Roy woke to a low rumbling from outside his bedroom window. His eyes snapped open, and he took a long sniff of the air. Exhaust, from a 75-z Dutch Automotive. A small car, a family car, priced for the income of a homeless man, but high-ceilinged enough for the heart of a true showboat. Roy's eyes narrowed into the darkness.
"Fullmetal," he growled.
Simultaneously, his gaze drifted over to the pocket watch resting on his bedside dresser.
3 am. Fullmetal. His house.
These three things seemed to come together in Roy's brain at once, and his hand was reaching out for his gloves even before the rapid knocks began.
…
Roy came pounding down the steps of his small cottage home with a hastily donned robe bouncing on his shoulders, muttering in unsuppressed rage. The banging on his door had just stopped, and not a moment too soon. Chances were that Roy would have blasted away whoever stood behind it if they'd dared to connect their knuckles with his oaken inlaid panels one more time. He stomped (at least, as much as one can stomp in wooly slippers) through his dark kitchen, and stepped into his tiled entryway.
"Fullmetal!" he called as he reached for the doorknob, "You damn well better be dead or dying, or so help me, you-"
He thrust open the door, mouth open, quivering with anger, ready to fight…but the last of his words had died out.
There was no one there. Just an empty dirt road and a field of gently swaying grass, looking perfectly serene in the perfectly silver moonlight. The breeze gently rustled through the branches of nearby aspens, almost mockingly peaceful.
Roy was just about to become truly confused when a small sound startled him. He looked down at his feet, and felt his eyes widen to the point of bulging from his skull. His temper returned quickly, and far hotter than before.
Two tiny, golden-faced children, pressed cheek to cheek, the larger one holding the smaller on his hip. They were both thoroughly bundled in heavy coats and scarves, staring up at him with the most innocent of expressions. What managed to cause something not unlike panic to take hold of Roy, however, was not the children themselves, but what sat in a very obvious presence next to them.
Suitcases.
"No, no, no, no, no, FULLMETAL!"
His only answer was the sound of an engine revving to life, and tires shooting up against the gravel.
Roy looked up, and felt his heart drop into his knees at the sight of a black Duch Auto speeding away in a cloud of dust, almost swerving in its haste. A hand shot out from the driver's seat, balled in a fist of triumph,
"FREEDOM!" Roy heard Edward's voice shout ecstatically.
Roy's blood boiled so hot it shot up into his head. He wasted no time in bending down and snatching up the two suitcases which accompanied the children. He stepped out past them, lugging the bags, and like a drug-crazed bull charged down the road after the disappearing car.
"Fullmetal, you come back here this instant!" he screamed, waving the suitcases above his head, kicking off his slippers in an attempt to move faster, "I swear, Fullmetal, if you don't come back here right now and take your spawn with you, I'll have you shoveling road kill for the rest of your god damned natural life! Fullmetal! FULLMETAL!"
His only reply was an excited series of honks as the car finally crested over the hill, and disappeared from Roy's view of the horizon. His fury only continued, and so did his pursuit of them, for a while. But eventually, teeth aching, knees burning, knowing he could never catch up, Roy coasted reluctantly to a stop. He bent over his knees, gulping in air, shaking from the cold, and from the smoldering furnace of anger in his gut.
He stayed there for several minutes, panting and heavily engrossed in elaborate mental images of revenge, when he felt a slight tug on his pant leg. He jumped up and cried out, stumbling a few paces before he realized what had touched him.
Two uncomfortably familiar golden eyes stared up at him with what appeared to be something not unlike Samaritan concern. It was a very strange, remarkably adult expression to see on the face of a four year-old kid. And it being Edward's kid only served to deepen Roy's discomfort. He tried not to shift awkwardly.
The boy hefted the pig-tailed baby in his arms higher up on his waist, and Roy thought he looked far too young to be carrying anything as if he were in charge of it. But children were odd that way, weren't they? They came in so many extreme sizes that only a few months' difference could drastically decide.
Disturbing, that was what it was. Disturbing.
The boy made a face, a rather ugly one, Roy thought. How immature, sticking out one's bottom lip like that. Was that supposed to be impatience? How the hell was he supposed to tell? What was this?
Not his problem, that's what.
The boy huffed, blowing out his already ridiculously round cheeks, and pulled his lip in. He then spoke, with an aggravating dismissal of all his R's and L's that Roy thought was probably due to a negligence in his upbringing on Fullmetal's part.
"Are you Babysitter?"