"Please, please, let me back..."

I sat on the windowsill of my room and felt the cold winter air in my face, which made the tears on my cheeks feel even colder. Since Hohenheim's absence I hadn't eaten or drunk anything, which was probably mostly due to yesterday's excessive alcohol consumption, which had led me to empty my stomach completely. The following disgust, both about the drinks and myself, had not exactly stimulated my appetite, which is why I had preferred to not eat anything else.

Instead, with great zeal and a blurry look, I had reread all of the books we had and searched for a way back. The desired success, like the thousands of times before, was missing and had shattered my hopes once again.

"Let me back... Please, let me back...!"

I showed of my despair with supplication, even though I should have realized that screaming to heaven wouldn't bring me back to my world. If simple pleading and silly things like prayers would work and do anything, many problems would have been solved more quickly than our cruel world allowed.

"Damn, please, I'll do everything! I give everything but let me go back...! Let me go back...!"

I clung to the windowsill under me so much that my knuckles turned white. The cold of winter increasingly lost its refreshing coolness, instead it turned into deafening insensitivity, which only made it more difficult for me to think clearly.

Eventually, I vented my despair by screaming a loud scream. A cry, full of all my sorrows and fears, with my pain and nightmares, with my hopelessness and the last strength I had before I would collapse under the weight of my task.

Some people who ventured through the snow beneath me to do their daily business looked up at me in horror. Some even pointed at me and whispered something to their companions.

But I ignored what was happening at my feet. Instead, I rocked my torso a little back and forth, subconsciously considering whether I should fall out of the window or tilt backwards into the room. Eventually, my sense of balance, still clouded by alcohol, took the choice away from me and pulled me backwards with a firm jerk that had me landing on my back in my room, my legs perenning against the wall. I wondered if the people below could still see my feet, which were just as high as the top of the windowsill, but I doubted it.

A slight gigging went through my body, which degenerated more and more into a heavy tremor. Tears joined in, completely opposite to my laughter and I rolled to the side to bury my face in my hands and to hide and control my emotions.

"Shit damn... Please..." I sobbed and wiped my face, but I could hardly calm down, neither the tormented laughter nor the crying ended. "I can't anymore, I can't..."

I didn't know if it was minutes or hours, but at some point, I got myself together to stand up, slammed the window shut and walked out of my room quickly.

"I'm turning crazy. Damn it, I'm turning crazy. Shitty hell. Calm down. Calm down, Edward!" I tried to give myself encouragement. Several times I patted myself against my cheeks, before I turned on the water tap in the kitchen and splashed the cool, clear liquid into my face, hoping that my head would become just as clear.

"Take a deep breath, in and out... in and out..." Even though the self-talk subconsciously still worried me, it still helped me to say the instructions out loud. Listening to orders, as the military had said. As Mustang had said.

I lowered my hands again, because instead of the clarity I had hoped for, only emptiness spread within me. I painstakingly held back further emotions and put on a mask to somehow keep my composure. I needed my mind if I wanted to solve this problem.

Hohenheim would not return until tomorrow, so I had a few more hours to gather myself before I would face him again.

Without wanting it, I suddenly felt infinitely alone. Alone in this apartment, alone in this world. I didn't know anyone but my father, but even with him I felt strange because of the long years of distance. Nobody here in this world knew me, nobody understood me. Not like my friends and family did in my homeland.

"Alphonse... Winry... Mustang..." I closed my eyes for a few moments, reminiscing about shared moments and memories in my head. There were some nice things, amazingly many even. Whenever I thought about my life, it felt like a tragedy, marked by loss, pain and bad luck. Whether it was like that or my subjective imagination showed it that way, I didn't know. But now I realized how many happy moments there had been in the midst of all the grief. How many times I had smiled and laughed, how many times I felt happy, how many times I was hugged and loved.

Without even noticing it, I began to smile as my thoughts wandered from Winry's birthday party to a swimming trip, only to end up on a night of party games. Inevitably, for a few seconds I had to think about the one night I had spent in Mustang's office.

But with this thought the feeling of loss came back, overshadowing the beautiful happy moments shortly afterwards, like a blanket that had been laid over the light and left only darkness behind.

I opened my eyes again and walked with quick, thoughtful steps to the door, where I took my coat off the clothes rack and left the apartment a few minutes later. Meanwhile, the streets were overcrowded despite the increasing cold, but it seemed as if it was getting warmer amid the crowd.

Nevertheless, after a few streets, I parted with them to go my own way. To my surprise, it didn't lead me to the cemetery as usual, but to the train station. A place very familiar to me in Amestris, where I had already spent many hours with Alphonse everywhere to wait for a train, which here, however, seemed completely different and foreign, new-fashioned and modern.

In my mind, I said goodbye to Hohenheim and Munich when I got on a train without even checking the direction, let alone buying a ticket. I just hoped I wouldn't stand out in the midst of the many passengers and get away unnoticed.

After some stops and several minutes of standing, I even got a seat from which I could look out of the window. The landscape didn't seem so different from that of my home, which didn't make me happy. It was as if this world was always trying to be like mine, to resemble it and to imitate it, only to punch me in the face so I realize shortly afterwards that it was very different here.

I sighed and closed my eyes a little. As if by itself, my head sank to the side and leaned against the soon cold window of the train. The night I had spent awake and the alcohol demanded their price and let me slip into a dreamless, deep sleep.

Only the loud whistling of the train at one of the larger stations woke me up again. Disoriented and overwhelmed, I looked around in panic, turned my head in all directions and tried to focus on something to understand what was going on.

What I didn't expect, however, was Mustang. Outside on the platform, dressed in civilian clothes with his black coat typically placed over his shoulders.

"MUSTANG!" I screamed surprised, before jumping off my seat and squeezing myself through the people on the train to the exit. Shortly before the door was closed, I made it out and jumped onto the concrete floor of the station. I didn't even know which city I was in, but I couldn't care less about it. All that mattered was that Mustang was here.

I pushed people out of the way and ducked under some arms. Since I had no luggage with me or - to my shame – wasn't very tall, I made it to him quite quickly. Without paying attention to who he was talking to, I jumped up to him and hugged him tightly and tempestuously.

"Mustang! What are you doing here, Colonel?! How did you find me?! Or did the train really go as far as Amestris? Impossible! But it's you! This is wonderful! You-" I could hardly stop expressing my excessive joy at the long-awaited reunion. But when Mustang pulled out a gun and pressed it against my forehead, my words died immediately, and my mouth remained open speechless while I looked at my former superior with big eyes.

"Who the hell are you. Don't touch me. Back off, go." It wasn't a spark of kindness in his eyes. Nothing but freezing cold stared down at me through black eyes, so much colder than the white, almost innocent snow that fell from the sky in sad flakes.

"M-Mustang... What..." I backed off with small steps as my mind desperately tried to comprehend what I was seeing in front of me. I had touched him, and I wasn't drunk anymore, he wasn't a fantasy at all! So why did he treat me as if he didn't know me?!

"I'm asking you one last time." Mustang unsecured the pistol, which he continued to aim at my head. "Who are you and why do you know my name."

This time, no sound escaped my lips, only tears from my eyes as I slowly understood what was going on in front of me. At the latest when I saw the well-known armband on his right upper arm, I knew that it was by no means my colonel. This was another person who maybe looked like him, apparently had the same name as him, but wasn't him. A mirage, no, another version of him.

"Like my alter-ego from this world...", shot it through my head. Because of my many self-conversations, I said the thought aloud, which only made the Mustang of this world look at me more darkly.

A sad smile forced itself on my lips as more tears began to roll. "Sorry, I probably mixed this up...!" I raised my hands in surrender as the train I had come with was leaving behind me. When the whistle was heard again, announching that the train was leaving the station, Mustang said something, but I couldn't understand his words because of the loud sounds around us. But I saw his face, which for a few moments, maybe a second, was filled with remorse and sorrow. Then he pulled the trigger.

I saw it in slow motion in front of me, with all of the noise around me suddenly fading out and focusing entirely on Mustang and the bullet that was coming towards me. I heard my own breath, trembling and flat, I felt my heart beating faster in my chest. The bullet came closer, aiming straight at my head, the space between my eyes, while Mustang's gaze had already pierced me.

With no time to think my instincts took over and forced me to act. As if by itself, my right arm lifted up and blocked the bullet with my automail hand, which caused it to dig deep into the metal palm of my hand. For a moment my breath stopped, and I also saw that this Mustang stared at me, stiffened himself and felt that moment with every fiber of his body.

I stumbled back and the moment was over, the loud sounds were roaring in my ears while the ground was still shaking from the leaving train. I lowered my hand, which caused the bullet to fall out of it and eventually it fell on the ground.

Neither Mustang nor I said a word, while the people around us completely missed the shot because of the train and had no attention left for us. My eyes looked into black ones, whose fire I missed so badly and couldn't find in this winter cold.

When he finally opened his mouth to speak, I rushed forward and put my cool hand over his lips, while despair spoke out of me:

"Please, let me go back!"