Ash was about to the point of putting a bullet through Ed's old acquaintance and just dealing with the alchemist's sulkiness for however long it took him to get over it, and they were only halfway back to the Sanctuary.
The scrawny, green haired invalid had looked sick as a dog and seemed to have a mild panic attack Every time the truck they were riding in accelerated, but still he seemed hell-bent on filling every second of the trip with a constant stream of whining, threats and insults, somehow seeming to perfect a mix of teenage female and male bullying styles into a constant stream of invective that she was hard pressed to not cut off with a burst of five-five-six from her new M4.
Or at least, the Canadian military's version of the weapon; no doubt it had its own name or whatever, but frankly bullets-go-in-bullets-go-out, keep clean to continue this process with no hitches was a winning strategy with most types of firearms, she had found. Although this one did have a super-sweet built in scope above the receiver….
"Pipsqueak, how did you even wind up with this bunch, hmm? They seem a little too riff-raffy for your normal tastes?"
Ed had been ignoring Envy for most of the trip back, and seemed to have no idea that this might not be best practice when dealing with someone like Envy.
I learned something in high school after all, Ash thought, look at me!
"Hey, Ed!" she called, breaking the alchemist's stoic façade as he turned to look at her; they were riding in the back of sputtering cargo truck with half worn-out shock absorbers, the three of them bouncing around in the cargo box with an assortment of loot the saviors had swiped from their newest vassals. Ed had taken the inadvisable but to his mind no doubt the coolest spot closest to the open roll up door of the bay; frankly his moody silence in the face of Envy's verbal attack had probably been mostly due to his trying not to fall out of the spavined vehicle as it trundled across the crumbling roadways of what had been Virginia.
"Yeah?"
"Did you have a pet back on Amestris?" she asked, calling back in her bad German, mixed with English here and there.
"What? I mean Winry and Granny had Den…a dog. Yeah, I guess I had a dog."
"Sweet, I had gerbils."
"What's a gerbil?"
"It's a fuzzy Mongolian rat with a furry tail."
Ash had continued the conversation in the mix of German and English, enough that Envy seemed to grasp the general thread of conversation, and to realize that he was completely cut out from it both by its odd subject matter and the ersatz language it was being carried on in.
"Yeah, that's…great…" Ed answered, clearly confused about where this conversation was going.
"My gerbils could beat your dog's ass, Eddie."
"…what?"
"You heard me. My boys would whip your mutts ass, Eddiekins."
"What, no, that's freaking impossible, Ash, what are you even talking about?"
And the pointless, insane argument was off, with Ash sniping at Edward, who grew steadily more heated with the pointless debate until he exploded in a furor that Ash met with equal ferocity, with Envy, meanwhile watching in mute silence as the only person on this entire planet with he actually knew, much less could properly speak to, had an enraged debate about whose childhood pet would win in a fight, and in the process ending up completely ignoring the very existence of the former homunculus.
His sulking grew to simmering rage as the girl flashed him an evil smirk, and he realized this had been her objective with that first, seemingly random question that had started the verbal melee.
He grit his teeth behind pursed lips and quietly fumed at being outmaneuvered, and fell into a sullen silence that spread to the other two occupants of the rusty cargo box.
A bit later the column rolled to a stop; Ed looked sharply out the back, but the occupants of the pick-up truck behind them seemed unconcerned, so he relaxed, assuming this was a normal pause for whatever reason.
He stood and stretched, looking out the open cargo door; they seemed to have come to a stop on a bare hill top, and it felt like he could see for miles as he held a hand up over his eyes to shield them from the sun as he scanned the horizon.
"What are those?" he suddenly asked, spotting a conglomeration of…something on the horizon, far from where the highway crested the hill they had stopped on.
"Hmm?"
"Those…constructions?" Ed asked, his confusion shaking him out of grammar in his new language.
Ash stood and went to Ed's side, being careful to avoid Envy, and keeping a wary eye on the former homunculus, who, although for his part he didn't understand what the two were talking about but his curiosity was peaked enough for him to struggle to his feet and join Ed and Ash at the end of the cargo box to see what had captured Edwards attention.
Ed pointed at the distant shapes of tall, impossible so to his mind, buildings on the far horizon, to the Northeast of their position.
"Dude, those are just buildings."
Ed looked at the distant skyline again,
"Those? Those are buildings? How high are they?"
"How should I know? I grew up in the suburbs. Anyway, I think that's DC…"
"DC?"
"A city."
Ed looked at Ash expectantly, but the girl just shrugged and walked away, leaving Envy and Edward to look at the distant city skyline as the convoy started to move again.
"Those are buildings?" Envy asked in Amestrian
"Yeah. Ash said it's a city called DC."
Envy squinted and raised an eyebrow,
"That's a goofy name for a city."
"You're tellin' me?"
The two stood there for a moment, still able to stand as the truck slowly built-up speed again; they passed over another highway on an overpass, and the pair looked over and out on a line of burnt-out vehicles that stretched all the way back to that distant city, with a few reanimated wandering through the wrecks, following the convoy with blank, milky eyes.
"This whole world is like this, Fullmetal?" Envy asked, as he limped back to the improvised seat of stolen goods he'd been riding on.
"As far as I know. The outbreak of the disease that causes the reanimation in the dead happened a couple years ago…" Edward answered, realizing this was the first wholly non-hostile conversation he'd ever had with Envy.
"Pathetic human weaklings, getting overrun by a few shambling, hungry idiots." Envy muttered.
Ah. There it was; Ed thought. He had started to worry.
He ignored Envy's remark and the trio passed the rest of the trip in silence.
The silence ended with their arrival at the Sanctuary, as a swarm of workers and disheveled people in gray clothing marked with the letter P in orange paint met them and began unloading the trucks and vehicles of the convoy; or, at least, those that remained. Edward noted that the vehicles and motorcycles from the Savior groups that operated outside of the Sanctuary were gone, having split off at some point.
Edward and Ash stood to help unload the scattered contents of the truck they had ridden, while Envy slunk to the back of the cargo box and crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back to watch, seemingly attempting to remain aloof- until Ash spotted him and snapped an order to help out at him in her terrible German/Amestrian dialect.
Enny turned his mouth down disdainfully and Ash laughed,
"Then you're going to fucking starve here, you know?" she asked, sweetly, "No work, no value- no life."
Envy gaped for a second, and then sullenly began shoving bits of looted cargo forward as best he could; not only was his ankle still gimped, his accustomed strength of the last four centuries was gone as well.
Edward smirked at Envy's discomfort, but used the brief bout of physical labor to try and consider his actions; in sparing the newly made human, he'd taken the burden of not only caring for him, but attempting to reform him as well. Why? For someone as vile as Envy…
"Don't let this world take you"
Ed closed his eyes and for a moment and almost froze, but snapped out of it when the Savior he'd been passing cargo to snapped a curse at him for the delay- Ed hesitated, returned it with one of his own and shoved the rattling box of stolen cookware he'd been holding into the man's arms.
The dark-skinned bandit threw him a rude gesture and carried the box off, but Ed stared after him. It was a simple if rough interaction, but he could point to it and say that's me fitting in, that's me being part of this community, as messed up as it is.
Could Envy, of all…people…ever do something so simple as being part of this tribe, or any other? Could he even make him understand why you'd want to be?
Ash shoved one last box of cargo out the door and turned to find the truck empty,
"Jobs done, boys. Let's go." She called to her two companions. She and Ed hopped down and the scavenger had a moment to notice a look of distant concern on Ed's face, but didn't have time to remark on it before Envy had hobbled over and the pair needed to help the ill and injured former homunculus down to the ground.
And then Ash turned to find Arat standing with her arms on her hips, looking pointedly at her.
"That's two rifles you're carrying, Ash."
Ash narrowed her eyes and Arat's blank look hardened into a glare.
"Rule is one per asshole, girl." Arat explained, unnecessarily, but it was clear that the girl was greedy enough to fight about it.
"They're mine," Ash returned; she didn't put her hands near any of her weapons, but she held her hands at her sides, fists clenched. Either that was as far she wanted to go or she didn't want to give the lethal woman any excuse to go for her weapons.
"Negan said you could take your pick from the Canadian soldier-bitches' things and you snatched that new one, so give up that old AR of yours."
"We got plenty of new guns, just let me trade this one, huh?"
"You got plenty to trade, and you can take whatever you need anyway."
Ash frowned and bit her lip, a move Ed spotted and made him worry; he'd never seen the violent girl uncertain about anything before.
"Oooo…what do we have here?" Simon suddenly cut in, as the gray-haired Savior lieutenant seemed to materialize out of the crowd, as if guided by some sixth sense of finding trouble to egg on, "Let me guess, Girley doesn't want to give up one of her guns?"
Arat nodded, not taking her eyes off Ash.
"Well how about tha-,"
"Ash, give it up. We need every gun we can get and you only have two hands." Ed suddenly interjected, cutting off Simon. Both the glowering old man and the young scavenger fixed the alchemist with an angry glare, but Ed didn't seem to notice,
"'Sides, you've got me, I'm worth every crummy gun on this planet."
Simon rolled his eyes, but Ash, still glaring at Edward, unslung her old AR-15 and ejected the magazine and slid it into her ammo vest before racking the charging handle on the back of the weapons receiver, causing it to spit out the last bullet in the chamber, which she caught mid air and slid into her closed fist, between her middle and ring fingers. She held her hand up in an imitation of a rude gesture at Ed as she held the old rifle out to him, stock first.
Ed awkwardly took the weapon and the girl stalked off, shouldering a bag of loot taken from the raid as she did so.
Ed passed the weapon to Arat, who snatched it from his hands and shook her head,
"Not bad handling the greedy little she-devil, Magic. Though she did just make off with your take."
Ed sighed,
"Goddammit…"
Simon had been glaring at Envy, who had attempted to return the gesture but he suddenly dissolved into a coughing fit that nearly doubled him over.
"Might wanna get your angry little androgynous buddy to the Doc, Eddie. He doesn't look too good."
Ed made a mental note to look up what androgynous meant later, but he knew that the raider was right about Envy; the newly trans-mutated human was in rough shape, shaking with fever and coughing, and a thin sheen of sweat glistened on his brow under his askew and tattered headband- now a simple black piece of cloth, with the maroon node array missing from it.
As the two Savior leaders left, Ed turned back to the former homunculus as he swayed on his feet and took his arm over his shoulder again.
Envy groggily muttered something under his breath that ended with shrimp and Ed sighed in resignation as he walked through the crowd of Saviors and into the main floor of the Sanctuary, with Envy stumbling along beside him. Ed stopped inside, looking up he long flight of winding stairs that led off to the old offices and workshops in which the makeshift medical ward the Saviors had built; Ed had been there but the haze of gun smoke and blood from that night had more or less blanked out his memory on the directions.
Ed stood in the dimly lit factory floor and looked around, trying to recall how he had got there, not wanting to drag Envy to the wrong floor; Envy was actually fairly light, but the prospect of carrying even the skinny former homunculus up and down the rusty stairways of the Sanctuary was daunting…
"You lost, Ed?" a feminine voice called, and Edwad looked up a concrete staircase behind him to find Negan's wife, Sherry walking down to him with a look of concern on her face. Or at least…he thought she was his wife. One of them. He was still confused on the issue.
"Yeah, I am actually, I'm trying to find the Doctor, for my…for him."
Sherry looked over at Envy, who was listlessly darting his eyes back and forth over the floor, seeming to focus on random people or items, until he fixed his slit eyed gaze on Sherry, blinking rapidly.
"Umm…wow. He looks…bad. You know him?"
"He's from the same place I am."
Sherry actually took a half step back; she'd been listening at the doorway when Negan and Ed had been having their conversation about just where Edward had come from, and she had gleaned enough to know that Edward was not of this Earth; unbelievable in most cases, but most cases didn't come with a metal arm and the ability to do magic, though she had heard that the boy insisted that to be called alchemy instead.
Normally a supernaturally powered alien would be more a cause for concern, but there were also living corpses and a civilizational collapse going on right now, so after seeing that Ed was brave and kind after the massacre in Negan's rooms and had so far not done anything monumentally terrifying other than strike up fast friendships with both Negan and the most vicious girl Sherry had ever met.
So, she might have been unnerved at the knowledge that there were now two aliens standing in front of her, she hardened her wits and finished walking down the stairs to Ed and his new companion.
"Why didn't you just take the stairs outside, on the East side? That leads almost straight to Carsons ward. Some of the worst wounded from the fight you all had out there should have been headed that way."
Ed sighed,
"Because…I'm going to blame it on being tired."
Sherry smiled slightly,
"I'll help you two get up there…" Sherry said, smiling a bit, happy to return some of Eds kindness.
When they had made their way to the infirmary, Edward was pleased to find that there were not too many wounded from the battle at the rolling fortress inside, and those that were there didn't appear to be in too bad of shape.
Then he had the less pleasant thought that anyone to badly injured would probably be given up for lost- there seemed to be a limited number of supplies and equipment in the makeshift medical center and with only one doctor, he had no idea how much could actually be done.
"Sherry, I've got him, if you were looking for Negan back in the yard, I wouldn't want to keep you."
"I wasn't looking for Negan…" Sherry blurted, then sighed, as if she hadn't meant to say that.
"What?"
"Nothing. I'll see you later, Magic."
Shery turned and left without saying anything else, and Ed eased Envy down into a small plastic chair near the door, similar to the ones in the abandoned school he'd been living in when he first got to Earth.
"What is that word they keep calling you, Fullmetal?" Envy whispered, voice sounding groggy.
"'Mah-jic'. It's short for 'Magician' in their language."
Envy sniggered, but kept quiet as Ed tried to flag down the doctor, Carson.
He looked up from the wounded Savior he was bandaging and regarded Ed and Envy coldly, before going back to his task. Eventually satisfied with his work, Carson stood and came to Edward- rather, he breezed right past him and went to Envy, reaching out to begin an examination on the obviously sick Amestrian without another word.
"Hey, stop!" Ed called, "Let me talk to him, he won't understand your language."
Carson frowned,
"What language…" he began to ask, but Ed ignored him and his frown deepened as the alchemist began to speak with the newcomer in the not quite German dialect the doctor understood came from Edwards home world.
"Envy, this man's a doctor, will you let him check you out and see what we can do to start getting you feeling better?"
Envy looked at Ed, then at Carson and nodded without any comment, which scared Edward to his core- just how sick was Envy?
Carson leaned forward and pressed his hands to Envy's forward, frowned, asked a few questions to Ed that the alchemist relayed to Envy, some of which Ed was embarrassed to ask,
During this, Ed was hit the growing realization that he was responsible for the health and well-being of someone who had actually killed him a couple weeks ago. Ed grit his teeth, but kept translating.
Finally, the Doctor shrugged,
"He's sick. That's all I can tell you, without a real hospital."
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Whatever he has his body is fighting it like hell, he's burning up, but for what it's worth I don't think it's Wildfire. I can give him medicine, for the fever and any pain he's in, maybe some anti-biotics." Carson narrowed his eyes, "But those are hard to come by. I have some anti-virals as well. Those are even rarer."
"Just give it to him. Anything you can spare, without putting anyone who was hurt at the fight today at risk."
"The price?"
Ed narrowed his eyes,
"Do you know who I am?"
Carson looked uncomfortable, and nodded.
"And you know what I can do?"
"Well…I've heard the rumors…a few stories."
"Then you know I'm good for it."
"But…"
Ed slammed his auto-mail fist into the tile while, leaving a shattered hole in the ceramic,
"Just give him the damn medicine!"
Carson darted off, deeper into the now deathly silent infirmary,
"Look at you go!" Envy managed to smirk,
"Envy, shut the fuck up." Ed turned to the ex-homunculus and crouched down before helping him unto an empty bed, "Doc said you're going to live. If you make a stupid joke about me being disappointed about that I'll feed you to the stenches chained to the fence outside."
Envy was silent, and Ed had second to flatter himself that he had shocked him into silence, but he seemed to be fighting a bout of shivers that seemed closer to convulsions, and Ed silently grabbed the ratty comforter at the end of the bed and pulled it over Envy's thin body,
"They have something that will make me feel better?" the green haired boy asked Ed,
"Yeah. Yeah I think so. Medicine seems pretty advanced here."
Envy sighed,
"Whatever they were giving me back in that cell seemed to help. Just pills. When I got really weak, they jabbed me with a shot that made my heart go crazy and my pulse race before I passed out."
"Hopefully Doctor Carson is better at treating you than those people, at least."
Envy shrugged,
"I don't think I could stop him if he wasn't. I don't think I can do any-,"
Envy shut up as Ed suddenly swayed on his feet, only to be caught and steadied by a leather-gloved hand.
"Eddie! There's my star ass-kicker, in about as shitty shape as he always is!" Negan joked, before guiding Ed to a folding chair next to Envy's hospital bed.
Envy sighed.
The loud one was back.
Great.