"Grrr...I'm sick of playing your stupid mind games! I quit!"
The sunlight caught the glint of silver off the rim of the pocket watch as it thud-thudded across the polished mahogany desk, and teetered to a stop square in the middle of the Ishbalan map.
Roy Mustang glanced up with raised brows; Edward Elric stood seething fit to burst before him, his face scarlet with rage.
" Who let you in here, Fullmetal?"
" I did, sir." The brisk feminine voice brought Roy up short. " He just returned from his mission. I assumed you wanted to see him. I can escort him out, if you'd like."
" You can try, lady." Ed interjected savagely.
" That's enough, Elric." Roy's tone was very final. " Thank you, Lieutenant Hawkeye. You are dismissed."
" Sir!" She saluted, cast a final crimson-eyed glare over Ed, then departed, slamming the office door behind her.
" So." Roy pushed his chair back and crossed his arms, eyeing Ed up and down—a relatively easy feat, given his size. " How did the mission go?"
" Did you hear what I just said?" Ed snapped. " I quit! I'm tired of being your lapdog. I'm tired of working for this military! Everywhere I go, I hear more stories about how the State has used Alchemy against its own people. Well, I'm sick of it! I won't be another pawn for you or the Fuhrer to just kick around!"
Roy leaned forward, picked up Ed's pocket watch from the desk, and gave it a poke with his finger; it twirled idly, catching the lazy rays of the late afternoon sun.
" I take it the mission was a success, then?"
Ed's face boiled dark red; Roy was struck by the sudden thought that Ed might have hit him, had the desk not been between them.
" The hell with the mission! If you care what happened out there, go find out for yourself! Or are you too afraid that you won't be able to turn a blind eye to what your people are doing against the innocents in this country?"
" Enlighten me." Roy folded his hands and pressed his lips to them, watching Ed beyond the white hills and creases in his gloves. Ed's hands clenched into fists at his sides, his automail clanking gracelessly.
" Whole villages wiped out. People dead, everywhere. By the time Al and I got there, there wasn't much left. And guess what we heard?" His voice was dangerously soft; Roy raised one brow. " They said the military did that! They came through and wiped everybody out! That's the kind of people you work for, Mustang...that's the kind of person you are!"
A haze of an image flashed across Roy's memory: a man and woman lying together in death, surrounded by blood, a photograph, splintered, just beyond their outstretched fingers.
The chair legs scraped abruptly against the hard floor as Roy kicked it back and rose; Ed recoiled a half-step, his jaw tightening. Roy wondered if the boy thought he would hit him.
Roy lifted his hand, Ed's pocket watch still in his grasp, and curled his fingers twice, beckoning.
" Take a walk with me, Fullmetal."
Ed hesitated for a millisecond; when he nodded, his jaw loosened.
They abandoned the Colonel's office and walked down the wide, mint-green hallway beyond. Ed didn't talk, and Roy didn't prompt him. Their footsteps were light and deep, echoes of each other. Roy glanced down at the pocket watch from time to time, and was quiet.
They went through a short switchback of corridors, and at last they reached a door at the end of the last hallway, and Roy pushed it open.
The room beyond was wide, windowed on three walls; everything but the wall on either side of the door was glass, and the sunlight blazed through, splattering gold on the floor. Ed's eyes widened; he stepped away as Roy closed the door.
" I've...never seen this room before." His tone was faintly awed.
" This is the last time you will."
Roy's fingers closed around Ed's collar; before Ed could protest, Roy lifted him, swung him up and around and slammed him against the wall. Ed cringed—Roy felt him cringe with his hand so near to Ed's throat—and then he hung limp and stared into Roy's eyes. Stared...and there was that memory again, of the Ishbalan boy, barely old enough to defend himself, cowering at Roy's feet. A whipped dog.
Roy wanted to shudder; was that what brewing war and a quest had reduced Edward Elric to? A broken cur huddling at the feet of its masters?
" So, that's it, huh?" Ed's voice was strangely resigned; he weighed next to nothing at all, and he didn't fight as Roy kept him pinned to the wall. " You're gonna kill me, right? I mean...that's what the State does to deserters. Like Marcoh. And..." He made a strange, strange small laugh. " Like me."
Roy heard the truth in the words. He felt them pulsing, each one a right in itself, from the pocket watch that Ed had given him. He was supposed to kill the boy, and burn the watch. That was the State's way, nowadays. Not many people knew it, but it was what it was. Defection was not an option.
But he couldn't do it; not now, not staring into Ed's eyes...complacent. Like he didn't care that he would be leaving his younger brother behind. Like he'd given up all hope in the face of what the military had done.
Roy's constricted fingers loosened; Ed slid to the floor at his feet and stared up; Roy stared right back down, clenching his teeth until his jaw hurt. Then he held the pocket watch out, over Ed's head. The golden eyes followed it, like Roy was a hypnotist and Ed was hopelessly caught in his grasp.
" You really want to do this, Fullmetal?"
Ed was quiet for maybe a minute. Maybe two.
" Yeah, I do." His tone was resigned. " I can't take this anymore, Mustang. All this killing...all the things that the State has done...it's not fair to the people. Alchemists, be thou for the people, isn't that the motto? But no one seems to care about it anymore."
" So you're quitting."
" Yeah." Ed repeated, pushing one fist briefly to his forehead. " Yeah, I am, Mustang." He lifted his head again, and his eyes were suddenly fierce, flashing against the sunset. " So why don't you just snap your fingers and let those flames of yours do the job?!" He was suddenly angry. Roy could see the anger in his face.
He dropped to his knees before Ed, grabbed his collar again.
" I'm not doing that because I don't want to kill you." His voice was harsh, harsher than he'd meant it to be. Something hurt inside of him as he saw Ed's hopeless expression. Dammit, how can a kid this beaten be of any help to the rest of us? And when did I start caring whether he lived or died?
Ed's laughter shocked him from his thoughts.
" You?" He looked away. " You're just another State alchemist, Colonel, and I'm just another one of your pawns. Why would you care what happens to me?"
Roy's fist tightened around the watch; he straightened and turned in one fluid movement, walked straight back to the far wall and stared out over the streets below. Everything in Central was alive, even at dusk. Children in the street; dogs, howling far below. All of the buildings turned to amber in the sunset.
He wondered what other people saw when they looked over this place. He wondered if they saw something worth fighting for.
" I care because I care, Fullmetal." The words left him before he had a moment think about them. Ed laughed, another empty, hollow sound, and there was a commotion as he climbed to his feet.
" That's not really a good answer, Mustang."
" Then let me explain it." Roy placed one hand to the glass, bowed his head, and sighed. " I care what happens to you and your brother, Fullmetal. Maybe not the way a superior officer should, and maybe not in a way that you can appreciate, but I care just the same."
" Why, though?" Ed's tone was earnest, a little more interested. " We're just ordinary people to you."
Roy shook his head.
" I know your kind. People who fight for one truth and one hope because it's the only one they have. Nothing else matters if there's one sure thing you can hold on to. For you, it's your faith in science. Your faith in alchemy. For me—" His lips twisted into a wry, ironic smile. " It's the people of this world."
" You must be even dumber than I thought." Ed grunted. " Putting your faith in people? That's a crapshoot even for you, Colonel."
" Do you think I enjoy working for this State, Ed?" Roy snapped, his temper flaring just like a flame. " Do you think I'm proud of what this military has done, of the boundaries we've crossed in the name of good? I'll be damned before I say that I see things the way the higher ups do."
" Then why do it?" Ed's voice was a whisper. " Why put yourself through it—becoming a Colonel, killing people, doing things you regret—what's the point, if all you do is hate the government, and hate yourself for all the things you've done?"
" Because nothing in this world is free." Roy murmured, watching as faint, dark shapes spritzed across the grounds beneath the window. " You of all people should know that, Fullmetal."
Ed was quiet for a moment.
" To obtain, something of equal value must be given." He sighed. " Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. Yeah, of course I know it."
" Then maybe you can see where I'm coming from." Roy replied. " The only way I can fix what's been poisoned in this State is to succeed Bradley and become the Fuhrer. If I can mange that, I can turn things around. That's why I'm still with this military. If I didn't care about the people, I'd have gotten out a long time ago."
He heard Ed shrug.
" Still seems like faulty logic to me." His voice held an undercurrent of spite that made Roy bristle. " What you're saying is that the lives of all the people you've killed...in Ishbal, and God knows where else...all of those are worth having under your feet, just so you can have a footstool to climb to the top?"
Roy's jaw locked; Ed was being obstinate, clinging to his viewpoint with stubbornness belied by that bored, arrogant tone.
" Tell me something, Fullmetal." He modulated his voice, kept it calm and reasonable. " Why have you gone through the things you have...giving up an arm and a leg, enduring the pain of having automail attached to the stumps, getting in fight after fight, even joining arms with the military you hate...why go through all that, if you don't have a cause as well?"
There was a heartbeat of silence.
" That's different." Ed muttered. " I'm not killing people to make my own ends."
" What about your brother? His life was something you were willing to risk in order to bring your mother back to life."
Ed's breath caught audibly. There was a very long pause.
" So you're saying the ends justify the means." Ed's voice was flat. Roy's head dropped even further.
" Look. What I'm saying it that the whole military isn't evil. And not every matter is black and white, Ed. Sometimes, evil things happen to clear the way for good. You can't have day without night. There's a universal balance, and we're part of it. You just have to choose whether you want to be the darkness that balances the light, or the light that's cutting through the dark."
" I think you know my answer to that one." Roy saw Ed's reflection as the boy approached him, hands jammed into his pockets, a half-smile on his face...a smile, like maybe he was finally getting it.
" Piercing the darkness means getting out on the front lines." Roy glanced at Ed sidelong, heard the reverberation as Ed's right fist clenched. " It means losing things, and knowing that you'll lose them. But that's the thing about being on the good side...it tends to make things worth fighting for."
" And...all the people who have died..."
" Every war has fatalities, just like every action has consequences. Good, and bad. Light and dark. There will always be two, Fullmetal. Quitting your fight just means that the next time, there won't be someone to stop Scar. There won't be someone to save that mining town. You'll always be running from the shadows of your past. And the dark side...well. They won't stop just because you do."
" You're right. They won't quit." Ed extended his right arm out before him, clenched his hand into a fist. " Not ever." He glanced up, and Roy glanced down. Ed was still smiling. " I get your point, Mustang. Guess it's just a matter of sticking it out until I can make things right again."
" Atta boy." Roy replied, a faint flavor of mockery to his voice—force of habit. They stared at each other for a long moment, and Roy felt, deep inside of him, that he'd made the impression he was looking for. " Now, unless I'm mistaken, your brother is probably waiting for you downstairs.
" Oh, yeah. Al." Ed rubbed the back of his neck.
" The two of you had better rest up." Roy added, all seriousness and severity now. " I'll have another assignment for you before long."
Ed pulled a face, then said, " Thanks, Mustang. Seriously. I needed that."
Roy dipped his head in acknowledgement, and Ed swung around, striding for the door and pushing it open; he paused with one hand on the knob, glanced back. There was mischief in his eyes.
" Hey, Colonel.." He grinned, all flashing teeth and eyes scrunched up. " Can I have my watch back, now?"
Roy smirked, and tossed the watch. It glinted silver and gold on a flip, and landed in Ed's outstretched hand. Ed hooked it onto his belt loop and turned away.
" Oh, and Fullmetal?" Roy called after him. " The next time you hand me that pocket watch as a resignation, you better damn well mean it."