He Who Searches For Himself

by Yuuki Hikari

Standing up and moving forwards feels a lot more like picking yourself up and trudging onwards. A continuation of FMA03 where Ep51 finishes: Al's quest to find his brother, Ed's struggle to get home, Winry's adventure in a new world, and Roy & Izumi's clashing ideals as they fight to protect everyone from Dante. AU to CoS. Plot!Fic. All characters plus OCs. Please enjoy!

61. Inequivalent Exchange Part 3

112 - Inequivalent Exchange - Part 3

Forward: Thank you so much for your patience on this chapter, it is by far the longest one I've written, and I hope you enjoy it!

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Clamouring to escape the bunker Al had built, the dampened earth mashed, slid, and slopped beneath Ed. Everything he grabbed became malleable, his hands sinking with greater ease each time he put one down. Awkwardly clawing his way to higher ground, Ed wiped his hands off on his slacks and reached into his backside pocket. He pulled out a plain pair of white gloves; with all the scrutiny Dante was going to give him, he wasn't about to draw attention to the sight of his bare flesh hands, and he discretely slipped the blank pair on.

Turning around, Ed examined the state of Dante's world.

Every torn up path and plot on the city's floor was painted in a damp, glossy sheen. As time went on the sheen gradually transformed into a skim and that skim rapidly grew into a layer of water coating the city's floor. All of it flowed down to the lowest point: the city centre.

"That's a nasty little parlour trick, Edward."

Ed's pupils dug into the corner of his eyes as Dante reasserted her presence. Making her way towards him with one wounded hand pressed neatly against the other, Dante's ever-present poise pushed her chin higher as she strode atop the water's surface.

Ed lowered a single brow and eyed the frozen pathway growing beneath her feet, "I'm not the only one playing games."

Relying on his brother to have had enough time to set up for their charade, Ed placed his dulled hands together. His palms had barely met when Al transmuted a dried slab of earth to lift him above the muddy water level with.

Dante watched Ed rise and let a smile worm into her lips at the apparent sight of his touch-free transmutation. She clicked her heels together and came to a stop.

Ed made sure to dispel her parlour trick, "The transmutation circle we create when our palms meet passes through the heart and the heart can be used as an interchange to divert the energy through the circulatory system," what sounded like the makings of a heart attack was not all that difficult according to Al. Ed was honestly a little disappointed in himself – no, really disappointed in himself – that he hadn't thought of it already, "That's why you don't need to use your hands when you transmute something, you've redirected the energy out your feet."

Nodding like an instructor commending a pupil, Dante added a footnote to his explanation, "I am proud of my innovations, but it would be disingenuous of me to take credit from someone else," the forced smile she offered looked like it pained her, "your father pioneered it."

"Good for him," Ed grumbled, firing back, "and you really want to come out of here having to admit that the better part of what you know is credited to your Ex and his son?"

"Knowledge is the result of cumulative efforts passed down. When we cannot be the inventor, we can excel as the innovator," Dante's brows settled in two flat lines above her steeled gaze, "but, before we commence, we must take a moment and address Miss. Rockbell's situation."

Ed's expression narrowed.

"You see, a trade like you've proposed is not something I can oblige, because I've already placed Winry beyond the Gate," a sly grin teased the corners of her lips, "I broke the bonds to her mind, body, and soul and dismissed her to the depths of the thing. So, you can spare me the theory of this and that, it won't do either of us any good – she's expiring inside."

Fighting to keep his poker face, Ed slowly rolled his jaw to hide how he nearly laughed at how desperately she was trying to strengthen her position.

Dante tossed her bravado like a stage performer projecting their song, "Throw those doors open and dig her out before there's nothing left to reclaim! With the access you have to the Gate now, such a task must be nothing but child's play for you. I'll step aside to watch how you accomplish it."

It was clear she was still unaware of the actual ramifications of breaking a person's bonds and that worked in his favour, but if the world actually operated as Dante believed it to, Winry would have been cast aside months ago. If Ed were truly finding this out now, Winry would be dead, and that deepened the angered creases of his brow.

Dante lifted her broken hand and mockingly tapped the bandaged wrist with her good index finger, "Time's being wasted Edward, go get her."

With an energetic flourish Ed threw his arms out at his sides and sucked Dante into his performance. He clapped his hands with gusto, making his audience flinch in anticipation of a flash that never came. As Dante braved her confusion to put her eyes on him again, frantically trying to see what he had done, Alphonse's transmutation finished lifting a wall of cycling mud behind his brother. Ed ripped his hands apart like they still contained all the power in the world and slammed them down on the platform. The mud raced forwards, parting to pass him, and blowing Ed's ponytail over his shoulder as it charged ahead. Tumbling over itself like a thick ocean wave, the rising surge Al controlled stretched to encircle Dante.

A fountain of transmuted water erupted like a protective barrier around her. Bountiful and strong, the fountain bloomed at its apex and spilled generously over on all sides. The billowing peak expanded, widening its girth, then began to peel away at the top, tossing fat waves that blanketed Al's dirty onslaught the moment it arrived. The force of the water falling at Dante's command drove Alphonse's mud back down into the lake growing at their feet.

Dante put Ed back in her line of fire.

Ed put his hands back together.

Al's transmutation swept around the fringes of the central square, collecting the runoff flowing down the streets to fill the city's core. Corralling the growing flood into a swell behind his brother, Al drove the water to a focal point and built the head of a water cannon to channel it through. The force of a runaway river was fired at Dante.

Dante's defensive transmutation drove a divide straight into the heart of the attack. Wrapping herself in a compact tornado, the strength of the wind she generated sliced through the centre of the blast and split the torrent in half. Two harsh streams of water were deflected away in horizontal sprays. The strength of the cannon wasn't enough to stop Dante from challenging it even further; she put the tornado into motion and dared the transmuted force to come down on her even harder as she snaked towards Ed in spite of the assault.

Opting not to engage her further, Al abandoned the attack in favour of moving his brother out of Dante's path.

The tornado dispersed when Ed left her path, but Dante's swirling transmutation found a new purpose – the energy snaked into the water. Like an invisible spoon began churning through dirty batter, the mud around Ed began to swirl and a column started to rise around him.

Ed clapped his hands before he'd vanished from view and Al breathed life back into his platform. The transmutation pushed the slab upwards, prompting muddy tendrils to sprout along the rim of Dante's creation to chase him into the air.

At Ed's next 'transmutation', Al put a familiar weapon into his brother's left hand.

A wicked Elric grin grew through Ed's face at the sight of an elaborate spear he used to forge for himself years ago. The nostalgic weapon doubled as a message: Al was leaving Ed to hold his own for a bit and the elder brother was more than eager for the challenge. Snatching up the spear, Ed wheeled it around and started trimming Dante's talons.

Stepping through the corners of the raised platform, Ed spun the long reach of the weapon through his hands, slicing off tendril after tendril with each swing. Soft and formless, they were easily broken apart – the heel of Ed's shoe severed one wriggly arm that teased his ankle and a firm swipe of his left hand took off the leading reach of another. Wide sweeps of the spear's blade took care of the rest. Navigating his steps in one corner of his eye and managing Dante's lures in the other, Ed spun his defence through his hands and danced around the obstacles harassing his feet, keeping them at bay.

As easy as they were for Ed to dismantle, they were just as easy for Dante to recreate, and every arm Ed sliced away was quickly replaced. Dante's transmutation grew more adventurous, challenging Ed to navigate quicker each time one tugged at his knees, licked his arm, or managed to snag an ankle or wrist. For each taunt that tried to catch him, the viscosity of the transmuted soil decreased. The solidifying tendrils started yanking on Ed's arms to pull him off balance. They incessantly tugged at his legs, trying to take one or the other out from under him. Getting caught up in the whirlwind of an increasingly frustrating tango, one of Dante's lures secured Ed's left ankle and dropped him on his backside.

Ed scowled at his teacher's warning coming to life – the transmutation was snaking up his unfeeling leg. Steadfastly refusing to allow either of the limbs Al had given him back become a hindrance, Ed choked up on the spear and cemented it in both hands. He thrust his arms overhead and lunged forwards, driving the blade into the body of the snare. Ed severed Dante's tendril below his foot and the wriggling mud recoiled.

A fresh arm was born out of the severed body and Dante wrapped her counterattack around the shaft of Ed's weapon. Knowing better than to engage in a physical tug-of-war against a transmuted force, Ed shoved the struggle for the spear above his head and dove in under it. He relinquished his defences and took a two-handed stranglehold on Dante's malleable lure. Clawing holes into the stiff mud with his fingers, Ed grimaced in frustration and bore down, attempting to tear the damned thing apart with his bare hands.

A brilliant red and orange flare exploded along the side of the city centre. The air shuddered in shock of the blast, distracting both Ed and Dante from their tussle. Flames rose from a building that made up a piece of the city centre's frame and a column of fire reached up high, stretching well above the tallest steeples, momentarily casting heavy shadows throughout the underground sphere.

Before the fire could settle and dine on a delicious dinner of brittle wood, the towering flame toppled like the great north wind had blown it over. Sweeping across numerous rooftops, the wave of fire ignited a line of once luxurious, ornamental buildings flanking the downtown core. The flames danced on the rooftops and dove inside, swarming the halls like they were playgrounds, and exploding with glee at each packet of unlit gunpowder they found. Pockets of fire burst like popcorn each time more fuel was added to the fire.

Ed curled his fingers, focussed whatever strength he could scrounge into his wrists, elbows, and shoulders, and tore the muddy tendril harassing him apart. He felt his spear bounce off his back when it came free, but never heard it clatter on the platform – the noise was drowned out by the ferocious sound of the underground city's stolen history going up in his brother's flames.

---

Throwing her prowess brightly across the lake she was growing in her city, Dante's response scoffed in the face of this fiery challenge.

Bringing every last drop under her command, the rush of water she transmuted generated a light breeze in the sealed underground, offering the flames a final opportunity to dance. A wide, liquid blanket was lifted above the fire, reaching higher than than the flames ever dared, and the damp fringes licked the rocky ceiling overhead. Dante's transmutation was excessive, far more than what was needed to snuff out the blaze, and she tossed it over the fire anyways.

The towering floodwater crashed down over the flames, exploding like a burst dam, and offering no mercy to the fragile city it assaulted. Racing through the streets unrestrained and claiming structure after structure, the flood tore down buildings, ripped open walls, broke through doors, and shattered windows at its farthest reaches. Church bells rang out as the demonstration flattened a district of the city, forced to chime by the quake the waterfall caused, adding the disjointed melody to the roar of deafening destruction overwhelming the underground city.

Dante made the message conveyed in her actions perfectly clear: Long held sentiment wasn't nearly as valuable as one might think. The lengths she was willing to go were not to be underestimated.

The fire Al taunted her with was ultimately extinguished as an afterthought.

Debris-filled water began washing back into the city's core and, as though she'd never relinquished her control, Dante steered the returning flow. The murky flood was aggressively redirected towards Ed's tower.

Al flew out to counter her. Capturing the stone perch and the remnants of Dante's abandoned tendrils, he swept his brother back down to the ground and immediately repurposed the materials. A low, wide ramp was constructed before the dirty torrent arrived to redirect the flood over their heads in a wide, roaring arch, and send it into the back reaches of the city's core.

Beneath the rushing water Al scrambled up to his brother's side, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," dusting himself off from the abrupt rescue, Ed gestured to his brother's gloved hands, "I think you got her wondering if Mustang's involved."

"I'm just putting them to good use before we have to give them back," Al patted his hands together and the spark of an idea brightened his eyes, "turn around."

Ed blinked and did as he was asked.

"Arms up!"

"What?" Ed's shoulders shot to his ears when Al's gloved hands reached around and dipped into his side pockets, "be careful…"

"I am being careful."

Al took his hands back and examined the nearly invisible signs of elemental powder now lacing the ignition gloves. A bit of aluminum powder from one pocket, potassium perchlorate from the other, carefully kept separate so they wouldn't accidentally cross and go off. Little packets of desired explosives tucked away here and there, carefully orchestrated to give Dante the impression that an alchemist would have been at work wreaking havoc had Alphonse not shown up. Yet, no matter how careful either of them were, a palatable solution was out of reach. Dante had laid down a narrow path for them: her way was the only way and she would sooner die than concede.

Ed had said from the outset that he wasn't down here to kill Dante. If she wasn't going to back down and his brother wasn't going to kill her, Al needed to know what this other option was. What was the point of the secrecy, the lies, the setup, and the entire charade he had been playing? And what on earth gave his brother the confidence to attempt this alone?

The answer initially made Al uncomfortable: Ed was going to send Dante to hell.

Ed understood the outcome if she gained access to his mind, but what if he returned without the knowledge she needed? Introspectively, nothing Ed could think of helped Dante, and if a monster running from death was forced to accept the harsh truth of her inevitable fate, what would she do? How would she react? The potential was terrifying. And what might Dante do if she got any hints that he had returned any differently than he'd left? Instead of investigating Ed's mind, she would be cautious and investigate Ed, and everyone associated with him since his return would be at grave risk of Dante's desperate claws. But, so long as she had no reason to go looking, so long as all of the answers resided with him, Ed could weaponize the same kind of ignorance Dante victimized an entire country with. The relationship he'd established with the Gate could be used to escort her to its doorstep, and Ed could force her over to the other side. Beyond the Gate Dante didn't pose a fraction of the threat that she did in Amestris. Society there would find a place to slot her in, constrain her to its rigid rules, and punish her if she didn't comply. All the information she craved would be at her disposal if she chose to seek it, all of it utterly useless, and alchemy would never, ever be a weapon she would wield again. Dante would learn, like Ed had, what the cost of gaining access to knowledge from beyond the Gate truly was: everything else you valued.

It was a prison without bars. A personal hell.

Al had a laundry list of questions and moral quandaries for his brother's plan, but their options were limited and Dante had tied their hands to much else. If they didn't kill Dante, whatever imprisonment she faced would become a death sentence. She would succumb to the rot, die in agony, and they would have enabled that fate. If they broke her bonds to stop the rot and somehow managed to keep her here in the process, she would have to be locked away in secret for every remaining year of her life, or until someone got antsy about that and she was found dead. But, it wasn't so much Ed's plan that caught Al's concern, it was how he framed it. The more Al thought about it, the less he believed that his actions would condemn Dante to a life in hell. The world beyond the Gate wasn't hell, it was home – it was Brigitte's home, and for a while it was his brother's home too. At some point they were going to have to send Brigitte back to her family, and Al didn't want to believe for a second that the life and world she missed was any sort of hell. Sending Dante there would allow her to live out the rest of her life, peacefully if she chose to. The rot would stop and, given the young age of Nina's body, the possibility existed that she would physically heal. In that context, wasn't his brother actually saving Dante's life?

It was one last life to live. A final respite.

Whichever point of view the brothers chose to see it from, the method of getting to that point needed to be addressed. Al insisted that there was less risk involved containing Dante and taking her to the Gate together where they could easily break her bonds, and after a ton of arm twisting he managed to talk his brother into that plan. Now, they just had to find a way to pin her down.

The water flowing overhead had petered out and the growing lake around them was crawling up their shins, growing more polluted by the minute.

Ed stabbed a broken plank of wood with his spear and fished it out of the water; an idea had washed in with the debris. A bent nail was worked free from the plank and Ed repurposed it into a tool. A tiny rendition of Al's signature transmutation circle was etched into the shaft of his spear.

"You come in from the left," Ed tucked the manually transmutable polearm into Al's elbow and handed him the nail, "I'll swing around wide from the right. Let's see what she does this time."

Al secured the spear against his body, "Got it."

With a nod the boys split, trudging their way to the opposite edges of the ramp.

Al peeked out into the deteriorating cityscape and easily found Dante. Perched at the head of the city centre she waited, standing above the water's level. Flanked by the building remains the Elric brothers had brought down on one side and the washed-out skeleton on the other, she was leaving it up to her opponents to show her their next move. Al turned the nail around in his fingers and etched a transmutation circle into the underside of the ramp.

Ed didn't make Dante long; showing his hand he emerged, giving her a wide berth in the process. Al watched his brother move through the exposed landscape, running through the unsteady mud and water hampering his feet en route to the city's ruins. Dante honed in on his movement like a hungry vulture, put her hands together, and Ed turned on a dime to challenge her when she did.

Al bounced the spear in his hand to ready it and laid his thumb down on the etched transmutation circle as the lake's turbulence intensified under Dante's orders.

Ed slammed his hands together at his nose and sent Dante's confusion soaring when neither a flash nor a transmutation came of it.

Al stepped out into the open, swiped his thumb over the transmutation circle and made sure the only light that caught her eye was his. He anchored his feet in the muck, brightly transmuted the air around the spear, and launched it at Dante.

The squealing tailwind that rushed by Dante's ear forced her eyes wide. The blade sailed past the same ear as the gunshots that had claimed her hand, catching her hair as it flew by. The spear continued to sail straight and true, embedding like an oversized arrow in the side of a building well beyond her.

A generous clip of Nina's untied hair slipped off her shoulder, severed by the blade that had flown by, and it settled softly atop the water at her feet.

Al's hand swept the transmutation circle etched in the ramp. Collecting the material he transmuted a solid path above the lake leading straight to Dante. He clenched his fists, dug his toes in, and raced straight towards her.

Dante's visual claws latched onto Al and the moment her frozen blue gaze lined him up in her crosshairs, Al slammed his hands together.

The chemical reaction, enhanced by the ignition cloth, flashed once again in Dante's eyes and it was Alphonse's turn to send her reeling.

Announced with a piercing shriek and bolstered by blind fear, believing that one or both of the Elric brothers were on the brink of reaching her, the water flooding the underground city was hastily repurposed as Dante's shield. A waterspout was whipped up, wrapping her behind a tenacious liquid barrier. The speeding spiral of water rushed to the city's ceiling, carving a notch in the rock where it churned. Its width swelled as the water in the city basin was sucked in, swallowing a wealth of accumulated debris to fortify the storm's wall.

Even clenching his eyes like Al had, the flash had still shone through his eyelids. Al backed away, putting distance between his position and the waterspout he could somewhat see, until Ed arrived to help guide him away. Retreating to the opposite end of the city centre, beyond the panic Dante stirred, the brothers reorganized.

Al rubbed his eyes again, clearing his vision a little more, "I guess that's what she's going to do."

"Could be worse," Ed's hand patted Al's shoulder and motioned away from the ravaged city square, "c'mon."

Al followed his brother's lead and disappeared with him into the wider expanse of the city, leaving Dante's fears to fester in the raging, polluted waters she hid behind.

---

"Brother!"

Ed picked his head up and looked through a bowed wall like he could see Al on the other side.

"It's coming down."

Hastened by the reverberating whoosh of Dante's waterspout dispersing, Ed snatched up a packet of matches from a table and tucked them into his vest pocket. The tired walls of the old house he stood in shifted again atop the unstable foundation, putting every aged nail and crossbeam under immense strain. Ed grabbed two small envelopes off of the floor he'd attempted to sleep on the last many days, shoved them in his backside pocket, and ducked out of the house before the roof had a chance to cave in.

Ed rejoined Al in the street as bubbling waves of water washed around the lower street corners, decorated with foaming white caps. Unreasonably fast and lively, the water sloshed between buildings and advanced through the streets like the eager waves of a tsunami flooding through. Pouring around foundations and washing the ledges of windows, the water gained with every passing second and grew thicker with each piece of debris added to the stew. The open streets didn't offer enough space for the aggressive floodwaters to comfortably advance, so the insatiable onslaught began tearing through the obstacles in its path. Crashing through doors and tearing down walls of the already compromised buildings, the liquid mass forced open new pathways as it routed the city.

Al transmuted a smooth, solid walkway through the street to save their legs the agony of another sloppy trudge and directed his brother up ahead, "There's a clock tower at the top of the street, we can get a better view from the top."

The race to the tower doors took them through the deteriorating, warped state of a city in decay. The softening of the city's floor caused nearly every building they passed to look like it was on the verge of collapse. Walls had shifted, doors had popped ajar, windows had cracked, roofs had broken open, fences had gone askew, and all the upright poles – be it sign or lantern – pointed everywhere but up. The moisture leaching through the earth continued to feed Dante's needs and the sound of water rapidly devouring the city settled in as an ever-present, hungry growl.

A professional building proudly sporting a stone clock tower welcomed the Elric brothers to its entry, and Ed and Al were already halfway up the stairs by the time the flood tore down the street level doors. Al reinforced the walls of their shelter before the water could find any additional seams to leak through.

Emerging at the uppermost reaches of the tower, the boys flew through an entry door and staggered to a stop in a dark, windowless loft. The roaring destruction stampeded outside of the echo chamber they'd landed in, rumbling deeply in the vacant hollow overhead and relentlessly quaking the foundations at their feet. Weighted chains and hefty cords dangling from the apparatus danced and jingled amidst the shower of ancient dust shaken free by the disturbance. Ancient gears mounted in the dark loft, idle for so long, creaked and chirped disapprovingly at the disruption of centuries of rest.

Cautiously making his way through the darkened room, Ed's hand searched the wall. He fished around, investigating every nook and latch, and eventually found the handle to a maintenance door. The door was thrown open, allowing the light to flood the loft, and he poked his head out onto an external ledge.

"Holy shit…" Ed gawked at the colossal force of water decimating the city below them.

Al snuck in around his brother, "I tried to transmute water when I got here, where is she getting all this?"

Ed shook his head in disbelief, "There's a drained lake somewhere nearby."

The brothers' conversation went silent while they watched the water pick up a crumbling building from its foundation and literally carry it away to disintegrate in the swill.

Passing minutes beckoned the water levels to rise higher, soon exceeding second floors. Twisted remains floated atop the rising flood like a rich, thick stew and the sound of wood succumbing to the pressure persisted without end. The screeches of metals bending, grinding, and breaking as they were abused in the disaster became the agonizing cries of a falling city.

Dante continued to summon water and redefine the context of the underground world. Streets were eliminated, submerged to remove the protective cover of the city's maze. Buildings were compromised, swollen with water or destroyed altogether to limit where Ed and Al could safely stay. Mobility was crippled, stripped from them by the event they were witnessing. There was no way down and no way out, and if something wanted to breathe the air, it had to exist in this last quarter of the city that remained above water level. Dante was literally attempting to flush them out. It was working.

Past the point where every building had been deprived of access to at least the lower three floors, a sparkling transmutation danced through the entire cavern. The boys' arms came up to shield their eyes from the light and, when eyelids cracked open and arms fell away, Dante's endgame offered an awe-inspiring scene to greet them.

The water was frozen solid.

The city in disarray was locked in ice, literally frozen in time, completely unmoving. The ice plate was painted by the dark ruined mass that filled it from below and the orange glow of the underground light glossing it from above. Packed with everything that floated free, the surface was a chaotic obstacle course of broken, jagged, and trapped remains. In a few precious gaps splattered here and there, the clean ice meekly tried to shimmer.

For the first time in what felt like ages, silence settled in the wake of something Dante had done.

Al slumped against the frame as his eyes digested what they had to contend with, "What a mess."

"Yeah…"

Ed gave his head a shake and tried to get his thoughts in order. He and his brother had conjured up a plethora of scenarios they might encounter and what they would try to do if they faced them, but Dante continued to exceed expectations. Then again, considering she'd brought down an entire city in the first place, it wasn't all that surprising she'd have the wherewithal to know how to flood it. In hindsight the logic made sense, if the city's location was ever exposed, it would be easier for her to flood it than bury it in a rush. Ed brought a hand up to his mouth in thought, how the heck could they turn this around and use it to pin her down?

"Sorry I didn't grab her when I had the chance."

"What?" Ed tumbled out of his thoughts as quickly as he'd gotten into them.

Al drew a deep breath in through flared nostrils and let the breath out in a heavy, frustrated sigh, "She walked right up to me and I had a knife in my hand and I couldn't wrap my head around how I got there."

Ed shook his brother's lament off, "Al, she was screwing around with you."

"We're not going to get that close to her again… not without a fight, anyways. We have to figure out a way to trip her up and trap her and I mean…" Alphonse's shoulders travelled up to his ears, his head shaking, "she's desperate and dying and if I'd been thinking I could have just dropped the knife and grabbed her and we'd have gotten this over with."

As convenient as Al's mental scenario could have been, Ed didn't share the sentiment, "I doubt she walked up to you without a plan on how to deal with that."

Al soured, "Yeah but—"

"Yeah but nothing," Ed's left hand landed firmly atop Al's messy bed of hair and he gave it a light shake, "can't go back and fix that, so don't worry about it. Keep your eyes looking in the same direction you're going, and we're going forwards."

The arm attached to the hand in Al's hair wrapped around his head and Ed firmly secured him against his side. He hadn't given a second thought to Al and Dante's exchange and he wished he could dismiss the disappointment that was weighing on his brother. Sure, it might have been an opportunity, but since when did anything ever come that easily for them? Maybe if only one of a thousand things had gone differently, they wouldn't have ended up here. Lots of different 'if's and 'or's and 'what's might change everything. More time might mean they'd find a better way of addressing it, but that wasn't a luxury they had. For all the disagreements they'd had since reuniting down here, the brothers met on common ground believing that Dante needed to be dealt with now. The potential consequences for dragging this out, or dragging it north, and tempting the 'if's and 'or's would be unimaginable.

As they were now, teamed up and poised to escort Dante to the other side, Ed couldn't help but indulge in the enormous relief Al's presence gave him.

This was what Ed wanted.

This was what Ed laid in bed for too many nights wishing for.

This was what he'd tried to circumvent the Gate for. This was what he came home for. This was what motivated him to get out of bed for over five years. Not the bullshit they were stuck dealing with, but having the chance to deal with it with his brother at his side. Ed fought through the loneliness of every single day on his own, so that when he got home he wouldn't have to any more.

What happened?

When the hell did Edward Elric get so scared and untrusting of everything that he'd actually forgotten that this was what he wanted? Al was who he wanted at his side at times like this… and for better or for worse, here they were.

Ed sighed, "There'll be plenty of time to kick ourselves for things we have or haven't done later."

The sentiment drew Al back into the conversation, "You have a lineup of people who want to help you with that."

Ed's nose twitched, "I'm sure I do."

"I think I'm going to start charging a fee to anyone who wants to kick your ass," Al grinned at his neat little idea, "1,000 cens per ass kicking sounds reasonable."

"What the heck are you doing picking on your big brother right now?" Ed grabbed the giggling child by the crown of his head and shoved him away, "we gotta deal with this first before you start profiting off me. How's your arm holding up?"

Al's left arm was swiftly tucked away at his side, out of his brother's reach, "It's fine. But we're not doing much about 'this' sitting here."

"No, we're not," Ed admitted – they weren't down there to exhaust Dante with a chase, they wanted to engage her. But the type of terrain they were facing was looking to be more daunting than all of the other challenges still in their way, "We're going to have to figure out how to ice skate pretty damn fast."

"Or," Al brought a thoughtful finger into the air and let his eyes dance with his idea, "or even better…"

Ed watched Al's waggling finger carry him away from their vantage point and directed him back to the entry door.

"Take off your shoes!" Al called as he started down the stairwell.

"What for?" Ed asked.

"I'll show you!"

The ice was freezing and the surfaces of everything were dropping in temperature, so Ed was not about to take off his shoes until he knew why Al wanted him to have literal cold feet.

Tailing his brother into the poorly lit stairwell, filled more than half way with the frozen sludge of city water, Ed descended past the single window welcoming the light in. Coming to a stop a few steps above the frozen blockade, he curiously watched Al snap the end of a twisted bit of metal out of the ice. Al slipped out of his shoes, put them down on the ice, nestled the piece of metal between them, and transmuted the metal onto the soles.

Al snatched up his shoes, admired the sharp metal cleats he'd added to the bottoms, and turned around to show them off – he immediately frowned, "Why are your shoes still on your feet!? Take them off, I need them!"

The persistent ingenuity shining in his younger brother put a grin back on Ed's face. He kicked his shoes off and used his toes to flip them down the final few steps to Al one after the other.

---

Emptying his lungs with an exhale, a thin white puff dissipated in front of Al's nose. The volume of ice continued to cool the air and every breath he took was sharp and crisp. Goosebumps covered the exposed parts of his arms and his bare back – Al had given up trying to shiver them away. He adjusted the shirt wrapped around his throbbing arm.

Surrounded by self-imposed ruin, the imposing silence under Dante's command restrained the life lurking in frozen corridors of debris, waiting to execute whoever or whatever dared disobey. Dante herself could have been anywhere – from the northernmost corner to the southern tip – but both Elric brothers knew she wouldn't expend that much energy. She wouldn't go looking for them, because patience would bring them back to her.

However, the Elric brothers had something a person with thinning patience wanted more than anything she may have once valued, and they offered Dante the chance to meet them halfway.

Planting his feet shoulder width apart, Al faced the abstract location of the city's centre and clapped his hands.

The light of his transmutation danced across the frozen floor, the disjointed, icy mirrors showering fragments of light on the rocky earth overhead. His power fanned out, capturing more and more of the debris-filled obstacle course trapped in the ice. From road signs to rooftops and encompassing all the stationary ruins in between, if it was embedded in the ice, once Al's transmutation grabbed it, he dragged it under. He dawdled with the process, taking it excruciatingly slow to ensure his beacon was unmistakable. When the process finished, a sprawling, clean, polished sheet of ice opened up in front of him like a generous exhibition ground, though the bleachers remained filled with the decay of the city's carcass.

Dante didn't snub the bright hail. Giving away her location as freely as the Elrics gave away theirs, a transmutation light beyond stretches of building tops flashed. Masterfully commanding her opponent's eyes, she forced them wide at the sight of her reply.

Sculpted from the ice, a frozen head mounted atop a wriggling liquid body came to life. A transmuted ice serpent uncoiled to rise above the city's remaining peaks and it opened its toothless jaws – blunt clamps designed to batter, bruise, and assault. The squealing sound of grinding ice sliced through the air in place of its breathless cry, prior to Dante unleashing it.

The underground silence unlocked its restraints and erupted in destructive bedlam at her behest once again.

Dante's 'greeting' bulldozed through the ice-top debris field, decimating the brittle remains of the exposed city. The transmutation was driven blindly, without regard for what laid in its way, assuming that whatever, or whomever, stood in the path was smart enough to move if it valued survival. Ploughing through everything like a bull on a rampage, the serpent exploded onto the slick, clean ice field Al had opened up and raced freely across.

Al watched it arrive and simply stepped out of its way.

Without Dante's eyes on the scene to supervise it, the serpent's first pass was merely a warning shot. The snaking transmutation drove clear through the rink and barrelled into the remaining cityscape beyond Al, its tailwind helping to spin him around as it blew by. Smashing through the bountiful stretches of debris beyond the clear field, Dante's menace snapped its liquefied tail along the floor like a wiper, exacerbating the damage it created, before she swung it around for another pass.

This time Al's hands came together.

The static generated in his palms as he rubbed them put the hairs on his arms straight up on their ends, and even the hair on top of his head started to rise. Digging the spikes on the bottom of his shoes into the ice, he raced to reposition himself, and aligned a building's attic trapped in the ice between himself and Dante's approaching attack. His leading arm flying open, Alphonse ripped his hands apart and threw the static he'd generated into the air. The transmutation cracked like dry lightning the moment it gained life. Forging a corridor within the oxygen, Al directed the energy towards the attic, and the building exploded in the serpent's mouth when it arrived.

Every time he blew something up, Alphonse understood the brigadier general's alchemy preferences a little better – the explosive power he was able to generate was quite a rush. He watched the solid head shatter in the blast and his eyes followed the generous chunks of ice hurled into the air. All of them crashed down like cannon balls throughout the field. Burning deposits of wreckage carved welts in the ice and the debris thrown from the explosion rained like confetti around the impact zone, littering an already tumultuous landscape.

The decapitated body of the serpent writhed, mimicking pain while picking up the warm hues of the fire in the idle water. The body slowly gathered around itself… around the fire… and the transmutation morphed into a dense, liquid bubble to envelop the blaze. The fire was put out.

Al's expression collapsed and he took a step back. It wasn't a surprise Dante had retained control of the transmutation, but the transmuted water addressing the fire was.

Dante could see the fire. Dante could see him.

Dashing into the city's debris field offering shelter, Al slipped behind a teetering half-wall and hunkered down next to his brother, "She showed up fast."

"She's pissed off, she's desperate, we have something she wants, and we didn't give her too far to go," sitting up on his knees, Ed pulled out the two small envelopes he'd picked up earlier. He popped up their flaps and shook what was left of the contents out into opposite hip pockets to refresh the flash powder, then discarded the empty envelopes through a crack on the beleaguered wall. The plain white gloves came off his hands next and were stuffed away in his backside pocket. With the flick of a finger, he popped the pack of matches out of his vest, flipped it open, and tore out what was left of the matchsticks, "Gimme the ignition gloves."

Al plucked them off his fingers and handed them to his brother.

Ed put the ignition gloves back on and nestled the bundle of matchsticks under his right thumb. He offered his brother a cocky smirk, "Let's give her something to look at since she graced us with her presence."

The protective guard of the building was abandoned by the Elric brothers and they moved out into the open, making no secret of their activity. The serpent's head had already been rebuilt and the liquefied body lurched to expel the charred remains it had swallowed. The emergence of two golden eyed boys summoned the creature high into the air.

Backing out onto the fringes of the polished ice field, Ed stepped up to bat against Dante's rising transmutation, facing it with his left shoulder. Al swung in opposite his brother, standing face-to-face with him as the creature's body regained its snake-like physique. Together Ed and Al clapped their hands with all the flourish they could muster, but neither offered Dante the baffling spark.

The speed that Dante's attack dove in with mirrored her mounting levels of frustration.

Ed stepped back from Al, twisted the matches in his palms to ignite them, and used the inherent energy of the ignition gloves to toss a garland of flame into the air when his arms flew wide. Al's transmutation collected his brother's flame, brought it under his control, and the firepower was launched into the creature's open mouth.

Dante liquefied the head of her transmutation to devour it, quelling the fiery attack behind a thick vapour cloud that was born when water and fire collided.

Ed and Al slammed their hands back together again, mirroring each other's movements. Ed produced the fuel by grinding out a static spark, but it was Al who used it, punching the follow up transmutation through the air and conducting it into the liquified creature's muzzle. The transmutation sent skyrocketing heat tearing down the liquid core, boiling the water as it went along, and ripping the serpent out of Dante's control. The heated transmutation consumed the entire length of the serpent's body and turned it into warm, white steam.

Dante's transmutation lost its life. Whatever didn't vaporize in the air became a slick of hot water to blister the city's frozen surface.

The eerie silence that settled in the aftermath was filled with whispers as the cloud thinned. Portions of the distraught city that had been disturbed by Dante's wrath weakly moaned; strained, wrought noises that eked out of the crumbling remains settling in new graves.

In the fading agony, Dante emerged in the back half of the frozen battlefield, offering no hints of her next move. Only appearing to make her presence known, she guarded her thoughts and actions like precious treasures, refusing to grant anyone the privilege of sneaking a peek at them. It was up to their imaginations to wonder what all the gears spinning in her head were going on about as the mysteries the Elric brothers built around their actions mounted.

Ed and Al had no problem taking the reins of battle from her. Maintaining their mirrored charade, their hands met in unison and together they drove their palms down to the ice.

A swath of jagged peaks ravaged the clean sheet between their position and Dante's, glistening with the orange and copper hues of the underground light. Al began launching them into the cavern ceiling above her head in successive bursts, then drew out more when the first volley ended. The bombardment rained buckets of shattered ice and sediment down onto the battlefield, and eventually began dislodging larger chunks of the overhead rock free. The ceiling above Dante's head began to break apart, releasing boulders to the ice.

The sound of Dante's hands meeting wasn't heard by anyone, but the results were clearly seen. The energy of her transmutation flew through the air, capturing everything that had come free and, in the blink of an eye, all of it was reduced to fine dust. The residue fell like sandbags spilled across the ice, leaving behind a low-lying, dusty cloud.

"Now?" Al asked below the noise.

Ed nodded, "Yeah."

"Okay," Al bounced up to his feet and rubbed the wrap covering his arm, "I'll pull her over to the right."

Ed stood up next to him, "Gotcha."

The brothers would have waited for the dust to settle, but they only needed until Dante's patience was exhausted and she dispersed the cloud herself.

Tormenting her curiosity with another unison show, Ed and Al clapped their hands. Ed stepped back and Al stepped forwards and they both crouched down to put one hand onto the ice. The ice wall Al erected in the space between himself and his brother strained the tension growing in Dante's face. The transparency of the wall was filled with loose debris and Al expanded it generously on both sides, wrapping towards Dante like a bowl to contain one end of the battlefield. The construction stopped before eclipsing her position, deliberately placing Al deep in the hollow.

Unlike the polluted wall, Al's actions were a transparent strategy that Dante could see straight through: he was offering himself as bait. Separated from the shield of his brother, the strategy generously gave Dante the freedom of lethality for her attacks, but in doing so she would leave Ed unattended to roam behind the security of the wall.

Clearly more interested in dissecting his strategy than investing in it, Al managed to get Dante to modestly chase his lure. The volley of ice needles she sent sailing across the landscape were fended off by the transmutation of wind, blowing the attack aside and even sending some back in her direction. Sinkholes leading to frozen graves were opened up beneath his feet; Al danced around them all like a lengthy game of hopscotch, dodging each pocket and plugging them for better footing while he crept along the length of the frozen wall. The farther he travelled, the more often Dante glanced away to inspect the vanishing view. With every turn of her head, with every dismissal of Al's presence, he slammed his hands together, drove them to the ice floor, and launched chunks of ice at her like missiles, forcing her to pay attention and defend. Al made no secret of his attempt to try and steer her line of sight, every action he took served that intention and the both of them knew that. Dante's refusal to fully engage him only highlighted how her interest grew in the areas he wanted her eyes to avoid. Alphonse was going to command her attention whether she wanted to give it to him or not and he put his hands together again to make sure she'd regret not playing along.

Al crouched down; placing both hands to the ice, the frozen wall evaporated. The barrier vanished in a white puff of air and the rotten debris caught up inside of it clattered to the surface upon release. Dante stood in the middle of the icefield as the veil lifted, alone in the clean expanse opening up to shine in her eyes, unable to see anything but the wasteland of her city beyond it.

A transmutation light flashed in the corner of her eye Al occupied.

Dante swung back to the single Elric screwing around with her, finally giving him the undivided attention he craved. Her eyes captured the image of Edward flying towards her instead. His hair blown out of his face by the speed, his arms already in motion, Ed rode the head of a growing ice arch steered by Al behind him. Dante momentarily lost herself in the heavy, unyielding set of golden eyes that barreled in on her, until he deprived her of the visual by dipping his head, leaving her with nothing to see except the explosion of light born from his hands when they met.

The flash rammed through her pupils, drove through her skull, and pounded off of the back of her head.

Dante screamed.

At a lurid pitch only a child's voice could reach, the anger, frustration, and pain born out of the assault on her sight culminated in her voice and fled unrestrained from her lungs. Caught thrice by the Elric brothers' maddening tactic, every last molecule of air was twisted out of her body and used to fuel her enraged cry.

With no time to transmute a defence, Dante ducked.

Ed's hand caught in the flying ends of her untied hair when he flew by.

Ripped off her feet and flung across the ice like a rag doll, both Ed and Dante crashed down on the frozen landscape and rocketted along the slick surface. Moving without control, unable to gain a foothold on anything, Dante's body was at the mercy of every toss and turn Ed made as he tried to corral their momentum. Forgoing a battle with him, the fight Dante chose to engage was the one against the terrain to bring her hands back together.

A successive series of ice blades shot out blindly between them when her palms met, slicing through the strained lengths of hair in Ed's grasp. Released from his tether, but still flopping around on the ice like a frantic foal, Dante's hands met one more time.

Alphonse captured her arms before she could transmute anything.

One Elric brother had robbed her of her sight and the other robbed Dante of her touch.

Tens of thousands of icy vines were born from Al's transmutation; bursting out of the ice, they hoisted Dante into the air and wrapped her in an untamed field of living ice. The vines wound around her legs, securing her knees and capturing her ankles. They wrapped around her body, locking her hips and torso, preventing her from thrashing. The transmutation imprisoned her arms – clamping her shoulders, sealing her elbows, and leaving nothing but the air in the palms of her hands.

But the circle had already been made and Dante had established her internal connection to the Gate for power. The only thing at her disposal – the air, was transmuted.

Damaged, childish hands unleashed the fury of a maelstrom around her. Winds thrashed around her body more violently than any creature physically could, throwing the free ends of her hair wildly around in a mad rage, ordering the loose bits of fabric to fly in a frenzy, and jostling the soft, malleable flesh on her face. The blindly transmuted, aggressive vortex waged Dante's war, bearing down with intense pressure against the vines restraining her body. Every shard that broke off was reincorporated into her arsenal to hasten the process. A single arm was all she needed, all she asked for in this furious moment, and she honed the storm's core around her left arm. She ripped it from the Elric brothers' clutches with the help of what little she had at her disposal and set the arm free.

The swift meeting of her palms obliterated Alphonse's bindings in a shower of glistening particles, tossing her into the air with the explosive gust. The dress ballooned around her body as the force carried her, her hair hugged her ears while she rose; suspended at the point where momentum faded and gravity reached up to take hold, Dante took Al's transmutation into her custody.

The field of vines was transmuted into cold, watery tendrils, wriggling with life as though the air was their ocean. Dante's desperation whipped them together to buoy her at their core, twisting and stretching them like they were strands of twine. A fat rope of winding water threads wrapped around her and she threw the lifeline to the ceiling, allowing the rope to form a solid mass when it latched an anchor overhead. Like she'd done before, Dante wrapped herself in the protective shield of a waterspout wall and rapidly forced it to swell, borrowing from the polluted ice at her feet and shredding the rest of the frozen landmass as its walls expanded.

"Brother!"

Al's voice rang out above Dante's raging storm.

"Spark!"

Up on his knees, the fingers of Ed's right hand scratched inside the bed of his left palm and he clawed his hands apart when Al arrived at his side. A bright static spark was passed from one brother to the other. Not only adjusting the oxygen in the air, but using the hydrogen in the swirling water as well, Al guided his transmutation to the cyclone's edge and released an electrical charge to dine on the impurities of the ion rich groundwater Dante was wrapped in.

The excited electricity swarmed the conductive waters, hugging the column with energy. he charge screamed as it danced around the water, snapping with boisterous lightning and cackling with glee as the current thrived. The spectacle shimmered atop the ice's surface, flashing brightly and tossing brilliant white and pale yellow light all throughout the city's remains, creating shadows where none existed before. Cries that called out from the core went unheard, drowned out by the untamed energy set free.

Overwhelmed by the sharp bite of the electrical current, the waterspout's form came undone. The thick column swayed, bending and curling as the fortitude of Dante's transmuted defences withered. The waterspout started to unwind, caving at its centre. The transmutation detached from the groove in the ceiling it had been carving and began to collapse.

Al caught it.

His next transmutation froze the faltering tower of water into a solid mass. Deadening the molecules and snuffing out the conductivity of the water, the spark that once thrived petered out quietly.

All at once, the uncontrolled madness ground to a halt. Everything stopped.

Frozen like the foundations beneath their feet, Ed and Al remained motionless at each other's side in the looming shadow of a thick, glossy, deformed column of ice. A chilly fog born from the heat of a battle finally had the opportunity to settle in the stilled air, blanketing the ice with a thin cloud.

The strange silence – the cautious peace – fell under the Elric brothers' control.

Al craned his head back to examine the structure's reach towering above them. Wicked bends and sharp curves defined the monument, like the water was mimicking the contours of twisted electrical wires. The solid prison mounted atop a chilly battleground had the audacity to shine amidst the ruins, flaunting the colours of debris encased within.

They caught her.

Alphonse felt the gasping breath he took move his entire body. The adrenalin-numbed arm throbbed at his side. They were going to do this.

Broken fragments of the Elric brothers' reflections glistened in the frozen streaks. Perfectly captured snippets of the underground view shone in the ice's fractured mirrors, highlighting their distorted images in the darkest patches.

The thump of Al's heart against his chest wall pounded in his ears with a beat that could have filled the entire cavern with its echo. They were going to have to do this.

The underworld's dead silence offered no ambient noise for the task.

A substantial, uncomfortable, imposing weight pressed down on his shoulders, trying to force him into the concrete ice beneath his feet. Al's eye drifted away to find the spread of Nina's severed hair strewn across the ice - the aftermath of a frantic attempt to break free.

Exhaustion arrived from nowhere, and it made Al a little dizzy. They were actually going to have to send Dante to the other side of the Gate, but…

"Al."

Ed's hand landed on his shoulder and Al snuck a peek at the dark, steeled look drowning out the colour in his brother's eyes. He was prepared to do this. There wasn't a shred of doubt anywhere on his brother's face – he'd put himself at odds with everyone and came down here, because he was prepared to do this. A decision made as a product of the world governed by harsh adult choices Al wished hadn't ended up in their hands. Whatever doubt or conflicting emotions his brother had over his decision was locked away behind the fortified wall he tried to bury unsightly things behind.

"Dig her head out before she suffocates," Ed stepped towards Dante's prison.

Al felt his heart wither watching his brother walk away, "Right."

Twisting grooves in the glassy ice welcomed Al's vigil when he stepped up to address the polluted cage. The single eye he looked at, the one that wasn't warped and distorted by the molded water, was momentarily unfamiliar to him. He'd forgotten his eyes were gold.

Al swallowed the uneasy feeling creeping up his throat and clapped his hands.

Layer by layer, item by item, Al stripped away the ice and debris. Tangled, mangled, indiscernible chunks of the devastated city were extracted as the frozen layers of the tornado were shaved away. Al put an eye on his brother, watching him slowly walk around the base of the ice casing, searching it for the first sign of Nina's tiny limbs. They needed to ensure Dante's hands wouldn't meet.

Al tried to banish his thoughts while he worked, but their nagging was relentless. The back of his mind wanted to know – demanded to know – what he intended to say to Dante before they sent her away. Before they exiled her. Al asked the part of his mind churning away in the background: what was someone supposed to say at a time like this? Was something going to be said at all? Did they have a right to say anything? He didn't know.

Broken remnants of a forsaken world piled up at their feet, some of it identifiable as a shop sign or door knob, but most of it was nothing more than digested mulch. The heavy look weighing down on Ed's face gained a sense of urgency and concern as he studied the unidentifiable shadows filling the thinning sculpture. Al sped up his excavation, shredding layers of ice and releasing the remains of the city to clatter carelessly off the brutally cold ice floor. Ed anxiously moved to the back side of the structure and searched the length of it. Al began stripping layers away in multiples, but nothing beyond the city's damaged skeleton ever appeared.

None of these shadows were in the shape of a body.

Nothing in here was Dante.

Reducing frozen waterspout to a decorative snake littered with a thousand broken thorns, Al stared at the glassy ornament. His heart thumped in his throat.

"She's not in here."

Ed's brow furrowed, creasing his forehead, "Where the hell'd she—

The thick ice beneath the Elric brothers' feet cracked.

A single crack sliced through the frozen plate, rocking the earth at their feet like a compact tectonic shift, dividing it in half. A second, divergent tear raced out from the divide. Fissures began sprouting and spreading in multiples, mimicking the appearance of invasive roots. The cracks in the ice began to gain a voice as they grew, squealing as each fracture shifted behind every new divide. In the blink of an eye, a web of screaming damage advanced to consume the surface. The frozen plate screeched as the final breaks carved their paths, then the entire mass shattered.

Smashed like a ruined pane of glass, the ice disintegrated into the maw of Dante's rage beneath them.

A whirlpool welcomed the Elric brothers into her ice cold hell.

The swirling, bone-chilling nightmare behaved as an extension of Dante's anger and the punishing waters screamed indecipherable obscenities on her behalf. The spiteful creation shredded the broken shards of ice in an overzealous, petty tantrum. The chaos demolished Al's feeble attempt at transmuting footing for an escape, and Dante dragged the boys down into the water, plunging them into the heart of her frigid inferno.

---

From the fury of churning waters depriving him of his bearings, and the swirling pollution executing the physical punishment, something pulled Ed out and deposited him on his stomach. He swam around in a layer of mud until he got his limbs in order, scrambling up to all fours in a panic.

Burdened with a splash of stars filling his eyes after the water in his lungs was expelled, the frantic thump of his heart made the scattered lights pulse. The water had been so cold when he entered it felt like it burned – he'd gone numb to it initially, but now he was just drenched in the shocking cold. His jaw quivered from it. Ed steadied himself over the trusted left arm that had gotten him through so much, but the right arm he lifted to wipe his hair out of his face never arrived. His mind aggressively stitched his double vision back together, afraid the arm was suddenly gone again for some inexplicable reason, and the first things he clearly saw were both of his hands cemented in the earth. The mud had gone dry.

Oh.

His mind didn't bother offering any insight beyond that.

Planted at the eye of a storm, the rumble of water cycling around him enticed his ears and lured Ed's head up. A dark and filthy stew formed the spinning liquid wall transmuted around him, swollen with the broken skeleton of the city. The powerful roar of the calamity cried out endlessly, never pausing to take a breath, never slowing down, and never relenting.

Al.

An alarm bell louder than Dante went off in Ed's head.

Where was Al?

Ed easily found his brother laying on his stomach right in front of him. If he'd had his arms free, he could have reached forwards and grabbed him. The ease of it was almost startling, but Al's arms and legs were almost completely submerged in the same hardened landscape. His head was turned to face Ed, and his exposed back revealed he was breathing, but his eyes were closed.

"AL!" Ed shook his head like a wet dog, trying to clear the hair from his face, "Al! Al, wake up!"

Dante rose beyond Al.

Ed swallowed hard, banishing his anxious heart to his stomach and instantly suppressing the chill coating him.

Riding through every breath rocking her body, Dante stood at the storm's helm drenched from head to toe. A tangled clump of hair was dumped on her back from the chaotic melee, the severed portions clinging to the side of her face. A soiled strip of white cloth lay at her feet and Dante bent down to pick it up, transmuting the dirt out of the fabric fibres as she stood up.

The exposed right hand cradled against her belly cried out for attention. Ed gave it his. The injury was still raw; taken over by the rot infecting her, the damage imposed couldn't heal. The corrosion had laid claim to what was left of her hand and was clearly in the process of breaking it down. The black and purple stain was eating around the anchor of her thumb, slowly sawing off the only digit left en route to her wrist. The damage wouldn't allow Dante to use her thumb to secure the end of the cloth that she repeatedly tried, and repeatedly failed, to wrap around the open wound. She gave up and transmuted it into a tight 'glove' to sheath the unsightly blemish instead.

Dante's pupils crashed into the corners of her eyes and tore into the two boys she'd captured. A vile glare as rotten as her hand raged silently at them through the blotches still clouding her vision.

Ed was the only one who could look at her like this. Ed was the only one who could see the decrepit state she was in.

Ed recognized how unwilling she was to come to terms with that.

Pursing her lips, a deep inhale adjusted Dante's entire body. Flushing the stress impeding her posture, she straightened her back and tossed her head high, sending the tangled mounds of long hair rolling down her back. The strands stuck to her face were wiped away, banished behind her shoulder with the swipe of her hand. Dante stiffened her upper lip and attempted to flex her mental strength by willing her composure back in order. The anger of the storm she'd caged the brothers in roared on her behalf and she encroached on them. Al was nothing more than a bump in the road that she needed to traverse and Dante stepped up to perch herself atop his bare back like a conqueror, looking down on the elder brother forced to his knees before her.

Ed peered up from beneath the ridges of his brows, through a stream of hair strung across his face, and tried not to gag. A putrid smell radiated off Dante's beleaguered figure. It tattled on her, announcing to anyone unfortunate enough to get a whiff of it how she was coming undone, mental strength be damned. What a sorrowful sight, he thought. There were nights in his other lifetime where Ed had wondered what Nina might have looked like if she'd had the chance to grow older. It was nothing like this. Nina wasn't this. She was never this… this dirtied, mangled, deteriorating mess of flesh and bones. There were no hateful creases in her expression, she didn't know how to look at anyone with so much contempt. If it weren't for those oversized eyes, poisoned as they were, he wouldn't have recognized the body Dante wore.

Dante's left hand unclenched, allowing colour to flow back into her white knuckles. She lifted her head higher, tilting it as if to think, before issuing her first decree, "Tonight, you will read The Theory of Beyond the Gate to me as my bedtime story."

"Dante you—"

"SHUT UP!"

The commanding shriek exited her lungs like a swift knife had been thrown through the air; the sound pierced his eardrums, but the echo's sharp edges were swallowed by the abyss.

Ed existed without any further word in the silence of Dante's command. Screws in his neck slowly came loose, one after another he let them turn, and he rewarded Dante by lowering his head. His soggy bangs slopped off his forehead, reached for the earth, and the water trickled from the dirty golden ends to the ground. Ed watched it flow, dampening tiny patches of the hardened earth he was locked in. Obscured from Dante's view, he lifted his eyes and peered out from behind the shield of his clumped hair to look at his brother.

Al looked back at him with the one exposed eye he'd cracked open.

"And before we take our first trip to the Gate, you will tell me what you two devils have been doing to my eyes," oxygen squeaked through Dante's nose with every breath, "what kind of nonsense have you come up with?"

A wordless exchange between two brothers was made and Al closed his eye again.

"I asked you a question!"

Ed tossed his head up, sending water flying out of the ends of his hair, "You told me to shut up!"

The muddy water landed in blotches on the front of Dante's dress, vanishing as quickly as it landed, easily absorbed by the damp fabric hanging over her body. Her fingers danced at her side uncomfortably, busying themselves by smoothing over the fabric at her stomach in an attempt to regain a sense of calm, "I did, didn't I?" her hand rubbed circles over her abdomen, each revolution becoming slower and more methodical, "please continue to do as you're told, but acknowledge me when I address you."

Ed examined how the soaken dress hung like a weight over Dante's body, adding to all of the forces trying to drag her down. Tears littered the fabric, and the damp, white hem had been pulled to the earth to absorb the dirt at her feet, dying it brown. Ed's line of sight travelled up, eventually finding hints of rot peeking out above the neckline. His eyes tried to measure how close it was to reaching her collarbone. His mind wondered how extensive the damage really was that she was hiding.

Dante caught his eye line and abruptly yanked the dress up, straightening it over her shoulders to conceal it, "Don't look at that."

"You're dying."

"I am not dying."

"You're rotting."

Apparently the two were different things and she didn't quarrel over the second.

Dante shook out a shiver from her arms and stepped off of Alphonse onto the thin stretch of dirt between the two brothers. Encroaching on the Elric she sought, Dante reached in to collect a bundle of Ed's wet bangs. Peeling his hair out of his face sections at a time, she wiped the soggy clumps over the top of his head amidst a wordless protest, clearing it away until the vicious look in his sunken eyes was completely exposed for her to admire.

"Not for much longer," Dante raked her fingers through his soiled beard, clawing out the mud dulling the leonine shine, "we'll need to find more tranquil accommodations than this, however."

"Where the hell are we supposed to go?" Ed spat out a short, bitter laugh. He tossed his head over his shoulder to address the gut-wrenching view of everything her desperation had ruined, "This was your home and look what you've done to it."

The broken carcass of a dead city revolved around them, blended to form a dark, dirty, liquid swill.

"You don't have control in Central anymore. You screwed up your fake family and the ghosts of your real one are gone. There's nowhere for you to go."

Burdened in a disabled child's body, an entire country that had once been her playground was inaccessible without aide.

"You screwed up your last homunculus and the one person who's been at your side is dead," Ed looked through Nina's eyes to address Dante's soul residing within, "you've used up your resources, there's no one's out there to help you – what do you have left?"

The vertebrae in her neck hinged Dante's head towards him, dumping the severed locks of hair over her shoulder, "What do I have left?"

The pillars buoying her control, the foundations giving her power, and the assets moving at her command had all been spent to obtain the only person in existence who could offer Dante salvation. Moving as though grace and dignity still mattered, her functional hand was presented to Ed's eye and the tiny fingers curled into her body one by one, dancing up her chest. Her index finger found the links of the necklace above the collar's hem and traced its path, sweeping behind her neck in a dainty, single motion. Dante tucked her index finger under the chain and drew her hand back down. The chain was lifted into the air and Dante slowly extracted the Philosopher's Stone from beneath her dress.

For all the trials and tribulations that he'd been through, Edward had never really seen the Philosopher's Stone. Sure Dante had taunted him with it and of course he'd taken a glimpse into the catastrophe Al had become, but the abomination of legend – the tangible Philosopher's Stone – had never truly found his gaze. At this point, he honestly didn't want to see it. But Dante let him look at it. She made a calculated, inescapable offer to his eyes to admire it and Ed got caught looking at it. The stone touted a rich, saturated, unnatural colour that existed nowhere else in nature – that existed outside of nature, procured exclusively through sacrifice. The intense shade of red captured the orange light of the underground, borrowed from the flame in Ed's eyes, and claimed their glows as its own. Sinking in the evanescent allure, a hum gradually made its presence known – it wasn't in his mind, but it did occupy the space between his ears. The stone deposited a faint sense of its aura there, and it felt a little… soothing.

Dante broke the enchantment; numb to the stone's ethereal charm she swung it through the air until it settled in her grasp. She leaned towards Ed, chasing him back as far as his restraints would allow. When he could escape no farther, Dante closed in tight enough to put the stone chained to her body down on his sealed lips.

Ed froze on his knees staring into the hungry eyes of a dying creature, his breaths trapped in his stone lungs, heart caught in the clenched apex of his steel throat.

"I have my life," she had ravaged lands, stolen seas, used peoples, and even tried challenging the Gods' orchestration of two worlds in order to protect and maintain the most important thing she had left, "and you will help me further it."

"What about your life?"

Ed asked despite the weapon he was threatened with.

"I have people I care about, I have a family I want to be with, I have a home waiting for me," his voice steadily rose above the calamity crying out all around, requesting an answer from whatever was left of her soul, "what the hell are you trying so hard to live for?"

A droplet of water slipped from Dante's short bangs. It tumbled down her forehead, trickled uninterrupted through the centre of her face, and slid past the pupils cast down the tiny swoop of her nose.

"You've abandoned every life you've ever lived and tossed it away like it was garbage. The only people at your side are the ones you coerce to be there. You got so sick of the game of life that you stopped living as part of the world altogether. You fill the void with knowledge – amazing, endless knowledge, so you can bandage it and ignore it. So you don't have to look at what it is about this bullshit life of yours that keeps you going."

The work she put into procuring a stone every second generation extended her life. The medicines she studied as a pharmacist helped maintain it. The advances she'd woven into society all served the agenda. The effort she'd put into obtaining someone from beyond the Gate was meant to save her. Helming the course of humanity was the curtain she was hiding behind, because everything Dante lived for was being governed by a singular drive.

To a woman who desperately wanted the longevity of a God wrapped in the simplicity of human flesh, a familiar sentiment was bitterly offered, "But living to escape death isn't living at all."

The corner of Dante's lip attempted to curl with the tart, haughty smile she preferred to subject people to, but instead it came across as a meek sneer. She fumbled the stone through her fingers, clumsily burying it behind the neckline of her dress again. Dante wrenched her chin above yet another man she lorded over, his weaponry reduced to simple words. Reaching for her trophy, Dante placed her mismatched hands together, "You and I are going to get along better if you're in a pleasant stupor."

She swooped in, causing Ed to gag on the air they shared and stifling anything he might say in protest. Dante's fingers pressed against the rich arteries running through his neck and executed a transmutation to intoxicate his bloodstream.

The next pulse that carried blood through Ed's veins sucked the transmutation out of Dante's fingertips. It was taken from her hand, pulled through her arm, ripped from her heart, and confiscated from the Gate itself. Dante felt the vacuum pull her Gate doors shut. The next beat bounced the power back on her, like it had burst from his blood vessels and been forced into hers. The pulse rippled the flesh of her good hand, stirred the marrow in her bones, rattled every atom in her body, and ignited a rebound so strong it bounced the ocean of raging water and ice trapped in the underground, rocking the city above it.

Everything that boasted 'life' within the rebound's reach in the underground city vanished from it.

---

Dante felt pale.

The loss of colour, the loss of warmth, the loss of the rose tint in her flesh made her understand what it was like to experience 'pale'.

Dante had never experienced the Gate like this.

She'd never felt it subjugate her in every fibre of her being.

Crushed by the strength of its power, the visions that invaded her mind screamed like angry wraiths. Fast, dizzying, disorienting, maddening; it was a sensation that lasted only a mere second or so, but the pressure on her mind, body, and soul lasted an eternity. The memory of the experience was instantly and irreversibly imprinted on her.

It was terrifying.

Dante had never arrived at its doors and felt oppressed.

Consumed by the shadow it did not cast, the Gate loomed over her taller and more imposing than anything in existence. The structure was invasive, overpowering, inarguable, and absolute. She understood its authority in a way she'd never perceived it before and didn't know why, but she knew she wasn't in a position to question that.

Because that wasn't what scared her.

Through the golden window of Ed's eyes she saw the Gate. She didn't need to look up to see how the structure towered over them, the doors didn't have to be open for her to see inside – she perceived it through him. Ed showed her a view that was nothing like any she'd seen before. The one she saw at the opened doors was insignificant by comparison. This was dark and immersive, persistent and never ending, and the incomprehensible sense of perpetuity coming from it made her shiver. It was as terrifying as it was exciting.

This was the source of fear that undid Wrath. She dove into it with her eyes and heard its indiscernible chatter like a deafening ringing in her ears. This was what Wrath experienced and she couldn't tear herself away from it.

Her perception of the Gate came to life when Ed moved and Dante gasped at the fright that gave her. He came up onto one knee, paused when she took a cautious step back, and continued to rise up on both feet.

The window vanished.

Everything went quiet.

Dante frantically searched Ed's face and found no further signs of what he'd shown her. She had only taken her eyes off of him for a second when she'd flinched, but the view of the inside, the profound sensation of a vast, insurmountable depth shown to her had been shuttered.

Dante stared up at Edward Elric.

How did they end up here?

She studied how he stood over her, imposing his presence on her like the Gate at their shoulders. The molten cores of his uncompromising dark eyes looked back at her – burdened, tired, and worn, but still with the sense of fire at their centres. Like the inapproachable sun, they had the power to burn her.

A set of hands clapped behind Dante.

The sound echoed in her mind like an explosion and she threw her head over her shoulder.

Al stood tall behind her; his hair a muddy, storm-mangled disaster, his trousers soaked with water and dirt, his one arm wrapped in a filthy, bloodstained shirt, and his bare chest littered with the damage he'd sustained in the frigid, debris-filled waters. His hands were pressed firmly together, the tips of his fingers resting just below his chin.

This other set of golden eyes she gazed into never closed or shuttered the sight of the steadfast, stalwart soul that resided within.

Dante's childish face widened with an epiphany: Ed was a window. That was the momentary enchantment his eyes had been – a window into the Gate. Millions of thoughts born out of centuries of research lit up in Dante's mind like stars filling a clear midnight sky and her heart danced with excitement beneath them. Ed was a conduit. He was a path. He was a way to the Gate that Wrath had seen, that Wrath had feared, and now Dante had seen it too. Edward could show Wrath the Gate because he had secured the means to access it. No, he was the means. She was here at the Gate with him because he was a means like Diana had been. A means she had instigated!

And Alphonse's hands were pressed firmly together.

Dante's heart fell from the stars and dropped to the pit of her stomach, landing like a boulder in a vacant canyon. The thinning air in her lungs barely gave her a voice, "What have you done?"

"Saved your life," Al answered, "make the most of it."

A familiar sound she knew all too well, the familiar sound of grinding stone, became Dante's salvation.

The aged hinges of the Gate ground into motion and the doors slowly swung open with a noise that made her heart flutter no matter how many times she'd heard it. The doors gained momentum as they opened wide, never creating a breeze when they flew by, but booming out a rich thud as they stopped. Dante looked into the darkness presenting itself, expecting to catch a glimpse of what she'd seen in Ed, but the Gate wasn't offering her that view. This darkness was something else.

This darkness reached for her.

Dante staggered away and clapped her hands.

Nothing happened.

Frantically digging out the Philosopher's Stone from around her neck, Dante put it in her palm and slapped her wounded hands together.

Nothing happened.

Stringy fingers attached to boneless arms formed unbreakable black lures that wrapped around her wrists. They snaked up her arms while Dante stood staring at the memory of her access to the Gate being forced shut.

"No"

Dante thrashed within the unconquerable snare of the Gate's reach.

"NO! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

She tried to throw her body around. She tried to break away. The arms of the Gate seized her limbs and Dante's legs buckled beneath her.

"STOP THIS"

The Gate plucked her off the ground.

Fighting the prison of black arms, Dante strained to turn and face the Elric brothers, but the black shackles stole her vision.

She wailed.

"WHAT HAVE YO—

Dante vanished into the Gate.

---

To Be Continued...

---

Author's Notes:

In the early days of this fic, I considered each chapter to be another episode. I got away from that some time ago (though I still pay tribute to that on the FFN titles) but for this one I'll consider this a 45min special or something lol.

For nearly the entire life of this fic, the resolution for Dante has been Ed sending her beyond the Gate (in some way, shape, or form). The number of ways my imagination has conjured up the last two sections of this chapter is very, very large (even in those years where I was a ghost, I did think about it). Most of them are absolutely nothing like this finished product, even the ones that might be similar really aren't that close lol, but in the storyweb in my head I can see how it evolved. It was actually still fairly different even 4 months ago (before I weeded out parts that didn't feel right). Funny how short those bits ended up being overall in such a long chapter, and how they were the easiest part of this chapter to write. After the countless variations I've written, or heck even imagined over the years, I think I'm happy with this. I release this to the scrutiny of the internet and hope it provided some kind of satisfying resolution for readers as well ^^

PS obviously I'm not finished LOL. Now back to our regularly scheduled 'characters being people who are stumbling through life' to wind this thing down (and Brigitte needs to go home :D).