Title: Ich Will
Pairing: RoyxEd
Word Count: about 3000
Rating: R
Summery: While on assignment an accident leaves Ed in a coma. Roy learns that the rogue alchemist Ed was after is on the loose with an insidious agenda for revenge. Can Roy catch him before it's too late? Or will he lose Ed forever? RoyxEd

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own FMA or the characters, only the writing is mine.

Fullmetal Alchemist © Hiromu Arakawa

There are many ways for one to pass the monotonous hours of the work day. Some actually did their work, while others slacked and found every excuse they possibly could to avoid the stacks of paperwork that loomed over their heads. Roy Mustang, Colonel Roy Mustang, was one such slacker.
The man made an art form of procrastinating his work. Making paper cranes or horribly deformed folds of expense reports. Hiding files and folders in every imaginable place of the office; behind the filing cabinet, in drawers of his desk, between the cushions of the two leather sofas, under Breda's box of doughnuts.

Even holding mock fire drills with the personnel of his staff (Hawkeye had to be out of the office for these proceedings) by setting fire to the never ending paperwork and herding them all out of the building in a single file line to the parade ground. Where he would then lecture for normally an hour on the importance of fire safety. Up until the last possible second, when the muzzle of the lieutenant's gun as trained on his head, did he dutifully do his paperwork.

Today was no exception. The Colonel was reclined back in his chair, pen balanced on the bridge of his nose, daydreaming. His fantasies taking him far from the now and present of reality that the Colonel's dark eyes were at half mast, slipping towards closed when the door to his office opened without warning. Startled by the sudden movement in the peripheral of his vision, the raven haired man jerked forward and upright in his chair. Making his pen take flight across his desk to the floor where it rolled against the boots of his first lieutenant.

"You should knock before entering, lieutenant," he casually reprimanded.

"With all due respect sir, you should hold on to your pen better," she replied smoothly picking up said pen.

"Well how am I supposed to do my work if your barging in here without warning," he raised both hands in a shrug to emphasize his point.

The blonde lieutenant held him in her gaze and he waited for the moment when she would rest her hand on the butt of her gun and call him out on his false accusations. None came. Instead the lieutenant held the pen in her hands, her fingers twisting the thin implement back and forth.

"Is something wrong lieutenant?"

She hesitated a moment, whether to choose her next words carefully or debating with something internally, then, "I received a call from Alphonse."

Every nerve went wire tight, every instinct within Roy sang with awareness. There were a small handful of possibilities why the younger Elric would call the office but only one true reason: Ed.

The drive to the hospital was executed at such break neck speed that Roy didn't have time to think properly. Rushed up the stairs into the brightly lit lobby were a young nurse, with dark hair and green eyes, greeted him with a smile.

"Hello, can I help you sir?" her lashes fluttered.

"I need the room that Edward Elric is in," ignoring the rasping of his words as they smoothly left his tongue.

"Alright, let me find it for you," she said shuffling some papers behind the desk. "Ah, here we are," a thick green notebook was produced on top of the neat desk. "Do you know what ward your friend is in?"

Friend should not have stung so much. Edward was not a friend, he was more than that. So much more "I, uh, don't know what ward my...friend is-"

"No problem," the nurse beamed, giving a flirtatious smile, "Let me find him for you."

The wink she gave him made his fingers ache. The way she hummed, just loud enough for him to hear, made Roy think of setting fire to the logbook beneath her manicured fingernail as it moved slowly down each name.
Instead, he tried to organize his thoughts back into order, tried to force the sinking nausea in his stomach to go away; slowly rubbing his gloved fingers back and forth. Feeling the roughness of the ignition cloth scrap across his thumb, middle and forefinger.

It did not help matters that the nurse, who was close to losing her eyebrows, kept looking up at him with little winks and smiles, her finger still skimming down the pages. Roy gritted his teeth; he didn't have time for this! Where was Hughes and his infallible investigative knowledge when he needed him?

The answer was like a battering ram to the skull. Wiping out Roy's thoughts to leave empty silence for a brief moment. Hughes wasn't here anymore. He didn't have Hughes to inform him of the details to the larger picture; not for aver a year now. The nausea in his stomach rolled and something sank like a lead weight in him. He hadn't known about Hughes until it was too late.

"I'm sorry," the nurse's reedy voice interrupted his thoughts, "What was your friend's name again?"

His fingers clicked a sharp crack as the spark came to life off his gloves. Murder. He was going to commit murder, right here in front of a dozen witnesses, in the hospital lobby.
However, in the same instant, Hawkeye stepped in front of him; turning the logbook out from under the nurse's hand as the spark fell dead to the floor. "It's important that we have Major Elric's room," she exclaimed calmly over the nurse's sputtering and deer in the headlight stare.

Making an irritated noise in the back of his throat, Roy was about to ask for the log himself when a clang and an all too familiar flash of red made him turn. Exiting one of the rooms at the end of the hall was Alphonse.

Mustang turned and very nearly ran to the suit of armor nevertheless he managed a calm albeit hurried walk. Paying no attention to the still sputtering nurse he had left behind at the receptionist desk.

"Alphonse," he called.

The younger Elric turned, saw him, "Colonel," looked down at the flash of red that had caught Roy's eye. His brothers red coat was tucked in his arms, like a child holding onto his blanket to protect himself.

Oh.

"I'm sorry, I had to disturb you and make you come all the way down here but…" Al apologized, his voice small.

"It's no trouble," he reassured worry building as Al began to shake, the armor rattling softly.

"They won't let me see brother,"

And suddenly Roy noticed that Al's armor was gleaming as if it had just been polished, the apron/skirt was still damp at the edges and Ed's coat was a deeper shade of red nearly brown. Roy felt his heart twist and wrench itself against his ribcage, disconnecting and sinking to where his stomach had been an hour earlier.

"Brother and I followed that rouge alchemist, Howards, to the warehouse district. He ran into one of the warehouses and hid in the crates by the door but brother found him and they started fighting." He began without preamble and stopped just as he had begun.

"And then what happened Alphonse?" the raven haired man asked needing to know what fate had befallen the blonde alchemist even as some small part of him wished to never know.

"There was an explosion," the boy explained, his words more hollow than the armor could ever make them. "Howards had run into one of the warehouses where alchemical equipment and chemicals were kept. He transmuted a crate into a bomb and it started off a chain reaction." Alphonse looked down at the red coat in his arms, tightened his grip on it. "Brother pushed me out of the way, tried to protect me with his body, when he knows that like this I can't get hurt; he's an idiot a stupid idiot!"

Roy sighed, just like Ed to throw himself in harm's way with no thought for himself. He was going to have to have a serious talk with him about that moral ethic. Of course, afterwards, Ed would bitch and be a breathtaking gale of gold fury; it was for Al, he'd do anything, give anything for Al. "Why won't they let you see your brother?"

"A nurse told me that the hospital has a new policy on who they will release a patient's information to. The patient has to formally name a next of kin upon arrival but brother's been unconscious since the explosion so the hospital checked his records and saw that I was listed as a blood relative. However, their new policy also states that since I'm younger than brother and a minor, that I'm not capable of making decisions on behalf of Ed's health," he said, the hurt clear in his voice. "They said his, they said you had to be here," Al went on his words stumbling over each other in a frenzy. "That as his commanding officer, you were the only one they'd release information to."

"How can they not let me see my brother?" he cried.

Mustang felt himself go numb, what was left of his heart was sitting like rot in his gut. He managed to keep the mask in place with a bit of controlled effort. On the inside, he was coming apart; Ed was still unconscious and that was only one detail of this chaotic mess.

"I um," Al spoke again, shuffling his feet and ducking his head, his voice calmer and quieter "I also called because I know you and brother are…" he stopped and Roy thought that if Al could blush then the armor would be a rosy pink.

"I thought you should know."

A flutter of comfort softened the empty space where his heart should have been. After the difficulty Al had had when Ed had finally told him he was seeing the bastard colonel, the younger Elric was starting to see Roy and his brother as them.

"Thank you," he whispered softly, feeling that flutter of comfort dissolve the frozen barrier from his frame.

"Sir," Hawkeye approached from her discreet spot down the hall, an older nurse in tow. "The doctor overseeing Edward is waiting for you to discuss his condition. I'll wait here with Alphonse."

The flame alchemist nodded moving to follow the nurse, who beckoned him to follow her. First, Roy reached up and knocked his fist against Al's chest plate like he'd seen Ed do.

"You have my word Alphonse, when I'm done speaking to the doctor there will never be any dispute over you being allowed to see your brother again," he stated in the voice he reserved for giving out commands.

The nurse gave a smug smile, turning towards the stair well at the very end of the hall, as Roy followed. "It's about time someone saw sense of that new policy, it's not right, I tell you, to keep family behind so much red tape."

Roy chuckled good naturedly as they ascended to the third floor, following the stout woman to a nurses station where she picked up a clipboard.

"I've been the attending nurse since he arrived," she explained, leading him to the room marked 314.

"How is he?" Roy asked, the anxiety returning with full nauseating force.

"Poor lamb doesn't feel a thing right now," she said opening the door. "We have him on a sedative."

Bright white tiles and a hospital bed against the wall and there was Ed. Eyes closed and still beneath the pale sheets. The raven haired man didn't know what to feel as a hundred conflicting emotions passed through him: relief that the blonde was now in his sights, curiosity as to what was wrong with him, desire to kiss him, at the same time a conflicting desire to strangle him, anger that he could do this to Roy and his brother, and a growing sense of dread.

"I'll go get the doctor," the nurse announced after checking Fullmetal's vitals and marking it down on the clipboard.

Roy nodded, watched her leave, and then as an afterthought removed his gloves.

It was hard to believe he could be so quiet. Even harder to believe that he could be so still. But it was impossible to believe, to even imagine, he would never wake again. Not when he was within arm's reach, still warm, still breathing. Just peacefully breathing, in and out. Lost to the world in slumber and made unaware of the turmoil that surrounded him.

Colonel Mustang listened, after making sure that his terms regarding Alphonse and his brother were met, as the doctor, overseeing Fullmetal's treatment, listed his known injuries and theorized possible ones. While Roy, Edwards lover, silently agonized with each detail. All the while wanting to reach out and take the blonde's limp hand in his own as a way to anchor himself. To remind him that his future, a future with Ed, their future was not slipping through his fingers.

But a commanding officer would not reach out for the hand of a subordinate. There was no reason, in the military's eyes, for him to be anything but the young alchemist's superior. That's why there were rules against fraternization. Rules and consequences about fucking a male subordinate almost half his age.

Roy fought for a moment to keep his face neutral, to keep the corners of his mouth even and not quirking up into a smirk. He remembered Ed's blatant tirade of what he thought of the rules and where the military could shove them because who he chose to fuck with was none of their damn business. He also remembered one night where Ed had read the section on fraternization, aloud, during sex.

However, the consequences of the situation were always present as long as Ed held the state pocket watch. Pushing the urge to damn the consequences and just hold Ed, Mustang turned his attention back to the doctor, who had continued to rattle off Ed's medical sheet without pause.

"We've been able to deduce that there's no internal bleeding and all of the Majors' primary organs are functioning normally, minus the bruising to the left kidney," the doctor, a squat man in his mid-fifties with salt and pepper hair and matching beard, explained. "The x-rays show minor fractures to the third and fourth rib and there's some muscle tearing beneath the automail port of Major Elric's arm. We don't know the full detramation of this to the Major's condition as we're still waiting to hear from his mechanic. Given his current condition he's defiantly suffered a concussion and head trauma though without him being conscious there's no way for us to determine the extent of the damage."

"I see," the raven haired man said after working past the growing lump in his throat. His eyes down cast, returning to Edward's prone form beneath the stark white sheets before returning to the doctor.

"I'm sorry there's nothing further we can do Colonel Mustang," the doctor stated, going over the charts on his clipboard. "I know you care for your men more than some of your fellow officers but all we can do now is wait."

"Wait for what?" slipped past his lips without any thought process from his brain. The words coming out in a low growl of the despair tinged anger.

"Head injuries are damn near impossible things to diagnose let alone treat without the patient being awake," the stout man looked up from his clipboard pursing his lips before continuing, "For all we know the Major could wake up in the next few minutes or not at all."

Roy barely stifled the whine in the back of his throat, his dark eyes returning to the young alchemist in the bed beside him. Holding on to the last of his will not to move closer to his lover.

"All we can do for him is make him comfortable until we come to that crossroad,"

Without another word the doctor turned and made his way to the door.

"I can't accept that," Roy murmured fiercely. "I won't."

The doctor gone Roy turned his attention fully to the young alchemist. Taking in the warm tone of his skin to the tangle of gold hair that rested on the pillow. If... if he ignored the thrashing anxiety in his gut and the dark flutter of his thoughts. Ignored the clean white bandage that was wrapped around Edward's forehead or that there were other bandages in various places of his lover's body. Then, Ed looked as if he was just sleeping, warm and safe, like he did at Roy's side.

Except, he wasn't safe.

Roy stepped closer, couldn't help himself not to, his dark eyes distant, he reached out to run a finger gently over the back of Ed's automail. Guilty thoughts swam to the forefront of his overcrowded mind. Accusing angry voices that demanded why he hadn't kept Ed safe, why he hadn't known something was wrong, who'd put the boy here in the first place, why he'd never-

"Sir,"

Mustang looked up spotting Hawkeye by the door. He cursed himself for not having heard her come in, being too lost to his whirlwind of thoughts; if she had been someone else. Instantly his eyes fell to Fullmetal's automail, to the pale finger that ghosted back and forth over the steel.

"It's time that we got back, sir," she informed him, her eyes softening as if in apology for the intrusion.

"Of course," he said slowly, reluctantly withdrawing his hand from the blonde before walking around the bed to where the lieutenant waited. A few paces from the bed he turned, a hint of humor and smug superiority finding their way into his voice. "I hope you don't plan on lying there all day Fullmetal, after all I do have a busy schedule."

No response.