Abstractication: its okay that your reviews are not "intellectual," I promise. I just like to know that people really are reading this story. As for why I don't sleep… I guess that's not true, I do sleep, but not at night. I work in the evening and come home around eleven or midnight or so and go to bed around four or five am. Its an odd schedule I know but hey it works.

Silent:Tears:Fall: yeah I have a few things here and there in the previous chapters that hint at the time inconsistency, either people didn't catch them or they assumed that the two worlds were going at different rates. In the Amestris world, its always clearly stated that Ed's been away for six years, but this is the first time he says ou tloud that he's been gone for ten. In the chapter where Ed visits Al in the hospital he says he hasn't seen his little brother's human form in 15 years. Also, the chapter where Ed and Al H are working on their rocket says the year is 1925.

And yes, Ed and guilt are like best friends.

As for Ed being upset with Winry, of course that's just secondary to being upset over what's happening to Al, but he and Winry have a ton of issues between them now. The age difference between Al and Winry is kinda weird I guess, but Ed is also dealing with the fact that he and Winry slept together. He didn't know she and Al were in a relationship at the time, but she certainly did, and slept with him anyway. That's got to be trying on their friendship to say the least.

Animefan127: just be patient my dear. Neither brother has given up yet.

The Weight of a Life

Four years after Edward's disappearance, Al finally accepted the truth: there was no way to bring his brother back without paying some kind of price. No matter how perfect the array, no matter how calculated the ingredients, it would never be enough to equal a life.

Six years after his brother disappeared, Alphonse was ready to pay whatever price necessary to bring Edward back.

There were many different kinds of alchemy, he learned throughout his travels; some of it was not even called alchemy where it was practiced. Since he worked for the military, he spent a lot of time in Ishbal, reconstructing parts of it, trying to restore the nation to some semblance of its former existence. In Ishbal it was called the Forbidden Art, but it was a kind of alchemy. Al saw arrays in every temple to Ishbala he visited. There were none, however, that entranced him as much as the one he discovered in a remote part of the desert. It was uninhabited, unused, but it must have been part of a monastery of some sort before the war. There was no civilization around it, and the military had decided not to re-develop the area. Al tried to be discreet as he tried to reproduce the array line for line in his notes.

It took him nearly a year to decode every symbol in the array; none of it was in his native language and although he had learned to read Ishbalan the sources themselves were near impossible to locate. It was only by sifting through the most obscure religious texts that he was able to understand exactly what the array was.

Human alchemy. Forbidden by God, Ishbala and science alike.

Human Transmutation was possible. Edward had proved that, although it would never be recorded in any alchemy text. The books would continue to print the falsehood that it was impossible and should not be attempted. That was fine, Al thought. Because the only alchemist ever to succeed had been destroyed in the process.

Al's hope was that the Ishbalan array would anchor him to his own life while he reached inside the gate for his brother. There would be a cost, he was sure, but whatever it was, he was willing to pay it if they could only be together again.

He thought his heart would be racing, hands shaking with nervousness when he arrived at the abandoned temple, but his steps were light and his soul felt like soaring. Whatever happened, he would see his brother again. Even if it was for a few moments before he died, he would see him again.

The archways that formed the entrance to the temple had crumpled, and Alphonse clapped his hands together and pressed them to the stone. With a crack! the arches righted themselves; the building was now whole.

He was amazingly calm, his mind crystal clear when he stepped into the array and willed it to activate. He felt the alchemic energy as a breeze that fled over his skin, lifting his hair and whipping his clothing around. Determined, he concentrated his focus on what he desired.

There was the Gate, and it was terrible.

Alphonse had seen it before but he did not remember it, and suddenly those memories seized him with the fear he did not expect to feel. The ground seemed to have dropped out from under him, the array that was meant to anchor him was gone, void, invalid. There was nothing but himself and the Gate.

His stomach clenched with dread as the doors began to open, and his mind was invaded by more information than he thought even existed, the inner workings of everything, everything on earth were explained to him in that one split second, things he could not even comprehend, mushroom clouds and star charts and swirling black holes and portals to other universes. Stop, he forced himself to command. This is not what I've come for.

Eerie bright eyes stared at him hungrily from the darkness within the doors, and chilling, writing black arms began to reach for him. He began to back up. "Wait," he said weakly. "You can't take anything from me without giving me something in return," he protested, but all he heard was the discordant shrieking of the creatures inhabited the depths of Truth. He had expected some kind of bargaining, some kind of conversation in which he would agree to exchange this for that, or perhaps he would have to fight with something, defeat something to earn the right to retrieve his brother from the Gate.

The icy hands were already scrabbling over his skin as he cried, "Take anything from me, my body, my heart, my soul, anything you want, but just give me my brother back. I'll give anything to see him even one more time!"

The answer reverberated in his mind, the voice utterly inhuman and causing a jarring pain to course through his body.

But your brother isn't here, Human One.

End of Part One