6/7/15 A/N: Boom! Out of nowhere, this plot hit me and I had to get it written down. Should be short exploration of Ed and Winry's struggles with PTSD. Trigger warnings: violence toward loved ones. Nightmares. And of course, Ed's struggles with PTSD. Part of The Kids are All Right series
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"I think that love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time, and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last... I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me."
―Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
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Chapter 1: Call me Buck
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Ed hadn't thought of Briggs or Baschool for thirteen years. Those horrific days last played out in his mind the day his son Charlie was born. He and Alphonse waited patiently for hours outside Winry's hospital room for his third child to come into this world and somewhere along the way, the former Fullmetal Alchemist fell asleep. The young father dreamt of an attacking bear as he and his little brother traipsed through a snow covered road to Fort Briggs only to realize General Armstrong's soldier, Buccaneer assaulted them thinking they were Drachman spies. Still, the looming brute of a man kicking ass in his dream triggered Ed's fight or flight response – something that hadn't happened for a long time. His body automatically responded to the violent dream by making him punch a hole in the waiting room wall.
Alphonse helped calm his older brother down that day. He also fixed the wall...and Edward's broken hand.
Winry never found out that this dream inspired Edward to name their child Charles Buccaneer Elric. His lovely wife also stayed blissfully ignorant of the damage her husband caused to the hospital and his hand. She did know about how, every so often, her loving husband had such horrible dreams he woke up covered in sweat and screaming. She did her best to soothe him and he would be eternally grateful for her love and patience.
Now, thirteen years later, the memories particularly of Bashchool crashed back into his head. The thoughts flooded his mind so innocently as his son, Charles chose that night to assert his independence. Oh, yeah, there was also something in there about a girl too.
"Mom, Dad..." Charlie B. stood up with a start, pushing his chair aside with a screech. He succeeded interrupting the family dinner. A dinner table cram-packed with mostly blonde heads looked up at him and all hushed their chattering voices. He cleared his voice.
"What's up, Sport?" Ed set down his fork. He saw something in his son's blue eyes, his child was serious and wanted to be heard.
"I want to, I want to be called Buccaneer, not Charles or Charlie." He exhaled, glad he got that out.
"Oh, great." Winry moaned and glared at her husband. "You HAD to give him that name when I was on all those drugs at the hospital."
"Not this again, woman!" Ed rolled his eyes. Winry would never let him live it down, that he tricked her all those years ago.
"Mom!" Charlie raised his voice. "I LIKE the name...it, it's..."
"Bad-ass?" Ed crossed his arms. "The original Buccaneer was as tough as they come."
"Yes!" Charlie pleaded with his mother. "I want to go to the military academy, I need a name that means I'm tough, that I'm serious..."
"He's only serious about impressing Lilly Renbeck..." Devin smirked in between chewing his food, the twelve-year-old eyeballing his older sibling with the same golden stare of his father.
"Shut up!" Charlie's determined face turned angry. "You're just jealous because she likes me more than you!"
"She does not!" Devin dropped his fork and growled. "Besides, you're not even taller than she is!" He knew exactly where to strike at his brother's ego.
"Take that back!" Charlie pointed and made his way around the table to his sibling.
"Easy, easy!" David, Edward's apprentice, extended his right arm, preventing Charlie from moving past him. "Go sit down, Buck." He barely raised an eyebrow at the youth before he felt the soft hand of Sarah Elric, the eldest daughter, squeezing his knee. The nineteen-year-old realized that a blush crept across his cheeks.
"Buck?" Seventeen-year-old Sarah interjected. "Mom, I kinda like that. It's not as colorful as Buccaneer, but sounds even tougher." She took a bite of her food and smiled at David's red face.
"Devin! Charles!" It was their mother's turn to raise her voice. "I did not prepare this wonderful meal to have you fight during it." She narrowed her gaze as the boys looked toward their father for protection. "You're father isn't going to help you..." Winry caught Ed shaking his head in agreement. "Now sit down!"
"Yes, ma'am!" The boys plopped their behinds down in their chairs in unison. Neither wished to incur their mother's wrath any further.
"Good." She inhaled. "Ed, what do you think? Buck is a nicer alternative." She put her husband on the hot seat. After all, it was his fault her child had THAT middle name.
"Aw, Win." Ed really didn't want to dredge up this old fight again. He knew he took advantage of his wife thirteen years ago when she held that precious boy in East City Hospital's maternity ward...when she was pumped full of pain medication. She would have agreed to naming a kid anything. Her angry stare reminded him it was, indeed, his fault. "I don't mind it...and, the boy's his own person. If he wants to go by his middle name..." Winry grunted. "...or Buck, it's his choice to do it. It's hurting no one." There. The father's edict had been administered. Head of the household made the rules!
"Very well then." Winry actually was the neck and she turned the head.1 All the young people at the table released a collective sigh that this argument fizzled out before something more headache inducing – as per usual in the Elric-Rockbell house- materialized. "...so, tell me more about Lilly Renbeck..."
"She's just a girl!" Devin blushed and looked away. "A girl Bucky, here likes."
"Bucky's worse than Charlie!" Buck snarled. "And YOU like her too!"
"Geez, I'm getting a headache." David whispered to Sarah through the corner of his mouth as the two boys continued to bicker across the table and their parents started hollering back.
"Typical Elric family dinner...you volunteered for this, remember?" Sarah elbowed the boy's ribs. "Still want to be a State Alchemist?"
"Of course...I'd put up with worse than this to have your dad be my teacher."
"Yeah...me too." Sarah smiled at the boy as his cheeks grew pinker.
Ring! Ring! The telephone in the hallway broke through the cacophony in the kitchen. Edward and Winry's eyes grew large with realization.
"Ethan!" Everyone seemed to yell at once and scurried from their seats to be the one to answer it.
Winry made it there first.
"Rockbell Automail." She always answered this way but hoped it was her oldest child calling from his own apprenticeship with her teacher, Garfiel, in Rush Valley. When she heard his soothing voice, she squealed with happiness. "Ethan!"
The family soon forgot about any arguments.
The spring night fell upon lazy Resembool just as the one before. The big yellow house stood tall and strong as a breeze rolling up from the meadow filtered through all the open windows. The occupants slept peacefully, inhaling in the sweet country air...well, some of them slept.
Two sneaky and quiet sets of footsteps creaked across the old floorboards of the front porch. Someone slowly turned the worn brass handle on the front door and stealthily slide into the home and moved toward the main staircase.
Sarah Elric squeezed David's hand as she made her way toward her bedroom upstairs and he tried to part with her to his room adjacent to the kitchen. They both knew her father would murder David if he found out about their late night courting in the meadow, but they could not keep away. The young man woke up with the image of the girl in his mind and this carried all throughout the day as her father beat him senseless sparring and teaching him alchemy. Even though David ended most days exhausted, he just couldn't sleep unless he got to see her, got to walk along the Rain river holding her hand and talking openly with her.
Tonight was even more special for the two.
"Davey?" She stopped before the first step and turned to face him.
"Um...yeah?"
"We have to tell mom and dad." Sarah knew releasing their relationship to her parents was going to change things in the house, but she also felt horrible for hiding it. Besides, her mom and dad were good people and they both seemed to like David.
"Yeah...I don't like sneaking around." He took both her hands. "I want to court you properly." His bold statement made her blush this time. "But, your dad...he doesn't see you as a woman, he only sees you as his little girl. He's going to murder me." The boy's eyes glazed over as he replayed the events of this night's walk in his mind. "Damn...he's going to really kill me if he found out I kissed you."
"Maybe..." The girl before him averted her eyes, thinking about their first kiss and reliving the moment in her mind. "But, I think we should give them a chance...after all, when you get your certification, you'll be leaving us...you'll be leaving me." The thought of her world upending when the boy left for the military scared the hell out of her. Sarah had no doubts she'd pass the exam and be able to follow David too, but she couldn't take that blasted test until she was eighteen. This new age limitation had been set down by the Fuhrer, himself. All the possibilities of their lives flooded her brain, distracting from the young man before her. Without any warning, David wrapped his warm arms around the girl and held her tight.
"Just for a while, Sarah, only a while until you can join me..." He longed to tell her he loved her. He wanted to shout it to top of the Elric-Rockbell house rafters. David never sought her, he only wanted her father to teach him alchemy and that took weeks of begging and prodding until Edward acquiesced. Now, he and the eldest Elric daughter couldn't pinpoint when the attraction began, but it did and bloomed into something neither one quite understood.
"Awwww, isn't this just precious!" A mousy voice distracted the couple and a light from the table lamp being switched on jolted them from any romantic thoughts. "I smell blackmail!" Devin curled his prepubescent grin. He'd finally caught his sister and her beau.
"You little shit!" Sarah quietly left David to accost her younger brother. "It doesn't matter, we're going to confess all to mom and dad."
"Confess what?" Buck strolled in from the kitchen holding a chicken leg in one hand. "Who cares if those two go suck face at midnight EVERY night." He took a bite of the chicken.
"Shut up, dummy...let me do the talking!" Devin glared at his brother. "Like I was sayin'..." He didn't finish his sentence as a loud crashing sound echoed from upstairs.
"What?" Sarah looked at her brothers for an answer but only got blank stares.
Next, the quintet heard a scream, not just any either, but the blood curdling sound of distress from their strong as steel mother. Buck and Devin somehow managed past their sister and her suitor and all four hurried up the stairs and to their parent's room.
"What's goin' on?" The younger ones with eyes still sleep-filled, rifled out of their room each clutching a teddy bear.
"Go back inside!" Sarah ordered, but flashed them her kind blue eyes. The children backed up past their threshold, but stared with golden and hazel eyes down the hallway where the loud thumps, crashes and muffled screams of their mother still reverberated.
Edward heard a sound which pulled him out of slumber. He thought one of the boys dropped a stock pot on the kitchen floor, a sort of pop and booming rattle of copper and steel on wood. He opened his amber eyes to see tendrils of gray smoke undulating upwards hitting the punched tin ceiling of his and Winry's bedroom.
"Winry!" Now fully awake, he sat up in bed, desperate to find his wife. Ed knew she still lay to his right, he felt her warm body next to him. Winry lay on her right side with long, corn silk-colored hair cascading down her shoulder. "Win?" The former alchemist gently clutched his wife's bare shoulder and pulled her down to her back. His heart raced and the bile rose into his throat as he saw the still-smoldering black mark marring her linen nightgown right over her heart. "Winry! Winry!" He tugged her chin to see her face and once she turned he knew it was too late. Her beautiful blue eyes were open and glazed over in death, the light of her soul no longer present. These glass eyes starred at the tin ceiling simulating those of a porcelain doll and just as lifeless. When he brought back his hand, warm, crimson blood rolled down his palm and he realized it also oozed freely from his wife's nose, ears and from one corner of her perfect mouth. Edward could no longer restrain the agony building in his gut and he released a scream loudly – the same one he internalized when his mother died. "No!"
"Aw, you should have stayed asleep." A smooth and familiar voice calmly uttered. "She didn't feel a thing and that was also going to be my gift to you too." The man in white stepped forward out of the shadows of Ed's bedroom, his pale hands outstretched revealing a transmutation circle on each palm. "...as well as to your children..."
"Kimblee!" Ed knew he could do nothing for Winry now. Instead, he had to keep this murderous psychopath from hurting his children too. It didn't make any sense to him just how the white freak was alive again, but damned if he'd let the murderer of Ishval lay a hand on his kids. Edward wasted no time launching himself over the body of his wife and attacking the former Crimson Lotus Alchemist, knocking Kimblee down. The man's hands instinctively went for the villain's throat.
"I would have rather killed everyone else first and had some quality time with the lovely Miss Rockbell all by myself." He barely seemed hurt or winded as Edward's two strong hands began squeezing Kimblee's neck. The madman started laughing, mocking the former alchemist.
"Shut up! You don't get to say things like that about my wife!" Ed rared back and brought the man with him, then slammed his head into the wooden floor with a sickening crack. The lamp on the bedside table fell to the floor, shattering the bulb.
"But she woke up first, so I imploded her precious heart." He cackled and taunted Ed. "A nice little trick I picked up since you last saw me."
"Stop talking!" Edward started slamming the man's head again. "Just die!"
Buck, Devin and David burst into the bedroom with Sarah close behind. Their eyes widened on the horrific scene before them. There on the floor lay their mother. Edward straddled his body across her prone form with each of his hands clutching her neck and slamming her head into the floor over and over.
"Just die! Die Kimblee!" Ed screeched. He couldn't understand why the monster still breathed, still mocked him.
"Get off her!" Devin launched himself at his father, but couldn't get him to release his mother. Winry lay there, no longer gasping for breath and her face tinged blue. The twelve-year-old kept striking his dad futilely, Ed was just too strong.
Out of the shadow of the room, Buck appeared holding his mom's biggest wrench. "Get your fucking hands off her!" He swung the heavy instrument and it came in contact with his father's head with a sickening thunk. Edward finally released his wife and fell to her side.
"David!" Sarah ran to her parents and check her mother first, finding a faint pulse. "Get on the phone and call Doctor Renbeck! Fast!" The girl had extensive medical training alongside alchemy. "Think...think, Sarah!" She wished Ethan were here, he was so much better at first aid. She ran her fingers along her mother neck to feel for any breaks. Finding none, she felt for any swelling of her cartoid artery and jugular vein. She jumped back as Winry's blue eyes flew open and she mouthed the words as she was no longer able to utter a sound.
"Ed?"
"Charlie...Buck had to hit him with your big wrench to stop him, Mom." Tears started to fall. "I haven't checked on Dad yet."
"Go to him." Winry's eyes, the whites of which were turning blood red, motioned over to the large unconscious heap across from them.
"Dr. Renbek is on his way!" David ran into the room.
"Did I...did I kill Dad?" Buck dropped the wrench with a clunk, too numb to know what to do next. He looked to his younger brother, Devin for help but got nothing.
"Is Mom ok?" Devin couldn't process the scene before him.
Out in the hallway, two young children cried desperately wanting to see the two people they loved the most in the entire world get up off the floor. Their pitiful wails carrying down the stairs and off into the soft night.
1. I love this quote, but can't claim it as mine. It's from the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. "Let me tell you something, Toula. The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants."