Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Veritas Hominum ❯ Interrogation ( Chapter 18 )

A/N: Thanks for all the great reviews. You've all made my week. :o) This is kind of an interlude, things should start picking up again soon.

 

Interrogation

 

The room was old and white and stank of the “criminals” who'd come before him. He couldn't even remember how long he'd been in this god-forsaken place, they'd been in this god-forsaken place. He barely registered Winry's presence nearby; she hadn't moved in what seemed like hours, eyes completely glazed over. The hours had grown into days, the days into weeks, and eventually all he knew were the occasional meals of bread and water, the restless sleep, and the occasional comings and goings of his brother as he waited him out.

 

It had become a game almost - one neither were willing to yield. He wouldn't tell them what they wanted to know. He couldn't tell them. And Al continued to stare at him, waiting for him to break.

 

Once upon a time… he might have been able to tell Al. But the Al he knew would never have allowed himself to be set up as an antagonist to his brother.

 

Images of Barry the Chopper and Al's subsequent identity crisis flashed across his mind's eye. Al had been used then, and he was being used now, sitting across from him, eerily calm in the awful, dim lighting.

 

He couldn't tell Al what he wanted to know; it was too risky, telling Al would mean telling the entire rest of the world. And the rest of the world didn't need to know. And so Ed sat there day after day, staring back at his brother as his eyes slowly lost their focus.

 

ooo

 

The silence in the room was deafening. He had seen Winry, seen how weak she had become, and he knew his brother, underneath his stubborn exterior was really fairing no better. Day after day, all he did was sit and watch as the light that was his brother flicker slowly and eventually blow out.

 

It had been three weeks. Three excruciating, miserable weeks. Ed had fought and yelled and screamed (as he'd expected) for the first few days, but eventually had simply acquiesced to the situation.

 

He'd had no idea how difficult this had been when he'd accepted the job. He imagined Ed would fight him - and he felt he deserved to retaliate a bit. But every day after he left, his heart broke a little more and he hated himself and everyone else a little more. He hated his superiors making him do this, hated himself for almost wanting to make his brother suffer. Hated Ed for putting him in this position.

 

He had not apologized, nor offered any explanation of his absence. And because of that, Al continued, every day, to sit at that table, his brother across from him, waiting for him to speak.

At night, he would cry for penance from an unjust God and pray that the dreams that kept him awake at night would subside.