Thank you everyone for the 61 reviews! It really means a lot to me that you would take the time to read and give me your thoughts about my fic, so…thanks! –glomps all reviewers– :D
Bet you guys have been waitin' for this chapter, huh? Now we get to see what Al and Ed are up to! ^.^
A confusing mesh of sounds swirled around Al's head; he tried to block them out, but to no avail. "Hey, Al, can you hear me?" a painstakingly familiar voice asked, clearly strained and worried…and about to lose its mind with panic.
Prying his eyes open, Al could see the blurry form of Ed leaning over him, his golden eyes reflecting the fear that had been present in his voice. "Brother?" he mumbled.
"Al," Ed sighed with relief, rubbing the palms of his hands against his eyes. That was when Al noticed the bandages wrapped around his brother's head.
"Brother, what happened?" he exclaimed, sitting up too quickly, for his head suddenly started swimming and he had to fight the urge to vomit. Ed gently pushed him down against something soft…a pillow? "Where are we? What's going on?"
"Just take it easy right now," Ed told him. "You need to get some more sleep."
"No…Rina, she…" Al started, his memories starting to come back to him. However, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open.
Ed must have noticed, because he said, "It's okay, you can tell me when you're feeling a little better. We're at the medical wing of the military base. You were found in that filing room and brought here for treatment when someone recognized you."
"Then we were found out?" Al asked, dismayed that he had failed at even that task.
"It's okay, we had been found out before that," Ed said grimly, his mouth a thin line of barely controlled anger.
That was when Al noticed it. "Where's Winry?"
Ed's eyes were like cold chips of golden ice as he stared past Al out the window. "Someone took her," he gritted out. "I tried to stop them, but they snuck up on me and knocked me out before I could do anything. I…I couldn't protect her." The hurt in his brother's voice mimicked the pain that Al was feeling at that very moment. Neither of them could protect those they had promised to never let get hurt.
"It wasn't your fault," Al said.
"No, it was," Ed argued, dropping his head into his hands. "Right before she was taken away, she was trying to tell me about something important that she had found out and I…I wouldn't listen. I was just so tired and frustrated…if I had only come out of my room to listen, I would've been able to save her."
"You can't blame yourself because of something like that," Al protested. "It's not like you knew what was going to happen. No one knows what will happen, and regretting what you did or didn't do won't change anything. Right now we need to figure out what to do from here."
"You're right," Ed sighed. "Now get some sleep; for right now, we can't do much of anything."
"What do you mean?" Al asked.
"The Colonel's coming here," Ed replied.
"You mean General Mustang?" Al asked tiredly.
"No," Ed answered, but before he could clarify himself, there was a knock on the door. "Al, the people here don't know who I am yet, only that I'm with you," Ed whispered hurriedly. "Keep calling me Jason; I'd rather stay under the radar right now." Raising his voice, he said, "Come in!"
The door opened quietly, and a moment later an officer that Al didn't recognize stood in the doorway. He glanced suspiciously at Ed, most likely wondering who he was, since Ed had just told him that no one knew his name. "Soul Alchemist?" the officer asked doubtfully, looking as if he didn't believe that such a young kid could really hold such a title.
"Yes?" Al replied, happy that his voice came out firmly and without a single tremor in it. All he needed right now was to look even weaker than he already did after having just been found in a destroyed section of this place with no explanation. He struggled to sit up on his bed to address the blue-uniformed officer better, Ed helping him. "What is it?"
"I was sent to find out what happened two nights ago," the officer explained.
"Wasn't it last night?" Al asked Ed, who shook his head.
"You've been sleeping for two days," Ed explained. "I was starting to think you wouldn't wake up." He gave a tiny smile, but instead of reassuring, it just showed even more how much he had been worried.
"You caused us a lot of trouble, you know," the officer added. His annoyed expression said as much.
"Sorry," Al said sincerely, to both Ed and the officer. "That wasn't supposed to happen." His eyes darkened as he remembered Rina's back as she disappeared from view.
"Do you really think you should talk to a superior that way?" Ed asked insolently. "After all, you don't even have a rank, do you?"
The officer's face turned red, but he didn't look away from Al. "Your explanation, sir?"
"We can't tell you what happened," Ed answered before Al could say anything. He glanced at Al, silently telling him not to speak, that he would fill him in later. He wondered just what all had happened while he had been asleep; what else had happened that he didn't know about?
"I wasn't asking you," the officer snapped, turning to look at Ed with a mixed look of annoyance and disdain. "You don't even belong here; I don't know why they let you in."
"But that's not any of your business, is it?" Ed asked.
"Like you even know what's going on," the officer smirked.
"I know more than you do," Ed retorted. "We're under orders not to speak of what happened," he added before the officer could get out a sharp reply.
"From who?" the officer asked suspiciously.
"That would be me," a familiar voice interrupted from the doorway. Al turned to look in surprise at Colonel Hawkeye, standing in the door frame and surveying them all critically, though her face was blank. So this was who Ed was talking about, Al thought.
"C-Colonel," the officer stuttered, quickly throwing a salute.
Hawkeye ignored him. "You really got yourselves into a mess this time, huh, Elric brothers?" she asked, addressing Ed and Al and shaking her head. "You two always seem to attract trouble."
"E-Elric brothers?" the previous officer asked, his face blanching as he took another look at Ed.
"My, my, we sure are stuttering a lot today, aren't we?" Ed smirked triumphantly. "Though I thought we had agreed not to tell anyone…?" He trailed off, glancing at Hawkeye.
"Which is why you won't speak a word of any of this to anyone, understand?" Hawkeye said, turning to look at the bumbling officer, who nodded vigorously. "In that case, you are dismissed."
They all watched as the officer walked quickly out of the room, Hawkeye moving past him and closing the door behind him once he had left. "Why'd you do that?" Ed asked curiously.
"He needed to learn a lesson in how to respect a superior," Hawkeye said with distaste. "I can't stand those who think they're better than everyone else who they consider to be a civilian or someone they think was given a rank higher than they deserve."
"Colonel Hawkeye, what are you doing here?" Al asked. "When Ed said that the Colonel would be coming, I thought he meant General Mustang."
"The General is preoccupied at the moment, so he sent me instead," Hawkeye answered, looking at Al with softening eyes. "How are you feeling?"
"Better," Al answered truthfully. His arm and chest still hurt tremendously, but there was no need for Colonel Hawkeye to know that. Though looking at Ed, he could tell that his brother already knew he was lying. Still, he didn't say anything.
"Perhaps now you could tell us what happened," Colonel Hawkeye prompted.
Ed looked like he was about to object, but Al beat him to it. "The sooner you know, the sooner you can do something about it." He stared hard at Ed, who eventually sighed and shook his head tiredly.
"Go on then," he said.
Al retold his story of what happened that night to Colonel Hawkeye and Ed, the former occasionally stopping him to ask questions and the latter saying nothing at all, even when Al got to the part about Rina. He noticed, however, when he started talking about Rina that Hawkeye's eyes narrowed ever so slightly in a look that Al couldn't discern. Concentration? Suspicion? Or something else entirely? He found that he couldn't meet the colonel's eyes.
"That's it then?" Hawkeye asked when Al had finished. He nodded, his gaze fixed on his bandaged hands, clasped together. He hadn't mentioned how he had felt when Rina had left…as though she had taken his still-beating heart with her. He couldn't blame her, though; if anyone had ever hurt Ed, he wasn't sure he wouldn't have made the same choice.
Ed stared at Al for a long time before turning to Colonel Hawkeye. "What now?" he asked.
"You said before that Winry had something important to tell you before she disappeared; do you have any idea what it might've been?" Hawkeye asked.
Ed flinched at the word disappeared. "She said it was something about what we were researching, but she didn't say what specifically," Ed answered, averting his eyes. Hawkeye glanced between the two Elric brothers, neither making eye contact with her.
"Do you have her journal?" Hawkeye asked more gently. "She might've written something down."
"Yeah," Ed replied. "I found it under the couch; I haven't actually had the chance to look through it thoroughly, but from what I can gather, all of the disappearing officers used to be commanded by a Colonel Avalier. Ring any bells?" Pulling out Winry's notebook, he handed it to Hawkeye, who flicked through the pages with an intent gaze.
"I remember there being some sort of issue with him, but I forgot what happened," Hawkeye murmured.
"There was a piece of paper that I think Winry wrote on before she came to talk to me laying on the table, too, but I'm not sure what it is," Ed continued.
"Can you show it to us?" Hawkeye asked curiously.
Ed shrugged, pulling a hastily wrapped piece of paper out of his pocket and handing it to the colonel. She glanced at it, her brows furrowed in concentration as she read it. "TI-1139?" she asked, glancing at Ed, who, again, shrugged.
"I think it's an automail part," Ed said. "But I don't know. I also don't know what that would have to do with anything."
"It says 'weakest point' right under that," Hawkeye observed. "Any idea what that could mean?"
"What if it's the weakest part in some sort of automail that Winry wanted us to know about?" Al suggested. When Ed and Hawkeye looked at him, he explained. "Well, it's pretty much saying that whatever TI-1139 is or means is the weakest point of something. If it is an automail part, then naturally you would find it in automail, right?"
"True, but that still doesn't tell us what the automail is or why that's important," Colonel Hawkeye observed.
"Do you have any news for us?" Ed asked.
"No," Hawkeye sighed regretfully. "There's been no recent development in the disappearances after what happened to you four."
"Is there anything we can do?" Al asked.
"For right now, just concentrate on getting better," Hawkeye said, already heading to the door. "If anything new happens, I'll be sure to let you know."
"Wait, are you saying we should just sit here and do nothing?" Ed questioned furiously.
"You can't just rush in, injured as you are, to face a person as dangerous as this," Colonel Hawkeye told him, her voice holding no room for argument.
"Still, there has to be something–anything–"
"I'm sorry, Ed," Hawkeye murmured. "You'll just have to wait for now."
Al saw his brother's hands clenched into fists, fully expecting him to explode at Hawkeye, but once more, he didn't say anything. Hawkeye closed her eyes, then turned and left the room with both Winry's notebook and the note.
"Ed…" Al started, but wasn't really sure what to say. What was there to say?
"I'm going," Ed said suddenly, heading towards the door.
"What?" Al asked, surprised. "Wait, at least tell me where your room is so I can find you. I mean, you're not still staying at the apartment, are you?"
"No, Al," Ed replied. "I'm going to find Winry."
"But didn't you hear Colonel Hawkeye?" Al asked. "She told us not to do anything."
"If you could do something to help someone you care about deeply and you were told to wait, what would you do?" Ed inquired, his back to Al and his hand on the door knob as he waited for Al's answer.
However, Al had no answer to give. He stared down at his hands without seeing them as Ed closed the door with a soft click behind him.
So how many of you guys read the last Full Metal Alchemist chapter? Can you believe what happened!? I'm going to be sooooo mad/depressed if what Arakawa-sensei was implying is true. D8 And, to my surprise, it was not the last chapter of the series. –stares pointedly in Shadow's general direction…wherever she might be right now– On the other hand, I'm more than happy that there are more FMA updates to come! ^.^
Okay, so I have some announcements! Well, more like goals that I have for this story. The first is for it be longer than any of my previous stories, a goal that I think is quite possible. The second I'm less enthusiastic about: I want to finish this fic before November (aka NaNoWriMo) starts so that I don't leave you guys without an update for over a month. 'Cause that would suck. However, I've got virtually no time during the week, I have pre-FBA and actual FBA coming up, and a project that's due on the 23rd. T-T Wish me luck my friends; for I will need it. XD
Thanks for reading~!