The smell was what he first noticed as he creaked open the abandoned barn door and was assaulted by the stench of blood, salt, sickness, and some unnamable chemical overbearing on what should have been the organic air of hay and dust. It took him a moment after the first shock had jarred him to get back the rest of his senses, and hear the retching noises that came within. His sleeve held over his nose and mouth, he edged in, and peered, adjusting to the dappled light that hit the floor in shafts, appearing almost solid with the dust they struck, and finally focused on the figure that kneeled in the center of a very large forboding array.
He knew that array... something from one of the books that Sensei kept; notes from her old master, the ones she found him looking at, and had given him a memorable punishment, declaring they were forbidden to him. Then how Wrath had discovered them, he couldn't think to try finding out, but ran to his side as the light of the array fizzled and waned, and Wrath painfully vomited the last of the red stones. Al may not have known everything about homunculi, but he knew enough to tell that losing their life source definitely wasn't good.
"... Damn, I didn't want you to- have to see..." Wrath rasped, crouched over the same spot, his head lowered. Al had already dropped to his level, and grasped the boy's arms, frustratedly trying to comfort and shake some reason out of him all at once.
"Stupid! What are you doing? Do you want to die?"
Wrath looked up, shocked by the sudden barrage of concern, and smiled weakly, without regrets.
"Only as much as you," he said, and collapsed against Alphonse. His words didn't make much sense to the young Elric at the time, but Wrath was still alive- thank God, he was still alive. He pulled through his subsequent illness, and weakness that followed, but he still had his life- a new life- one that could slip away at any moment. That fact was what made it something beautiful.