She was changed – so completely altered from the last time Edward had seen her. Of course, she tried to hide it; the lieutenant wasn't a woman who tended to wear her emotions on her sleeve – to expose her troubles to those around her. It was only a trained eye – the eye of one well acquainted with the soldier – that could spot the alterations, let alone the degree of them. It had been some time since Edward had left the military, yet he could tell that more had changed about Riza than the length of her hair.
Lowering his son from his lap, Edward approached the door, peering out through the window once more before swinging it open, just as Riza raised her hand to knock on its smooth, wooden surface. Her brown eyes lit with shock at Edward's sudden greeting, but gratitude swept over her face, accompanied by a sigh of relief.
"Lieutenant," he greeted her, stepping to the side to allow her to pass into the house, "come on in."
She hesitated before slipping past him, making a polite comment about the state of his home.
"Perhaps the front room is kind of neat," he agreed sheepishly, "but the back room…between all my books and Winry's tools…not to mention all the toys – but pretend I didn't say that, or Winry will get pissed that someone found out what a mess our house really is." He laughed self-consciously, unsure of what to say next. He was used to Riza taking control of things; her passive silence was unsettling. "Sit down, please," he invited her in an overly formal voice, unlike his usual tone.
She accepted, falling down into a cushiony couch with an exhausted sigh. "I won't put you through any more painful small talk, Edward," she promised him. She leaned back, her bloodshot eyes drooping shut. "You must know why I'm here – what I'm suffering from. You've seen it before, the object of my know the antagonist I speak of, the villain I cannot defeat. No, this is a force no gun could extinguish – that no amount of strength on my part, though I've tried, could ever take down. I come to you, Edward, because you must know – you must understand – it is one of the reasons why you've never come to see me. Laying your eyes upon such an evil…it's a kind of suffering you mustn't take home to your child. As a father, you have to be attentive and focused; your mind can not be disturbed by the horrific images I'm faced with everyday. I ramble, I know, but this has driven me to things much unlike myself, things odder than talking in pointless circles. You must understand!"
Of course he did. He had seen that which she now spoke of. A villain stronger than the homunculi, in the way it polluted one's mind and burned one's eyes, an ability none of the immortals had possessed before. An immortal force that grew with each and every night, its long, black arms stretching out, enveloping all in its reach. Dark, long, thin, strong, firm, prickly, fuzzy – the only monster that needed to be finely combed each morning. It was the mustache that they spoke of – the mustache, the demon that had infected the Colonel and stolen him of all he was. It had begun as a simple stubble but had, like any disease, grown with time, expanding and thickening with each passing day. How she must had felt, rolling over to that beast every morning – in a have dazed, sleepy state, reaching out for the Colonel and instead feeling the chilling brush of a furry clump of hair protruding from his once smooth skin. What it was like to work with him, filing a series of white papers with that clump of black stamped on to her peripheral vision. To eat dinner with him, spaghetti sauce clinging to the already grotesque growth beneath his nose – to fight beside him, forever doubting the judgment of a man who would allow such a thing to stem from his own flesh – supporting a man whose face looked like the victim of a vandalized poster. What a life Riza Hawkeye must lead, and yet Edward had had to turn away from her, to turn a blind eye to her pains, and not for the noble, responsible reasons she had offered him, but from his own fear and terror – a horror that filled him and shook him each time he envisioned that dark caterpillar, wiggling and squirming across his former superior's upper lip.
He squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. It hurt to admit such a small creature – such a small, squiggly sort of parasitic blob of hair – could cause an eruption of goose bumps on his arms, especially considering all he'd gone through. Yet, looking into the lieutenant's unfamiliarly defeated, broken eyes, he felt that he was not alone, that he had a reason for his fears.
"I hate to admit it – I hate to discuss this with anyone but the Colonel himself – but I've tried before. I've tried to convince him to shave it, subtly and then bluntly, but nothing would work. I believe he took our remarks about his childlike features too seriously, perhaps, and believes that a young face like his won't be taken seriously, when in reality-"
"-In reality, it's this new hairy, prickly mask of black, tangled bushes that can't be taken seriously," Edward finished. "Yeah, he took that incident with the marker a little too seriously."
Riza sighed. "I…at this point, I honestly don't know what to do. It humiliates me to admit it, but I cannot – this time I cannot save the Colonel on my own. I just…every time I feel those prickly, black claws scratch my lips, I draw further away from him. It's like it's infected him entirely, and I wonder if it's me, or the mustache. Am I overreacting, or has the mustache truly changed Roy?"
And the Colonel wonders why Hayate's getting more action than he is, Edward thought with a scoff. "Don't be embarrassed," he comforted her. "It'll take more than you – even more than both of us – to bring the Colonel back from the dark side. I think…I think we have to call together and prepare an intervention."
"An intervention?" she repeated skeptically. "You intend to humiliate him into shaving?"
"I intend to try every method there is," Edward vowed, "no matter what the cost, be it his pride or whatnot. Lieutenant," he murmured leaning forward, "we must kill the beast, before it's too late – before it kills the Colonel first."
He was sitting by the fire, the reddish light reflecting off of the dark, tangled nest, the light sinking into the abyss of straggly mane never to reemerge, swallowed into the black hole of hair. Riza tried to look at his eyes – those commanding, straightforward eyes she had always adored – but it was the mustache she saw when she laid her eyes upon him, a waterfall of clumpy locks pouring out from his upper lip, seeping down over his mouth and leaking out onto the edges of his cheeks, a disheveled mess, a monstrosity she couldn't avoid, couldn't ignore, couldn't accept.
And as she stared, it stared back, its black, beady eyes watching her every movement. Even when she turned away, she felt its presence – felt its chilling, chaotic presence looming behind her – it whispered threats in her ear, reminding her that it would be there when they sat to dinner, staring her down across the table – that it would be there when she rolled over in the night, that it would be there when she woke in the morning, that its thin, prickly hands would be grazing her neck, her cheek, her lips, the rattled nest of darkness sucking her in, polluting her clear flesh with each brush.
She sucked in a breath. "Roy?"
The mustache rose, its small, dark head emerging from the shadows and directly into the light, drawing all the attention in the room to its presence. "Yes?"
"Some friends are coming over soon." Looking at all those hairs, lined together in one line, a mane of straight, scratchy furs, she couldn't help but think that he was already in no shortage of friends.
The maze of hairs seemed to twitch in response, and Riza allowed the conversation to die away, slinking off out of the room as an escape.
"Is it my birthday or something?" the Colonel asked with a laugh.
The inside of his living room was cluttered with each and every acquaintance he had ever met, all crammed together with grave, determined glints in their eyes. No, he thought, it wasn't a party – had it been, he was sure Breda and Fuery wouldn't be holding signs reading exorcise the beast, or one that read like Ling's, which said we're here to 'shave' the day. Some wore masks over their mouths, and some wore protective goggles over their eyes. Roy emerged from the kitchen door, led out by a pale Riza, who stepped to the side, allowing their guests' eyes to befall him.
"Behold," she murmured gravely, "the mustache."
The young Elric child burst into hysterical tears, wriggling in his mother's arms in horror, clinging to the edge of her shirt with a shrill, pained cry of horror.
"What's this?" Roy asked, laughing to hide the annoyance in his tone. He turned to Riza. "What is this?"
"An intervention," she responded bluntly, dropping her hand from his.
"Oh, Colonel Mustang!" a loud, booming voice sobbed from the background. Armstrong came forward, sobbing hysterically. He rushed towards Roy, intending to embrace his wayward friend, but stopped within five feet of the Colonel; his sparks flickered like a dying bulb before collapsing to the ground, and he staggered backward, unable to come any closer. "My dear comrade, how you have fallen to ruin! How you have led yourself to despair! Fear no more, Mustang, for we are here to save you!"
"To shave you," Ling corrected, thrusting his sign further into the air. "We're here to shave you."
"Shave me?" he sputtered, staring in quizzical doubt and horror at the crowd. "What are you-"
"The mustache, Colonel," Edward said flatly. "It has to go. It's either you or the mustache."
"Yeah, lose the hairs or lose the babe," Ling piped up.
With an irritated movement, Riza stepped in front of the Colonel, blocking the unhelpful Xingese Prince from his vision. "Listen, Roy; a lot more depends on this than you realize."
"You're going to move out because of my mustache?" he laughed.
"That 'stache has more hair than Riza does!" Breda teased from behind them. "You can't keep two-timing her with that grizzly clump of burnt noodles you have there."
"Not just that," Ling sang out. "If you were to ever become Fuhrer – which you won't with that thing – I would, as the Xingese prince, refuse to cooperate with a man with a creature like that growing off of him."
"Yeah, it looks like you've sprouted some strange growth," Rebecca agreed with a wince.
"You should bring that down to the vet for some shots," Ling sneered.
Roy opened his mouth to object when Havoc emerged from the crowd, wheeling through the cluster of people, Armstrong's fallen sparks crunching under his wheels. "I've already lost mobility following you," he teased. "I don't want to lose my sight, either. It has to go, sir."
"I think you're all overreacting," he stammered, amazed by their behavior. "This has to be some sort of prank. It's just a mustache."
"That's not just a mustache," Al spoke up lowly. "We've all seen mustaches before, but this…this is something else."
Winry handed the sobbing child over into Edward's arms, passing through the crowd to approach Roy. "All right, it's time for some psychiatric help," she declared, rolling up her sleeves.
"Oh God," Edward groaned.
"Colonel," she began, standing directly before him, "tell us, sincerely, why is that you are so attached to this mustache?"
"I think it makes me look dignified."
"Aha!" she cried, clapping her hands to the group behind her. "Bring out Exhibit A."
Armstrong and Maria Ross emerged from the crowd, standing side by side, next to Winry and directly before Roy. Plastered onto Maria's upper lip was a paper mustache. "Behold, a dignified, suited mustache," she said, pointing to Armstrong, "and a horrific, blinding eyesore," she gestured to Ross.
"T-that's not the same!" he objected, watching as the left side of her fake mustache drooped off, falling to the ground.
"Do you ever want to get laid again, Colonel Mustache?" someone shrieked from the back.
"Grumman? Is that you?"
"All the Fuhrers have mustaches!" Roy objected. "Why shouldn't I?"
"All the Fuhrers have been losers," Edward reminded him. "Ditch the hair pit, Colonel Mustache."
"That's it," Winry decided. "Exhibit B."
"I think it's a little too soon for that," Al objected cautiously.
"For what?" Roy asked.
"I think it's time," Winry objected.
"I think it may be," Ross admitted, lowering her head solemnly.
Al shook his head, staring worriedly at the Colonel. "But-"
"Go on," Riza decided. "It's fine, Al; go on, Winry."
"What?" Roy demanded.
"Armor up!" Ling declared. Everyone in the room simultaneously whipped out a pair of plastic gloves and raised a mask to their mouths.
"What is this?" Roy demanded in a pleading tone.
Riza turned to the Colonel, her eyebrows furrowed. "You told me I could shoot you if I thought something was wrong – that you had strayed from your goal."
His eyes lit in horror. "You would do that – over a mustache?"
"Sorry, Colonel," she murmured remorsefully, pulling a gun from her jacket. "I'm truly sorry it's come to this."
The last thing he saw was her finger on the trigger.
Was he in Heaven? It felt cool; surely, Hell wasn't cool. He felt light, fluffy, as if he had lost half his weight, as if the oppressive force of gravity had been lifted from him, as if he had been freed of all his sins, of all his evils and demons. Yes, this must be Heaven. This kind of bliss wasn't anything like Hell – wasn't anything like Earth at that. There was nothing quite like this…
His eyes drifted open. He was lying in a tub, fully clothed. The tub was empty, but his shirt was stained with water. The ends of his hair dripped with damp residue, and the edge of the tub was littered with huge, oozing containers of cream – shaving cream. Lifting his head, a woozy sensation settled over him. He hadn't been killed – he'd been drugged.
He steadied himself before sitting upright, glancing out into the bathroom. Black Hayate sat, perched in the corner. Somehow, he seemed darker than usual – crueler than usual. There was something in the air that seemed to change around his body, seemed to suck all the life out of Roy's heart, and the conviction from his soul…no, that wasn't Black Hayate, he realized, coming fully to his senses, it was his former mustache, chopped and clumped in the corner, a sign labeled quarantine hanging temporarily behind it. His hand rose to his face, feeling the smooth, clear skin – skin he hadn't felt in ages. He raised dripping from the tub and staggered over the mirror, gazing in at his reflection.
It was like he was seeing himself for the first time. It was like he had been baptized, exorcized, purified – as if he had been given a second chance. He couldn't help but sob with relief, splashing cold water over his face before returning to the living room, where his friends waited.
He was a saved man.
He was a shaved man.
He was Colonel Mustache no more.
Author's Notes: Wow, I haven't written a fan fic in ages…but I've been dying to write this since I saw the last episode of Brotherhood. That mustache absolutely kills me…
Please review and let me know what you think! Are you glad to see the mustache go?