They'd finally stopped. The cutting was over. He wanted to badly to cover his neck with his hands and protect it from any further harm, but the chains were as tight as ever.

They'd had him begging, for fuck's sake.

Trying to calm himself down, Ed concentrated on feeling a trail of blood flow down from one of the cuts on his neck. One of the many cuts on his neck, fresh and stinging and bleeding.

They'd pierced his flesh over and over and over again as they asked their questions, the same questions as always, and all he could respond with was hysterical pleas for them to spare his life. He'd take anything but death, he'd said. Anything.

Snake had been so close to that artery. Pigface had outlined his trachea, mere millimeters away from puncturing the tunnel his breath ran through. They'd gotten so close, but none of those cuts would do anything to him besides bleed a little and then leave a scar. Some would even fade away completely.

He closed his amber eyes tightly against the tears threatening to spill from them. How embarrassing that had been, begging for his life like some sort of coward.

At least he hadn't given any information away.

Satisfied with this fact and thoroughly exhausted, he got into the most comfortable position he could manage with his legs bound and his arms chained above him. He needed to escape for a while.

Maybe he could see Al tonight...

--

"Alchemists are a dime a dozen..."

He woke with a gasp, moving to clutch at his throat, but the chains cut into his human wrist long before either hand reached its destination.

He gritted his teeth as that shock brought back all of the pain in his body. The sting of the dirty cuts on his throat. The throbbing of the gash in his forehead. The break in his ring finger. The ache of his shoulders, the sting of his chafed ankle. His hunger.

He looked across the room to find that his captors were nowhere to be found. He hadn't realized it was morning until that moment. He'd slept straight through breakfast, his only meal of the day, given to him just before they left each morning.

Ed frowned deeply and looked down at his bared stomach, past the bruises and the cuts. His muscles had faded a while ago, and his ribs were beginning to show as his body took the calories he wasn't receiving from food from what his body had stored.

Every scrap of food was important. And he'd missed his one meal of the day.

He looked up at his hands then, tugging on the chains experimentally. They were never any looser from the moment before, the day before, the week before. But he had to get himself out. Soon enough he'd be dead or he'd let something slip, making himself a traitor to Amestris. Neither of these options were acceptable. He had to get out.

He strained harder with his automail arm, his more resilient arm, ignoring the pain it caused in his chest and shoulder. He pulled and tugged and shook and tried everything he could in his current state to loosen the wall's hold on the hook that held the chain. His attempts grew frantic after just a few minutes.

He had to get the hell out of here.

They were going to kill him.

He was going to die.

"They're gonna kill me, dammit!" he screamed at the chain, voice hoarse but still loud in the large room, "Let me go!"

Another moment of struggling passed, and he let his arm fall limp, only supported by the chain tied tightly around his metal wrist. He slumped back against the wall as a small sob escaped his lips. Three weeks tomorrow. Why had no one come looking for him yet? Al and Winry had to be worried, and that bastard Colonel had to miss having someone to do all the dirty work for him.

He turned his head, attempting to wipe his tears away against his flesh arm. It wasn't very effective.

He heard the first of his tears hit the cold, hard floor, and he broke.

He pulled himself into the smallest ball he could manage, hiding his face in his knees, sobbing violently and painfully as tears flowed freely now from his dulling eyes.

He was going to die here, all alone.

He was never going to see anyone he cared for ever again.

Alphonse. Winry. Pinako. Riza, Havoc. Falman, Breda, Fuery. Gracia, Elysia, Russel, Fletcher, Scheska, Rosa, Mustang.

Yeah, Mustang. In this moment of weakness he could admit to himself that he did kind of care for the bastard.

But even that bastard hadn't found him yet. He was stuck here, full of pain, sentenced to death, and no one had come for him in the time he'd been here.

Maybe... Maybe they'd given up on him.

The thought wrenched another bone-wracking sob from his chest, another physical pain. But it was nothing compared to the emotional pain that now blanketed him, squeezing his heart too much.

Maybe they weren't even trying. They weren't even going to be looking for him when he was killed.

Killed.

Back to the thought of death. A vicious circle that never ended.

He eventually cried himself back to sleep, though the peace that accompanied slumber would not last long.