Alphonse couldn't immediately start on work like he wanted to. Miss Schmidt got him up at the crack of dawn each morning, fed him breakfast, and sent him out into the fields with her husband and nephew. The hours until Miss Schmidt finished her work inside the house and started breakfast were filled with hard labour in the hot, late August sun. Al's blisters on the first day of work were so bad that he had to wear gloves to pick up a fork. His body wasn't used to all of this hard work yet, and so it was probably not good for his weakened muscles to jump right into it, but Miss Schmidt didn't know that. Al wasn't going to tell her.

Miss Schmidt might have needed help with her fields, but her husband and nephew were built like Briggs bears, and seemed to had done quite well before Al was in the picture. No, she could've had him stay inside and sleep and they'd have gotten the same amount of work done.

With the combination of Miss Schmidt's austere personality and Al's...situation, Al guessed that Miss Schmidt wanted the hard work to distract him from his grief. Yes, That was probably her reason.

The hoe slipped from Al's sweat-slicked hands once more, and raked against his angry, healing blisters. Al hissed a noise of pain. The blisters certainly looked better, but they certainly didn't feel better.

Al frowned at the painful blisters. He wished he had asked for those gloves Mister Schmidt and Adam had donned; it would saved him a lot of pain.

Al rewrapped his hands into the cotton of his shirt and resumed digging the hoe into the ground.

Miss Schmidt called them into lunch when the sun was at its highest in the sky. Al welcomed the break from being baked like a Winter Solstice turkey as he stepped into the shady, cool house. He took in a great breath of air, smelling the food waiting for the three men in the kitchen. Was that…beef?

Miss Schmidt ushered them inside.

"If I let all of this cool air out because of you-" Miss Schmidt threatened, shutting the door behind them with a snap. Adam nodded and laughed, though upon catching a glimpse of Miss Schmidt's coolly composed face, reconsidered and turned it into a cough. Al thought that was a wise decision on his part.

"Thank you for lunch, Miss Schmidt."

"Thanks, dear."

"Yeah, Auntie."

"Well, don't let it get cold!"

The three men each took turns serving themselves some of Miss Schmidt's famous spiced beef. Based on the smell alone, Al could tell it would be delicious. Right on time, his stomach gave a loud, empty growl, and Al prepared to dig in. Just as he speared a piece of it on his fork, Miss Schmidt cleared her throat and asked him something he wished she hadn't.

"Al, what were you and your brother doing while you were away?" Miss Schmidt said, quiet, though with just enough force to make all the men pause.

Al hesitated. Should he tell her? No, brother wouldn't want him to. Brother wasn't here, though. Miss Schmidt had been so kind- but would she be kind after she learnt what they had done?

"I mean, you come back thin as a rail and your brother's… passed on." Miss Schmidt. "I apologise. I shouldn't be asking you this after...my curiosity got the better of me."

Adam, Mister Schmidt, and Miss Schmidt were all peering at him now, though Adam and Mister Schmidt with more curiosity than concern. Al fidgeted in his seat, tugging at the hem of his shirt.

You owe her.

"No, I…" Al fidgeted a bit more, and glanced over at Mister Schmidt and Adam. "I'd…"

You trust her.

"Rather not?" Mister Schmidt piped up in his gruff voice, fork still barely a centimetre from his mouth.

She won't tell anyone.

"No, Richard." Miss Schmidt said to him, her strong eyes still focused on Al. "Adam, Richard, you can finish your lunch in the sitting room."

She trusts you.

"But, Auntie-"

"And you will close the door." She finished, sending an austere glance Adam's way. Richard nodded and stood, while it took a bit for Adam to realise what she had asked.

"Go on, Adam." Miss Schmidt waved him away to her homey sitting room, and as soon as she was sure that the door had shut soundly, Miss Schmidt turned to face him.

Miss Schmidt motioned for him to continue eating. Al didn't feel hungry anymore, and even if he wanted to, his hands were now clamped together so tightly in his lap for it seemed unlikely he would relax them for several years.

"Al, if you truly don't want to tell me, it is perfectly alright. I can call Adam and Richard back in here if you want me to."

"No." Al said. Miss Schmidt's crow's-lined eyes widened for half a second, but then softened. She laid her outstretched arm back onto the table.

"You can start when you feel ready." Miss Schmidt murmured, leaning back into her chair.

"If I start when I'm ready, I'll never tell you." Al replied. The slightest hint of a weak laugh was in his voice, though this was soon extinguished like a candle flame on a windy night.

Al cleared his throat and picked at his shirtsleeves. He scratched at the table and his hands. Once he had made his third sweep of all of the room's exits, he braved himself to stare into Miss Schmidt's eyes. When he did begin, his voice was hollow and distant.

"My mother died in 1904 from a plague. I was four years old. My...broth- Edward was five years old. We were too young."

At the very mention of his mother, Miss Schmidt's arms uncrossed, and she leaned forward, her face almost pained.

Behind the sitting room door, ears pressed as flatly to the wood as was possible, Adam and Mister Schmidt chewed at their lunch and listened with rapt attention.

His mother's death. Hohenheim's disappearance and its effect on what was to happen. And…

"His notes. There were huge stacks of them. Books, booklets- I imagine there were thousands of pages. We were only interested in one of the subjects he covered, and that was human transmutation."

The phrase didn't register with Miss Schmidt. She cocked her head, slightly befuddled, and quirked an eyebrow.

"Namely, bringing the dead back to life."

It took a few moments. Only when Alphonse saw horror dawning in her eyes and every drop of colour in her skin draining and leaving it paper-white was he sure that she understood.

"Oh, Alphonse, you didn't."

Al was going too smoothly to stop now."We found a teacher and we learnt everything we needed. Our dad had alchemy notes, we had money to buy...ingredients, and the training to do such a thing. We were ready to bring our mother back."

Miss Schmidt was now staring down at the wooden table, hands clapped over her mouth.

"The thing we brought back wasn't human. And it wasn't even our mother."

Al swallowed thickly. "Equivalent exchange cost my brother his arm and his leg. I lost my body. For four years, I was a soul bonded to a suit of armour."

She stood up from her chair after he finished his sentence, and began to pace the room, completely silent. Al didn't stop.

"We were searching for something to get my body back the entire time we were gone. The legendary philosopher's stone was our main goal- until we found out it was made from human lives."

Miss Schmidt gasped aloud behind him. He heard her brace herself against an endtable. He didn't know if he should stop or keep going, and certainly didn't want Miss Schmidt to collapse. For several seconds, he was uncertain, until Miss Schmidt urged him to go on.

"We uncovered a conspiracy while we were searching."

Telling her would put her in danger. She would have to swear to not tell anyone.

"Miss Schmidt, if I tell you this part, it could put you in danger."

She rounded the table and sat across from him. Instead of covering her eyes again, she grasped the hands he had placed on the tabletop a few seconds ago, and fixed him with a stare.

"Alphonse. I need to know so I can help you. I can swear not to let anyone else know, but I still need to know."

So Al told her. He told her about the homunculi, their powers, the deaths, his brother's epiphany, the war in Ishval, Father, the upper levels of the military, and the Promised Day. Miss Schmidt was quiet for his entire monologue, until he mentioned that his brother had brought him back from the Gate.

"Wait," She held up a hand to halt him. "If your brother reclaimed his arm, and you reclaimed your body, where is Edward? I thought he passed on."

Al's hands tightened around hers. They tightened almost painfully so. Dead, flat golden eyes bore into his once again, and he was back in that courtyard. His elbows were painfully angular, his hair was long. Horrible adrenaline spiked its rushing embrace around his thin chest and through his skeletal limbs.

"Alphonse?"

Miss Schmidt's voice brought Al back to the present. Only once he registered her concerned expression and sweating hands did he realise he had zoned out again, lost in terrible memories.

"I'm sorry, Miss Schmidt." He stopped to ready himself. This was where it all fell apart. Here, in his memory, is where it all became tinted with sombre grey. "My brother isn't dead."

He cleared his throat and began again. "My brother isn't dead. The homunculus Pride...stole his body. I don't know where he is, I don't know what he's doing. He could be murdering innocent people or trying to fix Father's mistakes. I wouldn't be any the wiser. Now, Winry's missing, Auntie Pinako is dead, and I'm all alone."

Miss Schmidt let go of his hands. "You want to go to that house again, don't you."

Al nodded.

"I can't stop you. Just promise me that you'll go after today's work is finished, alright?"

Miss Schmidt didn't mention it again, and so Al was out for the next several hours, hoeing a small patch of dirt behind the house. He didn't know why they made him hoe this dirt. They didn't plant anything in the late summer, except maybe lettuce and certain herbs. Mister Schmidt put him to work harvesting apples and potatoes until sunset. When Mister Schmidt and Adam went inside to get dinner, Al went upstairs to get his borrowed knapsack, and set off down the road on a course for the empty Rockbell house.

The familiar, cheery yellow face of the Rockbell house loomed out of the red sunset. Rather than a familiar home for friends and a resting place for visits, the only emotion Al felt rise up in him was foreboding. Anything could jump out of the darkening shadows at any second, and Al didn't have the advantage of being virtually invincible anymore. His body was flesh now, flesh that could be hurt, and now any danger was magnified tenfold.

Al placed his hand on the burnished gold doorknob and turned.

He was instantly greeted with the thick smell of must and overbearing darkness, like a blindfold over his eyes, suffocating and overbearing. The generator had been cut off months ago because no one paid the electric bill, and Al thought this only served to make the house more sinister in the late evening sun.

Al flicked on his torch and ventured further inside. In the living room, a fiery red glow from the setting sun lit the dusty floorboards in dim, smouldering squares. He suppressed a shudder as he passed the workshop and pitch-black staircase. He didn't want to go upstairs. Not where Granny Pinako had died.

There was nothing out of place in the workshop, or in the sitting room, though Al noted that rotten dough of some sort speckled the sofa's green cushions. He couldn't know what caused that, so he filed the observation in the back of his mind for later.

In the kitchen, the sink was piled with dishes, and the rubbish bucket filled with rotting food and scraps of paper. The kitchen table had a plate filled with rotting food, and with a close once-over that ended with Al's gag reflex being triggered, he identified the molding remains as bacon, eggs, and toast. The fork was missing, embedded into the wall by the breakfast chair Ed sat in, which had been pushed back far away from the table, as if someone had risen suddenly. Winry's chair had fallen to the floor at a skewed angle. Had she jumped?

Al smiled a little at the image of Winry crouching on her chair like a frog and leaping out of it, hands extended and ready to attack.

He followed a trail of shoe skid marks to the foyer, where they came to an abrupt stop only a metre from the door. No sign of forced entry, Al observed. Directly in front of this final skid mark was the single droplet of blood, and then the gouges in the floor and walls. Someone had violently struggled against something right where Al was standing.

He crouched right on top of them and ran a finger down the length of a particularly deep one. Underneath his blistered fingertip, a small sliver of something creamy white was brushed out of the gouge. Al held it up close to his eyes between thumb and forefinger, examining it from all angles.

This is a fingernail! Al realised. Why is it- oh.

Someone had ripped their nails through the floor.

Al remembered something like this. Actually, two somethings like this. Two somethings that involved screaming, philosopher's stones, and people he knew and loved.

Ling shrieking and scrabbling at the hard stone floor of Father's lair. Brother screaming and scraping at the the courtyard's bricks.

Ice crept in around his core, freezing his stomach rock solid.

Auntie Pinako was killed by a single slit through her head.

No.

Brother's place at the table was set.

It's not possible.

Winry was missing.

There's no way.

The hands raking through the wood were Winry's white work-calloused ones. The hair spilling over the scarred floor were long blond waves. A glowing carmine pulse beat through all of her veins to the rhythm of her exploding-pounding heart. The screams piercing the air were Winry's shrill shrieks. Above her, stoic and cold, Ed's body and Pride's eyes stared down without a trace of a reaction. Only a hungry flash of something akin to sadistic pleasure or pride shone.

Al reared back and hit a wall. Every noise was suddenly so loud, he could hear the creaks in the floorboards, he could see the world tilting sideways and careening every which way, his knees became water, and darkness rushed in.

Alphonse collapsed to the floor amidst long gashes in a quickly darkening foyer and didn't stir for several hours.

_000_

I love doing this to my cinnamon bun,,,