If sunshine and the desert and alchemy had scents, that's what Ed would smell like.

The idea of it is so wistful, so unreal, and so at odds with Ed's actual scent—which is sweat and oil and metal and Roy's shampoo because even though Ed has the longer hair, Roy's the one who cares about the quality of the product—that he jolts into awareness.

"Hey," Ed says, soft, almost as if he's afraid to speak too loudly. He reaches out his metal arm and pulls Roy closer, and sure enough, he smells like sunshine and alchemy. Sunshine is the scent of warmth, of things that grow, of heat on concrete; alchemy smells like lightning in a bottle and the new-baby scent of creation. They're comforting, soothing scents, even though they're wrong, but they tell Roy that they must be in the dream again.

Roy wraps his own arm around Ed's waist, burying his face in Ed's chest, listening to the sound of his heart whoosh, strong and rhythmic beneath him. As he does, Ed's real scent begins to replace the dream one, as if his mind is trying to make it more real.

"Hey," he mumbles into Ed's chest, trying not to sob with the relief of having him in his arms again. Even if it's only in this dream place, even if it's not in the real world. It's only been two days and they've been separated so much longer before, but having Ed back in his arms makes it feel like it's been weeks.

Ed's flesh hand comes up and begins to stroke through Roy's hair, the way he almost only ever does when Roy has had a nightmare. "Had a rough one, huh?" he asks.

"It has certainly been a trying few days," Roy admits. "Your team are… protective."

Snorting, Ed says, "That's a word for it." He doesn't stop his stroking, and Roy can feel himself relaxing a little bit. "I'm sorry you're having to wrangle them all on your own."

"I don't," he replies before he can think about it. "If not for Maes, though, I think I'd have done something quite unforgivable by now."

Ed goes still beneath him, and the cadence of his heartbeat changes. "Maes?" he asks, voice soft, but not in a whisper this time, more like he had to force the words past his throat, as if they didn't want to be spoken.

Strange how in just two days of having Maes back, Roy has gotten so used to having him again. He pulls back a bit and scoots up so he can meet Ed's eyes. "None of the people used to fuel the array appear to have survived. There was nothing left of them but their clothes," he explains. Ed closes his eyes in pain. "But Maes Hughes appeared in the array."

Golden eyes fly open again, and the look in them is stricken. "You can't trust it!" he says, harsh and like it hurts him to say. Roy's sure it does; Maes was precious to the Elric brothers as well. "You can't trust anything that damn thing—"

"It's him," Roy interrupts, stroking Ed's bangs back from his face, needing to touch him, needing to feel him. "I've done everything I can think of to confirm it. He's whole and healthy and there's no ouroboros tattoo anywhere."

Ed pushes his hand away and sits up. "That doesn't make any sense," Ed says. "You can't—"

"Bring back the dead," Roy agrees. "I know."

"Obviously you've forgotten if you think that it could really be him!" Ed snaps, but his face creases with pain. "Twelve people? Twelve lives? Where's the equivalency? It just doesn't make sense! If it were that simple, someone would have figured it out before now!"

It's Roy's turn to pull Ed in close, and he does, ignoring the way Ed weakly pushes at him.

"I don't think it was," Roy says. "Tucker Maes wanted to resurrect his brother, Hugh Maes. That's not who he got. And he paid a heavy price for it."

Ed trembles in his arms, but his voice is steady when he asks, "What did it cost him?"

"An arm, a leg, his eyes, ears, and tongue," Roy says, not sugarcoating it. There's no point in trying to sugarcoat anything related to human transmutation with Ed. He won't believe it anyway.

Ed's quiet for a long moment before he says, "At the Gate… I thought I saw… I saw him being reconstructed. I thought it was Hughes… The Gate… seemed like it was taunting me with him." He leans back from Roy, looking up at him, and Roy knows the look of wheels turning behind Ed's eyes well by now. "Like it thought Hughes could take you away from me. I think it knew we'd had a fight."

The knowledge that the Gate is sentient is already something that Roy could live without having ever learned. Knowing that it watches them, that it knows anything about them, sends a shiver of unease through him.

"Yeah, my thoughts exactly," Ed says, obviously interpreting Roy's revulsion correctly. "It seemed to think… he could take you away from me, somehow."

Unnerved, Roy strokes his fingers through Ed's hair, the familiar warmth and softness grounding him. "For a supposedly omniscient being, it seems very stupid."

It gets a snort from Ed, and a little bit of the tension goes out of him. "Yeah," he agrees. "Yeah, it really can be. Knowing about alchemy or the nature of the universe doesn't mean that it understands how people tick."

A smile pulls at Roy's lips at the oddly comforting observation. People are unknowable even to this god-like being. Even to this being that claims to be god. He likes the idea that there is this one thing that is beyond it.

Ed lifts his head, puts his hands over Roy's chest, and pillows his chin on the flesh one. "So Hughes is really…?"

"As far as I can tell, it's really Maes, and he's really alive," Roy confirms. Ed's eyes look up at the wall behind him while he thinks, seeing things that Roy doesn't pretend to fathom or understand. He might be staring at Ed's eyes, but it's been so long since he's seen the gold unhidden for any length, he finds he's missed it terribly. No one has eyes like Edward Elric. Roy is convinced that even if he had all of the population of Xerxes to compare to, that would still be true.

"There has to be a way back," Ed says. "Not just to bring you back to Amestris, but also to send JJ and Morgan back to their world."

"So you are in Amestris?" Roy asks, relieved.

Blinking to clear his thoughts, Ed looks at him again. "Yeah—well, Xerxes, technically, but yeah, I'm back in our world. It's definitely ours too, not some weird parallel or anything."

Roy frowns. "Xerxes?" He barely remembers that Ed had said that last time they did this, met in their dreams like this. He hasn't had a chance to think about the implications of Ed being there.

Ed flashes a fierce grin at him. "It's being rebuilt as a waystation between Amestris and Xing."

"You mean like I recommended almost ten years ago?"

Smiling, Ed says, "Apparently without your charming self to push things through, bigwigs need a lot more time to be convinced of good ideas."

"Any chance that they're giving it to the Ishvalans to manage?" Roy asks certain that while they may have finally decided a waystation is in their best interest, Amestris—even Grumman, if he's still around—will hesitate to give the reparations that Amestris owes to the Ishvalan people.

To his surprise, Ed's grin gets bigger. "They sure are. Scar's even here, leading it. He's working with Hawkeye, who has gotten a promotion, by the way."

"Of course she has," he replies. "Hawkeye is far too good at her job not to have gotten a promotion in ten years. I wouldn't be surprised if she's had a couple."

"She's probably due for another soon. I'm sure she'll get it if the Xerxes rebuild is a success," Ed says. "And with Hawkeye in charge, it wouldn't dare be anything else."

Humming in agreement, Roy says, "I hope I get to see it soon."

He's sorry to see the comment makes the grin fade from Ed's face. "You'll get to. Soon. I'll figure it out," he says, fierce and certain.

Roy can't help but smile in response. "I have absolute faith in you."

It makes Ed smile again, this time a little softer. It's not that Ed doesn't know his own values and skills perfectly well, but he always seems to appreciate hearing that Roy has faith in him. His fingers stroke down Ed's neck to run over the automail joint on Ed's shoulder. "Why the automail?" he asks. Last time they were dreaming, Ed had been whole.

"I woke up before you. It felt… wrong. Like cheating. So I just… decided that it was automail, and it was."

Roy strokes his hand down Ed's shoulder. He always has such conflicted feelings about Ed's automail arm. On one hand, he wishes dearly that Ed had been able to have his arm, at least, back, even if he couldn't be whole. That same hand always wonders if he was worth the sacrifice, if he were worthy of it. On the other hand, it's hard not to be grateful that he has the chance to see Ed with his own eyes, see how beautiful his partner is, that he has the chance to not only make Ed smile but to see it himself.

Ed seems content with the decision, which makes it easier to be grateful and to appreciate the gift he's been given. Sometimes, though, the doubts gnaw at him.

"Stop wallowing," Ed tells him, flicking him gently in the forehead with his flesh fingers. "You've got that crease in your forehead that you get when you're being stupid."

Laughing, Roy's heart aches. "I miss you so much," he says.

"I'm going to get us back together," Ed reassures. It's the same determination he had when he said that he was going to get their bodies back, and in some circumstances, hearing Ed speak like that is mildly terrifying, but in this instance? It's exactly what Roy needs to hear.

"What can I do to help?" Roy asks.

Ed's eyebrows raise. "I'm not sure you can do much, not from your side?"

It occurs to Roy that they barely had time to talk last time, and most of that time they spent making up. They have a chance to speak now. It's important to share information. "Alchemy is working," Roy says.

Ed sits up, brow furrowing. "So it wasn't just Tucker? It wasn't isolated to him?" he asks.

"No," Roy says, following his lead. "No. The whole area around where the array was set off, probably a fifty-mile radius, I can use alchemy again."

"Huh," Ed says, and Roy can see the wheels turning behind his eyes. "That big of an area?"

"I haven't tried leaving since I got here. I didn't want to risk leaving and the alchemy fading or not being able to work anymore," he explains.

Raking a hand through his hair, sighing. "That doesn't make sense," he says.

"I know," Roy agrees, then grimaces.

Distracted as he is, Ed notices. "What else?" he asks in a tone that suggests he's expecting the worst.

Roy sighs. "Tucker and Maes aren't the only doppelgangers," he says.

"Who else?" Ed demands.

There's no easy way to do this. "Kimblee," he says. "There's a Kimblee doppelganger."

"Fuck!" Roy winces and Ed sees it again. "Fuck, it gets worse, doesn't it?"

It definitely does. "We strongly suspect that he's the one who taught Tucker alchemy."

Ed groans, exaggerated and deep in his chest, tilting his head back and staring up at… the sky. Roy blinks at it, surprised that he hadn't realized that the "house" he assumed they were in doesn't actually have a ceiling. He sees a bright, cheerful blue sky above.

After a long moment, Ed's chest heaves. "Well, we have one really big advantage, at least," he says.

"Oh?" Roy asks.

Ed tilts his head back to look at Roy and grins. "I have my alchemy back," he says.

It takes a moment for the weight of that statement to fully sink in. "You have your alchemy back?" he has to ask, just to make sure he didn't mishear.

The grin grows, and Ed says, "I do."

Roy had complete faith that Ed would find a way to get them home before he knew Ed had his alchemy back. Knowing they have that piece on the board changes everything.

"That's great," he says, what little tension he had about the issue fading.

Ed hums in agreement before the grin fades from his face and a more solemn expression comes over him. "Yeah, I just don't know what the price is for it," he says. "And as happy as I am to have Hughes back, I don't trust it. Even to try to cause trouble with us, Truth doesn't do shit like that. It doesn't hate me enough to bring someone back just to spite me…" He trails, then adds, "At least, I don't think it does. I don't think it would have given me my alchemy back. I don't think it would want me to have my alchemy back. It hates me."

"It doesn't hate you," Roy says. If that god-like thing hated you, you'd be dead. It's a thought that he refuses to speak into the world.

Rolling his eyes, Ed says, "Easy for you to say. And regardless, that's two big things we got out of the Gate: my alchemy and Hughes." He pulls his bottom lip into his mouth to worry at it while he thinks. "Twelve people. Twelve lives. Twelve souls…"

"What are you thinking?" Roy asks, not able to read Ed's mind when it's running through this kind of alchemy.

Ed's quiet for a minute before finally letting his lip go, and he shakes his head. "I don't know. It doesn't add up to me. I don't like it. My alchemy for Al's body. You can't bring back the dead," he says with certainty. "Millions of lives to create a Philosopher's Stone."

"Could a stone raise the dead?" Roy asks.

Frowning, Ed puts his chin in his hand. "Are you hypothesizing that twelve lives would be enough to make a small stone?" he asks.

"Maybe?" Roy says. "It was just a thought."

Getting that faraway look that means that Ed isn't seeing anything anyone else can see, he says, "Maybe enough for a one-shot," he says, then his brow furrows again and he shakes his head. "It can't be that easy. If it only cost a dozen lives to bring someone back, people would risk it more. You'd have more people willing to risk it. Not just desperate people, but ambitious people." His brow furrows even more deeply.

Roy knows that look. "What?" he asks, not sure if he wants to know what has occurred to Ed.

Gold eyes refocus on Roy and he says, "What if it's enough in their world because alchemy is so weak there? Because no one really can touch it? You couldn't do it in our world because it'd be too easy to achieve. But maybe the reason it worked is because it's so difficult in their world." He warms to the topic. "Think of it. You and me, we tried for years to get the smallest possible spark. We knew there had to be alchemy because my automail always worked. So it had to exist. But as good as we are, we couldn't touch it. We couldn't access it. Think about how much effort it had to be in order to power the array."

Roy hadn't thought about it before, maybe because he's been able to use alchemy so freely since he got to the area, he hasn't thought about the effort cost. It's usually considered almost negligible in Amestris, because the effort of creating the array isn't usually considered part of the trade. But if it were, if the effort were extreme and if it were considered part of the trade…

It makes sense. "The effort to initiate the transmutation was so extreme that it acted as a force multiplier," Roy says.

"An exponential one," Ed agrees, voice a mix of fascination and horror, the way it only ever is when he's talking about the most terrible alchemy. "So powerful that it's left open a conduit—that has to be why you can still use alchemy."

"If I can use it, so can Kimblee," Roy points out. "He's as much of a madman in their world as he was in ours."

Ed sighs. "Of course he is," he says with irritation.

Before Roy can respond, their tattoos light up. The walls fall away, and before they can reach for each other, they're pulled away.