Blues Upon a Whistle

To say Ed wasn’t used to waking up with a weight on his chest would be a lie.

He’d had his fair share of meet and greets with petty demons sitting on his ribs (hi mom) and the automail-induced ache of the oncoming storm making everything feel leaden and static-tinted. He was pretty familiar with the sensation of being freezing cold and sweating when consciousness gracelessly slammed into him, mouth cotton-stuffed and a gasp wrenching out of him.

Ed was used to waking up with a weight on his chest. 

But this was different.

It was different and it was suffocating and it was bad.

Everything was numb. Everything was cold.

Cold . Why would it be cold? Why was it so dark? Even in the dead of night, there was still light from the moon, or the afterglow of a waning sunset. Even when he passed out in the basement of some archive or library, there would be a lamp at his side and a blanket around his shoulders.

This was wrong. Something was wrong. 

For the life of him, Ed couldn’t puzzle out what.

His head pounded, driving a nail behind each eye and running a migraine right through his temples like electricity through a copper circuit. Had he passed out next to an icebox or something? And why couldn’t he— why couldn’t he feel his hand?

No…. Wait, no.

That’s not right he could feel his hand, but it was off. Like the nerves weren’t functioning properly, overloaded and shooting spires through his arm, right up to his shoulder where it leached into his chest. His chest, which still felt inexpressibly heavy.

Something was pressing down but he didn’t know what. It was hard to breath.

It wasn't a dream, was it? No, it couldn't be.

The air tasted like battery acid, smoke, and blood. Where was that coming from? 

Ed blinked and found… absolutely nothing. It was dark and quiet. He was sore all over. Ed tried to take in a breath but it just filled his lungs with dust and smoke.

A cough tore through him violently as he tried to raise his head from where it was pressed against the stone.

...stone?

It felt fuzzy and light. 

The feeling of pins and needles decorating his arm in a chorus of stabs started to ebb away. The world refused to come into focus. Not even in the literal sense: he couldn’t make out any real sounds or textures or tastes.

Ed tried to spit the dryness out of his mouth but all that did was shove more debris down his throat.

He choked on it, his left arm moving instinctively to grasp at his chest and—

—fuck.

Fuck .

There’s something there . There was something in his arm. On his arm and it was heavy—heavy like a ton of metal or three floors worth of concrete and he could feel something in his arm. He could feel it, rigid and hard, sharp and flat, a million things at once and it hurt .

The numbness seeped away and was replaced by... by pain.

It seared away at him and again, Ed choked.

He tried to yank his arm away from whatever was touching it—burning it, freezing it, pulling it apart thread by thread until the tissue fell out—but all that did was make everything spin and his vision went from black to deep, violent red.

Ed didn’t even have the wherewithal to cry out. He just tried not to bite his tongue off and laid there, breathing like there were rocks in his lungs and it was agonizing. Nausea came down over him with the force of a hurricane.

His stomach lurched in a warning. He had to actually concentrate, telling himself to not throw up don’t throw up you can’t move don’t throw up—

He swallowed back everything that threatened to crawl back up into his mouth, chest still heaving with shallow intakes and his ears ringing. 

After a few minutes—

—hours, days, weeks, months, he couldn’t tell because it all felt so hazy and he was disorientated beyond belief and he didn’t even know where he was—

—Ed managed to get a grip. His stomach still churned and his arm was spasming through the static fuzz that racked its claws across his skin, but the ground below him had stopped vibrating.

Or, actually, it was more accurate to say he’d just realized that the ground wasn’t shaking at all.

It was him.

He had been shivering. He still was shivering.

That’s right… it’s… it’s winter, isn’t it? It’s winter and there had been freezing rain coating the streets and lacing across rooftops, weighing down tree branches until they broke into shards, coasting up and down brickwork, spread out against the road.

It’s winter and that’s why everything was cold.

That’s why he was numb and shivering. Ed clamped his teeth down on the inside of his cheek to keep them from chattering and tried to collect himself. It was quite the task considering that he soon felt something cool and slick soaking through his hair, half frozen and it reeked of iron. 

Focus .

First item on the list, then: he was probably concussed.

Which would be helpful to know if he could think straight instead of in this looping, spiralling, backpacking circle. Ed forced himself to focus, desperately trying to find a way to ground himself in what was basically a void. It was dark, frigid, endless, and silent. What else could it be if not a void?

A vacuum? Or perhaps it was a nightmare. That would be wonderfully convenient; he could wake up with a gasp and shake off the weight that crushed at his ribs. He could dig out a blanket and huddle up until responsibility dragged him elsewhere.

Focus. You need to focus.

Ed drew in a careful breath and again tried to count it all out. One thing at a time, no need to overwhelm himself. Just one thing.

His head was bleeding. He probably had a concussion.

It’s winter. There was freezing rain. It’s freezing.

He’s freezing.

How long does it take for frostbite to set in? Automail probably doesn’t take kindly to being welded to his flesh through ice. If the metal got cold enough, it would probably just burn onto his skin like solid carbon dioxide. Ed wouldn’t be able to see if his fingers started turning blue, and he couldn’t watch the cold chills creeping up to his ports. It would happen eventually, though.

Why was that again? Maybe it was that he’d been shoved in an icebox or jumped into a lake. No, that wasn’t right. He must’ve just forgotten to light a fire.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

He’s concussed. It’s winter. He can’t feel his arm. He can’t move. Breathing is like trying to run energy through a broken, frayed wire—it started short circuiting. It hurt.

God, it's cold.

Focus .

It’s winter and there was freezing rain the night before. It had fallen in a dense veil of sleet, plastered to anything it touched.

Everything around him was droning and quiet. Ed blinked through the darkness and the thought hit him hard like a hail of stones being poured over his head.

It might’ve floored him if he wasn’t already half curled on his side, flesh arm numb and metal arm pinned against his side. 

Everything is dark and quiet because Ed is—

—he’s fucking underground.

The street had crumpled up like a sheet of paper being tossed. A building caved. The ice-slicked cobblestone made an uproar of cracking.

He was underground. Buried under rubble and glass and brick and mortar. The weight on his chest was growing worse and a cough was wrenched out of him.

Ed knows that air shouldn’t feel so heavy and cloying. Especially not when it was so debilitatingly cold.

They couldn’t even drive to the scene as they normally would. Roy and his team were stuck taking the main roads, coasting along the busiest streets that happened to get a generous dusting of salt that morning and it took them three times as long as it should have to get to the cave in.

Hawkeye managed to break laws without batting an eye, cutting so many corners he was surprised the vehicle didn’t roll.

In the rearview, Falman and Havoc were following close behind, a little obscured by the slush and exhaust smoke being pumped out from behind the tires.

“How far are we?” He asked, casting a glance to Hawkeye.

Her shoulders tensed, but her expression somehow stayed neutral. The way she gripped the steering wheel was a dead giveaway, though. The same emotion had been bubbling through all of them since they’d gotten called in to organize a search and rescue half an hour earlier: they were pissed.

“Ten minutes or so.”

The roads were god awful, so frictionless that no one had dared test their luck against the unforgiving stone pathways, not brave enough to challenge the curb against their own steering.

Meaning they only found out about the building that had toppled over and caused a hundred yards of a street to crumble an hour after the fact.

Getting there was hell, and no matter how often they’d all been thrown headlong into stressful situations—it was a miracle Roy didn’t have half a head of grey hairs by now, honestly, but perhaps Falman had taken one for the team; bear their sins like the loyal encyclopedia that he was—it would never cease to make their pulses race.

Anticipation, dread, worry, it all tangled up into a knotted ball and sat uselessly at the bottom of his stomach. Waiting like this was always, always the hardest part.

For someone with so much power, Roy ended up feeling pathetically useless in times like this. Newspaper headlines might be weeping over the loss of friends and family the next day instead of spouting some flaccid, meaningless bullshit about military heroics.

What made him seethe silently and had his heart taking off in a mad gallop, however, was the fact that the Elrics were missing in action. They’d sent someone to retrieved them from their dorms because this was literally their ballpark; twisting up minerals and stones with flourishes and casual grace was as easy as breathing or lifting a finger to those two and it would be incredibly helpful to get some precision and proverbial muscle behind this rescues effort.

They were the heavy hitters in the realm of alchemy. Even Roy could admit that, though he’d do it with his head hanging and pride squirrelled away into a hidey-hole so no one would snatch it away. 

They needed Ed and Al on this.

And they’d vanished into west bumble-fuck, nowhere to be found. Roy had an MP sent to check out both the public and private libraries, alongside the archives. He’d even ordered someone to scope out a local park on the north end (where they were headed, coincidentally) that the brothers seemed to take a liking to.

He hadn’t heard anything back but sincerely hoped that they would be agreeable about this and cooperate. Ed, specifically.

A prodigy in a headstrong brat's clothing… 

Well, actually, that wasn’t entirely fair. When things got serious, both of them seemed to have a little flip. There was a switch buried somewhere on them that would click and suddenly they’d be the most world-weathered, age-weary, maturity-saddled people you’d ever met.

So as long as someone could find them—

“Sir?” Hawkeye breathed.

The car came to a slow, controlled stop. He shook himself out of his thoughts, his attention flitting over to what laid spread out against the street behind the windshield.

His gut clenched at the sight of a folded up street, concrete spewed out in thick slabs, dashed with bricks and freckled with little glowing fires, birthed from the sudden friction. One building had keeled over without warning, stumbling out into the road and punching through to the drainage system that laid beneath.

It looked awful.

The one silver lining was that it was winter. Not many people would have been around, and the structure that had folded wasn’t residential. It was just a self-serve cenz arcade, packed with little nickelodeon film loops and cue sports. It was closed for the day.

There was a chance no one had gotten catch in the disaster at all.

Still, they had a job to do.

“Lieutenant,” He look towards Hawkeye. She straightened in her seat. “You and Breda need to go retrieve a medical team. Their ambulances won’t do well on the ice.”

He sincerely didn’t need any more accidents today. She nodded resolutely. “Right.”

Roy stepped out of the vehicle, joined by Fuery who looked over the block in muted horror. He needed the young man here for communications.

As much as it made his anxiety spike, neither Breda nor Hawkeye would be any more effective here than the rest of them. The two officers were easily their best drivers. He trusted them to be able to ferry back supplies and personnel without incident. In the meantime, he had to get into the weeds.

A smattering of MPs had been called out from nearby stations, their heads held high in an admirable attempt to not seem shaken by the genuinely frightening display of hubris and nature's own wrath. They flooded in as Havoc and Falman abandoned their own car, letting it be pilfered by Breda before peeling away.

Roy watched out of his peripheral as the two disappeared around the corner in a matter of seconds, then turned his attention to his team. “First thing is we need to block the area off.” He started.

Their heels clicked together with a distinct air of no-nonsense, as expected. They might be a vocal, friendly group on the day-to-day, but in crisis they all knew how to get things done effectively.

Roy had Falman survey the space for the weakest and strongest points, mapping it out as best he could while Fuery traded radio equipment with the MPs and got himself set up where the signal was able to reach its little hands across the city.

Havoc adopted leadership like he was stepping into shoes he’d already broken in, directing the MPs to take care of sectioning off the space, redirecting any traffic, and briefing them on crowd control. His voice spliced through the chilly air every now and again. “—number one priority and finding anyone who was caught in the collapse—“

Roy tuned it out and strode over to where Fuery was tweaking wires, a small makeshift tent set up around him that would double as a space for treatment if anyone needed it.

Most of the doors along this particular street belongs to businesses that were decidedly seasonal. Closed signs were abounded and the doors were plastered shut with ice. Part of Roy wished he could simply snap and get rid of it all, blasted into liquid form by way of a controlled flash of fire, but he wasn’t stupid enough to try. It would flood the whole block if he were to so much as thaw the ground.

He didn’t want any survivors to drown because he was too impatient to deal with a little bit of frost.

“Anything on Fullmetal?” Roy asked.

Fuery shook his head. “They weren’t at the library. Apparently the clerk said they hadn’t come by in a few days.”

He scowled at the ground. Now was not a good time for those two to be vanishing into thin air. It did no favours for his nerves as they sparked and sputtered. He huffed, glancing back to the Sargent. “Keep me posted on that. And the medical teams.”

He nodded grimly. “Of course. And… sir?”

“What is it?”

“They’ll turn up.”

Roy blinked. Something in his stomach twisted and a little nail of fresh fear drove through his chest. 

What if—

No . That’s ridiculous.

He scowled, glaring out over the field of debris and floes of dust drifting up to tangle with the overcast skies and city smog. “They better .” He hissed.

The younger man gave him an unreadable look that Roy decided wasn’t worth picking apart. His hands fidgeted, fingers pressed together in the instinct to snap because those kinds of problems were infinitely easier. The ones that didn’t require careful, tedious, intensely methodical hours of work and double the time in simply waiting. It was going to drive him insane.

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to at least give his hands something to do other than flick against each other and test the fabric of his gloves in a pointless routine. Flick , then a small spark. Flick , then no oxygen. Flick, then a little glow. Flick —

“Hey, Boss.” Havoc called over. “We’ve got a little issue over here.”

Dread struck him across the face violently, but Roy managed to keep his expression straight and neutral. “Another cave in?”

“No, no. It’s just…” Havoc turned, gesturing to the rubble. “We can’t seem to get to fires put out and you are the Flame Alchemist.”

“I’m aware, thanks.”

Havoc led him over to where they had a set of pots and kettles stretched over heated bars. Where they got the supplied, Roy had no idea, but he understood their line of thought: pry up some of the ice, melt it, throw a few pots of lukewarm water over the flames, eliminate one problem.

The MPs, to their credit, made themselves useful, rounding up shoves and keeping themselves organized, circling the parameter of the debris, giving it a respectful wake but carefully searching for any signs of survivors.

Some were using their eyes in the hopes of catching a glimpse of hair, perhaps a stray limb, while others were setting up a wire and stake that drove into the ground so they could listen for any shuffling or voices that reverberated up from under the barrage of stone and grime.

As expected, the flames refused to sputter out, whipping into a personal frenzy in the wind and spewing out smoke by the lungful. Roy’s eyes narrowed. “You said they’re not going out?”

“Nope. Not even when we dumped water right over it. The stuff just clean evaporated.”

Roy touched a hand to his array, pinpointing where there was an influx of oxygen bubbling around a little uproar of fire only a few yards away. He coaxed it away, leaving the fire in its own miniature vacuum of energy but—

—nothing happened. It kept on burning bright and hot. The air smelled like chemicals and something sour. 

“Boss?” Havoc leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse at the Colonel’s eyes. “What’s with that look?”

He ignored the question, taking a step closer to the flames and trying again. He pulled and grasped at the air, the transmutation circle alight with a low crackle of energy. He concentrated on manipulating all the gases in the air, siphoning it off and holding it above the fire where it wouldn’t be able to reach it.

Still nothing.

He looked to Havoc sharply. “This was an arcade, wasn’t it?”

The man jumped at the change in tone, nodding quickly. “Uh, yeah. An old one. Why?”

“Then they’d have novelty films.” Roy took another step forward, peering down at the fire but staying far enough away that he didn’t upset any of the debris. If anything shifted it could be a death sentence—watching his footing was absolutely paramount.

“Okay…?” Havoc said slowly. “Am I missing something here?”

“The reels—they’re nitrate film. It’s incredibly flammable.”

“Well shit.”

“And the fumes are toxic.” Roy glared down at the newest addition to the shit-show. “Take a car. Commandeer one if you have to. We need filters for anyone who is not doing tech and crowd control.”

The blond man paused for a moment with wide eyes, but snapped back to himself a second later. “Right. I’m on it.”

At the very least the wind was on their side for the time being, ushering the smoke and flames in the direction of the fallen series of bricks and wood where they drifted skyward before anyone could inhale them. The wind was always fickle, though.

Roy sighed and resigned himself to briefing the MPs before any of them were coughing up ashes and soot from a poisonous inhale.

Tedious, careful, and mind-numbing filled right up to the brim with waiting.

Waiting for Breda and Hawkeye.

Waiting for Falman to parse out what could and what couldn’t be moved.

Waiting for the roads to be less cluttered and dangerously glazed in frigid slush.

Waiting for the flames to tire themselves out and burn into oblivion.

Waiting for Ed and Al.

This was going to be a nightmare.

Ed had managed to keep himself from panicking. Actually, no. That was a lie.

He panicked. He still was panicking—unable to move and listening to the deafening silence that was only broke by his own laboured breaths and the sound of stone shifting, threatening to roll over him.

Ed was still swimming through incoherency and trying to figure out if he’d bitten off his tongue at some point or if the taste of blood was just trailing down his throat from his nose.

What he was able to do, was keep himself from feeling all of this outwardly . Even as his insides squirmed and twisted, as his arm spammed so violently he swore it had been torn off, he didn’t let it take over. Ed counted every breath, flexed in fingers carefully, and refused to let himself fall into shock. He fought against the numbness like his life depended on it.

Which it did.

It really, really did.

He recited the pages from books he’d read quietly, not daring to say it aloud because his mouth was so dry there was no way his voice wouldn’t crack right down the middle. It was barely a whisper in his own ears. A humble murmur of old information that he’d drilled into his temples and now was the only thing that kept his mind from being swallowed up by the gaping maw of exhaustion.

Ed reminded himself on loop that he had to focus. No matter how many times his thoughts wandered and grew aimless, he had to focus.

Focus .

Or it’ll kill you. 

He exhaled, feeling the warm puff of air ricochet off the low hanging spread of rubble and back onto his face. The slight brush only assisted in keeping his eyes from freezing over like an unattended harbour in the middle of a storm.

Like the storm last night.

Ed remembered it pretty damn well. The dorms were only insulated to prevent downright hypothermia, so as the rain shook the windows and rattled against the stone walls, Ed gathered up all the blankets and sheets he could, dragging both the mattresses into a corner and sandwiching himself between Al and the wall closest to the water pipes.

Inklings of heat bled through just enough that he could feel it on his arm. Eventually he passed out bundled in the quilts and covers in a way that probably resembled a small hibernating animal more than a person but that's besides the point, the point was—

There was no point. He was wandering again.

Focus . 

Breathe in without coughing, breathe out without choking. Ed did everything he could to pretend he couldn’t feel actual particles filtering into his throat and sticking to the walls of his chest.

There was nothing he could do about it and every time a hacking fit racked through him, Ed thought he would eventually choke up blood or make himself sick from the force of it all.

He couldn’t even sit up to alleviate the growing pressure that sat in a heavy band across his diaphragm. It constricted when he inhaled and pressed upward when he exhaled, trying to shove his heart up into his throat where he’d choke on it.

That would be a whole lot faster than drowning from his own nosebleed, though. Or having the debris grind downwards and slowly press the life out of him, one inch at a time. Maybe his extremities would start to break off first. Surely he would hear them fall to the ground.

Ed could hear everything. Down, covered by whatever cacophony of stones had spilled down, it all echoed.

It was quiet enough that he could hear as his heart struggled to beat, a low groan from the tons of material that waited above every now and again, the rattling noise that came from his chest and the way his shoulder creaked like an old wooden chair ready to break apart. He thought that the cold would have numbed some of the oh god I’m going to black out this fucking hurts by now.

Wasn’t it supposed to?

It didn’t.

Not how it should, anyways. It blocked out what was useful and made hurt a permanent resident, emphasizing the stinging, tearing feeling that refused to lift away from his palm.

Ed couldn’t even twitch his hand. He couldn’t bend the digits, nor could he tell if his foot moved when he told it to. The cold had numbed him but only to make him sluggish.

Ed couldn’t move but he could feel . He could feel the bones in his left hand from the inside out, awareness spreading in reverse and he could feel that something was wrong . Ed tried uselessly to glare through the darkness, but all that did was make his head pulse with a thready rhythm of blood in his ears.

Despite that yawning of icicles and flurries invading his skin and draining away any body heat Ed might have once had claim to, part of his left arm was actually warm . In sharp contrast to the blistering frigidness that laced across his fingers and tightened into knots by his shoulder like barbed wire, there was just there one broiling point that seemed to scream out.

He couldn’t see why, but the limb felt fiery . While the rest of him shivered, a subject to the whims of whatever drafts wormed down into the fallen stacks of floors and ceilings, the space between his elbow and forearm was writhing and squirming with embers.

It could be a pipe pressed up against his skin, searing away the flesh into blisters at its leisure. It could be residual of a fire, the blaze scorching at the stone and creeping towards him. Ed couldn’t tell what it was but it was flaring out every time a chill sent him into a fit of shaking. His arm jerked involuntarily and the heat blared loud, all the way up his shoulder to his neck and jaw, making everything lock up.

It was particularly unhelpful because breathing was already so exhausting he was tempted to just stop. It was like he was heaving water or oil instead of oxygen.

Oil could be what’s making the air so bitter, couldn’t it? Maybe a car tipped over in the fray and started splashing gasoline across the street. 

It could slip down between the cracks and soak into the soft, cheap wood that most places would have framed between the walls as a skeleton for installation.

But wait, no. No, that couldn’t be right. There were hardly any cars out after all the rain and ice.

Because it’s winter.

And it’s really cold.

He can’t feel his hand but it still spasmed and shifted and made him want to throw up for a full hour with the nauseating force that crashed through him in tandem with just pure, unadulterated pain . 

Focus . 

It can’t be gasoline.

Why can’t it be—right. No cars. And… and it’s cold.

It would have been frozen before it could reach down to intoxicate him with its fumes. But breathing was still terrible and acidic. The air was dense and horribly dry. Ed’s lips were cracked and… bleeding?

He could taste blood when he wet them. But that could just be from the crimson that still snaked down from his nose and crawled, achingly slow and steady, right down his throat.

Maybe he had already bitten off his tongue. 

He couldn’t say for certain if he would have felt it or not. There were so many clashing, intense feelings welling up that Ed could only lay there and beg his stomach not to empty itself.

So it wasn’t gasoline. There was something else clogging up the air and making his mouth feel cottony. 

Ed turned his head weakly to the side, feeling the half stiff splatter of blood below his head sticking to his hair, pulling it loose, painting his jaw and cheek red.

Or, at least it would if he could see at all. It was just water for all he knew, a trickle from the drainage system that had curled inwards so fast it pulled half the atmosphere with it. 

His chest seized and Ed swallowed back a mouthful of bile.

“You’re okay.” He breathed to himself. The words felt like dynamite in his ears and euphoria in his iron-drench mouth. “You’re okay.” Ed said again, whispering the words for no reason other than to hear something.

Something that wasn’t his own weak pulse or the earthen growling that caused his tiny, unstable cave to shudder.

Ed spat out the blood that pooled around his teeth, coughing and suffocating from the heavy aftertaste. Again, his gut curled in a warning. “You’re okay.” Ed said it a third time between the coughs.

“Just—“ He hacked out soot and blood matter alike. It coated his lungs. Ed wanted to be able to sit up so badly it made him physically ache. He squeezed his eyes shut as the bought of fruitless wrenching made him fucking tremble. “Just… focus .”

His automail arm was still crushed up against his side, digging into his ribs. It sent pins and needles up his neck but he needed to get it free.

It wasn’t the smartest thing.

Ed could very well cause the debris to lose whatever support his arm was providing and be left at the mercy of gravity and several tones of smog and stone. But he couldn’t move his hand and didn’t know why.

Ed could feel something was off. It was stuck in place. He couldn’t wrench it away without his forearm being set on fire . He couldn’t control his fingers enough to feel why it was trapped in place. If he could just… reach over. 

If he could do that maybe he could get his arm loose.

Then what?

What good would that even do?

A goal. It was a goal. Ed squeezed his eyes shut and once again raised his head out of the little bloody spot that gathered beneath. Even if it was pointless, it was something to think about. It was a reason to stay awake; to stay conscious; to stay breathing; to stay focused .

Ed tugged experimentally, twisting and shifting his weight, searching for any kind of wiggle room between his chest and the makeshift ceiling. It was slow and relentlessly tedious, but Ed concentrated every inch of himself on carefully flexing and stretching his metal arm.

He was able to get the elbow dislodged. Ed waited, straining to hear past his own shallow gasps and pounding headache. It was drilling between his eyes, driving through his skull. It would hit the back eventually. Not good, considering he was already concussed and had at least a superficial gash, though with the way everything felt fuzzy and fog-draped, Ed guessed it might be a little more than that.

The drilling refused to let up.

Focus .

His arm was almost free. There were no indicators that it would come crashing down if he moved again. Ed sucked in a breath, swallowing down the cold air as it so kindly left razor burn over his lungs. It felt like heaving in acid.

Oil. It felt like oil and acid. Both at once. Freezing cold and slick at the same time. Ed counted to three behind clenched teeth.

He could do it in his head, but speaking aloud was like having an anchor dragging him to the seafloor in the most merciful way possible. It was better than drinking in salt water and being tossed around by a storm.

The bottom was quiet and dark—of course it was, with all the pounds of pressure thrashing to make his limbs cave in and his chest flatten—but speaking made it less unbearable.

Ed’s words were soft, spoken for him and him alone.

“One…”

It’s winter. It’s cold. His breath was probably making little clouds in front of his face, throat like a smoke stack and coal burning in his stomach.

Focus .

“Two…”

He couldn’t move his hand. His arm felt hot. There was no gasoline from above, and the oil in the air was just dust from ground up motor, ripped from the splinters of wooden floorboards, walls stuffed with a fibrous insulator that would certainly kick up sand.

Focus .

“ Three —“

Ed wrenched his arm to the side, twisting with the momentum and feeling a weight be lifted off his rib. He almost felt sick with how rapidly his chest expanded and a cough forced its way out. Then another.

And another.

He braced his hand—his now free hand, no longer digging into his side or disordering his bones and organs—against the ground, grasping uselessly at the dirt. He let the fit run its course, making his eyes water and head feel lighter than the lovechild of helium and a zippo.

“Ten—“ He spat out the taste of ashes, grinning to himself wearily. “—ten points to Elric.”

Two of the fires had exhausted themselves of existence and sputtered into a hiss of sparks. If Roy had to guess, those were the shortest of the reels, because the rest still seemed to be going strong.

Everyone working within the area had been fitted with an industrial dust mask, both the medical staff that had been formally abducted from their posts at East City General Hospital, and the MPs that were graciously trekking through the miserable, blustering weather. They steered clear of the fire as much as they could though, and with some fragment of luck, the wind pushed the majority of it towards whatever cardinal direction they were opposite to.

Havoc wove through the throng of officers towards Roy, returning from a quick round of updates from all the sub-sects of workers who were sacrificing their rest to get this sorted out. 

Which included Fuery, still glued to his radio, headphones pressed to his ear and frantically orchestrating Hawkeye and Breda from afar. They had been essentially turned into curriers for the time being, alongside impromptu ambulances for anyone who needed it.

They’d been lucky so far. Through the hour of careful digging and slowly levelling the street, piece by piece, there had only been three trapped in the debris. Only one of them needed to be carried off.

The other two, though certainly shaken up and throwing up watery dust every now and again, were only subjected to bruises and scrapes.

“Still nothing on the Elric boys?” He asked

Havoc burned his way through the frustration of being cut off from cigarettes by chewing enough gum to make Roy’s ears pop just from watching. His jaw clicked as he sighed. “Nothing. Not even down in the record room basement.”

“Did anyone check—“

“The stupid shelf that Chief hollowed out? Yeah. All they found was a bunch of blankets crammed inside.”

“Goddamn.”

Havoc huffed. “Say it again, maybe someone’ll smite us.”

Roy glared.

The blond man didn’t even wilt. “Goddamn.” He said resolutely. 

A part of the Colonel wondered if the sky actually might open up, his eyes started to wander for a second before grimacing. “I hate to say it, but this would certainly be a lot faster with those two.”

“No kidding. Oh, Hawkeye got that man to the hospital, by the by. With the broken leg.”

“Any incidents?”

“Hah. She’d skin you for even asking.”

Roy blinked out over the spread of destruction like a table set by an earthquake or a hurricane. They’d moved as many stray bricks as possible, forming miniature bucket brigades and making a sweep of the stable areas. It was still shrouded in beat up wood and wide concrete slabs propped up haphazardly against one another.

“You think there’s anyone else?” Havoc asked. “Who got trapped in there, I mean.”

“I hope not. We’ve already cleared all the areas that won’t cause another cave in, but the rest is one big wild card.”

More like a jigsaw puzzle with all the wrong pieces. They’d need to be able to coordinate simultaneous removals of the fallen walls in order to keep them from crashing down onto the rest of the wreck. It wasn’t impossible, but it wouldn’t be easy to do without precision.

Without alchemy.

Without Ed and Al.

God, where the hell were those kids? This was the worst time to be vanishing into thin air.

Most days it would be inconsequential, if mildly unsettling—really, children weren’t supposed to be able to hide away so thoroughly as they could, damn near treating it like a manhunt rather than some adults looking for them who just wanted to make sure they hadn’t spent too many consecutive nights reading.

Which had happened.

On multiple occasions.

Roy had witnessed the succeeding crash that fell over Ed: he’d pass out with every blink.

They knew how to make themselves scarce, but why now?  

The one time—

Roy repressed a heavy exhale and jerked his chin towards one of their shoddy little dig sights. Falman had toed his way into authority more smoothly then expected and was trying to measure out lengths of rope and mathematizing the shit out of the available pulley system. 

“Not to mention the fumes.” Havoc gestured to the still blazing fires, screaming almost ten feet into the air, the bottoms roaring red and bleeding into a bright orange. They walked, skirting along the lines of tape. Roy’s gaze darted across the scene, from the tents set up far off away from the fissures running through the ground, to the MPs still jamming rods into the street in the hopes of hearing something that wasn’t the wind.

The wind, which was starting to howl and whistle as it rushed through the rubble. Like a distorted, disaster made harmonica, it sent a chilling wail up every now and again. Havoc elbowed him lightly. “You’re spacing out.”

“I’m not. It’s just cold.”

Havoc gave him a hard, startlingly stern look, his eyebrows pressed together and eyes hardening from their normal blue to something far more steely. He looked away quick enough that it wouldn’t feel like a challenge, but something in Roy’s chest started to tighten.

Havoc levelled a glare at the ground they tread upon. “I’m a bit worried, you know.”

Roy kept his eyes forward, back straight and ignored the fact that the impressively icy gales were threatening to pull his ears off. “I’m sure that if there’s anyone else we’ll find them and—“

“No, no.” Havoc cut him off, shaking his head. “I mean… the kids. No one’s been able to get a hold of them and I’m just thinking it’s not impossible that they’d been in this area.”

Roy stiffened, his foot almost missing its mark as throat-gripping shock came and left in a blink. “What are you implying, Havoc?” He asked slowly.

“If they had been nearby—“

“That’s a big if.” Roy hissed.

It was harsher than perhaps necessary but he did not need this right now. There was enough mayhem and destruction being piled onto his lap as is. Even considering it would make his anxieties double and triple and expand ruthlessly.

The possibility would make all of them nervous; on edge and rushed. The additional—visceral, cloying, inexpressibly—anxiety that would come if this became more than just their jobs would be hellish at absolute best. If this became personal—no.

No, it wouldn’t.

That was absurd.

Ed and Al were probably curled up on the couch of some antique book store, their noses buried in yellow paper, or milling about Eastern Command, innocently wondering why no one was in the office.

Maybe they’d heard about it and were taking back roads by foot to the fray getting kicked around by the glacial skidding of cars and the damning mix of black ice tied to high winds.

Havoc, however, didn’t back down. His feet stopped moving altogether, eyes alight with a little glint. It was one they’d all earned about two years back when chaos and brilliance incarnated showed up at the door in a set of two.

One size small, one size armoured giant.

This wasn’t the first time Roy had seen it. Wouldn’t be the last either, but the look certainly made him freeze in place.

“You’re not listening!” Havoc snapped. “I’m not saying this because I’m trying to rile everyone up, I’m saying it because I’m worried.” He gestured, his gloved hand cutting a swath through the persistent flurries to where the road continued a little ways off, untouched by the wrath of a late night storm. “You know as well as I do that they come by this area plenty and—“

“Enough, Havoc.” Roy growled. He tried to walk forward, feigning a sense of purpose, head high but something caught his arm.

“Colonel.” He said, almost pleadingly. “Please, you gotta listen to me. They might’ve been here. They might still be here.” The shine across his eyes was horribly telling, so sincere and alarmingly good-natured in a way that Havoc rarely was. This was painfully truthful and a touch too desperate for Roy’s liking. That alone almost entirely convinced Roy but—but he couldn’t. 

He couldn’t.

They didn’t have the time for that kind of nervousness and he certainly didn’t have the mental power for it. Roy tried to be callous, but the delivery skewed too sympathetic like a brick wrapped in layers of fleece. “We can’t afford to think like that. Speculating is just going to drive you crazy.”

“It’s not just me, you know.” The grip on his arm tightened. Roy looked anywhere but the Lieutenant’s face. “Fuery was saying the same thing. Breda too, when he came back from getting supplies from the ER.”

“It’s going to drive all of you crazy, then.” He said. 

“Colonel!” Havoc snapped. “The whole city knows about this! It’s been playing on every radio station since we got the alert and the entire block is roped off. They would have heard about it too.”

“What does that matter?” Stay cool, stay calm. Don’t explode. Don’t let it mean anything.

There was a nail in his chest, digging and squirming. It was a rusted, bent up thing, steadily making its way towards his heart, each word from the blond man like a hammer striking down. Roy had been fighting off the panic since they’d arrived to find a landscape of broken buildings (bones?) and dead telephone wires (bodies?) and it had barely been working.

This was going to send him into overdrive.

Havoc’s ire filed outwards like a fire eating away at paper. Or wood. Or nitrate. “It matters because they would have heard by now. Do you really think they’d ignore something like this?”

“No, but—“

“You know just as well as the rest of us that Ed and Al would’ve been down here in a heartbeat. Even if we weren’t here. Even if it was still unstable. That leaves two options: they're out of town, which we both know they're not, or they're—"

"Enough!"

Roy drew in a thin breath and jerked his arm away, a glower resting squarely on Havoc. His heart wasn’t in it, but he’d gotten pretty damn good at performing authority and forcefulness. That was the military’s first, last, and middle name; of course he’d gotten good.

It was a survival skill.

“We,” Roy started sharply, “don’t have time for this.”

Havoc looked ready to protest and Roy was slowly (quickly, rapidly, blindingly) losing his patience and his grip on the nail hovering too close to its mark, already running through his lungs and threatening to let all the air out in a pathetic rush.

Before the other man could say anything, there was a shout.

“Colonel!” The voice bellowed out. It cut through the wind without so much as a drop of hesitation. Roy’s stamina was waning.

He whirled around to find Falman sprinting over, pitched forward into death match with the icy ground. “Colonel!” He shouted again as he approached.

The nail pressed firmly against his heart. Something in his stomach dropped. Suddenly, violently, like a stone; like a street swallowing itself greedily. 

“What?” He demanded as the officer sided to a halt, hands on his knees and coughing out miniature clouds.

“We found Alphonse.”

There was rust in his bloodstream.

All of it was draining away into the ground and freezing over like hell itself. 

Ed took a moment to let himself remember how to using those handy little oxygen balloons stuffed away in his chest.

A moment. Ten. 

A hundred.

Whatever.

He relearned how to breathe as his automail arm lay splayed out, utterly free and twitching uncontrollably. His shoulder complained, a burning feeling slowly making its way through the port, protesting the sudden shift. But the slab of stone above held in place and Ed felt a rush of victory so vicious it made him sputter for air.

The grin that slip across his face at the triumph also happened to split his lip open. He would happily take it as a trade off though. 

Maybe equivalent exchange was more literal than he ever knew but this time it seemed like he’d gotten the good end of the bargain. A bit of sacrifice in the form of less than a mouthful of blood got his arm free. It was sprawled there, fully functioning, if a bit battered and the digits bent out of shape.

He could feel it in the way the cords and joints caught on one another, tangled in ways they shouldn't be. He tried to squeeze them into a fist and two of his fingers couldn’t seem to move beyond the first knuckle.

Amendment: it was almost fully functioning. Still better than if it had gotten torn up. Or just outright torn off . He would already be half dead from shock if that had been the case.

But wait, wasn’t he? Everything was hurting in a million different ways and he couldn’t take in enough substance to keep his breaths from sounding horribly laboured. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Was shock already here?

It could be.

He’d meet the smarmy bastard before. It would overstay its welcome, tracking mud and fuzzy memories through Ed’s mind until he wasn’t quite sure which had happened and which were placed there after the fact.

A party guest who didn't leave and kicked their feet up against the upholstery.

Shock was pretty damn rude, if you asked Ed.

No one did ask, though.

He was alone here.

Along with his metal arm, no longer pinned to his side and promising to bruise his ribs to Central and back. He couldn’t move his hand.

Focus .

He’d gotten his slightly more expendable arm free. The other was still numb with its over flavour of pain—he could taste the blood and smell the smoke; something was probably burning up above his head. It smelled like chemicals. Ed flexed his hand, carefully rolling his wrist and trying to find any places where the plating was catching against the wires and screws. He bent the limb at the elbow.

It didn’t hitch or hesitate. Aside from the two busted up fingers, he had enough control.

Ed wasn’t in shock. Not yet.

He was still conscious and still breathing.

He had enough control.

Enough to reach over and find whatever was staking his arm of flesh and blood and whatever else made up an arm (the equation was lost on him right now, but it was all written down in his notes; perhaps he should check if he got out of here) to the rubble.

But he needed to remember how to breathe without thinking about it so carefully. Every second was like threading a needle using his teeth and a frayed thread. Manual labour or hard time.

It felt like a miracle.

Wasn’t it though? Yes, it was alchemy inside of his throat, transmuting with every movement of his chest. Oxygen goes in and carbon dioxide gets flushed out.

Maybe there were little circles carved into everyone's lungs and doctors had yet to discover them.

A coroner might’ve, but maybe kept it to themselves. They worked with dead people all day long.

Surely they’d be a little shy about fresh discoveries like an array birthed into everyone's bodies.

Or maybe a body could do that all on its own.

Ed squeezed his eyes shut, turning his face toward the invisible ceiling so the warmth of his breath would bring him back to reality.

Focus.

Breathe in. You know how. Just do it and then breath out. It’s okay.

“It’s okay.” He repeated aloud. “You’re okay.”

Ed wasn’t exactly keeping track of how much, but time was definitely passing. Like a current, it swayed and waned, slowing and picking up without warning. He stayed still all the while, smiling to himself wolfishly because he did it and the minuscule cavern didn’t spill down onto him and drown out whatever last words he might’ve wanted to scream out.

Ed grinned madly and made sure that his lungs were inflating each time as his busted lip continued to trail down his face and join its relatives from the back of his head on the ground.

Ed gulped in the fragile wisps of the atmosphere that had shitty enough luck to get bogged down here along with him.

“You’re okay.” It seemed to be the only words his mouth could shove out with any sort of clarity. He came close to believing it was true.

Until his chest seized and his throat closed up. It was too quiet.

All he could hear was the shuddering coughs that made his whole body feel bloody.

Maybe that's why parts of it felt warm.

Maybe he was bleeding out and just couldn't see it. The hot feeling was blood and the cold feeling was ice (gasoline) so that would mean shock would come barging in soon—

Focus.

Ed discovered that he could say another word. It was a pretty damn important one too and the sound of it floored him in the best of ways, bringing his consciousness back to the forefront of his mind instead of hanging towards the back, languishing in pain.

“Breathe.” Ed told himself. “J-just—“ Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. “—breathe.”

He somehow managed to remember and after a few test runs his lungs seemed to be hit with their own muscle memory, able to do it without training wheels or hand holding in all of their malfunctioning, good for nothing, perfect glory.

He breathed.

Even if it was filled with dust and smoke, he sucked in the air and forced it out. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pleasant, but he needed to keep doing it. Keep the door firmly locked so that shock couldn’t burst in when Ed least expected it. 

Which might be sooner than he thought because he felt cold. Almost cold.

It's winter, isn't it? Yes, it is.

Not all of him, there were a few outcasts who hadn’t gotten the memo that it’s winter and they should be stiff as boards and chilled like the inside of an ice box.

The persistent ache from his shoulder and the sudden release of pressure at his ribs roared through him and it felt like there was fire in his veins.

Fire… gasoline.

No, no. That was frozen, remember? It’s frozen like the rest of him felt.

Not all of him, but most of him. There were hot coals inside his shoulder, searing at the inner workings of his port while the metal itself felt frostbitten and melded with his skin. 

The skin that was attached to his automail. Which was mobile.

God, being concussed was frustrating. Couldn’t he form more than half a coherent thought? Just one, please?

Focus.

Slowly, Ed reached his metal fingers along his flesh arm. The cool touch left a train of goosebumps as it went. He felt up the limb slowly, poking gingerly to stave off the family of pins and the needle in-laws from having a reunion under his skin.

His hand reached the part that was a little feverish and—

—wait.

He’d forgotten, hadn’t he?

Earlier, right after he’d dragged his mind back to the land of the living, Ed had felt it. There was something in his arm.

It was still there. 

The—the thing hadn’t just been pressed against his flesh, it was embedded into it. Ed tried to lift them limb and his vision blared pure, blinding white.

 It went through.

Whatever it was, it went right through, pinning him down like a butterfly in a display case. Ed choked on a yelp, blinking furiously to get rid of the spots that were promising to send him into a sleep, never-ending sleep.

“Bre…” He grit his teeth and scrounged for something to keep him in the present. “Br-reathe.”

He could do that.

But Ed still couldn’t feel his hand. He had to… he had to keep going.

His automail arm reached, slowly feeling around the thing that had skewered through his flesh—rebar, he realized with a start. He’d been run through with a piece of rebar. 

He reached something smooth and hard, his metal hand running along it until he found where it intersected with his fingers and—

—oh.

Fuck.

That’s why he couldn’t move it, huh. No wonder everything felt so goddamn numb.

Of course.

Just… of course. What else should he expect? His luck was as rotten as the earths fucking course what else should he expect but the worst of circumstances?

It’s winter.

He’s concussed.

There’s rebar in his arm and his hand was half crushed.

Who was it? Who the hell was so bored that they decided to use him for a punching bag?

Ed wanted to yell as loud as he could, cussing out whatever deity he could think of and mentally swore to kick them all in the kneecaps as soon as he could. Which might be sooner than he’d like.

Ed might be meeting them, huh.

His hand was broken, held down under a rounded chunk of pavement.

Suddenly, like a camera being snapped into focus, he could feel where all the fractures were, and where the bones were popped from their sockets. 

Ed shivered, his arm dropping down beside him with a devastatingly loud clatter. It echoed for a moment or longer. An hour perhaps.

It was the only sound he could hear. 

Ed forced in the poisonous air and let his thoughts come out of his lips without bothering to stop his teeth from chattering.

“Y..you’ve got to be f-fucking kidding.”

It took them only seven minutes to dig Al out.

One of his arms had been filled up with so much dirt that he couldn’t so much as clench his hand into a fist. The other was wedged between his chest plate and a mound of broken up bricks. A wrinkled blanket of plaster had been splayed out around him, hiding his form from view.

There was little risk in moving it out of the way, so they didn’t hesitate in doing so.

Roy’s heart knocked into his rib cage so hard and fast he feared one might crack as Al’s helmet tilted up at him and his voice split the air like thunder in the middle of spring.

“Where is he?”

Roy’s stomach dropped down far enough that it gave him vertigo. He felt vaguely sick as Al was finally able to haul himself out of the hole.

They’d shooed away the MPs as to protect the boy from prying eyes, but now being stared down by the metal clad kid, Roy almost wished they hadn’t so some shitty semblance of social etiquette would keep him from beating the older alchemist into the ground.

Al didn’t try. He wouldn’t.

He just looked to Roy pleadingly, somehow seeming small even when towering over the rest of them.

Roy swallowed. “We…” His words nearly broke, but Roy held it together. By a thread that was fraying, but he held it together. “We don’t know.”

“Colonel… he was with me. I don’t know what happened. He was with me.”

Al’s voice was far too young.

Roy swallowed back a nauseating swoop of horror because Ed wasn’t with his brother anymore.

At least—at least if they had been together then they could have looked out for one another.

Something had split them apart and something had kept Ed from trying to get back to the most important thing in the world to him.

“We’ll find him.” Roy told him and it sounded like a lie, even to his own ears. Falman and Havoc stood at his side, doing all that they could to assure the kid that this would turn out fine.

It always did! This would be no different.

“Chief probably just got too lazy to use alchemy.” Havoc said.

“Or he just didn’t want to risk moving any of the rubble in case there were other people.” Falman added.

Roy just swayed on his feet and felt panic start to set in, bone deep and unforgiving.

He’d been right.

He didn’t have the mental fortitude for this on top of everything else.

Al brushed himself off mindlessly, only humming a worried tone in response to their attempts at comfort. His armour was dulled by a thin sheet of dust, blanketing him and filling in the new scratches he’d gained from being caught under a building.

Caught under a building.

God, even if the boy hadn’t been in any physical danger, it must have been awful. Roy nearly asked why Al hadn’t been calling for help before the thought sprung into his mind without so much as a warning flash.

Al didn’t want to distract them.

He wasn’t very deep into the ground and had definitely heard all the commotion over the past while, but said nothing. He hadn’t been in physical danger.

So he stayed quiet.

It was the exact type of damning altruism he’d come to expect from the Elric brothers and he couldn’t find it in himself to be even a little frustrated because it was the logical, right thing to do. But here he was mulling over the information that Ed was here somewhere and hoping Al's silence hadn't been a mistake.

And unlike his brother, Ed was made of flesh and blood. He was made of bendable bones and breakable skin.

He wasn’t built to survive something like this. The dread was pulling Roy down.

Down, down, down.

It dragged him by the ankles and he couldn’t even fight it because he’d known something was off. He’d felt it in the air and seen it plastered across the faces of all his subordinates. Roy might have been shoving the thoughts aside when they arose, but they were there .

And they were loud.

Screaming and wailing that something wasn’t right.

That Ed and Al would have shown up by now. That they’d checked all their little hiding spots twice over and that the street that had been crumpled by a waning monument of brickwork and novelty games was terribly close to a little park that those two had arbitrarily picked as their personal haven for quick walks or long hours of reading when the weather approved. 

Roy had known that it was wrong and—

“Boss?”

He snapped out of the stupor. Havoc was scanning him, pace slowing. A few yards ahead Al and Falman were still trotting along towards the epicentre of the cave in, talking back and forth, rationalizing why Ed wasn’t bothering to use alchemy in every way they could.

“Yeah.” He replied. “Yeah, I’m listening.”

The blond man eyes him warily, though certainly not unsympathetic. “I know that you’re freaking out, but we need you here right now.”

“I knew that something wasn’t right.“

“We all did. This isn’t on you, but you gotta be here. Right now.”

He sighed and wondered when he started allowing his subordinates to have such a great impact on him. It wasn’t recent, but it wasn’t old either. This had been a slow progression. “Okay, okay. I’m here.”

“Good, cause the rest of us are still taking orders from you.” Havoc’s eyes thinned with a small smile. “Chief’s probably wondering what’s taking us so long.”

“Probably, yeah.”

Or he’s already dead.

Fuck.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Where was Al? Hadn’t he been here too? Ed was sure they’d been at least within shouting distance of one another when the beams and plaster let out a groan and washed over the street.

He’d been there, midway through calling out as the wave of debris curled down and sent Ed tumbling to where he was now with everything aching and his stomach still trying to pitch this great plan of throwing up everything, plus maybe a kidney for good measure.

Just to get free of the awful, dirty taste of chemicals and, well, dirt. The stench of iron kept on making him want to hold his breath and the pain from his hand—his crushed hand that couldn’t even work right and god what if he has to get it taken off?

What would happen if he lost another limb?

No, no. That was too optimistic. 

He might not get out at all.

Al was usually the one to look on the bright side. Ed had realism crammed up to his ears and filling up his pockets.

He might just not get out of here at all. He might just bleed to death or succumb to shock before there was so much as a sliver of light glaring down.

It would be simple to let his breath run out but Ed kept fighting against the urge to stop . He fought against it with the vicious desperation of an animal who’d already been shot and he really needed to stay awake but…

What if he didn’t? 

It would be so much easier to rest a while and… and maybe never wake up. It wouldn’t be so bad really. He wouldn’t be so damn cold, at least. Dreams could take over for the darkness and static would bowl through the noiselessness. It might be fine, why wasn’t he doing that again—

Focus. Please, for fucks sake, just focus. 

Al. What happened to Al.

They’d been walking together. Al ran ahead for… for something. It didn’t matter what, but his stride had grown more solid and reached across the pavement. He was surefooted, even on the ice. It wasn’t like there was much consequence if he were to fall.

It wouldn’t hurt and there were hardly enough people around to have made it embarrassing. Ed would have laughed before helping his brother up.

That’s not what happened though.

That’s not what happened.

What did? Ed was sure Al had been there. He always was there like the world's brightest shadow. Blindingly so. He could outshine anyone with just a few words and it seemed so easy, like a natural thing for Al to do.

A simple as taking a step or breathing.

Something Ed was still doing. He was determined to keep doing it, even though the taste was nauseating and his shoulders felt bruised and maybe something heavy like lead had been injected into his lungs and thats why they were so heavy to pump air in and out—

Focus.

They’d been walking together. Al had run ahead, heels skidding against the ice because it was winter and there was freezing rain the night before. It didn’t matter why.

The building next to Ed made a keening sound that he thought was just the ice slipping from the aluminum rooftops. It happened often enough, a quick onslaught of slush careening down from where it piled on shingles and weighed the gutters down into a terrible angle.

Ice always sounded like glass when it moved. That’s why neither of them had really noticed.

The high pitched, cavernous, screeching sound was spat across the street flippantly. Ed gave it all the respect he would give a raindrop.

He really did think it was just the ice, and not windows as their frames bent and the building came crashing down. The building did com crashing down.

All at once without a wail of twisting metal as a belated warning.

Ed couldn’t even remember seeing it touch the street. Just the roaring sound it made as it was uprooted from the ground, folding down on him.

Yeah, Al had been there.

So where was he now? He had to be alive.

Ed would have felt it if something went very—horribly, terribly—wrong. Wherever Al was he had to be okay. Maybe not happy, maybe not entirely whole, maybe losing his mind with worry and fear, maybe still trapped so far down under piles of rubble that no one could hear him, even with his endlessly powered voice and no need for airs or light or sound or any having there exit really any kind of conditions that could possibly tire him.

But he's okay.

Al had to be okay because even freezing cold, concussed, and run through by metal like a bird of a spit, Ed would have felt it.

He would have felt it like how he can feel the air as it refused to exist his chest peacefully.

He fell prey to another series of wrenching, jagged coughs that seemed sharp like glass and razors in his throat, blunt like a crowbar being swung against his diaphragm with all the force of ten very pissed off trains.

Because trains were sentient now, apparently.

The coughs themselves were rather rude, not even waiting for one to pass through before squeezing out of his chest, all too eager to make him choke and sputter.

Focus .

Ed shut his mouth tightly, lips pressed into a line. The jerking, involuntary huffs didn’t stop, but taking it in through his nose seemed to help. There was less room for grime and toxins to slither down his throat and sink their hooks in.

His head felt lighter by the second and unconsciousness was pleading with him to let go. Let go and lift away. It’s easier that way but Ed refused. There had to be some kind of logic to this. Was the dizziness from the concussion?

I might be from blood loss but—no that wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. Even with metal running through his arm, the blood would have frozen. It’s far too cold for it to have not. At best it would be sluggish, but even then the iron is still plugging up the hole rather efficiently.

Ed had made its job rather hard, trying to tear his arm away and likely ripping open more of his own skin, but that was a while ago.

It’s winter.

Everything was iced over and chilled to the bone. Ed was still shivering violently, teeth clicking against each other.

It had to have frozen.

Like the rain from last night. Like the gasoline from the cars that didn’t exist. So then why did it feel like everything was spinning?

It was endless.

Ed bit his lip and felt it slip back open just to have something other than dust on his teeth. He was at the seafloor now. The anchor did its job for a brief moment, pulling him down to the ground. It was peaceful and then it wasn't.

Ed kept on bouncing between the choked coughing fits and swallowing back to urge to throw up. He couldn’t seem to get anything of substance into his body and it all felt disgusting; unclean against his tongue and turning to sludge as it went into his chest.

His airways felt irreparably clogged.

Not just that, the air itself was—

Oh.

Oh wait.

He was running out of air, wasn’t he. The oxygen was thinning and vanishing. He couldn’t hear anything or see anything and the chances of this little hell hole being sealed in were rapidly growing higher. 

“You’re okay.” He told himself for the millionth time. The words felt acidic in his mouth and he ended up spitting them out with a forceful retch. Ed managed to keep the contents of his stomach where the belonged through some impossible miracle, but his insides were twisting into knots restlessly.

Fear had started to sink in, pricking across his skin and teasing at his thoughts. Ed couldn’t do anything to stop it because he could be running out of air and then he wouldn’t be able to do anything.

Al would be furious with him.

He would probably never forgive Ed for dying in such a stupid, inconsequential way. All because of rain and cold, he was stuck with metal ground into his skin, pinning his arm down, stones rolled over his fingers and the back of his head a mess of sour smelling blood. 

Misery is supposed to love company, but Ed was alone. It was deafeningly quiet and blindingly dark. 

Everything ached with a vengeance and his lungs were begging for him to let them rest after all the torment and abuse. He wasn’t built to survive this.

And maybe he wouldn’t.

Maybe he shouldn't.

Ed was running out of air.

Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was just forgetting how to do the alchemy in his chest and the shock of it all was sending him to a grave.

He was already there. This was more than six feet under. They could just leave him down here, stiff from the flurries and dead from the smoke—smoke… was that what was burning at his lungs or was it the carbon dioxide? Both? 

He’s going crazy.

It’s too dark and too silent.

He’s losing it.

“You’re not losing it.” Ed snarled weakly. The thoughts grew more and more frenzy. “You’re okay.”

If he said the lie enough times it would be true. Over and over until it brought itself to life, just like the monsters children would swear lurked under the beds or peers around the doors of their closets. Ed sucked in the dirty air over and over, each time breathing out the humiliatingly soft assurance.

“You’re okay.”

He was so pathetically far from being okay but there was nothing else to do. His shoulders shook with the force of chills, gooseflesh sprouting up in wide crops so suddenly and viciously that Ed could physically feel as his skin shifted, the texture becoming like a cliff face. It was jagged.

Or soft.

Or both. 

It was so cold and his jaw started to ache from being clenched tightly shut.

Ed tried to release the tension and hoped he didn’t accidentally break a tooth while he was at it. It's not like he’d be able to tell though. His mouth already tasted like blood and a steady, sticky trail of the stuff was continuing to leak backwards from his nose, sliding along the back of his mouth and down into either his stomach or his lungs. At least if he started vomiting up blood he could tell himself it wasn’t from internal bleeding.

It might be, but he could lie through it. He was lying through it now and it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working.

Ed was exhausted. It would be easy to stop. His lungs were pleading with him to stop please stop its not worth it it's not worth it please just stop.

He forced himself to keep going. He didn’t have a choice, no matter what all the nagging voices and warnings from all through his body said. “You’re okay.” He croaked into the darkness. For a split second the worlds echoed.

This was the first time he’d managed to rise above a whisper. It was so small, but the resounding mutter made Ed smile a little. He tried again. “You’re not losing it.”

His voice bounced across the stone and rounded back to meet him. He tried to flex his fingers in a vain attempt to retain some circulation, but even twitching them was beyond an impossible task. He tried anyways and kept on talking to no one, his words irreparably and painfully ragged, but most certainly there.

It was his anchor.

The seafloor was lonely and dark, but at least he could feel the floor.

He couldn’t breathe but at least he could feel the floor and he knew that there was still a tiny little chance. Even if he’d been down here for what felt like days, and an untreated concussion can kill someone as fast as hypothermia or asphyxiation.

Ed was running out of air. He was running out of air and blood and strength. The cold was unbearable.

He’s going to die.

“No.” He hissed. “Fucking— no.”

Everything protested at the words. Somehow the ache resounded right down his back and sent sharp slivers through his ankle. “You’re okay.”

He’s not okay.

“You’re okay.”

He’s going to die. Ed was going to stop breathing because he was almost finished cashing in his miracles. There was no god to smile down at him and even if there way, Ed had a hard time believing they would care.

Good riddance seemed more appropriate. It’s not like a god could lift the bricks or ease the toxins in the air.

Focus.

Keep breathing. Stay awake.

How?

Ed really wished he had a blanket. It wouldn’t make him stop shaking, but it definitely made him feel better. Maybe that was childish.

No, not maybe. It was.

He wished for a blanket just for the sake of having something soft among all the sharp edges and harsh lines. Even if it wasn’t all that warm, it could give him a little comfort in all of this.

A blanket.

Or perhaps a jacket. Just something that he could cling to for a while as his stamina failed and everything started to feel numb. It was like something was trying to pull him down farther than he already was like a tether tied right around his heart. Actually, no. It felt worse then that.

There was a cord that had been harpooned right through his chest and with every beat Ed could feel it inching in farther and coaxing him into oblivion. Every heartbeat was bringing him closer to letting go and he supposed that made sense. He was running out of blood and oxygen.

They were commodities, after all. High in demand, low in supply.

Of course his heart was trembling and lurching in his chest, slithering up towards his throat. It would be better to choke on it rather than have the shock take him.

Because shock was just so goddamn rude. He shouldn't give it the satisfaction.

Keep breathing. Stay awake.

“Y-you…” He tried to grind out the mantra again. “You’re—“ His arm spasmed and his breath fell out of his mouth in a strangled gasp.

He could hear his ribs creaking as they expanded and squeezed together. It was a delicate thing and he needed to make sure he didn’t stop doing it, no matter how much mud there seemed to me in his throat. No matter how sour it tasted. No matter how heavy it was.

It was heavy, though.

Ed wondered if this is how it felt to drown, heaving in something that didn’t belong there then forcing it out because there was nothing else to do. Drowning because of the self made anchor he’d created from his voice.

It had stopped working. His vocal chords turned themselves inside out and refused to do anything other than croak helplessly when he tried to say you’re okay.

When he tried to lie again.

Keep breathing. Stay awake.

Ed hesitantly filled his lungs with what felt like bricks, then pursed his lips.

It was an old trick that Pinako used to tell him, back when he was little and motherless. She'd take both his and Al's hands, and say: "Like this. Put your tongue back, then blow out a little."

It was shaky, rattling and with no real tune. The sound was directionless and soft.

But whistling forces you to breathe.

Focus.

Focus.

Fo—

It was cripplingly tedious.

They had to set up failsafes for failsafes with each beam they lifted, measuring and remeasuring each slab of stone they moved. It was an exhaustingly slow process, but Roy couldn’t do anything to make it go faster.

Being snappish and unfairly harsh would only frighten the MPs. They could grow sloppy in their stupor and end up losing their grip on a wire or over-turn a crank. 

Yet, being calm was impossible. Everything inside him was fidgeting and squirming around, coiling up into knots and braids so dense a sailor would’ve just opted to cut them had they been a rope on a mast. He couldn’t hope to push down all the nervousness and uncertainty that boiled in and around his head, heating the damn thing like metal on an open fire and giving him a migraine to rival the relentless beating of a sledgehammer on stone.

All Roy could be… was patient. He didn’t have any other options.

Staying still made him feel sick, rushing could cause some horrific, damning mistake. Waiting was torturous, but that's what he had to do.

Of course, Roy was also swamped with organizing, directing MPs and setting up objective after objective, watching over groups as they hauled debris away and making sure no one fell behind or was being put in needless danger.

He found himself either entirely surrounded by people asking questions, checking in with him, or in some way looking for a job to do. They were all restless and in search of a proper task.

Humans were like that, he supposed. Work was therapeutic when all you had to do was wait for the clock to shake hands and then do it all again.

If it this bad for Roy—unyielding and cruel—then he couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like for Al.

Al, who couldn’t tire nor needed any food. Al, who had volunteered himself for any job the was presented to him. One of the medics had tried to bring him over to their makeshift first aid tent, a hand laid gently over his and running through a series of questions that any medical practitioner would’ve had drilled into them before they so much as saw a stethoscope. But Al had jerked back with a dismayed, incredulous cry.

“I need to find my brother!”

They tried to assure him that it would turn out alright, insisting that he should be looked over. Roy stepped in before it got out of hand, sending a stern look to the medic. They bowed their head, a soft sigh elicited, but no more protests offered. They were just doing their job, but no one— absolutely fucking no one —could understand the terror and nauseating apprehension that Al was experiencing. He swayed on his feet, looking lost and Roy wished he had the skill to comfort him.

He wished he could cobble together whatever sugary words the kid needed to hear right now but he couldn’t. Roy had perfected lying as its own art from, but he couldn’t even force himself to take up a canvas. It was all too much.

He couldn’t do that. Especially not to Al, who would look right through his words as though they were made of water or glass or maybe just nothing at all. Even if the kid didn’t have any mode through which to deliver expressions, emotion radiated off of him in rolling waves and yhey washed over Roy ten times over.

It was only a glimpse into the sheer gravity of the panic that Al was feeling, but those fractions were enough to floor Roy. Once upon a time, he might have thought it was just worry.

But he could read people well enough. Everyone had an index and table of contents, whether they realized it or not. Anyone could be decoded if you knew where to look and Roy had learned what kind of lens that required. It was a skill that you needed when your career revolved around sleeping in a snake pit and strolling through a lion's den.

The military was just that but on enough caffeine to make a horse break the sound barrier. 

Roy could see the tension that made Al’s hands draw up into fists, curled protectively towards his chest when they weren’t filled with rubble or drawing circles.

Guilt, terror, despondence, and anything else that Al could fit into his chest.

At the very least, Roy had been right. This was a lot quicker with a prodigy at their disposal. It was awful the circumstances had to be the way they were, though. His correctness was no triumph. It was just heavy and loveless.

Al was deathly worried through it all. Everyone could hear how tight and strained his voice was; it was impossible to miss how he jumped to help; he didn’t seem to care if that particular heartstring was out on his sleeve.

The rest, however, were hidden much more carefully. They were being plucked and broken without the courtesy of a warning.

It was so much more than just concern. It was so much worse than just fear.

Al was angry.

Roy had always known that the boy carried his fair share of frustration and rage. It was a loud streak that only ever came around when someone managed to whittle down his patience to a thread and then snip it away with a final snide comment. Al losing his temper was rare, but it was explosive and indescribable.

He would never shout or argue. He would never fight.

But his voice would drop and he would become deathly still. 

Roy could see that anger working away at him now. It came and went, but it was there.

He trudged up to Roy for the fifth time in the past hour. The kid managed to look worn out. “Anything?” He asked hopefully.

Roy wished he could lie. “Not yet. We just have to be—“

“ —patient, I know.” Al spat.

The barb hurt more than it should’ve and Roy winced.

Al’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“I know you’re all doing your best. I’m just…” He waved helplessly. Roy nodded, eyes downcast.

“Yeah, I know.”

Al had been balanced in the brink of a full blown frenzy for over an hour now.

“Are you okay, Colonel?”

Roy blinked. His face softened a little because damn if this armour clad giant couldn’t knock his guard down in two seconds flat. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“I’m not okay.”

“We’ll find your brother.” The older alchemist assured.

“You didn’t answer.”

“I—“ He paused for a moment, weighing his options. Okay would be a splendid lie and he wasn’t really in top shape at the moment. Al had sharp eyes and a sharper mind. He would see through it. “—could be better.”

Al hummed. He didn’t sound smug exactly, but it was like he’d known the answer already and was just waiting for Roy to admit it. “Everyone seems nervous.”

“Everyone is nervous.”

“Even you?”

“Even me.”

Especially me.

They were trapped in another in-between stage. Mapping things out and drawing up game plans. The heavy lifting was on hold, so the labourers could sit and languish on the intervals. They could only do this section by section, picking the most abstrusive pieces of the crumpled street and defeating buildings to move aside.

They had to be patient. They had to wait.

Al sighed beside him. “I’m going to see if anyone needs help.” He vanished into the fray of people.

Roy found himself wandering away from the crowds. He drifted, feeling a little lost despite knowing every inch of this city and having agonized over this street for several hours now. Even with all his power, even with his rank and influence, there wasn’t anything he could do besides wait.

It was a devastating feeling.

A persistent one as well, sticking to him stubbornly and making his shoulders feel heavy. He stepped around small fissures and listened to the wind as it whistled. It wasn’t very melodic, but it was better to focus on that then the shuffling of dozens of feet, or remember how anxious Al sounded. Roy’s pace slowed and his listened, blinking slowly at the cacophony of overturned stones and blankets of dust.

His heart stopped.

There was no wind.

The whistling echoed upwards and his eyes blew wide.

Ed was sure he could hear something.

It was a low, rumbling sound. He knew it was there. At times it felt like he could feel it, the vibrations of some deep noise buzzing through him. But he couldn’t really tell if that was true.

He was still shivering, after all.

Ed kept on forcing air out of his mouth in a pitch-less tone, uneven and choppy.

Like waves, perhaps.

The seafloor was getting less quiet. It might be getting a little brighter too. Piece by piece, it seemed to let a little more light in. The change was small, but it was the strongest bit of hope he’d gotten since waking up.

Ed clung to the light and sound. He grasped onto it like a child would grab a blanket (or a jacket) and refused to let go.

Half an hour.

It took half an hour to pinpoint the sound and move the rubble.

It was as fast as they could possibly go and also infinitely too long. At least Roy didn’t have to simply wait. He had things he could do and people to direct. The medical staff approached from where they’d been huddled under a small canopy, accompanied by Fuery and a few makeshift cots.

They promised to be at the ready for whatever they found and, as much as Roy hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, he knew that was wishful thinking at best and impossible at worst. They swore up and down nonetheless, saying that Hawkeye had already been called back from where she was at the hospital with another survivor, ready to break as many traffic laws as she needed to and put the speed of any emergency vehicle to shame. 

Half an hour of digging and then they found something.

Roy had been hovering as a dozen MPs worked swiftly, carefully and somehow staying out of his path. They steered clear of everyone on his team, actually. Al too.

Smartly, the officers pivoted and swerved, not daring to obscure his staff’s line of sight and he could hardly blame them, as the nervous anticipation that billowed from the group was strong enough to taste. Roy knew his own expression was severe beyond his own intention, hours worth of restlessness and… and worry flooding outwards in a thunderous, shadowed look.

He knew his eyes were dark and the glower was withering. It didn’t matter at this point though because they were close. They were close and the feeble sound of a whistle was fading.

It would shake, vanishing for a few moments before returning with such explosive quietness that Roy was sure his eardrums would burst each time it happened. They didn’t of course, but the brief panic was followed by a world shattering moment of relief strong enough to make him reconsider.

The nail in his chest didn’t leave, if anything it burrowed deeper, but it seemed to fluctuate. Instead of twisting into his bloodstream, it constricted, growing smaller and less uncomfortable.

Al was stationed at the very edge of the outcrop, wringing his hands obsessively and trying to lean around people to get a better view. He was terrified that his weight might snap something loose and didn’t have the thoughtlessness to take more than one or two hesitant steps.

The boy was scared. He was filled up the the brim with spiked nerves and rapturous unease, shifting his feet and being uncharacteristically blunt. Al was never afraid to be honest, but he did so with a gentle tone. He seemed to have run out of the time and mental space to do it.

Roy was too focused on straining to hear the willowy, weakly blown note from below to space much concern for the younger Elric. He squinted down, looking through the plumes of dust, searching for a shadow or a streak of gold. Red would work too, he would settle for hoping it would be a familiar jacket and not blood.

Havoc was the one who remained nearby while Hawkeye raced over and the MPs scurried about. 

Roy watched intently.

And then there was a flash of red.

Just a few feet down, partially obscured from visibility as the whistling finally tapered off into a weak cough. It came to a full stop but under the layers of grime and through the thin veil of winter-born steam, he was there.

Ed was there.

Havoc was already scrambling down between the stones before Roy even had a chance to suck in a breath. A breath that was alarmingly thick and smoke-tinged. There was a fire still smouldering not far away and his blood went cold. He shouted (or screamed or something in between) for the medics before dropping down alongside Havoc, eyes wild and hearing the distressed cry from Al as he sprinted across the rumble, no longer having to patience or wherewithal to stay away.

He was still made of metal, broader and taller than most adults, but he fell to his knees before the crevice anyways and peered inside. 

Now, Roy was not the most graceful of people. He stumbled when he ran and did double takes on the daily, but for once in his life he was fluid. Maybe it was the sound of Al desperately calling out to his brother, or maybe it was the fact that he had almost missed Ed, soaked in grey dust so thick it clung to his skin and clothes. 

Maybe it was that Roy caught a dark smear of red before anything else and could tell even from an awkward angle that it was oily and reeked of metallic undertones. 

Whatever it was, it made Roy move faster than physics might otherwise allow.

Ed was curled on his side, a flat stretch of stone creating a shallow canopy over part of his body. His metal arm was limp beside him while the other disappeared under a jagged piece of debris. 

Both Roy and Havoc skidded to a stop, sending a small avalanche of pebbles tumbling. At least there was a decent sized area that was clear and relatively flat. The two men had enough room to both be there but god, what they were met with made Roy stop in his tracks.

He knew that it was due to the thick film of dust, stirred up from crushed bricks and cremated concrete, but Ed looked… dead.

He looked dead.

Unsettlingly pale and ashen like the body with a soul long gone. His skin was grey against the red. He really looked dead. The one thing that kept him from jumping to a myriad of awful, tragic, unfair, bad, bad, bad conclusions, was the heavy rise and fall of the kid’s chest.

His eyes were open and, of course, true to himself as always, Ed shot them a battered grin. There was blood on his face and his frame was being torn up by shivers. He smiled anyways, coughing.

“I’m okay.”

Ed was definitely not okay, but relief roared through him nonetheless.

Roy sank to his knees beside the kid, both hands raised hesitantly, scanning the boy and brushing off the feeling of premature grief in favour of taking stock as Havoc couched down as well. 

Ed’s gaze slid between the two aimlessly.

Yeah “You with us, Fullmetal?” Roy asked.

He flinched when the older man’s hand gently touched his shoulder. “Yeah I—I’m here.” He murmured. “Took you long enough.” Ed inhaled sharply and spat out something dark. To Roy’s absolute horror, it wasn’t blood.

Blood isn’t black. Not like that. It’s not dark like tar and thick like some kind of congealed sludge. There was too much dust down here and smoke was curling upwards and shit Ed was going to be sick from all of this for days. Weeks, even.

He was spitting out the very debris that he’d inhaled and, despite his lack of medical training beyond the basics, Roy still knew anything foreign being in someone's lungs was a fast ticket to a hospital.

He forced the tension to melt from his jaw and let just a little bit of sincerity worm its way to the forefront of his voice. Because he’d been worried. “Yeah, I know.” Apologize. Just fucking apologize. It took too long. 

Ed was absurdly lucky that he wasn’t dead. He managed to not get completely crushed by rubble and miraculously avoided asphyxiation; the fact that he was awake and talking should be impossible, but even with all that good will and survival by the skin go his teeth, things weren’t exactly looking good.

There was something clogging his lungs and blood seeping from the side of his head. 

Roy swallowed back a mouthful of regret. “Just give us a minute and we’ll get you out.” He shot a look to Havoc. His face was grim and shadowed, taking in the bloodied ground and the stench of fumes. It was coated in the smell and just the occasional, fading whisper of smoke was making Roy’s eyes water. 

And Ed had been here for hours.

He’d been breathing in fumes all the time, hadn’t he? Smoke and toxins and good knows what else. How he hadn’t gotten sick off the stench was beyond Roy; even the few minutes he’d been down here made his stomach start to churn. Ed’s inhales were fragile and thin, almost papery and each one seemed to make the boy tremble. 

Roy frowned, but stalwartly kept his hand in place. He could spout whatever reasoning he wanted later, but the long and short of it was that Ed looked ready to drift away. He needed something grounding; some constant to concentrate on, even if it had to be from Ed’s least favourite person. 

Ed blinked hard. “I…” His breath caught in his throat and he almost choked on the words. “I t-think I’m concussed.” He ground out. The bright, confident look didn’t falter. Roy could only assume it was out of pure spite that Ed managed not to crumple.

“You’re a lot more than just concussed , Chief.” Havoc’s hand slipped under the stone that obscured Ed’s flesh arm, prodding at it carefully. The younger alchemist cringed. Breathing seemed like a chore for him, every intake accompanied by an audible shake and a deep rattling in his chest. Havoc lowered himself a little more, a hand brushing against Ed’s forehead, pushing back the hair that had spilled across his face, matted with dirt and blood. 

“Not looking good… We need to get him to the medics.” Roy hissed under his breath.

“No, not yet. We can’t move him.” Havoc’s eyes narrowed, chewing at his lip and ostensibly trying not to panic. RoY heard the blond man’s hand hit something metallic. The sound reverberated for a moment and Ed flinched hard. Another pained, laboured breath from the kid. His eyes were growing clouded, half lidded and caught in an unwavering wreath of exhaustion and likely dizziness blood loss. Right, blood loss… 

There was a lot more of that than Roy was really able to process and Havoc tactlessly ripped the rug out from under him a second later.

“There’s a piece of rebar going right through his arm. I can’t see how bad it is. Could’ve nicked an artery.” Well look at that, there was a massive wrench.

There it goes, lodging itself into the situation.

Ed didn’t exactly have a whole lot of limbs to spare and if this was actual rebar—dirty and rusted—that had run him through then the chances of infection were already climbing, not to mention how plain old dirty everything was; not to mention the toxins that had been suffocating the kid for hours; not to mention that he still looked like a corpse. They really needed to get him out of here.

The medics couldn’t do anything to help until they could actually get to him.

“Can you tell if it hit bone?”

“Don’t think it did, but this shit isn’t exactly clean.” Havoc flared out his hand, dotted with bright orange rust and nearly black liquid. 

“Hand’s fucked too.” Ed added with a shudder. He looked smaller than Roy remembered, huddled on his side and dwarfed by the gargantuan stones that surrounded him.

He heard Havoc swear under his breath, his thumb pressed against the kid’s forearm and Ed shut his eyes with a terribly choked sound. “Sorry, sorry. Just trying to check for any breaks.” The blond man pulled back.

“S’fine. I…I’m gonna pass out, I think.”

“Don’t.” Roy ordered instinctively. “Keep your eyes open.”

“…I hate you.”

“Thanks. Keep talking.” Roy nodded to the other officer and he got to work, tearing off a cuff from his sleeve and unwinding it to form a dense rope-like strip of cloth.

“T-talking.” Ed parroted through another wave of chills. It was freezing down here.

“Yeah, normally you don’t know how to stop.”

“I can’t—“

“You can. You’re okay.”

Havoc used the fabric like a torquinet, tying it blindly and twisting until Ed, even as unfocused and bruised as he was, tried to bat the older man’s hand away.

Havoc huffed sympathetically in response. “It sucks, I know, but we can’t have you bleeding out, yeah? Just bear with it until we can get you out of here.

Ed deflated slightly with a sigh. “Can’t you just—“ His words blended and stumbled into one another. He sounded really out of it; a hair’s breadth away from unconsciousness. “—pull it out?” Ed asked, looking up at them blearily. 

Roy wasn’t even sure Ed could fully recognize them. At least, that’s what he thought until the kind gave him a split second once over and coughed out a mouthful of dust and blood. “Asshole.” He proclaimed with all the strength he could muster. Which wasn’t much.

But at least he knew who they were. No one else was bestowed with as many insults by Edward Elric as Roy was. His list of monikers was the length of a serial killer's rap sheet and included more swears than the ones pressed onto a sailor's tongue.

But still, the jab was a whisper of what it normally would be. It was strikingly obvious and, in all truth, it was actually worrying. Because even if he would make it through the concussion and his arm remained interacted, how much smoke had filtered into his lungs so far?

Ed was struggling to take in oxygen. His eyes were becoming more unfocused by the minute.

It’s winter.

Fuck.

Fuck .

Roy didn’t even second guess himself when reaching to press two fingers against Ed’s neck. His skin was waxy and pulse absolutely galloping into a roar. Even underneath all the grime, Ed was pale and cold.

It’s winter, after all, and the weather hadn’t exactly been forgiving.

There was no doubt that the kid would be viciously unwell from this; already he sounded put out and miserable, moments away from folding into the grasp of shock. Which would be really bad considering there wasn’t anything they could do until his arm wasn’t being maimed by metal and concrete. Ed shivered again and his pulse stuttered under Roy’s fingers. From up above, Al called down.

“What’s going on? Colonel?”

Ed tried to move, shifting to get his right arm under him. The two officers managed to keep him from ripping his arm from its socket. “Stay down. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

“Is Al okay?”

“He’s made of metal.”

“Is he okay?”

Roy shook his head and pushed down another wave of panic. “Yeah, he’s okay.” 

Ed relaxed by a fraction and his eyes fell shut. “Just… please just pull it out. It’s hot.” Ed muttered softly.

Hot ? The hell is that supposed to mean? Hot as in the metal itself or was infection already soaking into his flesh? It was alarming to say the least.

Ed flinched back from Havoc when he tried to get a better look at the jagged gash along his temple and scalp. The motion was involuntary. He tried to keep from jerking away as the older man undid the stitches of his other sleeve cuff, bundling it into a soft-packed wad and tucking it under the boy’s head in a feeble attempt to keep it clean.

Ed grit his teeth, but didn’t make a sound. He blinked, pupils blown wide and staring at nothing in particular.

“My hand. I can’t feel it but I know—I know it’s jacked….” He paused when a cough rattled through his lungs. “And—and I can’t—“

Roy cut him off. “We can’t pull it out, kid. You’ll bleed to death before getting to the hospital.”

“Don’t care.” Ed turned a little, meeting Roy’s eyes through a haze of pain and incoherency. “It fuckin’ hurts.”

He exchanged a look with Havoc who was making quick work of his gum, both hands clutching the haphazardly made torquinet and keeping the cord pulled taut.

He just shrugged helplessly, head inclined towards Ed’s arm that, in the slim rays of light that filtered down, looked downright macabre. It was white and grey like a tombstone, carved with thick, stony impressions from the rubble and dotted in bruises, coloured scarlet and black by the half solidified blood that swelled from the unseen wound.

“Colonel Mustang?” A high, unfamiliar voice called. He glanced up to find someone leaning over the hole, their eyes shielded from the comparatively bright overcast sky, watery light rippling around them.

“We’re down here.” He replied. “Kid’s pinned under some debris.”

“Pardon?!”

“Rebar. We’re trying to figure a way to get him out.”

“Don’t take it out.” The person snapped. “Try not to touch it at all, you could hit something vital. Can you cut through the metal?”

It was safe to assume this was one of their abducted medical professionals, based on the tone and strictness in their voice. An idea sparked up at the back of his mind. “Maybe.” Roy looked up to the medic. “Do you have anything for oxygen up there?”

“Of course but—“ They paused to turn away, murmuring something to Al. The boy took off in a sprint, disappearing from view in a split second. “—it’s only non-rebreather masks. It’s not safe to be transporting oxygen cylinders right now with all the ice.”

“Send it down.”

“But it’ll only last you a few minutes! There's about two litres worth of oxygen and—“

“I’ll take care of it.” Roy told them. “We’ll be up in a few minutes.”

The person lingered for a moment. “Okay. Get the boy sitting up if you can. Laying down will put extra pressure on breathing.”

“Right, thank you.”

“Boss?” Havoc questioned. “What’ve you got in mind?” 

He looked down at Ed and the blond alchemist looked right back, staring at him despite the glassy look to his eyes and the fact that every breath was now a shuddering heave. Roy’s face hardened.

“When I tell you to, pull up on that.” He gestured to the stretch of splinter-washed concrete that Ed’s arm was trapped under. “I can melt the metal. You need to lift it so the rest of his hand doesn’t come off.”

Havoc blanched and before Roy could stop him, he made a wild gesture. “Are you crazy?!” He yelped. “Metal is a conductor! You’ll just burn the kid’s damn arm off!”

He scoffed. “Please.” Roy gave him an unimpressed, slightly offended look because sure, he wasn’t by any means perfect and had screwed up rather royally on more than one occasion, but he wasn’t about to risk searing off Ed's skin.

Even he wasn’t that impatient, but they really did need to get Ed out of here and fast. Infection was surely starting to fester; there was fluid and mud in his lungs; there’s only so much even a trained professional would be able to do after a set amount of time.

A hospital was their best bet.

Roy tried to be flippant and downplay how severe it all was, waving casually but never taking his hand away from Ed as the younger alchemist’s heart continued to thunder and skip. “Give me a little credit. I can isolate it. Shouldn’t take more than ten seconds and that’s not enough for the whole thing to get too hot.”

The blond man hung his head with an exasperated, fearful huff. “This is a terrible idea.”

Ed let out a quick, strangled sound that might’ve been a laugh. His face was mirthless. “Don’t act…” Deep breath, swallowing thickly, trying not to get sick. Roy watched it all happen in just a moment, but knew that it would be back and again Ed was gripped by a harsh shiver. “Don’t act surprised. All his ideas suck.”

“Thank you, Fullmetal. Did you catch all that?”

“Yeah, you damn f-fire hazard.” He breathed.

“Just don’t pass out.”

The medic returned and gave a hesitant shout. Moments later they lowered a mask with a handy little bag of concentrated oxygen attached to it. Havoc took it warily. Roy ignored him.

”You hear me kid?”

“…Loud”

“What?”

“You’re… really loud.”

“Don’t pass out.” He repeated. Roy would be as loud as he damn well pleased so long as it annoyed Ed into staying awake.

“M’kay.” Ed tried to give a wave, but his metal hand refused to lift more than an inch off the ground. His eyes fell shut and Roy let his hand finally drop from where it had been monitoring Ed’s pulse. His fingers were adorned with red and grey, he noted absently.

Focus .

He slipped on his gloves, the stitched pattern ever faithful and bright against the curtains of dull floating partials that stirred all around them. He waited for them to settle because a dust explosion would be… bad? Awful?

Hysterically terrible?

All of it.

“Don’t torch me.” Ed murmured.

“No promises.” Keep things light. He doesn’t need to know how bad it is. He glanced to Havoc with a curt nod. “On three.”

“On three.” He agreed.

Roy knelt, taking up the other man’s place, carefully feeling for the rebar. It was rough against his gloved hand, catching on the fibres, the rigid grooves half decayed by rust—it was no wonder the building had come down in the first place. There was nothing holding it together but goodwill and nostalgia. Ice was a long stronger and a lot heavier than that. He focused, coaxing the oxygen into a concentrated little ring around the metal as far away from Ed’s arm as he could get it. All he could hope was to not add burns to the growing list of concerns. Roy grit his teeth.

Guilt was a fucking beast but this was the fastest way and he wasn’t confident that Ed could handle taking in any more smoke. Especially that which came from nitrate. It was toxic to people like salt is toxic to a snail.

He could feel the still ever-bright and annoyingly sharp eyes burning holes into his back, even without looking. Ed always seemed to be burning from the inside out, emotion and truth and whatever else didn’t quite fit in his chest would spill out in glowing embers.

The kid was absolutely volcanic in nature, even now with bruises up to his ears and a split across his scalp.

“ One .”

Havoc tensed, hands gripping the lip of the stone, ready to haul upwards as much as he could, still looking unconvinced of the plan. His eyes were steadily trained on Ed, worry written into the crease of his brow and twist of his mouth like words of wisdom into scripture lines. 

“ Two .”

Roy’s jaw itched to snap shut as a knife's edge of apprehension ran down his spine, scrapping against his fortitude viciously. He managed to suppress the concern that was most certainly coursing through him, coiled in his stomach and racing through his veins in a near serpentine, or even viperous fashion.

“ Three .”

Ed let out another thin breath. It hurt to listen to. His eyes screwed shut, waiting for whatever sharp pull or burning heat would come. 

Snap .

Havoc levered the stone upwards, straining against the weight so hard that his face was flushed within seconds while Roy scrambled to pull the stray limb out, rebar and all. And god , what a mess it was.

The blood and skin had crystallized around the wound in a way that could have been pretty if it wasn’t blood and fucking skin . His hand was a tangle of broken bones and split knuckles. 

Roy pulled the younger alchemist upright. Ed sucked in a gaspish breath and almost immediately started to cough.

Hard . Like, might break a rib or r upture an airway hard.

“Havoc.” He hissed, sitting back on his heels and keeping Ed from falling as he spat out dust and crimson, choking on air as he desperately tried to breathe .

Ed’s arm lay limp at his side, leaking a slow stream from where the iron was threaded through the limb. He couldn’t seem to stop coughing. Roy looked up to find his other subordinate looking shell-shocked and unsure. “ Havoc! ” Roy said again, more urgently because the mask was right beside him and Ed was going to throw up his pleura if he didn’t stop taking in smog. Each time he was able to force air into his lungs, it was shallow; as though the air itself was made of acid, his heaves were raw and ragged.

Roy kept a hand glued to Ed’s shoulder, letting the kid hunch forward, his metal hand grasping at his collar blindly like it was suffocating him. Finally Havoc snapped back to his senses, the dumbfounded look vanishing, replaced by one far more serious and severe. 

“ Sir ,” It was jarringly uncharacteristic to hear such a shaken, clipped word from the typically relaxed man—he was made of circular motions and could adapt to situations like water to a container. Havoc scrambled for the mask, releasing the valve that kept the air in place as he practically thrust it into Roy’s outstretched hand.

In turn, he shifted, letting Ed’s forehead rest against his shoulder and holding the miniature miracle over his nose and mouth.

It took a few painfully long seconds, but the fit lessened into a series of laboured gasps.

“You’re okay.” Roy said firmly. He felt Ed nod more then he saw it, but the confirmation was still silently reliving. “You’re okay.” He assured again, like that would make it more true.

Havoc was too busy scurrying back up towards the surface, calling for extra hands and trying to keep Al from losing his mind with worry. Roy tuned it all out. No one was really there to call him on the fact that he was just saying the same two words.

“You’re okay.”

In the same apathetic, stern tone. Ed just nodded as the heaves evened out into a more level set of inhales, still shaky and uncertain, but a clear improvement. Roy couldn’t see Ed’s face, he couldn’t read any expression or pick apart the thoughts that might be racing through his head.

All he really could see was the rebar poking through Ed’s arm, jamming the wound shut in a pretty gruesome way just above his elbow, and the sticky swath of blood that clung to the kids golden hair. It was coloured darker, muddied into an almost copper-adjacent tangle. It might have been a braid hours earlier, but had been matted with grime and alarming amounts of red.

Roy tried to level out his thoughts, staying as still as possible while Ed shook and writhed, suffocating on nothing and drowning in clean air. 

It’s a head wound. They always bleed a lot. Even a scrape. This is normal. Don’t say anything.

He could hear Havoc shouting, other voices blended and tore apart like the threads of some chaotic tapestry. Al’s worried cries cut above the rest in vibrant, striking bursts, but Roy couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. Nor did he try to.

He didn’t care enough.

His focus was on making sure Ed didn’t tip over or suddenly make himself sick from all the wheezing and hacking. “You’re okay.”

Something about it must’ve been grounding for Ed, because nodded shakily. Roy wasn’t even entirely sure the blond was registering the words themselves rather than just the hum of noise. He repeated it as many times as he needed to though, waiting for Havoc or a wave of medics to return and get the kid somewhere that wasn’t cold and unstable as glacier as it spun across open waters.

Roy had to refrain from giving up on formalities and fully pulling the kid into a goddamn hug because, even as he shuddered from the chilled air and freezing stone, that had to be crossing some kind of line. Ed would cuss him out for it later and probably try to push away even now. 

He stayed still.

From there it was a blur. Roy wasn’t completely sure how exactly they’d gotten back up, his tunnel vision growing debilitating and all the noises around him sewn together into a low buzz. It was like walking through the haze of a late night of drinking his liver into an early grave or the dream-like glow that came the morning after. He was feeling the same sense of vague, untraceable nausea that a hangover would bring as well.

Eventually someone pulled Ed away and, to Roy’s absolute horror, he almost started to protest.

Upon being met with a pair of uniforms belonging to none other than two medics, he snapped his mouth shut and allowed the kid to be led away towards a vehicle. A military vehicle, the doors swung wide open to reveal Breda tucked behind the wheel and Hawkeye seated in the back, the seats collapsed backwards to give them more space. She was already pulling off her jacket when the nurses (doctors, technicians, first aid adjacent, whatever they were) brought Ed to the car.

She shamelessly wrapped it around his shoulders, worry running rampant across her normally steadfast features. Ed hardly seemed to mind, wilting at the touch and curling in on himself. Breda gave a worried glance into the backseat and even from where he stood, a good ways away, Roy could see his hands tightening on the wheel.

Al hovered, asking question after incomprehensible question, trying to see his brother desperately like his life depended on it. Maybe it did. 

Roy didn’t know.

The younger Elric squeezed into the passenger seat and they took off before Roy had a chance to collect himself. His shoulders dropped, head hung and a tired sigh pulled from his mouth without permission.

“Hey,” He felt a hand on his shoulder and the smell of stale cigarettes filtered into his nose. Havoc .

“You alright?”

“Yeah,” No . “I’m fine.” That was fucking terrible .

He straightened up and put on his best Colonel face—tailored, polished, and handmade; it cost him a fortune in life lessons and dim battlefields—and turned to his subordinate. “We’ve still got work to do.”

Everything after Mustang and Havoc’s appearance was lost on him. Ed could recall a few things, like some disembodied voice reassuring him on loop, using the same words he’d been whispering to himself for hours.

He remembered hearing Al and feeling everything in his chest shift hard to one side, making his stomach clench and his throat refuse to be anything less than fiery.

It was a malformed series of snapshots right up until the car—when had he even gotten in a car —swerved hard onto a wide, empty street and suddenly Ed realized that he wasn’t nearly as cold as he ought to be.

It’s winter. He shouldn’t be this warm.

He was leaning against something alight with gentle heat. A person .

It wasn’t something, it was someone . And they had an arm around his middle, keeping him from slumping over, a hand carding through his irreparably dirty hair. Ed knew that at some point, the original mask had been swapped out for a new one, because the one currently fastened against his face wasn’t speckled with flecks of blood and dust. The other one had been. 

No, he couldn’t remember it happening. No, he didn’t really care that his memory seemed to be slipping away from him. 

He knew on some level that someone had been talking to him through the duration of the trip while rubber-clad hands were prodding at him. Ed didn’t have the energy or space of mind to argue against it and, truthfully, he knew how badly he needed whatever aid they were offering.

Whatever they were doing, even when it stung or burned hot enough that he flinched away, was necessary . He’d been losing blood and stamina for long enough that Ed did not care if he normally would have felt embarrassed at the need for help.

Everything hurt and he was tired.

The person—because it was a person—he was kept upright by had been urging him to stay awake. It was fuzzy and dotted, the words almost drowned out by a steady rising in his ears, but the alarmed nature of their voice conveyed as much as whatever they were actually saying.

His head started to clear and Ed shifted, wincing as the muscles in his arm spasmed. “We’re almost there.” The person told him. Their voice was familiar and fragile.

Hawkeye…?

“Just another minute. Stay awake.”

Yeah, definitely Hawkeye. Since when does she ever sound so shaken or worried? And since when did his coat get un-destroyed—

—oh.

Wait.

This wasn’t his. It was… blue? It was dark blue and held around his shoulders with the weight of two sleeves hanging off the sides.

Dark blue. There was a stripe of yellow mixed in somewhere, but he couldn’t pinpoint where. His eyes were too out of focus but it didn’t really matter because the blue thing was… warm.

Warm . It was warm, if a bit coarse on his skin. Comfortably so, not like the searing coals that had been stuffed into his arm, or the roaring chills from being pinned against stone. It was blue and warm and comfortable like a blanket. Something he’d been vying for earlier.

Like a blanket in a storm or perhaps an umbrella in the rain.

Warm . Ed leaned into it—whatever it actually was—and concentrated on doing as she had said. All he had to do was stay awake.

“Brother?” Al’s voice came from somewhere up ahead of him. Ed tried to lift his head but his throat tightened and he gave up within a second.

“He’ll be okay, Alphonse.” Hawkeye’s voice brushed past him like the taste of ozone before a storm. It was quiet but powerful. “He’s just a little out of it right now.”

Ed breathed in through his nose carefully, filling up his lungs until the puddle of slugs that was collecting at the bottom threatened to choke him. He exhaled and repeated it twice, slowly bringing his eyes up. For such a simple motion, it was exhaustive. He did it though, meeting his little brother's gaze with a pained, watery smile. The younger boy was twisted around in his seat, staring at Ed intently.

“Al…” His voice was about as strong as the breeze falling from a set of butterfly wings. “I’’m okay.”

The younger let out a soft sound that might’ve been a tearless sob. Whatever it was, it was drenched with concern and relief alike.

The car ground to a halt. Hawkeye’s hold on him loosened a little. “Okay.” She whispered. “Okay, you can sleep now, Ed.”

Oh thank fuck .

His eyes fell shut before he even heard the doors open.

And they stayed shut for a good while. Forcing himself to stay awake had taken quite the monstrous toll on his… everything . Mentally, he was struggling to compartmentalize; physically he was trotting along the thin line between infection and amputation, flirting with hypothermia, clogged with god knows what kind of toxins and missing a few quarts of blood; emotionally, he was shaken and plain old fucking scared .

Ed let sleep cradle him into oblivion and swam through the easy depths of static saturated dreams.

There were a few vignettes that were thrown in for good measure, of course.

When he did wake up, the room was dim and his arm was in a sling. 

The room.

Hospital.

Ed didn’t move, not wanting to risk the wrath of a migraine or a strict nurse, but glanced around, taking stock of everything through the fog that had carelessly seeped into his mind and made itself an atmospheric little home where the train tracks of his own thoughts were meant to run.

Station closed, Ed supposed.

He tried to shake it off anyways.

There was something covering his face again. It smelled like glass and rubber, pumping a steady breeze into his mouth. His mouth felt irreparably dry. The eastern desert would be jealous. 

He could still feel something blocking his airways, sticking to the walls of his chest, settled in a dirty heap at the bottom of his lungs and Ed knew that, sooner or later, it was going to come up and it was going to suck .

Like his arm, there was a tight set of bandages wrapped around his head, kindly keeping whatever was in there (he brain had already leaked out, Ed was sure) from spilling out. That was considerate of them. Wait… his arm.

It was still there. How long has he been out? The rebar had been removed already and it didn’t hurt as badly as it should have. Ed’s eyes slid over to the limb, growing sharper by the second and the clouds sharpened his senses into little razors. There was something there, snaking between the white of the bandages and pale yellow of the sheets.

A cord. A thin line that disappeared on his hand, taped onto his knuckles with a little tap-like thing stuck on like he was some kind of blood facet.

It went right into his vein, after all… 

Right. Hospital. 

It was an IV drip. He was probably on quite the concoction of painkillers wasn’t he? No wonder his wasn’t writhing in agony; they’d fading him drugs like it was candy and Ed wasn’t even mad about it. He’d rather feel out of sorts and a bit floaty then deathly sick.

Beyond the pale sheets, there was something else.

Blue. The warm blue from before. Ed reached for it, his metal hand brushing against the fabric. He pulled it closer, right up to his chin. 

“Brother?” 

He blinked slowly, head turning ever so slightly to find Al, hunched over on a chair and leaning forward. Ed tried to reply, but all that came out was a dry, wheezing huff. “It’s okay.” Al raises his hands placatingly. “It’s fine. Don’t say anything, I’m supposed to get one of the nurses when you wake up.” He stood and Ed did something impressively stupid.

He sat up. 

“ Wait— “ Ed tried, voice barely a gasp. He doubled over with a cough before the word fully passed his lips. He really shouldn’t have done that at all and Ed knew that but it was just dark enough and just quiet enough that—

He didn’t want to be alone if he could help it. All the garbage in his lungs and throat lurched, climbing upwards and even with the concentrated stream of oxygen Ed couldn’t breathe.

Al cried out, but Ed couldn’t concentrate on whatever he was saying. He just felt a sickly, cloying ball start to build at the centre of his chest, shoving itself upwards and trying to strangle him from the inside.

The darkness was flooded by bright—too bright way too bright—lights and a few people rushed inside. His eyes were stinging.

Ed’s hand clutched at the warm blue thing, still too drugged up and hurt to identify it beyond that as someone gently pulled the mask away from his face and settled a bucket in front of him. Ed didn’t throw up. No exactly.

He spat out a good few mouthfuls of nasty looking mud before his chest finally stopped heaving and his head was pounding . He was out before they even fully eased him back onto the pillows.

Ed woke up to find the room back to being dark and with the glint of his brother's metal body peeking into his peripheral. Al noticed quicker this time. “Don’t sit up.” He demanded, sounding far more authoritative than he usually did.

Ed nodded and Al’s shoulders sagged. “You’re sick.” He informed quietly. “Do you remember much?”

He opened his mouth to reply, but paused. It was still terribly dry. Ed nodded instead and watched as Al’s bright eyes became more downcast. “We brought you here yesterday afternoon. You were out until around two am last night. It’s eight now. And…” Al took a long pause. Ed wished that he could reach over. To cover his littler brother’s hand with his own, even if neither of them could truly feel it. Al shifted his weight, the chair creaked beneath him.

“The nurses said you’ve got pneumonia. Aspiration pneumonia, I think. And a concussion. That’s why all the lights are off.” He gestured. “They said that all the coughing was normal. It’ll keep happening until everything it out.”

Figures. Ed sunk into the pillows a little, eyes thinning to mere slits. He still couldn’t really see straight and his senses were muted at best. He still had the warm blue though. That was nice. He was glad no one had taken it because… 

Because…

Who cares.

Al was right though, and by extension so were those nurses. While he was still trapped in the throes of painkiller kite-flying levels of being, in essence, high , he had more unpleasant episodes wherein his chest and all its contents decided to turn inside out.

He coughed until his eyes watered and could only collapse backwards and try to regain his bearings. It tended to leave him falling back asleep. He knew that less time was passing then it felt like. Al told him it had only been two days since he’d been admitted to the hospital when it had felt like weeks, but he guessed that feeling like hell itself was raining down its wrath into his own throat would make time feel stretched out.

Even that was being charitable. In those two days he flipped between shivering and feeling like his blood was made of flames itself. His vision was spotty and he would be in and out so flippantly it was insulting. His body was apparently delighted to give in at the drop of a hat after he’d put it through the wringer. The traitorous prick. 

According to one of their doctors, probably wasn’t going to be able to stay awake for longer than ten or so minutes for the next day. 

He ended up sleeping a lot and feeling sick a lot. And coughing a lot. 

After a three day eternity of waking up and losing consciousness, Ed clawed his way back to the land of the living. As promised, he felt awful. He clung to the warm blue through all the fits, sight still unable to pull anything into focus and his pulse constantly racing.

He had been right: it sucked . Getting all the dust and dirt and whatever else had been piled up in his lungs was terrible and half the time Ed was certain he would choke and just die right there. It felt like there was something blocking any air from going in or out, jammed and refusing to budge. Of course, he didn’t die.

He was just miserable and in pain. 

Whenever he wasn’t trying to retch out a kidney, Ed was stuck with a rubber mask and a flow of air. Normally he’d be more resistant to it, but considering how dense and cold the normal hospital air was, he settled for the slight humiliation of having the mask on. 

Talking hurt, but he did it anyway. To Al, mostly, laying down or curled on his side, trying to ward off the shivers that still ran down his spine recklessly. They didn’t let him turn on the lights and it left him hopelessly bored. Al patiently sat and spoke softly for hour and god Ed loved him for it. 

He needed some kind of sound. With the chills insisting that he was still cold and the dark room successfully blotting out most light, it felt too much being buried. Again. 

Al’s voice was like a goddamn bacon thought it all. He was a lighthouse with the kindest glare Ed had ever encountered. Day three was when Ed was finally able to stay awake but it was by far the worst.

Because Ed was finally able to stay awake.

Suddenly he missed being trapped in dream land. Being conscious was hellish and brutal. A young woman had come in through the day to change the bandages on Ed’s arm and disinfect. The process nearly made him black out.

Al did what he could. He explained everything that had happened, back when the nickelodeon arcade toppled sideways and sent the street below it caving in. There had only been five people caught in it, both of them included. No one died.

Ed had gotten off the worst, with the runner up sporting only a broken leg.

“The Colonel heard you.” Al said quietly. “I don’t know how long it would have taken us to find you if he hadn’t.”

Ed just hummed in response.

“You were whistling.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement, but Ed nodded. Al fidgeted with his hands. “That’s the trick that Granny told us about, right? It forces you to keep breathing.”

“And—“ Ed swallowed thickly. “—and for hunting.”

“Right, right. To keep in touch over a distance.”

“Mmm.”

Al started to spiral. “They wouldn’t have found you.”

“Al,”

“They almost didn’t.”

“Al,”

“You almost—“

“ Al .”

“What?”

Ed gave him as stern a look as he could muster, still bundled in blankets and still hesitant to say more than a few syllables. “Stop doing that. You’re—“

Breathe .

“— I’m okay.”

Al fell silent for a moment. It was a long moment. For a moment Ed thought he might be shutting down. It wasn’t uncommon when the younger boy got too overwhelmed to simply stop and block the world out until he felt a little steadier. But Al laughed.

It wasn’t perfect—the tone a little shaky and bitter. He laughed though, just for a second. “You’re stuck here under observation for a while, you know. For the concussion and to watch for infection.”

Ed frowned. If only he could cross his arms. For once the metal one was intact. He could hear the slight smile in Al’s voice when he spoke. “Everyone has been wanting to come see you. They keep bugging the staff, but there’s only supposed to be one visitor at a time. I… I’m actually not supposed to be here. Lieutenant Hawkeye bullied the nurses into letting me stay.”

That sounded about right. Bless that woman and her trigger discipline. 

“They were scared . For a while there, when we didn’t know where you were. Everyone was nervous.” His shoulders hunched forward. “Even Lieutenant Hawkeye and the Colonel.”

Some part of him felt a little guilty. Another part took that as a small victory. Hah. 

Proof that Mustang was a prick because he wanted to be and not because he was born that way. A new thing to use to tear into his ego. Potential blackmail material.

… Assuring . 

“Do you remember what tune it was?”

Ed shook his head. 

Al sunk into his seat. Then, slowly, his head tilted up. He couldn’t whistle. There were no lungs in his chest or lips on his face to do so. Instead Al hummed.

Ed listened and stared at the dark ceiling until it lulled him into a trance.

For the first time since… since a while , Ed relaxed, well and truly. It was dark, but he wasn’t cold. The blue was there. He still couldn’t tell what it was and didn’t care to. It wasn’t quiet. Al was with him. 

Cold.

It was cold.

He wasn’t supposed to be cold anymore. It was dark and cold—winter, that’s because it’s winter—but last he checked it wasn’t like that anymore.

Ed was supposed to be in a hospital. Al was supposed to be here. It was too quiet and cold and dark.

Ed bolted upright, eyes wide open and a little frantic. He could move but it was still dark, quiet, cold and where the hell was Al he had been here before and he couldn’t feel the blue anymore—

“Fullmetal?”

Ed stiffened. 

That… that was Mustang, wasn’t it. Ed blinked, trying to see through the lightless room, waiting for his eyes to adjust a little. He didn’t have to wait long, because apparently Mustang was prepared. A small light flicked on in the corner of the room. It looked like a lighter.

Ed briefly wondered if it had been pilfered from their local smoke-sucker.

It was low, only spraying a soft orange glow around the dull room. Mustang looked at him for a moment, nonplussed. Then his hand jerked and the light went out. “ Fuck , ow.”

Ah, yes. The Flame Alchemist. Burning himself.

With a zippo.

Ed might have laughed if his mind didn’t still have one foot in the panic room and one being torn away by an anxious train of thought that still cried out where’s Al.

The flame lit again, held a little more carefully. Mustang stayed where he was, just within reaching distance of the foot of the hospital bed. There were two swaths of fabric draped over his arm. One was presumably the alchemist’s own uniform jacket. Why was there two? 

The older man’s expression was startlingly unguarded. 

Normally it looked like pounded metal, crafted into something unkind and hardened. Now he just seemed sort of unsure. It didn’t suit him much. 

Ed was still in a bit of an internal frenzy. His heart still skipped and raced in a desperate bid to explode outwards from the force of his own nervousness. It was cold.

“Something wrong?” Mustang asked. The younger alchemist’s hand crept across the sheets, but there was nothing there. Not what he was searching for. Mustang took a careful step forward. “Fullmetal?”

Ed stared, unable to clear the panic from his face. The mask wasn’t there anymore, he noted absently. There was nothing to cover for the fact that he’d been momentarily terror stricken.

Mustang tensed. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Ed managed. “Just didn’t—“ God, he sounded like he’d been swigging oil. 

(No, it was frozen. It wasn’t there. Relax.)

“—expect you here.”

He didn’t seem convinced. “I can get one of the nurses,” Mustang started.

“I’ll punch you.”

Because what else was he supposed to say?

The older man frowned for a second, but the critical edge left his expression. He had some kind of internal debate. Ed could almost see the opposing forces going back and forth, trying to come to a proper decision. It only lasted a few moments though. He levelled a glare at Ed through the almost cozy firelight. Which, come to think of it, was a rather considerate option, seeing as the loud white lights of the hospital room were, most charitably, absolute hell on Ed’s head.

The lighter let them both see without bringing on a blackout-worthy migraine for the one who was concussed or whatever.

“Hope you know how much trouble you caused.” Mustang said. It sounded like he was trying to be harsh and admonishing. It was a tone Ed was pretty used to hearing but it was strained. It broke right down the middle a half second later. He sighed. “Scared the hell out of us too. Your brother was losing it for a while and—“ He cut himself off sharply. Ed’s eyes narrowed a little.

Al had been telling the truth, then.

Mustang might be great at lying, he might have a degree in jackassery and be a professional at staying neutral. He must have had years of practice at this point, practicing apathy like it was its own school of thought and enjoying the space between theory and praxis. Politics did that to people.

And, you know, life .

But mostly politics. Mustang was a good liar.

But he was also stupid.

Because his stamina was low and he didn’t pace himself on this one. So his tone split and his voice broke just a little bit more then it should’ve.

Al had really, really been telling the truth: they’d been scared. 

Ed was at a loss for what to say. Both because of the highly unexpected nature of literally all of this, and the fact that speaking still felt like glass was scoring across his throat. Mustang’s eyes were downcast. “Normally I’d be pissed, but this one’s not really on you.”

Ed barked out a laugh. It hurt, but eh. “Winter sucks.”

“The worst.” He agreed.

Ed hesitated for a second. Sitting upright was a bit hard. He crossed his legs, half folded into a ball of a person. “Why’re you…?” He trailed off, gesturing.

“You stole the Lieutenant’s jacket.” He lifted his arm, adorned with the two pieces of the uniform.

Dark blue. Warm blue.

Oh. He stole her jacket. 

That’s why it was cold. Mustang’s voice drove a hammer through his thoughts. “What’s wrong?” He asked again. “You can’t hide stuff when you’re still getting pumped full of painkillers.”

“I’m okay.”

“I’m not going to laugh, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It’s just cold.”

He raised an eyebrow. “It’s like thirty-six degrees in here.”

“ I’m cold.” He snapped.

Mustang blinked. Ed swallowed back another fit of coughs with a harsh huff, and by the time he looked up, something dark was thrown over his head. He pulled it off with his functional hand.

Dark blue and warm. He shot the older alchemist a mistrusting look. He waved. “I’m sure she won’t mind if you hold onto it for a while.”

Ed was glad that, even with the light, it was still pretty dark. Because it meant Mustang wouldn’t be able to see him clutching the stupid jacket to his chest like it was a security blanket. It gave him some comfort (something soft among all the sharp edges and harsh lines) and a bit of warmth (as his stamina failed and everything started to feel numb).

Like a blanket.

Goddammit.

“Thanks.”

Mustang shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. There’s always spares.”

The light flashed off for a second, sputtering out with a metallic flick. He’d probably burned through a little too much of the fuel in one go. It was back a few moments later though. “Your brother is outside. Pretty sure he wanted to call your mechanic about frostbite and whatnot. I’ll send him back in.”

Ed nodded. Mustang made for the exit, but took a pause when his hand rested on the door.

“I’m glad you’re okay.” Then he was gone.

Ed blanketed himself with the (warm blue) jacket. It was winter and he was concussed.

It was dark.

But he wasn’t cold and Al was a split second away.

“Your jacket, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

There was a long pause and a critical look.

“Something wrong?”

“No. I’m just curious as to what happened to your jacket.” She paused. “Did you—“

“It was taken.” He said flatly. “I’m not getting it back any time soon.”