An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Edward Elric is eleven years old when the Gate cracks his mind open like an egg and pours the universe into the shell that’s left behind. He screams as he stands in front of the Gate and the thing with the too-white smile.
The Gate opens, and pressure builds in his skull. Images speed past faster than he can process them, but somehow he knows what each of them are, what they mean, how to use them. They’re formulas and facts and faces that he’s never seen before, but he Knows them. Ed Knows many things, now, and it hurts.
The Gate spits him out as someone new with pieces of Everything lodged in his skull, but he goes back because for Alphonse, he would do anything. He would pay any price, would have the universe compressed into his skull if only he could still have his brother. The Truth grins and takes his arm, giving him more knowledge than he ever wanted to have as it rewrites parts of One with All and leaves him lying on the ground alone.
Edward Elric is eleven years old when he passes through the Gate a second time and learns that having done so before doesn’t make it hurt any less.
