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Gunslinger Alchemist: A Crossover Fanfiction

"The boy has a mechanical body, but he is still an adolescent child…"

Chapter 4: A Broken Heart in my Hands, The Truth Revealed

6. Lied Too Much

Edward Elric stumbled his way over to the bathroom sink, harshly slamming the door behind him and carefully watching his step not to fall on the hard tiled floor. The porcelain on the edging felt frigid in between his firmly clenched hands, his knuckles a discolored white. More precisely in his left hand. He could never feel anything in his right arm or his left leg for that matter. They were artificial to the world.

The alchemist caught his breath, steadying himself against the sink and wiping sweat from his brow. He sharply rotated the faucet allowing the cool water to pour out and rush over his swollen fingers. Cupping the water in his hands, he splashed his face, washing away his doubt. He wasn't tied completely to the State. He wasn't their machine.

Above the sink was a standard issued vertically placed mirror, faded around the frame with age but still clear enough to see. Out of sheer curiosity, Edward took a look. The teenager in the reflection stared back. He possessed ashy pale skin which could only be obtained by lack of sunlight and being constantly indoors. His exterior was incredibly thin and unhealthy, prompting he hadn't been eating properly in months. Unkempt blonde hair had been hastily pulled back in a messy high ponytail, long bangs still enclosing his face.

The expression he displayed was hard to place, a mixture of awe and disapproval. Disapproval of himself and of his situation, of everything and of nothing. Of the blue symbol of war that he purposed adorned each day, the uniform that signified himself as part of the State Military, rank State Alchemist, Major.

And then there came an expression much more legible: absolute terror. Fumbling to reach for the spare pipe in the corner, Edward tightly grasped the end of the handle swinging it down in front of him which intensely collided with the mirror. A sharp crack was heard and Edward lost his balance, collapsing to the sleek floor tiles and letting the pipe escape his grip with a clatter. The piercing shattered glass shards, dust, and other discarded debris rained upon his disheveled form, feeling free to penetrate his yielding flesh. He began coughing violently, spewing blood in his hand.

Getting to his knees, Edward quickly twisted his gaze back to the damaged mirror. The broken, splintered glass produced a chilling image, one of a deformed young man. Blood trickling down the side of his face, the missing bits of the glass gave off the appearance of disfiguration. It was a wretched face, scarred and useless. The face that was ugly, the face of a monster.

Edward recoiled in outrage, a suitable reaction, as did his reflection. He clawed through his hair causing his scalp to prickle from the glass cutting into his skin. The State Alchemist slowly felt the blood begin to well beneath his fingers. He welcomed every ounce of the pain. Anything to keep from feeling the disgust at himself. Turning his head, he finally let go and emptied his stomach on the bathroom floor.

…

Doctor Tim Marcoh noisily tapped his pen against the log book on his office desk. As the head doctor of surgical operations and the conditioning process at the Social Welfare Society, there was a never ending chain of paperwork and overtime shifts. He was forever on-call, hardly spending time at home since he was recruited for the job. Not that he had anyone to return home to anyway. Like his friend and fellow colleague, Dr. Knox, his wife had cut off ties with him right after Ishbal.

At the moment the doctor was invoking his duties as a counselor to his "little experiment", observing the physical development and medical diagnosis in the form of counsel rehabilitation sessions. The boy sat before him now, his left bandaged hand in his lap and his cheek resting on his right hand. Edward's look, plastered on his face, was of a sarcastic scowling brat, but his misted-over golden eyes told a different story. The story of his past suffering. He hid it from everyone, no matter how obvious.

Everything seemed to be going downhill these days. Edward's attitude had drastically changed over the last few months. The kid had been having night terrors almost every other night and fevers constantly. His characteristics matched the requirements for the terrors, of course: impaired memory, passivity, self-directed anger, the ability to ignore pain, irritability, social and interpersonal difficulties, et cetera; though the doctor silently wondered if the "conditioning" was at its break-way point. Fever was part of the body's immune response to infection, after all.

To top it off, Edward had gone off and smashed several of the Society's windows with a long rusted pipe. It had happened in the middle of the night when he should have been sleeping. Nothing out of the ordinary had gone on before, so the guards were less cautious then usual and left him alone in the room. The kid had obviously sneaked out, bludgeoning the locked door open, and the shattered glass around him was proof enough.

Colonel Mustang had been the first one awakened by a "crashing sound". He had found Edward almost in a trancelike state, eyes with an empty appearance and the pipe raised over his head, only becoming somewhat aware of his surroundings until Mustang called his name, jogging his shoulder. Apparently the kid had a short period of amnesia, unable to recall what he was last doing or even his own name, a common side-effect.

Marcoh was impressed by the Colonel's actions. Though usually secured in his room, Edward was potentially dangerous just sleepwalking in that state of consciousness. Then again, he was always potentially dangerous. Mustang had been lucky, getting away with only a minor abrasion on his arm from a slight blow from the pipe. Even if he was the kid's handler, approaching Fullmetal in that state could easily mean death. The conditioning was getting too powerful to control.

Edward yawned suddenly, covering his mouth with his free hand. "Is this going to take too long? Why do these sessions have to be so early in the morning?"

"Rude as ever, are you kid?" Marcoh thought, flipping to a new page in the log book and writing down his observations. "It's the afternoon, Edward," he sighed aloud.

The alchemist grumbled. "I wouldn't sleep so late if you guys would stop those damn auto-mail maintenance tests. So considerate of you to do it so late," he shot back, glaring.

"No mental recollection of the past nights and substituted memories? That's a relief." The doctor quickly wrote down a few notes. "To answer your first question, no, it won't take too long. Have you been having any upset stomachs or nausea lately? Any unnecessary joint pains or blackouts?"

"No," Edward said, irritated. "Why the hell do you do this, anyway?"

"The higher-ups have been thinking about taking you off duty for a while," Marcoh answered plainly. He could have sworn he saw the boy squirm a bit in the corner of his eye.

Edward widened his eyes and sat up straight in his chair, hands clenched on his shaking knees. "Off duty?! But-But I'm alright, really!!"

The doctor forcibly threw an open thick manila folder across the desk, spreading out photos and the paperwork of the shattered windows and miscellaneous structural damage from other night. "Clearly you're not."

"Y-You can't do that, right?!" The young teen gulped back his settling fear.

"It's not my decision to place," Marcoh shook his head. "Think of this as an evaluation."

Edward sat stunned in silence, noticeably defeated, unable to come up with anything to say as the old doctor continued to write. "I'm not lying, I swear," he whispered under his breath. "Please let me still be useful…"

The scene playing before Roy Mustang wasn't one he particularly enjoyed. He watched his student surrounded by white walls through the one-way glass of the session room, the Colonel's arms crossed in a stern expressionless manner. There were dark blemishes around his eyes, results from fatigue and lack of sleep. His right wrist was badly fractured, wrapped tightly in a gauze bandage. "Why the hell does he look so much like her?"

Maes Hughes nudged his friend's shoulder from behind him with a coffee cup. "Rough night?" he questioned, sipping the brewed drink, already knowing the answer.

Mustang grunted softly in response, "Uh huh."

The Lt. Colonel glanced down at Mustang's wrist. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." The Colonel examined his arm, pulling back his sleeve. "The bruising wasn't as bad as I thought. Bones heal quick; I should more or less be back to normal in a matter of weeks."

"It wasn't your fault, Roy."

"That's what I'd want to think-"

"You training him has nothing to do with it. It's neither your fault, nor his." Hughes's eyes hidden behind his glasses gave Mustang an almost embittered look as if the subject was a difficult burden to carry, though he continued on with an unwavering tone. "The conditioning is a highly powerful substance. It's like it has a mind its own. Once it enters the human bloodstream it never completely leaves." He blinked, facing the cup. "Never."

As the Lt. Colonel took another long sip, Mustang stared confused at Hughes's words. "Wait a minute, how do you know that much about the conditioning? Only the doctors and head higher-ups even have an idea of its existence," the Colonel said cautiously. "Were you, in the past-?"

Hughes smiled in reply. It was a pained smile, one that seemed to say he understood Mustang's anguish.

The Colonel thought back to last night's escapades, the crash, the discovery of the broken windows, the glass flying in all directions…

Hughes struggled with his next sentence, "You think the conditioning is…" He paused, but quickly resumed. "…taking over again?"

Mustang turned his head, eyes widening.

"The last time he was like this, it was his first major dosage."

The Colonel's eyes closed and in his mind replayed the incidence of the lost innocence, of the blood and carnage, of the laughs and the tears, of the beginning of the end…

I finally got a subchapter out ahead of schedule!! Yay, me!! Geez, lots of angst in this one…That's what makes it so hard to categorize this fic. XD I stand by it, though: it's a Drama/Tragedy. Poor Ed's got such a painful past. BIG spoiler for Hughes in this one (if you get it that is). XD The title to this subchapter comes from a line from one of my favorite Three Days Grace songs, "On My Own" which I listened to constantly while writing the bathroom scene. If you're wondering, yes, the Society has been generous enough to provide Ed with his own bathroom. It's not too far from his room and Ed has his own key for privacy. That scene is actually based on a part in the Serial Experiment Lain PS2 game (which I don't own but saw on Youtube) in which Lain stands in front of a bathroom mirror and smashes it with a mop, then cuts her neck with the glass.

Nowadays my story has started to copy a LOT from others. The meeting with Winry where she hugs Ed and says she doesn't care about what he looks like was taken from a flashback of Lucy and her friend from the OVA of Elfen Lied. The shooting of Winry at the hotel was taken from the incident with Rico and Emilio in Gunslinger Girl, episode 3 (which I watched at least twice to get it accurate). The flashback dialogue before Ed wakes up from going unconscious in Chapter 3 about the "birthday present" was based on the opening scene of Fullmetal Alchemist episode 3. If nobody got the order of the kids' lines, it was Winry, Al, Winry, Ed, Al. The first shooting practice with Ed and Mustang is based on Angelica's and Marco's in the Gunslinger Girl manga. The scene where Ed wakes up and first sees Mustang is based on the scene in the Gunslinger Girl anime when Henrietta wakes up. The "holding my hand" part in the last subchapter was actually along the same lines as Syaoran's flashback of when Sakura is sick from the second volume of the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles (one of my favorite scenes, too!!). And of course, Elicia's birthday party was based on the one Winry was invited to in the Fullmetal Alchemist anime and manga. And the list goes on…I'm starting to feel I'm not original at all. XD Well, the revealing of the actual plot will be pretty good, so please stay tuned!! Get ready for some real explanations in flashback next time!! XD

Harry Potter 5 is AWESOME!!! Best one, in my opinion!!! XD Oh, my Daniel Radcliffe… (high pitched fangirl squeal) I LOVE YOU!!! Aggggh, I can't wait for the last HP book!!