Alternative chapter 22: Fray

Author's note: This is a complete alternative chapter. It starts very similarly to the one in the actual story (except that Armstrong's leg was unhurt), but digresses and ends up in a completely different outcome. Also, the chapter was originally called "Death" but I thought that was too spoilery.

Suwahao had climbed the rubble up and just as he peeked through the safer way Ehrhardt had transmuted, he witnessed the Colonel landing clumsily on a pile of rubble after a short flight through the air. Suwahao instantly crawled outside, ran to her and knelt down next to her. He saw her eyes moving, but she looked confused. "She is alive! But she is not breathing!"

Hearing this, Armstrong limped over to where Ehrhardt was lying. Armstrong had a some sort of bleeding injury in her back, but she acted like it was not too serious. Mustang followed Armstrong, and since he could move faster, he made it to Ehrhardt first even though he circled the homunculi a bit more further away.

Envy and the child just tried to finish regenerating and get clear of the spikes Ehrhardt had transmuted just a while ago.

"What is this?" asked Armstrong. "I can see her looking at me and she's not unconscious, but she isn't breathing."

Ehrhardt tried to speak, but since she could not move air in her vocal cords, she produced no understandable sound.

"Her heart is not beating!" said Suwahao.

Mustang frowned. "I would guess that her back is broken."

"Wait, what?" shouted Envy suddenly. "She's not breathing and she can't move her body but she can move her eyes? Her spinal cord is severed at some really inconvenient spot, most likely at one of the first three vertebrae."

Mustang gave Envy a glare, not being able to help wondering how Envy knew that.

"Guess what the really great part about this is?" it continued with a wickedly wide grin. "I could fix that. Indeed, if only I could perform alchemy, I have no doubt I could get that just right."

"Stop flapping your tongue," said Armstrong harshly. Envy's grin disappeared and it looked irritated. "If you weren't just blowing your horn, can you help Mustang perform that ...procedure in your stead?"

"WHAT? Hah! I am NOT getting any nearer to him! I am NOT going to help save HER! She tried to kill me!"

"I have no idea what to transmute!" said Mustang, speaking over Envy.

"That is why Envy would show you," snapped Armstrong at him. "If Envy shows you clearly what you need to do and how, are you able to save her?"

"I don't know!"

"That's good enough. Envy! Get over here! I'll make sure Mustang behaves." She turned at Mustang. "If you try to harm Envy while it helps you, I will shoot you."

Mustang could not believe what he was hearing.

"I will not help save her," said Envy.

Armstrong stared irritably at Envy. "What if I promise to take you back to Briggs?"

Now Envy looked more confused than uncooperative.

The child spoke to Envy, quietly enough that the others did not hear. "If you help them, would they then not be less likely to try to kill you?" Envy looked at the child with sore indecision. "If she dies, they will probably consider you her murderer."

"She doesn't deserve my help! I'm not going to save her."

The child frowned and saw an obvious way to make Envy help. "...That's right, she doesn't deserve it. How do you think she will feel when her worst enemy helps her?"

Envy looked rather astonished.

Armstrong spoke again. "I promise I will protect you and take you back to Briggs if you save her and agree to obey my previous rules. What will it be?" Armstrong turned to Envy.

Envy definitely did not want to help Mustang and it did want Ehrhardt to die so she would stop pestering it. Helped by the child's words, it thought past its immediate wants and saw that its help would make Ehrhardt feel delightfully conflicted and awful. In addition, Armstrong wanted it to help. She would be taken if it helped, even if she would not outwardly show it all that much. She would speak for its behalf if it helped, even though she had tried to kill it. She did not seem murderous – but that could be a ruse.

"You only want to get me close to you so you can try killing me!" it shouted at her.

"No! Though I will shoot you until you die if you try to harm Mustang," exclaimed Armstrong. "I tried to get rid of you partly because I was ordered to and partly because you created a homunculus behind my back. It was a mistake and I'm willing to rectify that."

"What! Armstrong, what!" shouted Mustang.

"Shut up! Will you try to save her if Envy helps you?" she asked and glowered at Mustang.

Mustang's every fibre of being screamed to decline, but a fellow soldier's life was at stake. "...Yes."

"Envy, will you help Mustang understand what he needs to do?"

"...Fine! I swear I'll kill you all instantly if this is a trick!" it said as it walked toward them. It stopped a metre away from Ehrhardt's body. "Turn her around and expose the base of her skull." Mustang did as Envy said. Envy bent down and showed a short portion of skin just under the skull. "Open her skin here and do try to not let her bleed too much, especially into the wound."

Mustang gave Envy a glare but then clapped his hands together and carefully pressed his finger close to the short distance that Envy had measured. Ehrhardt's skin folded and crumbled and moved aside to bare her vertebrae and the muscles connected to them. Some blood started trickling down from the veins that Mustang had not managed to close.

"Now open the three vertebrae... No, actually, I can already see that it's the second one. It's dislocated. Open that and the two intervertebral discs. Just the bone and cartilage, nothing else. No need to care too much about the muscles." Envy peered into the wound and as Mustang started opening the vertebra, it could see that there was a spot that leaked cerebrospinal fluid. Once the vertebra was opened, it saw that the spinal cord was severed at the junction of the vertebra and the upper intervertebral disc. "There's your problem. Her spinal cord is severed, just like I said. Fix that."

"How?"

Envy glared at Mustang. "What, don't you know human anatomy?" it asked mockingly. "This is a cross section of the spinal cord." Envy shapeshifted into its hand a paper-like object that both pictured the cord and listed the elements that composed it. "Since you're just repairing it, you don't need to create perfect cells or anything." Envy was delighted to see Mustang agonising over its instructions and sweating as he tried to understand what he was doing. "Moreover, when you fix it, make sure that nothing extra gets into the spinal cord. That liquid oozing out of there needs to be pure. I don't know why but it's really bad if it isn't."

"What kind of transmutation circle does the repairing require?" Envy shapeshifted the appropriate circle on the "paper". Mustang still spent a while studying the circle and the cross section, but soon enough clapped his hands and extremely carefully poked Ehrhardt's spinal cord. The small pieces of tissue puckered together and became whole again. "That's it?"

Suwahao held Ehrhardt's side and checked her pulse and breathing. "She is still not breathing and her heart is stopped!" he said.

Envy turned more serious. "What?" It checked Ehrhardt's breathing and pulse as well. "Her heart IS beating, you moron. But she really isn't breathing..."

Mustang aimed at Envy with his hand and Envy immediately brought its hands up. "Gah! Wait, you traitor!" it shouted angrily and backed down toward the child.

"Traitor?!" he shouted back.

"Put that hand down!" ordered Armstrong. "Is there any other reason why she could not be breathing?"

"Maybe her spinal cord is severed at more than one place!" tried Envy.

"Open her more," said Armstrong to Mustang.

Mustang did as she asked and bared Ehrhardt's spinal cord over the six first vertebrae. There was no sign of other injuries.

"Anything else?" asked Armstrong. No one said anything. "Fine. Close her. Is her heart still beating?"

"No," said Suwahao.

"Yes!" argued Envy after it had shapeshifted its arm longer and felt around for Ehrhardt's pulse. "What is it with you? It's a really weak and irregular pulse now but it's there. I know I can't MAKE you feel it, but by all means, whack her chest if you really believe it's stopped. Just don't blame me if it doesn't work or makes her condition worse."

Mustang transmuted Ehrhardt's vertebrae, intervertebral discs and skin into proper shape again and also fixed the small dislocation of the second vertebra. He turned Ehrhardt over. She was unconscious.

"Humans don't regenerate instantly," came the child's voice suddenly. "Ehrhardt's spinal cord was severed and even though the possibility for connection is present again, her body needs to understand that before it can heal and start working in the expected manner. That will take time. If she can survive long enough, she could heal and breathe on her own, but until that happens, someone needs to perform assisted respiration for her."

Envy stared at the child.

Mustang stood up. "HOW do you things know of these kind of issues?" he asked, completely bewildered and still hostile.

"How do you not know what your body is made of? How do you not know how it works?" asked the child. "I know what my body is made of and how it works. I know that I can regenerate instantly, but I understand that humans can't, and therefore I can deduce why she is not yet breathing."

Meanwhile, Armstrong spoke sternly to Suwahao. "Will you assist her breathing?"

"I don't understand."

"You don't understand what?"

"What you say?"

Armstrong glared at Suwahao and sighed. She positioned Ehrhardt's head so that the woman's throat was unobstructed. She turned at Suwahao again. "Look at me. Do this: Breathe in." She breathed in, bent over Ehrhardt, breathed into the Colonel's mouth and then stared at Suwahao again. "Breathe out. Breathe in. Repeat."

"Ah, I understand this."

"Some consolation," mumbled Armstrong and stood up as Suwahao started performing the assisted respiration. "Medic!" she called out, pointing at Ehrhardt and looking around the soldiers who were still just watching the scene since they had not received other orders. Two Eastern soldiers got up from a hiding spot and ran to Ehrhardt. One of them had a medical kit.

"And now finally... How are you alive?" continued Mustang and pointed at Envy. "Didn't you tell me that you had killed him?" he asked from Armstrong.

"That was how the situation appeared. We shot it with a missile and its body disintegrated. After that we could not find it anywhere. What else would you have assumed?"

"You don't seem too surprised to see he's alive."

"Pf!" huffed Envy. "She assumed from the start that I was alive. Apparently you didn't, and that's a fault in you more than her."

Envy noticed that Armstrong looked very displeased at its words.

"How do you know that she assumed that you were alive?" asked Mustang.

"A little bird told me or something," it replied and rolled its eyes.

"Did you lie to me?!" asked Mustang in an acidic tone from Armstrong.

"Why do you think that it's telling the truth?" snapped Armstrong but went on nevertheless. "I left it unmentioned that I personally thought that it was more likely that Envy was alive," she growled.

"And then you left it unmentioned when you found out for sure about three weeks ago?" said Envy with a grin. "Nice. You must feel stupid now, eh?" it drawled at Mustang.

Mustang lifted his hand, but Armstrong sighed and slapped his raised arm with her rifle in a tired manner. "It's trying to make us fight. Are you really going to fall for that?"

"I'm going to burn through him until he's dead." Some alchemical sparks crackled in the air, and by now both Envy and the child were all too familiar with Mustang's flames. The instant he snapped his fingers, they instinctively jumped into any direction, the child behind the cars and Envy upward and halfway across the space in front of the building. The flames had mostly missed their intended targets but had managed to singe Envy slightly.

"Mustang, what are you doing?" shouted Armstrong even while the flames were still burning. She lifted her rifle to aim at Mustang, but he had anticipated her move. He had just held his hands together and now grabbed the gun's barrel suddenly and transmuted it shut. Armstrong was more annoyed than surprised. "Envy just helped you save a person. Are you really trying to kill it just because it bad-mouths – –?"

"He only did that to make us think that he was on our side! He caused her injury himself. You can't seriously believe he would help saving a life because he actually cared or because you tell him to or because you promise to take him to Briggs, can you?" asked Mustang and pointed his hand at Envy again. "Soldiers, take aim!" The Eastern soldiers obeyed.

Envy was extremely tense and looked around itself for some safer place to jump to. It would have wanted to shapeshift into its massive true form, but it felt that its Stone was so depleted that it would not be able to become very large, and if the humans managed to kill its true form, that would be the end of it.

"Soldiers, HOLD!" shouted Armstrong as she drew her sword. She had some trouble with it due to her injury and Mustang was alerted.

The Eastern soldiers did not obey Armstrong, but they did seem a bit more confused.

"STOP!" shouted Shrike as he ran out of the forest and stopped a few metres away from Envy. One of Armstrong's soldiers called his name, but no one paid attention to that.

"What? Who are you?" asked Mustang before he remembered that Armstrong had mentioned Shrike a few times while they had been discussing. "Tell your soldiers to stay away, Major General Armstrong!"

Armstrong glared at Shrike with some irritated curiosity. "No. Actually, you should listen to him."

"Can't you just s-stop fighting?" asked Shrike with a very tight voice. "There are probably people stuck down there!" He pointed toward the collapsed wall.

"The sooner Envy dies, the sooner we can get to rescuing them. Now stand aside or help me!" said Mustang.

"No!" Shrike looked very twitchy and uncertain.

Envy stared at Shrike. It could not understand what Shrike was doing and it could not understand what it was feeling. It probably should have been offended that a human thought it weak enough that it would need protection, but Shrike was not like that at all.

Armstrong made an uncharacteristically wide grin. "See that, Mustang? He cares about Envy. He cares enough to risk his own life! I don't know how Envy managed that, but you can't deny the fact now, can you?"

Armstrong thoroughly enjoyed the immense conflict on Mustang's face.

"It's a trick!" shouted Mustang.

"No! Stop!" shouted Shrike.

"Put down the hand, Mustang," said Armstrong.

"No!" yelled Suwahao, but not at anyone in particular.

The others turned to look at Ehrhardt and Suwahao and the two soldiers.

"Yes," said the medic. "She's dead, sir. There was nothing to be done. Frankly, I have no idea how she survived even this long, if her spinal cord was severed so that she couldn't even breathe. Even with the assisted respiration."

"No..." mumbled Suwahao.

"What?" exclaimed Envy.

"Hm. Detain that one," said Armstrong and pointed at Suwahao.

"After all that trouble I went through to save her?" continued Envy. "I bet she killed herself just so she wouldn't have to face the fact that I helped save her!"

"Envy! Shut up!" shouted Armstrong.

Mustang looked unbelievably sour. "No one will save YOU." As he said that, he lifted his hand, transmuted and snapped his fingers so fast that Envy could not react in any other way but fall down to duck.

Shrike, then again, had only been watching Mustang and jumped partially in front of Envy, lifted his hands and tried to transmute the heat of the flames and direct it upwards. Mustang looked at Shrike in horror and tried to alter the course of his flames, but that did not work nearly as well as he would have hoped. Shrike's energy transfer was too slow and also did not work that well. The flames engulfed his right side and he let out a horrible scream, one that Mustang had heard several times before. Shrike fell down on the ground, and the snow put out his burning hair and clothes. The flames had not touched Envy.

The expression on Envy's face turned very strange. Even Envy itself could not have been sure what it expressed, but anger, worry, surprise and relief were definitely involved. It jumped at the screaming Shrike and turned him around. The cloth on his right arm and side were partially burned and melted. Envy tore off what cloth it could get from the burn sites, but there was nothing else it could do.

Shrike stopped screaming. He was unconscious.

Armstrong glared at Mustang whose face was very pale. "Envy!" she shouted. "Get up and step away! Mustang, fix him before he dies. Do it!"

Envy obeyed. Mustang did not. "I – –" he began.

"IRRELEVANT! You tried to save Ehrhardt. Save him!" commanded Armstrong again.

Mustang darted at Shrike and held his arm. He did not think he, or anyone else for that matter, would be able to fix it. Too much skin had been burned off and too much muscle had been damaged. What he could do was remove the source of the pain, and then Shrike could survive. He clapped his hands together and grabbed Shrike's burned upper arm a little below where it connected to the shoulder. He deconstructed the remaining skin, muscle and bone. Shrike screamed again and thrashed about, so Mustang kept him still by pressing his chest with his knee. Mustang sealed the bigger veins and reconstructed just enough skin to close the stump so that Shrike would not bleed out. Mustang then clapped his hands again and laid them on Shrike's side and shoulder. The less burned skin on the torso and neck got a little better. Shrike moaned in agony but stopped again and fell unconscious.

Both Envy and Armstrong stared at Mustang, both of them angrily.

"THAT was NOT what I meant when I told you to fix him," said Armstrong bitterly.

"That was all I could do to save him," replied Mustang as he stood up and stared decisively at Armstrong.

Armstrong's expression was more accepting now. "Medic!" She pointed at Shrike and the two soldiers who had been watching over Suwahao ran to Shrike now.

"Why... Why did he do that?" asked Mustang. He felt like he no longer understood anything that was going on.

"He loves Envy."

Mustang's eyes and mouth opened wide. "WHAT?"

If Envy had not been stumped because of what Mustang had just done to Shrike, it would have enjoyed his expression.

"Did you understand nothing of what he did and said before you tried to burn Envy? Either way, since you 'saved' him, you'll be able to ask him about it later," replied Armstrong coldly.

"But..." started Mustang.

"Can we finally stop this and get to saving anyone who's still stuck down there? And fine, I promise to take care of your homunculus problem for you."

Now that he had almost managed to kill a fellow soldier, Mustang was finally shocked enough to be ready to move on. "Soldiers, stand down," he said in a rather lethargic manner and gave the hand sign to stand down as well. He called some of the soldiers to him and started transmuting the rubble of the wall away. He left the homunculi to Armstrong.

Envy was still staring at Shrike, watching as the two Eastern soldiers checked if he was still alive.

Armstrong looked around and concluded that she would only be in the way if she tried to help clearing the rubble. She walked next to Envy and looked at Shrike. "How is he, Sergeant?" she asked from the medic.

"He's alive and stable enough and I believe he'll live, sir, but I can't do anything. He needs to get into a hospital."

"Very well. Go with Mustang to find if there are any more hurt people. We'll leave the instant we have all of them." The two soldiers left. Armstrong looked at Envy in a decisively shifty manner. "Well then, Envy, he risked his life for you. How do you feel about that?"

Envy just stared at Shrike with a grave expression on its face. It honestly could not reply anything. It had no words.

Armstrong watched Envy's expression and made a tiny smile to go with her shifty look. "That's an understandable response."

For a short moment, Envy still continued to watch Shrike as he lay on the ground. Mustang came back to briefly talk to Armstrong about telephoning some place, but Envy just ignored him. The child finally left its hiding spot behind the truck and walked behind Envy.

Envy collected Shrike's body from the ground. It could tell that he was lighter now. Shrike suddenly gasped for breath and uttered painfully. When Mustang heard Shrike's voice, he went silent and looked at his newest victim.

"Uh... E-Envy..." started Shrike. Envy was still speechless. Armstrong took a step toward him and looked at him. "Er, s-sir... I-I guess I know now how it feels to be burned. S-s-so much pain..." Having said that, he fell unconscious again.

Mustang turned right around and walked away. Armstrong talked to some other soldier about telephoning while another Eastern soldier with a medical kit tried to convince her to stay still so he could bandage the wound she had on her back.

"Er, hey, Shrike. Come on, can't you stay conscious?" said Envy finally and shook him a little bit.

The child walked around Envy and looked at Shrike's very pale face. It touched his head and somewhat burned hair and finally his burned side and what remained of his arm. "This skin is not good. Mustang could not reconstruct it properly."

"Huh? So incompetent. How bad is it?"

"I don't know, but I think it is better than burned skin. I assume they can do something about it at the hospital."

The two Briggs soldiers who had arrived with Armstrong made their way to Envy. One of them brought a blanket for Shrike. Envy slipped the blanket over and under Shrike's body.

Envy noticed that the Briggs soldiers looked at it somewhat oddly. One of them was a corporal who it had not met before and the other was First Lieutenant Henschel. The child was wary of them and went behind Envy again. "What?" asked Envy from the two as they continued to look askance at it.

"Well, you did try to kill us," said Henschel.

"What? You mean last month? I was trying to escape with my life. As much as Mustang wouldn't believe it, I really didn't TRY to kill anyone. You know, I can hardly believe that myself." Its tone was a little resentful, but then it realised that if Armstrong really was going to take it back to Briggs, it needed to play unusually nicely with the humans. "Er... Did I accidentally kill someone?"

"Well, no. Ramillies was in a coma but he woke up just before we left. Pelayo is still paralysed from the neck down. They and the others had some broken bones."

Envy stared at the man. "Well, I can just say I'm sorry. I wasn't planning on doing any of that. If it's any consolation to them, they can have whatever pay I earned and will earn. That's reparation, right?"

Henschel was quiet for a moment. "I don't know if that would help Pelayo."

"Ah, just wait until I can do alchemy again. I can fix whatever injury he has and I won't make any kind of stupid mistakes, unlike Mustang there."

Now Armstrong turned at Envy again and spoke up. "Are you sure about that?"

"Well, maybe I should practise on animals first. But seriously, I know what the human body is made of and I understand how it works. I have to, or else I would really suck at shapeshifting."

Armstrong eyed Envy suspiciously. "We shall see."

"Who is that?" asked the corporal and pointed at the homunculus child.

The child stepped into view from behind Envy again and spoke before Envy could explain. "I am a homunculus like Envy. My name is Reason." It could see Armstrong grinning rather knowingly.

Envy stared at it. "Oh, you finally came up with a name!" it said enthusiastically. "Why 'Reason'?"

"Well, only you know why you made me, but I am the reason why Armstrong tried to kill you, why you came here, why Mustang is so winded up now, and pretty much why everything that happened today happened. I thought that was fitting."

Envy smiled. "It sure is."

"And because I am reasonable."

"Ha!" said Armstrong. "That is a pretty high claim. Especially for one who is only three months old."

"Yet I can tell that you are being unreasonable just because of my so-called age."

"Good, good," continued Armstrong and made a smirk. "I do hope you agree to come to Fort Briggs."

Reason was surprised. "Um... I guess?"

"We have all the wounded!" shouted a soldier who emerged from the collapsed part of the building. Of course, Mustang had managed to clean the collapse, but he had left the way open for easy access since they would have had to use a lift otherwise.

Besides Shrike, there were only two people who seemed to have serious injuries. Three people had relatively debilitating but non-serious injuries and at least nine had light injuries. Two people had died under the collapses Ehrhardt had caused. The other soldiers had been carrying and guiding the injured ones into the truck.

"Envy, put Shrike in the back of the truck with the other wounded. Sachsen, get on the truck and watch Shrike. Envy, Reason, Henschel, you're coming with me in one of those other cars," said Armstrong and looked around but gave Envy and Reason a glance before walking off. "And shapeshift some uniforms on yourselves already."

Envy sighed lightly but shapeshifted itself so that it had a uniform. Reason imitated it, but could not get the uniform quite right.

"You forgot the edges here," commented Envy. Reason shapeshifted again. "And the badge here. The colour should be a little greener. And the boots are higher. They have two more sets of holes for shoe strings. That's a little misshapen. Your chain is a bit off. The split in the tail only goes up this high. I think you should be a Private. The mark doesn't have the three gold lines. The shoulder padding is off... wait, that's your actual shoulder and not the imitated cloth part. Anyway, it looks off. That's it."

Henschel had went with Armstrong, but Corporal Sachsen had remained next to Envy and Reason. He looked at the two homunculi in awe as Envy instructed Reason on the details of the uniform. "Wow, how can you see all that stuff? I wouldn't have looked twice at his uniform."

Envy looked a little tiredly at Sachsen. "We're shapeshifters. This kind of stuff is really important. Even if you think you couldn't notice it right away, it would look off and you would look that second time and another time until you saw the errors. That's why the uniform needs to look pretty much perfect."

"But it doesn't really matter now..."

"I want to get the uniform right," said Reason.

"Well, okay."

Envy then carried Shrike to the back of the truck. Reason and Sachsen followed it. There were a few stretchers that had been fixed between the bench rows that went around the edges of the truck. Envy laid Shrike down on one unoccupied stretcher. It frowned as it felt like it would not have wanted to leave Shrike alone with all the Eastern soldiers, but became a little better as Sachsen went into the truck to watch over him. Envy was rather confused. Did it care about Shrike enough to feel odd when it had to leave him alone with strangers while he was wounded? Thinking about the feeling was inconvenient, but at the least it could for certain say that it was not envious, and it was content about that.

Reason peered into the truck to see whether Matilda was in there, but could not spot him.

The Easterners looked at Envy very warily and with disdain, so it ignored them and left.