FIC: Toy Soldier - PG13, gen, FMA
TITLE: Toy Soldier
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: PG-13
LENGTH: 16,000 words approx
SUMMARY: Roy Mustang and Ed get a lesson in what it means to bring a 12 year old into the military after Edward falls into the hands of terrorists. Gen.
NOTES: Mangaverse, set a few months after Ed became a State Alchemist.
WARNINGS: Violence, language, cruelty to animals and small children.
THANKS: To sayhello for beta-reading.
DISCLAIMER: Fullmetal Alchemist belongs to Hiromu Arakawa and various other people not me. Not mine, no profit, yadda yadda yadda.
Toy Soldier
1.
Roy Mustang stood sweating in the middle of the dusty, empty crossroads, debating whether to loosen his collar and whether or not whichever hick local authorities they were here to deal with would even notice that his uniform defied regulation if he did. He cursed the unusually dry, warm winter spell that the east was experiencing. More than that, he cursed the Fullmetal boy and the reason he was standing out here in the middle of nowhere, almost a hundred miles from East City.
Behind him, Havoc shifted his feet and his grip on his rifle, because a Second Lieutenant who'd not brought along enough cigarettes and whose commanding officer refused a detour for the purchase of said cigarettes was a fidgety Second Lieutenant indeed. Breda and Falman were customarily quiet and professional. The rest of his own team were back at HQ, and the party's numbers made up by a dozen soldiers who looked hot and pissed off. The latter would be because some fool, somewhere along the line, had happened to mention to them what this so-important mission actually was.
The question uppermost on everyone's mind surely had to be: What the hell had that horrible little brat done now? Probably, it was second only to: What the hell possessed that crazy colonel to sponsor a kid as a State Alchemist in the first place?
Fullmetal's missions so far, Roy reflected, while often surprisingly adeptly and even ingeniously completed - albeit also with frequent paperwork detailing truly unreasonable amounts of property damage - did occasionally leave him feeling like the guardian of a wayward child, come to pick up and answer for his stray. It certainly was not the first time he'd received a communication to come and retrieve 'his' alchemist. He ground his teeth at the thought. Why did people assume that he was the kid's guardian? Sponsor did not equal babysitter.
Then again, he was here.
He blinked into the distance. He could see the dust trail of what presently revealed itself to be a covered cart, rounding the corner far down the road, between brown hedges. He leaned back against the wooden statue that was the crossroads' landmark - a one and a half times life size idol of some local war hero. It was carved from an ancient, lightning-struck tree, and was now rotting and growing mushrooms, which struck him as uniquely appropriate for anyone considered a hero of the Ishbal campaign. And he reflected, as he watched the approaching cart, that it was strange for them to ask for such a rendezvous, so far out of the way, so anonymous.
It was the first thread of unease to ooze through his annoyance and start to register upon him that this situation was not normal. It wasn't nearly enough to prepare him.
The cart drew to a halt a wary distance off. Roy stared, and some of the soldiers started as a large amount of clattering metal was scattered out across the road. That were followed by a small, panting bundle of human misery which had all too obviously been shoved without particular care for how heavy or undignified its landing.
The twelve year old Fullmetal Alchemist was bundled up in his familiar red coat, which looked very unfamiliarly the worse for wear, tattered and dirty. There was something odd about the shape his limbs drew inside the bundle. A moment later, it registered that the coat wasn't the only red decorating the small form, and as Roy recognised the shapes of the metal debris that had first been tossed out of the cart, he grimly reached into his pocket and started to pull on his gloves.
"No!" Fullmetal shrieked, raw and childlike in his all-too-obvious desperation. "They've got... people in there! Hostages. Don't--"
There was something funny about his voice, too; an odd slur in it. Roy could now see the black muzzles that the shadows of the covered cart had grown. The driver was hooded and anonymous. A likewise anonymous adult male voice said, "Be glad you didn't get the kid back in smaller pieces. I trust he'll tell you what we want from you, Flame Colonel. Don't try following us."
He dared not risk that the boy's assertion about hostages was true, and had no choice but to watch, gloved hand raised uselessly, as the cart swung around, sending armour pieces scattering beneath the swath of its huge wooden wheels, only narrowly missing the boy as it completed a full circle and sped back the way it had come.
Breda was the first man at the boy's side, because despite his brusque attitude, Breda was a sap. Not that he sounded like it when he snapped explosively, "Damn it, kid!" and swatted a hand at Fullmetal's grimy blond head. Though the blow distinctly failed to connect.
"...It... went a bit wrong." Fullmetal avoided any of their eyes and scrabbled around on the ground trying to turn himself. Though it was difficult to distinguish any injuries beneath that coat of his, he did not seem too hurt so much as not especially mobile. Indeed, Roy registered then where the wrongness in his outline came from - he was missing at least half his right arm, and there was something horribly twisted about the angle of his left leg. Even knowing that those limbs were machines, it remained a nauseating realisation. "Al... Al, you can probably talk again now, they've gone. Tell me you're okay!"
"Are you all right, brother?" the familiar voice piped up, more disembodied than usual and sounding thoroughly forlorn. "I'm sorry, I couldn't fight them, I let them--"
"It's not like I did a great job, either. Don't worry about those bastards now, anyway. We'll have you put back together in no time." He'd located Al's head to direct the words to. That had been what all the squirming around was about. Now he tried to shuffle towards it. Havoc picked it up and tried to place it in his hands, only to discover that the boy didn't appear to have a working limb to hold onto his little brother with.
Roy forced himself into action. He was in charge here.... Something was required of him. He couldn't, for instance, have Alphonse Elric idly chatting away as disembodied pieces of armour in front of the regular soldiers. "Havoc, Falman - get the armour pieces into the truck and start reassembling them. Breda--" He debated, momentarily, leaving Edward to Breda. But no - that one was his responsibility, alas. He should have brought Riza, instead of leaving her in charge of his office. "Take the men and scout around the area. See if these people have left anything of interest nearby."
With a sigh, he stripped off his gloves again and strode heavily to Fullmetal's side, where he knelt on the ground in Breda's vacated spot; aware of activity carrying on around them, but only peripherally. He frowned down at the boy and tried to quash the faint irritation he felt, since it seemed that this time it was probably unfair. "Can you stand?"
Edward looked down, then uncomfortably back up to almost meet his eyes. "I think that's pretty unlikely... uh, I... I'm sorry, Colonel. There weren't any hostages in the cart. They told me to say that, and they said they'd shoot me in the head if I didn't, and after all I can't get Al his body back if I get shot in the head, so -- I lied for them. I'm sorry! I mean, they did have some people. I saw them, but I don't think I was supposed to. And they were back at that place, anyway, not in the cart."
"That's o--" The babbling was almost a whimper, and damn it, he didn't know how to deal with a traumatised child. He was simultaneously rocked back by the waft of odour that came off Fullmetal's breath. What the hell? "Have you been drinking?"
Ed grimaced. "They made me swallow a lot of stuff. I didn't like it. I couldn't concentrate and I don't like not being able to concentrate. Two - no, three times. Last night and yesterday morning, I think, and the first time was the day before. Today it made me throw up and my head hurts, but at least I can think a lot better now."
Roy cursed, then broke off. There were no words. "Edward, I'm going to lift you up. Tell me what hurts and where I need to be careful."
"Arm. Bastards broke m' arm. Both, but at least the metal one doesn't hurt." His mouth curled into a snarl full of little sharp white teeth, which Roy appreciated because it reminded him that this was Edward Elric, whom the loss of two limbs at once had markedly failed to stop.
"Well, we'll get it fixed. Both of them."
"...Winry's gonna kill me... She's gonna fuckin' kill me..." A barely audible mumble.
What? That little blonde girl in Resembool? Roy blinked. "My soldiers don't use that sort of language, Fullmetal," he said sharply. Which was definitely not true, and certainly not when they had had all hell kicked out of them, but he wasn't going to passively listen to those sorts of words from the mouth of a twelve year old, either. "Anything else apart from the arm?"
"Back... um. Argh." The kid made a strangled sound, and shook his head, lank blond hair moving stiffly because it was gummed with who-knew-what and all too evidently hadn't been washed in a while. He gave off the general impression that he'd have made some sort of gesture had he possessed a functioning limb to do it with. "Just go for it, Colonel, and mind the arm."
Resisting the impulse to make comment on being ordered around by a beat-up twelve year old, Roy took him at his word, because if anything, the kid certainly knew about his own pain tolerance. He had never carried a child before, for all that he had carried injured men on the battlefield. It was an odd feeling to fold the smaller body against him. He waited while the stub of metal arm curled about his shoulder, and regretted the whole idea when he tried to stand up and his back screamed as it took the kid's weight. Automail. Right. This was a nice new way to look decidedly unmanly in front of his own men, he reflected, as he staggered with his troublesome burden to the nearest truck. Damn it, he knew he must look ridiculous, because Fullmetal was tiny... and how did he move around all that weight of artificial body parts, anyway?
The kid had given a little gulp initially, but otherwise didn't respond again until he was placed down on the wide seat in the back of the truck, at which point he yowled mutedly and squirmed like an eel until he was lying on his stomach. Back. Okay. His own back twinging sympathetically, Roy seated himself on what remained of the seat and was glad the boy was short. He could hear the muffled voices of Falman and Havoc, and Alphonse Elric's -- faintly embarrassed -- carrying through from the covered trailer to the rear.
"Let me look at your arm."
Instead, Edward clutched it to his side. "It's broken. A lot. I know that. I don't think there's anything anyone can do short of a doctor."
"All right." So far as Roy was concerned, the kid was talking, and moving, and other than his general scratched-up state he didn't appear to be losing blood, and frankly, Fullmetal probably knew more about human anatomy than he did. He was more than happy to leave this task to a doctor. "We'll get you proper medical assistance soon. In the meantime, I'll find you some painkillers."
"That'd be nice," Fullmetal mumbled into the seat.
They would go to the nearest town with a military presence, he decided, once he'd returned from his brief foray for a basic medical kit and a water bottle and seated himself once again next to the boy, trying to politely forget the fact he'd just had to place the tablets into Edward's mouth and tip the water for him to drink. Once there, he could commandeer facilities and medical personnel, as well as people to help tackle this new group of troublemakers Fullmetal had been unlucky enough to discover. He leaned back and sighed, listening to the kid's regular, pain-filled pants of breath.
Didn't you think about this when you decided to sponsor a twelve year old as a State Alchemist? his cynical inner voice accused.
He knew he'd thought about it. State Alchemists got hurt. Sometimes State Alchemists got killed.
Or did you simply not care? the voice added, snidely.
"Report, Fullmetal," he said blandly. "Everything you know about these people. Everything they said to you, word for word or as close as you remember. Everything you can tell me about these 'hostages' they didn't want you to see they were holding."
Edward rasped a non-regulation, but in this instance probably forgivable, "I guess..."
***
2.
Report of State Alchemist Edward Elric (Major) : codename Fullmetal : 14.12.11
"There were six of them, at least at first, although I saw other faces later, so there were probably at least twice that many in all. We weren't expecting to be attacked - I mean, we were investigating why all the local wells were drying up this year, so I doubt they were anything to do with the mission. I don't know where things... shit. Damn. No, I know where things went wrong: they were big guys who knew how to fight and we were outmatched, especially when they surprised us like that. I remember Al was trying to hold off two of them and I was transmuting blocks from the ground everywhere to try take care of the rest, but we were near a place where they were setting fences along the side of the road, and one of them picked up this huge hammer. That was how they smashed my arms and stopped me transmuting. I guess I'm pretty lucky he hit the metal one first.
"Once they had me down they made Al stop fighting. They wanted him to take the armour off, but of course he couldn't. I really thought they were going to smash us both to bits with the hammer, so I told Al to start dismantling himself and I told the bastards that he was an alchemical construct that I'd created to be my bodyguard, because at least that way he wasn't broken, and even with my arms like this there was more chance I could put him back together, and he'd be able to get us away from them.
"They took us to a place that... it was big. A farm, I think, rather than a big house. It smelled a bit like cows, but not like there were any cows actually there, it wasn't that strong a smell. And it was messy, like dirty messy. I thought I could hear a train a few times, so the railway line must run nearby. I didn't think it was more than an hour from the town, but I was distracted by my arm hurting so I might not have judged that very well.
"At first they wanted information, but I don't know anything about your military stuff anyway, and then the bastards broke all my fingers and I think it pissed them off that they ran out so soon. Hah! They hauled at my arm for a while because they knew they'd already broken that, and then they did some electrical trick to what was left of my automail, which hurt more than anything else had, but the older guy who - I don't think there was anyone in charge, but they seemed to listen to him more when they argued - anyway, he came into the room and said they'd probably come close to stopping my heart and if they kept up with that they'd kill me. They argued about it for ages. The one with the really nasty beard said that plenty of children had died at Ishbal, and if I could cause this much mayhem now, what would it be like when I grew up and they put me on a battlefield? But I think the other guy won anyway, or else they decided I didn't know any military secrets after all, because after that they asked me what I did know and I told them a lot of really complicated alchemical formulas. That didn't make them very happy, either.
"The older guy who'd stopped them told the others that they could use me as an example. They talked about you and used some swear words I never even heard before. They don't like you at all, Colonel. Then they argued what to best do to me to make me an example, and I'm not gonna repeat some of that stuff because then I'd have to think about it again and I'd rather not. But they must have decided to think it over a day or two because they locked me up in a room and left me there.
"I used my automail to kick a hole in the wall and went to find Al, and that was when I saw them with those people. There were two men and a woman. One of the men was a lot younger, but I didn't get a really good look. They were all ragged and tired looking, but I think their clothes had been nice sometime. I thought that they were prisoners, too, because they looked scared, and the other men I'd seen before seemed to be acting pretty aggressive with them. Anyway, the younger one saw me, and the idiot gave me away! He cried out all surprised and they chased after me, which didn't last very long and when they caught me I got kicked and felt something crack in my side which must've been a rib, I suppose. And then... fucking bastards... they hit me some more. And then they put me in a cellar.
"There was a lot of junk lying around down there, and old cans of some really useful substances they were very stupid to leave me in there with. I got my boots off and, uh, used my toes to put some of the stuff together in such a way that made it, well, explode. Except I think I was just mad and tired and hurting and worried about Al, and really not thinking too clearly because of it all by then. When I blew down the door they heard it right away and came running in. Which was when they broke my leg and staked both my automail into the dirt floor so I couldn't move at all and poured that stuff down my throat. Everything's a bit unclear after that, although I'm pretty sure that first I remember yelling a lot, and then I got dizzy and I think I fell asleep.
"I was stuck there for ages and they didn't let me up at all, just made me drink more of that stuff whenever I started to come round, but there was a bit of light from an iron grating and I remember it being night twice, which was cold, and they didn't even feed me either. It felt like very early on in the morning when they got me loose of the cellar floor - which took ages and was pretty funny, or at least it seemed to be at the time, especially since it was their own stupid fault. They seemed to have decided I was already a good enough example because they'd broken so much, and I definitely remember that they said they didn't want me hanging around there for ages, so I guess that means they've had those other people a while. Actually what they said was 'this awful brat', and that's just not fair because how do they expect someone to behave if they kidnap them and break their arms? They tried to make me memorise a bunch of things they wanted said to you at that point, but I wasn't making a lot of sense, which was obviously also their own stupid fault, so they gave up and decided to do it later. They did try to feed me then, but I didn't really want it by that time and I threw up. I didn't feel very well. I still don't. Is that the alcohol? Do people seriously drink it on purpose?
"I knew by that time they were letting me go, but I was scared that they weren't going to take Al back with me because they thought he was just bits of metal, and I didn't dare say anything either because if I protested and gave them any reason to think he was important they might keep him because of that, too. When they put me on the cart Al's box was still there, though, right where they'd left it, and I felt better. They just dumped us both off the cart in pieces, which you saw.
"Anyway, their stupid message, that they said again before they threw us out of the cart was: 'We are the Eastern Peoples' Liberation Army. Our mission is to see an end to a government that sends its people from their farms to battlefields of slaughter, and to see the end of a military whose upper ranks are formed of war criminals. We demand a more equal distribution of the country's wealth among the people and the cessation of military use of alchemists to strongarm its own citizens and serve as weapons of war, returning them to the service of the people where they belong. Blah blah blah blah...' 'Cessation' was my word, not theirs. Theirs didn't make sense. I don't think they're very well educated bastard kidnappers."
Roy grimaced again as he re-read the report in his hand, the typed sheet courtesy of the walking memory that was Warrant Officer Falman, who had been driving them at the time. It was the first occasion he'd ever had a report from one of Fullmetal's missions that was actually legible. Try as he might while they sat in the back of that truck earlier, he had failed to prise any more remembrance from the boy regarding what 'blah blah blah blah' represented, and eventually Fullmetal had ended the debriefing by dozing off. Not long after, they'd reached the small garrison town of Braklup.
Across the surgical room, Edward now perched on a gurney with his lips pressed tight together and his metal parts all missing space and impossible angles, while the doctor - whose name was Rachel; pretty girl - tried to patch the flesh parts of him back together. He should be in tears, Roy thought. Or there should at least have been tears, somewhere along the line. But there hadn't been, even when the doctor had briefly sent Roy away, a while since. He was, as a point of fact, incredibly relieved that Fullmetal wasn't in tears, but that was for his own sake, not Edward's. This silent stoicism wasn't natural in a child of that age.
What's not natural is that he's twelve years old, and he looks ten, and who the hell breaks all of a little boy's fingers?
The tally of injuries was... well, he'd feared worse, but it was still a depressing list that he'd have gone to lengths to avoid. The damage to Edward's arms had clearly been done with the intention of disabling his alchemy, and the left lower arm was indeed broken - splinted now, fairly lightly to allow as much mobility as possible to a patient already an arm down. The fingers were individually splinted, as well. From the elbow upwards, the doctor had declared a probable muscle sprain, stated that there was little she could do for it bar providing painkillers in plentiful supply, and that it would probably hurt more than the broken bones for a couple of weeks.
Edward had been correct in his assessment that a kick had left him with a cracked rib. A bit more prodding had teased the reluctant admission from him that he'd also received what his abductors had considered the sort of 'damned good hiding' owed to boys who didn't behave themselves: namely, multiple red marks across his lower back and buttocks where he'd been hit repeatedly with a heavy belt. Which explained his earlier reluctance to clarify the nature of his injuries.
Roy really wanted to genuinely feel that the excesses his captors had gone to were appalling overkill, but from his own long experience of trying to control the Fullmetal Alchemist, he found instead that he was afflicted by a sort of horrified understanding. It didn't stop him from almost vibrating with rage while he watched the silent boy receive the doctor's administrations.
Somebody had done this to one of his people, and by the sounds of things they had done it primarily to make a point to him.
As the delightful Doctor Rachel was helping Edward to pull on the clean t-shirt from the pile of small clothes the garrison commander's wife had provided (the garrison commander's son was nine years old, and there had been strict instructions passed around that nobody mention this fact to Edward), there came a quiet tap upon the doorframe. "Excuse me? I was told someone was needed to look at some automail... oh." The polite-voiced young man in spectacles faltered as he caught sight of his client. "That's... I thought it was a military personnel request." He eyed Roy's uniform and the child on the gurney.
"Just look at... at Edward's arm and leg, please, Mr Danner." Roy supposed it was just as well the engineer was so late, since at least Fullmetal was now partially reclothed and upright and no longer seeming about to die of embarrassment over the stripes etched in his skin. He also consciously avoided complicating the situation further by mention of Edward's title or default military rank, tempted as he was.
"Argh! Get away!" It was nothing short of amazing that Fullmetal could scuttle back from Danner's hands with just one good leg and half an arm to work with. "Winry'll gut me if you touch her automail. She'll kill me!"
"We're a long way from Resembool," Roy said reasonably, "and by the look of things, we'll be staying here a while to deal with these people. Do you want to spend that time mobile, or not?"
Edward made a strangled noise but stopped wriggling in circles around the top of the gurney and let Danner at his leg. "Just - make it a temporary fix. Enough for a few weeks. And quick, 'cause I don't wanna be sitting around, okay - Colonel Bastard's right about that." He looked glum, very much the expression of a condemned man. "But that way I can get Winry to do the proper work later, and I might get out of this in one… agh, in no less pieces." He groaned.
A tool kit was briskly opened, and within half an hour the leg joint faced the right way again and creaked appallingly when flexed, but could at least be walked upon. The fact that Ed immediately fell over when he stood up to test it out was not the automail's fault. "Head's... spinnin'..." He spoke like he had a mouth full of wool.
"That's because you're drunk," Roy said.
"Hungover," the doctor corrected. "Sit down." She dragged the boy back onto the gurney. Roy enjoyed a warm glow. He appreciated commanding women.
"Congratulations, by the way," he added to Fullmetal. "I was fourteen, so you've got me beat by two years." He joked about it while feeling annoyingly raw. A man's first experience of alcoholic excess was meant to be a rite of passage shared with equally young and idiotic friends, not someone's idea of restraint. "What about the arm?" he asked Danner.
The mechanic eyed it. "Where's the rest?" He was pointed to a tray on a nearby table containing elbow-joint-down of one small automail arm and a few smaller pieces that hadn't been a part of Al's armour and so presumably fit somewhere. Havoc had also found Fullmetal's silver watch among the debris, but Roy had taken that for temporary safekeeping.
"Pardon me, young man--" Danner uncoupled the upper arm segment from Edward's shoulder with no more warning than that, and left the boy glaring outrage at his back as he headed for the tray. He shook his head at the collection. "You haven't a hope. It's fine work - a real shame somebody wrecked it. The original artist might be able to fix it, given time, but I'm afraid I wouldn't know where to start."
Edward paled more than he had at any other time during the whole proceedings and wailed, "It wasn't my fault! They couldn't figure out how to take it off, and even though it was already broken, I could hardly just have told them that, could I? I didn't know they were gonna smash it right off! She's going to kill me!"
Danner looked at Roy, who shrugged. "I could probably bring a spare..." he hazarded cautiously. "A basic spare, for use on a temporary basis. It would be disproportionately large, of course--"
"--Who are you callin' SMALL--?"
"--and I would have to adjust the mechanism to fit the boy's shoulder port, which would cost, and I'd need it shipped back to me post-haste, which would also be expensive, but at least he'd have a semi-functional limb until his left arm heals."
"Yeah," Edward piped up, surprising them both. "I want that. I'm good for the money. But no wooden prosthetic shit. I have to have something metal with proper current and nerve connections running through it. I don't care if it's too big or if it's heavy." Because he needed a limb like that to enable his alchemy, Roy tagged on mentally.
He narrowed his eyes. This was headed somewhere. He could feel it.
Danner departed, leaving the tray of disassembled limb on a worksurface. Ed looked at it for a long moment as though he was considering asking for the stub to be reattached, since it at least gave him an iota more mobility, but the broken edges were sharp and it was decidedly doubtful the doctor would have any truck with the request, and evidently Fullmetal came to the same conclusion because he shifted his furtive glances to Roy instead, chewing his lower lip as if he wanted very much to say something but didn't quite dare. Eventually Roy gave up and leaned close to faux-whisper, "What?"
"Don't be an ass, Colonel," the boy growled.
"Huh... And there was I thinking that all these sidelong looks meant you had something to say. Nervous twitch?"
Fullmetal scowled, but quickly panicked when Roy made a deliberately slow turn to walk away. "Wait! Colonel Mustang, wait! I just need to - need to ask--" His words were hushed, making it necessary to lean right down again to hear him at all. "Colonel," Edward said, with tangible desperation and a note of plea he'd never heard in that voice before. "You won't... you won't tell anyone that they beat me across their knee like a little kid, will you?" Shame tinged his face red - the damaged pride of a child living an adult role - and Roy actually hurt for him, even while he half wanted to laugh. Though the least of his physical injuries, it was something that his abductors would never have inflicted upon an adult prisoner, and Edward insistently did not think of himself as a child.
He shook his head sombrely and patted a blond crown, which only made the boy squirm. "It goes no further than this room, I promise. I'll talk to the doctor, too."
***
He ushered Doctor Rachel into a side room under guise of doing precisely that.
"So--" and he noticed, somewhere automatic at the back of his mind, that she smiled very prettily when he spoke to her. "What is the damage, really? I've no doubt there are things he would never willingly share with me. They didn't... interfere with him, or anything like that?"
She shook her head and looked inappropriately amused. "No, but you'd think I had tried to from the way he carried on when I asked him." Well, that did explain it. "Take his left arm out of the equation and the only significant damage was done to his automail. The rest no doubt hurts, but it's superficial. He'll be fine. He's a robust kid, despite the amputations. He's a precocious little shit, but I don't actually have a cure for that. Sorry."
Roy let his face fall in line with her humour, then smiled dryly. "He's probably one of the finest minds in all Amestris, alchemic or otherwise... Awful, isn't it?"
"I confess to having no idea how you reconcile yourself with that knowledge, Mr. Colonel Mustang," she said. "It must eat away at you when you're lying in bed at night."
Really - and he congratulated himself - he wasn't going to get a better opening than that.
***
3.
Alphonse Elric's report consisted, almost in its entirety, of "I was in a box for two days and I didn't see anything, I'm really sorry." Roy sighed and slumped into his paperwork. How could somebody so small generate so much paperwork? Braklup's garrison had even cleared out an office, just for him, so that he could complete said paperwork. He mulled over his chances of persuading the Fullmetal Alchemist and his brother to concentrate their search and activities to the far north in the future. It was all simply too depressing for words.
While he had tried to offer the support of his companionship to his injured 'soldier' - he was a dutiful commander and the presence of the attractive doctor he had arranged a later date with had nothing at all to do with it - he had presently decided that he must have more practical and useful things to do than listen to said lady's increasingly irate attempts to get Edward to agree to a bath. (Because he frankly stank. And, as anyone would who had spent over a day and a half pinned to the floor periodically having large quantities of alcohol poured into them, not just of the alcohol.) It was not the bath but the assistance required that provided the source of the objection. Roy had made himself swiftly scarce and recommended tracking down Alphonse, if they'd finished patching up the last dents in the younger Elric brother. Fullmetal would never forgive him if his help was forcibly volunteered, in any case.
The telephone rang shrilly, waking him up. He moaned and lifted the receiver to his ear, assuming Doctor Rachel on an internal line and a dose more strife concerning Edward Elric.
It was an internal line, but the tones that greeted him were gruff and male and definitely not music to the ears. "We have a call from a man who identifies himself as a member of the Eastern Peoples' Liberation Army. He says he won't talk to anyone but the Flame Colonel. We're trying to track the call. Shall I transfer it through?"
Roy was instantly awake, alert and annoyed, his earlier fury flooding back. So those people wanted to talk to him now, did they? He realised his fingers were poised to click and, had he been wearing his gloves, he would have been a hair's breadth from destroying his borrowed office. While that was a clear tragedy, he would also never live down the embarrassing loss of control. "I'll speak to them. You get me their location." The phone line clicked.
"So this is the actual Flame Colonel? The real deal?" He thought it was the voice from the cart, sounding both impatient and mocking.
"It's Mustang. Might I ask to what I owe this call?"
"Did your midget alchemist tell you about us, or is he still busy wailing for his mommy?"
The receiver crunched audibly beneath the grip of Roy's hand. "My midget alchemist will recover completely, no thanks to you people. And when I arrest--" incinerate "--you, in amongst a very long list of other offences, I intend to charge you with giving alcohol to a minor and actual bodily harm to the person of a ranking military officer. Doesn't your mission statement have something to say on the issue of torturing children?"
"We made a special case for that one," the voice growled in that very special tone learned swiftly by any adult who experienced prolonged contact with Edward. "But I didn't call to waste more time on your little toy soldier. You know who we are, so I take it that our message was delivered."
"To be precise, a list of vague, sweeping, and impossible demands was delivered. Does none of your people possess any political acumen, or did you all learn about how the world works from fairy tales? Not even the fuhrer could make any of your requests happen, even if he were so inclined, and I regret to inform you that abusing a State Alchemist is not the way to ask nicely. I am also--" regrettably "--not the fuhrer. He's taller, and he wears an eye patch. Do you have an itinerary that we can actually talk about, or are you limited to the realms of the impossible?"
"Do you regret any one of the things that you did in Ishbal in the name of this corrupt government?" Anger lashed at him from the other end of the line. "'War hero'."
"Every day," Roy said. "My recent resume, however, does not feature 'victimising small boys'. Don't even think of moralising with me. You threw away your moral high ground."
"The brat can be grateful for his youth. We'd have sent an adult soldier back to you without his head. We still might send the Rydells back that way."
Roy stilled. He'd been waiting for something like this. "So you admit that you have them."
"Don't play games. The brat saw. If he told you the rest, your clockwork mouse will have squeaked about that, too."
"You've had them a long time, and you've never made any demands," Roy said carefully. "What is it that you want, from them or us?"
"We want," the voice came again, nastily, "to be taken seriously." The call was abruptly cut off. A split second later, the internal line rang again and a grim voice delivered a resounding negative.
Damn! Roy jumped up and marched from the temporary office, around the corner, and turned off the corridor into the outer office containing, among other things, the typing pool, which he'd already explored earlier. He slammed the door back and loudly demanded, "Who are the Rydells, how long have they been missing, and who can help me organise a task force to track them down before one or all of them shows up dead?"
A dozen manicured hands waved prettily in the air.
***
Fullmetal wasn't confined to bed when Roy found him again. He wasn't even in the medical section: rather, he and Alphonse had somehow connived their own quarters from the garrison commander. It had been almost eighteen hours since last he'd seen the boy, though, and a whole night had passed in the intervening hours, so perhaps it wasn't unreasonable.
Fullmetal was sitting on the floor, his hair washed and brushed but palely carpeting the back of his neck in a loose cascade. Also decidedly not part of the usual picture was the fact he was dressed in the tiniest uniform Roy had ever seen, or at least in uniform pants and a black t-shirt, with a jacket hanging loosely over the back of a nearby chair. Presumably Alphonse had used alchemy to alter the size, because he was almost certain that even the women's uniforms were not pre-made that small. Edward bared his teeth defensively as he caught Roy's stare and pre-emptively growled, "You think I'm going to walk around wearing the cast-offs of a nine year old, Colonel Bastard?"
Ah. So some idiot had told him, and apparently Roy was personally responsible. This was nothing new, however, so Roy took it manfully in his stride. He never did have the chance to get in his own witty response, though it would have been a cutting gem of a retort that would undoubtedly have left the boy in awe of him for life. Instead, his eyes registered the automail now reattached to Fullmetal's shoulder, and in doing so it became difficult to credit that it had been the uniform which caught his attention first.
It was enormous, ugly, ungainly, and almost farcical. He stared, lost for words, as Edward rotated the arm and performed a series of grasping motions at differing angles, in what was clearly a variant of physiotherapy for automail users and just as clearly a familiar rote for the child, though he did appear to be having difficulty balancing its weight. His upper body lurched forward each time at the extremes of the movements, and he would grimace and correct himself. The sight was extremely unsettling. Roy was accustomed to seeing Fullmetal strut around with his dinky, finely-made Rockbell automail, limbs all in proportion with his dinky body and seeming all equally as much a part of him, metal and flesh alike. And even though Roy had first seen him over a year ago without any limbs in those spaces at all, sometimes it almost seemed he could have been born with the metal attached. The clumsy, oversized arm ripped that perception to shreds.
Roy found his voice, which was hardly enthused. "That's... more useful than nothing." Probably. Barely.
"He's definitely not Winry," Edward said wistfully. "The nerve connections are rubbish, as well - it's like I've got pins and needles all through my automail. But at least it's an arm."
"I can't believe how much that - that - that man is making brother pay him for the use of that - that - that!" Alphonse stuttered, child's voice higher than usual in comical outrage. "Colonel, you can say something, can't you?"
Roy raised one shoulder in half a shrug. "It's Edward's expenses. If he wants to let himself get ripped off--"
"Ripped off?! You can talk about ripped off after you've had your ARM ripped off!" Fullmetal yelled at him. "Besides, I've already paid Danner, so the lot of you can just shut up!" He looked abruptly guilty, and it wasn't hard to see why. Inasmuch as it was possible for a suit of armour to huddle, his brother was currently doing so quite adeptly. "Sorry, Al." He scratched at his face with the automail fingers and almost did himself further damage. Roy wondered if all of the bruises visible on his skin, now he'd cleaned up, were courtesy of his captors.
"I did come to talk to you about something," Roy said. He scratched his head trying to remember what it was, then looked down at the fingers he'd used to do it. Ah, yes. He sat down uninvited on the edge of the bed and ignored Edward's glare. "The other prisoners that you saw are a local family called the Rydells. They've been missing for some weeks. The head of the household, Anton Rydell, came back from Ishbal a war hero." He'd leaned on a statue of the man for almost an hour at the remote crossroads. "He's something of a local celebrity. Rich, too-- a Major, retired, with a generous pension."
"I'm a Major," Fullmetal said, with typical diplomacy and respect for the privilege of rank and the efforts it took regular people to rise to such a position. But there might have been something else in his voice, not readily identifiable - a hint of challenge, perhaps.
"And we all try our very best to block that damaging thought from our minds," Roy agreed. "In any case, given this group's demonstrated disenchantment with the military and the subject of Ishbal, we can well surmise that Mr. Rydell and his wife and son are not in a very comfortable position just now."
Edward flinched. "What are their names?" he asked hesitantly, as if caring would damage his reputation. "Rydell's wife, and his idiot son, too."
Idi-- oh. Yes, that was evidently a grudge that intended to stick around. "Megan and Luke. Luke is sixteen."
"Huh. He looked older." Edward's gaze wandered about the room, sticking on random corners and then on Alphonse for a while before darting back to Roy. "I... I guess you're doing something, right? You and... everyone. The guys from this place. But we're kind of involved now, so you'll not be walking away until this has been sorted out, even though this isn't your direct jurisdiction... I mean, obviously someone should look for them. Help them. Even idiot Luke."
He's fishing, thought Roy. "That's precisely the point that brought me here, Edward." He leaned forward and set his hands on his knees. Roy Mustang, you are an evil, immoral, despicable man. He was fully aware that he was going to give Fullmetal exactly the chance he wanted, and that no truly responsible adult would consider handing him. "We've been unable to adequately narrow down the location of their headquarters from the raw information. I think it would help if you joined the search. You might see something familiar, and--"
Fullmetal shot to his feet as though he was on strings someone up above had just given an enormous yank - quite the feat for a beat-up boy with one monstrosity of a semi-workable arm throwing him off balance. Roy was momentarily stricken with a horrible terror that he was going to be hugged. "No shit, Colonel! Damn, and I thought I was going to have to beg -- Al, help me get that jacket on -- When do we go, Colonel? -- Al, can you braid my hair? -- Do I get to command soldiers? -- Al, pull my boots on for me, will ya? -- Can I have a gun--?"
Roy barely recognised the strangled noise that made it out of his throat as his voice. He slashed the air sharply with his hand to silence the boy, which worked predictably well, so he was forced to wait until the kid wound down (slapping a hand over his mouth seemed unwise given his trigger-happy temporary automail, and besides, if he was bitten he'd need shots). Once he’d paused for breath, Roy responded, curtly, "Not yet, we need to organise things first, but soon. And, no. And, hell no." Put a gun in that hand and he'd shoot off his own foot, and that was if the rest of the world was lucky.
"...I was kidding," Fullmetal sulked, scowling at his fingers.
Roy poked one of his own in the kid's face. "You will not be there to fight. Try to keep that in mind, because if there is any action, I fully expect you to be at the back."
"That's ridiculous!" Fullmetal roared, and Roy dragged his finger back because he liked it just fine where it was, next to its three fellows and attached to his hand. "I'm a State Alchemist! I can fight! I can still transmute -- watch."
Clad in the miniature military uniform right down to the jacket Alphonse had just tugged over his shoulders, he braced his feet apart, threw his bandaged and oversized automail arms wide, and brought them swinging together with a small yelp. A flash of alchemy and a dwindling whimper, and then he was dropping on a fiercely creaking knee to smack the automail palm against the floor. Floor, walls and ceiling promptly sprouted long spikes all aimed unerringly at Roy and ceasing their advance only inches from him.
"Ah..."
Edward clutched his broken arm to his chest, but looked smug. Roy could scarcely believe that he'd clapped the splinted fingers with those metal ones and still had them. "See?"
"Brother, you can't threaten to skewer a superior officer!" Alphonse scolded, but mostly in tones that suggested he hadn't done his homework or brushed his teeth, rather than was actively flirting with court martial. "Put the walls back! I'm sorry, Colonel. Ed--"
"Yeah, sure," Fullmetal grumbled.
"Wait..." Alphonse looked guiltily but determinedly at Roy, eyes hot points of light in that expressionless metal face. "If brother's going, then of course I have to go too..."
"Of course." He gritted the words through his teeth. "Edward, get rid of the spikes. Now. I mean it. I absolutely need to sneeze."
***
The thing was... the thing was, you see, that he had known Edward would do it. The thought turned over and over in his mind as the troops were talked through the new plan. Fullmetal would jump at the chance to strike back for his injured pride, and he could, in any case, definitely use an alchemist of Fullmetal's talents if he was to have the best chance possible to save that captive family's lives. The equation rounded off fairly simply; Edward was military, and they were not.
He was hardly using Fullmetal's skills against his will. He could see the boy sitting on the map table with flesh leg and clanking automail alike swinging down, his upper body bunched up in the jacket which, out of necessity to encompass too-large automail and splint, was of a size that swamped his small form. The chain of his State Alchemists' pocket watch was visible against his blue-swathed thigh, and his short braid whipped jauntily when he turned his head. He was as warlike and defiant as a twelve year old could be amid hardened military personnel he almost all technically outranked.
Putting forward a child as a State Alchemist had been an abominable idea, creating at once a travesty of the military system and a tragic joke of the boy with the title of an adult (who remained a genius, and worthy of respect). Fullmetal... Fullmetal, what a name. Yet Roy would do the same over, because it had earned him favour, and so, too, would Edward, because it gave him hope.
Adults were supposed to look out for the interests of children until they were old enough to judge for themselves, he berated himself. He did not act against Edward's wishes, but he knew he didn't act in Edward's interests. Then again, he never had.
***
Continue to next part
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: PG-13
LENGTH: 16,000 words approx
SUMMARY: Roy Mustang and Ed get a lesson in what it means to bring a 12 year old into the military after Edward falls into the hands of terrorists. Gen.
NOTES: Mangaverse, set a few months after Ed became a State Alchemist.
WARNINGS: Violence, language, cruelty to animals and small children.
THANKS: To sayhello for beta-reading.
DISCLAIMER: Fullmetal Alchemist belongs to Hiromu Arakawa and various other people not me. Not mine, no profit, yadda yadda yadda.
Toy Soldier
1.
Roy Mustang stood sweating in the middle of the dusty, empty crossroads, debating whether to loosen his collar and whether or not whichever hick local authorities they were here to deal with would even notice that his uniform defied regulation if he did. He cursed the unusually dry, warm winter spell that the east was experiencing. More than that, he cursed the Fullmetal boy and the reason he was standing out here in the middle of nowhere, almost a hundred miles from East City.
Behind him, Havoc shifted his feet and his grip on his rifle, because a Second Lieutenant who'd not brought along enough cigarettes and whose commanding officer refused a detour for the purchase of said cigarettes was a fidgety Second Lieutenant indeed. Breda and Falman were customarily quiet and professional. The rest of his own team were back at HQ, and the party's numbers made up by a dozen soldiers who looked hot and pissed off. The latter would be because some fool, somewhere along the line, had happened to mention to them what this so-important mission actually was.
The question uppermost on everyone's mind surely had to be: What the hell had that horrible little brat done now? Probably, it was second only to: What the hell possessed that crazy colonel to sponsor a kid as a State Alchemist in the first place?
Fullmetal's missions so far, Roy reflected, while often surprisingly adeptly and even ingeniously completed - albeit also with frequent paperwork detailing truly unreasonable amounts of property damage - did occasionally leave him feeling like the guardian of a wayward child, come to pick up and answer for his stray. It certainly was not the first time he'd received a communication to come and retrieve 'his' alchemist. He ground his teeth at the thought. Why did people assume that he was the kid's guardian? Sponsor did not equal babysitter.
Then again, he was here.
He blinked into the distance. He could see the dust trail of what presently revealed itself to be a covered cart, rounding the corner far down the road, between brown hedges. He leaned back against the wooden statue that was the crossroads' landmark - a one and a half times life size idol of some local war hero. It was carved from an ancient, lightning-struck tree, and was now rotting and growing mushrooms, which struck him as uniquely appropriate for anyone considered a hero of the Ishbal campaign. And he reflected, as he watched the approaching cart, that it was strange for them to ask for such a rendezvous, so far out of the way, so anonymous.
It was the first thread of unease to ooze through his annoyance and start to register upon him that this situation was not normal. It wasn't nearly enough to prepare him.
The cart drew to a halt a wary distance off. Roy stared, and some of the soldiers started as a large amount of clattering metal was scattered out across the road. That were followed by a small, panting bundle of human misery which had all too obviously been shoved without particular care for how heavy or undignified its landing.
The twelve year old Fullmetal Alchemist was bundled up in his familiar red coat, which looked very unfamiliarly the worse for wear, tattered and dirty. There was something odd about the shape his limbs drew inside the bundle. A moment later, it registered that the coat wasn't the only red decorating the small form, and as Roy recognised the shapes of the metal debris that had first been tossed out of the cart, he grimly reached into his pocket and started to pull on his gloves.
"No!" Fullmetal shrieked, raw and childlike in his all-too-obvious desperation. "They've got... people in there! Hostages. Don't--"
There was something funny about his voice, too; an odd slur in it. Roy could now see the black muzzles that the shadows of the covered cart had grown. The driver was hooded and anonymous. A likewise anonymous adult male voice said, "Be glad you didn't get the kid back in smaller pieces. I trust he'll tell you what we want from you, Flame Colonel. Don't try following us."
He dared not risk that the boy's assertion about hostages was true, and had no choice but to watch, gloved hand raised uselessly, as the cart swung around, sending armour pieces scattering beneath the swath of its huge wooden wheels, only narrowly missing the boy as it completed a full circle and sped back the way it had come.
Breda was the first man at the boy's side, because despite his brusque attitude, Breda was a sap. Not that he sounded like it when he snapped explosively, "Damn it, kid!" and swatted a hand at Fullmetal's grimy blond head. Though the blow distinctly failed to connect.
"...It... went a bit wrong." Fullmetal avoided any of their eyes and scrabbled around on the ground trying to turn himself. Though it was difficult to distinguish any injuries beneath that coat of his, he did not seem too hurt so much as not especially mobile. Indeed, Roy registered then where the wrongness in his outline came from - he was missing at least half his right arm, and there was something horribly twisted about the angle of his left leg. Even knowing that those limbs were machines, it remained a nauseating realisation. "Al... Al, you can probably talk again now, they've gone. Tell me you're okay!"
"Are you all right, brother?" the familiar voice piped up, more disembodied than usual and sounding thoroughly forlorn. "I'm sorry, I couldn't fight them, I let them--"
"It's not like I did a great job, either. Don't worry about those bastards now, anyway. We'll have you put back together in no time." He'd located Al's head to direct the words to. That had been what all the squirming around was about. Now he tried to shuffle towards it. Havoc picked it up and tried to place it in his hands, only to discover that the boy didn't appear to have a working limb to hold onto his little brother with.
Roy forced himself into action. He was in charge here.... Something was required of him. He couldn't, for instance, have Alphonse Elric idly chatting away as disembodied pieces of armour in front of the regular soldiers. "Havoc, Falman - get the armour pieces into the truck and start reassembling them. Breda--" He debated, momentarily, leaving Edward to Breda. But no - that one was his responsibility, alas. He should have brought Riza, instead of leaving her in charge of his office. "Take the men and scout around the area. See if these people have left anything of interest nearby."
With a sigh, he stripped off his gloves again and strode heavily to Fullmetal's side, where he knelt on the ground in Breda's vacated spot; aware of activity carrying on around them, but only peripherally. He frowned down at the boy and tried to quash the faint irritation he felt, since it seemed that this time it was probably unfair. "Can you stand?"
Edward looked down, then uncomfortably back up to almost meet his eyes. "I think that's pretty unlikely... uh, I... I'm sorry, Colonel. There weren't any hostages in the cart. They told me to say that, and they said they'd shoot me in the head if I didn't, and after all I can't get Al his body back if I get shot in the head, so -- I lied for them. I'm sorry! I mean, they did have some people. I saw them, but I don't think I was supposed to. And they were back at that place, anyway, not in the cart."
"That's o--" The babbling was almost a whimper, and damn it, he didn't know how to deal with a traumatised child. He was simultaneously rocked back by the waft of odour that came off Fullmetal's breath. What the hell? "Have you been drinking?"
Ed grimaced. "They made me swallow a lot of stuff. I didn't like it. I couldn't concentrate and I don't like not being able to concentrate. Two - no, three times. Last night and yesterday morning, I think, and the first time was the day before. Today it made me throw up and my head hurts, but at least I can think a lot better now."
Roy cursed, then broke off. There were no words. "Edward, I'm going to lift you up. Tell me what hurts and where I need to be careful."
"Arm. Bastards broke m' arm. Both, but at least the metal one doesn't hurt." His mouth curled into a snarl full of little sharp white teeth, which Roy appreciated because it reminded him that this was Edward Elric, whom the loss of two limbs at once had markedly failed to stop.
"Well, we'll get it fixed. Both of them."
"...Winry's gonna kill me... She's gonna fuckin' kill me..." A barely audible mumble.
What? That little blonde girl in Resembool? Roy blinked. "My soldiers don't use that sort of language, Fullmetal," he said sharply. Which was definitely not true, and certainly not when they had had all hell kicked out of them, but he wasn't going to passively listen to those sorts of words from the mouth of a twelve year old, either. "Anything else apart from the arm?"
"Back... um. Argh." The kid made a strangled sound, and shook his head, lank blond hair moving stiffly because it was gummed with who-knew-what and all too evidently hadn't been washed in a while. He gave off the general impression that he'd have made some sort of gesture had he possessed a functioning limb to do it with. "Just go for it, Colonel, and mind the arm."
Resisting the impulse to make comment on being ordered around by a beat-up twelve year old, Roy took him at his word, because if anything, the kid certainly knew about his own pain tolerance. He had never carried a child before, for all that he had carried injured men on the battlefield. It was an odd feeling to fold the smaller body against him. He waited while the stub of metal arm curled about his shoulder, and regretted the whole idea when he tried to stand up and his back screamed as it took the kid's weight. Automail. Right. This was a nice new way to look decidedly unmanly in front of his own men, he reflected, as he staggered with his troublesome burden to the nearest truck. Damn it, he knew he must look ridiculous, because Fullmetal was tiny... and how did he move around all that weight of artificial body parts, anyway?
The kid had given a little gulp initially, but otherwise didn't respond again until he was placed down on the wide seat in the back of the truck, at which point he yowled mutedly and squirmed like an eel until he was lying on his stomach. Back. Okay. His own back twinging sympathetically, Roy seated himself on what remained of the seat and was glad the boy was short. He could hear the muffled voices of Falman and Havoc, and Alphonse Elric's -- faintly embarrassed -- carrying through from the covered trailer to the rear.
"Let me look at your arm."
Instead, Edward clutched it to his side. "It's broken. A lot. I know that. I don't think there's anything anyone can do short of a doctor."
"All right." So far as Roy was concerned, the kid was talking, and moving, and other than his general scratched-up state he didn't appear to be losing blood, and frankly, Fullmetal probably knew more about human anatomy than he did. He was more than happy to leave this task to a doctor. "We'll get you proper medical assistance soon. In the meantime, I'll find you some painkillers."
"That'd be nice," Fullmetal mumbled into the seat.
They would go to the nearest town with a military presence, he decided, once he'd returned from his brief foray for a basic medical kit and a water bottle and seated himself once again next to the boy, trying to politely forget the fact he'd just had to place the tablets into Edward's mouth and tip the water for him to drink. Once there, he could commandeer facilities and medical personnel, as well as people to help tackle this new group of troublemakers Fullmetal had been unlucky enough to discover. He leaned back and sighed, listening to the kid's regular, pain-filled pants of breath.
Didn't you think about this when you decided to sponsor a twelve year old as a State Alchemist? his cynical inner voice accused.
He knew he'd thought about it. State Alchemists got hurt. Sometimes State Alchemists got killed.
Or did you simply not care? the voice added, snidely.
"Report, Fullmetal," he said blandly. "Everything you know about these people. Everything they said to you, word for word or as close as you remember. Everything you can tell me about these 'hostages' they didn't want you to see they were holding."
Edward rasped a non-regulation, but in this instance probably forgivable, "I guess..."
***
2.
Report of State Alchemist Edward Elric (Major) : codename Fullmetal : 14.12.11
"There were six of them, at least at first, although I saw other faces later, so there were probably at least twice that many in all. We weren't expecting to be attacked - I mean, we were investigating why all the local wells were drying up this year, so I doubt they were anything to do with the mission. I don't know where things... shit. Damn. No, I know where things went wrong: they were big guys who knew how to fight and we were outmatched, especially when they surprised us like that. I remember Al was trying to hold off two of them and I was transmuting blocks from the ground everywhere to try take care of the rest, but we were near a place where they were setting fences along the side of the road, and one of them picked up this huge hammer. That was how they smashed my arms and stopped me transmuting. I guess I'm pretty lucky he hit the metal one first.
"Once they had me down they made Al stop fighting. They wanted him to take the armour off, but of course he couldn't. I really thought they were going to smash us both to bits with the hammer, so I told Al to start dismantling himself and I told the bastards that he was an alchemical construct that I'd created to be my bodyguard, because at least that way he wasn't broken, and even with my arms like this there was more chance I could put him back together, and he'd be able to get us away from them.
"They took us to a place that... it was big. A farm, I think, rather than a big house. It smelled a bit like cows, but not like there were any cows actually there, it wasn't that strong a smell. And it was messy, like dirty messy. I thought I could hear a train a few times, so the railway line must run nearby. I didn't think it was more than an hour from the town, but I was distracted by my arm hurting so I might not have judged that very well.
"At first they wanted information, but I don't know anything about your military stuff anyway, and then the bastards broke all my fingers and I think it pissed them off that they ran out so soon. Hah! They hauled at my arm for a while because they knew they'd already broken that, and then they did some electrical trick to what was left of my automail, which hurt more than anything else had, but the older guy who - I don't think there was anyone in charge, but they seemed to listen to him more when they argued - anyway, he came into the room and said they'd probably come close to stopping my heart and if they kept up with that they'd kill me. They argued about it for ages. The one with the really nasty beard said that plenty of children had died at Ishbal, and if I could cause this much mayhem now, what would it be like when I grew up and they put me on a battlefield? But I think the other guy won anyway, or else they decided I didn't know any military secrets after all, because after that they asked me what I did know and I told them a lot of really complicated alchemical formulas. That didn't make them very happy, either.
"The older guy who'd stopped them told the others that they could use me as an example. They talked about you and used some swear words I never even heard before. They don't like you at all, Colonel. Then they argued what to best do to me to make me an example, and I'm not gonna repeat some of that stuff because then I'd have to think about it again and I'd rather not. But they must have decided to think it over a day or two because they locked me up in a room and left me there.
"I used my automail to kick a hole in the wall and went to find Al, and that was when I saw them with those people. There were two men and a woman. One of the men was a lot younger, but I didn't get a really good look. They were all ragged and tired looking, but I think their clothes had been nice sometime. I thought that they were prisoners, too, because they looked scared, and the other men I'd seen before seemed to be acting pretty aggressive with them. Anyway, the younger one saw me, and the idiot gave me away! He cried out all surprised and they chased after me, which didn't last very long and when they caught me I got kicked and felt something crack in my side which must've been a rib, I suppose. And then... fucking bastards... they hit me some more. And then they put me in a cellar.
"There was a lot of junk lying around down there, and old cans of some really useful substances they were very stupid to leave me in there with. I got my boots off and, uh, used my toes to put some of the stuff together in such a way that made it, well, explode. Except I think I was just mad and tired and hurting and worried about Al, and really not thinking too clearly because of it all by then. When I blew down the door they heard it right away and came running in. Which was when they broke my leg and staked both my automail into the dirt floor so I couldn't move at all and poured that stuff down my throat. Everything's a bit unclear after that, although I'm pretty sure that first I remember yelling a lot, and then I got dizzy and I think I fell asleep.
"I was stuck there for ages and they didn't let me up at all, just made me drink more of that stuff whenever I started to come round, but there was a bit of light from an iron grating and I remember it being night twice, which was cold, and they didn't even feed me either. It felt like very early on in the morning when they got me loose of the cellar floor - which took ages and was pretty funny, or at least it seemed to be at the time, especially since it was their own stupid fault. They seemed to have decided I was already a good enough example because they'd broken so much, and I definitely remember that they said they didn't want me hanging around there for ages, so I guess that means they've had those other people a while. Actually what they said was 'this awful brat', and that's just not fair because how do they expect someone to behave if they kidnap them and break their arms? They tried to make me memorise a bunch of things they wanted said to you at that point, but I wasn't making a lot of sense, which was obviously also their own stupid fault, so they gave up and decided to do it later. They did try to feed me then, but I didn't really want it by that time and I threw up. I didn't feel very well. I still don't. Is that the alcohol? Do people seriously drink it on purpose?
"I knew by that time they were letting me go, but I was scared that they weren't going to take Al back with me because they thought he was just bits of metal, and I didn't dare say anything either because if I protested and gave them any reason to think he was important they might keep him because of that, too. When they put me on the cart Al's box was still there, though, right where they'd left it, and I felt better. They just dumped us both off the cart in pieces, which you saw.
"Anyway, their stupid message, that they said again before they threw us out of the cart was: 'We are the Eastern Peoples' Liberation Army. Our mission is to see an end to a government that sends its people from their farms to battlefields of slaughter, and to see the end of a military whose upper ranks are formed of war criminals. We demand a more equal distribution of the country's wealth among the people and the cessation of military use of alchemists to strongarm its own citizens and serve as weapons of war, returning them to the service of the people where they belong. Blah blah blah blah...' 'Cessation' was my word, not theirs. Theirs didn't make sense. I don't think they're very well educated bastard kidnappers."
Roy grimaced again as he re-read the report in his hand, the typed sheet courtesy of the walking memory that was Warrant Officer Falman, who had been driving them at the time. It was the first occasion he'd ever had a report from one of Fullmetal's missions that was actually legible. Try as he might while they sat in the back of that truck earlier, he had failed to prise any more remembrance from the boy regarding what 'blah blah blah blah' represented, and eventually Fullmetal had ended the debriefing by dozing off. Not long after, they'd reached the small garrison town of Braklup.
Across the surgical room, Edward now perched on a gurney with his lips pressed tight together and his metal parts all missing space and impossible angles, while the doctor - whose name was Rachel; pretty girl - tried to patch the flesh parts of him back together. He should be in tears, Roy thought. Or there should at least have been tears, somewhere along the line. But there hadn't been, even when the doctor had briefly sent Roy away, a while since. He was, as a point of fact, incredibly relieved that Fullmetal wasn't in tears, but that was for his own sake, not Edward's. This silent stoicism wasn't natural in a child of that age.
What's not natural is that he's twelve years old, and he looks ten, and who the hell breaks all of a little boy's fingers?
The tally of injuries was... well, he'd feared worse, but it was still a depressing list that he'd have gone to lengths to avoid. The damage to Edward's arms had clearly been done with the intention of disabling his alchemy, and the left lower arm was indeed broken - splinted now, fairly lightly to allow as much mobility as possible to a patient already an arm down. The fingers were individually splinted, as well. From the elbow upwards, the doctor had declared a probable muscle sprain, stated that there was little she could do for it bar providing painkillers in plentiful supply, and that it would probably hurt more than the broken bones for a couple of weeks.
Edward had been correct in his assessment that a kick had left him with a cracked rib. A bit more prodding had teased the reluctant admission from him that he'd also received what his abductors had considered the sort of 'damned good hiding' owed to boys who didn't behave themselves: namely, multiple red marks across his lower back and buttocks where he'd been hit repeatedly with a heavy belt. Which explained his earlier reluctance to clarify the nature of his injuries.
Roy really wanted to genuinely feel that the excesses his captors had gone to were appalling overkill, but from his own long experience of trying to control the Fullmetal Alchemist, he found instead that he was afflicted by a sort of horrified understanding. It didn't stop him from almost vibrating with rage while he watched the silent boy receive the doctor's administrations.
Somebody had done this to one of his people, and by the sounds of things they had done it primarily to make a point to him.
As the delightful Doctor Rachel was helping Edward to pull on the clean t-shirt from the pile of small clothes the garrison commander's wife had provided (the garrison commander's son was nine years old, and there had been strict instructions passed around that nobody mention this fact to Edward), there came a quiet tap upon the doorframe. "Excuse me? I was told someone was needed to look at some automail... oh." The polite-voiced young man in spectacles faltered as he caught sight of his client. "That's... I thought it was a military personnel request." He eyed Roy's uniform and the child on the gurney.
"Just look at... at Edward's arm and leg, please, Mr Danner." Roy supposed it was just as well the engineer was so late, since at least Fullmetal was now partially reclothed and upright and no longer seeming about to die of embarrassment over the stripes etched in his skin. He also consciously avoided complicating the situation further by mention of Edward's title or default military rank, tempted as he was.
"Argh! Get away!" It was nothing short of amazing that Fullmetal could scuttle back from Danner's hands with just one good leg and half an arm to work with. "Winry'll gut me if you touch her automail. She'll kill me!"
"We're a long way from Resembool," Roy said reasonably, "and by the look of things, we'll be staying here a while to deal with these people. Do you want to spend that time mobile, or not?"
Edward made a strangled noise but stopped wriggling in circles around the top of the gurney and let Danner at his leg. "Just - make it a temporary fix. Enough for a few weeks. And quick, 'cause I don't wanna be sitting around, okay - Colonel Bastard's right about that." He looked glum, very much the expression of a condemned man. "But that way I can get Winry to do the proper work later, and I might get out of this in one… agh, in no less pieces." He groaned.
A tool kit was briskly opened, and within half an hour the leg joint faced the right way again and creaked appallingly when flexed, but could at least be walked upon. The fact that Ed immediately fell over when he stood up to test it out was not the automail's fault. "Head's... spinnin'..." He spoke like he had a mouth full of wool.
"That's because you're drunk," Roy said.
"Hungover," the doctor corrected. "Sit down." She dragged the boy back onto the gurney. Roy enjoyed a warm glow. He appreciated commanding women.
"Congratulations, by the way," he added to Fullmetal. "I was fourteen, so you've got me beat by two years." He joked about it while feeling annoyingly raw. A man's first experience of alcoholic excess was meant to be a rite of passage shared with equally young and idiotic friends, not someone's idea of restraint. "What about the arm?" he asked Danner.
The mechanic eyed it. "Where's the rest?" He was pointed to a tray on a nearby table containing elbow-joint-down of one small automail arm and a few smaller pieces that hadn't been a part of Al's armour and so presumably fit somewhere. Havoc had also found Fullmetal's silver watch among the debris, but Roy had taken that for temporary safekeeping.
"Pardon me, young man--" Danner uncoupled the upper arm segment from Edward's shoulder with no more warning than that, and left the boy glaring outrage at his back as he headed for the tray. He shook his head at the collection. "You haven't a hope. It's fine work - a real shame somebody wrecked it. The original artist might be able to fix it, given time, but I'm afraid I wouldn't know where to start."
Edward paled more than he had at any other time during the whole proceedings and wailed, "It wasn't my fault! They couldn't figure out how to take it off, and even though it was already broken, I could hardly just have told them that, could I? I didn't know they were gonna smash it right off! She's going to kill me!"
Danner looked at Roy, who shrugged. "I could probably bring a spare..." he hazarded cautiously. "A basic spare, for use on a temporary basis. It would be disproportionately large, of course--"
"--Who are you callin' SMALL--?"
"--and I would have to adjust the mechanism to fit the boy's shoulder port, which would cost, and I'd need it shipped back to me post-haste, which would also be expensive, but at least he'd have a semi-functional limb until his left arm heals."
"Yeah," Edward piped up, surprising them both. "I want that. I'm good for the money. But no wooden prosthetic shit. I have to have something metal with proper current and nerve connections running through it. I don't care if it's too big or if it's heavy." Because he needed a limb like that to enable his alchemy, Roy tagged on mentally.
He narrowed his eyes. This was headed somewhere. He could feel it.
Danner departed, leaving the tray of disassembled limb on a worksurface. Ed looked at it for a long moment as though he was considering asking for the stub to be reattached, since it at least gave him an iota more mobility, but the broken edges were sharp and it was decidedly doubtful the doctor would have any truck with the request, and evidently Fullmetal came to the same conclusion because he shifted his furtive glances to Roy instead, chewing his lower lip as if he wanted very much to say something but didn't quite dare. Eventually Roy gave up and leaned close to faux-whisper, "What?"
"Don't be an ass, Colonel," the boy growled.
"Huh... And there was I thinking that all these sidelong looks meant you had something to say. Nervous twitch?"
Fullmetal scowled, but quickly panicked when Roy made a deliberately slow turn to walk away. "Wait! Colonel Mustang, wait! I just need to - need to ask--" His words were hushed, making it necessary to lean right down again to hear him at all. "Colonel," Edward said, with tangible desperation and a note of plea he'd never heard in that voice before. "You won't... you won't tell anyone that they beat me across their knee like a little kid, will you?" Shame tinged his face red - the damaged pride of a child living an adult role - and Roy actually hurt for him, even while he half wanted to laugh. Though the least of his physical injuries, it was something that his abductors would never have inflicted upon an adult prisoner, and Edward insistently did not think of himself as a child.
He shook his head sombrely and patted a blond crown, which only made the boy squirm. "It goes no further than this room, I promise. I'll talk to the doctor, too."
***
He ushered Doctor Rachel into a side room under guise of doing precisely that.
"So--" and he noticed, somewhere automatic at the back of his mind, that she smiled very prettily when he spoke to her. "What is the damage, really? I've no doubt there are things he would never willingly share with me. They didn't... interfere with him, or anything like that?"
She shook her head and looked inappropriately amused. "No, but you'd think I had tried to from the way he carried on when I asked him." Well, that did explain it. "Take his left arm out of the equation and the only significant damage was done to his automail. The rest no doubt hurts, but it's superficial. He'll be fine. He's a robust kid, despite the amputations. He's a precocious little shit, but I don't actually have a cure for that. Sorry."
Roy let his face fall in line with her humour, then smiled dryly. "He's probably one of the finest minds in all Amestris, alchemic or otherwise... Awful, isn't it?"
"I confess to having no idea how you reconcile yourself with that knowledge, Mr. Colonel Mustang," she said. "It must eat away at you when you're lying in bed at night."
Really - and he congratulated himself - he wasn't going to get a better opening than that.
***
3.
Alphonse Elric's report consisted, almost in its entirety, of "I was in a box for two days and I didn't see anything, I'm really sorry." Roy sighed and slumped into his paperwork. How could somebody so small generate so much paperwork? Braklup's garrison had even cleared out an office, just for him, so that he could complete said paperwork. He mulled over his chances of persuading the Fullmetal Alchemist and his brother to concentrate their search and activities to the far north in the future. It was all simply too depressing for words.
While he had tried to offer the support of his companionship to his injured 'soldier' - he was a dutiful commander and the presence of the attractive doctor he had arranged a later date with had nothing at all to do with it - he had presently decided that he must have more practical and useful things to do than listen to said lady's increasingly irate attempts to get Edward to agree to a bath. (Because he frankly stank. And, as anyone would who had spent over a day and a half pinned to the floor periodically having large quantities of alcohol poured into them, not just of the alcohol.) It was not the bath but the assistance required that provided the source of the objection. Roy had made himself swiftly scarce and recommended tracking down Alphonse, if they'd finished patching up the last dents in the younger Elric brother. Fullmetal would never forgive him if his help was forcibly volunteered, in any case.
The telephone rang shrilly, waking him up. He moaned and lifted the receiver to his ear, assuming Doctor Rachel on an internal line and a dose more strife concerning Edward Elric.
It was an internal line, but the tones that greeted him were gruff and male and definitely not music to the ears. "We have a call from a man who identifies himself as a member of the Eastern Peoples' Liberation Army. He says he won't talk to anyone but the Flame Colonel. We're trying to track the call. Shall I transfer it through?"
Roy was instantly awake, alert and annoyed, his earlier fury flooding back. So those people wanted to talk to him now, did they? He realised his fingers were poised to click and, had he been wearing his gloves, he would have been a hair's breadth from destroying his borrowed office. While that was a clear tragedy, he would also never live down the embarrassing loss of control. "I'll speak to them. You get me their location." The phone line clicked.
"So this is the actual Flame Colonel? The real deal?" He thought it was the voice from the cart, sounding both impatient and mocking.
"It's Mustang. Might I ask to what I owe this call?"
"Did your midget alchemist tell you about us, or is he still busy wailing for his mommy?"
The receiver crunched audibly beneath the grip of Roy's hand. "My midget alchemist will recover completely, no thanks to you people. And when I arrest--" incinerate "--you, in amongst a very long list of other offences, I intend to charge you with giving alcohol to a minor and actual bodily harm to the person of a ranking military officer. Doesn't your mission statement have something to say on the issue of torturing children?"
"We made a special case for that one," the voice growled in that very special tone learned swiftly by any adult who experienced prolonged contact with Edward. "But I didn't call to waste more time on your little toy soldier. You know who we are, so I take it that our message was delivered."
"To be precise, a list of vague, sweeping, and impossible demands was delivered. Does none of your people possess any political acumen, or did you all learn about how the world works from fairy tales? Not even the fuhrer could make any of your requests happen, even if he were so inclined, and I regret to inform you that abusing a State Alchemist is not the way to ask nicely. I am also--" regrettably "--not the fuhrer. He's taller, and he wears an eye patch. Do you have an itinerary that we can actually talk about, or are you limited to the realms of the impossible?"
"Do you regret any one of the things that you did in Ishbal in the name of this corrupt government?" Anger lashed at him from the other end of the line. "'War hero'."
"Every day," Roy said. "My recent resume, however, does not feature 'victimising small boys'. Don't even think of moralising with me. You threw away your moral high ground."
"The brat can be grateful for his youth. We'd have sent an adult soldier back to you without his head. We still might send the Rydells back that way."
Roy stilled. He'd been waiting for something like this. "So you admit that you have them."
"Don't play games. The brat saw. If he told you the rest, your clockwork mouse will have squeaked about that, too."
"You've had them a long time, and you've never made any demands," Roy said carefully. "What is it that you want, from them or us?"
"We want," the voice came again, nastily, "to be taken seriously." The call was abruptly cut off. A split second later, the internal line rang again and a grim voice delivered a resounding negative.
Damn! Roy jumped up and marched from the temporary office, around the corner, and turned off the corridor into the outer office containing, among other things, the typing pool, which he'd already explored earlier. He slammed the door back and loudly demanded, "Who are the Rydells, how long have they been missing, and who can help me organise a task force to track them down before one or all of them shows up dead?"
A dozen manicured hands waved prettily in the air.
***
Fullmetal wasn't confined to bed when Roy found him again. He wasn't even in the medical section: rather, he and Alphonse had somehow connived their own quarters from the garrison commander. It had been almost eighteen hours since last he'd seen the boy, though, and a whole night had passed in the intervening hours, so perhaps it wasn't unreasonable.
Fullmetal was sitting on the floor, his hair washed and brushed but palely carpeting the back of his neck in a loose cascade. Also decidedly not part of the usual picture was the fact he was dressed in the tiniest uniform Roy had ever seen, or at least in uniform pants and a black t-shirt, with a jacket hanging loosely over the back of a nearby chair. Presumably Alphonse had used alchemy to alter the size, because he was almost certain that even the women's uniforms were not pre-made that small. Edward bared his teeth defensively as he caught Roy's stare and pre-emptively growled, "You think I'm going to walk around wearing the cast-offs of a nine year old, Colonel Bastard?"
Ah. So some idiot had told him, and apparently Roy was personally responsible. This was nothing new, however, so Roy took it manfully in his stride. He never did have the chance to get in his own witty response, though it would have been a cutting gem of a retort that would undoubtedly have left the boy in awe of him for life. Instead, his eyes registered the automail now reattached to Fullmetal's shoulder, and in doing so it became difficult to credit that it had been the uniform which caught his attention first.
It was enormous, ugly, ungainly, and almost farcical. He stared, lost for words, as Edward rotated the arm and performed a series of grasping motions at differing angles, in what was clearly a variant of physiotherapy for automail users and just as clearly a familiar rote for the child, though he did appear to be having difficulty balancing its weight. His upper body lurched forward each time at the extremes of the movements, and he would grimace and correct himself. The sight was extremely unsettling. Roy was accustomed to seeing Fullmetal strut around with his dinky, finely-made Rockbell automail, limbs all in proportion with his dinky body and seeming all equally as much a part of him, metal and flesh alike. And even though Roy had first seen him over a year ago without any limbs in those spaces at all, sometimes it almost seemed he could have been born with the metal attached. The clumsy, oversized arm ripped that perception to shreds.
Roy found his voice, which was hardly enthused. "That's... more useful than nothing." Probably. Barely.
"He's definitely not Winry," Edward said wistfully. "The nerve connections are rubbish, as well - it's like I've got pins and needles all through my automail. But at least it's an arm."
"I can't believe how much that - that - that man is making brother pay him for the use of that - that - that!" Alphonse stuttered, child's voice higher than usual in comical outrage. "Colonel, you can say something, can't you?"
Roy raised one shoulder in half a shrug. "It's Edward's expenses. If he wants to let himself get ripped off--"
"Ripped off?! You can talk about ripped off after you've had your ARM ripped off!" Fullmetal yelled at him. "Besides, I've already paid Danner, so the lot of you can just shut up!" He looked abruptly guilty, and it wasn't hard to see why. Inasmuch as it was possible for a suit of armour to huddle, his brother was currently doing so quite adeptly. "Sorry, Al." He scratched at his face with the automail fingers and almost did himself further damage. Roy wondered if all of the bruises visible on his skin, now he'd cleaned up, were courtesy of his captors.
"I did come to talk to you about something," Roy said. He scratched his head trying to remember what it was, then looked down at the fingers he'd used to do it. Ah, yes. He sat down uninvited on the edge of the bed and ignored Edward's glare. "The other prisoners that you saw are a local family called the Rydells. They've been missing for some weeks. The head of the household, Anton Rydell, came back from Ishbal a war hero." He'd leaned on a statue of the man for almost an hour at the remote crossroads. "He's something of a local celebrity. Rich, too-- a Major, retired, with a generous pension."
"I'm a Major," Fullmetal said, with typical diplomacy and respect for the privilege of rank and the efforts it took regular people to rise to such a position. But there might have been something else in his voice, not readily identifiable - a hint of challenge, perhaps.
"And we all try our very best to block that damaging thought from our minds," Roy agreed. "In any case, given this group's demonstrated disenchantment with the military and the subject of Ishbal, we can well surmise that Mr. Rydell and his wife and son are not in a very comfortable position just now."
Edward flinched. "What are their names?" he asked hesitantly, as if caring would damage his reputation. "Rydell's wife, and his idiot son, too."
Idi-- oh. Yes, that was evidently a grudge that intended to stick around. "Megan and Luke. Luke is sixteen."
"Huh. He looked older." Edward's gaze wandered about the room, sticking on random corners and then on Alphonse for a while before darting back to Roy. "I... I guess you're doing something, right? You and... everyone. The guys from this place. But we're kind of involved now, so you'll not be walking away until this has been sorted out, even though this isn't your direct jurisdiction... I mean, obviously someone should look for them. Help them. Even idiot Luke."
He's fishing, thought Roy. "That's precisely the point that brought me here, Edward." He leaned forward and set his hands on his knees. Roy Mustang, you are an evil, immoral, despicable man. He was fully aware that he was going to give Fullmetal exactly the chance he wanted, and that no truly responsible adult would consider handing him. "We've been unable to adequately narrow down the location of their headquarters from the raw information. I think it would help if you joined the search. You might see something familiar, and--"
Fullmetal shot to his feet as though he was on strings someone up above had just given an enormous yank - quite the feat for a beat-up boy with one monstrosity of a semi-workable arm throwing him off balance. Roy was momentarily stricken with a horrible terror that he was going to be hugged. "No shit, Colonel! Damn, and I thought I was going to have to beg -- Al, help me get that jacket on -- When do we go, Colonel? -- Al, can you braid my hair? -- Do I get to command soldiers? -- Al, pull my boots on for me, will ya? -- Can I have a gun--?"
Roy barely recognised the strangled noise that made it out of his throat as his voice. He slashed the air sharply with his hand to silence the boy, which worked predictably well, so he was forced to wait until the kid wound down (slapping a hand over his mouth seemed unwise given his trigger-happy temporary automail, and besides, if he was bitten he'd need shots). Once he’d paused for breath, Roy responded, curtly, "Not yet, we need to organise things first, but soon. And, no. And, hell no." Put a gun in that hand and he'd shoot off his own foot, and that was if the rest of the world was lucky.
"...I was kidding," Fullmetal sulked, scowling at his fingers.
Roy poked one of his own in the kid's face. "You will not be there to fight. Try to keep that in mind, because if there is any action, I fully expect you to be at the back."
"That's ridiculous!" Fullmetal roared, and Roy dragged his finger back because he liked it just fine where it was, next to its three fellows and attached to his hand. "I'm a State Alchemist! I can fight! I can still transmute -- watch."
Clad in the miniature military uniform right down to the jacket Alphonse had just tugged over his shoulders, he braced his feet apart, threw his bandaged and oversized automail arms wide, and brought them swinging together with a small yelp. A flash of alchemy and a dwindling whimper, and then he was dropping on a fiercely creaking knee to smack the automail palm against the floor. Floor, walls and ceiling promptly sprouted long spikes all aimed unerringly at Roy and ceasing their advance only inches from him.
"Ah..."
Edward clutched his broken arm to his chest, but looked smug. Roy could scarcely believe that he'd clapped the splinted fingers with those metal ones and still had them. "See?"
"Brother, you can't threaten to skewer a superior officer!" Alphonse scolded, but mostly in tones that suggested he hadn't done his homework or brushed his teeth, rather than was actively flirting with court martial. "Put the walls back! I'm sorry, Colonel. Ed--"
"Yeah, sure," Fullmetal grumbled.
"Wait..." Alphonse looked guiltily but determinedly at Roy, eyes hot points of light in that expressionless metal face. "If brother's going, then of course I have to go too..."
"Of course." He gritted the words through his teeth. "Edward, get rid of the spikes. Now. I mean it. I absolutely need to sneeze."
***
The thing was... the thing was, you see, that he had known Edward would do it. The thought turned over and over in his mind as the troops were talked through the new plan. Fullmetal would jump at the chance to strike back for his injured pride, and he could, in any case, definitely use an alchemist of Fullmetal's talents if he was to have the best chance possible to save that captive family's lives. The equation rounded off fairly simply; Edward was military, and they were not.
He was hardly using Fullmetal's skills against his will. He could see the boy sitting on the map table with flesh leg and clanking automail alike swinging down, his upper body bunched up in the jacket which, out of necessity to encompass too-large automail and splint, was of a size that swamped his small form. The chain of his State Alchemists' pocket watch was visible against his blue-swathed thigh, and his short braid whipped jauntily when he turned his head. He was as warlike and defiant as a twelve year old could be amid hardened military personnel he almost all technically outranked.
Putting forward a child as a State Alchemist had been an abominable idea, creating at once a travesty of the military system and a tragic joke of the boy with the title of an adult (who remained a genius, and worthy of respect). Fullmetal... Fullmetal, what a name. Yet Roy would do the same over, because it had earned him favour, and so, too, would Edward, because it gave him hope.
Adults were supposed to look out for the interests of children until they were old enough to judge for themselves, he berated himself. He did not act against Edward's wishes, but he knew he didn't act in Edward's interests. Then again, he never had.
***
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