Four months. It had been four months since mysterious black ships had emerged from an alchemic abyss and unleashed a storm of death and destruction onto Amestris. Four months since Edward Elric, the state alchemist who had been missing for more than two years and presumed dead, had appeared in Central, right on the tails of the strange machines. The siege hadn't even lasted a day, but even now Central was still in the intermediate stages of repair and reconstruction. Roy Mustang had petitioned to be reinstated as General, and he was successful, but had to fulfill a probationary period of nine months first. So for three months, he had slaved away in a small division of East HQ as a standing warrant officer. Now he was beginning his final term as a full Colonel before hopefully moving back up to his rank of three years ago.
He'd been issued a different office in Central Headquarters, as another Colonel was now occupying his old one. This one was smaller and more sparsely furnished, but it contained an almost exact replica of his old mahogany desk, as well as two sofa benches and a coffee table.
He missed his old team. They had all been transferred to other regions or promoted during his absence, and now the only familiar face he saw on a regular basis was Fullmetal's. He'd been entrusted with the task of getting his delinquent maverick "back in shape" for doing military work once again, but it had turned out that there wasn't much training he had to do. Edward had slipped back into the rhythm of military life as easily as if he'd never left in the first place.
As he was mulling over all the drastic changes that had happened in his life in the space of a few months, a sharp rap from the door interrupted his train of thought. He beckoned for the knocker to come in, and was assailed by his two tall brunettes and one short, pudgy middle-aged man, raining letters and forms and documents down on him.
The two brunettes were friends who'd climbed the ranks by each others' side, which showed in their comfortable camaraderie with each other, and the pudgy man was a kind fellow who enjoyed flirting clumsily with the two women and making them laugh. There was also a quiet, bookish man who was skinny enough to join the pudgy one in a comedy duo, and a man with black sideburns and a bright red goatee that made him easily distinguishable in a crowd of blue uniforms. Roy didn't dislike them, but it wasn't quite the same.
One thing that he fell back into easily was the familiar bustle of office life, which in his mind stood in stark contrast against a freezing outpost in the middle of nowhere.
It was nice to be back behind a desk again.
~o0{}0o~
It occurred to him a few days later that there was another dichotomy present in his life. Roy wasn't the only one to have chosen a more normal lifestyle - Ed, instead of roaming, had temporarily settled down in Central, and asked to be given assignments that let him stay there. When Roy had offhandedly asked him why, he'd simply said, "Al is going to enlist."
It was a day like any other: Roy was buried in a mountain of paperwork, and Ed had dropped in several days late for debriefing, as was his tendency. But today their conversation had taken an unusual turn when Ed actually responded seriously to a question Roy asked him, instead of with his usual sarcasm or flippancy.
Roy shifted to attention in his seat.
"Nothing I say will convince him not to," Ed continued. "He says he wants to help me pull some of the weight."
Ed was trailing off absentmindedly, and Roy, guessing that he was only thinking out loud, listened quietly. They had never really shared details about their personal lives with each other before.
"His skills are pretty much equal to mine, if not greater, so I doubt there's any chance that he'll fail. But he insists on studying anyway. He says it's not a good idea to get overconfident."
So he'd suppressed his visceral urge to travel in order to oversee his brother's training. Interesting, Roy thought, but not surprising.
At that point, Roy decided that it was time to refocus, and he pulled his subordinate back to earth to discuss his latest case, which was one of a traumatised boy who was the sole eye-witness to a stabbing and a kidnapping. On the assumption that the auditory cue would reel him back in, Roy prodded the shortest stack of papers on his desk. "This report is only half-finished."
Ed turned to look at him, and he seemed to turn his attention on the task at hand once again.
"I know," he sighed, dragging his hand down his face. He was sitting hunched over on the couch in front of Roy's desk, looking quite exhausted. "I'll get you the other half when my charge actually starts cooperating with me."
"Fair enough. What seems to be the problem?"
Under his breath, Ed muttered, "Babysitting is not a mission, is what the problem is."
"Edward."
Ed looked up at the ceiling. "He's paranoid that if he tells me anything, the big scary men will come after him, too."
"You were assigned to this mission because you're the youngest military officer in Central, closest in age to the boy, and seeing as how he's apparently developed a fear of adults after the kidnapping, we thought he would be more forthcoming with you. Use your youth to your advantage."
Ed glared at him. "Yeah, thanks for the advice, real helpful. Maybe I can bond with him over comic books and action figures – although, they'd have to be tested to his precise safety specifications first, just in case one of them were to contain a bomb." He shook his head in annoyance. "To be honest, the kid's more of a pain than I probably was at that age."
Roy tucked his smile into his pocket. If only Ed knew how wrong he was.
He cleared his throat, switching to business mode again in a blink. "Find out what he knows. Kidnap victims who aren't found after the first forty-eight hours are seldom found at all. Go, Fullmetal. You're dismissed."
And so that was the extent of any real communication he had with other humans for the day. Ed left, and Roy returned to climbing his mountains of paper.
Roy didn't expect to hear about that case again, except to receive word that it had been closed and that he should file a missing persons report, but at six AM that next morning he received a call directing him to an old broken-down factory in the slums of the city, more than thirty miles away from when the kidnapper had last been sighted.
Due to a vehicle crash late the previous night, a major road two blocks from his apartment had been blocked, so he was the last to arrive at the scene, which he was haphazardly parked at nearly an hour later by a sleepy cab driver.
As industrial suburban architecture went, the factory was run-of-the-mill fare. Concrete walls, peeling grey and white paint, iron pipes and bars, broken glass. None of that interested him. He looped around to the side of the building, where he could hear movement and voices, and stumbled across a motley group of emergency respondents, military men, and people from the press. He scanned the area to locate the detective at the head of the case, stepping straight through the boundaries separating the eager reporters with flashing cameras from everyone else.
The man was nowhere to be found, but Roy spotted Fullmetal sitting against the wall of the building, in a tête-à-tête with another boy of similar size and shape - Alphonse. When he came nearer he saw that Ed was bleeding from at least one stab wound to the side; his shirt was ripped and his cheek was swollen, most likely a souvenir from his encounter with the kidnapper. Ed seemed to be in shock still. His brother, who was spotless in comparison, was kneeling in front of him, performing emergency first aid on his wounds and fretting over him, concern written all over his face. They seemed to be arguing, but it wasn't the angry or caustic kind of argument; from the pleading tone in Al's voice, he was clearly trying to convince Ed of something, while Ed looked unfocused and unresponsive.
To his right, a gaunt face stared out at him through the bars at the rear of a truck, and to his left, a little girl was being laid out on a stretcher by a pair of medics.
"I can't wait to hear the story behind all this," Roy remarked, mostly to himself.
Ed, meanwhile, was in a familiar state of numbness. Shock. That was one thing that never changed. He had died twice already and yet he was sure that he would never be used to seeing the eyes of Death, no matter how many times Death stared him in the face.
When Roy met up with the two brothers, he greeted the younger brother warmly. Al went to help load the stretcher into a paramedic vehicle, and Roy was left standing over his subordinate with his arms crossed, waiting. The first thing that Edward said was, "I got into…a bit of a scuffle."
Understatement of the century, Roy thought.
"What happened to your alchemy?"
In response, Ed held up a mess of crushed metal, which, upon closer examination, turned out to be his right hand, chopped off cleanly from the wrist.
"Winry's gonna kill me," was the only comment he made on it.
Roy sighed and rubbed his temple. He could already feel a headache coming on. "Alright, Fullmetal, what happened here?"
"That's...sort of a long story. I'll have to tell you later because the paramedics are going to cart me off to the hospital in a moment." He winced, but Roy was unsure if it was from the pain or the mere thought of having to go to a hospital. "Anyway, the girl's pretty beaten up, but alive."
"But she is alive." That was the important thing.
"Yeah," Ed breathed, and it came out more like a sigh of relief than a word.
"Where's your kid?"
"Kid? Oh. He's, uh..." Ed turned to the ambulance, where the girl in the stretcher was being strapped in and tended to. Inside the vehicle, the troublesome little boy with the tuft of ruddy red hair whom he'd familiarised himself with over the past week was laughing over a colouring book and chatting profusely at his barely-conscious friend.
Roy couldn't help but be reminded of another feisty young child he knew, and smiled down at Ed once he turned away from the ambulance.
"Good work," he said approvingly.
Immediately after he spoke the thought crossed his mind that maybe he shouldn't have, because Ed looked rather startled, unused as he was to compliments from his boss. And that couldn't be good for circulatory shock.
"Uh, th-thanks."
Roy straightened his face. "Go get cleaned up. Now."
"Yeah."
Ed was still too shaken to argue with him like usual, so for once in his life he let himself be manhandled and taken away without a fight.
~o0o~
The story behind it all, once Roy had found someone who was stable enough and who had the time to relate it to him, had turned out as he'd expected: After Ed had wrangled some information out of the kid, he'd gone and investigated on his own, and when he picked up the trail of his target, he'd gone in to face him alone.
Roy didn't get the details until later on, though, and when he did finally get them, his anger lead him out of the HQ, through the city, and into the emergency ward of Central Hospital, Floor A.
There he let his poise and mask of disciplined composure slip away and his temper loose. After all those years he had spent waiting and grieving over him, was Fullmetal going to continue to throw his life away at every given opportunity?
As soon as he entered Ed's room, he slammed the door closed behind him, scaring the nurse waiting behind the door.
"You idiot," he growled, without preamble. "State alchemist or not, how could you have gone in there without telling anyone first? That madman could have killed you! You read the case file; you knew that he was dangerous and you knew what he could do. Did you even stop and think of calling for backup for a second - " As Roy railed at his officer, a part of him couldn't help but notice how small and vulnerable he looked sitting under the blankets in that rickety cot, in a thin hospital gown, and with bandages covering far more of him than Roy had expected. He was even paler than usual, and weariness lined his young face. This only made him angrier. He didn't want to feel pity, or sympathy; not when Ed had intentionally brought this on himself with his own foolish impudence.
After he'd stopped, Roy had expected him to argue, to retaliate, but instead Edward looked up at his boss blankly, as if he'd never been so chastised before.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence in which Roy's angry words hung in the air between them, and then Ed finally found his voice again.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly."You're right, I shouldn't have gone after him alone."
He sighed and closed his eyes. "I guess having to face Winry with this wrecked arm is an adequate punishment."
He seemed so sincere that there was no doubting his contrition. It was disarming, and Roy was speechless for a moment.
When Roy didn't reply, Ed went on, "I'm just relieved that I got there in time. I mean...I don't exactly have a good track record with little girls."
Roy had opened his mouth to say something when the nurse whom he'd slammed a door into just minutes ago tapped on the door once and let herself in. Glowering at Roy – he realised that she'd probably heard every single word – she asked him in tight tones if he would please leave, as he was disturbing her patient. Roy was about to object, wanting to talk more with Ed, but thought better of it and turned to leave instead.
He watched his charge out of the corner of his eye as he left the room, trying to reconcile this Edward with the one he remembered. Roy wasn't the only one who had changed over the past two years. What had happened to the hotheaded little boy he had once known?
.
~o0o~
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A/N: This story is a commission from a friend of mine, who challenged me to write a Roy/Ed story where Roy and Ed are actually in character. So that will be my goal with this piece. (Feel free to let me know after each chapter if I succeeded.) Also, I know stories that reverse the canon ending to get a 'happier' result are usually considered bad form, but that was kind of necessary in order for this to be a non-pedophilic Roy/Ed fic, so.
Hope you enjoyed! New chapter next week. :)
~Vina