"I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or any other already copyrighted material I may have missed." Leans in close and whispers, (doesn't mean I can't dream)...

Some of the summary is meant to scare off people who spook easy. You won't be considered weak if you don't read this. Think of people going insane and chewing off the faces of shrieking victims. FYI this actually happens. Rated M with good reason. Won't get bad till around halfway through the fic and this is a long fic. Then the gore and guts and puss and maggots and torture (sometimes all at once) gets a bit excessive.

THIS IS NOT A YAOI! In the words of the great and powerful Yoda, that I do not own the copy write for, "You must unlearrrn what you have learned." And that goes for all the sick-minded readers; you know who you are!

GO TO MY PROFILE FOR MORE INFORMATION.

Broken Stride

By … Fullmetal Angyl

I.e. K L. Nelson

Ch.4 Enemies?

Part 2

The silence stretched on for what seemed like hours, but it was probably closer to a few minutes.

"Colonel?"

He turned back to Edward and gave the boy his full attention. "I'm no doctor, but I don't think the eye itself is damaged. It's just out of alignment. The tissues that connect it to the muscles that move it were probably damaged. It could be fixable or even heal on its own."

Roy seemed to calm a bit and sighed, then looked back down at the puppy on his lap. "Well, what are we going to do about that?" He seemed to be reacting to things a bit closer to normal.

"I don't know, but I don't think she's a threat."

"Oh no. Don't you even think about it." He took a breath and held it for a second to calm his nerves.

"I named her Nina..."

The infuriated look that crossed his superior's face was as sudden as it was frightening and Edward leaned back and tried to sink his head into his shoulders.

"How dare you... I'm half blind and you just informed me that I broke a pipe with my head. I'm suffering brain damage And You Are Trying To Take Advantage Of That By Telling Me That You Named It After A Dead Girl! It's The Product Of Illegal Experiments And For All We Know Was Made To Be An Offensive Weapon! How Dare You Pull This Shit On Me!"

He didn't ever want to yell like that again, not at Edward. The kid was suffering enough without Roy piling on the stress, but at the moment he couldn't help it... and he found that more that a bit alarming. For no apparent reason he just felt pissed...

"I'm Not Asking For Anything, I'm Telling You This So You Don't Ship Her Off To A Lab The Moment We Get Out Of Here! I Don't Want You Making Any Decisions When You're In This Condition!" He looked genuinely scared and the elder alchemist was cursing off the whole situation to hell and back. He still couldn't tell why he felt so mad. Edward's eyes reminded him way to close for comfort of recent events. At the time he had been just too pissed to see that the boy was backed to the cliffs edge, and all it took was a shouting match to throw him over. After everything he's suffered...

"Her Mom Died While She Was Licking The Blood Off Her Face! She Cried In My Arms Over It, Like A Human! Please, I Just Don't Want Anything To Happen To Her!"

Those words got him, they really did. Great, it's personal, Roy thought grimly to himself. And he's already attached... He'd been trying his hardest to keep things easy for the boy since his latest trauma and the last thing the kid needed was more heartbreak. He needed help, needed to be with people who cared about him and were willing to show him that he mattered. After all those years of thinking that he knew what Edward was like inside, to have been so abruptly shown how wrong he was had shook him to the core. Him far worse than anyone else because he had actually been there. Roy had seen the trauma of it all first hand, not just the aftermath at the hospital. He blamed himself for the whole incident. Edward was both an orphaned kid and his subordinate and in the Flame's eyes that made Fullmetal 'his' responsibility.

"Roy, I'm not a kid getting attached to some cute, dumb puppy. I am telling you right now that she is not some unstable abomination. I have already seen more than enough to convince me that those animals were sentient. And damn smart at that."

All those years of thinking Edward hated him. If Roy suspected otherwise, even for a moment, he would have offered the brothers a home long ago. He even had the fuehrer's blessings to adopt them. Not wanting to see that fear another second he looked down and away, but it only gave him a better view is something just as tragic, the cuff on Ed's wrist. So he closed his eyes.

"I know that she's a potentially dangerous unknown, but I won't have her caged and experimented on. If we can't take her in then we need to find someone who can. Someone we can trust. They'll have to know what she is. Hawkeye has a dog, the Hughes's have Elicia and Breda would probably piss himself if we suggested it so they're out of the picture. The only ones I can think of are Havoc, Fury, Fallman or Armstrong."

Roy still felt angry and he couldn't explain it. Something just felt wrong. Sometimes he could think with a somewhat reasonable amount of clarity, other times he spent minutes at a time just fitting words with the proper definition and then trying to hold onto the words he'd already gone over long enough to say something understandable. All the while fighting to retain everything Edward was telling him. Trying to do so much was causing him to miss entire statements. He was having an easy time registering their conversation for the moment, but it was something that Roy knew could go downhill at any second. At least I'm aware there's a problem, he reasoned.

His attention was reverted back to the boy when a shutter ran through Edward. He wasn't looking up at Roy anymore, he was facing the opposite wall with his eyes and face downcast and his expression had turned to that of exhaustion and pain. His skin had paled visible in those few seconds and he seemed to have gone cold out of nowhere. Tiredly Roy pulled his left glove off with his teeth and let it drop, pressing his shaky hand to Edward's forehead. Forget cold, he was outright hypothermic. He was breathing heavier and suddenly clung to Roy shivering.

"Ed?"

There was no response. Then it occurred to him that Edward had nothing between his bare back and the cold stone wall. Being smaller meant less body heat to spare and the automail wasn't helping any. So he decided to switch places and started pulling away and off his shoulder.

The resulting deep-throated shriek left Roy wondering if there would be another cave-in as Nina jumped and scrambled out of the blanket almost faster than he could blink. Edward was shaking hard, wide eyed and clenching his teeth so tight that he worried the boy might brake something. His jaw was buckling under the strain.

"please..." He shut his eyes and lowered his head a bit, barely able to do more than whimper simple words through his teeth. "my shoulder... don't move..." His voice ended in a strained pitch and the tears came faster than he could stop them, but with his shoulder feeling like someone was stuffing the punctures with white-hot embers he couldn't care less. It was like someone was reattaching automail over and over again. Now that Roy had lifted off it the blood was rushing back into the once numb limb, the pain worsening by the second with no hope of relief.

Roy understood in an instant and did as he was begged. The scream had shook his nerves a bit, but the feel of something wet sliding down his arm and side where Ed's shoulder was put him in a mild panic. Edward had been bitten. He'd been thrashed about by his shoulder like a rag doll. All that struggling would have loosened his flesh from the bone and poured into him whatever salivated toxins or venoms the beast had. Then again, it could have just had an infectiously dirty mouth like certain oversized, man-eating lizards. It would explain why a dog-like chimera would have a thick, reptilian shaped tail. If that was the case, being shook about for as long as he had been would have flooded his system with infection. And he could only guess at the combination of animals and chemicals that when into the their creation.

Roy didn't think he had the coordination to check the pulse in Ed's neck without hitting him and he didn't want to even touch his real arm; so, being careful to not shift his weight, he reached past the wound and pressed his hand gently over the center of Edward's chest. The boy's heart was hammering so hard he almost thought he could see the skin moving. Next came the eyes.

"Edward, look my way." There was no response as he kept his eyes shut tight and his head pressed back to the wall. Roy cautiously lifted his hand from Edward's chest to the opposite side of his face and pulled just enough to turn his head. "Ed, please. Open your eyes and look at me, I need to see them." Slowly he did as he was asked and just as Roy suspected they were dilated.

"I need to move."

"Please, no..." Edward begged.

"I'm just pulling away to look at your shoulder, I'm not going to touch it."

Roy leaned away and Edward hissed from the lack of pressure, but when he tried to brace an arm against the wall to keep from falling back it gave way and he nearly hit Ed right in the wound. It surprised him just how off balance he was as he tried to pull away enough to straiten out his legs without leaning back into him, shoving the blanket away as he did. The muscles wouldn't cooperate and his legs weren't any better. If anything they were worse. He'd never felt so physically pathetic and helpless before, like a sick kitten. Pressing down on the ground his lifted himself barely enough to get his lower body over Ed's automail leg. In as controlled a manner as possible Roy let himself just topple over and away. He lay there breathing for just a moment; then dragged himself over beside Edward. Shaking from the effort he pushed himself back up so he was sitting against the wall and was forced to spend over a minute just catching his breath. At least now he could inspect the injury.

Now knowing exactly what the wet stuff he'd felt sliding down his skin was he wanted to vomit. The wound was an ugly, livid color and he wished to hell and back that he had something to clean it with. It was one nasty piece of work. The infection was bad enough and had it been away from his body, like a hand or a foot, it probably would have been amputated, but it was close to his heart and spreading. He'd never before seen a living person rot. For a moment he thought of using his gloves, but fire wouldn't be enough to sterilize such a deep and extensive infection and it bothered him that he had even considered it in the first place. For him it was common sense. And it wasn't even an option with the gloves as damp as they were. Why was he thinking so slowly?

Edward was scared enough as it was and Roy wanted nothing to do with anything that would make matters worse. "From here I'd say this probably feels worse than it looks. Try to calm your heart and take slow breaths. Like you said, we aren't going anywhere. Don't force yourself to stay awake. Sleep if you can."

Ed cracked a vague grin at that. "No prob there... I'm ready to pass out..." Not three breaths later he slumped back and let his head hang.

Breathing a sigh of relief Roy pulled the boy away from the wall and wrapped his arms around him under the arms from behind, then pulled him up onto his lap. He slid his right leg out from under him and stretched it out against the wall. Edward was lain back in the man's arms while Roy's other leg shifted and slid up so Roy was resting sideways into the wall and Edward was using him like a lounge chair. It took some doing, but he managed to pull the blanket around his shoulders and the excess was wrapped around Ed; there was more than enough to cover them both. He didn't leave the youth's automail out to freeze and sap away his energy and with their combined heat the metal started warming up. Using the blanket that way left Roy's boots exposed, but they were shirtless and it was the most efficient way to trap in as much heat as possible.

He had wanted to adopt the brothers for years. Now one was gone and the other was left half crazed in mourning, depressed nearly to the point of clinical insanity. Frankly he had no clue as to just what it was that kept the kid going. He'd lost so much that just to breathe must be agony. Roy knew even now that if left alone to dwell on the pain long enough Edward would try it again. To him it was a stone cold fact. And just the thought of him succeeding was more than he could bare. It was enough to force tears out of him on several occasions, usually over a bottle of vodka.

Often he was reminded of Ishbal, the feel of his pistol pressed up under his chin. The utter finality of it all. Roy knew the feeling all too well. If Dr. Marco hadn't stopped him he would have pulled that trigger. There had been an emptiness; an utter lack of thought wherein all he could feel was the pain. Nothing to stop himself. All Roy wanted was for the pain to go away and all he had to do was pull that little trigger, how could that be bad? It took the voice of another to snap him out of it.

"Hang in there, son," he whispered his words softly into the boy's hair as the tears fell. Hoping, praying they were heard. "Just hang in there."

A faint, strained whistle drew his attention to the opposite wall and his eyes settled on a shaking, piebald powder puff. Her eyes shown watery in the light and she stepped closer crouching low to the ground like she'd been beaten into submission before. Something about it pulled at the heart strings as he wondered if she had been abused. Probably... The fur under her eyes glistened with shed tears. Sentient huh? She seemed harmless enough, so scared and helpless. He sighed in defeat and muttered,"I must be out of my mind." Lightly he patted the blanket and she walked up a bit faster, shoving her nose under the blanket and nestling against his leg. Careful to not shift his weight he stretched out his arm and pressed a gentle hand over the bump in the blanket. The unexpected touch caused it to jump, but he left his hand there a moment longer before stroking it. Soon soft, kitten-like purring could be heard through the warm spot in the blanket and he allowed himself a small grin.

Human or not he'd managed to comfort 'one' lost soul.

In the words of Dr. Frankenstein, "IT'S ALIVE!!!"

Yes, I live still.

Sorry this took so long. Most of the stuff with a more poetic flow was written long ago. Many segments would have been in more detail and sounded less like a monotonous list of step-by-step instructions if I wasn't so damn impatient! I just said the hell with it and even cut some stuff so I could post it faster!

Sorta wondering just how many of you thought I had given up on this fic or died. If I never post again assume that I am either dead or in a coma and please joke about all the funny ways my life may have ended; at least 'someone' will get a laugh out of it.