Super Preview: Chapter 11, Part One
So, I just don't have much time to work on this fic these days, although I quit my part-time job so that very well might change. Then again, I'm getting married in the fall, so the free time that went to the job may very well go directly to planning and preparation. I feel pretty bad about going to long between updates, continuously, always with the excuse of oh, well, im busy, you know, with life and stuff. So, here is the first half of Ch. 11, for all friends of this journal. I have no idea how soon the completed version will follow, I really don't. But I can say that I am ending this fic with Ch. 12, and both chapters are completely outlined, and then, eventually, I will start the last story in the arc, "All My Life." This is a huge thank you to everyone who has been following this fic. I think I started "Friends and Lovers" in the spring of 2005, so I guess this whole fanfiction obsession of mine is two years old, give or take. I'm not the kind of person who ever finishes anything, so all the helpful and encouraging reviews I've gotten along the way have really pushed me to keep going with this. I hope you all enjoy reading this.
Hanging in the Balance, Part One
Roy had been planning to drive directly to the military headquarters in Central and come strolling in the front doors with the Fullmetal Alchemist at his side, ready to make a grand entrance, the Flame and the Fullmetal, ready to save Amestris from chaos and invasion. He had been planning on filling Ed in, as best he dared, on the drive there, and feeling him out, trying to determine the best way to convince him to go along with his plans. This plan was waylayed, however, when he realized just how seriously injured his former subordinate had really been.
“You need to lie down,” he told the younger man, not for the first time. Ed was pale and a sheen of sweat covered his face, and Roy glanced worriedly over at him as many times as he dared while still focusing on the road ahead of them..
“Fuck you, General,” Ed said sharply, but his eyes were closed. “I’ve been through worse.”
“We should stop somewhere, get you a good night’s sleep at least,” Roy pressed. “I don’t think bringing you to Central right now is the best-“
“You said you needed to find me before someone else did. So you did. End of story,” Ed snapped, turning his forehead into the cool glass of the window.
“Hardly,” Roy said dryly. “Besides, what good are you to me like that? You can barely walk,” he pointed out.
“So take me to a mechanic,” Ed mumbled into the door, his head dropping.
“Once we get to Central I’ll look for Miss Rockbell-“
“You know what? Screw that, I’ll fix it myself. Don’t look... for her...” he protested, his voice trailing off.
Roy frowned, concerned both by what he said and by the fading quality of his words. After he realized that Ed had downplayed the extent of his injuries, and that his inability to walk more than a few steps was more related to lack of strength than automail malfunction, he was beginning to re-work his plan. Edward had been shot three times, surely there was no way that could be considered “not that serious.”
Abruptly, Roy took a turn off the main road, risking another glance over at the blond in his passenger seat, but Ed didn’t seem to notice they had deviated from the most direct route. In fact, Ed didn’t seem to be aware of anything at all. He drove slowly through the small town, pulling the car up in front of what looked like a fairly reputable inn, and left it running while he went inside to inquire about a room, Ed’s stubbornness be damned.
The sight of Al in a military uniform stopped startling her years ago, ages ago even, but her distrust for the military never completely went away. She was uneasy with the military escorts Al had sent to the train station to meet her and Kaiya, and wary of getting into their car, and Kaiya was fussing and in desperate need of a nap by the time they arrived in Central.
It was another baking-hot day, and she could feel the sweat trickling down the back of her neck, and even in the mid-day heat it gave her the shivers, and Kaiya whined when she felt her mother shudder, and struggled to get down.
“I don’t think so,” she told her daughter sternly. “I can’t have you running all over Central station.”
“Daddy? Daddy?” her child asked, over and over again, like she had been repeating the entire way there.
One of the military escorts, a woman, turned and said brightly, “Oh, you’ll see your daddy soon enough. He sent us to make sure you got home safely.”
Winry pulled her daughter tighter as she ducked to get into the car. The other escort shut the door after her. “How old’s the baby, ma’am?” the other escort asked, and it took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her.
Since when have I become a ‘ma’am’? she wondered. “Almost two,” she answered, but distantly. Kaiya was banging her grubby hands on the window, making a opaque cloud on the formerly clear and polished glass, and she took one hand and captured both of her daughter’s in her own, and Kaiya let out a loud whine again. “Shh,” she said sharply. “Be good for Daddy.”
She had felt so together on the base in Dillon, taking control, taking over what she could, doing her part, getting things done, having a function, and now, sitting in the back of the military car, she felt like she was in a half-dream, half-memory, part nightmare, part reality. She had taken what she could carry and run to Central once before, to Al, who had been waiting for her then the way he was waiting for her now. She had been alone that time, and had arrived covered in grease, on a souped-up tractor with a truck’s engine she had stolen from an abandoned barn a few towns south of Rizembool. She would never do something like that now, not with her daughter in tow, not alone. Who would watch Kaiya while she was up to her elbows in machine oil? It wouldn’t have been possible.
No, this time she was arriving, if not rested, at least showered, but she felt no more at ease than she had the first time. The first time she had been afraid, but this time she knew what she was afraid of. She was afraid she’s see Al with that haunted expression she guessed any soldier might get after a battle, something she never imagined she’d see on her young friend and lover’s face, something she had seen only a few times but that had frightened her more than she was able to explain.
She was afraid of more nights of Al waking up shaking, with nightmares of that thing he called the “Gate” mixed in with visions of enemies perishing under his hands; she was afraid of feeling helpless as her country crashed down around her; she was afraid she’d never be able to give her daughter the kind of childhood she’d had: happy, peaceful, in the countryside where it was safe. Wars killed people.
Wars killed parents.
And left children orphans.
Alphonse was waiting for her when the military car pulled to a halt. He wasn’t wearing one of those blue uniforms; he was wearing a pale green button down shirt and khaki pants, and his bronze-colored hair was neatly combed and pulled back. His face lit up with pure delight as his daughter cried “Daddy!” and bolted from the car and her mother’s arms, and she watched him scoop her up like she weighed nothing and fling her up into the air, catching her and pulling her close to him on her way down.
With Kaiya in his one arm, leaning happily against his shoulder, he outstretched his other arm to Winry. “It isn’t much,” he said by way of greeting. “But it’s the best I could do for you on short notice like this.” She felt his hand on the small of her back, and it wasn’t weird, or awkward, or guilt-inducing. It was comforting.
He led through a door with chipped paint, up a narrow cement stairway, to a metal door with a peephole in the center with a peeling number 12 displayed prominently on its front, and slid Kaiya down to the floor so that he could reach in his pocket for a ring of keys. He used one to open the door and pushed it open, letting Winry and Kaiya go inside first.
“Here,” he said from behind her, holding out the keys. “These are yours.” She took them, wordlessly, and watched him disappear into the narrow hallway to the left of the living room. “There’s only two bedrooms,” he said, and she could hear the apology in his voice. “And Kaiya’s getting older… I thought she should have her own room.” She caught up with him, and saw him standing in the center of a closet-sized room with a little girl’s bed in the corner and a small set of drawers against the one wall. He was rubbing the back of his head with his hand, under his ponytail, a gesture that reminded her so much of his brother, and one she had never seen him use before. “The other room’s yours,” he added unnecessarily, and she let her eyes flick towards the doorway. “I’ll sleep on the couch if you want,” he said quickly. “Although.”
Here he stopped, and she looked at him quizzically.
Kaiya had followed them into the bedroom and she began pulling the drawers open and shut, open and shut again, banging them and scowling. “Mommy, go home?” she said when Winry grabbed her hands to stop her banging. “Daddy, go home?”
They glanced at each other. Neither of them knew if their house in Altenburg was even there anymore. Al couched down in front of her. “We’re going to stay here for a little while,” he told her gently.
“No!” she said, bringing her small hand down on his knee. “No, no, no, home, Kaiya home!” Al tried to wrap his arms around her but she squirmed away, running down the little hall and into the rest of the apartment, and he went after her.
“She needs to go to bed,” Winry called after him, but her words were drowned out by her daughter’s screaming. She stayed in the bedroom, looking out the small, square window at the city sidewalk. There were two soldiers stationed on every corner, each with a heavy gun slung over his shoulder. She turned away. Kaiya’s screams had died quickly down to wimpering, and Al appeared again in the doorway with her in his arms. She had her arms wrapped around his neck and would not let him pull her away to put her in the bed, so Al stopped trying, kicking his shoes off and crawling into the little bed himself and leaning back on the pink pillows. He was crooning something unfamiliar under his breath, his attention fully on his daughter, and Winry frowned, leaning closer. What was that he was singing? It wasn’t anything she had heard from her parents, or her grandmother, or from his parents either.
When Kaiya’s breathing was even and silent, instead of putting her down in her bed Al simply raised his grey eyes to hers, still humming under his breath. He lifted his eyebrows very slightly, his expression steady, and she felt her shoulders slump. As if it was automatic, she let herself crawl into the remaining space in the little bed, resting her cheek against her daughter’s and her head on Al’s shoulder.
She could fall asleep like that. She could fall asleep in a child-sized bed, the three of them, all on top of each other, like they had when they were children. She suddenly realized how exhausted the past few days had made her, and felt her eyelids slowly closing, and she let herself drift off before she could turn her head and ask Al what he had been about to say, ask Al if everything was going to be all right, ask Al if he had heard from his brother- and ask him where he had learned that song.
She had the eerie feeling she was falling asleep to a lullaby from another world, but she was too tired for it to make any difference.
Roy left the car running with Ed sleeping against the window as he straightened his uniform and stode inside, showing his watch as he entered the front room of the small inn.
“No room,” the grey-haired man at the desk said succinctly, chewing the end of a toothpick and not looking up from his newspaper.
The General let the watch clink against the counter when he set it down, the chain crumbling down on top of the round metal disc, and said, “this is official military business, you are required by law to put us up for the night.” He knew he sounded a pompous ass, but he also knew that more often than not, that was what the situation called for.
The man did look up then, taking in the blue uniform, but returned immediately to his paper. “No room,” he repeated. “’Nother inn next town east.”
“You will be compensated for the inconvenience,” Roy said smoothly, as if his request hadn’t been rejected at all, taking his book of government bank vouchers from within his breast pocket and wrote out a sizable sum, putting it on the desk beside his watch.
“Whole government’s in shambles,” the man said in a monotone. “Pretty soon that scrap won’t be worth shit.”
“Then you’d better cash it quickly,” he grated out, his patience wearing thin. “I need two beds, for one night, then we’ll be out of your hair.”
The man reached into a drawer and threw two metal keys marked 11 and 12 on their handles onto the counter, and, when Roy did not take them immediately, he pushed them towards him.
“Go on then,” the man said. “Get out of my lobby and into your rooms. Your presence is bad for business, don’t want my regular customers seeing you here.”
Roy pushed a hand through his dark hair. “We have no intentions of disturbing anyone,” he assured the man, and took the keys, returning outside to fetch his wayward alchemist from the front of his military issue car.
“Come on, Ed,” Roy groaned, trying to coax him back into wakefullness. He managed to drag him out of the passenger seat and into a standing position, all the while being careful not to jostle any of his injuries, but that was where his abilities stalled. “I can’t pick you up, you know,” he muttered, slapping lighty at the pale cheek.
“Cut ‘t ow, Roy,” came the vague protest from the sleeping blond.
“Fullmetal, wake up,” Roy said, his voice sharper. “Just long enough to get inside, then you can sleep all you want.”
One eye cracked open. “Thought we were goin’a Central?”
“Yeah, we’re almost there, just stopping over for the night,” Roy assured him, thankful that Ed’s conciousness was beginning to surface after all. He had been afraid the younger man had been slipping into a coma, going by the half-concious utterances he had been offering on and off all through the drive. “I got us some rooms, come on, there’s a nice bed waiting for you upstairs.”
“Not ‘p stairs, automail’s busted,” came the mumbled protest, but both eyes were beginning to flutter open and stay that way, and he seemed resonably secure in his footing.
“Well, I’ll help you,” Roy said, eager to get Ed inside and out of sight, both for his own reasons and those mentioned by the innkeeper. He flinched when Ed’s automail hand clenched his arm for support, and he swayed a little under the weight that was suddenly put upon him. “I can’t carry you, Ed, stand up,” the General warned. “You must weigh about a ton with all that metal.”
Ed gave a short laugh, showing even more signs of full conciousness. “Yeah, about that much,” he agreed, opening his eyes fully. “We didn’t have to stop, you know. I was sleeping just fine in the car.”
Roy supported him as best he could and they made their slow way into the building. “I want to give you some more time to recover before I throw you on the military higher-ups,” he admitted, letting his concern show plainly.
“Oh, you wanna make sure I’m use-able before you use me?” Ed said sarcastically, and Roy’s expression looked like he had been kicked in the gut. Ed rolled his eyes. “’Sall right, you know. I trust you.”
Taken aback as he was, Roy still noticed how out of breath and pale Ed looked, and concentrated on getting him up the stairs. As they passed the front desk at the inn they both caught the hushed words of the attendants, talking about watching out for those military bastards and making sure they were given rooms far from the other guests, so as not to disturb their regular customers.
Roy had gotten used to that kind of talk years ago, but it was a testament to just how unwell Edward was feeling that he didn’t let loose a piece of his own opinion.
Despite Ed’s protests that he would have been fine in the car, Roy stood in the doorway of the small room and watched him climb slowly into the bed and drop immediately back into sleep. Roy had been a soldier; he had been shot before - he knew how draining a gunshot wound could be, even if it completely missed any vital organs, which, according to the doctor in Dillon, Ed’s had not. He had been in surgery for several hours to stop the bleeding, and even afterwards there had been no guarantee he would pull through, especially without a decent supply of antibiotics. Roy pulled the small orange bottle from his pocket, leaving it on the nightstand, and went to fetch a glass of water to leave for him before he went to fetch himself a bottle of something stronger.
When she woke up it was to a sound she wished she didn’t recognize. Al had already bolted out of bed and was halfway to the front door, and she scrambled after him but was too asleep yet to call after him. She found herself panting in the open doorway, staring out at the dingy grey stairwell of an apartment building that wasn’t her home, her heart pounding and her ears still ringing with the sound of gunshots. She thought everything was stable now in Central? Wasn’t why she had come there?
Slowly, she pulled the door shut, turning the first lock and then the second, and then pulling the chain across and locking that too. Then she went back to her daughter’s room and saw that she was still sound asleep, undisturbed by the noise outside of her window or the commotion in her own bed. She crept toward the window, peering out once more. It was dusk, and everything was faded blue-grey in the dimming light. The moon was already high in the pale sky, and the sidewalk outside the window was silent except for a few passing pedestrians. She could hear the sound of an approaching car in the distance, and the motor grew louder as it came nearer and then faded away as it passed her. There were still soldiers on the corner, talking to each other, passing a cigarette back and forth under the newly-lit streetlamp. Al? she wanted to call out.
She jumped when she heard his voice behind her.
“It was nothing,” he said, motioning for her to come out of Kaiya’s room and back into the small, square living room/kitchen. “I’m sorry,” he added. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought maybe- there have been stories…” he started, but his voice trailed off. It was that look again, that look that she hated to see in his eyes. That look that didn’t belong in the eyes of the younger Elric. In the eyes of any Elric, she amended quickly. “There’s been talk that people are- disappearing. The military is coming and taking people, just like that, no explanation.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“They think the attacks came from somewhere inside our borders. At least partially. The enemy is already here, and everyone is a suspect.”
“Al,” she began, but stopped.
“This is bigger than anyone could have predicted,” he whispered, his face an ashen shade, and she couldn’t tell if it was from the fading light from the window or from something else entirely. “I can’t tell you everything that’s going on. Just- Winry, you know that we’re at war, right?”
Of course I do, stupid, she thought angrily, irrationally. I just had to pack up and leave my home for the second time in my life. I didn’t even know if we would really get here, or if you would really be waiting for us, or if- but she didn’t let herself continue that thought. She simply nodded.
“I might not be able to stay here with you,” he said finally. “If it gets bad- well, I’ll have to go and fight.”
“When?” she whispered. It was automatic, a show of comfort: she reached for his hand, clasping it between her own.
“I don’t know yet.”
She let go of his hand, stepping away from him, leaning down and picking up her bags that she had come with. She unzipped the first one: she had only brought one change of clothes, and they were no longer clean. She dropped them on the floor, and then dropped to her knees, staring down at the two bags, everything she had now, for all she knew. Maybe this would be just like last time. Maybe she would never go back to her house in Altenburg. Maybe that town had been absorbed into the area called “unstable territory” like Rizembool had been, where no one would dare to live.
She looked up at a plain white t-shirt dangling in her face. “Here,” Al said gently. “This is mine, but it’s clean. You don’t mind sleeping in this, do you?”
She shook her head, taking it from him.
“That’s your room,” he added, pointing at the second door in the narrow hall. “Like I said, I can sleep on the couch.”
“Don’t,” she said abruptly, but she was afraid to look him in the eyes.
I’m scared. I’m lonely. I miss your brother. I want to use you. I want to pretend you’re him.
I hate myself for being like this.
The world could be ending. I could wake up tomorrow and it ends up the last day of my life. I could lose you in this crazy war we’re in. Kaiya could grow up without a father. The military could take you away from me. I might never see you again.
I might never get to explain to you everything I feel for you.
The world doesn’t care about this mess we’ve dug ourselves into.
It could end before any of us even try to fix everything.
She didn’t realize she was crying until she saw the tear drops making dark spots on her lap. Winry let her hair hang down over her face, trying to get a grip on herself before looking up, but she felt Al’s arms around her. “Winry,” he said softly. “It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. I wont let anything happen to you or Kaiya.” He put a hand under her elbow, steadying her as she stood up, leading her to the closed door of the room that was supposed to be hers.
Suddenly she just wanted to be alone, and, before she could stop him, she shoved him square in the center of his chest. “Just sleep on the couch!” she cried, pushing the door shut with the back of her heel and flinging herself down on the lumpy mattress.
Edward woke with a start, feeling three sharp pains throbbing in time with one another: two in his stomach and one in his left shoulder. He wanted to curl into the lumpy matress and pull the musty blanket close around him, disappearing once more into the world of exhausted, dreamless sleep, but every movement sent a fresh stab of pain through his torso. Slowly, he sat up, blinking in the dim room. It was still daylight, he saw, but barely. The curtains were drawn, blocking out most of the weak and setting sun, and he was alone. There was a glass of water on the bedside table, along with his bottle of antibiotic pills from the hospital, and a note jotted on the back of an envelope - in the room next to yours. Knock if you need anything. Leaving early tomorrow for Central. Get as much rest as you can. Roy.
Carefully, he shook out two pills and tossed them onto his tongue, gulping down the lukewarm water, not having realized until he drank how thirsty he was, and set the glass down on the nightstand with a bang. Reluctant to do anything that would involve moving his injured shoulder, he rubbed his eyes with his automail hand, thankful for the cool metal on his burning eyelids. He didn’t think he could fall back to sleep.
He stood up, testing his automail leg several times before putting his weight on it and deciding it would hold. Never, in all the times he had wrecked up his best friend’s masterpieces, had he ever tried to repair them himself; he knew better than to mess with what he didn’t understand. It was wiser to leave such things to the experts, he had thought back them. But after ten years in a world where the only limbs he had were the remaining ones the Gate had left him and what he had been able to constuct himself with his substandart knowlege, he didn’t hesitate to take matters into his own hands. He could tell the electrical impulses that ran along the artificial nerves weren’t firing correctly, but the leg seemed to work well enough, and would last him until he would be able to get to a mechanic, even if it wasn’t his mechanic.
He had stayed in many inns with Al during their four years of travel, and he figured this one couldn’t be that much different. There might be a washroom at the end of the hall with running water, or there might be water to be had in the kitchen from a pump, but he placed his bet on the building having running water. While he had been gone Amestris had gone on pushing towards this new “modern age” everyone was always talking about, and besides, he was certain he was close to central and the towns closer to the big cities always had newer technology than the ones way out in the country side.
Towns like Rizembool, his home. He remembered the first time he had seen a big city was when he and Al had come to find the Colonel in East City, when he had been twelve and Al had been eleven. He had tried desperately not to look like an ignorant country kid, but even for all his knowlege of science the technology available in the cities simply amazed him back then. Edward shook his head. Just a few years ago he considered himself an engineer, pushing for even greater and even more unthinkable advances in a country no one here had even heard of. And now he considered himself... he shook his head again, his hand on the doorknob. A brother? A father? A scientist? An alchemist? A friend? A lover?
There was, just as he had guessed, a washroom at the end of the hall, and he drank directly from the faucet and then splashed the cold water over his face, wetting his super-short fringe of bangs and frowning at the reddened scar that ran just above his eyebrow. It would probably fade in time, he figured, but it would never go away. Just another one of the ugly marks that covered his body, marks of hurt and violence and pain. What was one more to him, anyway?
”-those military assholes upstairs, think they’ve been sent to investigate what’s been going on here?”
“Couldn’t possibly have. No one knows about this route, no one would ever suspect we’re harboring the Drachman fortune here, right outside of Central.”
“There’s another pickup tonight-“
The rest of the conversation was muffled, but Ed had his ear pressed to the vent under the sink, and quietly clapped his hands together and pressed them to the wall, slightly altering the ventilation system to better amplify what was going on on the floor below him.
”-make much sense, though, does it? Why would they be smuggling their treasure into Central?”
“Have you actually seen what’s in those packages?”
“Not me, I ain’t seen a thing. They’re not paying us to look inside, just to keep it hidden until it’s all moved to where ever they’re taking it.”
Ed’s eyes widened at the next statement:
”I looked inside, you know what they are? They’re bricks, stone bricks, red, like a gemstone. God only knows why they’re so important to them.”
The conversation he was overhearing had moved to another room, so he couldn’t have caught anymore of it if he had wanted to, but he had stopped listening at the mention of the red stones. What the hell? That package he had seen, that time in Central, that wasn’t the only one? What had he stumbled on this time?
His mind was spinning. Drachma was attacking his country from the northern border, yes, but what if that was just to distract the military from whatever it was they were doing right under their noses?
Before he even realized what he was doing, Edward found himself creeping slowly down the stairs, the ones at the other end of the hall, not the ones Roy had helped to drag him up earlier. As he suspected, the door at the bottom was locked, and, again with barely a thought, he opened it alchemically, silently, without a sound, and pushed it open, peering into the darkness and waiting for his eyes to adjust.
His breathing was shallow simply from the exertion required to travel the length of the hallway and the flight of stairs, and he could feel his three wounds pulsing in time with his heartbeat, but he clenched his teeth and steeled himself further, blinking in the unlit basement. He heard the shuffling sounds before his sight sharpened, and he drew further back behind the door when he realized there were men down there, loading up the brick shaped packages onto a cart of some sort, silently and quickly. He sealed the door again and leaned back against the stairwell. He couldn’t very well run in there and stop them, show them his State Alchemist’s watch and haul them back to Central, exposing them as villains and be hailed as a hero, now, could he?
He stared at the flight of stairs ahead of him, took a deep breath, and grabbed the rail with his automail hand, using the other hand to clutch his abdomen, and began his ascent.
Al jumped when he saw a something move behind him in the mirror, and immediately relaxed when he realized it was only Winry, standing just outside the narrow bathroom door, watching him comb through his hair and tie it back behind his head.
Her lips were slowly spreading upwards in a smile, though her eyes were slow to follow. “Al?” she said softly, and, although he could see her reflection, he turned around to face her for real. “When did you start shaving?”
He looked back to the mirror, running his hand over his smooth chin. “A few months ago.”
She came to stand beside him at the sink, staring at his reflection critically. “Why, though?”
“Because,” came the serious answer. But no explanation followed.
“Al,” Winry pressed. “You don’t have anything to shave.”
He pushed his face closer to its reflection. “Yes I do. A little,” he added, turning his head from side to side, running his fingers over his “sideburns.” As Winry reached across him for her toothbrush and turned on the faucet, he added, “My body’s almost eighteen. I should start shaving, right?”
She shrugged and spat into the sink. “I don’t know,” she told him. “I’d think you’d wait until you had something to shave off, first.”
“Hey!” he protested, but she had his chin in her hand and ran her own fingers lightly over his jawline, smiling at him.
“Al,” she said, her eyes twinkling in amusement. “There is nothing here.”
“Because I shaved it off,” he said stubbornly, but he couldn’t meet her eyes for fear he’d start laughing and give himself away.
“How old was your brother when he started shaving?” Winry asked curiously, and he was immediately serious.
He turned away from the mirror and reached for his shirt. “I have no idea,” he said shortly. “I wasn’t there. Is the baby awake?”
She paused midway through running a brush down the length of her yellow hair. “Hm? No, she’s still asleep. Al?”
“What?” he said, the word muffled by the cloth of his shirt as he pulled it over his head, straightening the collar in the mirror and pulling his ponytail out in one long sweep so it rested on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, looking down at her bare feet on the cracked tiles of the cramped bathroom. Her voice had a weird echo to it in the tiny room.
She felt his hands grasping gently the backs of her arms, and he pressed his lips to her forehead in a gesture he hadn’t offered her in months - or was it years? - and left them there for a full minute before he broke away.
When he spoke his voice was very soft, and he was looking down, his eyelashes throwing shadows over his cheeks in the harsh fluorescent lighting. “I’ve done some really bad things in my life,” he said, very quietly, and then paused again. “Unforgivable things.” He let one hand curve around the small of her back, rest on the dip of her waist, and her forehead dropped to rest on the center of his chest. “One thing I’ve learned about that word is that it doesn’t mean a single thing.”
She raised her eyes to him, and his breath caught, not for the first time, perhaps at the zillionth time, at the stunning hue of her eyes.
“Not a single thing,” he repeated.
“But I am sorry,” she repeated. “I’m sorry for all of this - I hate that I’ve come between you brothers.”
“So do I,” he whispered honestly.
She pulled away from him, staring down at the floor, unable to say anything else for a few minutes.
“Winry,” he said then, and she looked at him. “I still love you. Nothing can change that.”
He knocked twice, with his automail hand, even, but there was no answer. Impatient, he pushed the door open and stepped inside, but there was still no response. His eyes were already adjusted to the dark, and he scanned the room, taking in the rumpled but empty bed, the small, closed suitcase on the desk, and the half empty bottle on the nightstand. Remembering the night at the hotel in Central, he glanced over at the window, and there was Roy, rocks glass in hand, dressed in pyjama pants only. He turned slowly, staring down at his now-empty glass, and walked over to the nightstand, picking up the bottle.
“Don’t,” Ed warned, and Roy looked up, noticing he wasn’t alone for the first time.
He saw Ed standing in the door frame, silhouetted by the lit room behind him, and frowned. “Ed?” he said blankly.
“You’d better not be drunk, bastard, because we got shit to take care of,” he said, stepping forward. Then he stopped, his eyes locked on Roy’s face. He didn’t notice at first; the room was dark and the general looked exactly the way he had looked when he was a colonel: no patch covering nearly half his face. But when Ed stepped out of the doorway he let more light into the room, and he saw Roy’s entire face, lit, unobscured. The entire eye socket was collapsed, the eyebrow was gone, everything was gone, and Roy bought his hand up to cover the side of his face, turning swiftly away. “Sorry,” Ed said, his voice low. “I knocked, you know.”
He snatched the patch up off the nightstand and slid it over his head, his back still turned. “It’s fine,” he said to the wall. “What happened? What do you want?”
“You know why they don’t want us here?” Ed said, his face pale, neutral.
Roy sat down on the narrow bed, leaning back on his hands, and said, “Because everyone hates the military these days Ed, I told you that.”
“Nuh uh, General,” he said, that cocky grin creeping over his exhasuted features, “that’s not all of it. While you were up here,” he gestured towards the bottle on the nightstand, “doing this, I was poking around downstairs. They’re stockpiling red stones here, that’s why they didn’t want any military hanging around.”
“You were supposed to be resting,” the General said, his voice flat. “Not prowling around in the dark.”
“I wasn’t prowling- Roy! Red stones!” Edward practically shouted, but dropped his voice when he realized someone could just as easily be listening to him as he had listened to the conversations he had overheard.
“Yes, some group has been moving illegal red stones around the country for quite some time,” Roy said, unconcerned and unimpressed.
Ed raised his eyebrows. “Dont you think,” he said slowly, “it would be awfully impressive for you to actually catch them? I mean, I’m sure the president-“
“The president’s dead, Ed,” Roy said, his arms folded in front of him. He reached over and poured himself the drink Ed had stopped him from earlier, and switched on the bedside lamp.
“Dead?”
“Assassinated,” he clarified. “Central was rioting for days afterward, just like what happened after -after the Fuhrer-“
“After you killed the Fuhrer,” Ed finished for him. “So who’s in charge now? The new president?” When Roy was silent, Ed pressed, “Roy? Who’s in charge now?”
“No one,” he said, his voice eerie, even in the soft glow of the lamplight. “Yet.” He took another sip from his rocks glass. “Not until someone steps in and takes charge.” He put the glass down, and, after a minute of Ed’s confused stare, he added, “I’m trying to do this as painlessly as possible. Amestris doesn’t need anymore bloodshed; that’s exactly what I’ve been working to eliminate.”
Ed’s eyes grew round with Roy’s statement. “Then who the hell are you trying to impress with my ‘capture’? And who the hell ‘ordered’ you to find me, if no one is giving orders?” he demanded, his metal hand on his hip.
“A lot of people are trying to give orders, and a lot of people are vying for control. Trust me, Ed, it was better that I find you now rather than someone else hunting you down later.”
Edward frowned, stepping further into the room and sinking down on the edge of the bed next to Roy. “I do trust you, Roy,” he said, for the second time that day. “But why can’t you tell me what you’re doing?”
“I thought I already made that perfectly clear,” the older man said smoothly, picking up his drink again. “I’m going fix this country.” He took another sip. “And I need your support, just like I need the support of everyone else who has been working under me all these years, in order to do it.”
“But-“
“Trying to shut down this minor waystation of red stone traficking will simply look like another incident of civil unrest, which is not the impression I want to make. Returning to Central with one of the military’s greatest weapons, is.”
“That’s how you see me?” Ed spat, “as a weapon?”
“That’s how the rest of the military sees you, Ed,” Roy said calmly. “Now get some rest. Leave whatever’s going on in the basement of this inn alone, these people are just pawns caught up in something greater than they know. We don’t want to get mixed up in that too, not yet. You really need to go to sleep now, it’s late”
Ed stomped his foot, and flinched when the movement sent a pang of pain through his gut. “I’m not your damn subordinate, and I’m not-“ he began, but Roy held a hand up to stop him.
“I know you’re not, Ed. But you are my friend. Please. Just leave it alone, and do what I’m asking you.”
Ed stared at him for a full minute before he turned turned to go back to his own room. He paused in the doorway, and turned back, saying, “I’d better not have to wake your ass up tomorrow and find you hungover. This country’s gonna be pretty dificult to fix with the state it’s in right now.”
The General gave the younger man a small, sad, half smile. “Good night, Ed.”
Hanging in the Balance, Part One
Roy had been planning to drive directly to the military headquarters in Central and come strolling in the front doors with the Fullmetal Alchemist at his side, ready to make a grand entrance, the Flame and the Fullmetal, ready to save Amestris from chaos and invasion. He had been planning on filling Ed in, as best he dared, on the drive there, and feeling him out, trying to determine the best way to convince him to go along with his plans. This plan was waylayed, however, when he realized just how seriously injured his former subordinate had really been.
“You need to lie down,” he told the younger man, not for the first time. Ed was pale and a sheen of sweat covered his face, and Roy glanced worriedly over at him as many times as he dared while still focusing on the road ahead of them..
“Fuck you, General,” Ed said sharply, but his eyes were closed. “I’ve been through worse.”
“We should stop somewhere, get you a good night’s sleep at least,” Roy pressed. “I don’t think bringing you to Central right now is the best-“
“You said you needed to find me before someone else did. So you did. End of story,” Ed snapped, turning his forehead into the cool glass of the window.
“Hardly,” Roy said dryly. “Besides, what good are you to me like that? You can barely walk,” he pointed out.
“So take me to a mechanic,” Ed mumbled into the door, his head dropping.
“Once we get to Central I’ll look for Miss Rockbell-“
“You know what? Screw that, I’ll fix it myself. Don’t look... for her...” he protested, his voice trailing off.
Roy frowned, concerned both by what he said and by the fading quality of his words. After he realized that Ed had downplayed the extent of his injuries, and that his inability to walk more than a few steps was more related to lack of strength than automail malfunction, he was beginning to re-work his plan. Edward had been shot three times, surely there was no way that could be considered “not that serious.”
Abruptly, Roy took a turn off the main road, risking another glance over at the blond in his passenger seat, but Ed didn’t seem to notice they had deviated from the most direct route. In fact, Ed didn’t seem to be aware of anything at all. He drove slowly through the small town, pulling the car up in front of what looked like a fairly reputable inn, and left it running while he went inside to inquire about a room, Ed’s stubbornness be damned.
The sight of Al in a military uniform stopped startling her years ago, ages ago even, but her distrust for the military never completely went away. She was uneasy with the military escorts Al had sent to the train station to meet her and Kaiya, and wary of getting into their car, and Kaiya was fussing and in desperate need of a nap by the time they arrived in Central.
It was another baking-hot day, and she could feel the sweat trickling down the back of her neck, and even in the mid-day heat it gave her the shivers, and Kaiya whined when she felt her mother shudder, and struggled to get down.
“I don’t think so,” she told her daughter sternly. “I can’t have you running all over Central station.”
“Daddy? Daddy?” her child asked, over and over again, like she had been repeating the entire way there.
One of the military escorts, a woman, turned and said brightly, “Oh, you’ll see your daddy soon enough. He sent us to make sure you got home safely.”
Winry pulled her daughter tighter as she ducked to get into the car. The other escort shut the door after her. “How old’s the baby, ma’am?” the other escort asked, and it took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her.
Since when have I become a ‘ma’am’? she wondered. “Almost two,” she answered, but distantly. Kaiya was banging her grubby hands on the window, making a opaque cloud on the formerly clear and polished glass, and she took one hand and captured both of her daughter’s in her own, and Kaiya let out a loud whine again. “Shh,” she said sharply. “Be good for Daddy.”
She had felt so together on the base in Dillon, taking control, taking over what she could, doing her part, getting things done, having a function, and now, sitting in the back of the military car, she felt like she was in a half-dream, half-memory, part nightmare, part reality. She had taken what she could carry and run to Central once before, to Al, who had been waiting for her then the way he was waiting for her now. She had been alone that time, and had arrived covered in grease, on a souped-up tractor with a truck’s engine she had stolen from an abandoned barn a few towns south of Rizembool. She would never do something like that now, not with her daughter in tow, not alone. Who would watch Kaiya while she was up to her elbows in machine oil? It wouldn’t have been possible.
No, this time she was arriving, if not rested, at least showered, but she felt no more at ease than she had the first time. The first time she had been afraid, but this time she knew what she was afraid of. She was afraid she’s see Al with that haunted expression she guessed any soldier might get after a battle, something she never imagined she’d see on her young friend and lover’s face, something she had seen only a few times but that had frightened her more than she was able to explain.
She was afraid of more nights of Al waking up shaking, with nightmares of that thing he called the “Gate” mixed in with visions of enemies perishing under his hands; she was afraid of feeling helpless as her country crashed down around her; she was afraid she’d never be able to give her daughter the kind of childhood she’d had: happy, peaceful, in the countryside where it was safe. Wars killed people.
Wars killed parents.
And left children orphans.
Alphonse was waiting for her when the military car pulled to a halt. He wasn’t wearing one of those blue uniforms; he was wearing a pale green button down shirt and khaki pants, and his bronze-colored hair was neatly combed and pulled back. His face lit up with pure delight as his daughter cried “Daddy!” and bolted from the car and her mother’s arms, and she watched him scoop her up like she weighed nothing and fling her up into the air, catching her and pulling her close to him on her way down.
With Kaiya in his one arm, leaning happily against his shoulder, he outstretched his other arm to Winry. “It isn’t much,” he said by way of greeting. “But it’s the best I could do for you on short notice like this.” She felt his hand on the small of her back, and it wasn’t weird, or awkward, or guilt-inducing. It was comforting.
He led through a door with chipped paint, up a narrow cement stairway, to a metal door with a peephole in the center with a peeling number 12 displayed prominently on its front, and slid Kaiya down to the floor so that he could reach in his pocket for a ring of keys. He used one to open the door and pushed it open, letting Winry and Kaiya go inside first.
“Here,” he said from behind her, holding out the keys. “These are yours.” She took them, wordlessly, and watched him disappear into the narrow hallway to the left of the living room. “There’s only two bedrooms,” he said, and she could hear the apology in his voice. “And Kaiya’s getting older… I thought she should have her own room.” She caught up with him, and saw him standing in the center of a closet-sized room with a little girl’s bed in the corner and a small set of drawers against the one wall. He was rubbing the back of his head with his hand, under his ponytail, a gesture that reminded her so much of his brother, and one she had never seen him use before. “The other room’s yours,” he added unnecessarily, and she let her eyes flick towards the doorway. “I’ll sleep on the couch if you want,” he said quickly. “Although.”
Here he stopped, and she looked at him quizzically.
Kaiya had followed them into the bedroom and she began pulling the drawers open and shut, open and shut again, banging them and scowling. “Mommy, go home?” she said when Winry grabbed her hands to stop her banging. “Daddy, go home?”
They glanced at each other. Neither of them knew if their house in Altenburg was even there anymore. Al couched down in front of her. “We’re going to stay here for a little while,” he told her gently.
“No!” she said, bringing her small hand down on his knee. “No, no, no, home, Kaiya home!” Al tried to wrap his arms around her but she squirmed away, running down the little hall and into the rest of the apartment, and he went after her.
“She needs to go to bed,” Winry called after him, but her words were drowned out by her daughter’s screaming. She stayed in the bedroom, looking out the small, square window at the city sidewalk. There were two soldiers stationed on every corner, each with a heavy gun slung over his shoulder. She turned away. Kaiya’s screams had died quickly down to wimpering, and Al appeared again in the doorway with her in his arms. She had her arms wrapped around his neck and would not let him pull her away to put her in the bed, so Al stopped trying, kicking his shoes off and crawling into the little bed himself and leaning back on the pink pillows. He was crooning something unfamiliar under his breath, his attention fully on his daughter, and Winry frowned, leaning closer. What was that he was singing? It wasn’t anything she had heard from her parents, or her grandmother, or from his parents either.
When Kaiya’s breathing was even and silent, instead of putting her down in her bed Al simply raised his grey eyes to hers, still humming under his breath. He lifted his eyebrows very slightly, his expression steady, and she felt her shoulders slump. As if it was automatic, she let herself crawl into the remaining space in the little bed, resting her cheek against her daughter’s and her head on Al’s shoulder.
She could fall asleep like that. She could fall asleep in a child-sized bed, the three of them, all on top of each other, like they had when they were children. She suddenly realized how exhausted the past few days had made her, and felt her eyelids slowly closing, and she let herself drift off before she could turn her head and ask Al what he had been about to say, ask Al if everything was going to be all right, ask Al if he had heard from his brother- and ask him where he had learned that song.
She had the eerie feeling she was falling asleep to a lullaby from another world, but she was too tired for it to make any difference.
Roy left the car running with Ed sleeping against the window as he straightened his uniform and stode inside, showing his watch as he entered the front room of the small inn.
“No room,” the grey-haired man at the desk said succinctly, chewing the end of a toothpick and not looking up from his newspaper.
The General let the watch clink against the counter when he set it down, the chain crumbling down on top of the round metal disc, and said, “this is official military business, you are required by law to put us up for the night.” He knew he sounded a pompous ass, but he also knew that more often than not, that was what the situation called for.
The man did look up then, taking in the blue uniform, but returned immediately to his paper. “No room,” he repeated. “’Nother inn next town east.”
“You will be compensated for the inconvenience,” Roy said smoothly, as if his request hadn’t been rejected at all, taking his book of government bank vouchers from within his breast pocket and wrote out a sizable sum, putting it on the desk beside his watch.
“Whole government’s in shambles,” the man said in a monotone. “Pretty soon that scrap won’t be worth shit.”
“Then you’d better cash it quickly,” he grated out, his patience wearing thin. “I need two beds, for one night, then we’ll be out of your hair.”
The man reached into a drawer and threw two metal keys marked 11 and 12 on their handles onto the counter, and, when Roy did not take them immediately, he pushed them towards him.
“Go on then,” the man said. “Get out of my lobby and into your rooms. Your presence is bad for business, don’t want my regular customers seeing you here.”
Roy pushed a hand through his dark hair. “We have no intentions of disturbing anyone,” he assured the man, and took the keys, returning outside to fetch his wayward alchemist from the front of his military issue car.
“Come on, Ed,” Roy groaned, trying to coax him back into wakefullness. He managed to drag him out of the passenger seat and into a standing position, all the while being careful not to jostle any of his injuries, but that was where his abilities stalled. “I can’t pick you up, you know,” he muttered, slapping lighty at the pale cheek.
“Cut ‘t ow, Roy,” came the vague protest from the sleeping blond.
“Fullmetal, wake up,” Roy said, his voice sharper. “Just long enough to get inside, then you can sleep all you want.”
One eye cracked open. “Thought we were goin’a Central?”
“Yeah, we’re almost there, just stopping over for the night,” Roy assured him, thankful that Ed’s conciousness was beginning to surface after all. He had been afraid the younger man had been slipping into a coma, going by the half-concious utterances he had been offering on and off all through the drive. “I got us some rooms, come on, there’s a nice bed waiting for you upstairs.”
“Not ‘p stairs, automail’s busted,” came the mumbled protest, but both eyes were beginning to flutter open and stay that way, and he seemed resonably secure in his footing.
“Well, I’ll help you,” Roy said, eager to get Ed inside and out of sight, both for his own reasons and those mentioned by the innkeeper. He flinched when Ed’s automail hand clenched his arm for support, and he swayed a little under the weight that was suddenly put upon him. “I can’t carry you, Ed, stand up,” the General warned. “You must weigh about a ton with all that metal.”
Ed gave a short laugh, showing even more signs of full conciousness. “Yeah, about that much,” he agreed, opening his eyes fully. “We didn’t have to stop, you know. I was sleeping just fine in the car.”
Roy supported him as best he could and they made their slow way into the building. “I want to give you some more time to recover before I throw you on the military higher-ups,” he admitted, letting his concern show plainly.
“Oh, you wanna make sure I’m use-able before you use me?” Ed said sarcastically, and Roy’s expression looked like he had been kicked in the gut. Ed rolled his eyes. “’Sall right, you know. I trust you.”
Taken aback as he was, Roy still noticed how out of breath and pale Ed looked, and concentrated on getting him up the stairs. As they passed the front desk at the inn they both caught the hushed words of the attendants, talking about watching out for those military bastards and making sure they were given rooms far from the other guests, so as not to disturb their regular customers.
Roy had gotten used to that kind of talk years ago, but it was a testament to just how unwell Edward was feeling that he didn’t let loose a piece of his own opinion.
Despite Ed’s protests that he would have been fine in the car, Roy stood in the doorway of the small room and watched him climb slowly into the bed and drop immediately back into sleep. Roy had been a soldier; he had been shot before - he knew how draining a gunshot wound could be, even if it completely missed any vital organs, which, according to the doctor in Dillon, Ed’s had not. He had been in surgery for several hours to stop the bleeding, and even afterwards there had been no guarantee he would pull through, especially without a decent supply of antibiotics. Roy pulled the small orange bottle from his pocket, leaving it on the nightstand, and went to fetch a glass of water to leave for him before he went to fetch himself a bottle of something stronger.
When she woke up it was to a sound she wished she didn’t recognize. Al had already bolted out of bed and was halfway to the front door, and she scrambled after him but was too asleep yet to call after him. She found herself panting in the open doorway, staring out at the dingy grey stairwell of an apartment building that wasn’t her home, her heart pounding and her ears still ringing with the sound of gunshots. She thought everything was stable now in Central? Wasn’t why she had come there?
Slowly, she pulled the door shut, turning the first lock and then the second, and then pulling the chain across and locking that too. Then she went back to her daughter’s room and saw that she was still sound asleep, undisturbed by the noise outside of her window or the commotion in her own bed. She crept toward the window, peering out once more. It was dusk, and everything was faded blue-grey in the dimming light. The moon was already high in the pale sky, and the sidewalk outside the window was silent except for a few passing pedestrians. She could hear the sound of an approaching car in the distance, and the motor grew louder as it came nearer and then faded away as it passed her. There were still soldiers on the corner, talking to each other, passing a cigarette back and forth under the newly-lit streetlamp. Al? she wanted to call out.
She jumped when she heard his voice behind her.
“It was nothing,” he said, motioning for her to come out of Kaiya’s room and back into the small, square living room/kitchen. “I’m sorry,” he added. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought maybe- there have been stories…” he started, but his voice trailed off. It was that look again, that look that she hated to see in his eyes. That look that didn’t belong in the eyes of the younger Elric. In the eyes of any Elric, she amended quickly. “There’s been talk that people are- disappearing. The military is coming and taking people, just like that, no explanation.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“They think the attacks came from somewhere inside our borders. At least partially. The enemy is already here, and everyone is a suspect.”
“Al,” she began, but stopped.
“This is bigger than anyone could have predicted,” he whispered, his face an ashen shade, and she couldn’t tell if it was from the fading light from the window or from something else entirely. “I can’t tell you everything that’s going on. Just- Winry, you know that we’re at war, right?”
Of course I do, stupid, she thought angrily, irrationally. I just had to pack up and leave my home for the second time in my life. I didn’t even know if we would really get here, or if you would really be waiting for us, or if- but she didn’t let herself continue that thought. She simply nodded.
“I might not be able to stay here with you,” he said finally. “If it gets bad- well, I’ll have to go and fight.”
“When?” she whispered. It was automatic, a show of comfort: she reached for his hand, clasping it between her own.
“I don’t know yet.”
She let go of his hand, stepping away from him, leaning down and picking up her bags that she had come with. She unzipped the first one: she had only brought one change of clothes, and they were no longer clean. She dropped them on the floor, and then dropped to her knees, staring down at the two bags, everything she had now, for all she knew. Maybe this would be just like last time. Maybe she would never go back to her house in Altenburg. Maybe that town had been absorbed into the area called “unstable territory” like Rizembool had been, where no one would dare to live.
She looked up at a plain white t-shirt dangling in her face. “Here,” Al said gently. “This is mine, but it’s clean. You don’t mind sleeping in this, do you?”
She shook her head, taking it from him.
“That’s your room,” he added, pointing at the second door in the narrow hall. “Like I said, I can sleep on the couch.”
“Don’t,” she said abruptly, but she was afraid to look him in the eyes.
I’m scared. I’m lonely. I miss your brother. I want to use you. I want to pretend you’re him.
I hate myself for being like this.
The world could be ending. I could wake up tomorrow and it ends up the last day of my life. I could lose you in this crazy war we’re in. Kaiya could grow up without a father. The military could take you away from me. I might never see you again.
I might never get to explain to you everything I feel for you.
The world doesn’t care about this mess we’ve dug ourselves into.
It could end before any of us even try to fix everything.
She didn’t realize she was crying until she saw the tear drops making dark spots on her lap. Winry let her hair hang down over her face, trying to get a grip on herself before looking up, but she felt Al’s arms around her. “Winry,” he said softly. “It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. I wont let anything happen to you or Kaiya.” He put a hand under her elbow, steadying her as she stood up, leading her to the closed door of the room that was supposed to be hers.
Suddenly she just wanted to be alone, and, before she could stop him, she shoved him square in the center of his chest. “Just sleep on the couch!” she cried, pushing the door shut with the back of her heel and flinging herself down on the lumpy mattress.
Edward woke with a start, feeling three sharp pains throbbing in time with one another: two in his stomach and one in his left shoulder. He wanted to curl into the lumpy matress and pull the musty blanket close around him, disappearing once more into the world of exhausted, dreamless sleep, but every movement sent a fresh stab of pain through his torso. Slowly, he sat up, blinking in the dim room. It was still daylight, he saw, but barely. The curtains were drawn, blocking out most of the weak and setting sun, and he was alone. There was a glass of water on the bedside table, along with his bottle of antibiotic pills from the hospital, and a note jotted on the back of an envelope - in the room next to yours. Knock if you need anything. Leaving early tomorrow for Central. Get as much rest as you can. Roy.
Carefully, he shook out two pills and tossed them onto his tongue, gulping down the lukewarm water, not having realized until he drank how thirsty he was, and set the glass down on the nightstand with a bang. Reluctant to do anything that would involve moving his injured shoulder, he rubbed his eyes with his automail hand, thankful for the cool metal on his burning eyelids. He didn’t think he could fall back to sleep.
He stood up, testing his automail leg several times before putting his weight on it and deciding it would hold. Never, in all the times he had wrecked up his best friend’s masterpieces, had he ever tried to repair them himself; he knew better than to mess with what he didn’t understand. It was wiser to leave such things to the experts, he had thought back them. But after ten years in a world where the only limbs he had were the remaining ones the Gate had left him and what he had been able to constuct himself with his substandart knowlege, he didn’t hesitate to take matters into his own hands. He could tell the electrical impulses that ran along the artificial nerves weren’t firing correctly, but the leg seemed to work well enough, and would last him until he would be able to get to a mechanic, even if it wasn’t his mechanic.
He had stayed in many inns with Al during their four years of travel, and he figured this one couldn’t be that much different. There might be a washroom at the end of the hall with running water, or there might be water to be had in the kitchen from a pump, but he placed his bet on the building having running water. While he had been gone Amestris had gone on pushing towards this new “modern age” everyone was always talking about, and besides, he was certain he was close to central and the towns closer to the big cities always had newer technology than the ones way out in the country side.
Towns like Rizembool, his home. He remembered the first time he had seen a big city was when he and Al had come to find the Colonel in East City, when he had been twelve and Al had been eleven. He had tried desperately not to look like an ignorant country kid, but even for all his knowlege of science the technology available in the cities simply amazed him back then. Edward shook his head. Just a few years ago he considered himself an engineer, pushing for even greater and even more unthinkable advances in a country no one here had even heard of. And now he considered himself... he shook his head again, his hand on the doorknob. A brother? A father? A scientist? An alchemist? A friend? A lover?
There was, just as he had guessed, a washroom at the end of the hall, and he drank directly from the faucet and then splashed the cold water over his face, wetting his super-short fringe of bangs and frowning at the reddened scar that ran just above his eyebrow. It would probably fade in time, he figured, but it would never go away. Just another one of the ugly marks that covered his body, marks of hurt and violence and pain. What was one more to him, anyway?
”-those military assholes upstairs, think they’ve been sent to investigate what’s been going on here?”
“Couldn’t possibly have. No one knows about this route, no one would ever suspect we’re harboring the Drachman fortune here, right outside of Central.”
“There’s another pickup tonight-“
The rest of the conversation was muffled, but Ed had his ear pressed to the vent under the sink, and quietly clapped his hands together and pressed them to the wall, slightly altering the ventilation system to better amplify what was going on on the floor below him.
”-make much sense, though, does it? Why would they be smuggling their treasure into Central?”
“Have you actually seen what’s in those packages?”
“Not me, I ain’t seen a thing. They’re not paying us to look inside, just to keep it hidden until it’s all moved to where ever they’re taking it.”
Ed’s eyes widened at the next statement:
”I looked inside, you know what they are? They’re bricks, stone bricks, red, like a gemstone. God only knows why they’re so important to them.”
The conversation he was overhearing had moved to another room, so he couldn’t have caught anymore of it if he had wanted to, but he had stopped listening at the mention of the red stones. What the hell? That package he had seen, that time in Central, that wasn’t the only one? What had he stumbled on this time?
His mind was spinning. Drachma was attacking his country from the northern border, yes, but what if that was just to distract the military from whatever it was they were doing right under their noses?
Before he even realized what he was doing, Edward found himself creeping slowly down the stairs, the ones at the other end of the hall, not the ones Roy had helped to drag him up earlier. As he suspected, the door at the bottom was locked, and, again with barely a thought, he opened it alchemically, silently, without a sound, and pushed it open, peering into the darkness and waiting for his eyes to adjust.
His breathing was shallow simply from the exertion required to travel the length of the hallway and the flight of stairs, and he could feel his three wounds pulsing in time with his heartbeat, but he clenched his teeth and steeled himself further, blinking in the unlit basement. He heard the shuffling sounds before his sight sharpened, and he drew further back behind the door when he realized there were men down there, loading up the brick shaped packages onto a cart of some sort, silently and quickly. He sealed the door again and leaned back against the stairwell. He couldn’t very well run in there and stop them, show them his State Alchemist’s watch and haul them back to Central, exposing them as villains and be hailed as a hero, now, could he?
He stared at the flight of stairs ahead of him, took a deep breath, and grabbed the rail with his automail hand, using the other hand to clutch his abdomen, and began his ascent.
Al jumped when he saw a something move behind him in the mirror, and immediately relaxed when he realized it was only Winry, standing just outside the narrow bathroom door, watching him comb through his hair and tie it back behind his head.
Her lips were slowly spreading upwards in a smile, though her eyes were slow to follow. “Al?” she said softly, and, although he could see her reflection, he turned around to face her for real. “When did you start shaving?”
He looked back to the mirror, running his hand over his smooth chin. “A few months ago.”
She came to stand beside him at the sink, staring at his reflection critically. “Why, though?”
“Because,” came the serious answer. But no explanation followed.
“Al,” Winry pressed. “You don’t have anything to shave.”
He pushed his face closer to its reflection. “Yes I do. A little,” he added, turning his head from side to side, running his fingers over his “sideburns.” As Winry reached across him for her toothbrush and turned on the faucet, he added, “My body’s almost eighteen. I should start shaving, right?”
She shrugged and spat into the sink. “I don’t know,” she told him. “I’d think you’d wait until you had something to shave off, first.”
“Hey!” he protested, but she had his chin in her hand and ran her own fingers lightly over his jawline, smiling at him.
“Al,” she said, her eyes twinkling in amusement. “There is nothing here.”
“Because I shaved it off,” he said stubbornly, but he couldn’t meet her eyes for fear he’d start laughing and give himself away.
“How old was your brother when he started shaving?” Winry asked curiously, and he was immediately serious.
He turned away from the mirror and reached for his shirt. “I have no idea,” he said shortly. “I wasn’t there. Is the baby awake?”
She paused midway through running a brush down the length of her yellow hair. “Hm? No, she’s still asleep. Al?”
“What?” he said, the word muffled by the cloth of his shirt as he pulled it over his head, straightening the collar in the mirror and pulling his ponytail out in one long sweep so it rested on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, looking down at her bare feet on the cracked tiles of the cramped bathroom. Her voice had a weird echo to it in the tiny room.
She felt his hands grasping gently the backs of her arms, and he pressed his lips to her forehead in a gesture he hadn’t offered her in months - or was it years? - and left them there for a full minute before he broke away.
When he spoke his voice was very soft, and he was looking down, his eyelashes throwing shadows over his cheeks in the harsh fluorescent lighting. “I’ve done some really bad things in my life,” he said, very quietly, and then paused again. “Unforgivable things.” He let one hand curve around the small of her back, rest on the dip of her waist, and her forehead dropped to rest on the center of his chest. “One thing I’ve learned about that word is that it doesn’t mean a single thing.”
She raised her eyes to him, and his breath caught, not for the first time, perhaps at the zillionth time, at the stunning hue of her eyes.
“Not a single thing,” he repeated.
“But I am sorry,” she repeated. “I’m sorry for all of this - I hate that I’ve come between you brothers.”
“So do I,” he whispered honestly.
She pulled away from him, staring down at the floor, unable to say anything else for a few minutes.
“Winry,” he said then, and she looked at him. “I still love you. Nothing can change that.”
He knocked twice, with his automail hand, even, but there was no answer. Impatient, he pushed the door open and stepped inside, but there was still no response. His eyes were already adjusted to the dark, and he scanned the room, taking in the rumpled but empty bed, the small, closed suitcase on the desk, and the half empty bottle on the nightstand. Remembering the night at the hotel in Central, he glanced over at the window, and there was Roy, rocks glass in hand, dressed in pyjama pants only. He turned slowly, staring down at his now-empty glass, and walked over to the nightstand, picking up the bottle.
“Don’t,” Ed warned, and Roy looked up, noticing he wasn’t alone for the first time.
He saw Ed standing in the door frame, silhouetted by the lit room behind him, and frowned. “Ed?” he said blankly.
“You’d better not be drunk, bastard, because we got shit to take care of,” he said, stepping forward. Then he stopped, his eyes locked on Roy’s face. He didn’t notice at first; the room was dark and the general looked exactly the way he had looked when he was a colonel: no patch covering nearly half his face. But when Ed stepped out of the doorway he let more light into the room, and he saw Roy’s entire face, lit, unobscured. The entire eye socket was collapsed, the eyebrow was gone, everything was gone, and Roy bought his hand up to cover the side of his face, turning swiftly away. “Sorry,” Ed said, his voice low. “I knocked, you know.”
He snatched the patch up off the nightstand and slid it over his head, his back still turned. “It’s fine,” he said to the wall. “What happened? What do you want?”
“You know why they don’t want us here?” Ed said, his face pale, neutral.
Roy sat down on the narrow bed, leaning back on his hands, and said, “Because everyone hates the military these days Ed, I told you that.”
“Nuh uh, General,” he said, that cocky grin creeping over his exhasuted features, “that’s not all of it. While you were up here,” he gestured towards the bottle on the nightstand, “doing this, I was poking around downstairs. They’re stockpiling red stones here, that’s why they didn’t want any military hanging around.”
“You were supposed to be resting,” the General said, his voice flat. “Not prowling around in the dark.”
“I wasn’t prowling- Roy! Red stones!” Edward practically shouted, but dropped his voice when he realized someone could just as easily be listening to him as he had listened to the conversations he had overheard.
“Yes, some group has been moving illegal red stones around the country for quite some time,” Roy said, unconcerned and unimpressed.
Ed raised his eyebrows. “Dont you think,” he said slowly, “it would be awfully impressive for you to actually catch them? I mean, I’m sure the president-“
“The president’s dead, Ed,” Roy said, his arms folded in front of him. He reached over and poured himself the drink Ed had stopped him from earlier, and switched on the bedside lamp.
“Dead?”
“Assassinated,” he clarified. “Central was rioting for days afterward, just like what happened after -after the Fuhrer-“
“After you killed the Fuhrer,” Ed finished for him. “So who’s in charge now? The new president?” When Roy was silent, Ed pressed, “Roy? Who’s in charge now?”
“No one,” he said, his voice eerie, even in the soft glow of the lamplight. “Yet.” He took another sip from his rocks glass. “Not until someone steps in and takes charge.” He put the glass down, and, after a minute of Ed’s confused stare, he added, “I’m trying to do this as painlessly as possible. Amestris doesn’t need anymore bloodshed; that’s exactly what I’ve been working to eliminate.”
Ed’s eyes grew round with Roy’s statement. “Then who the hell are you trying to impress with my ‘capture’? And who the hell ‘ordered’ you to find me, if no one is giving orders?” he demanded, his metal hand on his hip.
“A lot of people are trying to give orders, and a lot of people are vying for control. Trust me, Ed, it was better that I find you now rather than someone else hunting you down later.”
Edward frowned, stepping further into the room and sinking down on the edge of the bed next to Roy. “I do trust you, Roy,” he said, for the second time that day. “But why can’t you tell me what you’re doing?”
“I thought I already made that perfectly clear,” the older man said smoothly, picking up his drink again. “I’m going fix this country.” He took another sip. “And I need your support, just like I need the support of everyone else who has been working under me all these years, in order to do it.”
“But-“
“Trying to shut down this minor waystation of red stone traficking will simply look like another incident of civil unrest, which is not the impression I want to make. Returning to Central with one of the military’s greatest weapons, is.”
“That’s how you see me?” Ed spat, “as a weapon?”
“That’s how the rest of the military sees you, Ed,” Roy said calmly. “Now get some rest. Leave whatever’s going on in the basement of this inn alone, these people are just pawns caught up in something greater than they know. We don’t want to get mixed up in that too, not yet. You really need to go to sleep now, it’s late”
Ed stomped his foot, and flinched when the movement sent a pang of pain through his gut. “I’m not your damn subordinate, and I’m not-“ he began, but Roy held a hand up to stop him.
“I know you’re not, Ed. But you are my friend. Please. Just leave it alone, and do what I’m asking you.”
Ed stared at him for a full minute before he turned turned to go back to his own room. He paused in the doorway, and turned back, saying, “I’d better not have to wake your ass up tomorrow and find you hungover. This country’s gonna be pretty dificult to fix with the state it’s in right now.”
The General gave the younger man a small, sad, half smile. “Good night, Ed.”