Author's Note: The origin of this chapter is in Chapter 63 of my other 100 Themes fic, A Hundred Ways to Say You're My Brother. In that chapter, I put Ed in the aftermath of a hostage situation which was very weird because it was extremely traumatizing, yet nobody knew exactly why. For a long time, I've wanted to explore just what happened when Ed was captured. It was actually quite hard to think of something that could be somewhat believable, yet still so traumatizing that it would leave Ed like that. Plus, I had to deal with this line from the previous installment: "'Did he hurt you?' Edward had shaken his head, but his eyes had said, He was going to." So I couldn't just go the route of some kind of physical abuse. In the end, I came up with this, and I should warn you that they start talking about some intense things later on. None of it's in actual description, but they do talk about it. Just so you know. On a lighter note, I actually got all the way through this chapter and closed off the document, feeling all happy with myself for churning it out...only to realize I'd blazed all the way through and completely forgotten to stick in the words of the theme like I normally do DX

Timeline: Midseries

Theme 11: Is it okay to cry?

Roy dropped his keys on the kitchen table and slumped wearily over the sink, rolling up his sleeves. But somehow he couldn't dredge up the energy to turn on the water. It had been a long, hard week, and only by the urging of all five of his subordinates was he even back home. He'd tried to protest, tried to convince them that he needed to oversee the hunt. But when Lieutenant Hawkeye looked at him with that familiar, steely look in her eyes and said, "You're not capable of overseeing anything on so little sleep," he'd capitulated.

Even now, even when he was so weary he thought he could actually fall asleep standing up, he longed to be back in the thick of the investigation. Julius, the perverted man who claimed he was a scientist, sat warm and cozy in his prison cell, not uttering a single word to explain how he had captured the accomplished Full Metal Alchemist, nor why he had been discovered in the cellar of a run-down apartment building, standing over the boy with a menacing glint in his eye. Nor what he thought he was doing, chaining a fifteen-year-old to a column by his left wrist and taking away his clothes and both automail limbs.

And because he said nothing, there was a strong possibility he would only be punished for kidnap, rather than the mischief Roy was sure he'd been intending. What the exact nature of that mischief was, he had no idea, and every notion that passed through his head only made him feel sicker and more desperate to round up the rest of the criminals, who had at least left a small amount of evidence behind them.

With a soft groan, Roy ran a hand through his oily hair. This case was in his every waking thought, and had begun to haunt the nightmares that plagued what little sleep he allowed himself. He didn't think he would ever forget the look of crazed fear that Edward had first thrown his way when Roy bent down to melt the chain and free him. As though, in the scant week he had been missing, he had forgotten that not everyone was an enemy. He had even started wildly and tried to clamber to his one foot when Alphonse first addressed him, though he immediately relaxed with relief when he saw who it was.

"Mustang?"

Roy jumped and turned around, staring at the boy in the kitchen doorway. Somehow, Edward had seemed smaller ever since they'd found him, and it wasn't just because the criminals had seemed to forget he needed to eat. His baggy black sweat pants and T-shirt, and the golden hair that spilled down his shoulders freely, seemed to make his body even smaller than usual.

But maybe what diminished him the most was his silence. This was the first word Roy had ever heard him speak since the rescue, though Alphonse had assured him they talked some when they were alone. Roy couldn't help being a little frustrated at this silence, for who could give witness better than Edward? Who else would be able to give them the information they needed to seek out the rest of the criminals and mete out their judgment?

But he had to be sensitive to Edward's needs. The boy had been physically unharmed except for the usual pain of reattaching his automail once they found it, but his nerve seemed shattered. Roy reminded himself of this and forced his voice to calmness rather than the near-frantic eagerness he felt. "Yes? What is it?"

Edward fingered the door frame, not looking up at him. "Um...I think I need to...tell you some things. About...what happened. So you can catch 'em."

Roy blinked and tried not to act too surprised. "Anything you want to say, don't hesitate to tell me."

"Yeah." He shuffled his bare feet, staring at his metal toes as though fascinated with the digits he'd had for years. "But...I don't want Al to hear. He doesn't need to know."

Mustang nodded slowly. "All right. I can arrange that."

Edward nodded without looking up, then turned and shuffled back to Roy's bedroom, which he and Alphonse had been occupying lately. Roy watched him till he disappeared around the corner, feeling a shiver of dread run down his spine as he wondered what on earth had happened that was so horrible Alphonse needed to be shielded from it.

With Alphonse safely sent on an errand to the grocery store, Roy stepped a little nervously into his own bedroom. It looked much the same as it always did, with the addition of a bright red coat draped over the back of a chair. Edward sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor. He only looked up when Roy dragged the chair over to sit facing him, and then it was just a quick glance into his eyes and away again.

He took a deep, shaky breath and then said, "I...dunno where to start."

"Why not tell me how they caught you?" Roy said gently. It was hard to keep the eagerness and impatience out of his voice. But it was obvious that Edward needed someone to talk to about what had happened, and he needed to move at the right pace.

"I went to have supper in this cafe," Edward said softly. "Al was still at the library; we were gonna meet up afterwards. But then when I was taking the shortcut to the library, these guys attacked me. I thought they were just muggers, you know? But a couple of 'em knew alchemy, and they surrounded me before I could do much. Then one guy pulled off my arm – like he knew exactly where the catches were. So then I couldn't do alchemy, and they took me to their hideout."

Roy looked up from the notes he was jotting down. "The same place we found you?"

Edward nodded, his voice growing stronger as he continued. "They knocked me out so I couldn't see where we were going, and when I came to I was chained to that pillar. They took my arm and leg, and my clothes." He fingered his shirt with a thoughtful frown. "Julius said it was to convince me."

"Convince you of what?"

After closing his eyes briefly, Edward looked up and met Roy's eyes with a haunted look. "They wanted to make a Philosopher's Stone. They knew me 'n Al were looking for one, and Julius figured that if anyone would know how to make one, it'd be me since I'm a State Alchemist. He said he'd let me go soon as I told him how, or even if I could just point him in the right direction."

Roy stared at him in horror. He was one of the few people Edward had confided in when he'd made his terrible discovery not long ago, so he knew precisely what this meant. If someone as unscrupulous as Julius knew that a Philosopher's Stone required the sacrifice of many human souls...it would be instant carnage.

Edward's eyebrows drew together as if in pain while he continued. "Funny thing was, he already had his ingredients, he just didn't realize it. You know all those missing people lately? Julius and his men captured 'em. They figured, since I'm the 'People's Alchemist', I wouldn't wanna see them hurt, so I'd tell them."

A chill settled in Roy's stomach when Edward stopped speaking. "You didn't...?"

"No," he said, his shoulders slumping in incomprehensible dejection. "I didn't."

He was silent for several minutes, and Roy was afraid to break the silence. But just when Roy was about to prompt him again, Edward spoke in tones softer and more anguished than anything Roy had heard yet. "So when they knew I knew but wouldn't say, they started torturing the prisoners. Made me watch. They started with little things. Beat a guy up. Broke a lady's finger. Then it got worse." He gulped, and checked to make sure Roy was writing down everything he said. "There was this kid – he looked like fourteen or something – and they burned the soles of his feet. He was screaming a lot. They cut one man's whole arm off, and didn't even give him anything to stop the bleeding. The other prisoners looked out for him, though. As best as they could."

Squeezing his eyes shut, Edward clenched his fists on his knees. "I wanted to make it stop, but how could I tell them what they wanted? They'd just have turned around and killed everybody! I told 'em that – that there was no way they could survive if I told, 'cause then they wouldn't be useful anymore. But I bet they hate me. It's all my fault!"

Roy set aside his notes and leaned forward. "Don't tell yourself that." He realized that Edward was blinking rapidly and pressing his lips tightly together, and continued gently. "Staying silent was the best thing you could do, Edward; we can hope they still survive, and when we catch up to them, we can help them recover. If you had told the criminals the secret of the Stone, they would already be-"

"But some of them are!" Flesh and metal fingers gripped his hair, as if he wanted to tear all of it out by the roots. "That guy...they chopped off his arm, and even though people were ripping up their clothes so they could help him, and he still died! One guy whose fingernail was all broken and sharp somehow killed himself with it so they couldn't hurt him anymore. And then...this girl..."

His voice broke, and it took several minutes of breathing deep and hard before he could speak again. "Her name was...Annie. Couldn't be older than twelve. Her mom was there too, and she kept...screaming when they tried to get Annie. 'Take me instead! Please! Just don't hurt her!'"

On impulse, Roy moved from his chair to sit next to Edward on the bed. The boy was gulping down his emotion and breathing as hard as if he was running away.

"But they didn't listen. They pulled her away, put her in the middle of the room. M-Made me watch. A guy was holding my head so I couldn't look away. And then they...they...raped her." The last words came out in a whisper, closely followed by a sob that shook his whole body.

Roy stared at Edward, who was crying for all he was worth. He was strongly reminded of the time Shou Tucker had transmuted his own daughter into a chimera, who had soon after been brutally murdered. A four-year-old girl, adorable and indiscriminately loving, reduced to a heartless splotch of blood on a concrete wall. Edward was reacting the same to this Annie, even though he didn't know her. Not only because what had happened to her was pointlessly cruel, but because he felt responsible for it.

The boy turned a helpless, tear-stained face to him, and the question in his eyes was almost audible: Is it okay to cry? As if any of this was his fault. As though he had no right to give way to his emotions while they were still out there, suffering and dying just because he wouldn't tell Julius what he wanted to hear.

Edward kept stammering through his tears, as though trying to vindicate himself to Roy. "I-I kept on telling them to s-top, but they just kept on...one after another...and when they were done, she was...dead. A-And then everyone else ran off, but Julius stayed, an'...an' he said...ev-ry-thing he'd done to them, he'd do... Bu-But then you 'n Al came..."

Roy shut the boy up by drawing him close and holding him tight. He'd stopped making much sense anyway.

"Scared," Edward managed to get out between his sobs and the folds of Roy's shirt.

Edward wasn't trying to break away as Roy had half-expected him to do, so he maintained his hold. "That's natural, Edward. Anyone would be frightened in such a position. But you're not the one at fault here. They are. We can't do anything for Annie or the others-" a muffled sob "-but we can find these criminals and see that they pay for what they've done. I promise you, they will pay."

Finally, Edward began to pull away, and Roy immediately released him. But before either of them could begin to feel awkward or embarrassed, Edward murmured, "Thanks." And for the first time, Roy dared to hope that everything would be all right.