He Who Searches for Himself - Chapter 40
Chapter: XL (40) - The Crimson Charm - Part 3 (of 3)
Rating: M
Word Count: 11,187 / 402,331
Beta: AmunRa
Previous: Chapter list for Part 1 thru Current
Alternative: located on fanfiction.net
Chapter Summary: Edward has to open the last path needed before everyone can be home again.
Part XL - #91 - The Crimson Charm - Part 3 (of 3)
I saw it.
I got to see what was beyond the Gate.
I saw the world, the country, the people, their knowledge, their lives, and their deaths. I saw everything that there was to see at that moment on January 25, 1922 - a date five and a half years into somebody else's future. I could have looked all sorts of ways, forwards or backwards through time, I knew I had those options, all I had to do was think of what I wanted... but I couldn't have told you how I knew I could do it.
My starting point was this date for a reason, this was the date I answered the only call that had made it home. So, I went to the starting and ending point of this world and I saw my brother, and I saw Winry who shouldn't have been there at all. It was her life and her blood that had triggered the crimson leak through the Gate - what I'd stood in was the shoreline of all the blood spilt by the dead souls used from the other world for our transmutations. I don't know why I knew that. I know the explanation for why and how that works and to me it makes sense, but it would be really hard to put into words to tell someone else. It was part of the knowledge I had for a brief period of time.
Even though they couldn't hear me unless I actually stepped through the Gate, I told Winry and my brother I'd help get them home.
I activated the transmutation circle.
Then the Gate told me I had to leave its space - it told me without words yet somehow it made sure I knew. I told it no, I wanted to see my family come home, but the Gate told me I couldn't. It overwhelmed me while I tried to hold on, forcing me to sleep, and sent me away to Dante's ballroom. The Gate was able to do that to me because my arms were still inside of it.
I still managed to bring my brother closer to home than he'd ever been before. I made sure the journey was as safe as it could be. I brought my brother and Winry to the other side of the Gate and watched as the rebound forced the Gate to reconstruct them before I had to go.
I'm not afraid that I've lost anything because Gate wouldn't allow my family to leave with me. I trust and believe whole-heartedly that, after everything that's happened to us, if my brother has managed to come this far, he'll find a way to make a path all the way home.
Part XL - Chapter 91 - The Crimson Charm, Part 3 (of 3)
The side of the Gate where Alphonse had unwillingly frequented, where Izumi feared going, and where Dante wanted to play God was a world submerged in light. It was a place with endless light and a bright vastness that stretched on forever without depth, width, or height. Yet this seemingly peaceful white space had a nightmare at its centre, and it was almost impossible to get to.
The opposite was true of the reverse side of the Gate. It was a world submerged in darkness that went on forever - a dark pool of dead souls waiting to be used by alchemists as fuel for transmutations. Yet, this other side had something bright and desirable at its centre, and it was a place that every soul in the other world would journey to once their life had ended.
As far as Ed was concerned, the light that came from the other side of the open Gate was as good as any glorified after-life. Home was not utopia, was not a perfect place to be, and wasn't even all that great sometimes, but it was exactly where Ed wanted to be. He'd recognized the light of the Gate in his first journey home years ago, but for this second trip the light had vanished before he'd arrived.
Whoever had run the terrifying transmutation to bring them this far had not been able to hold the doors open any longer.
When Edward finally opened his eyes again there was as little to see as there was to hear; the world was pitch black. Ed lay on his side, body sore, and he slowly realized he felt sick to his stomach. Edward tried to move and his body responded erratically, so he lay on the ground silently like everything else around him.
There was some poor resemblance of a memory in Ed's mind that looked like himself and Winry standing on the Thule hall floor when the circle activated. The current had hit him with more ferocity than his pounding heart could manage and Ed had thought his body might burst. His mind had begged for it to stop, but he'd passed out shortly after it started and thanked everything in the world that he had.
Ed tried again to pick himself up from the ground and nausea hit him the moment he moved; Ed's hand came to his chest to force it down. With a deep, exhausted breath, Ed put his hands to the surface he lay on, ordered his muscles to function, and pushed himself to his hands and knees.
Edward's heart stopped. Wait. Wait.
"WHAT?" the rip of his shrill voice was swallowed instantly by the darkness.
Wide golden eyes stared disbelievingly down at two hands and two arms holding his chest off the ground, jaw quivering as words struggled to find his voice.
"Wh-what the hell is this?"
A sudden wave of dizziness struck him from nowhere and Ed was forced back to the dark surface; the muscles in his forearms and shoulders quaked so hard they were useless. Ed's forehead pushed into the black surface he was on, trying to shake the nausea. He clenched his hands as he tried to figure things out and then Edward stretched his left leg.
What was this all about? Why? The limbs were numb and felt no sensation of any kind; he likened it to AutoMail but without the weight of metal.
This ridiculous game the Gate played with his body depending on if he was 'coming' or 'going' was getting frustrating - why in the world would he once again wake up after some insane transmutation and be whole again? The rebound would have broken him down and half-heartedly sent his deconstructed remains to the Gate - there was no catch in that to put him back together like this. In fact, it was the Gate that was responsible for putting him back together, because his remains needed to be extracted from the energy stream and there was no way this vicious monstrosity would voluntarily give him back his limbs.
Ed forced himself to think - something must have happened with the re-transmutation the Gate had performed, but what? Both he and Winry would have…
A sudden realization caused Ed to shelve the questions for his limbs - some thing else became far more important. A flurry of golden hair flew out and wide golden eyes slashed through darkness; the trembling assault from Ed's body was ignored.
"WINRY?"
Panic turned Ed over his shoulder in search of colour amongst the black. A body lay behind him, back towards him, curled up like an infant, blonde hair scattered everywhere. On unsteady hands and knees Ed stumbled to Winry, putting a hand to her shoulder and another to the back of her head as he nervously rolled the curled figure onto her back. Winry didn't respond to the movement and lay motionless in the dark. Edward's hand went to her neck and another rested on her chest, frantically searching for signs of life. When he found Winry's pulse and Ed realized that she was breathing, he sagged a little in relief.
The eldest Elric brother had to say he absolutely detested the alchemy Gate by this point in his life, because while Edward sat on two knees and moved Winry with two hands, the bullet wounds marring Winry's leg were still there. Ed eyed the scarf that had unwound from around Winry's leg and it took his unsettled nerves a few minutes to re-do it.
Ed glanced to the pile of supplies and things that had been on the transmutation circle and had followed them through the Gate before drawing up onto hands and knees. Ed leaned over Winry, putting a hand down on her cheek, tapping it lightly to see if she'd wake, "Hey… hey come on. I need you to wake up."
It wasn't Winry that Edward woke.
Slowly, one by one, sets of eyes began to appear in the black void; leering, lecherous, devious, hungry, purple sets of eyes.
"Oh great…"
Fear hit the bottom of Edward's stomach like a boulder crashing into a canyon. For what he could manage with so many wayward nerves, Ed's shoulders stiffened and he held his ground over Winry. Air was forced through Ed's nose as he watched interested purple eyes endlessly appear, littering every angle of this monstrous black space with malicious gazes. Slowly, Ed slipped one arm behind Winry's shoulders and the other behind her head to he sit her up - golden eyes ordering all of the purple gazes to stay back as he put Winry's forehead down on his shoulder.
More sets of intrusive eyes appeared, prying in from above, below, behind… in all the places Ed was not looking.
"What the hell are you assholes staring at!" Edward suddenly yelled, fraying quickly around his edges at the invasive presence. It was very obvious these eyes were visually dissecting them both and few things in any world frightened Edward Elric like the eyes of the Gate did. He clenched his hands to fight the mounting tension.
Winry gasped - a sound that came from seemingly nowhere. It wasn't a normal sound for a gasp for air, it sounded more like a man's final gulp before drowning.
"I can't breathe!" she choked, eyes flying wide and pupils at pinpoints, breaking out of Ed's grasp as her hands reached for her neck, "I can't breathe!"
Ed scrambled to settle the nerves Winry's outburst had frayed and he quickly took Winry's fingers away from where they had begun to claw at her neck, "It's okay, you're breathing just fine."
"But there-" the panic-stricken girl took a breath that told her she was wrong. She took a second breath that confirmed it. Reality sunk in and Winry slowly sat back onto her knees, her jaw loose, trying to piece together her chaotic thoughts, wide eyes drawing in the scene around her of a black space loaded with invasive purple eyes, "… Wha… what?"
Ed's hands landed at her ears, settling high on her jaw, pulling her focus forwards to him, "You're okay."
There were no words in the world that anyone could have spoken to express how thankful Ed was for that. He'd revel in the feeling if there wasn't a whole new set of problems literally looking at him.
"What is this?" Winry's exhausted question contained more air than sound, the terrified look in her eyes painfully obvious, "where are we?"
"We're at the Gate," Ed answered, an uncharacteristic tremor to his voice. He didn't know who had done it and he didn't care.
The world sat on pause as the situation sunk in, nothing beyond air breathed and heartbeats spent gave any indication that sound existed in this space. Ed watched while Winry's eyes slowly widened again and she abruptly stopped throwing her attention around the space at the Gate. The girl's focus captured Ed and his left hand felt all the tension in her jaw vanish. Gold eyes witnessed the flabbergasted emotions in the blue gaze staring back at him begin to swell as Winry's hands rose up, gripping the two wrists at her face and pulling them away.
Of all the times and places Winry could have chosen to give Edward such an astounded look and it had to be this one, at the Gate, and it made him smile.
"It's numb," Ed said of the right wrist Winry turned over in her hand, flexing his fingers for her, "I can't feel anything in it."
Edward was usually the one stricken with tongue-tied responses, so it was somewhat relieving to watch Winry struggle to bring her voice out, "But… but how did you…?"
"Um…" Ed paused, wondering how to give an easy interim answer until he did actually theorize a reason for why. Ed didn't know why the Gate had taken his limbs in the first place, since the offer for Alphonse's transmutation was an all-or-nothing transaction. The consolation answer beyond the Gate had boiled down to something unscientific simple like: the Gate simply didn't like him and had taken back what Al had given him out of spite.
"I, uh, think I caused the Gate to malfunction."
An answer that became his most unscientific response to date.
"Oh," Winry did nothing more than sit and stare at the hand she held, her thumb running through Ed's palm slowly, watching how the pressure she placed moved each finger, "about time it screwed up in your favour."
Amidst Central City's late afternoon sun, Brigadier General Mustang stood back and admired the new accommodations Havoc and Hawkeye had commandeered. It was actually a hotel - Mustang was quite impressed. The last building they'd set up shop in had been a half-occupied office and the commanding officer was more than happy to have a proper bed to sleep in again. When they'd first walked through the front doors, Mustang figured out quite quickly that Havoc must have charmed his way in to see the manager or the owner through the two lovely 20-somethings standing at the check-in. He took a mental note to talk with them later.
The change of scenery was a welcome sight after an earthquake had struck Central that morning and driven everyone from their last place of operation when the building had threatened to crumble down on them. Mustang had never experienced the earth shake beneath his feet before - no one in Central had. It was a strangely powerful occurrence that made everyone utterly powerless for the minute or two that it had lasted. On the whole, the city had held up pretty well structurally against the earthquake, though he couldn't say the same for the mindset of the people. It was unfortunate that Mustang's last point of conquest was in the eastern quarter, because that was the oldest part of the city and it took some of the worst damage - mostly emphasized by the mess Old Central had been turned into. The historical district had the unfortunate fate of being in the farthest reaches of the damaged eastern quarter.
Mustang wouldn't acknowledge the fact that they'd lost track of Wrath in the chaos, but frankly he didn't care. Maybe the annoying little twerp was trapped beneath some fallen building - Mustang was okay with that thought. For the brief time he'd had Izumi around, the forthright woman had given him just enough information to be useful before Mustang had lost her again; she'd ran off into the city to help people dig out from the wreckage. Mustang figured that just meant he didn't have to let her berate him about losing the little homunculus.
In the new hotel, the first knowledgeable person Mustang encountered was kind enough to point him towards a room on the third floor. What Mustang found up there was a plain room, nothing fancy or even remotely close to the kind of place officers of his rank were normally given - though it beat living in an office hands down. It had a single queen bed, a night stand, a dresser, a lamp that was lit, two chairs, and a table. Mustang ignored the call of the bed, flipped the deadbolt on his door, and took a long shower instead.
Some point in time after the shower had ended and Roy had passed out on the lovely, lovely bed wearing only a towel, a knock came to his door. Since the commanding officer was too deep in slumber to hear it, a key was inserted and rattled around noisily, as though to make sure any prying ears were aware that no one was breaking in.
"Sir?"
Roy didn't hear Riza's voice. He didn't hear a whole lot of anything until Riza threw his damp dress shirt over his chest - the man had been wearing it for days and it got washed in the shower along with everything else. Roy shivered and was unwillingly taken away from his sleep.
"You have a phone call," she sounded far more gentle than she normally did.
"Take a message," Roy grabbed one of the pillows his head wasn't on and stuck it over his face, wrapping his arms around it to hold it down.
"Mr Tlingum sounds a little desperate to talk to you."
The last time Russell had called with information the twerp had tried to tell Mustang he had to pay for it. Roy swore to everything he believed in that if what this kid had to say wasn't incredible enough to win him the entire city of Central he would personally march in on Xenotime just to ring Russell Tlingum's neck.
"Fine," the pillow was thrown aside, the damp shirt was snatched up, and Riza exited the room to let her superior officer get dressed in his damp attire with some dignity.
When Mustang had emerged from the room, he did so with a yawn and followed Hawkeye blindly down the stairs. They didn't take to the rotunda or the main floor of hotel room doors. Instead, they slipped down a corridor behind the staircase and into a quaint little hall that had five rooms with A1 through A5 marked on the doors.
The door to A3 burst open almost immediately, startling both officers.
"Sir!" Feury called, "I'm so glad you're here, I was worried I'd have to tell them to call back again."
Mustang kind of wished Feury had, "Thank you, Sergeant."
Stepping into the room, Mustang came to realize that this was not a hotel room - it was a conference room.
The white room with beige patterned curtains had a square table with eight chairs, two to each side, a desk with a wheeled chair, and a steno, dip pen, and a pile of paper stacked thick enough that he wouldn't be able to one-hand it out the window. Mustang cringed; he hated paperwork - how did a plague of paperwork manage to follow him around even in a government overthrow? There were wires and cords that snaked through a hole drilled into the neighbouring room; the hole was fresh because the dust was still caught in the baseboards. A telephone sat on the desk, the receiver on off the cradle and resting on the wooden veneer.
With a deep breath and a tired scowl, Mustang marched over and snatched up the phone up.
"What do you want?" he gave his greeting.
"It's about time you answered me!" Russell chirped into the phone, "I was worried the earthquake scrambled your brains out there a bit too much."
Mustang was a few poorly chosen words away from hanging up on the teenager, "You have ten seconds to make this conversation worth my while."
"Have you checked on Old Central yet?"
That was not what Mustang was expecting to hear -Russell Tlingum was a fountain of information on red water, red stones, and other bullshit that came out of Xenotime.
"… Why?"
"We need you to check on Old Central and make sure it's not damaged at all."
Mustang's tired thoughts continued to be stuck on 'why' - he glanced to the clock to find out it was almost 10pm. Even if the officer felt like it, he was not going into Old Central after dark, "Old Central took the quake the hardest. There's a lot of damage in there Mr Tlingum, so I don't need to go gallivanting out there to tell you that whatever you want from there is probably damaged."
The mouthpiece came away from Russell,'s mouth though Mustang could still hear bits of the conversation. The teenager told whoever was listening that Old Central was damaged, and then asked what they should do. A female voice answered, but it was too faint and distorted for Mustang to hear clearly. He pushed the earpiece tight against his ear, trying to pick up the entirety of the conversation, then had to pull it away quickly when Russell's voice came back loudly to the phone.
"We're going to give you directions to a building in Old Central - you need to make sure it's not damaged and seal it off if it is."
Oh, Mustang dearly wished this boy was standing in front of him so he could strangle the 'why' out of him, "Why, Mr Tlingum? And who's 'we'?"
"Me and Roze."
There was that name of the woman from Lior again; Roze'd given them all nightmares from the story she'd told of a woman who tried to seduce her with alchemy and then followed that up with stories of a city that once existed. He wasn't sure if 'Roze' fascinated or frightened him.
"There's a um… church Roze paid homage to in Old Central when she was still the Holy Mother of Lior. It's in the heart of the district, just off the main road. It's the oldest thing there, it towers over everything and all the windows are stained glass designs - you can't miss it. It's sacred and important. It has something that nobody should want… we need you to make sure that it's still intact."
"And if it's not?" Mustang asked.
A long pause came before Russell gave an answer, "Burn it down and bury it in dirt before you leave."
"Why?" the brigadier general would not let that go.
"You're gonna have to trust us on this one, you don't want to know why. But it needs to be done."
Mustang's good eye twitched - even the defective one beneath the eye patch twitched. Maybe he'd break the phone instead since Russell wasn't handy to strangle, "You're going to have to do better than that."
"Show a little faith in us out here Mister Brigadier General and we'll talk about it more later."
The phone line went dead. Mustang had a nearly uncontrollable urge to just rage on the poor telephone. He hated how cryptic everyone was with him about 'important' things he knew nothing about. It made him feel like a pawn and Roy Mustang was so sick of being people's pawn - it was on the list of reasons why he was taking over Central City. He threw the phone down in disgust and stormed out of the room.
"This is the other side of the Gate…?" Winry sat back and looked around once more, "I don't see a gate." She didn't see anything other than the prying eyes and their collection of things.
"I don't know what's wrong," even if Ed couldn't exactly remember it, he knew he'd been here before and there had been Gate doors to push through.
Ed questioned his knowledge of the Gate - something wasn't right, there had to be some reason the doors wouldn't appear. Something had to be different from before. Edward's brow slowly stitched together; the last time he'd been here, albeit briefly, his host body beyond the Gate had died and his actual mind and body had waited for him at the doors, detached from the journey his soul had taken. Ed's soul connected with his remains and he'd pushed his way back into Dante's ballroom. This time around, the whole of Edward Elric had been sent beyond the Gate with nothing left at the doors, and now he was attempting to return.
The seam through Ed's forehead was cut and his brow rose, "I'm gonna have to make the doors appear."
"What?" Winry found it difficult to distract herself from all the prying eyes visually suffocating them, "how?"
Ed's face twisted with a thought and he looked to Winry, a grin flooding life back into his face, "Heh."
"What?" under any other circumstance Winry wouldn't have been as concerned as she was for the look he gave her right then and there.
The grin didn't leave but Ed still gave a disgruntled shrug of his shoulders and a thoughtful 'hmph' while his hands came up and unbuttoned the top four buttons of his dress shirt. Ed flared it open with a swift tug on the collar.
"What are you doing…?" a deep alarm began to ring in Winry's voice.
Ed glanced to the pile of things that had come with them in the rebound, "You took that foot off with cutters, right?"
"… Why?"
"Hang on."
Ed rose to his feet and stepped away from Winry, moving swiftly through the darkness. He easily uncovered Winry's cutters amongst the mess and Ed snatched the tool up emphatically, catching it in his left hand. Golden Elric eyes looked between the two hands he had available, the worn left hand that had helped him on his own for so long and the new right one that still gave Ed no feedback that it even existed. For all he knew it was a loaner and he wouldn't get to keep it when he finally got home.
So… since there was no feeling in it…
Ed flipped open the cutters and placed the sharp tip of the tool down into his right palm, clamped his hand around the tool and swiftly tore it out of his own grasp, slicing his hand open.
"ED," Winry squawked, "what are you doing?"
The eldest of two impulsive brothers dropped the cutters, held his numb right hand out like a cup, and let the blood from the cut pool in his hand. Ed gave a nod to the blood forming, glad to know that his right arm was attached to his circulatory system at least. With the thick red liquid available, Ed dipped his left pinky finger into his right palm and took the finger to his chest.
"EDWARD ELRIC, what the hell are you doing!" Winry scrambled forwards on her hands and knees, "STOP. STOP RIGHT NOW."
The drawing on his chest was finished before Winry arrived and Ed knelt down to meet her - spilling his hand and wiping off his palm on his pants before grabbing Winry's wrists as she reached out to beat the image off of him.
"Let go of me! What are you doing?" The panic in her voice tightened the tension in Ed's shoulders but didn't cause him to let go.
"Win… remember I told you once…" his thoughts caused his eyes to glance away while he wondered how to word this, "that a transmutation circle has no direction; as in it has no top, no bottom, no start and no end, because it's constantly flowing with energy. It can never be upside down or right side up. It picks up the material provided and flows within the natural energy of the world," he eyeballed Winry who looked like she was going to tackle him if he didn't let go, "but, when you put a transmutation circle on a life form that already has a flowing circuit, like a circulatory system, it's properties can change, depending on what you want to do and how you draw it. You can establish that up and down, because you can move with or against a natural flow."
Winry gave him a heavy, wary eye, ready do everything in her power to attempt to overwhelm Ed if whatever he was getting at gave her no choice but to stop him.
"An encircled, five-point star, when presented with a single point upwards, can be used to represent symmetry of the human body. Head up top, two arms at the side, two legs at the bottom - never ending and constantly flowing. But, when you turn it and have the two points 'upwards', you invert the connection to the body's systems, go against the flow, and the transmutation's properties change to something else entirely."
Ed watched as Winry stared wordlessly at the symbol drawn on his chest; he'd drawn the same symbol on himself that Dante had drawn on Diana: the encircled 'upside down' pentagram - exactly as he'd just described.
"It connects the 'here to there' and the 'there to here'."
"No, no… no…" Winry gave a sharp yank on her arms but it was a futile effort - Ed would not let go, "what does that circle do?"
"Alchemy," Ed narrowed an eye in thought, "when I clap my hands. The Gate had to stitch us back together to bring us here, so I should be able to open the Gate from this side, since this is where all the power is stored."
"Yeah right," Winry glared at him, "what happens to you when you do that?"
"We go home."
"Bullshit," she snapped, not liking that he was so calm and collected over this. Winry again fought to get Ed to release her wrists to no avail, "you have a chronic problem of doing inherently stupid things with alchemy, so you are going to tell me what will happen to you."
"Winry, it's not important," Ed protested, his tone hardening as he held Winry at bay, "I need you to trust me on this one."
Ed was surprised to find she actually did calm once he'd spoken, but he quickly came to realize her relaxed body and fallen shoulders didn't come from calm, they came from resignation. Ed peered in uncertainly, watching Winry's head sag forwards as he gingerly began to return her wrists. He took a breath to speak but Winry shut Ed's voice down when her arms were abruptly snatched from his grasp.
"The last time I trusted you and Al to do the right things for yourselves with alchemy, you did something that meant you would never come back. If the Gate didn't think you were fun to play with, if it just didn't happen to be this way, you'd be dead. We wouldn't be having this conversation."
The weight of the other world's incarceration chains crashed down over Edward's shoulders and they pinned him to the side of the Gate where he sat. How strange it was for Ed to be reminded that he had done that, because when he'd woken up alive on the other side he'd been able to negate responsibility for his actions. It had been a long time since he'd had to look at the frame of mind he'd been in that day.
"Winry…"
She looked up at him abruptly.
"You didn't sacrifice yourself for your brother knowing you'd end up in this alternate world and be able to fight to get home. You sacrificed yourself; you did what you did for Al knowing you would die. You decided your life would be over. There'd be no more. You wouldn't come home. Ever. Regardless of who or what it was for, you were okay with being dead and not living anymore."
There wasn't a set of purple eyes in the darkness that could look at Ed and reach in so far, grab hold so hard, and twist so angrily like these blue ones did. The feeling was like a clenched fist that had been lodged in his throat; Ed felt himself choke on it.
"That's great for you, if you're dead you don't have to deal with not having you around anymore! Yeah, what you did gave us Al back and that's a miracle in itself and I cannot… I cannot wish that you hadn't done that, because if I did then Al would be dead instead. I can't pick your life over Al's or Al's over yours… so I just think what you two did was wrong." Winry's words paused for a moment, the look in her eye imprisoning Edward's ability to put any of his thoughts into the spaces within her statement. "What I see from you isn't always that you think so much of everyone else around you, but that you think so little of yourself in the process. You're the only one who doesn't seem to think you have any value to the people around you and you make yourself dispensable."
There wasn't anything in the world Ed could have done against painful words spoken by a moderately trembling voice that fought on, beyond listen to what they had to say.
"I trust you with a lot of things Edward Elric, but I don't trust you to always make the right decisions for yourself when it comes to alchemy… and that's your fault."
Winry left the verbally crushed feeling as a jagged piece of shrapnel in Ed's throat when her voice let go and he was forced to swallow down no matter how badly it hurt. Uncertain golden eyes fell to the wayside, shoulders collapsing, head bowing, sitting on his knees. Like a weary soldier slumped at the bottom of his biggest hill to climb, Ed looked into the two flesh hands that he opened, palms up, comparing the clean but journey-worn left hand to the bloodied opposing palm.
"I don't regret what I did for Al. I've never looked back and wondered what my other options would have been and I'm not going to. That's my decision and I have to live with that, so I can't ask you to trust me with this," The thing Edward had found about talking with Winry was that, unlike himself, she rarely looked down or away to shield what she was feeling. Winry always looked right at him when she spoke and that somehow managed to make it impossible to doubt her. Ed swallowed hard and picked his head up to look at Winry, "but I don't have any way of telling you how badly I want to go home, be at home, live at home, do everything I do and don't at home, and do all of the things in life that I haven't let myself do because I wasn't home. Right now I know what I can do to get us home like I'd promised - both of us - and I've tried for a long time to get there… so I just… want to go home. Whatever you're afraid of isn't going to happen. Really."
A hesitant pause preceded Winry's quiet voice for her last concern, "Will you be alright?"
"Yes."
Winry's lower lip slipped into her teeth, "Okay then."
Ed pursed his lips and exhaled slowly, rebuilding his posture as he straightened himself, feeling a little short of breath while he spoke, "Your leg doesn't hurt that much here, does it?"
"No," Winry admitted, eyeballing the wrapped damage on her left limb, "it feels kinda gross, and it does hurt, but not like it did."
"That's the Gate - being here is like a blip in time," Ed pulled to his feet, ignoring the intrusive eyes that continued to watch them. He reached down and pulled Winry up to her feet, "It's gonna hurt when we're back."
Winry gave a slow nod as she worked her balance onto the one good leg, holding onto Ed's shoulders as he turned and offered his back for her to climb on to.
"And you'll be pretty nauseous," Ed gave Winry a bounce on his back to settle her in place once she'd wrapped her arms around his neck again, "this isn't going to feel good when we get back… at all. It's probably going to feel like how we're supposed to feel after going through the rebound."
Even though he had two hands this time around, both of them were needed, so Winry wiggled around uncomfortably until her legs wrapped around Ed's waist as best she could, "But we'll be home, right?"
"Yup," Ed nodded.
Winry's arms tightened around his neck and she put her chin down, "Then I'll be fine."
Both weary travellers journeying between this world and that looked around, staring back at the countless sets of eyes that bore down on them. Winry's scowl at their lecherous invasion was tainted with nervous concern but was protected by Edward's glare assaulting whatever dared stand in his way. The hungry eyes hardened at his challenge and Ed chose to offer a cocky, triumphant smirk in return, inviting them to watch and see what he had in store.
This time Ed stood on two good legs with Winry on his back, the idea of running in fear no longer part of the equation. Giving a few sharp shakes of his head to clear it, Ed shifted with Winry on his back, slapped his palms over his thighs, straightened himself up, and threw his hands out to his sides amidst the pitch. His chest expanded with a deep breath and Edward Elric let the prying purple eyes eat his provocative sneer.
"This side of the Gate can KISS MY ASS."
Ed clapped his hands.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
... Second Half ...
Rating: M
Word Count: 11,187 / 402,331
Beta: AmunRa
Previous: Chapter list for Part 1 thru Current
Alternative: located on fanfiction.net
Chapter Summary: Edward has to open the last path needed before everyone can be home again.
Part XL - #91 - The Crimson Charm - Part 3 (of 3)
I saw it.
I got to see what was beyond the Gate.
I saw the world, the country, the people, their knowledge, their lives, and their deaths. I saw everything that there was to see at that moment on January 25, 1922 - a date five and a half years into somebody else's future. I could have looked all sorts of ways, forwards or backwards through time, I knew I had those options, all I had to do was think of what I wanted... but I couldn't have told you how I knew I could do it.
My starting point was this date for a reason, this was the date I answered the only call that had made it home. So, I went to the starting and ending point of this world and I saw my brother, and I saw Winry who shouldn't have been there at all. It was her life and her blood that had triggered the crimson leak through the Gate - what I'd stood in was the shoreline of all the blood spilt by the dead souls used from the other world for our transmutations. I don't know why I knew that. I know the explanation for why and how that works and to me it makes sense, but it would be really hard to put into words to tell someone else. It was part of the knowledge I had for a brief period of time.
Even though they couldn't hear me unless I actually stepped through the Gate, I told Winry and my brother I'd help get them home.
I activated the transmutation circle.
Then the Gate told me I had to leave its space - it told me without words yet somehow it made sure I knew. I told it no, I wanted to see my family come home, but the Gate told me I couldn't. It overwhelmed me while I tried to hold on, forcing me to sleep, and sent me away to Dante's ballroom. The Gate was able to do that to me because my arms were still inside of it.
I still managed to bring my brother closer to home than he'd ever been before. I made sure the journey was as safe as it could be. I brought my brother and Winry to the other side of the Gate and watched as the rebound forced the Gate to reconstruct them before I had to go.
I'm not afraid that I've lost anything because Gate wouldn't allow my family to leave with me. I trust and believe whole-heartedly that, after everything that's happened to us, if my brother has managed to come this far, he'll find a way to make a path all the way home.
Part XL - Chapter 91 - The Crimson Charm, Part 3 (of 3)
The side of the Gate where Alphonse had unwillingly frequented, where Izumi feared going, and where Dante wanted to play God was a world submerged in light. It was a place with endless light and a bright vastness that stretched on forever without depth, width, or height. Yet this seemingly peaceful white space had a nightmare at its centre, and it was almost impossible to get to.
The opposite was true of the reverse side of the Gate. It was a world submerged in darkness that went on forever - a dark pool of dead souls waiting to be used by alchemists as fuel for transmutations. Yet, this other side had something bright and desirable at its centre, and it was a place that every soul in the other world would journey to once their life had ended.
As far as Ed was concerned, the light that came from the other side of the open Gate was as good as any glorified after-life. Home was not utopia, was not a perfect place to be, and wasn't even all that great sometimes, but it was exactly where Ed wanted to be. He'd recognized the light of the Gate in his first journey home years ago, but for this second trip the light had vanished before he'd arrived.
Whoever had run the terrifying transmutation to bring them this far had not been able to hold the doors open any longer.
When Edward finally opened his eyes again there was as little to see as there was to hear; the world was pitch black. Ed lay on his side, body sore, and he slowly realized he felt sick to his stomach. Edward tried to move and his body responded erratically, so he lay on the ground silently like everything else around him.
There was some poor resemblance of a memory in Ed's mind that looked like himself and Winry standing on the Thule hall floor when the circle activated. The current had hit him with more ferocity than his pounding heart could manage and Ed had thought his body might burst. His mind had begged for it to stop, but he'd passed out shortly after it started and thanked everything in the world that he had.
Ed tried again to pick himself up from the ground and nausea hit him the moment he moved; Ed's hand came to his chest to force it down. With a deep, exhausted breath, Ed put his hands to the surface he lay on, ordered his muscles to function, and pushed himself to his hands and knees.
Edward's heart stopped. Wait. Wait.
"WHAT?" the rip of his shrill voice was swallowed instantly by the darkness.
Wide golden eyes stared disbelievingly down at two hands and two arms holding his chest off the ground, jaw quivering as words struggled to find his voice.
"Wh-what the hell is this?"
A sudden wave of dizziness struck him from nowhere and Ed was forced back to the dark surface; the muscles in his forearms and shoulders quaked so hard they were useless. Ed's forehead pushed into the black surface he was on, trying to shake the nausea. He clenched his hands as he tried to figure things out and then Edward stretched his left leg.
What was this all about? Why? The limbs were numb and felt no sensation of any kind; he likened it to AutoMail but without the weight of metal.
This ridiculous game the Gate played with his body depending on if he was 'coming' or 'going' was getting frustrating - why in the world would he once again wake up after some insane transmutation and be whole again? The rebound would have broken him down and half-heartedly sent his deconstructed remains to the Gate - there was no catch in that to put him back together like this. In fact, it was the Gate that was responsible for putting him back together, because his remains needed to be extracted from the energy stream and there was no way this vicious monstrosity would voluntarily give him back his limbs.
Ed forced himself to think - something must have happened with the re-transmutation the Gate had performed, but what? Both he and Winry would have…
A sudden realization caused Ed to shelve the questions for his limbs - some thing else became far more important. A flurry of golden hair flew out and wide golden eyes slashed through darkness; the trembling assault from Ed's body was ignored.
"WINRY?"
Panic turned Ed over his shoulder in search of colour amongst the black. A body lay behind him, back towards him, curled up like an infant, blonde hair scattered everywhere. On unsteady hands and knees Ed stumbled to Winry, putting a hand to her shoulder and another to the back of her head as he nervously rolled the curled figure onto her back. Winry didn't respond to the movement and lay motionless in the dark. Edward's hand went to her neck and another rested on her chest, frantically searching for signs of life. When he found Winry's pulse and Ed realized that she was breathing, he sagged a little in relief.
The eldest Elric brother had to say he absolutely detested the alchemy Gate by this point in his life, because while Edward sat on two knees and moved Winry with two hands, the bullet wounds marring Winry's leg were still there. Ed eyed the scarf that had unwound from around Winry's leg and it took his unsettled nerves a few minutes to re-do it.
Ed glanced to the pile of supplies and things that had been on the transmutation circle and had followed them through the Gate before drawing up onto hands and knees. Ed leaned over Winry, putting a hand down on her cheek, tapping it lightly to see if she'd wake, "Hey… hey come on. I need you to wake up."
It wasn't Winry that Edward woke.
Slowly, one by one, sets of eyes began to appear in the black void; leering, lecherous, devious, hungry, purple sets of eyes.
"Oh great…"
Fear hit the bottom of Edward's stomach like a boulder crashing into a canyon. For what he could manage with so many wayward nerves, Ed's shoulders stiffened and he held his ground over Winry. Air was forced through Ed's nose as he watched interested purple eyes endlessly appear, littering every angle of this monstrous black space with malicious gazes. Slowly, Ed slipped one arm behind Winry's shoulders and the other behind her head to he sit her up - golden eyes ordering all of the purple gazes to stay back as he put Winry's forehead down on his shoulder.
More sets of intrusive eyes appeared, prying in from above, below, behind… in all the places Ed was not looking.
"What the hell are you assholes staring at!" Edward suddenly yelled, fraying quickly around his edges at the invasive presence. It was very obvious these eyes were visually dissecting them both and few things in any world frightened Edward Elric like the eyes of the Gate did. He clenched his hands to fight the mounting tension.
Winry gasped - a sound that came from seemingly nowhere. It wasn't a normal sound for a gasp for air, it sounded more like a man's final gulp before drowning.
"I can't breathe!" she choked, eyes flying wide and pupils at pinpoints, breaking out of Ed's grasp as her hands reached for her neck, "I can't breathe!"
Ed scrambled to settle the nerves Winry's outburst had frayed and he quickly took Winry's fingers away from where they had begun to claw at her neck, "It's okay, you're breathing just fine."
"But there-" the panic-stricken girl took a breath that told her she was wrong. She took a second breath that confirmed it. Reality sunk in and Winry slowly sat back onto her knees, her jaw loose, trying to piece together her chaotic thoughts, wide eyes drawing in the scene around her of a black space loaded with invasive purple eyes, "… Wha… what?"
Ed's hands landed at her ears, settling high on her jaw, pulling her focus forwards to him, "You're okay."
There were no words in the world that anyone could have spoken to express how thankful Ed was for that. He'd revel in the feeling if there wasn't a whole new set of problems literally looking at him.
"What is this?" Winry's exhausted question contained more air than sound, the terrified look in her eyes painfully obvious, "where are we?"
"We're at the Gate," Ed answered, an uncharacteristic tremor to his voice. He didn't know who had done it and he didn't care.
The world sat on pause as the situation sunk in, nothing beyond air breathed and heartbeats spent gave any indication that sound existed in this space. Ed watched while Winry's eyes slowly widened again and she abruptly stopped throwing her attention around the space at the Gate. The girl's focus captured Ed and his left hand felt all the tension in her jaw vanish. Gold eyes witnessed the flabbergasted emotions in the blue gaze staring back at him begin to swell as Winry's hands rose up, gripping the two wrists at her face and pulling them away.
Of all the times and places Winry could have chosen to give Edward such an astounded look and it had to be this one, at the Gate, and it made him smile.
"It's numb," Ed said of the right wrist Winry turned over in her hand, flexing his fingers for her, "I can't feel anything in it."
Edward was usually the one stricken with tongue-tied responses, so it was somewhat relieving to watch Winry struggle to bring her voice out, "But… but how did you…?"
"Um…" Ed paused, wondering how to give an easy interim answer until he did actually theorize a reason for why. Ed didn't know why the Gate had taken his limbs in the first place, since the offer for Alphonse's transmutation was an all-or-nothing transaction. The consolation answer beyond the Gate had boiled down to something unscientific simple like: the Gate simply didn't like him and had taken back what Al had given him out of spite.
"I, uh, think I caused the Gate to malfunction."
An answer that became his most unscientific response to date.
"Oh," Winry did nothing more than sit and stare at the hand she held, her thumb running through Ed's palm slowly, watching how the pressure she placed moved each finger, "about time it screwed up in your favour."
Amidst Central City's late afternoon sun, Brigadier General Mustang stood back and admired the new accommodations Havoc and Hawkeye had commandeered. It was actually a hotel - Mustang was quite impressed. The last building they'd set up shop in had been a half-occupied office and the commanding officer was more than happy to have a proper bed to sleep in again. When they'd first walked through the front doors, Mustang figured out quite quickly that Havoc must have charmed his way in to see the manager or the owner through the two lovely 20-somethings standing at the check-in. He took a mental note to talk with them later.
The change of scenery was a welcome sight after an earthquake had struck Central that morning and driven everyone from their last place of operation when the building had threatened to crumble down on them. Mustang had never experienced the earth shake beneath his feet before - no one in Central had. It was a strangely powerful occurrence that made everyone utterly powerless for the minute or two that it had lasted. On the whole, the city had held up pretty well structurally against the earthquake, though he couldn't say the same for the mindset of the people. It was unfortunate that Mustang's last point of conquest was in the eastern quarter, because that was the oldest part of the city and it took some of the worst damage - mostly emphasized by the mess Old Central had been turned into. The historical district had the unfortunate fate of being in the farthest reaches of the damaged eastern quarter.
Mustang wouldn't acknowledge the fact that they'd lost track of Wrath in the chaos, but frankly he didn't care. Maybe the annoying little twerp was trapped beneath some fallen building - Mustang was okay with that thought. For the brief time he'd had Izumi around, the forthright woman had given him just enough information to be useful before Mustang had lost her again; she'd ran off into the city to help people dig out from the wreckage. Mustang figured that just meant he didn't have to let her berate him about losing the little homunculus.
In the new hotel, the first knowledgeable person Mustang encountered was kind enough to point him towards a room on the third floor. What Mustang found up there was a plain room, nothing fancy or even remotely close to the kind of place officers of his rank were normally given - though it beat living in an office hands down. It had a single queen bed, a night stand, a dresser, a lamp that was lit, two chairs, and a table. Mustang ignored the call of the bed, flipped the deadbolt on his door, and took a long shower instead.
Some point in time after the shower had ended and Roy had passed out on the lovely, lovely bed wearing only a towel, a knock came to his door. Since the commanding officer was too deep in slumber to hear it, a key was inserted and rattled around noisily, as though to make sure any prying ears were aware that no one was breaking in.
"Sir?"
Roy didn't hear Riza's voice. He didn't hear a whole lot of anything until Riza threw his damp dress shirt over his chest - the man had been wearing it for days and it got washed in the shower along with everything else. Roy shivered and was unwillingly taken away from his sleep.
"You have a phone call," she sounded far more gentle than she normally did.
"Take a message," Roy grabbed one of the pillows his head wasn't on and stuck it over his face, wrapping his arms around it to hold it down.
"Mr Tlingum sounds a little desperate to talk to you."
The last time Russell had called with information the twerp had tried to tell Mustang he had to pay for it. Roy swore to everything he believed in that if what this kid had to say wasn't incredible enough to win him the entire city of Central he would personally march in on Xenotime just to ring Russell Tlingum's neck.
"Fine," the pillow was thrown aside, the damp shirt was snatched up, and Riza exited the room to let her superior officer get dressed in his damp attire with some dignity.
When Mustang had emerged from the room, he did so with a yawn and followed Hawkeye blindly down the stairs. They didn't take to the rotunda or the main floor of hotel room doors. Instead, they slipped down a corridor behind the staircase and into a quaint little hall that had five rooms with A1 through A5 marked on the doors.
The door to A3 burst open almost immediately, startling both officers.
"Sir!" Feury called, "I'm so glad you're here, I was worried I'd have to tell them to call back again."
Mustang kind of wished Feury had, "Thank you, Sergeant."
Stepping into the room, Mustang came to realize that this was not a hotel room - it was a conference room.
The white room with beige patterned curtains had a square table with eight chairs, two to each side, a desk with a wheeled chair, and a steno, dip pen, and a pile of paper stacked thick enough that he wouldn't be able to one-hand it out the window. Mustang cringed; he hated paperwork - how did a plague of paperwork manage to follow him around even in a government overthrow? There were wires and cords that snaked through a hole drilled into the neighbouring room; the hole was fresh because the dust was still caught in the baseboards. A telephone sat on the desk, the receiver on off the cradle and resting on the wooden veneer.
With a deep breath and a tired scowl, Mustang marched over and snatched up the phone up.
"What do you want?" he gave his greeting.
"It's about time you answered me!" Russell chirped into the phone, "I was worried the earthquake scrambled your brains out there a bit too much."
Mustang was a few poorly chosen words away from hanging up on the teenager, "You have ten seconds to make this conversation worth my while."
"Have you checked on Old Central yet?"
That was not what Mustang was expecting to hear -Russell Tlingum was a fountain of information on red water, red stones, and other bullshit that came out of Xenotime.
"… Why?"
"We need you to check on Old Central and make sure it's not damaged at all."
Mustang's tired thoughts continued to be stuck on 'why' - he glanced to the clock to find out it was almost 10pm. Even if the officer felt like it, he was not going into Old Central after dark, "Old Central took the quake the hardest. There's a lot of damage in there Mr Tlingum, so I don't need to go gallivanting out there to tell you that whatever you want from there is probably damaged."
The mouthpiece came away from Russell,'s mouth though Mustang could still hear bits of the conversation. The teenager told whoever was listening that Old Central was damaged, and then asked what they should do. A female voice answered, but it was too faint and distorted for Mustang to hear clearly. He pushed the earpiece tight against his ear, trying to pick up the entirety of the conversation, then had to pull it away quickly when Russell's voice came back loudly to the phone.
"We're going to give you directions to a building in Old Central - you need to make sure it's not damaged and seal it off if it is."
Oh, Mustang dearly wished this boy was standing in front of him so he could strangle the 'why' out of him, "Why, Mr Tlingum? And who's 'we'?"
"Me and Roze."
There was that name of the woman from Lior again; Roze'd given them all nightmares from the story she'd told of a woman who tried to seduce her with alchemy and then followed that up with stories of a city that once existed. He wasn't sure if 'Roze' fascinated or frightened him.
"There's a um… church Roze paid homage to in Old Central when she was still the Holy Mother of Lior. It's in the heart of the district, just off the main road. It's the oldest thing there, it towers over everything and all the windows are stained glass designs - you can't miss it. It's sacred and important. It has something that nobody should want… we need you to make sure that it's still intact."
"And if it's not?" Mustang asked.
A long pause came before Russell gave an answer, "Burn it down and bury it in dirt before you leave."
"Why?" the brigadier general would not let that go.
"You're gonna have to trust us on this one, you don't want to know why. But it needs to be done."
Mustang's good eye twitched - even the defective one beneath the eye patch twitched. Maybe he'd break the phone instead since Russell wasn't handy to strangle, "You're going to have to do better than that."
"Show a little faith in us out here Mister Brigadier General and we'll talk about it more later."
The phone line went dead. Mustang had a nearly uncontrollable urge to just rage on the poor telephone. He hated how cryptic everyone was with him about 'important' things he knew nothing about. It made him feel like a pawn and Roy Mustang was so sick of being people's pawn - it was on the list of reasons why he was taking over Central City. He threw the phone down in disgust and stormed out of the room.
"This is the other side of the Gate…?" Winry sat back and looked around once more, "I don't see a gate." She didn't see anything other than the prying eyes and their collection of things.
"I don't know what's wrong," even if Ed couldn't exactly remember it, he knew he'd been here before and there had been Gate doors to push through.
Ed questioned his knowledge of the Gate - something wasn't right, there had to be some reason the doors wouldn't appear. Something had to be different from before. Edward's brow slowly stitched together; the last time he'd been here, albeit briefly, his host body beyond the Gate had died and his actual mind and body had waited for him at the doors, detached from the journey his soul had taken. Ed's soul connected with his remains and he'd pushed his way back into Dante's ballroom. This time around, the whole of Edward Elric had been sent beyond the Gate with nothing left at the doors, and now he was attempting to return.
The seam through Ed's forehead was cut and his brow rose, "I'm gonna have to make the doors appear."
"What?" Winry found it difficult to distract herself from all the prying eyes visually suffocating them, "how?"
Ed's face twisted with a thought and he looked to Winry, a grin flooding life back into his face, "Heh."
"What?" under any other circumstance Winry wouldn't have been as concerned as she was for the look he gave her right then and there.
The grin didn't leave but Ed still gave a disgruntled shrug of his shoulders and a thoughtful 'hmph' while his hands came up and unbuttoned the top four buttons of his dress shirt. Ed flared it open with a swift tug on the collar.
"What are you doing…?" a deep alarm began to ring in Winry's voice.
Ed glanced to the pile of things that had come with them in the rebound, "You took that foot off with cutters, right?"
"… Why?"
"Hang on."
Ed rose to his feet and stepped away from Winry, moving swiftly through the darkness. He easily uncovered Winry's cutters amongst the mess and Ed snatched the tool up emphatically, catching it in his left hand. Golden Elric eyes looked between the two hands he had available, the worn left hand that had helped him on his own for so long and the new right one that still gave Ed no feedback that it even existed. For all he knew it was a loaner and he wouldn't get to keep it when he finally got home.
So… since there was no feeling in it…
Ed flipped open the cutters and placed the sharp tip of the tool down into his right palm, clamped his hand around the tool and swiftly tore it out of his own grasp, slicing his hand open.
"ED," Winry squawked, "what are you doing?"
The eldest of two impulsive brothers dropped the cutters, held his numb right hand out like a cup, and let the blood from the cut pool in his hand. Ed gave a nod to the blood forming, glad to know that his right arm was attached to his circulatory system at least. With the thick red liquid available, Ed dipped his left pinky finger into his right palm and took the finger to his chest.
"EDWARD ELRIC, what the hell are you doing!" Winry scrambled forwards on her hands and knees, "STOP. STOP RIGHT NOW."
The drawing on his chest was finished before Winry arrived and Ed knelt down to meet her - spilling his hand and wiping off his palm on his pants before grabbing Winry's wrists as she reached out to beat the image off of him.
"Let go of me! What are you doing?" The panic in her voice tightened the tension in Ed's shoulders but didn't cause him to let go.
"Win… remember I told you once…" his thoughts caused his eyes to glance away while he wondered how to word this, "that a transmutation circle has no direction; as in it has no top, no bottom, no start and no end, because it's constantly flowing with energy. It can never be upside down or right side up. It picks up the material provided and flows within the natural energy of the world," he eyeballed Winry who looked like she was going to tackle him if he didn't let go, "but, when you put a transmutation circle on a life form that already has a flowing circuit, like a circulatory system, it's properties can change, depending on what you want to do and how you draw it. You can establish that up and down, because you can move with or against a natural flow."
Winry gave him a heavy, wary eye, ready do everything in her power to attempt to overwhelm Ed if whatever he was getting at gave her no choice but to stop him.
"An encircled, five-point star, when presented with a single point upwards, can be used to represent symmetry of the human body. Head up top, two arms at the side, two legs at the bottom - never ending and constantly flowing. But, when you turn it and have the two points 'upwards', you invert the connection to the body's systems, go against the flow, and the transmutation's properties change to something else entirely."
Ed watched as Winry stared wordlessly at the symbol drawn on his chest; he'd drawn the same symbol on himself that Dante had drawn on Diana: the encircled 'upside down' pentagram - exactly as he'd just described.
"It connects the 'here to there' and the 'there to here'."
"No, no… no…" Winry gave a sharp yank on her arms but it was a futile effort - Ed would not let go, "what does that circle do?"
"Alchemy," Ed narrowed an eye in thought, "when I clap my hands. The Gate had to stitch us back together to bring us here, so I should be able to open the Gate from this side, since this is where all the power is stored."
"Yeah right," Winry glared at him, "what happens to you when you do that?"
"We go home."
"Bullshit," she snapped, not liking that he was so calm and collected over this. Winry again fought to get Ed to release her wrists to no avail, "you have a chronic problem of doing inherently stupid things with alchemy, so you are going to tell me what will happen to you."
"Winry, it's not important," Ed protested, his tone hardening as he held Winry at bay, "I need you to trust me on this one."
Ed was surprised to find she actually did calm once he'd spoken, but he quickly came to realize her relaxed body and fallen shoulders didn't come from calm, they came from resignation. Ed peered in uncertainly, watching Winry's head sag forwards as he gingerly began to return her wrists. He took a breath to speak but Winry shut Ed's voice down when her arms were abruptly snatched from his grasp.
"The last time I trusted you and Al to do the right things for yourselves with alchemy, you did something that meant you would never come back. If the Gate didn't think you were fun to play with, if it just didn't happen to be this way, you'd be dead. We wouldn't be having this conversation."
The weight of the other world's incarceration chains crashed down over Edward's shoulders and they pinned him to the side of the Gate where he sat. How strange it was for Ed to be reminded that he had done that, because when he'd woken up alive on the other side he'd been able to negate responsibility for his actions. It had been a long time since he'd had to look at the frame of mind he'd been in that day.
"Winry…"
She looked up at him abruptly.
"You didn't sacrifice yourself for your brother knowing you'd end up in this alternate world and be able to fight to get home. You sacrificed yourself; you did what you did for Al knowing you would die. You decided your life would be over. There'd be no more. You wouldn't come home. Ever. Regardless of who or what it was for, you were okay with being dead and not living anymore."
There wasn't a set of purple eyes in the darkness that could look at Ed and reach in so far, grab hold so hard, and twist so angrily like these blue ones did. The feeling was like a clenched fist that had been lodged in his throat; Ed felt himself choke on it.
"That's great for you, if you're dead you don't have to deal with not having you around anymore! Yeah, what you did gave us Al back and that's a miracle in itself and I cannot… I cannot wish that you hadn't done that, because if I did then Al would be dead instead. I can't pick your life over Al's or Al's over yours… so I just think what you two did was wrong." Winry's words paused for a moment, the look in her eye imprisoning Edward's ability to put any of his thoughts into the spaces within her statement. "What I see from you isn't always that you think so much of everyone else around you, but that you think so little of yourself in the process. You're the only one who doesn't seem to think you have any value to the people around you and you make yourself dispensable."
There wasn't anything in the world Ed could have done against painful words spoken by a moderately trembling voice that fought on, beyond listen to what they had to say.
"I trust you with a lot of things Edward Elric, but I don't trust you to always make the right decisions for yourself when it comes to alchemy… and that's your fault."
Winry left the verbally crushed feeling as a jagged piece of shrapnel in Ed's throat when her voice let go and he was forced to swallow down no matter how badly it hurt. Uncertain golden eyes fell to the wayside, shoulders collapsing, head bowing, sitting on his knees. Like a weary soldier slumped at the bottom of his biggest hill to climb, Ed looked into the two flesh hands that he opened, palms up, comparing the clean but journey-worn left hand to the bloodied opposing palm.
"I don't regret what I did for Al. I've never looked back and wondered what my other options would have been and I'm not going to. That's my decision and I have to live with that, so I can't ask you to trust me with this," The thing Edward had found about talking with Winry was that, unlike himself, she rarely looked down or away to shield what she was feeling. Winry always looked right at him when she spoke and that somehow managed to make it impossible to doubt her. Ed swallowed hard and picked his head up to look at Winry, "but I don't have any way of telling you how badly I want to go home, be at home, live at home, do everything I do and don't at home, and do all of the things in life that I haven't let myself do because I wasn't home. Right now I know what I can do to get us home like I'd promised - both of us - and I've tried for a long time to get there… so I just… want to go home. Whatever you're afraid of isn't going to happen. Really."
A hesitant pause preceded Winry's quiet voice for her last concern, "Will you be alright?"
"Yes."
Winry's lower lip slipped into her teeth, "Okay then."
Ed pursed his lips and exhaled slowly, rebuilding his posture as he straightened himself, feeling a little short of breath while he spoke, "Your leg doesn't hurt that much here, does it?"
"No," Winry admitted, eyeballing the wrapped damage on her left limb, "it feels kinda gross, and it does hurt, but not like it did."
"That's the Gate - being here is like a blip in time," Ed pulled to his feet, ignoring the intrusive eyes that continued to watch them. He reached down and pulled Winry up to her feet, "It's gonna hurt when we're back."
Winry gave a slow nod as she worked her balance onto the one good leg, holding onto Ed's shoulders as he turned and offered his back for her to climb on to.
"And you'll be pretty nauseous," Ed gave Winry a bounce on his back to settle her in place once she'd wrapped her arms around his neck again, "this isn't going to feel good when we get back… at all. It's probably going to feel like how we're supposed to feel after going through the rebound."
Even though he had two hands this time around, both of them were needed, so Winry wiggled around uncomfortably until her legs wrapped around Ed's waist as best she could, "But we'll be home, right?"
"Yup," Ed nodded.
Winry's arms tightened around his neck and she put her chin down, "Then I'll be fine."
Both weary travellers journeying between this world and that looked around, staring back at the countless sets of eyes that bore down on them. Winry's scowl at their lecherous invasion was tainted with nervous concern but was protected by Edward's glare assaulting whatever dared stand in his way. The hungry eyes hardened at his challenge and Ed chose to offer a cocky, triumphant smirk in return, inviting them to watch and see what he had in store.
This time Ed stood on two good legs with Winry on his back, the idea of running in fear no longer part of the equation. Giving a few sharp shakes of his head to clear it, Ed shifted with Winry on his back, slapped his palms over his thighs, straightened himself up, and threw his hands out to his sides amidst the pitch. His chest expanded with a deep breath and Edward Elric let the prying purple eyes eat his provocative sneer.
"This side of the Gate can KISS MY ASS."
Ed clapped his hands.
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... Second Half ...