Al hadn't truly realized how cold it got in the desert at night.

Earlier, he'd seen signs of it in his brother, but it had grown hard to remember the little things. Warmth. Cold. Pleasure. Pain. They were all gone to him, and had been for so long. He'd watch his brother curl under blankets, shivering, and try to remember the sensation. He'd felt guilty, of course, for wanting to share something that tormented his brother so much - but he didn't have it; didn't have any of what his brother had.

All pain was hollow and metallic.

And then they'd found it, anticlimactic, a red red rock in the site of one of the many massacres of the Ishbarites. He'd stood and watched the glisten on it in the ruins, listened to the shallow noise of his brother falling to his knees and laughing and laughing until tears ran down his face, watched his brother curse the Colonel, spit invective, fold to the ground and break.

He stood there and tried to bring himself to mimic the action, but couldn't; his entire being was lines and circles in blood and hollow armour wearing it. He was tried, old, caking away and he couldn't weep.

He just wanted something, anything, and he ended up moving, running towards it, shedding bits of armour as he went; he didn't need this gauntlet, he didn't need this breastplate, he didn't need his helmet, he didn't need this. He heard his brother call his name and couldn't stop, bent, tried to press his blood seal to the rock.

For some time, he thought it wouldn't work, the curve of his armour keeping him away and unreal and he begged the air, softly.

The stone had many shapes, melted, filled his armour, and his brother had screamed.

And then he'd opened eyes and was real, soft, and he'd screamed, because the world was too vivid; the sand blowing in the air were tiny knives attacking his flesh, and his own scream hurt - a throat, ears.

Then the soft warmth of his brother's arms and he was okay, he was okay.

And days passed. He grew used to it again, to what he'd wanted, a gangly body he didn't recognize any more than he'd recognized the armour when he first got it. But he didn't think he'd get used to the cold of the desert at night.

His brother was out, and Al wrapped a blanket around himself, stepped out of the tent the Ishbarites had given them for their own. He found his brother standing on top of a sand dune, legs equal for the first time in years.

"Brother," he said. Ed nodded, but didn't look around; he was staring at the moon. "What are you doing?"

Ed reached out a hand, held it so it looked like he grasped the moon's face. "Isn't it strange," he said. "The moon is so sharp-edged when it's cold at night in the desert."

"Mm," Al said, and shivered.

"Everything changes," Ed said. "Even this dune will be gone by tomorrow, reshaped into something else. And what's left?"

Al looked around them, shifted feet on the icy sand. "The desert?" he ventured.

"What's left?" Ed demanded, again, voice and eyes angry.

Al looked at him and understood, suddenly. "Come here, Brother," he said, and Ed went, shoulders slumped, head lowered as if he'd suffered a defeat. Al held the blanket out, wrapped the other end around Ed's shoulders. He tugged Ed close as he steered them back towards the tent.

Ed looked at him from close, inches away, and Al realized that his eyes were bleached almost white in the moonlight. "Al..."

Swallowing, Al made himself look away. That tone of voice - he'd heard it before, too often. Grief, pain, guilt. His brother always wore them all, the mantle of the eldest sibling.

"Come on," Al urged, ushered him back into the tent. "Let's get back to bed."

He clambered back into his own bedroll, but Ed stood by the doorway, body stiff, shoulders hunched.

"It's cold," Ed said. "I don't want to get back into bed. I'm cold anyway."

Al sighed, soft, and held his bedroll open. "Then come in here with me."

Ed gave him a look. "I can't," he said. "People ... they'll think that's weird."

When had Ed stopped meeting his gaze? Al kept the bedroll open. "I've been weird a long time," he said. "You stop listening after a while and have to just be yourself to live with that. Besides, we're brothers. It's not strange for brothers to sleep together for warmth."

"It's not that." Ed was shaking. "Your...skin."

"What?"

"Your skin is strange."

Al froze, withdrew a little, tried to think of what to say. Ed was over at his side in a moment, reaching in to take his hands, to babble.

"I didn't mean it, Al. I didn't mean it. I -"

"You did," Al said, and made himself relax. "But it's okay. My skin is strange. I'm not used to it either."

When he had managed to adjust and stand on his own, he realized he was years older. When he first walked out, it was with legs fifteen years old that had never been fourteen, or thirteen, or twelve. He'd missed puberty and was an adult already. His skin had the development of an adult and the sensitivity of a newborn.

"But that's okay," Al said. "Because it's mine."

He was strangely unsurprised when Ed started to cry, and it was amazingly easy to pull Ed into the bedroll, hold him, let him cry himself out. Those were his, too, and long overdue.

Ed slept after crying, like he'd always done when they were young. Al watched his blotched, red, relaxed face, watched gummed eyelashes flicker against his brother's cheeks.

When he closed his eyes to sleep, he basked in warmth.