Can you guys believe the last time I updated this story, David Bowie was still alive?
Well, to make it up to guys, this chapter is a whopping 33 PAGES LONG! It's also disgusting! So, you may not want to read this while eating... or after eating... or ever it all...
There were times when Roy wished he could go back in time and kill his younger self.
Snap his neck before he could burn all those innocent villagers to ashes.
Incinerate himself and the rest of the regiment before that massacre the state had recorded as a "raid" could be launched.
Shoot a hole through that empty skull of his before he could send Fullmetal on that idiotic, imbecilic, cretinous assignment.
"Oh, come on, Fullmetal. It won't take long. Only a week at most. And I'll give you three to finish it."
Why was I so insistent?
"You grew up a country bumpkin, didn't you? You'll know how these guys think. Especially since there's practically no difference between the two of you."
What was I thinking?
"I don't care if it's fair or not, it's an order from me, and it will be followed."
I should have known better. I do know better.
I should have paid more attention.
I should have listened when he said it wasn't worth his time.
I should have been looking after him.
And now I've killed him.
XXX
"The infection in your shoulder is spreading to the rest of your body-we don't know how much of your muscle mass has been effected, but we do know that, at some point, the infection will reach your heart. It probably already has."
Edward was no stranger to illness.
He remembered, albeit vaguely, nestling upon his mother's lap, curling into her arms, shivering, every joint sore and his sinuses aching. His mother would sing those common folk songs everyone knew, and stroke his soft, youth-fresh hair, until he fell asleep, and when he awoke, perhaps not shivering quite so viciously, perhaps not quite so sore, she would still be, cradling him, and maybe coax him into eating some stew she had kept warm on the stove for him.
"The toxin keeps your muscles from relaxing whenever you move. That's why you're sore and keep seizing like you just were. The medicine we were trying to give you is the only thing that stops the toxin. You'll still have to take the sedatives; the anti-toxin keeps the part of you the toxin hasn't reached yet from being damaged. The part that's infected needs time to heal."
The drugs they had given him had been strong.
But not nearly strong enough.
He remembered only dimly, the way one remembers a particularly impacting moment of a dream of which the rest cannot be recalled, so that what is recalled is flashing colors and intoxicated feelings of the primal nature.
He could remember the mind-melting scalding as the bases for the ports were welded to the remains of his bones.
He could remember the prickling of gloved fingers brushing over the exposed meat, pinpointing the locations of the greatest concentrations of nerves and outlining the positions for the connectors in the automail.
He could remember Winry, his head on her lap, her hands rubbing circles over his stomach, the only part of him that wasn't begging for death, even as he convulsed and vomited whatever bland crackers she had convinced him to swallow a mere five minutes earlier.
"We're going to have to drain what we can of the infection out of your shoulder. The anti-toxins won't amount to much if the toxin itself keeps being produced. I… I know you don't like people touching your automail, but… it isn't really something that can be avoided."
Edward wished Winry was here.
XXX
"Should we call a doctor?"
"I don't know. I… I don't want him panicking. Again. And I don't want to lose what little trust he still has for us."
"What about Hughes? I'm sure he'd be willing to help."
Roy pulled an expression of doubt.
"I don't think this is what he meant. Besides, I don't think he has the stomach for it."
"He changes his daughter's diapers on a regular basis."
"Yeah, well, that's one thing, and this… this is something different."
Riza couldn't argue with that.
"I suppose you wouldn't stand to ask Gracia, then?"
"Who was it?"
The arbitrary question took Hawkeye by surprise.
"Who was what, sir?"
"When it was me. Who was it who… you know."
Mustang's mouth was hidden behind his interlocked fingers. His chin rested on his joined hands, his elbows on the table. He and Riza had taken the conversation to the kitchen, leaving Alphonse with Fullmetal. The wad of paper that had been used to swab the underside of Ed's automail had been disposed of in the compost jar. Roy had been hard pressed to simply throw it away like any other piece of garbage. Somehow, the idea felt like dropping a corpse in a landfill. And he'd done that more times than he cared to count.
Riza hesitated, opening her mouth as if to answer and then closing it without saying a word, then staring at her surroundings, perhaps searching for some distraction from the suddenly uncomfortable feeling of the room.
"It… it was me... sir."
Raising his eyebrows was the only physical sign of surprise Roy gave.
"You?"
"Yes, sir."
For a moment, Hawkeye thought her colonel was going to make a second comment. Instead, his brow lowered back towards his face, if only a fraction.
"Oh."
A pregnant pause.
"Could you… maybe… do it again? Not for me, but for Ed this time?"
"I suppose so. Although, I'll probably need you to-"
The discussion was interrupted by clanking footsteps.
Alphonse stooped through the doorway into the kitchen. Riza noticed the cautious, almost nervous way his armor moved as he shifted into the room before she noticed the way he was holding his left gauntlet-palm up and open, as if he was holding something small, but not something he was afraid of dropping.
"Alphonse. Is there something wrong?"
The boy didn't answer right away. Then, slowly, he extended his leather hand towards them so that they could see what lay in it.
Hawkeye's hand went straight to her mouth. Mustang raised his head.
"Colonel… Miss Hawkeye… um… what… what is this?" Al's voice shook, and not from the echoes of his hollow body.
XXX
The brothers had sat-or in Edward's case, lay- in silence. Alphonse felt horribly counterproductive, simply watching his big brother breathe, studying the bruise forming on his left arm, wanting to offer words or actions of comfort and knowing that he should. But Al couldn't think of anything comforting. All he could think of was how badly he wished he could switch placed with his brother. Not for the sake of living within a feeling body, but to save Ed from a body that felt itself falling apart from the inside.
Edward couldn't think at all. His mind had become numb to all things, even the torn muscle in his back that had swollen to the point of forming a tangible lump under his tank top. His mouth, not his brain, decided that there was something he needed his brother to tell him.
"Al?"
"Yeah, brother?"
"When… when we were at the… you know… and you said that the doctors were being really nice… they weren't actually being nice, were they?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well… they weren't being nice to make me feel better… they were… they didn't want me to spook and… and die on them…"
Alphonse's armor creaked as his shoulders slumped. It seemed he had lost all will to hold himself upright, any strength he had had left had been drained by the nature of Ed's inquiry.
"Yes… that's right."
Silence again.
"Brother… I'm sorry. This is my fault. I just… I didn't even think you could get hurt under your automail. If I wasn't such an idiot-"
"It's not your fault, Al." Edward's eyes slid closed as he spoke, exhaustion lacing his voice. "Nothing's ever your fault."
"Why?" Al couldn't keep frustration from sweeping over him. Edward was always patronizing him, always defending him, always taking care of Al's problems before Al even knew they existed. Common sense knew Ed only did such things out of love for his sibling, but Alphonse couldn't help feeling somewhat overly-dependent on his brother at times. "Is it because I'm the baby? Am I too innocent to ever have any blame for anything?"
The lapse of time between the query and its answer was so large that, at first, Al though Ed had fallen asleep in the middle of the conversation.
"No." When it did come, Ed's reply was mumbled, for he was on the verge of dozing, despite the whirling in his head. ""Cause you're too good for that."
Al just sighed resignedly.
XXX
Poor Black Hayate was not having the best of days.
After keeping watch over his mistress and the little human that smelled of iron and fever, whom she loved, he had been thrown from his post by the alpha human that smelled constantly of the mating season, whom his mistress loved. While most dogs might have barked or growled in protest, he made no sound. He saw little point in doing so; clearly the humans were already aware of the situation if the room stank so strongly of fear scent. He did not leave his place on the floor, though he could not see what was happening from above the bed or understand anything from the shrieking primate voices besides distress. He stood guard, refusing to leave his mistress's side unless permitted, until the fear smell had nearly faded. What fresh scent Hayate could detect was laced with bitter steal and sickness.
His mistress said his name and he looked up at her expectantly.
"I'm going to let Hayate outside."
It was an excuse to leave the room as much as it was genuine.
He followed her down the hall and through the kitchen to the front door, which she opened and gestured towards the gap in the house she had created. Hayate had learned some time ago that the movement represented her allowance for him to go out in the yard, but he hesitated, studying Riza. She looked sad. Terribly, terribly sad. Hayate hated that she was sad. He wagged his tail and made a wuff-like sound, reminding her that she needn't worry, because Black Hayate would always keep her safe, because he loved her.
XXX
Upon re-entering, Hayate found two bowls, each respectively filled with fresh food and water, in the kitchen by the table. He nibbled at the kibble and drank about half of the water, before returning to his station. Because he loved Riza, he was sworn to keep her safe and happy, and keep trespassers from defiling the military apartment that was their territory. And part of making sure she was happy was protecting who and what Riza loved, and Riza loved the little human that smelled of stone and, judging by his scent, was aspiring to be an alpha of significant disposition. And so he returned to the guestroom and leapt once more onto the bed where Edward lay, sending Hayate's nose twitching with the cloud of fear scent that surrounded him.
XXX
The sheets crunched as Hayate jumped onto the foot of the bed and trotted his way to where Edward could see him and Alphonse could scratch him behind the ears.
"Hey, boy. Are you looking for Miss Hawkeye?"
Hayate sniffed Al's fingers. They smelled of old, dead, cowhide. The dog wrinkled his nose and sneezed.
"I thought you like cats, Al."
"I do. That doesn't mean I can't like dogs, too."
Hayate's ears perked at the sound of Ed's voice and the dog turned his round eyes on the boy. Hayate sniffed him, and continued sniffing him, along his side and past his metal arm, to the infected shoulder he had not yet finished washing, and promptly stuck his head into the crook of Ed's neck.
Ed sighed heavily and closed his eyes. Al tried to shoo the dog away.
"Hayate, leave him-"
"Shut up, Al."
The armored shoulders jerked in incredulity.
"But… But Brother-"
"It feels nice."
"But it can't be sanitary-"
"But it feels nice." It was the tone of the words rather than the words themselves that stilled Alphonse; it was almost a whine, and Al realized his brother was actually afraid that Hayate would stop licking if Al didn't stop protesting.
For a while the only sound was of Hayate's tongue lapping and Ed's allayed breathing. Sometimes Hayate would go as far as to gnaw on the lip of the cap to the port, and though the scraping noise was less than appealing to Al, it didn't seem to irk his brother, and so he said nothing.
He let Hayate lap and gnaw, gnaw and lap, lap, lap, gnaw, lap, lap, gnaw, lap, gnaw, gnaw, gnaw, lap, gnaw-
"Mmh."
Al started when he heard Ed grunt, but his brother dismissed it.
"S'nothing, Al. S'fine."
Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw, lap, gnaw, chew, chew, gnaw, chew, lap, chew, chew-
"Ow!"
Hayate staggered backwards, his paws clumsy on the mattress, his snout in the air and his teeth bared. He was, in the curious manner that all dogs are wont for when they have some sticky treat or bit of jerky stuck to their mouth or between their teeth, swiping and lolling his tongue and grinding his jaws with his mouth wide open.
Ed's left hand was scrabbling against his metal elbow; he had, by reflex, tried to grasp his shoulder, but as his left arm was out of commission, he only succeeded in flopping his wrist over his adjacent joint.
"Brother, what happened?"
"Nothing, Al, just a sore spot-uuh, what is he doing?"
Hayate looked from Ed to Al imploringly, still smacking his mouth.
"It looks like something's caught in his-oh, no! What if he's swallowed a screw?!"
Al wasted no more time. He wrapped one leather hand around the dog's scruff, pulling him closer, and shoved his other hand into the dog's flapping mouth. The following procedure was significantly difficult, as the hollow fingers would flatten and fold against Hayate's jaws and were devoid of any sense. It was a slobbery, frustrated six minutes before Hayate's probing tongue and Al's searching fingers managed to remove the foreign object from the back of the dog's throat. Hayate snapped his muzzle and snuffed noisily, then began wagging his tail happily in gratitude.
"Hmm. Well, he seems okay," said Edward, finding some sort of innocent amusement in the glowing blitheness of the dog's large, black eyes.
Alphonse made a sound of assent, and then remembered, out of knowledge of instinctive action rather than instigated instinct, for the instigation of this instinct was touch, which he did not have, to study the cause of Hayate's brief conundrum.
And in doing so, realized a conundrum for himself.
It looked like a strip of a banana peel.
But it was too thin and far too pale to be of a banana.
A peach perhaps?
No, too pale for even that.
The sliver appeared to be quite wet, as it stuck to his fingers readily-though that could have been a result of being doused in dog spit rather than an identifying characteristic. It was clearly a piece of something; though the break was smooth, the very fact that it was a mere slip, which by itself was of very little purpose, was indication of its misplacement from its whole.
"What the heck, Brother? What do you keep under there?"
"Under where? Ha! I said underwear…"
Alphonse had a lifetime's worth of practice keeping his annoyance hidden from his brother. After all, that was probably Ed's goal in the first place.
"Under your automail? You're not hiding food in the cracks, are you?"
Edward stopped snickering and stared at Al like the colonel's head had suddenly popped out from underneath his helmet.
"What… what kind of a question is that?! That's ridiculous!"
Proclaiming something to be grody was Ed's trademark method for dissuading his authorities that he had not done whatever he had been accused of doing-which almost always meant he had done it.
"You don't have to hide from me. If you want to carry around snacks, you can always put them in my foot or something-"
"Not that kind of 'ridiculous'! 'Ridiculous' as in there's no possible way! How would I fit anything under my ports? There's barely enough room for me to get my fingers under there."
Alphonse glanced at the strip in his palm and back to his brother. He certainly sounded like he was telling the truth…
"Not even taffy? I mean, if you really squished it-"
"No! The only things under my automail are metal and skin. What the hell would make you even think that I would ever stuff things under my ports? Taffy, of all things…"
Al couldn't keep himself from feeling a bit insulted by the almost condescending attitude with which his brother was facing his inquiry. Out of habit, he made to counter Edward's argument.
"Well, then, if the only things under your automail are metal and skin, what do you call-"
Alphonse did not finish his sentence. He didn't need to. He had already answered his own question.
Only metal and skin…
Certainly not metal…
Oh, God, no…
"What do I call what, Al? Hey, Al? Al? Wait, where are you going? Come back!"
Brother can't see this…
What do I do?
Without warning or any given reason, Al stood, turned away from Ed and his increasingly-annoyed protests, and walked out of the room.
He walked down the hall…
Down the stairs…
Taking it far, far away from his brother…
"Alphonse. Is there something wrong?"
The kitchen…
Hawkeye's voice, Roy turning to look at him, with eyes that seemed, whatever for Al hadn't a clue, so very sad. Somewhere, in the back of Alphonse's reluct, horrified mind that had been stricken numb by its own calculations, he recognized them. They were grown-ups. Grown-ups always knew what to do. It was their job.
"Colonel… Miss Hawkeye… um… what… what is this?"
XXX
Rot.
Rotten tomatoes.
Rotting bread.
Rotting dead bird at the base of a tree where a stray cat had left the remainder of its meal.
Things rot after they die.
They turned wet and dank, like the hot, swampy feeling beneath his port.
They soaked up that wetness like a sponge, bloating and softening, until it was delicate enough that a gentle tug from a dog's teeth would break it away from the rest of him.
They changed color, from yellow to brown, from green to tan, from a healthy peachy shade to some sort of blackish-greenish mix.
Of course he had let Hayate get back to work doing whatever it was he was doing that made his aching, burning shoulder feel so placated. Perhaps Al had gone to get him something to drink. Yes, that was it. He had been about to say something absurd about taffy under Ed's shoulder port when he must have realized that he would accomplish so much more by fetching his sore, tired, ill older brother a cool glass of that amazing punch that was his because Colonel Bastard had gotten it for him and so it belonged to him-
And then he felt a second sharp twinge. It lasted longer than the first, and Hayate made odd snuffling, slurping noises, until the dog finally pulled the long, stringy patch of rot from beneath the metal and triumphantly spat it out onto the sheets next to Edward's leg, feeling quite pleased that it had not slipped to the back of his tongue again.
And Ed had stared bemusedly, from the dog to the thing and back again, not sure what to make of either of them… and then, out of human instinct, he'd gingerly picked up the patch of warm, slimy, material, stared at it, realized what it was, and almost instantaneously dissolved into a fit of abominated dry heaves, which quickly transformed into spasms, and Ed toppled face first onto the bed, burying his face in the pillows, shaking and choking and gagging.
They-he, his brother, and his mother-had buried the bird in the vegetable garden. Trisha had explained that when her flowers died, or the tomatoes turned gray and fuzzy, she would add them to what she called the fertilizer and fed it to her garden to make the plants grow. Ed had quickly learned that fertilizer was made of rotten things, and that the rotten things were dead.
If it was rotten, it was dead.
If it was dead, it was rotten.
And then Mom died.
And dead things rot.
Mom is rotting.
Edward knew the stages of human decomposition. It was something he had been drilled on when he had first become a State Alchemist. It was a vital ability for an officer investigating a murder to be able to tell how long a body had been dead.
A day.
Two days.
A week.
A month.
A year.
Eight years.
She was bones by now.
Maybe she still had a few traces of cartilage around the joints.
If there was any skin left, it was crumpled and dark, eaten away by bacteria and worms.
Those hands that had held him as she had carried him up to bed were nothing but jumbled segments and old, loose flesh.
Her eyes, always happy when they saw him, always bright, always beautiful, were completely gone. Only gaping holes in her face, teeming with maggots, was all that was left.
Her face. Her soft face, her smile, a grinning, putrid skull…
Things rot when they die.
Mom is dead. Mom is rotting.
And now I'm rotting, too.
XXX
"It'll be okay, Alphonse."
The suit of armor was staring at his soaked gloves. His brother's skin had been disposed of in the same manner as the one before it, with a tissue paper veil of its own. It probably was completely unnecessary, but he had washed his gauntlets in the bathroom sink, employing soap and water to take away any lingering trace of decay-of death-still on the leather.
"It's just the outer part. We'll just scrub off the top layer, and new skin will grow in its place. That's all."
Dead things rot.
Brother is rotting.
Brother is dead.
Mom is dead.
And I am… I am…
"Brother won't like it." He sounded so small. So young. He felt small and young. He was small and young. He needed his big brother. But his big brother was rotting.
"I know. That's why Riza is going to clean his shoulder. He'll be fine, Alphonse. Everything will be fine."
And then, as if to contradict Roy's statement, the colonel heard the sound of someone being violently ill.
"Brother?"
"Stay here, Al."
"But-"
"Riza?"
"Yes, sir."
"But I want to-"
"Alphonse, you are clearly shaken, and I really don't think seeing you upset will help Edward in any way."
It hurt to admit, but Al knew Mustang was right. It would be better for both of them if he took the time to collect himself before checking on his brother. That knowledge didn't abate his worry in the least.
"You'll take care of him?"
Roy smiled softly. As he followed Hawkeye out of the kitchen, he said, "I absolutely will."
XXX
His retching proved to be only a response of panic, and he hadn't actually vomited, but the convulsions had hurt. Thankfully, the muscles did not stick for more than a few seconds afterwards; they were, after all, too damaged already to produce any proper contraction. His diaphragm had been a bit more stubborn.
Ed was breathing again, albeit winded.
"Come on, Ed, look at me."
Ed did not look at him. He kept his face squashed against the pillows.
"Okay, say something, at least."
He said nothing.
Roy sighed. He didn't bother telling the kid to sit up.
He made to sit on the edge of the bed. This was clearly going to take a while, so he might as well-
"Colonel."
-he changed his mind.
"Oh…"
Hayate whined. He was laying against Edward's side, his fur brushing the boy's undershirt. He had failed his mistress. He had not made the iron-smelling human happy, instead, the scent of fear had tripled from what it had been. He blinked balefully up at Riza, hoping for forgiveness and knowing full well he deserved none.
Mustang glanced at the dog.
"Looks like Hayate's doing a fine job on his own."
It was a grisly attempt at humor.
Riza fetched the third wad of tissue paper.
Roy sighed. He knew this balled-up behavior.
Whenever Edward was upset-not out of anger, he screamed when he was angry, this was more of a depressed, perhaps disturbed kind of distraught-he would shrink into himself, like a turtle into its shell, and, like the turtle, would not speak, would not move, so that he was more like a toppled trash can in a back alley, or an old piece of furniture sitting abandoned in the corner of a room: inanimate and of no significance to the skimming eye.
He had been in this state the first time Roy had seen him.
He had been smaller, then. Pale and limp from blood loss, empty spaces where his arm and leg should have been. It had hurt to see him like that: so sick and tired and unbearably forlorn.
It hurt to see him like this now.
"Its fine, Ed. It's just skin, it'll grow back."
No response.
Roy switched tactics.
"It's… a good thing. It's like… puking. It doesn't feel nice, and it's kind of disgusting, but after it's over, you feel better than ever!"
Nothing.
Fortuitously, Hawkeye chose that moment to return from the compost bin for the third time in ten hours.
The round, pleading eyes he cast upon her told her everything.
"No luck?"
Mustang shook his head. Riza studied Edward, wearing the same expression she often showed when contemplating a question on her opinion of a proposed law or the competency of some political campaigner. She walked slowly to the side of the bed, on the opposite of Roy, and lowered herself gracefully onto mattress-which she could do now that the… Edward recrement… had been removed (Mustang could not bring himself to follow her example after the trauma of nearly sitting on said dross).
"You're lucky. When my back was injured in the war, it took days for it to clear itself up, and it itched so badly, I would rub my back against the tent pole to get the spots I couldn't reach whenever Roy or the medics weren't looking."
"I remember that!" It had taken well into the sentence before Roy knew what in the absolute earth Riza was talking about. "The first time I caught you doing it, I thought you'd lost your mind and had decided to become a lap-dancer for some shady nightclub."
Roy's ears heard what his mouth spoke and his brain waited for a bullet to suddenly appear in his frontal lobe.
When Hawkeye looked at him, his tongue turned to pulp, and when she nodded and gestured for him to keep talking, he was stupefied to the point that it took the most primitive logistics of his intellect to understand that reality was broken and the end of all things urbane was nigh. Instead of running for his continued existence as his every survival instinct demanded, he obliged her-or tried to, at least.
"Um... well… you ended up ripping your bandages to shreds, so I just took 'em off." His face reddened at the memory. However, the thoughts that summoned the blood to his face hadn't surfaced until after he had redressed her. At the time he had been too worried about infection finding its way through the torn gauze to notice the potential intimacy of the situation-and had known that her discomfort was his fault, and therefore her wounds were his to tend to. "And half of your back came off with it! It was… unsettling…"
"But I felt much better afterwards," Hawkeye finished for him. "It certainly stung whenever the bandages had to be changed, but it didn't itch anymore."
"And the new skin underneath was pink and so smooth-"
His jaw snapped itself shut, but it was too late. Riza stared at him, startled, and then smiled and looked back at Ed, who was not quite as curled into himself as he had been.
Perhaps a broken reality wasn't so bad after all.
Edward mumbled something.
Riza leaned in to hear him more clearly. He repeated what he'd said, and she pulled back and gave Roy her familiar evil eye.
And reality had already begun fixing itself.
"What did he say?"
"He wants to know what a lap-dancer is."
Oops.
"Oh. Well, it's a… they're a..." Do I have to answer? he mouthed.
Yes, you do, she returned.
"A lap-dancer is… someone who… dances… and people pay them… to dance."
He gave Riza a hopeless shrug. Her expression didn't change.
"Like in a show? The ones at the concert house that Al likes to watch?" Ed's voice was barely above a whisper, but strong enough that the colonel didn't need to ask his lieutenant what he had said.
"Yes," Mustang and Hawkeye said in unison. Although the mental picture of a suit of armor watching a lap dance nearly made him lose his composure.
Edward didn't say anything in response.
Impulsively, Roy's eyes wandered the room in search of inspiration for a subject with which to break the silence. His eyes landed on the forgotten bowl of soapy water, sitting lonely on the bedside table, and which had surely gone cold by now. He crossed the room to the table, opened the small drawer designed into its undercarriage, and took out a spare pair of ignition gloves.
"How many of those do you have?"
Edward's tired eyes stared at him over the pillow he had mashed his face into, and still hid his mouth and nose beneath, so that only his eyes and brow were visible. Roy wondered how he managed to breathe through all that insulation. He found himself smiling slightly, surprised at his pleasure the boy's responsiveness gave him.
"Well, you never know when some crazy anti-alchemy crusader will break into your house and try to chop off your head in your sleep… not that that's happened to me," he amended in reaction to Hawkeye's stricken face.
"But why would you need gloves up here when you're sleeping in your room downstairs?" Ed had raised his head completely from the pillow. His voice was still small and cautious, but some of his signature confidence had returned to it.
"In case the crazy anti-alchemy crusader finds the gloves in my room before I can get to them. I have a spare pair hidden in every room in the house."
Edward said nothing to this; instead his eyebrows tapered and his mouth thinned, an expression he wore when considering something he found of interest to the faction of his mind devoted to critical thought.
Leaving him to muse over whatever ponderings had appeared in his head, Mustang turned his attention to the bowl of cool soap-water. He pressed the index and middle fingers of his right hand to the complex array on the back of his left glove, carefully activating only the formulas related to heat, and cupped the side of the bowl with the palm of his left hand. After a few seconds, the water began to show signs of bubbling, and Roy quickly withdrew. He did not want to scald Fullmetal.
Ed watched silently as the water changed from room temperature to steaming in a matter of seconds. He was so fascinated by the chemical processes that had to have been elicited to make it so, that he did not notice Mustang pick up the syringe and hand it to Riza.
"We should probably sterilize it again."
"Oh. Right."
The colonel took back the syringe and dipped the needle into the bowl, and then Edward noticed.
He was too sore to scramble away, and the memory of his previous attempt to do so served as a lesson to keep still.
He ended up simply re-curling into his previous balled position, with the addition of his left hand covering his right shoulder protectively. The skin on his shoulder was tender and hot, and the metal was warm. His movements were slow and clumsy, and Mustang and Hawkeye watched him reform his shell despairingly. They had returned to the beginning of the predicament, or as Hughes would say when speaking of a case he was investigating, "back at Square One".
Roy, running the hand that was not holding the syringe through his bed-tousled hair, blew the air from his lungs between his slack lips, making a horse-like nicker sound of frustration. He knew openly displaying his annoyance was not going to help Fullmetal feel any less dolorous, but his patience, with himself as well as with Edward, and with the locus itself, was wearing thin to the point of shrinking out of existence entirely. And with his cache of equanimity all but run dry, he was unable to muster the restraint needed to keep his thoughts to himself.
"What is it that you want from me, Fullmetal? I got you out of the hospital, I let you sleep in my bed, I got you the most hopped up drink I could find that didn't have milk in it, and I let you eat my food...
"What is it? Are you afraid I might hurt you 'cause I don't know what I'm doing or something? Do you think I'll break your automail somehow?"
His breathing was quick when he finished his rant, and his head cleared enough for him to realize how dramatically he'd lost his composure. Sheepishly, he turned to Hawkeye, expecting to see reproach on her face. She did not look at him. She kept her gaze on Edward's back, her head tilted to the side in thoughtfulness.
"Are you afraid you might embarrass yourself?" Riza's voice was far gentler, far more understanding than his own had been. Roy's sense of shame deepened.
Neither Mustang's outbursts nor Hawkeye's calm question was offered a response. Roy took a breath to collect himself. He saw his hand out of the corner of his eye, his ignition glove still adorned. On spur of moment, he remembered that Ed, too, wore gloves: plain white gloves, to deter notice from his mismatched hands. He didn't like it when people asked him about his automail, nor did he enjoy repeating the cooked up story that Roy had invented for his certification documents; that he'd lost his right arm and left leg as collateral in the Ishval Civil War.
He didn't like it when others saw it, knew about it, wondered about it…
A thought occurred to him that he had never considered before.
"Edward… are you afraid that if we get a good look at your automail, we might… judge you for what happened to you and your brother? Maybe we'd see something that would make us think differently about you?"
Ed shifted. His head moved slightly, as if he were making to raise his face from the linens, but the motion was never performed. Roy cast Riza an inquiring expression. She returned it. Her countenance was similar to his, but held more depth, so that Roy could tell she was pondering something, but couldn't tell what. He thought, somewhere beneath her speculation, he saw a glow of pride in her eyes. The idea of her being proud of him garnered a warm, soft feeling at the bottom of his stomach. All too soon, she turned her face and her attention back to Edward.
"Edward, is what's bothering you… a little of all of those things?"
Ed shifted again. He was still for a few moments, before he moved his head in a minute, but definite, nod.
Riza smiled gingerly.
"There's no reason to be afraid. The colonel and I-sir?"
Mustang did not answer her.
Slowly, so as not to startle the boy, Roy lowered himself onto the bed. He lifted his legs over the mattress, so that his whole body was supported on the bed. He reached towards his right foot and began rolling up the ankle cuff of his pajama leggings.
"Colonel, you don't have to-"
She cut herself off.
Roy wasn't completely sure what possessed him to do what he was doing.
It could have been guilt.
It could have been sympathy.
But in later days, Mustang would attribute his actions most to a feeling of kinship. And with that kinship came a responsibility, and perhaps somewhat of a desire, to acknowledge that kinship. Even if it was a kinship based in tribulation.
Hayate watched Roy impassively. When the man began rolling up his pant leg, the dog's brow furrowed, making the bases of his ears coming closer together. He shuffled to his paws and trotted around Edward to the side of the bed where Roy was. Hayate stopped at Mustang's feet and stared at the exposed ankle, as if trying to decide what to think of it. After a few moments, he decided to sniff it. Then he decided to lick it. Roy emitted an uncharacteristic yelp, somewhere along the lines of, "Yeeh!"
Edward had discounted the rustling of the sheets and the vibrations in the mattress caused by Roy moving himself onto the bed, and the loss of warmth and softness that was Hayate leaving his side. But he could not overpass Mustang's "Yeeh!"
His head came out of his turtle shell of pillows and rounded back, and he stared incredulously.
Colonel Roy Mustang was pushing away a dog's head with his hand, while the dog tried to circumvent the hand to get to the bit of leg that had been uncovered from the man's pajamas, sticking his tongue out of his mouth whenever he got close.
"The hell?!"
Mustang's attention jerked involuntarily from Hayate to Edward. Before he could inwardly celebrate his success at getting Fullmetal to do something, Hayate took the chance and began licking his ankle with gusto.
Roy yanked his leg away, pulling his knee into his chest, and glared at the dog.
"Lieutenant-"
"Sir, not to be rude, but it seems clear to me Hayate thinks you are in need of a bath. He probably thought you were asking him to give you a wash."
"I am not-!"
"You have yet to take your morning shower, sir."
Ed couldn't help himself.
"Yeah, Colonel Bastard, so keep your stinky old man feet away from me!"
Mustang's turned his black look on the boy.
"My feet don't stink! And I'm not old!"
The corners of Ed's mouth turned up in a cheeky smirk and he pressed his mouth and nose against a pillow, leaving his eyes twinkling impishly up at Roy.
"P. U.! Put on some shoes, Grandpa, your feet smell like old cheese!" His voice was muffled by cotton.
"Fullmetal-! "
Roy's expression balked, then transformed into a devilish sneer.
"You must have an impressive sense of smell, if you're able to smell anything at all over your own stench!"
"What-!"
"You've been sweating nonstop for the past fifteen hours! If my feet smell like cheese, then your armpits must smell like spoiled milk!"
"Why, you-"
"Yes, yes, we all need a good shower," Riza broke in.
"Especially the colonel's feet."
"Hey!"
"That's enough!"
They were silent then-not silence born of tension or awkwardness, but the type of quiescence that falls when the members of a conversation come to the agreement that the subject they had been talking about had grown old-or, rather, Hawkeye had decreed that the subject had grown old-and the next topic of discussion was yet to be decided.
And, as it often is with these silences, one of the members must break it, and in doing so introduce the new topic.
Roy's fingertips glided over his ankle. He only felt the thin plates of callouses because he was looking for them; the scar tissue had flattened and loosened over the years, but had yet to disappear entirely. He took a deep, filling breath, the kind of sigh that one performs to calm one's nerves right before doing something that one is not at all certain they know how or are ready to do. Ed recognized it for what it was, and became instinctively anxious. Mustang was about to tell him something personal, and Edward was sure he didn't want to know what it was, because hearing it would be awkward and heavy, and knowing it would keep that awkwardness and heaviness from leaving for days or years or possibly forever.
And yet his ears sharpened and his attention narrowed, so that the only stimuli he might process was from Roy, was made by Roy, was Roy himself, because, whether or not he admitted it or even knew of it, a part of him respected the colonel-respected him as a person, respected him as a soldier, respected him as an adult. That part of him wanted to hear what Mustang had to say, and he would value any advice that he might provide, even if he didn't like or agree with it. Colonel Roy Mustang told Major Edward Elric what to do and when to do it, and the major would listen and obey, because the colonel was his superior officer and he was duty-bound to obey him, but also because the colonel knew what had to be done and he knew when what was to be done should be done because the colonel was right. He had to be, it was his job. It was his place in Ed's world to be the one who was always right.
Well, him and Hawkeye… and Alphonse… and his mother…
"When I was in Ishval… actually, I was leaving Ishval, and Riza and Maes were with me… or at least, we were leaving what was left of Ishval…"
Roy had to pause to let himself take a second deep breath.
"We ran into a group of Ishvallan guerillas. Not the animal," he explained in response to Ed's raised eyebrow of disbelief, a movement which the rest of his face quickly emulated. The boy made a small chuffing sound of annoyed discomfort and rolled his face halfway back onto the pillow. "Guerilla troops are foot soldiers. They camouflage themselves and lay low until an enemy unit comes along, then ambushes them, usually with bayonets or knives or something like that. Anyway they attacked us, and I-"
"You snapped them to death, didn't you?"
The question wasn't an accusation and held no malice, but the way the boy had worded his guess on Roy's actions-snapping someone to death, as if murder was as easy as walking or as natural as breathing, and at that point in his life, it had, in fact, been just so-made the Flame Alchemist's innards turn to ice.
"Yes," he forced passed his clenched throat, tasting the words as they slipped off his tongue, deliberately intensifying the sting of his confession. "I snapped them to death. Or at least, I thought I had. But I missed one."
He stood there, Maes on his right, Riza on his left, and tried to feel. He saw their blackened faces. He studied their boiled eyes. He drank in the smell of their smoldering viscera, and tried, with all his might, with every miniscule, despicable, vile particle of his being to feel something-anything, be it regret or exhilaration, excitement or horror. But Mustang's mind and soul were blank. Not blank like a fresh sheet of paper that has yet to be printed upon, more like the desolation of the inside of an abandoned home or the silence within a newly dead corpse's chest. Roy Mustang was empty, for his being was ripped and holey, torn apart by what he had done and what he had seen and everything and anything he put inside himself would leak out and pool around his feet in puddle, so that he could see what he wanted, what he ought, to be feeling, but was unable to experience it.
And then he felt pain.
He cried out in shock and agony as his right ankle was speared by multiple miniature pikes. He looked down instinctively to acquaint himself with the bringer of this damage to his body-and his howl of pain transformed into an absolute scream of terrified abhorrence.
"It bit you?" Edward's choice of words brought an odd feeling of aptitude to Roy's mentality. The creature, if it had ever before been human at all, had been far too charred for any gender-specific features to be discernable. Without knowing whether the pronoun "he" or "she" was appropriate, the default "it" was the most logical and simplest settlement. Roy told himself that was the only reason, and not because, in his mind, the thing was memorialized as a faceless monster with gnashing teeth, rather than a dying person whom he had deformed.
He didn't believe himself for one second.
"Yes… it bit me. Hard."
Maes had kicked it multiple times across the head, neck, and area that was once occupied by a face. But the jaws were stuck tight and the teeth cut deep, and all Hughes's efforts managed to do was exacerbate the wounds. Roy bellowed in pain as he felt the incisors tear the skin and top layer of muscle, and Riza finally grabbed Maes's shoulder and all but slung him away. She shot it through the brain, without bothering to aim. The chewing stopped, but the teeth stayed stuck in Roy's ankle. Hughes took it upon himself to cover his fingers in melted tissue and be punched in the back and shoulders involuntarily as he pried the creature's mouth away. Mustang stumbled into a sitting position during the procedure, and by the time it was done, he was sucking breath through pursed lips and growling deeply in his throat.
An oval-like outline of broken skin leaked thick trails of blood into Roy's boot. As the shock faded, Roy's head cleared enough for him to assess that the injury wasn't serious, and while the swelling had begun and looked to prove ugly, he could still move his lower leg-though he wasn't fool enough to think that walking on it was an option. The pain dulled from the sting of urgency to the throb of caution. He assured his companions he wasn't badly hurt, and they helped him upright and held him up, their arms under his, as they hobbled the rest of the way to the next checkpoint of deportation.
"When we got to the camp, I told Riza and Maes to go eat and rest, and that I could make it on my own to the medical tent. They didn't like it, but I made them go, and as soon as they had, I went looking for a place to sleep for the night."
Ed's face pulled round in an expression of addled chagrin.
"But-but you said you were going to the medical tent. You told Hawkeye!"
Roy grimaced.
"Yeah, I did. And believe you me, it came back to bite me in the butt."
"Or more literally, the ankle," Riza commented, her countenance showing neither smugness nor amusement.
"But why didn't you go?" Roy was surprised at the note of what he thought was disappointment in Edward's voice. He sounded oddly betrayed, as if he had found Alphonse in a shady casino in the dead of night, and Roy felt ashamed of himself, like he had let his major down somehow.
He also felt like Maes would have been immensely gratified if he had been present for the conversation.
"Because… I didn't go because I was embarrassed."
Ed snorted. "Well, that's stupid. It's not like you tripped and skinned your knee like a pansy. You were injured in battle! And that's what the medical tent is for!"
Mustang couldn't help his smile. Saying he had been "injured in battle" made the idea of the situation sound considerably more honorable and intriguing.
"I wasn't embarrassed because I'd been injured. I was embarrassed because of why I'd been injured. I killed people," he elaborated in response to Ed's furrowed brow. "Lots of people. More than I could count, even if I tried. I felt like… like I deserved to be injured. Like maybe, if I forced myself to feel the pain, I could redeem myself somehow. If I just accepted my punishment, then maybe I could just move on from what I'd done, and everyone around me could, too."
"That is a twisted way of thinking, Mustang," Edward said, though there was no conviction in the words, and what little expression Roy could interpret on what he could see of the boy's face, which he still kept hidden in a damp pillow, appeared fabricated. Roy felt a small flare of prideful accomplishment bloom inside him.
Edward had heard what Roy had left unspoken.
"It's not like you wanted to barbecue them," Edward stumbled out of his pretended ignorance and into his safe haven of logistical thought. "You were following orders from the Fuhrer himself. Besides, you werethe ones being attacked that time. You were just defending yourself."
"Yes, well…" Mustang sighed wearily. "I was thinking kinda twisted at the time."
There was a contemplative silence.
"So, I left the bite alone. I didn't bandage it, the bleeding had already stopped on its own anyway. I did wash it in the shower, but other than that, I acted like it didn't exist. No one could see it when I was in my uniform, what with the standardized long pants and all. It was like that for a couple of weeks."
"And then?" Ed's tone was impatient. "You'd better have started this damn monologue for a good frickin' reason, so hurry your ass up and get to it."
Roy couldn't help himself. He laughed. Ed glared with strong annoyance.
"The wound became infected," Riza detailed while Roy recovered himself. "The inside of the human mouth is an incredibly dirty place. Or so Havoc told me," she clarified in response to the offended stares the men cast upon her.
"Are you saying I have bad hygiene?"
"No, sir, it is a generalization-"
"Though it is terrible-"
"Edward! Since when does Havoc know anything about 'the human mouth' or otherwise?"
"Since he took Rudimentary Field Medicine at the academy. In fact, he told me this after I consulted him about your limp."
Roy said nothing, his fingers unconsciously rubbing at the scars on his ankle.
After a minute of contemplation, he said, "That must have been when you started badgering me about getting it looked at."
"It was, sir. But," she continued, turning her attention to Edward, "it wasn't until his foot became so swollen he couldn't put his shoe on that Hughes and I decided to do it for him."
Mustang emitted a sheepish sigh.
"You took him to the medical tent?" Edward prompted.
"No, we didn't," Riza corrected, and Ed tilted his head curiously. "We treated the wound ourselves."
Roy didn't need a doctor to tell him he was sick.
He felt like a hot air balloon: stuffy and bloated, with no place for the accumulating warmth to escape. Despite the heat inside him, his skin felt cold and he shivered in his uniform.
But illness wasn't an anomaly on the front line. Mustang needed more than one hand to count off the number of times either he or another member of his team-or both-had taken battle stations when racked with indigestion or fever-or both. No one, not even himself, took much notice to his sweaty forehead and chattering teeth. Probably just another filthy field virus. He'd flush it out of his system in a couple of days or so. Nothing to gossip about.
His foot, however, was a different story entirely.
It looked like a piece of a dead body: a grotesque crimson color, and swollen near the point of bursting. He had been unable to squash it into his boot this morning. The past three days he had managed to coerce it into his shoe, but each attempt had become more arduous and painful than the last, and on this day he hadn't managed it at all. After multicolored stars had exploded behind his eyes and his empty stomach had convulsed warningly, he had decided that the risk wasn't worth the effort. His already-two-sizes-too-large wool sock hid the distended tarsal from the view of any possibly passing physician. There was very little they would have been able to do for his fever, besides forcing him to swallow an aspirin, which he could, and already had, done on his own.
However, there were many things a general practitioner would have insisted on doing to his diseased foot-and none of them were even distantly related to pleasant.
When Hawkeye came to him bearing a tin mug of willow tea, Roy accepted it without argument. Hopefully the mixture would make him break into a sweat. That was what he'd heard the stuff was supposed to do, anyway. It tasted bitter, like all tea served without sugar or cream.
Riza said something about his tent, but her words were muffled by the buzzing sound in his ears. He made no protest as his lieutenant guided him to stand and led him gently by the elbow to his cot. She steadied him whenever he stumbled over his mismatched feet. It was surprisingly awkward walking with only one shoe.
The air was stuffy in the tent he shared with Maes. Hughes was waiting for them, dressed casually in an undershirt and dirty trousers, his uniform foregone on the end of his bed. Riza lowered Roy into his own cot, and Roy rolled onto the blankets, not bothering to tuck himself in or kick off his one shoe, and closed his eyes. He was vaguely aware of Hawkeye gently removing his boot and his socks.
His injured foot sparked statically at the friction.
Roy sat up sloppily; he had already been sinking into restless doze, and his body had turned slack in preparation of sleep. He did not want Hawkeye or Hughes to see his foot. In his half-conscious state, he couldn't quite remember why, but the feeling was urgent, whatever its reasoning. Roy tried to push Riza away from the cot. He missed entirely and his arm flapped out to the side. Unbalanced, he tilted and began to slump off the bed. Maes caught him and lifted his torso onto the mattress so that Roy was lying on his back again, and placed firm hands over Mustang's chest.
Roy reflexively wrapped his wrists over Hughes's and tried to pull his hands away. He thought he said something along the lines of "Go touch your own teats," but his lips had felt floppy on his face, and whatever he did say didn't have an effect on Maes.
He heard the scrape and flare of a match being lit, and out of the corner of his blurry vision, he thought he saw the glint of steel.
Roy bawled in terror and started thrashing madly.
"You tried to cut his foot off?!" Edward's voice was squeaky from horror, and his facial muscles twitched madly. He smashed his mouth and nose into the pillow to stymy the spasms, but left his eyes uncovered, their wide gawking delivering the words his mouth couldn't say.
"No, no, of course we didn't," Hawkeye quickly, but gently, asserted. "All we did was reopen the wound and drain out the infection."
"Although I was pretty certain that that was what they meant to do," Roy said deep in his throat, whether to himself or not, he himself couldn't say.
Ed's rounded eyes softened. His gaze darted momentarily to his right shoulder. Riza interpreted the gesture, but said nothing.
Edward lifted the pillow from his face slightly, to keep his voice from being muffled.
"How… how exactly does that work? The drainage thing?"
He wasn't sure if the Rockbells had ever performed the procedure on him. If they had, he clearly did not remember.
"Exactly how it sounds. We just cut the wound on Roy's ankle and all the pus and blood just came out. Well, most of it. We had to squeeze out the last of it."
Both Mustang and Edward stared at her with wrinkled noses.
"Eew," Ed said, giving voice what he and Roy were thinking.
Riza simply shrugged placidly.
"Better out than in."
Neither man disagreed with her on that.
There was about a half minute of contemplative silence.
Edward did not want to ask. It was a childish question, and he felt small and infantile merely by wondering, but as it usually does curiosity got the better of him; not to mention the more ratiocinative part of his brain knew it was a perfectly lawful question to ask, and something that he probably ought to know given his position.
"Did… did it hurt badly?"
Roy did not laugh as Ed had feared. In fact, he pursed his lips and his gaze grew distant with consideration.
"Well… it didn't hurt the way you'd imagine it. Actually, at the start it didn't really hurt at all. It felt more like… You know the pins and needles you get when your foot falls asleep?"
Ed nodded, he was feeling it strongly in his shoulder.
"It was like some gust of wind blew them away, or someone poured a bunch of water over my ankle and washed them away. To be completely honest… it felt pretty nice. The only thing that really did hurt was when they started pinching me."
"Squeezing, sir, not pinching. We had to get all of the infection out to keep-"
"Yes, yes, Lieutenant, we get the idea," Mustang waved away the rest of her sentence.
"But… why didn't you take him to the medical tent and have the doctors do the drainage thing?" said Edward, bemused. "Wouldn't've it been safer? I mean, you didn't have any training. What if you'd made a mistake? What if you'd actually cut his foot off?"
"Because there was a good chance the field doctors would have actually cut his foot off."
Mustang's face paled at Hawkeye's words, and he unconsciously tightened his hand around his ankle.
"The field physicians were only slightly more skilled than we were. The number of casualties from the war was so high that every citizen who at least knew how to wrap a bandage was conscripted for the medical team. Gangrene and sepsis are death sentences when you're on the front, and there were so many injuries to treat. The doctors didn't have the time, resources, or the training to deal with wounds that were already diseased. So if they came across any, the fastest and simplest way to prevent blood disease was to cut off as little of the damaged body part they could, cauterize and bandage the patient and send them home as a war veteran."
The seriousness of the colonel's situation hit Edward like turning his face into a cold shower. He knew what "war veteran" meant, he'd seen caravans of them pass through Resembool en route for Central Command-where their relief papers would be signed and pended, and they would be retired with a disability pension.
If Mustang had gone to the medical tent, he wouldn't have lost just a foot. He would have lost his career as well.
"If it wasn't for Havoc, and his semester of field medicine at the academy, we wouldn't have known what to do. He would've done it for us, but as a matter of fact, he was on duty as a physician at the time, and there was no way the higher-ups would forgive him if he gave a particular soldier more attention than the others. Even if he was his commanding officer. So Maes and I handled it in secret."
"I'm surprised you didn't gag me," Roy eyed Riza askance. "I can't imagine no one noticed the noise, what with me swearing and throwing punches at you two."
"Oh, they did, sir." Hawkeye smiled in an assuming way that made the colonel and major decidedly nervous. "I told them you were choking your chicken. They did not inquire further."
"YOU TOLD THEM WHAT?!"
Edward reflexively jerked at the sudden outburst. A cross between a hiss and a whine rose to his throat as his shoulders, neck, and back tightened and refused to relax. He managed to stifle everything but a small squealing sound. The adults immediately forgot their impending confrontation and turned their attention to Ed.
"It's fine. I can still breathe," he said when Roy reached a hand out as if to touch him. The rasping of his voice betrayed him to be half-lying.
"Why did you tell them I was… that I was…?" Mustang couldn't get the words out as he slowly rolled Edward onto his back.
The boy's teeth were completely bared. The corners of his mouth were pulled back as far as they would go.
"It's not as if they thought any less of you, sir. Many of them did so whenever they had the time for it-"
"But the fact that you knew-what were they supposed to make of that?!"
"If any of them so much as considered it, I would have made sure they wouldn't have a cerebrum to keep doing it, and they knew it."
"Well, yes, but…"
Edward did not know what the adults were arguing about, a situation that happened often and one he found incredibly annoying. He liked to think of himself at equal status with the grown-ups, but when a topic such as the current one somehow found its way to the surface of a discussion, Ed's illusion to himself would be discredited and he would be reminded of the unclimbable wall between him and his colleagues. There were some things about the world that he did not understand for the infuriatingly simple reason that he had not lived long enough in the world to know about them. He did his best to catch up when and where he could, through reading and, with only a very, very select few; asking questions.
He raised his right hand, intending to poke Hawkeye's arm to get her attention (she was, after all, the one who had introduced the topic, so it was only appropriate that he ask her). It was his growl of pain as the tight skin of his shoulder was pulled by movement rather than Riza being poked that made the adults forget their conversation.
"Edward?"
Ed winced, made a clumsy attempt for a swallow, and winced again. His face and neck ached horribly.
"'ha'-"Hearing his own fractured speech, Ed huffed in annoyance and brought his automail hand to his face, intending to pry his jaws apart. Hawkeye moved to stop him; his sore port beat her to it, he hissed in pain and returned his arm to his side.
Mustang grimaced. Edward's mouth was clamped shut; a classic symptom, and the reason why tetanus was often nicknamed "lockjaw." Guilt hollowed Roy's chest. He'd lost his head for a mere second and forgotten to keep his voice low.
Ed tried again.
"'ha's 'a' mea'?"
Roy and Riza glanced at each other.
"Umm…"
"'I'en! 'ou 'o'ed 'e 'I'en!"
Mustang consulted his brain for a translation. Receiving none, he tried to think of ways to at least pretend he'd understood for the sake of placating his major, when the door opened a fraction and a spiky iron head stuck itself into the room.
"He wants to know what 'choking the chicken' means."
Alphonse's appearance was so sudden, the colonel and his lieutenant were too taken aback to respond.
"Alphonse!" Roy collected himself first. Edward did not seem to be phased at all by the fact his brother had been eavesdropping. It later occurred to him that Fullmetal had probably known the entire time. "I thought I told you to wait in the kitchen."
Al decided to act like he hadn't heard the accusation. Instead, he looked eyelessly at the colonel expectedly. Roy turned to Edward. Save for the strained face, Fullmetal's expression was no different.
"So… are you going to tell us what 'choking the chicken' means?" Al repeated patiently.
Riza couldn't stop the grin that broke over her countenance.
Roy buried his face in his hands and moaned.
XXX
While Mustang's exemplum undoubtedly softened Edward, a fair amount of coaxing was needed before he would lay down on his left side, allowing Riza access to his injured shoulder. Taking heed from his lesson for that day, Roy decided to keep Ed distracted with an anecdote about one of Havoc's more disastrous trysts. By the time he got to the part when the man accidentally dropped his cigarette on the tablecloth and scared the entire residence of the café, staff and patrons alike, with the ensuing smoke, Edward was too busy laughing to notice Hawkeye administering the anti-toxin (the numbness caused by the swelling played a large role in that as well).
However, the colonel found it surprisingly difficult not to stare as Riza began scrubbing rather roughly beneath the boy's automail port. The scree that began appearing on the cloth inspired some sort of morbid fascination within him; it was hard to look at yet hard to look away from, like a decomposing bird or someone's disfigured face. The perturbing spell met its match once Hawkeye found the heart of the infection and it burst open. Edward's eyes turned glassy and slid shut, and he made deep humming sound in his throat, almost like a cat's purr.
"Wh't 'dya do? Felt amazin'," he slurred languidly. Black Hayate decided at that moment that he wanted to help too, and before Riza could stop him the dog started lapping up the mess, and Roy had to quickly leave the guestroom before he covered it with half-digested breakfast.