Title: Home Is Where The Heart Is
Author: Mon Petit Pierrot
Fandom: Full Metal Alchemist
Rating: T
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Summary: That pleading voice was enough to give him pause. He turned back halfway and saw Roy, his brother, their desperate faces, and doubts crowded his mind once more.

Note: This idea has been in my head for about a year and I've never gotten around to writing it. It's sort of an alternate ending for CoS. I really like how this turned out.

Disclaimer: This shall be mine, this shall be the new ending of CoS! ...It's not going to happen? Damn.

To Jazzy, for persuading me that this was fine the first time. I was a bit concerned.

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Home Is Where The Heart Is

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"Ed, please stay."

That pleading voice was enough to give him pause. He turned back halfway and saw Roy, his brother, their desperate faces, and doubts crowded his mind once more. The desire to stay home, instead of hopelessly wandering a foreign world that he could barely navigate and hardly survive, was overwhelming.

"I can't," he murmured. "I can't...I can't leave the Gate open."

"If we seal it from this side, then that wouldn't be a problem!" Al protested, fighting against Roy's hold, fighting to stand by his brother's side as he had for years.

He could see the confusion in his hazel eyes, see that he didn't understand why he was staying. He couldn't even explain it himself.

"I can't, Al," he repeated. "Those people are defenseless. I can't abandon them when I have the ability to help. Please, don't force me to choose."

"You would rather protect people not of your country?" Roy's voice was casual, but his eyes were fiery with disappointment. "What of the damages here? The dead? The homeless?"

"I'm sorry," he whispered, stepping back into the shadows in the pit of the flying contraption. "The Gate can never be used as a weapon again."

"Ed..."

He shifted his feet and slapped his palms together, partially deconstructing the plane and falling farther away from the colonel and his brother. He locked gazes with Al first and shared a sad smile, wishing he could say sorry. He glanced quickly at Roy, and could not tear himself away from the bottomless depths. He felt as though something was being torn away, and he could do nothing to stop it.

He bit his lip and forced himself to turn away.

He ran inside the damaged plane and wrestled with the unfamiliar controls to straighten the machine, sailing unevenly through the air. His vision blurred, but he scrubbed his face with one gloved hand as he struggled to steer the machine into the maw of the Gate.

Roy's voice echoed in his head, heavy and slow, before white blanked his vision.

He opened his eyes to a shadowy ceiling, the same bland texture that he had been staring at for the better part of three years, completely aware of the soft tears sliding down his cheeks.

"Only a dream," he whispered, haunted by the fading resonance of Roy's voice. "It was only a dream..."

Not for the first time, he wished that he had taken the second choice.

But this was reality.

And it would never change.