Hey guys! I wrote this one on the plane ride to Alaska to spend with my little sister. Well, technically, cousin, but shut up. Hope you enjoy (and, if you do, please review!)
The boy was bleeding too much.
Roy looked down in desperate hopelessness at the short Elric in his arm as he and Hawkeye sped towards the nearest hospital, the clothes he had hurriedly pulled on barely an hour before now warm and sticky, seeming to taunt the colonel who was nearly delusional with stress, tiredness, and most of all, worry. Here was the boy's life, spilling into Roy's lap, and the man couldn't give it back to the young alchemist who was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.
Roy desperately brainstormed ways to stop the bleeding, and the answer came from Riza as she quietly glanced over at blood pooling in Roy's lap from the recent gunshot and several of Ed's knife wounds that had re-opened during the excitement. Her voice was pained, revealing the deep concern for the boy that her face refused to show.
"You're not going to like it."
Roy looked up at her in confusion as she clarified, her voice breaking at the end.
"You need to – you need to burn them shut," she croaked. "You need to cauterize them, or else he'll bleed out before we even get to the hospital. It's another three minutes and he's about to pass out from blood loss."
Rage and pain and worry and despair made its way onto Roy's face as he looked down at the boy, whose expression broke Roy's heart. It was so small, and so terrified, and so damn lost and while everything in the boy's eyes was pleading the colonel not to do it, not to add more pain, they both knew that if he didn't the chances of Ed making it out were close to nothing. Roy shut his eyes. He had come to save the boy, and was just going to end up giving him more pain. An angry tear leaked out of Mustang's eyes, and as he opened them, he looked at the boy he cradled.
"I'm so sorry, Edward", he croaked out in a whisper, and as Ed looked at him with horror overflowing in his eyes, Roy knew that this was harder than anything he had ever faced; he would rather face Ishvaal again than have to do this, and while he knew that was incredibly selfish, Roy felt such a burning sense that they boy belonged to him, and that he was his, and that he was supposed to protect him. And right now, causing Ed pain was the exact opposite of what protecting him would be… and yet, it fell into the category of protecting the boy's life, if not protecting his relationship with him.
He first turned to the gunshot wound in the back of Ed's shoulder, trying to carefully lie the boy over on his back. Ed didn't resist even though anyone could tell that he was terrified, because he knew that he was more terrified of leaving the world and the colonel and Al than of having a few more scars.
The bullet was still in the wound, but for lack of even a pair of tweezers, Roy knew that he had to cauterize the damn thing with the bullet still in it. He cringed at the thought of doctors slicing Ed's skin back open to retrieve the tiny piece of metal, and wondered if Ed would ever forgive him for what he was about to do.
It took Mustang three snaps to get a light flame on his fingertips since his hand was shaking so hard.
"I'm so, so sorry, Ed," Roy apologized again in a raspy voice as he tried his best to wipe the wound of the blood surrounding it, and then placed the flame on the small red, leaking dot in the boy's shoulder.
Roy didn't think that he could cauterize the other wounds after he finished with the bullet wound. The bleeding had stopped, but it had taken ten seconds straight for the wound to be closed; the first three seconds Edward had been able to control his screams of agony, but after the first third of the process the boy couldn't stop the blood-curdling screams that forced themselves up, gurgling past his throat, sounds of pure agony, tears of pain streaming down his face. Roy's face found itself two waterfalls as well, out of rage and pain and sadness and curses at whatever god there might be that would let such an innocent boy who had been through so much already to suffer so much pain.
"No, NO! NO, PLEASE, STOP!" The young alchemist begged as Roy rolled him over, steeling himself as best he could to do the same to the two re-opened knife wounds on the boy's leg and arm. "Please, Roy," Ed begged, and the colonel's mistake was to look the boy in the eyes as he said this. "Please, no more, don't do any more, I can't take it, I can't…" his pleas were broken by a sob, and Roy turned his head away in shame as he once more snapped his fingers and the screams began from his lap as he focused solely on his duty.
The pain seemed to be too much for Ed to bear, and the boy lost consciousness halfway through the last wound, both concerning and relieving Roy; concern because now his only reassurance that Edward was still alive was his staggered breathing. Relief because unconsciousness provided at least a small source of escape for the boy.
"Call Havoc," the colonel told his subordinate, and both heard how broken he was. "When we get to the hospital call him, and just tell him to pick up Alphonse, and to get to the hospital as fast as humanly possible. Then call the rest of the team… they should be here…"
Hawkeye nodded curtly, and her sleeve angrily brushed away the small traitor that escaped her brimming eyes.
They had wasted no time once they got to the hospital, swerving past several ambulances and running several red lights before screeching into the emergency parking, where nurses shuffled about in annoyance at the parking job that soon turned to horror and business when they saw the red-stained bundle lying unconscious in Roy's lap. A gurney was quickly presented and the young boy was carefully and quickly carted away. Mustang tried to follow, but found himself blocked by nurses muttering some nonsense about not being able to go in there.
"Look", Roy growled threateningly, and while the nurses seemed taken aback they stood their ground. "He's my subordinate. I am his commanding officer. He was hurt on my watch, making him my responsibility. Now, unless you both want to loose your jobs, I highly suggest that you get the fuck out of my way."
The nurses both looked at each other, and the one who was obviously the senior sighed and crossed her arms. "We need information first, then we'll see what we can do."
Roy gritted his teeth and felt blood rise to his face, but anything short of two well-done nurses would leave him in the same place he was right now, and he figured this was as much as he was going to get.
"How did this happen?" The nurse asked as she whipped a pen and pad of paper from her inside pocket.
"He was doing some research work for the military. Some criminals captured him as their hostage. We got him away, but they shot him in the process. His name is Edward," Roy said quickly, and as the nurse scribbled furiously, she looked up at him in sudden alarm and suspicion.
"He looks no older than thirteen."
"Fifteen, actually", Roy told them, "but he looks younger because he's so short." A half-hearted smirk rose to his lips.
"Isn't he a little young to be in the military?"
He was growing impatient. "I assume you've heard of the Fullmetal Alchemist?"
Both nurses' eyes grew wide in sudden comprehension. "But, he doesn't have any automa-"
"You'd have to be pretty crappy medical personel to not notice that he was missing two limbs. That's where the automail would be, if he hadn't had it stolen," Roy said in agitation. "Can I see him now?"
The nurses brushed off the previous insult and looked at him. "That depends."
Roy was about to start torching the place when they continued: "Are you his legal guardian?"
He didn't hesitate. "Yes, I am. Anything else?"
The nurses handed him a clipboard with a pen attached to it and gave him directions to the emergency room where Ed was being operated on, making sure to stress that if he didn't do the paperwork he wouldn't be allowed back, and the sole reason that they were even making an exception like this was because he worked for the military. Roy took off at a sprint and Hawkeye followed him when he heard them stopping her.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but you can't proceed."
Roy stopped short and glared at them. "Let her through."
He could tell the nurses were loosing their patience, but he didn't give two shits. "Sir, unless she's also one of his guardians-"
"Yeah, she's my wife", he said coldly, and silently thanked whatever power there might be that both nurses were looking at him instead of his supposed spouse, because for all her military training nothing could prevent the look of shock and surprise and something else that Roy couldn't quite place. She soon had her face under control, though, and the nurses started to argue something again when she stepped in, a dark aura around her as she surprised even Roy with her sudden maternal manner.
"I swear to you two that if you don't let me pass", she said in a low warning growl, "so help me I might have to use military intervention because nothing is keeping my husband and I from Edward - not even you."
The nurses seemed to have been able to handle Roy, but the sudden mama-bear I-will-kill-you-if-you-don't-let-me-see-my-child kind of look that Riza gave them seemed to both terrify them and evoke a sense of sympathy, and they silently let her pass and run alongside Roy to the E.R. without so much as a glance at either of their ring fingers - though any doubt in their mind about Roy and Riza's relationship seemed to vanish when he took her hand as they ran. He saw a slight blush and look of surprise on her face as he did so, but she caught on and didn't turn her head as he muttered, 'gotta be convincing'.
More than the nurses were convinced that there was something between the two, but neither gave it a second thought until later as they sprinted into the observation room with the clipboard of medical forms, taking a seat as Hawkeye called Havoc and the team and Roy filled out the paperwork without taking his eyes off the doctors prepping for surgery.
Prayers were sent up to some invisible force that the boy lived.
Hope you liked it! Please review! I guess it's going to be a longer story than I thought (haha, whoops). Have a great day, lovelies!~