Roy's head hurt.
Not one of those up-too-early-not-enough-caffeine sort of headaches, but one of those probably-a-concussion ones.
The more aware he became, the more he realized it wasn't just his head, but his whole body. The only logical scenario Roy's addled mind could come up with at the moment was that he'd been hit by a train.
And the more conscious he became, the more he regretted it.
Ouch.
Finally, when he was still far too awake for his liking, Roy cracked open his eyes.
The light was thankfully dim, but he still squinted, trying to make his blurred vision feed him more than colored fuzz. There was something familiar about that blob in front of him, but he couldn't quite figure it out.
He blinked hard, bringing the world into focus for half a second.
It looked like his bedroom.
"Colonel?"
Too loud.
Roy groaned, dragging his hand up to cover his eyes like that might stop noise.
What was Ed doing here in his bedroom?
What was Roy doing here in his bedroom?
A lot of things just weren't making sense right now.
But that was definitely the soft give of a mattress under his aching back, and yes, the ceiling still had that scorch mark from that one time Hughes made a surprise visit right after his deployment. Yes, this was his bedroom.
But something was wrong here. Something he was supposed to be doing, to be remembering.
It didn't make any sense.
Had the facility been a dream? All he could recall were smells and flashes. Maybe it had all been some ghastly nightmare.
Then what was he forgetting?
"Colonel, I'd feel a lot better if you'd say something."
Roy managed a moan.
". . . not what I had in mind, but okay."
It took a minute, but Roy finally forced his eyes to focus on the blob beside him. He made out a pale shape and a blur of gold hair.
"Fullmetal?" He tried, but the word came out mush.
The blob shifted, and Roy wasn't sure if he could handle any more visual input at the moment. He closed his eyes and pressed his head back into the pillow. Maybe he'd been drugged before he was hit by the train.
"Yeah, it's me," Ed said. His voice was guarded, and Roy wasn't quite sure why.
"What happened?" It sounded more like human speech this time.
"Um . . . we . . ." Ed fumbled. "We brought you home."
Roy didn't remember that, but he was pretty sure he had strong feelings about it. He couldn't summon them at the moment, though.
"Here," the boy said, and Roy opened his eyes again. This time he was greeted by a blurry glass of water a few inches from his face. A hand slipped behind his aching shoulder blades, propping him up enough to let the cool liquid wash over his lips.
Once he started drinking, he couldn't seem to stop.
"Um . . ." Ed began, pulling the glass back uncertainly.
Roy chased after it though, and before he quite knew what he was doing, he had sucked down the whole thing.
It wasn't enough.
"More water . . ." he thought for a second. "Please."
Hawkeye would have been proud.
The boy was much more in focus now, despite Roy's throbbing head. Edward looked at him like he was expecting Roy to bite him, and Roy wasn't sure what he'd done to warrant the expression. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
The look Roy gave him must have been convincing enough because he let Roy back down and headed for the bathroom.
Roy's bathroom. In Roy's house.
Yes, that was the problem, wasn't it? When did Roy get in his house?
Wrong. All wrong.
And Roy couldn't remember why.
The tap hissed and cut off, and Ed reappeared with the glass, his mouth pulled taut and uncharacteristically silent.
Roy tried to get an elbow under himself, but the muscles in his abdomen cramped hard. The fibers cinched and sent a sharp spasm ripping up through his very core, lightening-bright pain bouncing all the way up to his head.
Roy might have whimpered, collapsing back to the mattress, writhing his whole aching body in an attempt to rid himself of this single agony. A hand pressed on his bare shoulder, but he hurt too much to acknowledge it or to comfort the child attached.
It felt like he was breathing fire.
An eternity later, he finally rode out the wave of misery and sagged against the sheets, sweaty and shaking, completely spent.
"Colonel, please don't move," Ed begged, and if Roy had possessed more brain power to devote to the task, he might have marveled at Ed's use of the word 'please.' Hawkeye would have had a lot to be proud of today. As it was, the air burned with the bitter taste of worry, and Roy didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about anything. "You've still got a bullet in your chest. Do . . . do you remember anything?"
Roy panted, eyes locking on the glass of water. He was so thirsty, like he was twenty-one again, trudging through the sand with fifty pounds of equipment on his back under the blazing Ishvalan sun. His tongue was swollen in his mouth, his breath dry. Maybe it was just dehydration from blood loss—a bullet in his chest? — but Ed seemed to get the hint and once more slipped an automail hand behind his back, propping him up and pressing the glass to his lips.
Roy inhaled it, the cold liquid flooding over his tongue and down his throat to clear out the dust.
Real or imaginary, it didn't matter.
When the glass was empty again, Ed eased him back against the pillow. "Do you remember anything?" he asked again, the glass thumping against the nightstand.
Roy blinked slowly as he dragged a warm hand over his mouth, searching his memory and coming up empty. "No, but I'm . . . not supposed to be here."
Ed's face settled into an expression that Roy's sluggish mind wasn't sure how to interpret. "What's the last thing you do remember?"
Roy thought back. "I'm . . . I was in the lab. You were there . . . why were you there?"
Why was Roy there?
Ed pressed his lips together. "What else do you remember?"
" . . I . . . I think I was attacked—no, I attacked somebody . . ." he trailed off, vaguely aware that he probably shouldn't be saying that out loud, much less in front of Ed, but his brain simply smiled and nodded and his mouth kept going. "You were there . . . Al was there."
He remembered sinking his teeth into someone's throat, and he remembered the taste of blood.
It had tasted good.
Roy was going to be sick.
He rolled over the side of the bed away from Ed, the momentum carrying him over the edge of the mattress, the jarring pain knocking the breath from his lungs. He tried to catch himself with a fist to the floor and noticed with a spike of panic that it wasn't gloved. Neither of his hands were.
Why does that matter?
His elbow buckled under him and he went face-first into the plush carpet, heaving out every bit of the water he had just drank. His legs fell heavy behind him, the pain of impact barely noticeable.
"Colonel!" Ed cried, mismatched feet thumping and pounding over to his side of the bed. Two hands, one hard and one soft, yanked him up under the armpits.
Way too fast.
His vision twirled, tilted, and darkened, his gut rolling hard, and he retched again. He curled forward like a dying beetle, his chest spasming hard.
Was that where he'd been shot? It felt like that's where he'd been shot. Either that or someone had taken a screwdriver to his diaphragm.
Which, given the trajectory of his life these days, wasn't outside of the realm of possibility.
He needed to get away.
Roy wasn't sure where the thought had come from, but it sounded reasonable to his muddled brain.
"Mustang?"
"Let go."
"What?"
Roy snarled and Ed's hands vanished.
Satisfied, Roy dragged himself around the foaming puddle of bile on the floor and under the bed.
It was much darker here, the air musty and stale. Dust motes kicked up and tickled his nose, but it was smaller and it was safer.
Yes. Safer.
He pushed himself against the wall, the fit tight but vastly preferable to the openness of the outside world. Exhaustion and pain zapped his strength while that muddy confusion from before took his focus. Despite that, he tracked Ed through half-lidded eyes, watching his booted feet shuffle side-to-side before the boy kneeled with a wash of gold bangs. A pair of golden, worried eyes peered under the bed.
"Mustang. . .?"
"Hand me a pillow."
Ed blinked, hesitating only a second before his face disappeared then reappeared with a pillow in hand.
Roy dragged it under the bed, reflexively bunching his hands underneath the fabric and pressing the pillow to his chest, curling forward, letting his body relax into it with only a small grimace as his weight settled. It smelled like his own shampoo, like spice and mesquite, and the scent was comforting.
"Colonel . . . what are you doing?"
Roy didn't really have an answer that didn't sound stupid, so he settled for, "I'm taking a nap."
"The bed not good enough for you?" There was a bit too much of an edge to his voice to be snark.
Ed was worried. Roy could smell it.
He hated that he knew that, and didn't want to think about how he knew it.
"Nope."
Ed settled onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows, but his fingers splayed on the carpet like he would spring to his feet if Roy so much as twitched the wrong way. He bit his lip, eyes shifting from Roy's face to the floor, and Roy could tell he wanted to say something.
Roy studied the boy's face, really looking at him for the first time. His eyes were ringed with purple bruises, hair thrown back in a messy tail and not the carefully manicured braid he normally kept it in. His skin was a bit paler than Roy remembered, and his cheeks were maybe just a bit thinner. Roy couldn't say he knew Ed extremely well, but he had observed a few things over the past couple of years. He could see the signs of long-term stress clearly now. Roy wondered what had put them there, and why no one had been checking up on the boy in his absence.
Had Roy been gone that long? It was just a lab inspection, right?
Why did he remember biting someone?
What else couldn't he remember?
"Are you okay?" Roy asked, too eager to ignore the churning questions in his head.
Ed regarded him strangely. "Yeah, fine . . . I'm fine. And . . .you?"
"Fine." Roy said, then smiled wryly. "Couple of great conversationalists, aren't we?"
Ed's lip twisted. "Experts."
"Where's Alphonse?"
Ed looked away. It was one of his tells; Roy always knew when the kid was hiding something. "He's downstairs."
Roy's smile faded just a bit. Something else was nagging in the back of his head, something wrong that he couldn't quite remember, couldn't quite pinpoint.
He remembered he was supposed to be assigned to the lab, but after that there were only flashes.
If he was supposed to be in the lab and wasn't . . .
"Was it a dream?"
Ed hadn't exactly been moving, but now he froze like a rabbit sensing a predator. "Was what a dream?"
Roy hesitated, then slowly pulled his left hand from underneath the pillow.
XxXxX
"Again."
Roy didn't have a choice. He couldn't have stopped even if he wanted to.
And he didn't.
He surged forward, flames lapping up his legs and singeing fur, smoke raking his eyes.
Someone screamed.
Blood ran down his throat.
XxXxX
The forest was life and death, sustenance and want, safety and peril.
Here was decay.
Here was the end.
XxXxX
Electricity arced his body, burning up his nerves, every muscle spasming at once.
"Learn your place."
XxXxX
Roy didn't know who he was or where they had found the hapless man. Was he a lab worker that had asked too many questions? A foreign spy? A political prisoner?
It didn't matter.
Because when they gave the order, Roy ripped the cries right from his throat.
XxXxX
It hurt so much, the blue and gold lights of transmutation ripping his body apart and stitching it back together.
It hurt.
XxXxX
Kill.
Kill kill kill.
This wasn't him. This isn't who he was.
But if this wasn't him, Then… who was he?
XxXxX
"I'll be back, you idiot."
"Don't come back."
"I won't leave you here!"
XxXxX
He remembered.
Roy buried his face in the pillow, his head about to split open any second. "You . . . idiot."
". . . Colonel?"
He could feel his bones shifting, his teeth growing in his mouth. "What did you do?"
"Colonel, what's happening?" There was a tremble in Ed's voice, and Roy smelled that familiar fear again, burning his nose even through the pillow.
Ed was afraid of him.
Roy tried to breathe, tried to control it, but his heart was starting to race. Even without a shirt or blankets he was way too hot.
Way too afraid.
Get away.
He couldn't just run now, he couldn't. Running now was stupid. It was still daylight. Someone would see, the military would shoot him.
Maybe they hadn't noticed he was gone. Maybe he could wait until dark and sneak back in.
The door creaked open, familiar armor clanking, and Roy's pulse kicked up another notch.
Roy was a calm, rational man. He didn't lose control under pressure. He did not give in to panic and rage.
His claws punctured the pillow.
Keep the monster there. Keep it contained.
That quiet, angry voice that didn't belong to him — until it did —whispered again.
Get away.
No.
Every muscle, every bone, burned. Even his hair burned.
Flames lapped up his legs, singeing fur, smoke raking his eyes.
Protect the pups, get away.
No.
Get away get away get away.
No.
Go!
His paws clenched, shredding the pillow to ribbons.
He could save himself or he could save the pups.
It wasn't a choice.
He couldn't have stopped even if he wanted to.
And he didn't.
Again.
Roy shot from under the bed on scrabbling claws, tearing both pillow and carpet as he raced past Ed.
"Colonel!"
Roy didn't hesitate, didn't pause to look at Alphonse.
Instead, he smashed through the window.
Always rough when your dog runs away from home /shot/.
JKJK xD At least Mustang is adjusting to life on the outside well . . . :'D Not like Ed's gonna feel baseless guilt about any of this, no sir . . .
Many thanks to mildlynerdy once more for bringing out the sense in my nonsense :heart:.
If you're following GSPM, you might remember my AN at the end about my shower spider, the shower buddy that I did not ask for and was too scared to remove myself. Sad/thrilled to say that the humidity did not agree with him. He curled up in the corner, closed all of his ten million eyes, and went to that great big spider web in the sky within a couple of days. RIP, little shower buddy. He received a traditional toilet send-off, and donations to cover the cost of burial (i.e. the monthly water bills) appreciated in lieu of flowers.
Spider tragedies aside, I am in the middle of moving my parents (the real tragedy) and it i s. The movers are coming next week, my mom is freaking out, and I am losing my mind xD All that to say that replies to reviews/comments are coming, they just might be delayed, as it is one a.m. here and I just got home from helping them with house stuff and I am beat. But you guys are the bestest and I appreciate you so much :heart: ;u; I read (and re-read xD) every single word you guys write and scream a little each time.
You can always tell how tired I am by how long and rambley my ANs are xD Please drop a comment/review if you have the time and I'll see you next update :)
God Bless,
-RainFlame