So here I am again. I hope I corrected all the life/live errors. I always try to learn from my mistakes so please tell me if you find some others. I appreciate critique.

Thanks for all your positive reviews, they really encourage me to keep the story going :)

Chapter 7

Colonel in the basement

Edward managed to get into the office seemingly unnoticed by the colonel. Though when Mustang left for his private office he gave Edward a pointed look, indicating that he meant what he said in his letter and was waiting for Ed to talk. The young alchemist buried himself in his work.

During lunch he caught the colonel silently analysing the food on his plate, obviously trying to figure out how Edward had managed to lose weight even though he always ate with the rest of the team and still devoured his normal, bigger than average, portion of food. He still didn't seem to get that maybe lunch was the only meal Ed ate during these days.

After reading the note concerning his weight, Edward had with a dumbfound expression realised that this indeed caused his pants to sit more loosely on his hips. So he pulled his belt a little tighter before he buckled it, but still didn't think about maybe starting his day with breakfast and end it with dinner. His body was functioning just fine without, so he didn't see a reason to go out and buy food and have all the restaurant owners who knew the kid with the gigantic appetite quite well ask where his companion in the armour was. And he didn't want something in his stomach only to bring it up again when he, against all odds, fell asleep in the dorm room and a nightmare made his insides churn.

Finally, Mustang gave him a disapproving look when he left headquarters that day. Ed could tell that the colonel would start thinking about how to make Ed speak now because the younger alchemist still didn't seem to want to do so out of his own will.

He mostly managed to ignore Mustang during the next morning and the colonel let it be because he had after all promised Ed that he'd wait two nights until he started forcing the boy to talk. It was after lunch when they were back in the office and just about to start working again when there was a knock at the door. Havoc went to get it and received a folder from a soldier from Investigations. He thanked the guy and went over to his desk, thumping through the papers.

"So, what did they find?", Mustang asked from were he was sitting behind his own desk.

"Well, the poor guy who was send to visit the guy who graduated with you said that...what's his name again... ah, Garber, is really creepy but has no chance to get out of that mental ward. Also his psychological profile didn't seem to allow for him to do these ugly killings." He skimmed the profile. "Apparently the reason why he's there in the first place is 'cause he...well...he can't live with the number of death he caused in Ishbal.", Havoc said slowly, eyeing Mustang carefully over the edge of the paper. The colonel's face didn't change.

"Continue.", was all he said.

"Well Garber is on a permanent guilt trip and tries to kill himself at every chance he gets, saying he doesn't deserve to live anymore. What is worse is that he also has a habit of trying to talk people into killing him by giving them every gruesome detail of his time in Ishbal. His favourite target for this are other soldiers who have been there as well. He tries to talk them into feeling too guilty to live too, so they would shoot him and then themselves. That's why the shrink says he wouldn't kill anybody but himself, and well indirectly those he talks into blowing their brains out by themselves."

They sat there in silence before Mustang turned to Hawkeye. "Did you know this?", he asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I met him once, only for a few minutes, the last day he was still part of the military. I didn't know he made a habit out of toying with people's minds, I just thought he hated you in particular. But he was discharged and put in that ward the next day, so I didn't think it was necessary to mention."

Mustang raised his second eyebrow in confusion. "Why would he hate me, I never really had anything to do with him?"

"Well, he seemed to be kind of...jealous."

"Jealous?" Mustang snorted. "I was hardly something to be jealous about during these times."

Hawkeye didn't seem to like Mustang calling himself a something, but continued to explain. "Well he said something about how unfair it was that even though you were almost at the top of the list and he was at the bottom, you still managed to get away sane and with the title hero whilst he was broke down"

"Well then he obviously thought too much about the opinions of some war crazy soldiers.", Mustang said dismissively.

The colonel turned to Havoc again, obviously about to ask him to continue, when Fuery wanted to know: "What list?" Again Mustang was about to say something dismissive but this time Falman was faster.

"During the Ishbal Rebellion some soldiers started a variety of betting pools about the alchemists. The most infamous ones were one about which alchemist would kill off the most Ishbalans and one about which alchemist would go crazy first. This resulted in some kind of ranking lists.", the warrant officer spouted off the informations, like he always did when such questions occurred.

"Oh. That's ugly.", Fuery said.

"And it doesn't matter. We're working on a case here and Garber apparently has a good enough alibi to be put off the list. Now I want to know about the others.", Mustang interrupted before anyone else could say something.

"Uh yeah..the guys from investigation found them all, and one has got an alibi for the time of every murder so he's off the list, too. That leaves only two then: Beagle and Erlking.", Havoc read from the papers.

"Well then we better work out which one it is before we need to let them go again." The colonel said. The team nodded a grim nod and they started to work again. Havoc sorted the files he just got so he could put them with the other ones they had about this case.

"Yo, Boss, you mind if I use a bit of your desk to sort these?", he asked Edward. The younger blond shook his head, smiled and pushed his papers to one side of his desk so Havoc could use part of it, too.

"Thanks, man!" Havoc started to scatter the papers around so he could put them in a new order and look at them all at the same time while he started on a summary of what they had so far. Edward started at his current paper. After a while though, his pen ran out of ink. There was no more ink in his desk drawer and he didn't want to disturb Havoc or Hawkeye next to him, or the others, so he went over to the small supply cabinet in the corner and got some ink from there. Then he walked back to his desk.

The small inkpot fell to the floor, the black contents splashing around. All heads in the room shot up and gazes settled on the small alchemist.

Ed was shaking. He was staring at the thing on his desk, the desk that slowly vanished as the scenery around him changed. He was back in that basement, staring at that body, staring at the organs that pulsed in their futile struggle to stay alive. It was there, right in front of him, and he just couldn't look away! His eyes went wide and suddenly there were hands on him, grabbing him, shaking him. Edward tried to shrug them off, his heart raced as he feared to be torn apart again. But they wouldn't leave him alone! Those greedy hands would pull him back to the gate, take more limbs from him, maybe kill him off, or maybe force him to look at that mutilated body in front of him for forever! But he wouldn't let that happen! He clapped his hands, transmuted his automail into a blade and just when he was about to blindly leash out for those horrible hands a sharp voice ordered: "Back off!"

The hands vanished, and so did the corpse in front of him. A white hand had somehow turned it over, leaving nothing but a white rectangle for him to look at. He blinked in utter confusion, his mind trying to find an explanation about why there was this white rectangle in the basement now. The white hand was there again, slowly moving in front of him, reaching out for him. He stumbled a step back. Was this Truth, coming for him in person because he fought off it's black handed helpers? But Truth didn't have an array on the back of its hand.

"Look at me Fullmetal!"

Truth didn't have piercing black eyes and this calm but at the same time sharp voice, either.

"No one here means any harm to you. It's just Hawkeye and Havoc and Breda and Fuery and Falman and me. This was just a photograph, just a picture from the crime scene of our current case. It's neither your mother nor Al and it's not here for real. You're standing in the office, not a basement."

Truth didn't have black, tousled hair, didn't wear a blue uniform.

And suddenly the colonel was standing with him in the basement and when he put his hands on Ed's shoulders, proving how real he was, the basement vanished, leaving them in the office.

Edward was panting, shaking and felt like his knees were about to give out. He swallowed hard, closed his eyes and concentrated on the hands on his shoulders that anchored him to reality.

And then his eyes flew open again when this reality hit him and he realised what he had been about to do. Wide eyed he stared down at his automail blade. If the hands that had shook and grabbed him had been those of the soldiers around him, then he had been about to use the blade against them.

The boy started shivering even more and hastily transmuted the automail back. They would hate him, rate him dangerous, abandon him, put him into the mental ward with that Garber alchemist. Edward felt like crying. He once again had made a wrong decision, had screwed up, had endangered others just because he was too selfish to bear the pain of staying in Resembool.

He felt Mustang's hands leave his shoulders and looked up in panic only to see the colonel turn away. His heart constricted painfully. Scream, yell, tell him to stay! His mind shouted.

"Follow me."

Relieve flooded through him when he heard the words and he went after Mustang, staring at the blue clad back in front of him as if it would vanish if he didn't. The colonel led him to his inner office, saying something over his shoulder to Havoc about putting stuff away, and asking for someone to get some tea. He was so calm. Was it the calm before the storm? Ed hoped not, because it was so soothing that the colonel didn't freak out. Seeing that someone acted like the situation was under control made him feel like everything would be all right again soon.

"Sit down." The voice was still firm and commanding but there was something very gentle in it that Ed had never heard before. He liked the sound.

The boy dropped down on the couch, grateful that finally he could allow his legs to give out. Though he almost jumped up again when he felt something heavy fall over his shoulders. But he soon realised that it was just a black coat and instinctively pulled it tighter around his still shivering frame. The thing smelled like smoke yet it was not the disgusting one that came from cigarettes. It was the nice kind of smoke that reminded of fire places or a freshly blown out candle. The realisation that this was Mustangs coat hit him and he looked up to stare at the colonel in surprise.

"There are no blankets around.", the colonel said with a nonchalant shrug and sat down on the couch opposite of Ed.

For a moment the younger alchemist felt the urge to push the coat away and claim that he didn't need it, but he didn't want to loose the warmth that it provided. And it did not only provide warmth physically. In some crazy way the coat around his shoulders felt like a hug. Not that he wanted a hug from the colonel. This would be just too awkward, too much for the both of them, but the coat around his shoulders was okay. It was comfort without them getting too close.

Hawkeye entered, pulling Ed from his thoughts. She brought two mugs. The one with the tea she put in front of Ed, the one that contained coffee she gave to the colonel. Mustang looked surprised for a second, but then smiled a grateful smile and thanked his lieutenant.

"Should I stay?", she asked after accepting his thanks with a small smile of her own. Mustang stared into the depths of his coffee with a thoughtful look. It fascinated Edward to see the normally quick thinking colonel having difficulties to decide something.

"I'm not sure if this is my decision.", he finally said and looked at Ed. "Do you want the lieutenant to stay?"

Ed looked at Hawkeye. He wasn't sure. He liked her and trusted her and she had that wonderful motherly site but he didn't want to show her what a wreck he was. Her job was to care about the colonel, not about him. It would not be fair if he stole her away from Mustang like Al had been stolen away from him. But on the other hand he feared that if he pushed her away once, she'd never again care about him.

"How about I stay outside and you just call me in if you need me?", Hawkeye suggested, sensing that the two males in the room somehow didn't know what to say. Both nodded, grateful for her suggestion.

"Just don't kill each other.", she tried to lift the mood before she left.

The two alchemists followed her with their eyes until she was gone before they finally looked at each other again.

"Maybe you should drink your tea and calm down a little more. We can try to talk when you stopped shivering.", Mustang finally suggested.

Edward nodded and started to sip at his tea, while Mustang sipped at his coffee. Both of them trying to think about how they would go on with their conversation later.