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CHAPTER 8:
ACROSS THE FISSURES OF DREAMS
.
"Al?"
should
the voice.
But what did it mean to
a voice?
"It's okay now.
"You can open your eyes, and when you do, you won't just see the Sunshine this time.
"You'll be wholly aware you're feeling it's warmth for the first time in five years.
"Julia told Granny and I what happened."
Al knew who he was, and what knowledge was.
At that awareness, Julia's last words before he'd fainted once more scoured gouging incinerating washing erasing clearing themselves as indelibly into the deepest reaches of the foundation at the bottom of the photonegative inverted switchback of a boundless abyss more profound than his soul; as well as everything that had brought them about.
But at the knowledge of who was talking to him; Al knew, for at least the rest of this day, is self hatred and guilt over what he'd done to Brother could not matter.
Now, more than at any time before, he needed to enjoy the gifts Brother had just given him.
He'd have all the time he needed to rip himself to tatters for all of his sins since Envy had broken him when he was lying alone in his room in the Rockbell house in the cold dark that would now never be as absolute zero frigid frozen as what he now deserved to live through for everlasting repeating and renewing nilforevers as the emptiest metal lacking even a lacuna so frozen it was the most ivory molten gamma ray burst unleashed by the most incandescent supernova.
Almost before he was aware he'd decided to open his eyes, Al sat up so swiftly he was afraid he was going to pass out and hurled himself like a cannonball into arms that Winry, sitting in a chair at the side of a bed with a window in the wall right above the opposite side through which warm Sunlight was glowing yellow cold, was barely able to spread wide to catch him in time.
Al wrapped his own arms around Winry.
To Al's shock; none of the elated euphoria consuming him so desperately fully and utterly and entirely and totally and wholly and absolutely and completely was forced.
He knew nothing but euphoric wonder and delighted, giddy elation and the feel of Winry's warmth against him and around him, and her heart beating beneath her chest against his own, and the softness of her hair, and the caress of the breeze of her breath against his face and cheek as he buried it in her shoulder, and the welcoming and firm and assuring and secure and safe and close and protective and strong and reassuring and sheltering warmth and hardness and calluses of her arms and hands and fingers; or the tears that blinded and erased all existing reality and nothing that hadn't or may or couldn't be real and false or true.
And all he wanted to do was drown in the warm sanctuary of the home of Winry's arms.
He felt a loving, soothing, gentle, welcoming, warm kiss press against his forehead.
Al couldn't be sure whether or not he was drowning and basking in it, or plummeting careening cascading sinking into its incomprehensible immeasurable warmth transcending all potential encompassment or not possible restraining it was a gentle brush of starfire evaporating him alive.
"Welcome home, Al," Winry said.
More tears came to his eyes merely from feeling her vocal cords shift and thrum beneath him.
"I'm home sweet home," was all Al could think to say in response, and he realized his face was aching an amount because of how wide his smile was, and how long it had been since the skin of his face had stretched in it.
"Julia told me Ed's body and mind are still together with his soul, so if we put our heads together; there's a good chance it won't be as hard to bring him back to you, and Granny, and I; as it was your body," Winry then spoke.
It was a lot easier than Al had believed it would be to keep the hot tears that attempted to push into the forefronts of his eyes, for far different reasons, from doing so.
"I won't say I'm willing to move forward from that, but I'm putting that aside, at least for today," Al told her.
"I know as well as you do that's what Brother wants."
Then why did it still feel like he was abandoning and betraying Brother to even think that; even though he now knew Brother hadn't died a second time repaying Al for abandoning him to Envy and Dante, or lost all of himself to the Gate this time.
"And yes, Rose and Julia told me everything that happened during the confrontation with Dante," Winry said, most of the pain in her words masked, but not how incommunicably depthless it was.
Then Winry knew that Brother had died, and been restored by a successful resurrection human transmutation.
Why was she still willing to hold h
"If I hear you say a single time that it was your fault, one of the first other things you're going to become reacquainted with the sensation of is what the impact of a wrench feels like."
Al was even more shocked, and actually delighted, to discover that none of the laughter now emerging from lungs and a chest he could blessedly feel actually ache a little from the strain was forced, or fake.
"I'll most likely take you up on that offer soon anyway," Al responded, and this time he wasn't shocked or surprised to discover he was grinning.
"Roughhousing with Brother just isn't the same without you and your wrench joining in the fun.
"I'm very sorry I don't have any automail to break as motivation to make them really good strikes, though."
"I'm sure that how you went to all the trouble to uninstall both of Ed's automail limbs, only for him to stick them both back on without me participating at all or even walking him through it vocally, will give me motivation enough," Winry responded with warm and amused mirth.
Then she laughed herself; and Al savored the sensation of her laughter moving in her chest, and it heaving a little, as she did.
"Where's Granny?" Al questioned.
"Baking an apple pie, since I told her it might hurt you if I did it when Ed isn't here."
Al pushed the knowledge Winry would most likely have been correct as far away as possible.
But then the euphoria retreated a little.
"What about Rose?
"And the other girl, Julia?"
"They're talking with Sciezka, who is on the phone with Ross and Bloch," Winry informed him, her arms shifting to become more soothing and assuring and reassuring and close.
"Mustang successfully defeated Bradley, so Sciezka is telling them everything they know about what happened on all of the sides of the Gate three days ago."
Al felt himself sag a good deal.
But there were agonized and worried undercurrents in her voice that told Al Mustang's victory had been costly.
"At what price?" he questioned.
"All I'll say for the time being, unless you really believe Ed would prefer you know now; is that it could have been a lot worse," Winry responded.
Al barely suppressed the urge to cringe violently.
"I'll save it for later," Al replied.
"But I would like to know any more of the details Julia told you about what Brother is now mixed up in on the other side of the Gate."
"I saved that to tell both of you myself," the stranger girl's voice broke in.
A hot, agonizing throb of longing contorted Al's heart, and all of his insides; at the necessity of lifting his head from Winry's shoulder and looking to see Julia standing in the doorway, still wearing the same clothes as before.
"Because Rose and I spent much of the journey here comparing and contrasting what we know about the differences between the two sides of the Gate, so I believed it was best to tell both of you at once."
Winry tensed, and Al tightened his own hold around her before Winry could do the same to him, making it as secure and close and protective and warm as he could remember how to with a human body.
Because he knew, with a different fashion of terror squeezing his heart and contorting and asphyxiating everything within him and about him and outside him, that that almost certainly meant just one thing.
"Ed is doing something even more reckless on the other two sides of the Gate than he did on this one, isn't he," Winry spoke.
It was a statement, tight and drawn with horror and terror, not a question.
"Worse than I'm almost certain he knows," Julia confirmed.
Al did need to struggle to keep breathing now.
Winry began rubbing his back with one hand with large, strong, reassuring, firm circles.
But, although Al could still justify keeping the self hatred and guilt away; he couldn't justify drenching himself in the warmth of her strokes that much now.
"I'm pretty sure even Ed doesn't know what he's gotten into," Julia continued.
"There are a number of things about how the two Stones I told you about were transmuted I found out from an old enemy of mine who fell afoul of the Homunculi from the Gate side Ed is in, and that I didn't get a chance to tell Ed.
"And, based on what he said, the Homunculi said, and what Rose and I pieced together when we bounced our notes off each other; I'm pretty sure they're researching this kind of Stone."
Julia shifted uneasily, a large number of indecipherable emotions passing over her face.
Among them a relief Al recognized, telling him she'd narrowly avoided doing something as horrific as what Al had regularly seen Mustang and Armstrong recollect doing in Ishbal, and hate themselves for having enacted, since Brother and he had heard about Ishbal from Marcoh.
And a sick, fascinated horror and terror that told him her older brother must have attempted to perform at least one related atrocity.
"Do you just want to hear it, straight out; the way Rose told me the Ed you know, and you yourself, approach the Truth?
"Because, if Rose and I are right; even taking into account everything she told me Dante has done for the last four centuries, this is going to be very, very bad."
Now Al did need to remember to breathe.
If Rose had told Julia the details of everything Dante had said and done, and Julia still believed this was a degree of inhumanity even Dante's own four centuries of numerous and continual atrocities paled in comparison to, this must be an anathema abyssal abomination that caused the worst war crimes within Ishbal to appear as no more than a child throwing mud in someone's eye in comparison to.
"I want to hear it," Al responded without delay.
He looked at Winry, and she nodded, her face set.
She turned so they were both facing Julia, but she didn't let him go or stop rubbing his back.
And Al himself didn't release Winry.
She'd learned what Brother and he were living through during their journey from Central to the Ishbalan refugee camp and afterwards, and Dante had done to Lydia's village, and she'd heard about a lot of Dante's other crimes; in order to learn how to love and care for and protect and cherish Brother and him better.
But she was still nowhere near as acquainted with the hardships alchemy could inflict upon people as Brother and he was.
Winry was going to need support a lot more than him.
Julia thinned her lips together tightly.
Then she walked over to the nearest chair, to her left, and sat down.
She appeared particularly uncomfortable with looking at him, and Al suppressed the urge to give her an encouraging smile, unsure if she'd take that as him attempting to replace the Al she was actually close to.
"The best place to begin is most likely with the Amestrian city you call Lior, and the Amestris on my side of the Gate calls Liore," Julia said.
"Rose told me the Lior here was sacked because a con artist named Cornello pretended to be a prophet of a God named Leto, in order to start a rebellion against the national government. She said when your brother and you, Al, attempted to stop it; the Homunculi here kept Cornello in power long enough for his movement to erupt in his face; in the form of riots between the people who still believed in him after he was exposed, and the people who now wanted to run him out of the town or otherwise see him brought to what they call justice.
"The national military then used this as a pretext to assert direct control over the city, and brutally suppressed the riots, leveling much of Lior in the process and murdering or harming many of its other denizens.
"However, in the Liore on my side of the Gate, from what my homeland heard on the radio and read in the paper, things happened similarly until the rioting began; but then they took a different direction.
"Rather than brutally suppress the riots, the military removed any of the soldiers sent in there to attempt to stop them peacefully; and then they allowed them to happen and sack the city itself, by using the pretext of risking a repeat of what the Amestris I know refers to as the Ishvalan Civil War, or the Ishvalan War of Extermination.
"Rose told me one of Dante's tactics for transmuting a Stone was to provoke victims of a war into wishing to wield it as a weapon against the State Military; but while the Ishvalan War of Extermination fit this modus operandi, the willingness of the government of the Amestris I know to allow the rioters to do as they would didn't make any sense to us. The natives of our Liore wouldn't feel inclined to transmute a Stone when their enemies were their fellows, and not a well trained military with a huge amount of resources and war materiel that severely outnumbered them.
"From what I can tell from what your brother, my brother, and the Homunculi your brother met argued about during the time I spent with your Ed, the Homunculi on my own side," Al suppressed the urge to cringe violently at the confirmation Julia's Amestris was also threatened by Homunculi who were unwilling to coexist with humans, "Appear to be conducting very similar research to the ones your Ed is facing.
"So what Rose believes about the ones in the Amestris I live near are very likely the case for the ones he's facing; and they very likely did the same thing with the Lior, or Liore, or whatever the location is named, there.
"I couldn't figure it out, but as soon as I told Rose how the Stones your brother may or may not have kept away from the second cabal of Homunculi were transmuted, she developed a theory.
"I was told they were transmuted from human souls who were killed in the city-state of Milos or its vicinity over centuries, and whose blood drained into a three dimensional transmutation circle forged out of speaking tubes."
Winry stiffened violently, and tears came to her eyes, but her hand on his back just became far more assuring and protective and firmly strong and reassuringly secure, and her embrace much tighter and sheltering and safekeeping and soothing and close.
It was most likely because she'd heard Brother had been murdered.
This soon after having been forced to confront that, very little else could likely affect her that much; because she was numb to it, or for one or more other reasons.
Even something this horrible past the horizon of all for never ended eternal hallucinations cast from the deranged fever dreams of dancing insane nightmares.
However, if not for Winry's warmth against him and around him and the feel of her heartbeat, Al wasn't sure he would have been able to keep the self hatred away any longer, or any threadbare string of reality and existence and any unawareness of it present.
For a number of seconds he wasn't sure if he was breathing, or even seeing things through the tears in his eyes.
As it was, he wasn't even sure he could tell the difference between the complete and entire horror and terror at what Julia had just said, and his self hatred and guilt; even though he pushed the rest of what he felt, in addition to the guilty self hatred, back for the same reasons he was keeping the hate away.
He'd imprisoned Brother, and abandoned him to torture on, a planet where Stones were transmuted from methods that required the living souls of tens of millions of people?
"Al, this isn't the time for you to refuse to cry like Ed does," Winry spoke, her voice chapped and cracked, but not broken.
And then a small number of tears did push forwards and fall free, because Al realized the true reason this revelation hadn't erased reality from him and him from existence was because he'd murdered Brother just days ago, and then abandoned him to be condemned to one or two whole worlds capable of inhumanity this immensely past vocal or nonverbal expression.
Not because of how determined he was to not waste the gift Brother had given him.
Sooner or later, Winry might be able to be affected by confronting nightmares this grotesquely gruesome; but Al wasn't sure he could for the rest of his life.
All there genuinely was was just an exhausted resignation to the fact that was nothing more than a it wasmightwasn'tcouldn't surpassing all truths, that life held nothing but despair; and any warmth and kindness he'd once believed existed within it was nothing more than an illusion so much more insubstantial than a silhouette it was the heaviest supermassive singularity at the center of a galaxy burning the inside out labyrinthine switchback inversion of the absolute zero white hot starfire molten vacuum of the core of the thickest jet diamond.
But, for whatever never unnavigable mysterious reason, he could still sustain his determination to enjoy Brother's gift of his returned body and mind; and so even now the self hatred stayed away, along with most tears and negative feelings.
That resignation to the indelible and inexorable hopelessness that was all that wasn't and was, however, left no doubt, and little further horror and terror, at what Rose's theory was.
"And Rose believes your Liore was wrecked by its people, and not the military, because the two Amestrises you're familiar with use cities as points on one single nationwide circle; not separate citywide circles; am I wrong?" Al asked, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.
Now much of the blood did drain from Winry's face.
"An operation that large, that must be taking centuries itself to finish, couldn't have been kept hidden from Amestris' High Commands, though; and overseen by nothing but a succession of Führers," Winry breathed in measurelessly stark, abyss deep terror and horror.
"And that means…"
"The whole core of the government of the Amestris where Brother is trapped is colluding with the Homunculi there, and has been for most or all of Amestris' history.
"So Brother is in a lot more danger of being hunted down there and shot.
"I beat Dante, and brought him back from Envy, just to paint a far larger target on his back.
"And Brother may not even know this."
"I don't think it's as bad as it sounds," Julia responded.
"From what I heard, it sounds as though those Homunculi want the Ed your brother is possessing alive."
Because it was relief, and not pain, Alphonse couldn't tell whether he or Winry was the one sagging as though he or she was a balloon who had just been punctured.
"I'm not sure why, but I do know these Homunculi aren't attempting to become human like the ones you knew were. They don't have too little confidence in themselves, they have too much; to the point they, or at least the Homunculus – not a human – leading them wants to become the Truth itself."
That was able to send a small but sharp and potent throb of shock through Al.
"But there's something else that worries me," Julia went on.
What now?
"My parents researched the Gate, or Portal, or what have you, extensively.
"And in their research notes, they occasionally referred to an ancient Milosian myth written by the founders of Milosian alchemy, when they first developed it by studying lava.
"Which, as you know, functioned as the building blocks of all life during the earliest eras of the planet."
Alphonse held Winry closer before she did, once more.
"Al, it's okay," Winry said, her voice soothing and encouraging.
"Ed won't mind if you cry about things like this.
"You need to let this out. In a lot of ways, you're being even more reckless than Ed often is by keeping this bottled up, and you're usually not the kind of person who is willing to be reckless.
"I'm right here with you, and you're safe and home now in my arms.
"You can cry all you want, and we can catch your tears together."
But Al just ignored her.
Because Winry's words now told him the answer.
Maybe if he'd been more like Brother, and at least as reckless as him, rather than sensible; he wouldn't have had so many doubts after Envy had ruined him he'd have just lain there motionless and then murdered Brother and sentenced him to a worldwide prison of even more nightmarish hardship and despair than the one he'd just freed Brother from.
He could never give up once again, for the rest of his life.
From now on, he needed to be strong and sure, and never let any pain, no matter how heavy, cause him to think twice or have misgivings.
And he needed to do it all by himself, with no one else crying for him or catching his tears.
That was the sole way he could avoid dragging anyone into his messes once again, as he had almost every instant of his life, even before he cooperated to perform the human transmutation when he should have stopped Brother from performing it; and thus yanked Brother and Sloth into a waking torture abattoir.
He needed to carry any and all hardship, relying on no one but himself as he did, and never stagger even the tiniest amount.
Brother had escaped one nightmare to begin drowning in an even worse one, and the sole way to keep history from repeating and ensure he didn't abandon Brother to die broken from this nightmare was to carry any torment, all by himself, and never fall a single time once more and need to get back up and use his legs, so Brother would never need to a single instant for all of history.
And if turning himself into not a hollow shell, but an endless vessel that bore all pain and hardship all on his own, tore him into an even worse oblivion than nothingness; that would be even better.
Then he would no longer have a heart to even be able to feel the forgiveness he'd never gain from anyone for abandoning Brother to die at the hands of a Homunculus of his own older brother through remorseless and brutal emotional and mental torture; and then to even more, and worse, clearing of warmth and kindness when all his pain should have ended.
To Al's surprise, a slightly relieved smile curled up the corners of his lips.
It was forever near, and never far, too late.
But, at long last, he was standing on his own two feet, and not just following in Brother's shadow.
"Stop lying to me!"
Al knew, without being able to tell how, it was important he realize why he was remembering crying at Brother and Winry to stop lying about how he was supposed to be the real Al; but he couldn't place why this was tugging at him.
Or why he now felt even more exhausted and resigned.
Or why, for no reason, he didn't want this last day he could share with Winry, or his time in her arms, to end; with almost as much desperation as he'd wanted to give Brother his arm and leg back for so long, and perhaps even more, in countless ways.
"What is this myth?" Al queried to Julia.
Winry's brow furrowed slightly, clearly able to tell something was off in his voice, but she didn't ask.
"It's an alchemical hypothesis that, if a large enough transmutation circle, one spanning hundreds of miles or more, could somehow be created; it would then be possible to use a circle that large to cycle subatomic particles so rapidly they can't just be collided with enough force to study the theoretical constituent particles of all matter; the collisions can be formed at paces surpassing the speed of light and thus enable unknown forms of energy and matter to briefly have their positions altered, and thus studied so closely alchemists could then learn how to transmute them without catalysts such as Crimson Stars or Philosopher's Stones.
"By doing this, the myth posits the last numerical digit of Pi can be identified and, if the secret to transmuting something known as a hypersphere was successfully deciphered from within the Truth, inscribed into the seven points of a special transmutation circle formed from one of these hyperspheres.
"What, precisely, this circle can do, or what it utilizes as its components, was lost to time.
"All the myth says is that to reconstruct the components for the transmutation that uses these points, 'dark energy must be harnessed to reconstitute the pale tapestries into a prismatic motherlode.'
"And that the transmutation itself will cause unusual particles that existed shortly after the Big Bang, known as X-bosons, to be converted from particles to wavelengths of pure energy without them losing any of the properties they possessed as X-boson particles.
"If Rose is right about how there is one or two, at least partially complete, nationwide transmutation circles on one or two sides of the Gate; an alchemist with sufficient skill, perhaps the leader of the Homunculi, perhaps someone else, could potentially attempt to use either, or both, as a transmutation circle for colliding particles at speeds higher than that of light."
"I have no idea at all what any of this but dark energy is, and dark energy is nothing more than a term I've just seen a small number of times in Dad's research materials," Al said.
But his first course of action was clear.
"But, if I can figure out how to open the Gate directly into the national military base, or government headquarters, of the leaders of the Amestris Brother is stuck in; Mustang can just lead a small military force right into it and take control from the military government there and give it to Parliament, or another democratic institution, with little to no bloodshed involved in the ambush."
Winry's posture became more drawn, in a mixture of both unknowably immense relief, and indefinably more stark and acute horror and terror.
"If that's possible, that may protect Ed; but you know what the repercussions will very well be.
"Whether it's a duplicate Amestris or not, if Mustang leads a unit of soldiers there, it still constitutes an act of war by foreign intervention into the internal affairs of a different nation.
"I'm almost certain most people on that side of the Gate know as little about alchemy as we do, so most people won't believe they're from a different planet.
"But it will still be very hard for the Mustang on that side of the Gate to cover up how the new government was put into power by illegal aliens, and if that gets out; many Amestrians will back the old government because they'll refuse to believe it didn't have their best interests at heart when it was removed from power by an uprising mostly, or fully, carried out by foreign provocateurs.
"The new government will very likely be seen by so much of the public as illegitimate you could risk setting off a full scale civil war; one that doesn't just involve an ethnic minority such as Ishbal or Ishval, but that includes the entire state."
"And you're assuming the Homunculi there will be as relatively easy to defeat as Dante, and hers, were," Julia added, a more contained worry in her voice.
"Rose told me you and this Ed were barely able to outwit and defeat Dante and her Homunculi; and from what he said and did when we met, I'm almost certain the leader of the Homunculi there is a Stone forged from tens of thousands of souls, if not tens of millions."
Winry jolted violently, and became much more tense.
This time, the sick terror and horror was very easy to suppress.
Then why was more hotness pushing against the backs of his eyes?
"You mean, I am the Philosopher's Stone?"
Alphonse pushed the memory as far away as he could justify.
"If he's made it back by the time of the strike; unless he can be maneuvered into performing a sizeable amount of transmutations that are very costly for a Stone, and thus forced into expending it within a relatively short period of time; it will be very hard for even a group of squads of the most capable soldiers from this Amestris to arrest him or kill him. At best, he'll escape the strike, or return after its over, and foment a civil war himself; thus restoring himself to a position where he can more effectively prove his theories about transmuting the Truth.
"And that doesn't even get into how we can't know for certain there isn't a Dante pulling their strings as a power behind the leader Homunculus' throne, or that the Mustang and soldiers from here will be able to outfight the ordinary Homunculi.
"They appear to be different in number, and capability, from the ones you know.
"It isn't just the Führer Bradley who is a Homunculus on that side or the Gate, or the upper echelons of the government colluding with the Homunculi and maybe a Dante.
"Selim Bradley is a Homunculus himself."
For an unknown reason, Winry winced violently.
Al tightened his own hold around her, and pulled her even more near.
To his new shock, he needed to suppress the urge to do so with a desperate longing that strove to grasp her like a dying person whose hold on a life raft was practically gone.
Why did it feel like this was the last time he'd feel Winry warm and close for eternity?
That was ridiculous.
He was just going to push her away from his heart in every possible important way after today, not remove her from his life in all potential methods perceptible.
She'd still be close by.
But when Al replied, his voice sounded as steady as it needed to be, and none of the pointless terror appeared to reach it.
"I'm taking that into account," Alphonse assured them.
"But this gives us a place to begin."
Neither Winry nor Julia said anything for a number of minutes.
Then Winry smiled a wide grin that was very clearly forced.
"And speaking of beginnings, I believe Granny's apple pie is now ready, and it needs to begin to travel in the direction of Al's mouth."
Julia assumed a wide smile of her own that was very clearly forced.
But while Al discovered his own elated grin was still totally sincere, for an unknown reason, the elation and euphoria was now muted; and new hot tears did push into his eyes at the unidentifiable knowledge he was for an obscure reason now betraying the gift Brother had given him he'd been determined not to savor.
But those must just be the kinds of groundless doubts and fears that had caused him to let Brother die.
Al pushed them away with set determination.
It felt as though a piece of him larger than his body and mind and soul was being ripped out of him as he did, but he ignored how the tears in his eyes spilled free by doing so.
And, while he knew his voice was honest when he spoke; it sounded distorted and wrenched clangorously discordant and separate from him when he said the words.
His smile felt like a sadistically and derisively mocking grimace, as well.
"So, what are we waiting for?"
The first two things he was aware of; from somewhere never distant and forever this instant, was a hand with cold and hard but inexplicably reassuring and sustaining and assuring revitalizing fingers embracing his left hand tight and securely safe from it all; and the warmth of a body behind him he was laying back against and arms around him and a chin above him holding him protected in a close sanctuary sheltered from none of it.
The cold hand and fingers squeezed his, and any wish to open his eyes and understand what was going on faded past his reach.
"We're here, Ed," a voice he knew he should recognize, and that shouldn't be using the name 'Ed,' spoke from above the direction of the hand.
"And if you believe we're here a lot more for big brother than for you; I won't deny you're wrong.
"We don't know if he was awake inside you for what Envy did,"
He wasn't sure he was still aware.
"But if he was, even though he can't communicate with us, maybe we can communicate with him.
"But we are still here for you."
The cold hand and fingers squeezed his tightly.
"And I do still love you as much as him, even though it's in different ways."
Ivory molten, broken and ruined desperate longing surged through him at the feel of the cold squeeze and the grip and those words, but then all there was was horror and terror that washed anything into an anywhere lacuna.
Warm lips pressed against the top of his hair.
"I love you as much as him, as well; even though the ways are different on my part, too."
A different kind of opal molten, shattered and fragmented desperate longing surged through him at the feel of the lips against his hair and the cold squeeze, and then all there was was horror and terror that cleansed everything into everywhere emptiness.
"And Rose will survive," the first voice continued.
At those words, even his awareness of the cold hand and fingers holding him close and protected and the warm body and arms embracing him near and secure almost vanished from all perspective.
But, blissfully, blessedly, no sensation spread through him from the cold sanctuary and the warm refuge where his right arm and left leg were.
No.
For an unknown reason, that awareness filled him with the most nil encompassed horror and terror of all.
"Get them off me," he heard a voice he somehow knew was his own whisper with very little and still breathless terror and horror that crushed smotheringasphyxiating all the beating from his heart and air from his lungs.
"And then keep them away from me.
"Get them away.
"And keep them off.
"Keep them offaway
"Get them offas far distant as you can
"And never let them touch me once again
"Please please please please please please please please please please please pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease"
He couldn't tell if he lost the ability to hear the voice, or just perceived nothing but the obsidian night.
.
"I wanna' go to a place where I can say
That I'm all right and I'm staying there with you
I wanna' know if there could be any way
That there's no fight and I'm safe and sound with you
.
"And every time I look
I thought you were there
But it was just my imagination
I don't see it anymore 'cause I see through you now
.
"What's stopping me? I get stuck again
Is it really okay? It's never okay for me
What's got into me? I get lost again
Is it really okay? It's never going to be"
'I Wanna' Go To A Place… - Version Two'
GUNDAM SEED DESTINY
