Disclaimer: I don't own any of FMA. I do want Arakawa-sensei's brain. Fighting panties, baby.
Warning: No spoilers, I think. But a running knowledge of Macbeth would help.
Out, I say!
"What, will these hands ne'er be clean?"--Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, V.i.43)
---
Hohonheim gently closed the door.
"Is he asleep?"
The man turned towards Al, held a finger to his lips, and nodded. His other hand held a mug of steaming mulled cider.
"It's been a long day for the two of you, hasn't it?" he whispered.
"Yes, I guess."
Hohonheim sat down on the couch, sighing in comfort. A peaceable minute passed, as Hohonheim sipped at his cider, and Al, who was sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor front of him, poked at the burning logs in the fireplace with his finger.
"You know, you don't have to do this to yourselves,"
Al's head jerked. A twig snapped in his hand. Hohonheim took another draught of his cider.
"I'm afraid I don't understand," said Al carefully.
"The Philosopher's Stone. Your brother, I can understand why—"
"You don't," said Al, a little too curtly, "you don't understand at all,"
Another minute passed, this time less peaceable, as Hohonheim sipped at his mulled cider, and Al jabbed at the fire.
"Well?" said Hohonheim to his mug, "What is it that I don't understand?"
"It..." Al was suddenly engrossed in a half-charred branch, "it's..."
The branch snapped, and Al jerked his hand back, as if the branch were poisonous. As if the question was poisonous.
"It's not about the Philosopher's Stone," he whispered finally, into his hands.
Hohonheim gently placed the mug on the coffee table, and faced his son.
"It's about...guilt, and redemption," said Al, rubbing slowly at a spot on his palm, "he still feels guilty about...that."
Hohonheim nodded, once.
"He...brother, he...still believes, I think, that if we were to get back our original bodies..."
Al paused and continued to scrub at the spot with his thumb.
"That everything would return to the way it was," said Hohonheim.
Al nodded, once.
"But you?" said Hohonheim gently.
"I...brother, he needs a goal, something that he can throw himself completely at," said Al, speeding up, "something he can put his whole heart and soul into, so that he doesn't have to think, to remember, to—to feel his guilt."
"But you don't," said Hohonheim.
"I...the nights are long," Al said evasively.
"I see. But the nights are also full of illusions, are they not?"
"No."
The spot disappeared, but Al continued to stare at his hands.
"Only for those that can dream. Illusions can only fool when you can see, and without light to see by..."
"...there can be no illusions," said Hohonheim. He pressed his hands, palm to palm, together thoughtfully to his lips.
"Then your brother's goals are nothing but false hopes?"
"No! I never said..." Al's head, which had snapped up, started to droop again, mechanically, as if pulled by a puppeteer.
"I never said that. Brother may not know towards what he is headed towards, but I believe in him. I trust him with my life and soul. We're headed towards the right direction, I'm sure!"
"But what are you headed towards?"
"I..."
Al rubbed his hands, as if cold.
"Then aren't you also hoping for the impossible?" Hohonheim said through his fingers, his hands pressed palm to palm.
"Not in that way! We may not be able to restore our bodies. We will not be able to return to the past. But...brother, he...he no longer hides from mirrors. He no longer refers to himself as a monstrosity. He...
"I don't care if it's habit. I do hope that it's forgiveness. Brother is letting go...of the past. Of that...sin that we committed."
"Is that so? It's still the past that he still holds onto, is it not? Didn't you say that his goal was to return the two of you to that time before?"
The spot had returned.
"Brother...for all that he says, brother still doesn't like the truth,"
"But his favorite saying—"
"He doesn't like the truth."
Both Hohonheim and Al started at the vehemence in Al's voice.
"I...I'm sorry. I don't know what came over—"
"No, it's fine. Go on."
There was another pause, as Al rubbed at the stain on his palm.
"Brother is able to throw out lies if they are impossibilities that he is willing to let go of. But there are certain impossibilities that, if he lets go of, will...will crush him...
"The impermanence of our state is one of those." Al whispered so softly that Hohonheim had to lean forward to hear him.
The stain was spreading. Al rubbed at his wrist.
"Brother didn't want to see the Gate. He paid only the price of entrance, because he was so intent on leaving. Even now...he has screaming nightmares about the Truth."
"But you went there too,"
"Brother was terrified of the Truth. I don't know how much he heard from It and how much he blocked afterwards, but...either way, It is one of the only areas that brother is unwilling to learn more of."
"But you were there too," said Hohonheim, firmly.
"I...have you ever been there?" whispered Al, his white eyes fixed on a spot six feet above Hohonheim's head.
"The shining Gate, the figure of Truth..." Al took a deep, shuddering, breath, "if I had anything, anything more to give, I would have given it, to spend another minute with..."
"Then you know the Truth," said Hohonheim.
"Yes,"
"About the Philosopher's Stone,"
Al nodded.
"And alchemy."
Al nodded again.
"And yet you let your brother do this...?"
Al was now scrubbing both of his hands in a washing motion.
"It's the only way," he said finally.
"The only way...?"
"The only way, the only way that brother will find the Redemption he looks for..."
"Even if it destroys the two of you?"
Al shook his head, violently.
"It won't," he said, in a clipped voice, "it won't because I will be there. To hold him, and to support him when the time comes."
"Just as you have now," said Hohonheim.
"Yes."
The words, And to keep him from the Truth, seemed to press down on the both of them.
"There are certain impossibilities that brother cannot discard," said Al simply, softer.
"Indeed," said Hohonheim. He nodded and retrieved his mug. He stretched and then ambled away, to the kitchen, sipping at his now-cold cider.
Al rubbed thoughtfully at the hardwood floor, where the stain had dripped from his hands.
A/N: For those that are wondering, the quote you're probably thinking of is:
"Out, damned spot! out, I say!-- One; two; why, then 'tis
time to do't ;--Hell is murky!--Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier,
and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call
our power to account?--Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?" (Macbeth, V.i.38-43)
I'll leave the rest to you to figure out.