Nightmare Chapter 14
Dominic was impossible to reach by phone, or rather, he would only gruffly grunt at Winry and tell her he didn’t have time to talk. With some financial help from Ed’s father, she was traveling to Rush Valley to prove to the man that she was Pinako Rockbell’s flesh and blood, even if it meant terrifying him… just a little.
When she had told Hohenheim about the other lawyer being from Rush Valley and having automail, he and that Lieutenant Breda had exchanged a knowing look, but shared none of the knowledge they seemed to possess with her. Instead, they seemed eagerly supportive of her suggestion that she would go to visit Dominic to intimidate the information out of him, even if it required recruiting her grandmother in the task.
Hohenheim had joked with her, told her they only wanted to intimidate Dominic, not scare him beyond reason, and had chuckled. It was so easy to forget that the man had been a drinking buddy of her grandmother’s. He seemed old enough to be a father to Ed and Al, but certainly not enough to be a peer to the eldest Rockbell.
Winry sighed as she looked out the window. She had been so sure that Dominic would know something, and Hohenheim and the lieutenant both seemed to think that Captain de Havilland was the key to ending the court martial. As though he was really the only thing keeping it going on.
Thinking about it, with the changes slowly happening throughout the country, with knowledgeable underlings all reporting their superior officers, was it really that hard to think that the lawyer may very well be the only reason the two military officers were facing court martial and Al was facing a real court date.
She’d heard the dates had been set, and according to Al, he and Ed were patching things up. That was good, for the best really. She knew that Ed was getting very close to Brigadier General Mustang, not an idea that thrilled her much given her parents’ fate at his hands, but she’d been glad Ed reached out to someone. The problem was that of the three people currently facing court trials, two of them were Ed’s obvious support, and Lieutenant Hawkeye a much more silent one.
Watching the world go by as she sat on the train, Winry hoped that the brothers were okay.
Ed had managed to hobble out of the basement with his brother. The armor held him securely, arm wrapped around his waist and careful of his bruised body.
“Come on, Brother, let’s get you out of here,” Al said.
“I’m not arguing,” Ed said as they made their way up the stairs, which creaked underneath Al’s weight. It was slow, and finally, Al picked Ed up into his arms and started up the stairs. When he reached the top, he feared the fuhrer would show up, that the man who nearly had Ed calling him master a few nights before would be back from his visit to Northern Headquarters.
When Ed saw no one, he was certain he was in the clear. He and Al would get out and he would be safe.
But then Al stopped and turned back toward the stairs. “Al?” Ed asked before he felt himself dropped from Al’s grasp. He tried to brace himself for the fall, but it didn’t stop the fall from breaking his left arm. He felt it snap in the forearm and upper arm.
Through tears of pain, he looked up to see Al transforming into Envy as he came down the stairs.
“You really thought your little brother would come and save you?” Envy said with a laugh. “He and the old man are currently looking for a way to use the philosopher’s stone. They have it, you know. They found it without you. I don’t know if they even spent a week looking for you before our baby brother went back to looking for the stone. And he found it so much faster with our father. Really, if Hohenheim had just shown up sooner, the stone would probably have already been found. I think Al has realized just how useless you are.”
“He might have found it, but he won’t use it without me,” Ed said as he cradled his arm.
“Such confidence in little Alphonse,” Envy taunted as he stood beside Ed’s prone figure. “What on earth will you do when you see it is misplaced confidence? When you see that he has forgotten you and has a nice, healthy body and a relationship with your father you used to dream of as a kid?”
“Shut up you bastard!”
And Envy kicked him.
Riza found herself consoling Al once again. It was getting to be as much a habit as Roy with Ed. But at least this time, it was understandable, and she could find no logical reason why she shouldn’t at least offer him some comfort.
She was standing with him, and he towered over her, but somehow still felt small in times like this. The therapist had visited again, and according to Al, Ed had recounted Envy’s treatment of him.
“I had accepted, well, not accepted, but you know what I mean. I knew what the fuhrer had done, but Envy… He tormented brother by looking like me. Ed said once, he made a good guess at what I’d look at by the time I was fifteen.”
“Then that means Ed has just been trying to separate you from what Envy had told him,” Riza said.
“I guess so,” Al said. “The doctor suggested that maybe we argued like that because it was all Brother had left. He can’t very well spar with me right now.”
Riza rubbed over the teen’s long hair. “I know. And this hurts more than fighting one another. Bruises fade much quicker than emotions.
Al nodded. “But things have been better since, and… and maybe we can get back to where things were, or at least, as close to that as possible.”
With a smile, Riza nodded. “Things will be different, but you two are too close for anything to come between you permanently.”
There was a pause before Al spoke again. “He hugged me.”
Riza looked up at the eyes, a green-tinted mirror of her own. His face wasn’t smiling, but they were.
Oh, Al liked for her to touch him, to give him all the tactile sensations he had been denied in the armor-though she’d unintentionally heard him exploring one solo in the bathroom a few nights before and didn’t dare speak to him about it-but she was nothing compared to his brother. She was his crush. Ed was his lifeline.
In another room, Ed found himself waiting for Roy, knowing the man was also talking with the psychologist. It was disconcerting just how much he’d come to rely on the older man. Not to mention that he knew Roy would be facing a court martial that could separate them forever. The doctor had reminded him of that fact, and it was all Ed could do not to get angry at her for pointing out something so obvious but so hurtful.
But not if Ed testified. He’d heard enough of the conversations from everyone as they came and went to know that if Ed testified, Roy would be let free, but Ed would have to face a courtroom full of people, maybe even be questioned about his abilities and Al having been in the armor. Ed had been trying to weigh the consequences because anything that affected him with the attempt to bring back his mother would also affect Al. But he and Al had actually committed the crime of human transmutation. What Roy did hadn’t been a crime. It had been the extermination of a monster.
The question was, did he rat out his brother to save a man he, well, cared about for a crime they really did or did he sell out Roy in order to save Al?
The fact was that Ed didn’t know the answer.
It hurt to think that a few days ago, maybe, he would have let he and his brother suffer the consequences, that the “residual anger,” as the shrink put it, at Envy might have let him risk his own brother.
“I am so fucked up,” Ed muttered to himself. But really, things were getting better between himself and Al, and the psychologist had helped Ed put into words that he simply couldn’t before with his baby brother.
Ed moved his arm a little, grateful the flesh and blood one was able to bend and straighten again. He’d have to tell Winry to get him patched back up with some automail for his leg. He was getting tired of lying around. He wanted to move and go and do, and just try to forget it all. And, while he was bound to this hospital bed, that just wasn’t going to happen.
He grimaced at the thought of having to use crutches, not to mention that he wasn’t entirely sure his left arm could do much supporting of a crutch once it was out of the cast. And Winry probably wouldn’t like the idea of him using the underside of his automail as a sole support for his weight. He knew from enough lectures there was a weak spot in the armpit there. It would wear down, but, damn it, he was getting tired of the bed and the wheelchair.
“You’re fidgety,” a voice said, and Ed immediately looked up to it with a smile that slipped out so unknowingly.
“I want out of this bed,” Ed responded.
“Well, I can get you into the wheel chair. They’ll let us onto the back porch at least,” Roy said, looking surprisingly dour.
“What did the woman say to you?” Ed asked. “Something’s different.”
“She just pointed a few things out to me,” Roy said.
“Probably the same stuff she said to me,” Ed said. He sat up in his bed. “After she finished analyzing why Al and I were fighting… not that I don’t appreciate the effort, I just hate being put under a magnifying glass, she decided to talk to me about you, of all things. Said I need to consider that you can’t be my sole source of support, that I should lean on Al and especially Winry and Pinako, since they aren’t facing charges.”
“It’s sound advice, really,” Roy said.
“It’s crap advice,” Ed said, shifting in the bed and gesturing for Roy to get the wheelchair. “Like I’d bail on you because you’re facing charges. Hell, I can get yours dropped. I mean, they need proof of the fuhrer being a son of a bitch. Well, I’m it.” Ed tried to mask the uncertainty in his voice. He could tell all to Roy, but to an attorney, in front of a crowd of dozens, maybe hundreds?
“I don’t expect you to do that,” Roy said.
“Yeah, well, that’s the good thing about friends.” Ed was testing waters here, calling Roy his friend outright. “You do things for one another that you don’t expect.”
Roy looked a little surprised, but Ed released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding when he didn’t argue the fact that they were friends. “But, Ed, I can’t let you do something that would risk you and your brother.”
“How would it risk us?” Ed asked.
“That day, when you told me that you thought Anton de Havilland was an alchemist, and I already suspected something myself…” Ed nodded, waiting for Roy to continue. The older man looked more uncomfortable than Ed had seen him in days. “He told me if you take the stand, he will question you about human transmutation.”
Ed swallowed what felt like a boulder that had taken up residence in his throat. “He knows.” Ed had suspected, but this confirmation was a little startling.
Roy nodded, putting an arm around the teen. Ed thought it had been initially to help him climb out of bed, but he suspected now that Roy was trying to comfort him, maybe even himself a little as well. Finally, Ed let the man help him into the chair, trying to do all he could to ease the burden off of Roy’s still-healing shoulder.
“Are you okay, Ed?” Roy asked and he nodded in response.
“So what are my options, Roy?” Ed asked. “Do I let you get court-martialed for something that should make you a hero while Al and I go free for a real crime we did commit? Or do I sell out my baby brother for something that was mostly my idea because I know telling the truth would save you?”
“Ed, it isn’t as though I’m blame free, and when I went in to fight the fuhrer, I knew what would probably happen, that I may be seen as a villain through all of this. I’m satisfied with that.”
“Well, I’m not,” Ed said a bit too quickly. “You saved me, saved this whole country. I won’t let you be remembered as a villain.” He shook his head. “That isn’t fair. That isn’t equivalent.”
“Ed, not everything in life is-”
“Don’t tell me not everything is fair, not equivalent,” Ed said, abruptly cutting him off. “If there isn’t some payback for everything Al’s gone through, everything you have suffered through, everything everyone I know has gone through…” Everything he, himself had been through, but wouldn’t say aloud. “Then I don’t want to believe it. I have to believe that there’s some retribution for it all.”
Roy said nothing as he pushed Ed out onto the back porch. “I’m sorry, Ed, but Breda and I have both agreed you aren’t going to testify at my hearing.”
“I’ll go there anyway, demand to be heard,” Ed said, defiantly.
“You don’t know when it is.”
“But it’s been scheduled, then,” Ed said.
Roy nodded. “Very soon, as a matter of fact.”
“Then, I’ll wait for the day when you suddenly disappear from the house, I’ll make the guards take me there.” Ed didn’t try to hide the desperation in his voice.
“Ed…”
“Damn it, if you go, you better not just disappear. You’d better manage to at least say goodbye. Then I’ll convince you to take me.”
It wasn’t until Ed felt Roy’s warm hand on his cheek that he realized he’d been crying. He looked up at the older man and jerked his head away, pushing at the man’s hand as well with his automail one. He was mad at Roy, and he didn’t want him touching him like that, in that way that made him feel uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach.
“Don’t,” Ed said. “Just don’t. You have no right to tell me not to. That is my decision, and I’ll find a way, you know, if I make that decision.”
Roy said nothing, but Ed was certain that he did know.
Havoc watched in shock as Olivier brought in four huge file boxes on a handcart into her office, where he was currently sitting on the floor, still surrounded by similar boxes.
“More?” he asked, sounding very deflated at the thought. “Really?”
“Yes,” Olivier said, shutting the door before taking off her uniform coat. “But I’m done for the day, so I can help you.”
“Usually when you help me, I get nothing done,” Jean said.
“But you’re relaxed and well rested for the next day.” She grinned at him, a bit predatorily, before sitting on the floor beside him. Surrounded by the boxes on the floor he’d just removed of papers, Jean felt a little like a trapped animal. He’d complain, if he wasn’t completely and totally aroused at the thought.
“So what’s in those boxes?” Jean asked.
“Nothing that can’t wait until morning,” she said, placing herself between his splayed legs. “But they are Juliet Douglas’s personal files.”
“They could be the answer to the chief and boss’s problems.”
“Which is why I want your brain to be able to function and eyes capable of reading them properly,” she said, shifting. “That wouldn’t happen right now.”
“My brain would function better if you didn’t have your hand on my crotch.”
“Hmm… and your eyes might not be so crossed either,” she added. “But regardless, I think you need a break, and I’ve had a trying day of facing all of the generals to prove myself as the most qualified fuhrer candidate.” Her hand moved up to unfasten Jean’s belt. All he could do was grab the woman and mash their lips together, taking the little bit of control the woman would give him.
Al came across something he rarely saw, even living in such close quarters: Riza Hawkeye taking a well-deserved nap.
She had comforted him earlier that day, but even then she had been carefully controlled. Now, all of her features were relaxed, and Al wished he could see her like this when she was awake.
He put his hands in his pockets as he leaned against the door frame to the living room. For her to have fallen asleep down here, she must have completely collapsed. He walked in and put a blanket over her, as she would have done for him. He gently brushed aside a stray piece of her hear that was draped over her face.
She thought this was all a new thing, that his feelings all came from the fact that he had just gotten his body back and all of the emotions and hormones and sensations were new.
He’d always thought she was pretty. He’d always thought a lot of women were pretty. If he would let himself reach that point, he could easily become another Roy Mustang, enjoying all the women in the world because they were appealing. But, there was too much of Al that was simply that: Al. He wouldn’t just want a series of flings. He would want to be with someone who was warm and caring, who was strong and bold. He had begun to notice it in the armor, but here, where they were exposed to one another on a fairly regular basis, those little hints that she might be exactly what he’d been imagining were all proven. He saw the sides to her that he was sure few others got to see, and he liked all of it.
She had a temper, not the icy one with threatening guns and bullets, but one that had led her to throw and break one of Mustang’s glasses in the kitchen. It was fiery and raw. It was painful, and Al just wanted to hold her as she so often held him. She also hurt, much more than she let show. Sometimes, when she thought she was alone, or he’d left the room already, he’d see it, this incomprehensible darkness that would wash over her face. Al had that too at times, they all did in the house, but she was the only one who tried to pretend it wasn’t there.
“Al?” she said, apparently noticing he was standing above her.
“Just getting you a blanket,” Al said. “Rest now. I’ll take care of things. Promise.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. He left it at that and turned off the remaining lamp in the room.
He saw his brother and Mustang outside. They didn’t seem to be talking. As a matter of fact, Al would have said they were mad at one another. As far as he was concerned, that was a good thing. Not because he was jealous of their relationship, but because he really feared that if Ed could only rely on Mustang, he’d cease to function after Mustang got locked away. And that, he was sure, was what would happen. They couldn’t execute him, not when it was so obvious that the fuhrer had done some very wrong things, but they could imprison him.
And then Ed would be broken, and Al would have to pick up the pieces. A few months ago, the young man knew he could have done that without any trouble, but Envy had destroyed much of his brother’s trust in him. Al frowned. He had done a little of that himself. Unknowingly, what Al had been forced to do to save everyone from Dante had matched up perfectly with what Envy had told his brother he’d done out of selfishness.
He thought Ed understood now that Al hadn’t used the stone for himself, hadn’t given up on Ed, didn’t resent his older brother. It killed him that Ed thought he would resent him, that some of his brother’s accusations at Al were really targeting himself.
But if Ed understood, then maybe they could pick up the pieces again. They’d done it dozens of times before, and Al was willing to do it again, no matter how long it took.
Roy had tried reasoning with Ed, tried to tell the teen that he really was deserving of a prison sentence or death, but there was nothing he could tell the blond that he hadn’t already told him before, that Ed hadn’t already forgiven him for, even if the crimes hadn’t been committed against himself.
So now, Ed was stubbornly set on trying to find a way to pay for his own “sin” of trying to bring back his mother, a woman who was Juliet Douglas, a woman who from all reports was likely the person who killed Maes. He said he would tell de Havilland that he had tried to bring back his mother and his brother had been an unfortunate victim. He said he would suffer the brunt of it all, if it just meant that Roy and Al would be free.
Roy had yelled at Ed, telling him that his brother would no more want that than Roy, himself, did. Freedom isn’t truly there when you know it cost someone else so much, even if it was a willing sacrifice.
Ed had stubbornly decided that Roy was trying to take the choice away from him, and looked like being out on the porch with Roy was the last place he wanted to be.
“Wheel me back into the house. I’m too pissed to want to ask you but too injured to do it myself,” Ed said. Roy moved over to the chair, to Ed.
“Ed, I’m not trying to take this choice from you. I’m trying to tell you that if you are imprisoned or killed, it will kill all of us here who care about you. That’s the thing about having someone who really does care, Ed. When you hurt, they hurt. You’ve always known that about Al, but Ed, there are a lot of us who feel the same way.” He started to push Ed into the house. “Besides, Breda has your father working with him. They’re doing everything they can to make sure you and I both don’t end up behind bars. I’ll be going out with a fight, but I refuse to take anyone out with me that doesn’t deserve it.”
Ed tried to open his mouth to argue.
“No, Ed, you don’t. There are a lot of deserving people in the world, but you aren’t one of them. Not for that.”
Roy guided the chair into the house, making brief eye contact with Al as he pushed it inside and back to the library-slash-guest room.
Roy helped the teen into his bed before again touching Ed’s face. This time, his hand was not brushed away, and a part of Roy wanted to dance at that. “Ed, if you are imprisoned or worse, I’ll spend every day wishing it was me instead.”
He saw a faint pink color appear to Ed’s face, and despite himself, Roy smiled.
“Hello,” a voice said from the open window of Anton’s room. “You’re not a very well-liked man right now. That’s a risk leaving your window open.”
Anton glared. “What do you want, Wrath?” he asked.
“Just to let you know what you’re looking for is pointless,” Wrath said. “I’ve heard, you know. They let me in on things, despite what I am because they’re all trying to save me, trying to convince me to go back to my ‘mother.’” He rolled his eyes. “Like that will ever happen.”
The boy kicked his legs as he sat on the windowsill. If Anton didn’t know better, he’d have said that the boy was just that, not the homunculus he knew him to be. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Anton said. “You came into things much too late.”
“I was constantly with Sloth, who was almost always with Pride. Trust me, I know you’re looking for your own pardon, and you aren’t going to find it,” Wrath said, his tone taunting, even sing-song.
Anton glared at the homunculus and his lilting tones as he teased him.
“You just don’t get it, do you? You were disposable.” He continued to kick his feet, looking every bit the part of a child. “We all were. The only one who really mattered was Dante, and as long as you were useful, she was happy. She only protected any of us as much as we were worth, and you weren’t worth what Ed was.”
Refusing to acknowledge the sin’s presence, Anton went about his normal routines.
“That Rockbell girl, she’s going to Rush Valley,” Wrath said. “They’re going to find out about you and what you did.”
“They won’t know for sure, and it’s hard to prove. I already heard Alphonse Elric’s story. The evidence is gone.”
“The ‘evidence’?” Wrath repeated. “That’s cold. Your own brother…” The sin ‘tsked’ him. “But you should know that not everything is as it seemed to Alphonse Elric. So if I were you, I’d get back to wearing that necklace again. You might just need it.”
Anton looked back at Wrath, but the window was empty, the curtains moving either by wind or by the boy’s exit. Anton looked at the dresser of his room and the thick gold chain with the matching, thick pendant sitting on top.