Chapter 98 - What Lies Between
That morning, in Izumi's room, the culmination of many days worth of effort was presented in its entirety to her by her former pupils.
"Our brand new, twelve-character alchemy chart," Al presented the sheet in both hands before turning it over to her.
"Scientifically tested and proven to be some of the most basic alchemical symbols you'll ever find, now available for exploitation on this side of the Gate," Ed bowed his head with a smug grin.
Izumi laughed to herself. Unfolding her arms to take the page from Al's hands, she looked it over more than once, "Certainly not something I knew I would see in my lifetime, let alone play a part in."
"And it's a part that keeps on playing too," Al grinned, "we're going to have an entire theatre feature ready by the time we're done."
"Alright alright," she waved a hand to tame Al's enthusiasm and looked at Ed, "how's Winry coming with Wrath's leg?"
He shrugged his shoulders, "Last I heard, she's on target for this evening."
"Perfect," Izumi nodded and put her hands on her hips to address her audience, "with the people Lt. Colonel Armstrong's left with, he's thin on ones he can trust with us and expend for driving duty, so I'll head out with the military chauffeurs around noon tomorrow. We've got a set location we're sending Wrath out from that we should hit at about midnight. I'll send him out and then we're turning around and heading straight back. As far as I can tell, he hasn't had time to re-contact her for another feeding since he lured you out to meet Dante, so his stomach should motivate him if nothing else."
Despite how things had turned out, Al still lowered his head in shame of his innocent eleven-year-old self's easy deception.
"When I get back: Ed, you and Winry are heading out at sunset. Lt. Colonel Armstrong wants as much of your journey buried in darkness as possible. By the time the sun rises, you should be far enough away from civilization's watchful eye that it shouldn't be a problem."
"Alright…" he reluctantly accepted.
The teacher's focus ventured back to her other student, "Al, I want to ask you…"
"No," Alphonse refused the request even before hearing it, "I'm going with you. I have these now," the small Elric presented his young hands, "and I got this," he tapped his forehead, "and Dante doesn't know I have either of them."
Ed turned to his brother, "I'm going to bet Dante knows you can clap your hands now. She was the one who ditched you at the Gate."
Nodding his agreement, Al countered, "True, but she doesn't know I have the extra years in my head to power my hands. I can surprise her."
A satisfied grin found Ed and he returned his attention to his teacher, "You're heading down to the Empty City today, right?"
"This afternoon I'll head down," Izumi scowled, "I'm going to turn off that wretched music she plays and we'll keep tabs on the city after that. When it comes back on, we'll know she's back in Central," her brow rose and she looked to Al, "and we'll continue our little play."
Alphonse gave a large Elric grin.
Izumi clapped her hands together, but dismissed the alchemical sparks that came from it, "Alright, you boys go have breakfast, find something to entertain yourselves in your down time, and don't distract Winry."
"Yes, ma'am!"
The young men in her life left the room in the warmth of their own chatter. Izumi stood up - what was 'morning' to some people was well into the day for her already, and she figured she better check on Wrath before heading out to silence the infernal noise polluting the Empty City. Leaving the room Mustang had assigned her, still able to hear the brothers' chatter down the hall, and Izumi made her way down the stairs.
At the second floor she stopped and looked out into the floor. Things had a different aura today, she could feel it, so the woman took a detour before descending further to see Wrath. Coming to a stop at the second door on the right, she turned the handle and let herself in.
Armstrong looked up from a desk, "Well, well! Ms. Curtis!" his large voice welcomed her grandly.
Izumi smiled. She preferred Lt. Colonel Armstrong to his superior officer; at the very least, he had charm. Of the dogs these men were, Mustang was an angry and noisy bulldog, but Armstrong was a large and loyal wolfdog.
"I've rarely seen you down here," the huge man stood up and offered her a seat.
"Well," Izumi sat down in the offering at the corner of his desk, "the floor doesn't smell so rank today. I thought I'd stop in and see if there were any changes in Xenotime we need to know about."
Armstrong solemnly shook his head, "None, other than the 'reassuring' press conference. It ended up being more of a publicity spectacle of their mining conference. Seems a nearby gold deposit has appeared that promises financial revitalization to the area."
"Oh, how interesting," Izumi threw one leg over the other in her chair, "with Dante out there I'm sure that'll be a bountiful distraction."
"I assume so as well," Armstrong concluded.
Sighing, Izumi's hands patted over her top knee, "Well, she's still playing the politics game for the moment. At least we know she isn't entirely sick of it. Our heroes got out with no fuss last night I heard, have they made it through their first checkpoint?"
"They have, yes," the officer confirmed, "we were lucky and they arrived early enough that there wasn't much congestion on the telecom lines."
"Small favours," Izumi mulled over Mustang's progress; he was making decent time and would probably be settled in Xenotime long before Wrath showed up. It would give him time to get the lay of the land in order hopefully. With all of that boding well for them, Izumi turned away from her thoughts and offered a smile to Armstrong as she stood up, "well, I won't trouble you much more. I have a homunculus to eyeball and some noise to silence."
Armstrong rose to his feet and walked ahead of her to the door, "You are no trouble, Ms. Curtis, I assure you."
What Izumi wouldn't give to have the authority for twenty minutes just to swap the ranks of the two dogs who'd both sat in this room.
As Armstrong reached for the doorknob and Izumi approached, both their ears heard a thunderous set of footsteps pound along the floor. They exchanged a puzzled glance before it became clear the noise was gaining and sounding like it was headed straight for them.
Izumi and Armstrong stepped back defensively when Lieutenant Breda burst through the door.
Coming to a stop, huffing and puffing with his hands on his knees, the Lieutenant took a deep gasp for air and looked up to his superior officer, "SIR, I have Russell Tringham on the phone downstairs!"
The expressions of the two occupants in the room flew wide in unison, "WHAT?"
Set to the tone of a perfect working atmosphere, Winry and Alphonse worked through their tasks in silent harmony. Winry lay atop Al's bed with pieces of Wrath's foot organized around her and trying to find some comfort in the fan Alphonse had lodged in the window with the clap of his hands. The younger Elric studied away on a myriad of things with the otherworld alchemy, tangling and re-tangling the elements, wondering if there were any way that he could find to make the conductivity flow faster. Maybe he was able to think up something that the ancient alchemists over there had missed. So far… he hadn't had much luck.
Alphonse's failed luck led him down a rabbit hole in history. Like all things in alchemy, 'understanding' was key, so if he could analyze the history of certain transmutation processes based on the twelve historical factors that he now had from beyond the Gate, and maybe he could learn something from it.
The harmonious hum of work came to a crashing halt when Ed walked through the door and stopped at the opening of the room. The working pair looked to each other wide eyed before turning their emphatic, curious expressions to the elder brother as he stood before them: his gaze flat, arms folded, and shifting an anticipatory blank stare between them both.
"Amazing," Al marvelled.
Winry straightened herself up and eyed him, "Is he real? Did he actually survive?"
"Could we not do this?" Ed pinched his gaze. This was his own fault though…
"Wow, he's just like a whole new man," Al gawked and leaned around in his chair theatrically.
"It must have been so torturous," Winry inched herself towards him, her face full of playful wonder, "I can't wait for you to tell the tale."
Ed's right eye twitched. If they'd just given him some warning…
Alphonse's arms flew out, presenting that afternoon's headline, "Edward Elric and the Removed Stitches."
Winry clapped her hands, "Best seller!"
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Ed's exasperation rang out and gave rise to the room's laughter. If someone had just told him less than a few minutes before it was going to happen that the doctor was going to take out his stitches, he would have had time to mentally prepare. Instead, it was a bit of an embarrassing scene.
Shimmying herself to the edge of the bed, Winry hopped up on her knees, "Come here," she waved him over, "I want to see."
Arms still folded, Ed walked up to the side of the bed. Deliberately clunking his shins against the bed frame, he met her eye to eye and tipped his head forwards so he could stare at Winry from beneath a flat brow, "Are you patronizing me?"
"No," her reply was laughed, "I really want to see," and she promptly swept away the hair shielding the left side of his face.
Ed blinked, "It was the other side, Win."
"I know," she put a finger down on his forehead, "just checking to make sure the other side was all healed first."
He snorted a laugh over injuries from another life he'd all but forgotten about. Ed rolled his eyes to the wall, turned his head to offer the right side of his face, and Winry moved the other side of his hair. His blank gaze wandered through the patterns of the faded wallpaper as her assessment was conducted and Winry re-captured his attention by putting her palm down on his cheek and her thumb on the healing wound. Only Ed's eyes moved to her while he worked to keep himself from discolouring; could he not react so embarrassingly with her at least once? Al was here…
"You know," she found his eyes and wove her brow with disappointment, "it might leave a permanent mark."
The statement turned Ed's head to look at her squarely - of all the things for Winry to be concerned about given the state of her leg. Ed realized he'd surprised her by abruptly moving; Winry pulled her hand away and stared at him a little taken aback. Ed eyed her and held his expression to a flat brow, feeling the need to say something , but finding himself dancing between only replying with nothing at all or saying something along the lines of 'what about yours?'. He didn't think he wanted to see the look in her eyes if he brought it up like that.
"It's fine. Doesn't matter," Ed voiced something harmless and looked beyond her shoulder, "how's that going?"
Winry looked back to Wrath's mess, "Every time I pulled a part off, there was more underneath. I needed to send someone to get me some different parts for the foot arch and pick up some wiring for the last three toes that need replacing. If I'd known it was like this, I would have just made him a whole new one instead," she returned to Ed with a crooked frown, "sorry it's taking so long."
"Don't worry about it," suddenly, a wry grin popped into Ed's face and he leaned forwards, "do I get a discount for the delay?"
Winry puffed up and leaned back as the encroaching Elric grin grew several sizes larger. Her hand flew into his face and she shoved Ed away as he cackled to himself beneath Winry's screech of 'No Discounts!'
Ed sauntered to the table Al occupied and sat down in the empty chair across from his brother. The elder brother opened his mouth to ask something, but stopped and warily eyed the pert smile Al was giving him.
"What?" Ed asked cautiously, picking up a sheet of paper and pencil.
With a large breath, Al filled his lungs and sat back in his chair with his own papers, "Well, I guess if Dr. Rockbell passes you, everything is fine."
"He's damaged goods, but he passes," Winry chirped as she settled back to her work.
"Har har, thanks," Ed sneered before refocusing on Al, "you're working on something else now?"
"Yeah," Al's brow bounced high, "while you were out I got curious and I've been trying to map out some history. I'm comparing the older symbols to our newer ones that replaced them and trying to draft matching transmutations to track their strengths and weaknesses to chart their evolution."
Ed wanted to laugh; that was something he'd done beyond the Gate, too. He grinned wide and leaned against the table, "So, what'd you find?"
"I can see why they did away with the old markers," the younger brother frowned, "every transmutation I've used to compare them with, either stand alone or in combination with others, just makes the older ones more complicated. The end result is the same; the older style transmutations are slower, more cumbersome to calculate, but they feel richer to transmute, while our newer variants are more straightforward and get the transmutation executed a bit quicker."
Looking back at Alphonse, Ed processed one of the most rewarding and validating things he'd heard anyone say about the alchemy he'd studied beyond the Gate. He'd theorized so much and rarely did anybody listen, let alone believe him; yet, here was his little brother, spitting back his own conclusions to him, without a hint or whisper of doubt. Ed had spent so many months burrowing through the bountiful, endless leads within the history of the other world, but the people there were so far removed from practical alchemy they no longer knew how to see it. It had been exhilarating to spend those months between London and Munich drowning in the wealth of forbidden texts in the unwanted corners of Europe. Yet, every time he looked up, wishing someone with competent ears could hear him, nobody was around. The urge for Ed to sink his hands into what his brother was learning to accomplish was so tantalizing, but…
Al laughed, "No wonder the Gate was so stubborn about you. With all those resources available to you, understanding the history of something is a whole power all on its own."
Giving a half smirk, Ed turned the pencil around in his fingers and looked at the blank sheet on the table in front of him.
"Maybe that's why Wrath is so enthralled with you," Al mused, "you render him useless because he can sense you came back with too much power and he's drawn to it."
Ed nearly dropped his pencil, "That's insane, Al. I don't want that. Find another explanation for Wrath."
The boy who'd just spent so many days with his head in scientific formulas and permutations, where the constant state of the incorporated factors all mattered, looked at his journeyed brother, "Brother, when it comes right down to it, unless Dante's feeding him something we don't know about, the only thing that's changed in some way is you."
A wary, adventure-worn set of golden eyes cast its gaze over the voice of unsettling words.
"Physically, psychologically, and emotionally you're technically not the same, because five years have elapsed and you've undergone a full transmutation more than once," Al looked off in thought as his voice ran on, "and maybe you've even changed quintessentially, since the bonds of your mind, body, and soul had to come apart to exist in the other world and be put back together when you came home. Maybe something, within all of that, or the sum of all of that, has changed your existence in some way fundamentally, and that's causing Wrath to behave the way he does around you."
Ed took his brother's words and bundled them up into a ball of ideas. He had a kind of journey through alchemy like none other in recorded history. His existence had been deconstructed and reconstructed like no other, not even Dante or his father. And when he looked at the most important part - the need for understanding - for both his own transmutations, and those of his brother, Ed was absolutely certain every one of their transmutations had been executed precisely as they'd been designed. There was nothing he could see in either the theories or calculations that would have an effect on a homunculus .
Yet, for some inexplicable reason, Wrath seemed to be captured by something that overrode his behaviour in Ed's presence and that drew the creature to meet him eye to eye. Ed had watched Wrath struggle to find what he was looking for in his frustrated gaze, and he couldn't shake the sensation that it felt more and more like the homunculus wasn't failing to focus on him, but that he was trying to focus on something behind…
"That's terrifying, Al," Ed put his pencil down.
"It is, yeah," Al's brow scrunched up, "at least he'll be gone soon. And if Dante does send him back, at least we know you can neutralize him."
"Yeah well," Ed slouched in his chair, his thoughts touring his eyes absently around the room, "the further away from me he is, the better."
Drawn back into his curiosities and studies, Alphonse once again slipped into the working silence he'd enjoyed with Winry. His brother remained carelessly seated in his chair, caught somewhere between studying something he'd already studied and still couldn't do anything about, and returning to his room for a nap. Even with so little to go on, Ed was certain that the educational journey his younger brother was taking would keep Al blissfully entertained for hours. With practical alchemy not an option for the older brother, Ed opted for his nap.
He paused before standing again, curiously caught by the stare he was getting from Winry from the corner of her eye. At the moment Ed acknowledged her watching him, the stare drifted away to the mess of Wrath's leg and didn't peek up again. Gripping the arms of the chair, Ed kept a curious eye on her as he got up and left the room.
Beneath the clear sky overhead and dusty, forgotten township surrounding things, the chimes above an old wooden door rang. Stepping into the small, outdated building, Riza tipped her hat to the two middle-aged men minding the post office. One fairly rounded stood behind a counter, the other thinner, but much more drab and taller, standing to the side; both postmen watched the woman tuck her hat under her arm before exchanging an intrigued glance.
"Good morning!"
"Good afternoon," Riza greeted them.
The one behind the counter looked startled, "Is it afternoon already?"
"Only just," she smiled and walked up to their counter.
The man to the side slipped behind a double hinged door to join his colleague behind the counter, eyeing their well-to-do visitor, "What can I do for a lovely young lady in a suit this afternoon?"
Paying no mind to the eyeballing she was getting from the older men, Riza pulled her gloves off and clasped them neatly in two hands, "I'm wondering how much it would cost to send a telegram?"
Obviously not what either man was expecting for a request at their postal outlet, the pair exchanged a curious glance before the rounder of the two attendants entertained her request, "A couple of bits, but our connection has been shoddy at times. Why not take another twenty klicks and get'er issued from a post closer to the main routes?"
The masquerading officer let her posture slip a touch, "Well, you see, I'm not entirely sure my car will make it and I didn't find an AutoShop in the hamlet."
The narrower of the two stroked his mustache, "No ma'am, we certainly don't have one of those."
Riza nodded her acceptance, "I promised my mother that I'd telegram her - to let her know when I'd arrived at my hotel. She's housesitting for me and I don't want her to fall into a panic if I wind up short and need to walk the rest of the way."
"Oh, well," the rounder man waddled his way down to the opposite end of the counter, "we have a phone you can try to give her a ring with."
Riza raised a hand to her chest, "Sir, have you ever tried to convince an old, rural, western woman to accept the telephone?"
The pair let out a resounding 'ahhh' at the argument.
"Even if I called my own home, she would just curse the 'noisy contraption'," Riza laughed lightly at her fabricated story, "I promise you."
With the shrug of his shoulders to relent, the attendant waddled back over to his spot alongside his co-worker, "Well, taking a shot in the dark with the telegram from here is better than nothing," he smiled, cleared some papers off a wooden box, and lifted the lid on their post office's telegraph machine, "What be your mother's surname?"
"Samson," Riza answered, "first name: Mary."
Both men stopped in unison and stared back at her with utter confusion and, for no reason Riza could explain, it set off a number of her caution signals. She fought the urge to abort the telegram attempt until she understood why their reaction made her so uneasy.
The taller of the pair again stroked his mustache, "Well isn't that something."
Beneath her honestly confused, "Hm?" the officer began running scenarios.
The man put his elbow down on the counter and pointed a finger at her, "We transcribed a telegram for a Mary Samson not more than an hour ago, but there was no local or county address to deliver it to."
What? Riza's thoughts raced while she held on to her act, "That is a fascinating coincidence." The coincidence was too great - someone from Central had to be reaching out to them, but what in the world for? "Of all the names in the world that could have come your way," but this name had to have been specifically sent here. Riza tried a direct approach, "What did you do with it?"
The rounder man looked down behind the counter, "Tossed it."
She smiled as amused and entertained as she could manage, and her tone toyed sweetly with the older men, "May I see what was destined for my mother's doppelganger?"
The men exchanged glances, shrugging in unison, and the crumpled telegram was retrieved from an otherwise empty trash bin and handed to her.
Riza's confusion grew heavier as she read it aloud, "Contact Mr A Behal."
Who was A Behal? She didn't know anyone with the surname of Behal. She re-read the telegram again, indeed meant for Mary Samson with no provided address… with only 'CONTACT MR A BEHAL' typed on it. What was going on?
"Well, how odd. It certainly isn't for my mother, we've never met anyone with the surname of Behal," she returned it to the men and let them discard it once again.
"Of all the names to end up in our laps today," the rounder of the two laughed as his companion continued stroking his mustache with intrigue, "might be some misdirected communications coming into us though, the telephone and telegraph lines have gotten pretty unstable with things the way they are. What message would you like coded, Ma'am?"
"Indeed," her head swarming with ideas and concerns, Riza put them aside for a moment and drafted an alternate message, "Car trouble. May be late. Will contact you again soon. Love Liz."
"And where are we headed with the message?" was the final question.
"Central-East Post and Telegram Office, please. If I can get a pen and paper I can write down the delivery address."
The other attendant collected a stack of clipped papers before turning the requested tools over to their guest. The paper stack was handed to his associate and together the postal men leafed through the bundle until the number for the Central-East Office was found. Riza finished writing the address and resumed holding her posture tall, though she clenched her hands behind her back as she tried to figure out what meaning lay behind A Behal.
Nothing would come of her mental investigation while she stood in the aging postal building in the middle of nowhere. The telegram was sent out to find its rendezvous in Central and the men were paid and thanked with a smile they both enjoyed. The officer left them to debate their noon hour with the ringing of the door chimes and she marched herself down the dusty dirt roadway beneath the powerful July sun. She rounded the corner of the next building and marched to the car Mustang and Havoc remained in. Tucked away in the remnants of a shrinking shadow cast by a grain elevator, Riza let herself back into the driver's side back seat.
"What took you so long?" Havoc turned from the wheel and looked to his two superior officers in the back.
"We have a problem," she fished around in a bag of their things for a pen and paper, "someone from Central sent a blind telegram to that outlet using our middleman's code name."
"What!?" both men sputtered in unison.
She slapped a page down between them and wrote out… "The message on the telegram addressed to 'her' was 'CONTACT MR A BEHAL'."
Mustang swiftly picked up the sheet and gave it an interrogative eye, "…Who?"
Hawkeye sat back, "I don't know anyone named Behal."
Havoc shook his head, "Me neither."
A sinking feeling began to swell in the car of civilian clothed officers, "If our people in Central had to blindly use that contact name for us to pick up by chance, something's changed between our last checkin and this," Mustang's eye on the page began to darken, "Behal…"
"You want me to start heading us back?" Havoc asked.
Mustang waved his hand, "No, no… whoever A Behal is, he's probably out here, or the message would have been worded differently," his gaze slowly turned from the paper to the view of a eastern Amestrist hamlet, "... somewhere out here."
Laying on his bare back, arms spread out at his sides, and untied hair everywhere, Ed stared at the ceiling of his room. He'd drawn the curtains, but hadn't bothered to shut the window. It didn't matter much anymore, it was just as hot inside as it was outside, but at least he could shade things with the curtains. Ed hadn't sweat in this kind of heat in far too long - there was nowhere he'd gone in Europe that could match an Amestris day late in July. Contently melting in a summer he'd missed, his shirt had been tossed to the floor and strands of his hair stuck to his face as Ed's gaze wove through the speckled ceiling.
While he lay there in the late-day heat, Edward entertained and dismissed his brother's words over and over, going through each one with a fine tooth, logical comb. Their transmutations had been correct. Ed redid them again and again in his head. There was no mistake, there was nothing incorrect done; both Ed and Winry had taken the rebound home. The length of time he'd been away shouldn't factor in. Both brothers had successfully performed human transmutation. The only remaining variable he questioned was his own transaction with the Gate to get himself and Winry home, but there was nothing in that Ed could find that made enough sense to explain Wrath's behaviour.
Wrath was looking for something beyond him. Ed could feel it. The creature was trying to see behind his eyes…
A knock came to his door. Ed flickered his attention to the sound, "Yeah?"
"Are you awake?" Winry asked, "Can I come in?"
For a brief moment, the inescapable conservative behaviourisms of the other world tried to move Ed - he'd nearly gone and collected his shirt before letting her in. Annoyed with himself for that, because he could honestly walk around in just his shorts here and have no one care, Ed decided he didn't have the energy to unstick himself from the top sheet of his bed to meet Winry at the door.
"Yeah."
Winry clattered in around the door, pushing it open and shoving it shut in her wake as she struggled to look like she knew how to maneuver with her crutches. Ed laughed to himself as she got back in order and moved into the room. The laugh became more pronounced at the horrendous sound of Winry mercilessly discarding her crutches to the floor and hopping up onto the bed.
"You're like a herd of elephants everywhere you go."
"Shut up," she hissed and settled on her backside, "this room is disgusting, go get Al to put a fan in your window."
Ed rolled his head as she slid up next to him, "That would mean getting up and I'm comfortable where I am." He nearly started laughing again as he watched Winry's thought process go through offering to go get Al and then giving up on it once she figured out she'd have to collect her crutches and manage the door again.
"What's up?" Ed asked, "Wrath's leg done?"
"Almost," she tucked her good leg in under her knee-length skirt, "I sent someone to pick up a couple final pieces and it'll be good to go for tomorrow."
"Great," Ed nodded, "we can get him gone and head to our prison in the north."
Winry frowned at him, "It's not going to be that bad. At least we'll have some sort of freedom, rather than having to stay cooped up here all the time."
"Yeah, I suppose."
Sighing, Ed put his focus back to the ceiling. He'd rather stay in Central - he hated this useless predicament and going north only made it worse. He trusted his teacher and his brother explicitly, but it felt wrong to leave them behind. The revelation that morning that everyone but Brigitte had escaped Xenotime made the situation surrounding the rescue attempt less stressful, but it also showed Dante in a light that made Ed question how she was playing her game. By letting her captives go, and leaving them alive to tell their stories, it told him they were meant to be mouthpieces letting everyone know she was refocusing her resources. At some point she'd be coming for him, and it would be easier to just prepare himself to meet-
Ed flinched and startled when Winry's fingers touched one of the thick, round scars along his collar bone.
"Is it sensitive?" her hand pulled back.
"No," Ed hesitated, "your hand's cold."
She smiled, "Sorry."
Ed closed his eyes, rolled his head away, but did answer, "Sensitive sometimes."
Winry frowned and tucked her hands in her lap. She looked at the two frontside scars left by crude AutoMail technology that had been forcefully removed in what felt like years ago now, "I guess I don't have to worry about how I'm going to anchor your arm now," she gave a nod to an old concern.
"I didn't know it was a worry," Ed opened an eye.
She shrugged, "I had lots of little worries that I worked around. For the anchor though, I was worried about compromising your clavicle bone more than it might have already been. Not like we could easily get anyone there to safely do an x-ray and find out," she looked off in thought, "probably too well healed to do a bone graft later… we should still get an x-ray done at some point to find out how badly they damaged the bone, though."
"Win," Ed opened both his eyes and waited for her to look at him, "why are we talking about AutoMail that I don't ever plan on needing again?"
Winry smiled, though her posture sank a bit, "I just wanted to see if you were okay."
"If I was okay?" Ed picked his head up, "why am I not okay?"
Winry's smile softened, "You looked a little spooked when Al started talking about how maybe there was something about you that isn't exactly right, because of everything you've had to go through to get home and maybe that's what is causing Wrath to act weird."
Ed pried his torso off the sheets; propping himself upon his elbows, he stared at her without anything to say.
"I know you wanted to come back and just go home, but things aren't really working out that way," she frowned a little and leaned forwards, "I don't want you worrying too much about what Al said. I don't think you came back wrong."
Staring back at her without words to follow up with, Ed looked at the humbling fact that, despite everything that had been done to her, Winry still tried to find ways to try and care for him. She had actions she took on without prompting and words she used to fill the inbetweens; it was something she'd started after his dad had died and now she'd brought it home with her. Ed quietly cursed himself - earlier he couldn't even find a way to address the leg she couldn't stand on, and here Winry was making sure Al's words hadn't bothered him.
Sitting up, Ed matched the frown he was getting, "I'm not worried about what Al said."
"You looked worried, though."
"I'm not that worried," he sighed, shook his hair sticking to his shoulders, and tried to organize the words he needed to explain, "no matter how I look at the information, there's nothing that Al or I did wrong. I haven't come back in any way other than how I'd intended when we crossed the Gate," which left only one conclusion Ed could find, "so, if there's nothing wrong with what we've done, then it's Wrath who's acting for a reason we haven't thought of yet, we just don't know what that is."
Ed looked down to the wounded leg Winry was forced to leave out, no matter how she sat, then moved his sights to her hands that held the knee of the leg she could tuck in beneath her skirt. At times like this, so many basic, interpersonal things were just easy for her to do somehow; Ed didn't know how she always managed to make it all seem simple. Whenever he wanted to borrow a page from her book, it was like he had to fight to tear out the sheet.
Ed took a breath, reached out with his left hand, picked up a hand from her knee, and held it in his, "I'm not worrying that something's wrong with me."
The hand was squeezed and her grip tightened in return, and a smile was found for the warm one he was receiving.
"Maybe…" he looked off slyly, "I came back even better."
Winry's face contorted, "Oh boy, everyone's in trouble now."
When Ed grinned, Winry pulled her legs around and rose on her knees. She steadied herself with the hand she held, before moving it to his shoulder as she leaned forwards to hug him. More to her delight than his reluctance, Ed negotiated his usual unease into welcoming it.
Then, caught in mid action, Winry squeaked and froze. She leaned back sharply, her arms held out to her sides, and hands above her shoulders with her fingers curled. Winry looked at her hand that had been on Ed's shoulder, then looked him over uneasily.
"I changed my mind, I'm not hugging you," she gawked, "You're all gross and sweaty."
Ed's composure collapsed like a house of cards. Looking at her aghast, he turned beet red, "What the fuck, Winry!?"
"I'm not touching you!" she squealed and tried to bounce off the bed to get away.
Caught somewhere between unprecedented embarrassment and 'what just happened?', Ed's hand flew out, caught her by the upper arm, and yanked her back as she wailed with laughter. Scrambling to her knees Winry turned, slapped both hands down on his chest, and she shoved him back. Ed let himself fall like a rag doll back onto the bed. Eyes cast to the ceiling, he humoured her with the momentary victory. Through breaths of laughter, and the commotion she made while she wiped her hands on the sheets, Winry half slid, half tumbled off the side of the bed and onto the floor.
With the swing of his legs, Ed brought himself up and hopped off the foot of the bed. Bending down, he yanked away both of her carelessly discarded crutches before she could get a good grip on them, tucked them under his arm, and came around to stand over Winry where she sat. Defenceless and too busy laughing, Winry's face fell into her hands as she battled her giggles instead of him. Still some annoying shade of red, Ed cocked a brow, curled a corner of his expression into a troublesome grin, and he marched away into the washroom with her crutches. Winry's eyes peered out from above her fingers curiously when Ed re-emerged, without her crutches, but drying himself with a towel, and he shut the washroom door.
Winry's fingers slid down her face, "Rinse yourself off in the shower!"
"No time."
Scratching the towel through his hair, Ed tossed it over Winry's head and onto the bed. He found the shirt he'd left to the floor, picked it up, snapped it out, slipped it on, and started buttoning it. Ed looked back to Winry as she watched him. Her giggles were still woven into her smile and he took a fantastic amount of satisfaction from realizing the face she haphazardly hid in her hands was more noticeably coloured than his.
Ed glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table, then left the last two buttons, tucked the shirt in, and squatted down, "Let's go downstairs for dinner."
"Now?" Winry's reddened face widened.
"Yeah now, before all of Mustang's people show up for the dinner rush," Ed started to tie his hair.
Winry eyed him cautiously, "That 'Mustang' is going to kill us if someone tells him we went down there at this time of day."
"Fuck Mustang. All the senior officers are in Armstrong's briefing for another twenty minutes anyways, no one'll notice us going down," Ed yanked his ponytail tight, "we haven't sat down for dinner since the night before we got back here. We'll have dinner at a table like civilized people."
This time it was Winry's turn for the wry grin, "That's the other world in you talking."
"Every time I got in shit for not eating at a table," Ed grinned and offered his hand to her, "c'mon."
Ed waited while Winry eyed the hand he'd extended for his sudden whimsy. He waited as she lifted her eyes to look at him and examine a kind of spirited grin she'd never seen on this man before. Winry stole from Ed's time and looked at him, wondering if this lighter air he suddenly carried reflected the person buried beneath all the exhaustive burdens. The person who could be dug out from the rubble now that they were home. Her hand slapped down into his emphatically and Ed rose to his feet, pulling her up to one leg. Turning, he let her hop on his back. Ed remained on the receiving end of Winry's investigative eye when she put her chin down on his shoulder, but he said nothing and only gave her a sideways grin to think about before they headed out of the room.
Allanite, a hamlet Mustang had never heard of until he picked it out at random on the map, had two things he now knew about: it had a post office and it had a restaurant where the two casually dressed men and one overly dressed woman sat. It honestly looked like every place described in a book, painting, or picture depicting lost rural life. The nearly empty building came complete with thirty-year-old décor, noisy iron chairs, a slightly dirty table, lace café curtains, a few noisy fans to blow the air around, every smell the kitchen had to offer, and a fifty-year-old waitress who kindly kept topping up their coffees and occasionally asked if they wanted to order any more food. They were going to have to tip her well based solely on how long they'd been allowed to sit there.
By dinner hour Mr. A Behal remained a complete mystery. Havoc had talked his way into the phonebook the restaurant had and, while it compiled the directories for several neighbouring counties, there were only four Behals. Hawkeye managed to contact all of them from the pay phone and came to the conclusion they were not involved. None of the officers could even say they'd ever met someone with the surname Behal, so the man remained a complete mystery.
"If it's a man at all… " Roy tossed out the idea.
Jean strummed his fingers on the table top to think, "If it's no one we can find and it's not a code name any of us have ever used, what is it?"
Flipping to a fresh page on his notepad, Roy handed it over to Riza, "Write the message out exactly as it had been typed."
Taking the pen, on the top line she wrote out 'CONTACT MR A BEHAL' and handed it back, "That was it, nothing more."
"Contact is probably the word we can be most certain of then," he turned it around in his hand, "it's the MR A BEHAL we have to decipher."
"If A BEHAL isn't a person, what is it?" Jean questioned.
Roy narrowed his eye at the single line of writing at the top of his page. Taking up the pen, he added a colon after the word 'contact', "A Behal on its own could be a man or a woman, but Mister was included on purpose; therefore, the M & R are important. Our question is what is MR A BEHAL."
"What sort of things would we contact?" Riza offered a question to the table.
"People… and places," Jean offered, "contact headquarters, call home… MR A BEHAL won't be any sort of arbitrary thing, it'll be a place we would engage."
Taking the notepad back from Roy, Riza read and re-read the single line she'd seen printed on the telegram. Her brow suddenly lightened and she looked up to the men across from her, "It's an anagram."
Jean slouched in his chair, "I hate those…"
Pulling out three sheets from the back of the notepad, Riza took one and distributed the others across the table.
Jean left his sheet on the table and pulled out his folded area map, "Are we looking for a city? Town? Business?"
"A business, building, or structure, even a landmark, would be too difficult for us to identify with what we have at our disposal. It would need to be something, like a location, that we currently have the tools to find," Roy looked over to the map being unfolded, "Circle out an area with roughly a fifty kilometre radius of here. Then, write down the name of every city, town, village, hamlet, and hole in the wall that's printed on there. If it is a location, hopefully we're not needed to go too far off course or else we may as well just drive back to Central."
Sitting back in her seat, Riza eyed the puzzle she'd written out without formatting: L
"Two A's and an E, the rest are consonants…" Roy read it over thoughtfully before his elbow nudged his neighbour, "Write down all the locations, but strike out any that contain an S, T, N, I, O, and U. That should leave us something we can narrow down to and match."
Obviously the anagram wouldn't be easily deciphered backwards or forwards, so the first thing Riza and Roy did on their sheets was scramble the letters.
HARBAMEL
RAMEHBAL
BHALERAM
MABELRAH
"There are no obvious words in this…" Roy tapped his pencil off the top of the table and decided to see what he could create for smaller words using the characters. And so a new list began: BAREL, LAB, LAMB, LEAH, HEAL, HERB, HAREM, MARBLE, MEAL, RABEL, RAMBLE, REBEL, REALM…
"So?" Jean spoke up to extinguish the intense silence his two superior officers' troubleshooting skills were creating inside the restaurant.
Roy held up his sheet to eye level and he tipped a proud grin over to Jean, "With these letters, I can successfully spell: LAB HAREM."
"Heeyyy," the lowest ranked officer of the bunch cheered lightly as he looked over his boss's wordsmithing, "I'll take that mission, thanks."
Riza's eyes lifted up from her page and locked onto the two men from beneath her brow, "I highly doubt…"
The idea was immediately dismissed with Roy's shrug, "I could never get that lucky, anyways."
Riza's brow lifted a touch, "And what makes you think it would have been a harem of women?"
The two men seated next to each other both gave a curious eye to the woman who just shrugged her shoulders and continued on with her word puzzle.
Jean resumed his locations list until he'd collected the names of everything he could find. With Roy's specifications to narrow things down, the list of locations was re-written to cover only what remained. Riza compiled hers and Roy's brainstorming into a single list and turned it over to Jean to scour through.
With a handful of additional customers in the restaurant for a later dinner, coffee made its rounds again. Roy took the top-up, Riza switched to water and kindly requested a salad, and Jean went off the menu and casually wondered if they had any beer. To his delight, a glass bottle appeared alongside Riza's salad. Roy suddenly wasn't so interested in his coffee anymore and hoped their lovely old waitress would make the rounds again.
After a few scrolls of both lists and the elimination of a number of towns, Jean stopped on an item and referred back to his map.
"Hey guys, I think LEAH is a winner," picking up his pen, Jean circled a village on the outer reaches of their search criteria, "we have a speck using all the letters called Bramleah. It's south-west of Xenotime."
Taking the map, Roy looked at the location too suspiciously close to Xenotime to not be their target point. With no contact person or foreseeable motive leading them to the town, other than they seemed to need to go there, Roy began to worry how much of a setback it would be for them and their mission in Xenotime. But, if Armstrong had gone so far out of his way to blindly send a telegram ahead of their one-way check-in, he would certainly have already deemed the detour worth the risk.
"It looks like we need to divert south first," Roy folded his arms, "since the original request was for a person, I suspect we're going to need to find someone in Bramleah that's relevant to us."
Riza nodded in agreement, but added, "By the time we get there, it'll be well past nightfall. We should probably find somewhere to stay the night before going in."
The time of day was not something any of them could do much about, so Roy agreed, "but we've loitered in this backwater place for far too long. We'll find somewhere to stay along the way and get to Bramleah in the morning."
The drizzle that fell overnight came down straight, without wind to push it. The thick, plump droplets squeezed from the sky blotched the dirt covering the window of Wrath's chamber. Each splash added another distorted pocket for the street light to filter in through. The homunculus confined to the basement room paid no attention to what lay beyond a window he couldn't reach, he was only interested in giving a malevolent, toothy grin to his visitor that night.
Ed approached with a dull, echoless sound as he descended the stairs, and his focus locked on Wrath in the unlit room. The creature's giggle echoed above the clatter he made when he moved and he welcomed his guest with crass greetings. At the bottom of the stairs, the older Elric brother stood at the farthest reaches of the room, not allowing his presence to affect Wrath. He watched the defective creature leer at him, studying it like the scientist he was, trying to see if there was something he'd missed.
"Thanks for the plate," Wrath offered in a high, shrill tone, showing how he could stand on his left leg stump thanks to the flat casing Winry had screwed on.
Listening to words that bounced off the walls like rubber toys, the bridge of his nose creased and Ed's gaze hardened, "Do you even remember what you've been trying to look at when you zone out with me?"
"No?" Wrath used his chain to pivot himself on the plate, "why would I?"
"Of course not," Ed mumbled. That would be too easy.
"Are you here to give me my arm and leg back?" Wrath asked, as habitual as the rise and fall of the sun.
His feet still planted at the base of the stairs, Ed's chest swelled with a deep, heavy breath. The faint glow of his golden glare faded as his eyes narrowed behind the shields of his bangs. Tightening his jaw, Ed's hands clenched and he surged into the heart of the homunculus' prison. Ed's advance took Wrath by surprise - walking right up to him, the elder Elric's presence submerged the homunculus as he loomed over him. Letting his knees go, Ed dropped to squat on his toes, meeting Wrath at eye level.
"No."
Wrath's aggressive posture gave way and he slipped into whatever trance Ed's close presence put him under. Fat droplets of sparse rain smacked off the windows and echoed in the chamber as neither moved.
"What the hell is this," frustrated, Ed looked Wrath over, searching for something that might be a clue, "what are you trying to see?"
The homunculus again tried to lock his unstable gaze to Ed's. As Wrath crawled and pushed towards his target in a chamber impotently lit, Ed grabbed him by the front of his meagre black shirt and shook him. When nothing happened, Ed took the creature at the shoulders and rattled him. When that sparked nothing, Ed grabbed Wrath at the throat and gave a half-hearted attempt at strangling him.
Nothing broke the enchantment.
Ed kept Wrath at arm's length and settled back into a squat. With unsettled nerves, his eyes ran over Wrath again and again, making sure there was absolutely nothing visual to investigate further. Putting a knee down for balance, Ed permitted the homunculus to reconnect at his brow, his bangs shielding their connection. Ed settled on his knees in the basement chamber, this time without Al's light and Winry's voice, and stared into wild purple eyes that shivered around him, unable to focus.
"What are you trying to see?"
Ed pushed his forehead against Wrath's and felt him push back. The more force he exerted, the more the creature dug in and countered. The longer Wrath was held at eye level and was forced to struggle to gain focus, the more Ed started to believe that Wrath wasn't actually trying to see what was in front of him - Wrath sought something within him, beyond his gaze.
Ed's heart jumped into his throat and he snapped his arms out to the sides, shaking out hands he hadn't realized were clenched so tight. Sweeping up to his feet, Ed moved away and let Wrath tumble over onto his face. Spliced into the intermittent raindrops accosting the window, the sound of Ed's shoes scraped off the floor as he paced beyond the homunculus' reach. Every time he looked back down at Wrath clamouring around on the floor, Ed's jaw clenched tighter.
He had a theory.
He had an idea how to confirm it.
His darkened gaze cast downward, Ed brought his hands up, turning his palms to face him. He looked at the dichotomy of his two hands: the left hand that stayed with him, that he'd solely relied on for so long, was strong, worn, and aged, and the right hand gifted to him, that had no feeling or sense of existence, looked fresh and young, but it was marred with a wicked gash Ed did not regret making. He snapped his darkened gaze back up to Wrath.
The clap of his shoes grew louder with each step as Ed paced around, keeping his focus locked on the chained homunculus straining uselessly towards him. There was an option available and Ed knew he was avoiding it. He would rather confront Dante to find out, but if Wrath was actually trying to see what he'd done…
The journeyed Elric brother's brow crashed down over his eyes, his teeth grit, his fists clenched, and he strode back into Wrath's range. His feet landing with authority, Ed's golden ponytail flew out as he pivoted, sunk down onto his toes, and he met Wrath's feverish gaze at his brow in the midnight chamber again.
Ed's heart thumped against his chest louder than the rain pounded against the window, and the once famed alchemist threw his arms out at his sides, flaring his hands.
"Okay you mindless troll, if you are looking for something back there, can I make you see it?"
Above eyes that couldn't meet, at the seam of the connection above their heads, Ed clapped his hands.
No spark was seen, no power emerged, but for the length of time that the echo of Edward Elric's handclap lasted, he captured Wrath's violet pupils looking straight on through him – absolutely, completely, and utterly terrified.
Wrath's scream shattered the moment of silence that followed the echo.
Edward tumbled forwards onto his hands and knees as Wrath threw himself away and flailed towards the far wall. Ed snapped his head up, desperately swept his bangs aside, and watched in alarm as the homunculus lurched around like a fish out of water, trying to get farther away. The scream he wailed with crashed off the walls, trying to shatter the windows with sheer force, and the horrific echo rained down around Ed from all angles. Frozen by the reaction, Ed stared wide-eyed at the panic Wrath threw his body with, watching his bindings cut into the flesh at his joints as he tried to rip free.
Finally picking up a few of his senses, Ed scrambled to his feet, "Wrath stop!"
"GO AWAY," the wailing creature threw his body uselessly, "IT'S SO LOUD, GO AWAY."
Stepping back, Ed looked around the room frantically. The only sound needing any silencing was the horrendous one Wrath was making. Again, he stepped back, his heart trying to pound in his ears louder than Wrath's cries, drowning out the rain, silencing his feet, submerging him in the dark. Ed backed away until he found the bottom of the staircase and that's where he stopped. Standing silent, he continued to watch Wrath heave his body around, until the creature finally came to rest at the farthest point away he could reach. Staring wide-eyed as Wrath slowly tempered, simply laying on the ground to bawl and gasp for air, Ed acknowledged that he had been the source emanating what Wrath was trying to get away from.
Ed's dark scowl returned to sink his gaze and he turned that look over to the noisy homunculus.
"What did you see, Wrath?"
"GO AWAY," he screeched.
Ed's chest expanded with a deep breath. He shoved down his pounding heart, told his concerns to wait, and stepped back into the room, "You saw it, didn't you?"
"Stop…" Wrath cried.
Ed took another step forwards, his words demanding, "How can you sense that through me?"
The approach sent Wrath into a wailing frenzy again and he didn't answer.
Steps became strides and Edward Elric marched himself through the room, storming towards the only noise he could hear. Wrath panicked at the advance; his cries grew wordless and shrill while he flailed his tethered body uselessly along the ground, unable to escape Ed's approach. The older Elric brother crashed down over the imprisoned homunculus. His firm left hand clamped over Wrath's mouth to shut out the noise, the other held the creature's free arm, and his knee pinned the homunculus on its back. Ed leaned over Wrath, expression tight, creased with frustration, but his eyes wide with command.
"LOOK AT ME, WRATH."
The struggling creature writhed in unknown agony before his eyes cracked open to peek at Ed. The golden Elric gaze slit behind the hair falling through his face, hiding his pupils in the dark, tired caves of his eyes, and his hand moved off Wrath's mouth.
"Did you see the Gate?"
Wrath's head rocked against the cold, unforgiving ground as he whimpered, eyes looking back at Ed still frightened, before the homunculus finally let his head and eyes roll away with a whine. Ed didn't ask again. As the vibrating tone of the overnight rainfall grew steady, he let go of Wrath's arm and sat back on his knees, allowing the creature to crawl away again.
"It scares you?" Ed asked below the echoes.
"YES," Wrath cried.
Sinking on his knees, Ed looked down and placed his hands on his thighs, turning them palm up. He stared at them: the worn left and torn right. The hands were brought up and Ed's left thumb ran through his damaged palm, only able to feel it when his other hand touched it. The cut was closed, but the wound wasn't fully healed, and the scar hadn't formed yet. Ed clenched his right hand and turned his attention back to Wrath.
"Yeah, me too."
Ed pushed to his feet.
In the darkened basement room, Ed stood and stared at a soulless creature 'raised' in the darkness of the Gate. There was a Gate available to every person born, regardless of skill, aptitude, or potential, it existed equally in every one. It was the same Gate shared among all the people in not just Amestris, but their entire world. It was a central abstract entity at the heart of their existence that, in some ways, linked everyone.
The Gate Dante had abused. The Gate Alphonse had breached. The Gate Edward had crossed.
By his own doing, the relationship Edward Elric shared with the Gate had been altered and, through that act, Ed concluded it allowed the Gate within him to be sensed by Wrath alone. He theorized it was because the Gate had nurtured the creature's physical growth for over a decade, until he'd collected Ed's limbs and became strong enough to force his way out, and it was through Ed that the Gate could idly lure Wrath back to his unwanted 'home'. The broken homunculus lying in agony on the floor gave tangible, undeniable confirmation that the transmutation Edward had done on himself to open the Gate's doors and return home had been flawless.
To Be Continued...
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