A/N: Thanks, Tobu, for the warning about the song lyrics. It is much appreciated coughevenifIthinkit'sabsurdcough Yes, Terrasina DW, last chapter was a barrel of monkeys to write. I just sat down and wrote with the intention of making it as farcical as I could. Yay, it worked.

XIV. Another Day, Another Siege: Pancakes, Porcelain, and Pearls

I awoke to the sound of heavy rain. I loved rain like that. It was the kind of downpour that caught the day at late morning and held it there until nightfall. It painted the entire landscape blue and gray and gave me a good excuse stay indoors and cuddle up with the latest issue of Mechanical Medicine.

Something in the weather inspired me to make a ridiculously large breakfast for my houseguest and me. As I expected, Edward scurried into the kitchen in his pajamas about thirty seconds after I put the bacon in the skillet.

"What's got you so domestic?" he asked, peeling a brown sugar pancake off the stack by the stove. He rolled it up like an empty canolli and ate casually while leaning on the counter next to me.

He always used to do that. I almost laughed at him in his tired pajama pants, playing out these ancient habits like they were traditions we've kept since childhood, like we hadn't missed a day. The more I watched him, though, the more it looked somehow incongruous to me to see him there, this stranger in place of someone I thought I knew. I suppose if I had been there to witness the changes, Edward's abrupt jump from then to now wouldn't have seemed so drastic. In my mind, the old, faded memory of Edward in my kitchen didn't adapt, the space he left behind wouldn't stretch to fit this person, this man. I caught myself staring at him and quickly looked back to my sizzling bacon.

I suddenly felt my discomfiture renewed, like it had been when he first sauntered up my drive. What little familiarity we had managed to scrounge together wafted out the window on the bacon-scented breeze as I remembered that four years was a very long time. I felt like I didn't know him. It was someone else pretending to be Edward. And I had no idea what to do with him.

I wondered if he felt the same. He probably didn't even think about it. Damn him.

"Win?" he said, leaning forward.

"Huh-what?" I said, snapping out of my reverie.

"You all right?" he asked before plucking a strip of bacon out of the skillet with his right hand.

"Oh yeah," I replied, waving a spatula at him dismissively.

"Hmm," was his reply as he blew on his bacon before popping it into his mouth and chewing with relish. He swallowed and sighed contentedly. "I knew there was a reason I stuck around."

I laughed and tried to remember what Winry would say to Edward at a time like this. "You mean besides this?" I asked, kicking his left shin lightly. My bare foot thunked against the rigid plastic of his temporary leg.

Then it was time for one of us to say something again, and Edward was chewing another pancake. So it was up to me. "Get a plate," I said. He, surprisingly, obeyed. He even had the audacity to get me a plate, too. I took that as an invitation to eat with him.

After scraping the bacon onto a platter, I loaded down my plate and took my seat at the table where Edward was not bothering to wait for me.

He poured syrup over his pancakes and held the pitcher out to me. "Syrup?" he asked around a mouthful. I looked at his offer for a moment and shook my head. "Since when do you eat your pancakes plain?"

I shrugged before tearing a piece off my topmost pancake and eating it. Edward didn't care enough to argue and continued eating.

"So… uh…" must say something, "do you know where you're going next?"

Edward looked over the side of his glass of orange juice at me. He set it down and wiped his mouth before saying, "Well, I've got to hit the bank at Central to pay you back before anything else. I guess I'll make that home base and work from there."

"Do you think Al's in Central?" Oh, that was slick.

Edward paused with his fork in front of his mouth and blinked. "I'm not sure," he replied guardedly.

Then I shoved my other foot into my mouth. "I think he would have written me wherever he was. That doesn't seem like him."

"I'm certain he's got a reason."

And that was that. Edward clearly had nothing else he wanted to share on the topic, so I let us eat in silence. The quiet was only broken later when Edward got up from the table and thanked me for making breakfast. He didn't comment on that fact that I—rather remarkably, I felt—had remembered his favorite after so long. Then again, it might have not been his favorite anymore.
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It rained for the next four days. By the end of day three, late morning was getting very old, blue and gray were making me seasick, and Mechanical Medicine was dog-eared and tired of my company. You can only cozy up to a magazine for so long before you realize that the heartbeat you feel from the pages is just the pulse in your own fingers.

And I remembered that I hated rain like that.

None of the shin plates I had ready were the right size to fit the leg I was making for Edward. That entailed some delays, and I could not decide whether I was relieved to find that or disappointed. For the past four days, he had been sulking around, as miserable as the weather. He would not tell me what was bothering him though that came as no big surprise to me. He even seemed offended that I had asked. It felt like every time I opened my mouth around him, things became more distant, more alien. I hated that feeling almost as much as I hated the rain. I felt like I had done something wrong, and it only made it worse that I could not figure out what I had done.

Regardless of that, the backordered shin plate meant that I would have either to wait for a new one to come in or cut one of my existing plates to fit, and by the end of rainy day four, I hadn't the energy nor the focus to turn on my table saw and trim the metal down.

I left my workroom in search of something to eat and passed the front door on my way to the kitchen. I couldn't help but notice that Edward's boots were missing, as was his coat. A quick glance out the window had me worrying. Why would he go out so late in such lousy weather? I abruptly forgot dinner, donned my boots and coat and snatched an umbrella from the hall closet.

It occurred to me, once I was ankle deep in the infamous Rizembul mud, that charging out on a search for a man who was as clever as me—if not more so—and probably did not want to be found was not very wise. On top of that, however helpful my umbrella was, my foolish optimism was not going to keep the wind from blowing raindrops in my face.

I cursed at the rain but kept trudging. I cursed the wind but continued my futile endeavors of wiping my eyes. I cursed Edward but still dug through my mind, trying to discern where he might have gone.

As I raged a battle against my mounting apprehension, the wind began to die. The rain then faded into a thin, limping drizzle. The clouds in the west were starting to glow faintly, signaling a setting sun. Climbing a small hill, I noticed in the distance, lit up by the fading light, something moving on the crest of an adjacent rise.

What I saw there struck me into paralysis. The dying light reflected silver off the damp stones of the foundation and looming chimney. The dirt was black with ash and decomposing fragments of charred wood. Rude shoots and saplings had begun to appear, some standing tall enough to be seen over the foundation. It could have been picturesque against the sunset.

I wondered how I could have forgotten. How could I have been so insensitive?

It was October third.

I snapped my umbrella shut awkwardly and sprinted down the hill. Sliding and splashing, I trudged through the trough until I found the overgrown strip of dirt that had once been the drive leading up to the Elric home. Thick streams of sludgy water cut grooves into the road, and I leapt them clumsily. I felt mud splattering up against my shins, but the sight of Edward's silhouette pacing the foundations of his childhood home didn't leave me with much concern for anything else.

My feet nearly slipped out from under me when I tried to stop at the top of his drive. Panting and dripping, I put a hand on the hulking skeleton of a hibernating tree and waited to catch my breath.

When I looked up, he was facing away and backing toward me with a jerky gait. I moved closer and began to ask him what he was doing, but I stopped when I saw he was dragging his heel in the crunchy, black mud, leaving behind a shallow furrow.

There in the ground was the stairwell, the hall, a guest room, the bathroom, the master bedroom, and third bedroom. In this last room, Edward had stopped and was standing, facing the murky sunset.

I felt almost like I was trespassing when I stepped into the plot, like I was treading on a grave. Out of respect, I walked up the stairs and paused, looking at the view from the hall window. I then turned and walked with reverence down the hall. Outside the boys' bedroom, I hesitated.

"May I come in?" I asked.

Edward didn't look back at me. He didn't reply either.

I started to let myself in, but stopped in the doorway, my hands searching for the ghost of the doorframe.

Just as he had when lounging in my kitchen, this Edward looked out of place, like a puzzle piece forced into a slot that didn't quite match. He wasn't tall, but he was taller. He wasn't broad, but he was broader. He wasn't old, but he was ancient.

I could see a little boy on his toes, his forearms resting on the windowsill, looking out at the sunset on a clear night. In the rosy light, his blue pajamas blush purple and messy hair is illuminated. He glances back and commands me with a gesture to be quiet; his brother is asleep in the top bunk. He waves me forward, telling me it's all right to join him at the window.

Things change. I knew that. People change. They grow up; they fill in their gaps with experience and personality, embellishing the little porcelain things they were in childhood with polish and scars and masks.

Pearls, after all, are just grains of sand revamped, reworked, painted and painted and painted until it is hard to believe they ever were something as unfinished as grit.

It was unfair of me to try to squeeze Edward into the hole he left behind. It was time to throw out the old pattern and allow for a new. I could not hold him up to his past, to my past, when there was so much more. There was an eternity between the boy at the window and the man in the mud, and it made my heart hurt to know that I had missed out on that time; but what there was now was there, in front of me, and I could not afford to let it slip away with the ash and dirt. Not this time.

My umbrella fell from my hand with a quiet pat as it struck the ground and sank unnoticed. Edward did not move until I was behind him, wrapping my arms around his ribs and squeezing him tight. I pressed my cheek to the damp shoulder of his coat and stilled myself until I was just breath and arms. I could hear his heart beating independently of mine, and after a moment, we beat in time.

I felt him shift and look over his shoulder at me. He watched me for a moment, and for once, I didn't care. I didn't care what he thought; I wasn't hugging him selflessly. Slowly, he looked forward again at the gray sunset. His bare flesh hand touched mine. I felt his palm spread over my fist where it was closed tightly around a fold in his coat, and he gently pulled, trying to dislodge me.

I started to cry.

He tugged on my hand again then breathed a resigned sigh. His arms fell to his sides, and I pressed myself closer.

"It's really cold out here," I said as though trying to explain myself.

"I noticed."

"I think it's okay, though."

He breathed long and deep. "It is," he answered, "It's fine."