Spoiler Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for the end of the series. You have been warned.
Disclaimer: Hagane no RenkinJutsushi is the property of Hiromu Arakawa as well as, but not limited to, Square Enix, Viz, and Funimation Ltd. I am not making a profit on this story.
Memory
Memory is a funny thing. It can play tricks on you. It can make you remember things that never really happened and forget events that did. No one knew this better than Al.
Al knew he was missing four years of his life. He had been told this by so many people that he knew it must be true . He tried to remember, he really did. He'd sit for hours in his room, screwing his eyes shut, trying to walk backwards in time to recreate four years of lost memories. But, try as he might, he couldn't.
He could clearly remember everything that led up to attempting to transmutate his mother. But after that……nothing. He was left with a sense of irony, a feeling that it was almost amusing that he wasn't content with his childhood memories, but he didn't know why that was.
He could remember awakening to hear himself shouting his brother's name. His sensei had rushed into the room, cooing reassuring words. She had seemed considerably older, which had surprised him as he had seen her just a couple weeks before.
When he had returned home to Rizenbul he had been startled to find his house gone. His sensei had already explained to him what had happened, but he had still expected it to be there, standing tall as it had yesterday. Of course, by this time he realized it had not been yesterday but four years prior, but to Al it seemed the day before. He wasn't sure how long he sat under the tree across the lane, staring at the remains of his house before Winry came to join him. She laughed at him and said he looked just as his father did when his father had come looking for his house. At that moment Al had felt a pang of sadness and jealousy, that Winry had a memory of his father when he had none.
At first he had sat for hours in front of the mirror tracing the outline of his body with his index finger. He remembered the suit of armor that had sat in his old house, the same armor that Winry and explained that Ed had used his own blood to seal Al's soul inside. Running his finger along his arm Al tried to imagine what it was like to feel nothing, but he couldn't.
After a while, as new memories of Rizenbul were created, Al could feel his earliest childhood memories slipping away and that scared him. He didn't want to forget a moment of his time with Ed climbing trees and racing through the woods. He tried to hold on to every memory. The hot tears that had rolled down his face when he was four years old and Ed had told him their father was never coming back, the musty smell of their father's books that, dusty from misuse, had made him and Ed sneeze repeatedly when pulled off the shelves, and the first time he and Ed had preformed a transmutation.
Every memory was precious to Al. He desperately attempted to hold on to them all, both old and new. He felt greedy, hoarding his memories, keeping his oldest as his most treasured and highly valuing his new memories. His new memories were confusing, trying to place faces and names such as Roze and Mustang to events that he couldn't recall. It had been frustrating at first and for a while he had fallen into despair.
He began to look at his father's old alchemy texts, ones that he had found in a suitcase at his sensei's house, books that he and Ed had evidently saved from the fire Al could not remember starting. Reading the textbooks gave him new hope. He understood his brother's sacrifice and made time to play with the stranger-friend Roze's baby and Winry's dog. He resolved to be happy and to study hard so he could find away to bring back Ed.
While studying Al though long and hard about what he would give up to regain Ed. He knew it would have to be something special and important to be considered equivalent to Ed's life.
Al realized he would be willing to give up all his memories if it guaranteed he could make new ones with Ed.