chapter 16

You sit in the darkness next to Ed, the silence only broken by the sound of the two of your breaths. Suddenly, Ed decides to change his position and jabs his left elbow into your injured abdomen. Pain shoots through your body and you yelp, bending over in pain. Ed's arm goes in front of you, holding you back. Your hand shoots to your pulsing stab injury and you you grit your teeth. As you bend over, you feel pain in your shoulder as well, and you hiss.

"Shoot! Are you alright!?" Ed worries. You don't reply, willing the pain to go away. It perceives, but gets better a bit.

"Y-yeah..." You say painfully. "It'll go away."

Ed jumps off the bed and turns the lights on.

When he turns to you, his eyes widen and he stumbles backwards against the wall, gasping.

"(Y/N)! Y-your-"

You turn your head to your shirt, chuckling lightly, careful not to hurt your stomach. "Yeah, I knew that."

Ed rushes to you, kneeling down in front of you, and lifts up your shirt so that the bandages showed. You inhale sharply, but allow him to look at your wound.

"You've bled through your bandages your shirt. (Y/N)! Don't be so careless!" Ed sighs in exasperation, and you watch his gaze travel up to your shoulder. He sighs again in annoyance, before his eyes narrow suspiciously.

"Wait... What happened? Your wounds couldn't have opened randomly.... Could they?"

You press your lips together, debating over wether to tell him or not. You didn't want to worry him... Yet, but what you discovered was important.

You decided to tell him.

"Remember that story I told you about that other day? The one where I got stabbed"

"Yeah."

"Well, there was something that I didn't tell you guys about."

"What!? (Y/N)! You shouldn't have-"

"They told me to come back within a week, or else I'd be dead. Well, now that I think about it, I think the voice was my boss's voice... Anyways, I went back there with Al, and uh, we kinda got attacked. By a black portal. With black ribbon arm things that, uh, tried to grab us."

"Black arms..." Ed thinks, and he suddenly gasps. "Wait! Were they long, and squiggly, and-"

"Yeah, just like that!"

Ed's hand goes to his mouth and his eyes gain an unbelieving look to them. "But I thought we destroyed the gate..." He mutters.

You cock your head. "What?"

"Oh, it's nothing. This is a huge problem."

"Well, no dur." You say sarcastically.

Ed's golden eyes turn to your wounds again. "Anyways," he changes the subject, "let's fix those wounds of yours first. Wait here."

Ed gets up from his kneeling position and rushes out of your room, leaving you by yourself. You sit there and wait obediently.

After about a minute or so, Ed comes back with a roll of bandages and antibiotic ointments. He kneels down in front of you and reaches his hand out to lift your shirt up. You-

(Choose one and proceed to read the corresponding sections)

~or~

You take in a sharp breath, but allow him to continue. Ed looks up at you, but you avoid his gaze. Slowly, he unwraps the bloody bandages, the sound of peeling gauze filling the room. You stay as still as possible.

When the last of the bandages are taken off, you look down at your stab wound and wince, making a face. There was a bloody rip on your side, blood oozing out and bits of gauze stuck to you. Blood smeared the skin around the wound.

"Eww, it looks disgusting." You say, disgusted but not able to look away. Ed pulls out a cloth and goes to the sink in the bathroom, wetting the cloth with water, and coming back to dab the blood off gently. Although he's being gentle, each tap sends a shock of pain through you. You bite your lip to keep yourself from shouting out.

"W-well, that makes sense since you're not taking care of it..." Ed replies. When you look at him, you see his face scrunched up in concentration, red tinting the bridge of his nose. You chuckle playfully.

"What?" Ed demands, stopping his work to look up at you.

"Oh, nothing." You say lightheartedly. You stick out your hand to pat Ed on the head a few times, flattening his bangs. The red on his face grows darker. "You expression just looks really cute."

Ed blushes and looks away, grunting. He goes to the sink again to wash the blood off the now blood-soaked cloth and comes back, kneeling in front of you. You watch in silence as Ed wipes clean the wound and pulls out the antiseptics. He unscrews the top of the ointment tube and squeezes some out on his finger.

"You know," you say, "you don't really have to keep lying to me."

Ed freezes and looks at you, confused. "Lying to you? About what?"

You sigh. "About you coming from the other side of the gate, dummy."

Ed's face twists in more confusion. "What? But how did you find out?"

You remember the flashback you had when the black hands came to grab you and shrug. "I remembered you."

Ed turns back to his work, rubbing the ointment across your wound and keeping quiet. You wince as the stab starts to burn, but keep quiet. The touch of Ed's hand on your bare stomach sends sparks up your spine, but you ignore them. A sprinkle of red dust graces Ed's face.

"Did I know you from before?" Ed asks, not stopping. He smears on the rest of the ointment and stands up, taking his cloth and climbing onto your bed, moving to the back of you, where the knife had barely protruded through. You don't move when Ed starts to clean the wound of its blood.

"No." You say simply. "But I knew you."

The room falls silent again. When Ed finishes, he applies the antiseptics again, this time, quicker. You flinch as the burn returns.

"How?"

Ed stops and comes around to the front of you again. He picks up the roll of bandages and picks at the beginning of it like it was tape. When he peels it off, he holds the beginning at your stomach and starts wrapping the gauze around your abdomen. His automail clinks as he works.

"Well... I may or may not have been in league with your enemy.. Haha..."

Ed freezes again, looking into your eyes again. "You were working with the homunculi?!"