Gateway-

'I've had enough of this. It has to stop.'

'What are you saying? You can't possibly want to abandon what we've spent years building upon!'

'Yes, I do. Infact, I think we should never have started this project. It would be wise to quit while we are ahead.'

'Hoenheim!'

'I'm sorry, Trisha…'

'You dare call me that pathetic woman's name?'

'Dante. I was not speaking to you. Trisha, I've ruined our lives and am regretting it all the more each moment-'

'Shut up…'

'- I did something horrible to you, and I can never take it back. All I can hope is that you will forgive me-'

'Be quiet.'

'- so that I can forgive myself. I should have just left you, instead of dragging you to hell with me-'

'Silence!'

'- I'm sorry.'

-------------

Biting cold winds nipped at his fingertips, stealing away whatever heat he had managed to gather. Hands tightly gripped onto the smooth fabric covering small shoulders and had been doing so quite desperately. His vice grip clamped down as a light shudder ripped through his chest. How he wished it had been from the cold.

Roy looked down at the pale face and wondered with a strange calmness why Edward's teeth were gritting. Could he perhaps feel the chill too?

No, dead people didn't feel.

They also didn't shiver.

It was likely his own grip causing the corpse to shake in his harsh grasp as his own body, raked from something other than cold, shook uncontrollably.

He was not sure how long he had stayed sitting on the freezing pavement, holding a warm body brokenly.

Was his own body heat flowing into Edward like his tears had? The thought seemed oddly out of place, romantic in a way. That he was unconsciously trying to bring what was dead back to life. Even though he knew such a feat could not be accomplished by any man, he wished it was.

He would give anything: his limbs, his eyes, his heart, his soul.

But he did know that not matter how hard he tried, he couldn't tear himself away. Not with Ed's hand gripping at his arm like that.

It made sense, that the muscles would clamp onto his and stay contracted.

He paused.

Dead people didn't move, did they?

The movements stopped abruptly and Mustang sighed with defeat. So was that it? The great Roy Mustang was determined to imagine his lover being alive when he was very much in fact, dead?

He was going into denial, trying to cover up what he could not accept at the moment with something he could understand.

Logic.

Each time Ed looked to be alive, he would logically explain to himself why he wasn't.

He heard a faint cough and shook his head.

Yes, it was sadly true. Now he was even hearing things.

The coughs became fiercer in density and sounded so dry.

Things that refused to stay silent, even in his mind. He hoped this-

More hallucinated sounds of Ed trying to clear his windpipe. An arm weakly tried to push the body off of Roy's lap. He tightened his hold on it reflexively, not thinking too much of the action.

-wasn't going to continue for the rest of his adult life. It was far too early to claim he was hearing voices.

It was funny.

He was about to begin laughing but…

Edward's dead and lifeless body rolled out of his arms reach and began violently coughing like its life depended on it.

Each shuddering breath he drew in erupted into worse as bile rose from his stomach. He spat it onto the pavement, shaking on his hands and knees.

He heard a voice calling his name in disbelief and he honestly tried to answer.

A rasping squeak came out instead. He frowned, that didn't sound like his voice.

"Edward! H-How… what did you?"

Cat got your tongue? He wanted to ask. However, when he found he couldn't, Edward gave up and flopped down onto his back, wishing that his chest would stop hurting so much.

Roy's hands grabbed at the painful area and he was sure he heard a wheezy, 'Fuck off' come from the not-so-blue lips.

There was no blood, no wound, and no mar on the skin he exposed hastily.

As Ed squirmed under the probing touch a heavy clunk resounded on the cement. A pocket watch fell from the coat's breast pocket, with a bullet embedded deeply inside of the center.

----------

'I thought you didn't believe in giving Christmas presents, Edward?'

'I don't.'

'Then why,' Roy inquired, gesturing to the package that was carelessly placed into his lap moments ago, 'did you give me this?'

'Because I knew you would be a bastard about this stupid season and get me a present that I didn't want but that I would like.'

'Most people would call that thoughtful.'

'Yeah, well I'm not most people,' Ed mumbled and snuggled into the fuzzy blanket of a present that he really didn't want to accept, but lacked the energy to give back.

Mustang snorted lightly.

He opened the meticulously wrapped paper with tape sticking out at odd ends and blinked at the contents.

'A pocket watch?' He asked while opening the lid and toying with the chain. 'How oddly thoughtful of you.'

'There's a difference between being fashionably late and just plain late, and you, Mustang, are unable to tell the difference and lump the two together.' Edward grinned, 'Now when you choose to be tardy I can call you on it with proof.'

He had kept it inside of his jacket pocket, still using it all these years later.

Fighting the urge to thank someone that it had managed to be there to catch the bullet, lessen the impact, and merely seem like an intense blow to the blonde's chest cavity, he instead turned to the body still on the ground.

Edward, Roy noticed had passed out and he proceeded to carry the uninjured body back to somewhere where they could think. Think and plan something.

He hoped Ed would have some answers for the blanks that had yet to be filled.

----------

Edward blinked sleepily, nearly jumping out of his skin as his eyes focused on a face peering not four inches from his own nose. He panted heavily and gripped the area near his heart.

"Don't do that…"

What, was this stupid kid trying to kill him?

Ignoring his companion, Ed took in his surroundings of an area that was endlessly black. Yet somehow the two of them remained illuminated by a non-existent light. He expected some creepy twilight music to start playing.

But when none did he looked back at the kid, dressed in a tank top and what looked like a skirt, brushing imaginary dust off of his rear end. Courtesy of being thrown backwards by Ed's violent shove upon awakening.

Edward gaped.

That wasn't a kid… It was him! An exact copy of him, as if he were merely looking into a mirror.

Though he hoped more emotion came onto his face and that he didn't look so zombie-like.

"You're awake, so does that mean we are still alive?" Clone-boy asked.

"Don't say 'we' like that," He hissed. "I am me and you are not. You'll never be like me."

"But I am you." The other countered.

"In your dreams. I'd never kill someone." And he is unwillingly bombarded with images of blood and knives and guns and hears a sadistic voice whispering into his ear. The voice calls him Pride.

"Not even if it was to protect someone else?"

"…"

A ghost of a smile hinted briefly on Pride's blue lips.

Smug bastard.

Edward conceded him the point and began wandering around aimlessly, noting with slight fear that no matter how far away he moved, Pride was still the exact distance in front of him as a moment before.

"Where am I, anyway," He asked while giving up on looking for a way out.

Pride pointed to a large set of wood doors that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Suddenly, the darkness faded away to a blinding golden light and Edward squinted.

"What is that?"

"The Gate," Pride replied.

"Well no shit!" Ed yelled. "I can see that it's a gate, thank you very much. I'm asking what the hell it is."

Pride, still emotionless (and un-angered by the childish and panicky outburst) stood behind it.

"It's a Gate to what you have forgotten."

"… Forgotten?"

Nodding, he moved to the side so Edward could see only his shadow playing across the front.

"Memories that you couldn't handle and that I put in here."

"Why would you do that?"

Pride sighed, "You created me to help deal with everything being shoved onto you. You thought that by doing so, whenever a situation became to rough you could switch over to my more, apathetic, personality and that I would deal with whatever the garbage was. You never realized that was what they wanted though."

"Who?"

"Do you really want to know?" He asked, coming around and placing his hand on the large handle. "Are you sure you want to see what happened on those nights?"

"Yes."

Pride opened the doors.

----------

"I've had enough of this. It has to stop." The man turned to the woman in a lab coat at his side, the light reflecting form his glasses and he glared for all he was worth. A glare that was meant to be unquestioning. But that face she wore, the mask that lay on top of her cruel and twisted soul haunted him into an unconscious retreat.

"What are you saying?" She whispered breathily. "You can't possibly want to abandon what we've spent years building upon!" Her hands flew dramatically as she spoke, hands that were not hers, he noted.

"Yes, I do. Infact, I think we should never have started this project," He ignored her audible gasp of disbelief. "It would be wise to quit while we are ahead." Before something worse happens, he added silently.

"Hoenheim!" Shrieking his name partly from rage and partly from fear, she stilled in a flinch when his large hand rested on her narrow shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Trisha…" He stated, gazing into her eyes. Eyes that were once so warm, feeling and loving. The proof of her change before his own sight only served to deepen the sorrow he felt.

"You dare call me that pathetic woman's name?" She wrenched his hand off of her.

"Dante. I was not speaking to you," Hoenheim's voice hissed. "Trisha, I've ruined our lives and am regretting it all the more each moment-"

"Shut up…" Dante clasped her hands over her ears, trying to shield the words that were piercing her heart. Or rather, the other heart within her.

"-I did something horrible to you, and I can never take it back. All I can hope is that you will forgive me-" He pulled on a grey coat as he spoke.

"Be quiet."

"-so that I can forgive myself. I should have just left you, instead of dragging you to hell with me-" He headed for the door, grasping its handle and preparing to open and leave.

"Silence!" She became unaware (yet so aware) of the paperweight clenched beneath her fingertips.

"- I'm sorry."

He had no time to react as she approached him from behind and swung.

A few hits later, crimson liquid pooling under his head, Hoenheim could think of only one thing. The thought repeated in his mind al thousand times over, consuming the time of a second.

And as he lay, nervous system horribly jumbled, he wondered if she forgave him for what he had done to her, and to their sons.

AN: After not updating for… a while I was guilted into typing this up from reading some of the reviews. If the writing seems a bit odd, as I thought it did, please disregard it as my lack of working on this story for so long.