Author's Note:
The parts in italics are from my fic "The Toll." This takes place sometime after that fic.
He was sitting on a concrete floor. His hands were locked into some sort of metal block that kept him from bringing them together. Why should that matter? He couldn't do Alchemy anymore. It was completely dark, which was also odd, since his eyes were open.
"Havoc here, sir. She's still unconscious. Her body mass is less than yours, so it will take a little longer for the drug to wear off. Besides me, Miles is here, and Breda, Falman and Fuery. We're all disarmed, but you're the only one who's bound at all. We're confined behind bars on one side of a large room with no windows."
Riza is here? No, he calls her Hawkeye, not Riza. Why is she unconscious? Where is he?
Miles is saying something.
"... this doesn't look good. There are two transmutation circles on the floor on the other side of the bars."
Fuery is trying to jimmy the lock in the metal block. He hears Riza, no Hawkeye, groan as she comes to. She's describing the transmutation circles to him because he can't see them.
"Human transmutation," he says, when he recognizes the description. "Hell."
Oh, God. They're all there. She's there. Someone is going to make him do it again. They'll kill someone and he's already lost his sight. What will Truth take next?
"So, who will you transmute first?" comes the oily voice of the doctor with the gold tooth. Roy knows there's something wrong about that voice being here, but he can't place it.
"First?" he asks.
"We'll start with the ones that matter to you the least," he says, sounding amused. "We'll get to her last."
The one who matters the least? They can't make him choose like that.
Then he notices that Fuery has stopped working on the lock. In fact, his head is in Roy's lap now. Don't check, he thinks to himself, but this is combat, he needs the information so he can decide what they should do next. But he could already smell the blood, and when he touches the neck, he remembers holding Lieutenant Hawkeye like this, bleeding like this.
"I thought that would be your first choice," says the voice that shouldn't be there for some reason.
"I didn't choose!" he screams. "I won't do this!"
But he knows it doesn't matter. His hands aren't locked in metal anymore, but they're staked to one of those transmutation circles, he can't see it, but he knows it. Shouldn't his hands hurt? That's wrong too, like the voice, that they don't hurt.
And now, he hears the other voice. That voice. "Roy Mustang," it says, sounding pleased with itself. "You're back. What will you give me this time?"
"Not my hearing," Roy thinks to himself, and then suddenly knows he should not even think it. Truth is a demon who will take whatever he fears most to lose.
He's lucky though. Truth doesn't take his hearing. It's his left leg, like Fullmetal that first time. Maybe they'll let him bleed to death and this can end.
But no, of course it doesn't end. The doctor has a Philosopher's Stone, and stops the bleeding.
Next is Falman, and he loses his right leg. Then Breda, and he loses his left arm. Then Havoc, and he loses his right arm. Now he's lying in her lap and he can hear her crying.
"Don't cry for me," he says. "After Miles, you're next."
Which is odd. All of the others were more dear to him than the Ishvalan officer.
Then the voice changes. No, it doesn't change, it's just that Roy realizes now that it never was the voice of the doctor with the gold tooth. How could it have been? He's dead - transmuting him was how he lost his sight in the first place. It's Scar's voice.
"I'm not going to kill a fellow Ishvalan, even if he is a dog of the Amestrian military."
Then that means she's next.
She's stopped crying. He feels something wet dripping down on his face. It's getting in his eyes, his useless eyes. He knows that smell, when did the smell of blood get so familiar?
"One last transmutation," says Scar. "We saved your hearing for last."
One last transmutation. No legs, no arms, no sight. Silence.
He screamed.
Roy sat up suddenly in bed, breathing hard. He didn't make any other noise, but the panting and the sudden movement was enough to wake Riza. Whatever the nightmare had been, the first step was always to turn on the light.
"Roy," she called gently, touching his arm.
He looked down at her and sighed with relief. She was there, he had all his limbs and all his senses. He lay back down in bed and pulled her to him, stroking her hair and then kissing her.
When he woke from some of his nightmares, he left their bed, because he felt so dirty he didn't want to contaminate her. Those were the nightmares about Ishval.
But when he dreamed about human transmutation, he felt only relief when he woke. There, at least, he was not guilty of anything. And then, he just wanted to celebrate the fact that he was alive and she was alive and they were together. And lovemaking, too, was an area where he had no reason to reproach himself. No other woman had taken her place in his arms.
It almost made the nightmare worth it.