Chapter Text
From the day he set his heart on joining the military, Roy expected to die young.
He said he wouldn’t. People called him an idealist and people called him arrogant, and he wore their scorn like badges of honor. What was it to him but more odds to beat? This country has to change and he swore he wouldn’t kick the bucket until he becomes Fuhrer and sees it make a turn for the better.
But a part of him always knew.
Maybe all of him knew and the boioustry he’s known for was merely a roundabout way of being in denial. Stubbornness is only such a factor; half the cadets he went to academia with are dead, and Life is a dirty gambler, and Death follows him closely enough that he can feel its breath on the back of his neck.
“Colonel!”
Most of him might’ve already died in Ishval.
“Damn it, Colonel, I swear to fuck—”
The world around him quakes, and Roy’s eyes snap open to the sensation of icy rain on his face. A gong buzzes between his ears like it was struck with a cannon. Pain stampedes behind his eyes and underneath his ribs. The side of his face is sticky. Eyelids sticky. Metal in the back of his throat.
“Colonel? Colonel!” The voice comes from overhead, desperate and shrill. “Can you hear me? Hey!”
Ed.
Roy swivels his head to find the kid staring down at him, his blown-out eyes bright like a lighthouse against the dark sky. His hair is half-undone with flyaways plastered to his face, clumped together with grime and blood.
Alive. Kid’s alive, but—hurt.
How bad is he hurt?
Roy shifts but freezes when Edward jerks with a cry. His real hand is clamped around Roy’s wrist, shaking from the strain, and his automail digs into the side of—a rock? It must be sturdy if Edward is trusting his weight to it but Roy can’t be sure what it is.
“Don’t move,” Edward gasps, his voice wet and full of holes, “I—I’m tryin’ to think.”
Roy swallows some of the smog in his throat only for his chest to bubble up with more of it. “Wh-What’s going on?”
Edward’s teeth dig into his bottom lip. His hair frames his face at a weird angle, braid slipped over his shoulder while his bangs hang like a waterfall, and—
Roy tries to move. His feet meet cold air and nothing else.
Dangling.
Dangling?
He shifts, carefully, ignoring the viscous throb behind his eyes and in his neck as he forces himself to look down.
A ravine stretches beneath them, narrow cliff’s edges and gushing water far below.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
“Ed—”
“I said I’m thinking!” Edward snaps, angry and afraid. “Just, just stop freaking out.”
His automail makes an awful noise. Edward clenches his teeth and sinks his grip deeper into whatever anchor he’s made for them, his other hand tight around Roy’s wrist.
Shit.
“It’s fine,” Edward is babbling. The blood in his hair means he was probably struck, probably has a concussion. “We, we’re gonna figure it out, just—are you hurt? You’re hurt, right? Colonel.”
Shit. Shit.
“Colonel,” Edward chokes.
The tears in Edward’s throat tear Roy back to the present. Edward stares down at him, clings to him. Roy’s head pounds.
“Definitely—Definitely a concussion,” Roy manages. “And, I—I think my ribs are broken.”
“How many?”
“Enough.” He swings his leg out again. Something’s fucked in his hip, but it doesn’t hurt, which means it’s either a minor dislocation or he’s gone numb. Not feeling pain when you should is never a good sign. “Don’t think I can move much.”
“So the same as when you were passed out,” Edward bites. He ducks his head, hiding behind his hair with a hiss. “Fuck.”
The rain kicks it up a notch, jackhammering over them and the wreckage and the mud. Roy grabs at his thoughts, his bearings, anything— neither of them wanted to take this mission, some bastard with a gun and a hostage and a bone to pick. Bastard with a gun and a bone to pick who lied about having a hostage. Together they managed to get the drop on him. Ed transmuted the guy’s gun into a pair of cuffs. It should have been over. Should, but Roy’s recollection ends there and any attempt to dig is punished with a stake between his temples.
“Are you hurt?” Roy finds his voice. Edward jolts and stares at him with wide eyes. “What are your injuries?”
Edward sets his jaw. “Like hell I’m telling you.”
“Ed—”
Edward slips, and the godawful cry that flies out of his throat nails Roy between the ribs, close to his heart. Edward pulls himself together just as fast, teeth tight and eyes squeezed shut while his arms shake under the strain of the weight. Both their weights. Edward’s breaths come in stammering gulps. He’s missing a shoe.
How long have they been hanging?
How long—
How much longer—
Roy heaves himself, tries to swing his dangling arm to the one Edward’s clinging to, but he can’t muster the strength. His arm doesn’t budge. His head throbs.
Shit.
Edward’s full-body tremors rattle down Roy’s arm. Even uninjured, on his very best day, it’d be a feat for Edward to hold him like this. But Ed’s hurt, his hair full of blood and mud and his pupils are huge. He isn’t even getting a proper breath. Hysterical strength can only last so long.
“Ed—
“No, shut up.” Edward tries to heave him up but there's no strength in his arms. “Shut up, I’m—I’m gonna fix this.”
Roy grits his teeth. The gushing water at the bottom of the ravine is a long, long way down. “You can’t—”
“Yes I can.”
Fuck. “Ed.”
The vibrancy of Edward’s fear tears into Roy like an animal, but the fear just as soon warps into rage when the kid looks at Roy— really looks at Roy—and when Roy’s pokerface isn’t good enough, and whatever Edward finds in his eyes is enough to make him realizes. “Shut,” Edward snarls, “the fuck up.”
“Edward.”
“No.”
Something in Edward’s shoulder pops. Roy is jolted. Edward clamps a shriek behind his teeth, his face wrenched in pain. The automail groans under the weight. How long did his mechanic say it’d take to heal? Three years? Edward pushed it, always pushes it, and he’s only fourteen and automail is not magic.
Fuck.
Roy sinks his fingernails into Edward’s wrist. The bite makes Edward flinch, minuscule, but he doesn’t loosen a finger. “Edward, let go.”
“No.” Roy feels his own shoulder strain and start to give, pain lacing across his tricep down his spine to join the tangle of nerves in his chest. “No, I’ll—I’ll think of something, just shut the fuck up and let me think, godd—” Edward’s shoulder jolts again, the real one, and the kid traps a sob behind his teeth. “Goddammit.”
Roy’s chest hurts. “Fullmetal.”
“Don’t you dare call me that right now.”
The concrete under Edward’s steel fingers bows with a crack. Edward yelps and Roy feels it in the pit of his gut, heavy and cold. Edward heaves for air.
“I’m going to fix this,” Edward blubbers, “I, I’m gonna pull us both up, j-just—”
If Roy had woken up sooner, maybe. But he didn’t. But— But Edward might be able to pull himself up with a dislocated shoulder as long as his automail doesn’t give out.
Roy swallows. “Ed.” He swallows again. “Ed, it’s okay.”
It isn’t. Nothing is ever going to be okay again and it’s a lie that Roy regrets the moment it’s out of his mouth.
Edward guts him with his eyes, with his glare. He looks distressingly close to tears. “Shut up. Just, stop talking and let me think of something.”
“Kid.”
Edward snarls. “I’m not letting go of you.” His grip on Roy’s wrist is so tight it hurts, but then he squeezes even tighter, until Edward’s adrenaline and fear shake down Roy’s skin and sink into his bones. “S-So stop—stop being a dumbass and help me—”
The kid’s voice finally breaks open, the crack raw and wet and scared, and it strikes Roy’s core deeper than any bullet. Any impact.
Regret.
Ed’s glare comes down on him fiercely. Roy is about to earn it.
He clamps his hand around Edward’s thin wrist, looks away like the coward he is, and twists.
Edward shrieks. Keeps shrieking as Roy keeps twisting. Starts to swear. Tries to pull, pull, pull, and he can’t, and he sobs, and he begs stop it, stop it, stop it. Roy twists until there's a terrible noise and Edward screams.
Then Ed’s hold slips.
His fingernails scrape a sharp and bloody gash into the back of Roy’s hand. It stings. It bleeds.
Roy tastes air and rain as he falls.
I’m not sorry.
Several seconds. Roy’s gaze fills with muddy sky and the jagged edges of the ravine. The clouds are dark. The air is cold. Edward is still screaming.
Roy closes his eyes when they start to burn. The wind swallows up Edward, and Roy swallows down guilt.
Forgive me.
The impact feels like nothing and tastes like blood.
Roy expected to die young. He’s lost enough buddies in the military that it’s pretty much a given. Fresh war lies upon every blood-soaked horizon the sun can spread itself upon, and it was only a matter of time before someone or something caught the better of him.
Hitting water from a high enough vantage has the same effect as hitting concrete. He knew that.
He isn’t prepared.
Hitting concrete. Water in his ears, up his nose and down his throat.
Death is cold.
Roy is tired.
The betrayal in Edward’s ashen face is trapped behind his eyelids.
That image, frozen forever, is hell on its own even without the cold.
He’s pulled.
Up.
Is he breathing?
He shouldn’t be.
There's a glacier in his stomach. It starts to hurt.
Ice has a far more brutal burn than fire.
Foggy screams beat against his ears. He places it as familiar but can’t pin down a name.
The light comes next and it burns, too. Doesn’t blot out the branding of Edward’s despair in his soul.
It is one of many things Roy will never scrape from himself. One more wrong he’ll never right.
What could he do? What would he say?
Edward screamed as Roy fell.
God, Ed.
Hawkeye is gonna shoot him for making Edward scream like that. He’s never going to see her again.
Hughes is going to be upset. Roy can hear him now: You’re younger than me. You can’t die before me.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Pressure on his chest. Pressure on his chest. Pressure on his— lungs—
Drowning
Roy chokes.
Gasps.
Air.
Above him instead of below him.
It’s like swallowing razors.
But his lungs dig into his shattered ribs and the pain is fanatically real. Unless he’s landed in hell like he deserves.
He keeps coughing.
Someone grabs him by the shoulders and shoves him onto his side. Water spills out of his mouth. It’s cold. His ribs burn, broken bone clawing against his organs. Rainwater like knives.
The corners of a ravine.
Edward’s filthy hair and sharp eyes.
Edward is yelling. Edward is crying.
Roy has never seen Edward cry before. The anguish in Edward’s face is far more terrible than his rage. When was the last time he cried?
The rain drags blood and mud over the kid’s face, and Roy can’t hear anything when Edward’s mouth moves.
If Roy is in hell then why is Edward here?
Edward fumbles for Roy’s shoulder. His hair sticks to his face, soaked in blood and water. He’s shivering. Roy isn’t shivering. It isn’t even cold anymore.
“Don’t die.”
Roy’s ears finally take in noise beyond ringing and rain and hurt hurt hurt.
“Don’t die,” Edward chokes, shaking him, “don’t you dare die. You can’t die, you can’t—”
Roy doesn’t want to die.
Landmine.
Roy drifts somewhere between light and cold and burn and Ed.
That goddamn bastard set off a goddamn landmine.
Red lights and darkness. The cold is back. Someone moves him and it hurts. He snaps his fingers just once, instinctive, but nothing happens. There are more voices now—more bodies. White coats. Blue coats. Hughes might’ve been there, might’ve hugged him. It’s a blur.
Edward’s lips are blue when Roy manages to break open his eyes. The kid’s face is bruised. Rainwater and tears carve streaks through the dirt on his cheeks. He shivers. He shakes Roy’s arm. His automail is freezing. The word clips to moments; fractions of moments.
Hughes’ hands on his shoulders, glasses smeared with rain. Distraught.
EMTs unload a stretcher, unfamiliar voices in frantic overlap. Riza is here. Riza is upset, soaked in rainwater with her hand on her gun.
Edward is dragged off by Havoc, thrashing and yelling.
Familiar people. His people—Hughes, Riza, Fuery, Breda, Farman, Havoc, Ed. Noise, voices, swinging blood bags on an IV hook. Needles. Pleading.
If it’s a dream, it isn’t a good one.
If it’s real, Roy wants to keep it.
Keep it.
Keep it.
Both hands. Grab on.
Don’t you dare let go.
Roy doesn’t want to die.
It isn’t just Hughes that’s a blur; the whole world smears together like watercolor, static sounds and stale smells. Antiseptic and blood and whirring machines, bright lights and cold air and the color white. The word fractured and the word surgery.
No sign of Edward.
Where’s Edward?
That bastard set off a landmine.
“Don’t move, buddy. Just stay put.”
Havoc. Throttled and exhausted, but Roy would recognize him anywhere. He can’t open his eyes. Pain crawls up his lungs into his throat.
Havoc’s voice filters in and out. Riza holds his arm very, very tightly. He knows it’s her even when he can’t open his eyes.
Why can’t he open his eyes?
“Ed,” he feels himself say. The movement around him hasn’t stopped—hasn’t slowed.
“Edward is safe,” Riza tells him, “we’ve got him. You need to rest.”
“We’re going to put him under now.” He does not know that voice, but it’s clinical and straight and it isn’t enough to know that Edward is safe, Roy needs Edward to be okay. “Hold him steady.”
“Ed,” blubbers up Roy’s throat again.
Riza’s hands squeeze around his arm, anchoring, and Havoc puts pressure on his shoulder. “Don’t move.”
That doesn’t answer his question. Edward was a part of the inciting explosion too. Where is he? Is he safe? Warm? His lips were turning blue and he was crying—
Roy made him cry.
“Where is he?”
“Colonel, stop.” Havoc is unusually upset. “Chief’s in shock, he checked out as soon as we got here but the hospital’s got a whole team lookin’ after him. Alphonse is gonna be here any minute.”
Oh.
That— Okay.
Good.
“Just hold still, alright? Doc’s gonna put the IV in.”
Right. He should be dead.
Why isn’t he dead?
If not the impact, then he should’ve drowned.
He did drown.
He did—
Edward was there. Pressure on his chest, pressure on his chest, pressure on his chest.
Why is he alive?
The needleprick zings across his forearm, floods his veins.
Fire; ice;
Nothing.
The familiar, sickening sensation of med-lulled pain seeps through Roy’s conscious mind before he’s aware he has one. It hurts, but manageably. Exhaustion clings, but he finds the strength to push against it. The push hurts. He pries his sappy eyes open to darkness and machines, crisp white hospital walls and no windows. There's a tube down his throat. It doesn’t hurt, but the pressure sets his nerves on edge. His lungs pop when he takes a deep breath. He can feel his legs. And his arms.
He shouldn’t be alive.
It hurts like fuck, but there's no denying it. Pain doesn’t lie.
Roy expected to die in that ravine, Edward’s hurt forever trapped in the forefront of his final moments. Roy expected to die young.
He should be dead. But he isn’t.
Roy wakes up in a hospital alive.