April 21st, 1984

"It's weird having next to no luggage," Winry commented as she finished folding the last of the few outfits she had picked up since the war officially ended. Their very few disguises from their mission had been discarded or donated to help those in need of clothing, being simpler items and rather old fashioned. Winry was much happier in clothing that reflected her own personality again, and with her long pale-blond hair that was more of a champagne gold tinged white.

"I'm sure you'll make up for it when we go to Creta this summer," Ed chuckled as he came up behind her, his strong arms wrapping around her waist as he tilted his head and kissed her neck. "I like clothes like these better on you anyway."

"I like the feel of them," Winry agreed. Her current shirt was a modern, tunic-style cut silk with a dyed pattern of swirling reds and oranges. "Though I'm not sure we'll have room for everything in the closet."

"You mean our walk-in closet big enough to house a middle school soccer team?" Ed teased.

"The one that would hold more if your half was better organized," Winry pointed out. "Don't you ever give anything away?"

"You never know when it might come in handy," Ed objected.

"You haven't worn some of it in twenty years."

"Or longer," Ed acknowledged. "What's wrong with sentimental value?"

Given she had several items she had personal attachments to in there as well, Winry couldn't argue that. "Nothing, as long as it's not falling on the floor and stuffed in boxes. All of my things are put away neatly."

"Fine, when we get home, I'll clean the closet."

"That may be the most romantic thing you've ever said."

Ed laughed. "Then I'm in trouble, if that's the best I can do."

"A lot of trouble," Al chuckled as he walked in through the open door into the guest room Winry and Ed had occupied for the past couple of weeks. "Flirting instead of packing? We'll miss the train."

"If Elicia were here you'd be just as bad," Winry teased Al as Ed released her and she closed her single suitcase, which was also new.

"Why do you think I want to get home?"

Ed grabbed both suitcases and the three of them moved back into the communal sitting area between the bedrooms in their usual suite. Thankfully this part of the palace had been mostly undamaged, and it looked as it always did. Though the rest of the palace looked almost as good as new in a surprisingly small amount of time. Ed and Al had restored most of the palace, including many of the broken or damaged historical relics, to their original splendor thanks to alchemy and access to a lot of photographs of the main rooms of the palace to help them visualize properly. Areas of less importance were being restored in more traditional fashion and updated, since some things hadn't been brought to current standards in over fifty years, despite regular work on the building.

"Because you can't wait to get rid of us?" Will asked in a playful tone. He and Ren were sitting at one of the low tables.

"Don't be silly," Winry smiled. "It's not like we won't all see plenty of each other when you all reach Central, and in Creta."

Ren nodded. "I expect we'll get to Creta before everyone else. There's so much to do!" She looked excited, and why shouldn't she? Her daughter was finally getting married to the man they had been expecting her to end up married to for years. Watching them together, it was clear that their latest ordeal had only helped move the process along.

"Though less than usual," Will looked a little relieved. "Apparently the curator and primary supervisor of the palace is a friend of the Argyros family. Apparently every Argyros wedding in four generations has been there, so there's no charge now."

"A princely gift," Al chuckled, "And a big relief on anyone's checkbook."

"Don't I know it!" It was no wonder Will was grinning.

"Where are the lovebirds?" asked Ed. "We're not going to get to say goodbye if they don't show up soon."

"They'll be here," Will assured them, "But right now Minxia is talking with Meifen, and I believe Thrakos is getting the 'if you ever hurt my sister' talk from Mich."

"Does he need it?" Winry asked, not entirely sure she believed it.

"Probably not," Will shrugged. "But they don't know each other all that well. Michio wants to make sure the guy is good enough for his sister. Not that that's actually possible, but he'll do."

"Given they're making wedding plans, I'd hope so," Winry replied, sitting down. "Is there tea left? I think I'd like a cup before we go." They still had about an hour until they were going to be driven down to the train station in one of the family cars.

"There's half a pot of jasmine green," Ren nodded, reaching for the little cups in the middle of the table and pouring the tea into one of them.

Ed grinned as they sat down. "What do you think they're really talking about?"

"-And that's when we managed to get the lizard out of her pant leg," Thrakos finished, grinning and taking a drink of his beer as Michio howled with laughter from across the table.

"Minx never told me that one," Michio said when he could finally breathe. "What did Angelique do when she found you two on the ground with your hand half-way up her pant leg?"

"She started laughing so hard Minxia almost hit us both," Thrakos admitted, relieved that Michio had turned out to be entirely cool about the marrying his sister thing. Not that he had ever had disagreements with Michio before, but they'd only met a handful of times. This particular story, thankfully, was one from their college days. In high school they probably would have been in much more trouble. "Though I think the lizard was more freaked out than she was by the end of it."

"Did she hit either of you?" Michio asked curiously.

"Not in the end," Thrakos grinned. "Though I did get a thank you once she calmed down a bit."

"What- nevermind, I don't want to know how she thanked you." Michio shook his head, and sipped from his own drink.

"Nothing nearly so interesting as the Cretan gossip columns would like to believe," Thrakos assured him with a shrug. "I think they're disappointed that I'm not the next Uncle Ziro. They loved following him around too: his exploits, his girlfriends…"

"I can see where they might find you dull," Michio grinned. "Apparently the Xingese Emperor's niece isn't interesting enough for them."

"Oh they've tried." Thrakos shook his head. "But if Minx and I had done half the things in half the places they claim, she'd never have managed to find time to work on any of the dig sites she's been at the past four years."

Michio's expression sobered for a moment. "You know, I appreciate you taking care of my sister, right? I know she'd have gone off after the family with or without you… and I hate to think what would have happened to her if you weren't there."

"You know your sister's the alchemist, right?" Thrakos pointed out. "We looked out for each other out there."

"Still, she needs someone to watch her back." Michio raised his glass a little. "She's more than capable of taking care of herself, but that also gets her into trouble. Now I know you're crazy enough to follow her into trouble, and capable of making sure she comes back out alive."

"So I'm allowed to marry your sister?" Thrakos teased.

"Sure," Michio grinned. "Just don't ever make her regret it."

There was the veiled threat he'd been waiting for. Thrakos grinned back. "Oh don't worry, I have no intention of ever doing anything to make her sorry. It's taken me more than long enough to convince her she can stay in one place long enough to get married!"

April 23rd, 1984

The fire crawled across the floor like ribbons of death, suffocating heat and billowing smoke that engulfed Alyse's unconscious form on the floor. It began to eat away at the clothing of her still, unconscious form; then the skin. She didn't move. Surely someone was coming. But no one was coming. Her body burned inexorably slowly along with the room around it. In the far distance someone was shouting in a language that couldn't quite be understood. It wasn't Amestrian.

Alyse's eyes popped suddenly open, and she began to scream.

Cal sat up abruptly, the last of a shout dying just past his lips as he gasped for air, eyes wide, body drenched in sweat. His hands clutched fists of sheets into twisted spiders on the bed. His heart was pounding like a racehorse in his chest, and he thought it might just come right up out of his chest through his throat. He could smell the phantom trace of burning bodies… a scent with which he was far too well acquainted.

A dream… a dream… just a dream. Oh hell…. He gasped in a deep, ragged breath, then another, forcing them in a steady pattern despite the panicked feeling that told his body to run.

A soft sigh caused his eyes to dart sideways, to where the still, sleeping form of Alyse –alive, whole, and definitely not burning to death- was cuddled under the covers.

She's fine. She's fine. Oh god…. I can't do this anymore.

Cal claws the covers off, and padded across the floor into the bathroom. He flicked on the light, and turned on the shower. He didn't even wait for the water to get hot, he just stepped into the stream, letting the cold water shock him into full sensibility first. The terrible images of his nightmares seemed burned into his eyeballs. It never happened. Alyse is fine. It never happened.

The water warmed slowly, and at the same pace his heartbeat began to return to normal, his breathing came more easily. He leaned up against the tile wall, closed his eyes and let the water course over him. Salty rivulets joined the water running down his face.

"Calvin?"

Shit. "I'm here," he called back after a moment, knowing Alyse would worry if he didn't respond.

"Are you all right?" Her voice sounded muffled enough he was pretty sure she had called from the bed, instead of taking the trouble to get crutches and get up and come to the bathroom door.

"Fine," he lied, even as he felt bad for saying it. "I overheated. Just wanted to rinse off. Go back to sleep. I'll be out soon," he called back over the water, hoping he didn't wake anyone else in the house.

"Okay."

He couldn't tell if she had really believed him or not, but Cal gave himself another minute, then turned off the water, grabbed a towel, and rubbed himself dry vigorously. When he looked in the mirror he grimaced. So much for looking rested. He certainly felt his age at the moment.

The lights were still out in the bedroom when he returned. Thankfully he didn't seem to have been sweating long enough to soak his side of the bed, so he crawled back under the sheets without trying to find new ones. Alyse snuggled up against him almost immediately, and he put one arm gently around her. She was fine. There was nothing to be afraid of.

He just wished he could get the rest of him besides the logical portion of his brain to believe it.

April 24th, 1984

"What do you mean you want me to take this stuff?" Cal looked at the prescription sheet Ethan had handed him.

Ethan sighed and gave him a sympathetic look. "Your blood pressure is too high, and from everything I can tell, its stress related."

"Why the hell would I be stressed now?" Cal argued. "We're home, safe, and I'm on vacation."

Ethan did not look fooled. "Don't lie to both of us, Cal. I know you came here hoping I'd give you a different opinion than you'd get from the psychologists the military has on call, but I won't. You're too much of a combat vet and I'm too experienced of a doctor not to know better. That, and I know you."

He was right, much as Cal hated to admit it. But then, wasn't that why he had come to Ethan; because he didn't want to talk to the guys HQ had at medical? Ethan was family, and he understood better than they could. "Okay. You're right. I can't sleep, not well. I keep having nightmares. The usual post-combat stuff, but the worse ones… they're worst case scenarios. Alyse dead. Charlie… Gloria." He ran a hand through his short curly hair. "I wasn't here, and all I can think when I see that hole in HQ is how much worse it could have been." He paused, but Ethan's patient expression said he was waiting for more. "And… they're not panic attacks, but I'm jumpy, worse than before, and I can't seem to get a hold of it. I've always managed before."

"What's different this time?" Ethan asked.

Cal's mouth twisted wryly. "I can't use any of my old coping techniques. Not if I want to stay married."

He wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that Ethan just nodded. "So what have you tried instead?"

"Not much," Cal admitted. He'd tried just toughing it out. It wasn't like he'd never had post-war issues. Most alchemists did at one point or another but before he'd survived his own way. Have a drink, have a smoke, have a night with a pretty girl…

"Does Alyse know?"

"Yeah." He hadn't been able to hide it from her, and he had promised Elicia he would talk to Alyse about what he was dealing with. They'd have enough of a rocky period he didn't want to cause friction in their relationship by not being honest. "Damn it, Ethan, why now? It wasn't this bad-" No, he couldn't say it had never been like this. "It hasn't been this bad since the Aerugo War." The two years after having his leg blown off had been two of the hardest of his life, and not just because he'd had to go through physical therapy to learn how to move with his auto-mail leg.

"When you stepped on that land mine."

"Yeah." Cal's fingers twitched, but there was no glass to pick up; no smokes in his pocket. Nothing to do but force them still. His stomach jumped at the memory. It was too soon after combat. "Those were hard years."

"Tell me about them," Ethan suggested calmly. "I don't know much about what you went through, other than helping Mom make your auto-mail."

Cal hadn't even considered that. Ethan had been fifteen during the war, turning sixteen. Gloria's age now. Cal hadn't really known Ethan at the time except as Sara's little brother. "It was rough," he admitted. "Every time I closed my eyes I heard the rush and explosion. I was in constant pain, even with the painkillers. They couldn't give them to me all the time either. Anything strong enough to completely block it out was too dangerous for long term use, they told me." His fingers tapped on his leg. He forced them still by clenching his fist. "My leg hurt all the time, and the feeling that it was still there, the phantom limb thing, drove me crazy until Winry installed my leg. After that, well, at least I didn't feel like I was imagining my limb. I just had to deal with figuring out what I wanted to do; if I wanted to come back to work when I could move again. I… I doubted if I even should, for a long time."

None of this was secret. He'd told Alyse about most of it years ago, but not anyone else. "I'd always gotten by on my own, but I make a mistake, and I had two years to take a good long look at myself, at what other people saw, and I wasn't sure I liked it. I wasn't sure I deserved to be called one of Amestris' finest. I knew Sara and Maes knew me better. I'm still not sure sometimes how I earned their trust and friendship. It took me years to figure out that it didn't have to be as complicated as it was in my head."

"And how did you deal with it then?"

"Required counseling, which didn't do much," Cal admitted. "I can't say I was all that willing a patient, but I did try, and I did answer what they asked honestly. But…"

"But?"

"I still felt like I'd failed again. Like I'd let everyone down. The way I always felt like I'd let my parents down, even when I hated my father for his expectations and the way he emotionally abused my mother. I couldn't do anything effective about him. I couldn't fix my leg." Cal shrugged. "So I did what most of us do. I coped, instead of getting over it. We're alchemists, and soldiers. We don't whine about our feelings. We don't commiserate about our nightmares. We sit around and drink and smoke and play pool and bitch about the world. Find a pretty girl to spend the night with…" he repeated his own earlier thoughts. "Those of us who get lucky have a girl to go home to who cares, even if they don't completely understand. You hope… you hope they never have a reason to."

Ethan's even gaze said more than words. Ethan had been in war zones, he had seen the worst, and fought for his own survival when needed. He understood.

"I'm trying." Cal hoped Ethan understood that. "The kids know. I can't hide anything from them anymore. They're not little. It's not fair for them not to know… but that doesn't mean I can tell them everything. I've been working out, trying to exhaust myself enough to sleep, work out enough energy not to jump at things." And yet… "Shit, I'm such a liar."

"Funny, I thought we were getting somewhere."

Cal glared at Ethan, whose expression was still fairly neutral. "To myself, as much as anything else. I've always told myself I can handle it. I don't care what people think of me, or my vices. I mean, I care what Alyse thinks… because I like being married, but I can't remember the last time I felt like this. I told Tore it was so damned easy; I got him in so much trouble." He'd helped him out the only way he knew when Tore was just a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old Major. But he hadn't done him any favors in the long run. "I'm dying for a smoke... and for once, I don't really want one."

"Your body is looking for the same ways to cope you've trained it for." Ethan nodded, and reached out, tapping the paper sitting on the desk between them now. "Doesn't matter how long it's been since you used it." He didn't ask Cal the questions Alyse had demanded of him the day Charlie had found the cigarettes in his sock drawer roughly two years before. "That's why I'm prescribing you these."

"Replacing one chemical dependence on another one?" Cal asked, a bitter twist in his words and in his stomach.

"Since you seem to suck at coping," and at that Ethan smiled slightly, "We're going to try something else. I want you to start with these. The first one, you'll take once a day for the next month. It will help bring down your blood-pressure, no matter how much you try to screw it up."

"Gee thanks." Cal quipped. "And the second?"

You'll take this one, two pills, twice a day, for the first two weeks. After that, I want you to drop it to one twice a day, for another two weeks, and we'll see how you feel." Ethan pointed to the second one. "That one's for extreme anxiety. I'd really rather not keep you on these indefinitely, and if we can't help you get past this, you're just going to keep stressing yourself into other health problems. Right now, you're in good shape. Let's keep it that way."

"What happens when I'm off them then?" Cal asked skeptically.

"By then, hopefully you'll have learned some more effective, more natural ways of dealing with the stress and trauma you're experiencing." Ethan was serious. "I know you're idea of relaxed is about as calm as Dad on his worst days, but have you tried any of the Xingese forms of healing meditation?"

"You want me to… meditate?" Cal couldn't hide his incredulity.

"Dad learned." Ethan shrugged slightly. "And look how much good it's done him. I use them myself. They're teaching them around here now."

"Too bad Ed and Al didn't know them when I was in training." Maybe it might have sunk in earlier. He was almost sixty now. "I guess I'm not too old to learn a new trick."

He'd try just about anything at this point. "Though it's probably going to kill my rep."

"If you want, I can add a prescription for daily sex on there for you to take home to Alyse."

Cal almost choked at the mischievous look on Ethan's face. "You - what?"

Ethan laughed. "Your instincts aren't entirely wrong. Some quality time with Alyse, whatever you two choose to do with it, would actually be beneficial."

He was actually serious. Cal gave that a moment's thought, but he didn't ask for a medical explanation. "Go ahead," he said, managing a smile. "I'd like to see the look on Alyse's face."

He hadn't expected Alyse to crack up laughing when she looked at the note and Ethan's distinct signature. "I can't believe he actually wrote this," she said as she managed to get control of her breathing.

"Yeah well, he said it would help," Cal replied, feeling a little nonplussed by her reaction. Though he hadn't expected her to take it seriously. After all, he hadn't really taken Ethan seriously either.

"There is research out now saying that it has certain psychological benefits and effects," Alyse said, her expression turning thoughtful.

Who was doing this research and how could Cal sign up as a test subject? "They actually do medical research on sex?"

"Why not?" Alyse smiled coyly at him. "They research all the other parts of the reproductive process and parts of the human body. I guess the question is, do you intend to follow doctor's orders?"

"You mean you'd let me?" the words spilled out bluntly, and Cal immediately regretted them.

"Well," Alyse looked down at the paper. "I'm not sure every day is entirely realistic, but if it's a medical necessity…"

Cal wasn't sure what had happened to the prude of the past few years, and he knew she was probably humoring him, but he wasn't complaining. "It's right there in ink, and I'd hate to make a doctor mad at me."

"You've been making doctors mad at you your whole life."

"Yeah, but I'm related to this one."

Alyse reached up and gave his cheek a pat with one hand. "Well then, I guess we'll have to be sure to take care of your needs. Tonight?"

Cal took her hand and kissed it. "It's a date."