Disclaimer: If I owned Fullmetal Alchemist, Lyra wouldn't show up ever after her first appearance, and Rose wouldn't exist... and all the impliedyaoi-ish relationship stuff wouldn't necessarily just be implied...:D Well, anyway, I don't own it. Hiromu Arakawa is a genius, though, and I'm just going to assert that. XD On to the story!

When he lay back and stared at the unfriendly ceiling, he could remember… remember that rainy night in his hometown… Al's terrified face as those tendrils made him vanish, his own screams as the pain from his missing leg hit him full force, his feeling of desperation as he took a gamble trying to make sure Al didn't die too… his short lived success. He crashed back down to his mind soon enough, not wanting to think on that any more… the outcome was evident enough from where he was sitting.

They let him out every so often… but only for about three hours at a time. Just to get some air, they told him… so he could stretch his legs a bit. It was okay, he supposed, because the prosthetics Auntie Pinako had given him worked like a charm. He could walk and stand on his own, and even run… which he did quite frequently in the beginning, never mind the fact that he always got caught. He'd at first been hopeful, even though he didn't show it… being caged for long periods of time kept him antsy and restless, making him alternatively snap at the guards and slump into depression.

It wasn't really like there was an "outside" for him to walk around in. His walks consisted of (in the beginning) just kind of a forced march around some of the corridors with somebody's gun poking into his back. After a few of his initial attempts to escape they began setting the jumpiest guy do this, so that he'd cooperate (no sense of pushing the soldier to the point he'd pull the trigger out of a sheer nervous fit). Soon, he stopped trying to run, and they removed the jumpy soldier and let him go out to the bleak open air concrete yard in the middle of the complex that made up the "outside". It was a relief, he could suppose… his cell was underground. The sun didn't do much, but he could pretend for a while that everything was going to be okay for the hour or so he was allowed.

There was an array drawn on the metal floor of his cold prison cell and tiny copies of it etched into his shackles so that he couldn't use alchemy for whatever reason. He wouldn't have tried anyway. They had control over him even without the arrays. And of course it had to be solitary confinement. He had nothing to say, no one to say it to, and nothing to do. The toilet and sink on one side of the cell and the bench on the other side were poor company, but despite this he talked. When he finally got it through his head that no matter how much he talked to them, they wouldn't respond, he gave up. He mostly just lay on the bench and stared at the ceiling after a while, daydreaming the sad visions that he'd become used to.

Sometimes he remembered the day things had turned themselves over of their own volition, seemingly. As he'd listened to that man talk to Auntie Pinako, he'd felt like he could trust him… only to find later that this man or someone connected to him had betrayed him. The soldiers had come down to the quiet country town less than a week later, and shattered the peace the day they marched through demanding that two certain children be handed over.

It had been a day wrought by pain and panic. The military had barged into first the Elric house, and finding no one there, moved on to the Rockbells'. Ed had still been lying on that bed, wrapped in bandages and looking so small with two of his limbs missing… they'd given him enough time to say goodbye before they hauled both him and his younger brother off, despite his vehement protests that Al had nothing to do with his crime. Auntie Pinako's own arguments were simply brushed off by the soldiers, and in the end she was forced to admit defeat.

"Here, Ed."

She handed him the prosthetics he now wore. He could recall her words, gruff with an underlying tone of resignation written underneath undetectable to the untrained ear.

"Use those. But you'd better come home alive some day so you can return them and get ones that fit better. And bring Al, too… you two had better come back alive, you hear?"

It was just a reluctant way of saying goodbye… and Ed knew that. Still, he'd accepted the false limbs and told her he would, with a cocky grin—a grin thathad faded after he'd been hauled out of sight range of the Rockbell house.

Sometimes as he slept he could see everyone back at home… everything had been fixed, Mom was alive, Al was normal… and then he'd blink and the vision would be gone. There would be the cold cell walls, just metal and concrete… a cage for him to sit in and look out of.

One day he attempted alchemy just for the hell of it. He woke up a week later, feeling like he'd been run over by several trucks. And that day he learned that the arrays he was constantly guarded by would kill him if he successfully transmuted anything, because the alchemical reaction would set them off too, or so a man had told him. He seemed to have a habit of gushing happily (and obsessively) about his wife, but telling him this he'd looked sad… probably why he believed him. Sometimes some of the off-duty guards who were particularly bored would come and taunt him, telling him things that proved utterly useless after further investigation.

His regular guards would never say anything to him, he found out early. They were afraid of him, afraid of the hubris that led him and his brother to break taboo and afraid of the power he used to partially reverse some of those consequences.

"Hey… HEY! You there! Do you… do you know if they'll ever let me out?"

"…"

"Hey, come on. What about you?"

"…"

"Isn't there anyone who can tell me when I'm going to get out of here?"

"…"

"…"

"HEY!" He banged on the door, hoping they would actually respond this time. "Why are you ignoring me?"

"…"

He banged both fists on the door again. Before he could yell he was looking at the muzzles of two guns between the bars of the cell door's window.

He stopped really trying after a while. The first conversation he'd attempted to hold with the guards proved fruitless, as had the second and the third and the fourth. Each time a soldier bringing the prisoners' meals would find him sprawled out on the floor utterly exhausted from attempting to get their attention. At least the guards were scrupulous enough not to touch him.

He was in cell number 666. Ironic, the soldiers who'd marched him down there had told him. He committed a sin and they gave him the devil's number. He'd better pray and hope that God could forgive him. Of course, he looked them in the eye and told them that as an alchemist he didn't believe in God. They laughed and told him that then he really was damned, wasn't he? He briefly pondered that before he yelled "I still don't believe in God!" at their retreating backs.
This earned him an irritated "Shut up!" from another prisoner.

The first time they let him out, he asked the soldiers, "Where's Al? Where are you keeping my brother?" And they said nothing. Afterwards he continued to ask… and then the Lieutenant Colonel who'd found him and the proof that he'd attempted human transmutation walked by one day. He said, "Your brother's in the labs… they're trying to figure out how you bound his soul to that suit of armor." The man had the decency to look upset, too. "I'm sorry."

"How do you know this? Why are you apologizing? And why the hell are you down here? Nobody comes down here… nobody wants to even look at me."

"Being in the military means that you find out what's going on. That and I have a couple of connections myself. I'm down here because I wanted to see for myself the 'sinner' that my superiors have decided is far too dangerous to walk free. I really didn't expect to find you, kid…"

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING A CHILD SO SHORT HE'S EASY TO OVERLOOK?"

The man smiled a little. "At least you have enough energy to misinterpret what I said and overreact like that."

"Tch… forget it."

"Now is that any way to talk to an officer of my rank?" the man asked, not unkindly. Noticing how he stiffened, the officer sighed.

"Sorry... I should at least introduce myself. I'm Ro—"

"Save it. I don't really need to hear it."

"And why would that be?"

"I'm never going to see you again, am I? I don't need to know your name if I'm never going to see you again. You've seen that 'sinner' the military's probably buzzing about, now you can leave and you won't have a reason to come back."

"…does your family ever come to visit?"

"My family is gone. All I have is Al and they took him away from me… bastards. You got that letter, didn't you? That's why you came down to Rizenbul. I know your name anyway. You told Auntie Pinako… I'm not deaf. I didn't lose my ears when I screwed up."

"Is it really your fault alone?"

"… I'm the one who deserves the blame. I told Al that we would do it… and he just went along with it. If I'd only listened to him when he asked about the equivalent exchange for the soul…"

In the end, the officer walked away. As his footsteps receded the boy leaned his forehead into the door. He wouldn't ask him for help… he couldn't. Shuffling over to his bench, he lay down and curled up into a fetal position. And, unknown to him, at that same time the officer looked down at his hand and shoved whatever he was holding into his pocket. His cold expression belied the inner turmoil that seethed as he remembered the weary expression the boy wore—the kind of expression he was too young to wear.

When the day came that the brass decided to "visit judgment" upon him, he didn't resist. His brother had been taken away from him, torn apart by alchemists eager to find how he ticked. If those soldiers were telling the truth, all that was left was a scrap of metal that cried the same thing over and over again. "Nii-san! NII-SAN! Please… I'm scared… make it go away…" Only it didn't go away, because it wasn't a nightmare… it was worse. It was reality.

He knew he'd committed a sin. And that day when he'd been executed, the same officer who'd walked by Cell Number 666 back then had stiffened and averted his gaze. A picture that the boy had as good as thrown at him still sat in his pocket… a woman and her two sons, all three people smiling. He couldn't watch… it tore him apart inside.

They bound him to a stake in the middle of the military complex… and right before they killed him, they asked him to answer questions… half of the answers to which they already knew.

"What's your name, prisoner?"
"…Edward Elric."

"Tell us your crime."
"… I attempted human transmutation."

"Why did you do it?"
"… I… my brother and I wanted to see our mother smile again…"

"Any last words, boy?"
"… Yes…"
"…well?"
"… I'm sorry, Alphonse… I love you…"

The last thing he ever heard was the voice yelling that order to the execution squad.

"FIRE!"

He was twelve years old.

A/N: Read and reply, please? XD The first draft was posted in my livejournal, and this would be the result from two or three reworkings. XD Improved, if I say so myself... xDDDD Much love to my beta, Lissiel! (on livejournal... xD)