Sorry for the delay! The looooong delay. Things have been busy. And this isn't a very long chapter, but if you're still following this story, it's not over yet, but it's getting close. :]

Thanks to all who've been following this and leaving reviews.

Also, hope you all had a great Christmas/New Years! Or just winter holidays, if you don't celebrate Christmas. :3

He woke up on guard, feeling for his surroundings before he even opened his eyes. It was cold. It was dark. He was wet. Someone was talking to him. And touching him.

He immediately tensed in protest.

"Hey, wake up," Someone said. The voice was familiar, as though Pride had heard it before. Perhaps not him, but... Edward had heard it.

Pride didn't want to open his eyes yet. He was still too tired. He felt something ice cold run down his cheek, hit his face like ice, and finally made him open his eyes.

Staring back at him was the face of a young man, his black hair stuck to his face, and the lenses of his glasses smeared with rainwater. He was familiar, all right.

"There you go..." He said, quietly. He took his hands off of Pride's shoulders and proceeded to push up his eyelids with his thumbs, staring into his eyes. "Yeah.. you look okay... How are you doing, Ed?"

"I'm not..."

"Right, right. Well, I have to get you somewhere safe," He said hurriedly, grabbing Pride above the elbow and pulling him up.

Before he could protest, the young man took off his jacket, which Pride could now see was part of a military uniform, and threw it over him, while quickly pulling him to a car parked some yards away.

Pride was warmer once they reached the car and beginning to dry off. Once he'd gotten his mind off of who he was with and how much of a bad idea sleeping outside in the winter probably was, he noticed what was going on around him.

Central happened slowly, like a headache, with the parks and small shops outlining taller buildings, wider paved streets, the night owls, and, in the center of it all, Central headquarters.

But they drove past it, and when Pride pointed to it, and began to speak, the young officer stopped him.

"You can't go there yet. Every guard posted outside knows your face, and the Führer has a bounty on your head."

Pride understood, and turned his face away from the window. Before he began to drift back to sleep, he remembered to ask: "What's your name, anyway?"

"It's Kain. Kain Fuery."

The Colonel and his uninitiated subordinate took the train back to Central the night before, making it back to the Headquarters by early morning. They avoided each other after a brief conversation in the Colonel's office, in which they discussed the whereabouts of Edward and, eventually, of Kain Fuery. They concluded it was tense enough around the Central Headquarters without the Führer-affiliated soldiers noticing the odd and elusive partnership between the Führer's most distrusted officer and the brother of the most wanted teenager in Amestris.

Colonel Mustang sat in his office then, tapping his fingers on his desk, deep in thought. Regardless of his subordinates efforts to keep his absence concealed, he had no time to give his thanks, not then.

Kain.

The young officer had been given a leave of absence, unpaid, until who knew when. The Colonel had prodded enough information out of the present Warrant Officer to discover Fuery was released from his duty because of the documents he shared with the Colonel regarding homunculi.

It was all falling together.

The Colonel stood up and paced around his office, lost in deeper thoughts, until a knock at his door pulled him back.

"Come in," He called.

The door opened and his First Lieutenant stood in the threshold. Her face held an expression that Mustang had not seen before. It made her look younger and exhausted, the dark circles under her eyes gave her a shadowy vulnerability.

Without warning, she dropped her clipboard and ran over to him, wrapping her arms around him.

It was unexpected, and the Colonel found himself unsure of what to do. Console her? Return the embrace? He did return it, after a few uneasy seconds, he wrapped his arms around her, and she held tighter.

"It's almost time," She said quietly.

The Colonel froze, realizing what she meant only several moments after she said it. And she was right. Kain was gone, and many of the remaining soldiers were on the verge of going AWOL, as the Führer had created a restriction of discharges so close to a declaration of war. The amount of time they had before they left for the lands where Ishbal once stood grew shorter, that day drawing closer. Once Edward was found, they would have to act quickly.

The light from the sunrise flooded the upstairs room. It was an unusual occurrence for the winter months, usually the days would begin gray and cold. It was unusually warm, also.

Pride woke from an uncomfortable burning sensation along his back, turning over with a displeased groan, having to shield his eyes from the sunlight, and he realized he was in someone else's bed, although it wasn't like somewhere he had a bed of his own.

He sat up and looked around, seeing books and jars filled with dried plants and different colored powders. It wasn't unlike Hohenheim's place. And with that thought he had a pang of nostalgia, wondering how the others were coping, wondering if they were safe.

There was a loud crash from somewhere downstairs, like a pot or kettle being dropped. Pride got out of the bed and stood still, recalling that it was Kain Fuery who had picked him up from the park and experienced a desire to find out if that's whose home he was still in.

He went downstairs, discovering the home was a small apartment, a common residence in Central. Still dizzy from the fitful night, Pride walked carefully into the sitting room, where more books and a table piled high with papers occupied the space.

"Oh hey," Pride turned at the familiar voice. "You're up."

Pride looked at him and then looked back at all of his books. He even began shuffling through the papers on the table before Fuery spoke again.

"I'll make some tea."

Pride nodded absently and moved a chair over so he could sit by the table, suddenly very interested in the papers he found. There were notes, scribbled so sloppily Pride wondered if it was deliberate. There were also many transmutation circles drawn, a few he knew, and even more he hadn't seen before.

The teen was so focused on the research that he didn't notice Fuery's re-entrance into the room. He grabbed a chair and sat down next to Pride, looking over his shoulder as he slid a cup of tea towards him. "Anything you recognize?"

Pride shook his head slowly. "Not all of it. Nothing important."

"This is how I spend my nights now, just researching, hoping I'd find answers," Fuery began as Pride finally tore his gaze away from the papers and settled on another strange object in the room: a helmet. "I'd hope some of this would help me find you, we've been looking for you for a while, now."

As Pride stood up, he took his cup of tea with him, finding himself drawn to the smell of honey and herbs, and walked to the face of the bookshelf that the helmet was placed on, just staring at it. "We?" He asked.

"Oh yeah, the Colonel, and, unfortunately, the Führer and his subordinates have been hunting for you specifically," He answered.

Pride just kept staring at the helmet. It was a style he hadn't recalled seeing used in other models of armor. It had a row of flat fangs, slits under the eye holes, and an obtrusive spike sticking out of the forehead. A tail fell lightly over the side of the shelf from the back of the helmet. He stared into the eye sockets. The helmet bugged him like a bad dream he couldn't remember, which just might have been the case.

"Oh, that's right, and your brother, Alphonse."

The homunculi froze, his head throbbing momentarily as he recalled what he expected to be more of his memories, although he already remembered he had a brother.

But his memories started coming back farther from his past.

He was on his knees in a basement, his arm absent from the shoulder down, he bled over the chalk of an outlined transmutation circle. He was upset about something. Something gruesome. Something far worse than his lack of limb.

His mother...

And that suit of armor came to life with his brother's soul.

Memories few and far between filled in the rest of his life before he woke up in Dante's home. He saw himself among the homunculi, but it wasn't him, it was Edward. Envy showed him a red stone, like the ones he ate, only this one shone and shimmered, it moved inside as though filled with liquid. The apprehension was overwhelming, only exchanged with equally overwhelming happiness a moment later. His brother had gone from an unfeeling suit of armor to a real body.

He realized his brother's body later failed because Edward hadn't given enough in exchange. To rectify it, he gave himself to Dante and the homunculi.

That's where his nightmare had started.

And there, standing in Kain Fuery's living room, was where he remembered it all. Stunned, his cup slid out of his hands and shattered to pieces.

Right. So. There you go. I'll try and get the next one started tomorrow.

Comments make me happy. :]