To the end

(A/n: Before I begin. I just want to apologize for 1. The fact it's taken me so long to get this new chapter out and 2. The shoddy quality of said chapter. The reason for the first I'll explain in my end author's notes, but for the second I say the following: If you don't want to loose some work you've spent hours on and just gotten perfect merely because STUPID WINDOWS restarts on you (All by itself. I didn't even press a button.) – save regularly. I wish I had a Mac. Then I wouldn't have these problems. Because of my inherent laziness and the fact I can't really remember the fine details of what I wrote, I'm a bit discouraged, so this chapter will probably seem a bit shoddy.)

Darkness, and a sound of feathers on feathers. A small baby wrapped in a bundle of blue cloth, its wings just barely peeking out over the edge, soft white feathers clearly visible. A few months old, if even. A large canyon, a woman with his own black hair and eyes whispering something to him as he turned away. A boy, with blond hair and shining gold eyes kissing him so very, very softly and sweetly, like someone who had never kissed before and wasn't quite sure how. Memories came disjointed to Roy as he slowly regained his consciousness. Disorientation, next. His head felt empty, drained, and unconnected to anything, a solid in a world where he was so used to there being flux. He groaned and tried to stretch out with his mind but encountered walls on all sides, no thoughts or memories of others leaking through the gaps.

The world around him was silent and smelt of nothing. It occurred to Roy that gravity wasn't working on him the same way that it had been before he'd passed out – and then that this must be because he was now lying down. Like a diver coming to the surface of a deep pool, Roy Mustang forced his eyelids open and took a great gulping breath of air. His senses came back in a world of flooding light.

Alphonse was seated over him, holding a damp cloth to his forehead, and gently wiping away any beads of sweat that formed on his brow. Roy couldn't see the boy's brother but had a vague sense that Edward was in the room with them, probably to one side and leaning against the wall, staying away from his 'commander' for as long as possible.

Very slowly, Roy tried to move his arms and winced at the stabbing pain that shot through them. His limbs all felt like lead, but by far his arms were the worst, a throbbing ache in his shoulders paralyzing them. Finding his voice, finally, he looked at the boy above him with no small degree of helplessness. "Alphonse," He said, "I want to sit up."

Alphonse jumped – he had not realized that Mustang was actually awake, but then gulped, casting a wary eye over to the other side of the room. Mustang tried, but couldn't turn his head to look due to the stress on his shoulders and sighed. "Please, Alphonse. Let me up."

Al seemed to have a brief wordless conversation with whatever he was looking at, expressions changing in a blink of an eye before finally he nodded and – very gently – placed his hands underneath Roy's back to lever the man upwards. With a grunt of effort and a slight strain on his stomach muscles, Roy was hoisted up and leant against the back of the couch that he was lying on.

There was a vending machine in the corner of the room he was situated in – along with a sink and a few mugs on the counter. The couch was large, but slightly old and lumpy, and there was a table in the centre of the room surrounded by plastic chairs. He was in some sort of common room, and a small area of destruction in the corner announced all that had remained of the security devices present. Edward was leaning against the far wall of the room, next to a small refrigerator. His wings were folded stiffly, and he was focusing everywhere he could but directly at Mustang. His bangs were ruffled, like he had constantly been running his hands through them over the past few minutes and there was something terse in the way he held himself, deliberately favoring his… wait.

His left leg?

Seeing Roy's expression upon viewing the limb, Alphonse rushed to explain. "We went to his automail supplier; they fitted him with a wooden leg for the journey."

Roy nodded, accepting that and noticed that the pain in his arms was fading more with every moment, and that there was no pain at all in his chest. Looking down, he saw a shiny white scar where the large slash across his chest used to be. Roy frowned. "What's going on, you two. Explain."

Edward shifted uncomfortably on the wall, but said nothing, seemingly preferring to stare across at the wall as if it were fascinating. Alphonse made a worried noise and looked across at his brother before shaking his head. "I can't tell you if brother doesn't want me to." Edward made no move.

"I order you to tell me!" Mustang demanded, snarling. "No one heals that fast and if the humans did something to my body I have a right to know."

"There are three things wrong with that statement." Edward said, finally looking up. His eyes were filled with a thousand shades of hurt and betrayal, anger and bitterness. Roy recoiled backwards. "One." He said, his voice toneless as he straightened up and began to limp across the hallway, "You are a traitor to the crown. I don't have to obey any order you give me. Two, I heal that fast and three, the humans didn't do it. I did."

Roy recoiled as Edward walked forward, something more in his eyes than a betrayal of the 'crown.' Lightning crackled about his feet, but it was different to the uncontrolled bolts that he had released before. It was focused somehow, centered and almost orderly. "What do you mean, 'I did'?" Mustang snapped, glaring back and noticing his shoulders were moving almost freely now.

"I did it, Mustang. That's all you need to know. Have a taste of your own medicine for once."

"There's no need to snap." Mustang said. "I just want to know how you can possibly explain to me why you're here and how you healed me. I explicitly told you not to follow me."

"And I've already told you why I don't have to answer that." Edward shot back, glowering and folding his arms across his chest. "So now you know how I felt when you ran off and did shit behind my back all those times."

"Stop being such a child!" Roy shot back. "You get left out of a few loops, it happens!"

"Yeah, and now it's happening to you!"

"ENOUGH!" Alphonse yelled, waving his arms and flailing his wings in exasperation. "I don't want to send you to separate corners, but I will if I have to! Cap…. Mustang. Sit there, be quiet and wait for whatever it was that Brother did to finish working. Meanwhile. Brother, you will sit there and explain just what is going on to the both of us."

Edward shook his head. "No I won't. I don't have to obey either of you." He bristled and turned his back so that all they could see of him was a gold braid on a mass of red cloth and feathers.

Mustang sighed and reigned in his temper. "Edward…" The young man kept his back turned. "Edward, why are you so upset at me?"

Still no answer, but the young man's shoulders shook with what looked like a suppressed sob.

"Ed… please. Tell me this; I have a right to know this at least." Anything. Anything to understand just what was going on. "Why did you come?"

"…because you told me not to." Edward said, a hitch in his voice. He turned very, very slowly, and the lightning around him faded. "You told me not to come get you when you were the one who came and got me. You were the only one who didn't give up on me." The tears were starting to trickle down Edward's face now, taking both Mustang and Alphonse aback. "You told me to give up on you! You… You… You hypocrite! How could you!" Edward flung himself at Mustang then, and by instinct, the man brought his arms up to catch him. Edward's fists beat weakly upon Mustang's chest as he spoke. "You liar! You said you'd let me come away with you! Then you left! You…You…" Edward hiccoughed and stopped hitting the man's chest. "You left me. You said you'd never leave me."

Roy was, probably for one of the first few times in his life, caught speechless. He merely wrapped his arms around Edward's shoulders and held on tight, for something told him that was all the young man really needed.

"Everyone leaves me." Edward mumbled. "Or I leave them before they can. It's always about leaving. Always."

"I won't leave you anymore. I'll be with you to the end."

Edward struggled then, and forced himself out of Roy's grip, standing back and glaring at him. "How can you say that!" He demanded angrily, pointing at him. "You've never taken me seriously, why should you start now? The only thing you've ever done is kept me in the dark, and you know what, I think I figured out why."

Mustang paused and stared at Edward, his compose breaking almost enough for his jaw to drop.

"Yeah, Mustang. I figured it out. What do you say to that, huh?"

Mustang felt his eyes narrow, and he wasn't sure he wanted to see the expression on his face. He knew it was not something that he would have liked to have put there. "Explain." He said, icily.

"I figured it out." Edward repeated, before looking over at Alphonse. "Hey, Al? What's the one thing that's really been unusual about this whole incident? Like, the whole war after I came along?"

Alphonse jumped, so did Roy – he had forgotten that the boy was there. The boy looked perplexed as he thought for a moment, then like a light dawning, he said, "Oh… The fact we didn't go home after we found you!"

Roy's expression twisted, as did his stomach. Edward couldn't have been thinking what he thought Edward was thinking, could he?

Edward nodded to Al's statement. "Exactly. Why not just… go back where the Avians came from once they had their prince? The only reasonable explanation is that Mustang knew something the rest of the ship didn't. what he knew was that they couldn't go home."

"Of course we couldn't!" Mustang snapped. "We didn't have you to take back with us."

""That doesn't explain why you didn't take the ship home after you found me." Edward replied quietly. "I don't think you were originally going to look for me at all. Something else made it impossible for you to go back, Mustang. What was it?"

Sighing and lowering his eyes, Roy admitted, "You're right. We were… lost after a magnetic storm struck the ship. No one who was around in that storm knows what happened, for the whole crew lost consciousness. When we came to, we were… Next to Earth. That's all I know. Even if I knew where we were, how would I start to know where to go back to? What direction to look and how the hell we managed to jump the light-years it took to get here in the first place?"

"And so, you invaded Mars."

"We didn't invade! We counter-attacked the first fight. We needed somewhere to LIVE, Edward. And Mars was the sensible option!"

"Yeah, that's a point. But once you realized that the humans weren't going to give up Mars without a fight, you realized something else, didn't you? That the Avians would loose."

"But we were winning!" Alphonse interjected sharply. "Every battle we won with limited casualties!"

"But there were casualties." Edward pointed out, sighing. "And the humans could afford a lot more of those than the avians could. Do the math, Al. 2000 odd avians against over 8 billion humans. Who do you think would win? Even if for every avian that fell, 100 humans died, that's still only two-hundred-thousand humans before the avians were wiped out. So, Mustang needed something. Something that meant they could ensure they gained the planet."

Edward paused here, looking at Roy with lividity. "You found it, didn't you. The key you needed."

Roy shook his head. "No. It wasn't the key." He had a strong feeling about where Edward's reasoning was going.

"Well, it was something that would provide to you a solution! You found the Gabriel reports, didn't you?!"

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Roy replied, "Yes. I did." Then, he looked Edward in the eye. "But it was in relation to my search for you. It was a mere coincidence that you and Gabriel were the same person."

"But that doesn't change the fact that you used that information!"

"No. You're wrong, Edward." Roy folded his hands in front of him, and closed his eyes. "I was going to use the information, yes. I was even going so far as to give you over to the humans to secure the planet. But… I…" Roy paused and took a deep breath. There was only one way to clear this now. "My plan changed. I thought that I could convince the Earth government to consider me an alternate to yourself."

There was a pause in which Edward drew in a sharp breath.

"But… Why?"

"Honestly I don't know. There are so many possible reasons that I can't just pick one." Mustang said, taking the moment to stand now that he felt well enough to. "They didn't take too well to the deal, obviously."

Edward nodded. "Of course they didn't." and then he looked up. "It's because I can do anything. Anything at all." Edward closed his eyes and then looked directly at Roy. "I can control the laws of physics."

Roy had to quell his horror at what that implied before he quietly said, "Edward, tell me what you've done."

A/n: Okay. So. WHY HASN'T AWWA BEEN UPDATED IN SO LONG?

Well, the answer is as follows. AWWA HAS been updated, but not in the way that meant I could post it on I'm finally going to divulge the little secret behind this fanfiction.

The secret is AWWA actually isn't a fanfiction at all. (No, this does not mean I claim I own FMA, hear me out.) The official version of AWWA that sits on my hard drive stars Lief Alexanders – Not Edward Elric. (Those of you watching my Deviantart account will have noticed a bunch of pictures propping up marked AWWA when they seem to have no relation to AWWA at all. This is why.) The fiction gets changed, truncated, played with so much that what you see here is not actually the full story. Only a branch thereof. There are many omitted scenes and little details that while not essential to the story, form a part of a greater whole. And the most important difference between the two versions is that the characters have been changed from my own original characters, to the cast of FMA. (This also means I've had to edit scenes to reflect the changed personalities of the characters.)

This original version of the fiction, not the fanfiction version, is the one I have been working on for the simple reason that there's a high probability that AWWA will get published. I've already had one publisher express an interest in obtaining the manuscript. I apologise for the long break in the fiction – however, I feel the break was necessary for separating Lief and Edward's characters in my mind. They were becoming too merged and similar, when that's not what they're like at all.

As for an experiment, this gave me a lot of thought. For me to see a project to completion, I do need a LOT of feedback, which is why I posted this fic on the net in the first place, (changing it just enough so that it couldn't be copied and stolen.) however, I don't think that I could do something like this again – for me, MY version of AWWA has been slightly spoiled by the fact that I'm now constantly drawing parallels between MY characters and the characters of FMA. While very different, I can't help but feel that they 'borrow' some of the character traits from their FMA counterparts even though all were created and fully profiled before AWWA even took on a Fullmetal twist.

As such – I will NOT post the sequel to this fanfiction on I apologize for this, but AWWA really ISN'T a fanfiction, and to turn it into such was a mistake on my part. I will have to rely on sources closer to home to get my feedback.

As for when AWWA comes out in print? (Or even if?) At this point in time I'm unsure. If you send me your email addresses, I will keep you updated on the development. It's in my experience that no one reads Author bios, and Author Note chapters aren't allowed – so posting either of these would be useless at best.

Once again, I apologize for the long delay, and thank you for your patience.

Please leave a little review? –puppyeyes and rattles tin- (Also: AWWA has a buddy map. You can access it from my profile if you wish to sign it. If anyone lurks for this fiction, they should sign it too! I want to know who all of my readers are!!)