Edward is a scientist. He does not believe in the afterlife. But even if he did, he holds no illusions that he will be going to the same place as his mother.
Knowing this, he still wants to hope that a thing as kind as heaven exists. He doesn't want to imagine Mom's soul forever trapped in that nightmare known as the Gate. He thinks he saw her there, the night everything had gone to pieces. He'd reached for her. She'd reached for him. With that pale, silhouetted hand - with that blackened, gnarled arm - not her not her not her not human-
Edward wants to hope. Lately he is finding that life rarely gives him what he wants.
A father's presence, a mother's smile, a brother's warmth: how much of it is Equivalent Exchange, and how much an unfair trade? How much is unfairly taken from him, and how much has he brought upon himself? It doesn't matter, really, because heaven is a children's fairy tale and Edward has damned himself beyond even fairy tales. But the useless equations linger in his mind. Trying to make sense of the nonsensical, quantify the unquantifiable. Absurd.
It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. Edward had dragged his mother up from beyond the grave to experience a second death, but the void he had pulled her soul from is no heaven, and its keeper is no god. (They're nothing but a monster. No matter what They claim to be.)
The end result is this: Trisha Elric is dead. She will stay dead, now and forever. There is no way for her to know the fate her foolish sons will bring upon themselves, or to place a kind hand on the metal shell Al is condemned to, or to calm Winry's quiet weeping. She isn't here to do any of that. Because she's dead. After seven years and so many new sorrows to grieve, it shouldn't hurt just as badly as the day he and Al had found her.
And so Winry cries. There is nobody left to wipe the tears away, so they flow and flow and flow, faster than the fire can dry them. Edward desperately tries to gather something out of the ashes where his heart had once been (before he'd sold it away). He wants to say something. Take her hand, apologize, tell her they aren't worth her pain, tell her I'm sorry, I'm sorry, forgive me.
But the taste of cinders still burns in his mouth, sears any words away. It would be pure arrogance to think there is anything he can do to make this better, here and now, when the flames of his own mistake are still roaring high. Any pathetic attempt at atonement will only bring the full weight of his sin onto his shoulders once again. And he knows that weight. He'd glimpsed beyond the Gate that night - disassembled atom by atom, mind invaded with foreign knowledge of things he'd never wished to learn, he'd seen something looking back at him from that endless darkness. He had stared into the Eye of Truth, and there had been no mercy there.
No. There is no forgiveness for this. And yet, just like always, he is too scared to face the Truth.
Clenching his hand around the silver watch, he tries to smile. (Just like Mom had. All the way until the end).
"What are you crying for, Winry?"
His voice is rougher than he intends, thick with grief and soot. Winry's eyes, so bright in the wake of the inferno, meet his. She lets out a stifled sob.
Looking back on it, Mom's smiles and reassurances had never worked on him and Al, either. Oh, not for lack of trying, on her part or theirs - they'd certainly been desperate enough to try to believe them. But the Elric brothers had always been too smart for their own good.
So smart, Edward thinks as the blaze turns cornflower irises into twin reflections of a burning home, and so very, very stupid.