Marked on the Calendar

Note: Chronologically, this takes place before the first chapter, but will be listed after it, as "Marked on the Calendar" comes first and everything else is backstory leading up to it. That said...

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Their commander was still a few weeks away from being released from the hospital when he scattered them out to look for the Elrics. The pair had been missing since before Bradley's death, and none of them particularly blamed Mustang for being concerned. Rather hard to get irritated at their leader for having the same bad feeling they'd all shared for months. Which was why he was currently in this little rat hole of a town, actually; one of their contacts had called in a supposed sighting of a small blond boy and a suit of armor. He'd been the one closest to the site of the call at the time, and had been the one ordered to investigate.

He was prowling around the abandoned former estate that he had been directed to, hoping to find some evidence that the boys had been there, when the proverbial hair on the back of his neck stood up. Dammit. Maybe he was no alchemist, but years of working in close proximity to them told him damn well what the crackling tension of static in the air was a prelude to. And it was stronger as he got closer to the house. Finding a broken window that had already had the boards ripped off, he let himself in and followed the sensation.

The sparks and flashes from whatever the hell transmutation was being set off were visible against the wall long before he ever made it to the basement stairs. Swearing under his breath, he shielded his eyes as best he could and made his way onto the landing-

-and walked into a scene straight out of the depths of hell, or, at the very least, the worst possible nightmares he could ever imagine.

As the red and purple writhing light and flashes from the transmutation began to fade, he could see the older Elric struggling to drag himself towards the center of the still glowing array, automail completely missing. Reacting on instinct to protect a fellow comrade, he hopped the railing, landed on the concrete and quickly moved in. A wet squish of his boot stepping in something made him look down, and he hissed at the pool of blood that had turned into a smear as it followed the smaller blond, drawing his attention to the fact that the boy’s other leg was missing below the knee.

Shit.

It wasn’t helping his screaming nerves any that the lights were continuing to fade, and he would swear he saw limbs writhing in the remaining flashes now, but he crouched down beside the fallen alchemist. He couldn’t hear what Edward was screaming at him over the roar and wind, but it didn’t matter at the moment. Shredding most of his outer uniform, he managed to bind the stump of a remaining leg enough that it would at least stop bleeding. All of his concentration focused, it was only after he finished his temporary role of combat medic that he realized that, whatever the hell the array was for, it was finished. And so he made his second mistake, after following the trail here in the first place.

He looked to see what the result was.

Instinctively, he tried to recoil, only to be stopped by Ed clinging to his pants leg like a lifeline.

“You have to give him these!”

This was insane. This was completely and utterly fucking insane. Only the fact that the smaller blond was now clutching his wrist with his only remaining hand kept him from just throwing away the little box that had been thrust at him.

“No way in hell,” he gasped in a small voice.

“Please,” Ed begged, and he couldn’t make himself look away from the tears of desperation that had begun to start spilling down the alchemist’s face. “He’ll die if you don’t!”

He? He looked up again, and realized with a fresh wave of horror that the writhing pile of organs and limbs and turned out parts was covering, no, spilling out of an all too familiar suit of armor. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. That thing couldn’t be the kid. But he had no other explanation for why Ed would be so desperate to save it…

“Don’t let him die,” the boy in question continued to sob pleadingly, his voice growing weaker, then fading altogether as he lapsed out of consciousness from exhaustion and blood loss.

He felt sick as he looked from the unconscious alchemist to the thing moaning and writhing in the center of the array. Then he opened the box, and found a couple of handfuls of glowing red stones. He didn’t want to do this… Oh, God, he didn’t want to do this. But if that thing was Alphonse, then Ed was right. He couldn’t just stand back and let it die.

Hesitantly creeping over the lines of the array, he gathered a few stones in his hand and held it out, unsure of exactly how he was supposed to go about doing this. He almost, almost gave in to the part of him that desperately wanted to flee, especially when what looked like a half-formed head surged up out of the mass towards him. Even though he managed to stay put, he couldn’t help the full body shudder that came when a long, inhuman tongue snaked out to curl around his fingers and pull the glowing stones from them.

He nearly threw up at the slimy feeling on his fingers and the crunching noises as wickedly sharp teeth ground up what he’d offered, but he forced himself to take some more stones out of the box and hold them out. He had no idea what he was supposed to do once the box ran out, and cringed when the thing actually nuzzled his hand, clearly wanting more.

“I’ll be back,” he promised. Right now, he had to look after Ed too. So first things were first. Upstairs, he found a child’s bed that was nonetheless big enough to hold the alchemist and, by some amount of luck, managed to drag it down the stairs without ending up getting squished. The thing had somehow managed to drag itself out of the suit of armor and over to the unconscious boy, but, to his amazement, didn’t seem inclined to attack. In fact, it seemed to recognize him, nuzzling and making little noises. Shaking off his shock and reminding himself he had a job to do, he gently shooed it away and picked up Ed to lay him in the bed he’d dragged down.

Then he collapsed next to the bed, exhausted himself, and tried not to look at the thing that was now staring at him too. This was going to be a damn long night.