Disclaimer in previous chapters. Please see Author's Notes at the end.

- x -

He didn't really hear the words. They were irrelevant; an apology for something that didn't matter anymore. What mattered was what was directly in front of them now.

All he saw were the lines of black, stretching towards them. The pairs of eyes, all so different, watching.

Wanting.

They went for Ed first. They always went for Ed first.

"Nii-san! No!"

"Get Russ and Fletch out of here!" Ed shouted, even as Al launched himself at the outstretched arm that was meant to block his way.

To protect him.

Not this time, brother, he thought darkly. Not again.

But the arm he was aiming for, the one crowned with the light scar of the fox bite, swung forward quite suddenly before he could grab it, meeting Ed's left with a resounding clap.

And before Ed could transmute anything, the arms had him.

Al couldn't stop his forward lunge, reaching out as the tiny black hands, attached to the impossibly long, ever-growing arms, wrapped around Ed's right arm. The little fingers dug greedily into the flesh, indenting the otherwise unmarred skin. Getting a good grip for what was about to happen.

Ed calmly slapped his left hand down on top of his shoulder, touching both the arms there simultaneously, and with a terrifyingly familiar golden glow, they began to flake apart.

The arms reacted instantly, flinching back from Edward's form. It didn't stop the reaction; golden sections continued to scale off as the lines whipped back to the safety of the Gate. Ed clapped his freed right hand on his waist, where another three arms were coiled, and repeated the process.

Decomposition.

He was fighting them.

The black lines lashed back and forth, the glowing ends almost like smoldering wicks as they flew back for the Gate. Some of the visible eyes were wide with shock, others narrowed. Once the last arm snaked back to the safety of the Gate, the golden glow of the decomposition faded.

And then everything was still.

The Gate didn't close.

Al had pulled himself to a halt, and slowly straightened out of his lunge position. Behind him, he heard the sounds of fabric, probably a struggle, but he didn't pay the Tringums any attention.

"Nii-san . . ." But his relief didn't last long. "That was probably a bad idea."

Alphonse took a stride forward, coming to stand side by side with his brother. Ed never took his eyes off the Gate, and shook out his right arm after a moment.

"Probably," he agreed.

"What are they made of?" And how had Ed known . . ?

"Carbon, partially," he answered evenly. "The building blocks of all life, and the color . . . it was just a guess."

Al watched the Gate. It would only take a moment for it to react, and he didn't expect it to be pleasant. The tiny black forms within the Gate were maliciously evil even when they had you at their mercy. He didn't expect their show of defiance was going to be well-received.

"Get the Tringums out of here," Ed repeated quietly. Then he tensed, falling into a defensive position as the Gate doors opened wider. Al mirrored his brother. He'd always been better at hand-to-hand combat anyway.

"Ed! Al! Get out of there!" It sounded like Russell.

"No – Russ, stop –"

The doors fully opened with a dull thud, almost striking the tortured statuary that framed them. For a long moment, everything was still.

Waiting.

Then a forest of black came pouring out of the Gate.

"Get them out, Al!" Ed shouted, charging forward to meet the wave of darkness hurtling towards them. "Promise me!"

Al swore, and followed his brother. Obviously Fletcher had the right idea, and was preventing Russell from getting into the thick of things. Hopefully the Gate would take them while it was ahead, and let the Tringums go. After all, two bodies and two souls had to be enough to pay any toll, didn't it?

Ed was able to complete his circle, and he managed to catch many of the arms with his outstretched hands. They were aiming, now; they were going directly for his wrists. Once they separated his arms, Ed didn't have a chance –

Al brought his hands together, and reached out.

But they were overwhelmed so quickly.

His brother was completely enveloped before Al could get more than his single decomposition finished. Ed's left arm was the last limb to be snagged, and Alphonse reached out, clasping his brother's wrist tightly. Even as he was yanked off his feet, flying towards the Gate with Ed, the arms didn't reach for him. Didn't touch him.

Just like they hadn't when he'd hidden in the armor, and followed Ed back to Earth.

Just like they hadn't when they'd come back to Amestris, until he'd asked.

Even though he'd inflicted damage as well, there was no retaliation against him at all.

"NO! AL, NO!" Ed's face, his eyes were no longer visible, but his voice was anguished. A thick black band circled out of the mass to cover Ed's mouth, and Al saw a flash of white as his brother sank his teeth into it.

"NII-SAN!"

The arms didn't fling him back, didn't hurl him away or reach around for him. But the little fingers began flowing around Ed's wrist like water, worming their way between Al's fingers and Ed's skin. In no time they had formed a gauntlet around Ed's hand. Al dug his fingernails in, gripping with all his might –

And then his brother slid away from him, as though a glove had slipped from his fingers.

The moment the black hands had removed Al, they yanked themselves away from him. With nothing else to support his forward motion Al fell, landing flat on his face yards from the Gate. By the time he got his feet back under him and his head up, it was over.

With a resounding crash, the Gate doors slammed shut, and the roaring echo seemed to last forever.

Al stared at the Gate, uncomprehendingly.

Why? Why had it done that? Why did it leave him behind, again?

The slapping of footsteps finally reached him, and Al barely registered it as he was pulled to his feet. They were almost on top of the Gate, only a few yards from it, but it didn't move. Didn't so much as crack open. No eyes so much as peered at them.

It was satisfied with its payment.

So why wasn't it disappearing?

Al blinked, turning shell-shocked eyes on the man on his right. It was Russell, and his first assumption had been correct. It looked like his shirt had been almost pulled off of him, and a hand on Al's left shoulder told him Fletcher was just beside him as well.

Ed had told him to get them out of here.

"What . . . what the hell was that?"

"Ed always thought it was Truth, but our sensei called it Hell," he heard his voice respond, oddly hollow. "You can perform forbidden alchemy with its help, but the price is always too high."

The price . . . Al closed his eyes. Would Edward always sacrifice his life like this? Sacrifice everything . . . for him?

Would he?

Where did this circle end? When they were both dead?

Ed was right. He needed to get Fletcher and Russell out of here, before they pushed their already strained luck. If they both died, everything – all of it, since they day they tried to bring back their mother – was pointless.

I will come back for you, nii-san, he thought at the black stone, staring down a warped statue of a human figure, writhing in pain. As he watched, it seemed like the figure was moving slightly, trapped in a permanent state of unbearably slow agony.

Would he see nii-san's face in one of these statues, when he returned?

"No!" Fletcher's hand on his shoulder tightened. "No, that's not - I won't accept that!"

"We should go," his voice said dully, without any input from his heart. "We shouldn't linger here. It isn't safe."

"Ed fought them." Russell's voice cracked slightly. "There's three of us. Tell us how he did it, Al. We'll get him out-"

"No." Finally, some life. "We don't know what will happen –"

"We can't leave him here! They'll tear hi-" Fletcher seemed to realize what he was saying, because his voice broke off in a choked sound. Al just nodded, once.

"Yes. It took his arm and his leg the same way, when we tried to bring back mom."

"And your entire body," Russell added softly. "All of that for your mother's soul."

Al's voice didn't answer for him, and he blinked. For his mother's soul, his body and Ed's leg had been lost . . . but was that really true? Had their mother's soul cost his entire body and Ed's leg, when his own soul had merely cost Ed's arm?

Their father had told him, over six years ago, that he must have gained something for the trade of his body, and later he'd assumed it had been his ability to transmute his soul to inanimate objects.

But what if . . . what if it was something more?

If it only cost a limb to gain access to someone's soul . . . what had his whole body purchased?

Was that why the Gate didn't try to take him in? Why it had left him alone when he'd traveled through, and then back again? And yet again, just now?

But he had his body back. Whatever he had gained, wouldn't he have then lost it?

Did the duration he did without it count towards a 'cost'? His memories, taken from him when nii-san tried to give his life to resurrect him – he had them back now. But had the fact that the Gate had 'kept' them for two years . . . did that mean something?

Was that why it had only cost Edward his arm and leg to resurrect him, after his Philosopher's Stone body had been spent, instead of his entire life?

They'd returned all that they'd gained, hadn't they? The homunculus they created, Sloth, had been returned. His soul had been affixed to his body, so they had returned the 'favor' of the blood seal as well. Creating their mother's body from the ingredients had simply cost alchemic energy – lives from the people on Earth. Ed had affixed their mother's soul to the body they created through normal alchemic reactions, and he'd affixed his soul to the armor with his own blood and his arm.

Even Ed's limbs, borrowed by Wrath, had been returned to the Gate.

Ed didn't owe the Gate anymore. Everything nii-san had gained, had been given back.

Was that why he had his real arm and leg whenever he appeared in front of the Gate?

But . . . did that mean he didn't owe the Gate anything?

Or had nii-san just had to pay for his soul, again?

Al blinked, staring at that so-slowly gyrating statue. But he regularly – or at least used to regularly – transmute a piece of his soul into things. Eventually it was attracted back to his body. Wouldn't it have been in this case? It had been temporarily knocked out of his body by the jarring it had received during the infusing process, but that hadn't killed him, or destroyed his body.

Wouldn't his soul have returned to his body eventually anyway?

Why had the Gate appeared? Did it appear every time a human attempted human transmutation? Was working on a body without a soul always human transmutation?

"Why did you appear! ?" he shouted.

"Al -!"

The Gate didn't respond.

"We don't owe you anything!" he bellowed at it, taking a step forward despite the restraining hand on his left shoulder. "We don't need your help, and we won't pay your price!"

Shou Tucker had used the Philosopher's Stone – a piece of his body – to create a perfect replica of Nina. But he hadn't managed to affix her soul to the body, when Dante, their father, even he and Ed had managed it. At the time, he'd known it was because Tucker didn't have the resolve. He offered up the Philosopher's Stone, but he didn't insist on getting what he wanted. The focus, the determination that nii-san had, that he had, Tucker had lacked.

So even with all the tools, it was possible to pay a price and receive nothing. Nina's body could have been created through normal, complex alchemy. It was just matter, arranged and functioning. Like a plant. Without a soul, it wasn't really alive.

If the Gate could take something and give nothing in return . . .

But it was the Law of Equivalent Exchange. It ruled Nature, it ruled all the laws of physics, even mechanics on Earth. Give and take. It was a constant in both worlds.

But not here.

Did that mean . . . that the Gate wasn't part of the natural world?

People, for example, could take something and not pay a price.

Al took another step forward, and this time Fletcher let him.

Nii-san had told him, about two years ago, that their father had given him a valuable piece of information when he'd first arrived in Earth, in a city called London. Alchemists had a small version of the Gate inside of them. It allowed them to channel the energy from human life on Earth into power to fuel alchemic reactions in their world. Red Stone amplified that power. The Philosopher's Stone amplified it further.

But those were just concentrated forms of the energy taken from human life. In essence, the same energy that the Gate provided, just without using the Gate.

What if something about human transmutation took more energy than a single alchemist could channel through their Gate? Wasn't that the reason that their father had originally almost died? Because forming the Philosopher's Stone had taken too great a toll on his body? He'd had to make up the lack of energy with his own life.

If that was true, then the power deficiency could be made up from this Gate.

Was that why the Gate appeared whenever human transmutation occurred? To offer up that required energy?

Was that why it had appeared now? And when he'd almost died on Earth? Or had the seven-pointed circle called it, just as Dante had used the circle on Rose's baby to call the Gate without 'paying'? Was it simply attracted to the idea that it might be called upon during human transmutation, in order to exact a price for the favor?

That was . . .that was human thinking, though. That wasn't the way Nature worked.

But . . . hadn't nii-san said that he thought he remembered meeting Wrath in the Gate, before Wrath was born? And hadn't Wrath confirmed it, saying he had taken Ed's arm because he wanted it? Scoffed at the idea of equivalent trade?

Hadn't nii-san just decomposed part of the things that lived inside the Gate? He'd tried to decompose carbon, the building block of life . . .

So those tiny black creatures weren't souls. They were something else.

Something else like people. Something that could accept something without giving something in return.

Tucker hadn't had the resolve to demand fair trade.

But he did.

He wasn't dealing with the Gate itself. He was dealing with the dark beings that lived inside of it.

"Pay up, you bastards!" he screamed at the closed stone doors. "You owe me for the four years you kept my body! And for the two years you kept my memories! What did I gain, besides a slippery soul?"

The doors remained solidly closed.

"Al-" Fletcher tried weakly, but Al ignored him.

"And you owe Ed his body and his memories!" There had been no reason to take him. And the Gate knew it. The things that lived there wanted to keep his limbs, but they kept returning to Ed because Ed no longer had the things he'd gained, so they no longer had a reason to keep the limbs –

"We didn't summon you! It was your choice to appear, and we won't pay!"

That was why Ed kept losing the limbs. He had to keep paying a price to travel back and forth between Europe and Amestris. He was paying by letting the beings in the Gate keep the arm and leg they owed him. That was why he'd had them when they crossed back to this world, and had appeared without them. He was letting the Gate keep them as payment for the crossing.

But now no one was crossing. No soul was missing, in need of affixing to a body.

There was no service to pay for.

The Gate had taken Ed because it was angry. Because the beings inside were spiteful.

And they could be fought.

"GIVE HIM BACK!" he roared, and brought his hands together sharply.

The ringing echo of his clap resounded, bouncing off the nearby stone doors and reverberating around in his ears as though it was alive. It was probably a useless threat, considering this Gate could channel so much more energy than the Gate inside of him, but it was clear that what Ed had done had caused the beings inside the Gate surprise, if not pain.

He would force these doors open if he had to.

Behind him, he heard Russell take a preparatory breath, and he heard another clap.

Of course. They'd seen the 'Truth,' too. The beings inside the Gate had shown it to the Tringums when they'd originally opened the doors. That information was necessary so that the humans that appeared before the Gate could 'barter' for what they needed.

It probably didn't cost them a thing.

Another slap, very firm.

Fletcher.

For a moment, nothing happened. The three echoes played off the golden light that surrounded them, and the Gate stood resolutely shut. The statuary on the Gate seemed to stare down at them in reproach for their ungrateful behavior.

Al glared at them. Another few seconds, and he was going to transmute his own doorway –

With a crack like the splitting of an entire continent, the black Gate began to part.

They opened just enough for hundreds of pairs of eyes to peer out, staring at the three alchemists that would dare challenge them. Al knew, intellectually, that they were vastly outnumbered and they probably hadn't done permanent damage to the beings. If they managed to decompose their entire bodies they might be killed, but with their understanding of alchemy and access to all that power, the little beings had probably repaired themselves or each other immediately.

They really didn't have a chance of taking on the Gate beings.

But he didn't back down.

The Tringums were adults. They could choose for themselves if they would fight, or withdraw. Al was fairly sure he could 'offer' his life in exchange for letting the Tringums go. The Gate would probably agree; it would leave two more humans out there foolish enough – and now knowledgeable enough – to call the Gate in the future and pay it.

In the past, he'd heard childlike giggles come from inside the Gate. Now, he heard something he could call laughter –

But there was nothing innocent about it.

A bubble of darkness began to bulge out of the Gate, and Al tensed and readied. It was a filling blister; it bulged like a seeping boil, spilling into the golden light, oozing and growing –

And then the darkness pulled away, and revealed light skin. Blonde hair.

The arms of the Gate beings pulled away very slowly, as though inviting attack, and Al remained absolutely still. There was no doubt it was Edward; the fox bite shone white and glistening on his intact right arm.

Al had what he wanted. He wasn't going to turn this into a battle of wills with the Gate beings. Not at the cost of nii-san. No matter how they teased him, they were giving him back his brother. He would wait.

Ed's eyes were open, but he made no move to uncurl himself from the fetal position he'd been laid in. Even as the last of the arms pulled away, delaying even further as if to mock them and their empty threat, his brother never so much as twitched.

"Edward!" Russell called, not daring to move lest the offering be merely a test, or a tease. The last little hand trailed a finger longingly along Ed's right arm, falling to his hip and then his right leg in a caress so reminiscent of the way Dante had touched Rose –

Could it be her? Even though she wasn't a homunculus, she'd said she was no longer human –

Al wasn't sure how he managed to be still as the doors ever so slowly ground towards one another –

"AAUGH!"

Al blinked, then froze a moment, completely stunned.

He was on his back.

He didn't know when or how he'd been struck – he hadn't even seen it coming. He didn't know who had screamed, but the voice had been too high-pitched to have been one of them. There was white light all around him. The white was crisp and clean, and if he looked carefully, he could almost see Aunt Pinako's face in some of the shadowing –

A ceiling.

And a face.

A furious face.

Startled voices pierced his surprise.

"Fletcher!"

"W-winry!?"

The furious face glared at him a second more, then moved off to the side, and it occurred to his bemused brain that it had looked an awful lot like Colonel Roy Mustang had when he'd cornered them just outside of Resembool, immediately after he'd been transmuted into the Stone.

Half a second later, Al realized it was Roy Mustang.

Alphonse sat up with a start, not finding it surprising that he could. They were back. Back in the hospital. His body had been repaired, and the Gate was gone.

But where was nii-san –

"Edward."

He whirled at the sound of rubber-soled boots grinding into something rough, and saw the major general kneeling beside a curled form. Mustang's back was blocking most of his view, but he could see two bare legs, both flesh-colored.

No bruises. No missing bits.

"Fullmetal!"

He scrambled to his feet, hurrying out of the transmutation circle to the other alchemist's side.

Edward lay huddled on his right side, his left arm clinging to his right shoulder in an iron grip. It was still there, though – the port was gone as thought it had never been, and Ed's flesh and blood arm was visible between his clenched fingers.

Something rough ground underneath the balls of his feet as Al crouched by his brother, and he wasn't surprised to see that the debris was composed of tiny balls of metal.

The automail port ingredients.

Ed was lying in them, trembling ever so slightly, his knees drawn up to his chest and his eyes wide open and staring at nothing at all.

- x -

Author's Notes: So, there you have it! Anything that seems unclear will be handled in the future chapters in musings between the alchemists, but if you want a more straightforward definition, please let me know, and I will post my notes as an epilogue. Thank you guys so much for putting up with the cliffhanger! You see this was too long to make all one chapter, right? You're not going to kill me, right? On the read-through I found all kinds of wrong stuff, so I apologize for offensive grammar and incorrect words still present! Thank you all so much for the support and the reviews!

:waves glowing tentacle roses at the lovely readers: