Authors note: I redid this chapter because it sucked. Really bad. The text is still the same, but I edited out all of Ed's jumbled thoughts I'd stuck in. Stephen King can do it, I can't. It's much better this way, though still a little odd in places.

Ed woke up and immediately went into the bathroom to take a shower, for he woke with a tangled ball of despair deep in his belly, awoke with the thought, he knows, so he took a shower to let the hot water wash it away.

It didn't help. He leaned against the shower wall and coughed and swallowed and didn't let himself think about what he was swallowing, but it slid down his throat to rest with the ball in his stomach and after he got dressed he went to Roy's office.

He did not allow himself to think about what he was doing. It was as though his goal for the morning was not to allow a single thought in, for if one came in so many others would come crowding in that he would not be able to do anything, so he went to Roy's office and did not say anything to anyone that he saw on the way.

It was not the black pits that his eyes sat in that were twisting his guts into a knot that felt it would never be untied. It was something else, and even when Roy looked at him and asked what he wanted, he almost could not say it, and was glad for the spasm of coughing that covered the weak feeling in his knees and the burning in his eyes.

Roy repeated his question, standing up behind his desk, and Ed took in a breath to answer, sucked in a breath, and felt ashamed of how it was almost a sob.

"Mustang…I'm scared." Ed was almost doubled over, his arms crossed tightly over the knot, trying to press it into oblivion.

"I'm coughing so much and…and…"

Mustang said nothing, only waited, and Ed realized that the longer he stayed silent the harder it would be, so he said it, and saying it made everything too real and then he really did start to cry, standing there hunched over, feeling very alone.

"There's been blood on my pillow."

And in a moment Roy was there, shaking his shoulders, his voice full of rage.

"Shit, Fullmetal, you have to see the doctor about this!"

It was then that Ed realized his mistake. He should not have come; he should not have said anything. If he had just kept on pretending, everything would eventually become real. It wouldn't matter how much he had lied to Al, lied to everyone, because the lies would become truth. He would get better.

He pulled away from Roy, stumbling toward the door, desperate to return to a life that was worth living.

"No—I'm fine—I shouldn't have come, it's all right, I'm all right—"

"You're not!"

Ed stopped, shaken by the violence in Roy's voice. Outside the office, the hum of conversation died and did not start up again. Roy did not leave room for any more words, simply grabbed Ed's arm and hauled him away, shoving the door open with an elbow.

"Hawkeye! You're coming with me!"

She fell into place behind him, saying nothing, asking nothing, but had Ed looked up, he would have seen the questions in the eyes that followed their progress.

He did not look up. He simply trailed in Roy's wake, hauled along by an arm that he knew would be bruised later, and the knot was still there, but still, he felt relieved, felt almost glad to be helpless and felt disgusted at feeling glad, but he could not pull out of Roy's grip.

When he did look up, they were in a waiting room and Roy was commanding a nurse with a look to melt stone, and then he was whisked into a room and ordered to strip, and here was where he balked.

"I'll turn around," offered Riza, but it was Roy who knew what the problem was and Roy who said it.

"We already know how thin you are, idiot."

And after that there was no reason in hiding so he shed his cloak and boots and then his shirt and pants and felt a savage gladness when he heard Riza gasp. See! He thought with a perverse triumph. I am sick. It plummeted immediately into a numb apathy, for it was the first time he'd said it. I am sick.

The doctor looked at him, his face stony, and Ed looked around the room, but when he finally found himself looking at his hands resting on his knees and found himself filled with an absent wonder at their skeletal appearance he closed his eyes and submitted to the doctor's poking and prodding, hearing his questions and the answers provided by Roy and Riza.

His eyelids fluttered but did not open when a question was directed at him.

"You say you've found blood on your pillow."

He nodded.

"You've had constant coughing."

He nodded again, though it hadn't sounded like a question.

"Open your eyes." Said the doctor, and he did, looking straight into a frowning face.

"You have uveitis. It's common for it to be caused by a different, underlying disease." He reached and touched Ed's arm, the one made of flesh.

"I can see where muscles used to be. You were a strong boy, weren't you?"

Aren't you.

"Yes." Riza answered for him.

"People who are strong inside and out don't have to worry about some things. But people who have been weakened…"

"…weakened by malnutrition." Finished Riza. Finished, but it was only the beginning. Ed shut his eyes again.

"Have you been sweating a lot lately?"

It's hot on the border. You sleep with your clothes on, and you sweat through them. I've still slept in my clothes, it's made me hot in my sleep. The justifications swept through his head, but the truth was there, and though he tried to block the thought out it came anyway. I've been sleeping in my clothes to hide from Al how thin I am and it isn't very hot out, is it, it's been getting cold lately, the weather's turning, I think it's going to rain later. He reined in his babbling thoughts as a drop of sweat slid down the side of face and effectively answered the question.

"You're pale, you have bags under your eyes, and blood on your pillow. You suffered from malnutrition in a war-torn area of the country, and it weakened your immune system. You have a classic case."

Ed opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. "I'm from the country." He heard himself saying, for no real reason that he could think of.

"Then I'll use the country word for it. I'll have to send in tests, but they'll only confirm what I already know. You're consumptive, boy."

Ed hopped off the table and began to pull on his clothes.

"Consumptive? What does that mean?" he heard Riza asking.

"You'd be more familiar with the more formal name for it."

He ran out the door with no shirt on, but he could still hear the voice of the doctor following him, and Roy's footsteps trailing after him.

"Tuberculosis."