Home stood before him.
Al paused. The house had never seemed so quiet, still and haunted...
He wondered if it was just in his mind, but somehow, as the night before flashed in his mind, he doubted it.
Here was where the path ended, this place where he stood and although the wildflowers behind him had seemed beautiful, here, they only seemed grey, they only seemed dead.
In fact, this place...this place he and Ed had once called home...
It seemed...
"Ed..." Al whispered.
"Al?" A voice suddenly said from near-by.Al jumped. Literally jumped and clanged heavily to the ground a few feet farther than he had started.
"Pinako ba-chan?" Al said as the old woman cocked her head at him.
"What were you doing here, Al? Is Ed alright?" she asked. Clutched in her knarled hands was a suitcase and she had a long red coat thrown over her shoulder. Al recognized it as his brother's. He also noted that there was a layer of dirt on her hands, and mud on her shoes, but he didn't think about that, not yet.
"Ed? Ed is...that is..."
"Out with it, Al."
"Yes...he needs medicine...He...he's hurting, Pinako ba-chan."
"I see..." Pinako said and she suddenly looked behind Al to the house. "Then I guess it can't be helped. I'll go back."
"Thank you..."
Pinako paused a little ways up the path and looked back, "Al? Aren't you coming with me?"
"Ah...that is...I'll be there soon. I just want to..." Al paused.
Pinako frowned for a second. Al thought for a moment she would want to know what he was going to do, but in the end, with a light nod, she turned, "Hurry home, soon, Al. I'm sure Ed will be wanting to see you."
"Of course. I'll be back soon."
"Before dark." Pinako called from over her shoulder as she descended the hill. Al wondered at that. It was morning. What he had come to determine wouldn't take that long.
Al watched her go and then turned to the house.
As he entered it, he suddenly understood the look in Ed's eye when Al had mentioned home.
This place was, for them, as Al was slowly beginning to understand, where something in their lives had changed forever not once, but twice...
Where something had broken irreversibly.
The door opened silently and admitted Al into the house.
Al paused in the frame, peering around at the living room, the kitchen.
He suddenly realized that last night, when Al and Ed had arrived back from their master's, they had taken no time to peer around and note all the familiar things they had left behind for that year. He realized they hadn't cared. They had believed that by morning they'd have all the time in the world to peer around and laugh as their mother called them to breakfast, called them to her, hugged them, kissed them.
Gone.
Even the hope of it all.
Gone.
Al quickly passed through that living room.
He suddenly didn't want to see it anymore.
He found the door to the cellar opened, hanging off its hinges. He must have done that last night as he carried Ed, bleeding against his chest, to Pinako, desperate as he believed he was watching the death of his brother.
He shivered.
A moment passed and then another and another and Al realized he really didn't want to pass through that door and into the room where he and Ed had tried to transmute their mother. Everything in him screamed at him to turn and get out of that house.
That "house"...
Not "home" anymore...
Just "house"...
Al's hand suddenly clenched and with a deep breath, he went through the doorway, intent on finding out one thing that had been on his mind...
...from the moment his body began to unwind to the moment he knelt before Pinako and Winry with his brother in his arms...what had happened...
Everything had seemed to be going perfect...
What was it...
What had gone wrong...?