This may end up in a longer fanfic, but first I need time and guts to do so. Writing this made my chest ache, but I love the story, so we'll see.
Disclaimer: No.
It Hurts…
"Kill me."
Its words were not an order. They were soft, an entreaty for the golden eyed boy with the limp, lacerated auto-mail and bruised face, and they were desperate.
The boy's eyes were wide and, with their own kind of desperateness, fixated on the creature in the cage nearest him. The beast was a mismatched monstrosity—claws for hands, hooves for feet, a gaping, slackened maw full up with too many teeth, gray skin, scales, sunken eyes a brilliant blue—but, Edward knew, human.
"Kill…?" Edward breathed. He was sick and near-starving by this point in his capture, but now a new nausea made his throat tight, made his beaten but resilient morals cringe. It had only been a few months since he had stared into another pair of eyes begging a different question of want to play, little big brother?, eyes that had been blown away because he couldn't, wouldn't help, eyes that had unknowingly secured his incarceration beneath Central City.
"Please," the chimera pressed its head against the bars, "please, please. I hurt. I hurt so much. They like hurt. Return soon. Please." Edward closed his eyes hard, but couldn't shut his ears against the garbled voice of what had once been a child. He swallowed. He clenched his fist against his forehead and gritted his teeth. He damned the scientists, the murdering men and women who were responsible for this nightmare. He looked at it—at her—and felt his eyes sting.
With a rough wipe of his eyes, Edward moved before her cage, gold locking on blue, and tried to breathe in spite of the stench. Every inch of him hurt. But here, closer to the chimera in the dim laboratory light, he could now make out the raw patches of rot and the odd bend of her joints, and he squashed his self-pity with a vengeance.
Edward's left hand met his right. The boy reached between the bars until his palm met her fevered forehead. Somewhere in the back of his blackened mind, he considered praying. Somewhere in the black shadows of the room, something cackled madly above the usual growls and screams. Edward stiffened.
The chimera nudged him lightly, tenderly. Edward gave a shuddering breath, closed his eyes, but did not retrieve his hand.
"I'm sorry."
