When Ed next opened his eyes, the first thing the doctor did was ask him, "Are you still alive?" and when Ed groaned an affirmative, he heard the doctor sigh and stand from the bed.

Ed's side hurt and he could feel the itchiness of even more bandages. He would be a mummy soon at this rate. He peered around. The room was dark. At first he thought he had been asleep for a long time, but a look out the window proved him wrong. The sky wasn't a night sky, it was a sky filled with a storm, a storm stirring the clouds, sparking lightning and thunder on the horizon. Ed's eye remained there on that storm for a long while. He could smell the rain, but it brought him no comfort...If Al hadn't pushed him away, right now, it might have been Al smelling the rain...Ed's eyes closed on their own...If Al hadn't pushed him away, Ed's guilt wouldn't be reawakening now...

"Edward?" Ed heard the doctor say and felt a hand on his brow.

"Don't touch me." Ed said weakly and pushed the hand away. "Al? Where's Al?"

"I asked him to leave for a little while."

Ed opened his eyes. "Why?"

The doctor regarded those angry eyes mildly and it was Ed who begrudgingly turned away first. "Because," the doctor said as Ed listened to the sound of the wind from outside the window, "I wanted to talk to you."

Ed's voice was soft, "About what...?"

"What would I have to talk about with you, Edward? You know what I want to talk to you about."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. How long has Al been gone?"

The doctor ignored the question, "I spoke to Pinako, Edward. She told me what Alphonse had told her."

"Someone should turn the light on in the attic, or a lantern from the balcony. He'd come here if he saw that...it's what our mother used to do when it got dark..."

"She told me how you tried to bring back your mother, that you saved Alphonse after the alchemy rebound. But she didn't tell me everything and she didn't have to..."

"What if he went to the house again? And the rain..who knows what'll happened to the seal... Al could...Al could be..."

"Edward." The doctor said in a voice that was neither soft or loud, but it was clear and Edward checked himself. He had been rising, despite the pain in his head and the ache now returning to the stumps of his arm and leg. The eyes the boy turned to the doctor were such the doctor had never seen on a child before. The expression he saw there, that was the same on the men and women who had returned from Ishbal, the ones who had seen such things that would turned their eyes haunted...the same as the ones he had seen when he had been at the laboratory...the eyes that turned the doctor's own blood cold.

But, the doctor knew, there existed in this world some events that changed a person overnight...

Made a dream into a nightmare...

The doctor knew that very well...

"Edward..." he said again and when he saw that he had the boy's attention, he began, "I asked Al to go becuase of what I am about to tell you. I wasn't sure whether I should tell you, and I'm still not sure...Pinako convinced me...but even she is wrong some of the time...but that look on your face, even now..." The doctor sighed and Ed looked around impatient, as though he would find a way out of the room and to Al who even now filled his thoughts. "I never told you boys how I got my automail." The doctor said and began to unbutton his cuff, "Truth is, I don't think I told anyone, besides your father and Pinako..."

Ed stopped and turned back to the doctor, "My...? Automail?" he said and watched the doctor nod and slowly pull back the cuff of his shirt, the cuff on his left wrist. There, as Ed had seen before, between shirt and hand, was glinting metal. As the doctor folded back the shirt, he saw that metal continued beyond the elbow and when the doctor finally removed his glove, Ed saw five metallic fingers curl and unfurl. Ed couldn't help but stare. He had seen the Rockbells' creations line the walls of their workshop and although he had always known that the purpose of automail was to be attached to a living person, he had never seen it before and he realized now he never really thought people lived with automail...It seemed terrible and wrong and unnatural...And frighetning...He stared and for a minute forgot his guilt and new-found self loathing as those curling digits clicked as each fake joint bent...click, click, click...Ed frowned and pushed himself away from that hand that made him so suddenly uncomfortable.

"You don't like it?" the doctor said, and when Ed felt those cold fingers touch his good arm, he shook his head, his eyes too wide, "Neither do I. I hate it. But I live with it as a reminder."

"A reminder of what?" Ed asked despite himself, his mouth suddenly dry.

And the doctor told him.

TBC...