Disclaimer - I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist
A/N - Hey, sorry it's been so long since an update, guys! I've been seriously overworked lately because of crap like 8th Grade projects and tax season (I have job as a CPA's assistant and I have to dedicate a bunch of my time to imputing 1040s and LCCs or LLCs or whatever and all that boring stuff). So I've been kind of stressed out and short on time. So again, so, so sorry!
But in other news, I've recently found out that in high school I will be in all honors classes including Latin 1 and Pre-engineering! Yaaaay! Okay sorry that has nothing to do with you I'm just a little too proud of myself . . .
Moving on.
New chapter!
. . .
"Come on Winry," Ed pleaded. "Wake up already!"
Ed had carried her over to the sofa and laid her down after she had fallen, unconscious, into his arms. The only problem was - that had been a few hours ago. Ed was kneeling on the ground next to her, trying to wake her up. Al was pacing across the living room.
"What if she's in a coma?" Al panicked. "How are we going to get her to a hospital? We're supposed to be dead!"
"Calm down!" Ed commanded his younger brother. "She's not in a coma! She's just entered a temporary state of shock . . ."
"I knew this was a bad idea!" Al exclaimed, his voice cracking slightly. "This is a high stress situation and I haven't slept in two days . . ."
"Yeah, well your record is four years so I'm not exactly worried," Ed snapped.
Al looked somewhat offended. "Hey!"
Ed took a deep breath. "Sorry . . . That wasn't right. I'm just . . ."
Al shook his head. "Let's just worry about waking her up . . ."
"Winry . . ." Ed shook her shoulders lightly. "Come on, Gearhead . . ."
She mumbled something in auditable and her eye lids began to flick open.
Al rushed over and knelt down next to his brother.
Winry stared up at them for a second. "Be honest . . . How much have I had to drink?"
Grins cracked across the Elrics' faces.
"Nothing, as far as we know," Al told her.
Slowly, she sat up. "Well, then why the hell am I seeing my dead best friends?"
Edward noticed that she had started crying. "Hey, Winry . . . It's okay! Just let us explain . . ."
"We're not really dead!" Al told her.
"No shit," Winry said. "Either that or I'm seeing ghosts . . . Have I been dreaming for five years or something?"
Ed shook his head. "No, Winry . . . We had to stage our own deaths. It was Mustang's idea. We're trying to hide from Envy . . . We put my arm and leg on a fake body and Mustang set off a small explosion. Al and I came here from Central. We were hoping to beat you home so we could explain but . . ."
Winry was silent for a moment, trying to decide if she believed him or not.
Ed looked at Al with a goofy grin, then back to Winry. "Het klinkt een beetje raar, toch weet ik wat ik zeg."
"What?" Winry asked.
"Inside joke," Ed told her. "Now, are you okay?"
Winry grabbed her head and clocked on the head. "Dumbass . . ."
Before Ed had time to react, she did something totally un-Winry like. She grabbed the front of Ed's mud-caked shirt and pulled herself into his chest, sobbing. "You idiots . . . No, I'm not okay!"
Al put his hand on her back and patted gently. "Winry, we're really sorry we had to make you think we were dead."
Winry shook her head. "I know I'm dreaming . . . I must be."
Ed held her out at arms length in order to see her face. "Tell you what? Why don't you go back up to bed? I promise we'll still be here in the morning, and then you'll have to believe us."
Winry shook her head. "I can't . . . I'm afraid . . ."
"Hey, I promise," Ed repeated. "When have I never broken a promise?"
. . .
When Winry woke up the next morning, she found herself incapable of getting out of bed. What if it had only been a dream? What if she opened the door to the guest room and found it empty?
He promised, she told herself.
After much mental convincing, Winry swung her legs over the side of the bed and let her feet slide down and sit the cool wooden floorboards.
Slowly, she walked from her bed to the door, where she slid her shoes into her slippers. Once in the hallway, she turned left and took exactly five steps, the floor boards creaking under her. When she looked up, she found herself facing the door to the guest room. She placed a hand on the knob, but hesitated to open it. If they weren't there, it would feel like losing them all over again, but she would never know unless she tried.
Cursing her own curiosity, Winry turned the doorknob and pushed it open.
Light was pouring into the room from the small crack between the window and it's curtains. When she looked further into the room, her heart did a few back flips. They were there. Her Elrics, her boys, her best friends . . . Her Ed and her Al. Home at last . . . It was too good to be true.
Al was occupying the bed, his face burrowed under the covers with the rest of him. The only way Winry could tell it was him was by his hair. She sighed and shook her head slightly when she saw that he had multiple leaves tangled in his light brown bird's nest.
She looked over at Ed, who had made himself a make-do bed out of spare blankets on the floor. Winry noticed that his left leg (which was sticking our from under the covers) wasn't automail, but rather normal prothstetic, which explained why he had been standing so lop-sided the night before. He still had mud all over his face, in his hair, and on his clothes.
"What'd he wrestle a pig for his lunch?" she muttered softly. She tip-toed out of the room, and returned a few moments later holding a comb and two wet face-cloths.
First, she walked over to Edward and knelt down next to him. She gently rubbed the damp cloth against his face to remove the mud.
He stirred slightly and looked at her through cracked eyelids. "What are you doing, Winry?"
"Shut up, Alchemy Freak," she muttered. "You're a mess . . ."
He watched as she continued to clean his face, then use the comb to brush dry mud from his bangs. She rose, wiped the comb off on the capri pants she had fallen asleep in. She then walked over to his younger brother, pulled back is comforter a little so she could use the other washcloth to clean the dirt from his nose, forehead, and cheeks. Then, Winry used the comb to get the leaves and twigs out of his hair.
Edward couldn't help but smile a little. It was almost as if Winry had the natural-born instinct to help people. Something she most likely inherited from her parents.
He shut his eyes as she walked by, though he didn't quite know why he would pretend to be asleep. Maybe because he was still too tired for her to make him wake up.
Before exiting the room, Winry paused in the doorway and smiled a little.
"Well, they might be thick and careless," he heard her whisper to no one. "But they're home . . ."
She must have really missed us . . . Ed thought before he drifted back into dreamland.
. . .
Dublith, Amestris
Envy, Pride, Lust, and Gluttony walked through the streets of Dublith, trying to draw attention to themselves. They needed the military to come after them, but they couldn't actually capture them. That's why they didn't make an appearance until they were about to depart from wherever they were at the time.
Pride looked around the streets, feeling the oddest sense of déjà vu. Even though she had never been out of Envy's underground hideout until that moment, she felt as though she had seen it all before, a million times.
"Akira?"
Pride turned towards the boy who had called out the name; he was addressing her.
She gasped. She knew him . . . She remembered? But how?
"Akira!" he repeated, trying to get her attention. He had slightly unruly black hair that fell just past his ears. His bangs fell over his pale face, nearly hiding his deep brown eyes. For some reason, Pride knew every single feature of his face by heart. A small scar under his mouth-
-from the stray cat in the alley, she thought. But how do I know that?
Pride snapped herself out of it. "No, I'm sorry. You're looking for someone else. My name's not Akira. But if you need held finding her . . .?"
The boy's face fell and he shook his head. "No, I'm sorry . . . I think I'm going crazy. Your hair is black and your eyes are purple, hers were both light brown."
"Were?" Pride repeated.
The boy looked down at the ground. "She died a few months ago . . . There was a car and . . . Again, I'm sorry. My mistake."
The boy then walked away without bothering to say another word.
"I'm sorry," she whispered after him. "Truly . . ."
"Pride!" Gluttony shouted to her. "Move it!"
"Ah, sorry!" Pride turned away and ran off towards her "brother".
When she reached him, she found Lust trying to calm a raging Envy. "Calm down . . . Please you're overreacting!"
"What's happened?" Pride asked.
In response, Gluttony shoved a newspaper from four days prior into her hands. "They're dead."
"Envy, please just listen to reason!" List begged. "Think of the others you seek vengeance on! Mustang! Think of Mustang, he's still alive, right? Let's continue on, complete the Seven, then go forth with our plan!"
Envy paused his tantrum and straightened out his back. "You're right. The best revenge I can get now is to kill all the humans those stupid brothers tried to hard to protect!"
. . .
Resembool, Amestris
Edward awoke again a few ours later to the sweet smell of pancakes. He and Al went downstairs and found Winry in the kitchen, cooking.
"Mmm, breakfast!" Al said happily. "I'm gonna go take a quick shower, make sure to save me some!"
He ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the bathroom.
Winry smiled. "He acts like nothing's changed . . ."
Ed shrugged. "It's Al. He's always been a little oblivious."
"He's sweet," Winry corrected. "I wish I could act that way; just let things go back to normal. Well . . . our normal. But every time I look at you I feel like I'm seeing a ghost."
Ed noticed that her eyes were glued to her hands; not looking at him. "I-I'm . . . uh, sorry, Winry. For making you think Al and I were dead."
She looked up at him, slightly surprised. "It's okay . . . You did what you had to do to hide from Envy. I'd rather that than you actually being killed by him. Especially now that he's got that creepy Gluttony guy that eats people-"
"What?" Ed asked, bewildered.
"Well, when I saw him outside the hardware store, he had these two freaky people he called Lust and Gluttony with him and-"
"You went near him?" Edward's voice rose slightly.
"I was just asking him a question," Winry explained; startled by his reaction. "Which, might I add, he did not answer."
Before she had time to process what was going on, Ed had crossed the kitchen and used his arm to pull her into his chest.
"Winry, don't you ever go anywhere remotely close to a homunculus again, do you hear me?" his voice was stern. "You're lucky you weren't killed!"
She pulled away from him, blushing. It wasn't like Ed to act like that . . . There must be something else bothering him. She needed to change the subject. "I'm going to start on your automail later, I only have one customer scheduled today, then I'm all yours."
"How long do you think it's going to take?" Ed asked her.
She flipped a few pancakes on to his plate. "How long was it last time?"
Three days," Ed replied.
"Then I'll have it by tomorrow night," she said with a wink.
He chuckled. "I think that's impossible even for you."
She grinned. "You'll just see . . ."
He rolled his eyes. "Whatever. So when this customer comes should Al and I go down to the basement?"
Winry shook her head. "Won't be necessary. He's blind and the only other person that comes with him is his orphaned niece who he takes care of, and she's a toddler."
"Brilliant," Ed replied. He shoved the fork in his mouth and sighed. "These are really good, Winry. Much better than the time your tired to cook us breakfast when we were kids . . ."
"I was eight!" she defended.
"And now we're twenty-one."
"Pretty old . . ."
"Yep," he agreed. "But still like family."
"Not 'like' family, 'a' family," Winry told him. "Don't forget that."
Ed smiled. There were those words again. Don't forget.
After a few moments, Winry spoke. "I waited, you know. For five years I waited . . . I refused to give up on you."
"Really?" Ed asked. "You never just once . . . Assumed?"
She gave him another pancake. "At first, I was sure I'd never see you again. But then I thought about when you and Al were still trying to get your bodies back . . . You guys hadn't come home once in nearly four years, and when you did, it was because you had completely destroyed your arm and Al was just a pile of scraps. I figured that someday the two of you would find your way back; needing repairs."
She tapped his empty automail part and winked. "Look at that; I was right."
Ed opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by Al reentering the kitchen, wrapped in a towel. "Hey, Winry; Brother and I don't have any other clothes."
"Check the upstairs linen closet; Granny and I always keep some extra stuff in there for our patients."
"Thanks!" Al exited the room again.
"You." Winry pointed at Edward. "Shower. Now."
Ed stood up and bowed. "Yes, your royal highness."
Winry rolled her eyes and watched as Edward walked out of the room. He paused in the doorway, and called out in English, "God save the Queen!"
"What?" Winry asked.
Ed left without answering.
. . .
About ten minutes later, Winry left Al at the kitchen table and went upstairs to change out the brothers' dirty sheets. Ed was still in the shower, so Winry didn't bother to knock before entering.
First, she went to the bed and yanked off the quilt and sheets, which she shoved into the hamper on the farther side of the room. Then she took Al's pillow case. On top of his mattress, she left a folded pile of clean blankets.
He's nearly twenty now, Winry thought. He can make up his own bed.
She walked over to Ed's make-do sleeping bag on the floor and did the same thing. When she lifted the pillow, however, she found something entirely new.
It was a photograph, with about 20 or so people smiling up at her. Some of them she recognized; Ed and Al, Mustang and Hawkeye (although they looked a little different, something about them that she couldn't exactly pin point), Gracia, Granny, Fletcher, Russell, one girl who looked an awful lot like Rose . . . Then it got weird. She saw two people who couldn't possibly have been there; herself and the late General Maes Hughes.
She picked up the photograph and walked over to Al's bed, where she sat. She flipped the picture over and read the writing on the back.
From left to right; Mrs. Williamson, Patricia, Wendy, Roy, Lisa, Edward (with Amanda), Alphonse (with Lewis), Noah, Fletcher, Nina, Russell, Mr. Andrews, Mrs. Andrews, Gracia, and Hughes.
Winry flipped the paper over again and took a closer look at the girl called "Wendy". When she looked harder, she saw that while they bear a striking resemblance; Wendy was clearly a few years older.
She looked at the back again. Below all the names was a note.
Ed,
Remember; you're always welcome. We love you, and this is your home too. Happy 21st birthday!
With love,
Lisa, Roy, Mandy, & Lewis
"Hmm . . ." Winry once again turned to the front of the photo and looked at Ed and Al's faces. They were both smiling and appeared to be happy. But where were they? And who were they with?
Winry jumped when she heard the water from the shower turn off. She ran back to Ed's pillow and shoved the photo under it. She then ran from the room.
In the hallway, she was so frazzled that she accidentally ran right into Edward.
"Whoa, slow down there," Ed told her jokingly.
She stepped back and opened her mouth to apologize when he noticed that the only thing he was wearing was a towel around his waist. Her complexion quickly changed to that of a tomato. God, when did he get so muscular? Gah! I did not just think that!
She was about to turn around and keep walking back to the kitchen so that he could get dressed when she noticed something. She reached out and rested her hand over his heart, her face now back to it's normal color.
"This scar . . ." she said. "What's it from? I've never seen it on you . . ."
"He pulled away. "N-nothing! I, uh fell . . . And yes you have, three years ago in Central."
Winry shook her head. "No, you were wearing a t-shirt under your clothes that day."
He was silent. His eyes were pleading for her to just drop it.
"Ed," she said sternly. "Turn around."
For a moment, he looked as though he were ready to argue, but then, he sighed and did as she asked.
When Winry saw his back, she gasped. There was a scar there too; clearly an exit wound from whatever pierced his chest. "It went right through! But, how . . .?"
Ed turned around to face her. "You mean Rose didn't tell you about it at all?"
"Tell me what?" Winry asked; on the verge of hysterics. "Edward where the hell have you been?"
Ed's eyes nearly popped out of his head. She was about to do the crying thing. He gestured towards his and Al's bedroom. "Just let me get dressed, then I promise, I'll explain everything!"
Winry didn't even blink. Ed took that as a "yes" and left her standing alone in the hallway.
Whatever that was must have gone right through his heart, Winry thought. I never really figured out how Al got his body back . . . What if Ed gave up part of his organs like Izumi did? What if he's going to die soon anyway, after all that?
Edward returned after what felt like hours. Winry hadn't moved a muscle.
"Okay . . ." she said after a moment. "I'm ready. Tell me everything."
Ed sighed and motioned for her to follow him. They went down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Al was sitting at the table eating his pancakes. Ed and Winry took the two seats across from him.
"Now, Winry," Ed said gently, earning him a startled glance from Alphonse. "I promise to tell you everything. But it has to stay a secret. Just like always."
Winry swallowed. This must be serious if he's actually reminding me to keep my mouth shut.
"Al you know; when Al and I were kids, we tried to resurrect our mother, and obviously failed," Ed began. "What we actually created was a homunculus, which is-"
"An artificial human," Winry recited. "I remember you saying something about it when my parents died. You actually made one?"
Ed nodded grimly. "It looked just like out mother, and even had some of her memories; but she wasn't our mom. She and the other homunculi wanted the Philosopher's Stone-"
"What for?" Winry asked.
"Dante - Teacher's teacher - was their master, and also our father's ex-girlfriend or wife or whatever. They had a son, who died and when Hohenheim tried to bring him back, he created Envy. But anyway, Dante and our dad were actually both over 400 year old, and they managed to live this long by stealing other people's bodies and attaching their souls using the stone."
Winry looked repulsed. "Your dad did that? That's disgusting."
Al nodded. "It gets worse. Dante planned on stealing Rose's body and then forcing Brother to be her sex slave!"
Ed's face turned bright red. "That's not true! She wanted to force me to marry her, which is totally different!"
Edward Elric: Orphan, child soldier, almost-sex slave. Alphonse Elric: Orphan, ex-disembodied soul, Winry thought. When all this blows over, I'm calling a psychologist.
"I still don't get what that has to do with you," Winry said aloud.
"Right, I was getting to that," Ed continued, forgetting about his brother's comment. "Dante wanted to use us as her pawns to get the stone. She did end up making one in Lior, out of a bunch of soldiers-"
"Out of?"
"A philosopher's stone is made of human souls," Al mentioned. "I thought we've been over this . . ."
"Everything you guys say is like a bussing in my ears," Winry told him honestly. "It takes a few tries for me to make sense of anything. And not to mention you're both terrible explainers, you leave out the most important details."
"We do not!" Ed defended. "As I was saying; they did make a stone. But it was made inside Al's armor. Somehow, it was attached to his soul. The homunculi kidnapped him and trapped me in a parallel universe. I wasn't in my own body though; I was in my other worldly doppelganger-"
"What?"
"I'll get to that in a second. When I escaped, Envy and I started fighting, and he stabbed me through the hear; killing me," Ed told her.
Winry's eyes stung. How was that even possible? She poked Ed's shoulder. He was solid.
"So I sacrificed myself and used the stone to bring Brother back," Al explained. "Then, he used alchemy to pull me back through the gate (which is the portal between dimensions) and in return, he became stuck there for two years until that whole thing in Central. Then I went back with him and regained my lost memories."
Winry's head was spinning. There they went skipping the important parts again.
"In the other universe, everyone who exists there has a double here, and vice versa," Ed added.
Well, that explains the picture . . . Winry thought. But everything else . . .
'Could you repeat that?" she asked. "But slower."
. . .
After going through the story at least five times (each time with deeper and deeper detail) Winry was confident she understood nearly everything.
"But, wait," she said, suddenly thinking of something potentially important. Something Ed had left out. "Ed's not a homunculus because you used the Philosopher's Stone, right Al?"
The younger brother nodded. "Right."
"But Ed didn't have the Philosopher's Stone, so how do we know that you're not one? Like Wrath; you just don't know it. Come to think of it, he didn't remember anything either, did he?"
"I never even thought of that! What if I really am a homunculus? Before Wrath ate human souls, he looked like any normal person!" Al exclaimed, easily slipping into crisis mode.
Winry sunk down in her chair a little. She had been expecting some straight, scientific answer. "Well, I mean I'm sure you're not Al it was just a stupid question I'd figured you had already thought of . . ."
Ed shook his head. "No, Al can't be a homunculus. I didn't bring him back to life - he was never dead. He was just on the other side of the gate. He probably doesn't remember it because he was passed out; like when Russell and Fletcher Tringham found him. All I did was trade places with him. Simple alchemy."
Al sighed. "Well, that's a relief."
"You're way too gullible, Al. First you thought I created you and gave you fake memories; now you've totally convinced yourself that you were a homunculus in under two seconds," Ed told him. "You really need to work on that . . ."
Alphonse opened his mouth to defend himself, but was interrupted by the doorbell. He jumped out of his chair. "Winry, who is it?"
"Just that blind man I was telling Ed about," Winry murmured as she stood up and went to answer the door. Ed got up and followed after her.
"Good morning!" Winry greeted when she opened the door.
"'Morning, Winry," the man replied. His eyes were glassy blue and unfocused. His black hair was sticking up in all different places, and the buttons of his shirt were unaligned. "You remember my niece, Amanda."
Ed's eyes shot down to meet a set of wide blue ones belonging to a tangled black haired toddler who appeared to have dressed herself. Bright blue sneakers, a frilly red dress shirt, and high-water kaki pants. The spitting image of a slightly raggedy Amanda Stanley.
Winry bent down so she was closer in height with the toddler. "Hey, Amanda!"
She wrinkled her nose at Winry.
Ed almost laughed. "I'll bet you like people to call you 'Mandy', huh?"
She nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah!"
Winry looked from Ed to the girl, then back again. She shook it off. "Okay, Mr. Frederick, come on in. This is one of my other customers, Ed; by the way."
The blind man held out his hand. "Henry, please."
Edward shook it. "Nice to meet you."
"Ed, why don't you take Mandy to the waiting room while I work on Mr. Frederick's arm?"
Ed nodded and motioned for Amanda to follow him. "Come on, I think I know where some old card games are. Can you count?"
"I'm two and a half."
"And you can't count?" Ed's voice was getting fainter as the two of them made their way down the hall.
"To ten," Winry heard Amanda reply before their voices completely faded out.
"He's not so bad," Henry said. "Mandy's really smart for her age, and unlike most two-year-olds, she doesn't warm up to people that quickly. Especially men . . . Ed must have little kids or something, right?"
"Oh God, no!" Winry replied, shaking her head quickly. Then she stopped herself. Why did she find that so strange? They were adults now, and he very well could have had children on the "other side" of that gate thing he and Al kept talking about. The thought seriously disturbed her but she wasn't sure why. It was perfectly normal to have little kids at their age.
Henry raised and eyebrow as he began walking towards the automail room.
. . .
Pride jumped to the next tree branch, panting hard. She and Lust were hoping from tree to tree in the forest outside Resembool. "Why did we have to come kill the Rockbell girl?"
Lust, who was a few trees behind her, sighed. "Because apparently Envy needed to round up that new homunculus ASAP, and Gluttony's too lazy to go so we were the natural choice."
"Damn them," Pride muttered under her breath. "She lifted her hand and a tree branch flew out in front of her, creating a bride between her and the next few yards of forest.
"Hey, that's cheating!" Lust cried.
Pride shook her head. "I can't hear you over the uh, wind! Yeah, the wind."
"Little brat . . ." Lust was grinning a little though.
When they were out of the forest, Lust leaned backwards until she heard a sharp crack! "Ah . . . That fells better. Let's do this quickly."
As they approached the Rockbell house, their superhuman hearing picked up on voices.
"Ed's not a homunculus because you used the Philosopher's Stone, right Al?"
"Right."
Ride and Lust glanced at each other, then simultaneously began sprinting towards the house.
They listened at the door for a few minutes, then Lust shook her head. "It must be them. The Elrics . . . We have to tell Envy."
"What about the Rockbell girl?"
"Excuse me," a man's voice said.
The two homunculi turned around to see a man in his mid-thirties who was clearly blind standing before them, holding the hand of a small girl. "Are you here for automail as well?"
Lust snapped her fingers and the man's face suddenly became confused, then back to normal. "Alright Mandy, help me up to the door now."
The little girl looked up at Pride and Lust. "Huh?"
Lust held a finger to her lips and as she and Pride snick past the man and down the hill.
