I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist, and I never will.

I read a really good Fullmetal Alchemist angst/horror war fic called Pains of War and this, more specifically Edward's little speech, came to mind. So I have Roy-Fan-33 to thank for the ideas it gave me that led to the creation of this fic. I think this is some of my best work.

Because I am using family names for some of Edward's men, namely Garrabrant and the Marshal brothers, I might end up changing them in the future.

This first chapter can be read as a one shot.

The Morals of Murder

By... The Lady of the Northern Mountains

I.e. K. L. Nelson

Winry stopped dead in the doorway, and gasped. Edward was bare chest and sitting up in a hospital bed with his left shoulder and the whole left side of his upper torso thickly padded; his arm in a sling. His brow was wrapped under the hairline and the bandages covered his left eye, it was slowly soaking through scarlet across the flat of the skull above his left ear and eyebrow. Thankfully the bandage was only stretched across his eye to cover a wound just to the left of it and the padding for that laceration pushed the cloth out, so he could see out from under the wrap if he tipped his head back a little. A blond ponytail trailed out the back.

His neck was wrapped as well, padded over the left side. The bed was against the right wall and Edward was facing the left, so for the most part all she could see was bandages and a pained grimace. It was the show of teeth he made when resting after having his auto-mail reattached. But worst of all, he was breathing very deep and slowly through his teeth, like he was fighting back a tremendous amount of pain.

He had started to grow in his facial hair early and quickly discovered that fewer men treated him like a child when he shaved at night and let it go for the day; it made him seem a little less affeminine. That teamed up with that aged glare of his made him look so much older, but he kept shaved for meetings and the like. He was still a complete mess and in uniform from belt to boots, all mud and blood where he wasn't cleaned to be bandaged, and his scruffy face held the black-red grit and grime thicker. His hair was bloody as well, especially the bangs by the laceration on his temple. It would have been a tuff thing to see anyone like that, but an eighteen-year-old boy she loved like a brother...

Seeing some movement out of the corner of her eye, Winry quietly left and stopped the nurse that was just rushing past her.

"Please, can you tell someone to get me a cloth and a bowl of water; preferably warm?" She kept her voice low so Edward couldn't hear it and nodded in his direction to indicate that it was for him. The nurse looked grateful that someone could tend to him. "Yes, of course." With that, she darted off. Winry stood there for a moment and in a matter of seconds she returned with the cloth and water.

"Here, there aren't enough of us to go around and he won't let us tend him. He keeps saying that there are others that need us more than he does. You're not a nurse so he probably won't send you off." And she left again, almost running to her next destination. Taking a calming breath she walked back in. Edward looked just the way she left him, caked in bloody mud and grimacing in pain. She took a quiet step and stopped, he had started shaking.

Just staring off with nothing to do but relive the attack was one of the worst things for him.

"GET DOWN!"

Part of him was still violent, still alert, poised to kill or flee. It was a shock that after everything that had happened that early morning that he could just sit there and think...

The scream came from ahead of them and everyone flattened as a thirty-eight millimeter artillery shell whistled by just over head and thankfully landed just over the ridge they were running along.

Just stay in one spot for more than a few seconds without being shot or blown to pieces...

They were immediately on their feet again and running up hill as fast as their legs could stand it.

Like his men...

"WARREN!"

And he started shaking...

Edward turned and looked back. Billy was running back to his older brother, screaming his name as the man just stood there in the open, seemingly frozen and staring at his right boot. The angle of his foot was eerily forward, like it was resting on something and he was afraid to move it. Then he knew.

"BILLY! BILLY, HE'S ON A MINE!" But the younger brother couldn't hear, or didn't care. Garrabrant was closer to the boy and tried to catch him, but Billy always too fast, too fast and too headstrong. Seeing the others had stopped Edward shouted for Haling to lead on what was left of their unit and he and Garrabrant ran back for Billy. Bullets flew past left and right and artillery rounds hit earth everywhere as they scrambled for him in the middle of a full-scale barrage. Billy reached Warren just in time to watch a bullet hit the right side of his brother's head and explode inside of him, blowing off the left half of his face and skull. The force of the bullet knocked Warren sideways and the mine was triggered. Shrapnel tore through his younger brother, the explosion blowing them to pieces and splattering some them every which way. "NOOO!" the two men cried out in unison.

Knowing there was nothing they could have done, Edward and Garrabrant skid, turned heel, and scrambled their hides back up the hill to meet up with their unit and the promised reinforcements. A pitched whistle sounded and Edward pushed his friend sideways behind a boulder just as a mortar went off just ten feet ahead and to the left, showering his left side with shrapnel. The shock wave caught him in midair and spun him sideways, smashing his left arm and side into what was left of a tree. Garrabrant was on him in an instant. Grabbing the back of his uniform he dragged him to his feet and pulled Edward with him as he started running. His automail knee felt loose, but for the most part his legs were unharmed and after a second of shaking it off in mid-stride he was keeping up with the man unaided.

Upon reaching the top they found... nothing. Just a small stretch of open field and the edge of a forest that wasn't on the map Archer showed him upon briefing him on this mission. There wasn't supposed to be even a fraction of the resistance they had just fought through, the map didn't coincide with his surroundings, and now the promised backup was nowhere to be found. 'A Setup!' Looking about for their unit as they shot for the trees, Jack and Doc came seemingly out of nowhere and joined them.

Fear struck Edward and Garrabrant as no one else could be seen. "What Happened!?" was Edward's response to the sight of them. Garrabrant inquired further with "Where Are The Others!?"

After a moment, Doc broke the silence. "Dead!" The two men paled and Jack chimed in. "We Held Back To Help You, But Then Decided There Was Nothing We Could Do And Tried To Catch Up To The Rest Of Them! Haling Had Turned Left When He Saw That There Wasn't Anyone Up Here And A Thirty-Eight Landed Smack Dab In The Middle Of Them!" It was then that he and Garrabrant noticed Jack's and Doc's uniforms were sprayed in blood and what looked like bits of flesh. "I Take It The Marshall Brothers Didn't Make It!" Garrabrant shook his head. "DAMN! Then We're All That's Left!" Edward felt tears stinging his eyes and he ran all the harder. 'The dead are dead; let's worry about the living.' the blond eighteen-year-old told himself. Glancing right he saw Garrabrant crying as well. Tears of hate, of loss, of betrayal. Edward loved his men, almost as much as he loved Alphonse or Winry. And they loved him just as much.

When they reached the woods, Edward stopped. The others did as well, wondering what was going on. "Brass, what's wrong?" Edward turned to Doc at the mention of his second name. "Are there any friendlies back there?"

The enemy was advancing so he answered fast. "No."

"...good..." It was a seething hiss and they knew better than to stand in his way. Edward took a slow breath, clapped his hands, and gingerly dropped to one knee, being mindful of his injuries and probable blood loss. Calmly pressing his right hand to the ground he unleashed what could only be described as the wrath of a God on an entire army...

"Edward?"

He flinched violently away, as if someone had struck him, her voice startling him out of his thoughts. Edward wasn't exactly in the mood to get bitched at and possibly even clonked with a wrench for doing whatever the hell was necessary to keep his unit, his men... his Boys, breathing. They were like extended family to him and to each other, and he'd just lost so many of them. The only response she got was him sagging his shoulders and hanging his head a little lower in foreboding. It hurt to see him like that, almost broken.

Then, after what seemed like forever...

"I killed today... Winry."

She just couldn't bring herself to believe that such a dead voice could come from Edward, and watched as a lone tear slipped from under the bandage; it already looked damp with past crying. Winry had overheard the stories of "Brass Balls Elric"; seen the reverence and strength in the eyes of men that spoke of him the way one speaks of a legend by campfire light. And when she did, she wanted nothing less than to lob him upside the head with her wrench and scream at him for taking such sick risks. But now, all she felt was guilt for coming to his room with such intensions in mind.

"Every time you pull that trigger, you're not just killing an enemy solider, you're murdering someone's friend, someone's brother, someone's father, someone's lover, for God's sake some mother's baby!" She jumped at his anger and the passionate desperation he'd poured into those terrible words.

"To kill one person is to leave many others in morning, each soldier killing dozens!" Then he whipped his head to her, grimacing. The breath caught in her throat as his eye met hers. It was something Winry had seen once before... just once. The pain, the fear, the sadness; churning with a thousand unreadable emotions in that one eye.

"And I 'killed' today!" The way he said it, in that strained whisper, left Winry feeling like the very blood in her veins had turned to ice water as a chill hit her spine. He wasn't just talking about a couple of soldiers killed in the heat of battle, not even dozens, but more. Roy broke down once, and she was unfortunate enough to see it. Those eyes! It was over a conversation the two of them were having about the deaths of her parents, she had come to forgive him; but she would never be rid of that eye. The eye of a man suffering for his past sins. Roy had spent every day since the horrors of Ishbal like that, and it was because of that pain that she forgave him. In her mind, he had already repented for those sins. It was a hurt she wouldn't have wished upon her worst enemy, and now she saw it again. Saw it in the eye of her best friend. The guilt of taking the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands. He went back to staring off at the opposite wall the way he was when she first found him there.

"This is what war does to you Winry… those who cherish life are forced to take life. There are those who preach the way of the gun, who talk of the necessity to kill, and sometimes it is necessary… but when it is all said and done, murder has no morals."

Pulling herself together, Winry walked slowly around the end of the bed. To her relief the only injuries worth worrying over were on his left side and had already been taken care of. He looked, out there; his eyes shifting not even in the slightest to acknowledge she'd crossed his line of sight. Setting the bowl on the bedside table she pulled over a chair, cloth still in hand. The minor wounds, cuts and scrapes and even small bits of shrapnel, had gone untended and were still open to infection. The nurse's words repeated themselves to her. Here, there aren't enough of us to go around and he won't let us tend him. He keeps saying that there are others that need us more than he does. Now seeing the condition he was in those words pissed her off.

"I... I-I killed... so many men..."

Despite his screaming body he hunched over and covered his eyes with an auto-mail hand, lightly whimpering as his body quaked painfully. It was a struggling effort to ignore the agony of his wounds, yet he couldn't help but feel that he deserved worse. For that very morning, an entire army was wiped clear off the face of the earth, a feat achieved by a single state alchemist throwing his full-blown fury into the very ground. The earth itself was turned against the enemy; splitting, uplifting, opening deep enough to hit magma and rain fiery hell down upon them; leaving nothing but a sea of pieces and blood and ash. His own men had nearly fled at the sight of him as he destroyed even their tanks and artillery. Edward's eyes had turned white with the raw energy coursing through his veins and his hair had come undone, levitating and brushing the tops of his shoulders, his clothes billowing as a fiery glow encompassed his being. The Fullmetal Alchemist looked like a vengeful god given flesh.

Fuehrer Hakuro would declare the Fullmetal Alchemist a hero. And he was! The young man had single-handedly annihilated an advancing army their government didn't know even existed and could have marched unchecked and unchallenged upon Central herself. He had probably saved all of Amestris from an enemy whose soul unprovoked purpose for starting the war was domination.

But he couldn't see it. Couldn't see the countless lives he had saved. Innocent men, women, children. No, all he could see was the destruction, the devastation, the carnage; brought about by his very hands. To him, it was nothing short of a bloodbath. All he could see anymore when he looked down at his hands was blood. It didn't matter if it was his own blood mixed with that of a wounded comrade. After everything that had taken place, at the sight of the cursed red substance he couldn't help but think of the lives he had destroyed. Their screams would forever linger in the back of his mind, whispering a poison into his subconscious to be revealed in dreams.

Afraid of startling him, Winry softly muttered "Edward." and rested her hand on his back. With her hand still in place she eased onto the bed. She took slow breaths, attempting to still her anger over the condition he was left in. Those cowards let him scare them off in his grief and left him to wallow in pain like this... Taking a closer look at the bandaging reveled that it had been stretched over areas where he hadn't been cleaned, trapping grit and old blood against his skin. And some of his hair was caught under the bandage over his left eye and probably sticking into the gash. It was a case of blatant malpractice.

This is only what I have so far... but this seg is pretty much complete. The rest of the story is going to flow strange. I haven't decided weather to start from the beginning and work my way up to here and then continue with the story or continue on from here and use random back flashes to piece together what lead up to this.

Hope you liked!

(begs and gives big puppy eyes) ...please review...