I hate this part. But I re-wrote it five times, and I liked this one the best, so here it is! Don't worry if you're confused. At this point, you're supposed to be.

Note: From this point, Roy's going to be acting a little OOC for a while. There's a reason for this, as you'll find out, so don't shout at me.

The Usual Disclaimer: Even after eight parts of this story, and God-knows-how-many of Conflicted, I still don't own Fullmetal Alchemist. That would be the ever-so-lovely Arakawa-sensei. I am making no money from this. I am poor, and living off noodles. 'Super Noodles', not even the cool ramen kind. Stupid credit crunch...


It was the fourth night in a row Roy had awoken in a cold sweat. At least, he thought it was. He had considered carving a notch into the dingy gray brick for each night that passed with him sitting against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest, and eyes closed but slumber refusing to claim him, but decided that was too cliche. That, and it was impossible to recall how long he had been here, anyway.

The days all seemed to blend into one another, with the help of the anti-depressants he was being given twice a day to banish the thought of jumping from another building. The only references he had were the steady healing of his injuries: the thin white scars and yellow bruises where bleeding gashes had once resided. He couldn't look at them. He couldn't let himself think of how long he had been imprisoned, for fear of seriously losing his mind. If he hadn't already, that is.

He sighed heavily, straightening his back and stretching until his vertebrae gave a pleasant crack. He slouched again. If possible, he felt even worse. The tension refused to leave his shoulders; couldn't bear to relinquish its grip enough to let him sleep. All that could lull him from his relentless mind was the steady rhythm of approaching footsteps, ones that Roy hated to admit he recognized without even thinking.

The three doctors who patrolled E Block each sounded different: so much so that Roy could decipher their identity without even opening his eyes. Armstrong's were the heaviest: slow, and surprisingly graceful for a man of his incomparable size. Havoc's were much lighter, and usually accompanied by the clicking of a toothpick between his teeth.

Fuery was a small and bespectacled figure; the furthest thing from intimidating. His footsteps were light and swift, and squeaked quietly against the tile due to how often he polished them. Roy was left in no doubt that it was his turn to patrol the block tonight, and he almost smiled. He liked Fuery. Perhaps, if he hadn't been ridiculed too much by the other inmates, he might even tell him the date.

Encouraged by this thought, Roy pushed himself to his feet using the palms of both of his hands, and stumbled over to the bars, head spinning in protest of the sudden movement. Fuery was standing directly opposite him, polishing his spectacles with the handkerchief he kept in his pocket at all times (Right next to the steel truncheon, Roy thought darkly) and eyes averted firmly to his skillful hands, sliding across the glass with well-practiced precision.

"Hey," he murmured, grimacing at the sound of his own voice. It sounded like he had been chewing gravel for two weeks, and then shoved a lit blowtorch in there for good measure. "What's the date?"

Fuery didn't reply. He raised his spectacles, inspecting them against the florescent lights for a moment, before dropping them again and continuing to clean them. Roy was patient; perhaps he'd been talking to Connor the obsessive-compulsive for too long and his penchant for cleaning had rubbed off on him, but after about five minutes of this Roy had to admit his patience was wearing thin.

"Kain!"

He looked up, then. It was impossible to ignore the desperation, the, dare he think it, fear in that tone, and the moment their eyes met, Roy almost screamed out loud. He was looking at him certainly, there was no doubt about that, but not with eyes. There were no eyes.

Instead, there were gaping black holes where eyes should have been, ones that Roy hated to think he could almost see straight through. His mouth was agape, jaw slack, as though he was trying to speak, but could form no words. Roy found himself in much the same state: stumbling backwards in terror, and only managing a few steps before he collapsed to the floor, shaking his head as though if he denied it enough, this vision would leave him alone.

He couldn't tear his eyes from it. There was so much pain in what used to be his eyes: they almost reminded him of-... He shuddered. No, he wouldn't think about that. Not now. Almost as though he could hear his thoughts, Fuery raised a hand, revealing that it had been blackened by flame, and the hint of dried blood was still visible. Roy choked as he tried to breathe, turned his head, but the man's voice could not be ignored.

"Roy," he tensed. That wasn't Kain's voice. It...it was Edward's. "What have you done?"

He screamed then. A long, mournful howl that was enough to tear himself from the torture of his own mind, and his onyx eyes managed to focus on the floor he was now lying on, bathed in sunlight he hadn't noticed before. He looked up sharply, and found a bewildered and wide-eyed Kain Fuery staring back at him, holding a small, plastic cup in one hand.

"Roy?"

"Y-y-you..." Roy stammered, hands shaking almost violently. "...Eyes...Ed...Ed...Edward! I have to see him! Edward!!"

The last word was bellowed, as though hoping he could hear him from all the way over in G Block. Fuery simply watched him, unperturbed as always, though he defied his image of apathy by chewing nervously at his lower lip. He was used to this kind of behavior: to watching his patients hallucinate and scream and cry until there was nothing left of them, but not from Roy.

He forced a smile once the elder man had silenced himself. "Okay, Roy," he said consolingly. "Take your pills, and then we can go to the Rec Room and see Edward there, alright?"

Roy nodded furiously, tangling his feet in the hem of his nightgown in his haste to stand, and only managing to make it as far as the bars after several moments of confused struggling. Extricating himself from the fabric, he gave a jubilant smile and held out his hand, where Fuery dropped several small, white pills, and handed him the cup of water with his other hand.

Roy liked these, he thought as he knocked the pills down his tarnished throat, and followed them with the liquid as an afterthought. The dreams had been getting worse lately, and always concerning himself, and Edward Elric: things he was certain he didn't want to know. Even in daylight he wasn't safe; tormented by voices ringing in his ears, and people changing right before his very eyes. Pills could make all that go away.

"Aah," he opened his mouth, to assure Fuery that he had indeed swallowed them (Oh, the ways of hiding them he had learned over the months were too many to count) and grinned triumphantly. "Can I see him now?"

Fuery sighed despairingly, but couldn't prevent a fond smile from playing at his lips. "Alright, Chief. But any trouble, and you're going straight to Isolation, understand?"

His tone was hardly threatening, though Roy still nodded his agreement, far too preoccupied with thoughts of Edward to bother putting up much of a fight. Drawing a set of keys from his pocket, Fuery gestured for him to turn around and he complied, crossing his hands behind his back with ease that implied he had done this a hundred times before.

The keys jingled pleasantly as they slipped into the lock, and a moment later Roy felt a hand latching around both of his wrists, and steering him from the cell. He found himself smiling as his bare feet padded down the stark white hallway: a triumphant, smug smile that was inches away from a smirk, almost as though he was recalling a joke that only he really understood. The expression was familiar, and it made Fuery nervous.

Eight months could really change a person.

----

Roy blinked. Twice. But the fraction of a second when his eyes were closed did not change the scene in front of him, which he thought odd. That usually worked. His mind was telling him he was curled on a chair in the Rec Room, but that wasn't true. He had been in his cell just a moment ago, when the same stupid mind of his had confused Fuery with Edward, and the boy from the Ishbalan battlefield who also wasn't real. So he wasn't about to believe a word it said to him any time soon.

It was metaphorically nudging him in the ribs, in that irritating way people often used to alert someone to something, and Roy was ignoring it. He already knew it wanted him to see Edward, (who also couldn't be real. He was in his cell, after all) who was sitting beside him, and had been watching him intently for a good twenty minutes.

It was still quite unnerving, so without looking at him, Roy muttered, "Ed, what d'you want?"

He started; he obviously hadn't been expecting a response, and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "You've been staring at Connor since you got here," he pointed out. "There's only so many times you can watch someone clean the windows."

Relaxing his eyes, Roy realized that he had indeed been staring in the aforementioned patient's general direction while his mind had been elsewhere, and he scowled. His mind had really done a number on him this time. Why the Hell weren't those pills working? When was the last time he had taken them, anyway? Perhaps they'd forgotten his morning dose, and he was hallucinating in their absence. Goddamn doctors couldn't do anything right...

"Roy!" this time, there really was an elbow in his ribs, and it was sharp as Hell. Edward needed to eat more. "Where the Hell are you?"

Roy rubbed at his new bruise with a grimace, and turned away from the blond to face Connor, who was cleaning the windows again for the hundredth time. He rested his chin on his knees and closed his eyes, muttering, "Shut up. Shut up..."

Apparently, Edward did not take too kindly to the dismissal. The fist that suddenly collided with the elder man's jaw was proof enough of that, and he was rewarded with another stinging pain, one that felt strangely familiar. He didn't open his eyes, instead counting slowly to ten in his mind, as Dr. Hawkeye had instructed him to do when he saw something or felt something that wasn't really there, which only angered the young blond further.

"Damn you, old man!" he roared. "And you have the nerve to lecture me about reality?!"

"Elric!" one of the doctors barked in warning, though Edward didn't even hear him above his own voice.

"What the Hell's got into you?!" he demanded. "This is real!" he sharply prodded his jaw for emphasis, and Roy winced. "You're so stupid!! You were stupid to come here! You've changed so much and you don't even know! This place is killing you!"

"Edward, I'm warning you-!"

Roy was counting aloud by this point, his hands over his ears to block his hallucination, and Edward was completely bewildered. It wasn't his job to deal with the inmates when they finally relinquished their fragile control over their lives, but he had watched Roy Mustang become one of them: noting every single change, every time the darkness in his eyes was focused on something only he could see, and it was killing him.

His Roy would never give in so easily.

"Wake!" he punched him again, drawing blood from both his knuckles, and Roy's jaw. "Up!"

He was walking on thin ice, and he knew it. The doctors were already coming over, presumably to detain him with medication and a straightjacket, but he had to get through to him. He couldn't watch the man with the Colonel's face destroy himself, in the exact manner Edward was fighting every single day.

Abandoning his plan of violence, Edward stooped down, yanking one of his hands away from his ear and whispering into it, "Colonel...Roy...you trusted me...you trusted me like you trusted Hughes," he tensed completely, and Edward knew he was listening. "So why can't you trust me, now?"

Roy looked up, and for the first time, he saw him. Really saw him. Reflected in his amber eyes were all those memories he'd been trying to deny; the dreams he'd convinced himself were nothing more than the product of his illness, but, looking at Edward Elric now, he knew without thinking which one of them was in danger of losing their mind.

"Ed," he whispered, his eyes wide with apprehension, and his hand enclosing around his. "I need to know...I have t-"

He didn't finish. He didn't finish because a second later, the young blond who was looking at him with an intensity that made him shiver was torn away from him, held firmly in a pair of strong arms without protest, which was more than unlike him. The doctor who had seized him obviously wasn't pleased, and he was eyeing Roy with the same distaste. Roy wanted to hit him, but suddenly found he didn't have the energy any more.

"I warned you, Elric!" the doctor spat. "You're not gonna be causing any more trouble around here, you little shit!"

It registered then that he had a one-way ticket to Isolation, and he immediately started to struggle. Without him, Roy would completely shut himself down and let his mind consume him. He may have looked like him but he had none of the Colonel's strength, and Edward cursed both of them. This was just getting worse.

Clawing anxiously at the doctor's forearms, Edward only managed to say, "I'll tell y-!" before a hand was clamped over his mouth and he was carried towards the Isolation block. He was already in trouble: both himself and this world's Edward were stubborn enough to get into regular fights, and the doctors were sick of dealing with him...them. He wouldn't put it past them to lock him away for good, so he wasn't about to go without a fight.

He was just in the process of biting the hand that silenced him, when two things caught his eye. The first was another door opening, and a rarely seen doctor with frighteningly pale-blue eyes entering the room, carrying a tray of plastic cups and medication. He was trying to smile, but it just reminded Edward of a snake, and the uncomfortable feeling in his gut was only worsened when Roy looked up, grinning as he realized pills were imminent.

The second was the sight of a figure. The entrance hallway was right next to the Rec Room, and the wall between the two was made up of several glass panels. The theory was that if the inmates could see who was coming and going, it would make them less anxious. It didn't work. It especially wasn't working now, as Edward fixed his eyes on the tall and bespectacled form of Maes Hughes.

Oh yeah. Things were definitely getting worse.