As much as Ed would love nothing more than to curl up with Roy indefinitely, he has no idea how much time they have together, how long it'll be before they meet up in dreams again. He can't even be sure that if Roy's concussed, that the dreams will match up the right way for communication. He wants time with Roy, wants to feel his warmth, hear him breathe, listen to the sound of his voice, just be with him more than he wants almost anything in the world.

But it would be so much better if he had him in the real world. As much as this place can soothe this heart, it's a placebo. It doesn't replace having Roy beside him. He can't actually smell Roy, just remember what he thinks Roy smells like, can't feel his warmth for real, just project what he remembers onto him. It's a tempting illusion, but it is an illusion, and Ed has never settled for a comfortable lie when there is a truth to be had.

"I think I know how to get everyone home," he says into Roy's shoulder.

It aches when Roy pulls back, even though it's the expected response to that statement. Roy stares at him, his expression stuck somewhere between shocked and exasperated, which is usually an expression Ed loves to earn, but this time, it's just another thing that hurts, that makes him miss Roy. Which is so unbelievably stupid because he's gone way longer than three fucking days without seeing Roy before. Especially in Amestris, where phones were still new and calls weren't so casual or easily accessible.

"You're serious," Roy says, not like he doesn't believe Ed—he's mostly given up questioning whether or not Ed can do something he says he can—but sometimes that compulsion to check, to confirm, still raises its head.

"Yeah," he says. He had been 97% of the way there before talking to Roy, but he's pretty sure Roy's given him the missing piece he needs. "Did I ever tell you how I got out of Gluttony's stomach?" In nearly ten years, he's sure it had to come up—Roy's certainly comforted him about enough nightmares about it—but he doesn't actually remember if he ever told Roy exactly what he did. Mostly because he doesn't want to add to Roy's own nightmares and he's almost certain this will.

Because Roy isn't stupid, his eyes narrow in suspicion. "You told me you managed to access your internal Gate," he says. "You never told me how."

Ed nods because that tracks. "I need you to hear me out before you start shooting this down."

"I am really not going to like this, am I?"

"Not even a little, but I think it's our only option," Ed says. He takes a deep breath and then forces himself to say the words: "I think we need to deconstruct ourselves to open the Gate."

Roy physically recoils, but he doesn't say anything immediately, just staring at Ed like he's waiting for more information.

"I know it sounds crazy, so I need you to hear me out. Gluttony was a failed attempt to create another Gate of Truth, so the space inside of him wasn't somewhere as much as it was actually between somewheres. In order to get out of it, we needed to open a real Gate, which I did by entirely deconstructing myself and reconstructing myself perfectly."

It sounds so easy when he says it that way, but any beginning alchemy student can tell you that reconstructing something perfectly? Putting it back exactly as it was before, is really fucking difficult. Deconstructing and reconstructing something as complicated as a human body is infinitely more challenging. And then there's the added complex dimension of making sure the soul carries over.

But Ed knew those arrays and calculations. They were part of the knowledge the Gate had given to him once, carved into his soul every bit as much as Roy is attached to it.

It is human transmutation though, and he's not surprised that Roy looks like he's going to be sick. The thought of opening up his personal Gate again, of having to face Truth yet again, makes Ed want to be sick too. To get everyone back where they belong, he literally needs to put himself right in the heart of one of his deepest fears, yet again.

"You can't be serious," Roy says when he doesn't go on, sounding completely appalled.

Ed doesn't blame him. It is appalling, but it also worked.

"Last time I did it, I used Envy's Philosopher's Stone to do it," Ed says, shuddering at the memory of those long-dead voices thanking him. He honestly doesn't know if it would be worse if they blamed him. "It was the piece I was missing. I thought that you and I might both have to sacrifice our alchemy to make it work, and I was stuck on that piece, but if you have a stone, we can use it."

Still looking pale and like he'd like to throw up, Roy shakes his head. "Only twelve lives were sacrificed to make that stone," he says. "I don't even know how much of its power Reid used."

"Twelve lives is enough because the cost of alchemy is so high in that world," Ed explains. "It's why we couldn't make it work, even though we knew it had to exist in some form because my automail wouldn't have worked otherwise. And it did , but accessing it requires an exchange orders of magnitude higher than our own world to draw out enough alchemical energy to initiate a transmutation. Which means that a successful transmutation that consumed a dozen human lives in that world—"

"Might be worth tens of thousands of human lives in ours," Roy finishes, looking even worse. Ed nods grimly. He rubs his hands over his face, as if he can scrub the terrible idea from his mind, but Ed knows that he can't. He wishes he didn't have to burden Roy with this knowledge, but in order to get everyone home, where they belong, it's going to need them both working, probably in concert, though how they're going to coordinate that, he doesn't know yet.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, Roy says, "That may get me back to you, but how can we be sure it works on the others? Our souls are linked." He sees the answer click on Roy's face as his mind catches up to what he's saying. "No."

"Reid and Morgan. JJ and Will. Hughes and Gracia," Ed says, listing them off slowly. "It's fucking dumb luck that we ended up with couples split on either side, but I think that's the only way to make sure they end up going back to the right place instead of some other world in the multiverse. And I sure as hell wouldn't bet that Truth would be that fucking petty. We set the arrays to link their souls, then deconstruct ourselves to open the Gate on both sides. You and Hughes jump in from your side, JJ and Morgan jump in from mine. Once they're both in that world with a Gate to the right place open, the soulbond should link up and pull them to the world where their other half is."

"Why do you need to deconstruct yourself?" Roy demands, looking plainly unhappy with the whole premise. "Me, I understand, but you shouldn't need to if you're not actually going through the Gate. From what you've told me, you should be able to just—" He stops, has to take another deep breath, and then continues with barely a waver in his voice, "you should be able to deconstruct JJ and Morgan to open the Gate without going in yourself."

Without a stone, Ed hadn't contemplated not using himself. After having his alchemy again, giving it up was going to hurt like a bitch, but he's rapidly approaching the point that he's been without his alchemy for nearly as long as he's had it. If the choice is between getting Roy back and keeping his alchemy, it's no more a question of what's more important than it was with Al's body.

After turning it over for a couple minutes, Ed shakes his head. "No," he says. "You and I need to be the anchors. We need a direct path. I don't think you just opening your Gate will get it there. You'll meet a closed door. You might come out in the right place because of our soulbond, but without us opening the right road with our link, I don't know that the others will connect and end up in the right places. And if they end up somewhere else? There'll be absolutely no way of finding them again."

At least, no way of finding them without a cost that Ed really does not want to pay.

"I might have the stone," Roy says, grimacing, "but won't you still need a toll from your side?"

"I have my alchemy to bargain with again," Ed says. "That was good enough for Al's body, it should be good enough to just pass through Truth's domain, especially if I'm not the one actually going anywhere."

Roy shakes his head. "You shouldn't have to sacrifice it again," he says.

"To get you back? You think that alone isn't worth the price? Much less to bring Hughes back! If the cost of a human life were that cheap, Al and I would have gladly given it all up to have our mom back." He leans his head into Roy's chest. "Compared to you, it's not a cost at all."

Threading his fingers into Ed's hair, Roy says, "You've already paid so much…"

"And I don't regret it. I've never regretted it." He inhales, wishing that he could recall Roy's scent more perfectly, because he smells like Ed remembers Roy smelling, but he's sure that he's forgetting nuances and details. "This isn't a burden you can bear for me," he says softly. "You can't bait and switch with Truth. You have a toll you need to pay. You can pay it with the stone. I have a toll I need to pay. I can pay it with my alchemy."

Roy's fingers card through Ed's length—he vaguely wonders if he imagined his hair down or if Roy did, not that it matters—his touch strong and soothing as they stroke his back on the way down. He wishes he could just stay like this for hours, but he doesn't know if they have hours.

"We need to work out unique arrays for each soulbond," he says, lifting his head. It feels so heavy, the whole task feels heavy, and he hates it, but this is the only solution he sees. He feels like they're on a clock.

"What if they don't want to do it?" Roy asks.

Ed shrugs. "I literally don't know another way to guarantee they get to where they need to go." He looks down at his own wrist, seeing the array tattooed there. "You could maybe do it with a parent and child, but…" he trails, thinking of the way their soulbond works.

"I would never want my child's life tied to mine," Roy says, voicing the problem. Ed nods in agreement.

"If…" He hesitates because he doesn't know if he wants to even put the option out there, but… "If one of them doesn't want to risk the soulbond, I guess they're agreeing to the risk of ending up in the wrong world."

"Gracia will say yes, and I can guilt Maes into it," Roy says firmly. "I don't know about LaMontagne and Reid."

With a sigh, Ed shrugs again, imagining a table between them with paper and pencils. It appears, feeling like it was there before. Creepy. "We should have arrays ready for them regardless," he says, pushing a page with their soul array on it toward him. "I don't know how much time we have, but if we can, we should have their arrays ready before the dream ends."

Roy gives him a weak but bemused smile. "You don't actually need me to do these arrays," he says.

Ed blinks up at him, slightly annoyed. "It's not like you're a slacker," he says. "Besides, when trying to come up with variants to a base that still do the same thing, it helps to have more than just my own brain working on it. I wouldn't have asked if I didn't think you'd be able to help."

He sees the little bit of pride flicker in Roy's eyes at that, and he sets to work. "What changes would we want to make with our own array if we could?" Roy asks.

There's really only one big thing that Ed can think of. "Death," he says. "For all of them, but especially with the ones who have kids—they're not going to want to risk signing up for something that means if something happens to one of them, their kids are going to lose both parents." He doesn't say I didn't solve for that with ours because I didn't want to. He's almost certain Roy would have seen it in the array designs as well, and he didn't try to solve for it either. He doesn't know if that's because Roy just didn't think it could be solved for or…

...Or if, like Ed, he didn't want to solve for it.

Maybe it was immature and irresponsible of him to want that, maybe it was even just selfish, but Ed didn't want to live in a world without Roy anymore.

It seemed like Roy may have held a similar feeling.

Al had specifically asked about it, had looked Ed in the eyes when he said he didn't have a solve for it. Whatever he saw there made his jaw tremble for a moment before he passed the array back to Ed, no changes made.

They hadn't talked about it again.

Given the option, Ed still wouldn't change his own, and he thinks Roy agrees with that. It gives them a new dedication to protecting themselves, to preserving their own lives, because they're also protecting one another's. For two people so willing to lay themselves down, it had the almost paradoxical result of making them both more careful with themselves.

But that isn't a weight that everyone can or should bear, and Ed doesn't want to put it on his teammates' shoulders if he can avoid it. So they set to work, altering their array to be unique for each couple, and trying to work out how to avoid a literal even into death.

Emily's phone rings, and she sighs when she sees Penelope's contact. "Hey, Garcia," she answers, trying to sound less weary than she actually is. She's pretty sure that Penelope doesn't fall for it.

"How are they?" she asks immediately.

Sighing, Emily says, "Rossi's out of surgery. It's not great, but blood loss was the biggest initial danger, and they were able to sew him up. They're going to want to keep him for at least a couple of days to make sure there isn't any infection."

"And Mustang?" Penelope asks because she really is the best of them.

"Out of eye surgery as well," Emily says, "but he hasn't woken up yet. The doctors saved the eye, but they're not sure how much—if any—vision he'll have left in it. Hughes is in with him. Luckily, they put the IV in his left arm, not his right, so no one has seen the glowing tattoo."

"Is it still glowing?"

"Last we looked." They had gotten lucky that between quick lies about suspicion of it being broken-where the wrap provided support but didn't need to be removed for the x-ray—and Seaver mentioning a new tattoo there, the hospital was content enough to leave it wrapped up rather than insisting on rebandanging it, even when the x-ray came back clear. "The doctors say he should wake up at any time now."

She hears Penelope sigh in something that sounds like relief. "Hopefully if he's talking to Ed for that long, it's a good sign?"

"We can only hope," Emily agrees. "With Kimblee and Tucker both dead, Cruz has already made it clear that we should be transferring Rossi and Mustang back home and should be reporting back. We're lucky the hospital is small and with Rossi and Mustang both stable and not in any immediate danger, there's no reason to transfer them immediately, but I don't know how much longer we can stall Cruz."

"I'm doing my best," Penelope says, sounding stressed.

"I know," Emily rushes to reassure. "I know, and we are so grateful for your help. We knew this was coming. I guess we just have to hope that when Mustang wakes up, he has a solution." She hates how all of this is in his hands, but really, it is.

"I'll do what I can to stall him some more."

"We owe you. Big," Emily says.

"Just get everyone home where they belong in one piece, and I'll call us even."

"We'll do our best," Emily replies, hanging up.

She just hopes their best is enough.