie the coat around her waist and threw it on the ground. She then reached into her coat pocket. Her hand touched a pair of purple gloves that reached up to her elbow.

Sam had been using gloves in order to stop having sudden flashes of memories that other people had from their emotional moments. It had proven quite effective, although sometimes the memory was too strong and leaked through. In which case, it was more annoying than a sudden burst because the memory would distract her longer than it would've if she had not been wearing gloves. Sam was glad that she had this ability, but she thought she had overstepped her boundaries when she had asked for 'Ultimate Truth'. Knowing everything was not as great as it seemed.

For now, Sam kept the gloves in her pocket. She grabbed her bag and the box her father had wrapped and headed out into the main room, where she set her stuff down next to the door. Then she turned to Klara. She couldn't wake the girl up. No, it wasn't that she couldn't. It would just be a stupid thing to do. After all, if Klara woke up, Sam would never be left alone.

After a few moment's thought, Sam decided to leave Klara here. But not like this. No, Sam knew what it was like to wake up after sleeping in a chair. Sam picked Klara up gently. She was careful not to wake the little girl up as she took her and her backpack to her room, where she put Klara down on her bed. She set the girl's bag on the ground and threw the blankets over Klara. As she tucked the girl in, Sam heard the little girl mumble in her sleep.

"Momma."

Sam paused. Then she patted the girl on her shoulder and walked to the girl, looking back only once to see Klara's sleeping figure.

"Sorry, kid. Really. It's just not possible."

She shut the door behind her and headed to the main room again. She was just swinging her duffle bag over her shoulder when she heard the door being opened. Suspicious, Sam watched the door quietly. Her father stepped out from behind its wooden surface, which brought an instant difference in Sam's stance. The way she almost always seemed to expect a fight had bothered him, so she had learned to pretend she didn't when he was around.

Sam's father caught sight of her and smiled, immediately coming up to her to hug her.

"I'm so glad I made it here in time. I took a little break from work so that I could get here to see you off. I'm glad I came, too. It seems you're leaving early."

"Yeah, I figured I'd better leave now or I'll have to run all the way down to the station!" Sam laughed.

"Alright. Well?"

"Well?" Sam was confused. What was he- "Oh! The box!"

"You didn't open it?"

"Nope, not yet."

"Good. Thanks for waiting. You should open it now."

Sam, thinking her father's up front-ness was strange, put down her pack so that she could handle the box with both hands. The wrapping was a plain brown and the string that kept it together almost looked like the stuff used for hay bails. Sam tugged on an end of the string and the whole thing came undone. The paper unfolded itself as if earnest for her to discover what was inside. The box was a plain white, consisting of only the bottom and the top. Sam pulled the top up and off the bottom piece, revealing a silver watch that was curled up on a bed of what seemed to be white stuffing.

Sam looked up at her father curiously. What was this? He seemed to think she should like it, although his expectation was mingled with a shyness that was uncharacteristic to him.

"It was your mother's." he said somewhat softly. "I figured I should at least leave you something of hers before you leave."

Sam looked back down at the box. She was suddenly holding it as if it was something that was to be treasured. After putting the bottom into the top of the box, she grabbed the watch. It was very shiny and the watch itself had no fancy markings on it. It was attached to a chain that was maybe a foot long and could easily attach to a belt loop. Its design reminded Sam of the watches that were given to State Alchemists, but there were obvious differences when she looked at it closely.

"This… was Mom's?" Sam wasn't sure if she could believe this was her mother's just yet. She had been given absolutely no proof that her mother existed for all this time. And suddenly, here was this watch in her hand that used to be owned by her mother.

"She gave it to me soon after she got it, so she didn't have it for long, but… It's about the only thing that she used to have that I thought might be useful to you."

Sam stared at the watch for a little longer. Then, realizing that time was becoming of the essence, she looked back up at her father and nodded a bit. She tried to speak, but found her voice had fled her. After clearing her throat, she found it had returned.

"Thank you. I really appreciate it. Really, I do."

Sam hooked the watch to a belt loop and stuck it in her pocket. Then she grabbed her duffle bag and slung it over her shoulders again. She had actually opened the door and taken a step out of the house before she remembered Klara.

"Oh! Hey, dad? Can you do me a favor? There's a little girl in my room who came by earlier asking for help. I couldn't help her, but I somehow ended up feeding her and now she's sleeping on my bed. Could you tell her I got on my train and left when she wakes up?"

Sam's father looked perplexed, but he finally nodded. Sam smiled, thanked him, and quickly headed out the door. She wondered how her father was going to take care of her when she woke up, but she figured he could deal with her how he liked. As long as Sam wasn't around when Klara woke up, she was happy.

With maybe thirty of her fourty-five minutes wasted at the house, Sam was worried that she may have run out of extra time to get to the train station. She jogged now and then, hoping that the brief periods of a faster pace would get her there in good time. She wasn't so certain.

She was just passing through a rather populated area of Central when she heard shouting up ahead. At first, she thought nothing of it because there was often shouting on this street. There were many shops here and people sometimes disagreed with each other to the point of loud arguments. What drew Sam up short was when she heard the words that were being shouted.

"Everybody move! Out of the way! He's a dangerous man! Move!"

Sam could spot one figure running his way through the crowd. People were shouting, startled, and parting away from him. A few paces behind him were a small sea of blue uniforms, their guns raised but unable to fire because of the crowd of people that were still close.

Sam sighed. She'd get nowhere if this guy got away. He'd probably jump on a train and then the train would be held up. Or they'd block off this street in an attempt to block him in. So Sam dropped the duffle bag. She could still hear the people screaming for the pedestrians to move when the man ran straight up at her, pulling back his arm to attempt to force her out of his path.

The moment was so quick Sam wasn't sure anybody else was aware of what exactly happened, but in the next second the man was on the ground. She walked up next to him and waved slightly. There wasn't any point to it but to piss him off. Them he pulled out a gun. Oops.

The sounds of military men and gunshots ringing in her ears, Sam jumped to the side just at the right time. She hit the ground on left side and heard her metallic arm hitting the stone road. The 'dangerous man' turned a little- enough to draw something on the floor in chalk. In the next second, there was a sudden flash of light and the ground had risen up in spikes that were flying towards the military men. They barely dodged out of the way, thank goodness.

Sam got up, chasing after the fleeing man. He turned left sharply, into an alleyway. Sam rounded the alley, her own chalk ready for use, and paused just around the corner to scrawl her own transmutation circle. It reacted, and a wall of stone rose up before the man. He drew up short of the wall, put his hand on it, and then turned to view Sam.

The man was an older person with short black hair. The look in his eyes was the look of both the hunter and the hunted. As soon as he saw Sam, it was more of the hunter. Damn cocky grown-ups. Sam began to slowly walk towards him. She could hear the military men trying to regroup down the road.

"I know it's my fault for getting involved in the first place, but I absolutely hate losing. So if you don't mind-"

It was at that precise moment that she noticed she couldn't see his right hand. He was hiding it behind him, and the way his arm was turned suggested- Sam was suddenly pushing herself against a wall in order to make a circle of her own. If only she had reacted a little sooner, she might have been able to advert the spikes that flew from the walls and came at her, forcing her to flatten herself on the ground with a half finished circle on the wall. Rock spikes jammed in the wall right above her, Sam felt it would be a while before she moved again.

"You should learn to lose, kid." laughed the man before Sam heard his footsteps retreating into the next street.

The footsteps of many military men came clattering by as Sam wiggled her way from under the spikes. One stopped to kneel by her. She shooed him away, saying that she was fine. The soldier discouraged her from following the man again, which she understood. Still, the fact that she hadn't have been able to win bugged her. After a moment's hesitation, Sam headed back to the street to pick up her bag and head to the train station. Now she ran.

Shieb: Whoa! Big chapter! But I've added a few things into it, including what will turn out to be a persistent character, so, like I said in the beginning, the chapter size has grown bigger. I refuse to let chapters get much bigger than this, though. Also, remember that if you have any interesting ideas as to what should happen to Sam, you should tell me. I'll put your name in the afternotes, if you'll let me. ^_^