Warning: there is M/M in the Saffron Soul, so I will be referring to an established homosexual relationship from time to time. If this bothers you, sorry.

AN:After I started, I decided on changing my fic to an AU based on BeautifulFiction's The Saffron Soul I quite liked the premise, and I think I'd like to expand on it.

Anyway, Saffron Soul sort of branches off ambiguously, but I`ll follow the anime anywhere the Saffron Soul content isn`t clear about its history. A note on timing: in the Anime, Ed was 15 during the events of Lior. In the Saffron Soul, Ed is 18. I will assume that he had his bout in England and Germany, but I'll be ignoring anything from Conquerors of Shamballa; he discovered a way back on his own and once the Army discovered he was back they claimed he needed to serve another 18 months. This story will take place 6 months after the end of the Saffron Soul.

Major story edit: I've condensed the chapters and worked on forcing the story in a single direction.

Ed woke to the sound of the telephone, coming to awareness enough to hear Roy answer it but not enough to hear what was said. Through the bond, he felt the rush of the other man's emotions: Roy was shocked, then resigned. The bed shifted as Roy stood, chuckling at Ed`s feeble attempts to pull him back into bed.
"Sorry Ed, you`ll have to eat breakfast by yourself." Ed whimpered pitifully. "Now, Ed. When you moved in, we agreed that this wouldn`t affect work." Roy deftly avoided the pillow thrown at him, while pulling on his uniform.
"Fuckers can wait!" Ed grumbled resentfully. Roy flashed him one of his signature smirks,
"The world doesn`t halt upon your orders, and the man I'm supposed to meet doesn't halt upon anyone's orders." Ed buried his head in the remaining pillow, offering a disbelieving snort.

"I'll see you at work." Roy said as he left the bedroom, adding a stern "Try to be on time for once, Fullmetal." The remaining pillow hit the door as it closed. Ed realised he was left alone on the bed without a pillow, and loudly complained about the 'smug bastard who stole my pillows.'

As Roy and his silent-but-ever-present bodyguard, Hawkeye, approached the police station, Hughes filled them in on the situation.
"Got a call from Headquarters," Hughes offered. "They said Kimblee was found in the graveyard, detonating his own tombstone. Five soldiers were incapacitated before a Central police officer passed by out of sheer coincidence. Kimblee turned himself in. The police don't know what to do with him, but he refuses to talk to military. The brass thought we could pull something out of him, being 'comrades' of his from Ishval."

Roy resisted the urge to facepalm,
"Great," he sighed. "I suppose the reason they didn't just ship him back to prison, is that he behaved and didn't just kill the soldiers like he usually does. Explosive alchemy is useful enough that when Archer brought that man to heel, he was given a promotion." Now he knew why his best friend had asked for an alchemist to come with him: Hughes expected Roy to incapacitate the Mad Bomber if he had a tantrum. The property damage that would result from pitting the two of them against each other would cause even more paperwork than Fullmetal causes on an assignment. Cripes, he did not want to deal with this when he could- and should!- be cuddling with his sweetheart for another two hours!
"If the Crimson Lotus Alchemist wanted to escape from a police cell, he would have wandered away from the pile of rubble by now. Why couldn't this wait until daylight?" His question was rhetorical, but Hughes answered anyway.
"Anders practically begged for us to come in immediately," Hughes offered with a wry smile. "I guess locking up a live bomb puts everyone on edge, especially after he demonstrates his specialty inside the interrogation room."
"Hughes?"
"Yes, Roy?"
"Next time you need an alchemist at four in the morning... for pity's sake, call Armstrong instead of me!"

The moment they opened the door, Anders rushed towards them. The rest of the building was quiet and empty.
"Thank God you're here!" Beckoning them to follow her, she led them to Kimblee's cell. "After he started blowing small divots into the walls, in the shape of an alchemy circle, we evacuated the building." Oh, great! Roy thought as he put on his gloves. Throw us in an empty building with the Mad Bomber. He began to list the forms he needed for compensating damage on city property. At least he already had copies of them all, with how often Fullmetal needs them.

When they rounded the corner and caught a glimpse of the prisoner, they all slowed. The man in the cell sat hunched on the bed, not in the feral anticipation of combat that had always seemed to follow Kimblee, but defeated and forlorn. Upon hearing their approach, he looked up.
"Are those... tear marks on his face?" Hughes whispered unbelieving. Roy quickly shushed him, knowing firsthand how good Kimblee's hearing was. Kimblee rubbed at his face, more smearing the salty liquid than getting rid of it. His posture straightened, and he was once again the insane predator they knew from the war.

Zolf J Kimblee sauntered to the bars separating him from the others,
"Oho," he said, mustering all the malice he could. "well if it isn't the Colonel, and our old buddies from Ishval," he sneered. "What a reunion!"
"Actually," Roy corrected, "I'm a Brigadier General now."
"How impressive," He mocked. "Who'd you kill for that promotion?" Mustang's face became a cold mask of resentment. Even going through the motions of his old personality left a sour feeling in Zolf's stomach.
"Kimblee, lets get right to the point," Roy showed him the impassive mask he'd perfected since the war. "How did you get here?"
"Well," said Zolf condescendingly, "This nice police officer led me here from the cemetary. I don't know the directions offhand, I didn't pay much attention."
"This was after you destroyed your gravestone, and attacked five soldiers who were there to visit another grave." Hughes helpfully reminded him.
"Well, it was my gravestone, after all," the Mad Bomber defended with a maniacal laugh. "I should be able to do what I please to it." He grinned away his sins as he used to, but the pain of guilt nearly made it a grimace. "And I didn't attack the soldiers," he defended, petulant. "They attacked me!"

"That isn't what I want to know," General Mustang interrupted irritably. His mask was slipping, Zolf noticed. It was nice to know he could still get under that man's skin. "I want to know how you got here from Lior, and where you've been since then. Several soldiers witnessed your body being tossed from a building right before the city dissolved into sand. You are supposed to be dead."
"You've told me that before," Kimblee reminded Mustang. "At that time, you believed I'd been executed. Maybe next time I 'die,' you should insist on personally identifying my corpse." Kimblee's demeanor suddenly changed, as memory overwhelmed him.

He had lost the fight with Scar, and though he clung to life, he could barely move. Around him, he could feel the energy build for the city-wide array. If he didn't get out before its power was released, he would become a part of the philosopher's stone that he was employed to retrieve. He may want to possess it, but he didn't want to be part of it! His desperate mind grasped onto an image from his childhood; the transmutation that killed his mother. Examining it from a trained alchemist's point of view, he knew that he could alter the tattoo on his hand to cover the basic elements that had opened the transdimensional Gate. Hopefully, since he didn't intend to bring the dead back to life, his own life wouldn't be forfeit. It was a long shot, but even if he died like she did, at least his soul wouldn't be used for another alchemist's gain. Soon enough, the black hands that haunted his nightmares slipped around his body and pulled him from impending doom.

Into something equally terrifying: The black faces he saw could have easily been drawn from a child's nightmare. They looked at him greedily, and when he looked back he recognised some of them. They were faces from portraits in his uncle's house, labeled with their achievements in alchemy and the date of their ceremony to become 'Honored Ones'. Uncle had showed them to him as a challenge: their place in society was above all others, he was told, and because of his fascination with catalysts and explosive energy he had the potential to join them. If this was indeed what they'd become, he was glad for his decision to take his sister and flee to Amestris.

Inside the Gate, knowledge was forced into his mind in a painful parody of osmosis. The longer he was held here, he knew, the more it would cost him.
"Let me out!" He demanded of the inky faces. "I don't want this knowledge!" Suddenly, he stood in a terrible white void with nothing but the closed Gate and an entity he perceived but couldn't quite see.

"You came to the Gate without a demand," the entity began, "we simply offered something equivalent for your sacrifice." Sacrifice? Zolf wondered, what have I sacrificed? "You are still owed. Part of your brain is damaged, limiting your alchemy and intellect. It will be restored."

His surroundings changed back to sand and chaos. The philosopher's stone transmutation was finished, the unused energy dispersing in a cloud of sand and sparks. Zolf lay there, watching the dark hands take both his legs as sacrifice, and realized the full extent of the Gate's meddling. The brain damage it had repaired not only freed his alchemical potential, it also returned to him the negative feelings of sadness and remorse, whose absence was the only thing that allowed him to function in Ishval.

"Kimblee?" Roy's words didn't prompt a reaction. He began to reach through the bars to shake the man, when Hughes pulled it back.
"It's a flashback, Roy. Don't touch him, it's better to just wait it out." Roy looked confused,
"Who do you know who has flashbacks?" Hawkeye and Hughes offered him a significant look. "I do not have flashbacks." The significant looks intensified. "I sometimes get lost in thought, but that isn't a flashback."
"Very well, sir." Hawkeye replied. "Since you do not have flashbacks, I shall assume that those thoughts you 'get lost in' hold a fierce grudge against the dustmotes in your office, and that the dustmotes only understand the Ishvalan language."

"Crimson!" Roy shouted, calling him by his alchemist title. Kimblee was disoriented, thus showing a side of himself they had never seen. But at least he was responsive again.

"No, no..." he moaned. "Crimson blood! God, I've killed so many..." Zolf began to shudder uncontrollably "So many people... so many children..." He covered his face and cried out in anguish. "I laughed! I mocked them! I bragged about it to my comrades! How can I live with this guilt?" He burst into sobs. "My legs... I could just let myself bleed out... but what right do I have to escape this by dying? I owe them all recompense." His eyes widened, staring at something that wasn't in the jail cell. "Soldiers coming! No! If I go back, He will just command me to kill again! When He finds out I'm useless, He won't even bother with prison... assign me to Lab 5..."

"Crimson Lotus!" Roy shouted again. Kimblee tore his eyes from the invisible terror, not quite focusing on him. "He's dead!" Roy informed him. The terrified man flinched.

"No." Kimblee said with terrified certainty. "He can't die. I tried once, and He laughed at me." Kimblee's visage melted into numb shock. "I can't hide from him, he's got this eye..." Roy realised his mistake. He'd assumed Kimblee meant Archer, his commanding officer. But to find out that Bradley had revealed himself to Kimblee wasn't much of a shock.

"I burned it until nothing was left," he offered cryptically. Neither Hawkeye nor Hughes was aware of what had happened in the Bradley mansion; if he ever got tried for treason because of it, he wouldn't drag them down with him. Kimblee snapped from his reverie, becoming fully aware from that single comment.

"Gone! Are you sure?" He asked suspiciously. "Those monsters can come back from almost nothing!"

"Sir?" Hawkeye asked suspiciously.

"It's nothing for you to be concerned about, Liutenant." Mustang dismissed it brusquely. Walking up to the bars of the jail cell, he spoke quietly enough for only Kimblee to hear. Kimblee, his face right on the other side of the bars, strained to listen.

"I held his remains while he burnt, then I threw the remains into the fire before I left. That was three years ago, he would have got his revenge by now if he were still alive. He's dead." Kimblee sighed in relief, his breath fluttering the cuff of the other man's glove. Roy felt the breeze on his wrist: In his rush to leave that morning, he hadn't wrapped his wrist to hide the array that betrayed his alchemical bond with Edward. It shouldn't have mattered, just a sliver was showing, but Kimblee's eye flicked toward it instantly.

His eyes widened in shock, grasping Roy's wrist and pulling him into the bars. The action bunched his sleeve into his armpits, and his glove around the base of his hand, completely exposing the array. His mind already registered it in the split-second it took for Roy's face to hit the bars of the cell door. Instantly, Maes and Hawkeye drew their weapons, but found no safe angle to shoot without risking Roy's safety. Roy himself held his other hand poised to snap, but a threatening surge of explosive alchemy warned him off. Kimblee's face was twisted in anger, hate, and fear. He spoke a word in Cretan, before switching to Amestrian.

"You're one of Them?!" Kimblee's voice trembled, "I won't go back without a fight!"

"One of Who? Back where?" Roy demanded, strained against the bars without any idea what had set Kimblee off. Just when Roy thought the man was sure to kill him, he relaxed.

"No, that's impossible. You'd be rejected, even with your unique skills. There's no way the Saffron Society would accept black hair and eyes... But-" He yanked hard on the arm he was holding, slamming Roy once again against the bars, and nearly dislocating the shoulder. "Alchemy marriage is a close-kept secret."