InsaneJournal

There was something missing. Al told Winry about it very early on, practically as soon as he had flesh again. She laughed and said that he was just anxious for her to bake him that cake she’d promised him so long ago and the warm scent of sugar to fill the air. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. That wasn’t it at all. It was something… basic. A part of the air itself, and the world wasn’t quite neutral to him without it there. Behind closed doors, Winry whispered to Pinako that she thought Al wasn’t used to breathing again yet and that oxygen itself must seem foreign to him.

He took walks out to his mother’s grave and sat in the grass there, reveling in the smells of sun and soil. The cool tree bark against his back gave him peace of mind long enough to think of joys once forsaken, and now lost. Al could remember the tingle of hot stew on his eager tongue, and how unused sheets would chill his legs as he slipped into their cocoon of cotton. There were so many days of laughter then, and he recalled with disturbing clarity the curve of his mother’s lips when he and Ed brought her newly transmuted toys. Ed… The tree behind him felt rough and unforgiving now, and he slumped down into a reclining position, elbows hitting the ground with damp thuds. He couldn’t recall his brother too well, and that bothered him. It was like there was no distinction of person from himself. There were some quick glimpses of memories, sure, and he could tell stories of their childhood mishaps without struggle. It was the little things. They seemed so insignificant when Ed was with him—the color of his eyes in sunset, or the way his cheeks would fold when he smiled—but sitting by their mother’s grave, his palms dotted with dirt and clouds painting his irises, Al would have given anything to remember them. He ran his thumbs over each other and wondered if Ed’s skin would have the same texture as his, if their callouses would align like the patterning of butterfly wings, and if their palms could curve together like swan’s necks, separate but complimentary.

The first time he’d put his soul into a suit of armor, Winry had been frightened initially, but afterwards, she’d asked him how it felt. Secretly, she suspected that strangeness he always spoke of would be alleviated, that he’d get a taste of what being in the armor felt like and he’d recognize that as what he had been used to, but was lacking now. It was a shock, then, when Al shook his head silently and turned glassy eyes to the sun. It was closer, maybe, but it still wasn’t right.

When the gate opened up above him and pulled back the armors he’d been fighting, he thought he caught the faintest whiff of something inviting. When his soul found Ed again, it was so wonderful he almost forgot the incompleteness. And standing beside his brother, closing the gate, he could feel his mind reel and his heart swell with the thoughts that were coming to him.

He wouldn’t admit it to Ed, of course. That would just be weird. It was enough that he’d finally figured it out. Sitting in the back of a beat-up car, he turned his face into the wind and inhaled deeply, finally content. He knew that scent, of whispered stories after dark and kisses on injured fingertips, had to be Ed, and finally, his air was complete.