Disclaimer in previous chapters. Please see Author's Notes at the end.

- x -

Amestris, 1921

"With all due respect, ma'am!"

She smiled; it really wasn't a pleasant one, and she was very proud of it.

"Why thank you!" If all due respect was being given, after all, then the opinion of a first-year was going to be thrown out the window to her fifteen years of automail experience.

And that wasn't counting any of the years she played with gears before she could talk.

She breezed past the young man, her smile turning into a more sincere beam than anything else. He was in the hospital, which certainly wasn't good, but there wasn't much else for him to do if he literally had no mechanical limbs at all. And she had no doubt if the automail had been absent for an extended time and Edward hadn't been paying attention to the ports he could have gotten them gummed up indeed. Possibly even actually slightly damaged.

Of course, damage to the ports would have caused him pain, so it was pretty unlikely. She was sure this first-year simply didn't know the difference between grime and 'the ports need to be completely replaced.'

And considering how infrequently Edward had oiled and cleaned the joints of his original automail . . . it was probably just dirt.

Depending on how injured he'd gotten himself getting rid of those automail limbs, she might go easy on him. She couldn't hear him yelling, for example, so either he was fine, or he was asleep. And hitting him with a wrench when he was asleep just wasn't very nice.

"Miss, these aren't visitor's hours-"

"I'm his mechanic, not his visitor," she retorted over her shoulder, not even slowing down.

"You don't understand, miss-"

"Is he in surgery?"

She could hear footsteps trying to catch up to her, and Winry Rockbell quietly took hold of the 3/8 quarter wrench in her side pocket. So help him if he tried to stop her –

"- well, no-"

"Is he naked?" That might actually be a compelling reason not to go inside, at least until someone threw a blanket on him. Then again, Edward had never really been concerned about that kind of thing, despite the fact that one of the ports came awfully close to his family jewels. As a little boy she supposed he was in far too much pain to care, but he hadn't so much as blushed when she'd attached the new leg four years ago, despite the close quarters and the audience. And if he was ever going to get shy around her it sure as hell would have happened then.

There was a slightly choked sound behind her. "I don't think so-"

"Then I should only be here long enough to diagnose the damage to his ports and take measurements for the new limbs," she replied airily. "I'm certain ten minutes won't make or break anyone's schedule."

Sure enough, a hand closed around her elbow. "I'm afraid you're not listening-"

She whirled on him, but he released her instantly, hands raised and palm-out. "Please, miss, just hear me out."

She considered hitting him with the wrench.

He considered her pause to be an invitation, because he plowed right ahead. "I'm not sure you'll want to see . . . him, without being fully prepared."

She just raised an eyebrow. Five seconds from getting a beat-down, buddy, she mentally warned him.

The good thing about mental warnings was that no one ever took them.

He lowered his defensive position – bad move – and frowned at her. "I've never seen anything like it."

She sighed, and relented. "Anything like what?" Like dirt on a port?" Maybe he was trying to warn her of something unrelated to the automail . . . "He isn't . . . dying, is he?" Oh, god, what if the automail had nothing to do with his reluctance to let her visit Edward? What if he'd been horribly burned, or torn up, or –

Well, of course he'd be torn up. She didn't expect him to have given up her automail without a fight.

The doctor shook his head quickly. "No, no, nothing like that. But . . . and I know I'm not a mechanic, at least not in the automail sense, but my brother-in-law is. I've seen the equipment he keeps in his shop. And I am a mechanic of the human body. We've all been trained in the basics of automail attachments so we can work on patients wearing the equipment."

He stepped forward, and she was surprised when she let him. He lowered his voice, and his eyes were very serious. "When I told you over the phone that the ports needed to be replaced, I meant it."

Winry stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate. When he didn't, she turned and started back towards Edward's room.

He didn't try to stop her again.

She knew which room was his, because, oddly, the rest of the ward was empty. Maybe it was just a quiet military hospital, but then again, maybe it was because he was the Full Metal Alchemist.

After all, they had no idea what had happened to the Philosopher's Stone. And from Maria Ross' message, they had no idea why he'd come back at all.

She'd certainly never expected to see him again –

Winry shook her head slightly, as if trying to shake off the bitterness that had enveloped her on the train. She had been staring out the window, watching the scenery go by, and could only imagine everyone else had felt the same way she did. The automail she'd made for him, she'd hoped it wouldn't be the last, but she'd been okay with that.

With the way he'd left things.

She was not okay with him reappearing and disappearing and reappearing again. If she knew he was permanently gone, she could move on. But if he was going to drop by at his convenience and turn their lives upside-down –

But he hadn't. Not if the doctor was serious about his warning.

She was used to being treated with kid gloves for being a woman. Okay, a pretty girl. When she wasn't in her overalls she looked like any other air-brained blonde. And he might have been overprotective.

She'd beat him senseless if he'd made her worry over nothing.

She pushed open the door without preamble, surprised to see the lamp by the bedside had been left on, and the room had a lovely, soft yellow glow.

Was he awake? "Edward . . .?" she called softly, on the off chance he'd just fallen asleep with the lights on.

She stepped fully into the doorway, not waiting for a reply, and down the little corridor past the bathroom door before coming into the room itself.

Ed was asleep. He also wasn't naked, or at least, she couldn't see anything beneath the middle of his chest. Which was bare. So were his arms, and the remainder of his right one was wrapped in bright white gauze.

Winry narrowed her eyes. There'd be no need to wrap a port unless it was bleeding, which was – well, almost impossible. Or infected, which was nearly as unlikely. It would have had to have been punctured or cracked, or bent so badly that the skin around the outer perimeter of the port managed to become inflamed.

Winry came in quietly, laying her small traveling bag on the reclining chair beside the bed and unbuckling it. From it, she withdrew her tape measure, her millimeter ruler, her tweaking toolset, and her utility lamp. She arranged all of them in order on the edge of the bed.

He didn't move.

Of course, Ed could sleep through anything. But something gnawed at her, and she stared up at the small bag hanging on a metal bar. A thin, clear line came out of the bottom of it, running into a needle in his arm. It was filled with a bright yellow liquid, and she'd never seen one that color before.

What were they giving him?

Normally a bag that small held painkillers, but considering her line of work, she knew most of the drugs used to quiet pain. This one didn't look familiar at all.

Winry bent across the bed, unhesitatingly finding the end of the gauze and unwrapping it. When she had it freed, she just stared.

It wasn't bent.

It wasn't cracked.

It wasn't punctured.

In fact, the port looked just fine. Unmarred silver metal met her gaze, and all the channels appeared round and even.

Except a little dark . . . she stared harder, then moved in for a closer look, bracing her knees against the mattress. Of course, the lamp was on the other side of him, so the shadows were impeding her view. Without even glancing, she picked up her travel torch and clicked it on.

Blinding white light erupted out of the end, effectively banishing every possible shadow on the port. It wasn't her imagination – roughly half the channels, mostly the central ones, looked dark. Dark was usually an indication that a nerve ending had been pulled too far, but if that was the case . . .

It meant most of them had been pulled too far. And it was physically impossible for the automail limb to pull a nerve through the channels.

Which meant it had to be . . . something else. Maybe he'd oiled the channels . . . ? Surely he wasn't that stupid. But it had to be a liquid residue, because if that was actually something solid, in that many of the channels -

Winry blinked, then went back to the bag for her magnifying goggles. She'd tossed them into the bag on the off chance Ed had gotten a grain of sand or a particle of dust lodged into the one of the channels. Even one would have been enough to drive a grown man crazy. And while it was plenty hard to wedge them in there, Ed was special. She didn't know how long the limbs had been missing, and the aforementioned lack of properly caring for them . . .

Fully goggled, Winry abandoned professional distance and scootched chest-first onto the bed, getting in up-close and personal. The most painful part of installing automail was carefully sliding the empty channel tubes on the limb itself into the channels on the port, providing a secure, moisture-controlled, and most importantly, sterile environment for the nerves to function within the mechanism.

If he'd contaminated that many of them, or worse, all those nerves had somehow been pulled too far through the channels, they'd have to remove the port. There'd be no doubt about it, the channels were too narrow to properly clean in this number, and she couldn't just stuff nerves back into the stump of the limb. Of course, if it really was the nerves were exposed to air like that, they'd also be on their way to dead, which would mean pruning back the stump of his arm to get back to healthy nerves, which mean changing the limb entirely –

Between the goggles and the light, it was almost as good as in her workshop. She was used to having to inspect ports at odd angles, and the fact that he was flat on a fairly narrow bed made it much more comfortable to get the look she needed.

The goggles magnified things to the point that each channel took up nearly all of her circle of vision. She had settled right on one, and she quietly inspected the gouge marks around the channel, and the splayed, dark nerve. The ends were shriveling, but not completely dead, which meant exposure to air was less than twenty-four hours. The gouge marks had been produced . . . by something cylindrical, but significantly wider-bore than the channel itself.

So . . . this wasn't caused . . . by the channel tubes in the automail . . .

She moved across the port, to her right, systematically. More than half were still intact, and as it had looked, most of the damage was restricted to the central portions of the port. Each damaged channel showed the tender, exposed nerve. Most of them had been shredded. A nerve looked much like a branching, flexible strand of hair. These had been split two, sometimes three times, where they didn't terminate in a ragged end.

They'd been teased out of the channels, but not even with the same tool. Some of the gouge marks were deeper, others lighter, as though someone was . . .

Was practicing. And getting better as they worked.

But then some of the gouges were on the other side, indicating a left-handed approach rather than a right-handed one.

So more than one person had done this to him. Probably with a needle or a pin of some kind.

And there was no doubt, someone had done this to him. This wasn't accidental damage. And this wasn't the kind of damage he could have done to himself.

Someone had sat in her position, with a narrow cylinder of metal, and they had teased out each and every one of the exposed nerves.

And just one of them, improperly housed in a channel, caused enough constant pain to make things such as sleeping and having a pleasant conversation extremely difficult. Ten and the agony was so unbearable that those unable to get to mechanics would often cut off the port, or even kill themselves.

There were over a hundred damaged channels on the port.

Winry didn't even take off the goggles, pulling away and using her knees to feel her way around the bed. Automatically, she lifted the blanket on his left side, exposing the port, and she expertly tucked the blanket into the crevice between what was left of his thigh and everything else. Then she pushed the bundle slightly aside, and leaned in close.

The first few ports she found looked fine, and she was starting to relax when a torn nerve came into view. Almost a full millimeter of it was exposed.

For some reason, whoever . . . they . . . had been focused again on the center channels, and she was able to find ten in the first thirty seconds of inspecting. None as bad as that one, but . . .

Winry leaned back, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling off the goggles wearily. It was as though the day of traveling had finally caught up with her, and she sagged heavily, dropping her elbows onto her knees.

She didn't look at him.

No wonder she didn't recognize the painkillers in that bag.

And they probably weren't doing him nearly enough good.

It would have taken . . . hours. Hours and hours to do that. Maybe even an entire day. It had happened relatively recently, obviously, but . . .

Who would do something like that? After treating just two nerves like that, whoever was suffering the kind of constant, piercing, bone-deep pain that pulling those nerves would cause would be worthless. They wouldn't be able to walk, wouldn't be able to talk. All they'd be able to do was scream.

Two.

Not two hundred.

He must have passed out. There was no way a human being could have tolerated that kind of pain. It would have put his system into shock. Seizures, vomiting, evacuation of the bladder and bowels, profuse sweating, temporary blindness and deafness as the brain tried to block out all the signals it was receiving.

He wouldn't have been able to function. Not to answer any questions, not to move, not to do anything at all.

What had been the point?

Why would someone do that?

Who could?

She slouched there, on the side of his bed, for a long time. There was no way to make him more comfortable than unconscious; no one had sprayed down the ports with a numbing agent, which she couldn't quite figure out, unless he'd been unconscious the entire time?

That much pain could literally kill a person.

She didn't know how long she sat there, not looking at him, before she heard the door quietly open. From the gentle way they entered, and their silence, she could only assume it was the first-year she'd run into on the way in. He didn't say anything, though; she felt the mattress sag as he sat on the opposite side.

Winry licked her bottom lip. "Who did this to him?"

The answer was slow in coming. "I don't know."

It was a military hospital. Even if he honestly didn't know, she knew exactly where to go to find out.

"Was he awake when he came here?"

"No." The doctor sounded as tired as she felt. "He was seizing."

That wasn't at all surprising. So the drug was probably also a paralytic.

Or maybe only –

"Why weren't these ports numbed?"

"The officer that accompanied him indicated his mechanic would want the ports as clean as possible to make a diagnosis," he replied. She heard the swishing of liquid, and turned to watch him over her shoulder.

He was holding a spraybottle out to her. "I assume you've finished, then."

She accepted it immediately and went to work, washing down the port and using the gauze to catch the drippings. Once she'd thoroughly saturated his leg, she moved to go around the physician when he gently took the bottle.

"I'll get it."

She let him, watching him carefully but determining he knew what he was doing. He even held the bottle at the right angle to ensure the best possible contact of droplets with the interior of the channels rather than the surface hood. It didn't do Ed any good if it didn't get to the nerves.

Which were, of course, flapping around in the breeze –

For the first time since she'd seen what happened to him, Winry thought she might be sick.

"I want to be here tomorrow. For the surgery."

He was padding the port, keeping the numbing agent from dripping on the bed, and he looked up at her, a little startled. "Begging your pardon –"

"We can't prune the stumps back very far," she interrupted him. "If we do, we're going to limit his range of motion too much –"

"Miss, the damage to his nerves is quite severe. If we don't go back far enough, he won't be able to use the automail at all."

She just looked resolutely at him. "I can tell you exactly how far."

He regarded her for several moments. "I'm a doctor, not a visitor," he chided, tossing her earlier words right back. "I know I'm young, but I know what I'm doing."

She didn't drop her eyes, and he smiled. "You can be there, if you want," he relented. "But keep in mind you won't be able to fit him for new ports for at least three days, until the swelling's gone down."

She raised an eyebrow, and he held up a hand placatingly. "No offense intended," he added. "I know you knew that, I was just . . . putting my foot into my mouth," he trailed off.

She gazed down at Ed as the first-year gathered up the bottle and the spent gauze. The Full Metal pain in her ass looked pretty peaceful, all things considered. He'd always been good at sleeping. Hopefully he was somewhere the pain wasn't getting to him.

Having a pleasant dream, far from the place and the people that had done this to him.

He was here. He was safe. In the morning, these ports would be gone, the nerves would be cut back to living tissue, and he'd have to deal with that pain. It would be a shadow of what he'd already been through, but it was going to remind him of his mother, of losing the limbs all over again.

It was going to be hard. And since Maria hadn't mentioned Alphonse, she didn't want to even think why he wasn't sitting at Ed's bedside. Obviously he couldn't, but was that because he was injured as well, or because . . .

What kind of story was Edward going to tell? If this is what had been done to him . . . if Edward Elric, of all people, couldn't escape what he'd been put through -

What had happened to Alphonse?

Surely this wasn't the 'equivalent trade' they kept on about. Surely he hadn't . . . hadn't had this done to himself in exchange for something else. Surely –

Surely Al hadn't gotten killed.

She waited until the doctor got out of the way, then gathered up her things. He escorted her out of the room, closing the door gently behind them, and then she turned.

"I've been traveling all evening," she started, "so I haven't been in contact with Lieutenant Ross since this afternoon. Do you know if anyone else was admitted to the hospital in relation to Edward's appearance?"

The man's face sobered. "Alphonse Elric doesn't have any automail," he murmured, ushering her down the hallway. "So I'm afraid your excuse won't work in his case."

"He's here?"

The doctor's expression didn't change, and something cold and heavy settled in her stomach. "For now," he said quietly. "I'm afraid his ward is off-limits to visitors, mechanics or not."

- x -

It was a horrible trick.

It had to be.

Because the blonde-haired man that leaned over him, with that relieved smile cracking across his otherwise serious face, was all wrong.

Doctor Russell Tringham wasn't real, after all. So there was no reason Russell Tringum should be bent over him, white coat starched and pressed. It should have been Edward's face.

What had he done?

Where was he?

He blinked accidentally, and when he opened his eyes again, the man was gone.

He stared at the white ceiling, instead, and after a moment Alphonse Elric realized he was still breathing.

He was still breathing. And there was no funny whistle, no odd wheeze. Maybe the bullethole had gotten numb, and he just couldn't feel it anymore. Maybe it had gotten congealed and clotted with blood, so he could breathe normally again.

But the ceiling in the janitor's closet wouldn't have been white. It was a dingy sort of place, with wooden shelves nailed haphazardly on the walls, and a threadbare mop stuffed in one corner. The corner that he'd dropped nii-san into when he'd pulled the door shut.

So they must have been found.

Found by the soldiers.

But if that was true, why had they let nii-san treat him?

Why had they saved his life? And when had Edward woken from that odd state he'd been in? It had been as if he'd seen a ghost, as if he couldn't see at all. No amount of shaking, not even a slap across the face, had fazed him at all. He had lain on the stained and filthy bed staring at nothing the same way Al was doing now.

What had they done to nii-san? And would they do the same to him?

Al blinked, and instantly the light level in the room dropped significantly. Now the ceiling was a dark grey, and the light was coming from his left, and it was yellow. It wasn't flickering like firelight, it was steady and seemed warm.

Electricity.

"We're going to run out before we've done enough."

There was a soft shuffle, somewhere near the light, and the sound of something sliding on paper.

"I know."

Something dull brushed against itself.

"It's probably just as well. I think they're starting to get a little suspicious."

"That what?" the voice sounded like the speaker was smiling. "That the great alchemist Russell Tringum has done the impossible?"

"It's not a joke, Fletcher." The second voice was admonishing. "This is a military hospital. If we were caught using it –"

"I know, I know." The other voice sounded not a bit repentant. "But just look at hi- . . . oh!"

Al closed his eyes, knowing that they'd seen he was awake. But they'd known it from the start. They were probably guards at the door, mocking him now that they knew he was really 'Fletcher Tringham,' and not the man whose uniform he'd stolen out of the laundry bins. They'd gotten caught.

He tried to move, tried to get up, but succeeded in nothing. His body didn't feel like anything at all. He wasn't even sure he still had it. He didn't feel the cold ache of steel, so he clearly hadn't somehow been sealed to armor again. This felt . . . heavier. If nothing at all could feel heavy. He felt as though no force on earth had the power to move him.

He also couldn't feel if he'd managed to so much as twitch a finger.

"So much for that," the voice said. It sounded much the same as it had before. Serious. But not accented, the voice wasn't speaking German . . .

Perhaps the Germans had imported American scientists, as rumored?

"I'm sure he'll start staying awake longer soon," the happier voice said reassuringly. "He's already so much better."

"I think that has more to do with your touch than mine," the serious voice replied. It sounded appreciative.

"You're the healer, nii-san. You always have been better than me at that."

"You just get hurt more than I do, because you're clumsy."

"Am not!"

"Used to be."

" . . . well, yeah . . ."

"Ready for another go?"

"Let's do it."

Al braced himself for an impact or a strike, but –

He saw red, but he felt no pain. For a few moments he waited, but it wasn't his imagination. Behind his eyelids, he saw nothing but a red glow.

Al opened his eyes again.

He could see the blonde man – how he looked like Russell Tringum – with his head bowed low, his blonde bangs hanging in his face. Across from him was the slightly rounder face of Fletcher Tringum, and the two of them had their hands –

Their hands were on his throat.

Only he couldn't feel it.

And their hands were glowing red.

A decomposition! his mind screamed. Panic sent a wave of ice shooting through his veins, and with it came sensation.

Excruciating ache. It wasn't like any pain he'd ever felt. It was as though his entire body had been repeatedly flattened with a human-sized rolling pin. Every tingle was unpleasantly sharp and his entire body throbbed. The more he concentrated on it, the more overpowering it became.

It hurt. He hurt.

Was this what decomposition felt like? He'd been a suit of armor the last time he'd been taken apart by alchemy, so he wasn't sure.

But he had to do something.

Alphonse Elric struggled for all he was worth, and managed to pick up his head, ever so slightly. Something stiff and rigid in his throat, something that shouldn't have been there, pulled so strongly he cried out from the pain.

Only he couldn't open his mouth. The cry whimpered out through his nose.

The red light didn't vanish, but both of the Tringums' heads snapped up to stare at him in shock.

"Al? Al, are we hurting you?" It was Fletcher, and he looked extremely concerned. "I'm sorry it hurts, but we're almost finished for now-"

"It probably feels pretty weird, but it'll be fine in a moment," Russell tried in a reassuring tone of voice. "Just bear with us for a few more seconds."

It hurt. Why did it hurt? Why did they say he'd be fine in a second? Would he be dead in a second?

"There."

As promised, the red light vanished.

But the pain didn't go anywhere.

Frightened beyond whimpers, Alphonse Elric struggled with all his might to lift up his head. He had to see, to make sure he still had his body, but more than that, to see where he was. It couldn't be alchemy, because he was in Germany, and the Germans didn't believe in alchemy. Was it magic? Were they trying to put a spell on him?

Was it the Thule Society? Had they been following the uranium bomb? Had they found nii-san?

It couldn't be the Tringums, not really. They were in Amestris.

He wasn't in Amestris.

Was he?

He was unable to pick up his head any further, and after a moment he gave up trying. The thick thing in his throat was concerning him, but there was nothing he could do about it. It was probably the exit wound of the bullet he was feeling, which meant –

Which meant he had survived.

"Al? Al, you probably can't talk yet," Fletcher was saying. "You're in Central, in the hospital. The Major General was here until about an hour ago, then he went to check on Ed. He's not hurt nearly as bad as you were, so we've been saving all of it to use on you."

Al blinked, trying to focus on what Fletcher was holding up for him to see.

"Turns out the old dog hung onto a few pieces, for a rainy day," Russell drawled. "Guess it was raining where you were."

Red stone.

Fletcher was holding red stone.

The Philosopher's Stone?

No, his mind whispered. Those were like the pieces that had fallen out of nii-san's National Alchemist watch.

Alchemy amplification.

"He's going to be in huge trouble if anyone finds out he gave it to us, or that we've been using it," Fletcher said, in a hushed tone. "Remember that, Al. You can't say that you saw us using it to heal you."

"You can tell them the Winding Tree Alchemist healed you," Russell amended. "Just don't mention the incomplete stone, okay?"

"And his brother. The hospital staff knows we're here."

"I don't think he's listening anymore."

"I wonder why he made that sound. When you healed me all those times, it didn't hurt."

Al realized at some point his eyes had drifted closed. The throbbing was getting farther away the more he ignored it, so he focused on the sounds of their voices, instead. Was it really them? Was he really back in Amestris? And had he really brought Ed with him?

"I think it's the first time he's really woken up. Probably just startled him."

"We should go tell Mustang. One of us'll have to stay here until we're sure he's lucid."

"You're right. And probably get a nurse in here to give him something for the pain –"

"That'll keep him out for days!"

"He can't talk, Fletcher. It's not like it matters. Let's make him comfortable. He can tell us what happened later."

"What about the thing?"

"He can tell us later."

- x -

Author's Notes: Yes, I can drag it on and on and ON! I am cool like that. Sorry for the long time between updates – I had to get some sleep last night. The remainder of the fic will take place in Amestris, in the year 1921, unless otherwise noted. Thank you guys for the faves and the hits and the reviews! Again, if you notice any typos or otherwise weird things, let me know and I will fix them straightaway!