AN: Again, a sort of preview I suppose. This just came to me, so I don't know how I'll continue with it xD I probably will though, I like the story so far, personally O.o. I'm just doubting whether or not to make it EnvyEd or RoyEd. I'll think about it some more X3
Prologue
"Mom! Don't let them take me away! Please!" Crying. She was crying. Couldn't they see that she was crying? Couldn't they see that she was sick, that she needed him? Why couldn't they see that?
"Niisan! Mom, where's Niisan going? Why are you crying?" She sobbed harder. Her dress had a stain in it as she used it as a tissue. The younger brother cried as well. It was probably because he didn't like to see his mother cry like that—he didn't understand what was happening, so he wept with her, his small fist clutching her dress.
"Madam, does this child know Alchemy as well?" The big man in a black uniform asked her, looking at the younger brother. She hurriedly shook her head. The younger brother knew he wasn't allowed to talk about alchemy, the forbidden art. So he didn't. He just cried harder. "Very well. Please say goodbye while you can. You have one minute," the man in the black uniform said. The older brother looked scared as he was embraced by his sobbing mother.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said. "Why did you use alchemy? Why did you do it in public?" Her tears were leaking through his thin black shirt. There was a pause, as he pulled back from his mother's arms and looked her in the eye with his golden gaze.
"Because I wanted to make you happy, mom," he said. "What's so bad about that?"
"The time is up," the man said. He grabbed the older brother's arm and dragged him towards a fancy black car. He tried to worm his way out of the man's grip, but he was too big and too strong for the young boy. He was pushed inside the car and the last thing he could see of his mother and his little brother, were them running after the car.
"I love you Edward!" his mother yelled. And that was the last time he heard her sweet voice.
"Ah!" he yelled as he sat up straight in his small bed. Beads of sweat were dripping from his forehead as he clutched his stomach unconsciously. He panted heavily, eyes widened as he remembered the dream—no, memory. It was a memory. "Damn it," he muttered to himself. It had already been nine years ago, why couldn't he forget about it?
He lied back down again, the mattress on which he was lying on poking him in the back. They didn't treat their 'prisoners' well in the place he was residing at. He snorted, thinking about the awful food, horrendous guards and the old, smelly clothes. The only good thing about the place was that they had actually given him something called 'auto-mail'. He had lost his left leg and right arm in an accident when he was eight, about two months after he had been taken prisoner, so he wasn't exactly of much use to them.
Of course, when he had auto-mail, he was also required to work a lot harder.
It was a prison he was staying at, for people who knew about Alchemy and who could also use it. For how long mankind has existed, it had feared Alchemy. People could do both terrible and wonderful things with it, but unfortunately, they had usually only done terrible and awful things. Killing people, actually crossing human beings with animals… humans started to hate Alchemy and anybody who had the talent—that's why they created the prison. Central, it was called.
It stood in the middle of the ocean, on an abandoned island. If you're now thinking about some beautiful tropical paradise—you're wrong. It seemed to be always dark where they were, because the sunlight hardly reached them. It was dark, always very gloomy. Children and some adults always came by boat, which came about every month or so, bringing in many new alchemists from around the world.
The reason why the prison wasn't full yet? Because most didn't even survive two years in there.
In the time Edward had been there, many people had died. Either out of illness, because the guards had beaten them too hard or because they couldn't handle the place mentally. Edward had been there for already nine years and it pissed the guards off.
Not that all of them were bad—there were a lot of nice ones out there. Maes Hughes for example, even though he constantly talked about his daughter. Edward felt kind of bad for him, since he could only see her once every month, though he would always say, "Don't worry Edward, just one glimpse of her beauty and cuteness could last me twenty years!". He was weird like that.
Edward just thought that the whole prison was one hypocritical ordeal. Hell, they fear alchemy, yet they use it to make sure the prisoners can't use it? Humans truly were ignorant and foolish. Most of them anyway.
The head of Central was a man named King Bradley. Edward thought he was bearable—fair, but strict nonetheless. There were many guards and people who pissed Edward off and it wasn't rare for him to get punished. He was almost beaten to death once, but since he had made a promise with another guard—Roy Mustang, the biggest bastard—that he wouldn't die before him, he kept fighting. He was stubborn like that.
Besides that, there was one other thing that drove him, that kept him alive—to see his little brother and mother again. He had attempted to escape a lot of times, but it was hard without using his Alchemy. He had always failed and ended up in the prison's hospital after that. He knew he would get out of there someday, he knew because he dreamed about it, longed for it.
He knew, because he loved his family and would do anything to return to them.
He closed his eyes and fell asleep almost immediately.