Chapter 7:

Edward was half asleep, half awake. His eyes were unfocused and dilated, and he wasn't thinking of anything in particular, more like thinking of a million and one memories he had stored away in his heart all at once, whipping by faster and faster until they were just a blur of color and sound. He found himself floating towards consciousness, and that was quite accurate, because he hadn't made himself do anything since…

No.

He wouldn't think of that. Not now. Maybe he would later, but not now. He stopped his ascent into consciousness, just hovering on the brink of some undefined ledge he had been visiting quite a bit as of late. He was detached from his body, hanging by a thin gossamer thread that frayed more each minute he was alone.

'But you haven't been alone too much lately, have you?' His mind whispered with a calm curiosity that sounded eerily like…

Well. That wasn't the important thing to focus on. What was important was that the voice was absolutely correct. The Colonel was there with him, wasn't he? The Colonel had always been there with him, hadn't he? Watching out for him, taking care of him,

Protecting him.

This realization caused his eyes to widen, although it was more the truth of the insight that surprised him than anything else. Mustang really had been there all this time, hadn't he?

He had noticed a softer side to the stony bastard he hadn't seen before, hadn't been allowed to see. He had even seen him smile. Edward hadn't been sure it was possible. Edward found he had liked that smile; he hadn't missed Alphonse quite as much in those brief moments. The guilt that had struck him later had been horrible, ripping through him with an almost vicious assertiveness. Assuming guilt, even for things he wasn't responsible for, had become a commonplace habit in the years since the failed transmutation, and he had had no reason to change it. As long as he had Al, everything else could wait. All that mattered was Al and his happiness, even at the cost of his own. But now that he no longer had Alphonse, there was a hole in his life, his heart, his soul.

'But…you know what to do about that, don't you?' His mind softly spoke to him. 'What is the logical solution to the problem? When you have a space, a gap, in the equation, what do you do to it?'

"Fill it." Edward's voice was hoarse, scratchy from disuse. His answer was accurate, of course. It was logical, precise, everything his life had been before…

But fill it with what? What could be used to replace Alphonse? His immediate gut reaction was nothing, nothing could replace his brother, ever. But he knew in his head, and his hear, that he couldn't simply live like this, wasting away to nothing.

With a determined spark in his eye, he rose and stepped shakily out of his bed. His legs were weak, wobbly sticks that seemed barely able to hold him. His clothes, a large t-shirt and baggy pajama bottoms, hung loosely on his small frame. He walked slowly to the window, just in time to see the colonel's car pull up into the driveway. Edward half-smirked to think of the expression on the bastard's face when he saw the blonde alchemist up and about. The movement felt strange and foreign, but the true shock appeared when he turned and saw the oval-shaped mirror hanging on the wall that held his reflection. He hadn't seen himself in seven months. He was…

Dead.

His skin was pale and sallow, his cheeks sunken in and hollow, his hair hung limp and dull, and his eyes…God his eyes…

He supposed, as he raised a hand to touch his face gingerly, that he had experienced a kind of death these past months. An involuntary coma, of sorts. His thoughts immediately traced back to the source of all this pain, this numbness, and he felt his knees give out as sobs began to pour from his mouth, his very soul. He dropped to the floor and buried his face in his cold hands, his entire body trembling with every pent-up emotion that he hadn't felt in so long. Everything, anger, grief, sadness, confusion, nostalgia, came flowing from him in loud, hiccupping moans. Edward wailed all this to the heavens…

And that was just about the time Roy Mustang stepped into the room.

(A/N: Hi all! I'm SOOO Sorry that it's taken me so long to update, I've had so much to deal with lately, schoolwork, license, getting a job...MY FIANCEE'! Yes, I am now engaged, so please forgive me for being so scatterbrained and for this chapter being so short(like Ed, lol). I hope you all like this chap, and will want to see how it goes:)