AN – I hopefully plan this as a series of vignettes, snapshots really, in the life of Mustang and his staff. Some will be serious and some not so much. Mostly this is just a warm up and to help me get a better feel for the characters before I embark on something longer. Of course, there will be touches of royai peppered about because it just seems right.
DISCLAIMER – No, I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or the characters. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox for a little while and not making anything off this.
Duty
It was like any other lazy, rainy Friday afternoon, Lt. Hawkeye thought as she walked carefully through the unusually quiet corridors of Eastern Headquarters. Her footsteps echoed loudly off the sterile walls as she tried to maintain a steady pace while carrying precious cargo. Held in a steady grip was a mug brimming with water that she had managed to carry it through the building without losing a single drop.
Luckily today, she did not have a handful of papers to balance along with the mug, otherwise her usual Friday afternoon ritual would be considerably more perilous. Well, perilous was a matter of perception. Eastern Headquarters was almost sleepy compared to other assignments.
Other hells.
Ishbal.
Reaching the door to the staff office, she paused as she heard a distressed voice from inside. Sighing, she opened the door all the way to find Fury, Falman and Breda gathered around a trembling Havoc. "Another letter from your mother?" she asked. Though it was unnecessary, this was almost a bi-weekly ritual.
Jean Havoc's mother wanted grandchildren, a point she wrote about quite regularly. She also wanted him out of the military and closer to home and apparently, looking at the desk, she loved knitting him pink sweaters with the sleeves about twice as long as any human needed as evidenced by the two sweaters piled on top of brown mailing wrap.
Paper with scalloped edges crumpled in Havoc's quivering grip. "Oh no, she didn't," he squeaked as he stared at a letter, his trademark cigarette barely clinging to his lower lip. "She didn't." He wadded it up into a ball and smashed it into the table before falling face first into the wooden surface.
"It can't be that bad," Hawkeye said as she gingerly moved around the men and found her place opposite Havoc. Placing the mug a safe distance away from several neat stacks of forms, she then took her seat. Silently reasoning that Havoc's troubles could not be any worse than her own mother's nagging about marriage and children.
The military is not a place for a proper young woman. You are wasting the best years of your life.
"My mother," Havoc muttered from the table as if the source of his pain was not already obvious.
Breda was beet red, shaking almost violently as he clutched a hand his mouth. Falman was standing behind, a smile twitching at his lips as he struggled to remain composed. Poor Fury, Hawkeye thought, he just looked confused.
Taking the bait, she asked, "Is she all right?"
"Oh, she's fine. Oh yes. She's fine."
Breda looked like he was about to burst a vessel.
"But you don't look fine," Fury innocently pointed out as he adjusted his large glasses slightly.
Raising his head slowly, revealing a red mark on his forehead and crumpled cigarette still hanging off his lower lip, Havoc offered an overly affected sigh. "My mother is trying to arrange a marriage."
"Didn't that go out of fashion about a hundred years ago?" Falman asked.
"My mother is behind the times." He tried to smooth out the wadded up letter revealing a ruined photo and slid it toward the center of the desk group. The three men leaned forward and looked, grimaced and withdrew.
Hawkeye frowned at their shallowness and picked up the photo. She grimaced too as she examined the very sturdy looking young woman…well, she thought it was a woman. "Miss Ox-Cart Pull?"
"Yeah, she's won two years in a row. She has the best time of all the girls." Havoc pulled the smashed cigarette out of his mouth and stared at it. "Mom thinks I would make a good farmer and is looking for an appropriate wife. I don't like nature. It's all green and filled with bugs and there are live cows. I like my meat medium rare and not still kicking."
Hawkeye smiled and slid the photo back. "Well, good luck with that."
"I just need to find a girl and Mom would leave it alone."
"What about that Priscilla you were seeing?" Falman asked as he leaned against the open file cabinet.
Breda appeared to find his composure, "Was that the seamstress or the flower shop girl?"
"The seamstress." Havoc sighed.
"The one who threw herself at the Colonel?" Fury inquired.
"They all throw themselves at the Colonel," Havoc grumbled. He eyed Hawkeye, which made her feel strangely uncomfortable. "You're a woman right?"
She glared at him.
"You know what I mean," he said a little more lightly. "What is it about the Colonel that turns women on?"
"How should I know?" she responded, perhaps a little too sharply and then quickly turned her attention to the desk and papers stacked in front of her. She shuffled through them hoping the conversation would pick up again but nothing happened. She was nothing like those women who seemed to get all flustered and flirty and just plain silly when he smiled at them. She was not so simple or as needy as that. Besides, her relationship with the Colonel was purely professional.
They were all staring at her.
"Well, I don't think you will have to worry about the Colonel stealing Agatha," Hawkeye said evenly, hoping to divert attention to somewhere other than her.
"Oh, I'm so lucky."
thud
Everything shook briefly as Havoc's forehead connected with the desk again.
Hawkeye quickly glanced as the water-filled mug, making sure none of the clear liquid had sloshed over the side. She steadied the cup as she examined the forms she had partially filled out and sorted. Rearranging the piles into one stack by order of importance, the most on top, because she knew she would be lucky if she could get the Colonel to go through half the pile before he took off for the day.
Though she often scolded him to get his work done, there was no real threat; after all, he was her superior. That and she had leveled so many empty threats over the years; he knew she was not really going to shoot him, no matter how often she warned.
She glanced about the room and saw Fury happily working on a report, Falman going through a nearby file cabinet and Breda, still bright red, had settled back in on some research. Havoc was still face down on the desk.
"I'm sure you will find the right girl one day, Havoc," she said a little more gently as she stood up, her chair scraping across the tiled floor. She gathered up her papers, tucking them under her arm and carefully picked up the mug of water.
"Yeah, thanks," Havoc murmured.
Sealing the smile behind her usual staid mask, she opened the door between the staff room and the Colonel's office. She did not knock, as it was unnecessary. It was still a little early and the Colonel had left late for lunch.
There was time to re-sort the paperwork on his desk and tend to another duty before he returned.
Though the hanging lights were on, casting a yellowish glow, the office felt dark and enclosed. The large windows behind the desk, usually filled with bright sunlight, today only a wall of gray as rain fell from the grim sky. As she approached the desk, she caught a vein of purple streaking through the sky and a moment later heard the rumble of distant thunder.
She frowned and wondered if her pup, Black Hayate, was cowering under the bed in her small apartment. He was getting almost too big to squeeze under the metal frame and one of these days was destined to get stuck. Worse, it would be like pulling teeth to get him out for a walk and to do his business this evening. That dog hated rain.
Speaking of dogs who disliked rain…
Sighing heavily she stopped before the Colonel's desk and stared at the untouched stack of papers. Stifling a growl, Hawkeye set the mug down on the corner of the desk and then stepped around the back and looked at the pile she had left him to tend to that morning. Not one piece had been touched.
What had he been doing all morning?
Probably sleeping, she told herself. She glanced about the large room but it was rather sparse of entertainments. The desk, the two settees and a small round table with a withered aloe plant sitting in the corner made up the bulk of the room. He probably cleaned the windows again, but he usually only did that on sunny days so he could stare out. Hawkeye doubted the Colonel would take too much enjoyment in staring out at the gloom today.
Though, she suspected he would do about anything if he were desperate enough to not do paperwork. She was going to have to keep a better eye on him.
Working the contents of the new stack in with the old, she paused when she heard voices. Havoc was still bemoaning the latest communication from his mother. Fury sounded as chipper as ever. She thought she caught something about cookies, which would not surprise Hawkeye one bit. Fury's family was not all that far away and his mother often sent cookie filled care packages. She wondered what his parents thought of his decision to join the military. She suspected they happily supported him in whatever endeavor he chose. At least that's the feeling she got from the picture of proud parents hugging him that he kept at his desk.
It occurred to her that she had rarely contemplated what family was save when her mother urged her to get a husband. Of course, to that suggestion she always replied that she already had a family. Their muffled laughter seeped in through the walls from the other room. And she was married, to the military. It was true. She was wholly devoted to her duties.
The smooth, polished wood of the large desk felt cool as she brushed her fingers along the surface. She reached across the dark wood and picked up a pen and placed it on top of the stack of papers as a gentle reminder.
Lightning cast a brief blue glow across the desk, sharply illuminating the few items that covered it, a vase with some pink flowers probably from the flower shop girl down the street, the papers and a phone. There were no knick-knacks, no mementos, nothing identifying the personality of the man who occupied the office.
It never occurred to her before how odd it was.
Her grandfather's office was filled with books, pictures, and mementos from his years in the military. So were many private offices of varied officers she recalled. They were often filled with items of importance to their job, things from the past, family portraits and certainly elements that at a glance could tell her a lot about the people, even on a first meeting.
She glanced around the room. There was not even a bookshelf in there. Not that one was particularly needed, the Colonel kept his private collection of alchemy books crammed into his tiny apartment. The reasoning was purely tactical. For if some in the top brass knew just how well read he was in various alchemic disciplines it might raise the hackles of more than a few at Central who would feel threatened by the ambitious young colonel.
Shaking her head, Hawkeye frowned. With skirmishes and ongoing battles on all sides of Amestris, it made her sick that the greatest threats often came from within.
Another flash of blue and a louder crack of thunder rumbled through the office, rattling the tall windows behind her. What a miserable day, she thought as she picked up the mug and carried it over to the corner where the sickly aloe plant sat. "You poor thing," she whispered as pulled a brown, dead leaf from the plant. She was always careful not to remove too much for fear of leaving the plant too bare and too noticeable that she did something to it.
It was strange, but she was convinced that the Colonel would notice if something happened to that pathetic thing. Digging her fingers into the soil, she could feel nothing but dryness. If it were not for the fact that she watered it every Friday, "Fred" as the Colonel occasionally referred to it, would go weeks without water.
Pouring the mug of water into the pot, certain not to spill any over the edge, she then paused to watch the liquid soak into the black soil. Under one of the good leaves she noticed a glint of something reflecting the lightning from outside. Setting the mug on the floor, she carefully pulled a leaf to the side and examined the copper tag sticking out of the dirt. She had never noticed it before.
Pulling it out, she brushed her thumb over the engraved surface pushing the water and dirt stuck to it out of the way. Engraved into the plate: Fredrick, Generation 5, Class B.
"Hmm," she murmured as she turned the tag over. That explained why the Colonel insisted on calling it Fred. Still, the other information meant nothing to her and only left her curious as to what it meant. Though she could never ask the Colonel without revealing she was snooping.
Biting back a small grin, she reinserted the tag just as she found it and picked up the empty mug off the floor. Just as she reached the door to the staff room, the main door of the office swung open revealing a very wet, very unhappy looking Colonel Mustang.
"Sir," she said as she slipped the mug behind her. "You should have taken your umbrella," she calmly added.
He grumbled something best left incoherent as he pulled the closet door open and shed the wet coat. The air in the office seemed to bloom with the scent of fresh rain. Hawkeye stood there quietly as he straightened his blue uniform and took on a less disgruntled appearance. With a sigh, he closed the closet door and headed for his desk.
Pausing just as he passed her, he looked her over and asked, "Did you need something, Lieutenant?"
"No, Sir," she quickly replied and decided to take her leave.
As she pulled open the door and started through, she heard: "Lt. Hawkeye?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Did this pile of paperwork grow while I was out?"
A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth, as she remained frozen for a moment, then setting the mug on a file cabinet just inside the door, she returned to the Colonel's office. "If you had finished the paperwork I gave you this morning the pile wouldn't be so big now."
"You enjoy doing this to me," he growled as he irritably looked through the stack.
"Yes, sir," she said as she snapped to attention. "I enjoy going out of my way to find as many forms and orders as I can for you to approve and sign off on. It is my duty in life." Her stern composure melted just a little as a smile threatened.
For a moment, the Colonel stared at her, then he smirked. "Just as I thought."