Chapter 7

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Edward didn't realize that the whole room, hell, the whole damn underground cavern for mile and miles was a transmutation circle. He did understand that this creep, the guy claiming to be his father activated a circle during the solar eclipse, causing everything to go black. He figured he must have passed out because when he opened his eyes, he was laying on hard rubble and jagged stones.

"Al? Winry?" He yelled, hoping to find his companions. Instead, he saw as shock of golden hair and ran to the form, now motionless on the floor. "Hey, Alphonse!" Ed knelt down and shook the robot, but he failed to move, he just stared at the now cloudy sky.

"Over here, Brother!" The sound came from another direction and it stunned the young alchemist. He was looking at Al, but his voice, it was over in another part of the room. He stared toward the voice and his vision finally cleared. The Alphonse-clone was walking toward him, a smile plastered wide across his face. "It's me!"

"Wait…wait a minute…Al?" He looked down at the robot who gazed lifelessly up at the newly forming clouds. The clouds rumbled and rain began to fall on the Earth for the first time in over a thousand years. Edward also realized that no alchemy held the oxygen in the room, they were breathing air, air absent from this world for as long as the rain.

"It's really me!" Al grabbed Ed in a big hug and lifted him up, twirling him around with glee. "I'm in my lookalike! Its really me!"

"You see, he really just wanted to redeem himself." Father came forward, followed by Winry and Mustang who helped Riza. "The dwarf in the flask…he finally realized what it was like to be human."

"I, I remember…" Winry whispered but they all heard her. She remembered Resembool and running in fields of grass. She remembered the Elric brothers' laughter and her own tears falling when her parents – her first parents died.

"I, I do too." Mustang remembered living with his father and getting the flame alchemy tattoo when he once was Riza Hawkeye.

"Did I really have to go blind again?" Riza remembered performing human transmutation the first time as Roy Mustang and losing her sight before. She also remembered tripping over the corpses of the dead of Amestris when Father succeeded in taking all their souls.

Edward remembered too. He remembered his last moments, taking days to get back to Resembool and bury Winry, Pinako and all the Briggs men. He remember a few weeks later when Al's soul could no longer hold on to the armor and he left him totally alone. He remembered taking Mustangs firearm and …

"You see, he released the Earth's soul back, he was saving that one with mine for last."

"What are you?" Ed approached Father.

"I'm sorry you didn't get your limbs back. There is such a thing as fate, and as best as he tried, he couldn't contain it."

"Please, explain to us, we don't understand!" Winry came to Ed's side, she intertwined her right hand with the fingers of his left and they both held on to each other, not wanting to disconnect or lose each other all over again.

"The Dwarf in the Flask, Father…he's gone, he's gone back to where he came from at last."

"Then, who, who are you?" Riza spoke, boldly now that she remembered her past life as Roy Mustang Roy, now by her side, helping her as always.

"I'm the last soul he kept, I'm Ed and Al's father, Van Hohenheim and I can't wait to see Trisha again.

End.

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"Our breath rose in the cold

like a hundred souls escaping…"

A Dark Congregation by The Hush Sound