I'm no stranger to writing, but this is my first fanfiction. Please be gentle in critiques but be honest all the same!
Al had been crying while watching Pinako. Edward, on the other hand, had done nothing and said nothing. His gaze had seemingly found a steady haven on the floor, but Pinako had noticed how he had been watching her intently out of the corner of his eye. And Edward knew that Pinako had caught him snatching teary looks.
They sat quietly in their chairs in the corner of the room and watched as Pinako gently washed their mother—her mother's body, for her mother was no longer there, at least not in this still, rigid, expressionless shell—every last vestige of death-sweat from her skin and changed her clothes from the pink nightgown to a white loose tunic which she pulled over the body over her head and then smoothed and straightened.
Alphonse hadn't stopped crying since last night, wailing loudly and with tears falling like torrents from his eyes, but after a while the crying had turned into ragged, harried sobs that were dry only sometimes, and not even at all sleep wanted to stop.
Edward had tried to do the same. Really. He knew crying was appropriate. Her mother was dead. It was normal to cry. He also knew that it felt good when you cried. Pinako would say that and stroke his head. "Crying helps," was what she would say. But there was already enough adults to take care of all the crying. Edward knew that.
Still, the tears didn't want to come. Every time he tried to find them, gather them, and let them out, there was just a big, thick lump in his throat that almost choked him. Maybe Al noticed that and that's why he cried so much. Maybe he cried for him too. The thought made Edward feel a little better and then just more miserable at the same time.
Pinako had finished her work. "All right, you may come here."
They slid from their chairs. Pinako had a pair of scissors in his hand and held them out to them. "There. Each of you cut a strand."
"What for?" Al asked softly.
"Memorial jewelry," Pinako replied, "Come on now."
Edward took the scissors and ran a finger down his mother's forehead, past her ear. Her skin had always been soft and warm and pink, like a pillow. She was still soft, but pale and cold, like the silk of her best dress, which she had worn very seldom and in which she had always been a terrible stranger to them. Her hair was just as cold and lackluster. They didn't even feel like hair anymore. This body didn't feel like his mother's anymore. He didn't even really look like his mother anymore. He carefully cut off a small lock of hair behind her ear.
Al took the scissors from his hand and did the same.
Then they watched in silence as Pinako arranged the strands in fine, filigree arcs on two oval pieces of glass and then sealed them with two more pieces of glass and set them in lead medallion frames.
She pressed one into each of them's hands. "It keeps a little of her with you." She forced a smile, although Edward could see that she wanted to burst into tears herself. Al squeezed his hand. So he kept his mouth shut and didn't ask how a strand of hair would change the fact that her mother was gone. He just clutched the locket and didn't say anything, searching for tears.
He didn't find them.
He couldn't find tears even at the funeral and again it was Al who cried for him too.
It choked Ed, he had to fight for every breath and yet no tears could come as he clutched the medallion through his pants pocket so tightly that it dug into his hand. His mother was dead. She wouldn't come back. She was dead, gone, irretrievably gone.
Edward pulled the rimmed medallion of hair out of his pocket and looked at it. That was all that was left of her. all that remained. And it didn't even feel like her. He swallowed. Suddenly the lump in his throat was gone. He could breathe again, while next to him Al still had to constantly wipe tears from his face.
That was okay. Edward let him cry in peace while he began to think. Finally, sometime after an infinity, he found the words.
"Al."
He felt his brother look up at him. "Let's revive Mama."
And at Al's confused, tear-stained, hopeful look, he held up his locket.
...
Years later, Al's soul remained disembodied, his soul trapped within a shell that made it impossible for him to cry. And what they expected would be their mother's hair was nothing more than strands from a thing that wasn't human, much less their mother, a mass of bloody, raw, throbbing organs. There was nothing left of Trisha Elric, nothing at all.
And Edward knew that.