He sees the world in patterns: circles, or endlessly repeating triangles, obtuse angles sliding around every corner. He sees life through these self-made scientific goggles, and he cannot take them off. He thinks that Alphonse understands, sometimes. He also thinks that Winry doesn't know. At least, he hopes so. Because for the longest time, alchemy has been his god.
During the nights, when he sleeps, he sees atoms dance. They flash behind his eyelids, electrons orbiting, the nucleus glowing and throbbing with a sensation, a heat that calls to him. When he forgets, he tries to reach out to them as they spin their path across the starry Universe. But most of the time, that hollowness inside of him, lurking in the sinkholes that hide in the unopened closets with dusty skeletons, reminds him. This science, this art, is lost to him.
Most days, he doesn't mind too much. Of course, there is still the pain in his shoulder, from the bolts and screws that never fully fell out. Some mornings, they blossom into orange-tinted fractals that fill his entire field of sight. The shapes morph and whirl; they turn slowly, inevitably, into rings within rings, runes that litter the edges like dry leaves, glowing with the faintest traces of power. And then he sits down, shakes his head, and it clears. He is alone with his thoughts. And it is during these moments when he tells himself that he has a wife, not a childhood friend, and a brother with a body of flesh and blood, not a suit of armor with a soul.
He reaches into his back pocket, to check the time, and then remembers that there is a clock in the kitchen that Winry made herself.
So when his head is clear again, he gets up and trudges down the stairs. Yawning on some mornings, not on others. As he walks down these wooden steps, his ears find a pattern: every other beat, there is a hollow thud. It is not the warm and thick sound of flesh on wood. Every second step, an unnatural sound.
He yawns (the space between the paintings on the wall following the stairs is equal to x2-3cm, where x is an integer between 4 and 8 inclusive) and manages to find his way into the kitchen. Winry smiles as she greets him, and hands him a fresh cup of coffee.
The steam forms inexplicable parabolas in the air.
Edward blinks, and then smiles, taking a sip from the mug. He cradles the porcelain mug in his hands (not that effective as a conductor of heat, though it does the job) and listens to Winry as she talks about what they have planned for the weekend. He smiles, and nods along.
These are their mornings. Their nights are different.
Sometimes, desire snakes through him. Names flow through his mind like thinned white paint, bleaching everything that they encounter. The first of these names are those monsters that even now, do not leave him alone. They are all dead already. The first name that he musters is the first one of them to have died. It is a tingling desire, a lust.
He knows that Winry feels it too.
And so, they strip each other of all their clothes. Shirt goes over his head, pants are hurriedly pulled down, and he easily does the same to her. Clothes are scattered on the floor, maybe in patterns but his eyes are too fixated on her perfect form to care. His hands (and he still cannot believe that these are really his hands, his own flesh and blood made of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen, phosphorous and nitrogen and calcium and zinc and other unimportant ones that he can't recall at this primal moment) roughly pull her naked form close to his own, and they fall back onto the bed, onto the white sheets.
It is fast-paced, and there is no rhythm to it at first, but they both ease into it as they continue; and yet, counter intuitively, they do not slow down. They keep going, tangled together, breathing as one, their hearts beating together, melding together to become a single entity. This is the most glorious moment, when the both of them sacrifice the deepest part of their souls for each other. It is this perfect union between man and woman that brings them the most ecstasy they will feel in their entire lives: this feeling of being one, connected by their own transient bodies, bound together by the strength of their souls.
And yet... this is the perfect union. Male and female, and yet it does nothing. When they finish and she sinks deep into exhaustion and sleep, he still feels as if there is something missing. But he does not know what it is, and soon follows Winry to the lands of Morpheus.
That is only until two months later, when he finally realizes what their union creates. It takes him so long to realize, but even now, there is still the two words he once lived by: EQUIVALENT EXCHANGE.
A woman sacrifices her body for almost a year to nurture. A woman's body becomes a house, a shelter for what they have created. And what does the man sacrifice? What does the man give in exchange for alchemy's ultimate, glorious, goal? And just the same like before, there is still something that nags at him , because he does not know what he has given up.
Alphonse once told him, a long time ago, that if you wanted to be invincible, nothing could ever hurt you. And that means that you can never have anything taken from you. You must always keep what you have, and there is no way that you can ever let it go because if you do, you might never have it again. You might never have the chance to hold it in your arms, feel it and yourself together in the world, because there will always be the pain of having lost it.So he hugs Winry from behind, and feels a little jump in her stomach, and his heart lurches as he realizes now what man gives up in exchange for this creation. He has given up his ability to be invincible, because now, he humans are just tiny beings. They will all wither away and die sooner or later, and he can never be invincible because he must, one day, give up the woman, the child. Just as there is creation, there will also be deconstruction. Man will never be invincible after he has sacrificed to create this.
But Edward does not mind. He does not care.
There was once a time when he thought that only God could create something so beautiful, so wonderful. And then, after he grew up just a little bit, he thought that only alchemy could create. But now, he knows. He knows that even little, insignificant beings like himself and Winry can create what has been the ultimate goal of alchemy over the ages, the one task that God, and only God may perform. He tilts his head back, and smiles, and knows that he has created life.