Fullmetal Alchemist © Hiromu Arakawa

Autumn winds made temperatures drop in Munich. It breathed the last droplets of the summer sun that died out in the fall. That breeze went through the open window, greeting her.

A nice cup of chocolate would do me some good, she thought. Lise walked down the hallways that she had called home for the past seven months. The floorboards that were loose creaked slightly with her light steps. Every nook, every cranny, she already knew and became familiar with.

She reached the cool wooden floor of what used to be Alfons Heidrich's apartment; now Edward's. Standing in front of the kitchen sink, she washed a mug clean, wiped it, before pouring the pre-boiled water to mix with the powder she had put in.

She sat on the dining chair, staring blankly at the floor as she stirred mindlessly her mug of warm drink. The sun from the window made the flower vases and the books and the tables and everything else cast a shadow on the auburn floor. Her head spun. Edward never gave her a chance. The clinking of the steel spoon against the ceramic made her remember a memory, almost like it was only yesterday. She sighed, a bit nervously. Were those memories supposed to be good or bad?

It was the first time she'd walked in the apartment. The brothers had led her there after the narrow escape from the police. She was actually pretty surprised though. For an apartment with only two boys living in it, it was pretty neat and tidy, save for a few cluttered books and unwashed dishes by the sink. She was unable to hold her gasp.

"Brother, what did I tell you about washing the dishes?"

Alphonse massaged the bridge of his forehead, unamused. Edward, who had proceeded into falling into the couch, only answered his brother with a loud yawn. Lise could only watch as things unfolded in front of her eyes—a taste of how the brothers lived their days before.

"I'm sorry, okay. I got a little caught up last night, that's all. I thought I got a lead, Al. …I was going nowhere. I just want to go home, you know that. I want both of us to go back home."

Alphonse, who had already made his way toward the sink to wash his brother's day-old dish chores, was stopped in the middle of the duty. A kind of sticky silence fell over them, and Lise could feel it sliming its way down her throat, choking her. The only sound that penetrated the eerie quietude was the sound of the water flushing out of the faucet into the steel sink, and their breathing.

Lise expected Alphonse to give out an epic remark, a sentence to block out or argue with his brother, but after what seemed to be an hour but actually half of a minute of pause, Alphonse resumed with what he was doing and Edward changed position to curl up like a fetus on the couch. Edward grabbed the nearest book on the table and buried his nose into it, while Lise just stood there, watching. Somehow she felt herself fade from view.

"What do you want for dinner, brother?"

Edward looked up from the book he was reading and shrugged. "I don't know. Pizza?"

"But brother," Alphonse whined, "you know that's expensive. We have to find a cheaper food to eat." He wiped his hands on the kitchen towel and went on to sit on the chair in front of Edward. "I'll just… cook up some stew, is that all right with you?"

"Hey, anything cooked is good. You asked me what I wanted," Edward said nonchalantly, his eyes still tracing intensely the words printed on the book like a laser. He did not give any other answer to his brother.

Alphonse walked over to the door where Lise still stood. "Lise! Come in and sit down, will you. Sorry for the mess. I'll just go over and buy some vegetables outside. Go on and make yourself comfy, okay?" He winked as he gently pushed Lise inside the room as he went out, closing the door with a slight thud. Lise saw Al disappear with his blond hair a few shades darker than Ed's flinging around with his movement.

She shuffled silently inside where Edward had already managed to keep a sitting position on the love-seat couch. She walked over toward the window that overlooked the city. The sprinkled lights of blue, red, yellow, and white that she saw was a mask that the city wore to hide the bitter truth of the war that sprouted underneath its beauty. Sitting on the windowpane she breathed a sigh of relief. Is this a kind of saving?

"Hey Lise. Do you have enough clothes in your bag?"

The voice was Edward's, and in a way she was calmed by it. She looked at him, and she saw his face change from tense to soft the moment their eyes met. She shook her head lightly. She almost had nothing in that bag of hers. An old passport; a fake ID; a journal; a pocketknife; a thin jacket; short shorts that were originally pajama pants, only cut; and a few underwear—what more could she fit in that little brown knapsack that belonged to her five-year-old sister when she still existed in the world?

Edward nodded. "We can go buy clothes in the cheap-store tomorrow," he said. He put down the book back at the table. Lise had that feeling that he wasn't reading it seriously from the start on, it was only something to shield him from Alphonse's… wrath.

"I want to bathe." It came out as a murmur but Edward heard it nonetheless. He saw her hug her shoulders awkwardly, her blonde hair falling like a curtain over her body. Her white shirt was a bit loose after all, and her skirt did little to shoo the cool of spring. What had she lived on all this time? He asked himself.

He stood up, and he felt her eyes study him curiously in silence. He walked toward his room and entered it, opened his cabinet and grabbed a towel. Looking at his clothes he grabbed a large-sized, checkered, long-sleeved polo shirt. He went through Al's stuff and rummaged around until he found the new knee-length pajama pants he had bought him last week. It was the most decent he could find. He closed the door and turned off the lights; and left the room.

He walked toward her and handed her what he got. "I'm sorry, this is all I have for now," he said to her. She took the articles of clothing in her arms, and she got a sniff of a particular scent from it. Musk, and the countryside?

"Thank you…" she said. He pointed where the bathroom was silently, and she nodded again in thanks. Lise walked toward the bathroom, got inside, and closed the door so gently. Edward could only watch her disappear.

Lise was so like her. And Edward had Lise. The problem is, Lise wasn't her, and he seemed to be utterly pained with that bitter fact.

Lise heard it though, how he voiced her thoughts. She heard him whisper, "Dammit, why do you look like her?"

Thunder rolled in the distance, and Lise took a sip of her warm drink. She wondered what time the brothers would return from their leave.

That morning, the brothers left her to 'do something important.' They didn't tell her exactly, but they said that that day, it was a special day. She understood that maybe they needed time alone, to juggle around with their thoughts again. She was the constant extra thing recently getting in their way, after all.

But she wondered what was so special with the third of October that they left so early, and haven't returned yet after ten hours.

She put the mug down and took a deep breath. She couldn't shrug the thought out of her mind, but somehow she knew she should have.

"Cats! I mean, after everything I asked him, he said he wanted the one with cats!" Edward complained before he took another huge spoonful of rice and meat that Alphonse had prepared for supper. He chewed mock-angrily as Lise and Alphonse took another stomachful of laughter.

"Pffff—I'm sorry brother, I can't exactly do anything about it," Alphonse said, finishing his food. "Stop complaining, it's better that it's cats and not rats, right?"

Edward stood up, his plate cleaned and walked away from the table, headed toward the bathroom. "I'm going to take a bath now," he said, dismissing the argument.

"Running away from your duties, huh, Ed?"

Edward froze on the spot, a chill of nostalgia and remembering running up his spine. Suddenly Lise sounded so much like her that he thought he was dreaming. He wasn't.

"Go over here and do the dishes, will you?"

A while ago while Alphonse was cooking up the meal of meat and vegetables, Alphonse had started up a little storytelling session with Lise. Although he didn't name names, he had successfully given her the best way to intimidate his elder brother that Lise seemed so scared of. Hands on her hips and with a voice that almost threatened to throw a wrench, she could visibly see Edward shudder.

"What the hell?" he cursed under his breath, turning back toward Alphonse and Lise. Alphonse had a huge grin plastered all over his youthful face. Lise… Lise melted into that person he'd been longing for. Suddenly, in that span of the five second silence, he thought he had her back. He didn't.

"What do I do to not do the dishes…?" Edward whined. He was utterly lazy that night, and with that 'show' Lise had managed to put up (that he bet Alphonse planned well), he felt exhausted. All that hope flushed back into the drain.

"Truth or dare," she said firmly. It was the first that came to mind—rock-paper-scissors was no option. She smiled to herself because her voice didn't falter like she expected it to. Everything was working out better than she thought it would.

Edward nodded, and Alphonse cocked his head to the side curiously. It wasn't part of his plan. "Fine. If I answer you truthfully, you do the dishes. If I don't, then I do the dishes."

"Edward, tell me…" she said, taking a step toward him. "…Edward, who is she?"

Silence. Thick, goopy, bleedy silence. That was what took over the room and everyone else that was in it. Lise's heart stopped, or at least missed a beat, as she feared. She could almost hear the imaginary thoughts of her old rebellious self. Oh my god. I think I did something wrong.

Edward sighed. "Leave the dishes. I'll be back at them in a while." He turned his back and stalked toward Al's room. The door closed. Lise noted—his back was slumped, sad, sulking.

A stream fell down from her blue eyes. It was all her fault.

The shower started to fall down from the drummed against the roof of the apartment, and the breeze that had blown earlier started to freeze the room. Lise stood and closed the windows shut tight to prevent the inside from getting soaked wet. She knew that a storm might pass soon, what with the winds.

She had dropped her empty mug on the sink; she decided she'd wash it later. Walking lightly on the wooden floor with her delicate feet she sat on the couch and curled into a ball, letting the blanket Edward left on the couch from last night wrap around her like second skin. It smelled of him, a kind of mix of musk and sea and rain, and she relished the scent. To her it smelled like hope and what had saved her from that emptiness of losing.

Last night, she remembered waking up at 11pm to hear an angry "AUUUGHH" from outside her room. She peered from her door, wrapped in a blanket, to see Edward. He sat on the couch wearing a white shirt and grey boxers (his usual attire at night), with his hair hung loose, and books and paper scattered on the coffee table and floor. He was up on an all-nighter again, she knew, doing "research" to "get back home." She never understood what it was for though. She never asked and never bothered to wonder—she was already content with what she had. She wasn't asking for more.

At 3am she woke up. She slipped out of her blanket and tiptoed in her night-attire, a loose shirt and the knee-length pajama pants Alphonse had given her, to reach out from her cabinet a thick blanket she had purposely prepared earlier. She opened the door, trying not to make it creak, and saw that Ed was already fast asleep on the couch. He didn't have a pillow or a blanket; it looked like he just fell asleep out of tire. She walked toward him and draped the blanket over him. Immediately he wrapped it in his arms subconsciously. And as quickly as she came, she disappeared back into the dark of her room.

She wondered what Edward's problem was. It was heavy, she knew. But she did not push on, somehow she knew it wasn't right to. Not when she…not when she was only Lise. She was only Annelise Kirsten, what did she deserve to know in the Elric life?

Lise curled, letting the smell of the beloved elder Elric she seemed to be so attracted to, and fell into a daydream, hearing the rain thunder away.

She wanted to call out to him but she couldn't. She wanted to tell him sorry but she couldn't. Suddenly she had no power over herself as her knees buckled and her throat clogged, and all she could do was cry and cry and cry. Suddenly she felt so weak.

"Lise!" Alphonse cried. "Lise, don't… please. Don't." He knelt over her and hugged her shivering form, shuddering with the tears. "Please, it's not your fault, you didn't know. Don't blame yourself…" he murmured consolations to her ears but she wouldn't listen. She still blamed herself and her stupidity, her recklessness. The world was crashing down on her yet again.

"But Lise if I were to answer your question," Alphonse started, and she stopped. She was curious to be exact, but she couldn't exactly show that at that moment. Alphonse pulled her hand up, but an arm still on her shoulder, he led her to the couch so they could sit. "Lise, I'd tell you that she… she was a very important figure in my life. And Brother's too. She was—is—everything to Brother, Lise. And the thing is, Brother almost had her, but he had to let her go again. And that's painful. Lise, I can't explain, she's everything. She's what pushed him up when he was the frail one at the start, and now I bet she's still the one bringing him up—memories of her, that is."

A sob started up to Lise's throat and she interrupted Alphonse. There was a short pause from the storytelling, but he continued. "But you know Lise, even if I can't tell you what she's like attitude-wise, and her importance to us, I can tell you what she looks like. Do you want to know?"

Blue was hidden in her bloodshot eyes, and Alphonse bit his lip nervously as she nodded. Somehow he didn't want her to know, but he knew she had to. "Lise… look at the mirror."

"We're home!"

Edward's loud voice and the shutting of the door behind him and Alphonse marked the minute the warmth flooded into the room—at last. Lise tucked herself deeper in the blanket, wanting to hide. She felt so weak, so useless. There it went again, the tears that welled in her eyes. She didn't know where she should put those.

Edward walked in first. He saw her first. She looked so frail and fragile under that sheet of blanket that was hers. His eyes grew wide. There was disbelief and surprise that nestled in his fierce golden orbs. He couldn't hide them. He went over to her behind the couch and asked, "Lise, are you alright?"

She turned to him, eyes already overflowing. He was even more shocked. She stood up and reached over for his collar, making him fall kneeling on the floor, at just the right height. She pulled him closer and buried her face in his chest, and cried and cried and cried, salty tears soaking her face more than what the rain would've.

Edward extended his arms and took her in. Yes. For that moment he would leave her in her moment of weakness to do what she needed to do to stand back up. He would give her a chance, this time.