Everyone: firstly, thanks for reviews! Yay! To those who asked for an update, here it is! To those who are starting school soon, good luck! But first (giggles) I would just like to clarify one thing. I didn't realize (hehe) that when I said, "yay, I'm a 12!" that it looked suspiciously like "yay I'm 12!" hahahahahahah that is like the best laugh I have had all week. I am quite far from twelve, lol. When I was twelve, there was no anime on tv. You couldn't download fansubs on the internet, you had to order fansubs on VHS tapes in the mail and im pretty sure when I was twelve I didn't even know what anime even was. Of course, my innocent little self prolly wouldn't have understood what "yaoi" and "slashfic" were either. …but I could pretend im twelve, and let everyone think im some kind of writing prodigy, hehe…

Finding the Catch: Equivalent Trade

It had been nearly four months since Ed had returned.

It had taken Winry nearly four months to realize, or rather, to admit what was happening. When she forced herself to consider it, there really was no other explanation. She told herself not to panic, not to worry, that maybe it was just stress and worry. Watching someone slowly disappear can make anyone stressed and worried. They were all stressed and worried.

Stress and worry and her clothes were feeling tight on her slender frame, although she had been so distracted she couldn't even recall eating, let alone what she might have been eating. Her heart had fluttered in her stomach while she had called her doctor and made an appointment. Logic told her that no matter what was going on in her life, no matter how stretched and thin she felt, stress does not make you sick to your stomach in the mornings.

She jumped when she heard the knock at the door. Shaking her head, she mentally scolded herself for being so easily startled. She should be used to visitors at odd hours by now. And, she amended, it was the middle of the afternoon. Not an odd hour at all.

"Hello, General Mustang," she said, knowing her voice sounded distant when she greeted him. She moved aside so that he could come in.

"Anything new…" he inquired hopefully, but she shook her head forlornly. His single eye was shadowed by a grey-blue half circle, she noticed, making his appearance similar to Ed's in that way. Neither of them, she was sure, had been sleeping nearly enough. She hadn't been sleeping well either, she admitted. "How is he doing?"

Winry sighed, worry heavy on her features, she was sure. "He's blaming himself, of course. He hasn't said a word to me all week. He's hardly even left his room. He just lays there, in the same spot where Al- was- the spot where he disappeared." She took a deep breath. It was becoming easier to say each time. Alphonse disappeared. People leave, people go away, people even die. Al disappeared.

"And how are you holding up?" he asked her kindly.

"I try to tell him he needs to get up, go out, move forward-" here her voice cracked "-but its so hard when I can barely force myself to do those things." She squeezed her eyes shut, forbidding herself from crying in front of this man. "I'm sorry, I have to go somewhere," she said, her voice shaking. "Ed is upstairs. I'm sure he appreciates your visits, even if he doesn't say so."

He stood, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to watch the young woman as she left her house, shakily pulling the door closed behind her. It must be terrible, he thought vaguely, staring at the door, hand on the stair rail. It must be like losing an Elric all over again.

But it was losing an Elric all over again, he told himself. No matter how determined, no matter how brilliant, the boys had committed an unforgivable sin and the price had to be paid. It didn't matter which brother paid it, or how he paid it, but perhaps it was true that the Elrics could never regain everything they had lost.

Roy shook his head to clear it, forcing himself to climb those stairs and enter that room and speak to that man who had once been so full of life and energy and determination. The door wasn't closed, but Roy felt awkward entering and awkward knocking, so he merely stood in the doorway, letting his eye drift over the scene before him: the rumpled, unmade bed, clothes strewn about the floor, the pictures on the dresser all turned face down. Edward sat on the deep window ledge, his hair down around his shoulders, his shirt half undone, and his left leg dangling loosely above the floor. His head rested against the glass, and his face was empty.

Roy hated these visits, because it was like losing an Elric all over again. He had been there with Ed and Winry, watching the shining point in his life disappear, the bright determined boy who could do anything, take on anything, fade away before his eyes, and now the same thing was happening to the elder brother as well.

Edward appeared solid enough. If Roy had grabbed his arm and jerked him to his feet, the floor would have felt his weight, but he was not going to go that route today. If he bombarded the man with sarcastic taunts, he surely would have felt his fist colliding with his jaw, but that was not his plan this time either. He did not need to prove to himself that Edward was present in body; that was obvious enough. It was his soul that seemed unreachable.

"Are you going to come in?" The voice was toneless and the body did not move, the expression did not change. Ed remained leaning his head against the window, curled in on himself on the ledge.

Roy strode quickly into the room, looking about for a place to sit, and settled on the edge of the bed, sidestepping the clutter scattered over the floor. "How are you doing?" he asked quietly, keeping his voice neutral.

A bitter laugh issued from the still form, and he was rewarded with the turning of the head and a hollow gaze from dull eyes. "I'm still here," he answered roughly.

"Would you like to go for a walk?" he suggested carefully.

"No." There was no defiance in the objection, it was simply a word like any other.

"It's a nice day outside-" he began.

"I can see that," Ed interrupted, gesturing towards the window.

Edward did not want to go outside, and Roy did not want to stay in this miserable house a minute longer than he had to, but he felt some sense of responsibility somehow. Taking care of the Elrics seemed to be his lot in life, he supposed. His eyes fell on a book that lay jumbled with the bed sheets, and he picked it up, turning it over in his hands. It wasn't an alchemy book, he noted, surprised. It was a novel.

"It's Al's," Ed supplied. His hand swept the expanse of the room, and he said, "This is Al's room, everything in here is his." He plucked at the half buttoned pale green shirt he wore. "These are his clothes."

"It doesn't suit you," Roy said softly, setting the book back on the bed.

"You mean it's too big for me," he corrected, his expression unchanging.

It was almost eerie. The lack of arm flailing temper tantrum both unnerved and alarmed the older man.

Ed turned back to the window. "It's not going to work, you know," he said. "It doesn't upset me that my little brother is bigger than me. He never had automail to stunt his growth, there's no reason he shouldn't be a normal height. I want him to be taller than me. I want him to be everything I wasn't."

It was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. "That's not what I meant," Roy all but whispered. "Green doesn't look good on you." It was that or the sharpness of his cheekbones that came from not eating, or the circles under his eyes that came from not sleeping.

The only response was a shrug, and after a few minutes Roy picked up the book again, leafing through it without understanding anything he looked at. At the sound of movement he looked up to see that Edward had turned on the window ledge, now sitting with his back to the glass and facing him. His eyes wandered over the room, and he seemed to be seeing Roy for the first time. "So what'd you bring today?" he asked.

He raised his eyebrow. "Pardon?"

"Last time you visited you brought classical records."

"You hated them," he said dismissively, looking back down at the open book.

"They weren't that bad," Ed conceded.

Roy frowned. "Well I didn't bring anything today. Just myself, although you don't seem to think I'm very good company."

"What happened to your eye?" The question came without preamble, with no forewarning, an abrupt halt to the strained exchange of sentiments.

Roy closed the book, setting it carefully back on the covers, and looked at the younger man. "I was wondering when you were going to ask me that," he said, his expression unreadable.

Dark gold eyebrows drew together above light gold eyes. "Sorry." The word was whispered. "Sorry," he said, louder. "You don't have to answer that. I didn't mean to ask you that way."

Roy considered him for a moment. "It's fine," he said honestly.

Ed was shaking his head. "No, no, it's not fine. I hate when strangers ask me what happened to my limbs. It's none of their business," he said, with more force than Roy had heard from him all day.

He ran his hand through his short fall of black hair in a gesture that Ed knew well. "Well, you're not a stranger," he said with equal force, and repeated, "It's fine." He fingered the eye patch lightly. "I was shot in the head," he told him, fixing his eye on the younger man's startled expression.

Ed had been swinging his right foot against the wall, making a slow rhythmic knocking sound. This stopped. "Then why aren't you dead?" he demanded, incredulous.

Roy simply shrugged. "I guess you could say I was lucky, if you can call it that. Most of the bone fragments lodged in my eye socket rather than in my brain."

The younger man was still gaping. "Was it during the last war?" he asked finally.

"No, it was the night I killed the fuhrer." The sentence hung in the air between them. The same night Ed had sacrificed himself for his brother. This was the first time either of them had spoken of it.

"And then you married Hawkeye," Ed stated, pushing aside any possible discussion of the events of that fateful evening.

"You could put it that way," Roy said, relieved. "She took care of me while I recovered, and then-"

He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard Ed snicker as he turned away. He hopped off the window ledge and walked over to the dresser, picking up one of the overturned frames and shoved it at him. "Where's this from?"

He glanced at it. "We sent that to Al from our honeymoon in Xing," he said, his voice a touch wistful.

"Did you really cheat on her?"

"No." The response was flat, and Roy did not look at him as he held the frame out for Ed to take back.

Ed flopped down on the bed next to him, leaning back on his hands. "Shit, Roy, I'm really sorry. I'm awful company, aren't I?" he said with disgust, kicking his foot against the bed frame. "You come here to cheer me up, and all I can talk about is you getting shot and you getting divorced." He stood up. "I guess we can go for a walk. I'll try not to be too miserable for you."

Roy did not know how to tell him that even talking about his divorce was preferable to listening to the loathing Ed subjected himself to over losing his brother again.