FMA Fic: "Brave New World" 31/?
Part One: Through the Back Door
Part Two: Aftermath
Part Three: Reminders
Part Four: Under Any Circumstances
Part Five: Lost and Found
Parts Six-Seven-Eight: Cold Comfort, Equivalent Exchange and In the Hallway
Part Nine: Discussions
Part Ten: Telephone Call
Parts Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen: Simple Requests, Tell Me a Story, No Tears
Parts Fourteen-Fifteen-Sixteen: Similarities, Discussions II and Painkillers
Part Seventeen: Wake Up Call
Part Eighteen: Chance, 1,000 Yard Stare
Part Nineteen: Thoughts Of
Part Twenty-Twenty-One-Twenty-Two: Waking, Curiosity, Treasure
Part Twenty-Three: Differences
Part Twenty-Four: Discussions III
Part Twenty-Five: Dress Up, Undercover Blues, Leaving Central, Mistakes, The World According To
Part Twenty-Six: Difference, Sorrow in Her Eyes, Homecoming, Over Dinner
Part Twenty-Seven: Over Breakfast, In the Garden
Part Twenty-Eight: Tune Up
Part Twenty-Nine: Sunburn, Kneading Bread
Part Thirty: Sharpest Cut, Washing Up, In the Cool of the Night
Title: Discussions IV
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters/Pairings: Roy, Edward
Author: evil_little_dog
Words: 338
Rating: Teen
Summary: Roy discovers more things about Ed. Whether he wants to or not.
Warnings: Part of my continuing crossover between the first anime and the manga.
Disclaimer: I’m just playing in Arakawa’s sandbox.
Note: This is the longer version based on the fanfic_bakeoff prompt, Lucky.
X X X
Roy stood in the doorway to the den, seeing Edward sprawled across the sofa, a book in his hands. The young man glanced over the book, a slow, sly smile curling his mouth. “So, bastard,” he said, “how was your walk with Captain Hawkeye?”
His eye narrowed. “How did you know?”
“Pft. It’s not that big of a house.” Edward swung his legs off the sofa, the sound of automail hitting the floor louder than the noise from his flesh foot. “Besides, the old hag was cackling about setting you up.”
“She did, did she?” Entering the room the rest of the way, Roy took the chair across from the couch. “Did she say anything else?”
“That if you got lucky, it might yank that stick out of your ass.” Pinako’s voice startled Roy, making him jerk and turn toward the older woman. She smiled from her place in the doorway he’d just vacated, and disappeared down the hall.
Attempting to keep from pouting, Roy looked at Edward. Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t Edward, falling off the couch with hysterical laughter and his pounding on the floor. “Oh, shut up, you ass,” he growled, folding his arms and crossing his legs.
Getting himself under control, Edward sat up. “What’s wrong? You can dish it out but you can’t take it?” The wicked grin on the young man’s face itched to be removed, and Roy wished his gloves weren’t tucked into a drawer in the patient’s room.
“No, I’m just surprised you had an idea what ‘getting lucky’ meant,” Roy said, letting his voice take on an oily quality.
“Hnn!” He waved his hand. “Soldiers like to talk. They told enough stories.”
“But you’re still a virgin?” Hey, if Edward could laugh, Roy could go in for the kill.
Edward’s mouth twitched. “Why do you want to know? Looking for more differences between me and that idiot?”
Idiot, that was an interesting choice of words. Roy smirked in response, deciding to let Fullmetal sweat it out for a while.
X X X
Title: Nightmare
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters/Pairings: Edward, Pinako
Author: evil_little_dog
Words: 1,733
Rating: Teen
Summary: Pinako and Edward have a talk.
Warnings: Part of my continuing crossover between the first anime and the manga.
Disclaimer: I’m just playing in Arakawa’s sandbox.
X X X
“You can use the back door.”
Edward stood in front of Truth, hands fisted, his jaw clenched. “We did!” he snarled. “Look what happened!” Swinging sideways, he pointed a trembling finger at the mess in the center of the transmutation circle, a creature that hissed and gurgled, blood suddenly spurting out of its incomplete skin as it tried to move. “You see what happened!”
“That’s not my fault, al-chem-ist,” Truth said, showing its teeth in a half-moon smile. “You made your decision to attempt human trans-mu-ta-tion.”
He whipped back around to the Truth. “Not at that cost! Nothing like that should be alive,” he snapped, “nothing should be made to feel that kind of pain!”
“Ed?” The tremulous voice plucked at his nerves, dragging Edward back to look at the creature.
This time, he recognized those blue eyes in the flesh-wracked skull. “No.”
“You can use the back door,” Truth hissed in his ear.
“Fuck you,” Edward growled, whirling, his forearm stiffened in preparation to strike a blow, but there wasn’t anything there, just an ever-expanding field of white.
“Ed, I hurt,” Winry cried, “why does it hurt so much?”
“Winry, I,” Edward spun back to her, kneeling at the edge of the circle. He bit his lip, wanting to help her, not sure what he could do. “It won’t hurt,” he whispered. “It’s not going to hurt any longer, I promise.” Swallowing hard, Edward pressed his hands together, the transmutation circle burning in his mind. He closed his eyes, dropping his hands to the edge of the transmutation circle. Lightning flared up, the light of it blinding him to everything but the being in the center of the circle. “Winry, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “So sorry!”
“Ed!”
He jerked, nearly falling off the edge of the couch. “Wh-what?” Clutching at his chest, Edward gasped, trying to catch his breath. “Shit. Shit!”
“Bad dream?” Pinako’s voice creaked nearby, and Edward trembled, hearing the faint echo of Truth’s laugh in her words.
“Yeah. Thanks for waking me, Granny.” Inhaling deeply, Edward forced the air to fill his lungs, holding it before he let it out again. His heart still banged around in his chest, and if he closed his eyes, he saw that transmutation circle again, and Winry, and - “Fuck.”
Pinako fetched him a glass of water while Edward dug his fingers deep into his sweat-damp hair. “Here,” she said, shoving the glass into his face. “Drink this.”
Edward obeyed, the water washing away the sour taste in his mouth, moistening his throat. It made his stomach churn for a few seconds, along with the memory of Winry’s eyes in that thing’s skull. Gulping down some more water, he let out a sigh, leaning back and letting the couch cradle his spine. “Damn it.”
“Bad one, huh?”
“Yeah. Really.” He peered out her from one eye. “Did I wake you?”
Waving him off, Pinako said, “Old women don’t sleep much.” She took the seat across from him. “Want to talk about it?”
Edward shook his head. “Not really.” With a short laugh, he said, “Anything else you want to ask?”
“Now that you mention it.” Her smile flashed at him across the dim room, and Edward had to remind himself that Truth only appeared in its hall, and in his worst dreams.
“Yeah? So, what do you want to know?” Edward gave her his best, cockiest grin in return, belying his current distress.
“Actually, you’re a lot younger than our Ed would be. And Al, he’s a lot older.”
“Yeah.” Edward set the glass down. “We don’t know why.” Sighing, he went on. “Winry told me about your Al, and how he came back so young. That had to be really weird for him. His brother not being home, Winry being so much older.”
“He took it pretty well, considering.” Pinako used a lucifer to light up her pipe. Smoke streamed around her head in a lopsided halo. “I don’t doubt it bothered him, though. I know he missed Ed.”
“Yeah.” He knew how much he missed his little brother when they were traveling separately. “I guess when I transmuted myself this last time, I tapped into whatever your Ed and Al were doing in that underground city.” Rubbing his chin, Edward thought about that. “If that’s how we got here, it’s gonna make it hard to get back home.”
“You’ve got people waiting for you,” Pinako said.
Edward nodded. “Yeah.”
“She’s waiting for you,” Pinako said, and her eyes glinted behind her glasses.
“I made a promise to her.” Raising his head, Edward met those mischievous eyes. “I made a promise to everyone; that they’d get to see Al’s smiling face. I’m going to keep it.”
Pinako cackled. “I don’t doubt you will, boy.”
“Good to know you believe in me, no matter what world,” Edward muttered, not quite under his breath.
“Oh, I know how you are, Ed, or at least how he was. There’s that stubborn pride, just like your dad.” Her grin widened at Edward gnashing his teeth. “Your dad was a good man.”
“He abandoned Mom and us.” He glared in remembrance. “That old man…he should’ve stuck around. If he had.” Well, there wasn’t any reason to go into that. “He and Al spent a lot of time together.”
Pinako chuckled. “Sounds similar. He took off when you were here, and Al followed him, even though you - well, he - freaked out.”
“Winry said the old man was here.” And flirting with Ross. Edward really didn’t want to think too hard about that. The other Hohenheim must’ve been even more of a freak than the old man. “Guess you guys were friends, huh? Same as back home.”
“He was a good man,” Pinako repeated. “A good friend to me. And a good husband to Trisha.”
“She still died alone, wanting him to come home.” Edward blew the air out of his lungs. “Can we talk about something else? I mean…you’re not freaked by the military being in your house.”
Pinako puffed the pipe, clouds rising out of her mouth. “They’ve been here before, too. Hawkeye and Mustang are all right, for who they are. It’s hard having him here, especially, but he made his amends. As long as Winry’s all right with him, that’s what matters.”
“What?” Edward perked up. “Mustang? What do you mean?” He leaned his elbows on his knees, inclining his body forward. That weird tension between Mustang and Winry, that he’d never had a chance to ask either of them about, Pinako had to mean that, right?
The old woman hesitated, eyeing him for a second. “What do you know about Winry’s parents’ deaths?”
“They were doctors, working in Ishbal during the war. Their clinic took care of people on both sides, Amestrians and Ishbalans.” Edward held his breath for a second, making sure that no one was listening. He didn’t know what this Winry knew, or even if this part of history was different, too, as so many other things had been. “One of their patients, a scarred Ishbalan man, attacked them. He was…hurt, badly.” It didn’t make it right, even now, but Edward could almost understand Scar’s reasons for attacking. He’d been out of his mind with pain. “The military found Uncle Urey and Auntie Sarah a few days afterward. Their patients were gone, back to hiding. You and Winry got the telegram…Al and I came by to play, and Winry.” Edward remembered it, and even that memory of her pain made him shake his head. “She told us. But I didn’t know - she didn’t know, either - who killed her parents until a lot later. An old Ishbalan woman told me that she knew Uncle Urey and Auntie Sarah, and who killed them.”
Pinako exhaled slowly, smoke trickling out of her mouth. Edward cocked his head at her, realization coming slow. “It…didn’t happen that way here, did it?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
He wasn’t sure if Pinako was going to say anything more for a minute, then she began telling him a story, about how Winry had found out who killed her parents. About a pair of Ishbalan boys, who told her after she’d befriended them. About how Winry fought with her feelings, and how she’d cried in Pinako’s lap at the idea that a man she considered to be good could be the one who killed her mom and dad. And Edward listened, his mouth growing dry and his fists clenching so hard, he could feel his nails cutting into his palms.
“No.” The protest came out weak and strained, and Edward shook his head. “He wouldn’t.”
Pinako gave him a long look. “Men in war do what their superiors tell them to do.”
“But they weren’t hurting…they were helping!” Edward couldn’t seem to catch his breath at the idea that Mustang had pointed a gun and - “They weren’t military doctors. They volunteered! They were helping everyone!”
“Ed. Edward!” Her sharp voice cut into his thoughts. “Winry has made her peace with this. You need to, too. Don’t disturb her with it.”
“Oh, I won’t, Granny,” he promised.
“And leave the Corporal alone, too. He’s tried hard to keep her safe, and keep the boys safe, for her and me, too. He did his best.” Pinako pointed the mouthpiece of her pipe at him, wagging it for emphasis. “You leave him out of it, Edward, and don’t bring it up to Winry, either. I mean it. They’ve both been through enough grief over this. I don’t want to go through it again, just because things were different on your world, and you have a misplaced sense of honor for a girl from this one.” The whip snap in her words let Edward know she wasn’t kidding around.
“Yes’m,” Edward grumbled, shifting around on the couch. “I won’t bring it up,” he added reluctantly when Pinako raised her eyebrows at him pointedly.
“Good. Keep it that way.” She studied him for a little longer, and then said, “She must be a lucky girl, your Winry back home.”
“Huh?” Feeling like he was a couple of steps behind her, Edward cocked his head.
The old woman climbed out of the chair, sauntering toward the door. “You must love her a lot,” she tossed over her shoulder as she left the room, leaving Edward with his mouth hanging open, unable even to form a coherent response.
X X X
Part Two: Aftermath
Part Three: Reminders
Part Four: Under Any Circumstances
Part Five: Lost and Found
Parts Six-Seven-Eight: Cold Comfort, Equivalent Exchange and In the Hallway
Part Nine: Discussions
Part Ten: Telephone Call
Parts Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen: Simple Requests, Tell Me a Story, No Tears
Parts Fourteen-Fifteen-Sixteen: Similarities, Discussions II and Painkillers
Part Seventeen: Wake Up Call
Part Eighteen: Chance, 1,000 Yard Stare
Part Nineteen: Thoughts Of
Part Twenty-Twenty-One-Twenty-Two: Waking, Curiosity, Treasure
Part Twenty-Three: Differences
Part Twenty-Four: Discussions III
Part Twenty-Five: Dress Up, Undercover Blues, Leaving Central, Mistakes, The World According To
Part Twenty-Six: Difference, Sorrow in Her Eyes, Homecoming, Over Dinner
Part Twenty-Seven: Over Breakfast, In the Garden
Part Twenty-Eight: Tune Up
Part Twenty-Nine: Sunburn, Kneading Bread
Part Thirty: Sharpest Cut, Washing Up, In the Cool of the Night
Title: Discussions IV
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters/Pairings: Roy, Edward
Author: evil_little_dog
Words: 338
Rating: Teen
Summary: Roy discovers more things about Ed. Whether he wants to or not.
Warnings: Part of my continuing crossover between the first anime and the manga.
Disclaimer: I’m just playing in Arakawa’s sandbox.
Note: This is the longer version based on the fanfic_bakeoff prompt, Lucky.
X X X
Roy stood in the doorway to the den, seeing Edward sprawled across the sofa, a book in his hands. The young man glanced over the book, a slow, sly smile curling his mouth. “So, bastard,” he said, “how was your walk with Captain Hawkeye?”
His eye narrowed. “How did you know?”
“Pft. It’s not that big of a house.” Edward swung his legs off the sofa, the sound of automail hitting the floor louder than the noise from his flesh foot. “Besides, the old hag was cackling about setting you up.”
“She did, did she?” Entering the room the rest of the way, Roy took the chair across from the couch. “Did she say anything else?”
“That if you got lucky, it might yank that stick out of your ass.” Pinako’s voice startled Roy, making him jerk and turn toward the older woman. She smiled from her place in the doorway he’d just vacated, and disappeared down the hall.
Attempting to keep from pouting, Roy looked at Edward. Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t Edward, falling off the couch with hysterical laughter and his pounding on the floor. “Oh, shut up, you ass,” he growled, folding his arms and crossing his legs.
Getting himself under control, Edward sat up. “What’s wrong? You can dish it out but you can’t take it?” The wicked grin on the young man’s face itched to be removed, and Roy wished his gloves weren’t tucked into a drawer in the patient’s room.
“No, I’m just surprised you had an idea what ‘getting lucky’ meant,” Roy said, letting his voice take on an oily quality.
“Hnn!” He waved his hand. “Soldiers like to talk. They told enough stories.”
“But you’re still a virgin?” Hey, if Edward could laugh, Roy could go in for the kill.
Edward’s mouth twitched. “Why do you want to know? Looking for more differences between me and that idiot?”
Idiot, that was an interesting choice of words. Roy smirked in response, deciding to let Fullmetal sweat it out for a while.
X X X
Title: Nightmare
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters/Pairings: Edward, Pinako
Author: evil_little_dog
Words: 1,733
Rating: Teen
Summary: Pinako and Edward have a talk.
Warnings: Part of my continuing crossover between the first anime and the manga.
Disclaimer: I’m just playing in Arakawa’s sandbox.
X X X
“You can use the back door.”
Edward stood in front of Truth, hands fisted, his jaw clenched. “We did!” he snarled. “Look what happened!” Swinging sideways, he pointed a trembling finger at the mess in the center of the transmutation circle, a creature that hissed and gurgled, blood suddenly spurting out of its incomplete skin as it tried to move. “You see what happened!”
“That’s not my fault, al-chem-ist,” Truth said, showing its teeth in a half-moon smile. “You made your decision to attempt human trans-mu-ta-tion.”
He whipped back around to the Truth. “Not at that cost! Nothing like that should be alive,” he snapped, “nothing should be made to feel that kind of pain!”
“Ed?” The tremulous voice plucked at his nerves, dragging Edward back to look at the creature.
This time, he recognized those blue eyes in the flesh-wracked skull. “No.”
“You can use the back door,” Truth hissed in his ear.
“Fuck you,” Edward growled, whirling, his forearm stiffened in preparation to strike a blow, but there wasn’t anything there, just an ever-expanding field of white.
“Ed, I hurt,” Winry cried, “why does it hurt so much?”
“Winry, I,” Edward spun back to her, kneeling at the edge of the circle. He bit his lip, wanting to help her, not sure what he could do. “It won’t hurt,” he whispered. “It’s not going to hurt any longer, I promise.” Swallowing hard, Edward pressed his hands together, the transmutation circle burning in his mind. He closed his eyes, dropping his hands to the edge of the transmutation circle. Lightning flared up, the light of it blinding him to everything but the being in the center of the circle. “Winry, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “So sorry!”
“Ed!”
He jerked, nearly falling off the edge of the couch. “Wh-what?” Clutching at his chest, Edward gasped, trying to catch his breath. “Shit. Shit!”
“Bad dream?” Pinako’s voice creaked nearby, and Edward trembled, hearing the faint echo of Truth’s laugh in her words.
“Yeah. Thanks for waking me, Granny.” Inhaling deeply, Edward forced the air to fill his lungs, holding it before he let it out again. His heart still banged around in his chest, and if he closed his eyes, he saw that transmutation circle again, and Winry, and - “Fuck.”
Pinako fetched him a glass of water while Edward dug his fingers deep into his sweat-damp hair. “Here,” she said, shoving the glass into his face. “Drink this.”
Edward obeyed, the water washing away the sour taste in his mouth, moistening his throat. It made his stomach churn for a few seconds, along with the memory of Winry’s eyes in that thing’s skull. Gulping down some more water, he let out a sigh, leaning back and letting the couch cradle his spine. “Damn it.”
“Bad one, huh?”
“Yeah. Really.” He peered out her from one eye. “Did I wake you?”
Waving him off, Pinako said, “Old women don’t sleep much.” She took the seat across from him. “Want to talk about it?”
Edward shook his head. “Not really.” With a short laugh, he said, “Anything else you want to ask?”
“Now that you mention it.” Her smile flashed at him across the dim room, and Edward had to remind himself that Truth only appeared in its hall, and in his worst dreams.
“Yeah? So, what do you want to know?” Edward gave her his best, cockiest grin in return, belying his current distress.
“Actually, you’re a lot younger than our Ed would be. And Al, he’s a lot older.”
“Yeah.” Edward set the glass down. “We don’t know why.” Sighing, he went on. “Winry told me about your Al, and how he came back so young. That had to be really weird for him. His brother not being home, Winry being so much older.”
“He took it pretty well, considering.” Pinako used a lucifer to light up her pipe. Smoke streamed around her head in a lopsided halo. “I don’t doubt it bothered him, though. I know he missed Ed.”
“Yeah.” He knew how much he missed his little brother when they were traveling separately. “I guess when I transmuted myself this last time, I tapped into whatever your Ed and Al were doing in that underground city.” Rubbing his chin, Edward thought about that. “If that’s how we got here, it’s gonna make it hard to get back home.”
“You’ve got people waiting for you,” Pinako said.
Edward nodded. “Yeah.”
“She’s waiting for you,” Pinako said, and her eyes glinted behind her glasses.
“I made a promise to her.” Raising his head, Edward met those mischievous eyes. “I made a promise to everyone; that they’d get to see Al’s smiling face. I’m going to keep it.”
Pinako cackled. “I don’t doubt you will, boy.”
“Good to know you believe in me, no matter what world,” Edward muttered, not quite under his breath.
“Oh, I know how you are, Ed, or at least how he was. There’s that stubborn pride, just like your dad.” Her grin widened at Edward gnashing his teeth. “Your dad was a good man.”
“He abandoned Mom and us.” He glared in remembrance. “That old man…he should’ve stuck around. If he had.” Well, there wasn’t any reason to go into that. “He and Al spent a lot of time together.”
Pinako chuckled. “Sounds similar. He took off when you were here, and Al followed him, even though you - well, he - freaked out.”
“Winry said the old man was here.” And flirting with Ross. Edward really didn’t want to think too hard about that. The other Hohenheim must’ve been even more of a freak than the old man. “Guess you guys were friends, huh? Same as back home.”
“He was a good man,” Pinako repeated. “A good friend to me. And a good husband to Trisha.”
“She still died alone, wanting him to come home.” Edward blew the air out of his lungs. “Can we talk about something else? I mean…you’re not freaked by the military being in your house.”
Pinako puffed the pipe, clouds rising out of her mouth. “They’ve been here before, too. Hawkeye and Mustang are all right, for who they are. It’s hard having him here, especially, but he made his amends. As long as Winry’s all right with him, that’s what matters.”
“What?” Edward perked up. “Mustang? What do you mean?” He leaned his elbows on his knees, inclining his body forward. That weird tension between Mustang and Winry, that he’d never had a chance to ask either of them about, Pinako had to mean that, right?
The old woman hesitated, eyeing him for a second. “What do you know about Winry’s parents’ deaths?”
“They were doctors, working in Ishbal during the war. Their clinic took care of people on both sides, Amestrians and Ishbalans.” Edward held his breath for a second, making sure that no one was listening. He didn’t know what this Winry knew, or even if this part of history was different, too, as so many other things had been. “One of their patients, a scarred Ishbalan man, attacked them. He was…hurt, badly.” It didn’t make it right, even now, but Edward could almost understand Scar’s reasons for attacking. He’d been out of his mind with pain. “The military found Uncle Urey and Auntie Sarah a few days afterward. Their patients were gone, back to hiding. You and Winry got the telegram…Al and I came by to play, and Winry.” Edward remembered it, and even that memory of her pain made him shake his head. “She told us. But I didn’t know - she didn’t know, either - who killed her parents until a lot later. An old Ishbalan woman told me that she knew Uncle Urey and Auntie Sarah, and who killed them.”
Pinako exhaled slowly, smoke trickling out of her mouth. Edward cocked his head at her, realization coming slow. “It…didn’t happen that way here, did it?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
He wasn’t sure if Pinako was going to say anything more for a minute, then she began telling him a story, about how Winry had found out who killed her parents. About a pair of Ishbalan boys, who told her after she’d befriended them. About how Winry fought with her feelings, and how she’d cried in Pinako’s lap at the idea that a man she considered to be good could be the one who killed her mom and dad. And Edward listened, his mouth growing dry and his fists clenching so hard, he could feel his nails cutting into his palms.
“No.” The protest came out weak and strained, and Edward shook his head. “He wouldn’t.”
Pinako gave him a long look. “Men in war do what their superiors tell them to do.”
“But they weren’t hurting…they were helping!” Edward couldn’t seem to catch his breath at the idea that Mustang had pointed a gun and - “They weren’t military doctors. They volunteered! They were helping everyone!”
“Ed. Edward!” Her sharp voice cut into his thoughts. “Winry has made her peace with this. You need to, too. Don’t disturb her with it.”
“Oh, I won’t, Granny,” he promised.
“And leave the Corporal alone, too. He’s tried hard to keep her safe, and keep the boys safe, for her and me, too. He did his best.” Pinako pointed the mouthpiece of her pipe at him, wagging it for emphasis. “You leave him out of it, Edward, and don’t bring it up to Winry, either. I mean it. They’ve both been through enough grief over this. I don’t want to go through it again, just because things were different on your world, and you have a misplaced sense of honor for a girl from this one.” The whip snap in her words let Edward know she wasn’t kidding around.
“Yes’m,” Edward grumbled, shifting around on the couch. “I won’t bring it up,” he added reluctantly when Pinako raised her eyebrows at him pointedly.
“Good. Keep it that way.” She studied him for a little longer, and then said, “She must be a lucky girl, your Winry back home.”
“Huh?” Feeling like he was a couple of steps behind her, Edward cocked his head.
The old woman climbed out of the chair, sauntering toward the door. “You must love her a lot,” she tossed over her shoulder as she left the room, leaving Edward with his mouth hanging open, unable even to form a coherent response.
X X X