January 17th, 1997

There was definitely something easy about having a pattern. While the week was rough, Cal felt an odd sense of calm start to come over him as he settled into the chair across from Isaac Dahl. Same blue room. Same carafe—fresh water. Cal picked up his glass and took a drink as they got settled.

"Rough week?" Isaac asked.

Cal paused, glass still in hand on the way down from his lips. "How'd you know?"

"You telegraph agitation."

That was the first time he'd ever heard that. "How am I doing that?"

Isaac pointed at the glass. "It's simple, actually. You handle that glass of water the same way you'd treat it if it were say… your preferred liquor."

Cal noticed he didn't suggest something milder, like wine or beer. For a moment he just stared at the glass, thinking about the past two sessions. He'd definitely taken down more water than he did just sitting around the house. In fact, he had never seen Isaac refill his own glass, which implied that he had drained the carafe mostly both times on his own. Had he fiddled with the glass? He hadn't always sipped on the water, had he? "You set that up," he suggested, trying not to sound accusatory, but there was a hint of it in his tone anyway.

"I provided water," Isaac corrected gently. "But given the only available liquid in a stressful environment, with someone who has admitted that drinking is how he deals with hard emotions, is it surprising that the way you drink it, and how much, would indicate your mental state at different points during our conversations?"

"No." In fact, it was incredibly clever and non-invasive. "Though now I'm going to be self-aware about it the rest of the day."

"Seeing as part of our goal here is for you to get control of those impulses, that's sort of the idea."

Cal stared at him. "You are too clever."

"Coming from you, I'll accept that as a compliment." Isaac nodded and picked up his own glass, and took a sip. "Before we get back to your love story, tell me what happened this week."

"Alyse and I went out last night. We were invited out to the club with some old friends. There was a concert with a band we all like, and at first everything was fine… until it wasn't. I just… someone at the table over ordered this rare Aerugean rum I haven't tasted in ages. They almost never export it, and it's ridiculously hard to get a hold of. And the smell…" It had smelled so incredible, it reminded him of drinking it on their last trip to Aerugo. "Knowing that they had it, and not being able to order it I just… suddenly it was overwhelming. I got up and left, well, as fast as I could shuffle. I almost hit three tables between us and the door." He'd felt like an absolute fool.

"You did the right thing," Isaac replied.

"I still felt like I ruined the evening." He had found the nearest exit, onto the terrace over the gardens. Thankfully it had been empty. Alyse had found him scarcely a minute later. "Alyse insisted I didn't, and I told her why I left. I just… I wish there was a way to get through this process faster. So, I could stop feeling like this. Every time I feel like I've got my life together, something falls apart."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you've heard part of it. Things were going well, then I got my leg blown off. I got back on track after that, and Drachma invaded, and almost killed me again."

Isaac nodded. "And after that?"

"We'll be doing a lot of jumping ahead," Cal warned him.

"That's all right. This isn't just about story time or some kind of continuous narrative. Tell me whatever you feel you need to."

"All right." To hell with it, he took a drink of water. "It's just always been like that. Things will be fine for a while, and then something explodes, sometimes literally. We hit a couple of rough patches in our relationship. The Hashman Syndicate kidnapped my son to try to get even with me, and we both got shot getting him out. I got shot-up again in Xing, and Alyse almost died when the Hashman Syndicate blew a chunk of Headquarters and the Assembly. After that, Alyse got breast cancer, and during treatment she also caught pneumonia. During that time, my son started sleeping with his girlfriend, got himself suspended from school, and her old man broke them up. While Alyse survived, Charlie and his girl went behind our backs, and her parents' backs, and got married. Dropped that on us with no warning, and the fact she was pregnant—on purpose—and then they were living with us while they finished high school." He only wished that were the end of it. "Then, when they were getting their lives sorted out, the whole civil war in Drachma kicked off while my daughter and her boyfriend were in Petrayevka visiting, and staying at the embassy. When we got sent in to try and retrieve Amestrian citizens, one of the Zinovek attacks hit us, and my son lost his hand, and had to go through auto-mail surgery and rehabilitation himself. Then, he… well… he was still having issues." Those were Charlie's stories to tell. "Let's leave it at that. He's been seeing someone for years, and he can talk to them about it." Cal took another drink.

"Anyway. I got sent back into Drachma when we went in to the Western Mountains, and got blown off a cliff by a falling bomb, fell into some rapids in the dead of winter, and should have drowned. Instead, the most insane rescue I've ever heard of found me in a coma in the Drachman camp, pulled me out, and more medical personnel than I've ever met apparently were involved in keeping me alive and bringing me home. I don't know. I didn't hear anything in that coma. All I know is, one moment I was drowning in icy water, and then next I was waking up in a hospital in Central, bewildered, confused, and paralyzed from the waist down. It's taken me five years to get to where I can move on my own, on my good days, and then Arsenic showed up. They blew the train with my daughter and her husband on it—along with other family and friends—and tried to kill them in the middle of a Drachman winter wasteland. Then one of their men tried to stab my son to death when Charlie caught him attempting sabotage. Then, just a couple of months ago Arsenic made that attack on Central, and they tried to come after me in the middle of rugby practice, and attack the whole team, and injured us both. When they knocked her out…I was so terrified. I can't… lose her. I didn't, but there's been so many near misses for all of us."

"Would it be accurate to say that all of those specific events coincided with relapses in, or episodes of, excessive drinking?"

"Most of them," he had to acknowledge. Not all, and some to lesser extents, but most of them. How many times had he gone out to run an errand after a fight with Alyse, that happened to include swinging by the nearest bar? Or that night after Alyse's surgery…. "The worst was the first few months after the paralysis. Being stuck back in a chair again, even less mobile than before. I couldn't even piss on my own, let alone do something as simple as go for a walk, or take a hot shower unattended. It was too much like being back in that apartment, even with Alyse. I felt like nothing but a burden, and all my plans for retirement were a mess… and the constant pain I live with well… I still live with it a lot of the time. I just never know how much I have left in me to pull it all together. If life would just get nice and slow and easy and stay that way for the rest of my life, I feel like I've more than earned it."

"And if it were in my power, I'd make it that way, because I agree with you." Isaac surprised him. "Unfortunately, I can't do that. But I can try and help you get through this. And at some point, we really should talk about your relationship with your own children, and how things turned out with your parents in the end, but it sounds like maybe that's not where this conversation needs to go today."

"I'd appreciate that." He had mentioned a lot about the stress that had been raising Charlie, and then dealing with the drama around Charlie and Shelby's relationship through the first years of their marriage. That, and the number of times his children had been targets, mostly because of him, yes, there was probably some talking to be done there. "Though if we aren't, where do we go from here today?" They had barely spent half an hour of the two-hour session.

"How about this question. Since we haven't really discussed it yet. What made you finally decide to quit?"

He had to ask that one. Cal grimaced. "I… realized that after everything I've done. After trying to pull myself together time and time again… the primary thing keeping me going is one person. I'm just…afraid, all the time, of losing her. Of losing any of them, but especially her. My family is everything, and Alyse is the center of all of that. Without her… I would just fall apart again. I had… a really realistic nightmare a few months ago, about all this. Not that nightmares are that unusual, and haven't been for most of my life—as I'm sure you can see why—but in this one… she died, and I did it. I just… stopped caring about anything else. And right there, in a dream, I saw everything play out from losing her through falling back into the darkest depths of pain. I slowly drank myself to death, and I couldn't even care. I watched my children beg me to get help. I watched my friends try and save me from it, and I just… didn't care anymore about anything. And when I woke up… I realized it wasn't wrong."

"Did you tell your wife about this nightmare?"

"I did and the worst part was… she wasn't even surprised, and I wondered, am I the only one who didn't see it? Or was I just lying to myself? Alyse has been on me about it since before we were married. There was a time, probably a few years after our marriage, where I really didn't drink much. If I'd been smart, I'd have quit then. But I wasn't, and I didn't. But, I have to try, even if I'm not doing very well at it." He shook his head. "I mean, what do you do after you tell your wife that if she dies first, you'll be following because you literally can't go on without her? I couldn't just put that on her for the rest of our lives."

"Did you used to feel that way?"

"I didn't think about it when I was younger. Honestly, every time I woke up a year older, alive, and married, I was just surprised and grateful I wasn't dead. My original life expectancy on my part before her… I couldn't see me making it past thirty. I couldn't imagine getting old. Now, I am old, and all of that feels so long ago it's like another life, and yet sometimes I feel like I haven't changed all that much after all. And… I don't really like that feeling."

"At our core, there's always some part of us that is the same person all the way through life." Isaac said after a moment, looking thoughtful. "That intrinsic part that is who we are, no matter the outside forces that push and pull us in other directions, and affect parts of who we become. It's possible to experience tremendous growth as a person, and still feel very vulnerable and childlike when we're exposed, and when we're facing things that are legitimately terrifying. Issues of mortality, of losing the people we care about… these are very understandable fears. They're not irrational or foolish. They're human. You started life with a family that was… not optimal, and didn't give you emotional support and stability. You struggled on until you were able to find it, and form a family unit that provided you with things that, as a person, you needed from other people, and let you give that back. What you're feeling makes sense. What you need, is to find a healthy way of coming to terms with mortality; not yours, but of the people you care about. Or, as you pointed out, you definitely run the risk of going down the direction you described from your dream. The fact that you're trying to stop that, is a huge step in the right direction. Don't give up."

January 18th, 1997

Ethan had to admit he was a little excited as he waited for the next appointment to arrive at the clinic. For one thing, it was nice to have a normal day, where he simply had clinical appointments and no reasons to rush over to the hospital for emergencies. For another, both he and Ren were in at the same time, along with both of the other alkahestrists currently working at the practice. Since opening, he and Ren had offered additional training and practical experience to over two dozen alkahestry trained physicians, who now practiced all over. Many had stayed in Amestris, but a few had gone to Creta, Aerugo, and one or two had gone to Xing for further professional study if they hadn't come from there in the first place. They were no longer the only alkahestry-focused practice in Central either, which was honestly a relief. Not that they weren't both often first on-call for major emergencies. History, familiarity, reputation, and experience still counted for a lot.

Still, today was exciting, because it heralded the arrival of his first real protégé. A student that was not already medically trained, but coming specifically to learn alkahestry, the way he had first gone to Xing and learned the basics from Ren's mother, Mei. Or the way he had interned at the hospital himself as a boy, under Doctor Gray.

The door opened, and the girl entered, smiling. "Hello, Dr. Elric. Thank you for having me." Danielle Moreau had been taking basic alchemy lessons from Uncle Alphonse in Resembool, while living with her great-grandmother since her mother's work involved a lot of travel. After losing her grandmother, Ethan knew his family hadn't been sure where the girl would end up. As it happened, her mother's work had finally had her settle in Central, and the relocation came at a very good time for Danielle to start the semester in the new school, and also have the opportunity to train with an alkahestrist, since that was where her interests and talents seemed to lie. She had even help save his father's life after the explosion that had destroyed most of the Resembool festival grounds, with the little she had already learned.

When he'd found out she was moving to Central, he had been happy to offer her the opportunity to be a student and intern in the clinic, with Ren's agreement of course. She would get the opportunity to learn how a clinic ran, and assist with a variety of tasks, while learning alchemy and alkahestry basics. If this was the career path she had chosen for herself, there was no time like the present to get started.

"Welcome, Danielle," he grinned shaking her hand. "It's nice to see you again. I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Renxiang Elric, my partner in the practice."

Danielle grinned and looked pleased, but unflustered, as she shook Ren's hand as well. "It's an honor to meet you. I've heard a lot about you."

"From Alphonse I expect." Ren smiled back. "Welcome to Central, Danielle. I hope you're enjoying it so far."

The girl nodded. "I am. I like the school so far, and the other students have been nice. Hrafn's uncle said I'm welcome to come over to their place and hang out when I want to."

Of course, Coran had. "And how does Hrafn feel about that?" he asked, trying not to read much into it. Of course, Danielle had known the whole family, though she was Dessa's age, and a little younger than Hrafn.

"He said he'd enjoy it and it would be nice to see someone he knew around. I know I'm looking forward to it. So, what do you want me to do first?"

"Eager to get to work?" Ren smiled. "Well let's start with a tour of the facility, and then you can show us what you know of alkahestry."

Danielle's enthusiasm was evident. "Yes! Let's get started."

January 20th, 1997

Sara was relieved to see Franz smiling as he entered the house that afternoon, freshly home from his latest medical checkup. After the injuries he had sustained during the battle, there had been more than one follow up since leaving the hospital. "I take it everything went well?"

Franz grinned as he held out his hands. "Fit as a fiddle and free to return to as much vigorous activity as I like. Ironically, it's probably the results I've had from a physical in years."

Sara chuckled, pleased by the good mood. "Glad to hear it. That means you can start joining the dogs and I for our morning jogs again." Leaving her book on the table, she stood and crossed the room, kissing him briefly.

Franz returned it warmly. "That would be more tempting if it weren't the dead of winter. Not that I'm saying no," he promised. "I just wish the weather were a bit nicer if I'm going to be out in it."

"We could always consider a vacation home in Southern Aerugo." Sara shrugged, only half-joking. "Or at least, a vacation that isn't a political trip in disguise."

"I wouldn't mind a romantic getaway somewhere more tropical." Franz put one arm around her waist, holding her close. "Especially if we don't have to go in disguise. Any particular reasons for Aerugo?"

"Well, you did say warm." Sara shrugged. "Though if we were going, Elena might like the company. She told me over lunch today that she's making a trip down soon to pack up the personal items she and Maes left at their city home in Bueaire when they came back up here. She's planning to return to living primarily in Central, since all the rest of the family is here, or closer, in any case."

"And you thought she might like some company."

"Only for part of the trip. I really did think it might be nice for us to just have some time alone, too," Sara promised. "Based on our conversation today, I think she'd rather not face the house without company, and she doesn't want to pull any of the kids away from their lives and families."

"But we other old, retired people are available." Franz didn't look at all displeased. "If we can do this to help ease Elena's pain a little, you know I'm all for it. She's going to be a bit at loose ends until she decides how she wants to spend retirement."

Sara understood why her friend had chosen to retire from diplomacy now. It wasn't as if she couldn't have several years ago, but she had still been enjoying it then, and she was incredibly good at it. As her work in Creta just proved. But without Maes going with her, working at her side, supporting her and making sure they got to enjoy their time together, what joy was there in it? "So, shall I extend her the offer of company then? I'd have done it on the spot, but I wanted to know how you were feeling and if you wanted to go first."

"I appreciate that you waited for my input." Franz looked amused. "Of course we'll go. It's been a few years since our last trip to Aerugo, and this time we won't be avoiding politics or assassins and you won't be stuffing me into unflattering disguises. Which now, thankfully, are probably too large."

"Thankful indeed." Sara reached up with one hand, placing it lightly in the center of his chest. "Not that I couldn't come up with other ones, but it would be nice to just travel as ourselves again. Besides, no one should have any reason to care who we are now." Not that they wouldn't be recognizable, but the average Aerugean probably had little idea of, or cared, what a several-years-retired former head of a foreign government looked like. Even if he appeared in some history textbook the photo would almost certainly be one of him younger, with dark hair and glasses. Sara would be less surprise if someone mistook James for Franz, than actually recognized him on the streets in Aerugo. "I'll make the arrangements, and we can enjoy a few weeks of warmth, sun, and no responsibilities."

"Sounds great." Franz's warm expression made her wonder if he might be up for a little recreational activity now…before the family got home. Unfortunately, it was almost time for Krista and the kids to be back.

"First, we should start on dinner. It is our night to cook. I promised James."

"I'll start peeling the vegetables," Franz promised, giving her another quick kiss before letting her go with obvious reluctance. "But we'll need to discuss this more in depth, tonight… privately."

Sara winked at him as she headed for the kitchen. "Yes sir."