When Van Hohenheim greets Edward in front of Trisha’s grave, he notes that Pinako told him about the boys’ attempt at human transmutation. Furious, Ed replies that there is no more room for Hohenheim, causing Van to question why the family home is gone. Edward explains that he burned it down a few years ago so he and Alphonse couldn’t turn away from their goal, but Van dismisses this claim by saying that the real reason Ed burned down the house was to hide all traces of his sin. escape from painful memories. Further angered by this insight, Ed angrily storms off, denying that Van knew anything about it. As he watches his son walk back to the Rockbell house, Van notes to himself that he was exactly the same at that age.
That evening, as Ed lies in bed, Van goes to him and, remembering his son as a baby, moves to touch him, but stops and leaves the room. However, Ed just pretends to be asleep. Pinako notes that Van hasn’t changed his appearance at all and asks what on earth he’s been doing all these years while Trisha has been waiting for him to return. Van doesn’t answer, but noticing that the door to the bedroom where Ed sleeps is now open after closing it himself, Van changes the subject and asks Pinako if the thing that Ed and Al transmuted was really their mother. Pinako replies that the creature couldn’t even be called human, but Van elaborates on whether the creature’s eye and hair color match Trisha. Shocked by his implication, Pinako wonders in horror if the creature the boys destroyed their bodies to construct was something completely unrelated to them or their mother. Edward, who has been eavesdropping on the conversation as Hohenheim has deduced, is equally horrified by the possibility.
In Central City, Al explains to Ling, Lan Fan, and Winry that the Blood Rune in his armor keeps him alive without having to breathe, eat, or sleep. Ling marvels at this and calls it immortality, but Al corrects him, noting that the two dissimilar substances of soul and unrelated inanimate body are incompatible and will reject each other randomly and without warning – his existence is like an unpredictable time bomb. Hearing this, Winry stresses that Al needs to return to normal as soon as possible, but Ling interjects, saying that Al could simply transfer to another immortal body when there are signs of danger and remain immortal and invulnerable. However, Winry angrily reprimands Ling for his insensitivity and storms off. Al follows to comfort her, and the two reminisce about Al’s first night in his armor. Winry asks if Al will be able to return to human form, but Alphonse is unable to answer her.
Back in Resembool, Edward sleeps restlessly through a nightmare in which he pursues the Truth and demands his brother’s body back. But Truth just mocks Edward and explains that what happened to Al is Ed’s fault. As Ed sees signs of his previous failure with his mother and is haunted by memories of Shou Tucker and his daughter Nina, he is awakened in the morning by Pinako, who screams to tell him that Van is leaving again. As Van prepares to leave, he spots a family photo of the Elrics from many years ago and asks Pinako if he can take it with him. She complies and he in turn advises her to leave the country because something terrible is going to happen very soon. She coolly declines and he lets it drop. As he leaves, he laments that he will never be able to break bread with her again. Later that day, with storm clouds gathering overhead, Ed and Pinako head to the remains of Elric’s house to exhume the remains of the creature Pinako buried there. When the rain starts to fall, Edward finds the task of confronting his mistake so downright physically difficult, but he pushes on until his shovel reaches a makeshift burial ground and uncovers some of the creature’s stray hairs. He reached down and cleaned them off, noting madly that the hairs he discovered were jet black, while Trisha Elric had auburn locks. The two dig up the rest of the creature’s bones, and Pinako’s examination of them reveals that the creature’s height, body shape, and even gender do not match Trish’s features. What the Elrics transmuted was not their mother. Falling to his knees, Edward begins to laugh and declares that with this confirmation that raising the dead is absolutely impossible, this corpse he has feared for so long has become a beacon of hope – rather than requiring a new human body, Alphonse. can be returned to the original body!
Ed calls Izumi into Dublith, explaining his new discovery and asking her to confirm that the child she transmuted so many years ago was indeed her child. Shocked by the implication, Izumi hangs up. As Ed prepares to leave for Central in the afternoon, he visits the graves of Urey and Sara Rockbell and explains to Pinako the incident of their deaths as he heard it in Xerxes. She is grateful for the truth and notes that she herself forgot to give Van a message before he left – Trisha’s last words to him. Remembering that Trisha asked her to deliver her apology for breaking her promise and dying in front of Van, Pinako delivers the message to Edward, charging him to deliver it to his father if they meet again.
However, when Ed arrives in the capital, he is shocked to find Al in such bad shape and repairs him as his little brother explains what has been going on since he left with Major Armstrong. In return, Edward reveals the news of digging up the transmuted body and discovering that it was not their mother. But as a result, he now knows that they can return Al back to his original body. He asks Winry and Al to go through his childhood memories to confirm that the soul in the armor is the same brother he always knew. However, he assumes that this very event indicates that Al did not die then and that his body must still be alive somewhere. Recalling his newfound memories of when Martel’s blood reacted with his in Dublith, Al explains that when he entered the Gate, the being he saw calling out to him was not his mother as previously thought, but his own body! If the body is inside the Gate, then all he has to do is go in and pull it out again, just like Ed did with Alphonse’s soul. Alphonse continues to reminisce about that fateful day, recalling that even before he woke up in his armor, he saw Edward bleeding on the floor. Edward realizes that this means that the soul that was inside the transmuted creature was actually Al’s soul, and that the two different substances then rejected each other, resulting in the death of the creature and Alphonse’s soul existing inside the Gate. Just then, Edo is told by the receptionist at the hotel that Izumi called him, who confirms that the child she had