Another drabbleish one. But I've had this little observation in my head for monnnttthhhsss. So it's nice to finally be able to use it :D

Sometimes Al thought it was funny the way things had worked out. People used to always assume that of the two brother, Ed would be the one to continue traveling and exploring the world, discovering new things, and Al would be the one to find a nice girl and settle down in Resembool. Al himself had always assumed that things would work out like that. When he thought about his future, sure, travel was exciting, especially if it was done on his own terms, not on a wild goose chase for the Philosopher's stone, but what he really wanted for his future was home.

It didn't seem that that would be the way things would work out, though. While Ed returned from his trip from the West after only about six months and married Winry shortly after, with a honeymoon baby soon on the way, Al stayed away from home for over three years, traveling through all of Xing and then other Eastern countries. And while he thought of home often throughout all of this journeying, he found himself thinking less and less about it as time went on.

The first time he realized he had truly ceased to think about Resembool as home, he had felt a horrible knot of guilt well up inside him. How could he do that? Resembool was his home, it had always been his home! Even when he had traveling all around Amestris with Ed, Resembool had never failed to be his home. It was always there waiting for him, ready to welcome him home.

So why could he not think about it like that?

It wasn't that he thought of Xing as his home now. He most certainly didn't feel like anywhere in the East was his home. But if none of these were his home… what was? Had his decision to continue to travel condemn him to being a wandering drifter the rest of his life, with no place to claim or call home?

Al had worried about that for months. The idea seemed so appalling to him. That had always been the one thing he had desired above anything else. Home. And now he of all people found himself without one.

It wasn't until he returned home to Amestris alone that Al got a clue as to what his problem was.

Home had become something different. Sometimes far different than what he had ever expected for himself. Home was a place, and established building that you associated feelings of comfort and safety with.

The reason he could never think of home as his birthplace was because that had ceased to be home to him. It wasn't Xing, it wasn't any of the places he had traveled with…

Home was a Xingese Princess who smiled and laughed and got that funny crease between her eyebrows when she was mad.