FMA BigBang - Closer to the Edge - Chapter 1 (2/2)
Previous Part
"You," Fletcher said as he stopped beside the sole occupant of the booth in the darkest corner of the dimly lit bar. "Are a son of a bitch, you know that?"
"Hey now," Russell said. "Don't talk about mom like that."
Fletcher scowled at his brother, but slid into the booth opposite him. Russell had clearly been there a while; although the signature blue uniform was nowhere in sight. He was wearing a dingy old off-white button-down shirt and even older looking trousers. "So what's with the distinct lack of grooming?" Fletcher asked, as Russell waved down a barmaid.
"What do you drink now?" Russell asked him, ignoring Fletcher's pointed question.
Fletcher stared levelly at his brother as the barmaid approached the booth. "Ale," he said after a long moment. Russell raised his tankard and tapped it. "And another one of these," he said with a grin, ignoring his brother's sour look.
Once the barmaid was out of earshot, Fletcher leaned forward. "You better have a damn good explanation for what the hell is going on," he hissed. "Or else I'm on the next train back to Aquaroya tomorrow, brother."
Russell waved his hand in the air. "Relax," he said languidly. "We're here to have a good time, y'know?" As he lifted his tankard into the air to take a drink, he said quickly, in a lower, more sober-sounding voice, "We're being watched."
Fletcher blinked at the abrupt shift in his brother's tone, and glanced around the dimly-lit bar. It was half-full of murmuring patrons, and too hard to see if anyone was paying them any special attention. Russell dropping the tankard to the table loudly brought his attention back to him, and Fletcher blinked owlishly at him. "Are you trying to get us caught?" Russell asked sharply.
"What?"
"I say 'we're being watched' and you start gawking at the patrons like it's a zoo," Russell said with a snort. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all."
Fletcher rubbed the side of his head with his fingers as the barmaid swung by, leaving two full tankards of ale on the table for them. "Don't think," Russell said in a bit of a sing-song voice, winking at the woman as she swept past. "We're supposed to be two quarreling brothers having a bit of a reunion, after all."
"We ARE two quarreling brothers," Fletcher said, drawing his tankard of ale in toward him and staring down at the liquid sloshing about in the stein. "You better have a good explanation for all this, you know I'm not joking about getting back on the train, right? Ari didn't even want me to come."
"Why did you, then?"
"You're still my brother, no matter how much we disagree," Fletcher said after a moment. "Besides, if you're going to do something stupid, well. Someone's got to watch your back."
Russell grinned and raised his tankard. "There's the Fletcher I know."
Fletcher sighed, and raised his tankard as well, so the metal steins clinked together. "Now you better start cluing me in as to what sort of stupid shit we're neck-deep in now."
"All in good time," Russell said. "I promise."
"I'm holding you to that," Fletcher murmured, taking a large swig of his drink. "Does this place serve food too, or just beer? I've been in the library all day, and I'm starving."
They shot the shit for several hours. At first it was a bit awkward, strange silences stretching between them for a moment between topics, but as the evening wore on and the drinks dwindled, things started to seem like they used to. Fletcher fished out his wallet to show his brother pictures of Arianne. "There is no way," Russell said, holding the picture at length and shutting one eye. "There is no way someone as smoking hot as her is interested in my dweeby little brother."
"Believe it," Fletcher said, plucking the picture out of his brother's hand. It had been taken by a friend's daughter at a summer picnic. He slid it back into his wallet after looking at it just a moment, a smile on his face.
"Heh," Russell said. "Never thought I'd see the day when my baby brother's in love."
"Shut up," Fletcher said. "What, you don't have a girlfriend?"
Russell shrugged. "I don't like being tied down," he said. "I've only been stationed out of Central City a few months. I was in East City before I got reassigned to the General's command." He leaned back in his seat and looked out into the bar. In the intervening hours, the bar had started to fill up as men and women got off of work. "Remember Alphonse Elric?"
Fletcher raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, of course I do," he said cautiously.
"Heh." Russell picked up his almost-empty tankard. "He's got a kid, you know."
"No way," Fletcher said. "Isn't he, like, your age?"
"Yeah." Russell was silent a moment, then smiled. "They left."
Fletcher glanced back out over the crowd. "You sure?"
"Mostly. Let's get out of here just in case."
The night air was cool, the sun having long since set. Fletcher stood out on the street while Russell settled their tab, hands in the pockets of his pants as he looked about. The city seemed so different ... and yet, oddly the same.
It had been long years since he had been in Central City. So much had happened since the last time he was here. Maybe it wasn't the city that changed as much as it was him.
Then, across the street, Fletcher saw ... her. She was walking with a few other Drachmians, one of which had his interview today. Their eyes met from across the street for just an instant, and then Fletcher nearly jumped as Russell touched his shoulder. "Hey," Russell said. "You all right?"
The spell broken, Fletcher glance back up the street, but they'd already rounded the corner. The message was clear, though. He looked over to his brother and gave Russell an uneven grin. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry, I was just ... thinking."
Russell gave him a considering look. His older brother was not nearly as oblivious to the world as he used to be, and that much was obvious. He could also clearly tell when he was being lied to.
"Yeah," Russell said. "You do that a lot, huh?"
"Yup," Fletcher said. He turned fully to face his brother, who he was a good few inches taller than now. "So, are you going to give me an idea as to what's going on, or do I just get to flounder around like an idiot?"
Russell inclined his head. "We'll walk and talk."
* * *
It was not entirely uncommon for Edward to pull late shifts, although the voluntary nature of that work could occasionally be called into question. The soldiers dismissed throughout the day - Cushler and Bailey, the most junior officers in the unit leaving first. Havoc would usually stay as late as Edward did to act as his chauffeur, but occasionally he had other things to do. Hawkeye too would stay late to supervise his work and, Edward often suspected, to keep an eye on him.
However, when Edward returned to the office he found it cold and dark. The interviews had run long, which he should have expected. Three of the candidates couldn't find their asses with both hands, and he was completely disgusted that they were able to coast as far as they could on sheer luck alone. He would have to see about revising that test yet again.
Of course, he couldn't just summarily dismiss them with General Howard sitting at his shoulder, breathing down his neck and looking for something entirely different than what Edward was fishing for. Edward was looking for competent alchemists that would serve as a boon to the country and possibly the military; not unbalanced idiots whose messes he would be serving as clean-up crew for.
Howard, on the other hand - a dark-eyed, calculating man who Edward wouldn't trust as far as he could throw him - he was looking for canon fodder. He didn't care how quickly the alchemist burned out as long as there was destructive power there. Out of the five candidates there was only one that the both of them had agreed was not State Alchemist material - Howard had challenged his decision by trying to pull rank on him over the other two.
If this decision went before the acting-Fuhrer, there was no telling which way he would skew. Dalton famously disliked Edward, but he didn't outright hate him. In fact, there might even be grudging respect there - Dalton was no enemy, but he certainly wasn't an ally, either. Letting this, the first round of State Alchemist interviews, end up on his desk wouldn't look good for Edward.
Although he really wanted to drag his feet about it, there were still days of this left. Howard was probably testing the waters and seeing how Edward would react to the challenge to his authority. As much as it galled him to do so, especially given the qualification level of the two alchemists in question, he passed them. Four passes, one person packing. There was still the practical examination, they weren't IN, yet - but the interview was the toughest hurdle to face.
Now Edward really needed to punch something, and he couldn't punch Howard. He was frustrated and had nothing to take it out on - he would prowl the streets looking for miscreants who deserved a good beating, but his M.O. was too well known at this point, plus Hawkeye would kill him. And it wouldn't do for a Colonel supervising the examinations to get hauled into the brig for drunken brawling again.
So that left him with little to do but paperwork. It was times like this he really missed having Alphonse around - he could always count on calling Alphonse up for some late-night sparring to work out his aggravations.
Edward returned to the office to get some work done and page through the applicants for the next day's interviews. And that was where he found himself as the clock on the wall chimed the late hour, single desk lamp on as he signed off on some of Bailey's meticulously typed reports.
There was a light rap on the open office door. Edward shuffled the paper into its appropriate folder before looking up, and then looked surprised at his visitor. "What are you doing here so late, Sheska?"
The mousy brown-haired woman held a pile of books in her arms. "I fell asleep behind my desk," she admitted, her hair in disarray and her glasses skewed. "I saw the light on as I was headed home. Why are YOU here so late, Ed?"
Sheska was one of the few people who never addressed Edward with his rank. She was an old enough friend that he didn't bat an eye at it. He was just fortunate that this habit hadn't rubbed off on Cushler or Bailey - he had a hard enough time as it was getting respect around here with HIS history.
"Just getting some work done," Edward said with a sigh, dropping the pen back into the inkwell and rubbing his temple with the same hand. "It's a busy time of the year for me."
"Oh, I know," Sheska chirped, far too bright-eyed for the time of night. "That's why Al sent me to help you guys out, Captain Hawkeye is SO inundated with paperwork it's amazing! All your normal work and then these exams on top of it, I'm surprised they don't send you extra workers for this time of the year."
"With the military's budget? I'm shocked we have as many people as we do," Edward muttered. He looked up at the clock and winced, he would have to be back in the office in less than six hours. No point to going home now, at any rate.
As if she had read his mind, Sheska frowned at him. "Are you sleeping in your office?"
Edward affected an innocent look. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. He leaned forward to pick up the phone's receiver. "Do you need me to call you a car to take you back to the dorms, Sheska?"
Sheska shifted the books in her arms to wave a hand in the air. "No, no," she said. "Don't make a fuss over me, I can get there on my own."
Edward looked down at the paperwork on his desk thoughtfully, then back up at Sheska. "I'll walk you, then."
"Ed," Sheska said. "You don't have to do that, I'm a grown woman, I can walk a couple of blocks to the military dorm all by myself."
"I insist," Edward said. "There are a lot of people in town right now." He stood up and stretched his arms over his head, then scratched the top of his head. "I could use the fresh air, anyway."
Sheska closed her eyes and sighed dramatically, then opened them in surprise as Edward took the books out of her arms. "These going home with you as well?"
"No," she said. "Well, yes. I was going to drop them off at the library, but I fell asleep, so that has to wait until the morning." She tried to take them back from Edward. "Give them, Ed!"
"I can drop them off," Edward said.
"The library is closed," Sheska retorted.
Edward just looked at her.
She sighed, aggravated. "I know for a fact that no librarian in her right mind would give you a key, but I'm going to pretend I don't know how you plan on returning the books to a closed library. You are planning to return them, right? They're checked out under my name-"
"Yes, yes," Edward laughed. "I promise, I'm not going to take home-" he looked down at the book on the top of the stack. " 'The Kingdom of Slender Swords' - what is this?"
Sheska grabbed the top book from the stack and her face flushed. "It's nothing," she said quickly. "It's just fiction, Ed, nothing that would interest you-"
"What makes you think I wouldn't be interested in fiction?" Edward queried, somewhat amused, as he locked his office door behind him.
"You," Sheska said. "You were talking about how stupid it was with Lieutenant Havoc one day."
Edward frowned as he tried to recall that particular conversation. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, I guess that sounds bad, huh? But I've read fiction that I liked, before, I swear."
"Oh yeah," Sheska said. "Name me one fiction book you've read."
"I used to read the Timothy Quick dime store novels on trains all the time," Edward said. "Al and I would swap'em."
"You and Al read Timothy Quick books?" Sheska laughed. "I shouldn't be surprised by that, those are the ones with the genius alchemist kid, right?"
"Yeah," Edward muttered. "Stopped readin' ‘em after the adventures suddenly got too familiar. I wanted to go visit the author and have a few words about it, but Al told me to let it go."
Sheska blinked. "They were based on you?"
"Some of the later ones had to be. But they were being published way before I started turning up in newspapers, so I dunno." Edward shrugged. "It could have all been a big coincidence like Al was trying to convince me of. I read those silly books to pass the time, not remind myself of things I didn't want to remember."
They had reached the steps down to the parade ground by that point. Edward blinked at the cool night air and caught a bit of a chill as he realized he was just wearing the thin long-sleeved button-down, his military jacket was still on the back of the desk chair. Sheska had started chattering about some of the companion book series to those silly dime store novels, those about a brilliant girl detective that she apparently loved as a child.
The streets were mostly deserted at this hour. It didn't take them long to arrive at the military dorms, where Sheska laid the fantasy novel she had been carrying atop the stack of books Edward still had. "Thanks so much for walking me back, Ed," she said, looking more at the books in his arms than at him. "Guess I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Edward said. "Have a good night, Sheska." She looked up at him, a peculiar expression on her face, then disappeared into the coed barracks. Edward watched her go a second, then shuffled the books in his arm. "And off to the library I go," he muttered to himself.
* * *
It was simple work to transmute the heavy wooden doors; instead of messing with the lock Edward just transmuted a smaller door inside the locked frame. He ducked his head as he stepped through, then walked the books over to the library desk, laying them on the check-in return.
The library was as silent as a tomb this time of night. Very little light filtered in through the dirty windows, the entire building smelled musty and old, and without the bustle of people, it was quietly terrifying. Edward stood a second at the desk and took in the atmosphere. There was nothing in the dark here to scare him, he did not believe in ghosts and ghouls - the things that he had fought in his life were far more terrifying.
Weird that he should run across Sheska like this. Edward transmuted the door back to solid - no one had yet been able to tell that he'd done this particular pony trick several times. The only time he was nearly caught was the one time he had taken a flashlight to find the book he needed.
Trotting down the steps and back to the street the confrontation from earlier flashed through his mind. The kid's instinctive flail, Edward catching his shoulder, then their eyes locked and that stone-cold feeling as his stomach dropped away. He had taken Edward's hesitation as a chance to escape up the street and away, and leaving Edward on the sidewalk with an empty feeling he thought he had completely buried.
The more he thought about it, the more that kid looked just like Roy, until the point he didn't see the teenager any longer, just a younger Roy, eyes narrowed in anger, hair mussed, jaw set - and the thought of it hurt more than any wound he'd lived through.
Edward stopped on the sidewalk and closed his eyes, trying to force the thought out of his head, shoving his hands in the pockets of his blue trousers as he thought. He was so focused on this task that he nearly missed the sound of feet on concrete until it was nearly upon him.
His eyes snapped open, and Edward glanced over his shoulder as three teenage hoodlums ran up to him. They were all wearing collared shirts and trousers, and two were wearing old waistcoats. All had scarves and hats to conceal their identity, and jack knives. Edward glanced over them in disbelief. "You have got to be kidding," he said. "You idiots are really going to try to mug me?" He gestured at the knives in their hands. "With those toys?"
The leader nodded, not coerced by Edward into speaking as his compatriots spread out a bit. Edward rolled his eyes heavenward, somewhere between thankful and put-out by the distraction. Then he grinned sharply at the hoodlums. "Well, it's your funeral," he said with a shrug, then clapped his hands.
Crosspost: FF.N ||| AO3
Chapter 2
"You," Fletcher said as he stopped beside the sole occupant of the booth in the darkest corner of the dimly lit bar. "Are a son of a bitch, you know that?"
"Hey now," Russell said. "Don't talk about mom like that."
Fletcher scowled at his brother, but slid into the booth opposite him. Russell had clearly been there a while; although the signature blue uniform was nowhere in sight. He was wearing a dingy old off-white button-down shirt and even older looking trousers. "So what's with the distinct lack of grooming?" Fletcher asked, as Russell waved down a barmaid.
"What do you drink now?" Russell asked him, ignoring Fletcher's pointed question.
Fletcher stared levelly at his brother as the barmaid approached the booth. "Ale," he said after a long moment. Russell raised his tankard and tapped it. "And another one of these," he said with a grin, ignoring his brother's sour look.
Once the barmaid was out of earshot, Fletcher leaned forward. "You better have a damn good explanation for what the hell is going on," he hissed. "Or else I'm on the next train back to Aquaroya tomorrow, brother."
Russell waved his hand in the air. "Relax," he said languidly. "We're here to have a good time, y'know?" As he lifted his tankard into the air to take a drink, he said quickly, in a lower, more sober-sounding voice, "We're being watched."
Fletcher blinked at the abrupt shift in his brother's tone, and glanced around the dimly-lit bar. It was half-full of murmuring patrons, and too hard to see if anyone was paying them any special attention. Russell dropping the tankard to the table loudly brought his attention back to him, and Fletcher blinked owlishly at him. "Are you trying to get us caught?" Russell asked sharply.
"What?"
"I say 'we're being watched' and you start gawking at the patrons like it's a zoo," Russell said with a snort. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all."
Fletcher rubbed the side of his head with his fingers as the barmaid swung by, leaving two full tankards of ale on the table for them. "Don't think," Russell said in a bit of a sing-song voice, winking at the woman as she swept past. "We're supposed to be two quarreling brothers having a bit of a reunion, after all."
"We ARE two quarreling brothers," Fletcher said, drawing his tankard of ale in toward him and staring down at the liquid sloshing about in the stein. "You better have a good explanation for all this, you know I'm not joking about getting back on the train, right? Ari didn't even want me to come."
"Why did you, then?"
"You're still my brother, no matter how much we disagree," Fletcher said after a moment. "Besides, if you're going to do something stupid, well. Someone's got to watch your back."
Russell grinned and raised his tankard. "There's the Fletcher I know."
Fletcher sighed, and raised his tankard as well, so the metal steins clinked together. "Now you better start cluing me in as to what sort of stupid shit we're neck-deep in now."
"All in good time," Russell said. "I promise."
"I'm holding you to that," Fletcher murmured, taking a large swig of his drink. "Does this place serve food too, or just beer? I've been in the library all day, and I'm starving."
They shot the shit for several hours. At first it was a bit awkward, strange silences stretching between them for a moment between topics, but as the evening wore on and the drinks dwindled, things started to seem like they used to. Fletcher fished out his wallet to show his brother pictures of Arianne. "There is no way," Russell said, holding the picture at length and shutting one eye. "There is no way someone as smoking hot as her is interested in my dweeby little brother."
"Believe it," Fletcher said, plucking the picture out of his brother's hand. It had been taken by a friend's daughter at a summer picnic. He slid it back into his wallet after looking at it just a moment, a smile on his face.
"Heh," Russell said. "Never thought I'd see the day when my baby brother's in love."
"Shut up," Fletcher said. "What, you don't have a girlfriend?"
Russell shrugged. "I don't like being tied down," he said. "I've only been stationed out of Central City a few months. I was in East City before I got reassigned to the General's command." He leaned back in his seat and looked out into the bar. In the intervening hours, the bar had started to fill up as men and women got off of work. "Remember Alphonse Elric?"
Fletcher raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, of course I do," he said cautiously.
"Heh." Russell picked up his almost-empty tankard. "He's got a kid, you know."
"No way," Fletcher said. "Isn't he, like, your age?"
"Yeah." Russell was silent a moment, then smiled. "They left."
Fletcher glanced back out over the crowd. "You sure?"
"Mostly. Let's get out of here just in case."
The night air was cool, the sun having long since set. Fletcher stood out on the street while Russell settled their tab, hands in the pockets of his pants as he looked about. The city seemed so different ... and yet, oddly the same.
It had been long years since he had been in Central City. So much had happened since the last time he was here. Maybe it wasn't the city that changed as much as it was him.
Then, across the street, Fletcher saw ... her. She was walking with a few other Drachmians, one of which had his interview today. Their eyes met from across the street for just an instant, and then Fletcher nearly jumped as Russell touched his shoulder. "Hey," Russell said. "You all right?"
The spell broken, Fletcher glance back up the street, but they'd already rounded the corner. The message was clear, though. He looked over to his brother and gave Russell an uneven grin. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry, I was just ... thinking."
Russell gave him a considering look. His older brother was not nearly as oblivious to the world as he used to be, and that much was obvious. He could also clearly tell when he was being lied to.
"Yeah," Russell said. "You do that a lot, huh?"
"Yup," Fletcher said. He turned fully to face his brother, who he was a good few inches taller than now. "So, are you going to give me an idea as to what's going on, or do I just get to flounder around like an idiot?"
Russell inclined his head. "We'll walk and talk."
* * *
It was not entirely uncommon for Edward to pull late shifts, although the voluntary nature of that work could occasionally be called into question. The soldiers dismissed throughout the day - Cushler and Bailey, the most junior officers in the unit leaving first. Havoc would usually stay as late as Edward did to act as his chauffeur, but occasionally he had other things to do. Hawkeye too would stay late to supervise his work and, Edward often suspected, to keep an eye on him.
However, when Edward returned to the office he found it cold and dark. The interviews had run long, which he should have expected. Three of the candidates couldn't find their asses with both hands, and he was completely disgusted that they were able to coast as far as they could on sheer luck alone. He would have to see about revising that test yet again.
Of course, he couldn't just summarily dismiss them with General Howard sitting at his shoulder, breathing down his neck and looking for something entirely different than what Edward was fishing for. Edward was looking for competent alchemists that would serve as a boon to the country and possibly the military; not unbalanced idiots whose messes he would be serving as clean-up crew for.
Howard, on the other hand - a dark-eyed, calculating man who Edward wouldn't trust as far as he could throw him - he was looking for canon fodder. He didn't care how quickly the alchemist burned out as long as there was destructive power there. Out of the five candidates there was only one that the both of them had agreed was not State Alchemist material - Howard had challenged his decision by trying to pull rank on him over the other two.
If this decision went before the acting-Fuhrer, there was no telling which way he would skew. Dalton famously disliked Edward, but he didn't outright hate him. In fact, there might even be grudging respect there - Dalton was no enemy, but he certainly wasn't an ally, either. Letting this, the first round of State Alchemist interviews, end up on his desk wouldn't look good for Edward.
Although he really wanted to drag his feet about it, there were still days of this left. Howard was probably testing the waters and seeing how Edward would react to the challenge to his authority. As much as it galled him to do so, especially given the qualification level of the two alchemists in question, he passed them. Four passes, one person packing. There was still the practical examination, they weren't IN, yet - but the interview was the toughest hurdle to face.
Now Edward really needed to punch something, and he couldn't punch Howard. He was frustrated and had nothing to take it out on - he would prowl the streets looking for miscreants who deserved a good beating, but his M.O. was too well known at this point, plus Hawkeye would kill him. And it wouldn't do for a Colonel supervising the examinations to get hauled into the brig for drunken brawling again.
So that left him with little to do but paperwork. It was times like this he really missed having Alphonse around - he could always count on calling Alphonse up for some late-night sparring to work out his aggravations.
Edward returned to the office to get some work done and page through the applicants for the next day's interviews. And that was where he found himself as the clock on the wall chimed the late hour, single desk lamp on as he signed off on some of Bailey's meticulously typed reports.
There was a light rap on the open office door. Edward shuffled the paper into its appropriate folder before looking up, and then looked surprised at his visitor. "What are you doing here so late, Sheska?"
The mousy brown-haired woman held a pile of books in her arms. "I fell asleep behind my desk," she admitted, her hair in disarray and her glasses skewed. "I saw the light on as I was headed home. Why are YOU here so late, Ed?"
Sheska was one of the few people who never addressed Edward with his rank. She was an old enough friend that he didn't bat an eye at it. He was just fortunate that this habit hadn't rubbed off on Cushler or Bailey - he had a hard enough time as it was getting respect around here with HIS history.
"Just getting some work done," Edward said with a sigh, dropping the pen back into the inkwell and rubbing his temple with the same hand. "It's a busy time of the year for me."
"Oh, I know," Sheska chirped, far too bright-eyed for the time of night. "That's why Al sent me to help you guys out, Captain Hawkeye is SO inundated with paperwork it's amazing! All your normal work and then these exams on top of it, I'm surprised they don't send you extra workers for this time of the year."
"With the military's budget? I'm shocked we have as many people as we do," Edward muttered. He looked up at the clock and winced, he would have to be back in the office in less than six hours. No point to going home now, at any rate.
As if she had read his mind, Sheska frowned at him. "Are you sleeping in your office?"
Edward affected an innocent look. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. He leaned forward to pick up the phone's receiver. "Do you need me to call you a car to take you back to the dorms, Sheska?"
Sheska shifted the books in her arms to wave a hand in the air. "No, no," she said. "Don't make a fuss over me, I can get there on my own."
Edward looked down at the paperwork on his desk thoughtfully, then back up at Sheska. "I'll walk you, then."
"Ed," Sheska said. "You don't have to do that, I'm a grown woman, I can walk a couple of blocks to the military dorm all by myself."
"I insist," Edward said. "There are a lot of people in town right now." He stood up and stretched his arms over his head, then scratched the top of his head. "I could use the fresh air, anyway."
Sheska closed her eyes and sighed dramatically, then opened them in surprise as Edward took the books out of her arms. "These going home with you as well?"
"No," she said. "Well, yes. I was going to drop them off at the library, but I fell asleep, so that has to wait until the morning." She tried to take them back from Edward. "Give them, Ed!"
"I can drop them off," Edward said.
"The library is closed," Sheska retorted.
Edward just looked at her.
She sighed, aggravated. "I know for a fact that no librarian in her right mind would give you a key, but I'm going to pretend I don't know how you plan on returning the books to a closed library. You are planning to return them, right? They're checked out under my name-"
"Yes, yes," Edward laughed. "I promise, I'm not going to take home-" he looked down at the book on the top of the stack. " 'The Kingdom of Slender Swords' - what is this?"
Sheska grabbed the top book from the stack and her face flushed. "It's nothing," she said quickly. "It's just fiction, Ed, nothing that would interest you-"
"What makes you think I wouldn't be interested in fiction?" Edward queried, somewhat amused, as he locked his office door behind him.
"You," Sheska said. "You were talking about how stupid it was with Lieutenant Havoc one day."
Edward frowned as he tried to recall that particular conversation. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, I guess that sounds bad, huh? But I've read fiction that I liked, before, I swear."
"Oh yeah," Sheska said. "Name me one fiction book you've read."
"I used to read the Timothy Quick dime store novels on trains all the time," Edward said. "Al and I would swap'em."
"You and Al read Timothy Quick books?" Sheska laughed. "I shouldn't be surprised by that, those are the ones with the genius alchemist kid, right?"
"Yeah," Edward muttered. "Stopped readin' ‘em after the adventures suddenly got too familiar. I wanted to go visit the author and have a few words about it, but Al told me to let it go."
Sheska blinked. "They were based on you?"
"Some of the later ones had to be. But they were being published way before I started turning up in newspapers, so I dunno." Edward shrugged. "It could have all been a big coincidence like Al was trying to convince me of. I read those silly books to pass the time, not remind myself of things I didn't want to remember."
They had reached the steps down to the parade ground by that point. Edward blinked at the cool night air and caught a bit of a chill as he realized he was just wearing the thin long-sleeved button-down, his military jacket was still on the back of the desk chair. Sheska had started chattering about some of the companion book series to those silly dime store novels, those about a brilliant girl detective that she apparently loved as a child.
The streets were mostly deserted at this hour. It didn't take them long to arrive at the military dorms, where Sheska laid the fantasy novel she had been carrying atop the stack of books Edward still had. "Thanks so much for walking me back, Ed," she said, looking more at the books in his arms than at him. "Guess I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Edward said. "Have a good night, Sheska." She looked up at him, a peculiar expression on her face, then disappeared into the coed barracks. Edward watched her go a second, then shuffled the books in his arm. "And off to the library I go," he muttered to himself.
* * *
It was simple work to transmute the heavy wooden doors; instead of messing with the lock Edward just transmuted a smaller door inside the locked frame. He ducked his head as he stepped through, then walked the books over to the library desk, laying them on the check-in return.
The library was as silent as a tomb this time of night. Very little light filtered in through the dirty windows, the entire building smelled musty and old, and without the bustle of people, it was quietly terrifying. Edward stood a second at the desk and took in the atmosphere. There was nothing in the dark here to scare him, he did not believe in ghosts and ghouls - the things that he had fought in his life were far more terrifying.
Weird that he should run across Sheska like this. Edward transmuted the door back to solid - no one had yet been able to tell that he'd done this particular pony trick several times. The only time he was nearly caught was the one time he had taken a flashlight to find the book he needed.
Trotting down the steps and back to the street the confrontation from earlier flashed through his mind. The kid's instinctive flail, Edward catching his shoulder, then their eyes locked and that stone-cold feeling as his stomach dropped away. He had taken Edward's hesitation as a chance to escape up the street and away, and leaving Edward on the sidewalk with an empty feeling he thought he had completely buried.
The more he thought about it, the more that kid looked just like Roy, until the point he didn't see the teenager any longer, just a younger Roy, eyes narrowed in anger, hair mussed, jaw set - and the thought of it hurt more than any wound he'd lived through.
Edward stopped on the sidewalk and closed his eyes, trying to force the thought out of his head, shoving his hands in the pockets of his blue trousers as he thought. He was so focused on this task that he nearly missed the sound of feet on concrete until it was nearly upon him.
His eyes snapped open, and Edward glanced over his shoulder as three teenage hoodlums ran up to him. They were all wearing collared shirts and trousers, and two were wearing old waistcoats. All had scarves and hats to conceal their identity, and jack knives. Edward glanced over them in disbelief. "You have got to be kidding," he said. "You idiots are really going to try to mug me?" He gestured at the knives in their hands. "With those toys?"
The leader nodded, not coerced by Edward into speaking as his compatriots spread out a bit. Edward rolled his eyes heavenward, somewhere between thankful and put-out by the distraction. Then he grinned sharply at the hoodlums. "Well, it's your funeral," he said with a shrug, then clapped his hands.
Crosspost: FF.N ||| AO3
Chapter 2