A/N: So I took a few prompts on Tumblr for Goretober, and some general ones for Halloween and the following stories are all products of those requests. Please note that some of them may have descriptions that are not for the faint of heart, and so you should tread lightly through this fic. If any of the chapters or prompts become too graphic I will change the story's rating to 'M.' Some of them will be continued later on (for example, this chapter will have a prequel).

This chapter is in response to "Royai and torture," though there wasn't much Royai in it. To make it up to the requester, I will be writing a prequel that will include Royai. (Excuse any dust this may have. I'm slowly getting back into the writing groove after a pretty brutal semester.)

I hope you enjoy!

We found them."

Edward buried his face into his hands and dug his nails into his flesh as Havoc's frantic message hung squarely in the front of his mind. He swallowed the mixed bolus of sickness and anticipation that had moved into the back of his throat, and slowly staggered to his feet.

The sleepless nights and dead ends had begun to take their toll and the moment he heard those words, all rhyme or reason for his actions was gone. The receiver was returned to its cradle and he was halfway out the door before Alphonse had risen from his seat on the floor. A quick declaration of what he had just heard was uttered over his shoulder, and the clash of metal that followed immediately after confirmed that his brother had jumped to his feet just as quickly as he.

And within minutes they were nearly at the hospital's front door.

Without being given the location, Edward somehow knew. One part logical reasoning, and another part instinct. He felt that tug toward the hospital, like a moth drawn to the proverbial flame they had sparked within him the day they had met.

"We found them."

Twenty-five days, eleven hours, and some odd minutes had passed since they were last seen together. Hawkeye had given the Colonel a ride home after the day, a Tuesday, had been done. It had been an ordinary, mundane day at Eastern Headquarters. The rest of the team had been catching up on paperwork after a simple mission that had occurred the week before. Edward distinctly remembers commenting on Mustang's slow progress, and Hawkeye's playful disapproval of his pointed critique.

It had been an ordinary day…

Until Wednesday morning came and neither one of them showed up for work. The first few minutes had passed without worry or concern, but when the clock struck nine they began to worry. It was unlike one of them, let alone both of them, to go without calling. And to have both of them gone on the same day was practically unheard of.

The search immediately began. First their homes, and then the routes they most frequently took. Everything they found and everything they saw was in its place, as though they had both both left their respective apartments for a day out. Even Hawkeye's car yielded no abnormalities, parked in its assigned area without a single scratch or fiber out of place.

It was as if they had just vanished into thin air.

It wasn't long after that that the rumors began to circulate. Whispers of a particular fondness of Mustang's toward his most loyal subordinate did not go unnoticed, and Edward found himself biting his tongue every time he passed small congregations of people that would collect in the halls of Eastern Command. He reminded himself at that time that anyone who wasn't involved in the case wasn't worth his time or breath, and that one more altercation with another clueless rubbernecker would result in his removal from the search team.

So the rumors continued, and he bit his tongue until it bled.

That is, until the first note came, arriving in an unassuming envelope with an unassuming letterhead, simply addressed as 'To Whom it May Concern.' And the message below was just a few, simple words:

We have them.

All at once the rumors vanished, and the tongues that wagged and perpetuated them joined the search and inflated its numbers. After all, they needed all of the help they could gather if they were going to be chasing ghosts.

The note left no indication of who they were, and no prints were left behind. Nor did the letter outline their intentions like a typical ransom would. Instead, it were as though it were meant to force them to speculate and wonder. And wonder they did.

The skirmish along the southern border had come to mind, and the thought of Aerugean spies targeting the country's fabled war hero had become a possibility, though it was quickly dismissed following a heated exchange that further thickened the diplomatic air between the two countries. Then their sights shifted toward smaller organizations, but the failure to demand a ransom left investigators scrambling to determine what their intentions were.

No matter the intentions that were speculated, Edward kept his mind focused on what was most important: finding them.

Before more theories could be speculated, however, they discovered that the intentions of the ones who were responsible were far more sinister than they could have ever imagined.

The second and final letter was delivered to Eastern Command adorned with splotches of black ink and red. The envelope was stiff and thick, completely opposite of the light and professional air the first had.

Hughes had been eager to lap up any information the letter provided after being left forlorn and without purpose following the first he had received. But not even he could have imagined what was inside that envelope before he opened it.

Edward distinctly remembered how Hughes' cry pierced his ears and immediately settled in his bones. It's something he will never forget. He had turned, bewildered and desperate for answers, to find a severed finger roll to a stop atop the Lieutenant Colonel's desk. The initial shock, however, was far more benign than the speculation, then horror, that followed when it was finally identified using the Colonel's registration that was on file from when he first joined the military.

The sky above them let go and Ed lifted his arm to shield his eyes as he sprinted up the hospital's front steps. They told themselves when they made that grisly discovery was that that was all that had happened. That the Colonel and Hawkeye were in one piece… for the most part.

He continued to tell himself that as they sprinted past the front desk and toward the heart of the hospital. Edward had been there often enough to know where they would be. A few turns and a few ducks around hospital personnel pulled him closer and closer until the stark contrast of the navy uniforms to the periwinkle scrubs caught his attention, and he skidded to a stop and paused to catch his breath.

"Brother," Alphonse whispered after catching up, carefully eyeing the two guards that had stationed themselves outside of the treatment area. "Maybe we aren't aloud to go in there yet-"

Edward brushed off his brother's hesitance and squared his shoulders. They were just as much, if not more, a part of the investigation than most. Hell, Mustang was his superior officer. He had just as much a right as the rest of the men, if not more.

He threw up a sloppy salute and went to maneuver around them when the soldier nearest him intervened and blocked his path. He stopped short of slamming into him and staggered a few steps back, eyes narrowed as the soldier resumed his position and shook his head. "Sorry kid, but we can't let you in there."

Edward gritted his teeth and dug his hand into his pocket, producing his pocket watch a few seconds later. "I'm a State Alchemist. I have just as much a right as the rest of my unit to be in there, so let me by." He pushed past the soldier and placed his hand on the door handle, and felt a grip on his shoulder. A sharp shrug brushed it off and he turned the handle. The hand quickly returned and grabbed his arm, pulling him away from the door. "Let me go," he snapped, and the soldiers tensed.

"Brother, please," Al pleaded. "Let's wait until Lieutenant Havoc comes for us. There has to be a reason why—"

Edward jerked his elbow back and into the soldier's diaphragm. The soldier gasped and released his grip on him, doubling over as the air evacuated itself from his lungs. The second stationed grabbed at him and he danced beneath his arms and back over to the door, pushing his shoulder into it as he turned the handle. Another pleading gasp from Al fell unanswered and he threw the door open and stumbled into the room.

"Ed?"

He briefly made eye contact with a rather offput Havoc before he tore his eyes away, scanning over the startled expressions of the doctors before they fell on the two people he most wanted to see. Edward stepped toward them, a concerned greeting on his lips, when he got closer and lost everything he had wanted to say as it plunged down his throat and into his stomach.

"I'm sorry," Al apologized softly as he slowed to a stop behind him. "But we just wanted to—oh." Out of the corner of his eye Ed could see Alphonse stiffen and knew that if he could see him clearly, the sparks of light in his eyes would have almost certainly dimmed.

A hand gripped his arm, and this time he allowed himself to be pulled away. His eyes found Havoc's again, saw that the anger they had held had ebbed away. The lump in Edward's throat caught and he opened his mouth to speak, but again found that every thought and feeling he had disappeared. Another pull on his arm sent him stumbling back and he clumsily reached out and fell into Al's chest.

"'m sorry," he murmured as he tried to look somewhere, anywhere, but them, and turned his eyes toward the ceiling and his brother's face. Alphonse hadn't flinched despite the crash of Edward's metal arm against his chest plate, his soul-fire eyes still vehemently glued to the pair they had found seated on the shared edge of a hospital bed. Edward braced his hand against his brother's chest, and a moment later Alphonse's armor began to quiver. He could feel the grip on his arm tighten, silently demanding that he continue to follow, and Ed swallowed the lump that had tightened in his throat and rasped, "Al… we have to go."

There was a lag from the time the words had left Edward's mouth to the moment they reached and processed in Al's mind. But once they had Al looked down at him, the fires behind his mask kindled by the panic and questions that had begun to settle in his soul.

Ed tapped his fingers against his armor one final time before his metal hand slid off and returned limply to his side. "We have to go now, Al. We'll come back later," he murmured as he took a few steps past his brother. He heard the familiar clank of him turning but when he failed to hear his footfall, Edward looked over his shoulder to see Al's eyes flitting between Havoc and him.

An invisible force drove itself into his stomach when his gaze followed Al's to Havoc and he quickly tore his eyes away. "We're sorry," he muttered. "We're… I'm sorry."

He willed himself to walk toward the door, despite his feet feeling as though they had been tied to blocks of lead. The moment he reached the threshold, however, the invisible bindings on his feet loosened. Driven by the churning sickness that had settled in his stomach, he pulled his arm from the soldier's grip and took off down the hallway. A few beats later he heard the crash of Al's steel boots against the hospital floor as he followed. He heard Al call for him to stop as he grabbed a corner and pulled himself around it.

Unaware that the floor had recently been cleaned, Edward's feet slipped and slid out from beneath him and he crashed to his hands and knees. He doubled over and retched and pressed his forehead to the floor, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes as the images he had been running from finally caught up with him and crashed into his mind.

A moment later Al crashed to his knees beside him and touched his hand to his back. "B-brother," he whimpered. "Are… are you okay?"

He curled his hands into fists and shook his head and bit his tongue. He knew by Al's tone that he was far from okay too, and it killed him knowing that he was the one to drag him there and yet, he was the one who needed to be comforted after what they had seen. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry, Al."

"'Sorry,'" Al echoed. "Brother, you don't have to be sorry. We… we didn't know. We didn't know..."

"But we would have known eventually, right?" His voice sounded frail against his ears, and he realized that the poorly constructed wall he had tried to hide behind had begun to crumble. "We would have… eventually."

When they did eventually find out, would it have softened the blow to have been in a controlled setting? One where Havoc had to hold their hands and guide them to what happened to Mustang and Hawkeye. He liked to think that would be the case, though he knew deep down that the horror could never truly be mitigated. Instead, he realized that their premature discovery forced the questions he would have asked later after living in ignorance into his mind. Now he found himself wanting to demand answers, to know what they had done to deserve what had happened.

Ed pushed himself up onto his knees and sat back on his heels. He rested his hands on his lap palms up and stared down at them. "I don't think it would have mattered when, though, huh?" He paused, expecting his brother to answer. But when he didn't like he had expected, he lifted his eyes to find that Alphonse was sitting down beside him, his head quietly bowed. The gentle thrum of metal gritting across metal met Edward's ears, and he reached out and placed a hand against his brother's quivering arm.

He lifted trembling hands and pressed his fingertips below his eyes. "W… why, Brother?" he sobbed as he curled his fingers into fists against his cheeks. His brother's outcry wound knots in his stomach and he swallowed the bolus of dread that had lodged itself in his throat. "His hands," Alphonse gasped, curling his fists tighter and shook his head. "And… and her eyes. Can't we… Why can't we just…?" He bowed forward and crushed his chest against his knees, and Ed's hand moved insensately to Alphonse's back.

There it was. The question that had ploughed through his mind the moment he saw them, unbandaged and damaged beyond repair. The tepid plea behind his frantic bawl not too unlike the bargain he himself had wagered to God Himself when their mother had died. An appeal that, despite his vast wealth of knowledge, he knew held no sound bearings in their branch of alchemy. It was one thing to heal a wound, but it was an entirely different level when it came to reconstructing hands and eyes that had been completely lost. He, just like those around them, were completely powerless. He would still continue to wrack his brain, though, until every possible avenue was exhausted, and until his body could no longer bear the strain.

But until then, his vulnerability bled through, and he only managed to muster a weak, "I… I don't know, Al."