"Was to make sure my new family didn't catch wind of her little escapade."
We all yelp and turn toward the window. Ed and Al gasp as I can only stare at the person with wide eyes.
"Th-there's no way…"
She grins, that oh-so familiar sharp toothed grin. Her hair is short, with red streaks right next to her natural black highlights. Her eyes have a purple-ish tint to them now.
"You're the lady who jumped out the Colonel's window!" shouts Al as he jumps to his feet. She claps slowly and moves closer. "Bravo, you boys actually have brains in those heads of yours." she mocks.
I can only stare at her in shock. "Li… Lillian?" I whisper breathlessly. She glances at me with a smirk. "Lillian no more." she chuckles. "I've been given a new life out from your shadow, and I'm going to enjoy it. I merely wanted to pop in on you." She sighs, examining her hand as she sits on stool that appears from nowhere. "Seems I'm at a lack of information and you know how much I hate that, Lisa dear. So I've come for a few tidbits from you." A sinister smirk appears as her pupils shrink a little, making her look even more insane. I gulp nervously. "B-but… how are you…" She rolls her eyes and gets to her feet. She shoots Ed a glare, which he mirrors quite easily. She scoffs and grins at him, leaning closer. "I suppose you want to be a hero and fight of lil' ole me, right?" The smile flips as she flicks him in the forehead. "Sorry Goldie Locks, but I'm out of your league."
She turns and grabs my arm, yanking me to my feet. "We'll talk elsewhere, preferably somewhere you three won't hear or interfere." She holds up her other hand, flicks her wrist, and a wall of shadows flies over our heads. I hear the others shout my name as my vision fails.
The red-black-and-brown haired girl grabs Lisa's arm and drags her several steps from the trio. "We'll talk elsewhere," she says. "preferably somewhere you three won't hear or interfere." She flicks her free hand over her head and what looks to be a wall of shadows jumps to devour them. "LISA!" The three shout, Ed and Al both jumping to stop the girl. Their captured friend sends a look of surprised confusion before vanishing.
Ed hits the floor hard as Al's arms close around air. Winry gasps in horror as the shadow blob on the floor vanishes out the window.
"DAMMIT!" Ed slams his automail fist to the ground. Al rushes to the window, only to find the shadow has completely vanished. With the top half of Ed's face covered in shadow as he grits his teeth, Winry jumps to her feet. "Where did they go?! What's happening?! And-and who was that girl!?"
Al sighs defeatedly and turns to Winry. "To be honest, we don't entirely know either. Lisa hasn't told us much about that other girl." Al sits heavily on the couch. "But the one thing we do know is that the first time we saw her, the other girl shared Lisa's body." "Shared her body?" Winry looks horrified at the thought. Al nods before glancing to where Ed is now sitting up on the floor, his back to them while clawing at his face with his flesh hand, growling angrily."She attacked Ed when we first met her." "Why would she do that?!" Al sighs. "When we discovered that the Philosopher's Stone is created using human lives, Lisa told us that she had already known that, but she couldn't tell us and that we had to have discovered that for ourselves. Brother got really upset and accidentally hurt her. The other girl, Lillian I think is her name, got mad at Ed because of it and threatened him. When we were in Dublith, Lisa told us that Lillian had disappeared from her mind but she had no idea how or why." "Guess we know now." Ed mutters.
Winry, worried for her friends' safety, furrows her brow. "So now... What, she's just wandering around in a new body doing who knows what?!" Al nods solemnly. "Seems like it..." He murmurs. "What information could she want from Lisa? What hasn't she told us?" Ed seethes silently while contemplating the demon girl's arrival. "When she gets back, I'm gonna get Lisa to tell us what's going on. I'm TIRED of her keeping us in the dark about everything!" Ed throws his arms in the air. "But Brother!" Al intervenes. "What about what she told us before, about learning something before we're supposed to know?!" Ed spins around, hopping to his feet. "I don't care! I'm tired of not knowing! I'm tired of not being able to help people, and I'm tired of her treating us like idiots!" Al stands up. "She doesn't treat us like idiots! You just push her around and she gets upset!"
"OH so now it's MY fault?!"
"That's not what I said!"
"Then what do you think we should do Al?! Blindly trust her and hope she doesn't kill us in our sleep?!"
"She's proven a dozen times that she would never do that!"
"And who's to say she won't turn around and prove us wrong! How do we know she isn't lying about Lt. Colonel Hughes?! What if he really is dead and it's her fault!"
"SHUT UP!"
The boys both turn to see Winry glaring at them both, tears in her eyes. She drops back down onto the couch, hugging a pillow to her face, sobbing. Ed, taken aback by her actions, slowly makes his way towards her. "Winry?" She glares up at him, making the alchemist flinch. "Don't talk like that! Mr. Hughes is alright, I know he is! Lisa wouldn't lie!" Ed's eyes hardened. "What proof do you have for that? She didn't take you to-" "You didn't see her." Ed stops. "You didn't see how bad it was when she told me. She was so desperate. I even asked her why she'd tell me when neither of you would say a word if you could help it." Both boys glance away, avoiding her eyes. "She said she felt it was unfair and that she couldn't lie about that if she wanted to. She was telling the truth. I know it…" Winry clutches the pillow closer.
Ed suddenly feels guilty for suspecting Lisa of lying about someone she obviously cares so much about.
A patch of shadow then detaches itself from under the window, creating a large circle by the window. It rises up, creating a dome and opens.
The unconscious form of Lisa is then flung from the depths of the shadow and crashes onto the small coffee table, splintering the object. With a gasp, Winry moves to check Lisa while Ed and Al jumps to their feet, ready to attack the demonic intruder. She merely smirks and waves to them. "Ta-ta." she says before the shadow engulfs her again and vanishes out the window.
Ed rushes to window and glares after it, watching the blob vanish into the ground. Al rushes to help Winry. Winry worriedly glances over the unconscious girl. A small stream of red flows steadily from her lips. Her neck has a small purple spot, roughly the size of a thumb. Winry turns to Al. "We need to get her to a doctor!" Al nods and gently picks the brunette up.
In my haze of pain, I can only barely feel my body make contact with something that smashes beneath me. I hear some voices but it's all garbled. "...need… her… doctor…"
'No… can't...go to… doctor… healing… in… progress...' I reach my arm up as much as I can, which isn't very far, and swat at the closest thing to me. A soft clang echoes in my ear, alerting the person carrying me, 'Al?', of my consciousness. He stops walking and I faintly hear his hollow voice call to someone. I cough, feeling a thick liquid force itself out of my lungs. I can feel the steady crick-cracking of my ribs slowly repairing themselves.
"B..bed... " I croak. My lips feel thick and I nearly force each letter out. "Need... Rest.."
"No, you need a doctor!" Winry's voice breaks through my painful haze. "Noooo... Need... Rest... Self... Heal..." "She's right Winry! Her body heals at an incredible rate. A doctor might not be much help." They argue for a moment before a third voice cuts in. "Just take her to her room and let her sleep!" There's a silence for a moment for Winry grumbles something and Al starts to move again, but in the opposite direction he was going before.
After a moment, I feel something incredibly plush beneath me as Al pulls his arms
out from under my aching body. I hear him say something, but it's hard to understand. My body sinks into the softness and I feel my soreness and pain start to melt away into sweet darkness.
Al stands up, sighing as he watches Lisa fade back into unconsciousness before leaving
the room as quietly as he could.
"She could die! And we don't even know the extent of her injuries!" Winry argues. "She's got her powers! And this isn't even the first time she's almost died! She and Teacher went and fought Greed and she almost died then but she was ok the next day!" Ed snaps back. "That's different!" Winry rages. "How the hell is it any different?! It might be different places and reasons, but it's still the same problem!"
"Both of you stop!" Al snaps, startling the elder two. "She just needs some rest and she'll be back on her feet before you know it. But that means you two can't yell at each other!" The two blondes glance at each other before glancing away, embarrassed to be told off by Al. "Aight… " Ed grumbles. "Fine." Winry mumbles.
Al then ushers Ed back to their rooms, Winry returning to the main room to cool off.
Sometime later, as the sky begins to grow dark and the city lights flicker on, Winry flings open the door to Ed and Al's apartment, eyes wide with worry. "Guys!" she calls. Ed, who was currently eating a bowl of ramen while reading, glances up. "Something wrong, Winry?" asks Al as he looks up from his own book. She points over her shoulder. "Lisa's freaking out but I can't get her to calm down!" The boys both jump to their feet and quickly follow Winry back to Lisa's room.
As soon as they open the door, all eyes fall to the bed where Lisa is currently flailing while screaming. Sheets tangle with her limbs, blankets cover her face and other parts of her. Ed immediately jumps to work, pulling the sheets and blankets from the mass of bedding.
"NO!" She sobs. "STAY AWAY! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!"
Winry worriedly rocks on her feet by the door. "Al, what's going on?!" Al gulps nervously. "Well, we don't know for completely certain, but she gets these weird nightmares and acts like this. Brother knows how to calm her down." Winry looks at Ed, bewildered, as pins down Lisa's flailing arms. "Has she always done this? Since you guys met her?!" Al shakes his head. "The day we first got all Doctor Marcoh's research she did and after something big happens, like when we were in Dublith." Al worriedly taps his fingers together. "It's always after someone almost dies..."
Winry's eyes widen. "Almost... Dies?"
Ed struggles to pin down the screaming girl, in an effort to keep her from hurting herself or him. For a moment, he recalls the last time this happened.
In Dublith.
He'd left her for all of ten seconds to go fetch Teacher and Al, only to return to a terrified girl in a possibly self-induced coma. A feeling in his gut made him feel incredibly sick. 'If I hadn't left the room, she wouldn't have freaked out like that. And she wouldn't be having these nightmares if it wasn't for me.'
It was one thing to be the one having the nightmares.
It was another, more painful thing, to be the one causing someone else's.
After a short while, Lisa's thrashing stops and her sobbing screams turn to soft whimpers. The blonde alchemist slowly removes himself from atop the brunette, who then curls onto her side, covering her face with her hands.
Al, realizing Ed will probably want to be alone like he always did after he'd calmed Lisa down enough, shushes Winry and ushers her to the main room of the apartment.
Ed feels himself sink into the mattress beside the sleeping girl. "I'm such an idiot." he mumbles to himself, running his flesh hand through his hair. He glances to the shaking girl behind him. With a sigh, he grabs the blanket he'd previously thrown to the floor and throws it over her. She pulls it close to her neck and buries herself in the fabric. Had it not been for the fact that he was wallowing in guilt, Ed might've laughed at how childish she acted, regardless of how she'd act when awake.
Ed pulls the blanket away from her face, lest she end up suffocating herself. He watches as her expression slowly turned from heart-broken and afraid, to peaceful and slightly annoyed. Ed chuckles, noticing her face twist in to a scowl for a moment before she snuggles deeper into the sheets and returning to a peaceful look.
'She's actually kinda adorable...' He immediately shakes the thought away. 'I can't afford to think like that! S-she's going to be leaving eventually anyways! And… well...' A lump forms in his throat as he realizes that he really does not want to see her leave.'She is our friend… even if she's annoying sometimes…' He notices how that small piece of a sentence feels like a lie. She isn't annoying, not like how he used to think of her. No, she's… funny… and silly and… Ed shakes his head. "Enough of that." He silently scolds himself. Taking a last glance to the sleeping girl, Ed brushes some hair from her face and gets up. As quietly as he can, Edward turns off the lights and shuts the door.