Sorry I was so late getting this out. My modem flipped out the night before I was gong to finally post this. Fortunately, I've replaced it, and the new one works better than the old.

As always, I'm still not Hiromu Arakawa, so none of these characters belong to me. I'm just borrowing them for a little while, and I promise to return them in approximately the same condition they were when I took them.

For those of you who are still (I hope...!) wondering about Three of a Kind, don't worry. I've finished the story, and it should be up tomorrow, barring anything weird happening.

Please review. I'm a writer, and I thrive on feedback.

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Roy Mustang and Edward Elric

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001. Heart

Edward had often thought that his commanding officer had no heart; it wasn't until after Mustang and his men cornered him and Al outside of Resembool that he learned otherwise.

002. Stone

As Edward looked down from the top of the stone cannon, it never occured to him to wonder why Mustang was smirking at him instead of running for his life, the way he was supposed to.

003. Cold

If Edward hadn't been part of the military, Roy would have offered the boy something more than cold words about duty and honor after Nina Tucker's murder; for the first time, he started to regret having brought the boy into the State Alchemist Program.

004. Hole

In a strange way, they filled a hole in each others' lives that neither had realized was even there.

005. Cut

Edward knew in his bones that the colonel's reference to a shortcut was an indirect reference to his height, but he had to admit he did get there faster.

006. Queue

There was a long line of people whose asses Edward needed to kick, and nine times out of ten, Colonel Mustang's name was near the top of the list.

007. Turn

There was no such thing as a turn in real combat conditions, and he would do Edward no favor during their duel in letting him continue to think that.

008. Apathy

For all his feigned apathy towards the Elric brothers, he watched over them as closely as if they had been his own children.

009. Innocence

The wide-eyed innocent expression was one that suited neither Flame nor Fullmetal, but Hawkeye thought that it looked better on Edward.

010. Stay

The Fullmetal Alchemist and his brother were both held up as true champions of the people and heroes to the common man in the years and decades after they disappeared; Roy often wondered what would have happened if they had chosen to stay in Amestris.

011. Drunk

Edward would have preferred to have lost his other arm and leg than admit it, but in the weeks after Lt. Col. Hughes' murder, he worried about Mustang; rumor had it the man had spent two nights out of every five either drunk, brooding, or both.

012. Attitude

Hawkeye thought that the boy in the wheelchair was broken beyond repair, but she hadn't seen what he had - a boy who would give the world as good as he got, and damn the consequences.

013. Rational

"Of course his decisions when it comes to Ed and Alphonse aren't rational," Maes Hughes was once heard to say, "they are his kids...after a fashion."

014. Possible

When he and Riza found the mess at the Elric home, his first thought was that no one could have survived what had happened there; afterwards, he was grateful to have been wrong.

015. Temperature

During the worst of his fever, Edward had thought that his father had been there, telling him that everything would be all right; Alphonse never told him that Colonel Mustang had sat with him the entire time.

016. Goodbye

Until the day he died, Edward would hold a grudge against Mustang for not telling them that Hughes was dead; he never got a chance to say goodbye.

017. Hero

As the two of them said their final goodbyes, Roy couldn't help but wonder when that badly maimed child from so long ago had turned into a hero.

018. Point

Edward never saw the purpose of his coming in to personally give Mustang his reports; the colonel would be sarcastic and make short jokes, and he would invariably lose his temper.

019. Try

"Sir, you could at least attempt to get along with Fullmetal," Lt. Hawkeye sighed as the two of them watched the boy storm out of the office and slam the door hard enough to rattle the windows.

020. Dinner

After a disastrous evening, he made a mental note never to take the Elric boys out to dinner again; Alphonse couldn't eat, and Edward had the metabolism of a coal stove and the manners of a drunken longshoreman.

021. Scar

The battle with Scar had nearly cost both himself and the Elric brothers their lives, but he put off the case of the shakes he knew would be coming until he was safely back in his apartment.

022. Perfect

The impromptu rematch of Fullmetal vs. Flame only confirmed what Riza had known for weeks - that Edward and the colonel had perfected the fine art of driving each other berserk, and that if she didn't intervene, the two of them would kill themselves and any innocent bystanders who got caught in the crossfire.

023. Solution

It had seemed the perfect answer at the time - Al's cat got a home, they got the information they needed, and he got to wipe that damn smirk off of Mustang's face - but after hearing what the colonel had to say, it didn't seem that fair, after all.

024. Science

Despite his youth, Edward was as much a scientist as he was, and he regretted never getting to argue theories of alchemy with him.

025. Proud

When they said their final farewells, he couldn't help but be proud of the young man Edward had become, and that he had played a part in it.

026. Pretend

"Tell you what, Fullmetal," the colonel said, "let's pretend that I'm your commanding officer, you're my subordinate, and you'll follow orders for once."

027. Late

Edward never realized that every time he showed up late, every time he didn't check in when he was supposed to, Roy would always start to fear the worst.

028. Forever

After he had run into the second, fourth, and ninth things the colonel had neglected to warn him about, and the seventh tried to eat him, Edward decided to kill Mustang in such a way that it would take him an eternity to die.

029. Defend

Edward knew that something had happened to the colonel during the last few seconds of their duel; Mustang would never have let him get that close with his blade otherwise.

030. Gone

When it was clear that the Elric brothers weren't coming back after the invasion, Roy went to tell Winry himself; it was the very least he owed her, after all.

031. Determined

Edward Elric was one who would move worlds, given even half a chance, and Roy was determined to be the one who showed him where to put the lever.

032. Abducted

Looking back on it, Roy wasn't sure what he found more disturbing - that the kidnappers thought that Edward was his son, or that he found himself not minding the idea once he got past the teasing.

033. Communication

For all the insults and all the bluster from both of them, Havoc knew that things would never come to blows between Ed and the colonel; it was just the way they communicated.

034. Disguise

Edward had dyed his hair brown and donned the rags of a Liore refugee; if it hadn't been for his gold eyes, Mustang would never have recognized him.

035. Drugged

When the nurse told him that his parents had arrived at the hospital to take charge of him, he half-expected to see Hohenheim and his mother appear; when Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye came through the door, he'd have laughed if only he had the strength.

036. Tragedy

The real tragedy, Roy thought, was that with Alphonse's memory gone, he would never know what his brother had done for him, or the part that he himself had played in the lives of the people around him.

037. Butterfly

He never asked that Fullmetal play the part of the social butterfly, but was it too much to request that the boy keep a civil tongue in his head?

038. Effect

Von Hohenheim had very briefly met the Flame Alchemist some years before, but never would have guessed that the boy would have such an effect on his sons' lives.

039. Design

If Edward had had any plans beyond finding the Philosopher's Stone and restoring himself and his brother, Roy wouldn't have had any problems with taking the boy on as a protege.

040. Substance

The report of the stone in Liore was the first solid lead on anything even resembling a Philosopher's Stone the boys had had in three years; Roy hoped for their sake that it was the real thing.

041. Smoke

Where the was smoke there was Flame, and when the fire department was overwhelmed by the inferno, he and Fullmetal were there helping to pull the survivors out of the building.

042. Paranormal

Ed flatly refused to believe in anything he couldn't logically explain, but that was only part of the reason he never told Mustang that he had seen Lt. Col. Hughes on a railway platform miles away from Central the day after his murder.

043. Spooky

When Ed finally set pen to paper and started writing about his time as a State Alchemist, he never dreamed that the Flame Colonel's eerie yet maddening ability to know everything his youngest subordinate was doing would make him one of the most popular characters in the story.

044. Spy

At first, Edward seemed ideal for ferreting out the information Roy needed for his own operations, because who would have suspected a kid would know anything about military operations or espionage?

045. Morph

Envy was sure the little brat had broken his jaw, and reluctantly agreed with his younger half-brother that he should never have taken on the Flame Alchemist's form during their final battle.

046. Pulse

Edward had been raised by and around very strong women, so when he saw Mustang throwing himself at anything female, just so long as it was pretty and had a heartbeat, he found he had even less reason to like the man.

047. Dare

Ed and the colonel fell asleep leaning against each other while they were waiting for their ride back to headquarters; if either of them had been awake, Alphonse wouldn't have dared to take the picture.

048. Whisper

Edward had never spoken to his wife and children of his life before he'd come to this new world, so his grandchildren never knew who people were that he called for as he was dying, nor why he called for a bastard colonel.

049. Insecure

Edward had always been terribly insecure about his height; that was why Roy always delighted in teasing him about it.

050. Writers' Choice: Continuity

As they listened with bemusement as Father Mustang ranted about his plans for his reign as pope, Edward simply smiled, shook his head, and said, "I guess some things never change, do they?"

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: #50 is for Phoenix-Fire Power, who was curious about Father Mustang. He followed a different path than the Flame Alchemist did, but the ambition is still there. For those of you who are looking at this and going "Huh?", my first reference to Father Mustang was in the Fifty Sentence set I did for Hughes and Gracia in 1923 Munich, and he was the priest who married them. From therein, he just kep popping up.