Disclaimer: Don't own

Author's Note: Been watching The Producers a lot lately. I love that movie, but the song's start to get annoying when they're running through your head 24/7. My TV exploded a few weeks back (I'm not exaggerating here) and I finally got a new used one.

Idea for this…came from the Wolverine comic of Marvel's Civil War.

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The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary. ~Ashleigh Brilliant

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Roy Mustang's always been a dreamer. He dreamed of human things, of peace and families no longer getting torn apart; he dreamed in logic and reality.

He didn't dream like Edward Elric. Edward who always dreamed in everything that was just tinged with human, but was nothing short of the things of myths. He dreamed in legends and remembered smiles, all laced with his nightmares lurking in the shadows.

Every now and then, Roy worries about Ed; about how, wherever he is, he'll dream up something that even the great Full Metal Alchemist can't even accomplish. Then he'll look at Al and know that maybe there really wasn't anything that Ed couldn't do.

Because Ed had seen this smiling, ruddy-haired child—well, Al wasn't a child now at fourteen and God, had it really been so long since he'd met the both of them?—inside a hollow armor with soulfire eyes. And Al still has those eyes. They don't glow that soft, pale red, but there's no missing the soulfire that, even as Roy watches, flares in gray eyes.

And Roy still dreams.

In his dreams, he'll sometimes be in a horribly stark, white place. Whiter than a hospital even, something that he hadn't thought was possible. And there will be a large, terrible, ornate door just sitting there. He's seen flashes of the place when he sparks his flames to life.

And leaning on the door is a young man with honey gold hair in a ponytail, watching him with too-calm amber eyes. Even with the sharpened angles of maturity, Roy still recognizes that face. He couldn't ever forget it.

What he doesn't recognize are the clothes. Plain and nondescript. A white dress shirt with brown trousers. It didn't suit this person at all.

"Edward?"

"Hey, Mustang." The familiar voice has deepened a bit and smoothed out.

"What're you doing in…wherever we are? Where are we, by the way?"
"You're at the Gate. As for why I'm here," Ed shrugged. "I can only guess. Maybe it's because I've been here so many times that I left a piece of myself here. Or maybe it's because I'm what you associate with the Gate and death or rebirth or whatever, if I did die."

"You don't know whether you're dead or not?"
A slight, ironic upturning of the younger man's lips that isn't quite a smile, but Roy doesn't really know what to call it. "It's a nightmare where I'm stuck now. I don't know if it's Hell or what, but it seems like it sometimes, so I think the possibility's open."

Now that Roy thinks about Ed's explanation, the second one makes more sense to him. It hadn't been a conscious decision, but he'd never, even remotely, considered the possibility that Ed had died. Because Ed was passion and fire personified and you can't kill fire and passion. And whenever Roy thinks of the Gate, he can picture this enormous door and Ed standing boldly in front of it, defiance written in his posture and on his expressive face.

"And am I dead?"

Edward blinked, possibly in surprise. "You're old, but you're not that old, Mustang. Nah, I think you're dreaming, though why you'd be dreamin' of me, I've no idea. Maybe you're just a pervert."

Mustang's about to retort when he sees a familiar smirk. He knows Ed picked it up from him, whether he realizes it or not. And he wants to continue the banter, wants to have a conversation like they used to before everything went to hell, even if it was full of insults and accusations. But he can't continue the banter because shadows are straining the edges of his vision and the last thing he remembers when he wakes up is that Ed's eyes are exactly like Al's in terms of soulfire.

And as he sits up in bed, breathing too fast and not fast enough, Roy thinks that he hates being a dreamer.

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A/N: I didn't know how it would come out and I don't quite know how I feel about this one. Hm. Odd. But I love oddities. They make life interesting.