theory and practice - part 1
Crazy!Ed! Once again, absurdly long. o_O
As always, thanks to zephy_magnum for the beta, and thanks (?) to eiliem for the idea. :D
One more part after this, and it will be Ed POV because I like to play these little games with my sanity.
FMA does not belong to me, I just borrowed it and then broke it.
Part I: In Defiance of Reason
Part II: Justifying the Means
Theory and Practice
Visiting Roy in his shiny new office in Central: best thing ever. As expected. It was so good to finally be in the same city.
“You can actually pick up what people are saying with these?” Maes asked, delighted. “These tiny little things?”
Fuery pushed up his glasses and looked Very Serious. Aw, he was like a small, fuzzy animal. Maes just wanted to ruffle his hair. And steal his electronics.
“They run out of power really quickly,” Fuery said. “Their lifespan is only…oh, a week? But the sound quality is good. They should be really useful, um.” He looked nervously around and lowered his voice to a whisper. “If Lieutenant Hawkeye ever lets me use them.”
“Spoilsport!” Maes gasped. He was scandalized, scandalized. He would never have suspected Hawkeye of being such a killjoy.
“She says I have to have a reason,” Fuery explained sadly.
He and Maes both sighed and contemplated the glorious little bugs they weren’t allowed to play with.
“You’re not even going to say hello to me, are you?” Roy asked, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded.
“Roy!” To be honest, Maes had forgotten he was there. “Have you said hi to Ed yet?” He took a moment to savor Roy’s flinch. And Fuery’s.
Oh, yes. This was going to be all kinds of fun.
“I’m sure he’ll find me when he has a use for me.” Roy looked so uncomfortable. And to think he was the one who kept saying, ‘Try to trust Elric,’ ‘Elric isn’t as wacky as he looks,’ ‘I’m sure Elric was a decent kid before life smashed him.’
“I’m surprised he’s left you alone this long,” Maes said, and he was. Very surprised. Roy had been in Central for at least forty-eight hours. “Have you been hiding?”
Roy shifted and refused to make eye contact. Meaning he really had been hiding, which was…
In fact, Maes had no words for what it was. Hilarious?
“Chief, d’you want the desk over-oh, Lieutenant Colonel Hughes. Hey.” Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc with an enlisted guy in tow, carrying Roy’s desk between them. Havoc had the charming ability to coerce enlisted guys into doing all sorts of favors for him. Favors like lugging enormous desks around base for the benefit of Colonels to whom they were not accountable. Maes suspected this had something to do with Havoc’s aura of the common man, and he admired it.
“Havoc! Have you been letting your commanding officer cower in his office when he should be out socializing?”
“Uh…” Havoc fidgeted as best he could while carrying half of an enormous desk. “Chief? Where did you want the desk?”
“Under the window is fine, Second Lieutenant.”
Havoc’s preferred method of avoiding conflict was to pretend it wasn’t there until it went away or at least stopped involving him. Maes admired this, too.
“Let’s head to lunch, Roy,” Maes suggested. “I haven’t seen you for months!”
Checkmate. Roy absolutely could not admit that he didn’t want to go outside because he was afraid of Ed. And there was no legitimate reason for him to dodge: Hawkeye could oversee the resettling of the office a hundred times more efficiently than Roy could, and everyone knew it.
“…Fine,” Roy said. And then, “My treat,” because he liked to make Maes feel guilty. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he informed Fuery and Havoc. Who would tell Hawkeye. Who would send out a search party if Roy didn’t turn up precisely on time.
Maes loved Roy’s office.
* * *
It was disappointing that they made it to the restaurant without incident, but then, Maes had noticed before that Ed was never around when you wanted him. He preferred to appear at the most awkward possible moment, not infrequently spattered with blood.
Ah, well. It was probably for the best. Maes and Roy had plenty of things to discuss that would be better discussed in private.
“We’re sitting at the corner table,” Roy pointed out once they’d settled themselves.
“So we are.” Curious conversation starter.
“You deliberately picked the corner table.”
“Did I?”
“You did.”
“…And?”
“You never pick the corner table.” Poor Roy, his world was obviously thrown out of kilter by this. “You always pick the table nearest the window so you can watch everyone who goes by.”
“Ed likes to sit at the corner table,” Maes explained. He’d only eaten out with Ed twice, and was already picking up his seating habits. Unsettling. Maybe it was because Ed was so very determined about his seating habits.
“How often do you eat out with Elric?” Roy asked, voice faint with horror.
“Not as often as you’d think. Moving swiftly along to things that matter!”
Roy braced himself, knowing he was about to be inundated with either extremely treasonous information or a flood of Elicia pictures.
Treason first, Maes rather thought, and Elicia after that. Because she was cheering!
“The facts, as we know them, are these,” Maes said in a voice barely audible over the sound of cutlery. “Kimbley was set free, though this information hasn’t appeared in any official records, and we wouldn’t know about it if not for Ed. And Major Armstrong, but more on this later. The Fuhrer of Amestris has no personal history, but he did order Ishbal, and Ishbal…is one of the points on the array.”
“I’d like to see this array,” Roy murmured.
“If you’d stop avoiding Ed, you could.”
Roy scowled.
“On top of this, homunculi. The homunculi hang around Central because this is where their father lives.”
“Father?”
“Again, Ed will have to give you the details, but according to Greed, the party consists of six homunculi, who’ve been hanging around for hundreds of years, and their father, who’s been around even longer.”
“That was all Greed knew?” Roy asked suspiciously.
“That was all he managed to say before he was murdered,” Maes corrected. “Meanwhile, something strange is going on up North, but the Major hasn’t been able to tell me quite what. I hear Kimbley’s up there too, and I find that worrying. And Ed is looking into how to destroy homunculi because that’s just how he is.”
Roy was rubbing at his temples. Heh.
“Ed suspects that this whole country-as-array thing doesn’t make any sense; I will let him tell you why. Something to do with human sacrifices and the fact that he’s still alive. Alchemy. I’m really coming to hate it. How do you feel, Roy?”
“Old,” Roy mumbled.
“If it makes you feel better, I’m sure General Armstrong will be extremely annoyed that they’ve picked her base as a battlefield.”
Roy gave Maes a dirty look, indeed.
“What? Isn’t it nice that she’s on your side?”
“She has never once been on my side. Never in life.”
“A new experience!”
“Despite arguments to the contrary, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.”
“Better the enemy of your enemy than the friend of your enemy,” Maes pointed out. “Speaking of which, Ed.”
“…What about him?”
“What are your plans for him, exactly?”
Roy tried to look innocent or at least blank, but Maes had known him far too long for that to work. “I wouldn’t say I have plans for him.”
“Of course you wouldn’t say that,” Maes agreed, “because you never willingly speak at all. But you do have plans for him, because that’s what makes you you. Spill.”
Roy nodded. He always was a good sport about being caught. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing for me,” he said, “if the fuhrer turned out to be in league with these monsters.”
Maes smiled. “Convenient that Ed’s uncovered all of this, then.”
Roy smiled back. “Convenient,” he said.
If Maes believed for a second that Roy had actually foreseen how useful Ed would prove, he’d have been even more proud. As it was, he was proud of Roy’s bullshitting abilities, for they were truly epic.
“And last but not least…your First Lieutenant. Whom I like to think of as your keeper.”
“Yes,” Roy sighed. “She doesn’t approve.”
“You astonish me.”
“Don’t you start,” Roy muttered, putting his elbow on the table and propping his forehead on the heel of his hand, the very picture of an overburdened soul. Not a very military posture, though. When Roy made general, Maes was going to have to train him to stop slumping like that. Possibly with cattle prods.
Hm. Assuming making general still meant what they’d thought it meant, given. Well. The end of the world, or whatever Ed decided was going on.
“And stop looking at me like that,” Roy said suspiciously. “I’m worried, Maes. Aren’t you worried?”
“About Hawkeye or about Ed?” Surely the end of the world was a given.
“Either. Both.”
“What if they join forces? Then we’ll need to be worrying about you.”
“God forbid.” Roy buried his face in both hands.
All in all, Maes considered this an excellent ‘welcome back to Central’ for Roy.
* * *
If Maes had been disappointed by the lack of Ed on the walk to lunch, he could find no fault with how quickly Ed found them afterward. They didn’t even make it ten steps away from the restaurant.
“What’s up with it, Colonel?” said the Voice from Above.
Maes had never seen Ed and Roy together before. He was prepared to be entertained.
“Elric,” Roy said, treating the name like something fragile. “It’s been a while. How goes the research?”
“All fucked up, Colonel,” Ed announced, bizarrely cheerful. “Fucked up like I never even imagined.” He hopped down and smiled up at them.
You couldn’t say that Ed looked at ease, exactly; Ed never looked at ease. But he did look less likely to flee or attack at any moment than he usually did. He was also smiling, not maniacally, but in a fairly friendly way. Smiling at Roy.
How very interesting. First the letters, now this.
Equally interesting: Roy clearly didn’t appreciate what special treatment this was-he thought this was scary. Apparently he’d never seen the backed-into-a-corner rabid animal side of Ed.
Though it was possible that Ed was, in some ways, less alarming when he didn’t like you. For one thing, he usually gave Maes more personal space.
“Miss me?” Ed asked, grinning, wild, and less than a foot away from Roy. “Shit, sorry about that. Didn’t think it’d be so bad you’d have to chase me to Central.”
“Elric, surprising though it may seem, I do have concerns in my life other than keeping track of you.”
“Uh huh. How’s that taking over the world thing working out for you?”
“Well so far, thank you for asking. And you? Still making progress on your plan to kill absolutely everyone?”
Ed bared his teeth, and, given how close his teeth were to Roy’s throat, that made Maes very uncomfortable. Nothing like as uncomfortable as it was making Roy, however. “You can’t help but be a dick even when you try, can you?” Ed said in a tone that Maes had to think of as a fond snarl.
“It’s so nice for me to have the crazy alchemists in the same city,” Maes cut in. It was good to see Ed happy, but since it was also creepy as all get-out, he thought it might be best to get everyone back on track. “Now you two can chat about the end of the world and I won’t have to pretend I understand. Go on.”
“Yes,” Roy agreed. “Hughes says you don’t think the country-wide array makes sense, Elric. I still don’t know how you came to discover that the country is an array. That letter you sent me was the most spectacularly cryptic thing I’ve ever read, and I regularly correspond with Hughes.”
Ed shrugged. Ed was not helpful. However, on the upside (or was that a downside?) he still seemed chipper.
“Ed decided the military was involved in this whole cannibalism, Philosopher’s Stone, human sacrifice thing,” Maes put in, hoping to encourage actual communication. “Which made me curious about military history. Once you look into military history, into old battlefields…well, it’s all fairly obvious if there’s a convenient alchemist at hand to explain it. And every day I am more grateful for Ed’s extreme paranoia.”
“Shucks,” said Ed.
“I suspect that if Ed weren’t so paranoid, I would have investigated through military channels.”
Roy was staring in horror.
“I expect I would be dead,” Maes said, just to drive the point home.
“Show me the array,” Roy said, face slowly shutting down into Grim Stoical. Maes defied him to hold that expression through the whole explanation.
“Ed, map?”
“What am I, your office boy? I don’t carry a fuckin’ map around with me.”
“I bet you can draw one from memory. Because you’re a crazy supergenius and besides, Major Armstrong could.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel competitive or some shit?”
“No. It’s supposed to make you draw a map. I’ll show you a picture of Elicia building a snowman if you do!”
Ed heaved a put-upon sigh, snapped, “Stop making that face, asshole,” at Roy, then, to Maes, “We’d better go to your hidey hole for this, assuming nobody knows about it yet. We should’ve had this whole fuckin’ conversation in there.”
“I’ll have to call Lieutenant Hawkeye,” Roy said. “On pain of death.”
Maes laughed.
“Lieutenant Hawkeye,” Ed repeated thoughtfully. “The blonde lady?”
Maes walked on a few steps before realizing that Roy had come to an abrupt halt.
“Elric, when did you see the Lieutenant?” he asked tightly.
Oh. Oh, my.
Ed did that head-tilting trick of his. “She came to the house that time, right?”
Amazing. Amazing the way he could speak and yet say nothing. Although Roy seemed to understand what he meant, so maybe it was just that he always spoke in code. “That’s true,” Roy agreed, cautiously reassured.
“Lieutenant Hawkeye,” Ed murmured almost to himself. “…Elizabeth?”
“Elric.” So much for that tentative reassurance. Roy was now chalk pale, maybe with fear, maybe with rage, maybe with both. Probably both. If Maes was not much mistaken, ‘Elizabeth’ was Hawkeye’s codename, and Ed…well. There were plenty of things Ed knew that he shouldn’t know, but this one was bound to hit closer to home than most.
“Don’t flip your shit,” Ed said dismissively. “It’s not like I tell people stuff. Just curious. Whatever.”
Roy scrubbed his face with both hands, as undignified as Maes had ever seen him in public.
Ah ha. So this was why Roy had been avoiding Ed. Maes even sympathized.
“Time’s wasting, Roy. Call your keeper.” It was still a fact that Roy had brought all of this upon himself, though. And also upon Maes.
Roy shot him a wounded look, but obediently wandered off in search of a phone. Ed snickered.
* * *
Maes didn’t bother to listen to the explanation. He’d heard it before. He hadn’t understood it then, and didn’t see any reason he should understand it now. Why try?
Instead, he amused himself by watching Roy and Ed, for they were very amusing. They were arguing, despite the fact that there wasn’t much to argue over, despite the fact that Roy was clearly somewhat afraid to argue with Ed. Ed leaned in to fight for a point, Roy unconsciously leaned back. But he leapt to the next point of contention with just as much enthusiasm as Ed.
Roy was a born leader: careful, charismatic, given to scheming. Ed, meanwhile, was a born wild thing. Maes doubted he had a problem with authority; more likely, it had never occurred to him that other people’s authority might have any relevance to his life. Still, he seemed fond of Roy, though Maes wasn’t sure he could call it respect so much as tolerant amusement. Ed would probably be willing to do favors for Roy, if Roy was careful to advertise them as a favors and not as any sort of duty to country.
Roy respected Ed’s mind, and Maes knew very well how insidiously likable Ed became once you gave him an inch. Roy was trying to recruit him, and Maes wasn’t sure whether or not he was doing it deliberately.
Hm.
“Are you seriously suggesting the homunculi have been around long enough to cause every one of these battles?” Roy demanded. “That’s insane, Elric.”
“Don’t even fuckin’ bother me with what’s insane around here, Mustang,” Ed snapped. “None of this shit makes sense, and you gotta stop acting like it does. Are you stupid?”
Roy’s jaw tightened. “Pardon me for needing a moment to cope with the idea that my country has been overrun by evil, impossible-to-kill monsters bent on our destruction.”
Maes wondered if they’d ever been in the same room for this long before. He suspected not. Because on top of all the other interesting dynamics, they clearly drove each other nuts. Roy had never mentioned that, and he would have, if he’d been aware of it.
“They’re not impossible to kill,” Maes put in for the fun of it. “Ed killed one.”
“Yeah, but that’s because I got him,” Ed said unhelpfully.
“…What do you mean, Elric?” Roy asked carefully, abruptly reminded of what he was talking to.
“You know.” Ed leaned across the table to give Roy a friendly clap on the shoulder that made him flinch. “I got where he was coming from. And he read me all wrong. I had the advantage, but it sure as shit wasn’t physical. I’m not laying odds on taking down the others anything like that easy.”
“And yet it didn’t seem particularly easy.” Maes said for Roy’s benefit. “What with the blood. And the limp. And the arm injury.”
Ed gave him a wary look. “You notice a lot more than you let on, huh?”
“I work in Intelligence, Ed.”
“Huh.”
“Let’s accept that Ed’s crazy theory is correct,” Maes went on. “Since he’s had a disturbingly good track record so far. In that case, they must have human support. Pawns. People who age. Otherwise they’d have been found out by now.”
“But who?” Roy asked, leaning toward Maes. “And how could they persuade humans to work against themselves?”
“Power, money, immortality,” Ed said.
“What about them?” Maes asked.
“That’s what you promise people, right?” Ed said with a blank face and dead eyes. “Power, money, immortality. And if you’re sitting on a Philosopher’s Stone, then you’re promising immortality, since you can get the other two other ways. What we’re looking for is some old fucks, probably military, who think they’re gonna live forever if the homunculi win.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Maes said cheerfully, because surely he could cheer away that scary expression on Ed’s face and the sickened one on Roy’s. Maybe. “Meanwhile, Roy! How will you be making yourself useful?”
“Is it time to call people in?” he asked seriously.
Oh. Good point. “Not quite, I’d think. Things can get much worse than this, and we’d better wait for it. We’re not there yet, Roy.”
Roy nodded, and Maes turned to Ed, expecting him to want to know what that was about. Instead, he looked bored.
“Can I go?” he asked, tipping his chair back onto two legs. “I got shit to do.”
He always did have shit to do, didn’t he? Maes was torn between wanting to know what it was, and very desperately wanting not to know. At least when Ed had been spending twelve hours a day in the library, he’d been easy to keep track of. Now he was only spending six hours a day, and that left a lot of hours Maes couldn’t account for.
“Roy, can we release Ed, or do you have more questions?”
“No questions,” Roy said. “I suppose we’ll see you…later, Elric?”
Ed hopped up and grinned. “Hell, yeah. Like I’m gonna do this on my own when I can make you do it for me.”
And on that happy note, he departed. Maes squinted one eye closed and tipped his head from side to side to check if that would cause the world to make sense again. Disappointingly, it did not. “‘How’s that taking over the world thing working out for you?’” he quoted.
Roy made no comment. He had a way of looking at you, did Roy, with serious eyes and a still mouth, and it meant that he was waiting to see what you would do next. It meant that this was a test, and he expected you to fail. Maes hated that expression with a passion.
“You’ve shared more information with Ed than I realized,” Maes pointed out in a calm, friendly tone that Roy would recognize as a prelude to pulling a knife.
“I didn’t share it,” Roy said evenly. Test still in progress. “I don’t know where he gets his information. Every time I turn around, he’s talking about Ishbal like he was there, he’s breaking my personal code, he’s throwing out references to my most closely held secrets-”
“Yes, yes,” Maes sighed. “I know. You might have told me that he knew. You might have mentioned quite a lot to me, Roy.”
“I know.” He was frowning thoughtfully now. A good sign; it meant that the test was over (Maes assumed he’d passed), and the next words out of Roy’s mouth probably wouldn’t be complete bullshit. “I wanted you to meet him first. I knew if you hadn’t met him…”
“I would have thought you were insane.” Maes hated it when Roy’s weaseling made sense. “Fine. What’s wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. He’s acting strange.”
“I thought that was his claim to fame?”
“Strange for him, obviously,” Roy snapped. “He looked uncomfortable. I’ve never seen him uncomfortable.”
Oh, Roy was more worried about Ed than about all life in Amestris, how…upsetting on many levels. And yet cute, in a peculiarly Roy sort of way.
“Central is foreign territory for him, Roy,” Maes pointed out. “From what I can find out, he’s never left the southeast, which he’s studied obsessively all his life. When he goes to a town there, he knows who’s who, what’s what, who to talk to about everything. He’s a big fish there. The big fish.
“He didn’t know Central at all. He only knew two people he’d even think about trusting, and them only by reputation. Both of them-pay attention, Roy-both of them connected to you. Think about what that means.”
“He did say he trusts me more than he trusts anyone else,” Roy admitted. Which might have been a good thing for him to have mentioned before. Anytime at all before now.
“He seemed odd to me, too, Roy,” Maes said, deciding that egregious communication failure was the theme of the day. “He seemed happy to see you.” Like he’d been greeting a much-beloved but somewhat stupid older brother. And Maes had watched the two of them-Ed’s fondness for Roy, Roy’s fear, respect, and fondness for Ed…and he couldn’t help thinking good cop/bad cop. He couldn’t help thinking that a politician like Roy was really going to need a bulldog. Someone less subtle than Hawkeye.
He had to stop thinking things like that, God help them all.
* * *
“General Grumman,” Maes said, trying not to strike a grim note right off the bat. “How much are you missing Roy?”
“Lieutenant Colonel Hughes, I presume,” said Grumman with a tolerant ah, young folk tone. “I’m sure your mother taught you that gloating is unattractive.”
His mother had been far too busy bragging about him to the neighbors to do anything of the kind. “It isn’t gloating, General! It’s concern!”
Grumman sighed. “What do you want from me, Hughes? I don’t owe you any favors-because I know what you do to people who owe you favors.”
“I don’t know what you’re suggesting,” Maes said airily. “And I only called to ask you a question.”
“I wait in fear.”
“How long would you like to live?” Ominous silence, and it occurred to Maes that that might sound more like a threat than a question. “Hypothetically! A purely hypothetical question. I mean, you’d like to live forever, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anyone?”
The ominous silence continued, but this time Maes was reasonably sure it wasn’t his fault.
Yes. A lead.
“Not you, too, Hughes,” Grumman finally in a low, unhappy rumble devoid of all humor. “I expect this nonsense from Raven, but you?”
“General Raven?” Maes did so love a lead. “What’s he up to these days?”
“He’s up North, I hear. Not that anyone tells an old fossil like me anything-I should say I overheard it. He went to deal with some problem they’re having up there, I’m not-” He broke off abruptly. “Hughes. What are you scheming?”
“Scheming?” Maes asked vaguely. “When are you going to visit us in Central? It’s been ages. You’ve never even met my glorious daughter! And you know, I think Lieutenant Hawkeye might be missing you.”
“Really?” Grumman asked with familial pride. “Missing me, you say? Well, in that case…I suppose I could leave these young people to look after things for a few days, perhaps in a month or two. I’ve built up a fair bit of leave. Nothing but work, work, work! What a life. You’ll let me know if she starts pining?”
A slight pause as they both tried and failed to picture what Hawkeye would look like, pining. “I certainly will,” Maes said honestly.
“Well. I might stop by in a month or two, then. Not for long, you understand. You let my girl know.”
“Absolutely, sir.”
* * *
“General Raven’s in on it,” Maes informed Roy, dumping a stack of paperwork detailing Raven’s personal history on the dusty desk between them. Ed glanced idly their way, then turned back to his book.
Ed showed no interest in the corruption of the military except as it related to crazy alchemy. But that was okay. That was what Maes and Roy were for.
“Raven,” Roy repeated. He sounded so pleased now that the prey had been spotted. Ed smirked absently, either at his book or at Roy’s tone. “Shall we pay a visit?”
“Alas, he is in North at the moment.” Which was…odd. “But certainly a visit is in order as soon as he gets back. I told General Grumman to stand by in case we need him.”
Roy frowned a question.
“Obviously not General Grumman, of all people, and try not to be paranoid. That’s my job.” Maes considered briefly. “And Ed’s.”
“The golden lion,” Ed murmured, ignoring Maes. His attention had wandered from the book, finally, and he was gazing at the flag outside the window.
“Golden lion? Rebirth, the Philosopher’s Stone. Gold, obviously,” Roy rattled off, frowning at Ed.
“Or, like, destruction of the base material and creation of something new and better.” Ed tipped his head back and laughed. “That is fuckin’ sick,” he shouted at the ceiling, then grinned at Roy. “Shit, Mustang. They’ve been tellin’ us all along. We’re base material.”
“You’re not serious,” Maes said blankly. “The flag-”
“The national flag-” Ed broke off momentarily to snicker. “The national flag of Amestris says, ‘We’re gonna fuckin’ kill you.’ I love it!”
He gave up the fight and dissolved into hysterical laughter. At least someone had the perspective to enjoy the humor of the situation.
Maes had thought of trying to assign tasks to Ed, but ultimately decided he didn’t have the balls for that, and this was precisely why. It is ill-advised to foist work off onto people who find proof of murderous intent hilarious. “That’s…wonderful, Ed. I’m happy you’re here to point these things out. What are you up to these days, anyway? You seem to have cut down the research hours.”
“Yeah, I guess I know basically enough to be going on with, library-wise. So I’m looking into stuff,” Ed said with his usual depths of unhelpfulness, but then, unexpectedly, “I’ll tell you when I find something out. You can’t help, and there’s no sense in you freaking about it in the meantime.”
He’d just volunteered information. It wasn’t much information, but even so…Edward Elric, full of surprises. Also, Maes wished he had a picture of Roy’s face right now, because if he did, he would treasure it forever and preserve it among the Elicia pictures and show it to absolutely everyone.
* * *
Another day, another mind-bending meeting with Ed and Roy, this one prompted by news from the North. He’d taken to having Roy leave messages with Madame Christmas for Ed, when they wanted to talk to him. The process only made his brain hurt a little. According to Roy, Madame Christmas was still responding to all inquiries about Ed with nothing but that deranged smoker’s cackle of hers.
“I talked to Major Armstrong today,” Maes told the mad alchemists. “He was full of news that I’d just as soon not have heard.”
“He freakin’ cried, didn’t he?” Ed muttered, and Roy shot him a disapproving look.
“Ah, worse still! Remember General Raven? Our lead, as I liked to call him?”
“The past tense,” Roy sighed.
“If I’m correctly reading between the lines, the past tense. Due to General Armstrong, who apparently didn’t take well to having him wander her base and order around her people. You know how she is.”
Ed nodded approvingly, and Maes spared a moment to pray that he and Olivia Armstrong would never, ever meet.
“A lovely woman, General Armstrong. Absolutely terrifying, of course,” Roy muttered, but Maes knew he secretly thought she was cool.
“The Major also implied that they found another homunculus underneath the base. It sounds like they tried to kill it, but it ran off down an underground tunnel, and poof! It disappeared. I imagine the General was annoyed.”
Roy was clearly torn between smirking over the General’s likely reaction to failing to kill something, and going grim over the prospect of another homunculus.
Ed wasn’t torn at all. Ed was crazy instead. “That’s great!” he said.
“Elric, I respectfully disagree,” Roy murmured.
“I’m serious, moron, think about it. Greed said there were six including him. Plus the Father guy, whatever. Greed died, I got Envy, so there’s four left. We know about the woman and the fat guy. That leaves two, and we found one up North. So, awesome, we’re down to one. We’re totally getting somewhere. If we hear something about Scar and Kimbley, shit, what am I gonna ask for for my birthday?”
“Birthday?” Roy repeated faintly.
Ed bounced happily to his feet. “Birthday. Most people have ‘em, Colonel. Hey, since things aren’t too fucked up and it’ll probably be a while before the homunculus up north gets down here, I’m gonna get my automail tuned before the shit hits the fan. You guys do your, whatever, political crap. Later.”
“How long will this take?” Roy demanded. Roy didn’t like to let his people out of his sight. It was getting to be a problem, Maes felt. Protecting the underlings was all well and good. Going overprotective older brother at every opportunity was less well and good; was, in fact, counterproductive. Conversations might need to be had.
“I dunno,” Ed said, walking backwards toward the door, grinning at Roy.
“Say hello to Paninya for me,” Maes put in. Ed’s grin fell away. He didn’t verbally reply, but instead stared at Maes for twenty-eight seconds (he counted) with an eerie lack of expression. Then he turned and left.
“Paninya?” Roy asked.
Maes was tired, and he wanted to go home.
* * *
Home at last. Home, near-spotless in a way that a house containing a three-year-old had no right to be. Maes gazed fondly at the garden, which was so flawless that it sometimes frightened visitors. He considered the highly organized stacks of biology books, math books, and geology books in Gracia’s study. “In case Elicia asks questions about it when she gets older,” apparently. In case Elicia came to have questions about advanced natural science at some point. Of course.
All this, and she still had time to spy on the neighbors.
“Have you ever considered going back to work, just as a vacation from your life?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her and peering out the window over the top of her head. Nothing exciting going on out there, as far as he could see.
“Papa!” Elicia cried, and he released Gracia to swing his daughter up into his arms.
“In its way, this is entertaining,” Gracia assured him, passing Elicia the binoculars, which Elicia took with the exaggerated care of those with underdeveloped motor skills.
Adorable, Maes thought.
“You’re teaching our daughter to spy on the neighbors,” he pointed out mildly.
“Tell your father how we feel about the neighbors,” Gracia said.
“We are very concerned about them,” Elicia said gravely, peering through the binoculars.
Maes loved Gracia, loved her with all his heart. And he thanked God every day that she was on his side. “Well, ladies, have we discovered anything about the neighbors?”
“Nope. We’re looking for the lady and the big man,” Elicia told him, and he went cold all the way to his lungs.
“What-”
“We haven’t seen them, Maes,” Gracia said briskly, but she gave him a gentle look. “Just in case.”
“If we see them, we’re going to call you and Uncle Roy and, and then we’re running away! But we’ll be sneaky, Mama said.” She turned to Maes, and in her mysterious, three-year-old way, decided he was upset. “Don’t worry, Papa,” she said. “We’ll remember our flashlights.”
“Well then,” he said. And because Gracia was watching him, careful and calm, he didn’t let himself have a panic attack. He didn’t let himself bundle them into a car headed to the sea.
Ed was probably right in thinking that it wouldn’t do any good anyway.
* * *
Ed took a trip out East for automail maintenance, and came back with a Xingian prince and a suicidal plan involving lots of explosions.
Maes was coming to expect this sort of behavior from Ed.
It was a glorious Saturday morning that Maes ought to have been spending with his daughter, and he was instead meeting Roy, Ed, and guests in a hotel. (Roy didn’t want to overuse the safehouse and Maes agreed with him.) The Xingian prince standing in the cheap hotel room and inspecting the flimsy, pastel curtains made the meeting especially surreal.
“Dickhead says he’s looking for the Philosopher’s Stone,” Ed explained to Maes and Roy, blithely ignoring the fact that said dickhead (Ling Yao, twelfth son of the Emperor of Xing, armed with two bodyguards, a sword, and a worrying smile) was standing immediately behind him. “So I figured I’d throw him to the homunculi and see what happened.”
“Do you speak Amestrian?” Maes had to ask the prince.
The worrying smile managed to become even more worrying. “Of course. It would be foolish to embark on a quest to a strange country without being able to speak the…native language.”
Maes wasn’t sure how he’d managed, with that simple statement, to imply that Maes was stupid and that the native language, the country, and all of the citizens therein were barbaric, but he had. Maes was impressed.
Ed had caught the implication, too. Maes could tell by the See? This is why we should throw him to the homunculi look he was aiming at Roy.
“Ed, if we throw him to the homunculi, he might die,” Maes pointed out, ignoring Ling for the moment.
Ed turned away from Roy to favor Maes with that old, familiar blank look. “I don’t care.”
Ling took on a wounded and long-suffering expression, but said, “I’m very resilient, Mr. …”
“Hughes. Lieutenant Colonel Hughes. And this is Colonel Roy Mustang. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Indeed, it is a pleasure to meet members of the Amestrian military. Very…potentially useful. And unexpected,” he added, glancing at Ed.
“We all keep low company sometimes,” Ed muttered.
“Indeed,” Ling agreed cheerfully. Ed glared at him. He smiled back.
Well, if he could hold his own against Ed, his odds against a homunculus were better than even.
“Anyway,” Ed said, dropping Ling abruptly from his attention. “I talked to Madame Christmas about all this shit before I left. She talked to some people, like she does.” Significant look toward Roy. “Turns out there’s this doctor named Marco who’s maybe not so much of a shit as most of those doctors in Ishbal were, and he should know something worth knowing. But everybody says he’s a fuckin’ rabbit, so that’s irritating. Besides, he’s missing.”
“Rabbit?” Maes repeated.
“Chicken,” Ed elaborated with false patience. “Scaredy cat. Wimp, weak-dick. You want me to draw a fuckin’ picture?”
“Missing?” Roy asked, shooting Maes an irritated glance.
“Yeah, and his house has puncture wounds. Sound familiar?”
“…Not really, Ed,” Maes said.
“I told you about Lust, didn’t I?”
“Oh, yes. The Ultimate Spear, according to Greed,” Maes explained to Roy. “You think Lust abducted Dr. Marco?”
“Looks like. And we should get him back and ask him stuff, because there’s some creepy research I bet he’s done that I’m just not gonna do. And this prince guy says he’ll help because he thinks he wants to see a homunculus up close. So you figure out where Marco is.”
“We’re the ones figuring out where he is?” Roy asked dryly.
“Yeah, I’m busy,” Ed tossed off with a mad grin.
Roy scowled. Temper, temper, Maes reflected. It showed itself so much less often than it had when they were younger, but that just meant it was worse when it did show itself. “If you can fit it into your full schedule,” Roy said in a cold, civil tone of voice that was going to get him nowhere with Ed, “I’d like to know what exactly this research you’re doing is.”
“You wanna see my notes?” Ed asked, supremely unconcerned. “You can have ‘em if you can crack ‘em.”
“I don’t have time to crack them,” Roy snapped.
“Time?” Ed asked. “Ability? Shit, who knows. Something like that.”
“Pardon me,” Ling murmured to Maes with a polite smile. “Your alchemist told us to call again next week. He seems to think you’ll have found the doctor by then. May I ask how we should go about contacting you?”
Interesting that Ling had chosen to have this chat with Maes. Was it because the other two were busy squabbling, or was it because Ling could read the lay of the land that easily?
The twelfth son of the Emperor of Xing. Maes imagined that imperial children didn’t survive long if they couldn’t read a situation.
He gave one of Ling’s bodyguards the address of one of the safe houses and a time next week. He told Ling not to get his hopes up, and was met with a firm smile.
“People do keep telling me that,” Ling said.
No sooner had Ling and bodyguards closed the door behind them than Roy shouted, “Just tell me what you’ve learned, damn it!” at Ed.
There followed a very unpleasant silence. Maes had never before seen anyone back Roy down through force of glare alone, and Maes had seen Roy face off against some very scary people. He imagined guilt was factoring into this, though.
“I know you didn’t just try to boss me around,” Ed murmured at last in a dangerously quiet voice.
“No.” Roy took a careful breath. “That would be like suicide.”
“I’m not one of your damn minions,” Ed went on as though he hadn’t heard.
“I know,” Roy said. Roy was hard to read, and it was deliberate, but Maes knew him well. He didn’t miss that Roy was sad that Ed didn’t work for him.
And neither did Ed, who paused, considered, and gave Roy an almost regretful shrug. “Sorry.”
Roy blinked. “What?”
“What the fuck. Guess I’ll get the notes anyway. They’re at my place; it’ll take a while. It’s not like they’ll do you any good,” Ed said, and followed the Xing contingent out the door. Maes wondered if Ed was capable of feeling such a thing as embarrassment.
Roy turned to Maes. “What?” he repeated.
“Have I shown you the pictures of Elicia’s new dress?”
“Hughes!”
Ah, he’d probably been played with enough for one day. “Will you feel better if I go with him?”
Roy blinked, startled. “You think he’ll let you?”
Maes smiled, and tried not to worry that sometimes he understood the way Ed’s mind worked. “He’s been to my home,” he told Roy. “It’s fair.”
“Equivalent exchange?” Roy asked thoughtfully.
Ed had said that the equivalent exchange law was only functional. Maes remembered that, because it had been one of the more disturbing conversations of his life. He hoped Ed didn’t extend the law to his personal life. It being only functional.
* * *
Ed lived on the outskirts of town in a shack that had most likely been condemned years ago, and he made Maes walk all the way out there.
In a way, Maes could see the appeal: no one would dream that a human was inhabiting this dilapidated thing. The roof was sagging ominously, every window was broken and most were covered in cobwebs, everything that could rust had rusted. The wind rushed through the remains with an eerie, whining whistle. The net effect was about as creepy and unwelcoming as a man-made structure could reasonably be.
“How, ah. Rustic?” Maes tried. Although that was a lie, and bitterly unfair on rustic architecture everywhere. Abandoned desert-front property occupied an alarming architectural niche all its own.
“It’s just a place,” Ed muttered. “A place is a place.”
“Yes, but some places have central heating. And fewer insects.” Although the shack was, now Maes thought of it, very like the run-down buildings on the outskirts of East. Maybe Ed had wanted to stay someplace familiar.
The inside was almost as desolate as the outside. Four rooms. Maes knew there were four because there were holes knocked in every one of the walls, and he could see them. There were weeds growing up between the floorboards, which suggested there was no such thing as a foundation. Broken glass under the windows.
But, curiously, hanging upside down over the filthy, cobwebby sink was a bouquet of dried yellow and red flowers that looked familiar.
“Hey, Lizard,” Ed shouted. “He’s with me. He’s okay.”
A head peeked around one of the intact doorframes. A boy. Young, maybe ten or so. Presumably the “country kid” Ed had given the flowers to. Maes hadn’t realized they were roommates. He had also severely underestimated what Ed had meant when he’d described the kid as kind of strange. Kind of strange, in this case, clearly meant part reptile.
“Who is he?” the lizard kid snapped.
“Hughes,” Ed answered absently, digging a chest from beneath a shattered bedframe.
“Nice to meet you,” Maes said, holding out a hand.
The kid leapt back and snarled, “Don’t touch me!”
Lizard’s three favorite phrases, as Maes would learn, were: “Who is he?” “Don’t touch me,” and “Fuck off.” At least it was clear enough what Ed saw in him.
“I didn’t know you shared a house,” Maes said mildly.
“Yeaaah,” Ed drawled, now fighting with the lock on the chest. “That’d be because I never told you. He’s called Lizard, cuz people are just creative like that. He was one of Greed’s, but Greed sent him with me for a while, like a guide. And then Greed died, so he stuck around.” Ed shot a glance Lizard’s way. “Which was fucking stupid.”
Lizard scowled back, and edged slightly behind the doorframe.
Ed lost patience with the lock, snarled, clapped, and transmuted the entire chest into splinters. It seemed excessive.
“You couldn’t have transmuted the lock?” Maes asked, keeping a respectful distance, just in case.
“I’ll put it back. Fuck you, shut up. What are you even doing here?”
Lizard took this time to pitch a pebble at the back of Ed’s head, which caused Ed to leap up with a shout. Maes backed a prudent two additional steps away. Lizard, on the other hand, mouthed the word stupid at Ed, then pelted for the rear of the house.
“What’s your problem, you little shit?” Ed yelled after him.
Maes was noticing a trend among people who willingly spent time with Ed. They were brave to the point of madness.
“Here it is,” Ed said, hefting a tiny black book. “Dunno what he thinks he’ll get out of it even if I freaking read it to him. I didn’t get anything out of it. Don’t see why he should.”
Genius alchemists could be quite irritating.
Ed stood and marched to the door, book in hand, leaving Maes to trail after him. “Be back late!” Ed shouted.
“Fuck off!” Lizard shouted back. Ed rolled his eyes and closed the door.
“Is Lizard his real name?” Maes asked after a few steps.
Ed shrugged. “It’s just what Greed called him.”
Hm. “How do you suppose he ended up in a government lab?”
Ed’s shoulders were going tense, and Maes wasn’t sure why. Ed usually just dodged questions he didn’t like; he didn’t get angry over them. Was it because these weren’t his questions to answer? “Got no idea,” he muttered, low and hostile.
“I wonder if his parents are alive,” Maes mused.
Ed snapped.
“What fucking difference does it make?” he snarled. “If they’re dead, they’re dead and he’s not getting ‘em back. If they’re not dead, then shit, they sold him to that lab, didn’t they? And they never looked back. If some lizard kid comes up to ‘em now saying he’s theirs, they’ll beat him to death with a fucking shovel. You, you, and your goddamn…sunshine and daisies…it’s never like that for us. You got no fucking clue. No fucking clue what it’s like. Shut up. Just shut up and don’t ask. It’s got nothin’ to do with you. We don’t need you. We’re fine.”
Well, this explained the tension. “Look, Ed-”
“Shut up.”
Maes let the silence be for the next mile, until they were well into town. He’d hoped Ed would be less furious by then. Body language suggested he was out of luck.
“I know I don’t understand, Ed,” Maes said, figuring another mile or another month wouldn’t make any difference at this point. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t help.”
“Actually, it does,” Ed said shortly. “Later.” He turned abruptly and stormed into a hardware store, slamming the door behind him.
Not the best day of their friendship.
* * *
“You look terrible,” Roy helpfully pointed out when Maes showed up on his doorstep.
“You’ll have to talk to Ed tomorrow,” Maes said, “because he had a tantrum and ran away.”
“You were going to bring him to my house?” Roy asked, appalled.
“Why not? I took him to mine.” Maes decided he’d done enough waiting outside to satisfy propriety, and elbowed past Roy on his way to the drinks cabinet.
Roy followed him silently, which meant he’d noticed that Maes felt as bad as he looked. Maes rummaged through the cabinet and found that Roy had a ridiculous amount of whiskey. How much whiskey could one man drink? Was there no vodka in the house? Gin?
And why did Maes feel so bad about today? It wasn’t because he was worried that Ed would hold a grudge. Ed never held a grudge, it was one of his more endearing qualities. If he didn’t kill you on the spot, your relationship would be fine.
Was this alcohol? Was this even drinkable? Surely no one should ingest something this improbable shade of blue.
The problem with Ed was, he wouldn’t let anyone help him. No, that had always been true. The problem was that now Maes considered him part of Roy’s team, which made the whole thing more immediate and personal. It was always a step back for every step forward with Ed. And a few steps sideways, just to give Maes a headache.
Vermouth. Well, worse come to worst.
Roy was staring at the side of his face. Very irritating, because Roy was quite good at reading people, and if Maes was refusing to look at him, why, that meant he didn’t want to be read, didn’t it?
Roy had a bottle of 1875 vintage brandy. Dear God. At what point in his life had he been able to afford that?
“I need this,” Maes announced.
“I was saving it for a promotion,” Roy murmured, but didn’t otherwise complain. Roy was worried. Sigh.
“Well, we must all make sacrifices for the cause, Roy. Sacrifices must be made.” Maes headed to the kitchen, Roy following him like a fretful sheepdog.
“What will Gracia say when you come home drunk?” he asked.
“One does not get drunk on expensive, expensive brandy. But if, hypothetically, I did, Gracia would say, ‘I wish you wouldn’t worry so much about everyone,’ and then she would put Elicia to bed and get me an ice pack for my head and hold me, and this, my friend, is why you should get married.”
“I suspect Gracia is unique.”
“Of course she is. And if you try to take her away, I’ll kill you.” Roy was at least being very obliging about not insisting on an explanation. Good man, Roy. In some ways stunning in his brilliance, in some ways quite stupid. A good man.
Three fingers of brandy was a reasonable start, Maes felt. Lovely golden brown, mm. He poured a finger for Roy, too. Ed was worth at least two fingers of 1875 brandy, so this was fair, reasonable, and aboveboard.
Maes seized his glass and the bottle and headed for the living room. Roy trailed after him. Maes should have fits of temper more often; he always forgot how docile they made Roy.
“Let’s talk about Dr. Marco,” Maes said once they were settled, dropping the bottle down on the coffee table with a thunk that made Roy wince. “Let’s talk about Ed. Let’s talk about the future. Let’s talk, Roy. We haven’t done that in a while.”
He knocked back half the brandy. It was very disrespectful, he knew. Roy was within his rights to wince about that one.
“What exactly did you have on the agenda?” Roy asked, leaning back, would-be casual.
“Well. Let’s start with Ed. And rescuing Dr. Marco, which you’ll need your team for, because if you think you’re using my men, you are very, very wrong. I refuse to send them on the kind of shoot-em-up and explosions missions your people like.”
“You’re telling me to introduce Elric to the team.”
“I’d suggest it. Assuming we go through with this at all…and why are we going through with this?”
“Elric-”
“Elric, Elric, Elric.” Maes sighed, but mindfully took a careful sip of the brandy. Very good brandy. Very expensive. Respect the brandy. “He is so often right, isn’t he? He’s fifteen.”
A small, careful pause. “I don’t understand your point,” Roy said.
“I don’t have one,” Maes admitted. “It just depresses me. If we survive this, you’ve got a one-way ticket to the top. Isn’t that nice?”
Roy laughed and slumped a little, genuinely relaxed now. “Yes,” he said, smiling at Maes. “That’s why we’re going after Marco. It’s meant to improve our odds of survival.”
There were, Maes reflected, very few people who could deal with him in this mood. There were fewer still who found it enjoyable. Happily, Roy was kind of twisted. Plus he had really good brandy. “Let us hypothesize wildly.”
“Let us, Maes, by all means.”
“Let us say that we all survive this, and that Amestris ends up under the somewhat worrying rule of you.”
“Well, you did say wildly.”
“At that time, what are you planning to do about Ed?”
Roy put a hand over his mouth to hide a smile. “I was planning to leave it up to Lieutenant Hawkeye.”
“Eeeeevil,” Maes said admiringly, and toasted Roy with his own brandy. “All the more reason to introduce them.”
“Agreed.”
“Sooner rather than later.”
“Yes, Maes.”
“Good. As long as you’ve thought that through, I shan’t worry.”
“Shan’t?”
“Yes. And I won’t, either. How’s the Ishbal contingent?”
“Ready.”
“Excellent.” One finger more. He could still walk home with one finger more. God, he’d become such a lightweight, these last five years. Maybe his liver was still annoyed about what he’d done to it the previous ten.
He noticed that Roy had hardly sipped his drink, which meant he felt he needed to be completely sober to deal with Maes right now. Heh. “Kimbley’s dead.”
A slight lift of eyebrows. “How?”
“Mm. Scar, probably. They found his body, or what was left of it, just inside the gates of Briggs, like a slap in the face. Armstrong is on his way back to Central. I understand the General will follow him down at the end of the winter. Who knows. Scar may be here already.”
“Hm.”
“I wonder if Ed knows.”
“You could ask.”
Maes made a face and Roy chuckled sympathetically. Maes was planning to give it a few weeks before he started asking Ed questions again. Crazy people were so exhausting.
“About the fuhrer with no history,” Maes said.
“I’ve asked Madame Christmas to look into it,” Roy said. It was cute how he always used her fake name when he had her doing a job for him. “She runs less risk of military observation than you do.”
Right. Topic covered, moving on.
“Ling Yao,” Maes said, “is one scary kid.”
The reason Gracia didn’t enjoy dealing with him in this mood was because hers was a well-ordered mind. Maes liked to think he got there in the end, but he got there via highly random motion that drove Gracia a little insane.
Again, it didn’t seem to bother Roy at all.
“Is he?” he asked, not missing a beat.
“Yes.”
“Should we try to back out of this?”
“No. He’s no problem for us, because we are not involved in the savage fight for the imperial throne. This turns out to be very lucky. Involved people tend to meet the Yao clan and die horribly. And then get made into soup, if you believe one terrified informant.”
Roy digested this in silence. Well, mostly silence. Roy had one of those old fashioned tock-tock-tock clocks that Maes despised, so it was a silence filled with tock-tock-tocking.
“Was there anything else?” Roy asked dryly.
There wasn’t, really. That had covered almost the full range of festering things that had been bothering Maes. His glass was empty, too, and since he was in a more benevolent mood, he no longer felt compelled to drink the whole bottle.
“No, that’s everything.” He stood, and Roy stood too, sighing. He shouldn’t sigh. Maes had gone much crazier on him before and probably would again. And vice-versa, come to think of it. This hadn’t even involved knives. Roy was just being whiney.
“Feel better,” Roy murmured, walking him to the door.
He already did feel better. Of course he did. It was the reason he was going home to his wife instead of staying and drinking the rest of Roy’s expensive brandy. “Thank you, mein Colonel.”
Part 2