Fabulous readers,

Ha, did you like that curve ball that I threw at ya'll? I'm sorry. Not really; it was a surprise even to myself. Got ya pretty good didn't I!?

With a cry, Edward doubled over, pushing his rounded belly against his thighs. His automail knee drove into his chest and hurt him, but he refused to move. Instead, he heaved heavily with stomach churning sobs, feeling sick, scared, and apprehensive all at the same time.

Never before had he suffered such a desperate need to cry. His whole body began to tremble violently. He felt as though he were suffocating. Suddenly he sat up again and turned his face upwards towards the ceiling as he continued, the noises coming from his throat were more like guttural moans at that point than actual cries. Between sobs he would take a deep breath over and over again until all he could do was breath quickly without rhyme or reason to the pace.

He was reduced to hyperventilating, his chest rising and falling sporadically. He only chokes out a few broken sobs between breaths, all the while he reached beside him for Roy's hand. He felt his legs lock up and all of his muscles go rigid as Roy grabbed onto his hand and held it in his lap.

"Edward, you need to calm down before you make yourself pass out," Roy said as he scooted closer and wrapped his arm around Edward's quivering shoulders. "Please, Ed, don't cry." He could hear the man speaking with a low, soothing voice. "It's going to be okay."

Edward turned towards Roy and grabbed for his face; he looked at him with pleading eyes, teeth gritted, tears falling from his chin. "I'm so alone. Please, oh, please don't leave me alone," he said between gasps before his mind went hazy and his vision went black.

"Edward!"

Edward!

Edward!

He was on the battlefield. He knew because he could feel the heavyweight of his metal helmet on his head. Stuck in the muck, boots wet, toes frozen, he was on his knees with his eyes closed. He knew that if he opened them he would see her laying next to him. This was his personal Hell for committing taboo and becoming a perversion of nature.

He should stay there with his eyes closed until he died.

Edward had his hands in his lap, palms turned upwards towards the colorless, empty sky. He felt a weight in his arms, a heavy cold weight. And still the alchemist kept his eyes closed. If he just kept them closed then nothing could hurt him, nothing could become reality. A child's logic.

Slowly, Edward brought his hands up from his lap, cradling the weight and holding it close to his body.

Take care of my baby, Edward.

I don't want this responsibility! He shouted with a hollow voice.

Take care of him.

Why did you lie to me?

Love him.

You did this to me!

His blood is inside of you.

With a jolt Edward opened his eyes and stared down between his legs. Blood spilled from his body, oozing out and mixing with the mud in which he was stuck.

Edward.

With terror, Edward glanced around and caught sight of her dead face. Her eyes were gone, her mouth decrepit, face broken. He screamed, but could not hear his voice, only feel the pressure in his lungs.

"Edward!"

In fear from his dream, Edward had been thrashing. He must have been screaming out. With a gasp he opened his eyes and sat up, disoriented, terrified, and hurting. He swiveled his head all around in order to take in his surroundings, knowing not, for a moment, where he was.

He was in a clean room, tucked in white sheets on a spacious bed, surrounded by plump pillows. In his grogginess, Edward groped around before he blinked the sleep out of his eyes and squinted.

It was morning; and he was still at Roy's house. Or at least it had to be Roy's. Even his room was classy and neatly decorated, just as it had been in the living room. He felt a pressure on his hand and squeezed it for support. Roy was holding his hand, kneeling beside him on the floor, and looking at him with concern. His expression was so powerful and calm. Seeing him like that made Edward feel safe.

"Are you awake now?" he asked.

"Y-yeah," Edward said as he shivered, still unsettled by his dream. With his free hand, he drove it under the sheets and rested over his belly. "What time is it?" he asked as he looked around for a clock.

"Almost 11."

"Seriously!? Shit!" Edward was about to spring out of bed when Roy suddenly caught him and held him still.

"Calm down; I called us in on personal days."

"That's a bit suspicious," Edward replied as he blinked a few times.

"It's not. No one would think twice about it. Believe me," Roy said as he stood up from his crouched position. He extracted his hands from Edward's shoulders, who then reached out for them instinctively, not wanting to be left without physical contact. Roy held onto his hands as he sat on the bed besides Edward's legs. "I'm not going anywhere, Edward; it's okay. I've got you," he assured as he gave Edward's hands a squeeze.

"Not like I could after that show last night. You're more beautiful when you're pleading for me to take care of you," he teased. Perhaps it was in bad taste, but it helped to ease Edward's worry.

He relaxed a little, willing himself to believe Roy for the moment. "I'm sorry."

From where he sat, Roy took in a sharp breath of air before he spoke. "So let's cover the basics. You committed human transmutation and altered your body to adapt itself to support a Pregnancy?"

"Yes," Edward replied guiltily.

"And how did you pull that off exactly?"

"An exchange of years from my life," muttered Edward as he glanced away. "I don't know how many."

Thankfully, Roy spared him any scolding; instead, he only felt the older man's hands grip his a little tighter.

"And Riza told you that it was my baby?"

"I thought she did." He looked down. "Honestly, now I'm not so sure. Maybe I was just imagining things," he said hesitantly. "If not you, then who?" He asked as he looked to Roy with hope that the older alchemist would know.

He looked just as confused, though and gave a quick shake of his head back and forth.

Edward sighed and looked away for a moment, glancing up and around the room before he turned his gaze back to their hands. He looked back at Roy again after a pause. "You're, um, you're gay aren't you?" Edward said; yeah, okay, so he was slow on the update.

Roy breathed out a laugh and smiled quickly. "What gave me away I wonder?"

Edward snorted. "Your overly loud and showy way of dating women makes sense now.. It was because you were covering your tracks."

"Bingo, but you can't ignore the elephant in the room by talking about my sexuality, Ed."

"Your home decor makes so much more sense now too,"Edward continued, referring to the fact that only a gay man would be as nit-picky and fashionable.

"What did you change about your body?"

Again, Edward brought his attention to the matter at hand. "I don't know entirely; I haven't had any medical equipment or any know-how in what I'm doing."

"Did you change your sex?"

"No?" came his quick reply as he gave the man a confusing look as to why he would even ask that. "It was a rushed job part medical part total human transmutation."

"Yeah, but how are you going to give birth Edward? And furthermore, how are you able support a pregnancy? Is it even alive?"

"Yes, and I don't know," Edward answered flatly. These were all of the questions that he was refusing to ask himself.

"So put the puzzle pieces together, right? If you know the fetus is alive, then you must have transmuted more than just the embryo, like her uterus, fallopian tubes, perhaps her vaginal canal. Who knows, maybe you'll even grow breasts too," Roy said, clearly meaning that last bit as a joke, or so Edward hoped.

"Piss off," Edward said as he pulled his legs away from where Roy was sitting. He sighed with a defeated exasperation in his breath. "I haven't….. gone inspecting," he admitted. Obviously he had bathed and gone to the bathroom, but he was too afraid to check what all had changed about him physically. The longer he was awake in his altered body, though, the more he began to think that there were some significant changes. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, nervously wiggling his jaw back and forth.

"Let's see then," Roy said as he moved off of the bed and disappeared for a moment.

"What?" Edward yelled after him as he held his legs even tighter.

"Oh no, no, no," he was repeating as he shook his head back and forth so violently that his hair whipped him in the face. "No way," he continued on as Roy re-entered the room with a towel in his hand. "What are you going to do with that? No," he stated flatly in case the other hadn't heard him the first fifty times.

"Do you want to go to the doctor right now then? Because you have to figure out a plan; how many months do you have left?"

"I think I'm sitting around 4 months," Edward muttered as he loosened his grip from around his knees.

"6 months isn't a long time, Ed. You need to know as much as you can as soon as you can."

With a defeated mutter, Edward sighed and re-situated his body onto the bed. He wiggled his boxers off, thankful that the man hadn't undressed him completely when he had originally moved him to the bed. Not that his modesty was an issue any more. Literally, he was on display for the other's viewing pleasure now.

At least Roy was moderately respectful about it as his hand poked around Edward's hips and felt the gentle curve of his belly. He pushed a little, digging his fingers into the flesh and feeling for the shape of a uterus. Down and down his hands probed until he was poking around Edwards intimate parts.

Edward looked at him skeptically, lifting his head off of the pillows and looking at the top of Roy's black hair. "No funny business," he warned for the sheer sake of filling the awkward air.

He shivered as he felt Roy's thumb roll across him, further down more until he felt a pressure touch him where he had been feeling so hot and weird. Edward closed his eyes, fears realized.

"It looks like there is, um," Roy paused a moment as he tried to think of a word to call it other than 'vagina'. Eventually he gave up and spoke again. "I'm going to push my finger inside; you'll feel some pressure, okay?"

"Why!?"

"Come on, Ed. We need to figure out what's going on otherwise we can't get a plan of action," he rationalized.

Edward's breath was coming out in short gasps again as he glanced down between his legs then up to Roy's face who was patiently waiting for his approval. Hesitantly, Edward nodded.

"It looks like it's working right; you're really wet," teased Roy.

Edward seethed as he drove his fingers to twist around the sheets of the bed. He gritted his teeth as he felt an intense pressure between his legs. It wasn't painful; just weird. He rolled his head back and bit his tongue with his eyes shut tight.

Roy's free hand came to rest on his abdomen; he could feel it push on him.

"A-are you inside of me?!" Edwards screeched with a crack in his voice.

"Yes; can you push against me, like you want to push me out of you?"

Again Edward gritted his teeth as he complied much to his embarrassment. He gasped as his toes began to curl and his legs began to raise. "How do you even-ah-know what you're doing?" he asked as he felt something so hot and deliciously delve deeper.

"Please Edward; just because I prefer the company of men doesn't mean I haven't had to fake it with women before. I know what a woman feels like inside." He paused. "Do you feel that?" he asked as Edward felt something wiggle against a particularly pleasurable spot.

Oh how he wanted to moan. "Yes," he choked out as the muscles in his legs began to go rigid.

"That's your cervix. So it looks like you have all of the bits and pieces to successfully give birth. Provided that we keep you as healthy as possible."

"We?" Edward repeated.

"You asked me not to leave you. So I won't," came the man's simple reply.

Edward could feel his finger slide from him, leaving him feeling empty. He exhaled with relief as he let his legs fall back down to the mattress to a resting position. He was staring up with wide eyes while Mustang stared back. "I guess this is a good thing," he mused at first as he stitched his blonde brows together.

"You can stop staring at me now," Edward was reduced to saying as he pulled his legs away from Roy and hid himself beneath the sheets. "Great; I'm the Fullmetal Freak."