Al didn't know how it happened.

One moment the fight was going as usual - sad, when they fought so often that there was a 'usual' way for a fight to go - when all of a sudden everything went south. Al had been distracted fighting Gluttony, the huge homunculus was extremely fast on his feet for someone so large, and he hadn't seen exactly what happened. Only that when the dust cleared, Ed was unconscious and a large pool of blood had been spreading from his head outwards to turn the soil a murky red.

He barely even remembered finishing the fight in a burst of frantic alchemy, Ed scooped up into his arms and borne away as fast as he could carry him. The hours that passed were blurred, confused, terrifying. The doctors got Ed stable, said he would live, but there had been damage to his brain. They wouldn't know the extent of what long term effects there would be, if any, until he woke up.

Three days, three long days in an agony of silence and endless waiting.

In all his fear, though, he never would be prepared for Ed opening his eyes and looking at him without even a flicker of recognition.

He still isn't quite sure how they managed to make it home.

All he knows is that one moment he was standing in the snow, listening to his tablet blare out a warning about being in a 'RESTRICTED ZONE', and the next thing-- he's standing at the bottom of the dirt path in Resembool that leads up to Winry's home. He would have thought this another hallucination, a cruel trick of Norfinbury such as they had dealt with in the past, if it weren't for the person standing next to him who definitely doesn't fit the scene.

"S-Steph--?!"

She looks ridiculous in her thick coat and scarf out here in the summer sun, and he can't stop staring at her. This doesn't seem real, it can't be real.

Can it?