A/N

First...

I will be honest with you all, this started as a joke. My beta had been bugging me to write a FMA fic for weeks as I was such a huge fan. In retaliation to this I decided to write rubbish and pick up on all the worst FF clichés. I made it non-cannon (to start with), flooded it with OC’s and had my two main characters as sisters. How many times has that been done? ;-)

Then I started to write, and write and write. I could not stop, I fell in love with my OC’s and my plot became more and more complex. In the end I gave in and started to take the story seriously; this is the result.

So now I have ostracised myself from my readership, this is my fic. It is set a few years after the film and is mainly based on that and the anime but I will make an occasional nod towards the manga (which I love). Its going to be a bit of a sweeping epic, with drama, action, adventure, angst, humour and just a smidgen of romance (very advanced fluff warning!) Yep I had to much time on my hands over summer.

One word on language; I will not be putting in Japanese terms. I personally like them in fanfiction but I know many people only watch dub so will have no idea what I am writing about. I have however, tried to maintain speech patterns where I can, for example Al will nearly always call Ed “brother” rather than by his first name, as he does in the sub. Also a word on spelling of names and places; it varies greatly from sub to sub. I know of four different spellings for Rizembool alone. So I’m just sticking to the sub I own for the sake of continuity. Like it or lump it.

So after all that, here it is. You have been warned if you don’t like fics like this don’t read this.

Indebted

Chapter one… in which something washes up on a beach and general nonsense ensues...

Anna skipped along the beach. The salt wind whipped her dark hair out behind her like a banner. The chill waters of the ebbing tide pulled at her ankles, but Anna did not care. She was free. It was the school holidays and her sister had told her to “get outside and give her peace for an hour.”

It had been raining for the first three days of the holiday so Anna had been stuck in watching the television. Now it was balmy and hot. Days of cabin fever fell away from Anna as she ran; she had left her sandals behind her in the dunes and she probably would not be able to find them again. She was so enthralled in her sprint that she forgot that the sheltered bay had other inhabitants. Her foot hit something fleshy and bony. It moved beneath her sole. With a squeal she lifted her foot, and the slightly squashed flat fish swam away apparently unharmed. Standing on one foot in the crashing surf however was not the most stable position. Anna toppled backwards. She landed rump first in the water, her white sun dress soaking up the brine. She sat for a moment in the chilly water, wracked with silent giggles.

Suddenly something white caught her eye. The small waves were tossing something shapeless and white towards the beach. She reached for it, despite being warned by her sister not to bring home any more “rubbish.” She scooped up the thing, which turned out to be a sodden white glove. She frowned at it. It was well made, and the stitches in the seams were tiny. But the material was well worn and grubby, and there was a hole in one finger. It was too big to be a woman’s glove but Anna slipped it on anyway, she wiggled her fingers in it experimentally.

“I bet this belonged to a magician working on one of those luxury cruise liners,” she thought. “He was pulling the rabbit out the hat, it bit him and it pulled the glove off which blew away.” Happy with her back story, Anna stood up and tried to get the wet sand off her dress. She gave up; her sister would still tell her off sand or no sand. The water marks alone would tell her that Anna had fallen in the sea, again.

“My sister is so boring now,” she thought at the glove. “She thinks she is some sort of domestic martyr. It’s not as if I don’t help out at home!”

Granted she did not do as much as her sister, but she still felt that her contribution should be recognised. She sighed and started to walk up the beach, then stopped in her tracks. Something else had caught her eye. A brown and white shape. She frowned. There was yellow on it too. It was at the other end of the bay, washed up in the surf. She skipped towards it.

It turned out to be something rather ordinary, but not the sort of thing you expect to run into on a beach.

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Gabbie was annoyed, very annoyed. She seemed to be in a permanent state of disgruntlement lately. She pulled the bed sheets from the washing machine with much more force than was necessary. She took the damp sheets outside and shook each out before pinning them to the line. She did this with more energy than was needed too, and each sheet made a satisfying whip crack of a noise. Normally she found hanging out the laundry quite therapeutic, especially on days like today. The sky was a lovely hazy blue and the sun was warm on her back and shoulders. The sea twinkled in the sunlight shifting from grey to green then back again. It was a fantastic day to be outside; Anna had been gone for hours. Gabbie was not worried. The girl was well known for roaming the beaches; she was probably collecting more junk.

Gabbie smiled briefly. The cottage was full of shells and fossils. Her sister even had a piece of seaweed tied to the inside of her bedroom door so she could tell if it was going to rain. When Gabbie had pointed out that looking out the window was more reliable, her sister had sulked in her room until tea time. Gabbie could hardly complain, she had been the same at her age; emotional, eccentric and curious about everything. Her mother had often told her off for getting dirty and told her time and time again to be more “ladylike.” Gabbie had never listened so she did not bother trying to rein in her little sister. The girl would become more stable and less wild when she was ready. At 15 she had all the attributes of a full grown woman and a number of her peers already had boyfriends. Indeed one of the girls her age at school was pregnant. Anna however, showed no interest in the opposite sex at all. Gabbie was glad of that; she had enough to deal with at the moment.

She looked up when she heard a creak and the object of her musings wondered through the driftwood gate that Gabbie and their mother had built, to try and use up some of the things her sister had collected. Anna looked like she had been dragged through a hedge backwards. Her dark brown tresses were matted, and she was covered in sand. Her white dress was stained with sea water, and her sandals were missing altogether. On her right hand was a dirty white glove. Gabbie gave a long suffering sigh.

“You’re back early,” her fingers as well as her mouth said. Anna shrugged.

“I got wet,” her fingers said back.

“Never bothered you before,” retorted Gabbie.

“I was hungry too; can I make some food and take it back out with me?” Gabbie frowned, suspicious for a moment, then smiled.

“It’s the holidays, why not? I’ll put something together for you, or you’ll just fill up on rubbish.” Gabbie disappeared inside.

Anna looked over her shoulder to check that the man with the gun was still hiding in the bushes, and then followed her sister indoors to urge her to hurry. The man seemed confused and desperate; Anna had no idea what the man wanted beside food, but he was clearly unwell and had no one but her to help him. She told her sister she was ravenous and took the small picnic back to him and waited to see if he needed anything else.

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Gabbie woke with a start. The rain was rattling against the windows, and she could hear the sea industriously pounding the beach below the cliffs their tiny cottage was built on. Lightning flashed and illuminated the small room briefly. Gabbie sighed; yet another nightmare about that man. If she ever saw him again she would personally thank him for all these sleepless nights by inserting a carving knife into his carotid artery. Wiping the sweat from her face and pushing her clammy red hair back, she swung her legs out of bed and stood.

It was a familiar routine; she would get up, have a milky hot drink while waiting for her heart to stop pounding and the gruesomely detailed flashbacks to cease their procession across her mind. When she was calm again she would wash her face, tie back her long hair and return to bed and hope she did not dream again when the darkness closed back in on her. As a child she had forced herself to remain awake for days at a time. Her doctor had given her tranquilisers in the end, but she never took them. That would mean giving into her nightmares. She was convinced the dreams would stop eventually, and that if she was still having them then she was still not over what had happened to her. She shrugged off her gloomy thoughts, straightened her pyjamas and slipped on her bunny slippers. She plodded across the ancient stone floor to the kitchen and as she turned down the hallway she noticed something odd. Anna’s bedroom door was open.

Thinking that the strong winds blown past the window may have created enough of a draft to open the door, Gabbie turned to close it again; after all Anna would not have heard it rattle open. Gabbie peeped around the door to check on her sister. Her sister was not in her bed, nor was she sitting on the windowsill, another favourite place of hers. An alarm bell began to ring in Gabbie’s head.

Anna had been unusually quiet these last few days, and had been eating her meals outside or in her room if the weather was bad. Gabbie had also noticed a few things missing from the cupboards, mainly tinned meat. She wondered if her sister had found a kitten or a puppy and was hiding it somewhere. Gabbie loved animals and had no objections to a pet, even if their budget was stretched tight. She had been waiting to catch her sister red handed in the act of theft, but the girl could easily take up crime as successful career.

“How can someone who is stone deaf be so quiet?” Gabbie muttered. She searched the cottage but as she suspected her sister was not home. Even her boots were missing from the doorway.

Swearing, Gabbie wondered if she had been wrong to indulge her sister’s wanderlust. On a night like this even Anna could get lost. She pulled on her jeans over her pyjamas and then pulled on her rubber boots. She grabbed her fishing jacket and shrugged it on. The heavy garish orange rubber jacket was a match for any Atlantic storm. She opened the door and the wind nearly ripped it from her hands. She closed it with difficulty and struggled up the garden path against the howling gale and driving rain. If she was struggling then Anna really would be having a hard time; the scrawny girl could be blown over on a night like this!

Gabbie squinted into the blackness and tried to tune out the pounding ocean to hear if her sister was calling her. Anna could speak if she chose, but disliked the reaction people gave to the pitch-less nasal tones she spoke in. She relied on signs and writing notes; it was another thing that Gabbie probably wrongly indulged her in. She could hear nothing above the whistling wind and the roaring sea. There was, however, one advantage to living in an area so remote that it had no street lamps; any light could be seen for miles. Gabbie could see one shimmering through the black night. She guessed it was coming from the old barn about two fields away. She turned, and with the wind behind her she began to trudge across the sodden fields, scaring sheep as she went. She knew these fields like the back of her hand, so she did not need the torch in her pocket. Besides that would let Anna know she was coming.

“I won’t get angry,” Gabbie said to herself. “I’ll find out what this is all about, and then bring her, and whatever it was she was feeding, home. I’ll even let her sleep in my bed if the lightning is bothering her.”

Gabbie arrived at the barn; it was built out of stone and missing most of its slate roof. It was probably as old as the cottage, but the sheep did not seem to mind their rough accommodation. She felt around the coarse blocks of grey rock and crept up to the open archway that served as a door, and lent around it. A small camp fire was burning on the hard earthen floor, and her sister, not even wearing a decent coat was sitting near it warming her hands. Gabbie sighed, walked up to her, and laid a hand on her shoulder. Anna jumped and turned to her sister, brown eyes wide with surprise.

“What are you doing out here! You’re soaked through and I bet…” Gabbie signed, not bothering to shout over the wind. Anna’s cold hand grabbed her sister’s stilling them.

“Go away,” her shaking hands said. “Turn around and go before he wakes up. He’s sick and I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds you here.”

“Who?” Gabbie’s hands flicked back at her frightened sister.

It was then Gabbie heard the unmistakable sound of a cocking gun. The cool barrel against her temple confirmed what her ears told her. A voice breathed in her ear, speaking in clipped consonants and too many Z’s. She was sure it was German.

“Ich spreche kaum Deutsch,” she whispered while raising her hands slowly. It was the only German she knew, apart from how to swear.

“I said… tell me who you are, and what you are doing here…” Gabbie wet her lips and looked at her sister. Anna had her hands pressed to her mouth and seemed frozen with fright. The man remained behind Gabbie; she could tell by his voice that he was probably young. Her fingers moved slowly on her right hand, forming the letters. “I” and “OK.”

“Don’t talk to her!” the voice growled and the gun pressed against her head a little harder. Gabbie squeaked and bit her lip, trying to stay calm.

“I was just telling her I was alright… she… she is…”

“Quiet,” rasped the voice. “I know she can’t hear or speak, but I do know what sign language is. Unfortunately I don’t know how to speak it, so she is hardly any use to me.” Gabbie eyed her sister; so she had been playing dumb; clever.

An arm wove around Gabbie’s middle pulling her against her assailant, Gabbie nearly bit through her lip.

“Breath, just breathe,” she told herself silently. “You’ll be alight; just give him what he wants and this will all be over.”

“What do you want with us?” she asked at last.

“Information,” the voice rasped. She could feel him breathing behind her, the rise and fall of his chest was rapid, a little too rapid. He grunted as if in pain and she felt him shudder. The hand holding the gun shook. “Where is this?”

Gabbie was taken aback by the question.

“C… Cornwall,” she stammered. The man sighed and spoke very carefully, as if talking to a child.

“And where is Cornwall? Apart from in the middle of nowhere…” Gabbie’s brain was not normally slow but it gradually dawned on her that the gunman was foreign. She could not place the accent with its clipped vowels and rolling R’s, but the perfect English he spoke had confused her, like it was his first language.

“Britain,” she whispered.

“Britain,” he repeated then seemed suddenly angry, she felt his body stiffen behind her and his grip tightened. There were way too many muscles pressed up against her back. Even if he was sick he was very fit, it was probably his stamina that was the only thing keeping him going.

“I guessed this was Britain from the way you speak!” he snapped irritably. “Don’t play games with me I…” he shivered again and seemed to make an effort to calm himself. She could feel the heat of his body even through her coat.

“You have a fever,” she murmured.

“Shut up and answer my questions!” he growled, contradicting himself. “How far is this place from London?”

Gabbie almost laughed. “France is closer.”

The gunman was quiet for a moment, and then a bitter chuckle escaped from him.

“You’re lost, aren’t you?” said Gabbie boldly. She reasoned if he had not shot her by now then he could probably be talked to. After all, her sister seemed to have been feeding him for the last few days and had come to no harm. But she had to get her sister away from him. Even if he was not a real threat he still had a gun and a raging fever; that was a dangerous combination.

“You’re ill too,” she continued. “I was training to be a doctor a couple of years ago. I know enough to help you. Just let my sister go.”

“No,” came the firm reply. “If she goes now, there is nothing apart from me tying you up or shooting you in the foot to keep you from running off. Neither method appeals to me as it will slow me down. If your sister stays, you stay. I see how things are between you.” Gabbie’s mouth thinned as she pressed her lips together. Anna shook her head almost imperceptibly, knowing that hard look in her sister’s green eyes too well.

“I’m going to let you go,” said the gunman. “Then you can prove your medical skills by telling me why I can’t seem to keep any food down. You help me out and in a few days I’ll be gone for good. But only if you co-operate.” Gabbie nodded; playing the meek hostage came easily to her. The arm slackened and then slipped from her and the pressure of the barrel was gone from her head.

Before she had time to talk herself out of it, she elbowed the man hard in what he had told her was a tender stomach. He doubled over coughing. Gabbie grabbed Anna by the arm and shoved her out of the archway into her stormy night. Something caught at her ankle and pulled hard. She fell backwards, hitting the back of her head hard enough to daze her for a moment. Her hands were pinned above her head and a weight settled on her legs, easily pinning them to the floor. Wheezing painfully above her, the gunman swallowed as if he was feeling nauseous.

“Your sister has the brains in the family; that was not only risky, it was stupid.” The flashes in Gabbie’s eyes cleared and she looked up at his face. She caught her breath; she could not help it.

“Weird eyes!” she breathed. Just like a large cat’s, a lion or tiger perhaps, the gunman’s eyes were a feline yellow. She had never seen eyes that colour before anywhere, not on a human anyway. His hair was blond and long. He had it scraped back into a pony tail at the back of his head; pieces had escaped and hung around his face. The hair was dirty and crusted with salt. He had obviously had a prolonged dunking. His skin did not look that healthy either; there were four or five red welts on what would have been quite an attractive face. She thought they were burns of some sort. She glanced at his neck and there was another mark, definitely a burn this time, and it looked bad enough to be second degree. She had imagined some ugly brute of a man, especially as his voice was quite low. But he was small and compact and probably not much taller than herself. He was also younger than she had thought, perhaps barely out of his teens.

“Oh, we are getting into the personal insults now, are we? I would indulge myself but I’d probably make you cry,” he drawled.

“Humour?” Her brain was having trouble with all this. A moment ago he had been the scary kidnaper, now he seemed a little unsure of what to do with her. “Either way he is still armed and dangerous,” she thought.

“You said you trained as a doctor?” he asked quietly. She nodded.

“For a year.”

“That will have to be good enough.” He coughed and Gabbie notice blood spotting on his lips.

“Burns? Blood in the airways? Nausea? What the hell…?”

Behind the blond man Anna was signing frantically.

“Help him! He’s not a bad person, just sick and confused. He has not hurt me and I wanted to help him. If he stays out here he will die!”

Gabbie looked back up into those intriguing yellow eyes again; they looked slightly glazed and she thought her sister might not be exaggerating. She made a decision, one she thought she would probably regret. She relaxed and felt him loosen his grip on her hands. One of his hands was oddly cold under the glove he wore.

“Despite threatening her with a gun my sister is concerned for you,” Gabbie said, the yellow eyes flicked to Anna for a moment.

“I did not hurt her.” He gasped as he started to cough again.

“So she tells me,” said Gabbie with an imperious air. “I suggest you get off me now. You’re not fooling anyone; you’re about ready to drop.”

The eyes narrowed and his jaw muscles twitched. “How do I know you won’t just run off?” he hissed.

“You have the gun,” Gabbie spat. “Also when you become a doctor they make you swear a pesky thing called the Hippocratic Oath. If I say I’m going to treat you, I have to do just that and cause no harm in the process. I think that covers leaving you for dead too.”

The man, who seemed more boyish to Gabbie now, frowned, making one of the burns on his forehead weep clear fluid.

“Help me and I’ll pay you,” he said at last. “I don’t have any British money but I do have gold. I have enough to keep you and your sister in comfort for the rest of your lives.”

“What am I going to do with gold?” Gabbie snapped.

“Please!” Anna’s gestures were huge, as if she was shouting.

“Oh alright,” Gabbie sighed, suddenly feeling tired.

The blond hung his head for a moment, his hair almost hiding his face. He looked relieved. She felt a twinge of sympathy and squashed it ruthlessly. He let her go and shifted to one side. Gabbie scrambled up.

“Bastard!” she yelled at him. “You could have just asked for our help instead of threatening us!” But the man/boy was coughing so hard he could not speak. Anna tugged on her sister’s sleeve, eyes pleading.

“I know! Stop nagging me, I said I’d help him and I will. And I’m going to have words with you later about keeping secrets from me, young lady!” Anna flinched back; her sister was furious with them both. Gabbie unbuttoned her coat and draped it over her patient, helping him put it on. As she did so, Gabbie noticed his strange clothes but said nothing.

“Thank you,” he breathed. It would have melted any normal woman’s heart to see such a pitiful creature genuinely thank her for a small act of kindness. Gabbie however was not a normal woman and sneered at him.

“Well mister would-be kidnapper; we don’t live far away…”

“Edward,” interrupted Edward.

“Oh, so you do have a name?” said Gabbie apparently uninterested. “Is there another name that goes with it?”

“Elric,” he gasped.

“Elric; what is that? Swiss? German?”

For someone who was not interested, Gabbie was asking a lot of questions. Edward just chuckled and struggled to his feet. He came up too quickly and swayed, Gabbie caught him. She put an arm around his middle and slipped his arm around her shoulders. He was strangely heavy for a small person. What was he, 5 foot 7 inches? Yet he felt as if he weighed about 18 stone.

“I’ll get you to our house; you need rest and fluids. After that, I’ll start figuring out what’s wrong with you.” He nodded, saying nothing and they shuffled out of the shelter of the barn.

Edward hissed as the wind and rain battered him, but the girl’s grip on him was strong and she supported him through the muddy fields, though his progress was slow. He kept glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. He had never seen anyone with such dark russet hair before; plenty of dogs but no humans. Jean Havoc was the closet he had ever seen to her colouring, but hers was much darker and richer. Here eyes were small, but a striking shade of vivid green. She was barely shorter than him, maybe by half an inch or so, and was much boarder in the shoulder than her thin willowy sister and a lot curvier, the sort of hourglass figure that Winry had always grumbled that she wanted. Thinking that his mechanic and this girl should definitely never meet, he chuckled

“What are you giggling at?” snapped the redhead who had rather rudely not even given her name. Edward was about to make up something vaguely insulting when he fainted.

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Note- That’s it for now. Plenty more to come, and for those that know my other stories I’m still updating them so don’t worry. One thing, for you American folk, there are 14 pounds in the stone so that means that Gab is being rather insulting and saying Ed weighs 252lb. I will be using metric mesuments later on too and I won’t always have time to convert things for you ;-)