He Who Searches For Himself

"Edward," Trisha's voice called out, "make sure you hold Winry and Alphonse's hands tight, okay?"

"I wanna hold Winry's hand too," Al pouted as he toddled alongside his brother down the gravel path beneath the brilliant mid-day sun. The warmth of the summer rays filtered down through the forming shapes of puffy white clouds; pure white light drifting throughout the farm fields below.

"Well I don't wanna hold a boy's hand," Winry scowled over to Ed, her face scrunched up tight in protest, "She didn't say I had to hold Al's too."

Ed's pudgy face grew extraordinarily cross, scowling fiercely at Winry's teasing, "Don't be mean to Al."

Winry shot her head away from Ed and turned her nose to the sky, "all boys have a boy disease and you're going to give it to me and Al 'cause you're holding our hands."

"Brother, I dun wanna boy disease," Al's little voice continued to pout until he fell silent, once again distracted from the ongoing debate.

"Winry!" Ed picked up his squeaking voice in protest, "there's no such thing as a boy disease."

"Nuh'uh, you lie!"

"Brother!" Al suddenly bounced at his side, his voice squealing as he pointed out to the trio's right, "an octopus cloud!"

Ed's eyes widened as he followed his brother's pointing finger, "It is…"

"Wow, an octopus cloud," Winry mirrored Edward's gaping enthrallment of the sky. The children fell into silence, watching as their cloud paraded its solitary way across the crystal blue southern sky.

"I bet it tastes like marshmallow…"

Chapter 64 - Contrast Blue

Bacon?

She didn't notice the mid-morning sunlight until her eyes cracked open. She didn't remember the quilt over her shoulders until she shifted beneath it. She didn't confirm the bacon and eggs scent filtering into the room until she sniffed the air again.

Winry rolled onto her back, her arms sprawled out limp at her sides; tired eyes staring up at the ceiling. Her head rolled to her left to cast a weak gaze out into the clear sky washed with an ill grey. Her head rolled to her right to send the gaze into the room with its dresser, night stand, throw rug, desk, and partially opened door.

This was different, wasn't it?

She rubbed her eyes, hooking her toes into the edges of her wool socks to pull them off; her feet were hot. Casting the blue and green quilt aside, Winry pulled herself up and once again cast her eyes out the window. She was met with the sight of shingled brown roofs, smoke stacks, a church steeple with bell, orange and brown falling leaves.

Munich, huh?

Winry ran her fingers through the matted mess of hair falling around her; she couldn't remember how long it had been since she'd last had a shower. The weak eyes turned their attention back to a partially opened door. Pulling out from the relative comfort of the bed, Winry felt the baggy shirt and sweatpants flop around her body as she moved to the curious calling of the hallway beyond.

"Edward?"

"What?"

Winry stopped at the voices echoing from the floor below.

"Would Winry prefer apple or orange juice?"

"Orange. Dad where do you want me to put your handouts for those missed Monday and Wednesday classes? Straight into your bag or just in the folder on your desk?"

"My desk is fine. But make sure you're picking up your mess in the living room too. It's about time those papers got off of my coffee table and couch cushions. Dust the mantle above the fireplace while you're at it."

"Okay already, for the tenth time I'm doing it; your stuff just happens to be on the same table as my stuff. If you don't believe me, stop playing chef and look for yourself."

Winry's head tilted in confusion at the unusual pair of voices carrying on a conversation. Moving to stand at the white rail along the hallway she could see downstairs, almost far enough to catch the front door. Slowly, holding her hand firmly on the railing, she made her way down the stairs. She could smell it, it was bacon and eggs; it was so obvious. She could hear it sizzling on the pan, but what was lacking? As Winry reached the final step, her mind tried to figure out what was wrong with the aroma. It did very little to encourage her appetite. The more she thought about it, the more puzzling it became that she hadn't felt hungry in days.

With a cautious hand placed on the doorframe, Winry's face peered into the kitchen. Her eyes slowly embarking on an adventure around the room, gathering details, sensations, smells, colours, and locations. Winry almost disregarded Hohenheim's presence within the room as she absorbed the surroundings.

But he could feel the eyes. Placing his pan of bacon down upon a cooled element, Hohenheim took the dishtowel into his hands and turned. The mixture of confusion, fright and wonder within her preoccupied gaze left him nothing but amusement. He couldn't help but smile, "Did you sleep well?"

"Huh?" Winry blinked back to him, suddenly startled as she sheepishly slipped into the room, "… I guess so."

"Don't be shy, sit down," his focus returned to the task at hand, though he wasn't about to let her stand dazed in the middle of his kitchen, "it's closer to lunch than breakfast, but it's always good to start your day properly."

Winry moved cautiously to the kitchen table; a white tablecloth draped over the surface, cutlery already set out, glasses filled to the rim, napkins folded at the center of the table flanked by the salt and pepper shakers. She blinked in confusion at the quaint little setup before looking to Hohenheim; she watched as he moved from the stovetop, a steaming plate in hand.

"If memory serves me right, Trisha and Sara would make bacon and eggs at one of our houses on Sundays before Sara would take you three into town," he placed the plate organized with scramble eggs, bacon and hash browns on the table before Winry, "it's not Sunday, but I thought you'd like it anyways."

"Thank you," Winry searched in her mind; she could barely remember those Sundays, they stopped happening a long time ago.

Sitting down upon one of the table chairs, Hohenheim kept a gentle touch about his voice, "the food isn't going to taste that good. It'll be quite bland from what you're use to. There's nothing I can do about that, that's just the way things are here," from the undivided attention she had given him, Hohenheim carefully monitored her perplexed facial expression "same goes for your drinks and most smells; you senses aren't as heightened here as they were back home," picking up the fork from the table, he placed the utensil into Winry's uncertain hand, "you're also going to find that your appetite isn't very good, this doesn't mean you aren't suppose to eat. If you eat three meals a day, even if you're not hungry, you aren't going to feel as lethargic, and you're not going to starve. Alright?"

Winry's fascinated expression drooped as she sunk back in the wooden chair, her fork poking at the eggs, "That's a strange set of rules…"

Giving a laugh, Hohenheim stood back up, "Yes, I have to agree, it is quite strange."

Winry returned her attention to the wise, old man as he drifted back to the stove to sort the rest of the breakfast; slowly chewing on what was confirmed to be a tasteless mouthful of eggs.

"This is your house?"

Not deviating from his task, Hohenheim found himself smirking at Winry's question, "Yes, for a couple of years now."

Her attention trailed back to the kitchen exit; her fork balanced between her teeth as she spoke, "Does Ed live near by?"

It was innocent enough, but her questions continued to make Hohenheim's lips curl in amusement. He placed an additional two plates down at the table, "Very close. In fact, if you head back up those stairs you will find his room right by yours."

Winry's fork fell from her mouth as the statement blew by, snatching it quickly up off the floor as she turned her startled expression towards him, "You two live together?"

"Yes we do," grinning, Hohenheim snatched the fork from her hand and returned a clean one into her fingers, "and we're having breakfast together today too," his voice rose as quickly as Winry's eyes widened in reaction to it, "Edward, come and eat!"

"Aisa, what were you thinking? This isn't an orphanage…" Mr. Mitchell's hand held up at his forehead as he looked back into the meeting room, momentarily trying to figure out what Alphonse and his new guest were doing, "I can't take in every lost person or child off the street. Even if she has special needs, I'm running a country, not a daycare."

"Sir," Nina tugged on his sleeve, "she's really sweet sometimes, can't we keep her?"

Mr. Mitchell knelt down and scooped Nina's tiny fingers up into his strong hands, "I'd like to Nina, but I'm not sure if it's such a good idea just yet. It's not like asking to keep a puppy. I'll see what I can do for her, though."

The Mitchell's nurse, Aisa, held an unwavering focus upon the Prime Minister as he rose to his feet once again, "Social services are currently in the process of trying to locate her family, they were displaced during the March raid that Drachma laid out in the northern cities. Perhaps her stay with us can shed light on her situation and a reunion will be easier with the publicity, given her condition and your position."

The excuses were not sitting well with Mr. Mitchell, "And I need to focus my attentions elsewhere Aisa, my job is something a bit more serious than that; it's not like Lyra is here to help with any of this. And it makes it even more difficult to send the poor girl back given her condition; your intentions will make me look terrible in the public eye. I've been having enough problems trying to gain the country's respect," his attention redirected towards the meeting room adjoined to his ministerial office, his shoulders falling in dismay of the situation he did not want to be in, "what was her name again? Bernadette?"

Nina tiled her head to the side in confusion, "Alphonse said it was Brigitte."

"I was going to tell you last night, Sir," Aisa continued on, stepping up next to her employer, "but you did not return home."

"The Ishibal situation was too important, General Hakuro and I had a great deal that needed to be worked on; I couldn't leave," feverishly scratching his head, Mr. Mitchell sighed heavily, "Why did you have to bring her to my office? Couldn't you have told me this last night when I called?"

– –

"Do you feel better now?" Al held in his giggles, watching her inhale a third cup of water and return the empty container to the glass top dining table the pair sat at. Al kept his attention on her as the shining blue eyes took in all that was to be had within the grand dining hall; the crystal chandelier hanging at the center, the oversized paintings and their elaborately decorated wooden frames, the spotlessly polished glass table on a black base and the twelve chairs surrounding it. Sheepishly, Brigitte took a napkin from one of the holders on the table and wiped the ring her cup left on the glass.

"Um…" Al swung his feet freely off the end of the chair as he glanced around, still puzzled by the incomprehensible words she'd spoken to him outside, "I don't suppose you can tell me your name, I don't want to ask those two."

"Huh?" was all she could give Al as he watched her eyes widen with uncertainty.

"Your name… what's your name?" he persisted anyways, watching her visually dissect of every word coming off his lips.

"…Name?" the moment she caught Al's realization that she had picked the key in his sentence, a smile of delight grew across her face, "Ich heiße Brigitte! Wie heißt du?"

Al slouched in his chair, his hand coming down over his hair as the momentary relief at communication flashed away, "… Oh boy."

Twisting her face in recognition of Al's confusion, she leaned over across the table to drive home her point, "Ich heiße... Brigitte! Br-i-gi-tte!"

The determination carried in her indecipherable tongue managed to draw Al back, "It's Brigitte? Your name is Brigitte?"

"Ja! Darf ich erfahren, wie Ihr Name ist?" Brigitte's hand reached out and snagged Al by the front of his shirt, realizing her words were a far greater puzzle to him than his English was for her. Her enunciation was precise, the free hand poking him square on the forehead, "Name."

"Ah! My name is Alphonse," he repeated the sentence key for her, "Alphonse."

"Alphonse?" sitting back down, Brigitte folded her arms across her chest, giving a firm nod of acknowledgement and eventually joining the laugh Al's nervous giggle spawned.

– –

"Okay, so this game is called 'Cat's Cradle', I don't know if you play something like this around here, but let's see how we do."

At some point in time between that afternoon and the next, both Brigitte and Alphonse had surrendered to the idea that neither of them had any idea what the other was saying, beyond a few words of Brigitte's German that were also found in English. Though, it was Brigitte who felt more comfortable around the English language spoken by the 'victors' of the war her country had lost than Al did around a language never heard by anyone.

"What are you doing?" Al tilted his head, holding his hands out in front of himself as she weaved a ribbon around his fingers.

"SO!" Brigitte raised her hands next to her head, pinching her index fingers and thumbs together, "you take these fingers and pinch the X's here and here, pull up, pull it around, put it back through and voila!" she pulled the ribbon from Al's puzzled grasp to show him the new design she'd created, "see?"

"Interesting…" Al's face scrunched up as he examined what she had done. He straightened in surprise when she wiggled her fingers to discard the pattern back from her hands.

"You're going to try in just a minute," Brigitte took a sharp step, spinning to stand tight to Al's side; catching Nina, the nurse, and Mr. Mitchell enter the room from the corner of her eye.

Al watched as Nina crawled up into one of the soft cushioned chairs, her nurse sitting down in the adjacent seat. His attention refocused on Mr. Mitchell, sitting upon the arm of a chair before the two older children.

"What do I do with you…" he rested his arms on his knees, examining the suddenly nervous Brigitte as she wound the ribbon up around her index finger, "that's such a stunning shade of blue you have in your eyes Miss. Brigitte, I bet they're your mother's."

Quickly exchanging a jittery glance with Alphonse, Brigitte forced out a sweet smile for the man.

Slowly shaking his head, Mr. Mitchell turned his growing displeasure unto his nurse, "I'm not impressed with the situation you left me with Aisa, and I can't send her away. I know you were a good friend of my wife's but if you overstep your bounds again I'll terminate your position. Is that understood?"

"I'm terribly sorry, Sir. I did not mean for this to turn into such a situation for you," she lowered her head.

"Ah, dammit, I can't keep everyone in here, I have a meeting scheduled in fifteen minutes and Diana is still being passed around the office," his hand slowly returning to his head in an attempt to cradle a headache, Mr. Mitchell glanced back to the door, "Aisa, why don't you take the children around the displays the museum director has been setting up in the main rotunda. It'll keep the children occupied until I'm done, the meeting shouldn't take long. I'll get Diana back from my grabby staff for you."

"Thank you, Sir. My apologies for the inconvenience."

"Ugh…" Mr. Mitchell grumbled as he hauled himself out of the room, "I'm going to need another nanny, too many kids in my house."

Cupping her hand over her mouth, Brigitte leaned over to whisper into Alphonse's ear, "Who's that guy and what's going on?"

Even if Al could have answered, his wide-eyed shrug of confusion sufficed as an answer for Brigitte. No sooner had she accepted the confusion than her attention quickly refocused to Nina, the child's eyes having not left her since she had come into the room. Brigitte wished she could escape the shiver it left her with.

"I'm some stranger in another life," Winry stared back at her reflection in the mirror. Grabbing a towel, she polished the mirror thinking that perhaps it was dirty. When it didn't come clean, she concluded that her eyes, complexion, skin tone, and hair, that everyone seemed to marvel over, were just as dull and faintly coloured as everything else she set her sights on.

"What am I doing?" it was like the homesick feeling brought on by summer camp, except summer camp eventually ends. With more precision than she'd ever bothered with at home, Winry folded the towel over the bar where it had been hanging. She stuck her head back out into the hall before turning out of the washroom and sauntering, hands behind her back, into the living room.

Looking up from the paper he read, Hohenheim watched as Winry slowly made her way around the room into the chair farthest from where he sat. Her eyes switched from the curious examination of Hohenheim to analyzing the rather quaint room everyone had been gathered in earlier. The grey, brick fireplace, the scenic oil paintings on the wall, the white drapery around the windows and back door, the soft plush couches, the hand crafted tables... it was so… homey.

"Where did Ed go?" the sentence should have continued on to include 'it feels like he's avoiding me' but Winry could not force herself to get that far.

"He's outside with Dr. Oberth. Edward helped you understand everything Hermann was asking you?" Hohenheim's eyes watched her with masked concern from beyond his paper.

"Yes, he did," the conversation evolved no further, Winry could feel the unease within herself knowing Hohenheim waited for her to ask something else; she let time lapse and he drifted back to the newspaper in his hands.

"Why does Ed live with you?" Winry had not intended for the question to come out as directly and poorly timed as it had; she glanced away at Hohenheim's obvious surprise.

"He's my son…"

Apparently, that answer made sense to him, so it was going to have to suffice, "Okay." Winry's fingers fidgeted in her lap, the conversations were so uncomfortable; she tried to extend the discussion to ease the feeling, "I don't understand. You said you lived in this house for two years, but I saw you in Resembool last summer."

"We lived in a city called London for three years before coming here," a smile grew across Hohenheim's face at the horrified reaction taking over Winry, "when Edward came to this side of the Gate, I had already been here for well over a year. We ran a theory that the Gate has a poor concept of time, but to be more accurate, time runs at a different pace than back home." Hohenheim moved next to the chair Winry sat in and crouched down; her overwhelmed reaction did not let him go, "do you remember the date you left?"

"Um… it was the end of May," Winry frowned as she drew a blank on the exact date.

"What was the year?"

"1916."

Hohenheim put the paper up onto the arm of the chair and used his finger to underline the date, "On this side, today's date is Friday, September 24, 1921."

Her hand coming up into her hair, Winry wondered when she would stop spinning out of control, "That's a long time… is it 1921 back home now? Does that mean I'm 22 now?"

His amusement was inconceivable; Hohenheim couldn't help but take a wonderful pleasure in answering every question she had to ask. Her situation was drastically different from Edward's, and it allowed the opportunity for this conversation to take place, "No, it's still 1916 at home. Time moves faster over here, for every year we experience, only a couple months pass back home. And you're still however old you were before. I'll adjust your birth year to make it accurate on this side, like I did with Edward."

She was so dizzy from this. Why did she want to cry again? Her eyes should be out of tears by now. She was so tired of acting like a baby but there was nothing else she could do. The misery brought on by the displeasure over her own behaviour was only compounding the devastated feeling she was fighting.

"Do you want to lay back down?" Hohenheim read the clear emotional swing in Winry.

"I think I should," she wasn't expecting the hand Hohenheim gave her as he helped her to her feet; it shouldn't have been so embarrassing.

"We'll go back upstairs; sleep does help. Edward slept quite a bit when he first got here."

Winry accepted the escort back to her room, though she wondered how pathetic it looked having an escort take her snivelling self up a flight of stairs, "Ed probably dealt with being here a bit better than me."

Hohenheim drifted off into silence as the pair reached the top of the stairs, Winry finding her pace faster than his. Her foot touching down onto the top step, she turned back to see in his eyes how distant his thoughts had become.

"No, I think you're handling the situation a bit better than he did. Though, given the circumstances, he had a fair bit more to deal with; your transition has been much easier."

Winry's eyebrows knit together as she dragged her feet into a bedroom that was to become hers, wondering how the last week could be classified as 'easy'.

"The evenings and nights have been chilly lately, did you need another blanket?" the old man slipped his hands into his pockets, watching her sulk through the room.

Lazily throwing herself on the bed, Winry tugged at the edges of her quilt, "No, Ed got me this sometime in the middle of the night. It worked just fine."

"Edward brought you that last night?"

"Yeah," she turned her head over to watch Hohenheim enter the room, brushing his hand over the quilt as he sat down for a moment. She kept the story going, something was sitting uneasily within the situation, "Ed was up doing something, I don't know what. The floor squeaks a bit and he said he heard me moving. He came up and asked if I was okay, I told him I was cold. Ed wandered away and came back with that."

"Did he really?"

Winry's head tilted at the introspective voice drifting through the room, "Shouldn't he have?"

Hohenheim quickly drew himself away from his thoughts with the shake of his head, "It's fine; it's his, not mine. I just didn't think he would pull it out of the closet."

Winry watched as the odd conversation ended at that, the father she'd spent an awkward 24 hours getting to know pushed to his feet. He reached across the bed and pulled the curtains for her before turning a comforting smile towards her, "If you start to feel sick, or need anything, you know where to find us."

"Your daddy's funny! He makes things with alchemy like Al does!" Elysia giggled, walking hand in hand in conversation with Nina.

"I know, he made something for me too one day; he wanted to show me how good he was at it," Nina raised a poignant finger, "but he's not my daddy, he's my guardian."

"Nina," Mrs. Hughes crouched down behind the two girls, "doesn't Mr. Mitchell want you to think of him as a father?"

Nina turned back over her shoulder, finding that she was face to face with Mrs. Hughes, "He does. But it feels funny to say that, cause I know he's not my daddy and I have a real one somewhere."

Gracia's hand slowly came together, her eyes shifting from her own daughter back to Nina's conversation at hand, "When was the last time you saw your daddy?"

"A long time ago when I was really little!" her free hand resting on her hip, quickly turning to Elysia as she piped up.

"I haven't seen my daddy since I was really little too!"

Gracia forced herself to disregard her daughter's comment; for today, the moment the thirty-second phone call from Alphonse had ended, other things had been planned. Turning over her shoulder, Gracia looked to the crowd gathered around Aisa at the secretary's desk; employees huddled around the woman protectively holding the Prime Minister's baby girl. Once 'coincidentally' meeting within the rotunda, Gracia found herself invited up to the Ministerial wing of the building.

Remaining upon her knees by the two little girls still holding hands, Mrs. Hughes began to unzip her purse, "Was his name Shou Tucker?"

Nina squared herself silently in front of Gracia, watching as she pulled a letter envelope out from her purse. With the sudden snap of her tiny wrist, Nina withdrew her hand from Elysia's grasp, "I don't know."

"Well, is your last name Tucker? A girl of your age who can remember her father should have a first and last name."

"No, I'm just Nina."

It had bothered Gracia since the day Alphonse had brought it up, about the Mitchell girl who looked like the Tucker child who'd died. It made her sick to discover the reasons behind his State Alchemist title when she'd gone into the library's newspaper archives and found information concerning him. The final article she read on the issue pertained to what had happened with his daughter. Gracia could remember vividly Maes' insistence that the circumstances around Nina's death were something she did not need to know. It was the rare seriousness of her husband and the amount of time she knew he had spent on the case that made this final article unsatisfying. As ghastly as it was, this was simply not the story of some father's mental instability leading to the disappearance and suspected murder of his only child, as the article claimed. Gracia was certain that she had once overheard Maes mention the man had been executed for something, but there was no information to be found in regards to that. Some part of her wished she hadn't gone in search of the last moments of this Tucker family, because it left nothing but questions. Finally, today, at Al's prompting, Gracia arrived at the headquarters under the pretence of visiting her late husband's co-workers.

"But you said you have a real daddy somewhere, right?" Gracia pulled a service record photograph she'd been able to obtain from the envelope and placed it into Nina's palms, "many years ago I met a little girl you remind me of, this little girl disappeared one day and the father was blamed for her disappearance," it was as simple as Gracia could make the story out to be, "I don't know when you last saw your real daddy, but I wondered if this picture looks like him."

"That's not him," the suddenly cold eyes engaged the photograph, the decision only given momentary consideration, "my daddy's different than that."

Gracia could not explain it, how someone so little could emit such a furious aura; it did not dissipate when she took back the photo.

Al watched the situation unfold, his elbows latched onto the ledge of the window as he leaned back against it; his focus on the scene drifted as he lent his ears to a forlorn voice.

"How come your sky is such a light blue? It's so full of sunlight, it makes it look really white; it's hard to look at," she did not expect an answer from her softly voiced statements, she simply kept her nose pressed against the window; absorbing the township, "the white clouds are so bright and solid. How are clouds bright? They look like I can stand on them. Everything's so colourful, all the houses and people and clothes and streets. How come the cement was so hot when I took my sandals off? Why is it warm like this in September? I thought everyone in Europe had fall season at the same time…" Brigitte's fingertips pushed against the glass window as she struggled to find a word the situation, "I sound like a four year old, but I don't understand why everything's just so…"

Turning to face outside, Al's hands came to rest on the window frame, his eyes watching Brigitte as she strayed away from the one sided conversation to absorb the fourth floor view of Central city. Her eyes followed the shadow patches beneath the clouds as the bright sunlight tumbled down from the sky around the growing puffs of clouds.

"You sound like you're either confused or daydreaming," Al tapped a knuckle off the pane of glass, inadvertently taking Brigitte's attention, "it's really nice out today."

Dropping the hefty black bag from her shoulder, Brigitte turned it on it's end and stood on top of it; pressing her forehead against the window to get a slightly different view of the streets below "Is this what places are like that are rich and don't loose wars?" she turned the wondrous expression down upon Alphonse who could not provide any sufficient response, "is this England?"

"What's an 'England'?" tilting his head as he watched her stand tall on the bag, Al narrowed an eye at her; curiously continuing on the unanswerable conversation, "Why do you keep talking on and on when you know I don't know what you're talking about?"

Something about the interrogating gaze Al gave her caused Brigitte to giggle, "You look funny when you're confused, you make silly faces like Mr. Elric does, I want to take your picture and put it with the collection in my bag!"

Al's hand reached up and quickly pulled Brigitte off her perch, his voice dipping to a whisper, "How'd you know my last name?"

Unsure how to respond to Al's startling behaviour; Brigitte simply remained wide-eyed.

"Don't say that name around here; it'll get a lot of people in trouble if someone finds out," Al waved his hands in a negative gesture to what she'd said, hoping to get a point across.

"Did I say something wrong?" Brigitte asked, uncertain to Al's negative tone and sense of panic.

The entire gathering turned their attention down the hall at the echo of footsteps and an accompanying voice, "Mr. Mitchell wanted to let everyone know he will be finished with his engagements shortly. I'm dreadfully sorry that I've left you with all these children Mrs. Hughes, the office has kept me far too wrapped up with Diana."

"No that's fine," Gracia returned to her feet, sweeping smooth her long skirt, "everyone loves babies."

Coming to stand next to Nina, the young Diana in her arms, the Mitchell family nurse turned a warmer gaze than Al was accustomed to down to the girl, "You've been good for Mrs. Hughes, Miss?"

"I have."

"She's been quite wonderful, she's a well mannered young lady," stepping forward towards Aisa, Gracia peered into the light baby blanket wrapped around baby Diana in her arms, "I can't imagine anyone giving her up for adoption, she's such a beautiful baby. May I hold her?"

After being forced to give into the office employee's demand to cradle the baby all afternoon long, Aisa once again found herself in a position where she was unable to retain her hold on the child, "Of course."

"There we go…" Gracia's warm smile grew as she tucked the bundle into the natural cradle within her arms. The expression softened and her voice cooed as she came to realize the child had been in one too many arms today, "oh dear, I didn't mean for this to start. It's okay baby… it's okay…"

The Mitchell nurse suppressed a satisfactory smile that wished to emerge as the baby began to cry in Gracia's hold.

Al's eyes suddenly turned back to the window, he'd been the only one to hear Brigitte gasp. Slowly as he turned around, he watched as Brigitte's trembling hands came up to grasp her ears. Her voice choked as she found herself suddenly short of breath, "Just like what I heard in that dream…"

"Brigitte?" Al's hand reached out and took a light hold on a wrist, "are you okay?"

"I can't make it quieter no matter how hard I hold my head," the only step backwards she could make placed her back against the window; she held herself there, fingers digging into her hair as she tried to drown out the voice, "just like when I was flying in the dream, the crying wouldn't stop… it was so loud. I couldn't go anywhere to make it stop…"

Al looked to Mrs. Hughes as she began to hand the howling infant back to Aisa, wondering if she was noticing the situation, only to rip his attention to Brigitte as she tore off down the hall.

"Wait!" Al called after her, snatching the attention of the others. Without hesitation, he bolted down the hall in pursuit, leaving the remainder of the party in his wake.

"Nina!" Gracia's fingertips only grazed the girl's arm as she joined the precession of children running through the government building. It was startling to realize she was the only one who'd made any effort to stop the little girl. Taking Elysia by her hand, Gracia's head shot over her shoulder, "aren't you going to–?"

She was silenced by insensitive eyes worn by the Mitchell nurse; baby Diana in an arm, she merely walked down the path the children had taken without a word.

"Mummy?"

Picking her daughter up, Gracia joined the pursuit; ignoring Elysia's attempt to draw her mother's attention to the black bag Brigitte had left behind.

Winry pulled the quilt tight over her shoulders, pinning the ends into her lap. Her chin resting on the windowsill, she again stared into the rows of brown rooftops and smoke stacks deprived of any vibrancy. The mundane view was fascinating in all its depressing glory. Where was the personality in this scenery? Winry sat up straighter on the bed to see if she could see anything more, only to catch a reflection off the glass; she turned around sharply.

"The door wasn't shut," Ed pointed at it in defence, "I was about to knock, but you turned around."

Winry wrinkled her nose, "You better not turn into a peeping tom or I'll beat you senseless."

Ed gave a nervous laugh as he walked across her room, "That's not going to happen."

Winry turned away from the intrusion and simply returned her chin to the windowsill. She slid her cross-legged self over from the centre of the frame when she realized Edward had crawled onto the mattress to join her. Taking the left pane of glass as his vantage point, Ed followed her gaze out the window, trying to see if there was anything worth looking at along this city horizon.

"Dad said you went back to sleep yesterday before I could tell you that Hermann said you were just fine, other than some strained muscles."

"That's nice," Winry's response was flat with little care for the observation; the conversations still felt uneasy, even if the unease was less with Ed than it was with his father, "Does that mean your dad's going to stop asking if I'm feeling sick? He's done that a couple times, I feel like I'm waiting for the roof to fall in."

Ed rolled his eyes, instantly railed by the statement, "Stupid old man."

Lifting her chin, Winry glanced over in surprise at his suddenly harsh disposition, "I didn't mean it like I was ungrateful, Ed."

"Whatever," waving a dismissing hand, Ed tried to discard the displeasure and annoyance, "just ignore him Winr—ow!"

Ed jerked away from the poking finger grazing the corner of his eye.

"Your eye cleared up a bit overnight, it's more white than bloodshot today. Some of that purple is gone too, but I bet you wouldn't look so funny if you weren't developing circles under your eyes," she grinned in contrast to Edward's defensive glare, waiting until he'd straightened himself before continuing her train of thought, "What did you do to it anyways?"

"I got hit with a baton."

Winry's reaction was deliberately distraught, "You got beaten up by a cheerleader?"

"Dammit Winry," Ed did not realize how quick his voice was to snap, "I got blindsided by a police officer!"

"You what?" she wasn't in the mood to be snapped at by a cranky Edward, she felt miserable enough for the both of them, "You idiot, what sort of trouble did you get yourself in to?"

Ed bit back; sticking a finger into her face, "I didn't ask for any of this trouble you know!"

Winry slapped his hand away, "No, I didn't ask for any of this trouble; you–"

The conversation halted abruptly; Winry withholding her poorly conceived 'you did' retort. Regardless if she'd spoken it or not, Ed knew it was coming. Wishing she'd never thought of it, and Edward wishing he didn't deserve it, both returned their attention out into the dirty blue expanse beyond the window. Letting the quilt fall off her shoulders, Winry folded her arms in the window and returned to her interrogation of the sky.

Ed glanced over for a brief moment before training the silent vigil into the town once more. He found himself drifting away with a thought, wondering if he could pinpoint what it was that held Winry's fascination for hours on end. Absorbing the undesirable sensation he slowly became wrapped up in, Edward never meant to sigh aloud. Why only now did he realize how desensitized he'd become to the misery soaked into the grey sponge of the European sky.

A weight crippled Ed's posture as he sank in dismay of the forgotten crystal blue sky he had once held up in contrast to this shade lacking radiance.

"I like your quilt."

Ed blinked over to Winry as she smoothed it out over her lap, "That's nice."

"It looks sort of like one my mom made. The one we would all wrap up in to watch thunderstorms on the porch," she gazed only to the faint reflection of herself in the window while stepping through the memory, "Al would sit in the middle or else he'd cry because the loud thunder would 'get him' if he didn't."

Slow to respond to a past he'd had spent years treating as a forbidden secret, Ed forced through the feeling burdening his shoulders and poked a stiff mechanical index finger at the quilt, "Well, this one was a gift."

"Who'd you get it from?" A childish curiosity had suddenly over taken her enthusiasm.

"Some lady who was friends with my dad back in London," Ed narrowed an eye as he thought about it, "she called it a 'comfort blanket' or something like that."

"I know what that is," it was a refreshing feeling; something… anything of familiarity, "my parents had those around the house from time to time. I helped Mom make them when she was home. They were for the really sick children in the hospitals they'd go to."

"Yeah, apparently it's for something like that. Someone told me what it was supposed to be for long after I got it," Ed turned his nose up, a bitter sarcasm emerging in his voice, "So, thanks Mrs. Churchill, I'm glad you thought so highly of me."

"Ed, I doubt she meant it anything by it. The general purpose behind a comfort blanket is to make you feel better; sick or otherwise," Winry's unimpressed response to his behaviour simply lead to a scoff on Ed's part.

"I suppose."

Sighing heavily at the re-emergence of the stubborn behaviour, Winry dropped her chin back down onto the windowsill, "But this is Munich?"

"Yeah, this is some of it," Ed glanced to the leaves scattering across the rooftops once more.

"Leave it to you to end up somewhere ugly."

"Obviously you're feeling better today," Ed's eyes slit as he grumbled, "Trust me, there have been times and places that have looked a lot worse than this. And I didn't get much choice in what house we lived in."

She rewrapped herself in the quilt, reinforcing the unrelenting confusion and curiosity, "and this country is called Germany? And they speak German here? And you learnt this German?"

"Yes, yes, and yes," Ed nodded at each affirmation.

"And we decided I was gong to be 17 now cause it's September and not May, I'm born in 1904, not 1899" Winry scratched her head vigorously in confusion, "And you're… how old again?"

"I'm twenty-one."

"Lovely," her voice dripped with discontent at the entire situation she was having to rearrange in her mind, "not only has my seventeenth birthday been skipped, you're something like four or five years older than me." Sinking into the bundle she'd wrapped herself up in, Winry surrendered to the situation, "Well, that's not as weird as meeting Al as a ten year old, so I guess I can cope with this."

Not until she turned in confusion to the non-responsive Edward did she realize how strongly she'd crushed him into silence. Even as she watched the swell of emotions take him over, Winry never realized he'd been afraid to bring it up; it was the reason behind why it felt like Ed had been avoiding her since they left the Thule hall. He'd been afraid to ask, it made his heart race too fast. For the two days she'd been living beneath this roof he couldn't bring himself to entertain the thought; what if she didn't say Al was…

"Al's what?"

The change in Ed's voice made it uncomfortable to respond. Winry didn't even have to look at him to realize the wave of emotion that had pulled him deep beneath a fully coherent surface.

"When we found Al…" Winry felt pinned beneath Edward's demanding eyes, "… he was only ten years old."

"Winry…" ten years old was inconsequential; he didn't bother to absorb any information beyond that which he begged to hear.

"Al's alive?"

Winry suddenly found herself removed from the depression brought on by the grey world, only to be placed before the firing squad held by Ed's desperate voice, "Yeah. Isn't that… why you're here?"

It was, wasn't it?

"That child was very… persistent," Roy's gaze followed Brigitte as her fascination with what was to be seen in a bright world beyond the panes of glass continued, "both girls were, in fact."

"Yeah…" Al sat himself down at one of the vacated chairs within Mustang's empty office, "I didn't think Brigitte would have so much objection following Mrs. Hughes back to Mr. Mitchell's office without me," Al sighed and put his chin on the desktop.

Dropping his black trench coat over the back of a chair, Roy again straightened the polo shirt, his expression still twisted out of shape; again his eyes followed Brigitte, "I assume that dialect she rambled on in was supposed to be an apology for trying to run me over in the hallway?"

"Yeah, I think so," unable to do much beyond frown, Al looked beyond the out of uniform officer to Brigitte once more, "sorry about her, I don't know what upset her."

"That's quite alright," perhaps, if things had stayed the way they had the first few minutes of their encounter, at the moment Mustang had been knocked clear off his hindered feet and Brigitte landed in a heap on the floor next to him, he'd have more interest in discussing the issue of this barely teenage girl and her inability to communicate. It wasn't until a childish and forgotten face he'd concentrated on years ago entered into their equation that he could have cared less how impossible Brigitte was to understand. The absence of an innocence he could clearly remember kept him upon the floor; he challenged the bone-chilling gaze Nina silently bestowed upon him until Mrs. Hughes arrived to cut the connection.

"This young lady did not seem to take well to Mrs. Hughes' arrival and even worse to that family's nanny… your suggestion that we go for a walk to calm her down made perfect sense given the circumstances," Roy's eyes narrowed as he again glanced back to Brigitte, "I'd like to know why that child was so adamant that your friend have nothing to do with 'someone like me'."

"Sir," Al's voice broke into Roy's concentration, "did you recognize her? Nina, I mean…"

Al knew the answer, he'd known from the moment the Brigadier General and Nina had made contact. It was like a silent conversation of bitter willpower; one set of eyes aggressively challenging for answers, and the other countering with a cold barrier towards intrusion.

Roy's eyebrows finally rose from the tight frown he'd locked himself into, "Why do you ask?"

The information flowed easily from his mouth; it had been a scenario he'd mulled over for far too long. Perhaps it had been Mrs. Hughes insistence that Mustang was someone he should trust that made the story all that much easier to tell, "Winry and I have been thinking… perhaps she was Nina Tucker," he had expected the look he received in response to carry confusion or distress towards the name, yet it simply narrowed in question; requesting continuation, "Mrs. Hughes showed me a picture of my brother that had Nina in it, and we were certain this girl was Nina. But the Nina in the photo would be around 10 years old today; this Nina is only around seven or eight. Mrs. Hughes told us that Nina had died, but…"

"Nina Tucker's father, Shou Tucker, was given the title 'Sewing Life Alchemist'," Roy's hands slipped slowly into his jean pockets as he leaned against his office desk. His low voice left no echo within the walls of the barren room, "both Hughes and Armstrong were assigned to the Fifth Laboratory case you and your brother were involved in…"

Al's eyes slowly widened as he focused his attention upon Mustang. As Mustang saw it, there was no harm telling Alphonse something he had already once known.

"… Hughes thought it best to keep much of the information to himself rather than disclosing information to me, so I don't know as many of the details as I'd like to. Shortly after the works within the laboratory were revealed, Fuhrer Bradley labelled the incident as classified. When the government was instated, it was discovered that a great number of military records had been destroyed; the Fifth Laboratory case was among them."

Glancing from child to child, not only did he have Alphonse's curiosity wrapped up around every word, but the intriguing eyes of Brigitte as well.

"As much as I came to understand, the Fifth Laboratory was used to facilitate a great number of alchemical 'experiments'. Only later through Lt. Col. Armstrong's work with Archer did we discover that Shou Tucker had been working to create chimeras within that building. From a laboratory we investigated beyond the city of Lior, my office later discovered that much of Tucker's chimera work had gone on at the Fifth Laboratory. Beyond creating chimeras for the military's purpose, he had been trying to create a chimera to replace his daughter."

Al turned in his chair, his hand gripping the back of the seat, "You can't… recreate someone by making a chimera."

"No, you can't," turning back, his gaze held seriousness, "but many of his failed experiments were uncovered when the Fifth Laboratory was torn down," lingering in the back of the officer's mind was the astonishment he felt at carrying on a conversation of this magnitude with such a young boy. Roy again reminded himself how old Ed and Al had been when their journey with the military commenced years ago.

"Something's missing…" Al found himself phasing out from his surroundings, trying to dissect what had been told to him.

Roy's attention refocused on the curious expression of Brigitte, standing against the office window looking back at him while he'd been speaking, "Your friend's name is Brigitte, correct?"

Too wrapped up in the thought to return his attention to Mustang, Al simply nodded. It was Brigitte however, who reacted to the calling of her own name, staring up into the single eye of a curious man slowly crouching down to an eye level with her.

"What language does she speak?"

"She doesn't," Al gave a shrug, looking from the corner of his eye to her momentarily, "the Mitchell's nurse said she has autism and she made up her own language because she doesn't know how to communicate properly."

"I've never heard of such a thing happening," Roy's nose wrinkled as he again cast a curious eye upon the figure at his window. The appearance of this child appropriately named Nina had been unsettling enough; the subdued viciousness within the eyes of the young girl compounded the feeling. Her attachment to Brigitte refused to relinquish his curiosity.

"Sir?"

Mustang's attention returned to Alphonse, narrowing his eyes at the stiff face the boy held. It was still odd to hear the voice address him, only to look up and see a young man rather than a towering suit of armour.

"Can you help me find this Shou Tucker?"

Something suddenly rewarding existed within the conversation; it was something Edward had never allowed: Mustang's direct involvement with their affairs.

"Why would you want to?"

"I think that girl is the same Nina who died five years ago. The only person with any reason to bring her back would be him. If he's found a way to perform a successful human transmutation–"

It was then that Mustang became gravely concerned for the direction that the conversation was headed, and whom it would imply, "Don't consider taking that path, human transmutation is a taboo you know isn't to be crossed."

"I'm not looking to perform a human transmutation," Al's voice was abrupt; from the moment he'd left Resembool his intentions had been far greater than the Brigadier General could ever have considered.

"If this man knows how to perform a human transmutation, he might know how to access the Gate."

"Gate?" from then on, Alphonse's conversation moved a step above the State Alchemists concept of what he understood alchemy to be; he absorbed every word.

"The Alchemy Gate, I guess you can call it. Sensei said it was like looking into hell, but she also said my brother once called it a wealth of knowledge."

Reaching out, Roy lowered himself into one of the office chairs, his attention never wavering from Alphonse's voice.

"Sensei and I weren't looking to perform a human transmutation when we set out on this journey, she would never allow that. But we were looking to study alchemy so we could find a way to access the 'Alchemy Gate' and take something from it. I'm not going to resurrect my brother, because he's not dead; I'm going to take him from the gate, like what he did for me." Al brought his hand to his chest, "Unlike our mother, I wasn't dead; I was kept as payment to the gate for access to our mother's life. That's why my brother could complete the process of bringing me back without the Philosopher's Stone. In order to perform a transmutation of a dead human body, you need the Stone; but not if your making an exchange with the gate."

"Ed didn't use the Philosopher's Stone to bring you back?" Roy's head shook slowly in confusion, "then where did it go? We assumed that's how you…"

"I'd already used the stone to bring back my brother."

"Wait," Mustang's hand came up to stop Al, "…'bring your brother back'?"

Al nodded, "He died; he was killed; that's what Roze told me. But I used the Stone to bring him back and vanished into the gate when I did that."

Roy's hand came to his temple as he slumped in the chair, slowly exhaling at the wealth of information, "Go on…"

"Sensei and I talked about it for a while before we left for Dublith. When a human transmutation is performed, the alchemy circles and ingredients alone are insufficient; you need to offer a personal sacrifice to access the person's life; that sacrifice is kept by the gate as a 'right of passage'. I guess you can look at it as a toll. In order to recreate life from death you need the Philosopher's Stone, because an alchemist's own will power will never be enough. But you don't need the Stone to retrieve your toll… even if your toll is life. I'm proof of that."

If his mind could spin any faster he would loose it. Were these Elric brothers always this far ahead with what they knew?

"You only get to see the Alchemy Gate when you're looking to request something from it, like a life, any of the three components to existence: mind, body and soul… or your 'toll fee'. My brother's leg and my whole body and soul were the gate toll only for 'access' to our mother's life, my brother's toll to retrieve my soul from within the gate was his arm, my brother's whole self and everything my armoured self had become were the toll to retrieve me from the gate as I am right now. My existence as armour was given up so my soul could be released into my body from the seal my brother made. If that hadn't happened, the mediation between the armour and my soul would still exist. I would have come back with only my mind and body; I'd be a lifeless doll. That's what Sensei and I were theorizing before we left. Some of those heavy books in Mrs. Mitchell's collection I read when I first got there helped clarify some of that. I'd like to know where she got them from."

"In order to recreate life, you require toll payment to access the contents of the gate, then the Philosopher's Stone to recreate the dead life," somewhere in the back of his consciousness, Roy thanked Maes' discouragement of his study of human transmutation, "but you do not need the Philosopher's Stone to access this gate and retrieve items given up as 'toll payment'?"

"Exactly, you just need to find the entrance and a key," Al nodded to affirm the question, his eyes still holding determination firmly at the throat, "the only thing I want to do is take back from the gate my brother's toll fee; himself."

"Edward is not dead?" it boiled his blood beneath the calmed exterior. Everything he had allowed those boys to go through, everything everyone had encouraged them towards; there had been another way all along. It was so excruciatingly vivid… what their collective ignorance cost everyone…

"Edward?" Brigitte murmured to herself, picking out a familiar name from within the conversation as she turned to gaze back out the clear window.

"Al, let's bring Mom back."

"All is the world! One is me!"

"The world is constantly flowing. A person dying is part of that flow, that's why you must not think of reviving the dead."

"I'll give you my leg, arms or heart. So give him back. He's the only little brother I have!"

"Tell me what you are going to do with that body? I'll find a way to return your normal bod–."

–

Edward gasped so sharply he choked from the startle the hand resting on his shoulder gave him.

"I didn't think you heard me come in," Hohenheim stepped back from his daydreaming son beneath the setting sunlight flowing in from the gaping windows of the empty Thule cathedral, "I was almost hoping you wouldn't come here so soon after everything."

A worn out gaze was returned to Hohenheim. Unresponsive, Edward's lethargic expression eventually turning up into the dome ceiling he stood beneath.

"Are you sleeping, Edward? You're still up when I go to bed and you're awake before I am," the question was poised regardless of the fact that he realized there would be no response, "every time I step out of my room there's a light on downstairs and Winry's said you've been up at night. I know how hard it's been for me to sleep, but I think it's time you came home and reacquainted yourself with your bedroom before you make yourself sick."

At the centre of his great mystery, Ed abolished the words of concern as though they had never come into existence, "A trace of magnesium shouldn't have made any difference," he tapped the tip of his polished shoe against the engraved cement as his vision slowly fell from above.

"No, I doubt it did."

Letting himself fall back onto the dark shade of his shadow, Ed sat down upon the etching; crossing his legs as he slouched over in the silence that existed beyond his own voice, "And I watched Hess kill people before at the centre of this thing, and still nothing happened…"

"Edward," Hohenheim reached an aged hand to the cement as he joined his son upon the floor, legs not strong enough today to stand up under the weight of evidence, "that night a few weeks back when I came home late, I'd stayed at the Thule hall because something happened in this room," he waited while Ed gathered together what there was to be had of his undivided attention, "I had wanted to bring it up earlier, but more important matters came up."

Hohenheim wondered just how tired Edward could have been to allow the old man to sweep aside his curtain of bangs and brush a thumb high over a cheekbone that was still discoloured.

"I have no idea why, or any explanation how, but this sigil had a power flow. I've seen a lot of disturbing things in Germany, but that one was beyond my comprehension," human behaviour could be explained even in the cruellest of fashions, it was the impossibility that broke nature's laws that Hohenheim struggled with, "I didn't dare come within two meters of the cursed thing, but anyone who walked across it did so without any problem. By the end of the night the circulation had dissipated and I asked Dietrich to go over the original layout plans for the hall with me, but nothing stood out. I have no idea why it suddenly reacted at that moment."

"Do you believe him?" Ed turned an eye down to a semi functioning mechanical arm that he'd not asked anyone to deal with yet, "What he said happened to Brigitte… how Winry got here."

"Do you?" it was a rhetorical question, Hohenheim knew both of them had no choice but to accept the underlying circumstances, "We both know that what Max did was not a human transmutation, but he did take Winry out from the… other…"

Hohenheim's voice trailed off, listening to the subtle laughter Ed indulged in, the voice barely holding enough energy to fill the room with the sound.

"He opened the Gate, somehow, from this side… and of all the people in the world he could have chosen, he took Winry," Ed's amusement subsided as he shook his head in disbelief, "I don't buy that," Ed pulled himself to his feet; his mind returning to a distant thought, "… I wonder what happened to Brigitte."

"Have you talked to Winry about what she knows?" Hohenheim followed suit, rising up.

"I wanted to wait until she felt better before asking too many questions. It didn't feel like she was really coming to her senses until today," Ed gave a lazy shrug before turning curiously to his father, "Have you said anything to her?"

"Now and then when she's out of her room. I talked to her today to find out where you'd gone, I didn't expect to come home and find her by herself," Hohenheim watched as his words lowered Ed's eyes until the younger of the two took a step away.

"I just needed to go for a walk."

"This is a long walk to make."

"It wasn't bad."

The remnants of Ed's voice trailed off into the silence left behind. As though waiting for a cue, Hohenheim held his distance from the wandering son until a moment emerged where he could again invite him back home. The opportunity was delayed when Ed turned back, his expression held sternly.

"Why haven't you ever brought Al up?" Ed caught the old man's eyebrows rise, "you told everyone when I first came to London that I was your only child. You've never asked me about him or wonder how he'd dealt with being sealed in that armour for so long. I've never heard you wonder if he's alive, if I'd failed or not, how he might be doing if he were around… you just add your two cents worth into whatever I would have been thinking and are done with it."

"Edward, he's my youngest son, of course I think about him," as preposterous as the question was from a parent's point of view, Hohenheim knew Ed had every right to ask him, "and I think about what you boys did, and what you did in the end. I can empathize with it far too well. But, what do you want me to say?"

It left Ed to wonder; what was there to be said? There had always been an unspoken acknowledgement his father gave of Alphonse; he was the reason Ed was there. Alphonse was his son too; the younger son, younger brother, in what felt like a different life. A life the man had no part of. A life Ed knew his father would not go back to.

"Dad…" perhaps it was not the opinion on the younger son which Ed sought, "…everything I've done here has really had a purpose. I brought Al back; I believed in it before but now I know," and it made him feel light as air, "I know it worked, that changes everything somehow, I know I didn't just…" a sharp exhale transitioned Ed's thoughts, "after five years of this, I know he's there, he's living, he's breathing, he's eating, Winry said he's searching for me and I just need to–"

His father's hands were silencing, holding him mute once they'd come to rest high on his shoulders.

"I think you've been punished enough by now," Hohenheim felt the strained muscles beneath his hands give way, "Relax in the justification Alphonse has given you of your presence here, consider it his gift of peace and tranquility within mankind's hell, and make sure to thank Winry for delivering the message later. Exist in the moment before the feeling passes, and then build off of it another day. Get some lemon tea, take back that blanket from Winry for the night and fall asleep in front of the fire place like you use to."

The hands pushed off of Edward's shoulder as Hohenheim created a breeze while passing his son. He slid a single hand into a pocket; he made no attempt to soften his footsteps on approach to the exit, the tip of his ponytail flipped with each step.

"Dad, I –" Ed turned over his shoulder, only to be stopped by a silencing finger held high at the man's side.

"Look at my foolish son: Edward."

The set of questioning eyes widened at the booming sound of a father's voice. A voice calling out as if it were critical, yet blowing whimsically around he who stood in silence at the centre of the chamber. The sole of the son's shoe pressed into the cement while pivoting towards the calling; turning himself to watch the waving coattails of someone always a step ahead.

"Look at what he's done for himself, shame on him. He succeeded where his old man once failed and returned to him a child for a life that was, and for life that is. What's this world coming to when a son surpasses his father?"

The pale evening sunlight stretched Edward's solitary shadow long across the floor.

.
.

Brushing the soiled flesh palm on the brown coat hanging from his shoulders, Ed followed in the preceding footsteps back to a street where his ride home waited; uncounted minutes having passed since the walls held him silent within an unyielding echo of the lingering voice.

To Be Continued...

Author's Notes

Warm fuzzies for Ed!

First I'll address a couple things that AmunRa brought up (cause they are valid and you may be wondering them)

Why aren't Nina and the Nurse more careful with Brigitte? They didn't completely realize at the time what had happened, that they'd gotten someone from 'the other side', because Brigitte was very uncooperative and not talking to them. She was a sudden anomaly in their lives. They sort of shot themselves in the foot by doing the swap in the baby's room, which is in the middle of the house, rather than in a discrete location. Can't hide a 13 year old girl in the Prime Minister's house (despite the fact there's few people there, it's a location very much under the microscope). They're also in a tight predicament, because when Dante-Lyra was around, she was in a VERY powerful position (the wife of the man running the country) and she was very active 'helping' her husband 6.6;.

Ed got the quilt after his stay in the hospital? Ed got the quilt during his hospital stay. In that flashback chapter, Ed and Mrs. Churchill have a brief conversation where she mentions how she makes quilts for the children in the hospitals, and the extra one for him was no problem. He received it before he'd left.

I hope everyone understands the difference I laid out behind the human transmutation idea. Human transmutation from a resurrection standpoint requires the Philosopher's Stone because an alchemist isn't powerful enough to complete the transmutation. Without the Stone you are only granted ACCESS to the person's life, you aren't handed the life. Ed did not require the Stone to retrieve Al's body because Human!Al was held as payment for the access privileges. Think of it like: Ed is at the front desk inside a building (the Gate) asking for his deposit back (Human!Al) which he paid to access the rest of the floors, but he was not asking for anything from those other floors, just the deposit. If Ed was asking for something from within the other floors of the building (IE: Trisha) that would be human transmutation. Get it?

"Wait wait… I'm still confused. Al said you need a sacrifice for 'right of passage' then the Stone to recreate the life, but when Tucker brought back Nina he didn't have to offer a sacrifice to get her". Al doesn't know this. Al doesn't realize that the Philosopher's Stone is a door key and toll-exempt as well. Wayyyyy back in chapter three (yikes) the back-story unfolded to reveal Al was never told that he had become the Philosopher's Stone; he was only told he was in possession of it. The family chose to tell Al this so that he would think that even with the Stone there would be a sacrifice and they wanted to discourage Al as much as possible from even thinking of going after the Stone.

Now, in episode 51, once Al had used the Stone to resurrect his brother (after Envy impaled him… x.x) he vanished into the Gate. Al didn't die; he just vanished into the Gate (cause the Stone made him special that way… and his mind and body were still in there). The Gate reclaimed Al's soul as part of their initial toll from when the boys tried to resurrect their mother.

"So then… you need to pay a 'toll' to get your toll back?" In 'theory', yes, and Al wants to find a way around that. He said he's going to "take" Ed from the Gate. Ed's line of thinking when he got Al back was "exchange my life for his". Al's upping the ante. Remember: equivalent exchange isn't as black and white as the boys once thought.

"Hmmm… didn't Izumi say at the end of the series that Ed offered the 5 years of memories up along with himself to get Al back?" Yes, yes she did. What I did with that was expand on the original idea. Thank you episode 51 for cramming 7-some months into 10 minutes :D you left me lots of opportunity to go "well, they COULD have talked about this :D lets say that they did!"

"How the hell did Izumi and Al figure this out?" Well… they needed to find some way to completely rationalize how Al came back and find some way of approaching the retrieval of Ed. It may not be exactly how it'll work, but it's a big step in the right direction.

I hate Tucker :D ALMOST as much as I hate Archer… until they made Terminarcher and I've laughed at him ever since. I'm glad Archer is dead… I'd never be able to write him, I can't take him seriously XD;;;

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