Title: Birds and Dogs
Author note:
Alright! This is my second little three-chapter thingy, and I'm hoping it does a little better than my last. SUCCEED, LITTLE FANFIC, SUCCEED! According to reviewers, my last one wasn't actually bad, it was just a little too long for me to have posted all three chapters all at once. *sweatdrop*
So this time, AT INTERVALS! :D
(Brotherhood) Takes place within the timeskip after Edward has passed the exam, but before he turns fifteen and then things go really crazy in the world of FMA. And I know that Hughes doesn't live in East City and have no clue as to whether he had a car or not; but he does for this fic.
And yeah, I flaffed around with the storyline a little. I could tell you what all the little changes are, but that would take too long. (Look, I'm doing it anyway; Hughes family introduced, Alphonse hasn't received the little book he writes in yet, Major Armstrong already introduced, etc, etc.) Includes a bit of OOC-ness in one scene, but all in the name of the story. Also, this fic was supposed to be light, but…
WARNING: Contains mild mentions of suicide in later chapters, so if that's not your cup of tea, you can skip a little bit of the next chapter when I post it.
The birds and the dogs,
Are as different as can be.
So how is he both?
"Zzz…zzzz…z… No, Maes… Zz…zzz…zz…"
"Sir."
"Zzz… Fuhrer…zz… Zzz…z…"
"Sir!"
"Zz… Zzz…z…zzz… I'll make it…right…Zz…"
"Colonel Mustang, sir!"
"Zzz…z…zzz... I know… Zzzz… I can fix it…"
"Roy Mustang! Get up!"
"Zzz—snork! Yah-huh?" Roy jerked up in his chair, his eyes snapping open. "What? What is it? Is the Fuhrer coming? Tell him I'll be right there! Is it Hughes? Tell him to shut up! Is it Fullmetal? Tell him he's short! Is it paperwork? Tell him…! Um. I'll get a pen…"
Colonel Roy Mustang gave his head a quick shake, then rifled about on his desk, pushing aside various documents and bits of stationary until he located his pen.
He held it up with a weary smile. "Pen."
Lieutenant Hawkeye's placid expression didn't change as she told him, "There's probably a better place to sleep somewhere about base than at your desk, sir. And no, as odd as it may seem, you've completed all your assigned paperwork for today."
"Well." Roy set his pen down again and straightened his back, stretching a little. "What is it, then?"
"Alphonse Elric is waiting outside in the corridor. The secretary tells me he says he'd like to see you. She also says she'd like to know if you're free Thursday night."
"Tell her I'd love to hook up sometime," Roy said conversationally. "She's very pretty, and I know this beautiful little cafe about three blocks down—"
"And Alphonse?" Hawkeye interrupted.
"Ah, send him in." Roy stood and stretched his arms, closing his eyes in a yawn. "One more thing! How is it I've finished all my paperwork this morning without actually doing any, Lieutenant?"
"I slipped all of today's paperwork into the pile of yesterday's overdue you were doing at two in the morning."
Roy pouted, dropping his arms by his sides. "So you made me do extra work last night? Do you know how long that took me? And now I'm absolutely wrecked!"
"It means your schedule for today has opened up and you now have time for more important things, such as meetings and the like," Hawkeye explained. "It also eliminates chance of you procrastinating and not finishing today's paperwork as you've already completed it. Furthermore, you're a lot quieter when you're tired. Benefits any way you look at it."
"For you, maybe," Roy muttered as she left the room. "But it just leaves me exhausted."
There was a knock on the door and Alphonse Elric entered, stepping into the room holding a thick yellow envelope and looking a little bashful.
Actually, Roy thought. He always looks like that.
"Good morning, sir," Alphonse greeted with a polite bow of his head.
"'Morning," Roy returned, sitting back down. "I was expecting the other Elric. Is there any particular reason I'm not graced with his company today?"
"Ah, um, I came to drop in his report in his place… I can do that, right?"
"Yes," Roy responded. "Although, his excuse for not turning up himself better be good. And legitimate. He's missing his routine lecture on how to complete a mission without exploding a building in the process. We're running out of concrete."
"I apologise for that…" Alphonse trailed off, rubbing the back of his helmet. "We didn't realise the foundations were so weak."
"Hm. Well, be sure to tell your brother I'm taking the damage fee out of his budget. Anyway, let's see the report. And tell me, why am I not directly lecturing him?"
Alphonse clacked up to the desk and set the report down, saying, "I'm sorry if it's a little brief; there wasn't really any more we could add."
Roy opened the envelope and skimmed the report with heavy eyes. "Ah, this'll do fine. I'm too tired to be bothered by the length right now. It's a good enough description anyway… Alphonse, did you help write this by any chance?"
"Um, just a little. I helped with the details here and there. The bulk of it is brother's work, though."
"I see. So, why isn't he here?"
"I also helped him print it out. Brother always had trouble with type-writers. He goes nuts every time he makes a mistake and sometimes he breaks them. Actually, he breaks them a lot." Alphonse had evaded the question again.
"Taking time to cool off from it, is he?" Roy asked, slipping the sheet back into the envelope.
"He's…got things to do," Alphonse replied, shifting his weight from leg to leg.
"So, he's too busy to come down here, then?"
"Um, something like that…"
"Alphonse."
"Y-yes?"
"Where exactly is your brother and why is he absent?"
"He's in one of the dorms…resting. The last assignment took more out of him than he cares to admit so I brought the report in for him while he sleeps."
"Is that right?" Roy murmured, placing his chin on a palm.
Alphonse made a quiet noise that was hard to distinguish between agreement and a squeak of nervousness.
Roy's soldier instincts kicked into action. He's lying.
"So, what's really the matter?"
Alphonse jumped. "Ah, um…! You see, it's…uh… H-he told me not to tell you."
"Alphonse," Roy said, his smooth voice low. "If you do not tell me the correct reason for your elder brother's absence, I will be forced to report him as AWOL. You do know what that may result in, don't you?"
Alphonse looked at his feet.
"He will probably just be issued a warning, but in the worst case scenario, he could receive court-martial or stripped of his rank. The most likely course of action the military will take will only be to mark his permanent records with this, which won't look good to higher-ups. This in turn could result in—"
"He's sick!" Alphonse broke in. "Brother's sick! Is that what you wanted?!"
Roy paused momentarily, his eyes flickering across the room to Alphonse, who fell into an apologetic silence. Of course he'd exaggerated Edward's punishment greatly, but it had got him the information he'd desired.
After a few seconds of quiet, it was Roy who spoke. "Thank you, Alphonse. That's all I needed to hear."
Alphonse bowed his head politely and turned to leave.
"You're not dismissed yet," Roy chided, wagging his finger in a mocking way.
"Oh. R-right." Alphonse turned back around and stood motionless, apart from the wringing of his metal wrists.
"Worried?" Roy asked, raising an eyebrow and standing to walk over to the window. If he looked high enough, he could just barely see the streets over the wall of the base. He peered out curiously at the roads below and observed how people scurried about on the paths and then looked almost directly down, into the courtyard.
Nothing interesting took place within this space, unless you enjoyed watching races between blades of grass poking out between the gaps in the concrete.
Roy did not enjoy watching grass race as it grew out of concrete.
"A little," Alphonse finally admitted. "But it's okay. I'm more anxious about what brother'll do to me if he finds out I told you he's not well…"
"I see. So, how did he catch sick anyway? Swimming in a lake? Casing after old, decrepit alchemists riddled with age and disease? Some foreign illness he hasn't already built an uncanny resistance to?"
"Oh, uh, I'm not one hundred percent sure," Alphonse said. "But it's not anything we can't deal with ourselves. Fever, cough, headache… You know. Just stuff like that."
There was silence.
Roy took this time to examine a bird perched on the outermost wall of the building, flapping about and pecking at the twigs and leaves that drifted down into the courtyard from the great oak that stood just outside the base. Then it picked up a twig and flew off with it. It was back seconds later to continue with it's pecking and scratching and flapping and chirping and…
…doing stuff that birds did.
"But, y'know, when brother's sick, brother's sick," Alphonse told him. "When it rains, it pours. That kinda thing. He tries to hide it and ever takes any medicine. But when you already know he's sick and won't let him get away with it, he complains so much it makes you think he really is going to die."
The boy gave a short, nervous laugh. "But, in the end, he gets better, and we keep going."
Alphonse seemed to be handling the situation quite well, but Roy could sense the real anxiety behind his words. The real meaning.
Brother's not well. I hate it when he's sick; because he's always really sick. It's always over the top with him. He won't just do things at a normal pace. It worries me sometimes. And I can't do anything for him. I'm scared that someday, he'll catch sick and won't get better. I'm scared he'll die.
"Funny thing…" Roy mumbled, half to himself.
"Excuse me, sir?" queried Alphonse.
"I said it's a funny thing, how it is. Your brother is a soldier, and yet he's also a boy. How can one person be two so very different things?" Roy wondered aloud. He pointed with a thumb out the window. "He can't pick one direct path set by nature, not like that bird out there. If he's a boy and a soldier, it's like that bird trying to be both a bird and a dog. But no, it sticks as a bird and just does what it has to."
"I think we gave up any hope of following nature's true path long ago," murmured Alphonse softly. "But the bird and him have something in common. They both 'just do what they have to'."
"Hm." Roy stared thoughtfully at the bird out the window for a while. "Odd."
He turned away from the window again, his eyes closed and his hands behind his back. "You can go now. Tell your brother it's in mine and his best interests that he returns to work soon. The requests will pile up without him."
"Yes, sir," mumbled Alphonse, moving to the door. He was gone a few seconds later.
Back to the dorms, no doubt, Roy thought. He looked back at the report.
"Hm. Alphonse's penmanship is a lot better than his brother's," he said to himself. "I wonder if Fullmetal would let me employ him as a secretary…" He let out a laugh. "No way. There's not a snowflake's chance in hell of that, is there?"
His tired eyes scanned the page once more, but skidded to a halt at the messily executed excuse of a signature Edward had supplied.
In reality, it wasn't even an excuse; it was a squiggle, and not a single letter was distinguishable.
But he paid the sad, mangled name no mind, for it was the date it had been written that had caught the Flame Colonel's eye.
That's today, right? He snatched the paper up and narrowed his eyes at the date, then his gaze snapped up to the door.
He pictured Alphonse's sombre demeanor, his voice even softer than usual, and the strange, faraway aura he'd emitted.
"This date… It can't be, can it?" Roy muttered, suddenly a little guilty. He set the sheet down and stared at the door Alphonse had just exited through. "No way…"
As a dog I'm stuck,
Sniffing at empty, cold trails.
Can I fly with birds…?
"Brother? Do you want lunch?"
"Ugh…no."
"I should have recorded that," Alphonse joked. "Rare, huh?"
"Nnngh," was the only response he received.
Edward was sprawled on the lower bunk of the bed the dorm provided, the olive green sheets twisted around his feet and his arms wrapped around the pillow. His normally glossy, braided blonde hair was draped about his shoulders and face like some kind of limp, dull octopus, his cheeks were red and golden eyes glazed and too-bright with fever.
He was wearing what appeared to be his singlet and a pair of boxers, and had his face pressed stubbornly into the mattress. His body gave a convulsive jerk as he coughed into it, barely muffling the hacking noise.
"Next time you'll listen to me when I tell you to get the flu jab, huh?" Alphonse said, turning the page of the book he was reading. He'd arrived a couple of minutes ago, having come directly from Roy's office.
"Al…flu shots're evil. You just get the flu anyway… And don't rub it in…" Edward moaned, lifting his head slightly. "I feel bad 'nuff already. What's the date, by th'way? How long've I been here?"
"Two days," Alphonse responded quickly. In reality, it had been three, but he had the feeling telling Edward he'd wasted three days of extra research time wasn't the best thing to do.
Plus, if Edward knew it had been three days, he might figure out what day today was and…
Well, that'd just be a whole unnecessary hassle.
"Al…"
"Yeah?"
"What's the date...?"
"Why'd you wanna know? It's not important. It's like…the eighth or something, I'm not sure."
"Eighth, hunh?" Edward rolled onto his back and settled back down. "Okay."
Alphonse let out a soft sigh of relief. Of course, he didn't really have any breath to sigh with or anything like that, but was the thought that counted, right?
"Do you want anything to drink?" Alphonse asked.
"Nuh-uh."
"Are you sure? You need to keep hydrated when you have a fever."
"'M fine…"
Alphonse stood and went to the small kitchen, a separate room that consisted solely of a tiny stove, refrigerator and sink, and poured his brother some water nonetheless.
He went back into the room with it and prodded Edward in the shoulder, saying, "Drink up. It'll make your head feel better."
"Mno," Edward argued his point to the pillow. "It'll just make me feel sick."
"Brother… C'mon… Please," Alphonse pleaded, shaking the elder Elric's shoulder gently. "You hafta drink something, or you'll end up getting dehydrated."
"Grr…fine," Edward turned his head to the side and sent a half-hearted glare in Alphonse's direction before sitting up and taking a sip of the water.
"More," Alphonse urged, making it clear that he wasn't leaving until at least half the glass had emptied.
As if to make his defeat less prominent, Edward drank the rest at a snail's pace with his eyes on Alphonse the entire time, lit with tired annoyance.
He handed the empty glass back to his brother, who accepted it and promptly said, "Sleep."
Edward had no trouble obeying this command, flopping back down on the bed.
Three minutes later he awoke again, mumbling, "Cold."
Alphonse looked up from his spot on the floor opposite, and cursed the fact that his hands could not feel temperature. He fetched the thermometer and used it instead.
Upon reading Edward's temperature, he looked down at his brother, and imaginary-frowned.
The boy was on his side, curled under the sheets in a futile attempt to gather some warmth from them, shivering. His red cheeks stood out against the white of the rest of his face, and every inch of skin was beaded with sweat.
"You only feel cold. You're actually at 104 degrees."
"H-how can I be that hot when I feel so cold…?" Edward grumbled, cringing. "Head hurts."
"Just try to rest. If you won't take your medicine, there's nothing I can do," Alphonse told him in a soft voice.
Edward didn't answer, just shifted slightly and let out a quiet moan.
Alphonse's soul squirmed and kicked at this, and he wished there was something more he could do. But Edward wouldn't let his brother feed him any medicine, he wouldn't eat and outright refused to visit a doctor.
He seemed to have fallen back asleep, his breathing shallow and laboured. His brow creased and his teeth clenched, making him appear as if he was in pain.
Alphonse, being unable to stand seeing his brother so helpless, went back to reading.
It was a good book; a novel, not an alchemy reference or historical recount like usual. He'd checked it out last time they'd visited a library and planned to return it before they left the city again.
It followed the story of three young children battling against ferocious odds to try and find a peaceful home to live in away from the starving, war-torn place where they'd been raised.
It reminded Alphonse a little of his and Edward's journey.
A couple of minutes had passed, before there was a soft;
Knock, knock.
"Who…?" Alphonse stood, making his way to the door. He opened it filled with confusion, and who should he find on the other side but Roy Mustang himself, bearing a small briefcase and a book. Behind him stood one Maes Hughes, who waved enthusiastically and smiled.
"Good morning," Roy stated good-naturedly, sporting a little grin and looking as if his bizarre appearance was nothing out of the ordinary.
Maes was carrying what looked to Alphonse to be a sloppily-decorated shoebox, and a cheesy grin stretched across his face at the sight of Alphonse's shocked-to-a-standstill state.
"Hi, Al!" he said with a flourish of his free arm.
"G-good morning…" Alphonse stammered, still struggling to come to terms with this baffling occurrence.
"You're probably wondering why we're here," Roy told the younger Elric. "Am I right?"
Alphonse nodded in mute surprise.
"Well, the reason is as follows; I was flicking through Edward's-and-your-report, when it struck me what the date actually was. Doing paperwork from eight at night to two in the morning sort of has that 'brain-dead' effect on you, you see, and when it finally sank in, I thought I'd better do something. So Hawkeye managed to sneak me the rest of the day off and—"
Maes took over. "—and then he called me, and I managed to sneak away from work with him and grab this," he motioned to the rainbow-coloured, glittery shoebox under his arm. "And we both came here as fast as we could."
Roy smiled again and Maes' grin widened to stupid proportions.
"Happy thirteenth, Alphonse," they said in unison.
Alphonse's imaginary heart missed a beat, and his clanking arm flew up to his metal chin. "Wh-what?! How did you—How did you know?!"
"You don't seriously think we'd forget, do you?" Maes said, raising his eyebrows. "We brought presents and everything."
Alphonse shook his head vigorously. "No, no, you shouldn't have! No!"
"Don't be daft," Roy chided. "We already have. I'd bought this a month in advance; I don't think it's sat in my desk drawer all this time for no reason!"
He handed Alphonse the book he was holding, nodding his head and saying, "Hope you enjoy it. It was one of my favourites when I was about your age, and it should be a nice break from all the alchemy books you read. Lieutenant Hawkeye and I picked it out, so it's from her too. One of her favourites as well. She sends her congratulations, and wishes she could have come along too."
Alphonse stood stone-still, uttering a stunned word of thanks.
"Oh! Oh! Me now!" Maes exclaimed. "This one's from me and Gracia and Elysia, and Armstrong, Havoc, Fuery, Breda and Falman all contributed too!"
He handed over the over-decorated, brightly-coloured box and squeaked, "Elysia decorated the box! Her artistic talent is shining through even at such a young age! She gets that from her mother!"
Alphonse inspected the glittering eyesore in his hands and imaginary smiled. He thought it was beautiful.
"Eeya! Open it!" exclaimed Maes, slapping his hands to his cheeks and stamping his feet like an excitable three-year-old. "Openitopenitopenitopenit!"
Alphonse obeyed this squished up excuse for an order and removed the lid from the container. Inside was a stack of various cards, as well as a small leather-bound notebook, an expensive-looking pen, a bow tie, an excessively decorated spoon engraved with the words 'Never give up' in swirling cursive, a pack of crayons, a doll, and some high-grade metal polish.
Maes, unable to resist, blurted out the entire story behind the box's contents in one long, high-speed tyrade.
"Well, at first we thought of stuff we should all get you, so we all went out and bought a whole bunch of little things to put in it. Major Armstrong had that spoon engraved; he says you can use it once you get your original body back and that it's crafted from the finest silver, and was taken from a large collection of antique cutlery that had been passed down the Armstrong line for generations. He said he's told his family about your nobility and that they were touched and thought you deserved it and then he he started crying and went all shirtless and sparkly all over the place and I ran away."
Roy gave Maes an odd look.
"Falman went out and got you that pen from a specialty store all the way in Central when he was transferred there temporarily and he said he thought it suited you, with your line of work and everything. Fuery got you that polish. He said he'd been saving it for a special occasion because it's rare and the best brand around, but he thought you deserved it more. And the bow tie's from Havoc. He says that you can wear it out to all kinds of fancy places when you get your body back, and that he's sure you'll be a hit because the ladies love bow ties and that bow ties are cool."
Maes continued his blabbering, oblivious to the fact that Alphonse was almost drowning in all of the grateful and touched emotions flooding his heart.
"Elysia put in the crayons! She says that you can write out your research with them, and draw pictures when you get bored!" Maes' voice heightened drastically in pitch and he started to go red in the face as his words sped up. "And then, and then, get this… She put her favourite dolly in there! She says she'll keep you company at night time if you get lonely!"
Maes let out a huge sigh, his cheeks burning and a faraway look of content and love flooding his eyes. "Elysia…! So generous!" He beamed then let out a giggle, obviously caught in some trance of fatherly stupidity. "So cute!"
Roy sighed noisily then took over. "Breda got the notebook and wrote down all kinds of foods that he loves and things he'd heard of but never tried, so that you could try them when you got your body back. We all thought it was a great idea so we started writing down all the foods we like and stuff we wanted to try in there, and before we knew it, we'd even started writing down stuff that you could do for fun after you're restored. We'd all written cards as well."
He shrugged. "And then we put it all in a cardboard box. Hughes here thought it looked too boring and volunteered to have Elysia decorate it. Before we knew it, there were…rainbows and stickers and glitter and drawings all over it."
"Hee-hee-hee!" Maes stamped his foot and his grin stretched even further to ludicrous level. "You should have seen how happy Elysia was to decorate it! She went all out and it was sooo adorable!"
Roy rolled his eyes and motioned to the box Alphonse was holding. "And that's what happened."
"I-I think it's just great. Tell Elysia I think it's really pretty," Alphonse said, his voice almost cracking.
"Of course!" Maes responded cheerily, shaking himself out of his stupor and back into the world. "She was so happy to do it for you! We all were!"
"You… You really shouldn't have…" Alphonse mumbled, his metal face plate somehow gaining a pink hue.
"Nonsense!" Maes exclaimed merrily. "Everyone else has birthdays 'round this place, so why shouldn't you? You're no different from the rest of us, bar the fact that you're turning thirteen! A teenager now, huh? Awesome!"
Roy nodded his enthusiastic agreement. "Yes, yes. You're all grown up now. Special occasion, it is. Required some form of recognition."
There was a pause.
"How's Ed doing?" asked Maes eventually, his voice having quietened now. "Heard he wasn't well."
"He… He's doing okay," Alphonse replied cautiously. "Still won't take any medicine, but otherwise he's being somewhat cooperative. His fever's high, but he's asleep most of the time so…"
Roy nodded again, this time out of sympathy. "Mm. Fever's a pain in the neck."
Maes' eyes glinted excitedly in the light of the grounds. "Reminds me of the time Elysia came down with a fever. Did I ever tell you the story?"
Roy slapped a hand across Maes' mouth a split second before the first word of the elongated, almost fangirl-like tale could be uttered. "That's okay. I don't think we need to hear that just now. It's Alphonse's birthday, remember, so try not to bore him to death with your family stories."
Maes mumbled something around his best friend's hand, but Alphonse was unable to distinguish the words.
"What was that, Maes?" Roy asked teasingly, a coy grin seeping onto his face. "I can't quite hear you."
A second later, the Colonel recoiled from his friend as if he'd been burnt, whipping his hand away and flicking it in the air. "Eyagh! Maes! That's disgusting!"
"Heheheh!" Maes pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and grinned victoriously. "Lick the hand! Never fails!"
Alphonse looked at the two men, one of whom was wiping his hand vigorously against the trousers of his military uniform, grimacing, and the other, who had begun an exaggerated victory dance, spinning in circles and jeering.
He wondered if they really were grown men they claimed to be.
"Alright, alright. Enough," snapped Roy, grabbing Maes's arm mid-twirl. They stopped messing about and turned back to Alphonse, who looked over his shoulder into the dorm.
"Um, do you wanna come in for some tea or something?" he offered, turning his head to face them once again.
"Why not?" Roy responded, shrugging and looking to his friend. "I'm sure Lieutenant Hawkeye won't mind if we both stay, to keep Al company on his special day."
"Yeah, she's not that cruel, is she?" Maes replied.
Alphonse stepped to the side and Roy went in past him, whilst Maes stopped to whisper, "He just wants to get out of work."
"Not true!" Roy's voice floated back out. "I have filed all the required papers, have the rest of the day off and am quite happy to spend some time with Alphonse on his birthday."
"Damn his supersonic hearing," Maes hissed.
"It's not supersonic," came the response. "You simply speak too loudly."
Okay, so, that's the first chapter done! There'll be two more after this.
I hope you liked it, and if you did, leave a review for me. (You can review if you didn't like it as well - either way, I appreciate it.)
And haiku because I felt like haiku. Is it a nice touch or should I not have done it? (Either way, they're already laced into the story now...)
Alrighty then! I guess that's enough from me! I hope you'll leave a review, and if you decide to follow this, seeya next chapter!