Thanks so much for your lovely feedback on the last chapter! I've got a few more ideas for cute post-series drabbles (several more of them EdWin-centric), so I'll be posting them here. This one is more Al-centric, and discusses some health and rehab stuff. Chapter title is from the song "Are We Family" by The Tragically Hip.

It's only human to want to inhabit every feeling you've got
And, more often than not,
Let's take it to the nth degree.
Here he goes, "Give me ten bucks and a head start,"
Here's where he goes, "The puzzle's pullin' apart,"

And here's the scene: you're yellin' calmly up the street,
"Are we family, or what?"

It took awhile for things to settle into a rhythm, but they did. Ed's leg needed adjusting, and the scarring around the port of his arm needed looking at, but Alphonse had the toughest battle ahead of him. Even after weeks in the hospital, he was seriously undernourished and deconditioned, and beyond that, he lacked coordination.

It had been so long since his brain had actually been piloting his body—they theorized, anyway—that Al's muscles and nerves were out of sync with his brain. It wasn't totally clear where the muscle weakness ended and the nerve issues began, but his first few months back in his own skin were marked with intermittent episodes of tingling, burning, cold spots and numbness that neither Pinako, Winry nor the doctor from town could fully explain. He got tired quickly, he crashed into the corners of tables and doorways, and after dropping and breaking three different glasses in the span of a week, he started using a set of enamelled tin dishware meant for camping to spare the Rockbells' rapidly dwindling supply.

Walking was the hardest thing at first, but he'd impressed the doctors in Central with his commitment to the rehab process, and he was already progressing faster than they'd expected. It was painful and exhausting, and he still needed the crutch quite a bit, both for balance and to support his weight, but he could feel himself getting stronger every day. The big stuff was tough, but at least it was straightforward.

Less so were the little things. Ed and Winry came home from town one afternoon to find Alphonse locked out, napping on the front porch with Den, his keys in his hand. He'd spent half an hour trying to put his house key in the lock and turn it, but he couldn't get it right somehow. The door was rarely locked anyway, but it bothered him for weeks. He even dreamed about it, which felt ridiculous. It was ridiculous—he'd been through hell and back, lost family and friends, fought monsters, soldiers and criminals alike, but what was he having nightmares about? Dropping his keys.

Eating was weird, too. Back at the hospital he'd worked way up from vomiting up water and broth to eating actual solid meals, and by the time he and Ed made it home, he was very ready for Granny Pinako's cooking. His stomach adjusted, and he could practically feel his body kicking into high gear once it started absorbing nutrients for itself again after years of leeching them from his brother. Once he switched to the camp dishes he stopped worrying so much about breaking things, but somehow he was still making a mess at every other meal. He managed to miss his mouth about a quarter of the time, and cutting his food was a long process.

It was embarrassing, and Ed made a lot of jokes about it until Granny dug out a picture of him, eleven years old and halfway through his automail rehab, wearing a thoroughly soiled bib at the dinner table and looking absolutely furious. That shut him up—not that he wouldn't have shut up anyway if Al had let his brother know he was really upset, but still.

It was nice to remember that his family understood what he was going through more so than most, but he was about to turn fifteen years old, and even though he finally had his body back, he still didn't quite feel like himself.

Writing was another thing. He'd learned to do it just fine with his creaking, oversized armour fingers, so he didn't expect it to be all that difficult with plain old human hands. Admittedly, in armour at first it was a lot harder to gage how hard he was pressing, and he broke a lot of pen nibs figuring it out, but it happened eventually. But somehow, now, it took him forever to figure out how to hold a pencil right (forget using a proper pen and ink), and when he finally mastered holding it at the right angle the letters came out weird, wobbly and huge. That was a hard one to take; before, Alphonse had had the best penmanship of anyone in school. It was kind of a silly thing to be proud of after all this time, he knew, but it was a strange thing to lose.

And anyway, silly or not, day after day he practiced letters like a primary school kid until his hands ached, and they got a little less wobbly and a little more grown-up looking week over week, because he had some letters he wanted to write.

There were no telephone cables connecting Amestris to the East, by land or by sea (though Master Sergeant Fuery had confided in Ed and Al that he was hoping to lead the project within a few years, after the Ishvalan restoration had gained some ground), but there was a fairly reliable informal postal service to Xing through the trader caravans.

They hadn't heard from Ling and Lanfan yet, but Al had been following the newspapers and the radio hoping for snippets of foreign news. There wasn't all that much on the airwaves beyond Amestris' immediate neighbours, especially given that border conflicts on all sides were still slowly deescalating. So far there had been an extremely brief item in the Central City Times about the emperor's health (which was allegedly improving) and a failed assassination attempt on another prince. Al wasn't sure how fast things would move, but he scanned the news every day hoping to learn that Ling had been named the successor to the throne.

There had, however, been a letter from May.

It came in a thick red envelope with an imposing wax seal, and Ed and Winry had an absolute field day upon noticing that it was written on several pages of perfumed paper. They hovered on either side of him, fake-swooning at the floral scent and sighing dramatically. Al hunched over the letter on the table, trying to hide whatever it might say. After trying and failing to catch a glimpse of the letter itself, they moved on to other tactics.

"My dearest Alphonse," Winry began, her voice breathy and theatrical. "It's been mere months since we saw each other last, but it feels like eons."

"My heart longs to see you again," Ed continued, picking up the tone and attempting a ridiculous falsetto. "I never thought I'd meet someone as dorky and cat-obsessed as myself on my journey to your foreign and exotic land!"

The two of them improvised a surprisingly elaborate skit about Alphonse's (alleged) star-crossed romantic future with the Princess, filled with royal intrigue and forbidden passion.

It was all pretty over the top, and Winry delighted in pointing out that Al had turned roughly the same shade as the envelope. He was embarrassed and indignant, absolutely—but on another level, it was actually kind of nice.

Well, maybe not nice. Refreshing, maybe.

While Ed and Winry had more or less managed to stay at each other's throats throughout the past five years, something about Al's predicament in particular had made them treat him differently. Not with kid gloves, exactly, but a lot more gently. The three of them had grown up scrapping, squabbling and generally giving each other a hard time—but after the accident, the dynamic changed.

He tried to keep a stiff upper lip about it, especially after the surgery, but Edward's sense of guilt coloured everything he did, and especially the way he looked at his brother. Alphonse didn't realize the extent of it at the time; on his end, he was terrified for his brother and what had happened to his body, and he felt guilty and ashamed and afraid to talk about it. It wasn't until much later, at the hotel in Central after Ed came back from Resembool, that it clicked for both of them that they'd been feeling the same way all along.

But Edward was the older brother—and, worse, the transmutation had been his idea. In Ed's mind, Alphonse guessed, that made him feel responsible in a bigger way. It would never have been apparent to someone who hadn't known the brothers before, but for five long years Al could feel Ed's sheepishness towards him—this vague, uncomfortable sense that he was pulling a lot of punches.

It didn't help, Al thought, smirking to himself, that he had to pull a lot of literal punches too.

They had sparred plenty, of course, and even fought for real here and there—but when Al was in armour, none of Ed's blows actually landed anywhere.

Even though, as far as Alphonse was concerned, Ed never should've felt so guilty in the first place, he couldn't deny that it put a bizarre constraint on their relationship. Not having a physical body had robbed him of a lot of cathartic experiences for sure—the major one being just crying—but he also thought, in retrospect, that being able to get into an actual fistfight once in awhile would've made a lot of difference too. Even beyond just blowing off steam, Al realized in retrospect that there were probably a few punches he had coming that he never got.

Winry leaned over and tried to snatch the first page of the letter out of Al's hands and he dodged her, triumphant in having gotten at least that much of his agility back, and he folded the letter into a bulky square and stuffed it into his pocket.

Ed and Winry both booed loudly, but they didn't intervene as Al got to his feet, bracing against the table for support, and strode out of the room.

Jerks, Al thought to himself, grinning and rolling his eyes as he shut the door to his bedroom.

Well, it was his and his brother's bedroom, really—a former patients' room that the Rockbells had quietly outfitted with bunkbeds and a small desk the week after the boys had come home.

About half an hour later he was relaxing on the bottom bunk, reading the letter over again, when there was a knock at the door.

"Yeah?" he said, startled.

"I, uh…" It was Edward. "I just wanted to let you know I'll help you write a reply to the letter if you want."

Al folded the letter back into its envelope, tucked it under his pillow, and got up to open the door. It took a few tries to turn the doorknob properly, but he managed it, and then he was smiling at his slightly sheepish-looking brother.

"Thanks," he said, "but I think I'm gonna wait until I can do it myself."