The Long Road

Ed hesitated, his shoulders instinctively coming up, to shield him from the past perhaps. He got a far away look in his sorrowful eyes and Alexa looked away, feeling it was too private of a moment for her to watch.

"I'm sorry, I know it's been hard. You don't have to say."

"It's okay, Brother just gets very caught up. Maybe I should begin?"

Ed nodded absently, staring intently at nothing while his eyes were in the past.

"Well, when we were very very young, our father left for unknown reasons-"

Ed cut him off.

"Bastard!"

Al looked at him sympathetically and Ed hushed.

"And when we weren't too much older, our mother died. We had been studying alchemy, our father was a great alchemist and had an extensive library in the house."

"Bastard!"

"Brother was always better at it than me, but I did what I could and I enjoyed the learning and helping him. After Mom died, we went searching for a teacher to help us better comprehend the alchemic world. We found a woman named Izumi who became Teacher. She's a scary woman."

Ed and Al shuddered simultaneously and Alexa smiled to herself.

"Anyways...well we studied with her for a long while, until we felt strong enough to attempt our secret. Our sin."

Alexa looked down in respect, thinking that part would be skipped over. However, Ed stated

"We tried to bring Mom back. We just wanted to see her smile again. To hold her again and...well. I lost Al his entire body and my leg. To try and partly right it, I sacrificed my arm to bind Al into the suit you see here. As for Mom...well....we had created something. But it was definitely not human."

Alexa nodded and then, before either Elric could continue on, she queried.

"What did you sacrifice as 'soul'?"

They stared at her.

"Like ingredients for the human body, but what did you use to compensate for her soul?"

"Not enough."

"Our own blood."

They spoke at the same time and looked at each other sadly.

"It was a good idea though."

Everyone was silent for a moment. Nyko meowed and Al picked him up, stroking him gently.

"After that, I had automail attached and went to become a dog of the military. To gain access to funding and research. To try and get our bodies back. We've been searching ever since.

Along the way, I've been the cause, inadvertintly of many people's deaths and it's so hard-"

Ed cut himself off, clenching both fists until his knuckles were white. Alexa gently cupped his larger hand in hers.

"I know how you feel."

"What about you?"

Al startled Alexa into dropping Ed's hand.

"Me? And my story? Well, that's something different altogether. Same experiences, different circumstances. Slightly different outcomes."

The Elrics looked at her curiously and she figured a story for a story seemed fair. There were many things they'd left out, so she couldn't feel guilty for leaving out a few major details.

"Let me begin from the beginning:

My parents were curious people. Young, in love, and happy to be content. But curious nonetheless. So, they managed to embark on the worst possible expedition for people such as themselves. They sought the philosopher's stone. Not for any greedy purpose, as you might suppose, but my father was a doctor and he wanted to be able to enhance his healing powers to help as many people as he possibly could. And my mother wanted to make my father happy.

However, the happy couple soon realized the sheer extent of lives required for a philosopher's stone and, in his desperation, my father began bending the rules. He began trying to use other ingredients besides human life. He tried animals, blood, corpses, you name it, he tried it. One time though, he went too far and managed to get himself killed in the process.

My mother was devastated. She near about lost her mind. Before my father had died, my mother became pregnant, though neither knew, and the experimenting was hard on her. After my father died, she went crazy trying because now she had a stronger purpose. She was going to bring my father back to life. Discarding care for other humans, including the fetuses inside of her, she began ruthlessly experimenting on herself and others. In doing so, my mother finally completed her task. She completed a pure philosopher's stone.

One way for someone to refine the stone is to insert it into a pregnant woman's uterus. It always kills the baby and sometimes the mother. My mother was unusually lucky. It only killed one of the four children she was pregnant with, a brother I would have had. And though she was weak, she was alive. She vowed never to tell my father about the one dead child.

So she brought him back. Just like that. In fact, he was reborn the day my two sisters and I were born. Or the day before. I'm not sure. But in any case, he was delighted to be alive and to be with his beloved wife and children. He went around, using the stone to relieve all the illness he encountered and for 3 years we were happy."

Alexa interrupted herself.

"Of course, I don't really remember that at all.

But one day, my father became curious about the completed stone. Before, my mother was always look away and say her strength and love for him made it, or a miracle from God, but for once, my father couldn't take such an evasive answer. He became angry and yelled and my mother broke down in her guilt, confessing the death of one of their children. He went away for awhile and my mother nearabout died in grief and anguish. But he came back. He could never really leave us."

Ed snorted and looked down. Al looked away. Alexa continued.

"Well, Mother became obsessed with trying to destroy the stone to make my father happy again. During one attempt, and I remember this, I'm not sure what she did, but she managed to shatter it. I walked in during her experiment and, in opening my mouth to cry out, swallowed a sizeable chunk of the stone."

Alexa flexed her fingers.

"The stone became embedded in my body, a part of me. Which has subsequently given me special powers to bend the rules of alchemy. Not break them, mind you. But my blood is very potent in equivalent exchange.

Not too long after that incident, neither of my parents could handle their respective guilts and, in one final attempt to completely rid the world of the stone they had created with my brother's life, they died. They gave their lives so they could take the stone to the next world with them.

They had arranged a place for us, my cousin Roy's family agreed to take my sisters and I in, and when they thought their five year old triplets had been safely taken care of, they built a giant pyre. I ran around back, wanting to ask Mother something, I don't remember what. Oh."

Alexa had the saddest smile on her face.

"I wanted to ask where they were going. They had given us kids prolonged goodbyes, taking a good week to set up arrangements. They had been saying goodbye to each other too, but I didn't know that then. They had said they were going on a very long journey and didn't know when we would be able to see them again.

So I ran around back to ask and saw them, a giant pyre lit on fire behind them, looming. They were holding each other in a passionate embrace and kissing. Then, holding hands and holding the stone between their hands they jumped in. I screamed then and even though they kept their eyes on each other and their love, I think my mother heard me because she just barely had time to glance back at me. But my father pulled her closer and I saw a tear steam off her face as they bathed in flames."

Ed and Al were staring at her in horror and shock. Alexa had been speaking in a quiet monotone the entire time.

"I remember the sight very clearly."

For a moment, her eyes were just as lost as Ed's a moment ago. She shook her head and her bangs hung low over her face.

"I went to live with Roy and his kind family and all the while, we learned the art that prompted our parents' suicide. We were good, except for Nichole. She tried though, but she was always much more interested in automail. She became a good mechanic later on. When we were about twelve, we were moved to my estranged uncle, Evan's house. He was an automechanic and he and Nichole became fast friends. He was good to us, a very good caretaker. He had been badly injured in the Ishbalan war though and as the years stretched on, he could do less and less.

Less than two years ago, he died of infection. There was nothing any doctor could do. We mourned heavily, especially kind Nichole."

Nyko took the opportunity to jump from Al's arms to nuzzle against Alexa's legs. She sighed and looked down.

"So we perfected our skill and tried our hand at human transmutation. We worked hard to achieve some sort of idea of what to use as a soul. We came to the conclusion that we must sacrifice a human to bring back a human. So we stole a sick and dying old man."

Ed and Al listened in utter horror.

"And we...sacrificed him. Along with all the necessary ingredients. However, we, for some reason, did not create a homunculous. Don't get me wrong."

She looked Ed dead in the face.

"The man was a friend of mine. He wanted to die. He asked to be used. So, I think that our sin of trying a taboo was compensated by relieving him of his intense pain. Which was a sort of salvation too, in its own way. It was still costly though. Nickel was taken completely. Izzy lost many vital organs."

"And you lost your leg."

Al was quiet, but it still startled Alexa. She looked away.

"Uh...yeah."

Ed coughed and looked around. Their surroundings had changed dramatically in a few minutes. Though, he supposed, they had been talking awhile. They had passed the outskirts of Central, and had found themselves in a strange mixture of rustic buildings and grassy plains. The grass was tall, scraping Alexa and Ed's knees, much to their dismay. So they struggled through and proceeded to ask

"'Scuse me Miss! Do you happen to know where the Moose's Jaw is?"

The maiden's eyes widened. She nearly began to shake her pretty head when she looked thoughtful. She pointed, looked down, and hurried away.

"I wonder what that was about...?"

Ed muttered, scratching his head. They walked in the direction she had pointed and sure enough, there was an old, ramshackle building with a swinging sign hanging halfway from it's rusted railing out in front with a skull of a moose and the jaw opened and in an almost speech bubble it read: The Moose's Jaw

"Well, I guess this is the place..."

Al trailed off looking around, doubting the significance of such a place. Alexa spied the old man sitting outside on a wooden chair that probably would have broken had a full grown person sat on it. As he was, the man looked positively ancient, wasted away, as skeletal as the moose on the sign and probably older than the entire building.

Ed ran up to him.

"Hey! This may sound a little odd, but do you know anything about the Emerald Tablet?"

The old man sat up in alarm, more quickly than the three would have thought he could move. He beckoned them in closer and wheezed quietly at them. His breath smelled of old books and his voice sounded like the turning of pages.

"Perhaps I might. Why do you seek it young Sir?"

Ed almost bristled until he realized that everyone would be considered young next to this guy. Instead he waved his hand.

"If you know what it is, I think there is a main purpose you can guess."

The old man sat back heavily in his chair.

"You should give up this quest and now young sir, before it lands you into trouble. Those who seek such things only find destruction, horror, and death."

"We have suffered already Sir."

Ed pulled up his pant leg and rolled back his sleeve. Alexa showed her leg as well. At Ed's prompting, Al took off his helmet and showed his lack of a body. The old man never so much as even blinked at the oddities.

"Undoubtedly, you have seen others like us before."

"Yes. Unfortunately, I have. But you are all so young! I suppose the young can be the most determined...and the most desperate."

They nodded in unison.

"In any case, I doubt that even your suffering has prepared you for this task you seek. In the first place, I highly doubt you'd even be able to find the tablet."

"Why is that, old man?"

Ed was getting frustrated. Alexa put a calming hand on his shoulder and he blushed and looked away. The old man smiled slightly.

"Patience is a virtue, my hasty friend. Anyway, the city of evil, the ancients built, where the Emerald still lies, is not in this world."

Ed looked about to interrupt, but the man held up a trembling, frail hand.

"All will be revealed soon. I have no problem in sharing information. It's what I am here for."

He paused and gazed at the sky a moment before continuing.

" I assume you already know about the world beyond the Gate?"

They nodded.

"There didn't used to be a Gate. Originally, that world and our world were one and the same. Furthermore, when the Gate was created, the lost city, of the Gods, was thought to be too tempting for either new world. So it is not through the Gate. It is behind it.

The city is called Eden and if you already know it's there, you can try to bribe the Guardian into letting you go there. However, it is a dangerous place. If you fall to temptation, you will immediately be sent to the world beyond the Gate without a way to return here. Also, the Temple which you seek was destroyed long ago by the Guardian, who feared anyone else gaining so much power."

They all looked down, incredibly disappointed. The old man hesitated and then spoke again, his tone different.

"However...it is said that the Guardian never recovered the Emerald Tablet because though he was desperate, he was not desolate."

Renewed hope shone in their eyes.

"Now don't think your task is easy! To get there at all, you must cross an unimaginable lie that is also the truth and even if you can get there, the Liar himself will never let you pass without a sufficient offering and what can you hope to offer someone who is all-powerful and all-knowing?"

They looked at each other, confused.

"But then, if it's so hopeless, why are you still telling us all this?"

The old man smiled.

"It is what I am here for. To tell."

"Well then, can you tell us what kind of offering to give this all-mighty being?"

The old man looked grim.

"You must give everything if you ever hope to achieve anything. Equivalent exchange. Yes, you must give up everything,... but perhaps not all at once, if you're lucky."

They looked at each other again, each with different degrees of hope or hopelessness on their faces. The old man reached into a deep pocket.

"Please, if you ever are unlucky enough to succeed and meet the Liar, please give him this."

He handed Alexa a thin golden chain, as frail as the man who had borne it for so long. On it hung a small golden cross. Alexa frowned at it. It looked familiar, like an illustration she'd seen somewhere, not too long ago perhaps...

"Old man, I have another question."

"Oh?"

"How do you know all this? Who are you? Where are you from? Have you been to Eden yourself? Or even to the world beyond the Gate?"

The old man held his hand up to stop the river of questions.

"Because I was there, you may call me Cain, my mother's womb, yes and no."

It took Ed a second to match all his questions to the answers, this old man, Cain, had given.

"You were there?!?!?! You couldn't have been! No one survived from that ancient race! And how could you get here? And why would you be spending your time in front of a crumbling bar?"

Cain held his hand up once more.

"I'll say one last thing. You youngsters have tired me out. But know this! You should never trust anyone who lives so long."

When it became apparent the old Cain would say no more, the trudged inside where Alexa and Ed proceeded to get some food and drink and begin discussing and going over everything they had just learned. Alexa began scribbling it all down in her notebook so it could not be forgotten.

"I'll be in in a second!"

Al stepped outside again, to ask if the old man wanted any refreshments or even anything to pay him back for all he had told.

"Oh how the angels have fallen."

Al looked up, startled to see the old man standing. He didn't have a cane, and his back was not feeble and bent, his legs were straight and he was a proud looking man. Probably a good looking man in his youth, however long ago that was. Al began to wonder if the old man had a philosopher's stone himself.

"You began it and I followed in your footsteps. I am sorry, but I am so far beyond forgiveness. This truly is Hell."

Cain sat down heavily with an enormous sigh that couldn't even begin to sum up his hardships and the years he'd endured. Al thought better of it. Perhaps this man was only telling because it was in equivalent exchange for something else, his sins perhaps, if he had lied so many times and now he was condemned to tell the truth. Al could never have guessed Cain's true story or why he sat there or even why, later that day when the manager came out to tell the old man that it was time to leave for the day, the manager would find the man gone, a sight he had never seen in his entire life.

Or how, the manager and the folks at the bar would notice his absence and wonder slightly about the disappearance, but that after a day, everyone would have forgotten him.

But for the time, Al shook his head and headed back into the bar. Just in time to duck a man being thrown at a wall.

"BROTHER!!!!"

Edward Elric was throwing and decking people in a rage, most likely brought on by some 'short' comment. Al looked in dismay to Alexa, who sat in a booth in the corner, laughing so hard her sides hurt. Ed paused in his rampage at his brother's voice. Unfortunately, as Ed stopped abruptly, a man proceeded to come in and kick Ed's metal knee at a very strange angle. In fact, the angle was so strange that it broke the knee completely. Ed went down and all the men began snickering. Now Alexa chose to involve herself.

"Hey! Shut up!"

She promptly hauled Ed up till he was leaning on her shoulder. He was humiliated though and didn't want her help. He got angry and tried to shove her away.

"Aww, the poor little boy needs help from his big strong girl!"

That irked Ed and Alexa and they glared equally as ferociously. Alexa picked up Ed and tossed him to a surprised Al who just barely managed to catch him. They both stared in wonder as Alexa slammed a punch into the giant mountain of a man who had poked fun. She was fuming as he went down.

"ANYONE ELSE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY??"

The men all cowered and scattered to their respective seats.

"No ma'am!"

Alexa turned to the Elrics.

"Time for Reseembool huh?"

"Yes ma'am!"

Alexa rolled her eyes.

"You can't fix me?"

She shook her head.

"Not this time Ed."

Ed started sweating and getting very paranoid. Winry was going to kill him and maybe Alexa. This was going to be bad....

Alexa stalked out of the bar, the shocked Elrics followed. None of them noticed Cain's disappearance.