Vulnerability

Roy Mustang stood by the window of his office and stared out over East City, wishing he could go outside and enjoy what seemed like a fairly nice day, judging by the pale sunlight spilling across the landscape.

Instead, however, he was stuck here, playing nurse to an undersized, bratty, sick alchemist.

On the couch in the back corner of the room, the aforementioned alchemist groaned softly and pulled the blanket covering him closer to his chin.

He'd just seemed unusually quiet when he first came in to give his report after he and his brother returned from pursuing yet another false lead on the Philosopher's Stone. Al had been delighted that he was actually getting a word in edgewise, and Roy was just glad that his eardrums were being spared the amount of yelling that normally accompanied the Fullmetal Alchemist.

That is, until Fullmetal excused himself to the restroom, and came back fifteen minutes later clutching his abdomen and looking like he hadn't slept for a week. Eventually, Al had gotten him to admit that he'd just thrown up everything in his stomach. Of course, the younger of the Elrics had started panicking and insisted that they get a doctor. Hawkeye had went with him to find one…and to keep him from worrying himself into a heart attack when he didn't even have a physical body to have one with.

At the time, Roy had thought they were overreacting. The flu had been going around Eastern Command for the last few weeks, and it was probably all that was wrong with Fullmetal. But the boy had been getting sicker by the minute since he threw up, and Roy was beginning to feel a bit worried himself.

When Fullmetal had started getting dizzy, Roy had convinced him to lie down on the couch. Then, he'd started getting chills, and Roy had gotten a blanket out of the standard-issue emergency kit in his desk. When he'd covered the him up, his hand had brushed against Fullmetal's skin for less than a second, and even with that little contact, Roy had been able to feel warmth from the boy's fever.

Now, Ed was hovering somewhere between sleep and consciousness. He was pale, except for his cheeks, which were flushed red with fever, and his entire body shivering from the chills. Roy was pretty sure that he didn't know where he was, and the few things that he'd said since he'd laid down had made no sense whatsoever. Roy didn't know how high a fever had to be to be dangerous, and he didn't have a thermometer anyway, but he was pretty sure that delirium was a bad sign.

Roy was intensely uncomfortable with all of this. He wasn't exactly qualified for taking care of a sick kid. What if he did something wrong? Actually, he wasn't sure he should have given Fullmetal the blanket when he already had a fever, but he'd looked so cold…Hopefully, it wouldn't hurt him. If it did, Roy was sure Alphonse would kill him. Al was a nice kid, for someone stuck in such a frightening-looking body, but he had an overprotective streak a mile wide, and he was better in a fight than Fullmetal, which was saying something.

Not to mention, it was just weird seeing Fullmetal like this. Fullmetal was someone who picked fights he shouldn't be able to win, got beaten up within an inch of his life, and still came out on top. He wasn't someone who curled up, ghostly-white and shivering and sick, on Roy's couch.

Fullmetal groaned softly, and, as Roy turned to look at him, said something in a raspy, cracked voice that Roy couldn't quite make out.

"What?" Roy asked softly.

"It hurts…" the boy said, a pleading note entering his voice. "Make it stop…"

Roy didn't say anything. Breda had caught the flu a week or so bad, and had said that it came with some pretty bad body aches, but Roy hadn't thought they would be enough to bother Fullmetal.

After all, this was Fullmetal, the boy who'd lost an arm and a leg and pushed himself through auto-mail surgery and recovery in a year. Pain didn't bother him. He probably didn't even feel it the same way that other people did.

Or, at least, that's what Roy told himself. Because, if he accepted the idea that Fullmetal could actually feel pain, in the same way that anyone else did…he would have to think about how much it must have hurt.

It should have driven him crazy. It really should have. The human body was only made to withstand so much, and Fullmetal had already pushed it far past that point. Auto-mail was attached to the person's nerves, for the love of heaven. It would have been torture, really. Torture performed by two of the people who Fullmetal had known the longest.

And if Fullmetal truly felt pain in the same way as everyone else did, if it was only pure determination that separated him from others who would have gone crazy or lost all hope…then could Roy have done it?

That was one of the questions that Roy asked himself on those nights when his dreams of Ishbal were interrupted by ones in which things ended badly for the Elrics. If it had been him…if he had tried human transmutation as a child, like the Elrics had, would he have been able to keep going, even after he failed and lost so much in the process? He truly wasn't sure.

Fullmetal groaned again, and clutched his blanket more tightly. Roy, without saying anything, walked over to him. He pulled the blanket up so it was covering the boy's shoulders, and brushed the boy's damp, golden bangs away from his eyes. Then, he returned to his place by the window to wait for Al and Hawkeye to return with the doctor, while, still curled up on the couch, Ed smiled, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.