Chapter 10

Two Years Later...Again

It had been two years since Ed, Al, Satori, and her son Ryokou had come to the non-alchemic world. Ed and Al had closed the Gate shortly after their arrival, and they had set off to find the creator of the atomic bomb...or at least they had hoped.

Two years later and they were still far from close to finding it. Satori, Ed, and Al had found jobs working for the police department in their area– though it was hard getting in with their co-workers, as most were still pro-Nazi– and had gotten an apartment near the school they had enrolled Ryo in. The apartment was slightly more spacious than the apartments supplied by the military back home, and had three bedrooms, two baths, a living room and a kitchen. Oh, and a small dining room. A dining room!

That morning they all sat around the breakfast table, eating Al's slightly runny eggs, Ed's bit-too-burnt toast, and Satori's crispy sausage. Their uniform jackets were across the backs of their chairs.

"I still think you should change your hair color," Ed said. "It attracts too much attention."

"You sound like the enrollment officer!" Satori said bitterly.

"It's a good idea." Al put down his fork. "I cut my hair. What's the matter with changing your hair color? It looked nice when it was chestnut."

"That was when I was Seiji, who I am not anymore. I am Satori Yabusame."

"On the outside," Ed countered. "On the inside you're still Seiji!"

Ryo watched as the adults– Ed was 20, Al was 14, and Satori was 27– bickered back and forth across the table. At eight years old, he was in second grade, and had been offered a chance to skip at least two grades. Both Satori and Ryo had declined, wanting to stay in his current grade.

"I am the oldest!" Satori enforced her words loudly. "And I say I don't want to change my hair!"



"Do you want to get us killed!" Ed shot back. "You saw what they did to people who didn't play by the government's rules! All non-Aryans will be killed! You could be killed!"

"Oh, and I suppose that because you have blonde hair you think you're safe??" Satori bickered. "Look at your eyes, Ed! They're gold! Aryans have blue eyes! You're just as likely to be shot as I am!"

That shut Ed up. He slouched at his end of the table, stewing. Al sighed. Satori wouldn't change her mind no matter how hard they pushed the issue. There was only one more thing to try, and Al took it:

"What about Ryo?"

Satori froze. "They harm my son, they die."

"If you don't do what they ask, they could take Ryo and then claim you did something horrible. This is a new world, Satori, with new rules. You don't have an edge anymore."

"It's just hair!"

"That's right," Ed said. "It is just hair. So why won't you change it?"

Oooh! Zing!

Satori glared at Ed across the table. She hated it when he was right.

"I'll get it changed today." She sighed.

Two hours later, a cab dropped them all off at a salon. Satori cringed as she spotted the words BARBER written across the door in bold black letters on the grey brick. They entered and a man looked up from one of the chairs, reading a newspaper. He beamed upon seeing them.

"Ah! Customers!" he had a German accent, with small, beady blue eyes and thinning blonde hair. "What can I do for the lady, or for the gentleman?"

Ed tensed at the thought of cutting off his long blonde hair.

"Not for me." he said.

"I would like my hair color changed." Satori said, with a lump in her throat.

"What color?" the barber asked.

"Brown."

He eyed her suspiciously. Anyone wanting their hair changed from red to brown was a non-Aryan in his book. Especially if their hair was originally such a gory red.

"Sit, sit!" he beckoned her into the chair he had just vacated.

Satori sat, cringing at the noise the leather of the chair made as she did so. The barber scurried to her back, and looked at her hair.

"You want a trim?" he asked.

"I don't see why not." Satori shrugged.

He grabbed a pair of scissors.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" Al smiled, as they walked away from the shop.

Satori moaned as she saw her reflection in a puddle at her feet. Her hair was now a chestnut brown again, and cut to the tops of her ears. Gone was the hard-ass look, and out came the old Seiji.

Exactly what she had been trying to avoid.

"It's alright." she grumbled.

"It's just hair, Seiji." Ed rolled his eyes.

"If it's just hair, Edward, then how come you didn't get a haircut too??" Satori yelled.

With that, she turned away from the brothers and stomped off. Ryo stood there with the Elric brothers, looking somewhere between confused and understanding.

Satori walked along the sidewalk by the park. Children were running and laughing on the grassy field, and their parents sat on benches, talking and laughing amongst themselves. It used to be that Satori would attract unwanted glares and looks from most of the parents if she dared bring Ryo into the park. But she no longer did, with her newly dyed hair.

Ed had been right. She had gotten mad at him over nothing. In the end, it was just hair. But at the same time she resisted the desire to go back and apologize. Her hair had defined her. She had died and gotten reborn with that hair.

It was otherwise unnatural to change anything about her new body without feeling at least some resentment.

Walking past a park bench, she paused. The woman who sat there looked familiar...Old, grey hair– she wasn't a looker, and certainly not one to attract much, if any, attention. Yet somehow...

"Dante?" Satori asked tentatively.

"Hello, Yabusame," she did not look up from her book.



"I thought you were killed by Gluttony back in the underground city."

"I was."

"Then how are you here?"

"His stomach was a door. All I needed to do was transmute him from the inside, and here I am."

"But you were in Lyra's body."

"When my soul took Lyra's place within her body, her soul traveled across the Gate. I couldn't get into Lyra's body on this side even if I had alchemy. There is nowhere for her soul to go now. So I'm stuck here, to wait out my days until I die."

Satori shook her head, chuckling. She didn't feel sorry for Dante. For years the woman had been using Philosopher's Stones to move from one body to the next– to be immortal. Now her time had come where she couldn't anymore. There was nothing to feel sorry for.

"So what do you want to do?" Satori asked.

"I told you the truth back in our world, Seiji," Dante confessed. "I wanted to come here and start over."

She closed her book and took Satori's hands in hers.

"This is what I had wanted, Seiji—"

"Will you not call me that, please?"

"Why not?"

"It's not my name anymore."

"You look the same as you did before you died. Why should you not take on your old name?"

"Because I already enrolled as Yabusame, and I don't want to be Seiji anymore."

Dante nodded.



"You still love Envy."

Satori said nothing.

"It's all right to admit it, Satori." Dante scolded. "He will be reborn, and if it is meant to be, you will find one another."

"But at the same time—"

"You love Edward."

Satori nodded.

"You have to make a choice. You loved Edward, but you loved Envy so much that you were willing to marry him. Now that isn't something to define love by, but it is a start."

"Love sucks, Dante."

"Oh, believe me, child, I know. I have years of experience."