NaNoWriMo - Fullmetal Alchemist Fanfic - Chapter 14
(See Chapter 13)
Maes stood looking down across the table at Roy for a long, long time. Roy, in the meantime, sat quietly waiting, saying nothing, gazing into the amber liquid in the glass cradled between his hands. His still-gloved hands.
Maes could hear the tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the hallway, and the occasional creak as the house settled for the night. The darkness outside continued to deepen as the evening progressed toward midnight. A far contrast from the brilliantly lit clouds above the warehouse just an hour ago, making the streets almost as bright as day.
The warehouse where almost everything Maes believed in, in the world, had been burned to a lifeless crisp.
Roy stirred at last, glancing up again. “Are you going to sit down?”
“I - “ Maes began hoarsely, and swallowed. “I...don’t know what I’m going to do, actually.”
The merest uplift of the lips. “I suppose I should ask the same question you asked me last night. Do you have your gun with you?”
Maes’s breath caught sharply. For a reeling instant, he thought his knees might give out. “Do you think I’ve come here to... Is that what you... " He took a gasping breath. “Is that what you want?”
Roy closed his eyes. “Maes. Sit down. Please.”
Maes lowered himself, gingerly, onto the chair nearest the other glass of scotch. He reached for the glass, but pulled his hand back when he saw how it trembled. If he’d tried to lift the thing right now, he would have spilled the liquid all over the table. And he had a feeling he was going to need every drop, and more, before they were done.
The main thing, he thought desperately, was not to cry.
“Roy,” he managed, finally, to whisper. “What’s going on? What’s happened to you? Why are you doing this terrible thing?”
Roy took a deep breath - and a large gulp of his drink. “I - I don’t really know, Maes.”
“You don’t know? You’ve burned down ten buildings and you don’t know why??” Maes clenched his fists on the table, possibly to keep himself from leaping over it and beating his companion to a pulp. “And I’m supposed to sit here and listen to garbage like that and believe you?? You’re nuts, Roy. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to do that.”
Another sip. “You’re right” was the only reply.
Maes hardly heard him, having finally opened the door to let things start flooding out. “You watched me - you watched all of us - agonizing over this thing, hunting for clues, even taking all the measures we could to keep you safe! And then you’d set another building on fire and watch us running around like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to keep the fire from spreading, keep people safe, even keep the people in the city from panicking because there was some pyro out there threatening the whole place. And then you’d swoop in like the big hero, and save the day, knowing all the while - Is that what you’ve been after, Roy?” Maes growled. “Life after war get too boring for you? You need the hero-worship that badly?”
“No, that’s not what I - “
“And the whole time - the whole time we’ve been trying to protect you, driving ourselves crazy trying to figure out who’s threatening you - and it’s you. You’re the guy who’s doing everything! You must have had a lot of laughs, watching us half kill ourselves for you.”
“Maes, no! God, no, it’s not like that at all.” Roy pressed a hand over his eyes - and there was that missing button again, drawing Maes’s gaze almost against his will. He stared at it helplessly for a few seconds before he realized that his friend was weeping.
“Oh Roy...,” he said weakly, his own tears drawing near the surface again. “I just...don’t...”
Roy lowered his hand and looked at him, revealing brimming eyes, drowning in sadness. “Can you let me explain?” he asked, his voice breaking. “Please, Maes, you can hate me all you want, but just - just let me tell you what’s been happening. I’ve tried to stop it - tried to fight it for so long - I just need to tell you, so somebody will know. Somebody,” he bowed his head, “aside from Zolf Kimbley.”
Kimbley. He’d given them everything they’d needed to figure this out, hadn’t he? He’d known right away. But Maes...he’d been so utterly, utterly blind, when the clues had been right in front of him almost from the beginning. And Roy had known he would be. He’d known how easy it would be to deceive the friend who cared so much for him...
He reached for the glass and took a quick, burning gulp. “All right, Roy,” he rasped, his voice harsh. “Tell me what’s really been happening, all this time. And as to hating you...I...I just...”
“Never mind. I deserve it.” Roy gave a small, mirthless laugh.
“Just tell me why you did this. Help me understand why a guy I thought I knew...” Maes couldn’t go on. He wasn’t sure he could keep from breaking down if he did.
Roy glanced at him again, a look full of pain. “You do know me...you did. As well as I knew myself. But that’s the problem, Maes...I don’t know myself any more.” He cupped his hands around the glass again. “You...you can’t imagine what it feels like. When it starts building, in the back of my head, and I can’t stop it, and it gets stronger and stronger until I can’t do anything - can’t think of anything else - when it gets so strong I feel like I’m go crazy if I don’t - don’t - “
“Don’t what?” Maes demanded. “Find some piece of property to torch so you can look like a hero?”
Roy’s breath caught with a little gasp and he covered his face with a hand. “That’s not what this is about!” he cried raggedly. “Do you think I care about something as stupid as that? When this - this thing inside my head is eating me alive like it is? Do you have any idea how much I’d give for this monster to go away and get out of my head and give me some peace??”
Maes watched in horrified silence. He was so far out of his league right now, he was absolutely floundering.
“It takes a few days,” Roy whispered, yet again curling his hands around the glass as though it were some sort of lifeline. “It builds up slowly, until the last few days get harder and harder to take. I - I can resist it at first, when it starts to build again. And then it gets harder and harder - I start trying not to fall asleep because I know that’s when it takes hold the easiest. I fight it - and fight it - and get more and more exhausted while it gets stronger and stronger - and then one night it just takes over and I can’t stop it.”
“And...then what happens?” Maes asked.
“Then it’s like...like I’m dreaming. In fact, the first time it happened, not long after we got back from Ishbal the last time, I thought it was a dream. I’d been having such nightmares, the whole time we were there. I started dreaming about...burning...about destroying those cities. It all came back, and I couldn’t stop it. It was just...I couldn’t stand it, Maes. I couldn’t handle living it all over again. I thought I’d escaped it, and now it was all coming back. I - I didn’t know how I could face it again. All that destruction...all that blood...all those people...” Roy’s hands shook as he took another drink.
“I remember how it was right after Ishbal, the first time,” Maes said slowly. “I never knew from one day to the next if I was going to come to your place and find you...but...but you never did this, Roy. You never did anything like this. Not even then.”
“You talk like I just decided to do this,” Roy blurted, his tone accusatory. “But I didn’t - I swear it! That first time, I didn’t even know I was doing it. I thought it was a dream!”
“How am I supposed to believe that?”
“Because this is me!” Roy cried, slapping a hand on his chest. “I’m trying to tell you the truth.”
“Are you? You’ve been lying and lying for months. I told you - I thought I knew you, but this - this - " Maes took another drink. He didn’t think he’d ever been so miserable in his life, or ever felt so betrayed.
“Maes - please - don’t you understand yet? It’s like this - this compulsion takes over, and I can’t resist it, I can’t control it, I can’t stop it. That first time - I was dreaming again, about the fires in Ishbal, but this time it was like my mind had had enough. It took me back to when the fire - when my flame alchemy - was beautiful. Pure. I - I was standing alone, and I snapped my fingers, and there was nothing there but my beautiful flame. It was the same as it was when I first mastered it - bright and powerful and beautiful - " Roy lifted his hand and cupped it, staring at it as though seeing the flames dancing on his palm. “You just - just can’t imagine how soothing it was. How peaceful.”
“Peaceful. While it was burning a whole building down.”
Roy’s hand clenched and he laid it on the table, grimacing in distress. “I know. I woke up...sort of came to myself...and found myself walking away from a warehouse that was blazing behind me. You...you can’t begin to imagine how I felt then, realizing that it hadn’t been a dream after all.”
Maes remembered that one, the first one. He hadn’t been there, but he’d heard about how the fire looked like it was going to go out of control and leap from one roof to another, and maybe set a whole district on fire - and then Roy had appeared out of nowhere and put the fire out. And been praised so highly for it.
“Right,” he said bitterly. “You were pretty upset all right. The whole city thought you were a hero, and you didn’t say one word about what had really happened. Not. One. Word. Not even to me.”
“How could I? I hardly understood it myself. And I...I was afraid. I didn’t know what had happened to me, and I didn’t know what might happen if I told anyone. When I realized that the building was empty, and no one had been hurt, I decided I’d keep my mouth shut. I...I thought it was done. I thought it wouldn’t happen again. The day after this happens, it’s like I’m...I don’t know, it’s like I’m free somehow. I feel so...purged. Empty. Light. As though I might never have another nightmare again. I really thought I’d gotten it out of my system, and everything would be fine. But then...a few days later, it started building again. And then I - I was simply terrified.”
“And you still didn’t tell me!”
“I hoped I could fight it this time. Now that I knew how it worked, I really thought I could. I kept thinking that - and then when I realized I couldn’t, there had been so many buildings that I knew I’d completely ruin my career and my life if I started telling anyone about it. So I went to Xing.”
Mr. Ian Woon. So that’s what that had been about. “That Woon guy. You hoped he’d teach you how to control it,” Maes said.
Roy nodded. “He taught me the meditation techniques. We didn’t have enough time, because I only had so much leave, and the travel time was part of it. But he gave me as much as he could in a couple of weeks. And Maes - I thought it worked. I didn’t start a fire the whole month I was away. And when I got back, I still felt the peace. I thought it had worked.”
Maes thought back. That day he’d walked into the house and found Roy trying to meditate. So uncharacteristic of him. And then he’d started the fire in the fireplace when it wasn’t really necessary...
Another gulp of the burning liquid. “Until it didn’t work.”
“I was so depressed when I felt it coming back. It’s been a - a nightmare I just couldn’t get out of.”
Despite himself - despite the fact that he wanted to be angry and betrayed, and yell and throw something - Maes found himself beginning to understand, as much as it was possible to understand, anyway. The thought of Roy suffering this strange compulsion, and fighting it for days on end in silence and alone, tore at his heart. If only he’d said something, told someone! If only Maes had had a chance to help him before it came to this! If only -
“Except.” He suddenly remembered. “You’re talking like you had no control over this, but you did, Roy.” He pointed an accusing finger across the table, his moment of empathy dissipating again. “You picked empty buildings to burn. You can’t tell me that that was just a lucky coincidence every single time.” Except tonight, he thought with a pang of grief. This one wasn’t empty, was it?
“No,” Roy muttered, “it wasn’t a coincidence. I did have that much control, at least. Once I knew I wasn’t dreaming, even when I felt like I was being dragged out of bed against my will, I could at least direct where I did it, even if I couldn’t stop it.”
“Direct it,” Maes growled, “you made a game of it. What about the spiral, Roy? What was that all about?”
For the first time in several minutes, Roy looked him in the face, the surprise on his own face completely genuine. “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t even know I was doing it until you showed us the pattern. I couldn’t believe it. I - I truly have no idea what I was doing, making a spiral.”
“I know what you were doing,” Maes pronounced. “You knew you should have told me right when it all started, but you hadn’t done that. So you were trying to show me in another way. You were pointing to yourself, and hoping I’d see it.”
Roy considered this, swirling the remaining dregs of the scotch around in his glass. He grabbed the bottle and poured more in. “Maybe I was, at that,” he murmured.
“And of course I was too stupid to see it. I was stupid, because I believed everything you said. You kept deflecting me away - you had all the answers to everything, the way you always, always do. All your reasons for not wanting a guard - they were so plausible, and I thought you meant them, I thought you were being courageous, hoping to draw out the arsonist at the risk of your own safety. When what was really going on,” Maes’s voice rose in volume and passion almost of is own accord, “was that you just wanted us out of your way so we couldn’t stop you the next time you set a big fire!”
“Of course I did, dammit!” Roy slammed his fist on the table. “You saw what happened to me last night - don’t you get what you were seeing? Of course it wasn’t the flu - it was me, when this compulsion comes over me and I have to get out there and make a fire or I’ll go out of my mind! And there were people everywhere, and I couldn’t get away, I couldn’t get out! I had to get rid of the guards! I had to, or by tonight I’d have been screaming on the bathroom floor and probably slitting my wrists with the razor like you thought I would! Why - why do you suppose I didn’t take my gloves into the bathroom with me last night, Maes? I knew I’d end up burning my own house down, and probably killing Havoc and Fuery and the outside guards too!”
Maes stared at him. So that...that...was what Roy was like if he couldn’t follow this irresistible urge and set something on fire? That was what he’d been reduced to?
The important thing, he reminded himself, was not to cry.
“Oh Roy,” he whispered. “Why - why didn’t you tell me about this?”
Roy’s hands opened helplessly, lying on the table. “How would you ever have understood?”
“I don’t know. But I’d have tried to help you. We could have talked to somebody - gotten you some help - “
“Sure you could,” Roy’s voice sharpened. “The same sort of help Zolf has gotten!” At the expression on Maes’s face, he barked a bitter laugh. “Don’t tell me you believe I wouldn’t get exactly the same treatment. They’re always looking for a reason to take me down and get rid of me. Wouldn’t they just love to have me sitting in a room like his - with my hands stuck in the stocks so I couldn’t burn them to a crisp when they came into the room to watch while I went completely insane right in front of them -“
“Roy, stop. They wouldn’t do that to you. I’d never let that happen.”
“They’d do as they please, and you wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it,” Roy answered darkly. He raised the glass again, and Maes saw it shake as he drank, eyes closed.
“Zolf Kimbley...why did you want to go with us when we talked to him?”
For a quick moment, a ghost of Roy’s mocking smile flashed across his face. “I thought that would be obvious. I knew he’d figure it out as soon as you said anything. I was hoping I could keep him from telling you what was really going on.”
Deceitful and subversive till the last, Maes thought sadly. “But instead you got more than you bargained for.”
The faint trace of the smile vanished, and Roy sighed, shoulders slumping. “I didn’t expect...but I learned...I realized that there was no hope. There was nothing I could do, no matter how I tried to fight this. I sent Ed away because I could tell he was starting to figure it out too, but - "
“He didn’t want it to be you, Roy. He really wanted it to be Kimbley.”
“I know. He’s such a great kid. I wish...” Another gulp of scotch. “But he knows. Zolf knows. And...Riza. I think she’s suspected almost from the beginning.” Roy managed a twisted, painful smile. “She was like Ed - she really wanted your explanation to be true. She really wanted it to be someone who had seen the array on her back and learned the alchemy so he could take revenge on me. But I just...I couldn’t let her take that responsibility. None of this was her fault, in any way. None of it. It’s all me.” He focused his gaze on his friend’s face, the pain screaming from his eyes. “It’s my fault...and I can’t stop. There’s nothing I can do. Maes...I’m so sorry.”
“There has to be something we can do. You’ve been through so much - overcome so much - " Maes had to stop, swallowing around the lump in his throat.
Roy looked down at his hands, now lying on either side of the glass of scotch. “When this...need...started showing up, it was like my mind built some kind of protection inside, to get me away from the memories of...everything before. It started reminding me why I had wanted to study flame alchemy in the first place. There was power in the flames, but it wasn’t just the power...it was...”
“It was because you loved fire,” Maes suggested softly, thinking of the rapt expression on his friend’s face this evening, shaping the flames into things of supreme beauty across the sky.
Roy nodded. “It always fascinated me. I wasn’t obsessed by it, but I thought it was beautiful. And the thought of being able to control it, of having the power of fire in my own hands...that’s why I studied it. And the last few months, no matter how bad I felt when I was remembering all the horror in Ishbal - these other feelings would come, to remind me that the fire was beautiful. It was...Maes...it was beautiful. It was magical.”
Maes watched his friend’s face begin to change, and the knot in his stomach began to tighten again. Roy’s eyes lost their tension, lost their focus, as his thoughts turned again to the beauty of the flames. “I started feeling like...like everything would be better...all the terrible memories and thoughts would go away...it would stop hurting...if I could just...just...”
Maes licked his lips and finished softly, “If you could just start a fire.”
Roy’s eyes focused on his face. “You...you just don’t know what it feels like. Maes...it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. To hold that flame in your hands...to control it...to shape it with the flicker of a finger...to hold it close...to caress it...”
And then he smiled. Maes wanted to slap his hands on his neck, to keep the hair from standing up, as Roy’s lips curved into the smile of a lover, the smile with which one might greet the angels sent to convey one’s soul to paradise.
“Roy...stop...”
“It’s so gentle...it flows so beautifully...” Roy cupped his hands together in front of him, gazing into them again as though the flames flickered on his palms. His fingers trembled. His lips trembled. “So beautiful...,” he breathed.
“Roy!” Maes broke sharply into his thoughts. “Take off your gloves.”
“What?” Roy’s startled eyes darted to his face. “What are you talking about?”
“Take your gloves off. Now. Do you hear me?” Maes shoved his chair back and stood up, pulling his gun out of its holster and flipping off the safety. “If you don’t get those gloves off right now, I’ll - I might have to - "
Roy stared at him in confusion, until his eyes focused on the half-raised gun, and the meaning of both the gesture and the words finally hit him. He gasped, leaping out of his chair and backing away until he backed into the counter beside the sink. “Maes - how can you - "
“I don’t want to do anything, Roy. Just take the gloves off, and we can keep talking.”
Roy pressed his hands over his heart, as though cradling the gloves, protecting them. “I wasn’t doing anything,” he began, but Maes interrupted.
“I saw you. You were slipping away right in front of me. Everything will be fine if you just take the gloves off. Please, Roy. Please.”
For a moment longer, he thought he might have to do something drastic. Roy leaned trembling against the counter, one hand clutching the edge of it as he pressed the heel of the other against his eyes, fingers burrowed into his hair, clutching, like claws. When at last he looked up again, the tears had welled up once more in his dark eyes, rolling slowly down his cheeks. Maes could hardly bear the despair on his friend’s face.
“I’m sorry, Maes. I - I - I need help. Maes - help me.”
“I don’t know how to help you any more, Roy.” And now it seemed that Maes, too, had forgotten the most important thing, and had also begun to weep. “If it were just the buildings - if that was all - I could lie and somehow help you get away - back to Xing, where maybe Mr. Woon could finally heal you. But Roy - it’s not just the buildings any more.” He took a ragged breath. “That police officer - you killed him. I know you didn’t intend to, but he’s dead anyway.”
Roy bowed his head. “I know.”
“And that - that changed everything. You know that, don’t you? Now it’s not just some empty buildings. Now it’s murder.”
Just last night, he had wondered if there was anything in the world that he wouldn’t do for Roy. And now, to his great grief, he had discovered what it was.
Again Roy pressed the hand to his eyes. “I know,” he whispered again.
“I’ll try my best to make sure that they don’t treat you like Kimbley - I’ll fight till my last breath to make sure - but I can’t just let you go, not after tonight. If you had just told me, after the first time - but you didn’t. You let it keep happening until finally someone died, and now I have no choice. I have to arrest you, and take you in. So I’m asking again - please, buddy - take off the gloves before you hurt someone else.”
Roy looked at him again, just looked at him, eye to eye, almost soul to soul, for a very long moment. Maes wanted to burst into sobs, but he gritted his teeth and didn’t let it happen. Despite what he had to do tonight, Roy needed him to be strong and keep himself together. And he was going to take care of his friend, get him the help he needed, if it was the last thing he did.
Finally, Roy actually managed to smile a little, despite the pain and the tears. “This is why you’re the real hero, Maes,” he murmured. “This is why I’ve needed you, all these years. You never did anything to deserve this mess. I...I guess it’s time I lifted the burden off your shoulders...” He began to tug at the fingers of the left glove, loosening it.
Maes sighed with heavy relief and started to lower the gun. “That’s not what I want,” he began, but got no further.
Roy’s right hand rose as he whispered, “Goodbye, Maes,” and then there was the unmistakable snapping sound, a rush of pressure, and a long fall into darkness.
(See Chapter 15)