Midnight. Always the most feared time for Alphonse, when the nurses didn’t click by steadily, their heels tapping sharply on the gleaming grey tiles. When whatever light there was slid itself behind the blind over the window, when the electricity flittered in the halls outside and went out; a nightly occasion that never ceased to amaze the electricians who came to mend the broken wards.

He was caged inside his own body, and it infuriated him. The blood pounding thickly through his veins, heat stirring when his muscles started to twitch, and then tremble, and then vibrate. Like some great drum beating just under his skin, pounding him with its repercussions. And the emptiness.

Of being inside this wasted shell. Of being so ugly and disfigured Ed couldn’t bear to sit with him in the room for one minute. Of being so tired and weak tomorrow’s were something he couldn’t even bear to contemplate. But he always waited. For a familiar face. A quicksilver smile.

But his skin was white and opaque, exposing wrangles veins to the surface in ribbons of bruised blue. He was as thin as the willow branches that hid the light, the moon and the stars, outside the hospital window. That whenever he spoke he hummed instead, like some great cable, full of energy and pain and then Ed would frown and cry and leave him.

It hurt, even more than his atrophied limbs. And they really, really hurt.

And he was so angry for Ed not staying with him, because that’s all his soul remembered thinking about, when it truly was cold and he was truly empty. To be wrapped in his arms the greatest desire imaginable; and to be able to feel it…! Something his body echoed in flashing waves of warmth, that curled in the pit of his stomach, hurting him. Something his heart echoed too, but that cried as often as Ed did, curled up somewhere inside and fluttering at even a thought of the older blonde.

And the light hurt, and the hurt confused, and when he was confused it was like sitting inside a great ball of white light. Inside a great ball of nothingness. And it hurt, to be in pain and alone and scared of what he is, and was, and might never be again.

And the midnight light howls inside his mind.