Roy Mustang hadn't mourned the death of Colonel Ellis Murphy - he was an ambitious man, a quality that Mustang knew and appreciated. He was also a cold man, stern and brutal, and Mustang had his suspicions about Murphy's behind-the-scenes machinations that he couldn't quite verify. The man's death had been unexpected - a routine garrison patrol that Mustang's command had passed on was the target of a terrorist plot that lead to the death of three officers, Colonel Murphy the highest ranked among them. Mustang knew that he was being looked at due to the circumstances, and while he had never wished Murphy ill he wouldn't miss the man's noxious behavior.
His sudden death, however, left Mustang in a strange quandary. Murphy had several alchemists in his garrison - he had them working on something, but Mustang wasn't sure what. The allotment and passage of goods and services was something he'd been watching like a hawk lately, trying to find some kind of angle to exploit against several of the military officers in his own rank, and it was clear by the way Murphy kept close tabs on all the information related to him that he was up to no good. Since several key members of his command had been badly injured, instead of trying to run that garrison at a quarter staff the office staff was divvied up among the other officers. Roy hadn't recieved any refugees from the disbanded garrison, instead Military Command appointed one of the State Alchemists that had been assigned to Murphy to Mustang instead. And that would be well and good if Mustang had any idea on this earth where the alchemist in question was at the moment - he was quite certain she could shed some light on the mysterious experiments that Murphy had his alchemists working on.
While Mustang put his considerable resources to work on locating the errant State Alchemist - who likely had no idea that the colonel she reported to was dead as a doornail, literally - he had another minor emergency to deal with. And that particular blond-haired emergency was laying on the couch in his office, arms draped over his eyes glumly as he pretended to sleep. Funny how he pretended to sleep, while Mustang pretended to work, and in reality they were both sneaking glances at each other at every available chance.
Edward Elric, the youngest to qualify for the State Alchemist title and a prodigy in most respects. He had been sulking about Roy's office in various states of duress since he was the tender age of twelve. Now seventeen, he was used to this routine; he had a bit of a fit when Roy had told him he was confined to the office and had even threatened to transmute Roy's head into a turnip; Roy had baited him cattily until Lieutenant Hawkeye had marched into the room to give them both the evil eye and that was that.
It had turned out that Edward had this time opened his mouth at the wrong General and it was all coming down on Roy's head. Again. He was very good at getting Edward out of the trouble he'd wrought, but it took time and patience and right now both were in short supply. Even before Murphy's death, Mustang's unit had been assigned several low-key undercover missions that needed to be plotted and run - and now several garrisons were running around willy-nilly because of the threat of additional terrorist attacks when anyone with any sense could see it was a small group of Ishvalian extremists and a garrison in the wrong place at the wrong time.
One of these days Edward was going to invite a court-martial down upon his head and he wouldn't have Roy around to protect him.
The best plan was to keep Edward out from underfoot. Unfortunately, there had been a dearth of missions to send the diminutive alchemist out on lately; so underfoot Edward had been. Alphonse had been good at keeping Edward out of everyone's hair - it seems between the two of them that they might have finally hit upon a solution to end their troubles and restore Alphonse back into his original body. They were gaining ground fast on ... something. Edward was being cagey about exactly what, and Roy hadn't had the time or resources yet to check up on what precisely they were up to.
Edward shifted restlessly on the couch, arm lifting up just enough so he could glare at Roy from his position on the couch. "Can I go yet?"
Roy didn't even have to look up. "No. You're not allowed out of this office without an escort on military grounds, and everyone is far too busy to babysit you at this time, Fullmetal."
The sound that emanated from the couch was somewhere between a growl and a frustrated sigh. At that Roy did look up, surprised that Edward didn't push the argument further. He was used to Edward's outbursts and fits, but he was also starting to realize that Edward wasn't having tantrums like he used to - maybe being in the military for as long as he had been, even peripherally, was starting to wear off on him. Then, sullenly, "I should be with Al."
"I would much rather you be with your brother right now too, and out of my hair," Roy said, skimming over the expense report Fuery had turned in. "But every time you get it into your idiot head to go off on a senior officer, you not only endanger your own position but you put me in a bad spot, and right now you can't be trusted to not make things worse." He heard Edward verbally ruffle at being called an idiot, but he didn't snap back a juvenile retort like Roy was waiting for. It was disconcerting, this growing up thing that Edward actually doing.
Edward leaned up on his elbows, stared at Roy. "If I'm stuck here you should give me something to do," he said. "I'm going out of my mind, you have cracks in the ceiling and I swear they're starting to move because I've been staring at them for so long."
Instinctively, Roy looked up. He too was well acquainted with the cracks on the ceiling from his own naps taken on those couches, as well as the times he'd whiled away the hours throwing push pins at the ceiling to try to make them stick. It was a game that Hughes had started, having impaled a single tiny green push pin above Roy's desk. It had fallen prey to maintenance years before but occasionally still Roy played that game alone in his office.
His eyes fell back to Edward, who was watching Roy with a lazy expression, clearly amused that Roy had actually checked the position of the cracks. Roy's own expression was carefully neutral as always, and he raised one eyebrow, staring back at Edward. Their silent exchange lasted almost a full minute before Roy finally glanced back down at the papers on his desk. Truth be told there wasn't much that he could have Edward do even if he wanted to - the majority of the paperwork required his eyes and his signature. But then, Roy's attention fell across the paperwork transferring the other alchemist into his command, and he had an idea.
"So you want to be useful?" Roy purred, picking up the paper detailing the alchemist's mission.
Edward sat up completely, his expression wary. There was something in Roy's voice that was warning him away but at the same time he was ever curious as to what, possibly, Roy could have cooked up for him. "Yeah," Edward said, eying Roy. "Sure. Beats laying here all day."
"I've got a new State Alchemist assigned to this unit," Roy said, glancing over the file a final time. Edward hauled himself up off the couch and shuffled over to Roy's desk. "I need you to find them and bring them in."
Edward gave Roy a puzzled look. "Bring them in? Are they in trouble?"
Roy shook his head. "No. They're probably unaware of the brouhaha going on and need to be debriefed. So do not pick a fight with this alchemist, understand?"
Edward scoffed. "Pick a fight with them, why would I do a stupid thing like that, they probably have some stupid single-element speciality and don't have the first clue how real alchemy works-"
Roy gave Edward a flat stare. "Fullmetal."
"Yeah, yeah," Edward huffed.
"Don't make me regret letting you out of this office," Roy warned him. "I want you to let me know as soon as you make contact with her."
"Right, whatever," Edward said as Roy handed him the file. He frowned at the small bracket of information. "Last seen near Raymead? Where the fuck is Raymead?"
"West of here, somewhere," Roy said. "I'm sure it's on a map, Fullmetal, you certainly, at least, know how to read a map."
Edward let out an exasperated sigh. "Whatever. I'll find this missing alchemist for you."
"Do me a favor," Roy murmured, "and try not to insult any senior officers on your way out of the base, please?"
"Fuck you," Edward said, albeit calmly for him. He tucked the file under his arm and stomped loudly toward the door.
"Yes," Roy said to his vanishing figure. "Just don't do that." Edward flashed him the middle finger and disappeared into the outer office. Roy didn't have to hide his amused grin under his hand, now alone in the office. Some things never changed.
It was wintertide in Amestris - the air was cold but hadn't yet taken on the bitter quality that made it difficult to breathe. Regardless, the temperature always bore down on Edward more than most, the cold seeping in through the seams of his clothes into the metal of his limbs and, seeming straight down to the bone.
Edward kept his promise - mostly. A only slightly rude exchange with a PFC in the hallway wasn't insulting a senior officer - Edward, by virtue of his State Alchemist status was conferred upon the rank of Major in the military - and that completely outranked a Private, First Class. Besides, the jackass had it coming, he was only lucky that Edward was in enough of a hurry to get off the base that he wasn't interested in breaking some toes.
Alphonse had spent the better part of yesterday with his head bent over a book across the table from Edward in the small work room they'd reserved in the Central Library. The librarians knew both of them on sight - they all smiled cheerfully for Alphonse but not all of them did the same for Edward. The woman working the front desk of the library today fortunately was one of those who seemed to like him, a friend of Sheska's before she was fired from the library. Julie waved him over as he entered the main foyer of the library, shivering with the cold.
"You seen my brother?" Edward asked.
"Alphonse is in the room you two reserved still," Julie said. She gave Edward a considering look. "He's been there all *morning* and I swear he hasn't moved since I got here." She leaned forward over the desk conspiratorially to Edward. "I brought him lunch earlier, don't tell my supervisor." The library had a fairly strict policy about food and drink even in the workrooms.
"I bet he appreciated that," Edward said. "Thanks."
"You two should really look out for yourselves more," Julie scolded as Edward trotted toward the hallway that lead away from the shelves of books and toward the work rooms. He raised his hand in acknowledgment and ducked out of sight.
Three doors in - the only one in the row marked "Reserved" - and Edward opened the knob cautiously without knocking.
Sure enough, in the center of the room sat Alphonse, hunched over a pile of books. An empty tray sat slightly behind him - no crumbs on the plate but the food mysteriously missing. "Oi, Al," Edward said, closing the door behind him.
There was a brief moment's pause - finishing the page, no doubt, or the thought - before Alphonse looked up, helmet scraping across the back of the armor. "Brother!" Alphonse said, his emotion carried through his voice as always. He hadn't been pleased with Edward's earlier call placed from Roy's office about his plight, and now Alphonse clearly wasn't expecting Edward to return so soon. "I thought you'd be gone all day."
"I got let off with a light sentence," Edward said, shrugging out of his heavy winter coat. It looked precisely the same as every coat he wore, usually - long, bright red trench decorated with the crest of the mercurial serpent. The winter version was just padded thicker, and with a frost of white fur on the hood. He slung it over the back of the couch and leaned over Alphonse's shoulder to peer at what his brother had been working on.
They were close now, so close to an answer. It had taken them five long years but the possibility of evading the cost of the Philosopher's Stone was present now. There were other stages of the Great Work that they had both been investigating thoroughly now - so many different recipes, far cries from the massacre that Marcoh's stone required. Of course each and every path had to be examined fully, neither of the brothers wanted to involve a single innocent life in their quest again. But now, for the first time in years - they /had/ something.
Alphonse's helmet turned, the empty eye sockets watching as Edward skimmed over the lines of notes that Alphonse had been taking down. Being a tireless suit of armor meant that he had worked through the night - Edward didn't ask how he had evaded the librarians doing their last sweep of the night, he knew full well that despite being a seven foot tall suit of armor that made a distinctive sound when he walked Alphonse was capable of being a fucking ninja when he wanted to be. "You've got some good stuff," Edward said, peering at a particularly obtuse line of notes. "You think Magnus was on to something?"
"Yeah," Alphonse said. "But the copy of his work was incomplete, and it's the only copy in the Amestrian system. One of the librarians who brought me lunch said that we might have some luck in Magnus's hometown; they supposedly kept a complete archive of his works that isn't allowed past the city walls."
"Might be worth checking out," Edward said. "Where's his hometown?"
"Somewhere in the West," Alphonse said, flipping through the notes he'd written down. "Why did the Colonel let you out so early?"
"He had a mission for me," Edward said. "Have to go collect a person of interest, and alchemist that's ... in some bumfuck town named Raymead."
Alphonse stopped flipping suddenly and looked up at Edward. "Raymead?"
"Yeah," Edward said. He pushed up from where he was leaning on Alphonse's back and flopped back into the large old couch that Alphonse was seated in front of. "Dunno what a State Alchemist is doing in an ass-backwards little village called Raymead, but-"
"Brother," Alphonse said. "That's where Magnus is from."
There was a long pause, and then Edward said, "What?"
"That's where Magnus is from, or at least where his archives are held," Alphonse said. He had found the page of notes and half turned to present them to his brother as proof. Edward squinted at the page in disbelief. "See?"
"I'll be damned," Edward said. "That's one weird-ass coincidence."
Alphonse closed the leather-bound book he took notes in, winding the cord around it securely. "Do you really think it's a coincidence?"
"No," Edward said without hesitation. They both know how he felt about coincidences - that there was no such thing. There was definitely something hinky going on here - and whatever it was they were going to get to the bottom of it. "And I don't think Mustang's in on it, either - or if he is, he's gotten better at acting like he doesn't know." Usually, when Roy professed innocent of knowledge connecting two seemingly unrelated things, he played it off with the sort of nudge-nudge wink-wink that let Edward know he'd been conned. There had been none of that today.
Not that that entirely absolved Mustang of being involved, though.
"When's the next train headed west?" Alphonse asked, and Edward, who had put his head in his hand to think, lifted his head and looked at Alphonse in confusion. Alphonse sighed, amused - he didn't need to make the heaving sound, the armor generally couldn't breathe - and he stood up, metal scraping against metal loudly in the small enclosed space. "I'll call the station," he said. "The Colonel didn't have tickets or an expense purse or anything for you this time?"
Edward shook his head. "We can get some money out of my funds if we need to," he said, waving his hand in the air. "I can put in the reimbursement when we get back."
He got the sense that Alphonse would have rolled his eyes if he had eyes to roll, but as it was the armor shuffled toward the door, stepping delicately around the precarious piles of books and other explosions of Elric genius that dotted the landscape. He paused at the door. "The sandwich is in the suitcase," he said.
Edward cast about the room, found the suitcase and set upon Alphonse's lunch like a rabid dog as the door clicked closed behind his now-chuckling younger brother.
The first train out of Central was scheduled for late afternoon - they'd make West City by midnight if they were lucky and there were no delays.
After a brief spurt of cleaning the work room up - they'd keep it reserved while they were gone; that particular room was on standing reservation for the Elric brothers, but the materials they had scattered all over the place might be requested by other alchemists in their absence - Alphonse oversaw that Edward was bundled up tightly and out into the cold they trundled.
Winter brought dark upon them early - the skies were gray and heavy, although no snow had been forecast it looked as if the skies could open up at any moment. Alphonse carried Edward's suitcase without complaint - it was best to let his brother just bundle up and try to keep his mind off the cold irritating his automail joints. Although there was little enjoyment to be had in being the formless soul attached to a suit of armor, it also meant that the extremes of weather didn't bother him, and fatigue never hooked its tendrils into him and dragged down. Occasionally, Alphonse wondered if there would be consequences to this small boon once they restored his body - but he had decided the small perks were just to balance out, well, everything else.
Edward lead the way through the streets, crowded with pedestrians. Yule fell near the end of the month, and there were plenty of shopkeepers putting up decorations, wreaths in the windows and candles lit cheerfully in the winter twilight. Garlands decorated several of the lampposts along the street. Alphonse looked at the decorations cheerfully - he loved Yule, even though he couldn't sample the once-a-year food or enjoy the mulled cider available from vendors along the street. He could smell them, though - almost as much a curse as the inability to feel. At least he never felt hungry, that would have been completely unbearable.
The whistle of a train departing sounded while they were still a good way down the street, and Alphonse glanced at a clock reflexively, prepared to pick his brother up and make a run for it. Their train wasn't sent to leave for another thirty minutes - it was a train departing for a different part of the country. "Brother," Alphonse said thoughtfully. "We ought to visit Winry and Aunty Pinako this Yuletide."
Edward made a sound that could have been agreement but more than likely was just a noise.
They hadn't spent a Yule with the Rockbells since before Edward became a State Alchemist. In fact, most of the past winter celebrations had been on the road. One year they had been snowed in a village near the northern border of Amestris and they had spent a joyous holiday among strangers who treated them as family. Alphonse recalled that celebration fondly. In the last year they'd attended the military's Yultide party - well, Mustang had coerced Edward into going. It was the first time anyone had talked Edward into wearing the full military uniform - and Alphonse was quietly amazed at how grown up Edward seemed just wearing the dress blues.
It was the officer's ball that required Edward in the full military uniform. Edward came up just a little past Roy's shoulder, looking particularly peeved at being embroiled in this particular plot of Mustang's. But, the transformation was there - Edward in the military uniform, arms crossed, a dark scowl on his face and he still looked like an adult. It was bizarre.
Not any more bizarre then catching the reflection of Roy leaning down, gloved fingers lightly on Edward's jaw. Alphonse had turned away, hadn't seen the rest and would have blushed through if he could. Edward never spoke to him of any sort of relationship with the colonel, but...
They had arrived at the train station now, Edward and Alphonse no longer strangers to the area. Most of the station attendants knew them on sight - the large suit of armor no surprise to the workers, even if most of the passengers gave them wide berth. The train going to West City actually was nicer than most of the ones they rode with any regularity - all the cars had private compartment seating, not the open air benches that faced each other. Those were usually the first class cars, with the cheap seats being open air but this train only had the private compartments.
There wasn't any difficulty in finding an empty compartment, and Alphonse slung Edward's suitcase to the shelf over their heads while Edward flopped down, laying out on the bench seat and pillowing his head on his arms. Alphonse smiled, amused at his brother's antics, and sat opposite him, pulling out his notes to page through them and see if anything jumped out.
The train's whistle sounded overhead, but neither brother noticed as the train slowly began its journey out of the station and toward the outlying West City.