The silver pocket watch lay open in Alphonse's palm, the dents and scratches on its surface a reminder of all it had borne since the day it was passed into Edward's hands for the first time, new and shiny and unmarked. Alphonse's eyes moved over the letters and figures etched roughly in the metal, and his brow dimpled.

"Pretty stupid, huh?" Edward spoke up from his bedside. It seemed less shameful now, his pathetic little secret, now that his brother was sitting here wonderfully alive and his own right arm could feel again. But that didn't mean he was any less eager to smash his State Alchemist licence to kingdom come. He wished Alphonse would stop staring at it now that he'd seen what was inside.

"Oh, Brother, you know it's not," said Alphonse, finally looking up at him.

"Whatever." Edward shrugged, though he knew Alphonse meant what he'd said and was secretly glad for it. "In any case, can you do me a favour?"

Alphonse's smile was shrewd. "You want me to get rid of it?"

Had he been that obvious? "Uh. Yeah. That." Showing his brother was one thing, but a bunch of random military clerks? Never mind that they'd be totally uncomprehending—he'd rather lose his arm all over again. It would be like baring a part of his soul that was raw and scarred. "While you're at it give it some badass horns."

Alphonse did not look at all supportive of this idea. "Really, Brother? Really?"

"Not permanently!" said Edward hastily. All right, so maybe he'd done some stupid things in his time, but frankly, he was a little hurt that Alphonse's expectations of him had sunk so low. Even he couldn't be that stupid.

Or so he thought.

Late afternoon found him at Central HQ, once grand and imposing, but now hollowed out in the middle, all its lustrous white surfaces blasted away. Steel frames jutted high in the air, and the grounds swarmed with noisy trucks and construction workers. They'd called in some State Alchemists to speed up the rebuilding process, but even alchemists had to wait for materials to be transported to the site. They couldn't just dig a massive crater in the ground.

Edward leaned against the counter of the temporary administration desk, listening to the quiet rustle of paper and thudding of stamps around him. It was a while before he realised the woman behind the counter was frowning deeply at him.

"Mr Elric, I take it this is some sort of joke?"

Startled, he directed his attention, which had wandered somewhere beyond the Great Desert, back to the business at hand. The woman was holding out his pocket watch, which was as tarnished and worn as ever.

And it had horns.

There was something like an implosion inside Edward's head. "He forgot to change it back," he muttered to himself in horror.

"I beg your pardon?" said the woman.

"No, nothing! Nothing at all," he blabbered, beaming widely. "So I've handed in my licence and officially resigned. Have a nice day!" He made to dash out the door and never return.

"Mr Elric, I'm sure it's not too much to ask for you to return it to its original shape?" the woman called after him relentlessly.

People were beginning to stare. Edward grudgingly retraced his steps. "Sorry, but I can't. Gotta admit it looks pretty cool, don't you think?"

"Fullmetal, do you consider this a good time to give up your licence?"

The new voice belonged to a man, a broad-shouldered major with a severe expression. Stanton, his name was. Edward recalled that he'd recently become a dog of the military. "You should be ashamed of yourself, treating the military with such blatant disrespect, and abandoning your comrades in this time of need. Surely you could lend the builders a hand, at least? Do you feel no sense of duty to your people?"

Edward sighed, his insides prickling with annoyance, but he had an inexplicable urge to laugh all the same. "Fine. I apologise for causing offence, but I'm being completely truthful when I say there's nothing I can do for you, or the people or whatever. You'll have to take my word for it."

He turned on his heel and walked out.

Edward knew something was wrong the second he inserted his room key in the door to 513. When you got yourself into a sticky situation at least once a week for several years, your senses became attuned to impending disaster.

This was not like the other seven hundred times he had forgotten to lock his door. There was no clicking noise, no resistance from either direction as he twisted the key from side to side. Locks did not behave this way, not even when they were broken.

He knew the work of an alchemist when he saw it. Or, in this case, felt it. With rising apprehension, he reached out and threw the door open.

The room looked as if several wild animals had ravaged it. The bed had been turned on its side and jammed up against a wall, one leg broken off and the headboard bent out of shape. The books that he had left piled on the coffee table were scattered on the floor, torn-out pages fanning across the carpet in a bizarre display. The lightbulb had been removed from the lamp and lay shattered in the middle of the wreckage, and the couch was nowhere in sight. The open window confirmed Edward's suspicions—peering down into the street below, he saw the couch, half-buried in shrubbery. He stared at it, anger flaring up like boiling acid inside him.

He usually liked to consider himself an adherent of science, putting logic and evidence before intuition, but this time he didn't have a single inkling of doubt that his gut feeling was right. There was only one person who could have done this.

But he still needed to prove it, or else—

There was muffled swearing behind him. He swivelled, pushing himself away from the window, but it was too late. The young housekeeper had already bolted, calling for security.

The two guards were not long in coming, striding down the corridor in polished black shoes. Edward had by this point managed to remove himself from the crime scene, but he doubted it made him look any less guilty. He held up his hands. "Look, let's not be too hasty here," he said, trying his best not to sound like he wanted to strangle them both. "I can explain who did this if you'll just—"

"Edward Elric," the female guard cut across him. "We heard of your antics earlier today. Unless you want to be locked in a cell I suggest you keep your mouth shut and come with us."

God, he hated the military. He hated their flamboyant state-run hotel with their oversized flags rippling over the city.

Just as he was about to speak, another man rounded the corner.

It was Stanton, a sickening smile stretching his repulsive face. "In trouble again, are we, Fullmetal?"

Edward was shocked into silence. He could not believe the nerve of the man, showing his face here and exulting in Edward's predicament with the air of someone watching a pack of lions tear apart their prey. But at the same time, he thought, it was a pitifully naïve confidence he had, something that would certainly have gotten him killed, had he been in the military under King Bradley's rule.

He turned away and looked the two guards firmly in the eye. "I can prove who did this. There are bound to be traces of the alchemy he used—"

"Do you really think we'll believe that?" said the male guard in a bored voice.

No. No, of course they wouldn't. It meant nothing that Edward had defeated Father with his bare fists, or that he had bested God himself by means of an insanely risky plan and gotten his brother back after so many years, because no one on the outside knew or cared. To them, he was just an impertinent boy who didn't know his place, who had found himself in the thick of a battle to overthrow a corrupt government.

"If you want to do something helpful, why don't you fix it?" Stanton was grinning widely, relishing every moment. "Aren't you supposed to be a prodigy?" Edward clenched his right fist automatically, itching to break Stanton's nose with the wrath of steel, before he remembered with a jolt that his arm wasn't automail anymore.

The female guard was nodding. "Should be easy for you."

All three of them eyed him, expectant. Edward averted his gaze. "Look, I—before I explain, just let me inspect it and—"

"Oh, back with that excuse again, are we?" Stanton taunted. "You can't do anything for anyone? Alchemists serve the people. What does that make you, runt?"

Edward locked eyes with him, and spoke through gritted teeth. "You're right. I'm not an alchemist anymore. Better to be an ordinary civilian than a fraud like you."

He began to march back into the room, but strong hands took hold of him, apprehending him in the doorway.

"That's enough," said the male guard. "We're escorting you down. Don't think for a moment that you'll ever be coming back here."

"You seriously got kicked out of the hotel?"

Edward glared at Roy from the passenger seat, so ferociously that stars popped into his vision. "Yes. Would you mind not repeating it at ten-second intervals?"

Roy laughed. "Well, I can't imagine what you did to deserve that."

While Edward was glad he didn't pry, he wished the Colonel would at least try to hide his amusement. It was bad enough being framed for something you hadn't done and manhandled by a pair of martinets in uniform without Roy passing it all off as a joke. Though he supposed the situation would have been rather funny if it hadn't made him feel, as much as he hated to admit it, like a helpless child.

It was stupid. He had lost an arm and a leg at the age of eleven, had fought people—and oftentimes not people—more than twice his size, had defied death multiple times, had seen horrific sights unimaginable to those luckier than him—and still he let a few stupid words get to him.

He wanted to get back to the hospital. But this was the one time seeing Alphonse wouldn't comfort him—Alphonse would blame himself, and Edward would not let that happen. His little brother had been through enough.

The car slowed to a stop. They had pulled up at a familiar block of apartments, below which hung a sign reading 'BAZAAR'. The day's fading light gave the place a shadowy, drained look, darkening and emphasising the odd grimy crack in the paintwork. Roy climbed out of the car, and Edward followed him past a couple of people milling about and chatting, into the building and up the worn staircase. He remembered another night, trudging up these same steps, the weight of a gun caked with blood dragging at his pocket and the weight of unease dragging at his chest. But then he had been tackled to the floor by a viciously excited puppy and his owner had appeared at the door, smiling in apology and amusement, and her apartment was warm and inviting because she was, despite its bare furnishings seeming to point to the contrary.

Riza was smiling the same way when she greeted them now, and her surprise at Edward's presence lasted only a moment before she opened the door wide to let them in. Edward didn't know what she and Roy had been planning to do before he unceremoniously crashed their—well, whatever it was—but he figured that if Roy hadn't made a fuss about it, it was probably fine. Probably.

Riza made them cups of steaming tea in her usual brisk, pragmatic manner and sat down between them on the couch. Edward took a sip out of his cup—not too bitter, not too sweet. They talked matter-of-factly about work for a while—tying up loose ends in Central, the proposed mission in Ishval—and Edward began to wonder if Roy, for all his apparent laziness, and Riza, with her disciplined professionalism, ever actually stopped working. But then the conversation turned inevitably to his situation, and Riza, to Edward's chagrin, reacted almost the same way Roy had to his unfortunate news, though she was perhaps less entertained and more judgemental.

"They kicked you out?" she said with raised eyebrows.

"Why are you both acting so surprised?" Edward grumbled, leaning his elbows on his knees and holding his cup with both hands. "It's not like it never happens."

"We're soldiers," said Roy in a superior tone. "We have standards. We do not get kicked out of hotels run by our military."

Edward rolled his eyes. "Well, I'll have you know that I quit the military, so I can do whatever the hell I want."

"You did? When?"

"Earlier today."

Roy grinned. "Not a moment too soon then. Although I'm sure you're aware that your reputation reaches far beyond your military status, so either way, the damage has been done, Fullmetal."

The tea suddenly felt uncomfortably warm in Edward's stomach. "I'm not him anymore. Not officially." It hadn't bothered him when Stanton had persisted with the title, but this was different. Roy almost never called him anything but Fullmetal. He never imagined it would be any other way, had never even thought about it. The way you never noticed a single cog in a pocket watch until it went awry and the watch stopped ticking.

"Oh," said Roy awkwardly. Clearly he hadn't realised either—the word had just slipped out, had rolled off his tongue without thought. "Right."

Riza looked at Edward, her brown eyes sharp. "Edward, is something wrong?"

"Is there ever not something wrong in this country?" Edward muttered. "Creepy artificial people, human philosopher's stones, plots to devour everyone's souls and become God, you name it."

But he could tell her the truth. There was something about her that you could trust, that you could confide in. He had sat down opposite her that night—it seemed so long ago now—and before he knew it he was telling her about Winry and Scar, about having a weapon and not being able to use it, about being completely useless when it mattered the most.

Roy was here too, and although he and Edward were always at each other's throats, they had fought together and called each other back when they had each teetered on the brink of madness and despair.

So Edward told them, and when he was finished Roy looked darkly furious, and Riza concerned and thoughtful.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Nothing. I mean," he amended, noticing the stunned expressions on Roy's and Riza's faces, "I might put explosive substances in his toilet. But he's an idiot. An idiot who pissed me off, but . . . he's like a petty kid. He doesn't understand anything about the real world." He thought of his mother and Resembool, and of crawling in a pool of his own slick blood, and felt a pang of sadness for his blighted childhood, and for Stanton's likely rosy and unblemished one. But when he searched his heart he there was no resentment or regret for the way his life had turned out—even if he were to relive his formative years he knew he would rather be the boy who lost and learned than the one who did neither, and lived in a delusion.

And yet loss was something you never got used to. On his hands and knees before the battered remnants of his brother's armour, rough concrete cutting into his white knuckles, he'd had one thought. After losing so many people who had left their stamps imprinted on his heart, after all the sacrifices he had torn from his being, what was one more? One more in exchange for what he'd wanted more than anything in the world, so much that sometimes when he had woken in the night the desperate hunger and loneliness had been unbearable. The price was nothing to him.

But it wasn't. To be sure, it had probably been the easiest decision he'd ever made. But it wasn't nothing. The problem was that he was only now aware of the sense of something missing, something fundamental and innate that had disappeared. It was like sustaining a wound in battle and not realising it was bleeding until afterwards, when the dulled sting slowly set in.

"Do you want it back?" asked Roy. "Your Portal?"

"No," Edward snapped immediately, without thinking. "Because that would mean—"

"I know. But wanting it doesn't mean you wouldn't give it up for something more important."

Edward's fingers squeaked against the teacup as he gripped it tighter. For a moment he said nothing. "I can't believe myself. What will Al think of me, getting like this the moment things are safe and easy again?" He thought he had grown. He had shown Alphonse the inside of his pocket watch, had even looked at it, this symbol of what he had accomplished, with something like pride.

"I think he would understand," said Riza quietly.

Of course he would. But the problem wasn't Alphonse's. "He doesn't deserve the guilt. He deserves better."

Edward's gaze was fixed on the wobbling reflections of light in his tea, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Roy and Riza share a covert glance. He wondered if the look had been one of mutual disapproval, or disappointment, or pity—but then Roy gave a short bark of laughter.

"You boys are unbelievable."

Edward frowned at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"He means," Riza supplied with a smile, "that the lengths you would go to for one another's happiness and comfort never cease to amaze him."

Edward didn't know if he was supposed to feel like he'd been complimented. Of course he would—and did—risk life and limb for Alphonse. It was a fact of life, nothing more. He did feel a little annoyed that both Roy and Riza seemed to be missing the point, though.

"I know alchemy shouldn't matter to me," he said. "I told that grinning bastard I didn't need it, and I believed every word I said. But . . ." He was nearing territory that he preferred to traverse alone, free from prying eyes and ears, and wrestled faintly with himself for a moment. "Alchemy tempts you. Empowers you. Makes you feel invincible when you're far from it. It can poison you with visions of grandeur if you're not careful. But it wasn't like that at the beginning. Back then it was just . . . every kid's dream made reality. You could make tiny birds out of your library floor, you could make all the toys you could ever want just by drawing a circle and putting your hands on it. Anything you could imagine, anything—could come to life."

Roy had gone very still, the spark of humour in his dark eyes replaced with a wistful pensiveness. "Yeah," he said, and Riza turned toward him, slightly startled. "Before I learned how to light a blaze large enough to turn the city into a wasteland, or set off a blast in a building full of civilians. I used to do some ridiculous things as an apprentice."

"You did, sir," Riza affirmed without missing a beat. "You dragged me around town once, transmuting excessive quantities of hydrogen sulfide and releasing them near unsuspecting men to make everyone think they were passing gas."

Edward snorted. He had never imagined he would hear Riza Hawkeye casually toss the phrase 'passing gas' into a conversation with a completely straight face. "You were an arsehole. Not that much has changed, really."

"I won't deny that," said Roy, "but you would've been the same if you hadn't been so terrified of your teacher."

Edward made a face at him, but there was nothing he could say to that. He tipped his head back and finished his tea, which had gone cold. The tension he had felt since he'd first sat down had almost abated completely, though he still crossed his arms and retreated a little into the folds of the couch as he leaned back. As if he could conceal his own glaring shortcomings from himself.

He couldn't help it. He felt defective, like a music box with a pin that had broken off, or a spinning top with a chipped off tip. During the countless skirmishes he'd been involved in over the years, he had thought nothing of the businesses and properties he damaged, because repairing them had been second nature. It wasn't until he stood staring in horror at his vandalised hotel room and realising he did not have the means to put it right that he truly saw how much damage he had caused in the past. How much damage he was still capable of causing—only now he had lost the ability to reverse its effects. He'd thought he had all the choice in the world as he stood before the Portal of Truth, and he would choose to move forward—alchemy or no alchemy—according to his will and his desires. But it wasn't so easy, standing without the crutch that had assisted him, that he had forgotten he needed.

Roy peered across at him from the other end of the couch. "I wouldn't want to give it up either," he said.

Edward nodded, acknowledging the gesture of empathy. "But you don't need to."

"I would if I did."

"I know."

"Fullmetal—" Roy began, and hesitated. "I can still call you that, can't I?"

Edward shrugged, but he could feel his cheeks lifting ever so slightly in a smile. "Yeah. I guess."

"Bradley wasn't mistaken when he gave you that title," Roy added. "He didn't give it to you because you were part machine or because you transmuted that spear. He gave it to you because you were a dumb brat who decided to shove it at his throat."

Well, that was one way of putting it. "What about you?" Edward threw back at him. "Yours is pretty lame, if you ask me, not to mention painfully literal."

Roy drew himself up with an imperious air. "I'm afraid you're wrong there. It clearly refers to the red-hot flames of my passionate—"

Riza coughed loudly into the back of her hand, effectively drowning him out, and Edward shook his head in disgust, appalled that anyone could say something so intensely nauseating with such confidence.

Riza let Edward sleep on the couch for the night, which he was thankful for—he certainly wasn't keen on seeking out another source of accommodation—but he felt slightly guilty just the same. He couldn't shake the sense that he was intruding on an occasion he shouldn't be.

And he was right. After what seemed like hours of restless tossing and turning—ever since Alphonse had gotten his body back, Edward had stopped consistently sleeping like a rock—he got up and examined Riza's small collection of books on a little shelf for a while, before pacing aimlessly around the room. He passed the bathroom door, which stood ajar, and—

He wished he hadn't glanced inside. He also wished they hadn't left the hallway lamp on, though to their credit it was turned down low. Unfortunately, he could still see what was happening with relative clarity—Riza, her back against the wall, her hands in the back of Roy's shirt, Roy's head tilted down, his mouth on hers—

Edward flushed and bolted, somehow managing not to trip over anything in the darkness. He was fairly sure the bathroom door was faulty and couldn't close properly—it had looked to be in rather poor shape when he'd seen it in the light. That had to be it, because the alternative explanation made no sense—Roy and Riza didn't strike him as two people who would be so casually and openly intimate. The logical working out of the situation did little to banish the image burned into his mind, as he had hoped it would, and so to compensate he dived under the covers and attempted to physically crush it out of his system. It didn't work.

He supposed Roy hadn't exactly been lying about the meaning of his title.

When he woke up in the early hours from the old nightmare of his mother dripping blood and touching his face with her cold, dead hand, he went to the tiny hallway kitchen—keeping his back firmly turned to the bathroom—poured himself a glass of water and sat on the couch again, bunching up the covers and hugging them to his chest. At some point Riza, having returned to the living space, fallen asleep and gotten up to relieve herself (for real this time), noticed him and came to lay a hand on his shoulder briefly. His face heated up at the remembrance of what he had witnessed, but thankfully she couldn't see.

When she had left he stared thoughtfully ahead, the light pressure of her hand still resounding through his skin. Roy's snores had faded into the background. It might have been the quiet, or how late it was, but an odd sort of calm had settled in. Edward saw the world, fractured and imperfect as it was, saw himself and the people he loved, navigating its precarious web, each of them dangled on a gossamer thread that sparkled as easily as it broke. You could never strive for contentment alone. Humans were greedy creatures. He would know—a certain homunculus he'd had the honour of working for had been the most human of all of them. But wanting more meant continuing to think, and converting those thoughts into actions, and going to places you'd never set eyes on before.

He would always be a petty, fickle human. But he had wholeheartedly meant every word he'd said to that bastard Truth. Every last word.

Alphonse didn't even bother to greet Edward the next morning. He cut straight to the chase. "I told you the horns were a bad idea. And is it true that you got kicked out of the hotel?"

Edward threw himself into a chair and his hands over his face. "Give me a break, Al."

Okay I know Riza has no reason to own a couch but I just couldn't get the image of the three of them snuggled up side by side out of my head forgive me