Fanfiction finally allowed me to upload documents after getting a new account, so here's my first...uh...thing. This isn't my first time of writing fanfiction ever, just my first time of writing on my own account. I used to share an account with a friend, but decided I should probably get my own, so I did. So...I don't know what else to say.

Disclaimer: Please don't make me do a disclaimer to make me say I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist. It pains me to hear those words.

I find that fantasy and reality have certain starting and stopping areas, and they tend to mesh if you look in the right places. Where they converge together, all of time and space shrinks down to an infinitesimally small line that is covered in gray, since black and white no longer have the room to exist as individuals.

I had wondered how reality worked all my life. My entire existence was spent in searching for answers, but it felt like I never got anywhere. Even my confrontation with the Gate of Truth felt like only a grain of sand in the vast ocean of the expanse of knowledge. I knew there was something more. I felt it with every fiber of my being, but I didn't know where to look, how to look. I just wished, and wished some more, that some day, some how, I would discover a new door I had never opened. A new rock I had never unturned.

I lay awake in bed one night, simply wondering, asking myself many unanswerable questions, never bothering to even think of sleeping. Al was in the bed beside me, clearly still awake since he couldn't seem to sleep in his armor body, but I didn't care to reveal to him that I was still awake. I had too many things on my mind to bother him right then, so I thought it would just be easier to allow him to think I was unavailable for discussion.

I wasn't sure if I had actually fallen asleep or not, but sooner or later I opened my eyes and gazed up to what should have been the ceiling, but wasn't. A vast expanse of space stretched on before me, forever and ever, yet I could see clearly from one side to the other. Did eternity have an end? No, if this was truly eternity, it had no end, but it could possibly loop back on itself, or it could hook onto a specific point along the way, and I could be seeing into that specific point. But what was this anyway?

A girl, she looked about in her teens, was watching me from that vast distance across time and space. I'd never seen her before, I didn't know who she was, but with her placement in this current situation, she made me very curious. Was she part of the Gate? No, this wasn't the Gate. I didn't know what this was, but I knew what it wasn't, and the Gate was something very different. One was a place filled with pure light, but this was a vast expanse of darkness. I should have been scared, but I wasn't. I was intrigued. I wanted to know what was going on. So, I did what I should have known better not to do: I reached out my hand in the direction of the girl.

The darkness instantly surrounded me, though I barely saw it. I simply had felt the warmth of the room I had been in leave me as the chill of the other dimension I had entered became my only reality. My eyes were fixated on what lay before me, that mysterious girl that made no logical sense. She wasn't calling to me, and she wasn't reaching toward me, but I didn't care. I still wanted to know what she was doing there. That's the scientist mind in me. Find the answers to every question you have, even if it's a stupid question in the first place.

Before I was fully aware of where I was, I felt myself transforming, passing through a skin as though emerging from the depths of the ocean. New energy began tingling in my body as I adapted to this new environment. What exactly had just happened? I was still in a trance and was forgetting that I should be scared. I was dreaming, after all. I had to be, so I just closed my eyes and stretched my hands out in front of me, enjoying the sensation, as odd as it was.

It wasn't until I suddenly crashed and an unexpected scream broke through my thoughts that I finally opened my eyes to take a look around. I was in a strange room. I had no idea of the location. A quick scan of the place revealed that the architecture was unlike any that I had ever seen in Amestris. Was this a place within the Gate? No, I had ruled that out long ago. It must have been a place within my mind. I was dreaming. That was why I had chosen to come here so readily. I wouldn't have done something so stupid otherwise. I would get back home as soon as I woke up, I knew.

With that knowledge, I stood up and dusted myself off. I felt so real and alive for a dream, but some dreams are just that way. I raised my head and looked around the room. The girl who had been looking down on me earlier was now staring at me in horror. She was sprawled across the floor on her back, a comic book a couple feet from her. Had I appeared too suddenly for her? Probably so.

I apologetically bent down and took her hand to help her up. "Are you okay?" I asked. She nodded, though it seemed very hesitantly, and she kept taking glances back at her book that was nearby. She must have really wanted to read it badly. I told her that I would get it for her, and then I knelt down and scooped it up in my hand.

I didn't get to hand it to her, however. Taking it into my hand had given me the opportunity to see the cover of the book I was holding, and I could not take my eyes off of it. What was this? The picture on the front was very recognizable to me, despite being drawn very two-dimensionally. There was no way I could not recognize it. It was...me!

"What is this?" I said, holding the book up for her to see. I was scared, and it was beginning to come out in my speech as anger, though that wasn't the true emotion I was feeling. This was only a dream, I reminded myself, weird things happened in dreams, but this dream felt too real for comfort. The girl just stared at me blankly and wouldn't answer, so I spun around and took a look at the room again. "Where is this place?" I asked again, hoping she would answer some question I asked.

The girl reached up very slowly and began to play with a swatch of her hair, obviously very nervous, probably because of my presence. I didn't understand why. She seemed to have been laughing at me when she was on the other side of the void. Maybe she thought she was safe from me when we were so far apart. Guess again. Here I was, so she was going to have to deal with it.

"Are you..." said the girl timidly as she inched her way closer to me, but didn't dare come quite near, "E-Edward...Elric?"

I spun around and glared at the girl. How could she know who I was so easily? Oh right, the strange book probably had told her. Where had she gotten such a book? An information leak like this should be reported to the military right away, as much as I hated the bastards. It could destroy the country, and I wasn't about to let that happen.

I narrowed my eyes and looked hard at the girl. She quivered at the sight, and took a step back. "What...do you...know?" My breathing and heart rate went up at that moment. I was just dreaming. I had to remember that. It was all a dream, but it was feeling less and less like one.

She fidgeted with her hair some more and turned her face down to the ground to look away from me. She was obviously scared. So was I, so that made us even. What connection did she have with all of this? There was going to have to be some explaining soon, or I would let her know the fury of Edward Elric, which obviously was not a pretty sight.

"You...You came out of that..." she warily pointed a finger in the direction of my hand, so I looked down to see what it was that I was holding. "...that book." I was indeed still holding the book that had spooked me so. I came out of it? Was it some kind of portal between time and space? That honestly didn't make any sense, but if I was dreaming, it was okay to question anything.

"I came out of this, huh?" I said, holding up the book for verification. I'm sure that a sneer appeared on my face about then. One had to admit that even in the context of a dream, it sounded a bit ridiculous. I sighed and slumped my shoulders forward slightly. There was no point getting my muscles tense. I would just end up sore later. I looked back up at the girl and gestured to the room we were standing in with the book-filled hand. "So, where is this?"

"New York," she said. She shifted her weight between her feet and began to bite at her nails, apparently having grown tired of wrenching her hair off. She turned to look at me and she almost asked me a question, and then she looked away again. I placed my hands on my hips, knowing this game all too well. I hated to admit that I was myself a shy person, as I did such a good job of covering it up with my cocky side, but it did come out on occasion, and I knew the signs.

"What are you wanting to say?" I asked.

She looked at me again, startled. The girl looked down at the ground again and began to fidget with her hands which she brought down away from her face. I waited. I knew she would give in and ask sooner or later. "I...I...um..." She paused. I sighed. She had almost asked the question, but she was still too scared to ask it. I rolled my eyes and cleared my throat. She ought to be able to understand that. She did. The girl looked up at me and instantly began trying to speak again. "Um...are you...real?"

I combined what I would call a sigh and a roar and flopped down to my knees, stretching out my hands in either direction as I did so. "Look at me!" I said, "I'm standing, er, kneeling right here! Do I look real to you?"

She continued to stare at me for I don't know how long, not responding to my comment, and me not adding any further input. I wanted her to tell me what I had asked her before, so I was willing to wait until she did, no matter how long that took. I was dreaming, so I had time. She blinked vaguely at me, so I assumed that she was considering the possibility of having a dream as well. This was such a realistic dream, it was disturbing.

"You do look real," she finally conceded after a long moment of silence, "But...how? You're...you're a fictional character...from a fictional book!"

I rolled my eyes again and turned away from her, crossing my arms as I did so. "Oh, puhleeze," I said, "You expect me to believe that I really came out of that stupid book? I am the Fullmetal Alchemist. I have a scientist's mind. Prove it to me or I won't believe it." I turned my head back around to see if my message had sunk home. It apparently had. She was staring at me, her hand over her mouth, shaking her head back and forth just slightly. There was no way she was going to be able to prove something as wild as that.

My eyes then strayed over to the spot on the floor I had picked up the book from. My eyebrows perked up and I walked closer to the spot. I hadn't noticed that there before. What was it? I knelt down and touched the spot. It looked as though the floor had been slightly charred...oddly enough in the perfect size and shape of the book I was holding. I didn't see how that shape could have been made with anything, particularly corresponding to that exact place and size.

A tight feeling entered my gut, an uncomfortable feeling. Something was so wrong about this, desperately wrong. I ran my hand over the char once again, and instantly a vision fluttered into my mind of the vast expanse I had just traveled through in order to get here in the first place. This girl had been waiting on the other side, seemingly watching me and enjoying the sight of whatever I was doing. Now she was terrified. She claimed I came out of the book. And then there was this burn mark where the book had been in the perfect shape of said book. All the clues were pointing to something ridiculous, but there was no way I could believe it. There had to be a better explanation.

I then remembered that there was. I breathed out a sigh of relief and slowly stood up as I turned to look at the still terrified girl. "Don't be scared," I said, "This incident is bizarre, but there's a perfectly logical explanation." I paused for emphasis, and for her to hopefully calm down, which she did. I took a deep breath and then said, "We're dreaming."

Next chapter should be up soon, so stay tuned while I figure out what in the world I'm up to.