Nightmares
By: Song
Summary: Sometimes, when Ed was young he would have nightmares- but then he would wake up and see that it was all just a bad dream.
A/U: This fic just happened. Review, my loves!
When Ed was a young, he would have nightmares. Nightmares of his father leaving, nightmares of loosing Al, nightmares of death and pain and sin.
He would awake, shivering, crying, looking desperately around to assure himself that Al was still there, sleeping peacefully unaware of his brother's strife. Ed would bring his knees to his chest ignoring the way that the phantom pains caused his body to spasm and his eyes to water. He would desperately feel his arms and legs- making sure that they were flesh and blood and bone; not metal and wire and lifeless machinery. Ed would look at Al, sleeping like the fallen angel he was- not some perversion of a body- armor that spoke of war and fear and loss. He would check his pockets to make sure that the silver watch with "Don't Forget Oct. 3 10" inscribed in it was just some bizarre figment of his imagination and not proof of his ineptitude and failure.
He would assure himself that all of the things he came up with were from stress and loosing the only parent he had ever known.
That there was no man with dead, obsidian eyes and fire in his hands. That no one was sick enough to combine a little girl and a dog into a monster. That a kindly man did not bleed to death in a phone booth with a wife and child at home because he knew too much and of a homunculus who could shift form.
That there was no such thing as controlling fire, or chimera, or homunculi.
That truth was a good thing, and equivalent exchange was the one and only reality.
Sometimes, Ed wonders if he ever woke up at all.
Fin