Chapter 1… The Easiest Night

On the first night he was nervous.

"We'll come from this area here, and then we'll catch them by surprise here," Edward decided, pushing a white-gloved finger at each location he mentioned, denting the overlarge city map in his excitement. "There should only be those two guys, so we can take them out easy, especially if we use my new disguise…. Then when we beat them up real good, and then signal to that idiot colonel, and then we go over to this area…."

The rather small young man spoke through a mouthful of bread he shoved into his rather large mouth, his large golden eyes fiery and blazing. At the mention of his 'new disguise', he reached back behind him and tugged a small band out from his hair, letting the blonde main fan out around his shoulders, altering his appearance by a surprising amount and partially hiding his young face.

Alphonse Elric paid close attention to his brother's plans; he had heard them before and knew them by heart, but he always wanted to make sure he had everything down- and he always wanted to be sure that his erratic older brother had not made some sort of fatal mistake. Sure enough, he had to bring up several important points his brother had missed.

"How do we signal the colonel, brother?" he questioned after Edward's monologue had ended, concluded with another large mouthful of food and a dramatic swallow and belch.

"Smoke," the elder grinned deviously. "Because he's the flame alchemist, everybody else will understand that it's for him and not misread it. Hawkeye is pretty good about that sort of thing, but Falman and the major will almost certainly get confused if we don't use smoke…."

"Good point," Al admitted, pleased that his brother had developed a sense of tactic. "But how are we supposed to get from this point to way over there in that amount of time?"

When all of the knots and wrinkles of the plan had been smoothed out, Edward rolled up the map and pulled his shirt and shoes off with a long yawn. "Got to sleep to get ready, then!" he decided firmly, hopping into the small hotel bed. "Night, Al."

"Goodnight, brother."

Al took the liberty of extinguishing the lights for his brother, who seemed to have fallen deep asleep even before the darkness fell. And then… the night truly took hold.

On that first night, Al was nervous. The prospect of a battle often did that to him. Even if it was just against two (most-likely harmless) enemies, recently his soul kept drifting out of him, searching for the body he had lost, and this armor body was left in a comatose state for two or three minutes at least. If it were to happen during the battle, Edward would be left to fight two soldiers at once. That would be no problem to the Fullmetal Alchemist… providing that the soldiers really were harmless. But a single flaw in the plan or unexpected turn of events could be fatal.

Alphonse sighed through his armor plating and let his head fall back to the wall behind him as he sat against it. Because every night was like this, every one of these nights that he was unable to sleep in this body. The endless nights would always bring him grief.

As if cued by the snoring of Edward on the bed, a thousand worries suddenly raced through his mind like the tide of an ocean that would never stop flowing, crashing waves upon his conscious and washing throughout his eardrums with deafening roars. The constant nagging of a million doubts that Alphonse was normally able to push to the back of his mind always flooded through him when night fell and he became alone.

Would the plan be successful? Would he and Edward ever return to their original bodies? Would his country ever see peace? Would he have to watch his loved ones fall screaming into the dust as the energy was consumed from their bodies?

Who would he know to die next?

Would the sun ever rise?

The questions plagued him until the sun dyed the sky pink as it announced it's soon arrival. Thoroughly shaken by the night of worry, Alphonse sprang to his feet at the first sign of that dawn. It was selfish of him to do so, but he shook his brother roughly.

"Time to wake up," he lied, desperate for that company.

The first night, he was nervous.