I didn't mean to scare everyone with my author's note in the last chapter. I guess I'm just so sure that I'll make something awful and waste everyone's time someday that I act like this is it every time I post something so that the inevitable blow of disappointment doesn't hurt as much.
I don't know if I'm okay. It's not because of this story. On the contrary, this story, and this chapter in particular, is kind of an explanation of everything that's been going on with me right now.
I don't blame anyone who's gotten tired of my neediness and left. Wouldn't be the first, won't be the last.
"It 'as milk."
Roy tilted his head to the side, his attention fully fixed on the boy shivering against him.
"Does it? I thought you hated milk."
"Do." Edward pulled a chattering, hissing breath through his teeth.
"So your grandmother puts milk - which you hate - into your favorite stew - which you love." Roy "hmmmed," holding his chin in his fingers. "How is this possible."
"Dunno," Ed admitted, giving a shuddering shrug. "'S a secret." Ed licked his dry lips, his eyes narrowing as a thought occurred to him. "Secret… Al…"
"What about the carrots," Roy was quick to distract him. "Are you sure it's not the carrots that makes it so wonderful? Does she boil them or roast them before she throws them in the pot?"
"Carrots?" Edward asked, considering the question. Then he said, "Breda looks like a carrot."
Roy blinked, not sure what to say to that, especially thinking about it and realizing Fullmetal was right.
Maes laughed hard enough to make himself bend over and Peggy tried and mostly failed at hiding her giggles.
Roy tried to use the moment of silliness to make himself feel better about the situation, but it only made him feel worse with the realization that doing so was a cruelty against Edward.
The doctor had come in earlier, his expression only barely concerned, as if he was trying to remember where he'd left his house key rather than trying to treat a critically ill patient. The doctor had hooked the strongest antibiotics the hospital had. Even so, the doctor had ordered the nurses to regulate, but not decrease, Ed's fever.
"If it's a virus -"
"Then antibiotics won't work," Maes finished for him. "The best option is to burn it out."
The doctor had looked surprised, then glanced suspiciously at Tomas. Tomas looked away as if he was expecting to be told off. When the doctor simply hummed and turned away, Tomas looked just as surprised as he had.
That had been three hours ago.
The medical line had been removed and now the bag hung from the tree, forgotten in its uselessness.
"I thought antibiotics took days to work," Roy couldn't help but hope as the doctor had removed the line with the solemnity of removing a trocar from a corpse. Maybe they just hadn't waited long enough. Maybe they needed to give the medicine more time.
The doctor crushed that hope with a dispassionate shake of his head.
"That's oral medication that must be diffused into the blood stream via digestion," he explained, coiling up the rubber tube like a spent hose. "Digestion takes hours. Delivering medication increases undesirable effects, but it also increases the desirable ones exponentially. If the antibiotics were going to work, we would have seen some improvement."
"Wouldn't keeping him on the antibiotics decrease his chances of getting another infection?" Maes asked.
The doctor shook his head again.
"The pathogen causing this infection got this far by weakening the others. It's important to remember that not all bacteria are dangerous. Many are necessary for good health. If antibiotics aren't solving the problem, continuing to administer them could make it worse."
"Havoc's a turnip," Edward continued, pulling Roy out of his thought and making Maes laugh again. "Fuery's a mushroom."
"A mushroom?"
"'Cause 'e jus' sits there."
"Really," Roy mused, then, unable to help himself, "what about the lieutenant? What's Hawkeye?"
Edward seemed to need to think on this.
"Potato," Edward said finally and flinched when Maes laughed uproariously. Roy laid a hand on Ed's sweaty head to calm him, like the boy was a startled horse.
"A potato," Roy repeated, not bothering to hide his amused smile. "How do you figure that?"
Edward looked up at him with his heat-shadowed eyes.
"'Tatoes do ev'rythin'," he said, as if the answer was obvious.
Roy slid his hand down Edward's hair.
"How do you mean?"
"'Tatoes make bread… an' soup… an'… an' you fry 'em… an'… um…" Edward trailed off with a yawn. He had been sitting up as best he could, which wasn't very well, so he'd ended up turned around in the bed with his feet on the pillow and his head near the foot. He sank deeper in the mattress, which led to him dropping his head onto Roy's leg.
Maes wasn't laughing anymore, but he was still smiling.
Roy had stiffened, not sure what to make of this new development.
"What about Mustang?" Maes prompted unhelpfully. "What vegetable is he?"
Edward breathed a heavy sigh, as if answering the question took more energy than he had, which it probably did.
"Beet."
"A beet?" Roy and Maes exclaimed together.
"How am I a beet?" Roy demanded, resisting the urge to poke Fullmetal in the face.
"No one… likes beets."
Maes was laughing again. Roy frowned.
"Well, that's not very nice."
"Nice…" Ed snuffled to himself, seeming to drift off, then muttered, "Al is nice… Al… Al? Al!"
Edward snapped awake, tried to sit up, cried out in pain as the packed gash on his back was pulled, and started babbling.
"You can't have Al! You have me! Al gets to go!"
Roy raised his hands in a placating gesture. This wasn't the first time that Fullmetal had returned to the deep fear of a hostage situation and Roy knew that it was unlikely to be the last.
"Alphonse got away, Fullmetal. Your brother is safe."
Edward stared at Mustang unbelievingly, breathing like he had just broken the surface of the sea, and turned his gaze fearfully towards Maes.
Roy saw the fear turn to despair and Edward reached for the space where his arm should be.
"Edward," Maes said in his sternest voice. "This is very important. I need you to tell me," Edward closed his eyes with the resignation of a man facing a loaded gun, "the Risembool way of shearing a sheep."
Edward's eyes peeled open in confusion.
"I know there's a secret way of doing it. I've never worn wool so warm. You want me to stay away from your brother? Tell me how you shear a sheep."
Both the colonels knew that, to an outsider, this could be seen as cruel. Perhaps it was, even with context provided. But Hughes knew there was a reason why Mustang didn't want anyone, including himself, to know what exactly happened that caused the Elrics to become full of metal, one more than the other, and Hughes was going to play along with Mustang's game of cat and mouse for as long as was needed.
It was that amount of trust that Maes had in his friend that made him realize that, even after everything they had done, Hughes deserved all the happiness he had achieved.
Tomas said nothing, though Roy could see the disapproval in the nurse's eyes, as well as genuine curiosity. It had never occurred to Roy that the secret techniques of shearing sheep could be so interesting.
Edward paused to think about this, his left hand drifting from his right shoulder. When he began his explanation, he started by patting his bare belly like he was searching for a pad of fat that wasn't there.
"Poop."
Roy felt his face heat up to his ears. Maes reacted with an understanding air of focus, standing up and reaching for the bed pan. Tomas similarly began preparing cleaning supplies.
"No, not me," Edward said with surprisingly characteristic annoyance, shoving away the offending bed pan when Maes offered it. "The sheep."
Maes blinked stupidly, still holding the bed pan.
"The… sheep has to…"
"Yes," Ed said, still annoyed. "It goes," he mimed his stomach again. "Can't use it."
Maes continued to stare, then realization lit his face.
"Oh. Oh, I see."
"I do not."
"You can't use the wool from the belly because it's covered in the sheep's poop," Maes explained, sitting back down and setting the bed pan aside. "Is there any other wool that can't be used?"
"Butt. No butt wool. Then you go up," Ed said, trailing a finger along his front, paused, then said, "No. Other side," and tried to reach behind himself to touch his back. Roy caught his hand.
"Along the spine. We understand. Then what?"
"Head," Ed said, making scissor-like motions with his fingers on his hair. "Neck," he did the same around his neck, a gesture that made Roy uncomfortable, given the circumstances and the more common meaning of the sign. "Hardest parts 'cause sheep don't like it. Then down the sides. Then legs."
"Can you sell the wool on the legs?" Maes asked, the question real even if the interrogation was not.
Ed shrugged. "Sometimes."
"That doesn't sound too different from skinning," Roy commented and Edward looked at him as if he had said that peeling an apple was the same as peeling an orange.
"No. That's later. After the babies get born. Then you eat the dads. Sometimes the moms."
"That's a little sad," Maes said and Edward glared at him.
"Dead sheep can't be sad. You're sad 'cause you're hungry. Eat your mutton, Al."
Roy wasn't sure if he should be charmed or concerned. Ed made the decision for him when his brother's name re-awoke what the colonels had been trying to extinguish.
"Al? Where's Al? Al! Al!"
"Edward, Alphonse is fine -"
Edward shivered and looked at Roy with such doubt that Roy started to wonder if he was lying.
"Me?"
"You are… you are going to be fine."
This did not reassure Edward in the slightest.
"Don't want to be. Let Al go."
Roy bit back an exasperated sigh. He wasn't sure how much longer he could do this.
"Edward," Hughes said and Roy felt relief wash over him, "show me where your arm used to be." And the relief was replaced by confused panic.
"Hughes! What -" Maes dismissed him with a wave and then motioned for Edward to do as he was told.
Edward's face turned white, the red spots of his cheeks like bruises. His shaking was no longer from chills as he forced himself to shift so that his empty automail port was facing Hughes.
The sockets sank into his shoulder, perfect black holes with glints of prongs inside. For a terrible moment, as Maes sat forward and reached his hand out to cradle the steel casing, Roy thought his friend was going to stick his fingers in those holes to see what happened.
Roy felt the command to stop rise in his throat. His trust for his friend held them in place.
His trust proved true once again as Maes's hand moved passed the port and to the purple skin above it.
Edward's eyes had been wide with anticipatory terror as Hughes's hand touched him. When the colonel's fingers dug into the swollen scars, Ed turned to stare as best he could when what he was trying to watch was directly beneath his nose.
Then his head dropped to his chest and he made a deep-throated moaning sound.
Roy's trust couldn't hold back the scandalized "Hughes!" that popped out of his mouth.
Maes shushed him and stood up, relocating to Edward's other side so he could use his other hand to stabilize the boy so he could press into the scar more firmly.
"When Elicia was pregnant, her feet would swell up and she would get so sore."
Roy stared at his friend over Fullmetal's dropped head. He wondered if whatever Edward had was catching.
"Whenever she started getting cranky or tired from making our daughter, I would prop up her feet and give her feet a good rub. Didn't make her less pregnant, but it would make her less nasty for a while."
Edward started leaning forward again, bumping his head into Roy's side. Maes leaned with him.
Roy's confusion broke into amusement and he laughed, lifting his arm over Fullmetal's slumped form so he could put his hand on top of the kid's bowed head.
"Does that feel nice, Fullmetal?"
"Mmm," was the answer he got.
Then Roy made the mistake of continuing to look.
He got a good look at the way the lips of the open gash rolled against each other as Maes worked the scar like dough.
Roy had to look away and study Tomas's curious expression and count his breaths.
Maes, on the other hand, seemed to find this observation fascinating.
"Is it supposed to do that?" he asked the nurse as he continued to rub the swollen skin above.
"The obvious answer would be no, considering that one's skin is generally meant to be in one piece," the nurse said, also watching what Roy could not. "The contextual answer is that this is to be expected, given the circumstances. The skin at the edge of the wound hasn't reconnected with the muscle. The skin reattaches from the outside in, so the edge of the wound will heal last. It was a lot worse when it first drained. You could see both teres muscles quite clearly and even some of the latissimus dorsi below them."
Roy looked away from the nurse and towards the wall. He started over his count of breaths.
When there was a knock at the door and Riza let herself in, he was more than happy to switch places with her - an act that took quite a bit of maneuvering, considering the fact that Fullmetal was using him as a headrest.
XXX
The nurse's fingers tickled, but not enough to make him react beyond a thought.
"This one is swollen, but there's been no sign of an abscess. These ones don't seem to be more than bruises," the fingers moved, tickling with pinpricks of pain.
"This one was open, but it didn't seem to fester, so we washed it out and let it be. This one is obviously the worst one."
A touch at his right shoulder blade and near his left hip.
"What made this one worse than the others? Besides size," Colonel Hughes, his voice nothing but professionalism.
"This one is deep. This one broke the skin," another touch on his right side, another spark of tenderness, "but this one broke all the way down to the muscle."
The nurse's voice had grown tight as he spoke. Hughes must have noticed it, too, because he pressed further.
"Why was this one deeper than the others?"
"Because," a terse silence, "because multiple strikes landed in the same place. Each strike cut a deeper layer until… well…"
"What about the muscle? Was muscle cut?"
"Only the surface. Muscle is designed to rip, though, so it's nothing that won't heal on its own."
Silence.
"What kind of… instrument could cause such injuries?"
A sighing sound, like the nurse was frustrated for some reason.
"Well, these are lacerations, so… some kind of switch or… or whip."
"Like a riding crop?"
"No. These are too large and too deep to be made by something as small as a crop. This was something large and simple to wield."
More silence, then, "Was there nothing like that at the scene?"
Maes must have shaken his head because Edward didn't hear his answer.
"Vanes Balt is a rural town, but their farming stops at pigs. The only large animals there are horses. No cows, so no reason for anyone to have a bullwhip, and a riding crop wouldn't do it."
Edward knew what a bullwhip was. Bullwhips didn't hurt. They were made to make a loud, cracking sound to make cattle and sheep go in one direction or away from another. They were large and braided and too heavy to move fast enough to do anything more than bruise. Even so, the children were forbidden from touching them.
That was why, when the adults of Risembool wanted the children to feel the sting of their bad behavior, they would use something lighter and thinner.
The schoolteacher had used a stripped switch on Edward's knuckles when he had failed to bring anything for the woman's larder. He and Al usually brought a basket of tomatoes from their mother's garden or a jar of jam from the pantry.
The tomatoes and the jam had abruptly ceased to exist after their mother got sick.
When Edward had shown the welt on the back of his hand to his grandmother, Pinako had walked the brothers to school the next morning. She had let herself into the schoolhouse and snapped the switch in two in front of its owner. When the teacher had protested, Pinako had not hesitated to give her a smarting rap on her fingers. When the teacher had cried out tearfully at the sharp sting, Pinako had warned her that she had a snake in her pocket.
The teacher's face had paled and she had never replaced the switch.
"Your grandmother had a snake?" Hawkeye's voice was soft and inquisitive where Mustang's was low and demanding.
Edward must have been speaking his thoughts. He didn't remember talking, but he could vaguely remember moving his mouth. His face and his brain were barely attached to each other, so anything that crossed from one place to another had to be particularly mesmerizing.
"That's okay, Edward."
No, it had not been okay. Pinako had refused to show him the creature, claiming that it "wasn't that kind of snake." What other kind of snake could there be?
"The kind that bites with its tail instead of its teeth," she had said, and left it at that.
"Hmm," Maes said said thoughtfully. "Sounds like some kind of country euphemism. I've lived in the city for most of my life, so I don't recognize it. Mustang's had more contact with countryfolk. Maybe he'll be able to translate."
Roy had translated something for Ed once. That was how Ed had found out that Colonel Mustang knew Xingese, if only a few words, like the Xingese word for "mercury." Edward couldn't hope to pronounce it, but the colonel had said it in a sing-song voice, one syllable higher pitched than the other. Mustang had said that was because Xingese did something called "intonation," and that meant that the pitch or the length of a single syllable completely changed a word's meaning.
Edward hadn't said it at the time, and wouldn't at any, but he had thought that the way the sounds went up and down and around each other was pretty.
"I promise not to tell him."
That was good. Thinking things were pretty was something girls did.
"Anyone can think anything is pretty, Edward. Colonel Hughes thinks his wife is pretty, after all."
That didn't count. Hughes had to think that about his wife. They were married. It was the rules.
Then the grownups were laughing. Ed didn't see what was so funny about following rules.
Grownups were weird.
XXX
Maes was called out to receive a telegram from Vanes Balt. After his personal interrogation of Colonel Holland, Maes had left a team of officers in the town to continue gathering information and to take anyone suspicious into custody.
The telegram brought news that Hughes's team had exercised that power on the second lieutenants and had then searched the mens' belongings, as was protocol.
Maes nearly dropped the paper when he read the the word "blacksnake" on the list of possessions they had found in the officers' footlockers.
He had sent the sergeant who had delivered the telegram back to Eastern Headquarters with orders to obtain a more detailed description of the item.
Half an hour later, the sergeant returned again, handing over the envelope with a salute.
Snake whip. Also called a pocket whip.
The handful of words both explained everything and nothing at the same time.
XXX
Blacksnakes were small but long and powerful whips that were designed to be easily stored and transported and just as easily readied and used. The smallness made the weapon faster, which made the blows more damaging through a genius and terrible mechanization of physics.
Maes replaced the hood on the shelf, focusing on keeping his face expressionless. He thanked the confused doctor who's office he'd invaded upon demanding the passing physician to lead him to the nearest encyclopedia.
He often wondered who wrote such books and how they came across the information inside them. Thinking about a stupid think liked that kept him from thinking about how he was going to snap Hanes's neck and slit Schaffer's.
He let himself out of the office, feeling suddenly exhausted. He and Mustang had figured that this was premeditated, but this was the conclusive evidence that they had needed to prove it. The only reason why either of the second lieutenants would have a such a terrible invention was if they had planned to do something terrible, even if one's plan had initially independent of the other.
Maes met Roy on his way back from keeping Alphonse company. The armored boy was following Mustang like a sheepdog following a shepherd.
"Can I see Brother now?"
"I don't know, Alphonse. We can ask, but I don't know."
Al's silence was more disheartening than any words of disappointment.
"If they don't, why don't you and me go do something fun?" Maes offered, trying to bring back the positivity that separated the younger Elric from the older. "I'm getting a little hungry. Why don't you and me go get some dinner. Do you like noodles?"
Alphonse had made a babbling sound, like he was flustered, though Maes had no idea how noodles could be flustering. The boy was saved from coming up with an actual answer when they reached his brother's room. Roy knocked before opening the door, then gave Alphonse a surprisingly hopeful look.
When Maes followed them into the room, he saw Edward was asleep.
He was still upside-down on the bed but now there was a pillow being smushed by his face. Riza had left the bed and was sitting in one of the hard hospital chairs, Black Hayate's head in her lap as she stroked the dog behind the ears.
"He drifted off a few minutes ago," Riza said unnecessarily, her attention devoted to the dog happily wagging his tail at her feet.
"Well, someone looks comfy," Roy commented, his relief obvious in his voice. Keeping Alphonse occupied while directing Edward's wandering mind had been exhausting. It was getting close to the evening, the shadows coming through the window growling longer as the sun sunk lower in the sky.
Alphonse approached as quietly as he could manage, pulling as much of the blanket as he could over his brother when Edward was lying on top of it.
Doing so gave him a full view of healing lashes on his brother's back. Al was happy to see that they seemed to be less red and angry than they had been, and sad that they were there at all.
Edward didn't stir as the blanket fell over him, his breathing hitched and short but his sleep dreamless.
"Brother must be in pain," he commented, not sure if it mattered that much if Edward wasn't awake to feel it. "He's breathing like he hurts."
Riza frowned, looking up from doting on Hayate, who looked up when his mistress's attention was taken from him. She reached out a hand to Ed's hair away from his sleeping face and her frowned deepened.
"He's awfully warm."
Tomas leaped to his feet like his chair had bitten him and pulled the blanket that Alphonse had so carefully placed away, pressing his hands to Edward's neck and chest. Edward didn't so much as twitch.
Tomas turned away and gave the bell pull a good tug, then picked up a syringe from the myriad instruments on the medical table beside him and injected its contents into a small plug he opened along the saline line.
"What's that?" Alphonse asked, all his gentle contentedness banished by the nurse's methodical movements.
"Diazepam. A muscle relaxant. It's to keep him from shivering."
Before anyone could ask why Ed would need to be stopped from shivering, the door opened and a nurse poked her head inside.
"Ice," was all Tomas had to say before she was gone.
XXX
Edward was not sleeping.
Tomas's brows pinched together as he pulled the thermometer from Ed's slack mouth and then pinched further as he squinted at the tiny markings the mercury had stopped at.
"How bad is it?" Roy asked, trying to make his way through to the nurse's side. It occurred to him then how crowded the room was getting.
"Bad enough we should do something about it but not bad enough to cause damage," Tomas said with an apprehensive smile. "Just let us do our jobs. This is nothing we haven't seen and dealt with before."
The door opened and the nurse from before came in pushing a medical cart in front of her. The basin on it held packs of ice rather than rolls of bandages and she and Tomas immediately started pulling packs out, putting one on Edward's chest and another on the back of Ed's neck and a third on his forehead. The second nurse left without a word, leaving the cart behind her.
Edward remained obediently limp.
Then, as if there was absolutely nothing wrong, Tomas said, "Why don't you lot take yourselves home for the night? It's getting awfully late."
Roy was sure the man was joking. When he didn't start laughing, Roy realized he wasn't.
"What… now?!"
Tomas shrugged, the gesture antithetical to the situation being addressed.
"The only thing to do is to wait this out. There's nothing any of you can do right now, not when he's unconscious like this, and we'll need the room clear so we can cool him down and warm him up when we need to."
"I'll stay with him," Alphonse said instantly, with a finality that brooked no argument, then turned to the officers and said with the same finality, "go home. You need to sleep and eat some real food and take care of yourselves."
I don't, Roy and Riza heard the phantom words.
It was those unspoken words that convinced them, though neither of them quite knew why.
XXX
The ice would melt, making the sheets soggy and Edward wet, and then the packs would be replaced by still somewhat solid ones from the basin. When those had all melted, Tomas called for another nurse to exchange them for fresh ones.
Peggy came for her shift and had to bully Tomas to go home, using the same words he had used on the colonels and lieutenant earlier.
When Edward mumbled incoherently and moved his arm as if to pull the sodden pack from his face, Peggy made a sound of relief and slipped the thermometer under his tongue, making another sound when she took it out and took its reading.
"Is his fever gone?" Al asked hopefully and was confused when Peggy happily shook her head. "We don't want his fever gone. But it's low enough now that it'll burn off whatever has gotten into him without burning him, too."
Alphonse wanted to be relieved by this, too. He was disappointed when he wasn't.
XXX
Edward's mouth tasted like he had licked an abandoned bookshelf in the library. He licked his lips. He felt cracks and tasted blood.
His head felt like a fluffed pillow, mostly air with little bits disconnected thought bouncing off the inside of his skull. Two of them found each other and joined into one concise, actable realization.
Edward was terribly thirsty and he was craving something sweet.
He opened his eyes and saw a blob of black beneath his nose. He was wearing the oxygen mask again.
Straight in front of him was a plain off-white wall and scuffed tile floor. In the corner of his eye, something flashed as it reflected the early morning light coming through the window. He recognized the way the light curved along the shape of its mirror.
His throat felt shriveled and paralyzed. He doubted he could speak even if the mask hadn't been covering his face. He reached his arm, feeling the air with his fingers until his forefinger and little finger touched something cold and smooth. Alphonse couldn't feel, but he noticed the way his vision swayed as Ed nudged his empty body.
The helmet creaked as it moved so that the eye holes were facing, if not pointed at, Edward's head.
"Brother?"
Edward nudged him again. Alphonse stood from where he was sitting and then kneeled so that he could meet Ed on his own sideways level.
"Brother? Are you awake?"
Edward stared into his brother's helmet so he could see the glowing from the active transmutation inside and beneath. Couldn't Al see his eyes were open?
"Do you need something, Brother?"
Edward reached to his face and pulled the mask down. The air outside the mask was warm. He touched his fingers to his chapped lips.
Al tilted his head to the side.
"Are you hungry?"
Ed tapped his fingers.
"Thirsty?"
Edward moved his fingers from his lips to the cool metal of Al's armor.
"I'll get you some water - huh?"
Edward had pressed his palm to Al's breastplate, stopping him.
"What's wrong, Brother. Do you want something else?"
Ed patted the metal.
"Something to drink that's not water?"
Edward pulled his hand away.
"Okay, Brother. I'll get you something." Alphonse replaced the cold mask over Ed's nose and mouth and stood with a blur of flashing gray and creaking steel.
Edward closed his eyes.
XXX
He woke up to a cold hand touching him behind his ear.
He realized he was shaking.
"Diazepam's worn off, but the fever's holding steady."
"Is that good?" Alphonse's voice was quiet and anxious.
"It's not bad."
The hand pulled away and Ed opened his eyes.
"Good morning, Edward," Peggy said, replacing her hand on his forehead and pushing his bangs out of his eyes. "How are you feeling?"
Edward shivered and reached for his brother.
"I'm here, Brother. I've brought you something."
It was Peggy who pulled down the mask and brought a paper cup to Ed's mouth, slipping a hand under his head and lifting it so he could swallow.
He tasted pineapple and strawberries.
"Alphonse," Ed said, his voice scraping out of his throat.
"Yes, Brother?"
Edward didn't know. The juice had stuck more of the pieces of thought together, making linear but not necessarily sensical chains of thought.
Granny had a snake. Sheep pooped on themselves. Mustang's leg was soft yet firm. Hughes wouldn't survive a day without concrete and cars.
The cup was brought back.
Pineapple and strawberries.
"Mustang?" He didn't know why he was asking after the colonel.
"Probably, at home, sleeping."
"Lieutenant?"
"Her, too."
Pineapple and strawberries.
"Hughes?"
A tense silence.
"Alphonse?"
"He's… talking to people."
Edward realized he was wet.
Pineapple and strawberries that abruptly stopped. The cup was empty. The mask went back where it belonged.
"Cold."
"That's the fever, Edward," Peggy said, misunderstanding his complaint.
"Cold."
Alphonse made the tinny whispering sound that was his equivalent to a sigh.
"I'm not sure I can do anything about that, Brother."
Al could take the mask away.
"No, Brother. Leave it on," Al said when Ed reached to do it himself.
"Cold."
"Do you want me to read to you, Brother."
Edward thought about this.
"Al."
"Okay, Brother."
Alphonse picked up where Edward could only assume he'd left off earlier. Ed had no idea which book Al was reading or where he was in it.
Ed closed his eyes.
XXX
"…was premeditated."
An impatient huff.
"We already knew that."
"But now we can prove it."
Another huff.
"What does this have to do with a life of luxury? Seems like a lot of work for people who aim to avoid it."
"Luxury isn't always about ease and wealth, Roy. It's often about being the biggest man out of all the little ones."
Silence.
"Why Fullmetal? Why me?"
"I have lots of answers that make sense. I haven't figured out which one is correct."
Something heavy was on Edward's head. Something else was sliding down the side of his head, passed his ears and into his hair.
It wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't uncomfortable either.
What was uncomfortable was when whatever was covering his eyes was lifted away and then returned heavy and cold. Ed couldn't help the way his face wrinkled at the feeling.
"Is he awake?" Then, as if it it belatedly occurred to Hughes that he ought to be talking to Edward instead of about him, "Are you awake, Edward?"
Edward answered by reaching a hand that felt as heavy as lead to his face and pulled the compress off his face, making sure the sodden lump of cold fell to the floor with a pathetic flop.
Ed didn't know which was weirder, the way he felt like he was both too hot and too cold at the same time or the fact that he could see the relief on Mustang's face. Ed wasn't sure what was so relieving about him tossing a wet rag onto the tiles.
"How're ya feelin', scout?" Hughes said, smiling gently at Ed as if was a venomous snake he was trying to calm. Edward hissed through his teeth like the snake Hughes seemed to think he was. To his indignation, the colonel laughed.
"That great, huh?"
"Al?"
"He's hanging out with Lieutenant Hawkeye and Hayate. There was something we had to tell you, but you've been… asleep."
Edward blinked sleepily and impatiently.
Hughes's smile dimmed slightly.
"Second lieutenants Schaffer and Hanes have been arrested for attacking a fellow officer, insubordination, and attempted murder."
The way Hughes said it with that half-smile made it seem like he was admitting to doing something rascally rather than his job. When Edward didn't react, the colonel added, "Colonel Holland has been detained pending an investigation," as if he hoped that was what was the missing ingredient from the recipe for Ed's reaction.
Edward didn't understand what he was so happy about. It changed nothing.
Hughes's smile dropped away fully.
"Kiddo? Y'know what that means? The people who did this ain't gonna get away with it."
Edward wasn't sure what Hughes meant, or what he thought he meant.
The second lieutenants had been arrested and Colonel Holland had been found out, but none of that changed the reason for why it had happened. Once anyone realized the reason, they would turn away from the whole situation. They would ask why the precious time from their finite lives had been wasted.
Hughes didn't understand that nothing had actually been accomplished because, even if the second lieutenants were disciplined and Colonel Holland faced consequences, nothing would change because neither the lieutenants nor Holland were the reason why any of this happened.
Edward was the reason this had happened. Everyone had been insisting that he wasn't, but that was because they didn't understand. They thought that he couldn't possibly be the reason for all of this because he hadn't set out to make any of this happen. He hadn't done anything with the intent to instigate this.
They didn't understand that it had happened because Edward was.
Edward was there when his father walked away and never came back.
He was there when the transmutation had gone wrong and Alphonse lost more than any of them could possibly imagine.
Window Guy and Chair Guy had seen that. They had told him. Edward hadn't wanted to believe them, had been sure that if he tried hard enough, fought hard enough, Colonel Holland would see what he was trying to do, what he was trying to be, and would count him as that.
Colonel Holland had not. Everything the second lieutenants had told him came to be.
Edward had been angry and he had tried to find a way passed this unexpected obstacle, but inside of that anger, maybe the root of it, was a kernel of understanding.
If it was true what Hawkeye and Alphonse and everyone else said and this would have happened no matter what Edward had done, then it meant there was nothing Edward could have done to keep it from happening.
There was no amount of thinking or fighting or planning that he could have done because the reason why it had happened was because he had been there.
He was himself and there was nothing he could do about that.
Edward was a scientist and a mathematician. He understood patterns and comparisons, and when he compared everything, his mother's death, his father's disappearance, all the suffering Alphonse and everyone around him had gone through, Edward was there. Perhaps he wasn't the only denominator in the fractions, but he was the only common one.
Not some distinguishable deficit or repeated action.
Just him.
Perhaps the others didn't understand it because in their own fractions, where they were the causative factor, the resulting calculations were desirable.
Perhaps it had never occurred to them that the calculations could possible be unsatisfactory. Perhaps they had never thought about how the results would be different if the numbers were different.
If Edward was one of those numbers.
"Why?"
He hadn't meant to ask the question out loud, but his mind felt soft and tearable, holes already ripping open and letting random words and pointless thoughts fall out.
"Why, what, Edward?" Hughes asked, understandably mistaking the recipient of the question to be himself.
There were too many for Edward to name, even if he tried.
Why had the second lieutenants seen what no one else could see?
Perhaps they hadn't, and everyone else had simply been too kind, too good, to accept what they saw.
But if their goal was to be good, then why not do what was so obviously good for everyone?
Was that why Edward's father had left? Was it because he was good enough to see how bad Edward was but wasn't good enough to do anything about it?
If the second lieutenants had done something, didn't that make them the good guys?
But the worst "why" was rhetorical because the answer was nonexistent.
Edward couldn't do anything about the past, couldn't do anything on behalf of anyone else, but if there was nothing he could do about his own contagious affinity for misfortune, then what was the point of doing anything at all?
Why should he bother?
Why had he bothered?
Why did anyone else bother?
If he was too heavy to float and the current was too strong to fight, wouldn't it be smarter, kinder, to let go and sink down into the nothingness?
Edward had tried to sink down, to disappear, but Mustang and Hawkeye had caught him. They wouldn't let him sink.
Why?
Why hadn't they let him die?
XXX
Edward didn't seem to know that his mouth was moving, that his throat was making noise.
The words that were coming out were terrible and Maes looked like Gracia had asked him if he wanted a divorce.
Roy felt like frustration building up inside him, frustration that no matter how much convincing and cajoling they did, Fullmetal couldn't get it through his thick skull that none of this was his fault.
Then Roy felt guilty because he knew Fullmetal wasn't being obtuse out of a desire to be obstinate. It was the risk of further attack that made it not worth lowering the walls, even if the person on the other side was offering the equivalent of paradise on a silver platter.
Roy knew that because he could hear that person calling over his own walls.
"Edward… oh, Edward, no."
Edward hadn't seemed to hear Maes's plea. He was staring at nothing in particular, muttering the same two slurred words over and over again.
Why bother?
Why bother?
Why?
Maes, always the sensible one of the two, ignored Ed's words and pressed a hand to the back of Ed's neck.
"He's burning again."
Peggy reached into the bowl of freezing water and slapped a water heavy compress to Ed's head, then took him under the arms and coaxed him into lying down. She plopped a second compress where Maes's hand had been and a third on the boy's chest.
Edward started shivering and the nurse didn't hesitate to inject muscle relaxant into the medical line.
"I'm getting Alphonse. Maybe his brother can calm him down."
"No," Roy said, surprising himself. "Alphonse doesn't need to see this."
Awkward quiet.
"Go check on them."
"What?"
"Go check on Alphonse and Lieutenant Hawkeye."
Leave me alone with Fullmetal.
Peggy seemed to understand and stood, taking hold of the cart and muttering something about fetching fresh ice and to pull the string if they needed a nurse. Roy could have kissed her when she took Maes's hand like a teacher guiding a young schoolboy and led him out of the room, claiming that there was some important medical information she had that he would need for his investigation.
Then the door closed and they were alone.
Show him he's safe.
Riza's voice echoed in his head, silhouetted by good intentions but hollow in their helpfulness.
Roy couldn't show Edward that he was safe because Roy couldn't keep him safe.
The gauze-filled gash on the boy's back was proof of that.
Roy had not been there to keep Ed safe.
But he was here now.
"You are forbidden from working under any other officer," Roy said, retreating behind his soldier's wall. "Everything you do from now on will be under my supervision. Every mission you have will be mine."
Edward's "Why?" was a breathy whisper.
Roy did not lower his walls.
He extended them, reaching out and circling the boy until escape was impossible, for him and anyone else who wanted him.
"Because your mine," Roy said, fortifying and reinforcing the walls. "You are mine. No one else's."
Roy sat down in the nearest chair, the one that was close enough for him to drape himself over Edward, catching him and encasing him with himself.
Roy did not lower his walls.
He was the wall.
XXX
Edward stopped whispering.
He closed his eyes.