Based somewhat on Cinderninja's "Blood Brothers". I honestly cannot really give a fic a good start to save my life...even if it's a one-shot series.
Edward Elric found himself gasping for breath, on the floor of the basement, in a pool of his own blood.
One thing was quickly clear: Alphonse was gone. Al was gone. "No," he muttered. "No, no! This wasn't supposed to happen, dammit!" What went wrong? What… He looked around blindly for something; he could fix this, after all he'd seen in the Gate. All the knowledge in this world was useless if he couldn't use any of it to get his brother back.
His hands happened to find something sharp—a shard of glass. The force of the rebound must've knocked a lantern over. Whatever the case, it would do the trick.
Ed barely managed to pull his shirt over his head, and brought the shard to his chest, over his heart. He let it hover there, nervous, before starting to cut into the skin. He was losing too much blood—he had to act fast.
"Give him back…he's my brother!" he heard himself shouting. A circle in formation, the cuts oozing even more blood that ran down his chest. They had to be deep enough to leave a lasting mark, after all. Lines were being drawn. He couldn't be distracted by the blood. "Anything, you can have it! Just give him back—he's my little brother! He's all I have left!"
He brought his trembling hands together, and pressed them on his chest. The light of the transmutation was the only thing he saw before things began going dark.
Alphonse had first been aware of something being horribly wrong—but his mind had been too disconcerted for him to figure out what exactly.
They were at the Rockbells' house, now. It almost broke him, seeing Ed hooked up to all those machines, incoherent and unconscious.
But Al couldn't do a thing…because he didn't have a body. Now that he was off of autopilot, he feverishly wondered what exactly had happened.
Ed had done something. That much he knew; maybe it had to do with that thing that looked like some sort of cord, which linked him to a glowing mark that resembled a transmutation circle of some sort on Ed's chest.
His "vision" was blurry at the edges, and Ed, Winry, Pinako, and even Den had a colored aura of sorts—Ed's was golden, and everyone else's was blue.
One thing became definite after a while of thought. Ed was the reason why Al was still there with them.
Partially, anyways.