Relative Trust
When Ed woke, he was again confused, though realized more quickly than it had taken him the previous time that he was at the Rockbell home—but that was largely due to a five-year-old Winry sitting on the bed, staring at him with huge, worried, blue eyes. For a long time, he could really just stare at her, trying to process the fact that she was only five years old! Which also reminded him that so was he. And his mind had frozen again as it just tried to process the fact that everyone he'd long since accepted as dead was very much alive and one more was sitting in front of him. A stray thought about how cute they'd been as kids came to him.
Then, he blinked as the girl scrambled closer to him, knees on the side of the bed as she reached out a hand to touch him.
Before she could, a sharp, soft voice gently scolded the girl, "Winry, I told you not to enter patient rooms while they're recovering!" And that voice was familiar in a way he had never expected it to be.
"But Mom, he's awake!" Winry replied eagerly as she turned to look at the door.
A moment later, the door opened and a startled, blond haired, blue eyed woman looked into the room—his honorary Aunt, Sarah Rockbell...Who had died in Ishbal (1) years before his own mother's death.
Before he could process more than that, pain shot through him again as he felt a sensation like leeching and throbbing and pressure all at once, flowing through his veins. Last time, he hadn't been able to process the sensation, but this time—it made him feel ill, much like how it had felt when Fuhito had first replaced his blood. And it hurt so much in very short order that he once again screamed in pain and fell unconscious.
His last thought was that he hoped all of the people he was...re-meeting...would stop being such shocks to his system soon, because he was sure that was making the pain feel worse.
FoWD-HC
When he next woke, there was no one in the room, and he was able to tell a difference between his last waking and this one. Last time, it had been fairly early in the morning—it had been light, but it was a dulled light as darkness faded. Now, it looked more like it was approaching evening, but hadn't quite reached sunset yet, and the curtains and window were open to let in a warm breeze and full sun. The heaviness of his limbs warned him to just not move unless he absolutely had to, and to move cautiously and slowly when he did. No sudden rushes to the toilet—or anywhere else—for awhile.
His thoughts were interrupted by the door opening a bit as his mother asked quietly, "Is it really all right to keep him here if it doesn't get better, though?"
"It honestly depends on how things develop from here," he heard—Uncle Yuri (2)!—reply to her as softly, though the padding of feet on the floor and the slight creak of the door made him look over to see a grinning Al and Winry slip into the room and up to the side of the bed, blue eyes lit on him. In the hall, Uncle Yuri went on, "If this lasts for more than a week with no change, we may need to talk with the transports about moving him to Central for care. Right now, that's not actually an issue, and they wouldn't be able to do any more for him than we are right now."
Oh, Central was a bad, bad idea, especially if his blood was going to become not-blood. But when beings like Minerva and Truth said something was a 'short time', they normally meant months or longer.
"Are you okay, Big Brother?" Al asked quietly. "It was scary when you screamed."
Turning his attention back to the blond haired, five-year-old girl and golden haired, four-year-old boy, Ed wondered what he was supposed to tell them. After all, he honestly still hurt, but that would just worry them more.
"You have a fever," Winry said, putting her hand on his forehead. "But Mommy's and Daddy's medicine doesn't help."
"Winry! Alphonse! What did we say about not coming in here?" Yuri scolded the two in annoyance, making them both pout and reply, "But it's Ed!"
A look up at the door again showed it now open with Yuri standing in the room and—his mother, Trisha Elric, at the door. She chuckled and her green gaze met Ed's with mixed amusement and worry, even as Yuri said to the two children, "That doesn't matter! Out!"
Both children whined and trudged out of the room as Trisha stepped inside and Yuri closed the door, then faced Ed. He was also blond, but had brown eyes, and was Granny Pinako's son, whose medical training was primarily surgery. Aunt Sarah's was more general medicine, though she could also perform surgery if needed, so they were currently the town's doctors. And being Ed's next-door neighbors also meant they were close at hand if something happened to either Ed or Al, so his being at their place really wasn't surprising.
And it looked like his mind was finally ready to accept that 'they were all alive again'. That didn't mean he didn't still want to murder Truth, since he definitely still wanted to do that for putting him back in his five-year-old body.
...Did that mean it would take eleven more years for the Omega and Minerva to arrive on his world? He sincerely hoped not!
"Now that the two youngsters are out of the room," Yuri sighed faintly, then sat on the edge of the bed beside Ed. "Since you're apparently not falling right back into unconsciousness again, can you tell me what happened when this first came on, Ed?"
What had happened? Didn't they know? Then, he realized they wanted him to tell them how it had felt, hoping for clues as to what was wrong so they could treat it. How had he felt that first time?
"...I'd...felt heavy when I tried to go to the bathroom," he said slowly, remembering the weight of his legs. Should he try to be careful with his language, or just say it however he had words to describe something? Then he realized he would probably never be able to talk like a child and gave up the idea of pretending it. "After that, it was just pain, so sudden and strong I couldn't really...feel anything else."
"Hmm..." Yuri murmured thoughtfully, clearly pondering the data. He then asked, "And the second time you woke?"
"Here?" Ed asked with a faint frown, and Yuri nodded with a small smile. "I actually felt like something was kinda...trying to suck something out of me and shove something into me at the same time. It was like my blood was pumping hard, my veins were throbbing. My body still feels heavy, but I'm not sure if I actually felt that last time. Winry said I have a fever, too?"
"That almost sounds like a—" Yuri began, sounding alarmed, but he suddenly cut himself off.
"A what?" Trisha asked, looking apprehensive. "Yuri, what happened to my son?"
"I'm not entirely sure it's what happened, Trisha," the man sighed faintly. "But the first thing which comes to my mind and would have had anything to do with blood flow restriction is a stroke." Her eyes widened in alarm and her mouth opened, but he held his hands up in a defensive motion and said, "Don't assume that's what happened. We aren't seeing other common symptoms or traits of that—his mind seems to work just fine, just to start. Weight of limbs doesn't mean any have been paralyzed, even temporarily, and strokes often cause issues with a person's use of limbs and-or their minds. And some of what he described also doesn't fit with the way a stroke would feel. There are more tests we can run to rule that out, and I'll start looking into other things which may cause the symptoms he's describing."
Her mouth closed, and Ed sighed faintly as he carefully pushed himself into a sitting position. Both adult's eyes moved to him, so he asked, "Can I used the bathroom while I actually can, please?"
After blinking for a moment, Yuri gave a small chuckle and asked, "Do you need a hand getting there?"
"Um..." the boy began, thinking hard about the question. It was something he'd gotten used to doing when in a mentally or physically sensitive state—really assessing what he could manage on his own, rather than just pushing and harming himself in the process. "As long as I don't get that sudden pain again, I can probably get there by myself, but I'm not completely sure I can do it both ways..."
The man seemed to find that highly amusing, and replied, "You do know you don't have to be strong all the time, right?"
Ed just gave a sigh and told him, "I thought about what I could actually do myself right now...Uncle. So, can I please do it?"
Still looking amused, the man nodded and said, "I'll walk with you, then. Take your time, and we'll see how things go."
"Is that okay right now?" Trisha asked in alarm. "If he's—"
"This will tell us if he's being affected by a stroke or just by pain," Yuri told her bluntly. "If he can make his limbs move the way he wants them to, slowly or otherwise, he's fine and it wasn't a stroke, similarity aside. We won't even have to run other official tests this way."
She sighed faintly and agreed, then followed them to the bathroom, where both adults waited outside until Ed finished and left the room. He looked exhausted by the time he did, so Yuri just picked him up and carried him back to the room, helping him settle in. Once he was, he left to get a meal for him, and Trisha sat down beside her son, gently petting his hair and smoothing it the way mothers tended to do with their children. To him, it felt both familiar and strange, and he was brought back once again to the fact that he'd always been reset to the age of a sixteen-year-old and had never quite outgrown the desire for comfort from family.
He sat again, suddenly but slowly by force, and reached out to hug her, and she readily accepted him into her arms as she returned the hug. It was so strange to feel her hold him again, but some part of him suddenly loosened at the sensation, the familiarity and warmth, the love he'd been trying so desperately to get back when he and Al had stupidly tried to bring her back to life. Now, having been apart from that for hundreds of years (more accurately, thousands, but he didn't want to think on that just then), having it back was both mind-boggling and a huge relief. This was what he'd always wanted.
...Maybe he didn't actually want to murder Truth after all. If there was a way to save her this time...Maybe he'd even have enough time to do so.
Yuri only came back into the room almost half an hour later, soup and bread on a tray for Ed. Once he'd eaten, he laid back down—and soon after, found himself gritting his teeth against the pain once again. Like the previous two times, the pain was so intense he ended up unconscious before it ended.
FoWD-HC
The following three days, he spent largely unaware, though was awake often enough to eat twice a day. Those visits were generally punctuated by Al and Winry sneaking into his room, then being shooed out as his mother sat with him the rest of the time. Had those two really ever been so disobedient? He'd thought that had largely been him, and he'd just dragged them along for the ride. On the same token, though, he'd also begun to realize he'd been incredibly absorbed in his own little world as a child, and hadn't really noticed anything, or anyone, beyond that. Maybe Al and Winry had always been like that, and he'd just never noticed it.
Usually, he woke sometime in the early morning and sometime in the evening, and both Sarah and Yuri were working in shifts to keep an eye on him, the woman normally in the morning and the man normally in the evening. He also thought Pinako had a shift in there somewhere, but he wasn't sure how she fit in yet—he wasn't awake often enough to know their actual pattern. With how quickly he was right back into unconsciousness, he also didn't have much chance to think about anything, so his mind was only able to process in the background.
But then, on the third night, he woke late at night, hearing Yuri saying, "Still no real change. This is starting to worry me, Sarah." Ed opened his eyes and looked around the room, seeing only the two of them with a small bedside lamp—no Al, no Winry, and definitely not his mother.
"I know," she sighed in reply. "But we already know there's no one who would really be able to do anything more than we're doing, and we don't have the pull to get someone like Doctor Marcoh to come and check up on him. For now, you should get some rest." Marcoh? Really? Was he the only really skilled doctor in Amestris? Still, Ed knew he couldn't let Central, or the military, get involved in his care.
"I'll—" Yuri began.
"Hey..." he began, cutting his Uncle off and making both adults face him in surprise.
He'd been wondering if he should talk in front of his mother, but he had to admit he knew how scared she would be and how little she would grasp. She was a wonderful woman, but she was no scientist or alchemist. That left him telling his honorary Aunt and Uncle about it and letting them work out what to tell to her, and that meant he needed to figure out what to tell them so they wouldn't send him to Central. He came back to the same desire to be secretive, and to Minerva's attempts to break him of the habit, but this time, he would have to force past the desire to not speak on his own. And he had to trust someone. He'd learned that sometimes it was the familial bonds not formed by blood which were the strongest in the long run.
His thoughts were interrupted by a weight on his forehead, which made him realize Sarah was holding her hand to his head, eyes closed for a moment. Then, she pulled her hand back and smiled faintly as she said, "It looks like your fever's gone down some. That's a good sign. How are you feeling, Ed?"
"Still sore," he replied with a faint smile. She ruffled his hair. Before she could withdraw or Yuri could leave the room, he said, "You can't send me to Central."
Both adults traded alarmed looks, then Yuri faced him and asked, "Why is that?"
Well, there was actually no sense in lying to them, so he sighed faintly and said, "I already know what's happening. I knew it would hurt, and I still chose to do it. But, when it's finished, my blood—won't be blood anymore. If you send me to Central with my blood like that, I'm going to become someone's sick scientific experiment."
The two traded alarmed looks again, held a discussion with their eyes, then both moved to sit beside him on the bed, Sarah saying, "I think you'll need to explain to us a little more than that so we know what's going on. Can you do that, please?"
He sighed and said, "I already know this will be hard to believe, but there's going to be signs—I'm not going to behave, or talk, the same way I used to, my blood will turn into a clear liquid-like substance which is actually compressed energy, I'll be able to do things I couldn't before." He paused as the two just stared at him in shock, but he told them softly, "I lived into the future, and was sent away to another world in exchange for my brother's life in that future. But then, something went wrong here, and the keeper of the Alchemist's Gate decided to bring me, and the people from that other world, here to help find the problem and fix it. The only way it could do that is if it put me back in my past body, still with all my memories.
"I'm not sure of all the technical details, but I'd had communication with Minerva, and the agreement I made was to keep that communication with her, but also to have it with another entity like her in this area. That's what's happening to my blood—it's being made to allow that communication. Because my blood in this body hasn't been changed already, the Gate's keeper is forcing it to change, and it warned me it would be painful. In the meantime, my body's effectively becoming a Philosopher's Stone, and everyone covets that. My blood being liquid energy won't be a good thing to make known."
They blinked, traded looks, then blinked again and faced him, Sarah asking quietly, "So, then, who or what is Minerva, and what do you mean by 'another entity like her' who happens to be around here?"
"Minerva's a planetary sentience," Ed replied bluntly, making their eyes widen. "No, that's not the same thing as a God. Truth, the keeper of the Alchemist's Gate, said there were five sentiences already on this planet, and that there was room for more—Minerva would be welcome here, but only if I could be here before they arrived to create a foundation for her arrival. I had to have the essence of the planetary sentience nearest to here as well to be able to work with the ones already here to figure out what's wrong. And they need that foundation, because when Minerva arrives, it'll be with people from her world, lots of people, if I'm right about her having left her world as an Omega and having taken along with her all her people she could save."
"So why did she apparently 'leave her world'?" Yuri asked with a puzzled frown.
"It was destroyed by an idiot. I'm just not sure if the idiot was President Shinra or Fuhito," Ed replied, watching their expressions closely. They seemed torn between shock, disbelief, and resignation. In a way, that last was actually good—it meant they were closer to believing him than not, despite how far-fetched the story was.
"And the Omega is what?" Sarah slowly questioned, head tipped to the side.
"Sort of like a vessel intended to take the planetary sentience and its collected genetic data to another world to start over. In theory, that would usually be an uninhabited world, but sometimes they land on ones which already have sentiences. Minerva's world was tiny—maybe about the size of Japan (3)—so if this world only has five and is a thousand times bigger, she's got space to be here without fighting over territory with the others. Planetary sentiences are creators who distribute both energy and genetic data in order to terraform a landing site and bring life into existence there. The Omega carries the base structures needed to form life, but the form it takes is partly dependent on the sentience and partly on what's already on the world. And Minerva is very actively involved in the lives of the people of her world."
"Damn, that's detailed..." Yuri blinked.
"Yuri! Language!" Sarah scolded him, and he blushed faintly as Ed gave a small, amused smile. Then she sighed and admitted, "Yes, that description is shockingly both detailed and logical. I don't know that any child, even one who is a certified genius, could have just created a story like that out of thin air." She eyed the boy for a moment, then asked, "And how is this...energy blood functioning to allow you such communication? How can you even live without blood in your veins?"
He had to commend her for not trying to lower her speech level to talk with him, so replied, "Liquid planetary energy, called 'Mako' on Minerva's world, heals the body by nature, though usually too much exposure causes something called Mako poisoning. It tends to enhance things like hearing, reflexes, strength, and healing speed, but there were two kinds of Mako on her world, the natural kind and the 'manufactured' kind, which had differences in how they reacted with the body. I was given, and am being given, natural Mako, which is gentler on the body overall, and tends to only activate when it's needed, not just be active.
"But because it's planetary energy in raw form, the amount of energy in a single drop is equivalent to the electricity Central uses in an entire year (4), and it's like sharing blood with the planet. It bypasses the need for materials for a lot of effects, and even bypasses restrictions on use in areas without ambient energy, and definitely works to keep the body it's in healthy. I only need to use materials if I want to permanently make a pile of wood into several chairs or something. I can also do without a drawn array by tapping into that energy. Sharing blood with the planet means joining actively in its energy cycle, which also means being able to hear things from both related ambient energy nearby and from the sentience whose energy is in my body. It used to only be Minerva, but now it'll be another besides her."
"Related ambient energy?" Yuri asked in confusion.
"Random floating energy, or energy pathways called 'the Lifestream' on Gaia—Minerva's old world," the blond boy clarified. "They spread energy around the world like blood veins carry blood in a person's body."
The two traded looks again, then sighed, and Yuri asked, "About your current state, though...How long will you be like this?"
"I should gradually get better as more of my blood is replaced and the Mako can heal me," Ed answered. "But time is strange to them, and not quite linear, so 'soon' can mean months or years later to us. The early part will be the hardest, but I'm hoping the worst will be done by the end of the week. And the major reason medicine isn't working on me is because of the Mako, which neutralizes chemicals—which are mostly harmful to us—and much reduces the effects of natural medicines. You'd need a lot of something natural to make it work on me for the time the normal amount would work on someone else. Though, there were a few medicines which worked on me, but for reduced times."
"This is a lot to take in, Ed, you do realize that, right?" Sarah asked him quietly. He nodded, so she sighed and said, "We should take some time to think about this, and ask more questions another time. Get some rest—we have no idea when the next round of pain will hit. For now, we can't really do anything else."
"Yes, even though there are dozens of questions on the tip of my tongue, I can't formulate any of them just now, so it will have to wait for another time," Yuri agreed.
"Yeah," Ed agreed. Yuri left and Sarah settled in to watch over him as he settled and closed his eyes. Now, the rest was in their hands.
Notes:
(1) Ishbal/a vs Ishval/a: This comes from me preferring the 'b's because that's the actual transliteration of the characters making up the word (and it's a more likely pronunciation for a nation similar to the Arabs). I took Japanese classes many years ago; their language doesn't have a 'v' sound, so they substitute it with a 'b'. In some words (like, say, Vancouver), we know the 'b' is a substitute for a 'v' and would still say the 'v', but there's no existing reference to 'Ishbal/a' to know if it was actually just intended to be a 'b' or if it was meant to be a 'v'. For the record, the default Japanese pronunciation is much closer to a 'b', though, in the Japanese language FMA anime. Which admittedly may be because they have a very hard time pronouncing a 'v' unless they started learning a language which used it way back when they were in Kindergarten.
(2) Yes, I know the English translation is 'Yuriy' (or 'Urey'?), but that's actually wrong, and neither of the prominent languages which have Yuri as a name (Russian and Japanese) have a 'y' at the end, so I'm not going to use it—it's just annoying and not at all how this name would be spelled, anyway. And don't even get me started on Urey—that's just utterly stupid.
(3) Because this came up in FoW, just to be clear, Japan is actually referenced in the FMA manga, in an end-chapter scene where some of the soldiers were playing shogi and acknowledged it was from Japan. So yes, 'Japan' exists as an island nation in this world, but is probably not identical to the one we know, and didn't really have a place in the FMA story line. I don't know if it will have a part in this one, but that doesn't make it any less of a viable reference point. Though, I now know a Japanese man will show up in the story...
On a side note, has anyone ever noticed that the vast majority of animes/mangas have some variant of Japan in them, even on a world or in a setting where it just doesn't fit? Their country Patriotism is shockingly high, and them tossing 'Japan' into everything they do is a common 'syndrome' of that Patriotism. Hence the reason its existence in FMA's manga is even there. Still a valid reference point, though! :P
(4) Keep in mind that this is the early 1900's and while they have some impressive technological advancements due to alchemy, their grasp and (by extension) use of electricity is much lower than ours today. Its main function is just to power lights and land-line telephones, and most heat is provided by wood stoves and fireplaces. They also don't have things like computers and cell phones, or refrigerators the way we know them, or the vast majority of technological devices which would run on electricity (from toasters to TV's). On occasion, some kind of PA system for announcements will run on it, but there's really not a lot of it being used. This is why a drop of Mako blood would be equivalent to Central's electricity use for a year, give or take a bit.