After a less than enjoyable breakfast during which both Roy and Edward had to force themselves to do more than vaguely pick at the food in front of them, Roy let Ed out into the small backyard and retired to the front room to peruse his notes again. Even if he didn't do any actual transmutations with Ed today, Roy wanted to re-evaluate all of the information that he'd collected now that he was more rested. Perhaps he'd even redraw the circle down in the basement later if he felt up to it.

This time, everything would be perfect... he would make damn sure of that. No mistakes this time. The allotted margin for error was a very thin line, and that line had almost been irrevocably crossed because of Roy's carelessness yesterday.

Roy picked up his messy stack of notes along with Ed's file from the lab and started sorting everything out lazily, taking his time. He had made some great headway and could afford to be more leisurely with his research now that he more-or-less knew what he was doing. Besides, Maes would absolutely slaughter him if he started rushing around so recklessly again. In the wake of chaos and error, it is always much more appealing to tread carefully... and there had certainly been bountiful error as of late.

The notes did seem logical though, even to his more rested, more critical eye. He saw no mistakes in his theorems other than the grossly enlarged transmutation circle. God, what had he been thinking?

But then he sighed. No, he knew what he'd been thinking yesterday... he'd been thinking that a bigger circle would yield bigger results, ergo: a swifter change in Edward's body, ergo: a swifter recovery for Edward in whole. He had just wanted to get this over with. He had wanted to save Ed from his nightmare and do it as quickly as possible. Roy had been thinking with his heart rather than his head. Exhaustion had intensified his emotions regarding Ed's plight and emotion had clouded his judgment. His pathos had overrun his logos, a sly combination that meant instant failure for Roy. He needed to stay completely logical and push his personal feelings aside if he was going to make this work.

Maybe Roy should insist that Ed sleep somewhere other than the bed... If Roy was to approach this emotionlessly, then he needed to separate himself from the boy a little. He was getting too attached to him; his brief, tearful moment of weakness after talking to Alphonse this morning could attest to that. And then what if it turned out that Ed really couldn't be fixed? It was still a very real—though certainly not very probable—possibility that the chimera might still need to be euthanized and if that was the case then would Roy be able to perform the act if he continued to allow his emotions to rule him? Of course not.

Roy squared his jaw and looked up toward the door to the backyard. Edward was lying on the small porch just outside the door, his long body stretched out under the warm rays of the morning sun. Lying on his side as he was, the sun highlighted his tawny fur and further exaggerated the shadowy, boney dips between his ribs and vertebrae that starvation had gifted him with. Roy softened a little at the sight and turned back to his notes, chest tight.

...But there was no way that Roy was going to be able to ignore his emotions completely... Well, he probably could—at least for a while—but Edward needed emotional contact right now and to rob him of that comfort would be too cruel.

Roy scowled and rubbed at his throbbing temple. Damn it, Maes was a better person to be taking care of this lovey-dovey shit. It wasn't in Roy's nature to be affectionate and Ed was begging for affection almost constantly. Roy gave it to him when he knew how, but it still made him uncomfortable on multiple levels. Giving affection was a little awkward for Roy, but knowing that he was giving it to the Fullmetal Alchemist of all people was disturbing—especially this dumbed-down, mutated version of the Fullmetal Alchemist.

Not that Roy didn't care for Edward, because he most certainly did. He loved Ed and Al both more that he would ever be willing to admit aloud. But still, the affection that Roy felt obligated to exchange with this creature was just... sick. Not being affectionate with Edward, however, seemed even more twisted. He needed the affection... he wanted it so badly...

Roy rubbed at his temple again and shut his eyes tightly against his fading headache. Maybe he just shouldn't think about it now. He had other matters to attend to anyway.

Satisfied with his notes, Roy set them aside and opened Ed's lab file. He'd gone over the technical details of the actual transmutation that had been preformed on Ed so many times that he could recite the process verbatim, but he hadn't really done more than glance at the rest of the file. It hadn't been important to his high-strung, action-driven mindset yesterday to read about the rest of the experiment, so he had only vaguely glossed over it for any pertinent information before moving on. Now, though, he was a little more at ease and knew that he should probably glean as much information about Edward's situation as he could while he had some down-time. The military would most likely want some information on Fullmetal's imprisonment when the colonel finally sent in his report and not just the details of his transformation.

Most of the file seemed pretty generic: just information on Edward's physical wellbeing, blood-test results, behavioral studies, et cetera. It was all very thorough. It looked as if they had done every single physical test that they could think of... they had even done a semen-count on him, which Roy found both strange and unsettling. What possible purpose could documenting Ed's fertility serve? As he continued to read though, his unspoken question began to answer itself and his stomach turned violently, threatening to disgorge the soup that he'd just forced himself to eat.

No...

Convinced that he'd misread something, he backtracked and read the page over again because surely... surely this couldn't mean what he thought that it meant. He must have interpreted something wrong... there was no way that this could be true.

And so he read the passage again... and again... and again, his disbelieving eyes devouring the words before him. Each time he read it though, his shocked mind came up with the same scenario until he finally made himself believe the horrors written on the page.

Oh... God...

The phone chose that moment to ring but it took Roy a few beats to register the sound. He just stared at the phone numbly, mind reeling, then reached out and answered it.

"Mustang," he said dully.

"Hey Roy, it's me," Maes said on the other end, "I was just calling to let you know that I probably won't be over today. I begged the morning off of work so I'm taking the girls to the park, but I still have to go in to the office this evening."

"...Yeah. That's fine. Whatever," Roy said distantly, not really listening. His thoughts were elsewhere entirely.

There was a pause at the other end of the phone-line, but then: "...You sound distracted. Is everything okay? Is Ed okay?"

"What?" Roy blinked, "Oh. No. No, he's fine. I'm fine. I'm just... distracted."

"That's what I just said, Roy," Maes countered warily, starting to sound a little concerned. "What's wrong?"

Roy hesitated then cleared his throat. "How much of Ed's lab file did you read?"

"Not a lot. Most of it didn't make any sense to me. Why?"

"It's just..." Roy trailed off, reluctant to say it aloud, as if keeping this information to himself would make this grim detail about Ed's imprisonment any less true. Today seemed to be a popular day for hard telephone conversations. "...They were breeding him, Maes..." he finished finally.

"...What?"

"They were BREEDING him. With the female chimera that was in the cage with him. With Twenty-Seven. That's what the experiment was. They wanted to see if chimeras would procreate."

The static silence that flooded out of the telephone receiver was deafening.

"And... and did they?" Maes asked in a horrified whisper after several unbearable beats.

"There were three pregnancies."

Silence.

"So... are you telling me that Ed has... has PUPS somewhere out there?" Maes demanded, sounding ill. "Ed has CHILDREN...?"

"Dead children," Roy corrected him, consulting the file again dazedly. "The first two pregnancies miscarried. The third resulted in an unexpected premature birth and the file says that all of the pups died before any of the scientists even knew that they'd been born... They were all badly deformed and... mutilated."

"Mutilated...? Did Ed and Twenty-Seven kill them...?"

"It..." Roy stopped and cleared his throat, "It doesn't say it explicitly, but..."

"My God..."

"The anarchists must have fled just after that, because there's nothing else in the file... The last entry in the log talks about acquiring a new female for the experiment because Number Twenty-Seven got sick after the last birth..."

"She went away..." said a low voice from behind Roy suddenly, the warped tones running an icy chill down his spine.

Roy spun to face Edward, his heart shuddering in his ribcage. Edward was crouched near the other end of the sofa, tail tucked as he looked up at Roy. His eyes were wide and haunted, startled as if he'd just been reminded of something that he'd forgotten, reminded of something that he would have given anything not to remember. Roy held his breath and watched him, not knowing what to say.

"Bad people went away... Twenty-Seven went away..." Ed continued after a moment, brow furrowed and gaze distant, "Everything went away..."

He made a frail, sad little sound and slunk out of the room again, exiting into the open air of the backyard. Roy watched him go, frozen, unable to do anything other than stare at his retreating form in sick pity.

"Roy? You still there?"

"...Yeah. I'm here," he rasped into the phone when he'd regained his ability to speak. "Look, I have to go... I should talk to him."

"Do you want me to come over? Because if you need me to, I can—"

"No. Spend time with your family. I'll talk to you later."

Roy hung up and looked toward the back door, his hand over his mouth. He hesitated, thinking deeply, weighing his options. Then, cautiously, he got to his feet and went out into the yard, following Ed's departure.

The yard wasn't very big. Hardly a yard at all. It was roughly a twenty-five-foot by fifteen-foot patch of lawn with a few rose bushes and other plants lining the brick parameter. There was also a huge oak tree close to the house. The thing was probably ancient; it had been there way before Roy had moved in and would probably remain there long after Roy moved out again. The tree was gnarled and stately, partially hollowed out in places, which made it a prime nesting spot for squirrels. In fact, one of the small, grey-brown creatures was currently scurrying down the trunk curiously, its bright black eyes focused on Edward's huddled shape.

Edward was sitting in the shadow of the great tree, crouched among the roots. He was mumbling to himself quietly, his shaggy head swaying from side-to-side so that the ragged strands of his blond hair caught in the sunlight like spun gold.

"Ed?" Roy asked tentatively, coming to a halt a few feet away from him. Edward's stooped back stiffened in response.

"She... gone. Went away," the creature whispered, not even bothering to look up, "Away, away. All away."

"I know she's gone... And I'm sorry."

Edward drew in to himself a little further, limbs trembling, and didn't reply.

Roy had been prepared to deal with Ed's physical pain and he had gotten more than a passing glimpse at some of the psychological frailties that Ed had gained over his months of torture... but this was something else entirely. Now, the pain was not completely his own. Now, he was grieving for a creature that had shared the same plight as him and had died because of it. He was mourning with a human heart, but his dog brain was struggling to make sense of this new kind of hurting.

Roy hadn't really thought much about the other chimera after her body had been taken back to HQ for identification and cremation. She had just been one of the many bodies found in that hellish place, some poor, faceless woman that had been contorted beyond recognition. To Ed, though, she had been so much more than that. She had been his fellow prisoner, a half-human beast that reflected his own suffering back to him. She had probably been his only friend in all that time... his anchor, his confidante in that dark pit, his only means of comfort... but then it had gone even deeper than that. They had been intimate with one another... She had been the mother of his children...

Bile rose in the back of Roy's throat and he had to swallow it back quickly. Disgust, rage, and profound sorrow inundated him, tearing at his insides, breaking him down slowly. What was Roy supposed to say to him? How could anything he said take away Ed's pain, pain that Roy couldn't even fully comprehend?

"Did you love her?" The question came to Roy's lips abruptly, unheeded, and he immediately felt like kicking himself for asking it. Such personal inquires had no place here; they were pointless and would probably just upset the boy further, but Roy hadn't been able to keep himself from asking it.

Edward slowly looked over at his superior, quietly analyzing the question before answering. He didn't really need to answer, though: his soulful, yellow eyes said everything that needed to be said.

"...Don't know..." he lied softly, looking away again.

Roy worked his jaw, understanding. Silence reigned between them, broken only by the chattering of the squirrels in the tree above. He wanted to ask the kid questions about the technical details of his transformation, thinking that if he could now remember these unhappy snippets of his imprisonment then perhaps he could recall something more helpful... but then he decided that now was not the time to ask him to remember anything more than he had to.

"Were... not right. Screamed. Kept crying," Edward began again after a moment, his voice low and misty as if he were speaking from the haze of a dream. "Not right, not right."

"What wasn't right?" Roy asked him warily, "What kept crying?"

"...Were very small."

Roy swallowed, a lead weight dropping into the pit of his stomach.

"Are you talking about... about your..." he trailed off. What should he call them? Offspring? Pups? Children? They hadn't been children, though... they had been malformed monstrosities, failed experiments, something so perverse that even Ed's animal brain had been repulsed by them.

"Were so wrong. Bad. Everything bad. Screamed and cried, screamed and cried..." Edward continued emotionlessly, rocking himself back and forth.

"...Did you kill them, Edward?" Roy pressed himself to ask finally, not really wanting to know. Ed's trembling intensified into a bone-deep, hopeless kind of quaking.

"Ed... I..." he forced out in a strained whimper, then hunched over and vomited onto the grass. His stomach purged itself violently and he moaned heart-wrenchingly between each heave, the low cry sounding like something halfway between a howl and a sob. He stopped vomiting after a moment but continued crying, the sound so twisted and hopeless that it was almost physically painful to hear.

Roy's vision blurred again at the sight and sound of this tortured boy and wanted nothing more at that moment than to hold him and make him feel safe. He resisted the urge only a moment, then gave in to his half-suppressed instincts and reached out to put a gentle hand on the boy's quivering shoulder. Ed, however, jerked away from his touch as if burned and cowered back against the rough bark of the tree.

"Go," he said in a very quiet voice, "Go away."

Roy drew his hand back a little, but didn't move. He probably shouldn't leave him alone... not with his mind in the dark place it was right now. Roy had seen firsthand what had happened the last time Ed had had such a soul-shattering revelation... the vivid stitches on Ed's brow spoke all too clearly of that, and the threat of another attempt was looming a little too close for comfort. And so Roy held his ground, kneeling close to the boy but not touching him.

"...Go," Ed told him again warningly.

"Just come inside with me," Roy tried to reason with him, "You can go back to bed if you want to..."

"Said GO AWAY."

"Come on, you must be tired. We're both tired."

"GO!"

"...No."

Edward stared at him for a long moment, and Roy returned his gaze uncertainly. Slowly, the light in Edward's eyes dimmed. The spark of newly regained human intelligence pulled back and retreated behind the dog's stupid animal mind, hiding in the haze of blissful, beastial ignorance where he would not have to feel these complex psychological pains. Roy's heart sank to witness the silent regression, and then sank even further as a low growl began to rumble deep in Edward's throat.

There was a flash of movement and then Roy was on his back, being pinned to the ground by Edward's surprisingly powerful front paws. The infuriated chimera leaned down over his prey, his bared teeth inches from Roy's face. Roy looked up at the creature in shock, seeing nothing of the boy he was trying to save in its wolfish eyes. It was ready to kill him. It wanted to kill him, yearned for it. It was a wild and savage thing that felt nothing but hunger and rage.

"Go," it said again very quietly, that single word burning into Roy like a brand.

"...Fine. I'll give you a few minutes alone, if that's what you really want," Roy said, trying to sound unconcerned when in fact his insides were twisting with a dismal mélange of dread and sadness.

"Want," the thing confirmed with another deep growl, moving off of him. Roy sat up cautiously and got to his feet, watching the chimera, but it was no longer paying attention to him. It had moved to the other side of the tree, head bent, eyes glassy, its gaze turned inward on itself.

Grudgingly, Roy stepped away from him and went back into the house. His hands were shaking, but he quelled it by shoving his fists into his pockets. It must be from the adrenaline rush he'd just gotten from being so abruptly attacked... That was probably it.

He stood in the middle of his living room for a moment, suddenly lost, unsure of what to do with himself. His thoughts were flooded with bleak images, playing back all the information that had just been presented to him, but his mind was too jittery to organize any of it into a logical form that he could handle, and so he just shoved it all out of the way where he wouldn't have to think about it at all.

He didn't want to think about Edward. He needed a distraction.

He was halfway down the stairs to his basement before he'd even realized that he was heading in that direction. He looked down at the massive transmutation circle on the floor and studied it for a moment, then moved over to his desk and grabbed a piece of chalk from the cluttered surface.

He needed to occupy himself. He needed to keep himself busy.

He knelt down onto the floor and sketched out a transmutation circle, scarcely even paying attention to what he was doing. His hands were still shaking. He activated it and the stone pillars sucked themselves back down into the floor, obliterating the big transmutation circle that they'd been surrounding and giving Roy a blank surface so that he could start from scratch and create another, smaller circle.

He grabbed his supplies and threw himself into the task doggedly, focusing every part of himself into creating the transmutation circle. He made every line perfectly, every spiral and symbol the exact shape and size that it needed to be. He didn't want to think about anything outside of the circle as he worked. He tried to think only of proportion and spatial relation, of line quality and symmetry...

Ed had hidden behind the dog's mind to escape from his pain. Well, this was Roy's hiding place.

Occasionally though, an unwanted thought would cross his mind—a little voice that echoed up from the deep chasms of his brain, begging him to go back upstairs and check on Edward. What if he tried to hurt himself again? the voice sang chillingly, What if he succeeded?

Roy ignored it. Maybe some part of him wanted Edward to kill himself. Maybe it would be better that way. He was dangerous now. A wild animal. Out of his mind and suffering. Maybe it should just end now, before anyone could entertain the false hope that he could ever be right again...

But then he shook off those melancholy thoughts, sickened by his own fatalism. No. They still had a good chance of getting him back. The transmutation had worked and it would continue to work until every aspect of the dog had been erased from him. He'd be fine. Roy would make him fine.

Half an hour later, a sudden sound on the staircase pulled Roy from both his concentration and his dark musings. He looked up briefly and saw Edward making his way hesitantly down the stairs, then turned his attentions back to the circle. He drew his paintbrush across the floor carefully, pretending not to notice the chimera even as he peripherally watched him creep closer.

Ed came to a halt a few feet away from Roy and sat back on his haunches, watching him wordlessly for several uncomfortable beats.

"...Colonel is mad?" he asked into the silence of the basement, his desolate voice echoing in the chamber.

Roy froze, startled by the question but relieved that Ed was clearly more in control of himself now. "No, I'm not mad, Edward," he told him honestly.

"Sorry... Ed is bad... sorry..."

Roy bit the inside of his lip and went back to painting the circle, unable to look at him. "You were just upset. Don't worry about it."

"Evil and bad," he insisted, voice trembling, "Kill babies."

Roy's stomach lurched again and he spun around to face him, horrified, "Oh, no... No, Ed. Just... no. Don't think like that. You did the right thing. Really. They probably would have died anyway... and... and..."

Roy was babbling. He knew that he was babbling, but he couldn't help it. Words had always come easily to Roy Mustang; he was the king of manipulation and could smooth talk his way out of anything... but why, then, did it seem as if he had lost all of his power of articulation since Ed's rescue? Why was it so hard to communicate now? Why wouldn't the right words come, especially now, when they were so desperately important?

"...I would have done the same thing, I think," Roy told him finally. The words felt lame and inadequate even as he said them, but they were true. Ed seemed to sense that and he closed his eyes tightly, head inclined.

"Thank you," he whispered.

"...Uh-huh," Roy responded awkwardly, turning back to the partially completed circle.

He started working again, trying to ignore both Edward and the tightness in his throat as the boy moved closer and settled himself at his side. Roy sighed and looked over at him, but Ed's eyes were on the circle, wide and wary.

"It won't be so bad next time," Roy assured him once again, glad for a chance to change the subject. "The circle is smaller now, see?"

"See," Ed agreed discontentedly. He looked only mildly soothed by that thought.

Roy smirked and reached over to tousle Ed's hair absently. Ed leaned into his touch in an apologetic way, a soft whine eeking from him. The colonel swallowed back a sudden stab of grief and lowered his eyes, not wanting to pull away from him, but still not entirely comfortable with the contact. Instead he stared down at Ed's front paws ineptly... and then was almost immediately distracted by something he hadn't noticed before.

Edward's left paw was distorted: something halfway between a hand and a paw. It had been changed a great deal by yesterday's transmutation, the digits beginning to resemble something like fingers... Ed's right paw, however, had not changed at all. It looked like a regular dog's paw. Roy wondered about that for a moment, then realized what was wrong and took a breath.

"You don't have a right hand..." he stated in bewilderment, straightening.

Edward looked at him blankly for a moment then cocked one ear in a way that seemed almost sardonic. "Know that," he said, sounding amused.

"No, you don't understand..." Roy went on, brow furrowed. To be honest though, Roy didn't fully understand it, either.

Edward Elric was a double amputee, yet the creature before him now had all four limbs... meaning that two of those limbs were entirely dog. As Roy worked Ed through the transmutations, the dog part of him was going to disappear... yet looking at him now, the two limbs that the human Edward was missing remained unchanged by the alchemy. The dog's limbs had effectively replaced Ed's arm and leg, but they were not responding to the kid's returning humanity and retained their animal shape.

"Something is wrong?" Ed asked guardedly, obviously not liking the way that Roy was looking at him.

Roy looked up at him. "I... I think we're going to have some left-over parts..." he said finally, unsettled.

Ed tilted his head to the side curiously, not understanding in the slightest.