theory and practice - part 2
Ed did not hold a grudge over the Lizard Incident. But then, Maes had been sure he wouldn’t.
What he hadn’t foreseen was Ed sticking close for days, reporting in, practically hovering. He hadn’t foreseen something very like an Ed-style apology.
Sometimes he didn’t understand Ed at all. But Roy did. It was enough.
Understanding didn’t always help Roy, though. It didn’t prevent Ed from cornering him and reading out the entirety of his alchemy notes dating back three years. Maes was informed that there were a lot of lists of elements in Ed’s notes. The composition of humans, the composition of quartz, the composition of cheese. Maes was to know that Roy was now an expert on how to transmute swords from sand, among other things.
As Ed had promised, his notes hadn’t contained anything particularly helpful on the subject of the end of the world. Maes counted the experience as a win anyway. Parts of it had been quite funny, after all. And the rest had been revealing.
* * *
Introduction to the team: victim the first, Riza Hawkeye.
Maes was sadly unable to come along for that one, but he heard it was special, indeed. He heard it had involved Ed being borderline polite and Hawkeye saying, “Sir?” in that way she had when she was so angry she was thinking of shooting everyone to spare herself the aggravation. Shame he’d missed it.
He made sure he was the one to do the introductions for victim two.
“It’s a kid,” Breda drawled, eyeing Ed before giving Maes a dubious look.
“It’s a fat man,” Ed sneered back.
“It’s a brat, too,” Breda informed Maes. “There a reason we’re bringing a brat along?”
Maes smiled, well pleased. “Ed, this is Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda, who works for Roy. Breda, this is Edward Elric. Edward Elric, the Demon Alchemist.”
Breda raised an eyebrow at Ed. “You gonna kill me or something?”
“I don’t kill people for being fucking annoying,” Ed informed him. “You gotta work harder than that.”
Breda shrugged. “Right. I sort of like the kid. What’s the plan?”
Roy’s team. Oh, Roy’s team.
Maes sadly missed the rest of the introductions, being preoccupied with finding their target. Roy was careful to share the highlights, though, which was decent of him.
Fuery had been terrified, but tried to be nice, and the net effect had made Ed laugh, which terrified everyone.
Havoc had tried to hide bodily behind Roy, which, given their respective heights, must have been awkward.
Falman hadn’t shown any sign that he cared what Ed’s profession was. He’d been too busy grilling him on the details of the case. Maes worried that they might get along.
* * *
One of Maes’s men found a rumor of a hint of a suggestion that perhaps there was an Ishbal doctor being held in Lab 3. Perhaps the theoretical doctor was Marco. Conceivably.
“This is not a sure thing,” Maes informed Ed.
“Yeah, you said that five times already.” Ed rolled his eyes and looked horribly adolescent. “Can we just go?”
“Promise me that if we go and he’s not there, you won’t have a fit of rage and destroy the building.”
“Shit, I’ll try my best, Hughes. Anyway, it’s a government lab. Destroying it would be a freaking public service, I’m just saying.”
“This is meant to be a discreet mission, Elric,” Roy murmured, checking over a map of the city. “What about here?” he asked Fuery.
“Too close to HQ.”
“Here?”
Fuery’s fingers traced over phone lines on the map. “Mm,” he agreed. “It’ll take us an hour to set up.”
“Falman will go with Fuery,” Roy said. “Hawkeye, Havoc, keep Elric from blowing up any buildings.”
“Hey,” Ed protested mildly.
“And I’ll-”
“Stay here,” Hawkeye said quellingly. There began a staring contest that everyone in the room except Roy knew he was going to lose.
“I’ll stay here,” he sighed eventually, bowing to the inevitable. Ed snickered and Roy shot him a dirty look. “Hughes?”
“Hm? What makes you think I’m not going home?”
“Your fatal curiosity.”
“It hasn’t been fatal so far,” Maes sighed. He hoped it never would be, but Roy had an unfortunate point. For example: “I’ll head to Lab 3 first, just to get the lay of the land, then I’ll keep Fuery and Falman company. My men are staying out of it.”
“Yes, so you said,” Roy replied, indifferent. Roy’s personality was going underground. It always did when he was using all of his higher faculties to scheme. “You can head over in your own time. We’ll send Elric first, and Hawkeye will follow after Fuery’s set up, in case anything comes up at the last minute and we need to abort.”
Havoc chose this time to arrive. He was the last one, and possibly for that reason was the one Roy punished. Roy went to meet him before he got out of the car, Ed and Maes trailing after.
“Havoc,” Roy said, “drive Elric to Lab 3. He’ll let you know the plan along the way, and the Lieutenant will meet you in half an hour.”
Havoc gave Roy the most pitiful look Maes had ever seen on his face, and that was saying something, because Havoc’s repertoire of pitiful looks was pretty extensive. “But Chief-”
“Nice car,” Ed said, leaning down to peer past Havoc. He leaned close enough that it would have been uncomfortable even if Ed had been a normal person. Which he wasn’t. Havoc stopped looking pitiful and started looking panicked. “Shame about the fucking cigarette reek, though,” Ed went on.
Maes knew Ed well enough by now to know that scaring the bejeezus out of innocent bystanders was his idea of a good time. Havoc did not know that. Poor, poor man.
“Havoc didn’t anticipate your delicate nose in his car,” Roy drawled. “You’ll have to try to forgive him.”
Ed turned away from Havoc to face Roy, but his right hand stayed propped on the window, metal in plain sight. Havoc was eyeing it as he might a snake. “I’m not gonna hold it against him,” Ed said with his just-for-Roy scary grin. “I’m holdin’ it against you. You’re supposed to be the boss, right?”
“I can’t control the Second Lieutenant’s smoking,” Roy said. “Or the weather,” he added reflectively.
Ed snorted, leaning back down to terrorize Havoc a little more. “Calm down, guy,” he said in a distinctly non-comforting fashion. “I hardly ever bite.”
Havoc swallowed. “Good to know.”
“I didn’t know you were into biting at all, Elric,” Roy said, arms crossed. Looking unsettled despite his best efforts. Aw.
“Well, you know.” Ed swaggered around to the passenger side. “Never say never.” He hopped into the car and slammed the door behind him. Havoc shot one last accusing glance Roy’s way, and off they went.
Farewell, brave Havoc. It was nice knowing you.
Ed in a good mood was almost as frightening as Ed in a bad mood.
* * *
“Isn’t Breda coming to the party?” Maes asked. He’d seemed so eager, after all.
“Breda’s taking care of the paperwork that explains why all of my staff is out of the office today,” Roy replied.
Maes blinked. “What did he ever do to you?”
Roy looked put-upon. “He and the Lieutenant are the best at destroying a paper trail. Unlike the Lieutenant, Breda is not an award-winning sniper, so he pulls paperwork. Interesting that he didn’t question me, but you did.”
“Well, I don’t have to report to you,” Maes observed. “Further to which, have I mentioned that this is a crazy idea?”
“Once or twice,” Roy murmured. “Or ten times. I told you why I agreed to support Elric, and you didn’t argue.”
Annoying but true. “You know someone killed the Silver Alchemist this morning,” Maes said. Spitefully. Throwing that out right then was definitely an act of spite.
Roy looked up from his map. “No.”
“I think we can change Scar’s being in Central from a possibility to a probability. So as soon as we’re finished with this, assuming we don’t all get killed or arrested, we should probably chase after him.”
“Have you mentioned this to Edward?” Hawkeye asked, and Maes and Roy both turned to face her, incredulous.
“I thought,” said Roy, “that you didn’t approve of Elric.”
“I didn’t,” Hawkeye agreed, unruffled.
“And yet….” Roy trailed hopefully off. Hawkeye looked blank. Roy gave up. “And yet you suddenly want me to talk to him?”
“Edward and I understand each other now,” Hawkeye said. Then she glanced at her watch and said, “Excuse me, sir. The Lieutenant Colonel and I should head to Lab 3.”
And she walked off, shameless, leaving Roy to gawp after her. Maes thought it was almost as adorable as Elicia. Almost.
Roy was so stupidly stubborn about his love life, about Hawkeye, and most particularly about the intersection of the two. Maes generally found this depressing. No man needed to be married to a practical woman quite as badly as Roy Mustang did.
Just at this moment, though, it was pretty funny.
“Be good, Roy,” he said. “Stay.”
Roy growled at him.
* * *
“Havoc,” Hawkeye said, stepping out of the car. “Check the front of the building and report back.”
Havoc beamed joyously at her, barely stopping himself from thanking her for the order. “On it, Lieutenant. And, uh.” A worried glance toward Ed, who was firmly ignoring everyone and staring intently through the fence toward the back of the lab. “So far so good?”
“Glad to hear it.”
Havoc fled.
“Y’know,” Ed piped up unexpectedly once Havoc was out of earshot, “that Second Lieutenant isn’t a bad guy.”
Maes and Hawekeye both stared at him, but that was evidently all he had to say about Jean Havoc. Maes wondered what he was looking for through that fence, or if he was trying to spontaneously develop x-ray vision and see through the walls.
“All prepared, Ed?” Maes asked. Ed hissed irritably in response. Everyone was making animal noises at Maes today. Was it the weather? “Sticking to automail and alchemy? I’m sure the Lieutenant would let you borrow a gun.”
Ed ignored him. He’d predicted that, but he wanted to see how Hawkeye would respond to this suggestion. Her response turned out to be…unorthodox.
“Edward doesn’t use guns,” she explained, loading her own.
“Oh?” It was true that Maes had never seen him with a weapon other than a knife or five. Occasionally a spear. He couldn’t see any reason for Hawkeye to know that, though. What exactly had been covered in this heart-to-heart Ed and Hawkeye had apparently had? “Why not?”
Hawkeye shrugged and looked inscrutable, which was something she had a natural aptitude for.
“Ed? Why not?”
Ed turned away from the fence with a scowl. “Huh? I’m busy.”
“Why don’t you use guns?”
“Why…? I dunno. They’re not as fun. Now shut up, I’m busy.”
Not as fun. Maes looked helplessly to Hawkeye, who met his eyes, pushed her cartridge home with a snick, and managed to give the impression that she’d found Maes wanting.
Why me? Maes thought. Why am I wanting? I’m the one who doesn’t like to beat people to death.
“Have you seen what you wanted to see?” Hawkeye asked coolly. He really was in trouble, wasn’t he? But why, why?
“I have seen,” Maes announced grandly. And he had. He’d seen that he had been quite right to refuse to commit his men to this lunacy. “And now I shall flee.”
Hawkeye nodded politely and Ed snorted. Maes got into his car and took off to the friendlier pastures inhabited by Fuery and Falman.
* * *
About half an hour had passed, and they had just settled into serious listening for any messages or hints of disturbance when their job was rendered irrelevant.
“No go,” Ed announced from the window, causing Maes and Fuery both to jump a foot. Even Falman looked unsettled. Hayate, on the other hand, ran joyously over and tried to lick Ed’s face.
First Nina, now this. All that babble about animals being good judges of character was clearly a fond delusion.
“Um. No go?” Fuery asked. Ed nodded, scratching Hayate behind the ears. “Why…why not?” Fuery persisted.
Ed shrugged. “He was dead already. Scar. That fucker, I’m about sick of his shit. He’d better have learned something from Marco before he splatted him, is all, or I’ll splat him.” Ed stood and looked at their uncomprehending faces. “Anyway,” he said. “Go home. I gotta find Ling’s guys before they do something stupid. Later.”
He ran off. As he was prone to do. Awkward silence followed in his wake, as was also typical.
“Um,” said Fuery. “Why didn’t they just call us on the phone? Or use the radio?”
Maes suspected someone’s bad sense of humor. In fact, he suspected Hawkeye’s bad sense of humor. He didn’t want to say that out loud, though, because if he did, it might get back to Ed. And that would be scary.
Was this propensity for playing with fire something Roy and Hawkeye shared? Because, if so, Maes took back all his wishes that they would get married.
* * *
Maes was very, very tired of finding so many leads that turned out to be a bust. He was surprised that Ed didn’t seem more put off by it. He made the mistake of asking why not, and was informed, quote, “Things go to shit all the time, what’s different about this? It’s way the hell creepier when everything goes fine.”
…Sigh.
Monotony. Futility. Paperwork. The constant awareness of impending doom. Maes found himself distractedly wishing that they would hurry up and start destroying Amestris already. A very familiar mad feeling, this one; he’d often had it in Ishbal. Sitting around for hours, wishing to God they would just shoot at you and get it over with.
Part of the boredom was caused by absence of Ed. Maes couldn’t torment him in the library anymore, and he apparently didn’t have any jobs for which he needed the military, so he visited but rarely. Maes almost never knew what he was up to. It would have been lonesome, if not for Roy, who provided him with daily worrying reports on various subjects. One of these reports was that even Madame Christmas was having a tough time pulling up history on the fuhrer without a history. A spectacularly bad sign, that.
It became obvious that Roy was somehow tracking Ed, as well. Maes discovered this when Roy marched into his office-his office, his office, where was the man’s famed subtlety?-and said, “He’s missing.”
“Who’s missing?”
Roy gritted his teeth and leaned forward. “Elric.”
Maes leaned forward in turn. “You are not his mother. Don’t you have enough paperwork to do? Should I give you some of mine?”
“I’m serious, Hughes! He missed a meeting!”
Maes sat back and studied Roy. Why so fretful? Maes didn’t find it amazing that Ed would miss a meeting. He might have gotten distracted by a serial killer and chased him halfway to Xing by now, after all. “When was the meeting?”
“Yesterday. He was the one who set it up; he said he had something to tell me.”
Maes sighed and scratched a hand through his hair. “Yes. Well, after all, Ed certainly never gets sidetracked…”
“He set it up, Maes.”
Maes put both hands on the table and gave Roy his best serious look. “Ed is focusing on whatever it is he focuses on. You need to focus on your work. Ed has disappeared for much longer than this before. I don’t plan to worry for a while yet.”
Roy stood and scowled down at him, but shook his head and left without further comment.
Maes sighed again and tried to melt into his chair.
* * *
A day passed.
“How long are we going to wait?” Roy demanded, as miserable and tense as if Havoc or Hawkeye had gone missing.
“He won’t appreciate it if we come after him,” Maes pointed out.
“I don’t particularly care, Maes.”
Two days.
“He would have contacted us by now if he could.”
“Ed wouldn’t go down without a fight. If anything had happened, surely we would have heard something-explosions, screams, something.”
Three days.
“Where is he?”
And Maes accepted where this was going. “I don’t know, Roy.” Deep breath, and the sure knowledge that Ed would consider this a betrayal. “But I know where he lives.”
* * *
Roy took in the house…such as it was…with a sort of grim, resigned acceptance. He understood Ed better than Maes did, and he clearly understood the logic behind this house.
Maes was happy not to understand. “He has a housemate. Try not to react badly.”
“What do you-”
Mean, he would have said. But the housemate had shown up in the doorway and rendered the question unnecessary. Roy’s hand tensed, fingers ready to snap, despite the warning.
It was the slit pupils, Maes decided. That was what made Lizard’s face so very unsettling to look at. Even more than the occasional line of scales.
“Fuck off!” he shouted, and he might have been part reptile, but God, he looked young and scared and pitiful. He was blocking the door, holding a broken piece of glass that seemed as likely to cut him as to damage anyone else. He was trying, Maes could see, to be tough like Ed. He was failing.
“Is Ed hurt?” Maes asked quietly.
Lizard wavered on the doorstep. He didn’t want to trust them, that was obvious. He didn’t want to trust them, but he had nowhere else to turn and he was terrified.
This did not bode well for Ed.
“Can we see him?” Maes asked.
Lizard lowered the shard of glass, hesitant. He jerked his head in Roy’s direction. “Who is he?”
“This is Roy Mustang. He’s a friend of Ed’s from East.”
Lizard shifted nervously. “The…Colonel?”
Ed had mentioned Roy? Ed had volunteered information about his acquaintance in East? Curious. “That’s right. Colonel Roy Mustang.”
Lizard slumped against the doorframe, dropping the glass. “Come on,” he said, and vanished back into the house.
Maes and Roy exchanged a worried glance and followed him.
The décor hadn’t changed much since the last time Maes had been there. Maybe an overall decrease in dust and increase in bloodstains, but the sentiment was the same.
Someone without great dexterity-childish hands, most likely-had tried to repair the bed in the front room, and that was where Ed was. What was left of Ed.
Maes and Roy rushed over, while Lizard hovered behind them. Ed was unconscious, pale and sweating, gasping raggedly more than breathing. He was swathed in inexpertly-applied bandages that failed to hide the damage. Starting at the top, Maes could see a cut across his face, stretching from the edge of his mouth to just under his left eye, and a gash under his collarbone, which looked like an attempt at a stab through the heart. They were both deep enough to scar. His left hand was missing its ring and little fingers. His trunk was too bandaged to see much, and the rest of him was covered in ragged, stained blankets. It looked as if Lizard had tried to wash the blood out of Ed’s hair, but hadn’t met with much success.
“He’s breathing, at least,” Roy murmured, two fingers pressed to Ed’s neck, checking his pulse. His wrist was too bandaged to check it there. “Nothing looks infected. But-how long has he been unconscious?”
“He wakes up,” Lizard mumbled, ready to bolt. “Every day he wakes up. He said…he said no doctor. He said.”
“You kept his wounds clean, didn’t you, Lizard?” Maes asked gently. Lizard nodded, eyes sliding away. “You did a good job. We’ll take him to someone we know, all right? Not a hospital. Someone who can keep a secret.”
“He said-”
“He needs a doctor, Lizard. None of us knows enough about medicine to take care of him. You can see that too, can’t you?”
Lizard nodded again, reluctantly. Those eyes were human enough when they were filled with tears.
“Will you be all right on your own?”
The distressed look changed to one of hard suspicion. “Fuck off,” he snapped.
Maes sighed. So much for that. At least he could tell Ed that he’d tried. “Well, Roy? Dr. Knox?”
“Knox. Do you know where he lives?”
“Of course. I always keep track of old friends. How should we move him?”
“How did he get here?” Roy looked to Lizard with the nearest thing to gentle patience that Roy could manage. “Lizard, was it?”
Lizard nodded and edged a step back.
“Did he walk here?”
Lizard twisted his hands together. “He crawled.”
Roy’s eyes closed briefly, and when he opened them, he looked like Ishbal. “Then his back isn’t broken. I’ll carry him. Hughes, pull the car up front.”
Maes nodded. It was a good idea, and anyway, there was no arguing with Roy in this mood.
* * *
Dr. Knox, unsurprisingly, was not overjoyed to see them. Roy was a miracle-worker, though, and they’d blackmailed their way into the man’s disastrous living room in under five minutes. Which was lucky, because Roy had made Maes carry Ed in from the car. Ed was surprisingly heavy, considering how small he was. Turned out he was less small and more compact.
“Who’s so high-profile you can’t take him to a real doctor?” Knox demanded, bad-temperedly biting down on a fresh cigarette and glaring at Ed.
“The Demon Alchemist.”
The cigarette fell from Knox’s mouth to the floor. Maes was glad he hadn’t gotten around to lighting it.
“This…this kid is the Demon Alchemist?”
“This kid has two metal limbs and weighs a ton, could I please set him down?”
Knox’s eyes widened and he gestured vaguely to…well, Maes supposed there was a bed under there somewhere.
“Roy?”
Roy obligingly dumped all of the books off the bed to the sound of Knox’s feeble protests, but then he stood eyeing it in much the same way Gracia was given to eyeing Maes’s study. “Maybe we should wash the sheets first,” he murmured.
Knox made an indignant noise, and Maes said, “My arms, Roy! Think of my arms! He’s wrapped like a mummy, I’m sure he’ll be fine!”
Roy grumbled and beat the worst of the dust off the blankets, then waved at Maes. Maes tried to set Ed down on the bed rather than dump him, but it was difficult. He managed to wake Ed up in the process. Ed moaned, Roy hovered, and Knox said, “Oh, for God’s sake,” and stormed into another room.
Ed’s eyes squinted slightly open, and he took in Maes, Roy, and the surroundings. “Th’ fuck…?”
“Who did this to you?” Roy demanded, harsh and angry. Maes wished he would get over this habit he had of shouting at people when he was worried about them.
“Wrath,” Ed rasped. “Fuck’n…Bradley…”
His eyes rolled back in his head and he passed directly back out. He was allowed. As good as Ed was at talking at length and communicating nothing, he was apparently equally good at saying volumes in under a sentence.
“Wrath,” Maes mused. “Sounds like?”
“Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony,” Roy recited flatly.
“And the one up north. If Greed was telling the truth-questionable-then that should be all of them. But there is the more important point.”
“The Fuhrer President can’t possibly be a homunculus,” Roy said desperately.
“It would explain why Madame Christmas is having so much trouble pinning down a childhood for him.”
“Bradley can’t be a homunculus. He-”
“Did you just say the fuhrer is a homunculus?” Knox demanded, walking back in with a kidney-shaped dish full of gauze and ominous, pointy things. “Aren’t they mythical? And, more importantly, did you just say that in my house? Get the hell out of my house with your crazy, suicidal treason! Isn’t it bad enough that you bring wanted…children to me?”
“Roy,” Maes said, ignoring Knox, feeling the satisfaction creep into his voice despite his best efforts. “I don’t think this is as bad as you seem to think it is. You were the one who said it might be nice if the fuhrer were in league with the monsters. How much better is it that he’s one of them?”
“It has advantages, but if he’s immortal, it’s not what I would call an ideal situation. Elric couldn’t handle him.”
“Immortal?” Knox repeated. “Immortal? I wasn’t talking just to hear myself talk when I told you to get out of my house. Get out before you get me arrested for knowing you!”
“When will he be awake for any length of time?” Roy asked, edging politely toward the door. Maes, less polite, kept himself planted next to Ed until they had an answer.
Knox shrugged. “Could be tomorrow, could be a week. Give him a week. He’ll be in too much pain to do a lot of talking before that.”
Maes followed Roy out. “Next week,” he said.
They closed the door on the sound of Knox’s annoyed muttering.
“You have a plan for Bradley, don’t you?” Roy asked.
“Not a plan. But I was thinking we could do a little investigation into his family’s background. See where the wife and adopted son came from.”
Roy looked disturbed. “For leverage?”
Maes shrugged. “Maybe. But they might be interesting in themselves. Who knows?”
Roy nodded thoughtfully. “Who knows?”
* * *
The next time they visited, Ed was, as promised, wide awake.
Wide awake and bound, hand and foot, to the bed.
“Why is Elric tied down?” Roy asked in a carefully nonjudgmental tone.
“He was trying,” Knox announced in the doctorly voice of rage, “to lift weights.”
“I’m gonna get fuckin’ out of shape!” Ed howled, lifting his head as far as he could and glaring at Knox.
“You’re going to rip open that gut wound again, is what you’re going to do, you idiot,” Knox snapped back. “And when you do, I ought to let you bleed to death.”
Ed huffed and slammed his head back into the pillow. Knox crossed his arms and scowled.
Maes could not look at Roy. Could not. Because if he did, they would both laugh, and then Knox and Ed would kill them.
“May we talk to the patient?” Roy asked in an admirably even voice.
“Fine, but you can’t untie him,” Knox said. “I’ll be checking on you,” he threatened Ed, who snarled at the ceiling.
Roy sat in the chair to Ed’s left, and Maes stood behind him. Ed looked surprisingly good, considering what he’d looked like only a few days before. Good color. Alert. Bad temper intact.
“Lifting weights?” Maes asked.
“Shut up, shut up, you’re a dick and this is all your fault,” Ed snapped. And it wasn’t that Maes had expected gratitude, but really. “I’m gonna be fat by the time I get out of here!”
“Perhaps you feel we should have left you to bleed to death in front of your housemate, Elric,” Roy said in that smooth, nasty tone he got sometimes.
Ed flinched. Roy did know just where to apply the knife, didn’t he? And, like the sadist he was, he quietly let that sink in for a while, watching Ed squirm. Maes would never have done this to someone as dangerous as Ed, but that was what made Roy special.
“How did you manage to run afoul of the fuhrer?” Roy asked after Ed had worked himself into a state of misery.
Ed shuffled his shoulders a little. “Uh, I was talkin’ to the First Lieutenant.”
“First Lieutenant Hawkeye?” Roy asked with some surprise.
“Yeah…yeah, I wanted to hear about Ishbal. Sounded like a clusterfuck, and I figured… whatever happened in Ishbal is what makes you guys do what you do. I mean, I’d heard about the war, but I didn’t hear what you guys did during it. Not from you, anyway.”
Not from them? Who had he heard it from?
“Didn’t like not knowing,” he went on. Then he gave Roy a fond sidelong look, so apparently Roy was forgiven for the Lizard comment. That was quick. “Turns out I pretty much had you figured. You’re easy.”
“I am not-” Roy broke off, closed his eyes, and sighed. He opened his eyes again and tried to get his brain on track. It was fun to watch, despite the circumstances. “This doesn’t answer my question about the fuhrer.”
Ed shrugged and let his gaze drift to the ceiling. “I had you figured,” he said, “but I didn’t know the details. Didn’t know it was fuckin’ state-ordered genocide.”
He stopped talking, as if he felt that answered the question. Maes disagreed. But wait…considering Ed, considering Ed’s typical reaction to criminals…
“Ed-you didn’t. You didn’t really find out Bradley had ordered a genocide and then…” He couldn’t say it out loud. It was too insane.
Roy said it for him. “You tried to take out the Fuhrer President!?”
Another embarrassed shoulder shuffle. “Fucker has it coming.”
“That is not the point-”
“Ed, how did you get past his guards?”
“He’s not all that worried about keepin guards around. Actually, I think he tries to ditch ‘em.” Ed gestured downward with the fingers of his bound automail hand. “Guess I can see why. Didn’t expect a goddamn homunculus.”
“Is that why you let him humiliate you?” Roy sniped, concern pushed into irritation.
“Fuck you, bastard. Which one of us took down a homunculus before? Cuz it sure as shit wasn’t you, desk monkey.”
“I thought they weren’t hurting you because you’re a human sacrifice,” Maes broke in before the conversation dissolved altogether. “If he attacked you, why didn’t he kill you? And how did you figure out he’s Wrath?”
Ed frowned at the ceiling. “He…right, so he was about to chop my head off or something.”
Roy made a distressed and enraged sort of noise. Ed ignored him.
“And Lust came out of nowhere…had to have been Lust. I didn’t see her, though, she was behind me. She said, ‘Don’t kill him, Wrath. We’re short on human sacrifices as it is.’ So then he clocked me, and when I woke up, they were gone. I guess damage is fine as long as I’m not actually dead. And it looks like they don’t care what I know anymore, and that really fucking bothers me.”
“Yes,” Maes agreed firmly. “That’s ominous. Terrifying, in fact. Where did all of this happen?”
“Huh. Like three blocks from the fuhrer’s mansion.”
“And when you came to, you…crawled all the way home, Ed?”
“No.”
Roy’s fingers were twitching slightly. Maes imagined it was due to an overwhelming desire to wrap his hands around Ed’s throat and shake until answers fell out. That was why Maes’s fingers were twitching, anyway.
“Ed. Do I have to frame my questions in words of one syllable?”
Ed squirmed. If he hadn’t been tied to the bed, Maes was sure, he would have taken this time to dart down an alley and disappear. “Uh. The stupid prince carried me home.” Long pause. “Ling.”
“Lizard told us you crawled,” Roy said, voice flat.
“I didn’t let him take me all the way home, obviously.”
“Obviously?” Maes asked.
“Yeah. Like hell am I gonna let him figure out where I live. I had him drop me a few blocks to the west.” Ed eyed them both, confused by their confusion. “Obviously.”
In retrospect, Maes was stunned that he’d been allowed to see Ed’s home. “How did Ling Yao happen to be there?”
“I guess he doesn’t much like the fuhrer,” Ed said doubtfully, as if he hadn’t believed this explanation himself. “Says he’s no leader. What the hell that’s got to do with anything, I dunno. You know he’s freaking obsessed with the Philosopher’s Stone, the dipshit. Maybe he figures if anybody’s got one, the fuhrer has. And hey, turns out he’s not wrong.”
Roy did not look pleased. Maes sympathized. He wasn’t pleased either. Well, with one exception-the image of a whole string of murderous teenaged boys trailing around after the fuhrer like rabid ducklings was a pleasing one.
“Why’d you guys come to the house, anyway?” Ed asked.
“You missed our meeting,” Roy said.
“Yeah, but only by a few days when you showed up.” Ed scowled. “The hell’s the matter with you?”
“He was fretting,” Maes said, anticipating Ed’s reaction to this with glee. “He was panicking in my office the very next day.”
For once, Ed’s reaction was everything Maes had hoped. Horror hit him going one way and confusion going the other, and his poor face didn’t know what to do with itself.
Roy, meanwhile, scowled harder. Unfortunately, Knox reappeared and booted them out the door before he got a chance to reply. Pity.
“Well,” said Maes as they walked to the car, before Roy could start bitching. “As we’re waiting on Madame Christmas, it’s clearly time to run screaming to the press.”
“And what would you like the press to say? ‘Fuhrer exposed! Mythical creatures running loose in Central!’? No respectable paper would print that.”
“I have connections.”
“I believe you’ll find your connections are funded with state money.”
“Maybe so, but they would happily cut off their noses to spite their faces, which is why they became reporters. And I know a few editors of this description, too.”
“If you run to the press, this will be entirely out of our control.”
“Ah ha, but it will also be out of their control. And, unlike us, they won’t see it coming.”
“They’ll have us killed.”
“Will they? They don’t seem to care that Ed knows.”
“Ed is a human sacrifice. It’s not a huge concern if one person they’re planning to kill soon knows. I certainly hope they won’t feel the same way about the entire population of Amestris.”
“You know that they may.”
Roy pinched the bridge of his nose and looked old. He was looking old more and more often these days. Difficult to pin down the emotion this stirred up in Maes-something between wistfulness and panic. Roy had once been so painfully young. “Give me some time before you do this, Maes.”
“You’re going to miss your moment, Roy. This is why Breda always destroys you in chess: you’re too cautious.”
“Then why does he always destroy you?”
“I’ll give you one week.”
“Two months.”
“Coward!”
“Maes!”
* * *
Knox was so inured to comings and goings at this point, and so very fatalistic, besides, that he didn’t even bother to lock his front door anymore. No one bothered to knock, either, since Knox only ignored them if they did. Maes managed to get all the way to Ed’s room without realizing there was anyone else in the house. He didn’t realize, in fact, until he looked through the doorway and saw Hawkeye sitting next to Ed. He ducked back to lean against the wall and listen.
He’d been wondering what the two of them found to talk about, and now he was going to know. He’d been working hard. Legitimate, paid work, in addition to investigating high command while pretending not to. Long hours! He was entitled to some recreational eavesdropping. He’d earned it.
“What you guys are doing isn’t any better,” Ed was muttering defiantly, though Maes could have told him that being defiant with Hawkeye never ended well. “It’s gonna get all of you killed in the end, too.”
“We’ve accepted that we might die in pursuit of our goal,” Hawkeye replied calmly. “But death isn’t the goal, it’s an unfortunate possible consequence. What’s your goal, Edward?”
“I want to take these homunculus guys down,” he said.
“And so do I,” said Hawkeye, “but that isn’t your goal, it’s incidental. Why do you wake up in the morning? What are you living for?”
Long silence.
“I’m not living for anything.” Ed was determined to break Maes’s heart. “You guys are freaks of nature, anyway.” Ah, good. Back on the attack. “Most people don’t have a specific thing they get up for in the morning. They just get up. They live because that’s what you freaking do, you don’t need an excuse for it.”
“Hm,” said Hawkeye. Maes had to agree. You couldn’t call Ed ‘most people.’
“I clean up after you guys,” he muttered, sullen now. “I have a job. What else do I need?”
“Hm,” Hawkeye said again, and Maes could hear her standing up. “I look forward to when you find your purpose, Edward. You will let me know, won’t you?”
“You’re very…bossy,” Ed said, sounding almost admiring.
“Get well,” she said, and in that tone, it was clearly an order. Maes loved Hawkeye’s sense of humor.
And so did Ed, apparently, because he laughed. Not many people understood Hawkeye humor. It made a certain amount of sense that Ed would be one of the few.
Hawkeye stepped through the doorway, noted Maes, and moved out of Edward’s line of sight. She then gave Maes a long look that made her opinion of people who eavesdropped on private conversations abundantly clear. After she felt he was reasonably chastened, she walked down the hall and out the door without a backward glance.
Ouch.
Maes waited a respectable amount of time, then went in to check on Ed himself.
“Funny I didn’t hear the door open,” Ed said, giving him a jaded look. Ed was an adorably suspicious little maniac.
“I’ve been in the house for a while. I was talking to Knox.” A half truth was better than no truth at all, right? And surely it didn’t matter, since Ed wouldn’t have believed him no matter what he said. “Did you have a good chat with Lieutenant Hawkeye?”
Ed rolled his eyes, but seemed basically tolerant. He gave the ropes an absent yank. To judge from the state of his left wrist, he did this at least fifty times a day. He couldn’t be serious about it, though. Maes had seen what the automail could do, and if Ed really wanted out of those ropes, he would be out of them. Interesting.
“Like you don’t know,” Ed said. “She wants me to find my life’s calling or some shit. I think she said I’d better find my life’s calling or else she’d have to fuck me up.”
“Nice that she cares,” Maes pointed out.
“Uh huh.” Ed seemed dubious, but that was only because he hadn’t seen what Hawkeye was like when she didn’t care about you. “She was like, ‘what’s your excuse for breathing?’ What’s her deal?”
“Well.” How to put this in a way that would not cause Hawkeye to shoot him? “She did tell you about Ishbal.”
Ed scowled. “Yeah, she told me.”
“I think it made her believe that her life, at least, needs justification. She feels she’s forfeited her freedom. That something is owed. She lives by her sense of duty, the same as Roy.”
“The same as you.” Ed huffed a laugh. “You guys and your second-hand sins.”
Maes didn’t consider his sins second-hand, but it wasn’t something he planned to argue about. Not with Ed, anyway. “She’s put you into the same category.”
Ed said, “I’m not the same as you,” which Maes had expected, and, “I’m worse,” which he hadn’t, though he should have.
“I wouldn’t try to argue with Hawkeye, if I were you,” Maes said.
“Oh, hell no,” Ed agreed.
They brooded over the likely consequences of arguing with Hawkeye for a moment, then Ed gave an impatient shrug that Maes recognized as indicative of ‘moving on.’ “How’s Lizard?” he asked, not quite making eye contact.
“He seemed fine the last time I saw him, but that was a few days ago. Do you want me to check on him?”
Ed responded to this question by violently hurling himself to the limit of the ropes, then flumping, defeated, back to the bed. Maes was so well-trained by now that he hardly even jumped. Ed closed his eyes wearily and sighed. “You better bring him here. I dunno how long I’ll be down.”
“I’m not sure how well he’ll take to being dragged to a strange place, Ed.”
“Should be fine if just the Colonel goes.”
Just the Colonel. Roy really was something special, wasn’t he?
“Idiot’s probably out of food,” Ed muttered.
Experimentally, Maes said, “He’s like a little brother to you, isn’t he?”
Ed’s eyes snapped open for a full-on Demon Alchemist glare. “He is nothing like my little brother,” in a voice teetering on the edge of insanity.
Hm. A step back for every step forward, indeed.
* * *
Roy fetched Lizard. From what Maes could gather, this passed off without a hitch. And now here they all were, awkwardly hovering in Knox’s kitchen pretending not to be watching the reunion.
Lizard was curled up next to Ed on the bed, carefully not touching him. Both of them were peering at a book. Knox had even untied Ed for the occasion. Maes hoped Lizard wouldn’t notice the rope burn.
“He’s not what you’d expect, is he?” Knox asked, wiping his hands on a dishtowel so filthy that Maes questioned the benefit. “From the Demon Alchemist.”
“Not at the moment,” Maes admitted.
“Has his moments, huh?” Knox snorted. “What’s the story on the scaly kid?”
“Oh, military medical experimentation. You know how it is.” Knox shot him a hard glare which he ignored. “As far as we can tell, everyone he knew died, and he ended up following Ed home.”
Knox abandoned the glare in favor of looking vaguely interested. “And he let the kid stay?”
“He talks about getting rid of him more or less constantly, but he’s never made any move to do so.”
They lapsed into a brief silence, during which Ed could be heard to say, “This one turns water into really shitty wine. You’d think the guy who came up with it could at least have bothered to make something worth drinking. People are morons.”
“He had me buy train tickets from Central to Rush Valley yesterday,” Knox said quietly. “Had me untie him long enough to write a letter.”
“To Paninya,” Maes guessed.
Knox nodded.
“You’ve mentioned her before,” Roy said.
“She’s an acquaintance of Ed’s,” Maes told him. “I can see why Ed would think that she and Lizard would get along.” Or at least deserve each other.
The three of them fell silent to watch the minor miracle that was Edward Elric making a little boy laugh.
“He won’t like it,” Roy said.
* * *
Ed made Lizard a hooded cape that hid most of his unusual features, and hustled him onto a train as soon as he had clearance from Knox to be driven as far as the station. Lizard did not, in fact, like it. Roy had been right. Ed forced him onto the train anyway. There were tears, but they passed unnoticed by the general public-there were always tears at a train station.
“He wanted to stay with you,” Maes pointed out once the train had gone.
Ed shrugged, face closed. “He’s ten. He doesn’t know what he wants.”
“Really? You’re only fifteen, Ed.”
“Yeah, and when I was ten, I wanted to bring my mother back from the dead. I remember real clearly how fucking stupid I was at ten, okay? Shut up.”
Maes sighed.
“It’s…” Ed trailed off, but then, unexpectedly, steeled himself for an explanation. “It’s not like this is the first time it’s happened. That I end up with some kid.”
Maes blinked, and he really should not be continually blindsided by Ed even now. “Oh?”
“I kill people, right? Sometimes these fuckers have kids. And, like, if they don’t have a place…I mean, I can’t let ‘em starve, that’d be…but they can’t stay with me. They hate me half the time, and I’m not a goddamn orphanage, anyway. I find ‘em a place. Okay? That okay with you? Stop looking at me like that, asshole.”
Maes obediently turned his eyes to the street and kept them there. “Let’s get you back to Knox before he revokes my permission to take you out.”
Part 3