DIABETES WARNING!
THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS OBLIGATORY PARENTAL! ROYED POSSIBLE OOCNESS AS WELL AS ENOUGH FLUFF TO PUT YOU IN A SUGAR COMA FOR 10 YEARS!
In all seriousness, you actually can't get diabetes from eating too much sugar. You can develop a similar condition called diabetes insipidus but it has nothing to do with your pancreas. Whether or not you develop either type 1 or type 2 diabetes depends on your genetics, though eating too much sugar can definitely increase your chances of developing either type if you're already genetically disposed.
The OOCness isn't an exaggeration, though. I tried to keep them in character as much as I could, but this chapter was a necessity.
Nurse Dorothea had dragged her son out of the room with profuse apologies and a fierce struggle from Samuel and Riza, sensing the atmosphere among the colonel and the brothers, had stepped out as well, promising to keep watch to make sure they were not interrupted again.
They had left, Mustang had explained himself, and now Edward wouldn't say anything.
He sat there, sitting up against the raised hospital bed, clenching and unclenching his metal fist.
Roy wished he would say something. The silence, broken only by the creak of steel, was suffocating. Roy looked to Alphonse, sitting against the wall, his leather gloves gripping his knees and his helmet staring into nothing.
Mustang's spine and legs were hurting from standing so long. He considered just leaving, taking the lack of response as dismissal. Finally, desperate for something in the atmosphere to change, Roy moved his foot to make his way to the door.
The sound of the sole of his shoe against the floor must have broken whatever spell Ed had been under.
"So what?"
Roy stumbled in his surprise, partly because Ed had spoken and partly because of what he said.
"Wh-what?"
"So what?" Edward waved his right arm in a gesture of aloofness. "Why does it matter? So you got sick a few years ago. So what?"
Roy gulped like a stranded fish for a few moments while he found his voice.
"I… I had the same thing you had – have! I knew all the signs, I knew how to keep it from happening. And I did nothing. I could have kept all this from happening… and I didn't. I…" Roy sighed and pulled a hand down his face like he was trying to wipe his nose off his skin. "I let you down, Fullmetal. I'm sorry."
Ed blinked, then tilted his head to the side, the only expression he wore that of confusion.
"But… why would you?"
"Why would I what, Fullmetal?"
"Why would you bother? It has nothing to do with you. Unless…"
Ed's eyes narrowed.
"Oh, I see. It's because you don't want your miraculous prodigy out of commission, huh?"
"Brother, please."
It was the first thing Alphonse had said, and though it was in character for him, he sounded tired, almost resigned.
Ed huffed and looked away.
"What other reason would he have? It's the only answer that makes sense."
"It's the only answer where he benefits."
Ed smiled and nodded.
"Exactly. I knew you'd –"
"Which is why it makes the least sense."
Ed snapped his mouth closed with an audible clop! and glared at his brother.
"If this whole scenario was about the colonel coming out on top, why didn't he just leave you in the hospital in the first place? Wouldn't it be easier for him if he just let the doctors handle it?" Al raised a gauntlet and pointed an accusing finger at Ed. "But you said you didn't want to stay in the hospital, so the colonel got you out. He kept you out for as long as he could. He only sent you back when it was clear he couldn't take care of you in his house."
Ed opened his mouth to retort, failed to think of a retort, closed his mouth and shrank into his sheets.
"But, of course, this is all about what's best for the colonel. What's easiest for the colonel. Not once, throughout this whole horrible mess, did the colonel think about what was best and easiest for you."
Edward's lower lip jutted out in an impressive pout.
"He… he has no reason –"
"Not everyone has a reason for doing something, Brother. Or at least, that reason isn't always about them. People do other things for other people. It's called being a good person."
"I'm not –"
Roy hadn't realized he'd begun to speak until he heard his voice. The brothers both stared at him, waiting for him to finish. He desperately tried to think of an alternative to what he was going to say that didn't sound like the obvious alternative it was.
"I'm not foolish enough to think that a soldier's health is in body alone. Mental health is just as important. If allowing Fullmetal to heal as efficiently and quickly as possible meant going out of my own way, then so be it. Why bother having a tool if it's not in perfect condition?"
Ed proffered his hand towards Mustang, as if offering the man to his brother.
"See? He only does things for his career."
Alphonse was quiet for a moment. Then, to the surprise of both Ed and Roy, he stood up, wavering as the armor shifted against gravity, and started for the door.
"Al? Where are you going? Hey!"
Al didn't answer until he was standing in the open threshold.
"Obviously, you two are too busy trying to prove to me that you're both the jackasses I already know you are to have a proper conversation, so I'll come back later once you've both said what you actually need to say."
And he left, closing the door behind him.
And the silence was back.
Roy sighed again, this time using his hand to rub the back of his head.
"Well –"
"I'm not going to say it."
Roy lowered his hand.
"Say what?"
"What Al wants me to say. I'm not going to say it because you didn't do anything."
"Okay. Then don't say it."
"I won't!"
"All right."
"You can't make me!"
"I won't."
"Get angry, damn it!"
Roy couldn't keep standing like this and not just because his back was really starting to hurt. He sat down at the foot of the bed since it was the closest surface besides the floor. Edward recoiled like Mustang was a particularly disgusting bug he'd found under a rock.
"No! Stop it!"
"I'm doing literally nothing, Fullmetal."
"That's the problem. You're supposed to yell at me. You're supposed to tell me how none of this would have happened if I hadn't been so stupid and just paid attention to where I was going or used my head for once or… or…"
Ed trailed off, his eyes roving back and forth as if he was looking for Mustang's missing ire like it might be mixed up in his hospital sheets. His eyes landed on his empty soup bowl and he picked it up with an almost manic grin.
"Like earlier! Be the stuck up dumb ass you were earlier when I threw the thing at you." He waved the porcelain bowl menacingly. "I'll do it again. I'll throw this one and this time it'll break right on your stupid head and then you'll have to be mad!"
"Why do you want me to be mad, Fullmetal?"
"Because it's my fault!"
"But it's not."
"But it is! It always is. So you're always supposed to be mad at me!"
It was the word "always" that told Roy what was going on.
"You're worried this has changed something. That it's changed our relationship."
"We don't have – don't call it that!"
Mustang couldn't help himself. The way Edward's face turned crimson and he lost control of his words at the use of a homonym set Roy laughing so hard he had to brace himself against his knees.
Edward's face twisted from mortification to consternation to fury and then he pulled his arm back and bashed the bowl over Roy's head. It shattered against the colonel's skull and Roy saw stars as pieces of ceramic spilled from his hair and onto the bed and floor.
Mustang leaped to his feet with a roar of surprise and pain.
"What the hell, Fullmetal?!"
Ed's face exploded with triumph and he wielded the shard still in his hand like a dagger, slicing it through the air.
"You deserved that, you –"
"How in the world did I deserve that?!"
"You're being creepy!"
Roy blinked away the disbelief and blood dripping into his eyes. His scalp stung where the bowl had cut him as it broke.
"I'm trying to be cordial, Fullmetal!"
"And that's creepy!"
Roy threw his arms in the air, growing in frustration and flinging blood from his hair.
"What do you want me to do?! You just attacked a senior officer! Do you want me to court-martial you? Cuff you to your hospital bed and wheel you into a hearing like the invalid you are? Would that make you happy?!"
"I'm not an invalid!"
Ed's voice cracked and Mustang heard a sliver of the emotion Edward was trying to hide with his anger. Roy wiped his face, getting blood on his sleeve (it was already dribbling onto his shirtfront) and narrowed his eyes.
"So this is about you feeling powerful, huh? The little boy who can't even sit up on his own is trying to be a man. If you want to be big so badly, why don't I just –"
Roy grabbed Ed by the collar of his hospital gown and yanked him up, the sheets tossed aside as Ed instinctively kicked out with his metal foot. Edward's hand wrapped around Roy's wrist to anchor himself and then they stood there, Mustang hanging on to Fullmetal and Fullmetal hanging, the only sounds being angry breathing and Edward's pained hissing.
And then Ed started gurgling.
It took Roy a terrible five seconds to realize he wasn't doing it on purpose and his soldier's self-control not to drop him.
Roy caught Edward around the waist and gently lowered him back onto the bed like the boy was made of glass. He frantically looked around for the pull string to call for the nurse and when he found it he lashed out his hand to grab it.
Ed was still holding onto his arm.
"Fullmetal, let go."
"No."
"I need to call the nurse."
"No!"
"You're seizing! I need to –"
"No! It's just my legs. I can still –"
Ed was cut off by a choked gasp of pain. Roy bit back a cry as Ed's metal hand tightened around his forearm. Roy tried to reach for the cord with his other arm but Ed yanked him back with strength that must have come from his automail.
"Fullmetal! Do you want your leg to dislocate again?!"
Edward let go of Mustang as if the man's sleeve had burned him.
Roy knew he should have gone for the cord then and there. It was the sensible, obvious thing to do. Instead he stood there stupidly and watched in horror as the Fullmetal Alchemist's eyes filled with tears.
"Fullmetal? What…"
Ed quickly ducked his head and started viciously wiping at his eyes but it was too late.
"Fullmetal? Edward? Hey, it's okay –"
"So it wasn't a dream?"
The question was so quiet that Mustang almost missed it.
"What wasn't a dream?"
Ed opened his mouth to speak, said nothing, closed his mouth, and shook his head.
"What did you dream about?"
"Nothing. Wasn't a dream."
Edward shrank into himself, as if the words had somehow injured him from the inside.
"What did you think you dreamed about?"
"Nothing! I didn't dream about anything!"
Ed's head shot back up and his glare was back full force. Roy glared back, his expression a mix of annoyed and angry and that horrible concern permeating through them both. The worry Ed saw there made his vision go blurry again and he cursed as he rubbed his eyes with his metal hand.
He pushed so hard he saw stars.
"Goddammit! Stop that!"
"Not this again, Fullmetal."
"Then stop looking at me like that!"
"I'll stop when you tell me what's wrong."
"Stop caring about what's wrong!"
"I can't do that! As long as I care about you –"
"Stop caring about me!"
"No! All of this happened because I didn't care enough about you, Fullmetal. I will not make that mistake again."
Edward made a sound between a bark of frustration and a sob.
"Stop it! Stop it stop it stop it stop it –"
Edward shrieked and instinctively snatched at his left leg.
This time he was too distracted by the pain to stop Roy from yanking on the pull string.
When Nurse Dorothea arrived, she found Colonel Mustang with his face and shirt covered in congealed blood and Major Elric gasping in place of sobbing, his own face wet with escaped tears.
XXX
Dorothea had been strictly ordered to not ask questions regarding the Elric brothers or anyone associated with them.
So she did not ask Mustang what happened as she prepared a wet cloth so he could wipe the blood from his face or while she stitched the slowly oozing gash beneath his hair.
She did not ask Edward what happened when she loosened the medical line to increase his pain medication or cleaned the broken bowl off the floor.
She could not keep herself from trying to wipe the tears and snot that Ed had smeared over his face in his attempt to hide them.
"It will get better," she promised him as she held his shoulder to keep him from pulling away from her as she brought a warm cloth beneath his eyes. "Your muscles are sore from being stiff for so long and the tendons are swollen, but you just need time to heal." She managed to plant a kiss on Ed's forehead before leaving the alchemists in privacy once more. Ed half-heartedly scrubbed at his skin that had been kissed, looking every part the ungrateful boy visiting his grandmother.
As soon as she was gone, Roy sat back down on the bed, now wearing his second borrowed hospital shirt of the day. Ed tried to roll away from him, pulling the covers over his face.
"When I woke up, I was surrounded by beautiful young women in pure white gowns," Roy said, pointedly not looking at the lump beneath the blankets. "I told them that they must have made a mistake and that I was pretty sure I was expected on the other side."
It took Edward some time to realize what Roy meant. When he did, he couldn't stop himself from giggling. Roy didn't stop himself from smiling at the sound.
"What did they say?" Ed mumbled against his pillows.
"First, they laughed. Then, they told me I was not, in fact, dead. Then they told me I'd been in a medically induced coma for three weeks." Mustang's smile faded. "I… I wasn't happy, to say the least. I ordered them to bring me the people who authorized this "medically induced coma" and they brought in the lieutenant and Hughes.
"I threatened the lieutenant with demotion – I wasn't that much higher in rank than her, but I could still pull some strings – and I told the colonel to tell me what gave him the right to not let me die like all the others."
Roy huffed to himself.
"And he said… 'A leader who doesn't do everything in his power to protect his followers is not a leader at all'."
Roy waited silently, expecting Edward to experience some dramatic revelation.
"What did Hawkeye say?"
Mustang laughed. Of course Ed was more concerned with the lieutenant's response than the colonel's words of wisdom.
"She told me Maes had ordered her to stay and guard me until I woke up. I never asked him if it was true. Even if it wasn't, he probably would have told me it was anyway."
Ed curled tighter under the covers.
"But my point is… when you took the state alchemist exam through my recommendation, when you signed your contract with the military… I made a promise. I made a promise to you and myself, and I made the same promise to everyone who works under me. Being under me means being under my protection. Being minemeans that your my responsibility. So if something happens to you, any of you, anything at all, it would be my fault."
Roy leaned back, the back of his head bumping the wall and his spine popping as he tried to lay down on the bed sideways.
"What kind of leader would I be if I didn't?"
"Mom."
Roy's head turned so sharply he knocked the side of his face against the wall. Whatever he'd been expecting Ed to say, that wasn't it.
"What?"
Edward sat up with some difficulty, his hair mussed from the sheets and his shoulders slumping with a tiredness Mustang could feel in his soul.
"You sound like Mom when you talk like that."
Roy smiled softly.
"Well then, your mother must have been a very intelligent woman."
Ed didn't say anything to that. He watched the dust motes dance in the sunlight pouring through the window on the far end of the wall.
"I thought I'd died."
It was Roy's turn to say nothing and watch the dust motes out of the corner of his eye.
Fullmetal took a shuddering breath.
"I thought… I thought I was… when my leg, it felt like…"
Ed squeezed his eyes shut.
"I thought it was the transmutation all over again. I thought it was taking my other leg."
It's got my other leg.
"And then everything just stopped, but then Al and you and… and the hospital people would come and go, and I thought… I thought I was dead and I was a ghost or I was in purgatory or something…"
Roy kept his gaze on the motes.
"I thought… I know I deserved it. I know I've deserved it for a long time. I thought I'd finally gotten it… I couldn't move. I couldn't tell what was going on and I couldn't do anything…
"… And I thought that this must be what it it's like for Al, all the time, and this was my turn, this was my – my punishment…"
Edward ducked his head, hiding his face in his blanketed arms.
"And I started wondering if this was what Mom felt when she died… and that she had to do it twice because of me!"
Roy did not balk like he did when Edward had reached for him, when he'd called him "bastard dad" when they were alone.
Instead he did the reaching, gathering Edward, linens and all, and held him against his side.
Ed tried to wiggle away for a few pathetic seconds before giving up and melting against Mustang's ribs. Roy felt the warmth of Ed's tears in the sheets and the trembling in his body as he fought the urge to sob.
Roy shifted so he could bring his other arm around the boy and started the rocking motion he'd learned Ed liked.
"Shh…"
"I was glad I was dead. I hoped… I wanted to be in Hell!"
"Shh… It's okay…"
Edward curled his metal hand into a fist and socked Roy's sternum hard enough to send vibrations through his skeleton.
"You should have let me die! Why didn't you let me die?!"
Mustang wasn't sure if Ed lost his fight against his body or if he simply surrendered as he began keening, a terrible, high-pitched sound that speared through an instinct Roy was only just beginning to understand.
"It's okay."
"No, it's not!"
"Shh…"
"I thought I was dead!"
"I know. I'm sorry. Shh…"
Edward pounded on Roy's sternum again, each punch sending vibrations through his skeleton.
"Stop it! Stop it! Go away!"
"I'm not leaving, Fullmetal."
"Yes, you will! Yes, you will! So just go away!"
Ed tried to push the colonel away. Roy tightened his grip.
"Fullmetal, why do you think I'm going to leave?"
Edward made a choking sound and tried to twist away again.
''Cause you will!"
"Why would I –"
"'Cause everyone does!"
"I'm not leaving you."
"That's what Mom said!"
Roy stopped rocking abruptly as everything suddenly made sense at once, and as it did, he felt his heart crumble into dust.
"Dad didn't say anything. He just… And then Al almost left… and I thought…"
The sudden burst of angry energy seeped out of Ed like he'd been punctured.
"I just thought it was my turn."
Roy could relate to Edward through many things – through guilt, through their lack of blood relatives, and now through their shared experience with lockjaw – but Roy did not know what it was like to have everything and everyone one could ever want or need, and lose it all.
Mustang did not remember his parents beyond voices speaking forgotten words and the smells of his father's soap and his mother's perfume – the exotic scent of palm trees and olives, the sweet aroma of lemon verbena. His only clear memory of them was when he was brought to his Aunt Chris who lived downtown from his family's tenement with the promise he would be home by the end of the year.
Eight years after they had broken that promise, he had asked his now foster mother how they had died.
That was the day Roy learned about consumption disease.
But by that time, Roy had long since realized and accepted the fact that his parents were gone. He felt little sadness because the void they had left had been immediately replaced.
Edward and Alphonse had not been sent away.
With their absent and their mother presumably the last of her family, they'd had nowhere to go as their mother had withered away to nothing.
As they watched her die, they watched everything they'd ever known die with her.
Roy remembered the day he was deployed to the desert, the day he was ordered to murder for the first time, the day he'd realized that the military was not Amestris's guardian, but it's captor.
It was the day he'd learned the world did not care.
The world did not care about little boys with no homes to speak of. The world did not care about the innocents who choked on their own blood in the sand.
The world certainly did not care about people who cared and loved and only wanted to be cared for and loved.
The world took and took and took until it started taking what one didn't even know one had.
Until one to escape the pain of losing by ensuring they truly had nothing and no one left for the taking.
Edward did not want Roy to care about him because he did not want Roy to be taken away.
The understanding that Fullmetal was trying to protect his commanding officer as well as himself filled Mustang with confused gratitude and made him want to hold the boy more.
And Alphonse…
Alphonse was Edward's weakness, the only thing he could not bring himself to throw away, even if it meant more heartache for the both of them if – or when, as Edward seemed to believe – one lost the other.
"I am not going to leave." Roy didn't know when he'd come to rest his chin on the crown of Edward's head, but as bizarre as the position was, he couldn't bring himself to move. "I am not going to leave you, just like you're not going to leave Alphonse."
"Then you'll die." Ed had dug his fingers into Roy's shirt, a physical embodiment of his disbelief in the man's promise. "If they don't leave on their own, they die. Everyone leaves and everyone dies."
Roy opened his mouth to protest but stopped. Edward was right, he could not promise he wouldn't die. As much as people lauded the strength of the "will to live," no one could live in a broken body, no matter how hard they tried. His protest turned into a sigh and he started rocking again.
"Well, maybe I will die. And if I do…" He trailed off and took a moment to think. "If I do, the lieutenant will take my place. She would never leave you or your brother."
"Then she'll die."
"Then Havoc will take her place and he won't leave you, either."
"Then –"
"Breda."
"But –"
"Falman."
"He –"
"Fuery. Ross. Hughes. Actually, Hughes would probably snatch you two before the lieutenant got a chance. He'd take you to some exotic resort and make a collage of you on the beach. At least, until the sun reflecting off Alphonse's armor burnt his film."
Edward had no words for that. He decided to alter his argument.
"Well… what if a giant meteor – two giant meteors – fell out of the sky and landed on East and Central HQ. Both of them. So now everyone's dead in a big, fiery blast and there's no one left."
Mustang's laughter rumbled inside him in a jostling, soothing way, and Ed found himself closing his eyes and leaning into the hard warmth of his body.
"I suppose the debris from the explosion would be thrown into the atmosphere and block out the sun, cooling the global temperature and send the planet plummeting into another ice age. Then all complex life forms would go extinct, paving the way for a new dominant species to claim it for themselves. At least, that's what the fossil analysts over at Central University would guess, based on what happened to the dragons."
"Wait, dragons are real?!"
Ed nearly sent Roy's teeth punching through his lip with the force of Ed lifting his head.
"Well, no one knows for sure. We do know that millions of years ago the planet was much hotter so the animals were much bigger. The bones that we've found look like they might have been giant lizards, so some people think that there used to be dragons all over the world. Then everything started getting colder and since lizards are cold-blooded, the giant ones all died out. Some scientists think everything cooled down because a giant meteor hit the planet and sent so much dirt and rocks into the air, the sunlight couldn't get through. That's what started the ice age."
Edward had stopped shaking but he hadn't let go of Roy's shirt.
"What makes them think it was a meteor?"
"Because the bones of the dragons, or whatever they were, were buried in a layer of space dust. That much space dust could have only been made by an incredibly large space rock."
"Huh. Why didn't the dragons just use their fire breath to stay warm? Aren't dragons supposed to breathe fire?"
Roy swallowed a yawn and blinked away the heaviness in his eyes.
"Maybe dragons couldn't really breathe fire. Or maybe things got too cold for them to make it. Maybe we'll never know."
Edward frowned. He hated not knowing something, especially if it was science related.
"I bet I could figure it out. Dragons can't be that different from people and I read all about how human bodies work when Al and I…"
Roy was not eager to return to somber conversation and all too eager to avoid it.
"Well, for your next assignment, I'll have the fossil analysts and the university's museum give you a private tour of the dragon exhibit and you can give me a report on your theory of dragon fire."
"Really?!"
Roy laughed again and let his eyes slide shut.
"Really."
XXX
When Alphonse returned an hour after he'd left, he first thought was that his brother and the colonel had killed each other.
Nurse Dorothea, who'd followed him into the room, simply laughed and rearranged the sheets so that Edward and Roy were equally covered.
"Sleep is probably the best thing for him right now. For both of them."
Al did his best to keep his joints' creaking to a minimum as he crept towards the bed. Edward was breathing slowly and steadily, his face blank of expression save for a bit of color in his cheeks. Mustang's face was twisted slightly in discomfort, most likely from his awkward position on the bed and the hardness of the wall behind his head. Al took it upon himself to move one of the pillows from the head of the bed to behind the colonel's neck and Roy visibly relaxed as the stress was lifted from his shoulders. Ed stirred as Roy shifted, sighing and readjusting his grip on the man's shirt.
"Not just sleep," Alphonse said, brushing a leather palm along his brother's back. "But they have plenty of that, too."
Now it's time for me to decide if I should a) write the next and very possibly last chapter of Taut or b) write the next chapter of Causatum.
I think I'll choose… an avocado bagel.
What? I'm hungry.