A heavy snowstorm came that night, so everyone agreed to wait until the following evening to bury the body. They would have to move the snow and thaw the ground in order to dig the hole, so they moved Edward down to the hospital's morgue temporarily. Normally, with a body that had been afflicted, it was best to put it in the ground quickly lest the disease spread to the living, but nothing could be done to help the weather.
Alphonse saw to it that his brother was safely put away – glad for the cold weather and the hampering effect it would have on the rate of decay of the body - before he set to work.
A few blocks from the barracks stood a research lab, officially named Laboratory Nine. It had been given to Edward for use in his research on weather alchemy. The laboratory itself had one floor that was above ground, two more below, and a tall tower that rose high into the sky. Laboratory Nine was built perfectly for studying not only the workings of the skies but also the tremors of the earth. The brothers had not made much headway in the field, admittedly, since they had not been at it that long before Edward had been called away to fight.
It was here that Alphonse spent the next eighteen hours, scribbling furiously on the walls and floor of the lab's basement. Complex arrays copied from a worn notebook he and his brother had sworn never to open again after restoring their bodies. Three packs of brand new, white chalk worn down to nubs, and it almost wasn't enough. Alphonse had always been meticulous and thorough with his transmutations; these arrays called for every bit of his concentration. There was no time to grieve when there was work to be done. The boy scarcely stopped to eat, let alone think of anything other than the science of life. His specialty – plant life and vegetation - lent well to the complexity of human transmutation. It was his talent with flora that had provided the final push in restoring their bodies, after all. Though he didn't have Edward's genius and skill when it came to alchemy, he had to try.
He had to. Edward would have done it for him. After restoring their bodies, they had made a promise to each other never to attempt to create life again. But Alphonse knew, and he was almost certain that Edward did also, that another vow ran deeper between them. So long as one Elric lived, so would the other. It was an unspoken understanding between the brothers, almost a function of their minds, that they would live together or not at all. Alphonse knew from the the moment his brother fell ill that he would either keep Edward alive or die trying. Any other alternative was implausible. His brother's life was his own.
Under the cover of night, Alphonse broke silently into the morgue and carried away his brother's body. It was no feat of strength to carry him; where Edward had been lean and slight, Alphonse was tall and stocky. It was clear which brother spent his days researching out in the field and which preferred to run numbers and experiments in a lab. Edward had always been like that, nose in a book with one hand scribbling notes and the other drawing arrays. It was a talent that Alphonse, respectfully, had no patience for. He preferred to collect ingredients for transmutations when Edward needed an assistant and help out anyone he could with odd jobs and handyman work when he didn't. The result was an impressive girth that more closely resembled his metal body than the frame of his childhood.
Back in the lab, Alphonse laid his brother carefully in the middle of the largest array, positioned in the center of the room. As he stood up to survey his work, his throat tightened at the sight of what his brother had been reduced to. Pale, lifeless flesh, sunken by disease and tinged an eerie gray color. His beautiful, thick, golden hair turned a pale yellow, stringy and limp around his face. A concave stomach and hipbones that might as well have been sticking out right through his thin skin. It was almost an impossible sight to see. He had always thought of his brother as immortal, in a way, though the brothers had come face to face with death more times than Alphonse would care to remember.
"You always attempt to lay down your life for mine, brother," Alphonse spoke softly, kneeling by his brother's body, "I'll never let you get away with it."
Placing the notebook down, he opened it to a page with a diagram of a rune. Then, he slipped a small knife out of his pocket and drew an X on his palm, blood quickly pooling inside his cupped hand. With practiced precision, Alphonse copied the rune onto his brother's forehead. Satisfied, he quickly wrapped his wound with a bandage pulled from his pocket and stepped back.
This wasn't textbook human transmutation by any means. In all of the reported cases of soul binding alchemy that Alphonse had read about, the soul was bound to an inanimate metal object, citing that the iron in the blood reacted well to the iron in the metal. However, Alphonse's theory eliminated the need for a soul to bind to an empty shell. It was almost better to die, Alphonse knew, than to live unable to feel or smell or taste anything in his environment. To be inhuman. Edward couldn't know, and Alphonse would be damned if he allowed him to discover just how traumatizing the experience was.
The new alchemical reactions Alphonse developed his theories on involved the signature and properties of his blood reacting with Edward's blood and calling his soul back from the other side of the Gate. It was a lot of guesswork, but so were all of the brothers' other attempts, so Alphonse let himself have faith in his theory. In truth, the theory itself reflected his relationship with his brother; the sentimentality of it was apparent. There had always been something emotional in a human transmutation, soul binding or otherwise, and the emotional bond Alphonse had with his brother was what the transmutation would draw on for its power.
Alphonse hadn't developed his theory in a week. It would have been impossible. These ideas had first run through his head almost from the moment he had really come to grips with his armor body and begun to think about it scientifically instead of just a miracle his brother had managed. He had done all he could to research it with his brother during those long years where they had searched for the answers they needed to regain their bodies, but there were always more important things to think about. After all, the object was to regain a body, not a soul. Still, after they had accomplished the impossible and were whole again, Alphonse had persisted with his research. Edward had wanted no part in it, and he had warned his brother against it. Human transmutation hadn't brought them anything good in life, and he wasn't about to go poking into it further.
However, all that time in his metal body had given Alphonse an insatiable need to know more. If the Gate hadn't taken his body and soul as payment – if it had merely taken his life – would Edward have been able to call his soul back into his original body? The question haunted him, bothered him like an itch he couldn't quite reach. Thus his theory was developed, the research was done, secret experiments performed, but this was the final step in finding out if his years and years of searching were fruitless: a human experiment.
Alphonse didn't like to think of his brother as an experiment; he loathed it completely. However, he had a scientific mind and no other way to think about it. So, he pushed sentimentality aside and carried on with his work.
Everything was set. Alphonse gazed at his brother, taking in the sight of the body and forcing himself not to picture the horrible bruising on his back from the blood pooling there when he died. Instead, he focused on his favorite memory of his brother, just moments after he had performed his final human transmutation. He was sitting cross-legged, staring in silent wonder at his hands. The way he had looked at Alphonse, cried when he began to cry, laughed hysterically with unbridled joy the first time they had hugged since they were children - that was the way Alphonse chose to see his brother now.
He knelt and pressed bloody fingertips to the array, holding the mental image of his brother in his head to bolster himself as he activated it.
The basement glowed an ominous violet as all of the arrays activated together. Alphonse felt all of his nerves catch fire at once as if lightning had suddenly hit the deepest parts of his veins, but he grit his teeth and kept his hands on his array. He reined in his body's reaction, focusing instead on what was happening. The air inside the circle was swirling as if he had summoned a cyclone, kicking up dust and whipping up all of his research notes into a whirlwind. He ducked his head, squinting at the center of the array. It appeared that there was a pocket of calm in the dead center of the turmoil.
A blinding flash of light stunned Alphonse briefly, cutting through the dark purple lights of the activated arrays and signaling the end of the transmutation. The boy breathed a sigh of relief, slumping to rest his forearms on the floor and give his body a break. He inhaled deeply, coughing furiously when he breathed in all the dust in the air.
Alphonse's ears picked up the sound of someone else coughing, as well, and he whipped his head up to stare towards the center of the array. There, sitting up, was Edward, hacking wetly into his fist. Edward. Coughing and breathing and alive.
"Brother!" Alphonse shrieked, caught between a multitude of emotions. He pushed himself up and ran, hunched over, towards his brother, dropping all of his weight down right in front of the other man. A hand was brought up to touch his cheek, gleefully feeling a glowing warmth pulsing beneath his skin.
"Alphonse," Edward murmured, eyes fixed on his brother with a dead look. After a moment, that blank stare turned into one of confusion. "Alphonse?" he repeated a little louder, a little clearer.