Nightmare

Review Responses: Lilith, Roy really is a sweetheart at the moment. He's being understanding, especially with Ed being so changed. Maara, I'm not big on torture for torture's sake either. I started this as a challenge and continued it so ther ecould be some comfort, too. Actually, what you see next isn't going to be happy. Kuragari, glad you're enjoying it.

Chapter 4

Al had done everything he could to prepare her, but Winry still felt it took every ounce of strength she had not to have a visible reaction to Ed’s condition. Even when he had lost his arm and leg, Winry didn’t think she had ever seen him look so lost, so hurt. Despite herself, she found tears gathering in her eyes and a sob shaking her body.

She started to run to Ed, but even as overbearing as she could be, she saw the look of pure terror on her childhood friend’s face and she stopped, the sobbing still continuing.

“I’m sorry,” she managed before collapsing into a chair at his bedside and grabbing on to the rail that surrounded his hospital bed. “Oh, Ed, I thought… I thought you were… And you’re here…” And she just kept crying, as though she couldn’t stop. She wanted to touch him, to prove that he wasn’t dead like everyone thought. She wanted some physical proof, not just visual, that he was really here.

“Winry?” Ed asked, his voice quiet, timid. Not at all like it had been before when he was discussing alchemy with Mustang.

She looked up at Ed through tear-blurred eyes.

“I’m sorry the automail was broken,” he said. His voice sounded so small.

“I’m not crying over broken automail, Ed,” she snapped, again shocked to find him recoil.

“M’sorry,” Ed mumbled.

“It is quite all right, Fullmetal,” the voice of the other wounded man said. “I believe your friend is so grateful to see you that you are safe from her wrench for once.”

“You’re safe from it forever,” she said. “It was a little crazy of me to do it in the first place. I’m sorry I ever did it. I just knew that if you damaged the automail, you had been in danger too.”

Ed said nothing, though he looked as though he was preparing to apologize once again, biting his lip just to keep from doing it.

“Do you need to check the ports and fittings?” he asked instead, and Winry was grateful.

“Only to look at them,” she said. “I don’t want to do anything that might hurt you.”

Ed nodded and shifted so that she could get to his ports.

“Don’t move too much,” Mustang chided.

Ed nodded obediently, and Winry fought not to shudder at the lack of opposition from her friend.

********

Roy managed to step outside as the doctors analyzed Ed’s injuries and the nurses gave him a sponge bath. Well, it wasn’t so much step as was rolled out of the room by Riza.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked him.

“Anything at the cafeteria that isn’t gelatin would be nice,” he said. “I’ll just stay out here and wait on Ed to be done.”

The honest truth was that he didn’t want to be too far away from the teen, afraid of what the young man might be going through, and that he might need someone at the moment.

Riza smiled at him, and he could not help but see the pity and something else in her eyes, though he couldn’t quite place the exact emotion he was seeing. Somehow, he suspected it was guilt, knowing his long-time friend. “I’ll go find something,” she said before she left him there in the hall, sitting opposite a tall, blond-haired man.

“Are you still waiting out here, Hohenheim?” Roy asked.

The man hung his head. “I doubt that my son is going to want to see me, especially in this condition. As long as I am here, I know how he is doing without adding to his stress.”

Roy sighed. “Eventually, you are going to have to talk to him.”

“He would only get angry at me,” Hohenheim said, meeting Roy’s eye.

“And that would be a fairly nice change. A little anger, that’s normal for Ed, probably you’re doing, seeing how much he hates authority figures.” Roy managed his most intimidating look, despite the pain that much movement on his face still caused his lost eye. “Anything would be better than watching him cower like a puppy who’s been kicked. Like someone who had done to him exactly what was done to him.”

“Not today,” the man said. “Al said that Ed just realized that the transmutation with the stone cost Al more than the four years in the armor, but four more years. I cannot, in good conscience go in there to show that at the moment, I am perfectly healthy. That the transmutation restored me when my youngest boy is now four years older than he should be and the other one has suffered the way he did.”

“If I do not see you in there in a few days, I will personally have Riza and my other men drag you in, seeing as I’m not in a condition to do so.” Roy then gave the older man a look that told him that there was no question he meant those words.

“Very well,” Hohenheim said, “but I will not go until we are absolutely sure it will not do more harm than good to my son.”

“Nice to see you have such concern for him, regardless of how belated it is,” Roy told him.

“We had this discussion in Risembool, and I have no intentions of having it again. You helped my sons, Ed while in the military and now after all he’s gone through and Al while he was looking for Ed and the stone.” Hohenheim’s posture became straighter. “While I appreciate that and all you’ve done, I will not continue to explain myself to you.”

There was silence again, until the screaming started, Hohenheim forgoing all thoughts on keeping himself away from his son as he pushed Roy into the room and both went to Ed’s side, Roy with a great deal more effort to go at the same speed as the other man.

“No!” Ed shouted, his eyes closed tightly. “Please, no!”

Roy could see that the teen wasn’t here. More than once, he’d seen men and women do exactly as Ed was doing now, reliving moments from a traumatic event. Ed was trapped inside his mind, and Roy wanted to stop it.

He lurched as he reached Ed’s bedside and sat on the lowered railings on the sides. It was hard just to remain alert through the pain that was now running through his body, making it difficult, but he knew Ed needed to be brought out of his flashback before he hurt himself.

“What happened?” he asked the nurses over Ed’s yelling. “Why is he screaming?”

“We don’t know,” the obnoxious redhead said. “We were brushing through his hair, it caught in the brush and he just started this.”

********

He yanked Ed by his hair and brought the blond’s face to his member. “Try fighting again, and I swear to you that I will rip every single strand out of your head.”

Ed glared up at him. “I dare you to make me suck it,” he said, still defiant after two weeks. “do they grow back on homunculi if they’ve been bitten off?”

He was dragged by his hair and slammed against the hard, cold stone wall. He heard something break, probably a rib, but he couldn’t be sure.

“By the time I’m done with you, Pet, if I tell you to suck it, you will, and you’ll be glad for the privilege.” Again, the fuhrer yanked at Ed’s hair. “But I have not gotten this far by being stupid. I have no intention of giving you the opportunity to try what you’ve suggested. Not yet.”

“I’m not a pet,” Ed growled.

“Yes you are,” Pride said. “You just need broken, like a disobedient animal.”

And before Ed could protest further, the fuhrer was behind him, slamming into his already abused body, one hand at Ed’s hips, the other jerking at his hair.

Despite himself, despite his desire not to give the man the pleasure of knowing how much pain he was causing, Ed screamed at the painful intrusion.

Ed wasn’t really aware of where he was, and though the pain at his scalp had dissipated, he still could not pull himself from his inner torment.

“You know, Brat,” Envy said as he transformed from Ed’s own brother back to his familiar form, “with that hair, you look just like our father.” There was a swift punch to Ed’s kidneys, then Envy grabbed a handful of the long hair. “And I hated him.”

“You think I liked him any better?” Ed spat back.

“I don’t care what you think. He left me so that he could have you, his perfect son, the little prodigy genius.”

Ed tried to use his remaining leg to fight back, but all it did was put the weight of his body on his left hand and his hair.

“He left me, too, Bastard!” Ed said.

Did he? Well, we have more in common than I thought. Let’s be…” And there was a swift kick that knocked Ed’s arm out from beneath him. “Friends!”

And with that, Envy left him for Pride to use. “I’m done playing,” he told the older-looking sin. “It’s your turn.”

If there was anything Ed was grateful for, it was that Envy never stayed and watched. Not once. He never witnessed Pride gathering his beaten body up just high enough that he could plunge inside without concern, pound hard enough that Ed bled every time.

Ed finally started coming round, feeling someone holding him, awkwardly, but holding him, nonetheless. He felt a third hand rubbing circles at his back, and took a deep breath.
That cologne, strong and familiar, jolted his senses back to reality. He remembered it, the scent that had stunk and lingered at his home long after the man holding him and left. Had it not been for the casts currently on his only limbs, Ed would have recoiled, would have moved, but he was trapped. Trapped against the man he’d learned to loathe since childhood.

“Get away from me!” he yelled out. “Get away!”

“They’re not here anymore,” he heard his father say. “No one will hurt you.” The man actually had the nerve to try and comfort him!

“Hohenheim, move,” he heard Mustang order. “That wasn’t a memory. It was a demand.”

Ed could feel himself being passed from one man to the other, though it was obviously difficult for his superior officer to supply some form of support. There were grunts of pain as he attempted to take over as Hohenheim backed away.

Ed leaned into Mustang’s body all the same, knowing that somehow, the man understood what he was going through, even if he could not fully comprehend.

“Ed, we’re here, at the hospital. You are safe,” the man said over and over until finally, Ed’s panicked breaths slowed. With the nurses’ help, Mustang lowered Ed onto the bed, and the teen looked around him.

“I thought you left Mom because you weren’t well. You look awfully’ damned healthy to me.” Ed was glaring up at his father. Remembering his childhood anger, combined with the recent memory of the regular beatings he earned from Envy because of this man, Ed’s fury was growing, blocking out the terror his mind had made him relive.

“In using the stone with me there, Al healed be as well as got his body back,” Hohenheim said.

“So, Al lost four years of his life, on top of the four in the armor, and you just get to continue on, you walking corpse?” Ed asked.

“I did not ask for this,” Hohenheim said simply. “I had hoped that I would have some use to your brother as a sacrifice. Once we lured Envy into the Gate, and he didn’t have the chance to kill me, I thought I might be able to offer that for Al. It did not work the way we planned.” He then added quietly. “It never does.”

“Just… just get out,” Ed said, once again remembering Envy hitting him. So many times. And then what would follow the turning over of the situation to Pride.

Hohenheim nodded, and Ed found a hand at his head, this time rubbing gently. He looked up to find Mustang again.

“Why do you care so much?” he asked bluntly. “I’m not worth it.”

“You are,” he said, then put a hand over Ed’s mouth as he tried to argue. “I will not have a disagreement with you as to whether you are worthy or not of care. I say you are, and that’s it. Understand?”

Ed looked away from the single, probing onyx eye. Then he mumbled, “I want to cut it off.”

“Cut what, Fullmetal?”

“My hair. I want it gone.”

********

Roy watched as the nurses carefully cut Ed’s hair, leaving it little more than an inch or two in length. It had an odd effect on the young man’s appearance. In one breath, he looked younger, in another, very, very old. He looked so difference with his bangs gone, barely any fringe there to cover his forehead.

Roy wondered what it was that the fuhrer had done with that hair to make him hate it so much.

“Why didn’t you argue with him?” Al asked quietly, as another snip of the scissors was heard.

“Because he needs it to be gone. It brings up unpleasant memories,” Roy whispered back. “Maybe he’ll grow it back, but only when it doesn’t mean something terrible to him.”

Ed looked in a small hand mirror when it was done, appearing startled and the change and somehow relieved.

Roy watched the teen try to raise his arm to touch the cropped hair, but found it restricted by the cast.

For just a moment, a memory of a favorite shirt and pants floating on a small lake flitted across Roy’s mind. Sometimes, things just have to go.