WARNING! THIS IS A REALLY, REALLY LONG CHAPTER! IT'S, LIKE, 22 PAGES LONG!
Also, it sucks.
Also, it's 4:30 in the morning.
I sleep now.
Roy Mustang was saying good-bye.
He was saying good-bye to his eyes, which had ensnared so many women over the years with their tantalizing darkness that implanted a longing to be swallowed by it. He was saying good-bye to his nose, so perfectly straight, not too long or too short, guiding the observer from his downy brow to his mouth. Not a trace of stubble, and lips carved exquisitely into the flesh, cheeks trained expertly to pull the correct smirk at the correct time. He said good-bye to his pristine, costless reflection as the steam from the sink coated the mirror in a blurry mist, because he was sure by the end of the hour, Edward Elric would tear his face from his skull.
XXX
The Hughes family had departed the previous evening, promising to return the next with a second potluck. Ed didn't remember them leaving. Nor did he remember falling asleep, although he doubted he had. Based on what he could remember, he had lost consciousness in the colonel's bed.
He remembered pain.
He remembered terror.
He remembered Mustang.
Focus on me and think about breathing.
And so he had.
Through the sensation of his body pulling itself into string meat, he had turned all his attention to the feeling of Roy's hand on his back. Warm, firm, muffled by fabric… air goes in, air goes out, air goes in, air goes out, air goes out, air goes out… And then finally air went in and he heard his name. He tried to call out, to answer, but he couldn't form sentences in his brain or words in his mouth and instead he had replied with a nonverbal bray with his vocal cords.
Then nothing.
When he awoke, he found himself soaked to the soul, and Black Hayate curled into his side.
The dog slept with his chin on Edward's hip. His hand rested on Hayate's head, as if he had been scratching the dog behind the ears in his sleep. Besides him and the canine, the room was devoid of life. He wondered where Roy, Riza, and Al had hidden themselves.
He thought he smelled bacon.
XXX
"What does your brother normally eat for breakfast, Alphonse?"
"A sandwich."
Riza Hawkeye paused in her act of locating the colonel's barely handled cooking implements and blinked bemusedly at the suit of armor.
"Okay… what does he eat for lunch?" she asked, her maternal intuition jumping at the signal that there was something about the boy in the guestroom she should probably know.
"A sandwich."
"What about dinner?"
"A sandwich."
She contemplated this in silence for a moment.
"Is there anything he'll eat that isn't a sandwich?"
"Brother will eat anything. I saw him eat a furry muffin he found on the ground when we were little. He was sick for days. Mom told him not to eat food off the ground anymore."
Now Hawkeye was thoroughly confused-a state of mind that often reached her when in the company of the Elric brothers.
"But… then why does-"
"Brother forgets to eat," Alphonse answered her question before she finished asking it. "He's always so busy researching ways to get our bodies back, he doesn't get up for meals. Even if I make something for him and I put it in front of him, he won't notice. So I just make him a sandwich and stick it in his hand. Then he eats and studies at the same time. Besides, Mom never let us use the stove, and I can't really smell or taste, so I have a hard time telling if I'm doing it right. But I know I can't mess up a turkey sandwich. Or at least, I don't think so…"
"I'm sure you've never done such a thing," said Riza, returning to removing a hefty frying pan from a cupboard that was reserved for the area of domestic life Roy Mustang had never properly been acquainted with. She suddenly felt almost uncouth to be noting the lack of grease coating the pan, when the boy standing two heads taller than her couldn't feel himself breathe.
She shook her head roughly. Pancakes didn't make themselves.
XXX
The sound of meat sizzling was punctuated by the distinct flopping noise of bare feet on the floor.
Roy Mustang entered his kitchen to the sight of his lieutenant frying bacon over his stove and a suit of armor cracking three of his eggs into his measuring bowl.
His first thought was wonderment at the fact that he owned a measuring bowl.
His second was that he could not smell coffee being brewed.
The third was a recollection of the events of the preceding evening.
Edward.
"How is-"
"Still sleeping, sir. Black Hayate is with him now." Riza did not look up from transferring browned strips of pork from the pan to a waiting plate on the counter.
"Did… did you sleep here last night?"
"I did, sir. If you recall, I put together a change of clothes when we stopped for Hayate the other day."
A change of clothes.
At his house.
Riza Hawkeye undressing in his house-
"Stop that, Roy. It's not polite."
"Yes, ma'am." Neither of them questioned how she had known what he had been thinking.
"But where in the house-"
"On your couch, sir. I hope you don't mind."
"No, not at all."
And then he realized that Hawkeye had slept on his couch.
"Wait… NO! I mean yes! I mean-you shouldn't have had to sleep on the couch!"
"Edward has the guestroom, sir. The couch was the only free resting place I could find."
"What are you talking about? My bed's big enough for two, you could have slept with me!"
His words made Riza stiffen.
She, like Roy, was garbed in her sleep wear, having seen no pressing reason to dress formally. However, she, unlike Roy, carried a method of defense on her person no matter the place or time. He realized this when his lieutenant produced a piston from the collar of her nightshirt.
"Or I could have slept on the couch, and you could have taken the bed!" Mustang's voice was an octave higher than normal.
"Why don't you go check on Edward, sir? I can't imagine him sleeping through the smell of food."
Roy was out of sight before she began her second sentence. From down the hall, the colonel heard a tinny voice speak up shyly.
"Umm, Miss Hawkeye… why did you pull a gun on Mr. Mustang?"
XXX
The door to the guestroom was melded into the threshold, but it wasn't by any means closed. Roy carefully it aside, afraid of startling the boy with a squeak from the hinge or an abrupt entrance. Edward was awake, his left hand absent-mindedly stroking Black Hayate's fur. The dog opened one eye as he sensed Mustang's presence and huffed a greeting. Fullmetal lay on his back, his eyes facing the ceiling. He gave no sign that he knew Roy was there.
"I smell food."
Roy nearly jumped, but caught himself with impressive effort of will.
"Hawkeye and your brother are making pancakes and bacon."
Ed said nothing.
"How are you feeling?"
Ed paused in his stroking of Hayate, as if considering the question, and then said tersely, "Fine."
He's lying.
"Are you hungry?"
Fullmetal's shoulders twitched, like he had been planning on shrugging, and then decided against it at the last moment.
"I guess I could eat."
There was an awkward silence as Roy racked his brain for something to say.
"Well… well, good. The lieutenant and Alphonse worked hard on those pancakes."
Again, Edward said nothing.
Mustang departed swiftly. There was nothing that he could think of to say that would make sense in this rather one-sided conversation, and he elected to cut the discomfort short.
XXX
"What are you doing?"
Hawkeye had cut the buttered and syrup drenched pancakes into small squares, and now she was quite literally ripping Edward's bacon to pieces. She cast Alphonse a glance of acknowledgement out of the corner of her eye.
"I'm tearing through the cooked fat in between the meat. Normally, I assume your brother would just chew the tough parts, but I don't think it would be a good idea for him to strain his jaw muscles. If it's in smaller pieces, he'll be able to swallow it without chewing."
"Oh." Al was impressed. "Wow, you're really observant, Miss Hawkeye. And that's awfully nice of you. Thank you."
A smile touched the edges of Riza's mouth.
XXX
Her prediction proved correct.
Ed greeted his brother with a smile. Al guessed the expression was prompted by the sight of breakfast rather than his presence. Black Hayate raised his head from where he had been relaxing against Ed's hip. His nose twitched, the tantalizing smell of hot meat bringing water to his mouth. Riza had trained him well, so he did not give in to the temptation to bowl into Al's breastplate and knock the plate to the floor. Instead he stood swiftly and hopped off the bed, squeezing through the small gap between door and frame that Alphonse had allowed, on his way to petition his mistress for a meal of his own.
"Hawkeye made you some food, Brother." He did not deign to mention that she had also cut it for him.
"Colonel said she was cooking. Who would've guessed the bastard has a stove?"
"Yeah. And a frying pan, too."
"Really? I bet his mom gave it to him for his birthday."
Edward accepted the plate with his right hand. Al noticed that he did so with the elbow and upper arm grounded on the bed, most likely to avoid aggravating his shoulder. He quickly forgot about this oddity as his mind became engrossed with an even stranger one. Ed placed the plate on his stomach, took the fork his brother offered him in his left hand, and began poking at the pancake squares, and doing all of this while still lying flat on his back.
"Umm… Brother…What are you doing?"
"I'm eating, Al. What does it look like I'm doing?"
Ed managed skewer three of the squares on the fork's prongs, then proceeded to bounce the utensil between his fingers. Satisfied that the food was firmly impales, he drug his arm across his chest and stuck the pancake-cloaked end of the fork into his mouth. His arm did not leave his body once throughout the exercise.
Al replied with his trademark honesty.
"I have absolutely no idea."
Ed grunted dismissively and repeated the procedure stiffly.
"Why don't you sit up, Brother?"
"Because I don't want to."
The words were shoved at him with a ferocity that Al recognized instantly. His big brother was trying to pretend that whatever reason he really wasn't in a more practical position didn't exist, and most likely because he knew Al wasn't going to like it.
It didn't take much for Alphonse to figure out what that reason was.
"You can't do it."
"Huh?" Ed paused in delivering miniature pieces of bacon to his face.
"You can't sit up. You can't even lift your arms."
Frightened concern layered Al's voice like it was a part of the ringing sound echoing from his armor.
Edward hated it.
"No, really, Al, I just don't feel like it. I can sit up if I want to. See watch-"
The breath he had been planning to use to continue speaking became lodged in his lungs as he forced his broken, ruined muscles to contract. Swollen with blood and scored with tears, the tiny fibers had been twitching and yanking throughout his sleep during the night, and the frail connections that had been valiantly holding and healing were not enough to lift Edward's weight-but Edward's weight was more than enough for them. Edward yelped as he felt those final bonds snap, and his lower back turned terribly stiff and hard.
"Brother!"
Ed didn't answer right away. He could feel a small line of white-hot pain just below the center of his back, on the right side of his spine. He could also feel the area grow hot as blood flooded to it, immediately working to close the gap in the tissue and creating the sensation of an uncomfortable knob forming beneath his skin.
"I'm all right, Al. Just a little sore." Ed silently cursed as his words came out slightly shaken. The pain wasn't the worst, and was definitely bearable, but its sudden spark into existence had caught him off guard.
"Should I get the colonel? Or the lieutenant?" Or-"
"No!" Al started at the fierceness in the syllable. Ed gave himself a moment to regain his composure and continued in a more even tone.
"You don't need to bother them, little brother. I'm just feeling kind of stiff. Okay? I'm fine, really. I promise."
What is happening to me?
XXX
"He's worse."
Roy looked up from his badly needed second helping of coffee.
Al held Edward's plate, now devoid of breakfast. He clanked across the floor and gently placed it in the sink. Roy realized, with a bit of a jolt, that this meant he had dishes to wash. This had never happened to him before. He wasn't quite sure what it meant. He supposed he would eventually have to wash them… but he had never washed dishes before. Perhaps Hawkeye-
"He can't move."
Mustang forgot about dishes.
Al was still standing in front of the sink, his nonexistent gaze unfocused. Mustang recognized the stance for that of someone who wishes to be useful to a cause, but it is in a situation in which there is no sensible action that can be taken, and so saw no reason to do anything at all if nothing anyone could do would have an effect.
"He can't sit up. He ate his whole breakfast on his back. He can't even lift his arms. I think… I can tell he's hurting. He's hurting too much to move."
Mustang sighed and stared into his coffee. If only Fullmetal would take the relaxants the doctors had prescribed, he wouldn't be convulsing so violently and his body wouldn't find it so easy to pull itself apart.
And then he remembered.
"Anti-toxin."
"Huh?" Al's helmet shifted so that the visor was facing the colonel.
"Ed hasn't been given his dose of anti-toxin for the day."
Roy drained the remains of his drink and stood, making his way to his room. The paper bag with the pharmaceuticals was in the pocket of his uniform jacket. Retrieving it, he ripped the stapled mouth apart and unceremoniously dumped the contents on the bed.
"Okay, diazepam… that's the relaxants… anti-arrhythmic… I should probably give that to him to… tranquilizers… just in case… ah! Anti-toxin!"
He quickly read the labels for each, noticed that the dosages were based on body weight, realized he didn't know Fullmetal's. He caught himself before he shouted across the house to Alphonse for this information, remembering the ban on loud or sudden noises, and instead returned to the kitchen with the medicines in his hands.
"How much does your brother weigh, Alphonse? Without the automail."
The suit of armor made a puzzled sound, then turned away from the dishes he had been washing-Roy would have to remember to thank him later-then saw the bottles the colonel was holding.
"Just under a hundred pounds. Should I get a glass of water for Brother to swallow the pills with?"
"Yes, please, if you would."
He abruptly noticed that he hadn't seen the lieutenant since breakfast.
"Do you by chance know where Riza's gone?"
"She's actually with Ed right now. She wanted to get a closer look at his shoulder."
XXX
Riza had entered the guestroom with a glass of punch and a bowl of dog food. Black Hayate eagerly began gobbling the kibble as soon as his mistress placed the container on the floor. She set the glass on the bedside table. Edward seemed to be dozing; his breathing was even, though his skin shone with sweat. Hawkeye noted with disgust that the sheets were still wet. Perhaps she ought to treat Ed to a warm bath while she changed the linens.
She sat herself in the chair Alphonse had been occupying when keeping an eye on his brother and leaned close to him, her attention focused on his furious-looking right shoulder. It was red and hot, and the metal cap was pressing into the tight skin. It looked as if it might pop off at the rate that Ed's shoulder was swelling, it was already noticeably bigger, if only slightly, than his left, and the skin around the metal was white. Riza wondered if there was any way that she might be able to lift the cap just enough to peer beneath it without waking Ed. She almost immediately decided that there was none.
For a while, she simply sat there, debating whether she ought to wait until Edward woke to inspect his shoulder or do something productive and come back later. Eventually, Black Hayate, finished with his meal, hopped onto the bed and saw his mistress studying a specific part of the Ed's body. Curious, he stepped over the lumps under the thin, wet blanket that were Ed's legs and made his way to her. Upon reaching his mistress, his nose caught the scent of infection. He glanced at the boy's shoulder sniffed it experimentally, and, out of instinct, began to lick it.
Ed moaned and twitched in several places. His eyes opened the smallest bit and he saw a furry, black and white body next to his face.
"Hayate, no."
Riza gently shooed the dog away. Hayate obeyed without question, though he cast her a confused expression while he did so.
"'S okay," Edward mumbled, surprising Hawkeye. "Feels better that way."
For a moment, she considered letting her dog continue his ministrations. Unfortunately, Hayate's tongue would probably impede a proper examination.
"I brought you some punch," she said, retrieving the glass from the table.
Ed opened his eyes a small fraction more and stared at the glass.
"Would you like some?"
Edward licked his lips thirstily and Riza took it as an affirmative before the boy lied that he wasn't. She placed the glass on the table once more and slipped her hands underneath him, one under his back and one behind his neck.
"I can do it," he protested pathetically.
"No, you can't. Alphonse told me."
Ed's eyes flashed with annoyance, but he said nothing more as the lieutenant slowly, carefully guided his body into a sitting position. Her hands were abnormally strong for a female, and yet contrastingly soft as they supported the weight of his immobile body. She adjusted the pillows behind his head to insure his comfort, then took the glass from the table and brought it to his lips.
Riza didn't comment on the way Edward would drink, stop and take a few breaths, and then drink again.
"How are you feeling?" she asked him between swallows. She saw his mouth pull into a forced smirk and knew he was about to say that he was fine. Riza set her own face in a glare that she plagued upon the colonel whenever he came into the office ill insisting he was healthy. The smirk vanished at once and the alchemist lowered his gaze in resignation.
"My head hurts. And my back hurts. And my arm hurts."
"How does your shoulder feel?"
Ed didn't answer right away.
"It's all tingly and hot and it burns. It… it hurts really badly if I move my automail at all."
Riza nodded understandingly and waited until Edward had finished the glass to inspect his shoulder.
She brushed her fingers over the skin and Ed hissed.
"What are you doing?"
He was trying to cover his nervousness with false indignation. Hawkeye did not respond to the latter.
"I'm just taking a closer look."
She did not like the way she could feel the blood pulsing through his flesh. The vibrations and heat intensified as she brought her fingers closer to his port. Riza knew Ed would be inclined to flinch as soon as he realized what exactly she was trying to do.
"Easy, Edward. I promise not to hurt you, okay. If you feel like I'm causing you pain, just tell me, and I'll stop. Just hold still for a minute."
She was impressively shocked that her strategy worked. Edward did not move away from her, though she could still sense nervousness radiating off him. Black Hayate could as well, he settled himself in Ed's lap and brushed his nose over the boy's stomach reassuringly.
Cautiously, lightly, and very slowly, Hawkeye slipped the tips of the finger of one hand below the lip of metal, while the fingers of her other hand were placed on the corner of his jaw. The hand touching his jaw encouraged him to lean his head to the left, so that it was resting on his opposite shoulder, while the hand touching his port began to tenderly pull the metal away from his skin.
XXX
This is what Roy Mustang found when he entered the guestroom.
He stared at the scene before him, not quite sure what to make of it. Edward's sideways eyes met his and Fullmetal's face twisted into a threatening scowl. Roy took the warning to heart and said nothing.
"Roy, could you get me a tissue, or something like that?" Hawkeye said, her voice muffled by calculation.
Mustang moved to comply, then realized Riza hadn't looked up to see who had crossed the threshold.
"Wait, how did-"
"The only other person in this house is Alphonse, and, if you'll excuse me, Edward, he has a very distinctive gait."
Ed didn't react beyond a quiet sigh.
Accepting her answer, Mustang swiftly made his way down the hall to the bathroom and retrieved a spare roll of toilet paper. Riza didn't seem to care that he'd returned with the whole roll rather than a few pieces, or if she did, she showed no sign of it. She tried unsuccessfully to tear a portion of the paper from the coil with one hand, as she needed the other to keep Ed's automail from touching his shoulder. Feeling the sight of his lieutenant struggle with anything so menial was more than he could bear, Roy took the roll from her and removed a decent amount. Hawkeye accepted the paper with a nod of thanks and proceeded to scrub the underside of the metal cap.
Edward winced, remembered the colonel was watching, and quickly tried to wipe his face of expression. Unfortunately, his facial muscles refused to obey and remained scrunched. Ed quickly turned his attention to the wet bedsheets. He did not see Roy's eyebrows pinch together in sympathy.
"Oh my God."
Mustang felt his breakfast turn to stone in his stomach.
Ed forgot about the spasms in his face.
"What? What is it?" The fear was unhidden in Edward's voice.
Roy stepped to Riza's side. Hawkeye turned and gave him a look he read clearly as, "Don't say anything." She discreetly handed him the bunched wad of toilet paper. Ed's gaze followed him anxiously, but Roy did not meet it. Mustang carefully unraveled the ball, taking care to keep the contents out of Ed's vision.
His face paled.
He raised his eyes to Hawkeye's. She waited patiently, and yet expectedly, and Mustang found the combination strangely calming.
In the silence, Hayate whined. The dog's nostrils flared and he licked lips nervously. Black Hayate smelled sickness. He growled low in his throat and shifted his paws uneasily.
"Colonel? I've got the water and the medicine."
Alphonse paused in the threshold, studying the eyes and faces that were now all focused on him.
"Is everything all right?"
Roy sighed and shook his head slightly, to Al it looked like he might be mentally chastising himself.
"Yes, Alphonse. Everything's just fine. Riza," he turned to his lieutenant, "could you possibly coax Edward into taking his pills? If you would, I'll go… prepare the less conventional prescriptions."
He slipped passed Al and into the hallway quickly, eager to avoid the impending shouting that would be Fullmetal protesting Hawkeye's encouraging words to take the pills.
XXX
And so there he was, bidding farewell to his life and body as he filled a soup bowl he had found in the kitchen with the hottest water the tap could provide.
He sighed mournfully. He had delayed a reasonable amount of time, anymore and it would, naturally, become unreasonable, and then Hawkeye might accuse him of abandonment-or Edward might rile himself into another seizing fit. It was the latter that gave him the drive to shut off the faucet. He hauled the bowl clumsily out of the sink-he had made sure to only fill it half full, he doubted sloshing water on the floor would really harm anything, but even so-and, rather ungracefully, carried it from the bathroom to the guestroom. The underside of the container stung his fingers, but the sensation was nothing compared to searing bit of snapping fire into life. He had managed to find a couple of bath towels hiding in the cupboard below the sink. This was impressive because he rarely used the upstairs bathroom, as he tended to use the one on the main floor due to its proximity to his bedroom. There wasn't even soap at the upstairs sink, he had had to fetch a bar from the one downstairs.
Within the towels, which he carried beneath his arm, were hidden the syringes. One held the recommended dose of anti-toxin, the other was a spare. He couldn't imagine under what circumstance a spare syringe would be needed, but he knew he would have regretted it when that circumstance appeared and he hadn't anticipated it.
The guestroom was silent.
Nearly all of the time it was soundless, so it took several moments for Roy to remember that it should not be. The essential arguing and impossible threats were absent, and Mustang immediately assumed the worst. He reached the guestroom, braced for the sight of a bloody Riza Hawkeye and an asphyxiated Edward Elric.
He found the opposite.
"Oh, there you are, sir. I was about to send Alphonse to make sure you hadn't climbed out a window and deserted us."
Her tone was unsettlingly pleased and her face was dusted with traces of triumph. Roy looked at Edward. Fullmetal's eyes were round and unfocused. His gaze met the colonel's, and as it did, it filled with a mosaic of emotions that Mustang had never imagined Ed would associate with his superior. To state it roughly, the unspoken message was a collaboration of You have to deal with this regularly?! and How could you leave to face this alone?!
"Riza," Roy began carefully, wary of that smile and glint in her eyes, "what exactly did you do?"
"I encouraged him to take his medicine, sir, as you asked of me."
"She pulled a gun on him," Al elaborated. His voice sounded uncertain, as if he wasn't sure if he ought to feel outraged or complacent about the lieutenant's behavior.
Mustang was surprised to realize that he wasn't surprised. In fact, he felt quite reassured. Of course Riza would pull a gun on Edward to convince him to do as she said. What else would she have done?
"Oh. All right, then."
Riza's smile widened the tiniest amount.
Fullmetal's countenance was stamped with hurt and betrayal.
XXX
At first, Edward was too upset over the colonel's permission for Hawkeye to corporally harass him to properly appreciate the bowl in the man's hands. When he did, his first fleeting, wishful thought had been that Mustang had brought him stew. Then reason caught up with him, and he noticed the lack of utensils, as well as the towels, and soap.
Are they going to give me a sponge bath while I'm still in bed? No way in hell am I going to let them do that!
Riza removed the empty glass from the bedside table so that Roy could set the bowl down and take the towels and soap out from under his arm. Ed took a breath to challenge Mustang's motives. The sentence forming in his brain vanished as, to his bewilderment, Roy dropped the bar of soap into the bowl. The colonel set the towels, neatly folded, on the edge of the bed and glanced furtively at his lieutenant.
Suspicion began to gnaw at the back of Ed's mind. They were planning something; something they didn't want him to know about.
He thought back to five minutes previous, when Riza had brushed the underside of his automail with the wad of paper and then handed it to Roy.
And he realized what the something was.
"No."
Three pairs of eyes focused on him bemusedly.
"What did you say, Brother?"
"No."
Ed shot his brother a glare that set his face twitching violently, then turned the scowl on Roy.
"No, no, no."
Mustang's eyebrow went up in response.
"No what, Fullmetal?"
Edward growled furiously, the bastard knew perfectly well what he was talking about.
"No tax increases?" Roy's mouth quirked into a smirk, his character smugness appearing in his eyes. "No morning meetings? No mortgage rates?"
"Colonel, please."
Mustang cast Hawkeye an irritated pout. It was countered by a stolid glare, and Roy quickly did as he was told and wiped the amusement from his face.
Any grievance he had for Riza was swallowed by gratitude when he say Edward's expression. The boy's eyes were glowing with murder.
"Brother, we don't know what you're talking about. Remember what Mom said about speaking clearly."
Fullmetal's attention switched to his little brother, and Mustang took the opportunity to slip the readied syringe from its cloth cocoon.
"I don't need to tell him what I'm talking about, I know he knows, and he knows that, so he's just being an asshole!"
"Ed, that's not very nice! Tell the colonel you're sorry!"
"No way! Why should I apologize for stating the truth?"
Riza snatched the injector out of Roy's hands. Before he could express his consternation, she dipped the needle in the bowl of steaming water, which was now chalky with melted soap, and stirred as if the instrument was a teaspoon. She then thrust the syringe back into Roy's hand with an admonishing furrowed brow.
Oh. Sterilization. Yes.
Roy felt like an idiot.
"Because he's been taking care of you, and he's the only reason you're not still in the hospital! He's only trying to help you get better, and all you do is make it harder for him, and worse for you! If you knew how sick you are…" Hawkeye and Mustang both tensed. Alphonse must have noticed their silent messages, because he didn't finish his sentence and let the topic die away.
For a good minute, the room was silent.
Riza nudged her colonel, and he saw what his only chance was quite possibly.
The closest exposed flesh was the red swell that was his shoulder, and Roy put his faith in the inflammation to mask the sting of the needle.
Fullmetal and Flame moved in the same instant.
"All right, Al, you win. Colonel, I'm sorry for calling you-"
Ed's heart stopped.
XXX
Riza reacted first.
"Edward." Her voice was terribly soft and slow. "Edward, it's okay. It's a medicine to make you feel better."
Roy had had the sense to go completely still.
If he had moved, Edward would have surely dissolved into a state of incoherent panic. As it was, the boy's initial response had been nonexistent. He was numb with shock. Mustang watched, sickened, as Fullmetal returned to some primal level of awareness, and his blank stare became poisoned by haunted terror.
Instinct awoke in the midst of fear, summoned by an ancient, simple nature that all creatures, no matter how sophisticated, are founded with. His eyes darted in all directions, like a rabbit searching for its burrow. They stilled to his left, to his brother, and away from the lieutenant and the colonel and that awful, execrable thing…
"Al, catch him!"
Roy needn't have spoken.
Faster than Mustang's senses could register, Edward launched himself towards his brother.
Years ago, Roy had gone on a hunting excursion with Maes. Hughes had managed to shoot a lean, strong-looking doe in the center of her chest, as the beast had lifted her head to explore the woods for the source of the rustling that had been Mustang shifting his cold limbs. The doe had sprung the heartbeat Maes had pulled the trigger of his rifle, and bounded away into the undergrowth. He remembered his friend's swearing, thinking he had missed, when the animal seemed to convulse in midair and landed on her side with a disturbing thud, her legs buckled beneath her.
And so when Fullmetal suddenly stiffened and fell, crashing into his brother's armor in midflight, he had been sure Edward's heart had burst.
XXX
"BROTHER! Oh my God! Brother! ED, NO!"
Edward lay limply in his brother's arms, his eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling and his limbs rigid and motionless.
Roy didn't know he was scrambling across the bed until he found himself wrestling with a sweaty sheet that had become tangled around his hands.
He yanked his limbs free and steadied himself on Alphonse's arm, his other hand aimed for Fullmetal's neck, praying for a pulse. Before he could even lay his fingers against the boy's throat, a crushing metal grip snapped around his wrist, squeezing so fiercely Roy could feel his radius and ulna grating against each other.
A bizarre whooping howl screeched from the armor as Al realized his big brother was still alive. The colonel stared, dumb with relief. He was shaken back to reality by Riza slamming a plastic mask over Ed's face.
"I can't activate it, sir! You have to!"
"I'll do it!"
Alphonse literally threw his brother at Roy. Any song of alchemy was killed by the ear-breaking rattling of steel. Edward gargled as his chest was forced to inflate against the pressure of his ribs. The power smashing Mustang's wrist lessened, but the colonel barely noticed the pain of blood rushing into his hand.
XXX
Edward was placed on his back on the bed.
Roy kneeled on the bed beside Fullmetal, his hands gripping the boy's forearm in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. He knew enough about seizures that the worst thing one could do was hold someone who was seizing down, but the way Ed was thrashing and jerking, nearly every instinct begged Roy to grab him and hold him until it was over. Alphonse had planted himself at his self-appointed station by the ventilator. His leather fingers were interwoven and his palms pressed together, as if he was in prayer. And perhaps he was, deep within his consciousness, praying to whatever or whoever had the power that his brother would be all right.
Riza had undone Edward's messy, unattended braid and was brushing the knots out with her fingers; Roy wasn't sure if she did this to distract herself or to comfort Ed.
He remembered her hands running through his dirty, war-stained coiffure.
It was for comfort.
Although he wouldn't have blamed her if it was a selfish endeavor.
Edward was screaming.
Neither Al nor Riza could hear him, but Roy knew the straining, wheezing whistles that slipped between the boy's gritted teeth. Ed was screaming in pain, but he had no air in his lungs to give them voice.
"It's okay, Ed. You're doing well, just one minute."
Just one more minute.
He remembered Maes shouting over his moaning.
"One more minute, Ed. You can do it."
Each minute was a goal. A false one, but a goal nonetheless. Roy remembered clinging to each of them, and sixty seconds passed, as each checkpoint reached, he would focus on the next one as if it was entirely different than the previous. A new minute, a new goal, until it was over, and Roy remembered no more.
"You're almost there. One more minute, I promise."
Ed's eyes were open, but he could not see.
His body was tinder, and it was on fire, and he could feel the tiny pockets inside of him popping from the heat and letting the agony pour through.
They were hurting him again.
He had been torn apart on the basement floor of his father's house, and just as the holes had begun to patch themselves closed, they had torn him open all over again, stuffing him with stone and wires to replace the parts that had been stolen.
His bones had been filed, his muscles had been shorn, his very sense of feeling was peeled into separate threads and forced to be merged with lifeless cylinders of steel, parasitic rock that turned itself to flesh by leeching off his strength and will.
And it was going to happen all over again.
And he couldn't even scream.
"Just one more minute, Ed."
Just one more…
XXX
"There. It's over now. It's okay. Deep breaths."
"Brother? Are you awake?"
"Hush, Alphonse. If he's asleep, we should let him rest."
Silence.
Edward was cold and wet. He was pressed against a soft, warm support. His heartbeat roared behind his ears and his head felt too small for his skull. He tried to swallow, failed, realized his chin was covered in his own spit, tried again, and succeeded, with difficulty. Ed cringed at the effort such an instinctual act required and he heard his brother's armor ring with a gasp of hope.
"Brother?"
"Waar…" Ed's jaws felt floppy and his tongue flapped uselessly in his mouth.
Despite this, Al understood him perfectly.
Al clanked as fast as he could to the kitchen, making Ed wince from the echoes they left in his head, and returned with a glass filled with water.
Roy Mustang was running out of clean drinking cups.
Riza accepted the glass and Roy adjusted Edward in his arms, so that he was more leaning rather than laying. Hawkeye placed her free hand on the back of the boy's head and held the cup to his lips while he drank. A good third of the contents was spat onto Mustang's shirt and Ed's lap. After recovering from his third choking fit, Ed turned his head away from the glass, and it was obediently taken away.
There was silence again, save for Edward's hollow breathing.
Finally the colonel spoke.
"What happened to the-"
"I caught it, sir. It's by the bowl."
"And what about the-"
"Still warm enough, though you could heat it a bit if you think you need to."
Roy shifted slightly.
"I think it's safe now, lieutenant."
The mattress creaked as Hawkeye settled herself on it. Ed felt her gently touch his flesh arm-his right was nestled in the colonel's hold-and Edward tried to flinch away. He managed a violent shiver. Riza balked, but did not take her hand from his arm.
"No."
"Ed, this medicine will make you better. It is very, very important that you get it."
Roy's voice was quiet and yet rumbled deep in his chest.
"Don't need it. Get bett' on m'own."
Mustang sighed, which surprised Edward.
The colonel sighed all the time. He sighed when he was tired. He sighed when he was frustrated or exasperated or annoyed. This sigh was none of those.
Ed was surprised because this sigh was one of sadness.
"No, Edward. You won't get better without this medicine. You can't."
Fullmetal's pale face turned white as snow.
"Yes, I can. I'm Fullme'al Alch'mist. Do anythin'."
Ed's eyes were closed. He did not see Hawkeye's gaze cloud with grief.
"No, Ed. It's not… it doesn't… you…"
"Oh, for God's sakes, what?"
The impatience in the boy's sloppy words snapped Roy out of his placating, almost paternal mindset. Without it, he was Colonel Mustang, Flame Alchemist, and the child he was cradling was the Fullmetal Alchemist, his bratty subordinate, and the colonel held no qualms when he told his sweaty major the raw, viperous truth.