So this chapter is basically an anxious and pissed off Roy discovering how much worry that comes with fathering Edward Elric...
Chapter nineteen
Roy was worried as hell. Ed had just disappeared and he'd been gone for nearly ten hours now. He'd just said that he'd go to find Doctor Marcoh, even if Roy wouldn't tell him where he was. And Roy had been too busy retching to actually follow him. Besides, Ed had taken whatever disguises there were and Roy had a fever of thirty-nine degrees and one hell of a headache. Even though he knew that he should be getting some rest, Roy had just been sitting on one of the camp beds, his duvet tugged around him and glared at the door ever since he stopped throwing up. He was shivering and felt like hell, but he was going to yell at Ed for doing something so stupid right now.
At the same time, he was just as worried about Al as Ed was, and he knew that he needed medical attention, but by sending out Ed he felt like he was choosing which one of his kids was most important to him. Sending Ed out right now was like giving his son a death sentence. Roy had been torn up about it for two days now, because either way he risked losing one of his kids, and the third option would risk leaving the brothers without a father and he had sworn to them not to do that.
But now Ed was somewhere in East City with an enormous target on his back and looking for a doctor that had mostly gone underground. So Roy wouldn't give a damn about how sick he felt and how his whole body felt weak and hurt, he was going to watch that door until the kid came.
Why the hell did Ed have to be so stubborn?
And the most annoying part was that Roy was proud of him for this. He was fucking proud of the kid's heroic stupidity. Not many would dare to go outside when knowing that if they were discovered, death by torture was certain. Especially when the kid was just sixteen. And Ed was doing this because of his brother and because of Roy.
And that made it even worse, because he was touched as well.
"Edward, I swear, I'm going to give you an earful when you get back here!" Roy muttered angrily so that he wouldn't wake Alphonse. Al didn't need to worry about his brother any more than he already had. If he was asleep until Edward came back then it would be for the best.
Because Ed was coming back. There was no way he was going to leave them again. There was no way he would do that to Al.
To Roy.
Not again. Not when it would be permanent. He wouldn't do that.
Ed had defied death already. Roy remembered when Ed told him about it while he was staying with Roy while Al was in the hospital. It still worried him, because he didn't know how much of his life the kid had given up.
Roy woke up in the middle of the night, needing to go to the bathroom. When he was done he heard moans coming from the guest bedroom. It sounded like Ed was having a nightmare. He walked down the hallway and gently knocked on the door.
"Edward?"
The moans continued and then the boy began screaming for his brother. Roy made a split second decision and opened the door. Edward was lying there in his boxers, screaming and thrashing in his sleep, the covers kicked off him.
"NO! IT WAS AN EQUIVALENT EXCHANGE! YOU SAID I'D GET HIM BACK! AL! AL!"
Ed was stretching his left arm forward for his brother.
Roy walked over, sitting down on the edge of the bed and grabbed Ed's shoulders. "Edward! Wake up! It's just a nightmare!"
He shook the boy, barely avoiding getting a fist in the face and a metal knee where they should never be, before he slowly opened his eyes and stopped yelling. Roy released his left shoulder as the boy lay in the bed, panting and sweating, looking scared around him. Roy turned on the lamp on the nightstand and Ed finally seemed to calm down as he recognised his surroundings.
"Colonel?" Ed hastily dried away a couple of frightened tears.
"Yes. You were having a nightmare."
Edward sat up, still panting slightly as he looked over at Roy, looking both embarrassed and shaken.
"So Al's –" the boy said weakly.
"Still in the hospital. He's back in his body and he's doing good." Roy spoke softly and calmly, still holding onto Ed's right shoulder. The arms were still mismatched to some degree, but Roy was still just thrilled by the fact that it was there. It wasn't cold, unfeeling metal anymore.
Ed still looked a bit scared and surprised to find Roy there, but he didn't push his arm away. He just sat there, letting the facts of his reality sink over him.
"Are you okay, Ed? Do you want to talk about it?"
"Nah. It's nothing new. Thanks for waking me up, though." He looked away a bit at that, still a bit embarrassed.
Roy's eyes suddenly fell upon a large scar in Ed's left side. Or, one of them. There was the one from when he broke into the lab, but there was an even larger one that really looked like the kid had been in some kind of horrific accident. Something Roy hadn't heard about.
"Ed, what happened there?" Roy said, pointing.
"It's nothing." Ed was looking away now.
"Ed, that certainly isn't nothing! It looks worse than when Lust impaled me!"
Ed put his left hand in front of it to cover it up. Roy had a bad feeling at the thought of impalement.
"Ed, let me see your back."
"Nah, it's nothing I said," the boy tried again.
Roy sighed. "Show me your back, Ed. That's an order."
Ed grumbled but turned around, revealing another large scar about the same size as the one on his front.
Roy froze, looking at the remnants of a wound that the boy shouldn't have survived.
"Ed, when did this happen?" Roy asked, turning him around to look at him. "There's no way you should have been able to survive this."
"It really doesn't matter, okay? I didn't die, so it's all good." He was starting to sound a bit angry, but he still didn't meet his eye.
"Edward, what did you do? If you don't want to tell me, I'll just order you to, so talk to me, Ed."
Roy put his other hand on Ed's free shoulder, looking right at him. "Please, Ed. You did something to survive this. Tell me what happened."
Ed looked up at him and then looked down. "I got an iron beam through my stomach when the mine collapsed in Baschool," he mumbled. "Darius and Heinkel helped me pull it out and then I sealed it up with alchemy."
Roy knew that there was more to this. "That's not all, is it? Alchemy like that doesn't exist. Did you use a Philosopher's Stone?"
"No."
"Then what did you do, Ed?" Roy was doing all he could to stay calm, but it was getting damned hard.
"I … used my own life force like a Stone." Ed just hung his head. "I didn't have a choice."
Roy froze, gripping the boy's shoulders. "How much did you use?"
Ed didn't answer and Roy's grip tightened. "Dammit, Ed, how much did you use?!"
"I lost a few years of my lifespan, don't know how much, though."
Roy still felt his stomach clench at the thought. To know that Ed had an unknown number of years left to live scared him. Even Al didn't know about that. Ed still hadn't picked up the courage to tell him.
And Roy couldn't blame the boy for having done it, because he wouldn't have been alive today if he hadn't made that choice.
Roy forced himself to calm down. But he'd sworn to himself that he'd try to make as much as he could with each day he had with those kids ever since.
So now all Ed had to do was come back. He had to come back alive and healthy, because if those people had got him and he was strapped to a bench somewhere getting tortured then Roy didn't know what he would do since the last thing he had said to him involved "Stay the hell where you are!"
Then the door opened and Ed came inside with Doctor Marcoh and an unknown redhead.
Roy immediately jumped up, strode forwards and enveloped him in a hug. Before the boy knew what Roy was doing, he had then lifted him over his shoulder and carried him with him to the bathroom. "We are going to have a long conversation about this, young man."