Yeah, I updated within a reasonable timeframe! I wasn't sure whether I would or not, even though I really wanted to. Keep your fingers crossed and hopefully I'll be able to do it again soon!
Disclaimer: AdventureAddict is trying to suggest a disclaimer, but hers are making less sense than mine, so I don't think I'll use them. Just know that I don't own FMA and we'll all be okay, okay? Okay.
It had been frustrating to try and come up with an explanation as to how he knew the Rockbells' house so well. They didn't believe anything he came up with as an explanation, though when he thought back to it, he could understand why. Claiming he had been there before they moved in didn't make sense when he looked younger than they did, not to mention that that still didn't explain how he knew where Winry's room was. They didn't believe the idea of him having popped over for a visit once before and they just forgot either. They'd insisted that they would remember if he had shown up at all. Edward wasn't so sure they'd remember him no matter what, but he couldn't argue with them when he knew he was a fraud. His lies were terrible. Even Al always saw through his lies.
His stomach sunk to his feet. He missed Al. Was he ever going to see him again? Logically he should be able to at some point since Al remembered seeing his older self while still young, but would he honestly have to wait that long? Couldn't he just pop to a time now when Al existed?
Edward stretched out on his bed and closed his eyes. It was hard to say whether he was awake or asleep as visions of him and Al playing together flashed through his head. He could easily be imagining it instead of dreaming it. Perhaps what he was experiencing now was the real dream, and he'd wake up and be with Al again before he knew it. That was a comforting thought. Then a mental stab of pain to the gut brought him back to reality. He had had this thought before. He probably wasn't going to wake up.
A cry of alarm brought him out of his delirium, and he slowly sat up and blinked his eyes as he tried to adjust to the darkness around him. The Rockbells were running around in a frenzy, trying to collect various things from the house. He poked his sleepy head out of his room and caught Mrs. Rockbell as she was going by. "What's going on?"
"Trisha has gone into labor. We need to get there quickly to help her with the birth." She turned and ran a few steps, then stopped and turned back around to face Edward. "You said you were an alchemist, right? Why don't you come with us? We may need your services."
Sleep vanished from him in a split second, and he stood up straight, eyes wide open. "I-I don't know..."
"You'll be fine, come on!" She grabbed his arm and ran to the front door and shoved him outside, keeping the door open so she could toss things through it into his waiting arms. He was shaking throughout his entire body. The last thing he wanted to do was interfere with his own birth, and he didn't know a thing about medical alchemy. He was not the alchemist doctor he'd been told about. He would have already suspected his role as such if he'd had such skill.
Before long, the Rockbells had gathered everything they needed, so Pinako grabbed Winry and they all joined Edward outside and sprinted the distance between their house and the Elrics'.
The journey between the two houses hadn't seemed so long in his memories of childhood. He and Al had traversed this distance many a time without batting an eye, but now that he was doing it again here and now, it seemed to stretch on forever. Was he just growing old or was the time stretching out because he was terrified?
At long last they arrived at the house. The Rockbells unloaded things from his arms and proceeded to march into the house. He hoped he could get away with staying outside and avoiding all the commotion going on within. It was too dangerous for him to be involved with his own birth. It was dangerous enough for him to loop back on his own timeline, and so he wanted to stay out of the picture until he was safely born. Even so, he could still be putting Al's life at stake if he wasn't careful. Al wouldn't be born for almost a couple years.
Fate was still toying with him. Winry looked over in his direction and whined, and Pinako, taking in the situation, marched over and grabbed Edward's hand and dragged him inside. "Idiot! What do you hope to accomplish by letting yourself catch cold? It's the middle of winter out there."
"Yeah, I know, Granny, I-" He stopped himself short. Calling her by that name certainly had not been intentional, but it had come out all the same. Had she noticed? If there were any gods in the universe, he prayed that they'd blocked up her ears enough so that she hadn't heard a thing.
"Granny?" she said, "Why did you call me that? I don't look that old, do I?"
Great. Maybe there were no gods in the universe, though maybe they just didn't listen to people who didn't believe in them on a regular basis. He shook his head vigorously. "No, no, of course not!"
"Then where did that ancient title come from?"
He shrugged. He felt cornered. What was he to do? She was technically a grandmother now that she had Winry around, but with that being her first grandchild, she had never been called Granny yet. She wasn't going to understand no matter what he tried to say, but maybe he could at least get her to drop it.
He scratched his head. "Uh, you remind me of someone I know, I guess." He offered a nervous little laugh and felt the sweat rolling down his neck. Would she accept it?
It was hard to say what her reaction was, but she didn't say anything more at the very least. She pretty much just shrugged, handed Winry to Edward, and then walked into the next room, leaving him stupefied. Now what was he supposed to do?
Winry stared at him with her innocent little baby face and sucked on her hand. It was hard not to smile at that, especially knowing how non-innocent she would be in the future. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if he could just keep out of sight and take care of Winry until all the crises were over.
He sat down on the hard wood floor and balanced Winry on his lap. She looked at him curiously, like she was trying to solve some great mystery about what he was up to. Well, he wasn't really up to anything at the moment, but he supposed he could indulge her. He set her on his knee and gently bounced his knee a few times, causing the corners of her mouth to twitch slightly upward. He smiled in turn. It was easy to please a baby Winry.
After a momentary lapse in activity in the little foyer he had stationed himself in, the door opened and in walked a man in a long coat, stamping his boots free of the snow that had accumulated on them and then turning around and shutting the door behind him to avoid freezing the entire house. He then turned back around and finally noticed the person sitting there, holding baby Winry, and Ed drew in a breath. This was his father.
Hohenheim drew in a breath too, and Ed didn't know why. Maybe it was because the two of them looked so similar and his father had recognized that right away? Surely it wasn't anything weirder than that, since Hohenheim had never met his son before this point.
His father raised his eyebrows and pointed his finger at Edward authoritatively. "You!" he said, "What are you doing here?"
Edward had to blink and he found himself shaking his head with his mouth hanging open dumbly. His father recognized him? In this time? And was he angry about something? What could he possibly have done to make his father angry when the two theoretically hadn't met each other yet?
At the sight of this reaction, Hohenheim chuckled and relaxed his shoulders. "We've been trying to find you ever since your little matchmaking trick to thank you, but you had just vanished. Now that Trisha's about to have our first son, we wanted you here all the more to join in the celebration of the moment, but we thought we'd never see you again."
Edward continued to blink stupidly. Surely his father was mixing him up with someone else. He had never met his father before this moment. That was impossible. That was so... wait... he was a time traveler, wasn't he? Maybe the two really did meet at an earlier date. That would certainly explain why his father seemed to recognize him at this point, but how much did he know? Was there any way to ask without looking too stupid?
Hohenheim was getting impatient waiting for Edward to respond, and so he sighed and rolled his eyes before asking, "Where have you been the past few years, anyway?"
And then he paused and waited for a response. That jerk, forcing him to reply. What if Edward didn't want to reply, had his father ever thought of that? Apparently he hadn't. A response would have to be concocted, and quickly.
"I uh... I had amnesia. Yes, amnesia! I had a bad reaction in a science experiment and forgot everything, and so I've been wandering around the past few years and finally stumbled upon you here."
Hohenheim remained silent for a few moments, making Edward nervous at his very silent presence. It was hard enough when the man was talking and giving no consideration to how anyone else was feeling about the situation, but it was even harder when everything went silent. How was one supposed to react when everyone had stopped talking? Was he supposed to be the one to break the ice, or should he wait until someone else did it? The whole think just stunk, and he wished he could just go back to his normal life in his normal time with his normal brother already. Wait, scratch that, his brother wasn't normal and never would be, but he wanted to see Al again anyway.
"So..." said his father as if trying to fish for words. "Did you make any progress on that experiment we were working on?"
Great, now he had to report on something he knew nothing about and sound half intelligent about it. How was he supposed to do that? Wait a minute, he had just told his dad that he'd gotten amnesia! He could just claim that he'd forgotten everything and his dad ought to buy it. It was worth a try.
"I don't actually remember anything about the experiment." He drooped his head in mock shame. "Amnesia. Sorry."
His father regarded him with a quizzical eyebrow, and Edward wasn't sure the man had accepted his explanation, but he wasn't calling him a liar either. It was at least better than nothing, he hoped.
"Amnesia, huh? That stinks. Hopefully you'll get your memories back soon. Do you still know alchemy?"
Before he even thought about what he was doing, Edward found himself nodding. Oh well, at least he actually knew what he was claiming to know. He felt better understanding something in this whole menagerie of madness, and his father smiled a knowing smile, almost like he understood what Edward was going through. It made the boy shiver a bit involuntarily.
"Excellent," said Hohenheim, who then reached down and grabbed the boy's hand and helped him to his feet. "Come on in and see Trisha. She'll be glad to know you're here as well."
Panic raced through Edward's nerves, and he tried to pull away from Hohenheim's grip. There was no way he was going to go in and see his mother before his younger self was born. That was way too dangerous. Wouldn't he run the risk of making it so he didn't exist or something? That was how all the science fiction stories went. Maybe they were secretly written by a time traveler crying for attention or something. He didn't want to brush them off as nonsense right then since he didn't know what to make of anything anymore.
He had to do what he had to do. Without giving his father any warning, he twisted his arm and his wrist fell out of his father's hand, and then he bolted out the door. He was going to run as far as he could get from this place and never come back, as tempting as it was to see what things were happening around this house. It was just too dangerous for him to stick around here.
A baby's cry snapped him out of his fight or flight syndrome, and he stopped running and looked down at the baby in his arms. He couldn't run off with Winry like this; it would hurt her too badly. He knew nothing about raising children, not to mention that her family was wonderful and he wasn't about to deprive her of it, especially since there wouldn't be many years for her to spend with her parents. A pang of guilt hit his stomach at that thought, and he turned around and looked back at the house.
Hohenheim was leaning against the door jam with his arms crossed. Was he daring Edward to leave while he was watching when everyone knew he was still holding Winry? That bastard. Maybe it was this incident that first started the hatred between the two of them.
"If you really don't want to be with be with us, you don't have to," said Hohenheim, "but I thought you would want to see Trisha." The man looked disappointed, and Edward felt a bit guilty. As much as he had developed a loathing for his father over all this time during his father's absence, he didn't see any need to deliberately hurt the man.
Edward took a couple steps forward and held Winry out to his father, gulping in his nervousness as the man hesitated to take her. But after a few minutes, Hohenheim did take the baby from his arms, and Edward spun around 180 degrees and took off running away from the house, again intending to get as far away from that house as he could in one sprint.
After a while of running aimlessly, he stopped to catch his breath and looked around. Without even realizing it, he had run close to the town cemetary. It figured that he'd run here if he let his subconscious mind have its way. He visited this place too often, and he was too curious now for his own good.
Edward cleared his throat and dusted off his pants. It would do no good to visit the dead with unnecessarily dusty pants, after all.
It was eerie to walk through the seemingly familiar plot of land and recognize very little about it. He found the headstone for that neighbor girl, Martha's great-grandparents, but aside from that, he couldn't find anyone he knew here. None of his family was dead yet.
"Interesting view, isn't it?"
Edward snapped his head up to find the disrespectful intruder, and found another boy standing only a few feet away. A chill came over him as he stared at the boy, and he took a step backward. No, please no, not another one of himself, please!
He clenched his fists and glared at his double. This was getting a bit annoying, running into older, know it all versions of himself over and over. Well, he didn't have to take it lying down.
"What do you think you're doing here?" He hoped the other Ed could pick up the venom in his voice and shiver at its utter awesomeness, because he was just that scary, or he hoped he was.
"I'm you, you idiot!"
Oh yeah, he'd forgotten that little detail. Oh well, he could still try to make his older self squirm. After all, if this older him was as smug and self-assured as he seemed, then he could handle it fine when he became the older Ed and had a younger idiot harping on him.
He put his hands on his hips and stuck out his tongue before saying, "Says who?"
"Says you, you dummy, didn't you get that from the first interaction?" They both paused. Edward wasn't sure what he wanted to say anymore. His older self was too smart, and he didn't like admitting that since it wasn't really taking that much intelligence to win against himself right then.
The older Ed spoke up again. "Is this your first jump or something?"
Edward crossed his arms and huffed, hoping that would buy him enough time to think up a witty response without his double realizing that he was trying to do that.
If he knew his double like he thought he did, then he could tell that the other guy had just rolled his eyes in the darkness with a you're-so-stupid-I-pity-you look. He really hated his older selves.
"Yep, this is your first time alright. There's no denying how stupid I was back then." He shook his head and continued. "Look, you might as well just go back to Mom and Dad's house and enjoy yourself because there's nothing you can do to change anything. Time is fixed." The other Ed paused, and Edward noticed a wobble in his voice as he said, "What will happen will happen."
"But what if I end up killing Mom or make it so that me or Al don't exist?"
The other Ed shook his head. "Can't do it. There's no way. Everything is set in place, so you might as well just ride with it instead of fighting it."
"But-" Edward's voice trailed off. What was the point of objecting with another question, anyway? He knew exactly what his older double was trying to say, so why make it harder for himself than it needed to be?
He couldn't resist one question though. "Did you-did you try to save-Mom?"
The other him turned away from him and looked in the direction of the house. "You should go. There's someone you miss waiting for you in that house."
And without another word, he was gone, having literally vanished from sight before Edward's eyes. Had that been what he'd looked like to Al when he'd vanished that first time? That was creepy. Edward found himself shivering. He really didn't want to see that again. Ever.
Still, if his older self said he couldn't change time and that there was someone he was supposed to meet, it was probably best he returned to the house. He could tell when he himself was lying, and his double hadn't been at that time. It was scary, and he hated to admit it, but his older self was probably right.
He took a deep breath and picked up his pace into a sprint back toward the house. Hopefully his family would still accept him after that charade, but he was still going to go and see things through. He had made his decision; there was no turning back now.
Thanks for reading, and hope to see you back here soon. Got any ideas? Feel free to let me know. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll update as soon as I can!