Well... in hopes the site's email notification system actually worked for once this week, and you got the email about this...

Welcome. Welcome, at least, to my Parental RoyEd angst monster. I've been awkwardly teasing this for over a year- but now, it's finally time! There shall be angst, general misery, all around sadness, and also parental fluff and hugs, to sweeten the pot :) Enjoy teh angsting! Also, importantly: no matter what it may seem like in the first one or two chapters, this is not an AU fic, or an amnesia fic. This takes place within canon, some time after Ed's become a State Alchemist. Oh, and Hughes is alive, because honestly it's me what did you even expect? Anyway! Hopefully, this'll update every Friday and Tuesday. We shall see. If an update doesn't come for some reason, check the bottom of my profile; explanation should be there.

And now- WE'RE OFF! I sincerely hope you all enjoy! :D

When he first woke up, he didn't know where he was.

There was blinding white, all around him. Thin, scratchy sheets tucked too tightly about his waist; a lumpy mattress at his back. Crook of his elbow aching, the thick needle of a medicine drip inserted underneath his skin there, and surely responsible for the fuzz that dominated his mind. White. All around. White.

He stared at it blearily, struggling to process it. Hospital. Hospital? But why? He'd been injured? He didn't feel injured. He didn't recall it, either. But he must've been, if he was here. His back... oh. His back hurt. It hurt. But not... He tried searching his memory for a moment, then nearly instantly gave up, set adrift by the blurry mess that greeted him when so much as tried to remember what he'd had for breakfast. He turned weakly instead, gaze roaming about the room. No Hawkeye.

His instincts tingled, warning him quietly. Not good. The way he felt now, he wouldn't be able to so much as defend himself against a cockroach, never mind a credible threat. And his gloves... where were his gloves?

Thinking after his gloves made his head pound, though, and somehow, he got the feeling that even if they were on his hands, he wouldn't have the mental fortitude to even try to defend himself, not unless he wanted to risk burning himself alive. His gloves... no...

Where's Hawkeye?

A low creak told him the door to his room had opened. He flinched a little at the noise, but actually turning his head after it was another matter; by the turn he'd sluggishly managed it, the nurse was already at his side, smiling sympathetically down at him as she started fiddling with his IV.

He winced again, tongue like lead as he tried to find the words.

"Whas... what happened to... me...?"

The pat to his arm was far too patronizing to be acceptable, but he didn't have the words to say so. "Oh, you had a relapse, dear," she told him warmly, rather like she was speaking to a child, and he winced again.

Relapse? What? Groaning, he fuzzily shifted again, fighting to clear his mind through the fog. Didn't matter... he'd find out sooner or later. "H... Hawkeye." He cleared his throat, struggling. "Lieutenant Hawkeye. C-call... her..." In this state, he needed his aide and bodyguard by his side. Whomever it was that had put him here could come back; she had to be back hurt. "T-tell her... C-Colonel Must...ang..."

That made her stop. She blinked down at him, mouth quirking. Her eyes looked almost fondly amused, and the pat to his arm- patronizing again, like she was rebuking a young child who didn't know better. "Oh, Roy," she lectured sternly, "you're not a colonel. You're not in the military." She patted him again, that sickening, sweet smile making another appearance.

If he hadn't been so drugged, he might've shouted at her. They'd mistaken him for a civilian? Someone's head was going to roll for this. "Lieutenant. Hawkeye," he stressed again, lacking the strength for more than that. His head sagged back onto the pillow, vision losing focus. "C-call..."

And the nurse just patted his arm again and sighed.

"I'll talk to the doctor. We'll fix your medicine, and having you feeling better in no time at all, Roy," she told him, and, just as she'd entered, breezily floating into his sloshing vision and fogged mind, she left it, so quietly she might've never been there at all.

His eyelids started to drag shut, no matter how stridently he tried to tell himself he needed to stand and make it to a phone. A more intelligent nurse. Anything. But his limbs felt like lead and his head surely weighed down, anything more taxing than letting himself drift off into a haze of drugs again utterly beyond him.

The last thing he saw, just before the haze claimed him, was his hand.

His right arm was draped carelessly over his chest, numb fingers splayed on the blankets. Around his wrist was a vaguely familiar, plastic white bracelet that identified him as an unwilling prisoner to medical care, and he scowled vaguely at it, for a moment disliking it even more than the IV tethering him to the bed.

By the time his vision had focused enough to read it, he was almost too far gone to care. Almost.

Mustang, R. Central Hospital

DOB: Blah fucking blah. Blah numbers blah. Blah hospital codes blah. Blah.

Psychiatric Ward

He slept again.

Next time he came to, the nurse was already there, futzing with his arm and smiling sweetly still. His back still hurt. He spoke before he knew why, instincts commanding his tongue while his conscious mind fell slack and helpless. "Call- call Lieutenant-..."

Lieutenant...

His throat went dry, and he swallowed, suddenly unsure.

Lieutenant...?

He struggled to find the words, but they just weren't there. It all felt miserably blank. There was a lieutenant. A very important one. One that needed to be told... something. Something that he... wasn't sure what... but he knew it was important. He had to remember. "Call..."

His voice failed him again, and he stared distantly at the ceiling, fuzzed mind going empty.

The nurse was saying something, leaning over him. He blinked; made an exhausted effort to focus.

"...no lieutenant, Roy. Here you are." She held up something small and utterly blurry; he didn't have the slightest clue how to focus on her or will up the strength to speak again. "Take this. You'll feel better."

Better? Better?

Before he'd realized he'd wished it, his hand had jerked into the air, smacking the nurse and her hand and her pill away. "Call my lieutenant!" he snarled. A desperate spasm took him and he grabbed her by the front of her shirt, yanking her down to his eye level. "Call her!"

He didn't remember who she was, but he did know that he wanted- needed- her here.

He didn't remember...

"CALL HER!" he shouted again, gasping until panic nearly choked him dead. "Call my lieutenant!"

Out of the blurred haze that surrounded him came men, men who knocked him back and held him down like he'd done something wrong. He shouted at them, what he couldn't say, thrashing to free himself from their grips but he was pinned down like a bird with broken wings, not even the freedom to move an inch. He shouted again. Screaming lieutenant! Lieutenant, help me! Let me go, it's a mistake- LIEUTENANT!

The haze of the drugs came back, and pulled him under.

"Lieuten... ant..."

His lieutenant never came.

The next time the nurse was there, holding out a handful of pills for him to take, he silently took them.

He knew someone else was supposed to be there.

He knew something about this was not right.

But his mind was fogged, and he was too tired, and before he could ever try to remember, he fell under again.

There became a schedule.

He was never let to leave the room; became very well acquainted with those four cramped white walls and the cold bed. He tried, once. Fighting past the drugs, he stumbled to the floor and crawled to the door, but it was locked, and there was nowhere to go.

When the nurse found him, he was lectured and chastised, again not like a man but a small child. He didn't remember being put back in the bed and left like a prisoner. He did remember the door locking behind her, when the nurse left, and he was alone again.

Little white pills in the morning. Little green pills at night. So many he forgot there was a taste in the world aside from acrid, acidic medicine. In in the interim he faded, awake but not. He heard things. There's no lieutenant, he heard when he moaned aloud; didn't realize he'd moaned a name until they told him so. You're very sick, they told him when he tried to insist he didn't belong here and that he wasn't ill. Heard words like mentally unstable, breakdown, and schizophrenia when he tried to protest; doesn't know what he's saying. A You'll feel better soon, when they fed him the pills. After the pills, he slept.

He dreamed of fire, against a blue, blue sky.

He didn't know why.

Finally, the day came when he felt a little less gone.

He still felt as woozy and dead as a tranquilized horse. Boneless and drained, body weighed down like lead while his soul climbed, wishing to float away. But when the nurse came, and he obediently swallowed the little white pills, instead of being treated to a shoulder pat and a swiftly turned back as she locked him in again, she smiled at him instead, and said, "How would you like to get up today, Roy?"

He blinked dully. His tongue and mouth were decidedly uncooperative, and he kept silent.

Up? Get up? Get up where? There was somewhere beyond this room?

He must've forgotten to answer, because before he'd figured out how to wrap his mind around that, he found himself being tilted to sit up, then guided to the floor. His knees tried to buckle at first and his head swam. For a very long while, it looked as if the cold white tiles were going to become his new pillow... but finally, his legs remembered their purpose. He wavered on his feet, perhaps utterly relieved; he vaguely recalled something about lacking the strength to do anything but crawl before, so standing felt nice. He smiled dully, padding around and testing his feet. He could stand again.

There were more blurred words that he barely heard as the nurse took his arm again, a little too firmly to just be offering support should he fall. He caught something about give you a tour, and psych ward, and in for a long stay here, but was still too horribly clouded to know what the words meant and had forgotten how to question it, anyway. He followed obediently, letting her tug him outside of the little room, and show him his new world.

He didn't remember much of what she said. Lots of rules and restrictions. He couldn't go there or do this. Couldn't say this or try that. Very strictly controlled. Very stringently regulated. It all flew over his head, and he hummed contentedly, too pleased to be allowed to move again and mind still to fuzzed to care.

He remembered more of what he saw. Very few other nurses, maybe one or two. Very small. The whitewashed hospital ward was stiff and cramped, even if when he blinked sometimes it felt massive to him, after so long in that little room. Many doors, but all shut and locked to him, none where he was allowed to go.

Something weighed hauntingly on his tongue.

You're not allowed to tell me where I may or may not go. You have no right to give me orders. I have authority- respect my uniform- respect me-...

Then the train of thought was gone, derailed and lost off the edge of a cliff. He nodded weakly, head bobbing, and was led away again.

There was a couch. The nurse was gone. He blinked fuzzily, and sat on it. It was nice to be able to stand again, but he was tired now, and even as stiff and lumpy as it was, it'd be... it'd be...

Comfortable? Was that the word? Comfortable-

What would be comfortable?

He shook his head slowly, long ago given up on clearing it, and sank backwards, allowing his mind to drift.

There was a boy.

A boy, standing there. A blurry, fuzzy boy.

He might've been there for a while. Sense of time was just one of those things that was lost to him, nowadays. He got the feeling the boy had been standing there for some time, and he'd seen him, just... not really, actually, seen him... until now. His mouth, dry, and his tongue still leaden, it took him a few seconds, minutes? past realizing him at all to acknowledge him.

"Hello," he said.

The boy, the fuzzy, blurry boy just looked at him. Perhaps for a long while, perhaps not. "You're here, too..." he thought he heard, and then, suddenly the boy was next to him, sitting down on the stiff, lumpy couch and staring at him with golden eyes that pierced straight through the drugged haze to leave him vulnerable; bare. "Do you know why you're here?" the boy asked carefully, slowly and determinedly enunciating.

Once again, it took him a moment to realize the question should receive a response. Licking his lips, he started to tilt his head in a shake, then giggled when that made the room spin, spin so fast the colors danced and the boy became a yellow blur. "Mmm... no." He raised a hand, trying to gesture, but the limb didn't even feel apart of him and he turned his gaze away, watching fingers that surely could not be his wiggle in the air. "They said... said..."

What'd they say? He hunted for the word, though it felt like sinking through mud. What had they said? They'd...

"...crazy," he finished at last, hand dropping in disappointment. That wasn't the word they'd used. They'd used fancy scientific word. Some name of some ailment; some condition. Something far more accurate and descriptive than just off-brand crazy. But he couldn't remember.

Just like everything else- he couldn't remember.

"Crazy," he said again, and started to shut his eyes.

He'd nearly slept, again, when the boy wrenched his head back and made him stare.

"Hey," the boy snapped. Fierce, golden eyes bored through him again, golden eyes with all the focus and power of the sun. One hand gripped him hard on the shoulder, and he blinked, staring.

One arm. Just one arm.

Then he blinked again, and realized the leg straddling him was just that- the one leg, too.

Just one arm, and just one leg.

He laughed fuzzily.

Heh...

You really are crazy.

"Hey," the boy snapped again, shaking him hard. "You're not crazy."

He blinked again. Sighed.

"Okay," he mumbled tiredly.

The boy watched him still.

Then, a little while later, he realized that the boy was gone, and he was left alone to sit, stare, and drift on the couch once again.

Before long, he forgot there'd ever been a boy there at all.

The routine was left the same for the rest of the day. There was lunch, food items that he could not, for the life of him, remember, but it had been a ridiculous chore to eat, when his hands were numb and he couldn't taste a thing, and then more sitting on the couch, sitting and staring and drifting. He didn't even realize he'd been pulled back to his feet until a while after it had already happened, the nurse's hand again at his elbow. Back to his little tiny white room. Another handful of green pills. Another sickly sweet smile as the lights were flicked out and he heard the woman bade him a good night. He watched her leave, eyelids already drooping shut. The green ones made him tired, and he sighed sadly, watching the colors and spots dance until he was pulled under again, and the colors and spots became flames.

The routine was left much the same again. White pills given alongside breakfast, some citrusy fruit juice that made his tongue curl, and then the nurse was gone again- but the door, left open.

He frowned at it.

Was he supposed to get up and leave again? He supposed he'd been told, if not. But his head... oh his poor, muddled, nonexistent head. He didn't want to be moving. Lying here was nice, too. To lie here and drift was nicer than stumbling around and drifting. Yes. To lie here and drift... that was all he wanted.

So that was what he did.

He did just that, until the door to his room opened again, and brought with it...

Oh. That boy from yesterday.

Oh, yes. Him.

For the first time, a break in the routine.

Fierce like he remembered, the boy pushed himself forward, wheelchair squeaking horribly loud over the tiled floors until he was close enough to grab the edge of the bed and yank himself up onto it. The mattress creaked and strained in protest as he was crawled towards, and he yawned blearily, simply without it in him to wonder or question as-

"H-hey!" A violent cough was torn out and he reeled away from the intrusive hand, struggling without strength to cast them away from his throat. "S- stop-"

His tender throat was violently rubbed again, no heed taken for his coughs or protests as his air supply was cut off and his windpipe squeezed, then the hand was jerked back and shoved straight into his mouth. It groped around, pulling, scratching, it was terrifying; he tried to fight it but, so drugged as he was, found himself helpless to do little beyond flail, gasp, and panic.

The abuse of his weak neck muscles finally left his gag reflex on overdrive. He coughed and doubled over, stomach heaving, already tasting acidic bile. Fuck, he was going to choke on his sick- "Let me g-g-go-"

The boy was gone, just in time for him to vomit hard on to the floor.

His throat hurt. Hist stomach hurt. Fuck, even his head hurt. It took minutes for him to stop heaving and his breaths to come back to him, and when he did, he felt even more lost and out of his mind than before.

No boy in a wheelchair was there. No strangely limbed, oddly crippled boy was there on his bed, choking him out for reasons unable to be discerned. There was just him, his aching throat, and his own sick on the floor.

Slowly, he raised a shaking hand to touch his sore neck. He brushed it over the spots where he still felt as if he'd been grabbed, and his breath caught a little in his throat, still tender and hesitant after nearly suffocating.

God damn, he really was out of his mind.

Too drained, disbelieving, and sickly miserable to hunt down that couch after all, he flopped back down onto his stomach, burying his head at in the sheets at the foot of the bed, and closed his eyes again. He wrapped his arms around himself, and patiently waited for that damnable nurse to come find him again, drug him senseless, and look at him like a pitiful pet to be euthanized instead of a human being- a sloshed, drugged, crazy one, but still a human being- locked in his own head.

His mind still spun with the pleasant buzz of medication, and he left his eyes shut, waiting for it to do its dues, and take him back under, where the crazy men slept and the crazy men died.

He knew something was different the instant he woke up.

Because he actually woke up.

He opened his eyes, and there. In perfect clarity. The metal foot of the bed. There. A bundle of pale blue blankets he'd scrunched up into some kind of pillow. So close he could see the stitching- but for the first time that he could ever remember, his vision held true. The blankets didn't blur into a seamless, colorful mass, nor did they spiral into such detail he could only be hallucinating. His vision was clear, and while his head pulsed with the mother of all migraines, and the lights in little prison-esque room drove knives through his eye and his breath caught as it became a groan-

He was awake.

Hardly daring to believe, certainly not daring to understand, he cautiously worked his hands underneath him, bringing himself up to sit. His word tilted threateningly, stomach clenching in nausea, but, but- it was so different than before. Before his whole existence had swam and he'd not felt sick simply because he'd been too light, feather light, to remember what being sick even was, but now... he was dreadfully ill and he felt it.

After days, weeks, months? Spend traversing that drugged haze where he'd not felt anything at all, this migraine, this nauseous twist to his stomach, his dry mouth, his aching throat- oh, how he relished it.

Because he was not drugged anymore.

Hesitantly, he tilted over the bed, eyes widening when he saw the remains of him getting sick over the side of the bed. So... it hadn't been a dream, then. He touched his sore throat again, fingers trembling, then pulled his pale hand to stare at it, for the first time feeling his fingers and his hand and his arm and- it had just been so long since he'd been able to feel like a dammed human being again-

What the hell had happened?

The memory flickered through his mind again, of that strange, crippled boy throwing himself on him, and choking him until he vomited, and his eyes widened.

He'd thrown it up.

Whatever the fucking nurse had been giving him to keep him so malleable, docile, submissive, doped, half-dead...

He'd thrown it up.

A very long moment passed, so stunned he did not know whether he wanted to laugh or whoop in victory.

It was unbelievable. It was nearly unreal. This was, then, the most clear-headed he'd been since... since he'd woken up in this room, at least. He remembered nothing from before it. For a moment fear awakened in his breast, and he swallowed, pulling back against the head of the bed and withdrawing himself, almost as if waiting for something to snap. Because something should snap, shouldn't it? There was something very wrong with him. He remembered nothing- that wasn't right, that wasn't normal. They told him he'd snapped, had a breakdown, done something horrible enough to land him in a mental hospital of all places, if only he could just fucking remember what he'd done so he could apologize for it-

But that strange kid had made him upheave all those horrid medications they kept drowning out his mind with. Those horrid medications that they'd told him were all were keeping him sane. No self respecting, functioning human being had to be drugged up past the eyeballs just to exist, but he was supposed to, because...

He didn't remember what happened if he wasn't.

But they told him it was bad.

They told him he was crazy.

He waited, the only sound in that small room his nervous, shaky breaths, in and out, in and out, for something to happen.

Nothing did.

At last, he decided that rather than wait to snap, he was going to brave the outside world once again, and take advantage of what might be his one moment of lucidity ever again. He tottered unsteadily to his feet to veer towards the door, to find that amazing boy, and figure just exactly why he'd reached into that mire of murky sedation and dragged him right back out again.

Out in the hall he crept, everything suddenly too loud and bright to him when he'd spent so long swallowed up by a swamp. The floor felt freezing beneath his feet, his legs sore and shaky like he hadn't actually used them since waking up in that room. He coughed and hung his head, letting ragged, dark hair fall over his eyes, suddenly self-conscious, and let himself stumble off down the hallway without particularly trying to correct it.

Something told him it wasn't a great idea, to let that dammable nurse find him and realize he spit up her fucking sedative.

He swayed down the corridor, only half acting as his weak legs took him towards where he'd first seen that boy. That shabby sort of common area in a tiny locked ward meant for long term patients, the couches and chairs that implied he was far from the only person held here, but it was empty, just as empty as the day before- except.

There he was.

In that couch he himself had vacated, just yesterday-

There was that boy.

Two gold eyes watched him darkly from behind tangled bangs, and somehow, he got the feeling the boy had been waiting for him for a while.

The stare nearly shocked the breath from him again. He stood frozen, tottering on his feet, and only vaguely remembered to pull himself together because, surely, he was more than this. Slowly, he approached the child, staring down at him without not so much as a clue what to do or say.

The kid smirked. "Feeling better?" he drawled quietly, voice a hushed sort of a whisper, the mischievous light in his eyes saying that he knew, full well, that he was feeling better.

He swallowed. "Why did you..." What? Help him? He still wasn't so sure he'd been helped at all. Attacked him? Wasn't sure if that was it, either- at least, the boy didn't see it that way. But then... "...do that?" he finished lamely at last, and found himself sinking exhaustedly to just sit across from him, a boneless and shocked shell of the man he might once have been.

All he got in answer was another smirk. "Because there was no one there to do it for me," he murmured, as if that vague sort of clarification sorted out anything, then cleared his throat. "What's your name?"

He hesitated. "...Roy." He said it because that was what they called him, not because he actually knew. And there was something very unsettling about that- not even knowing his own name. He raised his arm, the one with the plastic bracelet, and tilted it, the only reason he knew anything beyond that one syllable, strange sounding sort of thing. "Roy Mustang. ...I think. You?"

The kid grinned again, a fierce and bright sort of thing, so much brilliance it was almost blinding to see it here, in this grey and white prison, and stuck out his one hand for him to shake.

"Roy, huh? Well. Roy. Welcome to hell- it's nice to finally have some company." He smirked once more, and again there was something dangerous in those eyes as he wiggled his fingers for him to shake his hand. "I'm Ed."