The aftermath was, inevitably, anticlimactic. The hunt for the mysterious 'Ran' they'd heard so much about ended bare seconds after they got back to the hotel to discover someone of that very name seated at the table, being treated to a nice cup of warm soup. Likewise, the hunt for the feather (to Ed's mild disappointment and Syaoran's great relief) was over before it even began, since the item in question had already been returned to Sakura, the girl herself now sleeping peacefully. Syaoran hurried in to check on her as Fye skilfully deflected a number of difficult questions from Ed, primarily using the argument that since clearly neither of the twins was in much of a state (not to mention their rather battered Syaoran), getting them all to see that nice doctor should absolutely be their first priority. It turned out all either twin had had to eat through the whole ordeal was what food they could transmute from what they had available, and going by Ed's reaction it was painfully obvious this was not a diet you'd want to live on.
Ran assured them he was well enough to walk, though Aiden, still yet to regain consciousness, made this trip in Al's arms. To all appearances he was ready to remain out cold for a good while yet, so no-one was expecting it when a hand reached out to catch the fabric of Ran's shirt, or to hear a weak voice say, "Ran, is that you?"
"It's me," said Ran, taking his brother's hand. "It's all over."
"Ran, it was you?" said Aiden, fingers tightening. "You destroyed the feather?"
Ran avoided making eye contact. "It had to be done. It was the only way."
"Why?" Aiden's voice was weak and desperate. "Without it, you know our alchemy will never be the same. I could have brought Ben back. I could have…"
"But it doesn't work that way," said Ran sadly. "It never did. So many transmutations we tried came out wrong. Even the chimeras… Even if we'd tried to bring Ben back, we wouldn't have gotten him back at all."
"But we could…"
"Oi," Ed interrupted, having heard more than enough of this. "Listen to what he's saying for a change. He's your brother, isn't he? He knows what he's talking about a whole lot better than you do."
Aiden looked at him weakly, fell silent, and appeared to fall back to sleep.
"Ben was the alchemist the mayor was telling us about, wasn't he?" asked Ed, in the silence that followed. "The one no-one had seen in a while?"
"It certainly seems he must have been," said Fye.
"No-one mentioned he had any kids," said Ed, bitterly. "Guess we're going to have to be the ones to break the news about what happened to him."
"We're going to have a lot of explaining to do," Syaoran said, without enthusiasm.
"And I'm going to have a hell of a report to write too… and not even a Philosopher's Stone to show for it." Ed gave the others a sly kind of look. "Maybe I can summarise and leave a few things about travellers who won't tell us where they're from and disappearing feathers out of it."
There were a number of slightly embarrassed looks from the others assembled.
"Well, if it'll save you some work," said Fye innocently.
"Ah, the Colonel won't want to hear about any of that mess anyway, I'm sure. Visited town, chimeras being made by overenthusiastic kid in need of adult supervision, all taken care of, end of story. Short and simple."
The doctor declared both of the twins to be in miserable shape – even news of Aiden's crazy behaviour in the mansion basement didn't surprise him in the least. He assured everyone that they wouldn't be going anywhere until he'd given them a clean bill of health – after which he had hopes they'd be able to find someone new to take the boys in. (The ever energetic Mr Thompson was sent home to free an extra bed and assured that the urge came to him to invent any new imaginary monsters he'd be entirely welcome to keep it to himself.)
And that just left them with the job of explaining a much summarised version of events to the mayor, who, while inevitably dismayed to hear of the death of a resident of his town, was so pleased by the news that all those chimeras were taken care of that – to Fye's delight – he threw an impromptu party for them at the town pub. Ed and Al spent most of the evening trying to explain to people just how grossly underage they were, with limited success. (Ed must have gotten drunk eventually, however, since he had no other explanation for how much time he spent in conversation with a talking rabbit-like creature that night. The later revelation Al had seen it too was something that gave him a headache no hangover could ever compare to, and would remain carefully forgotten for the rest of his life.)
The next morning, hangovers or no, it was time for everyone to move on.
Conveniently, since Ed and Al were returning home, whereas the rest of the travellers were (presumably) moving on, they'd be leaving in opposite directions. They said their goodbyes in town.
Ed shook Syaoran by the hand. "If you're ever in East city, stop by headquarters and say hi. We're stationed there whenever we're not out in the field."
Syaoran hesitated. It weighed on his mind that they were leaving this world and there was no reason to assume they'd ever be coming back. On the other hand, even though it would never be exactly the same, there were a million other worlds out there, and there could easily be a thousand other Ed's and Al's. For all he knew, they could be meeting another two before they saw their next sundown. "Sure. Thankyou again – for everything."
Goodbyes said, all that remained was to get safely outside the town, over a hill and out of sight.
And a few moments later there was no-one left at all.
Finished at long last, thank you all for reading! There's another post up over at my LiveJournal (linked from my profile) with some talk about what went into writing this fic, for anyone who might be curious about (though I should probably warn, I tend to ramble a lot when I get going).
As a few people correctly guessed, the twins were alternate versions of A and C/Ran from Clover. It's one of CLAMP's more obscure series, but a personal favourite of mine, and I'd highly recommend everyone check it out.
And because I haven't said it loudly enough yet, I owe a lot of thanks to velithya for correcting a whole lot of my wording and grammar (and occasionally even my physics and biology) through all eleven parts of this thing. On which note, she did also suggest an alternate way to end the fic which I couldn't quite get to work myself, but which I still liked the idea of too much not to mention (particularly since she was very right that it would have tied back into the beginning quite nicely - and sooner or later, the Tsubasa crew's good luck with landing sites really is going to have to run out). It can be summarised as follows:
(somewhere else)
SPLASH!
"MOKONA!"