To Be A Child

Chapter 3

His arms and legs seemed to be incapable of moving. One second he was standing, the next he was like a puppet on the floor with its strings cut. Just great.

No one had even bothered to catch him either.

The colonel was by his side the second after he hit the floor. "Fullmetal?" he asked urgently.

A pleased feeling suddenly stole over Edward. If he wasn't mistaken, the colonel seemed to be concerned about him! It was nice to know that the colonel cared . . .

Urgh, he was doing it again.

Ed quickly derailed his train of thought, and proceeded to blow it to pieces.

"Brother!"

Al rushed to his side and picked him up gently. Ed could feel the cold metal against him. Okay, so he wasn't numb, but then why wouldn't his muscles obey him?! Was this the effect of hitting his head?

"I'm ok, Al." Ed looked up at his brother as he was carried back to his hospital bed. Funny, he could move his head around and talk, but couldn't move anything else. He was pretty much a limp noodle in this state.

Huh, noodle, that sounded familiar.

Once he was back on his bed, Al was on him in a flash. "See, Brother? You need to rest! You're always running around everywhere but you neglect what's most important - your health!"

Edward tuned out Al's lecture and looked over at the colonel, who was now standing there with a knowing look on his face. Ed resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at him.

"Alright there, Fullmetal?" Seeming to have forgotten about his desire to talk with Hawkeye, Mustang strolled to the side of his bed and looked down at him.

With both Al and Mustang looming over him, Ed felt more than a little small - which he wasn't dammit!

"I can't move," he answered honestly.

Mustang frowned, but he didn't seem overly shocked. If Ed didn't know better, he would've thought that Mustang had been expecting something like this to happen.

The colonel nodded once, appearing to be deep in thought. Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode out of the room with Hawkeye, ignoring Ed's protests.

"Sir, I do not think it was a wise decision to hide the truth from Edward," Hawkeye said without preamble as soon as they had reached the waiting room.

Roy felt a twinge of guilt, but he pushed it down. "It's for his own good," he said. "We all know that the first thing Fullmetal would do is run off to find his captor, but he's obviously in no state to do that."

"I don't know for sure," he continued, "but it looks like the signals from his brain are being cut off from reaching certain parts of his body, leaving him unable to move, and therefore vulnerable."

Hawkeye nodded in understanding. "I guess he'll have to stay here, then."

"Not necessarily," Mustang said. "It's been in his system for a while now; if he was permanently paralyzed he wouldn't have been able to get out of bed at all."

Mustang frowned. The woman they were dealing was definitely cunning, and therefore dangerous.

"I think that the paralysis will just be on and off for Edward," he announced.