When Edward woke, he was surprised to be smelling the typical smells of disinfectant associated with hospitals. He could hear people bustling around, pencils scratching on clipboards. He could hear the sound of several people's breathing around him, and, with extreme difficulty, he opened his eyes. He had to blink several times to adjust to the bright light, and when he could see clearly, he turned his head to one side. He was looking directly into the eyes of Winry. Tears filled her eyes and she launched herself onto the bed he was laying on. The sudden movement made him flinch violently, out of some newly developed instinct, but he hoped she wouldn't notice. She was gripping his shirt in her fists and crying into his chest, and, with difficulty, he gently wrapped his arms around her. While she cried on him, he looked around and saw the rest of the people around him. On the same side as Winry had been were his brother Alphonse, who was smiling gently at him, and Mai. She was still small and childlike, but he could tell that in the months since they'd seen each other she'd grown quite remarkably. She was now almost as tall as Winry. Maybe Xingese kids had particularly quick growth spurts.

On his other side were three faces he really didn't expect to see. The first that caught his attention was General Mustang, who was gazing at him with unseeing eyes. It made him feel warmer that he was taking time off work to visit him in his hospital bed. He was also surprised to see Colonel Hawkeye there. She was watching him fondly, with a worried yet, at the same time relieved, look in her sherry eyes. He vaguely remembered her saving him from solitude in the barn, and he remembered falling asleep with his head resting on her shoulder, but everything past that point was blank. He didn't remember anything since falling asleep. He wasn't sure how long he had been asleep, or even where he was. He was pretty sure they were no longer in Drachma; even in the hospitals it was always cold in Drachma. Right now it was toasty and warm, a feeling he'd severely missed since being kidnapped. In any case, he would have to thank her for getting him out. Obviously, since he had fallen asleep, they'd found a way to get his blindfold off. For that he was thankful. It occurred to him that he had stopped paying attention to everything around him and had been venturing in fairy-land. He pulled himself back and began to examine the third person.

Her raven black hair was still cropped military short, and her blue eyes were focused sharply as always on whatever she was watching. She was as short as ever, and she still had that trademark mole under her left eye. 2nd Lieutenant Ross smiled at him when she noticed he was watching and he smiled back. He pulled his arms back and Winry slid off of him. But not before giving him a kiss. On the lips. He blushed furiously and felt his heart rate accelerate and he could see a faint hint of pink on her cheeks as well. Her face was streaked with tears and she looked a lot thinner than she had when he'd last seen her. He would have to ask her about that later, because it wasn't the kind of, 'I went on a diet and lost some fat' kind of thin, it was the 'skipped far too many meals and haven't eaten enough' kind of thin. He hoped it wasn't because of him. He remembered when Winry had found out her parents had died. The same thing had happened. Even as a young child, she had been too depressed by the news to remember to eat, and she had become painfully skinny. Granny Pinako had never been able to convince her to eat, and after two months had passed since they had received the news, Winry had needed to be rushed to hospital and put on an IV because her body wasn't getting enough nourishment. The hospital had had to pump the necessary vitamins through needles in her arms, and she'd had to be sedated while they did it. He hoped that she wasn't doing it to herself again, because he didn't think he could stand having to watch her lay unconscious in a hospital bed, with needles in her wrists, and tubes in her nose and down her throat. It had made him sick as a child, and he didn't think it would make him any less sick now.

Winry was too beautiful to have to go through that again. As he watched her, taking in as fast as he could her precious blue eyes, her ray-of-sunshine blonde hair and her shapely face that was nothing less than perfect, those pink lips, he realized that those pink lips were moving. She was talking. How was it that he wasn't hearing her talk? He contemplated that for a moment, thinking perhaps he was deaf. Why didn't that bother him? He simply didn't care, but he hadn't the faintest idea why. That was something that a person should be concerned about, being deaf. Not hearing what people were saying when they were talking to him. Yes, definitely something to be worried, just the same as a person would worry about being mute or blind. Blind, that was something he really didn't like. It was an almost tangible pain, not being able to see everything around you. You never knew what was coming. You never knew where the danger was. Danger was everywhere, but blind you couldn't see it, didn't know which direction it was coming from. And then it hit you, right on the side of your face, and you flinched away, yelping in pain and surprise as your cheek burned fire-like because Envy had punched it. Where is he? He thought, panicked. He was here. Probably right beside him, but then, he felt the rush of air on the same side so he braced for another whack to the left cheek and was caught by surprise by the knee to the right eye. He cried out and felt stars burst behind it but he couldn't see anything else. The blindness was terrible, he couldn't tell whether or not Envy was going to hit him again.

Where was he, dammit? Was he still on his right, or had he moved to the left? He could hear the wind rushing around the walls of the barn, and he could feel the cold of being without decent clothing. The smell of spilled chemicals was thick in the air and it was suffocating. He had given up on being found. Mustang wouldn't care anymore. What reason did he have to? Edward wasn't part of the military anymore. He wasn't Mustang's subordinate any longer, so Mustang didn't owe him any kind of protection or rescue or any of it. Once Envy had run off with him he'd probably thrown his hands in the air and said to himself, 'well, we tried. Let's go home.' and returned to Amestris. And even if he'd chased a little longer, even if they found him, what would they do with him now? He was a wreck. He knew it. Envy had ruined him. Destroyed everything that he was. He wasn't Fullmetal anymore. Despite having given up that particular title the year before, when he had traded his alchemy for Alphonse, he had still been widely renowned as Fullmetal. No longer the Fullmetal Alchemist, just Fullmetal. The name still did fit, after all. He still had his automail leg. But he couldn't call himself Fullmetal anymore. That would imply that he was still the brave, confident, honorable person that he had been. The person with the resolve to help make things better. But that person was gone. He wasn't brace, he jumped at every noise. He wasn't confident, he wished nobody would ever have to look at him again. And he could hardly be honorable, could he? He was useless, pathetic, how could he be an honorable person if he couldn't help any of them. He was betraying them by being so weak, and you couldn't be an honorable person if you were a betrayer.

Envy broke his thoughts by slamming what had to be a brick into his arm, and Edward jumped and tried to get away. He flailed around in the bed and Envy grabbed hold of his arm and he screamed at him "Get away!" and miraculously Envy's hand left his arm and he kept trying to create distance between himself and the person who had been torturing him and he felt a sharp slap to his face and one word. "Fullmetal!" He froze and looked around, but he couldn't see anything. The blindfold was squeezing his eyes shut but basic instinct tried to open his lids anyway and light flooded his eyes and then all his senses came back into focus. He could smell the antiseptics again, which in his lapse in time focus, he had mistook for spilled chemicals. He could hear the breathing of the people around him that he had thought was the rushing wind. The cold he had felt was the window that had been opened by Mai, who looked stricken at him. Alphonse was right beside him, one hand holding Winry's and the other gripping tightly on the railing of the bed. He was staring, bewilderingly, at Edward, who was still coming to grips with the sudden change of surroundings. Winry was holding her hand, which was flaring red, and Edward wanted to vomit at the realization that, in his state of panic, he had hit her. She was shaking and not saying a word. He looked quickly away, deeply ashamed. Lieutenant Ross was watching him, unbelieving, and Roy was frowning deeply, because though he couldn't see what Edward had done, he would surely have heard it all.

But it was Hawkeye that he was watching intently, wishing he could back away into the depths of the bed and never come out. Her furious glare was making his inner coward tremble in fear, and he was suddenly aware that it had been her that had snapped him out of his hallucination. Her voice had broken him out of his memory, which was also like both a dream and a lie. It was both real and unreal, a mixture of dream and reality. Of truth and nightmare. The numbness began to creep over his mind, and the antiseptic turned into wasted chemicals once more, and the breathing of his friends became the wind of the Drachman storm. He lost all feeling of warmth and all that was left was the familiar cold that meant he was in that accursed barn. But no. He wasn't. How could he be? The cold barn he was unable to see didn't have Hawkeye's cold gaze in it. It didn't have that feeling of deep shame for hurting Winry. The warmth flooded in once more, and the smell of hospital antiseptic hit him like a wave. The wind returned to it's true form; the breathing of his friends. And he opened his eyes and Riza was still there, staring intently down at him. He forced himself to calm down, and that infuriating heart monitor he hadn't even noticed before slowed it's beeping until his pulse was at normal speed. Hawkeye smiled at him and suggested that perhaps everyone leave for a few moments while she had a few words with him. They all agreed, Alphonse the most reluctantly, but eventually he decided that the Colonel wouldn't have asked him to leave if she didn't have a good reason, so he allowed Mai to pull him from the room. The door squeaked closed and Riza stood up, and then sat back down again, but on his bed.

"You need to tell me, Edward. What's wrong?" She asked kindly, her soft voice soothing. But Edward, though he knew he was weak, knew that he would never be anything but wrong, still tried to deny it.

"Nothing. I'm fine." He murmured, averting his gaze from hers and finding a fascinating speck of dust on the bedsheets to stare at.

"You can't lie to me, Ed. I know you're not fine. And, after what you've been through, you certainly don't have to be just yet, but you can't heal if you don't tell someone what is wrong, because you and I both know that what just happened wasn't normal." She insisted, but with the same calm, quiet tone, that suggested she had infinite patience and would ask all day long if she had to.

"I'm telling you nothing's wrong!" He persisted. She smiled at him, sliding off the bed and into the plush hospital chair she had been sitting in before. She scooted closer to the bed and rested her elbows on the edge, because for whatever odd reason that particular side didn't have railing. Now that he could get a closer look, he could see that she had dark rings under her eyes and she was exhausted. Her usually neat, short cropped hair was wild and very clearly a few inches longer than she normally kept it at. Apparently she hadn't cut it in a while. She had looked good with long hair, he thought. And when she had it pinned up at the back of her head it had always had this look about it that said 'don't mess with me, I'm badass.' But after the Promise Day, the day everything had changed and become new, she had cropped it short again, saying that she always preferred it that way. He realized he was allowing his mind to wander again, and he quickly departed that particular train of thought before it left the station.

"But, are you okay?" He asked her. She gave a short snort of laughter.

"I'm perfectly alright, Edward. You don't need to worry about me."

"Are you sure? You don't look okay, Colonel." He badgered, trying to keep the topic away from him. And, also, out of genuine concern for her.

"I tell you, I'm fine." Her tone suggested that she wasn't going to be discussing it any more, so he switched to a different angle.

"What happened? The last thing I remember is falling asleep on your shoulder in the horse cart." He tried.

Hawkeye looked relieved that he was going to try to talk about what had happened to himself. "After you fell asleep," she began, "a storm hit us and overturned the cart, and I lost you in the snow. It was thick and I couldn't see. But the horse, you remember her? You petted her nuzzle." Edward gave a brief nod and she continued. "Well, she grabbed the back of my uniform and practically dragged me to you, and then she lay down and created a windbreak for us. She stayed like that throughout the entire storm, and when it finally stopped, she wouldn't leave your side. Luckily, a search party had a spare horse and cart with them and we managed to load you onto it. The horse trotted along beside you the entire time. The whole way back to Amestris. I have her lodged in a stables at the edge of Central city. She's looking forward to seeing you."

Edward became aware of a sudden and burning need to thank this horse. But first...

"Thank you, Riza."

"Huh?"

"You got me out of that barn. You brought me back here. You saved my life, so thank you." His eyes began to fill with tears at the thought of where he would be if she hadn't found him. He couldn't stop them, and soon they were flowing freely down his face, and he tried his best not to be ashamed of them. But Riza didn't appear to care. She lifted him up in her arms and hugged him. And he cried and cried and she held him, never letting go. And he was glad she didn't.