Roy had known that someday his youngest subordinate would open up to him. At first, when Edward was twelve and had passed the state alchemist exam, he was impatient and he asked questions the young blond seemed more than reluctant to answer. Edward would shrug and reply yes or no, and say nothing when he deemed the information too much. The biggest question Roy had ever had was the one everybody was asking. Not just anybody, though, mostly alchemists. The rest of the population knew what alchemy was and they knew the basics of how it worked, so they rarely asked questions regarding the Fullmetal Alchemist's way of using of it. There were people out there, scientists that would kill to get their hands on him, to interrogate him, but like everybody else, they knew that was near impossible. Fullmetal simply knew how to evade capture. Getting around the advanced martial arts he had so thoroughly engrained into his body and mind at such a young age made it difficult. He was not an easy target for anybody.

And yet, he was. Almost the entire country knew what he looked like. There was nobody with eyes his color, and nobody had ever become a state alchemist at twelve. Twelve!

Of course, just like those people, the Flame Alchemist did have questions, most of which he kept to himself, many he asked outright, only some of them answered. Edward did not speak when he did not want to. When it came to anything having to do with how he lost his arm and leg, he would reply that he was involved in an accident during the war in Ishval. Roy could tell the boy did not like lying, but to keep his secret safe, he had to. It wasn't hard. Where he lived in Resembool was quite close to where the battles took place. His answer to the clap-slap-alchemy technique, though, a simple, "I just can, I guess."

It infuriated many people, how vague he was, how young he was, how he excelled in all things so easily they themselves had to commit a lifetime to. It wasn't hard to tell that it did bother Fullmetal. He could tell that people either liked him or loathed him.

He had been a dog, more like a puppy (Mustang's lips turned up at that thought) of the military for five years. He still hadn't seen the things Roy had seen, still hadn't experienced the darkness that was war. And yet, he had. He'd seen more than any child of ten ever should have, and that left him a darkened spirit, completely focused on getting his brother's body back and nothing in all the world could ever stop him.

Mustang knew the boy's focus on finding the philosopher's stone and restoring his brother's body was part of the reason Edward never opened up. He decided he wasn't going to push him, though, and was going to do what he can to see that the Elric brothers' make real what they set out to find.

As soon as he heard Fullmetal speak, he looked up, not completely surprised, but surprised nonetheless at the boy's choice of wording. Perfect? What was perfect? Nothing in the world could ever be deemed perfect, especially by a scientist who knew better to discard that word from his or her working dictionary. His pen stopped scribbling and there were a few moments of silence, in which Mustang came to a conclusion.

Not the place. Not here.

Instead of waiting silently for the boy to continue, he set down his pen, pushed out his chair and stood to then proceed to walk around his desk and stop in front of Fullmetal.

Edward lifted his eyes, but not high enough to meet Roy's gaze and seemed to be staring at the man's belt.

"I'm not going to tell you that I don't want to hear what you have to say, because I really do. But I can't have this discussion happening in my office when I have work to do and you have a stone to find."

Fullmetal looked a little defeated. Almost like he had been very ready to pour his emotions and experiences out onto the coffee table in front of him and he looked about ready to close himself off again. Roy placed a hand on the boy's shoulder and bent to look at him. Edward reluctantly met his gaze, suddenly angry.

Tip-toeing on broken mirrors, scattered and warped reflections of a thousand pieces of you… which one is you?

"You know me, always trying to get out of doing anything resembling paperwork. Would you be willing to continue this discussion elsewhere?"

The anger Fullmetal seemed to have mustered almost visibly dropped off his face and was replaced with confusion, maybe even disbelief. He pressed his lips together and slowly nodded and watched as Mustang took his hand from his shoulder and straightened to retrieve his long black trench and umbrella.

Edward gathered his clothes, not willing to leave them in the resting room, and lifted his palms together. Mustang had never seen Edward do anything but clap loudly when he wanted to perform a transmutation, but this was interesting. Edward placed his hands on his clothes and steam erupted from the cloth, billowing up and heating the office, which was already pleasantly warm. That slow motion to bring his hands together, that sadness on his face and almost self-resentment shone there as he slowly went about his transmutation. It was almost heart wrenching.

With his boots and socks now dry, he pulled them on, making no move to replace Mustang's clothes with his own and waited while Mustang watched. Roy shrugged and moved to the door and opened it.

Hawkeye looked up from a desk just outside his door and narrowed her eyes at him when he exited, obviously ready to leave for the afternoon. After all, it was only 3 pm. He shouldn't be leaving for another three hours! But when Edward left the office behind him with a look on his face that said he needed somebody right now, she closed her previously opened mouth and bit back her response, then nodded and resumed her filing. Everybody else in the office remained silent as Mustang locked his inner office and left with Fullmetal following close behind, his hair still down and damp. It was almost as if the rain outside had sucked their spirits out of them.

Roy didn't notice that Edward had stopped walking when he pulled out his umbrella and headed out into the rain until he looked back and saw him standing there, looking up. The light from the doors turned Fullmetal into a stark outline against the rest of the world, and he was looking up into the rain, almost like he was asking for forgiveness, almost like his slow and soundless transmutation earlier had been a prayer.

Mustang cursed and turned back to the blond, taking the boy's hand and pulling him under the umbrella with him. "I'm not going to let you soak yourself again. Come on."

They walked the few blocks to Mustang's apartment in silence, feeling as if the rainwater might somehow collect and rise to drown them as it had just about all sound.


Edward paused in the doorway to the colonel's apartment. He had silently trailed the man up the stairs and down the hall, contemplating what he was going to say, how he was going to begin. He really had no idea, only that he knew he wanted to get it out, to have somebody that he could trust to keep a secret listen to him and possibly even console him. He knew he could trust the colonel. He knew he had no reason to not trust him. But he was wary, and he was willing to take this chance. He might never get the chance to speak to him while the colonel was in a mood to listen again.

When Mustang turned in the foyer to wait for his guest to enter, Ed just stood there. Mustang shrugged and put his coat on the rack, then entered another room. Edward followed and closed the door quietly, wondering if he should lock it, not knowing if the man that lived there locked his doors or not while he was home. He decided against it and kicked his boots off before going to the room Mustang had disappeared into.

It was a kitchen. Mustang was making coffee. How nice

"You should go to the den. We'll talk there."

Edward looked around, then back at the colonel, who nodded towards the door, leaving Edward to find the den himself. He turned to the door and peered down the hall, then back to Mustang who nodded, and crept to the nearest door which turned out to be a bathroom. But the door directly across from it opened up to a living space with two couches facing each other and a low coffee table between, much like the ones in the bastard's office, but made of a soft fabric. He stepped into the room and looked around before making his way to the nearest couch. There were books on the coffee table, a few of them about flame alchemy, others about modern politics. There were notebooks and papers scattered about the table with various arrays. Intrigued, Ed glanced over them, noting that they were not arrays he had seen before, and there were symbols he did not recognize which momentarily peeved him greatly. How could he not know these symbols?

He had busied himself looking over the symbolism of flame alchemy and trying to use the symbols he did know to help him 'translate' their meaning and didn't hear Mustang stop next to the couch with two mugs. It wasn't until he smelled the coffee that he turned his head and blushed, not liking to be caught shuffling through somebody else's business. He couldn't help himself.

Mustang handed him a mug and he took it gratefully, finally noticing how cold he had become and proceeded to ball himself on the couch and sip the steaming contents while the colonel snapped a fire into the brazier. It almost had an instant effect, and Edward began to relax into the cushions.

He watched as the colonel seated himself across from him and stared at the fire. It didn't seem like the man expected Edward to talk anytime soon and indeed he didn't for several minutes. They sipped their coffee, listening to the fire roaring in the fireplace and the rain on the window. As the weather had dampened the mood of the city, the fire made this room feel like home.

There is no home for me.

His eyes looked the colonel over as he sat there, one hand holding his mug while resting it on his knee, the other hand on his face as he stared into the fire. It lit up his eyes, turning those dark pools into something more, well, alive. His otherwise pale skin took on a golden sheen and his hair… Nobody would guess that the man's hair was actually brown. The sun didn't even shine through the strands to show that small fact, but somehow a simple fire did. The man's lips were leaning toward thin, but still full enough to see and almost just as pale as the rest of his face. Edward wondered why he had never taken even a moment to realize just how attractive the man was somewhere between his ranting and raving.

Not that it mattered. Did it?

He quickly looked away to the fire, resting his face in his flesh palm, unintentionally mirroring the man across from him. "We had stopped going to school. Granny and Winry often got mad at us for skipping to practice alchemy…"


Mustang's eyes flicked to his subordinate when he heard his voice. He had almost thought that they were going to sit in silence together until the world stopped turning, and somehow, that didn't bother him. He turned his head and examined Edward as he spoke. As much as he and the rest of his staff made fun of Fullmetal for being so small, he knew that the boy was growing. He saw it every time Ed stepped into his office, or rather burst into his office. He was going to grow to be a fine young man.

"…Teacher told us the very first time she saw us, 'no matter what you do, you cannot bring back the dead.'." Edward paused. "It's not that we didn't listen to her. We heard her, and she would repeat herself often, but we thought she didn't know what she was talking about, so we opted to ignore her. When we thought we had trained enough, when we believed we were ready to handle such a huge transmutation, we went home and set out to do what we thought would bring our mother back."

His hair was on fire. Edward's golden locks were no longer wet, and it was still a tangled mess, but the way the light from the fire hit it…

It's almost as if he lives to be the fire.

Mustang quickly frowned. That made no sense.

"…and I told him while we stood there, holding our bleeding fingers over the ingredients, 'Meh! What is a soul, anyway?' We didn't quite believe they existed. Of course, I had no idea that I would learn that they did only a few minutes later..."

Mustang listened to Edward as he went over the details of the transmutation, the way he and his brother felt as they got closer to their goal, the soul-crushing realization that it hadn't worked, what the thing they had made looked like, how it had moaned in pain, trying to move.

The part that interested the colonel the most, because truly, he was a scientist as well, therefore very interested, was the details Edward gave of within the gate, the little black hands that took hold of him and pulled him in, screaming. They picked apart his leg first and then shoved him into a place that forced knowledge any alchemist would kill to know into his head. He had screamed, the pain of taking in so much information at once giving him a skull-splitting headache, but it was over before he knew it, and he had begged the Truth to let him see it again.

Mustang thought about the things Edward told him and had to fight himself to keep from letting his mind wander at the things he was learning and to focus on the teen on the other couch. He wanted to see this gate, he had to. But he knew better, and trusted what Ed told him. After all, he had considered it once. When he was back from the war, deemed a hero by most of the country because of his amazing skill with fire, how he could… murder!... he told himself, so many people at once with just one blow. It had wounded him to no end to know that those lives were forever riding on his shoulders, that everywhere he went he left a trail of bright red blood smoking behind him on the ground.

Edward was a saint.

Edward was a god.

Of that he was sure.

"…but the Truth showed me how simple it was. You can't bring back the dead."