The Waters of Lethe
Disclaimer: I don't own FMA, I just like to play around in it's world and torture Ed for a while. On the other hand, I DO claim ownership of any OCs I've created.
Author's note: post series. Some movie events may happen, but differently.
Summary: Deep under control of the Puppermaster drug, Edward is having a mostly terrifying waking nightmare.
Warning: violence, death, and bad language. Possible sex.
Lyrics: "Attack Ships On Fire" by Ministry, although I prefer the version by Luc van Acker.
Beta: Took-baggins
69. The Long Nightmare, Part B (Der lange Albtraum)
Time and time and time again,
Tossing and turning and freezing and burning.
Time and time and time again,
Another bad dream and another dead ending.
He came to in a room he didn't recognize.
White was his first impression. There was a canopy over the bed, hung with white mosquito netting, and thebed sheets were also white. He turned his head to his right. A wooden chair and a large bedside table, both painted white stood next to the bed. On top of the table was a white enamel basin with a white washcloth balanced upon its rim. Next to the basin was a small clear glass bottle full of white pills, an empty cup and a glass carafe half-full of water.
Edward looked to his left, but it was another white wall. This one was punctuated by a window, but it was covered by white gauze curtains so thick, he couldn't see outside. A cool breeze ruffled them and came through the netting to play over his sweaty face. He picked restlessly at the sheets with his flesh hand; they were crisp with far too much starch and smelled of bleach. A strong tremor ran through him and he moaned softly before he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
Someone somewhere wake me up.
Someone somewhere wake me up.
Someone somewhere wake me up.
Someone somewhere WAKE ME UP!
When he came to a second time, Lust was bending over him while she daubed his face with a washcloth. She was dressed in a white uniform, its severe lines doing little to hide her luscious curves, with a small white cap pinned to black hair scraped back from her face and tied into a tight bun at the back of her head. A silver metal nametag pinned above one ample breast said "Desiree" and she appeared to be a normal nurse until he looked more closely at her eyes. She had none, just gaping black caverns with edges that shone red and wet.
Her face was pale yellow and the skin was of a translucent paper-like consistency, as if it would tear easily. Deep lines scored from her nose, past her mouth and down to her chin. More lines radiated, like wheel spokes from the corners of her eyes, and horizontally on her forehead. Her mouth wore lipstick of too red a shade, thickly and inexpertly applied and Edward could see more lines around her mouth as if her lips were often pursed around a cigarette.
Desiree finished daubing his face, straightened up and walked two steps to the white basin on the bedside table where she swished the cloth in the water and twisted it dry with a quick motion like she was breaking someone's neck. Edward shivered involuntarily at the sight, and again when she approached him with the freshly dampened cloth. He closed his eyes before she dabbed the sweat off his forehead.
"You poor thing," she crooned in the same tone of voice Lust used and it made goose flesh pop up on Edward's arms to hear those words spoken by the doppelganger of the homunculus who used to be his enemy. "Other have always used you for their own ends: Colonel Mustang, Dante, Winry, your father and even your own brother. It's time you stood up for youself."
Desiree folded the cloth and set it next to the basin before she picked up the water carafe and poured a few splashes into the glass. Next, she picked up the pill bottle, tipped one onto the palm of her left hand and placed it between Edward's lips. The hand she slid underneath his shoulders was as cold as ice as she lifted him into a sitting position, Desiree seemed unnaturally strong because she firmly held him up with just one hand while she tilted the glass against his mouth with the other. He drank and swallowed while carefully not looking at her face.
"Try to get some sleep now," she ordered while setting him back onto his pillow and pulling one sheet up to his chin. The mattress opened lengthwise, like a gigantic toothless mouth that swallowed Edward whole, so fast he didn't have time to scream.
Time and time and time again,
Same old story till the night-time ends.
TIme and time and time again,
Same dark covers and same dark lens.
He woke up a third time with a strong feeling he wasn't alone and the moment he opened his eyes a face on either side of the bed popped into his field of view. Two men wearing identical crisp white tunics, identical thin smiles, identical blue eyes and identical red hair.
The doctors Faust, Phillip and Thomas.
However, they were not identical twins. The man on Edward's left was extremely fat, his face was as round and red as a cherry pie, the skin straining to hold all the Faust-ness inside. Even his eyes were round and portrubent like over-filled balloons about ready to pop. The other man was the exact opposite, so exceedingly thin he would have disappeared if he turned sideways. His face and eyes were long and narrow, ending in a chin so pointed it could have doubled as an ice pick. Both doctors were such caricatures of body types they could be identical only in that sense.
"He's awake, brother," said the fat Dr. Faust and even his voice was roly-poly, although not particularly jolly sounding.
"Yes, he is," agreed his svelte brother, the other Dr. Faust, who had a deep, lugubrious voice to go along with his face.
Both flashed their teeth at the same time in identical wide grins, but they weren't nice smiles. These were smiles which gave children partularly frigthening dreams of toothy monsters lurking in closets or underneath beds. Nasty nightmare beings which skittered along wooden floors from rug to rug, using them as cover while they drew closer to their prey...
Edward was an adult but it made him shiver with the bolt of fear which suddenly ran through him because the motion looked highly uncomfortable for the Doctors Faust, as if they weren't used to smiling quite so broadly. Almost as if they were nearly, but not just quite human.
"We have to talk," said the fat Dr. Faust and he narrowed his eyes, which was a tough task for although the folds of fat around them were willing, but the eyes didn't want to play along.
"About what?" Edward ventured in a small voice which died away when he swallowed hard and shrank back against his pillow at the annoyed gleam that flashed in their eyes. THey apparently didn't like to be interrupted by patients.
"About your guilt," came the answer from both of them at once. "It has to come out before it eats you alive."
Time and time and time again,
I wake up screaming and I wake up dead.
Time and time and time again,
Wake up sweating and out of my head.
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Edward thought he'd only blinked, but maybe he'd blacked out. He opened his eyes and found himself in another white room, and he could see at once this one was different. He was naked and lay upon a stone table so cold he felt stuck to it. Only his head could move and he swung it back and forth to take in his new surroundings. This room had no windows and it was mostly bare of furnishings, except for a lamp on a tall pole at the foot of the table and against a far wall, two smaller tables draped with stained white cloths. Each table was supported by a thin wooden pedestal which in turn was held up by four bent wooden legs which ended not in wheels but human-shaped feet. Lumps underneath the cloths caused Edward to suspect they were instrument trays.
This was an operating room.
Feeling bored, he made a closer inspection of the table he lay upon because it didn't look quite like the usual piece of operating room equipment. This wasn't covered with sheets and a thin mattress, but was entirely bare and had deep grooves carved into it near the edges. Plus his head wasn't supported by a pillow, but instead with something hard and unyielding, like a wooden block. He looked down at the end of the table and eyed a hole between his feet with suspicion. Something was wrong here, very very wrong.
A memory came unbidden to his mind. During one of his many hospitalizations, an orderly pushed him in a creaking wooden wheelchair to the solarium to get some sun. But the orderly was new at the University hospital, he became lost in the maze of corridors and they somehow ended up in the basement of the vast building. While searching for someone to give them directions, they'd passed the open door of one room and saw inside row after row of sheet draped bodies lying on tables. Both Edward and the orderly were staring in shock when an amused looking mortuary student walked up. The orderly asked for the directions, and the student informed them that was not the solarium, but the morgue. "You're not going to get muich sun here boy," he'd replied with what he probably thought was a dry chuckle, but Edward considered it rather creepy. He was bothered enough not to be rude to the man because he just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
This was an operating room, but he laid upon an autopsy table.
The instant that thought crossed Edward's mind, straps suddenly came from over the sides of the table, across his legs, arms and shoulders. THey tightened and held him fast, he cried out once in alarm and thrashed against his new bonds, but as the way of nightmares, he couldn't shift them.
Then the Doctors Faust were there, one on either side as before. "Now, now," chided the fat Doctor. "Can't have you running away before we operate, now can we?" He chuckled once before both Fausts burst into laughter, a disturbing black sound which reinforced Edward's opinion the Fausts were only pretending to be human and rapidly getting bored with the whole business too.
The thin Dr. Faust turned his head and whistled in the direction of the two cloth-draped tables and to Edward's complete horror, they came running in response. One stopped next to the thin brother while the other went around the stone table to the fat brother. The feet of each hit the floor in a manner which parodied the innocent patter of children's feet and it seemed even inatimate objects weren't normal at the Faust Clinic.
The doctors Faust each put a hand upon the cloth, absentminded pats to which the tables responded with unnerving little titters, like the chatter of alien birds and they uttered tiny little shrieks like shattering glass when the cloths were suddenly yanked off and Edward moaned aloud with fear when he saw the inistruments.
They weren't the sterile and shiny chrome instruments lined up into a neat rows he'd been expecting. Instead, this was a jumbled pile of the most wickedly sharp tools of torture Edward had ever seen: gigantic scissors, scalpels with curving serrated blades, strangely twisted probes, forceps big enough to encircle a person's skull. These instruments also appeared to be alive for they shifted against each other with clanking sounds and whispered in cold metal voices like mosquito hums. As Edward watched, a scissor pounced upon a probe that writhed like a blind worm and began to hack it into pieces while it screamed with a shrill sound that drilled straight into his brain.
These instruments weren't clean, either. They were either reddened with rust or blackened with mold, sometimes both. All were spotted with flaking brown patches which resembled dried blood. Not that the Doctors Faust seemed bothered by a little insterility because each reached into the squiriming mass which attacked their hands before they pulled out two scalpels apiece.
"Let us begin," they intoned as one, bent over Edward's midsection and began to cut, humming as if they were contented bees making honey. The skin lept apart as the scalpels cut, hissing like two angry tomcats circling and spoiling for a fight. Edward could see a glaring eye on the side of each scalpel, and when one noticed him watching and it chuckled with a voice like sandpaper.
For all his fear, Edward noticed he wasn't bleeding nor was he in pain, but just when he began to relax a little a new sound, a keening noise like mourning women was heard coming from inside the cavity the doctors were opening in his abdomen. 'There it is!" shouted the thin Dr. Faust. "Grab it before it notices! Don't let it get away!"
They tossed the scalpels over their shoulders and reached down into Edward, they tugged hard while uttering piglike grunts of effort,and then with one final jerk pulled out something so horrid Edward nearly fainted from the shock. It looked vaguely human, but that was the only normal thing about it. It had eight limbs which ended in sharp claws, and a circular mouth edged with long fangs, this monster was black in color when it emerged, but began to rapidly turn pale after exposure to the air. A thick shiny liquid dripped off its body which was studded with what appeared to be numerous tumors, they resolved into faces that screamed silently, dissolved back into the body, and then reformed on another part.
All were people he knew.
Some he hated: the Sins, Dante, Frank Archer, Basque Gran, Shou Tucker, Number 66, Majahal, Mugear, Lieutenant Yoki.
Some he cared about: Nina Tucker, Maes Hughes and his family, Mustang's subordinates, Psiren, the coal miners of Youswell, his friends back in Risembool.
Some he loved: his mother and father, Winry, Izumi & Sig,Granny Pinako - and - ALPHONSE.
"This is your guilt, Edward, it's been dining on you for a very long time, ever since your mother died." the fat doctor explained. "You can't move forward until your guilt is expunged and this is the only way to do it." Each doctor grabbed one of the gigantic scissors off the instrument tray and they whooped with high-pitched sounds of glee, Edward imagined he heard one yell "Yahoo!" before they cut into the guilt-monster. The heads went crazy, shaking madly, dissolving and reforming faster and faster until the guilt was cut cleanly into two halves.
"And now, time for us to dine," said the thin doctor. "Have I told you how much I love eating a good serving of guilt?" The man was already drooling in thick white gobbets which rolled down his chin. Without another word, he bit into his half of the guilt, tearing off large chunks which he barely chewed before he swallowed them. Edward watched in horrified fascination as the Doctors Faust ate in savage haste, small bits of meat and what he supposed was the creature's blood flew all about. Those which landed on the instrument trays were viciously fought over by the remaining scissors, scalpels, probes and forceps with much discordant screeching.
This was all too much for him and he passed out again.
Time and time and time again,
I'm waking up shaking and waking in fright.
Time and time and time again.
Same B-movie in black and white.
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He woke up back in his bed in the white room. Night had fallen and a pale gibbous moon lit up the room almost as bright as day, highlighting the tattered remnents of the net curtains around the bed. Edward frowned and narrowed his eyes. What is going on here? He sat up in bed and the mattress creaked and sent up a strong musty smell as if in protest. He looked over at the window and the curtains were gone, the glass broken, as he watched one shard came loose and fell upon the floor with a loud shattering noise. He jumped reflexively, then looked to his right and received another shock. The table was covered with a thick coat of dust, the carafe empty of water, the drinking glass was broken and the quinine pills in the bottle were spotted with black mold.
Edward moved to get out of bed and in doing so noticed he was still dressed. He took one step, tripped over his suitcase and fell,sprawling inelegently on the floor where he came face to face with what was left of Desiree. She was a skeleton now, barely covered with rotting bits of once white cloth, the pin back of her name tag incongruously looped over one lower rib. A small round hole with cracks running off the edges like a spiders web neatly decorated her skull right above her left eye socket. She lay huddled in the center of the room, a few feet away from another window, her spine twisted as if she'd been shot through the glass, then fallen to land partly on her side. The window was mostly bare of glass, but a piece which remained bore a matching hole. Something screamed in the grounds outside like a dying animal and it spurred Edward to leave the room.
He found himself at the end of a long hall lined with mostly closed doors, he could hear the wind moaning and sobbing underneath them, like people in torment and he was suddenly too afraid to move until a shuddering crash made him leap fully an inch into the air. But it got him to move forward softly and cautiously because the corridor was littlered with bits of fallen plaster which crunched like bones when he stepped on them. Halfway along the hall was a pair of metal double doors which swung slightly in the wind, Edward peered curiously in and he wished he hadn't because there on the floor, lying on either side of the operating/autopsy table were the mummified corpses of the Doctors Faust. Their clothes were just tattered shreds and their mouths were open in silent screams. The once blindingly white walls were blackened now, the lamp pole was broken in half andthe instrument tables lay on their sides,their running days over. They were strangely charred, and the entire room had a strong smell of old ashes to it.
Gorge rose threateningly in his throat at the thought he'd been operated on by dead men, by ghosts and he backed out of the room, before he turned and raced up the corridor. Edward stumbled down a short flight of stairs to a small landing and turned right where he confronted a wide sweeping staircase. Once it had been beautiful and covered with a thick carpet, but now that was worn down to almost nothing and the bare wood of the stairs showed through like bones through a thick layer of dust.
Bones.
The parts of the Faust Clinic he'd seen were reduced to bones, and he didn't particularly want to see the rest, so he descended the stairs was fast as he dared while they creaked ominously beneath his feet as if ready to give way at any time. The grand double doors were open and mostly off their hinges, the stained glass shattered into pieces, the bits on the floor winked in the moonlight like eyes. He didn't see the remains of the Gluttony-butler but assumed they also lay in the house. He looked to his left, there was the parlor where his nightmare had taken its first terrifying turn. No voices whispered "Murderer" this time, but a fresh bolt of fear shot through him again when a single piano note sounded loudly out of tune. Edward wasted no time in sidling out a gap in the doorway, then he was outside in the warm night air.
The dolphin decorated fountain was in ruins, the once water spouting fish lay in the bottom, broken into large pieces of stone. His heart in his throat,Edward cautiously skirted the basin but Envy didn't appear,and headed up the driveway still laid with crushed oyster shell. It shone brighter because most of the trees which once shaded it were down now, blown down by storms. The ones still standing were dead and they creaked, leafless in the wind. The drive was much shorter than he remembered and he was to the gate before he knew it. The gate was also mostly down, but held up by one last desperate hinge, the rusty metal groaned like it was dying. He walked around it, but just before he stepped onto the road, Edward spun around and looked back once last time at the Faust Clinic.
The place looked like it had been the scene of a battle, the once white paint was mutilated by dark scorch marks and large holes. Most of the roof on one wing was entirely gone, the chimneys all collapsed, shutters either hung askew or were gone entirely, and all the window glass was broken out. It exuded an air of deep and abiding sorrow, as if something once promising and beautiful was gone forever. Edward shivered, but not with malaria. Indeed, he felt fine, better than he had felt in a long time, strong even. His earlier weakness had vanished completely.
A train whistle sounded in the distance and it reminded Edward he still had a long way to go on his journey. He squared his shoulders, set his jaw and started back towards town at a quick walk. Neither Mariebelle, the faceless band nor the town appeared to him again.
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"Wake up, brother."
Edward's eyes snapped open and he slowly sat up in bed when his arm was tugged on. Alphonse put one hand underneath Edward's left elbow and he stood up before he was steered into the bathroom. There Alphonse took off Edward's pajama shirt before he wet a washcloth in warm water he'd already filled the sink with and washed his face, arms, chest and back. While he worked, Alphonse softly hummed a tune, a half-remembered lullaby their mother had sung to them when they were little.
Then Alphonse steered Edward back into the bedroom where he dressed him in clean clothes. Edward sat unmoving and unseeing in a chair while his hair was brushed and gathered up into a high ponytail. Alphonse held a hand mirror up to Edward's face and said in a bright voice, "You're looking very nice today, Brother." But Edward's only movment was a brief twitching of his left cheek and Alphonse sighed in resignation. He shook another pill from the bottle, broke it in half and stowed one half in his pants pocket, the other he set between Edward's lips and then gently tipped a water glass against his teeth until he drank. Alphonse stroked Edward's throat with an index finger until he saw his swallow reflex, then he took his elbow again and got him seated at the table. He took the cover off a china plate containing a steaming mass of scrambled eggs accompanied by fat brown sausages, put a fork into Edward's left hand and urged gently,"Eat your breakfast, Brother."
He turned away to take the Rocketeer's breakfast to him and therefore he didn't see the single tear which erupted from the tear dcut in Edward's right eye and rolled slowly down his face. Edward put food in his mouth, chewed and swallowed automatically so he never noticed it himself.
On the outside.
On the inside.
Siomeone, somewhere...
Deep in Edward's subconscious, the Id and the Ego looked nervously upward at the loud booming noises which came from all about them. A deep crack in the ice began at the shoreline of the pond and rippled all the way across, sending ripples of smaller cracks off to the side. The snow stopped falling and the layer already on the ground began to melt. The clouds shrouding the sky were thinning and the unseen sun struggled to break through.
When Alphonse returned to Edward's room, he uncovered his own breakfast, picked up his fork and then looked over at his brother before he began to eat.
He dropped the fork.
Edward was still eating like an automaton, but his face was covered with tears which rolled down his face and dripped onto his breakfast. The something which gripped Alphonse's heart for the past month loosened its hold and under a sudden impulse, he got up and went around the table to hug his brother and kiss his forehead. He could hardly wait to tell Rose Edward seemed to be coming out of this terrible walking coma.
WAKE ME UP!