Chapter Text
Sometimes the drug had done what it was meant to and took away the memories.
Edward had had a bandaged stump, then his vision had doubled and his thoughts had turned foggy.
He’d blinked and there was a metal frame where the bandages had been, held in place by shiny new bolts that were so close to his eyes they looked like a lunar calendar made of full moons.
Sometimes it didn’t and it turned the present and past into one and the same, switching and mixing what was and what had been and confusing him about what would be.
If he did remember anything, it was usually only in flashes.
His mother telling him that it was all right, that she was there, and then plunging her fingers into his muscle as she grabbed the nerve wrapped around the stump of bone.
His father watching curiously from the corner of the room, observing but not intervening as an auger drilled through his skin.
Truth’s smile in the light from the surgical lamps, gnashing Its teeth hungrily like it was watching a prime cut of meat being sliced and Edward was the haunch.
One of the more vivid and more terrifying conscious conjurations of his brain had been when the instruments in Winry’s and Pinako’s tools grew hands of their own and grabbed hold of his flesh, taking it apart and tearing him open with the such graceful fingers that he hadn’t been able to help but stare, no matter how many times Winry told him to look away or to close his eyes and go to sleep.
Finally, in a last bid to keep Ed from seeing anything he didn’t need to, Pinako had dropped what Ed later knew was a wet cloth over his eyes.
In the moment, Edward had seen a great dark hand reaching for his face, then nothing.
He didn’t know which had been worse, thinking that the hands of the Gate had dismantled him completely and he had been experiencing non-existence or that the Truth had taken his eyes.
Either way, the only thing he had known was despair at how truly and completely he had failed his brother.
Edward did not remember if he had screamed or if he had thrashed, but what ever he had done, one of the Rockbells had torn the cloth away from his face.
They had let him watch in his drugged stupor, now knowing the alternative was worse for him, if only in the short-term.
In the present, Edward supposed it would seem odd to someone on the outside looking in, that he would rather be awake with the distortions than sleep through them, even if there was a chance for bad dreams.
He wasn’t sure he could explain it, but if he had to, he supposed he would have said he was choosing the definitive but changeable awful over the possible but inescapable awful.
If the hallucinations had gotten to be too much, he had cried out, called out for Winry, for Granny, and they would be there. If they couldn’t chase the false images away, they could layer over them, shield him from them by ascertaining for him what was real and what was not.
He could not cry out without consciousness, or at least, no one could reach him when he was that deeply drugged. If the ketamine chose to create a nightmare instead of nothingness, there was nothing Edward had been able to do but wait for the chemicals to wear themselves out.
As terrible as seeing scalpels with hands and Truth in the lamplights had been, he would choose that over seeing his brother disintegrate or feel his body break from one into many while his mind searched for an open door that did not exist.
Because that had not been nightmares or hallucinations.
That had been real.
XXX
Someone was wiping his face, his mouth and chin.
He must have lost the ability to swallow.
Not really knowing why, he tried to raise his arm to whoever was holding the cloth touching his face. The person caught his arm and put it back down against the floor, leaving their hand above his elbow and below his shoulder.
It felt fuzzy, like the blurred sensation of no sensation that he got in his ports after a reattachment or when the weather was bad.
“Are you all right, Edward? Are you… comfortable?” Hawkeye’s voice paused, like she had been searching for a better word but had failed. She sounded like she was coming from a long way away, maybe from the bottom of a cavern if Edward was standing at the lip of the mouth.
Ed answered her question by closing his eyes and pushing his arm into her hand, like a cat bunting its person’s palm for pets.
There was another sudden fuzzy feeling in his side, as if someone had poured a tea spoon of pins and needles onto a spot below his ribs, then an equally sudden pressure that was more like someone pressing something long and thin but solid into his skin.
Mustang swore and Havoc said something that sounded like “catch the blood,” and then there was a pressure that made Edward’s nose wrinkle in distaste. It was a squishy feeling, like some long-tongued creature was trying to lick the underside of Ed’s skin.
Then the squishy feeling vanished and Havoc shamelessly barked out a “Damn.”
“Well,” Tomas said, like he had resigned himself to sleeping on the sidewalk that night.
There was a pause as some things were set down and others were picked up, and then the thin-solid pressing feeling came again.
XXX
Roy wasn’t sure which he preferred, holes where they ought naught to be or a weeping slice that was pried open between the medic’s fingers so he could stick the forceps inside, like a dentist reaching into a mouth for a rotten tooth.
He would never know which he preferred because thinking about it made a noise like a frog that had swallowed its ribbit might make bubble up from his throat and Jean all but threw the wastebasket at him. Roy threw it right back.
“I’m fine!” he tried to snarl, but his voice bubbled just as much.
He forced himself to stand, wobbled, then sat back down on the carpet, not quite sure what he had been trying to accomplish but realizing quickly that he wasn’t going to.
Edward made a squawking noise that reminded Roy oddly of a duck.
Roy looked at the boy’s face. Ed’s pupils were so blown that his eyes looked like eclipsed suns, black ringed by yellow. It made the way he stared at Roy feel like he had never seen him before, as if Mustang was a creature he had never come across.
It occurred to Roy that this must be what Fluffy’s life was made of.
Edward tried to move his metal arm out from underneath himself. The movement jostled his whole body and Tomas paused in his work to tell Ed to lie still. Ed ignored him and reached out his hand to Roy in a gesture that wasn’t quite imploring, wasn’t quite beseeching. It was more like Roy was a ripe strawberry Edward wanted to pick.
He stopped, his warped gaze slipping from Roy to his own hand, and he studied his palm, a kind of distressed confusion pinching his brow.
“M’arm?”
“Yes, that is your arm, Edward,” Riza said gently, as if she was talking to a small child who was only just learning the names of his body parts.
Edward’s gaping, unfocused gaze drifted towards her but never landed on her.
“Wha? No. Wan’… m’arm?”
“What about it, Fullmetal?” Roy asked. His question earned him a stare and an uncomprehending shake of the head.
“M’arm?”
Roy rolled his eyes and Riza glared at him.
“Fullmetal, that is your right automail arm – oh,” he said, realizing Edward’s confusion and Riza’s ire.
He wasn’t sure what to do. Explaining to the boy that his real arm was gone, disintegrated into its basest molecules and scattered across a dirt floor would have been awkward to at best. Roy didn’t want to think about what it would be at the worst.
Out of habit, he glanced at his lieutenant for help.
“Alphonse has your arm, Edward,” she said, pressing Ed’s head back down against the floor when he tried to sit up.
“Al?” Edward’s voice cracked as if they had mentioned the keys to heaven.
“Alphonse is at home, Edward. He’s keeping your arm safe.”
“Al,” Edward mumbled, his eyes slipping closed sleepily.
Jean swore suddenly, making Riza and Hawkeye glance at him.
The towel he was holding was quickly shifting from white to red. Tomas’s brow was pinched in concentration, his arm moving in a cutting motion that made Roy look away.
“Maybe this one came out on its own?” Jean said, but he didn’t sound like he believed himself.
“Not likely,” Fluffy’s handler shut down whatever tentative hope he’d been nurturing. “If it’s in the… if it’s in something, we’d best leave it there for now –”
Edward made a confused noise and tried to sit up. The pressing and swiping pressure had sunk deeper than it had before. He didn’t think he liked it, though he wasn’t sure he could particularly think about anything right now.
The hands holding him kept him down and he groaned in annoyance.
“Got it.”
The depth of the quill had Jean recoiling with an “Oh… no.” Tomas made a sympathetic hissing through his teeth.
“That’s going to hurt later. It went right through a layer of muscle. Hold him still. The ketamine should keep this from hurting, but it certainly won’t feel good.”
XXX
Something was trying to pull his insides out.
Edward tried to move, tried to swipe at whatever was searching his flesh for whatever valuables it might hide.
More hands caught him.
This had happened before.
He couldn’t remember when or how, that information seemed to have been left behind somewhere, but he remembered that it had been the most awful thing that had ever happened to him and that he would do so many things, go through so many things, than go through it again.
He couldn’t move.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything other than be, and he realized he didn’t have a choice.
He waited for the hands to tear him apart.
XXX
Edward’s wiggling was slight, but it was enough to make Havoc put his hand on Ed’s shoulder to help keep him still.
“Mom?”
Mustang and Hawkeye stiffened.
It wasn’t a call so much as a question, and it was less like he was asking for his mother specifically and more like he was asking if his mother was an option, like he was asking if he could have strawberries on his ice cream.
They didn’t answer right away, both hoping but not saying that maybe the word had been chosen at random and that Edward hadn’t meant anything by it. Edward pulled weakly at the hand on his arm – his left arm, the one that could feel lightness and strength – and Hawkeye wasn’t sure if it was the way she’d resisted or even the size of her fist that told whatever part of Ed’s brain that was still capable of registering and recognizing that she was a woman.
Whichever it had been, Edward pulled again, this time with less intention of escape than measurement.
“Mom?”
The confused hope in his voice made Hawkeye’s stomach flip inside out inside of her.
She glanced at Mustang, who looked just as unsure as she felt. She was afraid that if she spoke, the sound of her voice would make things worse. Then again, it might bring him some comfort. Besides, he probably wouldn’t remember any of this, anyway. But it didn’t change the fact that she’d be tricking him, and that fact alone made her question the morality of the act, no matter how good its intentions.
Mustang saved her from her ruminations by deciding for her.
“Your mother’s at home, Fullmetal.”
Depending on the context assumed, it wasn’t a lie, not really.
The tip of Edward’s tongue stuck out between his teeth before slipping back into his mouth.
“Home?” he repeated dreamily, then “What?” as if he didn’t know what the word meant.
He seemed to forget his question and wiggled some more, his nose wrinkling in disgust.
“All gone,” he said in a slurred, oddly pleading voice. “All gone.”
Before anyone could hazard a guess at what, exactly, was “all gone,” Tomas made a frustrated hissing sound and Jean sucked in a breath while Fluffy’s handler put a hand over his face in despair.
“What?” Roy couldn’t stop himself from asking. “What’s wrong?”
If Riza was equally concerned, she didn’t show it, or she at least didn’t show it in an obvious way as she gently brushed Edward’s bangs out of his eyes, which were pointing in two different directions.
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” Tomas assured everyone who had seen what happened. “It’s nothing a few stitches can’t fix.” Then, completely dissolving whatever assurance he had made, “I need a light. Does anyone have a battery one?”
Jean managed to pull himself together and asked Roy if he had one in his desk, which he did but insisted on retrieving himself. The suspicious look Riza shot his way was justified but not pursued Roy reached behind a bottle of whiskey disguised a cologne and a questionable magazine disguised as a roster.
As he deposited the flashlight in Jean’s proffered palm, he couldn’t help a glance that sent nauseating squirming through his belly.
“How… how deep did it go?”
Tomas shook his head in what Roy thought was supposed to be nonchalance.
“It looks much worse than it is,” he said.
Roy highly doubted anything that led to someone’s fingers being second-knuckle deep in someone else’s side to be less worse than it looked.
He was quick to return to his place by Edward’s head. Ed was pawing at the warm bit of carpet where the colonel had been, his expression confused and disappointed. When Roy materialized back into place, Ed’s fingers brushed against his knee and Ed’s face lit up like he had pulled the winning ticket at a lottery.
“Dad?”
Roy and Riza stiffened, more so than he had asked for his mother.
Edward must have sensed something in the pause because his face fell and his unfocused, oppositional eyes roamed around Mustang’s form without actually settling on him.
“Dad?”
This question was frightened and sad where the first one had been hopeful and happy.
Roy opened and closed his mouth, not sure what to say or do, then took a deep breath and tried the simple truth.
“Your father is…”
Gone? Absent? Away?
“He’s at home, too.”
Roy inwardly punched himself in the face.
Edward didn’t seem to like this answer because he wrinkled his nose and shook his head, then shuddered in an obvious way and all but dug the nails of his fingers into Roy’s knee.
“No. Dad. No!”
Riza tried to pull Edward’s arm back but let go when Edward made a noise like he was trying to talk underwater and went from clawing Roy’s knee to grabbing a fistful of his pants leg.
“Oh my God,” Jean said and Roy thought he was talking about the boy’s drugged state until he glanced up and saw Jean’s gaze locked securely on whatever the medic was doing on – with, in – Edward’s side. “Is that –”
“Shut up,” Tomas snapped, his voice filled with both impatience and concentration.
Edward suddenly tried to sit up. Roy and Riza grabbed him, Riza taking his right arm and pushing him back against the floor with a gentle but commanding words with Roy taking his left. Ed tried to pull his arm out of Mustang’s grip, or at least that was what Roy thought he was doing until the boy’s arm slid through his fingers and stopped at his own.
Edward’s hand felt tiny in Roy’s and the colonel was afraid of hurting those fragile fingers until Ed gripped his hand so strongly that Roy grunted. This seemed to be the outlet he’d been looking for because he settled then, his eyes growing dark and his mouth going slack as Riza ran a hand through his hair.
“I know, kid, this has to feel weird, but I’ve almost got it,” Tomas said out of the corner of his mouth as he fumbled with the forceps. The towel in Jean’s hand was so red it was almost black.
Fluffy’s handler’s face was the color of snow. He kept looking from Havoc to Tomas and back again, as if he was expecting one of them to say something damning.
Then Tomas sat back with a triumphant, “Got it!” as he held up the awkwardly pointing quill in the forceps.
“Okay,” he said as he dropped the quill into the dish with the others. “That was it. Now to put him back together.”
Fluffy’s handler seemed to melt slightly as Tomas traded his forceps and scalpel for needle and thread.
“So, the quills didn’t puncture any…”
“That last one was too close to the stomach for my liking, but no, nothing’s been punctured.”
Fluffy’s handler let out a sigh that was almost a sob.
Close to the stomach.
Was that what Havoc had seen?
Roy resisted the urge comment on it and instead offered a guarded smile to Edward.
“Ya hear that, Fullmetal? You’re almost done.”
Edward looked like he was trying to lick his dry lips but either his tongue was just as dry or he’d forgotten how to use it.
“They got the quills out, Edward,” Riza tried, but Ed just made a “mmn” sound and seemed to give up on wetting his lips and let his eyes drift shut.
His hold on the colonel’s hand didn’t loosen in the slightest.
XXX
“He’ll have to take it easy for about a week while the stitches heal. Make sure he takes those antibiotics. Infection is still a very real possibility.”
Roy parroted back the instructions Tomas had given him to Alphonse as Edward seemed to sleep in his brother’s huge arms. Every few minutes Edward would stir and Alphonse would shush him in his echoey, whistley voice. Ed would calm instantly, sometimes whispering his brother’s name, something’s sighing and pressing himself into Al’s cold breastplate.
“But the porcupine’s okay?”
Alphonse’s question caught Roy off guard.
“Um… yes, Fluffy – the animal was unharmed during the incident.”
Alphonse nodded his helmet and turned his attention back to his brother.
“That’s good. Brother will be happy to hear it. I bet that’s why he didn’t say anything. He was afraid they would punish Fluffy.”
Roy wasn’t sure he believed that but didn’t say so.
“The colonel put out a warrant for the street performer you told us about,” Riza said from beside him. “If they find him, he’ll be charged with assaulting a military officer.”
Alphonse looked up, the simple dorm bed he was sitting on shifting under his weight.
“Oh. Um. You don’t have to do that.”
Roy found himself glancing out the dingy window of the dorm room as if he expected the mime to standing there, blowing a raspberry.
“If it hadn’t been for him, none of this would have happened.”
“He was just doing his job,” Al countered, bouncing his brother in his arms when Ed snuffled.
“That’s no excuse to be cruel,” Riza objected, determined to be understanding but firm.
Alphonse was quiet for moment, rocking his brother in the hammock of his arms.
“Maybe… maybe you could get him to do some community service or pay a fine. Nothing too bad, y’know? He wasn’t trying to cause trouble. Brother never does, but he always gets into it anyway. I think some people are just like that.”
Roy couldn’t find anything to say to that. He glanced at Riza, who simply shrugged, then at Edward, who simply hummed contentedly in his sleep.
XXX
When Edward woke, it was to a pounding in his head, a pitcher of lemonade at his bedside, and his brother helping him sit up.
The stitches stung and pulled as he moved, but Edward was used to the feeling.
The headaches he could always do without, which was probably why Alphonse didn’t say anything when he ignored the glass his brother held in favor of lifting the pitcher with both hands and drinking from it like it was fresh milk from the pail. When the pitcher was halfway empty, he lifted it up and pressed it to his throbbing head, sighing as tendrils of cold wiped away the layered pain.
“How’s the porky-pig?”
“Porcupine, Brother,” Alphonse corrected, though his voice was lined with happiness that Ed had asked after the creature before himself. “Fluffy’s fine.” Then, a bit more hesitantly, “They sent out an arrest warrant for the mime.”
Edward lowered the pitcher long enough to study the empty the holes of his brother’s helmet and to down three more gulps of lemonade.
“Really? That’s a little… excessive.”
“That’s what I said,” Al asserted, though for a different reason. Edward’s disapproval of the decision came more from his desire to keep the event secret and Alphonse’s was more ideological. If either of them knew of the difference, neither showed it.
“You have to take it easy for a week,” Al said, repeated what the medic had told Roy and then told him. “Half of you is plugged up with cotton and the other half is stitched together.”
Edward set the pitcher on the bedside table so he could lift up the two-sizes-too-big shirt that definitely wasn’t his. Al’s description was scarily accurate. A lot of the swelling was gone and though the redness was still there, it had faded. Edward let the shirt fall and picked up the pitcher, draining it completely.
He stared at the sugar that had fallen to the bottom, knowing what he had to say but not wanting to say it.
“I’m… I’m sorry I didn’t tell –”
“It’s all right, Brother. I understand.”
Edward glanced up at his brother, surprised and not sure if he should be pleased that he wasn’t angry.
“There are things you went through – go through – with your automail that you don’t want to talk about.” Alphonse knocked his empty knuckles against his hollow breastplate, which rang like a small but throaty school bell. “I’m the same with the armor.”
For a moment, Edward was terribly saddened and guilt-ridden at the thought that there were things that Alphonse was experiencing that were so awful he felt he had to hide from Edward, then felt slightly absolved of that guilt when he considered that, if the same was true for him and his arm and leg, then he at least wasn’t getting away with what he’d done.
He knew Alphonse would be angry if he voiced the thought out loud. Another example of how his little brother was too good for most things in their broken world.
“Stop thinking about what you’re thinking about,” Al said, taking the pitcher from his brother’s hands. “The colonel gave us an assignment to do while you heal.”
Edward made a confused scoffing noise. “I thought I was supposed to take it easy.”
“You are,” Al assured, his helmet tilting in a way that made his soulfire eyes look like they were narrowing in cheekiness. “This assignment is easy.”
XXX
“We’re going to have to limit how many guests can give him treats. He’s starting to get fat.”
Fluffy’s handler watched good-naturedly with his hands on his hips as the porcupine accepted a slice of carrot from the fingers of a curious girl, who giggled as the small creature started nibbling on the bit of vegetable.
“What about the other animals?” Alphonse asked as he watched Fluffy balance on his arm.
“They can feed the others, but Fluffy’s famous now. Some rumor about him being the reason why the commission got approved so fast.” Fluffy’s handler glanced at Edward, who looked away as his face reddened, though he had to admit that the petting zoo structures were some of his best work.
Shoelace craned her head out from the bundle of her body that was coiled around the resting bar he had made her. He looked the snake in the eye, who stuck her tongue out in greeting. Edward stuck his tongue out right back. Shoelace yawned and pulled her head back into her body, presumably to sleep.
Her handler had said that Shoelace, like all other snakes, had no eyelids, and so couldn’t blink and had to sleep with her eyes open. Edward had asked her how they kept their eyes from drying out. She had explained that snakes had clear scales that covered their eyes like goggles to keep them safe and moist. Edward had pointed out that, technically, not only did snakes have eyelids, but that they spent their whole lives with their eyes closed.
He did not know why her response to this was to laugh.
Edward was broken out of his thoughts by the Daryl the zookeeper squeezing passed him, a bale of hay for the floor of Fluffy’s enclosure in his hands. He and Alphonse had seen Daryl come and go among the enclosures, and every time they crossed paths, the man seemed to pause and study them, something Ed had quickly found annoying. He decided to give Daryl a taste of his own medicine, and the longer they stared at each other, the more Edward felt like the man was familiar.
Alphonse must have sensed that something was happening because he turned to look and immediately saw what Edward had missed.
“Hey… aren’t you?”
Daryl smiled bashfully and the way the corners of the man’s mouth and eyes crinkled had been the missing piece from Ed’s puzzle.
“The mime guy!” Ed said, pointing accusingly with his metal hand.
Fluffly’s handler stiffened, not sure what kind of confrontation to expect.
Daryl the Mime-Zookeeper stuck his thumbs under the straps of his overalls and bowed with just his head.
“Guilty as charged.”
They were the first words the brothers had heard him say. His voice was deeper than Edward had expected.
“What are you doing here?” Ed and Al asked at the same time, Alphonse curiously and Edward just as accusatory.
Daryl tapped the water pail at his feet with the toe of his boot.
“Serving the community.” His face twisted in chagrin and he added, “The judge said it was an act of poetry as well as mercy, considering the charges.” Then, his face twisting with more chagrin, “I’m sorry.”
“Brother’s all right. Being on light duty means he has more time for the library,” Al said as Edward opened his mouth to voice his opinion of the concept of mercy. Ed closed his mouth and crossed his arms, simultaneously pouting and scowling at his brother.
It had been nine days since the incident with Fluffy, and though Edward was allowed to walk long distances and the stitches were out, he was forbidden from baring any weight besides his automail or exerting himself for another five days. Alphonse had had to carry him to the park when the colonel had given Edward the order to transmute temporary enclosures for the commissioned zoo.
Edward had asked if he could perform the task under the cover of darkness so that no one would see his little brother give him a piggy-back ride. Mustang had cackled and said he could as long as he made sure to the get the job done by his bedtime.
To Mustang’s shock, Edward had found these terms to be agreeable. To the colonel’s frustration (and a bizarre sort of pride), Edward had gotten the job done by nine and had promptly called the colonel’s house phone, telling the older man that his orders had been fulfilled and that Edward expected him to be under the covers in the next ten minutes.
Roy didn’t know which had been worse: the fact that he had nothing to say to that or the fact that he had obeyed.
“I’m forbidden from returning to my street performances,” Daryl said randomly, though, Ed noticed, not unhappily. Al must have noticed as well because he accepted the non-sequitur.
“Did you enjoy being a mime?”
Daryl paused, though Edward suspected it was more for effect than to think.
“Not really. See, I never could sit still and farm work was always too much for me. Thought I might give magic a try – y’know, cards, slight of hand, that schtick.”
His chagrined smile turned rueful.
“Turns out no one has any interest in fake sparkles when there are real ones down the street,” he ended the sentence with a nod.
It took Edward a moment to realize Daryl meant him – perhaps not him specifically, but alchemists in general.
“When that didn’t work, I was desperate, and I happened to notice that there were no silent performers around.” Daryl shrugged. “Guess I found out why the hard way.”
There was an awkward pause that was broken by Fluffy chittering impatiently from the tree-like structure Edward had made him. His handler placated him with a piece of celery.
“So… what are you doing after this?” Alphonse asked as they watched the porcupine nibble happily at his snack.
Daryl’s moment to think was genuine this time.
“I think I’ll hang out around here. They’ll need people to take care of the animals, and from what I’ve heard, the pay ain’t too shabby.”
Fluffy finished off his celery and chittered for more.
“Oh, no,” his handler said, taking a meaningful step away from the tree. “You’ve had more than enough.”
Fluffy made a chattering sound in protest and lifted his quills.
Alphonse giggled and Edward glanced at his brother, waiting for Al to tell him what was so funny.
“He’s just like you when the cafeteria ladies tell you you can’t have thirds.”
Edward felt his hackles rising and nearly shouted back a retort, then realized this would only prove Al’s observation true and settled for crossing his arms in an impressive pout.
XXX
“You said you would, Havoc.”
Shoelace pushed her head away from her body and patiently stuck her tongue out. The second lieutenant leaned away and grimaced as if the creature had blown its bad breath in his face.
“Everyone else had to face their fear,” Mustang pressured, leaning towards Havoc as he leaned away. “Now it’s your turn.”
Havoc glanced at Edward, who shrugged helplessly. How was Ed supposed to know that the colonel would want to “escort” Edward to the park that day as he made the finishing touches to the zoo? More importantly, how was he supposed to know that the colonel had done so with the intention of making sure the second lieutenant followed through with his promise?
Edward had made to tell Havoc to forget about it, that he really didn’t care and would rather forget the whole thing, but Mustang, and surprisingly Hawkeye, had stopped him before he could say a word, insisting that it was “a matter of equality,” or something like that. Edward didn’t believe it, and from the looks of Havoc, he didn’t either, but they both knew that when the colonel told them to do something, they were fully expected to do it.
Even if it was as strange and pointless as kissing a constrictor on the nose.
“She won’t bite,” Shoelace’s handler said, as if it would somehow make the situation more bearable.
Havoc made a deep-throated groaning sound, then closed his eyes and thrust himself forward.
Shoelace yanked her head back into herself and her tree, tasting the air irritably as Havoc stood there, shaking with how tense he was, eyes squeezed shut like he was afraid Shoelace would bite his eyes out if he opened them.
Eventually, he opened one eye, then the other, and stared in amazement at the annoyed, but unprovoked, reptile.
Then everyone was giving Havoc pats on the back and the handler was giving Shoelace a loving stroke along her head.
Mustang in particular gave Havoc’s shoulder a hearty clap and proclaimed, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Edward saw Havoc grimace, which simply made Mustang laugh harder, and without really thinking about it, lifted his shirt so that the scabbed-over holes in his side were on display.
Mustang’s smirk vanished, replaced by a horrified but chagrined pastiness, and sheepishly looked away.
“Nope,” Havoc said, shooting Ed a grateful wink. “Not hard at all.”