Behind the Gate
A/N: So, I have to admit, this is kind of an extended headcanon, which means there's not a ton of plot and the characters may be OOC, but the main point is the idea. The point was I wanted to explore what exactly happened when Ed destroyed his Gate and whether there were any secondary consequences. This was the result, I hope you like it.
I have no idea what genre this is, so I just put it in mystery/suspense. If you have a better idea of what it is, let me know.
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist.
Ed pushed himself off the ground slowly, rubbing his head and scowling up at his friend.
"What was that one for?" he mumbled, picking up the wrench that had practically knocked him out. He held it up towards the balcony. "Do you want this back or can I hide it somewhere far away?"
His childhood friend glared back at him. "That was for running off again. Al, Granny and I have been worried sick. You can't just go off by yourself and not tell anyone. You've barely been back three weeks and you're already trying to leave again! What were you even doing? You were gone all week!"
Ed grimaced, looking at the ground guiltily. "I…had some questions I wanted to answer."
Winry sighed, knowing that that was all she'd get out of him. "Well as long as you're home, feel free to help with dinner." She started back towards the door. "Oh, and I do want that wrench back."
Ed allowed himself a small laugh. Winry always stayed the same. He slipped the wrench into his pocket and started walking towards the front door of the house. He would eventually tell Winry where he had gone. He would tell Winry and Al and Granny and probably Mustang and Teacher. It was a big discovery, after all.
After dinner that night, everyone gathered in the family room. It had been clear to everyone that Ed had had something big on his mind, and they expected to hear about it.
It took him some time to start. They sat quietly for a long few minutes while Ed simply looked at them and they stared back expectantly. Finally, he began.
"I've been thinking recently about how I destroyed my Gate," he said. "Because as much as it made sense when I first decided to do it, the actual concept shouldn't have worked at all."
Everyone caught their breath. The last time Ed had questioned the limits of alchemy, he had lost his arm, leg and brother.
"If alchemy comes from the gate, then what is alchemy? Is it a power source? Is it some creature that demands sacrifice in order to do our bidding? And if so, then why is it the gate that gives us this power?
"Well, I decided that to figure this out I had to study the origin of alchemy. Al and I studied it a little bit, to see if it would help get our bodies back, but it didn't seem to help, so we abandoned it. Lucky thing we did, too, because we would have been disappointed. The thing is is that there's practically nothing written about it. I've been in the library at Central all week and people just don't talk about the origin of alchemy. There are mentions of the Gate, seeing as there had to be some people who were crazy enough to do human transmutation back then, but that's about it. It was never studied.
"And that doesn't make sense. Normally, when people have skills, we know why. People who are flexible have stretched out muscles. People with good aim have the finer motor skills or, like Lieutenant Hawkeye, they train themselves. With alchemy it should be the same but it's not.
"Well, without any actual books on the origin of alchemy, I decided that I'd just have to break it down myself. It's not that simple, but I think I've figured it out.
"First, there's the issue of Truth. When I met Truth he identified himself as Truth, the World, sometimes God, and you (meaning me, of course). But what's wrong with that statement? Well, God is supposed to be a lot of things. A few of those things are omniscient and omnipotent. But. When I asked Truth if he could show me more of what was beyond the gate, he said 'I cannot'. When I asked why, he just told me he could only show me what I paid for. What can we get from this? Truth isn't omnipotent. He relies on what we sacrifice to do things. Therefore? Truth isn't God.
"So what is he? We'd have to go with one of his other definitions. But this is where things are a little simpler. Because Truth only said he was called God and the World and Truth. Which means that if he isn't God, he probably isn't those things either. So, I should stop calling him Truth. Who is he then? Well what's the one thing he called him self for sure? Me. He pointed at me and said 'I am also you.'"
Winry interrupted. "But how can he be you?"
"Good question. We can assume that Truth (I'll keep calling him that for the sake of not confusing everyone. If I started calling him 'me' and 'I' that would just be weird) does not have my same viewpoints. He didn't judge that what I had thought was equivalent exchange for my mother was equivalent, so we obviously don't have the same idea of worth.
"Then there's the way he addressed me. He called me a 'silly alchemist who didn't know his place'. Unless Truth is a hypocrite, that means that he does know his place. And, judging from what he did to me, his place is to monitor my use of alchemy and take whatever it is I need to give.
"Finally there's the issue of what happened to the limbs that he took. When he took my arm and leg, he didn't just take them and hold them there while I was gone, my arm and leg literally became his arm and leg. What does this mean? He and I are the same person, but in different realities. There's no way a limb could just attach to some random person and keep growing the way my arm did.
"So I've come to a conclusion. Truth is a different version of me. More specifically, he is the version of me that guards my Gate. A gatekeeper, so to speak. My own personal doppelganger who takes a part of me every time he opens my Gate."
Al frowned. "But how does this change anything? It just means that Truth isn't who we thought he was."
"There you go!" Ed yelled defiantly. "That's the problem. So what? So what if Truth isn't the person we thought he was? But, there's a problem with that sentence. 'He isn't the person we thought he was'. We're using singular pronouns. But if the Truth that I saw was me, then the Truth you saw was you. The Truth Mustang saw was him. The Truth Teacher saw was her. My Truth certainly didn't have Teacher's organs.
"This means there's more than one Truth. One personal Truth for one person, guarding one personal Gate."
"And this is important because…" Winry interjected.
"Oh! I'm glad you asked!" Ed cried, pointing ecstatically at Al. "Where was his Truth?"
There was a moment of silence.
"Where was my…Truth?" Al repeated.
"Yes! Your body sat in front of your gate for years, conversing with my Truth, waiting for me to come back, yearning for your soul. So that begs the question: where was your Truth.
"I think I have an answer. When my Truth took my limbs, they appeared on his body. Which means that when your Truth took your whole body, your whole body appeared on him. And for the brief amount of time that he took your soul, he had that, too."
They all stared at him.
"So… where is he now?" Ed asked, looking around expectantly.
No one answered.
Ed almost cackled, thrilled at his own genius. "Al's still got him, of course! He never left! When I got my arm back, my arm dissolved off of Truth's arm. But when I dragged Al out, nothing like that happened. In fact." Ed was practically bouncing. "No one opened the gate for us. It just opened, all by itself."
"I thought your Truth opened the gate for you." Winry said. "That's what you said."
"What my Truth said was, 'the back door's over there.' He never opened Al's Gate. He probably didn't have a right to, anyway. It was Al's Gate, not mine. But when we needed to leave, Al's gate just opened for us."
"So you're saying I've still got my Truth inside me."
"Yup! And I think I've figured out how we managed it, too. Because when Father tried to 'hold down God' as he called it, he was basically trying to do the same thing. He tried to bring Truth back to earth with him. He had to use countless human lives to do it, too." Ed grimaced at the memory. "But we don't have to do that. Al is just holding Truth inside him, effortlessly. He doesn't even know he's there! And so I've figured out how that worked. When I sacrificed my Gate to get Al back, my Truth said 'take what you want'. I literally bought Al's Truth by destroying my Gate."
"I thought you said that your Truth didn't have power over my Gate." Al interrupted.
"Well, that's kind of nasty. I haven't quite figured that bit out yet, but I think my Truth may have used part of my payment to pay your Truth so that he would stay with you. It's like some kind of double transaction."
"Well, what does that mean for me?" Al asked hesitantly. "Do I have control over my own Gate?"
"Possibly. As your own gatekeeper, I wouldn't be surprised if you could open and close it at will. In fact, judging by the fact that Father pulled that stunt where he transported all of us to him by pulling us through our Gates, you could probably use yours to travel wherever you wanted. No equivalent exchange. You own the market. You call the shots. You own the Truth."
"I'm not sure I like that."
"Well, it's not as if you've become God or anything. We've already established that Truth isn't God. But you're more like dad was. He could bypass equivalent exchange because he has a philosopher's stone. You can bypass it because you are the person who does the exchange. It's like real life. The manager gets the best pay. The owner gets the best deals in his own shop. The dealer always wins at poker. That sort of stuff."
Ed looked around at his friends and family. "Well? That's what I've been up to. What do you think?"
"I think." Granny Pinako said, speaking for the first time, "that you're an idiot if you expect us to believe that that is all you've figured out."
Winry and Al looked at her, shocked. It seemed like quite a bit of information to them, especially after what now seemed to be such a short amount of time.
But Ed was grinning. "There may have been something else."
~End part 1
Right, there it is. My extended headcanon. There is a second part that may come soon and may come in a while; depending on how much time I have to write (time is a struggle). Originally, I was going to have this play out into a full plot, but I'm starting to realize that that would be super complicated and I'd have to introduce a ton of OCs, many of whom are very near and dear to my heart so I'm not sure if I want to put them in here. I think I'll keep this to two parts and end it in kind of a Socratic dialogue kind of way, where everyone realizes that they still have a lot to learn about the world.
Feel free to comment, and let me know if I've left any holes. I can not-so-subtly try and fill in any holes you notice in the next section. Though if you find a lot (which you probably will), I may not address all of them.