Fullmetal Alchemist: Reawakening (3/6)

[jordannamorgan]

Title: Reawakening (3/6)
Author: jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG for a small amount of violence.
Characters: Edward, Alphonse, the Curtises, Winry, Mustang, assorted original characters, and a special guest villain.
Setting: First anime. Continuation of my AU one-shot story “Rebirth”.
Summary: Fifteen years after being reborn as a child of the Curtises, Edward has grown to be a healthy, settled teenager with no memory of his first life. Yet shadows of the past are beginning to fall over the family’s happiness… and not all of Ed’s old enemies have forgotten him.
Disclaimer: They belong to Hiromu Arakawa. I’m just playing with them.


CHAPTER III: Who Was He


By the time Ed escaped from Winry’s shop, he was on track to be thoroughly late for class—and he hadn’t been lying when he said there was an important test ahead of him that day. He grumbled internally as he ran down the street, the exertion making his still-lingering headache beat harder.

Now he was a little more angry than scared over the inexplicable panic attack that had so delayed him. It was becoming impossible to deny that something weird was going on inside him, whether the root cause was mental or physical… but whatever it was, it was just so stupid. Nothing should be disrupting his world like this. Everything should simply have been normal, the way it was before.

He didn’t have time to be sick… or crazy. His life was too full to let headaches and waking bad dreams interfere with it. He had studying to do, and chores at his parents’ shop to perform; for that matter, extra chores today, after his delinquency of the previous evening. He had family to spend time with, friends to visit, alchemy to practice.

He had Al’s real body to get back someday.

It was the only way it would ever happen. Al was so uncomplaining, so accepting of his fate, that the idea would never even occur to anyone else in the family. Only Ed had ever considered it—so he had to be the one to learn how.

I promised…

An especially piercing throb shot through Edward’s head, causing him to stumble to a stop on the street corner. He clutched his forehead and frowned at himself, wondering why he had just thought those words so clearly.

Ed never had made any promise to restore Al’s flesh and blood. Al didn’t even know he nurtured that desire in his heart—and probably would have dismissed or even discouraged it if he did. Besides that, Ed knew better than to promise something so incredible. If Mother and Al knew of no way to undo Al’s condition, what were the chances that he would ever find one, when his abilities might never be as good as theirs?

His emotions contorted again. Suddenly his anger was directed at himself and his own limitations, instead of the phantom ailment that assailed him. The feeling was not unfamiliar. In fact, it was strangely much like the sourceless, frustrated ire that had been randomly welling up in him for months, for no apparent reason.

Was this the reason? All along, had his anger come from this sense of inadequacy he found buried deep down inside him?

No matter the cause, the timing of this mood swing was particularly bad. The anger made him irritable, and the irritability made him lose focus. It made him self-consciously withdraw from others, so that no one would set off an irrational flare of the temper he didn’t even mean to display—and his academic performance suffered for it all. Not what he needed on a morning when he had a major test to take.

By this point, it was clear that his day just wasn’t going to get any better.

With a short, sharp movement, he lowered his hand from his head, striking his fist against his thigh in futile aggravation. Then he looked up at the clock tower of the bank across the street, and stifled a snarl between his teeth. He was even later than he had thought.

The only remedy was to take the straight line that was the shortest distance between two points. Instead of following the sidewalks to school as usual, he could cut across the next block at an angle, weaving his way between the backs of several businesses. That would shave a couple of minutes off his time, at least.

Resolved, Ed turned to the left. He climbed over a chain-link fence behind a café, leaving behind the sunlight that fell on Dublith’s broad main road, to set off down a much dimmer and narrower driveway used by delivery trucks. The rear doors of several stores and restaurants faced this grimy lane on both sides, most of them flanked by reeking garbage cans and stacks of wooden pallets. It wasn’t picturesque, but it was a more direct route to Ed’s destination, used by him in the past when various crises with his younger siblings belated him.

In spite of the rank smells, the softer light soothed Ed’s eyes, which in turn helped ease his headache. He picked up speed, skipping over oily puddles and littered trash, and began to feel a surge of optimism. This would be alright. At the rate he was going, he would only be a minute or two behind schedule.

Next his course required a right turn, down a particularly narrow and dirty alleyway between the rear walls of a couple of empty storefronts. Without slowing, he sprinted around the blind corner… and skidded to a halt as he nearly collided with something.

Or rather, someone. The hunched figure moved, startled by Ed’s intrusion, and quickly straightened to an impressive height—not quite as tall as Father, but almost. A hooded cloak of coarse brown fabric obscured the face at first, but as the stranger turned to look at Ed, he saw a man’s features. Deep crags and scars were cut into leathery skin; an iron-gray mustache and chin grizzle matched the errant strands of hair that hung down over an eyepatch. The visible left eye was a deep hazel-green, staring back at Ed with a wolfish fury.

“You…!” the stranger breathed slowly, his one eye widening.

Ed felt as if his head would explode from the sudden detonation of pain inside it. Choking off a cry, he fell back a step and clutched at his skull with both hands, as baffling images and sensations rushed through his consciousness.

The swaying of a train… The sharp smell of gunpowder… The ricochet of bullets against metal…

The face of that man, glowering with the same rage… but many years younger.

Along with this new hallucination, the aches reignited in Ed’s shoulder and thigh, more intensely than ever before. He gasped and reeled away from the stranger, only to slip on the slimy bricks, going down hard on his backside.

Then, from that changed perspective, Ed saw past the edge of the man’s cloak, and glimpsed what lay behind him.

An open purse and its scattered contents. A slender hand, limp and pale, outstretched as if pleading for help that never came. Long brown hair that spilled down in a tangle, concealing the face of its owner… but not hiding the savage red-black marks imprinted on her neck by crushing fingers.

A child in an alley like this, clinging and shrieking as he was dragged away, tearing off the sheet from his mother’s mutilated remains.

A familiar face that resonated with feelings of love, framed with brown hair just like that—but twisted into an unrecognizable mask above a tortured, inside-out horror of a body…

Edward screamed.

It was an utterly primal sound, born in mortal terror, ripped from the blackest and most unknown depths of his being. The pain in his head and limbs spiraled to an entirely new level, but at the same time, it was suddenly nothing—compared to the blind madness of the animal compulsion to run.

To escape from the murderer in front of him… and the bewildered agony inside of him.

He didn’t even know how he got on his feet. Fueled by instincts of self-preservation, his body simply went into overdrive, with no conscious direction from his mind. All he knew after that was running, and the heavy booted steps pounding behind him as the killer gave chase.

“You! Get back here!”

The bellowed demand sounded close enough to have been right in Ed’s ear, as the footsteps fell ever closer in his wake. Not only his head, but also his chest felt as if it would burst from the exertion and fear; but he pushed himself to run even harder. It would be better to drop dead from a failed heart than to die with this monster’s hands around his throat, the way that woman had died.

If he could just reach the open street beyond the maze of alleyways—then he would be safe. There would be passersby there, who could hear him call out for help. Witnesses, to whom the murderer would not dare show his face.

The wooden gate at the end of the alley was shut and padlocked. Ed gathered himself to leap, to vault over it…

At that moment, a powerful fist seized the back of his shirt, nearly jerking him off of his feet.

Ed screeched, twisted away, and heard a sound of fabric tearing as it slipped from the killer’s grasp. With his momentum suddenly unrestrained, he lost his balance and stumbled forward, skidding onto his knees a few steps beyond his assailant. Equally overbalanced, the killer went down on one knee as well, snarling out a sharp oath.

Desperately Ed dug his nails into the cracks between the paving bricks to pull himself upright. Even as he moved, he heard the scrape of boots behind him. The killer was far quicker than his bulky figure suggested. He lurched to his feet, and Ed smelled a gust of foul breath as a reaching shadow fell over him.

Everything seemed to slow down then, veiling the things that came next in a dreamlike twilight.

As Ed braced his body to push himself up and keep running, that hand closed over his shoulder and shoved him back down, forcing his own hands out from under him. His chin hit the ground so hard that his vision went almost black, shot through with bright sparks.

Dozens, hundreds of unblinking eyes, staring out from the depths of an eternally hungry, grasping darkness…

Ed moved beneath the menacing figure that loomed over him. His hands struck together, palm to palm, and he reached up toward the closest of the walls that bounded the alley’s narrow space.

Somewhere above him, there was a flash of light, followed by a thud and a yell.

The grip of the killer’s savage hand went away. The clinging apparitions in Ed’s mind did not—and now, they were what he ran to escape from.

Running. Running forever, perhaps. Mindlessly, sobbing, screaming; body and soul both wracked with unspeakable pain. Blind to the broken crates and garbage cans he stumbled over, numb to the cuts and bruises he received. All he saw was those eyes, and the grasping talons in the blackness, without one speck of light ahead to show him the way out.

He didn’t know when he stopped running, when he fell. He didn’t know when it all disappeared in the blessed nothing of unconsciousness.



“Brother?”

That gentle voice pierced the blackness like sunlight, as familiar leather fingers stroked Ed’s cheek. The cool hardness of steel was under him and around him, in the form of huge arms that cradled him like a baby.

He started awake, opening his eyes to see his older brother’s metal face above his own.

“Al…!”

“Shh. It’s okay now, Brother. You’re safe.”

Edward couldn’t think straight. There was still a hammer pounding away on the inside of his skull, and the rest of his body ached dully. For one groggy moment, he was bewildered; but memories quickly flooded in to fill that brief void of confusion.

Fleeing headlong in terror from the murderer in the alley… and from the waking nightmare visions of living darkness.

His heart turned over, and he squirmed into a sitting position on Al’s lap, shivering slightly. One hand gripped Al’s wrist as he looked around at the sterile environs of a medical exam room. Familiar pictures on the walls, a jar of cookies on the counter… It was the office of Doctor Lang, their family physician. Taking quick stock of himself, he found a dozen small bandages on his arms, hands, and legs, where he had suffered cuts and scrapes in his desperate escape.

How long had it been since it happened?

“There was a man—a killer—he strangled a woman back in that alley—” Ed stammered, the words tumbling out breathlessly.

“We know.” Al brushed Ed’s hair away from his face. “Winry called us about what happened at her shop, so Mother and I came looking for you—and we found out you’d almost been hit by a car in the next street down, when you ran out of the alley. The people who saw it said you were screaming, but then you passed out. When the police came, they found the woman’s body, and they thought you must have seen… what happened to her.”

“I didn’t see him do it. But I saw his face.” Ed shuddered, remembering the startled, hate-filled ugliness of the murderer’s expression. “Then he chased me, and… and I…”

Involuntarily, Ed glanced down at the palms of his hands. He thought he remembered doing something with them, a muscle memory of action in the moment before it all blurred into the blackness of his hallucinations; but he couldn’t remember just what it was he had done.

“Tell me the truth, Ed.”

Stricken, Ed raised his eyes, meeting the red-tinged reflection of quiet soul-distress in Al’s gaze. His brother knew he was holding back.

“…There’s something wrong with me,” he whispered faintly at last.

There. It was out. Now that the first crack had been made in the walls of Ed’s prideful resistance, he crumbled into the bitter relief of confession, curling into a ball with his face buried in his arms. “I was—seeing things that weren’t there. Eyes all around me, and these awful black hands reaching for me in the dark. It happened when I was running from the killer, and… before that, too. At Winry’s shop.”

In response to the revelation, Al was silent for so long that Ed finally looked up, his heartbeat quickening as he searched Al’s unreadable face.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Brother!” Al’s arms abruptly slid around Ed’s ribs, hugging him so tight that he could barely breathe. “And no matter what happens… nothing will be wrong with you. I promise that, Ed.” His voice trembled with inner tears he was unable to spill. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Ed’s own eyes welled up. He closed them, and clung to Al’s smooth steel as if his life depended on it.

His life did depend on it. Because if he let go now, if he let a single part of what was real to him and made him himself slip out of his grasp, that ravenous darkness would be waiting for him… and whether it was only in his mind or something more tangible, it would consume him either way if it found him again. He was sure of that.

“…There are some policemen here, Brother. They need to know what you saw—so they can find the strangler before he hurts anyone else.” Al drew back from Ed with seeming reluctance, helmet tipping downward to seek his eyes. “Do you think you feel up to that?”

The thought of voluntarily retracing those memories, of trying to sort out what was and wasn’t true, made Ed’s stomach flip-flop. Even so, he knew he had to do it, for the sake of others the killer might victimize. He nodded a little shakily and slid off of Al’s lap, bracing one hand on the edge of the exam table to steady himself.

“Yeah. Okay.”

Al reached out with both hands, squeezing Ed’s shoulders once. Then he rose from the chair where he was sitting, and moved to the door.

“I’ll stay with you while they’re asking their questions, if you want,” he offered, looking back at Ed.

“Come on, I’m not five years old.” Red-faced, Ed rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d—rather do this on my own.”

He meant those words—or at least, he wanted to mean them. A part of him did yearn to have Al’s hand to hold while the police made him relive the horror. And yet, at the same time… if he broke down again in the process, he didn’t want Al to witness that. He was starting to feel a little embarrassed that his experience had made him unravel so completely, no matter how monstrous it was. After a lifetime of Mother’s self-defense lessons, he should have done something more commendable than simply run away in terror.

Of course, that unreasoning animal fear had been triggered more by Ed’s hallucinations than by the strangler himself… but still.

“Okay. If you’re sure.” Al’s spiked shoulders hitched in a small shrug. “Winry is out there with Mother, too. We’ll be just outside if you want us.”

With that, Al opened the door and stepped halfway out of the room. He spoke to someone, and then moved aside, revealing three men in the waiting room beyond. Two were uniformed police officers, while the other was their apparent superior, a lean and lugubrious figure in a brown trenchcoat.

Ed took a deep breath as they entered the room, and the last man gently closed the door behind them.



When Alphonse emerged from the exam room, he was met only by silence in the waiting room beyond. The two women who occupied it did not speak. Winry was seated, her gaze lowered; her hands clasped firmly across her belly, as if to protect her unborn child from the heavy weight of the room’s atmosphere. More restless, Izumi paced, looking very much as if she wanted to smash something.

Neither of them approached the question Al knew they were burning to ask. Instead, they only waited for him to answer what was unspoken… and he obliged them, soft-voiced, as gently as he could.

“We know for sure now. The memory of the Gate is still inside Ed.”

Izumi caught her breath in a hiss, looking away. Winry flinched and clenched her fingers tighter against her stomach.

The confirmation was really not a surprise to any of them. Before Ed was taken from the scene of the crime and his own near-accident, they had seen the physical evidence. Aware of Izumi’s reputation as an alchemist, the police detective sought her opinion of the strange protrusion that had sprouted from a nearby wall. It bore the telltale crystallization marks of a hasty, imperfect transmutation… but there was absolutely no sign that an array had been drawn on the concrete it was formed from.

Alchemy, without a circle: a skill possessed only by those who knew the touch of the Gate.

“Does he remember anything else?” Winry asked faintly.

“I don’t think so. Not yet.” Al’s fists tightened. “But if he remembers that… the rest must be there, too. I can feel it.”

“He only reacted in fear for his life.” Izumi turned her face upward to seek Al’s gaze, her eyes glistening. “This doesn’t have to go any further. We can protect him. If he never experiences a trigger like this again—”

“Mother.”

The word was barely above a whisper. That was all that was needed to halt Izumi, to make her gulp and stare wide-eyed at Al, as if the word had been a shout instead.

“The past isn’t going to go away just because we want it to. Ed has always known he was different—and now he knows something isn’t right. He’s more afraid of what’s inside him than of what he saw today, and if we just leave him lost in that fear…” Al shook his head gently. “Sooner or later, it would hurt him even more than the truth.”

Izumi’s tears spilled over. She bowed her head, and Al knew it took all her strength to compose herself before she spoke, her voice trembling very slightly.

“I’ll call General Mustang… as soon as we get home.”

Al hesitated for only a moment. Then he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Izumi, hugging his foster mother as tightly as he dared.

“It’s not the end, Mother. I won’t let it be the end.” His too-young voice quivered with something more than the resonance of metal. “You and Father gave us back what we lost so much trying to reclaim in the first place. You gave us a family again—and I won’t give that up. No matter what memories come back to Ed, I won’t let the past take away what we have now.”

Only silence was Izumi’s reply. She leaned her head against his chestplate, and simply allowed him to hold her.

He was grateful for that, even if he couldn’t feel her in his arms.

No one spoke for a while. They merely sat, and waited… and wondered what pain Ed might be going through on the other side of the door. For all of the Curtis family’s roughhousing, this second life he lived had been so innocent, raised in an environment of safety and love. He wasn’t naïve about the darker corners of human nature, but he hadn’t experienced it. Not the way he had today. It surely would have been traumatic for him, even—and perhaps especially—if it did not awaken shadows of the Edward who once knew humanity’s darknesses all too well.

Nearly an hour passed before the police detective, Lieutenant Pardo, finally stepped out of the exam room alone. He closed the door behind him before approaching the waiting family, a sheaf of forms and papers clutched in his hand.

“Your boy’s a brave young man. He told us a lot.” A frown slanted across his lips. “He got a little confused when we asked him about the sign of alchemy I showed you back in the alley. Though you say he’s an alchemy student himself, he doesn’t seem to remember doing it at all—but of course, after what he went through, it’s understandable if some things aren’t too clear. Anyway, he did remember the strangler’s face clearly enough to give us a solid description. Our sketch artist made good use of it. I wouldn’t guess you’d have seen the man before, but on the off chance…”

Pardo turned his cluster of papers around, revealing a rough pencil sketch of a burly, grizzled man with an eyepatch—and Alphonse gasped.

“We can’t wait to call General Mustang.” Al stepped forward urgently, looking from Izumi to the detective. “I can tell you exactly who this killer is. He was sent to prison as a terrorist twenty years ago, after he hijacked a train… and I was there.”



By the time the police interview was over, a fresh headache was grumbling dully behind Ed’s eyes.

For just under an hour, he sat with an untasted glass of water clutched tightly in both hands, and tried to make sure the answers he gave were rooted in hard fact—rather than phantom terrors of his mind. With the gentle coaching of Lieutenant Pardo, who was both kind and skilled, he focused past the haze of his dark visions to pinpoint the specifics of the killer. That in itself was frightening enough; and later, when the sketch artist went to work with him, the ugly portrait that slowly took shape made Ed feel sick to his stomach all over again.

When Pardo left the room, the exhausted Edward leaned forward and propped himself against the edge of the exam table, resting his sore head on his arms. He only realized he had dozed off that way when he woke up. The other policemen were gone, and Mother was beside him, gently calling his name.

“Ed? Come on. We’re taking you home now.”

That thought was overwhelmingly appealing. Still drowsy and deeply troubled at heart, Ed straightened in his chair, and impulsively threw his arms around Mother’s waist for a hug. She returned it tightly, caressing his hair.

“It’s going to be alright,” she said faintly, repeating the promise Al had made to him earlier. She brushed her cheek against the top of his head. “Whatever happens… it’s going to be alright.”

Her voice held the faintest note of a tremor. She sounded almost as if she was trying to convince herself of those words, more so than Ed. His heart fluttered anxiously, and he looked upward, searching her solemn features.

“What’s wrong, Mother? I mean—what’s really wrong? What is it that everyone’s not telling me?”

“…It’s nothing, Ed. Nothing you need to worry about.”

She smoothed his hair one more time, and drew back slightly. “But… the police are concerned for your safety, as a witness to a crime. I’m sure they’re overreacting,” she assured him hastily, as he gaped in alarm. “They just want to post an officer outside of our home, to keep watch for a day or two. That’s all.”

Amidst the immediate distress of the aftermath, Ed hadn’t considered that the killer might recognize him as easily as the other way around. A shudder raced down his spine, and he swallowed hard. Especially the way that madman had looked at him… and because…

“My book bag!” Ed jerked to his feet, looking around anxiously. “I must have lost it when—”

“We found it. Winry has it, out in the waiting room.”

That, at least, was a relief. It meant the killer probably hadn’t found his name and address on the bookplates inside his schoolbooks. Ed relaxed a little, and tried to smile, although he knew he wasn’t going to be convincing.

“I guess I missed my test today, too.”

“Don’t worry about that. You’ll have time for it later… Plenty of time.” The tremor was back. Mother put her arm around Ed’s shoulders and began to lead him toward the door, clearing her throat very discreetly. “Meanwhile… you should know that Uncle Roy is coming to see us.”

That news was unexpected. As the commander of the military’s State Alchemists, General Roy Mustang—“Uncle Roy” to the Curtis children—was extremely busy, making his visits much less frequent than Ed would have liked. Uncle Roy was a fascinating man: a national hero, who led a coup to save Amestris from a tyrannical regime when Ed was only a baby. More personally, to the young alchemy student, he was a favorite teacher. When he did come around, he was always interested in seeing the progress of Ed’s alchemy, and seemed to genuinely enjoy showing him new tricks… much to Mother’s dismay at times, when Ed’s attempt to duplicate those skills was destructively unsuccessful.

In a very different way than Alphonse, Uncle Roy presented something Ed could aspire to. He had even considered the idea of taking the State Alchemy Exam himself one day, if he ever became skilled enough to stand a chance of passing it.

“Does his coming here have something to do with what happened?” Ed queried.

“I suppose it does.” Mother gave him a melancholy smile. “You know Uncle Roy is very fond of you. He wants to be sure… you’ll be safe.”

She looked away then, and Ed tried not to dwell too hard on the way she blinked quickly, as if forcing back tears.

“There’s something else, Mother.” He stopped in front of the door, looking up at her. “Lieutenant Pardo said it looked like I’d used alchemy to protect myself, back in that alley. But there was no transmutation circle, and even if there had been… Well, a lot of it is fuzzy now, but I know I never had the time. Not with the way that man was coming after me.”

Mother looked back at him. When she spoke, her voice was as steady as the mirror-smooth waters around Yock Island on the stillest of days.

“What do you think?”

A rush of heat blossomed in Ed’s cheeks. He fidgeted and raised his hands slightly, casting a furtive glance down at his open palms. He could still feel that ghost-memory of movement and sensation, a blind impulse in the animal darkness of fight-or-flight.

“You don’t think I… I could have done it without a circle, do you? The same way you can?”

“You were fighting for your life.” Mother’s arm tightened around his shoulders, loving and protective. “I can’t say what instincts might have been awakened in you then—but I do know it is in you, Ed. And I believe you’ll discover it… sooner than you may think.”

Edward was too speechless to say anything more after that.

In the waiting room, they found Lieutenant Pardo standing with Al and Winry. The detective smiled at Ed, thinly but appreciatively. “Thanks again, son. You did well by us. We won’t forget it when we put that creep behind bars—and in the meantime, we’re going to make sure you and your family are safe. I promise you that.”

“Thank you,” Ed murmured.

“And you, Ma’am. You’re an automail engineer, right?” Pardo inquired of Winry. “If you wouldn’t mind… maybe you could come down to the coroner’s office. There’s something nagging me about the marks on the victim’s neck, and I’ve got an idea about it. I know it wouldn’t be very pleasant, and I don’t want to upset you in your… er, condition—but you might be able to tell me if I’m wrong or not.”

“Even with a baby in it, my stomach is pretty strong when it comes to things like that. Otherwise I wouldn’t be an automail mechanic.” Winry glanced at the clock on the wall, tugging the ends of her hair. “I really want to help you, sir… but I do have automail surgery to perform in half an hour.” She smiled rather sickly. “If my hands are steady enough by then, at least.”

“I understand. Call us as soon as you’re available, then.” Pardo flashed a glance over the other members of the family. “I’ll have one of my men see the rest of you home. There should be an officer posted on watch by the time you get there, so don’t worry about a thing now. You just go on with your lives, and leave this guy to us. We’ll get him.”

“If you think of anything else I can tell you, I…” Ed faltered, with a hollow smile. “I’ll try, at least.”

Pardo clapped Ed on the shoulder. “Good. I’ll call for you personally if anything like that comes up. In the meantime, after the scare they’ve had about you, if this family of yours wants to spoil you for a day or two…” He smiled knowingly. “My advice is to let them.”



True to Pardo’s word, the three Curtises were escorted home by a polite young officer. Upon arriving at their house, they found a much larger and more burly policeman already waiting on the doorstep. He gladly accepted Mother’s offer to feed him dinner, but only on the condition that he eat at his post. It was rather unnerving to think that a guard would be sitting watchfully outside their house all night.

Shaya and Ronan had arrived home from school before the policeman’s arrival, and were unaware of his presence. When Mother went to find Ed, she had left them a note, simply saying that she and Al had an errand to run—so when Ed walked in, the two youngest children were quite unprepared to see his torn, dirty clothes, and the bandages on his collection of cuts and scrapes.

“Oh, Ed!” Shaya wailed in a mixture of alarm and dismay, rushing to put her hands on his shoulders and look him over. “What kind of fight did you get in this time?”

Okay, so maybe the way Edward’s moods had been lately, he deserved that—but it stung nonetheless. He scowled and squirmed away from his sister’s grasp, moving off toward the stairs.

“You’d better ask Mother and Al about it. I’m going to take a shower.”

The answer probably only made him sound more guilty. He really didn’t care. He was exhausted, his head still hurt terribly, and he felt a sense of crawling uncleanness that had little to do with the damp filth of the alleys where he was chased. It was as if the black hands that had clung to him in his hallucinations left a vile stain on him, at least in his own mind.

In the shower he scrubbed himself three times under scalding-hot water, yet even that didn’t seem like enough. Slumping against the tile wall, he let the steaming heat continue to pour over him until it turned cold, and tried not to think at all.

When he finally went downstairs, he found that Father had come home, and had been filled in on the day’s events. Father didn’t say anything. He only grasped Ed’s shoulders in his powerful hands and pulled the boy against his chest—giving him a hug that was crushing not because it was so tight, but because its rarity spoke volumes about just how much it meant. Even that stalwart man was upset by the news of what Ed had gone through.

Dinner was lighter and more sparing than usual. It seemed Mother was sensitive to the fact that no one—except perhaps Ronan, who could eat through an earthquake—had much of an appetite.

“I haven’t forgotten that I’m supposed to do Shaya’s chores tonight,” Edward said demurely, as he helped gather the dishes after dinner. Work of any kind was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment, but he was resolved not to defer his responsibilities any further. He had already caused the household enough trouble in the last two days, even if most of it was inadvertent.

“Never mind that.” Mother grasped the back of his neck with one hand, caressing his face with the other. It was something she had only ever done when he was truly and seriously hurt in some way: when he had a terrible fever, when he fell from a tree and broke his leg while retrieving a kite for Ronan. Even though his physical injuries from the chase were quite minor, she clearly recognized that the pain inside him now was something exceptional. “I just want you to rest, and try to forget today. Tomorrow… isn’t going to be easy, either.”

“Why would that be? You said Uncle Roy is coming for a visit. It’s always a good day when he’s here.”

Mother smiled thinly. “Yes… of course.” She brushed a quick kiss across his forehead, just at his hairline—and that was even more unusual. She had only kissed her children when they were babies or young toddlers, almost too young to remember it.

Ed was in no mood to deny such a maternal ache. He hugged her tightly, laying his head against her chest. For a few moments, he simply rested in her arms, as he had from the day he was born… and he wasn’t entirely sure he was surprised to feel a few tears trickle down into his hair.

“…Hey, now.” Ed pulled back, forcing a smile to keep his own eyes from misting up. To return the favor Mother had granted him, he stretched upward and pressed a hasty kiss to her cheek. “I don’t know what everyone’s so upset about. It was just a… a really bad day. It’s over now.”

He didn’t honestly believe that. Even if the strangler never came looking for him, and was caught quickly, that business probably wasn’t over; he would surely have to give his testimony again for the man’s trial. But even that was secondary to whatever else was happening, although Ed couldn’t explain it. In his heart, he was sure his dark visions weren’t going to stop until he found and faced their cause—and he didn’t know when or how he would find the courage to do that.

Mother didn’t believe it, either. She and Father and Al, at the very least, could sense the wrongness Ed felt. He knew that, even if they wouldn’t talk to him about it. He was sure now that they were keeping secrets from him.

But it was only because they loved him.

In any case, Mother had the grace to pretend things would be alright, which gave Ed a hollow kind of comfort. She returned his smile, squeezed his shoulders, and finally let him go.

“If you really don’t need me to do anything… I think maybe I’ll go to bed.” Ed rubbed the back of his neck, grinning sheepishly. “I am awfully tired.”

Early though it still was in the evening, no one seemed surprised when Ed made the rounds of saying good night. It didn’t really seem fair that he was so exhausted, when he had already spent a part of the day passed out, but it was true. If he hadn’t felt as if he could sleep for days, he would have been much more reluctant to face the possibility of nightmares.

By the time Ed had brushed his teeth, loosed his hair from its braid, and made his way to his room, he found Alphonse already waiting for him there. The eldest of the Curtis siblings was sitting on the edge of his own bed, its mattress sagging under the weight of his armor.

“What are you doing here?” Ed asked curiously. “It’s still early. I thought you’d stay downstairs with Shaya and Ronan for a while.”

“Oh, they have easier homework tonight.” Al eased his massive frame back onto the bed, and rested his helmet on the pillow. “Besides… I have a lot of things to think about.”

Ed’s heart gave a little thump, and a warmth rose in his eyes. Without a second thought, he crossed the room and climbed into his brother’s bed, settling against night-cooled steel with the complete lack of discomfort that came from lifelong familiarity. It had been a few years since he felt like enough of a child to do this… but just for tonight, all bets about his maturity were off.

The little sound Al made was the breathless approximation of a small gasp of surprise. He shifted instinctively, turning onto his side. From his own long experience, he knew the position least likely to poke Ed with his sharper edges; and with no muscles or nerves to protest, he could lie that way all night.

Al reached up to the bedside lamp, finding the switch to shut it off. Then, in the darkness, the palm of his broad gauntlet gently curled around Ed’s right shoulder. The gesture was affectionate and protective, a reminder that a tender guardian soul was there within the hard steel at Ed’s side—and it wasn’t going anywhere.

Grateful, Ed turned his head, so that his cheek could rest against Al’s knuckles. Al wouldn’t feel it, but it still mattered.

Neither of them spoke for a long time. The comfort of Al’s close presence warred against the formless jumble of ugly memories and thoughts in Edward’s head. He didn’t try consciously to think about them, to make any sense of them… but they weren’t going to leave him anytime soon, either. And somehow, they inevitably led him back to the ominous inner whisper that he was different.

“I want you to tell me the truth, Al.” Ed swallowed hard, but the ghost of a tremor still crept into his voice. “…Was I adopted?”

A flicker of tension quivered through the armor beside him.

“No, Brother.” The fingers on his shoulder gripped a little tighter. “You were born to us. I swear it.”

That simple, direct answer was enough. If Mother and Father thought it was for Ed’s own good, even they might dissemble to him; but Al had never, ever told him a lie, and he never would. There was no doubt of that in his mind. If his elder brother swore it, then Ed’s blood truly was the same as that which had flowed in the veins of Al’s long-lost body. He could rest assured of it now.

Something else was still wrong with him… but it wasn’t that.

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Chapters: I. - II. - III. - IV. - V. - VI. - Alternate Ending