Al likes to stare out the window. He's not really seeing Munich, this strange place a little like every big city he ever visited in Amestris but dimmer, dirtier. When his brother calls him on it, Al smiles in reassurance. He's fine. He just has to figure things out. It's strange, having two sets of memories for the same years, but he's sorting it out. Slowly.
When he was ten, he transmuted his mother.
When he was eleven, he played in the grass with Den, laid on his back and watched the clouds with a warm dog body pressed up against his side (where his brother should have been). He shoves Den away when the canine inches close enough to breathe in his face, laughing and crying out with false disgust.
When he was eleven, he held the handlebars to a wheelchair he didn't feel, could only see his large leather glove-hands wrapped around incongruously delicate handles. He can't feel the breeze that moves the grass like an ocean and creates a soft, sweet melody with the leaves in the trees. He can't feel the sun that reflects bright and beautiful off his brother's gold hair.
When he was twelve, he had his ass handed to him by his teacher (again). She is older than he remembers, and sicker, but still loud and angry and loving—tough love, but he doesn't mind, because she helps him salve his bruises afterwards. They don't talk about the glaring absence, but sometimes he sees her staring at the second bed in his room with her dark eyes shadowed, and knows exactly what she's thinking.
When he was twelve, he was following his brother, red coat flapping with his quick pace, the stark black of the Flamel cross as good as any guide. His brother, who with a flash of a silver pocket-watch becomes either hated or falsely adored, with no middle ground. His brother, who can transmute without an array because of whatever unspeakable horrors he'd seen within the Gate, horrors he still dreams about at night. His brother, who won't let himself be a child because he'd made a promise, a promise that no child can keep.
When he was thirteen, he watched a violet crack open in the sky above Liore. Dull steel armor suits fall out, and he fights fire with fire with a clap of his hands, gloved in white cotton. He opens the Gate with the lives of creatures who should never have lived in the first place and his brother shoots through, followed by unimaginable horrors. He watches his brother disappear into the metal guts of the flying machine, just a twist of brown fabric and gone, and decides he will not be left behind this time, not again.
When he was thirteen, he held his brother back from murdering Lt Col Mustang (again), trying to ignore the thrashing and screamed threats. Mustang has an expression of tolerant amusement twisting his lips into a smirk, which doesn't help his brother's temper, but he thinks it is good that his brother can still act like a kid sometimes, about some things.
When he was fourteen, he looked over a strange city in another world, and thought how much it was like traveling in Amestris, only less awkward. He doesn't run across people who ask after his brother, doesn't ask them questions about his brother in return. But it's better now. Nowhere in Amestris really felt like home, not the Rockbell house in Rizenbool, not his teacher's house in Dublith. His brother hadn't been there. But Munich, this city of smoke and coal fires and skyrocketing food prices and doppelgangers—this city finally feels like home.
When he was fourteen, he looked over a strange city in yet another far-flung corner of Amestris, following yet another hint of a lead to the Philosopher's Stone. The desert is hot around him: he knows because his brother is wet from his own sweat and complaining of thirst; he knows because he can see waves of heat rising from the metal of his armor body. But it's okay. His brother is with him, and for Edward, Al can do anything, suffer anything—as long as he's with his brother.