Act Two
The journey by train to the little town of Risembool from Central took several days. After finally convincing Maes to take a week or two off work, a month after getting the manuscript, Gracia was finally going to meet the boys who had written her latest commission. It was very exciting – made even more so because Maes had brought his camera. It kept her on her toes. Gracia loved her husband, she really did, but if he took one more picture of her while she was blowing her nose, or reading her book, or yawning, or what have you, she was going to throttle him. She wasn't that photogenic, although Maes passionately professed that it was the opposite whenever she voiced the thought (usually in a warning tone).
Gracia had sent the Elric brothers a letter in reply, saying that she would very much like to print their book, and would like to visit them. She hadn't yet received a reply, but she was sure that if it was a problem, they would simply just have to impose on whatever hotel or inn the town offered.
Now standing on the platform with her husband, looking out at the scenic (but very empty) countryside, she was now wondering at her choice. If the boys didn't have a proper house, it looked like she and Maes would require a tent.
At least they now knew where to look for the Elrics. The old police officer hanging about the ticket office was very good at giving directions. He must not get to do much else around here, she supposed. Such a peaceful village (if one could call such a small group – not even a cluster – of farms, a village) must not have much crime.
Still optimistic, the Hughes couple set off on the only (dirt paved) road leading away from the train station. She had had Maes carry their two suitcases. With his hands full, he couldn't use his camera, unless, of course, he got creative with his mouth.
After nearly half an hour of walking along the winding dirt road, they ran across their first real landmark; "Rockbell Automail". The helpful officer had told them that the young boys often played about this immediate area.
As they approached, a black and white dog, lying on the porch, raised its' head and gave a few deep barks in greeting. Before the two even reached the porch, the door opened and a young blonde girl peeked out.
"Ah, good afternoon, miss." That was Maes, crouching down to the child's eye level. He always has such a way with children, Gracia reflected fondly. "We're looking for the Elric brothers. Are they here?"
The girl looked between the two. "You're not soldiers come to take them away, right? You don't look like soldiers." She looked directly at Gracia when she said this.
"No, I'm not a soldier," Gracia said with a smile. She didn't need to mention Maes' profession. "And I promise we haven't come to take the boys away, either."
"Oh, that's good." The blonde said. She looked very tired, Gracia noted with motherly concern. "They shouldn't be leaving for a while, though."
"Can we see them?" Maes asked. Even he was curious about the children that had gotten his wife so excited.
"I don't know—I don't think you should." The girl said quietly. "Al's not doing very well today."
"Please, we've come from Central to see them." Gracia said, letting her concern tinge her voice. Their cover letter had said something about medical bills, she recalled.
"From Central? Why?" The girl asked, suspicious.
Gracia opened her suitcase and rummaged around for the thick bunch of papers. "The boys sent me a manuscript. I would like to publish it, but I want to speak to them first."
"You're a publisher?" The little girls eyes widened. "I thought – well, Granny posted a package for them ages ago, but – those sneaks! I thought they were joking when they said they were writing a book!" She frowned in childish indignation.
"Winry, who are you keeping out there on the porch?" An old and raspy voice said from within the house.
The girl was suddenly excited, and spun in the doorway to speak to the newcomer. "They're publishers, Granny! From Central!"
"Publishers?" The door opened further and an extremely short old woman stepped out onto the porch. She was wearing an apron that, disturbingly enough, looked like it was stained with a few fresh red spots of blood. She eyed the Central couple up and down critically. She nodded to herself; apparently they passed inspection. "I am Pinako Rockbell. This is my granddaughter, Winry."
Taking this as her cue to introduce herself, Gracia spoke up. "I am Gracia Hughes. This is my husband, Maes. I'm pleased to meet you." She smiled politely.
The elder Rockbell nodded once again. "Well, come in, come in. I suppose you want to see the boys." She turned to her granddaughter as they entered the front hall. "Winry, why don't you go take Den for a walk?"
The girl harrumphed in the way that children do when they know that they're being distracted while adults did adult-things, but went back outside to do as she was told. Once the door had slammed shut, Pinako ushered them into the kitchen after taking their suitcases and placing them by the stairs.
"Tea?" The woman asked gruffly once the Hughes were seated at the small kitchen table. They nodded in acquiescence; it had been a long walk. Pinako put the kettle on. Sitting on the stovetop were several other pots, simmering. "How much did the boys tell you in their letter? I assume they sent a letter along with that pack of paper?" She finally asked.
Gracia nodded. "It said that they were orphans –"
"True enough," Pinako broke in. When the younger woman paused after the interruption, she frowned and said, impatiently, "Well, go on." Something about the older woman's attitude brooked no argument. Her age ensured that she didn't even come across as too rude.
"Yes, well, they said that they wrote the book to pay for medical bills." She had a sinking suspicion as to what those bills were for now, considering what the apparent profession of Pinako Rockbell was, but she asked anyway. "Is it… serious?"
The kettle began to whistle just then. Pinako pursed her lips, and swiftly removed it from the heat. "They… were crippled. In an accident," she said vaguely, her eyes dark, as she poured the water over the teabags and set the mugs before the couple, before pulling up a chair for herself. "You'll see when you go in there. It could be worse," she said to the slightly horrified looks she was getting. "At least I have something to work with."
The three of them sat, contemplating this statement. The tea warmed Gracia's stomach but did very little to curb the sudden cold burst to her heart. From the almost carefree nature of the writing, the childish diction, she hadn't realized that – well, she shouldn't jump to conclusions. She could be imagining it much worse than it was in reality.
It was worrisome, though to glance over at Maes and to find the twinkle in his eyes gone. He was unusually silent, too. She wondered if he was remembering children of Ishbal; he never really spoke of what he had seen to her, but it had been war, after all.
Feeling the need to break the silence, Gracia spoke. "Could we meet Alphonse and Edward?"
Pinako frowned from behind her cup of tea. "Alphonse just had a session of surgery today. But Edward was fairly lucid this morning." She drained the last of her drink, then hopped off her chair (she really was a shrunken, short old lady). "It's about time I got something in that stomach of his, anyway." The automail surgeon ladled out some soup from one of the simmering pots into a shallow bowl.
"Here," she shoved it into Maes' hands. "You can carry this."
The older woman led them down the main hallway towards the back of the house, until they came to a normal-looking rough wooden door.
Pinako pushed it open.
Act Two: End
Act ThreeGracia had felt, after reading over two hundred pages in the boys' own handwriting, that she knew them fairly well. She understood that Edward, the elder, impulsive one, enjoyed sparring with his brother (even though he lost most of the time), but hated milk, liars and anybody who even implied that he was short. Alphonse, however, was very insightful, and was always holding his brother in check; he was naïve, but sometimes had startling amounts of cynicism. He liked analyzing people's motivations, but didn't always like what he found out.
Now, peeking into the room, looking down upon two feverish young children – crippled children, crippled by an event that she knew nothing about… She realized she really knew next to nothing about them, themselves. Why, she didn't even know how their parents had died!
Only one was awake; he was sitting up (well, technically propped up by pillows), and was reading a heavy hardcover book, which was lying in his lap. The reason for the books' position became obvious upon observing that he only had one arm. One had to have two to hold a book and turn pages after all. The shape of the sheets covering the lower half of his body did nothing to hide the fact that he was missing a leg as well. Wires trailed from stands beside both beds to the children. Gracia tried not to think of where they attached or what they were for.
The second bed in the room was pushed right up against the one the blonder boy was sitting in. That bed held a darker haired boy, asleep and even more feverish than the other. This child gave the appearance of being quite short, but only because the majority of both legs were missing. The one who was awake was resting his remaining hand on the other's right, when he wasn't turning the pages of his book.
The blond boy looked up from the tome as the door opened (it didn't creak; the hinges were well-oiled). "Who are you?" He asked as the three adults entered. His voice was tired, but curious.
"This is Gracia and Maes Hughes." Pinako replied, approaching the bed, flipping the sheets off his lower body and beginning to check over the bandages of the leg stump in a professional manner.
"Yo!" Her husband raised a hand and attempted a smile.
"My name's Edward," he said, taking a sharp intake of breath as Pinako gave his leg a prod. "This is Alphonse." Ed looked over to his brother.
"Pleased to meet you," Gracia replied, and she found that as she said it, it was true. She sat down in the chair placed beside his bed. Her husband placed the soup bowl he'd been manhandled into carrying on the bedside table and came to stand beside her. "I read the book that you sent me, and I came here to let you know that I want to publish it."
Edward blinked. It was obvious he'd been wondering what they were here for, but it seemed he hadn't expected that answer. Then her statement caught up with him. He positively beamed.
"You want to publish it? Really?"
"Yes," Gracia replied. "It's one of the most refreshing books I've had the pleasure of being sent for many years. I particularly enjoyed the chapter set in Liore –" and she was off, quickly engaged in conversation regarding the book to the young boy. The fastest way to an author's heart was to compliment their work; for Gracia, this took no urging.
For a while, it seemed they could both forget his crippled state, especially after the automail surgeon pronounced Ed well enough to eat if he wanted and went on to examine Alphonse's condition. Gracia found him to be an extremely eloquent twelve-year old – which wasn't truly surprising, considering he and his little brother had co-written an entire book.
They soon fell to discussing cover-design options, and Ed offered to let her use some old photographs of theirs. "We'll have to ask Al first, though," he insisted.
It was then that Pinako interrupted Edward, saying quite firmly that he should try to ingest at least a little bit of his soup before it was completely stone cold. He did so.
Really, what happened next shouldn't have been too much of a shock. But, as had been previously stated, it was very difficult to remember that the child was ill when he was talking with her so animatedly.
Edward put his spoon down. The only further warning that Gracia had was the slightly green tinge to his cheeks and the overall ashen look to his face. Pinako, however, was quicker on the uptake (probably through practice, unfortunately), and quickly shoved a metal bowl into the boy's lap as the contents of his stomach were disgorged.
The retching sound he made caused her own stomach to have sympathetic pangs. She did have the good sense, however, to quickly pull back Edward's long bangs before they dripped into the soiled bowl.
The horrendous-sounded dry heaves soon died down, and after a quick nod, eyes still tight shut, from Edward, Pinako whisked the bowl away, presumably to be rinsed out. The smell would only encourage the boy's nausea.
"Are you … all right?" Asked Gracia, hesitantly, feeling a flash of frustration with herself for asking the obvious question. Of course he wasn't all right. He was probably asked that vague question forty times a day, here. But what else could one ask? Would it be more proper to just remain silent?
His eyes still shut, Edward nodded once again. "I'm fine." Her husband, more pragmatically, handed the child a damp cloth to wipe his mouth.
After carefully cleaning off his face with his one remaining hand, Edward finally opened his eyes and looked at Gracia, still seated by his side, and took a shaky breath. "Sorry. You probably didn't want to see that." Amidst the Hughes' protestations that no, it wasn't his fault, he said, awkwardly, "But it is my fault, you see. It is."
And no further proclamations from the adults in the room could convince him otherwise – quite the reverse, in fact.
They found that, to their horror, the boy was soon crying, and was clutching convulsively again for his younger brother's hand. "You don't understand!" Edward gasped, a little bit hysterically. "It's all my fault. It was my idea, I – Al – I – my fault!" With another shuddering gasp, he finally just buried his head against his one remaining knee, hiding his face.
Awkwardly, Gracia placed a motherly hand on shaking shoulders. "Edward."
Her husband hovered in the background.
"Edward," she repeated, not quite in the high-pitched parent-ese tone, but one definitely recognized, at least subconsciously, by children everywhere as that of a mother. And this boy was still a child.
When calmed down, she would talk to Edward about publishing rights, title copyrights, royalties, and the like. She would tell him in detail, so he could tell his brother. She would leave her phone number, in case they had questions. Alphonse seemed like the type to ask a lot of questions.
Later, anyway. Later.
Right now, he wasn't another one of her prospective authors; he was just a guilt-ridden, pain-filled child. Right now he didn't need such talk. Right now, he needed a mother. 'Isn't it odd', she thought to herself, 'That I can slip into this role so easily?' She wasn't a mother herself, not yet. But maternal instinct – or perhaps it was just human compassion – meant she didn't hesitate. Gracia leant over and gave the child a much-needed hug.
'Later,' she thought, and held him while he cried.
Act Three: End