"Is there any hope, Al?" Ed asked softly. Al jerked his head up and looked at his brother in surprise. Ed was staring silently out the window, his chin rested thoughtfully in his palm.

"Of course there's hope, Brother!" Al said quickly, "We'll find a way to get back to normal someday, and-!"

"Not like that," Ed interrupted quietly. "I mean hope for the rest of the world. For everyone else," he paused, not noticing Al cocking his head to one side. "This war has been going on for years. It's scarred all sorts of people. Just think how different everything would be if the war hadn't ever happened. Scar wouldn't even be trying to kill people."

"There are kids everywhere that are just like us in the fact that all they've known their entire life is war. Even those who don't want to be affected end up being affected anyway. And even if the war does end and all the kids born during it go on to lead normal lives, grow up, get married, and have children, they'll still be affected because they lived during a time when there was war."

"No one is safe. No one can live a normal life because of the war. Even if you try to escape and live as far away as possible, you're still affected. 'All is one and one is all.' No matter what you do, you're nothing but a link in a chain, and if the chain is rattled, so are you."

"Brother…"

"And you can't save everyone, since that would mean saving the entire world. And even if you do manage to save a few people, they're still not completely saved because they'll always remember. How can anyone possibly have any hope of having a good future?"

"But they do, Brother," Al said softly. "People do have hope, and even if they have lived through a war, they still go on to live good lives. People have done it in wars of the past, and I'm sure they can do it again."

"But what about us?" Ed said so softly that Al barely managed to hear him. "Do you really think I can just get married and have kids? Just act like everything is normal, like I've never killed someone, or had a good friend die?"

"No Brother, I'm not saying that, I just," Al paused, unsure of how to put his thoughts into words. "You don't have to anything you don't feel you're ready to do. It's perfectly fine if you don't feel like you can ever get married or have a relationship with a girl." Al stopped, and a silence fell over the two brothers as each though about the set of circumstances they had been thrust into.

"I wish this had never happened to us," Ed finally said. "The reason we have to deal with stuff like the homunculi is because you don't have a body, and the reason you don't have a body is because we attempted human transmutation, and the reason we attempted human transmutation is because mom died, and the reason mom died is because Hoenheim left."

"Are you trying to blame all our problems on dad?"

"No," Ed grinned slightly. "I'm saying that he's the root of all evil." Al sighed, and Ed adopted a more serious tone once again. "I'm just saying that I wish we could have lived normal lives instead of all of… this," he waved his arm vaguely around the train.

"I think that everyone wishes that," Al said slowly, looking over at a small girl and her mother. "It's not like anyone actually has a normal life. Besides, it's not like we can do much to change the lives we ended up with now. The best we can do is change our choices now so we can have the most normal future possible."

"I suppose you're right, Al," Ed sighed as he looked down at his right hand and flexed it a couple times. "As usual."

"But will it ever be possible for us to live normal lives?" Ed asked after a moment. Al fell silent this time, unsure of how to answer.

As Harry Potter the puppet pal would say, "Angst. Angst. Angst. Angst." I know. This popped into my head after reading the beginning of the 15th FMA scanslation. Simply put, it has a lot of stuff to do with the war in Ishbal, which got me into the "we're all doomed" mood. I actually surprised myself with this and didn't have Ed swear for once, too.