I did not want to grieve anymore. I was an empty shell, a small skeleton at the mercy of the four winds. Drained of tears, I prepared the man whom I considered a friend for his burial. (Soon his body would stiffen and we must move him before then.) Edward was somewhere in the forest digging a grave and carving a headstone. And with alchemy, this task took no less then a few seconds. Still, he must've hesitated to think since he didn't come back until I was finished with the preparations.

Lowering Hughes in his ready-made casket, Ed filled in the grave, completing it with newly sewn grass. I laid a flower I had found outside of the cave, while Ed mumbled something off of military fashion. (I recognized it from somewhere or another.)

Something was bothering me. "Um," I started but then cut myself off. Too late, he had already taken notice. "May I um… it's nothing important, but my-my mom taught me a small grace for funerals and—"

"Do what you wish," was his short reply. I mumbled thanks and then turned toward Hughes's grave. Murmuring a prayer with a hand hovering lightly over the fresh earth, I let a moment of silence pass before I said: "May God receive you in his highest."

It was a short walk back to camp, but it felt like an eternity had passed before we arrived. Listlessly, I did what-seemed meaningless chores. With no sense of time, I curled into a small corner of the cave and fell into a fitful sleep.

My dreams tossed my mind into turmoil.

Jump! Jump! was the only consistent message.

Jump to what? my mind would cry back, only to have an unsettling silence as an answer.

Awake and upset, I moved toward the hill overlooking the newly turned grave. Ed was nowhere to be found.

It was bitterly cold for a summer's afternoon. (I had slept through the night and morning; it was Midsummer's day, the day of my departure.) The storm was close. At home my mother would be resting, her breathing ragged from delayed sickness and age, and General Soldato would be sitting by the bed, holding her pale, clammy hands in his over muscular ones. Or maybe he would be working on dreary military records, letting the scratching of pen on parchment fill the room, while his mind was with my mother.

'He loved her so much,' I absently thought bitterly, much like the weather. It surprised me how harsh I had thought of my own father, but there was little that I adored him for. But mother… her I loved unconditionally, and she was dying… and I was here.

Abruptly I stood up. Home. I have to go home. They need me… and I need them. I do not belong here. I knew that.

Or at least, I thought I did.

I heard my name sound softly behind me. It was Ed. And if I had been anywhere else and not this eerily silent hill, I would've never heard him. I turned around slowly, surprised but still mournful. It was the first time I had ever heard him use my name. "I-I thought you were gone."

He was close, not two paces away, and continued to surprise me when I saw concern in his eyes. 'This is not Fullmetal Alchemist,' I thought, but then secretly smiled to myself, 'No, it is. This is the true Edward Elric.' I shifted at his words, then hung and shook my head, sniffing.

Tears flooded my eyes suddenly, and I couldn't hold them back.

"You're crying," he said softly. "You did your best. Nobody could have done better—"

"I-I should not… have, I…"

"It was a good death. You made his last moments on this earth happy. Now you can—now you can go home."

Feeling my heart leap to my throat, I stared at him. Confusing thoughts, overwhelming sadness, and too many other emotions to name filled my head. This was not how it had started, he had always been the one to call me rude and hateful things, and I thinking ones of equal value right back at him. How had that changed?

Edward took a deep breath. "I wish—I wish those tears…" he drifted off awkwardly and then tried again, "I wish I could make those tears go away."

There, he had said it. In the distance the first roll of thunder sounded in the deserted forest, but I didn't hear it. Clutching the shirt that he had given me at my chest, I drew in a breath, and in a moment of daring I took two steps forward—

Jump! cried the wind that now swept the forest floor. Jump now!

—I shut my eyes and wrapped my arms around his waist, squeezing tightly. Resting my head on his chest, I vaguely noticed he was the perfect height to lay my head in the hallow of his neck where the blood pulsed under the skin.

There, said an unseen voice inside of me, that was easy.

Crying freely into his shirt, I felt Ed go very still—and then his arms cautiously came around my shoulders, as if he had never embraced like this before.

We stood there awhile, unsure of what to do, what to say. My warm tears soaked his shirt.

For the next part, I cannot say at which point that the embrace, starting in a simple act of comfort, turned into something quite different. I cannot say which came first: his lips moving to touch my forehead, my eyelid, the tip of my nose; my hands twining around and up his neck, pulling loose his hair tie and watch strands of gold fall gracefully over his shoulders, my fingers entwining in said strands.

Both of us realized the moment of danger. Once his lips brushed mine, it was impossible to keep our needy mouths apart. That kiss, that moment was not a symbol of friendship or comfort, but a desperate passionate meeting of lips, teeth, and tongue, that left both of us shaking and breathless. I looked at him, wondering how long I had longed for this embrace. And for a pause, we broke and stared at each other, my arms around his neck, his around my waist, and our faces displaying the same confused passion.

"We-we can't do this," muttered Edward, his hand of flesh already under my shirt, caressing the swell of my breasts. My legs grew weak at his touch while my skin became inflamed. My heart slammed against my chest as I kept my eyes locked with his amber.

"I know," I whispered softly, to afraid to scare this moment into passing, as I twirled a piece of hair around my own finger. "We should—should forget this ever happened… and… and…"

"Hush," he breathed in my ear. I silently thanked that I was leaning against him otherwise I would've fallen over. I moaned softly as he ran his lips down my neck and shoulder, helping him to remove my shirt. The moment of drawing back was lost forever.

Need flared between us like an unstoppable and sudden wild fire, a fierce coming together that was both joyous and terrifying in its power. Rain thundered down, and the rocks we lay on, locked in each other's arms, ran with water. We were soaked through; but w barely noticed as hands explored soft skin and lips touched sensitive places. Moving together, we were in our own world.

Ed whispered my name as we both paused to gasp in air, me above him. Running his metal hand over my back I flinched at the cold against my skin. Startled and rejected, Ed started to withdraw his prosthetic arm away, but I stopped him. Smiling gently, I placed it on the small of my back, enjoying the refreshing coolness against my burning skin.

Kissing before he could object, I felt myself turn to liquid gold as his hands, both flesh and metal, roamed my body, relishing his touch. In return I did the same, hugging him tightly, vowing that would never let go, never, as my leg brushed against his prosthetic one.

Edward Elric had never learned tenderness (save for that for his brother), never been taught how to love a woman, he knew no fair words. But his actions and lips and body spoke sweetly enough for him. Rolling to have me below him, he locked my eyes with his gold orbs, and the desperate longing I saw nearly broke my heart.

Touching my lips to his neck, I felt a rhythm inside me, like a slow drumbeat, that moved me against him. The clenching and loosening of muscles, the touching and letting go, the building sweetness—blessed God!

I cried out as he pulled me upward toward him. Gasping with the heat that flooded my body, my lips met his once again, his touch like fire licking my skin despite the numbing rain pummeling down on us.

And then we lay still, wrapped in each other's arms, shaking and gulping in air, neither of us finding anything to say.

Sometime later we recovered and went inside the cave, sheltering our half numb bodies from the rain, and by the dying embers inside the lamp we removed each other's wet clothes and dried each other with rags.

Edward told me, rather haltingly, that I was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And for a little while, I let myself believe it, trying not to think of all the complications involved with the next sunrise.

It was when he paused to wipe away the rain from my legs that my attention turned fully back to him. "You're bleeding," he stated softly, his golden eyes wavered, "I have hurt you."

I concealed my surprise, both at his resentful feeling of himself and the blood. "It is nothing," I said sweetly, gently pushing back loose strings of hair, "I have heard it is normal for the first time."

Edward did not reply, but started back at me caringly; and I thought, 'this is a different Edward. Quite different from the one that would threaten and insult me.' But it was the same man, not a boy as I had often misjudged him as, and somehow, I loved him for every bit of it.

He brushed my cheek tenderly with his metal fingers. "I-I don't know what to say," he whispered, and I slid closer to him and lay my head on his shoulder, wrapping his fake hand in mine.

"Then don't," I whispered. "Hold me, touch me. That's more than enough."

On an impulse I licked his ear, nipping it gently before moving down to his neck, and moving myself so that I straddled his legs. As I caressed his fingers, biting them playfully one by one, I smiled as I felt his hand break free of mine to stroke my cheek. Leaning into his touch, I felt myself act on impulse. Reaching out, I cupped his face and brought it gently to mine. Kissing him with every unnamed emotion flowing through me I felt him shake me off.

Hurt and confused I looked at him and understood.

"Please," he said unevenly, "stop," when his eyes said the exact opposite. "Don't, not unless—"

"Unless what?" I asked seductively, letting my own wants be communicated through my actions as I draped my arms around his neck. Edward smirked, his confidence suddenly back.

"Unless you want me to take you again," he said softly. My heart pounded with a feeling that made me dizzy. Matching his coy smile, I answered in the same seductive tone, "That would be acceptable…" but at that moment my confidence faltered, "Unless you've had enough."

Edward froze with his lips pressing softly against my cheek, my own mind beginning to drown in doubt. But he forced my chin upward so I sat on his lap, face to face with him, and he captured my lips in one perfect moment. And when he released them, the look that radiated out of his intense golden eyes lifted me out of my faltered confidence.

"Never," his breath fluttered over my ear, "I could never have enough."

We embraced, this time slowly, sipping every bit of bliss that dripped from the rest of the night, refusing to think of dawn. My heart threatened to spill over, so full of love for this man I had once called a murderous bandit.

Towards daybreak, Edward fell asleep, his head resting on my breast, and I felt a sedative peace fall over us. Only once was that peace broken when Ed started weeping like a child. At first startled, I cradled his head whispering calming words. I was surprised to hear him yell names, mine being one.

"Hush," I whispered, "I'm here. I'm safe." I held him tighter, so afraid that he would… would what? Leave? I couldn't say. But I felt a horrible thought pass through my mind: what if we did part? What then?

But my troubled thoughts soon melded back into a peaceful dream and I didn't move until I saw the sun's rebirth beginning as night's cloak lost many of its twinkling buttons to make way for a thin pale line on the horizon. Ironically, a sight that once would bring me joy when nothing else could fill me with an inevitable dread.

'Please, dear God, let it not be dawn,' I pleaded silently to an unseen being. But my prayers fell on deaf ears as the sun rose in its glory, greeting another day. And yet, as Edward and I rose, I couldn't help think that the days luster was lost on us as the lark sang their sweet serenade.

In silence we rose from our position and dressed, I folded the blankets neatly in a corner and Edward went out to salvage anything dry we could've possibly forgotten in last nights… thunder.

Who would start? Who would dare begin the thousand-word barrage in our minds?

When a fire was lit and roaring and our food baked over it (though I believed none of us had an appetite to eat it) we sat next to each other, my head resting on his shoulder and our hands entwined, an identical smile playing on both of our faces. We were adrift together in a fathomless dream. Bliss.

"A fair trade, an equivalent exchange," said Edward suddenly but softly. "A question for a question. An answer for an answer."

I nodded slowly, silently wondering what possessed him to bring this up. But I agreed, and I touched the back of his hand in a simple but unmistakable gesture. I loved him so much, so much that I would give my life for his would such a case ever have to be faced, and to be honest, it scared me. It scared me that I could ever have such a loyalty to any one but my family.

"Who asks the first question?" I ask logically, pushing the impending fear to the back of my head for now.

Edward planted a kiss on my forehead. "You do, my star."

I blushed, noting the reference to my own story, but then fell into a contemplative state. Unsure of how to put the question I had longed to ask since the night with Envy and Lust, I took in a deep breath.

Touching his prosthetic arm gently, I began to ask timidly, "How-how did you? You couldn't have lost it in the war, that's what Roy said. You aren't old enough to even be alive during that time."

Watching his eyes turn from a loving adoration to a hurtful melancholy state made me immediately regret my question, but before I could take it back, he stopped me. "No, this is something I have to say, especially to you."

My heart did a flip in my throat.

"Alchemy is made up of several complicated rules. But one rule is raised above all else: for something to be created, something of equal value must be exchanged. That is simple math, and because of that, there are few feats placed out of even our reach. One of those things is something that every mortal man would give anything to get: to bring the dead back to life.

"I grew up with my little brother, Alphonse, and my mother in a quiet, out of the way town, and we were happy. But that didn't last. When I was eight (Al, seven), our mother passed away."

Ed paused and I placed a comforting hand on his and squeezed it.

"We were young, but extremely gifted in alchemy. But we didn't know enough, so we got a teacher and trained for two years. We thought we knew enough…

"…But we didn't. For me, it cost me my left leg and right arm…"

He drifted off. I couldn't help it; something was nagging at my mind.

"And Al?"

Edward sighed. "His punishment is far worse than mine."

I bit my lip. "I am so sorry," I said leaning my head against the hollow of his neck, unable to think of anything else to say. I felt his human hand run through my unbound hair.

"It had nothing to do with you, but we did it, and we paid our price."

"But why did you choose to still follow alchemy? Surely everything you went through was punishment enough, why try to fix something that is obviously beyond any talent?"

At this Edward just kissed me and mumbled, "Just think of it as some screwed religion." Before I could protest he kissed me again. "You've had three, now it's my turn."

I nodded, swallowing excess spit, expecting him to ask who I was, who my family was. And I would have to answer him. I would have to trust him. But I could not help but imagine his reaction when he realized my own grandfather is the reason he lives in exile for something he never had part in. Still, I loved him. Surely that counted for something!

Ed was silent for seconds that turned into minutes. For a sound moment I thought I could see the sun climb higher before he asked his questions. It was a stinging blow of two words.

"Why me?"

Refusing to look at me, he let his bangs shield his eyes, angling his body so it forced me to remove my head from his chest. "Why an outlaw? A human weapon? Someone who has hurt and even killed so many people that it would kill your heart to know even a third of them, why? When you could have any one, you're beautiful enough, you're smart enough, you'd make any one the perfect wife. Why did you choose me?"

Stunned, stupefied, stone. Whatever word you choose is what I felt. I did not expect this, explaining why it took me so much by surprise. Silence stretched over the almost empty camp, my eyes staring pointedly at the man who wanted to look anywhere but me. Wind ruffled strands of gold hair; birds filled the silence between us.

How could I answer that? What could I possibly say to justify his challenge? Couldn't he tell from the way I kissed him? Touched him? Whispered to him? Looked at him?

"You have to answer," Ed said bitterly. His icy tone caused me to flinch. "I will know if you lie to me."

I felt a spark of my old self—rekindled. "Stop it!" I exclaimed, jumping to my feet, anger threading through my very words. "How-how can you even question me like that! How can you even think that after what I—after what I gave you! I have not lied to you in my words or my actions. I chose you willingly, knowing what you are and what you do. I want no other and I will have no other. Can't you see that? Can't you understand?"

Gradually my voice softened until I was almost whispering. Edward had buried his face in hands, half metal and half flesh.

"Ed?" I asked softly, kneeling in front of him and gently moving his hands. 'No wonder he had shielded his eyes from me,' I thought as I saw years of tears held back behind his golden orbs. Like entering another world, I saw the scared child whose mother had left him and his brother behind; I saw the Fullmetal's fears. And I wanted to cry with him. But I wouldn't be the first to shed a tear.

"Do you believe me?" I asked, caressing a cheek where the unshed tears would have fallen.

"You have no reason to lie to me. But I did not dare to think… to believe… marry me!" Edward said, his hands enveloping mine. My heart did a violent flip in my ribcage.

"Not—ahem—not one of your more practical suggestions," I said, trying to ignore my vibrating voice.

Edward took a deep breath; his eyes locked mine, determination springing forth from them. And when he spoke, it was clear with control. "I know this is no life for a woman wife, and I am aware that for you to be with—us and not in a palace, but-but I have a house and I am not without resources!"

His amber orbs begged me, and I knew that part of me would've caved in a heartbeat if given a chance. Still… "But-But," I tried to protest.

"I love you." Edward's stubborn character came out in its true colors, and I couldn't help but think how much more that made me love him. But…

"I—I can't!" I said bluntly and quickly, tears threatening to spill. "I must go home to Central. My—my mother is dying, you of all people should… And General Soldato, my brother Derrick. They need me—"

That was where I stopped. As soon as this had left my tongue I wished with all of my heart to take it back. With a breaking heart I watched Edward's face change like simply slipping a mask on, his expression was once again the cold and forbidden face I had first met. He was Fullmetal Alchemist again, feared outcast.

"What did you say?"

I was speechless while I fumbled for my tongue. "I-I said I must go home… I am needed, my family… Edward, what is it? What's wrong?" My heart hammered in my ears. His golden eyes were cold and emotionless. I feared what I had done.

"General Soldato. That is what you said."

"Y-yes. He is my father. And-and—"

His eyes narrowed, fixated on my frozen face. "And his father? Also General Soldato?"

I didn't say anything and only stared into his eyes which I could make out my frozen reflection in.

"Answer my question."

"Yes." My answer was quiet and sullen, barely a whisper. But I began to regain my strength when I felt my family being threatened. "But what does it matter? My grandfather made a mistake—!"

"That's what you call it?" Ed lashed out angrily. "A mistake! A mistake that cost so many people there lives and loved ones!"

My blood went cold. "But I am not like them Edward!" I tried in vain to protest, to protect the rest of my family.

"Hah!" There was an explosion of scorn again. He got abruptly to his feet, striding towards the cave, leaving me kneeling, silent tears rolling down my cheeks. I was speechless.

"They taught you well didn't they," he said over his shoulder, standing only a few feet away from me. "Those bastards you call family. And your mother, I bet she was the one who taught you how to seduce men."

I felt another spark of anger. "Take that back! You-you—"

He turned toward me and smirked coldly. "You… what?"

I felt indignant. 'He's mocking me and everything I love!'

"You monster!" I screamed, tears of rage replaced tears of grief. Edward through up his hands, the smirk still plastered to his smug face.

"There you have it, ladies and gentlemen," he said to know one, only to mock me and my family still, "Here is your pretty little whore."

Making a rude gesture before making a sharp turn towards the forest he disappeared, leaving me to weep. Weep for everything that I had lost in just moments before the fight.

When he returned I had recovered and stood proud and tall. I had to try… I just had to.

"Edward," I pleaded.

"Hold your tongue you worthless wench! My name nor anyone else you have met here is fit for yours."

He was holding the reigns to a gray mare, gentle. My things were packed in its saddlebags.

A stone in the heart…

That was how it felt…

"She will carry you home safely enough," he said as I stepped up beside her and hitched my left foot in one stirrup and swung my right leg over. I allowed myself a small smirk. Edward looked at me for a moment before continuing. "She knows the way well enough. And don't trouble yourself on returning her. Call it—payment for services rendered."

I felt the blood drain from my face. Lifting my hand I bended down a little and struck him hard across the cheek, watching as a red mark stained clear skin. He did not attempt to even avoid the blow when I knew well enough he could. Maybe he just had to make sure he could feel again.

"You'd better go," he said coolly. "Head east until you hit a road, then turn north."

One hand had found its way to my thigh and seemed reluctant to let go. But he did nonetheless.

Edward whispered my name. "Yes?" I whispered back.

"Don't wed Scar. Tell him, if he takes you, I'll kill him." Edward's tone was tinged with hatred; it was a vow.

"But—" I couldn't leave now, not like this. Then he slapped the horse's hindquarters and, being the obedient beast that she was, she headed off at a sharp canter. And before I could form words, even for a small good-bye, he was lost in a world of green…

…And it was too late.

xXx

At this point I would like to thank the following for reviewing for this small but well appreciated story:

(XHer Ink StainX)


(emily-the-elemental)

(xChibiNekoChan)

(momolovesyou)

(TheFerryman'sDaughter)

(PurificationArrow)

(EyeoftheTigerKissoftheDragon)

And I would like to give a "special" thanks to (Nazi punk) for more things to keep me warm in the winter. ;)