They're All That's Left You
There were so many pictures, Al discovered, and for days he sat and studied them all.
Photo after photo of Winry at various ages, from familiar childhood pictures to a strange in-between approaching the young woman she now was. A small handful of photos that had somehow escaped destruction in his own house, of the Elric family: his mother, beautiful and loving; the bearded, unremembered spectre of his father; his brother, frozen in youth with an innocent grin that threatened to split his face in two; and Al, himself, who didn't remember being so young and round and pink. Pictures of Winry and her parents, of Winry and Pinako, of all of them, of the Rockbells and the Elrics at a picnic as the adults smiled at the camera, save for the bearded stranger who hung at the back and looked distracted.
Then there were others, ones he'd never seen before, and he wasn't sure how they'd gotten there. A smiling man in glasses who waved at the camera. The same man, beaming, next to a pretty woman who was holding a wide-eyed toddler. A formal-looking shot of a sombre-faced, dark-haired soldier with a severe expression. He stood at attention, in uniform, hat in one hand and Al saw, behind his eyes, a million thoughts he was struggling to keep hidden. A smaller snapshot of the same soldier, flanked by a blonde woman - another soldier - with a heart-shaped face and a poker face, and a short blonde teenaged boy with an overtly angry look on his face.
In the background, a blur of metal.
The metal chilled him. He knew what it was, and sometimes looked for it in every picture he could find of his brother, and sometimes he tried as hard as he could not to look, but every time he found himself wondering what had happened that day. What had he been thinking when that picture was taken? What was he feeling? How did he feel about that soldier, the man with glasses, the little girl?
The pictures meant nothing to him. He studied them for hours at a time, trying to gain some meaning from them, hoping to unlock something. Knowledge and memory - they didn't just go away. Someone had lived his life for six years.
But Al, who ended each study session with the same quiet thought - that his brother had grown up so much in those years that hadn't existed for him, and had become a handsome, strong young stranger - finally had to admit that that someone hadn't been him.