This chapter is boring so I threw some fluff at the end to make it more interesting.
I dressed up as a werewolf on Halloween and walked around town to scare people. I walked 8.25 miles, which is the equivalent of burning 1,279 calories.
It's been 2 days and I'm still tired.
But man was it worth it.
Alphonse was inconsolable
"How do we know? How do we know it's the medicine and not… it's the same symptoms !"
Roy tried to pretend he wasn't mulling over the same questions, hadn't panicked when he'd gone to wake Fullmetal from where he'd been sleeping on the couch and found a shivering, moaning, sweat-drenched little boy in his place. His fever wasn't dangerous - only a little over a hundred degrees - but the fact that it had persisted despite the aspirin they'd given him with dinner made a sick feeling broil in the pit of Roy's stomach.
Mustang, of course, couldn't and wouldn't admit this.
"It's designed to activate the body's immune system. It's not uncommon for some people to get sick after one injection and your brother has had several. We just have to wait it out."
"But what if it's not?" Alphonse said for the fifth time, his voice turning shrill with frustration.
"What if, Alphonse?"
Roy had meant the question to force Alphonse to calm down by thinking rationally. Instead, it put him on the spot by forcing him to voice his worst fear. Instead of words, it was the horrible shaking of his armor that let Mustang know of his mistake.
"That's not going to happen, Alphonse."
"How do you know?! You've never seen rabies in a human!"
Roy's eyes darkened in a terrible way as he was lost in terrible memories. Alphonse had the sense to hold his non-existent tongue.
"There was a reason why the military made having the soldiers immunized a priority. During the…" Roy sighed and shook his head like the thoughts of war were flies buzzing around his ears. "People pick up all sorts of diseases in the field. Once one man is down, the rest of his squadron follows. When one squadron goes down, the entire platoon is weakened. And so on and so on. It's not possible to make people immune to combat, so they made us immune to what they could."
"Did it work?" Alphonse's voice was as accusatory as it was questioning.
"Only if they got it in time. The rabies treatment is expensive and God forbid the military spend more than they have to. So, they held back until they had to."
"So… they could have just… not had anyone die? And they chose not to?!"
Roy fought the terrible urge to laugh at Alphonse's indignation.
"We're soldiers, Alphonse. We are expendable by design."
And then Roy was pressed up against the wall of his house, cowering beneath a looming giant of steel and righteous anger, its eyes glaring as red as the bloodshed it threatened.
"If my brother is expended, I will expend every military personnel I find, starting with you."
Roy stammered stupidly for a few seconds before he managed to say, even more stupidly, "You would never. You're too good."
"If all the goodness in the world can't save my brother, then I want nothing to do with it."
"Mmm… Al?"
And then the monster was gone and the boy was back, abandoning Mustang from where he was only barely keeping himself from slipping onto the floor and hovering over Edward with a gentleness of a mother cat with her kitten.
"Yes, Brother? I'm here."
Edward looked around, blinking like a kitten that had just opened its eyes and was seeing the world for the first time.
"Wha's goin' on?"
"The medicine's making you a little sick, Brother. But you're okay. It's breakfast time. Do you want something to eat?"
Ed wrinkled his nose and shook his head vehemently.
Roy checked the clock on the wall.
"It's about time we headed to the infirmary, Fullmetal. Up and at 'em."
Edward moaned piteously and flopped back down on the couch. Alphonse pulled the wet blanket up to his brother's neck and let it drop. Ed snuggled under it so that only his hair was visible. Alphonse turned to Mustang pointedly.
"Colonel, I don't think he can make it."
Roy opened his mouth to object, realized that Alphonse's sentence had been a statement rather than a suggestion, remembered the younger Elric's promise, and decided that Al might have a point.
XXX
It was a simple matter to have Riza pick them up, Edward wrapped in a blanket and curled against his brother's armor.
"I'll be taking the day off to look after Edward, sir, if you don't mind," Riza said on the way. She phrased it as a question even though they both knew it wasn't.
"Of course, Lieutenant."
"Of course," she echoed back at him.
Behind them, Edward mumbled something about "letting the car into the zoo so he can save the lion on the waterfall."
Roy turned his head to stare at the shivering lump with hair.
"What?"
"He's talking in his sleep again," Alphonse explained, some of his worry pushed aside by amusement. "I'll let the car into the zoo, Brother, don't worry. The lion will be fine."
"Th' snake needs h't choc'late."
"Of course, Brother. Let us take care of the snake. You just sleep."
"Can snakes even drink hot chocolate?" Roy thought out loud, turning forwards again in his seat.
"Hippo on the ice."
"Never mind."
Alphonse laughed. The sound lacked humor.
XXX
"No."
"It'll just be a moment, Edward."
"No."
Edward wasn't fighting them by any means, making Roy think he was simply protesting for protesting's sake, like when Roy himself would grumble about "elitist tree-killers" when filing exorbitant amounts of paperwork.
"No."
Mustang huffed, letting himself smile amusedly.
"No one said anything, Fullmetal."
Edward's eyes roved towards him from where Ed was lying shirtless on the infirmary cot, the swollen weals on his stomach looking disturbingly like eggs beneath his skin.
Well, that thought was going to keep Mustang awake tonight.
Ed closed his eyes resignedly as the nurse approached with the syringe, muttering a vain, "No" and then a much more forceful, anguished, "No!" when the needle went in. He made a half-hearted swipe at the woman and a bored looking kick, but he had either had gotten accustomed enough to the pain or he was too weak from the fever and general malaise to do anything else.
"I know you don't want to hear this, but I think he should stay here today," the nurse said, her expression showing that she didn't like the idea anymore than Ed did. Edward opened his eyes and glared at her with a vicious, "No!"
"Enough, Fullmetal. What makes you say that?"
"His fever is high and it might very well stay that way for a while. Both the virus and the vaccine can have similar side effects, so it can be hard to tell the difference. Just to be sure, I think we should -"
"There's no need for that."
Everyone except Edward whirled around to stare at the man who had just come through the door.
The fact that he was escorted by a pair of armed soldiers suggested he was not there on friendly turns. Indeed, his expression was thunderous, like he'd just found out that his neighbor had shot his dog.
Out of habit, Roy's hand dove into his pocket for his gloves. He heard the lieutenant cock her pistol beside him.
"Who the hell are you?!"
The stranger strode further into the infirmary as if he owned it, staring at Edward with a mixture of disgust and disdain, like the boy was a dead bird lying on the pavement. He brought those eyes of antipathy to Roy's. Roy met them unflinchingly.
"I am Doctor Andre Berger - the second," he added, when he saw Roy's expression twist into something between confusion and fascination. "And I want to know how you got my grandfather's notes."
XXX
"I see," the man said, sipping the mug of coffee that had been brought to him per Mustang's request. The colonel had found that people were less likely to commit murder once they'd had their morning coffee and Andre Berger the Second was no exception. "I never authorized the release of my grandfather's research to the public. He was a very private man. A bit arrogant. Very paranoid. But he never forgot why he did what he did. He made me promise to make sure his rivals never got ahold of his accomplishments, so I waited until they had… departed… before donating the recipes to medical institutes. I had no idea they had published them in other countries."
"To be fair, they're in the restricted section of a military library - only state alchemists can access them," Roy explained when Berger raised a brow. "I wrote you only… three days ago. You certainly responded… promptly."
"I had questions. You have questions. My grandfather's work is a personal matter. Therefore, I deemed it necessary to deal with this in person." Berger glanced to where Edward was staring at him. Ed's expression was complicated, as if he was trying to decide if he should be showering the man with adoration or if he should call for his brother.
Speaking of which…
"Lieutenant, would you fetch Alphonse? I don't know if he's aware who Doctor Berger - the second - really is."
"Of course, sir." She sent Berger a warning glare before making her way to the door. If Berger was intimidated by the look, he didn't show it.
"My lieutenant is a tad… protective," Mustang said by way of apology.
Berger nodded with approval.
"I can respect this."
XXX
Alphonse had not thought anything of it when the doctor arrived at the infirmary asking after "the rabies boy," though he had been a bit rankled by the man's callous description of his brother.
Now that he knew who the doctor was, he forewent any formalities, such as greetings.
"If the vaccine is supposed to keep him from getting sick, why he is he so sick?!"
"Because it is working," Berger said, as straightforward as Alphonse.
Alphonse simply stared for a minute, waiting for Berger to either elaborate or say he was joking. When he did neither, Al pointed out the flaw in his explanation.
"The vaccine keeps him from getting sick… by making him sick?"
"Precisely," Berger said, walking to the wooden box that held the kit of serum and syringes. "My grandfather proved that illnesses are caused by creatures too small to be seen. Both death and healing are responses to invasion by these creatures. My grandfather made it his life's work to perfect the preferred response to make the alternative response as unlikely as possible." Berger opened the kit, pulling out the bottles of serum and laying them out on a table. "Healing happens when the body successfully defends itself from invasion, much like an army defending its borders, and like an army, the body becomes better able to defend itself with the experience it accrues. My grandfather's goal was to provide this experience without the danger of combat."
"Like a drill," Roy commented, then felt uncharacteristically bashful when everyone turned to look at him. Berger tilted his head, considering, then nodded.
"Yes, it is a bit like a combat drill… but rather than familiarizing with weapons, the soldiers are familiarized with the intended targets. You see, the danger of rabies is not fighting it, it's finding it. We may not know what sort of creature this virus is or how to kill it, but the body seems to know as long as it knows what to look for. That's where the attenuated samples come in.
"The virus dies with its host, or is at least weakened by the prolonged loss of nutrients from a living body. My grandfather proposed that a sample of the virus that was unable to fight back would provide the information the body would need to find and kill the living virus."
Roy instantly thought of prisoners of war being tortured for information and just as instantly pushed the thought away.
"Hence the rabbit spines in the recipe," he said instead. "Dead rabbits means dead virus."
"Precisely."
"But if the virus is dead, why is brother so sick?" Alphonse had moved to stand beside Edward's cot and Edward himself had grabbed his brother's metal arm and was pressing the steel against his forehead. The pressure and the cold helped to stifle the migraine, though there was still a persistent pounding behind Ed's eyes.
"Because the body doesn't know that the sample is weakened - which is good, because the final samples are not."
"Wait, what?!"
The exclamation sent Alphonse jolting, a movement that jerked his arm's place against Edward and making Ed grunt in protest, wrapping his own metal around around Al's to keep the armor still. Roy snatched one of the bottles from the table and studied the typed words on the paper label glued to the brown glass. A black number nine was stamped there along with a percentage of sixty.
He was holding a bottle of rabies that was more than half alive.
And it was going to go into his major like an innocuous bee sting.
"Each injection has progressively less weakened, more active samples of the virus. If the rabies from the wound escapes the body's defenses and reaches the brain, the brain will have built up a tolerance from the increased exposure and will not be susceptible to infection. The fact that the boy is responding so strongly to samples he's already been given means his body is aware of invasion and is killing the specimens it is finding, whether they are weak or not. As he develops a tolerance for the virus itself, his body will no longer react so intensely. That is how we know if the vaccine is working."
Alphonse thought for a moment, then jolted again for a different reason than before. Ed growled and gave his brother a warning clank with his metal hand.
"Sand bags!"
Berger blinked uncomprehendingly.
"Back in Risembool, in the spring, everyone goes to the river and lines it with sand bags. The spring rains always make the river flood, but the sand bags keep the water from reaching the town. Brother is sick because he's building a wall of sand bags!"
Berger tilted his head again and again nodded.
"That is a… informal way of looking at it, but a way, nonetheless. Rabies travels along the nerves, finding the spine and infecting the brain. However, upon reaching the spine, it will find a veritable barrier of… 'sand bags,' as you say, of immune cells that have long since perfected locating and destroying the virus. The stronger the samples from the injections, the more experience the immune system gains, and the more able it will be to defeat a fully healthy dose of rabies."
"So… Brother's just sick right now because his body is practicing for the real virus… and if he wasn't practicing, then you would know that the vaccine wasn't working."
"Very good," Berger said, genuinely pleased. "It takes time - maybe a week or two - for the virus to reach the brain where it kills. It is not feasible that the rabies from the wound would have reached the central nervous system by now. Therefore, his condition must be a response to the immunization."
"Must it make him so miserable, though?" Riza asked, giving in to the desire to cross to Edward's side to straighten his sheets and brush his hair away from his sweaty face.
"Unfortunately, it must. The injections are given deeply into the flesh of the stomach because of the increased area for further injections and because of the density of nerves and immune structures in the torso. The needle must reach the nerves because the nerves are the target of the virus and will be where the immune cells with find the live rabies. The body needs to find the virus in its natural habitat so it knows where to look. Because the sample goes directly into the nerves, there is no pain medication that would be effective at preventing the discomfort. The concentration of immune tissue is the cause for the excess swelling as the body delivers blood to the injection site in preparation for defensive measures."
"I was ill for quite a while after I was given the shot," Roy said.
"He will be unwell until his body's defenses are comfortable enough to no longer feel the need to employ so many tactics. He will probably remain unwell for the next few days, but when he does recover, he will do so quickly."
Alphonse's shoulders dropped, as if letting go of a weight he was only now aware that he'd been carrying. He brushed his leather gauntlet over Edward's face and Edward nuzzled the curve of Al's arm.
"Did you hear that, Brother? You're going to be okay! It's just sand bags!"
Roy laughed and Riza smiled and Edward snarled at the noise.
XXX
The only other sound in the room besides Ed's breathing was the occasional flip of a page.
Edward had managed to eat some toast and drink some juice after substantial coaxing from his brother. Ed had not wanted to eat anything. He had wanted to sleep because he didn't hurt when he was sleeping. But Alphonse had a lot of patience and a lot of practice at getting Edward to eat when he didn't want to.
Barring that, Alphonse could be sufficiently intimidating when he lost his patience.
Edward wasn't sure when or how he'd ended up in the position he was in now, mostly because he'd been sleeping when he had. He wasn't sure which explanation he preferred - that he had curled up against the lieutenant and she had accepted the development or that she had pulled him to her.
However it had happened, he wasn't inclined to pull away. Hawkeye was warm and soft and the way she carded his hair with her fingers was the perfect distraction from his aches and pains.
Riza turned the page in the book she was reading, humming to herself contentedly. Besides his own idyll, he hated to disturb her rare opportunity to relax, but he couldn't put this off any longer. Despite his best efforts, he could no longer pretend that something was wrong.
He sat up with a rustle of linens and grunt at the way the movement pulled at his welts and made his fevered muscles burn. The lieutenant looked up from her reading with a different kind of hum, marking her page and closing the book.
"Edward?"
Ed shivered and swallowed hard, forcing the words out.
"I don' feel so good."
Where Mustang would have scoffed at the evident admittance and Alphonse would have patiently waited for Ed to elaborate, Riza heard what Ed was unable to say. She quickly set her book aside and sat up, ready to jump to her feet if need be.
"Can you make it down the hall or do you need help?"
Edward had thought about this extensively and his answer, as much as he was loathe to admit, was the reason why had felt the need to disturb her.
"Help."
"All right."
Edward didn't know why he had been afraid that she would be angry with him, either for interrupting her day off or for making her do something most people would dread. If anything, she seemed oddly pleased that he had spoken up when he did. In hindsight, it was probably because if he had waited much longer, they would both be short a bed for the foreseeable future.
She left him there on the floor and then surprised him by coming back with the pillows from the bed and her book. She gave him one and kept the other for herself, placing it between her back and the wall and helping Ed get his under his knees so that the cold tile wasn't pressing against him.
Then she went back to reading her book, trading brushing Ed's hair for rubbing his back.
Edward closed his eyes and wondered what this had to do with his nerves.
"Hey, Brother - oh."
Hayate trotted in after him, pausing and cocking his head at the sight of his mistress and his mistress's second favorite person on the bathroom floor. Seizing the chance, he hopped forward and settled himself between Riza and Edward after some maneuvering of paws and legs.
"Alphonse, there should be some soda water and crackers in the second drawer to the left of the stove."
"Got it."
His feet pounded the floor despite his attempts to keep his gait unhurried.
"Sorry," Ed mumbled, finding the sudden attention more embarrassing than how pathetic he was.
"Blame the fox, Edward, not yourself," she said, not looking up from her reading.
"Not the fox's fault. Poor guy didn't want this."
"And neither did you, so stop apologizing."
Ed grunted and laid down, trying to curl up on the pillow like an oversized cat. Alphonse came back with the requested items, handing them off to Riza who placed on the floor. Hayate sniffed at the plate of crackers in anticipation, but a stern word from Riza had him backing off with a longing whine.
"Do you need anything else, Brother? Maybe some medicine to help settle your stomach?"
"I don't know that I have any in the house, Alphonse."
"I'll run to the store and get some, then. Is that okay, Brother?"
Ed gave his answer in the form of a disinterested sigh.
"Okay. I'll be back in half an hour. It'll be okay, Brother."
Edward sighed again and pressed his face into his knees. Hayate offered a couple of comforting licks, though they did not win him any desired crackers.
XXX
Edward was glad that Alphonse had left. It was easier to be miserable when he didn't have to worry about making his brother miserable, too.
Ironically, Alphonse's departure allowed him to relax to the point that he forgot to focus on maintaining control of his body. By the time he realized this, he nearly didn't sit up fast enough to avoid covering the lieutenant in toast and juice. If Riza hadn't hauled him upright with surprising swiftness, he probably would have.
"You're okay, Edward. The nurse said this is normal."
She held his hair out of his face and drew circles on his back until he was done (along with a few more licks from Hayate), then helped him wipe his face clean and fetched him a glass of water. She flushed the toilet before helping his stand up and guided him back to the bed. She left him there while she went to collect the pillows, soda, and crackers from the bathroom, grabbing a bowl from the kitchen as she went. Edward frowned when she set it on the bed next to him.
"It's just a precaution," she said, re-situating the pillows and checking the clock. "Try to eat or drink something every once in a while, but take it easy for the next thirty minutes, just to be safe."
Ed grunted and rolled over, away from the bowl and against Hawkeye as she settled herself on the opposite side of the mattress. She pulled her arm around him and held him close, going back to reading while petting his hair. Hayate hopped onto the bed with them, settling on Ed's other side and pressing himself against the boy's spine.
He didn't mean to doze, but he must have, because he was woken up by his brother arriving with a bottle of bismuth. The syrup tasted chalky and stuck to the inside of his mouth, but the soda was quick to wash it away, though it sent bubbles bursting in his nose.
"Have a cracker, Brother. The medicine works better if you take it with food."
Edward frowned at the unsalted wheat square, not having a shred of an appetite. An encouraging look from Riza convinced him and he shoved one into his mouth, his newly gained moisture sucked away. Oh, well. It was an excuse to take another drink of the soda. It was orange flavored.
Having satisfied his caregivers, Edward flopped back onto his side and snuggled beneath Hawkeye's arm. Ed had either forgotten that Al was there or had decided that he no longer cared. Whatever the reason, Alphonse tilted his helmet curiously at this rare display of softness.
It also gave him an excuse to "accidentally" drop a cracker on the bed, where it was swiftly licked up by Hayate before it could be taken away.
"Wow, Lieutenant. Brother must really like you. He doesn't snuggle with just anyone. Usually only Winry gets snuggling privileges."
"Really?" Riza said, genuinely intrigued.
"Yeah. They only do it when they think I can't see them but then they fall asleep and Ed snores really loud."
Riza laughed and twined Ed's hair between her fingers.
"I do not. An' I don' snuggle. I'm jus' cold."
"That is the purpose of snuggling, Brother."
"Shut up."
"Okay, Brother."
Edward definitely did snore, Riza thought to herself as she listened to Ed's breathing even out as he drifted off, but it was nothing compared to the colonel. She vividly remembered the time a visiting general had been convinced that someone had snuck a heifer into Easter Headquarters and had thrown open the door to the archives room only to find Roy in the middle of one his "secret" naps.
Riza reminded herself to tell Edward that story the next time the colonel's teasing toed the line.
The only thing other than her pistol that could reign in the man was blackmail.
Bismuth subsalicylate (yes, the rock, as in the rock from Steven Universe) has been an effective treatment for dyspepsia (indigestion) for hundreds of years. It's actually the key ingredient in the stomach medicine Pepto-Bismol and was the inspiration for the brand's name. It works by inhibiting the production of prostaglandins (the hormone that causes muscle contractions within the digestive and reproductive system), increasing the absorption of fluids and salts via chemical osmosis, and killing harmful bacteria by sticking to their cell walls and stopping them from attacking intestinal and stomach cells.
Why did you need to know that?
I dunno.