Title: Children

She's a genius. People forget that, forget about her, the sweet, little, neighbor girl. The one that used to live next to those brothers, the alchemist prodigies, at least up until they burnt their house to ash (idiots).

Just the sweet, little neighbor girl. Just a child that's been performing both restorative and enhancement cyborgization surgeries since she first hit double digits. Just the girl that can connect nerves to wires and steel and actually make it mean something.

But she isn't like those two brothers. She doesn't get alchemy. So she doesn't get what those two are up to, when they lock themselves away with their books and their secrets. And no matter how much she hates it, she lets it go, because there's nothing she can do.

...Then a suit of armor breaks into their house, and he's holding what's left of his brother.

Later, when she's attaching rib to steel, stapling skin, slicing muscle, and cutting out bone, she'll think of how she could have prevented this, somehow, if only she'd known. If only they hadn't been so childish, them with their secret-keeping, her with her empty excuses.

But she realizes it'll be different from that point on, and decides that they'll be different too. Time passes, they all grow older, and she thinks that they're finally growing up.

She'll think differently, years later, when she's standing in the snow beside her parent's killer. Looking at those boys, she'll remember just how much she hates those secrets, and she'll hate just how naive she's been, and she'll think-

- maybe they're not so grown up after all.