Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi). Never have, never will (although I wish I did). I'm not making any money off this; it's purely for entertainment (and a product of my own dreams). I don't have money, so please don't sue.

Author's Note(s): Wow. Thank you for your reviews. I really appreciate them! I've never actually posted a chaptered story, nor ever done it like this, as a WIP. So, this is a totally new experience, and I have to admit, I fear that I shall become a review fiend. >.> You know, I've never before understood what authors meant when they begged for reviews, or when they thanked their reviewers for them, but I think I understand now. So I sincerely thank all of you for your reviews. They made me want to get the next chapter out as soon as I could.

Oh, and er, in case you didn't guess, this is based on the anime version of FMA. (Although, I think that's implied, and usually it's manga-verse fics that are duly noted. Right?)

Note on the angst: I'll try to include it as much as possible. I thought I would get in more, in this chapter. Apparently not. ;o; Merriam-Webster online definition of 'angst': "a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity." That's exactly the type of angst Ed is (hopefully) going to get. In the fanfic world, angst can have a lot of different connotations to it, but uh, that's the type of angst I mean.

His Nightmared Reality
Chapter 2

Ed woke up in a darkened room. It was dark, but not complete darkness. An extremely tinted window that Ed would notice later provided minimal light, making the room appear hazy. The lighting would remind him of a child's naptime room; dark with just a little bit of light poking through curtains. Of course, there were no curtains - just the tinted window.

But before he recognized any of that, the first thing he noticed was the polished, hardwood floor beneath him. A sharp feeling of pain in his left shoulder helped him notice the second thing - his wound had been taken care of. He wondered if there was a bandage tied around it, but he couldn't look to see in the darkness, and touching the area with his automail arm wouldn't register any senses.

Ed leared forward a little, intending to stand up, and was a little surprised when, before he could do anything of the sort, his body met something both soft and hard. He frowned, before realizing a moment later that it was a couch. He had hit the frame and the cushion.

Looking up at it, he first discerned the color. It was a dirty robin's egg blue in a smooth texture. At this point, Ed noticed the lighting situation, and shortly afterward, his line of sight moved to the couch where a red backpack - his red backpack, actually, was laying. Obviously whoever had taken him had returned to the house to pick things up. Although why they had done so, Ed didn't know.

He reached out to grab the bag when a taunting voice stopped him. "Ah, ah, ah," it tutted at him as though her were a child reaching for something that he wasn't allowed to touch. A hand swatted Ed's metal one away and he looked up to se a figure sitting on the couch. The face was shrouded in darkness, but he could see a general outline.

It was a woman (although he had deciphered that from the voice). Ed guessed that it was the woman who had stabbed him, judging by the wavy hair and curved figure, but he couldn't be completely certain. It could have been any other female with similar feature, too. He couldn't tell without a face.

He realized that she was treating him like a child, and he growled at that. "Who the hell are you? What do you think you're doing! Why did you kidnap me?"

"Oh, that's cute! You think I'm going to answer your questions. Seeing as you are captured, you're in no position to be asking me anything."

"Captured? Hardly. I think I'll rectify that situation." Edward gave a wicked smirk, and since it was painful to move his left shoulder, he brought his right arm to his left side, and clapped his hands together, placing them on the floor. He was hoping to cause the floor to rise up, creating space between them and enough of a distraction for him to be able to escape. Ed's eyes opened wide when nothing happened to the floor, and the alchemic power he had put into the floor returned to his hands, giving him a shock.

Ed reeled backward from the pain, and above him, he could hear the woman laughing at him. His hand stung, and he didn't know what the heck had happened, but nevertheless, Ed clapped his hands together and tried again. He met the same results, only the shock from the energy bouncing back at him was starting to affect his whole arm.

She was still laughing at his attempts at alchemy, but calmed down enough to offer a gracious explanation. "Your alchemy is of no use in this room, your prison. On the outside of this room there are transmutation circles that catch any alchemic energy in here, absorb some of it, and bounce the rest back at you. Try all you want, Edward, alchemy can't help you now."

He growled. "I refuse to believe that!"

"Oh? Then tell me why your simple transmutation to raise the floor isn't working? You're the prodigy alchemist after all. Youngest to earn the rank of state alchemist, only known person to perform a complete human transmutation, hmm?"

Ed was positive she was smirking at him, but he didn't find it so funny. She was extremely dangerous if she knew that he and his brother had performed human alchemy and succeeded. It meant she knew something that no one was supposed to know, and if she could obtain that information, she was very dangerous.

"Oh yes, I know all about that. I know everyth-" Before she could finish her sentence, Edward was already on his feet, ready to take a strike at her. Never mind any rules about not hitting girls. With the way she was talking to him - taunting him almost - she was inviting a hit. He felt satisfied when metal connected with the side of her face.

She looked surprised, but made no signs to indicate she felt pain. "You're such a naughty child, Edward!" She did not punch him in return, but instead slapped his face with equal vigor that he had given to her. She slapped him again, and to his astonishment, he fell over from the force. Ed's left shoulder hit the floor, causing him to wince in pain. Yes, she was definitely dangerous.

The woman returned to the couch and picked up the red backpack with whatever contents were in there. Ed wanted to know what they had taken from his home, and though he was hurt, he still asked, "What's in there?"

She stepped over his body on the floor before replying, "Your cell phone, your brother's phone, a few of your alchemic research notebooks, a hairbrush, a book on alchemy, and a picture of your brother. Goodness only knows why he even bothered to take them. Although I may blow up the picture of your brother and pin it to the wall for a dartboard." Edward made a lunge for her, but she kicked him away. "Don't even try it. And no alchemy, either - you'll only end up hurting yourself and we can't have that." She opened the door, and light streamed in for a moment before the door closed again, the darkness returned, and he heard a click on the other side; they had locked him in.

'That's funny,' Ed said to himself, 'I thought her hair was black, not brown.'

xXxXxXx

Hours later, or what must have been hours and hours later, he was no longer pondering her hair color - he could have mistaken it in the first place, or it could have been a cohort - but her last words.

'You'll only end up hurting yourself, and we can't have that.' It was ironic, considering she had kicked him seconds before uttering that, and to some, it may have seemed that she was only being sarcastic, as his captor. But hours of waiting in the hazy darkness that eventually got very dark like night had him thinking more deeply. When he had punched her, she could have begun to fight back, but the woman only slapped his face, as though chastising him. It wasn't so malicious. Ed thought, 'They're keeping me alive for something. They need me for a reason - to do something for them, maybe. I'm going to be stuck here until they need me.' But a spark flickered in his mind. He realized that if they were to take him somewhere else at some point, he would have a chance to escape during that time. ...As long as he wasn't knocked out, that is. Ed hoped that wouldn't happen.

He attempted his alchemy a few more times, with no success. In fact, his body started to ache faintly. Ed decided he would need to be in good shape if his captors decided to come back, so he stopped trying alchemy for the moment, and lay down on the couch to sleep.

xXxXxXx

Ed woke up the next morning. The only way he could tell was by faint light coming through the window. If it had been night still, no light at all would have entered. Though a little groggy as he sat up on the couch, Ed's brain registered that his body didn't ache nearly as bad, and neither did his shoulder.

Glancing over to the door, he squinted through the dim light, and made out a plate and drinking cup. Eagerly, Ed rose from the couch, and walked over to the door to seize the plate. There was a small round table surrounded by four chairs on the left side of the room, but Ed just sank down against the wall and started to eat breakfast.

The only utensils were chopsticks - inappropriate for the dish - but he made use of them to pick up the eggs and diced potatoes on the plate, and used his hand for the toast, occasionally taking a sip of water. Halfway through eating, Edward frowned. Vegetables, carbs, and protein. If they wanted to make Ed malnourished, they wouldn't be sending him balanced meals. They were going to use him for something, and Ed didn't like that thought at all.

When he was done with breakfast, Edward got up and walked around the room, both looking and feeling to get the layout of the room in the hazy light. It took him a while to do this, and finally he concluded that the length of the room - which was very long - was probably around 22 feet. However, it was really quite narrow, only about 8 feet wide. The sofa was in the middle of the room along the back wall, and the door stood directly across from it (Ed had tried to open it many times, but to no avail). When facing the sofa, the window was on the wall to the right, and there was a small, round, wooden table with four chairs in a nook to the left. When sitting in the chair along the far wall, the outline of a door was noticeable, and Ed was relieved to find a closet sized bathroom and sink inside. There was nothing else in his strange prison, and the only other peculiarity was the floor to ceiling tinted window that let in very little light.

It was a thick, strong plastic/glass affair that didn't break or show any signs of a slight dent when Edward tried to punch it. He tried alchemy, thinking the window might be a weak point in whatever was holding his power back, but got a familiar shock for his troubles. It reminded him a lot of strongly tinted glass windows on a car, but instead of getting light in and being able to see out, as would be the case if he were sitting inside the car, this window was flipped, so that he was on the side that you couldn't look through and see anything on the other side of it. Ed wondered if he were standing outside, would he be able to peer through the window and clearly see the room inside? It didn't matter, he supposed.

He sat on the couch and the minutes ticked by, turning into hours. The room grew slightly brighter as the sun rose for the day. Ed hated not having something to do, and it was going to drive him crazy! He wondered how long he had been here, and thought back. The first time he had been in here, the lighting looked a lot like this. It was afternoon, now, so it was probably yesterday that he had woken up in his 'prison.' But the initial attack had been at dusk, which could only mean it was the second day since he had been kidnapped.

Ed started to panic. Two days, and he was getting antsy. He didn't know how long he was going to last at this point. He sat at the table, in the dark, wondering what he was going to do. It was a while he sat, staring off into infinity before a noise from the outside world, coming through the walls, interrupted his monotony.

"WHAT?" on the other side of the wall with the door was followed by a loud thud, as though slamming a fist on a table, or stamping a foot.

Somewhat startled, Edward quickly got up and rushed to the direction of the noise, pressing his side against the wall to hear better. On the other side, he heard a woman's voice say, "You heard me. He'll be staying here until further notice." It was a lusty, woman's voice, but naturally so. In fact, it sounded rather irritated at the moment, and he wondered how someone could sound seductive all the time while still inflecting anger, irritation, or sadness into it.

"This is absurd!" Another woman's voice (which sounded a lot like his captor) said in response. "She tells you to get him, and then comes up with an 'oh, oops, we screwed up, so you'll have to keep him until further notice until we figure it out?' If I didn't want this so badly, I wouldn't put up with it."

"Think of it as equivalent exchange." Her voice sounded highly amused, and Ed could picture this woman, whoever she was, smirking at the moment. "Put up with it for a while, and you'll get your reward in the end."

"Yeah yeah, shut up. I've already dealt with him long enough."

"I'm only the messenger. If you're so upset, go talk to Dante." It sounded like a challenge, and there was silence as it was not taken. The lusty woman continued, "Don't kill him and don't incapacitate him. If he can't do it, we'll all know who to blame," and at the end, her voice was threatening. There was another flurry of noises, clicking of high heels on a floor, the slam of a door, and Ed assumed that the woman had left.

Shit. Ed swore mentally. He didn't know how long he was going to be here? He needed to find a way out as soon as possible.

He spent a while trying to use alchemy until dinner came, with no results. He tried, in fact, all week to use alchemy in some sort of way. He used it in varying degrees - giving it all the power he had, and trying it whisper soft, with no affect. He used it on the floor, the walls, the water in the bathroom, the air, the furniture, the glass again, all with no change. The shock he got made him tired and weak, and he didn't think he had ever ached worse in his entire life. It wouldn't help him to be so weak while he was in the hands of kidnappers, so he eventually had to give up on the alchemy. Besides, the alchemy wasn't helping him either, so there was probably nothing he could do about it.

It was then that Edward began to loose hope for escaping. A miniscule amount lost, not much, but still it was something. He knew he was in trouble, especially since he couldn't see another way out.

AH! Wow. Um, just to let you know, my dream's not THAT descriptive. Most of that I made up, based loosely on the dream. In fact, the whole alchemy thing wasn't even an issue. I think, because, in the beginning, before I turned into Ed (heh), I was myself, and I don't use alchemy. By the time I was Edward, he was so crazy I don't think it would have occurred to him. There wasn't a bathroom, or even a door in my dream. It was an entirely open space that by now, fictional Edward points up would have escaped from.

There's going to be a lot of me making stuff up, to convey events and emotions of my dream. There's also going to be a lot of plot holes, as dreams usually contain a lot of them, and don't make sense at all. I'm doing my best to cover them, but I know there's still going to be a lot. I apologize, it's just the way it's going to be. :(

By the way, the cell phones have to be in here. They were in my dream, and appeared later in it, too. It was a bit of a breaking point (heh) in the dream, and because they were in it twice, I needed to put them into the story. All the rest of that crap in the backpack is irrelevant. Cellphones in dream. I know, weird.