The Weight of Pain
A/N: I felt like angsting today, so I angsted about Ed's pain wauge and tossed Al in there too. Of how he would sacrifice his arms, legs anything, just for him.
Note: I don't own Full Metal Alchemist. Though, I wish I did.
Ed could deal with pain. He was used to it, could handle it. Physical pain that is. The emotional stuff he still wasn't so good at. As should have become glaringly obvious back when he had been so afraid to ask Al if he hated him.
Emotional pain might have been a whole other thing; physical pain was familiar, easy enough to deal with. Predictable. Flesh torn, cut, or bruised, the initial almost reassuring spike of pain that followed and then the dull ache afterwards. Clean the wound, disinfect it, stitch if needed, bandage and handle with care – well, what passed for care in Edward's book anyway.
His automail bothered him though. As much as he would deny it, ignore the burden and put off Winry and Al's concerns as unneeded, it did. It wasn't the part when they had to reconnect the nerves when he got his automail refitted or repaired – however much he did dread that insane jolt, nerves feeling like they were on fire.
It wasn't that, nor the irritation he often had to deal with around both of the ports even. Sure it was scarred flesh there, but it was flesh all the same, and toughened up or not, deadened nerves there or not, it was still hard metal pressed against flesh without a break from contact. He had cream to apply to the area every now and then though. Something with which Al always insisted on helping him with after he'd once thrown the tube of it across the room in a fit of anger at not being able to reach a spot on his back.
The reconnection, the area around the ports, hell, even the constant minor maintenance like cleaning out sand or drying it off when it got wet didn't really bother him. The pain was what got to him. Not the occasional ache around the ports or in the bones they were connected to when the weather got bad to either extreme – he had pills Winry gave him for that. Some king of cocktail antibiotic and painkiller crap, he just took them, didn't care too much about the details of what was in them.
He could rule out the hassle of all those things, none really bothered him, not the way that the pain that he couldn't handle bothered him. Made him want to just not get up in the mornings sometimes, or just quit walking and never start again, as the alternative would feel like his toes and foot and heel, knee, entire leg was on fire with needles attacking it. With the way his arm felt sometimes he'd wondered if thirteen year olds could have heart attacks induced by pain.
Physical pain was something he could deal with, manage. It was well precedented and organizable, treatable. The worst part about his automail wasn't the physical pain and hassle of it all, but that irrational phantom pain that tended to show up out of nowhere, for no reason.
Phantom Limb Syndrome. He'd read up on it as soon as he'd asked Winry about the inexplicable aches – begging her not to tell Al of course – and she had given him a cursory explanation of it. It was common in those who had – for one reason or another – lost a body part, usually a limb. It was, however, (supposed to be) relatively rare in cases were the amputee had their missing limb or limbs, replaced by automail. After all, since the main nerves were connected to the wires of the automail to lend control of the device to the user, sensation of the arm, or leg, or whatever, was simulated. Just his luck he supposed. It figured that if he could get the short, er, unfortunate, stick, that he would.
Maybe he deserved it. Maybe it was his mind punishing him. Since Al couldn't feel anything, it was probably only fair that Ed feel the most pain possible.
And the worst – absolute worst – part of it was that it wasn't pain he could control, put a label on, or get rid of. He'd found that out the dangerous way, choking down two whole bottles of the painkillers from Winry that he was supposed to only take two a day of. That was the first time it had felt completely and totally unbearable, and the incident with the pills landed him in the local hospital, much to Al's concern. Once he'd had his stomach pumped and drank some awful charcoal fluid-like concoction, Al demanded to know why he'd "tried to kill himself". He'd skirted around telling him the reason he'd taken so many pills, doing his best to reassure his little brother that he had no intention of leaving this earth until he had restored him, (or even then, as Al had let out an upset noise at that point) and eventually he got out of giving him a straight answer. After that Al took it upon himself to monitor everything he ate or drank, but it didn't bother him much. It had been a stupid thing to do in the first place. But then, despite being a genius, Edward Elric really was an idiot sometimes.
He often tried to find some redeeming qualities in himself, maybe something to ease his self-loathing, but all his mind ever caught hold of were more reasons he deserved all the pain that was the counterpoint to all the simple pleasures Al couldn't feel – because of him. Fullmetal Alchemist was a heavy title for a twelve year old boy. But it was just a straw compared to the weight already on his shoulders by the time he received it. Scars, aches and pains of both the physical and emotional sort, an automail right arm, an at times hard to lift automail leg, the weight of a terrible Sin, even if it was committed out of love. The weight of fear, uncertainty, and a hope sometimes so far out of reach that it made everything seem heavier. And on top of it all, the weight of an empty suit of adult armor that laughed or smiled without expression in a child's voice, his little brother's beautiful voice.
There were a lot of things in the Elric brother's lives that almost anyone would consider unbearable, but Edward was willing to take the weight of it all onto his shoulders for the sake of his little brother. The little brother he loved so selfishly he imprisoned in cold unfeeling armor to keep beside him. Pain was nothing new to Edward, and if he thought about it… ghostly pain was actually something very old and familiar. The pain of a ghost of something that's not there… Their mother must have felt that when their father – that bastard – left them. Then they in turn felt it together after she died – the acute loss of their mother. Yes... now that he thought about it, that pain of... lacking, was all too familiar.
The pain of a ghost… Wasn't that what Al was now? Really? A ghost, a soul, linked to this world by the armor and tied to it by that seal, that bond of blood his selfish older brother had forced upon him. Maybe that ghostly pain in his automail then – maybe that was Al's pain. The pain he couldn't feel. Ed supposed if so, then all the better. He didn't mind taking it on, shouldering that too for them, for Al. It was amazing what the human body could withstand after all, what the human psyche could withstand. He… they, had already been through so much already, had put so much on their minds and weight on their hearts. He wondered just how much more he could take before something finally broke, something that would be more than just an easily stitched wound, but something intangible, irreparable. Maybe no one could know when something like that might happen, one certainly couldn't guess at what it might be. But for now, he tried to comfort himself, as long as he had Al beside him, to ground him and keep him focused and from falling into despair, as long as nothing happened to Al, they'd be alright, he'd be alright. He would get used to it, after all, he was used to pain, and it was only one more thing, right? And he was doing this for Al, for them. With that thought, he could shoulder, and would, anything that came their way. So… no matter what pain he ended up feeling, no matter what happened… he would adjust.
A/N: Domo! Read and Review please!