Worlds Collide

A/N: Affie and Rysha, I know it was an evil place to stop. empress-eerian-sadow, I hoped it was intense, even if I might tweak it so it doesn't go so fast. Amethyst-eyed Koneko, yeah, big dramatic scene last chapter. Hope you like how this more or less concludes that part. And yeah, those little threads are more or less getting tied up. And the pic, Hikaru said her scanner altered the haircolor. MustangsHavoc, yeah, Nicholas did what you think he's doing. Thanks for the review.

And for those of you who haven't seen it, "The Rest of the Story" has little one shots that take place throughout the story, and if you're looking for a sequel after it's over, it will, post-fic stories will appear there.

Chapter 60

Equivalent Exchange

Nicholas stood, holding an arm over his eyes to block out the bright white light. At his feet lay his sister’s body, bleeding, heart nearly given up. On the other side was the body of what appeared to be a girl of ten, one who looked a few years older than the pictures his dad had once shown him of Nina Tucker.

He looked up at the large set of doors in front of him, a set of doors he remembered from his nightmares, remembered from when he’d been poisoned and sick, when conveniently, Aideen was the first person to comfort him. Thinking back on it, he didn’t know what had frightened him more that night, the fact that he’d seen the Gate in all it’s horrific glory or that his sister had looked at him so coldly. At four, he couldn’t make sense of it, let alone explain it all, but now, with what he knew, it was so painfully obvious.

“I’m here to offer a trade!” he yelled. “Do you hear me? I’m offering you whatever is equivalent for my sister’s wounds to be healed and for Dante’s soul out of her body! I offer myself as the trade! Do you hear me?!”

********

How could he have been so stupid, so reckless? It was not Nicholas’s place to make a sacrifice for his siter. It was Ed’s as her father, as the one who couldn’t manage to stop Dante, as the one who’d actually said he preferred Dante’s behavior to his own daughter’s.

“Ed, what did our son just do?” Roy asked, eyes wide as he released the bonds over Ed’s trembling body.

“Sacrificed…” Ed said, struggling to keep his mouth functioning enough to form the words, “h-himself.”

Roy helped Ed sit up. “What can we do?”

“I-I don’t… know.” Ed wanted to be strong, to be reassuring, but his entire body was a mass of stinging pain. “I don’t think we can. Just wait.”

Ed wanted to do more than wait, but couldn’t admit to himself, let alone Roy, that the reason he wasn’t was because, at the moment, he was incapable of doing much of anything.

“We need to get you to a doctor. Your arm and leg. And you’re shaking.”

“I’m not going… anywhere!” Ed said, looking defiantly at his husband. “We’ll stay. They could b-be worse off… than me.” Ed didn’t add the words “if they get back,” though he knew well enough that the transmutation Nicholas had used could very well mean he would never be seen, and with the Gate’s sense of what was equivalent, it was hard to guess what would be “equivalent” trade for his own son.

“There must be something we can do.” Roy looked down at Ed’s face, searching for any sign that Ed was keeping something from him. All Ed could manage was a small shake and mouth the word “no.” Roy looked down at him again. “Is there anything you would do if you could?” Roy asked again.

This time Ed nodded.

“What is it?”

“It wouldn’t d-do any good, even if I tried to do what Nicholas did. I wo-would just be grabbing at st-straws.”

“Ed, tell me everything,” Roy said, cradling his twitching body against the wool of the blue uniform. “And stop fighting the tremors.” Roy drew something on the ground, tears falling down his cheeks. They both knew one another well by now, and the fuhrer apparently wasn’t buying that they were just waiting for their children’s happy return.

With a touch of his hand to the transmutation circle he’d drawn into the dust of the ground, the hard stone suddenly felt softer beneath Ed’s body. “That should make things more comfortable. Talk as you can, and stop trying to protect me from the truth.”

Ed began to explain, all the while, Roy listened, drawing transmutations on a piece of paper and holding them to Ed’s body.

“W-what are…” Ed struggled to ask more, but Roy cut off his attempts.

“I’m running diagnostics on you.”

“Why the hell… a-are you d-doing that!” Ed asked, surprised at first that his voice had gotten so loud. “Why are you s-so, so calm?”

Roy firmly grabbed Ed’s jaw. “I’m doing this because even if I’m not as good as my sister at it, I learned enough from our father to know you have massive nerve damage. I’m doing it because I want to see if I can help at all. I’m doing it because right now, taking care of you, you stubborn ass, is the only reason I’m not going mad trying to bring the twins back when you’ve told me there’s nothing I can do! If we have to sit and wait, and hope the Gate turns things out the way we want to, then damn it, I’m going to take care of you and you’re going to suck it up!”

Ed’s eyes widened. Not since he was a teenager had his husband used that tone with him in anything more than a playful manner. Even as a teen, Ed wasn’t sure he’d met Roy’s wrath as he was tonight. And much as he wanted to yell back at the older man, regardless of pain and twitching, Ed didn’t as he felt the coolness of Roy’s tears falling down on his cheeks.

********

Nicholas knelt down beside his sister, trying to hold her wound closed, trying to stop that precious blood from escaping any further. “I’ve told you what I’m here for. Please! Please!” He continued to apply pressure to the wound, trying to perform whatever alchemy he could manage. “I’m powerful and I’m offering myself.”

He continued to cry, his face wet with tears and his own sister’s blood. He struggled to use alchemy to repair the damage that he, himself, had caused, all the while trying to remind himself that he’d had no choice.

“Nicholas?”

********

Raine Mustang didn’t want to give up. He was so young, only a little older than the twins. It couldn’t end this way.

“Dr. Mustang, there is nothing more you can do,” one of the nurses said.

Raine tried a few final transmutations, anything that might save this boy, this cadet, this friend of her family’s. There had been too much death, too much loss. She just couldn’t give up.

“Dr. Mustang, there are others.”

Others. Of course there were others. Raine’s hands glowed as she held them over the still-bleeding chest. She couldn’t lose this boy while things were still so unresolved between him and Aideen. As much as Raine wanted to defend her niece, but the simple fact was that despite it all, she couldn’t believe this young man had taken advantage of her, or at least taken advantage of anything more than the situation.

“Phillip,” she said. “Come on! You’re stronger than this.”

“Dr. Mustang!” the nurse said, pulling Raine from the teenager’s body.

Raine only nodded her head, closing her eyes and stepping back. She was so tired of war, didn’t really know if she could handle this if it lasted much longer.

“Time of death, 3:48 a.m.”

*******

“Phillip?” Nicholas said. “No, you can’t be here. Not like, not like that.”

Phillip seemed distant, only half-taking in the scene before him. He glanced down at Aideen. “Take care of her. I really did love her. Didn’t mean to…”

The Gate opened up, the light from within the doors brighter than even that around it. It was nothing like the black thing he’d remembered from his nightmares. Beyond the door, Nicholas could see people, ones he didn’t recognize very well, but he was sure that two of them looked like General Armstrong’s parents.

“Bye.”

“Phillip! You can’t! I…” Nicholas started to turn, remembering once again that the pressure on his sister’s side was probably the only thing guaranteeing her own soul didn’t move on following Phillip’s. Again, Nicholas sobbed. “Phillip!”

But the older teen stepped into the light and vanished.

********

There were a few of Frank’s traits that Kain would have readily changed, none more so than his obstinate attitude, which he was displaying in all its glory at the moment. Though he was injured and could have used the support of the smaller man, even if as nothing more than a crutch, Frank insisted on continuing as if nothing was wrong.

Already, moving through the streets, they had encountered another chimera, which Riza, thankfully, dispatched of with the gun she’d gotten from her guard. Though he was growing war-weary, if Kain had to witness another death, he preferred not seeing the girl, who was currently guarding Frank like a fiercely loyal pet, drown one of the monsters with her hand.

Kain looked down at her, surprised to find her hand clinging to the flap at the bottom of Frank’s coat, not like a pet, but as though she was his… Kain shook his head, knowing it was better not to think like that. She was a homunculus, and though he suspected Roy would have slightly better intentions than Fuhrer Bradley when it came to anything rare alchemically, there was that nagging doubt in Kain’s mind. Aside from that, there was the simple reminder of just how successful they’d been thus far at finding a child.

No, it was better to think of this overly caring girl as a temporary ward for the two older men, not as anything permanent.

There was the sound of gunfire again, and before Kain could react, he found the girl, somehow now at his side on the ground. Riza and Frank returned fire, shooting down the soldier who’d just tried to attack him.

“Little girl?” Kain said, dropping down beside her. “Nina?”

Violet eyes looked up at him and smiled. “I like my body,” she said, as though that was the most logical statement in the world after being shot. She pointed to a bullet hole in the ground. “It went in me and in another direction.” Like a bullet striking water, that was exactly what had happened. “Why do people want to put those metal things in you two?” she asked, head tilted oddly to the side.

“I don’t know.” Kain answered, standing upright as she did.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Those things hurt Frank, but not me. Would they have hurt you too? Because I don’t want you to get hurt. The big man told me to find you, and you’re really nice.” She smiled up at him and took his hand, as though this entire situation was perfectly normal and they were strolling through the streets on a few errands.

And, much as Kain didn’t want to picture it, the idea of doing exactly that, just him, Frank, and the girl, was a very pleasant one.

********

Nicholas didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He’d spent the last few minutes watching the dead come and go through the Gate, a sickened part of him expecting to watch his own sister passing though with them.

“Damn you! Do something!”

“Why is it that everyone who comes here feels the need to use such language?”

Nicholas fell backwards, hearing a voice, feeling s though it was everywhere, and yet only in his mind at once. “Y-you can talk to me. Does that mean I’m dead?” Nicholas feared the answer to this, knowing that he had to be alive to offer anything to the Gate.

“Not at all. You just never properly tied yourself to your world. You can thank Dante for that. She used you as a key just as you were solidifying yourself to that world. You merely retained the gift you were able to share with your father before you were born.”

“As interesting as that is, would you please do something about my sister?”

“And what is it you would like done?”

“You know damned well what it is!” Nicholas bit his lip, trying to control the temper that once present was hard to restrain. “I want my sister’s body repaired before her soul is gone from it, and I want Dante’s out of my sister.”

“And I would suppose that you want the alien soul to be placed into that body at your side.”

“Yes. Please! I’m offering you whatever you want of me.

“You do realize that the transmutation you used to bring yourself here signifies a complete sacrifice on your part.”

Nicholas only nodded.

********

Al speared through yet another chimera. He didn’t know if he should be grateful he was underground, having to only face off again the creatures. He’d heard reports that above in Central, some of the troops had decided to rebel and were attacking one another.

But still as another of the chimeras died at his hands. He couldn’t help the shudder that ran down his spine. Killing was killing, sometimes it had a greater effect on the conscience, but Al still felt nauseous each and every time he’d done it. He’d argued with Ed years ago when his brother said he wasn’t designed to be a soldier, but Al understood now why Ed had been so stubbornly protective of him.

Strangely, Al found a rounded mound of stone on the street, something that could only be alchemically produced. With a clap of his hands, Al broke through the stone, only to be faced with a gun pointed at him half-heartedly.

“Russell?” Al asked as he saw the man inside, blood covering him.

“Glad it was you,” Russell said, looking like he was very near passing out. “Covered myself,” Russell took a strained breath. “all the way. Thought I was going to die.”

“Well, you’re not.” Al said, clapping his hands and closing over the wound on Russell’s arm.

“Didn’t know you could… do that.”

“I learned a few tricks,” the younger Elric said with a smile as he lifted Russell from his self-created barricade. “I’m going to have to throw you over my shoulder until we can get you to the hospital or a clinic.”

“Whatever.” Russell was limp in Al’s arms. “Just not rough.”

Al didn’t know what would have happened to his friend if he hadn’t found him when he did. It was obvious Russell had lost a lot of blood, enough that there was still a risk if Al didn’t get the man to the surface quickly.

********

“I knew what I was doing when I was doing it,” Nicholas answered.

“Well, restoring your sister’s body, that is simple enough. Hardly necessary of an entire body for sacrifice.”

To Nicholas’s shock, his sister’s body began to glow, the wound closing itself, the pallor in her cheeks gone as the blood seemed replenished.

“And your other request, well, the same was done for your father, putting his brother in another vessel. That cost him a arm, if memory serves.”

“You know that’s what it cost him,” Nicholas all but growled, thinking of his father, tortured by Dante and lying twitching on the floor.

“Temper, young Mustang.”

“Just do it! Take what you need and do it!”

“Tell me, do you believe this is fair? Exchanging a functioning body for one that has no strength in it?”

“Is it fair that my sister only got to live a half-life?”

“Very well. I would say, a few limbs will be all that will be necessary.”

Nicholas tried not to cry for himself, tried not to hate himself for his selfishness. More automail, if he survived the blood loss. But he could live, and for the first time in her life, so could his sister.

********

Roy paced around the transmutation circle his son had created, trying to make some sense of this. It meant next to nothing to him, aside from the fact it had allowed his son to completely vanish before him. His eyes followed every line, trying to find something that he wasn’t seeing, something that Ed didn’t know. In his frustration and strained mental state, he started to laugh.

How would he manage to find something that the people’s alchemist, the Fullmetal Alchemist, an alchemist who encountered the Gate twice, communicated with it once, couldn’t? He was fuhrer, he was a fire alchemist, but he didn’t understand more than a few symbols on this design, a circle his own son had drawn and used, he was useless at interpreting.

And the laughter wouldn’t stop. He felt so useless, so devastated, that his laughter became nothing but pained hiccups, then coughs, then sobs.

“Roy?” Ed’s voice said, as his trembling body strained to turn, his eyes hardly able to focus. “Don’t lose it now.”

He felt so useless, so worthless. His daughter was wounded, possibly dead, his son gone, maybe for good. And Roy realized that if this was permanent, his mind would be just as lost. He’d have Ed, but still he wasn’t sure he’d manage to go on without them.

“Roy? Nicholas?” a warm voice called from the tunnels. Roy couldn’t stop crying, even to respond.

“In here!” Ed yelled, his voice having regained some of its steadiness after Roy’s small attempts to repair the nerve damage done to his husband, damage that he questioned if even his sister could manage to fix.

Hohenheim stepped into the faintly lit area, looking first at Roy, trying to go to the man currently leaning against the wall. He then scanned for Ed, and finding him on the cushioned floor that Roy had created, and stopped mid-step to try to go to his son.

Roy merely watched, doubled over, hands on his knees. He didn’t panic, not like this, but never had it seemed so certain he would lose either of them, let alone both.

Under the fringe of his own white hair, Roy looked on as Hohenheim discovered the array on the floor, gasping with a comprehension Roy wished he’d had. Maybe if he’d known what Nicholas had been doing, he could have stopped him.

“Who…?” Hohenheim said, looking between the two fathers. “Nicholas?” Ed was once again trembling so strongly that any shake or nod of his head would have been indiscernible. Roy managed a few short bobs of his own head, seeing the worry in the older man’s eyes before closing his own to shut it all out. He had to regain his composure, remind himself that he had an army above fighting. Remind himself that coming back, if anyone did, could be the enemy who had started this entire battle.

Opening his eyes again and focusing on Ed, he saw his husband’s face twisted in pain. How he was still conscious with that kind of pain was beyond the fuhrer, but he knew long ago that Ed was stronger than him, stronger than nearly anyone. But as he saw the small blond shaking, Roy again walked over to the younger man’s side and held him.

“You’re sure there’s nothing more we can do than wait?”

“No, I don’t know, I…” Roy pulled Ed into his arms, careful not to hurt him any more than Ed already was on his own.

“I shouldn’t keep asking you.” Roy held Ed to his chest, looking up at the eldest alchemist, who had been hovering nearby. “Hohenheim?”

“Aside from sacrificing ourselves,” Hohenheim said. “I know of nothing else, and I am even unsure what that would do without the aid of a philosopher’s stone.” The man looked on as lost as the heartbroken parents.

********

Nicholas felt the Gate engulf him and the two bodies at his side.

“You are very unique, the heart of your family. You can communicate here, and have a comprehension for a different, emotional alchemy that your sister could never manage. There are many things you have yet to learn.”

That sensation of information flooding his mind just made him feel as though his head might explode. He had a feeling that for the knowledge currently going into his head, there would be yet another sacrifice to make. But from what he could retain thus far, he felt certain it was worth it.

He had expected darkness and hands, grasping at him, ripping his body apart, but even as the light faded, he found only the cavern once again, his fathers at once side, waiting together, Hohenheim not far away, watching anxiously at his return.

Nicholas expected pain, glancing down at his legs, both intact, looking at his arms, both there.

“Nicholas!” The three men opposite him, yelled out in unison.

Now, fearing that the sacrifice had been the very thing he’d been making the sacrifice for, he looked down at his sister, finding her unconscious, but noticeably breathing, and whole at his side. At the other, was the body of Tucker’s doll daughter, an arm and two legs gone, bleeding profusely, face contorted in pain.

The Gate had been fair? It had been just?

He knelt beside the doll’s body, using what he could remember to stop the bleeding, needing to look into the girl’s eyes to ensure that this was in fact Dante. He couldn’t manage to trust the Gate, knowing what it had done to his father, uncle, and so many others before them.

He closed his eyes, clapped his hands and sealed over the three stumps, grabbing the girl’s face to find icy cold eyes looking back at him, Dante’s eyes.

“I-I did it!” He yelled out at the top of his lungs, laughing in near hysterics, so loudly that he didn’t notice his papa coming over to him and smacking him across the face, just briefly making him wonder if someone had swapped his two fathers' souls.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

********

Fletcher stood outside of the fuhrer’s mansion, the chimeras finally dwindled down to nothing but a few squirming corpses on the lawn. He watched as Hohenheim appeared, cradling a child who appeared to have been mutilated by something, having lost both legs and an arm. He saw behind him the figure of the fuhrer, carrying Ed in a similar state.

“Aideen,” Fletcher murmured, fearing the condition he’d find her in.

Almost wanting to cheer out in victory, Fletcher saw Nicholas cradling his sister so tenderly there was no doubt that she, herself, was in there.