Declaimer: I wonder if I could send ideas to the writer?

(eeerrrrr. I don't own this)

Third Bit.

"Run!" Ed whispered urgently. And he took off like someone with a large gun was chasing him.

Al was a little slower, but he still managed to catch up. The two of them took a sharp turn down an alley, up a quiet street, through another alley, and between two houses before they finally stopped for breath.

"Why… are… we running?" Al breathed heavily.

Ed looked around suspiciously before reaching into his overcoat to bring out a large loaf of bread.

Al's eyes grew wide, "Brother! Did you steal that?"

"Sometimes, you have to do certain things so you don't have to do them again."

"I'm not going to eat that!"

Ed narrowed his eyes, "More for Noah and I then. We need to eat something so we can survive long enough to get a job."

Al looked down, how had it come to this?

They found Noah in the town square, trying her best to dance to a slow tune she was singing. She stopped and smiled when she saw them though.

Ed brought her aside before he showed her the bread. She took it from him without question. She was so hungry, she wouldn't have cared if he had to burn down a bakery in order to get it.

After eating nearly half of it, she took a deep breath, "I think I have enough energy to sing The Wandering Dream. Do you two remember the drum beats to it?"

That was the one thing they still carried with them. Two small drums, enough to accompany a lilting tune, or a vigorous dance, it was probably the thing that got them the most money. The Wandering Dream was always a big hit too, it sounded like Noah wanted to use up her energy before it faded away.

Ed and Al brought out their drums and found a small place to perform in an empty corner of the square.

Noah sung the first few foreign lines of the song before Ed and Al joined her with a fast passed rhythm. Within a few minutes, they had a small circle of people standing around them, swaying to the tune, and trying to follow Noah's complicated footwork.

The song ended with a clap and final stomp of the drums. A few people applauded, and a few more threw a couple of coins each at Noah's feet. She picked them up gracefully, and counted. She turned to the boys, "Looks like we have enough for a decent meal."

There was a collective sigh of relief. A few more performances and they might be able to sleep with the living tonight.

It had been two days since Winry had checked into the hospital, and after being told that she was free to leave, she asked if she might be able to help out as a nurse around the place until she figured out where she was going. It had been difficult, but in the end she had finally convinced them to let her stay for a while and help Molly.

She had nowhere else to go, so why not stay where she was? After she had a day to think about it, she had decided to let this journey take her where it wanted. And apparently, it wanted her here.

She shuffled slowly around an empty room, cleaning up after the last person to stay there. She was still fighting her dizziness, but as long as she didn't bend over it was okay. She still had the bandages around her head, the doctor informed her that they would have to stay on for another week in order to let the head heal, and she didn't mind.

The books should be arriving soon, possibly tomorrow. She would be getting them so soon because they were traveling on the trains, and being so close to the train station had its benefits.

To occupy her days, Winry had spent a lot of her time thinking and recalling the strange place she had gone while she was unconscious. She was always trying to figure out what it meant, if it was a dream, what was symbolic about it? She didn't want to think about the possibility of it not being a dream.

Winry Miller… soon to be Winry Denning. There was probably meaning in that. Did it mean she was supposed to get married to a guy named Miller or Denner? She really didn't like either option.

"Winry?" Molly walked up to her.

"Yes?" She was just finishing a checkup on a man who had broken his leg.

"Some packages have arrived for you."

"Packages?" Plural?

Molly led her out to the front entrance of the hospital. There were five large boxes stacked on top of each other, each addressed to her.

"Well… looks like he sent all the books." She laughed meekly.

It took her 20 minutes (with help) to bring all the heavy boxes into her room in the hospital. She asked for the rest of the day off so she could look through them. The hospital was mostly empty at the moment, so her help wasn't really needed. It was more just something for her to do at this point.

The first box she opened was advanced Alchemy theory. The second was more intermediate training, and the rest were information, history, and everything in between. And just like Winry had hoped, upon opening the first book, she found it was littered with Izumi's notes.

Winry sat down on the bed with the first book and started reading. Okay… time to figure out where Ed and Al disappeared to.

"Fish for table 3!"

Ed weaved through a few tables, picked up the two plates in the kitchen, and hurriedly drifted back through the restaurant. He smiled to the people at the table, "Fish. Enjoy!" he faded away before they could thank him, and ended up picking up a drink order at a table that wasn't even his to wait on.

Al (the busboy) walked past with a tray of dirty dishes in his hands, and Ed stopped him.

"Why did we agree to this again?"

Al sagged, "Because Noah thought it would be a good idea…"

Ed sighed, ah yes, he had to be reminded often, "And why isn't she working here?"

"Because she wanted to continue performing on the streets, because it's what she's good at" Al recited.

"Right." A hand lifted at a table, beckoning Ed to come and fix some problem with their order. Well, at least they weren't hungry anymore.

So what had she learned so far? Nothing really. She had learned that Equivalent Trade governed every law in Alchemy, but she also learned –from Izumi's notes- that it didn't really matter in the end. She had learned the fundamentals of drawing a circle and realigning the particles in a certain object to change it to a desired shape. You can't make something from nothing, the books said because of equivalent trade, but Izumi's notes said it had to do with there not being enough energy.

Winry had also learned, that human and animal transmutation was very, very bad. The thing she didn't understand about it though, was Izumi's notes on the matter. The books had gone on about all the problems of Human Transmutation, certain things about the soul and so forth. Izumi's notes however had said something about there being very little chance that you would actually bring the right soul back through the gate, along with her own questions on how to find the write soul. Winry had taken a pen and circled gate. That was the only thing that there was no information on. Seemed like the only person who used the term was Izumi, and a lot of help that did! Her notes were so vague; they might as well have been in another language.

There was another problem though; none of the books said anything about being able to use Alchemy without a circle. Ed had never told her before that that was a special talent.

Winry yawned; tomorrow… she would finish tomorrow.

Tomorrow came and went with much of the same; notes upon notes on things that made no sense. It was nearly midnight before she found anything worthwhile.

:Note: If this is death… there must be something beyond the door, within is hell, but beyond… there must be something beyond.

Winry reread the note a few times, and then she read over the page it had been written on again. The book was talking about some obscure fact about using multiple circles to get different effects. It seemed like Izumi's note had just been a random thought she had wanted to get out at the moment. Was she talking about the gate?

Winry closed her eyes and thought hard, trying to remember everything that had happened the day Ed had returned for such a brief moment. Those flying vehicles looked like they had come out of some Alchemy circle. So how was that possible? The circle had to open up a door to another place… a gate. Had those people come from death? No… there wouldn't be ships in death.

There were always two sides to a door. If the door were inside and just leading to another room, from a certain perspective both sides of the door wouldn't look any different. So what did that mean? Life was the same thing as death and death was the same thing as life? No… she couldn't deal with that. So what if death was the door, and on either side of it was life? So what did that mean?

She shook her head a little to clear it of old thoughts. She needed a new perspective. What it meant, was that with enough power you might be able to get through death and come out the other side. But what was on the other side? She laughed quietly to herself, "Listen to you! You're thinking like a crazy person." She had to say it out loud to make it a reality. Well, crazy or not, this was Alchemy; it didn't have to make complete sense.

She lay down and closed the book; she needed to sleep on it. She couldn't sleep though. How could she when she was so close? Those ships came from somewhere, and that somewhere was where Ed and Al were now. The question though, was did you have to die in order to get there?

There was a festival in the streets tonight; every performer for miles had come, knowing the payoffs would be bigger and better than any other day. Ed, Al, and Noah hadn't been an exception. Currently in fact, Noah was dancing happily within a large circle of people, there were so many instruments floating around, she had a nearly 20 people joining her with music. Guitar played the melody, drums were a distant background, breathing for the dance, a few tambourines circulated through the crowd, and flutes trickled between everything.

Al watched the dance vividly; no matter how many times he saw it, he always loved it. In his world, he had never seen dancing like this, or heard music like this, and it surprised him every time.

Ed on the other hand was looking dreary as usual, caught up in his own thoughts of something completely unrelated to what was going on around him.

Al looked over to Ed and said goodbye to his happy mood, he couldn't very well let Ed continue on like that alone, "We're here now, enjoy the moment!" he decided to pep talk before he got into anything serious.

Ed tried a smile, but it didn't work, "I can't stop thinking about that feeling I had when we first got here. I haven't felt it again since then though."

Of course, leave it to Ed to get lost in some mystery, "Forget about it, if it's important, it'll happen again."

Ed was irritated by his brother's logic. He didn't want to forget it; it had felt so good to feel something like that, almost like feeling Alchemy.

Al decided to brush his brother's mood off and soak in the atmosphere again. It was a wonderful night, beautiful, there was no sense wasting it over stubbornness.

Ed followed Al's gaze back to Noah, it was nights like these that gave her energy. She could probably keep on dancing till morning if she wanted to. Al's eyes were changed though; they seemed to be taking in more than the festivities. It was enough to distract Ed for a moment from his thoughts even, almost enough to make him laugh slyly. Oh. Now that made sense.

"You like her, don't you?" Ed smirked at Al.

Once Al absorbed the words his eyes filled with panic, "W-what?"

Ed tilted his head in the general direction of Noah, "her…" hint, hint.

Al's blush reached his ears, "what are you talking about?"

Ed nodded and laughed, "Don't even bother,"

Al swallowed. Damn. This made things more complicated.

"And I would like my potatoes grilled, not boiled."

Ed nodded, finished writing down the order, and made sure there wasn't anything else they wanted before he left.

The day had been slow, like most days. There just weren't enough people willing to go out to eat in town; everyone thought it was too expensive. But still, it was really the best place to work, unless you wanted to board some ship and catch crabs all day.

Ed sat down at an empty table Al was cleaning off, and stretched, relaxing in the fact that he was getting paid for doing nothing at the moment.

"I think I might ask the manager for the rest of the day off, it doesn't look like he needs our help. Besides, when it gets like this he doesn't pay us."

Al wiped the table once more before sitting down with his brother, "yeah."

The bell on the door rang as a couple came in.

Ed's heart seemed to stop completely; his body froze in the shock of what he saw, or what he thought he was seeing, because it couldn't be true.

"Winry…?" He whispered.

Al's head shot up to look at the couple and the shock washed over him somewhat differently. It was just a sense of being startled, but reality intruded a moment later.

Ed stood up shaking, and Al stood up to stop him.

"It's not her Ed."

It was her! Her hair was short and curly, but it WAS her. Ed tried to push through his brother.

"No Ed. It's just her Reflection." That was what they had started to call the doubles of people from their world. Just a reflection of what they knew, nothing more.

Ed almost wanted to cry. He didn't care! It was still a part of her, something like her, anything like her would be better than nothing at all. Always in the back of his mind he had wondered where in this world Winry's Reflection was, and now, he had found her, he couldn't just let her pass by him like all the others.

Al used his height advantage to push his brother back down into his chair, "You can't! We agreed not to get involved with Reflections anymore. You think you know them, but you don't, they're a completely different person."

"But she's right there!"

Al continued to recite the agreement, "You can become friends with them as if they were a stranger, but you can never be emotionally involved with the idea of what they are in our world."

Ed stopped struggling. He couldn't do that; he couldn't not be emotionally involved. He was unemotional about everything else in his life, but this… he wasn't with this.

Ed stood up catching Al off guard, "I have to go, I can't wait on them."

He stormed out of the restaurant as fast as he could, without once glancing over at the reflection of Winry.

Once he was outside, he leaned against a wall for support. He couldn't do this… he couldn't stay here, knowing she lived somewhere in town, knowing he might have to serve her in the restaurant. He couldn't live with seeing her, and being teased by a mere reflection.

A/N Much love to my readers! I would like to know who you are though, so please R/R!