Wow, two days later and I have an update. Sad to say, but after this there is probably going to be one more chapter and an epilogue. -sniff-sniff- I am gonna miss this story. But I will be working on a prequel to it, so that should keep my mind off things. That and I will be working on my other stories too. So, if you like my tales of Edward and my OC's then check them out!

In this chapter, I made it sadder than expected. But I also made it more in Ed's point of view and you get to see more into Ed and Andi's past. Like how they met. You also get to meet a Brotherhood character. So yeah, sorry for the feels, but I guess I couldn't resist. This chapter is filled with the feels

Songs: "Nothing I Won't Give" by Vic Mignogna
"Lullabuy" by Nickelback
"Never Gonna Be Alone" by Nickelback
"Perfect" by My Darkest Days
"Iris" by Goo Goo Dolls
"Broken" by Seether featuring Amy Lee
"Away" by Enrique Iglesias featuring Sean Garrett
"Addicted" by Enrique Iglesias
"Save Me" by Nickelback

Angel kept her gaze on the stone as she made her way up the stairs from the basement. She sighed in somewhat sadness as she realized that Greed had to die in order for her to obtain this small stone in her hand. But it was Equivelant Exchange. She hadn't been paying attention until she heard Ed's voice break through her thoughts.

"Andi!" he cried as he wrapped his arms around her, glad she was alive.

Angel hugged him back instinctively, her gaze still on the stone. Ed lifted his head, seeing what she was looking at.

"How do you have a stone?" he asked, scared to know of the answer.

"It was Greed's," she said slowly, softly. She sighed. "He gave it to me."

Ed looked at her, wondering why she was upset a little that Greed gave it to her. Then he remembered. When his wife was meeting him again, Greed was a friend of hers. He hugged her again. "How did he want you to use it?"

"To open the gate," Lust said with the realization. Angel looked to Lust and nodded wordlessly. "And here I thought Greed would fit his name."

Angel nodded in agreement. "We need an alchemist who would know how to open the gate then."

Angel looked to Ed, knowing he would know how to open the gate of all people. Ed sighed, looking from her to his feet. "I remember the transmutation circle vaguely." He looked to her as he said, "But I can't perform alchemy. I gave it up in exchange for Al's body."

"Will the stone help?" Lust asked, determined to get Angel to Andi again. She deserved it. They both deserved it after the shit Envy and Greed at put them through.

Ed looked at the descent sized stone in Angel's fingers. "It might. But if nothing happens, I'll call Roy or Al."

"Call Al," Angel said immediately. Ed looked to her with question. She smiled, already devising her plan. "I want to surprise Roy."

Ed nodded as Lust led them into the ballroom in the section of the mansion that only she and Angel had gone in when they went exploring around the mansion. Envy and Greed never bothered to since their minds were only on their plan. She stopped when she was in the middle of the room, showing the caked on dust on the floor everywhere else, showing how much it was unused. "Will this work, Ed?"
Ed nodded as he looked around, taking note of the caked on dust on the floor. "Yeah, we just need it to open the gate, and it's kinda big. It's like it's own door to get to the gate."

Angel watched as Ed started working out a transmutation circle in the dust on the floor, remembering a time when he didn't need to use one and would clap his hands. Al could, and still could, do the same. They had saw the gate. Ed was soon using paint they'd found in the basement in a corner somewhere once they all reached the same answer of using the ballroom, and after Ed was done using the dust-and was covered in some of it. Angel looked around, waiting in anticipation of what could happen in another room.

"Lust," Angel said, getting her attention. Lust looked to her as they waited. "If something happens in the gate and I don't remember you, I want you to know that I am grateful for your friendship. I think I would have been silent the entire time if it wasn't for you."

Lust smiled, glad to hear it come out of her mouth instead of just wondering. Though she wouldn't say it, deep inside, Lust had a feeling Angel wouldn't remember her after the gate was done with her. "You're welcome, but you don't need to say things like that. You'll remember me just as you remembered Ed."

Angel hugged her with a smile, somewhat easing Lust's concerns. "You're right."

Ed soon came walking into the room, clapping his hands and slapping his pants, trying to get dust off them from the ballroom flooring. "It's ready, are you?" Angel nodded with a smile, looking toward him. He smiled in return. "Then follow me."

Angel and Lust followed him back into the ballroom and saw the transmutation circle. Ed smiled, proud of himself.

"It took me a bit to remember what this particular one looked like. But, I got it. Are you ready, Andi?"

Angel nodded wordlessly, handing him the stone.

"Are you sure about this? I can't guarantee anything," Ed said, his voice turning from excited and anxious to concerned and worried. There was a chance this could kill her. He didn't want to have to relive the same agony of losing the woman he loved again.

Angel nodded again, silent.

Angel stepped into the middle of the circle, her breath coming in smothered gasps, nervous of what was to come. Ed took in a deep breath, praying to something up there that this would work as he got on his knees on the outside of the transmutation circle. Philosopher's Stones were like get a Free Card. He hoped his knowledge was good enough. He looked to Angel, taking in what her homunculous form looked like. He stood and went up to her. He made her face him. Before either of them could say a word, he kissed her passionately, like it was the last kiss they were going to share.

"I'll be waiting for you right here, I promise," Ed said with a smile and a whisper. "I love you, Andi."

Angel hugged him, her arms around his neck. "I love you too, Ed."

Ed parted from her, going to the outer edge of the circle and taking in another deep breath to settle his nerves and to let the memories of his alchemy days come flooding back to him. He smiled, thinking that this was for his wife. His wife wanted this. He pressed his hands to the circle with the stone in his hand as he pressed, watching the stone melt and go to the center of the circle, draining some of his energy in the process. The circle activated, releasing a luminous light that shone bright red with hints of blue. It was working. Before any of them knew it, a large door appeared and Angel was walking inside to the white abyss.

"So, I finally get to meet Edward Elric's wife," the formless thing said as he sat in front of the gate as Angel finished her walk through the first gate that opened and now closed behind her.

Angel smiled, remembering the name of the person who keeps the gate. Her tone as even as she said with a smile, "You do. And I've come to make a bargain with you, Truth."

Truth smirked, knowing it was another fool. "What could you bargain with me? I am Equivalent Exchange. What do you want?"

"I want to have my old body back. The one I had before I was shot and killed by Envy," Angel said firmly, not intimidated by the form that could think her body could be too costly for her.

"Oh? And what do I get in return?"

"I returned Envy and Greed."

"True," Truth said with a nod, that smirk still planted on his face. "You did kill those sins for me."

"I don't care if I have a scar where I was shot, or if I am bleeding from where I was shot. As long as I get to live my life until I am old enough to die naturally." Angel knew you had to specify with Truth. "I want to grow old with my husband and see great-grandkids grow up. I want to be the blonde-haired, blue-green eyed girl Ed fell for. I don't care if you remove my memories of when I was a homunculous or if I have alchemic abilities. My daughter can have the abilities. I lived my whole life without the ability to use the science. So keep that."

Truth smiled, remembering Edward when he was having his last conversation with him. "You're just like your husband." He looked toward her, scanning her, obviously thinking. "Let's see. I can grant you your wish. You've suffered with increasingly worsening images, which merely were memories. Your body rejected the stones before they could poison you. You were kind to everyone you were around, though until the end when you found out you were killed by a sin. You don't seem to be a sin like the rest, Angel. Is there anything else before I turn you?"

"I want to be Andi Elric, not Angel."

Truth nodded. "Everything you want shall be given. Though, I should warn you, if you survive the twelve hours after you step through the gate for a final time, then you'll be exactly who you want to be. Who you specified to me."

Angel nodded, preparing herself for anything. "I'm a fighter. I can do it.

Truth smirked again, knowing he was about to give her the fight of her life. "We'll see."

As Truth and his devious smirk faded with the giant gate he was in front of, Angel noticed white surrounding her. Transforming her dark, yet somewhat lightened hair into the shade of blonde she had before she was killed. Everything was returning to normal for her. As soon as the transformation ended, the large doors opened again. She saw the ballroom and the darkened sky. She stepped slowly through the gates, seeing Ed.

Ed saw her first. Seeing her dark gold hair falling to her shoulders and cascading down her back just as it had done with Al. Her bangs were still side-swept like Angel's had been. She was even smiling like Andi used to. She looked like Andi...finally. As soon as Ed had seen her, he reached for her, just in time to catch her as she fell.

"Andi!"

Lust rushed to her. "Truth is a real bastard. He couldn't have let her tell us she was alright?"

Ed picked her up, feeling his heart drop as he noticed she was limp in his arms. "I'm going to get her to a hospital since she's back to her old self. She won't like it, but I don't have a choice. You're welcome to join me if you want. You know her."

Lust nodded, grabbing a cloak and putting it on to conceal herself as Ed nearly ran out the door, trying to think of where Central Hospital would be in relation to where they were. He looked to Lust for help, feeling more and more worried as Andi's breathing started to slow.

"We're a while from the hospital. Are you sure we'll make it?" Lust asked as she looked down to Andi, unsure if she was going to make it.

Ed nodded. "Looks like we're not far from the red light district. If we can get her to a good part of the city, or near Central Command, I can get her there quicker. Either that or steal a car."

Lust looked to Ed. "You're better off getting me to steal the car. I can't die easily and it looks like we're running out of time."

Ed looked down to Andi, her breathing hardly noticible. "Get a car."

It had been three hours since Andi was formally admitted. Since they had taken her away on a wheeling gurney, trying to find out what was wrong with her; which soon after, a doctor had Ed fill out admissions papers for her. It had been four since she had stepped through the gate no longer an immortal. No longer a homunculous. That's what scared Ed and Lust the most. She was human again and already having to fight for her life.

Ed paced the waiting room, waiting for any news. Any was better than none. Lust just watched him, seeing him rub his nerves raw with anticipation of knowing if Angel would be alright. No. She wasn't Angel anymore. She was Andi.

Lust spoke up when even the silence and the soft whispers of the rest of the hospital running as if Andi wasn't fighting for life or that they were there. "I am not saying you should calm down, but you're looking like you are waiting to hear if it's a boy or girl."

Ed merely looked at her once before turning his gaze back to the floor. He stopped pacing, sitting in a chair next to Lust. "I shouldn't have let her go on that mission. I already had a bad feeling about it."

"What mission?"

"The mission that killed her."

Lust nodded, realizing that Andi was going on a mission to capture Envy and Greed. She was a fighter, Envy commemorated her on that, having lasted longer than all other humans they had fought as he walked into the room with her dead, bloody body.

"What was she like as a human?"

Ed smiled in spite on himself, remembering his relationship with her. "She was dynomite."

"How did you two meet?"

Ed smiled again, remembering. "I had to report to my superior officer, Mustang, back when I was the Fullmetal Alchemist. She was walking out as I was walking in for the most part. I had always wondered how Roy could argue back with me seamlessly, and it was that day when I realized it. They had been arguing about something. I think it was over her doing something at the school she was going to: Central Academy. Andi was yelling at him, and he was giving it back to her, just like he would with me.

'Riza and them were just rolling their eyes, like they would normally do when they'd hear Roy and I go at it. She was saying how she didn't see why she needed to be there while Roy was trying his hardest to make her see why she needed to be there. That ended with her storming out of the office, almost running into me and leaving Roy demanding that she go back and face him. From there, it just escalated when our eyes met. All Roy had said was for me to go in there, leaving Andi to go do whatever she was doing. I knew for a fact that she wasn't. Soon after, we started hanging out with each other while I was in Central. It was the three of us. Soon four when Winry came and visited. After that was history."

"Did she ever skip school?" Lust asked, not believing that studious girl she saw hated to study like that.

Ed nodded with a breathy chuckle. "Yeah. I'd help her. Sometimes I'd see her in the window, half-dead as she tried to pay attention. Then, when class would get let out, she'd sneak out the window in her school uniform and spend the day with me, then go back to school in time for one of Mustang's crew to pick her up."

Lust smiled. "Why'd you guys keep it a secret?"

"That we were together?"

Lust nodded.

Ed shrugged. "It was a mixture of things. She didn't want me burned to a crisp from Roy, and I didn't want her in danger from being with me. I knew I made a lot of enemies Not that it helped." Ed's voice had lowered when he mentioned how much it helped. She couldn't help but wonder what happened but left it alone.

"How old is your daughter?"

"Five and a half," Ed said with another smile as he thought about his daughter's smiling face. Al was probably worrying since Ed didn't come home the night before. "Which reminds me, I should call Al and give him some story to make him think I'm alright."

Ed stood and headed to the receptionist's phone, dialing his own number and leaving Lust alone for a couple minutes. "Al? Yeah, it's me. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I'm alright. Can you call him and tell him, I am sure he can tell Maes while he was at it. No, I am not hurt." Well, not hurt physically, he thought quickly. "Yeah, I know I didn't come home last night. I said I was alright, Alphonse. Can you watch her a little longer? Thanks! She performed alchemy for you? Transmuted a bracelet? That's awesome. Tell her I am so proud of her, and I'll see her as soon as I can. I am just...busy at the moment." Busy was a good way to put it, Ed thought as he mentally kicked his own ass for being so vague to his brother. But he didn't want Al to know yet. "Yeah, I'll explain everything later, Al. Thanks again."

Ed soon walked back to his seat he claimed in the waiting room. Lust was still the only other person there. He sat next to her, knowing that if he was younger, he wouldn't be sitting in the same room as a homunculous. "So, tell me, what was she like as a homunculous? I know I've seen her as one and all, but what was she like really?"

Lust smiled, thinking of the homunculous she knew as Angel. "Probably the same. She was a sweetheart, a real angel."

Ed chuckled. "And to think she'd say she wasn't one when she and I were first together. But she was a sweetheart, kind to most everyone she met. In both forms."

Lust smiled, remembering how Angel was kind to everything and would instinctively mother a wounded animal to health. "I am glad that her personality never changed."

Ed nodded, certainly glad for that, but he kept his head bowed, hunched over in the seat. He knew he wouldn't be having this conversation with Lust if it wasn't for their spontaneous trip to the hospital. That though just depressed him more, making him think about who was here as he waited in the waiting room.

"Mr. Elric?"

Ed looked up, seeing a long white coat and a man in scrubs. Her doctor. He stood up immediately and faced the doctor, being a few inches taller than him. "Yeah? How is she? Will she live? Can I see her?"

The doctor raised a hand dispassionately. "Easy there, Edward," he said, having known Ed since he was a mere intern. "I do have news, but you might not like it."

If it was possible, Ed's face lowered some more.

The doctor sighed, trying to form the words swirling in his head into sentences. He hated having to say this to anyone, especially people he'd known for a long time. He had known Andi longer than Ed. "I am not going to lie to you, Ed. She has a fifty-fifty chance of making it through the night." Ed's heart sank quickly. He couldn't lose Andi. Not again. It was bad enough when she was here for the three times she couldn't help it. "There was some internal bleeding above her heart. Nothing of too much importance, but it was enough to stop her heart twice. We managed to revive her, and she's breathing on her own. There will be a scar where we fixed the bleeding as much as we could. Now, it's up to someone up there to help."

Ed bowed his head, trying to force back tears. I can't lose Andi again, he thought. I just can't. I already lost her once.

"Thanks, Doc," Ed said quietly. "Can I see her?"

The doctor nodded stoically. "She's in the same room we' d put you. Just down the hall."

With that, Ed left, taking off down the hall and leaving the doctor with Lust in the waiting room without anything more to say to them. He ignored the nurses and patients he passed that warned him about running in hospital hallways. It wasn't like he was listening to them, he needed to see Andi. He had to make sure the doctor wasn't lying to him about her. When he reached Andi's room door, he stopped, looking at the handle. He took in a deep breath, trying to settle his nerves before he turned the door handle and went inside.

From what he saw, Ed couldn't tell you if it was his vivacious wife or not. The woman in the hospital bed across the room was lifeless, limp, and would have fooled him that she were dead if it wasn't for her chest slowly, yet rhythmically, rising and falling. He stepped closer, getting a better look at the dark gold-haried woman he called his wife. Her skin was paler than usual, even for when she was a homunculous. Her lips weren't the soft pink color they were but almost white. Her side-swept bangs fall in front of her eyes, mainly the right one since that was the side they swept to. Her eyes were lightly closed as if she were sleeping. They had been that way since she stepped through the gate.

Ed took the seat next to her bed, which looked like it was placed there just for him. He gently pushed her bangs from her eyes, making them sit neatly on her forehead. He scanned down her, noticing the white bandages that wrapped around her chest, that stuck out over the hospital clothes she was put in. He took her limp hand in his, letting hers lay on top. He sniffed, unable to push back anymore stinging tears. As a few of them dropped, he raised her hand, letting the back of it touch and gently rub against his cheek. Her skin was still soft to the touch. He kissed the back of her hand as he gently lowered their hands back to the mattress of the hospital bed she laid in.

"Andi," he whispers through another couple of tears.

He glanced at the clock. Time had not been on his side. It had been five hours, fifty-four minutes since she was admitted, and six hours, fifty-two minutes since she had stepped through the gate as a human.