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I have dreams sometimes, of that day.
In my dreams, sometimes there is a monster with Alphonse’s voice. In the dreams, sometimes Edward’s blood is red, and sometimes it is black, and sometimes there is no blood at all, but always his bones are stark white, visible where his limbs aren’t. The monster with Alphonse’s voice is huge and black and featureless. Everything is dark, and I don't know how I can see anything, because there isn’t any light at all. But in the way of dreams I can see it all so clearly. The monster with Alphonse’s voice has Edward in its arms, and I know that it tore Ed’s limbs from his body and ate them, and Alphonse is gone.
Other times I dream that Alphonse is trapped inside the armor. The armor is so large and cold and dead, in a way that it never is in real life. Alphonse is inside it, and I can hear him beating on the metal plates, trying desperately to get out. Edward is bleeding out on my floor screaming at me to save his little brother, trying to crawl towards the armor, helpless. I try to get Alphonse out of the armor. Sometimes I beat on it with my fists, tear at its seams with my fingernails. Sometimes I have my automail tools with me, and I do everything I can think of to pry the plates away, but it’s unnaturally, impossibly impenetrable, and nothing I do so much as dents it. And always, while I’m not looking, Edward quietly finishes bleeding out and dies.
Sometimes I dream that I’m with them when they perform the transmutation. Sometimes I try to tell them to stop, I try to tell them this is a stupid idea, I try to warn them, but they can’t here me. Other times I’m as eager as they are. “Hurry up!” I tell them, “Do my parents next.” And always they activate the array, and their house burns down around us.
I dream sometimes. Variations on a common theme, each more horrible than the last. And when I wake, I look out my window at the black remains of the Elric house, and I think of them, out in the great big world doing who knows what dangerous things. And all I can do is hope that they come back to me more or less intact.