Like a Wounded Animal

“Hamburger?”

“Yeah.”

“You cooked it…” The chimera’s ears drooped down the sides of his skull, a frown coming to his face as he bent low to sniff at the thing on the plate before him. He sounded very disappointed about it.

“Well, I wasn’t about to make you eat raw food, Roy.” Hughes said, sitting down in the loveseat across the coffee table from the couch that the chimera had become very much attached to. “Even like this, that would make you sick. It’s medium rare, I made sure there was still blood in it for you.”

Roy whimpered, reaching out for the plate on the table before him, but then stopped.

“What’s the matter, I thought you were hungry?”

“I- I am…”

“Well, eat then.”

“… my stomach hurts…”

“That’s because your hungry.”

“No, I mean it hurts….”

“Oh…. That, you probably moved the wrong way, you’re going to have a scar there.” Maes side. “You’re going to have a lot of them.”

Roy nodded, one of his long nailed hands coming to rest on his stomach as he leaned forward a bit more and picked up the burger in his other hand. He knew Hughes would have taken him to the hospital if he could have, so he could have his wounds properly stitched, but it wasn’t possible. With his ears still lying down to the sides, he looked at the burger as if it were a slug, then over it at Hughes.

“Go on, you need to eat or you won’t heal,” he prompted.

Mustang let out another whimper, but then nodded, swallowing a lump in his throat and beginning to eat. It was clear that he was starving, but was trying desperately to hold onto his humanity enough where he was eating like he used to, despite the long fangs that were now part of his mouth.

He was forcing himself to be polite and not give into the urges of the animal that was now ingrained into him. It took him a lot longer than it should have to eat the sandwich provided to him, and after he was done he whimpered something about needing some water, which Hughes provided with no qualms.

“Will you let me change your bandages now?” Hughes asked after Roy had half drank, half lapped up the water from the glass provided.

The chimera laid back down in his nest of blanket and pillows and cushions and shook his head slowly.

“Roy, it has to be done. You don’t want to get sick, do you?”

Mustang snorted. “Look at me, Maes, I AM sick.” He muttered. “And there’s no cure…”

“… Don’t talk like that Roy,” his friend coached, his voice soft. “We’ll find a way to change you back.”

“HOW?” Mustang’s voice choked as he yelped. “There’s no way, Hughes… except for the stone, and you know I won’t let you risk making one…”

“We’ll find one.”

“… no, you won’t… the easiest thing to do is to just accept that this is what I am… a monster…” the normally strong voice of the Flame Alchemist was only mere ash compared to what it had once been. It was as if he were only a shell of that man, hollow and dead.

“Roy…”

“Leave me alone… we both now that if I try to go on with my life the way I used to, I’ll be killed… it’ll just be easier to not check my wounds and let me bleed to death.”

“ROY!” Hughes thundered, causing the chimera to shrink down into the blankets he was lying in. “Stop it, ok. Stop. I don’t care what you look like; you’re still my friend… I still owe you for everything I have in my life that has meaning. You practically gave me everything I have. Stop.”

“You don’t… owe me anything…” Mustang muttered brokenly.

“Go back to sleep Roy.”

The chimera shook his head.

“Roy, sleep. You need it.”

Again, a head shake.

“What is wrong with you?”

Mustang began to whimper. By this point, Hughes had stood and made to walk away, though, at hearing the sound, he had turned and looked at his friend, seeing tears peel their way from his eyelids again.

“Roy…. Come on… stop…”

But the chimera’s cries only grew more drastic, louder, more like an animal’s whimper than a man trying to make the sound. To hear them hurt Hughes’s heart. He walked over to the couch, earning a warning growl and snarl mixed with those high pitched calls of pain. He looked Roy in the eyes, trying to plead with the man in him.

“Where does it hurt?” He asked, but Roy was unable to answer.

“Roy, please, tell me.”

Mustang’s slit eyes turned foggy with pain, and his eyelids began to close, though the yelps lingered on in the air.

“Dammit… why couldn’t you tell me what was wrong?” Hughes asked, exasperated already with the chimera’s antics. He sighed, remembering that before he had eaten, Roy had said something about his stomach hurting. He rolled his eyes, figuring that was the reason for his friend’s pain. The wound there had been deep, and had already looked as if it had been infected. Hughes had been forced to cut away at the rotting flesh in order to give that still living a chance to mend. There hadn’t been much else he had been able to do.

He reached over, planning on gently moving the chimera to lay on his back so he could check the would while he was unconscious, when Roy’s eyes snapped open. Too fast for Hughes to react to, he brought his head forward, fangs coming down to bare on his friend’s wrist. Unlike before, this was no warning nip, it was a true bite.

Blood began to fill Roy’s snarling mouth as Hughes cried out in agony. The alchemist’s eyes widened as he realized what he was doing, and his teeth pulled out and away from the General’s wrist. Maes grabbed the wound to check the bleeding, a hurt glare parting his eyes and finding its target on the couch, looking shocked and regretful.

“Why? I was trying to help you!” Maes shouted, the chimera beginning to shake and cower, tail between his legs and ears drooped.

“… I… I thought you were going to… to hurt me again…” Mustang whimpered.

“AGAIN? I would never hurt you Roy, ever.”

“I… I know…”

Hughes stood and went to go get something to wrap around his wrist. “Damn you…” he muttered as he left the room, leaving the chimera utterly alone, shaking and fearful, the taste of his friend’s blood still thick in his mouth.

“… I told you… you should just let me die…” he muttered, depression heavy in his tone and glazing his eyes.

“I don’t deserve to live…”