Worlds Collide

A/N: kuragari75, thank you. Glad you liked it. TrulyWished, Glad you're enjoying their interaction Amethyst-eyed Koneko, don't worry about the criticism. I encourage it. Also, I know the Ed/Roy stuff has been fluff and warm fuzzies, but in this chapter, you'll probably see the reason for it. The evil isn't just on Wrath's side of the gate, so they're going to have a lot to deal with, so I wanted them to have a few years of relative peace, and I needed to establish the children. As for Wrath's storyline, I've actually been told by other reviewers I'm not focusing it strongly enough and it's weaker than the Amestris one. Also, I wouldn't necessarily call Roy and Ed secondary characters, but Wrath's more their equal in this story.

This chapter jumps around a bit, and isn't very Wrath-centric, though I plan that the next one probably will have more of him.

Chapter 7

Studying

Three days later

Amestris

“Ed,” Roy said, shaking his husband’s shoulder. “Ed, you awake?” Groggily, Ed raised his head and looked up, a piece of paper stuck to his right cheek. “Ed, you’ve been out here in the lab all day.”

“I have to do something to keep that from happening again.”

“Ed, it is after midnight and you’ve been working since nearly three in the morning. You need your rest.”

Obviously still rallying, the blond looked up at him. “Don’t treat me like a kid."

“I’m not, but ours are getting worried about you. Three days you’ve been out here with hardly a break to even see them.”

“I have to. It isn’t safe for them.”

“Get. To. Bed.”

“You can’t order me around.”

“I’m the fuhrer, and if I have to boss you around, Lieutenant Colonel, I will.”

“You’re pulling rank on me in our marriage?” Ed asked, scowling.

“If it gets you to get some decent rest? Yes.” Ed still didn’t move as his husband had wanted, instead turning back to his research, and Roy tentatively said something he knew might later regret. “I suppose, with my bad back I can try to carry you, if you are having trouble getting into our big, tall bed.”

“What was that?”

“I was just saying, that you need a little rest.”

“Listen, you old fart,” Ed said, following as Roy backed out of the lab next door to their home, “not all of us need to go to bed at nine o’clock, just like we don’t need to eat our meals at five o’clock. I am more than capable of continuing to function after the sun goes down.”

“Really? I’d think you’d be short on energy.”

“Who you calling so short he could fall into a crack on the sidewalk?” Ed now began chasing Roy in earnest, Roy doing everything he could to stay ahead of the younger, more athletic young man. Thankfully, the blond was exhausted at the moment and not at his physical peak. Roy regretted the noise as they ran into the house, up the stairs and into their bedroom, but he felt certain that once he got the young man there, he’d finally get some rest.

Once they were together inside, Roy found Ed shoving him onto the bed. Taking advantage of Ed’s fatigued state, Roy flipped the younger man, placing himself on top, the lower half of his body resting on the mismatched legs, his arms holding Ed’s hands above his head.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting you to stay put,” Roy said. “I’m tired, you’re tired, Al’s tired. It doesn’t do anyone any good if we’re trying to do alchemy when we’re sleep deprived.”

“I’m more than capable of performing alchemy,” Ed said. “That thing came after our children, Roy. Don’t you get that?”

“And what if you make a mistake? Have you seen how close the lab is to our house, Ed? What about Aideen and Nicholas then?” Roy leaned down and put his forehead to Ed’s, inadvertently brushing against the smaller frame below him, and reminding himself how long it had been since they’d been together, really together, not that obedient crap after their fight.

“What the hell do you have planned?” Ed asked, angrily. “Need to sleep. Bullshit. You were trying to get me in bed.”

“I can’t help that seeing you like this is tempting,” Roy said, placing a kiss on Ed’s lips.

“You dirty old man,” Ed spat at him.

Roy moved a hand down to Ed’s own growing bulge. “Perverted shrimp.”

For a moment, they stayed in that position, Roy looking into a set of dull yellow eyes, imagining that his own must have looked just as glazed from lack of sleep. There was a consideration of proceeding, but despite both of their bodies’ obvious objections, Roy simply wasn’t in the mood or feeling energetic enough to continue. Instead, he just let his weight rest on Ed’s body, allowing himself to drift off to sleep after he felt the man beneath him breathing deeply and the resistance in his limbs faded away.

********

Munich

Wrath sat on the sofa, knees bent toward his chest, book resting on them. He had received ultimate knowledge from the Gate, but he still didn’t have the base of years of study from which to draw from or to help him interpret the information he had swirling through his mind. He felt something hard resting on his shoulder and looked over to find Edward was resting a glass of beer there, offering it to him.

“I don’t like that stuff. Clouds my thinking,” Wrath said.

“Not if you get used to it,” Edward said, insisting the former homunculus drink. Wrath curled his nose up at the smell. “Just drink it. At the moment, it’s all we’ve got.”

The dark-haired teen took a drink of the revolting liquid. “It’s warm.” He set it aside and turned back to his book.

“Find anything to block the Gate?” Edward asked, sitting on the other end of the sofa. Wrath shook his head. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Stop asking questions,” Wrath said with a smile. He wasn’t mad at Edward. He knew he hadn’t exactly been much company, and Stephen had been gone for much of the last few days since the successful experiment.

The blond stood and pulled some items from a box. Glancing over his book, Wrath could see it was the pieces of a small rocket, one that the leader of the Thules, the one Stephen called Frau Eckart, had requested.

“You aren’t actually working on that, are you? Knowing she’s going to be sending it into Amestris?”

“I have to make it look fully functional so that when it’s a complete dud, I don’t get blamed for making a bad rocket.” Wrath nodded at Edward’s answer and turned the page. As the blond tinkered with the pieces of metal, he added absentmindedly, “Have you thought about contacting Hohenheim? He’s supposedly 400 years old and has created one of those philosopher stones. Don’t you think he’d know?”

“That isn’t a bad idea. We’ll have to get Stephen to get in touch with some of his people in London. Hopefully, they’ll know where Hohenheim’s at.” There was a part of Wrath that wanted to argue with Edward, ask him why he was so sure that the teen wouldn’t figure it out, that they’d need to call the older, more experienced alchemist. But Wrath also knew that though his ego might be a bit demanding, he had no intention of allowing his own pride force him to endanger the people of his world. Al, Ed and the babies were intact. Wrath didn’t want to feel responsible if something changed that.

“Well,” Wrath said, glancing quickly over a section on fire alchemy, feeling certain the answer wasn’t there, “until then, I’ll keep looking.” He looked up at the blond, whose muddy gold eyes were intently focused on the work at hand. “How’s Alfons, Edward?”

Closing his eyes and sighing a bit, Edward’s body slumped. “He’s got maybe a few days left. I try to visit him, but he says he doesn’t want me seeing him like that. When I stay, we just end up arguing, which usually ends with him coughing uncontrollably. I don’t know what to do.”

Wrath closed his book and slid closer on the sofa to Edward, wrapping his arm around the smaller frame. “I wish I could tell you. I’ve never had to watch someone slowly die. It’s always been sudden.”

“How did you deal with it?”

“My name was Wrath. You figure it out.” He held tightly onto the thin blond, glad to be able to return a bit of the comfort he’d been shown.

********

Amestris

The next day

“Ed,” Roy chided, walking into the library, still hearing Aideen and Nicholas dogpile poor Al. “I thought I told you to stop researching how to close the gate for at least an hour.”

“That isn’t what I’m working on,” Ed said. “I’m trying to figure out why that suit of armor went toward Winry’s.”

“They were mindless hunks of metal. You said that yourself.”

“I know.” Ed rubbed the bridge of his nose, reminding Roy a bit of himself at the moment. “So why did the thin head directly to the place where our children were being held? Why go for them?”

“It could have just been heading into the city, Ed.”

“It took too much to distract it.” With large gold eyes, he looked up at Roy. “What if something’s after them? And I’m not even talking about the usual crap we deal with, with the terrorism threats and the attempts on your life that happen on what seems like a weekly basis.”

Speechless, Roy realized he’d never considered it. He was more than aware of the threat posed by terrorists or other countries, but the idea that something from that gate could be aware of his children, or that there was something capable of manipulating them already here made him more than a little uneasy.

“Daddy?” Aideen said, head tilted to the side. “Will you come and play with us?” She looked up at Roy. “You too, Papa.” Lazily, her rust and gold eyes scanned over his face. “Is something wrong? You look sick.”

“I’m fine, sweetie,” he said. “Well, Ed, are you going to be like your own father, or do you have time to play with them?”

“Always,” Ed answered, with a glare at Roy before standing up and going into the room with his brother and son.

********

It was late when Dante got the opportunity to look over the moonlit city from her bedroom window. The brat was doing far too much research. She couldn’t risk him blocking the gate, or worse yet, figuring out how to close it. She had to see what that other world had to offer, and until she did, she was going to need a distraction. Something to keep the prodigy of Hohenheim from figuring out how to shut the Gate down, or worse yet, to realize she had been the one manipulating the armor.

Mindless as those things were, they were drawn to great power, and she had it. She had it, and she could manipulate them. Sitting on the windowseat, back resting against the windowframe, she looked out, watching over the nearly still city, eyeing a few of the little ants going about their late-night routines, men sneaking out to be with mistresses, women trolling the streets for a little cash for a night in bed. The new fuhrer really should do something about them, she thought to herself.

But what she needed at the moment was a distraction, something guaranteed to stop the fuhrer and his miniature husband for at least long enough for her to make contact with whatever person was on the other side of the gate capable of creating those things and with the lack of morality required to do it.

How far would be far enough?

How could she guarantee not to drive them further into their studies for revenge or out of grief?

********

Three days later

Roy and Ed had avoided the reporters as best they could, explaining that Al and Raine were continuing the research while the “first couple” attended a political dinner. Like it or not, the representatives from Drachma had arrived in Central as scheduled just a week after the attack and were expecting a dinner and discussion with the fuhrer and the spouse that had caused problems in an already tenuous relationship between the two countries.

As well as meeting with the two men, Aideen and Nicholas were to attend. Both Roy and Ed really didn’t want to have to bring them, despite the fact that the representatives were also bringing their families. It felt like political maneuvering and posturing to both men, but there was very little choice in the matter. They wanted to avoid a war, though with a society still very much trained in battle, they were relatively confident in the country’s ability to win a war. The problem was the loss of life involved, even if Amestris won.

Ed noticed the men and women from Drachma looking over his children carefully, analyzing him just as closely, apparently for comparison. Yes, those were his eyes, despite their coloring, on Nicholas’s face, and yes, nearly half of Aideen’s features were his own.

“Do you have a sister, Mr. Elric?”

With a slight sigh, Ed answered, “No. I do not. I am sure you’ve heard the stories of how these two came to be.”

“We were in Daddy’s belly,” Nicholas said, rather loudly, interrupting Ed’s train of thought.

“We had heard stories,” one of the women said, “but we have difficulty believing that a man—”

Ed quickly pulled a small stack of photos from his coat pocket. “Roy took these for the twins, but we’ve had to make multiple copies to confirm the truth.” Ed looked up at Roy, then watched as the nobles from Drachma looked at the pictures of Ed with his progressively more swollen stomach. “I would go into details of how it was possible, but the honest fact is that many of those details are rather embarrassing, not to mention a killer for appetites.”

“I know that you have a law in your country that dictates a man must marry a woman he has gotten pregnant,” Roy said. “Though Ed was unintentionally pregnant, the fact that we are married actually fits more with your own laws than if we weren’t.”

Quite pleased with the usually obnoxious logic that only Roy could use with such ease, Ed took Nicholas into his arms, quickly shifting the boy to his left hip. After all this time, the boy still didn’t like Ed’s metal limbs and occasionally asked him why he couldn’t just have a human arm and leg like Papa and other daddies. The explanation was always difficult for the blond, but thankfully, there was too much for Nicholas to take in at the moment to concern himself with asking once again.

Roy took Aideen’s hand in his own and the family joined a table of dignitaries and representatives, talking as casually as they felt they could despite a still-tense situation.

The meal was brought out in several courses, and the two fathers carefully helped the two little children eat the smaller portioned meals, their own getting cold. Nicholas bucked Ed once about having to eat broccoli and just as reluctantly as his son, Ed ate the stuff from his own plate, showing Nicholas it wasn’t bad at all. Aideen very calmly ate every bite, reminding Nicholas from across the table that he wasn’t going to get dessert if he didn’t finish, and dessert was a big piece of chocolate cake with chocolate icing, though she didn’t do it in quite so many words.

“No broccoli, no cake,” she said as he finished one final bite of the green vegetable.

She had already eaten all of hers, chocolate cake being one of her personal favorites as well. The group sat and talked, Ed and Roy getting to eat some of their cold dinners—not that nearly every dinner since the birth of the babies hadn’t ended up cold. Then, after a brief wait, the chocolate cake came, both children eyeing the dessert hungrily. Rather than trying to feed them the cake because they’d never do it fast enough, the two fathers tucked a napkin into the collar of the two children, then adding their own to protect the tiny gray suit and pale blue dress. Then, they handed each eager tot a spoon and let them have at it.

Ed prayed his children didn’t make too much of a mess as he took his first bite.

“We should have let you keep your napkin,” Roy teased when Ed dropped a piece of the cake loaded with icing down the front of his suit.

Ed was in the process of thinking up a smart remark, when he noticed that Nicholas had hardly started eating the cake. “Buddy, it’s your favorite,” he said. “Did you eat too much?”

“Belly hurts.”

In a state of dread, Ed heard as Aideen dropped her own spoon, moving her hands down to hug her own stomach. “Daddy, it hurts.” Ed grabbed Nicholas into his arms, feeling his son sweating, despite the fact that he felt cold to the touch.

“Please make it stop,” Nicholas pleaded, eyes tearing up. Ed grabbed him into his arms and signaled for Roy to do the same. Something was wrong, very wrong with their children.

“Papa!” Aideen cried out as Roy carried her out of the dining hall. She held her hand over her mouth as Roy managed to turn her in time to vomit on the floor.

Roy yelled out to one of the guards. “Get my sister! NOW! Have her meet us at the hospital!”

Frantically, Roy and Ed climbed into their car, one of the guards already in the driver’s seat and rushed off to the hospital, their children in their laps, crying in pain.