FMA Big Bang

[xeviscerax]

Symptoms of Mercy: Part I
Deliver Me

Chapter One

A scream echoed down the empty corridor, bouncing from broken tiles, shattered glass, crumbling cinder blocks; resounded down pipes and emerged mutated and distorted from a dozen different drains until it barely sounded human.

“Water... th-thirty-five l-liters.” Shaky, faint, barely a breath left in bruised lungs and raw throat. “C-c-c-arbon... t-t-t-twenty k-k-k-ilograms... A-am-m-onia... f-f-four l-l-l-”

“This really needn’t be quite as difficult as you’re making it, Fullmetal.” Calm, amused lilt that made the flesh behind one’s ears tingle unpleasantly. “Tell us what we want to know and it all stops.”

“F-f-f-f-fuck you,” the creature croaked, blood flecking pale lips.

The tall man sighed, as if disappointed, but Ed knew he would be happy whether he answered his demands or not. Pale blue eyes looked off to the side, a tight, barely-there nod of the head. Ed’s scream drowned out the sound of the bone snapping. He squinted his eyes tight closed and turned his head as far as he could away from the sight of his mangled hand. That was the last of his fingers, they’d probably move on to toes now. Or perhaps they’d beat him again, they usually did when he was being particularly uncooperative. He expected them to yank him upright with bruising grip and have a go. Sometimes he passed out before they were finished and woke in his cell with more bruises, and once with fewer teeth, but he was past the point of caring about his endurance. A few months of little food and daily interrogations would make even Armstrong stumble-

Oh, but it hurt to think of the people he once knew. He held little hope of ever seeing them again - if they hadn’t bothered to come looking for him by now, he doubted they ever would find him. He was little more than an errand boy these days, anyway, now that Alphonse had been restored and his frantic search for the Philosopher’s Stone over and done with. Mustang had been sending him on reconnaissance missions for the last year of his contract, which mostly consisted of sitting in one place for hours eating greasy take-out food and stalking perfectly normal-looking people.

Ed never thought he would miss the smell of Havoc’s cigarette smoke or sharing a crossword with Breda or transmuting radio parts out of random junk for Feury. Falman would always lecture him about leaving scuff-marks on the floor, and Hawkeye would just sigh and give him a commiserating half-shrug as they exchanged paperwork. He even missed the way Mustang would always lord over him from the other side of his desk and give orders he always expected to be followed but he really should have learned by now, shouldn’t he? Things like this weren’t supposed to happen, not with the grand new order of things; someone had just never gotten that particular memo and now Ed was no longer even Ed but just a thing with memories of how things were and living how things are and couldn’t tell which he was supposed to be. His old life seemed worlds apart from what he lived now, and the point where he might have been able to reconcile the two had long since passed. He was never going to be him again, he knew that, however much longer he had to live, he’d always be this thing that knew only pain and dark and cold and light couldn’t break through to what he’d been because it just wasn’t there anymore. A part of him almost wished he wouldn’t be found; he didn’t want anyone from his old life to see him as he was now.

The sound of rolling-squeaking wheels wrenched him from his thoughts; there was a new cart being pulled up beside his slab, covered with a cloth to hide its contents. Breath that had been almost-normal sped up again, this was what he’d been fearing since they’d run out of fingers to smash. Just the memory called up the ache-pain-misery of the battered flesh at the end of his arm. His interrogators hadn’t untied the straps that bound him to the slab, and in fact were only tightening them, making it impossible for him to even twitch a millimeter to either side. Two hands hard and callous as iron bands gripped the hair at either side of his head to hold him still, tugging so hard that a few strands pulled from his scalp, eyes stretched wide open and staring up at the lone bulb casting its greasy yellow-green light.

“Your stubborn insistence to refuse to cooperate has left me with very few options, my boy,” said the tall man, stepping around the foot of Ed’s slab to stand beside the tray, arms crossed at perfect right angles behind his back. “There are only so many ways to inflict pain before it becomes an ineffective method of coercion.”

Despite his pain, Edward managed to summon a snarl to his face. “Never was gonna tell you shit, you bastard,” he growled, and, calling up what felt like the last of his defiance, spit blood and what little saliva he had in the man’s general direction. He was proud of himself; most of it actually landed where it was meant to, but it was a weak show. Puppy yipping at the wolf, yet still piddling in fear at the wolf’s grin.

The tall man looked down to the front of his black frock and frowned in distaste. His pale blue eyes fell on the pitiful sight and dismissed it as inconsequential. Instead of acknowledging Edward’s defiance, he merely set his hand on the still-covered tray, petting it as one would a beloved pet.

“I have been quite lenient with you up until now,” he murmured, cold eyes distant. Ed’s fear began to spike in earnest now; he knew that look. It was the same look he’d seen before the pliers had ripped his fingernails right from their beds, before the torch had cooked him as he screeched and writhed and breathed the fumes of his own burning flesh. “So far I have left you with nothing that will be quite permanent. However, my employer has grown impatient for results, and I really do hate repeating myself. I shall ask you one more time; will you tell us what we need to know?”

Ed’s eyes were glued to the tray, to the hand still slowly stroking fingers over the odd shapes beneath the cloth. His throat worked with fear; the words were bubbling up inside him, on the verge of spilling forth every dirty little secret he knew, anything to keep that tray covered, those fingers from picking up whatever was under them. No amount of swallowing the words down was going to keep them coming out, it was either start talking or else let it out in a scream but he couldn’t tell them, they could never know, not because of him, he never wanted anything that bad to be because of him, never again...

He screwed his eyes tight, hissed a breath out between his teeth, opened his mouth...

“Water, thirty-five liters. Carbon, twenty kilograms. Ammonia, four liters. Lime, one-point-five kilograms. Phosphorus, eight-hundred grams. Salt, two-hundred-fifty grams-”

A soft chuckle fell from the tall man, and he smiled almost benevolently down at his victim. In all his long years of doing this job, never had he met such a stubborn, willful, entertaining subject. The same litany, every time. Like a magic spell to keep the evil at bay. He never had learned the meaning behind it, assumed it some alchemic formula or other. Many soldiers, when captured and questioned, would do the same. He’d heard many in his lifetime, each one different, each one as senseless as the last.

“You are stubborn, I must admit, I’m impressed,” the man said.

“-saltpeter, one-hundred grams. Sulfur, eighty grams-”

“But I’m afraid we are pressed for time.”

“-fluorine, seven-point-five grams. Iron, five grams. Silicone, three grams-”

“What say you be a good boy and just tell me that one little thing-”

“And fifteen other ways for you to go fuck yourself!”

The hands holding his head gripped him by the hair and thumped his head sharply against the metal slab. Ed’s vision went blurry and his hearing took a moment to catch up, but his show of defiance had pulled him from the brink. Secrets safe, getting angry always did put things into perspective.

The man clicked his tongue and looked down at Edward like Teacher would do sometimes when he really had disappointed her, as if saddened by his inability to realize quite what he’d done wrong.

“No, no no no, that’s not what I wanted to hear, my boy. My employer really isn’t someone to trifle with, he’s been really quite patient these last few weeks, but it’s getting down to the wire now. Every moment you delay is just going to make it worse for you.” He leaned down over Edward’s face, blocking out the sickly, feeble light from above. “And because I like you, I’m going to ask one. More. Time.”

But Edward always would answer back anyone who tried to overshadow him. It was his inherent nature to hiss back in the man’s face:

“Get fucked.”

In the poor light, Ed couldn’t see the man’s mouth twitch, a there-and-gone smile, as if amused at the (still!) defiant creature before him. Ah, he would remember this one for a long time, the standard to which he would hold all others. He had a feeling they would all fall appallingly short.

“As I have said, I have left you with nothing that will not - eventually, at least - grow back. In time.” Straightening, the man finally twitched the cloth from the tray. Even without looking, Ed could see the glitter of surgical tools, so silver-bright they looked as though they could wound thin air. The fear was back in his throat, bubbling up from his stomach to choke his breath. “This time, I think...,” he picked up a scalpel, so delicate and lethal it made Ed’s blood cold, the pain in his hand a distant, insignificant thing, “-I will take...,” the scalpel held so expertly from long, long practise, “-something that can’t grow back.”

The scalpel lowered, closer, closer, never wavering, never veering from its course. Even when he tried to wrench his head to the side, the hands held him fast, immobile as steel. He could hear the breathing of the man restraining him quickening (anticipation? revulsion? excitement?), but the hands never lost their vice grip. Nowhere to go, no way to get free, he couldn’t look away-

The scream tore loose from Ed’s throat like a murder of crows, bouncing from the walls, down the corridor, echoing back in taunting reverb. The sound deafened him to all but the sound of flesh parting, tendons snapping like rubber bands. Metal scraping bone and blinding, white-hot agony. The side of his face ran in hot, red rivulets, he could feel the blade slicing his world free from its moorings. It was pain, he was pain, there was never anything in his life but this moment and the agony and the fear and the horror.

The scream never ended, it felt as if all of his body was nothing but breath to feed the scream. His voice broke and ripped and shattered and tore and still he screamed, he couldn’t stop, he was pain-horror-agony-fear and his language was nothing but one long horrendous scream that choked off in a blood-strangled gasp as his vocal chords finally gave out. Still he screamed, if only in his own mind, trapped there with no outlet now, nothing to communicate to the world of the pain, like he’d never known before. Automail attachment was like being tickled with a feather compared to this, limbs being ripped off was nothing but a stubbed toe next to this, the pain was wrapped up in fear and horror, his eye, he was taking his eye, his very self was being gouged from its socket, he wished he would just push the scalpel in and kill him, just kill him, it couldn’t be worse than this, please, just kill him, kill him now-

With a sick, sucking pop, half of Ed’s world went dark, gone, extinct, and still the scream went on, buffeting against the inside of his skull. Bloodstained teeth bared in a horrified snarl, his remaining eye stared up at the man now straightening with something clutched in his hand, dripping blood between his fingers, a sickeningly satisfied grin splashed across his face. He held up his prize to admire it in the meager light, a small orb dangling from a veiny string.

“Ah, yes,” he purred, turning it this way and that as if admiring a particularly fine jewel. “Quite the trophy. I think I’ll keep it on my desk.” With a pleased chuckle, he looked down on Ed, shaking with shock and revulsion. The blood covered the whole left side of his face, and in the dark, made it all but invisible. The blond of his hair was completely obliterated. Nothing was left of what he had once been but the wide-staring topaz of his remaining right eye. The man’s grin widened enough to show sharp canines. “Although, I would love to have a matching set...”

Ed’s brain stuttered when he realized what that meant, and by then it was already too late. The scalpel in hand, slicing into the tender flesh above his right eye, Edward found the steel cord of what little strength remained within him and wrenched his head to the side. The hands in his hair, slippery with his own blood, loosened enough for the scalpel to miss its mark and go careening off on a jagged path across the bridge of his nose, nearly to his chin. There was pain, yes, and there was also blood, but the tall man was shocked enough at the show of defiance to drop his scalpel, which went skittering off the table to land somewhere below.

“Idiot!” the man hissed, venom spitting from his eyes at the man holding Ed by the hair.

“Ain’t my fault you made such a mess of ‘im!” came the growled reply. It was the first time Ed had heard any of his other captors answer back to the tall man. Most seemed terrified of him. Well, he didn’t blame them, really.

With a snarl, the tall man twisted away from the slab, stalking out the door without so much as a word. The other man huffed irritably and (finally!) released his grip before loosening the straps holding Edward to the slab. So it was over now. He was going to be taken back to his cell, to lay on the cold floor and hopefully bleed to death. As the straps began to fall away, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like. Would the pain lessen, or would he keep feeling it right up until the end? Would it be like falling asleep, or would he struggle and gasp, clawing at his own throat just to get that one last breath...? He didn’t much care, after all, it would happen eventually, right? He could endure anything if it just meant he could stop; stop feeling, stop breathing, stop being. He just didn’t want to anymore, he was tired, he just wanted to stop.

The man had just undone the last strap when the explosion shook the foundations of the building. A commotion was beginning in one of the upper floors. Gunfire, running footsteps, shouting and confusion. The man hissed a curse and took two running steps towards the door before he looked back at Edward, lying limp and bloody on the slab.

“Don’t guess I gotta tell ya’ t’stay put, eh?,” he grunted, then gave a mirthless half-smirk before running out.

Ed’s head flopped bonelessly to the side, watching the light flicker against the wall. He might have answered if his throat didn’t feel like it had been turned inside out, or he might not have. Ed didn’t know, and in the next few moments, he stopped knowing much of anything.

His world went black.

The sound of running boot steps echoed off the crumbling brick and broken cobblestones of Old Central. Those unfortunate enough to call the old slums home made themselves invisible amongst the shadows and rubble or else risk getting run down by blue-clad soldiers intent on their destination. At the center of the invasion, a pair of piercing black eyes glared forward as pristine white gloves were tugged over hands shaking with adrenaline and purpose.

“We have the building completely surrounded, sir!” a young private confirmed, saluting quickly. The rifle slung over his shoulder threatened to fall before quickly being righted again.

“Assume combat positions and wait for my signal,” the Colonel ordered. “Do not make a move until I tell you, understood?”

“Sir!” the young man straightened his salute even further before scuttling off back the way he’d come.

Roy Mustang let out a huff of annoyed breath at the boy’s back. The kid didn’t look any older than Fullmetal himself, and he was supposed to be one of the best out of the academy, hand-selected for this mission by Riza Hawkeye herself. He trusted the woman’s judgment without question, but he wanted nothing to go wrong with this extraction; lives depended on everyone being able to handle any situation. He didn’t know what they’d find inside the dilapidated hospital when they finally broke through, but nervous trigger fingers were not going to be tolerated.

“Everyone is in position, Colonel,” Riza said, coming to stand at his side, pistol drawn. Lieutenants Havoc and Breda were commanding their own small squads of foot soldiers further down from their position and were waiting for his signal to begin the raid.

With one last quick sweep of his ranks, Mustang finally gave the signal.

Not one for subtlety when on the offensive, the Colonel’s signal was a spectacularly resounding fireball lighting up half the city block. It was designed to confuse and disorient the enemy while causing as little collateral damage to the surrounding buildings as possible. The result couldn’t have been more perfect; when his own troops broke down the doors of the derelict hospital, the enemy combatants were already wasting ammunition by firing into the smoke.

Once again, Roy had to give Hawkeye credit; though most of the troops she had selected were green, they had steady nerves as well as aim. By the time he himself entered the building, they already had prisoners. By his own order his troops were to shoot to subdue rather than kill; he hadn’t trusted himself to hold himself back if and when they found Fullmetal. Without knowing the state he’d be in, he’d decided to err on the side of caution.

Besides, a bullet would be too merciful.

In a matter of minutes, his soldiers had routed the main floor of the hospital and were slowly weeding out the pockets of resistance that had taken shelter in the maze of corridors. Once the main floors had been emptied and searched, Breda took his squad and continued to search the upper floors while Mustang took command of the lower floors.

At each branching of the path, he’d had to split his force into smaller groups. When they continued to turn up nothing but empty rooms full of abandoned medical equipment and rat’s nests, he’d been frustrated to the point of wanting to set fire to the whole place. He found himself alone in a corridor, looking left towards a surgical suite and the morgue to the right. His gut clenched at the implications of either one, but there was no where left to search; if Fullmetal was still in this building he would have to be in one or the other.

Edward inhaled a sharp breath at the flood of agony from what remained of his left hand, only to let it out as a muffled scream when the rest of the pain caught up with him. He managed to pull his arm around his sore and broken ribs and curl into as small a ball on the metal slab as possible. Each breath he drew tasted and smelled of salt and copper, tears and blood. The lone, bare bulb swung back and forth on its cord, casting nightmare shadows over the gruesome scene of his captor’s latest attempts to interrogate him.

A brief lull in the gun-fire upstairs let the sound of familiar voices drift to his ears. Shouted commands, angry orders, and more running boot heels echoed down the empty corridors, drawing closer every moment.

Edward shuddered as a fresh bout of pain wracked his emaciated frame. From the mangled, twisted remains of his automail ports, exposed nerve connectors trailed through garish puddles of red, leaving sickening agony to trail up his spine. In the back of his mind, he somehow knew that he had to get up, had to find those voices. Once those voices could be put to the faces they belonged to, this nightmare could finally end. Either they would take him out of this place, or they would put him out of his misery.

The footfalls were closer now; he could almost feel them resonating through his tattered nerves. Each shout sounded as if it were right beside his ear. And then, blessed relief swept through him when he recognized the owner of one of the voices.

“We think we’ve apprehended all of the insurgents, sir. We’re searching all of the lower levels to be sure.”

That no-nonsense tone, confident and sure even in the midst of chaos, could belong to no other. Even now, weak, injured and exhausted, Ed couldn’t help but wince at the steel buried within Hawkeye’s voice. He would forever associate it with stern lectures on punctuality, on standing up straighter, but mostly admonishing him not to antagonize Mustang.

“Upper levels are secure. I want all of you to concentrate your efforts on our search. Remember what we came for.”

Ah, speak of the devil. It had been a while since Ed had heard that voice. He hadn’t realized quite how much he’d missed it.

“None of the rebels will talk, sir. We’ve tried threatening them, but they refuse to give up any information.”

Havoc was here, too? The thought of all of them down here, looking for him, struck him suddenly as distinctly unfair. He was the one who usually ended up pulling everyone else out of the proverbial fire, not the other way around.

There was silence for a few moments, during which Ed might have blacked out, because the next thing he knew, the voices were beginning to move away. He hadn’t been allowed to see much of his prison in the last few weeks, but he knew that they were only going to find empty rooms and perhaps a rat or two if they went that way. In a sudden, desperate moment, he realized they were leaving him behind, and if he wanted to be found, he was going to have to give them a reason to look in his direction.

His vision was oddly skewed, the lights too bright and the shadows too deep, but he cast about anyway for something to make enough noise to attract attention. There, beside the table he lay upon was a metal cart filled with the implements of his interrogation. There was blood and bits of other things he didn’t care to know of splattered amongst them, but they didn’t have to be pristine to make a lot of noise.

Ed lifted his arm to reach for the cart, but a sudden intense burst of pain from his shattered hand arrested his movement before he could even unbend his elbow. Even shifting the bones caused such severe agony he had to bite his own tongue to stay conscious. Using it for anything was out of the question, unless he wanted to bring them running with the sound of his screams.

Taking a few panting breaths, he contemplated his leg. He could barely feel what they’d done to his foot. It certainly hurt much less than moving his arm would, and if he used enough force, he should be able to just kick the cart over.

As it turned out, Ed’s plan wasn’t as well-thought-out as he would have liked. His well-aimed kick did indeed knock the cart off-balance. It also sent him tumbling to the ground after it, landing with a painful, jarring thud on his right side. Mercifully, he missed the scattered tools now littering the floor, but it was only a small blessing. The pain he had been repressing exploded through his body. It was too much, and he passed out in a pool of his own blood.

The sudden crashing from the room down the hallway startled the search party, and Roy stopped them all with a silent gesture.

“Sir, was that-?”

“This way, come on!” He didn’t care to speculate along with Hawkeye on what the noise could have been. His nerves were shot as it was, wound up tighter than a bow-string. It seemed he reached the rust-splattered door in too few steps, which could be chalked up to sheer adrenaline, or simply his mind erasing needless moments in his haste.

Regardless, there was no way of knowing what was beyond the door. Despite having Falman scour every record he could find, he’d been unable to produce the blueprints and schematics for this particular abandoned hospital.

“Havoc.”

Silently, the Lieutenant stepped forward, one ear to the door to listen for any sounds within. Hearing nothing, he cautiously pushed the heavy swinging door inward, pistol at the ready. Flickering shadows spilled out into the hallway from the swinging bulb in the center of the room. Mustang held his breath as Havoc checked the room for any signs of movement.

“Sir... I think you should see this,” Havoc said, his eyes trained on something in the middle of the room.

He was beside his subordinate in moments, eyes wide at what he saw.

There was blood everywhere; spattered on the floor, across the walls, there was even some splattered and dried on the ceiling. Roy felt his stomach twist painfully and had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep the nausea at bay. An overturned metal cart lay on its side, bloody surgical tools scattered over the floor. That must have been what had made the noise, but how had it fallen over? Surely not on its own.

A tiny sound, not much more than a gasped breath, floated up from the floor behind the cart. It wasn’t very loud, but every ear perked at the sound. Havoc moved around, and stopped dead, all color draining from his face in an instant.

“Colonel...,” was all he needed to say.

“Hawkeye, get the medical team, now!” he said, and the woman was gone before he could even take his first step.

It was a sight that would haunt him for the rest of his life, both waking and sleeping. Even after weeks of searching, knowing who held him and what they would most likely do to him, all of his hours of planning and hoping and anger, none of that could have prepared him for his first sight of Fullmetal.

Broken. That was the only word that came to mind. He just looked broken. Huddled on the floor, shivering, bloodied and naked. His hair had been shorn in uneven patches. Gone was the brilliant gold braid that was so much part of him that it shocked Roy to see it missing. It was just as jarring to see the empty ports where his automail limbs should be. His captors had removed the braces, leaving the ports themselves naked and exposed. Bloody, oozing wires and nerve connectors hung from their docks, and Roy couldn’t even begin to imagine how painful it must be. Every movement must be an agony.

Ed had curled up slightly on his right side, what was left of his fringe hiding most of his face, but even at a glance, it was obvious he’d been starved. What had once been a compact frame, impossibly strong for its size, was now reduced to a wraith, an emaciated landscape of bruises and cuts. The sole of his right foot was criss-crossed with red welts and what Roy knew intimately to be burn marks.

He was still breathing; rapid, shallow breaths that spoke of shock rather than true sleep. His body had simply shut down, unable to handle all of the sensations it was suffering. Even as they watched, a full-body shudder quaked through the shattered frame.

“Havoc, your jacket,” Mustang ordered imperiously. He knelt beside Edward, removing his own outer jacket, practically ripping the sleeves in his haste. Havoc barely hesitated before following suit, handing his commander the heavy wool jacket without a word. “We need to keep him warm or he won’t make it until the medics arrive.” A sudden thought struck him, then. “You’ve had field medic training, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I can take a look at him, but, Colonel,” he paused and gave Edward a long, assessing look, “I don’t know if I’m up to this.”

Mustang glared up at his lieutenant, gritting his teeth at the hesitation. “I’m not asking you to perform surgery, damn it! Just see what you can do!”

“Sir!” The vehemence in Mustang’s voice shocked him into soldier-mode faster than perhaps anything else could have.

He hit his knees beside Ed’s still form and tried to make an objective assessment. It was easier to see the kid as someone else, as different as he looked now.

His first attempt at checking Ed’s vitals was thwarted when he discovered the kid’s only wrist was not only mostly buried beneath the rest of his body, but also shattered beyond recognition. He checked his pulse at his throat instead, ignoring the sick mixture of blood, dust and sweat beneath his fingers. A light, fluttery pulse was all he could find.

“He’s not going to last long, sir, we need to get him stable soon. His body’s under too much stress.”

Mustang growled under his breath, still-gloved hands bunching the blue wool in his fists even as he tried to wrap it closer to Ed’s cooling shoulders. The shivering was near constant now, and he was sure keeping him on the cold concrete floor wasn’t helping matters.

“Can we move him?” he asked.

“Move him where, sir?”

“I don’t know! Somewhere other than the floor, for starters. He’s freezing!”

Havoc cast about for something suitable, but there was nothing but the concrete floor and the steel slab he’d fallen from. He sighed and ran a bloody hand absently through blond bangs, making them stick out at crazy, spiky angles.

“Let’s turn him on his back. It might help his breathing, at least,” he suggested.

It was not an ideal solution, but it was better than nothing. Between the two of them, they got Fullmetal on his back, one of the uniform jackets pillowed under his head, and the other covering as much of his body as possible. For the first time, the two men got an unobstructed view of his face, or at least the parts that the blood didn’t obscure. Ed’s breathing evened out, though it began to take on an ominous liquid gurgling. Roy looked up at Havoc, the panic clear in his eyes.

“It might just be some blood that went down the wrong pipe, sir,” he said. “Maybe pneumonia.”

Roy’s voice was a caustic hiss. “Which one is better?”



The sound of running footfalls interrupted whatever Havoc might have said. The medical team rushed into the room, followed closely by Hawkeye, who, for the first time since Roy had known her, looked winded. She must have literally run up three flights of stairs to reach the medics, and run back down with them, in less than five minutes. Roy would never question her dedication to her team.

“Out of the way, sir, we’ll take him from here,” one of the medics said, practically shouldering him out of the way.

Indignant, Roy moved grudgingly away from Ed’s side. He wanted to take issue and pull rank, but that would not help Ed. He stepped back, hands held awkwardly at his sides, wanting to do something - anything - to help. Havoc stood up next to him, looking shell-shocked and badly in need of a cigarette. A smear of Ed’s blood marred his forehead and cheek, and had dried in his hair like some kind of freakish styling gel.

“Vitals are in the red,” the rude medic said to the other. “Thready heartbeat, and I don’t like his breathing. I think he’s still hemorrhaging somewhere. Let’s get him out of here.”

A stretcher was produced from seemingly thin air and Ed was slid carefully onto it. He was wrapped in a warm woolen blanket and strapped in securely before the two medics carried him out the door at a trot. Hawkeye couldn’t help but stare as he was trundled past, eyes round and shocked at the state of her youngest teammate. It was the first good look she’d gotten of him since he’d been found.

She turned those wounded eyes to him, as if looking for an explanation. They fell to his own hands, smeared with Ed’s blood nearly to the elbow. Her eyes drifted across the room, taking in the blood-painted slab, the tray, the surgical tools. Roy saw the steel set to her jaw even as he thought the word they were all loathe to say.

The torture of a soldier was not permitted under Amestris law. Depending on the severity of the torture, it could be punishable by death. The amount of damage done to Fullmetal... there was no way of knowing how long he’d endured the torture before they found him. There was so much blood covering him, they couldn’t even be sure where it was all coming from.

“Sir?” Hawkeye’s voice shook, perhaps for the first time in her career as a soldier. “What are your orders?”

Roy blinked, as if he just now remembered he was the commanding officer of this raid. His soldiers looked to him and he told them what to do. The steel came back to his spine and he straightened under his Lieutenant’s gazes as if he wasn’t in his shirt sleeves and covered in blood.

“Hawkeye, go after the medics. Get as much info on Fullmetal’s condition as you can. Go with them to the hospital. We’ll meet you there later.”

She saluted sharply, her mouth a thin line, eyes hardening once more now that the Colonel was back in charge. Her boot heels echoed down the empty corridor at a brisk march, and then it was just the two men in the bloodied room.

“Havoc, you’re coming with me.” Mustang’s voice was hard, almost vicious, as he stepped out of the room.

“Where to, sir?” the Lieutenant asked, falling into step behind him.

“To do a little interrogating,” was all the answer he got.

Despite the heat of the place, a chill shivered down Havoc’s spine at the ice in Mustang’s tone.

Chapter Two