.
.:: Recovery ::.
"If you take a breath consciously, your nose is a little ticklish and cold for a second. And if you inhale very deeply, it burns lower, almost in the throat, and your chest seems to squeeze."
Al now does everything consciously: inhales, blinks, smiles, holds his fingers on the spoon for a split second before starting to eat, tentatively tries the porch heated by the sun with his bare foot, and even blows air through his vocal cords to make a sound. In short, anything that people consider so natural they don't even pay attention to them, Al experiences with feeling, capturing every detail.
And listening to him, Ed himself traces a couple of his own breaths and exhalations. Indeed, it tickled and burned a bit.
Carefully, Ed resumes finishing his brother's nail and hair trims before sweeping the pieces off the floor in a scoop. They don't disappear on their own, like cut off parts of Homunculi, because here he is. Al—alive and real. His body is not recreated; it is all his own. Under the watchful eyes of his older brother, Al feels neither threat not discomfort. In complete trust, he doesn't even try to strain his hands, and his fingers spread relaxed over Ed's palm, as if hugging it. And at the end of the haircut, he happily leans back on his brother's chest.
"Whatcha doing, Al?"
"Your body is warm. You can feel it even through the air. It seems to be more diffused and softer. And if I shift around, my body heats up from yours, although our temperature is the same."
Ed smiles again and puts his right hand on his brother's shoulder. His palm saturates with the other's warmth, balancing to equal his own.
Al drinks a cup of water Ed offers him in small sips, while his brother peels the apples and stubbornly kneads the fruit meat into pulpy meal with the handle of a knife. "Sorry. I would bring you one of Winry's apple pies right away, but Dr. Marco said your digestive system wouldn't be ready for them yet."
"It's nothing. Waiting a couple of months isn't a problem. I've patience." Al smiles gratefully, closing his happy eyes, and pressing the applesauce against his palate for a long time with his tongue before swallowing. "Sweet and slightly sour. The consistency is very delicate, but I can feel little particles in it. If you press with your tongue, the juice first flows down the throat, sugary and slightly pungent. What remains has a more neutral and... 'calm' taste."
After a moment, Al rises from his seat, leaning on his brother's shoulder, and they put one foot in front of the other, slowly and infrequently. Ed doesn't rush, like usual. Instead, he stands still, until Al is ready to drag his barely obedient leg a few centimeters forward. Training with Ed was usually less challenging, and whenever Ed would leave for the city, Al would painstakingly pace back and forth along the wall, and then barely crawl to the bed and, grimacing, crumple the sheets in his fingers.
.::.
"You know, cramping hurts," he muses through his teeth as Ed freezes in the hallway with grocery bags in tow. "It's as if the muscle had been stretched one and a half times its normal length, and inside it is as hard as a stone."
"What can I do with you? Get you an automail to match mine?"
Ed kneels down in front of the bed and, gently grasping Al's shin with both palms, rests his thumbs on the bone, holds a second, goes down and repeats several times, reaching the ankle, and then comes back to the shin. Al hums inconsistently and tilts his head to one side but endures, because he knows that Ed is doing everything Marco had instructed. Besides, it will be better in the end.
Ed's right hand is much weaker than the left; the fingers are thinner; the skin on them is more elastic and softer. Visually, it's less striking, but Al listens to every centimeter of his own body and could correctly name the days in which Ed himself went too far with his workouts. He also knows that, due to bad weather, Ed's shoulder aches. The older brother never vocalizes it. Instead, he uncomfortably moves it when he stands, with his back to Al, as if Al couldn't see right through him.
"Pressure is good pain anyway. Doctor Marco is kind of correct. The sensation from your hands remains under the skin for some time: hot, aching, and maybe throbbing, but the feeling slowly weakens and subsides. It becomes cooler and lighter than it was initially. As if a tension spring had been loosened."
.::.
The most difficult thing for Al so far in his recovery is interpreting the state when he becomes sleepy, so he falls asleep anywhere with little rhyme of reason—at the table, with his cheek resting on an open book, stretched out on the floor in front of a quietly crackling radio, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets only just fresh from airing. And if he came back late to find his brother in any of these positions, Ed slept sitting with his head resting on the back of the sofa.
"It's all complicated. Sometimes you hold your eyes closed for a minute, and it becomes easier, and sometimes they twinge and itch only more after that. Sometimes you just want to blink and fall asleep, and sometimes you deliberately keep your eyes closed as if half your life depended on it. I can get up in the morning twice at the same time, spend two days completely identically, and not fall asleep by the same hour. I've never experienced something so illogical."
"Al, I had car armor for four years instead of an arm, and you had metal instead of a whole body. Look at us now. Is the lack of a clear pattern of sleep cycles and wakefulness still the only thing that seems illogical to you?"
A beat.
Ed smiles when he meets Al's eyes. Before sympathy or melancholy could splash into his eyes, he immediately squints as if he didn't have time to completely fall into the right emotion. Whenever Al was well enough to help someone with alchemy in the city, Ed would smile with genuine admiration and pride. Now, with him looking down slightly, Al sees the helplessness with which his brother clenches his hand into a fist.
"I'm sorry, brother..."
"Sorry?" Ed busied himself with clearing off the kitchen counter.
"That for me you had to sacrifice your alchemy."
Ed's eyes glaze over, and the rhythm of his step is lost for a split second. Then he carelessly runs his hand, his right hand, into his hair and goes on, as if nothing had happened.
"Well, I'm not sorry."
Al doesn't argue, but he wonders if it's true. This older Ed wouldn't put alchemy above him, no doubt about it. But that's the point of sacrifice—that one parts with something one really does not want to part with.
"Maybe try stuff from scratch? After all, when we took up alchemy as kids, we initially didn't know a thing."
"To gnaw the foundations of alchemy takes some five-year plan, in the same room with a teacher who can create transformations without a circle. And you think I can do all that again? Thanks for making me proud at least."
"I learned to walk again with you. So maybe there is such a way. Like a baby. Do you have anything to be ashamed of in front of me?"
For the first time since Al's return, looking into his eyes, Ed smiled for less than five seconds. "The first time I got you back at the cost of my arm. And I got my arm back when you decided to put your own soul on the line. Therefore everything, it turns out, should be easy to change back at any time. I'm not ready to lose you a third time just to assemble a crane without touching a sheet of blueprint. One tough alchemist is enough for the two of us."
He spoke so seriously and openly, Al even became uneasy and somehow ashamed. Ed's lips still float up. But not by the inertia of the moment, not wider and higher than required, and Al understands from this calm smile, which could well belong to an old man, that there is no need to start this conversation anymore.
"Thank you, brother."
One thing had been enough for two of them before; they'd come a long way with only one healthy leg between them both. One alchemist instead of two is not an oversimplification either. Al learns to feel with his skin and distinguish between tastes and smells. Ed also, only silently and with little help, learns to do things without the alchemy on which he had for so long relied. And these lessons, they knew, would obviously continue being more difficult than one's first steps on automail. Therefore, Al will always say thanks more than once, without specifying for what. And Ed will call him weird and keep going forward.
Together, through this wonderful world.
A/N: As always, reviews are appreciated and are replied to. Or, if you'd prefer to leave a comment more privately, feel free to shoot me a PM. Cheers, + KVP
