Title: Hanging On
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)
Characters: Ed
Warnings: Spoilers for chapter 76/episode 41 of Brotherhood
Summary: Ed has to make a decision. Except he never really had any choice.

"When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place."

~ Author Unknown

Somewhere, a long time ago, on the floor of a forest, Ed had laid on his back and wondered what would happen if he died. People would be sad, but in the end, it wouldn't matter so much. His body would decompose, nuture the soil, and the plants would grow, and the animals would eat it, and the bigger animals would eat them, before they too died and their bodies would nourish the soil all over again. A circle. All is one, and one is all.

There was no soil for his body to nuture here, and the cold would probably preserve his body for a long time. It was funny, he thought, staring at the steely gray concrete marred by a splatter of his own black-red blood. Master was wrong. The circle of life was going to end here, in the bottom of this mineshaft.

I'm dying, Ed thought, and it didn't scare him as much as it had when he had thought the same thing five minutes ago.

A calm acceptance had come after the debilitating terror had passed. Maybe it was the blood loss. Either way, it was helping him think more clearly, or less clearly, perhaps.

He thought about Al. He wondered what Al would do once he died? Would he even find out what had happened, that his brother had been bested by a sociopathic alchemist, trapped in a ruined mineshaft with a steel girder through his gut? Would he live through it? Wasn't it Ed's connection, his circle that kept Al's soul fastened into that suit of armor? Would Al die too?

He thought about Winry. Stupid, amazing Winry, with her pretty eyes and her pretty hair and her pretty smile. He had told her he wouldn't make her cry anymore, at least not tears of sadness. He had promised to make her happy, and here he lay, dying alone in the cold. She'd cry when he never came home. She'd cry, because she cared about him, and she'd be angry because he had broken his promise, and because he'd never be able to give her her earrings back.

He thought about the Colonel. He thought about the nation the Colonel wanted to make, and how he had been looking forward to seeing it. He thought about the 520 cenz he owed the Colonel; at least he had never paid it back. He hoped no one ever paid the bastard back on his behalf. The Colonel would be sad that he was dead too, he thought. The Colonel liked to pretend to be pompous, but he cared about his colleagues.

He thought about Ling. He wondered where the idiot prince was now, stuck as a voice inside his own head with someone else controlling his body. Stupid, idiotic Ling. He had hoped to free the prince from the prison of his own Greed, but now someone else would have to do it. He hoped Ling got out of that situation someday. He kind of hoped Ling got to be the emperor of Xing, if only because of all the shit he'd had to go through.

And again, he thought about that circle of life.

He thought about his mother. No, that wasn't right. He thought about her funeral, and he thought about the burning feeling of agony that had manifested under his rib cage when they lowered her casket into the ground. He thought about Al, standing next to him in his best Sunday clothes, holding his hand, and crying and crying and crying.

He thought about Winry's tears when she found out what had happened to her parents, her hands fisted in his jacket as she sobbed into his shoulder. He thought about that gut-wrenching feeling of helpelessness as he held her, not knowing what he could possibly do to make her feel better, and she too had cried and cried and cried.

I don't want them to cry over me.

The feeling was overwhelming, and it twisted his stomach bitterly. He groaned, he clenched his teeth, and he pushed himself to the side slightly. He couldn't die. He couldn't just lay here and wait to die. Even if he still died in the end, Al would never forgive him if he didn't try. Winry wouldn't forgive him. The bastard Colonel wouldn't. Ling wouldn't. He wouldn't forgive himself.

He remembered standing in ankle-deep blood, trying to figure out a way out of this hell, and bargaining with a monster in search of an exit. He remembered what he had told Ling then-humanity is all about survival. I'd sell my soul to the devil if it meant survival!

There weren't any monsters here to ask for help, though...

Or were there? All those panting breaths he heard weren't his. When Kimbly had destroyed the mineshaft, he'd let himself escape, but no one else. That meant that his two chimera lackeys were down here somewhere. Maybe they were alive. Maybe...

Ed forced his eyes open. His vision was hazy and faded, but if he could just...find them. The place was a wreck, broken rock and cement and steel in all directions. They hadn't been that far away from him when the ground had fallen out beneath them, so they couldn't be too far away.

And in the end, they weren't. He could see them, only a few meters away, trapped under the rubble but seeming to be not hurt badly. With a grunt, Ed slapped his automail hand to his flesh one. I am a circle. This is the circle of life. He reached up behind him, touching his fingers to the steel protruding out from his back. The top half of the girder fell with a crash to the ground.

With the sudden loss of a counter balance, he fell to his side, his remaining energy nearly spent. He could feel fresh blood pooling beneath his stomach and gurlging up in his throat. That maneuver had probably cost him some time, but it didn't matter. The next step was to free the chimeras. Now laying on his side, it was a little easier to get his hands together, but expending the needed energy to power the transmutation nearly knocked him out again.

They couldn't get him to the hospital on time, and besides, why would they, even if Kimbly had left them for dead? If it had been a smaller wound, maybe he would have been able to fix some of it with alchemy, but something this big, he wouldn't be able to stop the bleeding without some sort of alchemical aid. Like a philosopher's stone...

Kimbly had dropped his, but there was no way they were finding that in this mess. Even as the two men approached him questioningly, Ed concentrated on the tangy taste of blood in his mouth. Souls. A philosopher's stone was made of souls. There were three souls right here, weren't there? He couldn't use the souls of the others, but maybe, maybe...

The consequences might be dire, and he might not even survive. Oh, hell, what did it matter? If he didn't do anything, he wouldn't survive at all. He was stuck in a land where survival was everything.

And he had to survive. That was all there was to it, really. Whether or not he deserved to, whether or not this worked, he had too many people waiting for him to do anything other than come back for them. He didn't have a choice, just like he hadn't inside of Gluttony, or when fighting Scar, or any other time.

He had a prince to free.

He had 520 cenz to not pay back.

He had some earrings he had to return.

And, he had a little brother who needed his body back.

He didn't really have a choice.

The circle of life wouldn't end with him today.