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No.
No, no, no, no—
“Hold still,” the medic stresses, one arm thrown around Edward’s ankle. Another medic pins his automail with all his body weight. “Your leg is broken in three places, kid, we can’t do anything until we’ve given you something for the pain—”
No.
Panic sears his throat, his hands, behind his eyes. “You aren’t giving me shit,” Edward snarls and he hates that it’s weak, hates that his stupid leg hurts so much he’s blinded by it, “don’t, don’t, I don’t need it—”
“Kid, stop.” Mustang pins Edward’s hands against his chest, just below his heaving sternum. The panic in Mustang’s face catches him off-guard—sweeps his legs out from under him—but no. No. “You have to hold still, alright? Do you understand?”
“No,” Edward gargles, “no, no, n’no—”
“You don’t have a choice.” Mustang’s voice has dropped an octave—it’s his ‘Colonel’ voice now, but constricted, and it sounds like he’s gritting his teeth. “Either you hold still and take a deep breath or they’re going to strap you to the bed.”
“No!”
“We’ll restrain him,” comes a nurse’s voice over the blood in Edward’s ears. She’s talking to Mustang but he hears it just as well. “It’ll be easier on him overall if he doesn’t have to think about it.”
No, no, no, no. They can’t, they—
No.
Leg, leg— Alphonse—
Edward throws out his automail leg with all his might. It jostles the shattered bone in his right and the pain sends vomit into his throat when his stomach twists.
“I said I don’t want it!” Edward feels his voice break apart in the back of his mouth before it’s even finished, and he hates, hates, hates. “I don’t need it, just put the fucking bone back!”
A leather strap tightens around his bicep. His automail clangs as it strikes the table, but another nurse has that one, too, and there's more leather, and—and—
“Stop!” It isn’t fair to the rest of the people in this hospital but it doesn’t matter who hears him as long as they let him go. “Stop it, stop it! I’ll bite your fucking fingers off if you don’t stop—”
“Edward, stand down.” Mustang’s arm is over his chest and it’s got him pinned. “They aren’t going to touch anything until you’ve been medicated, they need to put the bones back in place and if you go into shock it could kill you. Now—”
“I’I’ll be fine!” He endured automail surgery, had his leg unraveled by alchemy and his arm torn asunder. He can. He can. “I, I can do it, I, stop it—”
Mustang looks a little like someone’s got a knife in his ribs and twisted it. “I know you hate needles,” Mustang says. “I know you’re scared. But this is for your own good, Fullmetal. It’s non-negotiable.”
Scared, scared, scared. The word is a knee to the gut. It is right and it is wrong and no.
Please.
“Please,” Edward hears himself. The conflict wrenches up in Mustang’s face again. He looks stricken. It’s disjointing but maybe, maybe. Mucus clots in Edward’s throat while he gasps. “Colonel, you can’t let them—”
The needle slides into the crook of his elbow.
Defeat sits heavy in the back of his throat, rancid, and it’s all he can do to squeeze his eyes shut and swallow.
Gauze is pressed over where the needle used to be. Mustang tells him they’re through with the needle, it’s over— halfway over— but he’s wrong. Scared is wrong. It isn’t fear.
Edward sobs, and it’s a noise every bit as disgusting as he feels.
Time crawls by, seconds marching like spiders under his skin.
And then
the pain
fades.
When it’s gone completely Edward cries, and Mustang holds his shoulder, and Edward feels like the worst person alive.
“You passed out,” Mustang says, letting the door of Edward’s hospital room swing shut behind him. “The stress was too much on you. The doctors thought it best to fix the bone while you were asleep.”
The cast is white and sterile, hard as a rock. Edward’s skin buzzes underneath it and he can feel the slight off-kilter of the bone, the familiar displacement of this would hurt like hell if I wasn’t medicated. His ports felt like that after Pinako was finally able to sedate him after the surgery was finished.
It’s only been a day, but hospitals put time all out of shape, bent at angles and too-fast-too-slow, and Edward has had more than enough time to tear himself a new one over just how stupid he had to have been to get his leg broken on a so-called ‘routine mission.’ Stupid cave-in. Stupid limestone.
Stupid Mustang, casually pulling up a chair like he wasn’t pinning Edward to a hospital bed hours ago while Edward screamed and begged like some sort of pathetic, inconsolable child.
“I could’ve done it without the meds,” Edward manages.
Mustang drags the plastic chair close to the bedside. “They might have been able to give you something orally if you didn’t lose your head.”
“I didn’t—”
“Fullmetal.”
Mustang sounds tired. Edward shuts his mouth.
Neither of them speak or move for a long time.
Edward hears Mustang take a deep breath, which is followed by the sound of him dropping into the chair. Another spell of silence runs its course.
“… If that’s going to happen every time someone brings out a needle,” Mustang treads, “then we need to—”
“It’s not about that.” It is partially, because he remembers automail surgery like it happened yesterday and given how his ports fucking hurt it might as well have been; but the needles aren’t it. Mustang doesn’t understand. “Just—drop it. Okay?”
“I wish I could, kid, but if you’re going to continue to work under me then this is how it has to be. I need to trust my people.”
Edward grits his teeth behind his lips.
Mustang doesn’t speak again, though, waiting without his usual preamble, and Edward glances sideways at Mustang just long enough to catch that conflicting look again before tearing away. Mustang doesn’t just sound tired; he looks it, too. He swallows.
“Al doesn’t get to decide whether or not he feels something,” Edward says.
There is a very long pause, entrenched by a very deep silence.
“What?” Mustang sounds—well, actually, it doesn't sound like Mustang at all, not that it fucking matters what the bastard sounds like when he’s going to make him say it again. “Fullmetal.”
Wellp, guess he heard it after all judging by that tone. That’s good. Really clawing at a silver lining, here. Shit. “You asked.”
“Edward.” The chair skids again as Mustang stands. Edward doesn’t dare look at him. “Kid—you can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Ed—” Mustang cuts himself off, hands hovering. Shaking? Edward can’t tell and it doesn’t matter. “Does Alphonse know you’re doing this? Does he know you’ve decided to intentionally put yourself in as much pain as possible for his sake?”
“I’m not tryin’ to do that!” Edward’s voice breaks open some more, just like before. He wants to kill it. “I never fuckin’ said anything about—I’m not doing that.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Nothing!”
“Look me in the eyes and tell me it wouldn’t kill your brother if you told him what you just told me.”
“I already killed him!” The echo of his voice comes back to clap him in the face. Must’ve clapped Mustang, too, because he’s gone silent, and Edward didn’t realize how hard he was breathing until he feels it hitch in his throat. He swallows hard. Can’t swallow hard enough. “Al—he loves being alive,” Edward says, “he… he loved the smell of the grass after it got cut, he loved pie and afternoon naps and running in the rain and—…”
And he hugged Edward all the time. They slept in the same bed right up until That Night and several nights after, until Alphonse’s guilt won out. Edward swore he didn’t mind being woken up all hours of the night whenever Alphonse needed to get up and walk or read or do something with the night. It was one of many, many fights Edward lost between his brother.
“I took everything away from him,” Edward manages. “Everything. Why do I get to choose when he can’t?”
Mustang is going to yell at him. Or maybe Mustang will tell him what Edward has been dreading to hear for the three months he’s been in the military: that he isn’t cut out for it, that he’s too weak, that the military doesn’t need someone who can’t even protect the only family he had left.
“Then,” says Mustang, with a tone that disarms Edward completely, “why not take this time to get ready for everything you’ll show him when you get his body back?”
Edward meets Mustang’s eyes for the first time.
“You’re going to,” says Mustang, “so why not start anticipating it? Write down the best restaurant from every city. And the shittiest. Then once he has his body back you can take a vacation and visit all the places he couldn’t before.”
“It’s—That wouldn’t be the same.”
“It’s not supposed to be the same, Fullmetal, it’s supposed to be sustainable. Anticipation. Stay alive, stay hopeful, keep your head up; you know this.”
Edward has lived it, purely from necessity, but that’s about it.
He has nothing else to say.
“Now then.” Mustang tugs a sharpie from his inner coat pocket and pops the cap off while Edward stares at him. “How many fingers can I expect to lose if I attempt to write something on your cast?”
The change of subject catches him off-guard. He can’t decide if he would’ve preferred Mustang’s shouting to—to whatever this is. “That depends. Are you gonna be an asshole about it?”
Mustang puts the cap back on the pen. “See, now that you mention it—”
Edward snorts, against himself. It loosens some of what’s clogged in his throat. He takes a conscious breath. “I don’t care. Do whatever you want.”
“That was a fast change of heart.”
“Al would kick your ass if you write somethin’ shitty, so it’s fine.”
Mustang pops the cap off for the second time, dropping back into his chair and shifting Edward’s leg toward him for better leverage. It’s kind of nerve wracking, but Edward grips the edge of the sheets and puts it out of his head. Mustang might be a jackass but he’s not a jackass.
Mustang leans back, and levels Edward with a cheerful grin that immediately hurls all of that out the window. “How’s your Xingese, Fullmetal?”
Never mind. Maybe his nerves were wracking for a reason. “You’re shitting me.” Edward draws his leg in and—yep, Mustang definitely wrote Xingese on his cast. He doesn’t understand a lick of it. “Is this some kind of a joke?” Mustang stares at him. “You’re gonna tell me it means one thing but it’s gonna mean something completely different and everyone who gets the joke is gonna laugh and—”
“No, Edward.” Mustang scoots forward in his chair and taps under the characters with the tip of the pen. “It says nǐ màn zǒu.”
“Nǐ màn zǒu,” Edward repeats. Mustang nods. “So what’s it mean?”
“Well,” says Mustang, “translated literally, it means ‘you walk slowly.’”
Edward looks back and forth between his broken leg and his automail. “Deadass.”
“I said that’s a direct translation, Fullmetal, it is not what it means.”
“Then what does it mean?”
“The sentiment,” says Mustang, “is that the slower you walk, the more care you take. You’re less likely to trip or be caught off-balance. You’re more likely to notice the sun along the way. Watch the birds, take deep breaths, eat well— take care. This,” Mustang circles the word with the back of the pen, “is what your brother wants, and he doesn’t just want it for himself.”
Edward bites his lip and turns away.
“I’d even go so far as to say he doesn’t want it without you,” says Mustang.
No.
Al deserves so, so much better than this.
“You don’t know that.” Edward can’t look Mustang in the face when he says it. “I ruined his life.”
“That’s a strong word.”
“I did—”
“I’ve ruined people’s lives, kid,” Mustang silences him. Edward’s teeth snap together. “I doubt Alphonse sees his life as being ruined while you’re still in it.”
That can’t be true—can’t be right—but for once Edward doesn’t want to argue. It doesn’t make sense for Alphonse not to hate him but dwelling on that thought is crushing, more devastating than losing his arm and leg, the pain sharper than any needle and any surgery and any broken bone.
Mustang must be finished talking, because he pats Edward on the head with a sort of finality, though careful, and then he steps away. “At least think about it,” says Mustang. “And no more stunts like this. When you’re in pain, say something. Please.”
“Sure,” Edward lies. If he ‘said something’ every time he was in pain he’d never shut his damn mouth.
“I mean it.” Goddamn Mustang and his creepy-ass mind-reading. “Tell someone you’re in pain and take something for it.”
“I said sure,” Edward claps back, crossing his arm. Mustang levels him with a more pointed look—one he’s familiar with, one that means really?— and he blows his hair and looks away. “I’ll—I’ll take… a little. Something. For it.”
“That’s all I’ll ask for.” Mustang sets the sharpie onto the bedside table. “Tell the doctors when the pain starts up again. I’ll be back tomorrow for a statement and to see how you’re getting along. Rest until then.”
“Fine.”
Mustang starts for the door.
“Hey,” Edward blurts, and Mustang pauses. “Who told you about the, the walking slowly thing?”
Mustang’s hand hovers over the door handle. “My mother,” says Mustang. “She was Xingese.”
“Was?”
Slowly, Mustang turns back to look at him. His smile is soft. “Nǐ màn zǒu, Fullmetal.”
The door clicks silently at his back.
By the time Edward finishes the first chapter of the library book, Alphonse has filled his cast with dozens of tiny, scribbly cats.
“Winry said writing could be good for dexterity,” Al tells him. Edward is never going to be used to his brother’s voice in an echo chamber; the racket of armor doesn’t suit his gentle brother. “Since I’m still getting used to how… different this body is.”
Edward tries to put reassurance into his chuckle, but instead what goes into it is hoarse and in shambles, like a shoddy record player. He wants to say, You’ve gotten better about not bumping into doorframes; he wants to say, You can draw as many stupid cats on my stupid cast as you want if it makes you happy, if not in as many words; he wants to say, I’m sorry I ruined everything for you and I’m sorry I can’t be what you need me to be.
What comes out of his mouth is, “I don’t deserve you,” and it’s sad and exhausted and Alphonse freezes and then Edward freezes and the stupid little cat on the stupid cast gets an extra-long whisker as Alphonse’s hand stays.
“Oh,” Alphonse says. He pauses. He pauses for a long time. “That’s stupid,” Alphonse says.
The icy talons around Edward’s heart begin to thaw, ever the slightestly, and he launches a pillow at his brother’s head. It nails the mark so hard that it knocks his helmet clean off. The sharpie flies.
“Ed!”
“It isn’t stupid.”
“But it is stupid! Why’d you go and say that out of nowhere? Oh, no, the cat’s ruined. Ed, you’ve ruined the cat.”
“The cat looks fine.”
Alphonse puts his head back on and grabs the sharpie. “Don’t say stuff like that,” Alphonse says, suddenly serious. “I mean it, Edward.”
Edward keeps his mouth shut while Alphonse tries to salvage the cat. Maybe he could get another chapter read in the meantime, but he wouldn’t remember any of it, and all his notebooks are back at the dorm.
“Hey, Al? What—” The words on his tongue are What do you miss most about having a body? but he looks down at his brother’s scribbly cats with wiggly whiskers and dot-eyes and it just feels cruel. Nǐ màn zǒu, he thinks; then he changes it to, “What are you looking forward to the most? About getting your body back?”
“The most?” Alphonse sits back with the sharpie and ponders. “Well, I’m really looking forward to hugging you, but that’s obvious, so I guess food?”
Edward nods. He can’t visualize hugging Alphonse again and being able to—to feel him without getting a lump in his throat, so he tucks it away for later. “Do you wanna keep a recipe book?” Ed says.
“A recipe book?”
“Yeah—we can put stuff in it while we’re travelin’. If you see somethin’ you like or I have somethin’ I think you’ll like. Then when you get your body back we can go traveling or somethin’ and try everything.”
Suits of armor don’t smile. Suits of armor do not look stricken, nor do suits of armor look excited, nor do suits of armor cry.
But Alphonse isn’t a suit of armor. Alphonse is his little brother, and Edward feels and sees and hears all of it.
It’s like when they were kids, and Edward dragged Alphonse outside in the middle of the night to lay blankets on the hillside and watch the meteor shower. Edward told him all he’d read about the stars and their night sky and Alphonse stared at him in wonder like he’d put the stars there himself.
“I would love that,” Alphonse says. “Let’s do it.”
Edward barely hears the metallic ring. When he smiles, it’s entirely involuntary and real enough to ache, in the way that every good and real thing does. The guilt is there, thick, and it might never go away. He might always fight needles and pain medicine, if only just in his head. But, maybe. Maybe he can do this.
“Alright.”
Maybe it will be okay.