Kaleidoscope of Hours, Part Ten
Title: Kaleidoscope of Hours
Author: mfelizandy
Rating: PG-13
Type: Post-first anime AU plotfic, featuring alchemical time travel and a ten-year-old Roy Mustang.
Warnings: Language and hints of one of Roy Mustang's past love affairs.
Author's Notes: This story starts in an AU in which Edward Elric was not catapulted into another world at the end of the series, and Al did not lose four years of growth and memory in regaining his body. Other AUs will make an appearance through the story. When the kaleidoscope turns, we're in a different timeline.
Summary: The State Alchemists were disbanded years ago. The homunculi have been destroyed. Amestris is finally enjoying some peace--until one of Brigadier General Roy Mustang's old flames brings him evidence that someone is tampering with powers that could tear him and his world apart.
In another version of history, Maes Hughes is a Central City police detective, with a very strange case on his hands.
Click here to go back to the beginning.
Click here to go back to Part Nine.
“Second Mirror”
Central City, Amestris,
November 14, 1916, 7:22 PM
Professor Theo opened his door, and surveyed Hughes' bruised face in a glance. “Is the boy all right?”
“I wouldn't be here if he was.” Hughes pushed past the man. “I need you to help me find him.”
Theo closed the door. “Do you know who has him?”
“A judge awarded custody to the FullMetal Alchemist, and he came by personally to pick him up.”
“FullMetal?” A shadow passed over the professor's face. “Don't take this the wrong way, Detective, but you're way out of your league.”
“I can't let him do whatever it is he wants Roy for.” Hughes shook his head a little and immediately regretted it. “I need you to help me find him.”
Theo was silent for a long moment, then he turned toward his workroom. “Come with me. We'll hope Edward hasn't noticed the dog tags.” He crouched on the concrete floor and started drawing in loose, confident sweeps of chalk. “Hand me the candles from the third shelf, please.” The words were polite, but the tone was a command.
Hughes obeyed, following the array as it grew under the alchemist's hands. “Is that the-what did you call it-tracking circle?”
“A sympathetic array, yes. It will let me get a feel for where Roy is-if he still has the tags.” Theo melted the bottom ends of the candles with a match, and stuck them onto certain points of the array.
“I've never seen candles used in alchemy.” Hughes tried to keep from fidgeting. Roy's survival was less likely with every passing minute, but the alchemist didn't seem to be in any hurry.
“I like to use some of the older methods. Just the way my mind works.” Theo added another arc to the edge of the array, which didn't resemble any of the circles Hughes had seen in his investigations. Before he could open his mouth to ask, Theo said, “Stand back,” and put both hands onto the chalked lines.
Hughes found his working eye tearing as the light flared and blotted out the rest of his vision.
“Third Mirror”
Border Station Southeast Six, Ishbal
October 28, 1924, 2:39 PM
The Ishbalan border station sat beside a road that was little more than a worn track over the dry hardpan that marked the edge of the Eastern Desert. The station, staffed by Amestrians but within Ishbalan territory and maintained by the smaller country, offered a head-high plaster wall surrounding a square central building surrounded by pens for horses and a well house. The expedition truck supplied by the Armstrong estate pulled into the yard, startling some horses that had been desultorily trying to graze.
“Our escorts have already arrived, it seems.” Armstrong's pale skin was already pink, and sweat stood out on his shining bald head, but he climbed out of the truck without showing signs of heat exhaustion.
Roy Mustang slid out of the truck. The pitiless sun of Ishbal glared down at him, and he could think of nothing to say.
“Envoy.” A man dressed in the tunic and loose pants of desert dwellers spoke from the doorway of the station. “Come inside and sit. We will talk of matters.”
Armstrong inclined his head a little, his expression noncommital. He hadn't missed the absence of a welcome or an offer of refreshments before discussing business. “I do not come emptyhanded. I bring tea, as well as the words of those who sent me.” Insult acknowledged and turned back with perfect politeness. Armstrong's mention of his tea made it clear he knew the custom and offered a way for the Ishbalan to gracefully change his mind.
A figure stepped into the sunlight and advanced on age-stiffened legs toward Mustang and Armstrong. “Ishbal greets you, Alex Luis Armstrong. May God look upon you with favor.” The man couldn't have been less than seventy years old. His face was weatherbeaten and lined, and the veins stood out on his hands. His eyes were bright and clear, and he strode up-not to Armstrong, but to Mustang, and took the former Flame Alchemist's chin in dry, leathery fingers. Mustang found his gaze captured by the piercing glint in those crimson eyes, and felt his hair standing on end as the Ishbalan Elder traced the marks left on Mustang's face by a homunculus' saber. “Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist. We have been waiting for you.”
“First Mirror”
Time and Location uncertain
Kaleidoscope. Images-dozens, no, hundreds-or was it thousands? Reflections of an infant in his mother's arms, a boy, a skinny stripling with his hair in his eyes...a man surrounded by flames. He saw the wind rippling over the grass of the far northern steppes, and a man in Utar furs riding a horse-a flare of alchemical light and a teenager's glazed eyes as the power surged through his body and threatened to break his control in a blast of unthinking ecstasy-a limp body in a pool of blood, and a woman shaking it, shrieking, though no sound reached his ears.
“Interesting, isn't it?” A voice at his elbow made him jump. “I've never met a human who didn't find his own life fascinating.”
“Who are you?” He had a feeling it was important that he recognize the child-shaped shadow beside him.
“Tell me who you are and I'll tell you who I am.”
“I--” He'd known a moment ago. He had a name, he'd lived a life-he knew the man in the images reflected around him. But when he reached into memory, he found only a babble of voices, people calling him, people he knew...but his name, why couldn't they agree on his name?
The thing beside him grinned, and he was suddenly cold. “Lose something? Maybe something you'd like to get back?”
A glimmer of awareness was fighting its way past the clouds of uncertainty. “You're trying to trick me,” he said slowly. “I can't trust you.”
The shadow laughed, showing its inhumanly sharp teeth. “Oh, no! Far be it from a human to ever believe in Truth, even when it's right in front of his face!”
The one who'd forgotten his name turned back to the reflections as they formed and swirled around him. Kaleidoscope. But which was real? The pictures, the faces, he knew them, all of them, but they didn't fit together. He remembered the man with the whip, shivered and felt his face twisting into a rictus of hatred as the money changed hands and the half-naked youngster-was that himself, or merely someone who looked like him?-was led away to the mines to work until the dust choked the life out of him-but he also knew the blonde woman, felt the weight of the baby, his son, lying in his arms, tiny and pink and perfect, his child born of his wife-but there she was again, her hair touched with gray as she led the man in the black-smoked glasses through the market, his blindness clear in the uncertain shuffle of his feet-no, she was dead and he was on his knees at her grave...
“It's not real.” He heard the uncertainty in his voice, and knew that somehow, impossibly, it was real. The grin of the thing beside him only confirmed it. “Some of it is true.”
“All of it is true. Yet it can't be, according to your human logic, can it?”
He turned and watched the man with his face and an Utar tribe at his back ride in a circle, trampling the grass and marking the territory, walk to the trot to the canter, to a barely-restrained gallop, men and women and the children, all the sheep and the horses and the dogs, everything the tribe had moving together and individually, and he felt the weight on his shoulders, the shaman, intermediary with the great powers of earth and sky and river, his people would flourish or starve depending on his ability to read the weather and bargain with the spirits of the Great Circles--
--circles. A ring flared in memory, circles and rings full of power, the symbols, runes he recognized, four triangles with their points just touching, there had to be that singularity, that point of no dimensions at all--
“Open your eyes!” The thing beside him jabbed him with a sharp elbow.
“I can't.” He opened his lone eye, looking down at the thing. “I only have one eye to open. I lost the other one years ago.” He shook himself a bit and looked at the whirling images. “My name is Roy Mustang, and I am the Flame Alchemist.”
The thing's growl wasn't a sound that could come from a human throat. “That isn't all you are.”
It was true, and the pieces began to fall into place. “No, it isn't. But--” He didn't get a chance to finish the thought. Light flared around him and arms grabbed him from behind. He glanced down and noticed that one of the hands digging into his flesh was made of metal--
--he had to breathe. Something was wrong, it couldn't possibly be so hard to just pull air into his chest, muscles contracting and relaxing in rhythm, yet he could hear his agonized gasping groan as his lungs fought to inflate against resistance, oh gods that roaring was his own heartbeat and the throbbing in his head--
“We've got him. His soul's okay.” Alphonse.
“Are you sure? His heart--” That was Anna's voice. Anna, beautiful red hair and warm low voice and just the sort of comfort a heartsick young soldier had needed--
“It just skipped a few beats, save the eulogies.” FullMetal, gruff and tactless as he was when he'd had a bad scare.
“I'm touched, FullMetal.” Oh yes, that kind of throbbing in his chest could only be the result of chest compressions a la Edward Elric. Still, Roy was grimly satisfied that his voice only sounded rough and winded, with no whine to hint at just how sore his ribs were. “I'm sure you'll have them all in tears at my wake.” He did his best to look nonplussed and quizzical, though it wasn't entirely effective, given that Ed was straddled over his hips and Alphonse still had his hands cupped around Roy's head.
“If I don't have anything better to do that day, I'll stop by and remind everyone what a manipulative tyrannical egomaniac you were.” Ed got up, scowling. “And you're welcome for saving your lazy incompetent ass, too.”
“It really was a close thing, General,” Alphonse said placatingly, moving his hands to pin Roy's shoulders firmly to the floor. “The dragons held your body all right, but something was tugging on your soul, and the Gate almost tore it loose.”
“I couldn't remember who I was.” Roy twisted a little. “Let me up, Al.”
“Not for a few more minutes. Get your breath back.”
“What do you mean, you didn't know who you were?” Anna's voice was high with tension. “Roy, are you all right? Do you know me?”
“That's what the Gate does-it fucks with your head,” Ed grunted as he dropped gracelessly into the sofa pushed up against the wall. “If you're not absolutely sure of who you are and what you're there to do, it'll take away parts of you until there's nothing yours left to hold on to.”
“But it has to give something in return, doesn't it? That's the law of alchemy-isn't it?” Anna looked from the scowling Edward to the distracted Alphonse.
“It gives equal value-but not always in the way you'd expect.” Mustang fumbled for the thought that had almost crystallized in that instant before Ed had pulled him back to the safety of life. “I didn't know who I was-but it showed me--” he felt his heart speeding up and his eye widening. “Oh gods, that's what it meant. What I am, but not all I am. The Ishbalans-that's what they were talking about.”
“Are you gonna explain that or should I wait for the book to come out?” Edward folded his mismatched arms and glared.
“Give me a minute.” Mustang sat up, letting Al support him with a hand on his back. He rubbed his sore chest while the pieces rotated and spun into place. “The Forbidden Books said a lot about specificity in unity, remember? Heringeh duv mala.”
“Actually, the meaning's closer to 'conflict that creates harmony',” Al answered. “It's one of the fundamental paradoxes of Ishbalan doctrine.”
“And why their music always sounds out of tune,” Ed added, sourness giving way to guarded curiosity. “They've always gotta have that note that doesn't fit the chord.”
“But that note does fit, from another perspective,” Mustang put in. “When you two activated the array, I expected to step out into this room, with the newspaper there on the sofa where I left it all day yesterday. Instead I found myself staring at-something like a carnival house of mirrors.” He groped for an adequate description. “I saw what looked like several movies playing at once, with the scenes out of sequence.”
“Did you see the man who was in my house?” Anna asked, her tone a mixture of desperation and dread.
“No.” Mustang rubbed his chest. “All I saw was my own life. Or what my life could have been.”
“Egotistical son of a bitch,” Edward muttered.
“You're welcome to try it for yourself, and see if you can change the film reels, FullMetal,” Mustang told him testily. “Trust me, it wasn't exactly a show I enjoyed watching.”
“You said you saw what your life could have been,” Alphonse doggedly dragged the conversation back on topic. “What does that have to do with the heringeh duv mala? No matter what could have happened, there's only one way it did happen.”
“In my memory, in this world, yes.” Mustang took a careful breath, decided he could live with the ache, and got to his feet. “But what if there are other Gates, other realities? Ones in which events didn't happen exactly as they did here?”
“That's absurd,” Edward stated flatly. “The Gate was screwing with your brain, Mustang. It did a really good job of getting your mind off what you were supposed to be doing. You didn't find out where the bastard who's messing with time went or where he came from.”
“On the contrary, it was showing me the scale of the search,” Mustang answered, taking his cane from Anna and putting his weight on it.
“Third Mirror”
Western Ishbal
October 29, 1924
His face was sunburning. He could feel the skin reddening above and below the headcloth the Ishbalans had tied around his head as a blindfold. Nor was there anything he could do about it, with his hands lashed to the saddle horn and the horse under him being led by an Ishbalan man. Speaking would rob him of still more of the liquid in his body, and wouldn't earn him any respect from these desert people. He was their captive, a blood sacrifice to politics and their god. They would waste no more time or water on him than necessary to keep him alive long enough to be stretched on the altar.
Not that sacrifice had been mentioned at all in the “negotiations”. The Ishbalan Elder had simply stated that the railroad surveyors would be accompanied by Ishbalan trackers, and that Alex Armstrong would not accompany Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist, any further into Ishbal. There had been other terms, details regarding the formal treaty signing and the tariffs to be charged on goods traveling on the new rail line, but none of that concerned Mustang. The impassivity of the dark-skinned Ishbalan faces, and the piercing gazes of their red eyes, those told him all he needed to know.
Armstrong had tried, to his credit and possibly his detriment. He'd even allowed tears to fall down his massive classically-masculine face, to no avail. The Elder had stood firm, and the former Major had made his choice. Mustang probed his psyche, but couldn't find any resentment of Armstrong. When weighed against the threat of losing a rail link to Xing, with all the political, social and financial consequences that kind of loss posed for Amestris and Armstrong's family-the choice was obvious. Mustang just wished there had been a way to avoid sunburn and saddle sores.
He may have dozed, or maybe his thoughts were simply so repetitive they ran together and didn't mark time normally. Whatever the cause, the horse finally stopped moving, and stood still with a sigh. Mustang listened to the Ishbalan men moving around, and tried to stretch his back and swing his partially-numb legs to get his blood moving again.
Something wickedly sharp jabbed him in the thigh. “Sit still, alchemist.” The last word was almost spat.
He sat still. An interminable time later, the loop of cord holding his numbed hands to the saddle was loosened, and he was pulled roughly off the horse's back. His legs, unaccustomed to riding, promptly folded beneath him, and the desert men holding him snorted and tossed him to the sand. He fumbled with hands that felt like so much chapped clay attached to his still bound wrists, and tugged ineffectually at the blindfold. His eyelids felt bruised.
“Hold.” The Elder's voice startled him, it was so close. Age-gnarled hands, dry and warm, slipped the knotted cloth off his head. “Make haste slowly.”
“...thanks.” Roy pushed himself upright, hearing the rasp of his own too-dry throat, and decided what the hell. “Would you spare me water?” He had no face to lose among these people by begging anyway.
The Elder took a steel cup, and poured it half full from a canteen, then held Roy's nerveless hands as he drank. The water was warm and tasted of the metal canteen-and Roy wouldn't have traded it for the best wine any vineyard ever produced. He licked his lips. “My thanks.”
“God's mercy,” the Elder responded gravely. His gaze weighed Roy while the younger men-there were four of them, plenty to attend to the elder, the animals, and the prisoner-saw to the horses and the preparation of a light supper. “You expect us to execute you.”
Roy's mouth went dry again.
“Tell me, Roy Mustang, called the Flame Alchemist, what is the purpose of an execution?”
He finally found his voice again. “It's the ultimate punishment.”
“Does the one punished benefit from execution?”
Roy licked his lips. “No.”
“Then an execution is for the people.” The Elder's eyes glittered. “To protect them against a murderer who feels no remorse, perhaps. Those who witness the death, what do they learn?” The Elder didn't wait for Mustang to answer. “Our people would learn nothing but savagery from shedding your blood, and there has been enough of savagery and bloodshed.”
“Then what do you want me for?” Mustang flexed his hands, trying to work feeling into his fingers and sense back into his brain.
The secrets behind the Elder's gaze belied the simple words of his answer. “We need you to go through a door.”
Author's Note: Yow--it's been almost two years since I posted Part Nine. To everyone who wrote and asked whether I was going to finish this--thank you. Your messages gave me reason to keep coming back to this fic and trying to tame it. I've been writing, deleting, getting distracted by other projects, rewriting again...well, in any case, here's Part Ten, most of Eleven and Twelve is written (I need to add a few scenes here and there), hope you enjoy. All commentary, critiques, and suggestions are welcome!
Author: mfelizandy
Rating: PG-13
Type: Post-first anime AU plotfic, featuring alchemical time travel and a ten-year-old Roy Mustang.
Warnings: Language and hints of one of Roy Mustang's past love affairs.
Author's Notes: This story starts in an AU in which Edward Elric was not catapulted into another world at the end of the series, and Al did not lose four years of growth and memory in regaining his body. Other AUs will make an appearance through the story. When the kaleidoscope turns, we're in a different timeline.
Summary: The State Alchemists were disbanded years ago. The homunculi have been destroyed. Amestris is finally enjoying some peace--until one of Brigadier General Roy Mustang's old flames brings him evidence that someone is tampering with powers that could tear him and his world apart.
In another version of history, Maes Hughes is a Central City police detective, with a very strange case on his hands.
Click here to go back to the beginning.
Click here to go back to Part Nine.
“Second Mirror”
Central City, Amestris,
November 14, 1916, 7:22 PM
Professor Theo opened his door, and surveyed Hughes' bruised face in a glance. “Is the boy all right?”
“I wouldn't be here if he was.” Hughes pushed past the man. “I need you to help me find him.”
Theo closed the door. “Do you know who has him?”
“A judge awarded custody to the FullMetal Alchemist, and he came by personally to pick him up.”
“FullMetal?” A shadow passed over the professor's face. “Don't take this the wrong way, Detective, but you're way out of your league.”
“I can't let him do whatever it is he wants Roy for.” Hughes shook his head a little and immediately regretted it. “I need you to help me find him.”
Theo was silent for a long moment, then he turned toward his workroom. “Come with me. We'll hope Edward hasn't noticed the dog tags.” He crouched on the concrete floor and started drawing in loose, confident sweeps of chalk. “Hand me the candles from the third shelf, please.” The words were polite, but the tone was a command.
Hughes obeyed, following the array as it grew under the alchemist's hands. “Is that the-what did you call it-tracking circle?”
“A sympathetic array, yes. It will let me get a feel for where Roy is-if he still has the tags.” Theo melted the bottom ends of the candles with a match, and stuck them onto certain points of the array.
“I've never seen candles used in alchemy.” Hughes tried to keep from fidgeting. Roy's survival was less likely with every passing minute, but the alchemist didn't seem to be in any hurry.
“I like to use some of the older methods. Just the way my mind works.” Theo added another arc to the edge of the array, which didn't resemble any of the circles Hughes had seen in his investigations. Before he could open his mouth to ask, Theo said, “Stand back,” and put both hands onto the chalked lines.
Hughes found his working eye tearing as the light flared and blotted out the rest of his vision.
“Third Mirror”
Border Station Southeast Six, Ishbal
October 28, 1924, 2:39 PM
The Ishbalan border station sat beside a road that was little more than a worn track over the dry hardpan that marked the edge of the Eastern Desert. The station, staffed by Amestrians but within Ishbalan territory and maintained by the smaller country, offered a head-high plaster wall surrounding a square central building surrounded by pens for horses and a well house. The expedition truck supplied by the Armstrong estate pulled into the yard, startling some horses that had been desultorily trying to graze.
“Our escorts have already arrived, it seems.” Armstrong's pale skin was already pink, and sweat stood out on his shining bald head, but he climbed out of the truck without showing signs of heat exhaustion.
Roy Mustang slid out of the truck. The pitiless sun of Ishbal glared down at him, and he could think of nothing to say.
“Envoy.” A man dressed in the tunic and loose pants of desert dwellers spoke from the doorway of the station. “Come inside and sit. We will talk of matters.”
Armstrong inclined his head a little, his expression noncommital. He hadn't missed the absence of a welcome or an offer of refreshments before discussing business. “I do not come emptyhanded. I bring tea, as well as the words of those who sent me.” Insult acknowledged and turned back with perfect politeness. Armstrong's mention of his tea made it clear he knew the custom and offered a way for the Ishbalan to gracefully change his mind.
A figure stepped into the sunlight and advanced on age-stiffened legs toward Mustang and Armstrong. “Ishbal greets you, Alex Luis Armstrong. May God look upon you with favor.” The man couldn't have been less than seventy years old. His face was weatherbeaten and lined, and the veins stood out on his hands. His eyes were bright and clear, and he strode up-not to Armstrong, but to Mustang, and took the former Flame Alchemist's chin in dry, leathery fingers. Mustang found his gaze captured by the piercing glint in those crimson eyes, and felt his hair standing on end as the Ishbalan Elder traced the marks left on Mustang's face by a homunculus' saber. “Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist. We have been waiting for you.”
“First Mirror”
Time and Location uncertain
Kaleidoscope. Images-dozens, no, hundreds-or was it thousands? Reflections of an infant in his mother's arms, a boy, a skinny stripling with his hair in his eyes...a man surrounded by flames. He saw the wind rippling over the grass of the far northern steppes, and a man in Utar furs riding a horse-a flare of alchemical light and a teenager's glazed eyes as the power surged through his body and threatened to break his control in a blast of unthinking ecstasy-a limp body in a pool of blood, and a woman shaking it, shrieking, though no sound reached his ears.
“Interesting, isn't it?” A voice at his elbow made him jump. “I've never met a human who didn't find his own life fascinating.”
“Who are you?” He had a feeling it was important that he recognize the child-shaped shadow beside him.
“Tell me who you are and I'll tell you who I am.”
“I--” He'd known a moment ago. He had a name, he'd lived a life-he knew the man in the images reflected around him. But when he reached into memory, he found only a babble of voices, people calling him, people he knew...but his name, why couldn't they agree on his name?
The thing beside him grinned, and he was suddenly cold. “Lose something? Maybe something you'd like to get back?”
A glimmer of awareness was fighting its way past the clouds of uncertainty. “You're trying to trick me,” he said slowly. “I can't trust you.”
The shadow laughed, showing its inhumanly sharp teeth. “Oh, no! Far be it from a human to ever believe in Truth, even when it's right in front of his face!”
The one who'd forgotten his name turned back to the reflections as they formed and swirled around him. Kaleidoscope. But which was real? The pictures, the faces, he knew them, all of them, but they didn't fit together. He remembered the man with the whip, shivered and felt his face twisting into a rictus of hatred as the money changed hands and the half-naked youngster-was that himself, or merely someone who looked like him?-was led away to the mines to work until the dust choked the life out of him-but he also knew the blonde woman, felt the weight of the baby, his son, lying in his arms, tiny and pink and perfect, his child born of his wife-but there she was again, her hair touched with gray as she led the man in the black-smoked glasses through the market, his blindness clear in the uncertain shuffle of his feet-no, she was dead and he was on his knees at her grave...
“It's not real.” He heard the uncertainty in his voice, and knew that somehow, impossibly, it was real. The grin of the thing beside him only confirmed it. “Some of it is true.”
“All of it is true. Yet it can't be, according to your human logic, can it?”
He turned and watched the man with his face and an Utar tribe at his back ride in a circle, trampling the grass and marking the territory, walk to the trot to the canter, to a barely-restrained gallop, men and women and the children, all the sheep and the horses and the dogs, everything the tribe had moving together and individually, and he felt the weight on his shoulders, the shaman, intermediary with the great powers of earth and sky and river, his people would flourish or starve depending on his ability to read the weather and bargain with the spirits of the Great Circles--
--circles. A ring flared in memory, circles and rings full of power, the symbols, runes he recognized, four triangles with their points just touching, there had to be that singularity, that point of no dimensions at all--
“Open your eyes!” The thing beside him jabbed him with a sharp elbow.
“I can't.” He opened his lone eye, looking down at the thing. “I only have one eye to open. I lost the other one years ago.” He shook himself a bit and looked at the whirling images. “My name is Roy Mustang, and I am the Flame Alchemist.”
The thing's growl wasn't a sound that could come from a human throat. “That isn't all you are.”
It was true, and the pieces began to fall into place. “No, it isn't. But--” He didn't get a chance to finish the thought. Light flared around him and arms grabbed him from behind. He glanced down and noticed that one of the hands digging into his flesh was made of metal--
--he had to breathe. Something was wrong, it couldn't possibly be so hard to just pull air into his chest, muscles contracting and relaxing in rhythm, yet he could hear his agonized gasping groan as his lungs fought to inflate against resistance, oh gods that roaring was his own heartbeat and the throbbing in his head--
“We've got him. His soul's okay.” Alphonse.
“Are you sure? His heart--” That was Anna's voice. Anna, beautiful red hair and warm low voice and just the sort of comfort a heartsick young soldier had needed--
“It just skipped a few beats, save the eulogies.” FullMetal, gruff and tactless as he was when he'd had a bad scare.
“I'm touched, FullMetal.” Oh yes, that kind of throbbing in his chest could only be the result of chest compressions a la Edward Elric. Still, Roy was grimly satisfied that his voice only sounded rough and winded, with no whine to hint at just how sore his ribs were. “I'm sure you'll have them all in tears at my wake.” He did his best to look nonplussed and quizzical, though it wasn't entirely effective, given that Ed was straddled over his hips and Alphonse still had his hands cupped around Roy's head.
“If I don't have anything better to do that day, I'll stop by and remind everyone what a manipulative tyrannical egomaniac you were.” Ed got up, scowling. “And you're welcome for saving your lazy incompetent ass, too.”
“It really was a close thing, General,” Alphonse said placatingly, moving his hands to pin Roy's shoulders firmly to the floor. “The dragons held your body all right, but something was tugging on your soul, and the Gate almost tore it loose.”
“I couldn't remember who I was.” Roy twisted a little. “Let me up, Al.”
“Not for a few more minutes. Get your breath back.”
“What do you mean, you didn't know who you were?” Anna's voice was high with tension. “Roy, are you all right? Do you know me?”
“That's what the Gate does-it fucks with your head,” Ed grunted as he dropped gracelessly into the sofa pushed up against the wall. “If you're not absolutely sure of who you are and what you're there to do, it'll take away parts of you until there's nothing yours left to hold on to.”
“But it has to give something in return, doesn't it? That's the law of alchemy-isn't it?” Anna looked from the scowling Edward to the distracted Alphonse.
“It gives equal value-but not always in the way you'd expect.” Mustang fumbled for the thought that had almost crystallized in that instant before Ed had pulled him back to the safety of life. “I didn't know who I was-but it showed me--” he felt his heart speeding up and his eye widening. “Oh gods, that's what it meant. What I am, but not all I am. The Ishbalans-that's what they were talking about.”
“Are you gonna explain that or should I wait for the book to come out?” Edward folded his mismatched arms and glared.
“Give me a minute.” Mustang sat up, letting Al support him with a hand on his back. He rubbed his sore chest while the pieces rotated and spun into place. “The Forbidden Books said a lot about specificity in unity, remember? Heringeh duv mala.”
“Actually, the meaning's closer to 'conflict that creates harmony',” Al answered. “It's one of the fundamental paradoxes of Ishbalan doctrine.”
“And why their music always sounds out of tune,” Ed added, sourness giving way to guarded curiosity. “They've always gotta have that note that doesn't fit the chord.”
“But that note does fit, from another perspective,” Mustang put in. “When you two activated the array, I expected to step out into this room, with the newspaper there on the sofa where I left it all day yesterday. Instead I found myself staring at-something like a carnival house of mirrors.” He groped for an adequate description. “I saw what looked like several movies playing at once, with the scenes out of sequence.”
“Did you see the man who was in my house?” Anna asked, her tone a mixture of desperation and dread.
“No.” Mustang rubbed his chest. “All I saw was my own life. Or what my life could have been.”
“Egotistical son of a bitch,” Edward muttered.
“You're welcome to try it for yourself, and see if you can change the film reels, FullMetal,” Mustang told him testily. “Trust me, it wasn't exactly a show I enjoyed watching.”
“You said you saw what your life could have been,” Alphonse doggedly dragged the conversation back on topic. “What does that have to do with the heringeh duv mala? No matter what could have happened, there's only one way it did happen.”
“In my memory, in this world, yes.” Mustang took a careful breath, decided he could live with the ache, and got to his feet. “But what if there are other Gates, other realities? Ones in which events didn't happen exactly as they did here?”
“That's absurd,” Edward stated flatly. “The Gate was screwing with your brain, Mustang. It did a really good job of getting your mind off what you were supposed to be doing. You didn't find out where the bastard who's messing with time went or where he came from.”
“On the contrary, it was showing me the scale of the search,” Mustang answered, taking his cane from Anna and putting his weight on it.
“Third Mirror”
Western Ishbal
October 29, 1924
His face was sunburning. He could feel the skin reddening above and below the headcloth the Ishbalans had tied around his head as a blindfold. Nor was there anything he could do about it, with his hands lashed to the saddle horn and the horse under him being led by an Ishbalan man. Speaking would rob him of still more of the liquid in his body, and wouldn't earn him any respect from these desert people. He was their captive, a blood sacrifice to politics and their god. They would waste no more time or water on him than necessary to keep him alive long enough to be stretched on the altar.
Not that sacrifice had been mentioned at all in the “negotiations”. The Ishbalan Elder had simply stated that the railroad surveyors would be accompanied by Ishbalan trackers, and that Alex Armstrong would not accompany Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist, any further into Ishbal. There had been other terms, details regarding the formal treaty signing and the tariffs to be charged on goods traveling on the new rail line, but none of that concerned Mustang. The impassivity of the dark-skinned Ishbalan faces, and the piercing gazes of their red eyes, those told him all he needed to know.
Armstrong had tried, to his credit and possibly his detriment. He'd even allowed tears to fall down his massive classically-masculine face, to no avail. The Elder had stood firm, and the former Major had made his choice. Mustang probed his psyche, but couldn't find any resentment of Armstrong. When weighed against the threat of losing a rail link to Xing, with all the political, social and financial consequences that kind of loss posed for Amestris and Armstrong's family-the choice was obvious. Mustang just wished there had been a way to avoid sunburn and saddle sores.
He may have dozed, or maybe his thoughts were simply so repetitive they ran together and didn't mark time normally. Whatever the cause, the horse finally stopped moving, and stood still with a sigh. Mustang listened to the Ishbalan men moving around, and tried to stretch his back and swing his partially-numb legs to get his blood moving again.
Something wickedly sharp jabbed him in the thigh. “Sit still, alchemist.” The last word was almost spat.
He sat still. An interminable time later, the loop of cord holding his numbed hands to the saddle was loosened, and he was pulled roughly off the horse's back. His legs, unaccustomed to riding, promptly folded beneath him, and the desert men holding him snorted and tossed him to the sand. He fumbled with hands that felt like so much chapped clay attached to his still bound wrists, and tugged ineffectually at the blindfold. His eyelids felt bruised.
“Hold.” The Elder's voice startled him, it was so close. Age-gnarled hands, dry and warm, slipped the knotted cloth off his head. “Make haste slowly.”
“...thanks.” Roy pushed himself upright, hearing the rasp of his own too-dry throat, and decided what the hell. “Would you spare me water?” He had no face to lose among these people by begging anyway.
The Elder took a steel cup, and poured it half full from a canteen, then held Roy's nerveless hands as he drank. The water was warm and tasted of the metal canteen-and Roy wouldn't have traded it for the best wine any vineyard ever produced. He licked his lips. “My thanks.”
“God's mercy,” the Elder responded gravely. His gaze weighed Roy while the younger men-there were four of them, plenty to attend to the elder, the animals, and the prisoner-saw to the horses and the preparation of a light supper. “You expect us to execute you.”
Roy's mouth went dry again.
“Tell me, Roy Mustang, called the Flame Alchemist, what is the purpose of an execution?”
He finally found his voice again. “It's the ultimate punishment.”
“Does the one punished benefit from execution?”
Roy licked his lips. “No.”
“Then an execution is for the people.” The Elder's eyes glittered. “To protect them against a murderer who feels no remorse, perhaps. Those who witness the death, what do they learn?” The Elder didn't wait for Mustang to answer. “Our people would learn nothing but savagery from shedding your blood, and there has been enough of savagery and bloodshed.”
“Then what do you want me for?” Mustang flexed his hands, trying to work feeling into his fingers and sense back into his brain.
The secrets behind the Elder's gaze belied the simple words of his answer. “We need you to go through a door.”
Author's Note: Yow--it's been almost two years since I posted Part Nine. To everyone who wrote and asked whether I was going to finish this--thank you. Your messages gave me reason to keep coming back to this fic and trying to tame it. I've been writing, deleting, getting distracted by other projects, rewriting again...well, in any case, here's Part Ten, most of Eleven and Twelve is written (I need to add a few scenes here and there), hope you enjoy. All commentary, critiques, and suggestions are welcome!