JJ does not like the fact that Ed won't wake up at all, and the only consolation to that fact is the fact that no one else seems happier about it than she is.
"Are you sure you don't want me to try—?" Mei offers again, but Al shakes his head.
"Would it hurt to let her try?" JJ asks, still trying to understand everything that's going on with this alchemy stuff.
Al is sitting on the bed next to Ed who may as well be in a coma for how reactive he's being. He holds Ed's glowing wrist in his hand and is frowning. "Soul alchemy isn't my area of specialty," he admits. "Mixing our alchemy and alkahestry together can be chancy under the best of circumstances. I don't want to risk it with soul alchemy." He looks at Mei. "You're sure his qi systems aren't compromised?"
To her credit, she doesn't huff or sigh. "As far as I can tell, all his qi systems appear to be functioning normally. It's just that array that's drawing unusual energy."
JJ would give a lot to have Spencer here to translate. She's sure she's heard of qi systems in their world, in other contexts, but she doesn't remember the details about them or know how closely the idea of them in their world might align with what Mei and Al are describing.
There's a knock at the door before Mrs. Curtis lets herself in. "Still out?" she asks.
"He's still unresponsive," Derek says, his own frustration and helplessness barely kept at bay in his voice. "Can you do anything to help?"
"You tried beating the shit out of him yet?" she asks Al.
"I don't think that's really necessary—" JJ starts to say when Al interrupts with a sigh.
"I gave him a few good slaps, splashed his face with water, made a lot of loud noise, shook him really hard." He ticks them off on his hand. "Not even a flinch so far."
Mrs. Curtis sighs, then stalks over to Ed, lifts him by the collar of his shirt, and yells, "Wake the fuck up!" in his face while shaking him violently enough to send both JJ and Derek reaching to stop her. When she stops, Ed's head simply rolls back alarmingly.
"When I asked if you could do something, I didn't mean give him brain damage!" Derek snaps.
She drops him like a sack of potatoes, and Ed still doesn't move from where he's sprawled. It's unnerving, to say the least.
"He's got a hard head," Mrs. Curtis says. "Being shaken like a rattle isn't going to give him more brain damage than he's already got."
"I meant-can you do something with alchemy?" Derek says through gritted teeth. "You're his teacher, so surely you must know more about alchemy than he does."
Her dark eyes wander back to Ed and alight on the still softly glowing array on his wrist.
"The days when I knew more of alchemy than Edward Elric are long past," she says with a kind of remorse. She goes back to him, arranging him on the bed so he's not in such a haphazard and uncomfortable-looking position. Her hand hovers over the array but pulls back without touching it. "This young man has stood before Truth more than possibly any other living being ever has." She strokes a bang back from Ed's face in a very maternal gesture. "Even if that weren't the case, soul alchemy is particularly specialized. I never had a reason to study or learn any of it. There's not much good you can do with it."
"Why does Ed know it so well, if it's not actually useful?" JJ asks.
"Ah, that's my fault—" Al starts, scratching at his neck in embarrassment. "Did Brother tell how he lost his arm and leg?" he asks.
"He said that it happened when he tried to resurrect his mom, and that it almost cost him you," Derek recites dutifully.
"It did," Al says. "It took my whole body. To save me, Brother sacrificed his arm to get my soul back, and he bound it to a suit of armor that was in our father's study."
JJ stares in horror because she can't even wrap her mind around the idea.
"Wait," Derek says. "What do you mean when you say 'he sacrificed his arm'?"
"Exactly what I said," Al replies. "Attempting human transmutation is a horrible sin against nature. The dead are not meant to be returned. There is nothing that is equivalent to a human soul. In retaliation for our hubris, Truth took Brother's left leg and my whole body. When Brother returned to this plane, he reactivated the array and offered his right arm to retrieve my soul."
If JJ were horrified before, she doesn't have a word to adequately describe her feelings now. "I thought he was eleven…" she said faintly, doing the math.
"He was," Al says. "I don't know how he had the presence of mind to offer his arm for me."
Derek looks as sick as she feels. "The first time I ever talked to him… I said that people would give their right arm for the job," he says, leaning heavily against the wall. "No wonder he laughed at me."
Al smiles, a little bit rueful. "That expression does tend to mean something different to Brother than it means for most," he admits.
"He was just a baby," JJ says faintly, staring at Ed's still form on the bed, eyes drawn helplessly to the metal arm stretched out next to him.
"Not after that, he wasn't," Mrs. Curtis says, frowning and sorrowful all at once. "Going through the Gate changes a person, forever. There's the person you were before you stood before Truth, and there's the person you are after. Children don't come out of it."
"Did you…?" JJ starts to ask, but Mrs. Curtis meets her eyes, and the question dies in JJ's mouth. It's not her place to ask, and besides, it's clear that she already has the answer. She doesn't ask why Mrs. Curtis tried to do, who she tried to bring back. Given the way she is with Ed and Al, JJ thinks she already knows.
A knock on the door followed by a, "I'm coming in!" interrupts the heavy atmosphere. The blonde young woman from earlier—Wendy?-steps in. "Oh," she says, seeing Ed. "He's still out cold then?"
"Yeah," Al tells her. "Do you have any ideas? We've tried slapping him and shaking him. I'm not sure a wrench will work, but he's not responding at all."
She looks thoughtful for a moment. "Did you try reattaching his automail?" she asks.
Several people have duh looks on their faces, as if they should have thought of that.
"The armor is meant to come off, right?" JJ asks, feeling nervous for some reason, trying to remember back to what Ed had told them about it. She is pretty sure that he said something about it being painful, but she can't remember if that was the surgery that was painful or attaching in general that is painful.
"Of course they are!" Wendy says, sounding scandalized. "How else do you maintenance them and get them refitted?" she asks, sitting next to Al and reaching over Ed's still form to take the automail arm in her hand. She eyes it critically. "It looks like he's been taking good care of it, but I'm surprised he hasn't replaced it."
JJ coughs. "We don't have prosthetics that advanced in our world," she says when Wendy's attention is on her.
Her eyes go wide, and she looks appalled. "But what if he had broken it?" she asks.
"I… don't know," JJ admits. "I don't know what he would have done."
Wendy's eyes go back to the automail, and she runs her hands over it with familiarity and comfort. She pulls a screwdriver out of somewhere and quickly removes the top plate on the forearm. "He's done a really good job of keeping it maintained," she says as if the fact surprises her.
"Well, if Brother didn't have any way to replace it if it broke, even he may have been more careful with it than normal," Al says with a smile that's just a little bit sad.
"Does Ed make a habit of breaking his prosthetics?" Derek asks.
Nodding, Wendy uses the screwdriver to poke at the wires inside the arm. "We used to have to replace them at least a couple times a year. If you'd told me he could go eight years without breaking them, I'd have laughed in your face."
"Your… family works on automail?" JJ asks carefully, not entirely comfortable watching her poke in the arm with apparently little care. Despite knowing it was a prosthetic, it's still unnerving to see it open and see only mechanical workings in the arm. Some part of JJ really thought there was flesh beneath the armor, and her brain is having difficulty connecting the inner workings of it with how naturally Ed uses it.
"Yeah," Wendy says. "Me and Granny."
JJ doesn't have to ask to tell from the sadness in her face and her voice that "Granny" is not with them anymore. "So you've been working on your own since she passed?" JJ asks.
Startling, Wendy puts her hands over her mouth. "He doesn't know!" She turns to Al, looking upset. "Al, we forgot to tell Ed about Granny!"
"Winry," Al says, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We have plenty of time to tell him. Let's worry about waking him up first, okay?"
Winry , not Wendy—such a strange name—looks back at Ed. She leans over, reaching for something JJ can't see, and there's a compressive sound that makes JJ think of a vacuum seal breaking as the arm comes loose.
"Are you sure that's okay?" JJ asks, her mind further struggling to see Ed without an arm. She keeps trying to fill in the shape of it, expecting it to be there. It's one thing to know he wears a prosthetic, but it's another entirely to see it be detached, and it's unnerving.
Looking over the arm more closely, Winry says, "Of course it's fine," with the offhand impatience of someone being asked a stupid question.
"Winry's been Ed's mechanic since we were teenagers," Al informs. JJ is starting to feel like if she keeps staring, her eyes are going to stick like that.
"So… you just work the automail?" JJ asks her.
"The automail, the ports, the upgrades," Winry answers in that same vague way that tells JJ most of her attention is on the arm in her hands.
"Automail mechanics are both surgeons and mechanics," Mrs. Curtis explains. "The best ones are, anyway. They not only do the surgeries to attach the nerve ports, but they also build the automail limbs themselves."
"Winry is one of the best in the country!" Al informs them proudly.
Running her fingers over the hinges and joins of the prosthetic, Winry says, "I had a really good teacher." There's more sorrow there, still fairly fresh at that. She seems to shake herself then, turns, tossing the arm next to Ed again. "I forgot how heavy these alloys were. When I get him refitted, he's hardly going to believe it." She says it with the determination of someone redirecting their attention firmly. "Al, you might want to hold him down," she adds, looking at him.
Al stands and shifts until he has a firm grip on both of Ed's shoulders. Mrs. Curtis goes to his legs and pushes down on them. Winry straddles his waist, moving the arm into place, then looks up at Al. "Ready?" she asks. Al nods, and Winry shifts until they hear the arm connect with something that's almost a compressive sound, but also a mechanical click.
Whatever happens, it's painful enough to jolt Ed out of unconsciousness. He makes a choked, bitten-off scream, and why he was being held down is readily apparent as he tries to flail for a moment before going limp.
" Motherfucker. " He groans, sinking into the bed, looking a little pale as he opens his eyes. JJ's eyes go to his flesh wrist, but the circle there is no longer glowing. "Winry?" he asks, staring at her like he's looking at a ghost.
She sighs heavily, then grabs the front of Ed's shirt. "About time you woke up, you idiot!" she snaps, shaking him hard.
"Winry!" Al says, having let go of Ed's shoulders. Before Derek or JJ can do anything, Ed has grabbed her and thrown her down on the bed in some kind of grappling hold.
"Knock it the fuck off!" he snarls at her. There's something in his eyes, in his voice that pulls at JJ's chest, something like loss. He hangs his head and his arms go slack. "Why…? Why did you have to wake me?"
"You weren't responding, and the soul array on your wrist was glowing," Al says. "We couldn't know if it was draining you or hurting you."
Ed shakes his head. "It wasn't," he says. "I saw Roy. Talked to him…" He takes in a harsh breath. "It was real. If the array was active… it was real." He stills and the pain and despair goes out of him. He looks up a Al. "If the array was active, it was real ."
JJ isn't following, but apparently Al is. "Your soul link is active," he says, his whole face lighting up. "That means we have a link between the worlds!"
"The door isn't entirely closed," Ed agrees, and a fierce determination settles into his eyes. "We have a way through."
It is way too late at night for them still to be at the station, still to be awake . Dave is far too old to pull these kinds of all-nighters if he doesn't have to, but Mustang had to magically pass out, and every attempt they've made to wake him—from shaking, to shouting, to slapping, to physically dragging him on the ground—have not yielded so much as a flutter of eyelashes. Reid only discovered the glowing tattoo on his wrist when he was checking all of Mustang's vitals.
Dave is more than a little relieved that Reid didn't touch it by accident. Given what happened with the last active array they knew of, who knows what touching the damn thing might have done.
"I don't like this," Hughes repeats, not for the first time, running a hand over his face. He looks as tired as Dave feels, which is little consolation under the circumstances.
"All of his vital signs are strong," Reid reminds them. "If you don't know how to disrupt that array on his wrist or aren't willing to risk breaking it to stop the energy flow, then I don't know if we can do anything but wait for him to wake up."
"I told you—I'm not an alchemist. I have no idea what will happen if we try to interrupt the array, I just know that touching an active array is usually a really, really terrible idea. Most alchemists won't do it."
"Would Ed?" Reid asks.
"Edward would," Hughes replies. "But Ed's… Ed ." He says it as if he's at a loss for another description, and—to be fair—Ed has a habit of defying description, so Dave doesn't really blame this one on him. "He does things that no other alchemist I've ever known would even consider doing."
"So the only alchemist we have who can tell us about the array is Mustang, and he's currently the one affected by it. I think we have to hope he wakes up," Reid surmises. "Either that or risk manually interfering with the array."
Hughes is already shaking his head. "Not an option. Roy said it's a soul link. No one should be touching that."
"So we're still where we started," Dave concludes, rubbing a hand over his face. They had flipped a coin to see whether he and Hughes or Reid would go back to the hotel first to get some rest, or if Prentiss and Seaver would. Dave and Reid lost the flip, which is why they're still there. With all of the craziness and strangeness of this case, no one is eager to be on their own at the moment.
There's no warning before Mustang startles awake, shouting, "Ed!" with something akin to desperation.
Hughes is at his side and pushes his shoulders back, trying to get him to lay back down. "Relax, Roy," he says. "You're in… wherever this is?"
"Pennsylvania," Dave offers.
"Right, you're in Pennsylvania." The pronunciation is strange in Hughes's mouth, like he's not quite sure what makes up the word. "With me and Edward's team…"
"Maes?" Mustang stares at him, clearly still not quite awake. "You can't be—" He reaches for something, but Hughes settles him.
"We've already been over this," he says. "I'm not a homunculus. I'm really alive. I'm really here. We're not really sure how that happened, but Ed isn't here, Roy. He's not here."
Awareness comes back into Mustang's eyes as they move from Hughes to him and Reid. Dave can see the wheels turning as he remembers who they are, as they click into place, and he calms, rubbing a hand over his eyes.
"Forgive me," he says. "I just… had a strange dream."
"You woke up asking for Ed?" Dave says. "Did you have a nightmare?"
Mustang lowers his hand and stares up at the ceiling for a long moment. "No," he says slowly. "I don't think I did."
Hughes pulls his sleeve up and gets a good look at the tattoo, which is, thankfully, no longer glowing with that creepy red light.
"This was glowing and you wouldn't wake up," Hughes tells him.
Mustang raises his wrist into his line of sight, but Dave doesn't know if he's really seeing it or just using it to focus while he thinks.
"It wasn't a dream," he says just as Reid opens his mouth. "I saw Ed, but it wasn't a dream. At least… I don't think it was."
"Tell us about the dream," Reid prompts, leaning against the wall. Dave knows he's standing mostly because if he doesn't, he's going to fall asleep where he's sitting. "As much as you can remember. You saw Ed?"
"We were in our bed at home," Mustang starts. "We talked about our fight… talked about…" He trails. "We knew it wasn't a dream. He told me he's back in our world. That Morgan and Ms. Jareau are with him."
That perks Reid up faster than a double shot of espresso would. "Derek and JJ are okay?" he asks, a kind of desperation of his own.
"I don't know," Mustang says. "Once we figured out it wasn't a normal dream, I told him where I was, and he told me where he was and that Ms. Jareau and Morgan were with him…" He sits up, pausing as if trying to remember more, then shakes his head. "Then he was pulled away from me…" He looks at his hands as though they have betrayed him, then looks at Reid. "But if they're with Ed, he will do anything in his power to protect them."
The hope dims from Reid's eyes, but he nods, accepting what he can.
Hughes adjusts his glasses. "Ed was dreaming too?" he asks.
"Of course he—" Mustang cuts off, seeming to come to the realization at the same time Hughes had.
"If you were dreaming at the same time, maybe your soul link allows you to communicate across the worlds," Reid posits.
"If that's the case…" Dave trails.
"There's an open pathway," Mustang says. He grins, a fierce, triumphant grin, then shifts his eyes to meet Dave's. "We have a way to communicate."
For the first time all day, Dave feels hope begin to take root in his chest.