Full summary: When he went through the gate, Edward Elric was given a curse– The ability to see people's emotions and intentions. He hates the world, because he knows no one does things for the right reasons. Mustang and the crew know there's something dangerous hiding beneath the genius' sad golden eyes, but they can't figure out what. Why does Edward Elric never smile? AU dark!genius!angst!Ed, no pairings, slightly parental!Roy and parental!Mustang's central team.

The gate was white and horrible. Edward had always hated white, because while it seemed pure, it always hid the dangers underneath. White snow hid rotten leaves and dead animals, white paint hid the scars and marks on walls, and white smiles hid evil intentions.

Yes, white was terrible.

The most terrible white thing he'd ever met was that figure. The figure with the white body and the white smile and the darkest intentions he'd ever met. And it was supposed to be truth. What an ironic metaphor, that truth was the cruelest and most painful thing in the universe.

Because it was painful.

But losing his brother was more painful. Losing the one who understood him more than anyone else, the one who cared and knew how bad life could be but also the joy– losing Alphonse was something that would never, ever happen.

The gate. The gate, though. It told him truth and it told him a lot of it. Ed felt his mind being torn and then healed and then torn again, being crammed with truth and truth and truth. It had taken his arm and his leg. And then, it had taken his childhood and innocence away by giving him the worse possible curse and secret. That humans were selfish. His childhood hadn't been taken away at first, but it had been taken away nonetheless, when Ed's eyes first opened. The curse had taken effect in his eyes, something that he couldn't stop unless he stabbed them out and became blind.

When he first sat up, eyes squinting against the light, he saw Winry's affection in a light pearl pink, saw the ghostly future image of her arms moving around him before they actually moved. He saw Pinako's happy tears manifest in yellow and blue around her face, saw a translucent hand move and brush them away a few seconds before her real hand actually did.

He saw people's emotions. In colors.

When he first woke up after the accident that had been his mom, he had looked around in confusion, because everything was black and white. Did the gate make me colorblind? Yet another stupid price. An arm and a leg and a brother's body couldn't have been enough, apparently. But no, that was wrong, because he did see some things in color. Only human things.

He looked over at the armored thing that was his brother, and saw more color. A whole lot of blue and black. S-sadness... I think that's sadness...

A wispy suit of armor crossed the room over to him, and Ed reached out to it. "Br-brother?" he whispered, his voice hoarse.

A solid suit of armor crossed the room, shoes making clanking noises. Ed jumped. Wait, what? There are two Als?

"Brother!" Alphonse said, a different, more greenish-white color seeping into the spot where Ed had previously drawn the soul-seal. Worry. It had taken many more days before Ed had figured it out. The future.

He had seen a little bit of the future.

The childhood innocence part– that had been taken when he had seen other people for the first time, with his new eyes. When he had seen the dark green envy and the dark red hate and the white, white, white selfishness and indifference. Good emotions were light and happy, and Edward saw little or none of those emotions in the people around him. Even Pinako and Winry had a little bit of darkness within them, but they seemed to fight it with the beautiful deep light pink love they had. Everyone else didn't even seem to care about the darkness within themselves. They didn't even try to fight it. Do they not see?

That was when Edward had known.

Humans were just as evil as truth.

Edward looked over the papers in front of him, hand pressed against his lips in deep thought. The philosopher's stone. None of the papers seemed to be helping him, because he pushed them angrily aside. There's nothing here. Nothing except stupid folklore and superstition.

The search for the philosopher's stone had been going on for years for the young blonde alchemist, but he hadn't found anything solid. Every lead Ed and Al discovered either wasn't a lead at all, or went silent. Ed had finally made the decision to send Al back to Resembool to gather all the notes and information Ed sent him from Central. Besides, Ed preferred staying inside his Central office to avoid people as much as possible. Al was the happy, impossibly kind one (even though he intimidated the crap out of people with the suit of armor thing).

A wispy form of a human flew through the door, hand landing on the corner of Ed's desk to steady itself. Without blinking, Ed moved the coffee cup that the hand went through three inches to the left. A few seconds later, Havoc burst through the door, tripped, and grabbed onto the corner of Ed's desk.

"Whew! Whoa, didn't see your coffee there, that was close," he said, giving a sheepish grin. Ed didn't say anything, going back to the another stack of papers. It looked like the lunch hour was over.

"I was running cause Breda said he would race me back from the cafeteria, but he didn't even follow me," Havoc continued, one hand pressed to his chest. "I wonder why?"

Ed looked up at Havoc with a disbelieving expression, shaking his head. "Did you finish eating?" he quietly said.

"No," Havoc answered. Ed swore he could've seen the visible lightbulb appear above the man's head a second later. "That jerk! He just wanted my leftovers!"

Ed went back to his work, not smiling, but feeling a little better.

Jean Havoc had known Edward Elric for three years, and yet he still had no idea what the kid was really like. Ed never smiled, never got even close to laughing, and seemed to hate talking. It wasn't just an angst phase, Jean had seen his plenty of those (and had one of his own), but Ed's silence seemed to go deeper than that. It was the silence of an old soldier who had seen something he couldn't forget.

Jean's (rarely used) desk was across from Edward's, and he often used his slacking off time to discreetly spy on the kid (when he had gotten bored of writing profanity and comics of Mustang). Edward Elric was fifteen, had the height of an eight-year-old, and was really, really messed up.

Jean had seen him smile once, once, in those three years. When that once librarian lady, Sheska, had hugged him after Ed had asked for held with something. At first, the kid looked as white as a ghost and was frozen, but slowly, he relaxed and even slightly returned the hug. Sheska beamed back at him, saying, "I wish I had a son like you!" Ed's mouth had curved very, very slightly upward, but he had quickly pulled away.

Currently, the kid was reading through pages at the freaking genius speed of light, one flipping every few seconds. They probably had something to do with the Philosopher's stone, even Havoc knew about Ed's little obsession.

Those eyes, though. Those sad golden eyes. They had strange lights in them, colorful lights reflecting off of things that weren't there.

Maybe those golden eyes held the secret of why Edward Elric never smiled.

tbc. Thanks for reading!