Al's scared, sometimes. But he'd never tell his brother that.
Al wonders what it's like to feel the rain on his skin, cool solace on a sticky summer day. He wonders what it's like to feel scorching hot desert sand, grass squished beneath toes, sun bright on his face. He tries his darnedest not to watch as Ed scarfs down dinner, some scrumptious noodle dish Gracia Hughes made as they crash at the Hughes' house tonight.
As Ed's right arm, the automail one, clangs against the table, Al wonders what it's like to feel pain.
He reaches down, deep down into the innermost reaches of his mind, grasping for memories of a time when his body was whole. He rewinds back, past memories of State Alchemists and training with Teacher and poring over alchemy notes, and finally comes across his mother's smiling face.
(He can't remember her embrace, either. If Alphonse had tear ducts, he'd be choking back tears at the dinner table.)
Al doesn't realize he's been unusually silent until his brother's gaze flicks up to meet his, raised eyebrows asking 'what's up?' and molten gold eyes flecked with concern. Ed's expression changes in an instant, now reading 'You okay? We'll talk later.' before reverting into his normal, cheerful and obnoxious self. It's amazing, how well they can read each other. Al wonders if it's simply because they're brothers, or whether it's through all the hardships they endured that they gleaned the connection.
He also wonders why Ed didn't pick up the 'I feel like being alone and wallowing in my dark train of thought' in his expression. Maybe he just ignored it. Knowing Ed, Al wouldn't put it past him.
It's dark outside now. Ed crawls into bed, murmuring a sleepy "G'night, Al" before his eyes shut and in a few moments he's snoring. His brother must be pretty tired to forego his alchemy texts for sleep, Al reflects. When Ed's snoring dies down, Al spends a few minutes resting his metal head against the cool walls he can't feel, feigning sleep before finally calling it quits and clanking upright.
The midnight moon is his only solace during these nights, bathing streetlight-lit Central in eerie white-blue light. It's vanished tonight, leaving Alphonse alone with the shadows thrown by yellow lights from street lamps, and the occasional cat darting away through cracks and crevices, seeking solace beyond empty corners.
Al's always been a cat person, but their furry presence doesn't comfort him tonight. It's hard, the more he thinks about it and tries desperately not to, to yearn for the snuggles and warmth of a cat. Maybe that's why he's so down tonight.
But it's all too easy, when he starts to yearn for physical contact and all the other luxuries that come from having an actual body, to remember the blood whenever his brother fights to the brink of death, his screams from all those years ago when the automail connected to his nerves, the anguish in Ed's eyes whenever he takes out his pocket watch. Fullmetal Alchemist is engraved upon the metal, and Trisha Elric's face swims into view whenever he sees it.
Al watches Edward suffer, and wishes with all his soul (he doesn't have a beating heart anymore, does he?) that he could feel pain. He wishes he could suffer instead of Ed, and can't stand when Ed says that Al has suffered tenfold the amount he did, because in Al's mind, the opposite is true.
Deep down, Al wishes their mother survived, because maybe then Ed wouldn't have joined the military at twelve years of age, and maybe they'd be regular teenagers living with Winry in Resempool.
He shouldn't yearn for what he lacks, Al berates himself sternly. It's best to live with what you have, and work hard to earn your wants and deepest desires.
But it's the darkest of nights, such as this one, that Alphonse stares at the sky and wonders if he'll ever be human again.
Far away, standing before the Gate, Truth watches, a cruel sneer curving across his face, and laughs.