HELLO! I have encountered a serious writer's block brick wall in my novel, so, for the time being, I have returned to the fan-fiction universe. I have no idea how often chapters here will be updated, but, meh, I'll figure it out.

Now, as promised, the full summary:

On his way to the library, Edward is kidnapped by multiple unknowns and taken to an underground laboratory, where, after many painful Transmutations, he is turned into a Wolf-Chimera. After being rescued by Maes, he is determined that no one, not even Al, can find out about him. But, as time passes by, it becomes harder to cope with, and he realizes he has to tell someone. The question is, who can he trust enough to keep his secret.

This story is obviously a Chimera!Ed story, but it's not like Nina-type chimeras, think more of Darius, Heinkel, Jerso and Zampano from Brotherhood/the manga. It's like that. In any case, this story is not one of romance or anything mushy like that. All the same, the pairings are as follows:

Parental Maes!Ed. Abusive Roy!Ed, Parental Riza!Ed, and whatever comes to me along the way.

Disclaimer: Why I need to have a disclaimer on a fanfiction site is beyond me, but anyway, I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, or any of the characters. The only thing that belongs to me is the plot.

Someday you'll know the pain

Someday the light will break through

And nothing you tell yourself

Will save us from the truth

Screaming out!

~Sick (Evanescence)

"I want them found!" Mustang bellowed, slamming his hands on his desk. His staff were all stunned into silence; he'd never, ever, reacted to anything with this kind of ferocity. Never had they witnessed him lose all of his carefully constructed control in such a manner, especially not in this kind of situation. But dammit, something here felt so wrong.

"S-sir." Lieutenant Hawkeye stuttered, before recomposing herself. If anything, at least he could count on her to keep her cool. "I'm sure Edward is fine, sir. He's gone missing before, and for much longer periods of time. He'll most likely report back in a few days, sir."

"Lieutenant, something is wrong. I feel it in my bones. It's been a week since anyone has seen or heard from him or his brother. Something's happened to them, and I want to know what. I want them back here." He said. He knew there was no way he could explain this feeling of dread in a way that would make logical sense to anyone other than himself, but he just knew that there was something really, really bad happening, right now. The dread clawed at his gut, and it made him feel sick.

"Sir, you know those boys, they're perfectly capable of-" She began, but Mustang cut her off.

"Hawkeye they were supposed to report in to western H.Q days ago. It was a very simple mission, go to West City, catch the criminal, come back. It should not have taken them this long. I'm telling you, Hawkeye, something's wrong."

No matter how much pain he was in, Edward refused to give his captors the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

He was on his knees, wrists shackled above his head to the wall behind him. His shirt had been removed, and his braid had been cut off. He missed the weight of it on his back. He also missed -and he never thought he would ever think this- his auto-mail arm. This new, flesh arm that had been Transmuted to his body was foreign and felt so wrong because it wasn't his arm. And it wasn't his leg. He didn't want to know where his captors had found the arm and leg, or how they had got them, because thinking about it made him sick, but wearing someone else's arm and someone else's leg made him feel disgusting and violated. Of course, that violated feeling could have been because of the actual violation he had experienced throughout that days that he had been down here (he wasn't actually sure where he was, but for now he was willing to refer to it as 'down').

His body shivered as a regretfully familiar finger trailed down his naked chest. He squeezed his eyes shut - though the blindfold made the action pointless - and held back tears as that finger trailed up and down and up again. More fingers joined them, and then both of the man's hands where on his chest, pushing him back into the wall, and the full weight of the man's body leaned against him, with no barrier of clothes between them, and Edward tried to prepare himself for the further violation that was coming.

It had to have been hours, but eventually Edward's captor was done with him once more, and left, leaving Ed shivering and hurt in the cold. I wouldn't be for long, though, no. In a few minutes, the rest of the guys would be back, and they would pick him up and place him inside the circle, and then they would continue their experiments. They would continue to morph and transform his body, into the grotesque creature that they wanted him to become. But these were no amateur alchemists, make no mistake. They knew exactly how to change him so that he could also change himself. When they eventually finished entirely, he would have the ability to pick and choose his form, whenever he pleased. They told him this was a gift that he was receiving, but he didn't think of it that way. He thought of it as a curse. His mind traveled to Nina, to the little girl she had once been, and to the abomination she had been turned into. It was like that. Except slightly different.

Compared to these guys, Shou Tucker might as well have been a child messing around with play-doh.

He flinched as he heard the door to his isolated little room squeak open, and hung his head as the shackles at his wrist - and the not-his-wrist - were undone and he was hoisted over the shoulder of one of the alchemists who would soon Transmute him, and carried to the experimentation room. The one where all the files on his progress were kept, the one where all the alchemy occurred. After several minutes of walking and turning, they entered the room, and his blindfold was removed. He blinked several times to adjust his eyes to the brightness of the room, and he was set down in the middle of the circle. He glared as one of the many people in the room took a photograph of him with one of those cameras that printed it out immediately after, and stuck it on a bit of paper, scratching notes next to it.

He knew where that paper was going to go. After this Transmutation was complete, it would be slipped into a yellow folder labeled 'Experiment #13', and then that folder would be placed in the cabinet in the corner of the room, in the drawer where the rest of his files were kept. He brought his knees up to his chest and hugged himself, waiting for the six alchemists to each press down on a point of the hexagon within the circle.

Eyes shut tight, he heard six pairs of hands slap the concrete floor in sync, and then the pain began. It flowed through him, scorching his veins, changing his bones, his skin, his self. The wolf inside the opposite Circle howled in pain, dropping to the floor and curling in on itself, as it's DNA attributes were analyzed, replicated, and merged into Edward's being. Edward clenched his teeth and bit his tongue to keep from roaring in pain as the wolf's genetics were implanted into his own. A sudden burst of extra agony erupted from his tailbone, and without looking he knew that it was elongating. His face was then in agonizing pain as it too began to stretch, to grow, to become similar in appearance to the snout of the sandy-coloured wolf that he was being turned into.

He pitched forward as the pain in his rear became too overpowering, and sat on his knees and his arms, waiting for the pain to be over. He whimpered as the bones in his hands suddenly dislocated themselves. The fingers grew longer and his hands spread wider, and he cut the skin on the claws that had become of his nails. Again he grunted in pain as the bones in his feet grew rapidly in size, and more, smaller claws grew from his toenails.

For a moment he was able to open his eyes and see that golden fur had begun to grow from his skin, and quickly he shut them again, not wanting to see the monster he had become.

The crackling of alchemy that was all around him gradually died down, and so did the pain. When the alchemy that kept his body in wolf form disappeared, the new form slipped away, and his body became human again, but he knew that that wouldn't last for much longer. Eventually, the transformation would be complete, and soon, probably, the circle would be modified so that when it's power died down, Ed's wolf form did not leave with it, but stayed with his body, and then he would have to be taught how to control it, how to use it, how to restrain it.

He didn't know what would happen to him after that.

Gasping, Edward sat up, and was conscious of more photographs being taken of him. He gave the cameraman the most terrifying death stare he could muster, and, judging by the shiver that ran through the man, it worked. Ed heard the wolf yelp as it was grabbed by the scruff of it's neck and carried back to it's cage in the next room, and he flinched as he was taken by the arm, none too gently, and pulled over to the man who, from context, Edward assumed was the ringleader of this particular operation.

"How do you feel, Edward?" He asked, eyes blazing. He was a fairly average sized man, with blonde hair cut short and blue eyes that looked like ice. His face was kind of pudgy, and he had a really, really big nose. He also had a thin mustache that curled at the ends, and the man had a habit of pulling on it as he talked. Edward would have liked to pull it, all right, right off the mans stupid face.

As he always did, Edward remained silent, refusing to acknowledge the bastard who was turning him into a monster.

"Still giving us the silent treatment, aye, Elric? Well, it will only backfire on you later on, so I would not recommend keeping it up." He waited a few moments, and when Edward still did not say anything, he nodded to the big man that was holding Ed, and then the blindfold was wrapped around his eyes again and he was taken back to his cell.

Re-shackled to the wall, Edward sighed and slumped against it. The cuffs bit into the skin, and he wished that they at least had given him some sort of bandage to stop it. Although, the thought was maid void by the reality of the situation, that being that if they were willing to put him through indescribable amounts of pain to make him into a chimera, they probably didn't give two damns about his sore wrists. He listened to the fading steps of his captors, as they walked back to discuss the experiment that had just passed, and when they finally faded away, the silence was deafening. A sob racked his chest, and he hung his head, praying that he would be found soon. His body clock did not work down here, but he presumed he had been gone for at least a few days. By now, Al should have panicked enough to call someone - Mustang, probably, and his heart lurched. Poor Al, he had been through so much, with their mum dying, the failed Transmutation, losing his body and being stuck in that hulking suit of armor, and now this. Alphonse would be worried sick, and Edward hated that he was the reason why.

Edward narrowed his eyes as he thought of Mustang, sitting behind his desk in his big fancy office, smiling that cocky, nonchalant smile of his, ignoring his paperwork and forcing his subordinates to work their asses off to make up for his own laziness. Ed had not been under Mustang's command very long; three or four months, maximum, but he knew without a doubt that he didn't like the man. He was so...detached, from everything around him except his own personal goal of climbing the ranks. Nobody had told him anything of the sort, but Edward could see it in the gleam of his eyes every time he came into contact with someone above him. Those midnight eyes, they shouted silent words, take care, soon I will be above you. It was impossible not to miss.

He shifted position in an effort to get comfortable, and a lance of spread through him, emanating from the rib he had broken, trying to fight off the men who had initially captured him. He had been walking away from the Military Hotel, it was roughly eight or nine in the morning, late enough for him not to be too noticed walking the streets but too early for too many people to be out. He supposed that was why nobody had noticed when four burly men, all dressed in a deep black, had come at him from all directions, just a block away from his destination (one of the alchemical libraries in the sad little town of Yectora), and tried to get a burlap sack of his head. He had fought back, hard, and broken one of the guy's noses. In return he had gotten a huge fist to the left side, and one of his ribs had cracked. Of course no one was going to bother to get that checked up on, they seemed to relish in his pain, but it hurt like a bitch and Ed was glad that afterwards, before they'd shoved the rag soaked with chloroform in his face, that he'd managed to kick the asshole's crotch with his auto-mail foot.

Since then, Edward had gone through five or six Transmutations like the one that had just gone, and every time it was that much more painful. He wasn't sure if his body could take much more of it, to be perfectly honest. He was sure that eventually the pain would become too much and he would die of it. He wished that those thoughts wouldn't consistently enter his mind, but he was unable to do anything to stop them. They were like a reoccurring dream, or perhaps more like a nightmare. Unable to push them away, he let them swim around his head for a while, until they had run their course, and eventually they faded away, replaced by different thoughts, thoughts of his mother.

He remembered the time, so long ago but yet it could have been yesterday, when he had visited the Gate. He had seen the Truth, the white creature that had imitated his form, had shown him an immeasurable amount of information in return for a toll: his left leg. When he had awoken from this experience, in more pain than he was in now, with a leg torn cleanly off, he had looked up, hoping beyond hope to see his mother, alive and well, and he had seen the complete opposite. His mother was alive, but she was far from well. Her skin was black, her eyes glowing red, and her body was a jumble of over-sized limbs and protruding bones. She could barely breathe, yet she reached her hand out all the same to the son that had reduced her to this, and that action alone had been too much. He had coughed blood and died, just like that. That was when Edward had realized that he was all alone. He had killed his mother, he had killed his brother. He could have, possibly, lived with Al being gone (and he had hated himself, and still did, just for thinking it) if only his mother had been brought back to life. But it had not worked, and now Alphonse, his baby brother, was gone, and he was all alone in the world.

In a split second he had known what to do. He hauled his tiny little body over to one of Hohenheim's antique suits of armor and knocked it over, crawling to the neck and, with his own blood, drawn a seal that would return his brother's soul and bind it to the metal. Without realizing he was doing it, he clapped his hands, feeling the surge of alchemy flow through him, and pressed his palms on each side of the blood seal. Instantaneously, he had been dragged back through the portal, by those hundreds of little black hands that could stretch forever, and once again he stood before Truth. It smiled.

"Back again, are you?" It said. "You fool."

Truth had taken his arm in return for his brother's soul, and they had both been sent back through the Portal and returned to the basement.

Forcefully, Edward pushed the memory back. There was no point reminiscing something that had happened two years ago.

More time had passed by, more, immeasurable amounts of time, passed by with pain. His captors had finished experimenting on him now. He was a completed experiment. A completed chimera. Number thirteen, the wolf. At will, he could now force his body to change shape, so that he took on the appearance of a golden wolf. He stood on two legs, his feet elongated, his fingers tipped with deadly claws. His face would stretch to resemble a wolf's muzzle, and his body would sprout golden fur. Right now he was being trained to get used to the body, and he was surprised at how it did not seem to feel unnatural. It didn't hurt to transform anymore, and he hated to admit that every time he fought with this new body, he felt a new kind of furious adrenaline that he had never had before, and he liked it. He enjoyed the feeling, while it was happening.

And he hated himself for it.

Edward narrowed his eyes. He thought he could, very faintly, hear shouting, and then an enormous explosion rocked the ground, and bits of rock and sand fell from the roof, confirming Edward's suspicions that he was underground. With some new-found instinct, his body reacted automatically, transforming into the wolf that made him stronger. He tore the blindfold off of his face and slashed at the chains that bound him, and suddenly he was free. He burst out of his prison, not bothering to take in any of it's details, and was about to run when he realized he had no idea which way to go.

The shouting grew louder, and he recognized two of the voices.

Mustang's.

And Hughes'.

They must have come for him, he realized, and his heart filled with excited warmth at the thought. He had thought that everybody had abandoned him, after all, why would they...want...him...now...? He was a chimera, a filthy, low, half-human creature that wasn't worth saving. As quickly as it had come the warm feeling was gone, and he realized that they could never, ever know what he was. He had to get to those files before they could read them. Closing his eyes, as calmly as he could, he counted the steps and turns he had memorized, until he was in the room that he had come to think of as his own personal Hell. He threw his eyelids open as soon as he passed through the door, and it occurred to him that the whole place was abandoned. They must have known that mustang was coming, and fled. Well, all the better for him.

With alchemy, he opened up the filing cabinet that contained all of the documents concerning him, and flicked through all of them until he came across the one labeled 'Experiment 13'. He yanked it out and and pulled out all of the papers. Separating them, he replaced everything that did not mention his transformation back into the file, which in turn went back into the cabinet. He re-alchemized the lock shut, and stuffed the rest of them, which was actually only about six or seven pages, into the pocket of his cloak (he had found his clothes in a box next to the cabinet, and had roughly pulled them on before anyone could see him).

Realizing that he was utterly exhausted, he slumped against the wall, sliding down it until he was sitting, and wrapped his arms around his knees, hiding his head, ad waited.

Maes watched as Roy snapped his fingers, and everything became chaos. There were men running everywhere, both friend and foe, the friends running to capture the foes who had been immobilized by the roaring fires.

They had finally done it. After being MIA for over a month and a half, a lead had finally turned up as to Edward's whereabouts. Maes' team had traced everything they could find, and all of it had led back to this building, two towns over from where Edward had last been seen. They had no idea what might be waiting for them inside, but both Maes and Mustang and Mustang's team had been willing to risk it, if it meant finding Ed. Maes hadn't known the young, quiet, forlorn kid for long, but upon meeting him in Mustang's office after the incident with Issac McDougal, he had taken a great liking to the child. Even more so after he had invited him and his brother into his house when they didn't have anywhere else to stay. They were good kids, those two, and didn't deserve the pain they'd had to endure.

"Hughes!" Mustang barked. "Take Havoc and Breda and search the building, top to bottom! Find Fullmetal!"

"Yes, sir!" Maes said, waving Jean and Heymans over to him, and together they searched every room of the building, and when their efforts were fruitless they went below and investigated down there. They found several rooms full of animals, locked away in cages, all of them severely malnourished and, by the looks of it, in immense amounts of pain. There were various assortments of them, too. A dog, a frog, a cow, a snake, a lizard, a wolf, even a Goddamn crocodile. In the room after there only dead animals, among them a boar, a lion, and a gorilla. Maes wondered about the intense variety of animals for a moment, before he was broken out of his thoughts by Breda, who was calling him and Havoc over, sounding urgent.

Havoc and himself found themselves in a room that looked like it had been hollowed out by alchemy, and where increasingly disturbed by what they saw. On the far wall were two chains, drilled into the rock, and they had been slashed by what would have to have been some sort of saw. It didn't look like that was what it had been, but no other explanation would come to Maes' mind. On the floor below was a mixture of dried blood and pale whiteness that Maes studiously tried to ignore, knowing immediately what it was. Whoever had been here had been raped, and Maes prayed to a deity he didn't believe in that it wasn't Edward who had been trapped here.

"Let's go, he's obviously not here." He said, his voice strained. Breda and Havoc nodded, and followed him out they way they came.

They had to walk through several passageways, each of which broke off into different hallways filled with different rooms, so Hughes decided that it would be quicker if they just split up. Maes went right, Breda went left and Havoc went down the middle. After searching more rooms, each of them containing similarities to what he had seen before, with a few minor differences he didn't care to think about, he eventually came to the last room, right down the end of the hall, and, cautiously, he opened the door with a creak.

The moment he walked through the door, he was hit with the smell of alchemy. He never had realized that alchemy actually had a smell before, but he knew now. It smelled like burned wires, or maybe burned rope, but either way, the smell was almost breathtaking, and he had to pause for a moment to inhale and exhale a few times before he could continue. In the center of the room where two giant Transmutation Circles. Knowing absolutely zilch of anything when it came to alchemy, he could not determine what they were for, exactly, but they looked like they would have taken hours of time and a Hell of a lot of chalk to draw. To the immediate left of the room were several desks, with accompanying chairs tossed over, as though the occupants had left in a hurry.

On those desks were several papers, all of them apparently concerning a particular woman whose name was Martel. Looking at the photo beside the name, the woman had blonde hair cropped short, with a few particularly long strands of hair falling over one side of her face. She had bright green eyes, and a green tattoo of roughly swirling lines and edges on her right shoulder. He didn't bother reading the rest of the pages, but at the bottom of this particular one was a picture of the green snake he had seen earlier.

He was getting a bad feeling about this.

To the left of the room was a series of filing cabinets, but his attention was drawn to the one near the corner. From behind it, he could see a hint of red. Narrowing his eyes, he drew his pistol, flicking off the safety and aiming it at the cabinet. At the sound of the switch, a small whimper sounded from behind the cabinet and the red moved, and Maes could see now that it was fabric. Lowering the gun slightly so that it would actually hit the person behind if need be, he said: "Raise your hands above your head and come out from behind there. I have a gun and I will shoot if I have to."

"H-Hughes?" A meek voice asked, and a moment later Edward poked his head out, two flesh hands above his head.

"Edward!" Maes exclaimed, clicking the safety back on and holstering the gun before running to the small boy and wrapping his arms about him. "Ed, are you alright?" He asked, suddenly breathless. It was as though a great weight had been sitting on his chest, and finally finding Ed had removed it completely. He felt so happy in that moment he could have cried, and it took great restraint not to.

"I-I'm fine." Edward whispered. Maes realized Edward probably did not feel comfortable being hugged like this, so Maes quickly let go, choosing instead to sit both of his hands on the boy's shoulders.

"Edward, your arm! You got it back!" Hughes said. Instantly, he saw the blood drain from Ed's face, and the boy looked as though he were going to be sick.

"It's not...it's not mine." He murmured, so quietly that Maes almost didn't hear it.

"Say that again, Ed?" He asked, just to be sure he had heard what he thought he had just heard.

"It's not my arm." Ed whispered.

"What do you mean? What happened? Edward?" Maes tightened his grip on the boys shoulders as they began to shake, and he realized that Edward was trying desperately not to cry.

"I-it's not...it's not my...It's not mine..." He choked, and Maes pulled him into another hug.

"Shhh, it's okay Ed. You don't have to tell me right now. It's okay, Ed. Easy." He cooed, rocking Edward gently back and forth, until the shaking stopped and Edward lifted his head, sniffling. He wiped his eyes and tried to smile.

"I'm okay now," He said, "Thanks."

"Don't worry about it." Maes assured him, knowing that Edward would be internally cursing himself for appearing so weak. "Now, let's get you out of here."