Hi, there! So my friend and I were playing around with soulmate au's the other day, and, well, this happened. It's an altered version of a common soulmate au, where, whenever you get hurt, your soulmate receives that wound the next day. Warning for Angst with a capital A. Also, this fic will contain many different pairings, including bobyxboy, girlxboy, and girlxgirl. If you aren't comfortable with that, don't read it. Thanks!

~Esteria

P.S. I've read the manga and seen Brotherhood, but I heard Ling wasn't in the other Fullmetal Alchemist anime, so I decided not to watch it. As such, this will not contain elements of that story line

I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist. If I did, GreedLing would have more screen time, and his minions from the Devils Nest would come back.

Ever since her boys had been born, Trisha had been excited for the day they would get their first soulmate mark. As someone who's marks had never appeared, due to Hohenheim's healing factor, she knew the pain and emptiness that came from feeling left out and thinking that you were forever alone. She never wanted Ed or Al to experience that. Still, seeing her five year old son standing in front of her, gripping what was obviously a bullet graze and promising that he "didn't do it it, I swear, it just appeared" was a bit much.

Could her son's soulmate really be a soldier? She knew that there was a war going on in Ishval, but Ed was only five, how could his soulmate be old enough to fight. Maybe they were an Ishvalan child who got too close to the fighting? Well, whatever was happening, if her son was receiving wounds this bad, that meant his soulmate was in danger. Which meant that Ed was in danger. And she couldn't do a thing about it.

Still, she wouldn't resign herself to being helpless. And so, Trisha called over the Rockabells to give her son better medical attention than she herself could, and told them what had happened, asking that they accept the offer they had recently received to travel to Ishval and work as emergency medical aid. And that night, as she tucked Ed and Al into bed she told them about soulmates.

She told them how soulmates were people who were meant to be together, either romantically or platonically, and that everyone had one. She told them about how, when someone is injured, their other half receives that same injury the next day. She told them that Ed's wound was from his soulmate, and that someday, Al would find a soulmate wound too. She told them everything. Everything, that is, except her suspicions of Ed's soulmate being in IShval.

Instead, Trisha sat out side Ed's door every night, just in case his soulmate was badly hurt again. She worked with Pinako to treat the various scrapes and holes and many, many burns that appeared on her little boy's body, and she promised that she would tell him when he was older. Over time, the war ended,and Ed's soulmate marks began to limit themselves to scrapes, and bruises, though the occasional small burn still appeared. Al began to receive soulmate marks, just small ones, nothing as drastic as Ed's, and Trisha's thoughts on Ed's soulmate completely slipped her mind. Then, she grew ill.

Her boys tried everything they could to reach their father, or a medical alchemist or anyone who could help, but Risembool was a small town, and there hadn't been a decent doctor there since the Rockabells had left. Trisha thought it was poetic justice, after all, she was the one who had convinced them to go to their deaths, and now she was dying because they weren't there to cure her. And so, Trisha passed on, her soulmate not even knowing of her ailment, because he healed to fast to hear her pain. A few years later, her sons tried to bring her back.

The Truth, while cruel, is nonetheless a fair being. He does not give more than the toll is worth, and he does not take more than the knowledge is worth. However, even One, All, World, You, Truth ect. Cannot stop the bond between soulmates. As such, the moment the Elric brothers were drawn into portal to witness the truth and have what remained of their childhoods ripped out from beneath their feet, they also sealed the fates of two other individuals.

That night, a military man came to the Rockabells to meet the Elric brothers and ask them to join the Amestrian military. As he and his companion, a blonde woman with a large, x shaped scar across her forehead, left, the Elrics began to plot. Pinako and Winry looked on with a mixture of horror and pity as two young boys, broken, but still strong, made a pact that they would get their bodies back, regardless of what occurred along the way, be it soulmates or soldiers. From then on it was them against the world.

…

The next day, at the exact moment that the Elric brothers had been taken to see the Truth, Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang began to scream out in agonizing pain as two of his limbs seemed to rip themselves off of his body and disappear from existence. At the same time, but a desert away, the Elders of the Chang clan of Xing looked on helplessly as their princess seemed to disintegrate before their eyes.

When the pain and suffering that were the final consequences of the Elrics' mistake were over, all the was left was a crippled man lying on his floor, trying to work up enough strength to inch his way over to the phone, and a young girl, who looked fairly healthy, though a tad more transparent than she ought to, hovered in the corner of a room wondering why no one could see her.