All Edward's life he'd had a goal. A purpose. When he had been younger it had been to keep Alphonse safe and his mother happy. As far as he was concerned, he'd failed spectacularly. His next goal had been to bring his mother back- another spectacular failure. His love for his brother had made his next goal clear: He would restore Alphonse.

He worked towards his goal furiously. It became his sole focus. His entire existence. He did not count the days or note the passage of the seasons, but still he had the feeling of time slipping away from him, the sense that each day brought him further and further away from his goal rather than closer to it. With every new discovery, every step closer to the Stone, his goal seemed to become more impossible.

Then one day- after monsters and madness and death- he succeeded. He paid the price he'd always known was necessary- his own life. Only he'd lived. He'd been alone in a foreign land save for the father he'd hated, but he was alive. His new goal: return to his brother. It cost him more, in some ways, than returning his brother's body had.

It cost him his hope. It cost him his faith in alchemy. It cost him a father he hadn't expected to find again. He returned too old to a brother too young. There was a space of four years between them. A journey of blood and pain and obsession that had formed him into the man he was. That had allowed him to give his brother the chance to be the boy he had become. In the end it had been equivalent exchange after all. He'd restored his brother and in doing so had lost the brother he'd known. They were strangers now, and no amount of love could bridge the rift between them.

He had no faith and no purpose. Just grief and guilt and cold steel where his sins had stolen all warmth. He was lost.

Only there was another like him. One who had lost friends and flesh and faith. One who had watched him run towards his death alone because he understood that there are things more important than yourself and your dreams. Another that looked at him with a single black eye that was dulled with the memory of his own mistakes and what they cost. It was in him that Edward found his new purpose.