Hey, everybody, here's the next chapter. I'm a little worried about the characterization and the speed of the revelations, so those who are inclined to comment on that are more than welcome to do so. I could use a little feedback. The rest of you, I hope you enjoy the story!

Disclaimer: Well, I got the word "disclaimer" down, but I honestly hadn't thought past that. I'm getting about as bad as Roy, and he doesn't own Fullmetal Alchemist either... and I think I heard a moan and a "Leave me out of this!" in the background. Goodness knows who said that.

Every dream has to die sooner or later. That includes nightmares, because nightmares are dreams, aren't they?

Edward rolled his eyes up as he tried to remember where he had heard that quote. It sounded like something Al would have said. Something to try and comfort someone. Oh, that was what it was. After Winry had lost her parents, Al had said that to her to try and calm her down. Edward wasn't sure if it had worked or not, since Winry pretty much cried and yelled the rest of the week. He couldn't blame her, but the quote was nice.

Think positively. That's the only way to get what you want. Otherwise, how will you know when you've received your wish if you never think about it?

That Al, always the optimist. How had he managed to stay so cheerful through all the hell they went through? Granted, he wasn't cheerful on… "that" night… but most days he seemed to have been in good spirits. If only he could be more like Al, then maybe this whole ordeal wouldn't hurt so much. Al always seemed to find some way to cope with his problems. Why was the younger brother so much stronger than the older brother?

You're not weak. You're far from weak. We get our strength from each other. If you were weak, there would be no way I could be strong. If I'm strong, that must mean you are too.

"Darnit, Al, get out of my head!" Of all the times in his life when swearing would be considered most appropriate, this was it, and yet he chose not to swear. If it was acceptable to the mainstream culture, then he wanted no part of it. Or that was his excuse for now, anyway. Al probably would have just used the curse word. He did when things got bad enough. And here Edward was refusing to curse. What was wrong with him, anyway?

Edward swam over to the side of his tank and grabbed hold of the glass. "Darn this pain…" He smacked his head against the glass as hard as he could manage. That had really hurt, but not enough. "Make it…" Smack. "Go…" Smack. "Away!" Smack. And then he let go and sunk back to the bottom of the tank, still in quite a bit of emotional pain and starting on a bit of delirium as it jumbled up his thoughts and didn't let anything make sense. Oh well, things were probably better that way, so he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

"Where are we going, Winry?" asked Roy, trailing behind her and somehow carrying all the baggage. Winry was a strangely evil woman to be around.

"Somewhere."

"Where's somewhere?"

"Anywhere but where we're standing."

"But how will we know if we're going the right way? We've got to at least think through a plan of some sort."

Winry stopped walking, put her hands on her hips, and turned around to face the man who was whining like a baby. She'd never seen Roy so insecure, nor had she imagined he could be. He never had been in front of Ed from the stories Ed told. Did he just expose his weaker side to women? That wasn't very smart if that was so, since the guy would get trampled to death sooner or later by a mob of high-heeled shoes.

"Look, unless you have a better idea, the only clues we have are the feelings I keep getting and your DNA findings, so unless you can somehow dismiss my feelings and follow up with logic, I'd say we'd better follow my feelings."

Roy sniffed. Winry was right, but who wanted to admit that a woman was right when it made the man wrong? Especially an older man at that. "Alright then, where are your feelings directing you then?"

Winry frowned in concentration for a few minutes, just trying to focus on how the brothers felt, as if she could feel their spirit or something. She wasn't getting much, and she wasn't even sure if what she did get was right, but they had no better clues. "Well, obviously we need to keep going west, but… I think we're too far south."

"Too far south?"

Winry looked up at the man. "Yes, too far south. We need to go north to find them. Or one of them. Whichever brother is still…"

"I understand," said Roy, and he patted Winry on the shoulder. "You've been working hard at this, so don't pain yourself further by forcing yourself to talk about it."

She buried her forehead in her hand. "Th-thanks."

"It might help to get some idea of what's north of here though. Maybe we should ask some of the natives."

"Maybe."

It wasn't long before Winry and Roy had approached a middle-aged lady and asked her about what was up north. It turned out that the lady barely spoke Amestrian, and they had to ask the question several times to get through to her. But once she understood the question, she seemed quite opinionated about the answer.

"Has crazy show. 'Tupid!"

Winry didn't know what a crazy show was, and she sure hoped the woman was referring to that as stupid rather than her and Roy, though a couple of foreigners probably looked rather stupid to natives, so perhaps it was fair either way.

She decided to ask for clarification. "So, what's a crazy show?"

"'Tupid!"

"Yeah, but what is it?"

"'Tupid!"

With a sigh and a shrug, Winry resigned herself to her fate as she realized that this woman just wouldn't understand her no matter what she said. If only she'd studied some other languages while growing up, but it wouldn't do any good to belittle herself about that now.

Roy, noticing her reaction, placed a hand on her shoulder and said, "Let's see if I can get through to her." He then proceeded to speak in another language with the woman. Even though Winry didn't speak the language herself, she could tell that Roy wasn't fluent in it, but then, neither was the woman. How did they both know a language that wasn't their mother tongue?

He turned back to her. "It seems she's talking about some freak show that comes through every year about this time, and she thinks it's quite stupid."

"I'd gathered."

"She said that most of the freaks have somehow become alchemy damaged. That must mean the owner passes through Amestris or Xing, though even if it were Xing he was going to, he would have to go through Amestris to get there."

"Which means he just came out of Amestris?" Winry guessed.

"That was what I was thinking," said Roy. "That travelers' language is very minimalist, so she couldn't figure out how to describe anything else."

Travelers' language, of course! No wonder they both knew that language. The lady lived near the border and ran into a lot of foreign people because of it, and Roy was in the military, so it made sense that they would both speak a travelers' language, even though neither one of them was proficient at it, as much as Roy wanted to place the blame on the language itself.

"Okay," Winry scratched her head and thought. "I don't know why Ed or Al would be traveling with a freak show, but we can't rule out the possibility since we don't know what's been going on with them."

"Right," said Roy, "So north then?"

He felt Winry smack him lightly as she said, "Northwest, silly. They're still moving, aren't they?"

"Oh, right." He bowed his head to rub at the bridge of his nose. He said he had an itch, but Winry doubted it. Most likely his masculine ego got bruised, especially with him being a Colonel and her not knowing anything about the military. Oh well, he'd come around soon enough.

They grabbed another horse and carriage and rode northwest, the drivers getting frustrated but being surprisingly patient with Winry's impulses. Maybe they just liked the idea of getting paid in Amestrian money. It was worth a lot more than the Creatan dollar.

After about a day and a half of traveling, the drivers switching off who held the reigns every few hours to get them to their destination as fast as possible, Winry cracked her eyes open and blinked them a few times to get used to the dawn light streaming in. She sat up in her seat and stretched her arms. It would be so nice to get off of this thing. Her back hurt, her rump was sore, and her legs felt dead. It was seriously easier to travel from place to place by walking, but it took too long and time was of the essence here.

She finally looked up into the distance and was met with the sight of a parade of bright colors. At first she thought it was just the dawn light reflecting off of some rocks in a weird way, but as she took another look at it, she realized that those were the bright colors of a circus. They had found it!

"I see it! I see it!" Winry frantically shook Roy's arm until he opened his eyes, moaned, and sat up and looked in the direction Winry was pointing.

"What do you see?" He yawned, and his eyes started closing again when Winry slapped him over the head.

"Dummy, wake up and look where I'm pointing!"

This time he did as he was told, and he looked where Winry was pointing. His eyes opened a little bit at the sight, hardly daring to believe that Winry could have been right all this time. "That's the freak show… circus thingy?"

"It has to be. It's right where I felt it was, so what else could it be?"

"Hmmm…" Roy rubbed his chin to contemplate that one. "Somebody could've set up a fake circus."

Winry snorted. "Who would go to the trouble to set up a fake circus?"

"I don't know," Roy said with a shrug, "Sounds like something Ed would do."

A chuckle from Winry. "Something that only he would do."

By midmorning, they arrived at the circus grounds, paid the drivers, and then went to search for the manager. Neither of the two was focused on the other at the moment, and so without realizing it, Roy had gone one way and Winry had gone another. Though it probably didn't matter since it was just a circus.

Winry walked around the side of a building and found the area where the tents formed a circle. This must've been the middle of the site. There was a large tank of water in the middle area too, and she felt her stomach lurch as something compelled her to go forward. There was something about that tank…

Edward sat up in his tank and shielded his brow with his hand as he watched a strange form fly over his tank and land somewhere beyond the main tent. Was that a seagull? He had never actually seen one before since he had always lived too far inland. He'd never even been to the ocean. Wasn't this seagull, if that was what it was, pretty far inland? What was it doing here, of all places?

He shrugged and sank back into his tank. It was just a bird. It probably didn't mean anything.

Winry looked up just as a seagull swooped down, dropped something in her hand, and then landed on a nearby chair and squawked at her. She looked confusedly between the thing in her hand and the bird for several moments, the seagull continuously squawking at her, before she realized that the thing she was holding in her hand was rolled up, and was probably meant to be unrolled.

It was whitish and had a rubbery texture, something that confused her greatly but seemed to be an amazing sort of technology. As she unrolled it, she began to make out words written on it, and a few drops of water fell out. What was this, some kind of waterproof paper?

She read the letter:

"Dear Winry, I hope you get this letter before you run into Edward. He's had quite a shock and will need your help to calm down or I fear he may kill himself. I have been keeping up with his behavior mainly through scrying, which is how I know about you also. I sort of just look into a bubble and things appear.

"Please tell Edward that Al is alright. He just had a really hard fall, as I did recently when the same thing happened to me. It took me a while to regain my memory of everything. Al is still confused, but he will recover. I'm not really supposed to tell you this, but we have the technology to safely lock away someone's body and then project the person's spirit away to a fake body. If anything happens to the fake body, they fall back into the real one.

"We'd pulled Al's body out of the Gate years ago and gave him a fake one to live in while he chose to remain on land. That body got destroyed, so now he is back in his own. Edward doesn't have a fake body to protect him while on land, so he is in real trouble if anything should happen to him. You're the only one I know of who could possibly help him calm down enough to be delivered safely to the ocean. We'll pick him up from there.

"And Winry, a tip for yourself: be careful when you get to the ocean. The call of Atlantis is exceedingly strong right now, and even you might feel its pull, but heeding the call would cause you to drown. Don't take this warning lightly. Perhaps that blue-suited man, Roy I think his name was, could help watch you and make sure you don't do anything dangerous.

"If Edward wants to contact us, he needs to either learn how to use his magic or charm a seagull. It doesn't take much, but he's having a hard time letting go of previous misconceptions about his existence.

"Thank you for reading this, Winry, and for being such a devoted friend to Edward. I hope we can become friends too when we meet at the ocean. Wishing you happy thoughts,

"Sylvia"

Winry read the letter several times over, not quite sure what to make of it. Somehow the writer had known exactly where she was, as well as her connection with Edward, and his connection with the ocean. And the writer had mentioned Atlantis. Was this some sort of practical joke? Did Atlantis really exist?

"What is it, Winry?" asked Roy.

Winry looked up from the letter and shrugged, and then she giggled self-consciously. "It's a letter, addressed to me and somehow delivered by seagull." She shook her head. That had sounded so stupid. All the statements were true, but it sounded ridiculous. How could she possibly believe what was written in the letter?

The circus master, who they'd been engaged in a discussion with before the mysterious appearance of the seagull, raised his eyebrow. "They knew exactly where you were."

Another self-conscious chuckle from Winry. "Yeah. It seems so. I know, it sounds ridiculous. It's probably just a prank, right?"

"Not if it was written by one of them merfolks."

"Merpeople again," more nervous chuckling, "You don't honestly believe in merpeople, do you?"

The circus master pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "Got one over there in a tank. Poor little fella and his brother were trying to get to the ocean. Then the brother croaked and now he's trying to get there all alone. Well, half trying. He's kind of given up on life." The circus master shook his head and then repeated, "Poor little fella."

That same strange feeling she'd felt when she saw the tank in the distance came flooding back to her, and she stood paralyzed, crushing the rubbery paper in her hands, eyes wide open, and scared to death. If she asked to see the merman in the tank, would she regret it? The clues all tried to persuade her that Edward was one, and that Al had tendencies in that direction, but she couldn't bring herself to accept it, and she didn't know why. Something about the whole thing scared her in a way she couldn't understand.

She came back to reality when she noticed Roy waving his hand in front of her face and going, "Winry. Winry?"

She blinked and shook her head. "Okay, sorry. I'm back."

"Good," said Roy, and then pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "The circus master was going to let us take a look at the fishboy." He extended his hand, expecting her to take it, but she didn't want to. It made no sense to her, but she didn't want to. If she'd been told she was going to be allowed to see a unicorn, she'd have willingly agreed no matter how skeptical she was. But something about this was just…off. And terrifying.

Roy got tired of waiting and grabbed Winry's hand and led her into the central area of the circus where the tank was. She saw a form in the bottom of the tank, and she felt like she was going to throw up. She did not want to be here. She needed to be anywhere else but here.

With that in mind, she pulled her hand out of Roy's and turned to run the other direction, but Roy's reflexes were faster than hers, and he caught her and turned her back toward the central area. Without waiting for him to even ask her what the matter was, she started sobbing, and tears followed in their course to water her face like it was a plant.

"Winry, what is going on?" asked a very concerned Roy. "I knew you were skeptical, but I never knew you were terrified. You were so strong about the situation up until now. Tell me, what's going on?"

"I don't know!" She shook her head and brought up an arm to wipe away some of the tears. "If I knew, I wouldn't be crying like this."

Roy patted her shoulder and then stayed silent. Perhaps he was trying to find words to say, but what does one say in regards to something like that? She could understand why he was staying silent. She wouldn't want to talk to herself right then either.

She was interrupted in her reverie, however, by a familiar sounding, "Holy shit!"

At this, she finally looked up at the tank. How can one resist when they hear something like that, especially in a familiar-sounding voice?

Her tears still made her vision blurry, but she could see that the lump on the bottom of the tank had moved and was now peering over the top at them. She blinked a couple times until her vision began to clear. When she finally made out the form of Edward perched there on the edge of his tank, she lost all control of her body and fainted.

Anyway, hope you liked that. Thanks for reading, and come back soon. I'll try to update again in the near future. Take care, and have a nice day!