Title: Nightmares
Author: Kristen Sharpe
Date: September 29, 2009
Rating: K
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: “Fullmetal Alchemist” belongs to Hiromu Arakawa, Square ENIX, Studio BONES and various other parties.
Author’s Note: This is manga-based and contains spoilers for chapters 38-40. Also, despite the title, it's a humor fic.
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The dream began well enough. A smiling, if vaguely defined, doctor announced that he could be a candidate for automail surgery after all. The dream then happily skipped over the more disturbing aspects of automail installation – though he did get a brief glimpse of some frighteningly sharp instruments – and he was soon in a sunny recovery room.
A nurse stood with her back to him, her blonde hair pulled back in a braid. Pretty. Hopefully, her face would be as well. She was a bit small, but that could be cute.
The nurse turned around, revealing a smiling Edward Elric. And, he was anything but cute. Especially with that demonic grin stretching his face.
“Okay, let’s start your exercises with fifty laps around the hospital!” Edward clapped his hands sharply and reached to yank the sheets off the bed, somehow transmuting a hapless bedpan into a frog in the process. “Up and at ‘em! I completed my automail rehab in just a year when I was eleven. Since you’re older, you shouldn’t have any trouble doing it in three months.”
Jean Havoc woke up screaming.
His roommate wasn’t far behind, waking with a choked curse and throwing himself from his bed to quickly scan the room for threats. Finding none, he rose from his crouch on the floor and looked toward Havoc angrily.
“What was that about, Havoc?”
Colonel Roy Mustang was not amused. His vault from the bed had nearly ripped out his IV line and, worse, pulled at the seared skin along his left side. The resulting pain promised returning to a peaceful slumber would not be easy.
But, Havoc was oblivious to his ire, instead staring blankly at the ceiling and breathing heavily.
Mustang’s glower dissipated. Was Havoc reliving the attack by that… creature?
“I had a horrible dream,” Havoc managed after a moment.
Mustang was silent.
“I dreamed that the doctors said I’d be able to get automail after all,” Havoc continued.
Mustang frowned. “How is that a nightmare?”
“I got to dreaming about the rehab. The Fullmetal Boss was there, and—”
“Say no more,” Mustang interrupted, “I see where the nightmare comes in.”
The two men were quiet for several long minutes as Mustang painfully climbed back into his bed and lay down on his back. He had been right about the pain. To take his mind off it, he started speaking again.
“I had a nightmare too,” he offered.
“Oh?”
“I dreamed that the nurse who was going to meet me in the courtyard tomorrow ditched me to see you.”
“What?” Despite his paralysis, Havoc nearly came out of the bed. “Now you’re taking my good dreams too?”
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Comments: Poor Havoc. He just can't win. And, I'm pretty sure even Ed can't turn bedpans into frogs (nor can I imagine why he would want to), but it seemed like the sort of nonsense that would happen in a dream.