(7-1-10) This fic is temporarily on hiatus. I just don't have the time or inspiration to continue it at the moment. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you.

"He's dead, he's dead. What have I done? God, no, what have I done?"

The pool of blood grew with every passing second, stretching out until it touched the walls and from there moving upwards to decorate each face of the room with a crimson gleam. He pulled the limp body close to him as sobs filled the air, his pathetic voice causing the thick liquid that surrounded him to ripple.

"Come on, wake up. It was just a game, just a game. Wake up now," he pleaded, tapping the paled cheek with his long fingers. He knew what he had done, because his mind wouldn't let him stop thinking about it. The scene replayed itself in his mind over and over, overlapping into a maddening film of screams and struggle. But no matter what he knew, he could not face the fact that he had just taken a life and it was the life of the one person he cared about the most.

"This is all wrong. Why? Edward, why? Why aren't you waking up?"

A scream ripped itself from his throat and the blood on the wall crashed down in a thick spray, quickly coming towards him in a tidal wave of metallic red and drowning him in its heaviness. So much blood. So...much...

As he rolled over on the hard floor, his eyes slowly opening, he reasoned that the dream, no, the nightmare was just something of his slumbering mind. However, something in his heart told him that it wasn't exactly what he thought it was. He looked over at his brother, thrilled to see his chest lift and fall as he slept, but a deep frown fell on his face when the bruises and cuts that littered his brother's nude body reminded him where he was.

With every passing day, the beatings got worse. They hadn't touched him much, but his brother was hit the moment those bastards stepped into the room. He didn't know how much longer his brother could last, and he most certainly didn't know how much longer he could helplessly watch.

He stared up at the stone ceiling and tried to count how many days they'd been there. Of course, there was no such thing as night or day in this place. Time was lost to them. He sighed softly, though his mind screamed in frustration because he had no way to know the answer. He closed his eyes, hoping to fall back asleep.

"Brother, are you still mad at me? I'm sorry, but I couldn't let you come here alone. We do everything together."

"You don't get it, Al. You're mortal again and this place is dangerous," Ed said. He looked back his brother and sighed. "Forget it, there's no going back now. Just stay close to me, okay?"

The younger Elric nodded, glad to be on his brother's good side again. He lengthened his steps and was soon walking next to the blond. Side by side, they trudged through the desert until they finally came to the camp site where they'd been instructed to report to. The camp site was located just outside an Amestris-owned, desert town.

"Glad to see the desert didn't shrivel you up, Fullmetal," Colonel Mustang teased with a smirk as the two brothers entered his tent.

"Shut up, bastard. Let's just get this over with already."

"Fine, fine. I've asked for you to come here to help with things. It seems there's been quite a disruption out here. The Ishbalans are regrouping and they're more than a little hostile. I don't really blame them. They're asking for their land back, but our side is staying strong to keep the land out of their hands."

"So, what do you want me to do?"

"They're are some civilians we're trying to evacuate out of here, but we've had two unsuccessful attempts at it. No casualties yet, but there were some serious injuries. We've been ordered not to fire back, because the government doesn't want another war on their hands. So far all the Ishbalans have done was thrown a bit of fire here and there. I don't think they really want to kill anyone who isn't a part of the military. Anyways, I've asked you here today to help evacuate these civilians. We need to get them out of here as safely as possible and you're the only person I could spare for such a task. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, yeah."

Al's eyes shot open and widened while terror shook his body as the door, a thick wall of steel, opened and three men stepped in. He pushed himself against the wall in hopes that he would be sucked in by the cold stone and protected. No such luck.

A lump formed in his throat and his breathing picked up as one of the men approached him. He yelped as the man grabbed a handful of his hair and wrenched him to his feet.

"Let go!"

"Um, no," the man said with a smirk. His eyes were like to points of fires, red as rubies, and his skin was dark. What frightened him about this man was the half Glasgow smile on his face, a deep cut that ran from the corner of his mouth and all the way up into the hollow of his left cheek. He looked like something from a nightmare. No, he was the nightmare.

"You've been very selfish, mutt," he said in a menacing tone. "Or maybe we've been too kind. Either way, we're not going to spare you any longer." He chased those words with a fist, sending it to connect with Al's jaw and knocking him to the ground. The man ran his feet into the teen's gut over and over, succeeding in making him vomit a mix of bile and acid.

Something kicked in his mind. He could hear something, but it sounded so muffled. He forced his eyes open, immediately feeling weak from the severe beating he'd received hours ago. Ed looked around, eyes widened enough to pop out as he saw his brother curled on the ground and begging for an end to his attacker's kicks.

"Hey! Let him go! Stop!" Ed yelled, unaware until then that there were two other men nearby. They grabbed his forearms tightly to keep him from physically intervening.

"Oh, look, mutt, you're friend's awake," the Ishbalan said, grabbing Al by his hair again and pulling him up to his knees.

Ed could see that his brother was to an end already. He looked weak and sickly from vomiting. Though he was strong, Al couldn't handle pain as well as he could.

"Shouldn't we show him what we can do, mutt?" The red-eyed man stuck out his tongue, trailing it over his captive's cheek. "Shouldn't we show him just how selfless you can be?"

Al struggled wildly as the man ran his hand over his stomach and grabbed between his legs for a moment. He squeezed his eyes shut as he fought to block out reality, but that did little as he was pushed on his back and his wrists were pinned to his sides by the man. He felt something thick touch him where he'd never even touched himself. He understood in that moment what was going to happen and it was something he couldn't prepare himself for.

He opened his mouth to beg, but found that someone else spoke for him.

"Leave him alone," the older brother said, his voice firm and strong. "Get the fuck off him."

"Watch your mouth," the man holding his right arm scolded.

"No, no, I'm interested. Why should I stop? If I were you, I would be encouraging this. He needs to be punished. Think about, he's been safe all this time thanks to you and he never once took your pain for himself. Doing this will even that, don't you think?" the Ishbalan with the scarred face said, his eyes challenging the blond.

"Please, leave him alone. Take me instead. He doesn't deserve this," Ed pleaded softly. "Please, spare him."

The man took a few seconds to think it over, then jerked his head at the other two Ishbalans. They let go of Ed and switched places with their leader, taking Al by his arms.

"You're a fool," the man said.

Ed didn't fight at all as he was roughly knocked to the ground. He didn't struggle as his left arm was wrenched behind his back and his head was pressed against the hard floor. But he screamed as the man sheathed himself inside him. There was no preparing, no making it easy or enjoyable. This was solely about stripping a man of all of his pride and dignity, reducing him below a human.

The younger Elric squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away as he tried to block out his brother's screams of pain and the Ishbalan's sickening moans.

"Look at them," the Ishbalan on his right whispered in his ear. "Look at how they move. Magical."

He wasn't sure what posessed him to do so, but he opened his eyes and looked. Tears welled up in his eyes as his gaze locked with his brother's. They were no longer vibrant and gold; now they were dull and wet and filled with pain.

He'd never felt anything like this pain. He could actually feel the thick and hard length of the man rapidly retreating and attacking him, tearing apart his insides with every thrust. His screams were replaced with pathetic whimpers as his body and mind became too exhausted to expend the energy needed to produce the shrill sound. Oh, if only he could fall into the darkness that sang out to him with such a sweet lullaby, but he couldn't. He would not leave his brother, the one person he had left in this life, alone and helpless with these men. He would not let them to this to him. It was his duty to protect his family and he was doing that by keeping Al away from feeling this pain.

With the last bit of energy in him, he cried out loudly as something exploded in him like a fire. He felt the man leave his body and let go of him; he sagged to the floor breathless and beyond the point of exhaustion. It wasn't over.

"Fullmetal, forget it. They're gone. Going after them would be stupid and reckless," Mustang said gravely.

"I have to try," Ed yelled in defiance, turning to leave.

"I order you to stay, Fullmetal."

"Fuck you."

During the civilian escort, there was another attack, but the Ishbalans took things to an extreme level. Ed fought and tried to save the woman and her child, but they took them to who knows where. He had to save them.

"Al, stay here."

"Where are you going, Brother?"

"To find them."

"No, I'm coming with you."

"Al, don't argue. Stay here."

"No."

Ed let out a howl of frustration and dropped the plea. If he had any hopes of finding that woman and her little girl, then he had no time to waste.

The defeated alchemist slumped over, his mind in a deep fog as he drifted in and out of darkness. He found it hard to breathe. He wasn't going to make it, he knew that. There was still one more bastard left to satisfy and he couldn't even see straight anymore. He'd lost the battle and already he was losing the war.

He groaned in protest as he felt hands grab his hips and the final Ishbalan pushed inside his slick entrance, a mix of blood and semen acting as a sickly relieving lubrication. He was actually glad that he had bleed and the other two men had released themselves inside them, because it made it so much easier to take.

"Well, well, what do we have here?"

Ed opened his eyes, confusion immediately falling over him. He struggled to get free, but his wrists were crossed together so that he couldn't even use alchemy. His gaze searched frantically for Al, relieved to find him alive in the corner of the room.

"A State Alchemist," a man with a cut cheek said, tugging at the silver chain of his pocket watch. "Now we get to see if this thing really works."

"Let us go," Ed demanded.

The man snickered and turned to face the other Ishbalan in the room. Ed couldn't make out what they were saying, but when the Ishbalan turned around he had a syringe in his hand.

"Let's play," he said. He jerked his head at the other man and Ed was grabbed, the sleeve of his jacket being torn away from his arm. The man approached him with the needle, but Ed was being held tightly. "This is something completely new from Xing. To use alchemy, you send energy through your body and the transmutation circle to create a complete circuit. This stops that. This interrupts that critical flow the moment it starts." Ed gasped as the sharp point was pushed into his arm and the liquid was sent into his bloodstream.

"What about this one?" he heard the other Ishbalan ask of Al. The drug, or whatever the hell is was, made everything hazy and blurred.

"N-no," he murmured, then darkness took over him.

Before the man inside him reached his delightful climax, Ed blacked out. He fell head first into the welcoming folds of darkness where there was not a pinch of pain. Everything was void and desolate.

He woke minutes, maybe hours, or possibly days, later. He shot up, then eased himself back down as his mind whirled. He wasn't tied up as before and he was completely naked. As he looked at his arm he found a trail of dried blood running down from the injection site, which was black and swollen.

Ed rubbed his forehead, then tried to stand again. Standing erect, he spotted the naked body of his brother on the ground. Despite the dizzying effects, he rushed to his side and cradled him in his arms while he coaxed him out of the darkness. Al was out cold and would stay that way for quite some time, he figured. He noted that they'd injected Al too.

He eased his brother on the ground and sighed. What a mess. Then, remembering what that man had said about the shot, he clapped his hands and placed them on the cement floor. He felt a strange "rip" in his body and found that there was no alchemical reaction whatsoever.

He leaned himself again the wall, shuddering as it gave him a cold bite. What had gone wrong? Well, the first mistake was leaving in the first place. The first mistake was not following that simple order from his superior. Following that, the second mistake was to think that woman and her child were still breathing. When they found the bodies, they were surprised in an ambush. There was no time to react. Then there was blackness.

"Ed? C'mon, Ed, wake up. Please, wake up," a broken voice pleaded as fingers tapped his cheek, the images from his dream playing eerily in his mind.

"Alphonse?" He opened his eyes and looked up at the face hovering over him in a daze. There was only one thing he could think about. "Did they hurt you?" he asked weakly, eyes sliding shut. He didn't have the strength to keep them open, but he wouldn't fall back into darkness without an answer.

"No, they didn't," he replied softly, a feeling a guilt hitting him as he looked down at his barely conscious kin. A tear fell from his cheek, finding home on Ed's. "I'm sorry, Ed. I should've stopped them. I..." He pulled the battered body closer to his own, feeling the stickiness on his legs.

"What are we going to do, Ed? We can't use alchemy and w-"

"Quiet, we'll figure this out. Listen, I don't think we should tell them that we're brothers. They might use that against us. For now, you're just one of the civilians I was escorting, okay? And whatever happens...Al, whatever happens, I'm going to protect you. I won't let them hurt you. I-"

His words froze as the door opened and three men walked in. He fought against them, but was quickly overpowered. An hour later, he fell to the ground with his body bruised and broken and their laughs filling the air. They left as his mind closed off the world, but at least Al was untouched.

"Alphonse, I'm going to get us out of here, I swear. We're going to make it, just hang on," Ed said in a weak whisper, then allowed himself to slip into some much needed rest. He just hoped that would be a promise he could keep, because truthfully, he saw no way out.

Hope it didn't get confusing with the kaprillion flashbacks and all... Oh, and I don't think I mentioned it, but the reason they're evacuating the people is so that the military can use the town for a base and incase there was a raid or war broke out. Soooo...yeah...

Anyways, please review!

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