Roy knew when he laid his head down that once he fell asleep, he was probably going to see Ed. That doesn't mean that when he opens his eyes in the dream that he's not relieved to find Ed's golden eyes watching him. He gets the impression that Ed has been waiting, or perhaps, has been watching him. There's a softness in his gaze that Roy rarely gets to see.

"Good morning," Roy says, and even though this is a dream and not real, his voice rasps as if he's just woken up.

Ed grins and presses his forehead to Roy's. "More like 'good night,'" he says. His right hand comes up and gently traces the outside of Roy's eye. "How's the eye?"

Wishing that Ed weren't quite so good at remembering details sometimes, Roy sighs. "Time will tell," he stalls.

Someone less observant might less the prevarication pass unchallenged, but Roy isn't involved with someone unobservant—occasionally oblivious, yes, but not unobservant—he's involved with Edward Elric. All of which means that Ed immediately pulls back a little bit, enough to look him in the eyes—he still has both in the dream—and frowns. "What did the doctor actually say?" he demands.

Even just remembering that he is currently—and likely permanently—blind in one eye is making his vision in the dream change. The world becomes a little flatter, somehow, in a way that's difficult to describe. He can still see things are three-dimensional, but his sense of depth is definitely altered.

Ed sucks in a breath, and he wonders if his eye has vanished or just gone blank. He has to sort of wonder at how quickly he's adapting to expecting the world to be different, expecting his perception to be altered. Somehow it feels almost… just, perhaps, that he should partially lose his sight. He remembers being blind, even if only for a few hours at that time. He remembers thinking that his life would be irrevocably offered.

He also remembers being shocked when he awoke and could see again. Remembers seeing Ed leaning in the hospital doorway, his automail arm restored. His chest aches at the memory of it, the joy of being able to see again being dimmed by seeing that Ed was still not whole. It had ached even more when he realized that the reason Ed didn't have his arm was because he'd sacrificed it for Roy. Ed might believe, deep inside, that he still owed the universe some recompense for his sin.

Then again, Roy is almost certain that no one has ever seen Truth as much as Ed has, that no other person has wandered in that nowhere place as much as Ed, spoken with God, itself, as much as Ed. Maybe Truth did feel that Ed still owed it.

"Roy," Ed says in that universal warning tone, shaking Roy out of his thoughts. "The doctor. What'd they say?"

"I shouldn't expect to recover much, if any, sight in it," he admits. He could continue to try to obfuscate, but once Ed got his teeth into a problem, he is unlikely to let go.

Pain paints itself across Ed's features, and Roy can see the self-recrimination in his eyes. Roy reaches up to cup Ed's face, not letting Ed hide his face. "This isn't your fault," he says, soft but firm.

"But Kimblee—"

"Ed," Roy interrupts. "This isn't," he pauses to make sure he has Ed's full attention, "your fault." It's been a while since he's seen Ed go into this type of guilt spiral. One thing being in the BAU has taught Ed is that he is not responsible for all the terrible deeds of terrible people. He's always been better at accepting it when it comes to strangers, but he's always struggled when it comes to the people he loves most. Even when he knows he's not at fault, he tends to take the burden of fixing it, making it right.

It takes a long moment before Ed's shoulders loosen, and he lets out a sigh. Roy bumps their foreheads again and pulls Ed closer to him. He wants to kiss him, but he doesn't trust himself to stop with a kiss. He thinks that if he kissed Ed, he'd have to kiss him again, kiss him until they couldn't breathe, kiss him and touch him until there was nothing at all between them, until they were joined. He shouldn't miss Ed this much—they've certainly been separated longer, with less ease of contact—but it's been a long time.

"We're going to commit the taboo again," Ed says, his shoulders tightening again. "We're going to do it because it's the only way to get everyone home, but we're still going to do it."

"If we had another way—"

Ed laughs, but it's a humorless sound that sounds more like a scream in Roy's ears, and he pulls away, sitting up. Roy regrets the distance even as he knows he has to respect it. "Eight years," Ed says staring out the window that shows a golden desert landscape outside it, almost eerily calm. "Almost eight years in America, on Earth. We never got close to finding a way home." Following his gaze, Roy thinks he can maybe make out ruins on the horizon. He can feel Ed's attention shift back to him. "Maybe I really am selfish down at my core, but I can't do this for another eight years, Roy. I'm finally here, back in our world, with Gracia and Elicia and Teacher and fucking Al— fuck, Roy, he's so perfect, you should see him." He stops, takes a deep breath, then continues, "I'm home, and it's… wrong. It's not home, can't be home without you. As interesting as this dream world is… it's not real. It's not a guarantee. And fuck knows that I don't trust Truth not to screw me over just because it can."

"I know," Roy says, holding out his right hand, the tattoo on his wrist looking very bright in the dream, glowing that soul-alchemy red. "But we aren't just doing this to bring us back together. We're doing this to reunite your coworkers with their loved ones, with their world, so they won't have to live like we've had to: out of place, out of time. We're doing this to bring Maes back to Gracia, to give Elicia her father back. We aren't doing this for ourselves alone."

His own tattoo glowing the same color, Ed takes his hand rather than touching the tattoos together. "But I would," Ed says, voice grave. "Even if it were just you and me, I'd do it. I'd commit the taboo again. I know better than anyone else what's at stake when you touch Truth, when you walk in its domain, but I'd do it for you." He meets Roy's eye again, and Roy doesn't know if it's his own imagination or something in the dream, but Ed's eyes appear molten, his pure, malleable-but-unbreakable will swirling in their depths.

Roy smiles at him, wondering if he will ever stop falling in love with Edward Elric. "You say that as if you think I'd do any less," he says.

"I wouldn't want you to," Ed says immediately.

"I know," Roy replies. He wants to say Unlike you, I am not a good man. I am willing to do things to achieve my goals that you find abhorrent. You have fallen in love with a monster with a pretty face, and I will never, never let you go. It has taken a lot of work, a lot of uncomfortable nights, a lot of sharing thoughts in the darkness when they missed Amestris and their people with an ache that was crippling, to talk through those thoughts, to stop wholly believing them. They still creep up on Roy sometimes, when he starts seeing Ed as something otherworldly, as something more than mere mortal.

Ed himself has worked to disabuse him of that opinion, but Roy isn't entirely sure he's ever succeeded. He has allowed Roy to accept, at least, that Ed could not truly love a monster. That a monster could never hate itself near as much as Roy could at times. A monster would rejoice in its monstrosity because why shouldn't it? To a monster, all others are less than bugs to be crushed beneath its heel.

Squeezing Roy's hand, Ed says, "We have work to do tonight." It's regretful, almost an apology.

Roy squeezes back. "Yes, we do," he agrees. "I've been working on the arrays."

"Me and Al have too," Ed says, and Roy can't help but smile.

"I would expect nothing less," he says, and indeed, no matter how much Al may disagree with this path, how much he might not want Ed to take these steps, he would never, could never stand aside while Ed did something this arrogant and dangerous without doing everything in his power to mitigate the risk as much as Ed would let him.

"I want to finalize the arrays tonight," Ed says, and four pieces of paper appear on the bed next to them, each with variations of the arrays they had designed last time. Roy can immediately see how much Ed and Al have tweaked the bases, and shakes his head, both humbled and annoyed.

"When we finalize them this time, we won't be able to tweak them at all," Roy reminds.

Ed rolls his eyes as if annoyed, but a small grin tugs at his lips. "I know."

"I know you know. But you sometimes need to be reminded."

"Bastard," Ed says, but the grin tugging at his mouth grows into a smile.

"And yet you chose me," Roy says, nearly struck dumb by how beautiful Ed appears in the morning light of the dream.

This time, Ed smiles so wide, his eyes crinkle with it. "Yeah, well, never said I had any damn taste, did I?" He tugs on Roy's arm, pulling him forward until their shoulders bump, and says, "We have work to do, lazy."

"I love you," Roy says, because it's true and he has to.

Ed doesn't look at him, but his smile grows and softens into the expression that is only for Roy. "You too, bastard," he says.

They lace their fingers together, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, and get to work. One last night tweaking, and then finally, finally they should be together again.

JJ startles out of sleep when someone shakes her shoulder. Moonlight pours into the window, illuminating the room enough for JJ to see Al's face. He puts a finger to his mouth, then moves over to Derek to shake him awake, repeating the motions he went through with JJ while she rubs the sleep from her eyes.

"Is something wrong?" JJ asks, her eyes drawn unerringly to where Ed is sound asleep, his wrist glowing that repulsive red, visible even where it's hanging over the edge of the bed.

Al simply puts his finger to his mouth again, an apparently universal sign to be quiet, then motions for them to follow him. She gives Derek a questioning look, but he shrugs, getting off the bed. She sighs softly, following his lead, and they both follow Al into the hall.

He leads them through twists and turns for long minutes before he shows them into a large room with shelves upon shelves. It only takes JJ a moment to clock the room as a library. A massive cracked dome ceiling lets in ample moonlight, and without any real light pollution, the moon is surprisingly bright.

"Sorry to wake you," Al says, "but we needed to talk, and I didn't want to do so where Brother might overhear."

She has no idea what it is about his tone, but something in Al's voice makes JJ suddenly want her gun. Some internal alarm is beginning to run up red flags like they're going out of style.

"What did you need to talk to us about that you couldn't also talk to Ed about?" she asks. They have had no reason at all to distrust or be wary of Al, especially given Ed's obvious regard for him, but she's wondering now if maybe Ed might have a blind spot where his precious brother is concerned.

"You know that in order to get you home, Brother is going to have to commit the taboo again. That what he's doing is human transmutation. I know you don't really understand what that means, but you do know that's forbidden, correct?"

Trading another look with Derek, they both nod slowly.

"Good," Al says, no-nonsense. "So I need you to understand that committing human transmutation requires a sacrifice. It's not an equivalent exchange. There is no equivalency in Truth's domain. God—if that is indeed what it is—does not play fair."

JJ sucks in a sharp breath. No matter how much she reminds herself that she's in another world, that there is power in this world that she doesn't, can't, understand, hearing Al talk like this sounds very much like talking to some deranged unsub, stating insane impossibilities as though they're mundane fact.

"So?" Derek asks. "What about it?"

"Just opening the Gate, initiating the taboo, has a price," Al says, grim. "Brother intends to sacrifice his alchemy."

"But you don't think that will work," JJ says, remembering their discussion earlier.

Al shakes his head. "I'm almost certain it won't," he says.

Derek crosses his arms. "What do you want us to do about it? What other options are there?" he asks.

In the moonlight, Al's eyes appear almost silver as he stares them down, clearly waiting for them to make the logical leap.

"You want us to sacrifice something," JJ says, feeling sick to her stomach. "You want us to sacrifice something so Ed won't have to sacrifice his alchemy."

The grin Al gives her is not cruel, but neither is it kind. It's a grin shared between people going into battle, who know that their chances of returning are slim, but they walk into the fight anyway. Because they believe in the cause or because they must, she supposes it doesn't matter.

"Can we even sacrifice?" JJ asks. "What could we give even if we can?"

"Something meaningful. Something that will hurt you to lose," Al says. "Brother will take you to stand before Truth itself to help you get home, he will bind your souls to those of your loved ones, a bond that will stretch across literal universes. He will do it because it's the right thing and because he's the only one who can."

"He is getting Mustang and that Hughes guy back out of this," JJ says. "Ed's my friend, but this isn't wholly altruistic."

Al shakes his head. "The General has a red stone. It's enough to bring him home on its own, using his and Brother's soulbond. Brother hasn't mentioned it, but I'm sure of it. General Mustang has all he needs to get back without paying any further cost. It's possible that he could even bring General Hughes with him." He meets her eyes squarely before turning to meet Derek's. "It's only to link you to your partners that he has to open the Gate on his side, commit the taboo here. That, he's doing for you. And he hasn't even considered doing otherwise."

"So you want us to sacrifice instead of him," Derek says bluntly.

"It's my understanding that you wouldn't be here if you'd just listened to him and not touched the array. My brother sacrificed his right arm when he was eleven years old to save my soul. When he'd already lost his leg. I think you'll agree that it's asking a bit much to have him give up another arm or leg. I'm sure you can figure out something you'd sacrifice to get home to your loved ones." He moves back around the table, heading for the door.

JJ wheels to stare at his back. "What makes you think it'll accept our sacrifice any more than it would accept Ed's alchemy?" she demands.

When he looks over his shoulder, the moonlight and shadows combine to make his face look gaunt, almost skeletal. "You aren't the alchemists, but you are the ones who want to travel. In our experience, as long as whatever you're willing to sacrifice will hurt you, really hurt you, it'll accept it. So make sure whatever you're willing to give up will hurt." The last word comes out almost as a hiss, and he slips back out the door.

Knees weak, JJ finds her way to a chair and all but flops down in it. She's relieved that it holds her weight, and a moment later, Derek does the same. His chair creaks ominously but holds.

"Do you think he means it?" she asks, even though she knows the answer.

"Yeah," Derek says, like the admission pains him. "Yeah, I think he does."

"Do you think he's right?"

"I don't know," he replies.

But JJ does. In his heart of hearts, she knows Derek does too.