Roy was able to get the boy out of there first thing the next morning.
Despite the nagging of the doctor and the recommendations of the head nurse and staff psychologist, Roy made the arrangements to transport him on the early train to Central. Ed was deeply sedated the whole time, sleeping away in the medical car while Roy and his team spent the restless hours in their private passenger car, poring over Ed's case file.
In the brief time his team had to investigate the crime scene, they had uncovered relatively little, and Roy couldn't help but be frustrated. The scene had been wiped clean, the perpetrators leaving nothing incriminating or useful behind except for one battered automail arm. He hoped that, once Ed was ready, he could give him more information about his captors, but he wasn't holding his breath. Who knew how long he had been blinded? He might not have even seen the room he was in, much less the faces of those responsible.
The train ride itself turned out to be unproductive, aside from heightening everyone's anxiety and frustration. The only conclusion they came to was that Ed's testimony was their only hope for a solid lead on anything.
Medical cars were given special privileges due to their often critical cargo, and the train was on a straight route to Central. They arrived before the sun came up early the next morning, tired and irritable, but glad to be back in warmer climate, especially Roy. Roy abhorred the cold.
After sending his team home and telling them to take the day off, he escorted Ed to the military hospital, and after they promised he would be kept sedated a while longer, he went home to take care of basic hygiene and catch some much needed sleep. He didn't really want to leave Ed there alone, but he was dead on his feet and the nurses gave him the ultimatum; go home or be admitted. He felt much better about leaving Ed in a hospital he could trust, though. He had been a patient there more times than he cared to think about and had at some point flirted with at least half of the nurses on staff. They were people he knew, and he rested a lot better knowing that.
It was late into the afternoon when Roy finally woke up and made himself presentable, dragging his exhausted body to the hospital.
He probably shouldn't have been as surprised as he was to find Hawkeye there in Ed's room, a box of paperwork at her feet as she forged his signature on some official document or another. A glance at the form in the bed told him Ed was still out cold.
Roy recovered quickly enough. He plastered a thin smile on his face, allowing her to move the stack of files from the only other chair and dropping heavily into it, nursing his cup of cheap hospital coffee as he did. "Isn't that illegal?" he asked, watching her scrawl his name with disturbing accuracy across a request form.
She didn't even look up. "What should be illegal is how long it takes you to get these done. Sir," she added.
A weary smirk tugged at his lips. "How long have you been here?"
"Not too long. He's off the sedative, so they're expecting him to wake up soon. Nothing else to report." Her voice was smooth, but Roy caught her worrying glance at the emaciated form on the bed.
His eyes drifted to the boy. Ed looked better in the afternoon light, his skin gaining some color back to it. The heart monitor still beeped steadily, and Roy wanted to think that the dark rings under his eyes had faded a bit. It was almost easy to fool himself into believing Ed was just asleep instead of forcibly kept under, as if he could wake up at any moment, golden eyes sharp and irritable and he would demand to know why the "Creepy Idiot Colonel" was watching him sleep.
Funny. What Roy had once found terribly annoying, he now wanted more than anything in the world.
"Any word from Alphonse?" he asked softly, unable to tear his eyes from Ed.
"He called your office yesterday, while we were away. I had told the secretary to have him come back to Central straight away if he called, so he should be on his way."
He almost smiled. Leave it to Hawkeye to think of everything. "Good. They're going to need each other."
Eventually, Hawkeye shifted a stack of papers into his lap, and with an exaggerated sigh, he accepted her proffered pen and began reviewing and signing, but it was halfhearted, at best. He honestly wasn't paying too much attention, and he absently hoped he didn't sign a declaration of war or something.
Every last scrap of his concentration evaporated when he saw Ed's fingers twitch.
He put his current paper aside, leaning forward to stare intently at the boy. Hawkeye had noticed, too, but she finished the document she was scanning before putting it down and watching with equal intensity.
The heart monitor picked up just a fraction as the boy was roused from his faux sleep and gently pulled into reality. Roy watched, heart hammering in his chest with hope and trepidation, as Ed's brow wrinkled, lips pulling down in a frown. His only hand curled into a fist, and his eyes slowly fluttered open.
They were pale and clouded and Roy felt a stab of nausea looking at them, the thought of what they would mean for Ed weighing down his very soul.
Roy was afraid to speak, afraid to startle him while he was in such a fragile, vulnerable state. He could only watch as Ed suddenly went tense, the bleary expression often associated with just waking up evaporating to reveal alarm. Ed quieted his breathing, listening, carefully curling his legs up protectively around him with only a small wince to acknowledge his many injuries. His hand wrapped around his throat as probably a million foreign sounds assaulted his ears.
"I hear your breathing," he whispered, voice small and shaking, his usual anger and defiance heartbreakingly absent. "Who's there?"
"It's us, Ed," Roy murmured softly, but his voice still startled the boy badly.
Ed flinched back away from the closeness of the sound, burrowing deeper into the back of the propped up bed, until recognition seemed to register on his face. He stopped, a cautious frown lining his face. "Colonel?" he asked.
One simple little word shouldn't be allowed to contain so much desperation.
"That's right," he answered, struggling to keep his voice light. "Hawkeye's right here with me."
Something unrecognizable flitted across his face, then it was gone, swallowed by caution. "Where are we?"
"You're at the military hospital in Central," Roy supplied. "We brought you back here yesterday. You slept through the whole thing."
A look of panic briefly crossed his face, and Roy wondered what it was about. "I . . . slept through it? I was moved halfway across Amestris and I didn't know it?"
Of course. For someone like Ed, control was everything. Freedom to have that control was everything. His lifestyle required him to be informed and make difficult decisions for the best interest of him and his little brother. He had so many responsibilities, so much relying on him; that so much could happen to him, without his knowledge or consent, was probably a terrifying notion.
Roy struggled to find words to reply, to comfort him, but nothing came. Thankfully, Hawkeye saved him. "How are you feeling, Ed?" she asked, her voice warm.
Ed reacted to the new voice, not as badly as he had to Roy's, but it took him a second to look at ease with it. "I'm fine," he answered, closing his eyes, and though he didn't know why, it bothered Roy to see him forcibly uncurl himself, to hide how broken his body was, how afraid he felt. "Where's Al?"
Naturally that would be Ed's priority. Al was always Ed's priority, but Roy didn't want to tell him he was up north, in the same area Ed had been abducted from. That would do nothing good for him. "He should be here soon," he explained lamely.
Lame or not, it seemed to satisfy Ed, which also bothered Roy. Ed was never this easy to satisfy. Maybe he was hurting too much to question it.
Ed suddenly went very still, whole body tensing and face alert. Roy was about to ask what was wrong until he noticed his sightless eyes fixed near the door, where a doctor was standing, scribbling absently on a clipboard as if oblivious to the doorway he had stopped in.
"It's just the doctor, Edward," Hawkeye soothed, voice softer than petals.
Ed didn't relax, though. If anything, his anxiety seemed to heighten. "Doctor?" he whispered.
"Ah, Major Edward Elric!" the doctor said, his tenor voice jovial as he finally looked up from his clipboard and entered the room. He was a young man, maybe just a bit younger than Roy, with a trim build, auburn, shaggy hair, and sharp blue eyes that glistened with intelligence and a joy that was hard to fake.
Again, Ed flinched violently, pressing back into the pillow behind him as if he could stuff his whole body in its feathery mass and disappear.
If the doctor noticed Ed's obvious terror, he didn't comment on it. He stepped up to the bed, keeping up a steady stream of dialogue as he did. "My name is Doctor James Silas, but most people just call me Jim, which you are more than welcome to," he offered with a warm grin, as if he didn't know Ed couldn't see it. "So, what would you like me to call you? Major? Fullmetal? Mr. Elric?"
Ed blinked at the sudden invitation of his preference, his surprise seeming to chase away his caution for just a brief moment, long enough for him to uncurl himself slightly. "Ed is fine . . ."
Roy suddenly understood what the doctor's game was. He was constantly talking, making noise to let Ed track him. He was giving him the power over how to address him, something small yet meaning so much for someone like Ed. It was as if he knew how much Ed needed it without being told, and Roy had a sudden admiration for this doctor.
"Ha, very good!" he smiled, scribbling on his clipboard. His eyes jumped up to meet his and Hawkeye's. "You must be Colonel Roy Mustang, and Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, am I right? It is most certainly a pleasure! Well, now, I do have some things I need to ask Ed, and some of them are quite personal, but I'll leave it up to Ed on if he wants you both to stay. Either way is fine with me."
Roy glanced from the doctor to Ed. The boy blinked again, as if stunned he was allowed to make that kind of decision. Roy was almost certain he'd ask for them to stay, and Roy was ready to do it, but something closed on the boy's face, shutting down that fearful expression before it had a chance to take over his visage, and he shook his head. "No, they can go, but . . . Colonel?"
"What is it?"
"Will you . . . can you both wait outside? Right outside?"
Roy knew what he was asking. He knew that Ed desperately wanted them to stay, but he still had some, small fractured bit of pride left in him that prevented him from asking, from having him so close for something so personal. He was terrified to be alone with a stranger, but more terrified still to need Roy's support.
Roy should have been pleased, should have been happy at this spark of the old Edward, but he couldn't help feel something cold settle in his gut. Something made of rejection and terrible guilt.
Perhaps Ed blamed him.
The thought hit him hard. It wasn't as if Roy didn't blame himself, hadn't been blaming himself for three months over what had happened, but it was somehow different if Ed knew, if that was how he felt.
And Roy couldn't blame him.
Roy forced a smooth smile to his face and nodded. "Very well, we'll be right out the door. Just call if you need us."
Ed nodded, and maybe it was just his imagination, but Roy thought he heard the heart monitor pick up and the boy's breathing escalate as he and Hawkeye left the room.
He shut the door on the doctor's bubbly voice, and leaned against the wall. He could hear the doctor babbling, then Ed's occasional monotone answer, but not enough to make out anything. As Ed's commanding officer, he would get the whole medical report anyway, so he wasn't too worried about eaves dropping.
He was just worried about the way Ed had asked him to leave.
"What are you brooding about, sir?" Hawkeye asked, her voice about as wry as it ever got.
He turned his head to give her a sidelong scowl. "I'm not brooding, Hawkeye."
"Whatever you say, sir," she said, obviously not believing a word he said.
He thought a moment, not liking the way his thoughts spiraled downward. "Do you think he blames me?"
Her delicate eyebrows knitted together as she came to lean against the wall beside him. "For what happened? Sir, he hasn't even had time to process, yet. This is the first time he's woken up mostly lucid. It's not fair for you to ask him to be himself. Not after what he's been through."
She had a power over him that no one else had. Their long history made her painfully easy to talk to, and it was as if Roy couldn't keep his thoughts to himself when he was alone with her. She was always his rock in the storm, his pillar of reason in an uncertain world. Even when he didn't say a word, even when he had his carefully crafted mask of stoicism in place, she could read his mind like an open book.
"That's the thing, Hawkeye," he said, fisting his hands and crossing them over his chest. "He shouldn't be kicking us out. He was scared to death, but he did it anyways. Like he blamed me for it and didn't want me around . . . which I suppose I deserve."
She didn't respond for a moment, and Roy knew she was agreeing with him. His guilt was obvious, just one more sin to add to his bloodstained gloves. He may as well have done the deed himself instead of sending Ed all the way up north and saved the State travel money.
"Perhaps it was a bad call," she agreed, her voice subdued as she stared at the pristine tiled floors. "But at fault or not, he needs you right now. Even if he can't admit it aloud, it's plain as day. So quit wallowing in your self-pity and be there for him. Sir," she added with a tight smile and a warm gaze.
Roy felt a weak smile tug at his own lips, but commotion in the room behind him made him pause. He couldn't make out any words, but he could plainly hear Ed's voice increasing in volume.
The door suddenly opened, and Doctor Silas' face leaned out, a gentle, worried look on it. "Ed wanted me to ask you if you would come back in for a moment." His words were polite, his tone even, but Roy saw the sad anxiety on his face, and heard Ed's pleas from behind, and Roy quickly pushed past him.
Ed was curled in on himself, his hand around his throat again. He had his eyes screwed shut, burying his face against the pillow, as if begging it to swallow him. "Where is he? Where's Al?" he asked, voice hopeless and broken.
"Fullmetal," Roy said, voice firm but kind. Inside, though, his guts were twisting. He hated to see Ed this way.
Ed responded like a moth to flame. The anguish on his face abated somewhat, and his eyes opened, hopelessly blank. "Colonel?" his hand started to unwind from his throat, but stopped, hesitating.
Roy knew what he was after. He placed gentle hand on the boy's bare shoulder. Ed flinched harshly, then released his neck long enough to latch on. Roy tried not to notice the tears leaking from his damaged eyes.
A weak, bitter laugh strangled its way from Ed's throat. "I'm sorry," he choked. "I'm sorry, I don't know how I got to be so pathetic."
I know how. And I'm sorry.
"Don't worry about it, Fullmetal," Roy said, careful to keep his voice smooth. The doctor caught Roy's eye and made a gesture out to the hall. He nodded. "I have to go make a phone call, but I'll be right back." Ed went ridged under his hand, so Roy continued, "You should keep Hawkeye here, though. She'll just want to tag along to chew me out for cancelling my appointment again."
It was all a lie, something to save Ed his pride, and Roy could see the appreciation in those watery, pale eyes. He nodded, and with great hesitation, let go of Roy's hand, fisting the sheets next to his throat instead.
Roy followed the doctor out the door and Hawkeye quickly took his place at Ed's side, resting her gentle hand near his on the bed, close enough for Ed to know it was there and grab it if he needed to.
The doctor shut the door, blocking them from sight and Roy turned his attention to the man. "What was that about?"
Silas offered him a worn, sad smile. "I can only imagine. He's just gone through one of the worst things the human spirit can experience, and he's only a child. Think if you will what it might be like to be in pain ever since the day you were robbed of your sight. You've just yanked him from a dark reality and thrust him into a totally new environment."
Roy nodded. "He can't believe he's safe."
"He can't believe it, and he doesn't have the eyes to confirm it. The only safe points for him are what is familiar; things like you and the Lieutenant, your touch, your voices. He has post-traumatic stress disorder in the worst way, and he doesn't have the senses to properly determine what is real from the nightmares in his head. He needs to be around familiar things and familiar people, and I'm afraid this hospital just isn't going to do."
Roy eyed him suspiciously. "That's not what doctors are supposed to say. Doctors are supposed to dig in their claws and hang on for as long as possible."
A knowing smile crossed the younger man's lips. "Well, sometimes medicine isn't the answer. Sometimes it takes something more."
Roy decided that he liked this doctor. "What do you suggest for his treatment, then?"
"Well, I'd like for him to stay the week, if he can stand it, but we'll have to play that by ear. If we have to, we'll send him home and do house calls. He needs people he knows and trusts here at all times, if that can be done. I know you're a busy man, but he seems to respond very well to your presence."
Roy nodded. He would stick around as long as he could, as long as Ed would let him. At least until Alphonse arrived. "And then?"
"Well, I'm no psychiatrist, but he'll definitely be needing one. I would give him some time to adjust before calling one in, though, as long as he doesn't become a danger to himself or others. I can have our automail specialist look at his arm and leg, but it's probably best if he's sedated for that. I believe you recovered his original automail, correct? Good. I don't know much about automail, but his port looks like someone ran excessive amounts of electricity through it. It will require some pretty strenuous repair."
Roy ground his teeth together. The things they had done to him . . . "What about his neck?" he asked. "Why does he keep grabbing it?"
"Well, aside from the obvious chaffing from his restraints, the initial report states there were teeth marks around his throat, probably from the animals he was kept with."
Roy's blood ran cold. "One of those . . . things went for his throat?" He couldn't get the image of Ed, lying in that cold basement, naked and blind and bleeding with one of those creatures attached to his neck, out of his mind. It would be terrifying at any other time, but when he was so weak and vulnerable . . . Roy suppressed a shudder.
Silas interpreted it as a rhetorical question. "It probably almost killed him, so he's naturally going to be very protective of it. I'd recommend not touching it without his expressed permission."
Roy nodded numbly. "What happens after he's out of the hospital?" When Ed was in Central, he stayed in the dorms with Al, but Roy wasn't sure he liked the idea of them being on their own in that kind of environment so soon.
"I'd recommend him staying someplace familiar, again with someone he knows. He's got a bumpy road ahead of him, and new things are just going to slow him down." He scribbled something on his clipboard. "Well, I have to finish my rounds for this evening, but if you need anything, don't hesitate to call. I'll get a cot sent down for whoever will be staying the night with him," he said around a knowing smile.
Roy gave a smile of his own, offering his hand. "Thank you, doctor."
"Please, call me Jim, Colonel," he said, giving his hand a firm shake.
"Roy."
Jim nodded and turned away, bouncing down the halls with a spring in his step and a merry greeting for the nurse's desk. After visiting with a doctor like that, Roy couldn't help but feel a bit more optimistic, just a bit more hopeful, as he turned back to enter Ed's room.
"Colonel Mustang?"
An unfamiliar nurse approached him from the main desk, a folded piece of paper in her hands. "A message from Central Command."
He gave her a polite smile and took the paper. "Thank you."
She smiled back at him, casting a sad glance in the room behind him before walking away.
Roy sighed, unfolding the paper with trepidation, wondering what had gone wrong in his absence. He felt himself brighten considerably, though, upon reading its contents.
Alphonse had phoned in to tell them he was boarding the last train of his route. He would be in Central by dawn.
Optimistic indeed.
Ed couldn't stop the yelp that escaped his lips as he kicked his leg, trying desperately to get away from whatever had touched his foot. The dogs, they would never let him rest. He could almost feel their eyes on him, their cold, desperate hunger rolling from their wasted bodies in dark ripples. He protected his throat at all costs, the only thing that kept him breathing, even as he tried to fend off the beast and the cold panic that was suddenly burning through his veins.
"Whoa, Ed!" a startled voice cried, so close that he jumped even more. Someone was down there with him, coming for him. A warm hand clamped down on his flesh foot and he thrashed instinctively, his thoughts stuck on an endless, frantic loop.
Get away. Get away, get away, get away!
"Fullmetal, stop that!"
He froze, the loop of his thoughts collapsing into an unsupported mess as this new information flooded over him. He remembered, everything rushing back to him in a wave. He was in Central, in the hospital. The Colonel was here, he was safe. He had only been dreaming.
Unless, of course, this was the dream and the other was his true reality. He didn't know, and there was no way to be sure. He felt coarse fabric under his body, smelled antiseptics, but those things could be faked. That wasn't enough to know for sure. Without his sight, he was floating in a sea of blackness, lost and ungrounded. Even his pain, the only constant he knew, was dulled, made artificial somehow, and it scared him. He had always known he was awake by how much everything hurt, but now even that certainty was gone.
All he had now was this familiar voice, a voice that could just be his fractured mind playing cruel tricks.
His heart pounded. He didn't know. He couldn't see, so he couldn't know. He pressed his body against the soft mass behind him, pulling his legs up around him, struggling to find something to latch onto, to ground him.
The hand was back, this time on the skin of his arm. He flinched, the reflex drilled into him, touch long associated with pain, but Mustang's soft voice came to him. "Shh, Ed. Everything's fine."
That voice, that hand, this had to be real. If it wasn't, his mind was doing an awfully good job faking it. He smelled a faint, spicy scent, like earth and mesquite, a balm to his frantic thoughts, and he allowed the hand anchor him in the world, giving the pressure on his bicep his undivided attention. Just something so the dark world would stop spinning around him.
He slowly got his breathing under control, inhaling and exhaling slowly, like Teacher had taught him.
"Are you alright?" Mustang asked. Ed heard the trepidation in his voice, the worry.
The pity.
He hated this. He hated being so afraid, so unsure. His pride, everything he was, had died somewhere back in that basement, and he didn't know if it could be brought back. All that was left of him now was this pathetic excuse of an existence, helpless and skittish and painfully isolated. Half the time he couldn't tell the present from the past, and he still wasn't sure he was entirely convinced of what he was sensing.
He wanted to get up, to leap from the bed. He wanted to run outside and scream and shout his frustration to the world, to track down the people who did this to him and rip them apart.
But as it was, he was quailing at the sound of his superior's voice, jumping every time a nurse passed by his door or when the air conditioning kicked on.
He was pathetic and he could feel it destroying him.
"Ed?" the Colonel questioned, the earlier worry turning into something a touch more urgent, the hand on his shoulder squeezing gently.
"I'm fine," he muttered, wishing vainly that he had the strength to push the Colonel's hand away, to tell him to take his pity and get away from him. But the hand was his anchor, and he simply couldn't release it, much less ask for Mustang to leave.
Much to his shame, the Colonel seemed to sense it. He didn't move his hand, and if anything, the voice sounded closer. "If that's what 'fine' looks like, I don't want to see you when you've had a bad day." There was just the barest trace of humor in his voice, but it was sad, a far cry from their usual banter. Like he was going easy on him, just because he was hurt and blind.
But Ed didn't have it in him to dredge up an insult. He realized suddenly that his eyes were open, and let them close. He was ashamed of them. They were a testimony to how horribly he had failed, how far he had fallen. Besides, it wasn't like they were doing him any good open anyways. "I'm fine. Sorry I woke you up." He was waiting, almost fearfully, for the hand to move and Mustang to go back to his cot on the other side of the room.
The hand still rested there, still tethering him to the moment. "Don't be ridiculous, Fullmetal. I walked all the way over here. I'm going to stay a while."
A weak smile made his lips twitch, but it felt pitiful where it sat on his lips. "Lazy old man."
Mustang let out a faintly amused snort. "Annoying brat."
No one spoke for a moment, and Ed was starting to hear things, scrapings and clicks and whispers that threatened to take his mind back to that basement, so he focused on the hand on his arm, the gentle whisper of Mustang's breathing, the earthy scent of him, willing his mind to the present. "How long was I gone?" he asked, desperate for another hold to the moment, even if it wouldn't last.
Mustang seemed to hesitate, though Ed wasn't sure. He could have just missed the question, but there was some interruption of his breathing that told him Mustang had heard the question and wasn't comfortable with it. "Almost three months."
Three months? That was it? It had seemed like an eternity, a lifetime. He felt like he had been in the dark forever. "Was Al . . . was he okay?"
"He was fine, Ed," Mustang assured him, a little too hurriedly.
Ed didn't trust his answer. "You're lying," he stated.
The hand on his shoulder twitched uncomfortably. "I'll let him fill you in. He'll be here in a few hours."
Ed still wasn't pleased, but he nodded. "Fine."
The pause grew too long, and his mind started to drift. He was tired, he knew. He was completely exhausted, but he didn't want to try to go back to sleep. He hated sleep. It was too much of a blurring of the lines between reality and nightmare, and he wanted to stay here where he was, relatively safe from the demons in his head.
At least, he thought so, until he felt the sheet over him shift and panicked. He hissed, yanking his arm from Mustang's grip to swipe out at whatever had touched him, only panicking further when his hand met only air and he couldn't find what it was, what had touched him.
"It's okay, Ed! It was just the sheet settling," Mustang assured him with a strained tone, reattaching his hand to his shoulder.
Ed gritted his teeth, shame and exhaustion tearing through his body.
He had tried to attack a bed sheet.
He hated this so much.
How weak he must look. How pathetic. And this was what his little brother was going to see. After his big brother missing for months, he would come back to find this in his stead. Would Al even recognize him?
And just how long would the Colonel stick around? Whether Ed admitted it to anyone or not, he was an important man, and he had important things to do. It was foolish for him to be here now. Ed was no good to him anymore. Without his eyes, he was less than useless, and it didn't take a prodigy to see that.
He was ashamed for Mustang to see him like this. Ashamed, but too afraid to tell him to leave.
So pathetic.
"Ed?"
"Just go back to sleep, Mustang," he said, his voice heavy and broken, even to his own ears.
Mustang sighed, a quiet whisper of sound. He squeezed Ed's arm one more time before letting go. Ed tried to regulate his breathing as he did, listening to the Colonel's soft footfalls as he moved across the floor, the creak of cheap springs and the stiff rustle of sheets as he climbed and settled into his bed.
Ed tried to focus on Mustang's breathing, but soon even that was too difficult. Like a boat being untethered and set adrift, Ed floated in the inky blackness, waiting for the next nightmare to rear its ugly head and drag him under.
Praying Al would hurry.
Long chapter is long xD The last scene wasn't supposed to be there, but I was feeling like some more Ed angst (as if this thing isn't drowning in it) so I tacked it on C: Hope you enjoyed that haha xD
I like Dr. James Silas :D He just sort of manifested and wrote himself. I can tell you that his name is from Paul's traveling companion in the book of Acts in the Bible (the book I'm currently reading, so I guess it was fresh in my mind). And I suppose he's sort of based off of Dr. Who, just a bit. But he kind of arrived out of the blue and behaved that way . . . love when OCs do that :D
Poor Ed. I'm such a meanie :C
I'll reply to all the signed reviews from last time tonight/tomorrow (and I promise I'm getting to those on Heart!). Again, thanks to everyone who is reading, and a special thanks to everyone who takes the time to review. I'm holding you guys personally responsible for the speed of this update haha ;)
Drop a review, if you have the time, and I'll see you next chapter!
God Bless,
-RainFlame
