Fic: Dawn (1/4)
Title: Dawn, Part 1 of 3
Pairings/Characters: Edward, Roy
Rating: M/R
Genre: Drama, Angst
Spoilers: None - Alternate ending, TWT?
Word Count: +/- 7700
Warnings: Language, violence, gore.
Summary: Ed and Roy are stuck in a war zone. Gratuitous hurt!Roy for the sake of hurt!Roy ensues.
Notes: Once upon a time, I started this fic for sevlow. It was over a year ago that I started this, actually. I was all inspired, and then life got in the way, and then it sat in a sorry heap on my hard drive until I posted it on ff.net in July 2008, desperately seeking some inspiration. I didn't think it was good enough for LJ at the time. That worked a bit, and I started a chapter two around August 2008. Then life got in the way. I started college and it kicked me hard right in the ass. Now I am done with freshman year and I am trying desperately to find my writing groove again. Chapter 2 of Dawn is 90% done, so I figure I should post the first bit over here on LJ before I finish up the second bit and post it. Anyway -- I will finish this story if it kills me! (And it probably will.)
Enjoy!
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Things started out normal enough for a day in a war zone. Ed woke sad and cold and lonely, panting and gulping harshly into the pillow so that General Mustang, one tent-length away, wouldn’t hear him. The night had seen the same old dream - Al dying in one grotesque way or another. Last night, it had been a landmine, and Ed swore he could still feel pieces of his brother’s flesh clinging to the dirt-smudged uniform he had collapsed into bed in last night.
He crossed his arms and let them rub at each other slowly, some unconscious effort to rid himself of his brother’s charred flesh - the automail chilled his left arm to the bone; he must have left the damn thing hanging outside the covers again. It was a stupid thing to do in sub-zero temperatures and it always left his shoulder aching fiercely, but he was just so used to sleeping slung-out and careless, and Mustang never did bother to tuck his shirt down and un-sling his arms like Al always did, which he supposed was just as well, because that would be downright embarrassing.
Edward curled into a ball underneath his blanket - not nearly thick enough for these temperatures - and hoped silently for a moment that the reveille wouldn’t sound this morning, that he could stay in bed and as close to warm as he would be all day for just a while longer, that he could just listen to the comforting rasp of Mustang’s breathing across the room for just a few hours more. There was no way of gauging the time. Up here, it was dark nearly all the time during this season. They were far enough north that the sun only found them for a few hours at a time. His watch was still set on Rizenbul time because changing it would be like admitting this stupid war was going to keep going, and it wasn’t, damn it. However, his time sense was good enough that he knew “morning” like he had an internal alarm clock, so either he was running early, or the reveille was running late.
Then, right on bloody cue, a trumpet sounded. Edward curled tighter and cursed it, every part of him aching to sleep again. Across the tent, Mustang groaned quietly and hacked a wet-sounding cough into his pillow. “Morning, kid,” Mustang said softly. Edward didn’t acknowledge him. He never did, this early. Mustang liked to think that he woke Edward every morning, liked to think that he was being merciful when he gave Edward an extra ten minutes after the reveille had sounded. It really was a nice gesture, but Ed always was awake, staring blankly at the dark of the underside of his coarse bed covers.
“That could be the last reveille we’ll ever have to stomach. We’ll be home soon. Any day now.” And this was the reason that Edward pretended, to hear these assurances that Mustang would only give him when he thought he was asleep. “You’ll be back to Alphonse soon, just wait.” A tingle trilled its way up his spine. Al. So new and human when he’d gotten the call, so quick to dissolve into emotions with the feelings from his new body overwhelming him that Ed had needed to get on the train while he was still sleeping. He had tried not to compare himself to his father, creeping softly out the door while his family slept soundly upstairs -
“That’s right,” Mustang hummed something then, tunelessly.
Comfort.
And then another wet, hacking cough.
“Any day now.”
The rasp of clothing stopped as Mustang finished putting on his uniform and Edward heard the heavy clunk of boots sound over his tuneless humming. This was the last part of his morning routine - he would be “waking” Ed soon, doubtless. Ed closed his eyes.
He heard Roy rise, heard his heavy footsteps against the tent’s dirt floor. Edward tensed.
Suddenly, the blanket was flung back and there was a heavy, glove-covered hand ruffling his tousled hair. “Rise and shine, kiddo.”
Just like every morning.
Edward shivered in the cold of the mess tent, yawned hugely, and hunched over his powdered scrambled eggs like a starving man. The strict ration system that the military stuck to during meals always left him sitting just on the wrong side of hunger, just enough to be uncomfortable, so he savored every bite he got.
He paused once during his meal, mid-bite, to think of Al. He checked his watch for Al time like he did every morning - reveille was around 0500 hours where Ed was, that made it around 0600 hours when he was eating breakfast (the delay was on account of the fact that Ed always had morning chores to do around camp before breakfast; melting snow off of people’s tents, warming the water for showers - silly little trivial things that alchemists took advantage of). In Al time, it was around 1000 hours. He would be getting out of bed now, and hopefully he was warmer than Ed was. Rizembool was cold, but it wasn’t bone-creaking, mind-numbing cold like Drachma.
He put his watch away and took the last bite of his eggs a little bit bitterly, savored the feel of it going down. His next meal wouldn’t be for six more hours, but he could already feel the uncomfortable ache of his stomach. Around him, soldiers ate and laughed, talked like they weren’t sitting on a tense border and waiting for a supply line that probably wouldn’t come. Across the room, Ed saw a private throw away a tray with a small heap of eggs still lumped on it, and his stomach ached more fiercely.
He saw a private at the next table elbow his buddy and mimic Ed’s earlier motions with the pocket watch - like Edward had been flaunting it instead of checking the time. The men at that table laughed loudly, uproariously, obnoxiously - and Ed’s head ached as he gritted his teeth. Being an alchemist, he had a lot of clout in this camp, and he caught a lot of crap for it. He and the general were downright famous in their domain, the highest ranks in the camp. They shared one of the most luxurious (luxurious being a relative term here) lodgings on the outskirts of camp, hidden away from the bustle in the thickness of the surrounding forest. Conditions being so bleak, just their hard, springy cots, leaps above the cold winter ground everyone else had to manage, were enough to single them out for teasing. The general was too high in rank to catch the brunt of the verbal abuse, though, so Edward caught most of it alone.
Being a sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old state alchemist and a higher rank than most everyone around him wasn’t easy either, and sometimes it was almost too much.
Nevermind. Give them someone to hate, Edward thought. Give them someone to make fun of. He would be the enemy so long as they weren’t fighting among themselves.
He thought, vaguely, as a he scraped the remnants of liquid-egg from his tray, that he wouldn’t have thought this way only a year earlier. He might have started a shouting match to defend his dignity (might have lost a large chunk of it in the process) but war had made him tired, and he was too exhausted and hungry and lonely and cold to work himself into a classic Edward Elric rant.
Maybe later, he thought.
Morning was filled by the tedious task of creating somewhere dry to stash the gunpowder. The Lieutenant who had asked him to do it seemed to think it was as easy as creating an underground cavern - and it was as easy as that, actually, but that wasn’t quite as easy as it sounded. Moving earth was hard with his energy levels so depleted, just as finding an area large enough for a cavern was hard, just as making sure the damn thing was structurally sound was hard - as much as he hated almost every asshole in this camp, he didn’t want the damn thing collapsing on them.
So he traced the perimeter in the snow with his boot for the better part of two hours while soldiers caught in the tedium of not being on the front line made themselves useless around him. There was a group of men having a snowball fight a few tents over, a group of men playing cards around a barrel fire near the mess, and God did Ed envy them. When he was done charting the perimeter, he plotted the supports, traced an area for the stairs.
There.
He leaned down, clapped his hands, transmuted.
Focusing on the task at hand proved to be a difficult thing, but then he concentrated on the tent that the soldier from this morning inhabited here, and, well - the dirt from the hollowed ground had to find a place somewhere. Equivalent exchange - it wasn’t just going to disappear. Edward grinned, and concentrating became a whole lot easier.
The blue glow dissipated, and somewhere across camp, an indignant cry rang out as a tent exploded in a column of hard, cold soil. It wasn’t a classic Edward Elric rant, no, but he was growing up. His revenge had become more refined - he wasn’t going to admit that the transfer of hundreds of pounds of dirt under tons of pressure and half the length of the camp had damn near exhausted him, though.
He turned to the Lieutenant, grinning and gesturing the stairs with a grandiose sweep of his arm.
“All done!” he said. His shoulder ached.
“Fullmetal, fancy seeing you here,” Mustang said, his condescending tone made weak and tired by all the same fatigues that Edward faced, only tenfold.
“I was just - ”
“Having a bit of fun, were you?”
“ - I.”
“What did this man do to impugn your honor? Hmm? More than the Sergeant whose tent you filled with snow last week, I hope.”
“I...” Edward felt too tired to argue, and as strange as it sounded, he felt ashamed and small in front of this bleached, reduced General in contrast to the feirce defiance he had felt in the face of his strong, smirking Colonel. This General was his comfort, perhaps the only friend he had here. He didn’t want that to stop. He needed him.
“Edward -” Mustang rubbed gently at the bridge of his nose. “I’m not going to say that he was entirely innocent, because I know you’ve been catching a lot of hell from everyone here. But this isn’t the right place or time to act your age. I’m sorry.” Mustang turned away for a moment and yanked a handkerchief from his pocket just in time to lean over the desk and cough one of his lungs into it. When he had finished and looked up, his eyes seemed a little fuzzy around the edges, rims of red obscuring the boundary between white and black. He sniffed once; he tried to make it haughty, but to Ed, it just sounded miserable.
“General...” Are you okay? danced temptingly on the tip of his tongue, but something told him it wouldn’t be welcome.
“The fact of the matter is, you contaminated a portion of our meager food supply with your little scheme, and our health specialist isn’t pleased. As such - ” Mustang looked down, like he didn’t like what was coming next, and clutched his handkerchief tighter in his hand. “As such, you’ll be skipping dinner tonight while you load our powder kegs into your cellar yourself.”
No!
“No! General - please -” It was edged with a plea, something Edward didn’t normally do, and the General’s face tightened perceptibly before he threw the hand holding the handkerchief into the air, finger pointed toward the mouth of his tent.
“You’d better get started. It’ll be colder soon - lights out at 2200. We have an ungodly amount of powder - ”
“General...” He coughed again, muffled it with his shoulder. It sounded bad - bad like some of the people the Rockbells had treated when he’d been a child -
“Go!” The general roared through his hacking.
He did.
Dear Al,
Ed’s eyes drooped and his head nodded. His stomach twisted painfully within him, clawing angrily at his ribs and pleading for food -
The ‘l’ in Al made a crazy zig-zag down the page. Furiously erasing his scribble, Ed started again.
Dear Al,
How’re things with you? I’m fine but the bastard made a special point to be a extra bastardy today -
Edward glanced at the mouth of the tent menacingly, like just writing about the General on paper would summon him.
- and I didn’t even do anything this time, honest.
Al wouldn’t believe it for a second.
Anyway I’m really hungry the bastard -
Edward stopped, crossed that out. His stomach grumbled in disdain.
My shoulder kinda hurts, I loaded -
He crossed that out.
Things really are going fine here. We haven’t even been attacked yet. Everyone’s pretty bored, actually.
There, a happy medium between the whole and the half truth. It always was best to sugarcoat things with Al. He hadn’t gotten a letter in return yet, didn’t even know if the countless letters he’d sent since he’d arrived here had made it - communication lines out of Drachma were precarious at best - but if they did, Ed really didn’t want his brother to worry.
He yawned again, stretching over his chicken-scratched piece of paper. He was getting tired enough that his writing was becoming near illegible.
Just as he decided that Al’s letter could wait a night, the flap of the tent flew forward, sending bone-chilling wafts of air into the little space. Edward burrowed deeper, curled under his sleeping bag and glared at the open mouth of the tent. Roy didn’t look at him, didn’t speak to him, but he cut a quick path across the enclosed space to Edward’s bunk and dropped something from his pocket onto the open page of Edward’s notebook.
Edward - blinked. Suddenly, where only hasty words had been before, there were two sad, flat-looking biscuits. Ed’s stomach did a little flip of absolute ecstasy within him, and before he even thought to thank the General, he was ripping off great hunks with his teeth. Mustang, meanwhile, set about busily insulating himself against the long, brutal night.
The biscuits didn’t last very long, and they weren’t even enough to put a damper on his hunger, anyway. Now, with the hard bread sitting like a lump in his stomach, he deigned to look over at Roy in the opposite bed, already buried beneath his blanket, back to the flickering light of Edward’s lantern. His chest lacked the even rhythm of sleep though - indeed, it seemed to hitch with every breath he took.
“Hey.”
Mustang shifted slightly, let out a gruff, “What?”
“Thanks.”
Mustang, much to Ed’s surprise, turned to face him suddenly, eyes half open and lips turned gently downward. “You screwed up, kid.”
“Yeah.”
“You seem to be doing that a lot more, lately. I’m getting rather tired of having to cover for your sorry ass.” He sounded tired, resigned.
“...Yeah. I know.” Roy paused, and his lips went tight. He glared resolutely at Edward, something flickering behind the blackness of his eyes.
“I want to go home, too. It’s alright to say it.”
It wasn’t alright to say it. Edward had spent weeks determinedly not saying it. But Al - “I’m hungry,” he said instead.
“Just a few hours until breakfast. Get some sleep. You won’t even know the difference.”
Edward blew out the lantern, moved his notebook to the floor, and breathed a sigh into the pillow. In the dark, with the wind outside now blatantly obvious against the airy canvas of the tent, he felt the need to fill the space between them again. Edward wasn’t much one for empty air, so long as there was a willing conversationalist nearby. “Are you okay?” he said without really meaning to, eyes closed against the pillow and voice muffled.
Mustang paused before he answered. “What are you talking about? I’m fine.”
“You didn’t sound fine today. You sounded sick.”
“I’m fine.” There was no pause that time.
Silence reigned again, for a time, and Mustang’s breathing had almost evened to the smoothness of sleep - as smooth as it got these days, at least - before Ed spoke again. “Don’t die, bastard.”
Across the room, Mustang had the nerve to sleepily snort his disdain. “Like I’d die, kid. Who do you think I am?”
And Edward, being the kid that he really was, that he really wanted to be, believed him, uncharacteristically let himself trust in the wisdom of adults.
The next day when Ed woke up, things were different. His night had been strangely dreamless, dark and peaceful in a way that he hadn’t slept in years. It was wonderful to know that a night could indeed go by where his precious little brother wasn’t desecrated in some way, wasn’t mutilated or taken from him. He had begun to think that that was the only form his sleep could take.
Ed waited patiently beneath his covers for the reveille, stomach empty and head empty and tent silent. Mustang was uncommonly quiet across from him. When the reveille didn’t sound for what seemed like hours, Edward began to suspect something was amiss in the world outside his canvas haven.
He pulled back the covers from his face, let them slither off his chest and pool at his waist. Outside, the world was dark, but that wasn’t unusual. There was, however, some golden hue that the light had taken that hinted at either sunrise or sunset. It had a flickering quality to it that Ed didn’t like, though. He’d seen that quality of light before, and it came with
memories that he didn’t much care for. He’d seen that light emanating from his house, flashing from behind his windowpanes like fritzing incandescent lamps before it had consumed them entirely -
He gasped.
He had worn his uniform to bed again, so there was no time wasted in bounding from the bed and to the flap of the tent, but his automail was cold and it groaned in protest as he fumbled with the ties that kept the flap closed. His flesh foot felt cold and bare against the ground.
They were indeed a ways from the camp, hidden among a thick clump of shrubs, foliage, and several coniferous trees - Mustang had set it up that way so as to have quiet at night, to have a peaceful place to think in the dark. And before, when Edward had been exhausted and desperate to fall into sleep despite the rowdiness of the overzealous soldiers next door, he had been grateful. But when he finally managed to part the flaps, swinging them wide in his haste, he wasn’t sure whether to be thankful or nauseous.
There was very little left of the camp. From where he was standing, yards and yards away from it, the overwhelming scent of burning flesh and blood mixed with the smoke from the fire to clog his throat and tear his eyes. He took a tentative step off the bare earth of their tent’s floor and onto the snowy ground, hardly breathing, hardly noticing that his flesh foot went to needles and painfully lost feeling almost immediately. The progress brought the camp into focus, and he was able to see several shadowy figures on horseback silhouetted starkly against the raging fire.
For a moment, his mind struggled to connect exactly what he was seeing. Something in the back of his head kept insisting that they had guards damnit, they would have heard if someone had instigated an attack. They were informed to raise the alarm - to consult Flame and Fullmetal immediately upon any signs of Drachman invasion. Edward had known all along that they were in an incredibly precarious position, just on the border between the newly won territory of Amestris and the newly lost territory of Drachma. That’s why Fuhrer Hakuro had posted two of the state’s most capable alchemists there, for God’s sake. But Ed had never been in a war zone before, and it was hard to register the destruction before him, hard to relate it to the camp that had been thriving mere hours before.
And yet here it was, consumed by flames. Who the fuck knew where the inhabitants had gone - the heady scent of blood in the air provided a very strong hint, but -
Ed looked toward the south end of camp, where hours before, men had screamed at the indignity of having their tent filled with mud. There were no tents there now. Just twenty-foot flames that crackled and spewed and sparked, that reached outward to claim the trees surrounding their pleasant little thicket, that hissed in a strangely pleased way every time they happened upon something particularly flammable.
One of the silhouettes barked something in a foreign tongue then, and that was enough to bring Edward’s attention back to the situation at hand. Strange as it may have been, it was only a matter of time before the flames licked their way to their tent, before the Drachman soldiers’ concentric circles led them to stumble upon two unsuspecting and unprepared officers - damn, hadn’t Mustang seen this coming? But no. Of course he hadn’t. He was sick and tired and miserable, and it was so much harder to draw lines between those goddamn dots when they were wavering in and out of focus.
It really was a wonder Edward had slept as long as he had - the screams must have been terrible, the soldiers must have been frightened. They had at least a hundred men. One hundred men, moaning in pain, burning to death, and Edward had slept through it? What were the chances of not one out of their one hundred men escaping to warn them? But would they all have been smart enough to realize not to give out their officers’ position? Or maybe the attack really had been so sudden that they hadn’t realized they were burning to death until they woke to the smell of their own charred flesh.
Edward took a step back, away from the horrors of the war, and his foot sang out in pain. Edward took the opportunity as a welcome distraction, glanced down at his foot red and throbbing in a backdrop of snow. He had stepped on something - his footprint was bloody. It rather made him want to laugh.
Suddenly, there was another harshly barked order, and Edward knew they needed to leave - or go, go search for survivors. Or - something. He stumbled back into the tent flinging out a “General,” in a breathless whisper. His heart throbbed painfully in his chest. When he reached Mustang’s side, he shook him none too gently, and all that Ed was able to see was his hair, thick and greasy and unkempt, scraping listlessly against the pillow.
“Mustang!” He said louder, desperate now.
The Flame Alchemist did not stir.
“Fuck!” Ed sobbed, flinging the covers back. Mustang was lying on his side, pale and peaceful looking, breath coming short and way too shallow. His forehead radiated unhealthy heat when Ed reached for it, and beneath his layers of bedclothes, Ed knew he was much too thin. “Please, please, please - you told me you wouldn’t die, bastard!”
He gave up on trying to wake Mustang and staggered blindly backward. “Bastard, please, what the hell am I supposed to do!?”
Edward’s mind moved at a thousand miles and hour, stuttering occasionally over all the road blocks he faced. Outside, Ed could hear the spitting of flames stronger now, could hear the rough orders of the Drachman officials over the fiery din. Any moment now they’d stumble on their tent, find a teenaged human weapon who had no idea what he was doing and an unconscious high-ranking officer.
Proud members of the Amestris Military they were.
He chose to concentrate not on the fact that Mustang was profoundly unconscious and had no intention of waking, instead focusing on the fact that he, he himself, was awake, that they both were alive, and that they both needed to not be here if they wanted to stay that way.
Decision made, he flew across the tent to his boots, laying serenely by his cot. He stuffed one bloody foot into one and another harsh, unfeeling one into the other. He looked towards Mustang’s boots, lined side by side at the foot of his bed, and stuffed his superior officer’s feet in as carelessly as he had his own. Mustang just kept up his slow, shallow breathing.
“Gotta go, we gotta go,” he mumbled. It was all he could think of to get the fuck out of this tent. That was his master plan - the rest could come later when they were safely hidden and shivering in the Drachman chill.
Sliding on his coat, Edward made his way over to Mustang. They both had hats, but who knew where the hell they were now. Edward knew he was going to need them later, knew he was going to regret everything he didn’t take with him later, but that was later and this was now and they had to go. He wrapped Mustang’s thin blanket around him again, almost strangely tenderly, before he roughly hoisted his torso from the bed. One of Mustang’s arms flopped off the bed and hung there, dead in the air, glove-covered hand motionless. Edward leaned down and backed his broad shoulders in the waiting outstretched arm, then took hold of it with his automail arm and lifted.
Mustang raised off the bed but it wasn’t long before Ed lost his hold and he fell back, half on and half off the cot.
He tried again.
This time, he grabbed both Mustang’s arms from behind and dragged them over his shoulders, hooking them under his chin, and again, lifted with all his might. The bastard was just too damn heavy - Edward was filled with adrenaline, stronger than anyone his age should be, and Mustang was all but emaciated, and yet it was still desperately hard. Were Edward at his best, he might have been able to do this, but he was just as thin - thinner, if his automail and metabolism had anything to say about it - and he was exhausted, too.
Nevertheless, despite everything working against him, this was going to have to do. He put one foot forward, Mustang slung on his back in some horrible imitation of a piggy-back-ride, and his superior officer’s feet fell off the cot to the floor with a mighty thunk. Then he was dragging him the distance to the mouth of the tent, and it had never seemed quite so large as it did then, with Mustang’s febrile heat soaking through the clothes on his back.
If the distance from the cot to the mouth of tent seemed epic, though, it had nothing on the great white expanse that Ed faced from his tent’s opening. The wind nipped threateningly at his cheeks, and he hitched Mustang a little higher on his back.
“Shit,” he breathed.
The first step was difficult, but the second step was torturous. Just as Mustang’s feet hit the snow, the drag increased a thousand fold and his pace slowed dangerously. By the tenth step, Edward’s thighs were straining with the weight of holding them both, and the snow was getting increasingly deep. Edward knew that he would have to stop eventually to alchemize their tracks away - their copse was thick enough that the wind wouldn’t do it fast enough for him - but if he lost any momentum now, he knew he might not have the strength to pick it up again later.
By the fiftieth (yes, he was counting each and every grueling one) step, he was panting. Stopping was no longer an option but a necessity - the farther they left camp behind, the more of a chance he had of his tracks being followed. He was moving slow enough that someone would have absolutely no problem catching up to him. Gently, he backed into a nearby tree and let Mustang slide lifelessly against it. Even now, he chose to ignore the way he refused to wake, the way he was too warm and too moist and smelled horribly ill.
Ed turned around to face his tracks. The light from the not-so-distant fires shone into them, defining them in the shadows of the early morning. He was suddenly - torn. There might be survivors. There might be soldiers still alive and in need of help. But damnit, even back to the days where Ed had been gallivanting around the countryside and helping people, back in the days when Ed had garnered the title of “The People’s Alchemist,” he had always been after his own gain.
Restore a woman’s vase, find a place to stay for the night.
Help a man’s cat from a tree, get a tip on a suspicious neighbor.
Take out a prostitution ring, get a tidbit on the Philosopher’s Stone.
Ed had lived counting on the precarious balance that his life’s philosophy ensured, and generally, if there was no return exchange, there was no equivalency.
And besides the thrill that came with a bit of heroics, what did he have to gain from leaving his commanding officer, his fucking father figure since the age of twelve to rot in the snow while he saved a hundred men who could give a damn about him? Ed sucked in his lower lip.
Very, very little. Perhaps a lighter conscience, in the end, but was it worth it to him? What if there were no survivors, what if it was only charred remains and rotting corpses, what if Mustang froze or got caught while he was aimlessly whiling away his time with a sea of burning corpses?
He paused, and the snow swirled thick and harsh around him.
“Fuck it!”
He clapped his hands, ignored the uncomfortable tug on his empty stomach that listlessly reminded him transmutations take more energy than you have to spare!, and leaned down to wipe away their tracks.
Let the little ingrates fend for themselves.
Just as the alchemy started to fizzle out and fade away, a flickering silhouette fell on freshly-smoothed snow. Ed only had time to puzzle out what that meant before a shot rang out. Miraculously, it missed him, but it had been close enough that it had sent his messy hair, still loose from sleep, waving. It found its place somewhere behind him, and Edward was up and hovering over Mustang’s motionless form before the next shot rang out.
That one found its place somewhere in his automail leg. It hurt like holy hell for a moment before the backfiring of severed nerves stopped, and he lost any feeling he might have had completely. After that shot, he wasted no time in bounding forward, compensating for the loss of movement in his automail leg with a wider stride from his right, and closing the gap between them. On his way over, he clapped once, loud and resonating in the thicket, and created a thin, deadly blade on his automail forearm. His poor glove (he would regret that later, when his automail froze with ice and started sticking) lay in tattered remains behind him.
Reaching the soldier, however, was not gratifying. Edward was fast enough that he had his blade to the soldier’s throat before he’d even seen the whites of his eyes. When his automail was pressed firmly against the man’s jugular, though, he was able to feel the quaking barrel of a gun against his ribs - was able to look up into deep brown watering eyes.
Ed knew very little Drachman, but he had heard enough pleas to know what they sounded like.
Edward hadn’t killed anyone yet. Contrary as that was, given that he was fighting in a war, he hadn’t seen any fighting. His letter to Al, probably burning away back in the canvas of their tent, hadn’t lied about that little tidbit.
He didn’t want to kill anyone now. He had never wanted to kill anyone all his life - he had of course. Homunculi. But he wasn’t quite sure they counted.
“Listen,” he started, slow and shaky. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to kill you.”
He was close enough to see the soldier’s adam’s apple bob against his blade. He pushed it in tighter against the hollow of his throat, and his own eyes were wild and nearly unrecognizable in the blade’s skewed reflection.
The man cursed roughly at him in Drachman, but that same half-wild fear that Ed could see in himself reflected back in a tinge of dark, earthy brown.
“You just - can’t - say anything,” it sounded ridiculous when he said it like that.
Suddenly, against his ribs, he felt the handgun tick as the Drachman soldier cocked it. Edward twitched violently, and slitting the man’s throat was as easy as one violent jerk forward with his automail arm.
Red bubbled from his lips and splashed morosely into Edward’s hair as he fell, and the violent spray from his neck surged outward onto Edward’s heavy brown coat. He scrambled backward when the man’s dead weight fell against him, suddenly feeling violently ill. His stomach turned, he went to his knees, and in the white, white snow, so suddenly marred by horrible red, he vomited.
He stayed like that, crouched over his own vile puddle of puke, slowly eating away at the snow where it had fallen like acid, until a soft noise from across the clearing lured him back to reality.
“Edward.”
Faint as it was, Edward recognized Mustang’s voice when he heard it and practically flew across the copse to his side.
“Mustang, oh God, oh fuck, oh shit - ” he murmured, hysteria making his words thick and rapid.
Mustang breathed for a moment, shallow and soft, before replying. His hand was pressed hard and firm against his abdomen, clenched almost painfully on the muscles there.
“Hey - breathe for a second. Are you okay, kid?”
Edward wiped frantically at the tears in his eyes, the blood on his face, and meant to respond whole-heartedly with a valiant “Yes.” But instead, his voice crumbled, and all that came out was, “I killed him.”
Mustang closed his eyes, and his eyelashes were strangely stark against the whiteness of his cheek. “Good thing you did,” he said, smiling darkly.
“What? How can you - how can you say that?”
“Because I can see a - ah - field-dressing kit on his belt. We’re going to need that.”
Ed’s eyebrow’s furrowed. “I’m not -”
But then, with a sickening wet sound, Mustang lifted his hand from his gut. It came away red and glistening in the half-light. “I’m - afraid I am,” he tried to smirk, but it just looked painful.
Edward swore harshly under his breath.
“He shot you!?”
“He shot me.”
“You told me you wouldn’t die! You looked half-dead before he fucking shot you - ”
“Not t-to worry,” he said cheerfully, even though the stutter sounded horribly out of place in Mustang’s voice. “It went right through.”
High and strangled, Ed replied, “As if that makes it any better!” He ran a nervous hand through his hair. It came away bloody.
“Listen, Ed, I need you to get that kit off his belt. I don’t have the strength or concentration to cauterize this myself.” Ed eyed the corpse reluctantly. Blood was still leaking lazily out of the hole Ed had made in his throat.
A few seconds later, Mustang chimed in again. “Ed,” he said, voice surprisingly soft. “As much as I don’t want to rush you - ”
“I’m fine!”
“Well. I’m glad one of us is. However - ”
Edward turned back to balk at Mustang’s gall even as they were lying, wounded and pathetic, feet away from a dead man. A dead man that Edward had just killed -
“...Time is of the essence, Edward,” Mustang said, and there was pain in his voice this time.
“Right.”
Edward knew, logically, that time was indeed of the essence, but facing the man he had just killed was more than a little off-putting. Ed climbed to his feet and took a hesitant step forward.
“It’s freezing out,” Mustang said nonchalantly, totally out of the blue. “At least the last time I was fighting a war, we were warm. Perhaps maybe a little too warm - ”
And there was that comfort again. All Mustang had to do was open his fucking mouth and Ed was somewhere familiar again, somewhere comfortable and warm. His voice faded to a soothing drone as Edward inched toward the corpse, then slowly, quietly, leaned down to grasp at his belt. He stopped in a mid-crouch, having made the mistake of looking up into the man’s face, still frozen in a painful grimace, eyes wide and staring.
Ed fell back on his ass from the very sight of it, mind going blank. It was moments before he even comprehended that Mustang was still talking behind his back.
“- and I remember when you were thirteen, and you ran into that General in the mess with your tray. He came to me with gravy all up his front, shouting about how you were insisting that he buy you a new lunch.” Edward laughed softly despite himself (nevermind that it was laced with hysteria), looked away from the man’s gaping maw of a throat, reached down, and carefully unhooked the bloody first aid kit.
“There’s a good boy, Ed,” Mustang said gently, and Ed might have cared that he sounded rather like he was talking to a dog had the situation been different. As things were, he just clung to the praise until he was far enough away from the corpse that he couldn’t smell the blood.
“Right, good boy - now don’t be alarmed or anything Ed, but you need to stop the bleeding from my other side, or I think I’ll go into shock,” his breath was short, his voice high and breathy, like he wasn’t getting enough air. Ed clutched the field kit tightly.
“What - what do I do?”
“Just go around to my back, apply pressure or something.” Ed moved forward, tentatively. “Try to hurry, please.” Mustang’s face was so, so pale -
“Right, sorry.”
Ed crawled around to Mustang’s back, moving faster now. Mustang was already tearing off his coat and thin blanket, lifting his military jacket for easier access. Ed could easily see the exit wound through the jacket and all the blood that had soaked through. He lifted the coat with his automail hand and hissed through his teeth when he finally got a good look at it.
Just a tiny hole, far to the left side of the General’s back and low enough that it might have just grazed his jutting hipbone. It was absolutely gushing with blood, a small river of it running down to pool at the waist of Mustang’s pants. “Shit, Mustang.”
Around front, Mustang had lifted his side of the shirt, and he echoed Ed’s sentiments almost precisely. “Ed, is there any possibility of going back to camp?”
Oh fuck, he didn’t know, did he?
“General they’re - they’re,” he swallowed. “The Drachmans invaded. It’s. On fire, Mustang.” The General was quiet for a second. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the tree, blood gushing from his open wound more fiercely at the movement. If Edward thought his breathing had been bad back at camp, it sounded positively ghastly then - short, shallow, and wet. Just moving back against the tree had left him absolutely winded.
“Survivors?” he managed to say.
“I...wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Fuck,” he whispered. “God-fucking-damn.”
Mustang just kept on leaning, and Ed, unable to reach the wound with him up against the tree, made a plaintive little panicked noise high in his throat.
“Don’t worry, Fullmetal. If I didn’t think you’d die without me, I’d say to just leave it. As it is though - ” Mustang grunted as, abruptly, he leaned forward, wordlessly granting Ed access. Edward frantically tore open the field dressing kit with his teeth and found medical gauze and tape and bandages.
“Damn, this stuff looks about a hundred years old,” the General said. And it did. In fact, the bandages looked as if they’d been used before. They were heavy and stiff with dried blood. It looked as if someone had attempted to wash them out for reuse, but hadn’t washed them out very well. “We’ll have to make do, because I’m losing too much blood.”
“I can’t bandage you with these - you’ll get infected!”
“Please, Ed.”
And Ed couldn’t ignore the pleading in that tone, so he did. Bandages, at least, he was familiar with. He’d been wounded enough times to know where to tape and how to best staunch the flow of blood. Mind, he wasn’t especially familiar with gunshot wounds - every time he’d been shot, it had been serious enough to merit some sort of hospital visit, and his brother had him on his back before he could make any sort of stopgap, but flesh wounds he was familiar with, and he treated the tiny little holes like that.
The gauze, which he applied directly to the wounds, was thankfully cleaner than the bandages that he used to finish everything off. But still - it wasn’t a safe combination. And if Mustang got infected out here on top of everything else, he would die. He should have been dead already, actually, if his breathing was any indication.
Regardless of all logic, though, when Edward taped off the last bit of the bandage and patted it gently to say as much, Mustang rose to his feet. Edward just stared, wide-eyed, at the pool of red that he had left behind. How well it matched the pool of red across the thicket -
“Are you coming?”
Was he coming? Was he -
“How - ?”
“Do you intend to just sit here, Fullmetal?” For a moment, Edward was back in the office, and Mustang was calm and collected behind his desk. That particular illusion, however, shattered like the flute of a crystal wine glass clutched too tight in his right hand, when he saw
Mustang’s knees shaking violently, his hands practically spasming as they clutched fruitlessly at his discarded coat and blanket.
“No. No, I’ll help,” he said, and scrambled to his feet. Astonishingly, though, the world seemed to tip sideways, and Edward went straight down. Back in the snow, he wondered vaguely how he got there. Edward laughed hoarsely from his white vantage point, and it sounded absolutely ghastly, even to him. Above him, Mustang seemed only vaguely alarmed, but didn’t move to help him. Indeed, he didn’t seem to be able to move at all. He just glanced drily over his shoulder, legs still quivering like a newborn fawn’s, and said, utterly matter-of-fact -
“I think I’m going to be sick.” And he was. Just meters away from where Ed’s own puddle of vomit was freezing. He hacked so hard that Edward, still just lying in the snow like he hadn’t the will to get up again, couldn’t help but think of that gunshot wound, of the makeshift bandages blossoming with blood. Mustang eyed the puddle almost speculatively for a moment after he’d finished. The force of his sickness had sent him back into the snow again, and for a moment, they both just sat beside one another, cold and miserable and tired. Edward was alarmed to see tears in his General’s eyes when he looked up, though Mustang was quick to wipe them away. Ed knew very well that the very power of nausea did that to a person, and he could remember that every stomach flu from his childhood had been accompanied by an unexplainable bout of crying into his mother’s arms.
“Motherfucker shot me in the leg,” Ed said, finally, by way of explanation.
“Automail, I hope,” Mustang said. His voice shook - a low, warbling, guttural sound.
“Luckily.”
There was a pause, and then, “Motherfucker shot me in the gut.”
Edward chuckled glumly despite himself. He couldn’t not - it was just too unusual, too out of place, too fucking weird. The whole situation was.
“Are we gonna die?” Edward mumbled, suddenly very aware of the cold seeping into his coat.
“Hopefully not. We’d stand a better chance if we stood up, mind.”
“‘Dun wanna stand up.”
“I don’t particularly want to either.”
“They’ll find us if we stay here.”
“Yes, you didn’t make it very far, did you?”
“You’re fucking heavy, bastard. Go on a diet and then we’ll see how well I can lug your ass around.”
Mustang scrutinized his vomit for a second longer before joking half-heartedly, “I imagine I’m a little lighter now if you want to give it another go.”
Then Mustang was up again, and Ed marveled at it from his place on the ground. He leaned against the tree he’d been seated against a moment ago to hack a cough into the bark, then finally reached down to take the discarded coat up again. “Right. You’re going to have to help yourself up, because I’m not even sure how I’m standing right now.”
Edward gained his feet using the same tree Mustang had, and his automail knee rattled like a loose windowpane.
“Something’s loose in there.” He said, brows furrowed.
“Can you walk?”
Ed nodded tentatively, then took a halting step forward. His leg held miraculously, though it wasn’t a leg so much as it was a crutch, anymore. Then Mustang took a step forward, and it was just as faltering as Ed’s had been.
“Damn, we’re pathetic,” Ed joked halfheartedly. “We look like zombies.”
Mustang quirked an eyebrow at him. “Zombie. You know. From the comics. ‘Brains’ and all that?” Mustang quirked the other eyebrow at him. “...Bad time, I guess.”
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Comments and criticism appreciated. Look forward to chapter two soon. <3