It felt to Jean like nothing had ever been as difficult as it was to get Roy back up onto his feet and sit him onto the bed. The Colonel was like dead weight in Jean's arms, and once he flopped down onto the stiff mattress, Havoc took a seat next to him.

"How're your legs?" Jean asked meekly. Roy just shrugged, wiping his reddened eyes with bandaged hands. "You gotta rest man – Hawkeye'll be back soon and she'll let us know what's going on, ok?"

"I don't think, Havoc," Roy started stiffly, gritting his teeth tightly as he spoke, "that you realize quite how hard it is for me to sit back and not know what's going on. I'm entirely responsible for what's happened, and I'm being kept from a position where I can help."

He looked strangely into Jean's eyes then, and the Lieutenant wanted to go on a rant about how he did know how that felt, how if Roy would sit and think for a second, Jean's reckless and immature behavior is what had gotten them all into this position, about how Roy going in to Ed's room would solve nothing because there was nothing he could do for him anyway…but he decided against it. He tapped his hand lightly on Roy's leg.

"Alright Chief, I get it, I'm gonna go check things out. Sit tight for a while, ok?" As he stood and crossed to the door, Roy's desperate eyes followed him. Jean looked back over his shoulder. "You gonna be alright by yourself?"

By all means, he could have meant physically ok but they both knew otherwise.

Mustang nodded, and Havoc left. He walked down the short hallway to find Riza waiting outside the entrance to the room Edward was in, face pressed up against the small window in the door. He came up behind her and said quietly, "Anything yet?" which made her jump a bit, but she only shook her head, still staring into the room.

"It came out of nowhere, Jean, I don't understand it. I was sitting there, and he was fine, or at least stable." She turned around to face him, leaned against the wall, and looked up to the ceiling. "And then out of nowhere the machines started going off, and his body just…I don't know. I was happy Dean was in there because he started working on him immediately, and I ran to get you." She was speaking quickly, and Jean could tell she was nervous, still scared and still searching for what to do…so he just reached out to her, put his hand gently on her crossed arms.

"It's alright Riza, it's ok," he soothed, and this time she walked into his arms for him to hold her.

"I know," she mumbled into his chest, shaking her head slightly. "I know."

They stood there for a moment, listening to each other breathe, and it was calming for some reason – for both of them. Jean rested his chin on her head, she kept her grip on his shirt, and for some reason, Jean didn't have the slightest inclination to say anything. It just felt like everything had been fixed.

"How's the Colonel?" she suddenly asked quietly, still talking into Jean's chest. He shrugged.

"I didn't want to leave him alone, but he's alright. I actually should head back, I just wanted to check…" He pushed Riza away from him slightly, and she let him go.

"Right, of course." She stood back and instinctively brushed off her shirt that wasn't dirty the way she always did when trying to gather herself. "I'll wait here."

Havoc looked at her differently then, as she stood at attention, awaiting orders from him or from Mustang or someone, and he cocked his head to one side. With a nod, he gestured down the hall, where Roy's room was.

"Why don't you go sit with him for a while? I can wait here to see what they say." Her whole body loosened up, a softened, relieved expression crossed her face. Jean smiled. "Go – I wanna make sure Roy has someone there, in case he needs anything. Just don't let him try to stand, or do anything crazy –"

Quicker than Jean could process, Riza came close to him, fisted her hands in his shirt, got on her toes and kissed him hard. The feeling he got was one of those things that he realized there are no words for, so he didn't try to think them.

There was a light cough, and Jean opened his eyes to see Dr. Pase, fiddling with his mask and closing the door to Ed's room as he tried to look inconspicuous. Riza released her grip on Jean's shirt and lips and spun around, the terrified look returning to her face.

"I guess I've just got bad timing with you two, don't I?" Pase forced an uncomfortable laugh, but it turned into another small cough. He pulled the cap off his head, revealing what Jean already knew was hair almost exactly like his – dirty, blonde, and unruly.

"How is he?" Riza asked, almost begging.

There was a certain hopefulness in her voice that worried Havoc. He was a firm believer in never getting your hopes up. It nearly always leads to being let down.

--x--

Roy sat in his room by himself, but he felt pretty certain that even if he'd had company he still would have felt alone. He idly picked at the dressing on his wrists, made a fist, relaxed, touched the thumb of each hand to the tip of each finger. Yep. They were working.

Sitting on the end of the bed where Jean had left him, Roy poked at his legs hidden under thin pants and thick bandages. The feeling was there, and they ached from his failed attempt to walk. He wiggled his toes just to be sure everything was working properly, and it was…so why, then, could he not stand?

Grasping the edge of the mattress behind him, he tentatively placed one foot on the tile floor. Regardless of the pain he felt upon putting half his weight down on his legs, Roy pressed on. Sitting in that room was doing no good to anyone, he figured; he had to get to Edward, he had to get to a telephone. So he put more pressure down, gritted his teeth hard as he grunted, and after a moment he let go of the bed.

He stood.

And his chest was heaving as he felt like he was going to bite right through his bottom jaw, but he stood.

Using the bed as a crutch to stabilize himself for as long as he could, he shuffled along, making his way towards the door. When he looked both ways down the hallway, he noticed three figures almost to the very end on his right. From where he stood it almost looked like Riza and – God forbid – two Havocs, but after a moment he recognized the other figure as Dean Pase. He was speaking to Riza and Jean, who stood close, his arm around her waist. Pase looked nervous, scratching at his head the way Roy had seen him do every time he delivered bad news.

Every muscle in Mustang's body tightened. He wanted desperately to go to them and hear for himself…but he didn't. He turned left out of his room after taking a deep breath, and shuffled as quickly and quietly as he could toward the front desk. Pase's deep voice was still a murmur behind him, but he ignored the urge to turn back as he pushed through the double doors.

Kelley sat at the desk, and her head snapped up as Roy walked in.

"Colonel Mustang!" she nearly yelled. "You shouldn't be walking, Sir!"

She stood up quickly from her chair, tossing her papers aside. Roy limped to the counter and braced himself on it.

"I need the phone, Kelley," he said calmly. She stopped and stood up straight, looking at him with the second-guessing glare he knew so well from her. She put her hand on her hip.

"For what , Roy? You should be resting for Pete's sake!"

Wondering how she could go from calling him Sir to giving him attitude so quickly, Roy almost laughed, but he cringed from the pain and bent over, propped himself up on his elbow leaning on the counter.

"The telephone Kelley, please," he stammered.

She moved quickly then, pulling the phone out from under the counter-top and placing it where Roy could reach it as she mumbled, "…don't know why you do this stuff…putting me in positions like this…"

"Thank you," he grimaced as he turned the dial. She looked at him with sympathetic eyes that made him uncomfortable.

A moment passed, and suddenly Roy's face became hard.

"Connection please," he spoke into the receiver, "to Northern Military Headquarters, code Charlie, Echo, November, Tango, Romeo. Repeat, Charlie, Echo, November, Tango, Romeo. …Thank you."

Kelley's eyes widened in awe. Roy's expression was stoic, still unchanged and expressionless.

"This is Colonel Roy Mustang, stationed in Central Headquarters," he continued into the phone after a moment, "I need to speak to General Law-…I understand that-…I know he's training-…" Roy's fist clenched tightly, fingers formed into the position to snap, and his face grew red. "Just put Law on the line you impudent pest, before I find a way to char you through this phone line!"

Kelley jumped when he yelled, taken aback by his sudden change in demeanor. He noticed her, and with the receiver turned away from his mouth, said quietly, "Apologies, Kelley. Sometimes yelling is the only way to get things done."

She nodded quickly, a half-scared and half-dumbfound look on her face, and he smirked a bit before returning his attention to the phone.

"General Law, this is Colonel Roy-…oh you knew-…well please, apologize to Grace for my behavior, I certainly didn't mean to make her cry." He rolled his eyes. "Yes, sir…yes, sir…no, sir…"

Kelley watched as his face and fist tightened again; she braced herself for yelling, but it didn't come.

"Yes, sir. I need to request the release of Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes, Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda, Master Sergeant Kain Fury, and Warrant Officer Vato Falman. …Yes I understand that's quite a few requests, but I'm confident that you will find my men are more than competent in- …yes, sir, but this is a matter of security for–"

Kelley's eyes turned to the door as Roy was cut off once again. It opened, and Jean and Riza entered, worried looks on their faces.

"Roy, what the hell are you doing out–" Jean began, but was cut off by Mustang's waving hand.

"Yes, sir," Roy continued louder into the receiver, "Lieutenant Havoc and Lieutenant Hawkeye have been serving Major Elric and me quite well, but due to unforeseen events, I am forced to ask for my men to be excused temporarily and perhaps complete their assessments at a later-"

Jean looked to Kelley strangely, who just shrugged in response to the questioning look. Suddenly, Roy banged his fist onto the counter.

"Forgive my insubordinance, sir!" he bellowed. "But I assure you if you would ask our Fuhrer himself, he would grant my request without question! He is already aware of the situation!" Jean and Riza exchanged a tense look. "Now I expect to see my men at Central Headquarters, unaccompanied, in no later than four hours! Good day, sir!"

And he slammed the phone down, turning his squinted, almost spiteful eyes to Jean, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Riza clutched onto Jean's hand, and Roy tried to turn himself around to face them properly, but the stress on his legs was finally too much and he staggered, almost fell before Havoc reached out to catch him.

Draping Mustang's arm over his shoulders, Jean bent down and supported Roy's body.

"I got you," he said lowly, shifting Roy's weight.

"I'm fine," Roy muttered between staggered breaths. "Just let me walk."

"You're impossible," Jean snapped as he pulled Roy closer to him, stopped the man from fighting his assistance.

Riza laughed to herself as she walked behind the two of them, limping along down the hall and bickering the whole time about whether or not Roy truly was leaning on Jean, or if Jean was forcing him to do so.

It was oddly comforting to hear that again.

Roy was confused when Jean didn't stop at his room, but kept dragging him down the hall further…and when he realized where they were going his stomach dropped a little. They reached the spot where he had seen Dr. Pase standing with them only a few minutes ago, a closed door looming in front of them. Jean let Roy take his arm down from around the taller man's shoulders, and he stood back from the Colonel for a moment. Riza waited nervously to the side, saying nothing as she brushed her pants off.

A silence settled between the three of them that seemed to ask the question Roy couldn't bear to muster out. Havoc's hands fidgeted, he kicked his toe into the ground and searched in his pocket for where he put his cigarette. With the other hand he scratched at his head, and then started hesitantly.

"The uh…the doctor, Pase…er, yea. Pase. Dr. Pase." His voice cracked and he coughed nervously. "Well yea, he uh, he told us what Ed's official condition is."

Jean swallowed hard; Roy clutched tightly onto the doorframe.

"I don't remember all the medical nonsense…it's something about shock, and hyposomething, and I uh…" His eyes wandered over to Hawkeye. "You know what he was talking about, right?"

She shifted uncomfortably, searched for something to distract her, but in a moment that seemed an epiphany, she snapped to her normal order-following self, stood straighter, and looked Mustang directly in the eyes as she spoke.

"Colonel. Edward is in a level 4 coma, which means he is responding only to pain in a twitching manner, and only in limited cases. His loss of blood volume, both internal and external, has led to what is called hypovoluemic shock, which caused him to go into cardiac arrest. The combination of those two things led to the coma."

She didn't have to go on. Roy already felt like he was going to vomit. He wavered and grabbed onto the wall with both hands.

"Hey, Roy," Jean urged, "You alright?"

Mustang didn't respond, just stared at nothing in front of him.

"Here man, let's sit down." Havoc reached out and grabbed Roy's elbow, pulling the Colonel in to his body. With his spare hand he reached out to the door handle, then paused and looked down at Mustang. "Are you…do you want to see him?"

Roy's blank eyes gazed back at Jean, and he nodded.

Jean took a deep breath, for him and for Roy, glanced over at Riza who still stood awaiting instructions, and opened the door.

The room was fairly dim compared to the one Roy had been in, but it was set up similarly. There were no windows, and the room was small. A few machines beeped regularly, and the little lights that flickered on them were probably a good sign, but in all honesty Jean knew just as much about that as he knew about alchemy. In between the machines and connected to wires and tubes, Edward lay on a bed, covered to his waist by a white sheet.

The skin of his chest and arm that would have been exposed was mostly hidden by bandages; a large dressing covered his automail port and wrapped around his entire torso, while random gauze pads were taped on to protect the gaping wounds Jean knew lay underneath the sterile cloth. He led Roy to the chair that sat to the side of Edward and guided Roy down into it slowly. The Colonel's hands were shaking and so were his eyes as he stared open-mouthed at the man lying in the bed. Ed was pale; his flesh had fallen away from his face until the skin kind of sagged off the bone the way it does on an old man's face, and honestly, Jean wouldn't have even recognized him if he didn't know ahead of time that it was Fullmetal. His stomach made a funny flipping motion, and he couldn't look at Edward anymore, so instead he concentrated on Roy, whose color had drained completely from his skin.

Mustang sat in that chair with a blank look on his face, looking quite sick himself, Jean realized. Once or twice he heard the older man say, "Oh God," but Jean didn't think that was addressed to him. He kind of guessed that Mustang was praying, which he was fairly certain the man had never done, but if there was any time to start…Havoc knew it was now.

Silence hung in the room for a while, so still that it seemed like they could hear each other thinking, but of course that would have made things easier. If either of them knew what the others were thinking, perhaps someone would know what to say…but no one did.

"Go on, Riza," Roy suddenly said in a voice that wasn't much stronger than a whisper, but with a flicker of life in his eyes. "What else."

She fiddled idly with her pockets, her arms pulled in close to her body, back still straight. She was just a soldier, she reminded herself, and she was just reporting to her superior the information that he requested. That's all. She put on her best face, and she coughed a few quick times, just to be sure her voice hadn't failed her like it seemed her emotions had, as her eyes welled up with tears.

"Edward has sustained severe head trauma, and possibly blood poisoning from the liquid put on his wounds. This substance, which they are still trying to track, is also what they believed may have left him unconscious for so long. Regardless, sir, that time was long enough to create a disturbance in the brain. All that, combined with the severe pain and torture," her voice wavered, "worsened the shock, and in turn, the coma...Sir."

And then just like that…she was her again. And Mustang was just him. And her eyes were pleading for this all to change as she sagged her shoulders and tilted her head.

"Roy…I'm sorry. He isn't responding to anyone. He…he doesn't even know we're here."

Mustang sat on the edge of the very uncomfortable chair next to Edward's bed, his head down and his hands together, elbows leaning on his knees. Jean thought for a fleeting moment that it seemed that Roy wanted to reach out and hold Ed's hand that lay near the edge of the bed, and maybe that was true, but he dismissed it.

Mustang nodded slightly a few times, looking to Havoc as if he was answering some question he had asked to himself. He probably was, too, but they couldn't be sure.

"Right," Roy muttered, seemingly to himself because he'd said it so softly. "Well, at least he's alive."

Then he went quiet again…and the flash went down in his eyes. Unsure himself of what could be said, Jean waited in silence, but it started to seem that Roy wasn't going to say anything else. His eyes were on the ceiling and Jean couldn't really tell that he was even breathing. Finally, after far too long, Roy's sullen eyes turned towards him again…very slowly, almost painfully, and that life that was left in them flickered up again.

"He's strong enough to get through this, isn't he?"

Jean put his hand onto Mustang's shoulder and squeezed lightly.

"Of course he is, Chief." Jean's eyes died a little themselves when he realized how desperate Roy was. "I know this is a lot to take in, but like I said before – you gotta take care of yourself before you think about anything else to do alright? I just figured, you know…that you'd want to know exactly what was going on…like you said."

Roy raised one hand up to Havoc's.

"Of course, thank you Jean." He leaned back into the chair, his hand still clasped around the Lieutenant's fingers, and turned his eyes back to Ed, glanced from his face to the machines to the bandages and blood. "I just wish…that there was something I could do to help him."

"I know man, we do too. But I guess Dr. Pase is working on it…he says Ed's still fighting more than he figured anyone else would be, but I guess that's to be expected from the Boss, right?"

Roy half-smiled.

"Right."

And with that Roy did reach out to Edward's hand and place his own bandaged one on top of it. He grasped it tightly, and Jean didn't know then if it was because he hoping in vain for some sort of response out of Ed, or if it was just a comfort to himself.

"I just hope he keeps fighting until I can finish this." The Colonel began to push himself out of his chair, despite Jean's protest. "It's a shame, too," he struggled out, "because we could really use him right now."

Jean was confused, Riza had a puzzled look on her face.

"Sir," she said calmly, "use him for what, exactly?"

Roy was standing now, unsteadily, and holding on to the rail of Ed's bed while he stared into the boy's blank face, but it was of his own free will. Jean honestly just wished he'd sit back down, but he realized at that point that what he'd said to Mustang back in his room had set the man in motion.

"So…what do we do now Chief?"

Once he began to formulate a plan, there was no stopping Roy Mustang. Neither gunshots nor stab wounds, torture nor poison, would keep him from moving forward. Jean had almost forgotten that. Roy stood straight, looked Hawkeye directly in the eyes for a moment before glancing back at Edward's sunken face.

"For the war that's about to begin, Lieutenant."

Havoc's chest tightened, and he suddenly realized that he'd forgotten to breathe, and when he tried to take a gasp of air, he made a sort of unintentional choking sound.

"War, Roy?"

"Riza," Mustang started, seeming to ignore Jean entirely, "can you ready the car? I'll finish up here with Kelley. We've got to get going."

Perhaps Riza just knew better than Jean, but she simply gave a curt nod and left the room as Havoc stood with the same incredulous look across his face.

"Roy, what the hell?"

Mustang turned to face him then, a strong and questioning glare in his eyes.

"Lieutenant, at any time at that abandoned building, did you happen to see any of the homunculi, or even a sign of one?"

Jean felt his stomach drop, his heart start to race, and a lump start to form in his throat – the same things he'd felt in the car when he looked into the mirror and saw the unmistakable silhouette of –

"Envy."

Roy gave a knowing nod.

"Then you understand, Jean, that a war has already begun. We're just late to the battle."