Fanfic / To The Night Sky

To the Night Sky is a Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) fanfic written on Fanfiction Dot Net by NovaWasTaken, completed with thirty chapters.

Roy and Ed are stuck in a psychiatric ward, supposedly because they lost their minds. In spite of being unable to remember anything else, both cannot help the niggling suspicion that they're not supposed to be there — but if they want a chance to escape, they need to last long enough and not lose their marbles on the way.

Contains the following tropes

• Amnesiacs are Innocent: Truth outright compares the memory-wiped Edward to a baby and doesn't ask for him to pay a toll (or at least, not one that would handicap him further) in spite of the teen triggering a human transmutation array, acknowledging he had no idea of its function.
• Awful Truth: Roy starts suspecting he's a murderer after refusing to take the memory-blocker pill and having flashbacks of Ishval.
• Bedlam House: The psychiatric ward in which Roy and Edward are locked up — the nurses treat them as ill-behaved pets, they're drugged to the gills, forced to take ice baths and stuffed in padded cells wearing straitjackets, and nobody listens when they try to protest. It's justified by the doctor — their kidnapper — not being very interested in their well-being, and by Amestris currently being in the 1910s with a period-appropriate approach to mental health.
• Berserk Button:
  • Even unable to remember his own name, Edward will fight you if you comment on his height (or rather, lack of).
  • Truth doesn't like people who cheat with its rules for alchemy. It outright possesses Edward in order to manifest in the material world because it was that pissed off against Justin Everson for attempting to manipulate the teen into paying the toll in his stead.
• Bound and Gagged: Edward is forced into a straitjacket before being locked up in a padded cell, and Roy suffers the same with an added gag when he flies off the handle after having flashbacks of Ishval. Both are impacted by the ordeal, feeling ashamed and dehumanized to an uncomfortably deep extent.
• Break the Haughty: Hughes is thoroughly unsettled and disturbed when Roy and Edward appear on his doorstep, acting like Nervous Wreck and very different from their usually cocky, confident selves.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The tatoo on Edward and Roy's backs. Roy mentions his back is hurting in the first chapter, Edward manages to remember about alchemy after seeing it, it needs to be burned for them to finally escape the hospital but wrecks their health, and burning it again allows them to recover their memories.
  • Roy associating blue with safety. He finally allows himself to believe Hughes is trustworthy after laying eyes upon the man's blue military jacket.
• Condescending Compassion: The nurses just won't listen to Roy and Edward begging for them to stop the drugs, merely assuming their patients are difficult and need for their dosage to be upped.
• Cuckoo Nest: The story opens on Roy waking up in a hospital with the nurses telling him that he has schizophrenia and suffered a breakdown. Meeting Edward quickly throws the story into suspicion.
• Demonic Possession: After Justin Emerson forces Edward to trigger a human transmutation array, Truth decides to punish the doctor by using the teen's body to manifest in the physical plane and openly express his displeasure.
• Disappointed by the Motive: Justin Emerson was furious because the military rejected his bid for State Alchemist and took his anger on Roy and Edward for succeeding where he failed. Edward is utterly disgusted by such a shallow reason for the months of torture he and Roy suffered.
• Eldritch Abomination: Truth is in fine form. Its manifestion through Edward's body scares seven shades of crap off everyone watching.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Courtesy of his disjointed flashbacks, Roy believes he was responsible for Edward's missing limbs and has killed Hawkeye. It takes Hughes swearing otherwise for him to learn it's far from the truth.
• Everyone Has Standards: Truth is merciless towards alchemists breaking its established rules, but it nonetheless follows rules. Because of this, it refuses to harm the amnesiac Edward who had no idea of what triggering a human transmutation array would do, reserving its anger for the doctor who forced the teen to do so.
• Evil Is Petty: Justin Everson was alright with abducting, memory-wiping and torturing two people he never even talked with, merely because they earned the qualification of State Alchemist he couldn't have, and at a young age to boot. Edward is thoroughly disgusted by the doctor's shallowness.
• Faux Affably Evil: The doctor claims Edward has no reason to be afraid since he Wouldn't Hurt a Child — but it doesn't stop him from overmedicating the teen, or locking him up in a padded cell for weeks, or threatening his Only Friend to get utter compliance.
• For Want Of A Nail: In-Universe, one of the nurses went to the police to confess both of her patients were abused and needed help — but the Flame and Fullmetal Alchemists' civilian names' knowledge weren't that widespread, so Roy and Edward languished further until they escaped on their own. Hughes is dismayed when he understands that.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Edward is taken to a padded cell for being "upset". After a while, he actually embraces hallucinating his mother's transmuted corpse because at least it's some kind of company and when taken out agrees to transmutate gold because he doesn't want to go back.
• Heel Realisation: Nurse Susan ultimately goes to the police and confesses two patients under her care are mistreated, after having a talk with Edward and actually hearing how distressed he is by the "treatments".
• Hope Spot: Edward has a Freak Out when the doctor first attempts to make him transmutate gold and flat-out refuses. As the doctor relents, the teen is overjoyed about someone bothering to respect his boundaries — then he's locked up in a padded cell until he breaks down and agrees to the procedure.
• Innocently Insensitive: After finding the heavily injured and traumatized Roy and Edward on their doorstep, Hughes and Gracia want to call an ambulance. Since the alchemists just escaped from a psychiatric ward, it doesn't really persuade them to trust the couple.
• I Will Find You: Edward is bent on running away and finding "Al", and convince Roy to join him and seek for his "blue".
• Kick the Dog: When Justin threatens Roy in order to cow Edward into obedience, he specifically mentions he will take Roy's limbs. In front of a double amputee.
• Logical Weakness: Roy is unable to activate the array for transmutating gold, something that Hawkeye suggests is a consequence of his specialization in flame alchemy, making him less competent regarding everything to do with metal.
• Loophole Abuse: Justin Emerson forces Edward to trigger a human transmutation array, obviously hoping to force the teen to pay the toll in his stead. Truth gets so infuriated by the blatant cheating that it manifests on the physical plane to close the loophole with a lot of prejudice.
• Memory Wipe Exploitation: Justin Emerson forcefully erased Roy and Edward's memories in order to make them more compliant and suggestible to follow his orders such as transmutating gold. However, his victims' morals were so deeply rooted that he had to use medical torture as well.
• Mugged for Disguise: Roy beats a guard in order to steal his clothes and impersonate a nurse for the escape. Edward cannot do the same in spite of his insistence because a double amputee, teenaged nurse kinda stretches the boundaries of credibility.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Roy, a lot. First there's his flashbacks about Ishaval (that leads him to believe he caused Edward's injuries and Hawkeye's demise), then he's informed he assaulted the nurses with such violence he had to be Bound and Gagged before being taken to a padded cell.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: In the last chapter, Roy muses his relationship with Edward has been forever altered by their captivity.
• Papa Wolf: Roy quickly becomes very protective of Edward in the ward, to the point of talking back to the nurses and physically assaulting them.
• Quest for Identity: Edward and Roy are desperate to escape the hospital and remember who they are supposed to be.
• Race Lift: Roy Mustang in canon was identified as Amestrian. In this story, he still has the Amestrian nationality but one of the first things Edward does after meeting him again is commenting on his Xingese features and Madame Christmas ultimately admits he's the child of Xingese immigrants.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Maes Hughes.
• Spotting the Thread: The doctor realizes his captives are plotting something when Roy acts sedated in front of him — in spite of having being locked in a padded cell for four days because he was so violent he couldn't take the pills anymore.
• Trauma Button:
  • Ishval for Roy. Unfortunately, this is the first thing he starts to remembers when he skips the memory-blocker pill.
  • After being locked in a padded cell for weeks, Edward cannot stand being left alone and definitely has fits of claustrophobia.
  • Both of them definitely want nothing to do with hospitals, nurses or doctors for what's left of their lifespan. Unfortunately, they are so heavily wounded after escaping the ward that they need professional medical help.
• Unknown Rival: Justin Everson fixated on the Flame and Fullmetal Alchemists as the embodiment of everything wrong and corrupted within the military — but neither Roy or Edward had any idea of his existence.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: Madame Christmas in canon is Roy's paternal aunt. Here, she's only his foster mother since he's a child of Xingese illegal immigrants and adopted her girls too.
• Unreliable Narrator: Both Roy and Edward, courtesy of being memory-wiped, drugged to the eyeballs and hallucinating.
• Villain Respect: Justin Everson, for all his petty envy and disgust that a child would be allowed to become a State Alchemist when he failed, concedes Edward has the sheer brilliance to deserve his rank.
• Wheelchair Woobie: As his automail was taken from him, Edward is often seen in a wheelchair and loathes it as a symbol of his weakness. Being unable to walk under his own power emphazises his vulnerability, and his slowly eroding mental health only furthers it.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Subverted to hell and back in spite of Justin Everson's claims, who apparently doesn't think that abducting Edward to be drugged, gaslit into a Nervous Wreck and isolated in a padded cell and straitjacket constitues harm, as the abuse isn't physical. And he ultimately loses even this flimsy pretense of care when he forces Edward to trigger a human transmutation array, obviously hoping for the rebound to kill the teen.