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Roy Mustang trudged down the all too clean hallway, his hands deep down in his pockets and his eyebrows furrowed in thought. There was a guilt factor laid on Roy for having sent Full Metal on that goddamned mission in the first place. Of course the boy had been obstinate about it. He stopped in front of a window and leaned his head back, pinching the bridge of his nose in remembrance.

"Roy, you bastard." Ed gripped papers in his hand, his anger evident, "Let me go on this one. It's not like I have anything left anyway." Grief was hidden by rage as full metal squeezed the assignment list harder ."Let me take this one"
"You'll miss the funeral." Roy signed a permission form and handed it to Ed hesitantly. Ed snatched it and grunted, his tears finally showing how much he was secretly hurting. "Not if I hurry"
 He ran out, disappearing for two months.

Roy shook his head sadly, turning to the infirmary door with a sigh. How was he supposed to know Full Metal would get sidetracked on the mission and end up tortured mercilessly for months, coming back to not only a brotherless life, but a life without his close friend as well? He couldn't. Full metal had survived harder assignments and after a lot of thought Roy chose to make himself believe the reason for this failure had been Al's previous departure, weighing heavy on Ed. Nothing else.

He started to take a step in to visit the victim when he was roughly pushed aside. A black-haired, woman in deadlocks shoved past him and ran to Ed's bed. Upon seeing the severely injured alchemist recoil at her presence, the woman slapped him. Ed jumped backwards and flattened himself against the headboard.
Roy rushed forward, drawing out his gloved hand, ready to protect Ed against whatever threat this woman posed, but there was none. For the woman immediately softened and embraced Ed with a sickeningly tight grip. Ed wretched in her grasp. Roy could see the animal like panic gloss over his eyes. It wasn't until the woman released him that he relaxed, looking into a loving and familiar face. "…Sensei?" He still sounded broken and hoarse, but it had been three days since his return to central and by now he could faintly calm himself enough to recognize friend from invisible foe.

Roy walked the rest of the way over to them as the woman started speaking, " Ed. What have you done?" Ed closed his eyes and crumpled into a ball. She knew damn well what he had done and what had been done to him. Al was dead and it was his fault. Hadn't he suffered enough for that sin?
The woman finally sighed and straightened, looking to Roy. "I am Izumi, Ed's former teacher. I heard what happened…." She turned to Full Metal with a loving glare in her eye that reminded Roy of any disappointed mother. Roy motioned for them to leave the room.

"I can't believe him," she crossed her arms as she continued talking to Roy, "he tries to resurrect his brother and then goes as gets himself beaten near death." She shook her head angrily. "He has learned nothing. I taught him and Alphonse the punishment for pretending to be Gods and they refused to listen. Now, one of them is dead. I told him the horrors of being a dog of the military and he ignores me. Now he knows and fears the true nature of mankind."

Roy decided not to be offended by her total hatred of the military. He had seen too much to disagree. After Hughes's death, he had little pride left in his work. But his mission to become Fuehrer seemed the only way to gain retribution for the years he had sacrificed for the government.

"Excuse me." A young nurse stepped forward, interrupting their rather one-sided conversation. She held a tray with a variety of inoculations. Roy and Izumi followed her back into the room. "Ed, if you could just hold still-" the nurse carefully approached the young man, gently tapping an injection needle. She stopped short, though, as Ed began screaming, bolting off the bed with a terror in his eyes not easily put there or removed.

"Edward!" Izumi ran for him as the nurse tried to get there first.

"No! Not today! No more…I won't try it again...Please!" Ed clawed at the wall he huddled next to, as tried to get away from pain he knew too well.
Izumi dove down to him, hugging him close."What the hell are you doing?" Izumi tried to talk above Ed as she glared menacingly at the nurse.

"N-n-nothing! It was just to stop infection and-umm- another to prevent tetanus…" the panicked woman trailed off as Ed collapsed, leaning into Izumi. He was overwhelmed and soon unconscious.

"Maybe you should save the needles for some other time." Roy took the syringe away from the shocked nurse as Izumi carefully put Ed back in his bed.

"No, do it now, while he's asleep." Izumi snatched the injections and pushed them into his upper arm. "There," She sighed, returning the vaccines to the nurse. "Now leave us."

The boy no longer looked horrified and desperate, but he was far from peaceful in his sleep. A disturbed and hurt look spread it's way into his features and he groaned horribly when they turned away. Roy was shocked when the boy's teacher lay down in the next bed, staring at Full Metal with a mother's fierce protectiveness. Maybe, the boy wasn't an orphan after all. After a moment, he shook his head and sighed, "I don't know how long you can stay in here if you're planning on moving in."

"If a tragedy occurs I'll sleep on the floor. In any case, I'm not leaving, colonel." she glared up at him with the same look he probably gave his inferior officers the day Ed was rescued. Seeing the wounded boy stirred something in people, a need to protect, and Roy would be damned if he tried to stop that. "Fine. I'll see what I can do. If you need anything, tell the nurse to let me know." the Flame Alchemist left, closing the door behind him with a satisfied grin, happy for once that his soldier was being taken care of.

Edward Elric bit his lip, wincing still as the needle was dug into his chest. "You-you think a simple needle is going to-" and then he felt it. The man pushed the contents through the syringe into his skin, not going very deeper than the last layer of skin. "Oh, this isn't any old medical syringe my dear boy." the man bent over with a grin as he removed the needle, going back to the table for more formula. "This is filled with Nitric acid. I'm sure a skilled alchemist as your self knows what it can do to the skin"
Ed gasped and fought his restraints as the acid started burning up through his skin and down into his nerves. His teeth buried themselves deep into his lower lip and he started to taste blood. The man retuned, shoved the needle back down, snickering at Ed's protests.
Ed opened his eyes in mid-yell. His vocal chords were extremely sore and it pained him to talk or yell, but right then it hurt him more not to. Izumi stood over him, holding a wet rag in the air, in the process of placing it on his head. Even though he was safe, in a hospital, he often had brief and not so brief panic attacks. The nurse had explained it was one of his body's more desperate ways to prevent damage. It was a fight or flight response and with the amount of adrenaline Ed had pumping through him, he was ready to do both. Izumi withdrew, sighing, "Ed, you're going to have to learn that I'm not the enemy. I'm not trying to harm you." Ed remembered her smacking him when she arrived, but didn't say anything. It hurt to talk. Everything hurt. The drugs had long worn out and because of this moment of terror, hey had not been able to administer more. He whined and forced his rapid breathing to slow. He finally laid down stopped remembering long enough to let her wipe his forehead. He winced as the memory of the transmutation circle returned.
The man leaned back after cleaning off the old marker stains. "Ready?" Ed was gagged and unable to protest so he settled on shaking his head violently, pulling at the chains as he gasped for air. For the past few weeks, whenever the man entered the room, Ed had begun hyperventilating. His inability to breathe only fueled the man's delight in hurting him. The man began to draw on his forehead again. Ed could barely stand the anticipation of torment filled his thoughts. How many more times could he take it? None he decided, but before he could even start to fight back, the man touched the sign and the unbearable suffering destroyed all thoughts.


"Ed?" His teacher leaned over him, removing the rag. He closed his eyes and opened them again, "Sensei?" He looked to her with a desperate need she somehow understood. She pulled him up in a gentle hug, rocking him as he began to sob. "A-Al...I tried to...he's dead and I was...I'm sorry. I can't go on without him...I really can't...I just...I need him. He's gone and I can't-and Winry. She's gone too. I'm so sorry…" Ed closed his eyes, trying to speak around the horribly salty tears. Pain flooded through him. Even his teacher's embrace hurt, but he had nothing left to lose. Eventually he fell asleep in what he began to delusion as his mother's arms.

The man was coming back in, his smile shining in his dark facade. His breath was came in short terrified gasps. His head throbbed with the furious beating of his heart. Ed began to struggle against his constrictions, crying out as the man came a foot away, holding down his fighting arm, speaking, "You're going to have to stop Ed. I'm not going to hurt you."

His teacher held his arm down as he tried to take a swing at her. He lay there, stunned and panting as she looked away, "...Ed, I should have been there, or I should have at least trained you better or... I tried-I told you….you didn't listen." She moved to get up as he grabbed her hand, gripping it like a last lifeline to sanity. She back down. Slowly, she leaned near him and whispered, "It's okay now. Its not your fault…" She smiled as he closed his eyes, trying to sleep.

Roy sat up in bed, drenched in his own sweat, fighting his sheets. The same dream, the same damn images he kept trying not to picture as the memories returned. He rubbed his hands through his hair and stared at the floor, like he could see the level below him. This was too much. He got up and made himself a cup of coffee as the phone rang.

"Sir?" It was lieutenant Hawkeye, sounding tired and upset.

"Yes?" He took a sip of the caffeine and made a face.

"Are you alright?" as she asked, he remembered that she had moved in to central apartments soon after full metal's rescuing.

"I'm sorry, but you're the floor right above me and I could hear you yelling. I was just making sure that you were okay, sir."

"It's nothing. I'm fine. Goodnight, lieutenant." Mustang rubbed his eyes.

"…Goodnight, sir." she sounded almost as upset as he was.

"Edward...Oh, Edward." The sing-song voice of the far too happy man made Ed shudder horribly. He knew the tone and the matching pain that would soon follow. As the dark figure entered the doorway, he could feel his leg convulse, his chest heaved and he subconsciously scrambled back, clawing at the metal ground for any hint of traction that might prevent the inevitable, "God no, please no…!" he held up his arm in defense as he realized struggling was pointless. He couldn't get out, and begging would only intensify his suffering. "Oh, Come now." the man yanked him up and smiled, holding an unlit match in between two unfeeling fingertips. "Not today, no more…" Ed again tried wriggling free, only to be thrown onto the table, his arm immediately pinned down with the strongest chord the man could get his hands on. "My favorite you know..." the man lit the match, smiling at it, before throwing it down onto Edward's bare chest. He screamed as flame touched flesh and as the small flare simmered to nothing. He could feel his skin, red beneath the agony of the fire. One match followed another and Ed lost count of the small divots they created in his chest as he screamed and thrashed, fighting desperately to get off of the table, to get out, to get back to his home, far back where his mother could hug him and hold him, and Al could make him laugh with his usually stupid ideas and antics. He wanted to go home, so bad it nearly blocked out the pain.
"Sir?" Hawkeye saluted as the colonel walked in, his face serious with concentration.
"In a minute lieutenant." He walked past her, right to the infirmary door.
"Sir, I wouldn't-"

It was too late. Roy Mustang had walked into the room and stopped immediately. Ed, shirtless, and no longer fully bandaged, sat up in his bed, letting Izumi hand him some sort of pills. He swallowed them and looked up to see his head officer staring at him in shock. He tried to grin and ended up twitching, his mouth trembling. Roy didn't respond, his eyes transfixed on the patches of burns. How could he have missed them? It was clear as his own signature. He staggered back and ran out, sweat coming down in slow thin trails from his now aching head as he tried to forget the flashes that showed him what he never wanted.

"I think it's the days of the rebellion. They're coming back to him now that he sees you like this...he did some pretty horrible things." Hawkeye looked away from Ed's bruised and cut face, still matted with new blood every day. She didn't blame the colonel for running out like that.His burns were a clear reminder of past nightmares for him. And one sight of the barely living boy was enough to make even her run. She didn't know how his teacher could stand looking at him day after day, knowing how much he was suffering, nearly helpless to change anything. She shuddered and looked to see Ed, now asleep, his head in his teacher's lap as he groaned and flinched, remembering nothing but torture.

Hawkeye looked away, "I'll be going now. I have some papers to file and Ed needs his rest." She began to walk out when the strong voice of Izumi stopped her.

"Make sure your colonel is alright. I've seen this kind of guilt destroy someone. It isn't pretty. He's going to need some reason to stay alive before this all ends." The lieutenant stared for a moment, and then understood. She turned and ran out, heading the direction she last saw Roy take.

Ed woke for the third time that night, his heart thudding in his ears. It was dark in the room, dark enough for the memories to flood his mind. He whined and curled up in a ball. He didn't want to be alone. Being alone was more horrifying than any physical pain he had received.

"Is anyone there?" His voice was barely a whisper. His captor had often punished him for speaking.

"I am here." Izumi's voice was warm and familiar. So terribly close to that of his mother.

"Sensei… I hurt."

"I know."

"I'm scared."

"I understand."

His teacher sat down beside him on the bed and moved to embrace him. Ed had grown to appreciate the way she moved around him, always slow enough that he had time to react if he needed. Ed laid his head in her shoulder and she could feel the tremors through his skin. She wanted so much for him to feel safe, but such an emotion was hard for Ed to grasp. Being trapped had scarred his mind and a dreadful wariness flowed through him. Still, she was just grateful to have this injured, vulnerable creature in her arms. Perhaps she couldn't save her own son, but she could save someone else's. Ed's voice ended her thoughts.

"Are you going to leave me?"

"No."

"Mustang left me-"

"Edward, I want you to listen to me. I will not leave you. I will not betray you. You are safe and no one is going to hurt you ever again."

Izumi felt Ed's constantly tensed muscles begin to relax. He closed his eyes and she gently ran the back of her hand down the side of his face. She smiled when he gave no indication that he feared the gesture. She leaned against the headboard as Ed drifted to sleep. She hoped the young alchemist had finally found some security in her arms. She had promised he was safe. Maybe, for once, he had listened.