Nightmare

Reviewer Responses: Kuragari, thank you. radcat, I'm glad you're enjoying this. I really don't know where it's going, so you are all kind of on the ride with me. As far as Ed, yes, he's suffering, and it seems like so many other people are doing better than him. And yes, it took something drastic for Roy to be like this to Ed. chelzi, glad you liked this. I know that Hohenheim is being irritating, but he's making an effort. Lilith, yes, I cut his hair. Sorry.

Chapter 5

Roy picked up the ball for the twentieth time, it seemed.

“Just throw it in the basket,” the physical therapist said, as though he was talking to a two-year-old.

“No, really?” Roy asked, sarcasm biting at this point. “Gee, that makes things much easier. I was aiming for the wall.” He glared at the man. “Or your head,” he said in a quiet growl.

Roy tossed the small ball at the large basket, and though it was headed in exactly the right direction, he missed it by three feet, as he overshot his target once again. Admittedly, he wasn’t undershooting it anymore, but he could not seem to find a happy medium.

There was a strong part of him that wanted to aim it at the man’s head, but he knew he wouldn’t hit it even if he did.

“It will take some practice,” the man said in his quiet, yet chipper voice.

“Well, wonderful, because I need to know how to throw a ball every day in my life. It will do well when I’m playing as pitcher in the state alchemists’ softball league.”

“Pardon me for saying that a softball is somehow better than fireballs when you are re-learning your aim.”

“And you know what?” Roy asked, taking the ball and tossing it at the plaster wall as hard as he could, busting the wall and lodging the white sphere in it. “You can take your physical therapy and shove it out of your overly optimistic ass. You know, if I really wanted to, I could probably find a way to make it possible to at least make this softball do it.”

“I’m sure you could. Though I have to say that you did manage to hit that wall with a nice amount of force.”

“Great, so I can continue as an alchemists as long as I only go for the large targets.”

“It is a start,” the physical therapist said. “Though you will have to pay for the repairs to the wall now.”

“Good luck getting it out of my accounts. They’ve been frozen by the military until they decide if I’m a criminal or not.”

The man just shook his head and went to retrieve the balls from around the room. “You might be irritable, but you aren’t a criminal for what you did to the fuhrer.”

“And you might be obnoxious, but you have good judgment.”

********

Al walked alongside his brother’s chair as the nurse pushed it down the hall to a secluded area where he would have his automail arm installed. The premise was that Winry would need the space to do the installation, but Al knew better. He knew it hurt his brother, and that most everyone who had automail attached or reattached ended up in enough pain to force them to scream. He dreaded thinking of the fact that Ed would have to go through the surgery for his leg again as though he’d never had the automail in the first place.

“You could have done it in the room,” Ed said quietly. “I won’t scream.”

“I’ve seen grown men scream at this,” the redheaded nurse said. Her name was Annie or Amy or something like that, though Al had started referring to her as the Red Terror. She never seemed to comfort his brother, though she tried. But treating him as though he was a child, something Ed really had never been, wasn’t going to work on his brother. Al knew that.

“Right, because I’m not as strong as a grown man,” Ed said.
For just a second, that wasn’t a tone of self-loathing or lack of worth. It was Ed, bitter about his height. And for that tone, for that comment, Al wanted to hug the nurse and kiss his brother, or the other way around.

“Well, you’re still a young thing,” the nurse said. “And after all you’ve been—”

“Brother got his automail when he was eleven. He will be fine,” Al said, actually glaring at the terror.

“Eleven? So young?” she asked. “You poor thing.”

Ed looked up at Al, his eyes both expressing a desire for his brother to save him and to see her die slowly and painfully. And though he was a pacifist himself, Al would have. He had seen how much his brother was hurt by this woman’s unintentional stupidity, though she irritated him more often than hurt him, thankfully

And yet, there was something in her that brought out the tiniest bit of the brother Al had always remembered, the brother he missed more than he could admit. Just that look, not of cowering fear, but of irritation at the Red Terror was something Al has wondered if he’d see again. Even Mustang, a regular irritant for Ed was no longer a target of anger.

No, instead, he seemed to be a source of comfort for Al’s brother, and as much as the teen didn’t want to admit it, that bothered him. Much as he hated it, Al could feel the green-eyed monster coming out when he thought of it.

Thankfully, before Al had to intervene, or before she said something beyond the irritation so far, Winry came bursting out of the room, a little larger than life, a little louder than Al would have liked.

“Edward James Elric,” she said, “what did you do to your hair?”

“I… I cut it,” he said. There were conflicting emotions crossing his face. Al spotted the fear that always showed itself when someone spoke in a raised voice to him, but there was also enough familiarity in it that he wasn’t cowering. And for that, the younger brother was happy. It was at least a step in the right direction.

Winry looked up at Al, and he tried to convey to her how important it was that she just accept the change.

“Well,” she said. “It’s definitely different. No bangs at all to hide behind now.” She smiled at Ed. “I should be grateful. It means that when you’re trying to pull one over on me or embarrassed, I’ll know.”

And with that, she took the chair from the nurse and wheeled Ed into the room, signaling for Al to follow. And he did, though there was something in her expression at that moment that made him realize that all his battles with his brother as children were pointless. He could see in Winry’s eyes that there would never be a need to fight. Despite it all, she loved Ed. Not him.

********

“So, how does it feel to have your automail back,” the doctor asked Ed.

“Okay, I guess,” he said.

“Bittersweet?” she asked him.

“Hmm?” Ed asked, having lost his attention on her as he saw workers repairing a wall just outside of his therapy room.

“I asked if it was bittersweet to get your arm back.”

“Oh,” Ed said, still not looking at the therapist. “Yeah, I guess so. I can at least do things for myself now.”

She turned around and followed his line of sight. “You find renovation work so interesting?”

“No,” Ed said. “I heard that Mustang had a temper tantrum. I’m just guessing that was it.”

“Does it surprise you that he got angry?”

“Hell no.” Ed looked at older woman and stopped craning his neck to see behind her. “I’m more surprised he hasn’t gotten angry with me yet. We used to go at one another all the time.”

“And what do you think about the way things are now?”

“It’s kinda weird,” Ed said. “He doesn’t walk on eggshells like everyone else, but he doesn’t yell at me either. We used to yell a lot.”

“What if things went back to the way they were?”

“It…” Ed floundered a moment, eyebrows meeting as he thought on it, a frown on his face. “It would be more normal, but I don’t know if I’d like it too much.”

“You rely a lot on the brigadier general, don’t you?”

“It’s not like I want to,” Ed said defensively. “I’m just more comfortable around him. He is just understanding. Like when my brother heard I was cutting off my hair. Al looked really worried about it.”

“You’ve been calmer in the last two days since you did it,” she said. “According to your doctors, you’ve had fewer outbursts.”

Ed fingered his short hair, though he couldn’t feel it with the automail. “They wouldn’t let me cut it,” he said. “Mast—the son of a bitch said he liked it. And the bastard said it reminded him of my father.”

Though he hadn’t used either name, he had used the two terms often enough to guarantee that the psychiatrist understood which of his tormenters was which.

“So this is something you have done for yourself?” she asked him.

“It is,” Ed said.

********

And yet, he couldn’t help but admit that he still contemplated death, that even that night, when it was dark and the only noise filling the room was the even pace of Mustang’s breathing. He looked at his hand in the faint light that filled the room through the blinds covering the windows, seeing how the light reflected off the metal of the newly-installed limb. It was part of him, and yet it wasn’t. If he actually tried to strangle himself with it, would it stop when his brain kicked in to protect itself? Or would it continue on?

He sighed. It wasn’t as though he would manage it tonight, if for no other reason than the fact that the hospital would revive him.

He dropped his right arm to the bed with a thud. The desire to die was still there. It probably wouldn’t leave, but it certainly felt less intense than it had during those first few days.

He turned his head and glanced over at the bed next to his. It had been over two weeks since the man had saved him, and he’d heard some quiet discussions of what Mustang’s fate would be for the rescue and the fuhrer’s death. It wasn’t fair. Mustang had done all that he had to redeem himself, not to be punished.

There was some moaning from the other bed. It wasn’t uncommon, Ed found. It seemed like the older man had nightmares often. Ed may not have noticed because his sleep had come to him via drugs prior to Monday, but in the three days since he was allowed to sleep on his own, he’d observed that he wasn’t the only one who suffered from reliving memories in his sleep.

The moaning turned more pained, more like quiet screaming, and Ed knew he couldn’t take that. He couldn’t stand to lay here and hear him crying out for Maes, who he knew Envy had killed. He couldn’t hear him trying to make apologies to Winry and Pinako or to Winry’s parents. And he couldn’t hear him trying to apologize to Ed himself for not finding him sooner. Didn’t Mustang understand that the simple fact that he hadn’t given up on him, that he had been the one person in the world who hadn’t given up meant more to Ed than he could say. Hell, he’d been the one to find him and rescue him from that in the first place. The man arriving late was still better than an eternity with the two homunuculi torturing him.

“Mustang,” Ed hissed, but got no reaction. “Mustang!” he said more loudly and still nothing from the man in the other bed. “Roy!” he called out as he tossed an empty plastic cup at the man, hitting him on his thigh.

He watched as the other man sat up in his bed, much to fast to be healthy.

“Ed?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but you were having a nightmare.”

“Oh.” The man’s eye was still blurry with sleep. “I’m sorry.”

“Just… go back to bed.”