Disclaimer: Don't own, never will. Not making any money off of this.

Chapter Fifteen

Edward stepped into the rapidly cooling air of dusk with a sigh. The rest of the debriefing had not gone well. His inability to explain the arrival of both himself and his brother had not been well received, and had brought a fair amount of suspicion down on them both.

He looked at the fading colors of the sky. When he had arrived at Central Headquarters it had been late morning, and now the sun had already set. Lunch had been 'light', which must have been a pseudonym for a starvation diet, he mused as his stomach growled.

The alchemist's brows knit together as he noted that the dark, military commissioned car that he had arrived in was waiting in front of the building. The driver, Carth, sat inside with the window down, motioning Ed over. With some hesitance, the alchemist descended the steps to meet the vehicle.

"So," Carth said, "Where to now?"

Ed's skills in subtlety were nil. "Why are you still here?"

"Oh, I haven't been here the entire time. I drove other people earlier. You just happen to be the guy I'm supposed to be driving right now."

Ed sighed in exasperation before getting in the car. He gave the lieutenant the address and leaned back, taking some comfort in being permitted to actually sit.

"Long day?" The driver enquired innocently.

"Yeah."

They drove in silence.

The motel was small and out of the way. It seemed like the sort of place that one would generally avoid, whether because of its proximity to Old Central or because of whatever reputation it had.

It was perfect, which was probably why Al had chosen it.

It was also full of potentially shady characters, which is why Ed chose to proceed with caution.

He had asked Carth to drop him off a couple blocks from the actual address for a couple of reasons. First, because a person on foot attracted less attention in an area like this than an obviously military car, and second, because showing up in a car showed money that he didn't have, and therefore made him a target for characters he would prefer to remain unnoticed by.

Entering the building's office, he found it to be cheap, but much nicer than he had anticipated. It was sparsely decorated, but clean. He inhaled slightly through his nose, and was pleased to find the air free of tobacco smoke. In the past when he and Al had frequented establishments like this one they had been unpleasantly surprised to find a number of areas filled with the foul miasma. Thankfully, it seemed that this was not one such place.

Ed walked to the front desk, brushing his blond bangs from his eyes. Coming to a stop, he waited for the attendant to look up. Al had given him the location, but not the room number. Once he had gotten the information from the woman he moved on to find the door.

Down the side of the building he walked, counting doors as he went. After only a cursory search he found the door.

Room 236 was locked. Ed ran a hand through his hair, pushing back his bangs to look at the sky. The sun had set, but the stars had not yet shown themselves as a sign of night. Suddenly weary, he rapped on the door. There was not an immediate answer. After two more tries Ed was beginning to get worried, but Al answered just before the older alchemist broke down the door.

"Sorry," Al said with a guilty grin, "I was working."

Ed frowned, taking in his brother's appearance. The younger alchemist was pale, and his features were drawn. "Are you alright?" he asked in concern. Alphonse gained a slightly sheepish grin, "I'll be fine. I've just been working harder than usual."

Ed's eyes narrowed in vague disbelief, but he accepted the excuse. Following Alphonse back into the room, Ed found himself even more worried. The room was dim and cluttered with papers. There was no visible surface area that was left bare of covering. The bed, the floor, and the nightstand were all overflowing with sheets of writing. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ed could hear his brother chattering away, but he paid no heed. The papers on the desk looked familiar for some reason.

He stooped to pick one up and held it to the light from the still-open doorway so that he could read it. His frown deepened. It was Al's handwriting on the page, but the content was not his brother's style. Various phrases seemed to leap off the page, searing into his retinas.

"...the myth of equivalent exchange..."

"...true alchemy..."

"...the souls of the dead..."

"...bypassing the Gate's demands..."

A shiver of fear raced down his spine. What was this? "Al," he said seriously, cutting off his brother's too-cheerful chatter. "What is this?"

Al glanced over, alerted by the harsh tone of his brother's voice, saw the page in Ed's hand, and froze. The carefree grin on Al's face frosted over, instantly becoming a hard mask before falling away as if it had never been. "Just a few ideas..."

"Ideas?" Ed's face was pale with rage and fear, "this is-- this is madness!" The golden-eyed alchemist was lost for words. What his brother had written went against everything they had ever been taught. It went against all of Izumi's warnings, all of her rules.

Al fell back defensively, his own eyes blazing. "Relax, Brother! I'm not going to do anything stupid. I've been trying to rewrite my journal from the machine world, is all. Somewhere around here is the counterargument..." The younger brother turned away and started shuffling through papers, possibly to find the missing notes.

Ed, still shaking with a slowly pasing horror, narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "So it was just a theory exercise? Nothing more?"

Al's response was glacial. "Of course. I'm not so stupid as to actually try any of that. Like you said, they're mad ideas." The younger alchemist sighed. "It was one of the days that you were away. I was bored and I suppose I was just trying to come up with another explanation of alchemy. It failed, though," He said. Something like regret almost seemed to color his tone, placing Ed instantly back on edge. "Too many variables... and most of it only makes sense if you don't know the things that we do."

The last part was added almost jokingly, and Ed found himself wanting to believe Al. Quietly, he looked over the paper again. It was well-written, almost too well written, but Al had always been smart. It was also very persuasive. "This is a dangerous document," he said after a long silence, "Take care that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands." He held it out for Al to take.

Something like relief colored Al's gaze, and as he took the paper back the young alchemist smiled to reassure his brother. "Don't worry, Ed. I'm mostly just keeping it for the sake of records."

Ed smiled, shaking away any lingering doubts. "Like I said, just be careful with it."

Silence hung between them, and Edward suddenly became aware of a wide gulf between them. Despite the fact that Alphonse stood only a couple feet away, there was a kind of deliberate distance between the two of them.

Al finished gathering his papers and stood. "So, how did the debriefing go?"

"As well as you could expect," Edward responded with a tired grin.

Al laughed in response. "Which is to say not well at all."

Ed could only shake his head and he bent over to help Al organize his papers, studiously avoiding study of their contents. After the twisted logic of the first paper he wasn't sure that he wanted to know what else his brother had been dabbling in.

They worked in strained silence, shifting through what seemed like hundreds of papers. "You have been busy, haven't you?" Ed wondered aloud at one point, watching his brother for a reaction.

Alphonse nodded. "It was my life's work," he said, "I've been writing down everything I can remember. Even things as distasteful as that." He motioned vaguely to the pile that Edward remembered him setting the paper from earlier in.

Edward felt a chill go down his spine, but he understood the need for such exercises in theory. Even when it couldn't be tested, alchemic theories were important. From the brief bit he had read Ed believed that Al was right-- it wouldn't have worked. Still, there was something niggling in the back of his mind. Something important.

His concern must have shown on his face, because Al paused in his work. "Careful, Brother," he teased, "You wouldn't want to hurt yourself with all that deep thinking."

Edward smiled back and returned to sorting the papers, casting the worries from his mind. But despite Al's teasing tone, there was something behind the words that rang false, and Ed's worries didn't fully leave him, remaining in the rear of his mind. If asked, he could not have told anyone exactly what it as that worried him, but still it lingered, just out of reach.

It was some time before Alphonse managed to convince Ed to go to bed early rather than stay up with him. "You've just gotten out of the hospital," he said in exasperation. "You need your rest."

"You don't look so good yourself," Ed shot back. "I understand that you want to get it all rewritten before it fades, but what you've been doing to yourself isn't healthy!"

Al's patience snapped. "I'll do what I want. I'm not the one who was just released from hospital custody this morning."

"A month's difference doesn't matter. You need the rest as much as I do."

Al opened his mouth to retort, but found himself staring down into his brother's golden eyes. In them he saw honest concern, and the angry words died in his mouth, leaving behind a taste of ashes. With a sigh he looked away. "Alright. I'll come to bed in little bit."

Ed would not be moved. "No. You'll come to bed now."

Rubbing his temples to stave off a headache, Al nodded and followed his brother into the bedroom.

There were two beds, and Ed automatically slid into the one nearest the door while Al made his way to the one by the window and lay down. They left the door to the living rooms open. After a time, Al heard heard Ed's breathing give way to to the slow, even breaths of sleep. He waited a few minutes longer before sliding out of his covers and making his way into the main rooms.

Seating himself at the desk, he lit a lamp and put his head in his hands. He had known which paper Ed had picked up even as he was turning to see which one it was. It was one of his maddest ideas, written out hastily for the first time while Edward was out seeking employment one day, and burned just as quickly. He'd come upon the idea of using human sacrifice to preform Alchemy in the machine world, though of course the other world was not mentioned in his notes. As soon as he read over what he had written, however, he had found himself horrified, and had destroyed it. He had not dared to write it again, but the idea refused to leave his mind.

It was sick. It was sick in the same way that the creation of the Philosopher's Stone had been. The very idea made his stomach turn.

But it made sense. And that was the worst part of it. The deaths in the Machine World were the only reason that alchemy existed in Amestris, after all. The death-energy fueled alchemical reaction. That same death-energy was found in the Philosopher's stone. All the power that their lives granted them was fused into a small stone that allowed a person to completely bypass the laws of Equivalent Exchange. Eckhart had used the death and blood of Honenheim and Envy to fuel the reaction that opened the Gate between the Machine World and Amestris, allowing entire ships to be sent through.

And now it wasn't a theory anymore. Now he knew it was real.

Al fought back nausea. In his mind's eye he could see the facility where he and Ed had been held and interrogated. The faces of every person he had seen in the compound flashed before him, both soldiers and fellow prisoners. He gritted his teeth, because he knew that all of them were dead. Dead like the people in Lior.

And it was all his fault.

His shoulders shook, and he found himself sobbing over the blasphemous papers.

Golden eyes watched from the doorway.

Author's Note: Yes, I know. This is far later than I promised. Still, it's here. I've finally gotten some inspiration after long weeks of searching, but I still need to take a step back. I'm having just a little trouble remembering who I'm writing about. Somewhere along the way I lost sight of my goal. It's coming into sight again, but the view is hazy. Posting may be sporadic.