Disclaimer: Nopes.
A/N: As I'm stating this in the author notes of all my stories, I have recently sustained injuries to my right hand, making typing/writing very slow, arduous, and mildly painful. But I've been having cravings, and who's to deny me? Pain? No!
I Wouldn't Know
Chapter Three
Absent. Present.
Ed had always thought that with the amount of amputees around Amestris – though these existed mostly in the thriving city of Rush Valley – people wouldn't be so surprised at automail. Then again, it wasn't the automail that really got the reaction. People were more concerned with what was absent than they were with what was present.
He'd had a bad day, really, so he couldn't be blamed for snapping on the brat.
Hopefully he'd scared him well-enough that he wouldn't frolic around making an asshole of himself anymore.
Edward Elric was defined by certain things. His persona included his lack of limbs. The Fullmetal Alchemist was a fitting name, however heavy it be, in so many aspects that he wished he would have thanked Wrath. He obviously, at the very least, had good taste.
It was late in the afternoon, and Ed was walking briskly past the school that was on his route home that day. The apartment he and Alphonse were staying in for a little while was conveniently placed not close at all to the military headquarters...
(Alphonse, after regaining his lost senses, had apparently been horrified with the dorms they had been living in. Provided to them by the government. It seemed if he had to feel it he wanted to feel something way nicer than that.)
…The walk was not something that he'd looked forward to each day. He also was not eighteen quite yet and therefore was not legally of age to drive an automobile in Central – though he doubted anyone would try to stop him if he wanted to – and he would refuse to drive one anyway. Cars and guns, among other things, existed solely for being items of trivial matters that he found himself particularly uncomfortable with.
His day had been fucked over so far. He had hit a block in his current research about a week ago, right after making the start of a great breakthrough. It had already been in the stages of infancy, and wasn't growing up any faster at the rate he was going now. He couldn't even count the number of times he'd wanted to use alchemy, if not to help him along then at least to ruin something large and tasteless, maybe make HQ look a little more... unique, and found himself incapable of doing so...
(Lately, only thinking about Alphonse, and the other great things that had come from his sacrifice, could repeatedly fish him from the dark spiral that the loss of his alchemy constantly threatened to pull him into.)
…Roy had made so many offhand comment and flippant insults directed toward him that he was ready to strangle someone. He'd tripped in three times – once into a puddle that he was sure had been waiting for him to walk by every since the thunderstorm they had night before. He'd gotten zero hours of sleep the night before, and had successfully made that up with zero hours of sleep during the day. His head felt like someone had hit him with a sledgehammer, and he was fucking hungry.
When his deep, frown filled, brooding session was interrupted, he had just about no patience, and it quickly deteriorated from there.
"Hey, hey! Y-you're Edward Elric, right?"
Ed had froze on the spot, inches from the boy's groping hand that had been making its way toward his shoulder but now stopped just as suddenly. He turned slowly on the balls of his feet, putting the most hatred filled look he could manage to convey into his fiery golden hues and feeling the corners of his mouth pull down so adamantly on the muscles of his face that it literally hurt him to be so unpleasant. He was not deterred.
His silence and equally inaudible threat hung in the air between the two of them. The other being a boy of rather average height, standing an inch above the seventeen year old, with mousy brown hair and a simple, lightly freckled face. He observed Ed fearfully, though there was a look of tenacity in his eyes that made Edward heave a sigh of frustration.
"Yes?" he spit out vehemently, venom lacing each letter as he drug out the "s" in an angry hiss.
It was quiet for a long moment, in which Edward decided that he could do whatever the hell he wanted and made to turn around. But the boy apparently decided to rise from his stupor at that point, shaking his head to clear his thoughts and reaching out to actually grab Ed's shoulder this time. He started when he felt the hard steel beneath the older boy's sleeve, and his mouth turned up in a wry smile.
"So it's true then?"
Ed's narrowed his eyes warily, and turned on the boy with another deep set scowl, "What's true?"
"That you've got a metal arm, you must have a metal leg than too," he sounded overly too excited about the whole prospect, and Ed tried his hardest not to let it put a damper on his horrible mood.
"Fuck you, what of it?"
The boy look startled again, probably by the alchemists full frontal, blunt and rude reproach. Edward couldn't give less than a damn, however, and only steeled his expression all the more.
"That's so cool," he cooed, falling into step with the young man as he attempted to walk away, "What made you decide to get automail. Did it help you get into the military when you were younger, is that why?"
Ed froze again, his shoulders rising up in anger. His features twisted into something very akin to rage, now was not a good time to push his buttons, "My arm and leg got ripped off of my body, that's what made me decide to get automail."
"...I was thinking about asking my mom if I could..."
"If you even say another word about this, I'm going to punch you in your face." Ed whipped around so fast that his long braid smacked against the side of his face, and he put that on a long list of things that he'd like to cut off today. Along with all of this kid's fingers, "Do you have any idea how much it hurts to get automail?" he stalked forward, and the stunned boy – who had already recovered from his earlier bout of rage, but had never expected anything like this – took a few unsteady steps backwards until his back was pressed against the wall of his school's gate, "Well? When I lost my arm and leg, my entire life was ripped away from me. The pain was unimaginable for someone with their head as far up their ass as you have it. You need to take a few seconds to grow up, because if you don't and you act like a moron the rest of your life you're going to end up really fucked up in the end." They were nose to nose now, and the boy could feel the anger rolling off of Edward and burning straight into his skin, "There is no anesthesia for automail surgery, no way to numb the pain, every single one of your nerves must be fully aware and functioning. And every single one of them must be slowly and painfully adhered and attached to a piece of fucking metal that you'll have to carry around, bolted straight into your bones for your entire life. What's your name?"
"A... Ad-Adam, sir!" The boy stuttered out, scared to death and unable to get his thoughts or words straight.
Ed's eyes narrowed again, until only two burning slits of molten gold could be seen, searing holes in Adam's face, "Have you ever been electrocuted, Adam?"
"I-I-I..."
"Well Adam?"
"I-I stuck a fork in the o-outlet w-when I was l-little once."
"Did your mom take you to the hospital, Adam?"
"Y-yes,"
"Can you remember what it felt like Adam?" he didn't wait to see or hear the boy's reply, but it registered somewhere in the back of his mind that the boy offered an unsteady nod. It was clear he was terrified. Great, "Can you imagine something a hundred times worse, something inside of you, inside all your little nerve endings,"
Adam said nothing.
"Well, have you ever puked blood, Adam?"
"N-no sir,"
"Has your mind ever told you there was something there that wasn't, and punished you for it. Have you ever felt pain for hours and hours on end, for months, Adam?"
"No sir."
Ed paused for a moment, allowing a breath to pass between the both of them, and watched as Adam squirmed in terror as his horrified eyes stayed locked on his own, "Do you want to?"
"N-no-no s-sir."
"Good," and with that he pushed off of the wall, turning away without even offering a glance back in the quivering boy's direction, "don't be an asshole," he sneered with a wave over his shoulder, sounding all together more pleasant than he had all day, "maybe I'll see you again sometime, Adam."
Adam opened his mouth in shock, not finding any words to say to the alchemist as he made his steady retreat. Suddenly, though, limbs were feeling particularly heavy, and he felt very much sick to his stomach. Edward's quiet laugh followed from before him, and he turned around and headed back to his friends, wholly unprepared to tell them about what had just happened.
Ed felt a little more cheery upon getting home, and Alphonse greeted him at the door with a smile, asking about his day (and proceeding to inform him quickly about all the ways in which his day had been wonderful), there was the strong aroma of pie from the kitchen, and Edward laughed aloud. Al gave him a funny look.
"Yes," he cheered, "I'm fucking hungry."
A/N: Ed always has his sour moods. And pie must always make a comeback in Fullmetal Alchemist, I figure, and I see Al very much as someone who would enjoy cooking. Whereas Edward is someone who enjoys eating, and their personalities tend to compliment each other in this perfect, completely-different-but-super-alike way. Thus the pie maker and the pie eater are born.
I really didn't mean to go on about the pie at all, but I did. So it's done. Adam's a brat, don't you agree? If I was having a bad day I'd go off on Adam too! :)
Stay cool ;)
