I was ten when Cornelius Steinbeck asked me to be his girlfriend. Cornelius was a very slightly person-he was slightly shorter and slightly more chubby and slightly smarter than all of the other boys and was deemed an outcast in return. There wasn't a single person, student or staff, who didn't call him 'Corny'. But he was sweet and when you're ten, that's all that really matters.

At first my father threw a fit, he grumbled and pouted until finally my uncle talked some sense into him and he allowed me to stay in my quasi-relationship and walk around town with Corny to my heart's content (although really, I would have dropped that boy in a heartbeat if my father had actually told me to do so). (Anyway) But never before had I felt like this. Not even when Corny began passing secret love notes to Melina Tripp and eventually left me to accompany her home from school instead.

At the time, I hadn't been bothered. There were a lot of things, I noticed, that were suddenly bothering me although they never did in the past. And this was definitely one of them. Rolland and Ava sat across the table from me and Alina, gazing deeply into each other's eyes.

"I'm so sorry to hear about Pinako," Riza was saying gently, her fingers wrapped around the glass of water on the table in front of her. Winry nodded, "Thank you, I'm sure she'll be awake by the time we're through if you would like to see her."

I nodded in sympathy and then diverted my eyes down, staring hard at my plate. Mustang was asking about what the doctor had said-about things such as the medicine she was taking and how long he expected her cold to last.

"It's only a case of the flu," Winry was saying, "but it's hard at her age…"

Beside me, Alina nibbled contently on the sandwich that, as she pointed out several times when we sat down to eat, she had helped them make. It was good to see her ease out of her shell. I continued to gaze at my food, my mind flooded with thought. Thoughts of my father and uncle-the family I had left behind what seemed like so long ago and the family I had developed here, Mischa and…

Ava leaned in close and murmured something, causing Rolland to laugh good-naturedly.

I froze, my heart growing spastic. It had been months since I had heard him laugh like that. Suddenly I didn't want to eat, or think, or even be seated in the same room as another person. I stood up and pushed in my chair, hoping to maintain my composure.

"Excuse me," I said quietly and took my first few steps out of the room.

"Where are you going?" I didn't look back to see who had asked but rather slipped on a pair of shoes and stepped out into the evening air.

"I'm going to see my family," I called back into the house one last time, the front door clicking shut behind me.

"Hey Dad," I murmured as my fingers gently skimmed the top of two rectangular stones, "It's been a while."

I squatted down in front of the headstones, studying every little detail. These strangers in the earth, they were my grandparents-little pieces of me which I never knew. The fingers of my good arm traced the etching in the stone-down the E and then curved with the L.

"A friend of mine died just last week…she was my best friend."

I moved on to the R and let myself linger on the I for a moment before rounding off the name at the C.

"You would have liked her." a sad smile crossed my face as the breeze began to pick up, causing my hair to spill over my shoulders.

"I've been here so long, yet I'm still just a stranger…but I don't miss the other world, not really, only you and Uncle Al and Aunt Sophia and the boys…"

Above me, a chipper songbird called out into the open air. It sat alone on the massive oak that was shedding its leaves onto the graves I sat beside.

"And I've seen so many things…" a small laugh escaped my quivering lips, "I don't think you'd believe me if I told you…I don't think you'd approve."

I turned my face up to the sky and gazed thoughtfully at the sinking sun. "I wonder," I began while watching the pale blue of the afternoon fade to red, "Am I the person…that you wanted me to be?"

I kept my eyes on the sun despite the familiar sound of footsteps through the grass.

"Winry thought that you would be here."

"These people," I nodded to the headstones, "they're my family-the closest biological thing connecting my father to this world…I know it's silly…but I thought…I thought that maybe if I spoke to them…that he could hear me too."

"It's not silly," Rolland replied with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his black coat.

I pushed myself off of the ground with one hand and stumbled to my feet. There were no stinging tears, no butterflies upturning chaos in my stomach, not one thing. I felt light…and empty.

"So the way you reacted earlier…that was weird." The wind swept his charcoal-colored hair to the left of his forehead as we stood facing one another.

"Yeah... I'm really sorry…I don't know what happened back there," I smiled, collecting my own frivolous hair and gathering it on one side of my shoulder. I bit my lip with uncertainty, "It's just…lately I wonder if I truly belong to either world…I mean, I can never keep anyone I care about around for long. I'm beginning to feel like I'm one of those people who never truly has a place; they just wander in and out of everyone else's lives-maybe I'm just another familiar face in a crowd."

My gaze wandered his way and suddenly I was trapped by his soulful, obsidian eyes. He fished his hand out from his pocket and offered it to me. I took it and his fingers slid into place with mine.

"Come on," he began with a slight tug of my hand and a small nod toward the familiar dwelling that rested just beyond the horizon, "let's go home."