Edward knew where he was. As soon as he saw—no, felt—the white emptiness around him, he knew. He knew it was a dream—he always knew it was a dream when he was in these things, and yet that never helped him to escape—and he knew that soon he would be waking from his sleep with a yelp. Worrying Al, no doubt. But it wasn't as if he could help that he was always having nightmares. If he knew how to stop feeling so horrible about things so he could stop having the cursed dreams, he would.

And yet, sometimes he wondered. If he were given he chance to honestly get rid of these dreams, would he really? After all, this was his one last, faltering connection to her. The only way he was able to have a mother, and even in his dreams, he was failing to remember some of the details. Where her freckles were, how her eyes wrinkled. He didn't want to lose this one connection. If this kept up, he wouldn't even be able to remember his own mother's face.

And that was when he saw her. She was facing away from him. He hoped it wouldn't be to hide some gruesome twisting of her features or something. He wanted to at least enjoy her for a little bit before he had to go back.

"Mom!" he called out. She didn't turn. Which was strange. She always, always turned towards him immediately when he called for her. She was always there for him.

He called again. She looked around, as if startled there was a voice, but still didn't turn towards him. He called for her again, and finally, she turned to look at him, her face a mixture of shock and fear.

It was the clearest he could remember seeing her in any dream. Her face was sharp, as if she had never been gone. Maybe she never had. He could almost believe that everything else he and Al had been through had been a horrible dream, and this, this was reality. His mom was reality. She reached out and touched his hair. Her fingers were as light against him as a child, like she was scared to hold him. He choked back the tears that wanted to come, that were always there when he thought about her.

"Mom," he croaked.

Suddenly, she shifted, and she was a mother again, wrapping him into one of the tightest hugs he had known, like she could protect him from everything in the world that hurt. For all he remembered of her, she was the only one who ever could. He wrapped back around her, just holding, never wanting to let go, never again.

"Edward," she whispered, combing through his hair. Just her saying his name felt like a blessing, like something he could carry with him and use as a shield against the world. He felt stronger with her there, he felt stronger because he was allowed to be weak. He was allowed to just be Ed. He pulled away to look at her again, wiping the tears from his face. He didn't want to forget her face again. He wanted to carry her strength with him after he woke up.

The two stared at each other silently, both seeming to try and commit the other to memory, like she was afraid that she would forget him too. Then her breath hitched, and he saw her eyes water. Her hand was on his cheek the next moment, rubbing comfort into his skin as if he were a child again. Hell, he was a child, still, even through everything. He closed his eyes against her touch.

"What's happened to you, Edward?"

His eyes were open again before he knew it. The question was so hard, so full of hurt, and such a long story to tell. Just her asking it made him scared that the dream was going to turn into a nightmare—just like all the others—and he would be awake in his bed with a sweat. An orphan again.

"I miss you..." he muttered, looking away from her, avoiding the question. He didn't want the dream to end, didn't want her to go away. She sighed, that motherly sigh that said she knew he was hiding something from her, but she pulled him into a hug and let it go, all the same.

He wanted to just stay in her arms and be held, just be able to be a family again, but something was nagging at him. Something felt... off. He couldn't be sure, but it was that same weird feeling he got whenever he knew that someone was watching him. He pulled away with a frown and looked over to where it was coming from.

It was like a window was stretching and opening, showing the hills and the grass he had grown up on. And the house. The house he hadn't seen in years, and in front of it, his mom. She was just as clear as the mom next to him, though something seemed different. He looked back to the mom beside him, and realized her face had less freckles, less wrinkles.

"You're younger," he stated, surprised he hadn't seen it. Was his memory on his mom really failing that much? Could he really not even tell when a younger Trisha had been substituted for the one he had known?

The mom in the window sat down by the tree, pulling a letter out of her apron pocket and beginning to read. Ed winced. He could remember the day. She had just gotten a letter from dad, and he hadn't found out until after she was sick and he had gone through all of the stacks of paper in the house. She hadn't told him or Al about the letters from their dad, mostly because they were along the lines of how he loved them all, but wasn't able to come back... yet.

"Mommy, mommy! Look at me! Look what I can do! Mommy!"

Ed blinked, slowly, almost wanting his eyes to stay shut. He hadn't known that the letter she was reading had been so important—how could he have? He was just a kid, after all. But he still felt bad, trying to act like he was the most important thing around, always strutting and trying to act like he was better than Al. He hadn't realized that his mom was a person too. That there really were more important things than him sometimes.

He remembered. It was almost nice, remembering how stuck up he had been as a kid, and how much he had grown. Granted, he was still stuck up, but at least now, as a teen, he knew what he was doing.

Then the mom in the window held a hand up to her cheek, clutched the letter to her chest, and started crying. Ed closed his eyes. He didn't want to see his mom cry like that. He didn't want to remember how much pain she had gone through because of their dad leaving.

When he opened his eyes again, the window was gone, and his mom—the younger mom—was looking at him like she wanted to fix something and was only starting to realize that she couldn't. He felt a tug on his gut, like someone was calling him, a long way away.

"I love you," she whispered, and it took all his willpower not to cry.

"I love you too, Mom."

And then, as he was just starting to wake up, the tears came. Tears at the thought of not seeing her again, tears at the beauty of having a peaceful dream of her, for once.

He didn't wake up peacefully though. He startled Al as he jolted into a sitting position, his hair flying around his face. Al looked at him, worried, even though it was normal for Ed to wake from nightmares like that.

"Another bad dream?" Al said, wary. He worried about Ed, and about how the idiot insisted on carrying such a heavy burden on his back. Ed silently touched two fingers to his cheek, still a little dazed. Already the dream was slipping away from him. That was always the most annoying part about dreams that weren't terrifying. They were so much harder to remember.

Then he looked down at his fingers and realized they were wet. Tears. He had been crying.

And then he remembered it. How mom had been there, how he hugged her, how she stroked his hair. How vivid it had all been. Not like a normal dream. Almost like it was real. He frowned and ran a hand through his hair.

"No, not a bad dream," he said to Al, looking at the ceiling. "I... I just got startled waking up."

"What was it about?"

Ed looked over directly at Al and smiled weakly. "Mom. She says hi. She says... She says that she loves you." And at that, he couldn't hold back the tears any longer, and they poured from him, as Al rushed over to hold his brother in the same protective way that Mom always had.

Okay, finally, finally wrote the second part to this that I've been planning for... forever, so I can finally call this one done and leave it alone. Hopefully my writing style didn't throw people off too much between the two different bits, I know my writing style has changed a lot since I wrote the last one. It's interesting to me to see the difference. Sometimes I forget my skills have grown and changed, lol.

Anyway, thanks everyone for reading!