Afternoon, readers! Hope you enjoy this update.

Warnings: Discussion of injuries, some language, explanations and revelations (finally!)

It was fuzzy and warm when he woke, and that's how he knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.

Ed struggled against the muffling fog in his brain for what felt like forever before he finally managed to open his eyes, and the off-white ceiling that greeted him made him want to cry. Or hit something.

Of course, that plan was vetoed by the fact that his face felt like a mass of bruising and what was probably bandaging, and his entire body felt like it was sinking into the clearly cheap and uncomfortable hospital mattress with absolutely no way to get it out again. His limbs were heavy and impossible to shift without more effort than his muzzy brain was willing to supply.

"Got me on the good drugs, then," he muttered, only for his ears to return something that sounded closer to "g'myn gudruen", which he supposed was close enough for now. And apparently someone heard it.

"Ed!"

The face that filled his vision was the most welcome sight in all his years of being alive. The weight that pressed on his right shoulder, on the other hand, was much less appreciated.

"G'ff!" he growled through a throat that scratched like coarse sandpaper, trying to shrug his shoulder up. It didn't move much, but Al seemed to get the idea and pulled his hands off with a quick apology.

"You're finally awake! How do you feel? Are you in pain? Should I call the nurse? The doctor? Do you—"

"Sh'up, Al," he cut in, his tongue feeling heavy in his mouth. Always the worst part of having drugs in his system. Besides the needle. Needles were terrible. But the lack of pain was nice. Very, very nice.

"Ed?" Al's face was over his again, and Ed blinked. "Lost you there for a second. I should call the doctor, you've been out for days—"

Ed tried to protest as Al made his way to the door, but apparently his body was totally done with listening to him, and he could feel himself being pulled back again. His vision narrowed on his brother's back as he leaned through the doorway to call a nurse, and the sudden feeling of relief and the abrupt release of tension—of worry—carried him down into darkness.

The next time he woke, Al was sitting at his bedside, a book in his hands and a quiet air about him. Ed must have made some noise, because he looked up after a moment and smiled brilliantly.

Oh, how much Ed had missed that smile.

"How do you feel?" Al asked brightly, though Ed could hear the concern beneath it. He was willing to bet that the kid hadn't left his bedside in the past however long it had been.

After a quick status check—he still felt muzzy and somewhat disconnected, but there was definitely feeling in all of his flesh limbs and he was pretty sure he had all of his body parts—he tried to shrug. It was a bit of a struggle, but his shoulders actually followed his command with minimal numbed twinging from his torso. "Fine."

Al's right eyebrow inched up his face. "Yeah. You're just fine. In a hospital bed. Not a problem at all."

"You know what I mean," Ed retorted quietly, satisfied with the only slight slur to the words. His throat still felt like someone had decided to go to town with a meat grinder, but at least he could speak. The small glass of ice chips that was pushed into his left hand was a very welcome gift, though. (The fact that his right arm was very much missing didn't escape his notice, but it was a surprisingly common occurrence and his brother didn't look concerned, so Ed set it aside for later.) Al thankfully didn't try to help him sit up slightly and bring the cup to his lips; there was only so much indignity Ed would suffer (that is to say, none at all) before doing it all himself. The bed being able to change angles to help him through the button under Al's fingers was a plus. His grip might have been just a little bit unsteady because of his thumb, which was held in place with a splint, but that didn't slow him down. The ice was blessedly cool on his tongue, and soothed at least a little of the scratchy pain. "What happened?" he asked carefully between mouthfuls.

Al bit his lip. "You've been here for a few days, after... escaping." The way he said it turned it into less of an accomplishment than Ed would have liked.

"I worked hard on that escape," Ed pointed out petulantly.

"How much of it do you actually remember?"

He let his mind wander back through the clearly still somewhat drugged haze that his memories floated in. But too much had happened during his captivity to have forgotten even a moment of it. "Got out, saved a girl's life, got jumped by that psychopath. Then... someone showed up." He shrugged, then winced at the pain it sent lancing through his torso and stilled. "Sounded like sirens, I dunno. Kinda lost it after that. Finally got hit on the head one too many times, eh?"

Clearly the joke fell flat, because Al didn't look amused. It was probably in bad taste anyway.

"Ashley found us," Al said at last. "We were out looking for you. Grissom had gotten a tip off from someone about where you might be. She ran into us when she was trying to find someone with a phone, and once we got some people together we came to the house to get you." He paused and grimaced, as if remembering something unpleasant, but didn't elaborate. "And then you ended up here."

Ed eyed his brother carefully. "And what happened to him? Because if he got away, I swear I'm going to hunt his ass down and finish this myself."

Al met his eyes steadily. "He's dead."

Well. That was actually kind of unexpected.

"What happened?"

Al shrugged. "I couldn't see a lot of it; I was... busy." Again with the slightly awkward pause. "But he must have had a weapon and fought back, or something. I wasn't really paying attention."

Ed narrowed his eyes. That was really unlike Al. His brother caught the look, and his shoulder twitched up slightly in a half-shrug.

"I was a bit busy trying to get to you," he finally admitted. "And... you really didn't look good."

Looking down at himself (carefully, because despite the drugs clearly still in his system, he felt sluggish and mutedly painful all over), Ed had to agree. If this is how he looked now—and his face was probably the worst, even though he couldn't see it—then he didn't really want to think of how he'd looked before the doctors had gotten a hold of him.

It was only when he was looking back up at Al's face that he noticed the white bandages wrapped around his brother's hands. Al was being discreet, casually gripping the bed sheet in a way that concealed his hands without being obvious, but the bandages were stark white and extended halfway to his elbows.

"What did you do?"

Al startled guiltily, clearly trying to avoid the question by pretending nothing was wrong as he burrowed his hands just a bit deeper. Ed fixed him with a level look before pointedly shifting his gaze down to the twin bundles under the sheet. After a minute, Al sighed heavily and pulled them up, only putting up a token protest when Ed snatched up one of his wrists carefully.

The bandages covered his hands completely, wrapping around each finger in turn and then up his palms to his forearms. They were thin enough that he could obviously still move his hands freely, but a few deep red spots dotted the white where blood had dried.

"Who did this?" Ed demanded angrily, ready to break out of the hospital and beat someone into nothingness, injuries or no. It would have been startling if it hadn't been so overpowering; he hadn't felt this protective of Al in a long time. Regular protectiveness, sure, but never about Al getting hurt like this. He'd been less... fragile in the armour. But now that he had his body back, he could get hurt. And Ed wasn't going to let anything happen to him. Ever.

The flush that crept up Al's neck to his ears was achingly familiar.

"No one did it to me, Ed." His scoff was cut off as Al continued. "It was my fault."

Ed raised an eyebrow in a motion that said Explain now before I have to beat it out of you.

Al sighed again. "Grissom locked me in the car when we got to the house. I wasn't going to get out because he'd told me not to, but then you came running out with that man on your heels and..." He rubbed the back of his neck with a bandaged hand, looking an odd combination of sheepish and irritated. "I kinda... lost it. The door wouldn't open even when I tried unlocking it, so... The window was the next best thing."

Ed blinked, and then felt his fist clench awkwardly around the splint. "You broke through the window? With your hands?"

Al shrugged, looking away. "Seemed like the best option at the time. And the actual breaking was with my shoe. Climbing out was just a bit harder, is all."

He opened and closed his mouth a few times before finally gathering himself and snatching up one of his brother's hands again, carefully examining the bandaging. "How many stitches?"

He felt Al wince. "Um... eighteen."

The answer wasn't reassuring. "What did you do, throw yourself on top of the glass and roll in it?"

A bit of a flinch, and Al pulled his hand away. "I wasn't really focussing on that at the time." The steady look in his eyes told Ed to just drop it, and he really, really didn't want to. But suddenly, everything just made him feel tired.

"Not like I'm any better." The pitiful flop of his hand seemed to accurately convey his attempt to gesture at himself, because Al gave him a smile that didn't have much humour in it.

"We're quite the pair, aren't we?"

Ed snorted, feeling his nose twinge at the action. "Not like much has changed, except that now you're not immune to actually bleeding when you do something stupid."

"Yeah. Guess that'll take some getting used to." He was looking down at his bandaged hands, a strange look on his face that Ed couldn't interpret. He was out of practice, which was something he was determined to remedy soon enough. But he was also very much in practice with reading Al's many silences.

"You'll probably be better at it than me in no time," he quipped, and Al let out a chuckle that sounded a bit wet. After a second his slightly glassy eyes came back up to meet Ed's.

"What are we going to do now, Brother?" Al whispered. There were thousands of ways to interpret that, but Ed knew what he meant.

For years, all of their focus and energy had been on regaining their bodies. Now, after everything they'd been through, every horrible thing on both sides of the Gate, Al had been restored. Ed didn't really give a damn about his own limbs if it meant Al could be whole again, and now it was a reality. No matter what happened, that chapter of their journey was closed. What now, indeed.

"I think the first thing is to get home," Ed said finally. "And anything else beyond that... Well. We'll improvise like we always do."

Al's smile was tentative and a bit watery, but to Ed it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

They'd be alright. Despite everything, they'd be alright.

"Your injuries seem to be healing quite well, Edward."

"So when can I get out of here?"

Dr. Speighn tapped his pen against his clipboard, lips pursed. "Despite your rapid recovery, there are still some matters of concern. The number of chemicals in your body has decreased but is still not past the level where I feel comfortable proclaiming you healthy, and there is still the possibility of complications."

Ed scowled, his fingers scrabbling at the bed sheet. He wished he could cross his arms, or at least make a proper fist with his one still-attached hand. But since that was a bit out of his hands (literally), he had to settle for ineffectual and significantly less vehement motions. "What kind of complications?"

The doctor studied Ed for a moment before speaking. "I have significant concerns about the state of your heart."

Ed blinked. "What's wrong with my heart?"

"Have you ever had a family history of heart disease or strain, Edward?" Speighn's eyes were serious but sincere. "Any family members who experienced difficulties with blood circulation, or arrhythmia?"

His eyebrows came together. "Not that I know of. My mother..." (he ignored the slight hitch his stomach gave) "she died of an illness, but it had nothing to do with her heart. And I have no idea about my father, but last I saw he was alive and at least relatively healthy. Why?"

Speighn tapped his pen again and studied his sheet. "We found some serious abnormalities in your heart function. It appears that you're having an excessive amount of strain put on your heart, not dissimilar to times when a person is experiencing extreme stress and high levels of physical activity for extended periods of time. Further tests will probably be needed, but the state of your breathing when they brought you in was also of concern; we suspect that most of the organs in your body are also experiencing that strain."

Ed felt something in his chest—probably his much-abused heart—clench tightly, but it was Al who spoke.

"What does that mean?" Ed wasn't imagining the anxiety in his brother's voice. "What's going to happen to him?"

The doctor sighed. "We can't be sure yet; we'd like to take your brother to do some tests, get CT scan. We're hoping it's just a result of the malnutrition and extreme stress he experienced over the last several days, but only bed rest and time will give us a concrete answer."

Al looked over at him, and Ed grimaced. He was never going to get out of here with Al concerned and protective now that Speighn had basically issued bed rest.

"When will you be doing these tests?" Al asked tentatively.

"Tomorrow would be best; we need a few hours of fasting beforehand."

"Alright. Was there anything else?"

The doctor ran his eyes over his clipboard once more. "Besides the mild nerve damage around the... what is it called? The port? For his automail, everything else seems to be healing quite well and is treatable. Make sure he drinks plenty of fluids to continue flushing his system, and make sure he keeps the IV in his arm."

Ed bristled at being talked over, but Al simply thanked the man before he turned and left the room. Once they were alone, Ed scowled over at his brother. Al was smiling innocently, even though his eyes shone with clear worry.

"Here, Brother," the traitor said, holding out a large glass of water. "Drink up. Doctor's orders."

"You drink up," Ed muttered, a feeble comeback that he tried to cover up by stuffing the edge of the glass in his mouth and taking a huge gulp—which ended up hacked painfully back in to the cup ashe choked, his throat rejecting it. He sputtered for a minute, hearing Al snicker off to the side.

Silence fell a moment later, and he looked up to see Al giving him a serious look.

"Strain on your organs... you don't think it's got something to do with—"

"I know it does," Ed cut in quietly, setting the glass of water aside and clearing his throat a few more times to get the worst of the water out of his lungs.

Al's bandaged hands fisted in the bed spread. "What?"

He sighed. "I did a bit of a test when I was... tied up. And I know that alchemy circles don't work."

"Well we knew that; Mister Grissom said that they use physics here, and that most of the ambient energy can't be harnessed by alchemy if that's the case. But I figured since you could do it without a circle, you'd be able to do it with one."

Ed shook his head before gesturing at the pad of paper and pen on the bedside table. Al handed them over and Ed sketched out a simple transmutation circle. When he pressed his hand to it, nothing happened (even though something in his mind had hoped that something would happen, and his conclusion could maybe be wrong.) "I tried some other ones earlier. Nothing. No energy, no matter what I try."

"So what's the difference, then? Between using a circle and not?"

Ed grimaced and started scribbling idly, mostly so that he wouldn't have to look at Al as he said it. "I think that the circle uses ambient energy, and when it can't it just doesn't work. Circle-less alchemy is the same, except that when it doesn't have any energy to use from the environment, it takes what's closest and easiest to access." When that was met with silence, he finally looked up to meet Al's wide eyes. "Because my body is essentially part of the circle, it can draw from my life force and energy in order to power the transmutation. Ergo," he gestured at himself, pen in hand, "after a lot of transmutations with less time to recover in between... It kinda starts to put a strain on things."

"You're using your own life force?" Al hissed, eyes wide and slightly wild. "What the hell were you thinking, Ed? You could have killed yourself! You still can!"

"It's not like I was doing it on purpose," Ed protested. "I didn't even know what was happening until the arrays didn't work! It's not like I have much experience in using alchemy in a place where it's supposed to be impossible!"

Al was clearly fuming—whether from worry or legitimate anger, Ed couldn't tell, but it was probably some combination of both. "So you just decided 'hey, it hurts to do alchemy but that can't possibly be caused by the alchemy itself so I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing and ignore any possible consequences'?"

"I'm not an idiot! I only used it when I needed to!"

"There were other ways you could have done it!"

"Oh yeah, because we would have totally been fine because apparently I'm capable of knocking down an entire steel-reinforced door just by kicking it—"

"Are we interrupting?"

Both brothers turned to the door abruptly and froze, eyes wide and panting slightly from shouting. Grissom and Greg stood in the door, Catherine hovering just behind them.

"Because we can come back later, you know?" Greg continued, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

The freeze broke, and Ed laid back against the raised bed with a scowl as Al seated himself in his chair; he didn't know when they'd gotten so close to each other's faces, but Ed's ribs were definitely protesting as he relaxed his core muscles. He also didn't know when the three from the lab had showed up or how much they had heard.

"It's fine," Al said, motioning them into the room. "Brother's just being stupid, as usual."

Ed shot him an offended look, but Al's steady stare in return told him that the argument wasn't done and they would be having words.

He hated having words.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded instead of responding, turning to the CSIs as they stood at the foot of the bed. Catherine had murmured something about Lindsay and left once she saw that both boys were awake and alert.

Grissom was undeterred by his tone. "Your doctor informed us that you were awake. I just wanted to come and see how you were doing, and what you remember. We can get your official statement later, when you've had more time to rest."

"That's what he wants to do," Greg cut in. "I wanted to ask about alchemy." Without so much as a by-your-leave, the Trace expert pulled a backpack from his shoulders and plopped it on the bed, unzipping it efficiently and dumping the entire contents—which appeared to be an assortment of books ranging from ridiculously new and colourful to old and probably leather-bound—around and on top of Ed's feet.

Ed's brain had stalled on the alchemy bit and so he didn't react in time to prevent Greg from then picking up an older one and seating himself on the edge of the bed, flipping it open to a random page and opening his mouth to speak.

That's when his brain finally caught up with everything. "You want to ask about what?"

"Alchemy," Greg repeated, before his brows came together. "I want to find out what in these books is actually true. You remember that stuff, right? I mean, you had a bunch of crap affecting your brain and a concussion so I wouldn't be surprised if you lost some memories but I thought it was a huge—"

"How the hell do you know?" Ed interrupted, ignoring the zing of anxiety that the thought of lost memories caused. He could parse through them later.

The man blinked. "Well, you basically gave me every clue possible without actually saying it, so research wasn't really a difficult thing. Not to mention," he pulled a stray sheet of paper tucked into the front of one of the books on the bed and held it up. Ed scowled when he recognized his own work. "Transmutation circle. Super helpful."

Ed turned to share an incredulous (and probably mostly exasperated) look with Al, only to be on the receiving end of a rather sheepish shrug. His mind made the only logical leap. "Wait. You told them?"

"He'd already guessed!" Al defended, hunching his shoulders slightly. "And I don't know why you don't trust them with this after everything that's happened." This time his stare was somewhat accusing.

Ed opened his mouth to retort before pausing and closing it again. The thought occurred to him that he legitimately didn't know why he hadn't told them. At first it had been his usual reticence, being careful to give away only the information that was absolutely necessary or would lead them away from things he didn't want to talk about. Once he'd found out they didn't even have alchemy here... Well. It was just automatic.

Al gave a triumphant nod. "Exactly." And before Ed could protest, he was grabbing up one of Greg's books and flipping it open. In half a second Greg was at his side, reading over his shoulder, and within another minute they were deep in discussion on the validity of early alchemy and the first experiments to turn lead into gold—Greg's exclamation of "What? You mean you can actually do that?" pretty much summed up most of his side of it.

Ed found himself on the receiving end of a sympathetic shrug from Grissom as the older man pushed aside a few books and took Greg's vacated seat on the bed. "He gets likethat. It happens."

"Yeah, so does Al," Ed conceded with a sigh and a small, involuntary smile. It was surprisingly easy to forgive his brother for being so stubborn, if only to be able to see his eyes sparkling for the first time in years as he explained the first principles of alchemy and how they differed from the ones in the book.

"So how are you actually feeling?" Grissom asked after a moment, giving him a level, assessing look.

Ed shrugged slightly with his good shoulder. "I've been better. But I'll be fine." He was used to ignoring the general aches that misadventure caused, though the sharp pains in his ribs and the pounding headache that tried to fuzz his thoughts and blacken his vision were unwelcome. The rest would heal in time, no matter how annoying the splint on his left hand or general light-headedness was.

"The doctor says he wants to keep you for observation for at least another week."

He swore softly. "I am not spending that much time in a hospital."

Grissom raised an eyebrow. "I hardly think you'll be going much of anywhere right now."

"Just watch me!" His intention was to sit up, pull the sheet back, put his feet firmly on the floor, and stand over the CSI, thereby showing him exactly how ready he was to leave this godforsaken place. The first two, he succeeded in—which was then followed by a stab of pain in his general lung area and a dizzying twist to the world that ended in him staring up at the ceiling with Grissom's hand firmly on his good shoulder and Al's concerned "Ed?"

"Maybe just one more day," he slurred slightly as the ceiling tiles continued to spin ever so slightly. The headache had turned to a roaring in his ears and his eyelids were suddenly impossibly heavy; he tried his best to fight it, but it was insistent. He felt his body relax involuntarily and then he was gone.

Short chapter is short; sorry about that! Expect the next update in a week.

Review if you enjoyed!

-Akita