A/N:

Hey y'all,

It's been a long time, huh? A lot has happened since I last updated, in my life and in the world.

Actually, a couple days ago, I thought, "maybe I should come back to this story." I feel like it's always been in the back of my mind, waiting. But when I revisited it, I realized I'm not the same person who started it - I'm not the same person who wanted to write it. This story is no longer meaningful to me. Back when I first started it, just the idea of "LET'S THROW AN OC INTO THE FMA WORLD" was enough to get me going. But now, I'm a little older and I've also read a little too much fic like that. If I ever write another FMA story again - who knows, it could happen - it'll be very different from this one, thematically.

But this wasn't even my first attempt to come back to this fic. Two years ago, I actually made this my NaNoWriMo project and thought, I want to finish it for real! I didn't finish it, obviously, or you'd be reading it. But I did write the ending. That's what this update is. I thought if I uploaded this ending, even though the writing is pretty crappy and you're missing all the stuff in the middle, maybe I could finally wash my hands and brain of this story and move on. Spoiler: just like Ed does in the end! It wasn't an intentional meta thing, given that I wrote this two years ago, but it's still pretty funny.

Anyway: here's the end of re:SINHEART (God, what a name, why did I call it that, what is that even supposed to mean?), with absolutely zero context. I hope you enjoy it.

the last act

When Ming became aware of herself again, it was absolutely silent.

This was worrying, because as far as she could remember she had been on a battlefield in the middle of Central, with plenty of explosions and shouting and gunshots and snapping bones. As far as she could tell, there were three explanations for the silence:

First, she had been knocked out, and the battle was now over.

Second, the explosions had been too much for her eardrums and she was now deaf.

Third—and this was both the most likely and the most unfortunate possibility—she was dead.

Feeling slightly more comforted now that she had a number of hypotheses, Ming opened her eyes and was immediately confused again.

There was so much white that she thought at first she was in the hospital, with its white walls and white sheets and disinfected everything, but she realized that she was standing up, which did not seem like something the terrifying nurses of Central Hospital would allow their patients to do under any circumstances. Further, there were no walls. Or sheets. Or anything.

She was, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere.

She looked down. She felt for sure that she was standing on something quite solid, but couldn't see the floor. Eerily, she could clearly see her shadow on the floor, but not the floor itself—it was so white and smooth that there were literally no imperfections to give away texture or hints of color. She looked up automatically to search for the light source that must have been generating her shadow, but it turned out that this was a bad idea because there was nothing but whiteness in the upward direction as far as her eye could see.

It gave her the feeling that she had whenever she visited the countryside after a long time in the city, the sensation that the sky was so wide and open that it was suffocating, only a hundred times worse.

She quickly looked back down, and then in every direction, but it was exactly the same no matter which way she turned. It was incredibly unsettling.

Suddenly, she felt it—the familiar disturbance that signaled an aggregate of twisted souls nearby. Wary at being caught off guard by a homunculus, relieved to be feeling anything at all, and even more relieved that there was at least something here, she turned behind her.

Towering in front of her, a few feet away, was an enormous gate. No, Ming realized immediately, not a gate. The Gate.

Oh, God, she thought helplessly as she stared up at this world's ageless and eternal source of alchemy and judgment, the doorway to the complete and entire body of all knowledge that had, did, or would ever exist, I guess I'm dead after all.

Then she looked down.

Floating only a few inches above the ground was a shapeless black blob. Ming blinked. I'm hallucinating, she thought. Then she rubbed her eyes, and looked again, and the blob was still there. As Ming leaned closer to it, she could hear it whispering.

"Why?" it was saying. Its unexpected voice—raspy and slick and remindful of the mysterious but terrifying men who chase people in their nightmares—made a chill go down Ming's spine, and she unconsciously took a step back. "Why did you not become mine, God?"

Because you did not believe in me.

The Homunculus—no longer Father, not of anything—spun around, one of its bulging red eyes settling on Ming.

"You," it snarled, looking as if it was ready to leap at her and, though it was too small to do much damage in its current state, at the very least try to shove itself down her throat and choke her. Then its gaze shifted briefly and lighted on the glowing white ball ten feet away from it. The sight of something even remotely resembling itself apparently surprised it so much that it froze in its floating tracks.

You wanted to make God's power your own? the glowing white ball continued scornfully. Don't make me laugh. You think stealing something makes you a great man? You're nothing but a cunning thief. You should have stayed in the flask where you belong.

The Homunculus grew visibly infuriated at this statement, momentarily expanding its black mass in a fit of anger. Ming involuntarily backed away, but the white ball ignored it.

You may have used the strength of others to grab hold of God, but you yourself have not grown, it said.

The Homunculus sneered. "I wanted to be perfect. I wanted perfect understanding of God! I wanted to know everything in this world!" Its voice grew higher and higher in volume and pitch, so that finally it screeched, "Why are you interfering with me? Who are you?!"

How was it possible, Ming thought, watching it in fascinated horror—the same horror by which one's eyes are glued to a bloody train wreck—for something so knowledgeable to be so stupid?

Funny you should ask, said the Truth.

I am what you call "the World," it said slowly, bobbing closer and closer to the Homunculus. Or perhaps "the Universe." Or perhaps "God." Or perhaps "Truth." Or perhaps "the All." Or perhaps "the One."

And, it said, somehow becoming even more menacing, though it was nothing but a floating ball, I am "You."

It bobbed so that, had the two strange forms been human, it would have been nose-to-nose with the Homunculus.

You said, "It is Truth that gives you despair, so that you do not become conceited," the Truth said. The Homunculus's eerie eyes widened.

And so, just as you said, the Truth concluded, with a horrible, wide-toothed grin, I will give you despair.

Suddenly, the door creaked open. The Homunculus whirled around. The Truth continued to regard the Homunculus with total disdain. And Ming closed her eyes, knowing what was about to come next.

"…stop…"

It was barely a whisper. No, a whimper.

"I don't want to go back…" the Homunculus said, its voice so tiny that it was hard to imagine this creature conquering an anthill, let alone a country. "No…I don't want to be trapped in there…sto…"

Suddenly, the Homunculus screamed a terrifying, desperate scream. There was a chorus of sickening squelches as the black tentacles that lay beyond the doors of the Gate wrapped themselves around their prey.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—"

The closing of the Gate cut off its screams abruptly. The stone doors slammed shut so solidly that it felt almost like they were doing so for good. The sound echoed, which didn't even make sense, Ming thought, her ears still ringing, because they were sitting in negative space, and there were no surfaces for sound waves to reflect on, anywhere.

And then it became absolutely and peacefully silent. Ming opened her eyes, unsurprised to see that the Truth had changed its appearance. It was as white and blinding as it had before, but had taken what was, unmistakably, the shape of a girl.

For a moment they simply regarded each other, the freak of nature and nature itself.

"Well, is it my turn now?" Ming said, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. The idea of being thrown into an eternal abyss of dark, writhing souls was not exactly a pleasant one.

The Truth regarded her, its face absolutely blank. Literally. That place is not yours.

Relief filled her body in one swoop. "Oh, okay, that's good. So then…what happens to me now?"

It's time for you to go.

"…I see," Ming said. "Not…not to my world, I presume."

She referred to the world from which she had arrived—the world that felt so distant in time that it seemed to exist only in her memories.

No, said the Truth. Your body there has long since decayed.

"Oh," said Ming.

She paused.

There had been so many things, over the course of this lifetime, that she had wanted to learn. The rest of Scar's brother's research. The principles and extent of alkahestry. The development of science and alchemy in other worlds, beyond Amestris and the Homunculus's control. What would have happened if she'd continued her research and melded the science of her world and the alchemy of this world together.

What kind of country Amestris would become once Mustang became Fuhrer.

What kind of empire Xing would become once her brother became emperor.

The looks on Ed's and Al's faces after she restored Nina back to normal…

But among the list of questions she wanted to ask, there was one so strong that it burned at her throat and felt like a wildfire crawling up her arteries, clogging her lungs, making her palms prick with sweat and her mouth go dry. She almost asked it. She did. She watched herself open her mouth, like how in a dream one seems to view and be oneself simultaneously. She felt, rather than saw, the Truth ripple in response, though whether that was in anticipation or tension she couldn't even begin to guess.

But at the last second, she stopped herself.

No.

No, she thought. It's over now.

For once in her life—in this life, and in the one before it—she had finished something. She had made her peace. It hadn't been easy, and she had fought it every step of the way, but it was done, and—more importantly, and at last—she was done.

For better or for worse, the girl who had been Ming Yao—and then Ming Curtis—thought, I'm finished.

So for the first time she could remember—and she still prided herself on her prodigious memory, as she always had—Ming swallowed her question. It stuck in her throat. She swallowed again. Then she opened her mouth and said: "I'm ready."

Truth said nothing, but looked down, and Ming looked down with it.

Her feet were disappearing from the bottom up. Rather than being eaten by nothingness, as Ed had described the process through which his arm and leg were taken, it was like—she thought with uncharacteristic poetry—bits of her were being carried away, the way dandelion seeds are blown across a field by the summer wind, left to drift and settle elsewhere. It wasn't horrifying, or painful. Actually, Ming felt nothing, except maybe a bit of a tingle.

As she disappeared, Ming thought of what Truth had said about her old body—about how it had decayed a long time ago. It was funny, really. In the old days—or perhaps she should have said very young days—sometimes she had imagined that this was all a dream, that she was in some kind of prolonged and tedious coma, that one day she would wake up to find herself lying in a white bed with an IV drip stuck in her arm. The Truth's words had stirred up the memory of those vain hopes, a few of the many theories and lies she had used to keep herself sane, back when she'd found herself in a world she hadn't understood yet, with a little brother she hadn't loved yet.

It had been years since she'd had those thoughts.

Suddenly and abruptly—and maybe partially because the tingling tickled—Ming laughed. It was a bright laugh, and long, and so carefree and thoughtless and completely unlike her that the process actually paused for a full second before continuing again, perhaps slightly faster than before, as if in recompense.

"It's ironic," she said, as her shoulders began to disappear, "that when I finally leave this world, I realize that I am tied to it, after all."

For a long time after it was left alone, the Truth didn't make a single move. It stood so still that it might as well have not been standing there.

Then, as though something that had been predicted years before had finally come to pass, it turned to look up at the old words carved onto the stone Gate that was beginning to fade away. Just before the top of the Gate began to disappear, the Truth reached up and waved a hand, then pulled. The words wavered at first, but easily came off the stone and hovered in the air for All to see.

Sciencia potest omnia.

"The knowledge of all things is possible," the Truth translated.

He grinned.

Not bad, Ming Yao. Not bad at all.

Ten years later

Dublith, Amestris

"Hurry up, Dad!"

The blonde boy ran ahead impatiently. Behind him, a man who looked very similar to him—albeit a few feet taller, with longer hair and a beard—walked leisurely, hand-in-hand with a lovely woman who carried a sleepy-looking little girl.

"Be careful!" the woman called, then winced when they heard someone cursing and the boy calling "Sorry!" "I swear he only takes after you," she said exasperatedly to the man beside her. "This is all your fault."

"Hey, at least he apologized," the man defended. The woman glared but looked down, eyes softening, when the girl in her arms stirred.

"Hey there, sleepyhead," the woman cooed. "Look who's awake."

The girl yawned. "Are we dere?" she mumbled, rubbing her eyes.

"Yes, yes we are," said her mother, patting her on the back and setting her down. The girl stumbled a little, but eventually found her balance and hurried with unsteady steps to keep up with her parents' long strides. "This is Dublith Station, sweetie! Are you ready to visit Aunt Izumi? You remember Aunt Izumi, right? She was there for your first birthday!"

"I still don't get why she wants them to call her Aunt Izumi," Edward Elric grumbled. "The old hag's already got more gray hair than Auntie does."

Winry Elric gave her husband a light smack on the arm. He doubled over, clutching it comically. "Ow! Ow, kids, look at this—your mom hit me and now I'm dying!"

Their son, five-year-old Urey, came running over from where he had been meticulously inspecting the candy at the newspaper stand. "Oh no! Dad, don't die!"

"Don' die, don' die!" three-year-old Trisha squeaked excitedly, jumping up and down at this new game.

"Quit it, you clown, I didn't hit you that hard." Winry rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Meanwhile, Urey shook his father's shoulder.

"You can't die, Dad! Who's gonna help me eat the gross stuff Mom cooks on Experimental Thursday?!"

Winry's smile abruptly disappeared, and her eye twitched. "What was that?"

"Uh…new plan, kids," Edward said suddenly, scooping up Trisha with one arm and making her squeal with delight. "We're making a run for it! Last one to Aunt Izumi's house is a rotten egg!"

"Wait a second, you guys!" Winry shouted, but the three other members of her family were already tearing through the crowd to the station exit. She smacked her forehead. "You're such an idiot—"

"—Edward!" Sig Curtis boomed, patting the man on the head. "You've grown again!"

Grumbling, the blond ducked away. "Cut it out, Sig! I'm an adult already!" Then he crumpled to the ground, nailed by a brutal punch to the solar plexus. Izumi Curtis towered over him.

"An adult indeed!" the woman barked, crossing her arms. She hadn't changed much, though she had aged gracefully; there were more wrinkle lines on her face, and crow's feet at the corners of her eyes, and her black hair was indeed streaked with gray—as Edward had commented earlier. "You'll always be a stupid kid to us, brat."

"What did you just call me?"

"A brat is a brat—" Izumi broke off when she saw Urey, who was panting behind his father. "Oh, hello there! Do you remember me, sweetie? I'm your Aunt Izumi!" She gave Edward another subtle punch when he coughed "grandma," and had the satisfaction of seeing him fall back to his knees.

"Aunt Izumi?" Urey questioned, and then pointed at her accusingly when she nodded. "Daddy says you're really ugly and scary!"

Izumi's eye twitched. Edward panicked.

"T-Trisha! Come here and meet your young, beautiful Aunt!" He picked up the little girl, who he had set back on the ground once they reached Curtis Meats. Trisha blinked big blue eyes up at Izumi and the older woman immediately fell to cooing. Edward sighed with relief; danger diverted…

"Edward Elric!"

…and rapidly approaching, again. Edward turned around with a nervous grin on his face. "Yes, honey?"

His answer came spinning through the air in the form of a wrench. Groaning, Ed sank to the ground as Winry scolded him for taking off without her. Why were all the women in his life so terrifying?

An hour past midnight saw Edward sneaking quietly out of the Curtises' house through the back door. He was so intent on not making noise, in fact, that he didn't even notice that he was being followed.

He walked through the town, making the turns that were as familiar to him as the back of his hand. The night was warm and quiet in this part of Dublith—all its rowdier nightlife was on the other side of town—and the sky was clear, but the only man outside didn't bother to glance at the stars. His stride, as he passed under the yellow glow of the street lamps, was too sure and purposeful.

Finally, he climbed over a small hill and found himself pausing at the sight that lay below him—a dark body of water, lit only by reflected moonlight. In the distance was a darker spot he knew to be Jack Island. Any other time, he would have shuddered in memory of how much suffering he and his brother had experienced on that island, but not tonight. Instead, he turned away and began walking along the lakeshore, eventually ducking under the canopy of the trees, swatting away the bugs that flitted around him curiously.

Eventually, he reached a clearing. It wasn't much—just a small place protected by a rusty iron fence, and a creaky gate overhung with the giant ivy that grew wild in the South.

But it had a beautiful view of the lake, and they thought she would've liked that.

Edward pushed open the gate—it protested at first, groaning, but finally budged when it realized the cemetery had a real visitor—and walked quietly to the gravestone, where he stared at the inscription.

Ming Yao Curtis

Beloved daughter, sister, friend, and hero

It was such a simple thing. Just a medium-sized block of granite. There had been a ridiculous fight over it—where it would be placed, that was. Mustang had wanted Ming to be buried in the Central Historical Cemetery and Memorial, alongside Amestris's greatest heroes, but both Ling and Izumi shot him down immediately. Privately, Ed had agreed with them. Then they had turned and stared each other down.

Ling was the one who gave in first. "She lived here longer," he said, his voice choked. "And this is what she fought for." Even in his own grief, Ed had felt sorry for the poor guy. How hard it must have been, how painful, to be reunited with your sister after so many years, only to lose everything about her, even her—her remains.

He tried to imagine what that would be like with Al, but couldn't bear to think about it.

Izumi had then chosen this location, but—reminding Ed of how kind she had been to him when he was a child, acting as his mother when he had thought himself an orphan—asked for Ling's opinion. The Xingese prince had agreed; this was the place.

As for the inscription, all of them had agreed. Something simple was best. Anything else would have felt overwrought. And, frankly, describing Ming would have been too difficult a task for any of them to attempt, anyway. Izumi had carved the words herself with alchemy, but during the funeral, Ling had drawn a teary Mei Chang aside. After a moment she had started sobbing harder, which had made Ling frantically try to shush her and Al start rolling up his sleeves with a dangerous look in his eyes.

But Mei had pushed Ed's brother away—and wasn't that a surprise, considering how much she had started clinging to him after the final battle—and drawn out her knives. In a few moments, there had been something else carved on the stone, in a language none of the Amestrians could read, but all of them recognized.

"It's Xingese," Ling had said unnecessarily, his voice hollow. "I—I thought she would like it."

Izumi had simply looked at him. "Yes," she had said roughly, "I think so too." And then she had buried her face in Sig's chest, her shoulders shaking.

"It does make sense," Al had said softly. His own eyes had been wet, and he had sniffed. Ed had found himself marveling at that—to think that only a week ago, his brother hadn't been able to cry at all! "Ming studied alchemy and alkahestry. Now she has a little bit of both."

Ed himself hadn't cried during the funeral. He had run out of tears.

Drawn out of his memories by the hooting of an owl in the forest, he mentally shook himself and took a deep breath. Then he knelt down in front of the grave.

"Hey, Ming," he said softly. "It's been a while, huh?"

Of course, there was no reply.

"I, uh." He cleared his throat. "I brought flowers. Again." He pulled out the bouquet of forget-me-nots from beneath his coat, and set them on the ground.

"How've you been?" he said. "Sorry for not coming around for the past few years, but—well—" for some reason he struggled to say the words aloud. Eventually, though, he did: "Winry and I had two kids. Urey and Trisha. And we had to wait until they were old enough to travel before we could come again."

A cool breeze from the lake lifted, rustling the flowers where they lay. A small smile passed over Ed's lips.

"I guess I should fill you in on what's been going on, though you probably already know anyway," he said, shifting into a more comfortable sitting position. "You always knew everything. It was annoying as—" He checked himself. As crass as Edward had been as a child (and still was, Winry would argue), even he wouldn't swear in front of a grave. "Well, first of all, that b—the colonel's been promoted to general…"

And so he spoke, chatting to the night air about their friends and family: Mei and Al had finally married and had their first child over a year ago; Ling had been crowned emperor, in a ridiculously lavish ceremony that Edward had been forced to attend, and that had gone relatively smoothly except for some brief chaos courtesy of Greed and his chimera, and had completed an agreement with Mustang to build a joint railroad across the desert; Elicia and Nina had turned fourteen and fifteen, respectively, and their overprotective father was now beating off boys with a stick, sometimes literally.

"Thanks to your research notes, the other chimera have finally been restored," he added. "It took a while to decipher your code, but Mei helped us work it out, and now they're living as civilians. Lionel said they'd rather die than go back into the military, no matter what changes Mustang's putting it through." He paused. "Well, actually, I think they joined up with Greed, but you didn't hear that from me."

As he talked away, he had no idea that two shadows stood outside the cemetery, listening to every word.

"What an idiot," Izumi scoffed. "He should know that he doesn't have to sneak around like this, by now."

Winry simply watched her husband's back, looking sad. "He feels guilty about it, I think," she said quietly. "But it's not as if he has something to feel guilty about, anyway…" She trailed off, and Izumi looked at her with sudden understanding.

So that's how it is, the older woman thought. Edward Elric, you absolute numbskull!

"Did he do this often?" she asked.

"Every time we came," Winry murmured, sounding resigned. "But it's okay." She hesitated, searching for words, and finally settled on, "Ed has always been bad at letting go."

Izumi thought of the two little boys from long ago, their golden eyes wild with grief and desperation, and thought again of the man sitting away from them with his back straight. "But he's grown," she said softly. Winry shrugged, but her eyes were suspiciously wet.

They watched in silence for a while. At last, Izumi said, "Shall we head back?"

Winry nodded, not trusting her voice. The older woman put a gentle arm around her shoulders, drawing her close, and the two of them turned to disappear back into the forest.

Meanwhile, Ed's chatter came to a close. At the end of "…but the lieutenant's too good for him, the bastard," he quieted.

After a moment of silence, he spoke again.

"I won't say I don't miss you," he said, "because I still think about it, what it would be like if you were still around." His voice grew wistful. "You'd probably be helping Mason in the store, or running around like you used to, not calling us for months at a time. Mustang would probably be trying to drag you into the military again, or make you a diplomat or something—but, nah, you'd be crappy at that. Then again, that annoying emperor is your brother, so he'd want you back. Obviously there's no way Izumi would be okay with that, though. Maybe you'd spend half the year in Xing and half the year here, with us."

He fell silent again, lost in thought. Then he shook his head. "But that's never going to happen."

The graveyard was still.

"I'm not stupid," Edward said quietly, heavily. As heavy as a metal arm, or a metal leg, or a suit of armor. "I won't make the same mistake I did before."

The flowers rustled in the breeze.

"So…what I'm saying is, I won't forget you," he said. "But I'm going to stop coming here like this. I think that's what you would have wanted."

For a while, he sat there silently, as if waiting for a reply from beyond the grave. When none came—none ever would—he bowed his head, then stood up and turned to leave. But at the last minute, he paused and looked around again. "Ming…"

Quiet.

He swallowed, then clenched his fists, as if steeling himself.

"I am living, you know," he said to the headstone. "We all are."

The wind picked up.

Edward Elric—the loving father, beloved brother, and war hero formerly known as the Fullmetal Alchemist—walked down the path and out of the cemetery. He closed the gate carefully. Behind him, the lake glittered under the stars, as though it held the light of a thousand souls.

A/N:

There you go. Was it satisfactory? If not, it was meant to be that way! Dramatic, angsty middle school/high school me always intended for Ming to die in the end. I thought it would be edgy.

What do you think was the question Ming wanted to ask Truth in her last moments? Why do you think those words appeared on the Gate? Did you enjoy the hint of Ed/Ming at the end? Two years ago, I wanted to circle back to how Ed had dealt with death as a child, and how he chooses to deal with it now as an adult.

Also, I actually have an alternate ending snippet - happy ending with a healthy dose of Ed/Ming. If enough people are interested, I'll post that too, so let me know.

But no, I'm not writing more for this story. The alternate ending snippet is something that I also wrote 2 years ago. That's all I got; SINHEART is effectively over.

Signing off,

marmaroth