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.S p e c t r o p h o b i a.
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The irrational fear of mirrors or of one's own relfection.
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Edward Elric was in Colonel Mustang's office, simply waiting for the dark-haired man to finish up whatever the hell he was doing - because he particularly didn't care. On some table farther off, there was Mustang's office workers, Havoc, Hawkeye, Falman, Breda, and Fuery in particular. He didn't mind them, because his mind was buzzing with other things far more important.
He sat on the leather couch with one leg on top of the other, arms encased in a startlingly bright red coat folded lazily against his chest. He was staring all around, not paying attention, golden eyes scanning the familiar room and lips molded into a frown. His long, blonde plait was thrown across his shoulder.
"Fullmetal? Are you listening to me?" From the corner of his mind, Edward nodded. He heard Mustang continue, but his mind was on the window, and how sunny it was outside.
Compared what this day really meant to him.
October 3rd, 1914.
Edward winced slightly as the date reminded itself in his mind. He stared at the transparent reflection of himself on the wall, and thought of how this was his Superior's office, how he was now giving in a report of a city he had saved - and destroyed - how he didn't belong here -
And all the images flashed through his mind, his golden eyes widening when one the wall, shown on the window...
It showed a dark, dark sky with pelting rain. There was a tree branch slamming against the window panel, and Edward envisioned Alphonse's face, pleading, begging, wide-eyed and bloody -
His throat constricted and he couldn't breathe.
"Fullmetal? Are...are you okay?"
He couldn't hear, he couldn't see anything but the images of the Unforgivable, like one of those new movie pictures. Then he saw the automail surgery, then the recovery, all the blood he vomited and his Teacher's stern face, and the Truth's cruel grin -
They were shaking him now, but he couldn't find himself to care.
"Chief? Chief! Damn, why is he lookin' at the window?"
Then he saw his little brother's face, how it looked devastated, then it changed. It morphed slowly, deliberately, into a metal armor head with a long single strand of hair, and soul-full eyes and an empty body, nothing but cold, unfeeling metal -
And he screamed.
He screamed so loud, that all the officers crowding him jumped back, including Hawkeye. Edward scrambled back, eyes wide and clouded, he folded his arms around his legs and held them close, mumbling.
"Get it away, get it away...I want it gone...please...please...stop it..."
Mustang was speechless. He had never seen Edward this way, and it was scary. He looked like such a small child, right there and then, scrambled up and shivering, mumbling insecurities when he had been cool and calm and collection just a moment before. It was...frightening. What had set him off, what had terrified the indestructible Fullmetal Alchemist off so badly?
Then Hawkeye reminded them of the date.
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I can never look at myself.
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Why?
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Because I fear a monster will look back at me.
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Edward could never look at himself on this day.
When he looked at himself in the mirror, he couldn't find himself to stare for more than a few seconds. Before the image was morphed into something disgusting and twisted, and before Alphonse would show up, shaken, then in a metal suit, with no expression on his face. Then it would keep changing, it kept shifting, to his failure. To darkness. To blood. To fire, to burning. To hell. To the Truth.
And it scared him.
When memories that weren't his flooded into his mind, and engulfed him, when it binded him with a white-hot pain and an iron grip, when it all flooded back and made him scream and thrash and yell for it all to just stop, stop, stop stop stopstopstopstop -
And it simply wouldn't, it would just grin and go on.
He could never look at himself, because he would see a deformed being with a handsome face and golden hair and golden eyes and the features of an angel, and a body of twenty-five percent metal and scarred and impaled and bleeding. Because then behind him, was Alphonse, in his metal armor, standing over him like a protector when he was the one that needed protecting from his big brother.
Because on this day, - October 3rd, 1914 - it was his worst nightmare, and this particular nightmare turned into reality and haunted him in every waking moment, following him like a shadow. Because it added another burden to his shoulders, because it made the watch in his pocket a whole pound heavier. Mirrors, puddles, anything that would show him his face and shame his and make a mockery out of him, and give him misery because all he could see was the sick grin on Truth's face, devastating him -
Because he didn't dare see himself on this day.
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