Two things made me want to write this. The first was my occasional inability to read, and the second came to me as I was already writing it. 1) I keep scrolling through the FMA section on AO3 and misreading "Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang" as "Roy Mustang/Roy Mustang." And then I got an image in my head, and bam! Here we are. And no, sorry, this is not a weird spicy-sexy story. Well, a bit weird. But more angst-platonic. And 2) I wanted to express some headcannons, which you can read more about below.
He reaches out to touch the mirror's surface, and when his fingers make contact, it feels like sand. That doesn't make any sense, so he trails his fingertips around it in a swirling swoop – it's smooth and clean where he touches it, and it does feel like stirring sand.
There are flecks of rust around the edges, darker and redder than any rust he remembers seeing.
Otherwise, it's a regular mirror. He sees himself reflected in it, his blue, perfectly-starched uniform, collar folded just so, sleeves straight and clean. Crisp. His hair styled messily-artfully, eyes dark and revealing nothing. Arm outstretched.
There are fine cracks in the mirror – his form is clearly reflected, but as his eyes travel toward the edges he sees them: fine cracks, spiderwebbing the surface.
It's warm in the room. Warm and dark, except for that faint flickering that means distant candlelight. The dark wraps around his shoulders, shrouds him and holds him.
The frame is old wood, paint flecking off with age. It smells of dust and mildew and sickness. He can see in its reflection that just behind him is a familiar bed, rumpled sheets half spilled onto the floor. The room isn't so dark anymore, there's a lamp shining yellow light from the nightstand, just enough for him to see everything in the shadows. He knows this place, has been here before, and he remembers determination and chagrin, and a rasping voice telling him, I regret even teaching you that much.
He's wearing a white button up shirt and black slacks, and classy non-regulation shoes. The cuffs of his shirtsleeves are undone, and his hair is short and cleanly cut and he'd look good, sharp and ready to set out and save the world, if it weren't for the sweat rolling down his neck from behind his ear, tracing down to his collarbone in a gentle caress.
The room is well-lit, in a cold, sterilized sort of way, and the light makes the cracks in the mirror twinkle, like there's anything good to see here. Like the room doesn't smell like smoke and antiseptic and burnt flesh, like his ears don't remember choked back screams. When he shifts his weight, his shoes scuff on dry sand forever etched into floorboards that will never be repaired, but when he looks in the mirror he sees that said floor is actually covered in blood, thick and dark and ever-spreading.
His hand shakes as he lowers it to his side, numb. He doesn't want to confirm what he's seeing with any other senses, doesn't want to feel the heat baking off the glass, or smell the copper in the air. The circles under his eyes are enough, the frown lines etched around his mouth, the deep furrows in his brow, pupils narrowed down to a laser focus.
He's thinking of turning away when strong hands grasp him by the upper arms and hold him there, clenched like vices in the sleeves of his greatcoat. There's a crack running down the mirror, right in the center, all the way through, and the glass is its own entity now; not just the reflections are in three dimensions but the glass too. It leaves its own imprint on his retinas, it would have its own smell if he were to lean in, its own taste, and if he were to touch it it would feel warm and alive under his fingers.
It would whisper in his ears like the voice he hears now, rasping and inhuman and full of glee, but also his own voice, hot and damp in his ear, saying, "You'll die a thousand deaths before I'm through with you." Under the light of the sconces along the tunnel wall, everything is yellow and warm in ways it shouldn't be, like there aren't places down here where he could crawl away into the dark and never be found, or like there are such places and it's a good thing.
When he looks up, there is a hand on his neck, touching him softly but with firm command. Fingertips slipping under his sweaty uniform collar, and it's himself he sees, his own face looming over his shoulder, skin pale and eyes lit from the inside with rage and deep-seated mania.
"You're ugly," Roy Mustang says, teeth and breath grazing his ear with a deep growl, grin wide and gleaming and white, too white, all-colours-at-once white, and The Truth laughs in his ear and says, in the voice of a thousand voices, all of them trying not to laugh, "You should take a good look at your face."
But he can't, because everything is dark–
He wakes up with a jolt and an intake of breath so hard that it catches in his lungs and he can't breathe. The dim, moonlit room is spinning around him and he doesn't know which way is up until he comes back to himself, panting and sweating and coughing, on the floor.
He doesn't know how long he spends down there, shaking and clutching at the cold floorboards, before he realizes that his face hurts, probably from hitting the floor. It can't be long, because momentarily he hears a rattle from outside his door, then a clap, and Edward Elric's voice cursing and calling, "Hey Mustang, you alright in there?" And on the heels of that: "Why'd you lock the damn door?"
Roy doesn't know why he locked the damn door, just that it had hurt to do it with his currently clumsy fingers, but doing it had made something release in his chest that had been clenched since he'd left his and Hawkeye's hospital room in the afternoon. Was it only this afternoon? What time is it now?
Another rattle and a curse. "Mustang! Answer me, dammit!" Was that growl angry or scared?
Roy clears his throat. "Yes – yeah, Fullmetal, I'm–" Alright, he's going to say, when he remembers where he is – on the floor. "I just..." His clammy fingers twitch against the floor, and there is a tug of pain in his palm. "Give me a second."
He starts to push himself up from the floor on his elbows, then has to kind of roll to the side to get out of the blankets. His cheekbone is starting to feel kind of hot through the pain, so when he's more or less on all fours he lifts one bandaged hand to probe it gingerly.
He's not fine, he's a mess. It's almost funny.
"You gonna open the damn door or what? I don't got all night," Ed's grousing, even though he did agree to spend the night at Roy's townhouse, to help Roy with the usual minutiae that are hard with holes in your hands – so he does have all night, according to verbal contract. With Hawkeye, no less. But Roy doesn't say that, just finds his way onto shaking legs and crosses to the door to unlock it.
As soon as the lock unclicks, Ed is pushing it open (with his left hand, fingers light and sure). He takes in Roy's appearance by the light from the hallway, a light which Roy can't help but look at, although he resists the urge to lean out into the doorway to see it better.
"Are you al–" Ed starts, then shakes his head. "I mean, did you bust your damn stitches?"
Roy looks away from the light. He lifts his hands to inspect the front and back, and sees no blood leaking through the bandages. "No," he answers, even though they can both see just fine that he hasn't.
"Okay," Ed says, and then there's a beat of silence. "Okay. Come downstairs, and I'll make us some tea, or whatever."
Roy nods and follows him.
Ed doesn't look at him on the way down, doesn't go slow to make sure he's following either, but he does flick all the lights on all the way to the kitchen. They don't need all those lights to see by, but each lit bulb seems to leech a little bit of cold out of Roy's bones.
Ed practically shoves him in a chair when they get there, and stomps past him to grab the kettle off the stove. He picks it up with his right hand – Roy wonders if maybe he's learned that potentially-hot metal things should always be a right-hand job, and whether it's necessary for him to unlearn that or just to learn to check the temperature of things first, and if there's a difference – but he has to switch hands when he fills it, as the weight of the water makes his diminished hand shake.
"Would you call it diminished?" Roy finds himself asking, "Or just never... augmented?"
Ed glares at him over his shoulder as he puts the kettle on the stove. "Of course it's diminished," he answers, "it's barely had any nutrients in over four years, didn't you see Al?" Then Ed cringes. It must be half-instinctive by now, not wanting to use the s-word around Roy, but he did see Al. He went to visit him after Marcoh, and having seen Al's young, unbearably thin face smile so brightly when he came in, like they were meeting for the first time, like there was no death or terrible truths between them, Roy doesn't think he could ever call Al "diminished."
"I saw him," Roy says in response. "It was wonderful. He's – you did well."
Ed huffs at that. He clasps his hands, fingers interlocked, and runs his thumbs over each other as he waits for the kettle to boil. His shoulders are tense that way, kind of hunched in like he's trying to shield himself from the cold. He's not looking at Roy, keeping his back turned – and that feels right for this conversation, the one where Roy is congratulating him for his bloodless victory, no lost souls damned to the void for him, thank you very much.
Roy's right fist clenches, twinges of pain sparking outward from his ruined palm, and he thinks it might have been involuntary, but it probably wasn't. Roy makes bad choices. It's a pattern.
"Hey," Ed says – he's turned around and halfway into Roy's space – "stop that, dumbass." He takes the hand in both of his, splays Roy's fingers, turns his palm upward.
Edward Elric is a lot of things, but gentle has rarely, if ever, been one of them, and gentle with Roy certainly hasn't been. He leaves his hand open, but pulls it back, unsure what to do.
"Sorry," Ed breathes. He steps away to an appropriate distance. Then he hauls out another chair, scraping it loudly on the tiles. He spins it around backwards and straddles it, facing Roy across the corner of the table. He opens his mouth as if to speak again, defiance in his eyes and full-up-to-here in the set of his teeth, but catches himself on a breath, instead.
Roy stares back at him. At the sixteen-year-old who saved the world, beat a would-be god to death with his fists and his convictions. Who waded into hell and said, "I'll take one of those," and came back with his little brother. In Roy's empty house in the dead of night, in his silent kitchen, sits a marvel, strong-willed and waiting for him to speak. All of a sudden Roy is twenty-two again, crouched in a tent with a dented pocket watch while solid shoulders wait for the seconds to tick by; he's last week, standing over broken, transmuted bricks with his hand out, waiting to deal out retribution and being told "no." He's standing in a desert, the sun hot in his hair, and the screams haven't started yet but he knows what they sound like.
The kettle starts to whistle before Roy finds any words. Ed levers himself up. He takes down a pair of mugs, drops tea bags into them, and fills them. Stirs them each, spoon clinking in the silence, takes the bags out – they'll be somewhat weak, but at whatever ungodly hour this is, it's probably not a bad thing. Ed sets a mug in front of Roy, who pulls it toward himself with both hands, cradling it and letting the warmth seep into his palms.
Ed takes a careful sip, then seats himself again and asks, "You wanna talk about it?"
Roy smiles, wistfully, sardonically. "I don't know," he admits.
Ed frowns at him, a furrow between his brows to match the dark circles under his eyes, considering him. He sighs, sips, and squares his shoulders. "I used to have a lot of nightmares," he starts, and it seems he's decided to wade full in, which is really the only way that he does things and so isn't surprising. "After what we did – after what we tried. After losing Al's body. I used to wake up screaming, sometimes, and sometimes early on I could pretend it was because of the automail, but I think Al always knew, you know?"
His chin tips forward, and he stares down into his steaming tea, bangs hanging in front of his eyes and obscuring his face. "Never could get anything past that kid. And sometimes, especially as we – as I – got older, he'd make me talk it out." Ed taps the fingers of his right hand idly against his mug and then pauses, as if surprised that they don't clink. "It might have helped, I think – or I guess it could have – but I couldn't tell him everything. He couldn't remember it all, so I couldn't... remind him." He worries his teeth at his bottom lip, exhales.
He looks up at Roy then, so Roy contemplates his mug harder. "Then..." Roy starts, "If that didn't help, then what did? How did you deal with... it?"
Another breath as Ed thinks that over, tap-tapping silently against his mug. "I didn't... well, you don't so much deal with it as live with it," he offers. "It's always there, is the thing. The Truth. It's always been there, and it's always gonna be there, and you just have to live with that. With knowing that."
If his hands are warm, then why are they going numb, Roy wonders. The bottom is threatening to drop out of his stomach, too. He hadn't realized he'd been hoping for a better answer until he hadn't gotten it. "Right," he says. "Live with it." His hands tense up again, and he forces them to relax.
"What?" Ed prompts.
Roy inhales, and says, "It's just getting a little crowded in here." He's got lots of things to live with, and mostly he just tries not to think of them all. He can't make any of them right, can't go back and change things, so he just does what he has to, to reduce the number of things-to-live-with coming in, to fix the things that haven't finished going wrong yet. It's a bit like climbing a sand dune. He'll get there, he has to, but it's hard going and his feet keep sliding, and there's so much sand.
"I shouldn't have used the stone," Roy adds. It's not a question, and it is. He knows what Ed must think of that particular choice; Ed just hasn't said it yet.
There's a pause, and a clink from in front of Ed, and then, "You didn't. Marcoh did. And..." There are fingers snapping in front of Roy's face then, the strong ones, no lack in coordination or callouses, making him look up into Edward's eyes, which are set as stone and staring at him hard. "And he was right to do it. I hope he uses the whole damn thing up, healing folks in that town of his. They're miserable pieces of shit, those stones, but there's no way to give the people in them their lives back, and so the only thing to do, the only humane thing, is to use them up."
Roy's hands are shaking. It's curious. "But I–"
"You didn't deserve that shit, I told you that, so don't sit there and tell me you did." Ed glares at him a little longer (some things never change), and then gestures at Roy's mug. "Now quit being melodramatic and drink your damn tea."
Roy does. He's never going to get Ed to take orders, he resigned himself to that a long time ago, so someone might as well. "Alright," he says, after a long sip and soothing heat down his throat. It's a bit bitter, but getting milk for it wouldn't be worth the inevitable hassle. "How is Al doing?" he asks instead.
Ed smiles like he can't help himself, and he probably can't. "He's good," he says. "Better every day, I think. But, do you know, the little brat accused me of hovering yesterday..."
They while away a bit of the dark night with quiet conversation, until Roy's eyes start to droop, and Ed shoos him up the stairs with a grumbled command not to lock the door again, geez. When Roy pulls the sheets over himself his hands are still aching, but it's not so bad, and he can hear Ed moving around the house, turning out the lights.
Longish author's note:
I know that Ed and Al would never use a philosopher's stone to heal themselves, but I don't think that's the same thing as Ed thinking that Roy should stay blind to avoid using one. We know two things that make me believe this: first, that Ed thinks what The Truth did to Roy is bullshit, and second, that Ed has basically climbed inside of a philosopher's stone and witnessed the storm of pain and madness inside. (And third, we know from Winry that souls trapped inside of stones have some awareness of that pain and madness, and that with few exceptions they would really rather not be there.) Ed might not like seeing a stone used for anything, because they are truly awful things, but I think he'd be more or less okay with a solution that involved undoing Roy's blindness and pushing the stone a little farther toward no-longer-existing. I wrote this thinking that it would probably not be completely used up, because that would be too convenient – but I doubt it will be around much longer.
Also, sidebar: in my head, Major Armstrong totally went back with Marcoh to his little town and hung out with him playing bodyguard and holding the hands of small children to distract them while Marcoh fixed them up, until the stone was used up. It was adorable and there were many tears, most of them from Armstrong.
Completely separate additional sidebar: If anyone is inspired to write something that is actually Roy Mustang/Roy Mustang, please tell me so I can read and review! My tastes tend toward genfic, but do what you gotta and I will read it. Or if anyone wants to draw Roy and Roy in front of The Mirror of Tnawtonod™, I think that would be beyond amazing.
Thanks for reading and please tell me what you think!