So sorry about disappearing on a cliffhanger like I did, but here's the new chapter and the next one will hopefully come out sooner because I'm getting ideas for this story again :)

So please leave reviews! (But no flames because they're really discouraging)

Chapter twelve

Al was scared. Right now he was sitting inside the small office behind the reception desk, playing bait. The door was locked and he was sitting in his wheelchair with most of the hospital's blood transfusion bags spread across the room in coolers. And outside that door, Riza was fighting against all the vampires that were after him. It had been Al's suggestion that they did it this way. That Al would play bait inside the reception room with all the blood transfusion bags so that the vampires wouldn't have a reason to attack either patients or staff or break into other parts of the building to steal the blood bags. There were a couple of military officers who had joined Riza outside the door, but the hospital security staff had been assigned to guard the patients.

And Al didn't know what was going on with Riza or if Brother and Captain Mustang were fine. They could be fighting right now outside that door, Brother could be standing there, too scared of breaking down the door to knock on it.

Or he could be unconscious because if what Riza said happened to most newly-turned vampires happened to Brother, then Ed was most likely really ill right now.

Al found the thought terrifying. If Brother was sick and the vampires were trying to kill him, then that was really bad and Brother could get seriously injured. And he had been acting strange about his powers and Al knew that he was keeping things from him. Things that were important.

Which was why Al had decided to steal a blood bag out of one of the coolers as they hadn't been counted because of the rush of the situation, so now he had it hidden beneath the coat that Riza had lent him.

He didn't like the thought of stealing from a hospital, but technically, they shouldn't mind because blood transfusion bags were meant to be used to help sick people who needed it.

And Brother was sick and needed it and he couldn't go and get blood transfusion bags nearly as easily as the hospital could.

And so he was torn in his own dilemma, because if Brother needed blood because he was ill, then Al needed to help. And so he was feeling a bit guilty about stealing a blood bag from a hospital, but they would count them and get new ones and everything would be fine.

... I feel bad about stealing, though.

Roy didn't know if he should punch something or laugh out loud.

Yes, he had run into a bloodbath and a sea of dissolving vampire corpses, their blood seeping out from their severed necks and heads, staining the floor, but the source of the bloodcurdling scream of terror and pain had been a surprising one.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO GET VAMPIRE BLOOD OUT OF THE SPACE BETWEEN THE TILES?!" the cleaner wailed in misery, staring at the room, looking like she had found her child dead.

Roy decided to keep his cold mask on because laughing was likely to get him slapped hard. And he could understand her despair to some extent. There was a reason that there were special military laundry rooms to have your uniform dry-cleaned after a hunt, or otherwise you'd be stuck with a uniform whose blood stains weren't going to disappear. It had taken the researchers ten years to find a way to get the spots out because of the millions of cens that went into replacing uniforms every year.

Roy sighed and walked over to Riza, untying the child strapped to his back and handed Edward to her. The kid was still out cold and only wearing his swimming trunks and was wrapped up in a blanket. "Where's Alphonse?"

"He's safe inside the office there," she told him, nodding towards the room behind the reception desk. "He hasn't been injured beyond what he was admitted for in the first place," she continued. "And you?"

"No new injuries here, what about you?" he asked, looking her over, taking in the large amount of blood staining most of her uniform and the few drops that had landed on her face mask.

"No injuries either. There were no casualties and as far as I understand, the only injury was to a nurse who ran too fast up the stairs and sprained her wrist as she fell."

Roy let out a relieved sigh. "Then please take Edward to Alphonse while I sort out the rest of the situation, Riza."

She nodded and headed for the office. Roy turned to the two officers. They were a Sergeant and a Second Lieutenant judging by their uniforms. They were looking at him uncertainly and he could understand why, people who didn't know about him and Riza were usually very confused by their way of being around each other as it was often misinterpreted as a romantic relationship, which felt incredibly wrong to think about and was highly disturbing. "Don't worry, there aren't any anti-fraternisation laws being broken here, she's more or less my little sister," he told them. "Now please go inform the hospital staff that the situation has been handled and that the patients can be returned to their rooms."

The two officers seemed to suddenly remember that they were speaking to a superior officer and saluted him. "Yes, sir! Should we inform the nurses that the older Elric requires medical assistance?"

"That's not necessary. He's been sedated due to the panic caused by finding himself caught in the middle of a raid again. He was nearly carried off for lunchboxing only yesterday after his entire hometown was massacred. The paramedics therefore issued me with some emergency sedatives as a precaution."

Roy knew he shouldn't take pleasure in it, but there was something highly satisfying about serving people one piece of believable bullshit after another while secretly saving a vampire. It felt a bit like he spent most of his time giving his parents the finger.

He still kept his face unreadable, of course.

"Oh, I see, sir. We'll go inform the staff about the patients."

Roy nodded and went over to one of the few clean spots left on top the reception desk, pulling out his chequebook and stealing a pen from one of the drawers, before writing down a cheque for forty thousand cens. He would have involved the other cleaning staff, but it was highly apparent that this was a woman who wouldn't let ANYONE touch HER floor because they would do it wrong.

"Miss, may I ask what your name is?" Roy inquired calmly, looking over at the sobbing woman who was kneeling on the floor, clutching the bottom of a mop in her hands. She obviously had no idea what was going on around her beside the state of her floor tiles.

"M-Monica!" she sobbed.

Roy wrote it down. "And surname?"

"B-Braxton-Digby."

"With a hyphen?" he asked. She was obviously too heartbroken to even wonder why he was asking.

"Y-yes!"

And so Roy wrote it down before signing the cheque. He had grabbed his wallet and chequebook before leaving the room at the inn for exactly this sort of thing. The military was probably going to only pay the expenses for the destroyed property. There were a couple of smashed windows and lightbulbs and the front doors weren't exactly in the best shape. But they were hardly likely to pay the cleaners anything other than the minimum wages for overtime. Plus, Roy still felt responsible for what happened as the attack was due to his wards' presence.

And so he sighed and walked over to the despairing woman, holding it out in front of her face. "For the overtime."

The sobs stopped in half a second as she reached out for the cheque with trembling hands, her beloved mop on her lap. "Wha-what is this?" Then she read the sum. Then she began wailing and hugged his legs tightly for the next five minutes straight while Roy gave the top of her head a couple of pats to comfort her.

"Miss Monica, if you wouldn't mind, I have two children to take care of now," Roy told her.

She immediately released his legs, looking up at him tearfully as she straightened out her back and saluted him with both hands at the same time obviously as a show of respect, the cheque held reverently in her right hand. "YES, SIR!"

Roy had to say that the plump woman before him was an interesting one.

He nodded at her and headed in the direction of the office, knocking on the door before stepping inside and locking it behind him, finding Alphonse sitting in his wheelchair and with Riza kneeling on the floor with Edward leaning against her chest. "Hello, Alphonse, how are you doing?"

"I-I'm fine, sir," Al said quietly, his eyes betraying more than a little horror at Roy and Riza's current state of being covered by blood.

"Good. Riza, please look after Ed and Al for a bit longer, I'll go see if I can find us some clothes and a car. I think it's safer if we go back to East City right away before we attract another nest."

"Of course, Roy," she said, giving him a small smile and giving Al's hand a small squeeze. She had removed the face mask which was probably a good thing considering Al's current state of frozen horror.

Ed woke up with a headache and a pretty distinct level of queasiness. He opened his eyes sluggishly, only to find himself lying in the backseat of a car, Al lying on the seat opposite him, using Mustang's lap as a pillow. "Al? What? Where are we?"

Then Ed realised that his mouth tasted of blood again, and panic flooded him because he could immediately tell that it didn't belong to any of the car's other occupants.

Unsurprisingly, Mustang immediately clamped his hand over Ed's mouth. "No shouting. It was a blood transfusion bag from the hospital. We're on our way back to my house, we're much less likely to be attacked there."

Ed shoved the hand away. "What the hell happened?" he asked in a frustrated whisper.

"You passed out, we fought off the vampires, your brother stole a blood transfusion bag and I bought someone's car."

"Seriously?" was all Ed could think of saying.

"Yes, Edward. Now I suggest you lie back down again and get some more sleep, we'll be in East City in about four hours."

Ed just glared at him. "No way in hell."

Then he froze with realisation. He had passed out while wearing his swimming trunks, but now he was back to wearing the clothes he had worn as he fell asleep and he was DEFINITELY wearing boxers and not swimming trunks under the sweatpants. "You stripped me and changed my clothes?!"

Mustang saw it fit to clamp his hand over his mouth again. "Yes, but I wasn't peeking if that's what you're wondering. My eyes were closed in fact."

Ed glared into his eyes, blushing, but he could tell that he wasn't lying, and so he pushed his hand away once more. "Whatever. But there's no way I'll just be going back to sleep again."

Mustang sighed and leaned back into his seat. "Suit yourself."

"Brother, please rest, you're still not well," Al said pleadingly.

Ed could tell from the redness of his little brother's eyes that Al had forced himself to stay awake for the entire drive just to make sure that Ed was okay. His stomach clenched and he used his right arm for a pillow. "Okay, Al, but you make sure to sleep too."

The next thing he knew, there was crunching on gravel as they drove slowly up a hill. He lifted his head, his nose being assaulted by plants and trees. The car was lit by daylight and Mustang was asleep as well as Al.

Ed was sitting up, feeling a lot better than he had before.

Then he froze as he looked out the car window.

There was a GIANT garden outside, with topiaries and a croquet course and a hell of a lot of hedges and plants and gravel paths going in between them.

Which must mean that we're at his house...

Ed turned around and looked out of the other window and froze yet again. It was a giant manor built in stone painted white and with a tower at each corner judging by what he could see and there were even a couple of turrets and large windows and balconies and it was HUGE. And yet Ed could only think of one thing to say. "Riza? Is this seriously where we're gonna live?"

"Yes, Edward."

Ed felt his stomach clench. "So there are lots of people working here?"

"No. There are two cleaners by the names of Holly and Pru and who come here every Monday and Friday and there's Reginald the gardener who works here four days a week. Other than that, we do the work ourselves."

"And you two have eleven bedrooms to choose between," came Mustang's sleepy voice.

Ed turned around sharply to stare at him. "What?"

Mustang just sighed, rubbing some sleep out of his eyes. "Welcome to the Mustang Estate." Then he scoffed. "Or at least the one in East City..."

Hohenheim was in pain. He had been so for the past seven years ever since he was chained up here in the first place. He would have been able to escape, hadn't it been for the fact that his body was being continuously pumped full of blood from dead vampires, poisoning every vein in his body, leaving him powerless to do anything but hang here limply in his shackles. And every time he was getting too weak and sick and at risk of dying, they would bring down a human child, stab their neck and force the blood into his mouth as the child screamed in pain and fear.

And then they'd leave the corpse on the floor, letting it rot and decay for him to watch as he was trapped in this hell.

There were too many. They were everywhere. All those dead children. Three hundred and ninety-four of them spread out on the floor inside this large room. None of them were ever removed. All of them there to remind him of his "sin."

After seven years of constant torture, he had learnt to separate his mind from his body, even if it didn't do him any good in terms of escape.

But at least this way his head was clear enough to mourn the innocent lives that were strewn around him. At least he could feel the sorrow over the lost lives instead of ignoring them in favour of his own pain.

The pumps next to him kept him nutritionally in order, the tubes connected to his back filling him with whatever was necessary, as well as the last tank of vampire blood that kept being refilled so that his torment would never end.

He heard footsteps coming down the stairs as he recognised Envy's smell. He felt a sense of relief at the fact that there wasn't anyone else with him this time. No screaming children.

Hohenheim had only seen his brother once these past seven years, and that was the day he was brought here. It seemed that Dante, or "Mother" as she called herself, had no interest in meeting him either. Apparently they had nothing more to say to him. Hohenheim had a strong suspicion that the only reason that they kept him alive was that they were using him to keep the few vampires who knew about his existence sated by seeing him punished for his crime of actually caring about humans. He was a traitor to not only his race, but to his blood status.

The Alphas Envy and Pride had taken it upon themselves to keep the torture going. Pride would usually be the one to drag the children down here whenever Envy was sent away to do something for either Father or Mother. Envy was however the one who took the greatest pleasure in Hohenheim's torment. He'd come down here a few times a week just to talk to him about people who'd died horribly and describe it in detail so that he could see the despair in Hohenheim's eyes.

It was never a good sign when Envy was in a cheerful mood like he was now. He stepped inside the room and made sure to step on a few extra skeletons on his way over to him, making him flinch inwardly at the sound of skulls being pulverised under his feet. "Hi, there, Uncle Van!" Envy announced, walking all the way up to him and grabbing his chin to force his head up to face him. "I've got some really interesting news for you today."

Hohenheim felt a stab of fear in his chest. Envy had never looked so maliciously pleased as he did right now. He could think of only one thing that could cause this sort of reaction, but that wasn't possible.

"I mean, seriously, we knew you were a traitorous bastard, but this?" he said, his eyes filled with disgust and hatred, but also excitement at seeing Hohenheim's reaction.

He felt like throwing up when Envy used his powers to change his appearance into someone who was undoubtedly his eldest son, even if he looked seven years older than he had done last time he saw him. "You actually had children with one of those filthy human worms!"

Hohenheim had so many questions, so many things he needed to know, but he couldn't ask a single one with panic and fear making him feel like he couldn't breathe.

"I bet you're wondering right now just what happened to those filthy brats of yours, don't you? And your little slut?" Envy said gleefully, "Well, this one...?" he said, changing his shape into Trisha's making his chest constrict even further with guilt and pain. He had left in order to look for a cure once he smelled the sickness on her. He couldn't feed from her when she was going to be considerably weakened by what he could tell was going to be fatal. He had promised to return to them with a cure, but ended up being discovered by Envy in disguise and had been chained up here, knowing that Trisha was going to die wondering and hoping for his return before it was too late.

And he had been powerless to stop it.

He felt tears going down his cheeks in grief and despair. There was no way that his sons had been left unharmed.

"...This one died about eight weeks after we found you," Envy said, grinning, his voice desecrating Trisha's image, turning the love of his life into the vilest ventriloquist doll he had ever seen.

He then changed his shape again, this time making himself look like Alphonse, and he even changed his voice to a sweet and childlike one, leaving Hohenheim with no doubt that that would be how his son sounded these days.

If he was even alive.

"Oh, don't worry, little Alfie here is all right, just a bit shaken after everyone in Resembool were slaughtered, except for himself and Big Brother Eddie," he explained, planting a grotesque smile on his youngest son's sweet features.

Hohenheim felt his whole world twist with fear and grief. All his friends had been wiped out because of him, and yet Envy wasn't done, leaving him terrified of what would come next. This was his fault. His sons were suffering and he couldn't stop it.

When Envy changed his form back to Edward's, he knew what must have happened and his insides twisted with misery and guilt.

"And now Little Eddie here's just like his Daddy, isn't that great?! And we had the one who turned him make it sound like we had been looking for them for years, just so that he'll really blame you for this!" Envy said, planting that beastly grin on Ed's face. "And the best part is, they've been taken in by none other than Roy Mustang!" he finished, laughing as he left Hohenheim alone inside this hellhole that reeked with death.

I'm so sorry, Trisha.

I'm so sorry...

The only sounds left were the pat pat of his tears landing on the skull below him.