Author's Note:
Originally published in the LiveJournal fma_fic_contest community for Prompt 128, Horror, August 16 2011. Set post manga, after my fic "The Toll."
At first, he thought his captors were taking him to face his death sentence in Amestris.
"Daddy, play horsey." Roy grins as he puts the three year old on his right thigh. "Boomp diddy boomp diddy boomp boomp boomp!" His leg goes up and down on each "boomp" and gets steadily faster and faster. Finally, Roy swings Maes off his lap and lands him gently on the floor.
The problem with automail is that it works almost too well. Get an automail leg or two and you can move around just as well as you could before. Heymans remembers being disappointed that Hav's spinal injury had ruled out automail.
Then he found out they were planning on doing it themselves. In the end, that's what gave his people time to find and rescue him.
"Again!" squeals the little boy, but Roy shakes his head. "Cool down," he says and lies down on the sofa.
Maes crawls onto the sofa to lie on Daddy's chest. Daddy's arms are hard, sturdy barriers on either side of him, but his chest is softer and warm. He hears the steady thump-dump of Daddy's heart and feels Daddy nuzzle his hair. He asks for his song.
You know how your rifle is like an extension of your body? Jean thinks that's pretty much what automail's like. You don't really have to think about it. But it's not the same as actually feeling something. Holding hands is like holding someone's hand with tongs.
"The ants go marching one by one - , " Roy sings in a low, rumbly voice that Maes can feel as well as hear. By the time ants are marching seven by seven for the second time, he's asleep.
They planned to execute him by fire, but they were in no hurry. They started with the little finger of his left hand and then gave him a day to recover before they went on.
According to Vato's research, if you lose an arm, your brain still expects the sensations of touch, pressure, temperature, from that arm, which automail just can't provide. The recommended therapy is to increase sensory input to the rest of the body.
Riza watches, smiling, from the doorway. She picks the little boy up and lays him carefully in his bed. Then she comes back for her husband.
His captors sped things up when they saw the rescue team was going to break through. He'd still had his right hand and right leg above the ankle. Now they didn't stop when he passed out. They gave him two automail arms and two automail legs when he got back.
Kain likes to look at Mustang and Hawkeye walking together. He doesn't usually hold her hand, so at first it made you think he was still keeping his distance. But then he'll wrap his arm around her waist and they'll walk like that, as if they were joined at the hip.
Roy still cries in Riza's arms at night sometimes, but he has her and Maes and another on the way.
Life is good.
