Ed had barely grown used to his new life. He could just about look at his mother without seeing the shrivelled face of a monster, just about look at Winry without feeling the ghost of the barely-there weight of earings in his pocket, and he still couldn't (and probably never would) look at Al without seeing bright eyes dimming into nothing.
But he coped well enough. More often than not, his nightmares were quiet, and Hohenheim's study always had a light burning in the lonely hours of the early morning. It was almost peaceful, Hohenheim hunched over a worn desk, and Ed curled up in a blanket, sitting quietly in a corner with a book.
Hohenheim rarely left. Only the occasional short trip to pick up more books from a nearby town. He never said what they were, and no one ever asked.
(In a way, maybe they could all tell that the peace was fragile in some way, because it was so clearly very precious to Hohenheim.)
Ed had started going to the small school in the village. It was tiny, underfunded and understaffed. Needless to say, he hated every single second of it.
Worst of all was seeing Winry again. Trisha had introduced them the day before they'd both head off to school. It had been a nice day, so Trisha and Sarah Rockbell had decided to drag them to a field of brightly coloured flowers.
It was almost funny, that he couldn't remember the first time he'd met Winry. She'd just always been there. Always and always, from the beginning until the end, when she'd watched him leave for the final battle. He'd promised to come back. He'd promised to return her earings. He'd promised never to make her cry.
He knew he'd never be able to keep the first two promises, but maybe he'd have a chance with the last one. He'd be better this time. He'd be the reason she smiled instead of cried.
But she was so small, and so young as she hid behind her mother in a field of blooming flowers and surrounded by sunlight.
Her hair was still short. He wasn't sure why, but it felt like a slap to the face. She'd always been proud of her hair, maybe not as much as her automail, but it was certainly something he could remember clearly. A smug smile and a high ponytail swinging with every step, the underlying smell of oil. That was his Winry.
Even clearer than the thought of cheerful, confident Winry, was the memory of her young face stained with tears as she waited for her parents to come home and later, the memory of her older face robbed of it's usual smile, but marred with grief and a gun trembling in her grip.
So with that, Ed decided that he was going to make sure Winry never needed to cry again. Because if anyone deserved a happy ending, it was her and Al. The people who'd picked up Icarus and taught him how to walk instead of fly.
He made sure to be friendly. Confident, happy, open. (He hadn't told her enough last time. He had tried to keep her safe, and in the end, it only hurt her more.) Clearly something worked, because they ended up sitting in the field, and made flower crowns out the bright colours while their parents talked in quiet voices.
It was peaceful. Just having time to relax in a field that wouldn't become torn up or bloodied by a battle. It was odd to have to make something, when for so long he had just needed to clap, and he was clumsy and slow. Winry, though, had always been good at building things, so she had a small pile of flower crowns while he had a mess of petals and delicate stems.
"I'm awful." He muttered sourly, glaring at the unyielding stems. "You'll have to teach me."
Winry's resulting beam was worth it.
And Winry had always been kind, had always been patient. That hadn't- and likely never would have, regardless of what happened- changed. She had always been good at building things, she'd never needed alchemy. All she'd needed was her own hands and something to work with.
"I'm proud of you," His mother said later as they walked away, hand in hand. "look at you, growing up and making friends!"
The flower crown was almost weightless, and it sometimes slipped down to cover his eyes, but it had made him completely forget about the phantom weight of earings he'd never return, and it made him think that his Winry wasn't too far away after all.
She'd always enjoyed making things after all.
Always and always.
Izumi Curtis took pride in her strength. Or at least, she had once.
Once, she had proved her worth by fighting tooth, claw and nail for answers. Once, she had been weak, so she'd taught herself how to fight. Once, she'd be able to look back at everything she'd suffered and know that she was stronger for it.
She'd become stronger, because she'd managed to face her demons and had, through time and tears and terror, she had defeated them. She'd managed to put it all behind her, and move forwards without it plauging her.
But her strength had abandoned her this time.
It appeared that she'd gone from one hell straight into another.
The pain wasn't even the worst of it. But her insides felt like they were on fire. Every second was met with a fresh burst of agony. With every breath, blood bubbled in her throat and she would double over with a hacking cough.
She faded in and out of consciousness, with the pain making it hard to think. Darkness wasn't quite a relief, because it'd merely blossom into memories.
"Sensei, was the life you transmuted really your child?"
She'd see the circle again, she'd see the white emptiness and the Gate, she'd see the smile and hear the slam of the doors. And at the very end, she'd see her students, the boys she'd tried to guide, try to make better than her, clap their hands and know they'd made the same mistakes.
But waking was just as bad. Because nothing made sense. When she clawed her way to consciousness, all her blurry vision could see was the hunched over form of her husband sitting at her bedside with sad, sad eyes.
When she eventually managed to maintain awareness for the first time of what felt like weeks of torture, her blood turned to ice when she realised how young her husband looked.
"Izumi," He let out a relieved sigh. "I thought I'd lost you too."
She just groaned wordlessly as she felt another coughing fit coming. The pot shoved in front of her to catch the worst of the blood was far more clumsy than usual, almost like he'd forgotten the years he'd spent helping her with her illness.
"Why did you do it?" The words were sudden, blurted out and shattering the eerie silence following her coughing fit.
Izumi froze. She knew those words. She knew them and she'd never forget them. She'd heard them a thousand times in her nightmares. Her husbands, quiet, pained question would echo through the endless white space, the wrong, withered face of what she'd transmuted would wail it.
And then her strength abandoned her, and she ended up sobbing. Because there were only so many nightmares she could take at a time.
In her memories, she'd answered him, hoarsely and ashamed. She''d failed. She'd failed, what kind of mother was she? Except she wasn't a mother, and never would be a mother, because of her mistake and the price it had cost.
In her memories, Sig had been angry and sad and grieving, because he'd lost a child and had nearly lost his wife. Everything had nearly slipped through his fingers, and he'd panicked and tried to hold on, because he felt powerless and he'd been so, so scared. So in her memories, he'd yelled, and she'd croaked back defiantly. They'd both said things they'd regretted for years afterwards.
They'd sorted it out. They'd talked , weeks bled into months and they'd talked until healing looked just a little more possible.
The memory of their argument had become smaller and less painful in the bigger picture. It was like a grain of sand in an hourglass. It'd been lost amongst a thousand other memories, and it'd passed. It'd settled at the bottom, and had been buried in gold to become a strong foundation for the path forwards.
But now, the hourglass had been flipped. Everything was rushing back and she was drowning in the remains of her strong foundations, she'd been reduced to nothing in the shards of what had once made her strong.
Everything was raw and rough and it hurt. It was like her heart was breaking again, like her insides had been ripped out again, like wounds that had scabbed and scarred were torn open and bleeding.
So in her memories, she'd answered in little more than a whisper. Like the Truth had robbed her of her voice instead of her hope and her arrogance and her insides.
But this time, she could only sob. Because she wondered if she'd died on that day, fighting the being that had snatched the power of a God from the Gate that gave answers in return for a differnt kind of everything. She wondered if she'd died and this was the price she'd have to pay.
But it couldn't be complete hell, because suddenly she was safe, wrapped in a gentle hug from her husband, the man who could and would and had walked through everything life had thrown at her by her side.
"It'll be okay, Izumi." He promised gruffly. "We'll get through this together, you'll see."
And she was broken. But she'd been broken before, and she'd worked around it before. It was a cycle of pain and trial and effort, but she knew she could get there eventually.
She knew she could walk down it, but it didn't make the path any less daunting. If, no, once the pain subsided, she'd figure out what was going on and how to deal with it.
But for now, it was enough to sob in her husband's arms, mourning for the children she'd failed so utterly.
Greed had never remembered hating so much.
He hated that he realised what his 'Father' had done so quickly. He hated that he'd been born from something so pathetic. He despised the connection that was still so very clearly there.
He had hated before, of course. But it was always the kind of hatred that simmered into rage and lurked at the back of his mind and became easier to deal with.
He hated that he'd been made with an emptiness he could never even hope to fill, he hated his Father for making him believe that he was better,because it just hurt more when he realised that it was all a lie and he'd never belong and he'd never happy no matter how much he took and how much he had.
But that hatred had settled into something cold and sharp. Something that would never go away, but it was something he could use. A double-edged sword. He could cause as much pain as he felt, perhaps.
He hated his Father, and he always would. Becaue he'd been created with an ouroboros etched into his skin. He'd worn the symbol of immortality, of overcoming the cycle like a brand. Time had taught him painful lesson after painful lesson. Immortality hadn't been kind, the years he'd lived through hadn't been a blessing, despite what he'd believed for so long.
And in the end, the truth was simple: no matter how many times the dragon ate its own tail, it'd never be full.
The ouroboros hadn't looked quite the same after that.
But for all that he tried, he couldn't hate the Xingese prince who'd taught him the very lessons that had made his life a living hell.
Sure, the brat's little speech had been interrupted by his Father's dramatic escape. But he'd had time to think about it. He'd have a lot of time to think about it, given where he was.
Time. That was funny. Like time had ever been an issue for him.
No, the problem had always been emptiness. He'd always, always wanted more than he had. Nothing was enough. The want for something better, something bigger, something more had bubbled in his blood since the day he'd first existed.
And all he'd needed was answers. Then he'd know just how to fill up the emptiness and maybe everything would be okay.
The prince had been trying to tell him something.
Maybe it was the answer he'd been looking for all along. Maybe it was more wisdom, like the ideas that had slowly changed him from the monster that had obeyed his Father without question. Maybe it was the same sort of wisdom that had made him realise that he didn't have any answers after all, and that his Father truly was pathetic.
He hoped that whatever the prince had tried to tell him was important. The kind of important that would sever the last ties between him and his Father. Because there was still a connection. They were both filled with souls instead of blood, they both lived through the ouroboros. He could still tell what his Father wanted, and what he'd do to get it, because they were still so similar.
So if the answers had been so close, he'd be sure to grasp them. Because he wanted to be someone different. Someone with all the pieces he was currently missing. And if the answer to everything really was so close, he'd figure it out for himself.
He had the time, after all.
