Notes at the beginning and end this time.

So! Thank you to everyone who reviewed and please do so again, they are a big help to keep me motivated to keep writing! Sorry this has been so long in coming, this chapter was really difficult for me to write. I felt like I was…intruding, for lack of a better word.

These upcoming paragraphs are mostly dialogue, so there's that. I really wanted this to feel like a true confession, of sorts. That's also the reason the storytelling might feel disjointed, as sometimes a person will be talking about something, switch gears entirely, and jump back into it—especially if they don't really want to be talking about it in the first place.

So…WARNING! This chapter might get kind of…dark. It's not graphic in detail, but the topics could be... sensitive. If you're sensitive to talk of murder, abusive relationships, and self-harm (though half of this story has already dealt with that) then just know what's coming up.

xxx

Ignored. If he was ignored, it hurt. It hurt more than he cared to admit. Being ignored was terrible. But being asked questions about everything he held so close to him was awful too. He didn't want people prying into his personal thoughts, he couldn't stand them getting too close to his walls. So he had to make a decision.

Better to be annoyed or to be ignored?

He felt that the silence of others was often worse than their prodding questions, and so he talked to them on his own terms, steering the conversation away from anything too personal. He would go quiet when they brought up his brother, suddenly only capable of answering in 'yes' or 'no'.

It tore him open that his expectations and reality were never quite in alignment, making every day feel like a waste of time. He knew that this was illogical, but his brain refused to work in any other way. And so he continued existing, tossed about in this world of disappointments and harsh realities.

xxx

The sounds from the studio were muffled, and all Ed could hear was the frantic beating of his own heart. He was still holding onto Roy, trying desperately to provide some kind of comfort for the older man as he just sobbed onto Ed's shoulder. He had no idea what to do. He had never seen an adult break down like this, not even his mom when Hoenheim left. So he stayed still.

He didn't know how long they sat like that. Sometime later Roy had finally calmed down enough to lean himself against the wall, and Ed was now sitting on his right, hands placed awkwardly in his lap, staring at the ceiling. Roy was gazing off into space, and Ed jumped when he spoke.

"I used to be a policeman." Ed's eyes grew wide, and with even just that one statement he had so many questions, but he held himself back, knowing this was probably his one chance to hear Roy's story and Roy's one chance to let him. So he kept silent.

"I was good at my job. Young, confident." He heard Roy sigh, and glanced over at him. "I was more than just speeding tickets and security. I was allowed to work on the big stuff, criminal cases of all kinds- homicide cases, even. I won't say that they were more fun, because there's nothing fun about a murder, but they were more of a challenge. They were at least interesting."

"I met her on a case. She was from out of town, though her name seemed oddly familiar. She was…a spark, a bright light shining in the darkness. She had quite a quick temper, and a tendency to argue over the tiniest details. It seemed like she hated me, no, she hated everyone at first. Her icy demeanor was off-putting to many of us, but somehow...I ended up getting her to go out with me. I found that she was brilliant, had great instincts, was incredibly smart and capable of taking care of herself. Hughes warned me that a work relationship would not do well, but of course I didn't listen. I was head-over-heels for her, this feisty detective that was soon assigned to work with me on the toughest case I had ever seen. I was glad of her intelligence and her emotional support, and I hoped she would help me get the case solved relatively quickly, to look forward to the future."

"However, that was not meant to be. It was a difficult case, the murder of the two young doctors only being the beginning. Late nights and sketchy undercover operations, and still we were no closer to finding the identity of the murderer. And as we got deeper and deeper into all the conspiracies surrounding the murder, I became more concerned for our safety than the outcome of the case. There were whispers of gang violence, drug trafficking, and I wanted no part of that for myself or for my partner. Once you're targeted by those kinds of people, you never escape them."

"She didn't listen to me. She was always hard-headed. She wanted to see the case through to the end, to catch the bad guy. So one day, she went out undercover by herself. She hadn't contacted anyone about what she was doing or where she was going. For a week I wondered if she had suddenly been transferred, but my chief looked confused when I asked him. So I knew she hadn't just skipped town. I thought I saw her once, briefly, when I was questioning some people in the rougher side of town. But I wasn't able to catch her…"

"There were shady dealings, things people didn't dare speak of. Strange people running around at all hours of the night, getting involved with drug dealers and teenage boys alike. It was the makings of a gang, she should have known that, it was obvious. It should have warned her off, but it didn't. When the calls came in of a woman with long blonde hair being very nearly stabbed to death, I got there as fast as I could. I knew it was her. She was still lying out on the pavement, bleeding from a gash in her upper thigh and a stab wound in her upper arm. The civilians told me they had already called the ambulance, and no, they didn't see who did it. And she… she wasn't saying anything out in the open."

"I rode with her in the ambulance. It was silent, all I could do was think of how she could've died, how she would have had no one to even know she was dead, how I would never get to tell her that I loved her. They stitched her up in the ER, and still we hadn't spoken a word. They let her go home with me. When we got to my house, she smiled at me. I remember being confused, and she said 'I've got a new lead'."

Roy's hands clenched, and Ed could practically hear him grinding his teeth together. "I got angry. Of course that was what she was happy about—not the fact that she was alive, not the fact that we were home, not the fact she was with me. I was so worried about her, and she, she didn't even care. So I yelled at her, I told her off. That was nothing new. We argued a lot. But she…didn't yell back. She just looked at me, eyes cold, standing there in the front room of my house, before shaking her head and saying, 'You worry too much, Mustang.' Then we had sex and I proceeded to forget the odd sense of discomfort her statement had made me feel."

Ed blushed at that, but Roy continued on, seeming as if he had forgotten who exactly he was talking to, or that he was even talking outside of his own head. "So we kept working on the case. I was worried for her safety, especially now that she had nearly been killed. We worked on her new lead that she had nearly died for, and what we found was… the last straw for me. It was a gang, of course. But not just the makings of a new gang, but a gang that had been in power for years… Homunculus." Ed's eyes widened, he had heard hushed whisperings of them at the university, but they had never seemed real. They were just… too evil.

"I shut it down right there. She wanted to push it, but I cut it off. I took it before the chief, and he…well, when he went white as snow, I knew I had made the right decision. There are some things that even the best police officers won't get involved in. As long as we didn't disturb the Homunculus, they wouldn't mess with us. Their dealings were often so deep that they never showed up on our radar, anyway."

"They called her the Ice Queen, and since I was dating her, that somehow made me Flame. Supposedly I had 'melted her heart' or some other kind of stupid sappy crap. As it turned out, I never even broke through her shield. She was so mad about the case, telling me I was a wimp, that I was a coward…This continued for some time, as she would bring it up whenever she was mad at me for something. I don't think I realized when she became so frigid, it wasn't like one day she was different, no it was more like…I kept reaching out to her, trying to make us work, and she just kept finding reasons to shut me down, always coming back to the case. At some point I finally caught on: she didn't love me. She probably never had. But I wanted so badly for us to make things work that I ignored it and just took whatever she dished out."

"I was spiraling downwards. I lost interest in everything that was important to me, because I was always trying to make her happy. But it was never enough. Everything I did for her was just brushed off to the side like it didn't matter. And still I didn't want to let it go. Finally, Riza convinced me to say something to her, and when I expressed my concerns, she just laughed in my face. She told me I would never amount to anything, in anything I decided to do."

Ed bit his lip, shock coursing through him. How horrible. The whole tale so far was so unlike the Roy he knew, that all the information was hard to process. And the fact that Mustang still hadn't named the woman made him think that the wounds still ran too deep, and were far too painful to bring up.

"So she broke up with me. I should have seen it coming. Hughes even told me it was coming. Everyone could see it. I like to think that I could see it too, and that I ignored it—that way I wasn't blinded, just stupid." Roy hissed, curling his fingers into a fist in his lap. "I was devastated. I fell deeply into depression. And she, she left town, and somehow that made it worse. I think that if I had had to confront my fears dead-on I wouldn't have ended up like this." Ed's eyes immediately darted to Roy's hands as the gloves were yanked off, and instead of last night where he had stolen glances, now he just stared, because Roy was letting him.

Both hands were equally marred. The skin was darkened and mangled, obviously having been burnt. On top of that were the thin white scars, clearly the result of having taken a razor blade to the skin. The scars were most likely inflicted after the burning, which only served to confuse Ed further. Just what exactly had he done to himself, then?

He looked up to find Roy's dark eyes on him, resembling deep pools. "I felt like such a failure. Everything she said about me being a coward, all of it seemed to be true when she left me. So I tried to show her. In my confused, depressed state of mind, I wanted to be 'brave'." He let out a choked laugh. "I wanted to show her that the 'Flame' was strong. And one night, drunk and out of my mind with all my emotional baggage, I shoved my hands in the fireplace and held it. I held it until I couldn't feel the heat anymore, until the pain had gone as numb as my heart." Ed squeezed his eyes shut, finding it hard to catch his breath. Oh how he knew that feeling. He understood. "Hughes found me the next day, after my boss had frantically called him in a panic. No one knew where I was or what had happened to me. Apparently, when you decide to burn your hands past the point of recognition, you can actually pass out from the pain. So he took me to the hospital, and they patched me up."

A minute of silence. Ed heard hesitation creep into Roy's voice, a slight tremble in the tenor. "I hated myself for it. I couldn't forgive myself. I quit my job, because a deranged man with damaged hands would never be able to be a police officer. So I was unemployed, and then I hated myself for that. It was like that for a year. And then…then she walked back into town as if nothing had ever happened. I saw her, just out and about in the town, and I, I lost it. I had no clue what she was doing back. I froze up. The fragile shell holding my mind together shattered. And when she approached me, her brother in tow, she had the same smirk on her face as the last time I saw her, and I couldn't even say anything. I wasn't wearing gloves yet, and so she had the nerve to ask about my hands. I-I… ran. I guess eventually someone told her about what I had done to myself, because to this day she still tries to get inside my head and mock me for it. But back then…I… every day I had to look at my hands, and I hated them, I hated her for my hands. So I took out all my frustration and anger and depression on the very objects of my self-loathing. Riza found me that time, and the hospital was, needless to say, not happy to see me again." Roy sighed, and Ed watched the older man lean his head back against the wall.

"I wanted so badly to prove that I was brave and strong and instead I made myself weaker and weaker. It was more cowardly to hurt myself than it would have been to just try and face the true problem. Eventually, I came to accept this fact." He turned his head slightly towards Ed. "But she still manages to stir up my old feelings, no matter how irrational it might be for me to still be this affected. I can't stand her. If…if I'm around her I start to doubt myself, start to fall back into depression, and I…I just can't anymore. I can't go through that hell again."

Ed's mind whirled, his heart clenching. "What-what is her name? I just…I just wanna beat the crap out of her. I don't—" he bit his lip as he saw Roy's expression darken.

"I don't want you messing with her, Ed. She just needs to return to whatever icy hole she crawled out of this time." But Ed held his gaze, and eventually Roy sighed. "You just want to make me say her name out loud." He raised one eyebrow at the teen, who narrowed his eyes. "Fine. It won't help me or you, but fine."

Ed wasn't lying about beating the crap out of her. At the very least, he figured he could destroy her reputation as a detective, writing bad reviews on every site he could. All he needed was her name.

"Olivier Armstrong."

And now he had it.

xxx

Wow. That was long. To be exact, this chapter's worth of story consists of around 2,500+ words. Really took a lot out of me.

Again, sorry for the wait. Please review, I'm always looking to get better! And it's more motivation for the next chapter!

I think that Roy's previous statement of "I tried to fix something that wasn't broken and destroyed myself in the process" makes more sense now. I also feel that way about self-harm in general. Although it looks like a solution at the time, it isn't. And you are never broken, never 'not good enough', never need to be 'fixed'. I'm guilty of falling into this trap, so I understand how hard it is to fight it, but fixing something that isn't broken will only destroy what is there in the first place. Just some food for thought.