Air squeezes out from Alphonse's two lungs as he stands hunched over on the grass gasping.
"Once more and I'll let you take a break," Izumi calls over to him shortly. He knows she wants to go back inside instead of standing here and sparring with him. He wishes she would let him off the hook for now.
He and Brother have only been with the Curtises three weeks now. That time has passed for them in a blur, all lightning fast colors and skill racing by.
Right now she's forcing him to practice a new fighting technique she has spent the past three weeks teaching them. In all the time they've been here, she hasn't let them so much as touch an alchemy volume or speak of the subject. It's like alchemy itself is the taboo in her household despite the fact that she herself is an alchemist.
Al straightens out his spine and turns to face her. The beads of sweat that trickle down the side of his face tickle his skin and he drags the back of his hand across his forehead to push them off. One more time and then he's done for the day.
She always lets them have Sundays off, but she pulled Al aside early this morning and told him she was going to work with him on his own for a little while. He'd been falling behind on his technique. It isn't that this practice of fighting is extremely technical or especially skilled, but there's just something about it that doesn't click with Al like it did with Ed, who picked it up immediately. He's so frustrated with himself.
Al surges forwards, charging at Teacher through the grass. He dodges her first hit and gets up behind her to attack from her most vulnerable position, but before he realizes what's happening, she spins and grabs his ankle and flips him onto his back in the dirt.
"You continue the leave yourself open when you do that," she says with a grumble.
"Sorry," he mumbles, picking himself up from the ground. "We can try that again if you want." Al doesn't mention how he would rather do anything but that, but he doesn't want to disappoint her by looking like a failure.
"No," she shakes her head. "You've had enough. Just take the rest of the day off."
He shrinks at her command, but nods and walks back to the house with his head down, ready for her to admonish him at any moment. As he walks, she calls out to him that she's going out to run a few errands and that she'll be back home in an hour or so.
Al enters the butcher's shop with a sigh, breathing in the familiar scent of meat. Sig waves to him behind the counter and Al does his best to smile back at him.
"She wore you out, huh?" Sig asks and he pulls out his large butcher's knife.
Al looks down at his clothes, now covered in sweat and dirt and grass stains. Wearing him out would be an understatement. His muscles seem to have grown used to aching being their permanent state of being since the moment he arrived here. He gives a little bought of forced laughter, his typical carefree demeanor gone. "Yeah, she did."
Sig smiles. "Well how about you go take a shower and I'll have lunch ready for you and Ed when you get back down here. Does that sound good?"
"Yeah," Al breathes out, meaning it wholeheartedly. Sig's meals are always the best. "Thanks."
Sig waves him off and Al climbs the stairs up into the house to the room he and Brother share. Those damn stairs are going to be the death of him one of these days, he swears he can feel every tendon and ligament straining in his legs every time he uses them.
The Curtis household is a smaller sized house built on top of the butcher's shop they own. There's a kitchen and a living room, three bedrooms and two bathrooms, all the typical stuff people would expect of a home. It's nicely furnished too and Al wonders what it looked like before he and Brother arrived here. He knows they had to move in a set of twin beds in one of the spare rooms so that they could share it.
Ed always grumbles that he should have just taken one of the guest rooms and Al should have been given the other, but Al always stops and reminds him that they have to be grateful for what they're given and not to ask for anything more. They were lucky Teacher let them stay here for free at all, only working chores around the house and the shop in the mornings and evenings to earn their keep.
Al makes his way to the bathroom situated between their room and the vacant guest room and washes off in the shower, taking his time to count the bruises he's accumulated on his shins and forearms.
He leaves the bathroom in a storm cloud of hot shower steam and pads back into his bedroom to change into a fresh pair of clothes.
On Ed's bed Al sees two books lying open and Ed's journal beside them with notes scribbled across every surface. Al rolls his eyes at Brother's carelessness, knowing Teacher would be mad if she found them since they're not supposed to be learning about alchemy yet. He wonders where Ed is now. He was still asleep this morning when Al got up and left to go train with Teacher, and Al's kind of shocked he's not laying here now, still asleep even though it's half past noon.
"Sig?" Al calls, descending halfway down the stairs into the shop. "Have you seen Brother?"
Sig looks up from his work and shakes his head. "I think he's still upstairs, I haven't seen him come down this morning."
Al grumbles about his brother disappearing on him as he returns back upstairs to the house.
"Brother!" he calls, hands cupped around his mouth in a megaphone and listening to the words reverberate through the living room. "Edward!"
After a few more times of calling out his brother's name, Al gives up and resorts to searching for him the old-fashioned way. There's a good chance Ed has slinked off to some far corner of the house to read and can't hear Al when he's so caught up in whatever he's reading. Al's known it to happen on severaloccasions.
Al starts in the living room, searching for Ed behind sofas and tucked away beside bookshelves. Moving into the kitchen he looks under the table and any other small places he can find that Ed could potentially cram himself into in his insane idea of a good reading spot. Al then proceeds to laugh at himself and how upset Ed would be if he knew Al made sure to look in the small places just for him.
Al doesn't bother checking their room or the bathroom since he was in there just recently and knows Ed definitely isn't in there.
Next, he goes to Teacher and Sig's room. He's only been in here once when Teacher asked him to go retrieve a book from her shelf that they needed for one of their lessons. He feels awkward as he walks in now, like he's invading somewhere sacred. It makes his skin crawl.
Al searches the room quickly for Ed, afraid that any moment now Sig or Teacher will jump out and demand to know what he's doing.
Pulling the door shut behind him, Al let's out a sigh. He's checked everywhere now. Maybe brother left this morning while he was out with Teacher and Sig just didn't notice. Al can't seem to come up with any other explanation for why he would suddenly be missing.
And then it hits him. There's still one place he hasn't checked.
Retracing his path back to his bedroom, Al skips past his opened door and the bathroom until he stands before the closed door of the guest room. It's the only room of the house he's never been into. When the Curtises first brought them back to their place after the month on Yock Island, they toured them around the house, referring to the closed door quickly as the guest room and moving on without even bothering to open it up to let them see inside. He had wondered then why they brushed past it so abruptly, but after a few weeks in their home, Al had forgotten about it almost entirely.
Teacher never told them the room wasn't to be entered, but he felt the rule was in place anyway, if only an unspoken one. Not even Ed, with all his nosiness and speculation, had asked to see inside or pressed the issue on his own.
The handle of the door is cold in Al's grasp. It's the only door handle in the hose that is shiny brass instead of the worn silver ones of all the other doors. It must have been replaced not long before they arrived here, a few years before at least. It doesn't quite fit with the narrative Teacher gave them of the room almost never being occupied.
With a hard shove, Al pushes the door open. It takes more of a prod to open than he's used to, clearly indicating the door hasn't been opened for a while.
The room inside is not what Al was expecting when he was told it was a guest bedroom. He was expecting it to be the same shade of light gray that his and Brother's room is and furnished simply with a guest bed, a nightstand, and perhaps a bookshelf or two.
For the most part the room is empty. There's a giant window against the back wall where light floods in, shining a bright patch of white on the bare, wood floor.
Every surface is covered with a thick layer of dust like moss growing wild on the forest floor. There's three, unlabeled cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other against one of the walls with a disassembled crib against another. Close to the window there's a mostly empty bookcase, only a few items inhabiting its shelves.
All four walls are painted a powdered blue.
It's clear by its emptiness that Ed isn't in here, but Al can't pull himself to turn away and shut the door.
He wonders why Teacher and Sig would lie to them about the room. Why tell them it's a guest room when there isn't even a bed for a guest to sleep in? What even is this room used for anyway?
Al steps in, his feet disturbing the dust on the floor and sends it scattering like snow. He considers opening up one of the boxes and seeing what's inside for a moment, but stops himself, knowing that would cross a serious barrier of privacy. As if he hasn't already crossed one by coming in here in the first place.
Instead, he redirects himself to the bookshelf that glows in the sunlight.
It's a nice bookshelf, he'll give it that. Whoever built it spent quality time painting and waxing it and delicately carving in the details at the top. He wonders why it's been hidden away in the blue room.
Directly in from of him is a teddy bear sitting on the shelf. Its fur is soft, Al can tell just by looking at it, and it looks like it's never been loved. There aren't spots where its brown hair has been worn or smushed down. The blue bow tied around its neck is the same exact shade of blue that the walls are painted. If it weren't for its thick, second skin made of dust then Al would have thought it belonged in a window display at a toy shop.
With his little fingers, Al reaches out and grabs it. Its little smile looks so lonely in here with only dust bunnies to keep it company. With his index finger, he pushes its fur out of its eyes. Perfect.
"I was wondering when one of you would eventually enter this room."
Al jumps and spins around, still clutching the bear in his hands to face Teacher who now stands in front of him. He didn't even hear her enter.
"I–I–" He stammers, not knowing what to say. He wants to apologize for coming in here and disturbing her rules and privacy, but there was no explicit rule against entering in the first place.
Al looks up at Teacher's face to find it surprisingly emotionless. He was thinking he would find disappointment, maybe even anger there, but there's nothing to her face at all. He's never seen her like this. Suddenly she no longer feels like the sharp angles and biting winds that she usually is, right now there's a soft vulnerability to her and it frightens Al.
"You want to keep him?" she asks when Al says nothing further.
"Keep who?"
"The bear," she says flatly, gesturing to the toy he holds.
Al follows her gaze, looking down at the bear with the soft fur and melancholy smile.
"I wouldn't want to take something that's yours."
She laughs a hollow, empty laugh. "The bear isn't mine, I'm much too old for such things."
"Um right–" Al adverts his eyes away, breaking eye contact with her. He isn't exactly sure what to say to her in this situation. It almost seems like she wantshim to take the bear, but he doesn't understand why. He was the one who intruded into this place, he shouldn't be rewarded for that.
"If it isn't yours," he starts slowly like he's walking on a frozen pond and slowly approaching a gaping hole in the ice, "then who does it belong to?"
She smiles at him. It isn't a wicked smile and it isn't cruel, but rather it's a sad and lonely one like the smile of the bear he currently holds.
"It was supposed to be for another little boy, but I'll never have the chance to give it to him now so I want you to take it. It's too nice a toy to leave here to waste away."
Before Al can protest that she shouldn't give it to him if it rightfully belongs to someone else, Teacher spins on her heels and heads for the door. "Come on," she says, guiding him out past the deconstructed crib and the unmarked boxes, "I think lunch is probably ready."
Teacher firmly shuts the door behind them when they both step out and Al has a feeling he won't be seeing the inside of the half-empty room again.
That night, when Al sleeps in his own bed in the room he shares with his brother, he holds the bear with the powdered blue ribbon tied around its neck close and wonders who the boy was who it was supposed to belong to in the first place and why it was never given to him.