Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Veritas Hominum ❯ Arrival ( Chapter 1 )

Arrival

 

Coming home had been bittersweet. It had been naïve of him to assume that the world he'd left would have been the same as he'd left it. Still, he doubted that he expected it to have changed as much as it had.

 

He'd come crashing through the dark pines out under a clear, blue sky with his thoroughly rusted automail leg dragging behind him and the automail arm swinging uselessly at his side.

 

His first realization that things had changed in the fifteen years he'd been gone came in the form of new gravestone in the small cemetery in front of him. He saw his mother's grave, and the grave of his childhood friend's parents, but he also saw a stone bearing the name of Pinako Rockbell.

 

He sank to the ground, unable to breathe. The woman who had been a surrogate parent to him and his brother was gone and the shock overwhelmed him.

 

What else could have changed while I was gone?

 

His mind raced. Did Winry get married? Is Al happy? Did the Colonel ever become Fuhrer?

 

He could see the Rockbell residence in the distance. There was smoke pouring out of the chimney, so even if Winry didn't live there anymore, somebody did. Maybe they would know where she went.

 

As he walked towards it, he saw that the remains of his own home had been cleared away. Any trace that the Elric Family lived in Risembool had been cleared away, save for the grave of one Trisha Elric, his mother.

 

It was as if he never existed in this world.

 

He knocked on the door anyway, trembling and tired.

 

He held his breath as the door opened.