Worlds Collide

A/N: I will thank reviewers next chapter. I had issues with slow internet and a long review page to pull it up and address everyone. I do appreciate every comment. Thanks so much.

Chapter 63

Healing Comfort

One Month Later

“You’re a damned slave driver!” Ed said as Roy hauled him up the stairs.

“I’m a furher and a military man. What do you expect?”

“Bastard!”

“Stop whining Ed. Winry’s going to install the automail ports in a few days. When you get your left leg back, do you really want your right one to be too weak to hold you?”

Ed glared at Roy, who only met the glare with a steady gaze. That irritated the hell out of the young alchemist. He was so calm; nothing seemed to faze him.

“Roy,” Ed said as they reached the last few steps, “it is six in the morning. It is too damned early to be doing this.” Ed leaned against his husband, arm wrapped tightly around the older man’s waist as he pulled himself up on another step. “We could just as well do this after you get back from the office.”

“Are you telling me you can’t handle your therapy?” Roy said, his tone mocking. “Am I going to have to deal with you crying, ‘Oh, it hurts so bad! Stop!’” The tone in Roy’s voice was irritating, but the exaggerated impression flat out pissed him off.

“You’re a bastard,” Ed growled.

“So you’ve told me every year of our marriage and quite a few before. Did you really think that would change just because you’ve managed to lose some limbs?”

Ed glared at him. In the back of the younger man’s mind was a voice reminding him that if Roy had treated him any other way, Ed would have taken it as an insult and been revolted by the sign of pity. The voice told Ed that his husband really did care about him and was doing the best possible thing by goading him up the stairs, where he was now. It chided him for getting angry with the silver-haired man who did look very nice in his green pajamas.

Problem was, Ed wasn’t listening.

“Listen, you son of a bitch, I’m trying. It’s my leg and if I want to take a day off because I feel like shit, I will.” Ed was seething and hobbling back against the wall to pull away from him. “I don’t even know if I’m going to get my leg back for sure, and it’s almost certain the arm’s gone for good, so if I want to wallow, I will.”

Roy pressed against Ed at the wall and held tightly to his face. “The hell you will, Ed,” Roy said.

“You don’t know what it is to lose something for good,” Ed said, wishing that in his anger tears weren’t springing to his eyes.

“Look me in the eyes and repeat that, Ed,” Roy said. “Or have you forgotten that the left one can’t do a thing more than move? And you know that when I got it, you didn’t let me mope about it or my face, no matter how much I wanted to.”

“Then you should know that this is natural!” Ed yelled at him. “Or is this revenge?”

“And you should know that I’m not going to let you waste away because of this.” Roy’s tone was lower, kinder this time. And Ed waited for it, the obligatory kiss to his crown of blond hair, just as Roy had done daily since the attack.

Instead, the dark-eyed man devoured Ed’s lips, taking full advantage of the fact that the shorter alchemist had been prepared to offer another argument, immediately plunging his tongue deep into Ed’s parted mouth. Roy’s left hand found its way to Ed’s hair, twisting itself inside and mashing them together. His right wound itself tightly around the small waist, either out of passion or the desire for Ed to remain standing—the younger alchemist honestly didn’t know or care. Trusting that his fuhrer wouldn’t drop him, Ed clung to the arm wrapped around him, his hand grasping at the green material.

The kiss was bruising and forceful, so different from what Ed had experienced from the older man over the last month. Though, initially, the small caresses and chaste kisses had been all Ed could handle, for some time now, he’d been wanting some sign that his husband still—he couldn’t say “found him attractive” because he seriously doubted that was possible as half a person—wanted him.

“Can you two get a room and please keep it down?” Nicholas asked as he exited his bedroom, his thick hair sticking in strange directions, eyes still foggy from sleep. He looked barely conscious as he scratched his thigh and then straightened a self-made cotton shirt baring the phrase “The chemicals that make up the human body cost a few cenz.” Lately, as though to irritate his two fathers—and occasionally entertain them—the teen had taken to creating and then sleeping in the obnoxious undershirts. This was a new one.

“What does the back of that dreadful thing say?” Roy asked, arms still securely wrapped around Ed, though in a somewhat less intimate way.

Nicholas looked at Roy blankly for a moment, then down at his shirt as though piecing together what is father was asking. With an “oh” expression on his face, he turned around.

“But my body’s priceless,” Ed read aloud. Both fathers groaned, but weren’t complaining as long as their son agreed not to wear the things in public. Well, that and make sure they weren’t too vulgar, like the one that had two arrows on it, one pointing to Nicholas reading “the alchemist” and another pointing down reading “the legend.” Roy had incinerated that one practically before Nicholas had it off his back.

The teen turned back around and looked his parents, eyes less sleep-filled and glinting slightly mischievously.

“He’s your son,” Ed said to Roy. I take no claim for him.”

Roy rolled his eyes at the smaller man and then looked over to Nicholas. “What are you doing up?”

“Well,” the blond teen said. “The two of you were a little loud. Woke me up.” He yawned. “But I figure if you two woke me up, Aideen’s probably up too.”

It also meant that if Aideen was awake, she likely had been forced to run to the bathroom, as she had the tendency to do within a minute or two of waking.

“Listen, I’m going to go in and see what I can do to ease her morning sickness, then once I’m a little more awake, I’ll work with you, Dad.”

“I’m working with your Auntie. I’ll be fine.”

“You have two people who can help heal your nerves and I’m more powerful,” Nicholas said, matter-of-factly. “You know, with patients like you and Aideen, I’m not surprised I don’t want to go into medicine.”

Nicholas opened the door to Aideen’s bedroom. Ed looked up at Roy, who was gesturing toward the door to silently ask the younger father to check on her. Ed answered with a quick nod and the two slowly made their way through the door. Though it was a bit of a walk still, the sound of the twins bickering from the bathroom was very clear from the doorway.

“How are you feeling this morning?”

“I’m making friends with the cold tile and toilet, how do you think I’m doing?” Aideen snapped back. Ed knew it was the hormones, but the fact that his daughter was still getting violently ill each morning made him wish he could take it all away from her. Hell, without Roy’s help he couldn’t even manage to get up the stairs form his new bedroom in the library to even hold her hair back, as he’d done when she was little.

Ed could see the glow of the transmutation as Roy guided him over to the desk chair near Aideen’s unmade bed. Glancing over at the strewn covers, it was obvious just how sick the teen had been feeling. Whether it was a habit of her own or one she’d learned from Dante, Aideen was a near perfectionist and a bit of a neat freak. He glanced over the desktop, which still had numerous alchemy books and her self-created transmutation circles. But for once, he saw there were also pieces of sheet music, and the guitar purchased by Fletcher over a year ago leaned against the side of the white desk.

Ed could hear Aideen moving in the next room, feeling somewhat sick. It was still a struggle each time he looked at his own daughter’s face just to convince himself that she wasn’t the one who tortured him. He could feel Roy’s hand at his right shoulder both helping to support him physically and emotionally. Ed honestly never knew whether to be grateful that his husband understood him well enough to know when to make gestures like this, or to be furious that he had to at all. Ed didn’t want to be some headcase who needed his husband to hold his hand just to lay eyes on their own daughter. He just wanted those feelings to stop.

“Feel better?” Nicholas asked from within the bathroom.

“Much. Thank you.”

Ed looked up at Roy. “You’re the son and brother of doctors, who obviously knows a little about medical alchemy. Want to explain why the hell you didn’t do that for me?”

“Because I still haven’t gotten that transmutation right, first. And second, we didn’t know how safe anything would be when you were at that stage.”

“I still don’t know why you insist on wearing those shirts,” Aideen said to Nicholas, her tone so adult, so much like the man holding onto Ed. “We are the only ones here to see them.”

There was the sound of her brushing her teeth as Nicholas came back into the bedroom, straightening his hair and a few of the more rebellious locks determined to stick up despite his best efforts.

“I can’t wait to dive into that cake Mrs. Havoc sent over yesterday. You still going to yell at me about too much icing?” Nicholas teased, stretching his mismatched arms over his head.

“No, because you and your sister are going out and you aren’t my problem,” Ed answered back.

“Which means you aren’t allowed enough cake to get a sugar high,” Aideen said, walking out of the bathroom, still looking a bit green from being so recently sick, but a rosier color to her cheeks than if her brother hadn’t performed the transmutation. She walked over to Roy, squeezing his hand. “Morning, Papa.” She then leaned down to Ed to hug him, forcing her father to struggle against his instinct to flinch at her approach. Aideen hugged him quickly, a flash of guilt on her face. “Morning, Dad.”

“Good morning, sweetie.”

“Well, since we’re all up now,” Roy said. “Why don’t we head downstairs for breakfast?” Aideen looked at him warily. “No sausage, I promise.” The teen looked relieved, having discovered last week that the smell of sausage cooking brought back her nausea, regardless of her brother’s alchemy.

Roy helped Ed stand and let the twins get dressed while the two made the slow walk down the stairs. “First, we need to get your chair from the library,” Roy said, guiding Ed into the room, which they’d converted into a bedroom while the blond recovered. “So, do you notice anything different?” Roy asked.

Ed scanned the walls and the books. “Am I supposed to?” he asked as he sat down in unfortunately familiar wheelchair.

Roy guided him to the wall where numerous candid photos of the family hung. Ed saw the group shot of himself at fifteen along with Riza and Maes, he saw the family photo that Nicholas’s impish behavior had ruined, one of Raine holding a very young Roy in a headlock. Then he spotted it. One of his mother and father, caught off guard while holding him as a baby.

“That’s the picture my father gave us before he left.”

Roy nodded. “I had the photo studio blow it up. There are a couple of things in it you couldn’t see at the small size.”

“How’d you get it in here?”

“Al picked it up from the studio last night, along with his copy. Asked me to distract you this morning so he could hang it.” He pulled it down off the wall, pointing to Hohenheim’s brown vest. “You’d just spit up on him. And if you look here,” He ran a finger over Ed’s mother’s somewhat rounded stomach. “it looks as though Al was in the photo as well.”

Roy continued to hold the picture as Ed traced over his parents’ outlines. Against his better judgment, Ed realized his resentment over his father was long gone. It was hard to hold onto it after the man had willingly gone through the Gate for Ed and his family’s sake twice.

********

Though he hadn’t expected himself to allow it, Ed found himself being hugged by his father, and more surprisingly, he was hugging right back. “Be careful, and just know that things will turn out the way they should in the end," his father said to him. “It’s equivalent exchange, Ed. You’ve suffered a lot because of alchemy. It’s certain to give you something back.”

Hohenheim moved down the small group waiting for him in the otherwise deserted area of the underground city, but not before handing a small photo to Ed, saying, “I think this will do you and your brother more good than me.”

Riza had walked beside him, taking Ed’s hand briefly. “You’ve done the best job you possibly could with your twins. Just take good care of them and take care of him.” She gestured to Roy.

After their goodbyes were said, Riza and Hohenheim moved toward the transmutation circle, where Dante’s motionless body lay. When he saw his father pull out a knife, Ed didn’t look away, couldn’t. He had to watch as Dante died, even if he wasn’t the one who did it. From the corner of his eye, he couldn’t help but see the mixed emotions across his daughter’s face. Then, as the transmutation circle glowed and engulfed him, for the first time since he was a tiny child, Ed found himself crying, missing his father.

********

Scotland

Hohenheim sat discussing with Roy some of the mistakes that the younger man was making in the operations of his business. All the while, he kept a wary eye on the long-haired blond practicing putting on a miniaturized golf course in the back yard.

“We are in war times, Roy, and you have to make exceptions for that,” Hohenheim chided, having decided ages ago that he much preferred his real son-in-law to his Earth copy.

“Papap,” a little voice said before pouncing on top of the older man’s lap. “Come play with me. Play with Unca William.”

“You want to play golf, do you?” Hohenheim asked little Eddie as he looked up at Noa. She patted her son on the head, saying nothing as a smile remained on her lips.

“Golf!” Eddie yelled out.

There was a loud laugh as the blond walked up to Hohenheim and his adopted grandson. “I can’t believe a little one like you can hold one of those big clubs.”

“Can too!” Eddie stated. “I show you.”

“Father?” the blond asked Hohenheim. “Do you want to come with us? I’m still trying to learn this game. I know I don’t remember much, but I am certain I didn’t play this before.”

“I show. I real good, Unca William!”

“I bet you are, runt.” With that, the man who appeared to be no more than eighteen scooped little Eddie into his arms, making entertaining faces at the toddler as they walked out into the yard, the dark-haired little boy excited that he was getting to play with the teenagers.

“You trust him with your son?” Hohenheim asked Noa.

“I’ve looked into that young man’s mind. There is no malice, not bitterness.” She patted Hohenheim on the shoulder, adding with emphasis. “No envy.”

Hohenheim met the woman’s brown eyes. “It is simply that I know what he was.”

“And you are the only one. Not even William remembers his time as Envy.”

Hohenheim watched the young man who called him father far more willingly that he ever had as a homunculus. Hohenheim had to believe that the Gate had decided this was the easiest way to ensure that it was not opened again. Without Envy, it would be impossible for it to open for any long period of time. And, as Riza, Hohenheim and the rest of the captured alchemists had destroyed the cavern with the Thules inside, it wasn’t likely that anyone was going to mange to replicate their research or success.

Hohenheim highly doubted this was a reward to either himself or Envy, as he felt certain he didn’t deserve it. Though he could dismiss a lot of what Envy did as not knowing better or a failure on his own part, Hohenheim still felt at a loss to explain this through equivalent exchange.

All he received in response to his thoughts a reassuring pat to his shoulder.

********

Hohenheim and Riza pulled on gas masks the moment the location-specific transmutation landed them at the floor of the cavern. They would have had the things on sooner, but considering what had happened to the Thules upon crossing through the Gate, the two didn’t want to chance somehow melding with the bits of rubber and metal.

The instant they had the masks on—a process that took no more than a second—Hohenheim and the woman at his side lit and tossed two smoke bombs at the gathered Thules, watching as the cavern filled with a green haze that would render everyone who inhaled it unconscious.

They didn’t have long, only an hour, to get the Thules sorted from the alchemists.

The most troubling person was the young blond man they found on the floor near their own feet when they landed in the cavern. Riza was first to turn his body over, crying out the moment she saw the resemblance.

“Hohenheim,” she said, her voice muffled by the sound of the gas mask, “he looks like you.”

The older man knelt down beside the body, seeing instantly the face that he’d nearly forgotten about after almost 400 years. He then, looked up at the ceiling, finding that the serpent who’d been held in a circular position was now gone.

“Do you know him?” Riza asked him.

There was a part of Hohenheim that wanted to answer truthfully than, no, he really didn’t know his son well at all. There was a part of him that wanted to eliminate what had been a threat to his youngest two children, that had been a threat to his grandchildren. But this face, it wasn’t that homunculus with the anger against him. It was his son, sound asleep as Hohenheim remembered before the teenager had gotten deathly ill.

“We may need to restrain him. But he isn’t a Thule,” Hohenheim said, knowing that he didn’t have time to delay dealing with the Thules with questions as to why the Gate would give him back his eldest son.

Though the thought of killing the Thules instantly came to mind, it was a risk as the gas would fade, the added noise of that act might rouse the other sleeping society members. Instead, they found ways to bind the men and women, Hohenheim taking full advantage of the alchemic power within the cavern as he used the very stone it was carved out of to restrain the Thules and their alchemist convert, Zolf Kimblee, and the unconscious body of Envy. From there, both he and Riza made their way into the tunnels leading from the cavern chamber, finding a few spare Thules there in varying states of consciousness.

As the hour’s time limit neared on the gas, Hohenheim set to waking some of the alchemists, such as Mustang and his two sons along with the two American versions of the Tringham brothers, Phillip and his step-father. It was strange to think that this brave young Scot was alive when his equally courageous counterpart had died in Amestris.

As the other alchemists rallied, they helped Hohenheim and Riza restrain the remaining Thules as best they could in their still-drugged state. Ultimately, it fell on the eldest Tringham to haul Envy’s body from the cave and Hohenheim to fabricate a history for the young man, who woke up while being carried from the cave. Envy, now William, remembered nothing. All Hohenheim knew was he now had a son whose mind was a clean slate and who, in this form, couldn’t be used to open the Gate ever again.

The alchemists had just gotten out of the cavern when a few well-placed and perfectly timed bombs later brought the cavern several miles outside of Munich crumbling onto itself.

********

Some of the alchemists had returned home. The former bishop who’d sided with the Thules died along with them. The rest joined Hohenheim in Scotland to help with the war effort against Germany. William roused with no memory of any of his past, and he was now become a full-fledged member of Noa’s family as well as Hohenheim’s.

“Aiden!” Riza’s voice cried from over the wall that adjoined the two yards. “Mail.” Enthusiastically, the dark-haired teen ran to the wall to retrieve the letter.

“What odds do you think it is Fletcher Tringham writing him again?” Roy said, shaking his head.

Hohenheim smiled, wondering if the relationship between Aiden and Fletcher would ever mirror the one of their counterparts, or if it would end as a good friendship.

“So what does he say?” Nicholas shouted over at Aiden.

“He’s been accepted into basic training. He’s going to be a part of the British navy and Russell is going to drive the ambulances.”

“They will be a fine addition to the military,” Roy said to his smiling but obviously nervous son.

For a while, the teens continued their small game of golf, Roy and Hohenheim continuing their conversation. All the while, Hohenheim watched William teaching the dark-haired toddler how to putt. For the first time in his memory, the elder alchemist felt the teen looked at peace with himself, even more so than he’d been before Hohenheim had tried to bring him back.

And though he wanted desperately to be with his family in Amestris, Hohenheim felt he might be able to live out his life this way quite happily.

“Father, come show Eddie that trick you taught me yesterday. I haven’t quite mastered it yet.”

And with that, Hohenheim rose to join his somewhat new son and adopted grandson trying not to contemplate why the Gate felt he was worthy of this little bit of contentment and simply enjoy it.

********

Amestris

Frank stepped out of Nina’s bedroom, face covered in robin’s egg blue dots. There was a faint giggling from the sofa, which drew the man to his now-adopted daughter.

“You think this is funny?

The young girl nodded, violet eyes twinkling as she continued to laugh.

“Oh, come on, Frank,” Kain said, stepping out of the room, spotless, “it’s good to see you in blue again, now that you’ve retired.” Frank had retired to stay home and care for Nina, and he had to wonder how long these jokes at his expense would last.

Frank sat at Nina’s feet, rubbing her calf as he did. “How are you feeling today?”

She shrugged. “Achey.” From what Raine could tell, the girl was stuck in limbo between the age of the girl she was created to resemble and the age the doll seemed to be. It was why she appeared six when Nina had died around the age of four, and why her muscles, bones, tendons were all trying to catch up to the seemingly ten-year-old doll.

“But, I fell asleep while you were working on that room, and I saw pictures. I think it was a dream.”

“That’s wonderful,” Kain said, brushing aside her brown bangs and rubbing her cheek.

“It wasn’t anything special. I was just in class with Mr. Mustang. But I knew I wasn’t really there because I didn’t have lessons today.”

Both men shook their heads in response to her final statement. Though, they both were aware that if Nina was dreaming, it was a sign that she was headed in the same direction as Wrath and could very well be developing a soul of her own. This was Nicholas’s day off from teaching Nina, a job he’d taken not long after passing out of school. With situations being what they were at home, and the fact that he had long ago surpassed what could be taught at the basic grade school, Nicholas had taken his exam to be finished with his schooling. To keep himself busy, as though he didn’t already have enough with his still-recovering sister and father, Nicholas had decided to tutor Nina to catch her up on her school work, not to mention basic interaction. The two fathers hoped that this would mean within a year or so, she would be able to relate to other children her age, at least without too many of her differences being noticeable.

And honestly, the young Mustang male seemed grateful for the escape that teaching Nina gave him. There was more going on with Aideen’s recovery from Dante, and they were all sure of it, but Frank suspected it was something that the family would make known when the timing was better.

“Well,” Frank said, “I hope you’re happy with this color because I feel certain I’m going to be wearing it for a week.”

Again, Nina laughed at him.

“Do you need anything?” Kain asked her.

She shrugged. “I think I could eat.”

That meant she was hungry but still not certain of the new feeling of hunger. Kain patted her brown head and walked out into the kitchen while Frank rubbed a hand over the tiny one resting on the sofa.

“You might want to sit up if you’re going to eat.”

Nina sat, scooting herself to Frank’s side. “I was thinking.”

“Oh?” Frank asked, raising a dark eyebrow.

“About what to call you. I don’t like calling you Frank and Kain.” She looked up at him, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Could it be Father and Daddy? Do you mind Father?”

Frank felt his chest clenching, taking the little girl into his arms. “Not at all. I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

“You’re crying,” she said, pulling away from his embrace. “You hate me calling you Father.”

“I promise you, Nina. I’m crying because I’m happy.”

Nina looked at him, head tilted to the side. “Humans are funny.”

Frank couldn’t agree more, but he couldn’t help but acknowledge that Nina, herself, was becoming more like one every day.

********

Aideen was roaming in the little coffee shop bookstore, cup of hot cocoa in her hands, perusing the spines of the books on the shelves. She felt at a loss now that she’d wandered outside of the alchemy section.

“Oh, my, Aideen Mustang looking at a novel and wearing jeans and a green shirt. The world’s surely at an end.” The voice was light and teasing. She turned to find Fletcher smiling at her warmly.

“Oh,” Aideen said, hating that she felt warmth to her face, “Hi, Fletcher.” Trying to hide her face, she took a drink of the cocoa, wishing she could curl up and die. Like everyone else, Fletcher didn’t know she was pregnant, and that only added to the amount of shame and embarrassment she felt at being in his presence.

“So, how are you doing?” Aideen only slightly noticed the discomfort in his mannerisms, as she was trying to consider how to answer such a loaded question without giving away the truth. After all, her thoughts lately seemed all-consumed by the impending responsibility and tiny life currently inside her. At least, those thoughts that didn’t somehow drift to Dante.

“Okay.” There was awkward silence. “What are you doing here?”

“My apartment’s upstairs,” he answered, an amused smile on his face. Inwardly, Aideen cursed herself for forgetting such a simple thing. She twisted her hands around the mug, glancing down at the floor more so than looking him in his blue-tinted green eyes.

“What are you looking at?” Fletcher said, gesturing to the books.

“I don’t know,” Aideen admitted. “I’ve never really gotten to, you know?” That sounded like a horribly stupid summation of what had happened. It had been so much easier to sound confident when she’d been certain she would die any time. Now that she had a lifetime to live with her actions, Aideen became much less sure of herself around the older man.

“Hmm,” was his only answer as he nodded. “I’m guessing you want an escape? Do you want action, fantasy, mystery, romance—”

“Romance,” Aideen answered much too quickly. Again, her embarrassment grew and her grip on her mug of cocoa slipped. The thing fell to the floor, cracking, sending the liquid chocolate across the tiled floor. None of it hit either alchemist, as they both moved away from the spilled substance fast enough, but unexpectedly and humiliatingly, Aideen found tears coming to her eyes.

“Aideen? Did you get splashed? Are you okay?” Fletcher asked, checking the front of her shirt and her pants.

Aideen wanted to answer coherently, but unfortunately, she found herself sobbing too hard to manage it. Two strong, wiry arms wrapped around Aideen’s shoulders, as she continued to cry into Fletcher’s chest.

“Aideen?”

“I’m sorry. It’s the hormones.” And then, the words that had come out of her mouth hit her. “Oh, damn it! I wasn’t— I wasn’t supposed to say… Oh, shit.”

Aideen felt the older man’s hand rubbing the hair from her face. “Aideen, are you…”

She looked down, unable to meet his eyes, just waiting for him to decide that he hated her. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “We’re trying not to tell anyone. The newspapers would have a field day. Anything important with the reconstruction would be pushed back to report on me.”

“And I’m sure you aren’t ready to deal with it yet.” That hadn’t been the words she’d expected to come from his mouth, and she certainly hadn’t expected one hand to move to her head, the other beginning to rub soothing circles on her back. For the first time outside of her talks with her Uncle Al—the only person knowledgeable about the entire situation with the kind of understanding that seemed to do her some good—Aideen cried for herself. “Let it out,” he said softly, his slightly unshaven cheek resting on her head.

“I heard a crash, and I—” Nicholas’s voice stopped abruptly. “What happened?”

“She dropped her drink,” Fletcher said. “Can you fix it, Nicholas? There’s a back room here the owner lets me use when I need to escape Russell when he’s in a mood. I’m going to take Aideen there, let her get this out of her system in private.”

She felt herself being guided through the aisles, through a small door at the rear of the store’s second floor. There was a scattering of old furniture and boxes that Aideen could see through her tear-clouded eyes. “This is the most comfortable one, I think,” he said, as he guided her to a worn red chair, taking the hard wooden one beside it. “You’ve been keeping this all from everyone for a month?” he asked, taking her hand and rubbing it. In the back of her mind, there was the nagging voice of Dante, long gone physically, but sometimes, just as much there as if she wasn’t. This man had rejected her that night. Why was he being so nice to her now?

“You didn’t need this on top of everything else,” he said, holding her hand in both his own, the warm, callused hands rubbing over her smooth ones. And again, the warmth of his words made Aideen break down, shuddering with her tears as Fletcher moved from his seat to kneel in front of her, pulling her once again into his arms.

She didn’t understand why, after everything she’d been through, she felt so capable of crying like this in front of the older man, but at the moment, all she could do was take in the sensation of being held, soothed. For the first time, she really felt comforted in someone else’s words.

“It will all be okay in the end, Aideen. I promise you.”

The logical part of her mind wanted to tell her to argue with him, to tell him not to make promises he couldn’t keep. The rest of her said to believe him.

********

Roy scooped Ed into his arms, despite the protests of the petit man. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Taking you upstairs. I’ve dealt with the issues at the office until tonight, though I’ll have to go back out after ten, and I want to spend the time I have with you.”

“And you shouldn’t be carrying me. If you had a bad back when you were thirty, what the hell do you think it’ll be like now that you’re pushing fifty?”

“First of all, you’re quite light,” Roy said, refusing to add the words “like this” to his sentence, though they hung there unsaid all the same. “Second of all, I’m not ‘pushing fifty.’ I just barely turned forty-seven.”

Roy made progress up the stairs, seeing Ed’s reluctance, but hating that there seemed no fight in the blond. It was true that Ed might never regain his arm or leg, but it was the spark in the gold eyes he’d seen this morning and seen so rarely in the last month that Roy refused to see die. The older man knew Ed was disgusted with his body as it was now, with no ports, no automail. He hadn’t wanted to go through this process all over again, but if he had to once again prove to Ed that he didn’t find it disgusting, Roy would do it.

Roy pushed the door to their bedroom open with his foot, making his way to the bed that he’d missed sharing with Ed these last four weeks. If Roy wasn’t falling asleep in the chair at Ed’s bedside, he’d been forced to once again sleep alone in a bed that seemed so empty and cold without his husband in it.

Carefully laying the smaller body down on top of the gray and black comforter, Roy caressed the young man’s face and kissed him. As soon as he released the younger man from what he felt was a tender and loving sign of his intentions, Roy watched the blond head turn away from him.

“Are you really that hard-up for sex, Roy?” Ed was blinking far too much, obviously holding back tears. “You can’t really mean to do this with me, with a cripple.”

Without thinking, Roy slammed his hand down on the bedside table. He hurt but didn't break his hand in the process, though he did knock off the metal lamp, hearing the pop of the shattered lightbulb. “Damn you Ed! I know you want to draw into yourself, and I know you can’t let the twins see it, but damn it, I’m tired of watching you descend into…” He gestured with his hand. “this.”

“Well, I didn’t choose this.” Ed imitated the gesture with his left hand.

“I’m not talking about the arm and leg, Ed. I’m talking about you thinking that every time I show you I love you, you look so damned surprised. One month I’ve gone without sex. I’d go without it forever if it wasn’t with you. I don’t want just a quick screw with some pretty thing.”

“No, you want to go home and bang your deformed husband.”

How had he missed how dark Ed’s mind had gotten? With all of the reconstruction efforts, it was true that Roy hadn’t gotten to be there as much as he wanted, but when he saw Ed, he saw that carefully crafted version of the man, very rarely this vulnerable, self-deprecating side. Ed was more than willing to show the guilt for everything that had gone on, a trait that while Roy felt strongly in himself seemed doubly compounded in their daughter, despite appearances. But this wasn’t about guilt. This was a side of Ed that probably made the guilt worse. This was the side that regretted his loss more than he felt he deserved to do.

“I want to go home and make love, if he’s ready, to a wonderful blond, who is no less handsome, no less remarkable because he managed to withstand tortures that no one else I’ve ever known could survive.”

Ed looked up at him in disbelief and surprise. “Bullshit.” Roy started to argue, but was cut off. “No, Roy. If you thought I was all of those things, then why the hell have I seen no passion, no anything from you until today? Just those kisses on the head, like I was your baby brother, not your damned husband.”

Roy stared at Ed for a minute, trying to think the reasons for his own actions, then trying to put that into words. “Maybe I got a shock, Ed. These last few years, you’ve seemed so damned indestructible, and for the first time since you were a teenager, you reminded me that you aren’t.”

“Well, I won’t break, so stop treating me like it.”

“Then stop acting like your life is over or worthless because of what happened.” Roy laid on his side facing Ed’s right shoulder, watching as the younger man flinched at his touch over the area where automail had once met flesh. Roy had hated to admit how much he’d learned to love Ed’s automail. Hell, he’d developed a bit of a metal fetish thanks to it, but it had been a truly amazing thing for the younger man to lose. It had protected and defended, had given Ed the ability to once again walk and move on his own. How many times had it encircled Roy’s neck or his waist, bruised his hips, scratched at his scalp, caressed his cheek. The loss of the automail was a loss, no denying it.

His hand moved to the buttons that ran down the front of Ed’s soft shirt. “Look at me,” he said when the blond turned away. Roy pulled away the shirt, pushing it over the expanse of skin that was slowly losing its tan. He didn’t remove the bandages covering the healing flesh beneath at the shoulder. He slowly straddled the smaller waist, looking down on Ed once again, kissing a trail down the center of the chest. “I love you, Edward Elric.”

He nibbled at the warm, salty skin at Ed’s neck, then proceeded to lick up to his ear, positioning his own neck in such a way that Ed could attack Roy’s own pale skin. He could feel a callused hand moving to the back of his neck, pulling him down. Roy could hardly help it as his now-injured hand skimmed its way down to the light pants that Ed was wearing, teasing beneath the waistband.

“Oh, shit, Roy,” Ed said, the spark, along with a healthy amount of lust back in his eyes. “Why the hell did you wait this long?”

“Doctor’s orders. Didn’t want to overtax you.”

Ed began fumbling with Roy’s shirt, trying to unbutton the numerous tiny buttons single handedly. “Remind me to shoot your sister.” Roy removed his hand that had been untying the drawstring waistband to help the blond, all the while bracing his weight on the other arm. Enough of the buttons undone to ease it over his head, Roy ripped the shirt off, moving back to Ed’s waistband, finding it more difficult to untie the tight knot with only his left hand than Ed seemed to be finding unfastening Roy’s fly.

The older man nearly lost himself in pleasure as Ed’s hand easily slipped inside of his boxers, the half-hard staff below him standing to full attention within the loose cotton pants.

“Hurry up, damn it!” Ed said, just as demanding as ever, forgetting for a moment, apparently, that pulling off the pants would reveal the absent leg.

Finally, Roy finished, pulling the string apart and jerking the pants off his husband quickly, doing his best not to flinch when he saw the stump that had once been a strong steel leg. It was bandaged as the shoulder was, but Roy focused his attention north of the missing limb, grabbing hold and earning a gasp for his efforts. With a smirk, Roy moved upwards on Ed’s body, wrapping his hand around both their hardened erections. Ed’s joined him shortly after that. It had been so long, and things had been so heated, it didn’t take long before both were grinding against one another, sweat gathering and pouring from their bodies.

Roy could feel Ed’s body tightening, his own responding in kind as they ground against one another. “Shit, shit! Roy!” And with that Ed was shooting at a force that surprised even the subject of the blond’s shouting. Watching Ed’s face lost in sensation, his back arched, his hand trying to remember to continue pumping quickly drug Roy over the edge as well, screaming Ed’s name, coming all over them both.

When al was over and they laid side-by-side, Ed nuzzled his sweaty head of hair against Roy’s shoulder, again, making Roy feel certain the younger man was part cat. “I love you, too, Roy.” He chuckled, voice raspy from their previous activities. “Thanks for getting me out of my funk, and doing it so inventively.”

Roy smirked before kissing Ed tenderly on the lips. “Any time.”

********

Kneeling in front of Wrath’s grave, Russell continued to cry. He knew the man was dead; he knew that Nina now had Wrath’s eyes. But for Russell, there was no closure, despite the respectful funeral or the tombstone erected over an empty grave. He cried, trying to remember the words that Nina had passed on to him. Wrath would be waiting for him when his time came, and he loved him. He also remembered that Wrath harbored no resentment toward Aideen mustang, much as Russell himself wanted to. All he knew was that if he didn’t soon make peace with himself and with Wrath’s death, he would soon waste away to nothing.

Perhaps the first step was to make peace with Aideen. He sighed to himself. It wasn’t going to happen today, but he would do his best to make a conscious effort. He stood, still careful not to use his recovering arm to help himself get upright. With the sleeve of his shirt, Russell wiped his eyes and made his way out of the cemetery.