Back Together Again: Roy/Maes fic, Chapter 13
TITLE: “Back Together Again”
GENRE: Yaoi/Drama
RATING: Overall Hard-R to light NC-17 (or just M, if you prefer) for violence, language, sexuality and adult concepts
WARNINGS: Violence. Grief/PTSD. Sexuality (including some borderline non-con). Angst/Darkfic. Hughesmunculus. And finally: THIS FIC MAY CONTAIN HETEROSEXUAL SEX. <-- consider yourself warned!
PAIRING(S): HUGHES/ROY!!!!! (with a dab of Hughes/Gracia and a pinch of Roy/Gracia - sorta)
SUMMARY: A still-grieving Roy Mustang is visited by a ghost made flesh - a ghost in the form of Maes Hughes! Did Roy actually succeed in bringing back his dead best friend using alchemy … or is he being haunted by a homunculus?
DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to Ms. Arakawa, I just take them out to play.
Chapter Thirteen: Goal
Sometimes there’s nothing to feel
Sometimes there’s nothing to hold
Sometimes there’s no time to run away
Sometimes you just feel so old
Sometimes it hurts when you cry
Sometimes it hurts just to breathe
And then it seems like there’s no one left
And all you want is to sleep
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! Just push it away
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! Just push it until it breaks
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! Don’t cry at the pain
FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! Or watch yourself burn again
- “Fight”, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (the Cure)
Roy was bone-tired the next day, but Edward insisted he should go to HQ anyway. “Questions might be raised if you’re absent,” he said. “I don’t know whether it will do any good against a … mind reader” - his voice dripped with sarcasm over the term - “but the least we can do is keep up appearances.”
Roy went to work as usual, making a mental note to have Havoc stop so he could get groceries on the way home. If the two young men didn’t eat him out of house and home, he thought, they’d make formidable allies.
That night, the ambience in Mustang’s house bore more resemblance to a tactical planning meeting in the Fuhrer’s war room than a comfortable city home. The thought was more than a little amusing to him.
And yet, through all Ed’s blustering and cajoling and pacing, and all Roy’s responses, there was a part of Roy that was entirely separate from the proceedings. Part of him that longed only for the touch of Maes’ hand on his, the silken feel of his lips, the smoothness of his-
“Hey, Flame! You with us?” Edward glared at him.
“Yes, yes,” Roy said. “Why did you want to know whether I have a shovel?”
“If you had two or three, that would be grand,” Edward said. “Although …” he glanced furtively around the room, and Roy could tell he was looking for something made of enough wood and metal to transmute into a handy spade.
“I think I’ve got at least one,” Roy jumped in hurriedly. “It wouldn’t look right for me to buy any right now. No snow outside this time of year. But you never answered me. Why the shovel?”
Ed cut his eyes at Mustang and then looked away. He looked like a little kid trying to explain his way out of trouble.
“I thought I’d explained it before,” he said in a reluctant tone. “To destroy a homunculus, you need a piece of the person they were before.”
A piece of… “You don’t mean…”
“Yes, I do,” Edward said. “And if you think I’m gonna stand here and let you chicken out, think again. I had to dig up a bit of my own mother to kill her homunculus.”
Roy gaped.
At that moment, the phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” Alphonse said. He was sitting on the couch that happened to be closest to the phone. Without waiting for Mustang’s go-ahead, he picked up the handset. “Mustang residence.”
“Alphonse Elric?” The feminine voice on the other end exuded nothing but surprise. “Is that you?”
“Sure is. Hey, Gracia? You wouldn’t happen to have saved a lock of your husband’s hair, would you? From any of his haircuts before?”
There was a pause and something that sounded vaguely like a shriek; Al held the phone out from his ear and winced. Then he put his ear back up to the earpiece and waited. “I think she hung up,” he remarked sadly. He set the receiver back down and returned to his previous position on the couch with no further words.
Mustang and Ed both rushed the younger man. Mustang got there first.
“Al, what’s gotten into you?” Roy practically shouted. “You just ask her something about her dead husband out of the blue like that and expect her to not get upset?”
“Well, it was the easiest way to find out,” Al shrugged.
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay? You were never this inconsiderate before.” Ed tilted his head to one side. “I guess that role has always been played by me.”
“It wasn’t inconsiderate,” Al replied calmly. “She used to save a lock of hair from Elicia’s haircuts. So why not Maes’s?”
Mustang and Edward exchanged a glance. Ed jerked his head toward Al, as if to ask, Is it true what he’s saying? Mustang nodded sharply, as if to say, Yup, right on the money. Mustang could tell that Ed wanted nothing more than to question his brother about his memories again, but instead he barreled right on, “Well, now we know that route is a dead end … I’m sorry to say, we’re gonna - ”
The phone rang again.
“I’ll answer this time,” Roy said brusquely. He picked up the handset carefully from its cradle. “Hello.”
“Roy?” The voice on the other hand was calm and clear.
“Gracia.” He licked his lips. “I apologize for Alphonse. I’m not sure what he’s - ”
“I don’t know what he’s about,” she replied evenly. “Just tell him that I used to save the hair but now it’s gone. Just one lock each time I cut his hair. I always put it in the same old tin. But I can’t find it anywhere. I must have thrown it out at some point.”
Roy heard the lines disconnect, but gently, as though she’d set the phone down but not slammed it down.
That’s something, he thought.
Then he thought: But it still doesn’t matter. The end result is that we’re going to have to go grave-robbing.
As it turned out, they didn’t get much use out of the shovels. On their way to the graveyard (much of the distance to which they had to walk to avoid the car being spotted too near the grounds) Ed and Al had one of their famous Elric debates. This one was about the ability of alchemy to move large amounts of dirt.
“That’s not transmuting, Al, it’s relocating,” Ed argued. “It won’t do a damned bit of good to try to transmute it unless we can transmute it back!”
“This from the big brother who taught me how to make a clay horse?” Alphonse retorted. “And how’d you get into Mom’s grave, without alchemy?”
“Dumbass, I did use some, but I had to get my hands in there anyway, her coffin was way more deteriorated by then than Hughes’ will be,” Ed shot back. Mustang was impressed by the scientists showing in the two youngsters, separating their emotions from the grisly duty they were about to perform. Mustang wished he could be half so rational.
“What’s the big deal about transmuting it back, anyway?” Al argued. “How the hell were you planning on getting the dirt back in place with the shovels? No matter how careful we were it’d be obvious the place was disturbed.”
“We could use an extra wheelbarrow or something, you know they have them out there,” Ed argued.
“Oh, and we’re so much less likely to get caught if we ‘borrow’ the gravediggers’ tools! Good going, Brother!”
“Well then, since you’re so smart, what the hell do you suggest?”
“Same thing I’ve said all along. Transmute the dirt into clay and back again. Anything extra that gets scattered, transmute it into dust.”
“Al, even I can’t transmute dirt into clay or stone and back again, and get it the right color and consistency, without being able to fucking see it! And what about the grass?”
“Well we knew we’d have to use the shovels some,” Al replied indignantly. “We can cut into the grass with them and -”
“Pipe down, boys,” said Mustang impatiently. “We’re getting close.”
They entered the graveyard as quietly as possible. Mustang had a small lantern, but he never lit it; he’d visited Maes’ grave often enough to find it in the dark. Mustang and Al spread their greatcoats to block the light from Edward’s transmutation (after all the talk, they’d decided on Al’s method after all, but it was Ed who did the actual deed).
The hole he transmuted was bowl-shaped rather than rectangular so all of them would have access to the coffin, which they did use shovels to remove the excess dirt from. Edward’s alchemy had apparently loosened it, but not removed it all; he’d had to sacrifice some of the volume of earth moved for greater accuracy. Mustang tried not to pay attention to the tiny tunnels of worms and shafts of roots growing in the harder-packed earth around the coffin itself. He swallowed hard. He was already breathing through his mouth, and he kept telling himself that it would do no good to vomit, that vomiting was not an option…
His hands were steady when he helped the boys pry open the lid of the casket. By now it was no surprise to him how much more practicality they were displaying, how much more useful they were than he.
In spite of himself, he let his held breath out with a whoosh of surprise when they opened the coffin. He’d expected all sorts of horrible things, but not this.
The coffin was empty.
Edward swore a blue streak, using a few expletives Mustang wasn’t familiar with even with his long military history; he managed to insult Dante, her ancestors, the owners of the graveyard, the military, all homunculi ever to have existed on the earth, and any gods who may or may not have been listening in this world or the other, all in the space of about one and a half minutes. His tirade was so impressive it might have even amused Mustang had he not been trying to shut Edward up the entire time. Finally he gave up and just clapped his hand, dirty as it was, over Ed’s mouth. Ed spat and hissed like a cat, but got the point and quieted down.
Alphonse ignored both of them. His slender hands were probing the inside of the coffin, sweeping its inside one inch at a time, apparently unconcerned about any mess or possible booby traps. He stopped his search when he encountered a single folded piece of paper.
“Later,” he whispered urgently when both men reached for the paper, wanting to read it. “We can’t stay here any longer. Every minute we risk discovery.” His words were sobering; Roy and Edward knew he was in the right.
Even with alchemy, the clean-up took longer than anticipated. Mustang wasn’t sure they’d done a convincing job of returning the gravesite to its former state, but it was too late now.
As they were leaving, he turned back, unable to stop himself. He knelt behind the grave and placed his forehead on the cold stone. He closed his eye. He did not murmur a word, not even a prayer, but stayed as he was in silence until Alphonse tugged at his sleeve, reminding him once more that time would not stop just because of his grief.
“ ‘Gotcha’? What the hell kind of message is that to leave inside someone’s gods-damned grave?” Edward was not amused.
“Well, obviously, Dante had to plan for the homunculus being investigated,” Al replied. “She knows how to kill a homunculus. She knows we know, and that we can’t be the only ones. And the homunculi know, too, don’t they, Brother? They at least can feel it when they get too close to … their human remains.” He glanced at Mustang, hoping he hadn’t been too insensitive. “We should have known this might happen.”
“Not to be too obvious, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a coffin to contain a body,” Mustang said dryly.
“It’s more than that, though. The casket was completely empty. No sign of decay. I think she replaced the whole thing, not just emptied it.” Al was all seriousness.
“How do we know the homunculus didn’t do it himself?” Ed was contemplative.
“Homunculi don’t like to be too near the original body, if Greed was any example, right? And they can’t do alchemy,” Al replied logically. “Whoever did that had to have used alchemy. There’s no other way.”
“Unless the gravediggers are in her employ, or … influenced by the homunculus, or something.” Edward brooded. “And that’s not true, Al. Wrath could do alchemy.”
“Wrath had your limbs,” Alphonse pointed out. “What ever happened to him, by the way?”
“You tell me. I was sort of gone during the last few years,” Edward sniped.
“Boys, this is no time to argue,” Mustang said sharply. “The important question is, what should we do now?”
“I’m going for a walk,” Alphonse said almost cheerily, standing up and striding over toward the coat-rack. “See you two in a little while.” He was out the door before either Ed or Mustang could protest or offer to accompany him.
“But … it only just stopped raining …” Roy blinked at Ed, a bit dazed by Al’s sudden departure.
“We’re lucky we didn’t get caught in it.” Edward seemed irritated, but Roy knew it was just a cover-up for his worry over his little brother. “If he gets wet, it’s his own damned fault.” He stood and stretched, then said with his usual brashness, “Damn it, I got dirt in my automail again. If you don’t care, Colonel, I want first dibs on the shower.”
Roy didn’t bother to correct him on his military title, but replied evenly, “You know where the towels are. Try not to use all the hot water, Fullmetal?”
Ed’s lips twisted in an ironic smile. “I’ll think about it.” Arrogant and golden as a lion, he stalked off toward the washroom.
Roy sighed and headed for the kitchen sink. He’d be damned if he was going to stay filthy just because Ed … was being Ed. At that thought, he couldn’t help smiling too.
Onward to Chapter Fourteen
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