Human kind can not gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's first law of equivalent exchange. In those days we really believed that to be the world's one and only truth. But the world isn't perfect and the law is incomplete. Equivalent exchange doesn't encompass everything that goes on here, but I still choose to believe in its principle. That all things do come at a price. That there's an ebb and a flow, a cycle that the pain we went through did have a reward and that anyone who's determined and perseveres will get something of value in return, even if it's not what they expected. I don't think of equivalent exchange as a law of the world anymore. I think of it as a promise, between my brother and me, a promise that someday we'll see each other again.