Alphonse holds the photo album on his lap, staring at the pictures. It belongs to Winry, her neat and girlish script beneath each picture telling him what it is he's looking at. He stares hard at the picture of Edward, his eyes moving over every line of his brother's half turned profile. The blond hair, so long and thick in its braid. The strong line of the jaw that has long since lost its baby fat. The thin lips, set in a straight line. Up the nose to the eyes, golden and large and hard as amber. Al remembers those eyes soft and mischievous, remembers those lips as smiling. Al's eyes move away from the face, down, a lump of fear squeezing around his heart.
He hesitates on the hollow of Ed's throat, fixing in his mind the way the smooth arch of his brother's clavicles meet at that soft and vulnerable spot. And then his eyes move, without his telling them to, and seek out the place where flesh turns to steel. He chokes as he traces the line of the scars at Ed's shoulder, and the way the edge of the automail port is as smooth and cold looking as the edge of a razor.
This is his brother. This yellow haired teenager with the automail limbs. Al struggles to remember, trying to superimpose this photograph over the brother of his memories. But all he can remember is soft skin and bright eyes and wide smiles. This handsome young man in the picture is like a stranger. And Al wonders, sometimes, with an idle distraction, why his eyes linger on Ed's throat or the sweep of Ed's hair. Why he likes to look at his brother so much. It goes deeper than a need to remember, deeper than a desire to connect the photo with the reality. It goes deep into places that Al is only dimly aware of, places he won't understand for another year as his body only beginning to turn to adulthood. All he knows is that he cannot remember life with Ed, and he does not like being without him, and wants above all things to reach out in the night and feel his brother beside him.
Al's eyes drop to the label of the picture. 'Ed' is all it says, and he knows that it is. He's heard the stories over and over, repeated again and again in hopes of triggering his memory. But nothing comes. All he can remember is Ed reaching out to him, Ed calling his name, Ed screaming for him.
And Ed is gone. Al has heard teacher and Rose talking about it, as he lays in his room pretending to sleep. He lays awake and presses his ear to the wall, listening through the thin wood.
"He gave up his life to save Al," he has heard Rose explain, and it makes his heart skip a beat and grow leaden. Because Ed can't be gone. Even though Rose and teacher think Ed has traveled to the place where everyone must go when their life is ended, he cannot accept it. Al remembers promises, whispered in the dark, promises to never leave one another's side. And Ed has never broken a promise, not that Al can remember. And so he will not accept that his brother is gone to a place he cannot return from.
Al will find his brother again, no matter what.
Edward holds the old book on his lap, staring at the unfamiliar equations. The book belongs to his father, hand written notes scribbled in the margins giving hint to its frequent use. The scribbled notes are the only things helping Ed to understand what it is he's reading, and even they are puzzles themselves. The alchemy of this world is different than what he's familiar with.
He wonders if Al is alright. He wonders if Al is human and whole. And he wonders what Al looks like, if he's grown now, seventeen as he should be. Ed cannot paint a picture in his mind of what his brother should look like now. He imagines him tall and lean, with warm brown eyes and rounded cheeks. Al, he imagines, will never lose all of his baby fat. He wonders what it will be like, to throw his arms around his brother and hold him closely.
He has been here, in this strange world of machines and machinery, for too long now. He still has trouble sleeping, the bedroom too small and too empty. He wakes in the night and looks for Al, but Al isn't there. There is nothing but bare floor and a book shelf and a cluttered desk, shadows in the darkness. It doesn't feel right.
He wants to go home. He knows that this is his half of the exchange, that to bring Al back he had to lose something. He wishes, as he sits on the edge of his bed and frowns down at the strange equations, that he had just died. To die would be better than to be like this, breathing but not living. But the higher the thing you receive, the higher the price that must be paid. Ed has never thought that there is any price higher than life, but now he knows. He has lost everything, and must live with the loss. A price that can never be paid in full, taking its toll with every waking moment.
But it is worth it, Ed decides. For Al, anything is worth it. And Ed is practical. As long as he is alive there is a chance that he can return to his brother. He has passed through the gate twice now. He can pass through it once more. He cannot accept that he will never see his brother again, that he will never touch his brother's warm skin.
Ed remembers being young. He remembers laying like puppies in the lower bunk, tangled and twisted and heaped upon one another. He wonders what it would be like now. He lays in bed at night and he longs for Al. And he wonders, sometimes, why it is in the late of night that he misses his brother the most. But he does not wonder for long, because he is eighteen and he understands the dreams that wake him at night, the dreams in which he calls his brother's name.
But that isn't important. He knows his father has said it is impossible, that there is no returning from this place. But Ed knows that Al is out there, on the other side of the gate, waiting for him.
Ed will return to his brother, no matter what.