I...LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

anyway I want you all to know I cackled in glee at your remarks on the previous lime, especially for those of you that wished for a lemon. And all I have to say is that while you can make lemonade with lemons you can make margarita with limes. Stay thirsty my friends.

Chapter 15

Olan Harbring had come from a long line of hard men. Drachma does that to you. In the far north where food and resources were slim, his people had long ago begun the practices of plundering other countries for their goods. But the time his ancestors had invaded Amestris with swords and spears to take what they needed had long ago ended. Now they had to be smarter. Their prey had grown teeth and the only way to outsmart a wolf was to offer it a steak.

And that had been just what he had done; offered the current Fuhrer and several generals a large juicy steak in the form of endless wealth and an immortal life. Harbring walked slowly around the catwalk that hung over the laboratory. Another ex-state alchemist was being brought in from the prison below. His hands were held apart in stocks so he couldn't transmute, and even if he had tried he wouldn't have gotten far. Drachman guards stood at every exit, and the prisoners were starved before their experiments to keep them weak and pliable.

The man was shoved into the array on the floor.

"Activate it!" commanded the scientist, pointing a gun at him.

"Is this...oh my god is this written in blood," the alchemist asked in horror as he looked down at the array. He turned from side to side, trying to seek an escape.

The scientist smiled deviously. He was a short man, with crazed eyes behind small glasses that barely perched on his nose. "Where do you think your friend the Green Thumb Alchemist went?" the scientist cackled. "He also refused, so we scrapped him for parts."

"You're insane!" the man yelled.

"Don't!" the scientist screamed back, showing his manic side before calming himself down some. "Don't you make me shoot you and ruin my pretty array."

"Doctor Nuremberg." The scientist holding the gun looked up at Harbring. "Hurry this along."

The man in the center of the array was already tired and half-starved to death. But he was also a solider, and that defiant nature would not allow him to betray his honor. "Go ahead and kill me!" he spat.

"Bring her in," Nuremberg commanded and several guards led in a crying woman. She yelled in despair and made to run for the prisoner in the transmutation circle before she was held back. "Do it or your wife dies."

The prisoner faltered a minute before finally stooping down and putting his hands to the transmutation circle on the ground. Immediately, the lines glowed bright and the energy that surged through them fled up into his arms. The power was so great it started to tear his skin apart causing him to scream. His body twisted painfully before dragging itself upwards, no longer in control of itself. The man hovered in the air, his screaming abruptly stopping right before his body violently exploded in a burst of flames and crumpled to the ground. The transmutation circle was now going berserk. It broke the cement it was on and the building started to shake in protest, threatening to collapse.

Other scientists in the room rushed forward, using their strength to direct the bomb down under the earth to dissipate. Finally the shaking ceased, and the transmutation circle fizzled out. The room grew completely silent save for the mournful wails of the woman who had sunk to her knees at the sight of her husband's dead body.

Doctor Nuremberg waddled into the middle and kicked the charred body that remained there with a dissatisfied snort, before wheeling around and smacking the woman.

"It didn't work!" he wailed like a petulant child. "Why didn't it work?"

"Not strong enough," a silky voice said across the room. Lust stepped out from the shadows with her faithful companion Gluttony beside her. "You're never going to make it work with filth like that."

"Then what do you propose?" Olan Harbring asked from above. He had observed the entire display in silence.

"Try someone it'll recognize. A strong alchemist who has dealt with it," Lust said softly.

"But who!?" the doctor squalled.

"Fullmetal's brother," Lust purred, watching Gluttony stalk closer to the crying woman on the floor.

"Lust can I eat her? Lust? Can I?" he whimpered.

Lust waved her hand at him. "Yes you may," she granted and Gluttony lunged.

Roy jolted awake, his mind reeling as the tendrils of horror slipped away. He was safe in his own home with the warmth of Ed next to him. He sat up and swung his legs over to sit on the bed, the nightmares causing restless tremors. The movement woke Ed and she turned over and reached out to caress his shoulder. "Okay?" she mumbled in a half awake stupor.

"Bad dream," Roy explained. He felt the hand on his shoulder tug and he slipped back under the covers. Ed pulled him over into a hug and he pressed him into her chest. They were both still nude and he drew comfort from their skin to skin contact.

"I get 'em too," Ed told him.

Roy started to count Ed's heartbeats as they thumped beneath his head. Like counting sheep, the steady pulse calmed him.

"Do you need to talk about it? You can talk about it Roy," Ed assured him.

"It was just about killing people. Just blood and sand and I couldn't stop even though I wanted to," Roy described. "It was like going to another world and that world was so awful that no one here could ever imagine it. It was like hell. And then you come back and they want to congratulate you. They'll never understand and they don't care to." He shook his head. "And this world is so different and everyone is so happy, and they want you to be happy too. But every time you hear fireworks you think bombs. And then you feel guilty that you're not happy."

"And then because you feel guilty you feel more unhappy," Ed included. She stroked his hair as he talked. Each word he'd said had hit her personally. She knew what it was like to feel so guilty that the sadness ate at you like a parasite. "You ever try to do it?"

"Do what?"

"Kill yourself."

Roy pulled away from her so he could look her in the eyes. She said it so conversationally. Like it was normal for the mind to turn to that solution.

"Once. But I chickened out," Roy told her. "Have you."

"Once," Ed said. "But I didn't chicken out. No before I could do it this obnoxious Colonel came looking for my dad and shook me and told me to get up." Ed reached up and kissed his forehead. "And I'm so happy he did."

Roy pulled her down and kissed her; unable to really describe the emotions he was feeling. All he knew was he needed the woman next to him. He knew he would never have to explain himself to Ed, because she already knew. They'd seen horror and laughter. The darkness and the light.

Still holding each other, they slipped back into sleep for the last few hours of the night, finally awakening as sunshine cut across the sheets. By that time the darkness had faded and after kissing Ed awake, Roy went to go make them coffee.

Ed yawned and stretched. She felt…rejuvenated, and for the first time in ages she looked down at her own flesh and it didn't feel alien. She traced the paths Roy had made across her torso all the way down to that curious little button that had made her see stars. To her absolute surprise, she'd found orgasm to be the same albeit concentrated in a different part of her body. It made her wonder what else might be the same. All this time she'd been so focused on what was different that the constants had been overlooked. Perhaps it was time to stop worrying so much. This was who she was going to be, and for the first time in a long time, Edward was completely happy.

Roy came back into the room and saw her laying on her back, the sheets pooled around her waist and her breasts bathed in morning light.

"Hello," Ed smirked, unabashedly checking out his groin and abs.

Roy saw the way her eyes were raking over his body like a three course meal. Where had all that embarrassment gone? "I've created a monster haven't I," Roy said right before Ed slid out of bed, gently took the coffee cups from his hands and placed them on the side table. Then she pressed up against him, kissing him and drawing him back to the bed. Roy let himself be led and they flopped down with him on top. "Mmm as much as I would love to spend all day like this, I have to go to work in an hour," he protested.

"Then we have an hour," Ed argued, already nibbling his neck and shoulder and rolling her hips against his hardening manhood.

"But I have to take a shower," Roy said, already wondering how late he could be before Riza came looking for him. Ed was definitely going to be a problem with his attendance record.

"Take me with you." Ed kissed his jaw. The early morning stubble turned her on more. It made him seem manly yet human. Only she wanted to see him like this.

Roy laughed out loud at her suggestion. He climbed off her and as Ed started to get up too, Roy threw her over his shoulder. Ed grabbed at his waist as she suddenly found herself flipped and her face in the middle of his back.

"Hey!" she yelled, all playfulness gone. "Put me down." She reddened when he gave her ass a smack. "Someone's gonna see," she protested weakly. "Through the windows."

"No one will see," he said and slipped out of the bedroom and down the hall, Ed arguing the whole way.

They ended up giving each other hand jobs in the shower with Ed's right leg thrown around his hips as she used the wall to balance. By the time he had downed his lukewarm coffee and thrown on his uniform it was ten minute to eight and Havoc was honking out front.

Ed kissed him, and assured that she could make her own way home. His Second Lieutenant gave him a cheeky smile when Roy slid into the back seat. "Busy this morning?" he asked as Ed gave them a little wave from the front step. It seemed so domestic, Roy in the car on his way to work and Ed standing on the front step in her navy dress. It's almost like we were married Roy thought, the idea remarkably pleasant.

"Sir?" Havoc raised an eyebrow, and Roy stepped into his professional role of Colonel.

"Step on it or Hawkeye will have both our hides," Roy ordered.

Ed watched the car speed off before she started the long walk back to her apartment. The phone rang as soon as she entered the shop and she rushed to answer it. "Hello. Edna Elric speaking."

"Ed! Thank God," Winry said from over the speaker. "Where have you been? I've been calling all night."

"What's wrong?" Ed asked, hearing the panic in her voice.

"Alphonse didn't come home on the train. Please tell me he's still there with you."