Epilogue
"Al, think about what you're doing; they're human just like you," Ed begged. "This body isn't human, brother! I'll never be human again and you know it!" Al snapped back then continued what he was doing about the kill the man who'd been cut-off at the knees. 'I'm sorry guy: keep Al's attention while he's killing you so I can crawl across the floor, grab my leg, and re-attach it.' But while Ed was crawling across the floor Al noticed him. Al dropped the legless man (knowing he would die of blood loss anyway), bounded across the room, stepped on his brother's auto-mail leg, and then grabbed him up by his arm. "Brother! Why do you insist on being a pain?"
"Because I think what you're doing is wrong."
"I don't care what you think. Now die, nuisance!" Al pulled back his arm, about to grab Edward's head. "What would mom think!" Ed shouted. Al stopped. "M-mom. . ." he whimpered. For a moment he returned to his former self, the sweet, innocent, almost child-like boy Alphonse, while memories of his mother flooded him. After that brief moment passed Al was furious. "How dare you trick me like that you heathen! DI-" Ed opened his eyes only to see Al's armor being broken in half horizontally, red light flooding through the breaks obviously made from a transmutation, the force of which thrust Ed and the upper half of Alphonse several feet backwards; Al letting go of Edward before clanging against the floor.
Ed almost couldn't believe what he was seeing. This had to be a nightmare; a figure that could only be Scar standing behind the bottom half of Al's armor, lowering his right arm as the armor crashed to the floor. He stepped over the fallen scrap metal into the light, an unforgiving anger-filled red eye glaring out from the side illuminated by the moon. As he slowly came forward the upper half of Al rocked slightly from side to side then sprang up using his hands for feet much like what happened to the younger slicer brother in lab 5. "So you're still alive. I'll have to fix that won't I," Scar said stopping in front of Al's remains.
Al quickly clapped his hands but Scar even quicker grabbed his right arm and ripped it completely off. Ed's vision was shaking as if there were some great tremor only he could feel; his body had gone numb and he was frozen in place from horror. While Al sat there bewildered Scar grabbed Al's helmet with his right hand and blew it to bits. This was enough to send a jolt through Ed's body that made him impulsively jump in front of his brother, but without one of his legs the jump was more like a flop and only landed him beside Scar's right leg. He wrapped his left arm tightly around Scar's leg and, looking up, pleadingly yelled as he had only once before, "PLEASE! DON'T KILL HIM! HE'S MY LITTLE BROTHER!" Scar glared down upon Ed with bitter red eyes and spoke the cold-hard-truth life had given him but he had refused to listen to, "This… thing … is no longer your brother; he stopped being that the moment he became a murderer. If he isn't killed he will only continue taking lives." Ed shook his head, eyes wide, not wanting to accept the truth, almost crying while he spoke, "No! You can't kill him!"
"Would you rather kill him then?"
Ed froze. He let go of Scar's leg and looked quietly at the floor.
Scar gently placed his right hand on Al's breastplate. Almost immediately red veins spread from beneath his hand to all over what was left of the armor. Edward didn't hear, but rather felt Alphonse let out a small whimper, and suddenly, he knew this was no longer acreature, but his brother—his younger brother. He looked up and began to shout "stop!" yet it was too late; the red veins burst open, shattering the armor into hundreds of pieces.
Edward sat staring at the bits of metal that had once served as his younger brother's body and said his brother's name in the only stuttered whisper he could manage. Scar turned from the fragments of metal to Ed. "Don't worry FullMetal, you shall soon join your brother," he told Ed, as if trying to assure him. Ed sat there unresponsive.
"In a cruel twist of irony the philosopher's stone was the only thing that could save Ishbal from the State Alchemists, yet it would take the annihilation of its entire people to make. In another twist of irony, the philosopher's stone was the only thing that could return you and your brother to your original bodies," Scar pushed his right sleeve up enough to show the transmutation circle his brother had branded him with in its entirety, "yet with your deaths its completion will be reached. And the irony of all ironies… is that your death—the death of a State Alchemist—shall complete the stone that was meant for Ishbal."
But Scar's words did not reach Ed; they were drowned out by a lullaby his mother often used to put he and his brother to sleep when they were young. The house he had grown up in faded into view. He saw his brother running down the road home, waving and calling out to hurry before supper gets cold. From the house he heard his mother saying she had made Ed's favorite, stew. She stepped out onto the porch just as his brother ran up to it and stood beside her, waving his arm with the brightest smile ever as their mother spread her arms and gently called out, "Come home, Edward…my son."
In that moment, Edward looked up as Scar put his hand on his head, though Edward could not see Scar nor feel the pressure of his hand. Smiling, he whispered 'Mother, I'm coming home.' As the red light brightened he saw the picture of his mother and brother standing on the porch of their house, his brother waving and smiling, his mother with her arms lovingly spread, and then … nothing.