Perfect After All: Odds Without Ends

Special Ops

Jaya Mitai

Disclaimer: Don't own FMA. Making no money. Don't sue.

This was a drabble written because undercover Havoc fics are hard to find, and he never seems to do much in them. So this was in response to that, a present for fellow author Silverfox2702.

- x -

Sharp.

The hairs of his nose tried to retreat back into his brain, and he opened his eyes. He couldn't help it. This smell was bad, bad like eggs in a mine. This smell meant you had to wake up. And he was awake, he knew he must have been wandering in and out for some time, because the pain was still there, just as crushing as it had been. He tried to lift his head, just to get his nose out of the blood, but he might as well have been picking up a boulder. He really couldn't move.

He also couldn't quite get one of his eyes open. It was stinging like the dickens, and even with one good one he still couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from.

He couldn't even tell where he was.

The floor was old, grey and far too smoothly worn to be anything but a business. He imagined he'd be smelling the dust if he could smell anything other than metal and that sharp vapor that reminded him a little of camping with Pa, the time he fell and broke his ankle. They'd had to stay the night in the ravine, it'd been too late to pick their way out and dark, dark like this. It was night, which wasn't good.

He wasn't even sure he was in the same district. Last thing he remembered was late afternoon-

He closed his eyes again at the sound of footsteps, and lay peaceably on the floor as two-no, four sets of boots clomped up some kind of wooden stairway. A door was slammed open, wafting some air over him, and for a second the sharp smell was gone.

"Wakey wakey, Riley."

A sharp kick to his gut gave him his orientation on the floor, and while he felt himself gag he found the general desire to continue not moving remained. A few more blows rained down, but he didn't respond, and not because he couldn't. No point. He remembered that, at least. Only thing it could'a been.

Someone ratted him out.

"That all the fight you got?"

Someone started to haul him up by his hair, and his chest creaked in warning. He tried to catch the wrist holding him, just to give himself some other kind of support. He did not want to sit up, he did not want to move. He wanted to lay there.

But instead, he was shaken like a mangy dog and grabbed by his collar instead, which was more useful to manhandle him. It also was a little easier on his body, so he allowed it, cracking open his eyes to see how close Raoul really was.

Close. But even with all those dirty teeth bared, all he could smell was metal and oil.

. . . lantern oil?

"So you're an officer, are ya?"

Yep. Cover was definitely blown. It really was the only explanation as to why the entire group set upon him the moment he met up at the rendezvous point, but they must've just gotten the tip, because he was sure the stock they had was the real thing, sure he knew where all their hiding places were. Sure he had them, he just needed to get the word out-

Not like he had a phone, though. Not like they'd let him wander out to find one, either. And since he didn't recognize the building even upside-up, he was probably a long way from his expected location. So they weren't going to find him, either. Not for a little while, at least. Maybe the colonel'd had one of Hughes' men tailing him, but he hadn't seen a guy. This was all so damn sensitive, and if it had been anyone else, anyone smarter, Raoul wouldn't have taken them on. He'd wanted a dumb grunt with a gun, and that was who Riley was.

Only now they knew Riley was really Jean Havoc, somehow, and that grunt with a gun was probably on his own.

He hung in the man's meaty fist like a rag doll, and was vigorously shaken again. He hoped distantly that he'd gag again and puke on the guy, but only a weak burp rattled out of his bruised throat, and this was met with roars of laughter.

Not from Raoul, though. He fancied himself the upper crust. The fact Riley was a lieutenant would probably rub Raoul all kinds of the wrong way.

"You think you're funny, boy?"

Jean tried to pick up his head, finding it a little easier somehow, and circulation was returning to his upper body. The sharp smell was stronger, this high off the ground, and now he was sure of it. Lantern oil. A lot of it, or else it was on his clothes.

Oh.

His brow must have furrowed, because Raoul pulled him even closer. "You think you're funny?"

Havoc blinked, owlishly, and then struck, seeking out Raoul's unprotected throat with the second and middle finger of his right hand. It only took two pounds of pressure to crush a person's trachea, and even though he was too weak to actually puncture the skin, his arm still moved as fast as it would've reaching for his rifle. He found himself suddenly unsupported, and his legs sure as shootin' weren't going to take up the slack, so he fell heavily despite complaints from his chest and gut. He'd landed mostly in a sitting position, though, and he decided to remain upright despite the drawbacks. Raoul might have a gun, after all, and if he collapsed in front of him, at least it'd give him a little cover –

Yep. Raoul fell to his knees, both hands wrapped around his throat, and there was a rich walnut handle sticking out of his ridiculous suede jacket, just begging to be plucked up. Always happy to oblige, he did so, and only then did the other men seem to realize what was going on.

Too late for them. He squeezed off a round and the unexpected recoil almost slapped him in the face. A little better prepared, the second and third shots were better, but there was still the fourth man, and as luck would have it, to his blurry vision it looked like Offal, just around the frame of a door. Who really should've been the first one he'd shot, the guy was a real bad apple and he'd be happy to pick right up where Raoul had left off.

He'd also be smart enough to take the stock and go, not hung up in assumed arrogance like Raoul. If he didn't get word to the colonel, then three weeks' worth of work – and the money they'd given the smugglers – was for nothing.

Offal, as it turned out, wasn't too keen on the idea that he might not have hit Raoul quite hard enough to kill him, either. He was more than happy to shoot through his old boss to get to 'Riley,' and Jean kept returning fire, a little blindly, watching the kneeling man in front of him shudder as round after round struck his back.

And then maybe Raoul ran out of ribs, because one of those bullets went right through him, and then Jean was lying down again.

He heard the other man approach, but the walnut gun was heavy, and his stomach was so happy he was lying down again that it was jumping around in celebration. He felt the gun being torn out of his grasp, and Offal's face swam into view. He had blood all over him, one of his shots must've grazed him, but not close enough. The next thing he saw was the interior of the barrel of an Evans ten, and then the click of the hammer, striking the gunpowder packet and sending a piece of lead hurtling into his brain.

Well, that was how it usually worked. If there'd have been a bullet in the chamber.

Offal managed to look incredulous through the blood, and he hurled the weapon at him. It must've hit him in the face, seeing as it couldn't have gone anywhere else, but outside of a suddenly tingling cheek Jean didn't feel any new pain. A quick check revealed he still even had all his teeth.

"This was my idea, you know," Offal snarled, when he saw that Jean's eyes were still open. "Like it? Couldn't'a worked out better." He kicked the corpse of his boss, and Jean heard the body settle. "Seemed a fitting message to send to your colonel. Him bein' the Flame Alchemist. Get it?" Offal bent to pick up the gun he'd kicked out of his hands, and he checked the chamber before he cursed, putting a hand to his bleeding head.

"Fuck you, maggot," he spat, and then he was hurrying out of the room.

Huh. He must not've known that Raoul used an old six-shooter. Offal only had one bullet left, and at least six men to convince he was in charge. Jean would've given him a salute for good luck if he could've picked up his hand. Instead, he lay where he'd fallen, wondering where he'd gotten hit.

Must've. Something had knocked him down. Didn't hurt, though, and he knew better than to try to seek out that pain. It'd find him soon enough.

A distant, muted roar, like a furnace starting up, and light outside the door Offal had just left.

Havoc eyed the room sluggishly. Any message he could leave would be burned, unless he could tie it to something heavy and chuck it out a window . . . ? He supposed he could always try to get up, but the flames were already visible through the doorway, and he'd heard the men come up – and one go back down – the wooden staircase, so he knew the exit was at least a floor down, and now blocked. He also knew he wouldn't survive a fall out the window, even only on the second story, and there was no guarantee Offal wouldn't be waiting outside. Hell, that sadist would probably stick around to hear him scream. Even if he scrawled a message and tossed it outside with his own body, Offal'd just take the letter when he left.

And he was right. Mustang'd be pissed if he died in a fire. What he didn't get was what Offal hoped to gain by knowingly pissing off the Flame. One way ticket to Hell.

Of course, he'd catch that hell too if he didn't manage to pass on his information before he bought the farm, so he needed to find a way to get that message out of this building, and quick, before he did something stupid like dying.

There were windows, his failing eyes told him, hiding behind thick, grimy drapes. Must've been a warehouse, the way that fire was spreading. Lantern oil burned hot and slow, and they hadn't actually really poured much into the room with him, just the stairs and the hall outside. Maybe to give him time to think about death, but it was time just the same. Curtains meant windows. Windows meant air and a way to get something out.

But again, if Offal was out there, he'd see anything he tossed out. Maybe if he tossed it out when he broke the window, though, Offal would think it was just junk to clear out the glass before he tried to jump himself, so if he wrote two messages, Offal'd find the one on his person but the other would still be safe.

That seemed a good idea, and Jean took a deep breath of the thickening air, bracing himself for the effort of moving. Still had his notebook, wonder of wonders, in his back pocket, and he knew there was plenty of ink to be had, it'd been dripping out of his nose before he'd gotten shot, and he could always use the stuff pouring out of Raoul. Jean pulled out the notebook, touching his upper lip with a boneless finger before he started scrawling.

It took a couple sheets, but he got them all down. The addresses were in shorthand, but it was Fuery's shorthand. Might as well've been an unbreakable code for all the sense Offal would make of it. Jean looked around, finding the Evans ten lying just next to his face, so he picked it up as he rolled onto his left side, and from there to his knees. A peculiar weakness started spreading through him, from some point high in his chest, but outside of feeling incredibly light-headed it didn't really hurt him. It would've been a slow, flat bullet, wouldn't have gone all the way through both Raoul and then him.

Hell, if not for the fire, he might've even survived it.

The weakness scared him, far more than the pain or the flames he could feel through the floor beneath his knees. He'd always been relatively strong, even as a kid. He'd always been able to press on when others couldn't. All he had to do was get his ass across that floor to the window and toss the gun. Even if he couldn't then write the other message and toss himself out after it, he had to get the gun out there.

Jean laboriously settled back on his calves, concentrating on the two small pieces of paper. It was like rolling a cig; his fingers knew what to do, strength or no. Into the barrel of the gun the cylinders of paper went, and then he used his pinkie to push them further in. The gun would be found, the notes would be found, and Maes would make sure it got to the colonel. All he had to do was get it out the window.

He was tempted to just throw it and he done with it, but what if he missed? The gun might survive the fire, but the metal would be far too hot, and the paper would burn. He tried to breathe, but here on his knees the air was already smoky, and rather than stand he crawled. The shot was definitely in his chest, it was hard to suck down air and hard to push it back out and he was so close to the floor, the nice warm floor he could lay on and rest, just for a second.

But he wouldn't, and he knew it, like settling in for a 'quick' nap in the supply room. It wouldn't just be a few minutes. It would be forever.

That thought struck him so weirdly that a feeble burst of adrenaline shot through him, and he kept moving, to get away from the place on the floor he'd thought it. Forever. This was the last place he was ever going to be.

Eventually the curtains were in front of him, and he grabbed at them clumsily, pulling himself up even as he tried to rip them down. But they stayed where they were, and he pawed through them desperately, growing more afraid by the moment as his arms became heavier and heavier. He'd probably gotten them opened twice before he realized it, the windows were so grimy and it was so dark. But he felt the hard glass brush against his knuckles, and he brought up the gun, bracing it on the windowsill before slapping it against the window.

If his strike against Rauol had been weak, this was weaker. Again and again he beat the glass with the gun, and it was at least the fifth time before the thick glass gave. He didn't just break a pane, though; the whole window was a single piece of glass, the panes just wood slapped over it, and it fell around him. He lost his grip on the gun in his surprise, and he wasn't sure where it ended up. He scrabbled at the floor at his feet, trying to find it, just in case it had fallen inside with the glass. Every time he thought he found it he raised his hands to see glass sticking out of his fingers, and after an unknown amount of time had passed, he decided that it wasn't there.

The window was giving him air, but it was also closer to the door, and the fire had already crawled into the room with him. He was pretty sure it was cooking his shins, too, where he knelt, but he didn't really care. It was going to get him, either through the floor or by the door, and it was the same fire so it didn't matter. All that mattered was that it was bringing light with it, and he could see that the gun didn't seem to be near him.

Now all he had to do was decide if he wanted to break his legs before he burned to death, or just sit still and let it happen. His stomach was voting for the latter, and he was sure Offal would only think he broke the glass to breathe, so he relaxed, and only then did he notice he'd left the pad of paper where they'd dropped him, and he sure as hell wasn't going to crawl back there for it.

Havoc leaned his forehead against the windowsill, not wanting to lay down in a glass bed but getting more tempted by the second. He found, however, that he was somehow slumped just right that he could stay where he was with almost no effort, so he did, and his stomach wasn't especially happy about being upright but it was a heck of a lot happier to be still, so it let it be enough, and he just kept right on breathing. There wasn't much else to do but listen, and there was a lot to listen to, so he did.

It kinda reminded him of the colonel, actually.

The building was falling down, he could feel it shudder when a support below gave, and of course the fire was talking the entire time. He'd even heard the colonel answer, once, in Liore, when he'd first met him. It seemed like if he just stopped concentrating, he'd be able to make out the words, and Mustang had told him once that fires have a purpose that is not necessarily the one their maker intended. Some fires were happy at their work, crackling away in fireplaces because they knew they were well-fed. Wild fires were ferocious, they were free and expanded across the land to play in the wind. House fires were desperate, knowing their brief life was accidental and would shortly be over.

This was one of those. It was howling, like it knew he was there. He could hear it talking to him, maybe because he was drifting and not paying attention, he probably had that stare the colonel got sometimes when he listened, but he couldn't make out anything besides his name.

Well, wasn't that a darned shame. Even the fire knew he wasn't really Riley. And its voice was growing more desperate by the minute, it must've known that help was coming, that it would get to him but that would be the last thing it could consume before the firemen put it out to prevent it from burning down the warehouses nearby. He opened his eyes, turning his head slightly to see that it was well on its way to him, using the walls and ceiling as its vehicle more than the dusty floor. Of course, dirt wouldn't burn, but old sooty walls were another thing altogether.

It was also throwing some weird shadows, too. Shadows and oranges and bright reds.

"Lieutenant!"

Now that was a little weird. He opened his eyes again, unable to recall when he'd closed them. They were still there, the reds and yellows and oranges, and they were calling him by rank.

"Lieutenant Havoc!"

One of the curtains fell down, just beside him, and then started beating the fire out of itself. Good call, he wanted to say. The fire would have come straight down them to get to him. Nice of the curtains to do that. He was too tired to do it himself.

Then the curtain flung itself around him, which was fine too, if it made it a little harder to breathe, and then he was moving. That was definitely not all right, and he tried to fling the curtain off. He got it off his face, since it wasn't a huge curtain and he was almost taller than it was, and saw that the fire was on top of them.

It was also under him, which was an interesting feat, as he seemed to be floating over it. Even more weirdly, it seemed to be carrying him.

He blinked, trying to get moisture into his eyes, and the red, which was by far the dimmest light, looked right at him. "Please hold still, lieutenant. The whole place is about to come down!"

No kidding, he wanted to say, and then he realized who else used that desperate voice, and who else glowed red brightly, like fire.

Another flicker of adrenaline, but of course his strength was less by the second, it couldn't do much besides clear the cobwebs temporarily.

Shit. That kid was made of metal. That was why he'd wrapped him up in the curtain. Alphonse Elric would burn him if he touched him. Already was, to an extent; he could feel his skin starting to cook, like his shins had against the floor.

And blood, even dried blood, couldn't stand that heat for long. The seal would burn off just as sure as Jean's own blood would.

"Jump," he told the shadow, knowing now why it looked like fire, why it sounded so desperate. He was just a little boy, even if he was so big, and even though Alphonse Elric was sure to survive, it just might not occur to him.

The shadow understood him immediately. "It'll hurt." You, he didn't add.

Jean nodded. Wouldn't do to tell the kid it already hurt.

And then there was the sickening lurch of falling, and then a landing that seemed to take forever, jarring and rattling his very brain. They'd fallen through the floor, he decided, and were hitting each level as the building collapsed. But then he was flat, and the curtain was peeled away, and he opened his eyes and saw fire, only it was further away. The air was cold on his face, inviting like a creek in midsummer, and he realized Al must have rolled to lessen the impact on him, since there was grass stuck to his helmet-horn.

So he reached up with an arm as heavy as Armstrong's must have been, and picked the clod off, before anyone else would notice. His fingers were caked with blood, but touching the metal didn't seem to burn them. Alphonse was uncomfortably hot, but not too hot.

The seal would be okay, then.

"Al! Lieutenant!"

Someone else, someone who reminded him of fire as well was now beside him. Quite a bit shorter, though, and Havoc almost pointed it out. Had the colonel somehow found out . . . ? But why would he send them?

"What're . . . you two doing here?" It was hard to talk, but he didn't dare swallow. His throat would stick together and then he'd really freak the two of them out. He wasn't sure he could avoid it, at this point, but death wasn't something little kids should have to watch, even if was just a death like his.

Edward Elric had also reached out to touch his brother, but Alphonse shook his head with the usual metallic rattle. "It's fine. I didn't get too hot."

"I wasn't sure that transmutation was going to be enough," Ed muttered, apparently relieved, before looking down at him. Nimble little hands were trying to pull the curtain aside, and he couldn't stop them, but Edward had seen blood before, and he'd seen people shot before. It wouldn't be too much for him. In fact, the boy's face hardly changed, just got a little harder.

It was hard not to imagine him with black hair, raising hell in his mother's kitchen. Seeing as he was going to grow right up into the spitting image of Mustang if he wasn't careful, seemed like the colonel had to have been a little like Ed, then, when he was younger.

"We overheard Miles just outside the library," Edward told him, voice tight as the curtain glowed with blue light and became a mantle of snow around him. "He mentioned the name Raoul Genkiss, so we knew it was linked to the missing stock. Then he said they had some surprise they were taking care of by the river, and with Mustang tied up in meetings, we figured it was worth checking out. It's what State Alchemists do, you know. Help the people."

Havoc couldn't help it. He laughed. It was dry and probably scared them a little, but neither drew back, and at some point it turned into coughing, and then choking, but there was water at his lips, and he eventually got enough down to stop. He didn't know where it had come from, but the boys had said they were near the river, and both were alchemists, so he wasn't going to worry about it. Pressure on his chest told him the curtain-turned-dressing was being used to slow the bleeding, and he contemplated replacing the small, white-gloved hand with his own.

Nothing should stain those hands, least of all him.

When he got his breath back, he was surprised to find they were still outside, still in the glow of the fire, and he cleared his throat. "How do you two know about Raoul?"

Edward had the good grace to look slightly less proud of himself, and Al sighed. "Nii-san knew that the colonel was keeping something from him, so we broke into-"

"The door was open, Al!"

"- the office one night and found a letter that was left out on a desk."

Huh. Wasn't like the colonel to be that careless with the documents. Unless, of course, it had been on his desk.

. . . and it wasn't like Hawkeye to be careless about locking up, either.

Jean's eyesight was too bad to pick out anyone else around them, almost too bad to focus on them at all, but he sucked in a breath. "It was just lying out?"

Edward nodded, looking cocky again. "Careless of the bastard colonel, wouldn't you say?" And then his face changed, and Jean was astonished. He knew the kid was quick, but he was thirteen. Wasn't healthy for someone his age to be so damn suspicious.

But it was healthy for someone like a soldier. Mustang wouldn't have left anything that explicit out. In fact, he wouldn't have even written it down. And Hawkeye wouldn't have let him leave it out. It was planted there. The question was, who was supposed to have found it?

"Did you take it?"

Ed was somehow already far past his train of thought. "No. We left it where it was. Do you mean-"

That someone else was instructed to go into the office and find it. And someone else had, because the colonel had never mentioned it. Which meant that Mustang was set up from within the military. Only reinforced, if Miles was involved. Someone higher up than the colonel, though . . . that was a surprise. The stock wasn't that important, even though it was their best armor-piercing bullets. In fact, the whole thing had been a little off from the start, which was why the colonel had asked him to go in as a spy rather than keeping an eye from afar.

It wasn't the op they were trying to mess up. It was the colonel. Or his reputation, at least. A blown op and a dead officer would be a black mark on his record, prevent promotion.

Of course, the op was blown, and he was just about dead, so there wasn't much that could be done about it now. Only thing would be to keep the Elrics safe, if someone had come to make sure everything went according to plan.

"Did you tell Hawkeye?" Even if the colonel had been sucked into meetings – and he hadn't had any scheduled, it was all adding up – Hawkeye wouldn't have been.

Ed thinned his lips, and Alphonse sighed. "We sent her a note. Nii-san, someone's coming."

He reached up and grabbed Ed's arm, surprising himself. The water and first aid had helped, but not enough. "The gun," he said clearly. "I threw it out the window-"

"We saw. That's how Al knew where to go."

"There's a note inside. It has to get to the colonel."

Ed threw him a startled look, even as Alphonse got to his feet. "Nii-san-"

"I see 'em, Al." But he hadn't taken his eyes off him, and Havoc shook his arm a little.

"Take it and get out of here."

Ed still looked shocked, but then the cocky grin was back. "Be right back."

Then the boy had pried out of his grasp, forcing his hand to lay on the wad of cotton, and Alphonse was already running, but in the wrong direction, and he knew dam well he couldn't have chucked the gun that far-

The warehouse finally collapsed, with a startlingly large fireball, and he clearly heard the fire roaring away, crackling and splitting what was left of the wood, whooping in the knowledge it had destroyed, and even though it would burn itself out all the faster, it had what it wanted.

And he closed his eyes, because he didn't want to see the colonel's face, not even with his dead eyes. It would be angry and disappointed, and he was just too tired.

He relaxed, finally feeling the bulletwound and rather wishing he could have died before it had happened. But it was pretty muted, all things told. His burnt skin was quite suddenly cold, and he noticed the roar was gone. Fire must've burned out. It was still dark behind his eyelids, so he listened to the silence, punctuated at times with the sounds of people moving around. None of them spoke to him, or touched him, so he assumed he was good and dead. It was a little disconcerting to still be able to hear, and he wondered if all those gentle sounds he thought were cloth were really feathers.

Then again, he didn't expect that he'd hurt this bad if he was in Heaven. Too cold to be Hell, though. Maybe purgatory? He supposed it was awfully sinful of him to assume he'd be going to Heaven. He hadn't even been able to get those two kids out of the thick of it. Didn't know if they'd made it or not. Didn't even know who had come after them.

Wouldn't, either, even if he was in Heaven, unless he opened his eyes.

So he did.

And there was the colonel's face.

Only it wasn't like he'd thought it would be. Mustang didn't look angry, or disappointed, or anything but . . . tired. Of course. He'd probably spent the night trying to clean up the mess, and he would have done that first, done it before he'd have time to deal with his own people. And it must've been a hell of a mess, because unless he was mistaken, the dark shadows under the man's eyebrows actually hid closed eyes, instead of open ones.

The colonel was asleep.

Havoc blinked, shivering slightly, and though he still couldn't see well, he was pretty sure he'd made it out right. There was a ceiling that wasn't the sky, and distant walking noises, and that fabric rustling sound that he was starting to realize was the colonel's sleeves rubbing on the front of his coat as he breathed, arms crossed on his chest.

Funny, that he'd have fallen asleep in the morgue. Ridiculous, even. Havoc blinked again, taking a slightly deeper breath, and then he felt the same pain he'd felt lying on the floor in the burning building.

Huh. Now that was something.

Jean Havoc didn't make a sound, he was far too tired for pointless whimpering, but even that soft sigh seemed to have been enough, because the colonel was suddenly looking at him, and he was looking back, and still, there was no anger.

Then again, if he hadn't died, there wasn't much to be angry at him about. Wasn't like he'd blown his own cover. Still felt cold enough to be a morgue, though. There was a blanket on him, he saw, and bandaging, but taking a better look would require him to move, and his stomach was still insisting that was a horrible idea.

Mustang studied him for a moment, then spoke. "Good evening."

Yeah. It might just be.

"Sir," he replied, his voice rasping. The colonel stood suddenly, striding across the room and giving him enough time to close his eyes before he turned on the lights. They were obnoxiously bright, but when Mustang returned he had water, and Havoc figured that was worth a headache. Of course, he had to move to accept the water, which was unpleasant, and he held it gingerly in hands that were wrapped in thick bandages. He was still shivering as he drank, and then there was some soft increase in weight on his sore, burned legs, and he lowered the cup to find a much thicker blanket had been draped across him.

"Report."

So he did, never asking the question that was on his mind, because Mustang would ask for a verbal report even if the Elrics were fine, and had given him the gun, and he'd had Fuery translate the addresses into normal post office addresses. It was a pretty short report, all things considered, but he did add his suspicions about Offal and the best places to find him. "Assuming it's still Thursday night, sir," he added as an afterthought.

The colonel had absorbed everything without speaking, arms still crossed. "It is, lieutenant."

Mustang wouldn't have let him report if it wasn't a secure room, so he swallowed. "How are the Elrics, sir?"

Roy looked a little more tired, all of a sudden. "Trying to put me in my grave ten years early," he replied dryly, and Jean smiled as much as his swollen face would allow.

"After tonight, I think I get why you feel that way sometimes."

Now it was the colonel's turn to smile. "Disobeyed you too, did they?"

"Always. Of course, the chief does outrank me."

"Not that it would matter if he didn't," Mustang murmured, smoothly ignoring the implied request for a promotion, and Havoc allowed himself to relax a little. He was slightly more awake, but not much. Enough to know he was in a hospital. Enough to know he'd have been dead if not for those two boys.

"Thank you for the report, lieutenant. Try to get some rest."

Havoc had, of course, left out the part about Offal telling him why he'd chosen to burn him to death, but he didn't miss the sudden change in the colonel as he stood. And it wasn't just about Offal. If the Elrics were fine, they'd already told Roy what they knew, and he'd have already figured out why it had all happened the way it had happened. He knew, now, that someone higher ranking was after him. And had done a fairly untraceable job of it. Fingerprints would be long gone, and every officer could get access to another officer's things just by borrowing the custodian's keys.

"Who went after them?" Had Ed and Al actually taken on military officers? Or had it been Offal?

Mustang paused, then reached out to flick off the light. "I'll take care of it," he replied softly. "Goodnight, Havoc."

"Goodnight, sir."

- . -

Author's Notes: So, he didn't do a whole lot in this either, huh. But it shows that while he's not the brightest bulb in the shed, he's not an idiot either. There are many people out there with almost no formal college education who have more wisdom in (un)common sense than I will ever have, and I think of Havoc as one of those people.

The next 'chapter' as it were happened because after I wrote this as a present, I thought . . . you know . . . I wonder, since Ed and Al were there . . . what would have happened to Offal . . . hmm . . . I wonder what he would have done to the Elrics . . . or they would have done to him . . .