Worlds Collide

A/N: Amethyst-eyed Koneko, glad you liked the chapter and weren't quite expecting Dante's identity. Though, I have to say you were the first person to suspect, or say you suspected way back at the chimera attack. I realized I hadn't given Russell an alchemist name. I will have to mention it later, once I've actually decided on an appropriate one. But yes, devastated doesn't begin to describe it. It definitely doesn't look good for Ed, does it? But for the first time, he got to fight side-by-side with his son, treating him as an equal. I know, you love your Roy. Hikaru, yep, and the only 2 people in the story to have figured out something was off about her were Nicholas and Fletcher. shirk, i'm sorry you found it "predictable and confusing" but the fact is that I knew Dante would be in Aideen from the start. I hope you give it a chance and continue to read so that things can be explained. At the moment, it is supposed to be a bit confusing, or at least, unexplained for a while. And though someone else might have been a possible choice had I not included clues to Dante's identity throughout, none will have the effect on the family that Aideen would. Kisa, I'm updating now.

Chapter 54

Meetings

Hohenheim stood behind Riza, forgetting his original anger at the woman for having run ahead, hearing the gunshots. Though the woman had never been a part of the military herself, from what Hohenheim understood of her from her husband, he knew she was a very strong woman and had always been. Hearing the gunshots, the blond-haired woman naturally went to see what was going on, to find out if there was something she could do to help a potential enemy of Eckhart.

But nothing the woman had done to try and prepare herself could have allowed her to expect this. Not anymore than Hohenheim.

After hearing each of the two teens address Riza and himself, the gray-haired man could only stand in surprise at the realization that these two were his grandchildren.

“Hohenheim?” the blond boy said to the girl. “As in… Hohenheim? Our grandfather?”

“Well, that would be the proper name for him, wouldn’t it?” the girl said.

“I don’t- I don’t understand.”

“I may have to leave it to them to explain it to you, Mrs. Mustang, but at the moment, someone needs to fly this contraption.”

Hohenheim made his way to the main controls of the ship. This dirigible was designed to ensure that it could fly, even if the pilot was distracted for a period of time, but Hohenheim knew that eventually it would crash without some form of guidance, and if it didn’t crash, then the various weapons being fired at it would most certainly bring it down.

“Either of you,” he said to the twins, “find a way to get a signal to the ground that everything is okay, that they can stop sending off missiles at us.”

The dark-haired girl went to the wall, acting as though she was trying to ignore his request, his presence even. Something was off about her, though he really wasn’t sure what. He didn’t know her prior to her killing Eckhart, so he had nothing to really go by. The girl was talented, as she transformed the side of the ship into a sort of megaphone and began announcing to the people below that everything was under control.

Her voice was calm, fluid, and Hohenheim hated to admit that something very familiar in it, not to mention how quickly it and its owner recovered from recent homicide, made him want to shudder.

“You called me mother,” he could hear Riza saying to the boy… Nicholas, that was right, the boy’s name hadn’t changed. “Why?”

“As far as I can guess,” Nicholas said, guiding the woman to one of the chairs, trying to calm her down, all the while the girl, whose name was a variant on her Earth counterpart’s… Aideen yelled outside, “there are doubles in this world to the one you came from.” Though the young man seemed to do quite well at remaining calm, it was obvious that the shock and joy at seeing his mother once again was affecting him. “My name is Nicholas. According to Frank, you have a son with that name.”

“Frank’s here? He went missing before Roy did.”

“He’s here.” Nicholas laughed nervously. “I can’t believe I’m actually getting to talk to you.”

“But you don’t look much like my Nicholas, and that is your sister, am I right?” Hohenheim couldn’t see it, but his grandson must have nodded. “I have twin boys.”

“Well, there were factors in our creation that weren’t there with your sons’.”

“You’re crying.”

“Huh? Oh, I guess I am. It’s just… my mother, our mother died long before we could ever know her.”

Hohenheim wondered if the twin’s other father had truly become a politician or fuhrer as he’d intended to because the teen was able to gloss over the truth far better than the older man would have expected. “I never thought I’d get to meet, well, I know you’re not her, but I… you look…”

And as Hohenheim glanced over his shoulder to see the woman embracing the young man, there was a loud thump.

“Nicholas! You damned little bastard! I treat you like an adult, like an equal during this battle, and you left me behind?”

********

Riza clung tightly to the boy, she didn’t know better than to deny his words, and he looked so much like herself, not to mention that he had Roy’s coal black eyes—even if his eyes were a different shape and his skin was a bit darker than either her or her Roy’s families—but more than that, someone had just hopped aboard the vessel and was calling the teen such horrible names.

She stood up and faced down the short man with ridiculously long hair that stood in front of her.

“I don’t know who you think you are to put yourself between me and—” the man’s face paled as he looked up at her. “Riza! You, you’re alive!”

“I don’t know what business you have with this young man, but you should not call him such names,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm, trying to focus on this situation, rather than the insanity of the last few hours.

“Really, it’s okay,” the young teen said as his sister pulled away from the wall and mouthpiece of the megaphone.

She saw the girl standing just behind the short man. The resemblance between these two was undeniable. Her eyes held the same gold tint, even if they were a bit darker with flecks of copper amidst the strange amber. Yet, she also bore resemblance to Roy. Maybe this younger man before her had been with Raine in this world, producing this girl? It was strange, but a possibility, or at least as much a possibility as anything else that Riza had witnessed.

The short man glanced around and spotted the raven-haired teen. “Aideen,” he said, wrapping his arms around her, grabbing her grimacing face as he pulled it down to kiss her cheek and embrace her. “You had me worried sick,” he said, looking angrily at her. “You ran off, then this happened…” The look, the tone, they were definitely that of a father. And his anger at the boy behind her made perfect sense for that of an uncle, even if the boy had called the girl a sister, except that he’d referred to Riza as looking like their mother.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Aideen answered, impassively. Was it possible that this world’s Riza had married this man? But, there was no explaining the resemblance to Roy that was so evident in the girl as well.

Again, Riza felt the golden orbs on her.

“How did you get here?”

“The Thules brought her through the Gate,” Hohenheim answered from the front.

“Who are… Bastard! You, you helped them come through the Gate?”

“They were coming through with or without me. I wanted to help you find Dante because I was informed by the late Frau Eckhart she was the one helping on this side.” The older man hadn’t taken his eyes off of the controls and was working to find a location to land.

“We know Dante’s here, and we’re trying to find her,” the small man said.

“And for that,” the young woman answered. “You risked everyone bringing those… those things here?” The girl’s eyes were very cold, similar to Riza’s Aiden when he got particularly angry, but with an intensity that the British woman had not seen in her boy.

“I did little more than accompany Mrs. Mustang on her journey.”

“Mrs. Must— Right.” The younger man seemed pained at that. “I’m Ed Elric,” he said, extending a hand, which she shook. “I’d like to take more time for introductions, but…”

“I understand. I can’t, well,” She clapped her hands and parted them, as though playing a child’s clapping game. “but I’m capable enough.”

Ed nodded with a small smile of gratitude. Still, he seemed troubled. “Well, it’s more or less a family trait you could say. My children inherited it from me, and I learned it through some misguided study of my father’s books and research.”

“You mean a double of your father, as I’m a double of this world’s Riza?”

“No, that man playing pilot is my father, and I’m wondering what he’s doing back.”

********

Kain had heard Aideen’s voice from the vessel, and seeing as it was no longer firing at the people on the ground below, decided to believe it. He ordered his troops to cease fire, and could tell that others were doing the same. He looked down at the ground at Frank, seeing that the older man was ordering the troops in his unit would stop firing at the one remaining vehicle, as this time, the voice of Ed Elric came bellowing out.

“We have the ship! Cease fire! Repeat. We have the ship! Cease fire!”

“Trying to make contact with the ground,” a voice said on Kain’s radio.

“Fuery here.”

“Kain?” the voice said. “I mean, Brigadier General Fuery, we have the ship.” It was Nicholas. “The Thules aboard have been destroyed, mostly through the trip through the Gate. But there are other visitors, and we’re going to need a landing area.”

Visitors? Kain had to wonder, but this wasn’t the time.

“And sir, can you make sure that Fr—Colonel Archer is there? I think one visitor in particular is going to need a genuinely familiar face.

Roy had been barking orders to his men, getting the clean-up started as he made his way to the landing site, really nothing more than a large field just outside of Central. He wasn’t entirely sure who was operating this machine. He knew there were supposed “visitors” from the other side of the Gate, but guessing by the way the dirigible was flying, he wouldn’t have said the current pilot was a very skilled one.

He watched as the thing made a lumbering descent to the ground, Roy’s stomach feeling somewhere in his throat as he realized that the people he cared about were all aboard. He’d heard Aideen and Ed both over the loudspeaker, and Kain had notified him that Nicholas had managed to contact him over the radio.

Frank stood at Roy’s side, apparently, someone on board knew Frank, not as the Archer from Amestris but Frank the spy of England.

Roy glanced up at the man at his side, finding a set of blue eyes looking intently at him. “You know, there are any number of people it could be,” Frank said, his accent coming out more clearly as the noise of the blimp coming toward the ground kept his words from being easily heard. “Are you prepared for any possibility?”

Roy said nothing, merely sending him a glare, which he hoped sent the message that, of course, he’d considered all possibilities—not that it was true, or that his glare was more at the man for finding him out.

As the thing landed quite bumpily ahead of them, Roy only half glanced at the teen still at his side. There was genuine concern on Phillip Armstrong’s face. Though he was still furious with the boy, a fact that as an overprotective father would never change, he realized that Phillip obviously cared for Aideen. It was a shame for him, Roy supposed, that Aideen didn’t and might never reciprocate those feelings.

No sooner had a hatch-like door opened on the side of the thing than a gray-haired man exited beside Ed, who for whatever reason looked as though he was going to his executioner. Roy looked at the man again, this time, not failing to see the resemblance between his still-young husband and the long-haired man at his side. He hadn’t had many encounters with him, but he knew this was Hohenheim, and that seemed to explain some of the younger man’s expression.

Yet, as Ed’s eyes darted behind him, his head turning just slightly behind him, Roy saw the twins, both looking perfectly healthy, flanking a middle-aged woman.

Still, nothing had sunk in just yet as he ran to his family.

“Ed, are you okay?” he asked. “Did the Thules do anything to you?”

“No injuries. And Aideen’s the one who took down the Thule leader.” Roy squeezed his husband’s shoulder, nodded to Hohenheim, and went back to his children, pulling them both into his arms.

“Are you okay? Both of you?” He felt two nodding heads, wondering why neither had given him a verbal answer, but all musing on it stopped when the woman that had been between the teens looked up and said only one word.

“Roy?”

And with that one word, with the sight of someone he could never have prepared himself to see again, Roy swore everything was crumbling around him.

********

Fletcher was torn between his worry over his older brother and the young woman he’d fallen for. As Aideen was with her parents and her brother, Fletcher chose to focus his attention on Russell, who stood beside him, an absolute nervous wreck.

“I’m going underground,” Russell said, his eyes asking the question that his mouth wouldn’t ask: “Will you come with me?”

Fletcher nodded to his brother. “Well, you’re not doing it alone.”

“Well, anything happens to you, just know I didn’t ask you to come.”

“Of course you didn’t, Russell.”

With a few commanding words to soldiers who were almost entirely outranked by the two majors—save for one genuine major and a lieutenant colonel—the brothers made their way to the entrance of the underground city.

Every soldier that passed by, Russell questioned them about Wrath, every street, every building, the two brothers began to search, seemingly in vain, as nothing as yet had turned up any sign of Russell’s lover and Fletcher’s friend. And while Fletcher had been trying to keep a level head about this for his brother’s sake, he had to admit that the feeling currently eating away at his stomach didn’t seem to bode well for the object of their search.

“Wrath! Where are you?” Fletcher heard his brother’s voice call out from one of the streets. “Wrath! Answer me!”

There were choked sobs in the older brother’s voice, and all Fletcher could hope for was the day, years from now, when he’d get to use that to tease his brother. He’d sit next to Wrath and Russell on a sofa in a new apartment, where they’d be celebrating this anniversary or that, and he’d tell Wrath just how emotional the usually stoic man became. He wanted to be able to tease him, to have that future ahead, where the two men he considered family would be sitting in some sickeningly loving pose while Wrath laughed at Russell for being stupidly concerned over his well-being, Russell attempted to knock the crap out of the dark-haired man, and Fletcher got to sit and watch and be grateful.

Any other future was unthinkable, even to him.

********

Frank pulled Riza aside and into the back of one of the ambulances. She was reluctant to go, asking questions about Roy, Roy looking as torn as he’d ever seen the experience military and political man appear.

“Frank, what’s going on? What happened to Roy’s eye?”

“I’ll explain all of that in time,” he said, helping her step up into the ambulance and taking a seat opposite her.

“You are really our Frank, aren’t you?”

“I hope so,” he said, with a smile. “The one from this world was a real asshole.” Riza gasped at the somewhat vulgar word. “Sorry. It’s a little more acceptable here to use that kind of language. But considering the other Frank scarred up Roy’s eye like that, it seems appropriate, don’t you think?”

“You’re wearing one of their uniforms.”

“I didn’t really think I would get the chance to go back, and honestly, I didn’t really want to.” He pounded on the wall of the driver’s compartment as a signal to go. “There are a lot of things you need to know, Riza—”

“Your hand,” she said, looking down. “A wedding ring?”

“Yes. I found someone here. And, I suppose that is as good a start as any to prepare you. You see, aside from the cursing, other things are acceptable here as well. The biggest being that men like me, who in our world never found any desire to marry a woman, find they have another option when it comes to wedded bliss, just as women in similar positions do as well.”

“You mean you’ve married another…” She looked so disgusted that it was obvious it was preventing her from finishing that sentence or thought.

“His name is Kain, and I’ve never been so happy.”

“But it’s sinful; it’s forbidden.”

“Not here.”

“So, aside from the fact that there was something I didn’t know about my husband’s commanding officer, what does this have to do with me?”

“You met the twins, didn’t you? And Ed?” Riza nodded her response to both questions. “Well, did you happen to notice their resemblance to three people? To you, Roy, and Ed?” Riza merely bit her lip. “Well, I don’t know the logistics of it very well, but I assume it’s better for me to tell you this than someone else.”

*********

Raine poked her head into the bedroom. “Juliana, sweetheart?”

A set of frightened blue eyes looked up at her beneath a fringe of red bangs. “Have you seen mommy or grandpapa?”

“Not yet,” Raine said, doing everything she could to keep her face as impassive as possible when his stomach was flipping and tying itself in knots. “Do you need any more crayons or paper?”

“No,” she said, shaking the head of ginger hair. “I don’t…” Her little pink lip quivered. “I don’t want to draw so much now.”

Raine knelt down and hugged the little girl. “I know you are worried, but I need you to stay here for now.”

“Okay, Grandmama.”

Raine released the little girl who might as well have been blood relation to her and once again left her in the office. She returned to the clinic, looking over the sea of wounded civilians and military men, wondering where to start.

Yet another man was brought in, this one somewhat heftier than the others, though his body didn’t look injured, or even as though he’d been part of the battle.

“We found him,” a lieutenant said. “It looked like he’d been knocked out and shoved in the janitor’s closet.” Raine glanced down to find the man was Heymans Breda. “In triage, his condition might not be a top priority, but we need to know who did it. We might have an enemy among our ranks.”

Placing her hands on Breda’s head as he was set on a nearby cot, Dr. Mustang watched as the man opened his eyes with a loud groan escaping his lips.

“Son of a bitch!”

“Who did this to you, Heymans?”

“Raine? Oh, it was a first lieutenant in my unit, not even a second in command.” There was another groan. “David Patterson.”

“Patterson, sir? When you went missing he took over control of the missile command.”

“Well, that would seem to explain a few things, wouldn’t it?” Breda said with a bit of angry sarcasm. “Goddamn, Raine, can’t you do anything for the pain?”

Raine smiled at her boyfriend’s friend before placing her hands on his forehead and releasing natural painkillers until she heard a definite sigh of relief from the man.

“You two!” Breda said. “Find Patterson and get his ass locked away. Now.”

“Yes sir, General, sir!” the two men said as they saluted and fled from the clinic.

While working on triage once again with several other doctors in the clinic, Raine spotted a gray head coming through the doors. She tried to focus on what she was doing, but got a nod from one of the other doctors to go to her boyfriend.

“Vato?” Raine said, seeing the older man shaking as he leaned against the doorframe.

“I got a call…”

“Vato, are you okay?”

“No. Yes. I… I just got word that…” And with that, he clung to Raine’s shoulders, sobbing. “I’m going to have to tell Juliana…” Again, he sobbed.

“Tell her what?”

“She is… my daughter… Kathy… one of the blimps fired… she…”

“Vato, is Kathy, was she…”

“She’s dead. Havoc’s troops found her.”

It was then that a set of arms wrapped around both of them, a large hand patting Vato’s back. “Tell me what you need me to do, Falman,” Breda said. “Name it.”

There was no answer, but Raine felt Breda was already doing it.

********

Nicholas couldn’t remember a time when his parents had been so quiet. Though both were obviously angry at him and his sister for being reckless, he couldn’t help but wonder if the presence of his other mother might have had a lot to do with the current state of things between them as they sat in the military vehicle headed back to Central.

Looking between his two fathers, he saw a silent, shocked expression on his papa’s face and one of incredible dread on his dad’s. It was nerve-wracking to say the least, not to mention that Aideen was still behaving strangely. He couldn’t help it, but even after what she’d just gone through, after she had killed for the first time, he found himself angry at her yet again.

Instead, he focused his attention on his dad, who sat at his side, putting his arm around the smaller man and trying to pretend as though it was he who needed this and not his father.

********

Dante sat, watching as Nicholas eyed her warily. She had grown to despise him as much as his father, at times, even more. After all, the young Mustang seemed to have a sixth sense about Dante, and she certainly didn’t like it.

Still, as she glanced across from her at the sight of the brat, Dante could little help but egg things on. The presence of the other Roy’s wife was causing some disturbance for Ed Elric, and Dante wondered just how far it could go.

“Papa?” she asked, taking the tone she’s learned from a lifetime as part of this family. “Are we going to get to see our mother again?”

“She’s not our mother,” Nicholas said. “She just looks like her.”

“But she’s the closest we’ll ever get to it.” Dante patted her hand on Roy’s shoulder. “And you’re going to see her again, aren’t you?” It took every bit of self-control that she possessed not to twist Aideen’s face into a smirk as she saw Ed squirm.

“As fuhrer, I have to.” Roy stared down at the radio in his hand. “It might not be a bad idea to have all of us go, but only if we think Riza, um, Mrs. Must… if we think she can handle it.”

Then, as though Roy staring at the radio had made it go off, the thing began going off again, an call for the capture of David Patterson.

Doing her best, Dante tried to focus on the fact that she was playing the part of the daughter, and couldn’t give the attention to the fact that Patterson had been one of the men she’d enlisted. Apparently, he had been a poor choice on her part, if he would do something so stupid. It was supposed to be a subtle takeover of control for this battle, not bludgeoning someone on the head and tossing them in a closet. She would have to find a way to dispose of the useless man.