Who:Ed and Neal-mentions of Riza at the end WhatWaking up from a dream coma. When:backdated to the 3rd Where:Hospital room Warnings:none, dream angst?
Ed finally blinked golden eyes open after what felt like an eternity of blackness to him, only to find the bright lights above him blinding. This wasn’t his room. That beeping noise wasn’t the alarm he thought it was-this was something different. Something that filled him with an awful sense of disorienting fear rarely like he’d never experienced before.
He went to move his arm but it was attached to something, and so he yanked harder in a moment of pure panic. He hadn’t known what happened to him. or where he was, or where anyone he knew was either.
He attempted to move his feet off the bed in an effort to get up but found everything to be a bit too heavy for him to move correctly.
If there was anything Neal knew with absolute certainty, it was that living in the OC tended to give someone grey hair prematurely. He already had a little around the temples, looking scholarly, but he swore that there were at least two or three more thanks to the random fog that blew across the land, monsters literally popping out from dark corners, and the fact that he had a twelve-year-old son who was ‘curious’ about everything.
Oh, and looking after a whole ranch’s worth of kids also. That sort of contributed.
Then Ed was in a coma, at the hospital. Neal wasn’t entirely certain what happened but he was as familiar with dream bullshit bleeding through as any, so he’d gone to visit. And was pretty sure that his voice could even still be heard, so he’d talked and talked - maybe it helped, maybe it didn’t, but it was worth a shot.
He was paying rapt attention when there seemed to be some movement, and Ed finally opening his eyes. Relief was the most prominent emotion. “Hey kiddo,” Neal grinned a bit, as the happy patient reoriented himself. “Glad you’re awake, finally. You’ve been out awhile.”
At the sound of a familiar voice Ed stopped fighting the wires and cables attached to him in various places. Ironically doctors had actually made an attempt not to tangle his automail in cords and such. Ed had been worried about that the first time Riza threatened to take him to the hospital. He worried about becoming the next big science project.
He seemed to relax a bit even. He hadn’t become the guinea pig in some lab apparently like his nightmares had lead him to believe. Once the light adjusted to his eyes they found the source of the voice nearby “Neal? ...What wait, out?” His voice was raspy from lack of use and straining against exhaustion, but someone was there. That was something. Riza had likely been in and out as well, but he didn’t see her or Al just yet, “What’s going on? Last thing I remember is school.”
“Don’t hurt yourself more, that’d be the last thing we need,” Neal laughed gently as he leaned over to help fluff the kid’s pillow a little. Ed also sounded like he needed something to quench his parched throat, so Neal reached for the pitcher of water, for visitors, on the attached tray to his bed and poured him some - fussing just a little, but it was in the dad (or dad-like, whatever) job description. “It’s been like, four days or so. You don’t remember dreaming anything about it? Because whatever put you in a coma there must have crossed over here too.”
Inconvenient, but unfortunately nothing new. It was just that being in a hospital bed, in a coma, for that long would be worrisome to the loved ones.
Ed was exhausted, which he thought was odd if he’d just woken up. He’d never really experienced a hospital before though so he didn’t know what to expect. When his mother had died she’d died in their house. Giving him a weak smile as he sat up and took the water-he nearly dropped it. It was ridiculous how physically weak he felt. “Crap” He worried at his lower lip with his teeth as he thought for a moment while some of the fog cleared in his head.
“The dreams?” It seemed to click again as memories flooded back. “...I remember lab five. They made a stage to create the philosopher's stone they had the ingredients already watered down..The..people they killed to make it to that stage already..” Ed seemed to struggle a little with that part, eyes lowering down toward his lap. “. I wasn’t going to do it, Al didn’t want me to. I had to sacrifice real living people too. More. A hundred prisoners of state. I did it though, I created the transmutation circles to create the stone itself. It took two full rooms. I was going to leave, but I couldn’t. I remember stepping in it.” He shuddered some at the memory and took a drink of the water with a shaky hand. “...Everything after that is a blank.”
Sounded like a pretty scary experience - and Neal remembered all the talk of the Philosopher’s stone and how dangerous it was during the debacle with him and having his father in his head; eventually, a replica had been created to trap the Dark One, the form it took, but to create the actual stone? His brow furrowed.
“Why did you decide to it eventually?” he asked, not bringing any judgments to the table. But he just wanted to know the reasoning.
“They were going to take Al from me. The homunculus..I bound his soul worth a blood seal to his armor. They knew how to remove it. They did it to another. “ Ed's dreams were no picnic. They only seemed to get worse and worse, and now they'd hospitalized him. He was afraid to get anymore.
Ed didn't cry often, but he could feel exhausted tears forming in his eyes, it was getting harder and harder to see. He lowered his head in attempt not to be seen. “E-everything I did they planned it. I wasn't strong enough to stop them. I couldn't do anything..” those last words trailed off as moisture fell finally
“Hey, hey...” Neal scooted the chair closer to offer a comforting hand, once he’d grabbed a tissue. To help catch the tears, that is - his other hand smoothed back Ed’s blonde hair, something he did to Henry when he was sick or hurting, a soothing gesture. “You’re strong, Ed. You are. But you’re also young - all of that, it’s too much for someone your age to deal with. Hell, it’s too much for pretty much anyone at any age to deal with. In that situation, it would have been the same for most anyone.”
When you were desperate, and caught between a rock and a hard place (especially during those awkward adolescent years when you were still coming into your own, going on those voyages of self-discovery), things just happened. Sometimes all you were left with were shitty decisions.
But he didn’t tell the kid to stop crying or anything. When everything became overwhelming, you just had to let it all out and there was no shame in that.
“I don’t even know what happened to the place or the ingredients or anything…” It was frustrating to be so close and then to have everything yanked away from your fingertips. It was a little more than he could bear at the moment. All he wanted to do was curl up and quit everything. “Al survived but..I think he hates me.” He hadn’t ever felt more ashamed. Dirty even.
And Neal wa still trying to comfort him even though he was sure he didn’t deserve to feel comfortable anymore after the things his brother went through. “I don’t really know what to do now.” Normally he might have tried to make a break for it but what was his goal? Did he have one at all? He caved and leaned into the touch, eyes closing for a moment as his lip quivered slightly. He wa worn out.
“Al could never hate you. Especially here, you know that. He looks up to you,” Neal insisted. Their brotherly bond ran deep - and he was pretty sure that Al just wanted Ed in his life, so they could have that relationship which wasn’t tainted by influences from their dreamworld. Things were different here, even if a lot leaked through, obviously. But overall, it was a whole other chance for something different.
It was a little heartbreaking to see now though - maybe he was made of metal, some parts of him weren’t flesh and blood and he was stronger than most, but at the moment Ed was just a kid who needed comfort and who needed someone to reassure him. Neal could do that - because he really did think that things would climb up, they always did. Maybe they went down again, but ups and downs were just a part of life.
“You’re awake now. And you can be with your family. That’s what you have to focus on, not what you couldn’t change in the dreams.”
“I wanted him here for so long but now I’m just worried about it.” It was ridiculous. Every day Al had spent with their good for nothing father Ed had longed to have him around, he was really the only one Ed knew how to talk to-but now it was the opposite. He was afraid to talk to him, especially about these dreams. The whole thing was his fault to begin with. Al had never wanted to bring their mother back in the first place, he only went along with whatever Ed did and it literally cost him his body.
“I’m scared..” He admitted, he hated admitting that. He wanted fear not to be a thing in his vocabulary.
He’d chewed a small wound in his lower lip, wincing as he went to wipe it away with his arm. He couldn’t move it. The automail refused to budge, fingers and all. “I..” He’d begun to say something else when he realized how heavy his arm felt. Sure to others it probably felt the same-but to Ed it felt like just another extension, and he struggled for a moment. “I can’t move.” He could move the fingers of his flesh hand just fine, but the automail was like a solid chunk of metal.
“It’s okay to be scared, Ed. Everyone gets scared,” Neal assured, because it was true. Even he got scared sometimes - hell, he was right now, worried for the future especially when it came to Emma dreaming of becoming the Dark One and how that would potentially affect their unborn child here. “Everyone has fears. That doesn’t mean you’re weak.”
His brow furrowed, as he watched the kid try to lift his arm. But he’d just come out of a coma, and was hooked up to various IVs and such, things to keep him hydrated while he was unconscious. “Relax,” Neal’s hand rested on Ed’s forehead, as if checking his temperature. The tried and true method of doing so, right? “I’ll call Riza, she’s gonna want to come by and see you too now that you’re awake.”
The frown on his face only darkened a little. “How do you get past it when it feels like it’s trying to cripple you?” No pun intended as he struggled to move his fingers, but he was pretty sure fear didn’t affect that-it was just some kind of side effect...probably He hoped. And yet that too was unnerving.
He fought with it until the warmth of Neal’s hand seemed to ease his frayed nerves a little. It was a strange feeling-nothing that science could really explain logically to him at the moment. Touch was no miracle cure or drug, and yet he just felt better. Warm even as he laid back, eyes heavy with exhaustion again. “Okay..can you stay a little longer?”
“It’s hard to get past it. But I do, because I think of what’s there on the other side,” Neal responded, continuing to brush back the blonde hair from Ed’s face. “People who are worth fighting for, who I can count on.”
Like now. Sometimes you needed another to fight for you, to give you a little boost, someone to lean on. And then sometimes you needed to do the fighting on your own. “I’ll stay longer, yeah,” he grinned. “Gotta see what hospital food they try to feed you. Maybe I’ll sneak you in something better later on.” Burgers and fries, pizza, those really great unhealthy things that teenagers loved.
The braid he usually wore was down and frayed in a mess of long blonde bed hair. He really wasn’t excited to see what that looked like after so long in bed apparently. He hadn’t worn it down in ages on purpose, it reached past his shoulders when undone. His eyes closed for moment shutting out the bright light again. “people huh..”People had let him down countless times, but there was a handful still by his side..maybe those were the ones Neal talked about.
“Wait, I have to eat here?” Ed hadn’t been hungry since he woke, I.V.’s and the like doing that sort of thing for him. He raised an eyebrow as a doctor finally made it to his room, clipboard in hand. “Welcome back to the living Mr.Elric.” and began to run the usual tests on him-all of which Ed would normally try to find some flaw in-but couldn’t find the energy for. Instead for once he just let the doctor do doctor things and kept an eye on Neal for a source of comfort. Riza wasn’t far behind. Apparently she hadn't ever left but the need for caffeine was great.