It was cold on the beach

Author's Notes:

"Winter in Munich" original music and lyrics by Elfinragdoll—used with her most kind permission

"Tinderbox of War", lyrics by The Binary Alchemist, (music: "Silent Legacy" by Melissa Etheridge)

Parts of this tale originated as part of a holiday special, "The Boy Who Loved Rockets ("Stille Nacht")" that evolved into part of this novella.

It was cold on the beach. Not as cold as he'd been that December. That was a cold that seemed to creep in under his thin wool coat, under his skin and into his bones. It threatened to crack his heart wide open, and there were bitter days when he longed to fling himself into some icy German river. After all, drowning was supposed to be painless and the bitter temperature would make it swift and certain, the mass of his clumsy Earthside prosthetic limbs dragging him down into something that was surely more merciful than this empty hell, so far from his brother and his lover…

Snow falling on stone
Finding it belongs here
But a stranger, torn from his home
Can only crawl here
Where nobody knows his name, but the streets are filled

With faces he remembers

His own self he starts to blame

As he takes the hand, he's been offered this December

His eyes stung in the high wind, and he must have gotten a bit of sand in his eyes. No other explanation for why he had to reach for his handkerchief and wipe away the two drops of moisture that had slipped down his cheeks…

Teddy never saw it, but when Havoc had emerged from the bathroom in the middle of the night he found the Gentleman Ghost of the Battery Carriage House waiting for him.

"Spreken sie Deutche?"

Havoc shook his head. "Non, mon ami. Parlez-vous français?Ou Anglais?"

"Anglais? English? Mine English iss not…sehr gut." The spectral face brightened after a moment. "Komm, gib mir deine hand…"

The hand that covered Havoc's was as softly translucent as the fine silk draped over the canopy bed where his bride still slept. His fingers began to move in an awkward scrawl that was not his own. Soon as the three word message was finished, the ghost shivivered and vanished and Havoc shook Teddy awake. They spent the rest of their wedding night sneaking around the property in the dark, armed with only Teddy's flashlight pen and a scented candle from their room. They thought they noticed a greenish light coming from under the doorway of Room 10 but they could hardly go busting in and check it for themselves. Red Coat business, they concluded on the spot, deciding to text Taisa in the morning.

They were about to go back to their room before somebody caught them snooping around in their robes and slippers when they noticed the light from the courtyard playing on the torn filaments of a large spider web that appeared to have covered the door to their suite. "What the fuck?" said Teddy.

Havoc noted the largish smear where some large insect had apparently been crushed against their door and pulled his beloved close. "Bad ju-ju, darlin'," he whispered into her hair. "Time to call for reinforcements, d'accord?"

AMESTRIS, 2001

Alright, so he had to pay the gang back for that goddamned pizza orgy he'd demanded when he bragged he'd provide proof positive that the legendary Brigadier General Roy Mustang had been a pickle puffer who knocked Edward Elric off his platform boots. "Just you wait, assholes!" he'd told them as he paid the tab with a 200 cens note he'd swiped from his dad's wallet when the old man wasn't paying attention. "Next time it's double or nothing, and—"

"--and you'll have to hock your fPod to pay the tab, loser!" howled his best buddy, Lucas Belsio. "Face it, buddy—history's whitewashed those old fucks, except for that stuff about Ed and his brother tryin' to bring their dead mom back to life. Sheesh, that gives me the creeps."

Josh Tringham had a repertoire of arch and sarcastic expressions, perfect for moments when Lucas was being a bigger scrote than usual. "Belsio, you pissed on yourself at camp last summer when my kid brother put a cricket in your jockstrap, fer cryin' out loud. You're a bigger pussy than he is. 'Sides," he leaned in conspiratorially, "I got me an after-school job workin' under Dickless Dickenson down at the museum. They're doin' this big-assed show this fall on the Great Alchemists of the 20th century. Mustang's got his own exhibit, and so do the Elrics. Dickless says he wants me to help him catalog the whole damn thing—so that means I'll be reading all those private journals they left behind when Dickless ain't lookin'!"

The problem was that alchemists traditionally concealed their notes in cryptic codes. Marcoh, the Crystal Alchemist, left behind piles of innocent looking cook books, and if you knew how to read between the lines you'd find the actual ingredient of the Philosopher's Stone! Fullmetal left intriguing travel diaries, while the Mustang kept a little black book full of tantalizing details of his trysts with a legion of women from all walks of life, from the perky secretaries of a number of high placed officials and rivals down to the whores from Mrs. Christmas' legendary brothel at Central. In later years, Mustang's journals were written exclusively in the Xingian script that he had learned as a boy. The sole exception were the letters he'd written the day he died, which were given directly into the hands of then-President Hawkeye, in the presence of his closest associates: Jean Havoc, Heymans Breda, Kain Furey, Vato Falman, Maria Ross and Denny Brosh.

This afternoon, while Dickless was in a meeting with the board of trustees, Josh Tringham had the run of the office and gleefully pried off the lid of a sealed crate that had been recovered from the remote cavern in the Briggs Mountain range where Mustang had hidden himself from the authorities in the military who wanted to send the senile old geezer to a nursing home. Most of his alchemic library had been packed away at the President's mansion in the keeping of Hawkeye herself, but his personal effects he guarded fiercely, probably with same sour expression as the life size bronze in the statuary garden, the one with the eternal gas-powered flame shooting out from its fingertips. Josh preferred the fountain depicting Alphonse Elric creating the never-failing Fountain of Liore. Alphonse looked no older than Josh, his head tossed back, arms flung up ecstatically as the cool mist rained down on his face after his long trek through the eastern desert. And of course, every child loved to pose beside the life-sized statues of Edward and Alphonse's armor in the playground—"see, mom? He was shorter'n me!" There was a concession stand in the Tringham botanical gardens near the playground, and Josh had gotten a jumbo order of "Not A Shrimp" prawn bites—the name was a quote from Fullmetal himself—with extra cups of Flame Alchemy sauce, plus a couple of fried fruit pies grown from variants developed by Russell himself and a bottle of StrongAde that came with a plastic sports cap comically shaped like the bald head of the Strong-Arm Alchemist that you could poke a straw through.

A bunch of elementary kids were running through the galleries, playing with their light up Red Stones, and the guards never noticed Josh sprinting in the opposite direction, ferrying in food and drink that was strictly forbidden in the artifact storage rooms.

Sucking a bit of Flame sauce out from under a fingernail, Josh began digging through the contents of the crate from Mustang's lair. There were some photos and sketches in leather portfolios that were cracked with age, clothing, personal items, and even his soap and razor. There were a pair of—holy shit!—women's panties, made of dark green silk. He examined the tag—it bore a strange message: Victoria's Secret, New York-Paris-London. Made in the USA. He almost sniffed them, especially after seeing the color photograph—one of the FueryGraph© instant snaps—of what could only be the Spiral Alchemist, Tricia Elric, posing with a distinguished man in a red coat and honey-blonde pony tail who bore an amazing resemblance to the joyful young man in the fountain outside. Apparently ol' Roy the Rampant had torn off a piece with the woman he listed as his alchemic disciple in his will and heir to his personal effects. In other words, if the Spiral Alchemist—or one of her disciples ever turned up in Amestris, they could lay claim to all of Roy's junk and cart it off if they wanted it. Considering Spiral and her father were last in Amestris in 1951 and it was now 2001, Josh hastily shoved the panties down to the bottom of the heap, slightly nauseous to imagine what Trisha Elric's ass might look like now, fifty years after she dropped them in the cave in Brigg's Mountain.

That's where he found the cracked and yellowed pamphlet, stamped Chaplain's Office—Do Not Remove From Library and Government Property, Eastern Command. It was of dark green card stock bearing the state crest in black, nothing different from the other rules-and-regs booklets handed out to cadets and new recruits at the Officer's Training Academy. It was cryptically titled Cadet Morale and Deportment: Your Place in the State Military, vol. 6. Curious, he flipped past the index….and the title of the pamphlet made his eyes grow wide indeed:

"Volume 6: Particular Friendships Peculiar to Gentlemen: Fraternization and its Consequences"

Holy crap.

Folded in the middle of the pamphlet was…wow…a demerit citation. It was written out against Cadet Roy Mustang and Cadet Maes Hughes for being caught in the kitchen raiding the pantry. They had been caught by one Zolf Kimbley, a platoon leader, who noted that Hughes and Mustang had been making 'man-sized sandwiches' around 13:03, hours after lights out. He had recommended that the cadets be disciplined and possibly be reassigned to different barracks . "Hughes is a disruptive prankster," Kimbley had written, "distracting Mustang from his responsibilities. If there are further episodes of this nature I would strongly advise splitting them up."

His jaw dropped when he read the handwritten note taped to the citation: "Hughes had your ass. I own it now. Might want to read through this. Want you to know what they'll do to you if I tell them what kind of sandwiches you boys were making when I caught you.

"Show this to anybody and Hughes is dead."

"TRINGHAM!! Do I smell food in the archives?"

Shit! Jamming the pamphlet in his coat pocket, along with the half-eaten bag of "Not A Shrimp's, he stashed his drink bottle inside his shirt, wiped the last of the Flame Sauce off his chin and slammed the lid back on the crate—half a heartbeat before the door slammed open and Dickless stormed in, sniffing madly. "What's that you're eating, boy? You know we don't allow food in here!"

He pulled the squashed and greasy packet from his coat. "S-sorry sir! I wasn't eating it, but these are the leftovers from my lunch. I thought it would be okay since they were in my pocket."

Dickless harrumphed a few times and allowed that he knew Josh wouldn't have been so careless. "You can put them in the fridge in my office next time. Off you go! See you on Monday!"

Heart thumping wildly in his breast, Josh snuck out the back door, jumped on his bike and got the hell out of there as fast as he could pedal.

He should have been crowing with triumph. Fraternization. Wow. "Hughes had your ass. I own it now." Sweet holy Ishballa in a G-String! So Mustang was getting' his buns buttered by ol' Hughes! The guy that got 86'ed by Envy in the phone booth and then got promoted to Brigadier General…

….the one Roy's body was buried beside at his own request. Damn!

Only….

…only he didn't feel quite as smug and jubilant as he thought he would. There was something downright…dunno…something creepy about the whole mess. Okay, so Hughes and Mustang were sucking dick as cadets…but who the hell was this Kimbley dude and what kind of sick fuck would blackmail Mustang, making him bend over or else he'd kill one of his subordinate classmen?

He didn't call Belsio when he got home. Instead, he locked the pamphlet away in his desk and went for a long walk beside the canal…

From the Alchemic journals of Edward Elric

Needless to say I was unnerved by that text message the morning after Teddy and Remy's handfasting. They were all for rushing back. "No—stay put, you two. If this is who I think it is, he'll try to make contact again. Besides, the room's paid for through tomorrow morning. If this is Alfons, you're in no danger. Not you, and especially not Teddy."

Teddy, on the other hand, would probably shit cinderblocks sideways if she got a good look at the Gentleman Ghost. She'd always wanted to see photographs of her father in his youth. Not only would she satisfy her curiosity, she'd see her own features, cast in masculine mold, staring right back at her. I knew she'd hit me with a barrage of questions about my erstwhile roommate and her own brother's namesake. If Alfons Heiderich spoke his heart--and he never failed to do so—those answers could seriously jeopardize my relationship with her father.

Oh, you doubt that, do you?

Right. You try explaining to your younger brother that you met his doppleganger and spent some of the sweetest nights of your life huddled under a thin blanket, whispering his name in the dark and praying to the gods you don't believe in to keep this beautiful, gentle man alive just one more fucking day, because his tenderness made your exile bearable—only just.

Tell the little kid that snuggled with you on summer nights that you loved a boy that had his face. His voice. His loving heart. Tell him how you rode his cock in the flickering candlelight, licked the sweat off the back of his neck as you made him groan and curse in a foreign tongue, his body trembling, clenched so tight around you—god, so tight! So goddamned good. When he was slammed back into the body of a 10-year-old child, you were grown, and you were down on your knees crying a name too close to his own to be coincidence.

I never told anybody what Alfons Heiderich and I shared. Not even Taisa. Because sooner or later my brother might find out, and I would lose the person I loved more than anyone in this world—more than any lover or family member. Al and I lived and died for each other—and if he turned against me…my life would stop. Just stop.

"One thing more, Oncle Edouard," Remy's lazy Cajun accent shook me out of my anxious reverie. "Tell Maman that Aunt Nancy followed us to the hotel—and she's been killed."

What the fuck? "Remy, is this some more of your Cajun voodoo shit? Who the hell is Aunt Nancy?"

"Just tell her, will you? And make sure someone's keeping watch over the children."

"No worries. Hughes is insane around kids. Right now he's babbling like a lunatic around your daughter, so if Izumi's IQ drops dramatically, don't blame it on me. Trust me, if anybody tried to lay a finger on his kids or yours, he'd rip out their intestines with one of Elysia's kiddy forks."

"D'accord, then. And if the ghost returns—what should I tell him?"

That, my friends, was what was eating a hole in my guts from the moment I read the text message. What the hell do you say to a long dead lover—the one your family never knew shared your heart and your bed and gave your life back to you during the most desolate winter of your life?

"Sorry—signal's breaking up. Call you later. Love to Teddy." I jabbed my thumb at the END button, cursed myself for a coward and hiked off towards the ruins of Fort Moultrie. Hopefully the ghosts of the Confederacy would run interference in case I had to face the shades of dead lovers.

Before I left, though, I grabbed Taisa so goddamned hard that I actually left a small bruise where my metal fingers dug into his back. I didn't say anything, just stood there locked tight against his lean, sculpted body. I wanted to feel him breathe—to drink in his warmth, his scent. "Hey," he protested gently, "what the hell's the matter, Edowado?" There was a low chuckle that I could feel straight down in my groin, even as worried as I was. "So Teddy and Remy are turning their honeymoon into an episode of Scooby Doo. If they want to play Shaggy and Velma, that's their problem, not ours. Do you really believe that was Heiderich that Remy saw?"

"I don't know what I believe," I muttered into the curve of his shoulder.

"Whatever it is, don't let it upset you. What was so special about winter in Munich?"

The same damn thing that was special about spring in Central. A man whose life was over—who had absolutely nothing to lose-- reached out to me—and I reached back.

One was a man who loved his country even more than he loved me.

And one, god help me, was a beautiful boy who loved rockets…

One body in pieces, one body in illness
Each bearing his cross
Each of them would reach out, shattering the stillness
Conquering loss

When it's winter in Munich…

Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen (The Rocket into Planetary Space) was published in 1923 by our teacher and mentor, Hermann Oberth.

I was the only non-German in the Verein für Raumschiffahrt—the Spaceflight Society. My plausible lie, however, was that my father Hoenheim had been living and teaching in London but my mother was from the Austrian-Germany borderlands, from a tiny village called Resembool. My German was passable—only just, but my fair hair and skin and even, angular features could be easily mistaken for Aryan instead of Amestrian. More to the point, I was a scientist, and my enthusiasm for Professor Oberth's classes and high marks opened doors that otherwise would have remained firmly shut in the face of an 'Englishman'. I wisely kept my mouth shut during political bickering, shrugged noncomittally when Britain's policies were scorned and generally projected the air of a man without borders, neither embracing nor openly rejecting the rise of National Socialism.

My agenda was going home…and home wasn't London. Home was with Alphonse--and Roy, if he would have me. It was bad when Dad was still around, but once he vanished again I thought I would sicken and die from loneliness. A world of familiar faces—but did any of them know my name? More than once I found solace in a glass of brandy at bedtime to numb the pain, not that it helped.

And to a homesick alchemist, drunk and lonely in his coldwater flat, the brandy didn't taste as fine as the glass I shared by the fire at Mustang's house, the night he finally told me about his relationship with Hughes. That was the night I leaned over and clumsily kissed him for the first time. I missed his mouth because he jerked back in shock, planting my lips on his pale cheek instead…

I had found myself getting hard around Mustang, especially after one of our shouting matches. Ridiculous, eh? I mean, he was fourteen years older than me, my superior officer and not exactly of sterling reputation as far as I was concerned. He was a user, a blatant opportunist and for all intents and purposes had the morals of a rooster in a henhouse. But anyone with half-decent powers of observation, such as Hughes or Hawkeye…or me, for instance, would have quickly pointed out that Colonel Sarcasm was deliberately pursuing the secretaries and underlings of the men in power. In short—he was whoring for his career. Oh, I'm not saying he didn't enjoy the hell out of the brainless attention of all those females—it was just that…aw hell, how can I defend him? He was an asshole with ambition and if the higher ups had been any wiser he'd been hauled off to Lab 5 and had his genes shuffled with something spectacularly nasty and appropriate.

But if that was all there was to Roy Mustang, I wouldn't have given a shit what happened to him.

That night he got so drunk and morose over Hughes, that was when I pounced on him. He turned me down. Told me I was too young, too confused. Automail is useful in a clinch, y'know? "Vice grips", Taisa calls my prosthetics. I locked myself around his hips and shoulders and zeroed in, wiping that goddamn smirk off with my mouth. Two searing kisses were refused—then hungrily accepted--before I was grinding my hips against the cock that had risen despite his half hearted protests.

I mean…c'mon. This was Mustang. Roy The Rampant. Hard as a tent peg and horny as a three balled tomcat. He'd told me about Hughes, so I knew he liked men. He should have been eager to stick it to the first willing hole anybody offered.

Right?

I wasn't prepared for his next words: "Edward...you don't want this. You don't want me." He pulled back as far as he could with me wrapped around his body, pressing him into the back of the sofa. "You're fifteen, Edward. You don't know what you want."

"I want you, Roy. Shit, what do I have to do to convince you?

He bit his lip with frustration, then smoothed my sweaty bang back from my forehead. "If this is so important to you, Fullmetal…you'll wait until you're of age. Right now you're young. Your blood is so hot right now—" he stilled the hand that was firmly stroking him through his trousers, "—you can't tell the difference between animal need and human passion. You can't stand me—you've said it to my face a million times, Edward. But right now your brain is flooded with hormones and you figured out that I'm capable of being with men as well as women. I'm an easy mark."

"But—"

"You've found out that I'm lonely, that I've lost the man that meant…that I've lost Maes. I'm vulnerable and drunk and you think that this is the perfect opportunity to—"

"NO! No—you've got it all wrong! Damn it, Roy! I'm not trying to use you! I just—" I growled in frustration, smashing my fist against the back of the sofa. "Look, tell me what the fuck I can do to prove that I really want this?"

"You can wait until you're of age. If you still want me—which I doubt—come to me when you're eighteen. If I'm still alive and you still want me…"

"I do. And I will."

He smiled faintly and pushed me off his lap. "Well..we'll see."

So ironic that a lifetime later on this side of the Gateway a nineteen year old Taisa Roy Mustang would be crawling all over me in the back seat of Teddy's VW Microbus, begging me to fuck him…

"God…Edo…do something, damn it!"

"Mmmmmm….Taisa," I breathed into his ear, punctuating each syllable with a warm stab of my tongue. "This is so…good. No…need to…rush…"

"Damn you, Edward! Hamete chodai! Come on," his fingers kneaded my buttocks. "Fuck me! God, you're driving me crazy!"

"I don't want to fuck you, Taisa. I want to make love with you. And you deserve better," I gestured at the back seat of the VW van, "than this."

Damn it, if Taisa ever remembers our lives in Amestris, he'll swear I was getting even with him for his refusal of my drunken advances—and then I won't be able to sit down for a week!

At any rate, there was that day he caught up with us in the woods when the military was after us--the day he blurted out what he'd done during the war and how it was driving him to make ammends for his crimes. That, precisely, was the day I realized what Colonel Shit really meant to me, recognized how alike we were. Our hands were drenched in the blood of innocent people when we were very young. I was 11 when I tried to bring Mom back; he was barely twenty-two when he went to war in the east. He was obeying orders. I defied my brother and the laws of alchemy and acted in my own selfish self interest. And that day in the woods it became crystal clear to us both that whatever the differences, we were one and the same. My anger was literally transmuted into understanding. I was one of those he'd die to protect. I knew why he'd rebuffed me. It was more than my age. He was willing to sacrifice that desire between us for the sake of protecting me as he could not protect Maes Hughes.

He wouldn't fuck me—but he would die for me.

If that's not love, what the hell is?

There is a thin line, so the song goes, between love and hate. Colonel Mustang and I wrestled and shoved each other back and forth between those boundaries so often that we finally scuffed out the line. Given the chance, we both recognised, we would choose to be together, to love—and fuck--and fight--and face whatever hells Fate decided to throw us into together. That is how it has been since we were reunited here in this world in 1975.

That is what would have happened in Amestris—if our luck hadn't just run out…

Sickened by my guilt I told my friend I had a plan

To overthrow corruption-To rebuild the Mother Land

I would heal a nation, torn by war and strife

My ambition burned to ashes on the day he lost his life

My tears won't bring him back-Now I'm settling the score

Retribution from the Tinderbox of War

When everything fell to pieces, right before he and Havoc and Armstrong staged their little coup d'etat, we both realised that if it was to be, it had to be now. Shit, he knew he was going after Bradley, knew he'd never come out alive, didn't give a rat's ass about anything anymore. I cornered him in his office and told him there was no fuckin' way I was waiting any longer for him. Half hour later I was flat on my back in a puddle of ink we'd spilled on his desk in our hurry to get our bodies entwined.

He wanted to go slow—just a blowjob, Ed. Let's not rush it, Ed. You're not ready for more yet, Ed. Blah blah blah… "There's no time!" I grabbed him by the lapels, thrust my tongue into his ear,whispered "Do it!"—and he did.

God, we must have looked ridiculous. I was squirming all over the desk, smearing ink over everything, and he was so nervous and scared of harming me, fumbling like a virgin—but all embarassment was forgotten once the sparks started shooting behind my eyeballs and my brain began to melt with bliss as he found the right angle of approach, so to speak. I could have been lying on broken glass. I didn't give a fuck, just wrapped my legs tighter and tighter around his back, sucking greedily on his neck while urging him on with hoarse cries. When he finally shuddered and collapsed into my arms, I wouldn't let him pull out. "Stay inside," I told him. "I've waited too long to let you go."

Then it got weird. Like fucking with me was the last straw, the last thing to crack that façade. He pressed his face into my chest and sighed. "I've been alone so long." It made me shiver with something deeper than desire. I found myself kissing that soft black hair, stroking his back with the first real tenderness I've ever felt. "I was here all along. You were just being stubborn," I told him. "I'm not eighteen yet. Why did you finally give in now? You raised so much hell about making me wait, selfish bastard."

"Because I'm a dead man, Edward. Dead since I decided I had to bring this government down. Once you're dead, there's nothing left to fear."

"WHAT--"

"Let me finish," he ordered firmly. "I'm not going to be Fuerher. I'll never get out of there alive, but if I destroy that monster that's tearing my country apart it will be worth any price. I—I'm sorry. I should have waited. I would have waited, Edward, but I'm out of time. I decided that if you still wanted me—"

"Shut up, damn it! I'm not going to lose you—"

"I'm already lost. Accept it. Just…be with me now. This is our only chance."

"Okay, you lost Maes. You're not going to lose me."I don't know if I was convincing him or myself, really. "You'll take him down. I'll be here when it's over, I promise."

He made a strange sound deep in his throat. Might have been a chuckle. Sounded more like a sob. "I'll be court-martial'ed. Executed as a traitor and as an assasin—assuming I get out of this alive—"

"Maybe not. Maybe when they find out he was a homunculus—"

"They'd still have to make an example of me. Only two things concern me now. I want my people safe and protected. And," he lifted his head from my shoulder and fixed his dark eyes on me wih a haunted expression, "I want you as far away from me as possible. I'm not dragging you down with me." His warm breath ghosted against my bare skin as he began sliding down my body, hungry again. "A few days. That's all we have to be together. Make it count, Fullmetal!"

Hawkeye caught us. I think he wanted her to. Not that he was being cruel. I think he didn't want her to have any illusions that could hurt her even more, although how she could have been his bodyguard and not known about Hughes—well, that's just impossible to my thinking.

Hawkeye didn't bat a goddamned eyelash. She glanced over her shoulder, ordered Havoc to stand guard outside, saluted us both with a wry, "carry on, sir!" before she spun on her heel and marched out, quietly closing the door behind us. Later she knocked and announced through the door that she was leaving a tray of sandwiches and a pot of fresh coffee outside for us.

We didn't go to his house that night. It was probably under surveillance. Instead, I slipped in the back door of Mrs. Christmas' brothel, just like any horny teenage boy in Central. Roy? He marched in the front door, smirking as usual. That snide expression melted off his pale face as soon as he locked the door to our room.

Now that was a night of revelations, I can tell you. Tense and depressed and—yes, damn it—scared of dying—he put it all out of his mind, drowning his senses in our lovemaking. And yeah, that is the right word for it. I couldn't say it to Maes, he admitted.

You're going to say it to me, I ordered.

"Fullmetal….Edward…I…."

In the end, he couldn't say it to me, either. He couldn't say it out loud, but he told me with his body, with the tender, possessive way he curled himself around me as he slept. The look of undisguised happiness when he woke to find I was still there in the morning.

Our farewells? Curt. Blunt. A handslap before I walked away. I wanted to knock that stubborn son of a bitch right in the head and order Hawkeye to stomp on the gas, get the hell out of Amestris. Take him to Xing. Take him anywhere. Just get him out alive. He'd have hated me for doing it, so I didn't. For all I knew, she was driving him straight to his death…and she'd do it for the same damn reason I was walking away: because we loved this man—and this is what he asked of us…

We are not the victims—there are choices we must make

Use your art with wisdom—learn to build and not to break

"Be Thou For The People"—I've got to make you understand

Learn from my mistakes and blood will never stain your hand

And from the Gateway, I will guide you

When my soul has found release—

And this Tinderbox ignites in flames of peace.

So I wandered the streets of Munich with no heart that December, wishing the bitter frost would gnaw into my bones and freeze my blood and let me join my beloved dead. My brother—oh, god! It hurt to think of losing Alphonse!—my Mom…and my Colonel.

I found a new obsession: rocketry and space exploration. I told Hoenheim that I would study with Professor Oberth.. "No guarantees that it will get you back home, my son," he fretted over a mouthfull of nails, hammering the lid on a crate crammed with extra prosthetics of his own design. I told him that if alchemy had let us down on the Earth side, science would have to provide the answers.

That's when he told me about his goddamned portal stones. "I'm not ready to give up on alchemy. Not yet. I was born in this world, and once I arrived in Amestris I was frantic to chase down any possiblity—any hope of getting back. Once I mastered alchemy I began making a series of array stones—half-finished Gateways, really—in an effort to make my way back to Earth again."

An armload of crisply starched shirts hit the threadbare carpet. My jaw must have been hanging down a foot. "Y-you…did…what??"

Yeah, I'd heard right. Stones on that side. Stones on this side too, matched near enough as he could guestimate. Figure out some way to link the damned things together…and you're on your way home, boy.

Bullshit. I didn't buy it. Wasn't worth getting my hopes smashed over. "Fine. Great. Whatever. I'll see you when I get back," I told him. I boarded the train with a heavy heart, wishing by all the powers that I could reach across the sky and feel my brother clasp my hand…and see that damnedable smirk on Roy's face, welcoming me home again.

… Instead my heart leapt up my throat at the sight of a pale German boy—just barely nineteen—who turned and smiled at me from the desk in front of mine and asked if he could fill his pen from my inkwell, as the one on his desk was dried out.

"ALPHONSE!" My god—the only thing that stopped me from clasping him to my chest was the color of his eyes—like the ironically named 'forget-me-nots'—and that his hair wasn't the warm caramel shade of my brother—a perfect blend of my father's blond and my mother's light chestnut.

"Al-fonzs," he laughted a little, correcting my pronunciation. "And you—you are Herr Elrich, ja?"

"Uhh…ja. From London. Call me Edward."

"Ah! Ed-vart."

"Ed-war-d."

His eyes twinkled and he mined scribbling my name in the air with his empty pen. "Ja. As I said. Edvart. Meine English iss gut, yes?"

I offered the inkwell and scowled at him. "Your English sucks, Herr Heiderick."

"Heiderich. Ich! Und your German iss disgraceful. You will be left in the dust in this class, Herr El-RICK."

"The hell I will!"

We were both laughing now. God, that smile made me homesick. "I shall make a bargain mitt you, Ed-WARD. I shall correct your German. You shall correct meine English. Ve study together as friends, ja? Und we shall race to the top marks, und make Herr Oberth pleased."

Three years later I buried him. Shot in the back, just for helping me escape to my home—to my brother and my Colonel. "Cut your hair," I ordered Alphonse. "Take his passport and clothing. Take his name for now. We'll get Noa to get us past the border and meet Herr Lang in France, like we planned."

"Are we really going to America, brother?" Al asked, scissors hacking away at his long ponytail.

"We can't stay here," I told him. "Not the way things are. 'Sides, we've got to find that bomb, and Lang says the Americans might find it before we do. Maybe they'll listen to reason and not try to use it on anybody."

I sent Al down to the strasse, suitcase in hand. Before I handed the keys back to Gracia, I sat down on the shabby mattress that had creaked and groaned under our bodies as we clung together, the boy who loved rockets and I.. "Abschied, meine Liebe -- mein Alfons. Vielen Dank. Ich werde nicht vergessen -- nie." I pressed his pillow to my face, faintly flecked with spatters of blood. I didn't want to forget the way he smelled—not ever.

I knuckled the tears out of my eyes, drew a deep breath, and locked the door behind me.

Roy is my heart. I waited a lifetime to find him again. But Alfons gave my life back to me. If it hadn't been for meine Liebe, I might not have survived long enough to find my Colonel, to see him reborn, to claim him as mine, damn it.

Somehow or other, if Alfons has something to tell me, I've got to listen.

No matter what it may cost me….

…And hate would claim the life, of the young man who'd held his hand out to a lost one
Who trembles against the ice, of this newest loss, cause it's gonna be a long one
When it's winter in Munich and a heart beats cold…

…TO BE CONTINUED…