A/N: Okay, people...Brace yourselves, because this chapter is going to be painful for everyone who knows the FMA story! Even if it doesn't seem like that at the beginning. It's also why this is going up as a single chapter, when normally something this info-intensive would go up with something less intensive.

About Souls

When Ed woke in the morning, it was to a sudden surge of pain, causing him to grit his teeth, clench his hands, and arch somewhat at the suddenness. There was no doubt it still hurt, but usually the pain had been so bad it would knock him out again, not leave him awake to ride it out. At that point, he also wasn't sure staying awake was an improvement, though someone was holding a cool cloth to his head during the process. Aunt Sarah, probably, if his memory still worked at all. Feeling the waves of pain through his body—several times, in fact—made him wonder if he was adapting to feeling it or if the degree of pain had gone down, since just the latter wasn't the only option for his remaining awake this time.

By the time it passed, Ed was exhausted again, but not to the point of simply returning to sleep, so he just released a deep sigh and let his body relax. Sarah's voice asked quietly, "How are you feeling, Ed?"

"Sore," he muttered. "But nothing like that pain..."

She actually gave a faint chuckle. "Did the cool cloth help at all? Every time that happens, your body temperature rises, so I thought it might."

"Dunno. I don't have a comparison yet," he pointed out with a faint smile. "I could feel it on my head, though, even with the pain."

"I'll keep doing it, then, and pass word on to Yuri, too. Think you'll be awake for awhile?" There was a shrewd tone in her voice that made him smile faintly again.

"Yeah, for a bit. I have no idea how long, though," he offered.

"I'll get you some soup, then," she said, and pulled the cloth off his forehead as she left the room.

Since he really wasn't in any shape to do much, Ed started searching his memory for things he needed or wanted to change, knowing the further back his memory went, the fuzzier it would get, and anything under age three was pretty much a lost cause. He'd even say he wouldn't remember much from before age four, come to that. There were an odd few memories—his father getting him to be nice to his brother, for example, and he had only been...maybe just turned three then—but that was an anomaly, not the standard. So, he traced back through his teenaged years, and back through his older childhood years, mentally cataloging things in need of changing. Most of them were rather obvious things it really wouldn't make sense to leave as they were under the circumstances, so mentally listing them wasn't hard.

However, when he got back to the age he was at and things which had happened before then—he suddenly started finding he had two sets of memories!

What?

Well, if he was being technical, only some incidences had two versions, and most things had happened as normal, so there was only the one memory for most of what he could remember from that time (which admittedly wasn't a lot, but under age four was mostly a blank, as he'd thought). The ones with two versions, one of them was the one he knew he remembered himself, but the other was a different outcome from something which had begun as the same thing. The second one was still viable as something that could really have happened, and it felt as real as the one he actively recalled living through. More, the second one did have a sense that he'd lived through it, but it felt somehow different in a way he couldn't place.

Then, a deeper look told him that wasn't the only oddity. There were times where he couldn't remember what had happened and those were just a blank in his own memory. However, if he looked again at those blanks, the 'other set' of memories sometimes gave him one, and he had to wonder if they were different from what the original memory would have been, or if they were the same. At the same time, with them being a blank, he would probably never know. How much he did remember of Amestris was actually pretty impressive, now that he thought about it, but...In a way, it was a relief that he didn't remember every detail. It still left him a question about the 'other set' of memories, though.

Aunt Sarah returned with the soup just then, and helped him sit against the headboard of the bed so he could eat. It didn't take him long to finish, and he was okay with staying upright at that point, so went back to pondering those memories as he stared blankly out the window—mostly just at blue sky and light, fluffy, white clouds from his position.

Truth had said he was being put back in a different dimension. After all of his experiences with the dimensions on the Planet, by default, that meant some things which had happened in this one had either happened differently or not happened at all. On Minerva's world, every time he was put in a new dimension, it was his same mind and body moving to it, just a body which reverted to the age he'd first arrived on Gaia at. There had been no 'Ed' prior to his first arrival there, and he wasn't taking over someone else's body, not even a younger version of himself.

Did it count as 'taking over' a body if it was just himself, but younger?

In theory, no.

In practice, however, his younger body already had a soul, and his older soul was in addition to that. One body couldn't house more than one soul without negative repercussions for the body and both (or all) souls involved, and that kind of negative effect didn't take long to show. Those results included increased appetite, absentmindedness, fainting spells, memory lapses, exhaustion, and eventually, death. Despite saying that (and how factual it was), there were exceptions—Chaos and Vincent, Percia and Zirconaide, Kariya and Odin—but those weren't as simple as 'two souls in one body'.

Chaos was specifically designed to only be capable of bonding to whoever had the soul currently in Vincent's body, so it would be more accurate to say that they were two halves of the same soul. A soul wouldn't reject itself, after all. As such, while each half of the soul had its own awareness, them sharing one body didn't put strain on it once it had adapted.

With Percia (he still sometimes wanted to just call her Felicia) and Zirconaide, his method of merging them hadn't been as simple as merging two physical forms and leaving the souls independent—that wouldn't have put Zirconaide's fragmented soul back together. Because his method had been intended to merge Zirconaide's soul pieces into one whole soul again, it included Percia's soul in the merging—it never differentiated between the whole soul and the fragmented parts of one. All souls in its range merged, and while the two still had some communication with one another, once merged, they qualified as one soul in one body, not two souls in one body.

In the case of Kariya and the Odin he had merged with, they had ended up with a 'meeting of minds' in a very trying incident. Odin had been in spirit form at the time, not his tangible, physical form, and when he and Kariya had both willed for Kariya to be spared, the physical data which would have allowed Odin to become tangible was discarded to let the spirit bolster and hold Kariya's. Their memories and personalities merged, forming a new, independent soul which was more accurately described as Kariya's and Odin's child rather than either of them the way they had originally been.

All of those were very unique and isolated incidences of how 'two souls could share one body', and all of them meant there was really only one soul in the body, just a soul capable of arguing with itself, like one might on occasion argue with one's conscience, or in some ways like multiple personality disorder (1) (a thing Gaia had which Ed hadn't heard of until he'd met Lenno's 'killer' personality). Taking that into account and putting it into perspective meant...the only way Ed could actually co-exist with his past self was if they were compatible souls (they were still both Ed, so one point was in place) and if the souls shared some form of merging.

But, what form did the merging take? Would he be able to tell without his blood being fully replaced with Mako? Then again...that part had never really been dependent on his blood, only on his awareness of his ability to do it. That didn't stop him from suddenly pining for Ria, who would have been able to help him work things out!

Closing his eyes and turning his awareness inward, he looked for the arrays denoting his own soul—and had to just stare in amazement at the network of arrays he could see surrounding the essence of his soul. Actually, if he was reading the arrays right, his past self's soul was inside his older self's soul, somewhat separate, but still somewhat merged. It was like having a dense core bound to a dense shield which had been projected outward from the core somewhat to protect it, not unlike how him manually using Anti-Grav worked.

It was one soul, but it wasn't, and was actually allowing him access to greater power, even without his Mako blood—he was nearly doubling his alchemic power. Of course, the smaller soul had less power than the larger, shielding one, but it wasn't a huge difference, which left him wondering how having double the power would work if he used alchemy. Also in the arrays was coding to allow them to share memories, and to allow a gentle merging as the younger soul grew and aged. He supposed, looking at the layout of his 'souls' and their governing arrays, they were currently closer to Percia and Zirconaide's merging, but by the time the younger soul merged with the older, they'd be closer to Kariya and Odin's.

Had Truth actually done that? And if so, why?

After a minute, he felt like kicking himself for being an idiot. Purging his younger soul was a shitty thing to do to it (not to mention, Truth couldn't 'claim' anything because he had initiated the meeting, not Ed), and his increased power would probably not be a bad thing in the current circumstances. After all, he'd still have to figure out what was so different about this dimension which would cause whatever happened in it to destroy all the others. It was safe to say he'd end up needing that double-strength power before all was said and done, and he had never been more grateful to Lady Shinra and hers for giving him the ability to heal.

His thoughts were interrupted by a jolt, making him turn to stare—at a giggling Al and Winry as Al started jumping on the bed by Ed's feet. The younger blond jumped a few more times, realized he had his brother's attention, and dropped to his knees on the bed. "How are you feeling, Ed?" Al asked, head tipped to the side curiously.

"...Just sort of sore overall right now," Ed said slowly, looking at the other two blonds. It had been a long time since he'd seen Winry wear a pink, floral-print dress (2), but it was actually somewhat mind-boggling to see Al as a human, not a suit of armor. At the same time, his mind kept screaming at him, 'Kids! We're all just kids!' Then he realized who was missing and asked, "Where's Aunt Sarah or Uncle Yuri?"

"Someone else is sick right now, and Mom went out to buy food with Auntie Trisha," Winry grinned. "And you know Granny, working on automail. I'm going to, too!"

"Do what?" Al asked her in surprise.

"Work on automail!" the girl grinned.

"Maybe you could work on making us better phones or something, first," Ed threw in, vaguely amused by the 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' discussion they had begun.

"Work on what?" Winry asked, blinking at him in confusion.

"Like, make them work without the line cutting out, or even make them so you can carry them with you," he offered, knowing there was a way—that's what PHS's were. He didn't know the way those were made, just that they could be, and with Winry's skill and mind, she might actually be able to create Amestris' very first portable phones.

"Hmm..." Winry murmured as she stared down at the edge of the bed, arms crossed as she thought.

"At least ours is easy, right Big Brother?" Al asked happily. "Because we're going to be alchemists!"

With a wry grin, the golden eyed blond said in reply, "There are lots of types of alchemists, Al. Which type are you going to be?"

"Types?" the other boy asked in confusion.

"Like, doctors, vets, soldiers—like the State Alchemists—inventors, and lots of others," Ed clarified. "So, which one will you be?"

"Aren't we already inventors?" the younger boy asked.

"I want to try that!" Winry suddenly burst out, stars dancing in her eyes and a huge grin on her face as she turned and bolted from the room.

They heard her feet on the floor all the way down the hall and partway down the stairs before they heard Yuri call, "Stop running in the house, Winry!" They then winced as she stumbled on the stairs, yelped, banged into something, then silenced for a moment.

"Ouch! Dumb railing!" they then heard her say in a pouting voice, but a small thump followed, and as silence fell once more, both boys giggled.

"So...Aren't we inventors already?" Al asked. "We made the array we used to make Winry's doll."

Shaking his head, Ed told him, "So far, we've actually just been copying from books, not making something new. That array was only 'new' to us because it wasn't already in one of the books he left behind, but there are books out there with it in them, and it would pretty much look just like that. Invention is actually doing something which hasn't been done before."

"Like bringing the dead back to life?" Al asked, and Ed felt his heart freeze.

Slowly, the older brother shook his head, memories of their stupidity dancing in front of his eyes, and tried to focus on what to say to his younger brother. Finally, all he was able to get out was one word: "No."

Al looked a little afraid of him as he asked, "But why not? Just because no one's done it before doesn't mean we can't figure it out. You said there's a way to do everything, we just need to figure it out."

"No," Ed repeated tensely, heavily, as Al in the suit of armor flashed in front of his eyes. "Not that. Because...The soul attaches to the body with arrays, and once the array has let go—death—only the being providing the source of that soul can put it back. We can't bring people back to life, Al. Not once the soul has left the body."

"If you know what the arrays are, then—" Al began eagerly.

"No," Ed repeated, and the younger blond stared at him. "How would you ask the soul if it even wants to come back? Because even the being providing the source soul can't make it go back if it doesn't want to be in that body anymore. Trying just creates a golem, a mindless, soulless killing machine, or a deformed corpse. Death happens for a reason, Al, and if you can't prevent the death before it happens or return life to them in eleven minutes, they're gone. And all of us just have to learn to accept that loss." He was fudging the data a little, but he really needed Al to not go that route this time.

For a long minute, Al just stared at him in shock, then glared and said, "You'd change your mind if it was Mom!"

To Ed, those words felt like he'd just been hit in the gut with a hammer, and his expression turned to one of pure agony as tears ran down his cheeks. However, now knowing what he did, he answered in a pained tone, "No."

His reply was apparently too much for Al to process, causing the younger boy to burst into tears and run from the room. He got down the stairs a lot faster than Winry, and the front door slammed a minute later, even as Ed leaned tiredly against the pillows and closed his eyes, trying to bring his tears back under control. Never had he imagined a discussion like this with his brother, and yet—he should have expected it. Al was still in the phase of 'idealistic youth', and the only reason Ed wasn't anymore was because he'd been alive a lot longer, suffered a lot more. And to add to that his memories of their mother's death, of what had happened the day they had tried to bring her back...

And he suddenly really wished Ria was there there for him to hug while he worked through the pain. Or for one of the other Amestrians—like Aeris or Nina especially. Wait, did Nina qualify as an Amestrian or a Gaian now? Could she even come back? That thought just made him cry more, about both her and what he and Al had just been talking about.

"Are you all right, Ed?" Yuri asked gently as he sat beside him on the bed and gently ran his fingers through the younger boy's hair.

"I..." Ed began, then drew in a shaky breath and said, "I know Al didn't mean to, but he made me remember some...very painful memories. Uncle Yuri...Even though I know people are going to die and you can't always save them...I don't think Al realizes that yet."

"You mean that's something you now believe alchemy can't do?" Yuri asked in mild surprise.

"Not believe. Know," the boy replied tiredly. "There are things it can't do, can't be made to do. And there are things no one realizes it can do, or that it applies to. Life and death is complicated, and it can't be forced to work just because 'you' want it to. I really used to think it could do anything if you just find the right way, but some things just...don't. The only resurrection terms alchemy can give are about the same as what a doctor can offer, just with a greater guarantee of success."

Yuri smiled faintly and told him gently, "It's good that you know that. And Ed, you've got enough of your own problems to deal with right now, so let us talk to Al, okay? We'll help him sort himself out."

After a long silence, the younger blond sighed and closed his eyes again—only for another wave of intense pain to hit suddenly. In the midst of it, he felt a cool cloth on his forehead, but by the time the pain passed, he was completely exhausted. He wondered if part of the problem had been the emotional turmoil from not long before—he now knew a common side effect of so much intense emotion was exhaustion.

FoWD-HC

The next time he woke, it was night again, and Uncle Yuri was still with him. He only stayed awake long enough to use the toilet, then went back to bed and right to sleep, staying that way until morning, when Aunt Sarah was there. When she came back with some food for him, he asked, "Could you bring me papers, or journals, or something I can use to write in or on? And pens. Or pencils. Whatever."

She chuckled and said, "We don't have much like that here right now, and Winry's appropriated most of it. I think there was a package of journals in the general store if you think those would work for you?"

"Probably," he agreed. "And to write with?"

"I'll bring some things for you to try—you might want more than one type," she answered. "What do you want to do with them?"

"I guess it would be like an alchemic journal..." he sighed faintly.

"What about?"

Since Aunt Sarah seemed legitimately curious, he told her, "I've learned a lot about alchemy since being sent to Gaia, and especially since my blood was replaced with Mako. And even though rules are largely what we know them to be, there are an awful lot of things people have missed because everyone became so possessive of their work and no one had long enough to work things out. I want to start writing them out, like my father's journals."

She blinked, then nodded and said, "Then you may actually want a combination of ink and charcoal, but just in case, I'll make sure there's a good bit of ink for you to use. Do you remember how to keep a fountain pen from blotching?"

"That's..." he began, brow furrowed as he searched his memories. "Every few lines, roll the ball on a scrap paper to clean the excess ink buildup off. Right, you have different pens from the ones on Gaia." He gave her a small smile and said, "But I remember, so we're okay. And you don't have to rush—I probably won't really be able to do anything with them for a few more days."

She smiled and informed him, "That might work with the pens, but I think I need to get the journals now if I'm going to—only one set was left on the shelf, and that may even already have been bought. Will you be all right if I go out while you're eating?"

"Yeah. Thanks," he told her with a small smile, then turned his attention to the food she'd helped him settle on his lap already. She then left quickly.

It only took a minute after she left for Winry to come into the room to hand him a thing like a small, rectangular, wooden box (actually, he thought it was a box) with a little metal post sticking out the top. "Keep this," she said, and pointed to a black button near the bottom. "If you hear me say something from this box, press on that and hold it and answer me, okay? I'll come back after—I guess ten minutes?—if I don't hear anything because that means it's not working yet."

"Okay," he agreed in bemusement, seeing how intense her expression was. Had she really created a walkie-talkie already? Even the Turks and SOLDIERs had only used that 'old' technology a few times when their main systems were either down or compromised. But for Amestris, this was really advanced technology, and...Winry had created a primitive one at four or five years old, in only about a day? Damn, she was really a genius in her own right, and he'd never actually given her enough credit.

She quickly left the room with a grin, saying nothing about where she was going, and a couple minutes later, he heard something like static from the box he held as some fragmented words and word parts in Winry's voice sounded from it, "Can...r...me...d?"

Following her instruction to hold the button—which made something in the box go 'clunk'—he said, "You'll have to try again." He knew she wouldn't hear it all, but unless her side was coming in a lot clearer than his, she'd know she still needed to fix something. Still—for a first try for a five year old...Her progress was actually mind-boggling. This was one of those times when he wanted to just go, "Wow..."

A couple minutes later, Winry ran back in with a deep, intent frown and grabbed it as she muttered, "Still not right..." She was gone again a moment later, and he was suddenly possessed by an urge to laugh, regardless of the pain he still felt.

He was still laughing when Sarah came back with the journals, making her just raise a brow at him. When he stopped, he explained to her what Winry had done, and her eyes widened in shocked awe before she also chuckled at the girl's behavior. However, he could see a thoughtfulness in her eyes which told him she may already have come up with a use for Winry's new invention.

Notes:

(1) Apparently someone has possibly renamed this mental disorder? Regardless, to me and to someone I know who is diagnosed with it, it's still called 'multiple personality disorder', so that's what I'm using. This is also more accurate than the other term I heard for it.

(2) To be clear on this, Arakawa did NO research into clothing styles in the 1890's and 1900's, which is the general timeframe of Homecoming. Winry, as a girl, would never have been wearing a sleeveless dress. Trisha would never have been wearing a wide-necked t-shirt (so wide it showed her bra straps) and short skirt when she was a child (check the wikia to see what I mean), or a short-sleeved dress as an adult. Those are all MODERN styles of clothes women back then just wouldn't have worn. Because Winry was a mechanic/engineer/doctor, she may have had more leniency in her general dress code, but that would have been in the sense of 'dressing like a man', not in being uncovered—she wouldn't have worn tank tops.

However, because Ed's Earth is a different dimension from ours, I'm allowing work clothes to have some leniency, and removing some of the restrictions on arm-wear. I am not, however, having the women dress in regular short skirts and t-shirts like we would see today—they're going to be better-covering than that. For example, child Winry's dress falls just below the knee and has short sleeves (rather than sleeveless) while child Trisha's would have been a long skirt with a properly fitting (around the neck) t-shirt. These aren't huge differences, but I felt they were necessary—the reality of the 1890's would have had Trisha dubbed 'Devil's spawn' at worst and 'whore' at best, which I'm SURE wasn't Arawaka's intent.