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There is something to be said for simultaneity.
For years, his brother was the only one between them to bear Truth. Al’s mind was kind enough to forget it, to press that Gate firmly shut. Disruption of the soul was enough, he ascribed his mind to think—we need not fret with all alchemical truth, too. And he was content without it. The pleasure of alchemy is understanding, and privately, during those years, Alphonse pitied Ed: that he no longer took the time to draw his arrays, to feel them come alive point by point. Al did not know, of course, what an open Gate was; he did not know Truth, could not comprehend just yet the wonder, the sheer depth of understanding that comes with it. It was later he learned his pity was for naught; channeling alchemy through the body was more intimate an experience than drawing with chalk could ever be.
But that is a digression. Al’s initial remembrance—and the weight of what put him there in the first place—aside, it was his second step into Truth that really gave him pause: entering the void in armor, and being confronted by a stranger.
Of course, his body could never really be a stranger to him. But for that first moment, still adjusting to the change of setting, still in the process of comprehending the situation, the emaciated boy across from him in the whiteness was just that: an emaciated boy, for whom he had no name, and who smiled at him, blandly, but with agency.
Yes—that was what captivated him. His body, moving soulless. Smiling at him. Speaking to him.
Ed played soldier and dragged Alphonse with him, but the military was never either of their callings. No—Ed and Al were scholars from birth. In Resembool they devoted themselves to their study as much as any other child might their play—but then again all Resembool children were strange in those days, with the tension of the war, with how many parents left and didn’t come back. Winry’s play was automail. Ed and Al’s was alchemy, and although they didn’t lose either of their parents to the war, they lost them all the same. Their father’s profession set them on their path. Their mother’s death cemented it.
Again—digression. The point is Al was a scholar. An alchemist, a mathematician, a seeker-of-truth, and Truth, now that he had known it, was of course part of the seeking. Study, discovery—this was what Al was made for, far more than conflict. Al was curiosity incarnate, more so than even Ed, and curiosity hungers for all things: for knowledge, for truth, for mystery. The soul is an alchemist’s ultimate mystery, the taboo, perfect object of curiosity. It is matter; alchemy could not otherwise touch it. Alchemy is understanding; without at least some knowledge of the soul, no one could harness it. The Philosopher’s Stone is a testament to its reality, irrefutable.
But—but—no one has yet been able to identify what the soul is made of, what its properties are. The alchemy that makes use of it is all theory, and it is luck that theoretical understanding was enough to activate those first arrays. All alchemy that involves the soul is shaky. It can be sensed, when an array is activated, how structurally sound it is, and Al would never forget the sensation of human transmutation: a house of cards. A hut in shambles. Bare frame, termite-eaten—human transmutation was never going to work. It was all theory, and maybe alchemists got lucky enough to take hold of the soul, but luck enough to move it is an entirely separate matter.
Point being—all know the soul, but none comprehend it, and who is to say what it can or cannot be made to do? Before he called on Truth the second time, Al thought he knew at least one aspect of it: that it can be transposed from body to metal.
And then he met his flesh, and his flesh voiced a greeting.
He had assumed that his body would be an empty shell. He assumed it might not be at all, that it had been dissolved into his Gate, and upon calling it back it would reconstitute itself then. Al had assumed many things—had even toyed with the idea that Truth was wearing it, having remembered the vision of it piecing away from him and piecing together again before his eyes, an expression on its face he would never wear. And again he toyed with this idea, when his body spoke to him, but it couldn’t be Truth, because Truth would never smile at him like that. For all that Truth is, it does not lie, in voice or in body. Truth couldn’t smile at him like that.
Even if it could, though, Al couldn’t have mistaken the boy across from him for Truth. He recognized him. Alphonse had never known, of course, what he would look like older, and certainly had never imagined himself so terrifyingly thin, but once he really looked, really listened, it was impossible not to recognize. The boy was him. He was the boy. It—in the blankness it was so simple—it was just that he was, in two places, seeing through two different sets of eyes. The flesh and the armor were separate, but—and wasn’t this so freeing a sensation—only temporarily. They had diverged but would converge again. The flesh was there kept safe. The armor would return to the world and keep moving.
When the armor did return to the world, Al did not know any more than he had seen or already remembered. The Gate did not divulge any new truths to him. His body had said nothing more than a regretful come-back-soon. But, as any scholar well knows, sometimes you do not need new information to come to an understanding. Sometimes you have all the pieces, and simply have yet to arrange them. And Al—well—he didn’t have all the pieces, but he had more than most.
The soul—alchemy’s greatest mystery—and here was an alchemical prodigy who was all soul. A testament to successful human transmutation, for that’s what alchemy of the soul is, he understood suddenly—and this was not the realization he wanted to have—it was a realization all the same—human transmutation, when applied primarily to the body, when evoking the soul distantly, imprecisely, as he and Ed did, cannot succeed. Humanity is the soul. The flesh is but a receptacle. One would not fill a pail by placing it on the desert sand and praying for rain.
A—digression—Alphonse could not think about it steadily. He kept drifting away from it, meandering around the idea; it was so difficult to face, not because it was horrible, or gargantuan, or impossible, but because it was just so slippery. So difficult to name, to keep hold of. The realization he wanted to have—not wanted, really—but hungered to—was simultaneity.
No one knows the properties of the soul. Ed thought he transmuted Al into the armor in entirety, but that is an estimation that cannot be made. Who is to say how big the soul is? What is its mass? Who is to say how much information is stored in any one part of it? A soul is not a brain. A soul is not anything known, and Al’s body, preserved patiently at his Gate, spoke to him. Spoke like him. Smiled like him. Held the same genial manner, asked politely if he had decided to return yet, did not begrudge him the decision to go. It was him. They were the same; they had diverged only physically. Information, personality, behavior—it traveled between them, or was shared by them.
Ed had not moved Al’s soul. He had instead stretched it across an improbable gap.
Al, armor, was Al, flesh. Al, flesh, was Al, armor, and he could feel it, returning from the Gate. His metal body did not feel, but he was not devoid of sensation entirely, and now he was intimately aware of it: the pulse that traveled through him. Not him, body, or him, armor, but him—his being, his humanity—he could feel it. He could feel the act of being. He was armor. He was flesh. Both, simultaneously.
And patience suddenly became all the more tolerable. The nights like blinks. For Al had always been being patient: there he was in whiteness, years on years, waiting.