Authors Note: This story deals with the adult themes child abuse, and rape starting in this and the following chapters. If you are squeamish, not a fan of the subject matter, or slash TURN BACK NOW! I have warned you. This is a dark slash fic written from Ed's perspective.

The Story of My Life

You once asked me when it started. Looking back, it started before I had even considered joining the military. I remember the weird old man who sat on the corner of town, drunk and unwashed, leering at random people. At seven, I just thought he was stupid and a waste of time, Al, and Winry's time. Mom and Aunt Pinako would always tell us to stay away from him, strangers were dangerous. That was useless information; nobody could hurt us. Al and I could protect Winry from anything. I didn't realize they were protecting us and now looking back, I see he wanted us -- and not in a good way.

Al, my little brother, had always been a handsome child. Even as a six-year-old kid, it was obvious he would someday grow into a well-built, handsome man. Winry was so cute as a child, and as she grew, that cuteness tempered into loveliness, a loveliness both inside and outside. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you looked at it (big brother instincts aside), few people looked beyond Winry's outer beauty to see her inner loveliness, or the well of almost never-ending strength she possessed. Me, I was an unusually pretty child, not that I knew it or cared. What did something like that matter? I have such an unusual coloring -- few people anywhere have gold eyes. I'm told they are my most striking feature, but I am off topic.

He wanted us. I didn't realize how he wanted us until I was eleven, but I'm getting to that. The townspeople realized what he wanted and took measures to get rid of him. The men, burly farmers, literally ran him out of town. Again, I thought nothing of it. What did one bum's fate matter to me? I had a secret clubhouse to build with Al in the caves outside of Rezenboul. I still laugh when I think of Winry's reaction to Al telling her she could come with us only because she wasn't a girly girl. She informed him she was a girl and as girly as any girl could be then she threw her doll at him. It's funny, Al gets soft fabric dolls thrown at him; I get hit in the head with hard steel wrenches. I'm rambling again, aren't I?

You know what happened next. Mom died, and we left for training in Dublith. The bum from Rizenboul may have been the first to notice me, but he wasn't the last. Mason's apprentice spent too much time looking at me for teacher's comfort. He tried to hug me once, and teacher beat him black and blue. That was before Mason got hold of him. He left town after that, and I never really understood why. It just didn't matter to me, and I hadn't wanted to be hugged by him anyway. Mason and Teacher were protecting us, even if I didn't realize it at the time.

Are you noticing a pattern?

Again, you know what comes next, we went home and tried to bring Mom back. That was a disaster -- there is no other term for it, but it was what really started all of this mess. Suddenly, my brother was a walking, talking trashcan and I was crippled. However, I was crippled and he was a walking trashcan without a protector.

You took advantage of that. Don't tell me you didn't. You knew Aunt Pinako couldn't hold us -- well me -- back, and you knew that the ability to fix my beloved little brother would bring me to you better than anything else, and it did. I came running.

But what to do with me? I was eleven and about to take the state alchemy exam. If I passed you had found a progeny, someone you could mold for your own use, all the while telling the military higher ups, who have put a feather or two in your cap, it is all in the name of the furher. If I had failed and you had trained me, that would have reflected poorly on you and your skills, not to mention the idiocy of having a child, and an eleven year old at that, try to take an exam full grown men fail on a yearly basis.

So you found the perfect solution, in your mind at least. 'I'll put him with Tucker. He's an alchemist who specializes in the same realm as what the boy wants to know about. I'm doing the boy a favor by setting this up. Tucker is a family man he'll know what to do with a damaged child. I'll just hint broadly at what they did, not that Tucker couldn't tell. It will keep the boy in line if he knows I will follow through on my threat to expose them. Tucker, being a family man with a young child not too much younger than the boys, will keep his mouth shut, and if not, well, then I am giving him a progeny to train that will look good on his record. It will all work out in the end right?'

You didn't count on him being a psychotic idiot did you? What you did was give a psycho who had been under Basque Gran's thumb for over two years, without a woman to satisfy him in any way, a damaged and uncommonly pretty child.

Note the damaged.

Not three days after you left, he cornered me in the library after dinner and asked me to come to his room to discuss my research. He told me we wouldn't be disturbing Al or Nina if we retreated to his room on the far side of the house. As big as the house was, I really didn't see how we could disturb them if we shouted at the top of our lungs, but it wasn't my place to point that out in the man's home. Mom did raise me with some manners, even if contempt for the military drove most of them out of me.

I went to his room after Al and Nina went to sleep, my current book in hand. I remember I was reading up on Biochemical alchemy, and I did have questions for him. If anyone would have the answers to my questions, it would be a man who specializes in the biology involved in chimera research.

It wasn't my research he was interested in. I knocked and was invited into his room and I took the offered seat on the couch he had in front the fireplace. I sat on the opposite end of the couch from him, and I told him what I had been studying.

He laughed, and I had no idea why, and he said, "don't you think we should start at the beginning?"

Confused, I told him I have the basics down already. He took that as initiative to move closer to me and place his hand on my thigh. Trying to shift away, I asked what he thought he was doing. I may have been young, but I knew I was not supposed to be touched like that. He laughed again.

"At the beginning it is. Equivalent Exchange. It is the basis of everything we alchemists do. I supply you with a roof over your head, food in your stomach, books to study and my knowledge to draw from. Now what do you supply me with?"

That stumped me. What did I have to give him? I told him I didn't know what I had that I could give him. So he told me what he wanted. "We, Nina and I, have been bereft of a woman's touch here for quite some time now. What I want from you is to take over the household, cleaning, cooking, dusting -- the works. Yes, yes I know it will take some time away from your studying, but once you have the place cleaned up, it won't take much to keep it up, and you will report to me every other night, where we will go over what you have studied, and I will help you with anything you have had trouble with before we go to bed."

That sounded fair to me. I would cook and clean, but I had done that enough when mom was getting sick. I didn't realize she was sick at the time, I just thought she wanted me to be able help her take care of Al. I had felt special then, Mom had needed me.

So I agreed. I would cook and clean. I figured I could get Al to help out of guilt, and if we made it into a game I could get Nina to help and not feel left out. But Tucker's smile was creepy. I got chills form that smile.

"Good then lets go to bed."

It was that simple. Getting up, I bid him goodnight and headed for the door.

"Where are you going? Our bed is right there."

I had no idea what he was talking about. I wasn't staying in here. Mom had always told me good boys and girls never stay with strangers, and that's what he was. A stranger I had been dumped on. I told him as much. I knew what he was asking was wrong. I could just feel it.

"But you're not a good boy are you? Look what you did to your brother. You trapped him is a feeling-less suit of armor. You want to fix your mistakes; well I have the materials you need to do that. Would you really deny your brother the only chance he might have to ever be normal? All for your pride and a misplaced sense of right and wrong? Where was this sense of right and wrong when you tried to transmute your mother? You realize what some people think is right and wrong is sometimes wrong. You want in the military, but do you think they want children? I am trying to help you. I was treating you as an adult, but if that is not what you want, then nevermind. I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with the whining of a child. The best thing you could do is go home and try again when you have grown up. I thought you were intelligent enough to have thought the reactions of your actions through, apparently I was wrong."

Yeah, that bastard hit every weak spot I had. The guilt over what I did to my mother. My guilt over what I did to my brother. Questioning my devotion to my brother and how far I would go to restore him. Implying that my pride was more important than Al. Hell, implying that anything was more important than Al. He hit on my fear that I would fail the test, that even if I had could pass that the military would not want me causing me to lose time fixing Al. Al who was all I had.

Then he called me a child. Which I was. Not that that was something I wanted to hear at that time. That was a blow to my pride, I can tell you that, and he knew it. He had me when he brought up what I had done to Al, but the blow to my pride, calling me childish and questioning my intelligence was just too much. He knew that too.

I stayed. I let him use me in the most vile and cruel way possible. I just stood there and let him strip away my clothes. I let him touch me in places even I had never touched except to wash in the bath. When he had me to lie down, I was scared. I had no idea what he was doing, or why my body was doing what it was. This was wrong, and I knew it but at the same time I could not stop it. I didn't know how. How do you stop something you agreed to?

It hurt. I should tell you that. I was so nervous I couldn't relax into what he was doing. Looking back it was sad. He had no stamina or talent for that matter. He exhausted himself. When I was sure he was asleep, I dressed and snuck back in to the room I shared with Al. Al never woke from wherever he went when he slept while in the armor.

The next morning, I made breakfast and Tucker smiled at me. He approved of me being back where I should be. Al would never know. Later that day, I told Al it would be nice if we cleaned up the house. If we were going to live there it was the least we could do. Al thought that was a wonderful idea, and never thought twice about the reasons why I, who hate cleaning above all things excepting milk, would voluntary clean anything. We did make cleaning the house into a game and Nina loved it, and I started to worry. If he could do that to me what would he do to her? If I only knew then what I know now huh?

How was I supposed to tell you? I didn't see anyone from the military, much less you, until Hughes came and got me on my birthday. For that matter, what was I supposed to say? "Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Hughes, I realize I don't know you at all but Tucker thinks I am his whore and he's been fucking me for a year now. Oh, you're in labor, I guess this was a bad time."

Would the military have believed me, or would they have sided with a respected family man? I would have been laughed out of Central, and you know it.

Can I get on with the story? You did ask you know. I don't want to tell you this, but you ordered it, so shut up.

He asked after my research two days later. That same night I went to him again. Again I didn't understand what he was doing or why my body be behaving like it was. I did know however that it was wrong and Al or anyone else for that matter could never know. For the entire year every two nights like clockwork he would ask after my research and I would go to him. During that year, I worried about Nina and Al, and we became close. Nina became our little sister.

Toward the end of our time there, I was still studying biology when I found a human anatomy book. It explained a lot of things about my body, and what was going on. This was when I began to realize that I had power over him. He wanted me, not the other way around. I could use that. If I got him wound up it was always over sooner. Admittedly, his evaluation had him in a fuss, so I wasn't called to come to his room as often. He was worried and rightly so.

Around this time, I had started taking Nina and Al to the local park to get away from him. His worry was making Nina clingy, and her clinginess was shortening his temper. I saw Gran a few times during this period, but he ignored me. I was just a kid.

When I passed the state exam, Tucker got even more flighty. He kept giving Nina funny looks, and I was scared for her. About this time I saw Gran a few times. He suddenly didn't like me. Later I found out is was because you had shown him up. I was a better alchemist that Tucker would ever be, and I had only just turned twelve.

The tension in the house was getting worse. Tucker's assessment was in a week, so I went to the library to see if I could find out anything on his original transmutation. If I could, maybe I could help him and he would quit looking at Nina that way.

What way? I don't know how to describe it. Cunning, assessing. Maybe weary and nervous would work too.

Right, where was I? About this time, Tucker started to talk about his wife, when she left him, why, where she went, all that jazz. The trouble was, it wasn't adding up.

When Nina caught me writing to Winry, she wrote a letter to her mom that Tucker was supposed to mail. When I came down to do the dinner dishes, I found it burned in a bronze dish on the table. Tucker didn't pay attention to how well it burned. Seeing that, well, it made the creepy feeling I had worse. Then Gran showed up.

Gran didn't like the fact that I had been, in his words "snooping" in classified matters under his authority. He really didn't like you, did he? We were thrown out. In one way, it was a relief. I was free of Tucker and a State Alchemist. I could, and did, move into the dorms. My certification was something that couldn't be taken away right then. I had a way to help Al, the whole of Central's First Branch, but Nina was still there. That feeling got worse all day long, so I talked Al into sneaking in with me, but we were too late. Nina and Alexander were a chimera. A perfect chimera bonded at the cellular level.

There was nothing I could do about it. If I had tried to separate them, I would have killed them both. Of course, you think this can't get any worse, but Gran showed up.

You know what happens next. Gran ran off with Tucker and Nina. I transmuted the ground and freed Nina, but she panicked ran and was murdered by Scar. Not that I knew who had done it at that time.

Yeah, I cried. My all but sister, a little girl who hadn't even turned five yet, was just transmuted into a chimera and murdered. She was changed into a monster by her own father. I knew, KNEW something was wrong but I didn't do anything until it was too late. After all I've told you, do you wonder why I didn't want to go back to that damn house? Why I wanted nothing to do with the Tucker case. No, of course not. You were preoccupied with Barry.

What is that look? I told you the bum from Rezenboul was the first, but not the last, well Tucker wasn't the last either. Do you really want to know what comes next?