Worlds Collide

A/N: Affie and Rysha, thanks so much, the cyber hot cocoa and cookies appreciated. empress-eerian-sadow, thank you so much. I'd hoped the chapter would come across that way. hikaru9, thanks. I guess that means you liked it. MustangsHavoc, yeah, Aideen is herself, and finally this chapter is from her point of view. And yes, poor kid. Hugged to death by Pap Armstrong. Glad you like Nina. She's a fun little addition for me to write. Amethyst-eyed Koneko, yes, there's a lot of turmoil here. And Fletcher was making the gesture because he respects Roy and loves Aideen. It was sort of symbolic, and convenient for Roy to borrow. And yeah, Aideen is over 6 months older than Ed was with the twins.

Chapter 62

Aideen

Aideen had had a hard time convincing her fathers to leave after dropping that bombshell on them. She had debated waiting to tell them the truth, just taking their brief visit to make sure they were both still intact—or not, in her Dad’s case. But Aideen had always been observant. She could see it on their faces. They knew. And if they knew, there was a chance they’d suggest she abort the baby.

Aideen knew if they made such a suggestion, she’d be tempted to agree. Her daughter—she wondered if that thought would become less difficult—deserved better. Ensuring that the child she now carried would live seemed the least Aideen could do. After all, technically, this child that was probably little more than the size of a bean had defeated Dante. Nicholas had fought, there was no denying, but Dante, in her concentration on the battle, had lost all focus on controlling the natural symptoms of pregnancy. The baby had made her dizzy, and Dante had faltered in the battle.

Aideen pulled herself out of the bed where her brother was sleeping soundly. She ran a hand over his hair, trying not to wake him. Aideen had debated whether to feel angry at him or grateful. She’d expected to die, had even hoped that she would, but here she stood, very much alive. She had a future and didn’t have a damned clue what to do about or with it.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts, moving away from the sleeping form on the bed. She moved to the tiny window, looking out at the city from her fourth story room. The destruction was obvious. There were fires scattered, tents set up for first aid treatment, and as wounded continued to come in, Aideen doubted she’d be allowed the sanctuary that the hospital provided. She’d give her room up to someone who needed it. Mentally, she supposed she could manage to heal anywhere, and physically the only thing wrong with her—her hand slipped to her abdomen—wasn’t technically something “wrong”.

The young woman looked out her window, trying and failing miserably not to feel guilty. Her every waking minute dwelled on how she might have been able to stop Dante, even when her thoughts turned to her daughter.

Watching firefighters not far from the hospital struggling to put out a blaze and seeing the signs of large transmutations in the distance, the sheer destruction from the two back-to-back attacks was staggering to the teenager. Standing there looking out at the disaster that her hands, if not her mind and soul, had created, Aideen could have cried, would have cried, but it seemed for the moment that all her tears were long gone. She’d been sobbing all day, soaking the scrub shirt her brother had been loaned by some of the nurses, between the guilt and slowly increasing hormones.

Looking out at the devastation, her thoughts went to Phillip. She knew that they had worked to save him here at the hospital, and she knew that the bulletwound had been beyond even her Auntie’s capabilities. More consciously than usual, Aideen’s arms wrapped around her stomach. It was strange to think that all that was left of him she carried.

Making the decision for herself, she walked to the door. The thought crossed her mind of what exactly she was going to say in order to get the right to see him. She wasn’t family, and it was pretty well-publicized that they weren’t dating. Would she just walk up to the mortician or his secretary and explain that she was carrying Phillip Armstrong’s child?

She huffed, not quite a laugh, not entirely a sigh. Sure, she’d go right ahead and do that. And while she was at it, she’d go ahead and let the entire world know she was pregnant.

But the fact that she might not get to see him and receive some kind of closure on what could have been a long-lasting friendship had Dante not been involved didn’t deter her as she stepped into the dimly lit hallway.

She walked by corridors and rooms to reach the stairs. Going down them couldn’t be too strenuous, and it wasn’t as though she was at a point where even climbing back up should have been a problem. As fluidly as her papa, she moved down the steps as though with a single motion, her grace failing a bit as her mind decided to recall the very worst memories of the man she was going to pay her respects to.

********

Dante seemed to have doubled her power over Aideen after the incident with Phillip. From the back of her mind, Aideen had to watch as Dante guided their feet—always theirs, never just hers—toward the Armstrong mansion. Aideen prayed that her brother was still there, possibly capable of deterring the woman from following through with her plans.

She’d known for a month what Dante planned to do, that the evil woman who had gradually taken over so much of their body and Aideen’s life. Dante had actually found a way to manipulate their body in a way that no medical alchemist could do to their own. She had discovered how to make it more fertile, a perfect “host for a third party.”

Aideen thought it was disgusting, perverse to call the idea of being pregnant being “host” to something, as though the baby would be some alien creature, or a parasitic monster such as Dante herself.

Even Aideen’s protests had gotten her nowhere, refusing to see anyone, trying to distance herself from potential partners like Phillip and Fletcher, and distance herself from her family as each night Aideen brought a pistol to their mouth in hopes that one day Dante’s power over their body would lessen enough for the trigger to be pulled.

Dante considered it a concession on her part that she’d “allowed” them to seek out Fletcher first. There was little hiding it from anyone, let alone the woman who literally knew her every thought, that Aideen had always cared for the older man. The only reason she didn’t call it love was because she wouldn’t allow herself that, because she wouldn’t risk him being hurt because of her feelings.

********

Aideen shook her head, trying to clear away those memories before they continued on their unpleasant path. She had enough nightmares of Dante using her body—it felt less strange to lay claim to it as her own now, though she couldn’t say why—to seduce Phillip and eventually trade off with Aideen before the act was complete.

“Wouldn’t want you trying to destroy the little one thinking it could be mine. ” Dante’s words as they swapped positions from the back to the forefront of the mind still made her shudder. Sad fact that it was, if Dante had been in control, Aideen might have been able to convince herself that her daughter would be evil, would have been able to convince herself to get rid of her. But Aideen did at least know that the child she carried had been conceived in a time when Dante had given over all control of the body they shared. Dante hadn’t needed the child to be her own, just there to be used as a key to the Gate. They had traded, and this was her daughter, never Dante’s.

Again, Aideen let out a derisive snort at her own thoughts. She’d told her fathers it was a girl, but according to whom? Her Auntie certainly hadn’t been able to tell the baby’s gender just yet. It was just over two months along, and even with alchemy that wasn’t possible. Dante had been the one who claimed to know, and as with so many things with Dante, when she said that the baby was a girl, Aideen believed her. After all, if Dante was able to do the nearly insurmountable task of ensuring that the baby was conceived—a feat not usually possible to be done on oneself—then it was just as likely that Dante was able to detect that the baby was a girl.

She continued to move down to the bottom floor, still not exactly sure how she was going to manage to see Phillip. She just knew she wanted that closure.

Opening the door at the bottom of the steps, Aideen saw a tall-for-his-age figure seated outside of the morgue. “Alex?” she asked, seeing the blond head pop up, a set of enormous blue eyes looking up at her.

He charged at her with such speed, Aideen instinctively protected her stomach, yet still embraced the eight-year-old.

“Aideen!” he wailed her name before sobbing into her hospital gown. “Father brought us home. He said… he said…” Normally, Aideen would have boosted the boy into his arms, but instead, she moved to one of the chairs and pulled him onto her lap. “Phillip…”

“I know, Alex, I know.” She rubbed his back, listening to him as he cried. “Shh.” She wrapped her arms around him, rocking him as they sat. She knew well enough that if he was outside, his parents were just beyond the doors with Phillip’s body.

“They wouldn’t even let me in.”

“It’s probably better, Alex. It’s hard to see something like that.”

“But it’s not fair!” the boy said. Aideen had to agree.

“I know.” They sat like that for some time, Aideen trying to argue with her stomach that it wasn’t morning, and it should stay the hell where it was. Unfortunately, it was arguing right back and winning.

“Alex, sweetie, I need to run to the bathroom.”

He climbed off of her lap, rubbing his eyes with his shirtsleeve while Aideen ran as quickly as she could to the small bathroom, not making it that far, and having to grab a wastepaper bucket. Throwing up on top of some scrap paper, she felt like she wanted to curl up and die on the floor, not for the first time in the last few months, but for a different reason this time, at least.

“Aideen? Are you sick? You’re not going to go like Phillip, are you?”

Aideen shook her head, spitting into the bucket. She wondered if her body was rebelling because Dante had repressed all of the normal reactions, or if it was normal to feel like this so suddenly.

Standing and going to the gross-looking sink, she rinsed out her mouth.

“Please be okay, Aideen.”

“I am,” she said, kneeling in front of Alex. Once again, she took him into her arms, finding her tears again.

“Aideen?” he said, still crying, clinging to her in his grief.

“I just miss Phillip.”

They sat like this for a few moments, his strong and somewhat pudgy arms tightly wound around her neck. She’d always loved the little boy, from the time he was an overzealous toddler to when she’d been dating Phillip and he’d always made sure to give her a hug.

“Miss Mustang?” a man’s voice said from above. Aideen’s hazel eyes looked up at her ex-boyfriend’s father.

“General Armstrong,” she said, watching his face, knowing he was aware of exactly who had been housing Dante. Anyone else, finding her with her arms around their remaining son, their eldest dead because of the person who had possessed her, might have looked frightened, angry or protective.

But not the general. Instead, he looked at her concerned.

“We have been worried about you for some time,” he said.

She nodded, relinquishing her hold on the boy so he could run to his father. She then went to the wastebasket, noticing her moves were closely watched.

“Aideen?” he said, his voice as warm as possible, given the situation. “Were you sick?”

“I…” she looked at the metal container. “Yes, but I’m not… I’m not ill.” She gathered the bucket in her hands to take into the bathroom.

“It would be simple enough to clean up with alchemy,” Armstrong said, watching her.

“I’m not really supposed to,” she said, moving again to the bathroom where she proceeded to clean out the container the old fashioned way. Because of everything that had been done to both Aideen and most especially the baby, her Auntie had decided that it would be safer not to perform alchemy, for some time. When she came back out, she saw the large man holding his boy in his arms.

“General,” Aideen said as she set the metal bin on the floor. “Can I see him?”

“I think so,” he said, glancing down at her hand at her stomach. “Are you certain you’re well? It isn’t…” His voice cracked. “Well, if your stomach is upset… Even with the determination of the Armstrong line, I found it difficult.”

“It isn’t, Mr. Armstrong,” Aideen said, not just yet ready to confess to Phillip’s family about the baby. She put her hand on the large arm wrapped around the blond boy. He seemed to understand, either that or was too lost in his own grief to concern himself with Aideen’s health any further than he’d already done.

She watched the young child seeking comfort from his father, as really, she should have. Instead, she had withdrawn, giving Dante her opportunity to take over time after time. All the adults thought it was cute how she would glare at anyone who tried to help her. Little did they know that it wasn’t her.

She felt so weak, thinking that this boy was capable of going through his own suffering rather than trading off with something inhabiting him. Even as a baby, when she’d cracked her father in the face and hurt her own forehead, she’d willingly made the swap, though she obviously hadn’t understood what the kind voice in her head was really offering her.

She moved into the morgue, looking at Rose Armstrong, one of many in the overcrowded room crying over a lost loved one, and without saying a word, Aideen hugged her and held her, while mentally fighting back her old demons.

********

“You nearly had my brother killed,” Aideen hissed at her own reflection in the mirror.

“A simple casualty.”

“Casualty? He’s my brother!" The thirteen-year-old yelled at what appeared to be herself.

“Well, he isn’t dead. He’s just lost an arm. Stop overreacting.”

“I’m going to stop you.”

“And how do you plan to do that? You’ve manages so successfully to defy me up until this point.”

Aideen pulled the scissors out of her back pocket and grabbed her ponytail. “You like my hair, don’t you? Think it’s nice and ladylike?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know me as well as you think you do,” Aideen said as she chopped off the ponytail with one slice of the large shears. “How’s that for ladylike? How’s that for too weak to fight?”

“I’m so afraid,” Dante’s voice was mocking. “You cut your hair. You certainly showed me.”

********

Aideen continued to cling to the sobbing woman, listening to the cries of others, others who lost their families because of Dante, because of her. As she held onto Rose, who in her grief seemed to have forgotten the insinuation a few days before that Phillip had raped Aideen, the teen looked at her former boyfriend’s face. He looked peaceful, as though in a deep sleep. His normally tanned skin was ashen in death, the brown curls splattered with red.

She could only imagine now what his reaction would have been to the baby, if he ever got over the guilt of how she was conceived. Phillip had always felt things a little too much, fallen a little too hard into his emotions, but his heart and his loyalty were practically unmatched, save possibly for the three men in her own family.

She hated seeing him like this, lifeless, dead. It wasn’t fair. That she was given the chance to live, and he was the one laying there in what amounted to a drawer, that all around her, so many others were just the same.

********

When she’d first seen the doll, she withdrew into her mind, wanting to confront Dante herself, knowing this left her body without the control of either soul. She’d yelled at the woman, cursed her for having Tucker create those chimeras and for seeming so pleased that he’d used the lifelike doll to train them. The argument hadn’t lasted very long between them, consisting of Aideen screaming inside her head at the thing she’d hated so much, Dante seeming to do nothing about it. Then, there’d been that taunting voice.

“Shame on you for leaving your body unattended.” Dante took the forefront this time. “Papa?”

From the darkness of her own mind, Aideen yelled at Dante, yelled to her father to recognize that it wasn’t her, but she went unheard.

As though watching a movie of her own life, she felt their body move, wriggling away from her papa’s touch, as though sickened by it because Dante was disgusted by it. Dante had even allowed the flower in their hair to fall to the ground unnoticed, except by Aideen.

Aideen watched as Dante interacted with her father and with Frank; she was so cold with them as both men were obviously concerned, trying to prepare her for the sight of the doll in her own likeness. Then she analyzed the thing, poking at the copy in a red coat, even using simple scanning alchemy to determine the thing’s components. Even as an orange-haired Dad came through the gathered crowd of people, Dante merely took the opportunity to taunt him and yell at him.

And all the while, Aideen was in her own mind, screaming for them to understand, to see that it wasn’t her.

Only one did, maybe not consciously, but he saw just as he had during all of their lessons. He berated Dante, grabbing hold of shoulders and making the woman possessing their body to face him.

“I know you’re in shock, but you can’t take it out on them.”

Aideen could feel Fletcher’s hands as they held onto her, them—it was all too confusing trying to think as one and yet never as one—the look in his eyes the same as it had been when he made her meditate. Just as the meditation sessions before, Aideen was able to use the eastern techniques to push Dante back, as though she was nothing more than negative emotion blocking the success of Aideen’s alchemy.

But despite the fact that at least this once she had bested Dante, the older soul still kept a close check on Aideen’s words. The confession of who Dante was, of the fact that Aideen knew perfectly well why that doll was there came out very differently, but all the while very true.

“Don’t I have the right to be angry? This shit keeps happening, and I’m tired of it. I’m just so damned tired of it all.”

********

She and Rose stood, both crying over Phillip’s body. Rose was nearly incomprehensible in her grief, but there were a lot of cries out at the unfairness of it all and a few curses at Dante and the military alike.

When the general once again returned, eyes puffy and cheeks tearstained, he took over comforting his wife and told her it was time to go and signaled to Aideen that she should probably leave.

Aideen did, finding that young Alex was curled up asleep from exhaustion, it seemed. Aideen wanted to do the same, but while emotionally she felt just like the little boy, mentally and physically, she was perfectly alert and awake. She gently ran a hand over the wavy blond hair before moving on to the stairs to go back to her room.

She made the way up each flight, grateful that she was not feeling sick once again or light-headed. That thought, again, brought attention to the fact that the hand not holding the railing was rubbing at her stomach. Really, she wondered, how long would that last? Was it even normal to be so subconsciously aware and protective of the tiny life?

She knew the lightheadedness and the nausea were common, but it was her own behavior that she questioned. After everything she’d been through, Aideen had to wonder with each and every thing she did in concern to the baby if it was normal. After everything she’d been through, it was hard to know if that had affected her behavior, and she didn’t really know how much her age had anything to do with it. Maturity wasn’t an issue, but experience was something she was sorely lacking.

And what about loving it? Would she? Because, although Aideen wanted the baby to live, even calling it her daughter, she didn’t feel fond of the child, didn’t feel any attachment to it. Reaching a landing, Aideen paused, leaning against one of the walls. It was strange that she could think of the child as her daughter, because biologically, it was, but never herself as a mother. Would she grow to care about this baby, now only the size of the tip of one of her own fingers? Would she ever see herself as more than an incubator? If something happened to her daughter, would she break down and cry as Rose did?

Deciding those were answers that could only be answered in time, Aideen continued up the final flight of stairs to the fourth floor. It was an odd mix of patients in her wing, all friends and family for security reasons. Well, friends and family save for the very first door, where Aideen’s grandfather sat, hovering over Dante.

Aideen wanted to hurt Dante so much and would have given anything to be the one to finally kill her, but Hohenheim needed the woman now trapped in a maimed doll’s body. She would be the perfect means to open the Gate one final time before it would be closed forever. Through the tiny window in the door, she saw only the faintest outline of the body incapable of moving. That thought pleased Aideen; there was no hope for Dante to perform a ditch-effort transmutation to put her soul into anyone else as she had before Gluttony completely devoured her.

It also meant that the baby was safe. While Dante was capable of the nearly impossible like transferring her soul into an unborn child and manipulating the fertility of a body that was done only on the technicality that it was not hers, she was not capable of the impossible. Creating a transmutation without movement of some kind was exactly that. A circle needed to be drawn or made, either by a body making contact with itself or babies in connection with their parent, offering power through their constant connection to their parent.

Thinking about all she had suffered, all the country had suffered because of this woman, Aideen still doubted her brother’s sincerity about the necessity of this woman.

********

Nicholas sat on Aideen’s bed after their fathers had left on Auntie’s orders. Her twin’s coal black eyes looked at her with sympathy, even a bit of pity. “I don’t know if there’s ever a good time to tell you this when you’ll actually believe me, but the Gate crammed a lot of information in my head at the cost of Dante’s other leg.” Nicholas swung his legs around on the bed, pulling one up toward his chest. Aideen wondered if his movement was conscious on his part or if it was as instinctual as her incessant caresses of her own stomach. “You know, I think the Gate actually likes us, if it’s capable of liking. It could have taken mine, but didn’t. It even tried to warn in its own way about Dante.”

“Shame it didn’t do a little more than tell them I could be a problem.” Aideen hung her head.

“It needed Dante to live.” Aideen’s head snapped up at that. “That’s what I needed to tell you. If Dante hadn’t done what she did, a small group of people who died over the course of the attacks would have killed so many people, more than even she did. That includes Dad, Papa and me.”

He proceeded to describe a very bleak alternative to their world, one where death and persecution were commonplace, where Ishballans and later, all religions and races differing from the “norm” were housed, tortured, experimented upon, and finally slaughtered. “One million dead, Aideen, before this group would be killed. Dante killed a thousand, possibly two if you include the Thules coming through.”

They sat in silence for a while, Aideen pulling both her legs to her chest, resting her chin at the tiny v created by her knees. “And you’ve decided to keep the baby?”

Slightly, Aideen nodded her head, closing her eyes as she did.

“Good, because the Gate didn’t warn me about it at all.”

“Well, that’s a good sign,” Aideen said sarcastically.

“Well, it did more than not warn me.” He looked uncomfortable. “It showed me how to perform the transferal transmutation. There aren’t many alchemists who could do it, only four who could certainly do it properly.”

“Dad, Uncle Al, you and I?”

“Yeah.” Nicholas’s posture then mirrored Aideen, as though trying to protect his own body from his newfound knowledge. “Not that I really want to be pregnant, but I think it was an assurance for you. That baby isn’t Dante, and even if you don’t or can’t carry it, possibly someone else can for you.”

“Are you sure it isn’t the Gate ‘needing’ someone to carry Dante?”

“It doesn’t go that far out of its way for that.”

“You sound like you understand it.”

Nicholas held out a hand and wobbled it. In other words: “somewhat.”

Feeling the mood had thickened the air in the room beyond comfort levels, Aideen kicked her brother’s sock-covered foot. “Or maybe it’s letting you know that one day you can be a proud mommy yourself.”

With a faint smile, Nicholas looked up at her. “Dare you to say that to Dad.”

********

Another room housed Russell Tringham. He seemed to be asleep and alone. Fletcher was probably one of the alchemists working on the reconstruction and recovery along with her Uncle Al.

That Russell was still asleep was probably for the best. She was not quite ready to face Russell awake, knowing that while Dante had done it, Aideen’s own hands had killed Wrath. Wringing the instruments of Wrath’s death, Aideen moved on, trying not to dwell on it, trying not to remember how hard she’d fought Dante and failed as the ancient alchemist had killed the man.

The next room held Frank Archer, sound asleep, but not alone, as the little homunculus was curled up at his side. Never would she have thought that a homunculus would be a positive thing that came out of all this, but it seemed that Frank and Kain would finally have their daughter. Aideen smiled as she observing the little body that was still incapable of sleep attempting to simulate it as it lay next to the wounded colonel. The two men would take care of the child. With the love those two men would pour onto her, there was little doubt that Tucker’s incarnation would certainly gain a soul as well as a family.

And finally, before going through the silver doors where her father’s room was, Aideen glanced in at her brother, who in typical Nicholas fashion had taken over the entire hospital bed now that he wasn’t sharing it.

Moving on to the swinging silver doors, she came to her father’s room. Her dad was on the bed, deeply sound in sleep. She was certain of that because next to him, her papa was crying. It wasn’t loud, but under normal circumstances, she knew her younger father would have heard him.

Quietly as she could, Aideen entered the room. Her dad slept on, but her papa stopped crying and looked up at her.

“What are you doing out of bed?” he said, standing.

“I can’t sleep,” she answered, looking over at her dad, wincing with guilt and pity at his misshapen form beneath the white fabric. He remained asleep, meaning that her dad was being medicated into this restful state. “Sit back down. It’s late and you have to be tired.”

“And what about you and the…” His voice trailed off as he looked at her abdomen.

“Just sit,” she said, a bit surprised when he did. Though the armchair he was in looked somewhat uncomfortable, it was the only one in the room, so she sat at his feet. She felt like a child doing it, but she laid her head against his knee. She remembered doing this when she’d been little, before Dante regularly took control. She remembered how distinct each of her fathers would smell, her dad metallic and of oil, her papa of musk and smoke. It was comforting like this, and although part of her was furious at them both, when she felt her papa’s hand carding through her hair, she felt like she might cry again out of relief.

She was alive, and despite her best efforts to make it easier for them to kill Dante, her family didn’t hate her.

“You know how important you are to us, don’t you?” her papa said. “You know that we love you. That I love you?”

Aideen only nodded, the slow tears falling at her father’s words.