He came to slowly, his body chiming in with a round of complaints and pains. Some were easy to ignore, others weren't. For instance, his eyes felt like they were melting in his head.
He finally wrested himself away from the clutches of unconsciousness, opening his eyes with some trouble. They hurt, like someone had raked their nails across both of them, and they were encrusted with matter, slick liquid coating their edges. He brought up his hand to feel them.
He couldn't see his hand.
On second thought, he couldn't see anything.
His heart slid up to his throat and stopped.
He couldn't see anything.
He couldn't see.
His chest heaved up and down in shallow, panicked breaths as icy fear made his stomach clench. He felt like he was spinning, his body off-balance and floating in the dark despite the solid ground beneath him. It was a disarming sense of vertigo he couldn't explain. The cold seeped from the stone floor into his very bones and he stopped moving, straining his ears to listen. Maybe he had made some mistake. Maybe this was just someplace very dark. The basement was always dark, but maybe the light filtering through the crack underneath the door was blocked somehow. That had to be it, because the alternative was unthinkable.
He forced his breathing to calm, because panicking would get him nowhere. He had to think.
Something shifted in the darkness off to his left, like claws sliding over stone.
He immediately struggled to sit up, his body straining pathetically at the simple action. His muscles had atrophied so much from so little food and his inability to move much, and he had to roll onto his stomach to push himself up with his only arm. It shook with exertion under his thin body. The chain attached to his neck clinked with the movement.
Most likely still the basement, then.
The light was just blocked, though. It had to be.
He finally made it back on his haunches, his body quivering with the effort. He tried to quieten his panting and listen, but he didn't hear anything else in the blackness.
His whole body ached terribly, and he wondered how long he had been out. If he thought about it, he was starving, though the thought of food filled him with revulsion. After . . . after that. His lips were parched, though, and that was something he had the power to fix. He felt along beside him before his hand grazed the smooth metal of the water bowl. It was big, and he wished he had another hand to steady it with as he lifted it up to his cracked lips with some difficulty. The stale water was frigid going down, dissipating some of the last vestiges of warmth in his body, but it took some of the discomfort in his throat away. A few rivulets caused by his shaking hand slid down the side of his neck and down his bare chest, causing gooseflesh in their wake. He put the dish back down against the wall where he could find it easier in the dark.
Footsteps thumped through the house above, drawing closer.
He wasn't ready. Not again, not again. He pressed himself against the wall, slowly easing his injued body as far as his chain would allow to the corner.
The door swung open on grating hinges.
No light flooded the basement. Nothing seared his eyes or made them water. No images of cruel Drachmen greeted him. Nothing.
Footsteps approached. Maybe there were two or three of them, but he was having trouble hearing over his pounding heart.
"Well, how are we feeling this morning?" the Interrogator asked in his strangely accented voice.
Steps kept approaching, heavy and foreboding. Ed didn't answer, pressing back against the wall in a pathetic attempt to protect himself. Their steps were so sure, like it wasn't pitch-black all around them. Like he was the only one in the dark.
Ed had never been more terrified.
"Nothing to say?" the Interrogator asked mildly from his perch on the steps, his booted feet scraping the stone as he shifted. "No smart-mouthed remarks? Maybe you're finally starting to understand your place, little alchemist."
Ed wasn't paying him much attention. The other footsteps stopped right in front of him and he slowly wrapped his hand around his throat. That's what the wolves and the Drachmen always went for.
The steps stopped on either side of him and his whole body tensed, waiting for the blow. Why were they just standing there? Anxiety made a tight knot form in his empty stomach and his breathing felt tight and impossible.
He couldn't see. Sight was knowing and anticipation and preparation, but he couldn't see.
His heart raced, nausea gripping him and he forgot to breathe.
What were they doing? They were going to hit him, he knew it, and he would have absolutely no warning.
He could make no move to protect himself when a booted foot buried itself in his side, making his entire body alight with pain. He bit back a cry as another blow fell on his swollen knee and while he curled to protect it, another hit his lower back and he gasped.
"Look at that," the deep voice of Borsk chuckled from his left. "Blind as a bat."
No, no, not blind. Not blind, anything but that. Anything.
"I'm confident that this will deter any other escape attempts, don't you think, boy?" the Interrogator asked. "Borsk, take Tessa and get him cleaned up. He's filthy."
The two pairs of steps shuffled off, presumably to get the hose at the top of the steps.
"I'll be seeing you later this evening," the Interrogator promised. "I'm still very curious about this 'Operation Firefight.'"
The Interrogator's steps faded away as the hose whispered over the stone floor and water hissed.
Ed could do nothing to shield himself from the freezing spray.
XxXxX
He didn't want to die.
He didn't really want to live right now, either.
Ed curled up against the wall, terrified of the sounds he was hearing. Those wolves, those cursed animals, were roaming just past his reach, soft paws whispering on the hard floor as they passed him. They'd been hovering closer and closer, as if sensing he was now more helpless than ever. They were growing bolder, attacking him any time he let his guard down. He wasn't sure when the last time was that he'd slept more than in a light dose.
The realization that he was actually considering letting them kill him had surprised him at first, but after the past few days (weeks? Or was it mere hours. . .) he wasn't so surprised anymore.
He hurt everywhere. He didn't know it was possible to feel so much pain from so many places all at once. His shoulder port had received the worst abuse just a few hours ago. They'd attached some sort of battery to the metal workings, then flipped a switch and Ed had to redefine his concept of agony for the fourth time since his imprisonment began.
His shoulder still sent off pain signals at random, the artificial nerves shorting and communicating wave after wave of fiery pain to his real nerves.
Then there were his other injuries. His flesh knee was still swollen, and the Interrogator seemed to delight in twisting the injured limb from time to time to keep him conscious. His knife wounds were adding up, a few now riddling the tops of his thighs in addition to his sides. He had a few cracked ribs and his flesh hand was still swollen. They'd even put fire to the backs of his legs.
He'd begged. Ed had never been more ashamed or degraded in his life, but it had hurt so much, and he'd begged them to stop it with pained tears rolling down his face.
They'd only laughed at him.
He couldn't go through with it again. He couldn't. Everything was so much worse now, magnified a thousand times by his blindness. It was a horrible, twisted new world filled with humiliations and fears he had never experienced before. He felt the pain clearer, the fear hotter, the despair more intensely than he had thought possible.
He didn't want to leave Alphonse, but surely he would understand? Surely he would find it in his heart to, if not forgive, then to acknowledge that Ed had tried his best. That Ed didn't want to go back on his promise, but that he'd had no choice . . . no choice.
"Just like that? You're just going to quit?"
Ed startled badly at the voice, his body half-way sitting up before he realized who had spoken. The movement had been excruciating, and with a harsh, pained hiss, Ed settled his head back to the cold stone, taking a few moments to breathe through the pain before he could speak. "Where've you been?" he asked weakly, voice rasping from his raw throat like dry scales. He was too hurt to sit up again. Everything hurt.
"Maybe you should ask yourself that," Mustang's voice said over his head. "This is your subconscious, after all."
"I haven't seen . . . I haven't heard you in days," Ed said. He hadn't heard from any of them in days. He'd hallucinated Alphonse and Winry once, but that could have been a dream. He even hallucinated his mother, but he hurt too much to even talk to her, so she just sat beside him, ghostly fingers stroking his hair until a wolf came and tried to tear off Ed's arm. Mustang had visited him the most, but Ed wasn't sure what to make of that. Maybe it was because it was easier to keep up his fleeting facade of bravado with him. With anyone else, he just wanted to cry and apologize. Something about Mustang always made him doubt his resolve to quit, like stoking a fire that had all but died. But a fire couldn't last indefinitely without fuel. "I was beginning to think you'd left."
"I'm not going anywhere until you're sane again," the colonel said. The way he said it made it sound like it was meant to be reassuring.
"How fitting . . . You finally drove me crazy," Ed said, smirking faintly at his own joke before it became too much trouble to maintain the expression.
"I'm only here because you're already crazy," Mustang sniffed indignantly. "There's a difference."
Ed didn't reply for a moment, his jaw tired from just the short conversation. "You planning on . . .sticking around a while?"
"Just as long as you let me," he replied simply. Ed heard a sound like someone settling beside him, but there was no sensation of heat or that faint thrum of life living things had. It was all in his head. Still, someone there, even a ghost, was better than being alone. It was a welcomed distraction, even if it was tangible proof that he was losing his mind. "So, what's all this nonsense about quitting?"
Ed didn't want to have this conversation. Not with Mustang, even if he was only a figment of Ed's fracturing mind.
"Hey, it's your subconscious," Mustang said. "You don't like the course of conversation, you only have yourself to blame."
If Ed had more strength, he might have frowned. "We're changing subjects . . . talk to me about . . . Alphonse. How is he?"
"Fullmetal, you know that I know just as much about what's going on outside this basement as you do. I don't have any way of knowing what he's up to."
"I'm creative. Make up something," Ed offered. He wanted to hear good things. He wanted something to take his mind far away from this place. He wanted his little brother.
Heck, he would even settle for the real Mustang right about now.
"I heard that, shrimp."
"Not short," Ed said, but the denial sounded hollow even to his own ears. His height wasn't something he could bring himself to care about at the moment. Besides, he didn't have the energy to speak in full sentences, much less lecture his imagination for double-crossing him. "Alphonse?" he pressed.
"Well, judging by the water running down the north wall and the draft currents, I'd say Alphonse is probably out in North City looking for you."
"No one likes . . . a smart-aleck."
"So, what's all this about quitting?" Mustang asked again.
He might have glared if he'd had the capability. "I thought I . . . said drop it."
"Well, you did. But as the voice of your subconscious, that's what's eating you right now. So, let's talk about it."
"Scary . . . Voice of my . . . subconscious is you," Ed panted. He was getting too exhausted to speak.
"You know I can just read your mind, right?" Mustang pointed out wryly.
Ed stopped. 'Well, guess that makes sense.'
"Now that you're finished stalling, talk," the colonel ordered, voice firm.
"I . . ." He closed his mouth. 'You see where I'm at. You see what they've done. I'm going to die in this pit, so it may as well be on my terms.'
"What about Alphonse? What about Miss Rockbell and that old lady Pinako?" Mustang asked, the barest traces of anger marring his smooth voice. "What about the team? You're just going to quit and leave everyone behind?"
Ed winced. 'It's not like that. I've waited . . . how long have I waited? No one's coming for me. Have all of you given up? I guess this place is out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe you can't find it, or maybe I'm presumed dead, but either way, I can't . . . Colonel, I can't go through anymore.' If Ed had been less dehydrated and had more energy, he might have cried. It was too much. He couldn't go through another round of questioning. He couldn't.
"You know better than that, Fullmetal," Mustang said sternly, almost fiercely. The heat of it startled Ed for a moment. "We're looking. We are, you just have to give us some more time. Don't make me have to bring you to Al in a body bag."
'I thought you said you didn't know what was going on outside anymore than I did,' Ed pointed out.
"But you know. You know us. You know Alphonse and I and the whole team won't stop until we find you."
'Maybe . . . but maybe it would be better if you didn't. Maybe it's best if I die. I don't want you to see me like this . . . Even if I do get out of here, they took my eyes. How can I possibly face Alphonse like this? I promised him, but even if by some miracle I make it out of here, I can't get his body back like this.'
"You know we won't think any less of you."
Ed didn't respond. He wasn't sure how to. He knew he was only arguing with himself, and Mustang was just some ethereal representation of the part of him that wasn't quite ready to give up, but somewhere in his mind, Ed felt that Mustang's view was wrong.
He was so tired . . . scared and tired and losing hope.
"We'll find you, Ed. Just sit tight."
Footsteps thumped overhead and Ed's heart suddenly hammered in his ears. They couldn't be coming, not so soon . . .
'Mustang?'
No response.
"Mustang!" he rasped.
The door creaked open. Mustang was gone.
Ed squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for an end to this nightmare.
XxXxX
Roy felt ill. Physically, horribly ill.
He cradled the boy's sleeping body in his arms. The drug Silas had injected him with had put him to sleep almost immediately, and his terrible gibbering and sobbing had finally subsided. Despite being asleep, Roy could still see his eyes twitching underneath his lids. Was he seeing dreams or nightmares? Really, the answer was obvious by the pinched look on his face, but Roy hoped.
He wanted so badly to forget everything he had just heard. He wanted to go back and take Ed's place, to protect him, to save him. It was Roy's fault, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.
Roy felt their eyes watching, all of them glued on the bundle in Roy's arms. He hadn't been able to put Ed to bed. He wasn't sure why, but the thought of leaving him alone right now seemed like abandonment. It was stupid, but Roy couldn't bring himself to do anything about it. He just stroked the boy's hair and tried to keep it together.
"Do you think . . ." Havoc began, trailing off as he tried to come up with the words. "Do you think they intended for Ed to actually eat Bearden?"
The silence thickened.
"Maybe it was just a convenient way to destroy the body," Hawkeye suggested quietly, her voice strained. Roy recognized the desperation underneath her calm. "It's plausible. There was wildlife in that basement. Let the wolves destroy the corpse, then dump it. We wouldn't have been able to link the two without Ed's testimony. We wouldn't even have realized Bearden was murdered."
Roy hoped so with every fiber of his being, because surely no one was that cruel. But whether they meant it or not, they had implied it. Regardless of their intentions, that sort of psychological trauma would break a man in days. And a child? Well, even someone as strong as Ed wouldn't last long.
Was that what all of his eating problems had been about? Did they all stem back to this? Ed had inhaled food the first few days he was back, but it was as if the day his body wasn't in immediate danger of starvation, he couldn't find it in him to stomach any more than the bare minimum.
It made too much sense. Edward, the boy with the voracious appetite that loved food as much as anyone Roy had ever seen, now could barely tolerate the stuff.
Ed was right. Everything he had been was destroyed, and there wasn't much left. How was Roy supposed to put back a puzzle with missing pieces? How did you repair a broken vase when half the glass was gone?
"Roy," Hawkeye said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Roy looked up. He saw his lost expression reflected back at him in her sherry eyes, but her voice was hard, her expression firm. She'd gotten control of herself. "It's already in the past, and Ed's been dealing with it on his own for weeks now. Just because you know now doesn't give you an excuse to fall apart."
He inhaled a tight breath through his nose then slowly released it. She was right. She always was. He couldn't fall apart, not now.
"What do you think will happen, James?" Roy asked, trying to put something besides emptiness into his voice. "When he wakes up."
Silas looked up, his sharp blue eyes burning like he'd been thinking hard about something. Slowly they softened as he processed Roy's question. "It's hard to say . . . this isn't my field of expertise. Maybe he'll wake up the same as any other day. Maybe he'll have forgotten everything, which might be a blessing. Maybe he'll wake up and won't snap out of it. The mind is a fragile, complicated thing. There's no way to tell at this point."
Roy nodded, eyes moving to Ed's pallid face. How did he manage to look even smaller when he was asleep?
"Maybe you shouldn't be so close to him," Hawkeye suggested softly.
"I can't . . ." Roy began, unsure how to express his need to hold the child, to protect him the only way he possibly could at this point. Some deep, paternal instinct demanded that he not let him go, not when he was so vulnerable.
"You're sick, sir. His system is delicate right now."
"A cold could kill him in the state he's in," Silas said solemnly.
Roy hoped his face didn't twist in pain like his heart did. They were right.
With unreasonable reluctance, Roy stood up and turned, setting the fragile bundle down on the sofa. The boy subconsciously curled his body at the loss of warmth, his face becoming distressed. Something wrenched in Roy's gut. He brushed the boy's sweat-soaked bangs from his face.
"When was the last time he showered?" Silas asked.
"It's been a few days," Roy responded. Just one of the many things that was simply too hard on Ed to make him endure on a regular basis. Roy wasn't sure how Alphonse had managed it.
"I'll go take care of it," Silas offered. "Jean, would you mind giving me a hand?"
It took Havoc a moment to respond. "Sure thing, Doc," he said, coming over to lift the boy off the sofa. He slid an arm underneath Ed's head and knees and lifted him like he weighed nothing. He didn't weigh much more than that, Roy supposed.
"Wait," Roy said, putting a hand on Havoc's forearm. The word had escaped his lips before he knew what he was saying. Ed wouldn't want Havoc there. He would be angry and embarrassed if he ever found out one of his colleagues had helped him bathe.
Hawkeye put her hand on his shoulder in a restraining motion, squeezing it gently.
Roy let out a long sigh and released Havoc. The man looked back at him, blue eyes uncertain. Then he turned and followed Silas up the stairs.
"He's necessary to keep Ed from drowning," Hawkeye said. "I'm sure Ed will understand."
Roy ran his hand through his own sweaty hair. "What am I going to do? I can't take care of him like this!" Without Ed as a distraction, he suddenly became keenly aware of a chill sweeping his frame as his body gradually fell victim to whatever illness had invaded it. If he couldn't be around Ed, how could he possibly take care of him?
"Someone will spend the night here," she said, her voice calm, the opposite of the frustration in his. "Havoc can help you take care of him until you're better."
Roy massaged his eyes, dropping his body heavily to the sofa. "Ed's terrified when he wakes up. Havoc won't know what to do."
"He'll manage," she said, sitting next to him. "He's not incompetent."
"I know that, it's just . . . his alchemy teacher is in town. She'll be dropping by tomorrow, and I'm the one that'll need to look competent. She doesn't seem like the understanding type." A tired smile pulled at his face as he remembered the fierce teacher. "I think I may have finally met a woman scarier than you."
"Even when I'm pointing my gun at you?"
"Even then."
"I should meet her. Maybe she has advice on making lazy colonels do their paperwork."
He suppressed a shiver that didn't have anything to do with fever. "Forget becoming Fuhrer. It has become my new goal in life to keep that from ever happening."
Hawkeye smiled, then sobered. "She can't blame you for being sick. Did Ed take her visit well?"
"Surprisingly so," Roy confirmed, squelching that annoying jealous feeling at the memory.
"Then maybe it's a good thing," she said. "Maybe she could help you out while she's here."
"She's only staying another day, I think. And it's not like Ed could go stay with her. He's not well enough for travel." Roy wondered absently if the kid would ever be able to trust people enough to leave his house ever again.
"We'll think of something," she promised. "You need to focus on getting better right now."
That wasn't at all what he needed to focus on right now, but telling her that would get him nowhere.
"Go get cleaned up and get some sleep, sir," she said. "We'll take care of things here tonight."
He looked up at her through a veil of fingers. "And just what are you planning? Are we having a slumber party at my house?"
"For all intents and purposes," she responded, getting to her feet and heading to his kitchen. "Go."
He grumbled about bossy subordinates for her benefit as he picked his aching body up off the sofa. He still wasn't sure what Hawkeye's intentions were, but honestly, he was too tired to care. He climbed the stairs with heavy feet, feeling weary and numb. His mind wondered back to the debriefing, to Ed's disturbing recounting of some of the horrors he had experienced.
As he passed the closed bathroom door, he paused. He could hear the quiet sloshing of water and Silas' tenor voice murmuring something, but no sounds of alarm, no indication that Ed was awake for any of it.
Something gnawing at the back of his mind had him knocking before he could think twice about it.
Havoc opened the door a crack, a wall of humid air hitting Roy in the face. Seeing that it was Roy and not Hawkeye, Havoc opened it a little wider. "Sir?"
Roy wasn't sure what to say. "He wakes up a lot. Nightmares. He needs someone he knows to calm him down. Just . . . get me if he wakes up, okay?"
Havoc gave him a small smile. "I promise if he wakes up before morning and we can't get him calmed down that I will come and get you. Go get some sleep, Chief. You look terrible."
Roy gave him a flat look. More bossy subordinates. Roy didn't argue, though. He nodded and turned away, headed down the rest of the hallway and to his room. He cracked the door so he could hear what was going on outside, and barely managed to kick his shoes off before he collapsed face-down into his comforter.
He waited there a long, tired moment before summoning the energy to worm his way under the covers, burrowing in them up to his nose. It was freezing in his house, or maybe it was just the fever finally starting to wear him down. How long had it been since he'd slept in his own bed? How long had it been since he'd lain comfortably and not in some odd, propped up position with Ed's automail digging into his side? Admittedly, it felt good to lie down, to be comfortable and warm and not worried about being awakened by someone else's nightmares instead of his own.
But that was a selfish thought. He'd done this to Ed. A little pain and discomfort was the very least Roy deserved.
With his guilt and self-loathing for company, it didn't take long for him to drift off into a restless, fevered sleep.
I don't know about this chapter, but . . . *shrugs* I'm tired of tweaking it, and I was afraid I might have been tweaking it to death, so I figured I'd just post it before I shredded it to pieces lol. It's not quite as "bookend-ed" as I like my chapters to be, if that makes sense, but I think it's alright.
Lol Havoc has a way with words xD
I'm going on another vacation, since it'll be my last weekend of summer :D Colorado mountains, here I come! It'll be nice to see trees. We don't have trees here. We have dirt. And rocks. And weeds.
Oh, a cat adopted us (more accurately, my parents) a couple of days ago. I named him Calvin xD He looks like a Calvin. I can't explain.
My laptop now has a super-cool sticker c: It's BATMAN *insert cheesy tv-show theme music here* And I changed my icon, since the last one was about two years old and this one looks so much fresher xD Like oranges.
I think my brain stopped working at some point during this author's note. That last paragraph is proof.
Aaaaanyways, I don't think I have any other irrelevant updates for you xD Hope you enjoyed! Please review if you have the time, and I'll see you next chappy! C:
God Bless,
-RainFlame
