She stood with her palms pressed against the door, her face was a bright shade of scarlet and she could hear her heart beat in her ears at the close call that just happened. Not moving until his footsteps were no longer able to be heard, she rested her warm face on the cool wooden door in front of her; wrapping her left arm around her lower stomach, around the scar that would never leave.

"Damn it…"

Ed would never admit how much she despised those scars, each one giving her memories of fights that had gone wrong, each one a fresh slap to the face. But there was one thing she hated more than her scars.

People seeing them.

When people see them, they tend to think things along the line of 'poor thing', or 'I wonder what happened?' both of which annoyed Ed to no end. Pity and questions, they always end up being something thrown at her at every new meeting, with every secret spilled there will be more of both. It's like that monster in the old myths, you chop off one head and two grow back. Kyoya would come back with more questions, or he would find out on his own, just like Hughes.

"Damn it!"

The blonde had her fist pulled back; ready to punch a splintered hole through the door that had been so comforting to her moments before when a small noise stopped her mid swing. She looked down as the noise maker rubbed against her ankle. It was one of the stray kittens that she had saved on a rainy day. Alphonse would have cried if he was still able to at the fact that now was the time that she allowed the strays. Now he was never going to see it.

Ed slowly lowered herself to the ground, her real knee having gone weak. Once she was fully seated, the kitten crawled onto her lap, mewing the whole time, only stopping to purr once Ed raised a shaky hand to stroke it behind its ears. After a while she picked it up, holding it to her chest and rubbing her cheek against the top of its head. Her nose started doing that weird burning thing and her throat started clenching, tell-tale signs that she was about to start crying again. With her back relaxed against the door, she curled her legs towards her chest, helping her prop the kitten up.

"You know, right now, I really should be pissed at the fact that a guy almost saw my top half naked, and yet here I am, crying once again, at nothing in particular." She took in a shaky breath as the tears started rolling down her cheeks once again. "I really hate crying, you know that? It makes my face feel warm, and the tears make my cheeks itch…" With a small sniff to stop her running nose, she tried to keep it at that, not wanting to break down and sob again. That was even worse than crying. It was loud, it gave her the hiccups, and she always had a headache afterwards. That and it was usually the key trigger to her coughing up blood.

Even though she didn't want to think about it, even though she tried so hard to block it all out and play the happy girl they wanted her to be, thousands of images started flashing before her eyes, making a movie that she wanted to rewind, one that never started before the first scene.

The father that never left his study, only for business trips that lasted months at a time. Him leaving for good, not even saying goodbye to his children as he walked out of the door.

The Mother collapsing, her being extremely ill, her hand going limp in the young girls, her last words being about the missing father.

Ed trembled at the thought of how sad Al was at the funeral, about how she practically forced him to train just for something he didn't truly believe was possible. Her chest was beginning to get tight again, beginning to ache.

All of that knowledge being crammed into her brain by force, her crying for it to stop. The thing that come out instead of their mother, the cracked bones, mutilated skin, and slimy guts; how it spat out crimson blood as it reached for her while she cried out how it wasn't supposed to be like this. Ed was clutching at her leg as she looked at the pile of clothes that was all that was left of Alphonse, the indescribable pain of nerves split in two, the pooling blood and missing bone. The tang of Alchemic charge was still in the air, some thick smoke left over from the transmutation.

In the silence of the room you could hear the gripping of fabric as the young teen clutched her pants where her Automail port was, and maybe, if you listened even harder, you could hear the noise of teeth grinding as she broke into a cold sweat, it was starting again, both in her leg and shoulder, and it would slowly spread. It would start out as an irritating itch, Phantom pains, then it would start burning, and lastly, it would hurt like hell. But still, it was only beginning, that itch that couldn't be scratched, for the flesh that wanted to be soothed wasn't there anymore.

She tipped over the armor, knowing that she would have to give something up again, but she didn't care, she just couldn't be alone, she couldn't make it without her brother. She scratched the seal on using her bloodied appendage, the rough nails on a chalk board chill ran up her spine, then she made some transmutation circles on herself with that same finger, going through all of that pain again just in the hope she was correcting her wrongs.

The kitten had run off by now as Ed had begun to squeeze into herself. After the flash backs began the pain had started as well, much sooner than normal, though it wasn't uncommon. Though, unfortunately for her, when the pain came fast it lasted for a long amount of time.

This wasn't good. Her chest was starting to feel prickly again.

Ed slumped to the side with hard labored breaths and curled into the fetal position. She was holding onto her arms, the automail one leaving bruises on the flesh as she tried to hide from the pain. Her gold hair splayed around her head in curls, it being down in a rare show of how ill she had felt. The coughs come out wet and raspy, the fits leaving her gasping for air and her body weak, the warm blood slowly dribbling from the side of her mouth. Even if the room was dark with the lights off to help her sleep, the curtains let in a sliver of light that lit up the puddle of the thick crimson substance that sustained her life.

The Tucker incident, the little girl that they should have been able to save before anything happened.

'Big…Sister…Can we play now?'

Ed punching Tucker in the face, the disfigured and distorted girl stopping her before she could kill the guilty man, the guy who had tortured someone the Elric siblings had considered a little sister.

When she wasn't having a flash back, she stared at the steadily growing puddle, strangely entranced by its morbid charm. She had seen it many times leaking from her body or someone else's. From a cut on her arm, her leg, a cut above her eye, a bleeding stump, a beam protruding from her gut. From a bruised cheek pounded by her fist, from a stabbed arm, from an impaled stomach.

After her fifth harsh couching fit her phantom pains showed no sign of leaving, she tried to ignore it all, to go in a trance by staring at the familiar red.

Red flames licking up a house, you could hear crashing glass and popping wood along with the cries on Winry.

'Huh, so the flash backs aren't in order anymore?' she thought to herself as she sighed. Then she gritted her teeth to stop herself from coughing for the millionth time.

'I don't want anyone to see me like this. My face is probably stained with tears and blood, and I probably look like shit…huh, I must look pretty weak now. And I don't think I could look any weaker, being a half metal chick with scars that pucker out of my skin and a puddle of blood under my head.'

. . .

Mustang sighed from his side of the train cart, with his new rank as Brigadier General he was able to get one for his whole team to share by themselves. They all had pull down cots that had railings that you could set up so you wouldn't fall down. They were all set up, though none of them were being used. Most of his team sat in the middle of the aisle playing a game of poker since they couldn't fall asleep. Hawkeye wasn't the only one to look up at his sigh.

This wasn't his first sigh, this was about his fiftieth.

"This is the last time I am asking you before I actually take out my gun. Sir, is something the matter? We all know you're worried about how Ed is doing with her cousin considering what we found out about her health, but we're all worried, you know that, right?" she asked, setting her hand of cards facedown. "This isn't like you to show your worry to obviously in the first place."

"It isn't so much her health I am worried about Hawkeye, it's her state of mind." He continued to stare out the window as the train rattled on, his team burning imaginary eyeball holes into the side of his head while he ignored them.

Roy needed to get his thoughts straightened out. He just didn't understand why she left. Didn't she want to stay around those that she knows love her and would take care of her? No, of course not. She would try and hide the fact that she was sick, and so she left to a place that had no idea what was going on with her yet.

"You don't look like you're doing too hot either!" yelled a voice right in his face, one that he was sure didn't belong to any of his teammates.

"Gwah!" Mustang gave out a very 'manly' yelp as he fell off his cot, looking up to see a teen clad in white pants and a yellow jacket with white trim. He stared, wide-eyed at him. "Wait, you're Ling, right? What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn't you be ruling Xing or something?!" he yelled, pointing a finger at the grinning emperor.

"I was on my way home, actually. I just finished some business with your new ruler. But when I heard you were in this cart I thought I would drop by and pay a visit!" he said, making himself comfortable on Mustangs cot. "So where are you headed?" he asked casually.
"Where we are headed is none of your concern." grumbled the raven haired man as he stood up from the floor, about to yell at the teen when he saw him reading Ed's medical files. "Shit, you weren't-!" He roughly wiped at his face as Hawkeye stood to see what the problem was. She pulled out her gun and aimed it at the stock still teen, and it surprised them both at how quiet he was.

"I'm going with you. I don't care what you have to say to try and stop me." Ling set down the medical files and stared at the sheets below him. "I was finally able to ditch my guards, so you won't have many people to add on your little 'trip'."

Mustang moved to stare up at him in disbelief, his dark eyes narrowing. "Look-"

Ling's head snapped up. He gave the brigader general a fiery glare that froze him in his tracks, then angrily spoke just above a whisper. "I am going with you."

Chii: Sorry it's a bit short compared to the last one! I worked really hard to make this one realistic and I looked the medical stuff up and everything!

Chapter by: CheetahLover101

Next chapter by: Silver Quil