So apparently my muse is not done with Roy. Or Fullmetal Alchemist in general. There are like ten other unfinished fics floating around in my FMA doc (not exaggerating, either) so at this point I'm not even going to claim this is the last one. I'm not 100% sure about this one, but it's been struggling with me for several weeks now and I'm not sure why I still feel like something's missing. Hope you enjoy this as Roy continues to hold my muse hostage... ;)

Al didn't talk to anyone, anymore.

His nurse was his only daily visitor anymore, and she was the only one who still tried. She'd speak to him sweetly and many times would stop by after her shift to take him on a walk around the gardens. It was beautiful, they were beautiful, everything was beautiful, overwhelming in its vibrancy; even breathing could still feel too much for him sometimes. He'd forgotten what it was like to smell, and even the antiseptic, sterile scent of the hospital left him could leave him reeling.

Everything was so very alive, and to witness such vitality made him feel a deep, hollow emptiness inside him hurt in a way he just did not understand. It was too much, and hurt so greatly, simply to stand as a bystander and watch the world turn. It was simply too much, and the idea of trying to do more, see more, feel more, and live on, was unfathomable.

So, he quit trying.

Al heard the door to his room creak open (so loud, so unique, so too much) and stayed still, staring without blinking out the window. It was too soon for his nurse, and beyond her, no one came. There'd been lots of visitors, in the beginning. But when they'd realized he was even less alive now than he'd been before, they'd all left.

Everyone was gone now.

The squeak on the waxed floor was achingly familiar, prickling at his ears as the sound of his wheelchair when the nurse took him outside. Al blinked slowly, the knowledge filtering in and making little sense, and continued to gaze out the window. The leaves of the tree danced in the wind, rustling gently, and he almost shrank back, withering from the idea of wind touching skin. Too much. Too much, too much...

He heard the wheelchair stop by his bed and blinked again, remembering the visitor. It was quiet for a few moments, even the sound of another person breathing in the room almost too much. He forgot to breathe, sometimes. It felt so very strange, to be sustained by something, to biologically need something. For years, the only thing he'd needed to survive had been him. He'd needed him like any other would need water or air, existing only so long as the space by his side was not empty, and he was always there-

"Hello, Alphonse."

Weak heart, pounding. Frail arms, shaking. Steady breaths, unsteady. Everything, not right.

Anger was a powerful emotion that took a body hostage, and Al had slowly learned, over the past month, that being angry was just as too much as everything else.

He knew that voice, and it made him furious.

"I hear you're still not talking. ...Would you mind telling me why?"

Get out.

"...I guess that would be rather difficult for you to do, huh? With the whole not talking thing."

Get. Out.

"...I guess I'll just do the talking, then."

GET. OUT.

"You really should be eating some more, Al. I talked to your doctor; he's worried. If you don't start eating more he'll have to give you a feeding tube, and I know you don't want that-"

GET! OUT!

Rage jerked him around to meet the solemn gaze on him, eyes blazing with feeling that he could not contain. The exclamation tugged violently at his throat only to die before it reached open air, but Mustang still jerked back as if he'd actually said it, face transforming in shock.

It was silent for several breathless moments, the colonel staring, and Al seething, until at last Mustang let out a shaky breath, reclaiming some sense of composure. "You want me to leave?" he asked, seemingly just to confirm.

Al jerked his head in a violent nod, then remembered only belatedly to breathe. He heaved in a trembling breath, feeling his chest shake, then sat back gingerly. The pillow against his spine almost hurt, it was so much feeling.

Mustang held silent for another moment, then sighed. "I'm afraid that I can't do that, Al. I gave my word to Ed that I wouldn't."

Blinding rage so powerful it took Al seconds to realize it was rage.

This time he scrabbled for the notepad and pen, too furious to let a mute stare suffice. He could barely write; even gripping the pen was almost beyond him, but he forcibly scratched the words out with a shaking hand, so mad he almost couldn't see.

You don't get to say his name!

Mustang blinked at the paper for a few seconds, holding very still, before Al limply let the notepad dropped and turned away again, still shaking. He couldn't keep looking at that flat stare much longer before even it became too much.

"Al," the colonel said at last, voice infuriatingly soft, "I know you're upset with me, but I had nothing to do with his choice. Izumi, either. I didn't even know until it was too late, and Izumi, she tried to convince E... your brother. ...He couldn't be stopped."

Of course he couldn't be stopped. His brother was a force of nature when he was determined, and no orders by Colonel Mustang or physical beatdowns by Teacher would ever knock him off his path once he'd decided it. And Al knew that, had always known that, but logic and reason were purely an intellectual game that could not stand in the way of the instinct of anger that swept through him from head to toe.

You didn't have to finish his plan, Al weakly wrote, hand already cramping and losing strength. He found himself turning his head away again even as he showed the note to Mustang.

"Al, I don't know what exactly you expected from me," Mustang snapped after a few moments, and he let the notepad drop back to his lap again. "You would've died. You can't honestly have expected us to just stand by and do nothing!"

He sounded frustrated. Al watched the wind blow gently out the window, the words sounding strange to him, somehow. He could almost feel it kissing skin.

I wish you had...

"I'm sorry," Mustang said abruptly, voice soft again. "I didn't come here to argue with you. I just..." Another frustrated sigh, this one sounding more frustrated with himself than Al. "When Winry told me about you, I just... I knew I had to come."

Another scribbled message, the pen slipping and sliding against his fingers with the impossible sensation of touching plastic and his hand shaking against paper as he tried to hold it still. You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't have gotten involved at all.

Mustang sighed again. "I don't think your brother wanted me involved, either. He wasn't comfortable entrusting you to anyone but himself, but he knew he'd need a second person for it to work. He went to Izumi then, because he needed someone who'd seen the Gate, to do the soul transmutation... obviously, I was unavailable, when he first came up with this plan." He snorted quietly. "Things are different now, though. And, given the danger for rebound, we discussed it and decided I was the best choice to attempt the transmutation. Given Izumi's... disability," he said uncomfortably, clearly unsure how to put the messy knot of her internal organs gently, "it was safest that I do it in her stead. Given how things turned out, it was a good decision. Her body probably wouldn't have been able to handle the shock."

Once again, logic and reason. A perfectly sound argument that he could find no fault with it.

Once again, fury. Words that made him almost want to scream.

Almost.

The wind was very beautiful, he thought, looking out at it again. He'd watched summer fade to autumn in those wind-ruffled leaves, dancing grass green morphing oh so slowly into sunset crimson. He'd got one of those leaves, once, on a trip out to the garden. A brown one that had given up already, cut off from its tree like a limb from the body, twisted away by the breeze to float until it crackled against his lap. He still held onto it now, even days later, thumbing over its easy fragility so gently it did not break. The rough feel of cellulose when he traced it along his cheek, the scent of dying summer when he held it to his nose, just a single leaf somehow being too much...

"Damn it, Al, he was dying either way! What Father did to him- even if he'd gotten that wound in the middle of an operating room, he wouldn't have survived! Ed knew he was dying, nothing could've saved him, and he made the decision to trade his body for yours! If he hadn't, he'd still be dead now, Al!"

Summer to autumn, prime of life to dying, and soon, soon would come winter... he could not imagine how cold would feel, could not remember the biting whip of winter wind or the burn in his cheeks born from frigidity of air, how cold stifled the world because everything was dead.

"Do you think Edward would have wanted this, Al?! He wanted to give you your body! That's all he ever wanted! He wanted you to be happy, even if... even if he couldn't be there with you, he'd still... this isn't what he wanted for you, Al."

Stop it.

"He..." Mustang broke off abruptly, bowing his head to hide it in one shaking hand, his breaths unsteady again. "Edward..."

Al remembered to breathe.

"You think you're the only one this is hard for?!" Another hitching breath that he felt gust warmly against his clenched hand. Too warm. "You think you're the only one who misses him?! I know I may not have shown it well, but I cared for him, Al. I cared for you both! And seeing you like this hurts just as much as when he... when he died. He... he wasn't... s-supposed to die..."

Stop it.

Mustang's voice died to nothing, but the hitching breaths didn't stop. Short and unsteady, each punctuating the pregnant silence in a wavering smoke signal of mourning.

Stop it!

The sheets at his knee twisted in Mustang's white-knuckled grip. the too large and too pale hand shaking. Al hated it all. The silent grief, the ache deep in his chest, the pressing reminder that he wasn't the only one knocked down by the Promised Day and left struggling to find a way back to a life again.

The sound of Mustang's gasp hit him again.

Stop it!

"He wasn't supposed... to die..."

Stop-

The hot agony of a seizing muscle sprang up his wrist like wildfire. Al gasped, pen slipping from fingers that spasmed as traitors, desperate scrawled word against paper ended mid-letter.

Stop...

Stop, please...

Summer's height of life to autumn's dying to winter's death, and in the world's cycle winter's death became spring's rebirth. But even though one was all and all was one, the world spun through the cycle through infinity while they, as the preciously fragile and finite beings that they were, fell with the winter and did not rise again. There was no spring's rebirth. Blood spilt in winter forever was blood dyed into snow, his blood, so much of it, everywhere, and even in alchemy's brilliant light winter could not be turned anew into spring. It couldn't happen. It couldn't happen, and he gasped for it, longed for it, longed for his brother's summer, longed to feel nothing in the flux of a soul with no corpse because it'd mean his brother was by his side.

It's too much, it's too much, everything to feel is too much to feel, to be alive is too much...

Stop, please...

"I'm so sorry, Al, I- I don't know what I was saying..."

Stop, please... I can't...

Wetness burned in his eyes and wept down in his cheeks, and the taste of a gasp of air prickled in his mouth. And oh, how he longed for cold steel and armor that did not feel, how he longed to no longer feel...

"I lost control, I'm sorry, Al. I shouldn't have... god, what's wrong with me..."

I forgot how much living hurts.

Mustang was rubbing his hand. Al blinked again, somehow not feeling it until now but suddenly now unable to tune it out, tune out the gentle warmth of human skin, the feel another next to him, the pain of a too weak muscle failing and the painful heat of Mustang touching it. The colonel was massaging the seizing muscle, he somehow realized, understanding filtering up from so far away he barely heard it. The colonel wasn't looking at him, either, head bowed and face shielded by long bangs, but his hand kept rubbing gently, so gently as if he feared he would break.

Please... stop...

It felt as if he was drowning. Like for so long, he'd been down at the bottom of a lake, struggling for each and every breath, trapped in the freezing cold and the dark and watching as the light at the surface got further and further away until life was out of his grasp. Like he was just a few more seconds of suffocation away from death entirely, and there was nothing he could do about it but watch it happen.

It felt like Mustang had dived in after him, but trapped on the bottom as he was, he wasn't strong enough to reach. Like the colonel was swimming, swimming, swimming, but no matter how hard he tried, he'd never reach.

He'd never... reach...

Mustang stopped massaging his hand.

The colonel slowly turned his head away, but one too pale and too large hand remained wrapped so gently around his, thumb still against the joint that he'd been trying to calm. "I'm sorry," came the hollow, empty whisper at last, a solitary break in a silence that hurt.

Hollow, empty, dead, gone, lacking, without him...

"I... I shouldn't have come here, after all, I think."

No...

Breathing quickly, Mustang carefully lay his hand back down on the bed, again moving as if his bones were made of glass. Al watched, heart pounding painfully in his chest, as the moment Mustang no longer touched him, the colonel jerked his hand back and turned his wheelchair around, making for the door as if his life depended on it.

No, please... I...

I don't want you to go...

Don't stop reaching for me, if you stop, there's no one else anymore, and I...

Again, Mustang stopped as if he'd heard thoughts that he could not say.

The colonel remained still near the door, head bowed again. "I won't apologize for bringing you back, Al," he said harshly, and the one hand Al could see clenched tight. "That, I will never apologize for. But... that I can not help you now..." Another shaking, unsteady breath.

"I'm sorry, Alphonse."

There was nothing left.

Mustang pushed himself another foot, then stopped for a moment, reaching down to grasp at his maimed leg. Al could see the shape of a limb underneath black pants, the glint of steel between the hem and his shoe, and the white-knuckled grip of a clenched hand grasping at the stump. A gasped breath through gritted teeth made it to his ears before the colonel shook his head again and began to make his way towards the door again.

"It h-hurts... doesn't it?"

Mustang froze.

At least five seconds passed with absolutely no movement. At last, very, very slowly, Mustang turned his head back, eyes wide, as if he did not believe his own ears. Black eyes met his and Al looked away easily, retreating to the safety that was the dancing leaves outside the window.

"...Yes."

His mouth felt dry, his throat ached, and his voice sounded like death's rattle. But words were there, and they wanted to be said, so he said them, not understanding why or how but just wanting this, this endless, ceaseless purgatory of nothing ever changing and the crushing silence of the emptiness by his side to stop.

"It's called phantom pain. Science doesn't yet fully understand the cause. Theories point towards the extensive cortical remapping that takes place after an amputation as the culprit," he explained dully. "The brain rewires itself, because it doesn't need the areas that controlled the limb anymore, so it'll put those areas to other uses. But it doesn't rewire everything perfectly. So, sometimes signals will go to places that used to control that limb, and you'll feel it, because your brain thinks it's there again." He tried to go on, then put a hand to his throat, wincing. This was a sore throat. This was a sore throat?

I'd... forgotten...

Wheels squeaked over the floor as Mustang swiftly pushed himself back to his side, pale and shocked. The noise hurt his ears, so loud and obtrusive and high and too much, but when it stopped his shoulders shook, heart crying out for more. The pouring of water reached his ears next, and this time the sound made his skin crawl with goosebumps, the sensation of ducking under a waterfall so real he almost felt the rivulets run down the back of his neck.

"Here," Mustang said softly, and a paper cup half-filled entered his field of vision.

It took him several moments to respond on autopilot, gingerly gripping the thing with a shaking hand and tilting his head back. The feel of it washing down his throat made his head swim.

"Your automail is new, right?"

"...Yes," Mustang whispered back, still staring at him as if he did not yet believe it. "Winry did the final wiring last week."

Al looked back out the window.

"It'll hurt more when you can use it," he murmured at last. His voice sounded almost dead to his own ears. "Right now, you can't even really move it. When you learn how to walk again, that's when it'll hurt the most. And it doesn't stop. Ever."

Very slowly, Mustang rested a hand over his own knee, just above where Al knew steel became flesh and metal's cold became human warmth. "They told me. ...Even knowing this, I still don't regret anything, Al. If I had to, I would do it again."

Al felt his head bob distantly in a nod. Of course he would. Of course he and Izumi would hold no regrets. But what regrets were there to hold? No matter what any of them had done, his brother wouldn't be alive.

He knew that.

It was just hard, sometimes, because his heart still sobbed that Brother had given his life for him, and here he was, wasting it.

But didn't he anyway? He could've done anything. He was a genius. He could've done anything that he wanted. But he enslaved himself to the military for me. He gave everything up for the sake of this frail, breaking, barely alive body.

No matter how he died, he still lived for me.

"It hurts to be alive, Colonel."

Too much...

"...I know, Al." Again, so cautiously it was as if Mustang feared the bones would snap, the colonel took his hand again. "But you... you do still want this, don't you? You do still want to- to be alive?"

Summer danced out the window. So far away it could have been a hundred miles and yet, he could still almost feel it.

"I don't know."

Heavy silence.

In alchemy, the symbol for summer was the same as the one that represented life. One of the most dangerous symbols to draw in a transmutation, even more dangerous than the one for winter: death. The road between the two of them was autumn, for change and growth, perhaps the most common symbol an alchemist would ever use, the first symbol Al had ever learned and the symbol that had been at the center of his brother's array, when his body had been traded for another.

"Would... would you like to come back with me to Risembool, Al?"

Risembool. Warm summer grass and windstorms and the scent of hay, softness of soil underfoot and a sun that was so bright he could feel it burn.

And a family home that was all graves.

"I don't know, Colonel."

Spring in Risembool was beautiful. But spring was also dangerous. It was the most dangerous symbol in alchemy, even more dangerous than summer. To draw spring meant taboo. To draw spring meant missing limbs, howls of agony, and red-eyed demonspawn taking form over what was meant to be Mom.

Spring's symbol was for rebirth.

"Would you like for me to stay here in Central until you're released?"

Spring had been the heart of their array, when they'd dared to commit taboo, and autumn had been the heart of Brother's, when trading dying body for soulless live one. Spring had led to summer, taboo spurring them into the life beyond days spent playing in riverbeds and swaying grass, and then, to autumn... and autumn had become winter.

And the cycle was done.

"I don't know." His voice struggled weakly in the heavy air. "Shouldn't... shouldn't you be starting the rehab soon, anyway?"

The hand did not leave his own. "I can postpone it."

A red leaf was torn from the tree, drifting gently over spiraling wind. Just like that; that was all it took, just the gentlest tugging of a breeze to see life become death.

"...I want spring, Colonel."

I want our second spring.

"I know, Al. I... so do I."

Al did end up going back to Risembool, with Mustang.

They learned how to walk again together. And from the day that both of them could again stand on their own, Mustang walked on towards Fuhrership, democracy, and Ishval, and Al found himself walking in search of his own second spring.

They both were walking for a very long time.