The long dusty track faced Al down, mocking. Daring him to take it on. The mile of sanded down, smoothed dirt had been created for the old gym that used to be a popular facility right outside Central City, before the incident over a year back when a rogue alchemist had frozen everything within the city limits. The frost had damaged the pipelines under the gym grounds and its reconstruction had been neglected in favor of a newer, more modern facility within the city borders. Remnants of its former frequents lay scattered at the base of the bleachers. Old bottle caps. A couple tattered, leaf and mud-crusted towels. A lone sock, red like fresh, anemic blood, with a streak of angry, fiery gold around the ankle. Where was its partner now? That was the price, wasn't it? Al's eyes misted over, seeing the red and gold as a blurry blotch in the brown dust flat.

"You ready?"

Al turned, reflexively drawn towards his brother's voice. Ed stood several meters behind him. The loss of his usual red coat hadn't affected his dressing habits. In the bright, spring sun, Ed's hands pushed deep into the pockets of the tan jacket he'd picked up as a replacement. Little beads of sweat gathered on Ed's hairline, flattening his hair against his temples. More sensibly dressed than his brother, in cotton trousers and a thin, long-sleeved blue shirt, the heat still gathered up behind Al's hair, kept long and let loose, and pressed through his shirt. It grazed his arms and back with a persistent tingle, sending an involuntary shudder through his spine.

Ed saw. "You feeling cold?" he asked, his face adopting an infrequent, and therefore awkward, expression of concern.

Al cracked a weary smile. "No. It's warm." The air smelled thick, dusty, hot, and slightly fungal. "It's very warm," Al said again, under his breath.

Ed walked up to his side and stared behind Al at the mile. Al turned to face the track with him, shoulder to shoulder, not an inch difference in height now. No more towering above his older brother. No more towering over anyone.

"Well? You gonna stand there and stare, or are we gonna do this?" Ed paused. "Unless you think you can't make it."

Ed grinned, displaying all his teeth while delivering his poorly disguised concern, and Al was irritated. So much so that his heart jolted ahead of him, leaving him intensely, physically uncomfortable. His breath came in short gasps, and Al was surprised and dismayed to feel his knees tremble. Rationally, he knew it was only logical. This body, his body, wasn't brand new. Oh, it was definitely new for Al. Only a week had passed since he first breathed air through his own lungs and smelled. Gunpowder. Sulfur. Felt static and sweat and sunlight on every pore of his exposed body. But, it felt... neglected? Stretched out, dried out.

"Maybe we should..."

Al didn't need to hear more to know Ed had noticed him falter from what appeared to be nothing more than the simple effort of standing. He was coming up with an off-the-cuff obligation that would serve as a graceful excuse for Al to quit the exercise, like suggest they visit Mrs Hughes or try a little more alchemy instead. He wasn't going to fall for that!

He crouched down, fingertips pressing into the rough, dry dirt, and shouted: "On your mark!"

"Hey!" Ed started protesting. "Hold on a min—!"

"Get set!" Al bellowed gleefully. "Go!"

He sprang forward, shunting one foot in front of the other. Right, left, right, left. The ground moved under him, slower and closer than the last time he ran. Instead of the clanging of metal limbs, he heard the flat, soft pound of his shoes hitting the ground. Those were his legs! The dirt road was lightly pitted with small stones and the roots of some tenacious weed and they pressed with brief pain into the soles of Al's feet. He laughed.

"Don't think a head start's gonna help you beat me!" Ed goaded, barely a step and closing behind Al.

"Oh? Just you watch!" Al wanted to shout but his lungs were already worked to their capacity. He grunted defiantly and bore on, urging his burning legs forward, battering his feet against the unforgiving ground. He wouldn't be able to keep this up for long, but for now...

Ed swept past him, limbs flailing with almost as much restlessness as his fat braid. "You run like a baby deer!" he cackled.

"Look at... yourself..." Al managed. Ed was holding back. Restraining his natural movement took more energy than letting loose would – already, his face flushed pink and sweaty. His jacket billowed behind him making air currents that disturbed the dust and sent it flying into Al's face. Al's chest was on fire, and the dust in his eyes stung and itched. Left, right, left, right, left—

It'd have been less humiliating if the track had been in worse shape, but the ground was sound. Al's body wasn't. All it took was a pause in watching the ground, and Al had forgotten that his legs were shorter now, and the ground always seemed both too far away and too close, leaving him in a perpetual state of vertigo. Small, unconscious actions like climbing steps or sitting down demanded exclusive focus. His attention divided between his brother and the stinging in his eyes, his feet faltered, the right catching on the dirt where he expected a longer descent and the left compensating in panic by attempting a strange, ill-conceived leap. Before the move was even completed, the gym grounds convexed and rose up around him for a long heart-stopping second.

He lay on the hard ground and gasped, the wind knocked straight out of him. Blood pounded behind his eyelids, fresh sweat sticking the dirt to the full length of his downed body. The warmth had turned to oppressive heat that seemed to radiate both out from his body and inward into the hollow spaces in his chest, making him feel like a piece of roast. From down here, he could see the ground behind him stretch out back to the starting line by the bleachers.

"Al!"

Rushed footsteps, then Ed was kneeling at his side, rolling him off his belly onto his back and sitting him up. The movement told him that his right shoulder and knee were hurt, and the entire side of his right torso stung like a fresh bruise. "I'm okay," he wheezed, his voice reedy and sharply clipped with restrained frustration.

Ed sat back, plonking his butt on the dirt next to Al while the younger boy tended to his hurts and caught his breath. "Looks like you broke a new record."

His chipper tone caught Al's attention and he raised his chin off his chest to look back over the track he'd just covered. 10 meters.

Al shoved Ed's leg with his foot. "Quit being sarcastic, Ed. 10 meters? That sucks! I didn't even get past the bleachers!"

Was that really all he was capable of? That wasn't even the saddest part of his recovery: even if he hadn't fallen, he couldn't have kept running anyway. 10 meters was a depressingly accurate estimation of his real stamina.

He collapsed backwards onto the ground again, only to feel the yank of his hair, and have to jump up and pull it out from being pinned under his shoulder. "How can you stand to keep your hair long all the time?" he complained to Ed with something that sounded like an accusation in his voice. He resigned himself to sitting upright, unwilling to put the effort into repeating his attempt at dramatic expression now that it had gone awry.

Ed shrugged. "I never really thought about it." He ran a hand through the roots of his hair to where his braid began. "Guess I just got used to it as it was growing out. I suppose it can be a hassle sometimes, like when it's hot out." He shook his hand out of his hair and smeared it on the leg of his trousers.

Al scowled. "That's gross! Use a rag! That's what we brought them for!"

"Nah, too much effort," Ed drawled, leaning on his arms in the dirt behind him.

"It'll ruin your clothes, and everyone will think you look like a bum."

"If you want it so bad, you run back and get them!"

The duffle bag was a mere stone throw away and the sight of it made Al's limbs feel like they were made of stone. He groaned and fell back onto the ground, and onto his hair again. His cry was made up of more than pain and frustration, and the excess came out in his actions. He rolled over, grabbing his hair and throwing it over his shoulder where it promptly landed in his mouth, leaving him spluttering to spit it back out. Furiously, he bunched it up, twisted it into a long rope, and finally imprisoned it there in his fist.

Ed sat frozen, watching him with wide, amused eyes. Al remembered his actions now as a tantrum, his scowl fading as his face flushed. Before, his anger triggered caution and fear in all but the hardiest of soldiers. The same expression of aggression was useless and immature now. Without his intimidating size and impervious skin, he felt like a little boy in a big boy's body, beating at the ground because he couldn't control his own feet. The worst part of it was, Ed saw him like that, too.

As if in response, the laughter faded in Ed's eyes. He scooted his feet under him, stood up and walked back to the bleachers, dragging open the duffle bag and shoving around the water bottles and materials until he came up with a handful of scraps. Al's eyes narrowed in recognition of the portent of the fragments.

"I don't need to do something easier," he said adamantly, scrambling to get back to his feet and prove his words. "I'm not hurt, or tired! I can go again."

"Relax, Al," Ed gestured impatiently, his eyebrows tweaking irritably. He held out the materials, a scattered collection of iron, steel, and strips of thick leather. "I was just gonna ask you to make me something I need."

"Something you need?" Al asked suspiciously. "Like the blanket you 'needed' at the hospital? Or the wheelchair you 'needed'–"

"Okay fine," Ed interrupted, waspish now. "It's for you. Happy now?" He shoved the materials at Al. "Just take them."

Reluctantly, Al took the pieces, feeling their shape and density by their weight. "What do you want me to make?" he asked as he carefully made his way to the bleachers.

"S'your choice." Ed sat a little ways off from Al and a step higher, setting his thick winter boots on the bench below him next to the materials Al laid out beside him. "Either a band, like the one I'm using, or a pair of scissors."

Infused with purpose, the pieces took form in Al's mind on opposing ends of the spectrum. Two pathways to solve his immediate problem – tie his hair back despite the way the band constantly pinched and pulled at the roots, or cut it off. Suck it up and deal with it, or run away from it.

"I'm keeping it," Al said, looking up at his brother with fierce determination.

"Why?" Ed sounded utterly bewildered.

Al blinked at him. "Well… why do you keep it?" he stammered.

Ed shook his head. "It doesn't matter. It's not my problem. But it's bugging you, and you always hated having anything on your head, so why should you keep it anyway?"

"I…" Faced with that kind of commonsense logic, his desire to keep it didn't seem reasonable; he didn't even really like it, actually. Unlike Ed's thicker, wavy locks, Al's were thin and dull, brittle in their straw-like, dehydrated texture. But the idea of taking a pair of scissors to it was an insult. "It's a part of me," he mumbled, his face reddening again.

"That's ridiculous." It was just like him, sneering like that. Belittling and cruel. Al stared belligerently at the materials as Ed continued. "You never had it long as a kid."

"I'm not a kid anymore," Al muttered darkly.

The laugh in Ed's voice was hard to ignore. "Is that what this's about?"

"Stop teasing, Ed," Al said sharply. "It's not a nice thing to do."

"Stop being such an idiot."

"I'm not an idiot!"

The laughter was quickly dying in Ed, much to Al's pleasure. He needed Ed angry. The mental effort of constraining age into words... this physical activity he could do. Not run, or even walk for any notable distance, much less spar against his older brother. But he could fight him.

"Yeah, you are!" Ed shouted, planting his feet hard on the bench above. His metal leg sent the wood reverberating under Al's hands. "It's just stupid hair! If you cut it off, it won't keep getting stuck everywhere! Do you have any idea how hard it was to untangle that mess from the door handle?"

"Of course I do, I was there." Al's anger was flat but trembled with fragile control. "I thought you were the expert in how to fix simple hair problems, but you just chop stuff off when it's too much effort, huh?"

"That was just a suggestion! It's not like I could use alchemy to get it loose!"

"And whose fault is that?"

Something shifted in Ed's eyes, like he'd touched a live wire. They darkened. His hands, innocuously swaddled in black gloves, clenched into fists on his knees. "What's that s'posed to mean?" he spat.

"It doesn't matter," muttered Al.

"Oh yeah? If it doesn't matter, just cut it off, or tie it back! Quit copying me and get your own style!"

"I would never copy a messy, careless person like you!"

Somewhere in the middle of this, the two had gotten to their feet. Staring each other down, each leaning forward against invisible barriers, bristling with falsely aimed rage. The afternoon sun blinded Al as he barrelled on, squinting at Ed.

"You never care about yourself at all! You take your body for granted! You don't drink your milk, or shower, or change your clothes! No leg? So what? 'I'm Edward Elric and I don't need to keep my promises'!"

Amid the overwhelming flood in his soul, a flotsam emerged. A conviction, deep in his bones that this, all of this – being here, on this gym track, in the sun – it was too soon.

But what was that reed of awareness against the onslaught? It was as though Al couldn't find the brakes. The pain in his body from the fall and the nausea that seemed to have made a permanent home in his stomach fed his momentum.

"We swore we'd get our bodies back. But you don't care anymore. You're happy living with an automail leg forever and that makes you the idiot!"

The scent of victory left Al intoxicated; he revelled in the adrenaline-flavored moment. He had wanted to storm off and thereby seal the fight in his favor, but he was beaten to it. Ed looked stunned, his mouth slackening into a brief expression of pain. There were lines in his face Al never saw before, and he seemed battered. A fortress held together by struts.

"Ed?"

The echo of his automail leg striking hollowly against the bleacher as he stepped down continued some time afterwards. The bob of his braid escalated as Ed's steps turned into a run. Al staggered after him. "Brother!"

It was no use. A brisk breeze sent goosebumps up Al's arms, dissolving the last remnants of his anger in a puff of smoke. He felt sick. Yesterday, Ed tried to transmute the colonel's uniform in retaliation to an ill-timed remark that included the words "microscopic" and "out of reach". Remembering him standing there, confused and humiliated, Al refelt the thrill of vicarious embarrassment and pity, now mixed with self-disgust. Al took pride in being known as the more temperate, level-headed and kind of the two Elric brothers but after his cruel words he didn't deserve any of it. He was the worst, a curse of a brother who cost his older brother years of his life, his arm and now finally his alchemy along with any hope of getting his last missing limb back. And then he chastized him for it!

All because Al wanted everyone to stop treating him like the slightest draft would blow him out the nearest window. Especially Ed. Ed was a strong, bullheaded, dramatic young man, with endless reserves of unadulterated nerve and get-up-and-go, and the best older brother in the world, but gosh darn it, he was driving Al crazy with all that hovering. But, that's what older brothers do, Al reminded himself bitterly. He kicked himself for being a hypocrite, worrying away about how Ed was coping without the alchemy that defined his being from the time he was a toddler (by not dealing with it, the stubborn idiot).

Fatigue and breathlessness forced him to sit back down beside the scattered alchemical materials. His foot pressed down on something soft. The lone sock. "I'm sorry, brother," he whispered, picking it up. The softness of the weathered material told Al it had once been an expensive piece of garment. He set it down beside him, clapped, and touched the crinkled fabric, repeating the action until all the bits of dirt, leaves, and body matter were separated and discarded. If only it was as easy to separate his horrible words from the past.

When Ed finally returned, having kicked every locker resolutely through the long, abandoned gym halls, he found Al seated where he left him, looking contrite and very tired.

"Brother, I'm so—"

"It's gonna get dark soon," Ed quickly interjected, putting on as cheerful a tone as he could to let Al know the fight was over and forgotten. Sure, Al was being unreasonable all day insisting on coming out here, but he was also just realizing that bodies are pretty uncomfortable things and he probably didn't even know that he was tired or hungry or hot. Besides, Ed was no saint either. He'd probably done something to deserve it and Al had come around like he usually did so problem solved!

"Guess we should head back to the hospital," Al agreed readily, still sounding a little penitent but also relieved. Ed swung the duffle bag over his shoulder while Al rose shakily to his feet and the two set off at a slow stroll to the main gate.

"Brother?"

Ed made a sound of acknowledgement.

He felt Al's thin, warm hand in his briefly. When the boy pulled away, he left behind a soft, bright red cloth.

"It reminded me of your coat," Al said quietly, as if he expected a bad reaction. "I'm pretty sure it's cashmere."

Ed stared at the sock. "It's the exact same red," he agreed. "Cashmere, huh? Who would be insane enough to shell out the cen for smelly feet? Oh, you know what? I just thought of someone..."

Al let out a little laugh. "The colonel would never spend that much money on a pair of socks."

"Yeah, you're right. He'd probably trick some poor unsuspecting woman into getting them for him. Must be plushy, walking on cashmere."

"I cleaned it, so you could wear it. If you want to."

Al's half-downcast eyes glanced up to check Ed's reaction. Under that sad little look, Ed didn't have the heart to share his disgust with the idea. Instead, he promptly sat on the ground, pulled his right shoe off, and drew the sock over his toes.

"It feels like... like a cloud," Ed exclaimed, eyes widening at the luxurious softness enveloping his foot.

Al grinned, pleased with the response. "Do we have to go back to the hospital right away?" he asked after a moment's silence.

Ed frowned. After all that, it seemed Al was still bent on straining himself. "I guess not," he relented cautiously. "Why?"

"There's a barber on Palace Square Lieutenant Havoc told me about, when he arrived at the hospital yesterday."

The grin was only on Ed's face for a second before he schooled his expression into careless nonchalance. "Sure, guess we could drop in."

Al pretended his legs didn't hurt, that the butterflies in his stomach was from his vertigo and not nerves, and most definitely that he was not fighting the urge to hug his brother for the simple delight in Ed's voice.