Ed woke to screaming and

"Al –"

jerked, tripped, fell out of bed before he even remembered to open his eyes, but it didn't matter,

"Al –"

he knew the way better disoriented in the middle of the night than he did during the day (two thrashing hops still tangled in his blankets and three half-sideways stumbles over the cold floor) and

"Al –"

his hands found Al as easy as touching his own nose in the dark and he didn't even notice the pain of his knees hitting the bedframe or the creak of the mattress dipping under his weight as his body scrambled to catch up with his hands –

"Al. Al, wake up, it's alright, you're alright, Al, wake up –"

He got his hands to either side of his little brother's face and the scream ripped up through his palms, tore its way into his chest and he'd give anything, anything to be able to bear this for Al, for Al not to have to feel this –

"You're right here, Al, you're in your body and I'm touching you, you can feel me, I'm here, you're here, wake up –"

A sharp breath like inhaling a knife and then Al was jerking upright, slamming into Ed's arms and Ed's chest with enough force to bruise and scrabbling desperately at Ed's back before he remembered how to make his human hands work.

And the first sob choked out like all his organs bursting inside him.

Al's fingers dug into his skin and Al's tears seared over his collarbone, down his chest, and Ed could only hold him, close and tight but not safe, never safe from this. Al didn't say anything, but Ed knew he wouldn't, knew there was nothing to say against the memory of someone bleeding out inside you, of dreaming a cat moving around in what should had been your stomach, but wasn't.

---

They went by Mustang's new office on their way to the train station ("I don't care how fragile you are, if you tell him this was my idea I'm going to – Al! Get back here, don't you dare, Al–!"), because they both felt guilty ("I do not.") about not saying goodbye the last time.

Not that it would have been goodbye, anyway; Ed had almost definitely known that it was going to work – and it wasn't like it was even their fault, Mustang had no right to be giving them that look. Al had been forgetting things for months, fuck, years, but Ed hadn't known until Al had looked at him scarfing down his breakfast one morning and asked in a curious voice, "Why do you do that?" like he'd been too hesitant to ask before but finally just couldn't help himself. And once Ed had looked, once he'd paid fucking attention, he'd noticed that Al was moving slower, stiffer and stilted, like – like he was a suit of armour that had never been meant to move by itself at all.

He would have clapped right then, used the array that had been hovering in the back of his mind since the Gate had had him the first time, but Al had grabbed his hands and begged, screamed at him in a high, frantic voice that came from nowhere, "No! Brother, stop, you can't – please, no, stop!"

So. A month, they'd decided – the best compromise they could come up with between I don't care, it can take what it wants, I'm not letting this happen and I don't want my body if you're going to die for it, you can't make me take it. They'd given up on the stone years ago, given up on any number of theories since, given up and given up and given up until they'd had to fall right back to basics almost a year ago in a hope to – have hope.

The work they'd started into self-perpetuating arrays – complicated, multi-layered concentric or spiralling circles that could feed the energy back into itself – was imperfect, too simple or too complicated or too limited or not limited enough (Ed didn't know what Mustang had been so damn pissy about; he'd rebuilt the building after he'd gotten out of the hospital), but it was the best they had. And Al was forgetting himself.

It was just luck, really, that Mustang had had to go politic-ing across the country three weeks later; Ed had spent every minute of those twenty-one days expecting the man to figure out what he was planning and call him into his office, give him that terrifyingly direct (honest) look and say, "You'll find another way." like he actually really believed that Ed could. And while Mustang was there and not here, Ed hadn't had to worry about having to look him in the eye and tell him that he actually really couldn't, that this was truly all that he was and the best he could do. Because he really wasn't sure that he could have, actually.

They'd found an abandoned place surrounded by nothing for miles, because they still hadn't quite figured out how to stop the build of energy without just interrupting the reaction. If Ed waited half a second too long there would be too much to channel into the second array, more complex than the first but held as sacred as Al's blood seal in the meet of his palms, and if he waited half a second not long enough, there simply wouldn't be the energy to complete the transmutation.

Except not completing the transmutation hadn't ever really been an option. So Ed had made a flippant comment to Fuery before they'd left about What if, because Ed was still about as subtle as a gas explosion and Fuery took everything at face value, at least until he'd had most of a morning to run it through his head.

And Al would have needed somebody if Ed had had to use the other array, the one that had been sitting behind his eyes like an axe waiting to fall since he was eleven.

He'd been almost definitely sure that he was going to have to, too, right from the moment he'd agreed not to (sitting sprawled against his brother's metal body being warmed by the sunlight his brother couldn't feel and eating a sandwich his brother had gone without for eight years, now). The last thing he'd expected was for their cobbled-together theory to work, to wake up a handful of days later in the hospital with Al – skin, nerves, pulse, Al – in the next bed, breathing like he'd never forgotten how. To wake up and have to face the gut-wrenching embarrassment of being found not just unconscious but naked, exposed and vulnerable like something the Gate had stripped, used, broken, and thrown out again.

But they were flesh, and alive, and flesh, and no one but Ed ever had to know that he'd spent a month thinking knowing he was going to die, thinking –

Nothing. It didn't matter.

He still couldn't quite believe it, anyway, even as they entered the office and were greeted by Havoc, sitting on the vacated secretary's desk like it was perfectly natural for him to be there. Even as Fuery perked up from his already attentive position standing to the side and Breda grinned from his casual slouch in the secretary's chair and Hawkeye offered them a completely unrestrained smile where she stood beside the inner door. They were alive. Al was alive, was flesh and blood and bone, and they'd gotten everything that they'd wanted.

– It was just that Ed hadn't really considered what would happen after they'd gotten everything they'd wanted. He'd woken up with a new arm and a new leg and every half-shift of air like agony and ecstasy on his skin; the nurse had touched his wrist and he'd screamed – fucking screamed – and thrown himself away so violently that he'd ripped his IV out of his other arm and his shoulderblades had bruised for days afterward.

Not Al, though. Al had had no feeling in his entire body, hadn't had a body not to feel with, and the first thing he'd done on waking was grab Ed's nervously hovering hand and yank him down onto his own white mattress and curl into Ed's body, bury his face in Ed's shoulder like they'd never lost anything at all.

And that was it. Al wanted to touch everything; he trailed his fingers over the bed, the wall, the door, the steadily turning wheel of his wheelchair. He never once flinched away from the nurses, or from Gracia, or from the touch of the sun on his skin. Al wanted to hug everyone goodbye; he threw his arms around Fuery (who turned bright red and flailed and stuttered a farewell back), and Havoc (who nearly choked on his unlit cigarette, but recovered enough to give him a slap on the back in return), and Breda (who caught on and tried to avoid his turn with a weak wave and a scratch of his head before resigning himself to Al's persistence with awkward grace), and Falman (who hugged Al back like it was the most natural thing in the world and said, "It's been an honour to know you, Alphonse," while everyone else just stared at him), and – still unhesitatingly – Hawkeye (who lingered with the warmest expression Ed had ever seen on her face and patted Al's shoulder firmly as she pulled away, as if that could disguise the brightness of her eyes), and Mustang (who smiled in that strange way Ed remembered from the hospital and murmured something that Ed couldn't hear), and he laughed the whole time like it was the best thing in the world. Then he crouched down to scratch Hayate in his turn, and the office turned to Ed. And looked at him.

Ed looked right back, and then glared, because Mustang was looking amused and Hawkeye was trying not to sigh and the others were shifting around like they couldn't decide whether to run or not, and Al was smiling, smiling, smiling because he could feel Hayate's coarse fur scritching under his fingers.

"Well," Mustang said, extending a hand before Ed could spit out something stupid just to break silence. And Ed wasn't grateful, wasn't – so what if the man had stuck out his left hand as well? – because there was a light in Mustang's eyes that made Ed's insides lurch and stumble into a confused hwa-? instead. "It's been a pleasure, Fullmetal. Try not to destroy too much of the country without us to keep an eye on you, hm?"

Bastard.

"Try not to pull a muscle doing your own dirty work, bastard." Ed parroted back as Al stood in his peripheral vision and sighed, real breath into real lungs, and the happiness just burst in Ed's chest, forced its way onto his face as the warmth spread all the way through him. So he found himself grinning at Mustang, adding, "And that's Ed to you," and tapping the man's naked palm with his own naked fingers.

He gave a flick of a wave over his shoulder as he turned to the door, and he was still smiling when they left.

---

"Good morning." Al greeted cheerfully as Winry came down the stairs, her eyes still half closed, hair everywhere and overlarge shirt hanging precariously off one shoulder.

"Ung." She grunted, fumbling a chair out from the table and all but falling into it. Al wasn't phased at all (he'd grown up with Ed) and kept on smiling as he placed a freshly poured cup of coffee in front of her. She made another indecipherable noise and downed the first half in two fat swallows.

Ed had to stop himself from falling to the floor and professing his eternal gratitude; firstly, because she would never let him hear the end of it if he did, and secondly, because he was just too stuffed to move. Al, unsurprisingly, hadn't wanted to go back to sleep after he'd ripped himself awake, and Ed had been too wired on unused adrenaline to try, so they'd come downstairs and had coffee sitting in exhaustion-sharp silence at the kitchen table. Until Al had jumped up from his empty second cup like he'd been scalded, and started making pancakes.

That had been a good two hours ago, and Ed felt like another bite would break the delicate balance between his stomach being grossly distended and actually exploding. Just the sight of the plate Al put in front of Winry made his insides roll dangerously.

"Would you like some more, brother?" Al asked innocently, and Ed hoped the pain didn't show on his face.

"Ah, no, I'm good." He managed. "Thanks, Al."

"You're welcome." Al chirped – chirped – and took Ed's plate with the bright flash of a smile, putting it with the rest of the dishes waiting beside the sink.

Ed sagged in his seat – god, he was going to have to lie down for a week, a month, he couldn't imaging moving ever again – and caught Winry's eyes on him, clear and intense and no longer tired at all. He shrugged in reply, meeting her glare with the best non-expression he could muster. If Al wanted her to know, Al would tell her. Shit, he didn't even talk to Ed, except when he was so hysterical that the words scrabbled up and out of him like puking cockroaches. Instead, he just... smiled, and made pancakes, and left them to glare and not-glare at each other while he washed the dishes and pretended he couldn't feel the tension heavy against his back.

Winry finally tore her gaze away and attacked her stack of pancakes like they had done her a very personal, very unforgivable wrong. Ed slumped down a little further. He just – what the hell was he meant to do? It wasn't supposed to be this – this silence, this space between them like they were strangers and didn't dare say any of the words they all knew were there. They'd reached their goal, shouldn't this part be easier...?

"Do we need anything in town?" He asked, loud and abrupt and ugly. The question was usually met with Winry's half-joking completely-serious warning, punctuated with a screwdriver to the head, to actually get what they needed in town, instead of just-so-happening to into the bookstore and coming back sans groceries with his nose stuck in a hundred year old copy of The Soul of Alchemy.

He'd never wished to be assaulted with heavy metal tools before, but he would have preferred it to this.

"Eggs." Al piped up abruptly like he hadn't noticed the pause at all. "And milk."

---

The last thing Ed expected was to walk back into the kitchen an hour later and see – Al and Winry. In front of the stove. Kissing.

He didn't think he'd made a sound but they jumped apart suddenly, jerking around to stare at him like he was the most horrifying thing they'd ever seen – and then Al's face was burning and he was looking embarrassed-but-pleased, and Winry was bright red and... guilty?

"Ed!" She squeaked – squeaked, like she wasn't the same girl who threw metal tools around like they were made of paper and performed horrific surgeries without so much as a blink – and her eyes were trying to meet his but kept sliding away before they quite could. "You – this isn't –" She fidgeted with the hem of her too-large shirt, shifted from one foot to the other and looked at everything, anything, as long as it wasn't Ed.

Ed... stared, mouth hanging partially open where some forgotten breath had abandoned him, and tried to think beyond Al and Winry and the image of them attached at the mouth in front of the stove (Al with one hand on her waist – not a kid's hand any longer, but a man's hand, large enough to curve around her from belly to back – and the other cupped around the back of her head, lost in the chaotic morning-tangle of wheat-gold, and Winry with her arms flung around Al's neck, dragging him down to meet her as her body bowed up into his –)

"I thought it was." Al said, his voice quiet and too steady.

Winry startled like she'd forgotten he was there, and the flush drained right out of her face.

"Al–"

"No." He interrupted, so vehemently that they all jumped. He took a deep breath, let it out, and when he continued, his teeth were gritted and his eyes were too bright and his voice cracked with trying not to break. "I thought it was and you just – I'm not a consolation prize, I'm not some – substitute that you can use just because we're similar enough that you can make do."

Winry looked like she'd been slapped and Ed felt like he'd been stabbed right through with an uneven tree branch. Because as Al turned away – as Al turned away, like he hadn't even when Ed had lost him his whole damn body – his eyes flicked to Ed's, and Ed saw – hurt, anger, betrayal. Resignation.

"Al –"

Her voice stopped him with his first foot on the stairs but he didn't look around, clutched the banister with white knuckles like he might collapse if he didn't.

"You don't get to play pretend with me just because I love you." He said, sounding so tired and defeated and Ed didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say that might make this better –

But Al had disappeared up the stairs already, his footsteps near-silent (because stomping was what Ed did), and the door closing with barely a click, (because Ed would have slammed it hard enough to make the house shake) – and that was just two of the tiny ways in which Al was better than him, had always been better than him, and, god, it was so obvious, why would Winry...?

... turn to look at him, with her eyes slightly red and her mouth held in a trembling-tight line and her eyes sick and miserable and oh god hopeful –

Ed opened his mouth, closed it, opened it – and no words came out, no sound at all. Winry stared back at him, eyes boring into his like they'd never had any trouble meeting them, and some new expression crept up under her skin, settled like a nervous shiver on her face – and crumpled, into a look he hadn't seen since she was newly orphaned and they were both too young to fix anything.

She pushed past him on the way out, hard enough to make him stumble back a step but not hard enough to send him into the wall like she usually would. The door slammed behind her (hard enough to make the house shake and send a jagged crack up the doorframe), and Ed just stood, staring blindly at the stove in the sudden yawning silence of the kitchen and wondering what the hell had just happened.

After a moment (two? Two thousand?) Ed stirred, moved toward the stairs – only to stop when something crunched sharply beneath his bare foot. He blinked out of his daze and looked down – at the shattered mess of what had been a carton of eggs and a bottle of milk.

---

"Ed," was the first thing out of Mustang's mouth when they saw each other again, while Ed was still not-quite-open-mouthed staring and holding a bread roll halfway to his mouth.

"Uh." He said intelligently, and then, "Ah," lowering his breakfast and feeling ridiculously embarrassed. "Mustang. Hey."

An almost imperceptible pause, long enough for Ed to wonder if he had something on his face (or, when Mustang's eyes flicked down, his fly undone), and then the man replied, "Hey yourself." with one eyebrow quirked upward in a familiar way and a tone that gave no hint of the mockery that Ed knew should be there. "When did you get back to Central?"

Um.

"A. Couple of months."

"Really?" He tipped his head in the direction Ed had been going and – they fell into step together, like they always found each other outside the market after two years of no contact at all. "And Alphonse as well?"

"Uh, yeah." Ed struggled to think, to come up with something other than the dazed what the hell? that was ricocheting back and forth inside his head and scrambling his brains a little more with every pass.

It didn't help that Mustang – the bastard – seemed to accept Ed's presence with barely a pause. What the hell was wrong with the man? When Ed expected him to shrug and say it's only Fullmetal, he showed up and yelled at Ed for not asking him (not anyone, him specifically) for help. Yet when Ed expected to get that furious look (not hurt, that was stupid, Mustang would never be hurt because of him), when Ed had been arguing with that look in the back of his mind for more than half a year and knew every reason why his actions didn't need defending – the man just asked Really? in a genuinely inquiring tone, and Ed didn't know any more what the hell he was supposed to think.

"We got this dump of a place, fixed it up." He blurted, desperate to shut himself up before he said something else. He wasn't in the military any more, he didn't have any reason to feel bad just because he didn't announce himself all over Central, he didn't owe the bastard anything – "Al an' Winry've been doing this stuff with automail for a while, trying to make it better – less invasive, more sensitive, shit like that. It was taking ten times longer to get anything real done, though, 'cause of the distance, so they figured it'd be worth a bash to set up here. Turns out a couple of places had to close without a war to keep 'em in patients, and Winry apparently wasn't exaggerating 'bout Rockbell Automail being famous, so."

So, Ed was babbling like an idiot. So.

"And you?" Mustang asked with a glance, calm and composed and curious like Ed wasn't falling all over himself inside. "You don't sound like you're doing the 'automail thing'."

"Me?" The startled question fell out of his mouth before he could stop it, and he snapped his mouth shut, fixed his gaze on the footpath passing under his feet. He used to scream at this man over his desk at least once a week, just talking shouldn't be so hard.

He shrugged, after a moment, but he kept his eyes on the grey illusion of movement as he spoke. "I don't have the patience for it – didn't even know how the stuff worked when I had it. Al's got me looking into alternative materials, trying to make something that can at least fake bein' organic, 'cause what moron thought metal was a good thing to attach to your body in the first place, right? And our neighbour seems to think I'm her personal fixit boy or something, but other than that I mostly just stay outta the way – do the shopping." He hefted the bags slightly (paper, but he'd alchemised handles into them so he could hold them in one hand and eat with the other, not that that was going very well) and tilted his head to flash a grin – and nearly tripped on his own feet when an answering expression flicked up the corners of Mustang's mouth. "What about you, anyway?" Shit, did that sound as abruptly too-quick as he thought it did? He took a breath, forced the next words to come out with something like calm. "You're not in the line up to rule the world."

That eyebrow again, but this time Ed recognised the rest of the expression, too, and instead of the relief he'd expected, he wanted to punch the man. Not because of the old, childish frustration, not because that look still had the power to make him feel barely an inch high, but because how dare he –

"Ah, well." Mustang said, still in that surreal facile tone, and Ed realised he'd been glaring, jerked his eyes away to make himself stop. "No, I'm not."

And that seemed to be all, and Ed couldn't quite decide whether to be annoyed for the typical evasion or relieved that the only thing that had changed was him – but then Mustang turned his head so they were half meeting each other's eyes and gave him a long, considering look that slid all the way down Ed's spine, and Ed knew he should have been relieved.

Mustang turned away again and said, "I've found that there are certain advantages in not running the entire country." as if he hadn't just – looked at him. "As Defence Minister, I have nearly exclusive control of the military and a considerable vote in foreign affairs. I also have a great deal of influence in the alchemy sector, because I'm the highest ranked alchemist. If I were Prime Minister, I'd have to defer to my Ministers and submit to a vote every time I wanted to–" small, conspiratorial smile just out of the corner of his eye that made Ed's stomach tighten "–skip out early for lunch. The chance that I'd be assassinated would increase rather dramatically, and I would have to sign my name at least ten times more often than I do now, which is already ten times too many, in my opinion."

"... Should'a known you'd do anything to avoid doing actual work."

"Well." Mustang said again, looking at Ed sidelong with bright, unreadable eyes. "It is my life at risk."

The laugh jumped out of him without any warning at all, and it would have startled him into something embarrassing, except in that moment it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

It wasn't until the next moment that Ed realised he'd just laughed with Mustang, and the what the hell? pinged off the front of his skull.