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It had taken hard work, but the Gate had been shut for good, leaving the two worlds severed, perhaps forever.Even after the Gate had closed, Noah still knelt on the promenade. Edward approached from behind, recognizable by his uneven gait—slightly heavier now on one side. There was a low clatter as he knelt next to her. “Noah.”She refused to look at him—couldn’t bear the thought of those otherworldly eyes staring into her soul.“I’m sorry. I should have told you this before… I should’ve started a long time ago.” Edward swallowed. Blond hair shifted in the corner of Noah’s vision as he moved slightly. “The blame lies with me. I should have listened to my own advice…”“The advice you gave to the other Noah?” Noah said.Edward exhaled slowly, through his nose. “Yeah.”For a while, Noah thought he wasn’t going to speak again, but he didn’t move from her side, despite that he moved so much more easily now, even with the heavier prosthetics.“I wish I’d told you this a long time ago. The world I came from is just as broken and flawed and prejudiced and cruel as this one. Maybe you wouldn’t have been exposed to that prejudice in my world, but you would still have seen injustice.” Edward swallowed. “The country I was born in massacred thousands of its own citizens just because they looked different. I knew people who had witnessed that firsthand. I saw what it did to them—how it left their souls hollow, only hoping for some way of repaying the injustice it did. And those were good people who were just obeying orders. I saw bad people too…”Edward sighed. “I was wrong to live passively. I should’ve listened to my own advice. I can’t just live my life assuming that what I do won’t affect anyone else. I thought I’d learned that, but…” Noah looked up as Edward’s face tilted up toward the ceiling. “I’ve wronged so many people, Alphonse first among them. I have to keep moving forward, because I can’t go back.”Slowly, Edward pushed himself to his feet. He offered Noah a hand to pull her up. “There is no secret island, no magical utopia. If we want Shamballa, we have to build it for ourselves. That’s the truth…. That’s the thing about truth. It’s hard and cold and we don’t always like it. But facing it is the only thing that can help us move forward.”The new hand wasn’t delicately formed or covered in soft latex faux-skin. It was gleaming metal, heavy, bulky, unrelentingly industrial, yet somehow elegant and utilitarian in design. Honest about what it was. Made to be used.Noah took Edward’s hand and let him pull her to her feet.