Dog of the Military Chapter 6: The World's End in Ice, a fullmetal alchemist fanfic

AN: I know. I know. It's been months. Don't worry though! I will finish this! I'm still interested!

Vato Falman has indeed been promoted a rank to Captain. This is also confirmed by the picture he has at the end of the 2009 anime (FMA: Brotherhood) with his two children. Although this picture is not in the manga, it is still considered canon.

WARNING: This is a very disturbing chapter. If you cannot take unsettling imagery, then you have been informed beforehand. Many strange, upsetting psychological aspects were taken into account. I'm a bit afraid of posting this because of that. Also, please keep in mind that many prisoners of war become sadly psychologically damaged. There is a possibility of being treated, but the experience is ultimately unforgettable. Torture is no diminutive matter. My mind is probably extremely twisted to think up this anyway.

Some content may not be completely scientifically accurate.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

—Robert Frost

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Chapter Six:

The World's End in Ice

Winry's plan was as perfect as it could get, but the only problem was that no one else seemed to agree with her. She had called Central Command in the hopes that someone, anyone, would pick up and believe in her cause. It was apparent to her now that it was inevitable that none of them shared their consent.

"Please," she breathed into the telephone, "send me anyone. I don't care who it is. I just need to get there and I need someone who can transport me."

A stern voice came from the other side of the line, shutting what sounded like stuffed drawers in the process. "Look, miss, I don't know if you've heard or not, but there's a war going on towards that area. If you go there now, chances are that you'll be in danger. Drachmans are ruthless and that's saying it nicely. Not to mention that our soldiers are in the heat of battle. They can't rescue every civilian that strays onto their path."

She sighed, deeply frustrated with the fact that this situation was not turning out in her favor. "Look, there's something I need to check there. This is the reason why I'm asking for someone! I don't want to get caught in a place like that alone!"

"You called Central four times yesterday. What is it that you want to do? Maybe we can help you in a different, safer way."

"But—"

Her arms flailed in the air, barely stopping herself from tripping over the toolbox at her feet. The wrench that Ed gave her years ago bulged in her pants pocket and the blonde was extremely tempted to somehow throw it across Amestris in hopes that it would strike the woman she was speaking to smack on the temple. This was just becoming ridiculous.

The Rockbell had been trying since yesterday morning, ever since that officer came to her home just to tell her that Edward was missing, but she had to see for herself. She wanted to go there to Fort Briggs; after all, she had been there already two years ago. What was the difference? It was dangerous then and it stayed dangerous at present. There was something about the Elric brothers that made her life dangerous anyway.

Surprisingly, a small yelp bounced off in the background. Winry strained to better hear the insignificant noise until someone entirely different cut in. She heard scuffling and arguing with a collaboration of "Hey! I'm assigned to this post!" and "These are direct orders!" In all honesty, she was baffled.

Static startled her into submission as a familiar, semi-monotone voice took over the speakers on the headset.

"…Ms. Rockbell. This is Captain Vato Falman with direct orders from Fuhrer Mustang," a man spoke calmly on the other line. It took Winry a few seconds to recognize the person and slowly imagine the silvery gray hair and thin eyes of the soldier speaking to her.

"Ah yes. I will arrive in Resembool tomorrow afternoon. Please be prepared for a journey. Your grandmother is already aware."

The mechanic was definitely confused now. She hadn't said a thing, and what the heck did he mean by "your grandmother is already aware"? A moment of silence passed quickly and the comment was affirmed yet again by the Captain.

"…W—Wait! But…!" She retorted trying desperately to receive an answer she would never get. "What's going on?"

And just as abruptly as the idea came into being, the phone was clanged back down onto the receiver with a loud, continuous beep resounding in her eardrums. She guessed that the only time that her questions would be fulfilled was tomorrow afternoon, whatever that time was supposed to bring with it. Frankly, the blonde was just as confused and flustered as before. There was nothing left to do besides pack for a journey in which the destination was unclear.

Though the following day came more swiftly than she expected, the Rockbell's curiosity would not be quelled until her "surprise" arrived as a package on the steps of her front door. She could not help but feel a bit of nerves. Questions swirled crazily around her forehead like fireflies avoiding capture by a jar.

As if the morning wasn't full of confusion already, a soft knocking on the home's main entryway came soon after Winry and her grandmother finished cleaning up their breakfast table and washed the dishes, placing them carefully in the plastic tub next to the sink. Granny Pinako gestured to her granddaughter to answer for their guest and she did so obediently, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

The seventeen year old mechanic gaped when she realized who was waiting outside. "Mr…Falman? What are you doing here?"

"Aha Ms. Rockbell," he said calmly as if nothing out of the ordinary was taking place at the very moment, "I've been looking for you. Please gather your things and we'll be on our way."

She shot him a disbelieving stare and subsequently stayed like that for several seconds. "'We'll be on our way?'" the girl commented dubiously, "On our way where? What's going on? Why are you here? Why did you say you were looking for me?"

A sudden burst of bellowing energy erupted from behind the wood of the door. A startled yelp followed by frantic barking indicated that the Rockbell family dog, Den, was once again disrupting someone innocent and off to the side, or so she assumed. Reluctantly, her gaze shifted over to the crack between the door and the wall and she spotted one of the strangest sights she had ever seen: a dark skinned grown man with dreadlocks in a ponytail who was traumatized by the dog chasing him.

"Oi, Captain," the man yelled tremendously as Den roughly successfully tripped him, "Let's get outta here fast! This mutt's getting to me! Must be sniffing out the toad in me!"

Winry blinked. "Mr. Jerso? Is that you?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the former military man shouted back, unceremoniously being defeated by her dog as it decided to finally take a pounce and fly onto his awaiting chest. "Oof. Hurry it up, will you? We got places—" Den licked his face. "—Ugh nasty…We got places to go, people to pound…I mean see."

Curiosity engulfed her being and she shook her head as she hurriedly whipped around, almost tripping over her short grandmother who, she might add, did not look surprised in the slightest, and sprinted up the stairs in order to pick up her tool box and duffel back of supplies. She had to admit that she had planned to head off to Fort Briggs to find those stupid Elric Brothers and get some information on the missing Ed a while ago, so her things were already set and packed. What she hadn't anticipated was the military to come sauntering up her doorstep with so much as a simple, "Please gather your things and we'll be on our way," and be offered a trip to, well, somewhere. Winry just didn't know exactly where that was yet.

By the time her feet reached the bottom of the staircase, clad in her traditional black boots, skirt and white sleeveless top, she was met with an abrupt, "Change into something good enough for snow and bring a scarf and coats," by Granny Pinako. With a startled glance, she quickly changed into a warm set of khaki pants, boots, a long button-up overcoat for winter, and a fluffy orange scarf.

She could only guess where they were headed. North.

"Alright," the blonde stated sternly, looking from one man to another as the chimera named Zampano, a blond man with fair skin and circular glasses that affiliated himself with Jerso and also possessed the ability to transform into half a giant boar, revealed himself behind the other two unexpected guests. "I think I get it. You're taking me to Briggs."

Instead of rejecting the very idea, Pinako Rockbell plainly said something along the lines of wishing the trio (now plus her apparently stubborn granddaughter), a safe trip and made to usher them out onto the porch. The old woman smirked, leaving Winry stunned still in her wake. Had her grandmother actually planned all this?

The answer came immediately afterward with the sound of a lock clicking shut and the outside's breeze tickling her cheeks.

"Crazy old woman," Jerso said to their new companion, "Right when she figured out that the kid went missing, she somehow got her calls hooked up to the military headquarters in Central and got you a personal escort to the Fort. Mustang was basically forced to give in. Said Ed would kill him anyways."

It took a few moments to realize that all four of them were still staring and gaping at Resembool's yellow Rockbell home. More or less as if the event hadn't transpired at all, they swiveled on their heels and started their trek up the winding dirt road that led through the main town and towards the meager train station. Dazed and still quite confused out of her mind, Winry did not bother asking any more questions and followed her troop onto the next train, which miraculously was already there waiting for them. It seemed that those three had come specifically for her and only her at the crack of dawn from the capitol. Because they were the only passengers, the conductor agreed to wait for them as they would just ride again anyway.

Thus began their trip to the war torn district of North City. They would have to stop at some northern town she had never heard of called Gestalt and acquire some military issued transport. Trains shouldn't go that far up. In fact, civilians really shouldn't be going that far north either. Most people living in the area had evacuated anyway, moving as close to the eastern and central portions of Amestris as possible for the time being, but needless to say that there were few resisting and still unwilling to become refugees.

Though unconventional, the automail engineer was now headed in the direction of her goal. She would find Edward Elric if no one else could, and of course, slap him upside the head with a nice shining wrench for getting himself injured, or so she heard. She just hoped he wasn't dead.

No, she thought confidently, he's Ed. He couldn't be dead.

Once they neared Gestalt, Winry was informed that the means for travel would be a military issued vehicle. There weren't many in the town they were going to anyway. The poor citizens agreed to make their home part of the supply route in the war.

Upon arrival they would head to the abandoned mine shafts near North City, in which the Rockbell had journeyed through before with Scar, Yoki, and the two chimera-human's with her now so that they could escape the clutches of the crazed Solf J. Kimblee a couple of years ago. This was more than enough reason for Jerso and Zampano to accompany her now. But Mustang was more than a logical man, he having chosen her entourage with strategic care. He had added Captain Falman into the bunch and the grey haired officer was more than anyone could ask for. His intelligence was high and minus the fact that his personality led him to be overly serious at times, the camaraderie was bearable. Plus, he had experience with working at the Briggs Fortress.

For now, everything was looking right. And as they headed off the locomotive and shivered, each one carrying their own weight and belongings, progress filled each step with purpose. Before the three men had left Central, they had asked Yoki to draw them a map of the mine shafts. He worked as a dictator in a mining town in Youswell after all (only being usurped by the Fullmetal Alchemist). They could trust him. They had to trust him. It was the only way to safely make it into the Fort in the middle of the frontlines without being blown up by a spray of Drachman bullets.

Reasoning in check, Winry followed the soldiers to the automobile, blatantly unaware of what was ahead of her.

ooo

"Why did you not become mine, God!"

"Because you didn't believe in me."

He woke up in a sweat, a wet, transparent sheen coating his forehead. The alchemist had had that nightmare again, in which he imagined a time back to the Promised Day. In his dream, he would see Father in his true form, a floating, inky black globule with a disturbing crimson eye; the dwarf in the flask. In front of the hovering form would be Truth, effectively reflecting a perfect white, eyeless version of the homunculus before him and they would be arguing about why Father never would own the Truth.

The Gate.

The Truth.

Humans which were never quite so human.

For some reason, all three were coming to haunt him in this forsaken hell-hole. His mind was aflame with boiling thoughts of anxiety. He did not have the smallest desire to think on it anymore. Ed supposed it was because he wanted so badly to reverse the damage that had been inflicted upon those poor Amestrians and Pitt. He wanted it badly enough that he might be tempted to use his alchemy to challenge the Truth again, but he also knew it was impossible and he knew it would be foolish even if he still possessed his vanquished ability.

The predicament seemed almost impractical, as the entire facility was freezing cold. But somehow the heat came, fast and furious with a toxic rage. The floor remained as hard and steel as the previous day, and even so the day before the last. His days in this prison felt like an eternity to the point where he had begun to lose count. But somehow he knew it was barely more than a week.

Edward lay still in place, wrists fastened in cuffs behind him and limbs aching so broadly that everything felt like liquid fire on ice. The effect was contradicting and that only made it worse.

The Drachmans had taken Brosh away the following morning after the first interrogation with General Albatross. And his situation had not improved in the slightest. One could argue that it had only grown progressively worse. That shoddier quality of things could only be defined in terms of dreams and horrifying nightmares. But yet, the physical abuse had lessened to the bare minimum for the past two days.

Nona Patton had not even bothered to "check up on him" for a full forty-eight hours.

He couldn't say he was grateful exactly. The abuse came in the form of a tasteless chicken broth soup and stale chuncks of bread. It was getting too repetitive for his stomach because that's all he really ate for days. He had developed a method of dragging the tray of the scarce ration of food with his foot toward him and, with no other choice, dunking his face into the cold bowl and lapping the soup up with his tongue, feeling its contents slowly slide down his sore throat.

The bread was another story entirely. Eating that came in the form of grabbing it between his knees and propping it up for a bite. The worst part of it all? He only had one meal a day. Even though these people claimed that they needed Ed alive for the time being, they sure had a funny way of showing it.

His meal had just recently come today. It was the same one as always, but the Drachmans had added a repulsive appetizer on a separate plate. The enemy soldier who had delivered it had said, "That thing came from prisoner F96's cell partner." Ed had registered that "prisoner F96" was how the facility referred to as Sergeant Denny Brosh.

"Take it as a gift from General Albatross," the man has said smugly, "and try to not have it stink up your cell." He then walked out purposefully and closed the steel entrance firmly behind his back.

As Ed heard the numerous locks click shut, his golden eyes widened at the gift left to him. Bile rose in his gullet and he shoved the plate away. On it, covered in blood and crisp with pocks of gore, was somebody's severed right arm. It must had been freshly sliced off, unbearably like when a stark red apple had been cut in two with its inner juices still flowing. The limb didn't smell quite yet, its lifeblood still dripping from its slashed veins and arteries. Though the iron smell of blood was ever present.

Ed glanced down at his tray of food, then to the human arm near it. He had lost his appetite even though he was always hungry. He wouldn't eat. He couldn't eat with that thing mocking him. Of course it would be a right arm. Of course they would choose that part of the body. He needed no reminder of his past mistakes. But to cut off a prisoner's arm and hand it to him literally on a silver platter? Albatross must have some sick, twisted, pleasure in torture. His logical self knew that all Drachmans could not be this way, but right now it seemed that a whole load of them enjoyed an adversary's psychological and physical damage.

"Shit," he breathed heavily with a futile attempt at hiding away his nose. If that thing was not taken out of his room soon, there would surely be a stench. "Damn these people…damn it."

For the rest of the night, he never ate a bite. Ed did not sleep either, his breath hitching at intervals and his nose beginning to pick up a nasty stink. He couldn't take this anymore. How long would he be forcibly fed and treated like some mindless animal in a cage? How long would they torture his mind? Forget the maiming and bloodied scratches all over his body; it was his mind that could no longer rest. Proof of that lay trickling with frozen blood before him, fingers caught forever in lifelessness.

Then, a ray of hope came in the form of a battered piece of paper hastily shoved between the bottom of the door and the floor. The Elric spotted it immediately and carefully shifted his weight towards the mysterious note, only to pick it up with his teeth, laying it on the ground and spreading it open with his chin.

The letter read:

There's a friend for you here, but everyone else is an enemy.
Mustang will come for you soon. Be ready and brace yourself. The arm was only the beginning. Destroy this after you read it.

"…who?" His eyebrows knit together, forming a slight crease between them and he sighed, a strand of light hair touching his cheek. "Bastard's coming," Ed mumbled softly, "Gotta destroy this. Sure."

He wanted to smack himself in the forehead when he said it aloud. How was he going to destroy this note? There was no fire burning nearby, nor should he shred it to pieces because that would only leave evidence that there was a form of correspondence in the first place. There was only one option that would not risk the prison hold's suspicion.

"I have to swallow it," Ed murmured in exasperated realization. It took him a few seconds, but he managed to crumple the slip of paper into a ball and, uncertainly, he forced it into his jaws and chewed with a disgusted look on his face. At least this forced meal would make up for the one he missed today. Well, not really.

His confinement, absolutely every damn thing about it was ridiculous. The alchemist's mind reeled at every thought, every form of perilous torture he had to endure. After a few days of darkness and silence, he found himself talking just to add sound. Minute tinkering in the background, a scrape of an object, whispers in the hallways…his ears picked them all up and reflex caused him to shift towards the source. Was he going insane?

His body ached; the severely healing bullet wound on his side that Ed was sure was becoming infected because the bandages hadn't been changed for days throbbed into his ribs. But nothing ached more than the pain of not being in control.

Edward was trapped, a man in a cage that wasn't being treated like a man. He couldn't save the humans-turned-chimeras, nor could he make sure his brother was safe from whoever was spying in Fort Briggs, nor could he break out of the Drachman detention center. The eldest Elric was alone, and for now, he would remain that way until this supposed help came, if it ever even did., but he wanted the flavor of escape. The musty aftertaste of paper on his tongue proved that notion.

"You think stealing something powerful makes you a great man?"

"You're nothing but a cunning thief. You should've stayed in the flask where you belong."

Ed was being dragged again. Why must he always be dragged? He wasn't that helpless, was he? But perhaps that was not the right question to ask. Let us try, "He wasn't some monster, was he?" The answer seemed to be heading more in the direction of, "Why Edward, of course you're some monster." Proof included those hateful and abhorrent expressions he was getting, practically from every cell corner. Drachman soldiers appeared to be everywhere and in multiple places at once, their deep, muddy uniforms gleaming in muted brightness. His eyes could barely adjust.

The repellent odor of vile filth and vomit filled the Elric's nostrils; scenes of hopeless and pupil-less stares followed him; horror-struck screams of agony echoed, and the unmistakable wails of innocent children penetrated the space like a spear protruding from a pound of hunted prey. The sad thing was he was used to it by now. It had been almost two weeks since he was captured, and yet, no one had come to save him.

The Fullmetal Alchemist was never one to rely too much on others. He would distinctly do things on his own, fight on his own, eat on his own, earn on his own. Most of the time, other people would have the tendency to rely on him. It was rare for the situation to be the other way around. So then why was it like this now?

Because, he thought bitterly, I can't do anything now. They've got Al dangling in my face too.

Maybe Mustang hadn't discovered the whereabouts of the hold yet? Maybe Briggs Fortress was being bombarded with too many attacks to care about things like missing officers? But maybe, maybe they all just thought he was dead. Right now anyway, Ed felt deader than he ever felt. Perchance the only moment in time that could fight for the spot was the memory of when he and his brother preformed the accursed act of Human Transmutation on their deceased mother in hopes of resurrecting the lifeless.

His head was pounding by the time the metal entrance screeched open and he was forcibly kicked in with a, "Get in there, soiled Amestrian parasite!" The officer pulling him in the laboratory section of the building spit in Ed's eyes. From the get-go, it seemed, this day would be worse than they usually were for the alchemist recently. Unpleasant emotions welled up in his stomach.

They finally decided to bring him to this terrible place again and she was inevitably there with him. Her white lab coat trailed behind her like a veil and her black stare was overtly ice cold.

"Ah, the little blond alchemist," Nona Patton said. Her lips, which seemed more crimson and maliciously beautiful than usual, glistened as she licked them. "I've been awaiting your arrival. Now how could you keep a young woman waiting? My curiosity with you appears to never fail me." She smirked with venom, "Are you here to entertain me today?"

Edward tried to hold back his scowl at being called little. "You. What do you want this time? I'm not here to do the dirty work of a second class murderer."

At that sentiment, Patton walked eerily in the direction of her captive, waving off the soldier that had taken him in as his hands were still tightly bound. This time though, a metal cuff was wrapped around his flesh leg with a fairly large metal ball attached to it at the end of a chain. Apparently, Ed had been stubborn enough to make an attempt at escape a couple of days ago. They were tempted to unlatch his automail leg.

The woman strode up to him, a mysterious smile gracing her features and she placed a dainty hand on his cheek. He glowered in retaliation as she did so, but the gentleness only grew worse. Next came her fingers tracing his neck and entangling in his bangs and locks of honey-hued hair, having lost its ponytail over the course of his stay. She brushed her lips against his, as if suggesting a kiss that neither of them wanted, but taunting at the same time, but he dared not waver, only deepen his reserve and frown line.

She was mocking him, teasing him, seducing him. The nerve, the utter nauseating nerve of his woman never ceased to amaze Ed. And then she placed her other hand on his chest, adding slight pressure there, then she moved her lips to his ear and whispered, "We have an audience today," and a sudden, sharp pain erupted near his right shoulder. She had pricked him unexpectedly with a syringe and it was gradually filling with the red of his blood.

He tried to shove her away. "What the hell?"

"Oh it's only an innocent sample after all," Nona Patton replied with a malicious cheeriness, "It's nothing quite so troublesome to get worked up over. I'll just inject your blood into one of our friends here—" she gestured around to the animal cages, "—and see if we can enhance their alchemical stability."

"What the hell are you trying to do," he called heatedly, "Transmute my blood into a weapon that's part…" His golden eyes widened in horror. "…You ARE aren't you? You're using blood to make into iron weapons! Some cheap supplies huh? And you're giving it to the chimeras!"

The Drachman woman only smiled as he continued. "You could kill those people! Metal in a person's body don't usually mix! Automail, bone reinforcements, those are different, but this?"

The woman scientist only ignored his pleas and a back door creaked wide open, revealing a thin and starved, brunette woman with chocolate brown eyes. From an angle, Ed could have sworn she was his mother, but he knew better, and the thought only made his position less bearable.

"This is our audience," Patton smoothly stated, a tremor of a sick hidden excitement evident in her voice, "and of course, the audience of the audience." Soon afterward, a little boy of about eight appeared behind the woman, whimpering to his parent and with identical eyes brimming with tears and fear.

Their clothes were ragged, torn in places and burned to a crisp in others. But only on the mother's, Ed noticed, was there no absence of flowering blood. Something wrenched in his gut. If these people were here in the same room as the Fullmetal Alchemist, Hero of the (not Drachman) People, they were surely to be in grave danger, and it all boiled down to him.

When the mother was tied tightly onto a wooden chair with thick stripes of rope, and the child was chained to the chair's armrest nearby, Patton turned to face Ed. She sneered and said, "To answer your previous question, Amestrian alchemist, I never said that the iron blood would be the weapons for our chimeras," her disturbing countenance deepened, "but they will be for our army and, if transmuted properly, can be used to reinforce parts of a chimera's body, making them more formidable opponents to your weakling military."

Ed glared in reply. There was really nothing he could say to that. He had learned, astonishingly enough, that there were times in this prison hold that he should never speak his mind.

The child shrank next to his mother, gripping her hand for dear life and the man who walked him in who Ed recognized as the same one who hauled him pitifully from his lonely cell to the laboratory was clenching onto a machine gun professionally in both palms.

"Igus," the Drachman woman called seriously to another man who was her lab assistant, not bothering to face any place other than the terrified eyes of her victims, and the young male with glaring round spectacles and close cropped hair obediently walked next to his companion. From where, Edward did not know.

"Prepare the participants for the experiment," she went on, pointing to the mother and child.

The dark haired man did his job well and thoroughly. He checked the bodies of the two humans, spying the clothes with disproving acceptance, and frequently would pause to rub his thumb and index finger on pieces of the fabric, his glasses flickering oddly in the weak light. Suddenly, he grasped the upper arm of the woman as she gasped out loudly enough to echo and he grinned eerily, shifting his gaze towards the syringe full of blood.

"Keep her arm still. If I don't transmute the blood quickly, she will die from the mixture of two different blood types and blood clotting." The wicked scientist smiled. "I suppose that would be rather amusing to watch, however."

Ed tried to protest, reaching out to wring the woman around her neck before she would even lay a finger on the Amestrian, but, without noticing it, a guard had subdued his advances and effectively dropped him to the ground whilst holding back his head by Ed's blond loose strands of hair. His weakness from eating meager amounts of food and the abuse that the prison system had given him caused the Fullmetal Alchemist to fall in such a way that he would never have done beforehand. It was humiliating and it left a disgusting taste on his tongue. And so he was forced to watch with his head held high and his arms bound with taught rope, while a metal ball attached to his left leg held him back from escape.

The man called Igus held the prisoner of war down in her chair, checking the ropes that secured her.

"Good enough, Lee Grant," the Patton woman breathed. "Inject the subject with the syringe. Quickly."

The elder Elric brother was stunned. What were these people thinking? Injecting a different type of blood into somebody else's bloodstream? He may not be a physician, but hanging around Winry made him more aware of medical issues. He knew that if you did not know the blood type going into someone for a transfusion, the results should best stay undecided. If two types of blood clashed, a type A and B for example, the antibodies of the recipient would try and fight off the intruding substance and ultimately end in a swift, yet painful death.

Knowing this, his fruitless struggle intensified and his reply to the situation was met with an outward kick to the temple, which made Ed's vision blurry.

"Hurry up! Get out of the way so I can make the transmutation. We need to do this quickly or the woman might die. I need this Amestrian pest to see the results so that we may be able to utilize his alchemic knowledge."

Ed hadn't noticed that his own lifeblood was nastily squeezed into the upper arm of the hostage until it was too late. For a moment, he was more than sickened. Then, promptly, there came a flash of movement and he realized that the little boy was fighting to untie his mother. Tears flowed down the child's face while his hands were grasping his parent's constraints for dear life, and the bulky guard attempted to reprimand the naive boy. There was a loud bang and a small spurt of red shot into the air while a simultaneous female's frantic scream sliced with passion. The guard had shot her child in the calf and he was writhing in agony on the ground, clutching his injury to his chest.

The Amestrian mother gasped for air, a look of pure grief and absolute hated marred the features that were similar Ed's own mother. A pang of guilt hit him next.

"Please," she begged, an edge of determination in her tone, "please don't hurt him. Leave him alone."At that statement, Ed wheezed a "You bastards! Let them go!" before earning a sharp shove to the small of his back. He was still hopelessly trapped.

Just as one of the three torturers were about to respond, they were met with a fierce intake of breath from the very woman who tried to talk back to them. Her face was suddenly pale and sweaty; her fingers that were bound were shaking and quivering in anxiety. In the background, Nona Patton simply chuckled with delight saying, "You idiot boy," while nudging her foot into the fallen child's cheek as if trying to avoid stepping into a sordid cesspool, "Your actions have been the literal death of your precious mother."

"C—Can't…breathe…" The woman was talking to no one but herself now. "Will…William…get out…" A glazed look replaced her previous begging one. "…go back home…go back to Liore."

"Hah," Patton laughed, "The result of not transmuting the separate blood fast enough. She has a serious immunological reaction called a Rhesus crisis. She'll succumb to full cardiac arrest within minutes. The blood is clashing. Blood clots are forming in her veins. Nevertheless," the beautiful and cruel scientist smiled, "it will be an excruciatingly painful and immediate death."

Ed shut his eyes tightly when the spine-chilling shrieks began. He turned his head away, not wanting to see the expression on the little boy's face as he watched his mother die before him. He gritted his teeth as he imagined the female squirming in her seat as her body responded to the lack of oxygen caused by her own antibodies fighting for survival. An abrupt hitch of breath and it was all over. When Ed heard the chair topple over, he dared to gaze at Trisha Elric's lookalike who had fallen to the floor in a heap.

Seconds passed and all the blond could see was her face, blank and cold like the Briggs Mountains, chocolate brown pupils staring into nothing, and the woman's incessantly sobbing son as he yelled for her to come back and hear him and because of the horrific throbbing in his wounded calf.

He couldn't stop staring. He couldn't, not when she looked just like her lying on the flooring, her lifeless and frozen and dead.

"No," he murmured, shivering with stark remembrance, "mom…I didn't mean to!" But none of them heard him and in minutes, as Ed was stuck dwelling in a past he had no desire of recalling, Patton had drawn out an extra syringe, not bothering to walk all the way to the Elric's side of the room and instead drew blood from the guard, who gave in without complaint.

"That corpse's blood is useless to me now," she said. "It would have already separated into plasma and cells, making it ineffective."

Her comment did not stop the man from grunting as the needle drove through his flesh, a dark crimson liquid rising slowly in the glass tube. She turned to loom over the whimpering young child and smirked saying, "Now, now, Will, your mother would be so proud of you. Staying alive in a Drachman hold this long should prove your worth enough."

The little boy shrunk more deeply into himself, shying away with wet streams still flowing like rivers of never-ending sorrow that only moved where the current took them. Ed began to think morbidly of tributaries in the craggy mountains, mountains, he somehow knew, this boy would never want to see again.

"Not that you're worthy enough for me," Patton's voice added as a silky afterthought. "It's so much fun, really, to add someone else's blood into another's. It is much more intriguing than using that person's own, much more satisfying to know that that donor will have to suffer too if he is not careful, for the blood that mixes can be a tool for murder."

The chuckles came. "Oh how satisfying indeed."

Seconds went by as Ed was motionless and partially ensnared in his personal nightmare. The unseeing eyes of the dead mother seemed to bore into his soul, Drachma was colder than ever, Nona Patton was the adversary he could not gather himself up to defeat, the life of his little brother, Alphonse was on the line, his nation was in danger, Pitt was a snarling creature crouching in the back of a forsaken cage, and he was being forced to watch an innocent child being transmuted into part living weapon.

Where was the Truth now when he, hell, where was the Truth when he needed to see what was behind the Gate the most?

A flicker of bright blue light charged the room like a miniature storm of electricity whilst accompanied by a shuddering yell. The deed was done and Edward found himself, once again, helpless and he hated himself more than he could ever have previously imagined. The boy was now clutching his right forearm which now had a sinister transmutation circle engraved with a knife into his skin, a strange bulging object forming on its bone. His fingertips twitched as his body registered a foreign object within.

"Adrik," Patton pointed a thumb in the guard's direction. "Shoot it," she said and then pointed at the throbbing bone. "We need to test the iron I have alchemized on his bone."

A sickening thud hit and Ed looked up to see a purpling bruise blossoming on the little boy's arm. There was no blood. There was no open wound save for his shot calf. As crude and evil the transmutation was to turn another person's blood into iron before the two sources mixed, the experiment was a success in a way. The alchemist was repulsed by the very idea.

"Good," he heard Nona state calmly. "Finish it."

Then more gunshots rang in the air, consecutively striking one by one. Blameless, pure, childish, crying, saddened, lost, confused, the barely eight year old boy jerked and flayed like a sack of sand responding to a tremendous earthquake. Spurt after spurt of scarlet, flayed upwards as a whip would; only splashing back down when gravity decided to make its devastating pull.

The hands of the dark dragged him now, deep into a pit of nothingness until he met his mother once again, but way too soon. He could have lived a great life, a full life. He would never make the same mistake he and Alphonse had made when they were eleven and ten years old, Ed figured. Alchemy would appear too cruel a tool to bring back the beautiful deceased.

They were both gone now: the boy and his mother. They were gone and both of them were not coming back, and he had assisted. Edward had helped.

Damn it! He quivered in his thoughts.

That was his blood that caused the mother to leave her boy behind. He had murdered. He had killed. And then what had happened next but the boy had to interfere! The world was crashing before his very eyes and Ed found himself grasping his hands forward as if the answer would be anywhere else but there.

"Now, Fullmetal Alchemist, I ask for your specialty," the Drachman scientist sneered, "Of course you know very well what I mean. Human transmutation. Bring these miserable fools back to life. With your power, Drachma will rule this war."

That was all the teenager needed to hear. They had found it, his bottomless, hopeless, horrendous, and unsolvable weakness. Maybe, just maybe, that weakness was enough to start breaking him apart into the insignificant pieces they believed him to be. A stronghold of an emotional fort, true, that was what everyone believe their hero to be. But you see, unlike everyone else, Ed knew that he was no more than a human being.

His hysterical laughter started slowly, then picked up the pace, bouncing with increasing volume from the ceilings of the facility. Ed's grin was a gruesome one and he could hardly consider how he was acting, but he couldn't hold back for some reason. His actions began to think for themselves.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?" The young colonel bellowed when he was finally composed enough. He hadn't noticed that he was on his knees, his hands grasping his head as if trying to block out all forms of sound. He did not want to hear anything. Nothing. Nothing at all. Damn it all. Damn it all to hell. They were breaking him, and abruptly, he comprehended, they were succeeding.

Please, please, please, please, please! His mind screamed on top of its proverbial lungs. His eyes were wide with terror, pupils rapidly constricting, and his breath came in disjointed hitches and heaves. The enemy was laughing as he trembled, stooped pathetically on the floor, laughing, and he could do nothing to prevent them from getting into his psyche.

"Their humanity is dead! Just kill them, alchemist!" Igus Lee Grant contributed now, shifting the attention to the moaning human-chimeras in the background.

"Kill them all!"

"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!"

"Wake them up, Amestrian! Wake up those people that are not longer alive!"

"What are you doing, pathetic slime? Use your alchemy!"

But Ed knew that even if he still had his alchemy, he would never use it here, not like this anyway. For the first time in his life, he wished he had never become an alchemist. Maybe if he hadn't, they would not be in this war. Maybe if he had never done so, these people would be living lives that were not ruined by the atrocious desires of power and a lust for victory, or greed, of strength over those who were lesser than oneself.

So he no longer struggled as they hauled him along with his attached chains to an unfamiliar place.

They had brought him to an unfamiliar cell, one with two occupants with metallic wristbands labeled F96 and F07. An annoying dripping sound could be heard quite clearly, like a drain had to be fixed or something. Ed was too dazed to be sure. At that very moment, his mind could not bear to wander for fear of tapping into his previous and recent experience.

Agitated sighs and split remnants of crazed laughter somehow blended in. Through that observation, anyone could realize that one of the prisoners was strapped down rather coarsely on a standing panel of cherry wood table, a strange device filled with liquid water (though how it remained that way in the freezing prison was a mystery), was hanging from the ceiling and carefully dripping drops of water onto the recipient's awaiting forehead.

"Xingese Water Torture," somebody muttered with dumbfounded astonishment, but it wasn't the phrase that Ed was necessarily paying attention to. In fact, it was the tormented reactions of his companion, Sergeant Denny Brosh, which caught him off guard. He had a band that read F96 on it. The man strapped down and being tortured was him.

"Enjoying the show, Fullmetal?" An eerie tenor that Ed had felt he should never hear again came at him just then, piercing the short-lived silence. General Alik Albatross walked up out of the darkness, and save for the two other occupants of the cell, they were virtually alone.

"Your friend here has been enduring a rather unique form of treatment the past few hours," he said with a disinterested smile. It made the blond sick inside.

Ed stood his ground, trying to look determined and not as shaken up as he really felt he was, staring his golden gaze into the stormy gray of his captor. "Bastard," he tried out with a hesitant confidence. This form of halfhearted rebellion earned him a slap on the face, leaving a stinging sensation there for minutes to come.

The General snarled. "You dare speak to me that way. Know your place!"

"What," Ed blurted out with a forced façade of composure, "what do you want from me?"

The dripping and groaning from Brosh was starting to get to him. He couldn't bear the sounds for long. They needed to get out of there fast; otherwise both companions were doomed. But how? How? There was no escape as far as he could see. He could not see, not for days. Light was a thing of the past now. The Elric could not remember how the sun's rays felt on his skin anymore, and his friend was losing his mind.

Drip.

Drip and drip of water. It was no wonder that that noise and sensation could make you feel insane.

"What is your true name, Fullmetal?" General Albatross asked harshly.

He had to answer swiftly to stay and survive. Mustang had to come and find him soon right? He could not believe that he was actually relying on the raven haired man in the first place. "Hughes," Edward said rapidly, "Maes Hughes." It was the only name he could come up with fast enough.

Another slap on the same spot on his face. The force this time was so strong that its impact pushed the alchemist to the cell floor until he was kneeling. "Don't lie to me, Amestrian!" The man roared in response.

"I wanted to know everything in this world! Why are you interfering with me? Who are you?"

"You may have used others' strength to grab hold of God, but you yourself have not grown."

"I am what you call 'the world', or perhaps 'the universe', or perhaps 'God', or perhaps 'everything', or perhaps 'one', and I am also YOU."

"Very well, if you won't tell me your true name, tell me more about Briggs Fortress."

Ed steeled himself, setting his features into what appeared to be a permanent frown and his gold irises shone with ire. "You can't make me talk."

The Drachman was furious now. After all that work, after days of no one at his side, of utter shadows and barely a speck of nourishment, how could this mere boy still seem so sturdy? No, wait. Yet, yet there was something else. There was something there that was different than before. The boy was falling, gracefully unhurried, but falling nonetheless. The nudge in that right direction would do it.

"Remember," Albatross decided to say, "If you don't cooperate, your brother's life is on the line as well as F96's."

"Go find some other guy to interrogate," Edward said unexpectedly.

"You fool! Your brother, Alphonse, your friend, Brosh, and your life is on the line! Do you want me to kill you now?" The General lashed out a fist and rammed it into Ed's unsuspecting jaw line. A bit of red could be seen glinting in the candle light and one could notice that small trickle of blood that now ran down the corner of the alchemist's mouth as he lay spread-eagled on the ground.

But he did not move. He did not need to. The effect was there and throbbing. He did not show fear nor did he flinch as he crashed back down on the earth. That notion alone would be enough to faze Albatross. The villain would be even more motivated to find out just why this person would not break fast enough. Yet that was no matter, not for now anyway.

As Ed attempted to sit up, the man roughly kicked him away, and an incredibly brave man, the brave prisoner man known as prisoner F07, shouted and halted the bulky leader in his tracks before he could continue on with the inflicted abuse upon the older Elric brother.

Albatross was further infuriated than ever. He swiveled on his boots more rapidly than a viper and called down a woman soldier inside the cell, obviously glaring at her emotionless stride as she came in. He pointed a forefinger at F07 and scoffed, growling under his breath and contradicting the agonizing sounds of Denny Brosh's whines. The anger and frustration was then turned onto the doomed man who was quaking and mentally groveling for mercy, but of course none ever came.

General Alik Albatross shoved the tip of his gun into the prisoner's mouth. "You are no longer useful to me," the he stated coolly, and then a bang resounded into the firelight. A bullet lodged itself into the back of the man's head and a scarlet flow of blood spewed out onto the hard cobblestone of the cell as the weapon was roughly taken out.

"Take out the trash," he said to the stoic Drachman soldier clad in dark browns and grays, but it was all the private could do to prevent herself from showing off any fear. And, just like her commanding officer told her to do so, her hands clamped around the dampened and tattered clothing of the dead man and the corpse was dragged out with the sound of unworldly crunches.

She glanced back while the man wasn't looking and for a moment, her black eyes met with the curious golden eyed Amestrian. His eyes widened as if in recognition, but the seconds had already passed by too speedily. The moment had disappeared, but the dawning of understanding between the two had just begun.

"You said, 'it is truth that gives you proper despair so that you do not become conceited.'"

"…so just as you said, I will give you despair."

The next morning, Edward was supposed to have breakfast as a reward for "assisting" Patton and her cronies. Instead, he received a parting gift, that is, from prisoner F07, Brosh's cell partner. It was then that Ed happened to despise Albatross more than anyone that instant, for when he lifted the silvery dome covering of the platter on his tray; he saw the most disturbing meal of them all: a severed human head.

ooo

Roy Mustang walked briskly through the Briggs hallways. Drachman forces were beginning to close in near North City and Gestalt. Things were definitely not looking up for his country. Yet, there was a sliver of hope. That morning, he received a hastily written note on a scrap piece of paper which was concealed within a hand grenade that was thrown directly at him on the battlefield, but it never blew up.

The war is just beginning.

Hell is imminent for everyone in Amestris. Drachmans will say nothing that will taint infinite power. We will conquer now for our nation in rightful conquest in honor of usurped brothers. Drachma will be raised again! You shall wait in earnest, Amestrian, for we kill those in the way!

The war will never end.

It was code, code that only he, his close subordinates, and trusted spies knew. Now, if he took the first letter of every fifth word, starting with the first word after the phrase "The war is just beginning" and before the sentence "The war will never end," the message would look something like this:

The war is just beginning.

The war will never end.

In other words, the message plainly read: He's in Rurik.

Yes, that was a Drahman prison hold, and with his spy connection, he could find his lost subordinate. It was time to discuss plans with Alphonse Elric. It was time to break Edward Elric out of prison.

He smirked as he strode over to the room where the younger Elric brother was resting for a while. The fighting was under a standstill for a few hours as both sides needed to recuperate and rest up for the battles that would commence the next day. He knocked on the door and genuinely smiled when the entrance was opened to him.

"We have a plan now, Alphonse," Mustang said, "It's time to get your brother out now that we know where they took him. I guess the shrimp has been waiting long enough."

AN: Xingese Water Torture equals Chinese Water Torture

Rurik means "famous power" in Russian.

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