Unexpected Rewind

Disclaimer: I don't own FMA, or anything else actually.

Summary: His brother had warned him against messing with unknown transmutation circles, but Al hadn't listened and now he was stranded in 1914 missing a leg in the middle of the events that led him and Ed to getting their bodies back.

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Chapter 1 - And It's White Again

A yawn pulled Al out of his research. He had been so entranced by the books he had discovered on Xerxes on his way back from Xing that ever since arriving on Resembool most of his time had been spent on his brother and Winry's kitchen table trying to decipher what the strange arrays on it meant. His brother, realizing Al wouldn't leave those books alone until he cracked at least part of the mistery, joined him on and off throughout the day everyday.

Even though Edward hadn't his alchemy anymore, he still had his knowledge and more stamina than Al had ever had since getting his body back. Only now Al realized how hard it must have been for Edward to keep up with his armour self researching until late at night, waking up early, traveling from one place to another only taking meaningful breaks on the trains when they had nothing to do.

On his first trip to Xing Al had felt his entire body cracking and had an stiff neck halfway to Amestris border with the desert, back then he had thought he wouldn't make it across the countries with his body in one piece.

"Oi, Al. Why don't you take a break?" Ed arrived in the kitchen with a bundle cradled into his arms and frowned at finding Al in the same place he was when he had left the kitchen three hours ago, "Winry is with a customer and I need to make dinner. Could you hold Sui for me?"

Edward didn't linger waiting for Al's answer and was already dropping the bundle on the younger arms.

"Brother! Be careful!"

"Don't worry, she's not that fragile anymore," Ed smiled at Al's now still position before opening the cupboard, "You can move, the baby won't mind."

"But what if she wakes up?" Al looked down on the light blond baby on his arms. She looked peaceful yet he knew that if she woke up there would be screaming and crying and he had never been as good at calming down Sui as he had been with Ted.

"She's like a rock when she's sleeping," Ed answered distracted by his new task, "Should I do a soup or something else?"

Al felt a sweat drop on his head, his brother was so calm about babies. Who could have guessed?

"Daddyyyy!" came an excited voice from the other room and soon a toddler rushed into the kitchen tripping over air near the door and landing on the floor. Silence.

Edward looked to his son dreading what was to come and tried reaching to him before it started. Theodore lifted himself from the floor, looked to Edward, then to Alphonse.

"Waaah!" and he dropped to the floor crying.

"Theodore, are you hurt? Come here," Ed lifted his mini-me from the floor and went to the other room trying to soothe his son.

Alphonse felt relief wash over him, Sui hadn't woke up. He looked down to his arms and a pair of frowning blue eyes met his golden ones.

"Oh, no! Brother!"

"Waaah!"

:-:-:-:-:-:-:

It had been an exhausting end of night. Al was the one who ended up making dinner, the children had gone to sleep earlier than usual and Ed and Winry were resting in the living room doing what Al didn't dare to imagine. Al glanced to the kitchen door, watching the stars was something he loved to do (and was a relaxing activity) but the books were inside the house and he was itching to take a look at them again, maybe finally try some of the arrays.

Edward had advised him it was best if they worked further through the translation process before doing any experiments but Al had looked through all the arrays many times before and none of them had seemed close to human transmutation. Besides, so far they had translated mostly words related to traveling distances and glass bottles, nothing dangerous.

Sure there may be a transmutation circle to make things explode in one of the pages, but it was more likely an alchemy dedicated to some sort of craft. Maybe one of these arrays would create a nice looking vase that was a bestselling piece in Xerxes centuries ago. The truth was that the mystery was eating away at Alphonse and since it all seemed so simple he decided that activating just one array to see what would come out wouldn't make any harm.

That was how Edward had found Alphonse crouched at the edge of an unknown transmutation circle right before activating it. He tried to stop Al, talk some sense in that head of his, but his younger brother wouldn't hear it.

"It's nothing to get worked up about, stupid brother," Al had said as he activated the circle and disappeared within a transmutation light as bright as the one that took their bodies 12 years ago.

"Alphonse!"

:-:-:-:-:-:-:

'Why is it so bright?' was Alphonse's first coherent thought as he woke up surrounded in whiteness.

He groaned and closed his eyes before sitting. He hadn't noticed yet, but the white shadow in front of him had risen as soon as he started to come to senses and was now grinning with its large white teeth.

Alphonse finally opened his eyes and froze. He knew where he was. He looked behind him and surely there was the giant white gate where his body had sat waiting for him so long ago.

"Did you miss me?" the voice that seemed a thousand in one asked and Al felt himself shrink. The entity was the same as he remembered with its smile growing wider by the second. Dread engulfed Alphonse.

"What?", Al's voice came out small as if he had turned into that 10 years old boy he was when they tried to resurrect their mother.

"What's gonna be your payment?"

"Payment? For what?", Al's voice gained strength. He didn't understand what he was doing there, he had activated some simple transmutation circle not a human anything, "I didn't make human transmutation, why was I brought here?"

The Truth chuckled.

"Ha, you amuse me! Since you have nothing to offer, I'll decide what pays whatever remains to be payed."

"No! I don't understand!"

"I think you Elrics would make a fine pair of twins," and with that a flesh right leg appeared on the grinning Truth, "Like mirrors."

Al looked down merely to see his right leg being severed from his body as if it were dissolving into nothingness. He didn't feel any pain until it was all gone and then all he knew was agony.

"Have a nice trip," Truth said to the screaming mess being dragged by small black hands into the black void behind the gate.

:-:-:-:-:-:-:

The first thing Alphonse saw was the familiar ceiling of his brother and Winry's house. Looking to his left the window showed a typical Resembool summer weather: bright sun, green landscape, chirping birds. He blinked, trying to remember what happened and why he had been put in the room usually reserved for customers recovering from automail surgery.

He tried sitting, but a shooting pain on his right leg left him frozen and panting. Muddled images of him being in the gate again reached his conscious mind and suddenly the feeling of being underwater assaulted him.

Confused and afraid Al took off the blanket covering him and stood up ignoring whatever was causing that horrible pain, only to fall with a thud on his fist step out the bed.

"Boy! What are you doing out of bed?" a voice came from the door, and Al had to give his hardest to look away from his newly discovered missing limb.

"My leg…" he almost whispered, it was getting harder by the minute to form a coherent train of thought. The fact that the one on the door was the late Granny Pinako wasn't making sense either, so Al just let go and flopped on his side, "I think I'm dreaming, Granny."

The old woman stopped right on the middle of his field of vision.

"Wow! You look so real," the woman kept looking at him with furrowed eyebrows and an idea blossomed on Al's head just as his eyelids started feeling heavy, "Do I look like brother? We might have switched bodies. I'm missing a leg."

"Winry, come help me," the woman said loudly and turned back to Al, "What's your name, boy?"

Just as Al was about to answer a very young looking Winry appeared by Pinako's side and Al felt his mouth hanging.

"You look so young. I should've listened to brother, I should have left those transmutation circles alone until we figured what they meant."

Winry looked at her grandmother.

"Granny, do you think he-"

"Let's not dwell on this right now. Half of what he's said so far makes no sense. I think the last round of painkillers is making him high. Bring the wheelchair here, I don't think he will be able to sleep it off this time. Boy, what's your name?"

"You know my name," Al saw Granny Pinako staring, "Don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"Hum…" Al gulped, it was as if the world had gone out of its axis. He was talking to a dead person, his sister-in-law was a pre-teen, his brother was nowhere to be seen… and part of his body was missing. Al closed his eyes, his stomach churning, "Granny, I'm not feeling very well."

:-:-:-:-:-:-:

Al studied the hills around the Rockbell's house. Such a familiar sight, yet he now knew he was far from being home. He sank his left foot as much as he could on the grass beneath his wheelchair.

The fact most of his right leg was missing left him longing for sensory sensations much like his first six months back on his flesh body. Granny Pinako had told him it was probably the stress when she demanded to know why Winry had found him sprawled on the muddy ground under rain a few days ago.

He sighed. Winry and Granny had been so good to him. They didn't know who he was but had let him stay until he felt better and they wouldn't charge for the emergency operation they had had to perform after finding him on their backyard lying in a pool of blood and missing a leg. Al had told them he was trying a new transmutation theory when there was a rebound. And no, he didn't know how he appeared on their door, he was very far from home. No, he didn't remember what his city was called, but he was sure it would come to him eventually. Sure he had a name, it was… Eric.

And then, hopelessly trying to think of a different last name he looked at Granny's clothes and found buttons. Now he was Eric Buttons until he found out how to go back home. All because he was useless at lying.

A gentle breeze softly ruffled Al's growing hair. He had been in the past for almost four weeks now and he had no idea how to go back home.

Alphonse, now Eric, looked over where his first home had been. While most of the ruins where hidden from view, the burned tree was easy to spot. In the future he and his brother had built a nice garden over the house's old foundation and around the tree. It was a much needed closure and Ed's first newborn child had motivated them to let the bygones be bygones. It wasn't that they were burying their mistakes under a bunch of pretty flowers, it was more like a memorial to the happy times with their mother they had lived in there instead of an open testament of their mistakes and grieving. Looking at it abandoned like it was now made him feel depressed.

Actually, this old reality made him feel sick.

Al knew that once Granny deemed him healthy enough to be on his own he would be alone and that terrified him. The fact he was missing a limb, and such a vital one, was eating at him and he couldn't muster enough courage to ask Granny to stay or even more important, Al realised without meaning to, ask for an automail. With an automail leg he would be able to go wherever he needed searching for a way home. Sure, it required maintenance and the average recovery time was three years however his brother had made it in one year when he was twelve and Al was confident he could do the same at 22. And yet…

He had no money, automail was expansive and he couldn't simply expect the Rockbells to accept he was trustworthy enough to give him an automail limb he wouldn't be able to pay anytime soon. On top of that he was still in a wheelchair despite Granny saying by now he should be walking at least a few minutes or hours a day with crutches to help the rehabilitation process. Still, if he kept on this pessimistic inertia he had been ever since waking up in the past he would get nowhere. If Al wasn't able to even stand up now - something he should have been doing for a week now - how could he hope to endure an automail surgery?

Determined, Al looked to his left foot planted on the grass and then at his bandaged stump leg. He had lost his whole body once and it wouldn't be a stupid leg that was going to hold him back. Losing a leg hadn't stopped his brother all those years ago and Ed had lost an arm along with it, an arm to keep Al alive.

It took a few tries and for a moment Al had been sure he would roll down the hill before he successfully lifted himself up. Standing in his full height Al was surprised at how good it felt to be tall again. He smiled. Ed would've been proud… after giving him a few blows for being cast into the past and having lost a leg.

"Eric! You are standing, that's great," Winry's voice came from behind him and, startled, Al almost lost his balance.

Using the wheelchair as support, Al faced Winry beaming.

"I know, I don't think being tall ever felt so good," he looked over the hills to the tree by his old house, "You know, this place reminds me a lot of my own home. And I realized that I'll never be able to go back if I keep the sulky attitude. Yes, I've lost a leg, but I still can move forward."

"I told you it was that gloomy cloud you were carrying around that was messing with you," she stopped by his side, "Anyways, Granny told me to tell you lunch is ready if you wanted to eat."

Al looked down, it was so weird being that much taller than Winry in his flesh body. He hadn't notice how much she had grown in 12 years. I mean, yes, of course she had grown, but in the future she reached his chin, almost as tall as Edward. Now she hovered somewhere under his shoulder.

"Of course, besides I need to ask Granny about a thing."

Winry's forehead wrinkled.

"You know, you're the first patient Granny has let call her that. And you have been calling her that even before you were truly conscious."

Al gave a nervous laugh.

"Ha, you know, she looks like a Granny, doesn't she? Besides, I didn't even know her name since, you know, she let me keep calling her that, ha ha ha."

"I guess it makes sense," she answered still thoughtful.

Trying to find a topic to change the subject Al's eye locked on the wheelchair. It's seat looked so far from up here.

"Hey, Winry? How am I supposed to sit down again. The wheelchair looks so far down, I don't think my leg will bear my body weight going down."

Winry released an annoyed sigh.

"That's why we always take you to the recovery room before trying to do anything. Or do you think all those equipments are there for nothing?"

Al was sure a screwdriver was about to fly his way, but Winry instead took a deep breath and continued:

"You should have done this by the parallel bars, they aren't there just for show and-"

"Winry, you can give the boy a lecture later. You both should come and eat before it gets cold."

Winry and Al blinked surprised. The routine had felt almost normal and usual. It was like reenacting the scenes Al so often saw Winry do with her pacientes in the future. Except right now she was 14 and had only ever lectured her childhood friends. This was new and left Al anxious.

:-:-:-:-:-:-:

Al spent half of lunch thinking about how he was affecting the past. Winry wouldn't start lecturing pacientes until after they took her to Rush Valley where she got her own pacientes and Granny wasn't there to stop them from doing stupid stuff with just a look. Had he changed so much already?

The other half was trying to plan how he would ask for automail. So far his best plan was to ask for an automail and follow that question with his plan of taking the State Alchemist exam as soon as he mastered using an automail, which was when planned on using part of his research money to pay for the automail.

Yes, he could trace a lot of parallels with Ed and Al was sure the other two would be able to do the same, and it would be hell when his and Ed's younger selves came home and Winry told them but that was the only way Al could be sure he would have enough money to pay for all he needed to do, including finding answers about his time traveling status.

He had planned his speech step by step, but off course he wasn't brave enough to say anything until Granny had finished having lunch and was leaving the room. In the end he had blurted a basic string of words:

"I want automail"

And then he had started a stuttered and messy explanation of his plans which he wasn't positive if either Winry or Granny had understood, although when he finished Granny had all her attention on him.

"It will hurt. Automail surgery is the most painful surgery out there is. Are you sure you want that?," Granny was serious

Al was silent for a moment. Yes he was, his brother had managed it, he could too.

"Yes, I need to discover how I got here. When I said my home was very far away, I meant it. There's no other way I can go back if not the way I came. I'm sure of it, and to find a way home I need a working leg."

"You only lost one leg, there are other ways of doing research that it's not turning into a dog of the military," she paused, "And if you help here around the workshop and with the customers I can offer you food and shelter. If your hometown is really that distant, is it really worth giving up so much to go back?"

Al looked down. He couldn't convey how much it meant to him to return home, unless he opened up about what was waiting for him back in the future.

"Granny, I know it sounds crazy, but I would give my other leg just to go back. I…," he looked at Winry before staring down at his lap, "I have a brother. He has a family now, a wife and two kids, but I know he's probably losing his mind over my disappearance. He…"

Alphonse gulped, he hoped Ed hadn't done something crazy trying to get him back. He knew future Winry would be worried as well and she would support whatever crazy plan Edward came up with, but he hoped they thought about the kids before anything.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want, Eric," Winry approached him and put a supporting hand on his shoulder. He smiled to her, Winry had always been supporting him and Ed even when she didn't realise that was what she was doing.

"Let him speak, Winry. I don't give free automails for every amputee that shows up on our door, so let's see if he has a good enough reason why I should do it this time."

Al felt tears gather in his eyes. It felt so wrong having Granny speaking like that to him. If the younger Al showed up asking for a limb because the gate wouldn't give his whole body back he was sure he wouldn't have to prove anything.

"Ted, my brother," Al borrowed his nephew's name for his brother, "he gave up a lot for me. When we were younger there was an accident and we were really injured. He lost his arm and I was in a sort of coma. He travelled all around trying to find a cure for me. We were so young... after four year looking he found what he was looking for and had to give something very precious in return for it. You're both familiar with equivalent exchange, right?"

"Yes," Winry muttered darkly. Eric's story reminded her of a very similar one, one much more sinister than his.

"Well, it was something like that. Brother had the automail surgery just so he could search for the cure, and he found it. I'm willing to do the same for him. After I recovered we grew even more attached and even as adults he demands I call him at least once every two weeks when I'm travelling. I'm afraid he'll do something stupid, he was there when the transmutation rebound but he doesn't knows what the rebound and the transmutation did. He warned me against transmutation circles I wasn't sure of the meaning, but I didn't listen…"

Granny looked at the boy. He reminded her a lot of Alphonse, physically speaking, before the kid had been stuck in an armor. He also reminded her of Hohenheim, someone out of their time and the same golden eyes. But his golden carried a fire she had only seem reflected on Edward's when he and his brother decided to go on their quest to recover their bodies.

Had Hohenheim screwed around before meeting Trisha? It seemed highly unlikely considering how much her friend sulked around before meeting Trisha.

There was a mystery to this boy, Eric, that maybe she would never uncover. But he had a good heart and one more person living in the house wouldn't be so bad after all. It had become quite silent after the brothers had left two years ago. Eric also looked like a hard worker, having him to help around wasn't so bad for business.

"I will give you an automail, but you'll have to pay the interests when it's time to pay us back."

"Yes, ma'am" Al smiled wildly. He had made it.

"You'll work with us during your rehabilitation time."

"Ok."

"It will most likely take you three years to master the automail."

"I'll make it one."

At that both Winry and Pinako stared at the boy. It was like a ghost from the past was sitting in front of them. But taller.

"That's a bold statement," Pinako replied, "I've only met one person capable of doing it, and it required a lot of effort and focus."

"I know, but I'm positive I can do it," for a moment Al wondered if it was a good idea sharing that much with them, but decided it wouldn't hurt to give them his reasons, "My brother made it in one year, I'm sure I can do the same."

"Interesting," Pinako said, there were so many similarities here, "Tomorrow we will make the arrangements, today you can rest and enjoy life without pain."

Alphonse felt sweat drop on his head as Granny left. She was so much nicer when he was Alphonse Elric instead of Eric Buttons.

"You know, you remind me of a softer version of a friend of mine," Winry told sitting by his side, "And you are nicer too."

Al smiled, of course she was talking about Ed. An evil smile appeared on his face, if only they knew what the future reserved for them, they would flip. Of course he wouldn't tell the future to teens that didn't knew they loved each other, but he could if he wanted to. He was such a nice brother.

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A/N: For some reason this was the easiest thing I've written in years. It all came so easy to me that I'm afraid I actually messed up somewhere, probably in my use of the English language. I can't promise I'll continue this quickly though, if you look at my profile you'll see I have two others unfinished fics and I'm stuck on chapter 2 of the Harry Potter one. Oh, well. At least I already know where I want to take this Fullmetal fic and most of the how-to's to take it where I want. Who knows, I might go smoothly for once. Next chapter one year has gone by and the young Elrics and Armstrong will be visiting.

This is also my biggest first chapter. Congratulations to me! If I messed up somewhere let me know, sometimes what I was writing felt weird but sounded right. I'm afraid my English isn't so good on this one.

Edited on 03/03/2017: My English grammar was way off. I also rearranged some sentences.

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