A/N: I posted this to tumblr a while back, then did a little editing and decided to put it here, too. It's definitely one of the stranger things I've ever written, and it's pretty depressing, so be forewarned.

(As a side note to those who know me on tumblr/discord and wonder why I just up and vanished: I decided to completely drop off of a lot of social media in an attempt to get a hold of my life, at least until Thanksgiving, and to be honest it's been a great decision. I miss some of the people I used to talk to, but overall a lot of the emotional problems I've been struggling with have lessened and my time management has become a lot better. I may turn up after Thanksgiving and may not, but I'll probably show up to post some fics every once in a while, so there's that.)

Anyway, on with the story!

Ed only came to see them a few times.

The very first time, Edward Elric stepped through thin air into Roy Mustang's office, causing the newly promoted Brigadier General to drop his scalding hot coffee directly onto his lap.

"Hey Colonel," Ed said casually, blood seeping from his promised day wounds. "Long time no see."

It had indeed been a long time. The last time Roy had seen Edward Elric, he had been alchemically broken down to be transported into Father's lair, and the last thing he had ever heard from the boy was a final, desperate clap after the chaos of the promised day battle. Moments later, Al had returned, screaming, in his flesh body, crying out for a brother who had surrendered himself entirely to the gate in order to fulfill a promise.

That had been a little over a year ago, now.

Roy didn't bother correcting him on rank. "Fullmetal, how are you here?"

"As it turns out, being a part of the gate means that it actually listens to me sometimes. It said that I could come see you. I don't have long, though. Next time I should be able to aim for a more useful time. See if you can get Al in here. I'd like to see him."

And then he was gone, leaving the Brigadier General wondering if he had dreamt up the whole encounter.

But several months later, with Alphonse Elric in the office, Edward appeared again.

"Al! I'm glad I got the time right- the gate's a little hard to understand sometimes." He grinned, like he hadn't been gone for two years, like it was normal that he looked exactly the same as he did on the fateful day he abandoned everyone who cared about him.

"I found out something cool about the gate, Al. As it turns out, people have been giving themselves over to the gate for centuries. There's hundreds of us in here. I'm the first one for a while, though, so I'm a little out of the loop. It's hard to differentiate between them sometimes…"

A brief expression of confusion crossed his face, and he looked at the occupants of the room as if he had just noticed their presence. Team Mustang stared back at him, still frozen in shock as they had been from the first moment he appeared. Alphonse was the first to move, approaching his older brother as if he were a loaded gun.

"Brother…?"

The expression of confusion vanished as if it had never existed, a smile brighter and more carefree than any he had ever worn on earth taking over his face. "Al! It's good to see you again."

And then he was gone, and would be for another several years, until he appeared in the Rockbell kitchen, inky black hands trailing off of him that had not been there before. Still with the same promised day injuries, still the same height and build.

There was something wrong with his eyes. In all the years that Alphonse had known his brother, he had never lost the fire in his eyes. Even in the horrific moments after the disastrous transmutation, there had been fire.

There was no fire now.

Not because he had given up. There was no hopelessness in his eyes, no defeat, no sign that the fire had somehow been forcibly extinguished.

There was madness, now. Madness that sparked with all the ferocity of flames but lacked the clarity and direction. Ed smiled wide in a smile that Alphonse had only ever seen on the disembodied face of the creature they had called Truth.

"Did you know that everyone else in here has merged together into one consciousness? Did you know that when Truth says that it's also you it's because Truth is beyond time and actually contains fragments of your soul that existed both before and after your death? Did you know-? Did you know-? Did you know-?" Edward spoke quickly, staring right through Al as if he wasn't even there, asking question after question. Winry stood in the doorway, horrified tears streaming down her face.

Ed abruptly focused, staring so intensely into Al's eyes that the younger boy almost backed away. "Al I found out how I could have gotten your body back without giving myself up to the gate."

"Really? How?" If it could get his body back, maybe it could get Ed back as well.

Edward gave him a strange look. Nothing that had made him Alphonse's beloved brother existed in that look. "What will you give me if I tell you?"

Alphonse didn't respond, and when he looked up, Ed was gone once again.

The last time they saw him, he appeared in front of everyone, at a small dinner to celebrate Roy's rise to Fuhrer. He practically fell out of the air onto Gracia Hughes' dining room floor. His limbs dripped with the inky hands of the gate. Some led back to wherever he had stepped from, but others crept out from under his own skin.

The fire had returned to his eyes, but it was dying. It drowned in tears of terror and hopelessness.

"I don't want to stay here anymore," he said, words echoing with voices that did not belong to him. "I don't want to become a part of this."

He ripped at the black limbs trailing off his skin as if they were the only ropes holding him back from his friends and family. Almost in one motion, team Mustang, Alphonse, and even Gracia Hughes stood and rushed to his aid. They reached out to him, tried to pull at his hands or touch his face in comfort, but he was forever just out of reach.

"Don't make me go back," he begged, though he wasn't speaking to them. "I don't want to be absorbed. I don't want…I don't…we don't want to be a part of us."

Mustang steadied the room with a look, and then focused his gaze on his former subordinate.

"What can we do, Edward?" he asked, relishing the opportunity to address the boy by name to his face, wishing beyond belief for some answer that he could give them, some solution that they hadn't thought of and tested already in their quest to find him again.

Edward's face softened, the tears spilling over his cheeks darkening into ink-like stains. "There's nothing you can do," he admitted, letting his eyes slip closed. "It's over."

Ed's tears were black, now, dark portals into the void of the gate, and when he opened his eyes they were blank. There was no fire, and no madness, either. They were empty of all consciousness, or perhaps broken under the force of so many.

"We never forget a debt, Roy Mustang," the thing that used to be Edward Elric said in Truth's voice, eyes only for the military commander in front of him. A few feet away, Alphonse sobbed, but Edward did not turn to look. "With Truth as our Lord, we do not renege on that which we owe."

Alchemical lightning flashed around his hand, and he dropped five hundred and twenty cenz into Mustang's hand and vanished, the inky hands covering him entirely in the last moments like dirt over a coffin.

They never saw him again.