#famb

When Roy opens his eyes, it’s once again after letting them close without his permission. He has no idea how long these small sleeps are lasting—Ed won’t tell. It doesn’t feel like they’re more than a few minutes, maybe an hour at a time here and there, but still, he doesn’t want to be asleep at all. Not until they let Ed sleep, too. 

“Good morning,” their captor greets, fake enthusiasm in his voice. “Have a nice nap, Colonel?” 

“Don’t do this,” Roy commands, ignoring his question in favor of focusing on the vial and syringe in his hands. “Just let him rest. You can give it to me.” 

“I could,” he agrees, drawing back a dose of stimulant, “but I don’t think that will be nearly as effective as this. Do you have anything you’d like to tell me?” 

Roy’s jaw shuts with an audible click of his teeth. Ed has been awake for nearly five days, his only reprieves coming in the forms of naps that always last fewer than 20 minutes when they come at all, which isn’t frequent. They’d even taken his automail. When he snaps out of his dissociated stupor to see the man approaching, he begins thrashing, desperately trying to make himself a difficult target to avoid yet another dose of this hell drug that’s been keeping him wired and shaky. He’s been spending his time alternating between lucid and hallucinating, sweating or shivering, coherent and inconsolable. Before Roy apparently fell asleep, Ed had been spiraling about whether anyone will find them. He’d been crying when he said that Al would be alone. No matter how many times Roy reassured him that wasn’t going to happen, he’s too far from reality to understand that right now. 

After letting Ed wear himself out struggling against the restraints that are keeping his flesh arm and flesh leg tied to this chair for a few minutes, the captor grabs him roughly and drives the needle into his arm before pushing the plunger. The effect is nearly immediate. His eyes turn bright and wild within a minute of the shot. Damn it. He’d only barely calmed down from the last one. He either can’t or doesn’t care to hide the pained groan he emits, almost a whine. For once, Roy isn’t going to give him any shit about this. 

He knows that begging won’t help. After all, this man had wanted secrets from Roy so badly that he’d kidnapped his child subordinate along with him. To him, Ed’s just a pawn. That sick man had done it because Roy would never reveal anything to save his own life, but watching a teenager, especially the one he’s responsible for, be tortured is much harder. And every time, he’s given an option to end it. He has to look Fullmetal in the eyes and tell him that he’s going to continue prioritizing the military over his safety, his pain, maybe even his life. It’s a simple trolley problem, but he has to make the choice while Ed is just feet from him on the tracks. 

The man disappears for just a moment, leaving Ed sitting there alone, chin to chest. If he weren’t just given a massive dose of stimulants, Roy might believe he’s asleep. His breathing is jagged and choppy, panic drawing air in at irregular intervals. 

“Breathe, Fullmetal. We talked about this.” 

“Trying,” he snaps. “Bastard.” They both know that the use of profanity was just to cover up how bad this is, how hurt he is. 

The man returns with a whip in his hands. “Ready, gentlemen?” 

“Leave him the hell alone. He’s just a kid.” 

“If he’s fit, in your eyes, to serve in the military, then surely he’s not that young.” He’s never regretted making Ed a State Alchemist more than he does right now. 

“Okay, kid. Let’s see if we can’t get him to cave.” He makes a lazy circle around his chair, watching Ed tremble.

“I don’t know anything,” Roy says, desperate to try to stop this before it starts. “You’ve got the wrong people.” 

Lightning quick, the man winds up and cracks the whip hard on Ed’s back, eliciting a pained, choking scream. 

“Wrong answer.” 

“I’ll give you whatever you want if you let him go first.” 

Another two cracks of the whip. Ed’s crying openly and it makes Roy see red. 

Another question. Another avoidance. Another crack of the whip. It continues like that for far too long, until Ed is slumped over in the chair and no longer even flinching when the whip hits. 

“Damn it,” the man laments. “He’s unconscious.” 

“Fullmetal!” Roy shouts, hoping against hope that the sound of his name might reach him in a way that pain could not. No such luck.

This time, before he leaves, the man unshackles Ed. Without that to hold him upright, he slumps to the floor. The man picks him up roughly and drags him to Roy’s side of the cell, close enough that he might be able to grab him, if he’s lucky. He isn’t sure what the tactic is here. Maybe it’s to give him a close up look at his injuries; maybe it’s just because he knows Ed is too weak to present them with any real danger anymore. He rushes forward as far as his shackles will allow and shakes his shoulder. 

“Come on,” he says with concern the color of impatience, tapping his cheek. “Wake up. That’s an order.” 

He doesn’t follow it immediately—he never does—but after a few minutes, his eyes flutter back open into that horrible, unbroken wakefulness that’s been plaguing him for the better part of the week. Roy feels a little guilty for doing his best to rouse him more quickly, but relief overshadows it. Ed’s dull, unfocused eyes glance from place to place in the room and he begins to panic at the unfamiliar surroundings. The drug they’re using has been disorienting him like that. Each time he does manage to lose consciousness for a few minutes, he wakes up confused and fearful.

“Easy,” he says quietly. “Slow breaths. Remember where you are?”

“Captured,” he says in a tight, small voice that’s shredded from screaming. “Hurts.”

‘I know. Let me have a look at those wounds.” 

His shirt is stuck to his back with both dried and fresh blood, and he winces as Roy peels it up so he can see the wounds beneath the fabric. What he finds is to be expected, but makes him feel sick, anyway. He’s been whipped so many times in the past few days that it’s amazing that there’s any skin left. What little he can see is swollen and red and angry. It’s probably on its way to an infection, if it’s not there already. He gently rolls the shirt back down, unable to look any longer.

“We’re going to get out of here,” he reassures. “Don’t worry. They’re looking for us.” 

“Better be soon.”