Death is involuntary; it is the resultant state of an event.
A rebound from human transmutation is involuntary; it is the resultant state of a reaction.
The separation of the mind, body and soul is involuntary; it is a resultant state of my actions.
When you deal directly with the Gate, it is a 'take' and 'give' scenario. The Gate takes from you and gives whatever it deems most appropriate back. It's a greedy entity; it's not looking to make anyone happy.
The Gate takes your mind and soul upon separation at death.
The Gate takes from your existence when you cannot create a proper formula.
The Gate takes that man's bonds of existence because I offered them.
But, if you step up to the Gate, give yourself of your own free will - the Gate acquires all of you and gives back. Edward Elric left nothing for the Gate to take – he gave everything. That doesn't make the game fun. The Gate could at least 'take' the existence bonds from each person I placed before it because I merely facilitated the opportunity, I am not the one participating in the sacrifice.
It's rare to encounter anyone that 'generous' to the Gate.
But now, the Gate has the problem: what to do with your existence?
It only stores what it takes.
It cannot send you back.
It most certainly cannot keep you like you are at its pillars.
So, what does it do with you?
Chapter 70 - Existence Revisited
"Edward?" Hohenheim's hand finally came down onto the young man's shoulder. The grip stiffened when his son jerked with a gasping startle in response.
Quickly silent, Ed looked around the darkened room to gather his bearings, soon realizing that he'd lost his crutch to the floor. His father's hand had re-gripped beneath his only arm to keep him from falling.
"Lay down. You can't sleep standing against the wall."
Oh that's right, he'd gotten up to get some water but put his empty shoulder against the wall when his back had started to ache again. Years ago he'd been cut, stabbed, tossed around, and beaten up more times than he could shake a stick at, but he'd always bounced back. It wasn't so easy to do that anymore. Ed would chalk up his pain and exhaustion to yet another quirk for the other side of the gate – as annoying as all the others.
"Did I wake Winry up?"
He'd woken her up at least twice since they'd left. There was a sound he couldn't shake from his ears and a vision haunting his mind. The sound triggered the vision that would twist and play tricks on him so quickly that he couldn't adjust to the illusion. In Berlin and in Brussels, the early morning backfire of a car's engine was all he needed to hear to set that in motion. With a gasping start, he'd fling himself awake to break from it. His heart racing without just cause, Edward would fall silent and curse himself: why was he not mentally strong enough to combat this? He'd been able to handle so much already. It was too frustrating to bog himself down with it, regardless of how it did not seem to relent with each passing day.
At least his hand had finally stopped trembling.
"No, she's fine," Hohenheim answered the rhetorical question, though the hotel room in Dunkerque was small enough Ed could see for himself.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, silent again, Ed closed his dried out eyes with the hope his headache would go away and the burning would stop.
"Lay down and get some rest."
The voice was a little more instructive this time, but sitting up or lying down didn't change much; he couldn't sleep. It had been that way for days…
"…Edward"
Shut up. Just shut up. He was so sick of hearing his name. A carnival of things would set him off, his father's nagging voice was no exception. Like an overtired, cranky child, he moved away from the edge of the bed, sliding along the mattress until he could finally burry his face in the pillow. Ed could care less if he could breathe, his mind was busy throwing incoherent, irrational thoughts about. He wanted them to stop; he was too tired to organize them. Yelling at his father for no good reason would make him feel better by venting frustrations, but not at this pre-dawn hour.
The mattress at Edward's side sunk when his father sat down beside him. The two coexisted in an uneasy peace before Hohenheim caught Edward's attention. Turning his head, the younger man pulled his face out of the pillow, "Could you not-"
The knuckles of his father's index and middle fingers dug into his lower back along his spine, silencing Ed who flinched beneath the pressure.
"You should say something if your back is bothering you."
This argument had been in existence for as long as Edward had existed beyond the Gate. Ed had frowned upon himself for many of the early days in London. At the time, he'd bitterly likened himself to a crotchety, frail old man – through no fault of his own. His neck, back, head, chest, stomach; most everything from the waist up added to a list of miseries that gave him cause to be ornery and Hohenheim would take it upon himself to remedy that. It was one of the few things he could do to ease the stress, Hohenheim worked on Ed's back and neck in the London hospital and later after he'd gone 'home'. He eventually lost the battle with Hohenheim; unable to order his father to bugger off when he'd found himself too worn down by illness and physical exhaustion to protest. What annoyed Edward more than his father's constant presence, more than his father's persistent attention, was how well it worked; even if it was only a soothing hand, which had a tendency to put him to sleep. From his unwilling surrender, Edward discovered Hohenheim was able to offer a sliver of peaceful sanctuary at a devastating and very demoralizing point in time.
Never the less, it would be a cold day in hell before he'd gratify that.
"What time is it?" the murmur seeped out from the pillow.
"Nearly four."
Ed sighed, it was long past one when he'd finally laid down and around three when he'd gotten up again. He must have been leaning against that wall for some time before Hohenheim had found him, "What time's the ferry leaving?"
"Eight thirty."
"Then you know what, why don't I just stay up," digging his arm into the bed, he pushed his chest off the mattress, "two or three hours of sleep won't do me any good."
The stronger hand stopped Edward from getting up; holding him at the back of his neck, "Get as much sleep as you can, tomorrow's a long day."
Giving up far too easily, he let himself drop back onto the bed. Ed turned exhausted, bloodshot eyes angrily against his father, the vicious sound in his late-night tone rose, "Why don't you go to sleep?"
"Unlike some people, I went to bed at nine o'clock last night," Hohenheim pushed his thumb in high at the back of Edward's neck. Hohenheim frowned, watching Ed's involuntary flinch from a spot that liked to knot up on him, "How much longer did you two keep working?"
"Just after midnight," Ed dug his forehead into the pillow, "Winry couldn't get a thing done when we were on the train… it was too bouncy, she kept screwing up. She didn't want to go to bed until the ankle coil worked right."
"Did she get it?" he glanced over to her sleeping figure, curled up tight beneath the covers, not as use to the late fall, early winter chill as the others in the room were.
"She'd still be up if she hadn't," rolling his shoulder to get his father's hand away from the sore cramp in his neck, Ed slipped his arm beneath the pillow and dug his chin into the softness, "this IS Winry, after all."
Sitting back, Hohenheim allowed the faint resemblance of a grin to form on his face. Smoothing his hands over his own loose hair, pulling the free gold strands over his shoulders, he gazed out into the small space of the room the three of them had cluttered up. A deep breath was taken before his voice rose again.
"I spoke with Thomas on the phone the other day," the father took a lesson from his son and delivered an uneasy message without easing into the subject. The Hyland family was not something they had discussed since leaving London, each for their own personal reasons. The family would enter his thoughts from time to time and sat at the forefront during the train ride through Europe. He wondered how receptive Winry would be to the family, one of many reasons Edward did not want to return to London.
Waiting for Ed to pipe up, Hohenheim found himself with a great deal of relief when he said nothing at all, allowing the statement to digress, "they wanted us to come over for supper when we get into London, I told him we'd be delighted."
Hohenheim's concern lay with his son's reaction to his mention of the Hyland family, where as Edward's silent concern rested with the uncertainty of how to approach the subject matter. The father did not expect a resounding acceptance of the invitation, he did not even expect a compliancy response; Ed concurred by not speaking up. For each of them, it was a different sort of unease as they remained in each other's company.
"If it had been just Winry and I, he'd have insisted we stay with them," Ed severed the nerves between them, choosing to follow a train of thought different from his father's, "it wouldn't have mattered what you'd arranged with Dr. Wilson."
His gaze cast down in thought, Hohenheim's expression softened at the statement, "I know."
They both allowed the silence to creep in once more. Hohenheim's unease rose with each second his presence at the side of the bed went unquestioned. The exhausted body lay awake next to him, unwilling to surrender to any type of sleep.
Their existence in each other's presence carried the cohesion of a distorted dream rudely interrupted by relentless insomnia.
"Why did you stay in London for Thomas' wedding?"
Delivered in blunt Edward Elric fashion, this question would have come up eventually; Hohenheim realized that it was only a matter of time before his son asked. He knew that there had been external circumstances that had kept Ed generally withdrawn on the train ride from Munich to Dunkerque. Winry had recognized it too, but Hohenheim knew that the question had existed in the back of his son's mind for much longer than that.
In the spring of 1919, they had planned to detour through Greece before arriving in Munich for the fall semester. Eager to dissect the ancients of the country, Ed had left before his father, but Hohenheim had never met up with his son again until Munich.
Composing his thoughts, Hohenheim's hand came up and smoothed over his bristly, golden beard. The doubt within himself prevented him from distinguishing Edward's true motivation for the question: was it derived from jealousy, frustration, disappointment, or sheer curiosity?
During his first winter in London, it had been the Hyland children who'd exposed Edward to something beyond the sulking misery of his father's home. Thomas, two years his senior, and Julie, three years his junior, found Edward to be some sort of phenomena, or 'charity project' as Ed described the situation. With as much subtle encouragement as Hohenheim could put forth, the two young adults had dragged the miserable blonde out from within the household confinements and into society. Not that venturing into the city was something Edward had avoided, there was no denying his swell of curiosity about the city, let alone the country; but it was a venture he had preferred to move solo on.
As time moved forwards, Edward had curiously kept an eye on Thomas's venture into university. It became a tenure that had accidentally sparked Edward's re-interest in alchemy at his point beyond the Gate. Up until that time, when Thomas had been able to open a window for Edward to jump from, the Elric had viewed alchemy practices beyond the Gate as not only impossible but viewed the texts as extremely misleading to any novice who could not realize the severity of the errors. He had become viciously critical of what little documentation he'd found until that point, mainly due to fundamental flaws in most frameworks. However, the post secondary libraries not only had far better documentation, but they had an arrow pointing to ancient Greece as well.
Something profound existed in those words; concealed between the lines of documents. They were documents rewritten into standard English by a 'modern' society lacking the basic alchemical understanding to grasp the astonishing concepts found in the pages. Suddenly an endless ocean existed in his path, willfully polluted with scarce fragments of overwhelming wisdom he'd never even dreamed of.
And he couldn't even use it.
Ed's drive to return home had peaked and cascaded with relentless force on a fair summer's night that he and his father had been invited to the Hyland house for dinner, The dinner was a conglomerate of guests, the vast majority of which were Thomas' acquaintances from school, and that became the night the London sky collapsed around the Elrics and drove an emotional wedge between the two families.
It would take over a half a year before Edward would walk away from it; his father slow to follow, much to Edward's quiet dismay.
"A few weeks before the wedding, Thomas told me that they were expecting a baby. They hadn't told either of their parents, because if they had, they'd have been furious. His parents were sick and that flu was showing no mercy, so they asked for my support for as long I could provide it. Things were getting hard for that family; I couldn't turn their request down."
Hohenheim's hands slipped over his knees and the father pushed himself to his feet, slowly taking a deep breath as he moved.
"I stayed and I helped until I was able to get in at the university," his eyes flickered down to Edward; his son's head remained turned away, unable to make any eye contact or judge a facial expression, "I know that you wanted to remove yourself from that situation…"
Ed scoffed, the sound muffled by the pillow.
"But, beyond that, I needed to be there to watch it all happen – even if it was for my own 'selfish' reasons."
With his face turned away, Edward lay listening as his father moved about the room. The sound of the sheets came and went, the sound of the mattress being laid upon faded, and the sound of their breathing was all that remained in the darkness before sunrise.
"Did Julie get to hold the baby?"
Inside the humane bubble he so carefully guarded, Edward had harboured that question for over two years. Sadly, he would receive the answer that had kept him from ever asking.
"No, she didn't."
The butter knife shaved a little more of that humanity away from the wrong side of the gate as Edward curled up just a little, golden slits peering out from behind sore eyelids.
"That's too bad," his arm stretched under his pillow, slowly curling beneath his head.
"Hey babe," Havoc's cigarette slipped to the corner of his mouth, the heels of his boots landing on Mustang's desk, "you must have been busy earlier, I called but no one picked up."
Breda, Fury, and Falman picked their curious eyes up from the paperwork scattered across their worktable.
"Oh, no, I'm just glad you called me before I stepped out," with his boots hooked onto the edge of the desk and a stupid grin painted on, Havoc slouched deeper into the seat, "I'd have been disappointed if I'd missed hearing the lovely sound of your voice."
"He doesn't give up, does he?" Falman gave a faint smirk.
"Oh yeah? Yeah there was a lot of excitement the other night, huh?" A lecherous grin grew into Havoc's smile, "let me know when you're up for another one of those nights, we can make it a weekend."
Fury's brow rose, glancing between his companions as the three men made it no secret that they were listening, "Should the Lieutenant really be discussing things like that on the office phone?"
"You should hear him with the receptionist downstairs," Breda rolled his eyes, snorting out a laugh.
"Hey it's Thursday, I'm good for this weekend if you're up for it. I've got a quiet little spot not too far from your place; we can curl up there for some peace and…eh?"
Without flinching, the three sets of eyes and ears that had been working so diligently were now trained upon Havoc.
"Your mother's in town?"
A collective snort burst at the table, the men grinning to themselves as Havoc's expression slowly fell.
"Well hey, I'm game for dinner with your mom…" catching his audience from the corner of his eye, Havoc kicked the chair away from the desk, spinning until all they could see was the back of his seat. The grip on the Lieutenant's boots stuck perfectly against the window glass and Havoc returned to lounging in the room's most important chair.
Breda's laugh was the loudest, smirking at the other two officers, "Hey, it's Havoc, just ignore it."
"I'm not so sure Havoc should be making those kinds of calls on the secure office line though," pushing his glasses tight against the bridge of his nose, Fury gave a cautious shake of his head, "he could get in a lot of-"
A familiar creak snatched the trio's attention, shooting their focus to the office door, watching the wooden plug swung wide.
"… Shit."
The officers shot to their feet, stiffened hands stapled to their foreheads in salute for General Hakuro as hthe man stepped into the room. Following directly at his back was Lt. Colonel Armstrong, whose unusually steadfast and harsh expression sent a nervous wave through the chests of the three onlookers as the two superior officers moved through the room. The inquisitive eyes drifted over their shoulders as they watched the Lt. Colonel and General stop their approach at the front of Lt. Havoc's temporary desk. Nervous, with a twinge of curiosity, excitement, and fear for their friend, the three lowest ranked officers held the situation in their sights.
"Does around seven sound good? Alright, that sounds fine. I'll drop by about ten to seven; we can chat with your mom for twenty minutes, and head out maybe quarter after? I'll make the dinner arrangements for 7:30."
The midday sun did not allow Armstrong's looming shadow to cast over the Lieutenant; else, he would have realized much sooner what stood at his back.
"Alright babe, see you then," with Havoc's reluctant sigh, the conversation ended and his feet slipped from the window, "damn…"
It was Hakuro who wasted no time bringing the office to order, "Lieutenant."
Slowly, a wide, wary set of blue eyes peered around the leather chair before Havoc's moments exploded, spinning around and snapping to his feet. Suddenly entangled in the telephone cord, the length of the cord came up short and the phone tumbled off the desk, taking a stack of paperwork with it.
Silently, Armstrong shook his head as they allowed the suddenly disorganized officer a moment to pick up the mess he'd created.
"Sorry, Sirs," the cigarette fluttering in Havoc's teeth, "I had no idea you were coming this afternoon."
"Obviously."
Hakuro's blunt response tightened the tension strung through all listening ears.
"Gentlemen," Hakuro turned his relatively pleasant expression over to the onlookers, "would you excuse us for a few minutes?"
Havoc ventured an uncertain eye towards his colleagues, watching as they swiftly exited the room at the General's command. Havoc pulled his cigarette from his teeth and slipped it behind his ear, wondering what the heck was going on – the General and Armstrong were an odd couple at best.
"… Sir?"
Armstrong's harsh tone came crashing down upon Havoc, "Who were you speaking with on the phone, Lieutenant?"
His show of surprise was withheld, and his rising alarm kept under guard. Havoc ran questions through his mind, concerned why Armstrong was playing this game. The Lt. Colonel knew perfectly well who he'd been talking to, Armstrong had been the one who'd arranged for the call from Major Hawkeye to be re-routed from the receptionist's desk on the second floor to the office. The conversation was modified from an old Mustang tactic; he knew how to read it. What kind of situation was bringing this sudden performance on?
"My girlfriend, Sir?"
"Perhaps you should restrict your personal calls, Lieutenant…" his attention over his shoulder, Hakuro watched as the door finally clicked shut before returning his focus to the matter at hand, "to a time when you are not in the office."
"My deepest apologies, General," Havoc watched the disapproving look in the general's eyes, "I'll use more discretion next time."
Hakuro gave a light shake of his head towards Havoc, "Lieutenant, you need to show more than discretion, I'm afraid."
His jaw stiffened, "Of course, Sir, my sincerest apologies. It won't happen again."
"That's not what I meant," the general's arms folded, casting a blazing look of disappointment over the officer, "I'll be frank with you Lt. Havoc, your name has been thrown around a great number of times to be placed under performance watch, probation, and even investigation."
Havoc's hands slipped to his sides, the uncertainty and concern suddenly boiled within him, "May I ask what for?"
"Far too many of your reports have been late, misfiled or simply misplaced before reaching the government authorities. The activity logs for many of the people stationed in Brigadier General Mustang's division, which you are currently overseeing, have been poorly compiled and seem erroneous. The brass has become increasingly critical of your performance and are pushing to place you under probationary observation for the inability you've displayed in handling your position efficiently," sighing, Hakuro let his posture loosen, though his tone remained directive, "Lt. Colonel Armstrong pushed for me to come and discuss this with you before any action was taken. You should thank him; after the Marketplace reports went missing you were walking on thin ice with many people in investigations, not to mention the government. If your performance does not straighten out, I'm afraid you will have to be dealt with. Take this as your last warning, Lieutenant. I have no problem reassigning this office to one of my direct subordinates, regardless of anything Brigadier General Mustang has to say."
It was an unsettling implication, Havoc's actions were being monitored, far more closely than he'd suspected. He couldn't fathom how the brass came to realize all of his deliberate misfiling; he'd buried them so deeply in the military's mess that there should have been no way. Armstrong must have suspected or known about the suspicion and used the General as his method of conveying the dire need for silence. If the General's impromptu visit was the only way Armstrong could relay the message, it had to be serious. This exchange would become as much information as Havoc would get from the Lt. Colonel here on out. The independent investigation into Izumi would have to be pulled, as well as the one for Winry. He'd probably have to divulge the Winry case to the police if he wanted to have anything done for her now. His thoughts raced, doing a mental check that the records regarding the custody of Brigitte, Lt. Ross's leave and Broche's transfer north were as secure as he could have made them.
"Lieutenant Havoc."
The man's attention was grabbed again by the General's powerful tone.
"Ensure that your behaviour straightens out, you've kept an outstanding service record until now. I'm sharing this information with you as a courtesy."
His hand stiffening, Havoc's right hand shot to his temple, "Yes, Sir."
With the nod of his head, Hakuro turned away from the desk without a word, Armstrong following in stride. Nothing more was said between the two parties as the lumbering Lt. Colonel followed the General out. Flicking his cigarette from his ear, to his fingers, and back into his teeth. Havoc turned his back to the door, projecting his concerns out the window. Folding his arms, he listened for the door to click shut while the deep, troubling concerns to coursed through his veins.
"…Son of a bitch."
London, England. November 15, 1916
How absurd.
His hand missed the keyhole. It was unsteady; such an uneasy feeling to be so out of sorts. This shouldn't have been so uncomfortable.
Bundled tight in his scarf and jacket to keep the bitterly cold chill away, Ed's attention was elsewhere as his father fought with the deadbolt and doorknob. There was the skiff of snow blanketing the fallen leaves, the curious age of the buildings, and the growing interest about the destinations of the streets. The final passing thought was how horribly tacky the 'Welcome' mat on the doorstep was.
"Edward, you'll freeze if you stay outside in the cold," holding the door open, Hohenheim looked back to the porch pillar Ed leaned up against.
With a deep breath, Ed found himself trying to clear his throat, enjoying how nice the frozen air felt to ingest.
"Edward…?"
"For fuck's sake," his disgruntled voice snarled as he pushed away from the pillar, "I heard you the first time."
It was awkward. The last time Ed had been like this, Aunt Pinako had given him the spare leg she kept around. He'd never been so unbalanced for any length of time before, and for the life of him, he could not get used to it. His right calf burned, though he said nothing about it and opted to ignore it.
The last time Ed had stood for so long he'd had two good legs, even if that was only for a brief few hours.
He'd shift more weight to the crutch under his only arm, except that he'd done far too much of that already. The muscles in his shoulder were stiff & sore, plus his fingers had a tendency to go numb. The less the shoulder hurt, the less irritation the muscles and nerves in his neck and back felt. The sore leg was far away from everything else that hurt, he'd deal with that annoyance on its own.
Standing in the hallway, he squinted, adjusting to the inside light. His pale, drained expression slowly panned through the open kitchen attached to the front entrance. The dusty, golden eyes combed the wooden surface of the room, accented by earth-toned towels, dishcloths, and table placemats. Unable to place what it was that tickled his nose, Ed could have sworn that the house smelled vaguely like vanilla.
He startled as Hohenheim took hold of the scarf's end and began unraveling it from around his neck. Opting for the pain in his shoulder rather that the assistance of his father, Ed pulled away. Defiantly, his hand gave a firm yank on the scarf, allowing it to unwind and fall upon the floor. Holding steady with the support under his arm, Edward took to unbuttoning the long jacket.
Without a word, Hohenheim picked the scarf up from the floor.
Ed's hand eventually fell away from his task, his head and eyes remaining downcast while his irritation once again swelled. Slitting his eyes, Ed's hand clenched around the crutch trying to prevent himself from shaking with infuriation at the battle he was loosing with his jacket and the last two buttons at his knees. He could have sat down on the floor to finish the task, but then the old man would have to pick him up; he wasn't even strong enough, let alone able, to pull himself up.
Ed gave no acknowledgement when Hohenheim took care of the last two buttons.
"Have a seat at the kitchen table and take off your shoes…"
Ed kept his eyes away but his tongue seemed more willing to dance about, "Just one damn shoe."
"… And put it on the mat," the interjection did not faze Hohenheim's careful tone, "have a look around if you like, I need to tidy a few things upstairs."
He didn't dare do any more for his son, even if he felt Edward would be better off if he did. There was nothing the alienated father could do to stop the raging aura of frustration that would flare up; he could only look for hints that Ed was looking for a verbal combatant and diffuse the situation by stepping away. Edward's insatiable, vicious, verbal assaults had snapped on the hospital staff, and had snapped on him over the most ridiculous of issues. Hohenheim found it best to simply allow Ed to simmer down on his own or they'd both wind up at their wits end.
Flopping down into the wooden kitchen chair, Ed held a long exhale. He looked back through the room, frowning at the trail his shoe had made across the floor. Crossing the right leg over the left stump to unbuckle his boot, he let it fall from his sore toes and land with a dead clunk on the floor. Picking up on a passing thought, Ed considered poking around for something to drink but decided that his head was too heavy to care about what was inside his father's home. Ed turned to face the square, wooden table; he put his chin down on the blissfully cool surface, chilled by the opened crack of the window for fresh air. His head was hurting again – 'again', as in more than the normal pain – it made his eyes ache and he wrapped his arm around his face to bring that to an end. Emerging from the silence of his own discomfort, Ed's ears focused solely on the sounds of birds toughing out the winter as it filtered in from just beyond the glass panes. Ed's mind intensified the sound; he hadn't heard the birds that clearly since the last summer night he'd spent in Resembool. He engulfed himself in it, lived within it, enjoyed it, and used it to extinguish the echoing reminders of the hospital noises that danced the back of his mind.
It all vanished when he started to cough again.
Ed winced, the abused muscles at the back of his neck and shoulders strained as he tried to bring it under control. He hated how the sound of his own breathing wheezed in his eardrums. He'd continue to try and clear his throat of the feeling, even if it rarely worked. The thought of getting a drink from the tap was completely dismissed; the patience to figure out which cupboard housed the glasses wasn't present.
But this reminder of illness was easier to deal with than others; he could walk it off. Taking hold of his crutch, Ed pulled himself to his feet. 'Have a look around' he'd been told – why not? If he was going to have to stay here, he may as well know his way around.
Moving towards the hallway, an unidentifiable 'something' caught Ed's attention and he paused to look back. Tired, sunken eyes scanned the kitchen, trying to shed some light upon what it was that seemed to sit out of place. There was nothing he could recall, and as far as he was concerned, this whole world was out of place. The feeling was dismissed.
Edward didn't get very far, Hohenheim's house was not big and with no more than a few steps down a rug-covered hall he found himself in what must have been the 'family room'. The small brown couch and large rocking chair flanked the centerpiece table; everything seemed to face the screened off fireplace. The sheer white curtains were pulled while the thicker drapes remained open, a scattering of potted greenery accented the room, his quilt was folded over the back of the couch while the newspaper he'd picked up earlier that day had ended up at the table. Ed curled his nose slightly at the whole situation; it didn't have to look so pleasant, did it?
Tightening his frown, he wrote the room into memory. Ed freed his hand from the wooden support long enough to snatch the blue and green quilt from the back of the couch. Stumbling his way around, Ed let the crutch clatter off the floor while he let himself fall into the soft confines of the cushions.
He wasn't interested in sitting there for long. Placing the blanket on the floor, he slipped off the seat, straightening the blanket beneath him as he shifted. Ed stretched out his tired leg along the floor and lazily slouched over the low table. His hand reached out and flipped the pages of the newspaper before him, even though he'd read it twice already.
Nothing within the pages was interesting; it was all about the war and he was really fed up with hearing about it. It was rare to find something within the paper that did not directly result from something to do with the war, and he simply didn't care about it. Flipping the paper closed, Ed leaned his forehead against the table's edge, relaxing his shoulders and letting his body drain of tension. Eventually, his arm slipped between his forehead and the table's edge to prevent a permanent crease from developing on his brow.
It was so quiet in this house.
The peace was so much of a comfort that he couldn't claw enough energy to dispute. It was an outrageous slap in the face that his old man had a place of silent sanctuary. Constantly in motion, the hospital continually drifted in and out of chaos regardless of the time of day. He'd grown accustomed to blocking it out and finally sleeping through it; but now, beneath Hohenheim's roof, tranquility existed. Ed took refuge in the knowledge that there was no one around to watch him enjoy it.
It started over 2 months ago upon the cold cobblestone street, glazed with water and sprinkled with debris. The raging sound of a fire, the nearby building collapsing, people's screams had been drowned out by the sound of his own pulse banging in his head. The severe dissociation with the world left him delirious. Before realizing that he was even in London, Ed had realized that he was without his arm and leg once again. His wounds were fresh and open, the precious limbs Alphonse had given him for a few fleeting hours had been ripped off his body. Lying silent, soaking in his own blood within the street, the murky red mixture of blood and street filth soaked his hair and dampened his clothes. There was nothing he could do about his wounds.
Edward had never forgotten what it had felt like to loose his arm and his leg to the Gate, but this pain was far beyond unbearable and felt nothing like the first time. The memory of the Gate's reclamation of his limbs was non-existent. Awareness of his first moments after returning to London soon vanished. He had no idea who found him or when he ended up in a hospital bed. At the time, Ed could not understand why this instance completely overwhelmed him. He came to understand that nothing felt the same as it did back home; it was an irreparable imbalance to his existence that could not be corrected beyond the Gate.
There it was again. Ed's forehead pulled away from where it rested; if he were going to start coughing again he'd rather not be hitting his head into a solid object. He'd learned to keep his eyes shut or the pain in his neck, that started high on his neck and ran along each side of his spine, would hurt his eyes just that much more at every convulsion. His arm trembled slightly as Ed gripped the table's edge to remain balanced; cheeks burning, ears ringing, eyes watering. His fist would find its way through the wall if he could ever find the energy to do so.
In the dark silence of his mind, he remembered the sudden insurgence of an unidentifiable voice stating that his injuries were serious and they would see how he faired the night. Yet, in the morning, he cracked an eye open in the early morning, cleared his throat of a nasty feeling, and asked where he was. That verbal exchange was the last time Edward willingly held a conversation with the staff. Their questions came and he could not answer them: place of birth, address, phone number, parents, relatives, contacts, school, doctor, priest… all he provided was his name and age.
Starting later that evening and continuing on for the next several weeks, Edward's recollection of the hospital stay came to around seventy-two hours. At first, when he'd made the passing comment about how he felt like utter shit, he'd been told that they were worried he'd picked up an infection, possibly in his bloodstream, when he'd been in the street. It was to be the cause of his rising fever, chills, and swelling lethargy. The misdiagnosis was satisfactory until Ed began awakening amidst dizzying and breathless sweats. He fell to the ailment too quickly to understand what was happening. The dizzying disconnection with reality gained a moment of coherency at the command of Hohenheim's hand slapping his burning cheek. According to the estranged father, they'd been holding a disjointed conversation about how to raise Aquoria out of the water by making it float somehow. It wasn't until Ed gave a coherent, though incensed, response that Hohenheim understood the young man hadn't even realized whom he'd been talking to until that moment, let alone been aware of the left-field conversation.
Edward cursed while undoing the top button of his loose, white collared shirt. The two nerves pinching high on his neck tightened with every convulsion. Balanced awkwardly by the shorter leg stump, Ed rose to his 'knees'. The dryer his lips got, the hotter his cheeks burned; the hotter he felt, the more difficult Edward found it to breathe. The frustrated fist Ed lifted above his head never reached a downswing. Startled, his eyes widened at the muscular hand that gripped beneath his chin. Before Ed realized what was going on, a second hand came down not once, but twice, high across his back. If there had not been that stronger hand, the weakened Elric would have crumpled to the ground.
Around the time the cough developed, Hohenheim told his viciously miserable and volatile son that the doctors had re-diagnosed him with pneumonia. The statement ended a frustration filled, one-sided argument in which Edward had been telling his old man to stay the fuck away from him for any and every reason he could dream up. He didn't ask his father what that was… exactly, but not long after the man left his bedside he asked one of the nurses. The question was an honest one on Ed's part, but it did nothing but concern the hospital staff about his state of mind, something that was already in severe doubt. To rub salt into the frustration wound, no one did him the courtesy of answering the question.
At some point the question was relayed to Hohenheim. Quietly the next afternoon, as Ed had buried his burning, aching face into the lifeless hospital pillow, the father's hand slipped into his son's loose, tangled mess of hair and the old man crouched down beside his bed. It was odd for the noise in the ward to be so low, and Hohenheim's voice slipped in beneath the existing hum. The words Edward reluctantly listened to finally explained that where Amestris excelled in alchemy, this world excelled in mechanics. Where medical science flourished at home, here, chemical and biological sciences were only in their infancy. This world had diseases that were treatable back home, or abolished, or simply non-existent. Neither of their systems had immunities for what lurked in this civilization. Before Ed gathered up the energy to slap the hand away, Hohenheim presented the crushing tone of voice that set him apart from every other man and established a foundation for the hierarchy between father and son. He would make it perfectly clear that there was no medical procedure that would fix what was happening. His lungs were infected, filling with fluid and if he didn't want to die from it he was going to have to do away with the chip on his shoulder for a little while.
"Did it clear?"
Even if Ed wanted to tell Hohenheim something to the contrary, whatever was sitting up in his lungs had moved, and the crackle in his breathing had dispersed. Exhausted, he closed his eyes, focusing on catching his breath, fighting off the persistent cough.
Why, of all the people in the world, was he under his care? Why did he get to see him in such a terrible state? With each passing day his self-respect and pride would be chiseled away a little more. Ed's inability to care for himself was degrading enough, and then to allow assistance from one of the last people he wanted to have around was infuriating. The damned old man had no right, no right to him at all. Yet, no matter what Ed had screamed at him, the fool always returned. His constant presence and insistence that he could play some sort of guardian's role would continually drive him mad.
In the end, it wasn't as though Edward could get up and walk into the city life; the most frustrating part of his reluctant agreement to the man's presence was that Ed chose to be with him. It was a terrible pill to have to digest, the idea he would rather stay under his old man's care than be sent off to some facility.
The choice was his to make. Would he carry the title of being his father's son? Or, would he allow himself to be sent to a care facility and permit the world to label him 'disabled'? Eventually, he chose the former.
Ed never realized the exact moment he'd finally stopped coughing, though he was perfectly aware Hohenheim was still at his side when the old man picked him up and put him face down on the couch. Taking one of the pillows, Ed scrunched it up beneath his face, listening as Hohenheim picked the quilt off the floor. Before the blanket fell over him, Ed peeked out to the room and quickly caught the barren surface of the coffee table. Yet again, something in this house was out of place.
Loosing interest and turning away, Ed's hidden expression soured when Hohenheim sat down next to him. His nose wrinkled when the old man's hand came to rest on the middle of his back.
"There's a room upstairs for you, did you want to sleep in it tonight?"
"No."
"Do you want something to eat?"
"I'm not hungry."
Glancing towards the curtain drawn window, Hohenheim slowly shook his head, "You haven't eaten since quarter after seven this morning, you should–"
"Are you fuckin' deaf?" Ed's answer was far more forceful than the first monotone response, "I said I'm not hungry."
Hohenheim kept his voice quiet, attempting to preserve the remaining peace within the house, "I'll leave a cup of tea on the table for you, alright?"
"It's your house, I don't give a damn what you do," even if his voice was lacking volume, the complete disregard for his father's gesture was prevalent.
Yet, there was no movement on Hohenheim's part. Ed shut his eyes again, hoping to block the world out. It was not long before he felt his father's hand rub over his aching back. His patience had ground to nothing long ago and Ed childishly wondered if the old man was deliberately trying to aggravate him today. Laying silent, summoning his strength, Ed tried to find the energy to lay down his definite position that he wanted Hohenheim to screw off. Before he'd be given a chance to snap his tongue, he heard the house door close. Wondering who on earth could be coming in, Ed quickly looked at the coffee table as the newspaper landed on it, jiggling the teacup.
Ed blinked; so that's what had been missing from the table, "I already looked at it, just throw it out."
"No, you read yesterday's paper," Hohenheim's voice mused.
"No," Ed began to wiggle himself upright, "I bought a new paper from the kid outside the hospital."
"I know," the corner of Hohenheim's lips had curled as he stood behind the couch, "but that was yesterday morning."
"No, it was this morning," waiting for his father to retort, Ed's aggressive disposition slowly slipped away the longer he looked at the man, watching the faint concern on his face. The argument slowly crumbled to dust. Suddenly concerned, Ed's attention turned to the paper on the table. His complexion couldn't have grown any paler when he realized the old man was right, the front page was entirely different. A knot twisted in his chest as he reached out and stuck a finger into the cold tea sitting on the table.
"You were just…" Ed's shoulders sank as he tried to adjust the situation in his mind. Among a million other concerns, he asked himself how Hohenheim ended up behind the couch when he'd just been sitting next to him.
Picking up on the disoriented feeling Edward threw about the room, Hohenheim drifted to his armchair and allowed the boy time to organize his thoughts.
"You put me on the couch and asked if I wanted something to eat. I said no, you said you'd leave me… tea," his eyes narrowed at the cold teacup on the table, " you put your hand on me and I was going to tell you to screw off… but then the paper landed on the table…"
"Edward," barely seated, Hohenheim soon realized something was missing, "you were tired, it was one in the morning…"
"No it wasn't."
"… I rubbed your back for nearly an hour, you were sound asleep."
It was out of character, and with the misunderstanding of his day the distraught tone in his voice strengthened, "We got here at 1:30 in the afternoon. I was in the kitchen, then I came in here, looked at the paper, and then I couldn't stop coughing…" his expression interrogated Hohenheim for an explanation.
"You fell asleep in the kitchen. You had your face in your arm when I came down, it didn't look like you were going to fall out of the chair so I left you there. I put your shoe away on the mat and cleaned up the floor," he looked on as Ed's expression fell, realizing what it was that had been bothering him when he'd left the kitchen, "you were there for three… maybe four hours. I found you in here later, sitting on the floor; you had your head down on the table. I put the paper in the trash. I didn't hear anything from you until around nine o'clock when you started coughing. It took a while to fade, but you fell asleep," Hohenheim's expression softened to counter the mortified look developing on Edward's face, "I didn't move you until around one because I didn't want to wake you up, but thought you might want a real bed. I left the tea on the table before I went upstairs."
"That whole day went by…" at the edge of his seat, leaning over the coffee table, Ed's eyes focused on the 'incorrect' date of the paper. It was shameful, it was embarrassing, and his father had been around the whole time – to watch over him, to care for him, to ensure his safety – as he unwillingly demonstrated his best attempt at narcolepsy. The inability to function normally, to care for himself, to simply unbutton his coat, was getting more infuriating with each passing day. 'Edward Elric' couldn't possibly be this dysfunctional. He was aware that he'd slept a great deal at the hospital; there were points where he'd been so under the weather that he'd lost days at a time. For some reason, that was easier to rationalize; not only had he been in a spot where there were no time and date reminders allowing him to realize what he'd missed, but when you're in a hospital, you're supposed to sleep! A few weeks back he hadn't even realized what month it was until someone had mentioned it in passing. But now, if he felt fine enough to be up and walking around, what the hell was his body thinking it was doing?
"Edward, you're not feeling well, there's nothing wrong with that."
"No," the remaining strand binding his frustrations weakened as Edward's voice cracked. This time when his fist rose, it came crashing down upon the smooth tabletop. The impact rocked the teacup, tipping it over the newsprint, "There is EVERYTHING wrong with 'that'!"
Central City, Amestris. May 1916
The back of Izumi's hand wiped the sweat from her forehead, sliding her chair to the right until she was protected beneath the patio canopy once again, "I hope they're keeping themselves out of trouble."
The uniformed officer laughed, "I'm sure Klose will keep Alphonse out of trouble, she came in to visit me last month and lived in the marketplace."
Izumi moved her empty glass aside before casting a relaxed expression upon the teenager's father, "She visits you regularly?"
Following a final swallow of his beverage, Klose's father shook his head, "No, this is only her second time into Central. I had a few days leave and thought I'd surprise her with tickets. I'm normally out East."
"You're stationed out in the Ishibal settlement?" Izumi's eyes slipped to the brick roadway, darting thru the crowds of people, wondering if she could spot the two children at the outskirts of the market.
"That's right. My town was under constant pressure from the government to join the military. I agreed under the condition that I worked with restorations. I was shocked when they granted my request."
Humming in response, Izumi's attention moved away from the bustling street and up into the clear, mid-day sky as she listened, "The government has been trying to change the face of the military, especially after the State Alchemist inquiry was held."
"Even with that," the man's voice developed into a cold, hard sound "there are still too much politics and rhetoric in the peace keeping measures… all sorts of nonsense," with a sigh, he pushed up from his seat, "but enough of that, I'll grab us something from the parlor to cool down with."
Izumi relaxed back in her chair, holding her glass up for Klose's father, "Thank you."
The noise from the streets and adjacent restaurant patrons slipped into faint background static. Her eyes held open lazily as Izumi cast her mind-wandering gaze in the pale blue skyline above the low roof of the eatery. Her arms folded and she let the tension slip from her shoulders for a few moments of relaxation.
"Excuse me?"
The gaze drifting above the rooftop swept around to the voice behind her. Izumi's eyes narrowed curiously at the slender, frail looking young woman who stood at her back.
"Yes?"
"I don't mean to intrude, but I saw two children with you and your companion earlier and I believe one of them may have dropped something."
Straightening her posture, Izumi turned in her chair to look up clearly at the fragile, yet finely dressed woman. Hand knit shawl hung around her neck, draped long over her shoulders, carefully concealing her entire torso.
"What did they loose?"
From beneath her body's decorative veil, an arm slowly emerged, placing the item in question upon the table. Carefully, the silver chain slipped from her fingers as she wrapped it around the circumference of the military pocket watch she'd presented to them.
"A young man dropped it; he had short, lighter brown hair, grey eyes, and there was a young lady with him."
Silent, listening to the woman's words, Izumi interrogated the military emblem etched into the silver pocket watch.
"That's not ours, unfortunately," her words exited her lips with blunt force.
"Really?" the woman stepped up to Izumi's side, her floor length dress sweeping the dust along with her, "the people around me said that he was the last one to handle it before it was lost. Could he have been holding it for someone else?"
"Unlikely," Izumi turned her gaze up with a powerful ferocity, holding the dark haired woman prisoner in her eyes as she stepped to the table's edge in her nearly floor-length dress.
"Such a shame, it looks so close to the real thing. It's a pity that someone has lost it."
Crossing her legs, Izumi began to counter the conversation, "The 'State Alchemist' title was removed from the military rankings after the government inquiry following the Ishibal fallout. That sort of thing is worthless now; I can't imagine anyone treasuring it. Thanks for your concern, though."
"Quite true, yes," the woman cast a sly, violet gaze back into the anger Izumi was projecting, "the patio is bustling with people during the afternoon, am I imposing too much if I ask to join your table?"
"You should expect to be refused."
An actress's poise carried on in her voice, a false hurt sliding from her tongue, "You'd refuse the Prime Minister's wife? That reflects even poorer upon you than your tone of voice with me has been."
Defiantly, Izumi reached out and swept the shimmering watch from the table, "I've never cared for the military, nor the government. I don't care what you call yourself now."
The watch cracked off the cement and clattered through the pebbles, stopping against the leg of another chair. From the moment it had been placed on the table, she'd known; they'd both known. For Dante, a wave of satisfaction moved through her knowing that her pupil had come to know enough to unravel her existence.
"You should not dismiss me so quickly."
Izumi's elbows came to rest on the table, placing her chin upon her laced fingers. She placed her fearless, challenging gaze on her former instructor, "Are you threatening me?"
"No," from beneath the secrecy of her shawl, Dante's single hand emerged again, pulling a vacant chair to the side of her challenger. Smoothing her dress, she sat down uninvited, "I'm offering words of advice."
As quickly as she'd sat down, Izumi stood up, sharply knocking her chair back from the table without another word.
"Edward Elric is inside the Gate, is he not?"
Izumi's jaw tightened, "You think I still answer to you?"
The statement was disregarded, and Dante was forced to work her plan around an uncooperative student, "That's the only conclusion I can draw seeing the younger brother as he is and the only reason I can think of for your trip to Dublith," as elegantly as her withering muscles would allow, she crossed her legs.
Izumi's arms folded, her back to her counterpart, "What we're doing now is none of your concern. You have no reason to get involved in our lives again."
"People who allow themselves the opportunity to be exploited should not shake their head when they find themselves at another's mercy."
Izumi pivoted quickly, casting her raging gaze down at the seated figure, "The only way for you to carry out your 'business' is to exploit civilization that way. The Elrics, the military, Lior, Ishibal…"
"Ishibal is forever beautiful," a sweeping grin laden with malice turned over to Izumi, "Ishibal continued to succeed where all others failed. I am only able to mold the future as I see it today because of their sacrifices; it's beautiful."
"In your eyes only."
"And I had beautiful, red eyes…"
Izumi's brow rose, perplexed by the statement, watching the quiet, confident words as they flowed from the woman's moving lips.
"The scarred man of Ishibal gave himself and the city of Lior to me in the most beautiful philosopher's stone I've had in ages. His brother was so close, but created something I could not use. Even more wonderful before that was a curious man who came to learn why the Ishiballan religion forbid alchemy, and was outcast for it. He carried the knowledge that would be passed on, graciously continuing my opera."
Her curiosity snared in the web of implications, Izumi listened as Dante's words flowed out of her mouth without hesitation. A script: decades in the making.
"I'm uncertain if he's bowed down to old age yet. As a young man, he and his lover developed and refined all sorts of methods for alchemy in secret; fueled by an ancient curiosity. It was in an old, rare text authored by a man who signed as Von Hohenheim that the couple discovered the proposal for Diana."
Lowering her defensive posture, the name of the Elric father coming from Dante was disturbing. The entire story was unsettling for Izumi. As her former teacher, Dante held the unique position of being someone Izumi would not forcefully lash out against, finding herself as the only woman who could leave this student puzzled and silent amidst confusion. The ancient woman relished that position, knowing that Izumi's 'superior knowledge' of alchemy was only the select information she'd fed her for so many years.
"Mind you, the research behind Diana's proposal was hundreds, if not thousands, of years older than my own existence; folklore from my youth which no longer exists," her head turned slightly, casting her gaze up to a former pupil, "but the first time I saw what was within the Gate and with each subsequent encounter, myself and that foolish man I once loved understood that within the Gate was the type of existence far beyond our understanding."
Listening carefully to each word spoken, absorbing the information, Izumi stared back into the malevolent storyteller's enthralling expression. After all the lies, the deception, the gross disregard for human life, the story conveyed to Izumi's ears could not be disregarded.
"Our first Philosopher's Stone allowed us to arrive at the Gate's door more often than any before us. It may have been an intolerable tease at an unreachable knowledge, but each time we stood at the doors we seemed to inch closer and closer to understanding the frightening image of mankind; almost able to taste the swell of knowledge there was to grasp. Many years later, that same husband of mine suggested: Could the horrors we see at the Gate's doors not be the knowledge and nightmares existing within the Gate, but be fragments of an existence elsewhere? Perhaps there was not only a type of hellish existence within the Gate, where the dead minds and souls of our loved ones reside, but one beyond it as well."
Izumi's raging tension drained away as the woman's voice continued to spiral through her ears. The daunting and unforeseen proposal pulled a nightmare of images to the forefront of her mind's eye. An assault, buried for years, now played again.
"Maybe what the Gate shows you is a warning," turning away, a sigh incurred before an old regret resurfaced, "though we could never find out if there was such an existence beyond the Gate and could only theorize how to confirm it."
Quickly digressing, Dante quickly cleared her lament, "The prospect of another type of mankind enthralled those two Ishiballans, and the couple explored the idea of Diana for several years. What they came to discover was that Diana existed with a condition. From that, the couple came to understand why their God forbid alchemy. Unfortunately, the Ishiballan way of life embedded such high moral standards into every man and woman raised under the church's blanket, that even a dissident couldn't find it within his heart to devastate society that way. Soon after they began searching for alternatives, the Ishibalan man discovered his wife had died while traveling through the south, her carriage crashed on the outskirts of Dublith. Days later the Ishiballan church leaned what they had been doing."
Her hand swept out from beneath her shawl, gripping the end of the table as she slowly rose to her feet, "There was only one survivor from the carriage crash that claimed his wife's life. A woman crawled out of the wreckage with barely a scratch. I'm sure you've met that sole survivour before."
A myriad of curses and accusations formed in Izumi's mouth as she clenched her jaw, her eyes slit like pins.
"So, the unanswerable question for you remains," the dark strands of hair fanned over her shoulder as the strong purple eyes drove into Izumi, "if you are seeking Edward Elric, are you looking for him in the nightmare of the Gate, or do you need to surpass your predecessors and find what exists beyond the Gate?"
Edward Elric, Alphonse's elder brother, was inside the Gate, thrown at mercy of a higher existence in order to reinvent his brother's existence. There had never been any doubt, nor questioning of the fact that once taken by the Gate you became its property as part of an exchange; equal or otherwise.
But this…
The words continued to flow without care as Dante gazed off into the crowds, "He did not die like Trisha Elric, whose body's existence came to an end allowing her mind and soul to exist within the Gate. His body was not taken like Alphonse Elric, and held at ransom by the Gate because of an incomplete alchemical equation. Edward Elric gave himself – his entire existence: mind, body and soul – to our beloved Gate to do with as it pleased; else the younger brother would not be standing as he is today. Those circumstances are different from the others. I would not expect to find him sitting by the doors when you finally arrive to take him back. The Gate had to put him somewhere to exist like that."
The noise of the bustling street rose into their conversation, yet the echo of the surrounding sounds was incomparable to Dante's blistering voice tearing through Izumi's head. The frustration and curiosity boiled inside of her, emotions reaffirmed themselves as her expression hardened. Her toe dug into the patio deck and Izumi spun around, holding her voice low, unable to sully the furious tone.
"I know that Edward sacrificed himself to bring Alphonse back, but that doesn't explain why you are telling me everything else! You don't care about that family."
With the shrug of her shoulders, and a sweet, malicious grin decorating her pale complexion, Dante's tone flooded with confidence, "I have my reasons, I'm sure you realize that. But, I don't have the patience to wait for you to discover things on your own. I'm disgusted enough by this world's ignorance, so I place higher expectations on my students, former or otherwise. The decades of failure you will endure is a far too painful thought, I do not want to sit back and wait to see if you come up with a solution. Diana can only be effective for so long."
"Is your riddle finished?" Izumi snarled, fighting with herself to not raise her voice and draw the attention of the people around her.
The riddle twisted at the deafening echo of gunshots ringing out within the streets. The hum of pedestrian traffic transformed into shrieks of men, women and children. Those voices were unable to drown out the rapid gunfire that went in chorus with the chaotic stampede of bodies.
Izumi stalled for only a moment, panic flooding into the streets and flushed into her veins, "… Al!"
"They're early…" Dante's uncompassionate eyes blinked wide.
Izumi whipped her snarling voice around, "EARLY?"
"By ten minutes or so…"
The automatic fire began drowning out so much that echoed: the shrieking voices, the shattering glass, and the thundering movements of people's feet. Their moment, their conversation, and their relationship threads were set ablaze as Izumi dismissed the existence of the malevolent puppeteer and refocused with every intention of charging through the terror flowing through the streets.
"Izumi!"
There was no other person who could command her with such ease; it was a string too hard to burn after so many years. Her fists clenched, Izumi turned back to the only person she'd ever allowed to hold authority over her.
"You don't have a firm grasp on what you're dealing with. You have only seen the Gate once. You have no documentation, no references, only your vague, personal experience. Have you deluded yourself to that boy's ambitions so badly that you can no longer remember the power the Gate held over you?" The storyteller's tone Dante had carried no longer existed and the woman's voice rose above the suffocating sound of fear swelling around them, "It seems Edward may have taken a page from his father's book without ever realizing it. So, if you want the only other man on this landscape who knows the contents of Hohenheim's Theory of Beyond the Gate, you should hurry east before I ensure that information flows from no mouth other than mine. Distrust my motives if you want, but I suggest you go, or risk every mistake man has made before you."
The ground beneath their feet heaved, the sound of a deafening explosion ripped through the air. Screams at Izumi's back magnified as a filthy fog of smoke thundered into the street. The gunfire faded, replaced by the roar of a flame that rose up, licking the delicious, blue sky before sinking into the haze.
"The hands of time are falling down upon Ishibal very quickly."
A dull vibration became a permanent sensation in the streets; the hands of time were crashing to the ground in a selected portion of Central City. Without a word in reply, Izumi vanished into the shrieking bedlam.
Pushing past toppled chairs in the smoggy patio eatery, Dante reached down and reclaimed the token watch. She slipped her way through the deserted mess, disinterested in the mayhem, pulling the ends of her shawl up to shield her face from the thickening smoke and dust.
She carved a path through the spiraling world that no other had taken, the violet in Dante's eyes shone clear in the sullied, murky air.
To Be Continued...
Author's Notes:
This chapter was originally posted 10/07/05 at www . livejournal users / yuuki / 94344 . html
You can keep the plot bunny alive by leaving a review :D
I'm laying the ground work for the next little while, this chapter is my springboard. Yes there are things you won't quite get, but they'll be explained!
You're told not to "assume" things because you can "make an ass out of you and me", right? Assumptions are going to start coming up on the FMA side about the process of crossing the Gate and they're not all going to be right. No one on the FMA side has a perfect understanding of how it works; there's going to be both right and wrong 'assumptions' made. The Gate's probably laughing at everyone in the process.
I touched upon a few things that I mentioned very early on in the story plotline (about Dante's position as the Prime Minister's wife), I suspect some of it has been forgotten because I've been so slow in putting out chapters since the spring time 6.6;. Sorry.