[Ed's looked into a mirror recently (hello, automail anyone?) and he's not really happy right now. He's sitting rather subdued on his bed, really subdued for Edward Elric. Any who would know him would probably know that something was up.]

I really hate this place. It's not very nice.

[Ed's in one of his...depressed moods. He keeps seeing Al everywhere he goes, and not Al in his suit of armor, but Al in his human form, or at least, how Ed pictures how Al would look if his body were restored.]

[It is said in many stories that vampires have no reflection, perhaps because they have no souls. They do, however, have an awareness: thoughts, feelings, even imagination. D's vampire half does not free him from desire or longing, and Puck's prank draws from him a strange, haunting scene that, oddly enough, is almost familiar in its domesticity.

Against the surface of a darkened shop window, a woman moves through a drawing room, her long white skirt trailing after her over the polished wooden floor. Her hair reaches to her waist, and is pulled back from her fair features by an elaborate series of braids and twists. She is beautiful, but most importantly, she is quite clearly human. As she moves through the room, another occupant comes into view: an adolescent dhampir with high cheekbones and hair as dark and nearly as long as her own. This is D in his youth, and he is seated beside a small table upon which two crystal glasses are set, each filled with a red liquid that seems set ablaze by the setting sun whose light shines through the window at his back. The first glass is D's; the second is held by a pale hand with long, tapered fingers tipped in short, sharp nails. The owner of the hand is obscured by shadow, but the woman goes to him after pressing a tender, motherly kiss to her dhampir son's forehead. She is pulled into shadow as she seats herself beside the almost unseen third occupant of the room, and while the words of welcome she is offered are indistinct, the calm, resonant timber of the individual's voice can be heard: a man's voice, much like D's.

Could the man in fact be a vampire, and D's father? Could this, perhaps, be a happy childhood that D was denied?]