Written for the lj community fma_fic_contest during week 89: "use song lyrics verbatim in a fic". The lyrics I chose were from Tori Amos' "The Pool" and can be found at the end of the fic.

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They were going to burn it down. The house was an unnecessary reminder, something that pushed their goal further out of reach simply by existing. Ed wanted—no, needed to go back one last time.

Closure, he decided.

Al thought he was just out, just running around and reveling in the fact that he had an arm and a leg, metal though they were, when in reality, Ed was trudging up the hill, legs pulling him along a familiar path. The house was just as they'd left it, quaint and perfect and looking like a home. It shouldn't have looked so normal, not when Ed found it so terrifying.

His automail foot was too loud against the hardwood floor, the clattering echo of a stranger's footfall. When he closed the door behind him, he was struck by the inexplicable thought that he did not belong.

Ed didn't know what he expected to find, but something was calling him home. What he found was long dark hair as neat as it ever was in life and a familiar face smiling sweetly at him from the end of the hall.

"Don't be afraid," she said, holding out her arms. She was in the doorway of that room, and Ed's mind lost out to his feet, moving closer. He was shaking. He didn't know why, but he was shaking. "It's been so long, sweetie," she said. "I've missed you."

"You're dead." Ed looked at her, tried to find a difference in the woman standing in his mother's house with his mother's face and his mother's voice. "You can't be real." His voice was shaking in time with his hands, the effort to stay on his feet almost too much for his small body.

"You brought me home, baby."

"It didn't work," Ed said. "You were—wrong." He choked out the last word, the image of that thing he'd created stuck in his head, chased by a disturbing thought. Is this what it became?

The woman shushed him, grabbed him close. Ed's hands kept slipping through hers like he was grabbing at water, the sight of his hands going through hers spiraling him into a dreamlike fright. Something happened, though, something changed, because suddenly he wasn't trying to hold onto her hands so much as he was one with her hands, cool liquid forming around skin fingers. Even the automail felt chilled.

"It's just you and me, sweetie," she breathed, the words fanning over his face, a frosty breeze.

"You're not her," he heard himself saying, repeating the tremulous words in rapid succession. She wasn't listening, just staring at his face with his mother's eyes and refusing to let him go. He could pull against those monster hands all he wanted, but Ed couldn't move.

"You want me back, don't you? My poor boy," she cooed. Ed looked away. "We can go away. We have each other now. No one will know it," she promised. "We can go somewhere new and no one will ever have to know what you did to me."

That tore it. Ed shoved out, bucked wildly against the deformed hands imprisoning his own. He would have screamed, but something was keeping him from it, that same cool liquid stretching around his mouth and jerking his head close like his mother had when he was in trouble, one hand tight on his chin and bringing him so they were eye to eye. The look on that thing's face was the same one his mother had, too, that stern, sad look, like she hated that she had to punish him for anything when she loved him so much.

Go away, he wanted to say, feeling more a scared child in that moment than he had during the transmutation itself. Go away, please.

He didn't know how the thing could be holding both his hands and covering his mouth at the same time, but it was. His eyes watered as his breath cut short in his throat, nose covered and unable to suck in air. He was going to die. Al would never know what happened, would never get his body back, and it was all his fault—

"Brother?" One word uttered in that tinny child's voice and the monster with his mother's face recoiled, dropping Ed to the ground with a solid thump. Ed scrambled to his feet, looking around wildly, but all that was left was a faint dampness on his face and hands, and a large puddle spreading across the floor, gleaming in the low light of the hall. "Brother, are you here?"

"I'm here," Ed said, but the words came out too quiet the first time so he had to repeat them, keeping his voice steady.

Al stepped carefully into the house, the doorway just a touch too low. "I've been looking everywhere for you!"

"Sorry," Ed muttered. "I just—"

"Yeah, I know," Al said, tone quiet, wistful. "Are we really going to burn it down? I always thought…" He trailed off. "I thought, when we first said we'd get out bodies back, I'll go back home when everything's done. Are you sure we have to burn it down?"

"Yes." Ed couldn't have been surer. "We have to burn it." The house was no longer tied to fond memories, to their mother's face. Ed looked around and felt nothing but that sharp fear, the panic of the struggle for air. "In fact," he said, the words coming out slow but gaining strength, "why don't we do it now?"

Al drew circles in the kitchen and Ed took the hall, scrawling the symbols on the floor with a vicious determination. Neither of them paid any mind to the slow but steady trail of liquid creeping down the hall, past the kitchen, and beyond the front door.

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one with her hands
open
don't be afraid, she said
no one will know it
just you and me
and when it's over
i'll go back