Travelers

It's Christmas break (OMG POLITICALLY INCORRECT!! AHHH! Hahahaha!) and I'm at work. Hurrah.

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Does this mean I have to have a quote related to the holidays? --Me
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It was two weeks later that Alphonse said, “What?”

“I think we should just get this done. Screw Crane, get Ed, come back—kill him and Ranen and destroy the goddamn Stone. I’m tired of sitting on this.”

Al and Fletcher both blinked at him. “Uh. I thought you wanted him to think—“

“Does it matter what he thinks? I’m not saying we should work day and night, but I just wanna get this over with.”

He and Fletcher looked at each other.


Havoc, Falman, Breda, and Fuery had arrived a week before this—one week after the Colonel had initially arrived in Central, two weeks after Winry’s departure, three weeks since Alphonse had left. They had never been to Winry’s house and were going only on Riza Hawkeye’s directions.

“Why couldn’t she just have come with us?” Havoc said, sighing as they walked down the dusty road, a few from the fields stopping to look up at their blue uniforms, but none approaching.

Fuery adjusted his glasses and cap. “She said she was going to wait for the Colonel. He’ll be following in a couple days.”

“Why? I mean, I get that she’s kinda weird when it comes to him but, hell, she was his bodyguard, basically.” He fished out a cigarette.

Behind the three of them, Falman smiled a little.

Breda gave Havoc a sly glance. “Why do you think, Jean? Come on, use that little brain of yours.”

“Hey, shut up!”

“Oh, c’mon, ain’t it obvious! Hawkeye has never struck an officer like she did you when you said her ‘man’ was on the phone. That could just as have meant ‘your advisor’ or ‘your commander’—things like that. And think, it’s Hawkeye. Wouldn’t that be how she’d take things normally?”

“Man, I was just being sarcastic when I said that.”

“Yeah, and from what I hear, she clocked you like a bitch.”

Havoc glared and blew smoke at him.

“She did?” Fuery asked. “I hadn’t heard that part.”

Havoc waved that away. “So what are you saying?”

Falman smiled a little again. Breda rolled his eyes. “It’s been obvious for how long—they are obviously, oh, how to say so eloquently—enamored—with each other.”

Havoc gave him a weird look. “No way. Why would the Colonel have had so many girlfriends if he liked the Lieutenant?”

“It’s the Colonel.” Breda shrugged. “Probably didn’t know what to do. He should have come to me.”

“Oh, yeah, ‘cause you get all the chicks.”

“Like you can talk, considering Mustang used to steal all your girlfriends!”

“Hey, shut up!”

“All right, knock it off,” Fuery told them, exasperated.

“Damn, and here I was beginning to think Hawkeye was asexual.”

Breda burst out laughing. “That’s going in my report, Jean.”

“What?! No! Shut up! She’ll kill me!”

Breda grinned. “Kind of a pity though, working under her, you might have had a chance with her.”

Havoc rolled his eyes. “Yeah right. She may be pretty, but I’ll bet she’s a total bitch in bed. That’s Colonel’s forte right there. I may have asked to keep working with her, but I ain’t that stupid.”

“Yeah, I don’t think she is either. She’s too much woman for you.”

“I’m going to shoot you in the face.”

“Is that the house,” said Falman, pointing a finger over all their heads at a yellow house.

“Yes,” said Fuery, seeming a bit relieved. “An older lady named Pinako or Winry Rockbell should be there. Rockbell told Hawkeye she’d be there.”

“Which one? The old lady or the woman?”

Fuery looked at Havoc. “You do remember how old Winry is.”

“I was just kidding, geez,” Havoc answered, snickering. He flicked his cigarette onto the ground and crushed it under his boot before walking up to the door to knock. He reached out to touch the door…

…and it opened on its own.

Havoc yelped and leapt back to the porch railing, practically climbing onto it. “GHOST!”

“What?!” yelped Fuery.

“Huh?” said Breda.

Falman nodded to the person in the doorway.

“I don’t suppose you know where my granddaughter is?” the tone had a bite in it.

Havoc froze, whispering. “Oh no.”

Pinako strode out and eyed him. “’Oh no’ what mister military soldier? And get off my railing.”

Havoc looked even more scared of Pinako then he would have a ghost, but he climbed down. “Yes, ma’am. Uh. You mean Winry isn’t here?”

Pinako eyed him again, hands folded behind her, glasses taking a slight gleam as she glared at them. “I found this when I arrived home. I was visiting an old friend.”

They all edged closer to read Winry’s slightly scratchy handwriting.

Havoc’s mouth fell open. “Eh oh.”

“Why would she have left!?”

“Hawkeye told her we were coming!”

Falman frowned.

“That’s what I want to know! So before you start a wild goose chase for that boy and that horrible girl and that Trigham, you’re going to find my granddaughter!”

All of them shifted uncomfortably.

Havoc tried first. “Ma’am, we have orders…”

Pinako snapped her gaze at him. Havoc froze. “Do you think I, for one moment, care about military orders! She’s gone after that boy! Now you’ll go after her!”

Fuery raised a hand slightly. “Ms. Rockbell…we’ve been traveling all day and we have—“

“You can stay the night but tomorrow you’re leaving at first light to get her back here! I don’t want her chasing after fruitless…opportunities.” For just a second, Pinako’s look was less steely. “Alphonse will either decide or he won’t.” But then the look was back. “So you four are going to go get her!”

The four of them shifted uncomfortably again under Pinako’s glare and said, as one man, as if resigned to his death, “…yes, ma’am.”


It was a week after this, the day Russel said they would speed things up, that Edward loaded the rest of their supplies in the car. He started to pull the top cover back over but Alfons stopped him. “I like it down,” he said and smiled.

Edward nodded and pushed it down. “It’s going to be a great day for this.” He hopped over the door into the driver’s seat.

Edward seemed particularly cheerful about this launch, Alfons thought, and he smiled. He was too. It didn’t matter what any doctor said. This was his work and he’d make his mark on the world before he left it.

He climbed into the backseat. He’d barely gotten in when Ed shifted gears and took off.

If there was one thing Edward loved, it was feeling that air on his face. Nothing was so fast as this at home except a train. He liked driving with the top down. And, really, he just liked driving. It was a neat way to get around.

“So do you think they’ll have gotten most things set up by now?” Edward called back, turning down a dusty road.

“Hopefully…,” Alfons looked to the side.

Edward saw this in the rearview mirror and, puzzled by his tone, said, “Alfons?”

Immediately, the boy perked and smiled. “Ha! Tell me, Edward—how did you become so well known in your world?”

Ed grinned and turned his look to the road again, cheerfully recounting a tale which ended a little drastically—a man blowing up some sort of bomb in a facility in the ocean, killing himself and nearly he and his brother.

Alfons had laughed and they bantered back and forth. Edward turned for a moment to look at him—

--and his hand slipped on the wheel. He barely had time to yelp before they plowed right into a ditch.

“Edward! Are you all right!”

He lifted his head and looked around. “Uh…” He looked at Alfons.

“I take that as a yes.”

“Aheh heh….”

Alfons sighed. “We’ll have to borrow the flatbed to come back for our supplies.”

“How are we going to get to the festival?”

“We’ll have to walk or something.”

Edward shifted awkwardly but pulled himself from the car and, as luck would have it, they saw a wagon.

“Oi!” Edward called out.

Alfons coughed and immediately smiled when Edward looked at him. “Are you all right?”

“It’s been getting cold, remember?”

The driver slowed for them. “Going to the festival? Go ahead and get in the back—these gypsies are going too.”

Edward and Alfons both gulped when they seated themselves, the gypsies chatting amongst themselves and a few to them. They were gypsy women and very pretty ones.

And then they introduced Noa. She was sitting on the edge, a cloth over her hair and when she looked at them, it was sad. Her eyes were filled with a strange sort of listless despair. However, it seemed she could tell you things about yourself, some sort of psychic.

Alfons grinned. “Oh, try it on me!”

Edward rolled his eyes. “Oh, c’mon—that’s hardly believable!”

And then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jerked his gaze to her and she jerked away. “You have no home.”

Ed looked at her and then looked down. How could she have….no…. He stared ahead, not seeing anything.

Behind him, Alfons watched him close in on himself, retreat back into his shell and he cast his gaze at the gypsy, who was watching his friend.

Edward’s demeanor changed after that. He kept on that soft smile, but didn’t want to watch the launch anymore. He clasped hands and nodded to John, Vincent and Phillip and the little boy, Eddie and then went to the flatbed, rolling up his sleeves and lying down.

“…maybe I’ll never get home…”

He heard the rocket blast off and wild cheers from the crowd and he sat up. “I suppose I can only do what I can now…”

The same mantra, over and over, repeated to himself a thousand times so he’d get up in the morning.

That’s when the flatbed moved. He sat up and watched that strange gypsy, Noa, crawl under the covering for the fuel tanks.

“Hey, that isn’t a very good—“

Suddenly, three men were at the truck, whisking aside the cover and grabbing at the girl.

“No! No stop!” she looked at Edward, pleading eyes. “Help! Please!”

He didn’t stop to think about it. He was up like a cat and bounding at them, knocking them away from the girl, who hid at the flatbed.

“What’s going on?” he snapped, clenching his metal fist.

“That gypsy was traded to us, fairly to boot. She’s ours now!”

Ed blinked. “What?”

One of the men looked at the flatbed, spying the fuel tanks. “You must be with the Heidrichs, so you were invited—but everyone else who comes to set up a booth has to pay a fee. And everyone knows they don’t have any money except for what they steal. They traded her. She’s ours now. She’ll come with us when we set up our festivals—she’s psychic, you know. We can’t pass up an opportunity like that. And why would you want to stay with them anyway,” he snapped at Noa, “they sold you—just like a damn gypsy!”

Edward didn’t care whether or not Noa was a gypsy. In fact, he didn’t really get why they were hated so much. It sort of reminded him of why everyone seemed to prejudice against the people of Ishbal.

There was only one thing that mattered. “She’s a human being! You can’t just trade a human!”

“Tell that to her friends. Now get out of the way, boy!”

They made to move past him.

Edward jumped forward, almost immediately slapping his hands together—which made them all pause—and he laughed. “If you came where I come from, you’d be running scared!”

They attacked him. It must have been looked horrible when he shoved his right arm to the side, pulling a tag, spinning gears—

The fight was short, ending when one pulled a gun, fired at Edward first, who evaded it easily. Then he fired at Noa and he missed, shooting a fuel tank and a powder bin. Ed barely had time to grab the girl’s hand and take off before the truck exploded.

In the rain of wood and metal, they leapt through the crowds. He saw Alfons for just a second, throwing up a hand and disappearing.

“Where do you live?!” he shouted to her as they left the festival grounds completely, running full blast down the road.

“Nowhere!” she called back.

Outwardly, Edward looked ahead and kept running; inwardly he froze.

You have no home.

They jumped onto the road, yelling behind them, a roar of an engine, but closer—a wagon. Edward chanced a glance. “Run! Run faster!”

There was someone in a wagon, hard on them.

“Edward! Edward! Get on!”

He skidded, nearly tripping over himself.

It was John. Edward grabbed Noa’s hand and hauled her up on the wagon. “That a gypsy? What’s going on—“

“Just drive!”

Later on that evening Alfons got back to the flat, Vincent, Phillip and Eddie in tow. He sent them off with a friend. Their father had gone back to get the wrecked car.

He shoved the door closed. Ed jumped up from the table to meet him and ground to a halt at the look on his face.

“Aheh….uh….how’d the launch go, Alfons?”

“First you wreck the car, then you won’t stay for the launch, then you get into a fight, blow up Michel’s flatbed, grab a girl and run off and you ask me how the launch went?”

Edward shifted awkwardly and then gave him a half-smile. “Uh…they picked the fight? I didn’t do anything! Really! They were trying to sell her and kidnap her! I couldn’t just leave her!”

Alfons sighed. “Trouble follows you like the plague.”

Edward looked the side, still half-smiling awkwardly. You dunno the half of it. “It was an accident….?”

“Where is she?”

Ed cleared his throat. “Uh…well….uh….in the kitchen.”

Alfons’ eyes got about as big as saucers. “What?!”

“Well, she had no where else to go! So I brought her here…”

Alfons looked angry for only a moment and then he heaved a great sigh and gave Ed a look. “You are such an idiot.”

Well, Ed thought, that was relatively light.

“You do dishes for two months for that, y’know.”

Ed huffed, about to protest and then looked at the floor, then at him under the tops of his eyes, smiling ruefully. He could tell Alfons was trying not to smile.

“All right, Ed.” He walked around him into the kitchen. Edward followed.

Noa stood up, curling her shoulders, looking nervous.

“Noa, wasn’t it?” Alfons asked her.

She nodded.

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