Notes: This is the English version of a fic I initially wrote in French, "Seul". Thanks to bard-linn for the great and thorough beta!

Alone

Al emerged slowly from unconsciousness. He felt bruised and numb, as if he had been violently thrown to the ground. Opening his eyes was so hard… He couldn't manage it yet. Everything was silent. Was it morning? Why had Mother not come to wake him? No, wait, Mother had died several years ago. So, Master? Or Brother?

Brother!

He remembered now. He and Brother had promised each other to bring Mother back to life and they had chosen last night, in Resembool, far from their Master's wrath, to put their plan into operation. He couldn't tell how long it had been since they had tried the transmutation.

Brother had guaranteed that everything would be fine, speaking with characteristic determination and assurance which gave Al the feeling that nothing was impossible for his brother. And, indeed, everything had been fine. At the beginning.

Then Al's memories became blurred, a vague sensation of little black hands – hands? – which were grabbing him, and then… nothing. He must have fainted. He had fainted when Brother had needed him! Brother was screaming at that moment, and even if Al did not remember exactly what he had said, the younger Elric knew his voice had been full of terror.

Worried and about to panic, Al jumped to his feet despite the protests of his numb body – as if it had not moved for years! – and looked around him. But he had not expected what he saw. Instead of their house, he was standing in a huge ballroom, richly ornate and completely empty.

No sign of the familiar furniture, of the ingredients they had gathered to bring back Mother… and of Brother. There was an array on the floor, but very different from the one he had drawn with his brother. The pattern did not look like anything he knew, but he found it disquieting nonetheless. Half-blinded by panic, Al wandered all over the room calling his brother. At a certain point he realized he was naked, but the information barely registered in his mind, as the whole situation was too weird to be fully seized.

Al gave up finding a comforting presence or an explanation in that place, and went out hoping to see someone, anyone, to break the agonizing immobility and silence that started to drive him mad. But the sight of the buried and empty city did nothing but echo his feelings; houses overlapped each other as if they had been piled up in a hurry, like the thoughts that were rushing in his head and were threatening to make it explode. He explored the premises still calling his brother, looking for an exit. To see the sun… To see people… To see Brother. Brother would have an explanation, that was for sure.

Al would have wandered in the city until he lost his reason but a voice broke the silence.

"You… You're Al, aren't you?"

He turned sharply and saw two boys, both blond. The older was nearly adult, but the other one hardly older than he. They looked surprised, and glad to see him, but not as much as Al could be.

The older smiled. "Really, what's with your family? Ed looks like a dwarf as it is but if even you are small… Well, at least you got your body back, you must be happy… Ed too…"

Al stared them, unable to answer. Who were they? Apparently, they knew Brother… And this story with his body? What…

"Wait, Brother, don't you see there's something wrong?" said the younger boy. "He's scared. And he's too young! Al is fourteen, he told me. And where is Ed?"

Fourteen?

The older looked preoccupied. "We were starting to become crazy after waiting in the church for so long," he said to Al. "Then a girl arrived with a baby and a wounded kid, and she briefly told us about what happened… And we decided to come. Ed has done something stupid again, hasn't he? He should be the first to be careful with human transmutation! Where is he?"

---

Little by little, he tried to accommodate to this new life, where all the people he knew were older and where other people were behaving as if they knew him. But Al had lost a part of himself; amnesia was disconcerting, but the absence of his brother weighed him down far more. Learning that his brother has surely sacrificed himself for him didn't help. But deep inside of him, Al knew he would end up going to look for him. He had known that as soon as the image of his frightened brother had appeared in his mind in that ominous ballroom. He would find him, and then the panic and helplessness he had felt underground would only be a distant nightmare.

Brother had always made nightmares disappear.