For Her. For Him.

A/N: Hikaru! You really didn't insult me. I had the same thoughts myself, and since other characters hadn't had the opportunity to weigh in on the names, which I really did use to make Mustang feel like crap, they are still up in the air. I have enjoyed your criticism. I wish that every person who read things I wrote was honest enough to point out where things are wrong, and where they could be improved. I do want opinions on the names because they are kind of corny, but possibly appropriate, and I haven't really made my mind up. To all of my reviewers, I appreciate how kind you have been, and I'm glad you are enjoying this. Also, because I have a new computer, there have been typos, so if I'm making some consistently, please tell me.

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't profit

Chapter 12

The Child

Ed looked at the child, trying to decide which of his instincts he should go with: own natural inclination that said he should start yelling, interrogating, demanding answers of the little non-human or those of the evil monster estrogen, which said he should try to comfort the child, knowing that if the boy could trust him, he could get answers without a battle. His own instinct sounded far more natural and more satisfying, but the second option presented by those implanted hormones seemed far less dangerous to the two lives he carried.

“He doesn’t like me very much,” Al said, quietly. “I think I’ve questioned him too much. He doesn’t seem too fond of Mr. Curtis or Mason either.”

“So he doesn’t like men?” Ed began sliding his hands out of the orange sweater. “I think I’m about to confuse the hell out of the boy.” He looked to his brother and the two adults in the room. “Word of this reaches anyone, I will kill each and every one of you. I don’t care if you all can beat me in a normal fight, if you breathe a word of this, I swear to you I will manage to hurt all of you.” Ed pulled the sweater over his head, revealing the tight brown tank top that left nothing to the imagination. Ed had resorted to wearing these, rather than breaking down and buying bras for the trip, not wanting to admit that he needed one, no matter how small the undergarment might be.

Ed tried to ignore the looks of surprise on the two adults’ faces, and he could feel the heat on the back of his neck as Al watched Ed closely. Making no scene, the young state alchemist merely sat down at the table across from Izumi and the boy. Ed looked at the table in front of him, seeing the numerous empty plates.

“He has quite an appetite,” Sig explained. “I put aside some food for you before he got to it.” Sig set a plate in front of Ed, who never took his eyes off of the boy, who never took his eyes off of Ed’s food.

“Are you still hungry, kid?” Ed asked. “There’s more here than I can eat.” That was only half true, but if he had to, Ed would go to the local tavern and round up some other food if he grew hungry later. He began to scrape off some of the ham and potatoes then slid it across the table to the boy.

“Ed, you shouldn’t have done that. You can’t believe how much he’s already eaten,” Al said. “You should have given it to Teacher or Mr. Curtis. They hardly got anything because of him.”

“He’s just a boy,” Ed said, looking up at Al trying to let his younger brother know that though he would be chastising him, he didn’t really mean it. “If everyone tried to stop me when my appetite got the best of me, I’d have never gotten to be full. Besides, there’s more than enough here.”

Ed shared a forced smile with the black-haired boy, both obviously unsure of one another. Still, he would spend the rest of the dinner trying to talk to the child as though he were Elysia or Nina instead of the person who had received the limbs he’d been struggling to recover for all this time. They chatted about a number of things and actually allowed the boy to ask questions of him and never vice versa.

********

Roy had reached the temporary headquarters in the South late, just as he had expected he would. Before the briefing, he knew he had time for a quick call, and almost immediately was on the phone, waiting for the person on the other end to pick up.

“Hello,” the person on the other end said, voice quiet and less than recognizable. Still, Roy knew who it was.

“Hey, cutie.”

“'Cutie?' What kind of a name is that?”

“You don’t like that for a pet name? I have hundreds on stock. Babe, darling, sweetheart…”

“Just drop it, snookums.”

Roy smiled even though he knew the person on the other end of the line couldn’t see it. “So how are you, Hon?”

“Fine, I’m a little tired, but mostly because I didn’t get a lot of sleep.”

“And is your extended family doing well?”

“Well enough. I still haven’t gotten to talk to the little guy.”

“When are you going to do that?”

“Probably after I hang up.”

“But the little ones, they are okay?”

“Doing fine.”

“I hated having breakfast alone this morning, Sweetie,” Roy said, realizing how much his voice sounded like he meant it.

“Same here, Colonel Hot Stuff,” the voice said, killing whatever mood might have been created.

“I will see you when I get home?” Roy asked, almost hopeful.

“We’ll be waiting for you.” Roy hung up the phone, wishing the call could have been longer, wishing he could have just talked to the young alchemist and asked him all the questions on his mind.

********

Ed hung up the phone in Dublith. Had Roy actually said that he missed him, actually sounding like he really did? He knew Izumi and Sig were already fast asleep, but he couldn’t help feeling eyes on him. Sheepishly, Ed turned around and faced his brother.

“What?”

“What was that about?”

“I told you that Colonel Mustang was going to pretend he was calling a girlfriend to check up on me.”

“Yes, but you blushed. Brother, you don’t blush.”

“I don’t have random crying fits, either,” Ed answered harshly, “or temper tantrums… okay, I’ll give you the tantrums. But a lot of things have been different lately, Al.” Ed looked to the phone on its receiver, then placed his hands in his pockets, suddenly feeling very fidgety. “I need to talk to the boy, and I’m probably going to have to do it alone. If you hear anything inside, come in and help me.”

“Brother, you are actually asking for my help?”

Ed rubbed his stomach. “For them, not for me.” Ed opened Izumi’s alchemic seal on the door, opened the door, then sealed it behind him. “Hello?” he asked as he looked around the seemingly empty room. “Hey, kid?”

That was when Ed heard a noise from the ceiling. He looked and found the boy swinging from the rafter.

“You’re not dead like the rest.”

“Dead?”

“Everyone else dies at night and comes back after the sun comes up.”

“You mean sleep.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Sleep means you are refreshing your body for the next day and will wake up because your heart’s still beating and you’re still breathing. Dead means that even if your body is still there, there is no way of waking back up. You’re gone.”

“I don’t sleep.” Ed thought to himself that, as a homunculus, the child didn’t die either.

“That’s because you’re special, like my brother. He doesn’t sleep either.” Ed fought a shudder at his own words, comparing his brother to a homunculus. How far would he go to be nice, to get answers?

The boy continued to swing above Ed’s head, as though he really hadn’t heard the alchemist. “I want to play.”

“Can I show you a game?” The boy nodded his head. “To play it, you have to come down here.”

With a thud, the strange child dropped to the ground in front of Ed. “Hold your hands out like this.” Ed held his palms face down. The boy did as instructed. Ed then placed his hands under the boy’s, palm facing palm. It felt odd to know that for the first time since the incident, Ed’s hands were touching again. Yet the right hand attached to the boy felt cold and alien.

“Does your brother ask you a lot of questions about your hands?” Ed raised an eyebrow at the boy. “Yours don’t match, just like mine, and he asks a lot of questions about mine.”

Ed told the boy that Al doesn’t ask questions because he already knows how he lost his limbs, then proceeded to explain to the child how to play red hands, having trouble convincing him that Ed wouldn’t hurt him if he hit him. They played for some time, the boy seeming to enjoy himself and Ed forgetting for a moment the reason he had initiated the game.

“Do you think it’s strange that my left hand and your right hand match?” Ed asked. The boy almost instantly withdrew from him, holding onto his right arm protectively. “I’m not going to do anything to you. I gave that arm up willingly. I just didn’t know someone would be using it when I was trying to get it back.”

“It’s yours?”

“Yes. It’s mine. I’m sure it is.”

Unexpectedly, the boy began to try to corner Ed. “Yours,” he said darkly. “How?”

“When I went through the Gate,” Ed said, not allowing him to be backed against a wall or a piece of furniture. Pregnant or not, he was still capable of putting up a fight if he needed to.

“Don’t say that word!”

“When I was on the other side, my left leg was taken. Then, to get my brother back, I gave up my right arm. Somehow, you got them.”

“They are different,” the boy said, anger in his voice. “They made me feel different. Different from you and from mother.” With those words, Ed watched the boy transform the right arm, Ed’s own arm, into something not entirely human, resembling the hand of a statue, large and stone-like. “I don’t like it.”

Ed cursed his own agility as the child seemed to match him move for move around the room, thanks in part to his own leg. The fist, without mercy, slammed into the bed, cracking the wood. Ed dodged, grateful that he was only three months along and not yet weighed down. The hand then made contact with the wall, cracking the plaster outwardly like a spiderweb. Ed had managed to transform his automail arm into a sharp point for his own protection, but he was leery of harming the boy, of seeing what pain would do for this already volatile temper. The boy began moving unnaturally from the rafters, more like animal than human, and too late, Ed realized that the homunculus above him had gotten him exactly where he needed him, against a wall with nowhere to go. Quickly as he could, Ed tried to transmute a wall, a barricade of some kind before the boy dropped down. Even without a transmutation circle, Ed wasn’t fast enough.

The dark-haired boy brought his fist down, sure to make contact with Ed’s stomach, with the alchemist turning his body, trying to shield himself with his right arm. When he heard the sound of the stone fist striking metal, he was certain he’d been hit until he looked up to find a large metal hand wrapped around the transformed one.
“Al,” was all Ed could say before the boy began screaming for the younger brother to let him go.

Ed could see that same transformation he’d watched before as the boy altered his body, occurring again, but this time, it was affecting Al as well.

“Brother!” Al shouted as Ed saw the boy’s alchemy starting to meld the two bodies together.

Ed did the only thing he could, relying on some inclination he knew was not naturally his own. He clung to the boy, wrapping his arms around him. “Please calm down. You said you feel different. You don’t have to. I’m trying to make Al normal again, and I can try to do the same for you.” Ed held the boy close to himself, despite the fact that a part of him was repulsed to do so. “Please, hurting my brother isn’t going to make it better.” The boy was calming.

“I’m stuck. I don’t know how… I don’t know how to get loose.” Ed could sense the boy’s tension rising and grew afraid that another outburst could mean the loss of his little brother, or with such a close proximity, the loss of his children. “I can’t get out. I can’t!”

The door flung open, and Ed saw his teacher running toward them, wrapping her own arms around both him and the boy. "Try to remember your original form. Remember your form, the little boy, the child that likes to play on the rafters.”

“Please try to remember,” Ed echoed.

Relief washed over Ed as he felt the boy withdraw from Al. The storm was over. For now.

********

It was nearly two in the morning when Ed finally got to talk to Al. Ed had trouble explaining to himself why the boy now clung to him nearly as much as Izumi, even asking Ed if he was a mother. Ed somehow had managed to bite his tongue, supposing that the boy wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Brother?” Al asked, when Ed entered the room they shared.

“Al, I wanted to--”

“Ed, we need to talk.”

“And I’m going to talk. What you did in there has made me want to cry for the last two hours, and I’m getting ready to lose it again, so I don’t have long before I’m incoherent. Okay? You saved me and the babies, and I wanted to hug you for it that moment, but I had to stop the kid first. As far as the promise I made to him, you know the one I made to you comes first, and…” Ed had to stop to fight back a choking sob. “and I’m not going to let you down. You are first, Al, but maybe I can make this kid feel normal. Teacher is very attached to him. And honestly, I’m being selfish. I don’t know of any other way to get my limbs back now that he has them.” Ed had impressed himself, managing to get out his little speech just before sobbing himself into an unintelligible mess. All he could manage to do was wrap his arms around the cold armor.

“I know, Brother. I don’t want my body back if yours isn’t whole.”