Part one in a series. Beta'd by Ketita. Warnings for mild violence, language, and slash. Vague spoilers for both the first anime and the movie.

.

.

.

.

The truck dropped Alfons off where the road met the forest, a short walk from the test site. The driver left him with a warning to meet back at the same spot in two hours or else find his own way back. Alfons' felt anxiety well up in his chest at thought of the hour walk he'd have to make if he missed the ride, and the sight of the truck driving off and leaving him, the dust from the road billowing up in its wake didn't help to soothe it.

It wasn't a big deal. Ed was busy, of course, or he'd have felt more at ease being out at the test site, but it wasn't like he was helpless on his own.

Alfons adjusted the bag on his shoulder and gave it a gentle shake to be certain everything was in order before treading into the brush. He pushed his way between two thickets of needle-like leaves to step out into the open, a familiar patch of land only he and Ed knew of. The foliage crept out hesitantly, stopping just at the edge of the open sunlight as though afraid of being burnt, leaving the majority of the clearing an open space. Alfons stepped over the various plants and branches spread around the perimeter of the area like a God-made barrier and set the bag on the ground as carefully as his stiff back would allow, listening for any sound that would indicate a damaged instrument.

The rocket was a brand new prototype, straight from the lab and under strict orders to be tested once, the results recorded, and to be returned to the lab promptly the next morning. Their team leader meant the last bit for Ed, who had a tendency to forget deadlines, considering them more of a guideline than anything else.

Geniuses, Alfons scoffed.

Adjusting the stand and the test pad, Alfons ran over the details in his mind, broke down the figures and how he knew the rocket should work, if only it would. As soon as they got the design right and the calculations for the thrust expenditure, they'd be another step closer to achieving liquid fuel power. If they managed, Germany would never be embarrassed again—Alfons was certain of that.

Oh, hell, and he couldn't find the pencil, the most basic thing and he'd forgotten it…? Alfons scrambled through the rest of the bag, heaving a heavy, relieved sigh when he found it. Imagine how ridiculous he would have looked, showing up at the lab the next morning with the excuse, well, I think it worked out fine, but I'd forgotten my pencil, you see…

He'd never be able to show his face in the lab again!

Everything else went smoothly from there, much to Alfons' relief. The pad was set up, the rocket standing proud against its stand, and Alfons circled around it, noting the position, the angle, mind rotating through the steps, and then I—

Ed always told him he was deaf to the world when it came to rockets. Alfons had no idea how right his friend was, might never have known, had the wind not shifted in a way he knew would affect the trajectory. In that brief second, his focus dropped back down through the atmosphere to the surface of the earth, his awareness returning to the sound of a low hiss and an odd slithering from somewhere behind him.

Alfons, alarmed, froze in mid-crouch, hands bare inches from the rocket, all thoughts of corrections and equations at a standstill.

Something was moving in the depths of the forest, slowly working its way through mud and leaves and the roots of trees toward where he was. Some basic instinct Alfons hadn't been aware he was in possession of seemed to kick in all at once. He was struck with the sudden urge to run, to hide from a threat he couldn't see, an irrational panic creeping up his throat. The logical part of Alfons' mind thought that if he couldn't see anything, why panic? But the other half of his mind, the same one that held tight to the fear of his inevitable death, was screaming for him to move.

Alfons barely had the time to stand before something was lunging out of the forest, out of the darkness, and straight at him, mouth open and rows of glinting knife-like teeth the last thing he saw before he was lying on his back with a chunk torn out of him by a mythical beast that shouldn't have even existed. Watching the blood pooling at his side was like watching the death of a stranger through a window, completely remote from all sensation.

He was still alive. Alfons swallowed and tasted blood, couldn't even smell anything else. He couldn't move, his fingers barely twitching in response to the neuron impulses his brain was sending, get up, run, if you're still alive, move!

The creature loomed over him, and the word dragon flitted through Alfons' mind, an afterthought. His death was going to be improbably ridiculous, he thought as his vision narrowed to a pinpoint, the monster's face and nothing else.

"You're not who I thought you were," it said, sounding disappointed. Alfons had the bizarre urge to yell at it and demand the chunk of his side back so he could get up and walk away from this—not that he actually could.

Still, the thought was a nice one.

"You might still work," the thing was saying, its voice filtering through the last vestiges of Alfons' consciousness like a soft symphony in the background of a party. "If the Gate will take you, then I can't say I'll complain."

The Gate, the Gate, why did that sound familiar? The term, something someone had mentioned once before and he'd never thought of again. Alfons' mind was crumbling, escaping his body with the last of his blood. He clung to life, to vision, to every sense he could still experience, even as the strange doorway materialized. The monster reared up, then butted its head down, nudging Alfons toward the door, rolling him along the ground. It would have hurt, Alfons knew, had he still the ability to feel, but as things were, he was pleasantly numb, watching the strange doorway grow nearer, alternating with a close-up of the ground.

It wasn't until tiny black hands, hundreds of them, stretched out from the barely opened doorway that he felt even the vaguest sense of alarm. The monster was complaining, loudly, and Alfons closed his eyes to, You aren't supposed to take me, too! and allowed the last of him to slip into nothing.

Sorry, Edward.

The alarm rang shrilly into the early morning, and Alfons shot upright, stared around wildly, sweat dripping down his forehead and neck and chest. He was alive?

He was alive.

A dream, he realized, that was all. A very lifelike dream, if the faint memory of panic and pain was anything to judge from, for there he was, sitting in his own bed, Edward's faint snoring filtering through the thin walls. Next to his bed, the clock proudly proclaimed it six in the morning on Thursday the twentieth of April. Alfons stared, bemused, because hadn't the twentieth been the day before?

But no, that had been a dream, he reminded himself. The bag from the laboratory was still sitting up against the wall, safe and sound and not crushed by a mythical beast. Alfons shook his head, rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes. He'd never been one to remember his dreams, or to have terribly inventive ones, but that was something to be remembered, for sure. It had felt so real.

Casting the dream aside, Alfons rolled out of bed, went through the morning as normal, listened to Ed's alarm go off ten minutes later than his own, heard the sound of a prosthetic hand crunching brass and winced at the thought of another expense. Ed stumbled out of his own room half an hour before he was normally out of the house and Alfons quelled the sense of déjà vu he had, told himself he was being ridiculous (it was just so real).

"Are you going to the lab?" Ed asked over coffee, and Alfons heard the echo of the same words and kept pushing the feeling aside, squashing it down into nothing.

"Not today," he said, the same damn words, "I was asked to test one of the new prototypes." Perhaps, a variation? "You want to come?"

Ed shook his head and took another gulp, holding the mug close to his lips like he was trying to save the warmth for later. "Can't. I have a meeting with a professor today, something about a research project he's gathering assistants for. It's paid," he added at the end, and Alfons remembered that, too.

"It's always good to have more money," he agreed. They did need it, after all. Gracia was already being too lenient with them. The thought of becoming a charity case of hers rankled Alfons. "I have to be heading out, then," Alfons said, standing, mind on the bag waiting in his room. "I'll be back late, so don't wait to eat."

Ed waved him off, and Alfons knew that meant, like I'll listen to you. Ed's hardheadedness often reached amazing levels that gave Alfons the desire to smash his own head into a wall.

Bag in hand, he was halfway out the door before he turned and shouted back into the flat, "Don't forget to eat something," the same as he'd dreamed, and Ed's returning, Yes, mother, the same, all of it the same.

All right, Alfons told himself, it was just a dream, a really strange dream, and there's no reason to get worked up about it.

Which he wasn't, at all.

When the pickup truck pulled up at the curb in front of Gracia's shop, and the man leaned out the window and said, "Oi, Heiderich, need a lift?" he also didn't panic, didn't think of anything, because a dream is, after all, just a dream.

The truck dropped Alfons off where the road met the forest, a short walk from the test site. The driver left him with a warning to meet back at the same spot in two hours or else find his own way back. Alfons watched it speed away without the panic he'd imagine he should be feeling at the implicit threat, as though it was nothing new, something he'd been through before.

It was a dream, though, and he hadn't been through it before, hadn't ever been to the test site alone before, hadn't ever imagined seeing a dragon lunging out of the deepest, darkest depths of nowhere before.

Imagine his surprise when he stepped into the clearing and a monster with the smile of a thousand knives was waiting. "You," the monster said, slithering along the ground toward him, mouth open yet words still coming out, "are a fool, you stupid boy." Its head was so heavy that its every forward motion dug a path in the earth, a fissure for later journeys. Alfons was frozen, from the air in his lungs to the stuttered beat of his heart, and when the doorway rose in the monster's wake, obscured by an opened mouth glinting its threat, Alfons thought, it was only supposed to be a dream.

He closed his eyes when he felt the first of what he knew would be a thousand different kinds of pain and opened them again to the shrill screaming of his alarm clock, body drenched in sweat rather than blood. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing, and he couldn't remember how to move, what to do, until he heard Ed screaming from the other room, "Turn that fucking thing off!"

Hand shaking, Alfons reached over from where he was lying on his bed to switch off the alarm, reading six in the morning on Thursday, April the twentieth, on the face of the clock.

Déjà vu, Alfons realized with a sinking feeling, was probably not a good enough excuse anymore.

He couldn't panic, he couldn't panic, because—

Alfons kicked off the sheets and was sitting, nearly curled in half when the first cough wracked his body, his chest seizing up and that familiar burn creeping up his throat and leaving copper in its wake. He tried to stave off, breath through it, breath through it, like the doctors always said, but it was like drowning in his own skin.

When the panic settled alongside the expanding burn in his chest, Ed stood next to his bed, a hand hovering over Alfons' shoulder and a glass of water in the other, gold eyes wide and glinting with something Alfons couldn't yet name. He tried to open his mouth to apologize for waking Ed up, but then the burn was back and his throat felt as though it was vibrating with the urge to cough, to purge whatever it was settling in the bottom of his lungs from his body. Ed's hand finally gave in and rested on Alfons' shoulder, moved to his back in a cautious slide and rubbed.

The glass was against his lips and Alfons managed a gulp, choked down a second, and spluttered up the third right into his lap.

"Fuck," Ed was saying next to him, chanting it into his ear in time with the circular motions of his flesh hand on Alfons' back, cool on clammy skin. "Fuck, try and breath, Alfons!"

"I'm fine." Alfons had to gasp the words, but he finally got them out, took the glass from Ed's hand and held it, because if the taste in his mouth and down his throat was any indication, he'd need it bad once he could open his mouth and not hack up a lung.

"Maybe you should go back to the doctor," Ed suggested, the concern in his tone belying the casual words. "What was it they said last time?"

Oh, hell, what had he said? "Cirrhosis!" Alfons said quickly, remembering that he'd overheard the word during one of his last appointments. He was just thankful he could blame his strained expression on the pain. "Yeah," he laughed, a weak sound, "cirrhosis, that's it. No point in going back," and even if he wasn't saying why, that last bit wasn't a lie. There wasn't a point in going back. It wasn't like the prognosis would change.

Ed looked like he was going to start in on something Alfons really didn't want to hear, so he grabbed his friend's hand, squeezed it even though Ed couldn't feel it, and asked the question he was dreading the answer to.

"What did I do yesterday?" And the day before, if it wasn't all some strange, surreal dream infecting his conscious mind and playing tricks on his perception of reality. God, but he hoped it was.

"Yesterday?" Ed frowned. "We had class yesterday. And then, uh, you went to the lab, right? Something about picking up that prototype…" Ed's eyes went to the bag sitting against the wall, and Alfons' followed.

Class, they'd had class on Wednesday, and the monster was going to kill him on Thursday, which hadn't happened yet, only it had, had happened twice already, and Alfons felt his temples throb the more he thought about it.

"You sure you're all right?" Ed prompted. "You look sick. You should stay home today."

"Stay home?"

"Yeah, you were going to test the new one, right? Stay and we'll do it together tomorrow." Ed looked oddly determined about the whole thing. Alfons felt pride rear its ugly head.

"I'm fine," he said, dismissed Ed's worries as firmly as he could. "I promised the guys at the lab, and a touch of a cold isn't nearly enough of a reason to waste the day in bed."

"Touch of a cold? You said cirrhosis!"

"It's more or less the same," Alfons lied, and Ed gave him the most incredulous look, huffed and pushed away from Alfons' bed with short, aggravated movements.

"Fine, just don't blame me when you get laid up," Ed warned.

And Alfons thought, there's no point in me being laid up even as his lips smiled and his mouth said, "I promise, I'm fine! Please, don't worry about me."

Ed needed to leave. He needed to go back to his room and crawl into bed and leave Alfons alone because Alfons needed solitude to panic in, needed it now. When Ed finally left, Alfons grabbed his sheets and fisted his hands in them so tight it hurt. He couldn't tell if he was awake, if he was asleep, if he'd dreamed the last two days, or if they'd really happened. If they had….

If the last two days, which had actually been the same day, had been real, then Alfons had a serious problem. The only way to prove it, one way or another, was to return to the test site, he realized. If he went back and there wasn't a monster waiting, then he'd likely been having some rather amazing dreams.

And if there was a monster? Alfons swallowed against the wad of copper and acid in his throat and closed his eyes. If the monster was there, waiting for Alfons with its mouth open and the strange doorway behind it, Alfons would probably, in all likelihood, start sobbing.

Worst day ever, he thought as he pulled on his clothes and set about to creep away from the apartment without waking Ed again, and I have to have it on repeat.

He was being ridiculous, that was all. Alfons stood in the middle of the market as the bells of the cathedral rang midday, staring down at the apples and chewing the inside of his cheek when he caught sight of the price.

Ed said it all the time. Everyone said it all the time. The recession needed to end.

"If you aren't buying…" The merchant let his words trail off meaningfully, and Alfons took that as his cue to leave.

It really was April the twentieth. Alfons had checked three different newspapers, and all of them had said the same thing. He'd even run across the same man in front of Gracia's store, offering Alfons a ride up to the test area if he needed. Alfons had nearly agreed, set on going to see if that monster was waiting or if he was really just losing his mind as well as his life as the days dragged on, but in the end—

In the end, he couldn't. He'd held up his hands and offered his excuses, darting back up the stairs to take refuge in the small apartment. Alfons had managed not to panic, had spent all of ten minutes doing nothing but not panic, right up until the moment Ed walked out of his room, shirt off and pants undone and looked at Alfons, careless for his own state of undress, and said, "What the hell are you still doing here? Staying home after all?"

Well, no, no he wasn't, and Alfons said something to that effect, though he couldn't remember so much what he said as how he said it, his voice breaking in the middle in an embarrassing way reminiscent of his early adolescence.

Ed had been amused, at least.

Alfons ran a hand through his hair, briefly dug his nails in his scalp, desperate to wake up from what promised to be the worst nightmare he'd ever endured.

All right, he told himself, all right. There's no reason to panic. After all, he could just stay home, just stick to the town. He wouldn't get the testing done, but—at least he wouldn't have to—

He couldn't even finish the thought. The idea was pure ludicrous. Living the same day twice? It wasn't possible, wasn't practical, and more to the point, if he ever said anything of the sort out loud, he'd be carted off to an asylum quicker than he could get out the front door.

"It was just a dream," he said, needing to hear the words outside of his head.

"What was just a dream?"

Alfons slammed his back into the wall of the shop he'd been walking by, hand clutched to his chest and eyes wide while Ed doubled over with laughter.

"Your face!" Ed wheezed.

"There's nothing funny about my face!"

"Oh, come on, you should have seen yourself, standing there muttering under your breath…" Ed pushed hair from his eyes, still grinning that same grin up at Alfons and the only thought Alfons had was, at least he's wearing clothes now. "What's with you today?"

"Nothing," Alfons said. "I told you, I'm fine."

"Yeah, okay," Ed scoffed.

"I am!" And he really was! Probably.

Most likely.

Alfons just had to get through the day and wake up on Friday, and he'd know it was all a big mix up, a dream too real to distinguish from reality. Surely other people had them. It couldn't just be him.

The grin on Ed's face disappeared. "I'm serious, Alfons," he said softly. "You've been acting really weird since this morning. You're sick, aren't you?" He looked so worried.

"No, no!" Alfons said. "Really, I—I'm fine, great, even! I just… had a strange dream last night. I woke up and thought I was still in it, so I panicked." God, he must sound like an idiot. Alfons could feel his face burning, but Ed—

Ed wasn't laughing. Instead, those serious gold eyes were watching him in a way he couldn't quite place, a soft, sad expression stealing across his friend's face. "I understand," Ed said, and Alfons figured he really did, thought of all the crazy stories Ed told about another world, another life.

Yeah, Ed probably understood more than anyone else possibly could. But Alfons' dreams weren't real, and unlike Ed, he wasn't about to confuse them with reality.

"So, don't worry," Alfons finished, scratching the back of his head and staring at his feet. "It's nothing. Just a stupid dream."

Ed rested a hand on Alfons' shoulder and squeezed it briefly before bowing off, saying he had an appointment. Alfons watched him go and held on to the imprint of warmth on his shoulder, clung it to like a blanket of security in an uncertain world.

At five minutes until midnight, Alfons was sitting at the kitchen table and staring at the clock hanging on the wall as if it held all the secrets to the universe, if he only looked hard enough. Ed had gone to bed in the hour previous, tired of Alfons' strange reticence. From the moment he'd arrived home from the meeting with the professor, Ed had been in an amazing mood, the sort of cheer Alfons prayed for in his friend every night. But Alfons couldn't even pause to appreciate it, too stuck in his own mind, feeling as though that monster was there next to him, still gnawing on his stomach and laughing in that frightening voice, You're a fool, boy.

Three minutes to midnight.

It couldn't be real; Alfons knew it couldn't be real. It was becoming difficult to breathe for his panic. Putting a hand on his chest, he tried to breathe through it, closed his eyes and felt his heart hammering against his chest and tried to time it with his breathing, a level in and out that would calm his quaking body if only he could keep it going for long enough.

Two minutes to midnight.

But what if it was real? What if Alfons, like the people in Ed's stories, was stuck in one big cosmic joke? What if he spent the rest of his existence living the same day, over and over? Alfons choked back a laugh because wouldn't that just figure? He'd spent a year, almost two, agonizing over his own inevitable death, wishing for something to cure him, for something to change. Wouldn't it be funny if this was meant to be the answer to his prayers?

Wouldn't it be just fucking hilarious if he couldn't even die, just kept going as he was, his life on repeat for the rest of eternity?

One minute to midnight.

He wasn't crying, not at all. Alfons wiped a damp trail of nothing from his cheek and buried his face in his hands. Ridiculous, it was ridiculous, because nothing was happening. It was just a dream, he reminded himself, and a dream is a dream is a dream, nothing else.

It had to be a dream, because—

The final click, and the minute hand crossed to midnight. Alfons froze in his seat as the cathedral bells began to sound, twelve long chimes. He closed his eyes and counted until they were gone and when he opened his eyes…

When he opened them, he was still sitting in the kitchen, staring at the clock and watching the second hand sail the world toward one minute past the hour.

Alfons laughed, his voice reaching an almost hysterical note. "Of course," he said, breathing in a shaky inhale, the air in his lungs a sweeter, fresher breath than he'd ever taken. Of course it wasn't real. He'd never been more thankful to be normal, to be completely uninteresting than he was in that moment.

Satisfied that his life was no different than it had been the day before, Alfons readied himself for sleep and fell into his bed, completely exhausted, every last drop of the adrenalin that had been pounding through his body since he'd woken that morning gone, leaving nothing but a drained feeling in its wake.

When he closed his eyes, it was with the absolute knowledge that the world was as it should be.

The alarm rang shrilly into the early morning, proclaiming it six hours into the day, and would Alfons mind terribly waking up? Alfons, eyes still clouded with sleep, stretched his arm out from under the covers and turned off the alarm, rolling his body with the motion to glance at the face of the clock.

A chill spread through his body. Alfons jerked up, grabbing the clock off the bedside table and holding it close to his face.

Six in the morning, the clock told him. Six in the morning on the twentieth of April.

Something was very, very wrong.

"It's not possible," Alfons whispered to the clock. His hands were shaking so hard the numbers blurred in his vision. Alfons had to put the clock back down to see what it was saying, stared at it until the clock read half an hour past, and the numbers still refused to change, proudly proclaiming that it was the twentieth of April like Alfons hadn't already seen the same sight two times before, like he wasn't just a cycle that repeated itself when it shouldn't.

Ed was awake by the time Alfons snapped to reality, or what he thought was reality. He couldn't even tell anymore. Ed called his name, his voice growing steadily nearer until he was standing in the doorway to Alfons' room and staring at Alfons, still in bed and staring at the clock, like he was looking at a stranger. "Alfons," Ed said his name slowly, approached the bed as if he was trying to calm a wild animal. "Are you all right?"

No, Alfons thought with heat, I'm not fucking all right! But he couldn't even express in words how he was feeling, couldn't convey the horror of that one moment, of waking up to seeing that he wasn't in a dream, wasn't doing anything but losing his mind or—or he didn't even know, couldn't even say, and then Ed was by his bed and Alfons was trying to breathe and just couldn't—

"Alfons," Ed sounded scared. "Please, come on, just breathe. Oh fuck, what's wrong with you?" His voice died off into a whimper and he was shaking just as hard as Alfons, or maybe it was just because he was holding Alfons, Ed's arms around his shaking shoulders so they were both quaking like the world was ending.

Maybe, Alfons thought, numb and somewhere in between his own mind and outer space, maybe the world really was ending.

It wasn't until he saw blood sprayed onto the sheets, onto Ed's bare arms, that Alfons finally tried to regain control of himself. Ed had backed off, was staring at the bright red stains with the sort of horror Alfons had when he'd first seen them. "Alfons," Ed said, voice shaking just as much as their bodies were. "Why are you…This is blood."

Alfons said nothing.

"Why are you coughing up blood?" Ed asked, and Alfons didn't even know how to answer that, because what did it matter anymore? He couldn't die if he couldn't even see the next day. He'd just stay right where he was forever, never moving forward, and even though he had all the time in the world, he'd never see a single rocket fly because his life's dream had faded away right alongside his ability to grow and to die, and oh, he was shaking again, the bed frame and Ed and the world—

But Ed had him, Ed was holding him, his face pressed right against Alfons and he was speaking directly into Alfons' ear, "What's happening to you," over and over.

Alfons didn't even see any reason to hide anything. "I'm dying."

Ed jerked back like he'd been slapped, a smile of disbelief on his face. His hands were in his lap, no longer holding onto Alfons. "What?"

"I'm dying," Alfons repeated, unable to look Ed in the eye.

Ed stared. Ed stared and stared and stared like Alfons had stared at the clock. When he got up and left the room without another word, the blood still painted up his arms, Alfons said nothing. There wasn't a single thing about the situation that words could fix.

The only saving grace was that, in the morning, Ed wouldn't remember a single thing.

Ed was gone by the time Alfons got out of bed and got dressed. Not only was Ed gone, but the small suitcase that sat at the foot of Ed's bed was also gone, the clothes in his drawers, the papers that always laid scattered across his desk…

Alfons took one look at Ed's room and felt like someone had pulled his heart straight out of his chest, threw it on the ground and stomped it into mush.

The monster. He had to go back to the monster, because that thing, he realized, was also stuck. If he was lucky, it wouldn't kill him for long enough for Alfons to explain.

Maybe it knew what was going on. That doorway had to have something to do with it. Both times he'd gone to the test site, the monster had been there, but the thing that stood out the clearest in his memory was that doorway, with its strange creatures stretching out their long and numerous arms and pulling Alfons closer, the monster right behind him, loud and full of complaints. Really, even if the monster killed him straight off, what did it matter?

Alfons had all the time in the world.

He took the ride the man offered, the same as before, and ignored the warning of being left behind, because he was fairly certain it wouldn't matter. The chances of getting that thing to listen to him were slim. Most likely, he'd be waking up in his bed on the same morning in a matter of minutes.

Pushing his way through the bushes, Alfons felt empty, numb. Ed was gone, and even though he knew Ed would be back, knew the day would reset and all his wrongs would be erased, he still felt the heavy guilt that accompanied his lies.

There was nothing he wanted more than to live a long life with Ed, no matter the conditions. Some perverse part of him wished that Ed got stuck in the cycle with him, because even if it meant the same day for all of eternity, he could handle it if Ed was there, if he wasn't alone in it.

In the clearing, the monster was waiting, but this time, when Alfons stepped into the open, it made no move to strike out at him. In fact, if Alfons didn't know any better, and by then he surely should, he would have said the monster looked almost depressed, worn out.

"I," the monster said after a moment of silence, "really fucking hate you."

Alfons stared. "I beg your pardon?" And just when he'd thought the day couldn't get any stranger.

"I don't know what the hell you did," the dragon growled, slithering across the ground until the hot breath puffing from its slitted nostrils was fanning Alfons' bangs from his face, "but it fucking sucks. I should have known," and it trailed off into a pitiable lament that Alfons had a hard time following, something about That Person and rocks?

"You're the one who tried to kill me first," Alfons pointed out before he could stop himself. What was the point in being afraid when nothing could possibly come from it? For all intents and purposes, Alfons was basically immortal. What was the point in being afraid of anything?

"That's because you looked like that shit!"

"…what?"

The dragon huffed angrily and reared back, raising itself in the air. "You looked like him, like the spawn of Hohenheim!"

Alfons blinked. Hohenheim, he knew that name, where had he heard it again?

"And he would have worked!" The dragon roared. "His blood would have fixed everything, but instead I had to get you, you filthy little imposter! Die!"

"I'm not an imposter! I'm just me!"

"That's what you say," the dragon said, thoroughly unimpressed. "But then, you're really all wrong. Your eyes, for one."

"What's wrong with my eyes?" Alfons demanded, indignant. The whole situation was becoming more than he could possibly handle, and he really didn't—

"For one, they aren't gold," the dragon said, and Alfons' stomach plunged down to his knees.

"Gold," he repeated, his mind's eye calling forth the image of a boy who did have gold eyes. "You're looking for someone with gold eyes?" It couldn't be. The monster couldn't know Ed, because if it did, then that would mean—Ed's stories. The monster wasn't talking about some rock, Alfons realized with sudden clarity. The monster was referring to a stone. The Philosopher's Stone.

The monster looked decidedly less disappointed in Alfons. "You know someone who fits the bill?"

"Well, I, uh, might," Alfons stammered, uneasy with the monster's sudden close proximity. "I think I've seen him."

It lowered its head until it was eye to eye with Alfons, and Alfons had to remind himself there was no reason to be afraid, because he was very suddenly staring death in the eye. "Ed," the monster breathed the name like a prayer. "You know the Fullmetal shrimp?"

"I don't know about that last part," Alfons said hesitantly, forcing himself to not step backward. "But yes, I think that's him. Edward Elric?" The monster's eyes were practically glowing, display its happiness in the only way it could.

"Where is he?" it demanded.

"I—" Alfons stopped, watching the monster warily. It looked a little too pleased at the idea of having Ed nearby, and not in a good way. "Why?"

"Why?" the monster echoed. "Tell me, moron of mine, do you want to be stuck here forever?"

"…no?" Alfons just didn't understand what Ed had to do with anything.

"Then bring tell me where he is," the monster said adamantly.

"You think Ed could fix this?" Alfons asked. "The days?"

"Maybe," Envy said. "I could sacrifice him to the Gate, and then we wouldn't be stuck anymore. I'm pretty sure."

"Sacrifice him?" Alfons demanded. "No! Absolutely not!"

The monster sighed disgustedly. "Human sensibilities," it muttered. "Why am I not surprised?"

"There has to be another way," Alfons argued. "What if—what if he just agreed to help?"

"I can't see why he would." The monster sneered down

"But if he did," Alfons persisted. "Would you agree not to hurt him?"

The monster gave him a searching look, head bowed. "You think you can convince him to come here? Do you even know him?"

"I might," Alfons said evasively. "Well?"

"Do I have a better option?" it grumbled. "Fine. I won't kill him if you bring him here. But bear in mind, that once this situation has been reversed, I can do whatever the hell I like!"

That was probably the best he was going to get out of the monster. "All right," Alfons agreed. "That's settled."

"So? Where is he?"

"At home?" Alfons hazarded. "He's my roommate."

"Your—" The monster stared. "As in, he lives with you."

"Well, yes."

It snapped its teeth, a motion that seemed more reflex than anything, and let out a long breath. "I shouldn't be surprised," it muttered. Then, as if something occurred to it, it raised its head. "His arm," the monster said urgently. "His right arm and his left leg? Does he have them?"

Alfons' mouth went dry. "No. They're prosthetics," he answered. "They're gone. He lost them in an accident." Ed had never been completely explicit in how he'd lost his limbs, would usually just become withdrawn and quiet, would brood for hours when asked. Alfons had learned not to ask.

"Then the Gate didn't return them…" The monster snorted. "But it was hardly what I'd call an accident. He lost them, all right, but that was just the price he had to pay. Everyone has to pay a toll."

A toll? Alfons realized, then, how little he truly knew about his friend. Perhaps if he'd believed Ed's stories, Ed would have trusted him with more.

The monster sounded like it knew more about Ed than Alfons did.

Alfons opened his mouth to ask the monster what he meant, but it was tired of the questions, apparently.

The last thing Alfons saw before he opened his eyes to the sound of his alarm was the glinting of row upon row of sharp teeth opening up before him.

Alfons swore and slammed his hand down on the alarm clock. The little brass clock cracked and the face shattered, but Alfons couldn't even bring himself to care. Not only was he trapped in some ridiculous, never ending cycle, but also he had to deal with a beast whose idea of ending a conversation was by eating Alfons. And then—and then, Alfons had to deal with the sudden knowledge that his friend wasn't out of his mind.

Ed really was from a parallel world, one where monsters roamed free and alchemy surpassed technology.

Alfons wasn't sure anymore which part of the day had been the worst.

But then, of course, he remembered the conversation with Ed, remembered Ed leaving, his room empty of the suitcase and the paper and clothes, and Alfons was quite certain nothing else had been as painful as the sight of Ed's room empty of the few possessions he had.

The clock still said April the twentieth, the numbers now frozen on the clock's shattered face, and although Alfons knew Ed would be in bed, wouldn't be getting up for another half hour, he had to make sure. In his nightclothes, with as little regard to his appearance as Ed ever had, Alfons stormed out of his room and into Ed's room next to his, opened the door and stood in the threshold.

Ed was still asleep, minus one arm and leg, curled up on his side with one arm stretched outward, searching for something that wasn't there. His forehead was wrinkled, the lines deepening as he shifted, murmuring something unintelligible. Alfons wondered what Ed was dreaming to have such a look on his face.

The monster's face and gleaming teeth flickered through Alfons' mind, and Alfons decided that he probably didn't want to know.

What he did know was that he wouldn't allow the monster to sacrifice Ed just to spare them the cycle they were stuck in. Even if it meant that one day for eternity, Alfons could bear it, so long as Ed could move on.

He never wanted to see Ed's back the way he had the day before, hunched and defeated and, above all else, betrayed.

Alfons knew what he had to do.

"I won't let you hurt Ed," Alfons said to the monster. The monster, in turn, continued to look unimpressed.

"You're back again?" it asked. "Wonderful. Really, I couldn't be happier to be stuck here, in this world, on this day, with you, you little fuckwit."

Was everything from Ed's world so foulmouthed? "What if we can find another way?"

The monster was silent for a moment, and then it tilted its head down. "I'm listening."

"What if I can convince Ed to help us? You said he's an—he's an alchemist, right?" The words felt strange to say, stranger still to believe. "Maybe he can think of a way—"

"And why would he want to help me, hm? Do you have any idea who I am, you useless wretch?"

"Well, no," Alfons admitted.

"Let me enlighten you. The Fullmetal shrimp and I, we go back. You could even say that we're family."

Alfons had a hard time believing that. "Family?"

"Half-brothers," the thing responded off-handedly. "We shared the same father. Hohenheim, you know."

Oh, and then Alfons remembered where he'd head that name before—Hohenheim was the name of Ed's father!

"You're—a dragon," Alfons said lamely. "You don't, er, look like you and Ed could be related." If they were, Ed's world was stranger than Alfons originally thought—

Not to mention, Alfons would hate to see the monster's mother.

"I wasn't always, you insipid little fool!" The dragon was looking less and less pleased. "I'm a Homunculus."

"Oh," Alfons said, followed quickly by, "A what?"

If it could, Alfons had the feeling the dragon would be beating its own head against the ground. "A Homunculus," it said, "a being created from human transmutation."

"Oh," Alfons said, though the explanation didn't really clear anything up. "I, er, I see."

"No you don't," the thing said, "but that's all right. You're an idiot, so I didn't expect anything else."

"Now, hold it just a—"

"Envy was my name," the thing, Envy, apparently, continued, ignoring Alfons' indignant spluttering. "I can shape-shift."

Shape-shifting? Well, Alfons knew what that was, at least. There were hundreds of old stories and myths from ancient cultures revolving around creatures that could change their forms at will. "Can't you be something else, then?" If the dragon was actually a person, or whatever it was, then why would it choose such a cumbersome form?

"Oh, well, I don't know, maybe because alchemy doesn't work in your world, you fucking dipshit."

Oh, right, Ed had said that. "Sorry," Alfons muttered. Envy was an awfully tense person—dragon—whatever he was. "So what do you think?"

"About what?" Envy snapped.

"If I can get Ed to agree to help us," Alfons said, "do you promise not to hurt him?" He couldn't agree to it otherwise, couldn't willingly put Ed in danger.

Envy let out a plaintive sigh and turned back toward the denser part of the forest, head already sliding along the ground. "Sure thing, kid. Same time this morning."

Before Alfons had the chance to process that, Envy's long, heavy tail was coming down, right on his head, the next sound to filter through his mind the shrill ringing of his alarm.

Alfons hated Envy.

The trouble with convincing Ed was that Alfons had no idea how to go about doing it. Ed had spent the entire time they'd known each other spouting crazy story after crazy story, trying to convince everyone that he was from another world—mostly Alfons, in the end.

Alfons had never believed him, so why should Ed do what he never could?

And even if Ed decided to believe him, though Alfons couldn't for the life him think of a single reason why he should, Alfons would need to be able to explain what was happening. 'Your dragon half-brother tried to kill and throw me through some weird doorway and now we're living the same day over and over again' didn't really strike Alfons as the best explanation. He needed specifics, details—

He needed Envy to stop killing him every time he wanted to ask a question!

But he had a feeling that going back to see Envy without having first spoken to Ed would probably just end in him being squashed or eaten or whatever the method of choice for that go-around was, so it was with that in mind that Alfons cooked the biggest possible breakfast he could. It was pleasant, really, being able to cook and not worry about going hungry. The food would just be there when he woke up or did whatever it was he did, so what was the point in worrying over it?

The cycle was oddly freeing, once Alfons got past the annoying monotony.

"Morning," he said cheerfully when Ed, still dragging from a night without rest, appeared in the doorway. Apparently the sight of so much food was more than enough to wake him up, because Ed's eyes shot open and he started blinking rapidly, looking from the spread of meats and eggs and potatoes to Alfons and then back.

"Morning," Ed said slowly, rubbed his eyes with his good hand. "What's the occasion?"

"You know," Alfons said, pulling out a chair for Ed and putting a plate down for him. "Nothing much."

"Right," Ed said. He was looking at Alfons suspiciously and peeking back at the doorway as though to make certain they were alone. Alfons started eating, and Ed, after another glance at the doorway, picked up his fork, skewered a potato, brought it to his lips, and then abruptly dropped the fork and the food. "Okay, what the fuck is going on?" he demanded.

Alfons reluctantly put his fork down. Right, he'd gotten a bit carried away with the food. It's not like he was avoiding talking to Ed, because he wasn't! Well, he mostly wasn't. "Ed," Alfons said, taking a deep breath. Ed stared back at him, eyebrows high on his forehead. "You see," Alfons began again, trailing off when words failed him. What was he supposed to say?

"Alfons, what's going on?" Ed asked again, starting to look really worried.

"It's nothing bad!"

"That—that doesn't make me feel better at all, actually."

"Right, okay." Alfons looked at the table. There was no reason to be afraid. He'd said worse things to Ed since the whole situation had started. He just had to say it. "Right," he repeated, and Ed was starting to look completely fed up with him so Alfons panicked and blurted, "I've been through today at least three times already!"

The frustrated expression dropped off Ed's face, replaced by one of bemusement. "Come again?"

"I," Alfons clenched his fists on the table, "This sounds crazy, but I'm, er, stuck."

"Stuck." Ed looked nonplussed. "How are you stuck? Stuck in what?"

"Today! I'm stuck in today!"

Ed didn't look remotely close to understanding the situation, so Alfons pushed on, knowing he sounded completely ridiculous, but damn it, if Ed didn't believe him, he was screwed! "This thing tried to eat me, and—and then I woke up!" His mind was scrambled. With Ed sitting in front of him with that skeptical look on his face, Alfons couldn't find the words to explain, couldn't piece the story together in a way that would make sense. "And then I woke up again," he continued helplessly, "and again."

"And again?" Ed suggested. "Maybe you should go back sleep. You sound completely out of your mind."

"I—I know," Alfons said. "Honestly, I do, but I'm telling the truth!"

Ed stood up and pushed his chair in. "Look, I'm going to be late. I have a meeting with a professor today. Can we do this later?"

"Do this later?" Alfons spluttered. "Wait, Ed—"

"See you," was the response he got before Ed disappeared out of the kitchen. Alfons heard him rush down the hall, pause briefly to grab his coat from the closet, and rush out the door. "Fuck," Alfons groaned, slumping down in his chair. What could he have done? With Ed looking at him like he was a babbling idiot, Alfons lost his nerve. What could he have said that would have made Ed believe him?

And then it came to him. Envy! If Envy was really Ed's brother or relation or whatever, then Ed would have to know about him! And the things Envy told him!

He could fix this, Alfons could fix this!

He jumped up and ran down the hall, dead set on catching Ed and forcing him to listen, no matter what Ed said. Ed had to listen, because he was the only hope there was. Envy even seemed to believe it, despite how much he seemed to dislike Ed.

Alfons pounded down the stairs and out the front door, saw Ed in the street. He shouted his name and darted after him. Ed turned around, wide eyed, and stretched his hand out to Alfons, yelled something, and then—

And then the sound of a horn honking, a bang, everything going dark, and the shrill sound of the alarm signaling six in the morning on April the twentieth.

Alfons rolled on to his back and slapped his hand over his eyes, letting out a loud, disheartened groan. "Of all the stupid things," he muttered to himself.

Envy didn't even have to kill him. Alfons, it seemed, could handle causing his own death just as well.

"The cycle restarts when you die," was the first thing Envy said to him when he returned to the clearing. "And I'd really like to know how you managed that without me. I was halfway to the city and then I was here. What the hell did you do, moron?"

"I got hit by a car," Alfons muttered, and he wasn't at all surprised when the dragon began roaring with unrestrained laughter, head bobbing up and down.

"Hit by a car!" Envy howled. "You really are an idiot! But at least something good came of it."

Alfons still didn't like the idea of standing too close to Envy. He was just so big, took up nearly the entire clearing all on his own. He wouldn't even have to try to kill Alfons. All Envy had to do was move the wrong way at the wrong time and that'd be that. "What good came out of it?"

"The cycle has limits. We're tied in it together somehow." Envy lowered his head to the ground and let out a long breath that charred the grass around his mouth. "And since there are limits, we need to understand them. What time does the cycle reset?"

Alfons fumbled with his words, trying to think. "I've never really tested," he admitted. "Once, I thought it would, er, reset at midnight, but I stayed up and it didn't."

"What did you do after?"

"I went to sleep?"

Envy huffed again. "Idiot, idiot, idiot! Why I had to get stuck with you—"

"You tried to eat me first!" Alfons shouted back, just before realizing that Envy had managed it, the first time—or had that been the second? "This is too much," he muttered, kicking the ground. Thinking about it was exhausting.

"What about the shrimp?"

Alfons made a face. "Shrimp?"

"Fullmetal—Edward Elric? Does that strike a chord in your mind?" Envy sneered. "I suppose I just accept my fate at this point, shouldn't I?"

"I did try!" Alfons said defensively. "He just didn't really believe me."

"Oh?" Envy sounded surprised. "He didn't?"

"He said I sounded out of my mind."

"What did you tell him?"

"Well," Alfons began, but there wasn't really anything he could say to that. Face it, he thought. You babbled at him like an asylum-escapee! "That… might have been the problem."

"Imagine my surprise," Envy grumbled. "I don't have the energy to deal with you today. Go home."

"Home?" Alfons watched Envy slither back into the forest. "You aren't going to, ah, do it for me?"

There was a brief, blessed silence where Alfons took the opportunity to pinch himself before Envy answered with a loud, mocking laugh and a sudden stream of flames pouring out from the forest. Alfons had never even been sun burnt before. When the heat hit him and disappeared within seconds to the sound of his alarm going off, Alfons couldn't have been more thankful for the strange curse plaguing his life.

Being burnt was quite possibly the most painful death he'd ever experienced.

Envy had made an excellent point. At what time did the cycle reset itself? It was tied to the both of them being alive, or at least to Alfons being alive. He had a hard time imagining anyone being able kill Envy, though. It made sense to test the limits of his strange reality.

From the moment he'd woken up, Alfons had tried to make a note of anything that might seem important, certain patterns he'd observed over the days, things that changed during every cycle and things that remained the same. Viewing his plight as an experiment made it bearable, made it something that felt under his control, no matter how uncontrollable it truly was. Around eight in the evening, he had twenty pages of paper filled in his notebook, jotted over and scribbled in completely with notation after notation, the restless work of a weary mind.

"You look like you want to say something." Ed stood in the doorway to Alfons' room, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, his hair tied back and spilling over his shoulder in a long golden stream. Alfons' eyes followed it to Ed's face, Ed's eyes, the soft expression he seemed to get when he thought Alfons wasn't looking.

There was a notation of that at the bottom of page seven.

Alfons shrugged and closed the notebook, dropping it and his pen onto the bedside table. "I don't know what to say," he said honestly.

"What do you mean?" Ed asked, brows furrowed. "You've been kinda weird all day. Why're you holing yourself up like this?"

Ed said it every day, or had said it every day since the disaster began. Alfons made sure not to laugh, just took in the concern plain on his friend's face and thought, why not? Why not tell him?

Ed would just forget in the morning. There was no danger in it, in any of it. Whether he believed Alfons or not was just an extraneous detail.

"I have something I need to tell you, actually," Alfons said. "Come in?"

Ed started looking nervous again. "All right," he said, sitting on the bed next to Alfons, leaving a nervous space between them. "Did—did I do something?"

"Of course not. It's more—" There was one thing he could say, Alfons knew, that would get Ed's attention. One thing that could ensure Ed would listen. "I believe you," he said simply.

Ed started. "About what?"

"About—your world," Alfons said, scrambling for the right words. "About where you came from."

The look on Ed's face was one of cautious hope, as though everything he'd ever wanted had just been given to him and he was terrified of it all being ripped away. "Why?" he asked—one word. He sounded so—so timid, so vulnerable, and it was then that Alfons truly understood what it meant for someone to acknowledge Ed's stories as fact. It was what he'd been searching for since the cycle began: someone to justify what he was experiencing so he would know he wasn't crazy. Having Envy around, no matter how much Alfons feared and reviled the monster, eased the burden on Alfons. He didn't have to do through everything alone. Ed, though…

Ed did. Ed was always alone.

"Because I found proof," Alfons offered, and if Ed had looked surprised before, hopeful and surprised and eager, it was nothing to the multitude of expressions overtaking his features all at once.

"What kind of proof?" Ed asked, almost a command. "What did you find?"

"A dragon," Alfons said, and when Ed's nose wrinkled, a look of utter disbelief overtaking his features, Alfons quickly clarified, "Envy, the shape-shifting homunculus. He looks like a dragon right now, though."

Ah, and the look of terrified hope returned. "Envy!" Ed choked. "He's here? Where?"

"He's out in the woods," Alfons said. "He's been hanging around the test site. You know the one. He's—well, he's kind of a pain."

"You've spoken to him?" Ed looked like he was about to explode from the sudden information overload.

"Well," Alfons said. "He's sort of killed me a few times."

Silence, complete and utter silence. Then, "What the fuck?"

"I've tried to tell you before," Alfons said. Ed was staring at him like he'd grown a second head, but Alfons could see it in his eyes—Ed believed him. "I'm stuck," Alfons said. "In the same day. I've been through today, a week's worth of them, and" he broke off, speech interrupted by a bitter laugh, "I'm—I'm really tired of it, Ed. Envy said you could help."

Ed didn't say anything for a while, just stared at Alfons with the strangest expression on his face, stared and cocked his head to the side, the soft light of the Alfons' lamp playing in his eyes like a flame. "I don't—I don't really understand," Ed said, swallowed loudly. "How did it start?"

He didn't sound completely convinced, but he was actually listening to Alfons. It was definitely a start. So Alfons told him, listed every minute detail he could remember: that first morning, Envy, the doorway, waking up and doing it over and over again. Ed listened with eyes wide and lips slightly parted, nodding every so often and making soft, agreeing noises.

"And Envy's—temperamental," Alfons finished. "He thinks you can help, but he, ah, sort of also wants to, er—"

"Kill me?" Ed guessed, laughing when Alfons nodded. "That's not much of a surprise. He hates me almost as much as he hates my old man."

Neither of them said anything at first. Alfons let Ed absorb it all, watched the gears turning in his head. It was endlessly fascinating to watch Ed think—he was so emotive, every tic, every slight movement singing of the grand overtures occurring between his ears.

"Do you have any idea of what to do?" Alfons asked, breaking the contemplative silence. "Because I—I can't take this much longer, Ed," and damn it, he couldn't. He absolutely couldn't. Alfons couldn't handle waking up and knowing he was going to go through the same day as before, that not even death would ever be able to stop it. Every day would be the same as the last, the only thing changing being Alfons' own actions.

Ed looked him right in the eye and, after a moment's hesitation, raised his hand to Alfons' face, cupped his cheek. Only now, with Ed's hand steadying him, Alfons realized he'd been shaking, finally able to feel how terrified he truly was of his own fate. He could block the thoughts all he liked, he could pretend there was no reason to be afraid, but so long as he was stuck in the cycle, there was. There really, really was.

"We'll think of something," Ed promised, and Alfons found himself able to relax, found the space between them disappearing. "I wish you weren't stuck in this alone."

Alfons laughed and ducked his head a little, feeling his face heat at how little distance was between them, at how his nose brushed Ed's cheek when he shook his head. It should be unusual, it should seem wrong, but it was him, and it was Ed, and that was the one thing in his life that could never be wrong. "Me too," he said, ignored that catch in his voice. "Envy's not great, as far as company goes."

"I can't imagine. Sounds really shitty."

Alfons nodded fervently. "You have no idea."

At some point, Alfons had rested his forehead against Ed's, looking directly into his eyes. Ed was looking back at him, was there in the present with him, and if Alfons had known that all it took to have Ed look at him and him alone was to simply say the words, that he believed, then maybe he would have been more willing to listen.

Ed was saying something, and Alfons couldn't hear it for how intent he was on Ed's face, Ed's eyes. He should be listening. Time was the enemy, now, and Alfons couldn't bring himself to look at the clock because sooner or later, this would end. He would be looking in Ed's eyes and free of the world one moment and the next he'd be laying in his bed, burrowed under the sheets, and the alarm would be singing its sorrow to him.

If he could just—

Alfons didn't know who moved first, simply knew that the movement itself had been an inevitability. Ed's lips were on his, or maybe his lips were on Ed's. He could hardly bring himself to care, not when they were together, lips moving in a slow slide, inexperienced as hell and yet somehow still the best feeling in the world.

Ed's hands on his shoulders, his hands on Ed's knee, Ed's waist, and it was fine, everything was fine, because this was what he'd been wanting.

Everything, everything was as perfect as it could possibly be.

There was something to be said about an alchemist's idea of excitement, and very little of it was positive. When Ed had pulled his lips from Alfons', he'd immediately demanded to know everything Alfons knew. "I have to understand it before I can help," he'd pointed out, and Alfons had to agree.

Whether or not he wanted to agree to an immediate interrogation was another question entirely.

When the clock struck three in the morning, emphasized by the old cathedral's bells tolling in the distance, he and Ed were sitting on his bed, the notebook open and the sheets torn out of it, spread across the bed. Ed's legs were tangled with Alfons' own, and Alfons couldn't help glancing up at Ed every so often, just for the sake of looking.

"But it makes no sense," Ed said for umpteenth time. "Why would the Gate put you on repeat like this? Why would it take you and Envy? There has to be something I'm missing…"

"Envy seems to think your blood would make a difference," Alfons offered quietly. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"I'm not sure," Ed admitted, running his finger in some invisible pattern over the paper. "He thinks my blood is different from anyone else?" He hummed, frowning thoughtfully. "Maybe he thinks it'll be different because I'm an alchemist."

Alchemy, monsters, Gates, sacrifices, blood—Alfons was completely lost. When he thought of science, he thought of equations and chemicals and machinery, not an art so fantastic it paralleled magic.

What he did know, however, was that his eyes were drooping with every passing minute, his body as heavy as if he'd spent the entire day running without end. Without intending to, without realizing it, Alfons' eyes drooped shut, his head rocking against Ed's shoulder as he drifted into blissful sleep—

Until the alarm decided to scream the time for him, six in the morning on April the twentieth and Ed nowhere in sight, the mess of papers completely gone, along with the notebook. Alfons shut off the alarm, as he did every morning, and inhaled slowly, deeply.

Everything was gone. He'd known that it would be, knew that Ed wouldn't remember the next day (or rather, the day before), but all those notes… To be completely honest, the thought that the notes would be gone as well had never even occurred to him. It made perfect sense, of course. How could anything created in the future be found in the past?

And stupid him, what hurt the most wasn't the notes or Ed's missing ideas—it was Ed himself, Ed's lips and Ed's hands. Ed never kissed him. Ed never heard his story and believed him. Ed never—Ed never smiled at him like he had, like Alfons was the most important thing in his world.

Alfons just hadn't thought things through. He should have known the entire night would amount to nothing, but despite that knowledge, he doubted he'd have been able to stop himself from reaching out to Ed. The only consolation was in knowing Ed at least cared.

Alfons threw his arm over his eyes, gritting his teeth and reminding himself that at least—think of the positive. At least he knew Ed wasn't going to knock all his teeth out if he made a move. It only served to strengthen his determination to break the cycle, knowing he had a chance with Ed when it all ended.

But then, unless he got moving, unless he fixed everything, it wouldn't matter what Ed did, because it would never last more than a day.

"This sucks," Alfons muttered.

"What sucks?"

Alfons jumped and flailed under the sheets, staring up at Ed in the doorway. What was Ed doing awake? He's supposed to be asleep for another… Alfons looked at the clock.

Oh.

It was already half past six, and Ed was standing in his doorway in nothing but the pants he slept in and it was in that moment that Alfons began feeling truly sorry for himself. Looking at Ed just made it all the more real, cemented the fact that no matter what his mind and his memory told him, there was as much space between them as there had been every day before this.

"Nothing. Just tired," Alfons lied with a startling new ease. "So, what did we do yesterday?"

Ed frowned. "Do? We had class. And, ah, you went by the lab, didn't you? And then…"

"Yeah," Alfons said, "the lab," and it took too much effort, too much damn effort, to so much as look Ed in the eyes. "I'm running late," he said, knew his voice sounded dead but didn't care to change it. "Do you mind shutting the door?"

Ed looked momentarily flustered, then shot Alfons a hurt look and closed the door. Alfons heard his feet pad down the hall and to the kitchen, fading away with the distance.

It was time to talk to Envy.

There was no way Alfons could have replicated Ed's notes from the night before (or was it from the night coming?) because even if he hadn't been completely exhausted, none of it made any sense! All those convoluted-looking circles Ed drew all over the place meant nothing to him. No matter how he looked at it, Ed's idea of alchemical science was about as scientific as that weird picture hanging in Gracia's shop, the one that looked a bunch of cut up pictures all taped together and scribbled on by a two year old. He understood them both equally, which was to say not at all.

"Hey, moron," Envy greeted, body hidden but his head resting in the clearing. His jaw was working and Alfons could hear a faint, wet crunch from the monster's mouth. He quickly looked at the ground.

"Envy," he said, proud that his voice sounded even. "I spoke to Ed."

"And?"

"Well, he doesn't remember—"

"Surely you aren't so stupid that you've just figured that out?" A slurp, an exaggerated swallow, and Envy sighed, uncoiled his body and slithered into the clearing. "I'm doomed. I'm completely, utterly doomed, and I'm stuck with you. This must be the Gate's idea of Hell."

"Like being with you is any better," Alfons grumbled under his breath. Envy either didn't hear him or didn't care, because he quickly plowed on.

"Did he say anything? Anything worth noting? If he had some sort of idea, and you've forgotten, I will devour you whole."

"Do you have to be so disagreeable? I—I have no idea if he had any good ideas!" Alfons cried. "I'm not an alchemist! I have no idea what he was talking about, and all those circles—what was I suppose to do? Commit it all to memory? I'm not even certain that's possible!"

"You're awfully whiney," Envy observed. "But still right, I guess. I've already told you once. The only way to get anything done would be if you brought him to me. You're too stupid to be of any real use."

"You—" Alfons put his hands over his face and tried to take deep, calming breaths.

"Yes, I know the feeling," Envy said smugly. "Now, unless you have something else, I believe you should get the fuck out of my face."

Alfons, finally learning from his mistakes, turn and ran flat-footed from the clearing, Envy's laughter chasing him all the way back to the road.

Alfons walked for half an hour before he saw the same truck pulling up in the distance, ostensibly coming to pick him up, and flagged it down. He had dust in his lungs, and he couldn't breathe, but the moment he sat down in the bed of the truck, he felt better, laid his head on the warm metal and closed his eyes.

Convincing Ed to go see Envy would be even more difficult than convincing Ed he hadn't lost his mind, and Alfons was loathe to go through the entire conversation again, to explain himself again—and again and again.

The repetition was getting very, very, very old.

Ed's appointment had been sometime around noon. Alfons figured it must be close to then, if not a bit after, so he asked the driver to let him off at the university. He really didn't want to waste time, didn't want to let a single second go by in which he could already have his life back.

Now all he needed to do was find Ed.

The clock in the center of the main grounds read a quarter till two in the afternoon. There was no way of knowing whether or not Ed would still be there. Alfons scrambled for the specifics of Ed's appointment, tried to remember when he'd come home and when, exactly, he'd left in the first place.

After living the day over and over, one would think Alfons would know the more pertinent details.

The professor was in the physics department, so Alfons figured it would be a safe bet to head to the sciences building. If he was lucky, Ed would still be hanging around somewhere between there and the library.

Luck, for once, was on Alfons' side. The moment he stepped into the building, he caught of sight of a long golden braid whipping around the corner. Ed wasn't moving fast, was wandering down the hall with a thick packet of papers clutched in his hands. He was flipping through them, intensely focused on what he was reading. It was a wonder he didn't run into any walls before Alfons caught up with him.

"Ed," he said, grabbing Ed's shoulder. The man started, nearly dropped all the papers when he whirled around and grabbed Alfons' wrist, eyes narrowed and body tensed for a fight. Alfons raised his hands, the white flag, and Ed relaxed.

"Oh, it's you. I thought you were doing testing today?"

"I have something I need to talk to you about," Alfons said, but as soon as the words left his lips, he had no idea what else to say. At two o'clock, there wasn't a great deal of time left. Even if he managed to convince Ed, would there be enough time after to get him to Envy?

He dropped his hands and closed his eyes, sighing in defeat. It really wasn't his day—hadn't been, in fact, any of the times he'd lived through it.

"What about?" Ed was giving him his full attention, eyes wide with worry, and didn't that just figure? Alfons wouldn't have minded the night before, wouldn't have minded that peaceful intimacy again, but somehow, he didn't think it would be so easy.

"I—" It was too late in the day, entirely too late. Was he really considering telling Ed? "The test site!" he blurted. "We need to go to the test site!"

Ed cocked his head to the side, looking very much like a confused dog. "Test site? For the rockets? Why, what happened?"

What could he say to get Ed to agree? "I, ah—" The rocket, he realized with perfect clarity. "The rocket worked," he said, tried to sound as excited as he knew he would have been if it had worked. "I don't want to go to the lab without getting a second opinion though. If we hurry, we can shoot it off one more time before sunset!"

"It worked?" Ed seemed surprised, and Alfons couldn't blame him. He'd been certain the rocket wouldn't meet expectations either.

"Yeah, it did!" Sound excited, he prompted himself. "Come on, we have to hurry."

There wasn't any way of knowing whether Ed was just going along to humor him, but the point was that Ed was following him, and they needed to find a ride because if Ed figured out too soon the rocket wasn't even with Alfons—

Well, Alfons didn't know what Ed would do. It was one of those things that didn't bear thinking on, he figured.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Ed demanded, wrenching his wrist out of Alfons' grip. They were halfway across the campus, nearly toward the roads where the truck had let Alfons off. He couldn't see the truck, but surely there had to be someone else heading out of town this time of day!

"If there's no light, then there's no point in going," Alfons explained. Please, please, just believe me!

"I don't know. I'm pretty tired," Ed said. He sounded apologetic, and normally Alfons would let it go at that, but Alfons was going to go out of his mind if he had to endure the goddamn twentieth of April much longer. He was going to hate that day for the rest of eternity, regardless of whether he managed to fix everything or not.

"Ed," Alfons said, injecting a note of pleading into his voice. "I promised I'd report what I found tomorrow. I really need this." Alfons would get on his damn hands and knees if that's what it took. Agree, just agree!

But Ed looked less like he was planning to agree and more and more suspicious about the whole thing. Ed took a step back, eyes narrowed, lips curving down. "Alfons," he said slowly, "what's going on?"

"Nothing," Alfons said, but his voice pitched high and he knew he sounded suspicious—maybe even a little manic. "I just—Ed, please," he said. "Just trust me." He felt like a complete hack, asking for trust from Ed when he couldn't even tell him the truth.

Ed looked so lost, too. Alfons didn't know what to do. "All right," Ed said finally, reluctantly. "I trust you, I do. But—Alfons, you sound fucking hysterical right now. You know that, don't you? I mean, I know you get excited about rockets, but are you sure that's all?"

Alfons didn't answer. There was a truck pulling up to the curb, several boxes loaded on the back. Alfons grabbed Ed's shirt and tugged him along, waving down the driver.

"Are you heading out of town?"

The man gave Alfons a once-over. "Yeah," he said. "Sure am. You need something?"

"A ride," Alfons said before Ed could interrupt. "Just outside of town." The man looked like he might refuse, so Alfons added, "I can pay, if you need it."

He'd do anything just to get this over with.

"Well, sure, why the hell not?" The man scratched the back of his head. "I'm leaving now. Get in the back."

Alfons grabbed Ed's things and climbed into the back, dropping the papers before turning to hold his hand out for Ed. Ed looked nervous, kept glancing at Alfons like he wanted to say something but couldn't bring himself to. "Ed," Alfons said, the words sounding as urgent as he felt. "Please."

The word had the desired effect, because Ed took Alfons' hand and climbed up into the bed of the truck, not relinquishing his grip until they were well on their way, dust kicking up behind the truck's path.

"Eventually," Ed said, his voice shaking and barely audible of the roar of the engine, "you're going to have to explain to me what this is about!"

"When I can," Alfons yelled back, holding his bangs flat to the top of his head to keep them from blowing into his eyes, "you'll be the first to know!"

They spent the ride in silence, right until they reached the edge of the forest where the test site lay just beyond the greenery. Alfons pounded on the back window, and the man stopped the truck and stuck his head out the window when they climbed out of the bed, Alfons lugging Ed's bag and papers out behind them. "I'm not coming through here again till tomorrow," the man said. "You all got your own ride?"

Ed opened his mouth, probably to say hell no, we don't'! but Alfons beat him to it, raising his arm in front of Ed and saying, "We won't need a ride. Thanks," and pulling out his wallet. All he had were the marks he was meant to use for rent that month, buried deep into his wallet. Ed looked like he might protest, but what did it matter? Alfons knew he wasn't really spending the money, not unless they fixed everything that night.

Honestly, he wasn't going to hold his breath.

"Thanks, kid," the man said, took the money and rolled up his window and didn't look back before speeding away. Ed kicked up dirt after the truck, cursing under his breath.

"We needed that money," he said, indignant. "How could you just—"

"Because it doesn't matter," Alfons said. "Come on, there isn't time for this."

"Isn't time for what?" Ed exploded, but Alfons wasn't going to wait around. If he couldn't convince Ed, then—

There wasn't any 'then'. If he couldn't convince Ed, then that was just that.

Alfons pushed through the bushes and into the clearing, the sound of Ed tromping noisily behind him, where Envy was coiled into a neat knot, albeit a rather sizable one. He started rousing at the sound of Ed cursing, and when Ed broke into the clearing, he took one look at the monster Alfons was standing barely three feet in front of and froze.

The sun was still up, just beginning to dip over the top of the trees circling the clearing. Ed didn't move, just stood, hands limp at his side and betrayal plain on his face. "Alfons," he said, his voice shaking, "what is this?"

"I didn't expect you so soon!" Envy lifted his head from where it had been resting comfortably on the ground, looking over at Alfons. "You're not as stupid as I'd thought."

Ed, looking like he'd been punched in the stomach, kept moving his head back and forth in clear disbelief. "Envy," he said breathlessly. "It's not possible—the Gate—"

"Brought me here," Envy cut in smoothly, "just as it did you."

"But you—Alfons—" Ed looked at Alfons, and finally it clicked in Alfons' head, just what Ed thought he was looking at. "Why?" That 'why' was so full of betrayal that it left Alfons nauseous.

"It's not like that!" Alfons said quickly, moving towards Ed. He stopped when Ed stumbled away from him, eyes wide. "Something's happened," he said, speaking slowly. "We need your help." He tried to sound soothing, but it obviously didn't work, because Ed's hackles rose and he bared his teeth like a threatened dog.

"Help you? Like hell! I'm not helping him, and I'm sure as fuck not helping you! How could you?"

"Ed," Alfons said, pleading, "this is really not what you think it is."

"Honestly," Envy scoffed, "I'm not going to kill you. Not today, anyway. If I was going to kill someone, it would be this morning!" He batted his tail against the side of Alfons' head, a gentle, barely there motion that still sent Alfons staggering to the side.

"Don't fucking touch him!" Ed hissed.

"Will you make up your mind?" Envy demanded, rearing his head at Ed. "Do you hate him or not? This is why I hate humans, do you realize that? You're all so petulant, so indecisive!"

"What do you know about humans?" Ed spat back, and Alfons wondered what in the hell he'd just involved himself in.

"We really don't have the time for this," Alfons interrupted. "Please, just—just for today, can you forget everything else?"

Sometimes, Alfons really wished he knew what the hell was going on.

"This bastard killed me!" Ed shrieked. "How can I forget that!"

"He kills me all the time!" Alfons shot back. "I always want to forget it!"

Well, that seemed to dumbfound Ed, because he stopped, mouth still open in the process of cursing out everyone and everything within hearing range, and gave Alfons the most incredulous look. "All the time," Ed repeated. "What do you mean he kills you all the time?"

"That's what I've been trying to explain!" Alfons groaned. "I—oh, fuck," and then Ed was really paying attention, because Alfons? Cursing?

"Oh, by all means, carry on with this little melodrama," Envy sniffed. "It's not like we're on a tight schedule or anything."

"What's going on?" Ed, apparently stupefied into passiveness, kept looking between Envy and Alfons, blinking rapidly.

"I know the feeling," Envy grumbled back. "But when the idiot says we don't have the time for your histrionics, I'm inclined to agree. The Gate's interfering in this world."

"How?"

Envy, it seemed, was much better at explaining the situation than Alfons. It was actually funny how well the two seemed to be suited to working together. Alfons made a mental note to never point it out to either of them.

By the time Envy and Ed finished muttering about circles and blood and doors, the sun had well since set, not a trace of light visible beyond the faint moonlight. Alfons had taken refuge on the ground, his head lolling to the side every so often while he tried desperately to focus on the conversation. It was just too damn much. No matter what he tried, he couldn't keep up with it.

Alfons quite liked it better when alchemy was just a crackpot science, and there weren't parallel worlds and dragons and magical doorways lurking beyond every corner to ruin his life.

"That could work," he heard Envy say.

"I think so, too," Ed sounded so excited. Al tried to pull himself back to reality, tried to focus, but he bored and exhausted and—

…and his eyes were closing. The last thing he saw was Ed turning toward him, mouth open, before he drifted off to sleep, only to wake barely a second later to the sound of his own alarm.

Alfons jerked upright in bed, feeling very much like he'd gotten a full night of sleep and knowing with absolute certainty that Envy was probably going to kill him the moment he laid eyes on him.

There was an element of disbelief in the moment. Of all the times to fall asleep, Alfons had to choose the moment Ed and Envy worked out the solution to his problem.

"You insipient little fool!" Envy roared. Alfons, one foot still in the bushes behind him, resisted the urge to cower. "If my escape from this Hell didn't depend on your continued existence, I would DEVOUR YOU ALIVE—"

"I'm sorry!" Alfons yelled, had to raise his voice just be heard over Envy's bellowing. "I couldn't help it—"

"I'll remember this," Envy swore. "I will remember and when this is all over, when the world's been restored to normal, I will find you and I will end you—"

"Why don't you just fill me on what I missed?" Alfons broke Envy's tirade timidly, sticking to the edge of the clearing.

"What you missed," Envy hissed, sliding along the ground until his slitted nostrils were bumping against Alfons' knees, an implicit threat, "was our escape from this! If you hadn't been so weak, the cycle would have been broken!"

Alfons looked away, closed his eyes. They could have been free of this already. The only thing standing between Alfons and a normal life was Alfons.

Figures, he thought disgustedly.

"What do I need to do?" His voice was surprisingly even given the weight of the guilt crushing his stomach to pulp.

"Bring Edward Elric to me," Envy said. "And do it quickly. I won't risk you ruining my escape." Alfons nodded and took a step backward, but Envy wasn't finished. "In fact, we've wasted enough of this day already, I think," he said slyly. "Why don't I give you a hand?"

Alfons barely had time to flinch before Envy's massive jaws closed around his middle, snapping him in half as easily as a twig crushed under foot.

At that point, the shrill chirping of his alarm was a blessing to hear.

"Don't waste time," Alfons spoke the words aloud. "Get him, get there, get out of this." He wouldn't screw up again.

He didn't bother to go through his morning routine. Alfons threw on his clothes and made a quick run to the bathroom before barging into Ed's room and standing at the foot of the bed. Ed's reflexes were unpredictable at the best of times, so Alfons settled for grabbing his foot and shaking it roughly, waiting until the moment Ed sprang upright, eyes wide and fists flying, before stepping back.

Ed's eyes focused soon enough. "What the fuck, Alfons? What the fuck?"

"There's no time," Alfons said. "Up, get up, we have to go!"

"Go?" Ed stared at him, bewildered. "It's—what the hell time is it, anyway? Where are we going?"

"We're going to see Envy," Alfons said with every ounce of the calm he didn't feel. "Come on, come on!"

He strode quickly from the room and stood in the hallway with his eyes closed, listening to Ed scramble out of bed and around his room, cursing wildly at nothing at all. When Ed ripped out of his room and down the hall, he still looked in shock, staring at Alfons' as though he'd never seen him before. "Envy?" he asked. "What do you mean, Envy?"

"Your homunculus," Alfons replied, keeping it simple. Simplicity had a pleasant affect on Ed. Alfons was able to herd him out of the apartment without questioning, and it was still so early, not even half past six yet. The truck was there, parked at the curb and still running. Alfons craned his neck, saw the driver across the street in the little café there. The driver looked like he might take a while.

Alfons didn't have a while. He wasn't going to mess up again, not now.

It was with that thought that he pushed Ed head first into the cab of the truck before running around and jumping into the driver's seat and taking off into the early morning streets. Ed couldn't even form words for his shock, just sat and stared at Alfons. They'd been driving for five minutes before Ed managed to get his mouth working at all.

"You just stole a car," he pointed out.

"Yes," Alfons said irritably. "The driver would have been at least another half hour, and I don't want to waste time."

"This—this go around? What time are you wasting?"

"I'm terrible at explaining this," Alfons said, exasperated. "Just wait. Envy did it best last time."

"What the hell is going on?" Ed demanded. Alfons, unsure of exactly how to answer and not willing to take the chance of worsening an already bad situation, kept his mouth shut tight and drove on.

He could feel Ed's eyes, gaze sharp and focused, beating against the side of his head, beads of sweat swelling up on his skin in answer. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't do a single thing to explain this, to make everything right, because Alfons, god damnit, still didn't even understand what was happening. Pulling a hard right, they were on the dirt road heading from the edge of town and into the heavily wooded area surrounding. They were almost to Envy, so close it took every ounce of self-control Alfons had left not to just floor it and risk killing them both on the narrow path.

And Ed—Ed was still looking at him with betrayal set deep in his eyes. What could Alfons do? What could he honestly do when—

Nothing made sense anyway. Not this, not him, and Alfons had long since run out of the desire to really understand the screwed up world he'd woken up in.

"This is it," Alfons said, pulled the truck over and shut it off, not bothering to close the door behind him. What did it matter? It was just an automobile, and at the rate he was screwing up, it wouldn't even matter that he took it because it would be right back where it belonged sooner rather than later.

He heard Ed slam the door on the other side. "This?" Ed looked around, more pissed than he'd been before. "This—this is the fucking test site, isn't it? Did you—please," Ed sounded strained, like he was just barely keeping himself from tearing Alfons' throat out, "please tell me you didn't—didn't do all this just so I'd come with you."

"Don't be stupid," was all Alfons had to say to that.

He didn't have to say anything else, and Ed didn't have the chance to demand more of an answer because Envy was waiting for them, eyes glinting in the early, open sunlight, coiled tightly in the center of the clearing. Alfons walked casually from the bushes and left Ed to stumble after him. He had no reason to be angry, no reason to feel the victim, because the only reason they were still there, still stuck in the godforsaken cycle was because of Alfons.

"It's about time," Envy said, slithering toward them. Ed was frozen, wasn't even reacting as he had the first time. Envy barely glanced at Alfons, just settled himself in front of Ed, eyes calculating, boring into Ed's own. "Fullmetal," he said, "how pleasant to see you," a pointed look at Alfons, "again. With any luck, this will be the last time."

Ed still wasn't saying anything. Rather, he was shaking, badly so, and looking right at Alfons' legs like they held the answers to everything. Alfons stood straighter and reached over, giving Ed's shoulder a gentle shove. "Ed, pay attention."

"Why are you doing this?" Ed asked. He looked over at Envy, then back at Alfons. "Why are you with him? Why did you bring me here?"

"All very good questions," Envy interrupted, "and unfortunately ones that I have to answer. Mouth closed, shrimp, you look ridiculous."

"You—fuck you! I don't have to listen to this shit!"

"Actually," Envy said, sliding dangerously close, snout pressed to Ed's midsection, "I believe you do."

Alfons could hardly breathe from the sight of it, but Ed appeared oddly unfazed. "I'm not doing anything for you," he said resolutely.

"Ed, please at least listen to him," Alfons begged. He was so tired of everything, so frustrated from explaining and explaining and explaining until he was sick of the story himself, despite it being still a very real nightmare. Ed looked ready to balk, to scream and rage and—he really couldn't take it. Reaching over, Alfons slid his hand in Ed's flesh one, twined their fingers, squeezing, and quietly said, "Please, Ed," because the word, from Alfons' mouth, worked more often than not.

When Ed's shoulders slumped, his mouth quirking down, Alfons knew he'd won. "I'll hear you out," Ed said to the monster, "but I'm not promising to do shit."

The worst part was hearing it over and over again, watching Ed go through the same range of emotions, watching him look over at Alfons for reassurance that it was real, that it was happening. It was, of course, and Alfons said as much, had done for days, despite it having not even been one day.

Sometimes, it was very difficult to keep his life straight in his head.

Ed was intent when Envy began explaining whatever plan they'd come up with on the last cycle. He was crouched down, tracing signs in the dirt and speaking so rapidly that Alfons couldn't wrap his head around it. Envy was nodding, though, nodding and speaking just as quickly.

What sort of place was Ed's world that this could be considered normal, fixable? Alfons wasn't so sure he wanted to know anymore.

Envy, unforgiving, had taken to occasionally snorting flames in Alfons' direction, a quick, hot burst that likely would have charred his trousers at least had it actually made contact, but Alfons was wise enough to stay standing this time, giving him enough leeway to jump to the side and stand shaking for a moment.

"This, then," Ed announced finally. "I think—" He chewed his lip, staring down at the ground. "It'll be tricky, though. You know how unpredictable—"

"I believe I'm just as aware of the Gate as you are," Envy spit back, and while the two glared at each other, sparks between them, Alfons once again wondered about the Gate, about all the little things he could never understand in Ed simply because Germany was his world.

"You've figured it out?" Alfons asked, breaking the tension. "You can—fix this?"

Ed tore his eyes from Envy, face softer. "Yes," he said, and there was no doubt in his tone. "We can do it."

Something about that reassurance didn't ring true with Alfons, but he had very little choice in the matter. Envy was already fully uncoiled from the tight knot he favored, stretching himself along the circular edges of the clearing until he was resting in a perfect circle, the tip of his tail resting between his teeth.

"Stay as close to the side as you can," Ed instructed, pulling off his shirt. "I'm going to draw the circle."

Alfons looked on with frustration, still unable to understand the relevance of the circles. Surely there was something more scientific to alchemy? While he knew the circles were part of the science, he'd never expected them to be the sum of it. Ed traced a series of complicated-looking patterns in the dirt, cautious of the wind, using his prosthetic hand to dig the lines deeper into the earth. Envy was completely still, not saying a word until Ed was done and staring down at his work with a fierce pride. He made an impatient noise.

"Right, right," Ed muttered, walking over to Envy who was opening his mouth and baring his teeth. Alfons watched on with growing horror as Ed used the longest, sharpest of Envy's teeth to slit the palm of his hand open and paint symbols across his chest. He stepped back, pausing in his work, and Envy suddenly angled his jaw and lacerated the flesh lining his mouth, blood welling up to the surface. Alfons couldn't get his mouth to work, just stared as Ed actually mixed their blood and continued drawing the strange symbols on his body.

The sight of blood left Alfons uneasy, and the way the air around them seemed to darken furthered his sense of alarm. It looked evil, for lack of a better word, and Alfons wanted nothing to do with it.

"I think we're ready," Ed said a bit breathlessly. "If we're right," a glance at Envy, "this should be enough to use alchemy in this world long enough to open it."

"Open it?" Alfons asked. "Open what?" But Ed wasn't listening to him. He wasn't even looking at Alfons, just patted Envy's head, the monster once again closing its jaws, and headed to the center of the strange circle. When Ed touched his hands to his chest and a blue light crackled from the designs and crept down Ed's body and across the symbols sprawling out in the clearing, the vague sense of dread plaguing Alfons became an immediate panic. Wrong was not a strong enough word for what that was.

He wanted to grab Ed and pull him away, wanted to beg him to forget the whole mess because this looked so wrong—

Envy was laughing, and he sounded so happy, a malicious edge to each harsh bark. He was slithering toward Ed, looking almost eager. Alfons looked at Ed, looked at the circle, and said, "Edward! What is all this?"

"It's my fault," Ed said. He wasn't looking at Alfons, eyes trained on the spiraling patterns shining up at him.

"I don't understand. How is—how is any of this your fault?"

"I brought Envy to this world," Ed said. "If I hadn't come here, you would never have suffered," and there it was, the crux of the matter. Ed could blame himself for anything. Alfons knew that, had seen the guilt heavy on Ed's shoulders from the first moment they'd met. Ed wore his sins like a crown of thorns, and no matter what he said, Alfons could see the truth plain as day in his eyes.

Ed planned to punish himself—for something he'd never even done, something he wasn't involved in and wouldn't have known about had Alfons not told him.

This was Alfons' burden, and as usual, he was too weak to take care of it himself, too stupid, too everything.

Ed's hands were on his chest and the doorway was opening behind him. For a split second, Envy's laughter faded into nothing, the world narrowing down to Alfons' eyes on Ed's, and Alfons was moving, feet pounding across the ground before he was even thinking about it.

There wasn't time for Ed to tell him to move, for Ed to push him off, because the moment Alfons' hands were on Ed's wrist, the blue light overtook them both, and Alfons closed his eyes against it. It was like looking into the sun, so bright it was painful.

Envy shrieked something, but the words didn't carry. When the light faded, Alfons cracked one eye open, then opened them both to a room made of nothing—a completely white space, and the first thought in his head was Purgatory, was Judgment.

Neither of them had moved. Alfons' hands were still on Ed's wrists, Ed's hands still splayed open on his chest. Ed was staring at him, eyes hooded and sad. "Why?"

"You've already sacrificed," Alfons said quietly. "And this—none of this had anything to do with you until I forced you into it. I won't allow you to punish yourself for this."

"It wasn't supposed to be you," Ed said. "Me and Envy—we're the ones who don't belong!"

"I'd rather just stay with you," Alfons admitted, knowing that that desire might just be the end. He remembered the story Envy told him, the tales of his past Edward himself had left him. The missing limbs, Ed's brother, everything was at the front of Alfons' mind. He knew what could happen, but he couldn't leave Ed to this, couldn't let Ed leave him.

"You don't even get it, do you?" Ed's mouth twisted. "This is about—about leaving. The Gate doesn't work like that. It'll take something from you," Ed said, voice catching. "It could kill you."

The doorway was still there, looming in the distance. They began opening, a million eyes looming behind them, and Alfons found himself stepping in front of Ed.

"Is that what you were planning to do?" Alfons asked, mouth dry. "Kill yourself?"

"Envy and I don't belong in that world," Ed repeated. "We were the problem. If dying is what fixes it—"

"How could you think I'd want that?" Alfons demanded. "How could you think after all of this—" He was the one who was going to die, anyway.

"All of what?" Ed asked, exasperated. "Look at what's happened to you!"

Ed was going to die—that was all Alfons could think about. Ed was going to die so Alfons could live, what, another two years? Maybe three?

"It's fine," Alfons said. Even if it killed him, what did it matter? He would sooner die than throw himself back into the cycle, and even if he let Ed sacrifice his own life, it wouldn't amount to anything in the end.

"Fine?" Ed echoed. "What's fine? Alfons—" Alfons was already walking toward the Gate. Ed, panicked, scrambled after him. "No, you get back here! Alfons, you idiot—"

"I told you it's fine," Alfons called back. "Because you know," he could hear Ed behind him, "I love you, so let me." He heard Ed stumble to a stop and knew the words did their job. It didn't matter anymore, holding the struggle of how he felt about Ed to himself, because he would no longer be around to suffer the aftereffects. He'd rather Ed remember that than anything else, anyway. When the doors opened, Alfons stood in front of them, Ed behind him and hopefully safe. A million hands reached out for him and Alfons closed his eyes, let them pull him in, and kept one thought clear in his mind:

I want everything to go back to normal.

He only hoped he would be around to enjoy it when everything was said and done.

The alarm clock sang shrilly into the early light of morning. Alfons groaned and rolled over, slinging his arm over and knocking the thing off the bedside table. He really hated the sound of it and decided to get a new one as soon he and Ed could spare the money.

Ed, oddly enough, was already up, if the sound of things being tossed around in the room next door was anything to go by. Alfons dragged himself out of bed the comfort of his warm sheets and tugged on his shirt before stumbling from the room. Coffee, he thought, would be excellent.

"Oh, good, you're up!" Ed came running into the room, already fully dressed. "I might be late today."

Alfons set the percolator on the stove and measured out the ground. "Why's that?" he asked distractedly.

"It's the twentieth," Ed said, pulling a two slices from the breadbox. "I have that meeting with the professor about that research position. If I get it, the pay'll be great."

"We do need more money," Alfons murmured.

"You going to the campus today?"

Alfons looked over to the window and scowled, shaking his head. "No. I was going to test that prototype today, but it's raining." He nodded at the window, beads of water streaming down the glass and colliding with one another.

"I didn't think it was supposed to rain today."

"That's the weird thing. It wasn't. The guys at the lab checked the forecast and one of them knows a guy at the paper, so they check with them, too. Everyone said the same thing: no rain."

Ed looked back out the window and laughed. "So much for the papers knowing what the hell's going on! You just going to stick around here for the day?"

"Guess so. I'll get some class work done," Alfons said. "Boring days are nice, every once in a while."

Ed just rolled his eyes, laughing, and Alfons tried not to be obvious about staring at him.

It wasn't like Ed would ever be interested.