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CHAPTER 10:
THE ELRICS' KEEPER
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Ashleigh Crichton stood in the alleyway near North City's train station as Major Alex Louis Armstrong stepped out of the train compartment, Edward Elric, still sleeping off the temporary soul drain that Victor had put him through and not having yet woken up from when he'd passed out due to what the Enlightened Sage had said about Miss Rockbell, in his arms.
Miss Rockbell and Miss Thomas themselves walked off of the train right behind him, with Sciezka and Muto behind them.
Captain Buccaneer had traveled here with a contingent of Briggs soldiers in a different compartment, and he had already departed to retrieve the reinforcements from Briggs waiting for him at the North City Command Center.
The Enlightened Sage stood at Ashleigh's side with a shell of visible light now solely transmuted into a form resembling his original body over his current human body.
Ashleigh felt a small contortion of distaste in his stomach about what they were about to do with Miss Rockbell, for she was still a surrogate sister to Alphonse Elric, and she had once been a surrogate sister to Edward Elric before her love for him had shifted to take a different route, and she thus reminded him of Julia.
"Are you certain that Miss Rockbell is the one who we should be using to prove the first theory of our research?" Ashleigh questioned, letting his worry and concern into his voice.
"I fully agree with you about the ways that you believe Miss Rockbell will react, when she learns what her trip to the university town of Rhinej near Baschool with Pinako Rockbell when she was a child, resulted in.
"However, just as we added a small amount of Miss Rockbell's blood to the location that Edward Elric would reappear when the Gate cast him out so he'd send a thread of her soul into and out of the Gate as he transmuted Alphonse Elric into the armor; Miss Thomas was mildly injured during the Thule Society's incursion into Lior, and a string of her soul thus passed through the Gate inside armor.
"Miss Thomas has less weaknesses than Miss Rockbell, but we might still be able to maneuver her."
The Enlightened Sage gave Ashleigh an empathetic and sympathetic and understanding look, but one that was set with reluctant determination that brooked no argument.
"I prefer not to use Miss Rockbell as much as you do, but she's our best option," the Enlightened Sage answered.
"Miss Thomas has her weaknesses, but she is currently too determined to move forward from them.
"Miss Rockbell has learned much about moving forward herself, but nowhere near what Miss Thomas has."
Ashleigh saw the Enlightened Sage's point, but discomfort still roiled inside him.
"Miss Rockbell is by far the better open," the Enlightened Sage continued.
"Once she learns exactly what she brought about from having been so devoted to Edward and Alphonse Elric, that she wanted to assist Pinako Rockbell in making money to support the Elrics so much that she stowed away when Pinako Rockbell visited Rhinej to research automail; she will play into our hands in the ways that we desire for her to.
"And then Miss Rockbell will at last enable the first ruined and hopeless people of these two worlds to launch the first stages of the revolution that will give their families, loved ones, and friends, and the rest of the people of both Earths, the chance that all humanity and civilization and culture and learning has longed for since humans first evolved.
"To at last and forever grasp, and hold onto; lives of eternal happiness and peace and prosperity and contentment, that will never again know pain or despair or war or adversity for as long as both Suns, and thus both solar systems, live.
"I haven't spent the last around half a century putting the preparations for this in place after my father left Baschool; to gamble setting the chain of events in motion that will bring the Promised Time to both Earths on a woman who will be far harder to manipulate.
"As I'm certain now that the Xingese from the Yao Clan diverted back to the embassy rather than follow us when Mustang returned May Chang there, I now know that it's safe for me to tell you that the rest of the materials and resources are now all in place, or about to arrive in place."
Ashleigh had difficulty breathing; and whatever doubts he'd had that it was Miss Rockbell who they should be manipulating into unintentionally causing something similar to what Edward Elric had unwittingly had in Lior, and Alphonse Elric had unintentionally brought about in Central, to happen to the people of Baschool and its suburbs; wholly faded into nothingness.
"I understand that you'd prefer that we could use Alphonse Elric himself, and not Miss Rockbell. But, as you know, there is no forgiveness in an unrelenting reality.
"So could you please cheer up, and look on the bright side?
"Before the Sun sets tonight, I will have proven the theory of Adam Kadmon."
"Mom and Dad and Julia and I trusted you to protect us, not to become an even greater danger to us than anyone else from Milos or Creta! You swore an oath to protect and serve the people who you were ordered to defend, not to murder them yourself!
"Even after what you just did to Mom and Dad; even after you didn't just murder them, but you literally ripped off all of the skin from all of their bodies to turn all of it into strips of flesh for a transmutation circle for decomposing their skeletons and insides are gruesomely as possible; are you genuinely going to try to do what you say that you will to Julia!?
"Mom and Dad were at least civilian adults, but what officer or soldier would do what you just threatened to try to do to an innocent child!?"
"Stop throwing a temper tantrum, you spoiled rotten baby.
"You must not have heard what the Amestrian military did last year in Ishbal.
"They tried to keep it secret, but enough information got out that I learned about it, and it's one of the things that inspired me to choose these courses.
"They massacred tens of thousands of civilians, including babies and children and the old, to suppress the rebellion there.
"If they were willing to do it when they were ordered to, what's wrong with me doing something similar of my own volition?"
"Because you're not an Amestrian shock trooper serving a State of warmongers, and you made a vow to follow orders that commanded you to do the precise opposite; protect us from anyone who would hurt us!"
"It gives me great pleasure to tell you, whiny toddler, that that's one of the very reasons that I'm deserting, and disobeying those orders.
"It's one of the best ways that I can defy orders that keep leaving me digging up scraps from my betters as a dog doing nothing but rolling over and crawling on my belly in cesspool after cesspool at every barked command, while I'm constantly denied a single chance at recognition or fame myself. But now that I know about Doctor Crichton's research, I at last have the opportunity for the status and recognition that I joined the military to gain, and the means of gaining incomparably more glory than I could once acquire in the Cretan military a single time no matter how many times I order other people to wag their tales for me and throw their lives away to conquer or suppress adversaries.
"So, of course, I'm going to seize that opportunity by in a means that involves as much insubordination to my direct orders as I can possibly bring into my desertion.
"What honor and reputation is to be found upholding an oath that requires an officer or soldier to guard a family of ignorant barbarians from a city-state of rebellious; and yes, I'm using the following term to all five of its fullest extents as a racial slur, cultural slur, national slur, religious slur, and ethnic slur; garbage slurping tapeworms; who are now living in the boondocks?"
Ashleigh pushed the memories away as far as possible.
If Miss Rockbell knew what had happened to Mom and Dad and Julia, and to him, she'd assist the Enlightened Sage and the Brethren of Trismegistus willingly.
Ashleigh was just teaching Miss Rockbell the same truths that the person who she was in love with, and her surrogate brother, and Ashleigh himself, had learned long ago.
He wasn't doing anything that harmful to Miss Rockbell, or to anyone else accompanying her to Baschool.
Then why was his stomach still churning?
"And I'll have fulfilled the first part of my promise to you for Julia; and my first promise to Pride, the Homunculus who you yourself transmuted, as well," the Enlightened Sage continued.
"So be at peace.
"Miss Rockbell and her grandmother are automail engineers, who create artificial materials that imitate the processes of living humans.
"And her late parents were doctors.
"Sooner or later, Miss Rockbell will come to understand the need for her to have unknowingly caused to happen what she is about to set in motion.
"And when our research is over, and I have obtained the means of beginning the Promised Time itself, there will never be another slaughter of humans for as long as space and time unravel at all, in any form.
"So you have no reason whatsoever to feel guilty about, or bad about, what we're about to do to Miss Rockbell.
"You need to leave before Miss Rockbell and the Fullmetal Alchemist do, and take your position in Baschool.
"These two worlds are finally about to change.
"And you and I are going to be the ones who change them."
Winry sat in the back seat of the military car as it drove over the snow dunes in the middle of the Briggs military cordon, Ed's head and upper torso resting in her lap and the rest of his body extending into Sciezka's lap on her left, with Rose on her right and Major Armstrong driving the car with Kazuki in the front seat.
Rose and Winry had both believed, although Ed was much closer to Rose than Sciezka, if he woke up with any of his body in Rose's lap, he'd be a lot more uncomfortable.
Familiar pain at how many years Ed and Al had pushed her away twisted through her, and she pushed it back with a grimace.
Her own selfish wishes to be more a part of Ed's and Al's lives had been what had done this to the two of them in the first place.
Granny and Sciezka and Rose had argued that Winry shouldn't see herself as responsible for what had happened to Ed and Al so many times since Al had regained his original body that she'd lost count of them.
But if Ed was actually able to stay in Amestris this time, the sole reason that she refused to tell him straight out that she wasn't going to establish a romantic relationship with him and push him to Rose, rather than accept his feelings for her, was because she didn't want to force Ed to choose the person who he wouldn't be happiest with, and Winry had no idea whether or not that would be Rose or her.
Ed had connected extremely quickly and extremely deeply with Rose even though he'd merely actually spent time with her for less than a week, and bonds stronger than ordinary friendships, be they surrogate familial, romantic, or stronger friendships couldn't develop unless you'd known each other for a long time.
But with how powerfully Ed and Rose had connected, and how well they understood each other, and what they'd been there for each other about, and supported each other through, Winry knew full well that they'd started to fall in love, and if they spent enough time together, in time, they would fall in love with each other.
That would have been a relief to Winry, after everything she'd done; and she'd have welcomed the obvious opportunity to return to just being Ed's surrogate sister, and best friend; if she hadn't known that she might hurt Ed by making it clear that she didn't want to be available any longer.
Not that being a surrogate sister for him would be much of an improvement.
She hadn't done any better with Al the second time around.
And now she had no idea if Ed and Al could even stay on the other side of the Gate; and whether she should believe that, once Ed returned to the other side of the Gate and Al, he wouldn't be back for certain this time, and continue to concentrate on moving forward from the two people who she loved the most, and who she always would, in one form or another.
Or whether Ed and Al would be happier if she took Ed's return as proof that Ed would remain with her this time, and Al would follow him back home to her and Granny sooner or later; or, at worst, they'd travel through the Gate one or more times in the future and then return home to her and Granny sooner or later for good.
But, even if the events of yesterday hadn't occurred; after her selfish need to become more a part of their lives, and to be thankful for all that she'd done for them, had cost Ed his life and then sent them both through the Gate two more times each, Winry couldn't push the fears away that Ed and Al would be better off if she was the one who walked out of their lives and never returned.
Her carelessness in creating Ed's new automail arm might have made things better, and if she hadn't been irresponsible he might have just gotten hurt worse in Laboratory Five, but after that, her attempts to love and protect Ed and Al had mostly just caused them nightmare after nightmare, and put them through one more hardship after another.
She'd let Izumi and Sig catch up with Ed and Al in Rush Valley because she'd felt betrayed and angry that Ed had cheated to defeat two swindlers in an automail arm wrestling contest; and, as a result, they hadn't caught up with Scar in the Ishbalan refugee camp before he'd left it for Lior.
If she'd accepted that Ed and Al needed her to give them the kind of home that they wanted, and not the kind of home that she wanted them to have, from the beginning; Izumi would almost certainly have caught up with them after they'd reached the Ishbalan refugee camp and had been waiting for Scar to arrive, or they'd have departed the Ishbalan refugee camp after meeting with the Ishbalan alchemist who researched Ishbalan Grand Arcanum and discovering that regaining their bodies through learning about Ishbalan alchemy was a dead end and Izumi would have found them somewhere else.
But that Izumi and Sig had caught up with Ed and Al when she had had still been Winry's fault.
Then, even if she'd done the right thing by not staying at their side as they'd visited Ishbal and Lior, Winry had still made things a lot harder for them by infiltrating the Central Command Center with Sciezka.
If she hadn't, she'd have been able to stay with Gracia and Elicia, and Sciezka would never have informed them that Hughes had been murdered. Mustang's and Armstrong's battle with them might have continued a little longer if Winry hadn't stopped it; but it was very unlikely that Ed and Al would have escaped from Mustang and refused to tell him about Bradley and Sloth, and if the battle had continued Mustang and Armstrong almost certainly wouldn't have hurt Ed and Al that badly, if at all.
And then Ed and Al might have come to see her as soon as they'd snuck back into Central after Mustang had directed the State's search away from them, and that would have resulted in their nightmare ending a lot differently.
Or Rose was still right, and if they'd come to see her and stayed with Gracia, the Homunculi would have gone after Ed at Gracia's house rather than where Ed had actually hidden; and the sole difference that Winry would have made was to get Gracia's and Elicia's house badly wrecked, and perhaps one or both of them even murdered.
But because Winry had no way of knowing, she had no way of knowing that she couldn't have made a difference.
At the very least, if she hadn't enabled Mustang to start moving forward from his own nightmare, he might not have been merciful enough when dueling Bradley to fall for Bradley's ploy when he'd let Mustang incinerate him; and Selim Bradley might thus still be alive, and Mustang might not have been partially blinded by Archer.
Or a more vengeful Mustang would have done something reckless when Archer had confronted him, and died rather than be partially blinded, and Archer would have shot Selim Bradley fatally himself.
Archer hadn't been a Homunculus, but he'd been as much of a glory hound as Edison and the other members of the Glorious Dragons, if not worse; and that Bradley had still been willing to use Archer while he'd sidelined Edison and the other disenfranchised officers of the Glorious Dragons was tantamount to how much more competent than Edison and the other jealous officers of the Glorious Dragons Archer was. And Archer had been both terribly traumatized by his near death in Lior and emboldened by his new automail body parts.
Archer would very likely have been willing to shoot a child if it would enable him to defeat Mustang, particularly if Mustang hadn't already been badly injured because he'd let Pride demoralize him, and Archer had thus needed a way to trick Mustang into dropping his guard.
But Winry couldn't even be sure about that.
Part of moving forward was not dwelling on what might have happened if she'd said or done something differently.
But Winry had no idea how she could justify moving forward at all now when she'd let Ed and Al lose their father because she'd been so clingy and selfish.
And when she'd let Ed find out that his half brother was still alive and close to the Philosopher's Stone, and that he or a member of his research team, had transmuted a Homunculus of his father, in among the worst possible ways imaginable.
At the very least, she should have realized that Al's dreams about Ed meant that he was alive in a world past the Gate; and found a way to follow Ed there herself and been there for him as he waited for Al to bring him home, and Winry along with him.
Winry couldn't believe that, if she had followed Ed through the Gate, Hohenheim, at least, wouldn't still be alive.
She could have made it through the Gate to Ed.
If Ed had made it to the other world, there had almost certainly been a way for Izumi or Mustang or Armstrong, or another alchemist, to send her to him there without losing part or all of her body, as Ed and Al had.
"Is this your first time this far north?" Kazuki asked from the front seat.
"I visited a town here named Rhinej, around fifteen years ago, shortly before Ed and Al's mother, and a lot of other people in Resembool, caught tuberculosis and passed away from it," Winry responded.
And, although she'd visited Rhinej to expand her knowledge of automail to be able to give Ed and Al, and Trisha, economic support; and had even stowed away on the train heading north when Granny had told her that this area of Amestris was too dangerous for an around five year old girl; all it had accomplished was to leave her just as powerless and helpless to prevent Trisha from catching tuberculosis and dying from it as she'd been to do anything else for Ed and Al but give Ed automail and assist Ed through therapy that, for all that she could believe now, he might have finished far sooner and far less painfully if she'd stayed out of it.
Assuming that she should have designed his automail limbs and installed them in the first place.
But Ed wouldn't have been as comfortable with anyone else's automail limbs, so Winry was still mostly convinced that she'd done the right thing for Ed by building automail for him herself, and repeatedly building new automail, and assisting him through his automail therapy.
It was what she'd done afterwards that had ruined Ed's and Al's lives even more.
"Ed and Al's mother, Trisha, was having problems supporting them after his father left because of what researching the Stone had done to his body, and how bad he felt about spending time with his family due to it.
"So I wanted to try to make things easier for them by improving the Rockbell family business, in giving people prosthetic automail limbs such as the ones Ed has for a right arm and left leg.
Kazuki's jaw opened, moving in ways and ending up in a set that told Winry that he'd already been able to tell that Ed's automail blade, which Mustang had long since transmuted back into his automail, had been reconstructed from a prosthetic arm.
But that he hadn't known that Ed had a second automail limb.
"Did Ed lose those parts of his body due to studying the Gate?" Kazuki questioned.
"And, whether or not he did, did Al lose any body parts?"
"That's not my story to tell," Winry said.
"You'll need to ask Ed when he wakes up."
How long Ed was sleeping was starting to worry her in and of itself.
He usually didn't sleep this long, no matter what he'd been through.
Kazuki blinked as he figured out why Winry now looked worried.
"An alchemist on my world performed what you call a transmutation involving an imperfect Stone that, over a good amount of time, drained a small but sizeable amount of Ed's energy," he said.
Rose went skeletal white.
Armstrong jolted violently, and Winry could see that tears were once more streaming down his cheeks in the rearview mirror.
Winry felt her heartbeat accelerate so quickly that she didn't understand why it didn't pound out of her ribs and chest, and tear them apart as it did, and tears appeared in her eyes.
"I have no idea how the transmutation works, though Ed might," Sciezka said quickly, for all of their sakes. "But if it wasn't temporary damage, from how long Kazuki says that it lasted, Ed would most likely already be rotting."
Winry took a long, deep breath.
Then she took another, and another, and a number more after that, until her heart was beating the way that it regularly did.
But she saw no reason to wipe away, or blink back, her tears.
Not when that had been one of the least horrible things that Ed had gone through yesterday.
"You haven't told me about your visit North before," Sciezka switched topics with a smile at Winry.
"What's to tell?" Winry shrugged.
"It was early Spring, and the snow hadn't melted that much, so it was mostly as white as the deserts in the East are tan, and the weather was as cold here as it was hot there."
And, just like when Ed and Al had had their first true encounter with Dante and the Homunculi in Lior while searching for alchemical secrets that might enable them to regain their bodies, and particularly the Philosopher's Stone; their first true effort against Ed's and Al's half brother involved searching for alchemical secrets written by an Elric with a broken body on a terrain as white and wet as Lior's had been dry and hot.
People truly did never learn from the mistakes of the past, and kept bringing the same kinds of horrible suffering down upon others.
They weren't traveling over similar terrain because history was just happening to repeat that way.
History repeated because people caused it to repeat.
Hohenheim had hidden, and perhaps hidden research, in the same kind of isolated location that Dante had started two wars in.
"And nothing particularly interesting happened," Winry continued.
"We studied the local automail, and watched a number of sick people get outfitted for automail themselves, and then returned home.
"But how I made it here is arguably noteworthy.
"Granny didn't want me to come, as tuberculosis had been making the rounds through the rural areas of Amestris and the cold climate up here was no place for a girl of around five, but I told Ed and Al that I was going to stow away to travel up here with her anyway, and then I did it."
Kazuki partially grinned at Winry's devotion to Ed and Al, and he partially grimaced.
Winry's heart twisted violently, and squeezed in a steel vise, and her insides warped.
"The sole alteration in what would otherwise have been an unremarkable visit was when someone named Steiner, brought in a martial artist brother who had just lost a finger but who was determined to attempt to be outfitted in automail even though being outfitted and going through therapy had a very good chance of killing him due to how old he was," Winry continued.
"He had medical knowledge and was very pushy with people, so he convinced me to take an experimental vaccine of tuberculosis, since it had been making its way around rural areas in Amestris.
"For all the good that did."
Sciezka blinked in surprise.
"Steiner?" she questioned.
"As in the Steiner brothers; Gold Steiner and Silver Steiner, one of who was an alchemist and one of who was a martial artist, though they kept changing who was the Gold one and who was the Silver one so often that it was difficult to tell which was which?
"Silver Steiner was Nash Tringham's alchemy teacher, and Tim Marcoh was his nephew."
This time, the terror that consumed Winry completely and fully and totally and absolutely and utterly and wholly and anyplace and everywhere was so debilitating that Winry's heart couldn't pound or stop, if she even had one.
She didn't know if it was tears obscuring all of her vision, or nightmarish hallucinations.
"I've read up on him extensively," Sciezka said quickly, knowing full well what was terrifying Winry so indefinably.
"He was like Izumi. He hated the State Alchemist institution. There was no way that he could have been involved with Dante. So if you're afraid that the vaccine that you were given was specifically meant to try to infect Trisha, Ed, and Al, and the rest of Resembool, and that you might have killed Trisha and caused everything that happened to Ed and Al, and everyone else, afterwards; you have no reason at all to worry about that."
Winry forced herself to take another heavy, deep breath, and then another heavy deep breath and another heavy deep breath, and another and another and another after that and another afterwards, and to keep taking them.
But her heartbeat wouldn't calm.
If she could do what she'd already done to Ed and Al, it was very hard for her to believe that she hadn't murdered Trisha by trying to be there for Ed and Al in another self defeating and futile way.
Especially not when she'd let Hohenheim die.
"You shouldn't be hard on yourself," Kazuki said with a reassuring smile.
"If you give people prosthetic limbs, that's comparable to enabling heroes and adventurers and soldiers in stories to pull off reversals when they're nearly beaten during quests, or to narrowly escape danger.
"I was actually in a similar situation once on my own, early when I started practicing alchemy, and then later with my alchemy teacher's assistance. And believe me, the concept of a coming from behind success isn't as pleasant as stories cause them to sound, so you might have very little idea what clawing your way out of a pit involves.
"But trust me, what you do for people by making automail for them is incredible."
Ed himself had named her the best automail mechanic in the world in Rush Valley, but that meant nothing to Winry now.
"It's all fine and thrilling to see reversals and narrow escapes happen in a story, but talking as someone who has been through that myself twice in reality, being in that kind of situation hurts a lot, and it's very terrifying," Kazuki said.
"The first time I was in that situation, when confronting an exploitative alchemist named Kawazui in a duel that involved alchemy, I was badly hurt,"
Sciezka cringed,
"Enough that I wanted to give up the fight, and that was when I truly realized how painful the world of death and pain and battle and conflict that I talked about back in Central are.
"The second time, when my alchemy teacher stepped in, Tokiko was near death from something that the alchemist who led Kawazui's research team, Koushaku Chouno, had done. I recovered a means of keeping her alive from that alchemist, but I'd been badly hurt by the time that I'd retrieved it, so I fell unconscious convinced that I'd been too late and that Tokiko was now about to die, and horrified and terrified out of my senses that everything that I'd done had been for nothing."
Sciezka pressed her lips together tightly, and Winry felt herself pale.
"So I didn't know that Bravo had found us, and he recovered the solution from me while I was unconscious, and when I woke up, Tokiko was nearby, but I was still convinced that I'd let Tokiko die and I'd felt horrible about it, and she needed to inform me that she was still alive, and had recovered from what Koushaku had done to her.
"And look at it from the perspective of the person or people who push you into a corner, from which the person who he or she or they pushed into a corner then accomplished a comeback or a narrow escape.
"All their efforts turn out to have been in vain, and how hard the person has struggled to push you into a corner ends up to have been for nothing, and a waste of agonizing effort.
"Or, worse, if you're in a battle where the enemy soldiers are about to win and then the soldiers who appear about to lose find a way to defeat their opponents when they've nearly lost; or you at least live to fight another day by a hairsbreadth and flee, all the people who died to enable the enemy soldiers who nearly won died for nothing.
"Last second reversals or last minute reversals, and narrow escapes and death-defying evasions of harm, are as deadly and harmful and horrible and frightening as the death and suffering of people who can't achieve a reversal or accomplish a death-defying comeback; to both the person or people who achieve the comeback victory or escape, and the person or people who back the reverser or escapee up against the wall.
"And last-second victories and death-defying escapes do happen to people who live in a world of cold battle a lot in reality. Furthermore, I used to believe that pain like that just happens a lot of the time in fiction, or at least just if you're in a uniquely dangerous situation that most people who live regular lives don't confront. But I recently met two people named Ouka and Shusui who went through something that, while I don't want to go into detail because I'll betray their confidences, showed me that reality is a very relentless place, and that, inside or outside of battle, the suffering people go through in stories are very true to life."
Tears pushed forwards into Sciezka's own eyes, and further tears streaked Armstrong's face, at the revelation that Kazuki was very well acquainted with how remorseless reality could be himself.
"Hairsbreadth evasions and comebacks from the edge of defeat happen a lot in stories because those stories exemplify the kinds of hardships that a lot of ordinary people regularly go through day to day, although in very different forms that I don't want to talk about. And people who don't live ordinary lives do go through the actual evasions and comebacks from the edge a lot, because lives of battle are not lives of virtue riding a white horse and easily mowing down adversaries. They're terrible and tragic situations where, as I know from my personal experiences, they hurt so much that people are more often than not motivated to fight their hardest until they're shoved against a wall and the need to contend with the pain of the conflict or face the death or torment of one or more people who they care about, or their own death or torment, thus gives them enough reason to confront the pain of combat and fight harder.
"And the more times that adversity that involves reversals or narrow escapes, or more common forms of torment, take place, and the more that all of these forms of adversity happen to the person or people backed into a corner, and the person or people who do the pushing; the longer the torment and the fear and the death last, for the people on both sides.
"Yet, by living as an automail mechanic, you're supporting people through that kind of situation, the more commonplace kinds that I won't describe, and the kinds involved in battle where the literal reversals and evasions occur, on a regular basis.
"And when you give someone such as Ed, who I'm pretty sure lost his body due to things that he did himself, you're also rendering what he did to bring these to that point as meaningless as those efforts become for people who push others against the wall, so you're causing it to become easier to deal with.
"It's crazy how well you care for people, and protect them from the brink, by giving people that kind of support as your living itself."
Winry saw Kazuki's points, but they weren't at all reassuring, and more tears just came to her eyes.
"However, as you say, if I outfit someone for automail who has barely survived a murder at the end of a brutal fight with a murder, then the person who tried to murder the person who I outfitted got injured badly in that fight, and shed a lot of sweat and perhaps blood and exhausted himself or herself very badly trying to make the murder happen, just to have all the hardship that he or she went through end up futile," Winry argued.
"I obviously should have stopped the murderer from succeeding, but that doesn't change that I caused all the wannabe' murderer's efforts to have just been pointless adversity.
"Or look at adversity that doesn't involve battle.
"Take, say, a team of archeologists exploring ruins left behind by a civilization predating the establishment of Amestris that left a lot of booby traps in a structure that their civilization valued to keep people from plundering it; and who I outfit to enable to recover from injuries, perhaps even injuries threatening to kill them, that they suffered due to being caught in the traps. Or drivers who are unable to get a train careening out of control back under control in time to prevent a fatal train crash, and who I then outfit with automail so they can recover from the wounds they underwent in the crash.
"There's no difference between whether I outfit these people, or they stop the collision from happening or avoid the traps by a hairsbreadth.
"All the injuries, perhaps crippling injuries that no automail could enable them to recover from, that the people of the earlier civilization suffered putting them in place, turn out to have been meaningless pain and striving. As I outfitted the archeologists who were hurt in the traps with automail, they didn't catch the archeologists and protect the remnants of that civilization from being plundered by them, or dissuade other archeologists from plundering that civilization, so they were crippled or badly injured, and one or more people might have even died, and the sacrifices were meaningless.
"If someone is crippled or dies in a train crash and the train can no longer be trusted to be used, at least not until its repaired, at least the train that people spent a lot of effort putting together achieved very high speeds and the effort put into building the train meant something, but if I outfit the victims with automail, then the train didn't even accomplish that much.
"And, as you say, due to how relentless a place the world is, yours as well as mine, these kinds of rebounds and hairsbreadth evasions happen in reality as much as resilience and tenacity in a combat situation.
"As do far more common, less unusual forms of torment that I'd betray confidences of my own to go into detail about.
"Besides, what good is protecting people from the brink on a daily basis when all you accomplish for the people on the brink who truly matter is to just force them to hurt, or risk death, much more?"
It was then that Winry became aware that the car had stopped, and that the Briggs officer who Major General Armstrong had tasked to escort them to Baschool and search for Hohenheim's research notes, a male around the height and size of Major Armstrong with black hair in a mohawk and a long brain named Captain Buccaneer, had rolled down the windows of the back of their car.
"Does that cause all the hard work that you've done for the people who you have brought back from the brink to mean anything less?" Buccaneer questioned with a mix of amusement and irritation.
"I have an automail arm myself, under the right arm of my uniform, so I know from my personal service in the Amestrian military how revitalizing it is to be given an automail after you've been wounded."
Winry blinked at the reason that it was so loose, but while, before yesterday, she would have been eager to see it, now the presence of another automail limb just exhausted her even further.
"But at any rate, I'd stay in the car."
Buccaneer looked at Sciezka.
"Your idea either worked, or the Fullmetal Alchemist's nutcase of a charlatan has a lab here himself."
Winry's eyes went wide as agony and hope surged up to sear through all of her being and what wasn't her self.
And she should have considered that Ed's half brother would have set up a lab of his own here once Hohenheim had left.
"Ed," Rose spoke urgently, and she reached over to shake his closest shoulder gently.
This time, Ed moved a little, and Winry was barely able to call upon the strength to keep from sagging bonelessly back against the seat at the knowledge that Ed was waking up.
"Someone watching us from Baschool, maybe a sniper, is warning us away by signals of reflected Sunlight that are telling us that, if we don't drive away, he'll–"
Buccaneer's eyes widened slightly, and he clenched his teeth furiously.
"All right, these crackpots are apparently full of themselves, for they just gave Knocs all of the rest of the reasons that he needs to convince Parliament to vote for a full fledged manhunt to arrest these lunatics."
In Winry's lap, Ed's eyes at long last flickered, which meant that he had finally woken up.
"The potential sniper said that if we don't drive away, he'll fire syringes with us filled with vaccines that are actually a refined form of tuberculosis that an alchemist working for them once infected a little girl from Resembool with when she visited the North in Nineteen Zero Four; in order to somehow maneuver the Fullmetal Alchemist to fight Dante and end her stranglehold over research into the Philosopher's Stone so they could advance their own; by tricking that little girl into taking that vaccine so she'd then infect someone named Trisha with tuberculosis and thus murder her, along with a number of other people in Resembool."
All awareness of everything and anything that had once been space or time or existence or the cosmos or the universe or the world or the world that Al was now in or reality or death or pain or life or anything that had once been or was or perhaps might be or would not be life and warmth and kindness and shelter and safety and security and protection and resilience and revitalization and tenacity and recovery and sanctuary and refuge and home and love had never existed or even not forever existed.
The sole exception was Ed's face as his eyes, now open, went wide, and his mouth opened partially, for he had just heard with entire clarity what Buccaneer had said.
.
"It was a dream bought by people at great price, so of course they wanted it to come true. Nobody ever wants to see their dreams shattered."-Rau Le Creuset
'The greatest uncertainty in this formula is the mother's body. We must eliminate that from the equation.'-Doctor Hibiki
"Was that what drove them onward!? Because people believed in their dreams and then demanded that they come true, at all costs!?"-Rau Le Creuset
GUNDAM SEED:
Phase 45: THE OPENING DOOR