Hello, students!
Today we're going to learn about the discovery of viruses, the invention of the first viral vaccine, and why milk is always boiled as soon as it's out of the cow!
That's not a joke!
Don't mess with wild animals or you'll be like Ed-Boi!
Colonel Roy Mustang knew something was wrong when Alphonse Elric burst into his office.
Alphonse Elric did not "burst" into anywhere.
The slam of the door against the wall, the childish metallic scream of "Colonel!" and the fact that it was Havoc all people who came running in after him, chanting, "Calm down, Alphonse, just hold on a second!" told Roy and Lieutenant Hawkeye that this was a situation that warranted panic.
If Alphonse was panicking, they most certainly should be, too.
"What happened?" Roy asked, standing up from his desk without hesitation. Riza, who would normally have barked a command for Roy to sit down or even clicked the safety off her gun, grabbed his coat in preparation for their leaving.
Alphonse's plating rattled as he shook - Roy wondered if it was an unconscious reaction or if he was forcing it to remember what it felt like to be properly frightened.
"It's Brother, I… I don't know what to do!"
"It's okay, Alphonse," Riza said, putting a hand on Al's shaking shoulder. Obviously, it wasn't okay, but the gesture seemed to help, even if the boy couldn't feel the warmth of her palm.
"Brother… I can't find him. He said he wasn't feeling well. I thought it was just his automail acting up and sometimes he just… I went to get him a hot water bottle because that usually helps, but when I went back to his room, he was gone!"
"It's all right," Mustang said, feeling the rising panic begin to diminish. "He probably just went for a walk to stretch his legs or went looking for something to eat."
"Out the window?!"
The embers of panic flickered back to life.
"Well… maybe he didn't want to worry you -"
"With all due respect, sir, this is a terrible way of keeping someone from worrying."
Roy answered Riza's flat stare with an unamused scowl.
"I said that was what he meant to do. I didn't say it was effective."
"No! You don't understand!" Alphonse half-whined, half-shouted in a rare instance of lost temper. "He's hiding something. I think he's hurt!"
"And what makes you say that?"
"He was holding his arm - the left one - all funny and he was holding his coat instead wearing it and it was all wet… and… and…"
"So he fell in a puddle?" Roy suggested, making no attempt to hide that his panic was turning into annoyance.
"Sir!"
"What?!"
"No! He threw his coat in the hamper and… and now it's all red!"
Roy barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes.
"His coat is always red, Alphonse, that's your brother's favorite color -"
Alphonse stomped a metal foot hard enough to make the entire office shake.
"The hamper! The hamper and the other clothes were all red! It's not water! It's -"
Alphonse's voice broke into a sob.
Roy could feel Riza's furious glare burning holes into his back, through his lungs, and out of his chest.
XXX
It was stupid.
He knew he shouldn't have gone back to the dorms, that it was asking for trouble.
But he couldn't just leave Al.
He had to at least leave a note, an explanation of where he'd gone, even if it was a lie.
He couldn't let his baby brother watch him die.
"Hey, Brother. You're back early. I thought you said you were getting something to eat."
Edward was glad that he'd had the foresight to take off his coat and cover his arms with it. It made him look like a monk preparing for noontime prayers.
"Uh… yeah, I just… I decided I wasn't really hungry, so I came back."
There was an awkward silence.
"Brother… you're always hungry."
Crap.
"Well… I just remembered that we have food here, so I just thought… y'know."
"We don't have food here. That was why you left."
Double crap.
It was hard to come up with a believable like when he was in so much pain.
"Oh, yeah. I mean… I'm not feeling too good. I thought I'd just… go back to bed. Sleep it off."
Alphonse was immediately in mother hen mode and reached out for his brother, meaning to look him over.
"Oh! Are you hurt? When did you start feeling off?"
Edward danced out of his brother's grasp and around his bulky body to the door to the bedroom.
"I-I'm fine, Al! I just… need to lie down."
"Brother… are you -"
"I'm fine, Al! Please, just… just leave me alone. Just for a while."
Edward couldn't wipe his tears away without covering his face in blood. He couldn't avoid leaving marks on the doorknob so just prayed to whatever force was listening that Al wouldn't notice.
XXX
He had been in too much of a hurry to think about how mixing blood and white underclothes was a bad idea before he threw his coat into the hamper.
Unwinding the fabric from around his left arm made speckles flash in front of his vision and he tried not to stare at the red muscle and bubbly fat as he transmuted the top sheet from his bed into strips. He couldn't avoid looking at the open flesh as he tied the strips around his forearm, replacing the flap of skin that had come loose. It didn't hurt nearly as much as it looked, but Ed was familiar with that peculiar quirk of the human body. The more he could see what was wrong with him, the less it seemed to hurt.
It did hurt, horribly and nauseatingly, but not enough to keep him from focusing on doing something about it.
Climbing out the window and down the fire escape one-handed was a challenge that left him blinking away fresh spots and dizzy with blood loss. His coat and clotting had stopped the worst of the bleeding, but his arm was still oozing and the white strips were already a gross shade of dark pink.
Now came the hardest part.
XXX
Dying was boring.
Ed wondered if Mom had thought that when it was her turn. At least she'd had the advantage of sleeping through most of it.
It was cold, surprisingly so for so early in autumn.
Maybe he would freeze to death before it set in.
He wondered if he would be conscious when it did. Maybe he would start seeing everyone as food and try to eat them or maybe he would just hate everyone enough to want to kill everyone he saw. Or maybe he would just black out and disappear or he would wake up as someone or something else as he entered his next life.
Maybe Mom would come for him.
He hoped it wouldn't be Truth.
XXX
Or maybe he would drown.
He had smelled the rain beneath the smoke from factories and cars and the rotting garbage in the alleys, but hadn't thought anything of it.
Rain had been the least of his problems.
He hadn't been lying when he told Al that he wasn't feeling well. The tightness around his right shoulder and left hip from the swelling was an old pain that he knew how to deal with - aspirin and hot towels were usually enough to chase the aches away - but the dull throbbing was second to the sickening stinging in his flesh arm.
He wouldn't be dealing with it for long, anyway, if the pool of water he was sitting in had anything to say about. The concrete cell he'd built for himself was supposed to contain him when the worst came, but maybe he had inadvertently quickened the process. He was no longer regretting his decision to forego a roof. Suffocating would have been faster, but being able to see the sky was the final comfort he'd allowed himself.
XXX
"This is elaborate, Fullmetal. Even for you."
The voice broke him out of the doze he'd fallen into.
The sky had long since darkened and the chilliness had strengthened into bone-deep cold. Edward couldn't have answered if he'd wanted to, with how viciously his teeth were chattering. The rain had moved on at some point, leaving Ed in an inch of water and soaked clothes. The oozing from his arm had diminished into a trickle as the cold had slowed his blood while the congealment in the strips had liquefied and spilled into the water, turning Ed's hand a faint scarlet as it drained away.
Edward began to wonder if he'd imagined the colonel's voice when he heard the unmistakable crackle of alchemy and the water lapping at his shoes was pulled away. Somehow losing it made him feel colder.
"Brother, you moron! What are you doing?!"
Because of course, Alphonse was here, too.
Ed just closed his eyes and pretended they weren't there. This was hard to do when he was picked up from his curled position on the dirty pavement by strong, warm hands and held against a deliciously warm body.
"You are hurt! I knew you were hiding something!"
"You know, Fullmetal, most people go to the hospital for stitches, not bury themselves in a make-shift well and try to drown. You have a lot of explaining to do as soon as we thaw you out. And you owe your brother an apology."
I'm sorry, Al, Edward thought, his face pressed into the colonel's shoulder and his ear was scratched by the stubble on the man's chin. I'm sorry for dying.
XXX
"The only reason you're here and not in the hospital is because I'm assuming you had a reason for what you tried to do. A reason, not necessarily a good one."
This was the worst place they could have brought him.
There were too many people here, people he could hurt, people he could kill -
He would have to go further, have to hide himself completely, maybe under the ground, maybe bury himself in his own grave, just as soon as they were all looking away -
His train of thought was interrupted by a shriek as the exposed muscle and fat were drenched in antiseptic.
The one good thing about this was that Alphonse was decidedly out of the picture. Roy had given his brother the task of fetching a medic from the infirmary at Eastern Headquarters so that he wouldn't have to see the naked muscle of Ed's arm. Mustang had carried Edward to a car and held him as they were chauffeured, dripping bloody water onto the leather seats of the car. He must have been asleep because he woke up to being carried into a building and then wrapped in a blanket and sat on a chair.
Lieutenant Hawkeye was there - when his mind would be clearer, he would realize that she had probably driven the car - and she had taken his cold arm in her hot hands and had untied the bandages keeping his skin on his arm.
The skin fell off and Roy said several words Edward had never heard before, interspersed with "Fullmetal" and "God" and "damn."
Hawkeye said a word he'd never heard her say before but had heard Havoc say several times when he thought the colonel and the lieutenant could hear him.
"What do we do?! We can't just -" Mustang's words disintegrated into a what sounded like a badly stifled retch.
"Infection. We need to worry about infection. I have some hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet. Go get it and a bowl."
Hawkeye sounded like she was trying to either not vomit or not cry. Maybe both.
Roy seemed to make the decision for her when Ed's half-yelp-half-scream shoved up the memories he'd been fighting back down and he whirled around to throw up into the kitchen sink.
"Are you all right, sir?"
"Don' worry 'bout me. F'lme'l's more impor'nt."
Roy ignored any further attempts to make him the center of attention and washed out the sink, grabbing a glass from the cupboard to wash out his mouth. This happened more often than he would ever admit, especially after a night of dreams and a bottle of whiskey that was supposed to scare them away.
Speaking of which…
He went to the other cupboard and pulled out the brown bottle, uncorking it and chugging several swallows. It burned furiously on the way down and bloomed in his stomach. Roy shook his head and went back to the sink to splash his face with water.
His perception of the world now pleasantly skewed, he was able to return to where Edward had come awake with shock, wrapped in a heavy quilt on a chair pulled from the table with his flayed arm dripping over a bowl of bloody antiseptic. Ed had started shaking for a reason other than cold and the blue tinging his face had vanished in red-spotted white.
"Are you gonna tell us what the hell you were thinking, Fullmetal?"
Edward was not.
He was going to pull his arm away and try to stand up.
This was a bad idea for multiple reasons
Roy caught him before he could crack his teeth on the tile.
"And where do you think you're going?"
Ed sputtered, his lips numb with residual cold and pain, as he was sat back down on the chair before his senseless feet and stiff legs gave out on him.
"Can't… can't be here. Can't."
"Well, you've been here for ten minutes already and the world is still here, so I doubt you'll have anything to worry about."
Edward shook his head and tried to stand again. Hawkeye took his shoulders and pushed him back down.
"Why can't you be here, Edward?"
Edward tried to pull away from her but he was either too tired or Riza's grip was too strong. It occurred to Roy that the boy hadn't had anything to eat or presumably drink in hours. That, combined with the hypothermia and blood loss, had turned the Fullmetal Alchemist into a wet noodle.
"You get some answers out of him, Lieutenant. I'll toast some bread. He must be starving."
The thought of food gave Edward new strength: he pushed himself up and away from Hawkeye, fell on his knees with a cringe-inducing crunch, and started crawling away in lieu of walking. Riza took the bowl off her lap and set it on the the now empty chair so she could join Ed on the floor, this time pulling him against her to keep him still. The loose skin hung off his arm like poorly tanned leather.
Roy rolled his eyes and continued the task of slicing the loaf from the breadbox and popping the shaved pieces into the toaster.
"What is going on, Fullmetal? You're acting like a werewolf hiding from the full moon. I can promise you that you aren't going to turn into a bloodthirsty monster and eat us. Besides, I'd be too gamy. You'd get more meat off the lieutenant - not that the lieutenant is fat -"
"Sir."
"I didn't mean it like that, Lieutenant, the joke was supposed to be self-deprecating -"
"Sir!"
"Please don't shoot me."
"Sir, just look."
Roy sighed in fatalistic resignation and turned away from where he'd been pretending to search for the butter that was directly in front of him, ready for the inevitable and well-deserved bullet to his brain.
Somehow, what he saw was worse.
"Hey, hey… It's okay, Full - Edward, it's all right. I was just joking. Werewolves aren't real, kiddo, they're just a story."
Edward did not seem to believe him. If anything, the assurances made the tears come harder. Hawkeye pulled him into her lap and started rocking him, something that always worked when Maes's daughter was inconsolable. Doing so brought Ed's flayed arm closer to her and as disgusting as it was, she refused to prioritize her personal comfort over an injured, crying child.
She'd done enough of that for ten lifetimes.
It was the closed distance that let her notice the shape of the torn skin.
"Sir -"
Roy jumped to action as if he'd been stung.
"Yes, um… kids like hot chocolate, right? I could… there's a lovely cafe down the street, I could grab some -"
"Sir, I think you might be right."
"Kids like hot chocolate?"
"Not that," Riza bit out, trying and failing to not sound exasperated. "Look at the edges of the wound. They're too rough to be made by a knife. I think this was done by an animal."
Edward made a cry of despair, as if Riza had uncovered one of his darkest secrets. Riza responded by tightening her hold and pulling his maimed arm further away from him so Mustang could see.
Roy's first thought was that werewolves were, in fact, real and that his subordinate had been attacked one.
His second thought was that having a werewolf on his team would be badass.
His third thought was that he was an idiot.
His fourth thought was that he might just be sick again.
He forced himself to kneel, his late twenties knees screaming in protest, and studied the ripped edges of the ripped skin, swallowing whiskey and bile at the way the exposed muscle would occasionally jump with the odd twitch or shift of a finger.
"This had to have been -" He paused to swallow again. "This had to have been something large. A dog. Maybe a wolf. A normal wolf," he added at Riza's expression.
"What would a wolf be doing in the city?"
"Fox."
It was the first word Edward had said since being brought to Roy's house.
"A fox?" Roy said, not disbelievingly but definitely nonplussed.
"They are known to scavenge for food in urban areas," Riza said in her standard tone of thoughtfulness. "It's completely plausible that he was bitten by a fox. Did you go near the fox, Edward?"
"No," he said automatically. Usually, when Edward spoke so forcefully it meant the truth was the opposite, but the ferventness in the word told the adults that he wasn't lying. "I was just… They asked me for help and then it was just there…"
XXX
Edward would never admit that he liked kids.
They were stinky and sticky and slimy and rude.
They were also frighteningly smart, kinder than any grownup he'd met, and hilarious.
And so terribly innocent and defenseless.
He had been wandering the street vendors and eateries on the street next to the city park, the restaurants and stands selling dinner to the parents and children enjoying what was likely to be the last warm day of the year. People were moving back and forth, leaving the grass to return to the city and back again with full bellies and eyes set on the nearing sunset. The smells of noodles and meats and frying oil were making it hard for him to decide on his own choice, though the quickly chilling wind was making him consider one of the indoor options.
Then he heard the unmistakable scream of a terrified child.
It was a sound that had been burned into his memory as he had watched his brother disappear into the doomed transmutation they had made.
It was instinctual to follow it, to go towards the rapidly forming crowd and the mother who was crying out for help, for the police, for someone -
The little girl was bleeding badly, the tooth marks on her leg swelling and bruising. The scrapes on her face and hands suggested that whatever had done this had done more than bitten her.
"It went that way!" Someone yelled, pointing further down the street.
"Get the military. This child needs a doctor," barked a man who had stepped out of the crowd to help the girl off the ground and into her mother's arms. "No one go near it! I saw the -"
Edward didn't wait to hear more.
After all, he was military. This was his responsibility.
"Which way did it go?" he'd yelled at the man at the back of the crowd. The man had stared at Ed as if he'd lost his mind.
"Kid, you don't want to go near that thing. Just wait for the military to -"
"I'm military!" Edward shoved his pocket watch into the man's face. The man had reeled backward as if he expected the watch to explode, then he had pointed wordlessly towards an alley leading off the street.
The alley had led into a maze of space behind buildings and Ed had had to run up and down the middle lane, searching the branches and dead ends until he heard the telltale rustling of a living thing at the end of a cul de sac full of what looked like old fabrics that had been dumped to rot.
Ed approached the heaving pile, stinking of mildew and decay and growling like a broken car engine.
"All right, ya bastard, where do you get off picking on little kids? Come pick on something your own size!"
A pair of glowing eyes had appeared in the lump. The eyes snarled and Edward snarled back, preparing to transmute his metal hand into a blade if he needed to.
The moldy fabric mountain exploded and something crashed into Ed's metal leg.
Edward had watched, a brow raised in the way he saw the colonel do when confronted with something that was either unimpressive or questionable, as a skinny, very angry lump of fur gnawed on his artificial shin.
"Looking for something?"
The fox continued chewing, drool and froth dripping from its muzzle and drenching his pant leg.
Edward knew what was wrong with the fox. The same thing had happened to one of Farmer Sweet's dog the summer after Mom had died. Edward and his brother had watched the way all the men of the town had come together to poke the murderous, slavering dog behind the barn with pitchforks and shovels while the farmer had fetched his revolver. Ed and Al had heard the momentous crack of the gun and the defining yip that were followed by eerie silence. The men and the farmer had come out from behind the barn to see little Alphonse in tears being held by his equally upset big brother. Granny had sent them for eggs, not knowing she was sending them to witness an execution.
"The dog was rabid, boys. Sweet was putting it out of its misery," Pinako had explained when they had returned with snotty noses and no eggs. "It would have been cruel to let nature take its course and the dog could have bitten someone."
"And that would be bad?" Little Alphonse had squeaked as Granny had wiped his face clean.
"Worse than bad, darling. There's no treatment for rabies besides a bullet."
Edward didn't have a gun, but he'd killed animals before.
"It's okay, little guy," Ed said, dropping the violence in lieu of what was coming. He pulled his glove off his right hand and clapped, pulling the metal of his knuckles into a sharpened spear. "I'll help you out. Just hold still."
And in an episode of merciful stupidity, Edward tried to take hold of the fox's scruff.
The idea had been that he would hold the fox away enough that he would have ample access to its neck. He knew furred animals tended to have a reflex where they would go limp if held by the loose skin behind their head. He had not thought about the other reflexes the fox might have.
Edward's arm had come down and the fox's head had swung up and its jaws had clamped down. Out of his own reflex, Ed yanked his arm away. Something tore and Ed felt the pain of the fox's fangs piercing his skin. The fox went with his arm, pulling its neck taut. Edward slashed and blood sprayed. The fox held on, dangling in the air, anchored by its teeth in Ed's muscle, then slid off as its strength left it. Its fangs came out of the meat but not out of the flesh, ripping the skin apart as it fell.
It landed with a wet splat, kicking its legs as the body died after the brain.
Edward sighed, sad that it had been done and glad that it was over. The breath took away the spike of adrenaline he hadn't noticed and without it, the pain came in full force. Edward's vision blurred and he stumbled, knocking into the brick wall of the alley and sliding down onto the dirty pavement. Huffing and puffing, trying to control the pain with panting, Ed saw that his coat was drenched. The blood blended into the red fabric, making it look wet rather than stained. His left sleeve had two long tears starting at the middle of his forearm and trailing down to the end of the cuff. He pulled the tendrils of cloth aside to assess the damage.
That was a lot of damage.
Ed had seen beneath his skin before, enough to know that the blood running out of his arm and spilling onto his pants and the ground was not flowing fast or hard enough for a broken artery. He could stop it with a tourniquet and some bandages, but he was still going to be woozy and weak for a few hours. Still, it was nothing some stitches couldn't fix.
It would leave an awesome scar with an even more awesome story. How many could say that they had been bitten by a rabid fox?
Then he remembered why.
His first thought was that this was a perfect example of natural selection.
His second thought was for the poor little girl who couldn't be saved.
His third thought was of what he had done to Alphonse.
His fourth thought was that the colonel would know what to do.
XXX
The colonel would know what to do, but Edward couldn't bring himself to go to him.
Mustang would make it quick, quicker and cleaner than Ed had been with the fox, but it would still be what it was, and Edward did not want to die. It was a silly want because it wasn't something he could do anything about or stop, but he couldn't help wanting it anyway.
Granny said that it took three days for rabies to set. That meant he had three days to get his affairs in order. Edward knew there was a good chance that he was going to die. All soldiers did. That's why they all had wills, signed and secured, just in case. Edward had thought his death, if it did come while he was in the military, would happen fast and violently, that he wouldn't have to think about it until he wasn't able to think at all.
He never thought that he would have to sit and wait patiently for a scheduled appointment.
Except he couldn't do that. Rabies had turned that harmless fox into a killer. It turned pets into monsters, wildlife into the stuff of nightmares.
It was going to turn him into a murderer.
No, he thought, his despair just as potent but now joined with determination. Not if he had anything to say about it. If he had to die, he was going to make sure that he was the only one who did.
He did not let himself think about the girl.
XXX
Edward had comforted himself with the thought that he was a hero.
He was protecting everyone from himself, from the beast he was going to become. He didn't have to be sad because his sacrifice was meaningful. He was breaking the cycle of death, making sure that the sickness died with him by dying alone.
Now he had been found and he had been caught. Now the colonel and the lieutenant, maybe even Black Hayate, were going to have to be culled beside him. A terrible, selfish part of him was glad that he didn't have to be alone anymore.
Most of him was too busy mourning himself and the others, though they were all very much alive.
Unless…
"Do it before Al comes back."
The sudden shift in narrative caught both grownups off guard.
"Do what, Fullmetal?"
Edward had started shaking again, though not from cold or shock. He blinked back the tears that pooled in his eyes but either the blinking loosened them or there were simply too many for blinking to work.
"Just… maybe out in the country. Outside the city so no one… Where does it hurt less?"
"What on earth are you talking about?" Roy was looking into Edward's wet, rose-tinted face and into Riza's equally confused one.
"Edward, we don't know what you mean," Riza said, trying and failing to hide how the boy's distress was making her heart crack. "Let's calm down first and then you can try -"
"Just shoot me already!"
The shaking turned into teeth-chattering shuddering and Edward tried to curl into himself, like he was trying to hide from his own idea. The shaking and Riza's staying arms wouldn't let him. He shook his head hard enough to whip his bangs, flinging the tears away and trying to make his terror and sorrow unseeable.
"Just… shoot me. Kill me, before… before I…"
Roy grabbed his shoulders, stopping his flailing. Edward's fear was replaced by startling. He had never seen the colonel look so horrified.
"Why in God's name would I do that?! I wouldn't let anyone do that!" Roy's face shifted from horrified to infuriated so quickly Edward pressed himself against Hawkeye to get away from him. "Did someone threaten you? Is someone after you? Is there anything you're not telling us? Dammit, Fullmetal, I can't protect you if I don't know what to protect you from!"
"Edward, please," Riza said, her voice and face full of the same pleading but much softer and gentler than Mustang's. Roy opened his mouth to continue but Riza shushed him with a shake of her head. Roy closed his mouth and did his best to give Ed time to come up with an answer.
"You have to because… because I got bit," Ed said once he'd found his words. He pointed at the flap of skin and the grownups pointedly looked away. "And… and then I'll bite you and then you'll have to get…"
Riza realized first. Edward saw when she did because the confused concern morphed into something almost like pity. Proud pity, like Hawkeye was impressed at how pathetic he was.
"Oh… Oh, Edward, no! No one's going to… You are not going to bite anyone."
Then Roy realized and then his proud pity was there as a tired smile.
"Oh. Oh, kiddo…"
Ed looked between them, his fear and worry turning into confusion of his own.
"What? But I… I got bit."
"Yes. You were bitten. So the doctor is going to give you medicine so you don't get sick." Riza explained it like she was talking to a small child. Edward didn't have the energy to be angry.
"But… but there is no medicine. That's why you gotta shoot me."
The proud pity turned into something Edward didn't recognize at first. To his embarrassed horror, it was cosseting.
"Fullmetal, there's been a treatment for rabies for over ten years. You didn't know?"
"Sir, how could he know? He's thirteen and he's lived in the country his whole life. They probably don't have access to more recent medicines."
Some distant, more awake part of Edward realized that Riza Hawkeye had just called him an impoverished country bumpkin.
The more centered part of him was waiting for the catch because this was too good to be true.
"No. No, there's isn't. Granny said…"
"We'll tell the medic as soon as they get here so they can send for some serum," Roy said, standing up with a wince as his knees popped. "Until then, take it easy. Do you like cinnamon on your toast?"
Edward stared at him stupidly for a minute, then nodded.
Roy blew out a heavy sigh.
"Okay. Now we're making progress. How about that hot chocolate?"
XXX
The medic was a pretty young woman who's soft face twisted into a grimace at the sight of Ed's arm.
"Ouch, buddy. I'll give you some medicine for the pain and stitch you back up."
Edward did not like needles but he also didn't like pain. He forced himself to hold still while the medic stabbed the wound with novocain, turning his whole arm below the elbow into a blob of numbness. Alphonse gripped his shoulders, unfazed by the sight of exposed muscle and fat.
"It's not nearly as bad as it looks," the medic said as she worked. "It's only a deglovement. The skin is still connected so all that needs to be done is for it to be put it back on. Some stitches and some antibiotics will make you good as new. It'll probably scar, though. How did this happen."
"Fullmetal saved a child from a rabid fox," Mustang said, the sudden praise making Ed look up at him in surprise. Roy pretended not to notice.
The medic had been humming to herself as she stitched the skin back into place. She stopped at the word "rabid."
"Oh, no. Then we have no time to waste. I'll file a report and send for a kit as soon as I get back to the infirmary. The fox is dead, right?"
Roy looked at Edward expectantly. Ed looked back and nodded nervously.
"That's for the best. You did the poor creature a mercy. Once the symptoms show up, there's nothing to do but wait for death or stop the suffering."
"What about the kid? The one that got bit before I…" Edward's voice trailed away and Al gave his shoulders a comforting squeeze. The medic smiled sympathetically.
"I'll ask around, but I'm sure they'll be fine. The sooner treatment starts, the better."
She snipped the twine free and tied it off, covering the puffy seam with some sort of powder and wrapping it in fresh gauze.
"There you go. Take the antibiotics until the bottle is empty and change the bandaging once a day. Come get it looked at in a week and we'll see about getting the stitches out, okay?"
Edward studied his swatched senseless arm and up at Roy.
"You said hot chocolate?"
Roy and Riza laughed and the medic patted Ed's hand.
"Yes, I'll get you some hot chocolate," Roy said, pushing himself off of the wall he'd been leaning against. "Would you like some, Lieutenant?"
"I wouldn't mind some," Riza said. "Though you may have to hurry because I think someone might be falling asleep."
Edward was blinking rapidly and looked he was thinking about curling up on the chair. Alphonse coaxed him up with practice ease and helped him over to the couch, where Edward gratefully laid down with his head on the armrest and almost immediately started snoring.
"I'll walk the medic back to the infirmary," Al said. The medic gave him a grateful nod.
"I'll go with you," Riza said. "I need to check on Hayate. I'll get the drinks while I'm at it. Sir, would you stay here and keep an eye on Edward?"
Roy glanced at where Edward was now cradling his injured arm and folding into himself for warmth.
"Shouldn't be too hard. Unless he's a sleepwalker."
"Not usually. But Brother does talk in his sleep sometimes. Isn't that right, Brother?" Alphonse asked, calling over the colonel to where his brother lay on the couch.
Edward snuffled and muttered something about "gotta wash the vegetables, where's the brush."
Al laughed and Ed sighed happily.
XXX
After receiving a fascinating lecture on how cucumbers should not have hairbrushes, Riza and Alphonse returned with paper coffee cups and a very appreciative Black Hayate. The dog wasted no time in hopping onto the couch and snuggling up against Edward. Ed started awake at the feeling of a wet nose and looked around blearily, his eyes landing on Hayate and giving him a scratch behind the ears. Hayate wagged his tail happily.
"Your drink, Your Highness," Mustang said as he offered the cup to Edward. Ed took it and slurped it without hesitation, burned his tongue and whined at the pain, then whined at Mustang when the man laughed at him. "You did that to yourself, kiddo. Don't get mad at me."
Edward grumbled and set the drink aside to cool while he went back to snuggling the dog.
XXX.
Edward went back to sleep once the hot chocolate was gone.
Alphonse occupied himself with letting Hayate chew on his leather fingers, an activity that Hayate deeply appreciated. Roy and Riza stepped aside, sipping their now cold chocolates and deciding on what should be done next.
"We need to have a place for him ready. I can keep the house open for him, but if you wouldn't mind…"
"Would Alphonse not be enough?"
Roy took a swallow of cold chocolate.
"Not necessarily. But there might be moments that… It'll be bad enough that Fullmetal will have to deal with it. Alphonse shouldn't take on anymore than he needs to. Hopefully they'll just be moments and not days so a couple of hours should be more than enough."
Riza showed her understanding with a quiet "hmm."
"Well, if it does end up being days, I'm sure I could handle him." She took a drink of her own chocolate. "Sir… shouldn't we tell him? Just so he knows?"
"And scare him unnecessarily? No, it's better if he only worries about it when he needs to."
Riza "hmmed" again, this time less approvingly.
"He's been through it before. Would it really bother him that much?"
Roy smiled at her wryly.
"You've been shot before. Do you want to be shot twice a day for the next two weeks?"
Riza looked uncharacteristically but deservedly chastised.
"Oh. I see."
Alternate Ending:
Edward really was a bitten by a werewolf and now he's bound to the Daedric Prince of the Hunt and he is slated to take part in the next Blood Moon.
Actually, that's a pretty good premise. I might jus use that.