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On the good days he dreams of scattered memories that don't make sense when he wakes up. Sometimes Al thinks he's just reconstructing them out of the stories that the others tell, that he's been given so many details about the adventures of Edward and Alphonse that he's filling in the details.
But most of the time, it's the same one, over and over again. He knows it's real, at least. That's some comfort. Almost every day, he goes and stands in the ashes and growing grass of the foundations of the home he grew up in. Every night, he watches it burn.
At least, that's how he tells Winry about it.
--
They're standing there in front of him, and they can't see him. Ed, he knows, even with his arm and leg a little bulkier, a little heavier, than they should be. He can't see the metal – just the new shapes of it under the crimson fabric. The other one looms so far above him that he's just a shape against the night sky. A warrior, a soldier, with spiked pauldrons and metal from head to toe.
Al knows something's wrong, because Ed can't see him. He keeps waiting for Ed's eyes to land on him, instead of look through him. Instead, it's like he's not there. He isn't, not really.
What they are looking at is their house. It's everything they have left, and Al remembers everything that happened here. He remembers Mom picking him up like he weighed nothing, and nuzzling his nose with a laugh, and feeding him peas and carrots even while he complained. He remembers walking to school and trying not to slip on rainy days when the hill was slick with mud. He remembers falling down the front steps and hanging up the laundry.
The tall man, the one in steel, lights the torch.
“Please, please--” He stands in front of the doorway, and he reaches for the torch, but it passes through him like he's nothing but air. “Please, don't, this is – this is all I have left--” Ed can be stubborn sometimes. He can. But he's never been like this, ignoring him so coldly, and usually Al can talk him around, tell him when something is really a bad idea--
Except, he supposes, when it really mattered. But that was because Al wanted to, too. And Al doesn't know how he knows that, because it hasn't happened yet, and it happened a long time ago, and it never happened, and it is still happening-- His life is still being determined by one choice he barely even remembers.
“Ed, please, you don't have to-- you don't have to destroy it all--”
It's too late. The walls are catching, and Al turns his head to watch the flames lick up the sides of the doorway. Everything's still here. Notes. Photos. Mom's journals. Mom's clothes. Mom's treasures, tiny little things that she treasured-- “You're burning up her history, too,” he wants to say, but Ed isn't even going to realize why that's important, and he knows it.
The man with him. He recognizes the armour, from his father's study.
“Dad?” he cries out. But there's no response there either. And even before the flames have burned down, they've turned their back and they're walking away--
He runs after them, but something stops him dead maybe a pace away from the steps. He tries again, but then the foot in front of him is burning, too. “Stop it! Stop it, stop it, stop it--”
---
Every night.
Every night.
He wakes up, and he looks at the picture of himself in the armour, and he tells himself, I just don't remember. Of course it doesn't feel like me. I don't remember any of it.
Then one night, the armour turns around and squats down in front of him. It's not cruel. He could handle cruelty. He could handle a villain.
Instead, with its face like stone and eyes glowing with a strange light, it says in a voice that echoes like some hollow drum, “He needs me. You understand.”
You understand.
---
Al sits in the center of the forest, closes his eyes, and practices. It's like throwing his voice, putting pieces of his soul into things. He has to touch them, but not for long; if he's prepared and ready, he can brush the fur of a squirrel and put himself in its body for a few moments. Not for long; he can feel the soul of the poor little thing struggling to push him out, and he tries not to do anything while he's there. Inanimate objects are better, but trees don't have eyes. The ground-- He nearly loses himself in it, the first time he tries. With practice, it gets easier.
He feels Wrath before he hears him, as a result. Bare feet treading on a bed of pine needles and loam, and every bit of earth, every stranded pebble, feels like a piece of his body. Al's only met Wrath a few times, but each time has been... He doesn't know how to phrase it. Everybody in his life tiptoes around him, or treats him like part of their family even when he doesn't know where he fits. They're all part of the normal world.
Wrath is something else. When Al opens his own eyes to look at him, nothing has changed in him since the year or so since Al saw him last. He's changed his shirt. But his hair still falls over his face like ink, and he's still got that playful, borderline-mean look on his face that never actually seems to materialize into cruelty. He's cruel to Winry, sometimes, and Rose. But never him.
“Picked up meditation?”
“Not exactly,” he replies. Then-- “Who are you?”
Wrath pauses, midway through grabbing a tree branch. The question's hurt him, and Al doesn't know exactly why. “They never told you, huh?”
“I mean--” He meant to do it more gently. “I know you're one of... them. The, uh, homunculi. I got that much. And I know you're--” He rests his arms on his knees, and it's strange, because suddenly he can't feel them, like he's drifting out far away, like he's cast his soul into a cloud or a breeze. “I know you were, or-- or some part of you, or-- I don't know.”
“I was transmuted from Izumi Curtis's baby. Is that what you're trying to say?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
Wrath lets go of the tree branch, and instead comes closer to him, standing over where he's sitting cross-legged in the grass. “So what are you actually asking me? My name's Wrath. You know that.”
“Did you choose it?”
“Nobody chooses their own name.”
“Some people do.”
“They're the lucky ones.”
“You could choose your own, if you wanted. I mean-- Being named something so, so...”
Wrath snorts. “Ugly? Mean? At least it's honest. Do you even know what your name means?”
“Something about ready for battle, I think.” Al sighs, feeling that disconnect from his body again. He must have been in the armour, to have the ability he does; but the dreams are getting under his skin. “Sorry. I'm... having a weird day.”
Wrath looks him up and down with a considering gaze. “I'd ask if you want to talk about it, but I'm not a shrink and I still don't trust you.”
“What? What did I do?”
“You don't remember it anyway, s'no point.”
He swallows down the knot of guilt in his throat, or tries to. “I did something bad to you? Or--” Or whoever it was in the armour, he adds, and doesn't say, because he knows it was him. Who else would it be?
And who else would Wrath be, except Kai Curtis?
“Is Rockbell at home? I think I need a screw replaced or something.”
“Not right now,” Al mutters. “She's – off with Sheska, doing, um. Something. I don't remember.”
I don't remember.
Wrath's legs are in front of him, and suddenly he's gazing at them. Not just the difference between the steel and the flesh, although that's catching his gaze too. Automail has so many points and ridges, but his other leg is so... white. So pale, even though he knows Wrath sleeps outdoors and walks out in the sun. When he reaches out his hand, even though he's not exactly dark himself, his skin looks like wood against Wrath's. He presses his fingers gently to the flesh, and it feels soft, a little colder than a normal person but smooth.
“What are you doing?”
Al pulls his hand back, heart leaping into his throat. “Sorry,” he exhales. “Sorry, I'm – sorry --”
Wrath squats down in front of him, and there's a hand on his face, but Wrath's expression is – so hard to read, watching him with purple eyes so bright they're like jewels and a mouth that's just barely showing his teeth, and Al's done something wrong but he can't quite wrap his head around what even though he knows, he knows--
“What-- what are you thinking?” he asks instead of all the other things he wants to say.
And Wrath... smiles. It's a sad little smile. Resigned.
“I thought when I was on the other side of this, I'd... Never mind.”
“No, please, I--”
“It's nothing to do with you. I just thought I'd understand more, not less. Not you. Someone else. You're not doing too good, are you?”
Al wants to lie, desperately. Because he's supposed to be doing well. He has his body, right? And even without being able to remember, he should be able to appreciate what a blessing that is. Four years not being able to taste, smell, touch... It sounds like hell.
Instead, he just starts to cry. He scrubs at his face, uselessly, and he tries, so hard, to get out some kind of explanation. “I don't-- I don't understand any of what happened, I don't even know if it was me – Someone's been here instead of me the whole time. And now I'm here and nobody will believe me. Nobody believes me.”
“Hey. Hey, look at me.”
Al does, and he can, because Wrath's eyes are so different from anybody else's. Nobody else has purple eyes, and he can lose himself in them. Like staring into amethyst ore. He doesn't even complain when Wrath picks him up like he weighs nothing, and carries him inside. Even when Wrath looks away and the purple's gone, he can't speak, but he doesn't feel so much like he's falling.
“I don't know how to make tea,” Wrath grumbles. “So this is guesswork. Do you take the thing out?”
Al tries to answer, but then Wrath looks over at him and he's able to nod – then hold up five fingers.
“Five minutes?”
He nods again.
“Oh, yeah, okay. I get it now.”
When the mug's in front of him, Al just finds himself staring into it. “I don't know if this is bad,” he whispers, and he can't get any louder than that, “but you remind me of Ed. I mean, the-- the Ed i knew.”
Wrath's quiet at that. When he does speak, though, he doesn't seem mad. Not exactly. “I don't really have anybody else to be. Anybody who doesn't suck, anyway. There's Envy, and-- Less said, the better. So, yeah, that's not an accident.”
“So you're... pretending.”
“Not pretending, no.” Wrath shrugs, or something that looks like it through Al's eyelashes. “It's what we do. People, I mean. Not homunculi. We copy people and pick the parts we like. That's all we are, really. Memories, and habits, and patterns. Take away the body, and that's all that's left.”
“You don't believe in the soul, then.” Al blinks, and a tear falls off his eyelashes into the dark-brown liquid below. Ripples, bouncing off the sides of the mug. He's still so far away, and maybe he's off wherever Ed is, and maybe he's just nowhere at all. Maybe he doesn't exist.
“I dunno. I don't know if I believe in anything. See, the--” Wrath adjusts himself on the couch. “The others, they were all made from people who'd lived. They had something to compare themselves to. Some standard they were falling short of.” He's got a cup of tea himself, but he barely even seems to feel the heat of it. “Lust and Yasmin. Envy and William. Even Greed and – I only heard his original name once. I think it was Allan. And Sl-- well,” he cuts himself off. “The point is. I was made from a kid who lived for four minutes. Four minutes and twenty-six seconds, to be exact.”
Al clearly doesn't disguise the expression on his face well. But Wrath shrugs it off again. “That's what Sig told me. I never – got comfortable there. But it's a different kind of ghost, right? It's all of the things I could have been. All of those futures they had planned for me.” There's a strange tone to the last part, almost like pride, and Al wants to ask about it, but he knows a tender wound when he sees one. “I have no idea how I'm supposed to act, though. I'm nothing like Izumi. Nothing like Sig, either. If I'm anything, I'm all the shit that happened to me.”
“That seems... sad.”
“I mean, yeah. My life kind of sucks. I'm used to it. But your brother was something that happened to me, and he sucked less than everything else.”
Al doesn't know why he's smiling. It feels like someone else is smiling for him, but at the same time, it feels like it's supposed to be there.
“What's so funny?”
“Oh, just... Nice to hear something that isn't hero worship. Winry was in love with him, y'know.”
“No, I had no idea. I could be blind and still know that.”
Al gives Wrath a gentle kick, but it's nice to tease. It's nice to be having fun. At the same time...
The dream. The dream is painted on his eyelids, these days, and it won't go away. “You met me when I was in the armour,” he almost whispers.
“Yeah.”
“Do--” His mouth is so dry, and he feels like he's gonna burst into tears. “Do you think I'm-- It feels like--”
Wrath waits, lets him try to struggle through as many syllables as he can. It's a patience he's not used to, and a patience he hasn't been told to expect from him. He's named after anger, after all – but instead, he sits there and waits, quiet as a mountain.
“I keep having these dreams. Watching someone walk away in that... armour, with my name, in my place.”
Wrath nods, puts down the tea that he hasn't touched. “So you're asking me if I think you're the same person.”
“Yeah.”
“I don't think it matters.”
“Oh come on. That's a coward's answer.”
“Bold of you to call me a coward,” Wrath retorts with a half-smile, and again it feels like there's a joke Al's missing, like Wrath is being gentle with him somehow, but he'll take it. “Here's the thing. No, I don't think you are.”
Al's breath catches in his throat.
“But I'm not the same person I was when I was with the homunculi, either.”
Al scowls at him. “That's not what--”
“What's the difference?”
“There are four years of my life missing. For all intents and purposes, they didn't happen.”
“They did, though. They happened to someone, anyway. They might not have happened to you, but they still happened.”
“You're not helping,” Al complained.
“Al, you're asking questions of identity to someone who's never going to age past twelve and can't recognize his own face in the mirror. I'm not going to be helpful.”
Wrath's laughing a little at that, when he says it. But for a split second, Al can see his brother in Wrath's face.
He's not sure where the urge comes from. He puts the half-empty cup down – he doesn't even remember drinking any – and he crawls across the couch, until he's pressed up against Wrath, He wraps his arms around his neck and curls into him, finding the perfect way to fit.
Wrath is tense, ready to push him off-- But then he relaxes. There's still nervousness there, Al can feel it, in the tendons and muscles and nerves just below the skin.
Al closes his eyes, and listens to the odd, slightly-off, heartbeat beneath Wrath's skin. By all rights he shouldn't even have one – but he does. “Is it a good thing?” he murmurs.
“Hm?”
“That I'm a different person.”
Wrath doesn't answer that one. Instead, he shifts his arm to cradle Al, keep him in place on his lap. “...Depends who you ask,” he says, and Al can hear it in his voice, or maybe it's just wishful thinking, that he's happier with Al as he is. That whatever ghosts he sees when he looks at Al, or listens to him, they're not dreams of could-have-beens and dead potential.
---
He's dreaming again. The torch thuds on the steps. The flames lick up the side of the house.
Ed's crying. He's never noticed that before. He's trying to pretend he's not – he always does that. Al supposes all older brothers must.
Time skips. He's chasing after them, and he's skinned his knee, and Ed's putting a plaster on it – no, Ed's walking away, and the armour is kneeling in front of him.
“He needs me. You understand.”
“I do.” He doesn't want to. He wants to knock the armour's head off, expose it for the ghost it is, but then what would Ed do? Even an echo is something. And Al can't be sure. There's something terrifying about the eyes staring back at him from the masked head, and he thinks about something he heard once. Imagine yourself in the past, imagining yourself now. This is him in the past. This is him in the future. This is a part of him he'll never know.
“I'm scared,” he says.
“I know. Me too,” the armour says, and he recognizes the voice this time, and he wants to touch the armour and see if maybe this time, this time, he'll reme--
---
He wakes up to Winry and Sheska downstairs, and the breeze blowing through the open window. Somebody's tucked him in, even undone his hair from its ponytail, and the wind smells like fresh grass and sawdust.
There's a few black hairs on his pillow. They probably ended up there by mistake, but Al still imagines Wrath lying there next to him, maybe sleeping as well, maybe just watching him as he dreams. He should be afraid. He knows enough to know that should worry him, or at least unnerve him. Instead, he wraps them around his finger and pulls his hands to his chest.
“Come back soon,” he says, and closes his eyes, and wishes, and wishes, and wishes.