It started with a cough.

An entirely innocent, small cough on a Tuesday afternoon.

By the end of the month, it wasn't irregular.

Al said that the smoke in the air from so many coal engines was just burning his throat a little. He'd get used to it. Two days later, Ed had finished packing up all their important belongings and shuffled them, and his brother, onto a train bound for the country.

The air was fresh and smelled of grass and trees. Even nicer than that was the apartment they'd found just upstairs from a bakery. Every morning they woke up to the smell of baking bread. Edward worked in a machine shop, fixing automobiles and farm equipment. He would scrub mercilessly at the oil and dust on his arms and leave his overall at work before going back home.

But still, Al would cough. He would get angry when he found that his brother was skipping meals to pay for medicine and he would shout, which made him cough harder, and so Edward found that he had to be more sneaky about it. He cried when Ed cut and sold his hair and the tears brought with them more coughing.

After Alphonse spat up droplets of blood into his hand, Edward began packing again. They took the trains back to the city, where hospitals were filled with doctors and medicines. A mechanic could get more work in the city and Alphonse was often alone as he coughed in an empty apartment, despite the more expensive medicines that his brother procured.

On a sunny Monday, when he was seventeen, Alphonse heard his brother's voice screaming in another room. He sounded furious and hysterical. The doctor's voice couldn't be heard through the whitewashed walls of the hospital room, but Ed must have been yelling at something he'd said.

The door opened a moment later and Edward rushed through it. Al opened his mouth to ask a question but was caught up in a fierce hug before the words could reach his lips. His brother was sobbing shamelessly and his whole body was shaking.

'... Am I dying, Brother?' Al whispered.

'No! Of course not!' Ed kissed his cheek and held him tighter. 'This guys a moron! He doesn't know what he's talking about! Just get dressed, we've got to go someplace else. Maybe Paris or London.'

'The answer's going to be the same no matter where you go,' the doctor said quietly from the doorway. 'They don't have a cure for cancer either.'

'SHUT UP!' Ed screamed at him.. 'YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!' He turned back to his brother and patted his shoulders, his lips curling into an encouraging smile between the shining tracks of tears. 'Come on. We've got to get our stuff packed so we can catch the morning train.'

Al nodded, blinking fast, and picked up his shirt.