Passing Winter

When Ed woke, he found he was still leaning on someone and had to blink in surprise. Giving his eyes a rub, he sat up slowly—only to pause when he heard Mustang's familiar voice ask, "Feeling better, Ed?"

Looking up, the blond boy realized Mustang had never actually set him down, even after he fell asleep. After blinking at the man, he agreed, "Yeah, thanks. Sorry to bother you with all that, though." That time, he actually took a moment to look at an amused Maes Hughes sitting next to them, then turned back to Mustang. Oddly, Hughes looked a lot younger in general, but Mustang's appearance at nineteen and at thirty-something was nearly identical, with only small differences to say this one was younger. He'd already thought the man had some Xingese blood or something from that part of the world, so while he didn't know for sure the origin, he was now more sure Mustang had some—even Wutains had a trend of looking younger for much longer than Caucasians.

The man gave him an amused look as he answered, "It's fine. I'm actually glad you did it—the whole experience was very informative. I did want to ask about one thing, though."

"What's that?" Ed blinked again, slipping off the man's lap to stand on the floor.

"Doctor Rockbell said you must trust us to have spoken so freely in front of us. If that's true, how did you go from calling me a bastard to that level of trust?" Mustang asked, and the boy had to admit it was the sort of thing the man he'd known would have noticed and thought to ask.

On the other hand, he wasn't sure how to answer. It wasn't because they had company—the three of them were the only ones left in the patient room at the Rockbell home. It also wasn't because he didn't think they'd believe him, or not entirely. He didn't actually know how much they would believe, but they were more prone to hearing out strange things, poking holes in them, and accepting them if they couldn't find many, or any. If anything, Ed realized it probably had more to do with where they would take that information to.

"Are you still sure you want to join the military, or did you not have the chance to ask about it?" Ed resorted to asking in reply.

The men traded looks, then Mustang told him, "Marcoh showed me a map of Amestris with the circle and the battles visible on it. Even as a rough copy, or maybe because it was a rough copy, what this nation is being made into is horrifying. I can't join people like that."

"Nor can I," Hughes agreed steadily. "For the record, though, I sincerely doubt your father is right to say 'some entity aged you.' It's far more likely you've lived at least one lifetime, and that mind has been transferred to your younger body."

Ed's gaze moved to him for a long moment, then he gave a faint smile and commented, "You'd really fit in well with the Turks once they get here." Both men looked at him in confusion, so he quickly went on, "If you already know my mental age is so advanced, why are you even asking? It should be obvious that I trust you because you've never done anything to betray me before. Regardless of whether or not we got along. What you did earlier—when I called you a bastard—was just more proof."

Both men stared again, but Mustang was notably confused while Hughes had a rather knowing look. It was Hughes who said, "So I'm right. I'm not sure if I should be thankful or horrified."

"How about both instead of either?" Ed asked in amusement, and both men blinked again. "How long are you staying?"

"Awhile," Mustang replied. "Probably for the winter while we talk with Hohenheim and Marcoh about what to do about the Amestrian array."

"Then you probably shouldn't stay at the Inn," the boy told them. "That's going to get really expensive very fast. Find someone in town you can board with for the winter. The Innkeeper should know a few people you could talk with about it."

"Thank you for the advice," Mustang agreed, and both men rose to follow Ed from the room.

Winter. Thinking about it, Ed realized he couldn't leave home until spring, anyway—Resembool was only just able to keep its own streets clear through the winter, and the next town over would only rarely be accessible. He'd be six. Who was going to let a six-year-old wander away alone? And where would he go? The only assurance he had that it would be spring in the first place had to do with the fact that Marcoh wouldn't be able to leave if he stayed much longer. If Mustang and Hughes also stayed, and if they weren't going to join the military, whether they were in Resembool or not was irrelevant.

Yuri was in the front hall just seeing a patient out when the three joined him. Once the elderly man had left, Uncle Yuri crouched to look at Ed from eye level and asked, "How are you feeling now, Ed?"

"Better," Ed answered with a smile. "I'm glad I realized what it was, though, otherwise that could have been bad. And Doctor Marcoh is a quick study, so that's good, too."

Yuri chuckled, ruffled his hair, and stood to look at the two black haired young men. "You've been invited for the evening meal at the Elric house. That's Ed's parents, younger brother, and Doctor Marcoh. As for your visit to town, you should probably be aware that you'll get snowed in for the winter if you stay just now. If there was something you needed to do elsewhere anytime this winter, you should account for that in deciding how long you stay."

"Thank you for the warning," Hughes agreed with a grin. "We'll plan accordingly." His gaze then moved to an owlishly blinking Ed as he asked, "Are you all right with us coming over for supper, Ed?"

"Sure," the blond boy agreed. "I just didn't know she had, or would, invite you. Mostly, our only visitors have been Winry, Granny Pinako, Aunt Sarah, and Uncle Yuri. Well, and Doctor Marcoh because he came with our father."

"Lead the way, then," Mustang told him, then looked up at Yuri. "And thank you again for trusting us with him." Yuri just smiled and waved them away with a word to send Winry home if they saw her.

It wasn't until they'd stepped inside Ed's house that both other children crashed into him to hug him tightly with cries of, "Ed! You're okay!" Mustang's and Hughes' chuckles made him give a small, annoyed huff, but he returned their hugs.

Part of him still tried to see their older selves, the fifteen and sixteen-year-olds he'd last known in his first dimension. In a way, them all being so young was what kept reminding him this was a different dimension from the one where he'd grown up. Some things were different, and he'd made more differences by being a different Ed. Whether or not those differences would help fix anything later, he didn't know yet, but maybe now that his idiot father wasn't trying to do everything alone, he'd actually make some headway before it would be too late.

And last time, it only hadn't been 'too late' because the Ishbalans had come through, finished the last of the counter-array for them just in time.

Ed wasn't actually sure how to take supper that evening. Winry had since gone home, but the table had been especially crowded even without her. It had almost been like a tension, but not, and he really had no words to describe it other than possibly 'strange'. Or maybe the strangeness of it had just been on him, having never seen this particular collection of people in one place before. Dead people. Some who had never met. Others may have met, but had never been close.

Why did Hawkeye know where Marcoh and Hohenheim had gone, anyway? While his father and Riza Hawkeye's had met and known one another, none of the alchemists Hohenheim had visited had ever before known where to find the man after he left their places. Which only made it all stranger.

FoWD-HC

As winter set in, Ed and Al had been retrieving a few things from the general store when Ed suddenly stopped to stare, causing a confused Al to stop beside him. He could see Mustang standing with Riza Hawkeye not far from the Inn. The woman didn't look quite like he remembered—sad, he thought, was the best description at the moment, and with her hair down. The most shocking point was that she was wearing a skirt or dress in rich brown—with her long, black coat on, he couldn't tell which it was. But why was she there? Like Mustang, in the other dimension, she hadn't come to Resembool until he was eleven.

When an obviously pained Mustang reached up to hug her, he had a sudden thought—hadn't this been around the time her father had died? A little later, a little earlier, but around Mustang's early military career, as it had been what had led her to following him into the military. Wait, hadn't that been next year, in nineteen-oh-five? So had something else happened to make her leave home, or had her father died early for some reason? Was it even appropriate to ask? Then, he realized Mustang was only hugging her around the shoulders, not the back, and remembered she'd had burn scars there...

He felt a headache coming on as Al just stared at him in confusion, so he finally sighed and trudged through the snow to the two adults, reaching up to tug on the hem of Mustang's coat. "Is something wrong, Ed?" the man asked after shifting to look down at him in surprise.

"Old Maid Maddie—she's got space for your girlfriend for the winter," Ed told him in annoyance, then pointed towards the crossing street. "Take that road, head down to the edge of the village, and look for a sign that says 'Madison Milk Farm'. She lives there, but the walk up might be hard, since she lives alone now and she's around seventy years old. Madeline Madison (1) formally. And don't take too long to get there or to get back to your place, 'cause a blizzard's coming in." (2) Ed paused with a faint frown, then pointed to the General Store and added, "And make sure you get some extra staples from the store for them to last out the blizzard. Oil, coal, some oats, things like that. And be quick—blizzards don't wait for anyone."

Then, he turned to trudge back to Al as a highly amused Mustang called back, "Thank you, Ed!"

"Hurry up!" Ed called back over his shoulder.

"Who's that, exactly?" Ed heard Hawkeye ask in curiosity.

"A kid who landed on me, called me a bastard, then burst into tears on me," Mustang replied, and Ed felt his face flaming as Hawkeye chuckled. "He's a good kid, but sometimes doesn't act like it. Actually...Hohenheim is his father, so..."

"A prodigy," Hawkeye finished. "So, do we do what he said, then?"

"Probably," Mustang agreed, and then Ed was outside hearing range. He did hope they hurried, because it was true blizzards didn't wait for anyone.

Thankfully, she was the last new arrival that year, and she, Trisha, and Sarah definitely bonded during that time. He didn't really know why she was there, what she knew, or what she was involved in, but he was pretty sure she'd been deepening her relationship with Mustang (or the reverse) after Ed had deliberately called her his girlfriend. Frankly, it had been obvious, but in their roles in his dimension, they could never have been an actual couple.

Freeing Mustang from the military also gave them the chance to express their feelings, and because Mustang knew Ed had 'future information', he also knew not to discard words like that. Though the boy had also made it clear that what he knew wasn't things to be taken for granted—it would still take real work to make them happen.

Most of Ed's winter had nothing to do with any of the adult relationships going on around him, other than sometimes seeing the results during 'family get-togethers' (when had Ed gotten a 'family' of twelve?), though. Without him realizing it, another side-effect of their presence had been for Hughes, Mustang, and Hawkeye to become Maes, Roy, and Riza to him. Oh, and he'd had to convince his mother to let him grow his hair long (by then, he could put it in a short tail at the back of his head), which was only helped by the fact that his father had long hair. Which both of his parents had found amusing.

Most of that winter he either spent helping Al with the healing water or trying to work out what he'd do once Marcoh left. Al was stuck on one point, because there was no actually scientific way to 'explain' life and growth by the terms of a planetary sentience. Finally, he told his younger brother, "Instead of trying to find a scientific definition of it, why don't you just wait for spring and actually watch the world come to life after winter?"

Al had stared at him in amazement, then agreed, so Ed had mostly gone back to his journals while trying to figure out what else he needed to do and how to do it.

FoWD-HC

Early in the spring thaw, Al suddenly charged into the house while Trisha, Hohenheim, Ed, and Marcoh were all sitting at the kitchen table, carrying a large pail filled with water. "It worked, Ed! It worked! And I got a lot for my first try, right?" Al shouted with a huge grin, clearly elated.

The adults traded bemused expressions as Ed looked up from his journal and asked, "Got what?" in a dazed tone.

"The healing water!" Al almost chirped, setting the pail down, and the adults' eyes widened in surprise as Ed paused, then dropped his pen and slid off the chair to crawl under the table to join Al.

"You got it?" he asked as he dipped his little finger in the liquid.

"I was watching one of the spring flowers open this morning, and it just suddenly went—that's life, it's really awesome, and that's what I need to feel to get it to work!" Al answered excitedly.

"It is," Ed agreed with a smile, lifting his finger from it. "And I think you really did do it. There's one easy way to find out."

He got up and went back to the table to swipe his mother's empty glass as she asked in surprise, "Ed?" and went back to the pail to quickly scoop some out, about a quarter of the glass. After eying it for a moment, he nodded, then went back to Trisha and pushed it into her hands. She again asked, "Ed, what is this?"

"Drink it," he answered, just staring at her. The two men traded surprised looks as she blinked at him, then down at the glass. Finally, she looked at a hopeful Al, then sighed and lifted it to her lips to drink it.

"Trisha—" Marcoh began in alarm, but Ed shot him a glare and he shut up.

A moment later, she set down the glass and blinked dazedly as held a hand to her belly for a moment. Then, she rubbed her eyes and blinked again as she said in awe, "It was like I could feel something straightening and setting to rights inside my body..."

"Did Doctor Marcoh know you were sick?" Ed asked her.

"Yes, I knew. It's not a familiar disease, but I've seen other cases of it," he said. "I also know it can't be fixed."

"Can you check it here, or do you need Aunt Sarah and Uncle Yuri's medical supplies to test it?" Ed asked him.

"Most of the basic tests I can run here, but a few—like a blood test—have to go to them," the man answered honestly.

"Do it, then," Ed agreed, grinning wolfishly.

The others traded looks again, but it was Hohenheim who rose and moved over to the pail to eye it, crouching so he could rest a hand on the outside of the pail. After a pause, he said quietly, "That's odd...I think...this really would be 'healing water', though I'm not sure how that's even possible. I've never seen water with arrays and active energy blended into it before."

"The water's just a catalyst," Ed answered. "And something to hold its form, so a stabilizer, too. It's not an easy thing to make, but Al wants to be a h—doctor, so I thought it would be something he'd be able to do if he wanted it enough. But other than in cases like Mom's, it should really only be used for serious cases of things like a plague, not things we could fix just as well without it."

"...I'll run the tests, then," Marcoh agreed, rising. "If you would follow me, Trisha?" He led her to her room upstairs, and the other three stayed downstairs as Al grinned like a loon and Ed gave him a smile.

"How long does it take this 'healing water' to go bad or stagnate?" Hohenheim asked while they waited.

"It doesn't," Ed answered dryly, and the man looked up at him with a look which clearly said 'impossible'. "The energy and arrays in it are for healing. By extension, they keep it purified of their own accord. Without application to a body needing healing, doing that cleansing on the water itself uses next to no energy, so it would take over a hundred years for it to run itself out. Longer if it's in a sealed vial with no air exposure."

The older man eyed him for a long moment, then sighed and said, "I suppose we'll see. How is it the two of you and Doctor Marcoh knew Trisha was sick, but no one thought to tell me?"

"It should be obvious how doctors would know—Auntie and Uncle did, too—but we just walked in on her by accident when she thought she was alone, so she hadn't been hiding it," Ed answered. "If you had been paying attention, you'd have seen it, too. By the way—what would you know about the arrays and energy in water which I know doesn't outwardly show it, and you usually have to take an energy reading to find out?"

"I have ways of knowing things like that when I'm close enough to things to touch them, and for some substances, just touching something else the object in question is also touching can be good enough," the man told him, seeming amused, and Ed read the explanation as it being the side-effect of housing the souls inherent in a Philosopher's Stone.

Not too long after, a smiling Trisha and a completely stunned Marcoh came back, the Doctor saying, "I'd still like to run the other tests to be safe, but it looks like all of the other symptoms of the illness are gone, making it likely the illness itself is gone. Could I take some of that back to Central with me for my other patients?"

Ed looked at Al, who blinked and met Ed's gaze as he pointed in surprise at himself. When Ed gave him a nod and an amused look, the younger boy looked back at Marcoh and said, "I guess you can take some with you, since I know I can make more now. But just enough for the patients you know need it right away."

The doctor looked amused at Al's terms, but agreed, "That I can do."

"So, you only need about a quarter of a cup per person," Ed put in. "That means a full cup will be enough for four people."

"Very true," Marcoh agreed. "I have seven who need it, assuming none of them have died over the winter, which I won't know until I return. Otherwise, the rest of my patients are normal cases, or were when I left."

"Then the best thing to do is take all this to Aunt Sarah and Uncle Yuri, then get them to bottle it all, and let them decide if they need Al to make more for them to give the townspeople if they need it," Ed offered.

"Sure!" Al grinned, reaching for the pail.

A knock on the door sent Trisha to get it, and she came back soon after with two others following her, saying, "Roy and Riza are here for Ed and Al. Should we get them to take the pail over to Sarah and Yuri's for us while they're at it?"

"Or give some to Miss Hawkeye to heal the marks on her back..." Marcoh answered in a mild tone.

"I don't think it can undo scars, since hers have already healed. And anyway, she'd need to have shown it to Roy first, otherwise the mark would be gone completely and no one will have any way of knowing what was left on her," Ed threw in, raising a brow at Marcoh. Why did he know about those marks when he'd never seen her back?

Roy blinked, then glanced at Riza, whose lips were pursed, but then the woman asked, "Why do you know there's something besides random burns on my back to see, Edward?"

"Because I know stuff," he answered with an amused smile.

"...So why is it Roy who needs to see it?" she asked, realizing she wasn't going to get a more definitive answer if he wasn't going to answer to begin with.

"Why wouldn't it be him?" he asked her in a dry tone. "I mean, unless you're saying you don't trust him? In that case, pick someone you do trust and get them to copy it down. But another benefit to having him see it is that he can remember it himself and no copy needs to be made, and no one else can get their hands on your father's work unless Roy gives it to them. He's not going to unless he's going to die soon."

Every adult in the room sighed in vague bemusement at the words, and Al managed to cart the pail to Roy to put it at his feet. There was a long pause, then the man reached down to pick up the pail as he asked, "How much is needed to heal things like the burns on her back?"

"About a quarter cup will heal anything wrong with a person at that moment," Ed replied. "Though, some faint scars may still be there, for fresh wounds. Again, I don't think it can get rid of already-existing scars, though."

"Do you want some, Riza?" Roy asked her.

She blinked in surprise and asked in reply, "You're not going to ask to see it?"

Straightening with the pail handle firmly in his hand, he met her gaze and said, "That's your choice, Riza. I would like to know, but your father didn't see me as worthy then—and because he left his secrets with you, you're the only one who can judge who, if anyone, will get to see them now. So, it's up to you."

Everyone just waited quietly for a minute while she thought, but then she said, "I have to bow out of having anything which might get rid of them for now. At least until I decide what my best path is. I can ask Sarah to keep some aside for me until then."

"Fair enough," Roy agreed, as Trisha and the other two men smiled. "All right, boys, let's go hand this off to the Rockbells and pick up the last of you little munchkins."

"Okay," Al grinned. He and Ed joined the two as they led the way from the house.

As Ed had thought, the doctors were happy to have a supply of healing water, and they did ask Al to make more for them in a few days. They also agreed to keep some for Riza for whenever she made her decision, then the two young adults collected Winry and took the three of them to play. When Ed asked where Maes was, Roy told him the man had a cold and was resting at the house where they were boarding.

In the meantime, Ed still needed to work out what to do when Marcoh left, which probably wouldn't be too long from then—the spring thaw had been going quickly.

He suddenly wondered if how fast it was going had something to do with all the holes in the barrier around Ishbala. Though, that would also be impossible to prove anytime soon. After all, the weather sometimes did its own thing, causing some differing effects from year-to-year.

It was only the second time Al made healing water and Ed thought about Ishbala that he remembered an important part of the equation. He needed the help of the Ishbalans, and hopefully would be able to keep them from doing something as stupid as attacking civilians as well...

Notes:

(1) Madeline Madison is an OC whose name you really don't need to remember—she never actually shows up, and I'm pretty sure she's never mentioned again. Like with the 13-year-old experiment rescued from Deepground, though, the people who knew her (like Ed in this case) would know her name and call her by it. And since we're talking the early 1900's, it would make a lot more sense for a woman to board with an old, widowed woman rather than a family or a young man (though a family might also have been an appropriate boarding option).

(2) Yes, people who live in a certain area often know what changes in the weather mean, so because Resembool was (as far as I can tell) far enough north to have gotten winter and blizzards, the residents would largely know just by the air/clouds/etc. that one was coming. However, some of those defining traits would be different in different areas, even if there were similarities, and the differences would take time to learn for a new arrival. To be clear, though, Resembool isn't far enough north to get the kind of weather Fort Briggs got—this land is nowhere near as harsh, since it's still in the 'Eastern' zone of Amestris.