Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Ed, Ling, and Envy crash to the ground after transmuting themselves through the Gate, Ed wants to just lay back and categorize all the shit that’s suddenly swimming around in his head, from eating a fucking shoe and the havoc that is going to wreak on his internal organs to seeing Al’s body, malnourished and unwashed but undeniably him, undeniably alive. He can hear someone shouting in the distance, a voice that’s high and familiar but that he can’t quite reach through his exhaustion and hunger. He hears Ling groan next to him, trapped in the weird tentacles from Envy’s side, and remembers abruptly that the other boy’s got a broken rib or two, and pushes himself up.

“You okay?” he asks, and Ling’s grin is wide and white against the blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Wonderful, thank you,” he says, and he sounds so much like royalty (even covered in dried blood and fuck knows what else) that Ed can’t help smiling back.

He lifts his fist and Ling bumps his own against it, and he lets his eyes flutter closed. “We’re alive.”

Then he’s slammed into by a force that knocks the wind out of him, with hands grabbing his wrists and tugging them out of Envy’s body. He screams, before it’s cut off, his mouth pressed against—

Metal. Huh.

“Brother! You’re here!”

Tentatively, he lets a hand rest on Al’s back. Al is hugging him so tightly he can’t breathe, and it’s not doing his broken arm any favors. He doesn’t mind, though. He can’t bring himself to. “Al?”

The surreality of it, of seeing Al’s body, gaunt and whole, and now hearing Al’s voice, eternally ten and echoing, hits him hard, and he almost wants to cry.

“Brother,” Al says, his voice shaking. “You’re alive — I thought —”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “I’m sorry I scared you.” He lets his hand rest, cautious, on the top of Al’s head. Next to him, Ling struggles to his feet, and grins again, warm and delighted.

“Lan Fan,” he says. Behind Al is Gluttony, writhing on the floor and still bleeding a little from having Envy explode out of him, and behind him is Lan Fan, standing tall and proud, her shoulder tightly bandaged. She’s pale, and Ed can tell just from looking at her she’s not at a hundred percent, but then again, neither is he; neither are any of them.

“Young lord,” she says. “You’re safe.”

“You shouldn’t have come here,” Ling says, “but I’m glad you did. Thank you.”

She grins a little. Ed starts at it; it’s one of the first times he’s seen Lan Fan look human, like a person who laughs and smiles.

“I could not have shown my face back home if I had deserted you,” she says, but there’s a quiet fondness to her tone that makes Ling’s smile a little softer. “Alphonse helped me.”

Al still has his arm around Ed’s shoulders, both to help him stand and so they don’t have to let go of each other. Ed doesn’t call him out on it.

“So what is this place?” Ed asks, cracking his neck. Ling’s eyes catch his, amused, and he can feel his cheeks redden as he looks away. “Where are we?”

“Now,” a voice says from behind them. “This is interesting.”

And Ed turns and looks, and it’s fucking Van Hohenheim standing there staring at them, because apparently it’s just that kind of a day.

It turns out in the end that he isn’t Hohenheim, he just looks like him, and that he created the Homunculi, and he can do transmutations without equivalent exchange. And also that he’s a huge dick.

Ed decides this about when he tells Gluttony that he can eat Ling and Lan Fan, refuses to explain anything he’s been doing, and implies human beings are worth about as much as insects.

In the resulting fight, Ling and Lan Fan stay back to back, Ling favoring his left leg and Lan Fan keeping her armless side turned into him, protected. Al is a badass, as usual. Ed is reckless, also as usual. For about half a second he thinks they might be doing something to Father, until he glares at them and takes their alchemy away, and then Ed knows they’re absolutely fucked.

Envy pins Ed, Al, and Ling with three of their paws, leaving their back leg to idly scratch at their chin. Gluttony leaps on Lan Fan’s back and smacks her hurt shoulder against the ground. She makes a noise, a choked, stifled scream, and Father looks at her, actually looks, for perhaps the first time.

“How did you get here?” Father asks, his eyes golden and cold. He doesn’t sound angry, or confused. It’s just the same indifferent monotone he’s been using this whole time. “You do not belong in this place.” She’s trying to get a knife drawn, fighting through the pain to move her arm. Ed can see it in her face how much it hurts. But she’s still trying, still fighting.

“Lan Fan,” Ling says, his voice sharp, his breath a rattle under the weight of Envy’s palm and two broken ribs, “don’t tell them anything.”

She nods. Father tilts his head at her, and Ed doesn’t like the way he’s looking; like he’s suddenly seen something interesting in the room.

“Curious,” he says. “Such a stubborn nature. You came all the way here in this condition?”

“I go where my lord goes,” Lan Fan says tightly.

“Very curious,” he murmurs. “And such good stamina—you haven’t even passed out yet.”

Lan Fan shifts again, her hand still trying to find her knife. Her eyes are as cold as his, bitter and burning. Ed has seen her like this before.

Father tilts his head again. “You must know that you cannot kill me.”

“Then I will die protecting my lord, avenging him,” she says, steady. “It is my duty. I have failed him once; I shall not again.”

“Lan Fan!” Ling says, struggling under Envy’s hand. “No, run, go—”

“No,” she says. “I will not leave you with these monsters.”

“So stubborn,” Father says again, musing.

Ed chances another look at Ling, who looks distraught.

“Get out,” he says. “Run. Please.” Ed’s stomach twists at his voice, cracked and shaking.

“Little girl,” Father says. “It so happens I am in need of a strong pawn like you. Greed’s position is currently vacant.”

Lan Fan balks. “I will not desert my lord.”

“I am afraid,” Father says, a slow, demented smile spreading over his face, “that you have no choice.”

Father steps forward and tears at the sleeve of her shirt, exposing her bandaged stump of an arm, then he tugs down the bandages so they can all see the wound. Ed’s stomach lurches. It’s unsettling to see anyone treated like a rag doll, but especially Lan Fan, who has always stood so tall.

“Let her go,” Ling screams, his voice hoarse, cracking. Lan Fan is struggling against Gluttony’s hold, twisting away when Father tries to touch her.

“Hmm,” he says, uncaring. “Yes, this will do.” Then his forehead cracks open to reveal a purple eye, and red liquid seeps out like blood, falling into his hand. A Philosopher's Stone.

“Ooh,” Envy says, “this should be fun. I haven’t experienced it, of course, but I heard the pain is exquisite.”

“You’re sick,” Al snaps. “Let her go!”

“We’re helping her,” Envy snorts. “She’s useless to any of us without an arm. If we give it back, then she’ll only be useless to you.”

“What are you doing to her?” Ling yells, still struggling. “Let her go, please, I’ll take her place, she doesn’t deserve—”

“An interesting proposition,” Father says, and hums. “But you are harder to replace, Prince of Xing. We must remain unnoticed, for now.”

“If all goes well,” Envy says, gleefully, “then we’ll have a new human-based homunculus.”

Everything is starting to make a terrible kind of sense in Ed’s mind. “Don’t,” he says, struggling still harder. “Don’t, she’ll die—”

Lan Fan is staring at Father’s hand. “That is a Philosopher’s Stone,” she says.

Father tilts his head at her again. “Yes, it is.”

“My lord,” she says, emphatically, sternly, “do not stop them. I will take this stone into myself and we will bring it home to Xing. Our clan will be saved.” She meets his eyes. “You will be king.”

“Lan Fan,” Ling says, low and terrified. “Please.”

“I will not fail,” she says, gritted between her teeth, turning her determined eyes forward, and then Father pours the Stone into her wound.

Lan Fan screams, and her back arches in a way that borders on grotesque. Red lightning is burning through the air, ripping through her body, and Envy makes a sound like a burbling laugh, deep in their throat, echoing through the room. Ed tries to yell her name, but he’s drowned out in the cacophony of her screaming.

When the lightning has quieted, her body keeps convulsing. She is sweating, blinking back tears, crawling along the floor on her hands and knees, but her face looks savage. Ed’s stomach lurches again. She isn’t someone he recognizes, in that instant. She’s only a cornered animal, and this is her last resort.

“This is interesting,” Father says, still in that bullshit monotone.

“You don’t seem to mind the pain as much as Wrath’s candidates did,” Envy says, their voice attempting boredom but coming out interested, almost fascinated.

“Monster,” Lan Fan says, “I am the chosen bodyguard and vassal of the twelfth prince of Xing.” She snarls again, and then hunches forward, curling in on herself, her one arm bracing her body as she heaves at the ground, but nothing comes up. “I have carried pains worse than this,” she says, but this time it’s hoarse, choked out through a mouth that is barely responding. She screams again, a scream that sounds like a laugh, and then like a scream again.

The lightning comes back, sparking out of her body, and Lan Fan hunches over as the flesh at her shoulder starts bubbling, and from the stump comes her arm, unscathed, growing back—with one difference.

Lan Fan stares at the tattoo on her hand, and stands.

“Lan Fan,” Alphonse tries, before Envy can think to silence him again.

Lan Fan tilts her head back and laughs, harsh and grating, like a fingernail down a chalkboard. Then she smiles at them, and it’s not a smile Lan Fan has ever worn in her life. There’s something smooth and cruel about it.

“I think something got lost in translation,” she says, and leans over in front of him, that sickening smile still on her face. “The name’s Greed. It’s a pleasure.”

“No,” Ling says, terrified. “No. Lan Fan.”

“Already told ya,” she says, examining her nails. “She’s not at home.”

“She must be,” Ling insists, still struggling. He switches to Xingese, then, Lan Fan's name and then a frantic sentence which Ed can't translate. Ling has mostly been teaching him insults and curse words, because that's the fun part of language learning. The tone, though, carries meaning, even if he doesn't know the individual words. 

“You’re starting to bore me, imbecile,” Greed says, her eyes flashing. “How’s this for an explanation. She’s gone. She gave her body over willingly.”

“She would never do that,” Ling says. “Never.”

“Guess you don’t know her as well as you think, kid,” Greed says, and stretches, and then walks up to Father, kneeling down for just a moment.

“Greed,” he says.

“Thank you,” she says, “for giving me life.”

“Born of my avarice,” he says. “Spirit of my spirit. I have lost a daughter recently. You shall fill her place admirably.”

“Well, I’ll do my best,” she says, and hooks a thumb back over her shoulder at the three of them. “Should I kill them?”

“The armoured one and the one with auto-mail must live,” Father says.

“All right,” she says. “The only one I really wanted to kill was the ponytailed brat, anyway.”

Before she can move even a step closer to Ling, though, Scar and a stranger burst through the door, the stupid little panda Al has been hiding in his armor squeaks and runs for them, and Envy lets their guard down, just for a second.

But a second is enough for the three of them to wiggle out from under their clawed paws, and for the fight to begin in earnest.

Ed has one priority in this battle—he won’t let Greed touch Ling.

He doesn’t want any of them to kill him, obviously, especially since they never really got to talk about—whatever it was that happened in Gluttony’s stomach when they were both nearly dead from blood loss and hunger and Ling stared at him with that terrifying open look in his eyes and said “if I’m going to see one person before I die, I wouldn’t mind it being you.”

And other parts of the battle are going on—Ed told Scar that Envy started the Civil War, the little girl screamed something at him about virtue and princesses and then something else at Ling about death to the Yao, and Father acted creepy—but the only other person Ed really cares about is Al, and Al can take care of himself. Ling is so close to death’s door right now that it’s not funny. Ed wants to make sure he doesn’t open it.

Not until he can think of some response to Ling’s statement that isn’t just the fumbling “Uh. Me too,” that he originally came up with.

(It’s probably not practical to be thinking about how much he wants to come up with a really good response in the middle of a fight as intense as this when he still can’t use his alchemy, but Ed has always been pretty good at multitasking.)

But Ling’s dumb princely ass, wounded and shaking just a little with adrenalin and horror, runs instantly towards Greed, ignoring the little girl’s angry shouts and calling out Lan Fan’s name. Greed’s smile flashes, sharp as a knife-slice, over her face. It’s a stolen face, a stolen body, but Ed has seen that expression in Dublith. Greed’s pissed as hell.

Ed swears to himself and follows Ling, shooting a quick sideways glance at Al, who responds with a slightly panicked thumbs up.

Cool. Shit. Whatever.

Ed’s pretty sure he’s handled worse odds.

When Ed reaches them, they’re in a chamber off to the side of the main one, like Greed tried to run and lose Ling and he wasn’t deterred. He jumps into the fight at Ling’s side, but the dumbass is already breathing heavy, still favoring his left leg over his right. He’s such a goddamn idiot, Ed thinks, but doesn’t say it, just falls in at his left (which is, frustratingly, a side he always leaves open while fighting) and tries to keep Greed from beating him up too bad.

“Can’t you just give it a rest?” Greed says, her eyebrows arched. “Your girlfriend’s not here, and there’s no saving her now, so—”

She’s cut off when Ling ducks under her outstretched arm and kicks her in the face with his good leg. She backs off, nose bleeding and sparking as it heals, looking furious.

“What the hell,” she says. “How do you keep doing that?”

“I’ve sparred against you for years,” Ling says. “You think I don’t know your every move?”

“You’ve never even met me,” Greed snaps, blocking him and shoving him down. Her eyes are narrow and purple, sharp and mean. Ed aims a kick at her side which she dodges, jumping closer to Ling and out of his reach.

“Muscle memory,” Ling says, then knocks her legs out from under her from his place on the ground and grins. “You taught me that one, Lan Fan.”

Greed is on her feet again in seconds, and Ling is not fast enough to get up before she reaches him and grabs him by the neck, hands going black. Ling chokes, kicking out with both legs to her chest.

“You’re gonna have to do better than that,” he wheezes. “Prince of Xing, remember? Do you know how many people have tried to assassinate me?”

“Shut up, you royal brat,” she hisses. Ed gets back in between them, throwing up his metal arm to block the punch Greed sends at Ling’s face.

“Ed, don’t,” Ling says, and Ed glares at him.

“You’re almost fucking dead and you tell me to lay off?” he says. “Unbelievable.”

Of course, looking at Ling is enough to distract him, and enough for Greed to swipe her claws at his side and knock him a few feet away.

“Leave him out of this,” Ling yells, and then punches Lan Fan across the face. “Lan Fan, I know you can hear me. This is just between us.”

“Can you shut up about her?” Greed snaps. “This is getting pathetic.”

He punches again. She blocks him with the carbon. “I know you’re still in there.”

Greed doesn’t even answer this time, just growls. Ed struggles to his feet, but can’t get there before Ling, frustrated, hits her again.

Ling screams something else in Xingese, and Ed gets one word this time—grandfather. The homunculus freezes where she stands, and Ling's punch actually lands, hitting her square in the face.

Then she’s glaring at him, moving to throw him off.

“Enough, brat,” she says. “I don’t have time for this.” She runs away, back towards Father’s chamber. Ling moves, as if he’s going to try to follow her, but then wobbles on his feet, dizzy.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Ed says, and grabs him around the middle to keep him up, casts a quick glance around. Al and Scar and the little girl are nowhere to be seen, but Envy and Gluttony are gone, too. “I’m getting you out of here.”

“No,” Ling says, stubborn fucking asshole that he is. “No, I need to—”

“You’re no use to anyone if you’re dead,” Ed says. “Now—”

He looks around. He knows they’ll find him sooner or later, but he’s really hoping on later.

(He wishes he could fucking transmute.)

He hears someone breathing, sharp and wet, in the darkness, and turns to find Scar, of all people, bleeding and staring at them.

“For fuck’s sake,” Ed says again, exasperated with fate, then glares at him. “We don’t have much time. Would you be able to make it to the surface?”

“You’re not going to kill me?” Scar’s voice is gravelly.

“Believe me, I wish I could at least kick your ass,” Ed mutters, bitter. The guy who killed Winry's parents, right here, and—! He shakes his head. “But I need you to get him out.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Ling mutters.

“Now’s not the time to be a smartass,” Ed snaps. “Can you walk?”

Ling nods, face mutinous.

“Good,” Ed says, and lets him go. “Get out of here. I’ll distract them.”

Something changes in Ling’s face, then, something open and honest and really fucking scary.

“Ed—”

“They won’t kill me,” Ed says. “It’s fine. Just get out. As fast as you can.”

Ling’s face closes again. “All right,” he says.

“I suppose I get no say in this,” Scar says.

“You won’t make it out alone,” Ed tells him. “This is helping you just as much as it’s gonna help Ling. Now just fucking go, all right? The longer we stand around talking, the more likely it is they’ll find us.”

He lets himself look one more time at Ling’s face before he races out back into Father’s chamber again, calling for Al, but before he can find him he’s punched, hard, in the face and knocked to the ground, pinned there by a pair of legs clothed in black. Ling's not the only one who's fought against Lan Fan—Ed has too, and he knows he won't be able to get out of this. He'd break his neck first, and then Al would probably be pissed.

“There,” Greed says. What he can see of her smile out of the corner of his eye is sharp and gleaming. “That wasn’t too hard after all.”

Ed closes his eyes and resigns himself to whatever fate is waiting for him out there.

Chapter Text

Somehow, Ed and Al get out alive. Together, like they always do.

They get the little girl—named Mei, apparently—out too, smuggled in Al’s armor and fast asleep for most of it. Ed doesn’t even know she’s there for half of it, which is probably a good thing, because he’s got a big mouth and low impulse control and Bradley—Wrath?—threatened Winry, so he feels shaken and horrified, vulnerable in a way he hates feeling. They call her on the way home and Paninya picks up and he has a moment of absolute panic before she makes fun of him and puts Winry on the line.

“What’s up?” she asks. “You never call. Did you mess up your arm again?”

“No,” Ed says, “I just—are you okay?”

He hears her sit down, over the line. “Tell me what happened, Ed.”

“I—” he says, and glances helplessly at Al, who shrugs. “I can’t.”

“You never tell me anyth—”

“Winry,” he says, cutting her off. “I can’t.” He hopes she knows what that means. That there are orders, and he's in trouble. That he wishes he could.

That takes the heat out of her. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she says. “Just—be safe, okay?”

“Will do,” Ed says. “Um. Tell Paninya hi.”

“Yeah,” she says, and he can hear the fondness in her voice, despite how cryptic he's being. “I will.”

He hangs up, and he and Al both jump when someone clears their throat behind them.

When they turn, it’s Greed, examining her nails.

“You know, little alchemist,” she says, “Father was right. You are incredibly predictable.”

“What the hell are you—”

“You didn’t think we’d just let you run off, did you?” She tilts her head, and it’s still so, so weird to see Greed’s sharp, wicked grin on Lan Fan’s face. “Wrath said to make sure you didn’t try to tell the girl anything, and you didn’t. Good job.” She gives a quick, sarcastic clap.

“Are you just gonna follow us around, or what?” Ed asks. “‘Cause that’s gonna get old really fuckin’ quick—”

“Ed,” Al hisses, pinching him.

Greed only snickers, sticking her hands in the pockets of her coat. “You’re fiery, kid, I’ll give you that. And no, we’re not. We’re just gonna be watching.”

Ed sticks his hands in his pockets, too. “Can I talk to her?”

“What, the girl?” Greed says, raising her eyebrows. “I wasn’t lying to you earlier. I don’t do that. She’s gone. She told me I could use the body and I haven’t heard from her since. Shame. She seemed like a sharp one.”

Ed doesn’t know if he believes that. But he remembers Greed from Dublith, saying he didn’t lie, in that same affronted way. He thinks that Greed believes it, which could be good and could be very bad. Lan Fan could be biding her time, hiding away, waiting to fight back, but she could also be silent because she’s overwhelmed with the force hosting Greed is putting on her body.

He can’t help but remember how weak she looked, and how much pain she must have been in that night. He can’t even imagine how difficult it would have been to fight against a force as strong as Greed in that condition.

“That little prince,” Greed says, “you tell him not to stick his nose in where he doesn’t belong, got it?”

“Why the hell do you care?” Ed asks, which earns him another pinch from Al, for deliberately antagonizing a homunculus for the second time today.

She fixes him with another disinterested look.

“He doesn’t need to die,” she says. “And I don’t like killing people unless I have to.”

She turns to walk away, then, her black coat trailing behind her like a cloud of smoke.

“Hey,” Ed shouts, thinking maybe he can surprise her, coax her out. Maybe he can find something to prove that Ling’s faith isn’t unfounded, that she could still be in there somewhere. “Lan Fan.”

She doesn’t even turn, just lifts a hand. “Still Greed, shorty.”

Ed looks grimly at Al as she vanished into the crowd, and Al nods, a little sadly. Then they go forward. Together, just like they always do.

-

“Sit still, wouldya?”

Ling is having trouble figuring out words, at the moment. The man’s accent is heavy and not exactly Amestrian, but he’s speaking Amestrian, so it’s confusing to sort out for Ling’s already soupy mind. “Ed,” he mumbles, struggling to sit up. “Lan Fan—”

“I said sit still,” the stranger says, pushing at his shoulder until he’s pressed back down against the bed. “Goddamnit.”

His chest hurts, but it’s the dull ache of a bruised rib rather than the sharpness that would come from having broken anything. Ling closes his eyes and leans back, breathing through it, trying not to move. The stranger with the accented Amestrian is wrapping bandages around the cut on his shoulder, which doesn’t hurt as much as it did earlier.

“Who are you?” he asks, his throat dry and his voice cracking. “Where’s—”

“That officer who brought you here is lounging in my living room,” he says. “And Elric will be here soon if he’s not already. Now shuddup and sit still, got it?”

Ling wonders what happened to the man that Ed called Scar, and why he didn’t just abandon him in the catacombs. He must have passed out at some point, and stopped being useful.

Now there’s an unpleasant thought. Ling has dealt with assassins for as long as he can remember, but he has never felt so utterly useless before. He has never been so completely at the mercy of someone else. He doesn’t think it’s an experience worth repeating.

He grits his teeth as the bandages are finished and the stranger moves on to his ribs.

“You know you can talk to me,” he says, abruptly, staring at Ling over a pair of rectangular glasses. “I ain’t gonna bite.”

“Who are you?”

“The owner of a fuckin' halfway home, apparently,” he says, then, more helpfully, “name’s Knox. I used to be a doctor.”

“A—what?”

“Halfway home,” Knox repeats. Ling still doesn't know what that means. “I got patients up to my elbows all of a sudden because of that bastard Mustang. He thinks he can just send some kids my way and I’ll drop everything to fix ‘em. Prick.” He finishes feeling at Ling’s ribs and stands, walking across the room to a box of bandages. “Well, nothing broken, at least. Goddamnit, kid, what did you get up to out there? Fight some kinda dragon or what?”

Ling thinks about Envy’s true form and winces. “Something like that.”

He starts to stand, ignoring the hurt all over his body, and the way his knees shake when he tries. He gets halfway up before Knox turns and yelps.

“What the hell’re you—”

“Ling!”

And it’s Ed, eyes sharp and clothes and face clean, rushing in the door. He looks Ling over with a clinical anxiousness, searching for scrapes and bruises, and relaxing into a relieved smile when he doesn’t find any. “You’re okay.”

“I have to go,” Ling says, even as Knox crosses the room to him, and pushes him back down onto the bed. “I have to find her, she—”

“We don’t know where Greed is,” Ed says, “but you can’t go look now, you almost died—”

“I have to find Fu, at least!” Ling says, still trying, and then Alphonse comes in, a small person trailing behind him that Ling doesn’t look twice at.

“What’s going on?” Al asks, concerned. “Dr. Knox, he’s hurt, you shouldn’t be pinning him down like that—”

“Oh yeah, like I’m the problem,” Knox snorts. “Your friend is trying to get up and walk with half a body’s worth of blood loss, don’t tell me how to do my goddamn job—”

“That much?” Ed says, his voice hollow suddenly, and scared. “Shit, Ling.”

“Yeah, that much,” Knox snaps, leaving the job of keeping Ling in bed to Ed, who seems willing to do it, and leaving to walk down the hall.

“Jackass,” Ed says, “stay in bed. I’ll sit on you, see if I don’t.”

Ling grumbles at him and closes his eyes. If he can just pretend to sleep, he thinks, maybe they’ll leave him alone and he can go look for her.

“Ling?” a voice says, interrupting his act. He recognizes it, vaguely, but at the same time it’s unfamiliar. Like something he heard once a long time ago. It’s soft and high and very, very small, connected to the little girl who wandered in after Al. “Ling Yao?”

He opens his eyes and looks at her, and she looks back, and then she reaches for her belt.

“Prince Yao,” Princess Mei of the Chang clan says, her fingers loose around silver darts, sharp-edged and deadly. She’s got a bandage on her forehead, and her eyes are big and dark in her little face.

“Princess Chang,” he says, instantly stiff-shouldered and cold. He reaches for his belt, but they’ve taken his sword.

“You’re here to discover the secret of immortality,” she says. Shifts, from foot to foot. “It’s unfortunate that you’ll die here.”

Ling thinks, desperately—not like this, not like this. But he’s weak from the blood loss and shaken from the loss of Lan Fan, tired in every potential way. Mei is sharp-eyed and determined. Mei looks like a victor.

“Hey, calm down,” Ed says then, stepping forward. “We’re all on the same side here—”

“What lies has he fed you?” she snaps. “The Yao live in luxury while my people die, and he thinks he deserves the crown?”

“I don’t give a shit about the crown or your political drama,” Ed says, his voice even. Always stepping in, Ling thinks, where he’s not needed, and Ling likes him for it often and hates him for it once in a while. Now is one of the times when he hates him for it. Ed has given enough to protect Ling. He’s given too much. “If you make even one move, little girl—”

Now he’s shifted, hands in a ready position to clap, to transmute if he needs to.

“Ed,” Ling says, tired and stern. “This isn’t your fight.”

“No shit, dumbass,” Ed says, glaring at him. “It’s also not yours. You can barely stand.”

“Good!” the girl says. “Another opponent to the throne will be eliminated and my clan—”

Doctor Knox comes in, then, glaring at the lot of them and smacking Mei Chang on the back of the head for good measure. “What in the hell is going on in here?”

“Don’t interfere in the affairs of our country,” the little girl snaps, and Ling shifts his position in the bed to one that better protects his vital organs, his hands shaking with the strain of even sitting up.

“I’ll interfere all I want if you’re my patients,” he snarls, and points to the doorway. “Get the hell out. He needs to rest. And quit giving Fullmetal lip, he and his brother are the ones who brought you here in the first place.”

She levels her glare at Ed, instead. “I didn’t ask for your help,” she spits, “liar.”

Ed throws up his hands. “I’ve never even met you. What could I possibly have lied to you about?”

“Hey, woah,” Al says, holding up his hands, ever the peacemaker. “Let’s just—”

“Just get out,” Ling says. “Just, just—”

“But—” Ed starts, and Ling can’t swallow it down any longer, his bitterness and all of his mistakes. Ed shouldn’t have gotten him out of there. Ed shouldn’t have taken him in there in the first place. This was all a stupid, stupid gamble and it’s lost Ling his best friend, the person he knows best in the world, inside and out and backwards. The way she screamed as the Stone was poured into her wound is echoing in his ears and pounding with his headache and it should have been him, it should have been him.

She did all of this for him, and what has he given her? What has he ever done to repay her?

“Get out, ” he says, voice cracking, dry and raw.

“Fine!” Ed says, throwing up his hands. “Fine. Cool. Whatever. I don’t give a shit, okay? I’m out.”

“Fine,” Ling says. He stares at the wall and tries to breathe, tries to think, tries not to cry.

“Sorry for trying to help, asshole,” Ed says, and leaves.

And then Ling does cry, a little; a few silent tears escaping his eyes and making their way down his cheeks, soaking his pillow as Ed leaves.

-

Ed slams the door, a little, on his way out. It feels good. Knox drags the little girl out after him, by the collar of her shirt, and gets her back onto the couch, where she complains and then passes out. Ed slumps down in a chair in the kitchen and closes his eyes.

“You gonna stay in my house too, kid?”

“Al and I can leave soon if you want,” Ed says. “And I can give you something for helping them.”

Knox waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it.” He leaves, then, to flick his cigarette butt out the window. Ed pinches at the bridge of his nose. He hates the smell of smoke.

“Ed,” Al says again, from the doorway. His footsteps are hesitant, echoing. “Hey—”

“Just—don’t,” Ed says, because he knows Al’s trying to be comforting, and the idea of someone sitting down in front of him and telling him that Ling’s just being a jackass sits wrong in his chest, because he is, but he’s also just lost Lan Fan, and he can’t fault him, not really. “All right?” He gives himself one more second to be pissed off before he sighs, scrubs at his eyes, and sits up. “Are you okay? Do you need help fixing your armor?”

“No, I did that earlier,” Al says. “Are you—”

“I have something to tell you,” Ed says, interrupting him, because he doesn’t want to talk about this and Al needs to know, now, before anything else can get in the way. “I saw your body.”

“You—” Al stumbles backwards, then forwards, sitting down in a chair at the table. He puts his armoured head in his hands and stays that way for a minute. “What?"

His voice is very, very small.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “We had to—well, essentially I transmuted us through the Gate. To get out of there. It was the only thing I could think of. And I saw you.”

“What—what did I look like?” There’s something trembling, wavering in Al’s voice. He sounds lost. Ed’s chest aches.

“Too thin,” he says. “Your hair was longer than mine, too. But you looked like yourself. You smiled at me.” He doesn’t know how to talk about that, the sharp-edged warmth and despair of seeing Al’s smile again. He’d almost forgotten what it looked like.

“I . . . did?”

“I told you to come with me,” Ed says. “I thought I could pull you out. Or pull it out, I guess, the body, but it said no. It said I wasn’t the right soul.”

“So only I can get it back?”

Ed shrugs. “I guess so.”

“Thank you,” Al says, softly, shakily. “For trying.” He stares at his hands. “Was it—older?”

There’s something in that sentence that Al doesn’t want to say, that Ed knows how to interpret nonetheless. “It aged along with you,” he says, because he doesn’t lie to Al, ever. He knows what Al is asking, though, and that’s about how his body aged. He knows that he lost his body before puberty really made a mess of things, and that scares him. “But it was so thin.” He glances up past his bangs, and raises his eyebrows. “Once you gain the weight back, maybe it’ll be—but we’ll cross that bridge then, okay?”

Al sighs and doesn’t look up.

“Isn’t that selfish?” he says. “To wonder how it’ll look. And how I’ll feel in it.”

“No, it’s not,” Ed says, stern. “It’s not selfish, Al.”

Al won’t look at him.

“Alphonse,” Ed says. “Listen to me. Everyone worries about that shit, all right? How they look, how other people see them.” He drops his voice a little, conscious of the other people in the room, even if Mei seems to be asleep and Knox doesn’t seem to be paying them too much mind. “It’s gonna be a little more difficult for you but there are things you can do, okay? I’ve been reading about them. Surgery, if you want that, or just—”

“I know,” Al says, cutting him off. “I just wish it was easier. I just feel like—I don’t know. Like I said, it’s selfish. But I feel like after all this we should just be able to get our bodies back and that would be it.” There’s open frustration in his voice, bitterness.

Ed reaches out and puts a hand on Al’s arm. He hates that there are things he can’t help Al with, battles they’re going to need to fight apart instead of together. But he doesn’t want to say some fluffy, useless thing to Al in the name of making him feel better. Al hates that; he hates being talked down to. So he just sits there with him, a hand on his arm to let him know that even if he’s frustrated and angry and sad, Ed’s here and Ed’s got his back.

It’s a lot to say through a hand gesture, but they’ve gotten pretty good at talking without talking by now.

“You should get some rest,” Al says, finally, quietly. “I can go out and buy some food for you.”

“Nah,” Ed says, just as quietly, and pats his arm once more before getting up. “We can get a hotel. They’ll have food there, probably.”

“Okay,” Al says. “I’ll wait here. I think we should tell Ling where we’re staying.”

“In case he needs to rack up my fucking room service bill,” Ed grumbles, but he can’t help shooting a worried look towards the room where Ling is. Al notices, because Al always notices.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine, Ed.”

“I got him into this,” Ed mumbles. “If he hadn’t met us—”

“He would have starved by the side of the road, dummy,” Al says. “So stop blaming yourself. I hate when you do that.”

Sometimes Al’s protectiveness comes out by giving Ed giant hugs and sometimes it comes out by angrily pointing out Ed’s dumbassery. Either way, Ed supposes it works.

“I’ll be back soon, then, I guess,” he says. “Want to come?”

“No, I want to try and talk to Mei,” Al says. “Her alchemy is . . . different. It might help us.”

“You’re not wrong,” Ed acknowledges. “See you in an hour, then.”

He glances back towards the hall, once, as he leaves, then forward, out onto the street. It’s already starting to get dark.

-

Ling watches as the sun goes down, and tries to sleep for an indeterminate amount of time. He can’t, though, because he’s thinking about Lan Fan, and thinking about Fu, and thinking about home. Seeing Princess Chang has brought back a lot of memories, most of them good, but tinged with bitterness after everything that’s happened.

Lan Fan had seemed different, last night, more like she had a long time ago. The smile on her face had been open and gentle and honest and he’d been shocked and delighted at seeing it, at seeing her. She’d seemed moments away from dryly and fondly calling him a fool. He supposes it speaks to how much she must trust Ed and Al, even after this short time knowing them. There are still some people back home that she would never act that way in front of. Lan Fan hasn’t dared to call him names in front of other people since they were about ten years old and she had started her training. The most he would get from her—publicly, at least—were the fondness and familiarity of her hands on his shoulders when she steadied him after sparring, the dry wit of her observations once they arrived in Amestris. They were meant for her grandfather, but they made him chuckle, and once or twice she glanced, amused, in his direction when he did.

There is so much he has had to give up to succeed for his people, for Xing; but giving up Lan Fan’s steady and determined friendship was the worst of it.

That isn’t fair, not really. He sighs and rolls over a bit in bed, trying to get comfortable. They never stopped caring about each other, they just stopped being allowed to show it. If she puts a hand on his shoulder she wouldn’t be a guard or a friend, she would be an overly-familiar young woman trying to make a play for a royal. She would be a schemer.

They’d both fought it at first, and gotten used to it in time. Fu’s eyes had been ever-present and trained on the back of their heads. Lan Fan had learned to walk two steps behind him, not to speak unless spoken to. He had learned not to look like he cared about her opinion or viewed her as anything other than a body that could be thrown in front of his if necessary.

It made them both sick, sometimes. He remembers her at fourteen, eyes burning like a sunset, pacing his bedroom after all the other people in the house had gone to sleep. She had been talking a mile a minute about all of the old men in the palace who had looked down their noses at her when they’d been visiting the Emperor, all of the people who made sharp comments to her grandfather as if she wasn’t there. He remembers her at sixteen, in love with a girl who worked in town, her hands covering her face as she laughed giddily on his bed and described the weightlessness of her limbs after kissing her. He remembers her at seventeen, fighting with him about going to Amestris, telling him he was fifteen, he was a child, he was too young to hunt for fables and glory.

He had stood as tall as he could and told her she didn’t have room to talk about being too young when she’d been putting her life on the line for him since she was ten.

“That’s not fair," she’d snapped, her eyes icy, “it’s my job to do that, young lord—” and it had been the first time she’d ever thrown the title at him, like a kunai, stabbing itself into the wall next to his head. They’d both stood frozen, glaring at each other, before she’d pressed her mask onto her face and went to sit on the roof. They hadn’t spoken after that fight, not for days.

He’d stopped her on the fourth night of her stony silence, because Lan Fan is stubborn and sharp-edged, endlessly determined, and he loves her for it. “I’m sorry,” he’d said. “But it’s the only way. You know that.”

“I do,” she’d said. “I only—I don’t think you’re going to be happy with what you find, when we get there. Nothing comes without a price.”

“If it’s for the Yao,” he’d told her, “I will pay it.”

But she was right. He didn’t like what he found. And she’s been the one, time and time again, who’s suffered for it.

He sighs again and looks outside, into the quickly dimming sky. She’s out there, somewhere, in Central. He wonders if he could even find the homunculus’ aura with all of this other energy in the way, from the being called Father. He wonders if Lan Fan is even still there to find—

He grits his teeth. He can’t think like that. He saw her, he saw her—

He sits up.

He can’t sleep, that much is clear. He’s not going to get anything done in this state, nothing substantial anyway. But he’s not going to help her by lying here thinking, either.

He struggles to his feet. At the very least, he can find Fu and bring him back here; they can make a plan to bring her back. He doesn’t want to look Fu in the eyes and tell him he’s lost his precious granddaughter, but there’s nothing else he can think of that would be even remotely useful. So he stands and hobbles to the window, one hand pressed to his side. He’s dizzy, even with just that movement, but he takes one step, and then another, gritting his teeth.

Then there’s a tap on the door, and a voice as it swings open.

“Hey, listen, I know everything was—I dunno, shitty, earlier, but I—”

It’s Ed, holding a bag of something that smells good, and looking more pissed off, suddenly, than Ling has ever seen him look.

Knox had the right idea, before, Ling thinks. Goddamnit.

-

When Ed gets back, bearing a peace offering in the form of food, Ling’s dumb ass is attempting to climb out the window. The window, on the second story of this stupid house, when he is literally half dead from injuries and exhaustion and blood loss.

“Fucking shit,” Ed says, for lack of anything better to say. “Go back to bed.”

Ling glares at him.

“Oh, this again,” Ed snaps, and gestures at the bed, dropping his bag of food on the dresser and moving closer. “You wanna die, be my guest; if you don’t, then rest up. I’m not above sitting on you.”

“I have to look for Fu,” he says. “If I can find him—”

“They’ll live,” Ed says. “You might not.”

Ling appears unconvinced, his eyes flicking back outside the window.

“Seriously,” Ed says, “I will sit on you. Are you always this terrible of a patient?”

“She’s out there all alone and it’s my fault, ” Ling says, the end of the sentence cracking in anger. “It’s all my fault, Ed, she could be dead for all I know, and you’re just sitting there like I’m being an idiot! If it was Alphonse—”

“Woah, hey,” Ed says, and holds up his hands. “Ling.”

“Don’t,” Ling says, his hands shaking, and he sits back down on the bed, folding in on himself. “Don’t, just—”

He looks like death warmed over. He looks like he’s grieving. Ed sits down next to him.

“Hey,” Ed says, not sure what, exactly, he can even say. “We’ll get her back.”

“She’s my best friend,” Ling says, muffled through his hands. “I promised her mother I’d bring her home.”

“You will,” Ed says.

“You don’t know that,” he says. His eyes are closed, now, his hands pulled off his face only to sit, fists balled, against his knees. “Did you know she was my milk sister? Empresses have no time to care for children, but they don’t like to broadcast it. It looks bad.”

“Milk sister?”

Ling nods. “Her mother nursed me. We grew up right next to each other, every step of the way. I know her as well as you know Alphonse.” He moves his hand so it’s gripping Ed’s wrist, so tightly it almost hurts. “I don’t know what I’d do if she—”

“Hey,” Ed says, feeling woefully inadequate, small and useless and overwhelmingly like he isn’t the person Ling wants to see right now. He tries not to let that bother him too much. “She’s not dead, all right? We can still save her.”

He barks out a laugh, tight and terrified. “You always think you can save everyone, Edward.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m enough of a stubborn asshole to actually do it,” Ed says, and knocks their shoulders together. “And Lan Fan—she’s a fighter. You know her. She’s just waiting for her chance. And then she’ll be back here, climbing in my window, asking if I’ve seen you and eating all my food.”

Ling’s hand moves to grasp his own, their fingers linking together.

“She’s an idiot,” he says, hoarse and sad. “Ed. She’s such an idiot. Did she really think I was angry that she—she lost her arm, Ed, she lost it protecting me, and she thought I—”

Ed moves to hug him on instinct. He doesn’t like touching people much with his metal arm—it’s always too cold and too heavy and too something. But this is Ling. It’s different with him. Everything is.

Ling shudders against him with the force of his frustration and anger and sorrow. Ed just holds him tighter. At least he can do this, if nothing else, to make up for this horrible situation he’s put Ling in, that he still feels half responsible for despite Al telling him to stop. At least he can do this. At least he can do something.

“She’s given up so much for me already,” he says, muffled against Ed’s shoulder. “I thought I knew what I would be losing to come here. But I didn’t. And she told me I would regret it, she told me, and she still trusted me enough to come—”

“Ever think she might trust you to fix it, too?” Ed says.

“How can I?” Ling says, his voice hollow. “I don’t even know where she is.”

“Yeah, so you find her, dumbass,” Ed says, shaking him a little. It hurts to see Ling like this, his usually wide smile crushed. “Get up—not this second, because you will rest if I have to knock you out myself—but get up and look for her. Find Fu and then find Greed. Don’t just let this happen, fight it. I know you, okay? You lived through Gluttony’s stomach with me. You held your own against Bradley. You carried her to safety when she got hurt protecting you. I know you.” He jabs a finger into Ling’s chest. “You don’t leave people behind. That’s what’s gonna make you the best fucking emperor Xing’s ever had.”

Ling looks at him, and there’s still that look of defeat and exhaustion on his face, but his eyes are sharp again, burning.

“You do realize,” he says, slowly, “that’s what I was trying to do when you came in here, and you yelled at me for it.” There’s a hint of a smile on the corner of his mouth. Just a tiny flicker, but it’s enough.

Ed grins. “Don’t be a smartass.”

Ling’s grin becomes a bit bigger. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He keeps his head against Ed’s shoulder for a moment before pulling back and clearing his throat. “Thanks, Ed. You’re something else.”

Ed can feel his cheeks getting red, and he firmly tells himself that now is not the time to get flustered. “You—you’re welcome.”

Ling is looking at him now in that same curiously open way he had in Gluttony’s stomach. His eyes had been dancing in the torchlight, soft and thoughtful. Ed gets redder and looks away.

“What did you say, before? When you yelled at her, and she froze?” Ed asks. It’s to change the subject, a little, but he’s curious, too. Ling had seemed shaken by it, enough that he didn’t run after Greed when she ditched them.

“I asked if she had forgotten our country,” Ling says, after a long moment of silence. “And her grandfather.”

“And?” Ed asks.

“She was there, Ed,” Ling says. There’s a sharp determination in his voice, and a grimness, but there’s hope, too, wild and untamable. “I’m sure of it. For just a moment. I saw her.”

-

Miles away, on a rooftop in Central City, a girl is glaring, fierce and fiery and brown-eyed, at Wrath.

“Don’t underestimate us humans,” she says.

Then her expression changes, glare replaced with a smirk, brown eyes replaced with violet.

“Isn’t she something?” the homunculus Greed says, almost fond. Almost proud. Wrath tilts his head and says nothing, for a moment. It is not a surprise. Greed has always been soft, too soft.

“Indeed,” Wrath says, finally. He too has been a human trapped in the skin of a god. He too has fought for dominance against souls that are not his own. He too has made choices. “That does not make her less of a fool.”

Chapter Text

part iii

Don’t underestimate us humans. The words rattle, purposeful, inside Lan Fan’s mouth. She holds her breath, keeping the words inside, waiting to scream them out. Greed is making a concerted effort to absorb her into the writhing mass of souls that now exist within her, and when she is not doing this she ignores her, and pretends she is the only creature of worth within Lan Fan’s skin.

Lan Fan finds she doesn't mind this, much. If the beast was paying her close attention, she would not be able to plan her escape.

So she holds her breath, and she waits.

-

Ed wakes up with a crick in his neck, slumped in the chair that’s in Ling’s little makeshift recovery room. Al is there, too, cross-legged on the floor and reading a book. He glances up when Ed stirs, and there’s a knowing element to the slow and purposeful way he’s moving.

Ed shifts in his chair.

“Guess we're not getting a hotel, then,” Al says, his voice measured. Ed tries to imagine what his face would look like, right now; it’s a game he plays with himself sometimes, trying to figure out what Al’s feeling, what expression he would have. A little of that irritating, knowing, little brother superiority, maybe. A lot of quiet support—that’s an expression that Al has always been very good at making. Amusement, at Ed’s predicament. Chin on his hand, maybe, a bit of a smile starting to show. 

If he knows, that is. If he’s figured it all out. Ed wouldn’t put it past him, but he doesn’t know how to approach it either. He doesn’t want to throw it out in the air and let it hang there, his twisted-up feelings for Ling, irritation and affection and want that twists his stomach when he least expects it.

Al doesn’t really get to do romantic stuff, at the moment, or, well—he could, theoretically. But it’d be difficult and messy and Al would be angry all through it, at his own perceived shortcomings and lack of a body. That’s enough to make Ed feel like he shouldn’t interact with that stuff, either, like he should just turn his head and ignore it all until Al’s back and they both have some time.

Maybe that’s just a messed-up justification. (He thinks that Al would certainly say it was, which is why he’s never said anything about it.)

“What time is it?” he says, and yawns. “I’m starved.”

“You always are,” Al says, that hint of amusement still in his voice, before it’s replaced by a no-nonsense kind of calmness. “It’s about ten. Mei Chang left already. Dr. Knox tried to stop her, but she just kept saying he’d done enough and she had to meet up with her companions. She tried to pay, too, but he wouldn’t accept it.” He’s quiet for a second. “Do you think she has bodyguards, like Ling?”

“Dunno,” Ed says. “They can’t be that good if they’d let her wander off alone. She’s, what, like five?”

“I think she’s closer to ten,” Al says, amused again. “She kept insisting she was almost eleven when I asked her.”

Ed snickers tiredly. “You used to do that all the time when you were nine. You wanted to be in double digits so bad.” He stretches and tries to roll out the stiffness in his neck, then lets himself glance over at Ling, who is sleeping uneasily, his face drawn and pale, his forehead sweaty. “Is he . . .”

“I don’t know,” Al says. “He’s been having nightmares, I think.”

Ed looks at him a second longer, and his fingers twitch with the urge to brush the hair off Ling’s forehead. He doesn’t do it.

It’s not new, exactly, this urge to wrap people up in blankets and stop them from getting hurt that Ed gets, sometimes. It’s only new in that it’s never really sprung up around anyone but Al and Winry before. That he would so desperately want to protect Ling, who isn’t family, who is just a boy that Ed’s known for a month and a half, who makes Ed’s stomach jump, is different.

Not bad different, exactly, just strange.

He taps his fingers uneasily on the desk, next to him. Ling’s pale face reminds him forcibly of the way he’d looked inside Gluttony, the universe a sea of blood, the two of them swimming through it.

His left leg had been clogged with all kinds of crap and viscera, gears creaking. It had felt close to giving out any minute, without warning; leaving him to fall face-first into the blood. But he managed to keep convincing himself, every time, that there were a few more steps left in him before he did it. A few more steps into the endlessness. A few more steps and then he would let it stop.

It's an old, old mantra for him.

Then there had been a voice at his side, breaking through the white noise. “Ed.”

Ed had breathed, in and out. He’d turned. He’d looked and saw Ling, also knee-deep in blood, pushing through it with his back hunched.

His stomach had growled. Ed had winced.

“Can we stop, for a bit?” Ling had asked.

“To sleep?”

“Yeah,” Ling had said. “We both need it, I think.” Now that Ed had really stopped and really looked at him, he looked tired. Really tired, his face drawn and streaked with blood.

“Okay,” he had said. He was tired too, he told himself. He hadn’t just been doing this to ease the drawn nature of Ling’s face, to make it a little lighter. “C’mon, I’ll make a place for us to lay down.”

And Ling’s face had split into a wide, gentle smile, and something had started to burn in Ed’s chest, his stomach, all through his body, something impossible to categorize.

He shakes himself out of the memory. Al is looking at him funny, maybe for the amount of time he’s sat here staring into space.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Lieutenant Hawkeye is here,” Al says. “She’s been waiting for you to wake up since nine-thirty.”

“What’s she here for?” Ed bitches, cracking his neck again, and wincing when the stiffness won't fade.

“To see if we’re all right, I guess,” Al says, frowning at him. “Jeez. She’s being nice, Ed.”

Ed glances at Ling again, sleeping uneasily. Al’s right, but he can’t help wanting to stay in here, to let the world take its turns without any of them for a while.

He sighs again and stands up. That’s not fair.

“Okay,” he says, “let’s go see her, then. See what Colonel Fuckface is up to.”

Al chuckles. “He’s been upgraded from Colonel Bastard, then?”

“No,” Ed says, “but a guy needs some variety.”

He shuts the door very carefully behind him, even though Ling always sleeps pretty soundly, and it’s not likely he needs Ed to be fussing over him. He avoids Al’s eyes when he does it, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“Ed,” Hawkeye says, when he gets to Knox’s living room. The doctor himself is sitting there with an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, staring out the window. He grunts when they come in the room, but keeps his eyes closed.

The lieutenant looks exhausted, her face drawn and still a little scratched up from their big fight the other day. Ed tries to smile at her, but it doesn’t feel honest.

“Hi,” he says. “Thanks for, um, coming to see us. I guess.” He’s fucking terrible at this. Al sighs.

“What Ed means, ” he says, pointedly, “is—are you okay? Is the Colonel—”

“We’re both all right,” she says, but her face doesn’t smooth out. “I’ve been promoted. I’m now personal assistant to the Fuhrer himself. He sent me to check on you two, to find out where you’re thinking of going next.”

Ed’s stomach falls through his feet, and he has to sit down. Hawkeye’s eyes are sharp enough, worried enough, that she must know what this all means. Wrath must have realized Mustang was trying to work against him, and taken her in retaliation.

Her mouth is stern, but her eyes are burning. He’s never seen Hawkeye genuinely angry, but he thinks this is as close as it gets.

“To Briggs,” Al says, from behind him, “or north in general.” His voice is steady. “To continue our research on how to get our bodies back to normal. Ed already got permission from Wr—the Fuhrer.” His correction is easy enough that it could be a cough, or a stumble, and not a completely different name.

Hawkeye’s eyes flick towards the hall, and Ed knows in that instant that she knows Ling is sleeping there. Something urgent and sharp coils in his chest, something terrified. “And are you going to be travelling with anyone else?” Her expression doesn’t change.

“No,” Ed says, before Al can say anything. “We’re going alone. Ling’s going back to Xing.”

Al shoots him a quick look, but doesn’t argue.

“All right,” she says, and stands, dusting off her knees. “That’s all the Fuhrer wanted to know. Keep up the good work, Edward. You too, Alphonse.”

She walks towards the door and they both watch her, her tight shoulders under her blue jacket, the ramrod-straight line of her spine.

“Hey,” Ed blurts. He wants her to know that they don’t blame her for this. That there’s a lot they wish they could tell her. That they’re as trapped as she is. “Um. Lieutenant—”

She turns back and looks at him, and he doesn’t know what to say, or how to say it. He’s never been good at secrecy or codes.

“The Fuhrer mentioned, the last time we saw him, that he wanted to pass along a hello to Winry,” Al says, easy and conversational. “We just wondered if you wanted to tell her anything. I know you’ve met her a few times, and since we’re calling anyway . . .”

God, Ed thinks, his little brother is the smartest fucking person alive. Ed is a genius and all, but Al is good at this. The Fuhrer—Wrath. Last time we saw him—when he was threatening us. Hello to Winry—threatening her, too. A way to explain a little of it—certainly not all—but enough so that she can understand that they’re not on the side of the homunculi, either. That they’re being pushed in whatever direction that creepy Father guy thinks they should take.

Hawkeye’s eyes do not brighten with understanding—she’s too good for that—but one eyebrow raises, soft and slow.

“Ah,” she says. “That’s sweet of you, Alphonse. Please, give her my best, would you? Tell her I wish her luck at work.”

“Of course,” Al says. “Have a good day, Lieutenant.”

She nods, and shuts the door behind her with a soft and final click.

Knox lights his cigarette.

“Dunno who you two dumbasses pissed off,” he says, measured, “but I hope t’God next time you don’t come crawling in here in a body bag. I’ve seen enough goddamn corpses to last me a lifetime.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, staring at the closed door. “Me too.”

He isn’t sure which part of the statement he’s agreeing with, exactly, but as a catch-all it’ll do just fine. 

-

“Shouldn’t one of us keep watch?” The words echoed around him, into the emptiness.

“Who else is here?” Ed points out. Ling nods, too tired to fight him on it. “C’mon already.”

He transmutes a platform out of the muck for them, high above the blood. It’s enough to be seperate, enough to make them feel like they’re escaping for ten seconds. Psychology, Ling thinks, watching him, that’s important, and it’s so very Ed to think of that, to try and make them a little more comfortable, a little safer. It’s not soft, but that’s all right. He’s slept in worse places.

Ed grins tiredly over his shoulder at Ling.

“Here you go, your highness,” he jokes. Even exhausted, Ling grins, and sketches out a little half-bow.

“Thank you, sir,” he says. He climbs up with the last of his strength. “C’mere.”

Ed lets himself be tugged up by his hands, pushing against the side of the structure with his feet, tumbling against Ling as he tries to get his footing on top. Ling gives this breathless, huffing little laugh as he does it.

“You’re tired, too,” he says, and it’s odd how that feels like a victory. “I didn’t think you got tired.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ed asks him, steadying himself.

“Nothing, really,” Ling says. “You’re just—sometimes I think you’re not a real person.” He feels his ears go red, at that, but it's—strangely, it's fine. He doesn't mind. The embarrassment seems like part and parcel of saying anything at all, a worthy toll to pay.

Ed blinks at him. “Weirdo,” he says. “Of course I’m a real person.”

Ling grins again. He can’t help himself. “You don’t look it, sometimes,” he says. “When you stand in the light, or when you’re smiling. Nothing about you seems real.”

Ed stares at him, cheeks red, then coughs and sits down. “Anyway,” he says, sounding flustered. Ling looks at his feet, hiding a softer and infinitely sappier smile. “Um. We should try to get some rest—”

Ling wakes with a start, shaking off the edges of his dream—or memory, whichever. He hears noise from downstairs, sharp enough that it must be an argument, and gruff enough that it must be Fu. He would recognize the cadence of that voice anywhere. The measured way he speaks Amestrian, picking out each word before he says it so he doesn’t stumble over something unfamiliar. The quick, light way he speaks Xingese—so different, but the authority the same.

He struggles to sit up as the voices get closer, and the door opens.

“I fucking told you, he’s—” Ed says, then trails off when he sees Ling sitting up, pale but determined. He grins, the gesture seeming automatic. “Oh. Hey.”

Ling doesn’t have a chance to respond.

“Young Master!” Fu says, kneeling. Ling swears he almost sees a smile cross the man’s face. His stomach hurts, and not from his wound. “I am glad to see that you are safe.”

“Hello, Fu,” Ling murmurs. He is trying to figure out how to voice everything that has happened when he can hardly admit it to himself. Fu stands, then, and reaches out to press a hand to his shoulder.

“But where is my granddaughter?” he asks. “She doesn’t often leave your side, at least not voluntarily.”

Ling’s jaw clenches. “She—” he starts, then stops, taking a deep breath.

Fu watches him, expectant, and he tightens his hands into fists to stop their shaking. Ed and Al back away, down the hall again, shutting the door behind them. Ling looks up to meet Fu’s eyes.

“There’s a lot I need to tell you.”

Fu falls to his knees again when he is finished explaining, head bowed, hands shaking. Ling wishes he knew how to help him, wishes he was well and able enough to stand and press his forehead against the old man’s, to help him shoulder this grief too terrible to voice. If Lan Fan was here she might be able to do it, but Ling does not feel allowed.

“I let her come here,” Fu says, his voice dull. “I have done this to her. I should have been there to take in the beast.”

“No,” Ling says, his arms wrapped tight around his middle. “It should have been me. She shouldn’t have even had to be there, I was the one who got her into danger, it’s all my fault—”

Something twitches in Fu’s face, changes in his eyes, and he rockets to his feet. Ling thinks, for a second, that he will scream, or take a swing at him, hit him across the face with the back of his hand. Another bruise to add to his collection, this one well-deserved. Fu is looking at him like Ling is a stranger and not a boy who he’s seen grow up, like he wants to rage and shout and tell Ling you killed my granddaughter, like he wants to throw a punch or tell Ling he’s a child, that he doesn’t know the meaning of loss, that he has made a sacrificial lamb of Lan Fan, that there is no going back.

Ling clenches his jaw and bows his head. He does as best he can, with his injuries, to bow with the rest of his body, too. He wants to press his forehead to the ground. Anything to show Fu just how viscerally he means it when he says I didn't mean to. I didn't want this.

Then Fu steps back, his face pulled together and eerily calm and desperately sad. “It’s no fault of yours, Young Master,” he says. “We have been bound to serve you.”

“Fu,” Ling says, a lump in his throat. Fu has never looked at him like this before, like he is a ghost, or a prince. Fu always looks at him with gruff eyes and a stern mouth but it’s always as a mentor, not a servant. “Can’t you just be angry at me, please—”

“Young Master,” Fu says. “I do not have much left in this world. Do not order me to abandon my training, as well.” His voice is tight and his eyes are empty.

She’s alive, Ling wants to say, she’s alive in there and we can save her, please look at me, please look at me. She’s alive. But he doesn’t know how to prove that beyond his own aching heart, and Fu likes proof, Fu likes certainty.

Fu walks, unnaturally stiff and steady, to the window. “If you would grant me leave, young lord,” he says. “I need to—”

“Yes,” Ling says, mouth dry, hands cold. “Yes, I—”

He doesn’t know how to say it, how to ask Fu just please come back. I can’t lose you too.

“I will return by morning,” Fu says, and then he’s gone. Ling slumps back against the wall, frustrated and cold. The rage that had scared him so much is still there, burning under the surface. He aches to punch a wall, punch himself, find some sort of outlet for it. Instead, he wraps his arms around his body and holds on as tight as he can.

He’ll be back, he tells himself, and straightens his shoulders, and breathes; in and out, even and steady. He’ll be back, and I can explain, and I can beg him to forgive me.

He thinks of Ed’s words, last night. You don’t leave people behind. And he won’t. He can’t. Surely Fu sees that.

-

Lan Fan breathes in, and then lets it go, in a sigh that rattles her whole body. She opens her eyes to the glittering buildings of Central City’s nighttime skyline. The world unfolds before her, ripe with opportunity, and her body is her own.

First things first, she thinks, and tears a strip from what remains of her bandages—tattered and blood-stained, but still there on her body. Greed had not bothered to remove them. She is not grateful for many of the homunculus’s decisions, but this one makes her wish she could offer the beast some sort of thanks.

She spreads the cloth out and writes, then folds it carefully and tucks it into her pocket, sliding off the roof with ease.

Climbing in his window is the easiest thing in the world, and leaving without waking him is the hardest.

She spares a moment to brush his hair from his face. Her naive, foolish, precious friend, her young lord, sweating in his sleep, his entire body twitching. Her grandfather is nowhere to be found, but she can sense Edward and Alphonse in the rooms below. She is glad, then, fiercely, that she had thought to add a postscript in Amestrian, for them. Protect him, because I can’t, not as I am.

But she can feel Greed welling to the surface, pushing at Lan Fan’s fragile control, so she abandons him, abandons the hand on his face in favor of vaulting herself out the window and running, in a random direction. As far, and as fast, as she can. She pushes at Greed with every piece of mental fortitude she has ever forced herself to build. She constructs iron bars around her and locks the door and breaks the key. She will not let her walk free, cannot even let her look at their surroundings.

If she cannot guarantee this body will always belong to her, she can at least get Greed as far from Ling, and her grandfather, as possible. She will do her duty, for her country and her prince.

-

Ling wakes the next morning to a note on a bloody scrap of fabric, in an achingly familiar hand, pinned to his wall with a kunai.

Despite everything, he laughs. And she calls him dramatic.

Don’t you dare come looking for me, young lord. I won’t see you die, not after all the effort I have put into keeping you alive.

Someday I will have strength enough to control her, and when that happens, I will find you.

Patience (though I know that is not your strong suit)

Lan Fan

Chapter Text

part iv

Fu comes back the next morning, as promised. New light, determined and sharp, flickers in his eyes at Lan Fan’s note, and he plucks it from Ling’s fingers without a word and folds it carefully, tucking it into his shirt just next to his heart. He doesn’t look at Ling, just past him, always staring somewhere over his shoulder and talking in quiet, measured tones that don’t sound like him at all.

“You’re still angry at me, then,” Ling says, then hates himself for saying it. It’s childish, petty and selfish; Fu is going through so much, he doesn’t need Ling to be acting like a brat on top of it.

Fu still does not look at him. “It’s not my place to be angry,” he says, “young lord.”

That means yes. It’s worse somehow, knowing.

A week passes before he is well enough to move without much pain. He isn’t completely healed, but it is enough that he cannot complain. He’s been idle for long enough, anyway, so long that Ed and Al have left Dr. Knox’s house and gotten a hotel room, though Ed still visits, and hovers in the doorway talking until Knox scowls and shoos him out again. A week feels like an eternity in situations like this—when all Ling wants to do is move.

“We need to look for her,” Ling says, “and I think—”

“I will go west,” Fu says. “You should go north, young lord.”

“I—what?” Ling asks, startled. “You want to split up?”

“We will cover ground more quickly if we do,” Fu says. “Your half-sister, Lady Chang, is going north, yes? To investigate the homunculi? I cannot go; it would compromise us. I am the only face they don’t know yet.”

Ling stares at the map and considers it. “You’re right,” he says finally. Ed and Al have figured that much out, at least, from the vague hints the little Chang girl gave to Al in conversation before she left Knox’s and from asking around at the train stations. She’s travelling with two others, which doesn’t make much sense. The Changs are not wealthy enough that she would have bodyguards the way he does, or at least, he doesn’t think they are. It has been a few months; anything or everything could have changed. “They know me already. If they caught you it’d blow the only piece of cover we have left. If they catch me—”

“I suggest not letting them, young lord,” Fu says, his voice tight, and Ling bows his head.

“We can travel the first stretch together,” he says, softly, “can’t we?”

Fu nods, and it’s the barest gesture, but Ling clings to it nonetheless. His mouth seemed to soften a little, when he did. “We can leave in a few days, once we have supplies.”

“I’ll tell the Elrics,” Ling says. “They’ll worry otherwise, and they might come looking for us, and that’ll ruin everything. I just think it’d be best to let them know. But no one else, I’m not trying to make it obvious, I just—”

Fu gives him a slightly different sort of look, one that might be called amused under different circumstances. “All right, young lord,” he says. “It is, after all, your decision.”

It’s a testament to Ling’s ability to be easily embarrassed that, even in the situation they’re in, his ears go red.

-

“Stop fidgeting,” Al says, not unkindly. “Or if you can’t, then go outside and run around for a minute.” He looks up from the book he’s studying. “You’re not going to get anything done in this state.”

“Excuse me if I’ve got a lot to think about,” Ed snarks back.

“That’s never stopped you from reading before,” Al points out, which is right, fuck him very much. Ed just can’t turn off his brain today, and he knows why, he’s just not going to say anything about it because Al will inevitably get that stupid tone in his voice, that ‘my brother is such a idiot’ tone that he pulls out whenever Ed does something particularly worthy of it, like get distracted from reading because he hasn’t seen Ling Yao in two days.

He bangs his head against the desk instead. Al watches him, unimpressed.

“Keep doing that and you’re not going to be able to read at all,” he says.

“Awfully bold of you to assume I can read now,” Ed says.

“Of course,” Al says dryly. “How could I forget, you're the first illiterate state alchemist. Are you going to keep doing that?”

Ed puts his head back on the table and wonders if it was his influence or Winry’s that led to Al becoming such a back-talking, snarky jerk. Probably Winry’s, he reasons. Next time he calls her he’s gonna give her a long talk about teaching his baby brother bad fucking habits. Getting yelled at by Winry for complaining about that kind of shit will be the most normal thing that’s happened to him in a while.

“Hey,” Al says, more gently this time. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

No, Ed thinks. I have a stupid crush and my timing is garbage and, oh yeah, everyone in Central wants to kill us.

“Yeah,” he says into the table. “I’ll be okay, I just—I’m tired.”

Al sighs. “Okay,” he says, and opens his book again. “I’m fine here, brother. Go get yourself a coffee or a sandwich or something. You need to eat more.”

“You’re just like Granny,” Ed complains. “Next you’re gonna be bitching that I’m too skinny like she does.”

“Well, you’re lucky you’ve got someone to look after you, brother, or you’d run yourself into the ground,” Al says, and Ed thinks he would be sticking out his tongue if he had one, at least based on his tone. “Go. Eat. Now.”

Ed snaps a cartoonishly stiff salute. “Yes, sir,” he says, and goes. Al goes back to the books, writing something in a margin as he walks away.

It’s getting dark already, which he hadn’t noticed. That means it’s probably been—oh. Yeah. Okay. It’s been a full eight or nine hours since he’s eaten anything, which means Al was right about everything, not that Ed is gonna admit it until they’re back to the hotel room and Al doesn’t have any strangers around to be smug in front of. The hunger wasn’t the reason he couldn’t focus—stupid Ling is the cause of that particular issue—but it certainly didn’t help.

He doesn’t know why he can’t stop overthinking this. Ed has had stupid crushes on people in the past, he’s only human, after all—but they always passed so quickly. They were so easy to ignore in favor of everything else, everything more important. There was this one librarian guy from back when he was fourteen who worked in East City, and there was a panicked month where he thought he might be into Winry, and there were other girls and guys that stuck out to him, over the years and all the miles traveled.

Maybe it’s that he could leave, in most, if not all of those situations, and Ling sticks, like a burr on a coat, but not one that Ed particularly wants to remove. He’s the first friend Ed has had in a long time that’s been a part of this whole big mess that he and Al have found themselves in. He’s got broad shoulders and kind eyes. He didn’t run away screaming when he found out what they did and who they were.

Ed takes an angry bite of his sandwich. This is exactly why he doesn’t have time for this right now. He doesn’t have time to be daydreaming, especially when it’s something Ling might not even want, not now that Lan Fan is gone and that everything is crumbling apart.

Remember how he looked at you? something very small and hopeful in the back of his mind whispers. Remember how he looked at you when you were stuck in Gluttony’s stomach?

Maybe he wants this too, maybe he—

With more aggression than is strictly necessary, Ed throws a napkin in the trash and stomps back towards the library doors. There’s been enough to deal with today, what with meeting Selim Bradley and getting the recommendation letter from the Major and all this stupid distraction that he can’t get over. Maybe he just needs to sleep it off. Get his head back in order. He walks, fast as he can, back to their table.

“C’mon, Al,” he says, rapping his knuckles on his brother’s shoulder. “Let’s go back to the hotel. I’m more tired than I thought.”

“Told you,” Al says, but there’s a hint of relief in his voice when he puts the book away. “Let’s go.”

Ed doesn’t talk on the way home, not anything besides the necessities, anyway, and he throws himself into bed with aplomb to avoid facing Al’s questions, tugging the covers over his head until Al sighs and goes back into the living area with a light knock to his head.

He’s almost genuinely asleep, close to thinking about absolutely nothing, when there’s a few sharp taps at his bedroom window, and just as Ed sits up, it swings open.

And, well. Fuck.

It’s possible that avoiding your problems might not work a hundred percent of the time.

-

“We’re going to hide,” Ling says, quietly. He’s sitting on Ed’s windowsill, his fingers tapping antsily on the edge. One of the street lamps from outside is casting golden light across Ed’s face, across his eyes. They glow like bits of molten gold, and Ling bites his mouth closed against saying so out loud. He’s only seen Ed lit up like this once before, and he didn’t get to take it in then, either.

He remembers Ed's face, soft in the flickering torchlight, remembers looking at him and wondering if it was the last face he would ever see. Not minding it as much as he thought he would. He'd steeled himself instead, and asked, "Do you think we're gonna die?"

He hadn't sounded afraid, or at least he hadn't felt like he did, but he'd felt it, deep in the marrow of his bones, in all the places he had started realizing that he was mortal, and hungry, and cold. He had known they might remain in Gluttony's endless stomach, hungry and cold together. He had thought, maybe, it wouldn't be so bad if he could warm himself by Ed's side, but he hadn't known what he could give him in return, and equivalent exchange is as important to Ed in life as it is in alchemy. Ling couldn't take if he had nothing to give. 

“I don’t know,” Ed had said. True enough, and not very comforting. “Do you?”

“Yes,” Ling had said. “Or I’m afraid that we will. It might be the same thing.” He had taken a deep breath, and he had been laying there curled into Ed's back for warmth, and he had been very tired and very scared and it had been easy, then, to say it. “If I’m going to see one person before I die, I wouldn’t mind it being you.”

He could only remember thinking that he might as well die brave, not hiding. He had tucked his face into the middle of Ed’s back and held on. Ed hadn’t moved, but his flesh hand came down to wrap around Ling’s, holding on tight enough that it almost hurt.

Definitely real, then, Ling had thought, heart pounding. Definitely human. Because Ed was scared too.

Then, in the distance, there had been more firelight flickering towards them, and Ed had sat up, his whole body suddenly made of sharp angles; protective and solid.

They hadn't gotten to rest after all—Envy had been there, stalking towards them, torch in hand. Ed had swung down off their ledge to meet them, and Ling had followed. He had still felt Ed’s hand wrapped around his, a phantom feeling that didn’t fade, even as Envy snapped and growled and grew, even as they had to fight.

Ling flexes his hand, sitting in Ed's window. He thinks maybe he can still feel it, just a little, even now.

Fu is on the street, below, watching his back. Ed is sitting up in his bed, hair loose and pooling around his shoulders. Ling is attempting to ignore how affecting it is to see Ed like this, tired and soft around the edges. His hair is a mess from sleep, his eyes like amber. He looks nice, and Ling feels frustrated and guilty for thinking so, because Lan Fan is still out there somewhere, swallowed by a creature they have no understanding of. Fu is still down there below him, bitter and angry with Ling for losing her. Ling is still angry with himself. And Ed is here, a warm presence in the dark, just like he was in Gluttony’s stomach.

He doesn’t know where Al is. He always assumed they stayed in the same room, even if Al didn’t sleep, but he’s not here, and they’re alone, and—

He shifts in place on the windowsill. “Fu wants to try and find out more about the homunculi. To see if we can find her, or find out how to help her.”

“We’re looking for them, too,” Ed says. He sits up all the way. His tank top is loose, too; Ling can see his neck, his collarbones, the dual tones of his shoulders, metal and skin. “You should just come with us.” He sounds hopeful. Ling’s stomach jumps.

“They’ve already used Winry against the two of you,” Ling says. “I don’t want to be another person they can threaten.”

“That’s not—” Ed starts, but Ling shakes his head, and, heart in his throat, leaves the windowsill to come into the room, perching at the end of Ed’s bed instead.

“Edward,” he says. “You and I both know they’d do it.”

“You don’t have to hide, ” Ed says.

“I don’t want to be a roadblock for you,” Ling says. “You and Al need to get your bodies back. If I stopped you from doing that—”

“Don’t try to be fucking noble,” Ed snaps. “Just—”

“I’m not,” Ling says, wearily. “I’m being practical.”

Ed doesn’t retort. Ling looks up at him. He’s glaring at him, lit up by moonlight.

Ling wishes, in that instant, that there was more time.

“They have information we don’t,” he says, quietly. “About Philosopher’s Stones. If we’re going to get Lan Fan back, we need it too. I . . .” He breathes out, angrily. “I realize how terrible a plan it is, now that I say it, but it’s all we have.”

“Still wish you’d just come with us,” Ed mumbles.

“I can’t.”

“I know.” He pushes the covers off and moves closer. Presses his hand to the side of Ling’s face. It’s metal and it’s cold and it sends shockwaves and shivers down Ling’s spine.

“Ed?”

“I’m trying to say I’m gonna miss you, asshole,” he says. Ling tries to smile, but his heart is in his throat.

“You’re doing an awful job,” he says.

“You goddamn idiot prince,” Ed says, and kisses him. His mouth is warm, the skin of his face soft from sleep and a tiny bit stubbly where his upper lip brushes against Ling's. Ed’s got one hand on his cheek and one between his shoulder blades, and Ling wants to crush the two of them as close as possible, hold on and never let go. He softens himself, though. He will give what Ed gives. He will make this equivalent; he will make this real. That will be enough to sustain him. Ed, made of sunlight; Ling, turning toward him like a slowly growing vine.

Ed shifts, slings one leg over him, and hovers over his lap; not quite sitting on it but almost. Ling tilts his head up, a little, to angle the kiss better, and laces his hand into Ed’s loose hair.

This isn’t how I thought this conversation would go, he wants to say, wants to pull back and laugh and break the solidity of the moment, but Ed kisses like he does everything else, fierce and determined and all-in, scrambling for purchase and a little angry. They’re grabbing at each other, fumbling in the moonlight for something to hold onto. Ling breathes him in, the smell of ozone and boy, laundry soap from the hotel sheets, and Ed makes this weak noise in the back of his throat when the angle shifts.

“I can’t stay,” he does manage to say, pulling back a little, his hand still wound tight into the hair at the nape of Ed’s neck. "Fu’s waiting for me.”

“Okay,” Ed says, a little breathless, “okay.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Ling adds. “I just—”

A smile tugs at the corner of Ed’s mouth. “Yeah.”

“Rain check,” Ling offers, and then feels stupid, but Ed laughs.

He doesn’t move, though, just remains perched over Ling’s lap.

“Hey,” he says, “listen, what you said, when we were trapped in there . . .”

Ling doesn’t have to ask where there is.

“Me too,” Ed says. “Me too, okay?”

Ling feels a laugh bubble in his throat, out of place and gentle. They’re both so terrible at this.

“I’ll miss you,” he says, finally. Ed nods, firm and a little sad, and kisses the corner of his mouth. When he draws back, he’s blushing furiously, and detaches his hands from Ling’s face with what seems like a considerable amount of effort.

Then there’s a tap on the door, soft and unsure.

“Brother?” Al’s tinny voice says, through the layer of wood. The illusion that they’re alone in the universe fades.

“Yeah, Al?” Ed says, scrambling off Ling’s lap.

“I heard noises,” Al says, his voice gentle and a little uncertain. “Are you having nightmares again?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Um. Sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

Ling meets his eyes one last time, and swings out of the window just as the door creaks open. Al doesn’t see him.

Fu meets his eyes when he lands on the pavement, soft as a whisper.

“Are you finished?” he asks, his voice neutral.

Ling closes his eyes and remembers Ed’s mouth on his, just for a moment more, then seals it carefully away, wrapped in a gilded envelope and tucked into a slot between his ribs. 

“Yes,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

interlude

When she was a child, Lan Fan always took her baths at night, when the rest of the house was slowly falling into silence and almost everyone—including Grandfather and Ling—were already asleep. She would drink in the quiet of the usually bustling house, and when she finished cleaning up her mother would be waiting, a soft towel in her brown, calloused hands. Her smile would be as warm as the towel, her hands gentle as she helped Lan Fan dry herself. Lan Fan did not like to be babied, usually, but she did not mind it so much during those nights where her mother emerged from the darkness, like an warm ray of light, and she would close her eyes and let herself be cared for.

And then Lan Fan would sit with her mother in front of the fire, and her mother would brush out her hair.

Her hair was longer, then. It went almost past her waist, and took ages to dry; even when her mother had finished brushing it it would still be damp, and her mother would pin it up against her head in braids so it wouldn’t have to be washed again for a few days. They would feel cold and clammy, like snakes against her scalp. Most things that other people called pretty felt that way, in those days. Lan Fan felt herself shying away from them, uncomfortable with the compliments, feeling as if they were things she did not wish to deserve.

“If I did not have long hair,” she asked her mother once, on one of those nights by the fire, “would I be ugly?”

Her mother was quick to assure her she would be beautiful with any length of hair, in any style, and Lan Fan sat back and felt the pins on her scalp and shifted where she sat, uncomfortable without being able to define why. She felt, ridiculously, that she wanted to be ugly. 

She tugged her robes aside and stared at her feet, small and soft in their white shoes. Her hands, the same. She thought of Ling’s feet and hands, calloused from his training. Ling joked with her, sometimes, that when he had a wife she would certainly not be pleased with how ugly his feet were, and it was a joke but it wasn’t, and she could hear—sometimes, when he spoke to her, she could always hear—an uncertainty in his voice. It was very nearly jealousy, but that didn’t make sense to her. He had nothing to be jealous of, not even if her feet were pretty, not even if she was pretty. He was a prince. He was learning to fight in ten different styles, to read the Dragon’s Pulse. No one with their wits about them would care either way if he was the ugliest person alive, even though he wasn’t.

She stopped Ling one morning as he went off to train, her hand on his elbow for a brief second of warning before she tugged him behind a closed door. They had already learned to function like that, then—behind doors, behind bars. He was a prince, in public, her mother had said.

“Teach me to fight,” she said. “Teach me what you know.”

He told her, after, that the look in her eye had made him afraid to refuse her.

“You should be the prince,” he’d said, “not me. You’re fierce and determined. I just do what people tell me to do and I’m not even good at that.”

She had not even been able to respond to the ridiculousness of that statement. She had not been able to respond, either, to the way the word prince felt as he used it to describe her; the masculinity of it like a new flavor of food she wanted to taste again and again. 

He had taught her what he knew, which ran out astonishingly quickly. He taught her to block a hit, to pause in the shadows so she wouldn’t be seen, to close her eyes and read the pulse of the universe. But by then she’d gotten a taste for it. By then, she was creeping out into the yard at midnight to teach herself.

That’s where her grandfather found her, one night, a lantern hanging from his hand, an inscrutable look on his mustachioed face. His hair had been black, then, inky and peppered only slightly with grey, like the night sky.

“Granddaughter,” he had said, blinking, “what are you doing?”

She’d stood there, frozen, in the halo of light from the lantern he held. He stared down at her.

“I want to fight,” she’d blurted. It stumbled out of her mouth, unpolished. Her hair hung, sweaty and limp, over her forehead. It was the ugliest she’d looked in weeks, and she adored it, adored her sweat and aching muscles and her bare muddy feet. 

“You want to fight,” he repeated. “Why?”

She hunted for something true, something that wasn’t her inexplicable, unexplainable urge to leave everything that had been handed to her behind. “He’s my brother,” she said. Her mouth was dry, her lips cracked. Until she had spoken aloud she hadn’t realized how true it was. “He’s my brother and I need to protect him.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was a part of the truth, significant enough to be believed. Ling was in danger every second. To sit and do nothing would be letting him die.

“I protect the prince,” Grandfather told her. “You should not worry about such things.”

She had been ten, then, and she had clenched her fists in her borrowed clothes—training clothes, Ling’s clothes. She had stolen them, just like she’d stolen his fighting knowledge, just like she’d stolen this time for herself in the yard in the middle of the night.

“I’m always going to want to protect him,” she said. “I’m always going to want this. I’ll keep coming here. I’ll train in my room if you lock me in. You might as well teach me, Grandfather. I’m not going to give up.”

She saw his mustache twitch in what was not quite a smile. He turned away without another word, and the next morning the servant that came to get Ling for his training retrieved her, too.

Her grandfather did not prize tenderness, not the way her mother did. He praised silence, determination, and strength. It was a language she spoke just as well, though not quite better. She didn’t have to teach herself, not anymore—her grandfather barked corrections, threw kicks and punches for her to block, put his hands on her shoulders and told her to breathe in, and breathe out, and memorize the feeling of Ling’s chi, present next to her, where he will remain. When he ate she sat in the rafters, concealed and determined. She would help keep him safe, Grandfather told her. If she ever sensed a person’s chi that she does not know she will hurt them first and ask questions later.

Her feet had grown broad and strong. They were ugly to everyone else. She thought they were beautiful. She thought her still-flat chest and muscular arms were beautiful, too. She thought if she froze herself here she would be happy forever, eleven and determined and slowly growing strong. Then she reached twelve, thirteen, fourteen. She only grew stronger. She only fought harder. She started sleeping, lightly (of course) in Ling’s room. Her grandfather pressed his hand to her shoulder and told her you have done well, little girl. Even that, though, tugged at a confused feeling in her chest, the part that felt like a warrior, not a girl, the part that ached to be recognized and the part that she continually sealed away.

Back when she had tried harder to be a girl, she used to grit her teeth against the sharp pinch of the pins in her hair, those nights in front of the fire. Her mother always noticed her disfomfort, though, and placed a warm hand on her shoulder.

“Lan Fan,” she would say, “my pearl—it won’t last.”

She was right, in a way. It didn’t last. None of it—not the long hair, not the pins in her hair, not the coiled braids against her head. Not those nights by the fire where her mother brushed out her hair and talked to her.

Soon her baths were short and sufficient; soon she was tying her hair tighter than ever so it would not come undone in battle. Soon her shoulders grew broader and her legs and arms stronger. Soon she learned how to kill a man, and quietly.

Her mother didn’t call her her pearl any longer. Lan Fan gritted her teeth, and kept going.

Chapter Text

part v

Briggs is fucking cold.

Ed is never exactly jealous of Al’s body—he knows too much about it—but the fact that Al can’t get cold is a huge advantage in a place like this. It’s hitting Ed down to his bones, the marrow of them freezing if he stays still too long. Or at least it feels that way. Ed knows he has a tendency to be overly dramatic.

He knows he hasn’t given Briggs much of a chance, but he doesn’t have too much fondness for the place as a whole, given that he’s almost been killed a couple times, he was commanded to actually use his State Alchemist title and clout for something he’d rather die than do, and Kimblee is dangling Winry in front of him and Al like they’re the horses and she’s the carrot. The terrible part is that it’s actually working. Ed knows his weakness is his family—he’d do whatever someone asked, if it would help Al or Winry—and the fact that he actually sat down and considered painting the crest of blood at Briggs, per Kimblee’s orders, is going to haunt him for a while now.

And also, Briggs is, like, really fucking cold. Ed grew up in the Southern Amestrian countryside. He is not equipped for this.

“Stop complaining,” Al says, handing him a tissue so he can blow his nose. “We can leave in a couple days.”

“I know,” Ed says, softly, mindful of the two soldiers behind them and Kimblee, probably nearby. “Just, like, shit, Al. This whole trip has been so—”

“So help me,” Al mutters, “if you say useless, I’m going to smack you.”

“That’s not what I was gonna say,” he says, like a liar. Useless was up there. So was awful. So was freezing.

“Sure,” Al says, skeptically. They’re walking along, ostensibly hunting for Scar; Ed and Al, though, have a completely different agenda, and that’s get Winry the fuck away from Kimblee. Ed hopes that their quiet bickering is distracting the soldiers a little. He’s used to them being thought of as kids, and used to using that to their advantage. Even now, Kimblee’s guys—the tall, bearded men—are giving each other exasperated looks as Ed and Al whisper to each other.

But that’s good. That means they’ll be taken by surprise, in a second, when—

“Ahhh!” Ed and Al shout, in unison. “There was someone over there!”

The two of them charge towards the imaginary something, leaving the soldiers in the dust. Al throws up a quick wall behind them. They high five, once, quietly.

“For the record,” Al says, “I did actually think you were being really whiny, brother.”

“Asshole,” Ed says, fondly. “Come on, let’s go.”

They’ve searched about two and a half houses before there’s a scream from behind them and Al is tackled to the ground.

Ed spins, instantly transmuting his arm into a blade, holding it to the throat of—

The little girl, Mei Chang.

She glowers at him, not seeming nervous at all. “Oh. It’s you again.”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Ed says. “Shit, kid, you can’t just—”

“Edward?” a voice says, from the same corridor Mei came barrelling down, familiar and soft. Ed spins on his heel, heart in his throat. Al, behind him, sits up and waves.

“Ling,” Ed says. It’s punched out of him like a gasp. “You’re—”

Ling waves back. “Hi.”

Mei glares at both of them, then smiles at Al. Ed considers telling her that Al isn’t ever going to go for her, most prominently because she’s a girl and secondly because she's ten and thirdly because she seems to be kind of a dick, but figures Al can explain that just as well as he can and probably in a nicer way. He settles for just looking at Ling, who is wearing all black and has his hair tucked under a knit cap in the cold Briggs air. There are snowflakes and dust motes swirling in the air around him. He looks just like Ed remembers, which means he looks smiley and also very tall, which on other people is irritating but on Ling is just kind of hot.

There’s a banging from inside of Al’s armor, and Ed jumps as he remembers Winry. “Fuck!”

“Language,” she says, wearily, and echoey from inside the metal. Al hastily unlatches the front plate and Ed grabs her hands to haul her out. She gives them each a perfunctory, exasperated look and stretches.

“That fucking sucked.”

“Language,” Ed imitates, and she sticks out her tongue at him.

“Who is this?” Mei snaps, waving her hands. “Mr. Alphonse—”

(Ed is going to get so much older brother blackmail out of this nonsense.)

Ling whistles, low and a little impressed. “Wow. Is this subterfuge? I didn’t think you were subtle enough for that, Ed.”

“He’s not,” Winry says. “It was my idea. Nice to see you again, Ling.”

Ling winks at her, which does stupid, jealous shit to Ed’s stomach that he does not want to touch with a ten foot pole. Especially since he knows Winry and Paninya are dancing in weird circles around each other, because Winry has been bitching about it for at least two months. Something about Paninya hugging her a lot and her not being sure what that means. “Nice to see you, too. Why are you sneaking around?”

“Kimblee’s using her to blackmail us,” Ed says, and then, grumpily, “you were right about that, by the way. ‘S probably a good thing you didn’t come.”

“Well, I was raised in the court of Xing, I was trained to be overly suspicious,” Ling says. “It seems to have paid off this time. Are you all right?”

“Am I what now?”

“All right,” Ling says. He blinks at him. “You look exhausted.”

Winry looks between them for a moment, then smiles. Ed hates her so fucking much, for the record. Just. So much.

“I’m fine,” he says.

Ling makes an unconvinced noise, then turns to Al and Mei and crosses his arms.

“Is now really the time, Lady Chang?”

“Princess Chang,” she snaps, “and you’re one to talk, you incorrigible—”

Ling whistles. “Ten years old and learning such big words, little sister. The rumors of the tiny genius of the Chang clan are truer than I thought.” The frostiness in his voice surprises Ed a little, but not enough to comment on it.

“Gunkai,” Mei mutters, “and anyway, I’m eleven.”

“You will be, in two months,” Ling says, then avoids the rock she attempts to throw at his head and turns back to Ed and Winry. “What are you doing here?”

Winry looks between the two of them and frowns. “She’s your sister?”

Ling’s eyes narrow, a little. “No,” he says, “not really. Have you—” He cuts himself off, but then looks up at Ed again, desperate and a little scared. It leeches something stiff out of Ed’s body, and he clenches his fists against the urge to walk over and gather Ling up in his arms, to say something soft that will make the whole situation better. But Ed isn’t good at softness, however much he wants to be. Ling continues. “Is there any news of her?”

Ed wishes he had an hour’s worth of news, in that moment. “No,” he says, instead. “I haven’t seen her. Or heard from her.” He frowns. “From either of them, actually. We ran into another homunculus up here—Sloth—but he didn’t seem to know what the others are up to. Or care, really.”

Ling breathes in, shaky, and then nods with determination. “That’s all right,” he says. “I didn’t even think I would get to see you again for a while, so—so this is all right.”

“News of who?” Winry asks. “Ed, can you please not do that thing where you talk about stuff without specifics? I’m not a genius like you, I can’t keep up with all that garbage.”

“Don’t play around, Win, you’re smarter than Al and I combined,” Ed says, and Al makes a noise of agreement. “But—sorry. I forgot you didn’t know this part.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when you told me everything else?” There’s a hint of hurt in her voice. “You said no more secrets.”

Ed glances at Ling. “I didn’t know if you—if it was mine to tell, I guess,” he says.

Ling nods. “Thank you,” he says, like a sigh, like a breath. Then he looks up at Winry. “Lan Fan’s been taken by the homunculi. She’s being possessed by one of them, a creature called Greed, and I haven’t heard from her since—except a letter, and Fu took that with him.” He takes another deep breath, and then says, with quiet dignity, “She's my best friend, and we grew up together, and I’m terribly worried. There. That’s everything.”

Mei frowns, as if she wants to comment, but then says nothing, sitting back on her heels.

Ling waves a hand. “Or, that’s the short version, anyway. But we haven’t got time for the long version right now.”

“Oh, God,” Winry says, “Ling, I’m so sorry,” and then she’s reaching out to give him a hug, and he sort of freezes and looks at Ed over her shoulder, like he isn’t sure what the hell to do with that. Ed shrugs, feeling that irrational jealousy in the pit of his stomach again, not because he thinks Winry or Ling are into each other in any way, shape, or form, but because he wishes that it was him with his arms around Ling’s middle, slowly feeling him melt against him.

“She just does that sometimes,” Ed says, lamely. Winry flips him the bird over her shoulder, and Ling’s hands tentatively come up to hug her back.

“Emotionally constipated moron,” Winry says. This is directed at Ed. “Can I do anything to help?” This is directed at Ling. He shakes his head.

“I appreciate it,” he says, “but no. I’m all right. I just have to get her back, that’s all.”

“His highness,” Mei says, a little huffy, “has no real plan for how to do that.”

Ling snaps something at her in Xingese that Ed doesn’t understand, but makes her huff harder and step back, crossing her arms mulishly. Then he turns back to the three of them, shoulders tight again. Ed thinks, I could reach out. I could reach out. I could reach out. It taps itself out like a code against the inside of his head, insistent and soft. Ed could reach out and touch him and try to smooth the stiffness out of him. Or, Ed could fall into step next to him and say, so, uh. Remember when you climbed in my window and you kissed me? That was amazing. I want to do it all the time and it’s been driving me nuts. When I have nothing else to think about I always end up thinking about you.

He doesn’t think either would end well.

He wonders if Ling wants to remember the kiss, or if it was something he’s been out here in the snow regretting for the past couple weeks.

Ed wishes he had the emotional depth to put what he's feeling into words instead of just blurting something rash and probably stupid like so, idiot prince, do you still want to make out with me or was that a fluke? But he doesn’t, so he shuts his mouth, thinks about something else. Hydrogen. Helium. Lithium.

I could reach out, I could reach out, I could reach out.

“Come on,” Ling says, hands shoved in his coat pockets. “You should meet the others.”

Ling had found Mei quicker than he’d expected, he says, and she’d tried to kill him again before they’d been stopped by another doctor, this one named Marcoh, one of her traveling companions. Ed and Al exchange disbelieving looks at the name, but don’t interrupt, just let him talk. Ed likes it, the way his voice expands and softens to fill the hallways and rooms they pass through. The steady line of his jaw reminds him of Ling inside Gluttony, holding a torch aloft, gaze determined. He’s glad to see that determination back in full.

Marcoh greets them at the doorway to the room where Mei and her companions (Marcoh, a man named Yoki that Ed vaguely recognizes, and her dumb fucking panda) are staying, and where Ling is staying too, for the time being. He’s only been here for about a week, he explains, and he’s been trying to investigate Briggs from a distance, but it’s too well guarded to be broken into by one fifteen-year-old boy, even one with the training that Ling has.

“Maybe you can find out something about alkahestry from her that I can’t,” Ling adds, giving Al and Mei, who are talking enthusiastically, a glance. “But it’s no use for me to ask her questions. It’s like getting water from a stone.”

“She really hates you, huh,” Ed says.

“What are you talking about?” Ling says, raising an eyebrow. “She loves me. We’ve become fast friends.”

Ed gives him an unimpressed look.

Ling relents, with a sigh. “It’s not personal, not really. It just feels personal, most of the time, because if you can jab a person with personal things that’s when it really hurts.” A bit more sarcastically, he adds, “I really love politics.”

Marcoh laughs a little, sadly. “It’s the same everywhere, you know. Not just in courts.”

“But it’s worse in courts,” Ling says. “I would know.”

No one can argue with that, really. Ed considers trying, but before he can, Mei stands up, sudden. The line of her mouth is less absent-minded and childish and more determined, now, and it shocks Ed for an instant how much she looks like Ling.

“We have to go,” she says, with quiet authority. “I can sense something really strange. I think Mr. Scar’s in trouble.”

(She’s right, when they get there, not that it was ever in doubt—with Kimblee closing in, they were all kind of in trouble.)

Later, when the two chimeras are defeated and Scar’s wounds have been bandaged, and their plan has been made, Ed sits down next to Winry.

“You never told me you liked him so much,” she says, nodding towards Ling, who is talking in a calm, measured way to Yoki and Marcoh, trying to soothe some argument between the two. “I mean, come on, I told you about Paninya.”

“Don’t,” Ed says, voice stiff. “Not now.”

She sighs. “Sorry.” Her head finds its way onto his shoulder, for a moment. He closes his eyes, and pretends they’re home, sitting in Winry’s attic and watching the snow fall from there. It’s the only way he can convince himself that she’s going to be okay.

“Just be careful,” he says, finally. “All right?”

She snorts and sits up again. “Be careful, he says. The king of getting himself into trouble. And breaking my auto-mail. And his ribs, and his nose—”

“See if I ever worry about you again,” Ed says. She knocks her shoulder into his and smiles.

“I’ll be fine, Ed,” she says. “I have to live long enough for you to tell me all about this boy you like, right?”

Ed groans. “Kill me now.”

“Nope,” she sing-songs, and says, in a whisper, “Ed and Ling, sittin’ in a tree—”

“He’s gonna hear you,” Ed moans, quietly. “Anyway, I don’t know if—”

“If?” she prompts, eyes bright.

“I’m not talking about this right now,” Ed says. “It’s not important.”

Winry sighs. “You always say that about stuff that would make you really, really happy, you know,” she says.

Ed picks at a scab on his thumb. “That’s not it,” he says, even though it kind of is, a little. “I just—I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, come on, genius,” Winry says, and nudges him again. “No one knows jack about romance. Everyone just pretends they do.”

I kissed him once, Ed thinks of saying, to watch her eyes pop a little. I kissed him once and he got his hands in my hair and it was fucking phenomenal, and so distracting that I’m afraid he’ll kiss me again and I’m afraid he won’t, ever. If Al hadn’t knocked I would have kept kissing him. If Al hadn’t knocked—

Well. Al had knocked, was the thing. Al had knocked, and Ed didn’t live in a world where he could tug a boy into his room and make out on his bed and expect no consequences. Ed lived in a world where he had two metal limbs and an all-metal brother and a purpose he could not allow himself to be distracted from. And also in a world where the object of his distractions was a prince, which just screamed consequences.

“All right, you two,” Miles called over to them, distracting Ed from his thoughts. “Let’s go over the plan one more time before we leave.”

He and Winry stand up, and she doesn’t bring Ling up again, just squeezes his elbow, once, gently, and then goes to stand next to Al.

After Yoki has asked maybe a thousand unintelligent questions and everyone else has asked two or three intelligent once, they’re ready to go. Ed can’t look Scar in the face, this person who will now have his best friend’s life in his hands. He looks at everyone else, instead, preparing for their parts. He tries not to think about how, if all goes well, Ling will have sanctuary at Briggs and Ed will have to leave.

“Any other questions?” Miles says, a third time. This time there are none, just soft murmurs.

They all split up, then, into their two groups. Ed heads for the stairs out to the first floor and the outside. He doesn’t think he can look at it all any longer—he needs to just do something. Everyone else begins to file out, too, either to the first floor or too the roof, determined looks on their faces.

Then—

“Oh, hang on,” Ling says, turning and jobbing back down the stairs. "I forgot something."

Ed turns around and raises his eyebrows at him.

“Kinda running low on time,” he says, and Ling grins.

“This won’t take long,” he says, then cups Ed’s face in his hands and leans down to kiss him, quiet and achingly sure. He makes to move away after just a second, but Ed makes a split-second decision and grabs onto his wrists to hold him still, kissing him back. He makes a soft noise that is kind of embarrassing, but he doesn’t think anyone except Ling can hear it, so that’s okay. Ling smells like snow, cold and clean and fresh, his mouth gentle but insistent, and Ed wishes he could bend time to swallow them up, just for a second. That it could let him have this, this kiss, and more in the future. Consequence-free.

Ed, distantly, also hopes that Al and Winry aren’t watching. Though they probably are, because they’re both dicks.

“Hey,” Ed says, stupidly, once they’ve pulled back. Ling’s mouth twitches up.

“Yes?” he says.

“Nothing, just,” and he struggles with it. His hands are still tight around Ling’s wrists. “Be careful.”

Ling winks, which is unfair. He shouldn’t be allowed to be so flippant when they both might die any day now. “I always am.”

Ed laughs, though. He can’t help himself. Then he shoves Ling away, gently, betraying how much he doesn’t actually want to. “Yeah, yeah. See you back at the fort.”

“Don’t get killed,” Ling calls after him, and Ed turns to walk backwards for a second, giving him a sloppy, two-fingered salute.

Ling’s wide smile is the last thing he sees before vanishing back out into the snowstorm.

“Ed,” Al says, cheerfully, in the way that Al has where he simultaneously sounds friendly and like he’s going to rip your face off. “When were you going to tell me that—”

“Shut up,” Ed says.

“It’s rude to keep secrets from your little brother,” Al says serenely. Ed gives him the finger, but halfheartedly. Some of Major Miles’ soldiers are snickering.

“It wasn’t a secret, it just didn’t come up, okay, stop smiling,” he says, and Al punches him in the arm.

“I can’t smile.”

“Yeah, but I know when you want to, dumbass.”

“You’re the dumbass,” Al says primly, and Ed nearly chokes. It’s always some combination of weird and hilarious to hear Al swear, in his permanently ten-year-old voice. “And you’re telling me everything when we get home.”

“Sheesh, you and Winry both need to get lives,” Ed bitches. “Time to look sharp, little brother. We’ve got a con to pull off.”

(It goes about as well as cons usually go, which means it works, but about ten seconds after it works, everything goes to shit.)

“So you’re saying Briggs isn’t safe anymore,” Ed says, and Miles nods. “Then we have to warn them!”

Uneasy looks pass between the soldiers. “That storm is—” Miles starts, but he’s cut off before he can finish.

“I’ll go,” Al says, squaring his shoulders. “I don’t have a body, so I can’t freeze to death.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Major Miles asks.

“Of course not,” Al says. “It could be a terrible idea. But it’s the only one we have.”

“Really filling me with confidence there, Al,” Ed says.

Al, obviously, can’t smile physically, but Ed can hear it in his voice. “I’ll be fine, Ed. Anyway, someone has to rescue your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my—ugh, you’re such an asshole,” Ed says, and hits Al in the arm. Al just snickers. Miles does, too.

“Well,” he says, “I can’t deny you’re the man for the job, Alphonse. Ed and I will stay here, and wait out the storm. Come back when it’s over.”

“No,” Ed says, the idea coming to him like lightning, fast and impulsive but, potentially, brilliant. “I’ll come meet you, when the storm lets up.”

“Brother—”

“Al,” Ed says. “You know what Kimblee’s asking me to do here at Briggs. With you and Winry all gone he’s not gonna stop asking, and sooner or later they’ll get tired of me saying no. So I’ll leave. I haven’t been forbidden to, I don’t think.”

Al nods, slowly. “Are you gonna be okay?”

“What could hurt me in this stupid abandoned town?” Ed asks. “I’ll be on your tail in no time, all right?”

Al hugs him, his arms cold and unexpected, but Ed welcomes it, reaching up to hug him tightly back.

“See you soon, then,” Al says, and Ed lifts his hand to wave, once, before Al charges, determined as ever, down the stairs and into the storm.

Chapter Text

part vi

They find Alphonse as they’re starting their trek back to Briggs—Winry stubs her toe on his leg, swears enthusiastically, jumps around, then realizes what she’s found, her face slowly going pale. Mei gasps and picks up his head, cradling it to her chest tenderly, calling out Al’s name. Ling just watches, stupefied, as Winry falls to her knees and sets to methodologically taking Al apart, piece by piece, instructing the others to carry different limbs. Her eyebrows are fierce in her terrified face.

“What should we do?” Ling asks. “Does he need to be warm? Does that even matter?”

“I think we should get him inside out of the snow,” she says. “And take it from there.” She pauses. “The blood seal doesn’t seem to be broken or chipped,” she adds, then a bit brokenly, “God, I wish Ed was here, he knows what to do about all this alchemy stuff, I don’t—”

“Hey,” Ling says, patting her on the shoulder. “He’s not gone, all right? The seal’s still here. He probably just—passed out or something.”

They both cling to the idea as she stands. Al has just passed out. He’s fine.

Between the two of them, they pick up Al’s torso, and carry it inside. Yoki makes a smart-ass comment about not leaving on time. Winry threatens to knock his lights out.

All in all, Ling thinks, still worried, glancing sideways at Alphonse’s silent body, a strange morning.

They don’t have to wait long, luckily. About twenty minutes after they haul him in, Al wakes up.

His voice comes from his torso and blood seal, which confuses Mei, who has been holding his head on her lap and staring at it ever since they laid down the pieces of his body. Ling, in his relief, has to try hard not to laugh at the bafflement on her face.

“Hello?” he calls, voice weak. Winry, more relieved than any of them, falls to her knees at his side.

“Alphonse!” she says. “Alphonse Elric, what the hell were you thinking, going out in a storm like that, you scared me half to death—”

“I don’t have a body, it’s not like I can get frostbite,” Al says plaintively, and then, slightly more frantic, “where are my arms and legs?”

“We took them off,” Ling says. “You were pretty heavy all on your own.”

“Oh,” Al says, “can I, um. Have them back, please?”

Winry sets about attaching them. Ling settles, cross legged, next to Al’s torso. “You scared us,” he says. “Why did you come here all alone?”

There’s a smile in Al’s voice. “Are you asking because you care, or because you’re wondering where Ed is?”

Ling feels himself blush, and glances sideways at Winry, who is wiggling her eyebrows at him, relieved enough to be mean about it. “You two are the worst,” he says, and they giggle in unison. “It was both.”

“Briggs has been taken over,” Al says, sighing, serious now. “It’s not safe for you all to come hide there. I was the only person who could come warn you, so Ed said he’d meet up with me when he could.” Winry has reattached his legs, and Ling helps him sit up straight, Mei plopping the helmet back on top. “I didn’t want to leave him there alone with Kimblee, because Kimblee’s—you know. But he can take care of himself. It was this or let you all walk right into a trap.” He shrugs, with the one arm Winry has reattached. “So I picked this.”

“Thanks, Al,” Winry says. “When’s he gonna get himself out of there? And how?”

Al shrugs, still with only the one arm. “He said he’d figure something out.” Then he reaches out and touches Winry’s shoulder, stopping her for a second. “Are you okay?”

“I should be asking you that,” she says, and sniffs a little, then furiously wipes her nose. “No. I promised I wouldn’t cry.”

“I won’t tell,” Al says, kindly, “and anyway, you know Ed was just being dramatic about all that tears of joy stuff.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Winry says, stubbornly, “and even if he was, I wasn’t. I refuse to cry any longer.”

Al allows that, sitting back and letting her reattach his other arm. Ling doesn’t ask about what all that meant. But sometimes two people have things, things they don’t need to tell anyone else. He has things like that with Lan Fan. Mei looks desperately curious, but she doesn’t ask, either.

“So Ed’s meeting up with us,” Ling says, to change the subject, and regrets it when Winry bats her eyelashes at him slyly. “Oh, shut up.”

“No way,” she says. “Ed’s so tight-lipped about all this stuff, I talk his ear off about people I like but he’s never said a word. I’m gonna get all the information I can out of you so when I see him again I can really tease him.”

Well. He understands that, at least.

“Yes,” Al adds, “by the way. He’s going to try to meet up with us. But if he’s not here in the next few days we should get moving. We don’t know what Kimblee will do, it would be a shame to lose our lead.”

Marcoh, who has been listening with amusement, nods. “He’s right. It would be smartest to get out as soon as possible. With or without Edward.”

“Then let’s go now,” Mei says, with one sideways glance at Alphonse, as if she’s expecting his expression to change to let her know whether it was the right move. “He can always find us later.”

“One day,” Al says, calmly. “That’s all I’m asking. Just a day. If Ed’s coming, he’ll be quick about it. If not, I’ll find him somehow.”

“What if he gets hurt?” Winry says. Alphonse looks away, out the window. The snow has calmed, leaving a perfect stillness outside.

“Then he gets hurt,” Al says. “He’s gotten hurt before and pulled through.”

“Al—”

“Look, I’m only asking for a day,” Al says, and stands. “Mei said something about journals? And alchemy notes?”

If there’s hesitation or worry in his voice, none of them can hear it. Ed’s ears are the only ones fine tuned enough for something like that. Winry stares after him, a soft furrow between her brows, but in the end she stands to, and goes to help them decipher.

Ling hangs back, and looks out at the snow. He feels like something big and terrible is coming, and something just as big and terrible is happening. He can feel something large, can sense its chi, a million miles away.

Or maybe it’s just his imagination.

(In a mineshaft, miles and miles away, there is a collapse, and a scream, and then there is a boy, and he’s dying.

But the thing is, he can’t let that happen, not yet. Not while he still has a job to do, and people to protect.

So he grits his teeth. He claps his hands.

He soldiers on.)

Ling couldn’t say he’d ever spent much time with Winry before this, but all in all she’s much better company than his scowling half-sister, even if she teases him about Ed. Winry’s Ed’s family, he thinks she’s allowed to do that. He thinks Al teases, too, but it’s in a quieter and opener way, a way that he thinks would include raised eyebrows and sly smiles if Al had his body back. With just his voice, it doesn’t sound as much like teasing. Ed swears Al can be a little brat when he wants to be, but that’s because it’s easy for him to connect Al’s tones with their corresponding, theoretical facial expressions; Ling just interprets everything Al says as being sort of sweet.

They all come up with a plan, after everything is discussed, and Scar’s brother’s journals are decoded. Ling mostly just sits back and watches, observes; none of it will help him get Lan Fan back, but none of it is useless information, either. He’s figured out that he’s probably going to end up helping save this country before he can go back to save his own, and he doesn’t mind that as much as he once might have.

It isn’t until they’re talking about getting information, capturing a homunculus to talk to it, that he speaks up.

“We should capture Greed,” he says. “To get the information. If we’re going to capture anyone.”

This makes Marcoh pause. “Sloth, from Alphonse’s stories, is closer to here.”

“But stupid,” Ling points out. “Al also said Sloth doesn’t know anything about the dealings of the homunculi, about what they’re doing in Central—”

“Oh, please,” Mei says, impatiently. “Is this all so you can rescue your wayward servant?”

“If I am going to help in this scheme," Ling says, voice tight, “I would like to get some information about her, at least.”

“The boy is right, child,” Scar says, in his gravelly voice. “Sloth will not give us anything of use. But,” and here he looks at Ling, eyes sharp and knowing, “I doubt you will be able to stomach hurting your kinswoman, even if it is only her vessel. Greed is not a good choice either.”

Ling can’t fault this, but anger bubbles up in his throat, denial and bitterness. He only wants to see her, he only wants to know she isn’t dead—

Winry drops her hand on his arm, to stop him from speaking. He takes a deep breath and leans back again, nods quietly. “Who, then?”

“Envy,” Al says. “They’re very willing to believe in their own intelligence and importance. But they aren’t very smart. They’re a good target for this sort of thing. I would say Gluttony, because he’s easy to manipulate, but I doubt Father will let Gluttony go far on his own. One of the smarter ones would most likely come along with him, and we can’t manage two. Envy is capable enough and arrogant enough to come alone.” He glances at Ling, and then away. Ling wonders if he imagined the compassion in the gesture, or if he’s wishing it into existence when it isn’t really there. But he thinks Al understands. He would be out there in the snow hunting for Ed, if he thought he could.

Marcoh and Scar glance at each other, then at Jerso and Zampano. Everyone nods.

“All right,” Zampano says. “When should I make the call?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Marcoh says. “We all need to rest before we invite more trouble.”

He leaves it unspoken that they are already in enough trouble to last anyone a lifetime. Still, the chance to rest is nice, and Ling doesn’t have any qualms about taking it.

The battle is troublesome, as expected, but like all battles, it eventually ends, and they’re left with a little worm-like thing that’s pacing its prison as they all walk south. They stop at a fork in the road at about noon, leaning against an old stone wall and eating bits from Marcoh's rations. Ling doesn't eat. He's got questions that need answering.

“So this is your true form,” Ling says, to the beast in the jar that's sitting on the wall, the high-voiced creature that was once Envy. They glare at him. “I have to say I’m not impressed.”

“I’m not telling you anything about your girl, princeling,” they say. “So don’t bother trying.”

“I don’t give up that easy,” he says. “Where is she?”

They blow a raspberry at him.

He takes the jar, calmly, in two hands, then shakes it as hard as he can. There’s a surprised shout from behind him, but then the thing screams, high-pitched and agonizing, tinny from the glass of the jar. He stops after a few good seconds of screaming, then sets it back down. “Where is she?”

“Maybe Father was wrong about you,” they wheeze. “Maybe you would have been a good host for Greed after all.”

He doesn’t look away from Envy, coughing on the bottom of the jar.

“Answer me, beast,” he says, simply. His hand goes to his belt, casual and pointed.

“Jeez, okay, how about we trade?” they say. “You tell me where the Fullmetal kid is, I tell you where your girl is. I know you know. He might’ve vanished after that little mine collapse but it must have been some kind of trick—”

“What did you say?” Al says, voice suddenly more hollow than usual, and he’s at Ling’s side. “A mine collapse?”

“Oh,” they say, eyes glinting wickedly, “you didn’t know?”

“Don’t talk to it,” Winry says, voice shaking, “for God’s sake, Al,” then she’s got them both by the elbows and she’s drawing them away from it, from the wall. “Can’t you see that’s what it wants?”

“Ed’s missing,” Ling says, feeling shaken. Two people, two people he’s failed to keep safe, two people he cares about vanishing into nothing without him even getting to say goodbye.

“He’ll be fine,” Al says. “I’m not—I mean, if Ed was gone I think that would mean that I’d be—”

“Everything is going to be fine,” Winry says, her voice clipped and high-pitched, terrified, “as long as we don’t talk to that fucking thing!”

Al freezes and turns to her. “Wow.”

“Sorry,” she says, passing a hand over her face. “I’m—I’m a little stressed out.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Al says, quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m sure he’ll be okay. We’ll all be okay.”

“Adorable,” Envy calls from the jar, “all three of you are just adorable.”

Ling tries to ignore them, curling his fingers into fists, nails digging into his palms. The thing starts to whistle, off-key and eerie, from behind them, but before it can get too far Scar stands. He'd been sitting alone about fifteen or twenty feet away, eating slowly and staring out at the horizon, back at Briggs Mountain.

“You came from Youswell,” he says, addressing Mei, “didn’t you?”

“Hmm?” she says. She’s been talking with Marcoh as they walk. “Yes. I did. The desert, then a rest in Youswell, then Central, where I met you.”

Scar plucks the jar from the wall and gives it to her. She stares, with more than a little distaste, at Envy, then looks up.

“Mr. Scar?”

“Go home, child,” he says. “Take this beast to your emperor. Maybe it will be enough to save your clan.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We need nothing more from it,” he says. “And you owe nothing more to a country you don’t belong to.”

Mei bites her lip and glances sideways at Ling, at the sword at his belt, like she’s waiting for him to draw it and challenge her claim to the beastly little thing, and a part of him wants to; wants to steal it away from her and run back to his people, to his home, to help them. A part of him screams out at the unfairness of it all, the desperation of his longing to win. But she shifts, subtly, so she’s in a fighting stance, drops one hand to her waist. Her preparedness for the fight makes him, suddenly, very tired. She’s only a child, he thinks, she’s only a child—

“You go,” Ling says. Mei stares at him, her eyes slowly narrowing into a glare. Every instinct he has is screaming at him to run, to go, to grab the jar with Envy inside of it and cross the desert as fast as possible. He thinks of Lan Fan’s mother and her strong brown hands, of the still lake near the edge of town where children still like to gather and watch the fish. He thinks of his clan and every part of him screams to save them.

But. But.

Can he go home without Lan Fan and Fu by his side? Can he return to Lan Fan’s mother and say I lost your daughter? Can he ask them to overlook what he’s sacrificed to save them?

(And selfishly, idiotically—he thinks of Ed’s steady golden eyes and the way he glares and laughs in equal measure, the gentle unfamiliarity of a metal hand on his cheek. He thinks, I don’t want to leave him.)

“Remember my clan, when you return,” he says, finally. “And tell them—tell them I’m alive.”

She stares. The others stare, too. The two chimeras are looking at him like he has sprouted a second head, and Scar has his red eyes fixed on his face, calm and searching. Alphonse and Winry, too, so intently that his skin prickles. Mei frowns, then, almost angry.

“You’re a fool, Ling Yao,” she says. And he thinks: she is a child, and looking at her makes his stomach ache. He thought he was young to be sent out into the world, searching for a miracle. But she is nearly eleven and tiny; she is his half-sister whom he’s never met. She is standing there with her big eyes as if she knows a single thing about him or his life or what he has given up and whether it is worth it.

He squats down so he’s on her level. “I’ve been called worse,” he says, finally.

“You would defeat me,” she says, then. “If we fought.” He doesn’t know what she means by it, can’t understand why she’s sitting here hoping to convince him to punch her in the stomach and steal the damned thing from her hands. The Yao are dying, he wants to scream, the Yao are dying and my family is in danger and I am realizing so slowly how little I can offer them.

He stands again. He tries not to take a swing at her. “Good thing we’re not fighting, then.”

“Ling,” she says, then, more softly, “brother.”

He closes his eyes against the sting of tears. “Don’t,” he says, lets the word choke him, tug him to his knees, beat him bloody. “Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t you want it?” she asks. “Don’t you want to save your clan? I just want to understand.”

“Do you think I would be a good king?” he asks. “Do you, truly? I want too much and I can’t do enough. Even for the people I love—” His voice cracks. “I can’t, and I don’t want to try anymore, so just take it and go.”

She steps back, seeming shocked. “I—” she starts, then hesitates. “Ling—”

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t, just—” He wipes at his eyes. “Mei Chang,” he says, “princess of Xing. You had better be a damn good empress, all right? Promise me.”

She hesitates, as if she wants to say something else, and then she only nods, a grudging respect on her face that he can’t help but smile a little at. “All right,” she says. “All right, I promise.”

Then she hugs Scar, tight, around the middle. He pats her once, gently, on the head.

“I’ll never forget you,” she says into his stomach, and then lets go, wipes at her face, and turns to run down the path to Youswell.

Ling stares after her, for a moment, even after the rest of the party sighs and starts to move on. Then he falls into step next to Alphonse, and tilts his face up to meet the faint rays of the morning sun. He lets himself picture it once more, Xing, Lan Fan's mother's garden, Fu’s beloved training grounds, the pond. His people. Then he sighs, and lets it go.

It’s been building in him for a while, this realization, but now he has a full grip on it, and he knows: without her, without resolution, he will not be able to go home.

The rest of the journey seems positively uneventful, in comparison to the drama of those first few hours. After they’ve walked for a day and caught a train for another, they reach a city in the process of rebuilding.

“Here,” Al says, sweeping a hand out. “This is Liore. Ed and I came here once.”

“It looks all destroyed,” Winry says skeptically.

“Well, you know,” Al says, sheepish. “Once.”

“He blew up a city?” Ling says. “That does sound like him.” He stretches. It’s warmer here, more like the soft breezes and gentle sunlight he remembers from childhood. Al and Winry seem more comfortable here, too, and so do the chimeras; Yoki is sweating, wiping at his forehead.

“He didn’t blow it up, per se,” Al says, in half-hearted defense. “He just—”

“Al,” Winry says, “if you have to say he didn’t exactly blow it up, he probably blew it up.”

Al sighs, and they catch Jerso snickering. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “That’s fair, I guess.”

Winry shields her eyes from the light of the sun and frowns. “It looks so . . .”

“It’s better than it was,” Al says. “They’ve done a lot to rebuild it.”

“Al? Alphonse?” They all turn, and there’s a tall, dark-skinned girl with her bangs dyed pink, beaming at them. “Oh my gosh, it is you!”

“Rosé!” Al says, clearly surprised.

“How are you? How’s the search? Never mind, you’re still in armor, so it can’t be going that well. Where’s Ed? Are you two travelling apart now? We’ve all been hearing such strange rumors from Central—who are all these people?” Her eyes are bright and inquisitive, and she’s got a good-humored smile. “Al, you shouldn’t have, you brought us some workers.”

“Workers?” Yoki says, raising his eyebrows. “I hardly think—”

“It does a man no harm to earn his bread,” Marcoh says, sternly, and smiles at her. “I’m a doctor, I’d imagine that’s needed.”

“Oh, yes, definitely,” she says. “We’ve got a man who knows a bit about medicine but he has no formal training, he’s been working with two of our best midwives to treat the town’s injuries, but another pair of hands would be welcome. You two—you look strong,” she says, addressing Jerso and Zampano, “and we can always use more help building. You as well, sir, if you’re able.” This is to Yoki, though she seems dubious about his ability to do anything. “Al, your alchemy will be a stroke of luck. We have an alchemist already but he’s been working in the medical area more than anything else, and he's been cooking.” She chuckles. “And you must be Winry, right? Ed and Al talked about you when we met! We could always use a mechanic. If you’re all going to stay for a few days, then—Al, let me introduce you to the alchemist, he’ll certainly be glad to have help—Mr. Ho!” She waves a hand at a blonde man in a bandana, and Ling only has a second to think, vaguely, he seems familiar somehow, before he turns and Winry and Al are both gasping, in quick, soft little inhales that make Ling feel like he’s intruding on a moment.

Then Al, very softly, says, “Dad?”

Chapter Text

part vii

Lan Fan takes a soft breath and she opens her eyes, amid the screaming, burning voices of the souls in Greed’s heart.

Maintaining consciousness in such a place is difficult. Sometimes she manages, sometimes she does not. Sometimes she manages to steal control of her own skin back for a few precious minutes, to dash to a rooftop and look for Ling. She never succeeds in finding him—he seems to have left Central City, which makes her both relieved and sad (Xing is safer, the part of her that guards him says, practical and calm, home is safer, but a quieter angrier part screams I wouldn’t have left, he shouldn’t either.) Greed always gets the body back under her control sooner or later, and eventually Lan Fan stops trying to win it for something as small as running to the roof and stretching out feelers as far as she can. She has learned to pick her battles.

Greed exists in the same space that she does, pushing into her and trying to absorb her into the cacophony. They do not speak to each other, not as such, but Lan Fan feels waves of hatred coming from her whenever their consciousnesses brush. Lan Fan does not allow the hatred to touch her. She does not allow Greed to touch her, either. At her core, the beast craves contact, attention, recognition. Lan Fan can feel that from existing within her, alongside her. She does not give her what she wants. She refuses.

But right now, there are twitches of something at the back of Greed’s mind, twitches that Lan Fan cannot ignore. There is a little man with a big nose and a tail, chattering about Mr. Greed, Mr. Greed, Mr. Greed, friends, friends, friends. She focuses all her energy on listening, just on that. Greed tries to keep her from listening, most of the time, but she always manages to catch bits here and there, small morsels of information. She bides her time. (She is good at that—at waiting. She waited for eleven years for trousers and training instead of skirts.)

Greed is twitching, breathing heavy. Her lungs are constricting, full of energy, excessive and strange. Her hands are clenching into metal-covered fists. And her mind is full of quick, sunburst images, of people Lan Fan has never seen, never met. But there is something heavy coming along with the memories, something burning like embers. Something forgotten and now unavoidable.

Mr. Greed, Mr. Greed. Friends, friends, friends.

“Shut up,” Greed growls. “Shut up, shut up, shut up—”

She doesn’t know if the homunculus is talking to her, to the little man standing before them, or to the memories.

Abruptly, she feels Greed shift tactics.

“Wait,” Greed says, then. It hurts to see the hope in the lizard-man’s little face. “I know that word. Dublith. I think I remember something. I think I do know you.”

Don’t trust her, Lan Fan wants to tell him. She is a demon. A beast.

“You remember me?” There are tears in his eyes. Greed smiles, and Lan Fan feels that smile drip off her face like honey.

The blood, when it comes, is so warm on her metal fingertips. The lizard-man scrabbles at the carbon, unable to find grip, gurgling and falling down, down, down.

“Sorry,” Greed purrs. “You must be thinking about the old Greed.”

The memories blur up around them, then. Faces flash into Lan Fan’s mind and intermingle with the sight of the little man, dead in front of them. Faces and faces and faces, a beautiful woman with a pouting mouth and shaved head, a short man with hunched shoulders and dark hair, a large man with white hair and horns coming out of his forehead. Devils, Lan Fan thinks, like you, but then the love hits her, love and desperation that is mingled into the memories, impossible to shake off.

It knocks Lan Fan off her metaphorical feet, and knocks Greed off her real ones. The homunculus falls to her knees, hands shaking, reaching out almost automatically for the lizard-man.

“Bido,” she whispers, then lurches back, stumbling to her feet. “How did I know that? What are these memories?”

Lan Fan breathes. They were your friends, she says. And you killed him.

“Shut up, brat!” Greed snaps, and turns away from the body, takes a few steps down the tunnel. “I didn’t even know him! Those were the old Greed’s memories, and if he was weak enough to get attached to his minions—”

Friends, Lan Fan corrects.

“You don’t know anything,” Greed seethes. “You sit there in silence all day. You follow a dumbass little prince around like a dog. You don’t know anything—”

How is this, for what I know, Lan Fan says, fierce, her eyes boring into Greed’s, in that between-place where their souls can speak. The hundreds of thousands of others scream around her, but her voice raises above them, more powerful than she’s ever felt it before. I follow him because he is my friend. Because his life means the world to our clan and to me, because he’s my prince. I follow him to protect him, and I will never forget that, not even now, when you’ve stolen my body from me. Friends are carried in your soul. I will not forget him, and you will never forget them.

“Shut up,” Greed whispers.

They died for you, Lan Fan shouts, and she sees her words hit, and keeps going. They loved you. You threw them away like garbage! You didn’t protect them!

“Shut up!” Greed says.

If they are your possessions, Lan Fan tells her, if you insist on ignoring their friendship, their devotion—then how could you let Wrath steal them from you? They were your people. You let him take their lives.

Greed turns back, the memories all rushing together, curdling in her mind. Lan Fan watches, and seethes.

You disgust me, she says. You don’t deserve to call yourself Greed.

Greed falls to her knees, and cradles Bido’s head in her lap, and sobs.

Lan Fan sits back, a little stunned, a little breathless. She settles back into the shadows, and waits for her turn.

(It comes, soon enough, after a fight with Wrath and an unbearable pain from Greed’s side of their head, a scream that rings out in the darkness. It comes, and she heads for safety.)

-

“If Al’s anywhere, he’s here,” Ed says to the chimeras, and then of fucking course Al isn’t at the cabin, which means Winry and Ling aren’t there either, which is just absolutely fantastic. Darius and Heinkel glare at him.

“Guess you don’t know your brother that well after all,” Darius says, and Ed wishes he was tall and strong enough to throw a punch at him.

“It’s not my fault—”

There’s a wheeze of breath from the corner of the cabin, and they are all instantly on high alert. Heinkel lifts their lantern to reveal a shivering, pale girl with dark hair—wait.

“Lan Fan?” Ed says, disbelieving, then catches himself. “Or—Greed? Which one is it?”

She looks up, and her eyes are brown and steady. It’s Lan Fan for sure. She looks different, but her all-black clothes are familiar in their color, at least, even with her hair tugged into a messy ponytail instead of her usual precise bun. She looks stronger, a little older. But she looks like Lan Fan.

“The young lord,” she says. “My grandfather. Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” Ed admits. “They’re alive. They’re safe, Ling’s with Al and Fu’s—he’s looking for you.”

“He’s not with the prince?”

“Ling can take care of himself,” Ed says. “I guess Fu thought you were more important. Are you okay?”

“Greed doesn’t often think to eat,” Lan Fan says, and he notices that her arm is wrapped around her stomach, as if to ward off pain. “She doesn’t need to.”

“We have some rations,” Ed says, and starts digging in his bag. “Try not to eat them all.”

A thin smile crosses her face. “I will do my best.”

“Thank you,” she says, later, food finished, sitting cross-legged on the floor across from him. “That was—I needed it.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Ed says. “Ling would have probably killed me if I didn’t help, and anyway, we’re friends, aren’t we?”

She eyes him, a little surprise. “Friends,” she echoes. “I suppose.”

“He really is fine,” Ed says. “As far as I know, anyway. I last saw him at Briggs.”

“The mountains?” she says, surprised. “I wouldn’t have thought he’d go there. He hates the cold.”

“Wait, which one are we talking about?” Heinkel asks. “Ling’s that kid from Xing who kissed you, right, Fullmetal?”

Lan Fan looks even more surprised, then laughs softly. “I didn’t think he’d have the courage.”

“He—you—what?” Ed sputters, thinking that this is really not going to help any of them in the long run, but Lan Fan looks almost cheerful.

She lays her hands neatly on her lap. “He was infatuated with you, Edward. I just never thought he would do anything about it.”

“Whatever,” Ed mutters, fighting off a blush. “It—whatever. It’s not important.” He fights the urge to ask what, precisely, Ling said about him.

Lan Fan only hums. “I suppose that explains why he braved the cold,” she says. “He was always one for grand gestures, silly boy.” She does not say it unkindly, and stands, brushing off her legs. “Thank you for the food, Edward. I can give you something in return, and then I need to get as far from here as possible, because sooner or later she’s going to come back.”

“What?” Ed says. “I just found you again, we have to—we have to stick together, this is—”

She holds up a hand. “Listen. Greed has fought with the others. She’s broken off from them, she’s remembered things—things about people she knew before. You’re there, in some of the memories, you and Al. You know more than me at this point.” Her eyes are fierce. “She’s not going to tell you anything, but I can. I’ve seen everything she saw. And Father is going to make his move soon—there’s a ritual, it needs sacrifices, and it’s on the Promised Day—”

She gasps and falls to her knees, mid-sentence, choking on air and heaving a little. It’s so similar to how she looked when the Stone was put in her that Ed automatically steps back, feeling queasy. Then he steels himself and moves closer.

“Fight it!” he says, hitting her hard on the top of the head. “Come on, Lan Fan—”

“Listen,” she hisses, drawing something in the dirt with one hand while deliberately not looking at it. “Father is going to make his move. The sacrifices are—”

Ed glances down. She’s drawing a sun and moon, together, crude but legible. An eclipse. Just as he makes the connection, she wipes it away, smudging it, and then tenses again, crying out in pain before sighing, sitting back, and cracking her neck.

“Fuck, she must’ve been saving up for that one,” Greed says. Her eyes are purple again, sharp and cold. Ed looks back and tries to look impassive. “Got to hand it to her, she held out pretty well. I was kicking and screaming in there and she didn’t even look me in the eye.” She stands, and stretches her arms above her head. “Well, see ya, kid.”

“You’re just gonna go?” Ed says.

“I don’t have to take you in anymore,” she says, “didn’t you pay attention? I had a big fight with my dad and my little brother and I ran away from home, kiddo. You must know about all that.” She snorts. “Maybe not the little brother thing. Either way. I don’t have to report back to them, and some little alchemist isn’t all that interesting to me, so—”

“You don’t have any allies,” Ed says, making several connections all at once, from the things Lan Fan said and the things Greed is saying now, and holds his breath, hopes it’s a good enough idea. “Why not come with us?”

Greed stops moving, stands still for what seems like forever, then turns. Any trace of Lan Fan’s gentleness and rage is gone from her face, replaced by only a bitter, condescending smirk.

“Allies?” she says. “With the likes of you? Some puny alchemist, some human? No thanks. The only way you could hope to tag along is as my minion.”

“Sure,” Ed says. “Consider it done.”

“What now?” Heinkel says, indignant. He and Darius have been pretty quiet this whole time, letting Ed and Lan Fan talk. Now he’s bristling, like his furry namesake. “You don’t get to make that decision for us, kid.”

“Fine,” Ed says, “do what you want. I’m signing up. I’m gonna be a minion. Whatever Greed says. I’m already a criminal, so I’ve got nothing to lose, right?”

Greed raises her eyebrows. “If this is some way to get closer to the girl—”

Ed rolls his eyes without really thinking about it. “Please,” he says, “it’s her brother I’m interested in.”

Greed laughs, then seems surprised that she did. “Aw, you’re funny, kiddo, I’ll give you that,” she says. “All right, I’m game. I love a good minion. How about you?” She nods at Darius and Heinkel. “Gonna ditch the kid or come with us?”

Darius shrugs. “I mean, Ed said it. We’re already criminals.”

“Shit,” Heinkel says, annoyed, “shit!” He paces for a second, thinking, then sighs. “I don’t like it,” he says, “for the record. But yeah, all right, I’ll bite.”

“Instinct,” Darius says, “says we should stick with the most powerful predator.”

Greed grins, all sharp teeth. “Instinct is right, boys. Stick with me, and I swear on my life, you won’t go hungry. Now.” She leans back, rocks on her heels, hands in her pockets. Satisfied. “Who’s gonna set up camp?”

-

“I don’t know why we worked,” Greed murmurs, later. “We shouldn’t. You should have just burnt up and become a husk, you shouldn’t have become part of me. You don’t want things. You’re more Wrath than Greed.”

Greed's face is tilted towards the sky, and the setting moon, the endless expanse of stars. Lan Fan can feel the roaring in the homunculus, to touch all of it, to claim all of it. To know it’s hers, and hers alone.

Maybe, Lan Fan says, that’s why we fit.

“No,” Greed says. “It shouldn’t work like that.”

She’s quiet, for a while, staring up. Lan Fan looks, too. Somewhere under those stars is her mother and her home. Somewhere in that endless expanse of possibility is her grandfather and her prince and her purpose. She has found Edward, which was more than she ever expected. She found Edward, and she knows Edward will never stop looking, not for his brother or for Ling. So he will follow Greed and she will follow him, the three of them working in a triangle, all trying to side-step each other. It’s a complicated plan, but the best she has.

The others are all sleeping, Ed curled up like a child, the chimeras sitting upright against a tree and dozing against each other. Greed doesn’t sleep. It’s one of the many things Lan Fan misses.

“Are you going to try again?” Greed says, in time. “To take the body?”

She thinks about it, thinks about lying, realizes she can’t. She shrugs. Yes, she says. Of course I am.

“You won’t be able to,” Greed says. “Most of the time.”

I’ll wait, she says. I’m good at that.

“I’ll be ready,” Greed says.

So will I, beast, Lan Fan says. So will I.

It is not a declaration of war, not quite. It is a declaration of intention.

Lan Fan knows they are already at war.

It is a war she does not expect to lose. She can play the long game. Greed, for all her immortality, cannot. She is too impatient, too sharp. She wants too much and too soon.

But Lan Fan can wait.

It will have to be enough.

She sends the message out into the stars, into the universe, since she can’t write it on a scrap of linen and pin it to his wall this time.

Ling, Grandfather, she thinks. Just be patient a little while longer. I promise I’ll make this right. I promise I’ll come home.

The stars blink at her, low and heavy in the sky. Greed sighs, barely audible.

“Home,” she says, ostensibly to Lan Fan, but it doesn’t sound like it is, not really. Then she shakes her head and continues. “And where is that, exactly, sweetheart?”

Xing, she says. Where is yours?

“Aw, you’re no fun,” Greed says, and spreads her hands. “You think too small. The world’s my home. It’s all mine. The whole damn planet.” She tilts her head back, and grins sharp and wide, feral as a tiger. “I’m gonna be queen of it all someday, little guard dog. Just you sit and watch.”

Lan Fan allows herself a small smile, at Greed’s delusions, at her desperation at pretending she has everything when she has nothing at all. I look forward to it, beast, she says. Goodnight.

Chapter Text

part viii

Some things that Ed has learned over the past two months, in no real order:

1) Darius and Heinkel both smell, distinctly, like animals. They have some animal-like characteristics, too, but for some reason Ed notices this less than the scent. It’s not even a particularly offensive scent, either, it’s clean, and all that shit. It’s just distinctly not-human, and because of that, strange.

2) Greed sometimes, late at night, has entire conversations with herself that Ed thinks might be conversations with Lan Fan. He’s never asked. She only does it when she thinks they’re all asleep, so he hasn’t mentioned it; he initially had some vague notion of using it for blackmail if necessary, and now it just feels like something too awkward to bring up.

3) He doesn’t like camping any more than he liked it when Izumi dumped him and Al on a deserted island and told them to go fuck themselves.

4) He misses Al. A lot.

And there’s other stuff, too, Promised Day, and all that, but those are the main four, the most immediate. Missing Al is probably the biggest of them. The others just piss him off or confuse him, but that one actively hurts.

He’s sitting in front of the fire, tending to it and making sure it doesn’t go out. Darius is snoring against one of the trees, Heinkel off getting food. Greed fucked off ages ago, when it was still light out. The moon is out, now. Ed’s meant to be sleeping, Darius on watch, but their positions have somehow been reversed.

He pokes at the embers with a stick and stacks a few more logs against the fire, watching as it grows taller and fuller, the smoke rising to meet the moon. He glances at the tree trunk, nearby, and counts the notches. They last checked the newspaper, what, five days ago—

Huh.

Okay.

He isn’t sure what to do, for a moment, with what he’s just realized, but eventually he sighs to himself and then, in a moment of whimsy, lights the end of the stick on fire. He makes sure it’s good and burning, then holds it upright in his hands and watches as it crackles for a moment. He closes his eyes.

“Happy birthday, Ed,” he mumbles, feeling silly, then blows it out and opens them.

Seventeen, he thinks, doesn’t feel any different than sixteen did.

Another year gone.

He shivers a little. It’s cold, still, even though they’ve left Briggs. His birthday being here means that winter is fast approaching. Ed was born on the very tail end of fall, just before the solstice. It was close enough to winter in Resembool that no one really bothered to make the distinction, and just called Ed a winter child. Al, lucky asshole, got to be the spring baby, warm-hearted, new life, all that shit. But Ed was winter-born, and that meant he was cold and determined, a moment in stasis. At least according to the fables of the town.

Mom never said that, though. Mom always shook her head and said he was born in the fall, and that she certainly remembered that better than any of the townspeople did, since she was the one giving birth, at the time. Then she would tell him that fall children were the bringers of change, of preparation, of renewal. He remembers thinking about that, when they burned the house down. Him and Al, spring and fall. Creating something new, through the destruction of something old.

He wonders, idly, when Ling was born, or Lan Fan. Not that he believes in that stuff, of course. It’s not backed by anything logical or scientific, it’s just old townsfolk and their dumb superstitions—

Darius wakes with a snort. “Oh, damn it,” he says. “Kid, you were supposed to wake me up.”

“Don’t call me kid,” Ed says. It’s an old argument. Comforting, like complaining to Al and having him say you’re being an idiot, like bugging Winry and getting a wrench to the back of the head. It’s strange to have something so familiar with another person, but the strangeness doesn’t hit the way it used to; instead of sending Ed running back to what’s familiar, it just seems odd that he’s made himself so isolated over the years. He supposes that’s growing up, or something.

Maybe seventeen does feel a little different.

“Anyway,” Ed says, shrugging, “you needed the sleep.”

“You’re still growing.”

God, I hope so, Ed thinks, irritably, but doesn’t voice it. “I don’t mind, okay? It’s fine.”

Darius squints at him, and seems about to say something else, when he’s interrupted by Greed crashing her way into the clearing.

“Coulda fuckin’ checked,” she says, bitterly, “but no, Father just does what he wants—and you know what, drinking ages in this country are a disgrace, I think we should pack this little circus up and head back to Xing after all.”

She doesn’t seem drunk, though to be fair, Ed doesn’t have much experience with that, and has even less regarding homunculi. She just seems pissed off.

“Seventeen,” she says, like it’s the ugliest word she’s ever heard in her life. “Seven-fuckin’-teen—”

“Were you trying to go to a bar?” Ed says, incredulous. “Really?”

“I wanted a drink, so sue me,” she snaps. “You couldn’t have told me she was a baby?”

“A baby? ” Ed says, vaguely insulted. “That’s a little much—”

“Cut the shit,” she says, angry. “That’s—there’s stuff—” She looks pissed, now that he thinks about it, at a lot more than just the drink. “There’s stuff that shouldn’t happen to kids,” she says, finally, quieter. Fiercer. “All right? Someone should’ve said something.”

He looks down at his hands and can’t help but feel, grudgingly, warm towards her for saying that.

“A lot of shit happens to kids that shouldn’t,” he says, finally. “She knows that. She knew that when she told Father to take her.”

This surprises Greed, if the way she looks up is any indication. “She asked?”

Ed nods. He’d thought she’d known this, all along; now, though, it makes sense that she doesn’t. “Yeah. She did.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” Greed says, head tipped back. For a moment, there is a distinct expression of mourning on her face, and then it fades. “Either way, I still can’t get a drink, so the night’s a waste as far as I’m concerned. Where’s Heinkel?”

Darius grunts, already halfway back into sleep. Ed pokes at the fire again and shrugs.

Aggravated, she stands, and snaps, “I gotta do everything myself, huh,” and stalks off to look for him. Ed looks after her, her stiff shoulders in that black coat.

He rolls his own shoulders back and stares up at the moon, and thinks.

Greed—this version of Greed—was born in the height of the summer. Summer children are relentless, burning, brave, sun-filled.

According to tradition, anyway. Because Ed certainly does not really believe in all that stuff.

Ed sighs, and shakes his head, and nudges Darius. “I’ll take you up on switching places now,” he says, quiet. Darius grunts again and nods, taking the fire-stick from his hand and laying another log across the fire. He hums to himself, lowly; it’s a tactic he uses to keep himself awake when he’s on watch, at least until Heinkel comes back and the two of them can talk. But Ed pretends it’s for his sake, and he tucks the hood of his coat under his head as a makeshift pillow, and he dreams of the height of summer, and the bonfires that the people in town would throw, burning through felled trees and mountains of dead grass, all in controlled piles. Relentless. Powerful. A hungry crackling thing, shining through the night.

It’s surprisingly easy to construct fake identities.

Ed’s never tried it before—his name and his State Alchemist’s watch were the best and easiest way to get information, so it always made sense to keep them—but Darius and Heinkel, for reasons they decline to disclose, have experience in this sort of thing. Ed mostly just stays quiet, keeps his head down, keeps his hair tucked under hats or hoods, always unbraided. He lets them handle it, lets them make up the names and the stories.

It’s not often that they make use of the fake identity parts, only when they’re really, really out of money, or when it’s really cold and they need to stay in an inn instead of outside on the grass. They stay away from Central, and stick to the south and the west. Warmer places. Over time, they inch closer and closer to Resembool, but Ed doesn’t say anything, even as the weather gets warmer, closer to spring. He doesn’t want to make himself hope too much that they might stop there, that he might get to sleep in Granny’s house and eat her food and see the face of a person that he knows down to the roots of his hair. But sometimes he does, when the afternoons or nights get long. Sometimes he wonders if that’s where Al ended up.

Darius and Heinkel usually volunteer in things like construction, manual labor; Ed joins them sometimes but after a few weeks he finds himself drifting towards libraries, asking if he can help sort archives or organize old newsreels in exchange for a few bucks. It feels like protection, being shut up in those basements or old buildings, losing himself in the smell of paper and the history in his hands. He gets to forget who he is for a while. It’s nice.

Greed never works, on those afternoons when they’re out of money and buckle down on earning more. She wanders, pacing towns and smiling toothily at people. Ed spends some time annoyed about it before he realizes she’s gathering information, and comes home to their room or fire each night presenting tidbits like juicy pieces of meat, hoping one of them will bite.

Mustang and Hawkeye are both still alive. Neither Scar or the Fullmetal Alchemist have been seen in a long time—the wildest rumors have the two of them killing each other, which makes Ed snort. Al hasn’t been seen, either. The political situation in Xing is falling to pieces.

She says this, pauses a second, then laughs at nothing. Ed raises his eyebrows at her.

“Oh, right,” she says. “The little girl said it’s always been like that, has been ever since the Jin Clan got power, then she called them miserable yapping little beasts that beg at the Emperor’s lap for scraps.”

There’s a beat of silence and Greed shrugs. “Don’t let it get you down, sweetheart,” she says, ostensibly to Lan Fan, but visibly just to herself. “I thought it was funny.”

After about three and a half months living like this, on the low, on the run, with the Promised Day fast approaching, Ed finally gets up the courage to bring up visiting Resembool.

He frames it as more of an automail maintenance thing, rather than a desperately missing his family thing, and he’s pretty sure Darius and Heinkel see through it, but they say nothing to his face about it. They’ve learned when to tease and when to push and when to shut up, and he’s learned that with them, too. Proximity breeds familiarity, and they have, all of them been in very close proximity.

But Greed bites onto the automail maintenance idea with enthusiasm, claiming that if his arm gets busted it’s game over for their whole little operation, and that’s how they all end up heading for Resembool at the very beginning of March.

Ed is bitching a little to relieve his nerves, about how they’re gonna be visiting right when the townsfolk are having the sheep festival and all that, and Darius has taken the bait and started complaining back at him about how he should be grateful to be going home at all—normal enough conversation, really—when they pass a little cottage, small and wooden with a bright green roof and a garden along one side.

Greed stops and stares at the garden, and they all stop and stare at her. It’s nothing special, really, just a few colorful, delicate flowers, but it’s obviously well-tended; treasured, even. There’s not a weed in sight.

“Orchids,” she murmurs, and her voice isn’t Greed’s.

Her hands twitch as if she wants to reach out and pick one, but she stuffs her hands in the pockets of Greed’s long black coat instead.

“Lan Fan?” Ed asks, hesitantly. Her face is startling; open and sorrowful.

“My mother has a garden like this,” she says, and her shoulders are tight beneath the coat, beneath the weight of the world. Ed sticks his hands in his pockets, too, while Darius and Heinkel exchange baffled looks. This, at least, he gets. The whole homunculus thing—weird, and difficult. But this? This, he understands.

“What’s she like?” he says. It comes out a little softer than he means it, a little more wistful. She shoots him a quick look, but doesn’t call him out on it.

“She has strong hands,” Lan Fan says, “like Grandfather.”

“And you,” Ed points out. “Guess it’s genetic. She has a garden?”

“Full of flowers,” Lan Fan confirms. “And ginger, and vegetables . . . Ling and I used to walk through it, hunting for the little spring onions that would grow in with the potatoes. He would drag me out by the hand and I would stop him from stepping on my mother’s flowers, and the crunch of those onions was how we knew it was summer.”

Ed walks a few steps closer to her, standing shoulder to shoulder. He’s never heard her call Ling by his name before, only the prince and young lord and him. It’s not out of anger. He’s getting the feeling that Lan Fan saves Ling’s name for people she trusts hearing her say it, and it’s good to be in that category.

“Mother used to make dumplings every few days,” she continues. “Enough for the whole house. The kitchen servants would help her, and Ling and I would sit on the counter and watch as they worked—three to fold and one to put in filling. He always stole bits of the dough, and they let him. Mother always gave me some, too, just before she shooed us out. She squeezed my hand every time, like it was a secret.”

“My mom grew tomatoes,” Ed says. He lets himself think about it, about all the good things that happened in that little garden. Mom kneeling in the dirt, beaming at the plants and then at him and Al; tucking them in and smelling like sunshine and earth and the warm, heavy smell of ripe tomatoes. “Al and I would eat them off the vine, like apples. Whenever we got whiny and hungry and dinner wasn’t ready yet, Mom would just laugh at us and point outside.”

Lan Fan smiles, then it fades into stillness. “She used to call me her pearl,” she says, wistfully, and then shakes her head. “She stopped calling me that a long time ago.”

Before Ed can answer, though, she shakes her head and rolls back her shoulders.

“Let’s go,” she says. “I’m ready. I apologize.”

“You don’t need to,” Ed says, firmly. “It’s okay. We’d been walking a while anyway, it was time to rest.”

She gives him a small, understanding smile, and he nudges her in the arm, and then they both keep walking.

“The fuck just happened?” he hears Darius whisper, from behind them, and Heinkel says something back, but Ed can’t hear it. He can see the buildings of his hometown on the horizon, and Lan Fan’s words are rattling around in his brain, and the two combined drown everything else out.

Granny greets them with very little ceremony and a whole lot of swearing, cuffs Ed upside the head for not calling and confirming that he was alive, and tells them all to get the fuck to bed. Den greets them by growling at Heinkel and pouncing on Ed, begging to be petted, which Ed does with little complaint. They all collapse onto the hospital cots that Granny keeps in the area of the house she uses for customers, except Greed, who perches in one of the windows and alternates between watching them and watching the horizon. Den curls up on the end of Ed’s cot, crushing his legs, half of his little body hanging off over the edges but determined to get some human contact. Ed doesn’t have the heart to refuse him.

They all sleep well, for once.

-

It’s the middle of the night, the others solidly asleep in the Rockbell’s house, when Greed eventually speaks.

“You liar, ” Greed says, soft enough to not wake them but emphatic enough that Lan Fan takes notice. “You can keep on telling me you don’t want things, you can keep telling yourself that, if you want, but you’re lying. If anyone says that they’re lying. You want things. You’ve been using greed as your driving force your whole life.”

Lan Fan is buzzing. She’s been silent for a while, since she pulled herself to the surface by the garden, and Greed has been silent too. Lan Fan could feel her thinking, but she didn’t know what she was thinking about, and Greed was usually so loud, so obvious, that not being able to tell had worried her. At first she’d thought it was anger, but now that she is actually speaking, Greed seems triumphant.

“Even I believed it,” she says. “You’re pretty damn good, aren’t you, kid?”

I don’t know what you mean, Lan Fan says. I am not supposed to want things.

She bites her tongue against it the moment she says it, because it feels too much like ammunition, like something she shouldn’t say. Greed does not use it the way she had feared she would, though.

She only crosses her arms. “Why not?”

I pledged my life to serve my lord, she says. My own needs—

“That doesn’t mean you just stop wanting things, sweetheart,” Greed says. “It just means you try to pretend you don’t. But you don’t do that. You still want them just as much as ever, you just don’t even seem to realize you do.”

There’s something like incredulity in her voice, like she’s marvelling.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lan Fan says, again.

“Greed isn’t just for money and power,” Greed says, her voice intent. “Greed is anything you want. And you wanted to fight. You wanted it so bad you stole it for yourself and you forced everyone around you to agree. That’s greed.”

I needed to keep him safe, Lan Fan argued. That wasn’t about—

“Bullshit,” Greed says. “You wanted to escape all the dresses and girl stuff and the being married to a guy for clan political power. You wanted to fight. You wanted to be strong. You looked ahead of yourself and you saw the life they planned for you and you wanted another one, and you got it. You’re a greedy little shit, Lan Fan. You should just admit it to yourself. It’d save us a lot of time.”

She clenches her jaw and says nothing. There isn’t really anything she can say, in response, because like it or not, Greed is right.

“What I still don’t get is why you’re content to follow him around,” she adds, finally. “Conviction like yours, will like yours, you could have the whole clan at your feet. You could be the real leader, and he’d just be the figurehead. But you don’t do it.”

You will have to remain confused, Lan Fan says. I’ve explained enough to you.

“I’ll figure it out eventually,” Greed says, cheerfully. “Now that I know what makes you tick the rest of this is gonna be a whole lot easier.”

Lan Fan stays quiet. She closes her eyes. She thinks about climbing out of her window at night, the yearning in her chest, the way it felt to see her arms and shoulders get stronger. She thinks about greed and its companions, about wanting, her entire chest burning with how much she wants Ling to succeed, how much she wants their clan to be saved.

She dislikes when Greed is right.

“Aww,” Greed says, still annoyingly cheerful. “Are we not talking again? Was it something I said?”

-

The sheep festival is in full swing the next day, with dozens of trains coming in and out of the station. Ed climbs to Winry’s room in the attic and sits at her window to watch them come and go. It’s something he did a lot as a kid, back when everything was simpler and he was just daydreaming about getting on one of the trains someday, to satisfy his wanderlust and then come back home again. It’s nice, though, too, to be in a place that belongs to Winry. It makes him miss her a little less. There are half-built bits of machinery strewn across her desk, medical textbooks and romance novels on her shelves, old photos taped to the walls near her bed. One is of the three of them, Winry in the middle, hugging the life out of him and Al. They look happy.

The floor creaks, behind him, and he turns, expecting Granny, come to be rude to him about how much they both miss Winry and Al, which is their typical bonding ritual. Instead, he sees Winry, standing there frozen and in travel-worn clothes, and he drops his sandwich.

“Oh my God,” she says, perhaps louder than is strictly necessary, because he hears definite sounds of movement from downstairs.

“Fuck,” he says. “Now you’ve done it.”

“Done what?” she says. “You’re alive? What are you doing here?”

“You thought I was dead?”

“Everyone’s been saying that!” she says, her voice high and stressed. She comes closer and starts pounding her fists on his shoulders. “You asshole! I tell you and tell you to call and you never do and now look what happened! Al and I had no idea what happened to you, we were worried sick—”

“You’re with him?” Ed says, shocked; the sounds from downstairs reach them, two strangers banging the door open, then Darius and Heinkel right behind them. Den’s barking, too, somewhere in the mix. “Is he okay? Are you okay? Is Ling—”

“Everyone’s fine except that we thought you were dead,” Winry snaps. “You’re such an asshole, you’ve been here all this time—”

“I just got here last night!” Ed says, perplexed. “I haven’t been—I didn’t call because there was no phone to call with. Also, I didn’t know where you were, and the government is after me.”

“Then why did you even come here!” she says, smacking him on the shoulder again. The others seem to have realized that there’s no danger, and Darius and Heinkel are now laughing at them. “Idiot! Putting Granny in danger—”

“I needed to get my arm fixed,” he says. “Stop hitting me, Winry, you violent, stupid—”

“You’re stupid!” she says, and then hugs him very tightly. “Ugh, I was so worried about you!”

His arms stick out, frozen, for a second by his sides, then he hugs her back. “I know,” he says. “I’m really sorry.” He pauses. “Is Al . . .”

“He’s okay,” she says, muffled against his shoulder. “He didn’t come back with me. Something about a Promised Day.”

“Okay,” Ed says. Something sticks in his stomach to know that he won’t get to see Al, but the Promised Day is soon enough, and he’s waited this long. He can wait a bit longer.

She pulls back and pushes her hair off her face, sighing and puffing her cheeks. “So what did you do to your arm this time?” she says, already business-like.

“Nothing,” he says, indignant. “I just needed a checkup before—before.”

“Are you gonna tell me what this Promised Day shit is all about?” she says, crossing her arms. “Al wouldn’t talk.”

“I’d tell you if I knew,” Ed says, which is only half the truth. Her mouth twists, but she only nods, once.

“Okay,” she says. “I get it. Let’s just—dinner. Right? Granny was gonna make dinner, and then I’ll look at your arm. How long are you staying?”

“Just until tonight,” Ed admits. He sees in her face that that’s not the answer she wanted, but she doesn’t say anything about it.

“Okay,” she says, decisively. “Then let’s go.”

Later, as she’s working on his arm, she says, “I’m glad you guys found Lan Fan. Ling’s been really worried about her.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, pressing his face into the pillow. His voice comes out muffled. “I know. He was messed up about it.”

“He really is okay,” she says, gently. “So’s Al. I know you must be—”

“I’m fine.”

She tightens a screw. “I saw your dad. He was in Liore.”

He sits up, dislodging her hands. “What?”

“He and Al talked for a really long time,” she says. “I think he’s trying to—this whole Promised Day thing, it involves him too. I just wanted to warn you.” The twist to her mouth is familiar; it’s the one that says you still have a father and you act like this with him. It’s something she never says out loud, but he knows she thinks it. “I know you won’t want to see him. But just—don’t be too—”

“Too what?” Ed says, raising an eyebrow. “Antagonistic? I’m always antagonistic.”

“With your dad you are,” she says.

“Look, just leave it, okay? I’m not having this conversation.”

“You’re so insufferable,” Winry mutters, finishing his arm in silence. “Anything else, or can I go to bed?”

Ed thinks about telling her to leave the country. It’s a sentence that has been rattling in his chest since he got here and saw Granny again. He wonders if she would realize what he means or think he’s still just irritated that she brought up Hohenheim. He wonders if she even would leave, if he told her to. He decides to tell her anyway, pausing in the doorway and looking back.

“The Promised Day is gonna be big,” he says. “I think you should get Granny, and go somewhere. Outside the country. Just for a while.”

“No,” she says. “I’m not leaving.”

“Win—”

“If you get to be stubborn about your dad then I get to be stubborn about this,” she snaps. “I am not leaving, not when you and Al need me, not when my customers are gonna need me. Anyway, you’re gonna be fine. The country’s gonna be fine.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” he says.

“I do,” she tells him, eyes burning. “And I don’t wanna hear anything else about it, okay? You’re going to win. All of you. And you’re gonna come home.”

He pauses. It’s on the tip of his tongue to say you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but then he thinks of sitting on Knox’s bed next to Ling all those months ago, telling him that he was gonna be the best emperor Xing had ever seen. That he believed in him. He closes his eyes, for a second, and sorts through Winry’s words, lets them take root in his chest. Lets himself believe in them, for a second.

Then he looks at her, glaring and exhausted and stubborn. His best friend. His irritation melts, replaced with heavy, burning affection.

"We're leaving soon," he says. "If you want to come see us off."

"Ed," she says, shaking her head, then she laughs a little, and the sound fills him up, like a good, warm dinner. "You stupid idiot. Of course I will."

(As they say their goodbyes, half a country away, there is a boy's soul in a suit of armor, and he is alone in the darkness, waiting for the morning. He has gotten used to this, the waiting. He plays games with himself, reads books, counts stars. He finds methods to make the time pass. He has nothing to keep him company but his own mind.

Then, suddenly, he is not alone. Shadows are creeping around his feet.

Hello, Alphonse, says a child's voice, and then, just as suddenly, the boy in the armor does not even have his mind to pass the time with.

The homunculus Pride settles his shadows into the armor, and the shadows smile with all of their teeth.)

Chapter Text

interlude

A lifetime ago, Greed thinks, she had more than she does now. A bar. A gang of minions instead of the measly three she currently has. A town named Dublith. A way up from that place, up and up and up, to the sky, to the stars, until she was large enough that she could encompass the entire universe in her hands and pick it up to swallow it whole. She remembers being able to see it in front of her, when she slept. She remembers the endless hungry potential of her chest in those days, the way it swelled even larger when her minions were near, walking alongside and in front of and behind her.

She looked different then, sounded different, wore different clothes and carried different pronouns. Schematics. It was her, and the world was open and ready for the claiming, and then Wrath took it all away.

Wrath. The replacement son when the old Greed went wayward, the prodigal child who shared Father’s rage. Telling her that is your weakness, Greed, on a rooftop, as if he knew anything about identifying weakness. Telling him that is your weakness, Greed, when he pinned the old Greed to the ground with four swords, cut out his tongue and yanked open his chest. A still-beating heart in the form of a red stone, tugged out and crumbling apart. You care too much.

How could she not, when she wanted everything, when there was so much burning inside of her? She wanted emotion and thousands of houses and all the attention in the universe and money and sex and she wanted—she wanted—

Well. She wanted.

It was kind of all in the name.

Her new minions aren’t half bad, as minions go. The two big ones remind her of her old crew at the Devil’s Nest; they’re made up creatures, and they have biology that isn’t entirely their own, but they’re living in their bodies nonetheless. Fullmetal is the same way, creating his own limbs, his own life, a perfect circle made of two willing hands. Determination. That’s greed, in its way; not that he knows it, not that any of them really know it. People think greed is exhaustive, hungry, claiming. They’re right. But greed is soft, too. Greed can be protective. She knows that, looking up at the moon, even if none of them do.

She understands all this about them but there is so much she doesn’t have a handle on. Her chest burns sharper and harder when she thinks about her old people, and she doesn’t feel like herself. Lan Fan closes her eyes against the tide in her infuriatingly calm way, and Greed wishes a scream would rouse her. It won’t. She’s tried it before. Wake up, she wants to say, don’t ignore me, don’t ignore me, look at me, look at me—

Lan Fan is the worst possible person Greed could have gotten stuck with, she thinks. Self-control is not her thing, but it’s Lan Fan’s, and Lan Fan can close her eyes and practically vanish in a way that Greed can’t do. She is always feeling too much and too strongly to fade away. It isn’t fair. She wants to be able to do it. She sometimes pictures vanishing, dissolving from Lan Fan’s body (her body, her body, she needs to remember that, it’s hers, it’s hers).

Would the girl even miss her? Would she just blink and move on, in her calm-eyed way?

A lifetime ago Greed had been surrounded by minions and her chest had been warm. Now she is a block of ice and it’s all that little girl’s fault, freezing herself and keeping Greed frozen with her. She’s always cold, always moving through the world and feeling like she doesn’t touch it.

You’re grieving, the girl says, unexpectedly. Her eyes are wide-open and still full of that terrible irritating calmness. Greed remembers telling her what greed was, how she’d been living off of it for years, how her chest and heart and head had burned full of it but she hadn’t known what it meant. She had hoped she would scream or argue. She had hoped she would cry or laugh. Anything but what she got, which was silence, calmness, big eyes. Then Lan Fan silenced herself again, and Greed did not hear from her for days, until now.

She hates being watched, like an animal. She’s something more than an animal, more than even a human, and this little girl stares at her and watches like she’s here for entertainment.

“What would you know about grief,” Greed tells her. What would I know, she doesn’t say. She’s never felt anything but what she is. She doesn’t know she’s capable.

You’re sorry they died, Lan Fan says. There’s something unfamiliar in her voice, something that isn’t cold.

Greed thinks about smiles and hands on shoulders and the smell of alcohol, all of them tossing back shots and wincing and laughing at the bar. She remembers telling herself minions, and it fit, but only because she wanted it to, only because she cut it down and forced it to. She molded it because it was what she needed but it wasn’t like any of them actually believed it.

Tell me about them, Lan Fan suggests. When Greed faces inward her eyes are open and full of warmth, the clenched edge to her jaw looser. She isn’t unguarded, only yielding for a moment.

“You’re supposed to be angry at me,” Greed says.

I am, Lan Fan says. But only because you were right.

There is a long silence, that stretches up to fill all the empty spaces between Greed and the stars.

“I’m right, huh?” she says.

A shadow of a smile crosses the girl’s face. Don’t make me say it again.

“No, tell me,” Greed coaxes. “What was I right about?”

I’m greedy, she says. I’ve wanted a lot and I’ve gotten it. Now tell me about your old friends.

“You keep calling them that.”

Friends?

“They weren’t. They were—not friends.”

Hmm, she says. Well, there’s still time for that.

“For what?”

For you to admit that I’m right, beast, she says, and there’s still that smile in her voice, tugging at the edge of her mouth. Now tell me about them. It helps, you know.

Greed tilts her head back and stares at the sky again, contemplative. “Yeah,” she says, finally. “All right.”

Lan Fan, silent and waiting as ever, raises an eyebrow.

Greed feels words burst forth from her chest like they’ve been holding themselves there. And there they are, in her memories, Dolcetto with his roguish grin and spiky black hair, Martel with her low throaty laugh and shaved head, Roa with his booming voice and endless appetite for beer, Bido with his twitchy eyes and big heart. She talks about nights on the roof where they had parties and drank heavily, the four of them falling asleep and the old Greed sitting up and looking out at the sky and thinking we will all climb up, higher and higher, together and together and together. I will take the sky in my hands and push it into my chest and they will still be there next to me.

She stops talking when she finds herself thinking that. Lan Fan says, Greed?

Greed watches the sky, and then turns her head, just a little, to the side. Darius, Heinkel and Edward are all sleeping, Ed curled up with his head on his brown coat and Darius snoring against a tree, Heinkel against his shoulder. She watches them, breathing there and snoring a little.

“I think I understand now,” she says.

What do you understand? Lan Fan asks.

Greed sighs, quiet and simple. She crosses and uncrosses her legs.

“It’s another kind of greed,” she says. “They’re my people, like he’s your prince. I get it now. Why you follow him.” She pauses, but she does not say she’s sorry. The idea, though, crosses her mind. She believes that most would find that to be progress.

Lan Fan is silent for a long moment, watching as Edward and Darius sleep.

I follow him because it is my duty, she says, finally. Anything else is because he is my friend.

“Yeah,” Greed says. “You, um.” She sighs and tugs her knees into her chest, resting her chin on them. “You love him a lot, huh? Like Fullmetal and his kid brother.”

Not all the time, Lan Fan tells her, and Greed can feel her amusement at the thought, the memories of Ling tugging her hair or acting like an idiot or eating all the pork buns before she could have any. She had been so irritated with him in these moments, but now she wishes for them back. Greed feels all of this and she realizes, in that second, that Lan Fan has not been silent, she has not been empty, she has never been dull. She has only ever been isolated and protective, and now she is opening herself up.

Not all the time, beast, Lan Fan says.

Beast has become an endearment. Greed grins into the empty sky.

Chapter Text

part ix

Up until Pride showed up, Ed could have said with all due honesty that he had been having a really fantastic day.

The Promised Day was fast approaching, yeah, but since it was getting closer it meant he had less time to stress out about it, and besides that, he’d actually had a good meal for once, and the sun was out. Not to mention he’d gotten to give Hohenheim a swift punch to the face.

(That had been great.)

But now all of that has gone downhill. Now, they were fighting homunculi in the pitch-dark blackness of night and Al is fucking possessed by Pride. Ed is running for his life from Gluttony and he can’t see anything, not Al, not the trees, not Greed—

Shit. Now there’s a question. Where the hell did Greed even go?

“Edward!” a voice calls, and it’s a voice he hasn’t heard for a week or so now. Then there’s a hand at his elbow, tugging him backwards and into the even darker shadow of some trees, and then Lan Fan’s eyes are blinking at him, wide and brown, furrowed slightly with the stress of the situation.

“You’re back,” he says, stupidly, and before she can respond, her eyes fix on something in the distance, and they widen and soften all at once. Ed turns, to see Gluttony running straight for them.

Just as Ed is about to lunge forward, to try to do something, there’s a flash of the red-electric light that means one of the homunculi is regenerating, and then the light explodes all over the clearing and Ed, feeling like he’s facing a state of mild shock, sees Gluttony split clean in half, a gleaming, familiar sword going right through him.

As Gluttony gurgles and glows in the distance, Ling straightens up, and grins.

Holy shit, Ed thinks, for a variety of reasons. Shock, delight, confusion, a larger-than-usual amount of attraction. He’s trying to swallow all of it when Lan Fan speaks.

“I knew you’d catch up,” she says, fondly.

“I always do eventually,” Ling says, and then crosses the clearing to them. “Hey, Ed,” he adds, a little out of breath. “Long time no see.”

Lan Fan shifts so she is at Ling’s side, at his left. The side he often leaves open while swinging his sword. Ed grins at them both in the darkness.

“Hey,” he says.

Ling rests his sword over his shoulder. “Need a little help getting rid of these two?”

“You know what,” Ed says, with a glance towards Lan Fan, “that would be awesome.”

“All right,” Ling says, like he’s got nothing better to do, and he winks. “You owe me dinner.”

Suddenly, the day is looking up again, Ed thinks, and then he rolls his eyes and claps his palms together to turn his arm to carbon. “Cheapskate. First let’s rescue Al.”

Ling nods, determination glinting sharp as steel in his eyes, and the three of them all run forward into the unknown.

Turns out that Ed’s second assessment of the day was the right one, though, because it turns out the only way to win the fight is to give up the only thing Ed’s ever really cared about preserving.

So, yeah, today officially sucks.

“Fuck,” Ed says emphatically, spinning on his heel, hands clenched into fists, feeling hysterical and terrified. What the hell is wrong with Al that he could even, for a second, think it’s a goddamn brilliant idea to act like homunculus bait? And Hohenheim, damn him, the rotten bastard, he agreed to it. “Fuck,” he repeats, and feels close to tears, shaking hand over his mouth. His stomach hurts, and so do his stumps; the echo of old wounds.

Hohenheim is standing there looking incredibly guilty, which is just fucking fantastic. “Edward—”

“Ed,” Ling says, then. He’s standing there in all black, his hair wound into a bun at the nape of his neck. Fu is standing next to him, but Fu is staring at Greed, who’s staring back. Lan Fan faded back out of their shared eyes a little while ago, at about the point when Hohenheim stepped out onto the grass with that horrible, calm expression on his face. So there’s that, too; another person missing, another person still trapped.

Ling’s shoulders are tight and he looks poised and ready to run, ready to fucking grab Greed and take her back to Xing, sit her down and try to talk Lan Fan back to the surface. His hand is the only warm thing in the universe and it’s resting on Ed’s shoulder.

And Ed is tired, and Al is trapped, and he can’t fucking help it, he turns and lets himself lean into Ling’s chest, lets his arms come up to wrap around his middle. He’s so fucking warm and shaking like a tree in a strong wind; he smells like sweat and dirt and Ed’s sure he smells even worse. The rage seeps out of him, leeched away like the cold air. There’s no room for it here. Here, it’s warm, and Ed is tired, he’s fucking exhausted, so he buries his nose in the bend between Ling’s shoulder and neck and holds on.

Ling’s arms come up to hug him back, crushing him a little. His face is buried in Ed’s dirty hair.

“You smell like a sewer,” he comments, and holds on all the tighter.

Ed chuckles, watery. “Hello to you too, dumbass.”

Then he draws back, and ignores Hohenheim’s raised eyebrows, the quiet looks the two chimeras are sharing. He walks over to the mound of dirt, to Pride’s cage. He feels like he has the strength to do it now, the rage gone, Ling’s hug still hanging gently on his skin.

He taps twice on the side of the dirt with his auto-mail hand. The resulting clunk is muffled and pitiful, but he tries not to let that bug him.

“Hey,” he says, “Alphonse.”

Al’s voice is distant. “Brother?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Al, I’m so fucking sorry it had to be you.” His fist is clenched tight against the dirt. He can feel his entire body shaking. “I—I’ll get you out as soon as I can, okay? I’ll get you out.”

Al is quiet for a long moment. “You always think you have to save everyone, brother.”

“You know me too well, Al,” he says.

He can hear a smile in Al’s voice when he answers. “Yes, I do.”

There’s a calm, if not exactly contented, silence.

“Are you all alive?” Al asks, then. “No one died, right?”

God, he fucking breaks Ed’s heart. The little shake in his voice, the waver, the unspoken question. Did I kill anyone while Pride had his claws in me?

(Sometimes it hits him really hard that his brother is fifteen years old.)

“No,” he says. “No one died.”

He raises his fist and lets it press up against the dirt again, deliberate. He hears a clunk, the distant sound of Al doing the same.

“Love you, Al,” he says. “I’ll come get you soon.”

“Love you too,” he answers. “Say hi to Ling and Fu for me.”

And then Ed steps back, tears gathering in his eyes, and turns away. He leaves his little brother there alone in the dark with a monster.

On the way back to the village he hauls over on the side of the path and throws up some blood and some of his dinner from yesterday, and he feels his father’s hand on his back, for a tentative half-second, before it’s wrenched away. Ed wipes his mouth and glares and thinks good. At least he doesn’t have to punch him again and scream don’t fucking touch me.

Fu is somewhere in the trees, above them, following and keeping watch. Greed split from the group while Ed had his forehead pressed to the dirt mound that is holding Al. The chimeras were talking to Hohenheim, but now they are just watching with more than a little disgust as Ed retches and coughs into the dirt.

Ling is silent, and only hands him some water from his belt. “There was blood in there,” he says, after Ed has rinsed his mouth out. “Are you —”

“I’m fine,” Ed says.

Ling falls into step next to him. “The whole ‘I’m gonna punish myself for not being able to save Al’ thing you like to do isn’t attractive, you know.”

“Good thing I’m not trying to be attractive, then,” Ed says, and walks faster.

“It’s also not what he would want you to do,” Ling says, gently, keeping time with his steps easily. Stupid tall bastard. And it isn’t fair, because he knows that bringing up Al’s potential disappointment is a surefire way to get Ed to do something he doesn’t actually want to do. In this case, it’s ask someone to fix his stupid stomach. In other cases, with other people (usually Al himself) it has been drink milk or file your taxes before we get arrested, brother, honestly, it’s not that difficult.

Everyone is watching them now. Ed wipes at the blood still at the corner of his mouth.

“Let’s just go back to town,” he says.

“Ed,” Ling says. Quiet. Pleading. He screws his eyes shut.

“I have seen too many goddamn doctors this year,” he says, and keeps walking.

“You’re not gonna heal on your own,” Ling says.  

Ed coughs, and it tastes like mucus and blood and everything he’s been crushing down inside of himself since he was twelve and bleeding out on his basement floor.

“I’ll cut you a deal,” he says, finally, because Ling’s got a look on his face like his ribs are cracking open with the force of whatever he’s carrying in his chest, and that’s scary as hell. “Leave me alone until we get back to the town and I’ll see someone.”

“Nope, sorry,” Ling says, unrepentant. “That’s a shitty deal. Every time I leave you alone you do your best to get yourself killed.”

“Fair point,” Ed says. “Guess you’re gonna have to stick around.”

Ling grins. “Guess so.”

“Stop flirting,” Darius says. “We’re almost there, kiddos.”

“Hey, now, that wasn’t flirting,” Ling says. “I’m capable of being much more charming.”

“Really?” Ed asks. “What poor suckers have you been charming, then? ‘Cause I’ve sure as hell never seen it.”

“Rude,” Ling comments.

“‘S what you signed up for,” Ed says. “No take backs.”

Ling squeezes his shoulder and says nothing at all.

Ling, eventually, jogs ahead to talk to Marcoh and Fu, and then the two chimeras are both looking at Ed.

“Can I help you?” Ed says, obnoxiously, but they’re both used to him by now and they don’t even respond to it.

“You really do look like shit, kid,” Darius says. “Is it your stomach again?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Nothing I can do about it now, though.”

“What happened?” It’s Hohenheim. Ed closes his eyes and imagines not answering him, just spending the rest of this stupid fucking Promised Day pretending his father does not exist. He wishes he had the time and the excuse of being that petty. He wishes he was allowed to act like a child.

“Piece of rebar went through me in a mine collapse,” he says. “Pulled it out, sealed up the wound, rearranged my guts a little. It just hurts sometimes, that’s all.”

When he looks up, Hohenheim is staring at him, horrified.

“Edward,” he says. “You’re seventeen.”

Ed coughs again, and swallows down the blood that comes up. “What’s your point?”

He looks away, then. “Nothing,” he says. “Just that—you shouldn’t have had to experience that.”

“Yeah, well,” Ed says. “Didn’t see you there to stop it, so just—”

“Can I help?”

“Sorry?”

“I understand if you don’t want me to,” Hohenheim says. “But I could—I’m a Philosopher’s Stone, Edward. I could heal you.”

For a moment, he imagines it. Breathing easy. His arm and leg back on his body. Al, walking and breathing and laughing.

For a moment, he wavers.

Then he turns his head.

“I promised Al,” he says, quietly, “that we wouldn’t use a Stone. Not after knowing what they’re made of.”

“Edward,” Hohenheim says, frustrated. “I understand that you’re angry with me, and I know I shouldn’t have left, back then, but—”

Ed stops walking. The air feels too light around him; it’s as if there’s not enough oxygen. Ling is ahead with Fu and Marcoh and Yoki. It’s only him and the chimeras and his unfortunately not-departed father, trying to swoop in and be the hero while Al sits back there covered in dirt. He has to laugh, horse and hollow. Darius and Heinkel both look back at him.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Ed says. He wishes he could scream, but he’s so fucking tired that all he can do is stare, dead-eyed, and wait for Hohenheim to respond. “I’m not mad at you for leaving me. I’m mad ‘cause you left Al. ”

“I don’t understand.”

“He was the one that thought you were coming back, asshole,” Ed says, and he’s so fucking tired, tired from fighting and walking and tired from losing Al and tired from having to look at Hohenheim’s stupid, guilty face. “You should have heard him. Every single day when Mom was sick, and after she died, just—when Dad comes back, when Dad comes back. He thought you were gonna fix everything.”

“Edward—”

“Don’t Edward me,” Ed snaps. “I raised that kid. I made him his dinner and I bought him his clothes and I tucked him in at night when we both had nightmares from watching Mom collapse and he still only fucking wanted you.” Maybe he’s got a little bit of a scream left in him after all, at the unfairness of it. Maybe he’s got the energy to take a step closer and jab a finger at Hohenheim’s chest. “And he still thinks you’re gonna fix it all. He thinks after all this is over you’re gonna come home with us and play happy families and you and I both fucking know that’s not true, all right?”

Hohenheim ducks his head, which is as much of an answer as Ed has ever gotten from him.

“And I really, really could not care less if you leave again when this is over,” Ed says. “But when you do, you’re gonna break Al’s heart. And I could kill you for that, Hohenheim. Because none of this was his fault. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Whose fault do you think it is, then?” Hohenheim asks, his voice very soft, and very sad. “Mine?”

Ed laughs again, and doing so hurts his chest, his stomach, his ribs. “Fucking hell,” he says. “You really haven’t been paying attention. I’d hate you a lot more if I thought this was your fault.”

Hohenheim’s head snaps up, and he says nothing, just stares, wide-eyed and horrified. Ed is struck by the absolutely awful feeling of having revealed too much, of having ripped his skin open and showed this asshole his heart. Look what I’ve turned into, he wants to say. Look what I’ve done to Al. Look what I’m trying to fix. Look at all this shit you tried to leave behind.  

“Edward,” he says, gently, like he’s approaching a spooked animal. “You can’t think this is your fault. You were a child.”

I ruined his life, Ed wants to scream, wants to grab Hohenheim by the shoulders and shake him until he sees stars. He’s my little brother and I ruined his fucking life. I might as well have killed him. He is never going to get the sight of Al’s face out of his head, ten and terrified, dissolving because of Ed’s dumbass mistake. He is never going to forget how Al’s voice shook when he admitted that he couldn’t sleep anymore, that he was so awake all the time and he was so exhausted. Hohenheim doesn’t know shit about fault and he doesn’t know shit about Ed and he doesn’t—

He turns away, skin crawling, headache pounding. “I don’t need to talk to you about this.”

“If I’d known,” Hohenheim says, but Ed cuts him off.

“But you didn’t,” he says. “So shut up and leave me alone.”

He stomps ahead to join Ling and Marcoh, who have gotten a fair few feet ahead of them in the time it took Ed to yell at his father, and Ling, absentmindedly, offers his arm for Ed to lean against again, and Ed lets his forehead press into his shoulder for a second, and sighs.

“You okay?” Ling asks, worried, in a whisper.

“No,” Ed says. “But thanks for asking.”

Ling squeezes his arm and starts to talk, mindlessly, endlessly, quietly; just a gentle stream of observations and talk to distract Ed from his stomach, and from his father, and from this whole stupid thing.

(“We should rest,” Darius says, after all the discussion is over, after they’ve sorted out who will stay and who will go and who will fight and who will stand down. He expects Edward to argue, but he only casts a last glance in the direction of the dome and nods.

“All right,” he says, then grabs the Xingese kid by the wrist and tugs him to the ground.

“Ow,” he complains, but goes, willingly, lying down on his side and holding out his arms, yawning as Ed settles into them, glaring at the crowd at large as if daring them to comment before closing his eyes. The two of them must really be exhausted, because they’re out cold in seconds.

Marcoh chuckles. Darius shares an amused glance with Heinkel.

“Wish I had a camera,” Heinkel says, smirking behind his mustache. “Those two are just precious.”)

Chapter Text

part x

The last time Ling had seen Central City he had been running from it in the dead of night, heart heavy with Lan Fan’s loss, lips buzzing from kissing Ed. Complicated feelings, complicated tuggings of his chest in different directions, and it’s no different now. He’s only a little older. Sixteen and not fifteen. Searching and not fleeing. Ready, and not afraid.

Well. Still a little afraid. But who wouldn’t be?

Fu touches his shoulder, draws him back from the rest of the group. Ed and the chimeras look over their shoulders at him, then back.

“I will go on ahead, young lord,” Fu says. “The enemy does not yet know my face.”

“Stay,” Ling says, shaking his head. “Please.” He only met up with Fu again a few weeks ago, and even though they have been existing mostly in awkward silences, he doesn’t want him to leave.

Fu thins his mouth. “Is that an order?”

Ling glances ahead at the rest of them, how they are not listening but are, at the same time. Hohenheim is looking back now, too.

“It’s a request, grandfather,” Ling says, quietly. He switches to Xingese, to their shared natural tongue. He misses speaking in it daily, and anyway, it’s how Fu better expresses himself.

Fu’s eyebrows twitch at grandfather, and at the way Ling is speaking. Too familiar, too soft.

“A emperor,” Fu says mildly, also in Xingese, “must have a better sense of propriety.”

“I am not going to be emperor,” Ling says. “I—I sent Mei Chang back with the secret to immortality. She will be empress, and the Chang clan will live. The Yao will endure, or I hope we will.”

Fu does not show any anger at this, at least not outwardly. “And you?”

“I will work,” Ling says. “And correct my mistakes. And hope you forgive me for them, someday.”

There is another long moment of that silence that Fu is so talented at speaking with. Then, at last, he shakes his head.

“Dear boy,” he says. “I forgave you the instant it happened. You were both children. I was only angry at myself, for being too old and stupid to protect you.”

“I was the one that lost her,” Ling says, uncomprehending.

“And we were both fools,” Fu says, “for thinking she would not find us again. She and the creature are working in tandem to defeat the evil in Central. After that, we may have to contend with it, and find a way to expel it from her, but she is in no danger now.” He smiles. “Of my grandchildren, I did not see her as a snake-charmer, but it seems she has continued to surprise me.”

Ling reaches up to grip the hand that is still resting on his shoulder. “I thought you would be angry. That I gave away the throne.”

“You may still land on it,” Fu says. “None of us can see the future.” He smiles, again, this time directly at Ling. “But I know you, and I know that you would not have given it without good reason. I’m sorry that I ever made you think otherwise.”

“You seemed so angry,” Ling mumbles. “And not just about that, about—about everything. About me bringing her in the first place, and telling her my lessons when I was little, and—I don’t know. Everything else.”

“She told me something once when she was a child, something I will never forget,” Fu says quietly. “She said you let him be my friend first, before you told me he was a prince. And it seemed to me that I had only put the two of you in more danger by letting you care for each other.” He shakes his head. “You and Lan Fan have tumbled so readily into the future of our country that I sometimes fear you plan to leave me behind, but you have never once been weaker for it. I see that now. If you can forgive an old fool that ridiculous assumption—”

“Of course I can,” Ling says, squeezing the hand on his shoulder. “Fu. Of course I can.”

Fu nods, and bows his head. “Then nothing else must be said. And I will go ahead, to scout the area. You forget I have also sworn to protect you.”

“I—” Ling starts, frustrated, because there is so much more to say, there’s everything more to say, but then he takes a breath and closes his eyes and thinks of the way Fu speaks in silence, through gestures, how much it is that he even said this. He nods. “Be careful.”

“And you,” Fu says. He takes a step back, then he smiles, and then he vanishes into the streets of Central.

Ling falls into step between Ed and Darius, nodding at Ed when he raises his eyebrows, and keeping silent, listening to them talk about some thing or another, drinking in the feeling of always having been forgiven.

For the first time—and it’s odd, really, to think of—he thinks of Fu and sees a man who has lived a long life and not seen much change through all of it, who took a chance on two children spilling change from their fingertips because he loved them so dearly. Fu taught Lan Fan to fight even if he only knew how to teach her the way he had been taught—by abandoning all else but the need to protect. Fu has made mistakes concerning the two of them and mistakes that have nothing to do with them.

Ling smiles, to himself, just briefly. Then he looks ahead to the buildings of the city, and speaks.

“This is it, then,” he says. “Everything comes together today.”

“If by all that you mean we’re gonna kick ass,” Ed says, “then yes.”

Ling wrinkles his nose. “You make it sound very barbaric.”

“Oh, well, sorry I wasn’t raised on a steady diet of Xingese poetry,” Ed says, rolling his eyes. “Are you gonna quote shit at them until they fall over, or are you gonna hit them with your sword?”

Ling laughs, and reaches down, and grabs his hand. “All right, then,” he says. “Weirdo. We’re gonna kick ass.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ed says, squeezing back.

They end up in a creepy tunnel under a science facility. Ed tricks some guards to let them in, then beats them up, and now they’re all standing here in a whispered argument about who should go with who. Ed has been getting steadily louder as he makes the case that he and Scar should not be on the same team, but eventually Darius cuts him off to tell him that he’s being childish, which is essentially the number one way to shut Ed up about anything. So Ed shuts up, crossing his arms over his chest.

That matter cleared up, the others move on to other things.

“The prince should come with me,” Hohenheim says. “You can sense the presence of the Homunculi, can’t you? That would be helpful. The chimeras can smell them, so the other group has someone too.”

Ed frowns, his irritation slipping and his hand sliding around Ling’s wrist. “Hang on—”

“Ed, we don’t have time to argue,” Darius says, sternly. “Say bye to your boyfriend and let’s go.”

Ling slides his hand down to grasp Ed’s, squeezing briefly and then letting go. “Bye, then.”

“If I find Lan Fan—”

“Tell her I’m alive,” Ling says. Ed nods, and he looks resolute as he turns away, his jaw clenched and hard. Ling thinks of him pressing his fist to the dirt wall that kept him from Alphonse, thinks of him tugging Ling’s arms tighter around him while they slept. He doesn’t want to be another person that Ed has to leave behind in the dark.

There’s a beat, and then Ling finds his voice.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?” Ed says, turning back.

“Don’t die,” Ling says. “All right?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. Something about his posture changes, softens, opens up. Just a little, just enough to mean something. “Yeah, you too.”

It feels like he’s saying more. Ling’s mouth softens into a smile.

Then he’s gone, and Ling turns away, too.

Once they’re alone in the dark together, after they’ve walked in silence for a bit, Hohenheim clears his throat.

“You love my son,” he says.

Ling only stops and stares at him. He hadn’t expected this.

Hohenheim blinks his gold eyes at him, dim behind his glasses. He is not moving. The world has gone still waiting for Ling to answer. It’s too big a question for the end of the world, and too big a question for a teenager, but he finds he has the words to respond nonetheless.

“Yes,” he says, finally. “I do.”

(The world takes a breath, and then spins on.)

“You’re going to be emperor.”

Ling knows what he means by that. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t. Xing has not yet chosen her ruler. But I’m not a child,” he says. “I know what my country requires of me.” He keeps walking.

“Do you expect he will wait for you?” Hohenheim starts walking again, too. He doesn’t sound rude, not really. Just curious. But it’s an intellectual curiosity, and it makes Ling angry. No one should sound that detached, talking about their child.

“He has a life to live,” Ling says. “So do I. I only hope that our paths will not diverge.” He glances back over his shoulder at Hohenheim, who is watching him. “I have a clan and a country already in my heart, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for him.”

“He’s lucky to have someone like you,” Hohenheim says. Ling stops again, then, still a little angry, and looks back at him.

“Shouldn’t you be telling me I’m lucky to have him? ”

“You know that already,” Hohenheim says. “I can hear it in your voice when you talk about him.” He shrugs. “I’m just glad, I suppose. I don’t know how much it means to you, or to him, but I wanted you to know that I’m happy you have each other.” Then he waves a hand at a vent in the ceiling. “And that you should go to find your sister.”

“What?”

“You can sense the homunculi,” Hohenheim says. “You’ll be able to find Greed. So go. I’ll be all right here, and Ed has a dozen people in his corner that aren’t going to let him get hurt. I’m sure that wherever they are, she and Greed will need you.”

Ling looks up at the vent. The decision has practically been made for him, it seems. He doesn’t know how right it feels to leave Ed down here, but Hohenheim is right about the rest of it. She and Greed are alone, and he wants to be there with her. It’s his duty to protect her just as much as it’s her duty to protect him.

He glances back at Hohenheim, and tries to connect this person telling him he’s happy for him and Ed, that he wants him to go find Lan Fan, with the man that Ed can’t stand, the man that left him and Al alone. He can’t quite manage it. He lets himself mull over that for a moment, and then he shakes his head and moves on.

He says, “Thank you, then.”

“Safe travels, Ling Yao,” Hohenheim says. “And good luck to you.”

Ling swings up into the vent and closes it carefully behind him. Then he leans back against the wall of the vent and closes his eyes for a long, calm moment; he listens for Lan Fan, for her chi, for the unique sense of it buried beside a million other souls in Greed’s.

Then he moves, and starts making his way through the vents to find her.

Today is where it all comes together, after all. And he’s not going to let it pass without kicking some ass.

Chapter Text

part xi

Slow down, Lan Fan says. You’ll burn yourself out.

“I don’t burn out, sweetheart,” Greed says. “I’m the brightest fucking star in the universe.”

Lan Fan hums, doing her best to convey disbelief. It must work, because Greed sighs and slows, stopping to perch in a tree, overlooking Central City. Lan Fan didn’t think they’d ever really come back here, somehow. She’d had some quiet notion that Greed, for all her bluster, would turn back when the moment came; that she would take a few steps backwards into the shadows and wait to pick at the bones, a large black carrion-bird, when it was all over. But she is frothing at the teeth, pushing herself too hard to move forward. She has a desperate wish in her heart that Lan Fan can feel infecting both of them.

It’s strange to admit that she’s proud of Greed, but she is. She didn’t turn back.

“You do know what this is, though, right?” Greed says, still in the tree, hand pressed a little too tightly into the trunk. Her claws are digging into the bark. “This is it. Father is going to do it today. ”

You still haven’t told me what he plans to do, Lan Fan says.

“I’d tell you if I knew,” Greed says. “He was really tight-lipped about it. All I got was that it was some big transmutation, some big Philosopher’s Stone. But the Stone was only step one. Step two needed the stone.”

Lan Fan mulls over that.

“Sorry for leaving your princeling back there,” Greed says, then, sliding down out of the tree and blinking in the slowly rising sun. “I just—there isn’t any time.”

Lan Fan blinks, too. There is something warm and tired in Greed’s chest when Ling comes up. You’re worried about him.

“Well, all you fucking do is worry about him,” Greed mumbles. “Guess it rubbed off on me. Ugh! Stupid humans. Always caring about each other instead of being sensible and caring about themselves.” The jab is pointed. Greed has taken to lecturing her lately about the various scars she has found on their body. The lectures mostly consist of Greed calling her an idiot, but—and Lan Fan doesn’t like to admit this, either—they’re sweet. In their way.

Lan Fan just smiles. After today, she says, we’ll be off to Xing, and then you’ll have to make it your job to worry about him.

It’s become a joke, of sorts, their endless debate about what’s going to happen after. Lan Fan has no intention of leaving Ling’s side, especially if all goes well and he’s named heir to the throne. Greed has no intention of ever setting foot in Xing, because she would be a servant there, and the idea is repulsive to her. Lan Fan thinks it’s only a joke because neither one of them wants to admit that after today, the debate will have to become real.

“Not on your life,” Greed says. “You know what, you and I are going to Aerugo. To the beach, or some shit. I’m sick of camping out in the woods.”

Lan Fan laughs, and the sun breaks out over the trees. Central City is lit up before them, and she feels Greed stretch the arms of their body out for a second, to encompass it, to beg for it. And then the arms are lowered, and Greed starts to run again.

The Promised Day has dawned.

Greed decides to climb to the roof of Central Command and just wait for her moment, as she calls it, to arrive.

This is ridiculous, Lan Fan says.

“Shut up,” Greed says.

There’s a fight down there!

“And what do you suggest we do, get in there and start swinging?” Greed says. “They’re all right without us. I know Xing does all this taking over the country shit through assassination or whatever, but Amestris likes to be loud about it, and us getting involved would probably just mess up their fucking battle plans. Anyway, you heard them talking. Wrath is dead.” A wave of glee rolls through her when she says it. “Envy’s out of the picture, Pride is captured, Sloth is stupid, Lust’s been gone, and Gluttony’s dead now, too. Father’s not gonna come out of his little hole. He can’t. And I’m right here.” She spreads her arms pointedly. “Humans can handle other humans. I’m gonna stay out of it until I’ve got the chance to get something out of it, understand?”

Lan Fan doesn’t want to concede to the logic of it, but she does, settling back mulishly.

“Anyway,” Greed says. “You don’t wanna fight for Amestris. You just want control back so you can go run after your friends.”

Our friends, Lan Fan corrects.

“Eh,” Greed says. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Lan Fan rolls her eyes, but before she can reply, there’s a commotion on the ground, a man standing at the gates and moving steadily forward, even as they shoot at him with everything they’ve got.

“There’s no way,” Greed says. Rage, previously bundled and mostly forgotten in her chest, bursts free, flares to life. Lan Fan feels it, and, quietly, adds her own. If this is who they think it is, then they’re in this together.

The man on the ground draws two swords.

You were saying something about letting humans deal with other humans, Lan Fan says.

“I was,” Greed says. Her arms are slowly going black. “Wasn’t I.”

She doesn’t have to say anything else. The two of them leap off the edge of the roof.

It’s one of the more dramatic entrances of Lan Fan’s life. She’s not used to that kind of thing—her craft relies on deadly silence.

Though when Greed crashes to the ground and everyone in the vicinity jumps, shocked, giving the homunculus both an opening to strike and an opportunity to monologue, Lan Fan supposes there might be something to be said for style.

“My dear little brother,” Greed drawls, hands in her pockets. “Word on the street is that you died in a train accident.”

“Unfortunately,” Wrath says, “my eyes are a little too sharp for that.” He tightens his grip on his sword and narrows his eyes.

Greed takes off her coat and throws it aside. The Briggs soldiers, around them, are all moving; getting into position, no doubt.

Well. All but one.

“You’re that prince’s friend,” Falman says, dumbstruck. “Lan Fan, right?”

Greed, surprisingly, lets her speak for herself. Or maybe they just agree on it, silently and easily. It’s become harder to figure out, lately, whether Greed is letting her do something or whether they’re switching back and forth seamlessly, becoming a little too comfortable sharing a mouth.

“You protected my lord in his time of need. It’s only fair I do the same for your people.” She shifts on her feet, feels metal encase her arms. “In any case, this self-righteous fool once took something very precious from me. I’ve been waiting for this fight for a year.”

“You call a year a long wait?” Greed snorts, taking back control as easily as breathing. “This old bastard’s been talking down to me since the day we met.”

Go, then, Lan Fan says. She stretches out, to the best of her ability, within the body. She gives her instincts up for Greed’s use, and her knowledge, and her skill. She knows in that instant that they will win. There is determination in Greed’s stance, in her even breaths, in her mind.

Greed charges on Bradley, and the world turns to the clang of metal on metal, of sword on false skin. Lan Fan can imagine it, from a distance; the flashes of silver, the feral grin on her own well-known face. She has only ever known herself to look serious in battle, but Greed always grins, wide and sharp. She strikes fear with a flash of teeth in a way Lan Fan has only done with her calm ability to destroy.

Buccaneer, Falman, the other Briggs men—they all help, but this is Greed’s show, and they all know it. She is all grey-silver claws, digging into the flesh of Bradley’s side, over his face. Lan Fan watches as it heals, again and again. They’re evenly matched, at the end of the day—but Bradley has only himself, and Greed has Lan Fan.

Think you’re my secret weapon, huh?

I know I am, Lan Fan says. I think you do, too.

Greed only smiles again, like a claw through skin.

Like a miracle, like a mirage—just when Greed is starting to struggle—her grandfather is standing there, not even breathing heavy, his back to her back. Lan Fan’s chest fills with a roaring, desperate emotion. She thinks that if she had use of her body, it would be shaking.

“Thanks, old man,” she hears Greed say, as if from the furthest distance. “You really saved my ass.”

“I could care less about saving your ass,” Fu says. “I am here to protect my granddaughter.”

“Well,” Greed says, a little amused, “it’s the same ass.”

The look Fu gives her is almost like he wants to laugh.

Everything that Lan Fan is struggles and screams and wells to the surface. Greed lets her go. Her arms stay metal, the homunculus’ power still active. But Lan Fan breathes, her grandfather by her side.

She could almost be home, in the training yards of the Yao.

(Almost.)

“Granddaughter. Are you well?” he asks, eyes still fixed on Bradley.

“Better now,” she says. “Thank you.”

Bradley scowls. Greed wells back to the surface.

All right, sweetheart, you’ve had your moment.

Lan Fan lets go.

Keep him safe, she says. She is not accustomed to asking the homunculus for favors, but this—

“I’ll try,” Greed says. “I promise.”

Lan Fan inhales once, then exhales.

It will have to be enough.

(In the end, though, it isn’t.)

“You need to rest,” Lan Fan begs him, holding him upright with both arms. She is desperate, pleading, shaking. “Please. Please. ”

“Yes,” he murmurs. “Yes, rest would be nice.”

He pushes himself to his feet, in direct contrast to what he just said. She shifts, prepared to help him if he falls, but then he smiles, in an old, gentle way, a way she has not seen since she was a child, toddling after him in her mother’s garden and listening as he taught her which leaves made medicine and which made tea. Before training, before their love for each other got tied up in duty to their country. He smiles like that no longer matters. He smiles like he is at peace.

Terror fills her, like a stone in her stomach.

“You take care of my girl, homunculus,” her grandfather says. His eyes are fixed and determined, and he’s staring Bradley down. There is still that smile on his face. “Harden your skin and take care of her.”

No, Lan Fan thinks, no no no, and she feels shock spreading through Greed’s consciousness, confusion and unwilling fear, along with the carbon-skin shield. Her limbs feel as if they are trapped in mud.

Her grandfather rips the stoppers off all of his bombs and charges. There is a flash of silver. He is cut off, mid-word.

She cannot save him.

Lan Fan makes a raw sound, wordless and empty. From somewhere far off, someone shouts “You fool!” but she cannot make any noise but that of a dying animal, of a burning corpse. There are no words for this. There is only the echoing sound of her scream.

Or maybe it is Greed’s scream. It is impossible to be sure, because in that instant, when her grandfather stumbles back, blood pouring from his chest, the two of them are bound in their grief, in their rage, in their terror. The screaming cacophony rests behind them are suddenly all around them, swallowing them up. Lan Fan is wrapped in the arms of a thousand sobbing souls and they all want, they all need, they all crave—

But Lan Fan is strong. She has always been strong. She has been taught from her youngest moment to balance grief and rage and silence.

And when she pulls herself out, Greed comes with her.

Or—maybe not. Because they are one creature now, one rage and one purpose, one terrified angry wanting thing. She wonders if doing this will only make her more like Bradley. But it doesn’t matter, just then. She wrenches the hole in her chest closed and traps Greed inside it with her. Her body turns to stone.

Buccaneer is bleeding out, Bradley’s sword pulled from his stomach, and shoved through her grandfather’s ribs and into Bradley’s. It’s a tactical move, an intelligent one. Her grandfather is smiling like he is at peace, and rage is burning through Lan Fan’s veins, her limbs, her beating heart.

She feels Greed, then. You can handle this, can’t you?

Oh, yes. She can.

“Lend me your power,” she murmurs, and stands. “Share with me.”

It’s not lending, though, at least not right now. Right now they are the same entity, the same consciousness. Greed is the part of Lan Fan that wants, and Lan Fan is the part of Greed that loves. They belong in the same place, in the same body. They have the same anger and the same desperation and the same love and the same loyalty.

Ling crashes to the ground near them, here at last and a little too late. It was his scream, she realizes, that she heard before, his shout of sorrow. His eyes are teary and wide and she meets his gaze with steely determination.

Lan Fan breathes, and Greed breathes with her, and together, they charge.

She sees Ling tending to Grandfather, bending over his body, desperate, frantic. Greed keeps up a running string of commentary—he favors his left, move now, you’re lighter than he is, use that—but other than that Lan Fan is alone with her fury.

Until she pushes him off the edge, and he grabs her ankle and and tugs her down too.

“Bastard,” she shouts at him, voice tight with grief. “Murderer.”

“You’re no better, little girl,” he says, voice impassive. “Don’t fool yourself.”

When Ling grabs her hand, when he falls into the water, she tries to feel vindicated.

“Use your Stone,” Ling says, begging. “Is there a doctor, an alchemist, anything, we can still save him, there’s still time—”

Lan Fan only kneels by her grandfather’s side, and shakes with grief.

“Dear girl,” he says, softly, his voice cracking, “I am tired.”

“Then rest,” she tells him, her own voice a thin, wavering thing. Warriors deserve some rest, don’t they? Some time to sit in the garden, to hum at the wonder and majesty of the world? He had loved that, back in Xing, loved closing his eyes and letting the wind hit his face, surrounded by the gentle smells of the herbs and flowers. All of these things her grandfather will never do again, things she will have to try to do without him.

He smiles at her, and in that smile she reads a million words he could say to her, a million words he cannot voice. Praise, love, gentleness. She heaves a sob, leans forward, presses her forehead to his chest, and as she feels him stop breathing, she wishes she could keep her head bowed forever. 

But there is work to do. She stands, and walks over to Captain Buccaneer.

“I can’t save you,” she says, “even with the power I have been given. I’m sorry.”

He snorts. “Don’t worry about that,” he says. “If you feel like you owe me, then protect the gate. We’ve got orders not to open it.”

“All right,” she says, without thinking. “All right.”

She doesn’t move, though, not right away.

“I know,” she says, then chokes on it, and then manages to finish. “I know that my grandfather is grateful to you for making his death a good one. A purposeful one. He died in peace, without shame.”

He eyes her and says nothing, save a quiet nod. She moves towards the gate; nods at Falman.

“Stop shooting,” she says. “Let me through.”

Greed breathes, and stretches, slotting herself into place next to Lan Fan.

It’s still a while before I make my play, Greed tells her. And I—we’ve gotta do our part, too. To make sure the old man died well.

Lan Fan’s hands turn to claws; she chances a glance back at her grandfather’s body, at Ling’s tearstained face. He reaches out for her like he’s trying to draw her back, but she takes another step towards the doorway.

“I’ll be back,” she says. “You have my word, young lord.”

She doesn’t wait for him to answer, just steps onto the elevator. She and Greed slip back into the eerie headspace of being one being, one person. Lan Fan lets her rage flare back up, her love, her sorrow. Greed wraps the unfamiliar emotions in avarice, a burning need for revenge, for protection, for justice. All things that Lan Fan already knows, amped up to a thousand.

Will you go back? Greed asks, just before the smoke clears and the bullets hit them.

“I am a warrior of Xing,” she answers. “Like my grandfather before me.” A bullet grazes her cheek and it heals, easy as breathing. She shifts, her hands turning silver, her arms on their way. “We always keep our promises.”

Fighting helps. It distracts her.

She thinks that Grandfather would scold her, in his way, if he could see her, all of the anger in her chest as she lets the world burn in her wake. Once the gate is secured, even Greed, cautiously, takes control back, tells her to settle in for the ride. That’s helpful, too. It gives her a moment to be silent, to sort through her feelings and compress them down. When the day is over she will grieve, but right now she is needed.

She opens her eyes.

Greed is running towards Father, towards that sickeningly large bundle of souls. “Are you,” she says. Then she stops.

I’ll be all right.

“Good,” Greed says. “All right.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“I promised you—” Greed says, but before she can even finish Lan Fan is shaking her head.

I don’t want to talk about it, Lan Fan says. But I don’t blame you, beast.

“But I—”

You need to focus on the task at hand, Lan Fan says. We’ll have time.

They’re at the door to Father’s sanctum. This time, it’s Greed who can’t fault her logic.

“Yeah, all right,” she says, and cracks her neck. “I’ll hold you to that, I guess.”

They leap into Father’s circle, Greed’s heart pounding, ready to take, ready to have; Ed’s eyes widen in comical shock, and widen still further when Father moves to a different spot, smug and disgusting, and tells them he knew their plan all along.

Help them, Lan Fan says, do something, stop him—

And Greed, to her credit, takes a step forward, but before she can get any closer, the eclipse reaches its peak, and giant eyes peel open on the five sacrifice’s stomachs. Lan Fan’s own stomach turns.

You wanted that, she says.

“Still do,” Greed mumbles. “I’ll kill him, and I’ll take it.”

Lan Fan can sense that she thinks she means it.

She keeps thinking she means it, as they battle Father under the city, as they follow him to the courtyard, as they find Ling again, standing next to Wrath’s body with a look on his face that Lan Fan has never seen on his face before. It’s terrifying in its newness, but she doesn’t have time to process it. He leaps to his feet when he sees them, rushes to a place beside them. He’s got a hand pressed to a hastily tied bandage on his side, scratches on his cheeks and arms.

“Anyone injured,” Greed says, looking directly at him, “stays here.”

“Yeah,” Ling says, “good luck with that. I’m coming with her.”

“My people are—”

“The colonel needs—”

“There’s still something I can do—”

“You can live,” Greed snaps, “what a novel fucking concept for you people—humans! What did I tell you, kiddo, no sense of self preservation—”

If Ling says he can fight then he can fight, Lan Fan says. The others should stay.

“Sister,” Alex Louis Armstrong says. “Stay here. You cannot allow me to inherit Father’s fortune this early.”

General Armstrong scowls at him. “It wouldn’t be going to you anyway—”

“Stop acting like children,” Mustang says. His eyes seem to be bleached, the irises a milky grey color and staring at nothing. “Lieutenant—”

“Yes, sir,” she says, and gets on Armstrong’s platform. Ling joins them. Sig lets go of his wife, and Jerso sighs, the two of them standing back. The general, after a quick phone conversation with her people and another scowl at Major Armstrong, stands back too, her face mutinous.

They rise. Father has turned the world to ash.

“That,” Greed mumbles. “I want that.” Lan Fan looks. The dead are rising, walking along the ground towards Hohenheim, who is pushing himself backwards, scrabbling weakly on his back.

Lan Fan looks at the crumbling walk that the dead have, the horror on Hohenheim's face. That’s not what you want, she says, though part of her thinks of her grandfather and sings.

“Don’t tell me what I want, you brat,” Greed says. “I want—I want—”

Mustang, beside them, snaps his fingers; fire rushes past Hohenheim to destroy the dead, to fizzle out against Father’s barrier, and the conversation, such that it is, is tabled. There are more important things to focus on.

-

(Mid-way through the fight, there is an explosion over the battlefield. Bodies are tossed back in every direction. There is a boy in a suit of armor, and the metal he is encased in is crumbling at the edges. There is a little girl behind him and a creature still on his feet in the middle of the courtyard.

There is an iron bar pinning his brother’s arm to a battered piece of rubble.

Death approaches that brother, taking step after staggering step.

Alphonse Elric gives the only thing he has to give.)

-

“That,” Greed says, as the crowd swells and cheers for Edward. “I want that, okay? Go on, be smug about it. You were right.”

You fool, Lan Fan says, amused despite her exhaustion, despite the loss of Alphonse, despite the slowly falling odds of success. You have that already.

Greed watches the battle rage, frozen with the thought, and then she laughs, quietly; Lan Fan feels a change run through her, a sudden determination that she hadn’t quite had before. “Guess I do,” she says. “Guess I better go protect it.”

She dives into the fight again, that determination still running through her, moving behind Ed to line up a few good, razor-sharp kicks and punches, and Lan Fan only has a moment to be excited before Ed is knocked back and Father dives, and then Father’s hand is in their stomach.

All she can do is hold on, but she does.

Hold on! she says, hold on—

“You’ll get sucked in too,” Greed breathes, kicking frantically at Father’s chest. He doesn’t move.

Not if we work together, Lan Fan says.

“Together,” Greed says, going still, putting all her focus onto staying in their body. “Huh.” She pauses, and then grins. “It’s a far cry from being queen of the world, but you know what, protecting the Emperor of Xing doesn’t sound too awful.”

You don’t mean that, Lan Fan says, but smiles back, and loosens her death grip.

Greed wrenches herself free. Lan Fan scrabbles to get her grip back, but fails; inch by inch, Greed is leaving her.

But you said—

“My first and only lie,” Greed says.

She should have known, she thinks. Greed never would have settled for something as simple as the life of a guard.

“I’m protecting what’s mine,” Greed adds, intent. “Ling Yao!” Her voice rises to a shout, and then Ling is there, grim acceptance on his face, and he slices cleanly through Father’s arm.

Greed vanishes. Lan Fan can’t feel her at all anymore, not her presence, not her feelings, the weight of her and the other souls in her chest. It’s freeing and empty all at once, wonderful and awful. She blinks, once, twice, stumbling backwards.

Father shouts, and he’s stumbling back as well, his body turning to carbon, black and fragile, crumbling under his own weight. And then Lan Fan understands.

“No,” she says. Father pulls Greed out from between his teeth like he’s picking out a bad piece of food and flings her into the air. “No!” Ling’s hand is on her elbow, Ed pulling himself to his feet next to them both. They all stare upwards, at the slow dissolve of Greed’s essence.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” Greed asks, the last remnant of her. Lan Fan has the ridiculous urge to leap up and grab her, to hold her to her chest, to shove her back in. To keep her, somehow, any way she can.

You have made me so selfish, she thinks of saying, but she can’t.

“Greed,” she says instead, low, desperate. “Please. Not you too.”

“Nothin’ I can do about it now, sweetheart,” Greed says, uncharacteristically gentle.

“Don’t,” she says, and swallows a sob.

“It was enough,” Greed says. Her eyes are fading but they’re fixed on hers, even and sure. “That’s not a lie. I want you to know that. In the end, it was enough.”

She winks, then, and she is that same boisterous smart-alecky thing that Lan Fan has known for six months, has welcomed into her body, has held close inside of her heart.

“See ya, runt, princeling.” Her voice softens. “Lan Fan.”

As she dissolves, as she becomes nothing—

Lan Fan bends at the waist, wordless and grieving, for the second time that day.

But she straightens, in the end.

She is a warrior of Xing, and the fight is not yet over.

Chapter Text

part xii

When it’s all over, Father falls backwards, screaming and being bound, turning to nothing and vanishing. There is a earth-shaking moment directly after it, where silence falls over the crowd, but it’s quickly broken by cheering, loud and raucous. Ed, though, just stands still, breathing heavy, knuckles bleeding. Ling straightens up to look over at him, looking at his face, first, then his trembling knees.

“Help me get to him,” Ling says to Lan Fan, standing next to him. “Please.”

“Of course,” she says, and lets him lean on her. Her arm wraps around his waist, and his wraps around hers. He can feel her fingers digging into his ribs.

Ed walks away from them, moving slow, as if in a trance. Some of the cheering is still going on, but those nearest to him have started to quiet, watching him like he’s a bomb about to go off. Major Armstrong, the muscleman, is watching Ed with tears streaming down his cheeks, and Darius and Heinkel are exchanging quiet, devastated looks, Darius helping Heinkel climb over some of the rubble to get closer to one of the army doctors.

Ed falls to his knees next to the remains of Al’s armor, and with trembling, flesh hands, he picks up the helmet, and lets it fall onto his lap. He stares at it, for one beat, then two. And then he hunches his body over it, wrapping his arms around it tightly, and biting his lip against a loud sob. Ling watches as tears fall down his cheeks, splashing into the dirt, into the rubble.

He’s still fifteen feet away, not nearly close enough, but Izumi Curtis walks up to Ed and kneels by his side, wrapping her arms around him and letting him cry into her shoulder, a hitching, held in sob that turns into a whimper. He gasps into her shirt like he can’t get his lungs to work. Lan Fan tightens her grip around Ling’s waist and keeps helping him.

“There has to be something,” Ed is saying, mindless, through his tears. “Teacher, there’s gotta be something—I have to get him back, I—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she says, softly. “It was Al’s choice.”

“That’s even worse!” Ed snaps, drawing back. “Him thinking he has to die for me—”

“Oh, you boys,” she says, and places her brown hands, steady, on his shaking shoulders. “You self-sacrificing little idiots.” There are tears in her eyes, a hollow ache to her gaze that shuts Ed up for a moment. He clutches at the joint of his shoulder.

“I was never going to get my arm back,” he says, softly. “I was never supposed to. Or my leg. It was always about him, always.”

“Ed,” Izumi says, firm and gentle, stern and soft. “Look at me.”

He does, and she hugs him again, holds him there until he melts, gripping her back with all his strength.

Ling is closer now, close enough to see the tears in his eyes. He grips the Stone he picked up, safe in his pocket, against his chest. A contingency plan in case something happened to Greed, and something has. He will not be emperor of Xing, but he can make his peace with that, because Al doesn’t deserve an ending like this, not when he is sure-footed and full of heart, protective and warm and quietly sarcastic.

Ling reaches his side, and with Lan Fan’s help, kneels beside him.

“We have a Stone, Ed,” Ling says; places his hand on his shoulder, and holds it out.

“I can’t,” Ed says, instantly, with conviction that makes Ling’s hands shake. “I promised Al I wouldn’t.” He tries to smile, a worn little twitch at the side of his mouth. “Anyway, you need that, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“Then use me,” another voice says. Ed’s shoulders tighten, instinctive, under Ling’s hand, and they both turn to look at Hohenheim, who is standing there with a hand pressed to his side, nursing broken ribs. “I’ve got one life left in me. My own. Use it to bring Al back.”

“I told you,” Ed says, his voice tight. “We aren’t going to use human lives.”

“I love you and your brother more than anything on this earth or anything beyond it,” Hohenheim says, quiet and even. “Let me be the father Al deserves, at least at the end.”

Ed scrubs at his eyes again, reaches blindly for Ling’s hand, and holds it tight. His voice is surprisingly even when he speaks.

“If you want to be the father he deserves then stick around,” he says. “How can you do that if you’re dead, huh, Dad?”

There’s a long moment of silence. Then:

“You called me Dad,” Hohenheim says, and Ed glares, tears still pricking the corners of his eyes.

“Don’t get too used to it,” he says. The look he gives Hohenheim is wide-eyed and surprisingly grateful through the sadness. “Just be here for him when I bring him back out.”

“When you—”

“I think I’ve got a theory,” Ed says. The word theory comes out slow, wandering, and Ling watches it unfold over his face, crushing the sorrow. This is a version of Ed he knows—Ed the scientist, Ed the genius, reworking the world until it fits where he wants it to. He’s still holding Al’s helmet in his lap, and he sets it aside gently as he stands, letting go of Ling’s hand and stealing the sword from his belt, instead. Calmly, in the rubble, he uses it to carve out a transmutation circle. The crowd watches him do it.

Izumi Curtis is tight-lipped and worried, shifting to help Hohenheim stand. Ed keeps drawing, finally finishing it, and walking back over to press the sword back into Ling’s hands.

“Are you gonna do something stupid?” Ling asks.

Ed shrugs. “Probably.”

Ling leans forward and kisses him once, brief and desperate. He doesn’t let himself linger, but he presses all the affection he can into it. “Just come back,” he says. “Yeah?”

Ed smiles, a little. “That’s the plan.”

Then he walks back to the center of the circle.

“See you all in a bit,” he says. “And, uh, consider this my resignation from the military, or whatever.”

He claps his hands, presses them to the ground. The portal opens up. There’s a flash of light before he fades.

“What’s he going to do?” someone whispers.

“He’s going to get Al back,” Izumi says, voice choked, “the dumbass.”

Truth can be a bitch, Ed thinks, but it’s fair. Most of the time. It’s always been fair to the two of them, at least. And it was fair today, too. It didn’t take anything that Ed shouldn’t give, but it took the hardest thing to give up.

Doesn’t matter, though. It didn’t matter when he was telling Truth to take it, and it didn’t matter when Ed took Al’s hands and led him out of the portal, and it didn’t matter when he accepted a torn coat from someone—Mustang, maybe—and wrapped his brother in it, carrying him over to the medical tent that somebody set up in that unquantifiable stretch of time where he was in the Gate.

It’s never going to matter. He can’t think of any time in the vague, uncertain future where he might possibly wish he’d chosen alchemy over Al.

Al stirs, and Ed freezes, his hands tightening a bit around Al’s, and he feels the bones through his skin. Alive. Real. Too thin and tired but he’s here, he’s here.

“Ngh,” Al says, and winces. “Ed?”

“You absolute fucking dumbass, Alphonse Elric,” Ed says, grinning wide, tears welling in his eyes. “You had me worried sick. Don’t you ever let me catch you pulling some goddamn stunt like that ever again—”

Al opens his eyes and grins, devil-may-care and gentle. And Ed feels it, deep in his chest, that knife-wound of his brother’s missing smile, healing over in a half a second. “It worked,” he says, “didn’t it?”

Ed tugs him, carefully, into a seated position, then pulls him, less carefully, into his arms. Al’s own skinny limbs reach up and hold him back, just as tightly. It must hurt, but neither of them care. Ed is sobbing into his little brother’s hair and Al is laughing into his shoulder and everything’s okay, everything’s okay, for once in their stupid fucking lives everything is gonna be okay.

“Never again,” Ed says, not letting go. “You scared me so bad, Al—”

“I’m sorry,” Al says, and the thing about Al is he always means it when he says that, every time. He meant it when he was little and he stole Ed’s dessert and he means it now. “But I couldn’t just sit there and watch him hurt you. And I knew you’d come for me.”

Sometimes Al’s trust, Al’s warmth and quiet determination, really just floors him. “I did,” Ed says, pulls back and wipes at his eyes, sniffing loud enough that it’s obnoxious. Al just laughs. “I always will, okay?”

Al wrinkles his nose at him, still grinning. “Stop crying, Ed. You always look so stupid when you cry.”

“Hey, fuck you!”

Al laughs and hugs him again, arms tight as a vice and surprising in their strength. “Thank you,” he says, sincere and soft. “I mean it. And I love you.”

Ed smooths a hand over Al’s ratty hair and smiles. “Love you too, Al. C’mon.” He pulls back and lets his grin widen. “There’s a lot of people out here that wanna shake your hand.”

“Oh!” Al says, grin stretching over his cheeks, delighted and bright as the sun. “Where are they? Yeah, come on, help me up—”

“They wanted to give you some breathing room, but we’re gonna see everyone, okay?” Ed says, and helps him stand, lets him lean against his side. “I promise. Do you want me to find you some clothes? Or cut all that hair off or something? That has to be heavy, I can get a knife—”

Al makes a displeased face. “I'll wait for a barber, thank you," he says, “also, your clothes won't fit me, and anyway, I hate them.”

“Screw you,” Ed says, without any real heat. “My clothes are cool as hell.” He improvises by tearing a strip from the hem of Mustang’s coat, wrapped around Al’s shoulders, and tying it closed like a bathrobe. It’s better than nothing.

“Your clothes are interesting,” Al says, which is his way of saying they suck. “Can't you transmute something for me?”

He sounds curious, more than anything, but his eyes narrow when Ed clears his throat and looks away.

“Ed.”

“I had to give something up,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s not a big deal.”

“You’ll lose your job—”

“Better that than you,” Ed says. “Anyway, I fucking hate the government.”

“Ed—”

“Al,” Ed says, quietly. “I’m not gonna bullshit you, it was a hard decision, but I will never, ever regret making it. Okay?”

“I guess I’ve got more to thank you for,” Al says. His face has calmed, though, into something more accepting and quiet.

“No,” Ed says. “You’re alive, and you’re here, and I’m alive, and I’m here. If that means I’m in research for the rest of my life, then that sounds like a hell of a deal. I like research.”

Al leans his head against Ed’s shoulder, just for a second, in thanks, and then takes two wobbly steps forward. “Okay,” he says, “let’s go.”

The first person to run towards them is Izumi, Sig right after her, which makes Ed laugh and Al, finally, start to cry, as she wraps him in a hug that damn near breaks his back and Ed squawks at her not to hurt him. Al calls him an overprotective dumbass while hugging Izumi back as hard as he can, and Sig wraps his arms around all three of them, and Ed watches as tears track their way down Al’s face at the simple feeling of being held after so much time alone.

When Al’s been let go, Mei runs at them, too, wrapping her arms around Al’s legs and blubbering into them, and Al wipes at his eyes and pats her head and then they’re being swallowed by this endless crowd of people, all of them hugging each other and reaching out to clap Ed on the back and Al on the shoulder. Ed watches as Mustang ruffles Al’s long hair, pointing a gloved hand vaguely in the direction of Ed and saying “you look like him, don’t you?” like he’s trying to visualize it.

Al grins, because he’s an ass. “No,” he says, “I’m much better looking.”

Armstrong breaks half the bones in Ed’s body and then very gingerly and carefully hugs Al, which makes them both laugh, Ed through bruised ribs. And then Hohenheim walks up, uncertain and awkward, and meets Ed’s eyes for a long moment before Ed shrugs, and steps back, and cocks his head, challengingly, in Al’s direction.

Al raises his chin. “Hi, Dad.”

Hohenheim smiles, wide and gentle, and it hits Ed suddenly that Al didn’t get his smile from Mom. “Hi, Al.”

Al throws his arms around Hohenheim’s middle with all the abandon of someone who doesn’t understand he might be breaking his own heart, and Ed watches for a second, then turns to Mei. Al’s grown, or grown enough. Hohenheim is trying. And no matter what, Ed will be here, and they have all these other people who love them.

Then he blinks. Speaking of which.

“You seen your brother around?” he says, and Mei blinks at him, shocked for a moment, before her smile becomes mischievous.

“He went that way,” she says, and points. “Want to go find him?”

-

While they’re waiting for Al to wake up, Ling takes Lan Fan’s arm and leads her off to the side, around a corner and away from the crowd. He looks at her for a moment, eyes damp, like he wants to say something but can’t verbalize it the way he wants to. Then he takes a deep breath, and he sits down against the wall that’s behind him, hands clasped into fists against his knees. He bows his head, shaking like a leaf.

Her stomach turns. How can he bow to her?

“You must hate me,” he says. “You’ve given so much for me, both you and Fu, and I couldn’t even save him.”

“Ling Yao,” she says, her voice shaking, kneeling next to him. She lets a tear fall down her face, then two; she places her hands over his, on his knees, grounding herself. “You’re my brother. How could I hate you?”

His eyes are red from crying and from holding back the rest of his tears.

“Anything I’ve given,” she says. “I gave willingly. I grew up by your side and I intend to grow old by it, do you hear me? I would do it all again a thousand times.”

“By my side,” he echoes, then shakes his head quietly. “But you haven’t been.”

She sighs again, squeezing his hands where they rest on his knees. “That isn’t your choice.”

“It will be,” Ling says, slow, but there’s an undercurrent of fierceness in his voice. “If I’m going to be emperor, then I’ll make it better, I’ll change things. I have to. For me, for you, for—”

His speech falters when he looks at Fu’s body, covered by a sheet, impersonal. He chokes on breath again and covers his mouth, looks away, back at their joined hands.

“I wish it had been me,” he says, softly, but she’s already shaking her head.

“Then Mei would have to be empress, young lord,” she says, “and I shudder to think of how she’d decorate.” There, she thinks. Greed would have liked that one. She imagines the homunculus’ low, throaty laugh, and then lets the thought fade.

He laughs, too, choked and gasping. She laughs in the same way. Then, unexpectedly, he grabs her in a tight hug, his hand winding into her loose hair and his face against her shoulder. She lets her face find a place against his neck, lets her hands grip his elbows.

“I missed you so much,” he murmurs. “I’m so sorry, for everything.”

“I missed you too,” she manages. She does not cry. She will not cry.

“Hey! Ling! Lan Fan!”

It’s Alphonse’s voice, deeper than she’s used to and unfamiliar without the echoing. Ed is helping him along, arm tight around his shoulders. Mei is scampering at his other side, chattering away. She sobers when she sees them.

“Oh,” Al says, sounding ashamed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s all right,” Lan Fan says. Ling lets her go and smiles at the three of them, wiping at his eyes as he stands.

“Hey,” Ed says, gentle as Lan Fan has ever heard him, moving a little closer. Al and Mei make amused faces at each other. “You all right?”

“Always,” Ling says, flippantly. “You’re one to talk, anyway. Look at your arm.”

“Hey, I punched God with this arm, I think it’s doing okay,” Ed says, and Ling laughs and gives him a hug, tight as the one he gave Lan Fan. The only difference is the kiss he presses to Ed’s bloodstained forehead.

“Hello, Al,” he says, then. “I am still not used to this.”

“It’s all right,” Al says. “Neither am I.” Al also gets a hug, though not so tight. “You two . . . I mean, are you really okay?”

“Grandfather is dead,” Lan Fan says, softly. She closes her eyes, but she still hears their reactions; a mess of gasps and whispered oh no s. “Greed and I could not save him, and now she—” Her voice cracks, and she hides her face in a shaking hand. “I apologize. This should be a time of celebration.”

She feels a hand on her arm, light as a feather. She opens her eyes.

Alphonse is looking at her, his gold eyes wide and compassionate.

“I’m so sorry, Lan Fan,” he says. “He was a good man.”

She nods, too close to tears to speak.

“And she was good, too,” he adds. “At the end. Brother told me.”

He wraps his skinny arms around her, and she lets him. For such a small person, his hug is surprisingly strong and warm. Comforting. Lan Fan closes her eyes and tries to breathe. She feels Ling’s hand on her elbow, too, the unmistakable dance of his fingers on her skin.

Her arms come up to wrap around Alphonse, too.

“Thank you,” she says, softly, then pulls back and tries to smile. “I knew there was a reason I liked you best.”

Ed does not look offended. Al smiles.

“That’s the usual reaction,” he says sweetly. Ed laughs, full-bodied and kind.

“Visit us in Xing,” she says, on impulse. “Both of you, and Winry.”

“Really?” Ed says. “You don’t think it would be—”

“What does that matter?” Lan Fan asks. “I refuse to leave some of my only friends on the other side of a desert. I want to see you sometimes. ”

For once, I want does not feel like a curse or a burden. She is a guard and a warrior and a person. She is a cause and a soul. She feels Greed in the larger, dual-natured person she has grown into, and she wishes she could thank her for it.

“You really should come,” Ling says. “For the coronation, if nothing else.”

“What, to see you dressed to the nines?” Ed says, his grin growing distinctly flirty. “No can do. I’m busy that week.”

“Asshole,” Ling says fondly. Alphonse mimes vomiting without really appearing to think about it, then stops and beams.

“Oh,” he says happily, “I missed facial expressions.”

When the Promised Day finally ends, Ed is sitting up on his hospital bed, too wired to sleep, too fascinated with every little movement of Al’s ribs and face and hands as he sleeps to try. He wonders if this is what Mom did right after they were born, if she just sat and watched them, in awe that a person could exist so fully in the world.

He almost doesn’t notice when Ling climbs in the window. Almost.

“It doesn’t feel real yet,” he admits, eyes not leaving Al. “None of it does.”

He tears his gaze away. Ling has damp hair, loose over his shoulders, and there’s a bandage on his cheek and many more on his arms. He’s smiling tiredly. He’s in Amestrian street clothes, scrounged from the various doctors and lost and found bins in the hospital while his clothes get cleaned. Ed vaguely remembers Lan Fan giving her patented cold stare to the nurses who tried to offer her dresses and putting on some of the clothes from Ling’s pile without another word. Al had given her a thumbs up.

“When are you going home?” he asks, softly.

“I don’t know,” Ling says. “Lan Fan says she’s all right, but she isn’t.”

Oh. Right, Fu. “Yeah,” Ed says, lamely. “Yeah, I—”

He doesn’t want to say forgot, even though he had. Ling just grins quietly and climbs onto the hospital bed next to him, nestling down until his head is resting against Ed’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s—I don’t know.” His hand finds Ed’s. “Part of me doesn’t want to go back.”

Ed shifts a little, so that he’s turned towards Ling, his cheek pressed into his hair, their hands wound tight together. He says, “You don’t have to, yet.”

“Don’t ask me to stay,” Ling says, quietly. “I think I would, if you asked me.”

“Oh,” Ed says, and pulls back a little. “Okay, I just—”

“Ed,” Ling says, and stops him; hand on his elbow, sliding up to cup the back of his head. “I have to go back. You know that, right? I have to. It’s the only way that anything in Xing will actually change.” His eyes are determined, even if they’re sad. “I know you’re not too sold on Amestris, not really, but I love my home. I love my people. I have to do my best for them. Otherwise, what was the point of all this? What was the point of being cold and hungry for months, what was the point of losing Fu, if I can’t use that to save them? ”

Al shifts in his sleep, next to them. Ling glances at him and then lowers his voice.

“Anyway,” he says, “I’m not leaving forever. And the first thing I’m gonna do is build a train across the desert, and write a letter to you, and put the letter on the train. Okay? You’re not getting rid of me, not even if you try, you idiot.”

It’s weird that the word idiot fills Ed with such warmth. “And I’ll come visit for the coronation.”

“And you’ll come visit for the coronation,” Ling agrees. “Ed. Please. As if I could just go back to Xing and forget you existed. You’re the least forgettable person I’ve ever met.”

Ed blushes and looks away. “I wasn’t worried about that.”

“Yes, you were,” Ling says, and leans into his shoulder again, yawning. “I suppose now that you’re not saving the world you’re going to need a new hobby. I wouldn't pick worrying, though. I hear it’s bad for the skin.”

“You’re so weird,” Ed says.

“Mm,” Ling agrees. “But you like me, so who’s the weird one, really?”

He turns his head so he’s looking Ed in the eyes, hair haphazard over the pillow.

“The first time I kissed you,” he says, unexpectedly, “you looked like this.”

“Like what?” Ed says, his stomach turning over on itself. “Beat up?”

“Handsome,” Ling corrects, rolling his eyes. “Just let me compliment you for once, would you?”

“No,” Ed says, to be contrary, but he grins, and then Ling is leaning up the two inches and kissing him, gently, thumb sliding over his cheek. Ed sighs and relaxes into it, into the quiet, into the peace. It’s hitting him bit by bit that this whole thing is actually over. That now, suddenly, there’s time.

Ling pulls back and smiles, kissing him once more, and quickly, on the corner of his mouth before lying back against the pillows. “I’ll leave in a little bit,” he says, and yawns. “I don’t want to leave Lan Fan alone for too long.”

“Mm,” Ed agrees, also sleepy, tucking his cheek back against the top of Ling’s head. “Also if Al woke up and you were here I’d be hearing about it for, like, months.”

Ling chuckles. “Are you going back to Resembool?”

“For a while, I guess,” Ed says. “I don’t think either of us wanna stay there forever, but a year or two would be nice. Just to—to learn to be people again. I don’t know if he needs to, but I definitely do.” He pauses. “I’m gonna have to figure out a whole new career path, I guess.” It’s funny when he says it out loud. Career paths. Futures. All the stuff he brushed aside in favor of not dying.

“Well,” Ling says, sitting up and squeezing his hand once before letting go. “If you ever get stuck, I hear the imperial palace of Xing has a wonderful library.”

Ed laughs under his breath, still mindful of Al. “Remember when I said you weren’t charming? I take it back. That was the smoothest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Good to know I only have to offer you rare books if I want to get you to come visit, then,” Ling says, walking backwards and sitting down on the windowsill, pulling his legs up after him and getting ready to climb. “I’ll keep it in mind. Good night, Ed.”

He winks before he pulls himself up to the next floor. Ed grins into the dark of his room, then turns over to watch the quiet movements of Al’s chest under his blankets, and lets the peace he’s feeling and that rhythmic motion lull him to sleep.

-

Lan Fan sits on the edge of the rooftop, one leg dangling out into the nothingness beneath her, one tucked into her chest, her chin resting on the knee. She puts a hand to the back of her head and tentatively touches her hair; longer than she’s let it grow in a long time. Greed didn’t ever think to cut it—or to brush it, she thinks, wincing as she tries to get her fingers through a knot at the nape.

“Stupid homunculus,” she says, out loud, then winces when there is no response.

Lan Fan has never felt so unsettled by being alone.

She can pick out Ling’s chi below her, even amid the many different flashes of people she can sense milling around the hospital. She thinks of going to him, but he’s with Ed, so she lets it be. They have a trip across the desert in which to talk to each other, and she thinks she needs this—this moment alone, to think about what has happened to her, and what he said.

By his side.

She lets go of the leg that is clutched to her chest and lets it swing free, to join the other one, and she tilts her head up. The sky in Central is smoggy, but despite that, she can make out a few stars.

“I wonder if you think I should climb up there for you,” she says, softly. “Continue your legacy.” She rubs the back of her hand, tattoo-less now. “Someone has to be queen of the world, right? And it might as well be me? That’s what you’d think.”

She sighs, and kicks her legs. She knows a response won’t come, but she can imagine what Greed would have said in reply.

“Or maybe you would have jumped up when Ling said us, and said we should go play in that field. I’d’ve been the same social-climbing brat my mother always feared I would be.” She sighs again. “How long could we have gone on like that, together? I always used to wonder.”

The lights below her seem to stretch out into infinity; they are little pinpricks of brightness, the signs of a living city. Just earlier today, everyone in Central had collapsed. Just earlier today, the world had ended.

“When I get back to Xing,” she says, finally, “I’m going to cut my hair off. Because I want to. And because I know you’d say that that’s a good enough reason.” She stands, then, and stretches. “And I’m going to tell my mother I’m sorry. And I’m going to keep you alive, in my memory, if I can. I think that’s the least I can do for you, besides rule the world, and I don’t want that.”

She pauses at the doorway that leads inside, turns back, and bows quietly, respectfully, at the night sky.

“Good night, beast,” she says.

The stars glow, fiercely, through Central’s hazy sky, and Lan Fan smiles back.

The door shuts behind her with a heavy and final click.

Chapter Text

epilogue

Their home is the same as they left it. Lan Fan can tell just from Ling’s posture, from meeting his eyes, that it’s uncomfortable for him, too. They are both so changed. Ling walks taller, now, from an added inch in height and a sobering new straightness of his shoulders. He’s still sixteen, and it makes her sad, but his unrelenting rush into adulthood has always made her sad. The curse of being a (slightly) older sister, she supposes.

People keep looking at the two of them, whispering. Lan Fan doesn’t know what they’re saying, and she’s doing her best not to care. The absence of Fu and the presence of Mei would be conspicuous enough, but on top of all that, Lan Fan is walking next to Ling, her face uncovered. She has not worn her mask since Greed had come to her; she’d lost it, somewhere along the way. But she has no desire to make a new one, either. She is so tired of making herself small in dozens of different ways.

Ling taps her once on the shoulder, and steps back, letting her walk up to the house first. Once she would have stopped him, met his eyes for a second and hissed that it wasn’t proper, but now she lets him do it. He smiles at her, gently, and reaches down for Mei, who is half-asleep on her feet from the last leg of the journey, picking her up and slinging her onto his back. She tucks her arms around his neck and mumbles something that Lan Fan can’t make out.

“Go on, then,” Ling says. “We’re home. You knock.”

So she does: she knocks with one shaking fist on the door, and after a few minutes, her mother pulls it open.

Her mother’s wide brown eyes catch on Lan Fan’s and stay there, and she walks the two steps forward to press her hard palms to her cheeks. Lan Fan catches her hands and holds them there, lets her eyes fill with tears, lets her body become soft and boneless. She trembles. Her mother trembles, too.

She breathes in, and there it is; the smell of cooking oil, and spring onions. A place in front of the fire to brush out her hair. Home.

“My girl,” her mother says. “My own sweet girl.”

“Mother,” Lan Fan says. “Mother.”

Only then do her mother’s eyes leave Lan Fan’s; only then do they glance past her at Ling and the sleeping girl on his back, at Fu’s absence. Her mother’s eyes start to water, too. Lan Fan opens her mouth to explain, to apologize, something, but she is crushed against her mother’s soft body without another word.

“I’m sorry,” Lan Fan says, voice hitching, face against her shoulder. “I couldn’t save him, I couldn’t, I’m so sorry—”

“My brave darling,” her mother says, choked. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

They hold each other a moment more, then release. Her mother’s eyes trace a pattern to Ling, and they fill with tears again.

“Don’t cry, Mother,” Ling says, soft and searching. “Not for me.” And it means something, Lan Fan thinks, that he still can still call her mother after all these years. It means something that he loves her so deeply, that he loves his people the same way. He will be a good king, not just a great one.

“You are my babies, and you’re home again,” she says. “If I cry, it’s because I’m happy. You have brought hope with you.”

She moves forward to embrace him too, to embrace the future emperor, with the clan watching from their windows. Lan Fan thinks, we are a family ready to make ripples in the water. With a tinge of shame, she thinks: I think she would have done this with us ages ago if we had ever asked.

Mei stirs and then yelps at the sight of a stranger, and their mother pulls back and laughs, wiping at her eyes. “Come inside,” she says. “Let’s get some food in you.”

“Ooh,” Ling says, and sounds so much like himself that Lan Fan laughs, soft and open. “Are there any dumplings?”

Their mother arches an eyebrow, as if to say of course, silly, and waves them all inside. But Lan Fan pauses at the door, feet planted firmly where they are. For a second, standing here, she feels like she’s rooted to the ground, the future spreading out breathless and important in front of her, ready to be grabbed with both hands.

They still have so much work to do, to sow the seeds to build a new world, to tear down palace walls and open their arms to the people they are supposed to protect. But for once, the thought is more exciting than it is terrifying. Maybe that’s because she knows she will be taking these next steps next to Ling, as his sister, as his partner in crime, instead of three steps behind with her chin tucked into her chest. It’s a novel concept.

She smiles at her mother, and reaches out once again to take her hand. She remembers telling Ed that her mother’s hands were like Grandfather’s, and remembers him raising an eyebrow and saying that hers were strong, too. She glances at their fingers, laced together, and notes the similarities and the differences, the scar on her mother’s thumb from cooking, the faint mottled outline that the ouroboros left on the back of her hand.

“It’s good to be home,” she says, and squeezes her mother’s hand, and she means it.

Her mother’s eyes soften even further, if that’s possible. “Oh, my pearl,” she says, “it’s even better to have you back.”

When it is all over, and their new journey has not yet begun, Lan Fan will sit in front of the fire, and her mother will help her to cut off her hair. Ling will whoop loud enough to wake the whole house the next morning when he sees it, and he’ll ruffle it into a complete mess, and he’ll laugh when she snaps at him and ducks out from under his arm. She’ll keep catching glimpses of herself in reflective surfaces, and she’ll smile, distracted from her other, rioting emotions by a sense of wholeness, an image of herself as a complete person rather than disjointed parts scrounged from many sources.

When it is all over, Ling will drag her into his room for help composing a letter to Ed, and she will laugh at him and pick apart his sentences and he’ll complain, but he’ll never shove her out.

When it is all over, the Emperor will name Ling Yao heir to the throne of Xing. It’ll be a grand ceremony, with visiting dignitaries from all the clans, and the three of them—her, Ling, and Mei—will spend the first couple hours of the day throwing knives at pictures of the rudest ones that Lan Fan will have tacked up onto the targets. Mei will get one right in the nose, and they’ll cheer—

But that’s all the future, golden and ripe and ready for the changing. Right now, they have a moment of rest in between their past and this next journey.

Lan Fan walks through the door.