"Father."
"What?" Edward was the first one to respond, "What do you mean?"
"Brother?" Al looked up him, "Could this be THE Father?"
"Yeah, Al," Aura said, not taking her eyes off of me, "It's him."
"What does it say?" Tatiana bounced Lillian in her arms, as she had started crying.
I handed her the letter. She read it over.
"What does it mean?" she looked at me. I had never seen her look so scared.
"It means a bloody fight," Aura said.
"But, what if we don't go?" Tatiana suggested desperately.
"He'll come here," Aura said simply.
"Yeah," I added, "If I know him at all, things will just be worse if we don't show. He'll just be more angry."
"But," Winry joined in, "We can't fight him, can we?"
"I don't know," Ed said, standing up, "If we all team up, Al, you and me with our alchemy, Envy with his transforming ability, and Aura and Tatiana with their gifts. Winry, you could even make me sturdier automail."
"We don't have much of a choice," I said in defeat, "We should do what he said."
And just like that, we became an army. Ed and I took turns teaching Tatiana how to fight, and in the meantime, Aura tried to predict fight moves and tell us where to block, or dodge or hit, by yelling it at us from a safe distance. Winry worked hard to make Ed the ideal arm and leg, and did ridiculously well, due to her lack of time. The surgery was difficult, due to the fact the stumps would need to be fully recovered before the fight.
Tatiana was improving at martial arts, but she wasn't anywhere close to Ed, Al, and my level. She wouldn't be able to land a punch on Father, I knew that. But, she insisted on coming. I suggested she stay home, but she wouldn't hear of it. I was worried I'd spend more time protecting her than fighting. I couldn't have a distraction. I had talked to Ed and Al, and they agreed on a plan. As soon as the fight started, they would transmute a wall around her, to keep her out of the fight. I felt terrible, but I had to keep her safe.
We left early on the first. The night was so quiet, it was hard to believe that a battle was about to happen, but in a way, the silence made it worse. It was like an ache grew in my chest with every passing second. The sun began to rise. Soon the bottom of the sun cleared the horizon.
"Where is he?" I growled under my breath.
"Show yourself, you bastard!" Ed yelled into the morning.
"Envy!" Aura screamed from her tree.
She jumped down, making a loud thud when she hit the ground.
"You have to go back to the house now!"
I felt my eyes get as big as saucers. He'd tricked us! Lillian!
"Tatiana!" I turned to her, "Hold onto my neck!"
She held on. I let red sparks run all over my body as I grew larger. I reached my full size and entered my true form. Tatiana shifted her weight uncomfortably on my back.
"Just try not to look at them," I said quickly. I'd grown to hate all of the human lives that had been forced upon me, forced to appear again whenever I took that form.
"Ed, Al!" I said loudly, not that anything about this body was quiet.
They transmuted towers and jumped onto my back as well.
"Go!" Aura yelled up at me.
I didn't waste another second. I started running.
We ran past buildings, fields, all going by far to fast to focus on. I heard Ed saying he was going to be sick. I ignored him. As I neared the house, I saw a bright flash of light. It wasn't alchemy, though. It looked like… fire?
We turned around the block and came to a halt in front of our house. There were people in front of it, defending it with full force. I didn't bother to see who they were, all I knew was that I was grateful.
I began to shrink back to my original form. Ed and Al jumped off and hit the ground hard. They didn't seem fazed, though. As soon as Tatiana judged it was safe for her, she jumped as well, and ran inside. No sooner had I reached my original form than I transformed my arms into blades. As soon as I was at eye level with him, he turned and faced me, easily deflecting the attacks at his side. He was toying with them.
"Envy," he held out his hands to me in a loving gesture.
"Hey, Dad," I had never addressed him with such informality. It was fun.
"Why have you left me?" he said, sadness in his eyes, "Come back to us."
"Rot in hell," I sneered at him. He didn't move, but spikes sprouted through my feet made from concrete. I screamed. It really hurt, not to mention, I couldn't lift one of my feet without putting pressure on the other one. He probably would've killed me right then, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw something black moving through the air towards Father. He deflected it, but his reaction was slow. He hadn't left any room for error. I looked to my left, and saw the last two people I expected to see.
"Gluttony," Lust said, "Do be a dear and help Envy get off of those spikes."
He hobbled over to me and grabbed my knees and lifted me up over the points of concrete. I had to admit, I was little embarrassed than he'd just helped me, but I didn't have time to dwell on it.
"Damn it!" Ed ran past me, and tried to trip Father with a small wall coming towards his feet. He stepped over it with ease. He kept his eyes on me, though. Suddenly, I knew he'd made a decision. If he couldn't have me on his side, I was too powerful of an ally for them to have. The only thing I had time to do was blink.
A wall came up behind me, and slammed hard against my back, pushing me flat on my stomach. Then, the ground underneath me rose up and pushed me against the wall behind me. I saw a fire change its direction and come towards me, and I was covered in it. All of my senses shut down, all I could understand was pain. When the fire subsided, I was lying on the ground, the walls gone from around me. I felt my skin growing back around my skull.
Then came the spikes. Not small one like the ones in my feet, but large ones, taking more life force out of me with each blow. Then, they stopped. Everything stopped.
I looked up, and what I saw made me want to be sick to my stomach.
Another spike was close enough for me to have reached out with my arm and touched it, but it had been stopped. In front of the spike, was a ginger wolf, with its teeth bared in what was unmistakably pain. A pool of blood was forming on the ground underneath her. Everyone had stopped to stare at this with horrified faces, save my father. He was smiling insanely.
"You bastard!" Ed rushed him. He didn't even think to use alchemy. His fist collided with my father's face. He hit him again. Again. A black form smashed into him and knocked him into the street, off of our lawn. Greed was standing over him, in full ultimate shield form.
"Envy!" a voice came from my right, "You have to get up!"
I looked up, and saw a man wearing a blue military uniform that looked like it hadn't been washed for months. Roy Mustang.
"I'll work with you long enough to kill him!" he said, making it clear that our alliance wouldn't last very long after that.
I stood.
I ran out into the street. Roy was behind me. I flinched a little when fire rocketed past me and ignited my dad. I overcame my fear, and reached into the fire surrounding him. I felt all of my anger boiling over. It was his fault I had spent centuries in misery. It was his fault I had watched my mother die and never got to tell her goodbye. I was his fault if Tatiana died! I felt myself screaming. My hand reached his chest, and easily reached through his skin. I grasped the philosopher's stone at his core, and ripped it out. My other hand, which was still a blade, ripped down at his throat. Without the stone, in that one moment when his body failed to reattached itself, he was no stronger than a human child.
I used the traction his dust created to spin myself around and run back towards Tatiana. I don't remember running back to her, I got to her so quickly without even realizing it.
I looked at her from the front now, and I was able to see her side, a concrete spike deeply embedded onto her blood-crusted fur. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was labored.
"What do I-" I felt panic rising, "I don't- how can I-"
"Fullmetal," Roy Mustang's voice came from behind me, "You have the most experience in the field of bioalchemy, correct?"
Ed looked at him, his eyes growing wide, "That doesn't mean that I can…"
"Please," I stared up at him. He was my last hope. I couldn't do anything. I needed his help.
"You loved her too, didn't you?" I heard my voice crack, "You have to try!"
He clenched his teeth and stared at the ground and brought his hands up, like was about to transmute, but he put them down.
"Get Winry."
"Envy," Winry said to me, "Can you hold Tatiana perfectly still while we get the rock out of her?"
I nodded, and placed my hands on her belly, one of them right under the wound, ready to take her full weight and not let her fall. I tried hard to ignore the warm liquid dripping onto my hands.
"Al," Winry said, "Can you put that spike back into the ground at the exact same angle it came up?"
"Mm," he nodded, and got ready to transmute.
"Do it as slow as you can," she emphasized. Then she moved on to tell Ed his job.
"As it exits her body, close the wound, as best you can."
We were all ready, and we were all terrified.
"One," Winry said loudly, "Two… three!"
I made sure not to let her body sink closer to the ground as she got heavier. It was a painfully slow process. Al could only extract the spike as fast as Edward could heal accurately. It seemed like an entire age later that Winry told me to set her down.
"It's too dangerous for her change back," Edward said, "She's got two broken ribs and her organs are mangled together, though none of them are punctured."
I heard footsteps, hard and fast against the ground. We all looked up, and saw Aura running towards us, breathing hard. She reached us, and put her hands on her knees.
"He's… right…" she heaved, "We… have to… take her… to… a vet."
Well, the vet thought we were all crazy, until he did some kind of test in back that showed human brain activity in a wolf. Then he thought he was crazy. He operated, though. She wasn't about turn back into a human for a long while, but when she did, she couldn't stop talking. She recovered fully, and everyone sort of went their own ways. Aura invited Ed and Al to stay in her guest room, but I had a feeling Al wouldn't be spending his nights in the guest room.
Roy Mustang promised he'd have me neutered someday, and went to further investigate the United States military, as he had been doing in between his trips to spy on us.
Lust and Gluttony went missing shortly after the battle, and their absence wasn't noticed until after Tatiana's surgery, though I had a feeling they hadn't gone very far. Greed sort of became a drifter, but he dressed wonderfully, which gave me a secret suspicion that he was the uncatchable thief we'd been hearing so much about in the news. He stopped by every great once in a while, although his visits became a lot less frequent over the next few years. He did show up to Lillian's sixth birthday - uninvited - though. That was when we gave him his invitation.
We sent Aura's in the mail along with Ed's and Al's, and we just set two invites out one night labeled "Lust" and "Gluttony", which were gone in the morning. Winry came by often enough to get hers to her without much difficulty, although I'd wished she would've opened it somewhere that her screams of delight couldn't bother the neighbors.
Ed and Al insisted on helping me pick out the tux, which looked good, yet totally wrong on me. The party was extremely weird, due to Greed's continuous complaints about the lack of strippers, which had been ruled out by the fact that Gluttony would've eaten them, among other reasons.
Before I knew it, the day before the - wedding - came.
I stayed outside that night, under the full moon. It really was the most beautiful night I'd seen since I'd come here. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The stars shone brightly despite the light of the moon which normally would've all but drowned out the stars.
"Are you scared?" a voice said quietly from behind me.
I shook my head, "No."
Al sat down next to me on the porch step, "It sure is a nice night, huh?"
"Yeah," I sighed.
"Maybe it's a sign," Al said, slowly, and turned his gaze to me.
"You think?" I smiled.
"I do," he said confidently, "Your love for each other isn't like anything I've ever seen before."
"It's different," I said, turning my gaze to the stars again, "I thought I'd felt all the emotions in the world, love among them."
"And?" he said.
"I hadn't. I had no idea," I said slowly, "What love was. Not until I met her."
"Does it make it easier?"
"What?" I turned to him again.
"Even though… your parents are gone," he said thoughtfully, "Does having her make it easier?"
"You know, don't you?" I asked him, "You may not have gone as far as I have, but your pain is eased too, isn't it? By Aura?"
"Yes," he said slowly, "Love makes it easier."
Author's Note: Yay! The time has come! And we all take a moment to fangirl for our lovely couple that's come so far. Thank you Aura, I couldn't have written this without you.