Chapter 10

Unborn Child

"You're kidding, right?" Ed said aloud, convinced he was going mad.

"Nope! My name's Wolfrik," the boy said, perpetually bright. "Wolfrik Curtis. But everybody calls me 'Wolf.'"

I can already tell this kid has a big ego just by his nickname! Ed exclaimed to himself. But if he's Izumi's son, then that means… It meant that he existed only here, just as Teresa did, being that Trisha was dead…

"Something wrong?" Wolf asked, tilting his head to one side.

"Um, no, nothing!" Ed assured. Was there anyone else he'd meet who wasn't supposed to be alive, and vice versa?

Wolf glowered at him suspiciously.

"Say, Wolfrik, would you let me follow you back to your house? I need to speak with your mom." Actually, he needed to find Teresa, but Wolf needn't know that.

"Why?" Wolf asked slowly. "Don't you remember the way?"

"Look kid, it's been –! How long has it been?"

"Five years?" Wolf filled in for him.

"Yeah – it's been five years since I was last in Germany; how can you expect me to remember everything?" Ed asked shrewdly, crossing his arms.

"I thought you, as you put it, 'had the memory of an elephant'?" Wolf said, adding obnoxious quotation marks from his hands to emphasize the quote, his face strewn to look crude and egotistic – copying the humdrum Edmund.

"Well –!" Ed buried his face in his hands, letting out a cry of frustration. "I lied, okay?!" he said, bending to be face-to-face with his – alternate – teacher's son.

"I thought you said you never lied, either," Wolf shot back, grinning smugly. Ed wanted to punch that smug little grin right off his face. Too bad he had a conscience. Then again, Alphonse wasn't here to stop him.

"Something wrong, Edmund?" Wolf asked, sneering. He knew he had Ed.

"AHHGG! I CAN'T TAKE THIS KID!" Ed screamed to the heavens, scrubbing his eyes with his hands and wobbling every which way. He snapped back onto the innocent-eyed Wolf, hands twitching in anger. "Take me to Izumi's house, or so help me, I will –"

"Wolf? Wolf?!"

"Mom, there's a weird guy pretending to be Edmund prowling around here!" Wolf shouted at the top of his lungs, skipping around the corner to Izumi's call.

Ed blinked stupidly at the place the boy had been nanoseconds before, gone in a flash. "Hey, wha –?! GET BACK HERE!" he commanded, whirling around. He saw alternate Izumi leaning down to her alternate son, eyes wide with shock, Wolf glaring at him distrustfully. Izumi stood straight, giving Ed an adoring look.

"My, Edmund, what're you doing around here so late?" she asked inquisitively.

Ed hesitated. "Is Terry in there?" he asked hopefully, perking up with interest.

"He's obviously not Edmund so I don't see why you're cozying up to him," Wolf muttered somewhere below Ed. Ed assured himself Izumi thought it no more than child's play, as she paid him no heed.

"Yes, Teresa is with us," Izumi said, smiling irrefutably. She seemed no different from the real Izumi, except maybe… happier. She ushered Wolf around the corner, saying, "I thought getting one visitor was strange enough."

Ed sighed in relief. "Good."

Izumi motioned to a single white door in their dead end, the edges lit with the light from the inside. "Come on in. There's plenty of space and tea. I will admit I didn't expect you to return here so quickly, though," she said, chuckling.

Ed said, "Well, you know me…"

Sig was chopping lettuce and mushrooms in the yellow-tiled kitchen, light coruscating throughout the entire kitchen-living room area, on their china and silverware, and into the dining room. As before, it was warm and homey, aglow with matrimony. Wolfrik trotted briskly over to Sigfried the moment the front door closed, jumping into his arms. Izumi followed closely behind.

"Dad, guess what I saw at church…!"

Ed would have watched the intimate exchange between father and son, – not knowing himself how such a thing took place, – but instead saw Teresa in the small outcropping of the kitchen to the living room, head inclined into the tea cup she squeezed in her lap, bated, as though in some chronic state. There, the light began to splay in dark shadows around her face and figure. He passed the happy family of three, and sat on the lumpy couch next to Teresa.

"We should really get back soon," Ed said. "You really worried Von and Alfons. We shouldn't leave them hanging."

Terry cocked her head up, getting her hair out of her eyes at this, breathing loudly. "Go away, Ed," she said breathily. "Von and Alfons sent you out after me, didn't they? Well too bad. I need to be alone for a while." She didn't look at him, facing the dark doorway at the end of the couch. What room lay there, Ed did not know, nor could tell.

Ed could feel the anger inside him spark at her apathy toward her own family's – or "soon-to-be" family's – feelings, and did his best to down it. "Von and Alfons didn't send me – I came looking for you on my own accord because I could see how much it troubled them and didn't want you to get hurt and only worry them more!" Ed said heatedly, his voice accidentally rising to a low shout.

"Why should you care what happens to me or Von or Alfons?" Teresa spat back at him with an ironic smirk. "What's made you care so much about how we feel or what we think? You don't know one thing about me. About us. Just shut up and leave me alone."

Hearing such words in spoken by that voice, with such a vicious edge to it, made Ed shiver. He could never imagine Trisha saying something so cruel, with such twisted humor in her voice and expression. He was shocked more than anything, not only by Terry's semblance toward Trisha, but because of Teresa herself. She'd never been so pessimistic before now. "What the hell is wrong with you?" Ed heard himself saying. "I thought it was you who said they wanted this, or don't you remember that?!" he yelled, standing over her.

Teresa was more surprised than anyone, Izumi, Sig, and Wolf, inattentive to their chafed argument, now viewers of the scene. They shuffled into the bedrooms to the right of the kitchen to give Ed and Terry some privacy.

"Don't you remember that?" Ed asked again, more quietly now.

Terry juggled the teacup in her lap between her hands for a while, as it was empty, then answered, "Yes. I do." Ed was going to breathe in an exasperated sigh, but she amended her statement. "I want to... but... I also find myself wanting to wait," Teresa said. "I don't want to be tied down so early in life. I want to explore. I want to create. I want to..." She shrugged to herself, still juggling the tiny teacup between her fingers. "I want to be able to go places no one's ever seen before," she whispered, smiling at the meticulously-painted dragon lilies and lily pads on her teacup.

Explore and create, huh? Ed thought. It almost sounds like she craves to go to Amestris as much as I do...

Ed stuck out his hand to help her to her feet. Finally, Teresa did look up at him. He pulled her off the couch, and took the teacup away from her, setting it on the table with the rest of the tea set. "Hey, me too," Ed said. He was sure he'd never heard anything more truthful in his life.

By the time they left the Curtises' house, it was dawn. Wolfrik had long since been sent to bed, and Izumi and Sigfried had asked if they wished to stay until daylight, but both said Von would be angry and worried enough with them returning anonymously during the night. So the Curtises waved, yawned, and went back inside while Terry wheeled her bike around the corner to their dead end, Ed walking beside her. The eastern end of the sky had just begun to turn cerulean, the stars fading away, one by one. All was dead silent, minus the wind rustling the branches of the trees, the occasional dog barking heard somewhere in the distance. The birds hadn't even begun to sing their morning tunes yet; the moon cast long shadows through the trees as Terry and Ed walked on the path under them.

At one point, Terry and Ed stopped to listen to a mourning dove sing its melancholy song, then pressed on.

"Do you think my dad would be able to convince my mother to move the wedding to be after I'd turned sixteen?" Teresa asked suddenly.

"I don't know," Ed said, which, he didn't. He had only met the Elricks yesterday, and didn't know their habits or personalities well enough to predict what they'd say.

"I guess it's my fault for not saying something yesterday," Terry whispered with that same wry smirk, her voice thick. Her bike wheel squeaked, and she was going to stop again, this time to wipe her face. The mourning dove call emitted from somewhere behind Terry, much closer than before. Ed didn't have time to counteract, suddenly outnumbered and ambushed by seven dark shadows. One of them scooped up Teresa, covering her mouth, her bike clunking against the ground. She thrashed in the man's arms, but they were thicker and stronger than the metal tubes Ed worked with at the rocket building company. Two stood between Ed and Teresa and her abductor. Three more behind him. Another took up Terry's bike with deft swiftness, as she stood, her hood falling from her face. Beneath, was dark skin.

"Gypsies," Ed said with a galvanizing sort of disgust. "You're the ones working with Envy, aren't you?" he accused, giving them each their own, different glare, in spite of them being covered by pallid hoods.

"What do we do with him?" the one curvy figure behind him inquired, pointing. The gypsy who'd gotten the bike had recovered her hood, and now stood beside the bulky one who held Teresa. "We can't have him following us," said Bulk. That was perplexing to Edward. Was abducting him not what Envy had in mind? Were they really after Teresa instead of him? Tears from the previous conversation had streaked her face. She was startled, but no longer tried to escape. She seemed more perplexed than afraid, like him.

"I don't know why you want Terry," Ed assumed, standing his ground. "But something tells me you aren't following any orders given by Envy."

Bulk laughed. "Guess right, kid," he said with that gruff voice of his, momentarily loosening his grip on Teresa to gesture to him in congratulations. She took this chance to thrash against his larger-than-pipe-width arms again, but he retained a tight hold on her, saying, "Whoa, now."

A vein in Ed's head pulsed. "Let go of her."

"And why would we do that?" Bike Holder said mockingly. "We'll definitely get a hefty reward if we bring her in, as she is part of the so-called 'plan.' Why in the world would we give her to you for free?"

"Oh yeah? And who's paying?" Ed shouted back. Why he didn't transmute his arm into a blade and demand they release her kept crossing his mind. He had to remind himself that that was impossible every ten seconds, his fury setting his mind out of focus.

"Quiet! We've told him too much already," said a tall, middle-aged man, one of the two keeping Ed separated from Bulk and Bike Holder. Though his hood was pulled down, from the few pink withers of the sun in the sky, Ed saw an intense glare looking down on him. He knew that vengeful glare.

"S-Scar..." Ed breathed, caught between fear and fury. He wanted to attack, he desperately wanted to attack. He killed Winry's parents. But he knew he couldn't. He was outnumbered. Outgunned. Unguarded. There was no way he'd win, not alone like this, when they were so much stronger.

"Right. Let's go."

Bulk and Bike Holder ducked into the cover of the trees, vanishing instantly. The three behind Ed went next, then the one beside the middle-aged man. When he didn't follow, one came back.

"C'mon, Isaiah," he said. It was the boy from that time before, the one who had given a bloody nose by Envy. Somehow, Ed knew if he moved a muscle, this towering man named Isaiah, who was exactly alike to Scar, would ensure he didn't pass, and he'd probably get a concussion in the process.

"What do we do with him?" Isaiah growled.

"We'll just leave him here; he's not going to follow us. Now, come on."

"No," Isaiah said. "He will follow us. I can see it in his eyes."

Ed gulped. Why was he so afraid of someone who'd never laid a finger on him? Maybe it's because the last time I saw him, he reduced my arm to a hundred little pieces. And this time he wouldn't be able to repair it pronto. Ed wasn't able to utter one word in his defense before Isaiah chopped him on the back of the neck, the trees and brightening sky closing in, then shading to black.

Ed woke in the exact place and position he'd fallen cold, something prodding his arm.

"Wake up."

He groaned, turning away from the voice.

"Wake up."

He was prodded again, and turned back the other way.

"Wake up already, midget."

"WHO'RE YOU CALLING –?!"

"Finally, you're awake," Wolf cut in, crouched on his haunches beside Edward. He plopped down on the grass, wet with dew, placing a stick on the ground beside him. "You weren't waking up, so I started poking you with a stick," he explained, fully reposed, unruffled by Ed's outburst. "I would have poked your other arm, but it's protected by some weird metal thing."

Ed rubbed his eyes, nearly popping his right eye right out of its socket since the glove covering his automail was missing. He snatched it from the ground, also rolling his sleeve back down, still collecting his thoughts. "How'd you find me, kid?" He'd blacked out because...? "Wait, Teresa's in danger!" he burst again.

Wolf cleaned his ear with one pinkie. "First of all, my name is not 'kid,' and secondly, STOP SHOUTING!" he screamed, overriding Ed's volume by a landslide. Right now, however, Ed did not care. He got to his feet.

"We have to find Terry; she was taken by –!"

"By gypsies? Yes, I know, I know," Wolf said, dismissing Ed as though it meant nothing.

"You know?"

"The moment I asked my mom where you guys had gone and she answered you'd left in the early hours of dawn, I knew there would be trouble," Wolf said, standing as well. "I saw them plotting something suspicious while walking home from school the other day."

"IF YOU KNEW THAT WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US?!" Ed yelled, using his – rare – advantage of height to lean over the kid.

"I DIDN'T HEAR WHAT THEY WERE SAYIN', GENIUS!" Wolf returned, standing on his toes to come level with Ed's chin. "AND BESIDES, WHAT IDIOT GOES OUT ON THE STREETS OF MUNICH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?! ON THE ABANDONED STREETS OF THE SLUMS, AT THAT! THAT'S GOT TO TAKE A REAL STRIKE OF BRILLIANCE RIGHT THERE TO BE THAT STUPID!"

Ed was going to retaliate, but was interrupted by his own thoughts. This snot-headed little brat has got a point, hate to say it. "Fine, fine. Do you know where they went, then?" Ed asked, sure he knew the answer. There's no way he could know that! Ed thought brazenly, awaiting his well-deserved accolade from Wolfrik. He could already hear the belated shouts as the kid fought to find a point to get back at him with, failing to do so, horribly. "If you don't know, you can always –"

"I know where it is."

"WHAT?! PROVE IT!"

"That is, I would know where it is, if certain hot-headed teenagers stopped yelling so loud that I go deaf for a few minutes," Wolf said, picking out his ear with his pinkie again.

"MMF – WHY, YOU –"

"Nope, still don't know where it is." Wolf checked an imaginary wristwatch.

Ed howled, his throat tearing. HOW CAN HE BE SO CALM WHEN SOMEONE HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED AND POSSIBLY SOLD INTO SLAVERY?! Ed's internal voice shrieked so boisterously he felt it crash against his skull and perhaps even his brain stem, tipping it sideways. Calm, be cool and calm. Face this kid like what he says means nothing. Ed took a few breaths to compose himself – well, probably more than a few. "Fine," he said, tone dry. "Wolf, where did they take Teresa?"

"Wait, wait, I'm getting something." Wolf put a hand to his ear as though a fairy were whispering in it. "Oh, it seems that you also need to tell a certain 'kid' that he was right and the stupid midget-of-a-teenager wasn't," he said, smiling cutely.

That smile looked anything but cute to Ed, again fighting all impulse to punch him. Ten minutes later, Ed said, more in small hisses than actual speech, "Wolfrik Curtis was right and I wasn't."

"Right about what again?" Wolf asked, his "cute smile" now a complacent smirk.

"You were right about me being an idiot and going out onto the 'abandoned streets of the slums' at the time I did." Ed was sure to add quotations to mimic Wolf's last night.

"All right, good enough." Wolf was satisfied with that, and knew you could only annoy someone so far before they really did pound you into the ground. "The gypsy holdup, hideout, and trade-in is on the southern peak of Munich," he said dignifiedly, about to go on when he realized Ed had already begun striding in that direction. "Hey, hey, I'm not finished yet!" Wolf pulled on Ed's brown coat to slow him down.

"Get off, kid!" Ed tried to strip the boy off him, but he only clung tighter.

"I told you, my name's not 'kid!' And I'm coming with you!" Wolf insisted.

"What?! No way! There's no way you're coming with me to a place like that! I'll find it on my own!"

Wolf managed to halt Ed and turn him around. "How can you expect to get in when they've already seen your face?"

Ed had no answer, and could see the same complacency hidden in Wolf's face when he saw this.

"You're going to need my help," he said. Which was probably true.

"All right, you're coming with me," Ed agreed. Wolf's expression changed from dead serious to a boy whose thrill came out of the promise of adventure. It was funny how much to he was reminded of... Terry. For once, he wasn't reminded of one of the many he'd left in Amestris.

Wolf jumped for joy, said, "I won't let you down, Mister!"

"There're rules, though," Ed said.

"Like what?" Wolf asked incredulously, sure that nothing could damper an opportunity so extraordinary.

"You have to do exactly what I say, and you have to stay by me at all times."

"Okay, okay, sure can do! I swear I won't go anywhere you can't see me," Wolf guaranteed, hand on his heart. "Let's go!"

"One more thing."

"Uhhgg whaaaatt?" Wolf said.

"If somehow we get into a situation, and you see a way out... don't wait for me. Leave me behind." Of course, Ed hoped beyond hope it wouldn't come to that, but there's no way he could face Izumi, in this world or not, if he'd allowed her only son to be harmed in any way. "Got it?"

Wolf seemed to understand the gravity of Ed's request, and sobered at his words. "I promise," he said.

Ed turned back in the direction of the eastern slums. "Well, good. It'd be better than having to lug your ass all the way back to your mommy if you were unconscious."

Wolf smiled. "Got it."

They started down the path.

"Um, Mister," Wolf said discreetly, when they'd reached the halfway point on the path back to the eastern slums.

"Yeah?"

"You do know we're going the wrong way, right?"

I will say, the story has taken many unexpected turns lately, even for me! I've had this story planned out, beginning to end ever since the second chapter, but dang! I still stray from it sometimes. I do that to add to the story, and add for my own interest~ As you know, this story was on hiatus for a while, and doing this keeps that enthrallment going! I hope it does for you, too!

Wolf has got to be one of my favorite OCs to date, I've got to say. He's so obnoxious, yet I can't help but love him! X3

I actually did it. I actually got two chapters out this month! YUS! I'll try my hardest to do the same next month, and get the next chapter out soon!