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I do not own FMA, nor do I wish to.
Not sure what to say about this one. It's left open at the end. Hopefully i can come up with a follow up in a couple of years or something.
side note: i just used the female pronoun for Ed from the beginning even though no one's aware of it yet. it was easier to write that way.
This chapter has a 'G' rating, except language.
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It'd been about a month since she'd been able to get Al his body back and had also managed to include her right arm in the deal. The first couple weeks everyone had spent a lot of time helping Al eat and restore his muscle mass. Malnutrition was still an issue for regular citizens even just during winter, nevermind being soulless and immobile at the Gate for several years.
Al had pulled through after that though and was now on the way to full recovery.
Ed had put so much time into Al's recovery that she hadn't really paid attention to her own arm and it wasn't until Havoc had learned there was only two months left on her contract and tried to shake her hand that anyone even noticed something was wrong.
Not that it was actually 'wrong' per se, just that with all her attention on Al, her arm had not been getting any workout or care. So when Havoc shook her hand, the state of the arm itself was made abundantly clear when Ed yelped and fell over.
Everyone stopped. Havoc frozen in shock. Ed stared down at her own arm in shock and betrayal, while simultaneously cradling it in pain against herself.
Mustang was the first to move. Marching around his desk and crouching down next to Ed's right side, he helped her take her coat off and inspected the arm. It was so frail, and the fingers and palm were quickly bruising just from a handshake.
He glared at Ed while still keeping the arm captive, "How could you forget to take care of your own damn arm like this?"
He'd actually been hoping to fire Ed up, get him in a fighting mood so they could start getting this arm back in shape, he definitely wasn't expecting the flash of guilt that washed over his subordinate's face a the word 'forget'.
"Everyone out."
As everyone shuffled out the door he kept his eyes on Ed's. They'd grown slightly wider in fear. Of what? Mustang could only assume Ed was afraid of being alone with him.
The door clicked shut behind him and Mustang stared at Ed, hoping the boy would explain himself.
Ed stared at Mustang for a moment before averting his eyes slightly, "Al was getting better and i just forgot."
Mustang raised an eyebrow.
"Ok, so i remembered when i tried to lift something or lean on it or do any alchemy. But it wasn't really on purpose, I wanted to make sure Al was ok first and so i just kind of ignored it."
Made sense, but then why was the boy afraid to say that?
"You're 18 now Ed." Guilt again? "Practically a grown ass man… you can't just keep 'forgetting' to take care of yourself."
Ed had averted his eyes at '18' and shut them completely at 'man'. Mustang started to get a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He put some warning into his voice, "Ed? Explain."
Ed opened her eyes and took a deep breath to calm down, she felt like an animal caught in a bear trap. Mustang wasn't letting her arm go and was getting dangerously angry with her silence. She tested pulling her arm away slowly and his grip tightened slightly, but he did seem to notice the 'bear-trap' situation and sat, crossing his legs into a sitting position in the same spot.
It helped, she exhaled and met his gaze; time to stop running away.
"This is hard, you're going to be angry with me. And actually i meant to tell you earlier i just kept forgetting..." No reaction. "Ok, so, you know i joined the military to save my brother. Well, we decided that since there are no female alchemists in the military and i was already pretty young anyway that we could fudge a few details to make it easier for me."
She saw Mustang's frown deepen.
"Soijustsortofsaidiwasaboyandchangedmynameandagetomatch."
Ed kept her eyes glued to Mustang's for any sign of attack. She didn't really think he would be angry enough for violence but this was pretty big news and she had no idea what the proper way to break it to him would be. So far he hadn't moved, no sign of acceptance or anger. A minute passed in silence, he gave her arm back and left the room without words. The door locked behind him.
Well, at least he hadn't broken her arm. It was just that now she'd have to sit here and wait while he decided what to do.
Maybe she could fashion a rope to escape with out the window. From the curtains. With one hand. Yeah, that wouldn't work. Not even a little. She sighed, without alchemy she was doomed.
She crawled onto Mustang's office couch. Might as well take a nap then. See if she could sleep through the impending apocalypse.
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I had no idea how to end this. In actuality the beginning of this one was supposed to end like the next one. And it just sort of wrote itself into this story instead.
Maybe i'll think of a sequel to this one later, since i just left it open like this.
only one left for this batch, enjoy!