Having all this extra time to write really let me chug this one out, but wow, it was exhausting!

Now that Whumptober is over, I have to catch up on my other stuff, like TCFHS and COS and my own original story, which I am definitely not stalling on because COS is about to get heavy and personal and I'm scared of dredging up repressed memories.

Nope.

Definitely not.

Roy's alarm went off with less-than-welcome bleating.

He slammed his hand on the button, stopping its shaking and ringing, and sat up with a groan. The watery dawn light poured into the room, turning his white bed sheets silver and his plain walls a soft shade of blue.

"Time to get up," he said to himself, forcing his legs over the side of the bed and pushing himself onto the floor. He opened the door to his room with a yawn and a jerk of his head to pop the crick in his neck.

Roy did not like getting older.

The hall was dark but Roy didn't need to be able to see to know where he was going. He'd lived in this house for years.

"M'kay, Fullmetal. Up and at 'em. The sooner we go, the sooner we can get this over with."

Edward didn't answer. He seemed to be so deeply asleep that he wasn't even snoring.

"Come on, Fullmetal. Wakey, wakey, eggs and - Fullmetal?"

The couch was empty. The blanket hung off the edge, lonely and discarded.

"Must already be awake," Roy mused, assuming that the boy must be in the bathroom, getting ready for the day. This meant that Roy himself would have to wait until Ed was done before he could use his own bathroom.

Oh, well.

Roy grabbed the egg timer from the kitchen and went back to bed.

Half an hour later, he woke up again, somehow sleepier than he had been before. Again, he forced himself upright and made his way to the living room, expecting a dressed and hungry Edward waiting for him on the couch.

The couch was still empty.

A worm of worry crawled its way into Roy's stomach.

It was an effort to keep his strides calm and measured as he walked to the bathroom, rapping on the closed door when he reached it.

"Fullmetal? Are you all right?"

There was no answer.

The worm dug deeper.

"Fullmetal! Answer me! That is an order!"

Still nothing.

"If you don't answer me this instant, I will come in there."

Nothing.

"I'm coming in, Fullmetal!" he called out in warning before he grabbed the knob and turned it, pushing the door open.

The door was unlocked and the bathroom was empty.

The worm bloomed into a fluttering moth of panic.

"Alphonse!"

There was a confused sounding squeak of armor, then more intense creaking as Al made his way out of the study.

"What is it, Colonel? You sound worried."

Roy made an effort to smooth his expression and steel his eyes.

"I'm… I'm not worried. I'm just… wondering where your brother is."

Alphonse's helmet tilted to the side.

"Is he not on the couch?"

"No. That was the first place I looked and he's not in here, either," Roy said, gesturing at the empty bathroom.

Alphonse was silent as he realized what this meant. Roy's house was not a big one, so if Edward wasn't in any of the already searched areas, then -

XXX

"You and Alphonse go left, Hayate and I will head right. We'll meet at the office in an hour. If we still haven't found him, we'll set up a search party."

Riza didn't wait for confirmation before turning down the street and heading off, Hayate sniffing the air beside her. The dog seemed to be just as worried as Riza looked.

Their fear paled in comparison to Alphonse's.

Alphonse was already halfway down the street, stopping at the crosswalk and debating which way to go before taking off straight ahead. Roy had to sprint to catch up with him. By the time he did, he was huffing and puffing while Alphonse clattered and clanked beside him.

"Alphonse -"

"Did someone take him? I would have noticed that? Did he just leave? Why would he do that? Where would he have gone? Why didn't he tell me where he was going?"

"Alphonse, calm down. Panicking won't do anyone any good, especially not your brother." Alphonse skidded to a halt with enough force to make him stumble forward an extra step.

"What… what if…" Al swiveled his helmet towards Roy. Alphonse couldn't shake with exertion, so Roy knew that the cause had to be terror. "What if the vaccine didn't work? What if he… what if he's run off to…"

"That's ridiculous, Alphonse," Roy said, even though the same thought sent spikes of horror racing through him. "If that was the case, why didn't he come after me? Or you? Do you really think Edward has such poor control of himself that he would let himself out for the purpose of hurting others? There has to be a rational reason for this. Not necessarily a smart one, but a reasonable one."

Either having something to listen to other than his own racing thoughts or Al was able to find some genuine reassurance in Mustang's words, because his shaking lessened but didn't stop and he seemed to take the time to properly contemplate his next moves.

"He… he likes to go to the park to think. Maybe he just went for a walk and stayed out longer than he meant to."

Roy thought about pointing out that didn't make much sense for one to go for a walk before the sun had risen, but he kept the thought to himself. It was a starting point, and even if it didn't lead to Edward, maybe it would lead to their next step.

XXX

Edward wasn't at the park, but he had stopped at one of the cafes for breakfast.

"He came in a bit earlier than usual, but I didn't question it. I just gave him the usual and he was on his way. He was looking a lot better than he was a few days ago," said the waitress who met them at the door.

This news made Roy feel two things: exponential relief at the fact that this meant Edward had not, in fact, been abducted, and eye-reddening anger at how Edward had simply left without telling anyone where he was going.

He also felt very hungry at the smells of bacon and eggs and mushrooms in a frying pan, and desperate for a hot mug of coffee.

Despite his grumbling stomach and pre-caffeine headache, Roy forced himself to move on at Alphonse's insistence that "just because he wasn't kidnapped at the house doesn't mean that he wasn't kidnapped on the street." Roy promised himself and the waitress that he would be back later for those eggs and coffee and followed Alphonse down the street.

XXX

"Why are you dressed like that?"

Alphonse turned his helmet to see the little girl from where she was peering at him from behind the bars of a fenced playground. It took Al a moment to realize that he was looking at the yard of a primary school. There were other children running, playing, and laughing in the concrete space. It was vastly different from the grassy patch outside of the small wooden schoolhouse in Risembool where Ed and Al would eat from their lunch pails and play in the dirt with the other children of the village.

Alphonse realized he had been staring at this little girl as she stared back at him. Silently reprimanding his rudeness, he kneeled so that he could meet the girl on her level.

"I was in an accident in a few years ago and I got really hurt. Now I have to wear this armor because my body is kind of mess up."

Alphonse heard Mustang make a disapproving noise at his choice of words, but the man said nothing. The girl looked at the colonel, her sharp brown eyes and her frowning face reflecting his dissatisfaction.

"Who are you?"

Roy puffed up his chest like a rooster preparing to crow and gave the girl his most charming smile.

"I am Colonel Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist, at your service."

This got him a reaction, though not in the way he had hoped. The girl's eyes brightened in recognition and she stuck a tiny arm through the bars to point at him.

"I know you! My friend's new friend said you're a big meanie and that you kiss ladies that ain't your girlfriend." Her frowned returned, darker than before. "I told him that my mom says boys should only kiss their wives and my friend's new friend said that you can't do that 'cause you're a chicken."

This speech was met with stunned silence, followed by Alphonse laughing so hard he had to grip the bars of the fence to keep from falling over and Roy staring at the schoolgirl in wordless horror.

The girl glanced at the rocking, cackling Alphonse and then looked back at Roy, her head tilting curiously as she studied his round eyes and gaping mouth.

"You don't look like a chicken. I think you look like the fish my mom buys at the market and bakes in the oven with tomatoes and onions."

Alphonse lost his grip and fell over. He had to grab for his helmet to keep it from falling off and revealing his blood seal. Roy realized what the girl meant and closed his mouth with a clop, blinking his eyes back into his head and straightening himself so as to look less like a chicken or a baked fish and more like the human man he was supposed to be. In doing so, he properly processed what the girl had said and what it meant.

"Wait - your friend's new friend knows who I am?"

The girl nodded, unamused and unfazed.

"He saw her and said, 'Hey, you got bit like me' and then he showed us his gross hand and my friend showed him her gross leg and then he said he was on his way to get his medicine and she said that she needed her medicine too so they went together."

Roy's horror remained, though the source had changed.

"Wait - Fullmetal just… took her?"

The girl nodded firmly.

Roy moaned and pulled his hands down his face.

This had just officially become a kidnapping case - just not in the way they had expected.

XXX

Now, at least, they knew where he was.

And as soon as the kid was recovered, Mustang was going to put the major on desk and drill duty for a month.

Alphonse's fear for his brother had shifted from his brother experiencing something he didn't deserve to experiencing something he did.

"Will Brother be court-martialed."

"There is a very good chance that he will be," Roy growled, already filing the papers in his head.

"So… what could happen? Will he be stripped of his watch? Will he go to jail?"

"That depends on how he explains himself," Roy said, forcing himself to steer his fury away from Alphonse. Al had done nothing worthy of punishment. On the contrary, he was a member of the injured party and was entitled to any compensation he demanded. Roy made a mental note to make sure Al did just that.

"Then I hope he explains himself really well." Al sounded just as concerned as convicted.

"He'd better."

XXX

The girl frowned at the shoddy lines that bloomed on the paper, flickering into existence with bursts of alchemical light.

"The tail fell off."

Edward glared at the paper under his hand. Sure enough, the simple circle-and-line dog was more or less there, but the dog's tail was noticeably missing from its rear end.

"Darn. I was afraid that would happen."

"Perhaps the drawing is too large. The tail was noticeably closer to the array than the rest," Berger commented, pointing out the discrepancy on the original drawing with a finger. "Perhaps it is most effective if the writing is specific distance from the array."

"Hmm," Edward said, tapping the tail of the first dog thoughtfully. "We'll have to either make the picture smaller or the array larger. I don't think we can increase the size of the array without increasing the size of the paper, so -"

"Fullmetal! You are in so much trouble, young man!"

Edward turned away from his work with a jolt, immediately relaxing when he recognized the colonel, the lieutenant, Alphonse, and Hayate in the door way to the office.

"Oh, hey there, Mustang. Hawkeye. I thought Hayate wasn't allowed on military grounds."

Edward's welcoming smile dropped as he took in the grownups' angry scowls. Even Hayate seemed to be glaring at him. Before he could ask them what was wrong, Alphonse barreled towards him and grabbed him by the shoulders, giving him a small but still forceful shake.

"What were you thinking?! We've been looking everywhere for you! Everyone's been worried sick! And you just took a little girl from school?! What is wrong with you?! Do you want to go to jail?!"

The girl and Berger watched this in awkward silence. When Alphonse paused his tirade to give his brother a chance to defend himself, Berger took the opportunity to remove any implication from himself.

"Edward, you told me your family knew where you were."

Edward turned to angrily snap that the colonel and the lieutenant were not his family, but his brother's arms on his shoulders stopped him. He quickly forgot his retort when he remembered what he had forgotten.

"But I thought I… I was sure I… oops."

Edward's expression shifted from combative to chastised.

"I'm sorry, Al. I meant to call you as soon as I got to the office, but I guess I just… Andre wanted to test something! Come on, look at it!"

And just like that, the regret was replaced by excitement. Roy could see that Alphonse was beginning to be pulled into it and stepped in before Edward could successfully change the subject.

"We're not done talking about this, Fullmetal. Why didn't you tell us where you were going before you left? If this is all you planned on doing, I can't see why I would say no."

Something flashed in Edward's eyes, so brief that Roy nearly thought he'd imagined it.

"Because… because you were asleep…"

"Your brother wasn't. Why didn't you tell him? I doubt he would have stopped you."

Whatever it was flashed again. Roy resisted the urge to smile at it.

"Because… I'm sure he was busy. I didn't want to bother him."

"I'm never too busy for you, Brother. You know that."

Edward looked oddly betrayed by his brother's promise to always be there for him. He stammered for a moment, then shrugged Al's gauntlets off of him and gestured towards the papers on the desk.

"Andre and I have been working on information transaction alchemy. We haven't gotten a whole picture yet, but we're still working… on… it."

Roy was no longer stopping himself from smiling.

"Have you gone to the infirmary yet?"

Edward's eyes flashed for a third time and he answered a bit too quickly to be innocent.

"Yes! Of course! Josie and I went together! Come on, come see -"

"Did you get your injection?"

Edward's moment of hesitation was his moment of truth.

"J-Josie and I went together."

"What about Josie's parents? Her teacher? Do they know where she is?" Riza gave Roy a look as she asked the question. She knew what he was up to, but she had some misgivings on his priorities.

Edward had the gall to look incredulous.

"No, I just picked up a random kid and left with her. Her sister's the nurse here! I showed the teacher my watch and said I would take her to see her sister at the infirmary since we - she had to go anyway. We went there first so that someone knew where she was."

Roy made a mental note to send an officer to the school to give the teacher a stern talking to about letting students leave with unauthorized persons.

"And did you get your injections? Both of you?"

Now Edward and Josie glanced at each other, both of them flashing in their eyes.

"We went to the infirmary to see Anne," Josie reiterated, and Edward looked back at Roy, nodding emphatically.

Roy decided it was time to end this game.

"Come on, you two. The sooner we get it done, the sooner it'll be over with."

Edward and Josie glanced at each other again. In a final, desperate attempt to redirect the colonel's attention, Edward jumped to the desk and grabbed one of the papers, shoving it into Roy's face.

"Look! We think that maybe it's not working because the picture is too big or the array is too small. What d'you think?"

"I think," Roy said, lowering Ed's raised arms with a hand, "that it is time for certain little girl and little boy to get their medicine."

Both Edward and Josie wrinkled their noses at the detestable word.

"I am not little!" Josie declared at the same time Edward shouted, "I'm normal for my age, bastard!"

Roy's smile vanished into a stern glare of warning.

"Watch your mouth, Fullmetal. There are women and children here - ow!" he mumbled when Riza gave him a well-deserved elbow in the ribs. "Now, enough playing around. If you're not little, prove it by following the doctor's orders like a man. Be a good example to Josie."

Edward bit his lip and stared at his feet. Then he looked up with round, pleading eyes. Roy let his smile return and went so far as to put a hand under Ed's chin, lifting the boy's head so that he looked a bit less pitiful.

"Hey, kiddo. Remember what I said about my turn. You have no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed."

"It's not that," Edward said, though his voice showed that it was very much that. "I just… I'm not sick anymore. Neither is Josie," he added with a quick glance at the girl who nodded agreeably. "So we don't need medicine anymore. Right?"

"I'm afraid that's not how it works," Berger said, his expression sympathetic but non-negotiable. "The fact that you are no longer ill means that your body has become accustomed to the immunization. However, this doesn't stop the active rabies from heading towards your brain. It will get there and when it gets there, your body needs to be ready. That's why each dose of the injection contains more and more active samples of the virus. Your body may now have a high tolerance for the virus, but that is not enough. It must be completely tolerant, and in order to do that, you must have all your injections."

Edward considered this, rocking on the balls of his feet. When Berger finished, he seemed a bit more agreeable, but there was still a question burning out of him.

"But what if it makes me sick again?"

"If the vaccine is working, and from what I can tell it certainly is, it will not. It will still be uncomfortable, but the fever and nausea should be gone for good."

"Tell you what," Roy said, seeing that the good doctor's advice was getting through, "if you come with me to the infirmary for your injections, I'll take you - both of you - out for ice cream."

Edward and Josie straightened with a speed and strength that made Roy's back hurt just looking at it. Riza, however, stepped closer to whisper into his ear.

"Sir, it's only ten in the morning."

"And? Have you ever had ice cream with coffee? It's delicious."

"Can I have ice cream with coffee?" Edward asked, tilting his head to the side in an attempt to look endearing.

Roy chuckled and ruined his pose by tousling his hair.

"No - okay, you can have one," he amended when Edward stuck out his bottom lip in a pout.

"What about me?" Josie asked, bouncing up to take hold of Edward's hand.

"Ask your sister."

This proved to be enough motivation, to get Edward and Josie to cooperate.

It was not enough to keep Josie from wailing or Edward from clinging desperately to Mustang.

"Yeah, they hurt more the stronger they get," Josie's sister said as she disposed of the now-used needle. "The good news is that the stronger they are, the closer you are to being done."

This seemed a small consolation for Edward, who was trembling and pressing his face into Mustang's chest. Roy gave him an encouraging pat on the back and hissed when the action earned him nails digging through his uniform and into his skin.

"We need to trim your nails, Fullmetal. You're an alchemist, not a leopard."

Edward dug his nails in deeper.

"Rawr."

"Oh, no. Fullmetal has turned into a sweet baby kitten. Lieutenant, fetch the kitten some cream."

"I ain't no kitten. I'm a leopard."

"Awfully small and cute for leopard."

"I ain't small and I ain't cute!"

Edward pulled away from the colonel and wiped at his eyes furiously.

"But do you want cream?"

Edward rubbed one eye while glaring at Mustang with the other.

"Ice cream. You promised."

"That I did, Fullmetal. Are you ready to go?"

"Ice cream! Ice cream!"

Josie, being younger, recovered much quicker than Edward did. Her stomach was a mosaic of red and purple bumps but her face was all smiles, the pain already forgotten and her mind focused solely on the future. Roy knew it was silly, but he blushed and looked away from the shirtless girl.

"Josephine, put your clothes back on. You can't go out half naked."

The nurse pulled the girl's shirt over her head and Josie immediately took off for the door. Edward, not content with the idea of being out-raced by a girl half his age, grabbed his own shirt and took off after her.

"Hey, wait! You can't walk around Headquarters by yourself! You need an escort!"

Roy found himself alone with Anne and the lieutenant.

"Our mother knows where she is," Anne said before Roy could say anything by way of apology or explanation on behalf of his major. At his confused look, Anne smiled conspiratorially. "Our mother is the teacher at East Primary School. Mom knew where Josie was headed before I did. We're both incredibly grateful to Edw - I mean, Mister Elric for taking care of the fox. She's been thinking about sending him a thank you gift, but she doesn't think a boy his age would like flowers."

Roy had an idea.

XXX

"I can't stay long. I have to get back to work."

"No. Sissy comes, too."

Josie spooned another mouthful of ice cream into her mouth, glaring at her sister when Anne didn't pull a drink from her milkshake. Anne, in true older sibling fashion, met Josie's stare with equal fire.

"You should be back in school by now."

"Mister Edward said I am job shadowing him and Mom said yes, as long as he brings me home when school is over. I'm going to be an alchemist when I grow up."

Roy pretended not to notice the way Edward swelled with pride. Berger, who had declined the ice cream but accepted the coffee, did not.

"What kind of alchemist, Miss Josephine? Will you be a bio-alchemist like me or will you be a metal alchemist like Mister Elric?"

Josie had to think about this. Edward waited for her answer quietly but expectantly. To his disappointment and Roy's horror, she pointed at Mustang. Roy felt Riza give his hand a squeeze under the table. Hayate, smelling the sudden fear scent coming from his mistress's favorite person (Roy had once again bribed the waitress to let Hayate join them) and gave Roy a comforting nuzzle with his snout.

Then, to everyone's astonishment, Josie elaborated.

"I'm going to be a daddy alchemist - but it'll be a mommy alchemist 'cause I'm a girl."

Both Roy and Edward turned cherry red.

Alphonse, who had been doing his best to keep quiet so as not to interrupt the consumption of ice cream, burst into high-pitched giggles that made Josie and Anne jump and the waitress turn to stare with wide eyes.

Roy and Edward quickly recovered, glanced at each other, and immediately started babbling counter-arguments.

"He's not -"

"I'm not -"

"He looks nothing like me -"

"The father is… absent."

"Besides, Al and I don't need anyone. Right, Al?"

Alphonse was laughing too hard to either confirm or deny.

Josie, with an attitude that was far beyond her years, rolled her eyes and shook her head. Anne repeated the motion back at her sister, showing where the girl had learned it.

XXX

Josie was already the most popular girl at school because she had been eaten alive by a rabid fox and survived. Now she was also the most popular girl in school because she could transmute smiley faces into the concrete of the schoolyard.

She taught her classmates the array for the price of the tastiest bit of their lunch pails and it wasn't long before the entire schoolyard was a ground mural of smiling faces, frowning faces, and even faces with tongues sticking out.

The school principal had considered ordering the children to remove the graffiti but found he didn't have the heart when he saw how well the students would cooperate to change the array to make different kinds of faces. When asked where they had learned to do this, all the children had pointed to Josie, and when Josie was asked, she told the principal about her day of job shadowing.

Two days later, the Fullmetal Alchemist was at the school by request of the principal. With him, to the principal's surprise, was a Cretan man who called himself Doctor Andre Berger the Second.

"Did you die?!" a little boy asked when he saw the fresh scar on Edward's arm. Ed had rolled up his sleeve to show the children the line of silver bordered with red dots where the stitches had been.

Edward laughed.

"No. If I'd died, I wouldn't be here. But I would have died if I hadn't gotten the medicine I needed. Doctor Berger's job is to make medicine like that."

The boy poked at the scar quizzically while another child trotted up from Ed's other side and grabbed Ed's hand - and screamed when she felt the cold, hard metal beneath the glove. All the children in the classroom instantly lost all interest in the fox bite and were pulling off the glove of Edward's right hand and rolling up the sleeve before Ed could stop them.

Ed sighed. He was used to this, but that didn't mean it was any easier.

"Woah… Did you die?!" the boy from before asked him, the lesson from before clearly not settled in.

Edward rolled his eyes and Berger let out one of his rare laughs.

XXX

"So… viruses are thoughts that make you sick?"

"I don't think so," Berger said, accepting a paper flower one of the girls had made for him. They had moved the demonstration to the schoolyard so that Edward would have more room to show off his automail. Berger had sat himself in the corner of the face-covered square, his bones protesting his unforgiving seat on the ground, and naturally the children had flocked towards him to sit on his lap and ask him random questions. "They're more like books. On their own, they don't really mean anything. They only have meaning when someone is reading them. When your body catches a virus, it reads the virus and follows its instructions. Unfortunately, the instructions are not good for your body. That's why you get sick."

The girl blinked at him uncomprehendingly.

"Then I won't read it."

"You don't read it. Your body does, and your body doesn't realize the 'book' is bad until you are sick."

The girl stared at him some more. Then, as most children are wont to do, she said the first thought that came to her.

"My mommy says my brother has a bad book that I'm not allowed to read. Will it make him sick?"

Berger raised a brow, thinking carefully about his answer.

"Perhaps. Just in case, you should listen to your mother and not read it."

The girl nodded seriously, deciding this was an acceptable answer. She immediately moved on to her next question.

"Is that why Mister Edward's arm is fake? Did a bad book make it fall off?"

Again, Berger thought about his answer carefully.

"I don't know. You will have to ask him yourself."

XXX

"Yeah. Yeah, I read a really bad book and I lost my arm and leg."

The children's eyes widened in horror.

"Did you -"

"No, Tomas, I did not die. I almost did, but I didn't."

Edward's voice echoed in the concrete playhouse he'd transmuted for the children. It went quite nicely with the shallow pool he'd made - a dip in the concrete that was bordered by lifted cement to form a barricade. It had been a simple matter to locate a water pipe, transmute to redirect into the pool, and then return it to its proper place, resealing the wall of the school he' pulled it out of.

The children were soaked and Edward was sure that their teacher - Josie's mom, he remembered - as well as their parents probably wouldn't be happy.

Edward decided he didn't care as the children had huddled around him for warmth.

"What was the book called?"

Edward twisted his mouth, knowing he couldn't tell the children the truth but not wanting to lie.

"It was called… 'How To Make A Dead Person Alive Again.'"

"My dog died and my daddy said that he would never wake up." Edward envied Tomas's clean and simple approach to life.

"Your dad's smart, Tomas. Smarter than me. I didn't listen and I read the book. Instead of seeing my mom again, my arm and leg fell off."

"Was it a virus?" Edward smiled ruefully at the question.

"Not unless I tell people about the book or what the book said. But I'm not going to do that. That's why you all need to promise me that you'll never read that book or try to find it."

The girl who had given Berger the flower was sitting on Ed's metal knee, testing the hardness of the steel by patting it with her hands like a drum. She looked up at Ed's request.

"Will my arm fall off if I do?"

"Yes, it will," Edward said, completely serious. "Your arm will fall off and maybe even your leg, too."

The children gasped in horror and all of them nodded emphatically, some giving verbal confirmation. After a thoughtful silence, another child decided to speak up.

"Who died that you were trying to un-die?"

Edward toed a loose piece of concrete with the tip of his shoe.

"My mother. She died when I was about your age."

To Edward's shock and dismay, the children began to wail, some of them throwing themselves on top of him and others running out of the house.

"Wha - what's wrong?! What's going on?!"

"Your mommy is dead!"

The girl had turned around on her place on his knee so she could wrap her arms around him. The small body sent spikes of pain through his sores that he desperately tried to ignore.

"That is the saddest thing that ever could happen ever anywhere!"

"I would be the saddest forever if my mommy died," said Tomas from where he had smushed his face into Ed's hip.

Edward patted the boy on the head, feeling strangely appreciated.

"Well… yes, I am sad about it. I think I'll always be sad about it. But I've learned to be okay with being sad about it, like how I've learned to be okay with not having my arm."

"This way, Mrs. York! You have to help him! He needs the smile med'cine!"

The teacher was pulled to the house by one student holding her hand, another tugging on her pant leg, and two more running behind her to keep her moving. Edward prepared himself for the angry tirade when she saw the pool and the concrete hut.

Instead, the teacher tried to duck through the doorway, realized she was too tall, and settled for reaching into the house to offer Edward a peppermint. Ed stared at it, not understanding.

"It's 'smile medicine' I give the kids when they're having a bad day," she said, winking at him conspiratorially. The children had flocked around him again, their faces taut with exaggerated concern. Not knowing what else to do, Ed took the peppermint and popped it into his mouth. As soon as he did, the children crowded in closer, a couple asking, "That's better, right?" and "Are you happy now?" The teacher gave him an expectant look, convincing him to play along.

He forced the brightest smile he could manage. "Yep! All happy now! No more sadness!"

The children cheered and flopped on top of him in a group hug. Edward lost his balance and fell over, nearly bonking his head on the concrete.

Berger watched this from his place on the schoolyard.

"I doubt there will be only one daddy alchemist in the near future," he thought to himself as Edward nearly choked on the peppermint as the children started to tickle him. The girl sitting on Berger's lap looked up at him curiously and then was distracted by her teacher studying the yard's new pool. The teacher had the familiar expression on her face that all teachers get when they have an idea for a new lesson and the girl new that whenever her teacher had ideas like that, they were always lots of fun.

Her suspicious were confirmed the next day when the teacher asked them if they would like a class pet.

XXX

"Fullmetal."

"Bastard."

Edward waited for the routine rebuke. To his surprise (and slight horror), Mustang smiled his signature smile and handed Edward what looked the front page of a newspaper. Seeing as how they were in Roy's office, Edward assumed that the paper had something to do with an upcoming assignment.

It was not.

It was an article on the new science project at East City Primary School.

"Mrs. York called me the other day. She asked me to thank you for visiting the school and for setting up the students' 'city swamp,'" he said, quoting the article. "I believe she said they already have a coy, two turtles, and a duck. They have also been making informational posters on viruses and putting them up around town on field trips."

Edward wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about this. He thought he ought to feel proud of himself, but instead he felt more confused as to why Mustang was telling him this. Reading his expression, Mustang sat back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest.

"Have you ever thought about pursuing a career in education, Fullmetal? Before he left, Doctor Berger told me that any institution would be lucky to have you."

Now Edward definitely knew how he felt about this. Roy knew too, because he laughed at Ed's reddening face that he ducked to hide behind his bangs.

"Just think about it. How are you feeling?"

It had been about a week since Ed's trip to the school. Two days ago, he had gotten his final dose of rabies serum. The final one had hurt worse than all of the others put together and, though neither would ever admit it, Roy and Ed had ended up spending the night at the infirmary - Edward, because he had curled up against Roy for comfort and fallen asleep as he had waited for the pain to fade enough for him to move, and Roy because once Edward was asleep he hadn't the heart to move him and accidentally fell asleep, too.

They had woken up, scrambled away from each other while the night nurse laughed hysterically, made the nurse promise he would never tell anyone about this, made themselves promise that they would never tell anyone about this, and walked down the street to stuff their faces with waffles.

In the present, Edward considered pulling his shirt up to show the colonel how he was feeling, but decided that it would have little effect since Roy had already seen his sores.

"I feel like I was stung by at least fifteen giant hornets."

Roy winced and nodded sympathetically.

"That sounds about right. But no fever? No headache? No fear of water or hunger for human flesh?"

Ed smirked. "No fever. No headache. But I could kill for some orange juice right now."

It took Roy a moment to find the joke. When he did, he laughed so loudly that the lieutenant poked her head through the door to see what the commotion was about.

Once Mustang had recovered, he handed Ed a paper detailing his actual assignment.

"Doctor Berger thinks your theory on informational transactional alchemy has promise. He wants you to run some trials and send him the results."

Ed "hmmed" appreciatively as he read over the paper. With nothing else to do while Ed read, Roy's eyes wandered about and he realized that something - or rather, someone - was missing.

"Where's your brother?"

"He's at ECPS. The kids really wanted to meet 'im."

"I assume he's not simply there to visit."

"Nah. We made a bunch of rubber dragons for their swamp. Al's teaching them to make their own."

Roy wasn't sure how he felt about that.

I probably won't start another story for a while because I want to catch up on my other stories first, but until the…

I got toxic shock syndrome, a pretty flower that makes you cut your tongue out, LSD for farmers, some fluff, a couple of AUs… what sounds good to y'all?