This was written for FMA-ArtandLiterature's crossover contest on deviantART. Hope you like it!

The alarm clock went off and Edward Elric rolled over in bed. He would've liked to just shut it off and go back to sleep until noon, wake up fully rested and get a big brunch to stuff his face with. That would be paradise, but it wasn't his life.

No, Edward Elric led a much different life.

"Come on, Ed, get up! You have a stable to clean out before sunrise. Get moving."

Ed groaned and shoved a pillow over his head in a vain attempt to drown out the voices.

"Leave me alone," he moaned.

He heard a laugh.

"No can do, buddy. We have to get up and so do you!"

The pillow was forcibly pulled from his grip along with the blankets. The next thing Ed knew, he was being bodily removed from the bed by his roommates, each one grabbing a leg. Ed yelped as he flew to the floor, pain shooting through the shoulder he landed on. He struggled with the insatiable urge to start strangling Beppu and Nishkawa to death one at a time for daring to do this to him.

"Time to get up, Ed. The horses are waiting for you," said Nishikawa in a sing-song voice.

Ed muttered curses under his breath all throughout getting cleaned up and dressed. His empty bed sat warm and inviting, always in the corner of his eye, but still he persevered. A couple splashes of water did their job and before long, he was wide awake. Only another hour before the need to sleep caught up with him again.

"I think I'll get my chores done extra fast today," said Beppu, rubbing his large stomach as he spoke. "I'm especially hungry for some breakfast."

"Yeah, join the club," Ed snorted.

He grabbed his boots from under the bed and pulled them on, finishing his morning routine with a quick check in the mirror for anything unsightly hanging from his nose or any dirt from yesterday's work that he'd forgoten to scrub off. It was a quarter after four and he was making good time.

"I'll see you guys later."

"See ya," said his roommates.

Ed started out, only to pause midway into the hall and turn back.

"Say, either of you guys feeling kind of... weird today?"

Beppu and Nishikawa just looked at him for a long time, and Ed wished they wouldn't. It was bad enough that the question felt so strange on his tongue, he didn't need them to see him embarrassed.

"What do you mean?" asked Beppu. "Weird like you're sick or something? "

"You should go to the nurse if you're not feeling well, Ed," said Nishikawa.

"No, no, it's nothing like that," Ed said. He followed it with a long sigh. "I'm probably just still tired. Forget I said anything."

The two of them shrugged, and then Ed was off.

Aside from the horses, the stables were deserted when Ed got there. He couldn't say he enjoyed the solitude. After such a rude awakening, he could use a little company. Most of his club mates wouldn't be along for another half hour or so, and if Nakajima-sensei wasn't around, odds were good that he was rolling around in his cheese cellar having some kind of phony cheese based religious experience and wouldn't resurface for hours. If the man wasn't the Equestrian club's advisor, Ed would be happy to write him off as just another whack-job and be done with it. Stupid Nakjima, leaving him to shovel horse manure all alone and five in the morning like he was some kind of slave.

Why did Ed even join the Equestrian club in the first place? He didn't know the first thing about horses. Did he?

While Ed contemplated this seemingly uncharacteristic decision of his, a shadow fell across the field, and it definitely wasn't that of the sun or one of the horses, otherwise Ed would've noticed right away.

"Good morning, Edward-kun!"

Aki Mikage's voice rang out bright and cheerful and impossible to ignore. Ed dropped the hoe into the hay stack, disregarding the affronted whiney of the horse he'd been servicing.

"Morning, Mikage," he said. "You're looking especially upbeat today."

"Am I?" asked Mikage, even as she bounced towards him with her hands in the air like she was dancing. "Haha, sorry about that. I just got a new pair of riding gloves and I'm excited to try them out. What do you think?"

She held out her hands, clothed in plain black leather gloves with the fingers cut out. She curled them a few times to give Ed a better look, but no matter what she does to make them seem flashy, they just look like plain old riding gloves to him, albeit very clean ones.

"They're nice," he said non-committedly. Mikage seemed unbothered by his lack of enthusiasm, but for all he knew, she'd didn't even hear him. She had already run into the stable and was patting the nose of Chestnut, that butt-ugly horse everyone favored for some reason.

Ed grimaced, and Chestnut's eye slipped onto him as he gave an ominous growl. Ed flinched. Was the horse reading his mind or something?

"I see you've gotten a great deal of work done, Elric. Good job."

Nakajima stepped into his line of sight, his porcelain Buddha-face as serene as ever with the steadily rising sun at his back. Ed grumbled a hello while Mikage greeted him whole-heartedly. He picked up the hoe and threw another huge bunch of hay into Chestnut's stall. The horse did not look grateful at all.

"Nakajima-sensei, I was hoping to get a little more riding time today," Mikage was saying.

"Breaking in new gloves, eh?" Nakajima-san asked. "Very nice stitching on the fingers. I can tell these are well made. Must've cost a fortune."

"Oh yeah, I saved up my allowance for over a year."

Their silly talk made Ed roll his eyes, and Chestnut's appearance grew in hostility when he couldn't determine that it wasn't about him.

"Making such a big deal about riding gloves," Ed thought aloud. "Sometimes I don't get you at all, Winry."

Mikage looked up. "What was that, Ed?"

"I said sometimes I don't get you at all, Mikage," Ed repeated.

By the time morning began for all the normal people in the world, the stables were clear and the horses well-tended to. Only Ed himself felt his work left something to be desired, mostly by way of comfort and difficulty levels and not making him feel like he just carried twenty tons of rocks while running a marathon. Now, after all that, he was actually expected to start riding the horses. These people were out of their minds.

"You're all out of your minds," Ed moaned on the precipice of unconsciousness while he waited his turn to ride. Mikage was in the chorale now, happily testing out her new gloves. They were to her satisfaction, if her face encompassing grin meant anything. Ed was pretty sure he saw sparkles around her as she rode passed, the literal kind that only worked for big overdramatic macho-men, and even on them it barely worked.

"By the way, Ed," Nakajima said. "I'm going to be busy later tonight. Think you can come and clean up again for me?"

Ed, whose crippling pain was just beginning to alleviate, fell to the ground as Nakajima's words hit him with all the force of a day's back-breaking labor. If he didn't feel them in every single cell in his body, he would think his back was actually broken.

"Wh-WHAT?! After all that work I did at five in the goddamn morning, that is what I get? More work?"

Nakajima frowned, his eyes turning to slits if that were possible.

"We don't work to be rewarded here, Ed," he said sternly. "We do it out of love and respect for the horses, something you seem to be lacking. I'm tempted to assign you evening work for the rest of the week to teach you a lesson."

"Oh, screw off, old man!" Ed shouted. "I know your game. You just want someone to do your dirty work so you can spend the night getting off to your Gouda cheese in peace."

"Actually, I'm more partial to the gorgonzola. Also, watch out."

Ed couldn't retort or ask what Nakajima meant. At that moment, something fast and powerful grabbed him by the collar and dragged him all the way around the enclosure. It wasn't until the second or third go-around that Ed got enough sand out of his eyes to see his shirt clamped in Chestnut's teeth as the beast ran with no clear intention of stopping.

"AAAAAAAAAH!"

"Try to relax, Ed!" Mikage yelled through cupped hands. "You have to show him you're not afraid."

"Don't worry, Ed," Nakajima said calmly, his hands in his pockets. "He won't go too fast. You'll be fine."

"Shouldn't his shirt have ripped off by now?" one random club member said to another.

"WILL SOMEBODY JUST STOP THIS CRAZY THING?!"

Ed nearly collapsed once more that day, this time in the cafeteria at breakfast. Half of his shirt was gone, courtesy of Chestnut, exposing his back to both the cold and the hungry eyes of several female students. Neither was distinct enough to make him think about changing. All he wanted was to get some food in his stomach and forget for a while that horses even existed.

"Looks like we have beef on the menu today," said Tokiwa, his face already half full.

"Can't you chew with your mouth closed?" Aikawa admonished him. "No one wants to see that."

"Says the would-be vet," Tokiwa snapped back, grinning evilly with bits of food in his teeth. "Don't you need to get used to dead animals? What about your dreams?"

"That's different and you know it!"

"Both of you shut up," Ed groaned. He propped himself into an upright position, spurred on through the pain by the mouth-watering smell of the food placed before him. With Beppu as a buffer, he found the strength to bring a single piece to his mouth.

In an instant, a choir of angels descended upon high and Ed did a dance of joy and praise to the god of dairy that such a heavenly bounty had been placed before his unworthy eyes.

Or at least, that's what Ed would have done if he was some kind of melodramatic idiot. In reality, he just shoveled the whole rest of his food in his mouth one glob at a time in a period of five minutes while the others watched in horrified awe. He finished with a burp and rubbed his distended stomach contentedly.

"Man, that's good," he said. "Almost worth all the crap I went through this morning. Almost."

"Geez, Ed, eat a little faster, why don't you?" Tokiwa said. His plate was still more than half full despite his own unsavory eating habits.

"Yeah Ed, you eat like you've been on an island without food for ten years," said Beppu.

"It was more like a month," Ed answered casually. "Hang on a bit guys, I'm gonna go get seconds."

The pigs all converged when Ed arrived with the daily dose of liquid feed. They oinked their hearts out, beady black eyes gazing at him over those perpetually happy faces of theirs that no media source had ever done any justice to. Their snouts bumped his hand when he put a bucket in. The biggest of them got there first, leaving the rest to fight over the next one. The final one was special, reserved for that one pig Ed held above all others.

"Hey there, Pork Bowl." The small pig waddled over to him, issuing little grunts and oinks as he chowed down. Ed patted his back as he ate.

"You're a little bigger than I remember," he said, and he looked out at all the other assembled pigs, his mouth tightening into a line. "Still not as big as the rest, though."

Pork Bowl's ears perked up, but he went on eating.

"Ah, don't worry about it, you'll show them," Ed said. "I understand what it's like, for people to look down on you just because you might be a tad on the not so ta- er big side. It's a harsh thing to have to face, so the best thing to do other than to fiercely deny it and destroy anyone who tries to bring it up is to do everything in your power to make yourself tal- er bigger."

Pork Bowl finished the bucket of feed and looked up, his snout wiggling in demand for more. Ed was only too happy to oblige.

"That's right, Pork Bowl, you eat as much as you can and get bigger than all of them. Someday you'll show them who's boss! You'll show them who's a runt! Who's a pipsqueak! Who's a half pint bean sprout midget! Who's a pipsqueak midget who can't even go to the beach because he will sink into the sand and when the tide comes in…"

Unbeknownst to Ed, he was not alone in the pig pen. Mikage and Yoshino stood over the railings, watching him with worry and bemusement respectively.

"You think Ed-kun is projecting something?" Yoshino murmured to Mikage, who shook her head.

"I… I honestly don't know."

"Hey, what's going on?" shouted Tamako.

She lumbered over to the gathered students standing around the boy's restroom. Inside, intense retching could be heard. It was so bad that some of the other students looked ready to throw up as well in sympathy. The only one strong enough to give Tamako an answer was Komaba, who merely rolled his eyes.

"Edward-kun is having some kind of an episode," he said.

"I don't understand what happened to him," said Tokiwa nervously. "We were starting to milk the cows and he just lost it!"

Evening arrived and the waning daylight found Ed in the stables again. All of his efforts to get out of it had been for naught. He had asked every single person he knew and even a few he didn't know, but nobody would take on the stable duties in this place. They all had some kind of stupid excuse like homework or already having chores to do or not knowing who he was.

Ed got about halfway through the stable before exhaustion set in. It was unfortunate that it had to happen right in front of Chestnut's stall. The rotten horse glared at him, its teeth bared and ready for another attack. Ed responded by shoving a bunch of hay into Chestnut's mouth. While the horse choked on that, Ed moved on to the next one with a feeling of great satisfaction in his belly.

Cool air seeped in through the windows. There was no wind to carry it, and so sweat was pooling at all different points of Ed's body. The most embarrassing of them he covered with a light jacket and stilted movements. Even if he was alone, anyone could come by at any time and see him.

That was never clearer to him than when the sound of crunching dirt and gravel hit him. It became louder, but Ed gave it no thought until a soft tinkle of a voice called his name.

"Oh, hey Mikage," he said.

"Hard at work, aren't you, Edward-kun?"

"Meh…" Ed threw another bundle of hay to one of the good, quiet horses.

"Hey, is there something wrong with Chestnut?"

Mikage ran to the horse. He had gotten most of the hay out of his mouth, but it looked like a couple of pieces had gotten lodged in his throat and he was having trouble hacking them out. It was music to Ed's ears.

"He's fine, probably just something he ate," said Ed.

On cue, Chestnut spat out the spare bits of hay. They landed on the opposite wall wrapped up in saliva and slid to the ground with a sickening squelch.

"See?"

"I suppose," Mikage said, though she didn't look convinced and kept shooting pained looks in Chestnut's direction.

"So what are you up to, Mikage?" Ed asked. "No chores tonight?"

"I finished early, so I thought I'd go for a walk," she explained. "It's so beautiful out here at sunset, isn't it?"

"I hadn't noticed," Ed said. He was too busy counting the number of stalls left so he could get out of here. He wouldn't even be having this conversation with her if he didn't think it would speed things along. No matter how he looked at it, all he saw was an impossibly long road between now and when he was finished.

Mikage frowned. "Well, that's too bad. It's one of my favorite times of the day when I get to see the sun go down over the trees. It's so beautiful that you can't help but appreciate your part in it."

Ed considered her words. He wouldn't have bothered, but there was a spark of sincerity in them that was hard to ignore. Hoe in hand, he went to stand next to her, forgetting for a while that it meant going back to where Chestnut was standing. He observed the window, uncovered and playing for him a single long shot of the forest beyond the school. An endless number of tall trees made it up. It didn't look so spectacular on its own, but somehow, Ed was entranced. Maybe it was just Mikage getting to him, or the sleep deprivation, but he wasn't feeling quite so wound up anymore. Something was coming over him, like an immeasurable sense of peace. The work still ahead of him grew shorter in his mind, no longer like a winding road he had to walk with weights strapped to his feet. It was amazing how much a little bit of introspective could do.

"Now that you mention it," he said, smiling. "It is kind of nice out he-"

"Edward-kun, LOOK OUT!"

Ed spun around and Chestnut's reared back legs smacked into his face. The world around him shook and cracked, Mikage's screams coming to him in bursts. The final explosion of light as he hit the ground was the last, fading into total darkness.

"AAAAAAH!"

Ed leaped up, almost bumping his head on a metal chest. He missed only due to Alphonse's timely action of grabbing him and pushing him back down on the bed.

"Relax, brother!" he shouted.

Ed sucked in air as his vision came back into focus. His mind was still sluggish, but he could just make out the gray square boxes assembled together into a person and interpret them as his brother.

"Oh, Alphonse," he said. "It's only you."

He brought a hand to his head. There was no pain, but the sensation of his mind swelling up and out of his skull was just as bad.

"Are you okay, Ed?" Al asked cautiously.

"I'm fine, I just had the weirdest dream."

Ed got out of the bed, taking a moment first to marvel at how soft it was. Nothing beat a fancy hotel in Central, not where beds were concerned.

"I was at some crazy farming school," he said. He was in the bathroom brushing his teeth, relaying everything he saw before it disappeared into his sub-conscious forevermore. "The food was good, but I had to take care of horses and pigs and get up at four am. Four o' clock in the freaking morning! And the cows… oh god, the cows…"

"Sounds awful," Al said, but Ed could tell he didn't see the full extent of how bad it was.

"Never mind, Al," he said. "I'm just glad it's over."

"Maybe you should eat a little less dairy before bed from now on, brother," Al suggested. Ed chose to ignore that.

He went into the closet to pull out a new set of clothing. His old ones were in the wash; he'd have to talk to the housekeeper later on about when he'd be getting them back. If Mustang was going to send him out on some other stupid pointless assignment in exchange for another lead on the philosopher's stone, he needed to be ready. Knowing that he could go at any time would be helpful in keeping him from punching the bastard's face off.

Ed took out a clean shirt and removed his pajama top in one smooth motion. With it came a long yellow string that fell limply to the floor. Ed wouldn't have given it the time of day, chalking it up to some thread that had gotten loose, but his pajamas were blue, and they were definitely not made of material that scratchy. Ed got down on his hands and knees and picked up the string. He ran his flesh hand up and down the length of what he now knew with perfect clarity wasn't string at all.

"Is this… hay?"

Ed held it to the light, staring in wonder. He got back to his bed without any conscious knowledge of it and sat at the edge, all the while never letting his gaze falter until his nightstand came into view and revealed one more surprise.

"What the- where the hell is my pocket watch?"