Munich, Germany, 1927

"It's not going to work."

I stared at the book open in my lap, trying to pretend that I hadn't just heard those words from Edward Elric's mouth. Edward Elric! The boy never gave up. Not unless there was no point in continuing.

"He's right, Leoma," Noah said softly, looking at me with her huge brown eyes imploringly. "I know you wanted to go to that world so much… So did I, once. But it wasn't meant to be. The Gate is shut. There's no way back."

Ignoring the three of them any longer wasn't going to help me feel any better. I sighed and shut the book with a snap, leaning against the hard wooden chair in Edward's dusty apartment. Closing my eyes, I ran a finger through my insanely curled brown hair, flipping it to cover my eyes the way I liked it. I was probably the only girl in the world that had such strange hair, and I did my best to keep it where everyone could see it. It was the only physical characteristic I could be proud of. My skinny, flat-chested frame wasn't all that much to look at, and my gray eyes were too cold to be considered pretty.

"Leoma? Are you alright?" Alphonse was looking at me, concern evident in his golden eyes. The same golden eyes that had first spied me, hidden away in a doorstep in the dead of winter. Alphonse had been the one who had told me about something better.

"I'm alright," I said. "It's just… I hate this world. I hate it so, so much. Isn't that funny, that someone should hate their own world so much that they would do anything to escape from it?"

"Leoma!" Alphonse said. He glared at me reproachfully. "Don't talk like that."

"Well," I said, "Maybe I wouldn't do anything. But this world took everything from me. My parents, my sister; my life. And yet I live. But I want to live somewhere better than here, before this sick world takes away somebody else I care about." There was no emotion in my voice; I'd broached this topic with Ed, Alphonse and Noah many times, and it didn't hurt anymore to talk about it. I only still felt the pain at night, in my dreams.

Ed leaned back in his chair, setting off a loud squeal that dulled my dark mood. "What?" He asked, golden eyes blazing in the way that only his could. "Finally admitting that you care about us, Leoma? And you have such trouble with emotions."

I groaned. "That is most definitely in part your fault," I said. "Maybe if you didn't laugh every time I said something meaningful, I'd say meaningful things more often." The banter didn't upset me unduly. Edward was right; in the two years I'd been searching for the other world with Noah, Ed and Alphonse; I hadn't ever talked much about caring. It was something of a superstition; as soon as I started to care, something awful happened. And for some reason, I'd gotten it into my head that it was different in the other world. Ever since Alphonse had brought little orphaned me back to Ed and Noah and Noah had nursed me back to health and told me all about Amestris, the place had sung to me in my dreams, filling every fiber of my body with a desperate longing.

I used to feel that way too, Noah had told me once, as she was wringing out the laundry and setting it on the line, humming as she worked. But now that we've settled in Munich once and for all, I feel like I finally have a home. I don't need Amestris anymore. I have Ed, Al, and you. Who else would I need?

What about me? I had asked her. Why do I care so much? Noah had placed a satiny hand on my forehead, and closed her eyes in concentration.

This world is a curse for you, she'd said. I can feel it inside you. You don't just dislike it. You don't belong here. There is alchemy in your soul, Leoma.

I sighed heavily, returning to the present. "That's it, then?" I asked, looking at the open book in my lap. "We're done? There's most definitely no way to get to Amestris?"

Ed shook his head. He was only twenty years old, but when he looked at me he looked as though he were a hundred. "There isn't a way," he said. "Sometimes I wish I hadn't closed that Gate, but… I mean, another Thule Society might show up, and I don't really feel like another alchemical battle. Not that the last one wasn't great and all that."

"Don't be upset, please, Leoma," Alphonse said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "We'll move out of Munich, if you'd like. To the country, maybe. It's almost as good as Amestris."

"No," I said, immediately. "We're staying in Munich. You two are not quitting your fancy rocket engineering jobs now. I'm seventeen. I'm a big girl now. I'll survive." A lie, but a good one, constructed with a grain of truth at its core. I would survive yes, but that wouldn't stop me from feeling as though part of my heart had been cleaved away. I'd fallen in love with Amestris, and sure enough, it had been stolen from me.

Alphonse patted me on the back. "Thanks, Leoma," he said. "I know the country would be great, but the rockets are getting so much better! Soon space travel will be possible. You're right; we can't leave now!" He didn't even mention the possibility of our group splitting, and I refused to consider it. We had been together for so long we all felt like different parts of the same entity. Breaking apart would be too painful to be worth it.

Noah caught my eye from across the circle of chairs and I saw that her eyes were huge. She alone was the one who saw past all the lies I'd been spouting, and I could feel her heart breaking for me. In some ways she felt like the mother I'd only had for about a year, despite the fact that she was Edward's age. I smiled at her, my expression no doubt tinged with regret, and she returned the smile with a smaller one of her own.

"Now what?" Ed said, looking at his boots and wiggling his prosthetic leg. "We've been hunting for a way back to Amestris for so long, and this book was our only hope. Now that we accept that it's never going to happen… What do we do?"

"Whatever it was you were doing before I came along," I said. "I'm the one who was obsessed with Amestris anyway. Weren't you doing something before Alphonse found me?"

"We were traveling through Germany," Noah said. " We actually destroyed the weapons Adolf Hitler and his lot were going to use to start a revolution, and then we just… wandered. Al and Ed got the engineering jobs after we found you to fund our search for the Gate, but before that we'd been nomads. I don't think I want to go back to that."

"Why not?" Ed said, leaning back in his chair and wolfing down a sausage from who knows where. "I'm getting kinda bored with Munich. Other than Gracia and Hughes, we don't even have any interesting people to visit, and we have to meddle with rockets all day. I'm all for moving out."

"Shut up, big brother," Alphonse said absentmindedly. "You love your job. Don't try to pretend like you don't."

"Whatever," Edward said. "I'm just saying: there are other- Oh crap!" He was staring in horror at his silver pocket watch. "It's almost time for work! I'm gonna be late, and we're working on the lunar module today!" He bolted from his chair and dashed out of the room.

Al got to his feet. "And he says he doesn't like his job," he mumbled. Turning to the Noah and me, he shrugged. "I'd better go too," he said. "We are working on something big today." He turned to go, paused, and came back to us, wrapping an arm around us both. "I'm sorry about Amestris," he whispered. "I know you both wanted to go there."

"It's okay," we both said, simultaneously, and laughed a little. Al kissed each of us on the cheek.

"Bye, Noah, Leoma," he said, and was gone. I smiled at his receding figure; Al, Ed and Noah all felt like my siblings, and Al was the compassionate, easily relatable brother. Noah was his female counterpart. Actually, the only one who wasn't filled with compassion was Ed, and he only pretended to be a jerk.

I looked at Noah. "How are you holding up?" She smiled.

"I'm alright," she said. "After we settled here in Munich, Amestris became something of a lost dream for me. I found my place in this world, so I didn't need it anymore. Besides, I knew we were never going to make it to Amestris anyway."

I frowned. "You knew?" I said.

Noah nodded slowly. "Oh, yes," she said. "I've seen Edward Elric's dreams, you remember. He may not know it, but he is the most powerful alchemist any world has ever seen, yet. If he closed the Gate and didn't leave a loophole for himself, there was no way it was going to reopen, no matter what we did to it."

I sighed. Noah was right, of course. She usually was. "Well," I said, getting to my feet. "I guess that's it, then."

Noah got to her feet as well and hugged me, hard. "This may not have worked out for us, Leoma, but don't worry. You'll find a place for yourself someday, just like I did." She released me and fondly brushed a lock of hair out of my face, and glanced at the clock on the wall.

"It's nearly time for breakfast. Do you want me to buy us some eggs?" I smiled. Noah knew perfectly well how much I loved eggs.

"I do, thanks," I said, and Noah's smile grew an inch. No doubt she thought I was back on the healthy track to recovering from an unhealthy obsession.

"Great!" She said. "You just sit tight for ten minutes and I'll be back with the eggs." She hurried out of the room, humming wistfully to herself.

I managed to keep it together for five minutes. And then I lost it.

"Damn it." I said. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!" I whirled around and slammed my fist into the doorframe, ignoring the flecks of paint and plaster showering onto my thin frame. "I hate this world! I hate it! And now the damn Gate won't open and I'm going to be stuck here for the rest of my goddamn life!" It felt good to finally be really angry, and not just to wallow in self-pity.

"I have no life here," I growled, my voice low, my fingers clenched. "I want a new life. In Amestris. Do you hear that, whatever the hell it is that's keeping the Gate shut?" I was shouting at the ceiling, half-crazed, but I knew that maybe if I could just get rid of the anger now I could live a productive life afterwards, even in Munich.

"You don't understand! How could you understand? Amestris was everything I wanted; all I wanted! The hunt for Amestris was my life! I would do anything!"

Anything, huh?

Well, that changes things, doesn't it?

My Gate hasn't been open in a long, long time.

But if you would do anything…

Maybe it's time for that to change.

And then I was falling into a swathe of yellow light, my only thought before everything turned black being: what the hell have I gotten myself into now?

And why am I so happy about it?