A/N: THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN MEGA REVISED, JUST SAYING.
Chapter 2
Soldiers
He sat in the gully all night, horrified by all that he had done in the past twenty-four hours. Worst of all, he was now alone, completely alone. Al could never come back, and Ed could never call his name again. The Truth was cruel beyond reckoning… but, then again, so was he. He, Edward Elric, had used that foul, taunting mouth of his to lure his brother to his death. In that sense, his inability to speak ever again was only fair… an equivalent exchange.
He knew he was bleeding from where his voice had been taken away because he kept coughing the stuff up in dribbles and clots. Between that and his leg, would he be dying soon? Right now, in his pit of despair, that actually didn't sound so bad. He'd heard that falling asleep when seriously injured could mean that you would never wake up, and that frightened him, but still his eyes began to droop, and his breathing slowed. Everyone had left him, so… maybe there wasn't even a point in going on.
As the sun peeked over the horizon, Ed heard the sounds of battle recommence through the haze of his exhaustion. And then, it ended, leaving only the noises of troops marching and officers giving orders. The Amestrians must have overrun the Ishvalan encampment. The curious part of Ed's brain wanted to climb out of the ravine and have a look at the soldiers, but he was too cold and drained of anything resembling energy to do that, so he just lay still, waiting to fall asleep. Maybe the soldiers would be nice enough to bury him.
It had been a long and tiring day of fighting and marching. They were supposed to be turning around to head back to the front, but honestly, Roy had no desire to plunge back into that bloodbath. Nothing but sand and screams… and death, of course. Always death. Kimblee had told him to look directly at the people he killed, never to forget them, but something like that was much easier said by a psycho like Crimson than done by someone like him. Roy laughed to himself a little at that. Absent-mindedly, he looked around, hoping to catch sight of a familiar shock of short blonde hair, but he had no such luck. It was a foolish habit, thinking that she would follow him wherever he went, like when they were children. She was a soldier now, and she surely had orders to remain at the front, where her sniping prowess could best be put to work for the sake of Amestris.
For the sake of Amestris. What crap. What point was there to this goddamn war anymore except to slaughter the Ishvalans? Nothing good could possibly come from so much death.
In his contemplation, the young major had started to wander from the herd of marching men, and by the time he'd realized this, something was carried to his ears by the wind. It wasn't anything loud or obvious, but he could have sworn that it sounded like someone coughing. There was a shallow gully nearby; maybe a wounded Ishvalan had sough refuge there in the hopes of getting out of this alive. Honestly, Roy couldn't blame a poor soul for that, and he was almost willing to ignore the sound and return to his company, except for the fact that there was something very strange about the sound. It was hoarse beyond imagining, as if the owner had long ago pushed their voice beyond endurance. Even so, there was a tone to it, one that Roy had become painfully familiar with.
The sound of a dying child.
But there shouldn't be any Ishvalan children here. This had been a raid by warriors into Amestrian land; it would have been suicide to bring children! Which meant—
Roy quickly traced the sound to the gully and looked over the edge. What he saw, however, was most assuredly something he hadn't expected to find. There was indeed a child — he looked around eight years of age — but there was also something grotesque in the shade that only remotely resembled a human body. And around the mutated corpse, a transmutation circle had been drawn in blood. Possibilities whizzed through the major's mind even as he slipped down into the ditch and approached the barely-breathing child, but he pushed them aside in favor of dealing with the immediate problem. The left leg had been shot, and more blood seemed to trickle out of the small mouth every time the boy coughed in that raspy absence of a voice. How long had he been like this? It was something of a miracle that the child wasn't dead! Wasting no more time, Roy knelt by the boy's side and tore a strip of cloth from his desert fatigue. He could have tried cauterizing the wound, but using such a harsh method on a child could very well be enough to do the boy in, in his current condition, so Mustang satisfied himself with binding the gunshot as tightly as he dared without costing the child his leg. He could still hear breathing and see the small chest rise and fall, but how long would that last? This boy needed proper medical attention, and right now the army surgeon's tent would probably be the only place he could get it, since most of the town's residents had fled from the fighting.
Carefully, Roy slipped his arms under the child and lifted him. The boy made to cry out, but only a raspy rush of air came out. Had he been wounded in the throat, as well? It would explain how quiet he had been and the way he kept coughing up globs of blood.
"Hey there," Roy said, realizing that he hadn't yet spoken a word to this undoubtedly-traumatized child. "You're gonna be all right, son. My name's Roy. I'm taking you to the doctors in my camp. They'll take good care of you, promise." He kept up a gentle stream of one-sided conversation, if nothing else, to keep the boy from slipping into a coma. One or two times, the child even opened his eyes and looked blearily in Roy's direction. They had such an unnatural color: a golden hue that reflected the sunlight like cut gems, or like the blade of a sharpened sword. The color reminded Roy painfully of fire.
"Good God, Roy! When I said you should settle down and find yourself a good girl, I didn't mean you had to get busy right now!"
"Don't be absurd, Hughes," snapped Roy. "What could possess you to think this child is mine!?"
"I'm just kidding," snorted the captain as he approached man and boy. Hughes adjusted his glasses and leaned in for a better look. "Well, I'll be. I've always known you were an idealist, Roy Mustang, but picking up stray injured children is a surprise, even from you." Turning, Roy's friend pointed to ten o'clock. "That's where they've set up the medical tent."
"Thanks."
"Sure thing." Before Roy passed Hughes buy, he could have sworn there was pity etched across the bespectacled soldier's face. Normally, Hughes was cheerful to his friends and vicious to his enemies, but Roy didn't know if he'd ever seen such a compassionate expression on his friend's face before. Then again, who wouldn't be moved to pity upon seeing this child, upon witnessing yet another reminder that the blood of this war would never be washed from their hands?
Upon reaching the indicated tent, Roy explained as briefly as he could the condition he'd found the boy in, before handing him off to the nearest nurse. And then, all he could do was wait.
Ed couldn't be sure of when exactly the world stopped swirling around him. He could hear people bustling on all sides, smell blood and metal, and feel a linen fitted sheet under him long before his sight decided to catch up with his other senses. When he could finally look around without wanting to puke, it didn't take him long to find the man from before. Roy — that was his name, right? Before Roy could look up from his hands and realize that Ed was more fully awake, however, a doctor stepped between them and broke the line of sight.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, little one," he said, as cheerily as he could manage while wearing an apron stained with dark, fresh blood. "You're in a camp of the Amestrian Military. Major Roy Mustang brought you here; do you remember that?"
Much as he resented being called "little one", Ed nodded.
"Good, very good. Can you tell me your name?"
On instinct, Ed replied, but — of course — it was inaudible, and he ended up only coughing until specks of blood dotted the sheet beside his head.
"There, there," consoled the doctor, patting Ed's head. "No need to rush it. I do wish I could get a proper look at your throat, but I don't have the equipment. Major? Oh, there you are Major." By this time, Roy Mustang had caught on and had come to the bedside, where he gave Ed a small smile and a brief wave, which Ed returned. The guy had saved his life, after all; that entitled him to see Ed's nicer side.
"Major," continued the doctor, "I really think this boy should go to a hospital. He clearly has some kind of internal bleeding, but, in such a delicate place, I don't dare touch it."
"Right," nodded the major. "But, is he stable enough to move?"
"He should be, once he's gotten enough blood restored."
It was only then that Ed picked up on the fact that there was a needle in his arm. Ed had never liked needles or hospitals; even when Aunty and Uncle Rockbell had given him checkups, he'd made a big fuss. Still, he tried his best not to panic, tried his best not to think about the cold metal sticking in him and pumping him full of blood. Instead, he thought about Granny and Winry and hoped that they were safe. He thought about better days when no one had left or died and life had actually seemed happy. He thought about Teacher and how disappointed she would be in him when she learned what he had done. And he thought about the forgiveness in Al's fading eyes as his little brother had placed futile trust in his ability to play God. What a fool he had been. An absolute moron!
At one point, he must have started crying, because his face was wet, and Major Mustang was squeezing his hand between his own. They were strong hands, slightly rough, and there were thick callouses on the tips of the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger of each hand. Odd. Maybe Mustang used to play an instrument before becoming a soldier, or something like that. It would have to be something very specialized to develop callouses like those. Normally, Ed wasn't much of one for human contact, but right now, when everything was so uncertain, it was nice to know he wasn't alone. One of Mustang's hands moved to brush Ed's bangs back from his sweaty forehead, and the action almost made Ed cry more, because no one had done that for him in a very long time, and it made him think so painfully of his mother, and of the father he could barely even remember.
That man… if only he'd been here, none of this might have happened. Mom mightn't have died, and Al… Ed mouthed his baby brother's name, trying to get anything more than a hoarse whisper past his lips, but it was no good.
"You never did tell the doctor your name," Mustang pointed out. "I have a notepad here, if you'd like to write it down, with your throat and all."
Ed nodded and received the pad once it was handed to him. A few scrawls later, he returned the pad to its owner, and Mustang read. "Edward Elric. Well, Edward, despite the circumstances, it's nice to meet you."
Ed nodded again, trying for another smile. However, at that moment, the flaps of the tent were pulled back, and a stumpy man with the physique of a hard-boiled egg strode into the makeshift hospital like he owned it. He had an awful lot of stars and stripes on his insignia of rank. Was he the commander here?
"Where is Major Mustang!?" barked the soldier. Once directed, the man stormed up to Mustang and got as in his face as he could without brushing noses with him.
"General Fessler," greeted Mustang with a salute, refusing to react to this invasion of his personal space.
"Word is that you picked up something strange on the battlefield this morning," growled Fessler, his great belly shaking with indignation at this breach in protocol.
"A lost child, sir," Roy began to explain, but Fessler cut him off.
"You don't have time to rescue every lost little lamb you come across. You're a soldier, Mustang; act like one!" Glaring down at Ed, the general grit his teeth in obvious disgust. "Get this brat out of here!"
"But, sir!" Mustang protested. "We've wiped out this entire area; there isn't another living person for miles!"
"That's not our problem," snapped Fessler coldly. "As they say up in Briggs, survival of the fittest will run its course."
The general's words sent a chill through Ed. They were going to throw him out, leave him to die like trash. A burning opposition flared inside of him, and he acted without thinking. First he ripped out his IV, then his legs swung over the side of the elevated cot only to collapse under him the moment he tried to put his weight on them.
"That's right, wretch!" and Fessler laughed this time. "Crawl on your belly, if you have to, but I want you gone now! No, yesterday!" A boot collided with Ed's stomach, knocking the wind out of him.
"Sir!" There was something almost mutinous in what Ed could hear of Mustang's voice through the ringing that filled his ears in the wake of the blow.
"Ahem. Excuse me, sir?" A new voice, one that Ed recalled hearing when Mustang was carrying him.
"What is it, Captain Hughes?"
"To be frank, sir, the men's morale is at a low point."
"So!?"
"So," continued Hughes, "kicking around a wounded child probably isn't the best way to go about reinforcing the men's confidence… sir."
Ed could have sworn that Hughes winked at him. Fessler, meanwhile, grumbled for a span before barking out new orders: "All right, fine! But I still want this waste of space out of my camp immediately!"
"Thank you, sir," Hughes and Mustang said in unison before picking Ed up from the ground. The former lightly patted Ed's torso where Fessler had kicked him and asked, "No broken ribs, I hope?" to which Ed shrugged and vaguely nodded. "Good. That's a relief."
Fessler might have muttered something like, "Damn bleeding hearts," before stomping away to tend to other business.
"You're probably too short on blood to walk on your own yet, Edward." Ed managed not to let the word "short" get to him, since the reasonable part of his brain told him Mustang hadn't meant it like that. "Is it all right if I carry you?"
Despite his embarrassment at the situation, Ed nodded, and soon he was back in the man's arms. His leg still hurt a lot, but he put on a brave face. It wasn't like he could even cry out in pain, anyway. Once he was securely cradled, Ed found it all to easy to rest his head against Mustang's collarbone and let his eyelids start to fall.
"There's a supply wagon coming in tomorrow," Hughes said as they began walking toward the edge of the camp. "We can leave the kid in their care. I bet they can get him to a hospital."
"That'll have to be our best hope," sighed Mustang.
"Look at you. You're already attached, aren't you?"
"Shut up."
"Roy Mustang, you had better settle down eventually. This alone has been proof enough that you'd make it as a father."
"How can you go on talking about that sort of thing? How can any of us hope to have a real life after this war? We'll be drowning in the blood until we die."
"And that's exactly why you need someone in your life. Someone has to be there to keep you from drowning."
"No good woman would want anything to do with me."
"C'mon, Roy. You're selling yourself short. You're a successful State Alchemist, you can be quite the gentleman, and you're easy on the eyes. You had your own fan club at the Academy." A pause, during which Mustang must have sent Hughes a dirty look, but Ed's eyes had long since closed, so he had to guess. "Okay, okay. I guess it'll just have to be a really special kind of woman for you, won't it?"
"Yeah," answered Mustang halfheartedly. "It'll have to be."
Ed didn't wake again until the next morning, and the unfamiliar surroundings made him start. Unfortunately, he sat up much too quickly and swooned back onto the thin cot under him. His movement triggered more around him, and the sounds of two men stirring from sleep flanked him on either side.
"I hate mornings," Mustang groaned from Ed's left.
"C'mon, Roy," countered Hughes on his right. "Up and at 'em! Time to greet another day in hell." Clearly, this was the evidence of a night owl and an early bird in action. Rubbing his eyes, Ed looked around the small tent. Giving Hughes an inquisitive look, the captain explained, "Fessler said you had to be out of camp, so we went camping on our own, right outside the picket lines." That made Ed grin, in spite of everything. He really hoped these two wouldn't get in trouble for helping him. "The supply wagon should be coming in soon, if I'm judging the time right," noted Hughes as he pulled on his uniform. Once dressed, he shuffled over to the lump of sleeping bag that was Roy Mustang and poked experimentally. "Roy~ If you don't get up, you'll miss seeing your little boy off."
That got a reaction. A tousle-haired man emerged from the layers of fabric with an indignant glare aimed at Hughes. "I told you—!"
"Methinks the man doth protest too much," snickered Hughes in Ed's direction before leaving Mustang in peace. Ed, however, scooted closer to Mustang, which the major accepted without fuss.
"Mornin', Ed," he yawned, reaching out to ruffle the boy's hair. "How'd you sleep?" Ed's frame sagged at that point. Though he hadn't woken during the night, an awful feeling in his gut told him he'd had nightmares, and that the only thing that had kept him under was sheer exhaustion. "Sorry, kid. I know this can't be easy for you." Sighing, the major reached into his bag and pulled out his notepad. Ed spotted that his name was still written on the top leaf before Mustang flipped the page. Grabbing a pencil, he wrote down an address and, tearing out the sheet, handed it to Ed. "The supply wagon will likely take you to East City. There's a train you can take from there to Central. Once you're there, go to this address. The proprietor will take you in. We have a lot of history, and I'd trust her with my life. Just tell her I sent you."
Ed nodded, clutching the paper in his hands. Since he didn't know where Winry and Granny were (let alone if they were alive) and he was far too ashamed to go to Dublith where Teacher was, it wasn't like he had many options of his own left. So, the boy gave Mustang a grateful smile before tucking the note in his pants, where he had some money left, too
Mustang's eyes narrowed then, and his lips rubbed against each other nervously, as if he was chewing on a difficult question. "Um… listen, Ed. I didn't want to ask you too quickly, but… what was that thing? In the gully with you. And the circle—"
"Roy! We've got company!"
"What? What do you…"
And then he entered the tent. He was a man of average height, balding, with large square glasses that glinted in the morning light. When he stepped further inside, the glare receded, and Ed could see that the man's eyes stared in opposite directions. The man smiled, revealing a golden tooth among the yellowing bones, and Ed shuddered. Having spent hours alone with a corpse, he could recognize the scent at once, and Mustang seemed to pick up on it too. This man smelled unmistakably of death.
"Can I help you?" Mustang inquired, immediately placing himself between Ed and the newcomer.
The man's grin broadened. "Indeed you can." His voice was high and grating, as if he spent most of his time laughing at other people's misery. "I found something very interesting this morning; would you like to see?" And he held up a photograph. It took a moment to make it out, but then Ed couldn't stop a voiceless gasp from escaping him. His transmutation circle, and what remained of Alphonse. Seeing it capture on film made the whole thing unescapably real, and he found himself coughing up blood moments later, trying desperately to remember how to breathe.
"Ed! It's okay. You're okay." But no words of comfort from Mustang could erase the evidence of what he had done.
"So… it was you."
Footsteps filled the tent, and rough hands grabbed Ed by the arms. Ed tried to cry out, in vain. People were dragging him outside, but he was having such a hard time seeing straight that he couldn't make out their faces. Probably soldiers.
"Wait, stop!" Mustang, somewhere close. "What are you doing?"
"The boy performed Human Transmutation." The man with the gold tooth, also close.
"He's just a child! Surely you don't intend to—"
"The law is the law, Major Mustang. Brigadier General Fessler and I are willing to overlook this rebellion on the parts of Captain Hughes and yourself, on the condition that you show no further resistance. The law has been broken. There must be punishment."
"He's only a child." There was more of a plea in Mustang's voice this time.
"Roy." That must be Hughes.
"You can't just… What kind of country is this!? Do you make a habit of murdering children!?"
"You're dancing close to the fire, Major," warned the gold-toothed man, "but this is a flame that even you don't want to play with." There was some kind of significance in that statement, but Ed didn't understand it. His vision was refocusing now, and he saw Hughes and Mustang being warded off by other soldiers. Hughes's expression was solemn and resigned, but Mustang's dark eyes were wide with fury. They burned like live coals, and Ed somehow got the feeling that that had something to do with the man's comment, as if Major Mustang were somehow capable of setting someone on fire just by staring at them with such intensity.
"Now, you and Captain Hughes had better collect your things and return to camp. I understand that your companies will be pulling out this afternoon to return to Ishval." Ed felt a hand on his head, but it wasn't kind like Mustang's hand been earlier. It knotted into his hair and forced his face upwards, where Ed found the man with the gold tooth smirking at him triumphantly. "I'll take good care of our little rule-breaker here."
The man released Ed's hair with a shove before turning to one of the soldiers under his command. "Let's move; we don't have all day!" The hands pinned around Ed's arms began dragging him away, and it took every ounce of the boy's willpower not to cry. He had to be strong, up until whenever they would kill him. Because of course they were going to kill him; he had broken the worst of taboos, after all. He kept his gaze locked on that burning look in Major Mustang's eyes, and somehow that helped him be strong, right up until they put a sack over his head, and someone dealt a blow to the back of his neck.
