Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist.
Warnings: Spoilers for all episodes regarding Lab 5. Not angst, but definitely with a hint of bittersweet-ness.
Well, Actually . . . .
Sometimes he wished Lab Five hadn't been completely destroyed.
It wasn't that he regretted the lives lost – well, actually, he did, more than a little. It wasn't that he had allowed the twisted creature that had once been Barry the Chopper actually make him doubt Brother. Well, actually, he had, and he regretted that too. It wasn't that right then, at the moment when Ed had paused, hung his head, apologized, that Al realized that he was still far from getting his body back, being normal again. Well, actually . . . .
Maybe it was that Brother had told him about number 48, the pair of brothers that had become bodiless armor, like him. They were both dead, as dead as two souls without human bodies left behind as proof could be.
Maybe it was that they had destroyed the only beings in the world that were like him. The only ones that knew, that empathized, not just sympathized, with the way he was now. Ed had told him a million times that he was sorry, that there was nothing else he could have done, that the armor was the only way to keep Alphonse Elric "alive." But he wasn't alive, not anymore. Weren't there certain requirements called for in order for anything to be alive? His gauntlets, the cloth and metal that approximated hands, tightened around the book. Before, he had no interest in biology, and now that he had picked up the text, he regretted the revelation it brought.
A living thing must be made of one or more cells. His body, such as it was, was made of atoms and quarks, which were similar to but still a far cry from true cells.
A living thing must have a need of and use for energy. No, that wasn't happening anytime soon. He had no living body, he never grew physically tired, he never needed to sleep or eat to recharge.
A living thing must produce waste. Waste? Hah! He didn't even exhale the parts of the atmosphere he didn't need.
A living thing must reproduce others of its own kind. He really didn't think that was going to happen anytime soon, either, whether he got his body back tomorrow or never. How could he justify creating others like him, suspending souls in centralized oblivion?
A living thing must respond to its environment in order to maintain conditions suitable for living. Homeostasis was something a nonliving entity did naturally. The conditions in his armor never changed so drastically that he "died" a second time. Yet, he knew that in the summer, the interior of the armor he was trapped in grew so hot that a normal human would swelter, that real skin would blister if exposed. In winter, a human trapped inside him without protection would fall victim to frostbite. Were the conditions inside him suitable for living then?
Brother assured him that he was human, that he was alive, but Al knew better. Only someone in the same situation could possibly understand what it meant to be sentient. What it meant to no longer be alive, but to be caught on the mortal plane just the same. It all boiled down to five biological requirements that he no longer fit.
The reason he wished so fervently that the lab hadn't been destroyed, along with all the experiments inside . . . .
It couldn't be that he wanted someone to share the painless agony he felt, someone to understand what it was like to not have a body, to know that all it took to die was a drop of water in the right place or a fingernail to scratch away his anchor to this realm, to not be alive, but still feel as if you were in most respects . . . ?
Well, actually . . . .