It was gone.

It didn't seem reasonable. Alchemy was supposed to be a science, and Ed still had all the knowledge. It just didn't work.

It took awhile for that to sink in. Al was so sick, and so alive, and Ed wanted to spend every moment with him that he could. And then Ed himself had to have surgery, and he was pretty out of it for a long time after that. It was more than a month after the Promised Day before Ed found himself out in the hospital's garden, staring at a cherub that really needed horns and a skull for a head. He clapped, and there was nothing. He visualized the makeup of the stone, but there was nothing. He called up the transmutation circles, but they were empty. He touched the stone, but it was gone.

Slowly, quietly, Ed started to laugh. He collapsed against the stupid angel, laughing so hard that tears came to his eyes. It was gone. Fuck. His father's books- gone. His mother's sad, proud smile- gone. Her empty body and her emptier grave. Yock Island. That thing they made, and the stump of his leg bleeding out, and Al's clothes lying empty on the floor and so much Truth he couldn't even scream and his own blood in a transmutation circle on a suit of armor and his arm gone and thank you, thank you, at least Al's okay, it's okay if I die now because at least I saved him. Holding a spear to the Fuhrer, and not even knowing what kind of monster he really was. Always keep moving, always keep learning because I have to find a way, I have to fix this, even if I couldn't even save a little girl. And then I have to find a way to save everyone, because if I don't they'll all die, Winry and Granny and Mrs. Hughes and Elysia and Teacher and everyone. Lying at the bottom of a mine shaft with a pipe through his belly and about to make Winry cry over him for the last time. His father standing between him and a sun. Al giving himself up to the nothingness, and himself helpless to stop it. That monster that alchemy made- all the monsters, human and not-human.

Ed quieted eventually, his shoulders still shaking. I'm sixteen, he thought, and he started to laugh again. I'm sixteen and now I can decide what I want to be when I grow up.