And here we are, at long last. This is the bonus chapter I promised you so long ago. Believe it or not, this one gave me the hardest time. Since it's set in something close to our own timeline, it's going to be a bit grimmer than the others
And once again, I'm still not Hiromu Arakawa, a nd all I own of Fullmetal Alchemist is the manga and the DVDs of the series and movie.
Let me know what you think.
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Maes and Gracia – Munich, 1923
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#01 – Walking
He'd been walking the same beat for three years and had never noticed the florist's shop on the corner until the day he saw her in the window.
#02 – Waltz
He had never thought much of American music, but their first dance together had been to the song Stardust; he was starting to notice that his opinions of a lot of things he'd previously dismissed were starting to change.
#03 – Wishes
The shop and the building had belonged to her parents and they had left both of them to her when they died; it had been her mother's wish that she keep the shop going, though she herself had wanted to become a nurse.
#04 – Wonder
Edward Elric kept dropping hints that the two of them belonged together; she wondered what there was about the man that would make Edward think that.
#05 – Worry
There were times she longed for the days when she didn't have to worry about her loved ones putting their lives on the line for total strangers, but those days were becoming few and far between.
#06 – Whimsy
He came across as just so serious and so focused on his work that she never would have believed that there was a free spirit lurking anywhere underneath it all.
#07 – Waste/Wasteland
She'd noticed him watching her through the window and thought that he wasn't bad looking, but it just seemed such a waste that a man like that would associate with such trash.
#08 – Whiskey and rum
The first time they really met was on a night when he dragged home an extremely drunk Edward Elric, half-giggling, half-crying, and singing an obscene ditty about a one-armed alchemist and a girl with a chainsaw.
#09 – War
When England and France declared war on Germany, they held each other close and prayed it would be over soon, for the sakes of those they left behind, if nothing else.
#10 – Weddings
Their wedding, when they finally did marry, was a hurried affair at best; he was leaving Germany for good, and the only way she could come with him was as his wife.
#11 – Birthday
A bouquet of flowers and a card were waiting for her when she got back from lunch; she hadn't even realized he knew when her birthday was.
#12 – Blessing
He would always regret having joined the Nazis, even briefly, but the blessings he'd gained after he left – his wife, children, and grandchildren – far outweighed the advantages he'd have had if he'd stayed.
#13 – Bias
His jaw dropped when he saw her in the slinky black bias-cut dress she'd just finished making week before, and she knew she had him right where she wanted him.
#14 – Burning
As London burned around them, he remembered Edward talking about an alchemist he'd known who could start fires with a snap of his fingers, and wondered if there was any truth to his stories; on the other side of the Gate, Roy Mustang sneezed.
#15 – Breathing
The Elric brothers were the ones who found him and brought him to her place after the fight; he'd been beaten badly enough that she'd had to look twice to make sure he was still breathing.
#16 – Breaking
She knew that he had truly turned his back on the Nazis when he asked her if she wanted to go to Midnight Mass at the cathedral with him on Christmas Eve.
#17 – Belief
What he'd seen during the invasion of Shamballa and afterwards was enough to shake in faith in the Nazi party forever; he never regretted tearing the armband off and walking away.
#18 – Balloon
Edward showed up six months later struggling with a massive bunch of balloons that he claimed were from a secret admirer; two pieces of apple pie, a cup of coffee, and a long talk later, she knew exactly who had sent them.
#19 – Balcony
When he saw the gypsy girl leaning over the second floor balcony, he knew she had let herself in for trouble, but she wouldn't listen when he tried to warn her.
#20 – Bane
An honest cop was the bane of a corrupt police department, and he learned to his cost that he was no exception.
#21 – Quiet
It didn't take him long after the Beer Hall Putsch to realize that there was a version of himself in Shamballa, but when he asked Edward and Alphonse what had happened to him, neither would answer.
#22 – Quirks
Edward had never expected to see either of them again, but was still thrown for a nasty loop when he met their counterparts in Munich; she was much the same as she had been back home, but he had none of the quirks Edward had always associated with him.
#23 – Question
His proposal of marriage hadn't been what she'd hoped it would be, but their marriage was a long and happy one, and they were together until the day they died.
#24 – Quarrel
When Edward had known them in Amestris, he had never heard of the two of them arguing; to see them at odds with each other here was as unsettling as the dim memories he had of the rare fights his own parents had.
#25 – Quitting
As the Nazis' influence worked its way deeper into the department, more and more of his fellow officers joined up; the day he finally handed in his badge and gun, he knew his next step would be to flee the country.
#26 – Jump
Watching the Elric brothers brawl was a new experience for both of them; neither one had ever seen someone leap half a story into the air they way those boys could.
#27 – Jester
After he stopped associating with those people from the beer hall, she found there was a clownish side to his personality that she'd never seen before; she found herself liking it – and him – more and more.
#28 – Jousting
Verbal jousting had been part of their relationship since they'd first met, but she could never quite pin down the point where it turned into flirtation.
#29 – Jewel
The necklace she wore at their wedding was a single sapphire on a chain; it had belonged to her mother and her grandmother before her, and would someday belong to their daughter.
#30 – Just
Edward had seen what the two of them had had back home; if there were any justice in the universe, he hoped they would have that here, too.
#31 – Smirk
When she told Edward and Alphonse that she had a date with him that night, both brothers smirked, and she was reasonably sure some money changed hands later on.
#32 – Sorrow
When a drunken Edward Elric burst into tears and started apologizing to him for having gotten him killed, he simply assumed it was the alcohol talking; years later, the boy's brother, Alphonse, told him the whole truth.
#33 – Stupidity
Male stupidity, it occurred to her, was the root cause of ninety-five percent of the world's problems; it was the only reason she could come up with that would explain why he'd decided to take on that gang of brown-shirts by himself.
#34 – Seranade
One of his friends had suggested that he try seranading her one night, but he dismissed that idea almost immediately; he couldn't sing a note, and he knew it.
#35 – Sarcasm
She had always had a sharp tongue, but he had never known that until a few days before the uprising, when she turned it on him.
#36 – Sordid
When the rumors of death camps started to leak out of Germany, she was ready to dismiss them as just that, but he had seen what Hitler's people were capable of and knew that stories were most likely true.
#37 – Soliloquy
He had been waxing eloquent for the past hour about paragon of loveliness that was the girl in the florist's shop, but stammered to a halt when Edward Elric, her newest tenant, suggested he ask her out.
#38 – Sojourn
Edward and Alphonse had come home to Munich long enough to see them married; when they saw them again two years later, they had emigrated to England, and she was expecting their first child.
#39 – Share
He never understood why it was that she would give more than her fair share to help the people who needed it, while others wouldn't raise a hand.
#40 – Solitary
As she got to know him, she found that solitude was not part of his nature; he didn't like to be alone if he could help it.
#41 – Nowhere
The longer he thought about leaving, the more and more he became convinced that he was not going to go anywhere if she didn't go with him.
#42 – Neutral
Officially, the police were supposed to be politically neutral, but as time passed and things started to get bad, he saw more of his fellow officers go on the take, and still more of them embrace the Nazis' philosophies; he knew a time would come when he would have to rejoin them or flee.
#43 – Nuance
He wasn't one to wear his heart on his sleeve, but once she knew what to look for, she could read him like a book.
#44 – Near
He had been on the front during the Great War, and had been an active participant in the November uprising; considering all he'd done, he was amazed she was willing to come anywhere near him.
#45 – Natural
Civil servants made very little money, so it only made sense to his commanding officer that his men would supplement their income with a little judicious bribery here and there; when he stopped doing that, his captain didn't understand why.
#46 – Horizon
When they left Germany, they had nothing but each other and what little they could carry, but the future facing them in England was far better than anything they'd have had under the Nazis.
#47 – Valiant
He didn't know if the girl he'd been protecting had gotten away, his glasses were lying smashed somewhere in the street, and he felt like he'd just gone ten rounds with Joe Louis, but it was all worth it; in her eyes, he was a hero.
#48 – Virtuous
Edward had fallen out of his chair laughing when he met the priest who had married them; the man's counterpart in Shamballa was apparently the mysterious Colonel Mustang.
#49 – Victory
There was less reason to celebrate the end of the war in the Far East; the news of the nuclear bomb being dropped, and the picture of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima left them both dizzy with horror at the scope of the death and destruction.
#50 – Defeat
News of the Nazis' defeat came on their tenth wedding anniversary; they and most of their friends stayed up most of the night celebrating.