Disclaimer:Don't own anything.

Author's Note: There are some spoilers for Chapter 102 of the manga, just warning you now.

-~-~-~-~

He who fears something gives it power over him. ~Moorish Proverb

-~-~-~-~

He's seen this place before, briefly in his sparks, in explosions over desert sands and he wishes he hasn't. Because no place was meant to be so stark white in its nothingness, in its terrifying everythingness. He doesn't want to turn around because he knows what he'll find, that door so simple in design with its sketches that would tell you the secrets of the universe, had you been able to bear to look at it in something more than flashes.

But his body, not wanting to listen to that tight clutch that Fear has on his heart, on his lungs, on his very soul, turns anyway; turns to see that non-being with it's too-wide smile, standing (could he be standing? There felt like there was no floor) with a posture so familiar that it looks like he could be looking at another being; a little shorter who taunts his dreams with sly-eyed looks and this not-human laughter because those too-bright eyes have seen that terrible door without flinching, have seen the secrets of the universe. Has known them since he was eleven years old.

And his stomach's dropping faster than he thinks his body is and it's the most curious sensation. Like being stretched across a drum and being wrapped too tightly in smothering blankets except that it's not warm where he is…wherever he is.

"Colonel?!" He knows that voice. Knows it from that sly-eyed boy with his secrets in his dreams. "You okay, Colonel?"

"Fullmetal…" Because Fullmetal doesn't laugh in a way that's not human with his secrets in his dreams(nightmares). He laughs like a teenager and grins like a young man. "Where are we?"

"In the boss's lair. What happened to you?" He can feel Fullmetal's hands hovering, worrying, but not actually touching him.

He doesn't know why he tells him. Perhaps it's because, out of anyone, Fullmetal would understand the weight of the words. "Empty white world with a massive gate."

You're being jerked backwards and forwards and Fullmetal's voice pitches an octave as he checks you over for missing limbs. You want to tell him not to worry (but you have no right; he's the keeper of the secrets. He knows what it is to lose an arm. A leg.) but the words out of your mouth address the icy cold of Fear that refuses to flee. "What are you doing? Are you with me, Fullmetal?"

You can feel the weight of what you know is a tawny stare directed at you. "What're you talking about?" His voice is touched with hesitation.

"I can't see a thing. Can you see any lights?" And you think that there is something wrong because Fullmetal can't see in the dark (not that you're aware of), but Fear is still clutching at you and it's taken over, though your war instincts are back, keeping you calm outwardly (Can't show weakness to the enemy. Can't let them see that you're cracked 'cause they'll push and break you and it's an awful long way to fall) But realization is setting in and Fear is often more powerful than instincts. "I…can't…see?"

You force yourself onto shaking knees (You haven't had shaking knees since you were fourteen, about to kiss a girl for the first time. Lilibeth was her name, back home where there were no sly-eyed not-children and plenty of light) and try to make your way through the nothing-everything landscape that's a negative of the Gate-world. You're falling forward and it's so slow but too fast and you want to tell the world to stop because you're not a kid anymore (Not fourteen with Lilibeth and her cornflower eyes) and isn't that what growing up is? When you have some measure of control and you know what to do? That's what your mom used to tell you (when she was alive. When she still laughed and it sounded like the countryside and you didn't know that the countryside had a specific sound).

"Have you gone blind?" You don't know that voice and you don't want to know it because it sounds like an echo of the not-being.

You don't want to answer because you're trying not to see anything in this blindness. Because now that you're peeking at the world through your fingers, you can see two sparks of a cold fire and you know you've seen that fire before. It's not one you've conjured because your fire doesn't burn cold, but you've seen that fire in the depths of a helmet that spoke with a polite and kind voice.

But the realization that Al hasn't spoken yet makes the Fear drop a little further in your stomach because Al was always with his brother. They were Ed-and-Al, never apart. Sides of a coin, a matched pair. There's crashing and steady hands on your shoulder. They're not hands you recognize, but they're feminine hands.

"I don't know." A woman's voice that sounded not far from his ear. "It's like he's unconscious."

So that was what had happened to him. But Al couldn't be unconscious. He's spirit attached to steel with blood and passion and brotherly love.

And Fullmetal's yelling in the way that he only yells for his brother. "Al?!"

And there are two more sparks in his vision, the same cold flame. Soulfire, he thinks. But why four? He understood two, even vaguely. One for each eye. But four made no sense. But then he hears Ed's worrying voice and something's tugging at the edge of his mind. He had forgotten that Ed, with all of his passion and vibrancy, still had his brother's eyes.

Soulfire eyes.

That other voice, that terrible echo of not-beings and wide smiles in faces that aren't there, says something about a fifth one. You can't see in his direction, can't see in his direction because all the soulfire sparks disappear in the direction of that terrible voice.

And you can only think that that can't be a good thing.

-/-/-/-/

Author's note: Fear the brain-child of a too-long day and an evil Chem teacher who hates me.