Please see disclaimers and warnings in chapter one.
A Little Help from My Friends –2/3
**
It took Roy a few minutes to identify the sound, and by the time he made it to Elysia's pink and bunny filled bedroom, she had worked herself up to real tears. He switched on the light and was met with the baleful look of utter betrayal only a baby can manage. Elysia instantly detected that Roy was neither her beloved father nor mother, and she howled her indignation and woe.
Despite the fact that no conversation with Maes since, really, the possibility of Elysia had come to be ran its course without at least one adoring mention of said child, Roy had managed to have very little actual interaction with her. He'd only held her once, at the chapel for her Naming Rite, and she'd wet on him. Still, she was female, and Roy always had spectacular luck with that gender. They weren't usually crying - he was smoother than that, and long gone before the tears started. But how hard could it be? A little admiration, a few compliments, a couple kisses, maybe dangle a bauble... come to think on it, he did treat all his women the same, if you allowed for minor differences in the types of kisses and bauble. Roy resolutely approached the crib, vowing not to show fear under the onslaught of noise. Babies must be all lungs, damn.
"Shh, Sweetie, it's Uncle Roy. Who feels like a complete fool talking to you when you have no more idea what I'm saying than a cat." He tried squeaking some soft rubbery mostly rabbit shaped thing at her. "Just go back to sleep, your daddy will be home soon. I hope."
Elysia was momentarily distracted by Uncle Roy behaving oddly, but as soon as the distraction ended, her face crumpled and the wailing resumed. Roy tried the trick a few more times with lessening results before admitting defeat. "You want me to pick you up?" He seemed to remember Gracia scooped the baby up as soon as she fussed. Elysia was already on her feet, clutching the bars of her crib, shaking them with the fury of her despair. Roy leaned over awkwardly and snatched her up, remembering belatedly to worry about catching tiny little fingers in the railings. Then he worried about supporting her head, he was sure he'd heard some instructions like that sometime. It didn't matter because she was clinging like a monkey, tugging hard on a handful of his hair. Then she screamed right in his ear and it was only involuntary muscle spasms that kept Roy's arm around her.
Roy paced around, babbling like an idiot and jiggling Elysia up and down, which seemed to just jerk loose hiccuping sobs. Did babies have enough temporal sense to know when their parents had been gone a good long time? Was there a difference between minutes and hours? There certainly was for Roy, even the seconds seemed to be lasting for days. "Shh, Sweetie, they'll be right back." Please god, let them be right back.
"Why are you crying?" Elysia couldn't have known her parents had rushed out; she'd been dead asleep. Something else must have awakened her. Bad dream? Did babies have bad dreams? What could they possibly have in their tiny little lives that could be bad enough to create a nightmare? Especially this child, who's very existence was enough to ensure her constant adoration. "If you think sleeping through the night is tough now, just wait until you have grown up things to worry about."
So, if it wasn't Maes and Grace leaving and it wasn't a nightmare, what did that leave? Roy hoped she wasn't wet, she didn't feel wet, he'd feel it, right? He felt it at the Naming Rite but then she'd been naked and pink and mildly repulsive. It was the scabby belly button. "I hope your daddy doesn't have his heart set on you marrying any offspring of mine, Elysia, because Uncle Roy is never having children." She sniffled in commiseration, getting snot on his collar. She couldn't be wet, because that was an adventure Roy was absolutely unprepared to face. Why was he stuck with a baby? He should call someone for back up.
"But who to call?" Roy asked Elysia, like she knew what he was talking about and could voice an opinion. He corrected that immediately, she was excellent at voicing opinions. If only he knew what they were. "I left my little black book at home... and the whole baby thing might give them dangerous ideas, anyway. Hawkeye is out of town... " There was the rest of the office staff, but Fuery was off at some electronics training seminar and the rest, well, by 9 on a Friday night, they'd be drunk or well on the way. Not that he'd expose Maes' darling baby girl to Havoc, Breda or Falman even if they were stone cold sober. Dammit, what he needed was a matronly old lady who'd do anything for him. One came to mind, but... "Your daddy would kill me for sure if I called a working girl over to baby sit." Anyway, Roy knew what those girls charged per hour; it would cost a damn fortune.
All right, maybe another man. A family man, or one with a large family, who would drop everything this time of night and rush to help. Roy shifted Elysia so she could sog up the other side of his shirt and reached for the telephone, dialing quickly. When the deep voice answered, sounding unperturbed at the lateness of the call, Roy sighed with relief. "Alex, Roy Mustang. Listen, Gracia Hughes' mother is in the hospital -"
Alex Armstrong gasped and offered sincere sympathies to Gracia. "Excellent woman, tragic. What can I do to help?"
"I'm glad you asked that. Hughes took my car to get Gracia to the hospital, her sisters-"
"Ah, I see, of course, I shall present myself and offer my assistance. Where is little Miss Hughes?"
"With me, which is why I-"
"Say no more! Glad to hear she's in safe hands. Rest assured, Mustang, Armstrongs are the ones to call in these sorts of emergencies. I'll be at the hospital in half an hour."
Panicking slightly, Roy all but wailed, "No, wait, not the hospital!"
"Of course, you can't go, since you have the baby. They will understand. I'll extend your regrets, of course. Must take some pressure off them, knowing Little Elysia is snug with you. Is that her I hear? I'll let you go, rub her tummy, old Armstrong family trick, always works. Good night, Mustang!" The call terminated with a click.
"He hung up on me!" Roy said to Elysia. She looked as confused as he must. When she started crying again, Roy debated joining her.
**
The Armstrong tummy rub only worked for Armstrongs. Granted, Roy was hampered by memories of the belly button and a fear of touching it. He settled for patting Elysia on the back, which at least helped with the hiccups some. They were both damp and sticky and Roy was impressed with the amount of moisture a baby could produce. He comforted himself that she couldn't possibly be wet; she couldn't have enough water to spare. For a tiny baby, she was getting heavy, too. He'd carried a pack easily three times her weight in Ishaval, but then, it hadn't wailed and squirmed and leaked. Attempts at setting her down, especially back in the pink bunny decorated crib, only increased the volume and fury of the wailing. Instead, Roy staggered exhaustedly in circles, alternating bouncing and the occasional swooping motion with patting and muttering about how he was never having children.
When the telephone rang about 10, he pounced on it like a life line. "Mus- er, Hughes residence."
"Roy, how is Elysia?" Maes sounded tired and sad and Roy bit back everything he was going to say.
"She's awake and missing her parents, but we're coping," he lied. "What's the news?"
"You know the jargon, everything sounds so bad. They are running more tests, now. Alex turned up, he's driving Faith and Honoria down to pick up their aunt and uncle." Maes sighed. "I hate to do this to you, but can you stay the night? I'll be home as soon as I can."
"You know I will. Here, say something to your daughter." Roy held the receiver up to Elysia's head, and smiled as her face took on an expression of joy at hearing Daddy's voice. She immediately started looking around for him. Maes was still talking when Roy took the phone back, something about Elysia keeping an eye on Uncle Roy. "Ahem."
"She sounded sniffly, is she coming down with something? Her little vaporizer is in the closet, it's shaped like a ladybug. Just pour some of the menthol oil in the little cup and fill the other part with water. Have you fed her? Gracia leaves some containers in the ice box, she likes the mashed yams the best. Make sure you warm it first, not too hot, you do know how to check that, right?"
"Maes. I wasn't raised by wolves, I was a kid once myself. I can handle it."
"You remember that far back? I'm impressed. Uhoh, I gotta go. Thanks, Buddy, I mean it."
It took Elysia about 30 seconds to figure out Daddy wasn't there and wasn't appearing. Then she threw a tantrum that put all her earlier screams to shame.
**
Roy wasn't a career military man for nothing. He did what any good commander does when faced with failure: regrouped and tried another tactic. His problem, he decided, was that he'd forgotten some key points, namely, that Elysia was still female and that he was still Roy Mustang.
"What kind of cad am I? Trying to get a pretty girl into bed and not even taking her to dinner, first." All right, it sounded a little perverted if your mind walked those paths, but Roy wasn't going to waste years of practice schmoozing by worrying over details. He started talking to Elysia, complimenting her um, gown (yellow flannel with pink and blue kittens) and complexion (blotchy red) and gave up and kissed the back of her grubby hand (sticky, ew). Elysia took her hand back and examined it, then smiled and threw Roy a kiss, mwah.
Roy laughed and made kissy faces back at her, and she giggled. Feeling himself on much firmer ground, he escorted his date for the evening into the kitchen and settled her in her high chair. As long as Roy kept eye contact or at least blew kisses towards Elysia, she smiled and babbled and returned them. He turned her chair so they could watch each other as he dug around in Hughes' ice box. "Yams, wasn't it? Those are orange, right?" He came up with a glass container of more or less orange goop and eyed it. "How does this get into the bottle? Do we mix it with water?"
Elysia sighed and gave Roy a very Maes like glare of exasperation, winning a sheepish grin from him. He tried blowing her another kiss and was rewarded with an outpouring of syllables, mostly involving the vowel sounds of "ah". Assuming that meant she wanted to inspect her food choices, Roy whisked off the lid and held the box of goop out for Elysia's approval. She gave the stuff a doubtful look.
"She's your mother," Roy said by way of explanation. "You must be used to it by now."
Bravely, Elysia reached for the box and stuck her finger in the mess. She drew back, surprised by the coolness, and then scrutinized her finger before sticking it into her mouth. The resulting expression did not bode well.
"Maybe it's better heated up." If it were typical of Gracia's cooking, it would be better thrown away, but Roy was running out of options. He was relieved to see a small kitten decorated china bowl and matching rubber tipped spoon in the drain board, so all he needed now was a saucepan. Roy set the goop down and picked a likely looking cupboard.
He found the appropriate utensils, dumped the orangey glop in, and lit the stove with a snap of his fingers. The whole process, Roy was sure, couldn't have taken more than 90 seconds, and yet, it was enough time for Elysia to grab handfuls of the cheerful yellow kitchen tablecloth and tug it towards her. The glass lid to the mashed orange things went first, shattering on the tile floor with a crash. Roy spun around, fingers poised to snap and incinerate his attacker, in time to see the vase of snapdragons and yellow daisies teeter on the edge.
He just missed it.
Elysia, frightened by the noise and rightly expecting parental dismay, wailed. Concerned that she may have been hit by some of the flying glass, Roy rushed over, crunching underfoot the last large piece of Gracia's vase. He winced, that would be a bitch to transmute back together, and he'd never paid any attention to the thing in the first place. Roy hoped the Law of Constancy would help restore the vase to its original form. Assuming he could find all the bits and separate them from the glass lid.
"Shh, Sweetie, it's all right, Uncle Roy isn't angry - possibly shocked out of several years of his life, but not angry..." He bent over her, searching her face and hands for any telltale signs of glass shards. It was a good thing Roy was in that position, because he was able to take the full brunt of the splashes of overheated mashed yams that erupted from the pot with a bloop. He straightened up quickly, involuntarily uttering words Elysia had certainly never heard before, and ripped off his shirt before the stuff could soak through to his undershirt and burn him further. The pot rattled, and with one last energetic blat, spewed most of the rest of its contents upwards. Roy slammed a lid over the pot and cut the flame off. He ran a shaking hand through his hair and came away with a glob of unpleasantly hot orange mush.
Shell shocked, Roy looked around at Gracia's previously pristine kitchen. The floor was covered with broken glass, water, and rapidly dying flowers. The parts of the tablecloth that weren't a wrinkled wad from Elysia tugging on it were dotted with bits of mashed yams, as was the stovetop, counter, and nearby cabinets. The only thing that remained untouched was his birthday cake, although the strawberries were looking a bit old and sad and the icing had begun to melt. Roy turned back to Elysia and snatched her up just as she was about to crawl out of her highchair and plummet to the ground.
Roy plunked Elysia down in the sink and barely got the flowers picked up before Elysia was sampling the dish soap. He tried washing her face and mouth with water and got a soap bubble for his trouble.
Dammit, how did Gracia get anything done? He couldn't get two seconds to draw an array, much less do anything the traditional way. What Roy needed was to master Fullmetal's trick of just clapping an array into existence.
...Fullmetal. The Elric brothers were back in town. Gracia and Maes adored those kids, more importantly, so did Elysia. They had a special bond because, according to family legend, Edward had actually delivered the baby. Roy was never quite sure exactly what happened that night, but if any 11 year old - no, sorry, that was his 12th birthday, 12 year old kid - could do it, Edward Elric was that kid. Anyway, Fullmetal was so young he was bound to be better at taking care of a baby than Roy was. Less time to forget details. And he had a little brother; Edward must have helped out with Alphonse. Worst case, Roy could pull rank and make Fullmetal change the diapers. That way, if it was done wrong, the Hugheses would forgive them. But how to get the Elrics over here in what was essentially the middle of the night?
Roy's eye fell on the cake. Of course.
