When the first rain started, Al was sitting, leaning against the trunk of the old oak. The rain made soft sounds as it hit his armor, rather like the sound of rain against an old tin shed. Al looked up at the water falling on his head and the cat in his arms shivered.
"There, there..." Al said, "It's just rain."
The cat wasn't comforted, not understanding a word of what he had just said, and instead, it curled closer to his armor, seeking a warmth that just wasn't there.
Al sighed.
He had been wrong. He could climb the tree, but perhaps, just perhaps, he shouldn't have.
He peered down at his legs and his arms where the more shallow of the dents were. He had fallen not once, but several times, and one of those times he had hit the place in his armor where the seal was beneath...So, not only was he wrong about being able to climb the tree, he had been very wrong about the fact that it wouldn't hurt.
It had hurt.
Very badly.
And...
Very strangely...
But what was more strange was that when he rememebered that pain, the thing that came to mind wasn't the fall itself or its aftermath, with Al curling around himself on the ground, no, what came to mind was Ed's face...
Meow, the cat said again and Al noticed that the rain was falling harder.
He looked up into it. Being beneath the umbrella of leaves made it so they didn't receive the hardest of it, but they got enough that Al now noticed the poor cat was soaked in his arms. "Oh...!" Al exclaimed and stood quickly, looking back and forth. There was nothing to help, of course, no blanket, no fire, all that was there was what he had known was there, the house. If Al had had his body, he would've frowned right there and then, but that's when a drop of rain dropped in the crack between his helmet and his shoulders, and he felt that cold droplet run across the blood seal like someone walking over his grave and it was Al's turn then to shiver.
Al looked one more time up into the storm. The storm looked down upon Al and lightening flashed, somewhere thunder boomed.
Al turned his head and looked across the horizon. It was too dark to see very far.
He couldn't even see Pinako's from here.
Meow, the cat said, but Al was thinking about Ed.
Meow.
"Alright." Al said after a moment and laughed. "You win. I'll take you into the house, but then I have to go see Ed. He'll..." He'll what? He'll be worried, is what Al knew he should be thinking, but that wasn't it. Al was the one that was worried. If it wasn't the doctor who had asked him to go and if he didn't know that Pinako would be there by his brother's side, Al never would have left. He probably should've left the cat in the tree and left back earlier, but he couldn't do that then and he wouldn't do it now. Something was wrong with Ed, something that had changed the moment they had tried to transmute their mother.
Something in his eyes...
...a light or a purpose...turned off...
or...a very quiet voice suggested in the pit of his brain...his sanity...
It was easy he had said, and his hand had reached for Al...
Meow, the cat said and Al was brought back to the moment. "Um..sorry!" he said and turned and made his way towards the house, up the steps and through the door. It was the same, even now, Al knew what he had to do, or at least, what he should do, and the smallest thing would change his mind, distract his attention from the thing he knew was important...
But, Al thought as he set the cat down wrapped it in a blanket he found in the living room...
What else could he do?
The cat watched him as Al opened the cubburds, searching for anything it could eat and when Al did find something old, but still edible and gave it to the cat, it purred beneath his fingers as he stroked it and fed it.
Outside, the lightening flashed again.
What else could he do?
He had asked Ed if he was still himself, even after being stripped of his body, and he realized at that moment that he still was himself despite it all...
Latch...
Climb...
They meant nothing, did they?
Al was still himself...
And...
That was the problem.
That really was the problem and it had been the problem, all along.
TBC...