Mossmask: There will be two separate oneshots in some attempt at narrative symmetry or some crap like that. One fairly happy, one not-so-much. Screw it, they're both kinda bittersweet. Let the titles be your guide. One will be set post 2003 series, and one will be set post Brotherhood. Both will be varying degrees of AU.

The following is AU only in the sense that after the events of the 2003 series, Al didn't lose his memory. Because sudden inconvenient amnesia is the worst plot device ever and just no. No go away do not want.

~Dash

For Better
Fullmetal Alchemist fanficton
by The Cinderninja

A lot of people go through life wondering what their purpose was. Why were they here? What was the point of it all? A lot of people felt lost, adrift in the world and overwhelmed with no rock, no anchor, no light in the dark. Ed and Al had never understood these people. That was quite possibly due to the fact that for as long as either of them could remember, they had always had a purpose. They had never been left wondering what they ought to do.

From the start, they always wanted to please their mother. Everything they did was done for her. Most small children all felt this way, and in time, they all grew out of it. It wasn't until much later on that people started to feel the hopelessness that went hand in hand with no purpose. Maybe if their life had had less tragedy, the Elrics would have met this same inevitable fate as well.

But their life had been filled with tragedy, and there was no changing it now. Their mother had died very early on, and after that, their life was filled with new purpose. They would find a teacher and master alchemy, they would learn all of it's secrets, and they would perfect the theory of human transmutation. Then they would bring their mother back. They always had this goal in mind. They knew what they had to get there, and every step closer brought with it a feeling of achievement. This was their sole purpose, their rock and their anchor, and the light leading them forward.

Until they finally reached their goal. Luckily – or quite unluckily, depending on who you asked – life was quick to give them new purpose. The transmutation failed, and Ed lost an arm and a leg for his troubles. Worse still, Al lost his entire body. It took some time for the boys to get sorted after the latest thing to go horribly wrong in their lives, but they quickly found themselves another track. Ed decided which road he was going to take and Al decided to follow him.

They would become State Alchemists – although in the end, only the older brother needed to – they would research the Philospher's Stone. And medical alchemy, and bioalchemy, and any other leads they thought might possibly hold an answer to get their bodies back. They knew they were on a dangerous path. It reflected too perfectly the same journey they had only just finished.

They lost their mother, they attempted the impossible, they nearly lost themselves in the rebound. And now, after losing themselves, they were determined to get back what they should just accept as lost. They were once more striving to attain the impossible, and they were both aware that in the end, they could lose themselves completely. But this was what they wanted and they wouldn't look back.

At times it seemed hopeless, but they never gave up. Because if Al felt like he couldn't go on, he just had to look at his brother and that would be enough to keep him going. And if Ed felt overwhelmed or that he just couldn't take any more failure, all he had to do was see Al, and he would remember what was at stake. They both kept their goals in mind, and they lived life with more purpose than most people could ever hope to be blessed with.

And so as long as either could remember, they knew where to go next. They knew what they were aiming for, and they were always by the other's side, ready to pick him up if he ever lost sight of his goal. This was how things had been their whole life, and neither could ever imagine things being different.

Until now.

Because Ed had reached his goal, and gotten Al's body back. But what was Al left with? Nothing. Because that was how he saw it. He had far more when he'd had no body, but his brother by his side, then he could ever hope to have with his body back and his brother gone. Without Ed, he... he couldn't even imagine... he didn't know... he didn't know where to go from here.

For the first time in his life, Al didn't know where to go from here. He had nothing to reach for. They'd gotten to the end of the road, and it turns out that yet again, it wasn't all they had hoped for. But now Al found himself alone, and he wasn't sure how to continue. He had no rock, his anchor was gone. He had just watched his light give itself up to the darkness. He fell to his knees and cried.

The first few days were the worst. But just like the first few days after the human transmutation, there was just so much going on, and so much to worry about, that his brain was allowed a brief time on autopilot to collect itself and prepare for the road ahead.

Those few days on autopilot were spent remembering things. Like remembering how to walk. To know the motions were one thing, but to feel all of the muscles and tendons in your legs reacting to a command from your brain and the way they pushed and pulled and moved around inside of you, that alone was enough to overwhelm.

But on top of that, he had to remember what it felt like to speak. To actually have to use your mouth. To remember which muscles had to move which way to make which sounds, and boy did teeth feel weird. Run your tongue along your teeth and try out every new sound. It was all familiar but so completely strange and alien and new.

Then to remember what things smelled like. That wasn't something he could turn off. He couldn't just stop walking, or stop talking, or lie down and close his eyes and pretend the world didn't exist when his eyes were shut. It was a sense he couldn't turn off, and it was constantly sending new information into his head and he couldn't even begin to understand it all. At first it had confused him until he realized that he was smelling things. Then he spent his time trying to distinguish one smell from another, and figure out why some things seemed so familiar and why others he couldn't recall and knew he had no hope of ever placing.

He was acutely aware of his hair. The bangs constantly tickled his forehead and made his eyebrows twitch. It was short in the back and he constantly found himself reaching a hand up to rub it and giggling at how short and fuzzy it felt.

He felt. Everything. Everywhere. Every part of his body felt something, all the time. Bare feet on cold tiles. The uncomfortable, constricting feeling of socks. The skin in between his fingers felt strange when he opened his hands as wide as they could go and shut them again. He did this over and over but still couldn't decide if it was a good feeling or not. Every fabric felt different. Some were soft and light and made him feel every movement and shift of the fabric on his arms and legs. Some were thick and heavy and made him feel weighed down and he decided he didn't like these because they made it hard for him to breathe.

Hot and cold. He couldn't figure out what was what. He walked in bare feet everywhere – he spent the first days after everything in a hospital. The military wasn't sure what to do with him but Mustang decided that it would be best if he were kept under close watch for a few days because no one knew what so much time spent in the Gate might do to someone. He was slowly getting the hang of everything else again, but hot and cold, they eluded him. There was no easy way to put to words the way temperatures felt. There was no clear cut way to describe the difference in temperature, and it never felt the same way twice.

Sometimes you could feel warm in your chest but cold in your toes. Sometimes warm was a good thing, and made you feel cozy and safe. Sometimes if was uncomfortable and made you sweat and squirm around but never find a way to sit comfortably. Sometimes cold was a pleasant chill breeze, but sometimes it was harsh and made you shiver. Sometimes he would shiver so hard it made his insides hurt. Sometimes you felt both at the same time, and sometimes you felt neither. Temperature was always there, it never just stopped being. But sometimes, if it wasn't extreme, it was easy for most people to forget about.

But Al couldn't just forget it or ignore it. It was there and it was strange and it was confusing. But he learned how to tell when his feet were cold and that putting slippers on would help (though not very much). He didn't wear socks because he had decided that he hated them. He learned when certain feelings meant he should take his jacket off or put another blanket on. Sometimes he got them all backwards, but usually, he was able to get it right.

Sometimes Mustang's men came by. Them and Hawkeye. Just to look at him. When Hawkeye came in she usually had a good reason and was actually able to have a fairly normal conversation with him. When the others came, it was just to look at him. They all had different expressions. Some looked completely surprised, like they couldn't even imagine that Al had ever been anything but a suit of armor, and now that they saw it, they had to get this whole new idea through their brains. Some just grinned at him. Some looked solemn because they knew what had happened and what it meant. They didn't usually stay for long, and they didn't usually say much. They weren't sure whether they should congratulate Al for what he gained or acknowledge what they had all lost. It was a hard combination of feelings to contend with, so most of them just avoided bringing up either topic at all, because each one would inevitably lead to the other.

Mustang came in, once. He wore an eye patch. He opened the door and looked at Al grimly. He said nothing, and then he left. That was the last Al saw him for a very long time.

Eventually, the autopilot wore off. It always does. Al was in Resembool when he broke down again. Because he had his body back, but what good would it do him? He still never got the chance to remember what Ed smelled like. He never had a chance to feel his hair, and he never would. He would never feel his brother's warmth, he would never know what he felt like. All that time they'd been so close, but there was a gaping distance between them. And the one thing Al looked forward to was the day he could hold his brother again and feel it.

And now he couldn't see that day ever fitting in to his vision of the future. He couldn't see much of anything in his future. The Rockbell house became a very bleak place in those times. The homunculus Wrath was there as well, but Al didn't see much of him. He was always in the surgery room. He'd lost the limbs he'd stolen from Ed and now Winry had decided to give him automail. Automail that had been made for Ed. In a way, Wrath would still be taking them from his brother.

Al found he didn't have it in him to hate the homunculus for anything he'd done, but at the same time, he wasn't quite ready to forgive him. They lived in the same house but they rarely ever saw each other, and spoke even less.

Al had nothing. No idea. No clue. He needed something to do. Something to push towards. A goal to reach for, a stair to climb, a hurdle to overcome. He was stagnating. He couldn't look to his side and find motivation anymore. He didn't have a brother to remind him why he had to keep going. He didn't have Ed beside him, which made him feel like there was very little reason to keep going at all.

He had always had something. He knew giving up wasn't an option. His brother would never allow it. Even without him here, that much was obvious. Ed had given himself to the Gate for a reason. He knew what he was doing – probably, and Al simply wouldn't allow himself to waste that. He just... felt lost.

He felt like he could finally understand those desperate people. The people who turned to religion or God or men. The people who lost themselves in their desire to do more, and be more, and do something. He understood the confusion of not knowing why you were here or what you were good for. He finally got how people could sit there and not see the point in it all.

Because he couldn't see the point. He was still alive, and that was good. He remembered that it was important to never give up, and that being alive was a good thing. But now he wasn't sure why. You needed to be alive to do things. You couldn't finish what you started if you died halfway through.

But what if you had finished. What if you were done everything you'd set out to do? Could you die then? Some people would say 'yes', but Al was only fourteen, or ten depending on how you looked at it, so he felt the answer to that would be no. But then, most people took a lot longer to decide what they were setting out to do, let alone to complete it. Maybe that really was all there was to it, and he had just gotten through the whole mess quicker then others? That still didn't seem like the answer.

Then one day, he woke up, and everyone could tell he was different. He had found some purpose again, even if they didn't know what it was. He announced that he was going to go visit Teacher again and that he was going to find Ed and bring him back. No one knew what he meant by that. They knew that even when Al said 'bring him back', he couldn't mean human transmutation. He was desperate and mourning, but he wasn't that stupid and everyone knew it. Some thought he was crazy, others thought he was just sad. Winry just smiled and wished him luck, because she hadn't given up on Ed either. She didn't know what had happened to Al in those few days that made him come around, but she knew that if anyone could bring Ed back from wherever he was, it was Al.

In truth, Al had had a dream. The first of many. He had seen Ed. He had seen his brother, alive and well, and he had known, somehow, that it was more then just a dream. His brother was out there, waiting for him. And when Al woke up, he felt like a complete idiot. Because how could he have ever have let himself give up on Ed so easily. He and his brother had been through hell and back again and again, so what was one more time?