Ed cowered in front of his father, eyes that were wide in fear downcast and left arm raised in front of him in an attempt to shield his face from the angry blows.
His father was drunk. Again.
A well aimed punch to his gut knocked all of the air out of his lungs and sent the small boy slamming into the wall behind him, which only infuriated his father more.
The punches came harder and faster.
Ed had to hold back a scream as his father used both hands to grab his right arm and bent it.
Backwards.
His vision started going fuzzy as his father repeatedly broke his arm, and soon the blackness overwhelmed him.
When he came to, it was not only his right arm, but also the lower half and knee of his left leg that were home to the searing pain that signified bones that had been repeatedly broken, his chest had a slightly duller ache in that told him that some of his ribs had been broken, but not repeatedly.
The beatings had slowly been getting worse and worse since Ed's older brother Al had run away from home, leaving Ed with nothing but the promise that he would come back for him one day.
Ed cracked his eyes open slightly, not wanting to alert his father to the fact that he had woken up, he was in the middle of a very large, peculiar transmutation circle that he hadn't seen before.
He knew of transmutation circles because he had seen his father use them before, but he had never seen one as large and intricate as this before.
Ed had many cuts and bruises on his body, but the blood from one particular cut under his left eye had caked it shut, so Ed didn't notice as his father chucked a small, golden kitten into the circle and placed his to hands quietly on the very edge of it.
Ed screamed out in shock and pain as the circle activated, his head and lower back felt like they were being torn open and his eyes felt almost like they were on fire.
The blackness overwhelmed him once again.
He woke up a few hours later, and, upon seeing that his father was asleep, decided.
He couldn't be here anymore, his small body just couldn't cope anymore. He felt something behind him twitch, Ed turned around, jumping when he saw a long, golden tail that almost reached his feet swaying behind him.
Ed scowled, that would make running away allot more difficult if he didn't keep it hidden, after considering it for a moment, he decided that it would be least noticeable if he wound it around his waist under his t-shirt.
As he carried on the slow and steady process of crawling to the front door using only two limbs, he felt a twitch similar to the one from his tail come from the top of his head, balancing himself in a kneeling position on his good leg, he reached up to feel the top of his head and gasped quietly when he felt two furry ears.
He carried on with his steady progress to the door, and, using the handle of that closet to haul his small body upright, he grabbed a hat similar to one an old-fashioned paper boy might have used, and jammed it firmly over his new ears, effectively hiding them.
As soon as he was out of the door, he was able to make progress at a much quicker pace than before, because now that he was out of earshot of his father, he wouldn't have to be so quiet, he steadily made his way towards the station as the the early morning sunrise casted golden beams across the fields.
Ed reached the station just as the sun had completely cleared the hill in the horizon, he stood up and hopped over to a bench after buying a ticket to go to central with some money that he had stolen from his father's wallet, unfortunately, central was a fair way away and the ticket had used up all of the money that he had taken.
Ed just sat there for half an hour, getting increasingly more fidgety with every minute that passed.
The young boy was constantly worried that his father would wake up and come searching for him at the train station while he was still there.
Much to Ed's relief, the train came a couple of minutes later and there was still no sign of his father. Ed quickly hopped onto the train and took the nearest free seat to the door that he could find.
Ed spent approximately three days on the train on the way to Central, and the regular meals that had been regularly brought round had fed him better than he had been since his mum had died two years ago.
As the days had worn on, the pain from both the abuse and the transmutation had slowly dimmed and now there was only a dull ache all over his body.
By the time the train arrived at Central, Ed was feeling considerably better than he had at the start of the journey.
He had eaten and gotten a fair bit of much-needed rest, but had kept himself a fair distance from the other passengers, he didn't really feel like interacting with other humans again yet.
Ed waited until the jerk that happened just as the train completely stopped to use the back of the chair he had been sitting on to help him to get up.
He carefully limped his way off of the train only using his leg for balance and not actually putting any weight on it.
He was immediately awestruck by the size of central, let alone the amount of people on the station platform, there were so many that he was getting quite awkwardly pushed to go with the flow of people that were heading out.
Judging from the position of the sun, Ed guessed that it was about midday, that was what his stomach was telling him as well. He gave a small cry as someone roughly shoved his small body out of the way and he painfully collided with the pavement just to the side of the mob of people.
"Hey, kid are you all right?" A tall man with pale ginger hair asked as he offered his hand to Ed to help him up, Ed flinched back and closed his eyes, expecting to be hit by the stranger.
When no blow came he opened his eyes slowly and saw the man still crouched down, hand outstretched.
He slowly moved his right leg underneath him and balanced on it as he placed his small bruised hand in the man's own, large, pale one.
He gritted his teeth as the man pulled him to his feet and caused some of the bruises on his arm to send unnecessary pain signals to his brain.
Havoc noticed that the boy refused to use either right arm or left leg, he noticed the blue and purple bruises that covered the small hand that reached out and took his own, he noticed the boy wince at the effort and movement involved in getting up, and he knew, he knew that something terrible had happened to this small child recently, but he did not know what.
He picked the boy up by the waist and noticed that there were more, unseen bruises that were hidden by the clothes he wore.
The small boy tried to resist as Havoc shuffled him around in his arms until he was carrying him princess style, which was surely much more comfortable for both of them.
Ed felt his eyes closing as the rocking sensation that was created by the man carrying him threatened to lull him to sleep, he fought against it for a while, forcing his eyes to open again after each blink and doing his best to imagine what kind of place the strange man was taking him.
Eventually, all the energy that he had left wore out, and the boy slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.
When he got to headquarters, Havoc used his boot to repeatedly kick at the bottom of the door in attempt to get a sound similar to knocking.
"Can one of you guys open this damned door for me, my hands are a bit full at the moment!" Havoc yelled.
"With what!" Was the reply that came from Fuery before he opened the door.
"Oh god, Havoc, what...?" He let the question trail away as he saw the state of the boy that was lying, unconscious in Havoc's arms.
There was a great big swollen bruise on one side of his face and he had a black eye on the other, his right arm and left leg were bent at impossible angles, he was thin, as though he hadn't eaten properly in weeks, maybe even months.
His clothes were grubby, and, in some places, bloodstained. In short, he was a mess.
The office sat in shocked silence for a moment, all eyes were on the broken boy that lay in Havoc's arms, their brains registering the situation, before all of a sudden leaping into action.
Hawkeye stood up, gun in hand, taking charge.
"Havoc lay that boy on the couch! Fuery, go get the first aid kit! Breda, you get a soft flannel and some warm water! Falman, go see if there are any clean clothes anywhere that might fit the boy, including a replacement hat, the one that he is wearing right now is way too worn out to last that much longer!"
"Yes Ma'am!" was the simultaneous response before each person rushed to do as they were told.
Colonel Mustang's eyebrow twitched in annoyance, how did Lieutenant Hawkeye expect him to do all that paperwork with so much damn noise coming from the other side of the door.
After pondering for a moment, he decided that, seeing as it was impossible to do his paperwork at the moment, and he had nothing better to do, he would go and see what all the ruckus was about.
He was just reaching for the doorknob, when the door slammed open...right into his face. He staggered backwards, clutching his throbbing nose with both hands and glaring at Hawkeye who simply grabbed his wrist and started pulling him out of the room.
"Sir, get over it, it isn't even bleeding." She stated.
"It may not be bleeding but it still hurts Hawkeye!" He argued.
"Well, Sir, I'm sure that whatever pain you're going through right now doesn't even begin to compare to the amount of pain that that boy is going through!" She said as she dragged him over to the couch that the boy was laying on and pointed to him.
Mustang's eyes widened at the sight of the boy. 'He looks like he's just been through a war and back!' was the thought that immediately sprang to his mind.
"Hawkeye! I've got the hot water and flannel!" Called Breda, who was quickly followed by Falman And Fuery with their respective items.
"These were the only clothes that i could find in HQ that looked like they would fit him." Stated Falman as he laid a Long red jacket with a peculiar emblem in black on the back of it, a black t-shirt, and some black cotton trousers on the back of a nearby chair, and balancing a brown hat almost identical to the one the boy was wearing - that was, however, in much better condition than the boy's - precariously on top of the pile of clothes.
"Those will be fine, Falman. Fuery give me those please." She ordered, motioning for the bowl and flannel to be put beside her as she knelt down beside the boy, gently propping him up as she carefully pulled off his t-shirt so that she could get to the bruises and cuts beneath.
There was a collective sharp intake of breath from everyone in the room as they saw that the boy's torso was almost completely purple from the amount of bruises that littered it, and the majority of space that wasn't purple was crusted over with dried blood.
Hawkeye placed the soft white flannel in the hot water, she took it out again as soon as the water had completely covered it, wringing it out thoroughly before placing it on some of the boy's wounds and gently scrubbing the dried blood away.
She worked methodically, starting at the top left corner of the boy's torso and slowly working her way towards herself, and as soon as that line was finished, she would start again just under where she had been working previously, making sure that she didn't miss an inch of it.
She made sure to work extra-carefully around and on the places that the broken ribs were.
Once she had finished his torso, she gently rolled him over to do his back, marginally relieved that it wasn't quite so bad as his front had been, and, once that was done, she went on to do the rest of his body except his head, which she had decided to leave alone for the time being just in-case she accidentally woke him up, she raised an eyebrow when she saw his tail, but kept quiet about it in order to keep is a secret from the others, who had long since gotten bored and decided that staring out of the window was slightly more amusing than what she was doing. By the time she was completely finished, the once-white flannel was a reddish-brown, as was the now-cold water.
"Fuery, go and get me a towel." She ordered upon noticing that the boy was shivering.
Fuery ran out of the room and came back a few moments later with a warm, fluffy towel, quickly handing it to Hawkeye and watching as she gently dried off the shivering boy.
She bandaged him up as best she could and, using a few of bits of spare metal that had been sitting in the corner and Havoc and Fuery's grudgingly handed over belts, she made a makeshift splint for both his arm and leg.
Smiling at her handiwork, she dressed him in the loosely-fitting clothes, glad that they were made of soft material that wouldn't be too irritating for his now-healing skin.
Finally done, she got everyone to return to their paperwork, she also forbade any speaking until the boy was awake again.