Title: Perfect Absence

Anime: Fullmetal Alchemist

Rating: M

Disclaimer: I wish, but can't say that I own any of Hiromu Arakawa's works

Summary: He never was the one to do such acts, he wasn't even the one to stand by and watch. But now, Alphonse meets the Holocaust face to face and he chooses who dies and who survives. Including his own brother.

Chapter 19:

The One With Whom You Fell

They stayed inside this place for many nights. Often, in what Edward thought could be the earliest hours of the day or the latest moments of the evening, men would shriek of parasites under their skin. In a frenzy they'd scratch themselves bloody, their skin so raw and red that he could feel their flinches and aches from across the room as they settled on top of one another in an attempt to get away from the cold floor. Out of the forty men inside the structure, he only recognized one.

Every so often he'd cross the room on tingling legs, under the watchful but tired gaze of his father. When he'd catch his eye he'd scowl like a child and continue his march, not a word spoken between the two (not that Edward needed to talk). Most of the men were too hallow, drained of emotion and breath, preferring to remember their lost families from their rough cots until tears were in their eyes and the feeling of being human was abnormal enough to have them weeping for feeling something. Every so often he himself would get a tinge of this pain, but he'd see his father and keep pacing.

On the third day the group had deteriorated to half its size. Boys fell from the top bunks and succumbed to shock as their fathers and strangers' fingers alike finally stopped their endless tremors. Some eyes were wide, having seen the unspoken fear that crept loudly through the cracks in the wooden walls at night, a deadly but patient beast. The rest remained closed in a peace Edward longed for. It didn't stop him however from startling awake others when his own father fell limp, pushing him onto his back in a hysteria, slapping him, shouting, bringing two officers towards him from the door.

"He's alive! He's alive!" he wailed as a strained eyelid slowly opened. "Look, see!"

The men left and Edward let out shaky breaths until he sobbed, wracking gasps that shook his body more violently than the coldest nights. He cried for the person he used to be, the child he still was, and who he'd become. He cried for his mother, his father, Winry and Pinako, for the men and women he'd seen and will never see. Most importantly, he cried for Al.

"They're killers, they're monsters," he spat between clenched teeth, "they wait for us to die like we're some pigs."

"We are all monsters of our own kind, Edward."

"Don't compare me to them."

"But..." His voice was a whisper so hushed Edward craned to hear over the wind and desperate sounds. "We've all tried to play God."

He squeezed his eyes shut, opening them to tears hot on his cheeks and chin. As he laid back down to face a roof that was very black, his hands rubbing against his face, he listened intently to the hoarse breathing from his left. It was slow. He raised his prosthetic arm, close enough to his eyes to see its silhouette then laid it down beside him.

It was hours like this that something else kept Edward awake, though hunger still caused his stomach to clench tightly and what felt like bugs crawled across his skin. Beginning at the back of his mind and slowly making it's way forward, he couldn't get away from it or accept it for what it was. It wasn't the SS men who'd demean him with hostility or death that was sly and lucid, not even the glimpse of holes in the snow dug by men searching for their brothers. Edward could barely put it into words himself.

This evil was here tonight in the form of his dying father, and as the fifth or sixth day passed, the officers opening the doors to let in angry snow and breezes, he gave the man's shoulder a shake. It was cold and he was still.

Alphonse straightened his uniform with gloved hands. Somewhere in the distance he could distinguish gunshots from breathing walls that creaked loudly throughout his stay. Before this he would've joined the other men, but now he only lay stiff in his cot claiming to have come down with a cold.

"Hey, scientist?" one man asked when Al tucked himself away in the farthest corners of the room. "Found a cure for all of 'em yet?"

The room filled with barks of laughter, cigars lighting, stubbed, as he stood up. He couldn't tell if his life's work was now being mocked. A stubby character slapped his shoulder, palm heavy and now shaking the boy into an embrace.

"We could march them all out to the sea if we weren't so damn tired!"

Howls, now, as ashes flickered across the floor and men leaned back in their chairs with bright red faces. The stove fed by wood (he'd seen a few so weak that they had to gather it from their knees yesterday) was now extinguished as the last cigarette dropped. One of the quieter officers walked towards Al and took him away from the almost drunken banter of the other.

"C'mon boy, we have a pace to keep up with."

The sky was clear and close, Alphonse almost raising his hand to touch it, with the sun shining down onto the snow before them. Their boots were soon wet and the air was so dry, so pure that he almost found it hard to breath in. All men alike were gathered outside the sheds they'd been kept in, and a bit over a small bank he could see bodies twisted together like twigs of the forest around them.

"Scientist..." the older man mused, receiving a sharp glance from Al.

"I wasn't brought around to kill," he replied in a hiss, furrowing brows and kicking of the packed snow before his steps accompanied his words.

"Oh?.. Interesting. Sacrifices need to be made though, for the better good."

This sent Alphonse into a hysteria, within seconds he was screaming at the man.

"Alphonse, have you gone mad?" one guard that pulled him off the officer said, a look of not anger but disappointment overtook his face. Alphonse didn't feel a single thing, he didn't want to please them. He'd wanted that before, to keep himself alive for the sake of Edward, to hopefully piece back together what was left of the two as he'd always done before. They'd found a way through most things, sometimes blindly, but nonetheless they were a team.

He'd never felt so alone.

Many have gone crazy, whispering to themselves like their prisoners, rattling around guns and walking with a constant war torn disposition. It was as if they'd come to terms that they'd eventually feel the consequences of their sins and wanted no more of it. One had told Alphonse that he prayed to God every night in hopes of making everything right (but deep down at the bottom of Alphonse's being he knew that was impossible, he just knew). The man was shot.

Al remained at the back of the march with his gun cradled in his arms, still an awkward fit despite practices of how to use it. He rounded up the slackers, the lame and the exhausted, urging them to go forward with as little words as possible. He was being watched, the badge on his uniform not a clearance for the beady eyes that followed his each sloppy movement. Each step was a thought out calculation until all attention was brought to a man who collapsed with a final plea to die on the road. He finally took a gulp of air as another being sighed.

Between the hours of the day, when Al had to work his hardest to keep up, and the two day stretch that they walked, he grew into a state of disbelief. Was he Alphonse? Was he Alphonse Elric? Was he who he thought he was or the person he wished to never see? He'd thought out this fear multiple times, when he first entered the camp, and when he was just the shell of a young child. Realizing when the morning's first bullets rang out like the sirens of a screeching storm, that his entire life had been spent fighting for something and someone (even when he'd turn away from a mirror, unable to go without feeling such remorse towards this metallic creature, he still fought for his brother's sake), and now when forced to fight for himself, to be greedy and hostile, he didn't. He couldn't.

Alphonse shook his head, rubbing his brow. He was truly going mad.

When the train tracks led them to a series of waiting cattle carts, and Al helped up a boy his age roughly, in spite of himself, into one, he sat in front and allowed the SS officer beside him to elaborate on the trek. At one point he fell asleep to the bumps and rocks but woke up from a dream so terrible he only stayed on the cart for the sake of being away from the thumps of dead bodies.

Thump.

Thump.

They fell like snow.

Thump.

Alphonse watched their bruised bodies curl onto the train tracks before him.

Thump.

On the tenth day the group arrived at Buchenwald with the last two survivors in Al's cart.

Thanks everyone for all the great reviews! I'm extremely happy that people are still interested in this story, and due to such a reception I was thinking of doing a follow up story. I can't say who'll be in it, that'll just spoil the rest of PA, but I can say that I will elaborate greatly on characterization and really get into their brains rather than having the plot do all the work; something I hope I achieved with this chapter! Rereading all the old ones, I felt like I hadn't really covered not necessarily the emotions but the mental strain and effect that all this must have on the boys. I almost want to rewrite everything but I'm a lazy cow ahaha! Anyway, tell me what you think about a follow up in the reviews! Lots of love, Mari.