Trial and Error

He was crouching in a dark place. He couldn't see anything except for his own body, weak and naked. He shivered, despite there being no cold.

As he raised his head to look in front of him, to gain an understanding into what had happened, a figure appeared, hazy at first. Could it be…Mum? Al? He tried to call out for their names, but he couldn't speak, as though his jaw was frozen and trapped in its position. The distorted image in front of him became clearer as the figure stepped forward. Nerves fluttered like butterflies throughout his essence, since in this place he couldn't see his body – did he have one here?

And where was 'here'?

He wondered where he was, but there was no way that he could tell. He didn't know why he was here, which was perhaps the most important question of them all.

However, suddenly he felt a bone-chilling voice whisper to him in an omnidirectional manner; he couldn't discern where it came from. It sounded mangled and evil, like the sound of a creature that should have never walked the earth. It made him fearful, but he somehow quashed his nerves, awaiting further direction from the voice. There was no doubt that he was confused, although if he panicked, he would end up missing further instruction from the voice, and then he would remain ignorant. It was a damn cycle ignited and finishing with fear.

And he didn't like that.

Therefore, he waited and listened. Moments later it sounded again, a long and mournful cry into the night and the dark spaces that filled between. The longer the voice sounded on for, the greater clarity its tone gained; he could discern words from the lament.

"You didn't do anything to save me," the voice pleaded. It was neither angry nor upset, but lonely.

Shivers were sent along his spine – his body was responding to him again – and his limbs shivered like the sharp points of throwing stars. Pins and needles. As he gradually regained sensation in his limbs, the voice spoke again, and this time it gained direction. Behind him.

Edward turned his head rapidly to stare at a hazy figure emerging from a lighter part of the void, like mountaintops becoming visible through the clouds, a valley visible through the mist. He swore under his breath and felt his pulse begin to rise. What was damn happening?

Each time the voice sounded, it became more and more melancholic.

"I'm sad, so sad," the owner of the voice wandered over to him. The man was short, with glasses drooping down the bridge of his nose. He wore military uniform, the image of a young, naïve solider who had yet to witness the cruel reality of this world. His face wore a different expression however: he had the expression of a highly-decorated war veteran. One who was no stranger to fear and blood and agony.

Images flashed through Edward's mind, and he remembered the white and glass and gunshots…he screamed, and remembering seeing pure fear reflecting from those dark eyes. Kain Fuery, a phantom, now walked his living nightmares.

"I'm sorry, so sorry," Edward repeated in the same tone as Fuery. He was so sorry; he could never be again. He had sworn to protect the lives of those around him, and as a result, he had adopted the motive not to kill. And now he had killed someone, and not only a stranger, but a dear friend whom who had trusted with his life. Edward hadn't shared all of his secrets with the young sergeant, and Fuery hadn't pried; they had established this bond based on their ability to share what they wanted and when they wanted.

Edward nearly smiled as he thought wistfully about the present he had given to Fuery that one time – it had been a gadget of course. There would have been nothing else that the alchemist would have thought to give to the technician. Fuery valued little trinkets highly; he would have treasured any gift that he was given that was one forged with kindness. However, it was the technical wonders of this world that especially sparked his interest, and Edward knew he wasn't the only one in the team who wanted to watch Fuery's face light up with inquisitiveness.

It was the same expression he loved to see on Al's face when he was younger, and one of the expressions Edward had imagined Al wearing once he had got his original body back. Both people deserved infinite happiness.

And looked what he had given them.

He had deafened his brother and killed his friend…

The ghost of Fuery approached Ed. He looked strained, the expression of one in deep pain. He was completely grey. His stature, his body, his whole aura was shrouded by grey, as if it composed part of his being, such as the molecules that had held his body together. Edward shivered, looking down at his own body, which was a ghostly white in pallor, but still he was alive.

That word remained etched in his brain like a firework. He was alive. However, Fuery wasn't. Everything had an opposite, if one called for it. In a chemical reaction, the same principle applied; there were the reactants and then there were the product. As there was life, there was death. It was the cycle of the world that he had accepted when he had become an alchemist. One is All, All is One. However, to come face to face with it again….after Mum…

It was heart-breaking.

In his life, Edward had two wishes: to keep them safe and make sure that he didn't make them cry. He wanted to see them all smile. And even though life wasn't all sunshine which was how he had perceived it as a child in Resembool.

When he wanted to bring his mother back, he had thought the world could return to a state of perfection, back to the days when he had been young and free. The biggest worry he had was whether Al would beat him in a race up the hill to his house. There was no house; there was no life.

He had moved away from that. As a promise of self-assurance, he had told himself that he was moving forward, ever forward. But he had tried to move away from his grief, and now it was coming back to haunt him. Fuery didn't deserve to be forgotten.

He couldn't ever forget but every time he dreamed he forgot for a moment. He just wanted a peaceful night's sleep, but it would always end in him remembering. It always ended him in having a nightmare. No more. He couldn't…

"You killed me," Fuery said, taking gentle steps towards the older Elric brother.

"I know, and it's my fault. I'm so sorry," Edward crouched even lower in a subordinating manner. He was trying to lower himself even further, imagining he would just turn into the dirt that he was.

"Not just yours…Alphonse didn't do anything either when I was with him," Fuery replied, and he took the glasses down from the bridge of his nose, and Edward wined when he saw that the glasses were cracked. They then burst into shards of glass a moment later. And then Edward saw the blood begin to dribble from the Sergeant's forehead, little drops at first, which quickly turned into a steady stream of red liquid.

"You both killed me," that was another voice. He turned around, and there was the decaying corpse of his "mother". Except this wasn't the body that the Elric brothers had transmuted, but the body of their actually dead mother, grotty bones and all. Edward tried not to heave, but the tears were already tearing up. He tried to crawl backwards, but the ground was beginning to swallow him up.

"Die. Die. Die," that was their mantra that was repeating in his head. He could hear their voices reverberate everywhere. He tried to hold onto the strings of sanity that were the only things that kept him from falling a thousand depths into the Hell he deserved to rot in. He was lower than a corpse.

What was making him bloody hold on? Protecting his brother. Protecting all of them.

The two wishes rang clearly in his head once again:

Keep them safe.

Don't make them cry.

He could hear his gentle brother's voice screech as his newly-found body and mind were broken inside out.

He could see the tears streaming down Fuery's face as he was killed.

He couldn't fulfil those promises. He had tried…he had tried so damn hard…

Keep fighting. Please. Some part of his head screamed to him. Begged him to fight for a little bit longer.

Edward didn't want his brother to see him. He couldn't protect Al. Al didn't deserve him…he didn't deserve this it that he had become.

He could feel himself let go…and he fell, as if consumed by the gaping maw of a giant serpent.

Roy found Maes in one of the guest bedrooms of the Armstrong mansion, sitting on the bedside of a dreaming Alphonse. The boy seemed at peace and oblivious to the anxiety and pain that was surrounding him in the world. Roy watched for several moments as Maes muttered quietly to the boy; he never stopped talking, and Roy knew exactly what Hughes was doing: telling Alphonse the truth. Even if he was unconscious, the words would be spoken. It was the least that he owed them. Maes made it his principle not to lie to Elicia; he wanted to protect her from the monstrosities (burn Kimblee scream) that life in the military had made protocol. However, if she asked a question, he would answer her fully. That trust was what made the two very close as father and daughter. And whenever Elicia was struck down by the flu, he would remain by her bedside all night even if he had an early shift the next day; he didn't think about doing what he did, but he just did it. His actions spoke for him louder than words. It was just that Maes could do the whole emotion thing, while Roy was oblivious to it as a lamb was for slaughter.

He shook the morbid image from his head and instead focused on the steady breaths of Alphonse. He was resting in a king size bed, his shaggy cropped hair hiding one of his eyes. Overall, he looked terrible, but at peace. This was the end of his torture. And then Roy widened his gaze to look at the items that were standing in his peripheral vision. There was a lampshade and bedside table at either side of Alphonse's bed, a grand mahogany wardrobe, and large sweeping windows that faced the pastures and rising sun, where Al would wake up to seeing the dawn and sheep and new life. Roy hoped that while the boys recovered, this would be enough. He didn't want to move them again; that would cause certain trauma upon the two of them. Whenever they were moved in their prison, they would have known that torture was imminent.

He didn't want them to have to worry about that now.

But Alphonse didn't look like he was being plagued by nightmares, which was a good thing. However…he thought to Edward in the room opposite (this house had functioned as a military hospital and as a result the bedrooms were arranged like a hospital ward was: regular and consistent). The boy had not woken up from when he had collapsed. He had only lost a tiny fraction of blood, but in his condition, any amount was dangerous. Roy hadn't understood how critical Edward's condition had been until they had arrived at the Armstrong mansion.

Apparently, the skills and talents that had been passed down the Armstrong line for millennia…generations… (Roy didn't want to admit that he never listened to the exact wording of the Major) was not lacking. There were even members of the great family that practiced in the medicinal field, and that the members of the family in Turinene were the family doctors. How prestigious, Roy allowed the quick thought.

Roy remembered that the head of this house was a woman, the matriarch, some aunt of Alex's…but he couldn't discern the correct name out of all the ones that Alex had proclaimed over the years. There were too many that he had to keep track of. However, he had been surprised when he had been greeted by a young woman. She had dark blonde hair, the colour of honey, and she smelt of lavender. She wore scrubs (very unlike what he was expecting from an Armstrong, but then he thought of Madame Christmas and how untypical she was for a Mustang) and she had looked at his face for a second, before removing Edward from his grasp, and she had hurried ahead into her mansion through a set of double doors and had not looked back. Numerous members of staff to the Armstrong lady had followed her quickly.

A maid had rushed up to her and apologised for her lady's absence, but she had proceeded to surgery with the young Elric. A certain Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes had arrived an hour prior and warned the mistress' daughter of the situation. According to the maid, Alphonse had been sleeping peacefully, and while he had wounds that needed attending to, they were not urgent; she would rather let him get some peaceful sleep to help prepare his body for surgery. However, Edward was in a critical condition. The infection had spread to his blood system, and he was suffering from septicaemia, also known as sepsis. Blood poisoning. Considering the gigantic size of his infection site, and the number of open wounds that the older Elric brother had dotted across his body like stars to the sky, it was no surprise. Roy was glad they had not delayed any further; had they brought Edward to Viola Cadence Armstrong's care a day later, she might not have been able to save him.

She was a surgeon that specialised in immunology and foreign infections; if anybody could save him, Roy knew that she would be the person. At the times when his subordinates needed him the most, and he was the most useless. What could he have done except ensure everyone else was alright and that their tracks had not been followed (Hawkeye had tended to that). He had paced the halls of the building, taking in nothing, until a weary Viola Armstrong had emerged from her theatre and proclaimed that the boy would live after three blood transfusions. And he was to be kept in a light comatose state for the next day in order to allow his body to heal, so that when Edward regained consciousness, he would not be in sharp pain. He hoped that the boy would be able to recover; physically the shrimp would be able to make a full recovery, Roy was sure of that. The boy had survived having two limbs ripped from his body and through the horrific automail procedures which left grown men rolling on the floor in agony. He had completed his recovery three times faster than was the recommended recovery period for one reason: the alchemist was reckless. Too damn flamboyant.

It was the mental side that Roy was fearful about; the boy had been tortured and broken in ways he had not thought possible. He had not believed anything to be worse than Ishval, although the world was always full of surprises, and not all of those were nice ones. A cruel place indeed.

"The small one will live, Mr Flame Alchemist, Sir," Viola had exclaimed mockingly; Roy knew he was dealing with a more of the Olivier Armstrong sort than she was the Major and the rest of his family. Viola wanted no nonsense, and she demanded respect and absolute loyalty from her team. Roy wanted the same but his means of achieving this were a little less…violent.

She boasted the prominent Armstrong curl with dark marine eyes and wore surgeon scrubs which were coloured a deep forest green. She didn't look…extravagant. And she had a tired but hopeful expression etched onto her face. While she had the status of one who would expect absolute authority, she hoped for a better outcome. Major General Armstrong always predicted the worst; Roy would have to find out about this doctor. At least he had figured something out from the day of chaos: Viola Cadence Armstrong was not a person of many words either.

"Thank you, ma'am, and for your hospitality as well," Roy nodded his head politely and surveyed the building with his gaze. The Armstrong woman inclined her head once in response, before removing her rubber gloves, and proceeded to her right where the ground floor guest bedrooms were. Roy learnt quickly that the building retained its old structure, which was that of a military hospital. Havoc, who was too nervous to smoke and flirt, was jittering by his side. On a good day, Roy would have been tempted to stand on his foot to regain the Second Lieutenant's attention. However, the day had been heavy and grave. He inched closer to stand next to his subordinate.

Maes would have been with Alphonse, but he had been reluctant to see his best friend in fear that he would be leaving Edward on his own. What a pathetic thought that was. The runt could take care of himself, and he was unconscious, and he was under the care of a brilliant surgeon and her team. Even if he didn't trust these people, Havoc would be there to supervise all that was occurring. Edward had travelled throughout Amestris on his own without telling anyone apart from his brother.

It was Roy who needed to reassess his thoughts. But for now, he let idle daydreams float around in his mind; he was too weary to think about much else. He shuddered and released a sigh of relief, which came out as more of a gasp, since they had rescued the Elrics.

The Elric brothers were safe and in one place, which was a surprise. Suddenly, Roy remembered his internal system he had: a mental tracking system of his team. It was so he could easily keep tabs on their status and positions when in the field of combat, or out on a mission, especially one of this importance. He usually remained trapped behind his desk in his office, glum and glued to his paperwork, but because he was on this mission, and so much had already occurred in the past six weeks, he hadn't been keeping his tabs religiously. He had decided that he would make amends to that:

Havoc – main entrance, Armstrong mansion. Shaken, but safe.

Hughes – ground hospital ward, Armstrong mansion. Safe.

Alphonse – ground hospital ward, Armstrong mansion. Unconscious, but safe.

Fullmetal – theatre, Armstrong mansion. Unconscious, broken, but hopefully safe.

Hawkeye – scouting for me, outskirts of Turinene. Inconspicuous, so safe.

Fuery -

He had forgotten about Fuery. He had questioned Havoc on the matter, but Havoc proclaimed he had not seen Fuery since he had been taken down the tunnels. He had been seriously injured; he wouldn't have been able to fend for himself…

What kind of superior officer was he moping in his self-pity when outside others needed his help?

He had run to search for Maes; Edward would be cared for. However, as he started sprinting, Roy nearly repulsed visibly at the dissonance the two words Edward and care sounded together. However, the alchemist wasn't a god, he was a human, and people often forgot that. It was a fact that needed to be taken into account, especially a situation as this one…

…Standing back with Maes, Roy averted his gaze from the sleeping Alphonse and the window facing the sunrise, and he probed the man with his query.

"Hughes, do you know where the Sergeant is?" Hughes jumped from his reverie, but automatically relaxed when he recognised who was standing behind him; Hughes had done this too many times to Roy.

"No, Roy, why, where is he?" Maes started looking over his shoulder, as if he expected Fuery to appear.

"I don't know, dammit!" Roy paced and was about to slap his fist against the window, but refrained at the last moment when he remembered to be considerate for Al.

And next door, Roy could hear the groaning of Edward. Even though he had been kept under the influence of anaesthetic, these didn't prevent him from having nightmares. He must have been having a particularly vicious one; Roy felt himself shrink as he became more helpless…

"Go then, you bastard, don't wait around and sulk," Maes scorned and he started pushing Roy from the bedroom.

"What about-,"

Maes looked at him earnestly, and with a flicker of understanding in his green-flecked eyes, he said, "I'll look after them."

Roy didn't turn around to reply: he had to find Fuery. He would not return without all of his team intact, and perhaps he could finally live up to his role of a Colonel.

Keep damn moving…

What a shame that mission had been a failure…

It had wasted her precious time. And she did not have the years to spend on fruitless endeavours as the rest of her siblings did.

Lust the Lascivious One filed her deadly spears, lifting them in the dim lighting, grinning and allowing them to retract to resume the length of regular nails. She had been waiting for her escort for the past three hours, and the Homunculus was greatly fatigued with staring at the bland human décor – so blasé and spiritless, even if it was the house belonging to the escort. He knew of her limited patience; he should hasten or she would be more displeased than she was now.

The fireplace was roaring, despite it being the height of summer. The heat was similar to a tickling sensation on her bare skin, but she didn't feel it acutely as humans did. It was an ugly ashen colour made from year old brick. And the room was damp, reeking of mildew; it would not be long before it started dripping from the walls, which were coloured a dull cream with patches of white wallpaper, covering up the circles of alchemic experiments the user had been dabbling into.

He was not particularly discrete, which could lead itself to becoming an…issue. Without a moment's hesitation, she lazily allowed her claws to extend, like a sword from its sheath. She barely lifted her wrists, and with her centuries of practice, cut elegant lines through the strips of wallpaper and hence destroyed the evidence of alchemic experiments. Having the MPs find these potential marks of evidence would be a pain. Wrath and Pride would have been able to resolve the situation, but if she could avoid the nuisance, then Lust would take that option.

The man lived in cramped accommodation. It was a two-storey building, although there were only two bedrooms, one bathroom and a combined living space and kitchen, with a table crammed between the two. That was where she was sitting now. However, Lust grinned when she saw the oddly clean carpet scattered on the ground; it lacked the layer of dust other objects in the house possessed. It was a carpet that was clearly moved often. She didn't have to slice a part of the carpet away with her claws to know that a secret basement rested below, leading to an underground alchemic research laboratory. Every alchemist she an acquaintance to seemed to have one these days, as if they were the latest fashion trend.

Humans. Mortal creatures with high ambitions and miserably short lifespans.

She would never understand Envy's obsession with them. Her sibling would whine and complain from dawn until dusk unless she demanded that he be useful and cease to sulk around. He had wasted weeks mulling over a human that he was not permitted to kill. However, she remained in the mind-set that humans were the lower lifeforms, and hers to control. The Homunculi had been tailored to be the new race of sentient beings in Amestris, while humans would be reduced to ash. She grinned wickedly – that inevitable fate would not be brought about by the Homunculi pulling strings from the shadows (humans were not only mindless pawns, but also puppets waiting to be commanded), but through their own undoing. The wars they constantly fought and the screams of insects dying were like a whispering song to her ears. She tucked her hair behind them, imagining she could that song.

Lust yearned for their reign of the land to be over while she lurked below the ground, watching and waiting for the parasites to rot and eventually die. She sighed wearily – why did she have to have been born to be so impatient?

She did not overtly disguise her impatience; her fingernails were drumming against the table and her feet tapped on the floorboards.

When she finally heard the footsteps of someone approaching up the path to the house, she grinned lavishly, pushing herself out of the uncomfortable chair and decided to perch on the edge of the table. She stared at the ground, looking for insects to squash.

There was a fumble of metal and then a click. Before the stranger could blink, Lust was onto them. She pierced their brain with her spears and they were dead before they had dropped to the ground. In the process, her spears closed the door on its hinges. Her escort had warned her about the cleaner he had hired who was the only other person to have keys to the house, due to her employer's mysterious work schedule. She was paid well, so she kept silent and cleaned the house twice a week, blood and all.

And now she was staring up at Lust with a tired and blank expression. Her body hadn't even had the time to register shock or fear or horror, such conceited human emotions. She shook the various fluids that had collected on her hands, and pulled out a brush from her back pocket, which she routinely to clean underneath the nails. She had an image to preserve.

"Finally, you've come," she muttered when the door opened again. A second figure had emerged, not walking down his garden path however. If one looked closely at his vegetable patch in the front garden, they would realize that he never picked the food sources, and the patch itself never seemed to…change. It served as the entrance to the system of underground networks that spread from Liore, a worthless desert town to Turinene, another broken-down human nest. This man both operated the tunnels and kept their secret. Nobody from the outside world knew of their existence, except for his experiments and the few he trusted to be guards.

He kept the secrets of the Homunculi (the scant few that he knew) and in exchange they had left him to writhe in his conceited jealousy and loneliness.

Einar Kimblee. He was the younger brother to Solf J. Kimblee, locked up in Central City. That one had made quite a name for himself, and he revelled in his destruction, the ability to eradicate all that were weaker than the alchemist. Einar however yearned to use alchemy, but he couldn't dabble into the science not matter how hard he tried. That was his greatest wish and intention, despite the power he could harness if only he showed great enough interest beyond his own self-inflated ego. The man was ironically a doctor, systematic and apathetic.

But he wasn't interested in interfering, so he was the perfect resource for Lust to use.

He stumbled into the living room and the corpse of his cleaner for however many years didn't faze him. He hunched over his sink and without bothering to fetch a glass of water, he drank freely form the tap and coughed and spluttered. Kimblee wiped his hand over his mouth and dropped to the ground, his grip on the glass releasing; it shattered into a thousand pieces next to him. Some slit his skin, and blood dribbled out.

Lust raised an eyebrow warily – this strange, abnormal behaviour was very out of character for the methodical man she had met on several occasions. And then he started laughing manically. His chest heaved and his eyes were laced with tears. He then used his blood to etch a circle into the ground; Lust believed he was fantasizing about different realities again, one where he could perform alchemy. However, when she heard the crackle of a transmutation occurring and felt the air pressure shifting, she had stopped preening her beautiful, deadly spears. She watched the man rise from the earth, holding a fully fixed glass in his hands. He had performed alchemy in several seconds, when he had attempted to learn the art for over ten years. The effort was neither strained nor forced, but surprisingly natural.

It was a feat she had not expected humankind to be able to perform; however, once again a human had proved her wrong. She rarely made a misjudgement in character. Humans were all the same, although this one was different as he was intriguing.

"I am impressed," she said simply, for that was all the praise the man was going to receive from her. Lust watched as Kimblee lifted himself off the ground, as nimble as a cat, and she reckoned his alchemic power stored was immense; most budding alchemists struggled to perform simple transmutations for years after they first began to dabble into the practice. Einar was tireless however.

He shook off the dirt from his trousers and hurried to a wardrobe, pulling out numerous instruments which included chalk, bullets, and ammunition. Lust nodded approvingly.

"I am prepared for phase III," Einar said confidently, and with the items laden in hand, disguised in his jacket, he proceeded out of the front door, completely ignoring the cleaning lady who was dead on the floor in his house. Lust would have to call Envy in to disguise as the lady so that the neighbours did not suspect about her passing. The cleaner decided to retire young and proceeded to move to another country. It was good for the Homunculus that simple people believed simple stories that she fabricated in her head.

Lust was itching to move down into the basement. She would finally be getting her prize. The one that Father had been interested in a long while, ever since Wrath mentioned it to her. While the Fullmetal Alchemist was by no doubts a talented alchemist, it did not take very much to break him; injure his brother and that would be the end of the boy. However, there was another who possessed a moral drive that Lust needed among her connections to utilise in the future. The Flame Alchemist, Roy Mustang.

"Is he contained?" she asked quietly as she slipped out of the house and into the secret, hatched door, remembering to close the door quickly and firmly so as to disguise the trace of body. The gloom did not affect her; she could see perfectly well in the dark as she could in the light. Gluttony struggled – his dominant senses were smell and taste, which was no surprise. It was the way her sibling had been created. But Lust had been born to be extravagant, and she had to have the ability to blend into the shadows if she was to get what she desired, and that didn't have to be anything sexual. She thirsted for knowledge, of answers to secrets, of keys to padlocks. And she would do whatever it took to get there, even if she had to watch and wait like a hawk.

"No. As you suggested, I secluded one of his team members. I silenced him and that broke the Fullmetal Alchemist for good," Einar chuckled.

"Excellent. Those boys will not interfere," Lust trilled happily, examining the dull damp tunnels that she was strutting along.

"They suffered from some side effects I instilled…"

"They can still perform alchemy?" Lust asked sharply, her eyes narrowing momentarily to slits, her body tensing up, making her garments itch against her skin.

"One blinded and one deafened," Einar recited as though from a textbook, and Lust visibly relaxed. She would not have to kill Einar immediately as she had assumed. She needed those boys alive and as alchemists if Father was to be satisfied.

"Did you work alone?" Lust joked, knowing that would have been impossible. But her question was answered as she walked further along the path. She saw a pile of bodies stacked up of guards, pristinely laid out in front of her – there were approximately two dozen. These had been the men that Kimblee had enlisted to the safeguarding of his facility below the town of Turinene. Here he had been performing on test subjects with a strange contraption harnessing alchemic voltage that could be amplified and transferred into another person with the correct methodology. Lust did not know the in-depth mechanisms, but she liked to understand the principle. The more ignorant she was, the more likely she could be toyed with, and that was one of her greatest hates in the world. The system operated without the Philosopher's Stone, which was a considerably impressive feat in itself. Nevertheless, both systems relied upon human lives, one for energy, and the other for alchemic energy transference.

"They were convicts and low-class criminals. Nobody will miss them," Einar walked past the bodies without pausing or stopping for a sideways glance. He quickened his pace, but she took her time; humans were running out of time, but she would always have all the time in the world.

She smiled.

Sorry for the wait - I've had no WiFi for a while...gosh that was strange. Anyway, I'm glad to be back! Here's an extra long chapter to apologise for the wait :)

All three POVs occur at about the same time, just for some extra info. And yes, juicy plot, at long last...