"He who was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them and drew near to Jesus to kiss Him.
But Jesus said to him, 'Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?'"

-Luke 22:47-48 NKJV

Edward had tried to ignore Noa's words, push them aside, filter them out of his mind. He hated the sound of each one, like a poison that seeped into an open wound and infected it, bringing a fresh wave of pain that curled around his heart and settled in his stomach.

He stood in the snow-covered street in the southern part of Munich and stared up at the small Lutheran church that was tucked away on a side road not far from the apartment he shared with Alfons, and now with Noa as well, trying to let the snow muffle her words so that it was only her voice, a faraway and distant background melody to his thoughts.

It was understandable, really, why she would ask him questions about his home, his world, his family. She had none of those things of her own; she was a Romanian, a wanderer, and her own sisters had sold her and betrayed her without a second thought. But every time she asked, it reminded him that he wasn't home, that he was so far away from what was left of his family that his family may as well be dead.

He's not dead, I couldn't have failed, not after the time I've had to spend here.

She realized after only a couple attempts at getting an answer that he wasn't really listening, and she fell silent; he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, noticing the quiet. She looked at him shyly. "I'm sorry." Her voice was always quiet, timid, not really certain of itself, another quirk that was understandable. Her posture changed, her head tilted to the side curiously. "Why did we stop here?"

Edward turned his head and looked at her for a second, before shaking his head. "Nothing. Come on, let's get home. Alfons will have dinner ready soon."

Noa stepped around in front of him, between himself and the church. His gaze followed her with a sort of detached curiosity. "Is there something special about this church?" she asked, watching him with that look that somehow felt like it saw clear through him, into all the darkest parts of his mind.

He frowned; of course there was something about the church, it looked just like the last building he'd been in on the surface back home, it was the other side of his rabbit hole and every time he passed it it danced through his mind to go in and see if he could find the way home in there somehow. "It's just a church," he replied with a shrug, starting to turn away.

"Something from home?"

He froze and looked at her, then frowned. "Would you drop that?" he asked, tone quieted and pained. Stop reminding him of home, stop reminding him of Alphonse, precious Alphonse who was so far out of his reach, his holy light that would never shine on him again-

"If you find the way back," she started, then hesitated, looking down at the ground nervously, "will you take me with you?"

Silence as he processed what she said, his thoughts dancing in a never ending array, lines stretching to eternity, analyzing, understanding, breaking down and forming replies, reactions that his mind understood in colors, images and shapes but never in words. Finally, he shrugged and chuckled. "If there's a way." If. A word he'd never let himself acknowledge when he was there, a word he refused to see when he first was trying to find the path home, and now a word that hung heavily over him. He looked back up at the church, at the cross that hung over the front doors, his mind tracing a serpent coiling up and around the arms of it. "Sure."

Her hands were warm against his cheeks suddenly, fingers just barely brushing his skin and he looked down at her in surprise. Her lips pressed against his, the contact light and shy. He stood still, watching her, only his mind racing to react to what she was doing. She pulled away and opened her eyes, watching him carefully, waiting some sort of reaction, but he gave none. Slowly, her expression melted into something he thought might be sympathetic understanding. "The man in the armor?" she whispered quietly.

He frowned, nerves sounding alarms that jangled up his spine loudly and he tensed. "My brother," he snapped quickly, trying to kill the rising heat in his cheeks.

She blinked uncomprehendingly a moment, then slowly her eyes widened. "He's yo-"

"So don't go making any stupid assumptions," Edward cut her off quickly, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Let's get back before dinner gets cold."

"How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?'"

-Psalms 13:1 NRSV

Alphonse had thought he'd found his brother the day his soul made it to the other side of the Gate, temporarily spanning the distance that had separated them for two long years. He thought he'd talked to him, by the side of a river, a river that was foreign and unknown to him, and yet, somehow it felt like home there. It was like it had been back home, or back at Master's house, just the two of them, their words, the unspoken tenderness, the secrets only they shared swept away and hidden from the world by the waters.

When he came across the Gate, following his brother back from the battle, refusing to go another day without him, Alphonse began to wonder if he had been wrong about that. He began to wonder who they had buried at that funeral the day before- a stranger with his face, or his brother.

He hadn't hugged him once; he'd hardly smiled, or even looked at him much, really, just like he wasn't now, standing by the window, looking out over the cold grey Munich streets, a long-since cold cup of coffee in his hands.

Alphonse watched his back silently, watched him stare out the window, occasionally glancing at Noa for answers; she could only shake her head. She didn't know either. Alphonse wondered who that was at the window; he lacked the golden light he remembered from his brother, that intensity in his eyes that burned and warmed and healed him all at once. This stranger's eyes were cold and flat, lifeless, as if sometime between the last he saw him and now, his brother had died and left his body behind.

Noa got to her feet, the quiet shif-shif of her wrap settling around the material of her pants drawing Alphonse's attention over to her. She gave him a weak smile, stepping over to him, and put a hand on his shoulder silently. I'm going to go see Miss Gracia, he heard distinctly, though her lips never moved, and then she straightened and left the room, leaving Alphonse alone with the stranger with his brother's face.

Edward never turned around, or even reacted to the sounds of Noa leaving the room, he just stood there, lost in whatever thoughts he'd trapped himself in, and Alphonse sat silently, fidgeting as he struggled to find something to say, anything at all that might tell him what was wrong, and how to fix it. "Brother?" It didn't feel right; he'd never been timid or shy around his brother, never had to be, because there'd never been this sort of distance between them.

Edward didn't reply, didn't make any sign that Alphonse had even spoke, and something shot through Alphonse's heart and twisted until he couldn't breathe. Frustration began to build behind the sharp pain, a wild, desperate sort of anger, demanding his brother back, demanding the stranger to leave, to die, to go away and give him back his brother. They'd been separated so long, he couldn't stomach the thought of staying in this foreign world with a stranger with his brother's face.

Just like he's been doing for two years.

The startled realization brought Alphonse to his feet; it was no wonder his brother seemed so different, so dead- he was. The Gate had taken him, taken him as a cost.

Just like the Gate had taken Alphonse years ago.

Alphonse moved over to his brother's side, looking up at him. "Brother?" His voice was firmer this time, commanding attention, shifting the power dynamic a fraction to the right. Edward started slightly and looked at him, having to look down for the first time in years. Alphonse returned his gaze evenly, silently screaming for his brother to come back, come back to him, he wanted his brother back...

Edward flinched, as if he could somehow hear the silent yells and turned his head away, looking out the window again. "What is it, Al?" he mumbled, now refusing to meet his brother's eyes.

Alphonse reached out and grabbed his brother's shoulder, turning him to face him completely, and put a finger to Edward's chest. Edward blinked, looking at him in wary confusion. Alphonse traced the familiar lines of an eight-pointed array on his brother's chest, looking up at him, a frown creasing his brow. "I want my brother back," he whispered. Edward's eyes widened a fraction a he realized what array Alphonse was drawing, and he tried to draw back. Alphonse didn't let him, lifting his hands to the sides of his brother's face and rising up on his tiptoes, pressing his lips against Edward's.

Edward didn't move against him, as if frozen, unresponsive as his little brother's lips captured his own demandingly. Alphonse released him hesitantly, searching his face for even annoyance, anger that he'd taken too much of the role of the dominant brother, but even that was absent. Edward started at him, wide-eyed a moment, before the expression melted slightly, a ghost of a smile pulling at his lips.

Alphonse let himself relax a bit as his older brother pulled him into a hug, but that tension never fully left him; that smile hadn't come within a mile of Edward's eyes.

"Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week,

they came to the tomb where the son had risen."

-Mark 16:2, NKJV

Edward was up and gone the next morning before either Alphonse or Noa had awoken. He walked down the streets of Munich, huddled under his coat, Alfons's scarf wrapped around his neck and face, blocking the sting of the chilly morning wind. Each footstep rattled his teeth as that never ending path of his thoughts worked themselves through what had been lingering and haunting his mind since yesterday afternoon, travelling along an old, familiar array.

"I want my brother back."

Each heartbeat thudded and echoed in his mind, like the steady ticking of a clock, counting down to something, some realization that was just outside his reach. He wandered the streets, looking for some answer to a question he wasn't entirely sure what it was.

Some distant, coldly logical part of his mind told him that he was still in shock over his father's death, over Alfons's death, over everything that had happened, and he accepted and understood that, but understanding did nothing to fix the problem. Alphonse wanted his brother back.

So where had he gone?

Edward rounded a corner and stopped, looking around. His legs had taken him back to that church; the cross of a crucified god hung over the door, welcoming people into the hallowed building. The early morning sunlight barely peeked over the top of the church building, the front of the cross dark against the light, casting a shadow onto the street below.

He watched the sun rise from behind the church, watched it until it hung just over the cross, warming the air around him. It was no different from so many other mornings, or like evenings when the cross reflected the sunset back at him. That was the problem. It wasn't different. Nothing had changed, he was still there, and everything still moved around him the way it always had.

His nerves hummed with a sick surge of fear as his heart tightened and twisted and threatened to stop beating all together. He was afraid to go back to the apartment, afraid to see the answer that he didn't want to the question that had wound its way out of the array of his mind. Was Alphonse really there, or had he just finally snapped, imagining everything in the wake of his father's death, his last tenuous tie to his own world. Had he killed off Alfons in his mind and resurrected his brother in his place? It'd all happened too fast, the home he'd ached for in his grasp and gone again too fast to process what he'd done.

And now, nothing had changed. The sun still rose and set in the same way on that little church, and he was still standing in the cold street outside, watching it.

"Brother?"

A trick of the wind whistling down alleyways. He'd heard that and imagined it for so long, that Al had lived, had crossed the looking glass, down the rabbit hole to get him out of this place. But it was never Alphonse, his Alphonse, his brother and his sanity, it was a trick of his mind, of the wind, of other voices around him. Steeling himself even as he let himself believe the last couple days, in their hazy fog in his memory, were real, he slowly looked over in the direction of the voice.

Alphonse stood in the middle of the street, holding Edward's old, too-light coat around him tightly against the cold morning, watching him, gray eyes worried. Gray. Not blue. Not a trick of the light. Gray. Slowly, Edward blinked; it was like waking up, like back in Amestris, waking up to the sound of his brother's voice, his little brother the first thing he saw as he first opened his eyes.

He almost didn't dare to breathe, afraid that the vision would vanish like a soap bubble handled too roughly.

"Brother?" Alphonse repeated, expression twisting up into a frustrated look of wet-eyed determination.

Edward cautiously stepped closer to him, movement slow and deliberately careful, lest Alphonse disappear, evaporate and vanish from his life like he was scared he would. Nothing changed. Edward swallowed tightly and kept his eyes on Alphonse, afraid to look away, touching a hand to his brother's cold cheek. Those eyes were still gray. He was still there.

Something inside cracked and crumbled, threatening to escape in a quiet moan of relief as his chest tightened up painfully. Nothing changed. He was still there, still in Munich, still in a world foreign and strange to him, but Alphonse, his brother, his Alphonse, was there. There in front of him, looking up at him with familiar gray eyes, gray eyes not blue, not Alfons, not a figment of his imagination, a specter his mind created. It was real. Alphonse was real.

It hadn't been a dream. His brother was alive, was there.

Alphonse watched him, expression worried, a bit wary, and Edward felt an all too familiar sensation of burning behind his eyes, a tightness in his chest and throat, and he broke gaze, taking a deep, steadying breath. "That coat's not warm enough for this weather," he scolded, unwrapping Alfons's scarf from around his neck and wrapping it around his brother's neck.

His younger brother's expression remained guarded, and Edward mentally flinched. He met Alphonse's eyes again, and smiled, a faint tug at the corner of his lips. "Morning, Al," he whispered as he leaned in and kissed his brother's forehead lightly, words that were comfortingly familiar, said so many times over so many years.

It was like waking up, and his little brother was the first thing he saw in the morning.

The wariness melted as a smile began to creep onto Alphonse's lips, the smile Edward had ached to see for so long, spreading over his face and lighting up his eyes like the dawn on the Eastern horizon. For the first time in two years, the sun rose.

"They worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made."

-Isaiah 2:8, NKJV

Alphonse was staring at an empty grave in his mind as he threw his arms around his brother's neck out there on the cold Munich street. The shadow from the cross played over his brother's face, never quite obscuring that light, that intensity that he'd missed so much in his brother's eyes. Edward held him tightly, and Alphonse practically trilled from the relief and joy that was threatening to drown him and steal his breath away.

Edward pulled him up tightly against himself, drawing his head back to press his lips against Alphonse's fiercely, and Alphonse's breath was stolen away then, as Edward's mouth claimed his possessively. He didn't care about the cold, didn't care that anyone might see them, as he remained locked in his brother's embrace, eagerly returning the kiss.

His brother was the first to break away, dipping his head down and nuzzling Alphonse's neck, or what was still exposed from the scarf. "Come on," he whispered against Alphonse's cold skin, "let's go home."

Alphonse reluctantly released his hold on Edward, dropping a hand down to take his brother's tightly, and nodded. "All right," he agreed, giving his brother's hand a squeeze. Edward smiled at him, and Alphonse happily followed his battered resurrected savior home.