Chapter Eight: The Sins of Indulgence

"Brother, I have to go," Al said, laughing, trying to shake Ed off as he clung to his brother's side. "Let go, Ed, seriously," he said, trying in vain to make his voice more stern.

"But you're on leave," Ed whined. "You're supposed to be taking care of me!"

Al rolled his eyes. "You can take care of yourself just fine, you know that. Besides, Winry's here."

Ed relaxed his grip a little. "I know. I know I can, I just don't want you to go. Why can't you work at the base in Dillon, why do you have to work in Central?" he complained. "How did you and Winry ever do it, with you being gone all week? I don't even like you being gone for a day! How long until you come back, by the way?"

Al pushed his brother's hands off of himself. "I don't know," he said seriously. "I didn't get a very clear description of what's going on. I know it's classified, and I know they need me. They need me, specifically, as an alchemist, not just anyone. So, I have to go." He shrugged. "Its part of the deal, you know that, Brother."

Ed frowned. "Do I ever. Once the military's dog, always the military's dog. Don't do anything dangerous, promise me?"

Al sat down next to him. "I can't promise you that. You of all people should know I can't promise that. But I will promise you I'll come home as soon as I can."

The older brother nodded. "I wish I could go with you," he said. "What if something happens? What if you get in over your head, who's gonna back you up?"

"I'll have back up, don't worry so much! Whatever it is they need me to do, it wont be alone!" Al assured him. "Don't worry so much! I've been doing this for years, you know."

This only made Ed's expression sourer. "Yeah I know. You started when you were just a kid. You should have been going to school with all the rest of the kids and playing outside and chasing girls and stuff. You never got to just be a kid."

Al's expression sobered. "Neither did you, Brother," he reminded him. "I did it for you, you did it for me. And we turned out all right, don't you think?"

Ed looked into his younger brother's face and saw, not for the first time, the subtle changes that were taking place every day: the way his features were sharpening, his jaw line becoming more defined, his voice deepening slightly. "You turned out fine, Al."


She didn't wake up right away when she heard the sound, and when she did she was slow to recognize what it was and where it was coming from. When rather than stopping, it became louder and more alarming, she forced her mind into wakefulness, pushing herself up in bed and blinking in the darkness.

These were sounds she recognized from ever since That Day, ever since the Elric's lives had changed irreversibly and, by association, hers did too. It wasn't a sound she heard often, but once she was fully awake she knew exactly what was happening.

Snatching her robe from her door handle, she crept down the hall to the doorway of the other bedroom, and watched him tossing in the bed, his unintelligible cries tinged with fear. Cautiously, she entered the room, coming to stand over the bed.

"Ed," she said quietly, forcing some volume into her just-awoken voice. Her hand found the switch on the wall, and she let light flood the room. "Ed, wake up, it's a dream." Wary of being smacked by flailing metal limbs, as she remembered happening before, when they had both been children, she steeled herself and knelt on the edge of the bed, grasping him firmly by the shoulders and bringing her face close to him. "Edward," she said, with more force this time. "Wake up! Wake up, now!"

He jerked out of her hold, but sat up, his eyes wide open suddenly, gasping and choking, his body seeming to shudder. He looked at her for a second, and then curled in on himself, clutching his automail to his chest and letting out a muffled cry, his face pressed into the blankets bunched in his lap.

She scooted closer, alarmed at his display of pain, and wrapped a cautious arm around him. "Ed, what's wrong? Are you hurt?"

He remained curled in a ball in the center of the bed, not lifting his face, but he nodded, and Winry leaned down, lowering her voice now that she knew he was awake.

"What hurts? Your shoulder? Is the port irritated? What happened?"

"Nothing happened," he said into the blankets, his words blurring together. "It just hurts."

"What hurts?" she pressed.

He turned his face to the side but his eyes were squeezed shut. "My arm," he gasped out, and she frowned. This was new but not new. Ed had felt these phantom pains, in the limbs he no longer had, after she had installed his automail the first time as well. It was purely psychological, Granny had explained to her, but although that didn't make it any less painful it meant no amount of medicine would help. She and Al had tried to follow Granny's suggestion that they try to fool his mind into perceiving something comforting being done to the missing limb, and she tried that strategy now, rubbing her hands back and forth over the junction of flesh and steel, hoping the illusion would carry over as soothing to whatever part of his brain that registered pain in a limb long gone.

"I thought you were having a nightmare," she said quietly, not stopping, making sure her hands had equal contact with skin and metal.

"I was," he gritted out. "I thought the pain was part of the dream."

She wished Granny were there, only Granny knew when to tell Ed to suck it up and deal and when to just comfort him in his un-combatable pain. "Is this the first time this has happened?" she asked, her concern growing. What if it had something to do with the way she installed the wiring? What if she shifted one of his nerves, only slightly, not enough to even see it but enough to mix up the signals to his brain, enough to cause him pain where no pain should be possible? "Since the surgery, I mean," she amended.

He nodded, turning his face back into the blankets in his lap, and guilt began to press in on her.

She continued rubbing his shoulder. "Is this helping at all?"

He shook his head.

"Do you want me to stop?"

He shook his head again.

"Do you want me to get you a painkiller?" she asked hesitantly, but he shook his head at that too.

"What the hell for? I thought this was all in my head," he snapped, and she fell quiet, feeling as ineffective as she had when she was eleven years old, watching over the little boy in the patient bed in her home in Rizembool.

Sighing, she grabbed him around the chest and hauled him into a sitting position, climbing further onto the bed and positioning her legs on either side of him and rubbed her strong hands over both his shoulders, feeling the need to do something even if she knew it wasn't much. Outside the window was still pitch black, but in the silence of the still house she could hear the birds, and knew that it must be right before dawn, early morning, really, no longer late at night.

"Happens sometimes when I have these dreams," he mumbled, and when she didn't say anything, after a moment he continued. "Al always used to do this for me and it never helped, and then he tried to do this for me too. Nothing ever helps."

"Then maybe I should stop," she said again, but he shook his head.

Eventually he lay back down, and she kept a hand on his shoulder and lay down with him. She didn't offer to stay, but he didn't ask her to leave either, and eventually, after the sky had gone from dark grey to dingy white, they were both asleep again.


She woke up feeling the warm sun on her face, and pulled the covers tighter around herself and stretched her legs under the sheets, pressing her face into the pillows and snapping her eyes open when she felt her foot brush against steel. Feeling momentarily disoriented, she sat up half-way and looked over at Ed, surprised to see his eyes open and staring blankly up at the ceiling. Slowly, he blinked, and turned to face her. "You're awake," he said.

She sat up the rest of the way, looking around. It had been a while since she had slept in Al's room; she wasn't like the brothers, falling asleep somewhere different every night. "What time is it?" she asked, covering a yawn with the back of her hand.

Ed glanced over at the clock on the nightstand. "About seven," he said lazily, turning over and pulling the blankets with him. "Go back to sleep."

"Hey," she protested. "You took all the covers!"

"You're in my bed," he retorted. "That makes them my covers, get your own."

"Ed," she whined, and smiled to herself as he shuffled the blankets and sheets around and tossed her fair share over to her, not moving from his curled up position on his side, facing away from her.

She drew the blankets up to her chin, closing her eyes again at watching the pattern the bright sun made against her eyelids. "You feeling better now?" she asked sleepily, and heard him rustle the covers a bit more.

"Yeah, thanks," he answered.

"I didn't do anything."

"I know."

She drifted back to sleep, and when she woke again she was alone in the bed. Ed was sitting on the window ledge in his pajamas, his hair tied back loosely and backlit by the sun, with Kaiya in his lap and a book balanced on one knee and a mug of coffee in his human hand. Kaiya had her face pressed against the window, her hands making little clouds of fingerprints all over the lower half of the glass. "Bur!" she squealed, and Ed nodded, not looking up from his book.

"Right," he said, "Birds." Winry sat up in the bed, and he looked over at her. "'Morning, Sleepyhead," he said with a smile, and she yawned again and stretched her arms over her head.

"You're the one who sleeps until one in the afternoon," she protested half-heartedly.

He just shrugged. "Not today I didn't," he informed her. Then he gulped down the rest of his coffee, reaching over to set the mug on the nightstand, flipped his book closed and stood up, picking Kaiya up with him and plopping her on the bed next to Winry. "Here," he told her, "Play with Mommy, I need to get dressed," and with that he pulled off his pajama top and began sorting through his drawers for a clean shirt.

"Ed, did you give her breakfast?" she asked.

"Yep," he said, not turning around as he pulled a plain black t-shirt over his head.

"Y'do your exercises?"

"Yep."

"Did you eat breakfast?" she asked then, standing up and picking Kaiya up with her.

"Bur!" Kaiya announced, pointing to the window.

"Birds?" Winry asked her, walking over to the window. "I don't see any birds."

"Bur, bur!" her daughter insisted.

Winry put her down on the ground, holding her hands up above her head and walking with her, and said, "Come on, baby, we're going downstairs to make Mommy and Ed some breakfast."

"I made you breakfast," Ed called from inside the bedroom. "It's downstairs on a plate, under the frying pan lid."


Winry sat at her kitchen table, contemplating a forkful of lukewarm, syrup-drenched pancakes, wondering why every morning the three of them spent together couldn't be like this. Maybe, slowly, they were resolving the tensions that had been present between the two of them ever since Ed had re-appeared in this world nearly two years ago now. Slowly, she was able to convince herself that while she did love him, she had never been in love with him; when she was young and heartbroken she had merely thought she was in love with him, and she was learning to ignore that voice that told her she never had any trouble knowing exactly what she wanted and demanding to know why things should be any different now.

Ed's pancakes were better than hers. Al had been exaggerating, there were slightly more thanthree things she could cook: spaghetti, pancakes, and tuna-noodle casserole was only about half of her list After her grandmother died she had told herself she would be fine living on her own; she would feed herself with the recipes from Granny's cookbooks, but things never tasted quite right. Always like something was missing.

Except the pancakes. Winry's pancakes were exactly like Granny's. But, she conceded, taking another bite, Ed's were better. Whether the recipe was Trisha's or Izumi's or someone from that other world's, she assumed she would never know. She was through with trying to pry into the secrets of his past; it was too painful to watch him take on that faraway, forlorn, regretful look.

After the last bite she stood, pushing her chair away from the table, and put her plate in the sink. She grabbed the shopping list off the refrigerator and headed out to the porch to find Ed and ask him if he would mind going grocery shopping later in the day. Walking to and from the market would be good for him; he was nearly adjusted to the new automail but his stamina was still lacking.

Winry stood in the doorway looking out onto the porch and smiling. He was sitting, bent over the small table, scribbling furiously on the large roll of paper. It was going to be a complete set of plans for this "airplane" he had told her of. Of course, they would never actually build one, how could they, but he was making good on his promise to explain to her how they worked.

She didn't know why she did it. Maybe things can only go smoothly for so long, or maybe it was because he looked so intent on what he was doing, so Ed, that she just couldn't help herself.

As soon as her lips brushed his cheek his metal hand seized her wrist, the joints between the fingers slicing into her skin. "Cut that the fuck out," he snarled.

"What is wrong with you?" she snapped back, instantly regretting her action.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he retorted, eyes flashing. "Do I look like Al? Or did you forget which brother is your boyfriend?"

"No, I- I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" she faltered, trying in vain to diffuse the situation.

He slammed the pen down on the table. "Well what did you mean, then?" he demanded.

"You just- you looked so content like that, concentrating-"

"I was," he said darkly, "Until you started this fucking game up again!"

"It's not a game!" she protested, trying to be honest. "You just looked- I don't know. You looked like you."

He scowled. "I always look like me, I hope," he said dryly.

"Handsome?" she amended.

"Bullshit," was his clipped response. "You're beautiful, but that doesn't mean I go around kissing you whenever the mood strikes me."

She threw her hands up, not facing him, looking out over the railing at the street. "It was a friendly kiss, Ed, we are friends, remember?"

"Bullshit," he repeated from behind her. "What the fuck is a friendly kiss? Would you have done that if Al was sitting right here?"

She whirled around, staring at him for a long minute, hands on her hips. "Yes," she said finally. "Yes I would, because we both know it didn't mean anything, just like the night you came home didn't mean anything, just like the night before your surgery didn't mean anything."

He gaped at her. "Didn't mean anything?" he echoed hollowly, the anger dropping from his voice.

"You don't like women," she continued, speaking to his stunned expression. "You know it, I know it, Al knows it. There's nothing wrong with that. So I can give you a friendly kiss if I want," she said, all the while echoing his own words in her mind, what the fuck is a friendly kiss anyway? A "friendly kiss" is feeling so comfortable around someone that you start to forget they don't want the same things as you do, she told herself, feeling the situation slip out of her control as she spoke.

His mouth hung open; he stared at her. She stood with her back to the sun, her hair catching its glow but her face in the shadows. "I never said that," he protested. "I never said I don't like women."

Her hands were on her hips again, and she glared at him. "So it's just me you don't like," she said, making her voice angry and insulted and threatening because she couldn't bring herself to sound sorry. "Thanks, Ed, that makes me feel real great." She swept past him, jerking the front door open, intending to disappear inside again before he demanded a further explanation, but he grabbed her around the waist, pulling her close to him, pressing his body against hers.

His face was so close to hers, she could see the veins in his forehead twitching, she could feel what she thought must be anger emanating from his being. "What," he said harshly, "did I ever do to give you that idea?" Her eyes were wide open, and stayed open in shock when he smashed his lips into hers, metal hand tight around her waist and the flesh one coming up to push its fingers through the back her hair. This was no friendly kiss, this was no misunderstanding of emotions!

She shut her eyes, feeling his tongue force her lips apart, pushing into her mouth, and let him kiss her, pressing her own tongue into his, taking in his taste. Her eyes flew open. Was it possible to kiss someone this way if you had no feelings for them? Was it possible to lie to yourself for nearly two years just to make things easier, just to keep from facing the inevitable, just to keep from making a choice?

The kiss surged on; he turned this way and that, prying into every part of her, moving to kiss her throat, her eyes, the place behind her ear, everywhere, breathless, wanting. When he broke away he stumbled backward, mirroring her shocked expression. "You are the only woman I've ever looked at," he said, his voice catching in his throat. "And you let my brother think you're in love with him. How great do you think that makes me feel?"

"I am in love with him," she said breathlessly.

"Then quit fucking with my head like that!" he raged, swiping at the drawings he had been working on, letting them flutter to the floor and stomping down the rickety outside stairs.

She stared numbly at his retreating back.


Al went first to the site of the train wreck in Bethan, displaying his State Alchemist watch unnecessarily to the local police. He was traveling out of uniform, as he normally did, and he was without his trademark red coat, but nearly everyone in the north knew who he was.

"Ah, Lieutenant Colonel Elric," the man said, holding a hand out to shake, and Al took it. "We were hoping the military would send you, even though we're such a small town and I'm sure you have much more important things to be doing-"

Al smiled at him engagingly. "I'm from a small town myself, sir," he said, always polite. "But aren't there military investigators here already?"

"Yes, sir, they arrived this morning, aren't you…" the man faltered, his voice trailing off.

"I would appreciate it," he said, keeping his voice low, "if you did not tell them I'm here. I'd like copies of the accident report, if you please, and then I'll be on my way."

"The chief investigator has the report at this moment, sir, but I'm sure you can find him-"

"He has the only document? Were there no copies made?" Al pressed.

The man motioned for Al to follow him inside, and after a few minutes of inquiries handed him a hand-copied duplicate of the report. Al slipped it into his briefcase, thanking the man, and turned to head back to the train station.

"Lieutenant Colonel!" the man called after him, and Al turned. The man walked swiftly after him, standing with him in the vestibule of the building. "It may be forward of me, sir, but I am assuming that you suspect the investigators will leave here with what they believe is the only copy of the report." Al opened his mouth to protest, but the man held up his hand. "Don't look at me like that, we've all heard about the rumors of corruption in the military and alterations of records. Something wasn't right about that wreck, it was more than a terrorist attack and we know it. Now you yourself are leaving with what really is the only copy of the report, assuming the original wont be returned." The man looked at him questioningly, brazenly. "We like to keep our files in order, here, sir."

"Oh, your files will be in order," Al told him, his voice low. "You won't have anything missing. But you're right, you shouldn't expect to get the original report back." With that he gave the doors a push and had disappeared down the sidewalk. The chief of police shook his head. The right hand of the government didn't seem to know what the left was doing, apparently. He wished he had thought to order a third copy of the report, but how was he to have known the military would send both hands in to disturb his files?

Al turned swiftly when he heard the voice behind him. "Little Boss!"


"Excuse me, sir," said a tiny voice behind him, and Ed turned on the platform, feeling his ponytail swish across his back at the sharp movement. There were two children standing behind him, one of them tugging on his coattails.

He raised an eyebrow to them, and they giggled.

"Can I have your autograph?" the taller (older?) one said boldly, and Ed's eyes widened. My presence here is a secret, my ass! he thought to himself briefly, before he took the paper and pen from the child and paused just after the first down stroke of the E. "What are you going to do with it?" he asked curiously, trying to be certain the kids hadn't mistaken him for Al or something.

"It's for my Fullmetal Alchemist poster, for school!" the smaller one piped up, and Ed's eyes widened further.

Edward Heiderich, he scrawled before he could change his mind. "I'm not the Fullmetal Alchemist, you know," he told them firmly, and they nodded as if they had just been given a huge secret.

"Can we see your automail?" they begged, and he looked around at the small crown on the station platform. Part of him itched to show off. Forcing some restraint, he lifted his sleeve and showed them his metal forearm. "Oooo," they admired.

"All right now, enough of this," he said, pulling his sleeve back down again. "I'm waiting for someone very important, where are you supposed to be?"

The two children exchanged guilty glances and ran off, just as the whistle sounded in the distance signaling the incoming train.

When Al stepped onto the platform he obliged his older brother with a hug but scolded, "You shouldn't be out here in public, people are going to see us together and-"

Ed held his brother at arms length, surveying his appearance to make sure he had returned in one piece. He had. "Al, I've already been asked for my autograph. Everyone here knows who I am."

Al smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand as Ed snatched his suitcase from him, swinging it around in a wide arc before linking arms with him and pulling him down the stairs of the platform. "Have you been showing off?" he accused, not even knowing where the accusation came from. When was the last time he had seen his brother in show-off mode? Not since they were kids, not that he could remember.

"Ahh, you know me too well," Ed said with a grin, allowing his brother to fear the worst.

Al fortuitously changed the subject. "How's Winry, how's the baby?" he asked smoothly, watching as his and his brother's feet met the pavement exactly in time, perfectly in step.

"Baby's a genius, Winry's a bitch, nothing new!" Ed quipped.

"Brother!" Al exploded. "What is it with you and Winry, every time I'm not here you two fight!" The air between them caught a sudden chill and Al found himself wondering, not for the first time, if it really was an argument that had happened or if it was something else entirely.

"It's what we do, Al," Ed said, but his voice was strained. "We've done it since we were kids. You're much better suited for her."

"You think?" Al said coldly, and they walked the rest of the way home in silence.

Winry was sitting on the front porch, various metal foot and toe pieces spread out over a cloth on the small table, and Kaiya's face lit up when she saw them walking up the street. "Da da da da!" she called. Al scooped her up and tossed her in the air, his eyes dancing as he listened to her shriek with delight. It didn't escape him how his brother and Winry locked eyes for a moment before Ed stomped into the house, slamming the door behind him.

When he climbed the stairs to his bedroom he found that Ed had already begun unpacking his suitcase for him. As he unbuttoned his uniform jacket he said, keeping his tone conversational, "You know, some people would say I'm crazy to trust you two together." He shrugged out of the jacket and hung it on its sturdy hanger on the back of the door and began undoing his regulation military belt. "I'd tell them I'd be crazy not to trust you, after all, you are my brother," he slid the belt out of its loops and raised his eyes to Ed, "and I know you'd never do anything to hurt me, right?"

"Al, I never-" Ed started.

"Right?" Al repeated, his voice steady, his eyes calm.

"Of course, Al."


There was something soothing about the way he could delight Kaiya with the same thing over and over again. She'll grown out of it, enjoy it while it lasts, he told himself, and basked in her excitement every time she threw her pile of flowers on the ground and then lined them up, then picked them up one by one and made an orderly bundle of them.

"One!" she would say, picking up the first one, and "two!" when she picked up the second one. "No, no!" she would say for the third and fourth, but the fifth she would hold up triumphantly and declare, "five!"

Ed crouched beside Kaiya, taking the bundle of wildflowers she was playing with in his hand and setting them in the grass in front of them. "Want to see something magic?" he asked her, and she grinned, nodding, her grey eyes lighting up with delight.

He paused for a minute, hardly thinking about it at all, and brought his hands together in a clap and touched them to the flowers, and there was a flash of blue alchemic energy and when it faded, he was holding a woven crown with flowers for jewels. As he held on to it, the small flowers grew, their petals becoming thinner and broader and more brightly colored, and Kaiya clapped her own hands and shrieked with delight. "Da da da da!" she babbled, and he laid the crown on her pale hair and grinned at her.

"Don't you look like a princess," he said fondly.

"Da da," she repeated, and he frowned.

"Say 'Ed,'" he instructed. "Call me 'Ed,' call Al 'Dada," he told her seriously, feeling his stomach sink.

"Da da," she said again, looking at him with round, serious eyes that reminded him for all the world of Winry's. Then she took the flowers from her own head and placed them crookedly on his. "Fowrs!" she announced.

He sighed and leaned back on his heels. "That's right," he told her, forcing a bright tone into his voice. "Flowers."

"Brother?" came Al's voice from inside. "Are you and Kaiya-" his head appeared in the doorway and he snickered. "Nice flowers," he commented.

"Fowrs!" Kaiya repeated, then "Da da da da!"

Al reached down and picked her up, and she protested, reaching out towards the flower crown on Ed's head. "Fowrs!" she insisted, and Ed laughed and took it off, handing it to her. "Mommy fowrs," she said happily, waving the crown around.

"Okay," Al said, nodding. "We'll give Mommy the flowers, come on, lets go inside- Brother?" he added, watching his face carefully. "Are you all right?"

Ed had suddenly become focused on something only he could see. "Yeah," he said distantly.

"Coming inside?" Al asked, his eyebrows raised.

"In a minute."

After shooing Kaiya inside, Al crouched down next to his brother. "What's wrong?" he asked softly. "Where did your mind go this time?"

Ed rested his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, staring at the place where the flowers had been and thinking of somewhere else entirely: the yard of a mansion in Central, in the dead of winter, when he had shown another little girl how alchemy took wishes and made them come true. He had been only twelve years old then, and she couldn't have been more than a few years older than Kaiya was now. He had cried when she died, and once a few days after, in the middle of the night, when no one but his brother was around to hear. "It doesn't matter," he said hollowly, pressing his hands on his knees and standing up. "No one remembers her anymore."

"Remembers who?" Al questioned, puzzled.

"Nina Tucker."

Shou Tucker's daughter, the lifeless doll, Al wanted to say, but he had never known her as a real person, not that he could remember, so he said nothing. "Did you make those flowers?" he asked instead.

Ed nodded. He made them with a clap of his hands, the way he made and changed so many things in the old days, before he knew the true price. Before he knew that the energy didn't come from his own soul but from the souls of those on the other side.

"Alchemy isn't a sin, Brother," Al said quietly, standing next to him but not looking at him.

"It should be," Ed said with resignation, turning to go in side. "It should be."


Al was tired. He was tired, and for the first time since the war ended he was truly worried. Something was going on and no matter what the military did, it couldn't be stopped. General Mustang had always seemed to him as a man who knew everything. You never knew just how but you always knew he did. General Hawkeye seemed like a woman who could handle everything without batting an eye. Now, Mustang was worried; Al could see it in his face when he thought no one was watching. And Hawkeye was flustered.

Something was very wrong and there was nothing he or any of them could do but watch things slowly crumble. They had to be ready, they told each other in hushed tones. Something was about to happen, and when it did, they had to spring into action.

When Al stepped off the train in Altenburg the sky was a pure, high blue and the air seemed to fairly shimmer with sunlight, but the platform was empty. Ed had not come to meet him the way he had been doing ever since Al had gone back to work. He felt his stomach flip: had something happened?

Breathing deeply, he told himself he was just worried about work. And when your work is ensuring the safety of the country you and everyone you care about lives in, your stomach's gonna flip a lot. Nothing was wrong. Yet.

He just needed to see his brother, to look into those golden eyes and hear that familiar voice telling him that everything was going to be okay. Neither of them would believe it, but it would help none the less. His steps quickened as he walked down the sidewalk to his and Winry's house.

Al frowned when he pushed the door open. It had been ajar; how many times had he told the two of them to lock the door? Altenburg was a small town, but leaving the door unlocked was just asking for trouble. "Hello?" he called out, and was met with silence. He sighed. They must have taken Kaiya and went out or something. Now that the weather was warm and Kaiya was walking, they liked to make a habit of taking her to the town square to play in the fountain, in hopes that she would start to play with the other children in the town.

He dropped his suitcase in the living room and opened the fridge, letting the cool air blow on his closed eyelids for a moment. Then he took out Winry's green pitcher and looked around guiltily before he took several gulps of the sweet lemonade directly out of the top. Smiling as if he had fooled the universe, he replaced the pitcher and closed the door, picking up his suitcase and heading towards his room. He tossed it on the bed, unlatching it and taking out the book he had picked up for his brother in Central and setting it on the nightstand where Ed could find it. Then he picked up the box he had gotten for Winry and made his way to her room, thinking he would leave it on her nightstand as well, letting her find it at her leisure.

He stopped in the doorway.

He blinked.

He wasn't even surprised.

He blinked again.

He was so not surprised he wasn't even angry.

The window was open and the curtains were pushed back, spilling that beautiful sunlight in a window-pane pattern right over the couple in the bed, laying on top of the covers, fully clothed, limbs intertwined like they were one person.

Al blinked once more.

Ed stirred, burrowing his face for a moment further into Winry's shoulder and then turned, stretching his arms over his head and opening his eyes. He gave his brother a sleepy smile. "Hi Al," he said.

He might as well have slapped him in the face, and Al took a step back as if he had. "You're not even sorry?" Al said, meaning to snap, to say it bitingly, but it came out weak and shocked.

"Sorry, we fell asleep," Ed said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and glancing over at Winry.

Al smacked his hand to his forehead. "I'm such an idiot," he muttered, leaning the back of his head into the door, looking up. Then he turned his smoldering eyes on his brother. "You fell asleep," he repeated, the words dropping to the floor with the weight of bricks.

Ed was beginning to look worried. "Al, we weren't- we were just sleeping, nothing-"

Al shook his head, his expression darkening further. "I know, I believe you." He did, and it made him feel all the worse. It was right in front of him, all this time. Every time he looked at them he saw it: something between them that he and Winry just didn't share. It was impossible to hide, and they must think he was an idiot to have even tried.

"You lied to me!" he cried, and the long day, the long week, the frustrations at work and the frustrations at home and the tensions that had been resonating between the three of them for the past year and a half burned behind his eyes, pushing tears to well up and threaten to splash down his cheeks. He heard his voice crack, wavering between octaves in a way it hadn't done in years, and was furious with his body for not being how old he wanted it to be. "'I don't want to come between you,' you said!" he accused. "'I don't want to hurt you.' 'I want you to be happy,'"

Winry had jumped out of the bed as soon as Al's voice had woken her up. "Al," she began desperately, "It's not-"

"Don't you tell me what it is and isn't," he said harshly, turning his stormy eyes on her.

"But I-"

"You're in love," Al spat. "You've always been in love with him," he said, watching her face, her eyes wide, her mouth gaping. "You tell me that isn't true," he challenged her.

"I-" she had to force herself to maintain eye contact with him, not allowing herself the luxury of looking away. "I can't," she said, finally, quietly, firmly.

"You," he said to Ed, jabbing his finger into his chest, "are disgusting!" he shouted, and Ed blinked his gold eyes in shock.

"Al, I-"

"Don't look at me like that, you know what you are! You've been lying to me all this time like I was some kind of idiot, like I didn't matter, like I was just some kid who didn't know any better-"

Ed stood, locking eyes with his brother. He shook his head fiercely. "Don't start that again," he insisted. "I don't think you're a kid, and I haven't-"

"I wish you had never come back!" Al screamed.

"I wish I had never come back," Ed countered.

"Stop it!" Winry yelled, louder than them both, her eyes blazing and her hair flying around her face, flinging her arms out and giving them both a solid whack across the chest. "You stop this, both of you, you don't mean that, you don't!"

"I mean it," Al said at once, no longer screaming, his voice deadly serious.

"I mean it too," Ed said sharply.

"Al, stop it," Winry pleaded.

He turned on her, throwing his hands up. "Why? Why should I stop? Why should I keep up this ridiculous game a second longer? I'm sick of loving you both so much I'm willing to play dumb!" His voice took on that eerie, quiet, frightening tone once more. "You don't belong here, Ed. One of us should have died. I turned up alive again, alone, and I learned to live with that-"

But you didn't, Al, Ed protested silently. Neither of us could live without the other.

"And now you're here, and you don't belong." He flung his arm out, gesturing wildly towards Winry's bed, the covers still rumpled. "You don't belong in her bed! You don't belong in my bed! You don't belong anywhere in this house!" With each sentence his voice rose, cracking again, and his face grew redder and his eyes grew wilder.

"If you didn't want me here," Ed said angrily, "you should have thought twice before you risked your life and mine to pull me out of Germany and back into this world that is my world, so you shut the hell up about me not belonging here. I was born here and I'm here now and there's no going back to the way things were!"

Al spun to face the wall, avoiding looking at them both as he continued, throwing his hands above his head. "Oh but I bet you wish you could go back, back to that other Alphonse," he said meanly, words and feelings he had forced himself to push away now tumbling forth before he could stop them, "so you two could play house, play lovers, you sick fuck, what kind of sick person would sleep with his own brother-"

"He wasn't you, Al!" Ed pleaded, his eyes red, desperate. "He wasn't you, I swear!"

"Oh, he was me," Al said frighteningly, turning around again, looking his brother straight in the eye. "I met him, remember? I know who he was. He was lonely, he was miserable, he was- and you- you- how could you do that?"

Winry followed back and forth between the brothers with her large eyes, saying nothing. She could hear Kaiya starting to cry in the other room, and knew the cry would escalate into a scream if no one came, but she couldn't look away. She couldn't stop them but she couldn't leave them either.

"What ever happened to you, Edward Elric, to make you think you can just help yourself to everything? All you do is take, take, take! You meet this poor soul who's just another version of me, and you, you, I don't know what you did and I don't want to know and it's sick, Ed, it's sick, but I said nothing because I love you and you're my brother and he thought you loved him and he never knew what he really was to you until I came along-"

"But he wasn't you," Ed repeated urgently. "He was his own person, and I did love him, and-" Ed felt his body slamming back into the wall, and brought his hand up to his mouth in surprise. Al had punched him in the face, a full out punch, not something he could just bounce back from the way he had when they were kids. This wasn't play fighting, this was real.

"If you loved him, then what are you doing with her?" he screamed, flinging his arms in a gesture towards the door where Winry was standing, staring, haven given up on stopping them. "How many people do you need to love you before it's enough?" he demanded, his voice dropping to that frightening quiet. "How selfish can you get before you're sick of yourself?"

"Al," Ed said, his voice breaking, "Everything I did, those whole ten years, every thing I did was just to get back to you-"

"And what did you do the minute you got back?" Al asked roughly, and Ed forced himself not to look away.

"She didn't tell me!" he said, what he had said many times, and echoed Al's gesture towards Winry as if she were a statue, a mere representation of herself incapable of defending or apologizing for her own choices.

"She's been in love with you all this time, she never lied to me about that, and you've been in love with him all this time so what the hell do you want with her but more, more, more?" The sight of his brother holding his hand to his bleeding lip only enraged him further. "The universe doesn't belong to you, Ed. You can't just have everything you want, you can't just decide to make up your own right and wrong and you know it, deep down I know you know it and you hate being wrong. You hate being wrong so much you burned down our house so it wouldn't remind you of it, you hate being wrong so much you gave up your own life to bring me back so you wouldn't have to live with the consequences, you hate being wrong so much you convinced yourself that other Alphonse wasn't me and you, you-"

"All right!" Ed screamed. "All right, I was wrong, all right, I never get anything right, all right, I hate myself for it, is that what you want to hear? I hate myself? I've fucked it all up? Everything I touch turns to shit? You're right, I don't belong here, you're right, it'd be better if I'd never come back at all. Is that what you want?"

"I wanted my brother back but instead I got this sick bastard who's just like dad and collects people's hearts and breaks them-" and it's my heart you're breaking Ed, mine, can't you see that, with every word you scream, every time you say you hate yourself but he couldn't stop the words from coming. "You should hate yourself, you're everything you never wanted to be!"

He waited for the next volley of protests, of curses, of excuses, but they never came. I take it back, he cried inside, but not every part of him cried it and no part of him reached out to stop his brother from flinging the door open but when Winry moved to go after him he pulled her back sharply by the shoulders. Her huge, wet blue eyes stared into his for nearly a minute before she jerked out of his grip and grabbed him around the waist, shoving him forcefully out of the room and into the hall, pointing down the stairs to the front door, which was already wide open.

"Go after him, you asshole!" she said menacingly before she slammed her door in his face.

It was her room, not hers and Al's room. Her room had always been her own and she could throw him out if she wanted. She flung open the window and stuck her head out forcefully, her balance almost wavering. She watched Ed storming down the street, and even now her mechanic's eye watched his gait and how he still favored his flesh leg, just slightly, but that it certainly wasn't hindering his progress.

It wasn't like he packed a suitcase or anything. He would get halfway across town and then come back, at least for the night, and they would work things out, how could they not? He wasn't really leaving. How could he leave? His brother was his entire life, his brother was his entire reason for being here-

She waited for Al to go running after him, she waited to watch from her window the tearful resolutions, but all she saw was Ed, Ed storming away, Ed getting smaller and smaller and Ed getting lost among the buildings in downtown Altenburg.

She listened, but all she could hear was Kaiya's screaming. Maybe Al would get her, she thought numbly, and when he didn't, she kept her eyes trained on the sidewalk at the front of the house, waiting for him to go after his brother. The sun was starting to set, and the shadows of the buildings were growing long and when Ed came back his shadow would be nearly three times his size, and she leaned a little further out the window.

When it was dark, when the sky was deep blue-black and the town was quiet for the evening and Kaiya had cried herself out (because Winry had been listening and Al had not come back upstairs, so he could not have gone to her) she finally felt the weight of the silence pressing in on her mind, and her heart ached. It ached for Al, who had tried vainly to accept this disaster that had been dumped on him the day he woke up with no memories. It ached for Ed, who- oh, her heart had always ached for Ed in some way, but this was something new and old. It ached for the man who had lost everything and somehow managed to lose even more. It ached for her daughter who had been born into a country on the verge of a civil war and into a family that was falling apart at the seams it never had.

Ed had always believed in the impossible. Al believed in the impossible, and that was one of the things she loved so much about him. Winry held onto reality like it was the only certainty left in the world, and the harsh reality was that you couldn't be both friends and lovers. The universe wasn't made that way.

She shook her head, jerked herself back inside the window. That was a kind of heartbreak she wasn't prepared to deal with. She hadn't allowed herself to choose yet, and she wasn't going to choose now.

She let her heart fall back into the old, aching loneliness of missing someone, and pulled the familiar record out of its sleeve, flopping backwards on the bed and wishing it was her old bed in her home in Rizembool, and instead of listening for her daughter through the walls she was listening for her grandmother.

That's the Ed song, she could hear twelve-year-old Al say in her mind, banging on her bedroom door. You're playing the Ed song!