animebw:

To follow-up on my many, many words about Brotherhood being a story about mercy and breaking the chain of violence, another thing I appreciate about it is that it acknowledges the difficulty of sticking that course. Being kind in a world that thrives on hatred is hard. And it’s dangerous: Ed ends up impaled by a steel beam because he tried to take Kimblee alive rather than take the easy way out of killing him. But he accepts that consequence in the end, even going so far as to tell Kimblee’s newly turncoat bodyguards, “If this is what mercy’s gonna cost, then I’ve gotta learn to pay the price.” It’s a powerful moment in what’s already one of the show’s most gut-wrenching scenes, and it speaks volumes about the maturity of thought Arakawa put into this tale.

(Also, he refuses to give in and die to his pain because he doesn’t want to make WInry cry “over something this stupid” and look I really just love how much they care about each other okay)