Ten Years Ago Today

by Daeleniel Shadowphyre

Shounen Ai: Roy Mustang is in Central to commemorate an unfortunate anniversary. But Edward Elric remembers another anniversary the two of them share.

Title: Ten Years Ago Today

Author: Daeleniel Shadowphyre

Feedback: darkone2813 at mindspring dot com

Fandom: FullMetal Alchemist

Genre: Romance, Angst

Rating: PG

Pairing: Roy Mustang/Edward Elric

Summary: Roy Mustang is in Central to commemorate an unfortunate anniversary. But Edward Elric remembers another anniversary the two of them share.

Warnings: Angst, sap, mature!Ed

Disclaimer:FullMetal Alchemist and related characters and themes belong to Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, and Funimation. This is a non-profit work of fiction.

Notes: Written for the SteelAndSparks LJ Community's Anniversary Challenge, Light theme. It's been awhile since I had this much fun and this much frustration in one fic.

Dedication: To the SteelAndSparks LJ Community-- long live Roy/Ed!

Distribution: Ask, and ye shall receive.

HE'D BEEN COMING here once a year since the military officially declared Edward Elric to be dead. Even after the sustained Gate brought metal constructs that could fly through from another world with a very much alive Edward Elric in tow to stop them, he still went on the day it happened. A commemoration visit, as the day Edward had "died" was also the day he'd lost his eye, along with just about everything else.

Not that his - former - subordinates would say anything about that, and the court martial hadn't taken place for another three months while the country recovered from the death of the monster that had masqueraded itself as their Fuhrer. Even the court martial was half-hearted, more of a way for the fledgling Parliament to show the people of Amestris that they were, in fact, doing something to rebuild. Roy hadn't fought them on it, had allowed himself to be demoted and packed away to the frozen back end of nowhere like the country's dirty little secret. The fire that had driven him to push and strive and succeed had died when his self-assigned purpose had been fulfilled, and now he was just tired.

Then the earth had ripped itself apart and brought an invading force from another world and the spark had rekindled itself within him, relighting the fire in him that he'd thought had smothered under the snow and ice of his backwater outpost. He'd only been in the area of Central because that's where Edward Elric's grave was despite the wishes of Alphonse Elric and Winry Rockbell, but with no body to bury beneath the elaborate headstone there was little they could do. When he saw the blond tail of Alphonse's hair running alongside a similar tail of all but forgotten gold, the fire roared even stronger within him even as his alchemy set the other world's machines ablaze.

And then he was gone again, and Alphonse with him. The fire remained, burning strong as he sealed the Gate behind them and started organising the recovery and relief forces, pitching in to clear fallen stone and dig out the survivors. He literally ran into Winry in the midst of it, almost not recognising her in his hurry, and she made him sit down for a few moments while she cleaned and bandaged the cut on his jaw that he hadn't even felt. For the first time since he'd learned she knew he'd been the one to murder her parents, Roy was able to look her in the eye and apologise for destroying her childhood. And then a weakened support gave way and another building collapsed, and both Roy and Winry were up and running to help.

It was another two days before someone else recognised him. Denny Broche spotted him as he was hauling a load of planks over to brace one of the unstable shelters and had yelped 'General Mustang, sir!' as he jumped to salute Roy. Laden down with lumber as he was, Roy could hardly return the salute, but he did pause and did his best to come to attention in front of the young Major.

'Forgive me for not saluting, sir,' he said, ignoring the way Broche flinched at the respectful address. Softer, understandingly, he added, 'I'm just Corporal Mustang now, Major Broche.' Nodding to the lumber in his arms, he said, 'The third building in sector seven needs bracing, sir. With your permission?' He'd made his escape when Broche only nodded dumbly and had used the time putting up the bracing to marshal his emotions again and get on with the relief effort.

It took weeks to get Central back on its feet, partly due to about twenty percent of the relief force being funnelled through to Lior where the armour automatons had first appeared. By the time the relief forces were being dispersed back to their original posts, the day - the reason he'd been in Central at all - had long passed. Roy was at the train station to return to his outpost when the summons came to appear before Parliament.

THE NEXT YEAR on that day, he was already in Central City, restored to the rank of Brigadier General which he'd thought he'd given up and left behind in the service of Amestris. Parliament, however, seemed to think that he would serve Amestris better by giving the orders instead of following them, by piecing together intelligence rather than gathering that intelligence in an out of the way outpost on the Drachman border. Not even the (ever-increasing) piles of paperwork spread out over his desk from the intelligence office could distract him from the day and, knowing full well that the boy - man - whose grave he went to visit wasn't really dead, he still stood up from his desk at ten 'til noon and left the office.

He left his coat behind, despite the sharp chill in the air, taking the most direct route to the cemetery. He knew the way all too well, burned into his mind as if with the flames he controlled. Through the gates of the cemetery. Turn left towards the civilian grounds of the cemetery. Turn right onto the path leading up and in between the civilian and military memorials. Stop before you reach the headstone marking an empty grave.

Roy didn't look up as he walked, using the walk to call forward in his mind's eye images of Edward Elric. Before, all he'd had were images of the brash not-child who had stormed into and out of his life the way he did his office, kicking dents in the door and generally making a ruckus. Now, along with the knowledge that Edward was alive, came newer, fresher images: a slightly taller, serious young man dressed in sober brown and a button-down white shirt, golden hair pulled back into a horsetail instead of the familiar braid, staring at him from across the widening gap between the piece of metal Roy stood on with Alphonse and the rest of the metal machine, watching them with sharp golden eyes and a quiet, solemn smile. Roy had fixed that image in his mind, knowing as he hadn't the first time he'd said goodbye to Fullmetal that this would be the last time he would see the alchemist.

And then, when Ed had turned away to take the monstrosity back through the Gate to that other world, Roy had told Alphonse to go with him and had closed the Gate on them both.

The wind picked up sharply as he crested the hill where the memorial to the Fullmetal Alchemist stood, and he drew his eye up to look at the white marble and engraved black letters proclaiming what he now knew was a lie. His gaze met the sight of a pair of brown shoes and lighter brown trouser legs and he froze. Slowly, Roy lifted his head, eye following the line up the trousers encasing legs that were still shorter than most. The thought should have made him smirk as it had so many times in the past, but all he could manage was a pained grimace, unwillingly dragging his gaze further up past trousers, coat, white button-down shirt and grey button-down vest, knowing that once he reached the head of the man the illusion would be dispelled and Edward Elric would still be on the other side of a Gate Roy had finally stood before and asked nothing of.

'You know, bastard,' the illusion said dryly, words making Roy's chest clench painfully, 'from the way Hawkeye talked, I kinda thought you might be glad to see me again.'

Roy jerked his head up without really meaning to, his single eye going wide as he stared at the illusion that had taken form and was talking to him. He looked just the way Roy had been envisioning, hair perhaps a little longer as he half-turned to look at the headstone.

'So,' Edward said almost mockingly, 'this is what the military decided was a fitting memorial to an AWOL state alchemist.'

'Not AWOL,' Roy muttered, still staring. 'Missing in action during a covert operation and presumed dead when no body was found.' A faint snort prompted him to add, 'The funeral was spectacular, or so I was told.'

'Couldn't be bothered attending my funeral, huh?' the apparition jibed.

'Forgive me for being hospitalised at the time it was held,' he snarked back automatically. 'I'm sure it's a small enough concession for you.'

'Hey, I grew some, jackass!' came the rejoinder, but it lacked the heat of true ire and there was a smile tugging at the other's lips as he turned back. It disappeared quickly, replaced by a questioning frown. 'What?'

'You...' Roy couldn't quite form the words he wanted to say. 'You went back through the Gate.'

'Well, yeah,' the blond said slowly. 'Someone had to stop that bitch Eckart from trying to come back again and destroy that side of the Gate. I told you as much then.'

'I sent Alphonse after you,' Roy went on, shaking his head slowly.

'I'm kind of annoyed at you for that, bastard.'

'I closed that thrice-damned Gate behind you!' he almost shouted, his voice rising in pitched. Understanding dawned on that face, that damned face that dared to mock him with the image of the one he wished he could see.

'Al and I closed our end, then spent eight months tracking down a man with a bomb,' he said gently. 'The last two months were spent gathering Dad's leftover research and destroying any remaining leads the Thule society had about alchemy.'

'You left me,' Roy whispered, nearly flinching at the broken tone he didn't know his voice could even make.

'I came back,' Edward Elric said simply. When Roy just stared at him helplessly, he lifted his right hand and removed the white glove, exposing the glinting silvery steel of automail.

Something inside Roy cracked and broke at the sight of the metal hand, so much a part of Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist, that it couldn't be anyone else. He couldn't say later which of them moved first, and certainly whatever sort of working relationship they had had never lent itself to any sort of displays of affection, but Roy had his arms wrapped around Edward - solid, real, here - and Edward's arms were strong around Roy's ribcage, holding him up as Roy let himself fall apart.

And if a cloudless day dropped rain on Edward's shoulder, that was no one's business but theirs.

IT WAS WELL past time Roy should have been back at work by the time they left the cemetery. Edward drove them back to the offices of Central HQ, flashing Roy's pocket watch at the gate-guard as his own was still sitting in Roy's desk drawer. Roy managed to stumble about three steps before Edward was there to hold him up again as they made their way into the building.

It might have amused him if he had been more than peripherally coherent. The gasps and the silences that followed their progress up to his office were more telling that the flurry of whispers that started up before they'd even made it past earshot. He leaned against the wall outside his office as Edward inquired after Roy's current workload and was told by a sympathetic Hawkeye that "the General doesn't have anything he needs to attend to immediately".

Havoc drove them back to Roy's house.

YOU COULDN'T KEEP your keys in a reasonable place like your coat pocket, could you? Bastard.'

'Shut up and let us in, Edward.'

'Still raining over there?'

'...Yeah.'

EDWARD MADE VERY good hot chocolate. The first few sips went down without Roy tasting them, but after the shock started to wear off he began to taste what he was drinking. That was when he received yet another shock.

'Brandy?' he asked, raising one eyebrow in Edward's direction, privately wondering how the blond alchemist had known where Roy kept the brandy and had gotten some without him noticing.

'I started carrying a flask of it for medicinal purposes after Eckart's invasion attempt,' Edward said, lifting his left shoulder in a half-shrug. 'Al made a fuss about it when he first found out, but he wasn't complaining when we got caught in a blizzard in the Ukraine.'

'The you-what?' Roy asked, nonplussed. Edward paused.

'Ukraine,' he said quietly. 'It's a country in the Other Side. Al and I weren't there for long, but I didn't want to go back to England yet and it was better for us to get out of Germany for a while.' He glanced at Roy and, probably seeing the lack of comprehension, gave another of those half-shrugs. 'Never mind.'

'The brandy?' Roy prompted, still wanting more of an explanation. Edward hid a smirk behind his mug as he took a sip.

'There was a war going on that spanned several countries, and sanitation wasn't really the best,' he said, sitting back a bit into Roy's couch. 'Most times, alcohol was safer to drink than water, and so long as you could see over the bar no one questioned your right to get what you ordered.'

'They must have had low counters in these bars,' Roy murmured, unable to resist the dig. Ed glared at him.

'At least I've never tried to drink Fuery under the table,' he said pointedly.

'Touché,' Roy said, his smirk turning rueful. That had been an experience he'd been happy to avoid ever repeating. Who knew the tiny Sergeant Major had such a high alcohol tolerance?

Come to think of it...

'I did hear an odd rumour later that week involving Havoc, Breda, and six bottles of malt whiskey that, I confess, didn't make much sense at the time,' he said casually, sipping his own hot chocolate while glancing surreptitiously at Edward. The blond's face was a study of casual neutrality that Roy hadn't thought he could manage, but the mischief glinting in those golden eyes convinced Roy he was on the right track. 'Might I ask how you drank both Havoc AND Breda into unconsciousness without passing out?'

'Is that admiration I hear, General?' Edward asked, smirking.

'Professional curiosity,' Roy rejoined. 'One former Colonel to another.'

'I still can't believe you got them to give me a posthumous two-rank promotion,' Edward muttered.

'Awarded for unspecified services to the State,' Roy said. 'Well?'

'It's... okay, you know how much I used to eat, right?' Edward started, setting his mug down on the coffee table.

'"Used to"? Do you no longer polish off enough food for three meals in the space of one?'

'Ha, ha. Real funny, asshole.' Edward glared at him. 'So, there were two main reasons I ate as much as I did. One of them deals with the automail, since it's powered by a combination of power cells and bio-electronic hardwiring. That means my own natural electrokinetic energy was being drawn upon to power my limbs. With me so far?'

When Roy nodded, Edward continued, 'The second reason has to do with alchemy. Specifically, my alchemy, the initial pulse to activate whatever array I was using at the time or just to spark off the alchemical reactions when I... er...' Edward trailed off, miming the "clap-and-touch" motions he used whenever he did alchemy without drawing the array first. 'There was also at least one array I had going that was always active, although it took me passing out after accidentally skipping two meals for me to research any of this.'

'When did this happen?' Roy demanded, feeling that frisson of alarm race up his spine from the implication that something had happened to Edward that he, Roy, wasn't aware of and hadn't been able to help.

'Back when I was thirteen,' Edward said holding up one hand in a placating gesture. 'The doc who checked me out passed it off as overworking on top of a touch of influenza. Anyway, that's beside the point. The combination of alchemy and automail drawing on my body's resources, coupled with the fact that I've always been pretty active as a rule, and you get a really, really fast metabolism. Any alcohol I drank got passed through my system almost too fast to have any noticeable effect.' It wasn't Roy's imagination; Edward looked distinctly put out over that fact.

'Are you actually upset about not having been able to get drunk, Fullmetal?' Roy asked, incredulous despite himself. Edward shook his head and grinned.

'Nah, not really,' he said. 'It let me win that bet with Havoc. And you can get away with a whole bunch of shit when people think you're a thoroughly drunk kid. They underestimate you, too, which managed to save my skin on a couple of those missions you sent me on.' Edward fell silent, then, staring pensively at his mug. 'It helped on the Other Side, too, sometimes. No one Over There expects a teenaged cripple to be able to hold his drink.'

'You're not a cripple.'

The words were out before Roy could think about them, spoken more sharply than he'd ever spoken to Edward in the past. The blond blinked at him for a moment, surprised. Then, slowly, a faint smile crossed his face.

'Yeah, okay,' he said, and picked up his hot chocolate.

HEY, IT'S AFTER midnight,' Edward remarked some time later.

'So it is,' Roy mumbled, peering unsteadily at the clock over the mantle.

'It's the seventeenth of October now.'

'I suppose so.'

'That makes it ten years ago today that an arrogant Lieutenant Colonel flashed a silver pocket watch at a couple of automail mechanics from a backwater town and invited a broken little boy who'd made the biggest mistake of his life to try and turn his life around.'

Roy forced himself to open his eye all the way and look directly at Edward. The tone was neutral, even, but the expression was... Roy didn't think he could place it, not floating as he was on a cushion of brandy and chocolate.

'Ten years ago today,' Edward said softly, 'you stood in the Rockbells' house and offered me a chance to correct the mistakes I made. You gave me a reason to try and get up and walk forward again. Even if it was on a clumsy metal leg, but don't you dare tell Winry I called her automail clumsy or I'll transmute you into a paperweight.'

It occurred to Roy that Edward was, in his own roundabout way, trying to thank him for something. Roy wasn't sure he deserved the thanks, but under the circumstances he wasn't going to try arguing with the other alchemist.

'Your welcome,' Roy mumbled. Edward laughed softly.

'Yeah, thanks, bastard,' he said, before leaning back into the sofa. The shift of his position made the couch cushions shift with him, pulling Roy sideways into him. Roy had the space of two heartbeats to think that he should probably move before a strong metal arm was wrapping gently around his shoulders and settling him more comfortably against the slightly smaller body (because Edward really had grown up while he was gone). 'And hey,' Edward added, the words rumbling pleasantly in the firm chest under Roy's ear. 'Maybe the next ten years will be a little less interesting, huh?'

Rapidly slipping down into sleep after the emotional upheaval of the day, Roy considered that ten years with Edward Elric would probably never be anything less than interesting, but he wouldn't mind seeing what happened.

-End-