Reborn from Truth and Lies

A.N. Hey guys. Don't know how you managed to click on my fic but welcome. *excited* I first must thank you for taking your time to check this out. Also I must warn that this is my first fic ever written/published, so take it easy on me ok? I am open to any advice/critics, just be polite. Also I hope you enjoy my story. English is not my first language so skip or point out in a review any big grammar mistakes you see. Also typos and comas missing are accidental, this will be updated later with the corresponding changes.

I must dedicate this story to my beautiful friend Kate which had always encouraged and listened to my repetitive speeches. You are the best and this wouldn't have happened without you. Love you, and you are the best, no matter what. Don't forget that.

Also I want to thank my awesome friend which helps me correct my mistakes, and damn sometimes there are plenty. Thank you so much for putting up with me so nicely.

Disclaimer: I don't have any rights on Fullmetal Alchemist manga or anime. Those belong to their owners. But I do own my plot.

(+)

Prologue

O.C.'s P.O.V.

Music was blasting in my ears. I tried to push the volume button one more time, but it was already at its maximum. It couldn't get higher, something I couldn't say about my rising anger and anguish. I was so done; done with school, life, parents, with everything. Therefore, I tried to deafen myself from the screaming thoughts of anger that were still whirling inside of me with music. Of course, I didn't have enough luck as to make them stop so easily.

This time, I truly overdid it. It didn't mean that those people didn't deserve it. But starting a fight in school meant I was out. For real. And to make things worse it didn't even make me feel better. Their voices still spoke those words again, again and again in my mind like an endless torture. I stopped walking and looked up at the ashen sky. It was going to rain. For a second I was tempted to stay and let the raindrops wash every memory of this day, but I flinched while remembering one of the most tearful episodes of my favourite anime series, Fullmetal Alchemist. In Rain of Sorrows, Ed tried to let the rain wash everything away, but it did him no good. He just felt more miserable, and I didn't need any other reason to make this day worse. And I definitely wasn't like Ed. Even now I was bound my own weakness, the thing that caused me to do what I did.

Suddenly I came to a stop and looked around me. Green trees and bushes surrounded me as I somehow managed to miss my way home while thinking and walking in a fast pace, as far as I could from school. Sighing, I turned around to actually go home, bracing myself for the mess I was going to find when I got there. I had all the chances to get slapped or beaten by my dad and of course this time I couldn't fight back. My step-mom was going to look at me with big teary eyes and ask me what I have done, then shake her head with disappointment. I could handle the guilt but I was really afraid of what would my dad do. Not understand, anyway.

My family has been divided ever since I was very little with the disappearance of my mom. For many years, I have lived with the conviction that she was dead, my sole memory of her consisting in her lilac smell. My dad was always an angry, ambitious and severe person, but after she disappeared, he got worse. Then Geneviere, my step-mom came into picture. She wasn't that bad, but she mostly got on my nerves because her vision about my life way meant that I should change into the person she thought I should be. Because of that, I grew up being insecure, antsy and very introverted, prepared to conceal everything I felt, especially at home, where showing emotion did me no good. This resulted in me being unable to really connect to people because I just couldn't let them in, I was just too scared. So I read books and watched animes like any other tumblr blogger that has some depressing quotes on his or her dash.

I was inspired by the people I saw in animes, by their courage and determination and qualities, the way they never gave up. My favourite example was Edward Elric, the person I admired most, and his little sensitive brother Alphonse. These two were my role-models and my escape when things got bad, and for a while I made a balance in my life between the parts of me that were scattered everywhere I went. Somehow, I almost felt happy. I had a break between the high expectations and severe critic of my family. Then I started high school, and things got bad like they do for everyone. Everything went from bad to worse, until today, when I snapped and gave up my control. I screwed everything up more.

As I started to slow my pace to home, I almost felt tears coming to my eyes. Stubbornly I shut them, fighting against the dizzying emotions I was feeling. I wasn't going to cry, goddammit. I did not ever cry. Never. Not when my best friend told me to go to hell because I am such a freak. Not when I was told my mother had died and a foster mom came and took her place. Not when I got beat up and bullied in school. Not when the science teacher told me there was no way in hell I will enter the college I wanted. So I wasn't going to cry now.

But for a moment I let myself want to. I let myself be effulged by grief, sadness, anger, guilt, and fear. But not even then, the tears wouldn't come , as I knew they wouldn't. They never did. Just as I couldn't get a hold of my anger or express my feelings. I was so tired of this world and its demands. For a second I just wished everything will pause around me and I could have a break. Or stop existing.

As I thought this, my mobile rang and I looked down to my pocket and fished out the telephone, only to see my mother's number on display. Sighing in frustration, I wondered if it would be a good idea to not answer. Within the corner of my eye, I saw that I got to the crosswalk on Wembley Street, a place rarely populated. Quickly looking around I started crossing the street, my attention going back to the device in my hand. I decided it was best to decline and send a sms with an explanation when I heard the sound: a car, very unusual sight for this part of the town. I peeked up in mild curiosity as the sound grew nearer, and I had only enough time to just blink and hear the wheels screech as the big vehicle smashed into my body and sent me spinning in the air.

My last thought was that I didn't send the sms before the pain made everything else disappear.

"And the girl appeared out of nowhere?" the officer asked incredulously.

"Yes. Oh my God I swear I didn't see her until the last second. She was playing with her phone; she didn't even try to move as I pushed the break. Oh my God, I am so sorry," said a ravished man, his head buried in his hand.

"I need you to come to the station, sir. We just want to you to give us a real declaration of this."

-\\\-

"Her BP is dropping! Bring the IV and call Dr. Martin. This is a code blue. I repeat, Code Blue."

'Yes, sir."

"C'mon kid, don't give up on me like this."

-\\\-

"I can't get the bleeding to stop. More suction please. Damn, her heart got pierced right here. I need a clamp and..."

A monitor started beeping in the background as a line stopped moving.

"Dammit! Her body is in shock. Charge to 12. Clear."

-\\\-

"No. No. No. You can't be saying this. She is not gone. No..."

-\\\-

"So she killed herself? What a freak. I am so glad that she's gone. She was definitely nuts. To start a fight like that over such a simple matter. I guess not everybody can handle jokes."

"You're so right. Let's get out of here, this funeral stinks. And black is definitely not my colour. Wanna go get some snacks?"

You can say it's a very odd feeling to look at your own grave. It's more odd to know that you died and somehow still are here. Or your existence to be classified easily as one of a ghost's.

I looked at the perfect lines drawn on the hard, cold stone. A name followed by two propositions. A loving daughter. Will be missed. Such a simple text, and yet I couldn't stop myself from wondering if there was any truth behind it. Apparently, when you're dead you can wander and hear many things, including what everybody says about you.

My parents were somehow devastated. I don't know if it was because the funeral service was too expensive or they did really care. Most likely the first.

I looked with an empty face at the grave, still trying to accept what happened to me in the last week. I was dead. I died in a car crash. I saw medics operating on me, trying to bring me back to life. I saw my coffin being buried, black silhouettes looking and surrounding it. But it didn't matter how much I screamed the words that all this happened, I couldn't bring myself to accept them. It was too unreal.

This was a dream. This was a nightmare.

I couldn't go home, not literally anyway, but that was the last place I wanted to be. I was going to be invisible, immaterial and hear them fight. I didn't really have friends to miss, or any other place in mind. I didn't have anything to do since I was incorporeal; right now I was staying in the only place I belonged. In front of my grave. If this was how death was like, it sucked. No light. No other side. Just the same world, only worse in some way.

I sat down touching the damp earth. It rained not too long ago, and the sky was still dappled with silver, like the metal of automail. Right now I couldn't even watch Fullmetal Alchemist. I only had memories.

I only have memories to live with right now. And most of them were bad. And with that something in me clicked: I, myself had become a memory. A shadow, a passing nullity on this earth. I had ceased to exist for everyone else. I couldn't touch or talk or anything. I was alone. In a way I got my wish.

Not like this, a part of me screamed. I didn't want to die and be in this form! I just wanted them to stop! I wanted my life to get better, to have some friends, someone to understand me back home, or just to pause what happened to me for a second! As my conscious was screaming in agony at the crude reality, I have, somehow, fallen on the wet ground, or it should have been wet, but I couldn't really feel anything. I was indeed less than anything that existed.

A wish is a wish in any form that is formulated. If the answer to your prayers is not what you wanted it is not the wishes' problem. It's the wisher's. A gift is just a gift, whether the receiver likes it or not.

Startled I jumped my head up from the ground looking around the grey stones that formed a forest around me, trying to figure who said that. But there was no one around in the stone cemetery. Besides, the voice was in my head; well, voices, which spoke in perfect unison, like a strange symphony. All the same, they were familiar to me. I just ignored how crazy the situation even was, and tried to form an answer, as it was the first time someone had spoken to me in a week.

A wish is indeed a wish. But there are multiple ways for it to be granted.

There are but there is no difference to them, isn't it?

Of course there is a difference. A wish can be interpreted in many ways as it could be granted in many ways. Some ways can be classified as good some as bad. It depends how you see the wish, or anything in or about this world. It's a matter of perception.

So you think your wish has not been granted in a truthful way?

There is no truth in being dead.

I was probably going nuts. In the literal way of the word. I was having an inner monologue about wishes and death with my inner self and a voice that I was hearing. In a cemetery. While being dead. Fantastic!

Then, wouldn't being transferred into another world be better than dying? Continued the voice unfazed. Now you have ultimate freedom in this universe but that seems not to be enough. Would have been better to live a small insignificant life, but be alive somewhere that you think is 'better' than to have immortality in the world you're living in?

Anything is better than this world. If there was something as an alternative I would have sought it long ago. And the loneliness I am deemed to live right now is beyond reason. There is no power in death. There is only nothingness. And this nothingness is a something different from what I have been raised to expect. If this is the ultimate power a human can have, I indeed was making a fool of myself thinking about how many other ways for humanity there were. If this is the power I should accept here, I can gladly refuse it.

Very well, then. As you wish.

And I felt myself being pulled away bit by bit, absorbed through space and time into a different void.

I was lying on something concrete surrounded by complete white. It hurt my eyes but even when I closed them I knew the white was still there. There was no ending to it; there was no beginning, just infinite. I was starring up into white trying to figure out where I was. Or who I was.

Then as a respond to my thought I remembered. My death. My grave. The voice.

"Very well. I see that you are indeed sharp if you remembered everything so quickly after the shift."

I jumped scared and looked around only to see that all that white wasn't infinite. A few paces away from me, was a big, simple, black door. In front of it, sitting in a relaxed manner, was a completely white figure. If it was standing on the white background I would have probably missed it. It had no face, no eyes, not anything, besides its colour. And then it came to me. An earthquake could have occurred and I wouldn't have been so shocked.

The Truth. The Truth was standing in front of me. And that was the Gate of Truth. Probably MY Gate of Truth. I think my legs started to shake, because my vision fazed for a second.

"Ohh? Why so surprised? I thought you knew about me."

"There's a difference between knowing the truth and actually seeing it." My voice was shaky and sounded a little strangled. I was slapping myself internally for sounding so pathetic but in front of me was actually The Truth. Carefully I started to regain my control and exposed my indifferent mask as I did 100 times before to everyone around me. But I knew I wasn't fooling it.

The creature smiled pleasantly at my words but I was feeling more uncomfortable. I knew what it could do.

"Indeed. Truth cannot be understood unless confronted with it. Humans are all the same after all. Here or there, even when they know something they don't believe it, and when they don't know something they trust in it. And they call anything above this logic confusing."

I stared as his smiled faded with his words. His teeth completely equal and white, hid under what I supposed was his mouth. Even though he had no eyes I knew he was watching me, analysing me, waiting an answer.

"Because the world is made of lies. Because as puny as we are, and hopeless and pathetic, we humans know that there isn't anything certain. Not our lives, not our conscience not even our feelings or memories. Then, when the only thing certain is that we are not certain how can we consider something truth and accept it as a general rule, when it could be as easily a lie. Everything changes, everything is an illusion. The fact that I am here is against the boundaries we established as possible and impossible means that what I believed in was a lie. And yet you accuse me of not believing the reality when my reality a week ago was made of such idiotic things, like school and parents."

"Everything is an illusion. Even God?"

His tone held a sharp edge even though it could still be defined as cheery.

"Depends on your belief of what God really is."

"You certainly are interesting. I think I would keep you around for a while." If his faceless face could make an thoughtful expression, it just did. I looked fascinated and afraid as it continued talking. "Your vision on how the world works is refreshing. But there is a problem."

"I bet there is" I said, finding in me the force to respond to this creature. I was never a calm fella and even now my fiery spirit was waiting to be unlashed. "There is a small problem, and that is that I am not your toy to mangle with. There is that one small problem that I am dead because of you! There is the small problem that my existence is nothing, and you just act like someone who owns everything! You say that one is all and all is one. You say you are the universe, you are God, but you are also me. If you are indeed everything that exists, how can you act superior to humans and what means humanity? Aren't you acting superior on yourself? Aren't you dividing yourself to pieces that are better or worse?"

My outburst left the white form in front of me speechless. I could see how its mouth was slightly opened and I felt pleasure that I surprised it with my speech. I panted because I had been screaming everything, and the air filled my lungs-how was that even possible anymore- as my breath was starting to steady.

Then a laugh cracked the silent emptiness. The Truth was laughing whole-heartedly his body bent from his devastating chuckles.

"Oh my... You are definitely something different. It would be a pity to stay dead even though you wished for it. I summoned you here because you accused me of misinterpreting your wish. Well, now I am giving you a second chance." As he talked he spread his arms, his whiteness looking paler than usually on the black background of the Gate.

"I will send you away from your world that you despise so much. But you are dead. So there will be conditions to our game."

It was my turn to lose the ability to speak. To be sent away? A new chance to live? Game?

"You will be sent in your most dear story, in the world of Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric." Its voice was reaching a crescendo, almost in theatrical way. "But there will be a price. What do you have to offer? After all you are willing to bind yourself to the rules of equivalent exchange by joining their world."

And that was it. That's why I didn't want to let that disgusting feeling of hope bloom inside of me. I had nothing to offer. I was a soul. I had no alchemy. I had no life. I literally had nothing to offer. And Truth knew that. It was indeed cruel.

"You became silent. Thinking hard or just starting to feel helpless? Well, I could just say this was my entire fault and help you with this." And his hand went behind him and took something in his palm. Then, opening it slowly, I could see a red irregular stone. My mind clicked horrified as I realised what it was. A Philosopher's Stone.

I gasped shocked. No. Way.

"No."

"So you don't want to accept my gift? Don't you want to live? Don't you want to see your hero?"

"I would not use anyone's soul for mine."

"That's foolish. And then you will do what? Stay here with me an eternity? Send you back? Sell your soul?"

"I am already doing that," but my voice just sounded defeated. I felt guilt envelop me like a net. I had no other choice. I was too selfish to turn back to accept my defeat or the idea of me being dead, that I stopped existing when my soul was still here; I wanted to live.

I gulped fixing the small stone with my eyes. Souls of some damned spirits lived there. Edward would hate me for accepting these, but in a way, my situation was more hopeless. The devil was in front of me, literally showing me a way to get what I wanted. I knew I would lose. I was so ashamed. I was so weak. I had every reason to hate myself.

"I accept." And my voice did crack a little from the searing guilt.

"As I thought you would. Smart girl. But there is still a problem. This isn't enough for you to get a body, to keep your soul and to cross the Gate without a fee."

You little son of -...

"I will not accept to be a soul without a body." I said my voice confident once again. If I was going to kill someone else's existence, I wasn't going to do it in vain.

Truth just smiled. I wanted to punch him.

"Then let me make you an offer. You will use all this Stone. But you will get half a body and half of your soul. You will be human, but not quite, something between one and those who lurk in the dark. If until the end you solve my riddle and win the game you get everything back. You will live here or in your dimension, whatever you choose. If you don't, you belong to the Gate. To me."

This sounded more than fishy, and I knew he was backstabbing me with every word but I nodded. I didn't really have any other choice to choose from. But there was a catch, Truth was never a good guy, he was...Truth.

"But you will lose your memories. You will get them back, gradually. But I can't really leave you messing around in that world knowing the future. It wouldn't be fair."

Or easy, I added mentally. This was going to be more than tricky.

"How will I know my name? Will I forget everything about FMA, or my world and about myself, or how?"

Truth raised his hand to his chin, like thinking and then said.

"I'll give you a bonus for the start. You will remember things about yourself. And some about your world. And some about Edward Elric and his world but not enough to make it easy."

Aren't you a sweetheart?

"Do you accept this deal?"

I pondered for a second. I wanted to say no, but I stopped myself. I was going to go to hell and back and get everything back; including my life, my body and my soul, altogether beating this guy like Edward and live. Death wouldn't find me a willing comrade. Even though, I would probably despise myself for the rest of my life. Such a selfish being that I am.

"I accept it." I finally said.

"Very well, then." He raised himself to his feet and I cringed as he moved towards me. When he was standing in front of me I realized we had the same height and body construction. Not something that I didn't expect after I have seen the series but it was still unnerving. And he touched my forehead.

I fell down screaming as a burning pain started to effulge my body. I felt my limbs shake, my body being pulled up and down, every part of me being touched and moulded by the pain. I saw how words, symbols and patterns started to appear on my arms, shining with a deep red light, contrasting so much with the pure background.

I think it was an eternity, but it could have been just mere seconds before the pain started to fade away, my numb body lying there breathless and powerless. My only functional part where my eyes, and my field of vision was narrowed from my weird position.

The Truth, after seeing whatever he had done to me was over, moved away from my sight and to the front of the Gate. I was still panting heavily, as he touched the Gate, its blackness transforming easily to a dark grey, many words, patterns and models appearing on it.

"Any Truth is a Lie. A lie is a different truth. In order to exist one must die, and to die one must exist. Lose everything to gain nothing, and give up nothing to have it all. Love is poison, hate is fire, and friendship is hate. There is light in darkness, and darkness in the brightest lights. One is all and all is one." it said its back still turned to me, but turning around and walking in my direction as it spoke.

Now the white silhouette was standing in front of me, his feet were an exact white replica of mine.

"This is my advice for you. You will not forget this part. And now it is time for you to go."

With every ounce of strength in my body I asked a final question.

"And... your... riddle?"

"For thee I shall die

But my body shall not perish as the Sun of the Lion

Burns Red into me.

I am the answer.

I am the question.

The Golden Beings hold the key.

Through the Circle, One will die

Through the Gate, All will be restored.

A lie lies the Alchemist,

As the Moon and the Sun together

Me and thee will exist.

I am thee. Thee are me.

Fire, water, air and earth cannot unbind the shed blood.

Comprehend me to deconstruct my being,

As I have to let myself reconstructed from thee.

A lie is truth. I am lie."

As he was speaking his voice started to fade. I realized I was about to pass out but then I felt the arms dragging me. From everywhere they surrounded me, black and cold dragging me to the Gate. I wanted to scream but my voice wouldn't listen to me, my limp body standing at the mercy of the black limbs.

I had time just to hear the Truth ending his riddle and I see his smile once more before the Gate closed decisively in front of me, leaving me in a complete darkness.

A.N. Thank you so much for reading, you don't know how it means to me. See you in the next chapter.

Al