It had been two days since the sirens had gone off for the first time. They'd gone off exactly six times since then, but Edward doubted that anyone other than himself was counting. Three to manage the movement and processes of deploying soldiers, one to call for a runaway who hadn't been accounted for, and one to announce increased security around the camp's perimeter. The most recent one went off seven or so hours ago, signaling that training would start again at o five-hundred hours, and that teams would be officially reassigned on the announcement board at this time. Edward couldn't wait.

Everyone who was meant to go out to the real action was gone now, and the whole camp's population was decimated for it. They'd gone from a base of over five hundred to holding approximately eighty teenagers and a duck that Edward knew about but wasn't supposed to reveal or else 'he'd get his face inverted' by one of his roommates.

Obviously, since he was currently lying on a grey brick-like mattress in a grey brick-lined room, he hadn't been deployed.

It was… a complex concept at the moment for him. On one hand, he hadn't been chosen to fight, then die. On the metal handicapped side, he hadn't been chosen to fight, then die.

So he lay there on his brick, in the dark, staring at the ceiling, trying to avoid that complex subject and address a different complex subject. He was trying to remember again. At this point, it was like trying to revive a burn victim with a spatula, but it was still there. Those blank spots, mocking him.

He grew up in Resembool, with his mother. She died. Winry was a childhood friend, and he practically lived with her and granny Pinako after that happened. Winry's parents were dead. He had tried something… he couldn't remember, it was an alchemic experiment, and that cost him his arm and leg but also got him into the military at twelve years of age. He kicked ass. It was awesome.

Terrifying most of the time, frustrating half the time, completely dehumanizing some of the time, but altogether not entirely regrettable. He had made some amazing friends, military people and random people who he helped or who helped him along the way. Some of them died. It really sucked working under Mustang. They'd (they?) had an overarching goal that whole time, though. It had to do with his arm and leg… And something else. He couldn't remember.

Then something happened, the something that obviously ruined everything, and he ended up with the Mustangs, who were at that point still 'Mustang and Hawkeye who lived awkwardly together and claimed they weren't a couple'. He wasn't really entirely 'there' for that period of time. Most of it was spent in and out of hospitals (cringe) fixing who knows what, therapy for something or other, and sleeping. Lots of sleeping and staring and pretending to be dead. Wanting to be dead.

But he didn't care about remembering that part.

Then, of course, that was all he could think about, so that ended the recall-failure of the night.

He thought about Roy and Riza. They were already out there, with the fighting and the dying and all the mess. He knew that they weren't dead, couldn't be dead, because they were both too good at staying alive, so he thought about how they were probably already through half the Drachmans and were heading the Amestrian army single-handedly. Or four-handedly, if you counted two gloves and two hands for a gun. He thought about their reunion after the war was over, and seeing Isaac again.

More importantly, seeing Isaac see them again. The poor boy was probably desperate for his family by now, even though he had all the attention he could want from Gracia and Elysia. They were safe in Central; Hakuro was too paranoid to let anything bad happen there. Isaac would be asleep now, wearing the bear pajamas that he wore every night. Every, single night. He had six pairs of the same exact bear pajamas, and hopefully he wouldn't figure out that they weren't all the same, singular set while they were away, or else Gracia would have a huge tantrum on her hands.

Isaac and Elysia got on so well together you'd think they were siblings, and Gracia was an expert at handling the madness of the two children. Ed was assured that they were together; it meant that Isaac wouldn't feel too alone while he was in this stinking place, waiting to go to an even worse place.

Thinking of Isaac cheered him up, just a little, and made him feel a little closer to home. Er, the Mustangs' place, he edited mentally. But considering everything else, where he was now, how separate he felt from Resembool, he felt like the Mustangs' place was really …Home.

Or maybe that was just the current lack of a warm shower and brick-bed talking.

Suddenly his late night thoughts were interrupted, quite literally, by stretched out hand slowly making its way into his view. He turned to his side to face the perpetrator, annoyed.

"Eh, sorry, I jus' didn't wan' to startle you suddenly. Las' time I think you broke a rib."

"You deserved it. Miller, what are you doing over here?"

Creek also had not been deployed. A shame.

"Couldn' sleep." Edward understood that.

"Yes, but what are you doing over here? You were put in the C unit of bunks, right?"

"Well," the taller teen's face flushed vaguely in the dim light. "You're kinda the only one I really know an' I had to get up an' walk som'ere 'cause that room was jus' too small."

The C unit (there were only three still in use after the deployment) was the smallest of the ones used for ordinary soldiers, about half the physical size of Edward's. The thing was that C had to hold the same amount of people as the other units. It was cramped to say the least, and Edward counted his blessings that he hadn't been put there, given his usual luck.

"Alright, what do you want to do?"

"Talk, don't talk, somethin' I don' care. I jus' can't be in that place anymore."

"How about we find you a bed. There must be an empty one in here somewhere."

As much as Edward liked Creek in a 'you didn't run me up a flagpole at the first opportunity' kind of way, he could not deal with the friendly giant or his speech patterns at this hour of the night. He had no idea what time it was, but it was too late for that.

Carefully, to avoid squeaking and waking the entire building, Edward sat up and rose from his bed, cursing each metal mattress coil with every move his sore back had to make. He regretted the whole plot the second his feet made contact with the floor, as he was halfway certain that somehow the room had turned into an ice-skating rink overnight.

Creek got up from his kneeling position and jumped to stride along next to Ed in hopes of finding a place to sleep. It was easy enough; the closest empty bunk was only a quarter of the way down the room from Edward's. He left, waving a silent farewell without looking back before Creek could even get under the covers. His feet were probably already frostbitten and the rest of him was soon to follow. Brick or nay, he would rest in warmth, at least.

And somehow, after that, it was easier to clear his head and, at some point not much later, let himself drop into sleep.

Edward was woken by a horrible, horrible noise. A megaphone, he later found out, but in that moment, it was Satan's rooster. He was sore, in all likelihood had only slept a couple short hours, and would not stand to face the freezing cold of the environment outside the blanket. He rolled over and pulled the blankets over his head in a both juvenile and ineffective attempt to ignore time and return to sleep.

Someone kicked his bedframe. Correction: someone with a death wish kicked his bedframe. He rolled out of bed groggy but ready to beat down some sorry punk… When the sorry punk turned out to be Asserstein. Edward slumped, defeated, and tramped off to breakfast. The only good thing that he had to look forward to today.

Or not. He'd gotten all the way to the cafeteria, the only place in this whole camp that he could find without getting lost twice, and was rewarded with a meager serving of cardboard, topped with frozen butter, and a patty of some long-ago deceased and processed pig filled mostly with mysterious grease and pepper. If there was anything they had a lot of, it was pepper. And the chefs were proud of this pepper, and hence used it on absolutely anything and everything that went through their kitchen.

Beside the food, he sat with Creek (who was suffering because apparently the C beds are better than the B beds) in the weirdly empty mess hall, and the conversation between them was nonexistent. At least, on Edward's part. He was sure it was very interesting for Creek, who wouldn't shut up, but Ed missed out on a lot of it because he was trying his hardest to tune it all out.

Too soon, it hit five a.m. Time to go to work.

He and Creek met up with the remainder of the populous outside, in a crowd headed by none other than General Asserstein. The man was still holding that horrible device, the megaphone, and clearly he was as fond of that thing as he was his own face, because he used it constantly.

"Everyone here!? Good! Now all of you run your sorry asses around the track, ten laps! Go!"

"Did I say stop, Jensen?! Run harder, failures!"

"Elric, get back in line! You have five more laps!"

"Feeling tired losers?! The day has just begun!"

If he didn't stop soon Edward was going to take it and shove it down an orifice. The only question was which one.

Finally they finished running, or 'warm up', as the tormentor called it, and moved on to actual drills. Then formations. Then complicated running, involving tires and walls. Then more drills.

It was around noon when the overcast sky finally broke and gave way to a heavy downpour. They went on, all drenched and frozen, regardless. There was so much sweat by then that it didn't matter too much anyway, and the water came welcome to most of them. Emphasis on 'most'; Edward would be drying the automail and praying it didn't rust before then as soon as they were done, and all the while would be tending to aching ports in the meantime. Rain was a stupid and misfortunate, but not unmanageable. So predictably it would not be the only problem.

The next drill: enemy grenade. Someone would toss in a defused grenade to their usual formation and they scattered until it was clear. It was probably the easiest drill of the day, the only test of effectiveness being the soldiers' ability to see a thing fly in and run away.

They ran through it a couple times, and by the third run Edward thought it might be a better usage of his time to run away into a bush and sleep there a while.

They regrouped for the fourth. Edward marched like the rest of them, Creek in front, some Fat guy behind. The bomb came in, as per usual. Not so as per usual: this one looked a little smaller than the others. And Edward, being an idiot, muttered that it was different before the mass flee. And Creek, being more of an idiot, stopped to examine this difference while everyone else ran like they were supposed to.

Edward realized that he was indeed the biggest idiot when he stayed behind to pull Creek out of the way and saw that it looked smaller because the pin was pulled out.

They were only as far away from it as Edward could jump with the weight of both of them when it went off.

The explosion was not a large one, and it was most likely just a screw up in the stocking. A live one slips in to the duds, the pin falls out when it's thrown, one stupid coincidence after the other. But it went off, loud enough to deafen anyone within close range.

One second Edward was jumping, falling away from a fire that chased after them in the rain, the next, he was in darkness, feeling only the rain and the heat, and hearing nothing but the aftershock of an explosion and tearing metal and wild, desperate screams. He was somewhere else. Somewhere he knew he should know very well.

It was dark, and everything about the night was cold, other than what was left of the explosion. Other than the pricks that were forming in his eyes. He turned back to the fire and was immediately blinded by its harsh light, in contrast with the darkness of the alley. The stone felt cold beneath his hands. Everything was cold. He stared at the flames, burning out his retinas, stared in shock and anger and disbelief, because there was someone he'd left behind. Someone in the fire.

No, Creek was next to him, they were safe…

Inside the fire. Maybe safe on the other side…? No. Inside. But that would be okay, the armor couldn't be affected too badly…

Armor?

He glanced around, desperate. He didn't think of calling out. He wanted to get up, and tried hobbling forward, toward the fire, but he couldn't move. He could make it in the fire, clapped his hands in preparation to make a shield for when he got there, but he couldn't move. He looked at his legs. Leg. Which was very clearly broken at the femur and burned severely. He'd be lucky to see it healed in his lifetime, let alone soon enough to venture into the fire.

No, people were trying to move him, couldn't they see his leg..?

He wouldn't believe that he was alone. There had to be someone in the fire, but still no movement came from the flames. He thought he saw shadows within their dancing tendrils now, he'd been staring for so long. He realized that he could use his voice, and he did. Or tried to. The first attempt, his voice was too hoarse to produce a sound. He tried again.

"A… Al…" It wasn't loud enough. Clearly, it wasn't loud enough, or he would hear a response.

"A-Al! Can you- can you hear me?!" Nothing. Not loud enough.

"Al! Alphonse!" Nothing moved within the flames, no sound came from any direction. Not. Loud. Enough.

"ALPHONSE! ANSWER ME! AL!" He screamed now, ripping through his throat. No sign of response, anywhere.

Alphonse.

He searched the area, desperate. He became acutely aware of the feeling of his eyes moving around, and felt the warm tears that melted with the rain on his face. He kept screaming. Then he noticed it, a tiny piece of metal, gleaming in the firelight. A little, unimportant piece of scrap metal. Please, please, let that be true. He squinted to see it better in the partial darkness and the rain. And he saw the blood, his blood, in an arrangement he had drawn there so many years ago. And he knew it well enough to know that half of it was missing.

All he heard were the screams of someone half dead and dying, someone who had been torn apart from the inside. And he realized that they were his own.

-philos