Ed looked down at the small rock glowing on the floor. Lately he'd been the only one able to stand being inside of his room. It had been a relief that none of the members had been able to bother him as he did more of his research, but more and more he found his mind wandering back to home. He was so close. He hoped he hadn't been too greedy in borrowing from this world's power. By the deep red colour of the stone he judged it must have been holding a very large share of it. He'd been told that a large group of ninjas from one of the opposing villages was gathering troops outside, preparing to attack and put an end to his power-draining, but he'd be done by then. Gone and done. And the ninjas outside would soon be surprised to find themselves without power, anyway. He'd at least promised Akatsuki that much. He feared the homunculus Orochimaru had been creating, though. The people attacking wouldn't be expecting immortal guards, but immortal guards were what they had. He still wasn't sure how they worked, but perhaps they were also powered by chakra, similar to how the homunculus in his world survived on the power of the red stone. It was possible… he smiled. He wouldn't allow himself to be indirectly responsible for any more deaths. He'd stop all of the chakra, and level the playing field. It wasn't equivalent trade, but he didn't believe that allowing these people to take several hundred lives because of the advantage he'd incidentally given them was, either.
Ed stepped out of the room and walked down into the large room at the end of the hallway. He could feel that Orochimaru had the gate open yet again. After he'd finally taught Ed how to open it, he'd been manically trying to find the missing part of his soul that had been trapped within it. Once again, his little sidekick was lurking in the corner, brooding. It seemed that brooding was all Sauske did. It was obvious that he resented everyone here, Orochimaru most of all for forcing him to come. He'd been almost entirely ignored since the man arrived, and it had been slowly driving him crazy. Orochimaru stood back from the gate again. Even the tiny giggling gate-keepers shied away from his insane grin now. He dragged one of them out by the arm and held it up at eye level.
"Where?!" he demanded, shaking it. It squirmed and tore against his arm, but only succeeded in dishevelling the bandages. He glared and threw it back into the gate. "One of you has them!" he yelled at the children in the gate. He reached in again, and pulled out a small one. It was as black as the others, but its arms were a slightly lighter shade. Orochimaru looked down at it and finally smiled. "You."
He turned to Sauske, grinning even wider than before.
"Sauske, it is time for you to hand over your body to me."
Sauske glared back from the corner of the room where he was standing. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. That Orochimaru would be treacherous enough to demand his payment before he'd finished what he promised. Sauske snapped.
"Like hell I'm giving you my body now! What have you done for me? You haven't done a thing since you gave me this seal! I've been training with your minions for months now while you scramble to other people about your own crazy goals. I didn't care what you were doing, as long as you gave me power, but everything I have right now I've had to work for myself. The only reason I attained the Mangekyou Sharingan was by killing Naruto with my own hands. And even now you deny me the power I need to finally kill my brother and avenge my family. You have me in his hideout and I still can't kill him! My only reason for living is revenge. I don't care what you do with me afterwards, but you cannot have my body before that. Three years was the promise. I don't care what kind of breakthrough you've had in your research."
Orochimaru glared and stalked out of the room. He was almost pouting as he pushed by Edward, but he knew that if he was going to take Sauske's body he'd have to find an opening for him to kill Itachi. Unfortunately, he'd lately been too distracted by his own research to find one. Why couldn't the boy do anything for himself? The door slammed closed behind him, and the gate retreated back to whatever space between the worlds it usually inhabited.
"And you," Sauske glared at Ed. "If you lay a finger on my brother before I get to him, you're dead."
Ed watched as Sauske retreated to the far corner of the room and sat down, resuming his sulking. He'd been watching him for small intervals ever since he'd arrived. He and his brother were the closest of all the people in the caves that were closest to his age, and at first they'd reminded him of himself and his brother. This had only been for the first few seconds however, before he'd noticed the murderous intentions Sauske had against his brother, and the way Itachi ignored him completely, as if he didn't exist at all or wasn't worth his time to notice. Itachi seemed to treat everyone who couldn't directly benefit him in that way, though. Ed didn't consider himself lucky that he wasn't one of those people. For some reason, seeing Sauske seething in the corner reminded Ed of his brother. He hoped that Al hadn't let some strange idea of revenge steer him since his disappearance. These ninjas, it seemed, had the same tendency to shut out the entire outside world in favour of their pursuit of power. He suddenly felt the need to try to make this estranged little brother see things differently.
"Is revenge really that important to you?" he asked.
Sauske looked up at him. Very little emotion showed in his dark eyes. He looked pale and somewhat sickly, like he hadn't seen the sun in months. His expression reminded Ed of Frank Archer – that ominous smirk and glint in the eyes that was just searching for a battle to fight. Was it these ones that always went insane? There was something slightly different, though. Oddly enough, his hunger didn't seem to be for power, but for recognition. No wonder though, with the only remaining member of his family refusing to even admit that he was able to see him. Perhaps then, he should just move on. When Sauske made no response, Ed continued. He could afford to spare a little time being philosophical.
"There's never a good end to revenge. I've seen it. The people who are driven only by revenge only end up unfulfilled. Even those that pursue things for love can end up without what they've been looking for, but at least then they have something else to go back to. The people who are only out for revenge; they just wither up and die afterwards. There's nothing else there. No future, no purpose. Is that what you want?"
Sauske still made no comment, and though Ed wasn't sure if he was even listening, he hadn't told him to shut up yet.
"It reminds me of people I knew at home. My neighbour… my brother and I always used to play with her when we were little. One day a man from the army came to her door to tell her that her parents were dead, killed in a war they were only involved in to help the casualties. But instead of revenge, she decided she'd work harder, and become the best mechanic she should be. Even when she found out that she knew who had killed her parents, she didn't seek revenge on them."
Ed wandered over to the wall near where Sauske still sat and leaned against it a few feet away. He decided he didn't care if the boy was listening or not, he looked like he wasn't the sort to ever listen to advice anyway, but he felt that someone else should know about the people he knew at home, and how much he respected them, even if he'd never told them.
"Then there was my commander in the military. He was a smug jerk, but when I think about it he was also a great man. I didn't realize it until the last time I saw him. He'd seen so many things go wrong, and decided that he'd do something about them. He decided he'd rise up to the top of the military and fix things from there. He had a whole group of loyal people following him, even. But his best friend got too close to the truth and got killed. I guess after that he did seek out revenge, but not directly. He channelled the energy into his work, pushing himself harder, and working out a plan to finally get revenge and meet his goal. And I imagine he did. He's probably sitting in Central now, Fuhrer, head of the military, with all his secretaries in miniskirts. Jerk. I don't think he's doing much work, but I bet he's happy where he is. Because there was something waiting for him after he got his revenge. Look at me! I've been travelling now for five years trying to get my brother back to his original body, and just when I came closest I was torn away from him and thrown out into some other world. Then, escaping that one, I ended up here!" Ed didn't care anymore that he was giving away all his secrets to Sauske. The boy was quiet; he wasn't going to tell anyone anything. And even if he did, it wouldn't make a difference. Ed would be gone in less than an hour anyway. "I guess I'm still paying my price for the mistakes I made in the past. But my brother and I, not once did we want revenge against what had taken our bodies away from us." He gripped his prosthetic arm, still made of the heavy useless materials he'd put together in Munich. "We understood that it was a consequence. I'm not saying that it was some kind of punishment that your brother murdered your family. But wouldn't it be a greater revenge to just go on living? Ignore him like he ignores you, and he'll be forced to take notice. It takes a lot more strength to move on than it does to blindly follow revenge where it takes you. The hardest thing I ever did was to leave my home the last time after my mom died. We burned it down so we wouldn't give up and come back. Maybe that's what you need to do. Put your past behind you. Surely you can see you're not getting anywhere by lurking around in corners here. For all you know the world could be ending outside, and if the only reason you would care is that you haven't killed your brother yet then… then that's just pathetic."
Ed turned and walked out of the room. Inside his study the stone was pulsating with a bright red hue. The time to cut it off, if he was going to preserve Akatsuki's power, had already passed. He smiled. So he'd made a difference even if the kid hadn't been listening to him. It wasn't necessarily his fault he'd been distracted by something else when he was supposed to be watching the stone. He felt an odd shift in the world, like it had suddenly stopped spinning, and the array around the stone faded.
It was almost time.