Worlds Collide

A/N: MustangsHavoc, I'm glad you're enjoying this so much. I've tried to keep all of the characters involved and involving. Also, very happy that 30+ Ed gets your vote for Amestris's Most Sexy Man. just kidding. Elegant Paws, I don't know where you're at in this story, maybe caught up this far, but hope you've enjoyed what you've read so far. I also have the original story, if you can stomach an MPreg. And thank you for the compliments on the writing. Amethyst-Eyed Koneko, Aideen's had it rough, definitely. You are right that Dante hasn't been noticed coming and going from the underground area where the chimeras are being held. Wrath is definitely, um, big, but Russell also exaggerates in his mind just how big. Hohenheim is a lost cause for pity, isn't he?

And if this doesn't set up enough sap and angst for you people, well, nothing probably will.

Chapter 47

It Has to Get Better

Nine Months Later

“I know you don’t want to, but this is the big birthday, Aideen. Driver’s licenses, cars, nearly legal age…” Nicholas looked at his sister for any sign of movement, aside from one pale, thin hand turning the page of the book. “Please, I don’t want a party if you’re going to be miserable, but they can’t thrown one just for me, and we both know it.”

Aideen huffed as she removed the glasses she’d begun wearing to keep from overstraining her eyes. Delicately, she placed them on the open pages of the book she was reading. “It’s that important to you?”

Nicholas didn’t know why his twin always caved when it came to doing things he wanted, guessing it might have been lingering guilt or possibly just the bond they’d always shared since childhood. He could tell, whatever it was, that it was working yet again, just by the resigned expression on her face. “I’d really like it.”

There was another huff. “Fine.”

Nicholas latched onto his sister tightly, feeling her wriggle in his embrace. “Thank you.” He grabbed his sister’s head, comically kissing her, ensuring that she would pull free of his grasp, wiping her mouth on the black sleeve around her lean arms.

He then received a small grunt in recognition of his thanks as she put her glasses back on and resumed her reading.

It bothered Nicholas to look at his sister now, her skin holding the pallor of someone who rarely went out into the sun. Her body still healthy, but lost some of its muscular tone from sparring, as she refused to do it any longer, even when Nicholas begged his hardest. Even his argument that she might need her sparring skills in battle didn’t seem to have any effect. She had withdrawn from nearly everyone who didn’t force her to bear their company, save for Fletcher Tringham, who continued to work with her on plant alchemy, as she was once again struggling from killing every green thing she touched when trying to perform it.

Worse yet, for the first time in his nearly sixteen years, Nicholas was arguing with his sister on a fairly regular basis. Not when she was like she was at the moment, but when she put on the pretense that everything was okay. Something always unnerved him when she did it, and he didn’t know why. All he knew was when she walked around the house, apologizing for being overly mopey, Nicholas had this undeniable urge to fight with her if just to wipe those unnatural smiles off her face.

Not helping their own relationship any, Aideen had been given the option of passing out of school and had gladly taken it, not seeing the benefit in socialization that Nicholas had when given that choice, himself. Sure, his textbooks were all filled with red ink and editing marks, and he’d become the fact-checker for his teacher, but he hadn’t felt it necessary to withdraw from school altogether. Now, they had one fewer thing in common to discuss, debate about.

“Is there a reason you’re still in my room?” she asked.

“I just wondered what’s so entertaining up here that you’ve cut yourself off from the rest of the world. Same ugly purple walls, shelves of books, some I see you’ve snuck from the restricted sections of the library…”

Her head snapped up and those molten eyes narrowed at him over the thin specs.

“I’m not telling our fathers, just looking.” He flopped down on her neatly made bed, wrinkling the comforter. “I never realized this was velvet. How indulgent and decadent we are, Aideen.”

He stretched his left arm up at the stars he’d painted on the ceiling back when it had been their uncle Al’s. They were faint and hardly noticeable in the light, but had been a comfort to their uncle. After all the years in the armor, he’d become a bit timid when it concerned being in the dark. The tiny specks of glowing light from the incandescent paint had comforted the man when he’d been younger. Nicholas smiled to himself. His uncle had been about the same age as he and Aideen were now when he’d been freed from the armor.

“Are you done?” Aideen asked, her nose still firmly buried in her book.

“Afraid I’ll mess up your perfect hospital corners?” Nicholas asked as he squirmed and untucked layers of her bedding.

“More afraid that I won’t be able to get the sweaty smell of teenage boy off my bed.”

“Are you saying I stink?”

“You aren’t exactly sweet-smelling.”

Nicholas grabbed for his chest. “I’m hurt, Aideen. Truly hurt.”

“Well, don’t let me stop you from storming out,” Aideen said, eyes never leaving the book, right hand pointing to the door.

As Nicholas left the room, he said in his most childish voice, “You know, you’re no fun.”

********

This was probably Ed’s twelfth headache so far that day, or at least it felt like it as he sat analyzing research and trying to uncover the source of recent activity with the Gate. The more this continued, the more gradually Central was becoming a ghost town. Oh, not everyone had abandoned it, but it was growing blatantly obvious that the ratio of military personnel to civilians was growing. Before long, the military was going to have to start paying for dress shops and restaurants to remain open and staffed.

Most of the time, nothing came through the Gate at all, and it seemed nothing more than a nasty storm, but twice, a small rocket had burst through, each with a message for Dante, actually giving orders to the ancient woman. If Dante truly were alive, it amused him that this world’s greatest political manipulator would be given orders by some third-rate alchemist on Earth. Part of him wanted to find out who Dante was just so he could let her lose on these Earth alchemists in hopes they’d destroy one another.

It was an entertaining idea, but unrealistic. There would be a winner, and with his luck, the battle will have only made that side stronger.

He groaned, laying his head on the black granite of his lab table.

“Brother?” Al put an arm around Ed’s shoulders. “Brother, are you okay? Is it your head again?”

“No, Al, it’s my ankle, that’s why I’m rubbing my temples.”

“I’m just trying to be considerate, Ed,” Al said. Damn it, Ed knew he was in for a lecture now. He was only called “Ed” by his baby brother when Al was particularly peeved at him over something. “You know, you aren’t the only one concerned about the Gate opening. I have a family here, too, you know.”

“Yes, and you have no obligation to keep them here. You aren’t military, Al.”

“I might as well be. I’ve free-lanced enough I’ve been given a state alchemist name.”

“You were given the name because the fuhrer’s your brother-in-law, Al. He felt strange referring to you as my brother in public meetings, so he started calling you the Soul Alchemist.”

“I’m not leaving, and you know it, Ed. But you’ve got other people here to help you, so don’t put it all on yourself.”

“I’m not, Al,” Ed said, defeatedly into the stone of the table. “I’m just so tired of going round and round this issue. I’ve tapped nearly every resource I have, read over every text.”

“What about Father’s research?”

“He was pre-occupied with Envy, trying to make him more human.” Ed scoffed. “Like that would ever be possible.”

“Brother,” Al said, hugging him around the shoulders. “We’ll find an answer. You know we will. Though, I think there is one, or rather two, resources you haven’t yet looked into.”

“We’ve been through this Al, I’m not getting the twins involved. It’s bad enough as it is with the regular storms from the Gate. I won’t let them know the risk involved, know what Dante had in mind for my daughter. I won’t, Al.”

It was bad enough as it was, watching Aideen withdraw more and more into herself, with nothing Roy or Ed did helping the situation at all. Nicholas was, well, Nicholas. There really had never been any descriptors for him, and that hadn’t changed. Then again, Nicholas hadn’t seen a doll of himself shredded in an animal pit. Nicholas hadn’t lost his faith in his parents.

That shook Ed, knowing that he didn’t see that look of complete trust in his daughter’s eyes that had once been there. It had become very obvious that she no longer believed that her parents would be able to keep her safe. And there was a part of Ed that doubted it himself. For years now, he’d been trying to find Dante, with no success, and while part of him wanted to believe that she’d had contact with Earth prior to her destruction—if it could be called that—but he knew better. Something like her doesn’t manage to survive four hundred years to be destroyed by their own creation, to just be eaten.

“Brother?” Wearily, Ed looked up at Al. “We’ll find an answer, you know that. So we have to actually study something for many years like the rest of the general public instead of instantly figuring it out.” Al pulled at the silver necklace around his neck. “At least we know we all have this.”

“But not everyone does, and if we give it to someone after the fact, it does us no good. Dante could walk around with one of those around her neck and be just fine. It only stops the transferal.”

“Then, we’ll approach it from another angle. We’re the Elric Brothers, the former child prodigies. Are you telling me we’re getting slow in our old age.”

“Watch calling yourself old, Al. I’m a year older than you.”

“And you still don’t look it.”

“If that was a short joke—”

“I leave those to your husband. He’s the only one who can get away with them without imminent death.”

“Ah. Then you found your first gray hairs.”

“Only three.”

“Pull them out?” Ed asked with a smirk.

“Mm-hmm. It hurt.”

Ed wrapped his arm around his brother’s waist. “My baby brother’s vain of his human body.” And with that, Ed felt a quick twinge of pain in his scalp. “Damn it, Al!”

“Sorry, thought I saw a gray, Brother,” Al said, teasing. “Just a light blond.”

“Oh, bite me Al, unlike those of you with slightly darker hair, no one will know I’m going gray until I’m mostly there.” He smacked his little brother’s back, pulling another text to analyze. “Let’s get back to work.”

“Whatever you say Master Slavedriver,” Al said, sitting next to him. Ed was unbelievably grateful for his brother when it came to research. Every time Ed felt close to giving up, Al managed to bring him back to the right state of mind to start all over again.

********

Fletcher opened the door to his brother’s apartment, having to drop off a few items of research he’d picked up from a trip south with Raine Mustang. The two had gone as experts to analyze plants touted for their medicinal uses, though at his age, Fletcher didn’t quite feel he was an expert yet. It had been an interesting trip to say the least. For whatever reason, the eldest Mustang had taken a liking to Fletcher, and had proven to be an overbearing mother-figure the entire trip—though if asked, even under extreme torture, he’d never have admitted it for fear she’d find out he’d said she was like a mother. Despite having hit her 49th birthday, Raine Mustang remained stubborn about being old enough to be other adults’ mother.

On the trip, she’d griped a bit about her step-daughter of sorts—Raine didn’t care about marrying Falman and he was quite happy with how things were considering his nasty divorce years ago—and the fact that Falman’s daughter had invited her father and Raine to visit the little granddaughter purposely choosing a time when Raine would be away. There was no denying it had been a strategic move, as time hadn’t improved the relationship between Raine and her boyfriend’s daughter, though the connection between the little girl and her “grandmama” was something else entirely.

If Fletcher hadn’t known all this prior to the trip, he would have been well-versed in the battles between Vato’s daughter and the doctor by the end of it, hard as Raine tried not to complain on the subject.

Fletcher chuckled at himself, grateful that years of being with Russell had engrained a patience in him that had allowed him to merely find her ranting amusing. He shifted the papers higher in his arms, pushing them up with his thigh before walking into the hall of the small apartment.

“If the two of you are doing anything I don’t want to walk in on, would you please warn me,” he called out.

“Nothing perverted going on here,” Russell yelled back, followed by a barely audible, “that you can see.”

Fletcher scowled in the direction of his brother’s voice, shuddered at mental pictures he didn’t want and walked into the room that doubled as study and library for the couple, finding Wrath on the sofa—the single piece of furniture would fit with their separate desks in the room as well—placing a book down on the end table. His other hand seemed to never stop stroking Russell’s blond hair as Fletcher’s older brother was laying across the rest of the hard, green couch, his head resting on Wrath’s lap.

“Is that the alchemic manuscript you told me about?” Russell asked, sounding like a hungry dog about to get his first bite of real food in months.

“Yes, all on the subject of the various uses for silicone in alchemy.”

“I’ve heard the stuff could be used in women to enlarge breasts,” Wrath said absentmindedly. “Though, that wouldn’t interest Russell since he always dates flat-chested women.”

“Haven’t dated a woman in a long time, and have no desire to see you with them,” Russell said as he grabbed hold of Wrath’s right pec, squeezing it only to receive a slight yelp from the younger man.

Fletcher rolled his eyes, feeling somewhere in the recesses of his stomach, he was going to be sick. They were much less obnoxious when they were perverted and fighting most of the time.

“Look, Wrath,” Russell said, holding the larger man’s hand, “I think my baby brother is jealous.”

“He needs to find someone,” Wrath said, nodding.

“Oh, he’s waiting for his to be legal,” Russell teased, leaving Fletcher standing staring at him, mouth open. “It’s love, I tell you. He named a flower after her and everything. I didn’t even get one.”

“Yes you did, it was called the big asshole,” Fletcher said with a glare.

Russell was unfazed by his younger brother’s words. “Isn’t it next week when you won’t be able to be thrown into jail for being with her as long as she approves?”

Fletcher walked over to Russell, dropping the stack of manuscripts and research on his older brother’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him in a groan of pain.

“You’re a bigger pervert than even I thought you were, Russell,” Fletcher said. “Bye, Wrath.”

With that, he left the apartment, wondering what the hell made his brother think he was interested in… She was still a kid. He was just her teacher, a friend. Worse yet, his older brother had suggested that Fletcher wanted to do something with the girl nearly eleven years his junior that was still illegal for another week. Just because his brother was a gigantic pervert, and in a relationship with an even bigger one didn’t mean it was genetic.

He huffed in frustration, slamming the door behind him.

********

Phillip changed out of his cadet uniform, grateful there weren’t incredibly strict dress codes in place as there had been when his father and even the fuhrer had attended there. He slipped on a pair of jeans, a lightweight shirt and ran his hands through his unmanageable curls. He was so sick of hearing people taunt him as “Phillip so-called Armstrong.” No, genetically, he wasn’t his father’s son, nor did he look it; he’d known that all his life, and he didn’t need to have any more knowledge of the fact of how he came to be. He knew enough of his true genetic heritage to know to renounce it at each turn.

Personally, he felt their treatment of him was incredibly unfair. He was gradually becoming a powerful alchemist in his own rights, even if it would never be to the extent of his best friend or ex-girlfriend.

Then again, being an alchemist certainly wasn’t helping his case either, as the stigma against them might have gone but the jealousy surrounding them for their abilities never faded. Worse yet, Phillip wasn’t just an alchemist, but one that was a family friend of the fuhrer’s family. No one treated him the same as the other cadets. Some teachers put him up on some sort of pedestal, as though afraid to anger the fuhrer through him while others were certain he expected such treatment and intended to give him just the opposite. It was the same behavior for the students.

The really obnoxious ones who seemed attached to Phillip’s hip because of his connections, the young man considered chasing away with the tried and true method Armstrongs had unintentionally been practicing for years. He’d grown up with more than enough tales of the illustrious Armstrong lineage, and while he found them fascinating, he’d only needed to watch the reactions of those not somehow connected to the line—even his own mother—to know that for the rest of the world, that was not necessarily the case. He could recite many of the tales by heart, and probably would if one more person asked him to invite them to the fuhrer’s mansion, which wasn’t even a mansion if you got down to it, just a heavily guarded home. Or perhaps, he’d use the truly tedious ones on the cadets that had intentions toward Aideen. With a devilish smile, he considered letting them visit with General Armstrong himself.

As far as Phillip was concerned, his relationship with her wasn’t a ship that had sailed, but one still ready at dock for him to be done with the academy, even if it hadn’t been waiting on him all along. He still cared for her, maybe even loved her. And even if she never felt the same way about him, he certainly wasn’t going to let just anyone date her or use him to get to her. She deserved someone far more special than these groveling future obedient military dogs. He’d have rather seen her with one of the cadets who resented Phillip’s connection with her family than the ones who tried to befriend him because of it.

********

“What the hell do they mean rejected because of our ‘lifestyle’?” Frank asked Kain. “I may not be the most devout believer in religion, but I’d have done everything I could to make sure she’d have known about her culture and her people’s beliefs. I thought we were accepted here.”

“But not by all cultures. Alana is Ishballan. Apparently the Isballan Council deemed it didn’t want a child from their culture raised by a homosexual couple. It’s against their religion. And that isn’t even considering religious differences or the tension that still exists with the military.”

“Oh.” Frank just stared at the letter he held in his hands, Kain rubbing a sympathetic hand over his husband’s arm. There were very few orphans who had seemed a good fit for them to adopt, excluding the roadblocks that occurred every time they attempted to adopt one who did. Frank had said it was Fate’s way of telling them they weren’t meant to be fathers. Then, two months ago, they’d discovered Alana, and she’d immediately taken to the two men, not seeming to care at the age of seven that they were a couple or worked for the military.

Her personality would have been a nice addition to their little home and family, but the extra room would remain vacant.

Kain could see his husband gritting his teeth, jaw clenched. He knew that face and had seen it often enough in their relationship. He wrapped his arms around Frank, pulling the taller man’s face to rest on his shoulder, pretending that he didn’t notice the wet warmth through his thin shirt as two arms wrapped around him in return.

“Al was right. It isn’t a sign that we shouldn’t be fathers. It’s a sign that there’s someone out there who’s going to need us one day that just isn’t today.”

“Since when did you become a ruddy philosopher?”

Kain kissed the pale cheek next to his own. “Since I thought it might make you feel just a bit better.”

“You’re a hopeless sap, you know that?”

“As though you’d have me any other way.”

Kain felt Frank move his hands, rubbing at his eyes before he pulled back to properly kiss the smaller man. If it was the way Kain touched the older man that made him melt, it was the way Frank kissed that made Kain a willing slave to his husband as the man began tilting his head, his tongue massaging over Kain’s gums, writhing over his tongue, moving in ways that could only simulate the most intimate of acts. All the while, one arm would wrap around Kain’s torso, the other running just beneath the smaller man’s arms and up to his head, where a strong, alabaster hand held his head in place if for any reason Kain should decide this wasn’t second only to the bliss of heaven and try to move away.

“I know it isn’t going to do us any good about this situation,” Frank said gesturing to the paper in his hand. “But what do you say we take this to the bedroom?”

“Well,” Kain said with a smirk, “if it could do anything about that,” He pulled the paper from his husband’s hand, dropping it on the couch. “I’d have to say that we’d have both been pregnant a few dozen times over.”

*******

Munich

At what point he’d become a vandal, Hohenheim wasn’t sure, but even he had to laugh at himself for the minute changes he regularly made to the Thules alchemic design. They were so simple, the swapping of a word here or a line misdrawn there. But those simple changes set them back for weeks at a time, more than enough for him to delay their plans until he could find a solution.

Of course, his attitude had changed when he’d seen the letter that Frau Eckhart sent through the Gate, not that she’d intended him to, addressed to Dante. Initially, he’d questioned whether his former lover had been involved in helping them before her demise, but he knew better. Dante’s favorite homunculus had always been Pride, and it was little wonder. The woman had always run over with it.

Her arrogance had known no bounds. Hohenheim had extended his own life for largely selfish means: fear of death, the desire to see his son alive again, wanting to feel the warmth of someone who truly loved him the way Trisha had. Dante had done it to prove she could and continued to do it to further emphasize her separation from humanity, which proved in her own twisted logic that she was the only one truly capable of protecting humanity from its own undoing through alchemy.

Dante would have bragged if she’d made contact on the other side of the Gate. She could hardly stand the fact that she’d discovered a way to open the Gate using an innocent baby as a key.

As Hohenheim stood in a circle around the transmutation circle that had only recently been altered by his own hands to ensure nothing made it through the Gate that day, he closed his eyes and prayed he wasn’t sick, prayed his boys were safe, even if he didn’t really have anyone to pray to.

********

Amestris

“Hi Maes,” Roy said, taking a seat in the grass, having long-since gotten over his unease in graveyards. He brushed away a stray tear with the back of his gloved hand. “If you couldn’t tell, I visited Riza first.”

Roy sighed. “Don’t worry about me. The guards are all posted just out of earshot, save for Maria Ross, who swore herself to absolute secrecy as the commander of my personal guard. But should anything happen, they’ve got a tight perimeter on me. I didn’t finally manage to become fuhrer to get my head blown off by an assassin.”

Roy leaned slightly against the aging stone of his friend’s grave marker. “It’s times like these I miss you being around. You were an annoying, but damned good father, and at the moment, I’m at a loss. Nicholas is, well, every curse my mother threw at me to be ‘blessed’ with a child like me. Plus he’s Ed, too, if you can only imagine. But Aideen…”

Roy paused, shaking his head. “She’s sunk so deep into a depression—that’s the only word for it—but she remains stubborn when we try to get her therapy. And, damn it Maes, she’s angry. At us, I really believe. I’m at a loss. I’d have always thought Aideen would have the same coping mechanism her brother did with the arm, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I suppose it was stupid of me to expect them to react the same way to the strange events that are their lives. They have never been identical in anything.

“Though, there are times when Ed and I see glimmers of something else, and it gives us some hope that maybe things are improving, just a bit. But those moments are few and far between, and when they happen, they are usually ended by some argument between the twins. Until recently, I don’t think I can actually remember a time I heard them yelling over anything more than a pulled pigtail or a transfigured bathroom door.”

Though, Roy managed a smile at that moment. “Enough of my depressing tale. I wonder, did you hear that you are on your way toward being a grandfather? Your daughter’s been married less than a year, and already she’s expecting. Apparently, it was discovered during a physical that she’s about six weeks along. I know it’s not very far, but it is still very strange to imagine that little Elysia is old enough to be a mother. You were annoying as hell as a father. I’d be almost frightened to see what you would be like as a grandfather.”

Roy patted the stone. “And I know if you were here, you’d remind me that you’re not my only friend capable of listening, that I have Ed and his family, Raine and hers, not to mention the men and Gracia. Even Frank Archer, though I never thought I would say that after the age of nineteen. It’s just... familiar to talk to you this way.”

Roy rose from the grass. “You want to know something Maes, it seems unfair you’ll stay forever 31 in everyone’s memory. I’d always been able to picture you with a gray head, wrinkles on your face, never myself.” Again, he put his hand on the sun-warmed stone. “Thanks for listening like always.”