Reflected in Amber-Prologue

          Deafening silence filling an oblivion of blinding white, in which Edward Elric stood alone. Before him loomed the only obstruction of nothingness besides himself, floating without support in numb, stagnant air: The familiar pair of disembodied doors, the entrance to hell, The Gate. For now the Gate was closed, the thousands of eyes and expanses of knowledge hidden by their master’s order.
          Despite the vastness of the pearly landscape, his quick breathing did not reverberate, and neither did his heavy footfalls as he stepped closer to the black Gate. He reached out a hand, not fully intending to touch the obsidian entryway, and then clenched it into a fist. He’d been here more times previously than he cared to remember, and his usual company was late.
          “Where are you!?” Edward roared, turning his back momentarily to the doors.
          The responding voice was amused, sounding in a chilling whisper from bodiless lips, “So we meet again, young alchemist. And so soon.”
          “You know what I came for,” he growled, golden eyes aflame as they returned to the Gate.
          “Yes. You seem to arrive here a lot when that soul is concerned.” A body, formed with thin fog, appeared not far from where Edward stood; the only solid aspect was the malicious grin across his smoky visage. This, too, was a constant presence, and he knew him only by name of the contents of what lay behind the doors he held the key to:
          The Truth.
          “But what will you give up this time? Perhaps those fresh limbs of yours?”
          Though the ghostly body had no eyes, Edward had the eerie sensation of being looked over: The invisible eyes started first at the rune in the middle of his forehead, then traveled down to the matching symbol in the center of his chest, and after evaluating all four befleshed limbs, met his steely gaze.
          “So often do you come that I could almost call you my friend,” Truth laughed at the final word. “I should say your permanent residence here would indeed be quite…interesting.”
          Edward flinched, but said nothing.
          “It seems you do not want this?”
          “You know what I want!” he shouted, taking a step forward. “If you won’t open this damn thing and give me back my brother then I’ll open it myself!”
          “Anxious as always,” as he spoke, there came a sudden chill to the atmosphere. Behind him, the doors to hell creaked open, revealing an eye almost as big as the doorway itself staring out from within the darkness. Immediately following, a million new eyes flashed open, piercing his very essence with scores of amethyst knives.
          Edward stared back up at them, fighting the tremors shaking every part of his body. True, he’d come here before: Twice on a stormy night six years ago, then again but a few hours ago when he’d been forced through and back, and the last time before this he’d arrived on what might have been his final moments before death. Each time Truth had opened The Gate, and each time he saw those terrible, faceless, eyes staring down at him, but no matter how many times he stood in the emptiness, and no matter how many times he gazed into those terrible eyes, he could never ready himself for it.
          And thus, as always, he was fighting screams when it happened.
          Arms as thin as paper, but strong as steel in their numbers, shot from within the Gate. They wrapped themselves around him like vices, before tugging his shaking body inside the door to join them. Just as the heavy doors slammed, there came a flash of brightest yellow, and all that he could see was shining like an ominous sun.
          The arms held fast as they traveled deeper into the yellow tunnel, pressing his ribs against a pounding heart. All around him flashed infinite lights of that single blinding gold, flawed only by the occasional whip of black that had no part of him to grasp. His bound arms tugged desperately against the fetters, tiny fingers dug into his scalp when he fought to turn his head from its forced-forward position, and all the while he shouted a single name as loud as his compressed lungs would allow.
          “Alphonse!”
          After what felt like hours in the endless void, there finally came a light shining brighter than the already blazing illumination. What little breath remained left his lungs as the light gained shape, and then depth. Only when the figure turned, bronze hair flowing over wide, copper eyes did one of his exhausted arms break free of Truth’s shackles.
          Edward stretched forward as far as the restraints would allow, craning his fingers and his back towards the figure until the hands grasped only his braid, “Alphonse! Take my hand!”
          The figure of his brother ran in slow-motion towards him, tears pooling in his eyes despite the smile of drastic euphoria on his pale cheeks.
          A smile spread over his face, too, without his consent; a simper that seemed crazed in its relief. Just seeing his younger brother smiling, physically smiling, was enough to drown out every light and sound around him. It wouldn’t be a portion of him he received this time: No, he would be finally getting him back, smile and all. Knowing this gave him enough might to pull away from the last of the arms and move forward to his full extent; having this knowledge was enough to close that final gap between them, and allow their hands to clasp together.
          But the instant contact was made, all the brilliance of the tunnel faded with a single booming slam of the closing Gate.
          Edward fell to his knees, the force and speed of his release back into oblivion catching him off guard. The smile faded as his skin familiarized itself to the solid alabaster limbo.
          Trembling fingers traveled over his damp body as he rose shakily to his feet, in an attempt to confirm his existence, “Insides are intact. Both arms...legs…Whole face is here and-” But he couldn’t finish his sentence, for his entire body froze at what his hand found atop his head.
          A tiny hand belonging to a pitch-black infant tightened around his finger as it stared down at him with joyful, evil, violet eyes.
          “Almost forgot the Law, did you?” Truth did not reveal himself, but smirked noxiously in tone.
          His heart thundered in his chest, instincts were screaming at him to remove the devil from his head, run, shout, do anything! But the admission to himself of the temporarily disregarded inevitable wouldn’t allow him any movement except the beating of his heart and the motion of his lungs. Immobilized by shock, his shrinking pupils stared upwards, seeing only the silhouette of the demonic child against a callous backdrop of purest white. Powerless against the whims of the Truth, he could only continue to gape when the baby dropped his finger, and then pressed a single ebon palm to his head. The hand briefly stroked his scalp, as if examining its perch, and then, with the force of a thousand of its brothers, the newborn hand plunged into his skull.
          Edward’s shriek did not echo as fingers sharp as spikes probed his subconscious. His hands flew to the sides of his head, covering his ears as if to block out the sounds of his own agony, as he fell to his knees beneath the weight of the young messenger of hell. Blood spilt by his fingernails clutching his head began to trickle down his wrists, but those wounds gave him no discomfort, for all pain was overshadowed by that raging with the sustained invasion of his mind. White spots, small at first, flashed into a single light behind his eyelids, his entire body began to slacken, but he couldn’t think himself dying just yet, for his screams hadn’t lowered in strength or volume, and his heart was still throbbing furiously in his chest.
          Tears brought to his squeezed-shut eyes by reflex dripped onto his cheeks, as the probing spikes finally stopped. The fingers of the grinning demon clutched its quarry like a trap around the leg of a beast. Grinning ever-wider, it began to retreat, with its prize firmly grasped.
          The fiend held in its hand what appeared to be a thick rope. Making it up were thousands of individual silver threads, all entwined and glistening like the moisture falling to his chin. Scattered about the lustrous weave were spots of pitch-black, fiery-red, and softest-pink: The black swirled like a whirlpool into an equally caliginous center, the red squirmed in anguish amongst the dazzling fibers, and the pink, to contrast all others, bubbled gently as if heated beneath by an infinite source of warmth. Further and further the rope was pulled from its home, bringing to its owner with its escape the malaise of salient claws digging endless canyons into his mentality. And the claws stopped only when there was but a fraction of the cable still connected to its possessor.
          With movement ceased, he was able to slowly open his watering eyes, loosen the grip on his head, and take in breaths to replace those lost to his lasting outcry. “Wh-…?Wha-…?” Another jolt shot from his head, silencing him once more.
          The Truth showed himself then, crouching before the confused alchemist with a smirk that was unchanged by the recent events. But he spoke not a word, only moved a single finger. Following the orders of its master, the child, still clutching the fantastic sullied rope leaped from his perch and floated just before his face.
          Edward blinked at the strand before him, finding no explanation for his pain. But the longer he looked at it, the more the glittering of silver began to resemble movement: At the beginning of the lariat, residing within silver, he saw a smiling face turn to him as he raced its owner uphill towards their house, in the first black spot he saw a single hand holding two smaller ones fall still, and within the red he saw his own blood falling from the gaping hole that had once been his arm. And then it hit him, faster than the heavy fist he saw in red hit his cheek.
          “A complete body and soul is quite expensive,” Truth explained with a grin. “I’m afraid physical possessions won’t cover it.”
          What remained of his mind began to swim, what air he had managed to breathe in came out in a single haggard breath, while his vision began to blur with his fleeting consciousness. Still he watched as the experiences of his life, known as such to him now only because of that single inch of connection, played out before him.
          Yet he couldn’t bring himself to feel saddened by this impending loss. He’d known from the moment he clapped his hands that the granting of his wish would come at a price, but it hadn’t occurred to him that mental possessions were as much at risk as physical. Seeing some of his most precious recollections about to be torn from his very mind, tragic a forfeiture as it was, only brought to his remaining thoughts a feeling of regret; not for his choice, but for the consequences.
          “I’m sorry,” he barely managed to whisper to the multicolored faces; their expressions didn’t change with his words though, they just kept smiling or crying the way he’d seen them in the past. “I’m sor-”
          “Don’t…Please.”
          His vision instantly snapped to clarity; as clear as the soft voice had come to his ears.
          “You have nothing to apologize for.”
          In a daze he found the brightest spot of pink along the rope, sparkling and bubbling with perpetual affection. Her eyes stared back into his, perched above a warm smile; he could almost feel the slender finger slipping from his lips.
          “Riza…”
          “I’ll always be here for you, Edward.”
          Edward swallowed hard, his entire body slowly falling towards unconsciousness. “I’m sorry, Riza. I-I…”
          The vision shifted to a moonlit hospital room.
          “It’s alright. I understand.”
          Darkness began to envelope his vision as the last echo of her soft voice in his ear faded into silence. No! No, not yet! He couldn’t say goodbye, not to her! Alphonse would live, this sacrifice was proof, and, after their meeting in the Gate, had at least some possibility of knowing his welfare. But Alphonse's knowledge was but a possibility, and as it seemed he'd been directly transported out of the Gate without a stop-over in this emptiness, he would most likely return as confused as Edward himself.
          So who would tell her about this night? Who would relay an assurance of his safety when he could not? How would he keep his promise with the knowledge lost perpetually to an entity that cared nothing for it or the woman to whom it was given?
          These new questions spilled like teardrops into the luminescent rope, adding themselves to its length as a last testament to the life he knew, and a harbinger of its ending. He vaguely saw The Truth grin in his peripheral vision, vaguely felt the claws as the fiend pulled out these new thoughts, barely saw the same demon clasp his memories tightly in preparation to remove them forever.
          “I love you.”
          “I love you, too.”
          And as the thread was snapped, everything he’d known disappeared, left as payment for a face he couldn’t recognize, in translucent hands that held knowledge of a love that he, himself, could never again call his own.