Alas, Fullmetal Alchemist, I own thee not. Arakawa got to you first.

Author's note at the bottom.

A Long Goodbye

So, he wondered to himself, finally able to hear his own thoughts after days of trying to quell the sudden rise of despairing, confused, and—perhaps most disturbing of all—unfamiliar din of voices in his mind. Where does one go when suddenly finding oneself immortal?

He trekked across the desert, only half-aware of how the harsh rays of the sun scalded his skin and turned it dark pink, how the grains of sand scratched and scraped against his burns until they bled, how increasingly limp his posture became as he continuously denied it the water it craved. Somewhere in the back of his mind, somewhere in a corner where he felt what was left of his soul crouched and held his knees to his chest while listening to the endless screams of strangers, he wanted to know whether it was true—whether he really would not die, whether there was really no way to hurl himself into oblivion, whether the sandstorms that raged around him truly had no power to bury him in scorching darkness. He kept walking, and walking, and walking, sleeping only when he collapsed, and continuing walking, and by walking, he waited.

When his journey gave way to lush green landscapes freckled with flowers that glinted through morning dew in colors he had not previously known existed, he paused and stood and stared. He was certain he was there long enough for his eternal life to end. As it turned out, however, he was a poor judge of time, as he noticed by how the sun only seemed to move from one side of the tip of a tree to the other by the time he started moving again.

He trudged, and the miles blurred by. Trudges and blurs, everything so distinct and yet so interwoven. He alternated between cold and hot and famished and stuffed and unbearably awake and practically comatose and eventually came to realize how many "ands" there were—and then he realized he was immortal.

He kept going in the same direction, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, sometimes trying to pick out the individual voices inside of him with a sense of mad curiosity. After spending so many, many years as nothing but a yearning slave with a name flippantly bestowed upon him by a shapeless black and treacherous little creature in a flask, constantly aware of his own helplessness, the reality of his new state of being seemed to rush upon him from every direction. He could not drown, he could bleed for hours with a chunk of wood protruding from his gut, he could feed himself poisons, and still, he could watch others die with all their sniffling, sighing regrets and know he would not join them.

They smelled the flowers because they did not know when they would be taken away from this world. He smelled the flowers simply because he could.

He felt high above, so high above them all, he could see parts of the sky they could never hope to see.

Then he saw it.

One day—though he did not care which one it was, for time meant little to him now—he reached an end.

He reached the ocean.

He knew he was somewhere north and west, past the territory that would one day become known as Briggs and Drachma. He had heard of oceans before—the homunculus had taught him, of course—but he had been unable to fathom one, and he had no idea there was one here.

But there it was.

The water stretched on and on, unfathomably farther than what he could see, the hues of cobalt blue deeper and darker in the waves most distant from him. A light mist shrouded the surface in patches. Salt tickled his nose and tongue when the brisk wind tossed it heedlessly at and around him. He stepped forward without thinking, already so accustomed to simply moving without knowing where, and finally fell to his knees in front of a small tide pool with an outer edge that seemed to reach persistently toward the greater body of water, despite falling just inches short. This place, this thing, it was vast, it was all-encompassing, it was overwhelming, it was breathtaking, its dauntless continuity in every direction completely escaped his comprehension. He stared. A young voice that he could not be sure was his whispered, Is that eternity?

And suddenly, he thought he felt like an ignorant slave boy all over again.

"Knowledge is to be treasured. It is a true power....

"The way a slave, like you, can escape his shackles."

No.

Not quite like being a slave all over again.

Not that kind of insignificance.

This.... This was the most beautiful insignificance he had ever felt.

He was so beautifully insignificant.

So.... Mortal.

"I can give you knowledge....

"Van Hohenheim."

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Aha! At last! This is a multi-chapter fic that I've been wanting to do for a while. I'm thinking it may have eight chapters, give or take. I'm looking forward to it, but I must point out that my biggest fan fic project at the moment is "In The Name Of Peace," a collaboration with my good friend, Fudfoodle, so it has to come first. I also have original stories that I'm trying to pour a lot of time into, among many other persistent and important demands on my time, so I can't say how often I'll be updating this. But I'm planning on keeping each chapter short (relative to how long I normally make chapters and one-shots, anyway), so I don't think the time between updates will be too bad.

That said, this particular fic takes place in the mangaverse (obviously) and within the continuity I created in my fics "His Eulogy" and "Adjourning." Just wait, you'll see what my purposes were for including what I did in those fics. :3 It will eventually lead to Hohenheim/Trisha. Obviously.

Critique is welcome, as usual. I am very interested in improvement. Whenever I write about things that I feel involve cycles or endlessness (or sometimes parallels), I tend to write in long, sweeping sentences, dotted with shorter ones, like crescendos and decrescendos in music (the classical pianist in me coming out, I suppose). I enjoy it, but I'm not sure they're being conveyed well enough. I'm still trying to master it. I suppose that might be my biggest concern with this one, besides the fact that it just might plain suck. You never know for sure. XD

Also, the quotes are from Homunculus in Chapter 74. Just so's ye know.

Also x2, this is definitely how I felt when I saw the ocean for the first time. I'm not sure I can properly relay how dearly I love every face of the ocean. And I will never forget how I felt the first time I ever saw it--not the first time ever, nor the time years later when I saw it from the vantage point high atop the cliffs in Oregon, standing next to my dad, who smiled with a sense of peace I rarely saw in him while he was alive. I'm fully determined to live near it one day when I can. It inspires me like nothing else. To me, it seemed obvious to write a fic series about Hohenheim and the ocean.

Good night, all!