Right so this is the next chapter, not much action and it's somewhat of a history lesson but please read and tell me what you think.

... Ray if you're reading this, note that I wrote this around five in the morning after hours of research to get this right and it's based on the original anime and the ending for that matter so I think you better watch it if you going to read this!

To anyone else reading this the above comment was for a friend so ignore it if you wish to.

Thus we move on with the story...


Roy followed the young man into the comfy apartment, Edward waved him to a seat in the kitchen and got to work setting the heat on the stove and getting a tea kettle set. Roy watched all of Ed's fussing trying to hide his amusement.

"I never knew that you actually meant to make tea, Fullmetal. Since when did you drink tea?"

Edward paused in his antics and shrugged without looking at Mustang, "Just something I picked up in England I guess, would you prefer coffee?"

"You like coffee too?"

Ed could have laughed at Roy's expression, "That I got from America"

Roy screwed up his face trying to repress all the questions that were popping into his head and failing.

"Where the hell is England? And who is America?"

Edward, who was placing some milk and sugar down on the table burst out laughing, then at seeing Mustang's dubious expression he laughed harder leaning weakly on the wooden table tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

"What? What did I do this time?"

Ed chuckled, sitting down in the chair opposite of the older man shaking his head, then he stopped and looked up at Roy with an unexpectedly serious face, "Time is a funny thing, especially when crossing the gate so often."

Roy became silent, intent on listening to every detail of whatever Edward would tell him. Ed leant back in his wooden chair the words, Shit, what am I doing? crossed his mind briefly before he started his tale.

"You know what happened when I left the first time, crossing the gate into the body of someone that looked like me, trapped there by Dante, until he died… Then again when I used all of myself as a sacrifice to bring my brother back, I was in that other world. At first I had been landed in a place called London, with my father who was also banished by Dante to the other world. We stuck together for about six months, he provided me with all the knowledge I would need to survive in that place, and then he left. I had no idea where he went at the time and I didn't care much wither way, I had been working on a stupid idea of mine on getting back.

"There is no alchemy on the other side of the gate, that got to me for a bit," Edward's face contorted into a crude smile for a moment then he continued, "But it turns out that their science wasn't too far away from ours, they just weren't able to harness the power of the gates inside of them. Still I was able to dabble into that and this concept I had about taking a trip into the stars to get back, It's still unknown territory and the people of that world were working on getting there. That's where I met Alfons Heiderich that worlds equivalent to my brother, we lived together in Munich a city in a country called Germany. We lived next to a flower shop run by Gracia…" Ed's voice trailed off.

Roy's eye's widened at what Ed was saying, he was living in a world completely different from his own, with everyone he knew around him, yet he was completely alone. Roy couldn't fathom what kind of pain it must have been for Edward to live that way.

Edward cleared his throat, "I helped mostly in creating the correct chemical compounds and amount of substance for the space program, heh, same shit different day (*) for a while. Then I met Rose, well Noah, a nomad with some ability to see into people's minds."

Ed saw Mustang's doubtful look and shook his head, "Stop there I know what your thinking, and so did I, but that shit was real. I helped her get away from some thugs and she came home with us. After that the events went very quickly, I ran around like the impulsive idiot I am, and as usual got lucky and wasn't killed in the process finding out that once again the destruction of the world was centered around me again.

"I was pulled like a puppet into opening a gate once. I found envy and I found that the person with the former Fuhrer's face to be a rather enjoyable tea partner and a decent co-pilot. And I was strapped into a small aircraft carrier set to Amstris, you know what happened from we arrived back-" Ed was cut off by the loud steady whistle of his tea kettle and Roy let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

He watched as Edward nonchalantly made the tea, Roy had no idea… just no idea of anything. What prompted Ed to tell him all this, and why him before even his brother?

Edward set two tea cups on the table and poured the tea with what Mustang would like to call grace, "You never told me if you would prefer coffee, it's simple Earl Grey tea nothing special, I wasn't sure what kind you liked."

"No this is good. I don't usually drink tea anyway, I wouldn't know what I would like or dislike."

"Yeah, Yeah, so you said" Ed blinked and sat down, "sorry."

"Um," Mustang had never had tea with Ed before, therefore could never have said that, "Ed-"

"After we arrived back," The blond interrupted, "Dad was dead and Alfons was dead, we staid long enough for the funerals and set out to get rid of a mercury bomb, that was one of the missions you sent me on before with Huskisson that scientist, remember? Well anyway, along the road, Noah fell in love with a guy that looked like Russell. They left for France while Alphonse and I went to take care of the bomb. Sooner or later we got there, and we got the bomb but getting rid of the damn thing was a bitch."

Ed paused his shoulders slumped a little as Roy watched him intently.

Alphonse was out getting supplies when it all went to shit. I had an idea about how to use alchemy on the other side of the gate, I had done it before without knowing it. I was going to try and take the bomb apart like that."

"Wait," Mustang was shaking his head, confused "I thought you said you weren't able to do alchemy on the other side of the gate?"

"I wasn't."

"Then how could you?"

"I was about to get to that." Ed snapped, "With a transmutation circle and some of my blood, I accidentally opened the gate on this side once, then my father sacrificed himself and his blood opened the permanent one. So as long as we shed blood over it the gates inside of us were able connect with the transmutation circle and circulate the energy to activate it."

Ed took a long gulp of his tea, "Now shut up and let me finish, ask questions when I'm done."

Edward glared at him as though to dare him to argue, Mustang thought it safe to stay silent and sure enough Ed settled down and continued.

"It worked but it also failed. The transmutation was a success but for some eff-ed up reason I was pulled and pushed around in the gate and spat out again around ten years later. In the same world, in the same friggen house but Alphonse wasn't there. After some searching, I found out that he was caught up in that worlds new war. He was taken in by a German cult that had taken over the government and killed." Ed's eye's darkened as he went on, "It was safe to say, I was fucking pissed. I went into Germany and blew up one of the cult's, they called themselves Nazi's, secret headquarters.

"Then some secret division of English soldiers saw what I did and recruited me into their little party. I was all to glad to help, my life for a while was your basic living hell. They were able to use my talents to the fullest, when I wasn't fighting, I was stealing secrets from the enemy, when I wasn't doing that, I was helping their scientists with whatever shit they threw at me.

"Then I was sent on a mission to deliver some very important shit personally to America, a country about six thousand kilometers over an ocean. Oh yeah, America was kind of the big back bone for our side of the war, I'm pretty sure that it's thanks to them that fucker is dead….

"I was transferred there to join another under the radar division of people from both of the countries after I gave them the research we had for some weapons. It was in that league that I met," Ed hesitated for a moment, "Jones"

"He helped me, I guess, I was getting to serious and shit and he helped me calm down and stop focusing on Alphonse being dead, and in turn when he got too depressed about the killing, I helped him out of thinking of stupid thoughts like suicide, but hell in that war no one would have blamed him. It was a shit-hole"

Roy's mind wandered to his exploits in Ishbal and shuddered. He had never wanted Ed to go through anything like that, never. But suddenly golden, blazing eyes fixed themselves onto his.

"The Nazi's had a leader, his name was Adolf Hitler, and that fucker was more screwed in the head than anyone I've ever met or wanted to meet. He ordered for millions of people to be captured and killed, like in Ishbal, but it was a messed up variant of that. If you were a certain religion you were collected, if you were a gypsy or nomad like Noah, you were gone, if you didn't follow the strict beliefs of the Nazis you were sorted and shuffled like cards into places to die, to be tortured and to be experimented on. Men, women, children, it didn't make a difference, or it did in the sickest of ways. Jones and I both saw this. We saved some when our armies reached them, but there were bodies frozen together along pathways and-"

Ed stopped taking a shuddering breath the ghost of the events played behind his eyes "There was a lot. A select group of us were given a mission, to find Hitler and kill him, Jones was there as well, we had information that he was hauled up in a bunker under the German capital called Berlin. I had been there before, when I was working with Alfons on the rockets. We infiltrated the area and shot down anyone that shot at us, but we eventually found the bunker… I was checking the perimeter when the bomb went off, the door to the bunker was rigged with one and it blew away my team…."

Ed glared at the now cold tea in his cup as a solitary tear fell into the dark liquid.

"Jones died in my arms, he was the only one to survive the fucking blast, and he died soon after, and I couldn't do a thing." Ed cleared his throat and Roy was startled to feel his own eyes watering up.

"He was dead," Ed's voice broke a bit but he carried on, "Hitler had committed suicide with his whore. But the most fucked up thing was what I found with him"

Ed stood up and left down the hall to his room, Roy heard fait shuffling and then Ed came back with something wrapped in cloth in his hand. Ed pulled on a drawstring and dumped a perfectly round red gem onto the table, it was about the size of a baseball and it gleamed in the kitchen light.

"Is that-" Mustang couldn't finish, everything Edward had related to him had been so horrible it was hard for him to find words, but Ed nodded.

"A complete and stable philosopher's stone. It's just a rock now but at the time I touched it, I could feel every soul inside. It reacted to my touch and I was thrown back to the gate. And it took from me my time, believe it or not I had grown and had quite a few scars after I found out about Alphonse's death, but then there I was back in that damned house, where I had played with Huskisson's bomb, but it wasn't there and I still had that." Ed gestured to the red stone on the table. "Alphonse walked through the door with a bag of groceries and I grabbed him, I did have to spend a while with the knowledge he was dead. The stone made contact with Al and it reacted, again. Then we were back here, or well we didn't know that at the time until someone found us, but the the philosopher's stone was dead by then."

Ed leant back in his chair, he kept eye contact with Mustang, "So?"

"Huh?"

"Now that you know, what now?" Ed raised an eyebrow at Mustang, and he took that moment to collect himself.

"Well, Fullmetal," He said, back in his superior officer mode, "This will be kept in strict confidence between us, until you see it fit to report this to anyone else." Then in a softer tone he added, "I won't tell anyone."

Ed shrugged running a hand through his hair and scratched the back of his head, "I don't even know why I told you. I was just being impulsive…again. Oh yeah, uranium and plutonium were some new elements the scientists in the other world were testing for bomb substance, they are actually very dangerous to experiment with so I wouldn't recommend it."

The young alchemist took the still half full cups of cold tea and washed them out in the sink. After a small internal struggle within himself Mustang stood and walked slowly and deliberately next to the blond placing a hand on the man's shoulder, "It's okay to be impulsive, Ed." Ed stopped and looked up at him, Mustang allowed himself a small smirk, "Just make sure to have someone else there who's able to get you out of trouble."

Then Roy Mustang's heart leapt as Ed smiled, then laughed, and he laughed too as Ed pushed him away playfully with a soapy hand. "Shut up." Ed said through his laughter. Mustang took the moment to marvel at this person's strength, and brilliance. Edward had been through terror but he still had the strength to get up in the morning, he had seen death, destruction, and decay and was still able to laugh, Ed went through multiple hells of the worst sort and was able to come out of it with the ability to smile. No one, ever, would be able to amount to the person Edward Elric was and it was this brilliant, wounded, broken, and wonderful person that Roy loved.


*Anyone ever watched Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher"? It's a good movie and that line "Same shit different day" or "SSDD" is a reoccurring line in the movie.

I did as much research as I could into the matter of all of the things historic but my imagination had to overlap it so some of it is a little morphed for the sake of telling the story. Truth is the people who made the anime screwed up their dates too, Ed arrived on the other side of the gate when zeppelin's were still bombing and that would be World War I it would be more than two years later for the beer hall putsch of 1923 to happen. So I decided to play with time too. Don't be too angry please!

Oh and we'll learn a lot more about the "Jones" in the next chapter. So please wait for that.