What?!

What?!

I've uploaded three times this year?!

And it's only April?!

Would you believe I wrote this in less than a week? It's 2015 again! Except it's not!

This chapter took a lot of planning because it's a pretty important one. We're getting into the nitty gritty now. It only took, what, five years?

I'm sleepy. I'mma take a nap.

As uncomfortable as it was, it made it easy to hold his chin against his chest and the lower part of his face hidden against his uniform. No one questioned the way he held himself, others were doing it to keep their skin and eyes away from the sun.

His legs felt like prosthetics, the kind made out of wood and maybe some plastic to provide flexibility – stiff and uncooperative, forcing him to compensate by walking like a puppet that was moved by strings from above it.

He'd fallen into a dull rhythm alongside his countrymen – step, drag, throb, breathe, step, drag, throb, breathe – with his swollen, half-functional leg dragging behind him. The inflammation and pain had diminished enough that he was able to put his sock in his boot, but weight was still a matter of debate, and he gave his foot as much as it could take without defecting and sending him sprawling in the sand for all to see.

His fever had broken and the shaking had left but the fluid oozing from the reopened wound kept his paranoia alive. He needed his foot. He knew he could always get automail, but that would take years, years he couldn't afford.

Step, drag, throb, breathe, step, drag, throb, breathe.

His throat ached and his skull was coated with spikes spearing the underside of scalp. He drank all the water that was brought to him, but it just leaked out of him like he was a sieve, darkening his uniform and making the fabric stick to his body, fermenting on him until he smelled like rancid wine.

Step, drag, throb, breathe, step, drag, throb, breathe.

He couldn't close his mouth.

Well, his jaws were shut, but his lips refused to come over his teeth. He didn't know why, didn't know what he could do about it, so he did nothing, ignoring it and waiting for its cause to progress into something recognizable or vanish. With his luck, he'd torn the muscles around his mouth and broken meat was cramping and hanging in just the right combination to be unable to fulfill its purpose. Spit poured down his shirt and chest with sweat.

Step, drag, throb, breathe, step, drag, throb, breathe.

The perspiration on his leg made the hole in his ankle sting like it had been made by an abominably large insect.

Step, drag, throb, breathe.

He just wanted to sleep.

Step drag, throb – whump.

He didn't realize the troop had stopped until he stumbled into Maes's disgusting back. Roy staggered back a step, his body going horribly stiff, like a spring about to uncurl. He fought the impulse to groan.

He couldn't raise his eyes, he couldn't see what was going on. Hughes must have turned around because the man clasped Mustang's shoulders, his face just as horribly bright as the horrible sun.

"Roy, we made it this time! We're next for the train! We're going home today!"

The greatest thing that Mustang interpreted from that was that he could stop.

It was always a fight to get to the pavilion they called a train station before the number of men who could board was exceeded, the unlucky ones having to wait another awful, stinking day and freezing night camping until trying again in the morning.

Men and women, he reminded himself when he felt a gentle hand between his shoulder blades.

"Sir, are you all right? Do you need more water?"

Roy sat down in the sand, uncaring and unresponsive.

More water wouldn't help.

Nothing helped.

He wanted to sleep.

He dozed.

He blinked himself awake when Hawkeye gave a soft tug on his arm, murmuring that the train was were. He could hear it, clattering on the tracks in the distance.

He also heard shouts of joy, whoops of triumph, sobs of relief.

Roy heard the silence of the soldiers like him the most, the ones that were too rent and cauterized to make a sound.

The train pulled in next to the pavilion, it's brakes squealing and boilers sighing.

Then nothing.

The dead always boarded first.

And then they waited for the healthier, fresher (unscathed, untouched, unbroken) officers to load the caskets, standing to attention as best they could out of respect for their fallen comrades.

And out of respect for their fallen comrades, once all the bodies had been secured, the young men on duty fell into formation and gave their departed fellows a three-shot salute. Roy, head down, was unable to see their preparation and was unable to brace himself for the thunder of the guns when it came.

On the first shot, Roy Mustang fell.

XXX

Roy couldn't have repeated what he'd told the doctor over the phone if he'd tried.

He remembered the man had asked a question and Roy had answered, then Mustang heard the clack as the doctor ended the call and Roy dropped his phone, not bothering to put the receiver on its cradle.

He might very well have broken into a run for Ed's room if Alphonse hadn't torn from that direction, metal body clanking like the conveyor belt at a car factory. Al froze in the living room, the glow of his blood seal through his helmet that served as his eyes flickering as his body shook. Mustang arbitrarily wondered how he was shaking without a nervous system or muscles, if maybe the soul's emotions affected the alchemy binding it to the armor, then promptly forgot about his question when Al sobbed and slapped his gauntlets to his helmet.

"Colonel… Colonel…"

Mustang didn't know what to do.

Alphonse wasn't a soldier he could order to his tent or back into line. He didn't have a shoulder Roy could clasp and reassuringly squeeze.

But he could hear and see, so Roy straightened his posture and found his most stable, fortifying voice.

"It will be all right, Alphonse. Fullmetal will be all right –"

"His leg's the wrong way!"

XXX

Edward reminded Roy of a heifer who had missed her milking.

His eyes rolled grotesquely in his head and his limbs, natural and not, spasmed in awkward positions, like he'd been thrown from a building. The moans coming from his rigid throat were disturbingly reminiscent of the heifer, strained and thin then deep and heavy. The lieutenant was holding the mask of the ventilator to the boy's face, her own ghostly void, the same expression she would take in the war after successfully hitting a target.

Roy did not bother speaking to her, he knew she wouldn't have answered.

Edward's leg had gone crooked at the hip, pushing his left knee towards his automail with such accuracy that his hamstrings were now where his thigh should be.

Roy knew why Alphonse had left the room. He couldn't bear to look yet couldn't bring himself to look away. The obvious wrongness was alluring yet sickening.

Instead, Mustang forced himself to study Edward's face, checking his level awareness. Fullmetal had pulled his automail into himself, as if he was afraid that whatever force had attacked his left leg would go after his prosthetics, and with those being the only parts of his body he still had full control over, his fear was understandable.

In his staring, Mustang spotted the bead of blood rolling down the right side of the boy's neck. He glanced at Riza questioningly and saw the empty syringe on the bedside table.

She had given him a tranquilizer.

It had been an unspoken agreement between everyone in Roy's house – except for Edward, who was quite vocal about it – that they would not use the tranquilizers the doctor had provided. Sedating him would have been counterproductive to the very reason why they were all in this situation in the first place, and besides, the diazepam should have been enough as long as they were careful.

It should have been.

A horrible suspicion rose in Roy's gut and he immediately shoved it back down. He had enough to deal with right now, he didn't need anymore.

"I don't think he's awake," Riza said roughly, cutting through Ed's keening. "Alphonse says he thinks he might have been dreaming…"

Perhaps he was still dreaming, with the way he seemed to be trying to move his body against, how his metal limbs would occasionally flex outward, as if he had considered lunging towards something then pulling back as he reconsidered his decision.

Like he was trying to attack something…

"He's fighting it."

Hawkeye looked at him, her blank countenance wrinkled by confusion.

"What –"

"He's fighting the tranquilizer."

Of course he was, he had fought the nurses in the hospital, had the colonel and the lieutenant when they had tried to give him the anti-arrhythmic…

Riza had placed the hand she wasn't using to hold the mask in place on top of Ed's head, possibly to keep him still but it didn't pass Mustang that she was petting him with her fingers like he was cat.

"Have you –"

"If he can hear us, he's not showing it. Alphonse called his name several times, but…" she closed her eyes tightly, wondering whether or not she would regret asking this, "Did… could you hear us?"

XXX

He'd heard the men around him shout.

He supposed he would have, too, if the person next to him had spontaneously combusted.

Surely that was what had happened. The kindling in his ankle had caught fire under the sun, and now he was burning, burning just like the Ishvalans, burning by they judgment of their god, whose punishment he accepted without challenge.

He thought he heard his name. Why did they think he could answer, when his body was aflame and his lungs full of smoke?

They grabbed him, certainly scalding their hands, and setting themselves ablaze, and he felt them pulling him, dragging him…

He remembered little more than heat and darkness, but in that little, he recalled that Maes and Riza had not left him. He couldn't have said how he knew it was them or that they were there… maybe he'd recognized the firmness of Hughes's hands on his shoulders, the almost painfully smooth voice of Hawkeye as she spoke to him, giving him comfort and updating him on their location.

"Almost there, Roy, we'll be in Womiob in an hour, and then we can get you a doctor."

"Go to sleep, sir. We're not going anywhere. Go to sleep."

He'd slept.

XXX

"Go to sleep, Fullmetal."

The only evidence of her surprise at Roy's sudden initiative was only shown in the way she swiped Edward's forehead with her fingers in fresh vigor. Mustang didn't remember putting a hand on Ed's wet left shoulder, but he must have, because there it was, trying to replicate the strength and certainty that Hughes's had, a non-verbal promise that this was only an inconvenience and not the crisis it was conspicuously trying to be.

"Go to sleep. We're not going anywhere. You're not going anywhere."

The crackling, mutilated warbling had begun to subside. Roy wasn't sure if it was because his reassurances were working or that Fullmetal was losing the battle against the ketamine.

Riza's hand migrated from his head to his human hand. She took it her own, taking advantage of the clawed position it was trapped in. If Mustang didn't know better, he would have thought his major was trying to scratch his lieutenant with his fingernails. Ed's fingers compacted and expanded chaotically, and he ended up doing just that, but Hawkeye gave no indication of pain, if it caused her any.

"Go back to sleep, Ed. You were only dreaming."

Edward made a high-pitched squeal, as if he was reminding her that his mangled leg spoke differently. The hip was turning an ugly red and had swollen to a third of its normal size. Roy had enough experience with broken and disjointed bones to know not to use ice, it would make the pain ten times worse, whatever boon it might be against the swelling.

No one was ready for the abrupt appearance of Hayate.

The dog had given himself the neglected task of comforting Alphonse, who was now recovering from whatever fit of panic had chased him from his brother's side thanks to Hayate's practiced licks to the armor's legs, then gauntlets and helmet when Al had gone so far as to pick up the dog and press Hayate to the closest thing he had to a face.

Al could not bring himself to reenter, but stood at the threshold, ever Edward's guardian golem.

Black Hayate immediately went to work, apparently oblivious to the fact that he had not been unexpected. He quickly found the pinprick on Edward's neck from the tranquilizer and expertly cleansed the wound with his tongue.

Edward stilled so completely that both Riza and Roy thought the boy had surrendered to the sedative.

Hayate swiped his tongue along Ed's collarbone as professionally as a medic would disinfect a cut, until he reached Ed's right shoulder and stuck his snout against the automail.

"Stop," Alphonse ordered when Hawkeye moved to push Hayate away. The lieutenant looked at him curiously. Her unasked question was answered when Edward sighed and closed his eyes, finally letting metal limbs go slack.

No one dared to break the silence beyond Hayate's rasping licking.

"Col…"

Oddly, Mustang's reaction to this was to gawp at Riza, who stared back with equal incredulity.

"Col… nel…"

It was squashed between his teeth and discordant through his voice box. Roy only heard it because he had been searching for it.

"Fullmetal?"

Ed pulled his eyes open, his gaze glassy and exhausted , but ironically focused. It seemed that only when he had been nearly forced to unconscious that he'd realized he was awake.

"It… it'sh ger…"

His eyes slid closed. He yanked them back open.

"It'sh ger my… udder leck…"

Mustang shook his head even though he knew Edward wouldn't be able to comprehend the gesture.

"I… I don't…"

"It'sh ger my udder leck. It'sh ger my udder leck."

The colonel told himself it was sweat gathering in Fullmetal's groggy eyes and slinking down his face into his ears and hair.

"It'sh ger my udder leck."

Alphonse made a noise, like he'd been about to weep but had caught himself. Hawkeye glanced at him concernedly.

"Alphonse?"

"He… he thinks he's…"

The part of Roy's brain programmed to ungarble vocalizations into meaning finished its processing and Mustang understood with a swiftness that left him feeling ill.

It's got my other leg.

Edward knew they were there now, but he was definitely not awake.

XXX

For a man who'd been woken during the witching hour, the doctor was smartly dressed and clear-faced. Upon reflection, Roy felt rather silly for thinking this. The man's profession demanded odd hours and judging by the wrinkles in his pants, the doctor slept in his clothes.

Mustang had been ready for a condescending look or at least a clipped glance, but the doctor was a physician through and through and seemed to have eyes only for his patient. Roy had opened the front door upon Al fetching him at the sound of soft but urgent knocks against the wood. He'd pushed passed the colonel without so much as a greeting and waited expectantly for his host to show the way. Roy led him to the guestroom, equally silent.

Edward seemed to have finally give in to the sedative, his eyes had closed and his breathing had slowed, although it was labored. Each breath was a puff, shallow and tiring. The doctor entered the room behind Roy and analyzed Fullmetal from head to toe, barely acknowledging the lieutenant sitting stoutly beside the humming ventilator. He did pay homage to the dog laying protectively between Riza and Ed, proffering a hand for Hayate to sniff, though he didn't touch Hayate's fur.

Black Hayate snuffled. He'd found the doctor's scent unthreatening and granted him clearance.

"He's not sleeping."

It was the first thing he'd said since arriving and it took Mustang by surprise.

"You gave him a sedative?"

"Um… yes." Roy wasn't sure where the man was going with this tangent. His question was quickly answered when the doctor set the small case he'd brought with him on the floor and made to examine Edward's crooked leg.

He instantly backtracked, leaning almost comically backward to avoid the kick from Ed's metal foot.

Edward had most certainly not been sleeping.

He had heard the extra set of footsteps and a stranger's voice. It wasn't until the man had asked after the tranquilizer that Edward realized who he was. Panic gave him the focus he needed to pull his eyes open and swing his automail leg at the person they had promised – the person the colonel had promised – would not be brought into this.

The movement shivved a knife of agony into his left him and Ed couldn't stop the shriek that streaked out of his chest and through his throat.

The doctor, apparently unperturbed, caught the prosthetic before it could pull the boy fully onto his side and gently repositioned him. Mustang wondered if he should apologize. He saw the concentration in the man's eyes and realized that even if he did, the doctor wouldn't have heard him.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Mr. Elric," he said, as if he was speaking to a rabid wolf. Ed somehow managed to narrow his eyes disbelievingly. The mask over his mouth misted with his scoff of doubt.

"I'm not going to anesthetize you. I didn't even bring analgesics with me."

Then the doctor started turning out his pockets.

Some change and a small, simple pocket watch were set on the bed by Edward's left arm, close enough to his head that he would be able to see them. An identification card joined them, as well as what looked suspiciously to be a flattened toffy wrapper.

Next was the case, of which the contents of were carefully removed and placed with the growing pile of knick-knacks. Some wooden sticks in sterile paper casings, a hastily stuffed stethoscope, a sphygmomanometer (which apparently made up the majority of the bag's bulk), three small vials, and two empty, needle-less syringes.

Upon the revelation of the final items, Edward's eyes, which had rounded in curiosity and confusion, had stiffened back into accusing slits sharp enough to cut. The doctor raised his hands in a gesture of placation (or perhaps surrender).

"It's just rubbing alcohol, pain-killers, and liquid diazepam. No sedatives."

Ed's gaze flicked distrustfully between the bottles and their owner, then unexpectedly, to Hayate. The dog laid his muzzle on Edward's ribs, looking back balefully.

Edward shifted his attention to the colonel.

In his stare, Roy saw a promise that made his insides squirm.

If he's lying, I'll never forgive you. You brought him here. He's your fault.

Then he closed his eyes as if to relax, but the tense energy he emanated thickened rather than abated.

The doctor haphazardly swept his belongings into his bag (even the ones that had not originated there), his expression closed and serious. Once the bed was clear of everything but Edward, the doctor resumed whatever it was he'd been doing before Fullmetal had tried to decapitate him. He tried to keep his fingers light and his touch gentle, but Ed still felt a shock of pain spark from his leg and he barely managed to stop himself from crying out. As it was, he grunted and shivered like the doctor's hands were cold (which they were, for the record).

The doctor ran his hands tenderly along Edward's twisted leg, noting the swelling and the angle, pressing around the knee and in the middle of the thigh, then finally ever so slightly at the hip and Ed squealed like a kicked puppy. Hayate gave the man the best death glare a dog can give and growled a warning.

The doctor pulled his hands away in a heartbeat and apologized vehemently. Alphonse's feet clanked as he backed away from the room, unable to watch any longer.

"Okay," the doctor straightened and for an odd reason the tone of his voice made a ball of ice form in Ed's stomach. "Colonel, would you mind helping me for a moment?"

Roy looked up, startled, but stepped forward in answer.

"Come up to where I'm standing and put your hands just above his hip, like so," the man demonstrated, then moved aside so Mustang could take his place. The position felt horribly invasive and Fullmetal arched against the mattress with a muffled, "mmph."

The doctor repositioned himself by the boy's foot, taking his ankle and lifting it slightly. Ed made a sound that was terribly similar to a whimper and Riza took his crabbed flesh hand in her own. The doctor struggled for a moment, the boy's knee wouldn't bend and he knew better than to force it. Frowning, he adjusted so that he was holding Edward's leg near the knee instead to reduce the pressure on the joint.

Fullmetal keened and the doctor apologized again.

Roy wished the man would shut up and get it over with.

"Okay," he said again, with more confidence than before. "Mister Elric, I know you probably will find this difficult, but I need you to relax as much as you possibly can." Roy would have bet five thousand Cenz that Fullmetal would have been much more relaxed if the doctor hadn't said that. "Try to relax" was practically medical patois for "This is going to hurt like hell."

"On my count, I need you to push into his pelvis," the man said to Roy. The wording made Mustang's skin want to crawl off his muscles and slink away.

"One…"

Roy couldn't help but notice the way Ed's squeezed shut.

"Two…"

Hawkeye unconsciously tightened her grip on Edward's hand.

"Five…"

All of them, including Hayate, stared at the man who seemed not to realize his mistake.

"Apricots…"

Roy and Ed stared at each other. Riza took turns staring at each of them.

"Green…"

"Wh't the f –"

Edward's mumbled swear was cut off by the abrupt force of the doctor shoving the boy's hip back into its socket, the gravelly cracking of the cartilage sucking the bone back into place, and Ed's shocked wail of agony.

The doctor dropped Fullmetal's now swollen, but corrected leg and motioned for Roy to step back.

"Sorry, but the more distracted and unsuspecting you are, the easier it is and the less it hurts," he gave as means of explanation.

Ed's automail limbs had jerked back towards his body. Once it was over, they slowly relaxed back against the bed and Ed went so far as to wiggle his toes to assess functionality.

"You can put ice on it now if you'd like. It would help with the swelling and pain." Roy nodded and ducked out of the room, finding Alphonse cowering in the living room like giant teddy hiding from the monsters in the dark – which could just as easily be him, with the way his crimson eyes glowed.

"Alphonse –"

"Is he okay?!"

Al shivered, his armor clinking.

"He's fine, Alphonse. The doctor says he can have ice for his leg now, to help with the swelling."

Without waiting or asking for more information, whether because he was anxious to help his brother or too anxious to be given the information at that moment, Al clomped to the kitchen in search of the ice box.

Roy returned to the guestroom to see what looked like Fullmetal and the doctor having a staring contest.

"Mister Elric, I know you don't trust me and I understand why. But whatever your instincts tell you, I am trying to help you. I'm not upset… well, I am, but only with myself for not have thinking this might happen, considering your previous experiences with depressive medications. My point is, in order to help you, I need you to tell me where you've put them."

Mustang cast a questioning look at the lieutenant, who shrugged, equally confused.

Ed blinked slowly; teeth bared in a way that would have looked aggressive out of context (despite the mask covering his maw). The doctor sighed, sadly rather than exasperatedly.

"All right. I'll just have to find them myself."

"Find what yourself?" Alphonse entered the room, a chunk of ice wrapped in a rapidly dampening towel in his gauntlets.

They all turned their attention to Alphonse out of reflex. After a moment, the doctor turned back to Edward with the expression a mother might give her child when confronting her husband after receiving new of poor behavior at school.

Ed, playing the part of the misbehaving child as though he'd been born for it (which he had), returned the doctor's commanding scowl with a challenging glare.

Roy wondered if he should say what he had speculated and then tried to forget. He didn't need to because Al, being the quick thinker and brother he was, reached the conclusion without having it given to him.

"Oh… oh, Brother, you didn't."

Roy then wondered if he should ask the younger Elric to teach him what power he had over the older.

Edward's face collapsed as much as it could with such raw guilt that Mustang would have had to look away if Fullmetal hadn't done so first.

Al angrily thrusted the ice into the doctor's hands, who caught it against his chest with an "oomph" and stomped to his brother's side with force that should have sent the house shaking, if not for the amount of practice he'd had controlling his gargantuan body.

He loomed over his smaller elder sibling like a dragon over a crusading knight.

"Where is it?"

Ed refused to look at him. Turning his head put him under the gaze of Lieutenant Hawkeye, who was just as unforgiving. He turned his face to the ceiling and closed his eyes.

Alphonse was having none of it.

"Dammit, Brother, what did you do?!"

Roy and Riza looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Neither of them had ever heard Al swear before.

Edward apparently had and the circumstances in which he had must not have been that different than this one. His eyelids crinkled as he pressed them shut. He made a hissing sound through his teeth, like the dragon had lost its fire, and slowly scooted his upper body as much as he could until his head was off the pillow.

Al snatched it up, looking it over as best he could since he couldn't feel for whatever he was looking for.

"Did you transmute it into the pillow?" Al's voice had softened considerably now that he'd gotten his brother to cooperate. Mustang realized that his earlier fury had been more fear for what Edward's stubbornness might do to him than anger towards what Edward had done.

Edward nodded, a single clipped nod, eyes still closed.

Alphonse made to reach for the chalk he kept his sabaton, then remembered the doctor was in the room.

He stopped himself, returning to his previous position rather awkwardly.

"Um… Colonel, do you have any chalk I could borrow?"

Mustang fetched a pencil from his study.

"You'll probably see what you're drawing easier if what you're drawing with isn't the same color as what you're drawing on."

Alphonse agreed with a quiet "thanks."

He quickly drew the circle for the transmutation of plant fiber and activated it.

The pillow, case, and stuffing inside seemed to push each other way from the center of the circle, Al keeping a firm hold on the disintegrating pillow. When all of the cotton was out his glove and on the floor, Alphonse opened his palm.

In the center of the glove were pills from that day and the previous day that Ed had pretended to take, hid under the pillow, and then transmuted into the pillow the first chance he got.

Al sighed; a deep, heavy sound that made him sound like a very old man.

"Oh, Brother… I'm… I'm sorry."

Ed quivered and Hayate whined, giving the boy a comforting nuzzle.

XXX

"I should have thought of this," the doctor said.

They were in the living room; the colonel, the doctor, and the armor; the latter sitting on the couch.

"Brother… doesn't like medications that are meant to make him sleep or not move around. It reminds him too much of his surgeries. He's never told me this, but I can never get him to take medicine for his automail if he thinks it'll make him feel heavy or tired. He only takes it in the hospital with a needle because there's no way he can pretend to take it that way."

"Conditioning," the doctor said, as if that was the socially expected response for what Al had revealed.

"Um… excuse me?"

"Conditioning," the doctor repeated specifically to Al. "The brain learns in many ways, but we aren't actually aware of all of it. It's like… it's like your body learns from the experiences you have in your life – what happened before the experience, the experience itself, and what happened after, so that you know how to expect similar situations and what to do about them. Learning to expect a situation by remembering what happened before a similar one occurred is called 'conditioning.'

"Like cutting yourself when chopping vegetables because you held your hands too close together. Your brain remembers the pain of the cut and that you were holding your hands close together while chopping vegetables when you were cut. So, through conditioning you learn, unknowingly or not, to feel nervous when your hands are close together while cutting vegetables. Your brain makes a new instinct and your body makes new reflexes to make sure that experience doesn't happen again. Or, if the experience was pleasurable, your brain learns to enjoy the events that happened before the experience and to find ways for those events to repeat.

"Your brother is not unique. Many automail patients develop negative associations with depressant medications, like diazepam or anesthesia, because they are given such drugs before they enter surgery… which, I believe it is safe to say, is not a pleasurable experience."

"But… the automail is good," Alphonse pointed out, his young voice laced with confusion. "He was so happy when it was finally done. Why didn't he get positively conditioned for medicine if taking the medicine led to him getting something that made him happy?"

"Because the human design is imperfect, young Elric, and the brain typically only makes associations to events that coincide rather than events that occur later on as a result of ones that happened in the more distant past. Survival is not a game, and if the animal guesses wrong once, they never get to guess again. The brain takes no chances with survival. It's because of this flaw that we have many mental disorders, particularly war neurosis."

Roy tried to convince himself he'd imagined the doctor looking at him at the term war neurosis. There was no way this stranger could possibly know.

"That being said," the doctor said, looking each alchemist in turn, "we need to discuss what step should be taken now."

"We give Brother his medicine now, right?" Alphonse piped up, his voice holding desperate hope.

The doctor frowned, more sympathetic than unhappy.

"I'm afraid it's no longer that simple. The purpose of the diazepam was to keep the muscles that had already been affected by the toxin from contracting to the point they would be unable to stop. Now that they have, the muscle relaxants serve little purpose. I have to admit that I'm fascinated by the fact that the diazepam was the only medicine he seems to have… refused."

"Brother may be dumb, but he's not stupid. He knows what antibiotics are and what they do. And he couldn't really pretend to take the antitoxin."

Roy wondered if he was supposed to laugh at Alphonse's description of his brother. He decided not to.

"We showed him what each medicine was and what it was meant to do," Roy answered the doctor's question. "We were hoping our straightforwardness would make him more agreeable. It did… but I suppose it was for a reason other than the one we thought."

"I suppose so, indeed," the doctor agreed broodily. After a moment of thought, he seemed to come to some sort of decision.

"Well, as I see it, these are our options. We can anesthetize him and put him in an iron lung until his nerves have sufficiently rebuilt themselves."

There was a terrible silence.

Slowly, Alphonse stood, and the higher he rose, the whiter the doctor's face paled.

"If you dare –"

"Or" the doctor squeaked, his young face seeming to age with fear, "or we could anesthetize him and intubate him for the remainder of his recovery."

Al took a menacing step forward.

"If you so much as look at my brother with the thought of putting him in a coma -"

"You have to understand, young Elric, I'm worried that if we don't… put him in a coma, as you say… he'll simply continue to hurt himself."

"We promised we wouldn't," Roy interjected. "We promised we'd keep him awake."

The doctor turned his gaze to the colonel, blood returning to his skin. He felt a spike of jealousy towards Alphonse: the man feared the boy who was two heads taller than him but didn't blink an eye at the officer who was the same size as him, but older.

"A promise that was kind when it was not guaranteed he might shatter a bone at any moment. If he does, and there is a chance that he will, he will suffer through every painful moment. This was just a dislocated hip, which is horrible enough. Can you really bring yourself to put him through anymore?"

"There is also a chance that the right person might hear the wrong things, and you will suffer every repercussion of that," Mustang said, his black eyes darkening. "Can you really bring yourself put yourself in that position?"

The doctor's bravado faltered as he remembered the colonel's threat in the hospital. Then he steeled himself and his expression petrified.

"Yes. For the sake of my patient, I will do what I must. I was lenient with your requests because I wanted what was best for Mister Elric, even if I wasn't comfortable with it, but I must draw the line. I agreed to your demands" he made sure both Al and Roy heard the emphasis in the word, "because it was clear you genuinely had his happiness in mind. But I have seen patients who aren't anesthetized until the last minute. It is a living hell."

He was looking at Roy. Roy couldn't pretend he wasn't.

XXX

"Just one more minute, Roy, you can do it."

He couldn't breathe.

"It's almost over, Major, hold on."

His spine was going to snap.

"Go to sleep, sir. It'll be over when you wake up."

"Don't tell him that, Hawkeye! What if he doesn't wake up?!"

"He's suffering! Can't you see that? What can we do with him conscious that we can't with him not?"

Roy didn't remember the rest of their fight.

He'd taken Riza's suggestion to heart.

XXX

He'd woken when they'd carried him off the train in a stretcher.

He heard his name, heard questions being asked: what had happened to him, where were they taking him, would be all right?

Riza and Maes took turns telling the concerned soldiers trying to get off the train around him that he'd taken a bit too much sun, that he just needed some rest and some water and he would be fine.

They took him to the town's clinic.

He remembered staring groggily at the bald man who listened to his heart and breathing, took his temperature by sticking the thermometer in his ear, and tried to get him to move his extremities.

"Can you move the toes of your right foot?"

Roy didn't bother to try. They were already splayed grotesquely, the bones and tendons stretched to the point he wondered if they would break in twain like rubber bands. It the wonder they'd even been able to remove his boot.

"Can you move your right knee?"

He could, only barely and it ached the way his joints cramped after a day on the marching field.

"Looks like it's already spread from his leg. We'll have to –"

Roy didn't remember what they'd done. He'd been gripped by a giant clamp at his feet and his head and he'd been bent in half.

The bald man must have somehow cut the power from the clamp, and Roy by proxy, because there was nothing but blackness after that.

XXX

"What did you do for me?"

Riza looked up from wiping drool from Fullmetal's drenched chin (and trying to stop Hayate from "helping").

If Edward was listening, he didn't show it. For all appearances, he'd given in to the tranquilizer and gone to sleep, or at least drifted into a doze.

"Sir?"

"Did you… was I… was I drugged? Until it was over? I can't remember."

Roy knew he had, in fact, been drugged, but he was hoping his lieutenant would find the double meaning in the word.

Riza looked confused for a moment longer, realized what he meant, and her expression changed. She looked more uncomfortable than sad or concerned. The story had a (somewhat) happy ending, but that didn't mean she liked recalling it.

"Yes, sir. The… practitioners at Wiomob didn't give us time to argue. They didn't even let us into the room until after they'd… put you to sleep."

Roy remembered waking up, knowing he'd been unconscious but not knowing how long, the only evidence he had that a significant amount of time had passed were the snippets of half-lucid speech and sensations of being touched and moved.

He remembered Maes telling him he'd been in an iron lung for three weeks.

He "hmm"ed to himself. Not being conscious to remember it, he hadn't been privy to the specifics of his stay at the clinic. Not wanting to remember it, or anything to do with the war, he hadn't thought about what the specifics might have been. When he did think about it, it was about the old man holding his disemboweled dog while laughing into Mustang's face when the colonel, then major, had asked him if he had any last words before Roy had incinerated him.

It was quite bizarre, to learn that he had been paralyzed to near death for more than a fortnight and not have any particular feelings about. It was like he'd just been told a story about something horrible or embarrassing or hilarious he'd done as an infant.

Fullmetal would have been equally medicated during his surgery, albeit with different substances. He would have been awake and he would have felt the most vital moments of it, he'd needed to, in order to make sure that the prosthetics had successfully attached to the correct nerves.

Conditioning.

Edward's experience had been negative and Roy's had been almost non-existent.

The difference in reactions was flabbergasting.

He was interrupted from his musing by the creak of the door.

Alphonse crept into the room, the doctor behind him but lingering in the threshold. Al padded to his brother's side and took Ed's small, mangled hand in his large glove.

The colonel and the doctor made eye contact; some unspoken message being transmitted through the gesture. The doctor stepped back into the hall and Roy followed.

Mustang had words on his tongue, questions and demands jumbled together so thoroughly he wasn't sure which would come out first when he opened his mouth.

"You haven't told them, have you?"

The man's segue made Roy swallow all of his sentences.

"Um… I'm sorry?"

"The boys. You haven't told them. It's probably not my place to say, but I do believe it would be beneficial if you shared your insight."

Mustang's guts twisted together.

He knew.

How long had he known?

How did he know?

"You don't remember me," the doctor said blithely. "Understandable. You were quite out of sorts. I was a nurse, cutting my medical teeth in a local clinic in Womiob. A lot of our patients were from the war, most of them honorable discharges who'd been left handicapped as a result of their injuries.

"But one case stuck out to me. A major, just beginning his deportation back to the heart of Amestris, compromised by lockjaw that had taken root in a wound in his ankle. The man came in on a gurney, barely able to breathe, and he walked out of the clinic three weeks later with only a wobble to show what he'd been through. Incredibly tenacious, I must admit."

Roy's blood had gone cold.

The doctor smiled amicably as if he had come across an old friend while at the market.

"I wasn't sure I recognized you at first. I though maybe I found you familiar due to your name and title. But I dig some digging in the medical archives they keep for apprentice physicians, and I knew I'd brought one chronicling my time in the southeast. They tried to give you a fake name, you know, but it's hard to keep secrets from people when they're around you all hours of the day, and especially if concerned comrades come to the door asking after the whereabouts of one Major Roy Mustang who fit the description of our mystery patient perfectly.

"So, tell me, colonel. Is there a reason why you're keeping your personal knowledge a secret from your boys? Because they could definitely find use from it."

So... how many of y'all guessed it?

Probably all of you 'cause I'm bad at this.

Did you know that if you drank soda immediately after eating Mentos, your stomach would explode and you'd die. At least, that's what my high school biology teacher told me. Sounds pretty shady to me.