When Edward Elric passed his State Alchemist Test, Colonel Roy Mustang had no way of knowing exactly what he was getting himself into. He'd assumed, of course, that there would be at least some difficulties. Honestly, how could one not expect some sort of dramatics when it came to dealing with a soon to be teenager? He'd expected that the twelve going on thirteen year old would probably have a feisty attitude and would most certainly have an issue with authority. He knew the young alchemist would probably even be hormonal and, to an extent, constantly cranky.

He'd hoped that by becoming the recruiter of the youngest and most promising State Alchemists of the century would gain him some well wanted prestige amongst the higher ranks of the military. Luckily for him, it had. At least, enough so that he was promoted a year earlier then he would have been otherwise. That what the rumor mill turned out, anyways.

Mustang had gotten everything he had expected from the situation. He had gotten all of the things he expected and more.

Much more.

He had not been prepared for the blatant lack of respect Ed had for anyone who hadn't already proved themselves worthy of his trust. He hadn't expected the boy's rapid and sometimes violent mood swings, or his ability to turn even some of the most mundane happenings into traumatic adventures. He didn't think he would ever really be able to live down the fact that one of his subordinates had not only been kicked out of, but also banned from, one of Central's most prestigious bakeries because they blew up at the owner for informing them that they were "short on rye bread".

But most of all, Roy had not been prepared for Edward's apparent phobia of doctors.

As was routine for all of the newly or soon to be enlisted personnel, whether they be Alchemist or Solider, by law there needed to be a physical examination to insure the well being of said recruit. Everyone was to either have themselves examined prior to or on their first day of work.

Three months on the job and Ed had somehow managed to avoid any and all attempts of a physical examination.

Needless to say, despite the figurative brownie points he'd won with his superiors by recruiting Edward, they were still not pleased. They were not pleased at all.

It left Roy Mustang with not only a bad taste in his mouth, but left him in a very foul mood to boot.

"I'll kill him. I swear, if he somehow manages to come up with another excuse for missing another doctor's appointment, I will throttle him myself." Mustang said aloud after trying, and failing for the tenth time, to reach Ed by phone.

The poor man had called every place he could think of.

He'd called all the libraries. He'd called all the restaurants that Fullmetal was rumored to eat at most. Heck, even though the kid had spent less then a fourth of his time there since he'd passed the exams, he had even tried the dorm number.

Just for good measure.

"It would be very counterproductive to your career if you were to do that, sir." Hawkeye said simply, tucking loose paperwork back into the file from whence it had come from.

"He's just a kid Colonel. Give him a break, he might be nervous when it comes to doctors or something, you know?" Breda piped in, turning in his chair to face his commanding officer.

"I had a weird fear just like that when I was younger too, sir. For the entire world, you would have not been able to get me to go to a dentist." Fuery interjected.

"What's so scary about a dentist?"

"I don't really know anymore. As a kid though, I thought they were going to take all my teeth from me. My older brother even told me once that I was going to have to eat mushy food for the rest of my life if I ever let them check my teeth."

The others smiled at this.

"I'd take your advice, but the only issue that remains is that I have been cutting him slack. For three months now, and he still refuses to go see a damn doctor for this check up."

"Have you tried asking him why he won't go?" Havoc asked.

"No, not directly anyways."

Mustang sat back at his desk, brushed the hair out of his eyes, wondering again for the umpteenth time what could make his new subordinate so hell bent on avoiding a simple, absolutely painless check up. If it had been Alphonse receiving the physical, Roy could have been able to be sympathetic to that cause. Having a hollow body made up of leather and mostly metal wasn't exactly the most normal of occurrences. The only thing he could think of that might make Edward uneasy would be the inevitable discovery of his automail, and the kid had already lied through his teeth to the Fuhrer himself about that.

What could make Ed so skittish about the whole thing?

"You really should talk to him about it, if not to understand why he won't go, then to set up parameters for him to follow accordingly. If you don't, he might just try to walk all over you." Hawkeye said, turning her sights away from the paperwork she'd been busying herself with.

The Colonel cocked an eyebrow, silently asking her to elaborate.

"Give him an ultimatum. Either he sees a doctor for his checkup or you withhold any research or traveling privileges until he does so. I would get on that today if I were you, sir."

At this, Hawkeye promptly collected the papers she'd been attending to, and briskly walked out of the office, closing the door softly as she left.

A momentary silence filled the room.

"What a woman." Breda said, a cross between respect and astonishment etched into his voice.

"I believe the proper slang term you mean to use here would be 'hardass', correct?" Falman asked, deadly serious about the subject at hand.

Breda just stared at him, not sure whether to laugh or sigh at his peer's comment.

"You're not really going to do that to him, are you sir?" Fuery asked, adjusting the ever present glasses on his face.

Mustang bit his lip for a moment, picking up the phone once more.

"She made a good point. For all we know, Fullmetal may not be afraid of anything at a doctor's office. He could be testing to see how much I'm willing to let him get away with. I wouldn't put anything past a kid that was smart enough to pass the State Alchemy Test as a twelve year old. If I don't set up some guidelines for him to follow, who knows what he might try to do down the road. He may just be a kid, but he's also my subordinate."

Mustang cleared his voice as he dialed the appropriate numbers.

"Who're you calling now Colonel? I thought you'd already tried to get a hold of Fullmetal."

Roy paid them no mind.

"Yes, is this the front desk?... Yes, I'd like to leave a message... For a Mr. Edward Elric... Make sure you let him know that Mustang needs to talk to him about something...Today."

It wasn't until much later, nine o'clock in the evening later, that Edward Elric showed up at Mustang's office.

"What do you want now Mustang? I already turned in my report two days ago." He said, flopping none too gracefully onto the office's couch.

"I didn't call you in here to talk about that, Fullmetal."

"Then I'll say it again, what do you want now?" Edward asked dismissively.

Roy gritted his teeth for a moment in frustration, hoping they could both get through this conversation unscathed.

"It's about your mandatory physical check up. The one you were supposed to have already done before you started your first day on the job?"

Edward was silent for a moment, a look of concentration on his face that made Roy wonder for a moment if the boy had truly, honestly forgotten.

"Oh. Yeah. That. I'll get on it tomorrow." Ed said, getting up quickly to leave.

"Sit back down Fullmetal, we're not done yet."

"I told you I'll do it tomorrow."

"That's what you said last week. You said the same thing the week before that; and the week before that. See a pattern? Now sit."

Letting a low growl rumble in his chest, Ed sat himself back down on the couch.

"Now, Fullmetal, is there some reason why you won't go see a doctor willingly?"

The only answer he got was an angry silence. Again, Roy had to grit his teeth.

"If you can't give me a good explanation for your seemingly uncalled phobia of physical examinations, I've no choice but to severely restrict your privileges until you do so."

Now, that got Ed's attention.

"What do you mean by restrict?" he said, turning his full attention to his elder.

"It's just like it sounds Fullmetal. Until you get this physical out of the way, I've got no choice but to completely stop any traveling and research endeavors you may wish to partake in."

Edward stood up again at this point, eyes livid and alive as he shouted.

"You can't do that to me!"

"I'm your superior, I can absolutely do that!" Mustang stated firmly, voice just as loud as Edward's.

"Come on Colonel, that's not fair!"

"Fullmetal, if you want to use the facilities and opportunities this military can provide, you have to go through the same basic steps as everyone else. It's the law, I can't do anything to help you unless you have the physical done or you have a very, very good reason for why it shouldn't be."

Ed opened his mouth to protest, closed it, opened it again, and then closed it a final time. He fell silent, breathing harshly once through his nose.

Mustang smiled to himself, so assured that he'd won this fight with the boy. That was, until Ed all but marched around to the side of his desk, lifted up his sleeve and presented the Colonel with his bare, blood and flesh wrist.

"Check for my pulse."

For the longest three seconds, Mustang was almost completely convinced that Edward had absolutely lost it.

"Fullmetal, what's the point of all thi-?"

"Just check it, ok? You'll see what I mean." Edward interrupted him quickly, shaking his wrist at his superior.

The older of the two frowned deeply, doing as the younger had asked. Taking the much smaller wrist into his hand, Roy proceeded to find Edward's pulse...

Or at least, he tried to find it.

Mustang dropped the wrist, and, calmly as he could, put two fingers to the boy's neck. At this, Ed shifted his neck slightly to allow Mustang more access to the artery that ran under his skin. When nothing, not even the smallest blip of movement fell underneath his finger tips, Roy did the last thing he could that would either dispel or confirm his growing terror. Pulling his fingers away, Mustang leaned forward in his chair, pressed an ear to Edward's chest, and listened. After thirty full seconds of not hearing a single, comforting lub dub of a heart beating, he sat back as coolly as possible.

Another long moment of silence stretched out between the two before Roy finally found his voice again. Even when he did, it still came out as a strained whisper.

"Edward, tell me again, what did you have to give up for your brother's soul?"

Ed was quiet for another moment or two before he answered.

"The Gate said that even if I gave up my entire body, it still wouldn't be enough for a soul. It said it couldn't give me Al's soul back without receiving a fair incentive, a fair pay. It said just an arm or a leg wasn't enough."

Mustang's brow furrowed, quietly urging the boy to continue.

"It said it didn't really need something that was tangible. It needed something a little more."

"What did it want?"

"My heartbeat. I said no at first, because, last time I had checked, you sort of need a heartbeat to stay alive. So, I struck up a deal with it."

Mustang swallowed heavily. From what he understood of this mythical, godly like Gate, which was precious little, it was not something you messed around lightly with. Forget striking deals with it, that in and of itself was a whole other ballpark of insanity.

"What sort of deal?" He asked after a moment.

"I told it that if it gave me Al's soul back, it could have my heartbeat. I told it, though, that I wanted a chance to live, that my body still had to work so I could live. I had to give up my arm for it to do that willingly. The Gate and I, we agreed, that if I found a way to pay back for Al's body without giving up anymore of my own, it would return my heartbeat and my limbs as well."

Mustang didn't want to ask, but he had to.

"Say you don't find a way to do that, what does it get if it wins?"

Ed's face contorted into a deep grimace.

"I said it could keep my limbs, Al's body, and my heartbeat if I lost. When I asked how long I had to search, it said it would only give me eight years until it expected my loan to be paid back. It was the only way it would agree to give me back Al's soul."

Mustang stared at the boy, mind reeling at it all.

Eight years, really only about seven at that point, what with a year wasted on automail surgery and rehabilitation. This boy only had seven years to successfully complete a feat no one in the history of all mankind had been able to do. When you put things in perspective like that, seven years suddenly looked short. So very, very short.

"Do you see now, why I've tried my best to not see a doctor?"

Yes, Roy knew perfectly well how such a medical paradox would have been greeted. A human being, alive and well, despite the lack of a heartbeat. The poor kid would be shuttled off to a lab without a second thought. Roy let his shoulders slump slightly, the weight of the entire situation piling upon them.

"You...you may go now, Fullmetal. We'll figure out how to deal with this tomorrow."

Ed nodded and turned towards the door. He paused there, made to grab the door handle, and turned around to face his superior once more.

"Colonel, can I ask you a favor? Besides not letting on that, in the grand scheme of things, I'm technically already dead. "

"Depends on what it is."

"Don't tell Al about what I did. He...I haven't told him yet."

"Don't you think the fact that your very life depends on finding a way for him to get his body back would interest him in the slightest, Edward?" Mustang asked, a sharp edge in his voice.

A look dashed across Edward's face, one that spoke volumes about his character. Ed knew he was in the wrong to do that to Al, to not privy him to such important information. There was something else though within that guilt, something that expressively did not want to be more of a burden. The look was that of remorse within remorse, guilt within guilt. A moment later, the extreme expression was gone, a more normal fiery expression in its place.

"I've put him through enough Colonel, he doesn't need to worry about this too."

Mustang grit his teeth yet again. For once, it was not in annoyance.

"I won't tell Alphonse. But you have got to let at least me help you where I can, Edward."

Ed opened his mouth in what looked like might be an attempt to ask a question, closed it again, and let a smirk tug the corners of his mouth.

"Thanks, Colonel."

Ed turned and pulled open the door at this point, and walked out.

Roy sat at his desk for a long time after that.

Eventually he sighed deeply. Ed only had seven years to do the impossible, seven very short years. He had just made the kid his subordinate, which, essentially, made Edward's immense problems his immense problems.

Perfect, absolutely perfect. There needed to be a new word for the level of sarcasm Mustang wished he could attach to such a thought.

When Edward Elric passed his State Alchemist Test, Colonel Roy Mustang had had no way to know exactly what he was getting himself into.

Honestly, this is what happens when one of my fav. animes gets a second run on tv *is eagerly awaiting the next subbed episode of FMAB*. Anyways, very happy and excited for this series to be back on!

PS: for anyone who cares...I'VE FINALLY GRADUATED FROM HIGHSCHOOL!

*EDIT* Went back through and fixed a few things that were bugging me.