Descent

Chapter Sixteen

There was blood everywhere. Soaked into the carpet, spattered on the walls, the inside of the door, there were ever splats of it on the furniture and on the boards of the bed. She drew in a sharp breath and slowly walked further into the room. There was so much blood, too much blood, so much that if it had all been spilled at once, which surely it had to have been, then Edward was most assuredly dead. Surely this had happened recently? It had to have. She knelt down next to the largest dried-up puddle of blood and examined it for a few moments. Ed and Roy had only been missing for three days, but this blood had been spilled three or four weeks ago. How could this have happened? She walked over to the splats on Edward's clothes drawers. At least a month. She repeated her actions with every little bit of blood she could see, and each section yielded similar results.

"H-Havoc?" She said, her voice shaking slightly.

"Yeah?" He responded, sounding a bit sick.

"All of this blood, all of it, it's between three weeks to two months old. None of it is even close to recent. What the Hell happened here?" She said.

"I don't know, Colonel. Hey, I don't know if this will help, but the blood might not even be Edward's. We might have to run a DNA test to be sure." He suggested.

"Havoc, that technology is new and faulty, it can't be trusted. No, I think this is definitely Edward's blood." She insisted, not because she couldn't think of another explanation, but for a more logic-less reason. She had looked after Edward for three months almost, and she had come to regard the child as a son. Without knowing, she just knew that this blood belonged to Edward. She just knew. "At least the age of the blood is varied, some, it means it was spilled over time. He shouldn't have died from this, at least, I hope not. But who would do such a thing? And how would they manage it without Roy knowing?" She asked, more to herself than to Havoc.

"Uh, Hawkeye?" The First Lieutenant said slowly.

"Yes?"

"Look at this." He motioned her to come to where he was kneeling, and when she had, he pointed to something on the floor. A closer inspection revealed it to be a fair sized section of singed carpet, something she hadn't noticed before. She frowned.

"What do you think?" She asked.

"I think my recent suspicions have just been confirmed. At least, they're as good as." He replied.

"What suspicions are you talking about, Havoc? And why haven't you voiced them?" She demanded.

"A while ago, I noticed that Edward wasn't acting like himself. He was flinching at everything, noises, movement, other people. It was so weird, because it was just so out of character for him. I asked him about it but he bluntly refused to tell me. But there was something else I noticed. Since he moved in with Mustang-"

"He's been limping." Riza finished. "I know, Fuery told me that he'd noticed it too, but he wasn't sure what to make of it. He was also too afraid to confront the General about it, in case he was thinking along the wrong lines."

"Yeah, well, if his thoughts were following the same path as mine, then he was definitely not wrong. When I confronted Mustang about what was wrong with Edward, his behavior changed completely. He went from casual and relaxed to dark and guarded the second I mentioned Edward's name. At the time I thought it was just because he was worried about Edward, but now I think it was because he was worried Edward ratted him out about what he had been doing."

"Havoc, what on earth are you even suggesting?" Riza ordered.

"What I'm saying, sir, is I think it was Mustang that was hurting Edward. You remember that day Ed fell out of the tree?" He asked suddenly.