Broken
Title: Broken
Verse: Further Interruptions
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Summary: Ed had no idea how Roy was going to take this news. Roy, who had become his everything, who had devoted himself wholeheartedly to Ed so many years ago. The man who fell apart when Ed disappeared and who still, to this day, questioned why Ed had ever been with him in the first place.
Author's Note: For Ed, this is chronologically after "First Comes Love", For Roy this is chronologically after "Quiet Interrupted". And all I'll say about this is.... sorry....
Ed took a deep breath as he watched the last few members of the investigation team leave the Fuhrer’s Mansion. Havoc and Fuery were outside in surveillance mode while the regular house security staff rotated around the house to make sure they didn’t have any more surprises. Hawkeye and the others were already back at Central Command, trying to put together what they already knew. Ed hated to leave their home to move into the Fuhrer’s Mansion, but considering he’d just had two late night visitors - only one that everyone knew about - Ed knew Hawkeye would never allow them to stay in their home until it was cleared. The twins had already fallen asleep in their rooms. Gracia and Elysia had come over as well, to help handle the children in the morning while they tried to track the man who had broken into the Fuhrer’s private home. Fumi was finally asleep - again - and Ed was as alone with the Bastard as he was going to get.
He walked past the children’s rooms, a brief nod to Ross and Brosh who were guarding the family rooms tonight. He knew they were in good hands and that the rest of the team was hard at work trying to figure out what had happened. Ed had a couple of clues they probably needed, but he had to talk to the Fuhrer first. He found his husband in his office staring out into the back gardens. When he turned to look at Ed, it was with the shrewd, discerning eye that had irritated him so much in his youth.
“What aren’t you telling everyone, Ed?”
“I could ask the same thing of you, Roy. Time travel ring a bell?”
Roy’s face went blank for a moment, then his eyes narrowed and he looked at Ed with an entirely different focus. Before Ed could ask what he was doing, Roy picked up the phone. “Hawkeye, he’s back.” There was a short pause, then, “Yes. I’m sure. I trust you to make the arrangements for my family.”
When the phone was hung up, Ed crossed his arms over his chest. “He’s back? What the hell are you talking about?”
“The man that ran out of the house tonight is the same man I was chasing back in 1926. He was behind my abduction the year before that. And I think he was part of the group that abducted you in 1934. I’ve been waiting eleven years for a lead on this case. Hawkeye knows, though I’m not sure she believed me about time travel.”
“You knew all along!” Ed shouted. As much as he wanted to just crawl back in bed, possibly with his children all in a dogpile around him so he could keep them safe, he couldn’t help the anger. The Roy that had traveled into the future to see him had looked so much younger than his husband. They’d been through so much by then, but obviously, Roy hadn’t trusted him with the knowledge of this. “Eleven years you kept this from me! Our entire marriage!”
“And how long have you known, Ed?” Roy shot back.
“What?”
“You knew what was happening before tonight. You’ve seen it before and you knew how to get my past self back home. I have watched and waited for the moment you said something, for the time when something happened so we could talk about this but nothing ever showed. When did you know? How did you know about time travel?”
Fuck.
He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to talk to Roy about when he knew and how and confess to a secret he’d kept since before they got together.
“What aren’t you telling me, Fullmetal?”
Damn it. He was using his title and everything. “It was a long time ago. I recognized part of the array and I knew how to get you home. What does the rest of it matter?”
And that was absolutely the worst thing to say. You would think after almost ten years of marriage he’d know better but some days Ed’s mouth got ahead of his brain. And now Roy was pissed.
“What does it matter?” Roy demanded. “A man who abducted both of us at various times in our lives showed up tonight, using a time-traveling array that you already know about, and you don’t think it matters! This is about our safety, our children’s safety!”
“It was our children!”
Roy was visibly taken back and there was no help for it now. Ed had no choice but to speak. “In 1921 I was home alone and a young woman showed up in my living room, with that array. She was 16. She said…”
Ed had no idea how Roy was going to take this news. Roy, who had become his everything, who had devoted himself wholeheartedly to Ed so many years ago. The man who fell apart when Ed disappeared and who still, to this day, questioned why Ed had ever been with him in the first place.
“Ed?”
“Her name was Tishy.”
Roy’s face blanched and he clenched his fists as if he needed to keep them from shaking. Ed felt the same.
“She was 16. She told me her brother Maes was on the other side of the array, waiting. She … she said I had to find her father. And save him. That he wouldn’t survive the night if I wasn’t there.”
Roy took two steps back until he was at the edge of the couch in his study and sat heavily. “The night you busted through my front door.”
“Yes. I thought she meant someone was going to attack you. I’ve thought about it so many time over the years. I think she probably did too. She didn’t know it was the bottle killing you.”
“How much did you know, that night?”
“You were Fuhrer. We were married. She didn’t mention Fumi.”
“And yet you never told me.”
“Of all the crazy shit I’ve gotten into over the years, who would have believed time travel? I didn’t even tell Alphonse until…”
“Until what?”
“We came back from Aerugo. You and I hadn’t quite started dating yet, but we were seeing each other. He needed to know … to know why.”
Roy rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head. As much as Ed wanted to go to his husband, he knew he couldn’t yet. So much of Ed’s early devotion to Roy had come from the knowledge Tishy had given him. Roy’s had come a much longer, darker route.
“So all those nights, you were there because of her. Because of this.” Roy looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “That night. When I told you to leave. You stayed because of her.”
“Roy,” he tried to stop him because they never spoke of it. Not anymore. For Ed, it was an old heartache that had healed, but for Roy, it would always be raw and scabbed and waiting to bleed again. “Please don’t do this. It wasn’t like that. I … I went the first time because she asked me to. You’re right that I’d never thought of you like that before but she didn’t put something there that wasn’t. She just pointed me in the right direction. What happened, that was you and me.”
“And when you left for Aerugo? Why did you come back? For this idea she gave you? Did you really believe this was worth what I did to you? Did you honestly think it was some sort of price you had to pay to get here?”
“Of course not! I … when I left you …” he’d never spoken of it, except the one time to his brother, and it was now he realized that perhaps it wasn’t so healed after all. “I thought I’d made her up. Some kind of dream or delusion or something, because I thought, obviously, she was wrong about us. Back then, you didn’t love me and she thought we were going to have this amazing life. It couldn’t be real. So I left. And when I came back … when I came back to you … it was because I believed in us, Bastard. I believed we could find a way to make something real.”
Roy let out a shaky breath as he stood up and walked over to the window, looking back over the garden. “So what you’re saying is that when our oldest turn 16, they’ll find a way to travel in time. Tishy is going to tell you about us and you’ll come running to save me. And you’ll fall in love with me and I will hurt you in the most painful way imaginable, so much that you’ll leave the country for two years so you don’t have to face me. And then you came home and we ended up married and you still never told me. Why?”
“Because I was afraid to hurt you. I was afraid you’d think I didn’t have a choice in what happened, in what I did. I answered your phone because I wanted to. I came to your bed because I wanted to. And I returned to Amestris after two years, because I wanted to. That I still loved you, that you found a way to love me, had nothing to do with any of that. The life we built has nothing to do with that.”
“You loved me because she said you would. You put yourself in harm's way because you believed in her. And when you came back?”
“No, Roy, I believed in us.”
“Which came from her!” he was nearly frantic in his words and Ed didn’t know how to stop the place in Roy’s head that he was taking this. “There is no point in our relationship where you weren’t manipulated into believing you should have to put up with what I did to you.”
“You aren’t listening, Roy. I came back on my own. I didn’t believe her anymore. Hell, it wasn’t until you held her for the first time and called her Tishy that I realized she was actually real.” He crossed the distance between them then and stood behind Roy. He leaned into his husband’s back and let his head rest between Roy’s shoulders. “I love you, Roy. You know I do.”
Roy let out a deep sigh and Ed felt some of the tension leave his husband’s body.
“What happened when you went back?” Ed asked. “The Roy who showed up tonight?”
“When I went back to my time, the building was set to explode. I got out uninjured, but I knew things I shouldn’t also.”
“Yeah?”
“You had a wedding ring. You had a child. Your home was full of both of our things. And when you walked away, you were talking to yourself.”
“Oh shit. What did I say?”
“First, that you needed to keep her from waking me up. Then you said something about my daughter waking up while her dad’s time-traveling doppelganger was there. So I got home and asked you to dinner that night and failed spectacularly to try to propose for the first time.”
Ed turned Roy around and leaned up to catch his lips in a soft kiss. “See, it doesn’t matter what we knew. We ended up here because we wanted to be.”
“Ed, I loved you without being told we were going to get married. I already had the ring. And the book,” he said as he cupped Ed’s face in one hand. His eyes were sad and when he brought his forehead to rest against Ed’s, his husband let out a shuddered breath. “It isn’t the same.”
“What are you saying, Bastard?”
“I need time, Gold. Because I have loved you with everything I am, but Tishy manipulated you into a relationship with me, unknowingly. And when we were at the point where I should have asked you to be mine, I was hurt and you were forced to my side because of what I endured to protect you. I proposed too soon and we had kids right away and there was never a time when you could have turned back because you are too good of a person.”
He felt his husband’s hand in his hair, felt his grip tighten even though it was far enough down not to hurt.
“I fucking love you, Gold,” Roy whispered and there was no hiding the thickness of his voice or the tears that had started to fall down his face to drop on Edward’s. “I can’t live without you. But I don’t know how to live with you when I know that we stole your choice from you all these years.”
Roy pulled away from him and Ed just watched, stunned speechless.
“Please stay with the children and keep them safe. I’m not asking as your husband. I’m asking as the Fuhrer to protect my children from whatever else might come at them. If this time traveler is looking for something and our children in the future have learned something useful they could be in danger.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going into the office. I need to fill Hawkeye in on this latest information. Do you know anything else about the time traveler or the array he used?”
Ed wanted to protest but he knew it wasn’t the time. His heart was breaking, but he always knew Roy would take this hard. He hadn’t imagined it in this way, but he’d kept it secret for a reason.
“I didn’t even get a good look at him tonight when he was in our home. I do have some information about the array. Or at least part of it.”
“What do you have?”
“Remember the scroll Tishy and Maes found in Xing last year? It’s the array. Mostly. When Tishy traveled back they had altered it some. It looks like the array that brought you here tonight was a little different from those. I’ll start to work on the arrays and see what I can figure out about them.”
Roy rubbed his forehead and Ed reached up and gently brushed aside the track of tears on his face. “Roy, we’ll get through this. Tell me you know that.”
Roy’s eyes searched his for a moment and he gave him a small smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. “We always do, Gold. Somehow, you always get us through. Will you have them get a car ready for me?”
It was a clear dismissal and Ed wanted to fume, but he was too tired and too worried about his husband to have any proper fuel for it. Instead, he went out to where Havoc was stationed and asked him to drive Roy in. Ed wouldn’t trust anyone else right now.
By the time he went back inside, Roy had already dressed in his uniform and any sign of his husband was buried under the mantle of Fuhrer. “We’ll take care of this, Fullmetal,” he said at the door. “Now that he’s back, we’ll find him. He made a mistake showing up in the Fuhrer’s house. I will bring the entire military down on him before I left him hurt you or our children.”
“Keep yourself safe too, Bastard. You remember. This parenting thing takes both of us. I don’t do this so well without you.”
Roy nodded then walked out of the house and Ed had to clench his jaw not to yell at the Bastard for leaving without at least a kiss. As the car drove off, Ed turned back into the house and went into the study where he’d brought his personal research journal from home. The scroll the twins had found was hidden in their home, but he’d kept a copy of it in bits and pieces throughout his journal. He sat down with the intention of beginning the work, but as soon as he was alone the words his husband spoke began to creep up on him.
He set his forehead on the desk’s edge and took deep breaths to try to get his emotions under control. He had to protect his family. He needed to be able to research this to do it.
But for the first time in his life, Ed wondered what would have happened if his 16-year-old daughter hadn’t visited his 22-year-old self. How would his life have turned out? Would he ever have come to love the Bastard on his own? Would Roy have ever loved him in return? If Ed hadn’t believed in that happily ever after, what really would have happened the night when they had both been broken?
Verse: Further Interruptions
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Summary: Ed had no idea how Roy was going to take this news. Roy, who had become his everything, who had devoted himself wholeheartedly to Ed so many years ago. The man who fell apart when Ed disappeared and who still, to this day, questioned why Ed had ever been with him in the first place.
Author's Note: For Ed, this is chronologically after "First Comes Love", For Roy this is chronologically after "Quiet Interrupted". And all I'll say about this is.... sorry....
Ed took a deep breath as he watched the last few members of the investigation team leave the Fuhrer’s Mansion. Havoc and Fuery were outside in surveillance mode while the regular house security staff rotated around the house to make sure they didn’t have any more surprises. Hawkeye and the others were already back at Central Command, trying to put together what they already knew. Ed hated to leave their home to move into the Fuhrer’s Mansion, but considering he’d just had two late night visitors - only one that everyone knew about - Ed knew Hawkeye would never allow them to stay in their home until it was cleared. The twins had already fallen asleep in their rooms. Gracia and Elysia had come over as well, to help handle the children in the morning while they tried to track the man who had broken into the Fuhrer’s private home. Fumi was finally asleep - again - and Ed was as alone with the Bastard as he was going to get.
He walked past the children’s rooms, a brief nod to Ross and Brosh who were guarding the family rooms tonight. He knew they were in good hands and that the rest of the team was hard at work trying to figure out what had happened. Ed had a couple of clues they probably needed, but he had to talk to the Fuhrer first. He found his husband in his office staring out into the back gardens. When he turned to look at Ed, it was with the shrewd, discerning eye that had irritated him so much in his youth.
“What aren’t you telling everyone, Ed?”
“I could ask the same thing of you, Roy. Time travel ring a bell?”
Roy’s face went blank for a moment, then his eyes narrowed and he looked at Ed with an entirely different focus. Before Ed could ask what he was doing, Roy picked up the phone. “Hawkeye, he’s back.” There was a short pause, then, “Yes. I’m sure. I trust you to make the arrangements for my family.”
When the phone was hung up, Ed crossed his arms over his chest. “He’s back? What the hell are you talking about?”
“The man that ran out of the house tonight is the same man I was chasing back in 1926. He was behind my abduction the year before that. And I think he was part of the group that abducted you in 1934. I’ve been waiting eleven years for a lead on this case. Hawkeye knows, though I’m not sure she believed me about time travel.”
“You knew all along!” Ed shouted. As much as he wanted to just crawl back in bed, possibly with his children all in a dogpile around him so he could keep them safe, he couldn’t help the anger. The Roy that had traveled into the future to see him had looked so much younger than his husband. They’d been through so much by then, but obviously, Roy hadn’t trusted him with the knowledge of this. “Eleven years you kept this from me! Our entire marriage!”
“And how long have you known, Ed?” Roy shot back.
“What?”
“You knew what was happening before tonight. You’ve seen it before and you knew how to get my past self back home. I have watched and waited for the moment you said something, for the time when something happened so we could talk about this but nothing ever showed. When did you know? How did you know about time travel?”
Fuck.
He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to talk to Roy about when he knew and how and confess to a secret he’d kept since before they got together.
“What aren’t you telling me, Fullmetal?”
Damn it. He was using his title and everything. “It was a long time ago. I recognized part of the array and I knew how to get you home. What does the rest of it matter?”
And that was absolutely the worst thing to say. You would think after almost ten years of marriage he’d know better but some days Ed’s mouth got ahead of his brain. And now Roy was pissed.
“What does it matter?” Roy demanded. “A man who abducted both of us at various times in our lives showed up tonight, using a time-traveling array that you already know about, and you don’t think it matters! This is about our safety, our children’s safety!”
“It was our children!”
Roy was visibly taken back and there was no help for it now. Ed had no choice but to speak. “In 1921 I was home alone and a young woman showed up in my living room, with that array. She was 16. She said…”
Ed had no idea how Roy was going to take this news. Roy, who had become his everything, who had devoted himself wholeheartedly to Ed so many years ago. The man who fell apart when Ed disappeared and who still, to this day, questioned why Ed had ever been with him in the first place.
“Ed?”
“Her name was Tishy.”
Roy’s face blanched and he clenched his fists as if he needed to keep them from shaking. Ed felt the same.
“She was 16. She told me her brother Maes was on the other side of the array, waiting. She … she said I had to find her father. And save him. That he wouldn’t survive the night if I wasn’t there.”
Roy took two steps back until he was at the edge of the couch in his study and sat heavily. “The night you busted through my front door.”
“Yes. I thought she meant someone was going to attack you. I’ve thought about it so many time over the years. I think she probably did too. She didn’t know it was the bottle killing you.”
“How much did you know, that night?”
“You were Fuhrer. We were married. She didn’t mention Fumi.”
“And yet you never told me.”
“Of all the crazy shit I’ve gotten into over the years, who would have believed time travel? I didn’t even tell Alphonse until…”
“Until what?”
“We came back from Aerugo. You and I hadn’t quite started dating yet, but we were seeing each other. He needed to know … to know why.”
Roy rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head. As much as Ed wanted to go to his husband, he knew he couldn’t yet. So much of Ed’s early devotion to Roy had come from the knowledge Tishy had given him. Roy’s had come a much longer, darker route.
“So all those nights, you were there because of her. Because of this.” Roy looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “That night. When I told you to leave. You stayed because of her.”
“Roy,” he tried to stop him because they never spoke of it. Not anymore. For Ed, it was an old heartache that had healed, but for Roy, it would always be raw and scabbed and waiting to bleed again. “Please don’t do this. It wasn’t like that. I … I went the first time because she asked me to. You’re right that I’d never thought of you like that before but she didn’t put something there that wasn’t. She just pointed me in the right direction. What happened, that was you and me.”
“And when you left for Aerugo? Why did you come back? For this idea she gave you? Did you really believe this was worth what I did to you? Did you honestly think it was some sort of price you had to pay to get here?”
“Of course not! I … when I left you …” he’d never spoken of it, except the one time to his brother, and it was now he realized that perhaps it wasn’t so healed after all. “I thought I’d made her up. Some kind of dream or delusion or something, because I thought, obviously, she was wrong about us. Back then, you didn’t love me and she thought we were going to have this amazing life. It couldn’t be real. So I left. And when I came back … when I came back to you … it was because I believed in us, Bastard. I believed we could find a way to make something real.”
Roy let out a shaky breath as he stood up and walked over to the window, looking back over the garden. “So what you’re saying is that when our oldest turn 16, they’ll find a way to travel in time. Tishy is going to tell you about us and you’ll come running to save me. And you’ll fall in love with me and I will hurt you in the most painful way imaginable, so much that you’ll leave the country for two years so you don’t have to face me. And then you came home and we ended up married and you still never told me. Why?”
“Because I was afraid to hurt you. I was afraid you’d think I didn’t have a choice in what happened, in what I did. I answered your phone because I wanted to. I came to your bed because I wanted to. And I returned to Amestris after two years, because I wanted to. That I still loved you, that you found a way to love me, had nothing to do with any of that. The life we built has nothing to do with that.”
“You loved me because she said you would. You put yourself in harm's way because you believed in her. And when you came back?”
“No, Roy, I believed in us.”
“Which came from her!” he was nearly frantic in his words and Ed didn’t know how to stop the place in Roy’s head that he was taking this. “There is no point in our relationship where you weren’t manipulated into believing you should have to put up with what I did to you.”
“You aren’t listening, Roy. I came back on my own. I didn’t believe her anymore. Hell, it wasn’t until you held her for the first time and called her Tishy that I realized she was actually real.” He crossed the distance between them then and stood behind Roy. He leaned into his husband’s back and let his head rest between Roy’s shoulders. “I love you, Roy. You know I do.”
Roy let out a deep sigh and Ed felt some of the tension leave his husband’s body.
“What happened when you went back?” Ed asked. “The Roy who showed up tonight?”
“When I went back to my time, the building was set to explode. I got out uninjured, but I knew things I shouldn’t also.”
“Yeah?”
“You had a wedding ring. You had a child. Your home was full of both of our things. And when you walked away, you were talking to yourself.”
“Oh shit. What did I say?”
“First, that you needed to keep her from waking me up. Then you said something about my daughter waking up while her dad’s time-traveling doppelganger was there. So I got home and asked you to dinner that night and failed spectacularly to try to propose for the first time.”
Ed turned Roy around and leaned up to catch his lips in a soft kiss. “See, it doesn’t matter what we knew. We ended up here because we wanted to be.”
“Ed, I loved you without being told we were going to get married. I already had the ring. And the book,” he said as he cupped Ed’s face in one hand. His eyes were sad and when he brought his forehead to rest against Ed’s, his husband let out a shuddered breath. “It isn’t the same.”
“What are you saying, Bastard?”
“I need time, Gold. Because I have loved you with everything I am, but Tishy manipulated you into a relationship with me, unknowingly. And when we were at the point where I should have asked you to be mine, I was hurt and you were forced to my side because of what I endured to protect you. I proposed too soon and we had kids right away and there was never a time when you could have turned back because you are too good of a person.”
He felt his husband’s hand in his hair, felt his grip tighten even though it was far enough down not to hurt.
“I fucking love you, Gold,” Roy whispered and there was no hiding the thickness of his voice or the tears that had started to fall down his face to drop on Edward’s. “I can’t live without you. But I don’t know how to live with you when I know that we stole your choice from you all these years.”
Roy pulled away from him and Ed just watched, stunned speechless.
“Please stay with the children and keep them safe. I’m not asking as your husband. I’m asking as the Fuhrer to protect my children from whatever else might come at them. If this time traveler is looking for something and our children in the future have learned something useful they could be in danger.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going into the office. I need to fill Hawkeye in on this latest information. Do you know anything else about the time traveler or the array he used?”
Ed wanted to protest but he knew it wasn’t the time. His heart was breaking, but he always knew Roy would take this hard. He hadn’t imagined it in this way, but he’d kept it secret for a reason.
“I didn’t even get a good look at him tonight when he was in our home. I do have some information about the array. Or at least part of it.”
“What do you have?”
“Remember the scroll Tishy and Maes found in Xing last year? It’s the array. Mostly. When Tishy traveled back they had altered it some. It looks like the array that brought you here tonight was a little different from those. I’ll start to work on the arrays and see what I can figure out about them.”
Roy rubbed his forehead and Ed reached up and gently brushed aside the track of tears on his face. “Roy, we’ll get through this. Tell me you know that.”
Roy’s eyes searched his for a moment and he gave him a small smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. “We always do, Gold. Somehow, you always get us through. Will you have them get a car ready for me?”
It was a clear dismissal and Ed wanted to fume, but he was too tired and too worried about his husband to have any proper fuel for it. Instead, he went out to where Havoc was stationed and asked him to drive Roy in. Ed wouldn’t trust anyone else right now.
By the time he went back inside, Roy had already dressed in his uniform and any sign of his husband was buried under the mantle of Fuhrer. “We’ll take care of this, Fullmetal,” he said at the door. “Now that he’s back, we’ll find him. He made a mistake showing up in the Fuhrer’s house. I will bring the entire military down on him before I left him hurt you or our children.”
“Keep yourself safe too, Bastard. You remember. This parenting thing takes both of us. I don’t do this so well without you.”
Roy nodded then walked out of the house and Ed had to clench his jaw not to yell at the Bastard for leaving without at least a kiss. As the car drove off, Ed turned back into the house and went into the study where he’d brought his personal research journal from home. The scroll the twins had found was hidden in their home, but he’d kept a copy of it in bits and pieces throughout his journal. He sat down with the intention of beginning the work, but as soon as he was alone the words his husband spoke began to creep up on him.
He set his forehead on the desk’s edge and took deep breaths to try to get his emotions under control. He had to protect his family. He needed to be able to research this to do it.
But for the first time in his life, Ed wondered what would have happened if his 16-year-old daughter hadn’t visited his 22-year-old self. How would his life have turned out? Would he ever have come to love the Bastard on his own? Would Roy have ever loved him in return? If Ed hadn’t believed in that happily ever after, what really would have happened the night when they had both been broken?