Old Soldiers
"No."
She didn't know whether it was due to the frosty bite of the speaker's voice, or the silence that hung over the office like an onset of poor weather, but Riza Hawkeye could hear every word coming through over the telephone. The no resounded with a particularly cutting finality –– intended, no doubt, to halt any further forays into avenues of conversation. A proverbial cordon slung across the road.
The man holding the telephone, however, was not renowned for suffering rejection gladly, proverbially or otherwise. A person less acquainted with his character would attribute the kindling of insubordination to a brittle ego, a fit of pique from a city brat too well accustomed, perhaps, to getting his way. Captain Hawkeye knew better, of course. He had his carefully-cultivated self image, all irritatingly smug and cocksure, but Riza knew the facade was intended to preclude the possibility of outsiders peering through the act. To see that, indeed, the chronicle of his life was punctuated with disappointment and difficulty and things going terribly, terribly wrong. That despite all appearances to the contrary, an adversity existed, a perpetual ache in his bones and a raging fire that never went out.
But he bore his crosses with swagger and a smile. Riza had long ago decided there was a sort of grace to be found there, somewhere those like the voice on the telephone would never think to look.
No, decided Hawkeye as she rifled through requisition forms, wetting the pad of her finger intermittently. Brigadier General Roy Mustang was not affronted by the no.
He was affronted by the no coming from one Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong, a woman who was difficult and stubborn in the same way a tank with a rusty tread was difficult and stubborn.
And Hawkeye, loathe though she was to give her subordinates - or her superior, for that matter - the satisfaction, was inclined to sympathise with the Flame Alchemist's plight.
The phone cord had been wound around the General's wrist so many times, his fingers had turned red. Any more loops and he was liable to cut off his circulation. Just another casualty of Armstrong's stubbornness, Riza supposed, though she didn't think it would inconvenience Mustang to any great extent: she had already imagined Roy using the swollen digits as an excuse to wiggle free of assisting with the aforementioned requisition forms.
An Ice Queen's chance in hell, Riza thought to herself.
"General," Mustang bit out, knuckles white around the Bakelite, "I have afforded you every possible courtesy in this matter. I have gone through the official channels and several more unofficial ones. I have seen more dotted lines in the past week than a Morse operator. Grumman himself has respectfully requested––"
"Unless our illustrious Führer intends to drag me down to that craphole of a city and slap me with a summary court-martial," growled Armstrong: Riza imagined a hand on a sword pommel, the glint of white, snowy light on the blade of her sabre, "then my decision holds. As it has likely escaped your notice, Mustang, winter is fast approaching in the North. The nights are long and cold. Drachma is biting at the bit. I need every non-frost bitten hand and healthy body at my disposal. Your man happens to fall within both categories. Do I make myself perfectly clear, or should I have someone fetch a box of crayons to explain it to you?"
Jean Havoc coughed.
The room they shared in Central Command was not partitioned like Eastern Headquarters, and if Hawkeye was privy to the conversation, then so were the rest of the General's retinue, although most knew –– Lieutenant Havoc notwithstanding –– better than to draw attention to the fact. Hawkeye bunched her eyebrows together and glared pointedly at the blonde man's forehead. It had the intended effect, and Havoc returned to his task without further personal annotation. One hard look at the other two, mousy Kain Fuery and gruff, stolid Heymans Breda, and any lingering traces of frivolity evaporated. They all straightened, preparing themselves for an embittered confrontation of Edward Elric proportions.
Mustang rested a fist on his desk. "General, I must insist… you know as well as I do that the Reconstruction effort takes precedence over––"
Poor choice of words, sir, Hawkeye thought grimly. Breda actually winced.
"Over what, Mustang?" Armstrong snarled. The vehemence coiled from the headset like a bad smell."Over protecting our borders? Over keeping Amestris safe? While you're down there playing politics, my men are up here risking their lives just to make sure you and your devious ilk still have a politics to play with. Don't you dare call Briggs's duties, my authority, under question, you little shit."
A suffocating stillness suffused the office. Hawkeye whittled at the inside of her cheek but said nothing; General Hakuro's handwriting coruscated across the page but Riza had long ago stopped paying her paperwork any mind.
She rested her hands on her lap, hiding her pewter-white knuckles. Riza had gone rigid at Armstrong's viper strike, rankling at the hatred she harboured for Roy, but a soldier of Hawkeye's fastidiousness could appreciate the Major General's position to a certain degree.
The Promised Day had had a way of redrawing the battle lines across Amestris: suddenly, the enemies were no longer attacking from without, but from within, festering in the heart of the country like a carcinoma. While the cancer had been decidedly cut out, the public's attention had been lethargic in swinging back to old martial concerns. A sense of calm had settled over Amestris: with Father and the Homunculi gone, with those implicated in the coup removed from office, the subsequent peace had lulled some into a false sense of security. Hawkeye, like Armstrong, recognised the comfort as delusion. If anything, the Amestrian civil unrest had roused Drachma from its hibernation. Their invasion force's utter annihilation in the months before the Promised Day had not helped matters. Armstrong had been forced to contend with an agitated northern aggressor without the accustomed support of the Amestrian government. Grumman was no pacifist, but he was no Führer Bradley, either. Not for the first time, Briggs found itself at a conflict of interest with the greater military machine.
And now a certain upstart state alchemist was rattling chains that probably ought not to be rattled, thought Hawkeye. It was little wonder Armstrong was scarce of temper.
General Mustang pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. There was a newfound solemnity to his face, a tightness like too little skin stretched thin over his bones, a few more lines fissured into the corners of his eyes.
He was always tired, these days, thought Riza, her chest tightening. Roy put on those smiles that weren't really smiles at all, and they went on.
"General," he began, voice gentle, almost supplicatory, "I understand your position. I do. In many ways, I sympathise. Five years later, and we're both still contending with the aftermath of the Promised Day. We've lifted sanctions in Ishval. The engineering projects are well underway in Dairut, but if Major Miles's plan is to come to fruition, then there are a lot of broken families in need of unification and relocation."
Hawkeye bowed her head in a slight nod. Roy had been wise to mention Miles, shifting the focus of Olivier's assistance to her own man, a Briggs man, instead of himself, the newly-promoted Brigadier General she so despised.
Mustang went on: "Due to the theocratic and filial nature of Ishvalan society, the Reconstruction effort has necessitated an incredible amount of genealogical research, and for that I need my best mind. I need Vato Falman with me in Dairut."
"You have archives, don't you? Use them."
"You know as well as I do that Amestris didn't keep any official record of its Ishvalan citizens subsequent to the Civil War. We're relying almost exclusively on those few savants who worked in archives prior to the extermination. One of those savants is Lieutenant Falman."
Hawkeye could picture Armstrong's furrowed brow, her blond hair, almost as storm-tossed and wild as she was, shadowing her face, her expression cautious, but not hesitant. Wary, but not afraid. For a moment, Riza imagined the two generals could have been mirrors, each unto the other. Throughout their military careers, their jumping off and landing points stood well apart, but the weight of their responsibilities had crossed in that moment, over the chasm of grim possibility.
Riza had not seen Vato on the Promised Day. She had not seen him since Bradley recommissioned them, their new assignments amounting to little more than exile. But Falman had fought in the conflict, side by side with the soldiers of Briggs. He had defended Central Command. He had held the gate against a Homunculus. He had been brave, and Riza had been so proud. But with Major Miles serving as a liaison between Ishval and the Führer's office and Captain Buccaneer buried on the summit of a distant mountain, Armstrong's cadre of advisers had grown thin. Vato Falman was a good soldier; his absence, Hawkeye knew, would cut sharply.
"He has a kid on the way," said Armstrong suddenly; the ice had thawed a fraction of a degree. "Due in half a year or so. Dr. Carmichael is beginning to show."
The cigarette fell out of Havoc's mouth, much to Riza's displeasure –– the discarded butt seemed a likely shortcut to smouldering files. Breda, who usually played his confidences close to the chest, betrayed his surprise in a subtle lift of his eyebrows. And at the far end of the workstation, the meagre stirrings of a smile had begun to chip away at the corners of Fuery's mouth, dark eyes widening behind his glasses.
Falman had a family. Hawkeye hadn't known: no one had.
"This is a temporary transfer," assured Mustang; if the news came as a surprise to him, he didn't show it. Because he already knew, wondered Riza, or because he didn't want to give Olivier the satisfaction. "I have no intention of relocating his spouse."
"You're damn right. A second lieutenant is one matter –– my chief medic and automail engineer is another entirely."
Hawkeye heard Armstrong indulge a sigh. Someone who didn't know the Northern Wall of Briggs would call it exaggerated, but for all her posturing, Olivier was an unceremonious being. Quite the opposite, in fact. Riza found her honest, uncomplicated. She was a woman who harboured an almost vicious hatred for the disingenuous manoeuvring of most military types. A company which included, to Hawkeye's complete lack of surprise, one Roy Mustang.
"I'll grant Vato Falman a few months leave," she growled into the phone –– the tension seem to unwind from the officers' bodies; Riza didn't realise she had been holding her breath until she let it out slowly. "He will assist you in patching up your genealogy records. I'll send word to Major Miles and the new Muhaddith." A pause. "I trust you have made his acquaintance?"
Hawkeye almost snorted; consent to an official transfer was a matter of bureaucratic necessity, even in spite of her dogged determination to make Roy's life as difficult as possible in the process. But Armstrong could not allow Mustang his victory without pressing at least a small advantage.
The Flame Alchemist frowned. "I didn't realise there were any Muhaddith remaining after the Civil War."
"There weren't. I understand this particular Muhaddith very nearly succeeded in combusting your skull, Mustang, had Captain Hawkeye not been around to knock you on your muddy ass where you belong."
Understanding dawned on him. He glanced at the headset as though it might bite him. "Scar is the new Scholar?"
That feral grin managed to make itself known even over the telephone. "Watch yourself, General. One day Hawkeye might not be there to save you, and when she isn't… well, I hope someone records it so I can play it back with a nice cup of tea. Like listening to a lullaby. Expect Lieutenant Falman on the next train to Central." For a moment, Armstrong's words grew low and dangerous, and the old malice boiled like thunderheads over Briggs, an oncoming storm. "But let me make something abundantly clear: you're a lodestone for tragedy, Mustang. If Falman should go the way of some of your vainglorious bunch of morons, then it won't be me you have to answer to.
"It'll be Carmichael… and her unborn kid. And I don't think that's a conversation you're eager to have again."
Hawkeye saw a muscle clench in General Mustang's jaw, a spasm that would have passed unnoticed if not for her exhaustive familiarity with his tics. Armstrong's final snarl of defiance was gratuitous –– even cruel, although Riza imagined Olivier had become so acquainted with loss over her years of service that the Major General had ceased to invest any true emotional stake in such things.
But Roy Mustang still wore the death of Maes Hughes like a scar on his heart, some white, noduled ugliness that would never, ever go away. It was one hurt that would never heal, and Armstrong had picked at it like a scabby sore. The grief lingered still, tattooed onto his soul.
Hawkeye did well to mask the slippery, complicated something churning in her gut, something that begged to be named though Riza daren't not try. There were some truths best left unsaid, some hurts that ran too deep. Some things Mustang's team did not talk about. Lieutenant Havoc did not discuss his paralysis, Kain Fuery did not discuss his time fighting on the Southern Front, and Roy Mustang did not discuss the late Brigadier General. It did not take an especially prodigious mind to puzzle out why, and Hawkeye knew that such extraordinarily painful conversations inevitably meandered down paths she would much rather leave untraveled, paths that resembled the intestines under Central City and brick tunnels choking with smoke. Resurrected memories of fire and fury. A monster's screams. A shaking hand. The back of a head of black hair.
And the fear. A deep, nauseating fear that threatened to snatch her breath away. Hawkeye didn't like to think about it, the memory of him forcing her to confront her worst nightmare, and then, to her horror, realising she simply wasn't ready for it.
She had not forgiven him for his betrayal. And so, she wrapped herself in silence, her self-made sanctuary that was, in some ways, her self-made purgatory, as well, lived in the little rooms stacked inside her mind like stones on a parapet. A wall against the hurt.
Hawkeye's eyes drifted away from her commanding officer. She felt a heat on the side of her face and turned to find Lieutenant Breda staring at her, hard, mouth pressed into a thin, pale line. Riza's gaze lingered for a time before swinging back to her forms, taking a sudden profound interest in Hakuro's regimented penmanship, looking at the words but not really reading them. She suspected Heymans was not so hurried in returning to his own work.
The man was far too intuitive.
It was only Armstrong's rank, a principle almost alchemic in its incontrovertiblity, that kept General Mustang from breaking his mask of unruffled professionalism. Or from breaking the telephone. Instead, he murmured a few half-crafted words of thanks and set the receiver in its cradle, endeavouring, Hawkeye suspected, to keep from making too much noise, like there were minute cracks in the world that he dare not shatter. Pens continued to scratch and papers continued their soft susurrus across tabletops, but the Captain knew her comrades' minds were elsewhere. As was hers.
"Well," Roy said finally, allowing a smirk that still managed to look so small, and so very sad; Hawkeye could not fathom how he expected it to fool anyone, although it almost invariably did. "Falman's coming back."
"I told you she'd come 'round." Havoc grinned crookedly at the man opposite his workstation. Breda muttered something circumspect and several hundred cenz exchanged hands. Hawkeye knew she must have looked gravely unimpressed, but Roy, not for the first time, elected to ignore it.
Fuery seemed to glow, the tense lines of consternation from the phone call fading away. When he smiled, Riza thought he looked so incredibly young. Tragically so, barely older than the Elrics. Falman and Fuery had never been particularly close –– the former an older man sunk in books and figures and the latter a greenhorn obsessed with his radios –– but their minds worked at such speeds that most of the rest of the team were unable to keep pace, and Breda never seemed especially interested in trying. Their intelligence had forced them close together, and it was only after their separation that Fuery realised how terribly he missed his taller, greying counterpart.
"General Armstrong said he'd be on the next train," said the Command Sergeant brightly. "He'll be here within the next 24 hours!"
"It's a temporary transfer," the General reminded them smoothly, though not unkindly. "Don't get too comfy with the change."
"I know, sir, it's just… well, this'll be the first time," Kain grinned, "the first time since the reassignment we'll all be together again."
Havoc snorted, but his warm blue eyes revealed nothing of the disparagement the noise suggested. "You sound as though you're talking about a family reunion."
Fuery scrunched his face at his superior. "You make it sound like such a bad thing."
"Unless it's got my ma following me around with an ashtray and asking when I'm gonna give her grandchildren, then it's no family reunion I've ever known." Havoc shuddered. "And I'm in no hurry to relive those."
"Following you around with an ashtray, huh? Your mother sounds like a wise woman. Tell me, does she like cabernet sauvignon?" There was something cheeky in General Mustang's words that, if not for the way the his eyes still looked clouded and anxious, would have had Hawkeye gazing skyward.
Breda took his cue to interject, using a finger to close Havoc's slack-jawed gape. "Speaking of mums, how about Falman's girl, then?"
Fuery almost vibrated with excitement; he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose to give his fidgety hands something to do. "I can't believe it… Vato's gonna be a dad!"
"Chick must be really into the Encyclopaedia Britannica."
Fuery frowned, turning to his smoking superior. "He's got other qualities, you know, sir…"
Havoc reclined in his chair, legs sprawled out under the desk. His grin was almost as irritatingly smug as Roy's. It was little wonder the pair of them so often made Riza want to grind her teeth together.
"All I'm saying," the sharpshooter mused lazily, feigning serious introspection, "is that when you've got a mind like that, you'd be real good at memorising all sorts of... useful information."
Somehow, Hawkeye doubted Havoc was referring to serial numbers and genealogy records. As Fuery went beet red, Riza shot Jean a glare that could have stripped the paint from the wall.
"Aw, shut up, Hav," Breda stacked a few more forms on his pile, "you're just sore because the quote, Encyclopaedia Britannica, unquote, cuffed a girl before you."
Havoc's face wilted into a sulk. "I'm not the settling down type," he muttered petulantly.
"Right now, you're not the anything type."
"I'm just looking for the right partner."
"What, someone who's aerodynamic like you?"
"I'm what?"
"Aerodynamic," Breda deadpanned. "Everything goes over your head."
Jean threw a balled-up newspaper at him.
"If you're quite finished, gentlemen," Riza murmured, pretending to be utterly absorbed in the engineering reports for drainage and sewage in the Dairut prefecture. Toilet reading. If her workspace insisted on forcing a protracted association with crassness, then it ought to at least be useful crassness.
Havoc, it seemed, was not finished. Breda, as Breda was so often given to do, had spurned the Lieutenant's pride. While it was not a wholly difficult thing to do, it took far longer than Hawkeye found acceptable to piece it back together again.
"Jeez," he said, sitting his chin on his desk and, Hawkeye noted, getting ink on his face, "Vato got the meaty end of this deal. It'll be like a vacation for him, going from whacking icicles off that god-awful fort to pouring over books in some hot, sunny desert."
Hawkeye put down her pen. She realised, for the first time, that her forms were fissured with furrows and creases; Riza had pressing on her pen harder than perhaps was necessary. She didn't look at Havoc when she said tartly: "If you think the reconstruction of Dairut, a former theatre of one of the worst massacres in Amestrian history, is going to be a vacation, First Lieutenant, then you're in for a rather nasty shock."
Havoc's smile faltered. "Come on, Hawkeye, I was only joking––"
Her eyes blazed. "Nor is it a joke," she snapped.
"Captain..."
"Leave it," Breda cut in, glaring at Havoc.
"But I was just––"
"I said, leave it."
Hawkeye grew still, stubbornly, stonily silent, as Breda pushed out from his desk, swinging around the workstation to clap Fuery on the shoulder. The tiny Command Sergeant's teeth rattled. Unlike before, even as Riza watched him, the ginger Lieutenant's eyes did not meet hers.
"Come on, Kain, let's get some lunch."
"Oh. Uh, okay."
Breda allowed himself a small grin. "I wanna snatch as many corn beef sandwiches as I can before the veggie gets back."
"There is no way in hell Falman managed to stay veg up at Briggs," said Havoc, the prospect of food pulling him out of his foul mood. He had the attention span of a distracted goldfish, Riza thought, fondly despite herself. As he spoke, Havoc pinwheeled his arms as though trying to pull the enormity of Olivier's mountain fortress into the scope of the conversation. "They hunt bears for god's sake! Where would he grow the plants?! What does he eat, the pine cones?!"
Fuery mumbled, "Briggs has a greenhouse, sir." Havoc ignored him.
"In any case, it's not a risk I'm willing to take," said Breda, strolling to the door.
Havoc grunted a small agreement. "Yeah. Last time he tried to get us to try his livestock chow, it was that kwin-noah stuff."
"It's quinoa, sir. Q-U-I––"
"This ain't the spelling bee, Fuery…" Riza could hear their voices retreating down the corridor, as ever doing little to respect the peace and quiet of other officers who were doubtless working far harder than Mustang's… vainglorious bunch of morons.
Hawkeye shook her head. If by some miracle and over her dead body Olivier Mira Armstrong did make Führer, Riza hoped for the sake of Amestris's mental fortitude she hired a competent speech writer.
The emptied room grew quiet quickly. Only her pen scratched across the silence. The dust seemed to float on the air, sparkling where motes drifted in front of the east-facing window. It was, for a short time, peaceful. Immersed in engineering reports and telegraph correspondences from Major Miles, she almost didn't hear the General release a deep sigh, the sound rising from the cavern of his chest, as though he had been holding it in for the better part of the hour. Riza signed off on a supply order before looking towards her superior. Roy hung his head, until his chin touched his chest. His hair needed cutting. There was spray of stubble on his chin.
"I thought I'd learned how to dilute some of that acid," he said quietly, without ceremony. Riza remained quiet. "I've known her long enough. But… ever since the Promised Day, there's been something darker there…"
Hawkeye, still, said nothing. He didn't need her to. The pause, the space, was affirmation enough. A neat little caesura in his train of thought.
"The brass aren't making our lives easy, Captain."
"They never have, sir."
Roy smiled grimly. "No. But I suppose it would leech all the fun out of it if they did."
Finally, his head came up. He peered at her from across the office, the light in his eyes akin to something Riza couldn't quite pin down. Not warmth, certainly, and he'd never insult her with pity. A type of gravity was as close as Hawkeye could manage, a buoyed weight pulling at his thoughts.
"I received another notice from Hakuro today."
Hawkeye absently straightened her pen. "He's becoming more insistent."
"He's becoming a pain in my ass."
"Sir…" Her head didn't move but her gaze flicked towards the door, which, of course, had been left wide open. Idiots. "Perhaps you ought to keep such thoughts to yourself."
A snort. "If you don't think he's saying the same things about me you're delusional."
"That does not justify your stooping to his level, sir."
He peered at her through his fingers. "I never took you for an moralist."
"I'm nothing of the sort, General, but neither am I terribly keen on our superior overhearing slights against his character." Hawkeye let out her own sigh. "It would do nothing to rectify the situation."
Roy scrubbed a hand over his face, fixating on something above Riza's shoulder. "You're right." He laughed hollowly; it was almost a cough, it sounded so ravaged. "Of course you are."
Riza switched tact, deftly shifting to cool, clinical clarity as though she'd taken a gulp of ice water: "He may continue to make requests, sir, and while you both hold the rank of general, you are the one in Führer Grumman's favour." She hesitated, just for a moment, then: "I understand your reservations, sir, but General Hakuro's proposal is not without merit. General Armstrong's current predicament is proof enough of that."
Mustang's voice was low, sombre. "Current predicament."
"Her reluctance to part with Lieutenant Falman," she provided.
"You mean to tell me there's a reason? And here I was thinking she was just being difficult."
"The two need not be mutually exclusive, sir. Both Generals know the military's numbers are low, sir. Dangerously low. High ranking officers even more so."
There was a quick, hissing breath forced through clenched teeth. "Hawkeye, when I'm not arm wrestling that stone cold bitch from Briggs trying to get my man back, I'm either scissoring through Reconstruction red tape or trying to get Hakuro to leave me the hell alone. If you're about to side with him, may I respectfully request you do it elsewhere?"
Riza frowned. "Captains are not commissioned due to the merit of their opinions, sir. I'm just stating facts. Most senior military officials are dead or imprisoned for high treason. There are seats that need filling."
"And Hakuro thinks you're the one to fill them," finished Mustang wearily.
"And others. But… yes."
The smile he forced was so distortive, so false, that Riza was almost overcome with the sudden, explosive urge to smack it off his face. Sometimes, he couldn't bring himself to afford her even the smallest token of honesty and it enraged her beyond sense. Made her as angry as she had been in the tunnels under Central, when he almost forced her to kill him.
Angry, and scared.
"The situation will not correct itself until a great many promotions are made," said Hawkeye. Her superior's smile lingered and Riza swallowed down her fury like bile. It burned the whole way down. "But… until such a time, I am content to remain under your command, sir."
Roy kept his expression carefully neutral. The smile, at least, faded after a time. He was almost as adept, Hawkeye admitted grudgingly, at affecting some semblance of objective pragmatism as she was.
Almost. He looked at her, and his dark eyes were suddenly so full of tenderness and warmth that some final thread of doubt gave way and Riza understood not only how entirely kind he was, but also that his kindness, his compassion, was the only lens through which she might view some manner of his own, personal truth.
"When you served under Bradley…" Roy began softly; Riza had never discounted the efficacy of her instincts, and at the significance in the General's words she imagined she felt the fretting of something inevitable hanging in the atmosphere, something violent, volatile. Ready to explode.
Don't be an idiot, she thought to herself, urgently, desperately. After all these years, don't say something stupid…
"When you served under Bradley," he continued; he prodded the folds of his consciousness for a mask to hide his sadness, his remorse, but any porcelain face was quick to disintegrate into chalky powder. "I… well, the organisational structuring of this place fell to shambles. A Homunculus may have had other things on his mind but Grumman'd kick me to the curb."
Though the devastating compassion in his gaze remained still, relief washed over Hawkeye; she very nearly let out a sigh. An immense weight ceased its incessant press on her shoulders. "That cannot be abided, sir."
"That it can't... Riza."
Before Hawkeye could manage even a meagre attempt at reigning in her surprise, her anger at his god damn audacity, Roy notched his eyebrows and turned to leave. As he brushed past her, his left shoulder pressed against her right; the touch was no accident, the bastard. She couldn't suppress the shiver at the contact.
She remembered: his skin was warm. Even though the thick wool of his uniform, something burned.
Vainglorious moron…
"That it can't."