Rating: PG-13/ T (language)

Disclaimer: No rights whatsoever to FMA have I.

Summary: Remember all those "50 drabbles" collections? Well, it's not 50, but here's what I've got. First part Roy&Ed, second Roy/Ed. It's never been a game to him, but you keep playing it anyway.

Notes: You'll probably notice I had themes. ; I wrote these ages ago, but I'm only posting them now; don't really know why, just to have something finished, and because there's some good stuff in here.

If you can't stand the Roy/Ed pairing: Okay. I respect your opinion. Just don't read the second part. I went to a lot of effort to put anything slashy or even borderline slashy in there. Legally that means if anyone starts bitching, I may shoot them. -wink-

(-)

For some reason, you never expected this, even though you should've. Thought he was better than this, than you. More noble, maybe, more principled, more salvagable than you.

But he's got his demons, too, he's got his goals, God knows you could never forget about his goals--

And as he walks away, you know you should've expected this. After all, you taught him everything he knows about duplicity and betrayal.

Well-- obviously not everything--

You always knew that pride would be your downfall.

(-)

Someone had brought him coffee. Someone had brought him coffee and breakfast and put a blanket over him. Or, dropped a blanket over his head, seemed more accurate. Couldn't have been anyone but Hawkeye. Except...

But it didn't matter. Heaven only knew how much time his inadvertent nap had cost him, and he still had all that paperwork, and-- God-- Fullmetal of all people was coming in this morning, after a mission that (predictably) went crazy, and he'd taken him to task about the informal nature of his reports the week before, lectured him for about an hour, and yesterday, forgetting to explain, forced him to take an overnight train...

And any second now the boy was going to storm in and he'd get his very just deserts.

Except he should've already been here, judging by the clock. Probably he was just delaying, as usual, but--

Was that a report on his desk?

He sat there, bemused, for several minutes, a very odd look dawning upon his face.

Dear God, the boy had taken pity on him...

Touched in a way that only lack of sleep could excuse, he turned gratefully to the coffee.

(-)

"All I wanted-- was to be your friend. Or your comrade, or equal, hell, even subordinate officer-- all I wanted-- was for that respect to be visible, just once. For you-- to tell me something. To trust me with something. And I tried to be-- trustworthy. I tried to be the kind of person you'd be close to. And you never were."

"...Fullmetal, I've trusted you with more than you may ever know."

"Then TELL me so, goddamnit!! Just once, tell me so!"

"Somehow, I never thought I had to. I-- was always so hard on you, wasn't I? I never meant to be. I only... Heh. I've made quite a fine mess out of this, haven't I?"

"Yeah."

"The best-laid plans."

"...Don't worry. I'll get us out of this, no problem."

"Yes. I know."

(-)

He turns that ghostly expression on you and you're entirely bewitched.

"They won't let me leave..." he whispers.

"No."

"I can't let them find out... But I can't stop them..."

"You can. You'll find a way."

"I don't feel capable of anything right now..."

You want to hug him, but he'd hurt you. "Fullmetal, some days I don't think there's anything beyond you."

Dangerous admission-- but that surprised, warm smile is more than worth it.

You should do this more often.

(-)

To forget those days... so many things you'd like to forget. But it isn't possible, it isn't healthy.

Or is it? Why couldn't it be? Why shouldn't you be able to become again who you were? If you couldn't make up for your mistakes, had to pay that penance the rest of your life, could never change back-- then what was the point?

Philosophers and storytellers for years had talked about nonlinear time.

And if you could be that young man again, that cocky, confident young man who'd never had to question his abilities, his place in the world...

Then maybe you could look into his eyes and finally see them.

Just looking for redemption...

(-)

The first lesson he'd learned in this quite literally damned game: never depend on one possibility, one thing, one person too completely. Never have a keystone. Always have an exit plan. An alternative. Otherwise, when that one card is pulled, your whole house of cards implodes.

And evidently he'd forgotten it, because he was standing there stunned, as papers flew around him like those cards tumbling down, as the dust started to settle and the sirens began to wail. Probably it would take far more than a bombing to kill Edward Elric.

But if he was wrong?

Fullmetal was almost certainly alive, but if he ever wasn't...

When, he wondered, had he so stupidly come to rely on such a reckless young kid so completely?

Funny how all it takes is a horrific act of terrorism to make you realize that sort of thing.

(-)

"You know, I met someone interesting the other day."

"Is that so?"

"He said, he knows that if his superior officer had a choice between defending his men and getting a promotion, he'd choose his men."

"I can't believe anyone's really that unambitious..."

"I can. But the funny thing is, I can't answer that question about you."

"...Really?"

"And the funnier thing, Edward can. The other way around."

"You asked him?"

"He really believes it."

"Is that so..."

"It's not a game to him. It's never been a game, but you're playing one with him anyway. And it's dangerous. Because the second he isn't distracted, all that brilliance and fury and strange revolutionary skill is going to be turned on you. And you don't want that. I don't know why you're so emphatic about making him hate you, but it's working far too well, and it has to stop."

"But... if he doesn't hate me... he might..."

"Why you think he should hate you, I don't know. But it isn't true, and you have to stop it, okay?"

"...I can try..."

(-)

In a few years he'll be looking through Rizembul's records. No particular reason, he'll have said. Just curiosity. You never know if there night not be something we can learn here...

And why he didn't leave it to a subordinate, he'll always manage not to answer.

All of this will become secondary when he finds an unusual death certificate. A man who died mysteriously, in what looked like a heart attack, but seemed unlikely in someone so young.

A visit to the town doctor, incognito, and his charming smile will draw out the information that the doctor hadn't put in the official files. There had been a strange, unnatural-looking growth in the man's body-- one that was unusually mineral for a tumor. Whatever the viny-looking thing was, it had pierced the man's heart, and the cause of death had been the blood that slowly pulsed out into the chest cavity with each heartbeat.

What had interested him was the timing of the man's death. When Edward was still in town. Before their mother's death.

There hadn't been many alchemists around town at that time. And this had been done by alchemy. Either by someone very cruel... or very inexperienced.

Or both.

His subconscious will whisper a suggestion to talk to the other boys in the town who had been Edward's age, to see if they'd known him. A number of them had. They won't talk much about him. Their silence in itself will tell him what he needs to know, but he'll send Hawkeye in to get confirmation just in case. She's ridiculously overqualified, but she's who he trusts.

She'll return with a very dark look in her eyes. She'll tell him he was right, and remain strangely quiet through the conversation. He'll push the issue, and she'll show him a picture she found in the town archives.

Dark-haired, rather stout, with a lopsided smile.

"Everyone mentioned how charming he was. No one noticed how he acted to the boys. He was cruel to them, arrogant-- as a schoolteacher, he said he was their master and they couldn't say or do anything to stop him. He said they were obligated to do whatever he said. He would lie to their parents and even to them to get them where he wanted them. And there wasn't a single adult in town who had a clue. Do you understand now?"

And for the first time ever, he truly will.

(-)

Lost again, beaten resoundingly, and he storms out of the office as his brother trails behind.

He's never had any of the cards, not any, and the bastard's been playing them since they met. Since before, maybe. It's a game to him-- a game!--and he's a pawn in it, being played and manipulated and he hates it.

Everything he can think of to do, every strategy, every plan, backfires or bounces off that goddamned smirk. Except of course the real weapons he has. The real secrets he knows. He might be able to break the man with that, but you don't pull someone's entrails out for pulling your braid in class. And for him, that's all it is, games and teasing. For Ed, it's personal, and he's tried, but he can't make it anything else. And the man either doesn't understand that or doesn't care.

Still, Ed has a feeling there's some way to turn the tables on the man, some ploy he can use besides those end-of-the-world measures. Something half-obvious, something running over and beneath everything that would not only shut the man up, but end the goddamn game.

He doesn't know what it is yet, but he's damned if he won't find out.

Actually, he knows, damned very literally...

(-)

"Why are you here?"

"Shut up and eat."

"I don't want to. You've poisoned it."

"Damn, I wish I'd thought of that. Too late now. Shut up and eat."

"Why are you here?"

"Hawkeye was busy. She foolishly thought I wouldn't kill you when you were sick."

"And you're cooking?"

"No, I use my power to create things out of nothing on chicken soup instead of my brother and me. Shut up-- and eat."

"I never knew you cared."

"Shut up before I change my mind and kill you!!"

"All right."

"Good."

"...--Oh my God, this is edible!!"

"That's it!! I'm killing you instead!!"

(-)

"...What did you just say to me?"

"I said I just don't think you're ready to--"

"Ready? You don't think I'm READY?! You DARE to PATRONIZE me by saying I don't know what I'm doing?! You think I don't know how stupid this is?! I know exactly how stupid this is!! AND GETTING DUMBER BY THE MINUTE!! How DARE you!!"

"I only meant--"

"So I'm old enough to go out and get myself killed but I'm not old enough to have any idea what I'm thinking!! Is that it?! You trust me to go out on your damn missions but you don't trust me to-- dammit! I don't have time for this! And neither do you. We don't have time for all this 'I'm ready, you're ready, are you sure, you're so young, you probably should go' bullshit, okay?! I! Know! What! I'm! Doing! Which is more than I can say for you!! And-- dammit! Go to hell!!"

"Fullmetal--"

"I said go to hell!!"

The door slammed and he was left staring at the wall.

"...What the HELL just happened?!"

(-)

And I really do know he's on my side. I've figured that out now. I think you can't blame me for being sucpicious, because the guy's never sincere about anything ELSE he does, and I have a hell of a lot riding on this game. But he's protected me, and done a lot of good for me, and even his worst crap has some reason in the end.

But I still say there's something wrong with it. I still hate the way he doesn't tell me anything, won't trust me with anything, teases me and mocks me every chance he gets. I know that it's not serious, I get that now. But there's something-- pathological about it, don't you get it? There's something abnormal there. Like he likes to see me angry, or he's pushing me away.

So it's not that different, I'm just wiser at thwarting him now: I don't know exactly why he pulls this crap, so I stay calm and stay close, just to cover all my bases. And I realize now that it's abnormal, that it can't be just me, that normal people just don't act like that to people they don't hate.

I realize there's something wrong here now, and every time he talks about not being able to see me from in front of the couch there, I just let out a deep breath, and I think, Thank God I don't care about him.

And there's just got to be another way...

(-)

His office door was open, just a little, and he could hear every word of the conversation outside.

"What's he like?" asked the messenger, a little timidly.

"He's--" Fullmetal started.

"Perfectly nice," Hawkeye jumped in. "More of a womanizer than we'd like, but honest, clever, and loyal to his men. Even if he is a little too smug."

"Yeah," Fullmetal agreed-- and said something that briefly stilled Roy's pen.

"I can't wait to meet him..."

(-)

He's your most valuable asset and you've been treating him recklessly. You really don't tell him anything. You are patronizing to him. You even insult him!

You pretend it's a game, but it isn't. Never to him. Not even to you, if you ever have the guts to look inside that elusive mind.

You are carefully driving him away.

Do you want him to betray you? Do you want him to be safe from you?

What exactly would you do to him?

What the hell are you so afraid of?

(-)

"I miss him."

Alphonse was startled by the admission.

"Why do I miss him?"

"I don't know."

"I hated him."

"You shouldn't have. He meant well."

"Didn't act like it."

"But he did."

"Yeah, I know."

"That meeting tomorrow at six a.m... when should I wake you up?"

"...Couple hundred years from now sounds nice..."

(-)

I have so many other things to worry about. Surviving here, for one thing, figuring out where home is and how to get back there before all my time and all my chances drain away. I've actually been lucky so far, which I just find totally insane, because if this is lucky, if anything I've been through can be called lucky, what the hell happens to unlucky people?

Or maybe I'm just looking at it wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

Anyway-- why I'm even bothering to write this I don't know, I hate admitting it-- during the day, I do worry about those more important things. During most of the night too, really. But then there's that other part of the night, when I dream of home. Of my brother, and all my friends. (Dunno if I was ever really much of a friend to them, but it's the only word I can think of, and "acquaintances" is just as wrong.)

See, but then I find myself thinking of all the people I hate. All the people who manipulated me for their own purposes, whatever the hell those were. And I keep coming back to him. Time and again, trying to think about anything else, I find myself wondering again and again, what was it you wanted from me? What the hell was it you wanted?

Did you find what you were looking for? Or what you were looking for in me?

I shouldn't give it a second thought, and yet I do, but now I have a countermeasure.

'Cause I'm just gonna have to ask the smug bastard, right?

(-)

His ghost wanders around here at night.

It's a figment of your inagination, but sometimes others pretend they've seen it too, trying to make you feel better. As if you need sympathy, or can even accept it. Ask that ghost you claim to see, you want to tell them, he'll tell you you're wasting your time...

But he's abnormally quiet, now, probably because he's finally getting revenge. Haunting you has mellowed him immensely. After all, there were two things that made him high-strung in life: his responsibilities, and you. His responsibilities are gone, and ironically, he has found peace hanging around your office couch and mocking people.

Last place he thought he'd find it.

And this is a ridiculous charade of yours, this "ghost" thing, and you really should give it up; you don't like teetering so near the brink of insanity. But he keeps you honest, keeps you (vaguely) humble, keeps you from drowning yourself in self-recrimination. And frankly you miss him, and this hallucination may be the only thing keeping you sane in this dark struggle for power.

A ridiculous charade, but everyone does believe it; after all, the boy's come back from everywhere else...

(-)

And again you feel like you did when you first dropped back into this world and saw what you somehow knew was your sun up in the desert sky. You were spinning around, you were laughing the way you'd never thought you'd laugh again, and everything was fine, better than fine again. It didn't last; sobriety kicked back in, the realization you were in the middle of a desert with half a canteen of water.

But you made it and you're back, and you announced your presence by stomping in and dumping years' worth of reports on his desk-- "Your reports, Fuhrer, sir! And I apologize for the delay."

And shock faded into incredulity faded into an abject joy you'd never expected, and he'd started laughing, and you'd started laughing helplessly too, and here you are.

And this magic'll fade in a minute too, most likely, but still, maybe it won't, maybe it's true. Either way, it's worth it.

He's looking at you with such a warm smile you have to return it.

Feels like summer, feels like home...

(-)