The Colonel did not even read the report in front of him before sliding it across the desk and directly into the trash can.
"Rewrite it," he said simply, and the young blond boy sitting on the couch was silent. The calm before the storm.
"You didn't even read it!" His whine was met with a smirk.
"I didn't have to. It's less than a page long. Though it's not surprising that your report would be short..." he drawled, and Ed gritted his teeth.
"Bastard..." Roy waited for more of an outburst, but it didn't come, so he continued.
"Anyway, you'll rewrite it, and rewrite it quickly, because you've got another mission to go on."
"I don't even get a break?" he asked, and Roy felt a little guilty. The kid was probably tired. "Not even a day or two?"
"No, Fullmetal. I know it isn't ideal, but you're a soldier, not a child, and I expect you to act like one. Soldiers accept their missions without whining."
"I'm not whining! I just..." He sighed. "What's the mission?"
"An alchemist in Millville is up to some suspicious activity"
"Where the hell is Millville? I've never even heard of it."
"It's a very small town, pretty far from any major cities. Kind of in the middle of a forest. It's so remote that you can't even get to it by train. We're going to have to take a military car."
"What do you mean 'we'?" Ed asked, a feeling of dread creeping into his stomach.
"I'm coming with you, Fullmetal; I've been assigned to the mission, as well."
"Colonel, I really just need some down time. That last mission was really stressful-"
"I might sympathize more with that sentiment if your report were more impressive, but judging by the length of it alone, it doesn't look like you did much."
"-And I'm exhausted. What harm could really come from waiting a few days?"
"This woman is experimenting on people, Fullmetal. She's a doctor, and she's using her terminally ill patients as her test subjects. A few days could be the lives of a few children. Do you want that on your conscience?"
Edward sighed again, this time feeling a slight rattling in the bottom of his chest, and cleared his throat. "No, Sir."
"Good. I expect to see you at dawn tomorrow. That shouldn't be a problem, though, considering you'll probably be up all night revising your report, which I expect complete and in my hands when the car pulls up to the dorms."
Ed was, in fact, still awake when the military car arrived at sunrise the next morning. His report was now two pages longer, and if the quality had suffered, then it was no skin off his bones. It was the damn Colonel's fault, anyway, for making him rewrite it on such short notice and with so little sleep.
"Brother," Al started, making the eldest Elric jump in surprise. "Sorry," he apologized, but Ed brushed it off.
"What's up, Al?"
"I was just going to say that you look tired. Try to get some sleep on the way there, all right?" Ed could tell that his brother was disappointed that he couldn't come along, but there was nothing that could be done about it. Trains didn't run through Millville, and there was no way Al was going to fit comfortably in a military car with both Ed and Roy on a several-hour long journey. He understood, really, he did. But it still hurt.
"I will." He coughed a bit, annoyed now that the slight crackling that he felt in his lungs yesterday was seemingly turning into a cold. If Al could have frowned, he would have.
"Brother, you don't sound very well. Maybe you should tell the Colonel that you can't go on the mission and see a doctor?"
"I'm fine, Al. It's just a cold, if it's even that. I'll live."
"But if you're coming down with something, even if it's just a cold, you shouldn't be straining yourself so much. You should be resting."
"I told Colonel Bastard that I needed to rest. Shockingly, he didn't care. Listen, don't worry about me, all right? Just focus on having a little fun here while I'm gone. Go shopping, read some books."
"Promise me that you'll go to a doctor if you start feeling worse?"
"Yeah, yeah. I got it. Seriously, stop worrying. I'll see you in a few days."
"Be careful, brother."
The car outside honked impatiently, and Ed took his sweet time walking to it, somehow not feeling too broken up about making the Colonel wait.
"Good morning, Fullmetal," Roy greeted, but it was met with a grumpy huff of air. Not that he had expected anything else, of course. "You seem to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."
"I didn't wake up on either side of the bed, bastard, because I didn't go to bed in the first place. I was up all night writing this stupid report." He handed the papers to his superior and rested his head against the window, allowing his eyes to drift shut for a moment.
"This is even worse than your original," Roy chastised, but the pounding in Edward's head occupied any area of his brain that might have actually cared about the criticism.
"If you want me to write it again, I will. Later. Just let me sleep," he groaned. Roy was a little taken aback by it, but he didn't show it.
"I'm sure this one will do just fine, Fullmetal. To be perfectly honest, I don't want to read another copy of this any more than you want to write one. Just do better in the future, got it?"
Ed nodded without looking up, seemingly almost asleep already. It was no surprise, Roy thought. From the report, the mission sounded exhausting both physically and mentally, and on top of that, the boy had been up all night. Besides, an unconscious Fullmetal was a quiet Fullmetal, and that only meant fewer problems for Roy.
A lot of time went by in that silence, several hours, before Roy became bored and felt that the boy had slept enough. He needed to be briefed on the mission, after all.
"Fullmetal," he barked, startling him out of sleep. He winced a bit.
"What?" Ed snapped angrily.
"Don't take that tone. You need to hear the details of the mission."
"What details? It's human experimentation; there's nothing to discuss. We go in there, shut her down, leave."
"It's not that simple, Fullmetal-"
"It will be. Just let me sleep a little longer," he moaned, squeezing his eyes shut again and turning towards the window, "I've got a headache." That part was almost whispered, as if he didn't intend for Roy to hear it.
"We're discussing it now," Roy boomed, and Ed winced again, one hand coming up to massage his eyes. The older man softened, feeling a pang of pity. He knew a thing or two about bad headaches-his biggest one was trying to sleep in the seat right next to him, after all. "Fine," he caved, "We'll discuss it later. You get a little more sleep. We can talk about it when we get to the inn."
"Thanks," he said in a voice that sounded much more irritated than it probably was. Even with his eyes closed, his eyebrows were knitted together slightly in pain.
"That bad?" Roy asked, and Ed shrugged.
"It's fine. It'll pass," he answered, and Roy pulled a canteen of water out of his bag.
"Doesn't look like it'll be going away any time soon, so drink this. It might help." Ed opened his eyes a crack and took the water without a word. Roy tried to doze a bit, too, but didn't end up falling asleep, opting instead to just stare out the window. "If you really weren't feeling up to this mission, you should've turned it down."
Ed scoffed. "I tried. You didn't seem too happy about it."
"Oh, and when have you ever been concerned about making me happy?"
"I'm not," the younger alchemist snapped, "but orders are orders, and you said yourself, soldiers accept their missions without whining."
"You're allowed sick time, Fullmetal; you know that, right? You may be a soldier, but you're still human."
"I'm not sick. Just tired."
"You sure about that?" Roy inquired, reaching out to feel the kid's forehead before stopping himself. "Have you taken your temperature? Made sure you don't have a fever?"
"I don't have a thermometer," he replied, "but I'm fine. Just let me rest a little longer."
The older man nodded and they spent the rest of the ride in silence. It was evening by the time they arrived, and they checked into an inn.
"Where would you like to eat, Fullmetal?" Roy questioned, hoping to lift the boy's spirits with food. "I'm thinking steak, but I'll let you decide. I'll chalk it up as a mission-related expense so the military has to pay the tab," he smiled deviously.
"I'm not hungry," Ed muttered.
"Would you quit sulking? I know you don't want to be here, especially with me. But I'm really trying to make this a tolerable experience for the both of us."
"I'm not sulking," the blonde alchemist insisted, but whatever argument would have followed was cut short by a frantic banging on their hotel room door.
"Help, please!" a woman's voice shrieked from the hallway.
"What's going on?" Ed asked groggily, and Roy rubbed his eyes in irritation at being woken from his slumber.
"Your guess is as good at mine." He opened the door to reveal a frantic young woman. "Can we help you?"
"You're the State Alchemists, right? Please, you've got to do something. My daughter is missing."
"Your daughter?" Ed repeated, standing a bit unsteadily and shuffling toward her.
"Yes. Her name is Natalie, and she's only eight."
"When did you see her last?" Ed interrogated.
"She was in the hospital. She was born with one deformed kidney, and she's often ill. Her normal doctor was out on business, so she was under the care of Dr. Miller. I went to visit her this morning and the nurses say they've got no records of her even checking in!"
"Don't you worry, ma'am," Roy soothed, "we'll find her, whatever happened. You just go back home, all right? We'll contact you as soon as we know anything." The woman reluctantly left, and Roy turned sharply to Ed.
"Dr. Miller is the one we've been sent to investigate," he said simply, and Ed blanched.
"So, the girl is...?"
"Dead? It's possible."
Ed swallowed hard. "So what's your plan?"
"Originally it was for us to sneak into the hospital undetected and look for any evidence that suggests foul play. However, I'm working through another idea that might work better."
"Oh? What's that?"
"What if we checked you into the hospital as a patient? It might buy us some time."
"Dr. Miller is a pediatrician," Ed argued.
"And you're not 18. You'd still be seeing a pediatrician if you weren't military." You'd still be a kid if the world hadn't made you be a man so young.
Ed hesitated, understandably uncomfortable, and shuffled back to his bed, snuggling beneath the covers. "Okay. First thing in the morning."
Roy looked out the window to the setting sun and sighed. "I don't think we've got that long," he said. Ed sighed.
"Hi, Nurse... Cutie?" Roy read the name tag of a young, attractive nurse that sat at the front desk, and she looked unimpressed.
"It's Cuddy."
"My mistake," he smirked and winked.
"NOW I'm feeling sick," Ed gagged, and Roy swatted him in the back of the head.
"What can I do for you?" Nurse Cuddy asked, nonplussed.
"My son hasn't been feeling well," Roy lied. Ed's eyes widened a bit at the word "son;" it caught him off guard and his breath caught in his throat, resulting in a few choked coughs that he could feel all the way in the bottom of his chest.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, sweetie," she softened, walking around the desk to Ed's side. "You look awful; poor thing. I'll take you down the hall and we'll get your vitals, and then we'll see if Dr. Miller wants to see you." She offered Ed a wheelchair, which he scoffed at, and he followed her down the hall.
"Be nice," Roy chastised. "She's trying to help."
"You're just jealous she likes me more than you," Ed fired back, sticking his tongue out. As the group made their way to the room, Ed began to shiver. However, it wasn't the sort of shiver you feel in a cold room, or when you're nervous before a school play where you have a giant monologue and you just know that whatever kind of performance you give is going to be how everyone in your grade AND all their parents remember you for the rest of your high school career, or when you've just seen something you maybe wish you hadn't had to witness. No, this was different. Part of him felt cold, sure, but he felt sweat dripping down his back and beading on his forehead. After a moment of cold sweating, he decided that it was much, much too hot in this hospital. How could they expect sick people to recover in a place that was, like, a million degrees? He began struggling with his coat, trying to nonchalantly slip it off to drape it over his arms, but he found that his hands were trembling too hard.
"Do you want your coat off, Full-Eddie?" Roy asked.
"Eddie?" he whispered back in a tone that was nothing short of murderous.
"Yes, son," Roy bit, "do you want help with your coat? You look flushed."
Ed did want help with his coat.
"I've got it," he insisted, but Roy helped him out of it nonetheless. Ed felt no better with the coat off, and the hallway began to do an interesting dance, one where the lights looked colorful and the edges looked dark, and that dark began to creep inward until most and eventually all of his vision was gone, and he blindly walked forward directly into Nurse Cuddy.
"Sit down," she sounded alarmed, so he allowed her to take his hands and lie him in a bed, jamming a pillow under his feet. Almost immediately, he felt better, and his vision cleared. "Are you alright?" she asked, and he nodded.
"Just got a little dizzy," he smiled charmingly, embarrassed at the whole incident.
"You looked more than a little dizzy. You looked like you blacked out a bit."
"I guess," he admitted, to which she responded by shoving a thermometer into his mouth.
"Don't speak," she commanded.
"So, nurse Cuddy, do you like coffee?" Roy asked.
"I was talking to both of you," she dismissed, and Ed almost choked on the thermometer. Watching Roy get shot down was the best. He was almost glad he came.
A few minutes later, she took the thermometer back and held it up to the light with a worried expression on her face.
"I think Dr. Miller might want to see you," she informed.
"Make sure she knows to look down," Roy teased, looking to get a rise out of Ed.
"Say that to my face, you bastard!" he shouted with a sudden burst of energy that betrayed his state of health.
Nurse Cuddy smiled affectionately. "Oh, Dr. Miller is DEFINITELY going to want to see you," she laughed.
"Great!" Roy cheered. However, that reply sounded much stranger coming from a concerned father, which he quickly remembered he was supposed to be. "I mean, it's great that he's going to be seen. How high is that fever?" he asked, genuinely curious.
"Almost 104." Through her clear disdain for the Colonel, her eyebrows knitted together in concern for his son.
"That high?" Roy felt genuinely shocked at that. He hadn't known Ed was that ill.
"So," Ed dodged, "when will the doctor be in?" Focus on the mission, not the pounding in your head, he thought.
"Soon, Nurse Cuddy replied. "Make yourself at home while you wait, and let one of the staff know if you need anything." She exited the room and as soon as the door clicked, Roy's expression became businesslike.
"You feeling up to snooping around this place?" he questioned, and noticed Ed's microhesitation before the confident smirk.
"Let's go."